Soloman Kane KS about to arrive, and I couldn't care less!

[limburger 21704xp 1]

Anyone considering that any company is their ‘friend’ is in for a dissapointment sooner or later.

Kickstarters sell you a promise to deliver a product.
There is no need for them to deliver a good product, because they have your money already.
There is no need to meet any deadlines, unless they are retail related because they have your money already.

Heck … the only reason these deadlines exist at all is because any time the product (or the materials required to build it) is sitting in storage is costing them money. And their only reason for shipping it is to make sure it stops costing them money.

Mythic simply were lucky when their initial projects managed to deliver on time and on target.
That meant people expected them to be on target for the next ones … so the delay for SK simply hit harder than any other kickstarter that failed to meet its expected deadlines.

There also isn’t any amount of testing that can prevent a 1st edition product to be perfect.
I’d even argue that to expect such products to be flawless when it is pretty obvious that it is a new type of system is wishful thinking at best.

I do expect Ragnarok to be less problematic, because they do have the previous game in the series to build on.
Solomon Kane is heavy story based adventure … not something they’ve done before.

Joan Arc was another unique style of game with practically zero practical examples to build on.
Same applies to Darkest Dungeon and Reichsbusters.

They are fixing Reichsbusters with an errata pack … which contains reprinted bits because they wanted to make it a more complete product. They could have done the errata. To me that says that they wanted to make the product better for everyone.

As for v1.5 Joan D’Arc … instead of a mere expansion we’re getting both updated rules and a new expansion. They could have done the expansion and let their customers deal with the crappy rules, but they didn’t.

As nice as all of that is … they’re still not our friends.
They do what is best for them.

You don’t have a meeting with a close friend.
You’ve got a meeting with a stranger you gave money to in advance who may or may not have something interesting to offer.
It is up to you to decide if you’re still interested if they delay the meeting over and over, but your loss is already a given.
It is up to you to decide if their excuses are valid or not, but you’re not getting the money back either way.

I haven’t seen anything that made me question their decisions. At best I never realised how complicated the game itself was going to be, but that’s their problem … not mine.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

@horus500 to a degree I can totally understand you not wanting anything further to do with Mythic. Because of the delays and poor past experiences you don’t want to be associated with them anymore, that’s a totally reasonable stance, but also one that I didn’t dispute. I don’t know if we were talking at crossed purposes – I was talking about the interest in the interest/anticipation about a specific product that you are about to receive rather than your relationship with the company making it.  If you have indeed backed previous Mythic Kickstarters and they all turned out to be awful games, I can also see why that would also dampen your enthusiasm for the game (although again that’s not related to project delays) or at least give you a sense of caution about getting too excited.

So I am not going to try and tell you why you continue to give Mythic Games your money because if you aren’t happy with the service you absolutely should not. But I would say you can probably allow yourself a little excitement about getting the game you paid for whilst simultaneously distancing yourself from its creator.  I have never backed a Mythic Games kickstarter in my life (Mythic Battles was technically Monolith) so I really don’t have a particular affinity for them as a business nor any experience of dealing with them.

@maledrakh I can also see why having too many games already would be a cause for lack of enthusiasm when receiving delivery of a kickstarter.  I have pretty much stopping backing new games on kickstarter, although I will back for expansions/sequels to existing games if it’s one that I like.  I will worry about where to store it later

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

@limburger I would say companies like Mythic (and Monolith) do need to deliver a good product because they rely entirely on kickstarter. If they don’t deliver a good product they will lose backers in the future. Given the issues almost all of these companies face when dealing with manufacturing, especially in China, it’s inevitable that there will be delays – possibly very big delays. If you’re going deliver your product late (and they almost always do) then you had better get it right. On the cost quality time triangle, their costs are fixed meaning they have to strike a balance between quality and time.

[limburger 21704xp 0]

If the product is late due to manufacturing being delayed then there is little fixing one can do as all the fixes need to be done before manufacturing starts.
Extra play testing effectively means that there will be errata and fixes the moment the product arrives and that can leave a bad taste.

Of course companies can’t just shovel crap out the door and keep getting backers for their kickstarters.
I think that (IMHO) Mythic has been ok. They’re not perfect, but I don’t get the impression that they willingly released a bad product based on their efforts so far on fixing problems. There will always be people who demand ‘more’. I think their Batman games are the only ones that were a bit of a dissapointment, but I put that down to the kind of tunnel vision that can occur during development/playtesting.

OTOH … it’s not like non kickstarter companies always deliver quality products either.

Companies need to make hard choices … and the customer isn’t their priority when those choices get made.
So a substandard product does get shipped from time to time.

I think the one disadvantage that Mythic have is that they haven’t decided on a core product that they’re going to support ‘forever’. Although Super Fantasy Battles appears to be headed that way.

And as with many things … Covid has limited the amount of physical contact, which is bad news for play testing as that sort of stuff is limited when you’re not able to talk face to face with a physical product in hand.
I hope SK hasn’t suffered, but we’ll see when it gets here if that is true.

I must admit that I’m never one who is worried about rules too much.
I probably wouldn’t have had a problem with the SPQR rules as others clearly had.

[ced1106Participant 6224xp 3]

I regularly read OP’s POV in KS comments and BGG forums, so, while I don’t understand as in empathize, I see it as a legit feeling. My guess could be one’s emotional perception of time. I easily forget the hype, so also forget that I’ve paid for a project until it turns up a few years later, no delay or long delays. So it comes up as a neat surprise — but then so does any new game I buy. I far prefer holiday sales, but they, of course, only happen during the holidays.

I also have low expectations — for delays. I’ve had two KS fail, and one deliver poor quality miniatures (hello, Cryptozoic). I’m waiting on Myth Journeyman, although I received the two expansions and cards.

I don’t know any way to avoid delay risk on KS. Even CMON recently announced a major delay with its Trudvang boardgame, and they’re a KS company with more experience than Mythic.

[limburger 21704xp 0]

must admit that initially I followed every kickstarter I had backed and every update.
These days I just ‘fire and forget’ … it kind of does prevent delays from causing problems, but I’ve also noticed that I don’t have as much enthusiasm for a product when it does arrive.

OTOH … I got my copy of Evil Inc. kickstarter and despite the delays I can’t wait to play that one.
Looking at the kickstarter page again helped me remind me why I did back it originally.

(note : I haven’t backed a kickstarter for 2 months now … )

[horus500 11505xp 3]

Just an update on the Soloman Kane KS, the first half arrived today. The miniatures are large – 30mm as opposed to 28mm bigger than GW humans. Some of the sculpts are great, others ……not so much.

The fact that the game was made by Mythic is ultimately irrelevant. I have 2 more KS on the way and I’m enthusiastic about both but either way I’m done with KS for all the reasons I detailed before.

@ced1106 that Dork Tower was funny because it was true.

@limburger your last line makes it sound like you are a recovering drug addict!

[zoidpinhead 12492xp 2]

Intersting discussion.  Thanks to contributors and @horus500 for starting us off.  I’m a Solomon Kane all-in backer and have Conan and Mythic Battles: Pantheon (1.0 and 1.5) as well as Batman: Gotham City Chronicles and Kingdom Death 1.5 so I have experienced plenty of complexity and delay in KS delivery with these epic experience, miniature heavy boardgames.

I’m excited to finally be getting Solomon Kane as I’m still as much a fan of REH and this character as I was when I backed it.  Still annoyed about the delays mostly because of the inconsistent communication that made it seem like they just weren’t working on the game for such a long time.  Also worth noting this is only the main game and as an all-in backer I’m owed the expansions too (no deadline for when they will get here).

I won’t back another one of Monolith or Mythic’s projects on KS.  Both have shown an intention to go to online retail to provide an additional outlet for their print runs and I’ll look there for stuff I thought was cool (HEL, and the Scythe ripoff Steamwatchers).

The issue for me is one of the trust relationship between me and the company.  To make a mistake as an up and coming independent business and get your timings wrong on a bigger than you anticipated project is forgiveable.  What isn’t acceptable is to use that as a positive business model and run one ambitious Kickstarter after another, using the money from new projects to fund the completion of old ones.  This over stretches your design and management time/capacity as you need to constantly develop new projects to keep fresh money coming in at the expense of fixing and finishing existing projects for which you have had (and already spent) the money.

Kickstarter relies on trust as it isn’t a preorder platform – it is a speculative investment platform.  They have proven themselves untrustworthy by my judgement.  No trust means no more money for them.  Kickstarter on the other hand is still somewhere my money goes.  I tend to back either STL projects (Iain Lovecraft’s are great, The Frost is running right now) or model based projects (Agema’s Etruscans last year and today Ragnarok’s naughty dwarves).  I want to support small business in my hobby and will return to people who deliver what they promise when they say they will e.g. Iain Lovecraft.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

@horus500 are the miniatures worth painting. Asking the #importantquestions

Also, would you possibly use them for anything else? Generally speaking if I am backing a big kickstarter with lots of miniatures I will decide based partly on whether I think I can use the miniatures for something else, such as an RPG.  And generally speaking, as long as the characters are good, I don’t mind so much if the faceless minions are a little lacking, they will probably end up just getting a lick of contrast paint and a brown wash.  I genuinely hope that you get some use/enjoyment out of the product

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 1]

@ced1106 That cartoon is how some of my friends approach kickstarter. It’s like buying a present for future you. Unfortunately I track mine quite closely using a spreadsheet so I can see when things are planned to be delivered, whether things are going wrong, perceived risk of failure or in some cases highlighting that something has failed.  So sadly I rarely get that unexpected gift feeling ?

[limburger 21704xp 0]

@horus500 yeah it does, doesn’t it ?
I realised I was backing too many projects without even thinking if I had any real use for them and why I was throwing money at them after they had achieved their funding goal when I didn’t really like the subject matter so much that I needed to have a ‘pre order’ or the ‘exclusive’ bits on offer.

I also developed an intense dislike for all the kickstarter ‘exclusive’ crap that gets added, because there is no reason to deny anyone access to those things if they are a good addition to the game/experience.

@zoidpinhead without access to the financials of the company it is hard to judge what part of a kickstarter funding is used to fill gaps in the budget of existing project. Companies that do that tend to die (as happened to NinjaDivision … ). Such things tend to hit a brick wall eventually. I see no sign of that with Mythic. Besides they did say they were re-evaluating how they would use Kickstarter as a platform in the future. They have been pretty honest and open about their plans to use crowdfunding as a fancy webshop for generating hype and pre-orders …

Estimating production time is hard. Even for experienced people who have to make estimates for similar projects get it wrong.
Anyone claiming they can be accurate in planning when they have dependencies on 3rd parties is delusional at best and a scam artist at worst.

If anything Covid has proven how fragile the hobby industry really is and how dependent as a world we are on the production facilities of a single country. It is something anyone could have seen coming, but few realised it could happen at all because 99 times out of 100 no real problems were caused as the buffers used in planning were big enough to handle most delays.

The problem with most kickstarters isn’t so much in crowdfunding as a concept, but in how much research the backers themselves do before throwing money at a new shiny thing. Look at how much is shown and what is missing from a project when you back.

STL-files can be a ‘safe’ bet, because any model shown during the kickstart effectively means that they are 90% complete on that part.

If you see a barely functional prototype or if a lot of stretchgoals get unlocked then you know there is a ton of work that still needs to be done.

Nobody can do the risk assesment of a kickstarter for you.
This isn’t about trust, because I seriously doubt companies blatantly lie about their estimates …
This is about understanding that estimates are exactly that … estimates based on the available information and promises/arrangements made ahead of time.

It’s been said often enough that you shouldn’t buy into a kickstarter if you couldn’t afford to pick a match and burn the money you are about to invest. You need a similar approach to any deadlines and dates mentioned during the kickstarter from start to finish. You’re getting the best possible answer based on available data.

Every time a kickstarter team held back any information it was because they weren’t sure if it was accurate enough.
I’ve seen countless of idiots trying to scream ‘scammer’ when the initial post clearly indicated that there was a margin for error/uncertainty and the deadline passed and the team had to post that a deadline had been missed.

It can be pretty damn tricky to decide when to post about a possible delivery when it is ‘next week’ .. only to have to tell people that it wasn’t going to happen because a 3rd party dropped the ball. The only teams that ever are accurate are the ones that have full control over the process from start to finish and that’s only if and only if the proces itself is something they have done before.

[horus500 11505xp 2]

@onlyonepinman some of the minis are great. Some, are beautiful, others not so much.The plastic feels a little strange but only in that it feels like the plastic they’d use in toys. There are a few animals in the collection and they look very well fed and perhaps suffering dwarfism. Also the scale of soloman Kane is out on some figures. Theres one in the set where he has a slight bend to the knees and bend to the back. The pose looks natural but you realise if that SK stood up straight, he’d tower over the other SK who is standing straight. They are about the size of GW Stormcast Eternals.

@limburger the exclusive trap is the one I always fall for! It never pays off as I just end up with more crap than I’ll ever play with.

@zoidpinhead – 100% agree with all of it. STL files for me from now on, but before I go down that rabbit hole I need to buy a 3D printer. I’ll get that when I make it through what I’ve already got – in other words, the next life.

[onlyonepinman 18060xp 0]

The plastic on the miniatures in most board games is PvC which is very common in toys

[limburger 21704xp 0]

@horus500 given that this is a boardgame where the minis function as pawns the lack of consistent scale doesn’t really surprise me. It may very well be intentional so Solomon Kane is always ‘the big’ mini compared to the monsters.

Do the Virtues look good ?
Because to me those are what sold the game to me (miniature wise).

The exclusivity trap is hard to avoid. I effectively have to tell myself : “no you do not need this kickstarter at all.(period)”
Because when I back I tend to go ‘all in’ as the entry levels often have too little of the actual game to be ‘useful’.
The Scale 75 instant colour kickstarter demonstrated this perfectly.
Yes … you could buy just one set of colours. However they were distributed in such a way that the colours that you ‘need’ are likely to be found in multiple sets (as proven when you look at which paints they used in their tutorial videos).
As they are a business and their goal is to maximize sales this is unfortunately a standard strategy.

[horus500 11505xp 2]

@limburger the virtues are excellent. Particularly the darker one. A painters dream.

in regards to scale, it’s just handy to be able to us minis in other games.

I tend to find plastic comes with different textures and flexibility.

The more time I spend looking at this game the less impressed I am. The neoprene mat is just a mat made from Neoprene with the box cover art on it. It serves no purpose other than to be a mat. A tablecloth would do the same job.

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