MMP planning Kickstarter for Lincoln's War.

Dogmatix wrote: I do wonder if H&M was a trial balloon for the LW project. Hope John learned something good from it...

I think this is definitely not the case. That doesn't invalidate the rest of your thinking though. Lincoln's War is coming out of a different publisher.

It's also being pressed hard by Poniske in their BGG's and forums. Unfortunately I think much of that is preaching to the choir, as getting the general audience there to look seriously at a wargame, even one like this with its much broader subject matter, is very difficult. I have not monitored CSW for it and can't speak to that side of the coin.

Poniske almost seems to be a bystander on Hearts & Minds, which may be because he's neck-deep in Lincoln's War and doesn't have time for it. It's a finished product. Hearts & Minds is also a more esoteric subject matter and has to compete against itself.

All that said, I'm very anxious to see the Lincoln's War kickstarter come up, because I think one of the stretch goals may be to design one of the cards in the game. I have a relative on each side of the war that I'd love to put into the game (Col. George Washington Curtis who served under Jackson and General Samuel Curtis, both of West Virginia) and if that kind of thing is up for grabs the game could get a little more attention.

It appears I stumbled into the meeting where the Kickstarter decision was being made -- 11pm on Saturday night at Winter Offensive 2013 -- and there was a big chunk of heat at the table. I said hello, recognized my interruption for what it was and quickly retreated. I don't think MMP is taking this lightly by any means, and it's a big change to their business model. My guess is that they're taking it seriously and that Lincoln's War is the trial balloon, not Hearts & Minds. Take that for what it's worth, I just hope their KS page has a little glitz and some red meat to it to get things underway.

S.

I do hope MMP has something interesting planned for this project. I just noticed their newest Pxx titles are up, and they've clearly taken some other new measures. 3 of the 4 in the current batch are guaranteed sellers: ASL's *long* awaited return to the PTO and 2 Gamers titles. The Gamers are putting out a 1-mapper introductory-type OCS game, which I think is probably one of the most demanded [though we'll see about sales] and necessary games. It's basically magazine-game sized [which makes it a bit on the expensive side IMO, but not enough so to even check my stride in ordering it]; along side that is the rework of SCS series The Mighty Endeavor. TME is one of those "it coulda been great, but it ended up being a tedious grind" games. The new edition looks to have done a *lot* of reworking to address that stuff, so I think it will appeal to 1st edition owners. AND they gave 1st ed. owners a further price break, which offers some incentive to pre-pub rather than just wait for it to hit CSI or Wargamedepot. That was certainly an excellent idea. I hope that the approach works out well enough for SCS Fallschrimjaeger, OCS Sicily, or OCS Korea to earn another look.

The 4th game is a 3 Crowns reprint (Konigsberg '45) that appears to have charged immediately at the pre-pub price, which would seem to indicate it's close to ready to ship. No idea if that's actually accurate, but it's the only thing that makes sense of it appearing as a separate transaction.

So, it strikes me that they're really trying to do something different with the pre-pub process (err...assuming that these 4 games weren't simply what was next up on the release chart anyway). I hope that the LW Kickstarter works out well for them as the combined "new thinking" for pre-pubbing could go a long way for them. I wonder if a A Las Barricades Kickstarter that combined the 3 sets previously up for Pxxx along with some nifty incentives like personalized counters might be worth looking at for them.

One of the things you mentioned there strikes me as one of the obstacles to P500 success -- there's really not incentive to pre-pub when you'll pick the game up from wargamedepot for the same price. Yet another place where the discount houses apply pressure to the industry.

Of course one alternative is to use the Game Salute model where there's a single source of purchase and we all know how they're looked upon. I'll be honest -- I like the single-seller model and I think it's a better choice for wargames where the price isn't as big an issue and the purchase model isn't so flexible. If you want the next OCS installment there's going to be one company producing it.

The other alternative is what Kickstarter puts into the mix, the opportunity to add materials that cannot be obtained at a later date. It puts the scare back into the equation. What remains to be seen is if it can survive on shorter print runs and longer development cycles.

S.

Poniske has indicated that Kickstarter kicked Lincoln's War back, stating that corporations face hurdles that individuals don't in order to publish on their site and the original submission needed revision.

I'm somewhat amused that a box of blank pages and cards has less trouble than a legit product, but what are you gonna do?

S.

Sagrilarus wrote: Poniske has indicated that Kickstarter kicked Lincoln's War back, stating that corporations face hurdles that individuals don't in order to publish on their site and the original submission needed revision.

I'm somewhat amused that a box of blank pages and cards has less trouble than a legit product, but what are you gonna do?

S.

Laughable at first blush if you don't think about it at all (err...that sounds more shitty than I mean it to be, but I'm at a loss on how to temper it. Just pretend I wasn't trying to be a dickhead there...). At the very least, it's not all that odd when you look at just the threads around here. Kickstarter is acknowledging that MMP is up against the same complaint Barnes has presented as his anti-kickstarter mantra all along: "you're a company which has done this for years. Why should anyone give you money up front now?" It doesn't even come close to taking into account MMP's long and storied history of half-assing the pre-publication model.

I bet that the silly "25 word love note to a veteran" and T-shirt options were added to the Hearts & Minds project for exact same reason. *That* leads me to wonder if MMP *was* just trying to get away with using KS as a digital pre-order form. Do you have any other information about the project they tried to launch? If they really did try to go in with nothing more than what worthington did, I wouldn't touch the game with a 10-foot pole. MMP has too shitty a track record to *not* come up with something truly new or interesting for me to bite. I'd rather not punish Poniske as a byproduct of that, but MMP is going to need to show me a hell of a lot more than "Guy Around the Corner Games" does for me to bite...

Right, this whole thing about Kickstarter for established companies is "Why haven't we been doing this all along?" But of course, the reason is that people wouldn't give the kind of barely-any-strings attached treatment to a pseudo-company like MMP that they give to true entrepreneur groups that normally kickstart.

Apparently the page has cleared Kickstarter's hurdles, but it hasn't appeared yet. This is just strange -- if you were trying to prime a market for a release this would be the kiss of death. You need to have some sort of timeline established.

S.

Sagrilarus wrote: Apparently the page has cleared Kickstarter's hurdles, but it hasn't appeared yet. This is just strange -- if you were trying to prime a market for a release this would be the kiss of death. You need to have some sort of timeline established.

S.

[Claude Rains] I'm shocked--SHOCKED I tell you--to find out that MMP is having difficulties communicating an accurate timeline to its customer base. [/Claude Rains]

Dogmatix wrote: [Claude Rains] I'm shocked--SHOCKED I tell you--to find out that MMP is having difficulties communicating an accurate timeline to its customer base. [/Claude Rains]

[James Earl Jones]I find your lack of faith disturbing.[/James Earl Jones]

Poniske seems to indicate that the holdup has been with Kickstarter, not MMP. He may be calling a wide strike zone but if it was me I'd release at 10:30 in the evening because that would mean it would end at 10:30 in the evening which is a pretty good time for one to end. If someone at MMP is putting a hold on it I don't know what they're waiting for. I'd have this critter on everyone's desk for tomorrow morning.

S.

Launched. Not showing up on search yet, but it's live. Very interesting stretch goals at the top end.

S.

I have a dumb, selfish question. Will I like this game?

My favorite CDG is Hearts & Minds because it's more combat-oriented than other CDGs. I tend to like maneuver and combat in my games, which is why block games are my thing.

I recognize that Twilight Struggle is a good game, but I never really get the urge to play it. Too much area control scoring for me.

What makes Lincoln's War special?

A side note:

As the developer of Hearts & Minds, Stan Hilinski dramatically reworked John's original design. In my mind - perhaps unfairly - this makes Poniske's track record a big unknown, especially since King Philip's War had its detractors.

Based upon my extensive play experience with you personally (one play each of Buffy, Battlestar and that game set on Easter Island where everybody dies, plus several tense sessions of Ringo Flamingo and Bucket King) my estimation is . . . I don't know.

It's worth having a look at the extensive play session here -- www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/937927/linc...ter-playtest-session which is a pretty good indication of the balance between card play, field action, and political machinations. Reading a page or two and looking at the pretty pictures will tell the tale.

For me personally it's a good match because (and this sounds like it should never be an issue) I can move the pieces the way I want. The cards are in support of the action instead of driving it. I like Battle Cry and Memoir but not being able to move units because I don't have a card for them sucks. C&C gives you more flexibility but still presents the problem to some extent. Lincoln's War gives you cards that help you make grand attacks (which that play session linked above is playing out right now as the Confederate player is going all-in on an attack on Washington) and the like but you still get to move the units you want.

Fog of war may be "realistic" but it's just not fun gaming for me. C&C is about my bottom edge for the concept.

S.

You have to be kidding me. $40k and next to no backer incentives below the 4-digit pricepoint? The customization goals are nice but extremely overpriced. It's like they looked at Mark Walker's ridiculously expensive goals for his early self-kickstarted (LnL's "Guffless Preorder System" aka "Kickstarter without the fees and flexible deadlines") and said "if Mark can get that, we can charge MOAR!" Didn't appear to notice that none of LnL's hex-n-chit games have had target numbers above $20k and that he's basically halved the price of his incentive levels since the World at War Into the Breach highwater mark). At the very least, it does show some thought put into the project--even if it clearly was all Poniske's thinking effort.

I'm not so sure this makes the target funding, but let's see how Poniske pimps this up. I'll back a basic copy of the game.

All the higher-number support levels include three copies of the game. That lifts the price of all those packages by about $120. I don't really need three copies. That's the one thing I don't think works well for the high-dollar levels. I'm sure MMP wanted more boxes out the door, but about the only thing most of us can do with the extra copies is eBay them because you don't gift a game that you already own to a buddy. I'd wager that 85% of his purchasers will be from the $70 pledge level.

But given that much of his intended audience is history buffs over the age of 30 it wouldn't surprise me if one or two of those slots in the > $1000 range got picked up. Too much for me of course, but they show some outside the box (quite literally in this case) thinking that may get him a couple of hits. One of them is 12% of his entire goal, even if it is pricey as hell. I know people that spend $5,000 on ooba tooba stone counter tops when cheesy-ass press board does fine (that looks quite nice in my kitchen by the way) so I've come to the conclusion that what I'm willing to spend doesn't track well with the reality of stupid rich people. As you're in Ashburn I'll offer to have you look around the neighborhood to find examples. I can give you the street address of two.

And . . . what we were talking about earlier. Is $70 including shipping sufficiently inexpensive to not wait for Wargamedepot to put these on sale 30 days after KS ship? What will be the availability this time next year? Will this game be available via other channels and what will be the pricing? If MMP said "exclusive from MMP directly" that would put the scare on, and would make three copies of the game look a little more interesting.

S.

John is a great dude. Hopefully I can get some money together and back the level that gets the game, otherwise I'm coming in lower just to support him and the project.