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Sounds good!

Just be sure to have all of your costs covered for all the options (especially the 'free' ones!) and you should be OK!

I would be careful with letting people choose different options mainly because it will make fulfillment a nightmare and you will have people wanting the arms of option A and the head of option B, etc. A mix of freebie heads maybe even arms, and then paid add on shield, arm, and head packs. Just structure your stretch goals for the freebies in order to take into account the cost of getting freebies not only to current backers, but future backers as well.

I also think a stretch goal for an alternate bugbear pose would be appreciated, as would options for a dual wielder. I would also personally be interested in a less armored option as well. I don't know about the breakdown on the wider web, but at least around here my sense is that the interest in the Bugbear is significantly higher than in the zombie hulk, so you may structure stretch goals to reflect that.

 Kaine Larson wrote:
You would get the standard shield free if course but additional ones would have to be purchased.

And you'd be retaining this for the big pledges for extra parts? Hm. And does this mean "one of" or "four of" for additional arms, shields and such? Best to work that out beforehand and specify in the campaign.
Mega Bundle (4xBrutes) plus all stretch goals FREE.

 Alpharius wrote:
Sounds good!

Just be sure to have all of your costs covered for all the options (especially the 'free' ones!) and you should be OK!

Agreed. While yeah a few options would be nice, I'd rather you were able to have a successful campaign that ensured the company can take off.

I'm fine with pledges being very simple and streamlined, with stretches adding in extra bonus pieces.

Maybe have an option to buy variant piece bundles? Keep all those extra pieces clumped together, or in the case of smaller bits like heads, just cast them together when the time comes?

Whatever helps you keep things nice, neat, and under control.

I liked RBG's last one. Very simple, easy pledge levels, no fething around, pick what's available, done.

What I will do is release the basic make up of the KS over the next few days once I've worked out all the costs. I think only the mega bundle early bird will have all the heads, arms etc free. Shields would be additional cost. Each part will be available from the addon store separately or slightly cheaper in a pack of several items. All previous backers from the last campaign will get a unique, loyalty bonus bugbear head.

Stretchgoal models will be the Zombie Hulk and the Lizardkin Deathscale. Options will be available for both of these too. There will be an addon store link to a PDF showing all the options available at the end if the KS as a kind of pledge manager. This should make it easy.

 Kaine Larson wrote:

Stretchgoal models will be the Zombie Hulk and the Lizardkin Deathscale.

Have we seen the Deathscale? Will they be comparable size- wise to the Bugbears? I know we saw the Lizardkin Brave.

Also- the Zombie Hulk was the thing with all the bodies all over it, right? Those looked neat.

The Deathscale is brand new! You are right about the Hulk. He is much bigger and will be more expensive too but is a real centrepiece.

Kaine, I like the idea of backers of the prior campaign getting a free head (you had advertised this on the prior campaign too, of course, so it makes sense to honor it!). But I would make this head available to all backers, too, just so no one misses out (they would just have to pay to add it on, or select it as the base head for their miniature perhaps, depending on how you set things up).

Excited to see what you do / have done with Deathscale!

Good point. I'll make it a paid addon to everyone else.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
My comments to my artist were:

"Giant Lizardman.... Ferocity incarnate." I'm yet to get the concepts back but judging by Grigors other work... It will be awesome!

http://prefundia.com/projects/view/minion-miniatures-the-monsters-of-underdeep-28mm-fantasy-miniatures/2656/

Please click on the above link to our new Prefundia page - The Monsters of Underdeep.

This time we are offering our Bugbear Ironshield and Flesh Golem to the world with addition parts to customise your creature through our stretch goals.

Whats more, you can also unlock our awesome Monster stretch goals including the Zombie Hulk, the Lizardkin Deathscale and our new Miniotaur Guardian!

All the miniatures are in high quality resin. The KS itself will launching mid October with a target of only £2000!

Looks great! Found a typo in the third paragraph:

and a our ranges of the Goblinkind...

Looks good... except for the lack of lizards.

I look forward to seeing these figures in the flesh! The sooner we see a test shot of that bugbear, the better!

Early stretchgoal is the Lizardkin Deathscale. He is kind of like a primitive, primordial lizard ogre. Very different looking, not your typical lizard but the art looks great. He will have lots of additional parts too and can be picked as part of your pledge once unlocked.

Done, looking forward to the bug bear and keen to see what the deathscale looks like

Out of curiosity, why make him a stretch goal? If you want more early pledges, why not make him an early add-on instead?

He is a very early stretchgoal, along with most of the other monsters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I also want to keep the initial funding goal as low as I can!

2K (even in pounds) should be a cinch! I'll actually be pledging significantly more here than I did for the prior campaign.

Could you remind me if we pay shipping now or later, and what that would be for two brute-level models to the US?

Right... the shipping costs we something I got wrong in the last campaign. The basic US/EURO pledge will be the shipping cost generated by KS. For pledgers not in this zone they will have to add a small amount on top. The maximum cost of shipping to the US will be £10. However, as I have not worked out what the postage will be for each pledge yet we will most likely be looking slightly less than this. Perhaps £6 -£8. This will of course be confirmed before the KS begins. There will be only one EB to pledge on to begin with and this will be around £55-£60 Four brute pledge with access to the free stretch goals (not all the SG's are free).

Once this one is gone I will add another set of EB's for the same thing but only slightly more expensive. There will be one more EB pledge level if this one sells out but it will be for a much larger set of Brutes as we should have more monsters available then. It will probably give you access to 8 Brutes plus the free addons.

There will be plenty of additional addons unlocked through the stretchgoals and accessible from the Addon store.

There will be limited edition signed prints of all the Brutes unlocked as well.

The stretchgoals are designed to unlock three of each of the optional extras for each model available or unlocked. For instance, if they are all unlocked the Bugbear Ironshield should have three head options, 3 weapon options and three head options.

There is also a FREE Bugbear Ironshield head for all the pledgers in the last Minion Miniatures campaign. This head will be available to new pledgers from the addon store as well for the cost of £3.

The list of the monsters/Brutes available in this Kickstarter is as follows:

Starting choices of the Bugbear ironshield and Flesh Golem

Stretch Goals:

Lizardkin Deathscale
Zombie Hulk (counts as two Brute choices as its so huge)
Bugbear Brute
Minitaur Guardian

If the campaign goes really well we have some other monsters up our sleeve too! All the proceeds from this KS will be used to supplement the Goblin-Kind KS in February.

Sounds good - and is that a typo/mistake up there - you mean 3 shield options, I think?

Can't wait for the re-launch!

Ummmm yeah... Three shield options! Sorry!

Yup, even though I really liked the look of the goblins I'm actually more excited about the re-launch!

Me too actually... I love monsters!!!

Monsters are my bread and butter.

Based on those choices I've already decided what my four brutes will be.

Unless you do something mean and nasty like make Deathscale option parts, and then I have to use all my choices for giant reptiles.

I'm quite excited to see how the minotaur turns out though.

I too am looking forward to the new campaign- I have a funny feeling it will fund quite quickly, so I hope you're ready! Try not to succumb to stretch goal overload!

That's what I'm worried about. The SG's start at every £500 for an additional piece. Then they go up to £1000. If it does go well it could swallow up all my SG's straight away. I have SG's all the way up to £20k. I hope that enough. It's funny because the last one didn't fund I'm finding it hard to judge where this one will go although the mailing list is over 100 names already!

The Deathscale will have three head and three arm combo options.

The artwork concepts for it are very nice. It's not like anything out there in my opinon. Just don't expect him to be a large version if a Lizardman. He is more primitive and primordial than that. What I will do is release the SG at a rate that suits the KS once the initial funding is out the way. But there will be tonnes of options.

If everything gets funded quickly I have three other monsters up my sleeve so they may have to make an appearance. One of these guys would be the Troglodyte Behemoth... Another addition to the Lizardkin faction!

I'd be careful about the stretch goals. Better to be conservative and make sure you can produce product quickly and at high quality first. A runaway success can be worse then a failure on kickstarter.

It really depends on your objective for this kickstarter. If you're just trying to build a rep for a later (bigger) kickstarter you are better off going small, delivering on time and with good quality. You might want to talk to Tre Manor about small kickstarters over an omnibus version.

500 GBP per stretch is ( forgive the usage ) a bit of a stretch. You DO need to make a healthy profit on each piece added otherwise you may end up on a slow boat to hell during the fulfillment. Things will go wrong. they ALWAYS do. Plan for that and add 25% and you MIGHT have enough. otherwise you are likely headed for trouble.

And making more money on less figures is infinitely better for you and the future of your business and game than is makign less money on more figures. One thing that I have learned over the past 6 years operating RBG is that oddly having more figures in my catalogue works against my bottom line in strange ways. The mor eexpansive your catalogue ( and more expensive each piece is to stock ) the more diffcult it becomes to maintain stock. Especially if you are outsourcing production......which I WHOLE HEARTEDLY suggest you do for at least the first 2 or 3 years.

There is at least 2 high profile ready examples ( I won;t specifically name them ) of the absolute horror stories of trying to handle in house production with no experience and in trying to produce hordes of minis on narrow margins. Neither method ever works.

Take it slow at first and build your reputation. It will pay off.

Thanks for the advice Tre. The first few stretchgoals are £500 for one small part for customisation. This increases to £1000 and even £2500 for the later stretchgoals. The renders are nearly done for the additional pieces. I have done it this way to make it easier for people to buy multiples of the same model. We are still making a decent profit but I think having a few options for each model will fuel interest.

On the outsourcing side we have outsourced the manufacturing to zealot miniatures and the distribution to a large UK based distributor.

No problem Kaine, best of luck with it. If it is just parts then I would say that 500 GBP is perfectly reasonable.

What day do you plan to launch this, Kaine? With getting approval from KS beforehand, of course