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No Rulebook = No Game


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Wonder what that's done to the people who'd already ebayed their pledges basically the second the kickstarter ended...

Ebay policy is that they don't allow pre-sales for things more than 30 or 45 days in advance of possible delivery.

However, a bunch of those went up around August/September, when we were still told that they were aiming for a Sept/Oct delivery. Overly optimistic as it was for PB to say it and for people to believe it, that was something they did. Saying they were hoping for an early delivery only to deliver late has definitely been a point of contention.

I still see some up on ebay, however their reporting system is a pile of garbage, so I can't find "item being pre-sold outside of ebay guidelines". Some of the shops with their full allotment up I'm less sure of. Grandfathered in perhaps? Or it might just be small fry enough to fly under the radar for now.

From the .ca site I only have one seller who has been listing their boxes for a while, and someone who has a single battle cry up for 2-3x the KS price. I'm actually kind of surprised it's so low.

Edit: interesting; of the 18 sold by a store I'm familiar with (bought a ton of Malifaux off them, if I'm not mistaken), one person bought 3 of them. Damned fine way to beef up ones forces, but yikes, that's spicy.

I'll likely be selling 1.5 of my 3 boxes, but I'm waiting until we're a lot further along before I worry about that.

Edited by Forar
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I was lucky, I got my rulebook from GenCon. I bought one for a friend through Element Games before I found out about the supply issues and that was delivered about a week late - which is apparently par for the course with Wyrd. Since then I havent seen a copy anywhere, I'm the only person at my club with the book and its been passed around more than a 13 yr old's first jazz mag

And on the KS thing, too many people are treating KS like a bizarre kind of shop. Folks, you're not shopping, you're investing

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Our gaming group has no rulebook either. There is none to be had in Germany. Ordered one from Wayland at the start of October but they said they were waiting for stock. They sent the rest of my order without the book since they don't know when it will be back in stock.

Thankfully we have the Arsenal packs and with the Beta rules, Lazyfaux and the cards we can improvise.

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And on the KS thing, too many people are treating KS like a bizarre kind of shop. Folks, you're not shopping, you're investing

Actually, a number of backers have been using Kickstarter as a form of speculation investment for ages now, buying up extra materials and tiers (as permitted by a given campaign or simply through using multiple accounts), with the potential to see significant returns on the secondary market (ebay, craigslist, whatever the venue). Reaper Bones 1 "Vampire" boxes were selling for two to three times their sticker price. Dwarven Forge dungeon tiles are selling around twice their tier price. And while this is a somewhat controversial stance to take for some, others (including some project creators) recognize that those people are helping funding occur, stretch goals get reached, and providing a form of advertising, as those who buy the product from a re-seller may well become a future customer or backer themselves.

In my case, because of an absolutely idiotic Shipping and Handling setup, it cost $90 more to get 8 boxes instead of 7, and each box contains roughly $500-600 in models. Making my money back and then some is all but guaranteed, and that's another $90 the campaign received to utilize on production, marketing, shipping, art and whatnot. In the grand scheme of a 1.44 million dollar campaign (before Amazon and Kickstarter take their ~10%) it's not much, but it's still $90 out of my wallet until they get around to delivering in Dec. I mean Oct/Nov. I mean Dec. I mean Jan. I mean Feb.

Shenanigans like that are why even projects and products from known entities are associated with 'risk' all the same.

And yes, to address the elephant standing in the corner, the same can be said for the Sept "Late Q1" delivery of TtB. I never had any doubts the products would be created, or worried for their quality. But a half year delay? Sadly par for the course with many successful KS campaigns.

Except Dwarven Forge. Those guys delivered early, in the sense that they'd send packages out in October (which I always take to mean "the very end of the month", and they actually started firing them off in the middle of the month.

But then you also have things like Ogre, which was late by something like a year and a half.

It's also about personal contribution. I gave Shadowrun Returns around $70, so it being delayed by 8 months didn't bother me much. $270 for TtB and ... vastly more for Robotech? You can bet I'm watching like a hawk.

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I showed my rulebook at the club last night and a few players joked about me getting mugged for it outside later, that's how scarce they are.

Joking aside we did chat about why it seems so hard to get another batch sorted and distributed. IIRC wave 2 will finish beta in dec and be published end of jan. If they can get a new book sorted so fast, you would expect a reprint to be at least as easy.

We wondered if it was an issue for our UK distributor, but the problems appear to be pan-European and also in the US. Some clarification from the people in charge would be appreciated.

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And still, no official words from Wyrd around here... :Sad_Puppet2:

They only have so much control over local shop supply. It's not like Wyrd fires off packets of 6-10 books each to thousands of stores world wide. They send off entire pallets of them to various distributors in the world, who in turn send them downstream to whatever stores they service, depending on supply and demand. Granted, local factors like a high demand can eat up what few books the stores may have gotten, or a short supply from Wyrd (for whatever reason) means the distributors and in turn the shops have fewer than anticipated on hand.

Ebay doesn't seem to be much help, and it seems someone is selling at a premium on Amazon, so it may simply be that stock everywhere is running low, or out.

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And yes, to address the elephant standing in the corner, the same can be said for the Sept "Late Q1" delivery of TtB. I never had any doubts the products would be created, or worried for their quality. But a half year delay? Sadly par for the course with many successful KS campaigns...It's also about personal contribution. I gave Shadowrun Returns around $70, so it being delayed by 8 months didn't bother me much. $270 for TtB and ... vastly more for Robotech? You can bet I'm watching like a hawk.

Don't think of it as a half year delay on Through the Breach, think of it as a year headstart on M2E (even if it's hard to come by).

Without the funding from the TtB Kickstarter, most likely we would have received Malifaux 1.5 book 5, a few models for it, and the re-releases of metal crews in plastics. Although, it is getting hard to even believe that, considering that only Nightmare Edition Tara, Barbaros, and maybe a few others that would have been book 5 models have even appeared.

I don't know. Let's take a look at what was promised of TtB, read it word for word from the Kickstarter page, watch the podcasts, etc., and let's re-evaluate if any of our monetary contributions were required to write out a rules system, a char gen system, more fluff, all of which the backers are still putting in hours to playtest and proofread (whether they were supposed to or just can't help themselves), and, oh, printing off the regular and deluxe edtions of the books. Personally, I find the answer to be no, but you may have arguments to justify it.

Now let's consider the high initial cost of paying for molds for plastic models (which has sparked plenty of debates on the forums, already). It'd take a huge investment, from somewhere, to get enough molds set up and the production costs covered to have the first few runs manufactured. Where oh where did that funding come from? Oh, that's right, from the TtB contributions, most likely.

Had they simply set up a Kickstarter asking for help in re-releasing the models in plastic, with a chance for limited edition models, like the translucent blue Ice Golem, we still would have jumped on it. Reward levels could have each been pick from a number of unlocked crews, such as Lilith, the Vikies, Rasputina, etc., all in the order we're seeing them re-released, along with some other goodies for super backers.

To mostly get back on topic, though, the holidays are fast approaching. The money that has already been buring a hole in people's pockets is either going to trickle away, one purchase after another, on stuff that isn't Wyrd, or it's going to go in one big splurge to other games, gaming systems, etc. You cannot just release a new edtion and not have product on hand, in surplus, to meet the burgeoning demands of all new play groups, that you want your new edition to generate. It just isn't sustainable.

I don't know where the holdup, is, though. Whether it's at the production end, the distribution end, or Wyrd's own end. I suspect it's out of Wyrd's hands. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt on this one. Now, whether it's a holdup on production, or a blockage in distribution, I'm thinking it's distro.

Alliance is a major US distributor of gaming products, to include Wyrd's. They have a history of filling large volume customers' orders first, going so far as to take items slated for smaller volume stores out of their orders until a much later date. If Alliance happens to be a step along the way between US distribution and International distribution, you can bet that they'll go with stocking US orders first, then eventually send it off globally. It's a much faster return on their investment. I don't agree with it, but it is a fairly sound policy, despite how much it may ruin things for any one of their individual Brands or gaming stores.

Now that we've each had our chance to vent. Let's focus on something more productive, like actually being thankful for the fun Malifaux has provided us with so far and getting paint onto the models we've neglected.

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Let's also include staff work hours, having exclusive stuff sculpted and cast, extra art and fiction, shipping and warehouse storage, and probably a bunch of other things I don't know about.

Without the money, they'd have likely had to choose to spend their available capital on either the plastics or the RPG. The kickstarter probably allowed them to fund both at the same time becuase it freed up their existing capital for the changeover by paying for the RPG - those kickstarter funds wouldn't necessarily pay for all the currently released stuff's moulds so claiming it paid for M2E is way off target, in my opinion.

To say that the existence of M2E and a delay in testing the RPG means the kickstarter was a giant lie to get money that was just used for the plastics is a massive stretch and a real disservice to wyrd.

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Is it really?

I don't think it was a lie when they proposed the kickstarter, but I do believe that they've been led down a different direction than was their intent at the time. They've just succumbed to pressures, from within and from without, to change all of their original plans, no matter how carefully laid they might have been. But it's bound to happen any time any company brings on fresh new talent to help reimagine their brand name. It's not their fault for succumbing to the gaming industry's version of Bain Capital.

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Hold on a second...have you missed the numerous times that Eric has posted that M2e was his idea? Not Mack's, not Justin's- his. The same person who is planning the finances and overall direction of the company. They did not suddenly get new blood and change everything. And how exactly do you know what their intentions were from the beginning?

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...a lack of his endorsement? I'd think the fact that the book got published is endorsement enough! And have you missed all the blog posts that he put up on his blog? The numerous posts here on this forum?

If you're determined to think that Eric was somehow conned into M2e or something that's fine, but the evidence is on you to prove it.

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