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I think the need of the creator to post an apology for the mess they delivered speaks of itself but I would like to elaborate further than that.

My second title would be "how to kill a franchise"

But lets start from the beginning.

Mercs recon was viewed at least by me as a clever idea, Mega con games introduce their flagship line, Mercs, as a boardgame tapping on the goodwill Myth had created and the loyalty the company has in order to update this line in modern standards.

I will not hide that I found the fluff wacky (they are an army but we only see the character individuals?) the models sub par and the artwork great, so a reboot would not be a bad thing, after all the art was great the world needed some tweaking and the models would definitely get a resculpt with this been funded well right? of course no silly me.

we started the campaign with such claims

Recon miniatures are made of hobby-level plastic. This plastic is dense and hard. It holds detail extremely well.

Are Recon miniatures metal or plastic? Are they preassembled?
They are plastic.

The OPFOR minis will be one piece plastic the same level as Myth. The MERCS minis will be either 1 or 2 pieces and be even higher quality plastic.

A few things that make no sense to me during the kickstarter campaign was the really big amount of streachgoals dedicated to optional add ons that do not fit on the setting and free stuff that do not fit on the setting, but do fit on the 70-80s movies they pay tribute to, the decision to include Myth streach goals in it (one fantasy, one sci fi) and the unwillingness to upgrade the core box offering, yes they did offer additional free stuff as streachgoals, but the core box is unupgraded and for what it offers is not a good offer for the person that will buy it from the self, having a game that has models and flat counters to represent models especially the objectives and the most common lvl1 security forces is odd.

Another disappointment during the kickstarter is they stuck with their resident sculptor, while he is good at doing Myth (and Myth suits his style of sculpting) mercs needed something more clear and sharp to stay competitive with the really excellent competition in the sci fi models market.

The kickstarter finished many accusations were flung at the manufacturer and with many delays we finally received our products.

From where to start? the printing on both core boxes is really bad, not even the box cover is aligned or glued correctly, tiles inside are damaged (surface ripped) from the printing, have a dust layer over them, some missing the varnish layer they should have (might be the dust they have), the dice feel as a downgrade in comparison to the prototype components they showed worse of all the models have shallow, rounded detail and are made of a soft bendable plastic (restic?) that has lots of flash and moldlines and behaves like restic, of course almost nothing is one piece except the civilian models and one security forces model everything is at least 3 parts or even more and on some models they do not fit on the provided bases if the slot is not scraped wider, many parts are really tiny in short what the boardgamer really hates (and this is supposed to be a boardgame, for a wargamer the detail is too soft and shallow and the bendy plastic (you can bend some thin female models almost 90 degrees and not damage them) will make paint flake easily, for whom is this product?

The rules are thin and especially the expansions come in a single page, without any fluff.

Another bad thing is their expansions come in a pizza style box instead of proper boxes as illustrated on the kickstarter mock up art and are useless for really storing anything.

This kickstarter has burned them a massive amount of goodwill and in the end delivered a product that looks cheap, has damaged their flagship franchise and I do not see it moving, the expansion boxes do not even have a fluff in the back to make the consumer get interested in them, the models look awful and are unfit to be used for wargame some even look worse than the models they were in metal a decade ago.

Personally beyond the sad state Mercs franchise is after the fiasco that happened, I also feel sorry for the lost opportunities megacon had and not did on this

First and foremost it was their prime chance to make the models up to the modern standards, with a sharp 3D sculpting.
They also missed their chance to colour code the models printing the models in the colour of their faction.
They missed the opportunity to upgrade with the kickstarter their core product and offer more value for it.
They missed to put at least some fluff in the expansion boxes to make them stand out and some art since this was always their strong point.
They missed the opportunity to flood the boardgame with fluff of their world and make the players interested in their world.

I am not sure if the franchise will survive the hit and if it will need yet another kickstarter to be brought back into strength or be left in limbo, but it was such a nice opportunity for this little, cute, franchise that was killed.

I am sure people will have more to add.

Getting the Myth crossovers, the plastic, the detail and bendy/rubberyness would have made me ragequit if I had gotten an entire KS of that stuff.

It was manageable for 7 figures and they painted up somewhat fine, but a whole KS... woof. As a Myth Journeyman backer, I am glad from what I can see, the printed materials and minis look equal or better than Myth 1.

At some point, it sucks. You invest all your capital into a company, they produce bad minis and you basically can't go to backers and say 'we will reproduce the entire game' as the quality sucked.

I will say... I have no problem with the PIZZA boxes. They never are releasing those at retail, All my tokens go in my Plano, my tiles go in the core box and the minis in a figure case, so the Pizza boxes are little more than shelf bloat or recycling for me. But I also use my games differently. I had no intention in keeping my myth module figures in their pizza boxes, so I had no problem with the Merc box I got.


As for the 3D, better style... Backers should have known they were getting myth house artist and sculptor which is myth-style sculpted cartoon, not realistic. Now missing the boat is one thing, but they really never said they were going to 3D design. The only stuff I have seen them do 3D is the clockwork minions MYTH2 which will be their first attempt at that.

They did realize their mistake, I guess they didn't check proofs or the proofs were bait and switch, but I am not sure what they could have done apart from a year delay and massive debt to find a new company and remake all the gak.

The biggest issue I have with the pizza boxes is they are unattractive for the consumer to buy them, they are useless for storage and worse of all the back does not have any fluff to entice somebody to buy them and the faction, that is a huge problem for the longevity of the game and attracting new players.

As far as I know they have 3D sculpting I think I have seen Ios renders and the mercs 2.0 rulebook shows 3D renders, but even with traditional sculpting they could have done far better work on the sculpts to bring them in a more modern quality era, I have not much of an issue with the cartoony style of the sculpts it works better on Myth than here, but, the sculpting seems sub par especially when compared with the Myth sculpts.

And they have the entire game sterilised of any form of fluff they invested 0 effort to bring their IP to the boargame players.

My biggest disappointment is how much they botched the opportunity to make their flagship product new appealing and relevant, making it another Sci Fi game in the market.