Reply To: So the recent 9th age Kickstarter campaign failed to fund. Any thoughts on why?

[hephestoParticipant 880xp 0]

Tough call really, there’s so much that could potentially go wrong. The minis definitely aren’t on of them, very nice, metal stuff, which is bound to go over well with the old WHFB crowd.

That said I initially hadn’t even noticed this was a 9th age thing when it came by on various pages / groups, figured it was another ‘army’ Kickstarter. There are definitely some questions that come to mind:

– Who is this Kickstarter actually aimed at? There’s things in there that both could draw newcomers and veterans, but neither group actually get addressed in detail.

 

– What even is 9th Age, the page isn’t particularly insightful for the newcomer to the hobby. Both when it comes to the type of game or the setting there really isn’t much to grab that initial attention other than shiny models and some downloadable rules PDFs.

 

– Is there actually an audience for this? As in for 9th age in particular as I am sure those minis will find a home eventually. Are there enough folks out there though willing to invest some cash into what is essentially ‘just’ a fan project that may or may not be supported in the future.

 

– It could be that GW was right and that the WHFB consumer base was dried up. Personally I rather doubt this given how there’s a slew of quite active Middle / Oldhammer communities out there that still keep pumping out armies made of both ancient and brand new models. At the same time Kings of War, though being quite a different game to WHFB, has drawn in a lot of WHFB veterans. Fan projects outside of the small skirmish games don’t tend to have a long shelf life unfortunately. People move on, find it to much work to keep following along or in the case of WHFB may simply have given up with a nasty taste in the mouth after the world literally got blown up.

 

– Does there even need to be a 9th Age? Something I regularly see in say the Middlehammer community is that folks group together playing specific, older editions, often with a fairly limited errata. People don’t seem to actually need new rules or and at times even new armies. Veterans are drowning in models or already have a ton of other companies where they can pick up stuff. Feels like a very niche group in an already niche hobby.

 

– Lack of advertisement, really haven’t seen much on this outside the usual pages. Saw a bunch of folks in the Middlehammer group being surprised this was a thing, having completely missed it.

 

– Think the season may indeed have an influence, many of the larger (boardgame) miniature Kickstarter do tend to avoid the December / Januari period. Too much stuff going on in general, while the traditional companies (GW in particular) do tend to suck folks back for a few weeks / boxes / blisters.