Kingdom Death. How to screw up, and be awesome

Kingdom Death screwed up. The final game was about 3 times the original Kickstarter, and he ran out of money to ship expansions. Part of that is that just the shipping on the expansions is $34 because they are three times the size of the original game.

So is asking for half of the shipping to cover it. And there isn't a hue and cry of whining and a frenzy of pain, because the post is so awesome.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/poots/kingd...onster/posts/1493648

The trippiest part is that instead of a painful slog of boats, possible shipping, uncertain customs release...he pulled an Apple and announced the release date with the games sitting in global warehouses shipping tomorrow.

Wow, a full set of this is going to be a real collector's item. Are the expansions going to retail or is some of this pure KS material?

(The dragon King Expansion will retail for $120, many pledgers picked it up for a mere $25, which is less then cost to create it! ;_; )

I wish everyone would announce things only when they're ready--that's great.

The design is really pretty. Is the game any good?

Frank has a great review up on F:AT! Check it out!

fortressat.com/articles-boardgame-review...nth-s-best-game-evar

Those critical effects are also pretty amazing. They can range from extra resources, to massive shifts that affect AI cards. In our second combat, the crits wore the lion down to where he was slower than us. Then one player cut off the lion's balls which caused the lion to focus entirely on him. He could then kite the lion around while we finished it off.

This game really does sound amazing. And it seems like a testament to the idea that one mad genius can do something really cool that could never come out of a conventional publisher.

It looks amazing! Have a blast whoever got in on this. $25 for $120 retail---yikes, not the smartest businessman. But hey, sounds like he had fun and learned a lot.

Our second settlement died when we lost 7 people in one turn. With only one person left, we pulled the plug. That one barely had any armor, so it was only a matter of time.

It is also a REALLY hard game. As you get to the harder fights, positioning and special powers become much more useful. You can't just move up to things and try to hit them.

The thing that bugs me about the game is that all that pinup stuff around the kickstarter totally turned me off the game and I ignored it as a miniatures game with no real game attached.

I've played a friends' copy and love it. I spent less than $300 on board games last year, yet I'm strongly considering purchasing the base set some time this year.

People who got in on the kickstarter got a great deal.

The only thing I wonder is how the heck do you do all this stuff in 25 Lantern Years? You can run the same monster 4-5 times and not have a set of armor if you're unlucky on your resource draws. Are some of those human-sized guys nemesis encounters?

Yeah, the pinup stuff turns me off too and I don't care about the miniatures but the game itself, especially the base management campaign stuff, seems awesome.

I may get my head kicked in given the current PC atmosphere, however.......

I like the pinups. There is a huge precedent set for women to be depicted in this manner by the art of Frazetta. There is a time and a place for everything and a fantasy setting is it.

No doubt the minis in this game are unlike no other... Unbelievable really. And those pinups are gorgeous.

I'm more turned off by things like "early backers got this thing for $25 that costs the cautious consumer A HUNDRED DOLLARS more" than I am by the sex content.

I really want to get into this game, but the miniatures modeling thing and the exclusionary marketing keeps me away from it. But I could deal with gluing the figures together. The exclusive bullshit, not so much.
It's bad business to keep buyers away from something they want to give you money for, worse business to punish buyers for not buying in advance of release.

When I bought Armada, I could have gotten Kingdom Death. But the fact that I wasn't "allowed" to buy pieces of it steered me away. I could buy all the Armada I wanted, all day long, and not be made to feel like I have to pay a premium simply because I wasn't willing to drop a bunch of money on some dude's vanity project sight unseen.

Well, uh... isn't is *supposed* to be *exclusive*?

Sure it is. I just think it's stupid for something that would likely be a huge seller in traditional retail. It could easily be a multimillion dollar product line, regardless of the earnest "this isn't for everybody" posturing.

Kingdom.
Death.
Monster.

I can't think of any three more nondescript words in gaming. That unimaginative title, the juvenile minis, the KS exclusives...there's nothing about this game that makes me want to play it. I guess it could be called a 'luxury' or 'premium' game or what not simply because of price or availability (Like that Cthulhu Wars thing), and it sounds like there may be a few neat bells and whistles, but at the end of the day it's really just pushing minis and rolling dice. Been doing that for 30 years. Nothing else that much more interesting to warrant the price.

Kingdom Death: Monster? I'd rather play Drakon.