Ninja Division Hope Masterclass Range Change Fortunes
April 23, 2019 by brennon
Ninja Division this week announced that they would be working on a new range of Masterclass Miniatures in hopes that it will recoup some of the money they need to fund their outlying projects.
The range of special miniatures will be created based on their current intellectual properties, each with that stylish chibi look. The first set, pictured above will include Super Dungeon x Relic Knights models with Limited Edition Leopold Magnus and Bang-Bang next week.
Here's what they had to say in a current blog post...
"Already, a number of you have provided valuable insight and service towards accomplishing our reorganization goals, and we thank you tremendously! But, we also need to continue to raise the extra capital necessary to get things moving again, outside our ongoing work to secure investors. We also want to provide you with new and awesome products."
Whilst this seems like a good idea, and they are pledging to bring more and more options to the table later on down the line, it still feels like it's too late for Ninja Division. I'd really like them to get all of their products finally delivered to Kickstarter backers but it still seems like a far off dream right now.
They do look cool, but alas I think Ninja Division might still have fallen so far out of favour with consumers that they won't even help save them.
What do you reckon folks?
"The first set will include Super Dungeon x Relic Knights models..."
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Those are nice.
I like the chibi witchhunter she looks so joyful for a warhammerish mini, Hope ninja division gets their act together as their sculpting studio does good work and their games seem to be fun from all the accounts I have heard.
You’d have better Warhammer chibi action from the Siblings of Conflict project. There was a Kickstarter that I saw a while back but you might still be able to order as a late pledge.
https://app.crowdox.com/projects/674003445/chibi-siblings-of-conflict-miniatures
At $25 (+ shipping), as nice as the sculpts seem to be, this certainly seems to be pretty poor value for money.
This is a company built on the success of Super Dungeon Explore, and they managed to kill the golden-goose by spending all their Kickstarter money on years of development while not having their primary product at retail.
I don’t see them digging themselves out of the hole they’re in with these piddly little side-projects. Amazingly there are still plenty of optimists on the SDE:Legends Kickstarter, but they didn’t even get started on the actual physical production, and with 6,611 backers on that KS alone, that’s a whole mountain of goodwill to try to get back. Not happening.
If you *are* tempted by these (and that amount of cute can be hard to resist), I suspect at least waiting until something beyond a 3d-render is available before putting any money in would be advisable.
I feel like they’ve been open about their plan. They’re trying to use Masterclass minis sales to pay off some of their smaller debts (starting with debts to some of their resin casters).
They’re simultaneously wooing investors to try and bail them out in a bigger way (probably still one project at a time). That sounds like a crazy plan, but I know that this has worked for other failed Kickstarters (I know this from behind the scenes stuff, I don’t think any of them have been as open about this as Ninja Division- ironically).
As for the risk in purchasing from them- none of the Masterclass minis have failed to ship up to now, so I suspect that will continue to be the case.
(by the way, I don’t want to sound like their plan 100% will work. I don’t have that kind of confidence in them. It does have a chance, though).
They are now more open then before, but some things they did with the kickstarters was hard to swallow.
The kickstarters were started by sodapopminiatures, nowhere in the campaigns it is mentioned that actually ninja division is running them. ND does not have the intellectual properties, so some of the kickstarter money were payed as royalities to SPM.
ND still does not have the ip, so with the Masterclass range I bet part of the income will again be shifted this way from one of their companies to the other, they also still need to pay the overhead like management payroll, facility leasing, office supplies. They paid this with the kickstarters, for SDE it was together 55% of the costs, now the masterclass range must take over.
If the diagram is correct, which they once showed on kickstarter they would need more then 1 million dollar, that is around the revenue from the SDE kickstarter a second time, to fill the holes in their budget.
So with the overhead and the production cost for the master class miniatures included we should be closer to 2 million dollars needed. And believing the profit would be 50% is really optimistic.
A quick search says 2 million is about the estimated annual turnover of corvus belli (Infinity and Aristeia), just to get a really rough dimension and comparison of what hole they need to dig themself out.
If we calculate with a profit of 20% we are at the annual turnover of privateer press.
We have been informed that almost everyone who formerly worked for Ninja Division and Sodapop Miniatures has been let go, and the current principles are no longer receiving salaries. That, and the detail with which they describe their finances leads me to believe that they are not paying themselves for the Masterclass minis.
We were told some time ago that they still employ a guy who manages the warehouse, and he’s the only one at Ninja Division or Sodapop who gets paid. Since then, we’ve been told that the ND team is down to two people (Deke Stella and John Stark Canice)- although we don’t have concrete confirmation of this.
From what we’ve seen, they need 750,000 to completely fulfill the Legends Kickstarter, but they also have obligations regarding Starfinder, Relic Knights 2 and a few minis for Way of the Fighter. This is definitely too much money to make off of the resin releases (even with most of these products relatively close to a proper release).
But SPM/ND’s plan is not to raise the large amounts of money through Masterclass sales. I feel that they’re very open about this- the goal is to get enough investors to get some of their other games moving (for example, they want to release the “Super Dungeon Arcade” set first, because they feel it has the highest earning potential of their KS products. That release could really get the ball rolling on the others- and I feel that it would bring back a lot of their burned audience).
(and I know that bringing in investors has gotten some KS games out of the hole before- though I doubt it was as big a hole as we see here).
Will they succeed? It is hard to tell, but as one of those burned backers, I’m glad they aren’t giving up.
Really….I would have thought their past would have gotten them excluded from kickstarter. If they succeed….I really doubt anyone will see anything. Lets get real folks..you might as well burn your cash…at least it provided you with the feeling that you have money to burn.
I don’t see any sign this is a new kickstarter.
I wish them the best in turning things around. A lot of folks would have just walked away, maybe even started fresh under a new name. At least ND are sticking to it and TRYING to rebuild and fulfill their obligations.
I’ve been following this very closely, and while a lot of information is out in the open, here’s a bit that might have been lost under the pile.
A spokesman for Paizo implied strongly that there was a person at Ninja Division who was responsible for misleading them in the Starfinder fiasco- and that this dishonest person is no longer with Ninja Division (Paizo did specifically absolve Deke Stella and John Stark Canice).
Paizo thinks that those two guys might still pull this out, but they might not. Ultimately, they decided not to pull the plug on the Starfinder project.
They bowed out of ever using Kickstarter again- but that’s probably because they wouldn’t be able to run a successful Kickstarter anyway.
These minis are limited edition resin kits- like the ones Kingdom Death makes. The relationship these have to the Kickstarter is that they’re planning on using these sales to pay some of their debts and eventually hope to start delivering on their Kickstarter promises.
The first thing they’re doing is paying off their US based resin casters. The lowest hanging Kickstarter promise is the resin chibis from Way of the Fighter (these sales could reasonably contribute to that debt).
Probably, if they can pay off some of their smaller debts, and start delivering on some of their smaller Kickstarter promises, they’ll look more attractive to investors (who are needed to pay down on the bigger promises).
I didnt really follow what happened to their previous KS. From what I read here, it hasnt gone well.
Shame, I was looking for some Anime style boardgame/skirmish to play with my son and also to collect as I love this type of art.
I wish them luck nevertheless 😉
Check out Middara. Very anime inspired dungeon crawler.
thanks for the tip! I ll check now
Also, if you want to play Super Dungeon, you can pick up the Forgotten King box set and any expansions that are currently available. That’s the older edition of the game, but it is mostly compatible.
You can upgrade to the new rules set with some of the PDFs that Ninja Division have available (the FK cards are compatible, but you’ll need to print out a few cards in order to play with the new rules).
My interests were perked again with Myth after hearing they sold the company to someone else. I have lost trust and belief in the COMPANY, so I would prefer they go belly up and sale their IP to someone the community can get behind and trust. Then, like Myth, I might have hope that something will happen. I have backed both S.D.E. and Relic Knights at the upper level pledges and don’t think I will get anything from them anytime soon. (I have backed over 180 games and while nothing can be worse than Golden Egg Games, they are at the bottom of the list.)
Regardless of what HAS happened it’s great to see that they are attempting to put things back together. They do and can create some great games and it’d be a shame to see them lost to the ether. I picked up Doomslayer last year and it’s one of my favourites.