AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

[nyys]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

Maybe that accounts for the difference, then? Was anyone really asking for that much content all at once, though? Especially when it was mostly marketed to an existing player base that logically had a ton of content already? Seems like they could've split a lot of that out of the introductory set and into future waves, especially since a lot of the design work was not finished for the campaign.

I was 100% for this campaign, even with all the warts. That said, no, I definitely did not need that much all at once. I would have been just as happy getting it in 1/3 chunks, even if I paid a little more overall in the end.

[brak88]

Originally Posted by IAmBatman

Honestly, even for the content included, the $250 price tag boggles me a bit.

I know RotV was a loss leader. But how much more would it have had to be to pay for itself? $60 instead of $40? $100?

I know this set is just slightly bigger than RotV.

I know inflation is a thing.

I know shipping costs are built into the $250.

Lets say that: RotV should've costed $100 to not be a loss leader. Lets say (using an inflation calculator) that $100 in 2004 is worth $157.76 today. We'll round that up to $160 for easy math. Lets say shipping costs would be $30. That still has us under $200 and feels like the higher end of some estimates we could make.

I haven't accounted for there being *slightly* more content than RotV (a decision they supposedly made to get a better value for the set). Was there really $50-$60 more worth of content than RotV (i.e. a full RotV set in 2004 and at least a third of one now?). I don't think so.

How much of that $250 price tag was built in profit margin to make sure they were making bank right away?

I don't have insider info and this is all, obviously, reckless speculation, but I struggle to see how their only option was to present something that cost *6* times as much as RotV did in 2004 for a just slightly larger (and unpainted) product.

There's way more then just slightly more content. There was like 15 multi hex sized walls, 15 pillars, a full ticalla jungle and 41 more figures. It's like 2 to 2.5 ROTV's.

[IAmBatman]

Fair enough. They should've considered 1 RoTV-sized offering, then, since that was a successful product.

[artemiscorso]

I guess there is, but to me it just doesn't feel like it. The figures are upainted and this magnifies that they are blurry thematically. If I didn't have either set I would rather have the 30 RotV figures.

[IAmBatman]

It does feel like this offering failed to recapture the magic of RotV for a variety of reasons (one of which, to be fair, is because RotV was undercosted and new).

[Good Pig]

There were a lot of unknowns when bringing the product and campaign to the public. The unfortunate part is how wasteful and expensive it is to build a product to be near production ready and then pulling the plug. If die hard fans were the primary audience, then even a cheap survey on this site or Facebook could have gone a long way to finding answers prior to launch.

How big and expensive of a set would people want?
Would unpainted figures be a deal breaker?
Cardboard tiles for basic version vs plastic hexes?
Are you looking for new Kyrie generals rather than filling out existing ones?

[brak88]

Yeah if Avalon Hill and Hasbro could have came up with something the size of rotv or sotm at a cost of like $125 that would have really helped get some more people in. I know a lot of people are saying I would have been fine with 10 figures, but really the Marvel and battle for the underdark sets are so limited.

Especially when you consider trying to have two armies of equal point value and only having 10 figures to be able to do that with. Sure you could mix and match them, but they really only work with a good army and a bad army for each one. Rotv and sotm still feel like complete packages.

I think like 25 figures, only two being the smallest of the two hexers, maybe two bushes, two pillars and two walls and maybe like a 20% reduction in tiles somewhere in the $125 with free shipping or $100 plus $25~ shipping range could have really helped if it was possible in any way.

[GamerDad74]

Originally Posted by Good Pig

There were a lot of unknowns when bringing the product and campaign to the public. The unfortunate part is how wasteful and expensive it is to build a product to be near production ready and then pulling the plug. If die hard fans were the primary audience, then even a cheap survey on this site or Facebook could have gone a long way to finding answers prior to launch.

How big and expensive of a set would people want?
Would unpainted figures be a deal breaker?
Cardboard tiles for basic version vs plastic hexes?
Are you looking for new Kyrie generals rather than filling out existing ones?

Totally agree they should have surveyed the community--would have built even more excitement ahead of time, bring everyone along on the journey.

The crazy thing is that they assembled this supposedly incredible team of veterans who had their finger on the pulse (no pun intended) of the HS community--knew exactly what we wanted and were going to hit it out of the park. They didn't just swing and miss. They hit into a game-ending double play.

[Drewman-chu]

I have to admit I am a bit relieved having to not try to paint 70+ miniatures. I am sure there are many others that feel that way. I think having so much new content was both a blessing and a curse.

[Hogg]

Originally Posted by bmon

I really disliked the new cards. I know they were trying to make things fresh and modern, but I don't think it was necessary or warranted at all. I prefer to have them all look identical to the old ones. I don't want new color tones. I don't want new general icons. I don't want a new layout. Mixing these with the old cards would be jarring and feel unnatural.

I hated the cards and seeing them was the only time I considered pulling my pledge. I am certain the new cards caused them to lose support. Probably not 3000+ backers, but still...

Its mind boggling to me that they would even consider changing the cards, much less spend resources doing it. That is time that could have been spent making meaningful improvements that would have brought in support instead.

Originally Posted by Zeldarck

Totally agree with you on the part of the terrain. I really hope Hasbro/AH understand that terrain is a product on itself and a campaign with only terrain would be a hit, lot of other gaming communities use heroscape terrain system.

Sadly, the campaign would have gone better if there had not been figures, just terrain. If there had been new types, every Heroscape player would back it, plus all the people who want it for other games and didn't want to buy $125 worth of HeroScape figures to get it.

[ThrasherDarkrai]

Originally Posted by bmon

All the major campaign misteps are being well covered by others, so I'm going to add some smaller things that I really did NOT like. I know the project team was open to feedback during the campaign, but I just never wanted to drop any negativity onto something I wanted others to endorse with me. Especially because what I'm about to say are not major setbacks to my appetite for the new content, but bothered me nonetheless...

I really disliked the new cards. I know they were trying to make things fresh and modern, but I don't think it was necessary or warranted at all. I prefer to have them all look identical to the old ones. I don't want new color tones. I don't want new general icons. I don't want a new layout. Mixing these with the old cards would be jarring and feel unnatural.

Then the worst offender with the new cards are the icons. The attack, defense, and life icons make sense to me and are at least intuitive, but I don't like them. Even the range icon makes sense, however, when it is paired with that move icon, I still get tripped up looking at them. Even though it was words on the old cards, I loved the color coding of green (move), gray (range), red (attack), and blue (defense). It is much more visually obvious than these icons that need to be deciphered. And please don't take away the skulls as attack symbols!!

I've seen a couple people mention these same quibbles, but I haven't seen a lot of people talk about this. I didn't let it bother me as I figured the community would just create cards that were uniform with the old ones anyway.

To me, nothing better exemplifies the problems with Avalon Hill's approach to Heroscape than the whole card design fiasco. As I'm sure everyone in this conversation knows by now, when Avalon Hill actually polled the fans on this subject after the campaign's launch, the results were overwhelmingly lopsided in favor of retaining the OG card design. It wasn't particularly close, either: the OG card design got more votes than every other option combined! Yet, when Encarmine first broached the topic on the discord shortly after Heroscape's surprise Gencon appearance, here's what he had to say (credit to Caps for the quote):

Originally Posted by Encarmine

I’m extremely curious, because the data on this one points in multiple directions. Couldn’t really have the larger fan community weigh-in earlier without blowing the lid off all this.

What we’re seeing currently there is almost four equal perspectives: 1. The OG multi-hex. 2. A standard size playing card that can be sleeved. 3. A hybrid that is original to HS but doesn’t have quite the potential to get damaged like the originals. 4. No opinion.

Needless to say, this is an extremely curious claim. How, exactly, did Encarmine arrive at the conclusion that there were somehow "four equal perspectives" as to how the cards should be designed? He certainly wasn't talking to the fans; they voted for the OG card layout by overwhelming margins when they got the chance. Was he polling random people working at Hasbro/Avalon Hill? Did the design team want to switch to the hex-shaped cards, only to backtrack when they realized the campaign was floundering? For that matter, why change the cards at all? This last point is especially pertinent because the card layouts (which put the Species/Rarity/Class/Height information at the bottom of the cards) the design team showed during the poll actually exacerbated the problems they nominally wanted to fix, further cutting away at the usable space of a card design already starved for text space!

Ultimately, the whole card design fiasco is symptomatic of one of the AoA set's biggest problems. Hogg nailed it earlier in the thread when he noted that AoA was helmed by someone (read: Encarmine) without any nostalgia for Heroscape or any understanding as to why the game proved so popular at its height. Avalon Hill was not truly in touch with what the fans wanted in a new set, and the result was a set that only a portion of an already-somewhat small fandom actually wanted priced at a level that actively deterred new players from joining the game.

Actually, you can see this at work in how the set was structured around factions, too. SotM is remembered as a fine Master Set now, but at the time of its release, I distinctly remember Heroscapers generally (albeit not universally) agreeing that the RotV set was a better starter set precisely because of the greater variety of figures it offered compared to SotM. If Avalon Hill followed in a similar mold, offering a smaller set that provided a broader sampling of what Heroscape had to offer, I fully believe this campaign could have succeeded. None of this is to impugn the War Council; they did a phenomenal job with the unit mechanics, and I was extremely excited to pilot the Frostclaw Paladins and the Nemesis War Brood. What it is to say, however, is that Avalon Hill never understood what people wanted out of the property they were working with.

[Good Pig]

Heroscape: Age of Moderation

2 opposing factions included
- Clockwork Combine
- Dawnraider Syndicate w/ one squad as historical looking pirates
- Jungle Pieces
- Shipwreck LOS blocker
- Reversible cardboard hex mats like AOTP (tundra/snow/ice on one side, sand/water/lava field on the other)
- Limited set of plastic tiles to go with each side

Get it priced under $150.