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 AlexHolker wrote:

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
There's no reason why the Shieldmaiden kit should cost almost twice as much to ship, nor should you have to buy an extra $6 worth of coins you can't spend on anything.

On the contrary, there is. It's not a question about producing+packaging+shipping;

You are charging $5-6 for shipping on 20 Orcs and $9-10 for shipping on 20 Shieldmaidens.

The additional $6? Well, we have offered some minis at 2 gold coin cost (=6$), and the backer would be receiving an Infernal Assaulter's Hero too. True, he/she doesn't get to pick from a huge variety but that would bring the cost down to $3 each of the additional minis. Is that so bad?

If I wanted to collect both orcs and infernals, that wouldn't be so bad. But I don't.

It could be a penny per mini and free shipping, Alex, and you'd still find a reason to complain.

 HisDivineShadow wrote:
It could be a penny per mini and free shipping, Alex, and you'd still find a reason to complain.

Do you honestly believe that making idiotic gak up like this improves your argument?

 AlexHolker wrote:

 HisDivineShadow wrote:
It could be a penny per mini and free shipping, Alex, and you'd still find a reason to complain.

Do you honestly believe that making idiotic gak up like this improves your argument?

Based on your posts on this and other forums, it perfectly does.

5th army are Goblins.

I really like this. More powers to gobbos!

So the super secret race are goblins.... Not so sure what's so secret about goblins....

overtyrant wrote:
So the super secret race are goblins.... Not so sure what's so secret about goblins....

They sneak up behind you and stab you? Especially Ninja Goblins

overtyrant wrote:
So the super secret race are goblins.... Not so sure what's so secret about goblins....

I have to agree - this is a bit of a letdown.

Ain't no way Highlords are gonna Highlord over this announcement!

They claim to be "Innovative?"

They look like they are producing pretty much the same Baroque Warhammer Styled, overly muscled, exaggerated anatomical structured miniatures that almost everyone else is producing these days.

Their miniatures look really good.

But I would think "Innovative" would be to produce something that was actually more realistic given the trends in the miniature's industry right now.

They may be wearing kilts - so Scottish goblins?

I think that gobbo looks awesome!

It does, but I'm not so sure it is going to really move the needle, so to speak.

Ain't going to be much to highlord it up for when Shieldwolf already said their Dracantopii weren't one of the races for this campaign.

Goblins look nice though.

Look like they mean to fight rather than muck about all over the battlefield.

The goblins are pretty standard looking to me. There's nothing that makes them Shieldwolf Goblins as opposed to just goblins. Now, if the goblins were half-naked and sexualized with bizarre French comics poses, they might have something worth talking about.


Or if the shield maidens looked like warriors.

I agree that both the orcs and the goblins look pretty standard (and by standard I mean like GW). However, they do look really good, so I ain't got a problem with that.

I'm probably going to drop out of this one and wait for retail. I really have no need for any of the armies to the point that I can't wait a year for them.

Sadly this campaign has been an anti climax for me. The build up and communication were fantastic, I was disappointed about the ogres because of the material choice but was still excited for the shieldmaidens and 'the 5th race'. I kept on reloading the KS page waiting for it to go live and was confronted with ogres that I feel were expensive (but I had lost interest in them as I thought they would be expensive) and a bunch of heroes and a monster, where were the plastic kits?? I know the kits need the funding but where was the concept art renders etc, people would be pledging mainly for these kits as you can get so many heroes on the market already. I do not like coin systems for prices, just put the price on it! Then the shieldmaidens were brought forward due to popular demand and the concept art was nothing like the fantastic bust that was shown and look more like amazon's then an effective shield bearing fighter. OK there still is the 5th race, it must be something new and amazing to be such a secret.... but it is goblins..... It felt like the time when Mantic revealed there 8th race (I think it was that) really??? Shieldwolf have some outstanding miniature sets and I've half a mind to pledge to get those half price orcs to use as demons in KoW or something. I still sincerely hope this campaign does really well and blows my suspicions of how this will go out of the water....

Well maybe they're also thinking about cross compatibility: you can buy these orcs and goblins and add it up to your existing orcs and goblins collection and they won't look like they don't belong? I know 2-3 people who, despite like Mantic's orcs, didn't want to buy any because they'll look funny if mixed with their Orc army. I also like the Mantic orcs but I want to add some variety to them, but I can't since no kit outside of Mantic is compatible with their look.

 zirrian wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 HisDivineShadow wrote:
It could be a penny per mini and free shipping, Alex, and you'd still find a reason to complain.

Do you honestly believe that making idiotic gak up like this improves your argument?

Based on your posts on this and other forums, it perfectly does.

Funny, and true.


Back to the campaign-

I still have my fingers crossed for this campaign. I like the goblins. They look malicious and fun to paint. I think the campaign has lost a little bit of steam, but this may be the case of a "deliver first on this small stuff, and we will back you big later." They certainly had some headwinds; leading with pretty expensive ogres after hyping real plastic so much and launching immediately after the great nerd tax of the Conan "Never going to be on-time" campaign got charged to cards everywhere, and showing up right before what seems to be the final curtain call for Warhammer fantasy all contributed.

I think they realize this, and are incredibly open to feedback. If enough people say something, they will change the shieldmaidens to look like Lagetha clones. I know they put a lot of their own money into this, and I sincerely hope that this campaign doesn't put them in the red or jeopardize their future. They are absolutely stand up guys and deserve to do well. This campaign basically has next to no chance of being late, and they seem willing to bend over backwards to make backers happy. I would bet money that they will have regular updates and won't disappear into the mists like so many that work dakkadakka for a month or two and then disappear post campaign.

Also, those lions are absolutely awesome. I won't get the ones with riders since I plan to use them with elves, but man oh man are those fantastic sculpts. They have lots of nice paintjobs on the minis they are showing as well. That is a definite bonus, and will pay dividends long term for their products.

Regarding "innovative" etc. I wish they would just drop that as a marketing line. It causes more trouble than it is worth with every third person chiming in to say how when you boil down everything Shieldwolf does it isn't really "new." Ex. "Your orcs are bipeds! I'm so tired of all fantasy races being bipeds. Bipedal orcs is hardly innovative, GW has had bipedal orcs for years!" I don't want blob men unicorns or whatever would pass as innovative in fantasy these days. I want fresh takes on old favorites, preferably with some new fantasy things in plastic. There is innovative in design, and innovative in material/execution. I think shieldwolf' is mostly in the latter category, and I'm fine with that.

Good morning everyone!

So, first of all thank you all for commenting and any feedback you leave, it's all greatly appreciated, without exceptions nor irony! ;-)
Second we'd like to address a few things, then we'll go away limiting ourselves to watching till the project has ended, there is no sense in saying much more, what we've done is there for you to see and this is still a very LIVE project to us :-)

As you all know this is our first campaign. We overcalculated some things, we undercalculated some others.
We still believe that the value of the minis (especailly the Ogres) is not high, regardless of what it may seem. Resin costs, these are bulkier/larger/heavier minis, we had calculated freebie upgrade command kits, freebie Champions etc. The value was there, the numbers however haven't (and is a good chance they won't) make it there for it to be obvious.

Starting off with plastics? Sure, next time we might. As newcomers, coming out and asking for 30,35, even 40,000$, without any Kickstarter history and for funding 1(!) kit (which would've been the Shieldmaiden being the most popular, agreed), that was NOT going to happen. Maybe with an avalanche of more stuff on the sidelines, that would however have a good chance. It's still hasn't proven us right. We meant to keep all plastic regiments within a 25K stretch goal, including commands, in order to do so, according to our math, we needed an "x" number of pledges however. Which should've come partially from the 700 voters on our survey, from which we got something like 15% however... :-(

Innovation.
Yes, a large topic, wouldn't know where to start from. Let's do so from the Goblins. Oh well, goblins, nothing new, still small, still green. :-)
Well, goblins couldn't be 10 feet tall, on the other hand, when we immagine goblins we see these malicious and extremely cunning small guys.
Our goblins are warriors, they seek close combat and overcome with numbers and speed. Our goblins are master-engineers (real pity we will probably never see their warmachines we had planned for them in this campaign). Our goblins are mercenaries and unlike what we know from other manufacturers, they do not join Orcs, on the contrary they hate and despise them. Should our goblins be red? Nah, we prefer them green :-) Should our goblins be like everyone's else dumb midgets? No. Should they instead have awesome warmahinery and fast skirmish units with extremely high leadership value? Yes!
Well, to us that was innovative. :-) I'm sorry if we didn't convince people, we never set out to reinvent the wheel.

Timing.
Conan writing history certainly didn't help, lol! Mantic Games being supported a 2nd time for their KoW project with another 350K 3 months before us showing up, again, didn't help. Mierce ending their campaign just 1 day before us showing up on our pre-announced date (wonder why?) certainly didn't help either.
Regardless we do not blame others for the fact our plastics still haven't funded, just wanted to be clear on this. Something will always come in front of you, we couldn't calculate that and must keep on lookin at our own bussiness practices. Warhammer 'dying' may on the contrary be on our favor. That would leave Shieldwolf and Mantic with the field "open". But we very much doubt that Citadel miniatures would abbandon the table-top fantasy wargaming, we are pretty sure on the contrary they still have lots to offer to the Community and their game. (no sarcasm, this is only my opinion)

Choice of races.
Azazel pinpointed and hit the nail right in the head. We wanted to finish with our Orcs, then plunge at the more enticing Shieldmaidens, whose dual kit should've caused people to pledge really well (and not 1(!) box as Alex said earlier, if people are supporting plastics they don't go for 1 box, especially when they have to wait for it 1 whole year...). The 100K seemed a long way off, and we didn't want to create "fake" stretch goals in order to fund these first, collect the necessary funds later. We refuse to play that game.

Fulfillment.
Although the project is a long way off still (23 days left), we are pretty confident we will meet our deadlines as initially calculated. We think we'll prove Gallahad right, dropping off the radar is not something one does if he/she ever wants to really grow. I mean, grow a lot!

Economic status.
I find it funny to address this, but oh well... All these finished sculpts (many of which painted) and ready to be put into retail, along with all the current funds that we had reserved to cofund plastic regiments... And on top of that, we are still in easy postiion not to have to put our 7(!)resin regiments in production and trying to stick to HIPS. Yap, future still looks bright from where we stand. :-D

Gold coin system.
We thought it fun, it proves the opposite. We said so in the Reaper forum, if we could turn back time we would. Unfortunately we cannot, and gold coins it remains... :-)

Hope I answered everyone, if not I didn't do it on purpose. Back to our campaign and let's see if the additional banners are going to help as much as we want them to! We still have a live campaign in order to fund at least 1 plastic kit... :-)

Thank you all for reading, appreciate your support!

As far as first time campaigns go, ive seen worse. Much MUCH worse. Youve made mistakes, sure, who doesnt. I have no doubt that once this one is done and dusted, and when everyone gets their minis ( on time and with a minimum of Kickstarter drama...right?) Im sure people would be happy to back your future products and projects.

More goblins are as meh to me as more orcs. If you asked me what miniatures the market needed more of, those two would be at the bottom of my list. I know some people get super crazy over them though, so hopefully they get some action from them.

I finally got a chance to look at the campaign page more closely, and actually the deals (especially buying heroes, like the existing orc ones) seem pretty good.

I've put in a small pledge for now, but just a quick question: does even the tiny pouch ($15 pledge plus shipping) get this model free:



Plus the free gold coin unlocked at $17K? So, 6 gold coins for the tiny pouch... meaning I could select 3 existing orc heroes? I'll likely go for the goblin hero with great weapon once it unlocks, but the orc heroes look great, too. Or maybe 5 coins for the Ogre halfbreed.

But basically, this looks like a fine deal to me. I know people are hoping for regiments, but the heroes are pretty cool and a good deal, imo. Let me know if I'm off about anything above, though, particularly the free figure / free coin!

Ok so she did catch my attention! and got me thinking about bidding again.



Whilst I like my Viking women armoured - or at least some of them - she is great as a necromancer.......and some of the add ons are tempting - just need to work out shipping etc.........

Thank god Shieldwolf gave the work of sculpting women miniatures to a sculptor who can actually sculpt good looking female miniatures.

I'm another that was interested in this kickstarter before it happened, but I just don't like the current look of the shieldmaidens. I'd love for them to look like the bust- the 'Lagertha' look.

The other thing is that this is supposed to be a mass battles game, and so far there's only characters and a few units that you'd use in relatively small numbers. I can completely understand that there are some commercial realities that prevent you from finding plastics straight off the bat, but I feel that the campaign might have started better had the plastics been not so far away. I think that keeping the stretch goals a secret was also a bit of a two-edged sword; I think people might be reluctant to commit to a campaign when they don't know where the minis that they want are scheduled. Anyway...

I'm looking forward to seeing where this goes. I'm going to get on at a low level and see what happens.

The necromancer looks nice, but I like the pose of the Ice Maiden better! I might still be getting both, though.

Do you have painters slotted already to paint those figures?

 RiTides wrote:
I finally got a chance to look at the campaign page more closely, and actually the deals (especially buying heroes, like the existing orc ones) seem pretty good.

They are some of the best deals I have seen on high quality resin miniatures. The discount off of their HIPS Mountain Orcs is also fantastic. I'm trying to decide whether I go for three or four boxes of those plastic orcs at that price.

 Gallahad wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
I finally got a chance to look at the campaign page more closely, and actually the deals (especially buying heroes, like the existing orc ones) seem pretty good.

They are some of the best deals I have seen on high quality resin miniatures. The discount off of their HIPS Mountain Orcs is also fantastic. I'm trying to decide whether I go for three or four boxes of those plastic orcs at that price.

No need to resist. Four boxes of them are the EXACT amount you need. Maybe more

ALL pledges/backers are entitled to the free miniature illustrated above. The free coin is for all pledges/backers with the Citizen's pouch and up.