I think this is a lot more true than the maxim SU&SD likes to float that if it’s any good it will be available in retail. Reprint/expansion KSes are often a good and realistically expectable option, but there’s plenty of stuff I’ve loved that has no/minimal retail availability.
In general, getting in at least one KS after the debut has served me well, I only back stuff out of the gate if I’m either really, really sold from day one or already have good experiences with the development team. The downside is that can end up being very expensive all at once (e.g. total buy-in on Too Many Bones these days is several hundred bucks).
Game is soooo good you’ll end up spending the money if you get in to it. Also available outside of a KS direct so maybe not so all in if you don’t want to
I have almost everything. The one thing I feel quite sad about missing is the wildly expensive map to track your progress. I ignored it initially due to being $15 dollars for a counter but keeping track from the cards annoys me enough and I’ve spent so much already I now regret skipping it Due to Covid I’m yet to play the lab rats or with anything from Splice & Dice. Tink made my brain hurt though. I’ll put that down to long covid brian fog
When I did my big TMB order a couple of years ago, I grabbed the map for the simple reason of “it looks nice, and I’m already in for this much? May as well”. It does make tracking progress much easier though.
The only time I’ve ever regretted buying an addon for a game was the minis for Tainted Grail and Etherfields. They’re cool, gnarly critters but I could have just piecemeal grabbed the other stuff I actually wanted and saved money, and Tainted Grail they’re even more pointless than I feel minis are in general. Aside from the characters and menhirs (which come in the core box), you will only use minis to represent wandering monsters, which is <20% of the monster deck, which only spawned for us if an event spawned them (since the other criteria is you failing/running from them as a regular encounter, and we never did), and which frequently spent <2 turns in play. Etherfields does at least make more regular use of them but it still feels like most of the Entities you encounter are using the Creature or Human Shapeshifter minis from the main box.
Whoa, pledge manager is open for Nemo’s War Ultimate ed, and by the time postage and taxes (including taxes on postage) are added to a $98 pledge, it’s another $42. That is… more than I’ve ever spent on a game that I don’t KNOW I’m going to enjoy.
I’d been thinking I could always sell it on for the ridiculous 2nd-hand prices the UK gets, but that’s a big chunk which won’t be part of that. Ouch.
Additionally, pledgemanager.com have my old credit card details (not even the ones - the only ones - registered with Kickstarter) and absolutely no way to change them. Can’t add a card, can’t edit a card. Don’t know where they got my card from, but there’s literally not an option to view or change it on their page
EDIT: Ooooh - there’s a pop-up at the very last minute with all the card details pre-filled, and you CAN edit it. It just looks like you can’t.
I am concerned that with brexit a lot of kickstarters are unsure how fulfilment in the uk will work. Saw a few updates recently where the UK is being prioritised for fulfilment to avoid possible additional customs charges.
Think we might be getting elevated Estimated shipping costs for a bit.
Yes, I’m very grateful to Canvas in particular for doing that.
“We’re going to prioritise the UK so it gets there in late Dec, because goodness knows what’s happening with customs in January”.
As for the UK situation with Brexit, things are still very unclear unfortunately. Our plan is to keep UK shippings customs friendly, so either we’ll ship the rewards covering customs costs ourselves, or we’ll use a new UK hub to fulfill the project for UK backers directly from their own country. We’ll hopefully have more details to share early next year.
Just received my Kickstarter copy of Hexplore It volume 3, The Sands of Shurax plus the Hero Chest for storing the character bits in a volume-agnostic context. Excited.
ISS Vanguard, Awaken Realms’ latest story-oriented coop, this time sci-fi planet-hopping exploration, is now crowdfunding, albeit on their Gamefound platform rather than Kickstarter: https://gamefound.com/projects/awaken-realms/iss-vanguard#/
$100 for a copy of the game, $180 if you want to add minis but let me just point out that said minis saw very little use in Tainted Grail and so far in Etherfields have been kind of a waste also. And ISS Vanguard doesn’t look like it will be an exception to that rule.
I know Quinns was down on Etherfields, and NPI on Tainted Grail, but the latter is my favorite game this year and probably #2 or 3 on my all time list, and Etherfields is shaping up extremely nicely in my book, so I’m there with bells on for ISS Vanguard. Especially after all the cool art and stuff they’ve shown in bonus books they gave out with recent projects.
Due to Covid I’m yet to play the lab rats or with anything from Splice & Dice. Tink made my brain hurt though. I’ll put that down to long covid brian fog
