Ogre...Kickstarter...you in?

Already have too many two-player games that I don't get to play...but...trigger...finger...itchy...

I've been watching it for the last hour or so and the numbers click up about as fast as the page can reload. A lot of $23 pledges for the T-shirt. 5400 total backers.

S.

That is "Fuck you" money. Too bad Steve Jackson will piss it away on Fuck You Munchkin.

jeb wrote: That is "Fuck you" money. Too bad Steve Jackson will piss it away on Fuck You Munchkin.

The $23 shirt is likely the Car Wars shirt, not the "Eat Hot Treads Munchkin" shirt. Buying that CW shirt gets you access to the Car Wars development forum for their next KS project. It was actually a smart move as it's basically a $23 ticket to a private forum to try to influence the Car Wars reboot. Consumer input may matter *way* more for that product line than OGRE because Car Wars took so many hard turns over the years and lots of folks came and went at different times. It has real potential to crank out a game designed by committee, which is never good, but if it's as modular as I remember Car Wars being, it shouldn't be too much of a problem to cherry-pick between the various parts you want to play [i.e., my larger group tended to avoid gas engines as they made car development into a bit of a chore; a subset of us, though, would get together for "side events" where we'd run classic gas motor Figure 8-type races that were separate from the regular group...]

God damn it, this does have my finger itchy but I can't do it. Not for 100 dollars and I have other, less simplified hex and counter wargames I like and don't get played.

And the final total is in at $923.6k. That's a fairly ridiculous number. I'm sure several thousands will be lost to bad credit cards or fucked up pledges, but we're likely still talking $900k+

And, yes, I did buy the T-shirt that shows an Ogre running over the Munchkins...

Dogmatix wrote: And, yes, I did buy the T-shirt that shows an Ogre running over the Munchkins...

That one is tempting, but it still makes me feel dirty. I've sworn never to support Munchkin in any way, ever. I hate what it's done to SJG as a dynamic and creative company.

OTOH, it supposedly has the Ogre squashing the Munchkin logo. That's pretty sweet.

But we don't have to finalize our extras until we see our end-of-project surveys, so there's time to ponder.

I'm going to keep this thread alive for a while as info becomes available on some key extras. One of the supporter levels was an opportunity to buy your own countersheet for $4,500. This goal got you at least 3,000 copies of the sheet and a pledge from SJG that you could sell 'em [once you signed their licensing agreement] and they wouldn't [either at all or at least for a year--the wording was a little odd and I think it was subsequently clarified on the SJG forums]

Well, it turns out this was a big hit as they ended up adding multiple additional options and 9 full 11x17[ish] counter sheets were bought, including an almost literally last-minute pledge for a Nihon faction sheet [which is also likely to be the subject of an official SJG expansion down the road].

Eventually, SJG is going to put up a website with contact/purchase details for all 9 sheets but 2 of the sponsors are a bit ahead of the curve and are putting together a mailing list.

2 of the sheets were bought by Gary McBride of Fire Mountain Games, who already sent out an announcement about them:

Details are still sketchy. I haven't even signed the license agreement yet so for now I cannot legally sell ... well, anything. But that will happen soon and when it does I will be selling two large counter sheets and hopefully a booklet full of linked scenarios that form an Ogre campaign. With your Ogre game plus our product, you will be able to play a series of ten to twelve games that form a coherent "story". At the end of the series, you will total victory points and determine who won the campaign.

So what's the campaign about?

The Ogres have gone rogue. A small cadre of cybertanks have banded together to end this war by destroying a humanity they've grown to hate. One side plays the conspiracy of Ogres. The other plays the desperate forces of humanity who must stop these monsters from carrying out their genocidal plan.

One counter sheet will feature the rogue ogres -- at least three exclusive Black Ogres and the buildings and equipment that are the tools of their scheme (also black). This includes a black strongpoint, laser turrets, laser towers, a black AI controlled death train and more.

The other sheet contains reinforcements to the blue faction (more GEVs, Super Heavies, and others) and exclusive scenario units (refugees and medical units) critical to the campaign.

Only you can save the world...or wipe out humanity with cold, robotic efficiency. The choice is yours.

And even if you don't want to play our campaign, this set will enable you to play Ogre scenarios impossible without it. With one set you can play the campaign. With two or more, you will have an armada of exclusive rampaging Ogres.

Prices are not yet set. The exact counter list is not yet set, but this is the plan. We will be selling the two counter sheets together and both sheets and the booklet will be one product. There is no ordering one sheet and not the other.

I also guarantee that we will ship this product anywhere that receives mail. International shipping will cost more, but I pledge that we will charge as close to cost on shipping as we can manage. We are doing this for profit -- I make no bones about that. But we want to make money on the counters, not on stiffing you on shipping.

More information will follow including how to preorder your own set(s).

To sign-up, just send an email to ogre AT firemountaingames DOT com

The other sponsor who has contact info out there is Walt Freitag, who is putting together an "Uncommon Ogres" sheet. Per his auto-reply:

This is an automated reply to confirm that you will be added to the
mailing list for informaiton and updates about the Uncommon Ogres sponsored counter sheet.(snip)...At present, as far as I know, none of the custom counter sheet sponsors is close to being ready to take orders, and it will be months before the actual counter sheets are in hand. For now, I'm using this mailing list as a way to let people know what's going to be on my sheet, and how things are coming.

Sign-up for Walt's stuff is: uncommonogres AT verizon DOT net

And, had I really paid attention to the reward details, I would have floated the idea that the Fort think about sponsoring a sheet [selling using an ebay or amazon storefront] as a fund-raiser. Though I don't have self-designed and remotely playtested Ogre material in my back pocket, there are folks out there who do who I suspect could have been engaged and the potential ROI is kind of interesting. This reward level works out to a cost ranging from under $1 to ~$1.50 per sheet depending on the final run you receive (it's "not less than 3,000 sheets" but final # as yet unspecified). SJG is selling their own "stretch goal" sheets at $8 per [not sure if that's "$8 shipped in the US" or "$8 + $whatever shipping"]

While the time and effort to put together the sheet and the subsequent infrastructure to take orders and ship may be way too much work for this place, I suspect that it could be a relatively quick seller depending on the number of sheets you receive versus the total print run (i.e., if you're looking at a 1-year monopoly on selling sheets and have roughly half the total print run of games made, I could easily see a large and quick initial spike of sales if you're in the same $8-$10/sheet range since I firmly believe that a decent percentage of KS backers who actually bought 1 or more copies of the game would NOT pass up the various sponsored sheets. This is, without question, one of those "in for a penny, in for a pound [of silver ingots]" kind of purchase for a lot of folks). I'd actually be surprised if BGG didn't sponsor a sheet as they already have all the infrastructure in place to sell them quickly and could easily tap into their userbase for the design side.

Dogmatix wrote: ...I'd actually be surprised if BGG didn't sponsor a sheet as they already have all the infrastructure in place to sell them quickly and could easily tap into their userbase for the design side.

According to these threads they are:
www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/795171/boar...x10-counter-sheet-or
www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/795476/poll...e-on-the-bgg-ogre-sh
www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/796538/bgg-...designer-toolkit-sub

The third link states an 8x10 custom sheet and a 11x17 sheet of terrain overlays.

In the end I decided against the FLGS option as it's not clear whether 'retailer + $1 to enable me to buy from w23' actually gets me everything that a Kickstarter pledge does. And $192 + customs + handling fee means paying £150+ for a game I've owned for years and rarely played. So my conclusion was not to Kickstart and not to buy at retail.