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  #37  
Old November 17th, 2022, 12:34 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

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.

Last edited by bmon; November 17th, 2022 at 01:19 PM. Reason: better clarity
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  #38  
Old November 17th, 2022, 01:04 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

I did read everything but there is all my points:

Good :
Figure Sculpt
New General
Risk to update the gameplay with 2 life figures, flying without the text
Backward compatibility
Terrains
Price (for what is propose, the price is ok)


Wrong :
The platform, using Haslab instead of Kickstarter, make the project more confidential and functionnalities are missing

Excluding some world region because don't want to spend few dollars (compare to the 2M budget) to make french translation for example. When you look big project on kickstarter (look at a CMON), you can look the community tab and you will see that targeting 8000 with mainly US is quite impossible

The haslab page. Its bad, even with the update, its bad. It don't reflect the game, the videos don't have any montage or rythmic. The components are not illustrated, the exemple for terrain mounting is cheap, show a big terrain, don't show a piece by piece build for something too cheap, yoi wait seconds on the gif to just see a quite flat terrain without jungle and castle. They could have used multiple sets. They should have show what is heroscape, what is the community, photo of tournament, etc, etc. Show that is not launching a game but continuing a game and there is already organised play

Targeting : they targeted only core fans. There last message show it, they said "once launched we worked hard to gain the support of every single backer who pledged". But NO, they should have work to have the support from those which didn't back yet. And lot of stuff reflect this: their bad video and explanation of wtf is this game and how it play. The news only on discord (problem of haslab, no actus pannel). All the last news focusing on showing new cards, yeah we wanted some card, it's cool to have a peak of original power and interaction. But base the new only on that it will not catch new player which want to see globally how it work, so few example at the beginning of the campaign were enough

Miss of tiers. A lower entry tier with few terrain like AoTP and few figures at 50/80€ and then bigger tier with everything was needed. How player with low money can enter heroscape like that. Personnaly I pledged more than 60 boardgame crowfunding and I really rarely spent more than 200€ when I don't know the game/the editor

Miss add on and commons. Heroscape is a game where everybody play differently, some want 4 squad of each common, others, it depend of the design. Some want lot of terrain, etc
Heroscape is designed for add on. We should have been able to add more terrain if we want. Should have been some common hero/squad that we could add multiple of thel if we wanted. The objective should so have been 2M$ and not 8000 backers.
And some other gamer use the terrain of heroscape for their game. They should have been take in account

The no compatibility with C3V/SoV. They say there is some legal problem. But I think its bull****, a power design inside their own game can't really be legally a problem. They could have create their own set of figures matching with the cards and tweaks the cards if needed, but keep spirit and synergy of those. For me ignoring those figure its ignoring more than the half of heroscape life. It's ignoring what made classic heroscape survive and say to players "yes you can play with C3V/SoV, but tweak them yourself, we don't care now of what you made.". I hate this design philosophy. This points it's the one which made me really hesitate to pledge.

The absence of transparency. Lot of the communication are blurry, with mysteries and a cult for that like "ohoh, I can't say that ". How do you want us to trust anything when there is no transparency, no explanation of why france & canada are exclude? Why so much time to explain the Valkrill stuff, the historical problem? Etc. Too many questions were essential and not answer and way too late.

The too big attachment to the Lore and the "Toy marketing". AoA have been marketed as a toy with only figure visual really polished. All what make heroscape a game was amateur, not clear, not explain, hide somewhere inside the discord. For the Lore, the fact to remove Valkrill because it didn't fit the Lore...really, who care? Heroscape lore is not important during game session. So why lore impact gameplay? It's not a narrative game, the selling point is really that "you can play everything", that's all, the story exist only to justify "why there is everything", but don't need to go really deep, major part of the community don't care. I am pro "gampeplay first", sacrifice a gameplay for a detail of the lore it's really wrong for me

The community itself. I have been really disapointing of all people searching excuse for AH when there was obvious problems (example, the absence of france), everybody wanting to take there defense, saying Hasbro is the problem. But how do you know hasbro is the problem? As there is no transparency and real communication, we don't know. The fact that even if their is red flag every body is eager to have heroscape back and I have seing a lot of message saying that if we don't take multiple set of AoA we are not true heroscaper or whatever. But me I don't want to jump on every possibilty to revive the game, if the product propose have too much red flag, I don't want to pledge. And not every body have 1500€ to put into a game.


The presence of exclusive figure. This is a big red flag. Having exclusive gameplay element on crowfunding its really disrespectful of future player. It make me really feel like "we only want our game to be fund, after we don't really care if it sustain and if new player come and can get everything". Especially when knowing the campaign will not be worldwide

Strech goal on selling arguments. Before the campaign, the figure which hyped me the most were the V2/3 of the Sotm heroes. The fact that biggest teasers are strech goal is a big ethic problem.

Trying to change cards layout. Seriously I just never get the point of the change, change of shape and of layout afterward. It doesn't make any sense for me to have spend so much time on it, saying it will open new design space but never show what it will really open as design space.

The ugly 3D on card &photos. There is a beautiful painted set from Gencon, why don't use those photo instead of the bad coloring. Sorry for the artist which worked on that, but your materials and lighting are wrong to replicate the painting figure feeling.

Bad marketing. I have been at Essen, biggest european boardgame event. There was only 2 printed on A4 sheet paper indicating the project exist. Seriously? No table to test?
Not any playtest video or articles. The news on discord make all of this comic to have a news saying "hey, there is a tik tok which speak about us", yeah? Cool? I hope there are tik tok advertising when tik tok is one of the biggest media, it shouldn't be so an event, just normal into a marketing strategy

Speak about the after. It come with the miss of transparency, really we didn't had any peak of the future , the packaging, the price when release. We spoke about a live game, the planning for the future are really important


There is the end of my analyse. I remind that I critics work and not the people behind the work, I don't know them and maybe they had good intention. I only judge work and idea. Sorry for being harsh, english is not my native language and I have not the subtility to turn my comment in a better way.
I really hope they will be an other try with all my red flag fixed. Especially :
- worldwide
-c3v/sov compatibility
- remove exclusive
- use kickstarter
- better marketing/transparency

Last edited by Zeldarck; November 17th, 2022 at 01:26 PM. Reason: Fix typo
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  #39  
Old November 17th, 2022, 01:07 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

Quote:
Originally Posted by bmon View Post
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.
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  #40  
Old November 17th, 2022, 01:12 PM
GamerDad74 GamerDad74 is offline
 
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

@ 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.
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  #41  
Old November 17th, 2022, 01:14 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

Quote:
Originally Posted by IAmBatman View Post
Just to put it on record: I personally would not (and will not, in the unlikely event it becomes relevant) support another crowdfunding effort from Hasbro for Heroscape (or, really, for anything). If they want to invest in bringing Heroscape back at some point, I'd consider supporting the official product then (probably just terrain), but I'm not interested in supporting the return of "official" product with more zeal than they do themselves and won't be going down that road again.

As far as I'm concerned, Hasbro is a non-entity when it comes to Heroscape.
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.


Thanks GamerDad74

Last edited by Zeldarck; November 17th, 2022 at 01:30 PM.
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  #42  
Old November 17th, 2022, 02:56 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

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.
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  #43  
Old November 17th, 2022, 03:09 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

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
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  #44  
Old November 17th, 2022, 03:31 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

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.
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  #45  
Old November 17th, 2022, 04:34 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

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:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anitar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper
Quote:
Originally Posted by Anitar
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper
Quote:
Originally Posted by pluckywoodjr
do you know if ppl are aloud to recreate the minis like from clockwork or dawnraiders
Please just don't start a "book" thread or something on 'Scapers, for now. But nobody can stop you from playing with your own games how you want in your own home.
...For now? Why not?
That's an excellent question. I would ask it myself, if I were you. For now please let the answer be, "because I said please." That request did not originate from me.
The "for now" part is incredibly suspect... Did that part also not originate from you?
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...
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  #46  
Old November 17th, 2022, 04:44 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

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.

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  #47  
Old November 17th, 2022, 05:01 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

30 figures to 71 is slight?

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  #48  
Old November 17th, 2022, 05:14 PM
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Re: AoA:Vanguard Campaign Postmortem

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Originally Posted by nyys View Post
30 figures to 71 is slight?
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.

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