2018 Top 10 Requests!

[Techno]

Will.....

I think this'll be a lot easier than the last two 'wossnames' ranges you've been helping me with*. 

*...and they're nearly finished.

Cheers - Phil

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Where are the Duck Knights, and Wombles with AK's ? 

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

No, armoured bears and meerkats!

[Sunray]

I was thinking more the KGB types and Freelance agents in the Copplestone range.  Fit nicely as agents, undercover soldiers or gun dealers. Mark C. is no mean sculptor in 28mm.  His 10mm fantasy is neat too.

Does anyone else do role play skirmish in 10mm ? I introduced it to our Christmas family war game some years ago.  An espionage precursor, with the winner getting the edge.   

[fsn]

To clarify - "kiss kiss, bang bang" was originally the sexy spies bit.

Those Cobblestone castings look like Babs Windsor, Charles Hawtry and Kenneth Williams.

The rest of the Cobblestone range are a bit more serious.



Apart maybe from the evil geniuses?

[Sunray]

To clarify - "kiss kiss, bang bang" was originally the sexy spies bit.

Those Cobblestone castings look like Babs Windsor, Charles Hawtry and Kenneth Williams.

The rest of the Cobblestone range are a bit more serious.

[img height=200[/img]

Thanks Nobby- its an eclectic little range in 28mm.  But the KGB type sculpts have potential in  range of games from Cold War agents/resistance, to futuristic scenarios.   Could also be used as terrorists and/or undercover soldiers.    

But ...its not in the Pendraken master plan, so I will continue to look for existing figures to modify.

[Orcs]

Well its been an easy night shift so I will put in my tuppence worth.   


Top 10 Ranges:

1.   Naps in India
2.   War of 1812
3.   1920's/1930's Gangsters
4.   Yom Kippur
5.   Modern Infantry (US/UK)
6.   Medieval Expansion
7.   Modern Insurgents (Afghan/African)
8.   Boxer Rebellion
9.   Renaissance Italian Wars
10. Mexican-American War - NEW ENTRY!

Of the Top 10 ranges I can see why most of them are there.  All but one of the top seven are essentially expansions of current ranges. 

The exception being entry number 3 1920's/1930's Gangsters.   I suspect people are going to want a lot of varied poses to make the gangs interesting, the same with the police and any other civilians.  Then to play a prohibition type scenario you will need a couple of gangs and the police. Typically this will be a skirmish type game and you will have at most a couple of gangs of 15-20 men and a similar number of Policemen, plus a few civilians.  So in all probability you will have 50 odd figures on the table.  Not only that you will probably only ever need a maximum of 60 figures.

So we have a range that requires a large amount of masters Probably a minimum of 20-30 poses. ( the same as the Carthaginian or Early Imperial Roman ranges).

Most gamers interested will probably only want a maximum of 60 figures to game the period, plus a few will be bought as partisans/civilians for other periods. compared to the Carthaginian  or Roman ranges where most gamer will want at least 300 and more likely 500+ figures for their army

Is this range really a viable range for us to ask Pendraken to produce?  Are those requesting it willing to pay a higher price per figure to make this range viable?  Obviously it is up to Pendraken to work out what is commercially viable, but I think we have to  take some responsibility when asking for stuff to consider how many we would buy and what the likely interest is to be.

[fsn]

Kickstarter.

There's a few naturally skirmish games - gangsters, superheroes, wild west, spy* (notice how they're also film genres) - that would require the same. I would quite happily contribute a few of my hard earned groats to development costs, and would pay a bit more for "Pendraken Premier" products - just as personality figures cost more than yer bog standard ones. Then there's the individualised figures in the Warband range. Doesn't take much to be able to differentiate figures. (Proper length of bow being one such determinant.) Guy in suit with Fedora firing shotgun from hip. Guy in suit with Fedora firing BAR from hip. Guy in suit firing Chicago Piano from hip. Dame in cloche with pistol. Dame in cloche with knife. Dame not in cloche firing two Choppers*** 

I won't be buying from ranges 1, 2, 7, 8, 9 and 10, 'cos they don't interest me. I would probably shell out for some gangsters 'cos they're pretty and I'm basically weak with very little impulse control.

It's a maths problem isn't it? Retail price = (cost of development + (expected sales  x cost of production) + markup)/expected sales**
   
In this case the cost of development would be 30 times a standard infatry pack (assuming 30 different gansters), cost of production would (I expect) be very little different from a standard pack, assume markup expectation the same and expected sales would be lower. A kickstarter would lower that risky cost of development.



*Also neolithic hunting party, deepest Africa ... struggling now
** I'm assuming an additive markup and not a multiplicative
*** Really annoyed because she'd lost her cloche

[Orcs]

Dame in cloche with pistol. Dame in cloche with knife.

I know you have "exotic" tastes when it comes to women and their clothing, but why is she wearing one of those plastic things you grow your vegetables under? 

[Lord Kermit of Birkenhead]

Its Nobby, explains it all !!

[Shedman]

It would be interesting to see how many votes there were for each of the Requested ranges

Personally none of them appeal to me  except maybe the Japanese from the Boxer Rebellion

I'd like to see a generic range of greatcoated troops with different headdress eg shako, forage cap,  Carlist beret and without backpacks

[fsn]

I know you have "exotic" tastes when it comes to women and their clothing, but why is she wearing one of those plastic things you grow your vegetables under? 

Da doll went to a speak easy.  Now she's cabbaged, but she's still a swell tomato.  (Pronouced "tom-ate-toe".)

[Leon]

It's hard to put a precise number to it but it's probably something around 15%-20% of each sale going towards recouping the sculpting/moulding costs.  Then once a new range has paid for itself that money becomes 'profit', which is essentially our wages.  30 figures for a Gangster range would mean £1000 in sculpting/moulding costs so you'd need to be selling £5000-£7000 of them to recoup the outlay, which is a lot of figures!  You can adjust that target by increasing the retail price of the figures, but even charging double the usual price we'd still need £2500-£3500 to make them viable.

At our scale the profit margins are so low that really everything we produce is a long-term investment that adds to the overall viability of the business.  The ranges that have been in production for a while keep the sales coming in and allow us to put money back into producing new ranges.  Those new ranges tick over and slowly pay for themselves and then become part of the profitable side.  Some ranges will pay for themselves quicker than others, which is why we use things like the Requests lists to identify which ranges will be more likely to reach profit sooner.

We've chatted previously about the Napoleonic ranges and having a customer willing to buy 1000's at a time.  We know that we can put £1000 of sculpting/moulding into those ranges and we're going to recoup a large chunk of it almost immediately, so it's less of a risk to get them produced.  The other side of that coin is something like the recent Korean War ranges which were around £6000 of investment and were produced based on their position at the top of the Request lists.  Using the estimates above we're going to need over £30,000 of sales on those ranges before they become profitable but we weighed it up and thought the level of interest justified the risk.  Time will tell whether we're right on that!

The Kickstarter method is something we'll be looking at for a project in the near-future, like we did with the Mongol range, done through the Forum here rather then KS itself.  We should have some info on that towards the end of September.

[Orcs]

WoW!  That's around a 1000 packs. An awful lot ,  especially if people are buying for skirmish games

I would certainly be very interested in a "Pendraken Kickstarter" for Biblical ranges.  Preferably before I buy any more in 15mm. 

[paulr]

Thanks Leon, an interesting and valuable insight into the realities of the business side
Makes me appreciate the range of figures even more

[parkerm17]

Having avoided Napoleonic Wargaming for about 50 years (loathing the Corsican tyrant for a start) I have decided on the Peninsular War as a "bucket list" project, I would like to know if Pendraken is likely to fill this glaring hole in their ranges in the near future or should I look elsewhere?

[Leon]

I would like to know if Pendraken is likely to fill this glaring hole in their ranges in the near future or should I look elsewhere?

It's something we've been asked about repeatedly but we've got to finish off the 1809 and 1815 areas that we've already started.  We're getting close on those now, but anything for the Peninsular would be mid-late 2019 at the earliest.

[Sunray]

It's hard to put a precise number to it but it's probably something around 15%-20% of each sale going towards recouping the sculpting/moulding costs.  Then once a new range has paid for itself that money becomes 'profit', which is essentially our wages.  30 figures for a Gangster range would mean £1000 in sculpting/moulding costs so you'd need to be selling £5000-£7000 of them to recoup the outlay, which is a lot of figures!  You can adjust that target by increasing the retail price of the figures, but even charging double the usual price we'd still need £2500-£3500 to make them viable.

At our scale the profit margins are so low that really everything we produce is a long-term investment that adds to the overall viability of the business.  The ranges that have been in production for a while keep the sales coming in and allow us to put money back into producing new ranges.  Those new ranges tick over and slowly pay for themselves and then become part of the profitable side.  Some ranges will pay for themselves quicker than others, which is why we use things like the Requests lists to identify which ranges will be more likely to reach profit sooner.

We've chatted previously about the Napoleonic ranges and having a customer willing to buy 1000's at a time.  We know that we can put £1000 of sculpting/moulding into those ranges and we're going to recoup a large chunk of it almost immediately, so it's less of a risk to get them produced.  The other side of that coin is something like the recent Korean War ranges which were around £6000 of investment and were produced based on their position at the top of the Request lists.  Using the estimates above we're going to need over £30,000 of sales on those ranges before they become profitable but we weighed it up and thought the level of interest justified the risk.  Time will tell whether we're right on that!

The Kickstarter method is something we'll be looking at for a project in the near-future, like we did with the Mongol range, done through the Forum here rather then KS itself.  We should have some info on that towards the end of September.

Thanks Leon for your honesty and transparency.    Its a sobering reality check on odd ball requests.  The Korean war is not a popular game topic compared with WW2, ACW or SYW.  However, I do believe that there is appeal and market in the wide range of proxy applications that these 1950s figures generate.    I get the sense of interest in the USA, but such sales are hit with a very rich postage.   And US stockists will want a margin.

From the forum members' point of view, perhaps the best advertisement for sales is to buy, paint, base and post on forum.

[fsn]

Thanks Leon for your honesty and transparency.    Its a sobering reality check on odd ball requests.  The Korean war is not a popular game topic compared with WW2, ACW or SYW.  However, I do believe that there is appeal and market in the wide range of proxy applications that these 1950s figures generate.    I get the sense of interest in the USA, but such sales are hit with a very rich postage.   And US stockists will want a margin.

Hear, hear!

From the forum members' point of view, perhaps the best advertisement for sales is to buy, paint, base and post on forum.

I'll exclude myself from that, shall I?

[paulr]

Seconded