Descent definitely totally not 3.0

charlest wrote: While this game may succeed or fail on its own merits, I think directly competing with Kickstarter games and hitting such a price point is a strategy doomed to fail.

One thing that seems to be misunderstood about the big Kickstarter games is the financial incentive for consumers. Yes, there are strong financial incentives to back these $100-$300 Kickstarter games.

The thing about these games is that they not only hold their resale value, but there's incredible upside. Check out Ankh on BGG. It has already sold second hand for $500 a few times. All of these big games follow this and resell for incredible profit.

What this means is that people who have this type of money in their hobby budget, if they're on the fence concerning the game itself, they may as well back and just resell if they decide they don't want it.

BoardGameCo, Alex R., Has created an entire brand and YouTube Channel that he is close to moving full time on simply due to the commodity aspect of board games and Kickstarters. Every week he releases videos discussing whether you should back that week's hot KS game and the discussion is 100% from a value perspective.

He made a comment in a recent CMON video about how backers should buy 10 extra copies of an add-on because they will resell for a huge profit.

He made another comment in a different video last week where he said a particular game didn't look great to him, but he was backing it anyway because it would hold its value.

I got into a lengthy discussion with an employee at Leder Games on Twitter about this when my Polygon Kickstarter article dropped. The Leder employee didn't agree or understand that people back games because primarily from a financial incentive. He said no one is backing a game they didn't really want based on the game itself, and he's dead wrong.

All of this is to say that there is not a financial incentive to back Descent 3rd. It will be difficult to resell because you're competing with the MM and Amazon who have free shipping.

If Descent succeeds it will be because the game itself gets a ton of buzz, but it's an uphill battle.

This financial incentive for consumers is also why the Kickstarter model is broken and the cycle won't be stopped until something catastrophic happens, like a few big KSers failing to deliver to the shipping crisis.

If someone is moving full time to a YT channel flogging KS games and which ones to buy, I can't help but wonder if the guy is being funded by the very companies he's advocating people "invest" in.

As far as Descent 3.0 I wonder if part of the pricing is due to FFG being primarily sold via the usual three tier distribution model whereas a lot of the big ticket KS are direct to consumer for a large percentage of their sales.

To return to this product itself, I hope it is very good and successful. It certainly looks 1000x better artwise than previous editions and I like the move to gonzo plastic squared terrain---if I was going to play something like this (I won't, not my genre) I'd want it to go big. As I said in the other thread, I think the app is a good idea as long as they get serious about it. Asmodee and FFG are big enough to leverage a real app maker to make an actually good app so if anyone was going to do this dungeon crawl enemy AI For Real it would be them.

The models also finally look better, still not quite GW, and that is long overdue: www.polygon.com/tabletop-games/22596743/...erview-preview-video

I think the market will bear it out for awhile yet.

There seems to be an endless amount of people who either missed the Kickstarter, didn't have money at the time, or entered the hobby later. I suppose the sheer growth of tabletop gaming is a large factor.

With Kickstarter campaigns being a short window, and the delivery not happening until one or more years later, the demand will likely have no problem outstripping supply.

Another contributing factor is that these campaigns have built in hype men in the form of backers. Once a campaign starts delivering there is a ton of buzz from backers. For instance, take Chronicles of Drunagar - most people hadn't even heard of that game until recently because it delivered.

Then you have a fresh wave of hype if the company launches a reprint campaign and people don't want to wait another year or two for the base game reprint.

I think the risk on most of these games is minimal actually. That could change, but the industry at the moment is weathering shipping increases of 500-600% and people are still paying up.

To hell with it...I sold Iron Helm for almost what I paid for it so I’ll just get Descent with those funds. I like how upset this game is making people, I like that it’s disruptive and potentially a disaster. If it blows I can always Noble Knight it for $50 or so. Stay tuned.

Gary Sax wrote: Well normally I'd say you can get a review copy but lol.

Recal that my article “The Descent of Descent” was what prompted Mr. Petersen to personally demand my removal from the press list.

I'm betting you're going to like it. All of the reviews dropping today are positive. No Pun Included particularly surprised me.

Michael Barnes wrote: To hell with it...I sold Iron Helm for almost what I paid for it so I’ll just get Descent with those funds. I like how upset this game is making people, I like that it’s disruptive and potentially a disaster. If it blows I can always Noble Knight it for $50 or so. Stay tuned.

There’s always me

I haven’t had the chance to listen to the episode but Efka of NPI seems to love what he’s seeing:

Is every picture of this game hiding several dungeon tiles, or can you really just make this tiny corridor with stairs? I get more bored every time I look at it. EDIT - never mind, it apparently does come with other tiles, but for some reason they just don't show them off.

I find it mildly amusing that this game got "review bombed" over on TOS. So stupid, I just wish BGG would nuke their entire review system.

I think buying KSers speculatively is rather foolish, unless you have a lot of local rubes to sell to. The cuts that eBay / freight take eat up any profit you may have in many cases. Definitely easy to get burned.

Calvin’s enthusiasm and Efka’s nod were decisive for me.

hotseatgames wrote: I think buying KSers speculatively is rather foolish, unless you have a lot of local rubes to sell to. The cuts that eBay / freight take eat up any profit you may have in many cases. Definitely easy to get burned.

I'm trying to figure out what your hourly rate is flipping this stuff. Even if you're doing it en masse I think you could do better working a blacktop crew. Meet a better class of people too.

Michael Barnes wrote: To hell with it...I sold Iron Helm for almost what I paid for it so I’ll just get Descent with those funds. I like how upset this game is making people, I like that it’s disruptive and potentially a disaster. If it blows I can always Noble Knight it for $50 or so. Stay tuned.

I am genuinely fascinated to hear your take fwiw, to blow smoke up your ass your depth of miniatures and dungeon crawl review cred puts you on a different level evaluating this stuff for me along with charlest and the like. Lots of the people loving it have only played like Gloomhaven and a CMON dungeon crawl , but you've been through *all* this shit in the last 5-10 years or so: Kingdom Death, the GW lines, pure tactical RPGs with terrain, the indie crawls, everything.

This game mainly just gets me more excited for my core space KS set tbh.

I listened through the NPI podcast earlier and it sounds fine? It sounded very much like a half assed video game mashed into an okay sounding dungeon crawl boardgame. I just don't get the appeal of this kind of thing I guess. Not including an actual rulebook is some real bullshit for this price point, I'll tell you that for free.

Sagrilarus wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: I think buying KSers speculatively is rather foolish, unless you have a lot of local rubes to sell to. The cuts that eBay / freight take eat up any profit you may have in many cases. Definitely easy to get burned.

I'm trying to figure out what your hourly rate is flipping this stuff. Even if you're doing it en masse I think you could do better working a blacktop crew. Meet a better class of people too.

Not directed at me, but I quite like my Mailboxes Etc. people.

If anyone is looking for a good price on it, the EBay seller Flipside Gaming (where I get all my Marvel Champions packs) is doing $139.