Left-right binding is way too strong for me.
I love that crowdfunding allows this sort of thing to exist.
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âWar of the Ring designers making âDune: War for Arrakisâ boardgame with CMONâ coming to Kickstarter later this yearâŚ
(Edit: and being CMON means itâll have 100 minis and cost over ÂŁ100, so I wonât be getting it, but I will play War of the Ring one day).
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Interest will be declared - I demo for SJGames, and write for them.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sjgames/pathfinder-revolution-by-steve-jackson-games
I canât back this because SJGames arenât offering non-US shipping (and the cost of setting up a package forwarding for just one thing⌠no). I like the old Revolution, and I still have my copy. A couple of other warning flags: no rulebook post, and no reviews by anyone Iâve heard of. Iâd really want to know a lot more about this before I even went for a retail version.
Also $60 even in the US.
Also Pathfinder.
On the other hand as far as Iâm concerned itâs a very welcome move by SJGames back into games that actually have some meat to them, rather than the likes of Super Kitty Bug Slap and Ghosts Love Candy. (And of course the endless parade of Munchkin $RANDOM, but I canât really blame them for that â people are still paying for it!)
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Itâs pretty weak as a crowdfunding effort. I would have expected to offer the other expansions (such as 5-6 players) as a stretch goal or add-on at least. Coming only with the base game is underwhelming, especially for those of us with the original.
$80,000 stretch goal makes the base game that ships to everyone a 3-6 player game rather than 3-4 player. That seems fair; Iâm generally not a fan of huge stretch goals (and the Ogre Designerâs Edition Kickstarter killed work on other things for a year, so I suspect they arenât either).
Huh. I completely skipped over that. I did a search for âplayerâ in my browser, but since itâs in there as an image (perhaps the one practice of kickstarter page design that frustrates me the most), it didnât show up.
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Is anyone interested in Dark Tower? I wonder if itâll be the last time on sale as I imagine the second hit for a nostalgia product is going to be ridiculously reduced.
Itâs a legitimately good game that bears little resemblance to the original Dark Tower. I will get the new expansion. I donât know that I can recommend getting the base game at the updated list price though.
Five Three Five (English Edition of 535 from Japan) by Portland Game Collective â Kickstarter
Oh look! Another trick taking/climbing card game 
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Okay. Letâs start with the pros:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/cgl/leviathans-the-great-war
I love Catalyst Games and a lot of what theyâre doing and have done with Battletech.
I love the look of the game overall, although it is very hard to tell the ships for each specific faction without paint (compared to, say, WarMachine or WarHammer, where each unit has a very distinctive look).
Airships! With guns! Amazing!
Cons:
The ROI for the KS is very, very slim unless it hits $500K+. Right now, the saving for the $100 level is⌠$12. And it stays pretty linear. At $500K more free stuff opens up, and youâre looking about about $30 in savings. Still not great⌠most of the milestones are âWe will allow you to buy these thingsâ instead of actual ârewards.â Not a complaint, just a fact.
I definitely, 100% do not have enough room for another miniatures game.
I canât tell anything about the various armies without digging, and I donât wanna dig. I donât like playing âthe baddies,â but I get the impression that everyone in this game is going to be âthe baddies.â
Did I mention I definitely donât have room for another minis game? To say nothing about having people to play it with! Or time to play it! I havenât played any of the three minis games I already have in years!
⌠itâs so prettyâŚ
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New Revolution got cancelled when it looked as though it wouldnât fund; to come back âlater this yearâ.
Theyâre talking, like everyone else, in terms of âlook, weâre not gold-plating our cats here, this is how much itâs costing us to make a game and stay in businessâ. Which Iâm reasonably confident is true. But I also think that there are a lot fewer people willing to pay $60 for a fairly light game than there are willing to pay $40, and maybe this model isnât sustainable unless you already have a rabid fanbase.
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What I donât quite grasp is how a kickstarter for a project will cost RRP plus half that again on postage but getting the game to a shop and they can sell the game for RRP with no delivery fee.
Is it simply from the fact that shops need to buy in bulk? But then surely the shop has to pass on the cost for individual delivery.
Maybe selling board games is impossible realistically.
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From what I can remember, retail gets discount for hoovering up stocks from the publisher.
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This is the major reason Iâve stopped crowdfunding. I can pay ÂŁ80 + ÂŁ40 postage or I can wait and pay ÂŁ80 at retail.
(Other reasons: âon a game that may change before its released⌠in a yearâs time⌠and hasnât been reviewed fully yetâŚâ etc)
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At least in and to the UK, itâs cheaper to ship a box of ten games than ten games individually, cheaper to ship a pallet of ten boxes than ten individual boxes, etc.
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Additionally, retail has its costs, but so does Kickstarter.
In retail, the publisher sells wholesale to a distributor, who then distributes (along with many other games, combining shipping) to various retailers. I donât know the wholesale numbers, but retailers buying from distributors is usually at, roughly, 40-50% of MSRP/RRP.
In Kickstarter, the numbers are somewhat less standardized, but the general effect is that by the time you pay Kickstarter for their cut, a pledge manager and a fulfillment company, youâre probably down to 10 to 20% âprofitâ, as long as worldwide shipping and logistics hasnât ruined your day.
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Itâs bizarre when I see my kickstarters coming from gameslore via their distribution bit though.
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Just backed Shuâs Tactics on KS. A tower defense roll and write that looks pretty cute, and is just $6 for the full campaign delivered in PDF format. Went ahead and threw in $3 more for the co-op materials. I have a soft spot for things involving the Romance of the Three Kingdoms after playing so much Dynasty Warriors, so Iâll risk < $10 for a game with that theme.
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20ish years ago, I worked for a company that did third party fulfillment for publishers. Weâd get a container of stuff, unload it into our warehouse, and ship it to the customer (which was often a bookstore, but not always). The numbers of a normalish textbook (ie: dense, and heavy) worked out something like â$1 to get a container load from Asia to the west coast, $1 to get from there to us, $5 to get it from us to the customerâ. A bookstore getting a carton would cost a buck or so, per book.
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