Thursday 1 December 2016

Plastic Ogre Miniatures Success

  

As the KickStarter page says, "1,529 backers pledged $124,628 to help bring this project to life."
 
Well done.
 
As you can see from the picture you get a shed ton of miniatures, and can also buy them with the colours reversed: blue Ogres and red vehicles or green Ogres and vehicles.  I imagine for the majority of players they will be happy to use them as is and won't end up painting them.
 
Now the question is when will Steve Jackson Games bring out an edition of Ogre with miniatures inside the box?
 
You may not agree with me when I say that the future of the game lies in broadening its appeal with plastic miniatures, but my guess is that the cardboard version appeals to old grognards for nostalgia reasons: it's like the original game, but larger so that I can read the writing on the counters now that I'm old and can't read the original chits even with my glasses on.
 
As marketing strategies go that one is time limited.  The future lies in attracting new players to the game, but I could be wrong.  Only time will tell.
 
Still, very excited to see the return of Ogre miniatures.
  

5 comments:

  1. My reading of the KS note is that the new Ogre ver 6 will have the cardboard minis in BUT the plastic ones are sized to fit the new game - 'Includes a heavy mounted gameboard with hexes big enough to play with these minis' (buried in the add-on notes).

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    1. You are right, but the next edition IMNSHO should have the plastic miniatures. Actually, IMNSHO, if the ODE KS had been thought out fully it would have had plastic miniatures too, but SJG hadn't really thought beyond let's do a KS starter for Ogre and send the old girl off into the dark night never to be seen again.

      I would say, ever since the start, the strategy for expanding Ogre's market has not been very joined up, with wasted opportunities, and this failure has lead to a series of choices that have had serious unintended consequences with costs exceeding profits.

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  2. I was looking at this KS, but without EU friendly shipping, no thank you...

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    Replies
    1. By EU friendly, I assume you mean with EU distribution centers?

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    2. The KS was American centric because SJG concentrates all their efforts there. Can't blame them, I guess it sucks not to be an American.

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