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I apologize for being mean. I am a fan of Shieldwolf and intended that more as good-natured ribbing. I've been very happy with all of the products I've bought from them*, and plan to be a customer for years.




*excluding their deep dish bases.

Shieldwolf's deep dish bases don't hold a candle to the deepness that is CMON's Wrath of Kings bases.

Wrath of King's are designed to take CMON's base inserts, and if you don't have any... I guess your units have portable cover then!

Speaking of bases- will round bases be an option for whichever armies we choose?

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:
Shieldwolf's deep dish bases don't hold a candle to the deepness that is CMON's Wrath of Kings bases.

You won't be receiving lip-bases this time, they'll be flat for this project (like what Citadel's WHFB were for example).

 highlord tamburlaine wrote:

Speaking of bases- will round bases be an option for whichever armies we choose?

You can always write under "Comments" of your pledge manager and we can do the swap, why not? Costs are the same for us.

We made available some weekend add-ons, the Ballista for fantasy and a couple of extras for the sci-fi vehicles! We hope you like them!

 Shieldwolf Miniatures wrote:

 Mmmpi wrote:
I'm one of those people who are interested in the KS, but haven't backed yet. I like the tanks you're offering, particularly with the religious doors you pictured on your website. I'd be up for 6-12, depending on how my funds look in the next two weeks. But I want the religious doors, not the Norse. (would be willing to buy the doors I want separately though).

If the not-sisters don't get unlocked, would your company be selling, or at least be considering selling vehicle upgrade packs at or before KS delivery?

We will see how sales work at retail for our science fiction range, we are rookies in this market and need numbers to make assessments.

Nothing illustrated in the campaign is ever going to sale before KS delivery. We have promised this in the past, we promise this now, we will promise this in the future. Why you may ask. It is financially unfavourable to us and we miss out of money, but ethically it's the right thing to do. It's not always about money but paid trust must be repaid (sorry for my English, I don't know any synonym for the verb pay).

Put the religions not-Rhino doors up as a paid add-on. Do it now without requiring an unlock for a paid add-on.

If they're already digitally sculpted then you can easily get a high quality 3-d print master and mould making is your forte anyway. Mmmpi is already down for a dozen. Make them reasonably priced and you'll get a bunch of buys now regardless because people can use them in several forces regardless of whether the nuns get unlocked.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Arachnomaidens unlocked for those people here that were interested.

Angelos/Dimitrius, might be a good idea to update the thread title here with that as well.

@Azazelx
Sure, not sure how much traction this will create but that's an easy one to set up! :-)

 RiTides wrote:
I know you're joking, Bob, but no need to be mean!

For myself, I am also after the Arachnomaidens, but because they're just an add-on it's not as efficient to pledge for them here. I do want to pick them up (I owe them to Werhkind, for when we thought they'd unlock in the prior campaign!) but they aren't necessarily a very good fit here.

I thought my ears were burning....

Just to preface, I have ~250$ of Shield Maidens across the room from me now, and ~5000 points of Sisters of Battle across the other side. I don't even know how much that would cost or sell for now, but I have been collecting them since '07 at least, right around the start of 4th edition. So believe me when I say that plastic space nuns would see me very excited and waving my credit card about. I really like your work and basic aesthetic, and of course the price point is very nice.

I really need to offer some feedback, however. As those renders stand, there are a few things that would need to change over all before I was sure I wanted to buy.

1: Scale down the weapons. The shield maidens had some cool weapons, and others looked like they were made for a model twice as large. The resins in particular sported ax heads that were just silly. Not heroic scale, not magical fantasy, just 200 lbs of steel on a 20 millimeter thick rod silly. Their small hands made that especially obvious. A fully automatic 12 gauge (.75 caliber) rifle does not need to be 25 cm tall or 15 cm deep. Likewise with the flamers that you are showing. Scale the weapons down to a reasonable level, please. They don't have to be whisper thin, but don't make it look like they are trying to shoot 2 liter soda bottles either.

2: Scale down the pauldrons. PP has giant silly shoulder armor, and it looks terrible to all but a tiny portion of their players. GW even doesn't over do the shoulders (as much). Shoulder armor that protrudes more than 4-7 cm from the shoulder is just over doing it. Scaling down the weapons will go much farther towards making the armor seem more bulky and brutal than having pauldrons a World of Warcraft character would cringe at. You want it to look like normal sized people in heavy armor with roughly normal sized weapons, not tiny/stringy people in normal armor with giant ass weapons.

3: Yea, hands are good, and if everything has the same basic pistol grip you can allow for just adding the weapon to the hand instead of having a different hand on each gun. That will help solve a lot of the "two hands on the gun" issues. Let the melee weapons/grenades/books have their own hand attached, but for the "standard" weapons they can share a hand chassis, if you will.

4: Make some more poses. Not different poses like which foot is slightly forward, but a crouching one, one leaning forward with weapon up to fire or just peaking around a wall, one running, one standing around giving orders, etc. The shield maidens suffer somewhat from all having sort of a "standing around, shouting at the enemy" pose. Not a big deal for rank and file troops, although one leaning forward a little, or bracing themselves for an impact on their shield would have been cool. For modern to scifi skirmish type troops, a bit more movement and differing positions are a good call.

5: Try and shoot for a 28 mm scale instead of 32 mm All Star Women's Basketball Team scale. The shield maidens are a bit tough to fit in with other models because they are both very thin (with very small hands) and very tall. It can be done certainly, but they always look "special" in that "Hey, we are all Kareem Abdul-Jabar's love children! There's like an army of us!" sort of way.

6: Seriously, dial back the scale creep.


So if you were just pleasing one single economist, I'd recommend the aesthetic changes, which might require putting the sci-fi religious girls into their own KS. I don't know what your bandwidth on changes looks like. I do know that looking at the renders I am immediately thinking of what bits I would have to buy or make myself to correct the above issues which makes it all less appealing. I like the fantasy nuns, but not enough to back them on their own. I would buy a box or two as an add on to a big Space Nuns pledge in the future, however.

Funding was canceled... It s a shame I really liked those tanks.

Not a good look, cancelling your campaigns after reaching the funding goal... a second time :(

Was a reason given?

Not yet.

Shieldwolf wrote:We'll be posting an update later on, there are serious reasons for which we are stopping this project.

 Zywus wrote:
Not a good look, cancelling your campaigns after reaching the funding goal... a second time :(

At this stage I don't think its a bad thing - I had backed for quite a bit but I was finding the campaign confusing in terms of what I could and could not pledge for and having the not SOBs as a "possible" rather than certain pledge was inhibiting my spending.

Hopefully its nothing serious with their company of people front and they can restart the campaign or more likely campaigns?

Azazel put this up in comments about 2 hours ago (as of me posting)

Azazel A about 2 hours ago

Shieldwolf has a core of around 400 backers. Most of us back every or at least most of their campaigns. Getting outside of that core will require something that people outside of SW's core supporters want.

Running essentially 4 campaigns at once was not the greatest idea. Starting the sci-fi models with 10 per box when the fantasy ones are 20 per box was a terrible one that shot themselves in the foot immediately.

In January, when SW did their research, it looked like GW might release SoB on the heels of Celestine (and RH was shipping), so Wolf Sisters would have seemed a more unique choice. The landscape has changed considerably in the last 10 months though. 40k is on fire, and there's no sign of plastic SoB anywhere on the horizon.

That also means that as much as many of us want SW to succeed, we're facing the choice of paying for 10-woman boxes of sci-fi sisters now and getting them in 12-18 months against picking up a Start Collecting box (or three, or four) or new-release DG, or PSM, or.. lots of new hotness.

Starting the Sci-Fi boxes with 20 (same as the Fantasy - compare apples to apples) would have defused a lot of that "poor value" perception, especially when it's only $5k between them. But that $5k puts off people outside of the 400 core SW backers, especially when a KS funding objective has got to be a wave building rather than a drip-feed.

Expecting people in the 400 to double their pledge to get a SECOND $30k (plus $5k) to unlock the stuff that many of them actually want is too much of a stretch.

Renders need some more work, but the "best" campaign would be the Space Nuns at $30k with 20/box as the first goal, and build from there.

All three other designs are cool, and while I'd personally like to get some of each, but only one of the four fills a particularly empty, high-demand hole in the marketplace of one of the most popular tabletop games out there.

There's always a risk. The risk is that GW will release proper HIPS SoB sometime between when a relaunched campaign funds and when it delivers, which would no doubt take a lot of the wind out of the new kits' sales, but it wouldn't affect funding, and if the Mountain orcs have sold okay, and if the Shieldmaidens have sold okay...

Oh, and Balgin. Your criticism of the discussions on Dakka is ...amusing. If you want to discuss directly then I'll see you there.

I will say this though - No-one (sane) is going to back a couple hundred bucks on a campaign that is funded (so you're guaranteed to be charged) on the hope that another $20k is going to drop in 10 or 12 days for the things they actually want when the funding has slowed to a crawl after Day 2.

Backing Day 1 for the initial funding is risk-free. Backing Day 8 when it's funded but needs another $30k for the things you actually want is simply foolishly optimistic. This isn't a CMON campaign, so just as backers & potential backers should not have unrealistic expectations on SW to provide endless extras and stratch goals like CMON, SW and existing backers should not expect funding to move anything like in a CMON campaign.

It looks like they were starting to question their market research, and felt they had bitten off more than they could chew product wise.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Zywus wrote:
Not a good look, cancelling your campaigns after reaching the funding goal... a second time :(

At this stage I don't think its a bad thing - I had backed for quite a bit but I was finding the campaign confusing in terms of what I could and could not pledge for and having the not SOBs as a "possible" rather than certain pledge was inhibiting my spending.

Hopefully its nothing serious with their company of people front and they can restart the campaign or more likely campaigns?

I see your point. I was thinking that it's bad to create the impression that your KS drives are not serious, as might happen if they keep canceling funded campaigns. But it might be worth it to have a better structured campaign.


I just wish Shieldwolf would think these things over, collect feedback and advice before they're already in the middle of a campaign

That's just the thing they did their research, then they went away as got down to making plans, commissioning scupts etc which takes time

and now they've launched they're hearing a lot of different opinions about what people want in part at least because the gaming environment has changed, other companies have released (or not released) stuff etc

I think the big mistake was tying something they're funding themselves in to the KS which just complicated things both for backers/potential backers in trying to understand what was on offer, and them in trying to figure out what they could afford to do (and what to do if they said they would do something and then the KS went backwards)

(I'd also have been strongly tempted to run the KS for a single faction even if it resulted in a lower overall take but without access to their data and projections I don't know if that would have been viable)

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
That's just the thing they did their research, then they went away as got down to making plans, commissioning scupts etc which takes time

and now they've launched they're hearing a lot of different opinions about what people want in part at least because the gaming environment has changed, other companies have released (or not released) stuff etc )

Long term plans and changing gaming enviroment can cause some problems yes, but I'm thinking of smaller things that has more to do with how the KS page is structured.

For example, that weirdness of having Sisters of Wolves start at 10 models per box at the base funding goal of 30k, and then double to 20 a box at the 35k stretch goal.
That only confuses things and scare away potential backers who Why not simply put the base funding goal at 35k, with 20 women per box?


Shieldwolf I think, would really benefit from uploading a preview of their KS page some days before it goes live, and collect feedback then, rather than start to fidget with the campaign mid run.

They really need to accept when projects fund even if they don't fund to whatever crazy expectation they have. I dont understand why they wouldn't take the money and run then do it again with whatever didn't fund this time.

Oh well, maybe one day I'll be able to buy those Arachnomaidens. Just not this day. :(

I think its a bit off/weird that they just cancelled it without any hint of it coming...?

I would have thought an update to backers to warn them that it might be happening, or even one just before they cancelled it to explain what was happening. As it stands they just cancelled it out of the blue, and then added a one line comment on kickstarter (and again, using kickstarter comments as updates is not acceptable imo) saying we'll explain more later, and that was 9 hours ago... brilliant.

I just hope that the reason it as cancelled so abruptly is related to the project/financials/etc, and not something more personally serious i.e. illness/death/etc

 Zywus wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
That's just the thing they did their research, then they went away as got down to making plans, commissioning scupts etc which takes time

and now they've launched they're hearing a lot of different opinions about what people want in part at least because the gaming environment has changed, other companies have released (or not released) stuff etc )

Long term plans and changing gaming enviroment can cause some problems yes, but I'm thinking of smaller things that has more to do with how the KS page is structured.

For example, that weirdness of having Sisters of Wolves start at 10 models per box at the base funding goal of 30k, and then double to 20 a box at the 35k stretch goal.
That only confuses things and scare away potential backers who Why not simply put the base funding goal at 35k, with 20 women per box?


Shieldwolf I think, would really benefit from uploading a preview of their KS page some days before it goes live, and collect feedback then, rather than start to fidget with the campaign mid run.

Uploading the preview page with less than 24hrs to launch wasnt a good idea at all, we had been asking them for a couple of weeks about it and i think running sci-fi and fantasy at the same time wasnt a smart move either, i did voice my opinions about it when they announced the duel themed KS,

A couple in the comments have thought maybe a C&D from GW, it did cross my mind too, we just got to wait for the 13th update(spooky) to see what the reasons was :/

What makes you say the 13th? That's a bit odd (10 days away) especially if they planned to rework and relaunch, I would've thought they'd post their plans / get feedback sooner.

There have been 12 updates so far. The next will be the 13th.

Oh, sorry I misread that! Thought it was a date...

That reasoning for scrapping and relaunching makes quite a bit of sense to me.

Is it ideal - maybe, maybe not - but I can certainly live with it.

any update from SW yet? Facebook is on fire about a GW CnD

Interesting... some of the weapons did look a little too close for comfort, but the models themselves are obviously quite different from anything GW has done. Is it pure speculation or did any of the FB posters cite a source...?

Hi everyone (Angelos here),
I will be updating late tomorrow night after one more thing settles in.

from Face Book

 RiTides wrote:
Interesting... some of the weapons did look a little too close for comfort, but the models themselves are obviously quite different from anything GW has done. Is it pure speculation or did any of the FB posters cite a source...?

Most likely speculation from the comment that has sprawled onto varous sites as a few of us commented that COULD be the case over the Iron Wolf being a bit close to the real thing, the troops should be fine as there are no wolf emblems that are the same as GW uses and GW dont own the Fleur-de-lis, wolf's head or paladin/fur pelted armour.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Hi everyone (Angelos here),
I will be updating late tomorrow night after one more thing settles in.

from Face Book

Angelos posted over in the KS comments too

 Original Timmy wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Interesting... some of the weapons did look a little too close for comfort, but the models themselves are obviously quite different from anything GW has done. Is it pure speculation or did any of the FB posters cite a source...?

Most likely speculation from the comment that has sprawled onto varous sites as a few of us commented that COULD be the case over the Iron Wolf being a bit close to the real thing, the troops should be fine as there are no wolf emblems that are the same as GW uses and GW dont own the Fleur-de-lis, wolf's head or paladin/fur pelted armour.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr Morden wrote:

Hi everyone (Angelos here),
I will be updating late tomorrow night after one more thing settles in.

from Face Book

Angelos posted over in the KS comments too

Sorry yeah I meant Kickstarter - no idea why is said Facebook - long year....

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
That's just the thing they did their research, then they went away as got down to making plans, commissioning scupts etc which takes time
and now they've launched they're hearing a lot of different opinions about what people want in part at least because the gaming environment has changed, other companies have released (or not released) stuff etc

It's not about that though, it's about a (very) poor choice (10 sci-fi sisters per box when we all know the point is to have 20), and not adjusting the campaign shortly before launch with the current environment in mind. All the renders, etc would remain just as valid (sure, the sci-fi models would still need their hammer-hands changed) bit they'd still be usable for the campaign if they were up front and 20/box with the wolves second, or whatever.

I think the big mistake was tying something they're funding themselves in to the KS which just complicated things both for backers/potential backers in trying to understand what was on offer, and them in trying to figure out what they could afford to do (and what to do if they said they would do something and then the KS went backwards)

If you mean the sci-fi models, then sorta. I've said this before. If the difference is $5k, I could bloody afford that (not as a backer, but I can get my hands on $5k without too much time and effort). If I can afford something that literally increases the value proposition of a key product by 100%, then it's foolish to hold that back behind an additional paywall and put potential backers outside that 400 off. I believe that SW would get more backers (and make that $5k up faster) by offering the "full" set of 2 sprue shots instead of one.

(I'd also have been strongly tempted to run the KS for a single faction even if it resulted in a lower overall take but without access to their data and projections I don't know if that would have been viable)

I agree here - sorta. Going with one theme rather than faction - sci-fi (both) or fantasy (both) or nuns (both) or wolves (both)

 Zywus wrote:

Long term plans and changing gaming enviroment can cause some problems yes, but I'm thinking of smaller things that has more to do with how the KS page is structured.

For example, that weirdness of having Sisters of Wolves start at 10 models per box at the base funding goal of 30k, and then double to 20 a box at the 35k stretch goal.
That only confuses things and scare away potential backers who Why not simply put the base funding goal at 35k, with 20 women per box?
Shieldwolf I think, would really benefit from uploading a preview of their KS page some days before it goes live, and collect feedback then, rather than start to fidget with the campaign mid run.

Also, this. Not a 24 hour window and only shared with people still sticking around in a single KS' previous comments months after its conclusion.

skarsol wrote:
They really need to accept when projects fund even if they don't fund to whatever crazy expectation they have. I dont understand why they wouldn't take the money and run then do it again with whatever didn't fund this time.
Oh well, maybe one day I'll be able to buy those Arachnomaidens. Just not this day. :(

Yeah, that doesn't do them any favours and loses them backers and goodwill each time. I think a core problem here is that Shieldwolf keeps thinking (and expecting) their campaigns to blow up like a CMON campaign. Or even a Mantic one.

As I said in their comments (and reposted here). 400 backers. Use them to get the wider-appeal models funded so others get on board, and even then don't expect $100k, let alone more than that. Let that sort of thing be a nice surprise (that's planned for, of course) but not a core expectation.


From the KS update just posted:

Angelos wrote:
this was planned as our BIG project. Four different fantasy armies (Wolf Wardens, Sisters of Talliareum, Warmaidens & Dragon Wardens) and three different sci-fi armies (Sisters of Wolves, Sisters of Faith and Sisters of Dragons) along with ultimate stretch goals for the tooling of the vehicles and Aracnomaidens/Aracnowraths in HIPS.

That's a huge problem. If SW said that upfront, my spidey sense would be drowning out even the alarm bells. A KS for 7 armies. That level of expectation is crazy. Pick one, or a couple of those and do them well. Do them very well. Let's use (ahem) Sci-Fi Battling Sisters for our example.

Basic Troops with guns and flamethrowers and heat guns and a pistol & sword or three. Make sure there's enough special weapons to make them into Sisters Squad or a Celestian squad. Use stretch goals if needed to add enough extra flamers and heat guns and so forth for the Celstians. Stretch goal to add extra glue-on bling/helmets/icons to make Dominions.

Support troops with heavy flamethrowers and multi-heat guns and heavy guns (could potentially be an add-on sprue with weapons, arms, ammo backpacks and maybe a couple more heads, pouhes, etc - or a new full sprue with new torsos, legs, etc - there's another stretch goal to bump it from an upgrade sprue to a "new, full" sprue.) Have a couple of heavy weapons in the "core box", with the potential for it to be its own SKU for people who want to purchase heavies specifically.

Assault troops with jet packs and pistols and flame pistols heat pistols and pistols that shoot plasma and swords and chainsaw swords and...

Hero/Command sprue with parts to make a canoness, imagifier, hospitalier, dialogus, standard, etc - along with even more blinged-out weapons.

Then there's that plastic tank and all it's variations.

So there we have one army (not seven) that currently has high potential demand as proxies for a game that is huge at the moment, bulked out enough to be an entire KS.
With plenty of stretch goals that largely build on each previous one, especially when a lot of it is re-using existing renders with a few tweaks, adding more weapons, blinging out an existing weapon, etc. Of course there's new/unique stuff in there, like jet packs, but the torsos work off the original base sister. Even a lot of the hero/command sprue items would be tweaks of the initial base sister.

Like I said, I'd happily buy fantasy barbarian women, but they're a pretty generic concept that doesn't fill a high-demand niche in the market. I should point out that it just feels like that that niche will be filled with official models sometime in the next few years, based on the history of older things returning like Genestealer Cults, Deathwatch, proper Cult Troops etc - so it is indeed a risk. But it won't happen in 2017 as we're in the re-release book roll-out period, and so funding a KS would be a safe call, and there's still a lot of potential for lucrative sales before (if_ official models are finally released. And even then, hopefully Shieldwolf has sculpts that are good enough to stand strong and value in the boxes that's also there.

Having read the rest of the SW update:

The project will relaunch with only a single faction: Talliareum (paladins). One fantasy and one sci-fi. Theoretically we can start in a few days, we already have all the legwork done. I will however wait, not only because my entire team (me included) are down with the flu, but also because I would like to implement changes to some of the models according to feedback we received in this project. We will inform when ready if you are following us here on Kickstarter, FaceBook page or our Newsletter.

Having written up everything I have now done above, I'd honestly skip the fantasy stuff entirely for the time being (unless market research dictates that they MUST happen). There's more than enough Sci-fi stuff there for an entire campaign and would actually cover an entire tabletop army quite nicely (there'd still be outliers, like Repentia and walkers, but hey...) Going with both sci-fi and fantasy means you're again splitting your market, splitting the stretch goals for your backers, and for what? Is there a huge demand for female fantasy paladins right now? (again, I would happily buy them, but it's not about me) They don't/won't look enough like Stormcast to fill that niche, and I'd argue that particular niche is very small right now compared to SoB.

I'd also suggest previewing the campaign (for a week) to get feedback. I say a week because there are a lot of smart people around here, but people's work/sleep/family/social schedules and time zone differences mean a short feedback window means you're guaranteed to miss out on someone who has good advice.

Update is up, talks about "dodgy" IP infringement letters, not funding well and relaunch as separate KS for each faction.

I left a essay on the campaign page, the short of it is they need to do separate sprues for sci-fi and fantasy, and have multi-pose minis not rank and file, as i dont know any sci-fi using fantasy rank and file static forward facing bodies, they are rushing in and jumping on the sci-fi band wagan, 6 months ago they had no intentions of doing sci-fi minis until the backers & forum users planted the seed back in Feb talking about converting the paladins into Sisters of Battle.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1273312680/war-is-coming-warmaidens-and-dragonbreds/posts/2007256#comments