AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

[IAmBatman]

My understanding is that all figures for C3V have 3D printing available as an option. So price and availability shouldn't be a barrier if someone is willing to get them printed and deal with them being unpainted or do the painting (so basically they're as good as the official product on this front).

[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.

[GamerDad74]

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. 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.

But that's just it, no one was asking for newly designed cards, new iconography, toddler cartoon art. If the community would "just create cards that were uniform with the old ones anyway" that should be an obvious revelation that what the Hasbros and AH Team created was NOT what the 'Scape community had been asking for for the last decade.

That's what's infuriating--Heroscape wasn't "Baaack!!!" A completely new game with Heroscape mechanics and terrain was back, but it wasn't Heroscape.

[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.

[GamerDad74]

@ Zeldarck

Very well said, your analyses and tone were spot on. Great job! I couldn't write a complete sentence in another language, let alone clearly state so well as you did how terrible Hasbro/AH did on this campaign.

[SchismaticSounds]

I was really hoping to see more done with the terrain. Different larger shapes than 7’s and 24’s. Might’ve helped interest some of the people who said they had enough terrain already. The new walls looked neat, but we never got to see them painted and weathered, if they’re stackable and more closely how you could use them. The heaviest fall off of supporters was certainly during the first days of the campaign, to those who were aware of it. Not having certain things already baked didn't help. The black and white box art. No painted figures To showcase, and the first look of the color saturated figures flooding an already dense map was bewildering with the 250 price.

[Good Pig]

It's easy to be a little salty and vent some after it didn't fund, but there were some nice parts of AoA that I really liked too and ultimately caused me to back it.

- I enjoyed seeing the concept art shared early on before the campaign went live. Especially for the terrain concepts.
- All of the sculpts were phenomenal. The air ship, Major Q10 and Queen Maladrix were some of my favorites
- Loved the inclusion of jungle trees with a little alien flair
- The new modular ruins looked fantastic
- 2 Life squads
- Lots of new Unique Squads
- All of the designs looked fun, loved the new powers and reuse of Chain Grab, Mortal Strike and other powers on squads
- Tons of new Kyrie heroes

[SchismaticSounds]

It’s been difficult for me not to let saltiness show when I hadn’t returned to this community since having felt a bit bit. I wasn’t very invested in AoA but certainly wanted it to succeed. I don’t question whether enough passion or energy was involved, but what I saw simply wasnt quite for me personally and it’s hard to say this thing would’ve met the mark even with everything people say could’ve been done differently.
A lot of money floating around on these kickstarters sure, but still in an economic crisis. Like in 2008 when these games could not hold up any longer.

[Shurrig]

I loved just about everything in the Vanguard set. Although I backed it for one set, it was very tough for me to justify spending $250 on anything at the moment. The chance of getting a whole slew of new units, jungle terrain (which I still don't own), and the revival of Heroscape for the foreseeable future, dangled in front of us behind a $250 paywall. $2,000,000 needed to raise at such an inaccessible price felt on Hasbro's part naive at best and cruel at worst.

I wonder what they could've done at a $200 value. Remove the kyrie, one of the Revna factions (I lean towards the ironclad- I liked them but they're just the least fleshed out of all the factions), maybe a squad and a hero from the pirates, reduce the amount of terrain and castle walls slightly, etc. Any way they could've sliced it up to get to that cheaper price would have been great, hell if they did that I likely could've backed a second set. Maybe that makes the offer too meek for some, but for newcomers it could have been more than enough.

There is a way to make this product accessible to a wider audience, I truly believe that. Though I love the allure of the big box set, Selling units and terrain separately is likely the most profitable direction Avalon Hill can go in with Heroscape. I'm intrigued by this response from Dad_Scaper:

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

Yes. That part, too, does not originate from me.
I expect that we will have some clarity on this issue in time.
My guess is pretty soon. Within a few weeks.

But for now, . . . . please.

I think it's safe to speculate that we will at the very least receive an update to these army cards. @Dad_Scaper mentioned on the ToV Podcast this Tuesday that he felt like the team gave us these cards as a gift to the community. Maybe we will get the rest of the cards shown to us, updated with art and more refined stats? That would rock, even though we may not get any official units out of it. Just speculation though...

[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.

[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.

[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.