Just a question. I’ve looked all over for the answer and I couldn’t find it. I didn’t get SotM until 2013, and so I missed out on all the awesome Kickstarter fun, but I see it looks like Vengeance was an add-on on the Shattered Timelines Kickstarter. Anyone have any thoughts or official word?
Thanks
Shattered Timelines was the last SotM Kickstarter, as stated by >G.
Shattered Timelines was the last SOTM kickstarter.
Official word is that there will be no more Kickstarters for Sentinels expansions. Only new Greater Than Games properties. So you and I are in the same boat as far as missing Kickstarter fun.
Alrighty, thank you all for the quick replies.
So, Will they be open for preorders? Or are they going to ship the ones that were promised in the last kickstarter. I kickstarted Shattered Timelines, but not at the Vengance Level. Will I still be able to get it in a timely manner (Compared to the kickstarter people)?
I would just preorder with CoolStuff or one of the other online retailers.
I kickstarted Shattered Timelines, and I got my copy after the people who ordered from the online retailers. So I suspect that you will get it at most a few days after the Kickstarter backers if you order online.
I would definitely not preorder direct from Greater Than Games. That seems to be the slowest method of getting your game.
When >G lets you preorder this game, I would reccommend getting it from them. Even though it was only a three person team that shipped out all the Kickstarter orders, they did it in a very timely fashion, and mine even came with a handwritten thank you from Christopher. That means a whole lot more to me, than if someone from CoolStuff signed my package. (Although the thought would be nice)
Does this mean there will be no new extra/promo decks sold as part of the Vengeance campaign?
There is a promo Legacy which is his dad, backers of Shattered Timelines who pledged for Vengeance will be getting it as well.
This was an unfortunate circumstance that is unlikely to reoccur.
When >G received the shipment of Shattered Timelines, it completely filled their warehouse. That meant that they had no choice but to ship boxes as they packaged them, rather than being able to pack all of the Kickstarter orders and then ship them all at once.
At the same time, in order to make space available, they shipped games to distributors with a clear message that the games were not to be sold until a certain date. At least one distributor got that wrong and sold early.
>G admitted that they got this wrong and have taken steps to keep this from happening again, most notably moving into a new warehouse with greatly increased storage. They have also recently made their very first hire – a part-time person to help with packing and shipping.
As an aside, I was recently in St. Louis and had an opportunity to see the current-but-soon-to-be-past warehouse. Christopher showed off how he climbed 30 feet into the air each time he needed to get a box. Well, until the top level was empty. Then it was only 20 feet into the air. He packed boxes 12-16 hours a day for two weeks straight.
Last Christmas, I preordered enhanced edition from the website here. I got the game after I would have if I had ordered from an online store. I basically payed more to get the game later.
The same thing happened to people who preordered Shattered Timelines from the website this past March. This is on top of the people, like me, that supported the Kickstarter and got the game the game after the people that ordered online.
Personally, I am 0/2 ordering direct from Greater Than Games. I have seen no official announcement that their own preorders are going to go out before shipment to distributors. This was definatly not their prior policy, so I can not recommend direct ordering from the website.
I tried for about 2 months to get ST and IR from my FLGS. I finally gave up and ordered from >G. Got the order in a week.
@youperguy, yeah, as arenson9 described, they've made changes to their process to avoid those issues moving forward. They definitely heard everyone's concerns and I think they're doing a good job addressing them.
Rabit, I hope you are correct. They way it was before was frustrating.
Has there been an official announcement of these changes? I would like to see some official statement about when preorders get shipped, because before they were definitely shipped last.
@youperguy
We definitely understand the frustration from previous pre-order periods and are planning on fixing them going forward now that we're moving into a new, larger facility soon. Our intention with Vengeance is to have a pre-order period wherin people can order the game and also acquire an America's Greatest Legacy promo for doing so. We then intend to pack and ship out all of the Vengeance Kickstarter orders. After they are all sent out, we intend to pack and ship all of the Vengeance preorders. Only once *those* are complete do we intend to ship out distributor orders. Now, they say that no plan survives contact with the enemy (in this case the enemy is probably like typhoons or something), but that is the plan, and I don't forsee any major difficulties in its execution.
In that case is there a reason why Vengeance is not included as part of the same KS as GSF.
I am sure tons of people would like to pledge for both and possibly save on shipping.
As a lot of people didn't pledge Vengeance because of the extra shipping they had to pay?
EDit: Also not sure if its possible but I am sure if you did this ST Backers would appreciate if their order went out before the GSF ones that backed Vengeance later.
They don't want GSF corrupted by the success of Sentinels; they want to see exactly what the demand is for Galactic Strike Force, and for it to stand on its own two feet, and putting any SotM products into the mix goes against both those goals.
Right. They could easily hit the 200K if they also offered every SotM product as an add on, but that isn'y what they want. They could of also added in an SotM promo, but GtG said before that wouldn't happen.
@paul
Great to hear. I am glad for the change.
They could easily hit the 200K if they also offered every SotM product as an add on, but that isn'y what they want.
Makes sense. Why would they want $200k... ?
What strikes me odd, is the stretch goals seem to have SOTM influence in mind. Since I just checked the ST KS campaign had 10k stretch goals, while GSF has 20k stretch goal for 1 card (3 copies). The only main goal being the bigger models and box which people are most looking forward too might nit even be reached.
Also my point is with their current offering. Only people who pledged for Vengeance in the KS would benefit from combined shipping. International backers would most likely purchase Vengeance than GSF from their store if they had to choose shipping for one of them they probably go with Vengenace which is a much more established game than GSF. Not to mention Greatest Legacy is a promo card while GSF promos are up for purchase in the future.
I am not saying >G should offer all the extra like Scholar(Mini expansions), Expansions, etc. As I can imagine that a nightmare which is why playtesting has been moved to their store, but just offer a pre-order of Vengeance so people can still pre-order the game from them. Like a have a Vegeance + GSF for saved shipping, as it seems right now I am sure a lot of people are holding off on GSF and wait for reviews or until it hits their FLGS since its probably cheaper and avoid the heavy shipping.
The only reason why I see >G avoiding this is to avoid the charges from KS and the hassle of online add-ons.
Why sell Sentinels through Kickstarter when they can sell it at Gencon or Essen or direct from their webstore and avoid having to pay Kickstarter a cut?
We were talking about the GSF Kickstarter at that point, about how it would get a huge goose from cross-promoting with SotM stuff. I have to admit that I think the philosophical question of whether or not GSF can stand on its own is an interesting one, but if you could get $200k for GSF by tossing some SotM stuff into its Kickstarter, that seems like a no brainer to me.
Well, I'm not convinced that they'd sell enough extra copies of GSF in order to make up for the loss incurred by selling Sentinels products via Kickstarter instead of their online store.
Selling products through Kickstarter is much worse than selling products through our website, at conventions, to distributors (in terms of profit margin in the former case, and in terms of time spent packing and shipping in the later case). Things get even more out of hand when we have a crazy number of options - packing up thousands of orders with hundreds of different variations that all have the go out at roughly the same time is a massively time consuming enterprize that is prone to errors and customer disappointment with ship times, etc. This is why we are looking to move away from Kickstarter entirely going forward - we would much rather just fund games ourselves, release them when we are good and ready, and then sell them through our website and to distributors. For the time being, however, while we don't yet have the funding to do that, we plan to run occational Kickstarters for new projects. We plan to keep these Kickstarter campaigns as streamlined and straight forward as possible in terms of reward options while still providing bonus cool free things for the fans who support us. Going forward, we simply can't afford to have entire months (like this last March) that are entirely wasted for game production.
I hope that helps explain it!
Paul thanks for the reply.
Yea I guessed why the shortened items. The streamlined process definitely helps I can see.
Would you mind answering the following questions too.
Without the 100k stretch goal what does the current box hold? (Will it hold future expansions?)
Are miniatures gonna be sold outside of KS?
Are promo cards gonna be printed with the GSF printing or separate printing, since I was told promo cards arent KS exclusive and are offered as a promo pack in the future.
Mind if you can comment on the higher stretch goals for the promo cards compared to ST KS. As I notice they seem quite high for a relatively new IP. (Just curious not saying not to.)
Might be better if you could answer them in this thread, I will copy the questions there too:
https://greaterthangames.com/forum/topic/galatic-strike-force-kickstarter-discussion-3545
And for everyone's reference, Paul answered these here.