Lead Adventure Forum
Miniatures Adventure => Fantasy Adventures => Topic started by: Vanvlak on April 16, 2018, 07:34:38 PM
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Apologies if this has been posted elsewhere - I searched and didn't find it.
Apparently there's a Confrontation KS opening tomorrow at 13:00 (Paris time) - the only details I have are a Facebook page unfortunately: https://www.facebook.com/confrontationresurrection/ (https://www.facebook.com/confrontationresurrection/) and the Sans-detour page, in French: http://www.sans-detour.com/ (http://www.sans-detour.com/)
Edit: English page - https://confrontation-universe.com/index.php/en/subscribe-your-newsletter/ (https://confrontation-universe.com/index.php/en/subscribe-your-newsletter/)
178 minis, terrain, rules in one box apparently - that's before add-ons and rewards.
According to the video it's compatible with the old and a new (?) Confrontation. A range of 1500 miniatures is mentioned.
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I'm very interested in this... I'll be interested to see how much work they have put into it. Not interested in giving my money to pipe dreams... the rackham world of minis is very alive and sought after still. I have a large collection... I wonder if they will have rackham quality of plastic sculpts and if they will reuse old rackham figures or all new... we shall see...
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Nothing yet, but it's just 1430h CET, so still within the margin?
I'm pretty interested in this, as I've been collecting several Confrontation ranges over the years. I just love the attention to detail and the very distinct designs. I even have several of their gaming tiles and all of the books, just for the eye-candy.
Let's hope they will be (severely) revamping those rules though, as I've tried them, and they're pretty dang complicated. Maybe after a game or two, they'll sink in, but the horrendous translations are not helping getting a grip on the mechanics. And let's not get started on Hybrid (their dungeon crawler board game; think Hero Quest with ridiculously convoluted rules).
Believe me; we tried, and had to admit defeat ::) But the minis are just so beautiful...
And here's to hoping they will not be continuing with those plastics that killed Rackham; we want Metal dang it! \m/
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I can only pretty much echo Daeothar's sentiments (though I'm lacking the Dogs of War book and some bonus floor tile for Hybrid, the latter of which seems extremely elusive to pin down).
That said though, I'm fairly sure it was stated before that the new miniatures will be resin.
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And here's to hoping they will not be continuing with those plastics that killed Rackham; we want Metal dang it! \m/
...I have some real bad news for you... The Kickstarter launches tonight at 9pm (France time I think) and it will be a single box with all 16 factions a mat and some terrain. The miniatures will be plastic, PVC I would guess given it's 178 (190+ if all the early birds get filled in 12 hours) miniatures with no ability to buy them separately...
It's absolutely horrendous, as though someone wished Confrontation back using a monkey paw... :'(
Edit: Realise now Vanvlak put the single box stuff in his original post but yeah... still sucks and a hard pass from me.
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I don't mind it being plastic... i think it makes it more do-able for them to actually create the game.... I agree that the rules need a SERIOUS makeover... i've never actually played the game, but have read the rules many times.... i use all the rackham minis i have to play many different games from Dragon Rampant to Heroscape... I just don't want the new sculpts to be of the early 2000 DND quality... which was gumby horrific... If they can match the quality of their plastic line before they died I would be more then happy... Those were the most detailed prepainted plastics I've ever collected... nowhere near the quality of their metal stuff... but for plastic, very nice. I'll be a buyer.
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Funny, I was sure it said 13:00 - must have misread it.
I was hoping there's be some smaller options instead of the big box. :(
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I was really hyped when I heard about the relaunch and still I am anxious to pledge , but there are a lot of problems I see after having read the reports on what they want to achieve.
- if it’s actually just one big box with minis and no possibility to buy singles, I’m out. I already own most of what has been previewed.
- They say they want to produce in PVC. However, you cannot simply use the old Rackham moulds and fill them with plastic. Therefore they will need to scan the old models/mould, rework them digitally and test a good way of producing the minis without losing the details. I see GREAT problems here. PVC models are designed specifically for the production process (CMON and Monoliths have developed this pretty well), but no one really knows what will come out when translating multi-part models designed for metal into the new material. And they haven’t shown any test casts, yet.
- the rules are a mess. I own several warbands (wolfen, drunes, steampower dwarfs, orcs, griffins, devourers, cynwall elves) and played regularly vs. various opponents (lions, dirz, sessair, dwarfs, goblins). The rules simply suck. And after announcing that they would rework them, the last announcement simply stated that for now it wil be CO 3.5 rules. I’m not happy about this.
So apart from technical difficulties, the poor rules and the possible inability to buy single models might take me out...:/
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Well, i'm not really interested in the rules... just in the minis... and it looks like they have some terrain elements too... if any of the original designers or ppl who worked for rackham are a part of the team then they should have connections to how they produced the plastic minis with great detail before then went caput.... time will tell.
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It's on, and they're heading towards achieving their goal, if they keep up the momentum.
The KS is here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=confrontation (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game?ref=nav_search&result=project&term=confrontation)
The main entry point is a bit steep at 299 Euros (early bird - the 'regular' is 320), although you do get 178 models, rules, stretch goals, and it is a nice collection.
I might go for the 1 Euro 'in' pledge in case interesting add-ons appear - I really do not need another 178+ models.
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The price per mini is not that bad, but I really have neither 300€ to spend nor do I want another 178 minis... they might have been off better with offering smaller pledges.
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So, no metal and an enormous buy-in.
pretty good deal still, counting all those mini's and terrain.
I've seen GCT converting their Bushido models to PVC for a boardgame. It was pretty good, but it is a difference.
Some pro's and con's for sure, but I just don't have that much petty cash lying about.
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Not much of a selection within factions and can't spare €299 + shipping ATM...
Why PVC?
While brittle in parts, I prefer resin for the detail and polystyrene for plastics. AFAIK, PVC doesn't hold detail as well as either aforementioned, this might explain why the pics are of metal versions. I understand that metal molds for styrene sculpts is expensive, but why not stick with metal?
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Bugger that.
Yep agreed, smaller pledges and do the all in pledge at 300 Euro. Yes you can buy the addons separately with the 1 Euro pledge (not that I even looked at that) so not out of everyone's price range if there are a few things they want. I wonder if this is why CMON sold off all their confrontation stuff really cheap lately? must check to see if they are still selling it.
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Bugger that.
Yep agreed, smaller pledges and do the all in pledge at 300 Euro. Yes you can buy the addons separately with the 1 Euro pledge (not that I even looked at that) so not out of everyone's price range if there are a few things they want. I wonder if this is why CMON sold off all their confrontation stuff really cheap lately? must check to see if they are still selling it.
CMoN sold off their range?!?
Checks the store...
>:( >:( >:(
Was there a sale I didn't know about? Prices look the same...
Kept putting off buying the Hydra and could've used another Golem... :-[
Didn't know about the 1 Euro pledge and add-ons, but the KS creators aren't explaining things clearly - no different than Rackham. lol
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CMoN sold off their range?!?
Checks the store...
>:( >:( >:(
Was there a sale I didn't know about? Prices look the same...
Kept putting off buying the Hydra and could've used another Golem... :-[
Didn't know about the 1 Euro pledge and add-ons, but the KS creators aren't explaining things clearly - no different than Rackham. lol
They did a massive stocktake sale. It is still there though CMON still are selling confrontation minis.
I think I got the hydra for $24 and the dragon for $60.
The $1 pledge says "Thank you for your support ! As an Adventurer, you have access to the Add-ons and the late Pledge."
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They did a massive stocktake sale. It is still there though CMON still are selling confrontation minis.
I think I got the hydra for $24 and the dragon for $60.
The $1 pledge says "Thank you for your support ! As an Adventurer, you have access to the Add-ons and the late Pledge."
Hydra for $24 and Dragon for $60?!? :(
It'$299.99 now and 44 in stock...
I might be interested in the terrain pieces, but not for the PVC sculpts, though the $30-$45 shipping is a deal breaker - this is why I ordered in large quantities from Ludik years ago and participated in group orders from Rackham.
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The $1 pledge says "Thank you for your support ! As an Adventurer, you have access to the Add-ons and the late Pledge."
And it seems that the first add-on will be the Goblins of Uraken ;)
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[OTTO]Disappointed!![/OTTO] >:(
Ah well; I suppose it was too much to ask for in all reality: a re-issue of all the original metal miniatures, with a total rewrite of the rules (translated right, with a well laid out book that makes sense, and doesn't just look pretty)... ::)
I think I can understand the reasoning behind their KS setup, and it works; we're less than a day in, and they're already funded twice over, basic funding being reached within 2 hours. But for those of us who have been investing in the original metal minis for years, a complete set of 178 miniatures, spread over all factions is not very interesting. Especially when issued in unglueable, bendy PVC (although €1,80 per miniature certainly is a good, Reaper Bones-like price point).
The only add-on so far (but I'm certain there will be many to come) is the 'Battle Set', with gaming aids for 2 players, a mat and 3 pieces of terrain (which you also get two(!) of in the basic pledge?). I think most will get that set just for the terrain, but, to me, it doesn't really stand out as being very specific Confrontation terrain. It's pretty generic, which is nice if you need it, but I already have enough comparable terrain pieces to get by, so it doesn't draw me in.
Here's to hoping that future add-ons will be comprised of more interesting items, like perhaps faction specific expansion miniature sets, or Confrontationy scatter terrain pieces perhaps.
Hey; a man can hope... :D
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It looks like it will easily hit all of the current stretch goals including the early bird extra faction... thats 219 minis if i counted right... $1.68 each... not bad at all... and that not including the dice, cards, terrain, boards, and bits.... i'm in it for sure... i have all of the lions, cynwall, and griffons armies in metal... i have some of the others... no goblins at all ... this will add to my collection substantially. Excited to see what other stretches they add.... TITAN DRAGON I HOPE!!!!
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I have a lot of their metal sculpts which are awesome. Unfortunately, there is no way I could afford this sweet deal. :? However, if they start selling singles in brick and mortar stores I may buy some 8)
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Depending on the quality of the actual figures, it would be a great deal.. for a club or so. Even as a bit of a collector, I see no need to have the full range, let alone in one go.
The "one big box" also makes me wonder how much support will exist beyond the kickstarter, although they say the same big box at least (minus stretch goals) will be available in stores.
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They are planning to re-write the rules in the near future.
I would love this to succeed and plenty more to be released in the future. I have 3 large armies (Lions, Sessairs and Wolfen), so have no need of the big box. Will be watching carefully to see what extra boxes are added as stretch goals and if the $1 pledge gives access to these, that might be the way I join it.
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I really just want more fomors
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They are planning to re-write the rules in the near future.
I would love this to succeed and plenty more to be released in the future. I have 3 large armies (Lions, Sessairs and Wolfen), so have no need of the big box. Will be watching carefully to see what extra boxes are added as stretch goals and if the $1 pledge gives access to these, that might be the way I join it.
I think that’s also what I’ll do once there are options I would like to buy.
I have the same problem. I own several large (Wolfen, Orcs, Griffens) and small (Drunes, Devourer, Dwarfs, Cynwall) collections already. So why would I want to buy all these models again...in PVC of unknown quality?
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i like the new stretch goals they have added... Tho I think they need to offer smaller goals of better dice, neoprene mats, different terrain items... The $ progress has greatly slowed, but I think after they give more details (assuming they are liked and positive) then there should be a decent pile in... Lots of $1 pledges... Lots of time still.
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If I read the reactions here right, they would be well off putting each faction set up as an add-on, and all those €1,- pledges will probably become a great deal larger. And I think that is the route they're taking.
I for one would probably buy a box or two of such add-ons to maybe round out my forces (Uraken, Cadwallon and Mid Nor, which I all have in metal), or even start one or two other forces I've always fancied (Wulfen and Sessair Kelts for instance, or bringing the Dirz and Griffin forces from the Hybrid and Nemesis boardgame up to strength).
But certainly not that Big Behemoth Bulk Box of Bespoke Bendiness. :P
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Well I'd be tempted by the Drunes.
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The comments for this one are brilliant. The creators haven't given complete budget breakdowns down to the last penny and it's got people screaming robbery!
I've seen alot of comments from people saying "how can they produce these at less than 50p a miniature it must be a scam!" makes me wonder if some people don't realise how cheap it is to mass produce plastic/pvc? if they knew the actual markup over material cost that they pay for most miniature they'd pop a blood vessel!
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makes me wonder if some people don't realise how cheap it is to mass produce plastic/pvc?
I don't think a lot of folk realise it's PVC yet... I've seen folk who know it's plastic still talking about it like it's gonna be GW style hard plastics...
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I don't think a lot of folk realise it's PVC yet... I've seen folk who know it's plastic still talking about it like it's gonna be GW style hard plastics...
That’s probably very true. I’m not even a big GW fan, but must acknowledge that their hard plastics are way better than anything CMON/ Monolith & Co. throw at the market.
That said, pvc is a very generous term, and the Mythic Battles: Pantheon PVC is well suited to show details and allow decent painting. It’s just not as god as GW plastics or metal.
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There is buzz about them being ABS... since the terrain is being made of ABS... just the latest... I expect them to announce the plastic today... that has to be 900 of the over 1000 comments so far... (what is the plastic?).
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http://www.sans-detour.com/public/Aarklash%20Post/Aarklash%20Post%20%239%20EN.pdf
Miniature's bodies will be PVS, and the weapons will be in ABS. This is the approach that CMON is taking with their GoT tabletop game figures... which look decent in pictures, but I won't have those in hand until August at the earliest...
There is a mention in the letter of setting a funding goal to try and make it all HIPS (GW style hard plastic) but IMO that is a bit of a pipe dream, Would love to see it happen though!
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320 € for the same old minis but in pvc. We have an expression here in France for that: foutage de gueule !
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http://www.sans-detour.com/public/Aarklash%20Post/Aarklash%20Post%20%239%20EN.pdf
Miniature's bodies will be PVS, and the weapons will be in ABS. This is the approach that CMON is taking with their GoT tabletop game figures... which look decent in pictures, but I won't have those in hand until August at the earliest...
There is a mention in the letter of setting a funding goal to try and make it all HIPS (GW style hard plastic) but IMO that is a bit of a pipe dream, Would love to see it happen though!
that seems like a promise made by an earnest but naive creator. It's one thing to say "well we can just scan them and make them in plastic" It's quite another to actually adjust those scans in such a way as to lay them out for casting in a steel mould without MAJOR reworking. The labour involved in just getting the existing miniatures ready for tooling would be insane. Every single figure would need scanning, breaking up, reworking, slicing up again...it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Not saying it couldn't be done, But not on the budget and time scale they seem to be promising.
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that seems like a promise made by an earnest but naive creator. It's one thing to say "well we can just scan them and make them in plastic" It's quite another to actually adjust those scans in such a way as to lay them out for casting in a steel mould without MAJOR reworking. The labour involved in just getting the existing miniatures ready for tooling would be insane. Every single figure would need scanning, breaking up, reworking, slicing up again...it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Not saying it couldn't be done, But not on the budget and time scale they seem to be promising.
I agree: this is a major problem!
I have the pretty good models from Mythic Battles: Pantheon at home and while these are really nice and okay for the price, you can definitely see that they were designed for this type of production from the very beginning.
If you compare them to Rackham sculpts (consisting of multiple parts, overlappings etc.) they are pretty „flat“. I’m not an expert in miniature production, but as far as I understand the process, exactly these aspects of sculpting are still best shown in metal (and resin) casts.
It’s also enlightening to compare Rackham to the modern AoS plastics, which are also pretty damn well made concerning dynamic poses and details. GW uses plastics and invested for nearly two decades (or even more?) into the production until they got both the technical means to make such models as well as the experience how to design the various parts from which a model is made.
GW models consist of „layers“, i.e. flat parts glued over each other to create dynamic poses, Rackham models divided the model by relatively simple „cuts“ along the joints of extremities.
Of course GW also uses a different material and with PVC it’s another thing, but I cannot believe you simply take the moulds, scan them and cast them in PVC and get the same model as in metal.
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that seems like a promise made by an earnest but naive creator. It's one thing to say "well we can just scan them and make them in plastic" It's quite another to actually adjust those scans in such a way as to lay them out for casting in a steel mould without MAJOR reworking. The labour involved in just getting the existing miniatures ready for tooling would be insane. Every single figure would need scanning, breaking up, reworking, slicing up again...it makes my head hurt just thinking about it. Not saying it couldn't be done, But not on the budget and time scale they seem to be promising.
Glad to see someone noticed!
I'm not seeing evidence that the creators have experience in miniatures production. They've run several KS for RPGs, but not miniatures. The owner of SD also has another OLGS company, which is having financial troubles. Take a look at the Dakka thread for more info. SD also plans to release a Confrontation Boardgame in 2019, so this isn't the only opportunity for you to get some Confrontation miniatures.
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To re-release the minis in another medium is challenging as there are more then 300 + parts. No Idea how feasable it is to get them done in another medium such as affordable plastic, but pretty much everything is possible if masters or first off's are at hand. I'd be very surprised if this goes down smoothly. Then again - CMON might help with pulling some strings in the background, which would certainly help, at least with the production side of things.
As for a hard plastic option - that's simply not going to happen, and it shows a certain lack of understanding of the involved processes to even ponder with that.
Note: I am looking for the past 2 years into all things plastic, and I know nobody who's genuinely excited about plastic bits. I quite like the idea of mixing PVC and stronger materials tho, but this - again - would include cutting masters and making proper joints, and finding production and fulfillment facilities that can turn this mess into products.
I will pledge £1 as I think there's a few things to learn. :)
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Glad to see someone noticed!
I'm not seeing evidence that the creators have experience in miniatures production. They've run several KS for RPGs, but not miniatures. The owner of SD also has another OLGS company, which is having financial troubles. Take a look at the Dakka thread for more info. SD also plans to release a Confrontation Boardgame in 2019, so this isn't the only opportunity for you to get some Confrontation miniatures.
I noticed that they only really have experience with RPGS. I assume then that they are pretty up on the production and work needed to get books and such out to the public, A challenge in its own right. But the more i look at what they're trying to do with an existing range of sculpts (possibly without acess to masters/concept art/original master moulds.ect) the more i think they are going to come up against a big problem at some point. PVC casting is something I'm only mildly familiar with, But as with any material you can't simply stick one material in a mould designed for another material and expect it to be just fine, and you can't just cast a model made in one material and expect a new material to work to the same limits and strengths of that earlier material.
I wonder who they have attached to actually make the models? They surely must have asked someone to make them and presented them with what they have and asked what can be done. If they have a veteran mould maker and casting company ready to go then things will probably go smoothly but slowly.
If they've contacted a company in china to just recast everything in PVC then we may see a fast cheap and shockingly low quality turn out for this project.
I'm curious to see what happens and how they tackle this.
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Sorry for the double post but it's a seperate thing! :D
I'm very curious to know what they'll do once they run out of legacy sculpts to recast.
Rackham had a very distinct, high quality style, But looking back on it it was VERY grounded in the 90's. I don't really know if, without the original creators on board, anyone could recapture that same style tone and attention to detail.
Look for example at the scenery being offered with the kickstarter. the company running things have clearly outsourced this element to someone else, and as such they have some serviceable but not exactly great scenery. It's not the worst scenery, But i could make the same in about an hour or so, and i could pick up something similar from any number of companies. Nothing about it says "rackham" to me. Tabletop world says "rackham" because of it's attention to detail and style, and that's really the kind of quality level these guys need to keep hitting if they want to keep their future activities in line with the legacy they have to build on.
This is a problem.A fantasy tabletop wargame is almost entirely a creative and aesthetically driven thing!
sure, there are rules, But the style and setting are what make people buy your miniatures and models. no one buys mantic elves JUST because they love kings of war. If the company running this have an attitude of "good enough" to the scenery, It seems likely that that same attitude will carry over onto new model releases and future development.
for a game like this that will live and die on how well the people running it can tap into peoples nostalgia for a very specific style and tone, Making things "good enough" will quickly kill this one.
In short, Rackham are well remembered and loved for their distinct aesthetic, And failing to put in the effort and time to mimic this , Or god forbid not realising that that's what people want, is a risky game.
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[...] but pretty much everything is possible if masters or first off's are at hand.
I forgot where I read this, I think it was the German tabletop newsportal Brueckenkopf-online, but somewhere it was reported that they (i.e. SD) had sold off a large lump of the masters...
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I was actually looking forwards to this KS but with the need for a massive all-in pledge, poor service from the aforementioned OLGS ran by the manager of SD, apparent inexperience with making minis and all that, I'm getting a very bad feeling about this.
Edit: reading that Dakka thread (from page 19 onwards) just raises further concerns. :-X
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They claim that they have all of the original molds for these figures... I think they have been talking/working with legacy miniatures who also reproduced rackham sculpts in plastic... and apparently did a decent job of it... I have no doubt they can get it done as it's already being done... I wish the community would stop asking for HIPS as that is a totally different process and has not been done with rackham guys yet... I have a lot of rackham metal, but have not collected several of these factions and would love to get them... the price is fine... lots of these guys go for $20-30 each on ebay... that would get you what, 15 guys for the all in price vs. Over 220?... yes metal vs plastic, but still... I'm a decent painter... I made the horrific dragon strike sculpts look pretty nice... I can make these look really good.
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Griffin Exorcist I just finished... I'm more motivated to get these done now... 18ish months of lead time!
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A Lion Royal guard I also finished... currently only working on guys that look like they aren't going to be in the kickstarter... his right hand still needs a touch up where I had to repair the axe
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From dakkadakka:
"The person who will be in charge of the miniature production has been answering more questions on Discord.
However, I am not knowledgeable in these things to know the veracity of their claims.
They have stated that they can use all the existing "masters" to create PVC molds and "no scanning is required" nor "rework"
They also confirmed that the main body will be PVC and that weapons and other bits that need to be straight will be ABS. "
Now as i have said, My experience with PVC casting is minimal, I've only ever worked with it on a large scale for fine art purposes.
But to me this seems worrying.
Either they are using a two part off the shelf pvc mix and casting it in rubber moulds, which is viable but has all the issues of resin casting plus the material limitations of PVC.
Of they are actually using metal moulds to do this on a mass scale (which given the amount of models they want to make seems sensible) in which case they'll be using the masters to create these moulds, But these masters will need adjusting for undercuts/pull/detail loss/shrinkage rates.
It really seems like the physical production side of this has been largely swept aside as something that doesn't need thinking about.
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It really seems like the physical production side of this has been largely swept aside as something that doesn't need thinking about.
From what I've read, the company in charge doesn't seem to have much of a history in creating miniatures. The recent mention that they "could try making them in HIPS" also implies a limited understanding of the dissimilarity of the processes involved. The kickstarter goal probably was (as often is the case) lower than the actual required funds anyway, but not even in the neighbourhood of what would be necessary to create a fraction of these in hard plastic.
Combine all that with the fact we have no idea how successful their proposed ideas will be, and I'm fairly certain I will not be touching this in the kickstarter period. I suppose this technically is what kickstater should be used for - a big expensive project with risks involved - but I'd rather spend my money when I have some idea what I'm paying for. I have no idea whether it could work, but I'm not exactly convinced that it will.
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I suppose this technically is what kickstater should be used for - a big expensive project with risks involved - but I'd rather spend my money when I have some idea what I'm paying for. I have no idea whether it could work, but I'm not exactly convinced that it will.
I worry tho that these project detract from the potential of crowdfunding platforms to actually KICKSTATER anything. This is an established company, they have existing products. They don't have the means or experience in producing miniatures and as such are using kickstarter as damage limitation. If it goes tits up then oh well, we lost some money and time, but we can give back peoples pledges and walk away without having dunk £500000 of our own money into something right off the bat.
But that attitude of big money risk limitation can damage the idea of crowdfunding to such a degree that smaller , well costed projects, like an individual looking to produce a single range of figures, or cast and sell their first sculpt as a means of getting to grips with the requirements of running a business, Are going to be viewed as too risky. after all, if a company with alot of money can fuck up, what chance does some guy in a garage stand to do it right! the big projects that don't do their research damage the perception in the mind of backers of small projects that have priced everything up to the nearest penny and are ready and rearing to go.
I think this project is also symptomatic of a wider issue I;ve noticed recently with regards to the void between the desire of many hobbyists to be "in the business" and the technical skill needed to actually make and produce a 3d product. it's the lack of understanding that leads to someone saying "well i have the master sculpt, so i can just make a steel mould no problem." in theory yes, in practice you need more tools and know who than you're accounting for.
I come at everything from the point of view of someone that studied sculpture, so everything at its most basic has to work as a physical object, and you have to understand how to get to that point before you can do anything else.
too often people forget that this is very much a creative industry, and as such requires a great deal of not just passion but serious technical knowledge to make work. this is a big commitment, without much room for error and a very steep learning curve.
But this is their first time producing miniatures! It's not the ideal time to learn the basics of mould making, material limitations, principles of sculpting. Trying to navigate the physical material issues of recasting hundreds of masters in a new medium would present a challenge to even an experienced caster, But doing so on your first try, without knowing what you're actually doing, with this many people backing you? that's not a steep curve, it's bloody vertical!
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Not saying you are wrong, but do we know they don't know what they're doing?
It might be their first time as a company, but do we know they do not have someone on board, or at least consulting people who do know what needs to be done?
Haven't looked very deeply into it, but I can't say, one way or the other, at this point.
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Not saying you are wrong, but do we know they don't know what they're doing?
It might be their first time as a company, but do we know they do not have someone on board, or at least consulting people who do know what needs to be done?
Haven't looked very deeply into it, but I can't say, one way or the other, at this point.
Alot of the worry has come from a combination of statements.
Throwing around the idea that they'll make things from HIPs , saying they don't need to do any reworking of sculpts and masters for a new material, not putting out any actual concrete information on material for the first couple of days and then switching between answers.
These things all have different needs and costs, and it seems that if they'd done the safe amount of research and ground work with regards to the actual physical miniature production, they'd have had a concrete answer from the start. Even something as simple as "we've budgeted for PVC but if we meet a certain goal we may look at adapting our plans and going for HIPS. " would show that they've considered this. But just saying "plastic. wait, no, HIPS! no...we mean vinyl... but only some of it..." seems like they aren't sure what they're doing.
They're juggling alot of money, i know if that were me, I'd be damn sure what i can afford before committing (or not) to anything.
EDit: I just found the last bit of info they put out regarding material. It simply says "we're using two pvc for now, If we get enough, we'll use HIPS sprues and rework the models" that to me doesn't read as a well costed and planned project.
I have a theory that they went with an all in one pledge so they could tool up a single mould containing all the figures, get them cast cheap in PVC and pump them out like toy soldiers.
(also not really sure why anyone would want a rackham miniature on a sprue, they never really screamed modular to me.)
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Or are they just being super sneaky. PVC for now and if they can raise the $20,000,000 to put it all into HIPS they will do it. lol
Yes they need to be more concrete about things.
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They're super sneaky as in "Super! We made all this money! Let's sneak off from these guys and never reappear again!"
Credit to Limonata (and TurboCooler) on Dakka:
@TurboCooler - Is it possible to elaborate more. Would not the molds for the PVC and ABS need metal molds, are you saying that these can be made via the masters? ---Masters are what's needed to make molds. Metal, plastic or resin. We don't need metal molds to make the plastic ones. - There is no rework that will be required? --- Maybe a bit but not that much. -For example, would not the plastic molds need deeper or bolder lines to compensate for the shrinking of the material which would be much more than metal? --- Not really no. As for Alkemy, the same masters were used to produce Plastic minis, the same in resin and even some metal samples. Not an issue at all.
Good work, nic-e. I'm not seeing a scam, but "Maybe a bit but not that much"?? Can you can have "maybe a bit" of a train wreck? Who's in for a pound?
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I'm not sure if I fully understand that last post, although the quotes at least, are somewhat clearer.
I think that, even if they state what they did in that quote, armed with LAF's (and beyond's) collective knowledge, one cannot but wonder if the guys behind this KS are being a tad too positive in regards to the technical feasibility of their plans.
All posed questions relating to whether or not certain materials can be cast using moulds for a different material are therefore, in my opinion perfectly viable. I've never heard of plastics being cast in moulds created for use with metals, especially not HIPS. Most professional metal moulds are spin moulds, while HIPS is injected in its moulds under pressure. I'd love to be proven wrong, but until that's the case, I remain highly doubtful whether this is possible at all.
So the only thing I can say with any certainty at this point, is that I'm doubtful if their optimism will see the entire Kickstarter through to a satisfactory (for all involved) ending. As I've seen utterly dedicated and committed people begin a Kickstarter they were not able to fulfill due to circumstances and underestimation of certain aspects of the process. Add to that some poorly worded and unmoderated communications, and you have a recipe ready to completely burn up during re-entry.
Like some said before; I'd be all over HIPS Confrontation miniatures cast from the old metal moulds without any loss of detail. But until I can see some actual production results to make up my mind based on facts, I remain highly doubtful (but also a bit hopeful?)...
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OMG....has anyone checked the KS page?
They’re bleeding...the project is slowly but steadily losing money. Already 21(!) Early Birds have become available since yesterday evening.
They will have to cancel the campaign if his continues...they are now € 8,000,- below the last strethgoal.
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Good work, nic-e. I'm not seeing a scam, but "Maybe a bit but not that much"?? Can you can have "maybe a bit" of a train wreck? Who's in for a pound?
To clarify, I don't think anyone is being scammed, cheated or robbed here.
As the old saying goes, never chalk up to malice what could easily be chalked up to ignorance.
I don't want them to fail, because doing so means the rights and sculpts for confronation will wallow in uncertainty for another decade.While i have no real nostalgia for it, only really knowing of it at the time through the pages of a few fantasy miniature magazines that I managed to snag from forbidden planet in the early 2000's , I like the sculpts and style, and i think a game that puts a strong aesthetic focus first deserves to succeed.
My concern is that they have lowballed this in the hope that they can make the whole thing look like a storming success, crash through their goals, and then use the bulk of what they make to cover the actual productions costs which would never have been covered by their initial goal. but by not having a very clear goal for backers to focus on IE; material type, stretch goals, rules ect, They'll end up with all the money they asked for but not enough to do what they promised.
I worry that their very defensive attitude on kickstarter comes not from passion for the project but from panic at the amount of work they didn't realise they need to do and are now being asked about.
I want them to do well (mostly because then i might be able to get AT-43 back!) but it just doesn't seem like they've set out the best path to do so.
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To clarify my previous statement I do t think they are scamming either. That post was in jest.
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...there are now 44 Early Birds available. The project is steadily losing the trust of its funders. 15k below the last stretchgoal.
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I think a lot of people got very carried away with the thought of Confrontation coming back. Which is kind of surprising since the game itself was never that successful according to the shops I frequented. Lots of figure sales and some very vocal/dedicated fans but not a wide persistent player base.
I am pretty sure there are backers here who really don't know how the super detailed skirmish Confrontation 3/3.5 works and have been hooked by the name and reputation based on the figures, which is a problem as in PVC there will be little comparison to the original metals.
Following the updates and comments the KS seems to be developing 3 areas of doubt;
Firstly there is real doubt over the ability of the SD team to make it work, especially given a) their total lack of experience with figure production (they are a book publisher) and b) their lack of experience with initial product development (the books they print are only French language versions of other companies products). This seems to be coming across in the very muddled answers or deflection of questions.
Secondly the entire concept seems flawed in that the huge buy in cost does not include a printed rulebook so is not an actual "game", it is just a big "pick n' mix" box of cheap Chinese plastic figures, some scenery and a couple of paper battlemats. Which is a problem given you are expected to buy about 200 figures for a game that is only designed to play with forces of less than 10 and have to download and print off your own rulebook, stat cards, spell cards and a myriad of tokens.
There is a line of thought that the SD guys are purely using this to fund the creation of the PVC figures for their planned Boardgame. Something that will use the name but be "based on Confrontation" rather than being "Confrontation". Hence no development of the existing rules and forces as they will be totally redundant in the new format.
Thirdly (and why I personally think going anywhere near this KS is a mistake) DS are owned/run by the same people as own/run Ludikbaazar which is in severe (probably terminal) financial trouble, lots of complaints over incomplete and unfulfilled orders, suppliers cutting off credit and as of late March a final "destock" sale.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540/717182.page#9939004 (https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540/717182.page#9939004)
Sadly, as a consequence of all this the excellent Cadwallon were hit with a C&D notice to end production and sales of the actual metal Rackham figures and the game that they were developing.
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Sadly, as a consequence of all this the excellent Cadwallon were hit with a C&D notice to end production and sales of the actual metal Rackham figures and the game that they were developing.
Is it? That's really a shame. After seeing this KS crumble I had hoped to get some of the sets I really would have loved to collect (Goblin Pirates!) from their site.
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Why didn't they just go for selling metals? The molds were designed for that I take it. Just simplified pledges of set miniature groups (even focus on just selling 1 lot of minis from 1 mold to make picking and packing easy.)
They definitely wouldn't have people dropping like flies. Easier to cost out that way I'd imagine.
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Why didn't they just go for selling metals? The molds were designed for that I take it. Just simplified pledges of set miniature groups (even focus on just selling 1 lot of minis from 1 mold to make picking and packing easy.)
They definitely wouldn't have people dropping like flies. Easier to cost out that way I'd imagine.
My guess would be postage. average weight of a pewter mini like that is easily 40-50 grams, multiply that by the number of models on offer and then find postage solutions that leave your mind unharmed...
Honestly, I'd be all over metal for my own stuff if it wasn't so darn expensive to ship.
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Well, on the other hand does anyone need 200+ Confrontation models? I would happily have paid €40-60 for a box with metal models for a warband.
Confrontation was popular as long as it had metal models - high quality minis & low model count in games.
I've regularly pledged for KS with metal models and postage was always fair and insignificant - even when the stuff came from the States.
MAybe the real plan behind this KS is indeed to develope PVC casting for future games with their own designs?
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My guess would be postage. average weight of a pewter mini like that is easily 40-50 grams, multiply that by the number of models on offer and then find postage solutions that leave your mind unharmed...
Honestly, I'd be all over metal for my own stuff if it wasn't so darn expensive to ship.
The postage is only an issue if they chose to stick with this insane set up of having to buy a single box of 200 minis plus 2 paper mats and terrain sets (but no full rulebooks...). Plenty of people, including yourself, manage to post metal miniatures out not in boxes of 200. ;D
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I think a lot of people got very carried away with the thought of Confrontation coming back.
Not just that, it was coming back "in plastic". That's the phrasing that was continually used from what I read. In wargaming circles, "plastic" is "HIPS". Hard plastic. Solid, good detail. It may not have been meant to be deliberately misleading, given their unfamiliarity with the miniature side of things, and possibly the language barrier too. Even so, I am sure a fair few people were pledging for something that was never on the table.
That said, although not a good sign, it's not as if they have no backers or money left. How much funding they genuinely require for their enterprise is not irrelevant though, as is the ongoing question of how the final miniatures will actually turn out...
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I really only wanted the gobs, so I pledged a $1 and will add on the box I want.
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When it comes to the plastic, I kind of wonder why anyone would want confrontation models in HIPS.
They were never so modular as to allow a variety of poses, and you never needed enough of hem for the speed of assembly to be worth the pay off in detail. I guess they'd be cheaper? but they'd probably end up around malifuax box price per warband, and unless the team behind the relaunch really threw themselves into getting new models made, the range would be pretty bloody small.
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PVC need not be a poor quality product if done properly with the right plastics.
The "Drakerys" figures (a game developed by some of the original Rackham creative guys) are actually very good multi part PVC models and under the factory paintjob even the Confrontation 4 (Age of Ragnarok) are good nicely detailed figures. But on the other hand the tat that Mantic fill their boxes with (Mars Attacks/Dungeon Saga etc) is not.
I noticed on the KS comments today that there is mention of a new Confrontation RPG as well as the Boardgame in design so presumably if this KS succeeds there will be an option to pick up smaller sets or individual figures later.
But that said, anyone looking for a skirmish game in a unique/quirky Rackham style should be picking up "Moonstone" anyway:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1138228733/moonstone-fantasy-skirmish-game (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1138228733/moonstone-fantasy-skirmish-game)
KS was very successful and the game is now released, demo was showing at Salute.
The figures are superb.
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Faaaar too many miniatures for me, it'll just turn into a slightly started but never finished plastic pile. Just rereleasing a selection of the classic sets in their original metal or resin would've been a better kickstarter for my money. Even though I only really want a couple of the Dai Bakemono minis, I almost certainly would've paid out for ten or fifteen various dudes.
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By now 70 (!) people have dropped their EB.
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My guess would be postage. average weight of a pewter mini like that is easily 40-50 grams, multiply that by the number of models on offer and then find postage solutions that leave your mind unharmed...
Honestly, I'd be all over metal for my own stuff if it wasn't so darn expensive to ship.
Never meant the whole lot. That would be ridiculously expensive in metal costs as well let alone shipping. But if be interested in the Drunes starter set if it was metal. Postage wouldn't be horrendous on that.
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I just don't understand all the fuss... The kickstarter is for a big box of all the factions... That's what it is... The company, tho not the best at PR, is working no doubt on getting everything ready to produce this box of minis... I don't want them updating every 2 seconds... I want them working on getting me my big box of minis... Watching the forum comments makes me never want to do a kickstarter... So many complainers who probably don't even have a pledge or have just sunk in a whole whopping dollar...
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The fuss is they don't seem to have an understanding about what they are doing. Not really a minor thing. Of course the people complaining don't have a pledge.
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I just don't understand all the fuss... The kickstarter is for a big box of all the factions... That's what it is... The company, tho not the best at PR, is working no doubt on getting everything ready to produce this box of minis... I don't want them updating every 2 seconds... I want them working on getting me my big box of minis... Watching the forum comments makes me never want to do a kickstarter... So many complainers who probably don't even have a pledge or have just sunk in a whole whopping dollar...
ah well in that case , I withdraw all my scepticism based on observation and technical experience.
Nevermind the observable problems , these don't impact reality at all. :)
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lol lol
Most of the dropped pledges seem to have fallen into the €1 pledge
But, SD have "calculated" an option that allows backers to pledge only for the factions they want. It is a stretch goal target set at 1.25 million euros. But you will only get the basic faction figures, none of the ones added to that faction in the big box by previous stretch goals.
No problems with that, no siree, none at all..... :-X
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lol lol
Most of the dropped pledges seem to have fallen into the €1 pledge
But, SD have "calculated" an option that allows backers to pledge only for the factions they want. It is a stretch goal target set at 1.25 million euros. But you will only get the basic faction figures, none of the ones added to that faction in the big box by previous stretch goals.
No problems with that, no siree, none at all..... :-X
"HEY GUYS ! Great news! If you give us more money, You can unlock the ability to give us less money! don't worry about the basic fallacy in that statement, just look these these original sculpts that don't reflect the end product we will be sending you! Remember confrontation! Guys?! guys...where are you going guys?! Remember the early 2000s..remember spawn and starship troopers...Guys?..guys? Please come back...We'll give you a map...."
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Well, if I were losing $10K+ per day, I'd rather have it happening after making $1.5M than $.75M! lol
So many complainers who probably don't even have a pledge or have just sunk in a whole whopping dollar...
Yeah! And they'll receive just as much as those who actually pledged! lol
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131 EB dropped. The project is now below 600,000,-.
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I think when you have to put out an update that says "Our company is financially sound and above board." you might need to take a good long look at what has gone wrong with your communication down the line.
I had no interest, hadn't even looked, at the finances of the company behind this. I assumed they were a perfectly fine RPG publisher. NOW HOWEVER, I feel motivated to look into why they have out out the kickstarter equivalent of a mobster saying "I'm just a legitimate business man looking to dispose of this old carpet in a car compactor, as is my right!"
I do wonder if this carries on whether they'll be the first major kickstarter to go backwards from being funded to being below their goal.
It also seems that they have tried launching confrontation before, via private investment, but couldn't secure the funding for some reason.
I think that those wishing for the rebirth of confrontation as a living breathing game may be wishing in vain..
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The project is really starting to crash...155 EBs free now, dropped below 590,000€. I had thought they would cancel the campaign or at least tried to reassure backers by now, but on the contrary a sort of flame war is raging in the comments... :?
I had hoped for a better development and the continuation of Confrontation...
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So sad this is starting to appear a failure; I'm really wishing for the best possible future for Confrontation, but this KickStarter might well actually become detrimental to the property.
If only those guys had done their homework and kept to what is factually possible, instead of projecting a pipedream, larded with ill advised wishful thinking, that is now costing them dearly.
Here's to hoping they will pull this one and come back with a more limited project, offering starter sets in metal for each faction, for which they have all the requisite materials. With that, they might build a new supporter base, which maybe will allow them more ambitious projects in the future.
If this was a field hospital triage station, this KS would be sent to the left... :?
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Well, they still seem to claim, that the project is financed as long as it meets its basic goal. If that is true they can easily survive another 964 Early Birds dropping to $1...
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Now this is interesting, they just posted a new update:
"Coming soon : the collector add-ons of resin miniatures!"
Sounds incredible, but I'm not sure if they can turn the campaign...
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I'm pretty excited for the dwarf golem and the cynwall dragon! In resin! I also like that they had a talented painter Angel Giraldez paint up an actual resin example to show us... Apparently he is commissioned to do a bunch more to show us.... Detail looks good to me!
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That is a good price for figures of that size in resin.
But I still think they need to offer decent individual faction sets now. Let the inevitable internal shuffling of pledges happen, get past the constant negative comments and then carry on from wherever they end up. With a buy in price that does not deter potential new backers, or is not beyond the €€ people are willing to risk losing on a badly planned, badly run campaign from an inexperienced company whose owner is in financial trouble with another of his associated businesses.
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Will CMoN continue to stock the resin stuff or is it exclusive to SD? If the latter, will CMoN be an US distributor? Spent several hundred $$$ ordering Rackham figures from Ludik and was always happy with the service, but this was almost a decade ago. Despite the connection, I know nothing about Sans Detour and based on the muddled comments on the KS page from the company and fanaticism by people like Sylvano, I'm reluctant to spend money with them.
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Real confusion around this KS now (as well as the ever present negativity and personal attacks) about the future plans for these figures.
Seems this production run could be a one off and these PVC figures are not destined for ongoing supply. The figures designed for the new C5 game they are developing will all be new and based on a reworking (new later timeline) of the original Rackham world setting.
They are giving away more original Rackham master castings as draw prizes. Having previously sold some as part of a failed non KS fundraiser for the new game.
Which indicates them not having any long term plans for the range as in many cases the ownership of the surviving putty sculpts has reverted to the sculptors.
Expectation was that these figures plus new ones would be the basis of the new game. Now it seems there will be a set of crossover stats to play these (and existing metal models) with the new game rules, but it does not seem as if they will be part of the new game world or it's ongoing development.
As with all other contencious issues SD are refusing to answer the questions directly preferring to leave the day to day KS to selected fanbois.
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The announcement of resin models seemed to have stabilized the KS, but then again nothing happed. Why don’t they simply offer the old Rackham minis in resin?
They would easily earn a fortune!
As of now the KS is not bleeding anymore, it’s collapsing. 254 Early Birds available, funding dropped below 570,000€.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game?ref=profile_starred
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I dropped out of this KS some time ago. I find it very high risk and there are just so many red flags waving. The creator does not instil confidence that they are able to deliver. No production samples are shown, instead we get old promotional pictures from the Rackham era and a load of Trump style smooth sales talk everything will be "the best".
I sincerely hope that backers will get their moneys' worth, but I doubt it so very much.
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Back to bleeding again. Update has an intro to the project team, but, not only should this info have been on the KS page on the first day, but (or because of it) there's no mention of miniatures experience. Joss, who teased (but may not have actually said) during the Discourse chats he had miniatures experience is only the "game designer and author of the game Alkemy, 1st Voice of the Chroniclers". https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2174347
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Just had a look at the comments section (kind of morbid fascination)
No blue boxes denoting project owner comments or input for about 2 days now, looks as if they have given up trying to hold back the flood.
French fanbois still having a good go though, saw one post saying that all the negative comments are coming from people being paid by other miniature producers to spoil the chances of Confrontation being reborn.
:o
Who knew!
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Given that there are now 293 early bird options available, I wonder why 88 people are still insisting on paying for the more expensive full pledge ???
It looks like some degree of masochism is required for this project, but that's taking it too far lol
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Just had a look at the comments section (kind of morbid fascination)
No blue boxes denoting project owner comments or input for about 2 days now, looks as if they have given up trying to hold back the flood.
French fanbois still having a good go though, saw one post saying that all the negative comments are coming from people being paid by other miniature producers to spoil the chances of Confrontation being reborn.
:o
Who knew!
When did the project owners deign to comment? AFAIK, it's just been the drama of les collaborateurs contre la résistance...
Apologists are claiming that it was an holiday yesterday, so they had better things to do, though they weren't forthcoming with answers in the first place... ::)
SD's attitude reminds of of Rackham on their forum, some months before the end, sans smiley emojis. Have been wondering, how hard is it to get this right? This isn't the first instance of a group trying to resurrect Confrontation.
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On a related note, I thought that Ukranian Rackham figure producer is a recaster or at least lacks the rights to the IP, yet based on the comments, there's a difference in his status? ???
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On a related note, I thought that Ukranian Rackham figure producer is a recaster or at least lacks the rights to the IP, yet based on the comments, there's a difference in his status? ???
Cadwallon.com was certainly recasting stuff, the folk in the comments are just totally clueless. Though a C&D seems to have worked as all the rackham stuff is now "out of stock".
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This isn't the first instance of a group trying to resurrect Confrontation.
No indeed, but I think it may well be the last. They have sold many of the master castings before and are giving away others in this KS. They have sold original greens and others have reverted to the sculptors. The moulds themselves were destroyed at the end of Rackham.
I am certain they realise without moulds, master castings or greens there is no way of bringing it back.
Stellar Consulting is another of the businesses owned and run by the head of SD & LudikBazar, and they have pulled together all the Confrontation associated licences except video games and C&D'd the best known recaster (not sure about the Australian guy as I don't do eBay anymore). So they pretty much have it sewn up at the moment.
Making their proposed "Confrontation Resurrection" re-imagining the only option.
Which would be a true Machiavellian twist given that they are hoping development of that game would be funded by the very fans of the old game that they are aiming to kill.
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Cadwallon.com was certainly recasting stuff, the folk in the comments are just totally clueless. Though a C&D seems to have worked as all the rackham stuff is now "out of stock".
Cadwallon was recasting from production models, but as said in the comments SD could have offered him a licence to produce legally and kept the metal figures in production.
They are also launching a KS for their own game next week so maybe have other plans anyway.
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It's dropped to 550,000. What a mess. I also cannot look away. o_o
If it wasn't Confrontation (which I really liked back then because of the sculpts), I would certainly enjoy the first KS to un-fund itself. Masterly done by the clever timing of misinformation, extraordinary high-risk, astonishing entry levels and irritating business decisions! Well done, SD!
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You just want to see it say, funded in 2 hours, unfunded at 24 days. lol
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You just want to see it say, funded in 2 hours, unfunded at 24 days. lol
..well they are still on target if that was the aim. Dropped below 550,000.00 € and 315 open EBs.
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I'm crying so hard... I really wish I could step in and right the ship... i'd do it for free if they would give me a voice... it would be easy to do... their updates are so idiotic... the stretch goals are not compounding, but at this point underwhelming... they need a HUGE info post clarifying A LOT OF STUFF and just be totally transparent... WITH A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER... they need to spill any beans they have and show all the candy they have... it always seems like they are hiding something... and i'm a backer BTW... i'm missing 5 of those factions and i would love to have the minis... way cheaper if this works out then trying to buy them all in metal. it might be money in the trash... but so be it. I have to try. I love those sculpts.
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It has reached the point where you begin to think NOBODY could be this idiotic about running a Kickstart Campaign so they must be up to something.
Why the f**k would you go silent for 2 days, watch the campaign lose 105 backers and over €120k, put out a surreal update thanking the fanbois for their support and then go on the comments and start chatting about hosting game tournaments and cheese & wine parties in the South of France.
???
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I also fet sad....really sad. Actually the campaign made me look for my old models in the lead-pile and even read the free Confrontation evolution rules. And now those Vollpfostens sell the masters or give them away as freebies and totally spoil a phenomenal start! Sapperlotkruzitürkenhallelujah! From about 700,000 going down.
They’re now approaching the 530,000. Will we see them breaking through the half million on the weekend?
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I think they may have enough fanboys to keep them going.
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So their response to the freefall has been to limit the regular pledges to 2000 (as well as 2000 early birds) and declare that this stuff will never be available outside the KS... It also seems they have no plans to actually bring back old Confrontation stuff as their new Resurrection game will have it's own new minis.
The Celebration Pledge has become a unique item and an exclusive Kickstarter:
ALL the Stretch Goals have been unlocked up to 1 249 999 €. That's a bonus of 86 miniatures!
This include the Stretch Goal for the map of Aarklash.
The Celebration Pledge is limited to 4 000 copies worldwide (including 2 000 Early Birds).
Last but not least:
it will never be available in stores.
It will never be available as a Late Pledge.
And there will never be another Confrontation Classic Kickstarter campaign.
The 1 250 000 € Stretch Goal remains valid and will liberate all factions.
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I am reminded of HeroQuest 25 o_o
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They added a lot of cool stuff to the unlocked minis... I'm def staying in... it got a lot better... and i like that there is only 4000 being made... i think they start to reverse the negative trend now... a lot of extra add ons you can buy too... we'll see...
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That looks like a last gasp desperation ploy to me. So many figures they are (theoretically) committed to producing without a confirmed level of funding.
As if there were not enough red flags on this already.
Staggering hubris from these idiots.
Shame about Confrontation. :'(
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They added a lot of cool stuff to the unlocked minis... I'm def staying in... it got a lot better... and i like that there is only 4000 being made... i think they start to reverse the negative trend now... a lot of extra add ons you can buy too... we'll see...
They did add a lot of stuff yes, but no idea how they're gonna afford to produce all of it. It seems especially mental with this being a completely limited Kickstarter only now so they won't be making their money back on this stuff afterwards. Of course they still have a retail pledge of x6 boxes... dunno how that works with the 4000 limit and no retail release... ;D
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$1.43 per mini not including all the terrain, boards..... no repeating minis.... i'm going to guess they've been crunching numbers and can get all these produced for 4000 sets for a certain amount... they are going to make a LOT selling just the add ons to people who don't want the big box... the plastic dragon has to cost less then a dollar to make and they are selling it for $149.... they are going to make a lot of money on this... i don't worry about them going broke.... it's PLASTIC... and they already have the sculpts (tho that is still somewhat unclear).... you could probably make each batch of 4000 minis for about $15-20 in raw plastic cost at the buying levels these chinese plants get it at.
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Of course they still have a retail pledge of x6 boxes... dunno how that works with the 4000 limit and no retail release... ;D
I can’t see any retailer being interested in this. A very expensive one-off product that won’t be expanded upon or rereleased?
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i don't worry about them going broke.... it's PLASTIC... and they already have the sculpts (tho that is still somewhat unclear).... you could probably make each batch of 4000 minis for about $15-20 in raw plastic cost at the buying levels these chinese plants get it at.
The raw plastic costs is never an issue with these things it's tooling. Plastic moulds are notoriously expensive, like £20k - £30k per sprue to make. Then you've got all the rest of the production including packaging, cards etc. Assuming they can even produce them, we still don't even know what kind of quality these are gonna end up as since they're only showing old studio pictures of the miniatures.
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So their response to the freefall has been to limit the regular pledges to 2000 (as well as 2000 early birds) and declare that this stuff will never be available outside the KS... It also seems they have no plans to actually bring back old Confrontation stuff as their new Resurrection game will have it's own new minis.
That is either a joke or they want to test to which extraordinary degree you can abuse fanboys & girls... If not before this should make the last one run away screaming...
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That is either a joke or they want to test to which extraordinary degree you can abuse fanboys & girls... If not before this should make the last one run away screaming...
Well they're going up now so seems to be working... They've also just announced a resin pledge, all in much like the main pledge but without any stretch goals.
Resin is Confrontations Holy Grail.
Get your hands on the 178 unique miniatures from the Celebration Pledge in resin at the price of 990 €.
This pledge includes the 2 Battle Sets, but none of the Stretch Goals.
This prestigious edition will not be available as a Late Pledge.
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Well they're going up now so seems to be working... They've also just announced a resin pledge, all in much like the main pledge but without any stretch goals.
...hmmm, I've seen that. The resin is indeed tempting...but €1000,-???? Seriously?
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The raw plastic costs is never an issue with these things it's tooling. Plastic moulds are notoriously expensive, like £20k - £30k per sprue to make. Then you've got all the rest of the production including packaging, cards etc. Assuming they can even produce them, we still don't even know what kind of quality these are gonna end up as since they're only showing old studio pictures of the miniatures.
Bang on.
None of this actually makes any sense to me. If this will be the 'last' chance to get the old style miniatures why on Earth do it in PVC? Why on earth go through all of the hassle to get metal production moulds made only to not get the use out of them, and at such a relatively low cost?
Material cost is by the by. How many moulds are they needing for these? My guess is that this is the reason for the lump them altogether deal. They can economise on mould space without worrying about making units out of them etc.
Still, seems dodgy as hell to me which is why I have avoided it and not recommended it to anyone.
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It is possible they could be pricing doing this with the cheap short life Aluminium moulds although 4000 plus retailers pledges is on the limit of "quality" injection for those. Maybe that is why they capped the number.
Still, seems dodgy as hell to me which is why I have avoided it and not recommended it to anyone.
Agreed. It still feels wrong.
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Maybe that is why they capped the number.
My guess is that it purely was done to create more demand; fear of missing out and all that.
In reference to another post above - I doubt any particular number crunching has been done. The required knowledge and capability seems severely lacking in the team behind this KS. I sincerely hope things turn out well, for the backers more than the company involved. But I have seen little evidence to believe that will be the case.
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I suggested on dakkadakka that they were doing this all as one big box to keep the work and cost to a minimum and make a quick buck. Essentially just pack everything into one or two big moulds, Get them pumped out in china like cheap toy soldiers.
I really don't see how they could have had a proper worked out budget that says they couldn't afford single faction boxes or a smaller starting point, But now with LESS funding then they had after the first week, they can afford to throw a whole bunch of stuff in? Seems like a desperate last grasp, and I highly doubt they've properly factored any of these new rewards into their timeframe/budget.
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A CHALLENGER APPEARS.
that is to say that Cadwallon, the company that had kept confrontation alive by recasting the old figures for the last few years, have a kickstarter launching soon.
These are all their own sculpts, many of which i belive have been on heir website for a while.
They are in a lovely rackham style, and unlike SD we know the material and skill set being used.
This kickstarter to me seems like it is being run by people with more passion for confrontation than the actual confrontation one!
actual fresh sculpts, a new game, and a clear attention to detail and aesthetic consistency that does the legacy of rackham proud.
https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/755853.page
https://cadwallon.com/legends-of-signum
(I do wonder if the name is meant to confuse people and draw in age of sigmar fans.... lol )
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It is a strange looking game, part CCG, part miniatures with a city builder mechanism in there too.
The miniatures are excellent, I have a couple of them.
There is not going to be a "just the minis" pledge but each starter faction has a figure box with a few tokens etc in.
Kickstarter Advance look: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2034410916/319726173?ref=445132&token=ceea4041
Some of these sculpts look perfect for Cadwallon types. I have them for Moonstone.
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Just going by those minis, they've certainly hit the spot.
I must read into the rules of the game (I'm not convinced at the moment, partly due to the, ehm, interesting, English in the texts, but that might be addressed), but the minis would blend in perfectly with the existing Confrontation range.
They certainly appear to be better organized, and the full development of an entire game system shows their dedication.
My sentiments right now are; I hope the Cadwallon guys are very succesful, so along the line, they can actually buy the rights to Confrontation from those bumbling buffoons holding them now, be able to sell the original (re)casts again and integrate them in their own game.
Best case scenario I can think of at the moment.
So here's to hoping Legends of Signum will be a resounding succes...
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^
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That's much more eloquently put than I could've said.
The one thing I dislike about the Signum KS is the tying of a bonus miniature on the backer's ability to advertise the KS on Facebook.
I do understand that it'll get them more free advertisement but it does put everyone without a Facebook account out a mini.
Still, I do love the look of the minis. Not only do they look like they'd be right at home in Confrontation, several of them look like they'd be at home in a more Dark Souls-esque setting.
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FWIW, I think the Cadwallon guys did have some master moulds or something... or else they are very talented at casting. I have ordered from them a few times in the past, and the quality was excellent. Some were even better quality than the officially released confrontation versions I had of the same figure!
I'd love to back the Cadwallon KS, but don't like the CCG aspect of it. Hopefully they decide to do a minis-only pledge.
As for this KS... I left my pledge at 1 euro... mostly to watch the slow motion train wreck it seems to be turning into. I find it very hard to believe that the quality will be wothwhile for so many miniatures... being cast in a material that is known to be of lower quality.
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Fanbois out in force again this morning, thankfully they all seem to have early bedtimes so late evenings and early morning discussions seem calmer and more productive.
Last night there was discussion of the general financial risks associated with backing a KS ( obviously developed from the massive risk factor of this one). A well know figure manufacturer who has run their own KS campaigns commented on KS risk in general and the legal position of backers/investors.
This morning he was roundly attacked, basically told he did not know what he was talking about and that the creators of this project are lovely people who would surely refund everyone all their pledge money if things go wrong.
There are people backing this who genuinely believe they are guaranteed the big box of excellent quality figures, with first quality printed game cards and plastic scenery, or a full refund of their pledge.
WTF :?
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Fanbois out in force again this morning, thankfully they all seem to have early bedtimes so late evenings and early morning discussions seem calmer and more productive.
Last night there was discussion of the general financial risks associated with backing a KS ( obviously developed from the massive risk factor of this one). A well know figure manufacturer who has run their own KS campaigns commented on KS risk in general and the legal position of backers/investors.
This morning he was roundly attacked, basically told he did not know what he was talking about and that the creators of this project are lovely people who would surely refund everyone all their pledge money if things go wrong.
There are people backing this who genuinely believe they are guaranteed the big box of excellent quality figures, with first quality printed game cards and plastic scenery, or a full refund of their pledge.
WTF :?
Like you I have a perverted joy in checking this particular KS from time to time, hoping for a miracle or a catastrophe or just some malicious joy reading the comments.
I must sa the fanatical fanboys nearly convinced me from time to time... lol
After all I would pay like 1200 € if this marvelous box ever reached the shops...I started to look for ahidden camera last week.
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Well I'm not a fanatical fanboy, but I'm still in with my EB pledge... if it works out it will be one of my best investments... if not it will be sour... that's investing though... you weigh the risks and make a decision. I'm staying in... fingers crossed... if it dives, then I'll have all my Joan of arc figures to keep me happy this Christmas!!
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Who are these people that have £300 to just risk on such a shoddy kickstarter? I'm always confused by the comment son dakkadakka when a new big kickstarter comes along , the ones along the lines of "well i have these 4 massive kickstarters coming to me soon, and i'm backing 4 more now, but i'll happily drop £400 on this one!"
Where are the people so easily deperated from their money? I have some super rare and expensive scrap wood and banana peels to sell them!
I swear half the backs of big kickstarter projects never even open their boxes and just stick it all on ebay when it arrives to try and kill the buyers remorse.
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Well I'm not a fanatical fanboy, but I'm still in with my EB pledge... if it works out it will be one of my best investments... if not it will be sour... that's investing though... you weigh the risks and make a decision. I'm staying in... fingers crossed... if it dives, then I'll have all my Joan of arc figures to keep me happy this Christmas!!
Well. Good luck to you, sir!
I certainly hope the KS will succeed and produce minis in decent quality. But even if this succeeds, SD have announced to drop the classical Confrontation line (why?), and I guess ebay will be flooded with minis people who had an eB don’t need and sell off.
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I think they brought this back out to make sure there was still an interest in the game before they start work on Resurrection... It's not a waste as everyone loves the models and they are compatible with the next version... But they needed to see the interest before they start work on all new sculpts for the new game... They are looking to hire several of the Rackham sculptors to carry the theme on... They will not ditch the masters/scans i guarantee it... Too many people love them... Would be dumb to do so. I'll bet GW still has every mold they've ever used. Just in case.
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I'll bet GW still has every mold they've ever used.
They most assuredly don't
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In many cases love of anything by anyone is outweighed by the desire of the few in possession of it to make money from both it and the love shown to it by those others.
I hope it succeeds, and its not a victim of the above, but I have enough some stuff already, and not touching it until ebay if ever.
If it is necessary for those who support it to defend it by defaming/attacking people for their justifiable concerns, rather than answering them, then is it really going that well for anyone?
Still, its a KS, we are free to chance the investment to hopefully receive something for it.
Run a KS poorly to gauge interest in relaunching a product? Really? think there are probably a lot better choices/ways to do that.
I swear half the backs of big kickstarter projects never even open their boxes and just stick it all on ebay when it arrives to try and kill the buyers remorse.
Of course not, its worth more if you keep it in the plastic wrapper and never take it out - the pristine condition, think of the value to other collectors, and how much they will be willing to pay you for it when your dead and gone....
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They most assuredly don't
Correct, I watched a few being destroyed when I was working there. With some licence agreements it is a legal requirement to destroy the possibility of production when the licence ends. Others simply burn out and are not replaced.
At the time they were keeping at least one of the "Tins" of the GW copyright miniatures though. These being the specialist first casts of the master (called "Tins" because of the alloy which is different to the production casting. Better detail retention at the cost of reduced flexibility/pliability)
As for the Kickstarter
:'(
The inclusion of all the new stretch goal minis does not seem to have recovered the Kickstarter, total is still dropping and barely a change in the numbers of available early bird pledges. Looks as if the few new backers have gone straight for the add ons.
May be their only option now to include all the stretch goal miniatures as add ons and boost the funds that way but I think it will be too little to late. I see no way they can produce what they have committed themselves to for the money they have raised.
edit: At least not with the quality that people will expect of a Confrontation mini.
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DavisMal - that's not investment, that's gambling.
Kickstarter is like the public version of dragon's den. Investment is about weighing up what is on offer and whether it is realistic and the people that are suggesting they can do it are reliable and trustworthy.
When you have weighed up that, hopefully with something more substantial than words of reassurance, then you decide whether the investment is viable or not.
If you are investing knowing that the chances are slim that you will get the return you invest for, then that's just a gamble. You are rolling the dice and hoping for double 6's.
Has to be said that this is not looking good at all. The resin pledge level is not economic, it will lose them money, not make it for them. It doesn't take much maths to work it out.
If they can't get that right, then where does that put the normal pledges.
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OMG...after a not that bad attempt to introduce resin as a material (heck, I might have pledged, if they had offered smaller pledges, but 1000€ is ridiculous!), it’s going down again!
Dropped to 535,000 after reaching 550,000.
And guess what? The last update is really good...in a bad way: substitution of the bazillions of special abilities in Confrontation with icons.
1. This is clearly more difficult to remember and check up, and makes their new cards incompatible with the old ones. You can already imagine the in-game dialogues, like „Does your mini have brutal or born killler? Well it has a circle with a dor. A large dot? Well an dot that is pointed. To which side?“
2. they totally forgot that in Confrontation the equipment had a game effect with certain cards.
3. there are so many special abilities that they will run out of icons pretty soon.
Ach, heck. Why couldn’t they have just recast the old minis in metal?
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Ach, heck. Why couldn’t they have just recast the old minis in metal?
That's all people want.
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They don't want the old figures in production anywhere. As far as they are concerned Confrontation is what they decide it will be in the next game, take it or leave it.
This project was just a cash grab so that they did not have to kickstart the main game for production. Apparently they estimated 2 - 3 million from this project which would get development etc sorted on the next game and they could launch that in a blaze of glory as a pre-order scheme project like CMoN/Mantic.
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Back into a bit of a freefall again - lost about £9000 yesterday.
Still 79 people not bothering to save a bit of cash by converting to one of the 423 remaining early birds, and one more person actually took up the resin pledge o_o
8 days to go. You gotta think the the company is probably wishing they could call a halt now, while there's still time
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Back into a bit of a freefall again - lost about £9000 yesterday.
Still 79 people not bothering to save a bit of cash by converting to one of the 423 remaining early birds, and one more person actually took up the resin pledge o_o
8 days to go. You gotta think the the company is probably wishing they could call a halt now, while there's still time
Well, freefall is the correct term. It's now dropping in big steps. Another loss of 8,000 just from today. And it's dropping as you watch. I think the last couple of updates (or better: not-updates) nailed the coffin. The resin pledge is by far too expensive and the PVC...well all has been said.
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Wouldn't call it a free fall, but certainly a continuous gradual decline. Just remembered there is this website collecting kickstarter data and creating some graphs: https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/#chart-daily
(just ignore the projections, they in no way represent a realistic scenario here. Past data, on daily pledges and backers, is useful though.)
(https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/minichart.png) (https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/)
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Been falling for ages... the bump around the 3rd may is when they unlocked all the stretch goals and added resin pledges.
(http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/dailypledges.png)
Also to reinforce that they have no intention of carrying on the old lines they have the original sculpts up for sale... Granted it seems like the older stuff but I haven't had a proper look through.
https://www.stellarlicencing.com/index.php/boutique
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8 days to go. You gotta think the the company is probably wishing they could call a halt now, while there's still time.
A creator can cancel anytime before the project end date. Since SD hasn't done any work aside from the demo cards, this campaign has been inexpensive marketing for them. That doesn't mean Confrontation Resurrection (SD hasn't said if it'll go to KS or will be sold retail?) will be as successful as it could have been had SD run this campaign properly, but "any publicity is good publicity" and all that.
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Wouldn't call it a free fall, but certainly a continuous gradual decline. Just remembered there is this website collecting kickstarter data and creating some graphs: https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/#chart-daily
(just ignore the projections, they in no way represent a realistic scenario here. Past data, on daily pledges and backers, is useful though.)
(https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/minichart.png) (https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/)
Well, maybe, but there has been a regular decline since day 3 with only two small episodes of gains. The constant bleeding might well lead to a panic as new KS rules forbid changing your pledge if this would cancel the project in the last hours.
The last days were certainly dramatic for them and could just bring about a domino effect.
Anyway, it’s a pity to waste such a strong license.
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PS...and today they are already approaching the 500,000 € mark...but from the wrong side!
The non-existant etiquette to critical people as well as the non-answering of all critical questions did not help the project it seems.
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Judging by that graph I think they won't go under the goal by the end of the funding date. But promising more minis while getting less funding? I really hope people get their stuff.
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I don't mean to dive into this too deep, and there's no doubt they could've done a lot better in many regards.
But to me it seems that many folks on the KS page don't bother with sticking to constructive criticism.
Some clearly lecture and even troll the campaign owners instead of just leaving the campaign.
So all things considered - I can't help it, but I am starting to feel really sorry for the guys running that thing.
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I don't mean to dive into this too deep, and there's no doubt they could've done a lot better in many regards.
But to me it seems that many folks on the KS page don't bother with sticking to constructive criticism.
Some clearly lecture and even troll the campaign owners instead of just leaving the campaign.
So all things considered - I can't help it, but I am starting to feel really sorry for the guys running that thing.
Really? I've only seen one negative poster who could be described as "trolling", most of it has been the vicious obsessed supporters (who also trolled a rival KS). The criticism has been constructive, pointing out exactly why this is failing and why it's pretty much not going to deliver. I don't feel sorry for them at all, this was a naked cash grab that will finally put the nail in the coffin of Confrontation. Their attempts to "fix" the funding slide have been exceptionally shady, unlocking all stretch goals and introducing a heavy amount of FOMO (fear of missing out) by limiting the pledge amounts and declaring that the box won't be available outside the KS, not even in the pledge manager. Oh and for added hilarity the stretch goal which will allow individual factions as add-ons, the most requested feature, isn't even reachable if they sell all 2000 early birds and 2000 regular pledges...
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I have looked in on this campaign out of interest from the beginning, there is something going on behind the scenes that makes it seem really dodgy.
It is plain that they need to curtail the campaign and reboot at a later date. When they have a better idea of what the real market outside the rabid French fanbois want, because currently they have absolutely no idea.
Their refusal to even consider that is either incredible arrogance or they have some unstated obligation to get the funds in now. The lower this goes the greater the risk to peoples money, if this funds with a minimal amount above the initial goal it will be a disaster. I have no sympathy for them either.
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Really? I've only seen one negative poster who could be described as "trolling", most of it has been the vicious obsessed supporters (who also trolled a rival KS). The criticism has been constructive, pointing out exactly why this is failing and why it's pretty much not going to deliver. I don't feel sorry for them at all, this was a naked cash grab that will finally put the nail in the coffin of Confrontation. Their attempts to "fix" the funding slide have been exceptionally shady, unlocking all stretch goals and introducing a heavy amount of FOMO (fear of missing out) by limiting the pledge amounts and declaring that the box won't be available outside the KS, not even in the pledge manager. Oh and for added hilarity the stretch goal which will allow individual factions as add-ons, the most requested feature, isn't even reachable if they sell all 2000 early birds and 2000 regular pledges...
I was just looking at the comments for a couple of mins and got a bit overwhelmed with what I thought was pure negativity.
But yes, a lot has gone wrong here, and there's no doubt that many folks were trying hard to be constructive to see their criticism not being properly addressed.
It just all feels so incredibly toxic.
Edit: Looking a bit closer at the list of issues mentioned on here (I shouldn't have) made me jaw drop. I was really under the impression that this is mostly failed communication.
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Their refusal to even consider that is either incredible arrogance or they have some unstated obligation to get the funds in now. The lower this goes the greater the risk to peoples money, if this funds with a minimal amount above the initial goal it will be a disaster. I have no sympathy for them either.
I might be recalling wrong but didn't they (somewhere in the mess that is the KS' comments section) respond to suggestions of rebooting it by stating that they can't due to how they've set things up? That would suggest the latter.
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The biggest question is, will this thread and kickstarter reach defiance games levels of incompetence? ;)
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I wonder if they have a license that depends on them producing a product within a certain timeframe?
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Well. They finally made it and dropped below tha half million mark.
Sympathy or suspicion aside, I think they have seriously underestimated the KS competition and the problems a KS brings, when hundreds of investors ask very detailed questions in public.
I still think, this might drop even lower in the next few days, when more and more backers realise that by now 150,000€ of funds have been lost and the risk for a very high pledge has considerably risen and continues to rise with the possibility of a Moria-situation in the last 48 hours („We cannot get out!“)
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I wonder if they have a license that depends on them producing a product within a certain timeframe?
Unlikely, they own the licence, or at least a holding company in Hong Kong owned by the same guy does.
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Unlikely, they own the licence, or at least a holding company in Hong Kong owned by the same guy does.
Then it sounds like a sales tactic to scare up some new backers
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Jebus, £13k down in one day, that's not great.
EDIT: ... and counting - £14k and a half now.
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They lost more yesterday.
I was watching this and Hellboy and they were competing to see if one could make the amount of money the other lost . . . . . . ;D
Suffering from detailed questions in public is close to the truth. Not having thought that people might ask such questions and therefore have the answers already presented is probably closer to it.
Announcing that you do not have the masters, or the moulds and that you will have to be scanning them in and adjusting them to make 3d renders to be printed - suggests at least you should have one or two pieces done in such a way so that people can have confidence in what you are suggesting.
Then there is the PVC for what were once considered high end miniatures. Folk that collect Rackham/Confrontation do so for the quality. Without examples I'm sure people have lost confidence.
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They seem to have just abandoned the comments...
There are still people on there with no understanding of how things get made insisting that SD will be making steel moulds.
One person seems to think that their willingness to sell the masters means they are making steel moulds because it shows they aren't precious about them , Because apparently "when you make a steel mould, you encase the figure in steel and it gets damaged in the process"...
The mind boggles.I think I'll send that one to my old casting tutor to add to his big book of dumb mistakes.
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Because apparently "when you make a steel mould, you encase the figure in steel and it gets damaged in the process"...
That is part of what happens in bronze casting for sculptures etc.
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That is part of what happens in bronze casting for sculptures etc.
Indeed it is, I have a few of my own bronze works on my desk as i type. But it's not a method you'd ever need to use for miniatures, and you also don't coat the master in metal. You coat it in a ceramic shell , layer by layer over several days. it's also not a method you'd use if you needed more than 1 of something, Since the mould is destroyed when you remove the cast.
The comments on this kickstarter remind me of a teacher i worked with once when i helped to run an sculpture workshop at her school.
She wanted to cast her students hands, so she was all ready to get them to stick their hands in a bucket of setting plaster up to the elbow. I told her this would not only not work, but could seriously hurt her students. She said "but they'll have vaseline on so they can just pull their hands out." It took me longer than i would have liked to get her to understand WHY what she was planning wouldn't work, and she still insisted she had seen it work before and i was just making it more complicated.
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€16944 down in total yesterday. :o Blimey, they lose as much daily as a small company would love to just reach at the end of a campaign. If the last six days pan out like that, that could be another €100k less - still above the goal, but possibly not by too much, and at about two thirds of what they had at their peak. Once again makes you wonder what the genuine funding required is...
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The comments on this kickstarter remind me of a teacher i worked with once when i helped to run an sculpture workshop at her school.
She wanted to cast her students hands, so she was all ready to get them to stick their hands in a bucket of setting plaster up to the elbow. I told her this would not only not work, but could seriously hurt her students. She said "but they'll have vaseline on so they can just pull their hands out." It took me longer than i would have liked to get her to understand WHY what she was planning wouldn't work, and she still insisted she had seen it work before and i was just making it more complicated.
I have to ask -- what happened when the plaster hardened? :D
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I have to ask -- what happened when the plaster hardened? :D
Well luckily the kids didn't have their arms in it. But there have been cases of kids getting third degree burns (people forget that plaster is exothermic when setting, and a large volume of it can get very hot in the middle), having their arms broken trying to get out, and even a few cases of amputation of limbs due to damage caused during the breaking of the plaster. If she'd gone through with her plan she'd have had 20 kids all weighed down by a bucket of hard plaster.
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One of my favourite's so far today:
"2018 best PVC > 2010 best metal."
Logic and experience fail me with that one, and most people on this forum have access to a lot more of both of those than me.
mmmmm...... then I read the FAQ...
I don't think it will quite 'unfund' but its going to be very very close.
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More losses all morning, and one of the 990 euros pledges has pulled out
There's a big thread over at the reaper forum (http://forum.reapermini.com/index.php?/topic/79487-confrontation-classic/&page=9) saying pretty much the same stuff as here. One poster commented
Apparently, Sans-Detour is the company running the kickstarter, and they're planning on using Ludik for the fulfillment. Ludik is causing concerns because it is apparently having financial issues. Now it's revealed that there is a third company in the mix, owned by the same people.
Hopefully it is just incomptence rather than badness and things will work out, but if I was a backer it would be a long nervous wait for Nov 2019...
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Their latest update is amazing... "We can deliver this project for just 300k euro, honest guv!"...
As a matter of fact, we own the original miniatures allowing the manufacturing of the molds. Therefore, you pay neither for the engraving nor for the fabrication of masters! All these reasons make this project very much atypical.
So don't be surprised by the gap in prices in comparison with other projects, or by the generosity of this offer. Confrontation Classic is one of a kind.
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That would be the Masters they are selling via another website, with no reproduction rights?
They have that many?
Or do they have other types of masters they are not selling?
Yes Ok if you have them, one cost not to pay - but your basically re-mastering them? so that costs?
Nice to see how many backers there are that are still so positive about this product, in the developing atmosphere of this KS.
Still going down though
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That would be the Masters they are selling via another website, with no reproduction rights?
They have that many?
Or do they have other types of masters they are not selling?
Yes Ok if you have them, one cost not to pay - but your basically re-mastering them? so that costs?
Nice to see how many backers there are that are still so positive about this product, in the developing atmosphere of this KS.
Still going down though
The sculpts they're selling on the licence site don't seem to be any of the same ones being produced for this KS to be fair. It does mean we'll never see an actual re-release of this stuff as they abandon it to collectors with deep pockets but they never intended to put the old stuff back into production anyway.
But yeah, it ignores that they need to make new moulds for the sculpts they do have in a material those sculpts were never intended for so they will need reworked in some way.
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So its only the stuff that they want gone forever thats no impact on the ones they want to PVC.
Fair enough.
Still it is always a sad thing for me to see nice miniatures disappear from the market whether I can afford them or not, it saddens.
Having said that I think KS went up again since I last checked. by about 1 backer. or 300 1 euro backers..
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I'm still in it... I've been on the con-federation forum the last week (in French, but Google chrome translates)... Joss and 2 of the other mods are members and they have full confidence. The people in the forum are their lifelong friends and tournament buddies... I think they would warn them if things were looking shaky... SD has big plans with the followup games and capital from somewhere to push it all forward... horrible marketing and communication, yes... but I think there will be a box show up at my door in 2019.
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This KS reminds me of the Heroquest 25th that I foolishly backed through a different Crowdfunding platform. Gamezone however had more, much more experience with miniatures. So much offered and most backers backed due to nostalgia. The money I spent on that is gone (they put an update up every now and then) and I doubt I will see money from that. It doesn't really bother me as I knew the risks and took the gamble. I lost out that time. This one seems a bit more of a risky venture even though they do fully have all copyright sorted (I believe). copyright on HQ25 was a mess but only a part of the failure
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I'm still in it... I've been on the con-federation forum the last week (in French, but Google chrome translates)... Joss and 2 of the other mods are members and they have full confidence. The people in the forum are their lifelong friends and tournament buddies... I think they would warn them if things were looking shaky... SD has big plans with the followup games and capital from somewhere to push it all forward... horrible marketing and communication, yes... but I think there will be a box show up at my door in 2019.
Well, I keep my fingers crossed for you. I do hope, they succeed in reviving Confrontation, though I'm very sceptical.
But even if I would want to take the risk, the KS has still failed to show anything that was of interest for me. I have most of the sculpts and don't need them again in PVC, and the resin pledge is still a joke.
If they cancelled, retought the whole concept and offered small(!) resin pledges from the begin, I think, they could still rock the house.
And one last thing: friends and business does not go well together...
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It is getting kind of surreal now, the fanbois are celebrating less backers and less funds on the grounds that it will make fulfilment easier and quicker........apparently because it is not likely to drop below the 300k target all is fine.
wtf ???
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Well, the haemorrhage has slowed to a steady drip at least in the last couple of days. If everything goes smoothly and everyone gets their stuff in good time, and it's all as lovely as they hoped ... good luck to them. They took a punt and it came off.
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Well I'm giving it a 75% chance of full successful fulfillment. This company has big future plans and everyone that cares 1 bit about confrontation or fantasy minis will remember this KS... if they don't deliver they are toast... and since we know all of their names every future project those names are associated with is severely tainted... it's still weird how distanced they are remaining, but several of their staff are very involved in resurection and getting it developed. Don't get me wrong, I'm worried... but I don't go to Vegas often... and I feel the odds are better... a little gamble is worth the reward here to me.
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They need some friends...
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and since we know all of their names every future project those names are associated with is severely tainted
Future? One of the names has already been associated with a company that's being liquidated.
I think they would warn them if things were looking shaky.
Why? Will they be out $400 if the KS falls through? Do their friends know anything about casting miniatures? Or are they one of the 1500 backers who think SD can pull this off?
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So if they go below the level of the unlocked content does it get relocked?
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So if they go below the level of the unlocked content does it get relocked?
SD announced that all SG's were unlocked, in one of their updates.
Now, whether or not anyone will *get* the SG's is another question.
Hmm... -22 backers yesterday. Keep dropping your pledges so we can make this the best KS ever!!! ;D
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Future? One of the names has already been associated with a company that's being liquidated.
Doesn't matter. As log as enough people aren't aware/don't care.
Mierce miniatures s build on the corpse of Mealstrom games, which burned huge ammounts of hobbyist, including yours truly . It's doing fine though.
I must grudgingly admit that their range is beautifull and the one reason I'm not buying is their past.
I don't think this kickstarter will unfund. The initial buy in was above what I'd be willing to put into it, so I was out anyway.
But I have no hope they will deliver a quality product. I'm amazed at how this kickstarter is run. Never have I seen so many red flags.
And yes that is a shame. It really is a wonderfull range. Here's hoping I'm wrong
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Maelstrom was very different though. That was an emergency move to try and sakvage something from what was the result of a move by Wayland, who had bought debt from Wyrd and then called it in. At that time Maelstrom was one of their leading competitors.
In tbis situation you have at least three seperate entities. Ludik Bazare, the company running the KS and the company the holds the IP. And all three have the same people in common.
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Don't get me wrong, I'm worried... but I don't go to Vegas often... and I feel the odds are better... a little gamble is worth the reward here to me.
I hope it works out for you. To treat it as a gamble is the right attitude for any Kickstarter, not just this one.
At this stage who knows, they could confound all the sceptics.
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Maelstrom was very different though. That was an emergency move to try and sakvage something from what was the result of a move by Wayland, who had bought debt from Wyrd and then called it in. At that time Maelstrom was one of their leading competitors.
I don't know those specifics. All I know is they where still taking money from people, when they allready knew they couldn't deliver.
I'm not saying SD is pulling the same stuff here. I was just saying that if a product has a controversial past it's not a given that the product will be abandoned by the public.
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Everyone keeps mentioning Ludik Bazare as a company involved and this Kickstarter... it's not one of the guys with this Kickstarter was the owner of Ludik Bazare... totally separate company and they just shut the company down... they didn't screw anybody they didn't do anything wrong it just wasn't feasible anymore and they shut it down. I have several LLCs with my name on it that have nothing to do with each other. if I start to think one isn't feasible anymore I'll shut it down. I don't understand why it would have anything to do with one of my other companies though. people are giving us this a bad rap because Ludik Bazare is shutting down their company even though there's not one person that said they've ever lost money with Ludik Bazare. That whole arguments just not valid with me I see why they keep wondering why everyone's so worried about a company that's not involved.
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There are people out of pocket as a result of Ludik going bankrupt. They sold a series of "club" discount schemes that were still valid at the time they stopped trading. The people holding those were not able to use them during the closure and will not be refunded for that time or the remaining months of the current membership period.
Also there are still people awaiting refunds for items they purchased in the closing sales that were actually out of stock when the sale was accepted. It was discussed during the kickstarter.
Although in fairness I got a portion of my final order with them refunded as figures I bought were out of stock, but that was right at the beginning of the sale period.
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Everyone keeps mentioning Ludik Bazare as a company involved and this Kickstarter... it's not one of the guys with this Kickstarter was the owner of Ludik Bazare... totally separate company and they just shut the company down... they didn't screw anybody they didn't do anything wrong it just wasn't feasible anymore and they shut it down. I have several LLCs with my name on it that have nothing to do with each other. if I start to think one isn't feasible anymore I'll shut it down. I don't understand why it would have anything to do with one of my other companies though. people are giving us this a bad rap because Ludik Bazare is shutting down their company even though there's not one person that said they've ever lost money with Ludik Bazare. That whole arguments just not valid with me I see why they keep wondering why everyone's so worried about a company that's not involved.
Wait. What? SD and Ludik Bazare are owned by the same guy, Piotr Borowski. They're even at the same address. AFAIK, LB is an online store. You're telling me it's not "feasible" to run an online game store?? Dunno about you, but I'd rather fund a guy who can run a business, rather than shut it down. KS is not a store -- and it's not a secured loan, either. If SD also "isn't feasible anymore", backers will be last in line in getting any of their money back, although I'm sure they'll be happy to know that the SD employees, such as Joss and Piotr, will have gotten their salaries from backer KS funds. Also, Sarouan, on Dakka, said about Joss, the miniature guy "well known" in France, "And let's not forget that the game Alkemy that he designed made their first company, Kraken Editions, bankrupt."
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HaleysRedComet post from c.2 hours ago: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments?cursor=20439538#comment-20439537 (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments?cursor=20439538#comment-20439537)
In case it's deleted or forgotten:
So, let's think about this. I, and I believe most people here, want the return of Confrontation. CMON dropped the ball on this when they held the rights. They teased Phoenix edition through a different project and never delivered on that, and now SD holds the IP rights and plans to bring the game back via Resurrection. So far, so good, I think. We got a company who is actually doing some work to bring the brand back. Awesome.
OK, so back in early 2017 SD announces that Classic and Ressurection will be something they are working on, and at some point Classic will be a Kickstarter project. Awesome. I'm jazzed about this, I love this game and the minis and can't wait to see how SD does with it. Then... not a lot happens. As the project draws closer there is a poll for characters to be included with the pledge, actually pretty cool. Get the community involved, good idea. But then...
Mostly silence from SD. People, in general, don't get responses to questions on the FB. One thread in particular had a ton of pretty basic questions - what's the pledge structure, etc... - but the only question that was answered was someone asking for SD's Twitter account. So, we know SD is seeing these questions but ignoring them. I'm not saying I was expecting detailed answers, but a simple "Wait and see" or "This is the basic idea" would have been nice. This would be a trend that SD continues to this day - they mostly don't respond to social media inquiries.
Anyway, the KS launches and funds in 2 hours. It raises about 650K Euro. Awesome. But then... people start asking questions and looking closer at things. The minis will be PVC with ABS weapons, similar to what Wrath of Kings does. Personally, this doesn't make too much sense to me, as my metal Confrontation minis tended to have stability issues with ankles more than anything else. But, this is the project SD wants to do. So, we will have PVC and ABS. The issue of quality comes up again and again. It's answered, but because a prototype isn't shown people don't believe it. We are told to trust SD, many backers do because they've delivered on their RPG projects before. SD posts and update saying they can be trusted because they've made products before. OK.
So, we are 3 days from the end of the project and it is down to about 461K Euro right now. That's nearly 200K lost and about 66% of what it was at the height of funding. What happened? Here's where I am going to get really critical: Sans Detour barely worked on this project.
The project launched with over a year of planning able to go into it. What we saw was pictures of the old Rackham minis - the same ones used in their catalog and on the mini's cards. There's even art used in a few situations instead of miniature images. That's weird. Not a single model was ever cast by SD. They're offering a resin pledge, people thought maybe SD made some of those minis. Nope, I confirmed that they were leftover from old Rackham. SD then doubles down on this and states that they are unable to produce a mini they have made, that it is cost prohibitive. I have never seen a single miniature company using KS that has said this. So then people start asking to see how they will scan the masters into a computer, as SD stated they will do this to make molds. Nope, again. So we are left to conclude that Sans Detour has not done -any- work prior to the KS campaign to show people what they plan to produce. They said they've made calls to factories. That seems like it is enough for some people.
Then, we get into the weird grey area of how business ownership and partner companies. In an update, Sans Detour stated they would use Ludik (with whom they share an owner and address) for logistics on this project. They stated that, if Ludik were to go under, they wold simply switch to a different company. So, in a comment, it was disclosed that Ludik is now controlled by a liquidator. I don't know how this wasn't known before, it's a huge red flag. Then, we also find out that Stellar Licensing, the company who owns the IP, only owns the Confrontation IP as their single asset and is owned by the financial Director of SD. Again, kind of weird.
So - in the year leading up to this project, the only prep work done was to photoshop existing images together, make a choice of minis featured, and contact factories. That is, observably, the only work done by SD leading up to what they hoped (looking at the stretch goals) would be a million Euro+ project.
This brings us to the current situation. Sans Detour, the account, is barely involved with getting information out. Instead, Joss - the project manager - has his own account and comments, while other collaborators - who are friends of the project and not SD employees - also give official information. The collaborators get all their info from SD directly, so if they don't have the answer to a question and want to answer it, they have to ask someone. Fine so far. But - we have seen that some of the collaborators have berated and ignored people who have questions or concerns about the project. It's also apparent that there is no native English speaker who works on this project, which sometimes causes misunderstandings. It's a small issue, but for a company to launch a large project in English without a native speaker seems like a mistake.
It also came out that SD was not able to produce game play videos of the game they are pitching, which was a request frequently asked of them. I asked a collaborator about this and was told that there are only 2 players around their office and they had no time to record. I don't see how, in the year they had to prepare for this, they couldn't run through a game and take pictures or record. That doesn't add up to me, and makes me think this project wasn't taken seriously by SD from the start.
It would appear that SD thought it could put together a project for a game that hasn't been produced in about 10 years and expect that people would be willing to buy a 300 Euro box of minis without even seeing how they might look in the material they will receive them in. Next to no prep work was done, and SD seems to be happy with the fact that it passed it's goal at all despite the fact that it lost 1/3 of it's funding so far. SD plans to launch a new edition of Confrontation next year sometime. No one has seen any work that has gone into that so far, so we are left to conclude that as much effort will go into that project as went into their current one. Which is to say - not much at all.
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.......and just when you think they couldn't do anything more stupid they have just sent out a spam "Back our Kickstarter" email via Ludik Baazar.
You know, that bankrupt company they are not connected to at all, honestly, really, not at all.....
Another couple of grand down and they will be eating into the money they took on day 1, at close to €445k now.
The words piss up and brewery come to mind.
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Yeesh,
Lost 25000 yesterday!
(https://www.kicktraq.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/dailypledges.png)
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In case it's deleted or forgotten:
That is .... terrifying. If I had backed this, I'd be pulling out faster than a Cardiff bus driver (I cleaned that one up considerably). Having it put down blandly like that must surely fire off alarms in people's heads, when they realise they are paying someone who has done absolutely nothing to prepare for actually delivering a product.
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That is .... terrifying. If I had backed this, I'd be pulling out faster than a Cardiff bus driver (I cleaned that one up considerably). Having it put down blandly like that must surely fire off alarms in people's heads, when they realise they are paying someone who has done absolutely nothing to prepare for actually delivering a product.
You did very well. My eyes widened at the fact the comment was clean.
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Yup, this all looks rather dodgy.
Liquidators were in at Ludik last year - why would you even plan to use them as distributors if you knew that?
Then you add in that there are like three names and they are all linked to the different businesses and all situated in the same building.
Sorry but this is all dodgy as hell. What worries me more, is that if they haven't even got as far as scanning them in and running a test print - how on earth do they know how much it will cost?
I'm assuming this is going to be produced in China - if so, how much contact have they had so far - again, look at other KS campaigns that have suffered huge delays despite having good prior correspondence with the factory in China etc.
Seriously, the people trying to play all of this down will be as guilty as the creators should this sink with people's money lost to the ether.
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With the amount they promise I imagine they will try to use the cheapest possible PVC molds etc they can get (If it will cover it) and this will yield rather sub par miniatures to say the least. Just conjecture mind you.
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With the amount they promise I imagine they will try to use the cheapest possible PVC molds etc they can get (If it will cover it) and this will yield rather sub par miniatures to say the least. Just conjecture mind you.
My thinking was that they'd churn these out like cheap toy soldiers in a cheap mould.
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It now seems that SD are playing hardball with backers by refusing to allow upgrades in the Pledge Manager, if you want resin later you have to have a minimum of the big box pledge now and if you if you only have a €1 you cannot upgrade to either big box or resin.
Basically trying to extort anyone with a slight interest to put up and shut up with the €300 euros.
Totally obvious now they are desperate to get the funds in immediately, and obviously not for anything related to this Kickstarter.
I think this has passed from risky project to downright cash grab scam.
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Don't think I've seen that strategy before.
Ah, and they've now dropped below the funding they made on the first day. Reckon they can manage to get below 400k, if they keep up their great work.
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Don't think I've seen that strategy before.
Ah, and they've now dropped below the funding they made on the first day. Reckon they can manage to get below 400k, if they keep up their great work.
Well, don't forget, that usually during the first and last couple of days a KS skyrockets and gains the majority of pledges.
Therefore I consider even 350,000 € possible!
I actually do wonder why there are so many people still clinging to their pledges. I mean, everyone was pretty positive in the beginning, then the problems began, but now SD actually limited the available pledges and forces you to pledge very high to get the chance to buy the big all-in. No 1€ and late pledge... this is not only totally erratic, but also obviously the try to create massive FOMO.
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I'm not proud of the fact that I now have a morbid fascination to see how much more money they'll lose before the end.
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I imagine a lot of 1 Euro pledges will be dropped in the last hour/10 minutes. I bet a lot of them are just in their for the comments lol
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I'm not proud of the fact that I now have a morbid fascination to see how much more money they'll lose before the end.
You’re not alone my friend... o_o lol
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I imagine a lot of 1 Euro pledges will be dropped in the last hour/10 minutes. I bet a lot of them are just in their for the comments lol
Oh I'm keeping my 1 euro pledge, I consider a small price to pay for a ring side seat at the future shitshow. :)
I wonder when/if it will dawn on the mentalists, who claim the KS is being sabotaged by collectors trying to protect their minis values, that they're getting nothing... or at best sub par chewing gum minis.
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I just can't help but see this as another Palladium Robotech/Defiance Hard Suits project only with more red flags to indicate that things are not likely to proceed even remotely as expected. Yet there it sits with more than $500k and I predict when this Kickstarter does catch fire, fall over, and then sink into the swamp you will have no protection form Kickstarter. Robotech proved the Terms of Use aren't worth the 1's and 0's used to project them on the screen. Maybe the French are better prepared to start testing the legality of Kickstarter's accountability but I doubt it.
Any project is a gamble but this one just confounds me as Sans Detour really seemed to come into the project thinking they were just going to pump plastic into the molds made for the metal figures and the revelations by the company itself have not been faith building at all. Still, $500,000, I'm gobsmacked.
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Sans Detour really seemed to come into the project thinking they were just going to pump plastic into the molds made for the metal figures and the revelations by the company itself have not been faith building at all. Still, $500,000, I'm gobsmacked.
Not even that, the old moulds were destroyed long ago. Hell I'm not sure they even have the original sculpts for everything since a lot was sold off.
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Oh I'm keeping my 1 euro pledge, I consider a small price to pay for a ring side seat at the future shitshow. :)
I'm pretty much in the same boat here 8) I started off with an EB pledge (why not?) with some intention of splitting with a buddy, but that only lasted a couple days. Although, when you look and realize that there are almost 1000 backers at 1 euro... that's pretty decent profits for them! o_o
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Apparently one guy in the comments is now calling some of the naysayers not only intentional saboteurs working for another KS project but also terrorists.
Aaand then one of Sans-Detour's collaborators came and thanked him for that comment...
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Waa! Kickstarter seems to be down. Maybe this is part of SD's plan. Hack into Kickstarter, make the site go down for the last days of the project so no-one can reduce their pledge!
EDIT: Phew, back up and running. Off to get the popcorn.
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no KS seems fine and up, See the latest comments about LOS, saboteurs etc.
Seems its living up to it's name even the comments section is still
really 'confrontational'.
::)
In all likelihood, if something is delivered, the shouts of 'told you so' will be very loud, regardless of quality.
If nothing is delivered, the shouts will be even louder.
I am far to burnt, old, jaded, suspicious and cynical to even put a single $ on it.
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With the amount they promise I imagine they will try to use the cheapest possible PVC molds etc they can get (If it will cover it) and this will yield rather sub par miniatures to say the least. Just conjecture mind you.
If they ever will be able to deliver, that is :(.
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I started off with an EB pledge...
Me too, but after having read whatever they intendend I decided to drop it in a heartbeat. I don't believe PVC will be the right medium in order to cast Rackham-quality miniatures, I don't believe digiscanning a metal miniature to make it into a mold for PVC will be a simple 1 on 1 translation and as they didn't have any example to show in the first place I waved them goodbye.
Too many other projects to back, with much less uncertainty and/or red flags...
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It is not dropping fast enough to save the backers pledge money from this scam.
Either too many people are ignoring the obvious or backed at the beginning and have not been following the campaign.
If you compare the effort SD have put into Confrontation with another figure game campaign:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1263001724/anno-domini-1666 (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1263001724/anno-domini-1666)
Everything SD says is "too hard" or "too expensive" or "too time consuming" has been done; gameplay videos, sample of an actual production figure, quality components on show not just photoshop images, creators engaging with backers, questions being answered, and this by a company with no more employees than SD.
Just goes to show it can be done and exposes SD as either totally incompetent or deliberately evasive.
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It will be a lesson for many backers. A very expensive lesson, but still a valuable one not to back just anything you'd like to.... ;)
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Now under 417k euros. I reckon they'll break 400k before the day's end. It's going to be a close one o_o
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Seems the answer to all the questions and doubts is still that its 'provocation" or "Trolling" and why should they provide all these answers and information on how hard they have been working on the entire IP not just this KS.
Wow, so really, its just "stop asking questions and give us your money?"
I can understand they feel pressured and strained etc, but having run crowdfunding for other projects you would think they could present this better from day one? Even if its their first kickstarter crowdfunding attempt, it can't be that different.
Hardly any involvement with the KS by the actual creators, barely any updates with any actual information in them, for something that should be a major KS gaming wise.
What a shame.
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Wait. What? SD and Ludik Bazare are owned by the same guy, Piotr Borowski. They're even at the same address. AFAIK, LB is an online store. You're telling me it's not "feasible" to run an online game store?? Dunno about you, but I'd rather fund a guy who can run a business, rather than shut it down. KS is not a store -- and it's not a secured loan, either. If SD also "isn't feasible anymore", backers will be last in line in getting any of their money back, although I'm sure they'll be happy to know that the SD employees, such as Joss and Piotr, will have gotten their salaries from backer KS funds. Also, Sarouan, on Dakka, said about Joss, the miniature guy "well known" in France, "And let's not forget that the game Alkemy that he designed made their first company, Kraken Editions, bankrupt."
Would you link to that post? I don't know anything about this Joss person, other than him being a privy jerk in the comments. He's now suggesting that SD plan on doing HIPS in the next project...
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"And let's not forget that the game Alkemy that he designed made their first company, Kraken Editions, bankrupt."
Actually the vacform packaging is what did them in
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Oh dear, last 24h and not unfunded yet...I had hoped for a better result by now! o_o
Let’s see, if tomorrow some people will beg SD to let them cancel their pledge.
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Actually the vacform packaging is what did them in
Details! Details! :D
@Condottiere: EDIT: Piotr's companies start at page 19 of this Dakka thread. : https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540/717182.page
"Ludik Bazar and Sans Detour share the same address"
"Piotr BOROWSKI owns both Ludik Bazar and Sans Detour but they are two separate companies (or at least it's what they say)."
"You can add Stellar to the two companies."
IIRC, Stellar has the rights to Confrontation and is licensing them to SD (?). Sorta reminds me of Valley Games and Up Front. ::)
Latest update has a pic of one of the resins. A bit late, though...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2189398
EDIT: Duncan says the miniature was intended for Resurrection: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/900/717182.page
EDIT EDIT: "Joel McCoy about 8 hours ago
I remember seeing those resin pics unpainted in the Confrontation Facebook group many days ago. Not sure why you waited this long to post it." :(
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Details! Details! :D
They did their second wave of miniatures up in vacform packaging and it was far more expensive than they thought. Customers didn’t like the higher prices for fewer figures so they were stuck with fewer sales on a set of minis that cost them more per unit than before. Cash crunch ensued
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Details! Details! :D
@Condottiere: EDIT: Piotr's companies start at page 19 of this Dakka thread. : https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/540/717182.page
IIRC, Stellar has the rights to Confrontation and is licensing them to SD (?). Sorta reminds me of Valley Games and Up Front. ::)
Latest update has a pic of one of the resins. A bit late, though...
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2189398
EDIT: Duncan says the miniature was intended for Resurrection: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/900/717182.page
I thought I misunderstood you about Joss tanking a company, but found it on page 26 - why can't one link to Dakka posts? Strange no one brought this up in the KS comments, as if would've knocked him down a peg...
Stellar/SD or whatever they want to call themselves are behaving like Harmony Gold. I'm bitter I missed out on the CMoN sale, as I had no knowledge of it*, but I suppose I should've grabbed the Mid Nor Hydra, another Flesh Golem for the alternate heads and parts* and another Dirz Wyrm, as it's supplied with extra heads, but I was lulled into complacency, since CMoN always restocked these resin sculpts. No idea why CMoN dropped the ball on this, but SD will have to outsource manufacturing, so would it have killed 'em to let a proven producer handle the resin side, until they could get their act in order? At least there are 111 boxes of Drac Mac Syro and the Fiannas - an odd combo - and since I've got 2 of the former in metal, I could several boxes and hawk off the not Conan for $10+, assuming I could scrounge up $69.99.
*Did CMoN send out a newsletter about the sale? I must have misplaced it... ???
*Not available when purchased directly from Rackham... >:(
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They did their second wave of miniatures up in vacform packaging and it was far more expensive than they thought. Customers didn’t like the higher prices for fewer figures so they were stuck with fewer sales on a set of minis that cost them more per unit than before. Cash crunch ensued
The same for Rackham...
I acquired 7 boxes of Aberration Prime* from LudikBazaar back in the day, for cheap during and/or after Rackham's demise, and was surprised about the fancy cologne/perfume packaging: no sprue or bagged bits, but a vac-formed container and some had a layer of felt. lol
*Anyone know what plastic used in these sculpts?
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Apparently one guy in the comments is now calling some of the naysayers not only intentional saboteurs working for another KS project but also terrorists.
Aaand then one of Sans-Detour's collaborators came and thanked him for that comment...
It was like that on Rackham fora near the end...
I only got in after looking for alternate heroic sized barbarian figures and stuck for the mutant goblins, but was surprised over their credulous overzealousness, making GWanbois seem sensible in comparison. The volunteer mods, some of 'em cool, were locking accounts over sarcasm IIRC, lol while the fans were chanting metal's dead, most gamers hate painting and the future is PPP. ::)
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So, if the company cannot afford to get this off the ground for the amount they now have to play with, now is the time to admit they set their target too low, pull the plug so everyone gets their money back and it's no harm, no foul, right?
But, if the company is basically just pulling a cash grab to line their pockets, they will let the KS complete, take the funds and then later on rub their hands, blame saboutage/slander/Satan and say they can't afford to deliver as promised, before starting up a bunch of new shell companies to pull their next trick.
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So, if the company cannot afford to get this off the ground for the amount they now have to play with, now is the time to admit they set their target too low, pull the plug so everyone gets their money back and it's no harm, no foul, right?
But, if the company is basically just pulling a cash grab to line their pockets, they will let the KS complete, take the funds and then later on rub their hands, blame saboutage/slander/Satan and say they can't afford to deliver as promised, before starting up a bunch of new shell companies to pull their next trick.
That's about it.
I saw one of the fanbois responding to lack of involvement from SD saying it's not fair to expect them to be around to answer questions because they have lives and jobs........
Unbelievable
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Lol yep. For 300000 you would expect them to be engaged in their own product
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two things
- Poorly done KS.
- The destruction and distraction of anyone raising legitimate questions and concerns.
Sure other KS have succeeded with even less direct communications from the creators, but the initial structures and information provided for them has been sufficient to address concerns even before they got raised, and usually for much less required finance.
And a KS of this size and value, yeah that should be handled much better than this for even 300K/Euro that it will finally get
Really they are even to the level of denying and condemning anyone that suggests they are formerly from Rackam or suggesting they have industry experience.
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Well, guys and girls,
they made it and successfully crushed the 400,000 € barrier (just from the wrong side!).
Will they make it even lower? Only 6h left to unfund nearly 100 grand! Keep your breath and watch the show!
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Live footage... (https://zippy.gfycat.com/TornThankfulGenet.webm)
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Brilliant.... lol
And let's not forget, people can alter their pledges during the pledge manager, so it still can be unfunded in a few months' time.
Really hope they'll pull the plug, get their things sorted out and will relaunche this one in about 6 months with PVC ( or hipps )-stuff to show, sombody who'll handle the communication for them and have much more pledge options.
*keeps on dreaming*
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Brilliant.... lol
And let's not forget, people can alter their pledges during the pledge manager, so it still can be unfunded in a few months' time.
Really hope they'll pull the plug, get their things sorted out and will relaunche this one in about 6 months with PVC ( or hipps )-stuff to show, sombody who'll handle the communication for them and have much more pledge options.
*keeps on dreaming*
Is that really possible? I had thought that the new KS rules forbade to change your pledge after the last 24h had started if it would unfund the project.
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That's about it.
I saw one of the fanbois responding to lack of involvement from SD saying it's not fair to expect them to be around to answer questions because they have lives and jobs........
Unbelievable
In a few months to a year, if it heads south as expected, the KS' comments section will turn into a support group, like the one for Defiance Games (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/defiancegames/28mm-power-armor-hardsuits-defiance-games/comments)... :-I
Can't believe the Massachusetts Attorney General dropped the ball on what's basically fraud...
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Is that really possible? I had thought that the new KS rules forbade to change your pledge after the last 24h had started if it would unfund the project.
Terms of Use (https://www.kickstarter.com/terms-of-use)...
You can change or cancel your pledge at any time before the project's funding deadline (with one exception). ... Once the project has been funded, you can only cancel or change your pledge by making special arrangements directly with the creator.
Good luck trying to get a response... lol
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Once the pledge manager lands they'll long have had your money from KS. You'll be able to give them more, don't worry about that at all. Also remember to pledge for that celebration box, you won't be able to upgrade to resin with that sweet heavy centaur* if you don't.
*Note - Heavy Centaur not included, all sales final, contents may not resemble promotional images in any way
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Looks like a slow trickle of people simply changing from possibly losing 300 Euro to possible losing 1..
At this rate though it should still fund.
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Once the pledge manager lands they'll long have had your money from KS. You'll be able to give them more, don't worry about that at all. Also remember to pledge for that celebration box, you won't be able to upgrade to resin with that sweet heavy centaur* if you don't.
*Note - Heavy Centaur not included, all sales final, contents may not resemble promotional images in any way
Really? Well that is pretty nice of them! Splendid chaps as they are. lol
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"Update Nr. 32
The Confrontation Classic Kickstarter campaign comes to an end tonight (9:00 CEST)
Here we are, ten hours away from the goal we set. You only have until tonight to participate in Confrontation’s grand come-back and indulge yourself with a mountain of exceptional miniatures at an incredible price!
We particularly remind you that this offer is limited and will never be available as it is now in your brick-and-mortar store after the end of this campaign."
Do not miss this unique offer to lose a lot of money for shabby miniatures that will either be long delayed or even better not received at all!
It's the last opportunity to join!
Nerdrage guarateed! You will be the centre of every party.
You will never again burn your money so easy!
Don't miss this.
It's the last chance!!!
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Ah, my bad. I thought it was possible in the PM both to add to your pledge or to substract from it...
Well, another red flag, so to speak :?.
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One comment made me laugh. Along the lines of " a lot of trolls not putting their money where their chatty mouths are"
Of course they aren't. They don't want to be swindled out of their hard earned money. It's not trolling if the facts back you up.
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This is one of the two topics I posted which had most reads.
The other one was the '100 disasters in modelling' thread. Perhaps the two should be merged... >:D
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Surprisingly (ar least for me), they went back over 400,000 €.
At first I had imagined thousands of people like us all pledging 1 € in the last minutes just to be able to be part of the show!
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Well, it is cheap entertainment... lol
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I am glad they have enough local support/backers, to get it funded, I don't know if they had much international backing left?
Not knowing their reputation well, and all the red flags waving, well, they could have presented better.
Still will pop back to it occasionally to see if anything happens, don't feel I missed out as they only "one off" never again PVC....
I have plenty of other stuff to get on with, and as mentioned, its cheap entertainment that may well be giving again in months to come.
Still would of course prefer it to deliver on time etc. but...
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Even if it succeeds. I could never have afforded it and and nor would I have wanted to. I have enough miniatures to paint without needed that much more.
I do back the Bones PVC stuff but that has more variety and is a lot cheaper(and is 99% sure to deliver, not on time but deliver) and I give the most of them to my kids to practice on.
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That's the crazy thing about it...if it will succeed and is of decent quality, the market will be flooded with ultra-cheap Rackham models. The last time this happened was after Rackham went bankrupt and there followed a cascade because shops could not sell the stuff to normal prizes anymore and everyone wanted to get rid of it.
Now SD have maneuvered themselves into a position where it will be very difficult to commence:
1. the KS will not deliver or deliver poor quality. --> The guys who pledged wont support them anymore, we old guys are happy to not have trusted them and admire our Confrontation collections.
2. the KS delivers and is of good quality. ---> No one, I repeat no one, will ever need all minis in the pack especially for confrontation. Single factions will be sold at ebay and will saturate the market for confrontation for years.
The good thing actually is that the KS did not rocket. Imagine, they would have sold like 2000 EBs and another couple of thousand normal pledges. There would be minis for generations to paint be sold for almost nothing at ebay...
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But what will the influx of cheap, low quality Confrontation minis on the market do to the prices of the existing metal miniatures I wonder...
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But what will the influx of cheap, low quality Confrontation minis on the market do to the prices of the existing metal miniatures I wonder...
good question. If the quality is as poor as we all imagine it to be (if they appear at all, that is), this might even raise the value considerably as people will realise that with the destruction/giving away of many of the masters these precious models will never be reproduced again.
Maybe a scene analogue to Oldhammer will develope?
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That's what I was thinking.
I will beat the curve and call it the Oldfrontation movement from now... :D
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That's what I was thinking.
I will beat the curve and call it the Oldfrontation movement from now... :D
Oldfronation! That was the name I was looking for! And to show another parallel: The Oldfrontation rules were as clumsy and poorly laid out as Warhammer 3rd. - maybe even worse! So they are ideal for senile old men dreaming about their youth and telling the youngbloods how it was all better back in those days... lol lol lol
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Perfect. lol
I'll go and dust off my old books and revel in the awkwardly translated rules and fondly remember how I never could make heads or tails out of them, even back then! ;D
Oldfrontation...
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I understand bashing the horrible kickstarter, but there is no need in bashing a game that many, myself included, enjoy. This is not a forum for hating games... there are many games on here that I deem, silly... but I keep that to myself. Let's be respectful.
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Apologies if you took offense; it was certainly not meant in that way. :-X
In fact, I can say that it's pretty much as DivisMal stated; WHFB 3rd ed has a certain reputation and is loved by many today , mostly because of nostalgia.
And I think the original Confrontation falls in the same category. Was it a perfect system? Not by a long shot. But it was enjoyable, and dang were the artwork and miniatures awesome!
So there will be a lot of nostalgic players dusting off their old books because of this Kickstarter, as it has awakened forgotten sentiments.
Oldfrontation is therefore uttered fondly and not mockingly; I never really grasped the rules (mostly because of appalling translation), but I do still have a soft spot for the game and its fluff, art and miniatures...
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I understand bashing the horrible kickstarter, but there is no need in bashing a game that many, myself included, enjoy. This is not a forum for hating games... there are many games on here that I deem, silly... but I keep that to myself. Let's be respectful.
No one's stopping you from throwing away your money on this KS, but no one gives you the right to stifle criticism concerning the flaws of a gaming system.
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Oldfronation! That was the name I was looking for! And to show another parallel: The Oldfrontation rules were as clumsy and poorly laid out as Warhammer 3rd. - maybe even worse! So they are ideal for senile old men dreaming about their youth and telling the youngbloods how it was all better back in those days... lol lol lol
I'd say worse...
The more I study WFB 3rd the greater my appreciation increases for it, despite its clunkiness and flaws, such as the lack of an index and head scratching unit lists in Warhammer Armies, compared to subsequent attempts at streamlining/simplification of the core and advanced rules in later editions.
Confrontation is an example of parochialism, especially with a translation that read like a novel in parts, resulting in terms for game mechanics being unnecessarily complicated when trying to move more than a dozen figures, with special rules. It didn't help that Rackham kept pushing their clunkier mass combat game, despite a lack of desire from customers.
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Oldfronation! That was the name I was looking for! And to show another parallel: The Oldfrontation rules were as clumsy and poorly laid out as Warhammer 3rd. - maybe even worse! So they are ideal for senile old men dreaming about their youth and telling the youngbloods how it was all better back in those days... lol lol lol
I'd say worse...
The more I study WFB 3rd the greater my appreciation increases for it, despite its clunkiness and flaws, such as the lack of an index and head scratching unit lists in Warhammer Armies, compared to subsequent attempts at streamlining/simplification of the core and advanced rules in later editions.
Confrontation is an example of parochialism, especially with a translation that read like a novel in parts, resulting in terms for game mechanics being unnecessarily complicated when trying to move more than a dozen figures with special rules. It didn't help that Rackham kept pushing their clunkier mass combat game, despite a lack of desire from customers. Not saying its awful, but needed to be streamlined...
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I understand bashing the horrible kickstarter, but there is no need in bashing a game that many, myself included, enjoy. This is not a forum for hating games... there are many games on here that I deem, silly... but I keep that to myself. Let's be respectful.
I also think it is worth quantifying which version of the Confrontation rules you are talking about.
The last version Rackham put out was not a success, nor remembered particularly fondly by many. It was the version that pushed the pre painted PVC miniatures and was no longer a single individual miniature skirmish game and more of a small unit army game.
That is more or less what became the final nail in the head for Rackahm.
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I also think it is worth quantifying which version of the Confrontation rules you are talking about.
The last version Rackham put out was not a success, nor remembered particularly fondly by many. It was the version that pushed the pre painted PVC miniatures and was no longer a single individual miniature skirmish game and more of a small unit army game.
That is more or less what became the final nail in the head for Rackahm.
The rules weren't that bad and IIRC, Rackham always wanted players, with increasing collections, to move on to Rag'Narok, especially from a sales perspective. There's an unreleased Rag'Narok 2.0 and I think I still have the PDF, but Age of Rag'Narok was chosen and might've succeeded, like Age of Sigmar, had Rackham not gone the PPP route.
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I also think it is worth quantifying which version of the Confrontation rules you are talking about.
The last version Rackham put out was not a success, nor remembered particularly fondly by many. It was the version that pushed the pre painted PVC miniatures and was no longer a single individual miniature skirmish game and more of a small unit army game.
That is more or less what became the final nail in the head for Rackahm.
I play version 3.5... It is the version that is the most developed and has the kinks ironed out... Version 4 know as Age of Rag'Narok is an entirely different game almost. I've played a few sessions of that, but it's not very deep. It's easy to teach to a newbie though. 3.5 is the version most play. Great skirmish game... I do not recommend trying to adapt it to a large army game... Dragon Rampant is best for that in my opinion.
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......The rules weren't that bad and IIRC, Rackham always wanted players, with increasing collections, to move on to Rag'Narok......
Indeed, the CAOR (Confrontation v4) rules are a good small unit skirmish game (The Drakerys game which was developed by some of the ex Rackham team afterwards is even better and closer in spirit to C3). Unfortunately both suffer from limited force options.
Confrontation was killed here by the trick Rackham pulled persuading game stores to invest heavily in the metal figure range weeks ahead of a major announcement "re-invigorating" the game. The announcement that turned out to be C3/Ragnarok/DoW is dead and the rules and figures are being replaced by v4 with plastic PPP figures and expecting the stores to stump up another stock order for the new stuff.
In protest the shops stopped organising and sponsoring the Red Dragon tournaments, refused to stock the plastic figure boxes and in one case eBay'd their entire stock of metals and walked away from the game entirely. There still exists a lot of ill will.
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I play version 3.5... It is the version that is the most developed and has the kinks ironed out... Version 4 know as Age of Rag'Narok is an entirely different game almost. I've played a few sessions of that, but it's not very deep. It's easy to teach to a newbie though. 3.5 is the version most play. Great skirmish game... I do not recommend trying to adapt it to a large army game... Dragon Rampant is best for that in my opinion.
Hey gibby64,
I certainly wasn't trying to ridicule Confrontation, but as a long time fan with a huge collection (wolfen, orcs, goblins, devourer, griffins, dwarfs, sessairs, drunes) I had a lot of frustration with the arbitrary point values, the stupid system of hiding rules away on cards and the poor balance. In fact , the system completely collapsed if you played larger games than on tourneys.
Do I hate the game and mock anyone who plays it? No, sir!
Do I want it to be revived in the version 3.5? Certainly not! Co2 was better IMO, Co1 even better, because it was more streamlined, and CoEvo is certainly the way to go...and even here, I would say: simplify, simplify, simplify.
In contrast to Warhammer, the system seems very nice and original, but simply doesn't work in many cases. Try to fight Razheem, for instance, or the Great Crane with a goblin army...there are simply too many holes in the rules.
Nevertheless, I can still have a lot of fun with the game as long as I don't play against someone who knows and abuses all these holes!
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So Stellar got the Legends of Signum: Battle for Vallor (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2034410916/legends-of-signum-battle-for-vallor) KS shutdown? Is it possible that this cash grab was an attempt to partially or entirely cover legal expenses? Probably a silly question...
Personally I see little difference between LoS claiming they aren't Cadwallon and SD claiming they aren't LB. Honestly both sides of this legal coin have been less than clear.
All this said, I think this is just fallout from SD and Cadwallon having less than friendly interactions after Stellar purchased the IP. Clearly SD is doing this to stunt and kill Cadwallon's KS. Personally I just think it's petty. They clearly waited until this KS was completed, whether that was to guarantee funding for a legal crusade or to avoid getting any more of a negative perception. I mean it's literally the next day. Lol.
If taken to court I'd find it hard to believe they could win. The best they could do is force Loss to remove some of the line from the KS.
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They can certainly do that. Some BGG'ers speculated that's what Valley Games was doing with their Up Front funding.
I guess we could wait for SD to make a statement if they were or were not behind the C&D (but this would require rudimentary communication skills...).
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So Stellar got the Legends of Signum: Battle for Vallor (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2034410916/legends-of-signum-battle-for-vallor) KS shutdown? Is it possible that this cash grab was an attempt to partially or entirely cover legal expenses? Probably a silly question...
FFS; is there no end to this travesty? ::)
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Sure took long for the post-KS drama to start.
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and here I was feeling empty after the Kickstarter ended with nothing to do but wait till next year... It's definitely Stellar/SD that hit them.
https://www.lumendatabase.org/notices/16525981#
I wonder if the KS even had any infringing stuff in it, as far I could tell it was all their original stuff. Similar style to Rackham sure, but you can't claim copyright on that.
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Give it a few months and SD will be coming out with something like:
Dear Backers, we are sorry to break the bad news that, despite our best efforts, we are unable to produce the full (non contractually obligated) selection of miniatures we intended, so none of the (non contractually obligated) stretch goal miniatures will now be included in the box and all sculpts will be 1 piece PVC not the (non contractually obligated) mixed PVC/ABS as we had hoped.
We were obliged to spend money on legal fees and other expenses necessary to protect the world and characters we love from dirty counterfeiters and illegal attempts to profit from the Confrontation Intellectual Property which we pay Stellar Consulting huge licence fees to use. We are very grateful to all the new staff at Stellar Consulting for their professionalism and dedication and the consultancy services they are providing us at this time.
We still hope to produce some of the (non contractually obligated) figures and Joss is working closely with leading experts in the PVC casting companies to discover how to take this forward. Unfortunately time and cost constraints prevent us being able to show any samples of the figures, But trust us we will get through this, you will not be disappointed.
We will not let this setback stop us, I know we can count on your unwavering support for our next project 'Confrontation: Resurrection' coming to Kickstarter shortly.......
;)
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Legends of signum was certainly similar to confrontation, But are SD gonna try and take cool mini or not to court for wrath of kings? I'd rather signum get the money they need , since that project is being run by competent people with an understanding of how to make miniatures.
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Statement from the LoS FB:
https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/32940753_1545536688888462_3061660792639193088_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=82d592c7ead99053d4ef9fce5849ec6d&oe=5B7DB805
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Statement from the LoS FB:
https://scontent.fsnc1-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/32940753_1545536688888462_3061660792639193088_n.jpg?_nc_cat=0&oh=82d592c7ead99053d4ef9fce5849ec6d&oe=5B7DB805
Nice swipe at the end... lol
The art looks like something out of Confrontation, but who cares at this point?
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I feel like back LoS just to spite SD. lol
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I feel like back LoS just to spite SD. lol
Me, too. This is downright silly.
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*Beer and bratwurst grabs*
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Well, never really felt I could afford confrontation stuff, but hey, it seems that it is a game that provides a lot of entertainment even without any investment, or actual play time.
It just keeps giving to its supporting community and others.
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Sans detour seems very effecient. They simply skip a step and build bridges out of wood that's allready on fire.
Ho-ly crap....
I guess there's no such thing as bad publicty?
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Sans detour seems very effecient. They simply skip a step and build bridges out of wood that's allready on fire.
Ho-ly crap....
I guess there's no such thing as bad publicty?
It seems like they figured out that's the only kind of publicity they have and decided to just run with it.
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I feel like back LoS just to spite SD. lol
I agree entirely with this sentiment. I have a couple of their figures (Signum and Legendarion) already and would certainly be getting more. Just as easy to do that via the KS when it comes back up.
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I always wanted to order some of the not-Griffin models, but as robh said further above, it’s the rules that were missing for Confrontation, and I wasn’t that keen to enlarge my already huge collection with. Ore „dead“ pieces.
Let’s hope that they’ll get up again, and we can order some of their stuff!
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Unfortunately, whilst everyone else may have taken note of GW Vs Chapterhouse, it would appear that SD have not.
If they push this one to court, that case will be used as precedent and they will most likely lose, meaning that they may well instead of snuff this out, breed more.
Plus, the money and people power for this is coming from where? KS funds?
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.........Plus, the money and people power for this is coming from where? KS funds?........
Would certainly explain why they refused to consider a reboot of the failing KS to restructure it, there was some imperative why they needed the funds in immediately. Now it becomes clear what that was.
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(https://i0.wp.com/twincitiesgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/hy-brasil.jpg)
Anyone else got this feeling about SD?
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Nope, no, there's nothing wrong...there's nothing to see here...
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Some news and profiles ! -- Quelques nouvelles et profils ! (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2194837)
This is the first news since the end of the Kickstarter campaign; we wanted to keep you in the loop for what’s coming next!
They got the first news part right... ;)
Profile cards for the KS exclusive resin Ashan Delerith and the 2 unstable Gargoyles...
We are currently working on the pledge manager and expect to be able to put in online within a couple weeks. We took good note of your many and various feedbacks, so that the pledge manager will come with some surprises!
lol lol lol
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The surprise is you can pledge for the celebration boxes after all! Aren't they generous to their loyal fans?
I also love how their new design for the cards with ability icons only fits two abilities then an ellipsis icon... lol
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The surprise is you can pledge for the celebration boxes after all! Aren't they generous to their loyal fans?
I also love how their new design for the cards with ability icons only fits two abilities then an ellipsis icon... lol
It's a work in progress, though good news: Confrontation Classic Update #2 (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2208770)
Greetings, adventurers !
As promised, we keep you updated about the progress of the campaign with a couple news.
The Pledge Manager is our number one priority. It isn’t totally ready yet, because we want to present you with a very complete and detailed solution.
About profile cards. We took your latest feedback into consideration, since the previous news. We therefore decided to keep the Confrontation original design for the Classic version, in order to avoid confusion. The only modification on this design will be the faction logos, so that you can identify the miniatures’ affiliation easily.
Tell us what you think about it on the Facebook page !
Two weeks to post an update, so working hard or hardly working?
The heated Council of Nicea style discussion over the use of symbols was sort of entertaining and this is why I prefer the simplicity of the defunct WotC's Chainmail.
Legends of Signum is back...
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Better go restock my popcorn
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I guess they still have to show the 1st model produced by them in PVC?
Meh, won't hold my breath...
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Wonder if they will do another update this month..
No 1st produced PVC thing - that's not important, they have prioritized getting the pledge-manager just right..first.
So top priority method of taking more money...I mean lock in your pledges and first postage payment/s...?
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The surprise is you can pledge for the celebration boxes after all! Aren't they generous to their loyal fans?
Would someone pick up that phone? Cause I called it... well wasn't exactly a difficult call. ;D
As announced earlier during the campaign, the Confrontation Classic Core Box will be limited to 4000 copies, which means some are still available. Therefore, you will have to opportunity to get this Core Box as a late pledge in the Pledge Manager.
Edit: Oh yeah and they've found a way to offer smaller boxes with 4 factions each. :P
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Heh, I was just coming here to tell you that you were right, lol... you beat me to it!
But I agree, it was not a stretch to believe they would still make the celebration box available in the pledge manager.
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Well... they do have maybe 3,773 more to sell... roughly.
They have to take the money some how.. so direct via Pledge Manager rather than indirect via KS is better for them?
Still, I am more amazed at two updates this month already since KS ended!
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Show me a bloody model! ;D
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They already did, just old ones, but they will be exactly the same in plastic, honest.
They can do amazing things in PVC now, just look at the pictures of other manufacturers products.
Like that only in confrontation shape ::)
Nothing like that old metal stuff you used to get in the 80's or 90's - proper top quality modern PVC castings. Modern quality. Modern Materials.
Oh and/or maybe resin - there will be some of that, maybe they can show them sooner?
Still I am sure they will sort something out, just - after the Pledge Manager. That is top priority, so that you can pay/pledge for more first.
Then later if it becomes like, really important, they can show some models..?
Maybe even some of the ones you are going to get :D
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It all sounds a bit....C.M.O.T. Dibbler to me lol
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Was considering starting another thread, but think it's better to keep the speculation in one place...
Over four months since my June post and nothing substantive yet, even though there have been 49 updates... :o
As usual HaleysRedComet's comments are spot on and the apologists are still at it: backers shouldn't be pressuring Sans-Detour, as it's demoralizing. lol One update promised the resins and a later one mentioned delays and blamed a third party manufacturer and still no pics of the PVC, but plenty of updates like Confrontation Resurrection : Meeting the playtest teams -- A la rencontre des équipes de test (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2350230). Why are the rules still in the Alpha test stage? Aside from tweaking, I'd have thought the it would've been ready by now, considering SD made the announcement at least a year before the campaign.
I didn't back this campaign, due to the obvious warning signs, but if a one man operation, like Rude Minis (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1658344233/make-your-collection-of-miniatures-great-again?ref=user_menu), could pull it off, with slight delays, what's SD's excuse?
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They are still refusing to answer any questions about the production of the figures and continuing the aggressive hard sell tactics they used in the campaign.
Backer: "how are the new masters/moulds coming on?"
SD: "Increase your pledge now as we will not be making these again"
Backer: "Yeah, but how are teh new figures looking"
SD: "Up your pledge now before we close the pledge manager"
Backer: "I want to but you promised to show pictures of the production samples before closing the pledge manager"
SD: "Last warning, pledge manager will be closing"
Backer: "What about the promised pictures, what about the promised playtest report of the new rules, what about pictures of the resin models supposedly due this month"
SD: "OK last chance we are closing pledge manager tomorrow"
Backer: "WTF????
SD: "Too late now closed........suckers"
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They are still refusing to answer any questions about the production of the figures and continuing the aggressive hard sell tactics they used in the campaign.
Backer: "how are the new masters/moulds coming on?"
SD: "Increase your pledge now as we will not be making these again"
Backer: "Yeah, but how are teh new figures looking"
SD: "Up your pledge now before we close the pledge manager"
Backer: "I want to but you promised to show pictures of the production samples before closing the pledge manager"
SD: "Last warning, pledge manager will be closing"
Backer: "What about the promised pictures, what about the promised playtest report of the new rules, what about pictures of the resin models supposedly due this month"
SD: "OK last chance we are closing pledge manager tomorrow"
Backer: "WTF????
SD: "Too late now closed........suckers"
Whatever happened to Joss? His last comment was 2 months ago: We will make soon some updates about the various ongoing productions and ongoing tasks.
We do know that our communication is not enough for the backers standard. We are working on that too.
We just want to let you know that our team is a small but determined one and we do know that expectations are high for Confrontation.
We are working hard on meeting those expectations and hopefuly things will soon be different.
We love Confrontation just as you do and we want to bring it back the best way (and we know we have a huge amount of work to do so and to convince every last one of you that we do)
See you soon !
I don't even know if the shipping issue has been fixed...
Ryko(3 months ago): PM compeleted..40 euros for a shipping from France to France including 15 euros for just 6 extra resin minis...hell I honestly would not call that "cheap"...it even seems preposterous compared to Solomon kane or JOA fares....at that price i do not expect anything but extra care in the packing!! (+some complementary lollipops or goodies !!!)
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Oh no...
According to Yslaire, from 3 hours ago, the SD's Facebook page is closed...
According to Yslaire, from 9 hours ago, Le communiqué officiel de l’auteur : http://www.reussitecritique.fr/aventures-editions-sans-detour/ (http://www.reussitecritique.fr/aventures-editions-sans-detour/)
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Not really surprised, but dang that is a lot of money that they managed to defraud from the backers.
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Looks as if SD have been defrauding Chaosium too:
https://www.chaosium.com/blogstatement-about-ditions-sansdtour/
Guess no-one who looked at the whole SD thing openly is surprised they could not be trusted and fits with the way all the assets were divested to 3rd party companies.
Can't wait for the fanbois defence of these issues, no doubt someone/anyone/everyone apart from SD will be at fault, hell, it was probably the result of all the backer hatred that did it!
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Looks as if SD have been defrauding Chaosium too:
https://www.chaosium.com/blogstatement-about-ditions-sansdtour/
Guess no-one who looked at the whole SD thing openly is surprised they could not be trusted and fits with the way all the assets were divested to 3rd party companies.
Can't wait for the fanbois defence of these issues, no doubt someone/anyone/everyone apart from SD will be at fault, hell, it was probably the result of all the backer hatred that did it!
Are there any coureur des fanbois left? I thought they moved on to greener pastures...
Joss is awfully silent...
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does this mean Confrontation Resurection is dead? Or just the Adventure game. I am confused when reading it all.
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From the linked web notice it looks terminal for L'Aventures but Chaosium say they have already agreed a new partner for the French CoC stuff so that will continue.
I assume the issue for the Confrontation kickstarter will be the litigation for unpaid royalties SD owes Chaosium and any culpable damages resulting from the contract with L'Aventures.
Question is what does Sans Detour actually have that could be counted as an asset?
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From the linked web notice it looks terminal for L'Aventures but Chaosium say they have already agreed a new partner for the French CoC stuff so that will continue.
I assume the issue for the Confrontation kickstarter will be the litigation for unpaid royalties SD owes Chaosium and any culpable damages resulting from the contract with L'Aventures.
Question is what does Sans Detour actually have that could be counted as an asset?
And the fact that if they're not paying licencor's then they've probably got no money. As has been said none of this clusterfuck is all that surprising to most folks, certainly not the ones here. Normally I'd be more sympathetic to the backers getting screwed over (hell I backed Super Dungeon Explore Legends) but given the amount of red flags and people actively trying to warn folks I feel like most folks who've been burned here kinda brought it on themselves. Interestingly the folks who savagely defended SD are completely silent now in the KS comments, either embarassment or they were shills from the start...
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Well, glad I dodged that bullet... :)
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I still wonder about all of the people defending the project. Unlike Upfront which was previewing art and cards these fellows effectively showed nothing.
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I’m a big fan of Confrontation, but I didn’t get a good impression from the KS since the beginning. Thank the gods I didn’t back it (being semi-broke all the time helps)
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Ok, thank you. Was wondering because 3 of the people in my game group joined the kickstarter but don't keep track of miniature related things. (they all played 17 years ago). Luckily I only pledged for the resin undead guys because I already have all the models I wanted in metal. I was hoping this was a way to get my board game group back into miniatures, but might have the opposite effect.
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Comments currently appear overall civil, with few, if any, posts by those defending SD.
Yslaire posted this comment, translated from French, about Ludik eight months ago:
Yslaire
4 days ago
There is indeed no evidence of non-payment of suppliers - only of Chaosium that one could qualify as entitled. Now the final troubles of Ludik took place during the KS (summer-autumn 2018) and not 10 years ago: https://www.black-book-editions.fr/forums.php?a=last&topic_id=10111.
I really invite you to read this to better understand the links that exist between these distinct societies but whose managers (and addresses) are very related: http://necrophiludique.blogspot.com/2018/12/confrontation-sans-detour -The return-de.html? m = 1
Again this does not indicate any wrongdoing but it is time to look at facts that are essentially verifiable. Yes it remains Adventures, yes it remains Confrontation, but Cthhulhu alone had to easily weigh 50% of the turnover of Sans Détour. Few companies could absorb such a loss. We wish them the announcement of Chaosium is only a warning shot or they are very strong legally / financially.
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The comments on the Ulule (French KS site) for the Masks of Nyarlathotep campaign are interesting.
Sans Detour has quoted from the public notice Chaosium put out about the loss of the CoC licence but in "translation" all reference to breach of contract and 2 years unpaid royalties/licence fees has gone missing, thus making it read like SD are the victims.
Whether the backers of that campaign will get their books (now a year overdue) is uncertain and SD have not made any response to the questions being raised about the statement.
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The natives are getting restless, so Collaborateur Sylvain Couture posted six days ago:
SD sera de retour de vacances en janvier 2019. / SD will be back from vacation in January 2019.
When was the last time these guys weren't on vacation? lol
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Some tidbits from the French Infiniti forum, translated to English:
http://www.bureau-aegis.org/forum/index.php?topic=13765.20 (http://www.bureau-aegis.org/forum/index.php?topic=13765.20)
* (Regarding the Chaosium statement) It seems that among the employees all this did not know and that they learned the news by the release of Chaosium ....
* (The liquidation of stock) the liquidator in question is one of his friends who still works with him
* SD says, on its FB page, "Other unfounded comments were made against Ammirati, who is not an employee of the company."
(https://scontent.fcdg2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/48387746_2117415521651916_1332457073224450048_n.jpg?_nc_cat=111&_nc_ht=scontent.fcdg2-1.fna&oh=4baefb1c21e3ef2d92b008c3592e6f0f&oe=5C9891B7)
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Culling from the Confrontation KS comments...
Here's another statement, from Chaosium, released December 23rd.
We are taking this unilateral step to at least enable Éditions Sans-Détour to fulfil obligations to their Masks of Nyarlathotep/Day of the Beast Ulule.com backers:
Chaosium will unilaterally grant a license to Éditions Sans-Détour to fulfill the 2017 Ulule.com crowdfunding campaign. We do that despite our concerns that we will never see a cent of the not insubstantial royalties owed by ESD, by ESD’s repeated acts of bad faith, for their serious breach of contract, and copyright and trademark violations. We do that because we don’t want the fans to get punished for someone else’s deeds.
This license DOES NOT permit Éditions Sans-Détour to sell Masks of Nyarlathotep/Day of the Beast to game stores, distributors, or online. It ONLY allows ESD to fulfill the Ulule crowdfunding campaign to existing backers and nothing more. Nor does it waive ESD of its obligation to pay Chaosium the royalties owed. Chaosium reserves all rights to seek legal relief against ESD as specified under its (now-lapsed) contract with ESD.
We’ve tried to work with ESD to move past what is obviously a difficult period in their company’s finances, but not only have we not received any royalty payments for books sold since the end of 2016 - we haven’t even received sales data upon which royalties could be estimated. Our requests for this information have been ignored.
*****
SD's response to Adventure RPG's statement.
https://fr.ulule.com/aventures-le-jeu/news/communique-201354/
And Adventure's response.
I have read the latest press release from the publisher SANS-DÉTOUR,
which does not hesitate to charge me with the project's" freeze ", to report information that could be covered by the confidentiality of the exchanges, and clearly defamatory, so I intend to assert my right of reply
here, which will be brief and very clear:
without payment of royalties since the fundraiser and after months to question my editor on this subject, I was forced to bring in my legal adviser, without any more success.
In addition, in the face of persistent silence, and in the absence of factual information on the fundraising, I could only take note of the suspension of the contract. SANS-DETOUR has been duly informed beforehand and repeatedly, as it should, by official means. To my great regret, the discussion is interrupted today. The expected answer to these questions belongs to SANS-DETOUR.
As for the allegations of SANS-DETOUR with regard to my rights as author, I leave it to the "legal" to take care of it. The termination of the project does not in any way result in the production of any license agreement.
This situation is a real heartbreak for me, the AVENTURES project being one of the most motivating and exciting of my career. If out of respect for the community invested in this project, informing is essential, this information must respect certain principles. "
Source: http : //urlz.fr/8rRb
EDIT: Also found this discussion about Chaosium and Aventures' statements on a French gaming forum.
Eloniel says that, within the last two years, SD pulled in a fair amount of money from crowdfunding, yet did not pay royalties. :
"More seriously it is abuse, they have the biggest crowfunding of the French jdr both in amount and number of subscribers (Adventure) and they manage to not pay the royalties. It's pure theft. I advise the backers to meet to file a complaint for fraud in case you do not receive your pledge. It's too easy to cash, not to pay royalties and file for bankruptcy to put a box behind."
https://www.black-book-editions.fr/forums.php?topic_id=12066&nbp=3&nop=0
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Only one way this is going to end.
Sadly not likely to be with the crooks behind this scam in prison for fraud though.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments
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The half-bothered disinformation campaign appears to be working... lol
That’s a nice little trick that Chaosium pulled; by giving SD a license extension to fulfill their Ulele campaign, They keep their good name intact while keeping SD from making any profit by selling more copies after (if) they fulfill the ulele orders. The Call of Cthulhu translations were their main revenue stream, wasn’t it? Why would they let the license lapse?
They didn't let the licence lapse, Chaosium never renewed it because SD haven't paid them royalties in 2 years, how did you miss that part of the story? They also didn't pay any royalties due to the Aventures guy hence the termination of that project. It seems they're not good at paying their dues in general...
Sans Detour should've focused on the Cadwe army in metal, since they're compatible with almost every other faction IIRC, and possibly a styrene multi-part Cadwallon militia box, as based on the metal versions, these are compatible with a variety of other games and shorn of symbols, 14th/15th Century HYW infantry. Based on sales, subsequent campaigns could cover one or two other factions at a time. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but PVC doesn't have the same appeal for me...
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The half-bothered disinformation campaign appears to be working... lol
Sans Detour should've focused on the Cadwe army in metal, since they're compatible with almost every other faction IIRC, and possibly a styrene multi-part Cadwallon militia box, as based on the metal versions, these are compatible with a variety of other games and shorn of symbols, 14th/15th Century HYW infantry. Based on sales, subsequent campaigns could cover one or two other factions at a time. Maybe I'm being unreasonable, but PVC doesn't have the same appeal for me...
Hah, I don't normally post dickish responses online but that guy had to have been intentional, you couldn't find out they lost the licence without seeing why...
They could have done all that stuff you said but I'm sure it's pretty clear they have no intention of actually producing stuff they were just hoping to pull in a massive pay day to cover their outstanding debts.
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It's in French, but here's a blog that's been keeping track of SD and has a good summary.
http://necrophiludique.blogspot.com/2018/12/confrontation-sans-detour-le-retour-de.html?m=1
Something it adds to this thread is Christophe Ammirati. SD said CA is not an employee -- until you look at a screenshot of the SD site that shows he is, as the Finance Director.
Christophe Ammirati:
If someone holds the keys to the financial mystery, this is this guy.
Unless there is a recent change; he is the financial director of Sans Détour. (his Linkedin profile does not mention this responsibility, but the site of Sans Détour yes).
So it is this man who should have signed checks to Chaosium, who also could have provided a sales statement for Chaosium.
But he is also a leader of Stellar Licensing and Consulting , the owner of Hong Kong-based Confrontation's intellectual property, and therefore, head of the company that needs to earn royalties for the Confrontation Classic's Kickstarter and the possible future Confrontation Resurrection.
The "team" page of Stellar Licensing unfortunately returns to an error 404: impossible to confirm it there, but on Linkedin it is clear.
Honestly, I would not want to be in the shoes of a man who may find himself in a position to choose between paying royalties to Chaosium and paying a return on investment for the Confrontation license (which must have been quite expensive).
Here again do not necessarily see malice. I believe there are strong business and friendship ties between these two men and that they seek to get out of trouble in one way or another rather than voluntarily shutting down the world. Only when you play the tightrope, the slightest accident of course can be fatal.
Another proof of this proximity, the company Way of Gamers / Smart Trading Limited, located at the same address as the warehouses of Sans Détour also belongs to Mr. Ammirati.Stock liquid that looks very much like that of Ludikbazar ...
While formerly Way of Gamers was known only for a site of collaborative work and crowdfunding for creators geeks to the uncertain success ( 1 only unfunded project ).
It is these appearances of conflicts of interest, combined with a certain amateurism, and the news of Chaosium leaving a doubt about the finances of Sans Détour that lend at this moment to all possible theories in the absence of answers to these questions :
-What was the actual financial situation of Sans Detour when launching the kickstarter of Confrontation Classic?
- If the little hands and the project manager were probably unaware of it: who knew about the dealings with Chaosium regarding the royalties?
- Has Stellar Licensing received her royalties?
- What exact role does Christophe Ammirati and his companies play in the partnership, what are the interests of each other?
- Will the current finances of Sans Détour and its concerns of rights allow you to deliver The Masks, and, while having lost this cash cow, especially, in the long term, to deliver the KS Confrontation Classic?
- Who will eventually take over the resin casts of Confrontation? Who is in charge of standard plastic production?
- Where is the production planning of the big figurines?
http://necrophiludique.blogspot.com/2018/12/confrontation-sans-detour-le-retour-de.html?m=1
Way of Gamers looks to be a French crowdfunding site, although I don't see any projects there at the moment?
https://www.wayofgamers.fr/qui-sommes-nous
*****
MOB (Michael O'Brien, Head of Licensing and VP) of Chaosium posted more regarding their statements about SD on a Chaosium thread:
Ludikbay declared bankruptcy; at this point I don't think ESD has though. But as Sandy says, it was not our desire to end the partnership with ESD, but we ended up having no choice. We had previously regarded ESD as a valued and trusted partner, but then they simply stopped paying us, or even answering our emails, or coming up with excuses when they did.
ESD never finalised the rights to Masks of Nyarlathotep/Day of the Beast. The rights were contingent on ESD paying the standard license fee that was agreed to in the contract with Chaosium. This payment was supposed to made within 10 days of receiving the crowdsourcing funds from Ulule. But ESD never paid up*. Chaosium served notice on ESD to rectify this, but they persisted in ignoring us (nor pay any of the outstanding royalties owed for more than two years). Hence, the termination of ESD's permission to use our trademarks, logos and all related intellectual property, including Masks of Nyarlathotep/Day of the Beast.
Because this put the Ulule backers in a unfortunate situation, having pledged funds to a project that the company producing it never properly secured the rights to, we came up with the unilateral solution posted here. This is despite Chaosium ourselves still not receiving a cent from ESD from the Ulule campaign (and ESD's total liabilities to Chaosium exceeding well in excess of €100K). We took this course of action because we don’t want French CoC fans to get punished for someone else’s deeds.
We will be announcing the new French licensee shortly.
*obviously, if at the time we were aware of that ESD were going to do this, we wouldn't have given them the green light to use our IP and trademarks in the Ulule crowdfunding campaign. But in early 2017 we still regarded ESD as a valued and trusted partner.
https://www.yog-sothoth.com/index.html/news/sans-detour-stripped-of-call-of-cthulhu-licence/
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Translation of a post on the French Black Book Editions forum. :
Laurendi
Author Info
3 weeks ago
gentlemen,
Perhaps you should consult the previous balance sheets of the company?
The latest figures available are not recent. On the data provided, we are very far from a company that rolls on gold: 46690 € Net Profit in 2014. This is not what is called a solid company.
For the rest, concerning the ability of Chaosium to intervene to prevent a publication ... must be lucid: I do not see what they could do immediately. It is not a French entity. The rights are different. It is already difficult to recover an unpaid balance between French companies, then with an American company and the legal costs related to an action ... in short, I can not see Chaosium launched a lawsuit which will cost him a fortune and which guarantees him not to recover his bet. On the other hand, it is a good reason to break a contract with a partner who disavows it.
Finally, in case of scam, know that it is the state that is considered as high priority by the financial agent. So if judicial liquidation there is, the first ones to be used are the agent and the State. Then the rights holders cheated. In other words, you will have nothing.
Ultraviolet also has some comments about their accounting in 2017 in this thread.
https://www.verif.com/bilans-gratuits/SANS-DETOUR-504290206/
*****
Also, SD owes Petersen Games "six figures" of Cthulhu Wars not distributed, or something to that effect.
https://www.black-book-editions.fr/forums.php?topic_id=12066&nbp=91&nop=23
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Well I did back this... I think anyone who has looked at my thread has noticed i'm a big fan of Rackham... so I pretty much had to back this even though I was not a fan of SD and how they ran the campaign... AT ALL... i still sucked it up and pledged.... i figured it would work out... i've been in over 30 kickstarters and they have all delivered (or are going to based on constant weekly updates showing progress and enthusiasm)... some a bit late, but they are all very well run and good communication from the creator... I have to admit, I don't think I get this one... there is too much shady crap going on. I have pretty much written it off as a loss... if it ever does deliver it'll be a nice shock, but i'm not planning on it. Such a shame. You couldn't have a more incompetent group of people running a kickstarter. I've learned my lesson and if they look off from the start i'm not going to assume that they will right it later!
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Well I did back this... I think anyone who has looked at my thread has noticed i'm a big fan of Rackham... so I pretty much had to back this even though I was not a fan of SD and how they ran the campaign... AT ALL... i still sucked it up and pledged.... i figured it would work out... i've been in over 30 kickstarters and they have all delivered (or are going to based on constant weekly updates showing progress and enthusiasm)... some a bit late, but they are all very well run and good communication from the creator... I have to admit, I don't think I get this one... there is too much shady crap going on. I have pretty much written it off as a loss... if it ever does deliver it'll be a nice shock, but i'm not planning on it. Such a shame. You couldn't have a more incompetent group of people running a kickstarter. I've learned my lesson and if they look off from the start i'm not going to assume that they will right it later!
The worst part for us Rackham fans is that these guys (through another company) own the licence now so they've pretty much killed it stone dead. They already sold off loads of the original masters anyway. :'(
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I've never been into Confrontation but its a great shame to see any game carved up and left to rot. I don't understand anyone who takes on a fallen game and bring new life into it.
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I almost regret my 1 euro pledge on this... the entertainment value is good, but 1 euro is almost too much to give to con artists.
Does anybody else find it ironic that Legends of Signum, which is affiliated/owned(?) by Cadwallon miniatures (the Ukrainian confrontation recasters) is on the verge of fulfilling their pledges for their spin-off game/range of miniatures? I did back that project, and there have been nothing but constant updates, new pledges, and general excitement for what they are doing. All this in spite of having their KS sabotaged by SD...
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I've never been into Confrontation but its a great shame to see any game carved up and left to rot. I don't understand anyone who takes on a fallen game and bring new life into it.
The rules are not perfect for confrontation, but very enjoyable... the rules are not what I care about... the world, lore, and very unique factions are what make confrontation so interesting to me. I've been playing a few games in the confrontation world using the new middle earth strategy game rules... very fun. The world of confrontation will never die for me, I own almost all of it now and will never sell... having a company (SD) show people who might not of ever heard of confrontation a glimpse of it and then fumbling it and jerking everyone around just angers me. They do not deserve the license.
The game didn't die... Rackham went bankrupt because they had no idea how to run a company and spent all their money on over a thousand original sculpts and thousands of pages and cards of original beautiful art... they had so many more sculpts then games workshop at the time and were a fraction of the size... then they invested all the rest of their money in creating the best detailed line of prepainted miniatures even to this day. They had massive plans for the prepainted lines for 16 factions... they just went too much too soon and couldn't pay all the manufacturing bills... sad...
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Does anybody else find it ironic that Legends of Signum, which is affiliated/owned(?) by Cadwallon miniatures (the Ukrainian confrontation recasters) is on the verge of fulfilling their pledges for their spin-off game/range of miniatures? I did back that project, and there have been nothing but constant updates, new pledges, and general excitement for what they are doing. All this in spite of having their KS sabotaged by SD...
I'm not sure that's ironic as such seeing as they already produce product and have been for years. It's a shame they started where they did with recasting as their own stuff is fantastic (obviously stylistically similar to Rackham). On the other hand with this debacle I find myself wishing I had bought some of the Daikinee recasts to complete my collection as it's unlikely I'll ever end up with originals...
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COMMUNIQUE
Chaosium Inc., propriétaire du système de jeu de rôle Call of Cthulhu, n’a pas souhaité renouveler la licence de L'Appel de Cthulhu par les éditions Sans-Détour, exploitée et enrichie par notre société depuis 10 ans. Nous évaluons actuellement ensemble l’état des royautés encore à devoir.
Dans le respect du contrat qui nous lie, nous mettrons un terme à la production et la vente des produits de gamme de L'Appel de Cthulhu. Nos clients et la communauté seront informés prochainement de ce calendrier.
La fabrication de la campagne des Masques de Nyarlathotep et du Jour de la Bête sera bientôt terminée et prête à l'embarquement. Le retard de cette production nous a également porté préjudice, mais nous faisons en sorte que personne ne soit lésé et que cette campagne soit bien livrée. D'ailleurs, dans l'intérêt des fans et le respect du contrat, nous échangeons avec Chaosium sur ce dossier.
En 10 ans, Sans-Détour a porté la réputation de L'Appel de Cthulhu à un niveau jamais atteint auparavant. Et nous avons surtout apporté la même passion et la même expertise à toutes nos autres gammes et nombreuses productions. Sans -Détour est reconnu pour cela. Nous allons continuer à produire des jeux de qualité et à innover sans cesse, grâce aux talents exceptionnels des femmes et des hommes de nos équipes, pour le plus grand plaisir des joueurs et passionnés qui nous soutiennent.
"Chaosium Inc. , owner of the Call of Cthulhu role-playing system , did not wish to renew the license of Cthulhu's L'Appel by Sans-Détour editions , operated and enriched by our company for 10 years. We are currently evaluating together the state of the royalties still due."
You don't pay the licensee for *two* years and don't answer their emails. Yeah, good luck with that.
https://fr.ulule.com/cthulhu-campagnes/news/communique-200499/?ul_campaign=presale_47593
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I wonder if Hysterical Games got paid for the big box of resin castings SD pictured? Co-incidence they end up in a cash flow crisis severe enough to sink the business while doing contract work for a company which appears not to be paying its bills.
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I wonder if Hysterical Games got paid for the big box of resin castings SD pictured? Co-incidence they end up in a cash flow crisis severe enough to sink the business while doing contract work for a company which appears not to be paying its bills.
That is exactely what sprang to my mind after having found out about the connection of these two companies...
The irony would be that in this case, although not taking part in this KS, SD would have sunk my KS money for Panzerfäuste :-[
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On the other hand with this debacle I find myself wishing I had bought some of the Daikinee recasts to complete my collection as it's unlikely I'll ever end up with originals...
You could always contact those Cadwallon guys and find out what's still possible. Not a fan of recasts ( as in, never bought them on purpose although some came two times - unknown to me - in big lots and I'm absolutely not happy with that ) but no pity for con artists like SD. Still am considering a few of those myself...
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> I wonder if Hysterical Games got paid for the big box of resin castings SD pictured?
Good question. I've also heard of KS and other projects encountering financial difficulties when the 3rd parties they've paid (eg. printers) go out of business and take the money with them. That's sometimes why, for a First Created miniatures project, I'll press the creator to tell me who the caster or manufacturer is.
Anyway, good (?) news for the resins, although resin production isn't plastics production. (Resin and metal molds costs hundreds of dollars versus thousands, while material costs for plastic is pennies.)
We've received all of the production from Hysterical Games (Cynwall Wyrm, Belial, the Eclipsant Bust, and the Mid-Nor Hydra) and are currently preparing the models to be packaged the castings first).
Our first wave of shipping will start soon so that you'll be able to get these first pieces quickly. For the remaining parts, qui Originally Were Supposed to be produced by GRX, we've found a new contractor, De Roos Tinnen , Who-have already done masterful work for other game lines (Steamforged Games, Freebooter, etc.) and Who-have Reported They should be able to produce these models (Skull Warriors, Chimera, and Dwarf Golem) quite quickly. Of course, we do not have a specific date for the completion of this production, but we are going to see you there.
Update: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2391708
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Well, they use a Dutch mouldmaking and casting firm ( de Tinnen Roos ) and that looks like a solid, experienced firm.
We'll see what they are going to do with their plastic stuff lol.
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Chatter from the french forum which has connections to a low level employee of SD says the are using (or talking to) the same Chinese factory that produces the minis for Dust 1947... which is actually really nice quality plastic... still a flip of the coin as to whether this comes to fruition, but the chatter is better then nothing...
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Is Sans-Detour still in business? Could anyone Cthulhu Wars Kickstarter claim? :? No mid month update in February...
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Could anyone Cthulhu Wars Kickstarter claim? :?
Huh? Oh referring to the "SD went out of business last year" comment?
Is Sans-Detour still in business?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments
https://www.facebook.com/EditionsSansDetour/
There, you know as much as anyone else now cause SD sure ain't talking. :P For what it's worth I think someone checked the French business directory and the company was still listed as ongoing, the assumption being the Cthulhu Wars update got them mixed up with Ludik Bazar. An easy mistake to make considering they shared staff and the exact same address...
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Huh? Oh referring to the "SD went out of business last year" comment?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments
https://www.facebook.com/EditionsSansDetour/
There, you know as much as anyone else now cause SD sure ain't talking. :P For what it's worth I think someone checked the French business directory and the company was still listed as ongoing, the assumption being the Cthulhu Wars update got them mixed up with Ludik Bazar. An easy mistake to make considering they shared staff and the exact same address...
Comments on the KS page, linked above, was where I first read the claim about SD's status, and since I can't post there, I thought I'd ask here. Maybe someone in the industry in France could chime in, since it's not about national security. lol IIRC, someone checked last year, but the situation could've changed since January. It's possible CW got it mixed up with LD, but the lack of an update could suggest anything - they could be on another holiday. lol
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Petersen mentions that they hired a lawyer to file a claim in France, so, as long as said lawyer wasn't called Saul, my guess is that they knew who owed them money. :
"Sans Detour, unexpectedly went out of business last year (while owing us more than $150,000 in products we manufactured and shipped to them. The “net 30” model widely used in this industry, in which distributors pay publishers 30 days after receiving the goods can destroy small publishers like us. Our lawyer says we should not ever expect to be paid, even though we have a petition in a French court, and are on the list of creditors to be paid out of their assets). "
Sound pretty firm to me, although I figure the whole house of cards was gonna fall apart at once. Possibly the only entity to survive is Stellar Licensing, which owns the IP, and is connected to SD through Christophe Ammirati. Sure, legally, SD may still exist, but that only means the registration fee is paid until the end of the year.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/petersengames/cthulhu-wars-onslaught-3/posts/2425177?fbclid=IwAR2D4uW3Epf5k4T09ehTnnH-9CpYSBkQPVTAIyF2e-MgmEwp0g_mQZbckhQ
Christophe Ammirati:
If someone holds the keys to the financial mystery, this is this guy.
Unless there is a recent change; he is the financial director of Sans Détour. (his Linkedin profile does not mention this responsibility, but the site of Sans Détour yes).
So it is this man who should have signed checks to Chaosium, who also could have provided a sales statement for Chaosium.
But he is also a leader of Stellar Licensing and Consulting , the owner of Hong Kong-based Confrontation's intellectual property, and therefore, head of the company that needs to earn royalties for the Confrontation Classic's Kickstarter and the possible future Confrontation Resurrection.
Scroll down to my January 8th post for the full quote.
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Hopefully cadwallon.com will offer Rackham models again soon. They may not hold the rights, but they deliver, do great (re)casts and give fans a chance to complete their collection. SD may had the rights...but apparently it seems a lot of people were scammed for a lot of money. A real, real shame...
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And they wouldn't have 2c to rub together to get a lawyer to follow through with a C&D lol
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rotflmao!
Haven't used that acronym in awhile. :)
Didn't SD send a C&D to Cadwallon right after Confrontation KS funds were collected? Wonder who gave them the money to do *that*.
Anyway, my *guess* is that, like a Spanish company that used to make knockoffs of traditional US family games awhile back, now that Cadwallon has its own IP that customers will buy, it won't produce unlicensed IP. I speculate that it's partially because of legal issues, but also because the hobby is a creative outlet, and Cadwallon may have its own not-Rackham concepts they would like available to the gaming market.
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Two months since the last KS update. I'm sure that's a good sign. (They're probably, erm.. working hard to create those plastic moulds, right?)
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Who's El Huappo? Either an 'obby 'ard man or a plant...
Just an update on my end - SD is still around and I have been in communication with the project lead for this KS. I asked for a shipping timeline on the resin with April as my end point of needing to change shipping addresses etc, they didn't give me a shipping estimate but did tell me to change my address to be safe, so I would expect a delay to occur through then.
Also, I am sure the only reason they replied to be is because I created an in depth video showing all emails I have with them and their failure to communicate with the BH program people.
Also, I still have good faith in them to actually deliver at some point unless they prove otherwise. I wont be replying to any of the sad sack trolls that have been living here for months on end that pledges for $1 lmao.
Probably a little slow today, but what does BH stand for?
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An actual update!
Well, updated info on the resin at least. Not exactly a lot about those plastic minis.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2504077
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An actual update!
Well, updated info on the resin at least. Not exactly a lot about those plastic minis.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/996665814/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/posts/2504077
I was going to post this, but it's not much of an update, just more of the same: excuses and giving false hope to those experiencing 5 stages of denial. In an earlier update they said the resin figures were ready for shipping, based on the photos, and now it's in production since the 13th of May.
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They don't even have an idea of how they'll do the plastics yet...
Thanks for the update and show something,things can have problems and can be fixed just need patience perseverance and trust! 1:0 for SD
Amazing, 1:0 indeed... ;D
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I suspect eventual update of :
---
- we have decided to do the plastic pledges in resin, or card flats (laminated at extra, extra cost) off our office printer, for any backers who stump up the extra and/or the extra,extra cost.
- these will be all pink, so that its possible to tell plastic resin/card replacements from the true resin gray pledges and our master blue resin pledges.
- its a new type of resin called polyuresin....
- Please add on 5 or 6 more years to your expected delivery month.
- if you don't want that - here's a coupon for 10% discount off new confrontation.
- this is the only way we can do the plastics pledges within the next 10 years.
- oh and extra postage cost will be calculated and charged after..
---
sorry, I am an awful cynic sometimes ::)
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It's downright impossible to get scans of the metal models and turn them into castable plastic mini's without some major reworking and changes. That will take time, trial and error and lots of funds. And they barely raised 400K out of their KS. Take out wages, shipping costs, designers' and manufacturers' bills, overhead and of course the taxman so that leaves what, about 200/300 dinarii a pop for the scanning, redesigning/reworking, testing/checking and last-minute changes, moldmaking and whatever else comes to mind?
Don't see that happen... ::)
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I suspect eventual update of :
Good game....lets all play
I suspect eventual update of:
SD has been forced to cease trading due to the unfair and unforeseen actions of "partners" who took exception to our trying to rip them off and defraud them of their rightful licence fees and commissions.
However Confron fans, the good news is that the management team of SD have set up a new trading entity which has been able to obtain the licence for Confrontation from our other shill consulting company its owners and will be relaunching a new version "Ultimate Confrontation" game on Kickstarter next year. State of the art high detail plastic miniatures and amazing new rules.
Cynical, not as far as this bunch of crooks are concerned.
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Anyone see the update today? Celebration box minis will now be in metal rather than plastic, for the same price, with no change in shipping costs.
Interesting development, though I am skeptical that the number of miniatures there can be produced and shipped in metal for that price...
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Anyone see the update today? Celebration box minis will now be in metal rather than plastic, for the same price, with no change in shipping costs.
Interesting development, though I am skeptical that the number of miniatures there can be produced and shipped in metal for that price...
I missed it... :o
Daniel Bentley: Uh... okay... how can I get mine in plastic please? Metal is garbage. Metal has less detail, is too fragile, and uses CA glue which leads to pieces eventually falling off and needing to be reglued. Not to mention I'm not a fan of the excessive weight and top-heaviness of metal.
WTH is this guy talking about?!? How is metal garbage?
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Hopefully cadwallon.com will offer Rackham models again soon. They may not hold the rights, but they deliver, do great (re)casts and give fans a chance to complete their collection. SD may had the rights...but apparently it seems a lot of people were scammed for a lot of money. A real, real shame...
Have you more informations about Cadwallon ?
Where will they release recast again ?
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Wow
Disappointment in getting metal - well. That's unexpected.
Surprised they did not partner with Cadwallon, they have a lot of existing experience with casting their miniatures.
That aside, although I am surprised they are casting anything not resin pledge, it does of course make sense going back to the original material, and avoiding having to actually go through re-doing them all for plastic...
Here's to hoping the backers get their stuff, even with the disappointment of the material chosen for casting.
The world changes - people preferring plastic over metal...
amazed.
I just wonder if they are trying to find something to be disappointed about now that they might actually get something?
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That update doesn't surprise me at all. I never saw them cast all those miniatures in plastic, they were sculpted for metal and AFAIK you can't just switch to plastic without doing tons of work on them.
And let's say 1500 people pledged for the big box...that was supposed to be a box filled with plastic, now with metal. And shipping prices are only increasing...how the heck are they going to pay for that increase? That box will weigh a ton!
But still, it's good to see progress for the backers!
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Glad I didn't pledge but the fact it is in metal now would have been more of an incentive. Still glad I dodged that one though.
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Yeah this will be interesting, on the one hand metal was what they should have done in the first place and might mean the return of some classic minis. However it's going to be super expensive especially shipping boxes of 250+ minis cast in metal and while metal moulds are gonna cost way less than the planned plastic moulds, the pictures they posted show them using one mould per miniature?
There seems to be an insane amount of people on the project unhappy with metal... as opposed to soft detailed PVC casts... Even the best PVC minis (and there are fantastic ones these days) are gonna be a bit less detailed than metal due to the softening of detail.
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If they went for the metal right away I'd rolled the bones and backed it for sure... Man, what we all knew from the start, a 1 one 1 translation frome metal into plastic isn't viable took them about, how long, 16 months to realise?
We'll see where it goes, but surprised to see they still are trying to deliver. As is Heroquest 25th, so it seems ;).
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I bet they are going to wish they had not lost, sold and gifted the original masters now. Going to end up making new master casts from existing stock castings.
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If they went for the metal right away I'd rolled the bones and backed it for sure... Man, what we all knew from the start, a 1 one 1 translation frome metal into plastic isn't viable took them about, how long, 16 months to realise?
We'll see where it goes, but surprised to see they still are trying to deliver. As is Heroquest 25th, so it seems ;).
Oh, I'd better go check HQ 25th, lol. Last update from what I remember was over a year ago now.
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I bet they are going to wish they had not lost, sold and gifted the original masters now. Going to end up making new master casts from existing stock castings.
To be fair the masters I saw for sale were the much older minis from 1st Ed and not the more popular ones. Still they seem to putting a single mini per mould and have 16 copies of Khanir the Savage in one so that's a hell of a lot of master castings required.
(https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/025/384/230/6cf47239de6001788a3d1c9a1fe49e80_original.jpg?ixlib=rb-2.0.0&w=700&fit=max&v=1559733378&auto=format&gif-q=50&q=92&s=8838b257f73c000d2db1a3546f1874d0)
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I bet they are going to wish they had not lost, sold and gifted the original masters now. Going to end up making new master casts from existing stock castings.
They still have most of the original masters and most of the green master molds from Rackham for the minis they are offering... I've seen them. Of the original masters they are missing, they have the masters from the original "master set" cast off the master sculpt that rackham used to make production molds... so the quality should be the exact same except the minis will be a bit lighter as they will be using lead free white metal. Rackham had some lead in their minis. I'm with the other poster in regards to shipping though... i weighed a mix of 15 rackham minis and it came out at 3 lbs... so simple math says that 250 minis would weigh 50 - 60 lbs.... that's HEAVY... and shipping to backers in south america and Australia could end up costing as much as the pledge.
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From the lack of them supplying examples from the very start of plastic versions, it always screamed "not happening"
As better informed persons have mentioned and they clearly indicated they have access to masters.
Expect it to arrive to backers about the same time Heroquest 25th backers get their stuff..
regardless of the plastic love, i reckon they would have got a lot more money if they had done metal/resin options from the start.
They might even have had enough interest to then offer plastic options..
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This KS reminds me of Wheel of Fortune: just pay in order to spin the big wheel around and see what you'll get, ranging from nothing via plastic unto metal and /or resin , or maybe nothing at all amd maybe increased shipping costs but maybe not ;D.
Just wondering if they've got the cash in order to refill it ( + P&P ) or need a 2nd KS in order to fill in the hole this KS left...
If I were them I'd seriously consider launching a quick one where people can back seperate factions, of course for metal prices but still... The moulds are being made, why not make more money from a few extra spins?
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Well, that’s unexpected. I recently have sorted through my immense Confrontation collection (and sorry @Gibby for never answering you back, but the baby and work needs all my time atm), and it’s still amazing how well these sculpts stand next to ultramodern ones.
On the one hand, I would certainly have backed the KS if it had been metal...but then I had wanted ALL metals back and the option to buy my choice and not a random collection of stuff I don’t want.
On the other hand...the postage will be crazy! They cannot hope to send metal models for the same price as plastics. That’s insane! If they manage to produce the models it already comes to strange math: how cheap do they expect to cast multi part metal models? 0,50€ per model maybe...that sounds unrealistic, but maybe they manage...but then postage might cost several times what they estimated!
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Well they've reopened the pledge manager so you too can get your big box of metal for the low low price of 500 euro, but act fast this offer is only available till the end of July when the price will increase to 600 euro!
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Well they've reopened the pledge manager so you too can get your big box of metal for the low low price of 500 euro, but act fast this offer is only available till the end of July when the price will increase to 600 euro!
Surely that's just the postage? :D
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For someone wanting to take the plunge into collecting Rackham, 500 euro isn't bad at all for metal... that's less then 2 euro per model... l've paid WAY more off ebay for some models...
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That’s what makes me really suspicious....how can they do this?
I have a collection of several hundred Rackham models and heck even when they were sold for literally nothing after the bankruptcy of Rackham they were more expensive....how do they plan to make money with it?
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To be fair
The nice part of me thinks re-opening the pledge manager is a way to get some more money out of hopeful backers, and new ones, who would really like the metal versions.. and to drag this out for as long as possible maybe, so perhaps some people will get something..in very slow waves.
The cynical part of me thinks far worse.
I don't see anyone having a struggling courier turning up on their doorstep anytime soon with a 25kg box of minis
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The French supporters and guys they have in their secret test groups for Confrontation Resurrection will likely get theirs first... we shall see how they plan to package such a heavy affair once those un-boxing pics start making their way on the internet...
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Well, we already know they can't afford the plastic molds. With metal they can at least make *something* though not necessarily for backers. Cast product, sell retail, struggle, repeat until dead. Also, by releasing updates, they show progress on the project, so KS (?) can't go after them.
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Hardly surprised the plastic transition wasn't found to be feasible, but that whole plan was so poorly thought out I can't help but question their knowledge and experience on other matters now, which leads one to wonder if the new metals will indeed be economically viable. (At least it's practically possible, which I suppose is a major step up for this project...) Can't quite make out if the new plans are entirely trustworthy, or a new way to rake in more cash before things collapse after all. And of course, it'd be interesting to have seen how much money the project would have raised had they opted for metal from the start - those few preferring plastic would have passed, but the massive exodus at the end may have been avoided.
Time to grab some new popcorn and see how it continues to evolve... hoping for the best, but far from convinced that is the most likely outcome.
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Daniel Bentley:
I'm sorry, but I've never seen a metal mini with details worth anything. I'll take plastic over metal any day. More durable, less bendy, and better detail in plastic minis. Metal minis always look like mud; all the details are overly softened and droopy looking. ESPECIALY in the faces.
lol lol lol
Plastic Prats ever the comedians...
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What would be really useful is if they listed the suppliers they use for their metal miniatures - so we could avoid them.
and just when the rest of the world is trying to get away from single use plastics ::)
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The Robotech Kickstarter was proof that KS has no teeth in regards to enforcing well... anything at all. Basically SD can close the Pledge Manager after taking in the money and declare this project a massive failure within five minutes of closing the Pledge Manager and the only penalty will be SD taking a hickey to their branding. People will be really quick to remind backers that they are supporting a DREAM and Kickstarter is NOT a store or a preorder there are no guarantees.
This crowd funded project ticks off about every alert trigger for me. Over promising, mad scramble of information that doesn't quit add up, switch in project direction.
My cynicism meter went to 11 out of 10 on this one.
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Well, 4 updates during June!
Still complaints that plastic is better, but actually sounding somewhat possitive beyond that :o
Really you think they would realise the project has real environmental credit now avoiding using plastic.
If I could afford to risk jumping on another project not to ever finish... I almost would.
Yay for the safety net of low/no hobby budget sometimes (well and spending it on something else shiny that I actually received of course)
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I think some of the safety comes from Miniatue Market having a preorder of 400 boxes... that's a serious capital boost... if it wasn't true Miniature Market would have commented on it. They have always historically carried Confrontation and AT-43 stuff, so I think they are fans... I don't think these guys want to tick off that company as they actually would have the funds to pursue legal action. I'm now proud to be a backer again... I was at the start... then I wrote the money off for a long while... now i'm back in the happy boat with METAL minis!
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I highly doubt they paid up front for 400 boxes, that's a huge amount of cash and stock for a company in this industry. I'm guessing it's just some kind of commitment to stock them if and when they're produced. It does make it a safer bet for SD at least as long as they can begin producing the minis, which is far more realistic with the metals than the original PVC plan.
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I agree, there is no way they paid in full... but even putting down 10% is a good chunk of change.
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Either way its a good boost to backer morale.
here's to continued hoping.
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If they deliver the original backers got the deal of the century. I'll keep my fingers crossed for them ;).
Will do some cherrypicking eventually when/if they start to appear in (web)shops...
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Hello everyone,
At the end of the year, we are taking stock of our various projects.
Sans Détour is going through a very difficult period. Our company is trying to restructure and launch its activity.
The first actions will be to stop direct selling and the immediate closure of our Villeurbanne depot. In the future, our logistics will be entirely outsourced.
You have until December 31 to place orders on our online site. We continue to deliver all orders.
After this date, we will remove most titles from the catalog.
Regarding our other licenses and pending files, end year holidays and strikes do not allow us to advance as quickly as we wish. Our projects are idling, but not abandoned. Many discussions are underway for the relaunch of Sans Détour.
The offices will be closed from December 23 to January 6.
We will meet you after the holidays and our move for more information.
We wish you a very happy holiday season.
Sans Détour
Translated from: https://www.facebook.com/EditionsSansDetour/
Discussion on Dakka : https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1170/717182.page#10670518
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Doesn't sound very promising... :'(
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:o :o :o
I was hoping they'd eventually offer a bits store, so I may acquire spare Flesh Golem parts, and the Mid Nor Hydra at a reasonable price. I recall group orders organized for stateside residents, since shipping from France is expensive compared with the Royal Mail, but I doubt anyone would be willing to pay these guys now!
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Did they ever deliver on their KS?
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They delivered some resin miniatures. IIRC, They were cast by another party.
Comments mention backers who did and did not receives resins. :
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sansdetour/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments
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Well I never wish for companies to go out of business especially when my own money is on the line (core box backer)... but these guys have been very dishonest and deceitful with all of their communication and business practices. It's a shame. I do hope they will sell the IP to a passionate person who will finally at least put the miniatures back in production. They are too nice to be lost in time... I was never a cheerleader, but I did have high hopes they would come thru... I've backed over a hundred kickstarters and have not had an issue yet... sadly this one was the one I was most passionate about....
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If they really don't deliver you can always go Cadwallon ;).
I know they don't have the IP but let's be fair, you paid already for it bij backing this SD-thingie...
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This KS had disaster written all over it from Day 1. It was only a question of whether incompetence or malice would derail it.
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Seems that discussion has belatedly turned to organising a legal class action against SD for Confrontation "Resurrection".
There is already one registered against them by backers of the "Aventures" RPG pre-order scheme.
Probably way too late.
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Boy, that Sylvan guy. If someone wants to pay a few hundred dollars to never admit they're wrong, that's not my
problem money.
Yslaire : "The project lead, Joss, had previous experience in miniature manufacturing (but was the only one to have some and left SD)"
Joss's resignatation: https://www.reddit.com/r/confrontation/comments/epqamz/confrontation_resurrection_was_ironically_named/
Also, if you're familiar with Mythic Games (Joan of Arc), they're in the middle of a contract dispute with Pascal Bernard, the game designer. Mythic Games purchased Play and Win, including the JoA contract that was written by P&W with PB. Piotr Borowski, manager of the company Sans Détour, was one of the owners of P&W. https://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/2348051/right-reply-pascal-bernards-ip-dispute-author-game/page/2
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Boy, that Sylvan guy. If someone wants to pay a few hundred dollars to never admit they're wrong, that's not my problem money.
Yeah Sylvain seems to be the only SD cheerleader that hasn't slunk off in disgrace. "There was only one red flag and it was all lies from Board Game Geek!" is the hottest take on events. ;D
Thing is, because of the shady set up they have, they'll retain the Confrontation rights (through Stellar Licencing) even if they go under so are free to come back with a fake mustache and try again.
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Messages have gone out to backers regarding the legal class action complaint against Sans-Detour through the French courts.
From the KS messages:
Hello,
We are a group of CONFRONTATION CLASSIC pledgers.
We are planning to file a collective complaint in France against SANS-DETOUR.
Indeed, the French company SANS-DETOUR does not have any obligation to complete its project. However, if money is being embezzled, then a crime may have been committed.
This crime is called « abus de confiance » (breach of dust). In France, penalties that could apply for this crime are : prison sentence (7 years max) and criminal fine (750.000€ max). The first action to take after becoming a victim of a crime in France is to file a complaint as soon as possible, even if the real perpetrator has not been identified (against X). This step can be achieved by filing a complaint with the french police or the prosecutor of the Republic. Once the complaint is filed, the prosecutor has three months to instruct the police to open an investigation or to dismiss the complaint (for example, if the prosecutor considers that there is no crime).
We must file a complaint with the prosecutor of the Republic together.
If you live outside of France and if you are not French, you may still make a complaint with us because SANS-DETOUR is a French company.
For the moment, we gather and structure all complaints.
If you would like to join us, please contact us at email :
sdcomplaint@outlook.com
More details on the KS comments pages regarding data protection etc, I am not involved in setting this up so cannot give any more detail but would urge anyone with a pledge on this KS to register.
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I guess it should read "breach of confidence". ;)
Well, there sure wasn't much confidence in this project to begin with, at least not within Clan McDane & friends. Glad I/we've dodged that one...
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.....and it is over.
As of yesterday Sans Detour are in liquidation, taking over €400k of backers money with them:
https://www.societe.com/societe/sans-detour-504290206.html
Was inevitable really.
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They really managed to drag that out for far longer than expected.
what a shame, for everyone who had dealings with this.
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Loads of money blown in the wind and at least one supplier company down, that‘s quite an achievement...
These minis deserve better, hopefully someone else takes them over for a relaunch.
I really like the models- still
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Info from at least 10 days ago: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sansdetour/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments?comment=Q29tbWVudC0zMDQ2NzYyNw%3D%3D (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sansdetour/confrontation-classic-the-legendary-skirmish-game/comments?comment=Q29tbWVudC0zMDQ2NzYyNw%3D%3D)
Une info qui interessera du monde: j'ai pris contact avec la société de liquidation et j'ai reçu des infos.
Monsieur
La mission du liquidateur est de faire l’état du passif et l’état de l’actif.
L’actif lorsqu’il est défini doit être réalisé afin de désintéresser les créanciers.
Dans ce dossier, à ce stade, je ne dispose d’aucuns actifs, il semble que le « ménage » ait été fait avant la désignation d’ALLIANCE.
Sachez que des enquêtes sont en cours et que je ne peux vous en dire plus
Cependant à ce stade de la procédure aucun créancier quel qu’il soit ne pourra être régler
Cordialement
Bon bah on a confirmation qu'il y a eu magouille...
Remember when the collaborators were claiming that the creators weren't going to run off with the funds? ::)
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Forewarned pre-liquidation asset stripping of your own business and transfer to another entity you own should be a criminal act. Were they stocks/shares being sold it would be viewed as insider trading, but physical assets are not counted like that so there will be no legal penalty.
Having used the same scam with Ludik Bazar and now Sans Detour these individuals are finished in the hobby, they cannot escape the fallout from this. "Once on the web always on the web".
Sadly this probably means that, unless they sell the Confrontation IP to a legitimate independent business, the game is done. The Confrontation fanbase is very small and pretty much everyone with an interest in the game was involved in, or following, this Kickstarter. Nobody will put up any more money for it regardless who fronts up a relaunch campaign so long as the core IP is still owned by Borowski and his cohorts.
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Sadly, as with others in the past they will simply go outside of the business area they have a bad reputation in, and get financial backing, and repeat a few more times yet over the coming years similar activities, with other peoples money.
Shame on them, but I don't think those core people care much about that, and have no doubt they will re-appear again with something.
We can hope that someone manages to take the IP away from them. But it would not be the first such IP to "die"
But most hopefully in future projects, whatever they be, and their involvement, enough people tell others about them, that they are noticed every time and their financial impact on any new victims is reduced as much as possible.
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:o OOooh I didn't know all this (I'm not a Confrontation player, but some of my friends were, a long time ago).
I understand now why 2-3 years ago some players in my area were talking about gaming Confrontation again, planning future games, agreeing about opening new subforums for this in our already existing wargaming forums, etc. ...and why I don't hear from them any more on the subject since (although I've asked). :'(
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Thought people might find this interesting
https://www.beastsofwar.com/confrontation/community-notice-french-police-investigating-sans-detour-seeking-information/
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Well that's an interesting development, i had not swung by the relevant websites, to check, had wrongly assumed the trainwreck pretty much over, and they mostly got away with it.
a civil and a criminal case possibly against them
Will be checking more often again. although not impacted, I feel for those who were, and it would be nice at least if certain persons, ended up in court for their actions, at the least. Some guilty of something verdicts would be even better.
Sadly, as they have already dealt with/moved any assets of value, I don't see moneys ever getting recovered or back to any investors of any kind.
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Looked at the KS' comments today, just to see any mention of results and found this 7 month old comment from van kerckhoven:
-Piotr Borowski (boss of sans-detour) sent 16500€ to stellar licencing & consulting limited (another one of his business).
-13948€ went to mister Tarapacki
-29948€ were used by sans-detour without any kind of justification.
-560€ were used by Piotr personally (no justifications)
-Piotr paid cable tv with the money of the campagne (canal satellites, 39.9€/month!)
-35750€ disapaired god only know where.
-331248€ of products disapaired.
-all the stock just vanished (only 2 computers and a tablet remain)
and he knew he wouldn't be able to deliver the product in january 2020.
AFAIK, no one's getting their money back, and the consequences for Piotr Borowski is he can't legally own a business for 10 years and something about personal bankruptcy ???. Anyone want to add to this?