Sybaris

Sorry Fetid, if you can speculate that it was intended to be as small, so can i speculate that it is a mistake.

About the pricing...the webstore is a great point to start.

The current prices looks to be set by brackets, with the most expensive things being crew boxes, ranging from 35 to 50, in 5$ increments.  Indidividual sets range between 11$ to 35$, going through 15,16, 18, 21). Notice the absence of a 25$ product. The prices seems to be based on the kit's complexity (size, detail) and the number of models. To be honest the prices seems to be far more based on production costs than marketing potential (ophelia is 50$, just like Justice, but there's 8 models in there)...or at least it doesn't play much more than 5$ from what we can see. Limited editon stuff is completely different, of course.

Now about the "speculation" that the resizing was intended...

Notice that in their explanation, they never said they intended Nekima to be smaller, they were careful to avoid talking aobut that...rather they just said that, due to someone's health, the price was put out wrong and basically...it was forgotten until the forums went raging about it then went for a partial refund.

Health is a very serious issue, i am sad to hear stuff is going wrong for anyone, but from a company's perspective, personal issues should never be used as a scapegoat to explain a company's mistake. It's basic business... (a dog ate the documents, darn!). As a buyer, can i use my health to ask a full refund on the order?

A kit's price...surely isn't decided during black friday...it's most likely decided before production orders even starts, to at least have figures to work with. I suspect a few swear words were heard in the studio when they found out Nekima was that small, whenever they actually found it.

It felt as if the company decided to wait and see...and then was caught off-guard by the community's outrage and went for the partial refund solution to prevent the loss of the sales. Surely, if it was intended...it would have been better from a PR point of view to mention this much earlier, before people even press the buy button on the webstore or get the orders in the mail. It was obvious that people would be mislead, since there was no way at all for any customer to expect the model to be that small...and mislead customers are seriously bad for business (again, basic stuff).

That could lead someone to speculate that it wasn't intended to be this small.

The real aftermath of this, for me, is that my wife is no longer a fan of the company...she knows how much time i spent to test Nekima and the 2nd edition (she had to be on the other side of the table), and so wanted to give the model to me even if we had the metal. Now she wants me to send the thing back. I had to explain ther the issue...and she is shocked that there was no way of knowing the size of the miniature at purchase, given there was no indication of such change from the previous one (at least comparable to a Mature, being Ht3). No other model got this kind of shrinkage. She compares it to buying clothes online, not knowing the size, then being offered a discount when it's not found to her liking. Her analogy is better than i thought initially, because the concept of "fitting" is subjective, just like the concept of a miniature that feels too small. In the case of clothes, she just returns the items for a full refund.

In any case...the model seems to have sold relatively well, otherwise the reaction wouldn't have been this big and this thread wouldn't have such a following.

Since the model is not officially released yet, they still have time to do something about it, and unlike some other companies, they've done it before, like when the Viks box got giant ronins. So i am not completely out of hope.

As stated previously, the current mini-Nekima can work very well as an alternate Barbaros (fits on a 40mm). To turn this whole affair with a bit of humor, I would call her Miss Scale  

Who knows...maybe they'll turn around and come up with a miraculous descision of making a re-size set at the correct price (35$)...

I agree that the potential sculpt of the new plastic was great. Granted they changed the tone of Nekima from majestic to barbaric, but i think they had some success there, and it wasn't easy because as you said the first art piece was so great.

So...Wyrd replied, basically those who talked about $ got some of their money back. I think that's great for them, but those left who want(ed) to see a bigger Nekima logically won't see anything done about it for a long long time...if ever. I think it's a missed opportunity but is there really something we can do? I wish, and would be the first to back a project to "fix" it for good.

That being said, while waiting the long wait, there's always proxies if someone doesn't like the old metal sculpt but wants something bigger. Some are more fitting than others but here are a couple:

Sophie 72/54mm  (Reaper Miniatures) fits the bill of the 1st edition art piece pretty well (without cloven feet though).

Lithe, extremely large, huge sword and giant wings. Very playable on a 50mm.

There is a clothed and a nude version of this, so careful on the web searches at work. Still metal, but doesn't require much skill to build.

Nalach, the evil shadow (Andrea Miniatures)

very tall, very large sword, much more horrific and gnarled in concept, but still fitting the description quite well and can fit a 50mm.

NSFW sadly, but that's an easy find from home. Made in resin, had no issue building it, but some less experienced modelists might find it tricky.

Her head seems smaller/on par with Lilith's and her sword is about the same lenght as her sister and less imposing than Barbaros's macahuatl. It doesn't look like she has 3" melee range. Her wings are on par with a young's....not even close to a Mature.

I am not exaggerating when saying that it's completely off the descriptions. 

So...why would they decide to do this anyway? There was nothing to gain imho.

Agreed with the "temporary" aspect of this fix...i wonder how many more years is it going to take to get it right, if ever.

• Took years for the rules to get shaped up. Didn't happen for 1st ed...still M2E came in to save the day.
• They managed a nice feat to create a new look (artwork) for nekima that was quite fine despite the original being great.
• Then they make her much, much smaller than the original.

But why make her smaller?  Surely no one at Wyrd sat down one morning and declared  "Guys, let's shrink Nekima, she's too big right now" at random, when you have rail or ice golems lurking about. This feels more like they discovered it was smaller than expected, then forgot to ajust the price accordingly....speculating of course.

On the long term though, this fix will still leave us with a shrunk Nekima on the game tables and i wish there was something we (yes, Wyrd and the part of the community that are fans of Nekima) could do about it.

Kickstarter, Indiegogo, Nightmare edition...something.

The fatemaster's almanach's Neverborn generic description may be the cause for my memory bumble (as i may have thought "so that explains it" when reading the part where it says that some neverborn can choose their appearance or at least evolve differently). That said i had in mind a passage where it said that her form suited her...or something to that effect. It could be linked with pandora's stories indeed. At least i think it was in the first editions book. Couldn't find it so i assumed i just made that conclusion over time.

You can see the pictures at the start of the thread. What is AWP?

Well that's the easier way to get it done, i guess....but imho that was not the issue. It was the model's size, and that didn't have much to do with what was paid for it.

25$ for something i won't use is better than 35$...yes.

But i'd still prefer 35$ for something i would use.

Thanks for wyrd to actually do something, never easy in business, even if it's not what i hoped it would be.

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That said, please..by all means...please make a Nightmare version of Nekima. You got the rules down this edition...so with the right model (and you don't even need to change the pose or sculpt, just resize)....it'd be perfect...finally.

To support the idea that it might be a scale issue, i'm looking at the rest of the range. There's quite a few of the previously "large" miniatures that actually got beefed up rather than shrinked down on the metal-to-plastic transition. The features on human sized models are finer (compare Lilith versions or Lady Justice) but the big guys got bigger from what i can see (Lord Chompy Bits, Ice Golem, Bad Juju, Rogue Necromancy, Sabertooth and Adder...etc.). The new big guys are also pretty large...If someone could put the Rail Golem and Cojo besides the new and old Nekima...it'd illustrate the point as well.

P.S. i won't touch the model atm, i'll wait for an official answer as well. What does worry me is that Wyrd has been silent on this so far...i mean they obviously opened some boxes for QA and saw the product before shipping it.

@Fetid: the potential market also depends on a faction's popularity and the characters concepts appreciation by the players. Then we must add the popularity of a model for its own value as a miniature (i.e. some model types can generate sales just by being of that type...in which case i dare say Nekima has an advantage on the models you named, even though i guess Killjoy may also enjoy some attraction with all zombie/rotting games going on). And then we need to add all other factors we don't even know or can only speculate about.

So all in all, i personally don't think we can make a precise assessment on the "potential market" to justify a pricing policy without the numbers that Wyrd have. They certainly are aware of how popular or irrelevent it is...so for all we know they may have priced that model at 35 in expectation of high OR low sales. To me that means we are just completely in the blue about it.

The thing is, some of us are not satisfied with the size of the model, either because it doesn't fit the character as we "expected" to get, or because of the price tag attached to it.  Those two reasons are valid from a customer's point of view.

Speaking of %, personally I'd go for 1.5 of what she's at atm, so 50% bigger. The sculpt is quite good, and in fact a larger model would make it even better, too. If it was just 20% off the right scale, i wouldn't bother to be honest and live with it...but it's just too far from expectations.

@Vorschlag: sure here goes

"Her cloven hooves dug into the earth, and she rose, towering above the nearest man, easily doubling his size."

"...and the creature's great sword, as long as a horse and wider than a man's waist..."

Malifaux - Rising Powers,  Ambush, p. 19

So the metal model was actually the correct size when taking the 1.5 fluff into account. Those stories are still recognised as valid, are they?

Here's what i've done with my wife. I made her read the fluff. She loved it, and by the end of the stories she knew what masters she wanted to play (Rasputina, the Viks and Colette and had fondness toward Ophelia). So i got those crews and we then started very, very small with the rules.

She had no wargaming background, so we started with a couple of minions. Then we introduced a henchman with some soulstones, and in the end Masters. Keep in mind that this was during the first edition of Malifaux which was far more complicated than this one, so you can probably get it going with henchmen right away. Still, start small no matter what she picks. Given Colette was a bit of a challenge for a newbie, we kept that crew for last.

But basically my advice is to have her read the fluff so she picks what she has interest in. She'll then be "hooked" enough to go through the process of learning the rules and enjoy the challenges they offer.

By now my wife has played plays Raspy, Viks, Ophelia and she's now working toward Colette.

Imho Nekima has a potential for a broader market than just Neverborn players. The "Winged female demon" theme is by and large popular (given the amount of sculpts found from different companies). Personally it's how i found Malifaux, as i was looking for a generic "succubus" miniature for another game, which ultimately made me discover Wyrd and brought us (wife and i) as followers and backers of the game.

Bottom line is we don't know why she's that size, or why she's that price. Wyrd likely has a much clearer idea. As a customer and fan of Malifaux and Nekima the least i can do (and that's all i can do) is to voice my concern and hope that something is done about it.

@ Vorschlag: Actually no, the fluff indicates that Nekima was at least twice as tall as a human, while Lilith is basically human in appearance. Neverborn shape vary a lot...and some can change their appearance to suit their purpose (more obvious ones being Doppleganger, Graves and Tannen).

@ Laocorne:  Sad that it turns out this way.

An unnamed female Nephilim appears in the story Ambush in Rising Powers, I assume it's Nekima since she is introduced in that book. Anyway, she is described as very large and more than twice as tall as a human man.

Indeed that's Nekima, everything fits the description, even the location where the fight takes place (outside Latigo). The "more than twice as tall as a human" also fit the old model correctly. From a writing perspective it was logical not to name her, since the protagonists of the story (Sonia's crew) visibly had no idea who she was, and this helped make sure that Nephilim were portrayed as alien as possible from the reader's point of view.

I don't have my books right now but i do remember a line where it pretty much says that, i'll get back to you later today.

Edit: pm sent, apparently my memory is playing tricks and i can only find indirect text.

( Edit: this appears to be speculation by my own brain, even though imho, it's a valid proposition )

Lilith prefers to look human for her own reason (manipulation, cunning, etc.), and she's the complete opposite of Nekima. Who knows what's Lilith's true form after all? But Nekima, who hates humans with a rage-filled bloodlust, certainly is going to use her most destructive form (or at least one that embodies her state of mind). I personally find the new model far too small to emulate what the stories tell of the character, wasn't she was said to be the largest nephilim in one of them? but yeah i can still use the old model so there's an option.

That said if they ever release a nightmare version of her, it'll be an instant buy.

Gees, when compared on the pics...she really is on Barbaros's scale . Blah...now that's a serious disappointment. Of all the things i expected from the model in M2E, that never came to mind. The same model, twice the bulk/size, would have been perfect.

So alt Barbaros it is. I'm going to hope for a huge Nightmare edition next year.

My order is on the mail and it'll take a while...but if no one did post pics once it arrives, i will.

Weird enough i had fun building the old one

Argh...damn it, why did it have to be so small  . Compared to the new ice golem, and alot of the "old big guys", good lord....i sort of expected she'd be the same size as the old  first edition model at least. It may not be a manufacturer mistake...but it does look quite strange on the pricing/size. 

The Mature is very good with Nekima, imho i've been pleased each game i got him. Contrary to Nekima, the Mature is reliable to do his job without spending a river of cards or soulstones. His speed and attack are great, and his trigger can seriously thwart the plans of your opponent if it occurs at the right time. He also has a defensive (0) in case he is bogged down by fodder. Combining Lilith, a Mature and Nekima in many games proved to be a great "heavy-lifting combo". Mature on one side, Nekima on the other, Lilith going where she needs to.

I don't have game experience with Killjoy sadly, but on paper he's probably able to take on Nekima and either cripple her or win the duel. That said, i don't have my cards atm, but don't you need something to die for him to appear in the first place? If that's the case, it means he may not appear exactly where you want him. Depends if you really need something to "charge up a flank" or want a mega-beater i guess. The Mature may be more indicated to "charge down a flank" thanks to flying.