Any update on TOS goodies?

[Brass Monkey]

Sorry if I sound impatient (I am impatient - especially since last Wyrd Chronicles landed) but do we know if our shiny new TOS toys have left China yet? Have they landed in US? Is someone in Marietta filling boxes at this very minute? How long before onwards shipment to the UK? So many questions and I don't expect much of a response at this time - but any news would be good!

[Harkevich]

From Friday:

[retnab]

As far as we know the shipping-out-to-us dates of late July / early Aug are still the current schedule. Since they've got to be boated out they're almost certainly on the water now, who knows beyond that though.

[Brass Monkey]

"On the boat" sounds promising. Hope that's the case. Hopefully when I get back from hols in September they'll be waiting for me.

[cmusgrove]

I've seen some online stores listing it for sale on October 31st.

Some of the prices are significantly less than what they were during the KS.

Hopefully the KS people will be getting theirs early September.

 

[Brass Monkey]

Crickey you're right. The prices here are less than KS was charging us:

https://www.gamenerdz.com/the-other-side

Fortunately I'm too old to believe everything on the internet, or care about things I can't influence, otherwise that would indeed be a bit of a slap in the face.

[Nathan Caroland]

We'll be shipping out, unless something goes sideways, middle to late August. Most folks will get them end of August and September (particularly overseas) I would expect.

As for that website, apparently, he's selling directly from distribution or has decided to not make a profit so that he can push quantity if I was to guess (there are a few of them that do that oddly enough, hoping they make it up on the added items in their shop or shipping). Certainly will look into it, but yeah - basically it's your internet resellers/retailers that can only do that due to not having to carry deep or can sell and have ordered in fairly quickly from distribution if they are of any decent size. 

[cmusgrove]

Not really a bad thing for the consumer and game.  As a KS backer, I'm a bit bummed because I should have waited to get some things. 

However, I am able to point a few friends that direction and let them know they can get into the game at a lower price point.  Which will be much more appealing to them and grow the community. 

[Brass Monkey]

Choosing Kickstarter was more than just a financial decision for me anyway - I'm happy to have backed something I want to see succeed and contribute in a tiny way towards its awesomeness.

[Nathan Caroland]

Thank you.

 

[Adran]

5 hours ago, cmusgrove said:

Not really a bad thing for the consumer and game.  As a KS backer, I'm a bit bummed because I should have waited to get some things. 

However, I am able to point a few friends that direction and let them know they can get into the game at a lower price point.  Which will be much more appealing to them and grow the community. 

As a commander level backer. I think my pledge is still cheaper overall than that site. I may have been able to pick up some cheaper add ons, but we get the limited edition cards on the kick starter add ons, which seeing how popular the malifaux ones are probably makes the add ons still cheaper. 

And, I back things like this to see them come to fruition, rather than just to save money, 

[PolishSausage]

already have couple people interested in getting the starter sets due to "affordability".

at ~$60.00 this beats out GW's start collecting ( and gets you a playable army).

 

Very good price point for a new game to get people flipping cards.

[Rathnard]

Well if some stores want to sell TOS cheaper than what i paid in the Kickstarter then that's fine by me. Like @Brass Monkey said in happy to have supported the game's creation, and if it encourages more players to dive in then all the better!

[-Loki-]

Kickstarter expectations are skewed by places like CMON that have all but replaced the retail channel with absurd amounts of freebies in the Kickstarter. Sure, you might see a few boxes on shelves in niche stores, but it was all about the Kickstarter if you want value.

Wyrd were using Kickstarter to get the game to retail. Buying in to the Kickstarter was about helping launch the game rather than be the main point of sale.

I went all in on Hordes. I knew that I’d be able to get it cheaper at my local stores with their discount. That wasn’t the point - I love the idea of the game, the miniatures are fantastic, and I wanted to help get it to retail so it has a chance to take off in my area. 

[envyizm]

As much as I understand the whole support aspect of building a gaming community, I'm not sure if blindly supporting a gaming company for the sake of "community" is such a good idea as the complacency of your average gamer has been a sure fire catalyst for gaming companies being notoriously bad at many things (customer service, fair pricing, etc). We are building a gaming community here, not a cult. 

As much as I am excited for this game, I cannot help but be extremely dissatisfied with how poorly deadlines have been met through this entire process. Being a financial investor in a game only to receive the merchandise a month ahead of schedule of retail is kind of absurd. Agree or disagree, I really don't care. I just think the ball was dropped on this project and I really hope they are able to pick it up once it's released. 

Think of how much better our games could potentially be if we actually rooted ourselves in skepticism regarding the companies that profit from our obsession with "community"

[retnab]

19 minutes ago, envyizm said:

As much as I am excited for this game, I cannot help but be extremely dissatisfied with how poorly deadlines have been met through this entire process.

I get what you're saying, but I'll take a temporary delay over a permanently crap model 10 times out of 10.

[-Loki-]

Kickstarter projects get delayed. It just happens. Wyrd are using a relatively new (to them) material and production method. Sure, they did a couple of tests with Aoinus and the Tortoise and Hare set, but those were small compared to the amount of kits they're doing for this. Plus they've been revising their material as well (Aoinus and the Tortoise and Hare and Christmas Rasputina all have different levels of held detail and flexibility of the material).

As for 'blindly' supporting a company. They've made products I enjoy year on year. I'm not sure that's being 'blind'. Blindly supporting someone is backing someone with no company history who are bringing their first ever product to market via kickstarter. That's not what happened with The Other Side.

[envyizm]

 

1 hour ago, -Loki- said:

Kickstarter projects get delayed. It just happens. Wyrd are using a relatively new (to them) material and production method. Sure, they did a couple of tests with Aoinus and the Tortoise and Hare set, but those were small compared to the amount of kits they're doing for this. Plus they've been revising their material as well (Aoinus and the Tortoise and Hare and Christmas Rasputina all have different levels of held detail and flexibility of the material).

As for 'blindly' supporting a company. They've made products I enjoy year on year. I'm not sure that's being 'blind'. Blindly supporting someone is backing someone with no company history who are bringing their first ever product to market via kickstarter. That's not what happened with The Other Side.

As for "supporting" a company. Support can come in many forms, not just monetarily. Blind support can also come in the form of making excuses for a company rather than holding them accountable. This prevents the company from bettering itself thanks to constructive consumer criticism. Creating an counter claim that is conjecture at best is an insufficient excuse. Getting past enjoyment from an game that is connected by story doesn't mean that TOS is going to be a game you actually enjoy playing. It is my assumption that you haven't gotten a chance to play yet, am I right?

With that said, The overall enjoyment of  the products of a company doesn't excuse the same company for putting their financial backers at such low priority compared to the general consumer market. We were essentially investors in this production and they made the decision to put more efforts into making their production viable for full scale retail than serving their investors first. Considering their project was funded at 75 k, and we (As a community) raised 7 times that amount. Placing the retail release so close to backers receiving their share for actually financing the game from the ground up shows very little priority given to said investors. Their delay was not rooted in the company paying their investors back for making their game possible. There is far more evidence to suggest that they double dipped in terms of their retail supply and the supply for their investors than this passive argument rooted in logical fallacy 

As stated before, you can agree or disagree. Frankly, I knew good and well that some of you guys would chime in to defend the company. However, I'm having a hard time justifying why others would agree with your argument.

I'll let you continue to justify these actions with whatever arguments you decide to fabricate in the future, but I'm going to rest my case here. 

2 hours ago, retnab said:

I get what you're saying, but I'll take a temporary delay over a permanently crap model 10 times out of 10.

I definitely agree. However, they set their own timeline and they didn't appear to have issues with the model's quality in production. At least they never let that be known.

[-Loki-]

13 minutes ago, envyizm said:

With that said, The overall enjoyment of  the products of a company doesn't excuse the same company for putting their financial backers at such low priority compared to the general consumer market. We were essentially investors in this production and they made the decision to put more efforts into making their production viable for full scale retail than serving their investors first. Considering their project was funded at 75 k, and we (As a community) raised 7 times that amount. Placing the retail release so close to backers receiving their share for actually financing the game from the ground up shows very little priority given to said investors. Their delay was not rooted in the company paying their investors back for making their game possible. There is far more evidence to suggest that they double dipped in terms of their retail supply and the supply for their investors than this passive argument rooted in logical fallacy

Bullshit. This only makes sense if the sales primary channel is Kickstarter and/or the point of the Kickstarter was to get a significantly early release. If Wyrd had said 'This game will not hit retail until X amount of time after backers get their rewards' and then broke that, you'd have some ground to stand on. Wyrd never made that claim, and made it very clear the whole point was to help the game get to retail, which was to be the primary point of sale.

Personally, I'd much rather it get to retail sooner rather than later because I want opponents to play against. You can't build a community around the product if the community can't buy the product.

[retnab]

8 minutes ago, envyizm said:

I definitely agree. However, they set their own timeline and they didn't appear to have issues with the model's quality in production. At least they never let that be known.

Actually a few times in the updates they mentioned some of the sculpts not really being up to snuff and having to be sent back to be made better.  IIRC the last month or two before they announced they were done was just them getting the last 4 models up to par.  It seems like getting the factory to get it to the level of quality we expected from their HIPS models took more work than they expected, which is fair enough.

When I first heard about TOS I wasn't super keen on another larger scale wargame since I came here after my group left in disgust over WM/H's slew of bad decisions around Mk3.  I originally pledged low, but when I participated in the open Kickstarter beta and actually got some games in I ended up loving it, selling the idea to some of my locals, and pledging in deeper.  On the one hand I see how you'd be concerned about there being a small window between the backers getting their models and them going to retail, but on the other hand if you get your models and you bring it to your LGS and people get excited and ask where they can buy it and you say "Oh sorry, backers get it 4/6/whatever months before it goes to store shelves, you have to wait" would kill the hype that's naturally going to come from a new game being played in a story.  Not to mention that it going to retail sooner means more people playing sooner.  We get our own special goodies like the special edition cards, I don't feel a need to get more than the 1-2 month early window we're probably looking at between me having models and the others at my LGS.

I mean, YMMV, but them starting a new wargame at all is kind of a crazy gamble financially.  If they only got that $75k and a few hundred backers, that might have been an indication to not push so hard into it.  But ending at about $400k and a couple thousand backers should mean they're willing to push the resources into the game that it needs to really thrive.

[-Loki-]

Also, as backers, we got access to the entire catalogue. I very much doubt that the entire catalogue will be available at launch. If you look at the amount of products on offer, each faction has 13 separate releases. This makes sense - on release, drop the rulebook, allegiance boxes, and something else like the small champions. Then for 11 months, 1 release per faction. That lets them keep the release cycle going until the next book, assuming they're sticking to a yearly cycle like Malifaux.

If so, there's already a reward there for backing - you got models up to a year in advance.

[envyizm]

1 hour ago, retnab said:

Actually a few times in the updates they mentioned some of the sculpts not really being up to snuff and having to be sent back to be made better.  IIRC the last month or two before they announced they were done was just them getting the last 4 models up to par.  It seems like getting the factory to get it to the level of quality we expected from their HIPS models took more work than they expected, which is fair enough.

When I first heard about TOS I wasn't super keen on another larger scale wargame since I came here after my group left in disgust over WM/H's slew of bad decisions around Mk3.  I originally pledged low, but when I participated in the open Kickstarter beta and actually got some games in I ended up loving it, selling the idea to some of my locals, and pledging in deeper.  On the one hand I see how you'd be concerned about there being a small window between the backers getting their models and them going to retail, but on the other hand if you get your models and you bring it to your LGS and people get excited and ask where they can buy it and you say "Oh sorry, backers get it 4/6/whatever months before it goes to store shelves, you have to wait" would kill the hype that's naturally going to come from a new game being played in a story.  Not to mention that it going to retail sooner means more people playing sooner.  We get our own special goodies like the special edition cards, I don't feel a need to get more than the 1-2 month early window we're probably looking at between me having models and the others at my LGS.

I mean, YMMV, but them starting a new wargame at all is kind of a crazy gamble financially.  If they only got that $75k and a few hundred backers, that might have been an indication to not push so hard into it.  But ending at about $400k and a couple thousand backers should mean they're willing to push the resources into the game that it needs to really thrive.

You're absolutely right about a few of their delays we pushed due to quality control. I totally forgot about that. However, that put their deadline for production at that point to May/June if I do recall. This would have given us 2-3 months before gen-con where they would have likely sold their product. I'm not sure if their intent would be to kill the hype surrounded around their new game. As for the reality of the situation, we are well into August and will likely not see our kits until September or even later. At this rate, our shipments will go out at the same time retail shipments go out to their vendors and LGS. I mean, it is what it is. 

[envyizm]

1 hour ago, -Loki- said:

Bullshit. This only makes sense if the sales primary channel is Kickstarter and/or the point of the Kickstarter was to get a significantly early release. If Wyrd had said 'This game will not hit retail until X amount of time after backers get their rewards' and then broke that, you'd have some ground to stand on. Wyrd never made that claim, and made it very clear the whole point was to help the game get to retail, which was to be the primary point of sale.

Personally, I'd much rather it get to retail sooner rather than later because I want opponents to play against. You can't build a community around the product if the community can't buy the product.

Sigh... I'll close by reiterating the point that it really doesn't seem as if they made any exclusive priority in providing product for their initial investors over the general population, which I believe strongly to be bad form (This was the entire point of my our conversation). Whether their intentions was X or Y, the fact is that we as investors in the production of this new line were not prioritized by the company while they played with over 400k of our hard earned dollars (from the community you're talking about wanting to play with) and failed to meet several deadlines they themselves set for their product. Creating alternative arguments really rooted in the "I want to play with people" mentality to justify their bad business practice may be in other people's wheelhouse, but not in mine. Cycling arguments rooted in this logic is akin to that of arguing with people about their religious beliefs. People choose to believe all kinds of crazy stuff to dodge the hard realities. You have your ideas about building community and I think it was a crappy move for the company to habitually lie to their founding consumer base (gaming community) due to their ineffective strategies. 

Sadly, this really is what gaming companies do more often than not. 

I'm really at an "agree to disagree" point in our conversation. I really am finished here, really. Now, let me leave this forum.

[-Loki-]

And I’ll just reiterate - kickstarters suffer delays. You’ve now accepted that the delays were about quality control but they set their own deadlines so tough but your previous post implied you’d have been okay if they had given a reason like quality control so you’re not exactly showing you’re willing to be reasonable yourself.

So I’m not sure why you commented if you yourself were not open to open minded discussion.

[PolishSausage]

As long as I get my weekly updates with picture of product/smiling employees holding said product I am content as a backer.

Instead of being promised delivery and reassured that product is arriving, I would like to see proof and existence of pallets of product getting ready to ship to backers.

This would much de-escalate the situation of delivery being pushed back almost a year.

 

PS: I do agree with delivery and store availability needing to be close to each other time wise. Its important to get our stuff but also to be able to introduce new players to the game just as fast.