Paranoid Unlocks The Wildborn For Last Few Days Of Mythos KS
May 10, 2016 by deltagamegirl22
Alright, gamers. We are approaching the finish line for Mythos Kickstarter from Paranoid Miniatures as they enter their last few days. They have been teasing us all along with the imagery for additional factions, like the Wildborn and more recently the Travellers.
Much like kids waiting for Christmas, these guys couldn't hide their excitement or hold out on us any longer and they've unlocked the Wildborn ahead of schedule- so naturally I couldn't pass up one last opportunity to show off the genius/madness art from Shane Cook!
So in these last few days on Kickstarter, backers will now be able to pledge for the Wildborn box set or the models individually. If you've been wondering what it would be like to play the role of a witch, a snake, a centaur, or a wickedly nasty goat, then there's no time like the present! The Wildborn faction includes: the sisters Dorothy & Mercy Good, the familiar Blood, the centaur Loren and the monstrous Goat.
As for the Travellers, we'll still have to wait to see this colorful band of trouble brought to life, but I think it's wonderful to see the host of ideas coming from Paranoid. It's not hard to see that they are constantly inspired by their storyline and they're anxious to continue to breathe new life into their game by way of unique and interesting characters.
As a last minute treat, the guys have offered us an exclusive peek at the final two characters for the Travellers faction - the familiar, Pali, and the monster, Amran. Let's start with the gribbly familiar, Pali.
Pali is the embodiment of a minor mischief or nuisance curse that is summoned by Max. He generally just likes to play around and cause trouble for people, which will likely be represented by debuffs for being close to him. Mischief or not, that may be the creepiest nuisance I've ever seen!
And last, but not least, is the very dark monster, Amran. Amran is a much nastier beast than Pali. He is the embodiment of a death curse summoned by Talia and is the cause of the trail of bodies alluded to in her past. Once he has been called upon, he will stop at nothing until his target has been brutally slain.
In game he will likely have singular purpose much like Maharal. He has a fantastic eerie feel that leaves no doubt that nothing good will come of his presence...well, unless you're Talia.
There are only a few more days to get in on the Mythos Kickstarter to explore the Lovecraftian Madness, but you haven't missed it yet!
Will you be pledging for the Wildborn of Mythos?
"As a last minute treat, the guys have offered us an exclusive peek at the final two characters for the Travellers faction - the familiar, Pali, and the monster, Amran..."
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While I’m very glad the Wildborn are unlocked (that was the faction I really pledged for, although the Priory were a close second) I am quite surprised that the funding hit such a brick wall once it reached the 10k mark. Granted, Paranoid weren’t offering up a ton of freebies by way of the stretch goals but the funding goal was extremely modest and it feels like it should have coasted to at least 20k based on what was presented on the KS and the interest that was generated after the BoW video a few weeks ago.
I think people saw more goals werent being funded and jumped ship or reduced funding. Small companies cant offer a bunch of freebies or it could put them in the red and the project mightn’t even fund.
I wish these guys all the luck in the world. They have beautiful minis and art. That said. The KS page is a big mess. One has to scroll and scroll and go back and forth to understand what they get, what the project is about. I’m willing to do that for a good project, but most people will not. There is much competition in the tabletop market these days, and projects like this now seem to be hitting KS on an hourly basis.
Beyond that a minor thing for me was the price points seem kind of high ya ya … “small company” always somehow justifies higher price points … I understand that … but some small companies seem to manage to keep prices down. I have the funds to back pretty much whatever I want, but my inner starving student cringes when the per fig price gets to a certain point. Again though that is minor here and I don’t feel like they are outright gouging on price, I’m sure they are doing their best.
They funded so damn awesome for them right!!
I think there’s two things at play here. The days where a KS would get the bulk of its pledge amount in the final few days are long gone. People who want in on a campaign without it being dependent on unlocking lots of freebies usually pledge in the first few days, and for some companies (such as CMoN or Mantic) the anticipation of freebies to come is now enough to get people to pledge in the first few days instead of waiting till the end. The end of the campaign can bring on board people who have been on the fence, and get existing pledgers to raise their pledge to get more add-ons or a higher pledge level. In between there’s little incentive for anyone to pledge, so the middle of a campaign tends to sag.
Your money also has a time value, and anything which is not going to get to you now is hurt when you make your opportunity cost decision on what to spend the money on that you have now. This is something we intrinsically take into account when making opportunity cost decisions. A KS campaign has to offer something to offset that, which is usually a deep discount, lots of freebies, or both, and if it can’t then its opportunity cost value is low. There is little incentive to a potential pledger to spend money now on a product they won’t have for a year, when they could just buy it at retail next year. They can spend the money they have now on something they can use now (or on another campaign that is offsetting the time value). Many of the late pledgers who come on board at the end of a campaign do so because the stretch goals that have been unlocked have now offset the poor time value.
Combining these things, (people who definitely want in on a campaign usually pledge in the early part of a campaign, and very little incentive to offset the poor time value intrinsic to a KS campaign which in turn limits late pledgers), means I don’t think we should be surprised that the ceiling on this one is low and that it raised the bulk of the total in the early part of the campaign. None of this is commentary on the game, which I thoroughly enjoyed when I played it at Salute, it’s just economics.
CMON is the king of squishing any possible competitor with launches they have in their pocket. I have to guess they do like a couple KS projects a month anymore. Lots of minis in a box with a mediocre game … for CMON … sells like wildfire and they always seem to launch on top of other similar releases.
@redben Do you mind if I copy and paste that to the comments on the facebook page as feedback for the company? I was actually going to message you about it and get your opinion because I like how you view, process and then explain things from your perspective, quite well at that.
Your right though, kickstarter has ‘evolved’ a little in how it functions and gets results.
Not at all. I do realise that Paranoid have offered what they can afford to offer, so I’m not saying that they made a mistake by not chucking in lots of freebies or offering the product at a deep discount. Only that it lowered the ceiling and gave little incentive to people to pledge beyond the initial wave of people who definitely wanted in.
I will say I am somewhat surprised that the KS did stall.. certainly as redben said, there is some economics to it.. although I thought the prices and such for Mythos were better than some other KS I have seen that failed to get supported.. what actually surprised me was that the guys @ Paranoid did what I thought was an EXCELLENT job of staying on top of game play videos and the campaign… the interview with BoW was amazing… and every update they released had more info and they seemed very responsive to feedback… so I thought it would snowball into more backers compared to some KS which have a big initial response and then the designers kind of disappear for days at a time…
Sadly, I think that the niche for this game just isn’t as big as we thought it would be.. I know I heard “Mythos” and Lovecraft and was very interested, but in hind sight, there have been a lot of Cthulhu based games and expansions lately and Mythos didn’t take the “re-hash Lovecraftian creatures” and instead came up with their own stuff.. which I think is far superior to just trying to re-make existing figures .. but I also feel that this style of small skirmish game might just be competing with too many other existing genres and companies like Wyrd/Malifaux and similar small “alternative reality” games where although I do like the stories, art, models, and different rules.. I’m not sure they were “different enough” to corner their own market in a big way… I know I struggle with “shiny syndrome” and I want to play all the new games and all the old games that get new models and all the 2nd and 3rd editions or MKs that are out there… I end up spreading myself thin, collecting a lot of figures, but not painting or playing as much as I should.. the curse of Kickstarters and social media … I do still plan on maintaining my Pledge with Paranoid and I look forward to demoing this for friends at the LGS… but I also realize it is hard to recruit new backers if they aren’t blown away by the new game, the size or prices of the KS, or if the game just isn’t marking out as much of it’s own new market as some other lucky games are able to do.
I tend to think that if there’s a lot of other similar games that people are buying then that’s a good thing rather than a bad thing. It shows that there’s a market for them and people will buy them, even if they don’t necessarily get round to playing them. Just look at the glut of zombie and steampunk games in recent years. All you have to do is make sure you the game is appealing (which is not necessarily the same as making sure it’s good).
Despite operating in different genres, I think the Guild Ball KS campaign makes for an interesting point of comparison. Both are small UK start ups, offering a low model count skirmish games with metal models, they’re entering a crowded genre (Lovecraft and fantasy sports), and both promoted the campaign before and during at cons and news sites (I think GB used Twitch as well). Guild Ball was very well marketed in that it knew exactly the niche it was going for (promoting itself as a ‘second game’ to people who played the likes of Warmachine and Malifaux), it was simple to understand (teams playing medieval football against each other) with one way of playing, the teams had simple and distinctive brands within a distinct overall brand*, and the pledge levels offered full teams at a deep discount plus freebies. All you had to do was pledge at the two or four team level, pick your brand, and you were golden. Mythos is offering starters rather than full factions, the factions aren’t as simple to understand, there’s fewer factions to choose from, there’s multiple ways of playing, and there’s little to no discount and one freebie. None of those things are a reflection on how good Mythos is as a game in comparison to Guild Ball. Only that the simpler you make things the more you appeal to the masses. Throw in the economic factors I mentioned previously and you have a good argument for why GB made over £90,000 and Mythos is at £10,000. Also, tying things back to the observation that people tend to back KS early in the campaign, GB raised 25% of its total on the first day, almost 50% by day three, and actually lost money on the final day.
*The Spice Girls are a good comparison as they had an overall brand of essentially meaningless ‘girl power’, plus each had their own brand (sporty, posh, and so on).