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 RiTides wrote:

Keep up the good fight, those of you willing to persevere . But the final product would be so much better, and the process and expectations clearer, if you guys could take constructive feedback more seriously and not just gloss over it, and at worst misunderstand it and implement it incorrectly, as illustrated above.

EXACTLY.

Everyone commenting here wants to see you guys take your stuff from good to great, and from great to AMAZING.

I think a big bonus is that whichever female army (all of them?) you guys decide to fund next, it would be GREAT to see some cross compatibility with the current Shiledmaiden parts.

That would be a big win for everyone- more parts, more options, more everything!

 RiTides wrote:

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:

Albertorius wrote:There is also the added problem of more than half of the command sprue being just exactly the same as the regular one... seriously people, if you pay for multiple sprue machining, try to use it better!

Well, we always had the choice to tool an additional "half sprue" but we opted for full sprues by duplicating part of the sprue in order to supply our backers with even more bits. It never crossed our minds that would be cause for complaints but we still regard the vast majority appreciate the additional bits we provided.

Once again, we thank everyone for their support, it allowed a very unique army to be created and it would have never happened without your help.

That's not a "complaint", it's feedback / constructive criticism! He wasn't suggesting you tool only a half sprue instead of a whole sprue - he was saying if you're paying the tooling cost for that whole second sprue, more value is gained (for both the company and the consumer) by not duplicating half of the original sprue.

This is what I've been talking about - people taking the time to give you detailed feedback like this are doing so to help, and honestly are better than I am in this regard as I gave up on getting through during the goblins campaign (which I still love, by the way!).

But the misunderstanding of saying "We could have just given you half of a sprue" rather than "This is why we chose not to have new armaments included on that duplicate half sprue" (including, notably, the many spears that would have fit) epitomizes my frustration in trying to communicate about your projects.

Keep up the good fight, those of you willing to persevere . But the final product would be so much better, and the process and expectations clearer, if you guys could take constructive feedback more seriously and not just gloss over it, and at worst misunderstand it and implement it incorrectly, as illustrated above.

I won't keep bringing this up - hopefully this post came across is as I really did intend it, one last try at showing what I'm trying to communicate to you guys, Not as a "hate" post. You guys are awesome, your product is awesome, if you could just adjust this you'd have the trifecta!

I was just chatting with another Dakkite about this.. to me their response was basically a middle finger. This is the only time I ever buy from these guys. I like some of the things in their store but just like Hasslefree.. they aren't so good on the feedback side and moreover take swipes at customers.. so.. they are a hard pass for me from here out.

@MLaw
Just like all criticism we are not going to leave this unresponded, we are open to criticism and we do take feedback. Taking in feedback is evidently not received/(perceived/whatever the correct word in English is) likewise just because we don't end up doing exactly what some people ask.
I am more than willing to openly debate this, we have always been respectful and if not I apologize but saying we are "giving the middle finger" to the very people who helped us fund this is the last thing we would ever do to anyone interacting with us, let alone to our supporters. Without you guys this wouldn't have happened.
You are more than free to do as you like and that doesn't diminusih the fact that we still will cherish the fact you supported us in the past, even if you decide not to do so any longer. Just for clearance sake on what @Albertorius said, let it be crystal clear that it would have been cheaper for us to tool a full sprue and then add a half sprue for the Ranger upgrade. We decided we would go the extra mile and cover the costs for full sprues. If that is cause for complaints, then we are sorry you have acknowledged it this way. The general impression is people are pleased at how we handled this and that's the luggage we will carry away with us. Pleasing everyone is never going to happen, we still try our best regardless.

We are taking this feedback and some of it will be implemented in the next project. We also take into consideration that some backers have still not received their pledges. While we are practically ready to launch our follow-up project end of this month, it will not happen as we care first to get everything sorted for you guys. Does this mess our plans? Yes it does, it actually tilts the entire 2017 layout, including the Forest Goblin KS relaunch! Do we care about clearing everything else up first though? Yes we do.
Also, some people asking for more weaponry on the sprues? OK, this kit has the same number of weapons as our Mountain Orcs, we have never received a complaint that the weaponry there was insufficient, it has been like 3 years in the market. Do we plan to take in this feedback and add more weapons in future sprues? Yes, since it is doable and we don't have any objections whatsoever on something like that we will do so next time.
We have already said so in our KS page, I'll write it here again though, the Warmaiden kit had all left arms weaponry made to fit the Shieldmaidens/Rangers, just like the Shieldmaiden kit has the right handed weaponry made to be crosscompatible with the Warmaidens. It's the Dragonbreds' weaponry which has nothing to do with either the Shieldmaidens nor the Warmaidens, theirs is completely different.

I am happy to take this in private if you like but I certainly have no issues to face anything openly and for anyone else to read. Hopefully written text comes across as intended and not sarcastic or anything else. As I said, this is not the type of people we are.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

I'm very keen for that next KS, having the second and third kinds of infantry will really go a long way to helping this army cover all the possible bases of equipment and style.

Just don't have "<nation>-friendly shipping" on the campaign if you're not shipping to local distribution hubs. That particular thing (in KS) means backers have no additional import fees or taxes, not that you're simply happy to ship to those countries.

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:
Just for clearance sake on what @Albertorius said, let it be crystal clear that it would have been cheaper for us to tool a full sprue and then add a half sprue for the Ranger upgrade. We decided we would go the extra mile and cover the costs for full sprues. If that is cause for complaints, then we are sorry you have acknowledged it this way. The general impression is people are pleased at how we handled this and that's the luggage we will carry away with us. Pleasing everyone is never going to happen, we still try our best regardless.

I just wanted to note that you still missed the point of what Albertorious posted, which I tried to explain in my post.

The question was not "Should it be a half sprue?" but rather "Why not include different options if making a full sprue?"

 RiTides wrote:

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:
Just for clearance sake on what @Albertorius said, let it be crystal clear that it would have been cheaper for us to tool a full sprue and then add a half sprue for the Ranger upgrade. We decided we would go the extra mile and cover the costs for full sprues. If that is cause for complaints, then we are sorry you have acknowledged it this way. The general impression is people are pleased at how we handled this and that's the luggage we will carry away with us. Pleasing everyone is never going to happen, we still try our best regardless.

I just wanted to note that you still missed the point of what Albertorius posted, which I tried to explain in my post.

The question was not "Should it be a half sprue?" but rather "Why not include different options if making a full sprue?"

Exactly. We know it would have been cheaper for you to order a half sprue tooling. We know math, and acknowledge that half a sprue has to be cheaper than a full one to tool.

It's just that, if you go the extra mile and splurge for an additional sprue, well... there are better options to fill it than just with more of what you've already paid for tooling, particularly when you're leaving stuff you've modelled out of it (and have a very limited amount of other things, like weapon arms).

Why? Well, because you have already tooled that parts in another sprue. One would think that, if you want to reward backers with additional bodies of the same variants that there already are in the regular sprue, adding an additional sprue or two for backers on each box would probably have been cheaper (once tooled, each "pop" is... well, cheap, way more than the tooling for a half sprue, I'm sure), and we would have gotten exactly the same stuff.

Dunno... it seems pretty easy to understand for me. Am I unsatisfied with what I got? No, I am not. What is there is nice enough. Do I think you've taken the best decisions you could have? No, I don't either. And that's what I'm saying. Being satisfied and thinking that you could have made better choices are not incompatible things.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:
Also, some people asking for more weaponry on the sprues? OK, this kit has the same number of weapons as our Mountain Orcs, we have never received a complaint that the weaponry there was insufficient, it has been like 3 years in the market. Do we plan to take in this feedback and add more weapons in future sprues? Yes, since it is doable and we don't have any objections whatsoever on something like that we will do so next time.

I'm not familiar with the Mountain Orcs sprue. Does that mean that the total amount of weapons in both are the same? Because as the Shieldmaidens is a "double unit" sprue, the fact is that there would be actually half as many weapons of any given type (rangers and Shieldmaidens) than in the Mountain Orcs' sprue, unless theirs is double duty too.

 Azazelx wrote:
Just don't have "<nation>-friendly shipping" on the campaign if you're not shipping to local distribution hubs. That particular thing (in KS) means backers have no additional import fees or taxes, not that you're simply happy to ship to those countries.

Well, there's actually a grey color here. It's not black as we had already included shipping in people's pledges, so backers wouldn't have to pay absolutely anything else. It is not white either though as taxes or import fees might have still applied and we had not taken that into consideration.
To avoid any further confusion in the future we will limit in signaling only EU friendly since all rewards get mailed from Athens.

 Albertorius wrote:

[...]Dunno... it seems pretty easy to understand for me. Am I unsatisfied with what I got? No, I am not. What is there is nice enough. Do I think you've taken the best decisions you could have? No, I don't either. And that's what I'm saying. Being satisfied and thinking that you could have made better choices are not incompatible things.[...]

Fair enough.

 Albertorius wrote:

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:
Also, some people asking for more weaponry on the sprues? OK, this kit has the same number of weapons as our Mountain Orcs, we have never received a complaint that the weaponry there was insufficient, it has been like 3 years in the market. Do we plan to take in this feedback and add more weapons in future sprues? Yes, since it is doable and we don't have any objections whatsoever on something like that we will do so next time.

I'm not familiar with the Mountain Orcs sprue. Does that mean that the total amount of weapons in both are the same? Because as the Shieldmaidens is a "double unit" sprue, the fact is that there would be actually half as many weapons of any given type (rangers and Shieldmaidens) than in the Mountain Orcs' sprue, unless theirs is double duty too.

The Mountain Orcs kit has a total of 6 different hand weapons (total 30 per box) and 2 different halberds (total 6 per box). The Shieldmaiden kit had 7 different hand weapons (total 21 per box) and 4 different crossbows (total 20 per box).
A big difference here is that the Orcs carry dual weaponry whilst the maidens are all right handed, therefore the maidens have more weaponry compared to our previous kit.
The above numbers also don't include the champion's/leader's weapon (found twice in the Orc kit and 3 times in the Shieldmaiden kit ) nor the shields for the females (5 different sculpts +1 Champion, for a total of 28 shields per kit).
That's why the additional weaponry for the maidens as it has been infact designed as a dual kit. I wonder if a couple more weapons squeezed e.g. in place of the leader's cloak would have been more welcome and would have helped avoid all this. If yes, then that was a bad call from our side.

I think it's hilarious that you assume that since a kit you sell hasn't received any complaints that it somehow means that you could assume the thing about other armies.
I don't own and never will (intentionally) own your mountain orcs.. so I have no clue what is on those sprues.

What I do know is that these ladies are gigantic. They didn't have spears. They have an abundance of standards (would've made loads more sense to do spears on sprue and standards as a one-off resin bit), the hand weapons that are there are separated in such a way as to be a giant pain in the ass, and the layout of the sprue reflects a lack of understanding of what your competition is able to do with similar amounts of space.

Your response is consistently an arrogant tone in which you clearly think extremely highly of yourselves. We get it. These are not the worst multipart plastics ever created. I'll grant you that. However, the fact that people are already trying to figure out what to use in place of what you provided should tell you something.
I will say this for you.. the hyper-inflated ego has made me respect Mantic a lot more than I previously did.. as I've interacted with various people from there a lot more.. as well as Zealot, Anvil, and even Mad Robot.. who I got in a literal argument with.. and none of them distance themselves from the opinions of their constituents in anything quite like the way you do. You do remind me a bit of CMoN though.. so you've got that going for you lol...

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Just don't have "<nation>-friendly shipping" on the campaign if you're not shipping to local distribution hubs. That particular thing (in KS) means backers have no additional import fees or taxes, not that you're simply happy to ship to those countries.

Well, there's actually a grey color here. It's not black as we had already included shipping in people's pledges, so backers wouldn't have to pay absolutely anything else. It is not white either though as taxes or import fees might have still applied and we had not taken that into consideration.
To avoid any further confusion in the future we will limit in signaling only EU friendly since all rewards get mailed from Athens.

Nope. "Shipping included" is wonderful, appreciated, and you've got every right to add that in large type on the campaign as a major plus. BUT. It's not the same thing as what "<nation> friendly shipping." means in KS-parlance. That you're willing to rectify it in the next campaign is good though, and means we don't need to argue that point further for the next and subsequent campaigns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MLaw wrote:

Your response is consistently an arrogant tone in which you clearly think extremely highly of yourselves. We get it. These are not the worst multipart plastics ever created. I'll grant you that. However, the fact that people are already trying to figure out what to use in place of what you provided should tell you something.
I will say this for you.. the hyper-inflated ego has made me respect Mantic a lot more than I previously did.. as I've interacted with various people from there a lot more.. as well as Zealot, Anvil, and even Mad Robot.. who I got in a literal argument with.. and none of them distance themselves from the opinions of their constituents in anything quite like the way you do. You do remind me a bit of CMoN though.. so you've got that going for you lol...

I think to be fair that you need to take into account the language barrier. Although Shieldwolf's forum reps come across as 100% fluent in English, their first language is still Greek. If you've ever spoken to someone who has migrated from another country with a different first language, you'll know that misunderstandings happen. I've spoken to Angelos on the phone and he's got a similar way of speaking to my wife's father (Greek) or even my own father (Italian) - and even in spoken form one side will still need to clarify. On top of that, add the tone of typed conversation and how easily that can be interpreted or misinterpreted. I mean, you come off here as really aggro and a bit of a sarcastic prick, but I'm sure that't not your intent (not being sarcastic) - and the fact that I had to type that last bit about not being sarcastic just shows my point again about my own post here...

 Azazelx wrote:

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
Just don't have "<nation>-friendly shipping" on the campaign if you're not shipping to local distribution hubs. That particular thing (in KS) means backers have no additional import fees or taxes, not that you're simply happy to ship to those countries.

Well, there's actually a grey color here. It's not black as we had already included shipping in people's pledges, so backers wouldn't have to pay absolutely anything else. It is not white either though as taxes or import fees might have still applied and we had not taken that into consideration.
To avoid any further confusion in the future we will limit in signaling only EU friendly since all rewards get mailed from Athens.

Nope. "Shipping included" is wonderful, appreciated, and you've got every right to add that in large type on the campaign as a major plus. BUT. It's not the same thing as what "<nation> friendly shipping." means in KS-parlance. That you're willing to rectify it in the next campaign is good though, and means we don't need to argue that point further for the next and subsequent campaigns.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MLaw wrote:

Your response is consistently an arrogant tone in which you clearly think extremely highly of yourselves. We get it. These are not the worst multipart plastics ever created. I'll grant you that. However, the fact that people are already trying to figure out what to use in place of what you provided should tell you something.
I will say this for you.. the hyper-inflated ego has made me respect Mantic a lot more than I previously did.. as I've interacted with various people from there a lot more.. as well as Zealot, Anvil, and even Mad Robot.. who I got in a literal argument with.. and none of them distance themselves from the opinions of their constituents in anything quite like the way you do. You do remind me a bit of CMoN though.. so you've got that going for you lol...

I think to be fair that you need to take into account the language barrier. Although Shieldwolf's forum reps come across as 100% fluent in English, their first language is still Greek. If you've ever spoken to someone who has migrated from another country with a different first language, you'll know that misunderstandings happen. I've spoken to Angelos on the phone and he's got a similar way of speaking to my wife's father (Greek) or even my own father (Italian) - and even in spoken form one side will still need to clarify. On top of that, add the tone of typed conversation and how easily that can be interpreted or misinterpreted. I mean, you come off here as really aggro and a bit of a sarcastic prick, but I'm sure that't not your intent (not being sarcastic) - and the fact that I had to type that last bit about not being sarcastic just shows my point again about my own post here...

It would be easy to agree with that.. but these guys have jumped into OTHER PEOPLE"S kickstarter threads and started trash talking. So.. when people have something to say about theirs.. they deflect, ignore, soft pedal, etc.

Also.. I could see where one would think I'm always aggro and prickish.. but those tend to be the posts people notice of mine.. but that's not what 90% of my posts are. I'm genuinely pissed at Shieldwolf.. maybe that's not even accurate.. I think most of this is frustration and disapopintment but yea... pissed too because of the 'meh attitude.

On the language thing.. it's another easy cliche.. my wife learned English as a second language and most of my college professors were Greek and/or Turkish.. but again.. I have seen SW ripping into people because of bad decisions and for them to have such a flippant attitude about their own shortcomings.. it's a bit up

I'm from Spain, and over here we tend to also be overly blunt, so I see where you're coming from (I've also had the problem of coming off as overly aggressive when giving criticism).

I'm not that bothered about Angelos' tone, maybe a little frustrated sometimes, but it's all good :p. In the end of the day, the one with the company is him, and it's he who need to make the decisions. After that is onto us to check wether those decisions are ones we can cope with or not.

 MLaw wrote:

It would be easy to agree with that.. but these guys have jumped into OTHER PEOPLE"S kickstarter threads and started trash talking. So.. when people have something to say about theirs.. they deflect, ignore, soft pedal, etc.

Also.. I could see where one would think I'm always aggro and prickish.. but those tend to be the posts people notice of mine.. but that's not what 90% of my posts are. I'm genuinely pissed at Shieldwolf.. maybe that's not even accurate.. I think most of this is frustration and disapopintment but yea... pissed too because of the 'meh attitude.

On the language thing.. it's another easy cliche.. my wife learned English as a second language and most of my college professors were Greek and/or Turkish.. but again.. I have seen SW ripping into people because of bad decisions and for them to have such a flippant attitude about their own shortcomings.. it's a bit up

I can't think of where I've seen them doing that in other people's KS thread off the top of my head. Them, I doubt I've seen all of their posts, so I'll grant you there that I don't know and can't say. I also wasn't having a go. I'm pretty blunt on here as well, and I've been blunt and head-butted with Angelos in emails as well. Sometimes he doesn't seem to get my point, but I typically put that down to the language thing as he will say that he understands my point even when he disagrees at other times. I then need to tell him that he's still wrong, as I did above with the "<nation>-friendly shipping" thing above, but that's how it goes. I don't feel that he talks down to me, though. OTOH, I do see him get frustrated at times and have offered my advice and interpretation when appropriate.

Regarding your posts and the perception of/presence of aggro. I'm not sure if you've seen my own ones, particularly in the N&R and DD forums. Point being that sometimes being curt, direct or even calmly blunt has people thinking that you're being a witch, or even foaming at the keyboard, and I'm sure you've experienced the same reactions that I have in response at times.

Not sure what you mean by easy cliche? People from NESB aren't all trying to feth with everyone else, but misinterpretation and appearing overly blunt or worse can be an effect of it as you'd know given what you've said and I certainly know, having grown up around and amongst and alongside all manner of wogs. It doesn't happen in every sentence or conversation or anything, but it happens - and combine that with the way bluntness comes across in text and it can give an impression is my own point there.

I'm hoping to get my models tomorrow. They got delivered a week ago, but I haven't done a mail pick-up this week, so....

 MLaw wrote:
It would be easy to agree with that.. but these guys have jumped into OTHER PEOPLE"S kickstarter threads and started trash talking. So.. when people have something to say about theirs.. they deflect, ignore, soft pedal, etc.

I will address that as well. Yes, that has been true, partially at least. It was during the period when we were still trying to figure out how KS works, being something fairly unknown in Greece (it still is, most people have never heard of it). We have come to a final conclusion now of what the system actually is and the collateral manners it can be exploited with. It must be noted that we haven't interfered with anyone's else doings a very long time now -nor will we ever bother doing that ever again- so calling us out on that I find unfair. Just because in the past we called it out as we see it doesn't mean we are "bad" people nor has foul language ever been used by any Shieldwolf member. Dimitrios is the one who usually interacts in the forums but he has my complete trust and I am sure what he does is always out of good intent or blunt honesty.
Our point of view might vary on that, no argument there.

I wrote 'partialy' because it must be like 5-6 KS projects (give or take, I doubt there are more) we have commented on, over half were in benefit. I think I remember each and everyone of them. For those who haven't followed I will list them here, one by one.
In the case of one Kickstarter (Fallen Frontiers) we pointed out along with another manufacturer (artemisblack I recall) who also was saying that the creators didn't know what they were doing since they were talking tooling vehicles and other stuff in HIPS and their math was way off. We probably contributed in saving a large number of backers from a KS project disaster and dissapointment.
In the case of Mythos (it was the last one we ever bothered with and which totally sealed the way KS works) it was a ridiculous statement that "95% of the work has been done but we still need crowdfunding to bring this to fruition". Now that I look at it I should have simpy laughed away and not bother commenting for obvious reasons.
In the case of Black Plague from CMoN I was personally genuinely interested but pointed out how unfair charging everyone else P&P of 15-25-35-45$, while for Greece it was a ridiculous 70$ (I still remember the number!). You can check for yourself if you like, it's still on their page.
Another project we interfered in (Project Elite) is because a member of our Team here was a backer himself, and IIRC we were rather indifferent from the entire thing till someone brought up the economic status of the country and its companies -therefore I interfered as it was causing indirect harm to mine. It would be fair to say you would have interfered as well.
Last, Tre's and Grefven's Kickstarters we commented just to say positive things as they are what they are and we are fond of both of them.
That's all of them in like 3 years and some. Anyway, as I said we no longer interfere with anyone's else endevours in any negative way. Should you ever see us do the opposite kindly call us out on that,
I think I covered everything, if I missed something it was not intentional.

Am I the only one trying to paint these ladies?



Get with it people! I need some paint schemes to copy!

Anyone try doing more interesting skin tones instead of generic white people?

You might want to be inspired by a painted version of another backer, Spanish I think.



Our studio version is still in the works, we will be posting it up once ready.

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:

 MLaw wrote:
It would be easy to agree with that.. but these guys have jumped into OTHER PEOPLE"S kickstarter threads and started trash talking. So.. when people have something to say about theirs.. they deflect, ignore, soft pedal, etc.

I will address that as well. Yes, that has been true, partially at least. It was during the period when we were still trying to figure out how KS works, being something fairly unknown in Greece (it still is, most people have never heard of it). We have come to a final conclusion now of what the system actually is and the collateral manners it can be exploited with. It must be noted that we haven't interfered with anyone's else doings a very long time now -nor will we ever bother doing that ever again- so calling us out on that I find unfair. Just because in the past we called it out as we see it doesn't mean we are "bad" people nor has foul language ever been used by any Shieldwolf member. Dimitrios is the one who usually interacts in the forums but he has my complete trust and I am sure what he does is always out of good intent or blunt honesty.
Our point of view might vary on that, no argument there.

I wrote 'partialy' because it must be like 5-6 KS projects (give or take, I doubt there are more) we have commented on, over half were in benefit. I think I remember each and everyone of them. For those who haven't followed I will list them here, one by one.
In the case of one Kickstarter (Fallen Frontiers) we pointed out along with another manufacturer (artemisblack I recall) who also was saying that the creators didn't know what they were doing since they were talking tooling vehicles and other stuff in HIPS and their math was way off. We probably contributed in saving a large number of backers from a KS project disaster and dissapointment.
In the case of Mythos (it was the last one we ever bothered with and which totally sealed the way KS works) it was a ridiculous statement that "95% of the work has been done but we still need crowdfunding to bring this to fruition". Now that I look at it I should have simpy laughed away and not bother commenting for obvious reasons.
In the case of Black Plague from CMoN I was personally genuinely interested but pointed out how unfair charging everyone else P&P of 15-25-35-45$, while for Greece it was a ridiculous 70$ (I still remember the number!). You can check for yourself if you like, it's still on their page.
Another project we interfered in (Project Elite) is because a member of our Team here was a backer himself, and IIRC we were rather indifferent from the entire thing till someone brought up the economic status of the country and its companies -therefore I interfered as it was causing indirect harm to mine. It would be fair to say you would have interfered as well.
Last, Tre's and Grefven's Kickstarters we commented just to say positive things as they are what they are and we are fond of both of them.
That's all of them in like 3 years and some. Anyway, as I said we no longer interfere with anyone's else endevours in any negative way. Should you ever see us do the opposite kindly call us out on that,
I think I covered everything, if I missed something it was not intentional.

This was 6 months ago from the Mythic Battles Pantheon KS.. You mentioned this one but you are also talking about your comments of this nature like you stopped doing this LOOOONG ago.. Let's not act like not doing something for 6 months magically means you've established a record of behaving otherwise.

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:
The risks and challenges read
"Due to the fact that the core box of Mythic Battles: Pantheon is 95% complete as we head into this campaign..."

So let me get this right, they are missing that last 5% in order to get their game into the market? Apologies but I highly doubt that,also seeing what the funding target was. Unless, that number is a lie and they are missing more than five percent (which I don't think is the case), but if that was the truth they are equally not excused.

I honestly don't understand it, the sculpts are ready and look great, the theme looks good, the game I don't know but I have no reason to doubt it is also good. So, if the product is ready to go into retail, why on Earth go into crowdfunding depriving from other projects (which genuinely lack the funds) the opportunity to see the light of day? I'm sorry if I sound snarky/crabby/choleric/insert whatever you like, that is not my intention and it is definitely nothing personal with this company (I absoluetly don't know any of the people who own Monolith or Mythic Games and would perhaps buy the game in retail if reasonably priced, it follows Greek mythology after all!) but the more we study how crowdfunding works the more things we find alarmingly altering its very essence.

If any of the mods find my post inappropriate please move or delete it.

Yeah, I had a few back and forths with SW in Private messages about their posting in other KS comments section. In the end I'm not touching these guys with a 10' pole. They want to blame everything on the fact that they are Greek, or other people are hiding the truth in their KS or didn't need to KS in the first place. I'm sorry backers didn't get what they were expecting, but not overly surprised.

@MLaw
As I said, different points of view. :-) It was half a year ago(!), to us that's is a long time. It was also our ever last comment on other people's threads for now we have a pretty good idea how crowdfunding actually works.
I appreciate your finding and pasting the comment though, it is in my opinion very politely stated. If you don't agree with that, we will simply agree to disagree.

@Theophony
Why would you think backers didn't receive what they expected?! Some backers as commented in our thread here at dakka yes, but many others however messaged us to congratulate us, I find therefore what you say unfair.
As for the 10" poll, I have to say it's way too harsh a statement, but that's up to you. Shieldwolf Miniatures never wrong did anyone and never has anybody ever lost a single dime due to our misdoings or received crap product. I challenge anyone who in the past years has dealt with us to say otherwise.
I believe in time you will recall this statement of yours. If you ever find yourself in Greece pay us a visit, you will be surprised at what people we actually are and what it actually looks like to live here these days. Frape' is on me. :-)

Shieldwolf delivered a genune HIPS kit via KS with only minor delays,

the minis are really good, some options are not what some wanted, but realistically unless there were a full set of swords, axes, flails and spears some people were going to be upset as despite these being barbarians for sheildwolf's eventual game lots of us plan to use them for other systems where mix and match weapons in a unit are less acceptable

not being more specific that the spears (and the 2 prong tridents that I was looking forward too) missed the cut in an update was a mistake, but I think the choice to drop them was the right one

and for shipping they used a decent courier who should have provided tracking numbers (even if some didn't get them)

so for a KS (or in fact any preorder of a product that was only in the concept art stage) its a major success

plus they're around on Dakka (and other forums) and actually talk to us even when there is criticism instead of vanishing

so if you back KS (and I quite understand why some will not do so) Shieldwolf's are projects you can do so with confidence

I got a pack of Deus Volt / Fireforge 5cm spears last night and quickly threw together a maiden using one.

Had to cut the spear in half and glue either side, the hand was too small / the spear was too thick to do it via drilling.

Still - its a decent enough look, and thickness aside the scale is good.

@SW, my comment about not getting what they wanted was in regards to spears mainly, sorry if that came across incorrectly. Me not touching you guys with a 10' pole is due to comments we exchanged in PMs. Your tone on other companies and what was mentioned about backers of the SM vs Orcs kickstarter has me on the Will not buy list. It's fine if others are happy with it and I wish you the best of luck.

@Theophony
Fair enough, the spear issue was admittingly not handled by us in the best of ways. I know you are sincere in your wishes and the offer for the frape' still stands :-)

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

Am I the only one trying to paint these ladies?


Get with it people! I need some paint schemes to copy!
Anyone try doing more interesting skin tones instead of generic white people?

Hopefully picking mine up tonight. Of course, there's other barbarian-types in front of them in the queue. Some actual Vikings, some Dwarf Slayers, some old Citadel barbarians and some Russian Alternative Not-Chaos Dwarfs, but I'll slot a couple of them in afterwards. I'm probably going Norse themed to start with, though. I might try some mash-ups with Sisters of Silence, Statuesque Heads and Dark Eldar parts based on what I've seen others do after the first couple of "stock" ones, though.

I'll be honest I was not over joyed with my maidens for a couple of reasons, the scale is off for my needs but to be fair it is close to the silhouette they previewed, however next time maybe a ruler would be better or an actual miniature comparison.

The lack of spears was my real gripe, ok you say it was mentioned in the comments section but not everyone has the time to follow and read every comment left, something like that should have been added to the update section as it was a rather important change.

I also think it is strange that the resin and plastic miniatures scale up differently, that seems really odd to change your scale within a faction ?

However I will say I really like the resin miniatures and my mammoths are fantastic can't pick a fault with them.

For future KS please could you do the following to resolve these issues:

1 confirm all sprue layouts and changes in the UPDATE section not the comment section, this should include polls or voting required feedback.

2 Scale shot with ruler or actual alternative miniature for size comparison.

 lone dirty dog wrote:

For future KS please could you do the following to resolve these issues:
1 confirm all sprue layouts and changes in the UPDATE section not the comment section, this should include polls or voting required feedback.
2 Scale shot with ruler or actual alternative miniature for size comparison.

On these:
1) Stuff like that needs to be reflected on the main campaign page as well. Stuff buried in Update #12 means feth all to someone who backs at the point of Update #24 or at the end of the campaign. It means things like updating the graphics on the main page when spears are removed, etc. I've said as much to Angelos, and I'm hopeful he'll take it on board. A little extra admin, but it would equal far less disappointment and a good bump in comms quality.

2) Should be much easier with the existing kit out. I believe they intend to scale them up with some others, and if the next girls are the same scale as these, there'll be plenty of SM KS backers able to put them next to Space Marines or anything else on request (as has already been done, when we found out.

So I've opened my box. Thoughts so far:

1) Packaging is non-existent. A few pieces of brown paper in the top of the box provides no padding at all for hundreds of dollars worth of plastic and resin as it bounces around while couriers handle the parcels with all the care in the world(!) Nothing appears broken, but I expect better packaging. When I get packaging this poor from a retailer, I tend not to buy from them again. Just saying...

2) I only got one set of my "Gold-level" stretch goal rewards, despite two sets of "Gold level" pledges and assurances that multiple pledge levels get multiple sets of stretch goals. Others have reported the same. A bit annoyed there, and unlike others, I'll be after the missing figures since they're actually nice and I personally have uses for them.
Shieldmaiden Hero with Great Maul x1
Army Banner Bearer x1
Shieldlord A x1

3) So many sprues and NFI how many I should have. I know I should have 8 boxes, but since we didn't get boxes, I've got to play a guessing game to work out how many sprues in what combo equals a box. Did we work that out earlier?


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24(!) Command Sprues and 17 Warrior Sprues. This seems off. Is it off?

You can straight away assemble 20 miniatures but can actually build 24 with some kitbashing according to Shieldwolf Miniatures as there are only 20 left arms included.

That seems to indicate that each "box" is 2 of the warrior sprue (6 bodies) and 3(!) of the command (4 bodies).

So that means I think I have the "correct" number of sprues including the extra sprue that was a 500-backer reward (which was a sprue for "everyone", so maybe not per pledge level as the stretch goals were supposed to be...) Which means the "Surprise twist" is... the bit of paper advertising the next KS? Unless it's the missing stretch goal models.

I am surprised that the spears issue is raising more ire amongst backers than the scale one. Personally I find how huge the plastics are to be very annoying, when the KS was on going it was stated to be for 28mm not 32mm models and the fact that the resins are all 28mm not 32mm shows this up quite clearly. How can you possibly get your own internal scaling wrong? Now I know someone will be thinking that there are different ways of using 28mm (to top of head or to eye line) I have never come across anyone ever that thought that 28mm was to the top of the shoulder which these ladies are.

Further to this is the silhouette used to highlight the model size, now I could recognise that it was a GW Dark Elf of some description and so I had a look at my DE models (all from plastic regiment boxes) and went, 'yep that's 28mm' I did not know that GW had made a few newer DE models that were totally out of whack and that Shied wolf used one of those as its model.

So the next project they are running is going to be for some massive, heavily armoured 32mm warmaidens and some totally not in anyway Sisters of Battle that are going to stand taller than Space Marines? There is now way I am giving money to that, I don't mind a bit of wonky scaling but from the same company, within the same line that is just poor.

Still bang on side for some goblins though as I care not how they scale up against each other or other lines!


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Edit: Also whats this about shipping being included in pledges? No it wasn't. We had to pay for it when filling out the pledge manager, I think it was $18US for me.

Oh feth, you're right. I paid €22.62 alongside my add-ons. Which is pretty reasonable for the box I received, but it's certainly not "included". Maybe they mean "partly subsidised?" But then I recall talk about how cheap Greek shipping is when they decided to split the resin mammoths from the rest of the campaign, but then they used DHL in the end, but then they must have used DHL's most economical service, since my parcel sat in Athens for over a week before getting to my mailing address in about 4 days once it started moving... (unless DHL just ripped SW off for the service they paid for.) Yeah, I'm not sure what they meant by included?

As for spear vs scale. Both have been discussed here a fair bit, and I've also had a back and forth with SW on both of them via email, raising all of the same points that you have here - with the exception of the next set of Not-Sisters being taller than Space Marines. I hadn't thought of that. I talked about scaling them next to/with Sisters of Silence. How big are they compared to SM? I've got 4 sets of Fireforge spears and javelins on the way now, and someone else mentioned spare weapons from Mantic skellies, which I should have some of somewhere.

I've built my first SM today though. Combined with some Bloodreaver parts to make a female Bloodreaver/Gorechosen proxy model. There's a "skipped leg day" element to the final kitbash, but I'll see how it turns out once painted. Hopefully the cloak and bits will pull some attention away from it. Models are nice enough, though the arms are thinner than I'd like, and excepting Cloud's sword, I'm ok with the Fantasy-styled weapons. Slightly larger hands would have been better and more kitbash-friendly, as the whole heroic-height/truescale proportions thing they have going makes it hard to do any kind of weapon swaps, forcing you to glue both sides a la Micky above. Still, it's better than Lego hands on miniatures, and I do like the inclusion of ball-joints on both the arms and heads.

The other thing that stands out between the resin heroes and plastics (aside from height-stature) is the realistic-ish sized weapons on the plastics vs the lollerskates weapons on many of the resin heroes (which I'll be replacing with something a bit more in-between, myself). I'm guessing that the "new" standard Shieldwolf scale will now be that of the plastics and the resins will now be sculpted to match in future, perhaps with the current ones being retired and replaced sooner rather than later in order to have a more consistent line.

@Lone dirty dog
We will do both of these as it's reasonable and good advice. Actually not only have we already seeked a couple of models from other manufacturers to scale shot (which we didn't intend to do BTW prior to comments written on this forum) and on top of that we will be providing current backers a preview page pre-launch. It should help assure that everything is crystal clear to avoid future confusion.

@ingtaer
You have missunderstood I think; the free shipping was included in the Forest Goblin pledges and not the Shieldmaidens.

@Azazelx
Boxes were not included in order not to further delay delivery; Mays' update will have more information on this. We will be sending out later (i.e. later = end of this month probably) any missing items, since we have decided to delay for this purpose the launch of the Warmaidens/Dragonbreds (plan was to launch on May 30, not happening).
I hear you on the packaging but to our credit we supplied tracking codes free of charge as you weren't meant to receive any (that too was clearly stated on the project's main page). This was due to 2 whole weeks of battling it over, effort I was not required to go through since shipping charges were extremely close to the ones estimated and communicated initially but which we thought would additionally benefit the backers.

Scale shots can only benefit you and your business in terms of providing further clarity to backers. As we've both discussed, having the SM plastics makes it much easier assuming this is the scale all future SM models will now be. Just ensure that you call the next campaign's models 32mm instead of 28mm to further avoid confusion.

The clarification on the free shipping being on the FG makes sense. I think a bunch of us on the forum got confused there.

Angelos and I have spoken about the boxes before (not sure if it's Angelos or Dimitrios posting) - the reason I brought it up again today was in relation to "Wait.. how many sprues and in which combination should I have them?" as I assumed there would be more warrior sprues than command sprues, as is typical for HIPS plastic kits. Boxes would (I assume?) have provided that information. Even the box art on the web somewhere might have worked to work it out, but I couldn't find it. Luckily I was able to piece it together from a review and a KS backer, but that's not the ideal way to have to work out how many sprues in which combination we should have received.

Providing tracked shipping (especially if it was close to what was charged) benefits you as well as the backers. I don't know how many packages go "missing" as opposed to missing, but it helps to protect you from fraud and gives backers warm fuzzies, so they're more likely to feel good about their purchases/pledges.

Delaying the next project until you've rectified the current missing items/other issues also does you in good stead, especially since a good chunk of any future backers will be the current ones. It might mess up your ideal projected timeline, but the campaign already delivered late by several months, so you'll have adjusted at least once (and probably more) already, and keeping the existing backer base happy means more repeat customers and less anger and bitching at the start of the next campaign - so a worthwhile time investment that should reap financial rewards in that sense, even if the metric is not easily tracked. Of course, you know this as well as I do.

Other benefits from a short additional wait between campaigns can include more models painted by the existing backers around the web, and we all know how well painted models sell more models. Even GW who have leveraged this better than anyone else in the industry now features customers' models on their product pages - so more painted Shieldmaidens out there can only be a good thing for the next campaign.