I don’t watch many of the themed weeks, I prefer the more dripfeed approach taken with things FoW and DB, but when I have dropped in on one the presenters have often seemed underprepared for the video. The format tends to be them leafing through the rulebook/army book and ad hoc discussing what’s on each page. A longer lead in time for more prep would definitely get my vote. I’d much prefer to see videos in which the bulk of what’s going to be talked about has already been worked out and is in a running order. And whilst I’ll still probably not watch any GW themed weeks as I don’t play their games, I’d probably watch most of the Feed the Week vids.

Another excellent set of shows. Warren/Justin/Lloyd is up there with Warren/Justin/Stu as the best set of presenters for the show. To dredge up the old issue of trailers and talking about non-tabletop stuff. We’ve had movie talk the past two weeks and even a trailer last week but it’s worked really well. The issue was never so much about showing trailers, it was about showing trailers in lieu of actual content. I may have said this once or twice before, but The Weekender works best when it’s like hanging out with a bunch of your gaming buddies. As long as the conversation never steers too far from gaming for too long, conversational excursus works well (as long as the presenters make the conversation engaging). Warren’s new game thingy from these last two weeks are a good example. It works not because of the games, but because it feels like you’re in there having a chat about games.

I think we should all be at the point where were over delays in delivering on KS pledges. More often than not a minis KS runs over its estimated time. There are so many variables that can’t be accounted for prior to launching the campaign that a delay should be expected. You could argue that the creators should a few months onto the estimated delivery time cover themselves but the problem with that is, every month you add on, some potential backers will self-select out because they don’t want to wait that long. Especially as they’ll be assuming it’ll be later than that anyway.

CMoN are running a very interesting KS at the moment with WoK. It was them what blew the bloody doors off KS with Zombicide and set the template for what a successful KS campaign should (with respect to Dark Potential). They’re taking a different tack with WoK and not offering loads of stretch goals for new minis which are either free or at a deep discount, most of which are just concept art and are slated for a future wave of releases. They’re also allowing people to hop on for a $1 and then buy whatever they want when the pledge manager comes out. The upshot is the campaign will not finish with a mega amount of money. It may even be the least successful campaign CMoN have ran for a KS that includes minis (which I believe Cadwallon did not). What it does mean is they haven’t committed themselves to loads of new product, there shouldn’t be much additional tooling to do, so costs will be a lot lower than they would usually be. And all the additional purchases pledgers make on the PM (which like I say, CMoN have practically invited everyone to do instead of maxing out their pledge in the campaign) will not unlock any stretch goals, so a big chunk of money will be raised that won’t have to spent on tooling new minis. Plus Paypal’s fees are lower than KS/Amazons so CMoN’s cut of the money is greater on the PM than on KS. It may even mean the pledges will ship on time as there’s not much new stuff to sculpt and tool. CMoN may have moved ahead of the curve again.