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Weekender: KoW Kickstarter & Batman Miniatures Game!
November 15, 2014 by dignity
Welcome to another episode of The Weekender where we're sitting in the wake of a pretty fantastic Kings of War 2nd Edition Rulebook Kickstarter that's kicked off and already blasted through it's stretch goals!
We're also gearing up for some more awesome stuff from Knight Models concerning Batman The Miniatures Game. They make some amazing miniatures and of course we love making terrain so a full on Gotham board has to be made right?
We'll be checking out some more stunning buildings from 4Ground called Urban Zone, talking about brilliant Kromlech Orcs and the Ghost Hunter Card Game from our friend Kedric Winks who made our awesome game LocaliZED!
Keep in mind that our 55k Likes Challenge Winner WILL be announced in this episode and we have an awesome Knight Models League of Shadows competition for Backstagers on Sunday morning!
Have a great weekend!
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Hey Warren good to see you! Keep at the family stuff, that is the most important thing. You are lucky to have a good crew around you and to work with your brother, and to have the ability to know you can take care of the big things in life and the wheels won’t fall off while you’re gone. All the best.
Thanks Mate
The lads have been great. And little Max is continuing to improve 🙂
It’s good to hear max is getting stronger hang in their Warren & Andrea.
Meanwhile in the painting dungeon: it paints the minis or it gets the hose.
Careful now 😉
The hose ? If only… 😉
Up with this sort of thing!
How can the Tank God have been present and no tanks? That is so wrong. You can never have enough tanks.
Loved the way you handled all that rubbish about click farming allegations, it was measured and mature. You’ve made me very proud to support back stage, it’s so rare to see peeps avoiding flame wars and being dragged into slagging matches, thank you. Good luck with Max mate let us know how he’s getting on.
I’m sure that BoK are revelling in the increase in exposure caused by having a pop at a popular site. Unfortunately I can see this already feeding into other forums where people are prepared to believe whatever s#!t they read on the internet.
Let’s see how long my comment on their page lasts…
Yup – been cleaned out already.
I wouldn’t worry what other rubbish out there. I can’t understand why there is so much dribble and finger pointing by these guys. BoW aren’t the only ones to be on the receiving end of their crap. I don’t understand why they need to but if people want to play in that world BoW would be better off without them.
Don’t let the buggers get you down are they (undercover GW trolls?) Perhaps out to Nobel the competition?
Black Canary appeared in Gotham city in the DC title “Birds of Prey”.
The part works series that just brought up a couple of Weekenders a go also do both versions of the Tumbler.
I purchased it and another batmobile. I took one from out of its case – you need a small headed Phillips screwdriver for this – and found that the wheels don’t turn. Apart from that it looks good.
They also do the batmobile (more like tank) from Frank Miller’s “Dark Knight Returns”, which would look good with the mini featured in your coverage. The issue is more expensive but the model is pretty big – as I say a tank.
I’ve a few of the Eaglemoss vehicles. As I only want them as terrain pieces I prefer that the wheels don’t turn. I’m clumsy at the best of times so if the wheels did turn I’d be knocking them all over the board lol.
Revoltech toys are Japanese for those wanting to hunt them up. Easily found on eBay and quite a few import stores in the states (I usually order my stuff from shops in Japan so I don’t have to pay the double markup). Not sure where to direct you to look on the other side of the ocean for local buys, but I’d still lean towards saying using those Japan shops with english sites.
Unfortunately when companies or people become successful you always get your haters, looks like thats what these guy’s are, it won’t matter what you say.
You might also want to try and view Watchdog program from several months ago where they showed that advertising through FB is pretty much the same as going through these false ones.
Great show guys,
The Skin tones painting guide look’s great. Would also love to see some Kromlech painting guides as they have a very cool theme for there miniatures. Kind of hoping that 4Ground scale up there new buildings as they would look amazing in larger scales.
Would it be possible to see how john paints a tank using the airbrush?
If your looking to get a bit more background on some of the other characters in the batman game you should check out the Arrow tv show. It borrows quite a lot of the batman supporting cast, and also happens to be one of the best things on tv at the moment. Pretty sure the first season is on Amazon Prime just now.
Also good to hear that baby Max is doing well, and don’t you worry about us, Lloyd is doing a bang up job. I’m loving his haphazard hosting style!
As long as your own community supports you, don’t worry about some other group of keyboard warriors.
Oh dear.. regardless of what did or did not happen, the refusal to be swayed by evidence and the manipulation of publicly visible opinion to the contrary speaks to the lack of character on the part of the author. Even if you were indifferent to Beasts of War, the actions taken only serve to undermine the credibility and thus the value of Blood of Kittens.
With @warzan attempting to de-escalate the issue with the phrase “To be fair” and by acknowledging how a person could see the raw data and draw the wrong conclusions, he is offering the author the opportunity to save face and retract the claim without preventing the opportunity to perform further analysis of the evidence which could still support or disprove the accusation. Instead we see that it is preferable to maintain the contrary view, seemingly to further some agenda against Beasts of War.
So now, should I ever read something on BoK, I have reason to doubt their integrity and thus, anything they say.
Very sad indeed.
To be fair, while I think the Veritasium experience sounds like the most likely event (see video below, been posted before), it’s still entirely possible that BoW tried to buy a few clicks and got caught. Simple as that. Not what I would want to believe, but still possible.
What I find odd is Warren’s comment about Facebook being “not a platform they advertise on”, while estimates (!) from sites like Alexa.com, Compete.com, etc.. will show you, that BoW easily gets 15 to 20% of their traffic from Facebook. Ironically, Facebook is a more important source of traffic for BoW than YouTube.
To casually dismiss it as irrelevant to the “main site’s traffic”, and thus in turn its appeal to advertisers (be it straight-up paid ads or simply the appeal for companies like Hawk Wargames, Micro Arts, etc.. to send out people to make videos with BoW), seems potentially misleading on Warren’s behalf.
Veritasium video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag&list=UUHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA
Sorry what I meant was we don’t sell our Facebook presence to advertisers.
There is no services or ad delivery connected to it.
Sorry that wasn’t more clear!
But yes you are correct we have manage to build a big chunk of traffic from it.
Fair enough, thanks.
I presume there is a difference between traffic generated by people who already like BoW and thus it appears in their news feed.. and people who are clicking an ad that is placed in their feed by Facebooks wonky advertising system and certainly if most of that traffic is generated by the former then I would say that Warrens statement is – or has been – true.
Quite the opposite.
If “miniatures company A” sends a guy out to Ireland to make a tactics video with Warren for their game or pays for a trailer in front of a BoW-video, they want to reach the audience BoW has build up.
If they want people coming through facebook ads, they can pay for those directly on facebook. The ad-appeal or a site like BoW is their existing audience, who are (a) wargamers and (b) likely to be swayed to spend money on things endorsed by the BoW-team, whom they trust.
Perhaps I am not using the right terminology because I don’t..think…that I am disagreeing with you. I’m just wondering what percentage of that traffic from Facebook to the BoW site (assuming that is the traffic we are talking about) is from users who already like BoW and have thus opted in to recieving posts from BoW (like some kind of over engineered RSS feed) and how much of the traffic is from people following a link that was from an unsolicited but (theoretically) targetted advert. While I have no doubt that the number of facebook subscribers (is that the right term? Likers?) is in itself a useful piece of data to factor in to the potential exposure of a Beasts of War article and thus, the value of any advertising that is cut into the corresponding video.. if the former accounts for the majority of the traffic to the site while the amount of non-likers is perhaps 5% then I would agree with what I think Warren was saying.
But maybe it doesn’t even matter and I’m arguing semantics here. Heck, I can’t even see what I have typed anymore as I cant scroll up lol. Maybe its time to end it here 😀
The ads were talking about only generate likes (they purely promote the Facebook page), if the likes are genuine, then repeat engagement generates traffic.
Non genuine likes don’t turn into traffic, as upon looking deeper into this, those likes are purely covering the tracks of the click farms.
So at best the benefit is nil, at worst we have to work harder to reach .
There doesn’t seem to be any effective way of removing them either, the link I have so far (from BoK funny enough) seems to suggest we have to delete them one by one.
Oops didn’t see this reply. Wait, what were we talking about again?
I need a cup of tea and a lie down!
I thought that was pretty hilarious, BoK thinking you’d have time to comb through 6000+ likes and deleting the ones which were from clickfarms… Because you guys totally don’t have anything better to do 😀
I don’t understand the BoK post. The guy says he doesn’t want to do a voice chat to “avoid spin”. I would’ve thought a face to face converstation would be the one situation where words can’t be misinterpreted! The fact that BoK doesn’t seem to want to consider that it’s not BoW’s fault just feels wrong to me. So good on you guys for not being baited into a flame war and explaining it in a friendly manner 🙂
Sadly this is a trend in BoK’s style … anyone who is a 40K Freeboota likely knows well the history involving the members of that site. Romeo and the BoK’s group have had a few public run-ins and ultimately ended up in the Superior Court of California battling each other, and during the time Spencer was leaving the show, TT did all he could to fan the flames by posting ‘rumors and facts’ about everything from Spencer doctoring an email threat, his IRS status, theft of funds from the show, etc etc.
BoK is everything shameful, degrading and despicable about “Journalism” in this hobby.
I don’t care what BoK or any other people talk about BoW, let them believe what they want. All I know is that I’ve been enjoying your show for months now and regret none of my spending for being a Backstager.
That being said, those Batman minis are really-really cool. Its that kind of game where you’re a bit afraid of going into because you’re not sure you can paint them properly. Infinity used to be that game for me, but since Op:Ice announced, I kinda forced myself into it.
Lloyd – you can ‘Pluck’ yourself if you like?
…and Romain’s best quote so far…
“Of course it’s time consuming, it’s a hobby!”
Could only have improved if he’d used the term pastime.
I just had a look at this BoK site just to see what was said.
After waiting ages for it to load and mentally correcting to poor grammar, I get the sense that someone is green with envy (just a personal assessment).
And I am not a bot or a clickfarm.
Beasts of War are the best!
I’d never heard of BoK before, so it’s useful to find out that it’s not worth bothering about anyway.
Thanks for coming on and talking to us Warren – probably the last thing you needed to do at the moment. Hope all continues to go well.
Hey guys,
on the topic of the Facebook problems: Sadly, that’s a well known problem and there is not much you can do about it, other than not advertising in India (and some other countries). There is a very good video by Veritasium about this very topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVfHeWTKjag&list=UUHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA
Greetings and keep up the good work!
I’ve watched this a couple of times now this week, the bit that gets me is the targeting, we are ultra specific on the ‘interest groups’ (this is our prime directive as it’s not the like that’s important but the subsequent engagement)
But it’s as if Facebook completely ignored the interest group settings and just let it loose.
I’m not sure if you already found that, but there is a bit of an explanation why interest targeting doesn’t work so well anymore (http://www.jonloomer.com/2014/02/17/facebook-ads-interest-targeting/). I think the only real solution, is to just not advertise in those countries at all. Sooner or later Facebook will have to do something about this, otherwise their whole marketing plan will collaps.
Facebook are well known for changing security settings on private accounts to public in the past they may have changed you settings from what was set to public open for example.
I made a lit batman table for PAX AUS 13, check it out here http://s255.photobucket.com/user/fattdex/library/PAX13?sort=3&page=0
Now that, is a Batman table!
Congrats! Warren
i ll vote for the spitfire model to be painted.
If you can’t get you hands on tumblers and bat wings , try
http://www.miniaturescenery.com/CategoryPage.asp?CODE=CAT_VH
Very cool
I would pay no heed to the venom of people such as Blood of Kittens as it seems he has nothing better to do than dig for dirt on other people. It’s a shame as it seems he wishes to tear down others rather than build them up. It has been more than once that this guy has aimed at the throat for minor things in the big picture. The only time I hear about this guy is when he make allegations against someone or group. It sets a bad standard for interacting with the hobby community.
I don’t know if it’s because I am old, or how I was brought up, but I very much believe in those old cliches of “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” and “give peace a chance!”
This is one of the reasons I love BoW.. because you rarely hear ‘This model is a bit s*it really’. If there is a problem with the price or the sculpt or the rules, the information is there for you to come to that conclusion yourself while the team concentrate on the positives. It is endearing and as you say, @manpug it helps to build up a community by building everybody up instead of defining an identity by tearing everyone else down. A lot of these other sites just don’t seem to get it by fostering a hard core community for a (generally) narrower spectrum of games and angrily attacking other communities that have a different focus and are more successful because of it.
A good episode with a Dark Knight
Max. Hmmm, good private eye name.
“Max Johnston – Private Eye!”
lol that’s the kinda thing I was going for 🙂
So, the 10mm 4Ground buildings are great looking, but a touch spendy for us in the US. They are also a great scale for Robotech too!!!
if you’re wondering why someone would downvote that comment, the answer is ‘by accident’.
Congratulations on the birth of your son, and I hope for him getting well enough to come home speedily!
I did see the BoK article about Facebook. Like everything on the internet I take it with a grain of salt. But good on you for addressing it right away and giving your side in a reasoned and non-confrontational manner.
Word up !
I am impressed by Warrens dignified reaction to this. It is so much more than this unfair accusations deserve.
But BoK is known for doing this kind of stuff and has already been proofen to be dishonest and just a shrill provocateur.
Hope the little one is ok Warren, its a shame this business with Bok dragged you away from them when it is clear you need to be with your family.
To be honest I wouldnt have known about the accusations against you if it was not in the weekender.
Those knight miniatures look great and to be honest I’m suckered for all things batman.
Keep up the good work guys and don’t let them get you down. In my opinion this is easily the best wargaming painting and modelling website out there and im proud to be a backstage.
Another vote from me for Arrow. – It’s a great show. There’s a spin off now based around ‘The Flash.’ Arrow is very much in the vein of the ‘Dark Knight Trilogy’ (The recent Batman films). The Flash is a little lighter in tone overall.
However, on terrestrial TV, you can’t forget to mention Gotham on Channel 5. – It’s a Batman prequel series, based shortly after the death of Bruce’s parents.
The different styles from the scenery would be something like:
Burton’s style: This is the like, super Gothic style. Basically take some 40k terrain and unexplode it and you’d probably be kind of close to it. So, something like this.
Then there’s the Batman Forever type, which was like an exaggerated Burton’s style, but then, naturally, you add multicoloured lights to everything. Because it’s not like the city was supposed to be dark or anything.
Then Batman and Robin (The film so bad, that George Clooney will give you the money back for it if you ever meet him), style, which was like taking the already exaggerated Batman Forever style, then NEON everything up. Also, according to this article, they added faces to everything. http://findingthewrongwords.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/for-images-batman-1989-97-part-one.html
If I remember right, aside from look of the Arkham area in Batman Begins, the rest of the Dark Knight trilogy is basically just Chicago.
The Gotham TV series has a good look for Gotham as well in some of the larger scenery shots.
The Knight models range was originally based on the ‘Arkham’ game series. So that will do great source of inspiration for scenery too.
Warren my thoughts are with you, I do know what you are going through I’ve spent my time in SCBU. Best wishes to all.
Thank you @gremlin
It’ll take me (and us as a family) some time to put the emotions of all of this behind us.
But every day we see new parents and babies coming through the unit and it reminds us we are not the only ones going through the mill.
Appreciate you taking the time to post mate
I’m sitting here looking at my 15.5 year old daughter who went through something similar. Even now when I recall what we went through my heart skips a beat; the emotions will always be there but I know that in someway the experience made us all a bit more resilient plus we learnt not to take the “simple things” not just “in life”, but life itself for granted.
‘Delighted’ to hear Max is headed in the right direction (see comment on XLBS as to why ‘delighted’ is in quotes 😉 )
Lol I will definitely try to be more careful with my on screen ‘pleasurings’ in future 🙂
And I know what you mean about taking things for granted, myself and Andrea have spent many a conversation these days discussing that very sentiment.
All the best for you and your family Warren!
Warren, your giving too much attention to these clickbaters! I live on the internet and I never heard anything about this before you mentioned it. I think their reach is pretty small so ignore them. The internet is full of losers and haters and the only way to deal with them is not to give them any attention. They are children who crave attention that their mommies never gave them.
Warren, I will be highly disappointed if Max’s middle name isn’t Hitpoints. Don’t lose this golden opportunity!
Hehe nice one! You could make it more subtle, though.. how about Max H. P. Johnston? Of course, ‘Power’ is a close second. Homer would be proud!
Just asked Andrea he he
Got a sly grin 😉
(Don’t know if that’s a sign of a ‘yes’ or an impending kick in the balls)
😉
or “Max Eleven Johnstone”…
I guess with success comes jealousy.
Don’t let it go in your heads and let it pull you down. You already are in theirs and so have won.
All in all BoW offers the highest quality content around in our hobby sphere. Its diverse, well produced and developed, its a lot and I just love you guys and your big irish hearts. I am proud to be backstager : D
Thank you !
I think john & roman should through a coin to see who get each model to paint (great show) again.
Good to see some Kromlech stuff up there,
get painting that Mega-Juggernaut Boss
As to the Facebook stuff I sadly suspect just by selecting English speakers as a target group you’re probably hitting a keyword for the click-farmers
make John paint all the things…. but make him paint the Juggernaut first
please….
Nice response to the trolls. some people can’t stand to see people succeed.
It is a time like this and the way Warren handles these “issues” that makes me proud to be part of this wonderful team. That was top notch class and non-confrontational.
On the lighter side the Batman minis look rocking solid! It was nice to see the whole team (minus Sam) together on one show. That is why I stay up to the wee hours of the morning to watch the Weekender.
Can not watch the vid. Second one that I’ve not been able to see. Can someone give me a tip?
@williamwidrick – what type of computer are you using and what kind of browser? Have you tried to watch it directly via Youtube?
BoW Gianna
No, have not tried u-tube. The vexing thing about it is I can play vids here on BOW but not the two latest. Have just had this problem today. Using IE11 and my notebook, not a beast but absolutely capable, same set-up as always. Been here for over a year now and apart from the big change over have not had any problems at all.
Would you be able to install google chrome and try that?
Hi Warren and thanks bud, I know you have more on your plate than to worry about some hoser not being able to play this vid. Am praying for Max, Andrea and you, as well as your other little ones. This type of thing is hard on the entire fam. Yes I could install chrome, though I will try firefox 1st. Watched the vid on u-toob fine. Came here this morn to see if I could play the xlbs vid, did so without a hitch but still no access to the weekender. WTH? Will keep messing to see what works. All our best to you and yours Warren.
BTW, thank you Gianna
Been relatively absent from BoW recently so didn’t know your partner was expecting Warren.
Congratulations. My wife had a baby boy just a month ago so I am well aware of the multiple trips to the hospital. Best of look to you both and the wee one.
*luck
The dance was called the Batusi (Bat-speak for the Watusi, a popular dance at the time).
I wonder how batman would work as a miniature game?
Yay @elromanozo is going fo do a tutorial on tattoos. I can’t think what he may use for inspiration.
I’m not that excited by the Kings of War Kickstarter so far, compared to their Dungeon Saga KS. A lot of what we’ve seen is rehashes of what we’ve already seen from Dungeon Saga.
Well handled on the BoK issue, if they won’t talk reasonably then forget about them. Life is to short for BS.
That Kromlech stuff looks great in the hand, I’ve got a bunch of other ork stuff waiting for attention, and I’d certainly pick up some of their stuff to add to it.
I got all excited when I saw Roman’s skin tone mini’s! I’m really looking forward to the tutorials.
Great show guys.
Would love to see John paint up the mega-armoured boss. I’m not much of a fan of the spitfire flier.
The facebook/BoK issue is a reminder of one of the key things I like about Beasts of War: the positivity and inclusivity.
Both the content you produce, and for the most part, the forums… it’s all very civilised. You don’t go out of your way to start fights, if you don’t like something you’ll be polite… But you’re always promoting the hobby, promoting the wider industry, supporting fans and generally being encouraging.
Long may it continue!
I don’t have Facebook, I play board games and tabletop games with real people.
@elromanozo, why can’t we have you on every week? The intellectual boost you provide should not be underestimated when considering the needs of the audience!
(sorry guys… 😉 )
Thanks ! I’d love to be on every week and have intelligent conversations (or, rather, as intelligent as possible…) but I live in France and I am only around in the BoW studios for about a week at a time two or three times a year. Beasts of War is filmed from Northern Ireland. You are forgiven for not knowing, even though it is regularly mentioned…
I knew, I just took no notice of the fact! I mean, aren’t we all constantly being told about free trade throughout the European union?
Just imagine the benefits – there are probably at least one or two reasons it would be a good idea 😉
You should look in to video conferencing to see if that could be possible for future weekenders? @elromanzo
@elromanozo
Yeah the FB advertising, and BoK issue, is exactly why we at Darker Days Radio does not use FB ads to increase awareness. We just rely on posting to forums and word of mouth. Again this is why engagement on G+ is quite more interesting than on FB, because you just can’t pay for advertising on G+.
Oh yeah, enjoy. https://www.flickr.com/photos/21265815@N07/sets/72157645440438427/
This is my mate’s set of minis I painted for him.
Warren, best of luck to Max! Going on the fact he comes from such damn fine fighting stock, I don’t think you have anything to worry about, Mate. He’ll bounce back with a vengeance and 10 years from now he’ll be trunching you and his Uncles Lloydy, Justin and John completely on every single game yous play!
And re: BoK; myself and several others have already sent private messages questioning the agenda, the honesty, the courage and the credibility of those individuals. BoW have an immense following of intelligent and well balanced people – we will judge this based on ALL of the facts, not just on one side of the story.
The fact that BoW have met this head on and discussed it openly speaks volumes. The fact that BoK have refused to speak to you directly, have hidden behind the internet and are now censoring peoples’ comments to suite their own agenda, also speaks volumes. BoW’s credibility holds firm; BoK’s credibility, on the other hand, has gone forever!
cool show
try to coverage the batman miniature game it look like a cool game … there will be a batman week?
fingher crossed for Max and Warren family ^__^
FB sucks. That is all.
Must agree, though I am an old fart and most likely just don’t “get it” I regularly ignore any notice from FB and all my “friends” know that. I used it mostly when my Mom was dying as a way to keep everybody up to date on her condition. I must admit it was a great tool for that.
Another vote for a batman games centered series of shows! Particularly terrain.
Great show guys. Yeah I put a comment on BoK and guess what deleted.