"Age of Tyrants Sf 6mm Kickstarter" Topic

Age of Tyrants shows the universe developed by Void but in 6 mm. The project was announced a long time ago but for a year now, it is making great strides including a kickstarter announced for January 14 and in which I will be a happy pledger.The world is made up of four human factions : an US army, some Romans, a space UN and a technologically advanced faction. As for Epic, you will find masses of infantry, tanks and I hope some air units.
Meanwhile, there are some painted masters to discover.

Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

Thinking very seriously about getting in on this one! :)

Glad you like them my friend!. (smile)

Amicalement
Armand

This and Polyversal coming as well, good time for 6mm.

Last time I saw AoT come up some guy was attacking Tango though.

According to the site the KS will begin next Friday (the 21st).

Well… always is hunting time to attack me my friend… (smile)… but… I'm glad you enjoyed it too!….

Amicalement
Armand

Kickstarter got moved to the 21st so we could get some advertising on BoW.

link

Now LIVE!

Prices are in WOW.
Before shipping 8.5 dollars a tank.

Hero 12 dollars.

Very GW style in pricing.

Looks nice.
Anyone for Chronopia in 10mm???

Binky says "OINK"

Having looked at their site and listened to the Beasts of war interview I am very interested in this game. Like the design of most of the units, but will wait and see what the air units look like.

Like the sound of the game play certainly does promote combined arms with alternating moves depending on command structure. I hope its more in depth than just adding modifiers to die rolls.

I am not familiar with the background story and the previous games, but Mark stated in the interview that it was "Hard" sci-fi?? I see it as more in-line with gothic-fantasy sci-fi?

Also the tanks are huge and looking at the 50mm bases these miniatures would be more compatible with 10mm than 6mm?

Adrian

Interesting looking pieces … as far as 10 vs 6mm … many 6mm IMO are a bit small next to their 6mm Infantry, IMO … so …

Here we go again. It's funded and now they're talking about all the stretch goals they have planned. How about bring out the game first, using the funded KS, and not get caught up in the usual KS stretch goal add-on frenzy that's been the curse of KS?

Don't you want more units? Special hero tanks? Big stompy CLAUs? Scout units? Aircraft? The vast majority of the work is already done for the stretch goals. We wanted people to be sure of what they were getting. There's a lot of finished digital models ready to go to print.

The tanks are MASSIVE and match the size of some of DZC tanks (50mm in length). I don't think they are matched for level of detail anywhere. I am biased though. I'm a modeller on AoT.

So the prices are based off GW and Drop Zone?

That explains much of the issue.

You might want to look at 6mm makers, as that is the scale you claim to be.

From the comments on the KS a very well paid modeller, as even at 8.50 to 12 USD a tank, there is no profit they claim.

That we are bad folks for wanting value to go with 0% loan, is implied more than once.

Perhaps trying to get the KS backers to fund every thing at once they should have priced it to get the base game out, and at a retail price that would not make folks run away.

But thank you you have pushed me over the line, my little pledge was just removed.

Will not post about AOT any more, better things are coming.

Err I didn't say the prices were based off anything. Sad to hear you are leaving us.

He's right though. The kickstarter may have funded, but it's struggling. The prices are too high for what you get. Even at retail I can see it struggling at what they want to charge.

The kickstarter itself has been poorly handled from the start too. It's like they had only heard of kickstarter through a third party but never actually did any of their own research into how it works. No gameplay videos, no images of stretch goals, all the unlocks are add-ons you need to pay for (except some cheap cardboard chits), hell, even at the £100.00 GBP pledge level you don't get a printed rulebook. There's no value to be had, and if we're going to be honest, that's how you draw in pledgers.

It even took a week to convince them to put up army bundles (at no discount mind you) just so people had an idea of what they should be aiming towards in terms of army composition. That kind of blind ignorance is not what you expect of someone who knows what they are doing.

My guess at this point is that the kickstarter will succeed, but the game will fail. Even if it manages to scrape together a small community, GW will decimate it with the re-release of Epic (if they actually go through with it).

I'm not complaining mind you, I don't have a dog in this fight. I was kinda interested in the game, but not enough to put down more than £50.00 GBP, and certainly not enough to be upset at the seeming ineptitude of the creators. Saying that, I do think it's a shame that the game seems destined for an early grave, I actually think the setting is kinda interesting (which isn't something I can say about a lot of other recent properties).

Thanks AdmiralCrackbar for the comments. I'll pass your feedback along to the powers that be.

We've just put in a load of new stuff for people to look at. Hero tanks and infantry for all factions and CLAUs (Big Robots with pilots, kinda like a Landmate or a GW Dreadnaught).

Hey guys,

Just to say, we've unlocked some more heroes and CLAU units! :)

I can see there are some questions here re: pricing, I hope this message from elsewhere on TMP might help out a bit.

"As for our pricing, we understand it's a little different to what perhaps people are used to in the 6mm industry. We've got some overheads to cover and we are not hiding that fact. It's important for us to pay our sculptors, our designers, our artists and manufacturers fairly, to create the best products we can; whilst making it acceptable for our eventual retail and distribution chain to buy at a standard discount.

For many of the currently trading 6mm manufacturers, the latter point is not of a huge concern for them, so they naturally give you guys the margin that we would be giving our trade routes. That means they secure sales with end consumers, instead of trade accounts.

For us to grow the game, we must go through trade. The overwhelming advice we've had from retailers and distributors is that KS is too often used as a platform for excessive discounts and therefore, not a product they necessarily want to purchase.

Please also understand that £20.00 GBP GBPk is our funding goal. We've hit that and we are funded. We are starting to unlock stretch goals (a few quite early) and the eventual aim is to add more and more as free content. Once we start really making headway, that will absolutely be the case.

I hope that helps a bit and please, if you do have any questions, concerns, queries or feedback, please do let us know. We're nothing if not a communicative bunch."
Cheers!
Rob

You've unlocked more things to buy (and without hitting any stretch goals, making those seem a little disingenuous), but you're still not offering any real value to your customers. I mean come on, you don't even offer a printed manual below the £200.00 GBP pledge level. That's ridiculous. If I purchased a £100.00 GBP boxed game I would at the very least expect it to contain a printed manual and starter two factions. You literally cannot get that in your kickstarter as it currently stands.

I think, as a hobbyist first, gamer second, one of the things that did attract me to this project was the idea that the tanks/vehicles would be resin. You can get an amazing amount of detail in a resin model and it is typically very easy to work with. But resin isn't cheap. Anyone who's bought a Forge World model or a McVey Studios 28mm figure will tell you that resin often costs a premium price.

Now you can certainly argue that it becomes cost prohibitive if you're trying to build a massive collection and there are many other game systems and model ranges out there to choose from that offer metal and plastic miniatures. But the aesthetic (Wayne England is one of my favorite artists), along with the prospect of very high-quality, detailed resin models makes this KS for me. In the end, I don't think the pricing is vastly different from other resin models that I've bought.

@AdmiralCrackbar – I'll pass the feedback on. I'd really like to help you further, but at this stage, I'm afraid I can't offer anything or change how it is for now. It might be that something comes in further down the line.

@DavePauwels – Yep, we could have done metal – but we know that it would end up being *shipping* prohibitive instead of *manufacturing* prohibitive. Equally, for larger elements, metal ends up with pitting, sink holes, etc. The resin is gooooorrrrgeous as well. Top quality stuff – we've sent out a lot of samples to a lot of different people and the responses have all been positive. I'll be honest, there were some initial comments regarding miscasting, but that has allowed the casters to respond to feedback and make changes to the way the moulds are made to avoid it.

Let me start by saying that I wish you all success in this KS I think you have nice models. However, I have looked through the KS and there are a few things that confuse me about this game and the presentation. It is presented as a 6mm mass army game but I think 10-15mm company-level sci-fi is a more accurate label because:

- Looking at the scale comparisons, the armoured vehicles are out of scale for 6mm and more in scale with 15mm armour.

- I haven't seen scale comparisons of the infantry but their comparison in size to the armour makes them look closer to 10mm.

- The size of forces in a standard game is a company with four platoons and maybe some support. This doesn't sound mass battle to me, it is about the same size of game as company level WW2 game. This is not a problem, but the appeal of 6mm is to put a lot of troops in a reasonable space.

- It's been mentioned before but the prices are more in-line with other 10mm and 15mm resin manufacturers than 6mm metals.

- Lastly, the infantry, for some reason, are lined up in a phalanx style deep formation similar to ancient battles. Perhaps there is fluff reason for this and I know it's sci-fi but in order to suspend disbelief wouldn't they reasonably spread out and grab cover.

I hope my comments don't come off as overly harsh, and I want to see new miniature lines succeed. Some of your models are very nice and would serve well in my collection. I just want to understand the design decisions and the incongruity between how you are pitching your product and what I perceive from the information available.

Agree I think they are trying to make a 8mm game and create a new scale, those infantry are not 6mm.

The phalanx guys are mostly the Junkers. They have a very Roman feel to them. They like hand to hand.

The vehicles are pretty big because many of them can take at least 2-4 stands worth of troops.

I haven't had a chance to see a comparison between the Age Of Tyrants and Epic, but GW Epic 40K weren't really 6mm either IMO.

Price wise, the vehicles are definitely in the realm of the bigger GW Epic figures, like the land raider. Here are some comparisons that show their sizes. The Viridian tank is just as big as a land raider. The Junker tank is much bigger.

Detail wise, I think the Age of Tyrants has GW beat by alot.

I asked about the size of the infantry over on Tactical Command and they were kind enough to post the following picture of one of the Viridian standard troops

Good enough for me, thats the same size as most of my 6mm stuff, I'm in.

Less than a day left on the Kickstarter. Go get some.

Thanks for all the positive comments guys, your support has been fabulous, I am very grateful. Into the last day now!
All the best
John