You mean all the limited "convention only", "preorder only" and "kickstarter only" models who "may or may not get their own sculpts, this year, next year or whenever we get around to it" are not "hidden behind an impossible FOMO wall" for us? Trust them all you want that they will actually finally release every single alt-sculpt of all those limited minis. But most of us won't or can't or both and that's what's causing the FOMO.
But all the minis that were released with Defiance are also compatible with infinity, so even if you never play defiance more than once (or at all!) the minis still have a place in a living, ongoing game system. That's basically the opposite of CMoN's MO of rolling out entire games, model lines, and IPs only to ditch them as soon as the KS is finished. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk
This is quite possibly one of the worst takes I've ever heard. People vote with their wallet and Cmon has some of the most successful kickstarters out there which means people obviously care about them.
Because you've done the interviews and gathered the data and know for sure whether the flimsy pretext board games or the miniatures themselves were the motivator for each and every one purchase, right? Talk about a crap take.
CMON did 2.86 million on their marvel united kickstarter. Any company would love to have those kinds of numbers on a board game they kickstart. Pretty sure that's alot of people caring.
Well, the short video gives us a PanO TAG HMG (same one as the Cutter and new KotHS), a silhouette/shadow that doesn't readily lend itself to any of the current TAGs, and a statline that seem close to a PanO Squalo chassis.
I think another salient point is that without Kickstarter these are projects that never happen. Defiance isn't viable as a retail product, boardgames with multipart metal miniatures are a no-go in the retail space. KS let them offer our at a more reasonable price by cutting out the middle man and distribution network, but even with that Defiance was expensive for a Dungeon Crawler. Without the Kickstarter those sculpts never exist, we've already seen that there were general release versions as well. Apart from the Taigha and Boarding Sheskiin everything Shasvastii in Defiance is already available, O-12 have their Lynx and Saladin ahead of the KS release, and Kusanagi just came out and she hadn't even been sculpted when the KS finished. So TAG-Raid will likely have new versions of existing TAGs, some new TAGs, and some resculpted TAGs. It lets CB make the TAG Deathmatch game they've been wanting to do for years. Players that back it get a bunch of cool TAG models, players that don't can get the general release ones that already exist/will come. Hopefully this time we don't also have a global pandemic and self inflicted UK economic disaster during the production.
I agree with everything else you've said, so I'm just gonna highlight this. The only reason Defiance isn't viable as a retail product are the multipart metal miniatures. If that game were full plastic it would be perfectly fine as a retail product. I am honestly worried about this small detail. Metal Tags would make this boardgame quite hard to sell to my non-infinity friends, and I really prefer to play these kinds of games with the people I don't usually play infinity with. So, from a personal standpoint, I am hoping for plastic TAGs.
The renders of the models can be designed for one thing and reused with different load outs easier than creating a completely new model. Whereas, the actual molds cannot. The Defiance molds are not being used for the Infinity models, so the only shared work would be the renders. The idea that Defiance may have sped up the Shas-population, sure, the idea that they weren't doing them anyway? Can't see it. Defiance was a risk. A big investment for a new game that may have done nothing and cost the company a lot. That's what Kickstarter is useful for, gauging the actual interest (not the "I'd buy that!" interest from a forum, but actual money on product) and producing what is needed. Assigning nefarious motives to this stuff serves no purpose.
I agree with this so much. Defiance can definitely be used as another portal into infinity especially for board gamers. A huge hurdle though is going from single piece plastic minis they're usually get to multi part metal minis.
It definitly would have earned more units (probably at a lower price tag) with plastic figures, and been delayed even more given current world. But, I doubt it would have had large commercial success. It's an Infinity product vs a general boardgame, so it'd have done good on kickstarter. That said, they definitely should have done a token only base game and gotten some of the base-game folks addicted. Sort of depends on what kind of game it is though, nay? If it's just a different skirmish game, it won't really be a "boardgame" group thing? I don't know, just curious. It's October which is a long ways off. For me, I'd prefer metal, with all printing done in Europe. Unless they can get a quality European plastic guy to do it. I want the quality detail and avoiding shipping stuff back and forth. Plastic has it's advantages (I mean, the Zeta could probably injure someone), but I'm not crazy about it.
Not even just metal minis, really. That was confusing enough, but metal minis that need to be assembled with no instructions at all, no guide on how to clean flash or anything, no... anything. Definite fail in bringing folks across to the model range.
I wonder if we'll see a hybrid approach, metal for anything the size of existing N4 TAGs and PVC for anything larger like the Megalodron? I'm not sure how well PVC glues together with Cyanoacrylate so if they're aiming at modular loadouts I don't know how viable it would be. I do remember that the first wave of Warcaster from PP was all metal, including the modular "TAGs".
I assume the large stuff will be plastic, and the regular Infinity stuff will be metal (with it just being some resculpts and "reinforcement packs"), but 7 months away, so who knows. :) Works fine and better for thin items most of the time for me.
Hey, look. If CB wants to keep doing kickstarters for “After the tournament” convention games... Why the hell not? :)
If they have to run it through KS, it's probably a full on game. They'd need the money to actually support the production and such. If it were just another Skirmish game then they could do like they did with C1. The fact it is KS is something that makes me hope for plastics. Because then they'd have the funds for molds and other stuff that are, you know, expensive as balls. If the game has metal models it will be a hard pass for me like defiance was. No sense in investing so much money in what's essentially more infinity minis.
I think they use it more for gauging interest and the development, but plastic molds are indeed a large up front cost. It's a large multiplayer arena game I think, so I'm imagining an Aristeia variation (though probably regular dice). They need to develop the game, build the materials (assuming TAG terrain and stuff) and it's a big risk for an unknown project that they probably figure is too niche for a regular production run.
vecenovtum makes a great point CB cant know if the TAG idea will work at all, there are tons of giant robot fighting games Battletech came out recently and Namco have like a dozen of those with unrivaled figures to boot in fact this TAG idea might get a copyrighted
Why does the armour Voronin talks about need to be a TAG? A tank would be more appropriate for Ariadna, wouldn't it?
