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 Alpharius wrote:
How is this one 'only' at $418K entering into the last week?

I really would've thought this property as a KS would be doing much better at this point.

Maybe a Walking Dead game would lend itself better as a boardgame vs. a wargame?

Or...something?

That's still a good chunk of change for what amounts to a 8-12 month pre-order. Not a lot of people in the grand scheme of things willing to plunk down hard-earned coin on something like this, sight-unseen. Factor in that, yeah, it's a wargame rather than a board game and you have even more reduced appeal as there are arguably more people willing to pay for board games than wargames.

Not bad now, it was looking pretty bad earlier but rebounded pretty well. I'm not personally interested as Project Z has my attention now but if someone's a wargamer who like zombies and is a diehard TWD comic fan, there you go...it's a bit specific a group to appeal to for this to have ever been a runaway success.

Meanwhile the card game, Sentinels of the Multiverse is closing on nearly $1million.

I think the wargame aspect hurts it, as does the inability to put in TV characters.

I also think very low value at the start contributed to a slower initial jump than they expected. Especially at a pretty premium initial price. All the spinning the Fans! and Mantic did to convince people it was a Great Deal! was easily seen as false.

The 'terrain' add on with the smaller mats also didn't bring in the funds they hoped for (and for good reason).

The cars, though cool, are not worth buying extras of, who needs 4 each of two sculpts when you can get cheap diecast and other vehicles? (well, Mantic Fans!, but not many other folks).

Some folks in the KS comments talking about throwing in $400+ and it amazes me. There just isn't $400+ worth of product for sale here.

I'm avoiding it because Mantic.

 Alpharius wrote:
How is this one 'only' at $418K entering into the last week?

I really would've thought this property as a KS would be doing much better at this point.

Maybe a Walking Dead game would lend itself better as a boardgame vs. a wargame?

Or...something?

Still paying for serious missteps at the start. People who would have taken a look at it, shrugged at the lack of solid value for a KS and walked away. If Mantic is lucky, some of those people will look again when the 48-hr warning comes up.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
At least someone at Mantic (I'm guessing Matt) was clued in enough to push back the closing date for the WarPath Pledge Manager from it's previous date of right about now when the new KS is winding up until the end of next month.

I mean, I thought Aliens & Predator was a pretty massive license (although from less of a known publisher), and that only did a little over $250K by the very end. License alone will probably mean that your product won't disappear utterly, but it doesn't guarantee a huge amount of Kickstarter income - especially if you can't generate "FOMO", since people will otherwise gladly wait.

On the other hand, Ghostbusters, based on a particularly unloved cartoon version of the property, with only CGI renders, from a publisher with a genuinely terrible track record for quality, still did over $1.5 million. So perhaps Mantic really is missing a trick here!

Honestly, it's doing better than I would have expected. I didn't see any value at all at first, so plenty of people either have a ton of faith in mantic, really like TWD, or are just nuts for zombie miniatures.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Bioptic wrote:
On the other hand, Ghostbusters, based on a particularly unloved cartoon version of the property, with only CGI renders, from a publisher with a genuinely terrible track record for quality, still did over $1.5 million. So perhaps Mantic really is missing a trick here!

A board game will always get more backers. Board games are self contained, they can usually be learned and played in one sitting, and they require only one player to make the investment of time and money. Buying the Ghostbuster game meant that if you can convince your friends to sit down and play, you could play. Buying TWD means finding somebody else that wants to play, is willing to paint up a force, blah blah blah.

 Bioptic wrote:
I mean, I thought Aliens & Predator was a pretty massive license (although from less of a known publisher), and that only did a little over $250K by the very end. License alone will probably mean that your product won't disappear utterly, but it doesn't guarantee a huge amount of Kickstarter income - especially if you can't generate "FOMO", since people will otherwise gladly wait.

On the other hand, Ghostbusters, based on a particularly unloved cartoon version of the property, with only CGI renders, from a publisher with a genuinely terrible track record for quality, still did over $1.5 million. So perhaps Mantic really is missing a trick here!

I was surprised by how little AvP made as well, I did think that the franchise had started to die a bit, although arguably those who love it most (who remember it from the original movies, rather than the gak that followed) are 30-35+ and you would have thought the demographic with a fair amount of disposable?

Don't think this one is doing too bad all things considered. I do think that Wargames aren't something you can just piling like you can boardgames (for the most part they are so much more an investment of time - how many games have you liked to collect, but just know you won't have time for?) and I wonder if the 'water level' has risen to the point that the market is just starting to get over-saturated.

Anyone still betting this does the $Million+ some folks speculated it would do?

The total is in line with my expectations.

 MLaw wrote:
I'm avoiding it because Mantic.

Truth hurts , but I dropped mine too. Maybe a year ago, but now I'm solidly in the Zombicide camp and the models aren't great.

I quite like the zombie models. As shown, anyway. I expect that they will survive the transition to mantic's board game plastic about as well as the DS figures did. So bent and warped and broken and mispacked. So not worth the money, hassle or risk since I've not yet had my DS stuff sorted out yet with no end in sight...

I may pick up the core set at retail if it gets good reviews and the production minis are worth it.

I'll also add that, aside from Rick and Carl, Mantic didn't offer any popular characters at the $125 level. The subtitle is "All Out War", yet Nagan's nowhere to be seen. Instead, we get some guys who didn't even last three issues. Who remembers an unimportant character over 76 issues and five years ago??

Mantic hasn't shown that it can deliver product, including game content (Dungeon Saga Advanced Book).

Mantic's also only shown comic book art and renders (not all of which look like their comic book counterparts despite being *based* on their images).

TWD, ironically, doesn't overlap Mantic's existing properties, so there's no crossover with their existing customers.

I also noticed that on TWD forums, when a TWD fan mentions a game, they talk about the video games, which are simpler to play and more similar to tv immersion.

 Polonius wrote:
Buying TWD means finding somebody else that wants to play, is willing to paint up a force, blah blah blah.

This.

You need to be wargamer, a TWD comic fan, without a grudge against Mantic, with $200+ to burn, willing to preorder, and willing to get the game in 2 shipments months apart.

 Bioptic wrote:
I mean, I thought Aliens & Predator was a pretty massive license (although from less of a known publisher), and that only did a little over $250K by the very end.

Prodos games did Warzone beforehand and the result was less than pleasing so I stayed well away, maybe others did too.

"that leaves us with the cards to talk about – and they are among the most powerful yet."

Hey look! power creep already just within the KS.

If people don't buy the Woodbury expansion will they get their arse kicked by a cashed up opponent who bought Woodbury and has automatic weapons? yeah sounds like ***FUN***

 adamsouza wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Buying TWD means finding somebody else that wants to play, is willing to paint up a force, blah blah blah.

This.

You need to be wargamer, a TWD comic fan, without a grudge against Mantic, with $200+ to burn, willing to preorder, and willing to get the game in 2 shipments months apart.

If you consider all of this, the TWD kickstarter is a runaway success!

My bet is a total of $550000

Even I'm not sure if I'll stay in on this one, I am a huge fan of Mantic and TWD (Well, the TV show, anyway), the CCG element of the cards is really off-putting, I don't want that in a wargame, at the very least a .pdf of all the cards would be nice.

It is also getting to the point where there are so many KS exclusives out there that I'm starting to not be too fussed about owning them all.

Also having to accept that I don't have the time in my life to play and paint *everything* Mantic makes, so I'm potentially considering skipping their licensed IPs as standard to focus on their other games, Mars Attacks was dropped after 1-2 years.

At this point I'd be happier to see Mantic consolidate a bit more and focus on their core games. Support for KoW and Warpath as their big two flagship games, and also Deadzone and Dungeon Saga as their smaller fantasy/ sci-fi games. Dreadball 2nd edition a couple of years from now as well.

 scarletsquig wrote:
Mars Attacks was dropped after 1-2 years.

I've heard that a few places, is it true? That's weird to fly through the license so quickly. Especially since they created MA stuff for deadzone and dreadball...

I get that's it's a pretty self contained game, so they probably didn't see many more sales going forward, but I won't be expecting too much support from Mantic for licensed products.

That all said, I totally agree that Mantic should focus on the most reachable market available to it: disgruntled GW fans. KoW is killing it with former WFB players, and if Warpath is even 80% as good as KoW is, it could become the non-40k. Maybe they don't want that market, and they want to sell their own stuff, but I think they're doing that by focusing the Warpath plastics on Dwarfs and Rats. (Sure, they're non-squats, but the last squat model was released over 20 years ago. That market is cold).

Warpath should have quirky, interesting armies that mantic can make models for, and then an Uncharted Empires book to represent "Planetary Milita," "Elder Pirates," "Feral Marauders," "Formics" etc.

 jorny wrote:

 adamsouza wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Buying TWD means finding somebody else that wants to play, is willing to paint up a force, blah blah blah.

This.

You need to be wargamer, a TWD comic fan, without a grudge against Mantic, with $200+ to burn, willing to preorder, and willing to get the game in 2 shipments months apart.

If you consider all of this, the TWD kickstarter is a runaway success!

True.

Honestly though, I think Mantic expected it to do better, and they could have handled it better.

No Add ons became 3 $40 add ons.
The character's included and their distribution makes me suspect that they purposedly kept all of the most deisreable characters out of the box sets, for additioanl blister pack sales.
The core characters from the comics are not available together, or even all in the first wave.

Rick, Carl, Michone, Andrea, Glenn + 5 randos would have made a better starter set.

We may not get Abraham, because they linked him to number of supporters instead of a dollar value. I would have dropped $10 for a Abraham, Rosita, and Eugene pack.

I love the source material, and the game looks good, but I'm seriously contemplating just buying a $300 3D printer instead of my pledge instead of a $205 pledge that I'm not certain I can anone to play with afterwards.

I think $433K with 6 days to go is pretty awesome for this campaign, personally! It's definitely not for me, and I would love for Mantic to focus on their own properties as others have said (particularly KoW - will there be a campaign for it this year, I just want to throw money at it!).

But the expectations game is weird, as this has already well passed 2 of their last 3 campaigns, and is extremely likely to pass the third, as well. If they are viewing it as a self-contained release, I think raising over half a million dollars (as it would do without even accounting for any final days surge) is fantastic.

There are a lot of things I think Mantic can improve, but I don't think holding them to a valuation guess on a campaign is too valid... particularly when it exceeds their own properties which a number of us here have said we want them to do more with

All that said, have they hinted at other projects for the year? I'm not sure what they can do with KoW since the rules are so tight, other than putting out more models for armies in the Uncharted Empires book, for instance.

 adamsouza wrote:


Honestly though, I think Mantic expected it to do better, and they could have handled it better.

No Add ons became 3 $40 add ons.

And a bunch of $12 add ons as well.

 adamsouza wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
Buying TWD means finding somebody else that wants to play, is willing to paint up a force, blah blah blah.

This.

You need to be wargamer, a TWD comic fan, without a grudge against Mantic, with $200+ to burn, willing to preorder, and willing to get the game in 2 shipments months apart.

It's not even about grudges for me. They keep going back on their word, delaying things, changing things, charging incredulous amounts for shipping, mucking things up. I've got no genuine ill-will towards them just a lack of confidence in their capabilities. I'm still waiting for Firefight rules. People are talking about they need to do this and that.. How about they actually take care of things they are supposed to be taking care of??? Am I critical of Mantic? Yeah but I'm also not wrong.

EDIT: For clarity.. They're like that guy who's kinda cool to hang with but you don't really want to lend him money because he takes forever to pay you back and it's always with pocket change or packs of CCG cards you don't want.

Seems pretty straightforward to me. This kickstarter is not the great deal that Mantic's KS campaigns used to offer, and the Walking Dead('s cousin's brother's aunt, the comic book) license isn't powerful enough to overcome that.

This is Mantic's most CMON-style campaign yet, but if CMON were running it, production values would be higher, sculpts would be better, there would be a superabundance of popular characters (and probably a slew of KS exclusive variants or somesuch), and it would have already passed a million. Comparing this with what you got with a $150 pledge for Black Plague is a joke. Heck, comparing this with what you got with a $150 Mars Attacks pledge is a joke.

True, Black Plague raking in millions helped make its deal considerably better. And true, Mantic was a different company that offered real value during campaigns when they ran Mars Attacks. But that raises the question: why did Black Plague rake in millions in the first place, where TWD is struggling to top half a million?

Probably because Mantic are doing everything exactly right and we live in the best of all possible worlds.

Being based on the original comic rather than the TV show certainly doesn't help (but it generally still better financially than being based on a completely new zombie universe IP like the warlord one being advertised at the same time). I can't speak to the value but I suspect that the proliferation of zombie minis games over the last few years certainly doesn't help. If folks wanted modern zombie minis (as opposed to medieval dead like in WHFB), that itch has long been scratched and likely the area is a bit sore from all the scratching. While the IP is obviously well known as a comic, it's a johnny come lately to the tabletop gaming scene that is already full.

I'm pretty sure coming late to the game, after All Things Zombie and Zombicide, doesn't help either.

All Things Zombie is like $15 and use whatever minaitures, and Zombicide has set a standard for kickstarters that is probably unatainable my Mantic.

It's funded, but it's not an irresistable deal. I guess it will keep retailers happy.

We all heard about the 120 sculpts. Just put in all 120 sculpts between the base and two addons for $205 already, and they can can spare us all the 8K stretch goals and add real value to the whole damn thing.

I don't want to end up with 80 sculpts and have to wait a freaking year for another kickstarter to get the other 40 main characters.

There's a lot of minis on the market. There's barely any (wargame) rules.

Vermonter - If Mars Attacks raised a similar amount (which may be the case at the end here) I'm not sure if there's really a problem in what they're doing here in some ways. This property is more valuable (and probably more expensive, hence the deal not being quite as good) but as others have pointed out Alien vs Predator didn't take over the world either - it was $530K when converted over, which I think this one could easily pass.

I'm not saying I'm in love with the offerings here (it's actually not for me at all) but comparing it to the absolute board gaming juggernaut of CMON and in particular Zombicide probably isn't fair.

But Aliens vs. Predator was done by a junior company (Prodos still doesn't have the best name in the business), while Mantic is dropping to a junior company in my mind at least. At the time I didn't trust Prodos to get it done and now I'm glad I didn't go in on their KS. Prodos was still saying that everything still had to be given the green light which was a major turn off for me, Mantic said they had 120 sculpts done (but we are still just seeing renders or really poor sculpts here). Mantic had reasonable kickstarter success with it's prior kickstarters (some complaints about missing packages, but not horrendous until KOW2) and delivered relatively on time. All these things have slid from being positives of Mantics to being why I am not going to back this project. I got shafted with the KOW2 shipment, RIch flat out lied in the comments section to me about my order, I finally got it but only when he went on vacation and someone else handled it. Dungeon Saga and the wrong print file being sent to the printers is just laughable, I didn't bother to pay for a replacement and the models will get used for other things. They had great models for Dungeon Saga and it seamed like a good turning point for Mantic, but then they fired the sculptor and are back to sculpting by committee. Meanwhile how many more projects do they have going in kickstarter right now that are unfulfilled? I was really hoping for more out of this, but then them cancelling Mars Attacks is a pretty good sign that this will be a once and done product.

I still can't believe they are cancelling Mars Attacks. The giant bugs and Tiger Corps alone would have made great fodder for a spin-off board game.

As for TWD, the minis are just terribly uninspiring. Yes, zombies and comics and little value and all that would probably hobble the campaign all on their own, but the minis look like a range Flying Frog Productions would have put out 5 or 6 years ago. They might appeal just fine to boardgamers who see minis as gaming pieces first, but this campaign is aimed at tabletop wargamers, right? Does Mantic find market research...otiose?

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I still can't believe they are cancelling Mars Attacks. The giant bugs and Tiger Corps alone would have made great fodder for a spin-off board game.

Really? I was frankly shocked they did it in the first place. It was a 50 year old short lived very niche card game IP with a brief mainstream movie resurgence 20 years ago that they adapted without updating the visuals or aesthetics to a board game (which for fans of the classic stuff would be a positive and not a negative). I'm surprised that they ever did it (the license fees must have been dirt cheap!) and that it did as well as it did. Anything non-Mars Attack specific that they did they could have released without attaching it to the IP.