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I will say, if you backed this game because of the tiles, rather than owning high quality minis of predators, aliens and marines, you have something wrong with you

Really, I mean that

Lord forbid someone backed a KS for a board game and actually wanted a good game out of the project...

 CptJake wrote:
Lord forbid someone backed a KS for a board game and actually wanted a good game out of the project...

Inb4 "game over, man, game over!" post. Oh crap... I do agree that this was advertised IIRC (at least the core box) as a board game so having varied tiles is a reasonable expectation.

Did they accidentally delete anything important when they "cleaned up" their forums?

From BGG.

Seems the colonists set out three crates every few feet in an attempt to break up the Alien rush.

Still, as the corridor contents seem to have an impact in the rules (if theyare infested or not) I can see the 3 crate looks as a quick visual shorthand. (I'll admit that that is the benefit of the doubt to a high level...)

Is it AVP or Gears of War? Waist high cover everywhere!

 warboss wrote:
Is it AVP or Gears of War? Waist high cover everywhere!

the crates do not provide any cover - in fact nothing does.

Oh, well...um..that makes it a tad bit worse then to have it spammed everywhere.

Those crates look absolutely crap.

The other thing i noticed on the unboxing video is blank space on the cardboard frames. Surely they should have optimized the frames better evn if it is just for more tokens. Wasted space is wasted opportunity

On the plus side, this is looking more Space Hulk than SedWars.

 Pacific wrote:
I will say, if you backed this game because of the tiles, rather than owning high quality minis of predators, aliens and marines, you have something wrong with you

Really, I mean that

There are tiles? o.O news to me, I was only buying it for the minis.

But yeah, looking at the tiles in that pic that was posted, thats some really lazy design work...

looking forward to the minis more myself, do they still have plans for making it an outright table top war game?

cerealkiller195 wrote:
looking forward to the minis more myself, do they still have plans for making it an outright table top war game?

They need to in order to fulfill their KS commitments to backers.

well it looks like I've been ejected from the facebook group.

Jarek, responding to concerns that nobody has yet reported receiving their boxset even though shipping started 13 days ago, pointed out that there are only about 400 backers in the group.

I suggested that if that number is correct, then by only updating facebook (as they have done recently) rather than sending out KS updates or using the email database they have thanks to the pledge manager, they are essentially keeping 80% of their backers in the dark.

and now I can't see the group at all. it would appear that they can't cope with having the truth pointed out.

Who ever would have thought that a company that has the KS page taken down, in part to avoid folks asking hard questions and in part folks pointing out uncomfortable truths would then go on to ban people from their facebook group.



I get closer and closer to committing to selling off everything I eventually get from them just because I really want no part in anything Prodos related.

to be honest, I'm not all that surprised. If anything is a surprise it's that they took this long, but seriously, I've never typed anything that might be considered offensive on there (unlike many of the fanboys who remain) and while I've asked hard questions, and pointed out telling facts, I've always been fair, and even defended them on occasions when others tried to make ridiculous demands or statements.

Their inability to understand how important the customer / business relationship is, is remarkable.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
so my guess is that they've been telling porkies again, and in fact they haven't shipped out 550+ units so far. They don't like it when you get too near the truth, and so by inference, I was indeed close to the truth. They are intentionally keeping as many backers in the dark as they can, and the only credible reason for that is that they have something to hide.

I'm glad I was one of the 51.

Hmm... well, retail orders were/are due at the end of the month - be interesting to see if my FLGS gets the pre-order in...

It'll be telling what their priorities are if stores get their supplies because they're incoming money whereas backers who pledged over a year ago are outgoing costs.

 warboss wrote:
It'll be telling what their priorities are if stores get their supplies because they're incoming money whereas backers who pledged over a year ago are outgoing costs.

you say "if" like there's a chance that stores won't get theirs as a priority.

I suspect this is the very issue that Prodos are battling with right now - that they have committed (whether through choice or because Fox have forced their hand on pain of huge financial penalty or whatever) to provide stock to retail in time for a 30th June launch while at the same time have shipped to backers before then. It's pretty easy to assume they can't do both - they almost certainly don't have enough time and/or manpower to get it all done in time.

for sure, given that quandary (if it exists), they'll end up servicing the retailers before coming back to finish the backer order - they really don't have much choice. What is annoying is that they got themselves into this mess in the first place. At some point in time they signed a contract with Fox. It seems to me that at that point, they should have stressed the importance of dealing with backers first (at least making the units needed for backers first and setting them aside before starting to make retail, if not shipping all of them), and setting that requirement in stone. That they now may be dealing with retail ahead of backers (I fail to see how they have a choice at this point), shows that they failed to protect their relationship with backers in that initial contract. Either such a clause was never put in, or it was not robust enough to withstand scrutiny, That's entirely their fault (though I'll accept they were probably a little naive in their dealings with Fox)

So once again they are caught between a rock and a hard place, and probably can't even communicate the fact since it will seriously piss off one side or the other.

Pretty much all their problems likely boil down to poor contract negotiations though when you think about it.

Anyone in here got their 1st Wave AvP stuff yet then?

Surely its easy to ship to retailers? Its only the actual boxed game isnt it?

Orders arnt hard to pick if there is only 1 item on the order.

Pick/pack/ship isnt hard and with only 1 item it is very fast.

yep you're right, but you're assuming they have enough boxed games made up. They don't. They have the individual components, but they need to pick/pack each boxed game, and then shrink wrap it - that's a time consuming business - not a hard one, but it's time consuming.

They talked about ramping up to production of around 800 per week by now (no idea whether they've achieved that). If that was the case though, they'd still need another 2 weeks minimum just to make enough for the backers alone, and retail need theirs in the next week. We have no idea how many boxed games retail companies will have ordered, but you'd think it would be 10-50 units minimum order, and there are dozens, probably hundreds of retail outlets (including online) worldwide.

The numbers don't stack up - they just can't make up the boxed game fast enough.

The shipping isn't the issue they can only produce so many units per week 400 or so I think and they only started to assemble finished products 2 weeks ago so there is no way they can produce enough units for both retail and backers before June 30th and like Biggusdoggus I suspect retail will get priority.

It's now 2 weeks since the initial batch of 150 backer units and nearly 1 week since the next 400 shipped and still no reports of delivery I now suspect that the real reason that they went for random rather than backer order is so that no one would know for definite when or if theirs had shipped if they had stuck to backer we would know for definite if they had shipped those initial 150 as I would have mine at this stage. There's a lot of misinformation or half truths going on here.

 DaveC wrote:
I now suspect that the real reason that they went for random rather than backer order is so that no one would know for definite when or if theirs had shipped if they had stuck to backer we would know for definite if they had shipped those initial 150 as I would have mine at this stage. There's a lot of misinformation or half truths going on here.

yup, this.

Ahh i didnt realize they were assembling too.

Still, not a hard job if it is setup correctly, but it is easy to have a suboptimal production assembly line if you dont have much prior experience.

A dodgy shrinkwrapper could easily hold up the queue though if they have an old machine/heat tunnel.

biggusdoggus wrote:

 warboss wrote:
It'll be telling what their priorities are if stores get their supplies because they're incoming money whereas backers who pledged over a year ago are outgoing costs.

you say "if" like there's a chance that stores won't get theirs as a priority.

I suspect this is the very issue that Prodos are battling with right now - that they have committed (whether through choice or because Fox have forced their hand on pain of huge financial penalty or whatever) to provide stock to retail in time for a 30th June launch while at the same time have shipped to backers before then. It's pretty easy to assume they can't do both - they almost certainly don't have enough time and/or manpower to get it all done in time.

That assumes that they also don't want the added "hassle" of extra money coming in right away or soon (depending on their retail terms) for those units just shippied units whereas every backer box going out is nonrefundable almost no strings attached money going out the door. It reminds me of an old bit I remember seeing on TV as a kid. I think it was Abbot and Costello but they were divvying up some stuff and the heavy set one was doing the dividing.

One for you (places one item next to the skinny guy)
One for me (places one item next to himself)
Two for you (places the second item next to the skinny guy)
Two for me (places two items next to himself)
and so on.

In this case, it might be one dozen backer boxs out, one retail pallet out.

no, not at all. They want retail. Hell, they NEED retail. Retail = cashflow, and they need that big time, not least because they probably need to fullfil further payments to Fox. I think we all get that.

I don't think anyone would be remotely surprised that they are (maybe) servicing retail first or amongst the backers. The real problem here is where they've made certain statements over timescales, and realistically they can't meet them. They've done this throughout the kickstarter, at almost every single point. Remember when they said they'd be shipping us stuff before Christmas? They were still saying that until mid November - just 3-4 weeks away, yet here we are now some 6 months later.

They've repeatedly given timescales that were ridiculous, and when you crunch the numbers, the current promises to both backers AND retail are equally unrealistic. It's probably no wonder that Fox are less than happy about that.

biggusdoggus wrote:


They've repeatedly given timescales that were ridiculous, and when you crunch the numbers, the current promises to both backers AND retail are equally unrealistic. It's probably no wonder that Fox are less than happy about that.

And worse, when you ask questions about it or point out what they are saying cannot be correct, they shut you down if at all possible. That (to me) clearly indicates the problem is more than just bad estimates/overoptimism. It is indicative of dishonesty and deception. THAT is and has been my major issue with them.

Remember that Prodos also does work for other companies, which stretches them even further. How much their contract work takes away from wave 1 and/or 2 of AvP fulfillment I don't know, but I don't think Prodos has many staff, do they?

Final product does look great though, and I really don't mind the duplicate tile art. Looking forward to getting mine, though I'm sure I'm last on the "random" list.