Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

It would be a lot easier for them to just re-do spin molds of the metal miniatures and manufacture them again in metal. Shipping would suck, but it's an easier and cheaper method than trying to scan in metal miniatures and then reproduce them in plastic.

I can't see any good coming from any of this.

Doing that would have made me happy - and would have made me back the campaign and stay in!

The way I see it they have their plan and everything has to go according to that, things like reality are things to be ignored. Only the master plan is important.

YOu only need 300k to launch it. YOu unlock everything up to 1.25mil...because reasons...you don't care if you loose most of backers as long as you get 300k, because 300k is enough to give few resin pledges + some resin big models + all those sg you gave for free up to 1,25mil...because ...reasons..

I think this is 1st campaign that has done something like this...it's almost like we don't live on a same planet,lol

Man, it's really gonna be fun to watch how this story goes on and what happens with those true believers, because I will be very very surprised if they manage not to just take the money and go or really feth this up.

I don't think they seem to get the concept of reputation.

If this kickstarter fails to deliver, the big noise about that will be coming down on them at the precise point they want to release their new version of confrontation.

It would kill the big new game before it got going, and i don;t think they can even see it coming. The saddest thing for me is I love confrontation, and I so wanted it to be a success so i could buy all those minis I wanted but never got first time around.

 Fenriswulf wrote:
It would be a lot easier for them to just re-do spin molds of the metal miniatures and manufacture them again in metal. Shipping would suck, but it's an easier and cheaper method than trying to scan in metal miniatures and then reproduce them in plastic.

I can't see any good coming from any of this.

Unfortunately metal has always been out of question. The price per kg of the raw material today is not what it used to be back in the days. The margin on metal products is so low that they would not be able to offer a much better deal than cadwallon.com used to, probably worse considering EU taxation.

How many people would have jumped on the project if they had offered 40-50 miniatures at 300 euros?

PVC was a good choice. They just had to do it right.

Actually, if you visit french forums Sans Detour already has done a great deal of damage to its reputation. The thread over on TricTrac-forum is very similar to this one, only they find even more "flowery" words for it. Also on BGG most see it too as Robotech 2.0 and the admins have asked people to move their threads about the Confro-KS to the fraudulant and problematic KS section.

Ressurection is already DOA, and Classic already killed it the way this KS was run. And even if they deliver... People surely will want to unload their surplus miniatures via ebay... the market will probably be flooded with them. Which LGS is going to stock stuff that is already cheaper to have on ebay. Cause according to SD they minis can be used for Ressurection.

 smurfORnot wrote:


Man, it's really gonna be fun to watch how this story goes on and what happens with those true believers, because I will be very very surprised if they manage not to just take the money and go or really feth this up.

What's going to happen is that a bunch of people will lose their money because they trusted a company to deliver what they promised.
I think you and I have very different ideas of 'fun'... This sort of nonsense is bad for those involved, bad for Kickstarter, bad for those who lose their money, bad for other startups legitimately trying to make a go of it, and bad for the hobby community overall. Nothing about it is fun.

Yeah, nobody wins when this goes tits up. The naive investors will lose a pretty large sum of money, those of us interested in the Confrontation miniature line will probably see the final death beyond any possible resurrection of the property, and the people at SD will destroy their company and any reputability they might have had. That's what makes this drive over the cliff such a frustrating one.

 insaniak wrote:

 smurfORnot wrote:


Man, it's really gonna be fun to watch how this story goes on and what happens with those true believers, because I will be very very surprised if they manage not to just take the money and go or really feth this up.

What's going to happen is that a bunch of people will lose their money because they trusted a company to deliver what they promised.
I think you and I have very different ideas of 'fun'... This sort of nonsense is bad for those involved, bad for Kickstarter, bad for those who lose their money, bad for other startups legitimately trying to make a go of it, and bad for the hobby community overall. Nothing about it is fun.

Fun might not be the right word for him to have used, but it will provide hours of entertainment. Before you start about people being hurt by it, think of any sport where the players get hurt(football, hockey, MMA) it’s all entertainment. If people aren’t doing their diligence and watching what is being said in the comments section or on forums then they cannot blame anyone else for their loss. At the end of the day this is an investment, even though it’s on hobby stuff it’s still a gamble, and people shouldn’t be gambling with their funds if they cannot afford to and it will hurt them in any serious way.

I have an extremely limited hobby budget, I have dodged some big bullets (Robotech) because I didn’t have funds I could spend. On the other hand I missed out on Zombicide season 1 because I didn’t have funds either. But I did my research, and I haven’t been burnt too bad. I managed to get out of the Jeremy Glenn Kickstarter pretty soon after it closed and rescued most of my money.

Though Creature Caster did eventually fulfill. I’m happy with what I got.

 Theophony wrote:
... and people shouldn’t be gambling with their funds if they cannot afford to and it will hurt them in any serious way.

Whether they are spending money they can't afford to lose, and whether losing their money will discourage them from supporting other Kickstarter projects, and whether or not everyone gets a little more jaded about new startups as a result of dodginess like this are not at all the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that backers should be absolved of any responsibility for their choice to back a dodgy project... all I'm saying is that I see little entertainment value in something that ultimately just hurts the community as a whole.

 insaniak wrote:

 Theophony wrote:
... and people shouldn’t be gambling with their funds if they cannot afford to and it will hurt them in any serious way.

Whether they are spending money they can't afford to lose, and whether losing their money will discourage them from supporting other Kickstarter projects, and whether or not everyone gets a little more jaded about new startups as a result of dodginess like this are not at all the same thing.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that backers should be absolved of any responsibility for their choice to back a dodgy project... all I'm saying is that I see little entertainment value in something that ultimately just hurts the community as a whole.

I guess we will disagree then. I don’t want people to suffer, but it will be a good lesson for those who didn’t listen. I’ve been warned away from some train wrecks and I appreciate the community that much more for saying something. But we still need a few of these schisters to keep us all on our toes. We all work better as a team and I see this as practice for us all to be wary. When the people who lose out start crying, I’ll still feel bad for them, but they only have themselves to blame. The entertainment comes from hearing them trying to rationalize why they went against the common thought.

It is really sad to see such a strong license be killed right in front of our eyes. There is no way this KS delivers, and as others have explained, this pretty much guarantees that Resurrection is DOA. It honestly feels like the IP is cursed some times to only be picked up by some terrible combination of business savvy, enthusiasm, and delusion.

Posting my thoughts on the project as it currently stands here.

So, let's think about this. I, and I believe most people here, want the return of Confrontation. CMON dropped the ball on this when they held the rights. They teased Phoenix edition through a different project and never delivered on that, and now SD holds the IP rights and plans to bring the game back via Resurrection. So far, so good, I think. We got a company who is actually doing some work to bring the brand back. Awesome.

OK, so back in early 2017 SD announces that Classic and Ressurection will be something they are working on, and at some point Classic will be a Kickstarter project. Awesome. I'm jazzed about this, I love this game and the minis and can't wait to see how SD does with it. Then... not a lot happens. As the project draws closer there is a poll for characters to be included with the pledge, actually pretty cool. Get the community involved, good idea. But then...

Mostly silence from SD. People, in general, don't get responses to questions on the FB. One thread in particular had a ton of pretty basic questions - what's the pledge structure, etc... - but the only question that was answered was someone asking for SD's Twitter account. So, we know SD is seeing these questions but ignoring them. I'm not saying I was expecting detailed answers, but a simple "Wait and see" or "This is the basic idea" would have been nice. This would be a trend that SD continues to this day - they mostly don't respond to social media inquiries.

Anyway, the KS launches and funds in 2 hours. It raises about 650K Euro. Awesome. But then... people start asking questions and looking closer at things. The minis will be PVC with ABS weapons, similar to what Wrath of Kings does. Personally, this doesn't make too much sense to me, as my metal Confrontation minis tended to have stability issues with ankles more than anything else. But, this is the project SD wants to do. So, we will have PVC and ABS. The issue of quality comes up again and again. It's answered, but because a prototype isn't shown people don't believe it. We are told to trust SD, many backers do because they've delivered on their RPG projects before. SD posts and update saying they can be trusted because they've made products before. OK.

So, we are 3 days from the end of the project and it is down to about 461K Euro right now. That's nearly 200K lost and about 66% of what it was at the height of funding. What happened? Here's where I am going to get really critical: Sans Detour barely worked on this project.

The project launched with over a year of planning able to go into it. What we saw was pictures of the old Rackham minis - the same ones used in their catalog and on the mini's cards. There's even art used in a few situations instead of miniature images. That's weird. Not a single model was ever cast by SD. They're offering a resin pledge, people thought maybe SD made some of those minis. Nope, I confirmed that they were leftover from old Rackham. SD then doubles down on this and states that they are unable to produce a mini they have made, that it is cost prohibitive. I have never seen a single miniature company using KS that has said this. So then people start asking to see how they will scan the masters into a computer, as SD stated they will do this to make molds. Nope, again. So we are left to conclude that Sans Detour has not done -any- work prior to the KS campaign to show people what they plan to produce. They said they've made calls to factories. That seems like it is enough for some people.

Then, we get into the weird grey area of how business ownership and partner companies. In an update, Sans Detour stated they would use Ludik (with whom they share an owner and address) for logistics on this project. They stated that, if Ludik were to go under, they wold simply switch to a different company. So, in a comment, it was disclosed that Ludik is now controlled by a liquidator. I don't know how this wasn't known before, it's a huge red flag. Then, we also find out that Stellar Licensing, the company who owns the IP, only owns the Confrontation IP as their single asset and is owned by the financial Director of SD. Again, kind of weird.

So - in the year leading up to this project, the only prep work done was to photoshop existing images together, make a choice of minis featured, and contact factories. That is, observably, the only work done by SD leading up to what they hoped (looking at the stretch goals) would be a million Euro+ project.

This brings us to the current situation. Sans Detour, the account, is barely involved with getting information out. Instead, Joss - the project manager - has his own account and comments, while other collaborators - who are friends of the project and not SD employees - also give official information. The collaborators get all their info from SD directly, so if they don't have the answer to a question and want to answer it, they have to ask someone. Fine so far. But - we have seen that some of the collaborators have berated and ignored people who have questions or concerns about the project. It's also apparent that there is no native English speaker who works on this project, which sometimes causes misunderstandings. It's a small issue, but for a company to launch a large project in English without a native speaker seems like a mistake.

It also came out that SD was not able to produce game play videos of the game they are pitching, which was a request frequently asked of them. I asked a collaborator about this and was told that there are only 2 players around their office and they had no time to record. I don't see how, in the year they had to prepare for this, they couldn't run through a game and take pictures or record. That doesn't add up to me, and makes me think this project wasn't taken seriously by SD from the start.

It would appear that SD thought it could put together a project for a game that hasn't been produced in about 10 years and expect that people would be willing to buy a 300 Euro box of minis without even seeing how they might look in the material they will receive them in. Next to no prep work was done, and SD seems to be happy with the fact that it passed it's goal at all despite the fact that it lost 1/3 of it's funding so far. SD plans to launch a new edition of Confrontation next year sometime. No one has seen any work that has gone into that so far, so we are left to conclude that as much effort will go into that project as went into their current one. Which is to say - not much at all.

Good summary - thanks!

And yes, it also explains why this one hasn't made any money since the first week, and has a real good chance of dropping back into the 300K range before the end too.

It will be very unfortunate for Confrontation fans if this KS fails. Many people will give dead games a second chance through KS. If the KS project fails, it will be a nail in the coffin. It will never see the light again.

HaleysRedComet wrote:

...and now SD holds the IP rights ...

To be technically correct, Sans Détour doesn't hold the IP rights. It's Stellar Licensing and Consulting Limited, who is their partner and entrust them to exploit the license.

https://www.stellarlicencing.com/index.php/en/#

Can make a few differences in case Sans Détour does gak in a horrible way and has to be "discarded", if you see what I mean...

wildger wrote:
It will be very unfortunate for Confrontation fans if this KS fails. Many people will give dead games a second chance through KS. If the KS project fails, it will be a nail in the coffin. It will never see the light again.

The Warzone curse, eh? A bad case too, from what I've seen in this thread.

Not sure if people on here are following the "Legends of Sigmar" Kickstarter currently running until middle of June. It has a very similar vibe to Confrontation and the models are in resin and many are currently in production

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2034410916/legends-of-signum-battle-for-vallor

 Gleesman wrote:
Not sure if people on here are following the "Legends of Sigmar" Kickstarter currently running until middle of June

Well yes, they do...

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/755853.page

@Sarouan Just to let people know that "Legends of Signum" has models etc which have a similar aesthetic to the ones proposed on this thread. People might not have any idea from the title "Legends of Signum" which would not have the same weight/background/history as "Confrontation

 insaniak wrote:

 smurfORnot wrote:


Man, it's really gonna be fun to watch how this story goes on and what happens with those true believers, because I will be very very surprised if they manage not to just take the money and go or really feth this up.

What's going to happen is that a bunch of people will lose their money because they trusted a company to deliver what they promised.
I think you and I have very different ideas of 'fun'... This sort of nonsense is bad for those involved, bad for Kickstarter, bad for those who lose their money, bad for other startups legitimately trying to make a go of it, and bad for the hobby community overall. Nothing about it is fun.

I think the word he was looking for is "interesting" , il be dropping to 1Euro in a bit just to follow it along to see how it ends out of morbid curiosity and if by some miracle it has production samples in the PM and looks good to deliver i might get some resin add-ons, but i agree with you its not good for KS and new start-ups reputation its hard enough for them already!


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Looks like it might be the start of the mass exodus!

https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/#chart-daily

Wow. The project has lost over € 25,000 so far today....

I can only hope that the losses in the next 64 hours are enough to stop the project from getting funded. While there's no way out of this that isn't going to be ugly and painful, I feel that this kickstarter failing the only way the Confrontation IP will manage to even survive.

If it passes the 48 hour mark funded, it will fund, unfortunately.

(Unless KS changed this?)

Well, now I'm confused at how the companies owned or once owned by Piotr are related. Not that it's *my* responsibility for clarifying it all.

Missing avatar
Drew about 3 hours ago
@Wunderlich- ok, that makes it sound like the opposite from what I understood.

The "Liquidator" can be one of the partners of the company, or one of the managers, or some other legal representative who assumes the duty of liquidating assets and paying creditors.

That means that it is customary for the liquidator to be someone who is involved with the company- and possibly involved with the other two companies that the same owner owns (it could even be one of the owners).

(this is VERY different from the way it works in the US).

 insaniak wrote:

 smurfORnot wrote:


Man, it's really gonna be fun to watch how this story goes on and what happens with those true believers, because I will be very very surprised if they manage not to just take the money and go or really feth this up.

What's going to happen is that a bunch of people will lose their money because they trusted a company to deliver what they promised.
I think you and I have very different ideas of 'fun'... This sort of nonsense is bad for those involved, bad for Kickstarter, bad for those who lose their money, bad for other startups legitimately trying to make a go of it, and bad for the hobby community overall. Nothing about it is fun.

Not fun that people will get burned...but you know that you don't learn until you get burned. It will be fun to watch how their perspective changes towards SD and comments they will start throwing their way, same ones they are now throwing towards 'non believers'. If they get burned, despite huge red flags, they only have them self to blame. You know about those deals that are too good to be true? It's because they usually are not true.



This almost feels like those who decided to invest in bitconect...if you are gonna trust someone like them? Well, you only have yourself to blame for what happens.

Investing in Jesus or DOGE coin is probably safer bet than in this project,lol

Sounds different to the UK as well where every time I've encountered a liquidation its been done by a 3rd party company (most often one focused on the liquidation process).

Still even so who is doing the liquidation doesn't matter, its still the sign of a company that has, for whatever reason(s) failed and been forced to close its doors.

If I recall right they were going to use it for shipping a month ago when the KS started and then it goes into liquidation during the KS - that just screams to me that their financial situation behind the scenes is going into meltdown.



It reminds me a bit of that company that launched several KS to fund their miniature range (I think they still do KS every so often) and ran a store front as well; with the store basically going totally dead as the company invested everything into the miniatures game. If I recall quite a few customers were left without orders when it liquidated.

Mealstrom Games/Mierce?

Regarding alternatives... the closest to Confrontation right now is Godslayer and the campaign is way better run. What really surprises me is the fact that people are more willing to invest in promises than in tangiable facts. If you compare Godslayer to Confrontation then all the issues of Confrontation are non-existent in the other one. Still there are way more people willing to invest in a promiss that is at best shaky. It is a little bit like they want to be robbed...