Stark Vs. Lannisters In A Song Of Ice & Fire On Kickstarter Now
July 26, 2017 by deltagamegirl22
The day has finally arrived. CoolMiniOrNot has launched A Song Of Ice & Fire: A Tabletop Miniatures Game on Kickstarter.
Soon you will be able to battle Starks vs. Lannister on the table as you try to lead your favourite characters to victory.
I have been looking forward to this ever since we had the pleasure of playing the game at CMON Expo this year. In a collaboration with George R. R. Martin and Dark Sword Miniatures, they've created some really beautiful, one piece miniatures.
There's your standard fodder characters or Combat Units, for mixing it up in battle, plus your special characters. These are recognizable warriors that can help drive the plans of your house, while offering extra bonuses to the units they are with.
And then there's one more type of character. These are the Non-Combat Units. These characters come into play in the Tactics portion of play. You can try to influence things going on in the game through the use of your powerful, recognizable character.
These characters also bring extra cards with them for your Tactics Deck.
This is probably my favorite part of the game. You try your hardest to tactically maneuver your units to your advantage on the table, and just when you've got the enemy exactly where you want them...they produce a card from their tactics deck that foils your carefully crafted plan!
The tactics cards offer all sorts of twists and turns. There's things to be played to strengthen your efforts in an attack, there are things to minimize the effectiveness of the enemy's attack and all sorts of other shenanigans.
I think my favorite answer to all the questions asked about what else/who else we'll see in the game moving forward was, "If it happened in the books, it's fair game."
And naturally there is a Kickstarter Exclusive mini, The High Seneschal!
Now you just need to decide which side of this massive war you're going to be fighting on.
Will you be joining the fight for the iron throne?
"Soon you will be able to battle Starks vs. Lannister on the table as you try to lead your favourite characters to victory..."
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They timed it well with the start of the new season.
A rank and file system that depends strongly on high unit counts and a continuous support regarding rules and new units/models, quite a task and not sure Coll Mini is up to it.
Wrath of Kings is going pretty slow and you hardly will find someone to play with here in germany its pretty much dead here.
Maybe Cool Mini is too far away form the european market and beyond the initial reap there is not much to make and thus support has to be cut down pretty quickly.
for being such a huge or important franchise this kickstarter has let me cold. 0 hype for one of my all time favourite series. It is a boardgame? it is a wargame? A mix? I think it fails as a boardgame and also fails as a wargame. The miniatures are standard medieval settting. Nothing fancy. Nothing real cool. Maybe its because im influenced by the TV series but if they sell me the same miniatures using another name i wont notice. For being a Song of Ice and Fire i was expecting a LOT more. Imho Martin’s work deserves a… Read more »
It’s a rank & file fantasy wargame. It’s no more a board game than the Age of Sigmar two-player starter.
Age of Sigmar is a true ‘bored’ game. 😉
Have you played it yet @cpauls1? Nope? Thought not.
You’re right. I watched a game while painting, then declined when asked if I wanted to try a game.
I think they missed an opportunity here – a 15mm or smaller mass ranked battle game would have been awesome, but then they wouldn’t have been able to tempt people with the GoT character minis in the same way.
Personally I can wait for the Joan of Arc game to nail this fantasy~medieval battle genre at a smaller scale.
Rank and file is great as long as the minis aren’t too expensive to support the system. The reason (IMO) Wrath of Kings is failing (and it is failing – they were giving away full starter sets for free in the Adepticon swag bags) is that the models are just far too expensive to support that type of mass battle game.
Also being PVC minis, they need to be cheap for folks to even consider due to the lower production quality inherent in PVC miniatures compared to hard styrene.
£115 for possibly 150+ GoT miniatures is reason enough for me to back this.
I don’t care much whether the game is good or will be supported, I just want to paint the figures.
If the game turns out to be a success like Mantic’s TWD where lots of people were sceptical at first it would definitely be a bonus, of course 😉
PVC miniatures. Next.
Someone earlier said the Wrath of Kings minis were better quality than 40k minis. I nearly choked on my cuppa.
PVC ? Ok 101% pass for me.
PVC has come a long way in the last few years…
Kinda depends on what grounds they where comparing quality, sculpting and design, or production. In truth the WoK minis are very nice, and boundaries on PVC are being pushed.
I have many WoK models and for PVC they really did capture detail well. Compare it to GW plastic is a far stretch I agree, but to ForgeWorld resin with all its mold lines WoK comes out on top.
Models look good and game could be interesting to play.
Seems a little late in the day to me, by the time this ships (if they can send it out on time) you’d have a couple of months till the last season airs. What happens after that? I assume it would die out or at the most go the way of GW LoTRs game…while it is still going (just) it seems very shaky and I haven’t seen anyone play a game of it for years.
End of this season, then probably be another year to the last one, but apparently there are numerous spin off series planned, Inc. Ones which go back before (so probably a better timeline for this actually)
gaargh, back from bowling (n some bevvies) n I see this. Another Kickstarter backed… blame the vodka…
Anyone else noticed that the High Seneschal seems to actually be a figure of George R Martin?
I really like the models, and rules look really interesting. However, there is zero interest in my gaming circle and the price point is not one where I would take a chance I can sell it to an apathetic set of friends. Maybe when it hits retails there maybe a little more interest.
I’ll take some models when they retail, thank you! 🙂
I’m going to go for this I think. I’m glad this is based on the books rather than the TV series – I like the TV series, but love the books. The very historical look of the figures is right up my street. The game looks pretty good. Vaguely similar to kings of war, except with alternating activations and the added cards and non combat characters influencing things off table (which is a cool idea, in keeping with the IP). One thing I would quite like in the campaign – some photos of painted figures with textured/flocked movement trays on… Read more »
Currently at 123 minis
the figures look fabulous painted up.
agree with Andy but will pass on this one. im in to skirmish this days.
They look great. But I really don’t like PVC as it seems to always retain bends in the thin parts, even after hot water. Resin and plastic for me please.
The weapons and arms are hard plastic rather than PVC.
That’s great news and deals with my main concern.
I’ve backed this. I can’t wait. I’d say its going to be great.
Also I have a bunch of historical minis Im doing up as a Lannister army which predates this. Im going to work away on these for now and hope the scale is the same. Can’t wait.
I suppose that it would be better if they based the game on the tv series. AS someone has said it may be like GW Lotr that once the movies ended it started dying even when GW or Forge World still supports or better, still sells, the game. Once Game of thrones TV series ends i guess it will fade and die as it just a game based on the books. No one can outside of the game can say: Hey, that one is Ned Stark! as it happens with GW Lotr. Maybe just Tyrion resembles Peter Dinklage. I own… Read more »
You can bet that GoT will get endless re-runs once the series finishes …
Heck, there are supposed to be spin-offs AFAIK
So unlike LotR/Hobbit there is plenty of content still to come.
Also, getting tired of the Kickstarter formula. Not to mention that Cmon doesnt need to use kickstarter to sell anything or develop a game. In the end pay a lot of money for something you wont see in a year. You end buying more than you need only to get some useless (im gaming terms) exclusives.
And that is killing local hobbystores.
End of the rant
From what I have read, there will be more of an attempt by CMoN with this one to try and help out retailers a bit.
So, less KS exclusives, lots of the expansions being available retail only etc.
I assume some more support for the EU would help a bit as well, as I believe it’s fairly hard to get hold of a lot of their releases if you don’t back them with a KS.
It would take three or four forevers for the game to see the light of day in that case as each individual actor would have to approve their likeness and thats after HBO approve it too. It could be a bigger debacle than the AVP game with Fox and Prodos.
It didnt take a single forever for GW and Lotr or the hobbit. But a license based on the HBO series for sure it wont cost 150 USD for backers. Just take a look at hobbit or Lotr prices.
And GW also send the Perrys and Co. to New Zealand, where they did get to hang out with a miniature collecting Peter Jackson and make him a custom WWI army. That might have helped things get moving for them.
With secondary products being a big deal, production companies usually have actors sign over such rights in the initial contract, at least in movies. They’ve been making action figures in actors’ likenesses for a long time now. With money being involved, it’s definitely not complicated to do.
Delivery is in April 2018, so it isn’t a years wait fingers crossed!
I’m glad they went for the books rather than the TV show, just like Mantic did. Guess time will tell..
And as mentioned before, arms and weapons are hard plastic to avoid bendy bits.
CMON has never ever delivered on time and they are running 3 other campaigns right now and if history is guide, it will be a minimum of 4 months late at best case and 8 months late with high possibility of a hitting 2019 before most receive their pledge.
Bah! By the time this is out the TV show will be almost over and nobody will care about it anymore. Not like the Warhammer 40K TV show which will be around forev… Oh wait.
Think it looks good so far. They just need to pile on the extras.
They have specifically said they do not want to pile on the extras but they will have some. They have repeated several times in their posts they want the extras to be in the retail shop and this game is suppose to be retail focused. I believe they even eluded to the fact that they want this to be like X-Wing with changing meta over time so you keep purchasing as well as they want to support tournaments. IMHO, many are simply purchasing for the miniatures that can be used in other games.
They also said that about SMOG – they lied.
I think their communication on this has been poor. They’ve said they’re not planning on releasing a lot of exclusive pieces, because they’re not releasing any gameplay exclusives. They never actually said they weren’t going to have lots of extra stretch goal content for your pledge, but they were so off message it wasn’t clear. In another forum someone said they guaranteed not to have stretch goals. They didn’t do that at all, but with such a muddled delivery I’m not surprised they thought that. I can’t guarantee the end package will be a great value, but I don’t believe… Read more »
For me PVC is a boon. Most of the minis I’ve painted are PVC and while mould line removal is more involved then hard plastic and sometimes you can get minis with some faults to it, they still paint up well and much, much more durable. I’ve had my friends shove my painted zombies all across a table, grab em by the handful and generally put them to use without me having to worry. Other then two minis I’ve posted here(The Slaughterpriest and Snake Plisskin) all my minis I’ve photographed have been PVC and no one’s called em hideous yet.… Read more »
There’s a stigma to PVC due to the early ‘restic’ years. Now that hard plastic is increasingly being used for parts that would be bendy in PVC, and tooling has improved, I don’t think hard plastic is any better than PVC as a material.
Exactly, quality PVC models are just as good as plastic, the CMON Wrath of Kings models are fantastic, they have the hard plastic weapons as well.
I was excited about this at first, but the more I’ve looked at this I just find it increasingly disappointing looking. I’ll reserve final judgement until towards the end of the campaign but currently “I’m out”
People are voting with their wallets on this one…
– GoT Licenced game
– CMoN KS…
So how come a week in it’s struggling at less than $750k? Most CMoN projects are one to two $million up by this stage.
– http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/cmon/a-song-of-ice-and-fire-tabletop-miniatures-game/
– http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/coolminiornot/rising-sun/
Are we seeing the wheels falling off CMoN’s KS Juggernaught?
Nope, this is not a boardgame where most of their sales go, project is doing fine.
This will have no impact on their KS business. It’s a different animal to those projects.
There’s lots of mini companies that would be thrilled to make this much, but even pulling away the schadenfreude, the interest has been underwhelming. Maybe they’re popping Champagne bottles at CMON for making 700k in three days, I don’t know, but for the daily totals to fall to the low $20,000s a day is strange. A lot of people on their comment section have been clamoring for Add-Ons and saying that’ll cause the thing to shoot up, but they added lots of Add-Ons and it’s not shot up at all. I think many of the people who would be interested… Read more »
I think the game has issues as the market is not kind to rank & file games. However, from a KS point of view this is already well on its way to becoming the most funded wargame on KS, and that’s despite offering a reduced product line with no gameplay KSE. This is what I expected the campaign would do (and I’m not being wise after the event as I was discussing this very thing last weekend with some gaming friends). I can’t believe CMON aren’t smart enough to have expected this also.
Yeah, you’re probably right, and I’m sure CMON has some market projection to get a feeling in advance for what it would do. Though, big players like Games Workshop have never done a Kickstarter to know how successful that sort of thing would be, I’d think CMON would have to hope they might be the first to have the clout and the product to generate something huge. But again, I still think it can have a huge backend if the stretch goals add a lot.
It may be that it’s doing worse than even they expected, but given that they practically wrote the book on how to make money on KS, they must know that this project isn’t doing some important things that they do on other campaigns, and that would make the ceiling quite a bit lower. I do think they’ve made the same error that FFG made with RuneWars, in thinking that GW pulling WFB meant there was a big gap in the market for a rank & file fantasy game, when in fact it meant there is no great market for rank… Read more »
As Hithero has said, this is a miniature wargame not a board game. Market is that much smaller.
As it stands believe this is already the highest total for a miniature wargame
Well… depends on the definition. Mythic Battles Pantheon is a miniature wargame with a (very large) board to serve as a map. That did nearly $2.7 million. And Conan, which was related to it, is at worst a hybrid skirmish miniatures game, with board game elements, and it did $3.3 million. The market is big enough.
I am not sure what point you are making. Neither Conan nor Mythic Battles:Pantheon are rank and file wargames.
Well we’re saying miniature games didn’t have a big market. As far as rank file games not having a big market… there’s absolutely no proof of that. Warhammer got run into the ground by GW, but that doesn’t tell us that there’s not 20,000 or 30,000 people on Earth willing to buy into a rank and file game on Kickstarter. So until there is some proof, it’s utter conjecture.
Mythic Battles is a self-contained big box miniature board game, and those are the types of games that consistently do best on KS. You can back the campaign even at just the base pledge and get a lot of content, and you don’t need anyone else to have backed it to be able to play. The draft element means it has no factions, so everyone can get the same core pledge and find it equally playable, even in a tournament. When you go down the wargame route of having multiple factions and each player needs their own, then KS becomes… Read more »
What you’re saying is true redben, games like Mythic do have an advantage in terms of the package that they’re selling and the fact that there’s just one faction (Greek Mythology) that plays against itself. But as I’ve been watching people argue about this on their Kickstarter page for the last couple days, I do think there were (still maybe are) ways to ameliorate some of those weaknesses. They could show off their long-term plans, tell us what’s coming in the second starter so it becomes real to people, and get focused on selling the game right now to Kickstarter… Read more »
Yeah, I’m increasingly beginning to think this is a product which is caught between two stools. They know they need it to succeed at retail as it can’t survive without retail given the type of product it is, but they want to launch it on KS to create buzz and get it into people’s hands at launch. It’s looking to be a tricky thing to pull off.
@frankelee WFB was a failing line for a long time before GW pulled the plug on it. RuneWars is now struggling at retail, Kings of War was passed by several other Mantic products, and there aren’t any others that have made real money. The ceiling for rank & file wargames is low. Whether that’s because of the number of models, the repetiveness of the model, the table space they usually need, or people don’t like maneuvering blocks of minis around the table, they’ve just always done poorly in comparison to non-rank & file games. Check out the top 5 sellers… Read more »