What KICKSTARTER(S) are you BACKING and WHY?

Sure would suck to have a game you've worked on for 6 years about to go on Kickstarter. I'd feel bad for idiots in that situation. Those poor bastards, maybe named Mark and Pete.

Trump just announced a 90-day pause on tariffs for every country except China. This has caused a jump in the stock market, but doesn't really offer any longer-term assurance to investors or consumers.

LOL, Trump could end that pause tomorrow.

Old and busted: Plastic minis
New hotness: Cardboard standees

I ended paying way too much for a used copy of uprising because who knows if there even will be a kickstarter for it again with how fucking crazy this shit has been.

Is it worth tracking down the second printing for the errata?
Everything I see is from the first Kickstarter.

bendgar wrote: Is it worth tracking down the second printing for the errata?
Everything I see is from the first Kickstarter.

It's not too bad, there are two rules changes that aren't hard to remember: 1. All Druid cards are revealed up-front, 2. All player setups start with 3 skeletons, with a new setup picture. Updated rulebooks are available online. I'm not aware of anything else substantive, as I have the first KS plus the second expansion. Some component designs changed a little (the resource tokens), but I'm fine with it. There might be other differences, but that's all I found when I went hunting around. I wish my copy had come with the updated resources from the second campaign, but beggars can't be choosers.

Oh, this may be a first, but Portal Games has decided to go forward with their upcoming crowdfunding project next week ( gamefound.com/pl/projects/portalgames/race-to-berlin ) with one major difference: they will not be shipping to the US. US backers can back at $1 to follow along, and if sanity returns by when it's time to manufacture/ship the games, they can jump on at that point. I'm curious how this will turn out for them, since you're cutting out the largest market, but when you're only other option is to sit on your hands...

Maybe if the tariffs stabilize, even at stupid levels, creators can actually add the tariff fees to shipping charges ahead of time. I feel like the volatility is the bigger impediment rather than the higher $$ amount to import...I mean, people continue to pay CMON's stupid shipping prices.

I lucked into a 2nd printing "Ultimate Pledge" for the same price as if I had funded it. I'm pretty excited.

I told myself last year that I wouldn't kickstart any more games. This was after I kickstarted the new edition of Camp Grizzly and a potentially interesting sci-fi campaign game called Enormity. Oh, and of course I had to kickstart the expansions/errata for Vampire: Chapters.

During pandemic lockdown, I finally took on the Mount Everest of AmeriTrash: Magic Realm. I had already purchased a second-hand copy and downloaded tutorials and strategy guides, so I finally sat down to read them all and teach myself the game. It was really hard. Some of the rules are very counter-intuitive, and there are an excessive number of corner-case rules that are impossible to remember without constantly scanning the rulebook. I played two games, and wanted to play with friends after the pandemic, but knew it would be a tough sell. So Magic Realm has been gathering dust for nearly six years.

About a year ago, I saw a Facebook ad for a kickstarter campaign for a game called Dragons Down. I hadn't heard anything about it, so I clicked through to the ad. Dragons Down is Magic Realm Lite. It still isn't a light game by any normal gaming metric, but the design is a very intentional streamlined knockoff of Magic Realm, which is something I often fantasized about while teaching myself Magic Realm. The base game of Dragons Down has less content than Magic Realm, but this Kickstarted campaign was for a couple of expansions that appeared to push the overall content above and beyond Magic Realm. I was intrigued, but the sticker price of $120 for just the base game seemed steep.

From time to time, I would see another ad on Facebook, then go to the BGG entry and look at comments, images, and reviews. And then pop over to the publisher's website and read more advertising copy. Finally, I decided to pick up the base game yesterday, as an early birthday present for myself. Unfortunately, the publisher was sold out, and the only available copies were on eBay and stupidly expensive. But I already knew from Facebook that they were kickstarting a new expansion and reprinting previous content. The Kickstarter ad also had enticing endorsements by Trey Parker (co-creator of South Park!) and Richard Launius (Arkham Horror).

So I kickstarted Dragons Down. The base game, the two existing expansions, and the upcoming third expansion. $319 USD. I could have spent even more, for fancier components and extra scenarios, but I didn't completely lose my mind. The game should ship in March of 2027. Now I need to decide if I am finally going to sell a bunch of board games or buy another Ikea bookcase.

WOW. And if I recall, that game doesn't do anything elaborate with miniatures. It did look pretty neat.

I'm backing a game called SHUG that has amazing art (4 days left on the campaign I think) and looks like Talisman-lite.

Waiting on:
Hitman (just finished the campaign, looks fun)
6: Siege (in production now)
Camp Grizzly (supposedly on time?)
Animalcatraz (very late, but seems to be finally getting somewhere)
Phantom Division (also very late but it's finally ready to print. Supposedly the plastic pieces are already being printed)

hotseatgames wrote: I'm backing a game called SHUG that has amazing art (4 days left on the campaign I think) and looks like Talisman-lite.

Isn't Talisman already Talisman-lite? I only played it once, but it did not seem deep.

I think the lite comes in with it also featuring real world "challenges" like a party game, and being shorter than Talisman by quite a lot.

hotseatgames wrote: WOW. And if I recall, that game doesn't do anything elaborate with miniatures. It did look pretty neat.

True, but miniatures wouldn't have worked well with the design anyway, for two reasons. First, as with Magic Realm, all monsters have two sides reflecting two different tactics with a possible flip each combat round. That keeps combat from being too predictable, but makes tokens a better design choice than minis. Second, the hexagonal map sections each contain a half dozen locations, so it is crucial to be able to stack the tokens for an entire party of characters. In the default version of Dragons Down, all the tokens are cardboard. In the upgraded version, the tokens are weighted poker chips.

If I had a game group, I'd be in on this. Reminds me of Nexus Ops but with an OG Dark Tower style.

www.kickstarter.com/projects/plaidhatgam..._id=Q2F0ZWdvcnktMzQ=