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Heard from them this morning, they are on some much needed time off, they said they would reunite next week.

Thanks for that, Goregut! Here's hoping after the time off they "come to their senses" and let us fund their awesome shieldmaidens unit (and maybe a second one if things go well).

Again, I at least would not hold them to the idea that they couldn't do other work in the interim while the unit was made - particularly if the Kickstarter is a very limited thing, just for the plastics (and maybe a resin character or two). Then they could continue with the rest of their catalogue in another avenue, while the shieldmaidens are being tooled up.

 Goregut wrote:
Heard from them this morning, they are on some much needed time off, they said they would reunite next week.

Good to hear - I think I posted just as you answered my question

You did indeed Morden thought id make another post just to clarify though

Im also hoping they return with a blaze of glory!

Out of interest does anyone know how much it costs to make a box of plastic figures from scratch - I am assuming its an awful lot of money?

Well I'm sad it didn't keep going. I hope they do revamp their approach and try to hit 1-2 kits at a time for each army. They can run them around 3-4 or even 6 months apart when they have the tooling capacity for the additional sets. Personally I think 2 sets at a time and one for each "faction" is the way to go. So Basic Valley Orc and Shield Maiden units. And then next time Great Weapon Valley Orc/Shield Maiden units. And then ranged units (if their game has them). It won't be a windfall but it'll build their catalogue. Especially if they produce 1-2 resin models or units at the same time.

Hopefully they do come back and can be happy with building success. I was getting kinda excited for the bikini clad warrior women

 Mr Morden wrote:
Out of interest does anyone know how much it costs to make a box of plastic figures from scratch - I am assuming its an awful lot of money?

Let's start with sculpting. That's roughly £700+ per figure, production so casting for plastic is massively expensive... put it this way it costs 3 to 4 times more than metal which can be up to 2000 per mould, even more though the Spanish firm I dealt with was fairly cheap. ( these tend to last a few goes but still a plastic one can cost anything up to 200,000. This was one of GWs moulds .)Then you have to pay for casts . I've looked at it seriously for some time now and you need between 6000 - 15000, just to break even depending on what you are casting.

 Mr Morden wrote:
Out of interest does anyone know how much it costs to make a box of plastic figures from scratch - I am assuming its an awful lot of money?

Dunno what industry standard rates for that might be, but SW was fairly consistent in saying that they could do one plastic kit for every $30,000 raised.

Cancelling the project was premature and petulant. However, it is in the past, so here is what I think they should do:

1. Relaunch soon. The longer you wait, the more people will spend their money elsewhere and forget about you.
2. Restructure rewards to focus on the plastic. This is likely where your margins are the highest, so you have the most room to offer deals. I would have four tiers of rewards a) One box of plastic b)Two boxes of plastic c)Four boxes of plastic d)Eight boxes of plastic
2.a The discount for each tier of rewards should be increasing ex. reward a)$25 b)$45 c)$80 d)$140
3. Leave the resin things as add-ons. This lets people choose which ones they want, and you don't have to cast stuff that many people wouldn't use.
4. If Renedra charges by how many parts they have to cut on a tool, do stretch goals to add stuff to the sprue. Seriously, this is a good way to keep momentum going with smaller stretch goals. ex. stretch goal to fund some small optional armor bits on the sprue to make all of the 'no exposed navels' people happy, or an alternate head, etc.
5. I would set up a campaign to fund basic shieldmaiden infantry and have the big stretch goal be the more nekkid ones (just like last time).
6. Having pieces from your store available as add ons with little to no discount is a no-brainer. People like to pick up things in big lots to avoid high shipping, and there are likely people who have been waiting to make orders because they wanted to do them at the same time as the KS (possibly hoping for a discount)
7. People should be able to swap any available/unlocked plastic boxes. ex. I pledge for $80, and I can get two boxes of mountain orcs and two boxes of shieldmaidens.
8. Don't do stretch goals for your rulebook. It isn't the focus of the campaign, and to be frank, it is something you want to fund more than your customers do.


The plastic is your biggest advantage over all the other small resin/metal companies out there, so utilize it!

 Mr Morden wrote:
Out of interest does anyone know how much it costs to make a box of plastic figures from scratch - I am assuming its an awful lot of money?

This type of box, £25-£30k.

Some life-signs shown on Warseer:
http://www.warseer.com/forums/showthread.php?413705-quot-War-is-Coming-quot-by-Shieldwolf-Miniatures-New-releases-and-News

Its Jack wrote:I backed at $190, I saw the little green dot on my activity and thought i'd be getting some freebies and its gone...

This is a bit disappointing. It feels like they lowballed their initial funding goal to pass their funding and hoped to get more later on to compensate for it. This happens all the time on Kickstarter where companies put their initial funding lower, then use cheaper stretch goals to make the actual amount.

What they really needed to do was have pictures of sprue layouts and renders instead of boxes on the rewards section. People are more likely to perceive value when they see 40-50 odd renders than a box with quantity listed next to it

I don't understand why they cancelled it when they did, most other companies wait until near the end to cancel it. Yes, people were complaining about value, comments like that are ten a penny on any Kickstarter comment section. Yes, funding dipped, that happens to nearly all Kickstarters after the initial wave of followers and people who see the kickstarter advertised on TTGN or adverts slows down. It normally speeds up again in the last few days as people add to their original pledge or back to avoid missing out.

The last update states it isn't an emotional response, but it reads like self entitled complaining that people weren't spending enough money. That alone has put me off backing their Kickstarter again in the future.

Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:I'm sorry you feel like that. We didn't lowball anything, the funding goal was what it had to be, we weren't asking for peanuts, and I can assure you that cancelling funding was the last thing we ever thought we'd have to do.
People saying "they should have asked what they really wanted to" is beyond human logic, does anyone honestly think we could have ever asked for e.g. 160,000$ and have the slimmest chance of ever funding that?


You're wrong about people not spending enough money, we never had any issues with any of the backers that had already pledged their hard-earned money in this project, our issues rose with backers that never pledged, yet they kept hammering us night and day with all kinds of demands in what we believed an honestly good deal for everyone. Obviously they didn't...
Do you think we would ever gamble the reputation of our company? It has taken years to build, and it's a great asset for us. The honorable thing to do was cancel. That's what we think and that's why we did it, there are no secrets behind that.


Having sprue lay-outs is not going to happen, if we genuinely had all that ready, we wouldn't be needing the additional funds. We are not mad or angry as some people suggested, we are sad that we didn't convince enough people to make this explode. Maybe we have too high expectations in an era we (apparently falsly) thought wargaming needs a new army game.


Anyway, we will be back in the comment section sometime next week, for now it's time for responsible reflection before any decision making.


Thank you.


Angelos.

Hmmm... "Responsible reflection" probably means letting go of the idea that it was the "honorable thing" to cancel... it's not just most posters on Warseer, or Dakka, who feel this way - the gaming group local to Wehrkind and I, who Wehrkind was getting interested, reacted the same way without a post from him.

The fact is SW acted a bit rashly, but it's not the end of the world! If their quote / contract allows them to just have two sprues made, rather than 160K worth of sprues, they should go for it! Hope to see them back

Yeah, I feel like they felt like the only way this was going to be successful was to fund 4-5 plastic kits. Unless it was a volume discount kind of thing I hope they come back and reasonably try to fund 1-2 kits at a time.

 Hulksmash wrote:
Yeah, I feel like they felt like the only way this was going to be successful was to fund 4-5 plastic kits. Unless it was a volume discount kind of thing I hope they come back and reasonably try to fund 1-2 kits at a time.

I honestly think this is probably the way to do it 1 of each races kit so 1 orc, 1 barbarian , then if they get enough expand it

This was a pretty incredible step to take. I had decided to pledge, hopped on a long-haul flight home, and when I got off the campaign was cancelled!

I think that only two improvements could have been made really. Firstly I think that the valley orcs should have been the 60k kit- there was no real incentive for backers that were interested in orcs, so I think that they could have drawn more backers through that. It was supposed to be shield maidens vs orcs, but felt like it was just a shield maidens Kickstarter.

Secondly, as everyone else has said, I think they expected too much from this. The reality is that most people are buying their miniatures to play other games- the rules are not why most people went in, I assume.

MattW wrote:
the rules are not why most people went in, I assume.

Certainly not why I went in. I just wanted the pretty plastics.

I was planning to back the relaunch... but have just spent the money I did have pledged for this one, on Mierce metals instead. I might still back depending on the deal, and when it happens. Still very interested in shieldmaidens. Not really interested in the game -- I had a look at the PDF but it really didn't grab me.

I am massively sympathetic to Shieldwolf though. Running a KS must be pretty terrifying. And this isn't a huge business... it's just a few ordinary (but very talented) people.

Yea, this was weird to me. I hadn't backed yet because I wasn't sure if I wanted 50 or 100$ for my pledge, and figured I would see what the local group was up for. We usually will back projects under one person to save on shipping then just distribute on game night.

It worries me when they say the problem wasn't the backers spending enough money, but the lack of backers relative to those making demands. I can see how that is frustrating, but listing that as a reason to stop is sort of... odd coming from someone I hope to be a responsible adult. I mean, best case say "People seemed unhappy with how we set up the value proposition, so we decided to start over and redesign things a bit." That makes sense. Otherwise it sounds like they are saying "People said mean things we didn't like so we decided to quit," when what they should be saying is "Hey, we think this is a hell of a deal, but if you don't agree, that's cool; we'll see you at retail."

 Wehrkind wrote:
Otherwise it sounds like they are saying "People said mean things we didn't like so we decided to quit,"

That was pretty much my take-away from their last update, unfortunately.

Like Ian Sturrock said, I'm sympathetic to them and will give them the benefit of the doubt for sure. Hoping they come back stronger for this, maybe this coming week!

Surprised this was cancelled, especially considering it was over double their funding goal and had plenty of time left. They barely had time for hype to grow for it.

As others have also said, i don't think that a majority of the backers cared about the rules, they just wanted the plastic.

I'm definitely going to think twice before pledging on any other shieldwolf kickstarters, and i don't think that I'm the only one.

Some good points here, and I especially like Gallahad's post.

I'm still very disappointed - notsomuch in missing out on some more toys, but in their actions - and surprised that they had such an unrealistic set of expectations. $160k.. that's almost half of Mantic's KoW2 campaign. Which as I said before, had an established ruleset, fanbase and 10 armies on offer as add-ons.

They've actually gambled their reputation significantly by cancelling rather than continuing - unless going through with what was already on offer would have been unrealistic or cost them money to fulfill (in which case, don't set it as a funding goal).

Similarly, I don't understand what they think is "honourable" about setting a target of $30k, and then cancelling in a week after getting $40k. I've been a supporter of SW for some time, but this strikes me as quite the opposite of honourable - so might not be the best word to use here. Again, if it risked their business then fair enough - but don't set a funded goal that would hurt the business if that's all that is achieved in 30 days.

As with Ian, though - I've spent the money I had aside for this on several "Start Collecting" boxes and some other new GW stuff. We'll see what happens from here. I can always have more money, but whether I'm quite as enthusiastic next time around remains to be seen.

It's sad and somewhat amusing how fickle we are with our hobby money.

I'm not the only one who immediately went out and bought more plastics to compensate for this one canceling!

Will be curious to see how things progress from here since it sounds like quite a few of us have already blown through our Shieldmaiden funds.

(I too snagged collector boxes.)

Not really fickle. I wanted the GW kits regardless, and this freed up the funds to get them sooner rather than later.

Yea, there is definitely a lot of competition out there these days! As consumers of kits we have no real reason to wait with baited breath for any one thing, as there are 5-6 others on the list of stuff we want at any given moment Especially seeing as how KS are 'pay now, get fun stuff a year + from now' it makes it a rough deal. I am cutting back on KS stuff this year because my wife points out that I spend the money but don't get toys, making me want to spend more money to get more toys now. Unfortunately, I think she is right.

Yeah, I'm pretty much done with KS at this point, with a few very specific exceptions - mostly a very limited few self-contained boardgames that will ship from a local hub so as not to get shafted hard by shipping. Even WarPath is my final Mantic kickstarter the way I see it.

This was one of those few exceptions. The way I see it is that I've bought a ton of stuff, most lilely more than I'll ever use, so unless there's something that really specifically ticks one of my boxes (like Zombicide) I certainly don't need any more.

Even moreso when stuff will take a year or more to actually get here....

Mythic Battles: Pantheon will likely be my final one in June, unless another Bones or Zombicide comes along.

Hm, that one looks interesting. I hope they deliver Conan before starting this one up, though.

I will be pledging for their next KS if its for the Shield maidens - although the unpainted minis are piling up :( I need to start getting them to my painters!

Hopefully in a year or so I will have a fully painted Shieldmaiden and Amazon army

I have backed quite a few KS over the last few years (about 20) - pretty much all are late (some very very late) but luckily I am in no real hurry for them.......

 Azazelx wrote:
Hm, that one looks interesting. I hope they deliver Conan before starting this one up, though.

Their plan is to have wave 1 of Conan delivered before starting Mythic Battles. They are prepared to delay the KS launch if necessary.