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Cool stuff. Just pledged for some of the heroes and might pledge more when more stretch goals unlock.

That "not a slann" and the carnosaur are so cool, hopefully it fully funds. The giant beast is a bit too big for my apartment but i cant wait to see what people in the community do with it.

Amazing looking stuff. I wish I had the thousand dollars handy to build the sort of army I'd want to play with.

As it stands, I might buy a couple of the characters and watch with interest.

This stuff looks amazing, but I'm stopped dead in my tracks by resin. I just need to hope it lights a fire under the arses of the right people at GW to revitalize the lizard-men model line!

10 miles above the GW lizardmen.

Good stuff! Hope you have lots of success

RoninXiC wrote:
10 miles above the GW lizardmen.

Good stuff! Hope you have lots of success

Ten miles above and twice as expensive

These look fantastic, and with a friend who's thinking about getting into the hobby with seraphon, i wanted pledge and get him some as a gift... but the fact that these are apparently 30mm scale makes me hesitant perhaps i'm overreacting? i don't see many people being put off by the scale difference. In your guys' opinion, does that present much of an issue when it comes to the tabletop and playing or not really?

 lord marcus wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
10 miles above the GW lizardmen.

Good stuff! Hope you have lots of success

Ten miles above and twice as expensive

You mean the labour intensive hand-cast resin made by a small business is more expensive than the mass-produced injection molded plastic made by a comparatively giant corporation?! Shocking, shocking I say

EDIT: If you're hesitant because GW claims to be "28mm scale"(though they really haven't actually bothered to in some time I think), I wouldn't be. GW's models haven't been "28mm" for almost twenty years, and even within the Lizardmen plastics there's a fair amount of scale variation - the normal infantry Skinks are bigger than the Stegadon Skinks which are bigger than the Bastilodon Skinks, for example. The army shot appears to be using 20mm and 25mm square bases? If so they're either the same size as the GW ones or at least no larger than a modern GW plastic kit would be.

 Sentionaut wrote:
These look fantastic, and with a friend who's thinking about getting into the hobby with seraphon, i wanted pledge and get him some as a gift... but the fact that these are apparently 30mm scale makes me hesitant perhaps i'm overreacting? i don't see many people being put off by the scale difference. In your guys' opinion, does that present much of an issue when it comes to the tabletop and playing or not really?

Warhammer heroic proportio s are more like 32mm anyway. It could look strange in humans, but something monstruous as lizardmen it wont be a problem.

I love Lizardman and these are stunning. I'm very tempted to back although I have a ridiculous unpainted catalogue at this rate.

I backed their Indegogo for the Chaos Dwarves awhile ago, and they came out great!

You can get them, along with some orcs & gobbos it looks like, on their website.

http://lostkingdomminiatures.com/en/

Knowing that their chaos dwarves campaign resulted in some damn good models gives me the confidence to back them here. However I am a bit worried that the Carnosaur is a bit of a lofty stretch goal, that and the slann are why I am backing. So hopefully we can get there.

skullking wrote:I backed their Indegogo for the Chaos Dwarves awhile ago, and they came out great!

You can get them, along with some orcs & gobbos it looks like, on their website.

http://lostkingdomminiatures.com/en/

Did you have any issues with the company or your order? Did it come late? Did you get what you ordered? Was the quality as good as the pics shown?

After reading what happened with Robotech Kickstarter and other Kickstarters, it seems it's a chance and you might not get your product or money back. So that is why I am leary and trying to learn how Kickstarter works.


I asked before but wasn't answered. How come and use a Kickstarter if the molds are already made? What if they don't get the sales to unlock the bonuses? What happens then? They are never released? It just doesn't make sense to spend all the money on molds if their is no demand for it. If the molds are not made how can they have this released by this August? I just don't get it and that is why I am leary.

skullking wrote:I backed their Indegogo for the Chaos Dwarves awhile ago, and they came out great!

You can get them, along with some orcs & gobbos it looks like, on their website.

http://lostkingdomminiatures.com/en/

Good to hear

Did you have any issues with the company or your order? Did it come late? Did you get what you ordered? Was the quality as good as the pics shown?

After reading what happened with Robotech Kickstarter and other Kickstarters, it seems it's a chance and you might not get your product or money back. So that is why I am leary and trying to learn how Kickstarter works.

Good questions and you beat me to them

I asked before but wasn't answered. How come and use a Kickstarter if the molds are already made? What if they don't get the sales to unlock the bonuses? What happens then? They are never released? It just doesn't make sense to spend all the money on molds if their is no demand for it. If the molds are not made how can they have this released by this August? I just don't get it and that is why I am leary.

They most probably have the master molds made but still need to make the production molds and pay for production of the minis, maybe even pay the sculptors.

Master molds are made from the "green" or digital file of the mini and they are used to create a set of masters as close to the original design as possible then put in storage until new masters are needed, then those masters will be used to make the production mold and then boxed up again until new production molds are needed.
Production molds are used just for that producing the retail minis, depending on what the molds are made from and what material is being used in casting they will only last so long, resin silicone molds dont last long 20-30 pulls before deteriorating whereas metal rubber molds will last a lot longer time maybe 10 times(someone else might know the numbers better), just for giggles a PVC mini mold will make thousands and thousands of minis before needing replacing but those molds are not cheap!

Davor wrote:

I asked before but wasn't answered. How come and use a Kickstarter if the molds are already made? What if they don't get the sales to unlock the bonuses? What happens then? They are never released? It just doesn't make sense to spend all the money on molds if their is no demand for it. If the molds are not made how can they have this released by this August? I just don't get it and that is why I am leary.

Small businesses have small cashflow. If you've got your computer design; you're only halfway there. Silicone rubber to make the molds costs, as does printing the master, and investing in the plant for production. Not a vast sum, but not an insubstantial one either.

The consequence is that a lot of small businesses these days would rather kickstarter (to invent a number) three kits which have the masters printed, along with stretch goals for another seven designs; as opposed to spending the same sum releasing two kits in full right at this moment for general sale. If they just release those two, they'll hopefully recoup sufficient cash from sales to make the third and so on; but it's slow and incremental.

If you can get that big cash injection up front from Kickstarter however, it lets you suddenly release all ten kits simultaneously with little risk. It also lets you sell large packages to the same customers instead of just the odd model, do a big focused advertising campaign, and complete the project in one fell swoop so you can move on to the next one.

The amount of time it takes to make the molds isn't such a big deal. Pouring and pressuring a new mold only takes a day, tops. Buying enough pressure pots to let you do a dozen molds simultaneously? That costs several thousand pounds. etcetc. For smaller firms, Kickstarter lets them get a real kick into the industry free of business loan entanglements, a single bad financial investment, or dragging projects.

Now I've backed several KS and been satisfied each time. The trick is to treat it like an investment. Do your homework, and invest a sum commensurate with the appropriate risk. Then forget about it, because not all investments pay off. So in no particular order...

Assessment

In this particular case; have they run a kickstarter before? Check.

Did it deliver and on time? Well, they said Spring 2017, and the last packages went out in April that year. So check.

Was it for a project of a comparable scale, and if not, is this one pie in the sky or a reasonable scaling up? Well, their last one funded at 19,000 euros with stretch goals up to 16,000. This one is at 33,000 euros already and has stretch goals up to 110,000 euros. So he's stretching a bit more than I'd be entirely comfortable with. So I'd automatically expect the delivery to slip by anything up to three or four months, as he hasn't handled a project of this size before.

Are they offering a deal too good to be true or loads of freebies? Well, his base pledge is at about 75 euros for fourteen models. Given most resin model makers will charge about three to four euros per model, that seems well in line with current market prices. Freebies consist of a coin (dirt cheap for production) at 75 euros , a single medium model and a few skulls per 150 euro pledge, and so on. Given the price level for the normal pledges, the freebies seem affordable for him. So check.


All told? 8/10. I'd quite happily drop an investment of a hundred and fifty euros with reasonable confidence, but I would expect delays due to this being a much larger scale to what he did before.

Thank you Original Timmy for the explanation. Also thank you Ketara for taking the time for all that. That was really helpful in thinking of trying a Kickstarter or not.

 Ketara wrote:

Davor wrote:

I asked before but wasn't answered. How come and use a Kickstarter if the molds are already made? What if they don't get the sales to unlock the bonuses? What happens then? They are never released? It just doesn't make sense to spend all the money on molds if their is no demand for it. If the molds are not made how can they have this released by this August? I just don't get it and that is why I am leary.

Small businesses have small cashflow. If you've got your computer design; you're only halfway there. Silicone rubber to make the molds costs, as does printing the master, and investing in the plant for production. Not a vast sum, but not an insubstantial one either.

The consequence is that a lot of small businesses these days would rather kickstarter (to invent a number) three kits which have the masters printed, along with stretch goals for another seven designs; as opposed to spending the same sum releasing two kits in full right at this moment for general sale. If they just release those two, they'll hopefully recoup sufficient cash from sales to make the third and so on; but it's slow and incremental.

If you can get that big cash injection up front from Kickstarter however, it lets you suddenly release all ten kits simultaneously with little risk. It also lets you sell large packages to the same customers instead of just the odd model, do a big focused advertising campaign, and complete the project in one fell swoop so you can move on to the next one.

The amount of time it takes to make the molds isn't such a big deal. Pouring and pressuring a new mold only takes a day, tops. Buying enough pressure pots to let you do a dozen molds simultaneously? That costs several thousand pounds. etcetc. For smaller firms, Kickstarter lets them get a real kick into the industry free of business loan entanglements, a single bad financial investment, or dragging projects.

And from another perspective it makes a lot of sense to run a KS in terms advertising and developing a customer base. I'd never heard of these guys until this thread came up here.

In a more traditional model (pun?) of distribution they'd make a few minis as cashflow allowed, put them up on their own site (and some third party mini makers don't have great site design) and hopefully people would find them somehow. Whereas now I can see this thread, I can see it when I check the KS site for other projects I've backed, it's much easier for me, as someone who wasn't specifically in the market for lizardmen, to see the company offering some really cool product.

And if they deliver well I'll back more, or I'll buy from them again, as mentioned they apparently delivered a nice chaos dwarves project prev.

Davor wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
- GW prevent people from "piggy backing"...

I always get a kick out of this. GW get's upset when people use GW for stuff but GW entire line is "almost" a copy of something else. How ironic GW sues for what they basically do.

A bit disingenuous there, GW generally copy from a number of sources then combine them, as far as I can see the Cuetzpal Empire has 1 point of inspiration; GW's Lizardmen.
If the unit names can actually be translated into Aztec (or similar meso-american language) then I would say the Cuetzpal Empire has 2 points of inspiration.

Also as far as I know GW has not copied other miniature lines, and I would love to see GW's take on the Devourers of Vile Tis (Slaanesh worshippers of course).

Could you also clarify when was the last time GW sued for ip infringement, I am sure Spots the Spacemarine was not the last time.

All the more reason for GW to take seraphon to their logical, space traveling, hitech conclusion.

I love the fact that the aztec accents feature much more strongly here, something GW never went far enough with in my opinion.

Dear sweet merciful heavens...not sure how I'm supposed to resist going all in here. Well executed concept on some georgeous minis.

I am a little confused though. If you got the big army bundle, would you get all the stretch goals for free? Can anyone that speakers Kickstarter-ese answer that for me?

 godswildcard wrote:
Dear sweet merciful heavens...not sure how I'm supposed to resist going all in here. Well executed concept on some georgeous minis.

I am a little confused though. If you got the big army bundle, would you get all the stretch goals for free? Can anyone that speakers Kickstarter-ese answer that for me?

The usual way stretch goals work is that if enough money is invested, a stretch goal unlocks and another item is available for purchase. Sometimes stretch goals are freebies; but it has to be explicitly spelled out as such.

As you can withdraw your pledge at any time; it's usually best practice to pledge the maximum amount you would want for stuff assuming all stretch goals were met; then go back 12 hours before the campaign funds to see what's actually unlocked. Then you can adjust your pledge appropriately.

 StygianBeach wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
- GW prevent people from "piggy backing"...

I always get a kick out of this. GW get's upset when people use GW for stuff but GW entire line is "almost" a copy of something else. How ironic GW sues for what they basically do.

A bit disingenuous there, GW generally copy from a number of sources then combine them, as far as I can see the Cuetzpal Empire has 1 point of inspiration; GW's Lizardmen.

That seems like an odd point of criticism - so, "stealing"(note: I do not actually consider unauthorised use of information "stealing", I'm just using the term for the same reason corporations do - impact) a whole bag of shopping is OK, but only "stealing" one Mars bar is not? Or does it only become OK once you use the "stolen" shopping to make a meal?

Cuetzal Empire are Lost Kingdom's take on a similar combination of concepts and tropes as the pastiche GW chose to use, that they weren't the first to use that particular combination doesn't make their work somehow "lesser" any more than one maker of flatscreen TVs not being the first to make such a device makes their offering "lesser" than the first to do so(assuming GW were the first, they rarely are and that's never made their stuff less appealing). Particularly given GW seem disinclined to continue developing and refining their version of the pastiche.

Yo shin, have you heard the saying "stealing from one source is plagiarism, stealing from many sources is research"? GW does a lot of research.

These are some great looking minis. I'd be all over them if I still played with my lizardman army. I might pick up a few of the models though when they are released later

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Yo shin, have you heard the saying "stealing from one source is plagiarism, stealing from many sources is research"? GW does a lot of research.

I'm bad at this kind of thing - is this a pithy remark agreeing or disagreeing with my post?

StygianBeach wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
- GW prevent people from "piggy backing"...

I always get a kick out of this. GW get's upset when people use GW for stuff but GW entire line is "almost" a copy of something else. How ironic GW sues for what they basically do.

A bit disingenuous there, GW generally copy from a number of sources then combine them, as far as I can see the Cuetzpal Empire has 1 point of inspiration; GW's Lizardmen.
If the unit names can actually be translated into Aztec (or similar meso-american language) then I would say the Cuetzpal Empire has 2 points of inspiration.

Also as far as I know GW has not copied other miniature lines, and I would love to see GW's take on the Devourers of Vile Tis (Slaanesh worshippers of course).

Could you also clarify when was the last time GW sued for ip infringement, I am sure Spots the Spacemarine was not the last time.

Not to derail the thread, I will PM you if you like. Just let me know.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Yo shin, have you heard the saying "stealing from one source is plagiarism, stealing from many sources is research"? GW does a lot of research.

I'm bad at this kind of thing - is this a pithy remark agreeing or disagreeing with my post?

Sort of both. While I agree that GW has "stolen" from plenty of sources (there is nothing truly original that can't be broken down into a collection of influences), I don't find that morally equivalent to actual theft. Nor do I believe it is equivalent to "stealing" the aesthetic designs from a single source, a direct imitation. However, I don't have a real problem with that, either, other than lamenting a general lack of creativity.

These lizardmen look great, even if they are obviously based on GW's own aesthetic. I hope to see more lizardmen that aren't armed and outfitted in Aztec style with derivative units like skinks, chameleons, lizard ogres, and the like.

I really hope we’ll see some cool Seraphon armies on the tables using these models. With the huge boost they got from the new summoning rules there should be plenty of people interested!

If you're going to condemn Lost Kingdom for a lack of creativity, save some of that for GW itself. Their inspiration for the Slann was taken from the AD&D Fiend Folio monster species the Slaad. Almost everything Chaos related was inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric novels including the eight-pointed star of Chaos and mutated Chaos Spawn. The early GW staff acknowledged this in the White Dwarf, citing their various sources of inspiration. Later during the Chapterhouse lawsuit, the then GW CEO testified that all of GW's ideas were original and developed in house. A pity the Chapterhouse defense team did not know about those older WD articles.

Of course, much of fantasy gaming both tabletop and RPG is a mishmash of Robert E. Howard, Tolkien, Jack Vance (Ioun Stones and the original D&D magic system where mages forgot the spell after casting) and some others I can't recall. HAWK & MOOR: The Unofficial History of Dungeons & Dragons gets into that. HAWK & MOOR (5 Book Series)

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


Sort of both. While I agree that GW has "stolen" from plenty of sources (there is nothing truly original that can't be broken down into a collection of influences), I don't find that morally equivalent to actual theft. Nor do I believe it is equivalent to "stealing" the aesthetic designs from a single source, a direct imitation. However, I don't have a real problem with that, either, other than lamenting a general lack of creativity.

These lizardmen look great, even if they are obviously based on GW's own aesthetic. I hope to see more lizardmen that aren't armed and outfitted in Aztec style with derivative units like skinks, chameleons, lizard ogres, and the like.

 Ancestral Hamster wrote:
If you're going to condemn Lost Kingdom for a lack of creativity, save some of that for GW itself. Their inspiration for the Slann was taken from the AD&D Fiend Folio monster species the Slaad. Almost everything Chaos related was inspired by Michael Moorcock's Elric novels including the eight-pointed star of Chaos and mutated Chaos Spawn. The early GW staff acknowledged this in the White Dwarf, citing their various sources of inspiration. Later during the Chapterhouse lawsuit, the then GW CEO testified that all of GW's ideas were original and developed in house. A pity the Chapterhouse defense team did not know about those older WD articles.

Of course, much of fantasy gaming both tabletop and RPG is a mishmash of Robert E. Howard, Tolkien, Jack Vance (Ioun Stones and the original D&D magic system where mages forgot the spell after casting) and some others I can't recall. HAWK & MOOR: The Unofficial History of Dungeons & Dragons gets into that. HAWK & MOOR (5 Book Series)

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:


Sort of both. While I agree that GW has "stolen" from plenty of sources (there is nothing truly original that can't be broken down into a collection of influences), I don't find that morally equivalent to actual theft. Nor do I believe it is equivalent to "stealing" the aesthetic designs from a single source, a direct imitation. However, I don't have a real problem with that, either, other than lamenting a general lack of creativity.

These lizardmen look great, even if they are obviously based on GW's own aesthetic. I hope to see more lizardmen that aren't armed and outfitted in Aztec style with derivative units like skinks, chameleons, lizard ogres, and the like.

Reread what I wrote and I hope you'll see that I had no problems with them making not-Seraphon other than a hope to see new types of lizardpeoples in addition to the Aztec GW type.