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545k

They've said you can add bolt-ons but not change pledge levels in the pledge manager.

That's what I expected. It's just that a lot of people seem to think that post-campaign add-ons are part of Kickstarter, rather than an entirely separate thing.

Presumably having to handle people wanting to change their reward level after the fact is too much paperwork, and would lead to too many inevitable errors.

 Mymearan wrote:
They've said you can add bolt-ons but not change pledge levels in the pledge manager.

Yeah, this was confirmed a few times afaik - no need to worry about getting all the bolt-ons you want added to your pledge by the deadline (in 7 hours). Just make sure you've managed to get up to the top pledge level you want!

This may well make 600k given how much its made today.
Only 7k away with 3 hours to go,they will definitely make it.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Update time

to ensure everyone gets the rewards and Bolt-Ons for their pledge, there are a couple of points we wanted to make:

In order to receive any Free Rewards, you need to back a specific pledge level. Any level of support (of any value) that isn't linked to a Pledge Level will not count towards any rewards, (including any freebies). You also won't be able to add any bolt ons. While we're thankful for all your support, we really want you to be rewarded! So please do choose a pledge level if you'd like freebies and the ability to add bolt-ons.
In the Pledge Manager (which will go out after the Kickstarter) you will not be able to change your pledge level, so please make sure you're happy with your level. however:
The Pledge Manager will allow backers - who have pledged against a Pledge Level on this Kickstarter - to select and/or add Bolt-Ons. More information will go out about this in the next few weeks.

Painted strike craft


The free KS T shirt

Only 4 minutes left.

I wish I had the cash for this. There are so many nice freebies and the game looks lovely. But with no guarantee of a community around that will also play, I will just save the Christmas cash and wait for retail.

Finished at £629,222!

My screen said $960,606 at the very end, which is a cool number but google only converts it to $952,705

Beat out Sedition Wars either way, but Kickstarter currently shows it as behind Sedition Wars in their "most funded" list... *shakes fist*
https://www.kickstarter.com/discover/advanced?category_id=34&woe_id=0&sort=most_funded&seed=2415306&page=2

(That's "page 2" of most funded tabletop games, here's the Top 25 for reference)

Really impressive campaign, and what's more I don't think the overextended themselves or have done anything that will keep it from being a success at retail. Awesome job by the Hawk team!

Congrats Hawk!

I ended up bailing, got so much on my plate already, but it looks like a top notch product. Have fun guys!

Commodore Pledge locked and loaded, now the wait begins!

When do I get my minis? I want them now!
I hate waiting...
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Still waiting...
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Ah well, guess it gives me time to get my DZC armies painted.

I did end up going for commodore too. The Shaltari battlecruiser thingie was just too awesome to pass up on.

Yeah, I ended up at Commodore; I rationalize this with it being June 2016's hobby money...this makes perfect sense...

My great fear with that is I'll end up bulking out the fleets with bolt-ons, but maybe I'll skate with just adding another PHR and UCM starter since I'm a species-ist. I can't see any sense in not getting one of each starter fleet out of the pledge though with the freebies. 4 cruisers and 12 frigates seems a good basic+ force based on what I can see of how DZC starters work out.

The extras are going to be killer too...hopefully the PM runs for a bit so I can rationalize a bit more.

2-player starter for me. Will probably add the extra bomber/Torp addon.

I backed this, but I was massively disappointed that there was no way to avoid UCM and Scourge, but still get the stretch goals. I'm only interested in Shaltari and PHR, but in order to get only those I would have had to back at Lieutenant, buy an extra starter fleet, and forgo any of the bonuses and savings everyone else got.

Wasn't well planned by Hawk in that regard.

 NTRabbit wrote:
I backed this, but I was massively disappointed that there was no way to avoid UCM and Scourge, but still get the stretch goals. I'm only interested in Shaltari and PHR, but in order to get only those I would have had to back at Lieutenant, buy an extra starter fleet, and forgo any of the bonuses and savings everyone else got.

Wasn't well planned by Hawk in that regard.

I think the opposite is true. It kind of blows if you are not a UCM/Scourge player. However, everything they are releasing except for the KS battlecruisers are going to be boxes that exist at retail. A second two player starter box probably is not cost effective for hawk to invest in. It becomes one of those things where no matter what you are not getting full player coverage. If you only play PHR and your buddy plays scourge, the box is still a negative deal as well the case for other combinations. The 2 player box becomes something that is for mostly new players getting into the game. In fact, I think the commodore level was specifically designed for that. So you could have one of ever faction to demo the game to as many players as possible.

It would have been nice if they released a level that was choose your own 4 starter fleets or something at high levels. However, I suppose they were still trying to avoid the KS becoming a store thing. Again, I agree with PHR/Shaltari it sucks. However, long run this is probably much better for their needs as a company.

They didn't have to nail themselves to the 2 player starter box though, that was a decision they made out of insecurity early and had to stick with it - much to the detriment of anyone who didn't want UCM and Scourge.

I don't think anyone can deny that Hawk completely and utterly failed to read the enthusiasm leading into the project, which caused them to make some decisions in their planning which were good for a project that would struggle to meet the basic goal, but somewhat crippling for a wild success.

They raised almost a million dollars, I think that is pretty wild success!

I think it is more an intentionally conservative approach on their part - in many ways it is similar to the way they launched Dropzone Commander, although that was through their own site, of course.

They are leaving room for themselves to add on key things everyone will want (Battleships / Dreadnoughts / Commanders!) along with room for retail sales. For almost any game, the starter box has two preset factions, rather than letting you choose any faction... I am not a huge fan of starter boxes for my own collections either (I prefer to have more choice over the units I get), but I don't think they're doing anything out of the ordinary by having one!

It would have been nice to have a pledge for just two or four starters of any faction plus the rulebook and tokens, but that's not really a bundle I see most companies offering, and people often buy starter sets just to get all the "essentials" even if they don't play the factions.

I don't think they made a bad choice with this. Can anyone name an inprint game that has multiple SKU's of plastic game 2 army starter sets (NOT individual army starters)?

 RiTides wrote:
I think it is more an intentionally conservative approach on their part .

This is what I just said, except I think their approach was far too conservative, and it left them unable to adjust when the wild success that was inevitable to all observers hit. No agility.

 warboss wrote:
I don't think they made a bad choice with this. Can anyone name an inprint game that has multiple SKU's of plastic game 2 army starter sets (NOT individual army starters)?

Thanks for not reading a word I posted. They didn't need to make a second SKU 2 player box, they needed to make a Commander-sized and Captain-sized pledge level that dumped that 2 player starter box, and put in the PHR starter, Shaltari starter, and other box contents instead - or pick 2, so you can combine UC and Shaltari, or Scourge and PHR, etc.

It was a mistake, and an annoying one.

iirc they said they wanted to avoid that because it would increase logistics and packing complexity by order of magnitude. Its the same reason they're not allowing people to upgrade their pledges in the PM.

I admit its slightly annoying (i primarily wanted PHR as well), but based on their track record and dealings so far with the backers, I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. If they deliver on schedule by June, then for me their conservative approach was correct.

Ah, I see - yeah it would have been very nice to have that pledge level, but I'm guessing they thought then a decent percentage of folks would skip the 2-player starter box (maybe a third?) and obviously starter boxes do best with volume of sales! But yeah, our group would have appreciated such a pledge level (but as it was, not having one tempted us to up our second pledge to Commodore to get those 2 extra single faction starters - so they get more out of us ).

Unfortunately I don't have a group I can split a pledge with, it's just me. Not sure I've even got a good enough market to resell the UCM and Scourge stuff with around here.

 NTRabbit wrote:

Thanks for not reading a word I posted. They didn't need to make a second SKU 2 player box, they needed to make a Commander-sized and Captain-sized pledge level that dumped that 2 player starter box, and put in the PHR starter, Shaltari starter, and other box contents instead - or pick 2, so you can combine UC and Shaltari, or Scourge and PHR, etc.

It was a mistake, and an annoying one.

Thanks for clarifying your earlier much broader posts. If you had posted that instead of generically whining about the starter, it would have been alot clearer. You had the option of picking up one or two individual fleets btw without being but you wanted in effect a second starter set pledge with all the benefits congruent to it that you could completely customize to your heart's content. I'm sorry that you didn't get to cherry pick every little thing but Hawk did meet you half way with the pledge of just the fleets you wanted and the book and some of the freebie goals. If you wanted the cherry on the top, you have to order the full sundae on the menu. NedTCM already said it

It would have been nice if they released a level that was choose your own 4 starter fleets or something at high levels. However, I suppose they were still trying to avoid the KS becoming a store thing. Again, I agree with PHR/Shaltari it sucks. However, long run this is probably much better for their needs as a company.

Honestly, I agree with you and him that it would have been nice to be able to cherry pick everything but complicates things significantly and I don't think it is "massively disappointing" that they didn't want to do it especially given that you CAN cherry pick your fleets at the cost of missing out on some freebies. They know their retail box of choice for shelves will be the starter and making it the core of the big pledges that give you extras is a reasonable trade off for them likely getting a bulk per box production discount on their end.

 warboss wrote:
I'm sorry that you didn't get to cherry pick every little thing but Hawk did meet you half way with the pledge of just the fleets you wanted and the book and some of the freebie goals. If you wanted the cherry on the top, you have to order the full sundae on the menu.

What I wanted, and clearly sated in my first post, was sensible pledge levels that catered to people who didn't want UCM or Scourge, simply swapping out the basic starter fleets in exchange for others, which would be large and simple changes which are in no way remotely close to cherry picking. If you think that's generic whining and cherry picking, then there's little point in trying to converse with you, because you're clearly irrational.

The campaign was not well managed by any stretch of the imagination. First time jitters maybe, but they were scrambling from day 1 and never really caught up.

Take a break guys and keep Rule One in mind please. Thanks!

Moving on, I'm wondering how others are thinking of running the various factions (I know we have little concrete info, but speculation is fun : ).

I'm thinking that I'll run the UCM battleship heavy, the PHR cruiser heavy, the Shaltari not at all and the scourge as a frigate swarm. Thoughts?

It will be hard to guess we really haven't seen enough yet.

I think UCM is going to end up having to trend towards a balanced fleet (surprise!). However, I kind of want to build a ton of frigates and like 2 fleet carriers with a pair of Battleships or a Dread. I like the idea of lots of smaller ships. UCM is what I am planning on playing. Colonial Marines look is just too cool.

I think PHR is actually going to benefit more from that. With your smaller ships having a lot more weapons Investing too much into medium stuff is going to be a points sink. Those smaller ships have some big guns like the one frigate with the burn through on it. The issue is the cruisers unless you getting in close you aren't making the most of those broad sides. It may be better to take a few battleships to slug it out in the middle and hold ground with their durability. Then the mass of frigates take pot shots from the sides. My little bro is picking that one up, but no word what he is planning.

Shaltari Probably benefits from lots of cruiser and frigates I think. With the light armor too much investment in heavy ships is going to be a mistake. You use frigates supported by the ion cannon ships to force people to rise their spike. Those ships like the tri particle lance ships hiding in the back will snipe doing main damage. Meanwhile you play the void gate game to deploy troops without having to get close.

Scourge we haven't see enough of to know how they are different. However, I bet they are probably a swarm army. So that probably means a ton of frigates.

Hawk was saying the beta rules should be done soon so hopefully in the next month or so we may have a better idea soon.

Congrats to Hawk on a massively successful campaign! I dropped out of a Commodore pledge a few days ago because money's tighter than expected and I can't really justify dropping that kind of cash on a new game with no local group of players, but it's got my interest (as DZC had too) and I'll certainly pick up some bits at Salute if anything's for sale there.

I'm proud of them for sticking to their guns - they said towards the start "This is the starter set, these are the forces in it, that's not changing" and weathered the storm of calls to change it. I can't walk into a GW and ask for a boxed game with Tyranids Vs Chaos, why should this be any different just because it's a KS?

Also pleased they didn't over-promise. I'm still waiting for my Annihilation KS pledge from 2012, and I remember almost giving up on ever getting my Dreamforge pledge because they piled on extra levels and rewards. Hawk ran a measured, calculated campaign and did amazingly well.

Now, hopefully big pledge levels will translate to long-term revenue as well, you only have to look at Heresy's KS to see that the two are very different things

629,222 of 40,000

That's over 10 times the goal.
Does that mean we'll get race specific torpedoes and fighters?

Charax wrote:
Congrats to Hawk on a massively successful campaign! I dropped out of a Commodore pledge a few days ago because money's tighter than expected and I can't really justify dropping that kind of cash on a new game with no local group of players, but it's got my interest (as DZC had too) and I'll certainly pick up some bits at Salute if anything's for sale there.

I'm proud of them for sticking to their guns - they said towards the start "This is the starter set, these are the forces in it, that's not changing" and weathered the storm of calls to change it. I can't walk into a GW and ask for a boxed game with Tyranids Vs Chaos, why should this be any different just because it's a KS?

Also pleased they didn't over-promise. I'm still waiting for my Annihilation KS pledge from 2012, and I remember almost giving up on ever getting my Dreamforge pledge because they piled on extra levels and rewards. Hawk ran a measured, calculated campaign and did amazingly well.

Now, hopefully big pledge levels will translate to long-term revenue as well, you only have to look at Heresy's KS to see that the two are very different things

Exalted and I agree. Kickstarters have to work for both ends and I'm glad that they found a reasonable middle ground with choices that prioritized both choice and value in varying degrees depending on which pledge level you choose. I didn't pledge but I'll be giving this a close look once it hits retail and battle reports start being posted. I would have preferred UCM and PHR personally at a lower price but, being a reasonable person, understand that the middle ground they chose was best for the largest number of people even if it didn't work out perfectly for me as a consumer. Congrats to Hawk for a well run and successful campaign!