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Very nice sculpts! I like the Ogres, they look very characterful. I also like how sensibly armored the Orc is.

 Gallahad wrote:
Very nice sculpts! I like the Ogres, they look very characterful. I also like how sensibly armored the Orc is.

Thanks!!!

So, our first update for this year has to do with the thanking of all the people who voted in our Poll, more than 500+ !!!
Results show that Humans, Orcs and Ogres are equally popular, and that's with more than 100+ votes for each of these! Ogres and Humans will have a unique "touch", but for the Orcs especially, with all the "goodies" the Valley Orcs have to offer (some of which unique to anything else you've ever seen before from any other manufacturer worldwide), we are very confident that -with a bit of luck on our side- we will soon have the most complete and detailed Orc army in 28mm heroic scale ever created!

All things are in schedule and we will be launching -at the very latest- on the 10th of February, but we will try to make it late January if possible...

In the meanwhile we again wish you all a very happy and prosperous 2015 from everyone here in the Shieldwolf Team!




Thank you.
The Shieldwolf Team.

Those Ogres look fantastic, can't wait for this to launch so we can see more.

So, we are keeping a bit silent these days, but everything is on schedule and we will take off as planned at the very latest on the 10th of February. The project has already been submitted and we have been given the "green light" so theoratically we could be lauching right now, but we mean to take care of a few loose ends first :-)

There are slight chances we manage to launch late January, but early February is more probable. A few more sculpts will definitely show up some time before clicking on the "launch!" button, you can expect them even more spectacular than those already previewed ;-) And mind you, we still keep surprises for the launch -some BIG surprises! :-D
Stay tuned and we hope you'll like and support what we have -already- created and what we want to create!

Thank you,
The Shieldwolf Team.

Project "Monuments of Glory" completed and ready to ship on Friday!






And now... *very evil smile*... totally free to wrap things up in the next short period and launch our Kickstarter! :-D

And date has been made official. :-)
We will mark exact time of launch when we get a tad closer.

I really hope he doesn't end up riding a kitty cat like the mantic female priestess riders did after the KOW kickstarter closed.

 warboss wrote:
I really hope he doesn't end up riding a kitty cat like the mantic female priestess riders did after the KOW kickstarter closed.

Lol

Okay, I got a chuckle, but we should probably put away the knives and focus on Shieldwolf on their own merit

 warboss wrote:
I really hope he doesn't end up riding a kitty cat like the mantic female priestess riders did after the KOW kickstarter closed.

I'll make you a bet. I don't know the exact size of the KOW model you're referring to, but if you still think this is a "kitty cat" after you've seen it (because the one pictured above has been already sculpted by us), I'll send you a couple of each for free! :-)

Seriously now, the picture above is the 2nd-level sketch, we still made minor corrections (like the teeth which we made a tad smaller). These are not simple lions, 4 out of 5 armies are going to receive Monstrous Cavalry Units, so "small" doesn't cut it. Angelos had already written their story, but we had to transfer that in concept artwork and after that, in physical form aka sculpts. ;-)
It might also interest you to know that while we were designing these, we were inspired by watching the trailer of "Hercules" with Dwayne Johnson back in June, July, don't remember which exactly. When we saw the trailer with the Nemea lion, Angelos said "Now THAT'S a lion!". Same goes for the Boar of Erimanthio (but that's not for the Humans)...

What currency will the KS be in?

Very cool concept art! Do you have any idea what your pledge levels will look like (as in how much money I would need for the "sweet spot" pledge level)?

willb2064 wrote:
What currency will the KS be in?

Shieldwolf gold coins! :-)
But officially it's in USD... $$$

 Gallahad wrote:
Very cool concept art! Do you have any idea what your pledge levels will look like (as in how much money I would need for the "sweet spot" pledge level)?

Thanks. We have already every pledge level calculated for, since if we wanted we could press "Launch!" right now. Your question is a bit tricky, we tried answering it ourselves while creating the pledge levels but I guess "sweet spot" depends on what someone is looking for.
We have various pledge levels to facilitate as many as possible, from the purchase of a single mini till the pledging for a couple of armies.

We created this campaign with how we -as pledgers- would expect it to be. It has been a logistical nightmare, but we think to have most stuff covered. :-)

Some other things we can reveal are
-Shipping is charged during the campaign. We want people to know exactly what they are paying for, a single payment and that's it.
-Shipping will be discounted for, the more the pledges climb, the more we discount their shipping.
-Funding goal will be hilariously small. To give you an estimate, even without fees it doesn't even cover the expenses we have went into for the concept artwork alone! We do not have a KS crowdfunding crowd ready to pledge tenths of thousands of $,euros, pounds, whatever. It is a great risk if this doesn't pick up quickly, but we have decided to grow the campaign with a steady pace.
-We not only have some minis already sculpted, but professionaly painted and with 360 degree shots, it's not going to be only concept artwork. We may have world-class sculptors recruited, but we want to make sure people realize how committed we are into this. We make fun of campaigns that -even having previous campaigns and followers- don't even go into the trouble to sculpt something on their own, instead of expecting everything to be on the backers backs! That's not dedication. That's not faith. That's not passion.
-A greek hobby site took an interview from us, we are going to translate it in English and post it for all non-Greek speaking people. Guess that includes almost everyone here :-)
-When we say a full army, we mean a full army. Expect to see monsters -among which yes, Dragons! (with and without riders)-, expect monstrous cavarly, expect warmachines, expect troops, warriors, magicians, skirmish, cavalry... and some BIG thingies. You can expect the unexpected. :-D
-There will be pledge levels with limited availability. If someone thinks these are considered EBs, then yes, we'll have EBs. But the logic behind this is not to create quick buzz (or at least not only that) but mostly control/handle the pledge levels easier once the campaign has ended. Receiving the community's support is one thing, the other is to paying them back for their support. It's equally important.

We believe to have covered it all. :-)

Thank you.
The Shieldwolf Team.

Wish you the best of luck with the KS, I'll probably be in on that one I'd imagine. I do so love my orcs.

One thing I'll say though: try to be as upfront and honest with your updates and timings as you can. I'm not saying you won't be or have not been, but of the 4 kickstarters I am still waiting on, one has dropped off the grid, one has been totally dishonest about their timelines and two are late (but not by much so far). Honesty is the best currency when it comes to keeping people on side.

Once again good luck, and Im looking forward to it.

Appreciate the council, really do. :-) We have a good reputation and we mean to keep it.

Also- don't forget you won't be sleeping much during the campaign!

Questions will be asked at ALL hours of the day!

Do you guys think you'll offer the option of pledging a small amount now, and adding on later with a pledge manager after the campaign?

Got zinged on home repairs this weekend and don't know how much money I'll be able to get away with spending.

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
Do you guys think you'll offer the option of pledging a small amount now, and adding on later with a pledge manager after the campaign?

We have thought of opening something like a small time window via PayPal once the campaign has finished but we have nothing decided yet for sure, so we can't promise anything. :-)

So, finally finished translating the interview, hope it helps.

The original interview for anyone interested is here http://www.wargamer.gr/index.php/community/interviews/item/4425-shieldwolf-miniatures



This is our first interview from the people behind the only Greek company manufacturing miniatures in 28mm scale. While waiting for their first campaign on Kickstarter which is due on February 10th, we asked 11 questions to this company, concerning their upcoming rule-set, their miniatures and naturally their campaign!

1st Question: Tell us 2 words describing Shieldwolf Miniatures, how was it created and how come you decided something like this in a country that has nothing similar to what you're doing?
Shieldwolf Miniatures was an idea created many years ago and something that Angelos liked a lot, since we have all been involved for many years in fantasy worlds and it fascinates us. The decision to make this into a reality was however taken on February 2012. The fact nothing else like this exists in Greece was additional motive for us to create it!

2nd Question: How was the reaction of the hobbyists?
Initially we expected better, we were set up for mass production of large scale, but we soon realized that competition was tougher than initially anticipated. Truth is that worked in our favor because although it forced us to alter our initial plans, it made us even more competitive than we initially were aiming for. The number of people who are now following us today proves this.

3rd Question: What did you change?
Well, let's start with what we kept. Our manufacturing methods rest the same, they were already at a great level. Same goes for customer service, we kept doing exactly what we started from day 1. What we changed was our sculptors, our standards and the interaction with the people who share our passion, we are now discussing openly with people and we are not afraid to show off our accomplishments in such a short period of time. Also, we are prioritizing innovation, something that makes us different from everyone else, and which was recognized to us from the release of our Mountain Orcs.

4th Question: What do you believe makes you different from other miniature manufacturers?
First of all we are not only manufacturers of miniatures, we are also producers of a game. Concerning the miniatures we replied earlier, we see things differently. For the game I'm afraid there's not much to tell because although it has been developed a lot, there's still work to be done. There aren't many fantasy army games in general, the reason is simple, it's very hard to support them. We however, in contrary with skirmish games, are looking into doing something harder and more elaborate.

5th Question: What difference does your game have from e.g. Warhammer or Kings of War?
Our game allows 2 different ways to play it, one very fast and one very hardcore, something that neither of the above offer. Compared to Warhammer it's much faster and slightly less complicated. We have different rules concerning magic and character roles and placing, while we don't include any named characters. Compared to Kings of War we include large monsters (centerpieces) which they don't have and probably more tactical and fast. Whether it's more fun to play or not will be judged from the people.

6th Question: Do you want to tell us some more specifics about your game?
The game people know today when playing an army wargame, like the ones mentioned above, is that 2 players set up their armies and then take turns playing according to certain restrictions. Before even starting a game of War is Coming, there will be a number of events that effects whatever advantages or disadvantages a players had before starting. Nothing chaotic but brings the feeling that this is war and you must cope with the unexpected. Any capable General going into battle should be able to handle that.
Another example of how a number of soldiers/warriors of each army gives advantages and disadvantages to each army and which should reflect on the game or if you like, on the field of battle. An army with few numbers (elit) compared to an army of many (horde) could and should move more effectively. Therefore, while a General/player has finished deploying his more disciplined army, instead of waiting for the masses of troops the enemy/opponent brings with him, could start playing immediately (by shooting, moving etc)! War is coming and it's not going to wait.

7th Question: Let's change a bit the subject and get back to the miniatures. What armies are you preparing and when are we going to see for example the Araves?
The Araves like many others have temporarily frozen in favor of the Kickstarter. We have already said that we have many plans for armies no one has ever created before in this scale and will be favored when possible. Dwarfs for example, which are included in our plans, have saturated choices at the moment and even if we release rules for them, you aren't going to be seeing models any time soon. Someone could use models from Mantic or Games Workshop which are the only ones at the moment that have a complete army for dwarfs. For the rest of our troops we are definitely liking very much Daemons, Goblins and Elves. For the Daemons we have a very powerful and special set of rules and vision in store for them, Goblins are a Mercenary army (like the Talliareum Ogres) while we have said before that Elves are not "good" and "bad", for us Elves are only "good", they are divided in 3 factions, the Elves of the Order who compose the main part of the army, the Oak Elves who supply skirmish units and the Shadow Elves who do all the "dirty" work (harassment, warmachine hunters κλπ). Slowly and with determination we will proceed in these armies as well, one thing at a time.

8th Question: I see. OK, let's talk about the Kickstarter. Why Kickstarter and not Indiegogo?
We chose Kickstarter because of the plans and passion we have for something really big, Indiegogo (as it is till today at least) is for smaller scale projects and with not as many people. It's definitely very important that the campaign goes well and we hope in the support of the Community. We have worked on this for 9 long months, while freezing everything else that was ready to go into production, something that financially has obvisouly not helped us and we hope our decision proves correct, not by chance we had named this “Pillars of destiny”. We have done everything we could do, we have superb sculptors, painters, concept artists, the materials we use are world's best. Every detail has been analyzed and discussed multiple times, even our pitch video which we consider every serious campaign wanting to do something great should reflect the amount of work, passion and responsability of the creators.
If this works out well, besides Games Workshop Shieldwolf will be the only other company worldwide producing this quality of fantasy miniatures in 28mm heroic/bulky scale, while we also accelarate the completion of the first edition of our game.

9th Question: What goodies have you prepared and what's the 5th army you still have not revealed?
The 5th army will be revealed during the Kickstarter in order to provide further momentum in our campaign. We have sculpted and painted models from this army too, along with the other 4 naturally. What we have prepared I can assure you are top quality not only in sculpts but also concept, while many you have never seen from any other manufacturer. And some of these are... big. Really big!

10th Question: What's your funding goal?
We have spent a very considerable amount of money preparing this Kickstarter, and that is only normal if you want to convince on what you are doing. In theory this campaign even with our cofunding should have had a funding goal of at least 62,000$. Even so, it was decided that we are going to start from an embarassingly low funding goal, which will not even cover the money spent on concept artwork alone! There is the danger of course that this does not pick up fast and that the stretch goals don't get unlocked the one after the other like we have planned, something that would be very bad not only for all the work we have put into this but for the campaign itself. We hope something like this does not happen and we'll unlock -if not all- at least most of the things we have planned for.

11th Question. Hopefully all will work out well. One last question before we finish, because it will certainly interest people. Will there be any Kickstarter exclusives or early birds?
Kickstarter exclusives will not be available. The reason is when we create something we want it to be great and share it with people, even those that at the time couldn't afford it. During our campaign we already have serious discounts to reward those who believe in us and helped us out. Now, in the great scenario that we have unlocked all our stretch goals, which we have said before will be counted and we'll not add anything else on top once everything has been met, then we'll look to do something extra with that money for the backers, but let's not rush.
For the early birds the answer is also "no", except if you mean a limited number of pledges, then in that case "yes" (although we have not baptized them early birds), we need to make sure that after the campaign we meet pledges easier.

This gak looks great dude. Excited to see what you've got.

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:


10th Question: What's your funding goal?
We have spent a very considerable amount of money preparing this Kickstarter, and that is only normal if you want to convince on what you are doing. In theory this campaign even with our cofunding should have had a funding goal of at least 62,000$. Even so, it was decided that we are going to start from an embarassingly low funding goal, which will not even cover the money spent on concept artwork alone! There is the danger of course that this does not pick up fast and that the stretch goals don't get unlocked the one after the other like we have planned, something that would be very bad not only for all the work we have put into this but for the campaign itself. We hope something like this does not happen and we'll unlock -if not all- at least most of the things we have planned for.

Audentes Fortuna Iuvat!

Many newer companies have failed at the attempt to fund HIPS plastic troops. I hope your sterling reputation and experience carry you across the finish line. I will certainly be pledging.

Everything looks great and really promising. The guy on horse is absolutely fantastic, probably one of the best horse mounted figures I saw in long long time.
Hopefully you will be rewarded for your great vision and honest approach. We need more strong companies in the "old world".

I have never bought or painted a "bust" figure. But that Oak Elf is making me interested in trying my hand at it.

 Gallahad wrote:

Spoiler:

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:


10th Question: What's your funding goal?
We have spent a very considerable amount of money preparing this Kickstarter, and that is only normal if you want to convince on what you are doing. In theory this campaign even with our cofunding should have had a funding goal of at least 62,000$. Even so, it was decided that we are going to start from an embarassingly low funding goal, which will not even cover the money spent on concept artwork alone! There is the danger of course that this does not pick up fast and that the stretch goals don't get unlocked the one after the other like we have planned, something that would be very bad not only for all the work we have put into this but for the campaign itself. We hope something like this does not happen and we'll unlock -if not all- at least most of the things we have planned for.

Audentes Fortuna Iuvat!

Many newer companies have failed at the attempt to fund HIPS plastic troops. I hope your sterling reputation and experience carry you across the finish line. I will certainly be pledging.

Appreciate the trust :-) yes, other companies tried and failed for HIPS, we do however have faith (and some advantages compared to them) so hopefully all will work out nicely.

dubovac wrote:
Everything looks great and really promising. The guy on horse is absolutely fantastic, probably one of the best horse mounted figures I saw in long long time.
Hopefully you will be rewarded for your great vision and honest approach. We need more strong companies in the "old world".

Thanks, among my favorites too, we still have some more teasers to show off before launching :-)

 drazz wrote:
I have never bought or painted a "bust" figure. But that Oak Elf is making me interested in trying my hand at it.

Then that means we might have done a really good work on it :-)
The sculptor is Georgios Tsougkoutzidis, we look forward in working more with him. Really talented, happy to have him aboard.

If all our sculpts look that good I would Kickstart this.

Does being locating in Greece create challenges in creating your own line of miniatures?

I'd say, being the first can be exciting but it does cause (unexpected/unforseen) trouble some times. :-)

We met unexpected difficulties with beureacracy, "Miniature Makers" doesn't exist as an "option" and people at various public departments couldn't place us under something "specific" when we wanted to register our bussiness or anything similar for our production facilities.
-"Toy makers?"
-"Well, what we make can also be for collectors..."
-"Then I place you under antique sellers"
-"We are manufacturers, and also these are definitely not going to be considered antiques!"
-"I see. OK, think I found it. Domestic item sellers."
-"What does that mean?"
-"Well you know, anything you can use and is directed for home use, something like kitchenware."
-"That's not us then."
-"Then we go back to toys..."

For the copyright of our Mountain Orc sprues for example, they initially wanted us to present them with every single miniature that could be assembled and have photographs covering each and every aspect of them (the ones not pictured could possibly not be covered legally). Yeah, right... *dazzled eyes* In the end, we managed to convince them of the obvious (that we simply cannot assemble thousands of variants, take thousands of photos & then pay the tenths of thousands of euros necessary for their IP expenses!)
We created first precedences for quite a few things actually, the law firm protecting us was very precise on certain terms, so we lost valuable time dealing with that, I'm pretty sure any new company in Greece registering a bussiness like ours will have a much easier time than we had. :-)

Another bad aspect we faced was prejudice from certain community members, I'm pretty sure e.g. French companies didn't have consecutive emails shot at them asking how many months it was going to take to get their stuff if they placed an order and that PayPal only covered 45 days (true story, and didn't happen only once!)... I believe this has long been overcome however (thankfully!).

Taxes was another issue, we didn't fall into the category "innovation" although there's a law protecting all "artists" here in Greece, we are considered "butique" so we are at 23% that is a lot for us (Bulgaria has 10%), we tried to prove we are not elephants, but in vain, since -again- we were something new and couldn't be thus excluded as we normally should've. We received no leniency being a start up company, but anyway something that had to be dealt with. And I'm pretty sure every single person that received items from us can testify we always had their invoice included.

I think that living in the UK makes it easier to drive to Renedra or similar manufacturers, and not having to take the plane + book a hotel every time you need visiting them. All domestic factories dealing with plastic proved useless in Greece (for what we wanted to make), we visited 8 of them and had multiple other contacts via phone. Time wasted. China was also in our list, we had give-and-take with quite a few to see their samples, send them our copies etc, just to find out their quality was not what we were looking for. Greek customs with China (due to some recent laws) was also very time-consuming...

We visited the Athens Art University, which for the sculpting department was a real promise. Very talented sculptors, but no-one sculpting in our scale (too small for them). Another waste of time and materials, we now work exclusively with professionals aboard. :-)

So yes, (to cut a small story short) we did face a lot of problems, but where's a will there's a way ;-)

Psssh, You have an Iron will, I would have just taken my ball and gone home after that much trouble.

Do you see yourself/company moving operation to England/UK? Is that why it seems like the majority of miniatures come from there?

Hope you have a home run of a kicktarter.

Good luck with the KS Shieldwolf. Going in for multiple factions in HIPS for a brand new game certainly takes balls. I hope you have no issues with funding or fulfillment!

An interesting tale, and one that shows how much work goes on in the background. I doubt many people realise that its rarely a case of "Have idea-sculpt mini-cast mini-sell mini" in this industry anymore.

Most people Ive spoken to dont have quite the same story as you have (which is pretty extraordinairy and kudos for keeping at it despite the obvious frustration) but certainly close. The miniatures business is like a swan gliding along. Its all pretty things on top but underneath there is a lot of thrashing going on.

Thank you , appreciate the wishes, hopefully we'll give everyone good motive to back this. :-)

 Piston Honda wrote:
Do you see yourself/company moving operation to England/UK? Is that why it seems like the majority of miniatures come from there?

Negative, we are only keeping our plastic manufacturing at Renedra, our facilities here are great and more than sufficient for our for resin casting & storing, now that we are up and running it would have no substantial benefit for us (other than fiscal reasoning, but we hope that will change at some point in the future).

Thanks for the good read. Always interesting to hear about the behind the scenes stuff.

I'm looking forward to seeing how everything will be put together for the campaign, even if it seems like your dragon men are going to have to sit this one out.

Any chance you guys might run an early preview of the page? For feedback and stuff?

We have put a lot of thinking in how this should be spread out, everything could be done correctly and a bad placing of stretch goals could prove a distaster!
We have created a crowdfunding structure that will allow every person interested in a single army alone to have his/hers mark close behind. We will not have for example

Stretch goal-1: Guard of Talliareum
Stretch goal-2: Guard of Talliareum
Stretch goal-3: Guard of Talliareum
Stretch goal-4: Shieldmaidens
Stretch goal-5: Shieldmaidens
Stretch goal-6: Shieldmaidens
Stretch goal-7: Talliareum Ogres
Stretch goal-8: Talliareum Ogres
Stretch goal-9: Talliareum Ogres
Stretch goal-10: Valley Orcs
Stretch goal-11: Valley Orcs
Stretch goal-12: Valley Orcs

Instead it's going to look something more like this

Stretch goal-1: Guard of Talliareum
Stretch goal-2: Talliareum Ogres
Stretch goal-3: Guard of Talliareum
Stretch goal-4: Shieldmaidens
Stretch goal-5: Valley Orcs
Stretch goal-6: Shieldmaidens
Stretch goal-7: Guard of Talliareum
Stretch goal-8: Talliareum Ogres
Stretch goal-9: Shieldmaidens
Stretch goal-10: Valley Orcs
Stretch goal-11: Guard of Talliareum
Stretch goal-12: Shieldmaidens

Please Note: This is an example, not necessarily the final start order.

The way we have structured this is so everyone will feel involved, we can appreciate the support and love someone will show at a single specific faction and so noone will have to wait for 7-8 stretch goals before seeing something that does interests him/her. It makes perfect sense that if things pick up fast, anyone joining will immediately have a much larger variety to choose from.

We will have communicated both the initial stretch goal order and their pricing from the beginning. We do not want to be blamed that we started offering something but because things were working out too great we decided to make extra money from it (something we've spotted often in very succesful campaigns), remember that we are co-funding this.

Now, the order that has been decided may cause some people to complain, but we have not only to respect the results of the voting (which shows Ogres-Humans-Orcs all tied and Shieldmaidens leading by a good margin), but also it's impossible to release everything at once without asking for a huge amount of money!
Ogres will be getting some more goodies since they get no HIPS, and the winners of the poll (Shieldmaidens) will definitely be getting some more attention, their first centerpiece is theirs. We have tried to bring this into an equillibrium by offering first MC for the Humans and a couple of goodies for the Orcs as well, but we are very confident some people will still not be satisfied *shrugs shoulders*
We have tried our best to please as many as possible, after all without your support this KS will not succeed. :-)

I thought there was going to be 5 armies in this?

I was holding out hope for demons