"Kickstarters and time to Delivery" Topic

How much does the apparently long average wait for delivery of miniatures items affect your support of Kick Starters?

In an ideal world you could walk down the street to a source, pay, and take the item home. Realistically, if there is a long time ( 3 or more months) from KS finish to delivery of items does it affect your decision to support?

A) I will wait forever for my items! Even a year isn't that long.

B) You know, 3 months isn't that long – I put my money down.

C) It better be something I would maim somebody to get; but they better be on time!

D) Really? By that time there will be other sources I can get within a week. I may put my money in the KS bucket but I will be impatient to get my toys ASAP and will loudly complain if there are any delays, maybe if there isn't any delays.

E) No thanks, I can proxy happily until it becomes available retail.

F) I do not participate in KS's! Evil JuJu!

G) What is a Kick starter?

H: Other: [Fill in the blank]

I: Not a miniatures player

I'd prefer buying stuff that I can actually get now. I only tend to do crowd funding for artsy fartsy stuff or for people I have personal trust in.

Well, I trust Reaper and Iron Wind Metal (to give two examples) to get their stuff to me in relatively accurate timelines but still, months is a long time to wait for some people. I see your answer as an "H" perhaps?

It depends on the cost/benefit ratio. The Reaper Bones kickstarters delivered ridiculously good value for the money you invested. For about $100 USD you got about $350 USD worth of figures. That kind of value is worth waiting for (their CAV Bones are late, but I'm not worried about it as they delivered part of the kickstarter already.

In other cases, it's a new company, and without the kickstarter, they wouldn't be able to bring the company to life. With these cases you need to do your homework to see if their plan is realistic and if they have the talent to do what they say. In those cases, I am willing to wait, but that depends on their level of communication. If they keep in touch, letting backers know what is going on, and what they say makes sense and is reasonable, I can be very patient.

It's only when the company is shady, or is terrible at communicating updates with backers, or tells me things that make no damn sense that I get impatient (I'm looking at you, Robotech Tactics).

You have to remember that Kickstarter isn't a preorder service. It was never meant to be. If you simply must have the item tomorrow, Kickstarter really isn't for you.

I give money to kickstarters for the price break and in some cases I have waited well over a year, almost two. I do my research before I back the program. I've never lost my money. The great delays are from kickstarting brand new businesses. I'm willing to do that. Most of them deliver on time or even early!

Three months isn't long. In some instances is outright wrong.

A)

i'm currently waiting for a couple of KS's that are about a year late from their estimated delivery date . both companies have been very good at communicating so i'm happy to wait . one that was over a year late was very bad at letting us know what was going on , that was much less enjoyable but it did eventually arrive .
a long delay doesn't bother me , i have 3 to 5 years worth of stuff to paint sitting in my closet .

I purchased a huge amount of laser cut terrain from Impudent Mortal's Warehouse District Gaming Terrain kickstarter by Walt Langhans this past spring. Not only did he deliver on time, but he also responded to e-mails and questions promptly. I am thrilled with my purchase even though I was initially extremely concerned about supporting a kickstarter after reading a lot of negative comments about kickstarters. I e-mailed Walt on numerous times over several weeks before committing any money until I was completely satisfied with the information he provided. I also asked a lot of questions of Walt and expressed my concerns. Though it all, Walt was professional and took the time to answer my questions clearly and in detail. He has been a champion as far as I am concerned and I would support any further kickstarters that Walt put forth if it was something that was useful to me. This district warehouse had all kinds of terrain that I was looking for over months of searching. I am currently building and painting it up and look forward to using it for my games.

Impudent mortal….Ks was great! On time I recall
Mantic deadzone took about a year but they did well communicating
Mercs Ks……still waiting, over 1 year….communication recently not so good but still optimistic.
Super dungeon explore ks, I messed up providing my work email… which blocked their store site which was were points were spent…it was confusing.

That's my experience thus far. I guess I'm A…

I've been in 3 or 4 kickstarters. All were successfully completed and all were varying degrees of late. None overly so. Personally, I can wait until the product hits store shelves and buy it then. I don't need to pre-order/kickstarter anything.

I supported an earlier Impudent Mortal after seeing their products in person at a convention. It gave me confidence that their buildings were of high quality and that they could produce what they were proposing.

It really depends, for Reaper Bones and Robotech I'll wait a long, long while. Other projects make or break my support on delivery time, but unless the KS is an experienced creator, I'm not putting much stock in the delivery times quoted by new KS creators… So it's generally depends more on trust, product, quality, materials, quantity, price, etc.

In some circumstances it's just that I can a similar product for a similar price right now, instead of having to wait many months. So if your product doe something unique I'm more inclined to back it (but I'm certainly not backing everything I'm slightly interested in).

Backed ~30 game related KS.

A/B

I would expect to support something unique that has enough work done on it, and/or done by a company with a good track record that I can expect that it will complete. Unrealistic goals or timeline is a red flag.

My lead mountain is so high that exact delivery time is not an issue

I have supported 4 miniatures kickstarters in the last 6 months – nothing delivered yet because the schedules were realistic

John

G.

I backed the All Quiet on the Martian Front KS and after over a year am still waiting on the last small box of stuff from it. But since I have already received over $1,200 USD worth of product for my $400 USD investment I am not making a big deal about it. I still have yet to begin unboxing and building all the second wave stuff anyway!

If they become over a year late, and sell stuff to public before KS folks, they really should be banned for 5 years from doing another.

I have a few that are past a year late.

Most are good, many are new and get over their heads, but it seems the established ones make large messes.

Walt was mentioned, great fellow.

We he sees the KS reach goal he starts making stuff, so he gets stuff out on time.

For games if they will not let you see the rules, of a mini game Run Away.

All the bad ones, share that issue.
The rules are done but you do not need to see them, we have pros working on them.
Rules were horrid with huge game breaking holes.

After 75 I am very picky these days, too many go back on promises or say that is not what we meant after saying it and seeing a rise in pledges.

Some great stuff but a lot of crap these days.

Oh if you screwed me on one and I see you start another, I will pledge a buck to let folks know what you have done to others in the past.

Oh Walt has a new one starting soon!

THey are almost always late. Sometimes I lose interest by the time it arrives. Sometimes the stuff doesnt look as good as it did on screen. I'm done with these unless something incredible pop up.

We've done 6 now, and they've all delivered early. But then we don't promise the earth…