Firelock Games have announced that they are launching a new service called Firestarters, letting them seek crowdfunding for smaller items that might not be worth a full Kickstarter on their own, but which people still want to see on the table.

The first of these Firestarters is looking to help create European pikemen, brought over by colonies in the early part of the century to defend against the cavalry of other European forces.

What is a Firestarter?

On their website, Firelock put out an announcement letting everyone know exactly what to expect from a Firestarter:

It is our way of crowdfunding small-run products that fans of Firelock games would like to have, but would be difficult for us to create because of the initial cost. We still have many regular releases planned for our games that will be dropped throughout the year. We have seen great success with our larger campaign releases and we hope Firestarters will become a way for us to quickly expand a game’s world. It’s a way for fans to show support for the products they want to add to their collection.

When a Firestarter campaign has been launched, we will accept pre-orders for the item being crowdfunded. If enough pre-orders are placed within the time period of the campaign, we will manufacture the item. The goal of each campaign will always be the cost of creating the new product in question.

Personally, I think small, dedicated crowdfunding services like this are very useful to help companies expand their product line, without having to necessarily run large Kickstarter campaigns every time they wish to bring in something new.

I hope that we will get to see Firelock's European Pikemen, though, not knowing much of the history, I'll be curious to see how they fit in with a game that has such a mix of naval skirmishes, as well as on-land combat.

What units would you like to see Firelock come out with?