Monolith Games: Conan 2020 Kickstarter

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.

**Gallahad**

I hope so, but they sure bungled that original survey. I think they relaunched it three times.

**Monkeysloth**

ya. that clearly didn't help and probably cost them a good number of votes especially after the second one failed.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
EDIT: Yep. They're already reconsidering reprints of other items. Should be something in a few days on this.

**Monkeysloth**

So Fred posted this in facebook via a group about monolith's games about them not repriting the expansions right away:

Thanks. We are reading complaints. I can understand some of them. But peoples tend to forgot that we had to destroy 6000 english expansions in china when FFG deleted its order in 2016, because peoples were not interested by buying this expansions at this time. The minimum on quantity for printing them is 1500 ex per expansion in the factory and it s way more than the number of wishs of our survey. Speaking of the survey and the reprint, we are actually way under the quantity peoples annouced they would pledge. So we will actually lose money on some items people told us they would buy for sure.

**Azazelx**

Is he fething complaining less than 12 hours after opening the PM that he's going to lose money because he's "sold" way under the amount of product that he estimated for??

Or am I reading all this wrong? I hope I am reading/undertanding it all wrong.

**ced1106**

No, this is normally how he writes. He's transparent, but could write less defensively. And, no, I've been following the Conan KS as well as anyone else, and didn't know that expansions were destroyed. I do know that this happens often, including outside of boardgaming, but had to read an article about estimating plastic injection costs to find out.

With KS requiring projects to have new content, I dunno what creators can best do to reprint expansions when they need a minimum order and want to not lose money. Even before KS, GMT has a P500 preordering system, where customers vote on which products GMT produces. Maybe Fred Henry could cheat like CMON did with their Time Vault by offering a new soundtrack with the reprint. Petersen Games essentially ran a KS for each language variant of Cthulhu Wars, so Monolith could possibly run a KS for each expansion reprint.

Backers are upset, but I don't think there's a good solution when demand outstrips supply, yet there's not enough demand for the company to risk another print run. Take too many risks, and the company may go out of business.

https://www.gmtgames.com/s-2-p500.aspx

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Since he's saying backers have ordered less of the reprinting items than they said they would in they survey i'm afraid that may, in part, be down to his choice of pledge manager

I was unable to add some of the reprint material although I tried but the PM just wouldn't let me (and I bet I wasn't the only one)

and since I missed out on all of the big three expansions i'm probably not going to go back and try again, a leas not yet, I need the sadness to subside a bit first

(not that there is anything they could have done about limited items not being enough to meet demand if that wasn't enough to cover a minimum order)

(and perhaps a better contract with Asmodee could have at least made them responsible for production costs if they cancelled their order)

**gungo**

I was able to add everything but I’m still back and forth in the dragon mostly because they are redoing a new version for the next Kickstarter red nails expansions.

The other thing is there is plenty of time to order this stuff as the pledge manager is due to stay open a while

**Gallahad**

To figure out actual demand they could just run a pre-order that required people to put down money and then refund money for items that didn't clear the number threshold.

I'm sure that there are many people who decided not to order anything after they found out they couldn't order the things they wanted.

**TwilightSparkles**

To only backed to go in on the PM but those UK shipping costs are eye watering.

**Monkeysloth**

ced1106 wrote:
No, this is normally how he writes. He's transparent, but could write less defensively. And, no, I've been following the Conan KS as well as anyone else, and didn't know that expansions were destroyed. I do know that this happens often, including outside of boardgaming, but had to read an article about estimating plastic injection costs to find out.

With KS requiring projects to have new content, I dunno what creators can best do to reprint expansions when they need a minimum order and want to not lose money. Even before KS, GMT has a P500 preordering system, where customers vote on which products GMT produces. Maybe Fred Henry could cheat like CMON did with their Time Vault by offering a new soundtrack with the reprint. Petersen Games essentially ran a KS for each language variant of Cthulhu Wars, so Monolith could possibly run a KS for each expansion reprint.

Backers are upset, but I don't think there's a good solution when demand outstrips supply, yet there's not enough demand for the company to risk another print run. Take too many risks, and the company may go out of business.

https://www.gmtgames.com/s-2-p500.aspx

I agree. Fred is not one that's very good and holding back his thoughts or information. He's not mean about it but it does come off as defensive a lot. But I wasn't really posting due to the current low purchase numbers as that's Fred being Fred and was only one day into the PM.

I hadn't known about the 9k boxes being destroyed and it's been confirmed by other people (employees and non-employees that were on the Monolith Forums at the time Fred originally talked about it) as there's talk about how poor the game sold back in the day but seeing the orders from the expansion dropped by 3000 each one is quite a large amount. There's some massive wining in one of the two Facebook groups (the one that looks official but isn't where this quote) that Monolith lied about expansion availability, that it was false advertising and that they didn't tell people ever that they were limited. I can't think of how many times all that was stated but there's a decent size group of people reacting worse to this then any other similar thing (black Friday or CMoN timemachine). Maybe because it's a more niche product? There was one guy seriously trying to convince the Conan Monolith Facebook group to not be about Monolith games because of this.

Gallahad wrote:To figure out actual demand they could just run a pre-order that required people to put down money and then refund money for items that didn't clear the number threshold.

I'm sure that there are many people who decided not to order anything after they found out they couldn't order the things they wanted.

They're working at reprinting them later on with more content Seams like Fred is really wary of the expansions and Matt's plan to reintroduce them with the next campaign with more scenarios (solo/co-op added) is what convinced him. But we'll have to see what becomes of them.

TwilightSparkles wrote:To only backed to go in on the PM but those UK shipping costs are eye watering.

Yea Brexit! But I've seen some price comparisons on Facebook and ya, the UK stuff sucks but at least your not iceland where it's like 100 euros to ship or something around there.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

THE LIMITED QUANTITIES ITEMS: -

Items in the Pledge manager oversold. We own that! alongside Game On TableTop.

We are working to ensure that we deal with this oversell situation as FAIRLY AND AS QUICKLY as possible.

We wish to find solutions and ask for your patience while doing so.

In the worst possible scenario we will fully refund any oversold item at 100% + additional compensation.

On a positive note we had NOT included ALL the copies of our Limited quantity stock.

We had set aside an amount to deal with contingencies, so we can say that the oversell in most cases is not as dramatic as it may have appeared on the pledge manager.

The addition of the contingency stock has already significantly reduced the number of items effected.

We are preparing an item by item overview and once we have finalized our research will be able to clarify which items still remain a challenge.

In order to facilitate this overall reduction, we will move items of inventory from one distribution hub to another, while checking with every distribution hub globally to access their inventories.

Including our US and EU based inventory held at mass market retail warehouses. No stone will be unturned in order to maximize the reduction of the oversell, these numbers may be small, but they will have an impact.

The instructions to provide an accurate inventory went out to our global distribution hubs on Friday and we are eagerly awaiting those responses.

We anticipate being in a position to have final numbers of available inventory and be able to begin the process of determining who did and who did not make the cut in the near future with a view to making any decisions known no laterthan early June, if not earlier.

To repeat any oversold item will be refunded at 100% and additional compensation.

The method of verification will be the transaction date stamp.

We will continue to keep you updated on a regular basis – as we resolve this challenge.

well I guess I dodged a bullet by not getting any of the limited stock, i'd be very sad to have won the race and then have it taken away (although Monolith look to be handling it as best as they can and offering compensation too is a good touch)

I suspect the best way to handle this sort of scramble in the future is NOT to tell backers when the PM is launching beyond a 'sometime in the next month' and stick the limited stuff up at a random point during the month. People that really want stuff will keep checking, the less committed won't, and once the stuff is up word will spread, but hopefully slow enough that the software can cope

**Monkeysloth**

I suggested a lottery when they first said they were planning on selling limited stock. That's really the only fair way but probably something they didn't want to do due to not having a webstore or way to sell these to winners outside of like paypal.

**Monkeysloth**

New update.

TLDR: they're reprinting the expansions. The more the sell the more solo/co-op content they'll add.

First up, the “oversold” items. There was indeed a server problem with the Game on Tabletop format and that resulted in some selling of quantities we did not have. However, after discovering the total number of items was 462, we dug into other hubs, older distributors and retail stocks everywhere and we’ve managed to almost entirely fix the situation and can report most items sold will be honored. There are only 11 items in total we were not able to track down. Those individuals affected will be contacted by us via email by June 17th. Here are some specifics:

-All theoretical “oversell” of Sabertooth, Black Dragons, Vanir Valkyrie, Baal Pteor, Artbook-Campaign books, are secured and confirmed for everyone. There has been no ‘oversell’ on these items.

-All Demon of the Earth, KHITAI, NORDHEIM, and STYGIA sales are also secured. In fact— and here’s the big news:

WE ARE REPRINTING STYGIA, NORDHEIM, AND KHITAI! These “Big 3” expansions will be available in unlimited quantities and will ship worldwide. All three are now available in the PM (in the “add-ons” section, under 2015-2017 items we are reprinting). This was a big undertaking for us. It required tons of negotiation with our factories and partners, but it still represents some financial risk for us. We are really hoping the survey data our fans provided is accurate. The ball is in your court!

What’s more exciting is that we’ll start off offering one Solo-coop scenario for each of the Big 3. These will function as a mini-campaign and will be available online after the Pm but before delivery. However, once we’ve sold a total of 1800 copies from among these three expansions (old stock included) we will turn this three-scenario campaign into a six-scenario campaign, with one scenario for each map. Players can, of course, play these scenarios independently, but for those who buy all three, you will have the entire campaign. We have had preliminary discussion about the thematic direction for this campaign, but Matt John has stated he’d like to call it “The Jeweled Thrones of the Earth”. Draw from that what you will.

**Gallahad**

Monkeysloth wrote:
New update.

TLDR: they're reprinting the expansions. The more the sell the more solo/co-op content they'll add.

First up, the “oversold” items. There was indeed a server problem with the Game on Tabletop format and that resulted in some selling of quantities we did not have. However, after discovering the total number of items was 462, we dug into other hubs, older distributors and retail stocks everywhere and we’ve managed to almost entirely fix the situation and can report most items sold will be honored. There are only 11 items in total we were not able to track down. Those individuals affected will be contacted by us via email by June 17th. Here are some specifics:

-All theoretical “oversell” of Sabertooth, Black Dragons, Vanir Valkyrie, Baal Pteor, Artbook-Campaign books, are secured and confirmed for everyone. There has been no ‘oversell’ on these items.

-All Demon of the Earth, KHITAI, NORDHEIM, and STYGIA sales are also secured. In fact— and here’s the big news:

WE ARE REPRINTING STYGIA, NORDHEIM, AND KHITAI! These “Big 3” expansions will be available in unlimited quantities and will ship worldwide. All three are now available in the PM (in the “add-ons” section, under 2015-2017 items we are reprinting). This was a big undertaking for us. It required tons of negotiation with our factories and partners, but it still represents some financial risk for us. We are really hoping the survey data our fans provided is accurate. The ball is in your court!

What’s more exciting is that we’ll start off offering one Solo-coop scenario for each of the Big 3. These will function as a mini-campaign and will be available online after the Pm but before delivery. However, once we’ve sold a total of 1800 copies from among these three expansions (old stock included) we will turn this three-scenario campaign into a six-scenario campaign, with one scenario for each map. Players can, of course, play these scenarios independently, but for those who buy all three, you will have the entire campaign. We have had preliminary discussion about the thematic direction for this campaign, but Matt John has stated he’d like to call it “The Jeweled Thrones of the Earth”. Draw from that what you will.

Well, looks like I'll need to pick up Nordheim now, as they strongly suggest that this will be the final reprint.

The completionist in me is screaming at me to pick up Khitai as well, but that setting just doesn't grab me.

**Monkeysloth**

from the number I've heard on Facebook and that they've mentioned that they need to sell to get all the bonus missions I have a feeling they'll have some left over for the red nails kser and maybe even their webstore. I also suspect, though this is just my opinion, that if Conan keeps doing well and bringing in new players they'll reprint the big box expansions again.

What they don't want to do, which most in the community seam to agree with, is release small boxes that just have one scenario as those didn't go over as well, and stick to boxes that have 4-5 scenarios and sets of minis.

**gungo**

Sounds like in the latest update they have enough for the 3 expansion reprints..

But this last update adds everything people have asked for in this game.
options to switch out hero’s to different hero’s.
Options to switch out monsters to make the game easier or hard mode.
Solo play options
Game board options with treasure rooms

And they are literally reprinting almost everything you can want.
barbarian pledge
3 expansions
the majority of addons

Gives you nearly everything minus the king pledge minis which sold out and very few missing addons.

It’s a great resource management miniature game and I’m extremely happy with this latest Kickstarter for expanding the playability of this game. Official scenarios alone we will have over 50+.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

Please remember and help spread the word, THE PLEDGE MANAGER IS CLOSING ON AUGUST 20th! It’s time to think about finalizing those pledges.

Bye for now!

The Monolith Team

**Gallahad**

After choking down the big shipping cost, I'm not sure I'm willing to pick up the two big box expansions I'm missing.

Shipping likely to make them an unpalatable price.