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  #1  
Old November 1st, 2006, 07:07 PM
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Euryon Euryon is offline
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Wave X - Custom Competition Discussion

Ok, after a particle inspiration hit me in fuzzysadists thread next door, the idea of a "Best of Heroscapers Customs" set to sell on eBay (or whatever) materialised.

This thread is simply for discussion on whether it is 1) ethical, 2) practical and 3) interesting.

First, the ethics of the situation are in question as the proposal includes selling customs on eBay for cash. The cash raised could either a) go to charity, b) be the custom designers prize, or c) go to Heroscapers.com. We ought to discuss what sorts of figures are we allowed to re-sell as customs (D&D, MK, Warhammer, etc).

Secondly, the practicality. The idea would be to hold an in-house custom competition to find 5(?) "sellable" customs, that could be packaged, rudimentally, and sold on eBay (or whatever), and the proceeds given to whom/whatever. Would it be possible to centralize the figures and cards, and then actually sell them.

Third, the interest of the idea. Well, that comes down to you, the reader. Would you be interested in entering such a competition (when some concrete rules/guidelines were in place), would you be interested in judging, spectating or contributing in some other way? Please discuss here so I can gauge if this idea is worth pushing forwards.


Some initial ideas I have:

Hold an in-house custom competition. The top 5 are then sold by a single salesperson on eBay (maybe HouseMouse?) with equal reserves. The custom that sells for the highest wins. We'd have to make allowances for not buying your own customs, though! The winner then wins "something" (to be determined).

Or;

We hold an in-house custom competition and produce "Wave X - Heroes of the Web", a lá "Orms Return" - 5 customs that are voted as being potential Halls/Barracks quality, and then sold to the public, perhaps enmasse. Maybe we could convince some of the terrain builders (Robaula etc) to chuck in some custom scenery to spruce up the deal.



Any other ideas and discussion welcome. The above is *just* an idea. I am not particularly claiming ownership or a massive desire to run the thing, though if things *do* go ahead, we could start a project of it.

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  #2  
Old November 1st, 2006, 07:24 PM
robaula robaula is offline
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Sounds like a great (if time consuming!) idea, Euryon. Only worry I would have would be if such a thing would be attracting the wrong sort of attention from Hasbro - I know not the details of the closure of the previous Heroscape fan site, but didnt it involve Hasbro frowning upon something being sold openly with out their permission?
Having said that, there are TONS of unofficial customs and stuff on Ebay all the time....

Sounds fun, worthwhile, and interesting, from my point of view though.
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  #3  
Old November 1st, 2006, 07:31 PM
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Euryon Euryon is offline
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Fair point, Rob. Maybe one of the Admins/Mods in the know can enlighten us as to any possible problems this might cause for the sight?
If it does, I ain't losing anything by having this idea shot down

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  #4  
Old November 1st, 2006, 07:35 PM
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Hmmmm could have sworn I posted in this thread...

Anyways, I think someone got an email from Hasbro saying that customs were okay, as long you make sure to note that they are not official. I will see if I can find the thread.

EDIT - Found it.
http://www.heroscapers.com/community...t=2435&start=0
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  #5  
Old November 1st, 2006, 07:49 PM
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Cool; so theoretically, if the custom includes that little disclaimer, we should be ok?

I shall PM Truth for his "official" views; if he can give the idea his blessing, then we know we're good.

Thanks for the research, Nether.

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  #6  
Old November 1st, 2006, 08:05 PM
Karkadinn Karkadinn is offline
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Wasn't this sort of thing done once before, as a charity thing for hurricane victims? IIRC there was some disagreement over whether the auction sold for as much as it could have with maximum presentation effort, but I don't think there were any other problems with it.
A while back I'd idly tried to cajole Truth to do faux expansions on Ebay with his lovely customs, but he hasn't thought it worth the bother... if there's a contest, I think I'm voting one of his customs in instead of one of mine, because I know most of his are better in terms of sellability.

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  #7  
Old November 1st, 2006, 08:06 PM
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If for whatever reason you cant sell them on ebay, you guys could always make a bunch of figures and cards that work together and put them into one "custom" wave so everone can see them. they could also be used in trades and such. I think that would be pretty cool. :P

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  #8  
Old November 1st, 2006, 09:07 PM
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I've got no problem here. So long as participants know in advance that they are making customs for the purpose of selling on ebay and what the profit of those sales will go towards then it all seems on the up and up.
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  #9  
Old November 1st, 2006, 09:46 PM
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I have no problems selling stuff on ebay, but the only problem I see is A) what do you charge? I've sold single customs on there for 50+ bucks.(note, not for a while, and I've never sold anything I've posted here, I've always kept my ebay and forum stuff separate. Adds to the "never before seen" jazz I added to my listings) You're going to have to do it buyitnow for whatever someone agrees on. Different figures cost different things, and the profit is going to be different from figure to figure. I'm not really sure about the logistics of this. Who would sell it? Would a new ebay account be made?

I like the idea, it just seems to have a ton of room for headaches.

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  #10  
Old November 2nd, 2006, 03:53 AM
Rhydderch Rhydderch is offline
 
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As JJ said there are definitely logistics problems here. Each custom will sell for different prices and in some cases a well made custom might not even sell as well. One example would be the many, many ridiculously overpowered customs which sell for egregious amounts of money. In fact you might just find that any well made and well balanced customs will end up being sold to other Heroscapers here! :P

As for the idea itself I'm somewhat uncomfortable with it. I would have to refrain from participating in any contest or factory. I don't make my customs to be sold and I have no intention of changing that, unless I find I am unable to find a job and completely out of money when I graduate but then I'd probably go beg my parents to take me back in anyway :P

Although I will not be participating in the idea I can suggest a few things to keep in mind:

What figures will you use. Ideally you would want to find a cheap source of figures: either custom made or easy to get. Traditional "contest winners" such as Rackham figures or DnD rares are unfeasible. Rackham figures can run upwards of $50 and require shipment from France andpainting! Definitely make sure you do not try to start a factory based on expensive figures...

Will the figures be balanced to Barracks and Halls standards? As I mentioned above in many cases overpowered customs on Ebay sell better than balanced ones. It may be more profitable to make more powerful customs.

Will it have legal ramifications for Heroscapers. I know Truth has already OK'd the idea but I personally feel it would be better to put some distance between Heroscapers and any custom factory. Just my 2 cents there though.

If you make a contest what will be the prize and how do you ensure the prize does not cost more than the auction? It is hard to determine what you will make on Ebay. The recent War Elephant on Ebay which had a really neat custom figure and an awesome card ("borrowed" from Reaper) only sold for $12, barely enough to pay for an expansion pack. Actually if the card were not stolen from Reaper and if I had an Ebay account I probably would have bid on that darned Elephant!

Meanwhile I've seen overpowered customs with overused powers and dorky dirt-cheap DnD minis sell for over $50!

Is it worth it given the time and effort? Keep in mind your proposal is a community custom effort combined with its own Barracks/Halls revision process. On top of that someone has to obtain/make the figures you intend to sell. The item must then be sold and the money divied up. I do not think it will be a tremendous amount of work overall but it does seem like it could take a lot away from the individualized customs scene here if many people become involved. Personally I will be very sad if 3-4 of the top custom designers release one custom at a time between the lot of them so they can "perfect" the card and then sell it on Ebay.

There are other things to consider but I'm tired now and have a lot more work to do. Plus there are a few other posts I needed to make in other threads. I may post here again tomorrow.



which sold for only $12

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  #11  
Old November 2nd, 2006, 07:04 AM
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Euryon Euryon is offline
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Ok, I'll try and address some of the questions posed:

What do we charge?
Well this depends on how we sell the items. If they are one by one, we set a reserve equal to the expenditure, and allow a price war to begin (we hope). If we sell as a "Wave", then, I don't know, this would have to be heavily discussed. As a starting point, I'll suggest a reserve equal to the total expenditure (lets assume $20 for now), and hope a price war breaks out.

Who would sell it?
Something that needs to be discussed. What I can say for "fairness", is that it would be a long-standing trusted member of this site, someone who hasn't entered the competition, and someone willing to do so. If this takes off, we can start asking for volunteers, or approaching people who fit the criteria.

Would a new eBay account need to be made?
I shouldn't think so.

The problem of over-powered customs selling better than balanced customs.
This depends on whether we go for "saleability" or quality. If possible, I suggest going for both. As the idea is to produce 4 or 5 good quality customs, we could make something similar to "Orm's Return"; high powered heroes. As experienced custom makers here, i'm sure we could produce a set of 150+ point figures that are powerful, and therefore marketable, but not imbalanced. It's something to aim for, at least.

Being uncomfortable with the idea.
That is, of course, your perogative. As yet the proceeds may go to charity, the upkeep of this site, towards a prize from housemouse... I can understand people seeing ethical problems with custom sales; but this would be as legitimate a custom sale as there could be. However, it is optional, so it's completely up to each individual.

What figures will be used?
This all depends. I would be willing to part with any figure I currently own, from well painted Warhammer figures to Mage Knight. I'm expecting stipulations to be entrants must provide their own figure and send it to the centralized eBay account holder for sale, if they "win".

Out of interest - why is this referred to as a factory? It's a one-off competition, not a production line...

Will the figures be balanced to Barracks/Halls standards?
I would hope they would be of that calibre. This is something that needs more in-depth discussion following a concencus of approval. Halls/Barracks judges quality, and I don't believe quality and power are mutually exclusive. Jotun is powerful, Charos is powerful, Braxas is powerful - and they're all fairly balanced.

What are the legal ramifications?
I'm not sure what's referred to by "custom factory"; but I think it's an unfair name for this project. It implies mass-production and low-expenditure/high-income. This is meant to be a 1-off competition. Nought more. Legal ramifications - Truth has ok'd it. Hasbro want a disclaimer on all customs. Custom selling is legal on eBay. We need not advertise it as a Heroscapers product, nor put any link to heroscapers.com in the sale (unless Truth wanted it), all we would do is use heroscapers.com webspace to discuss and hold the competition. I think the legal issues with that are minimal...

If you make a contest what will be the prize and how do you ensure the prize does not cost more than the auction?
The prize will need to be discussed. Such insurance cannot be given other than placing a reserve on the item(s) that matches the expenditure of shipping goods to the centralized eBay account. If figures don't sell, then that's tough. The eBayer who put the items up would be able to keep the items as collateral against paying for listing the items. This is a low-risk occurence though, IMO.

Is it worth it given the time and effort?
Maybe, maybe not. The way I see it, the absolute worst case scenario see's a competition produce at least 4 or 5 top quality new customs which fail to sell on eBay, leaving 4 or 5 scapers out of pocket by 5 bucks, and a single scaper out of pocket by $10, but bonus 4 or 5 custom figures. Those are risks entrants would have to take, I suppose. On the flipside, you gain prestige, honour, and potentially money/heroscape goods.

The problem of a brain-drain/skills shortage.
We have had several custom competitions before. The one I entered, sure, I devoted a lot of my custom time to my entry, but I still churned out other customs. Every entrant would be allowed to enter of their own free will; if they chose to continue producing regular customs, thats up to them, if they wish to spend 24 hours a day on the competition custom, that, too, is their democratic right.

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  #12  
Old November 2nd, 2006, 07:25 AM
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Euryon Euryon is offline
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Some things that those interested in this idea can start discussing. Please answer the following questions:

1) Are you interested in entering a competition of this type?

2) Are you interested in supporting the competition in some other guise? (Judging, selling, helping tweak entrants, etc)

3) Where should the proceeds go? (Upkeep of site, charity, towards a prize for the winner(s), a combination?)

4) How many winners should there be? (4 or 5 as a ballpark figure)

5) Should the winners be sold individually or as a custom-wave?

6) If a wave, should it have a theme? (ie, desert theme, utgar theme, pirate theme, etc)

7) What sort of delimiters should be given to the competition? (ie, all entrants should be Large Unique Heroes, all entrants should be Beasts, etc)

8) What should the wave be called? ("Heroes of the Web" or something?)

Please post any other questions or queries you have that are relevant to this discussion, I will try to answer as best I can.

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