Harry Potter from Knight Models (aka FUBARing an IP)
Posted: Mon Mar 12, 2018 12:43 am
I'm not a Harry Potter fan, but my wife is. When I saw that a company was developing a Harry Potter Adventure Game, I thought that it might be a fun game to play with my better half. The game is set to be released by Knight Models (of the Batman Minis Game), a small Spanish company, with some rules writing done by Mark Latham, an ex-GW and frequent Osprey Rules-Dude.
So I spent some time looking around the interwebs and scraping up bits of info here and there. Common feedback on Knight Models is that their minis are gorgeous but need a lot of clean up. Their customer service is poor and their quality control is worse. Their rules are often cited as being produced by Google Translate as well. Their previews for the HP range looked very accurate to the cast of the films though.
Looking over other forums and news sites, it appears that they initially announced the game in 2016, with a planned release at the back end of 2017. A small delay in getting stuff ready is understandable, especially with a popular IP that you're spending a lot of money on before you even start designing or producing figures.
Over the past couple of months more and more previews went up. Beautifully painted models of Harry and friends were posted all over the place. Though I doubt I could do the minis justice, I still thought that it would be a good idea to buy and paint them, and even if my wife didn't like the game, they would still be a nice gift.
The Knight Models homepage is a half-assed mess of a site and the HP section had an "Under Construction" page it redirected to for most of this time. Updates were all links and images copied from Facebook and posted elsewhere.
Towards the end of last month Knight announced the Kickstarter date, March 14th. White Day, sounds auspicious.
Last Friday (5 days before the Kickstarter), Knight announced that there wouldn't be a Kickstarter. Instead everything would be direct order only from their website. There would be a pre-order discount and some free figures though. Ok, still no problem.
They released a short video of the lead designer and one of their Spanish team setting up the game. The audio was poor and the majority of the video was the designer telling the Spanish guy 'No, you can't do that. No, not that either'. To cast spells, both players roll the same number of dice and see who gets the most 3+'s. Er... Not impressed at this stage.
The release info went live on the (still very buggy) Knight Models site. 80 Euro-bucks gets you the core game. Harry, Hermione and Ron vs. 4 generic mook Deatheaters, a spider, some more spiders and a scant handful of very generic looking boards. So, we have Harry Potter and the Chamber of Spiders, Harry Potter and the Spider of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Order of Spiders.
But you could get more minis as add-ons. 20-30 more Euro-bucks gets you 2-3 extra figures. If you buy the 150 Euro level pack you get a couple of extra characters from the school (Draco, Ginny and Luna for example). For 300 Euros (about 40,000 Yen) you get the whole range so far, including a limited Voldemort. A bit pricey for about 45 minis, but some lovely sculpts.
So I was um-ing and ah-ing about what/if to buy. For an "adventure" game, it seems like a very grindy skirmish game, with a high price tag. To top things off, you could get minis for a few minor characters, some of whom were on screen for a total of 2 lines in the movies, but no Dumbledore.
This morning I checked through the various news-sources I was following to find that Knight announced, (on a reply to someone's question of Facebook,) that they would only be shipping within Spain, the UK and the US. No shipping to Japan. They aren't even shipping within the EU. So, I would need to pay shipping to the UK, then shipping to Japan. I also couldn't even save the VAT (Spain has a healthy 21% tax rate, which would have been a nice discount).
So in the space of a week this release of a very popular franchise has:
Changed from a Kickstarter to Direct Only.
Provided poor previews of a very bland looking game system.
Offered an incredibly lacklustre starter set.
Offered some expensive add-ons to make the starter set approach a decent level of game.
Jacked up the costs for anyone outside the three countries they ship to.
Failed to produce one of the most central figures to the story.
Made a lot of their figures pre-order exclusive.
Completely put me off buying.
Well done! It must take a lot of effort to mess things up that much. /angry ranting.
So I spent some time looking around the interwebs and scraping up bits of info here and there. Common feedback on Knight Models is that their minis are gorgeous but need a lot of clean up. Their customer service is poor and their quality control is worse. Their rules are often cited as being produced by Google Translate as well. Their previews for the HP range looked very accurate to the cast of the films though.
Looking over other forums and news sites, it appears that they initially announced the game in 2016, with a planned release at the back end of 2017. A small delay in getting stuff ready is understandable, especially with a popular IP that you're spending a lot of money on before you even start designing or producing figures.
Over the past couple of months more and more previews went up. Beautifully painted models of Harry and friends were posted all over the place. Though I doubt I could do the minis justice, I still thought that it would be a good idea to buy and paint them, and even if my wife didn't like the game, they would still be a nice gift.
The Knight Models homepage is a half-assed mess of a site and the HP section had an "Under Construction" page it redirected to for most of this time. Updates were all links and images copied from Facebook and posted elsewhere.
Towards the end of last month Knight announced the Kickstarter date, March 14th. White Day, sounds auspicious.
Last Friday (5 days before the Kickstarter), Knight announced that there wouldn't be a Kickstarter. Instead everything would be direct order only from their website. There would be a pre-order discount and some free figures though. Ok, still no problem.
They released a short video of the lead designer and one of their Spanish team setting up the game. The audio was poor and the majority of the video was the designer telling the Spanish guy 'No, you can't do that. No, not that either'. To cast spells, both players roll the same number of dice and see who gets the most 3+'s. Er... Not impressed at this stage.
The release info went live on the (still very buggy) Knight Models site. 80 Euro-bucks gets you the core game. Harry, Hermione and Ron vs. 4 generic mook Deatheaters, a spider, some more spiders and a scant handful of very generic looking boards. So, we have Harry Potter and the Chamber of Spiders, Harry Potter and the Spider of Secrets, Harry Potter and the Order of Spiders.
But you could get more minis as add-ons. 20-30 more Euro-bucks gets you 2-3 extra figures. If you buy the 150 Euro level pack you get a couple of extra characters from the school (Draco, Ginny and Luna for example). For 300 Euros (about 40,000 Yen) you get the whole range so far, including a limited Voldemort. A bit pricey for about 45 minis, but some lovely sculpts.
So I was um-ing and ah-ing about what/if to buy. For an "adventure" game, it seems like a very grindy skirmish game, with a high price tag. To top things off, you could get minis for a few minor characters, some of whom were on screen for a total of 2 lines in the movies, but no Dumbledore.
This morning I checked through the various news-sources I was following to find that Knight announced, (on a reply to someone's question of Facebook,) that they would only be shipping within Spain, the UK and the US. No shipping to Japan. They aren't even shipping within the EU. So, I would need to pay shipping to the UK, then shipping to Japan. I also couldn't even save the VAT (Spain has a healthy 21% tax rate, which would have been a nice discount).
So in the space of a week this release of a very popular franchise has:
Changed from a Kickstarter to Direct Only.
Provided poor previews of a very bland looking game system.
Offered an incredibly lacklustre starter set.
Offered some expensive add-ons to make the starter set approach a decent level of game.
Jacked up the costs for anyone outside the three countries they ship to.
Failed to produce one of the most central figures to the story.
Made a lot of their figures pre-order exclusive.
Completely put me off buying.
Well done! It must take a lot of effort to mess things up that much. /angry ranting.