I played it at GenCon and of course purchased a copy after a fantastic demo. Kudo’s to the crew running the booth.
One of the things that was discussed was the potential for future releases for the game. One recommendation I have for future products takes a after a move by Fantasy Flight Games…Print on Demand card expansions. They’ve (FFG) done this with their 40K card game and I think it would offer an opportunity to push out future products if the economics of producing large print runs ever becomes an issue. I offer this suggestion because I think this game has the potential to be one of those classic games that has a long run of fantastic expansions…and I want to see it succeed.
Totally didn’t know the answer to this either but looked it up the other day after reading this. What I have gathered from my one minute of research is people will order, or “demand”, an expansion online then the company would print and ship it to the recipient. But that sounds more like the best thing to do for a booster pack type deal, something they aren’t really considering right now. But I am going on a limb to assume that they might be doing that for people who order a deck online to replace anything they have damaged beyond use.
We are actually considering doing a kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com) to raise money for our first expansion some time this fall. That way, people can pledge money to help us cover printing costs, and will then get the expansion (or various other super awesome prizes which are currently secret) in return.
The concept behind “Print on Demand” or POD is that the vendor doesn’t produce a large stock pile of the item, cards in this case (but it could be books, etc.). They design the product, advertise it, and when a customer wants it they produce it (or use another service provider to print the product. ala LULU) specifically to fulfill the specific order. I’ve purchased several books and the aforementioned cards from FFG via POD. In the case of the 40K card game the expansion was more than just a booster (granted they weren’t a large number of cards); it offered a new squad of marines and a new brood of genestealers to expand/change the basic set up for the game.
At GenCon it was mentioned that potential SotM expansions might already be in the works or on the drafting board, and any future products would depend on how sales for the game turn out. I offered the suggestion of POD as a more affordable means for expanding the games range, which of course could vary in size from booster sized expansions or larger…governed by the economics of the situation.
We are discussing that with the printer now and looking at our options. The kickstarter would probably be in the $20K range, but that is subject to change based on info from the printer, etc
If the expansion and other super awesome prizes will be given away then I will definately give some money to the kickstarter. Because I would like to see this game thrive, and doing my best to spread the word.
And the only things we know for sure about the Kickstarter are that 1) anyone who pledges at least the price of the expansion will get a copy of it and 2) there will be many truly fabulous prizes for sponsors
Is there a possiblity of 3)People who pledge so much can also submit a Hero idea and a few hero card ideas for that Hero? I for one have ideas that roam through my head, I just never take the time to actually do anything about it.
Generally speaking, we are prevented from accepting ideas for characters/cards/etc by our lawyers, who are full of legal concerns about all sorts of things when it comes to intellectual property :). However! It is quite likely that anyone willing to contribute a sufficient sum toward the expansion will be able to get their likeness in the art on a card!
If it was contributed as part of a contest, where all participants formally waive rights to their submitted ideas, they might be more accommodating. And if the winner for “best idea” (or something) gets their idea created and their image on the card, you’d probably get a lot of interesting submissions.
So you can’t really accept any ideas as far as characters, character designs, cards, etc, but what about a gameplay mechanic? I just had the idea in my head for a “hero character” that is not a target (has no HP). While at first it would seem to remove challenge to have a character that can’t be incompacitated, some villains have alternate win conditions such that the heroes need not be incompacitated, and the rules could simply be updated such that no hero targets in play constitute a villain win. Types of not-target characters could be one that simply enhances other players such as a character that represents a country cheering on the rest of the heroes (think something like a playable benificial envionment deck or such), or it could even be a deck full of “hero minions,” such as a character representing a village being attacked, with various villiager cards which then become multiple “heroes” for the player.
The same legal principle goes for mechanics as well, and it’s far less likely we’d have any sort of mechanic contest than we would a character contest. The character contest seems like a possibility legally with waiver of copyright, though I don’t see us having one any time soon as we have the next four expansions pretty much planned out. We have a lot of really exciting things in store!
My wife and I discussed this over the weekend, here is what I would like to see.
Semi regular “packs” with any three of the four - 1-2 Heroes, 1 villain, 1 environment. So, 1 of each, or 2 Heroes, and a villain.
Super team packs - 4 - 5 Heroes.
Rogues Gallery packs - 3 Villains.
I’d easily pay 10 - 20 bucks for an expansion like this, which would be about a MTG starter deck sized box. Depending on the number of things included.
Also, you need to release some kind of storage solution for it! I’d shell out bucks for an official storage solution for the base game, with room for expansions. I currently have everything hair-banded up in the base game box, which works, but I’d love someting pretty.
Our “standard” expansions will be 4 villains, 2 heroes and 2 environments for something in the $15-$20 range. Printing bigger print runs like this lets us keep the cost-per-deck down, and our gameplay experience and much of the feedback we’ve gotten indicates that what the game really needs (at least at first) is more villains to challenge the heroes. In the base game, there are really 2 “intro” villains (Blade and Omnitron) and 2 “regular” villains (Voss and Dawn) in terms of difficulty. We want to make sure that we add additional interesting challenges for players. In terms of heroes, the 10 heroes in the base set give players a ton of options in terms of game play styles, and most people find a few heroes they really enjoy and stick to those. We want to make sure that any future heroes we add have unique and interesting play styles, so we don’t want to release too many.
Anyhow, that’s our reasoning for the layout of the “standard expansions”. That having been said, we have various other types of expansions planned. We’d also very much like to release a better storage solution for the base game for those who are interested.
So does that mean Voss and Dawn are like “normal mode” and we might be seeing some “hard mode” villains in the near future?? Also I totally agree with you, I want more villains way more than heroes right now.
Well, all Villains have a “hard mode” currently: Advanced Mode. Personally, I’d like to see a lot more discussion on this forum about “Advanced Mode” play, as it’s really where the challenge in the game lies. Also, it’s where many unexpected things can happen.
