For those of you who have been paying close attention, this may not come as a surprise to you. But for those just glancing through after being away for a bit, there are some big changes coming for the Dwarven Forge’s new kickstarter Cities Untold: Lowtown kicking off in early February. But before we dive into the new structure, let’s take a deep dive into the history of Dwarven Forge Kickstarters. Or you can just scroll down to the NEW MODEL headline.
The Early Days
The first two Dwarven Forge kickstarter campaigns followed pretty much the same model for what was being produced. Basically you backed in order to get a number of sets of the core tiles (dungeons in KS1 and caverns in KS2). Each set of core tiles only consisted of different 3 pieces with a significant number of these 2x2 tiles in each set. So long as you got at least two sets you also got the stretch goals which ended up being close to an additional set in total pieces with several of them being duplicates of the origin as well as a wide variety of other dressing pieces.
Add-on sets were available and included things like curved walls, elevation stairs, narrow passages, additional dressing, and water and lava packs. The early days were pretty amazing as you essentially got about 50% more than just the sets you ordered through stretch goals. While these pieces are still great, the days of the amazing deals we saw here are long gone.
The Complicated Years
I wouldn’t want to call the next two KS sets a failure by any means but they certainly did complicate things. The first cities kickstarter moved away from the idea of a single core set and instead began with two different kinds of core buildings, field stone and tutor. The initial set to include stretch goals was similar in price to the previous KS, but the add-ons started to get a little wild here. First off, the Monster Sewer set was offered without stretch goals as a main pledge. Secondly, the hamlet set contained half field stone pieces which some previous buyers felt replicated the dungeons pieces they already had. Finally, the add-ons included streets, the sewer, and additional roofs, as well as battlements, miniatures, magnetic walls, tavern accessories, LED walls, balconies, and the bridge of valor, was a lot to take on and fully understand. As a note, this part hasn’t really gotten any better yet, we’ll see if it does.
Castles suffered from growing pains in that buying enough to make a castle required a really significant investment. The most “basic” set, ramparts, had a gate and two walls. It didn’t feel like a lot even though it is still huge in comparison to some of the previous kickstarter pieces. One significant issue was that it gave vertical space, without giving a massive diverse playable area. The basic castle set, which was really just a gatehouse and square of walls, ran over $400. But the add-ons here were where things really went crazy. There were 13 wall add-ons, 10 tower add-ons, 5 roof add-ons, 11 city integration and expansion add-ons, 2 gatehouses, 11 battlements and crenelations, and 11 dressing add-ons. All this before we even get to Erinthor Mountains which probably could have been its own KS at some point more like a part of Wildlands.
While the stretch goals in Cities were pretty good, it started being pretty bad in Castles. Cities basically gave four additional 4x4 rooms and a fair bit of dressing to go along with it. Your Watchtower or Ramparts set came with–uhhh–a bunch of dressing. And not like good core dressing like barrels, boxes and food stores, but mostly strange stuff like grappling hooks, gargoyles, and flags. So ends the era of good stretch goals, generally speaking.
The Encounter Era
Never being the sort to do the same thing more than twice, Dungeon of Doom and Caverns Deep took an interesting turn of going back to the original two KS sets as far as appearances go, but building pledges with a pregenerated scenario mindset. Rather than providing a solid number of core building blocks in a set, each set was designed to build something specific. In this way these sets looked more like a LEGO set in that it came with a proscribed build. Now you could still use the pieces for whatever you wanted, but the flexibility of these sets was heavily diminished compared to earlier kickstarters. A hamlet could easily represent a village of small houses, a large tavern or even a multi-story tower for your adventurers to climb. Rooms like Zultar’s game room had a couple of ways it could be set up, but it really was not a highly flexible set. The next pledge level gave you Zultars, plus couple of other rooms. Many of these rooms relied on pieces you already had in Zultar’s while adding some new variety like curved walls, corner LEDs, and thinner corridors.
But that’s not where the adventure stopped. There were more rooms, and more rooms, and more rooms. A total of 13 rooms for a full dungeon that ran $3600. However, by the time you got to the last set, you already had most of the pieces you got from the final set, you were just getting more of them. It’s worth noting that they sold 297 painted and 81 unpainted dungeon of doom sets. With over 60 add-ons, this was a significant departure from the earlier sets. Also, it was difficult to just get core building blocks without diving deep into add-ons. One could buy a stack of starter dungeons and have vaulted walls similar to KS1 but this was not presented as a main option, you really had to dig to see it.
I’d dive further into Caverns Deep but it was pretty much the exact same thing. 11 encounters stacking on new parts while repeating a number of pieces, and a massive $4k price tag. Also a crap ton of addons. Two things to add that I didn’t mention here. After the end of each main adventure they released three or four full additional large scale sets with unique settings. This is where the Jade Temple, Crystal Caverns, Underdoom, and Dreadhollow all came from. These were some amazing sets but they were all pretty much late releases in the KS and inaccessible without paying the $500-$1000 price tag for each one. Final note on this era, the stretch goals were really, really bad. It was pretty much all dressing, much of it unusable individually because it was things like replacement LED lights that didn’t have their own lamp post. In an era while CMON was still providing nearly 50% more minis in their KS, what was offered here is just pretty insulting.
The Mini KS Era
I’m not going to dive way into this because I don’t consider Hellscape and Plaguestone to be real Dwarven Forge Kickstarters. It generally followed the historical encounter pattern but had a much smaller base of total pieces it was making use of. Also it allowed for more of a build your own style package that we’re going to see in lowtown with builds being made up of add-on packs. Hellscape was kind of all over the place and plaguestone was really just a redesign of previous pieces but I think we can get a good picture of what we could anticipate seeing in Lowtown from this picture from Hellscape.
Wildlands
Wildlands deserves its own mention here because while it was wildly successful, it was kind of a mess. There were 170+ different sets. I know, I wrote a review about each one. Also the initial pledge levels were really, really bad. They just didn’t function well to do much of anything until you got to the Explore the Swamp set. Eventually they released sets called the Heart of the [Swamp, Forest, Mountain] while they weren’t available as pledge levels, around 1000 backers bought in at a “build your own” level eschewing the pledges, and getting screwed out of any stretch goals. It is worth noting that this has essentially become the norm in the Encounter era forward. There tends to be a significant contingent of people who buy the big set or a significant chunk of it, a handful who pickup the pledge offerings, and a huge number that build their own pledges. Wildlands was a pretty clear example of this.
As an important note, stretch goals were still terrible with $500 sets continuing only a small handful of unimpressive scatter terrain unless you were getting the Untamed or another mega-pledge where you kept getting things like Wyverns and Dragons added to your set for “free”. Even with the fix to stretch goals, I don’t anticipate it actually being much better in Lowtown.
THE NEW MODEL
There’s several things changing as far as pledge levels, stretch goals, and how the entire KS is being put together as far as add-on packs. I’ll dive into each of these here.
Stretch Goals
Stretch goals in Cities Untold will be based on how much you spend, regardless of how you pledge. This means those 1000 people who build their own pledge will all have the opportunity to get stretch goals. It’s currently sounding like each landmark level pledge will come with one stretch goal pack, which means you’ll need to drop $500 to be considered buying enough to get a stretch goal. I’m hoping this isn’t the case and instead there’ll be a $250 or $275 buy in to get stretch goals. This would be more inline with previous kickstarters but it’s pretty clear that they’re targeting bigger buyers in these kickstarters now as an “average” pledge is around $1000, though probably a median pledge is closer to $500.
Each stretch goal that you acquire will enable you to pick up one stretch goal pack, of which there will be a handful available. When we talk about add-ons packs below we may see how this comes into play as I doubt that the stretch goal packs will be anything other than one of a handful of add-on packs that you can choose from. My personal hope is that they include some basic building blocks for these packs. Specifically the floor, four posts, and four walls with a door pack or a scaffolding pack like the widow’s walk. Being able to pick up something substantial that isn’t just dressing would be really nice. In several ways, this really doesn’t seem like stretch goals as they probably won’t be adding much of anything to these packs over time. I’d guess that as the total pledge count rises you’ll just see more packs available to pick from. Possibly more valuable packs as they hit higher goals, but more on that below.
As the trend has been moving downward, I wouldn’t expect to get more than a $50-$75 add-on pack out of a $500 pledge. While it used to be that a $200 pledge would net you $100 of extra value in stretch goals, those days went away after KS3. Dwarven Forge doesn’t seem to be following the CMON or Reaper model where the anticipated amount of core product is built into the stretch goals but the stretch goals end up making up about 50% of the overall value. I’d guess in Wildlands the total value of the stretch goals ended up closer to around 10% of the untamed pledge, and much less if you bought any other set.
One other concern I have is how unpainted sets are going to work for stretch goals. Being offered unpainted versions of the set if I prefer isn’t really what I’m hoping for as the main reason I go for unpainted is to avoid paying the 65% painted premium. But since I’m in the unpainted world, I don’t really want my stuff to come painted. They could just offer me double stretch goals unpainted and I’d be pretty happy but this seems unlikely. I’m not sure how they’re going to balance this one out. If we’re following recent history it may be that stretch goals are so bad it doesn’t really matter to me.
Landmark and District Pledge Levels
The big target pledge level for Landmarks at $550 and Districts at $2250 are basically Explore and Mega-pledge level from Wildlands. What is missing here is the $1000 Heart of level which is basically being offered through two landmarks. I have a feeling that this isn’t going to work like the guys at Dwarven Forge want it to unless they have a couple of barebones landmarks that are really just focused on providing core pieces. Something that aims to provide massive room coverage that feels like a village. Remember, a village had 15 4x4 rooms for $440 with the latest price adjustment. It’ll be interesting to see how the landmarks compare to that for coverage. So far the landmarks have felt overdressed and under-covered.
There’s also supposed to be a few lower buy-in levels where you can pick up a house or two. We don’t have a ton of details on these yet but I’m hoping to see something like the City Tutor Core Set with the new roofs and the Tudor Starter Set as the early entry options. These are good sets that really give you a lot to work with. Currently, for someone getting started in cities, picking up a City Core seems like a much better starting place than either of the two landmarks we’ve seen so far. I’m hoping with more landmarks to come and the flexibility discussed below, we’ll see some really good offerings.
Add-ons and Pledge Makeup
One of the largest changes that will be happening in this set is that every landmark and district will be made up of a direct combination of the 70 add-on packs they will be offering. Now 70 add-on packs is a lot, but it’s significantly less than we’ve seen in the post-encounter era. Most importantly, each landmark and district will be directly built from combinations of these add-ons. Like the Hellscape sample pledges above, each landmark and district will have a clear list of the sets it contains (which I assume will be public). This is going to make it much easier to see what you are getting for “free” when you pick up the pledge as opposed to going a la carte.
There were plenty of us doing this math back in Wildlands trying to figure out if the mega-packs were really worth it as opposed to piecing together exactly what you wanted. If you bought the heart of the mountain, but didn’t want the trees, a lot of math went into figuring if you were better off buying just the pieces you wanted without the trees or were the trees essentially free. I think that this math will be much easier this time. This also means that any combination can be sold forever without having to be repackaged. DF will probably want to keep all 70 sets in stock and so long as they have all the pieces, they can sell any landmark or district without having to special order it like the Dungeon of Doom and Caverns Deep encounters which are incredibly difficult to restock. Unless there are specific add-on sets that are just difficult to restock (looking at you stairway to violence), anything from the KS should be able to be built directly from add-ons.
For me this is exciting because it means I only have the 70 sets to review, plus some 10 districts and 10 landmarks, and a few other lower pledge levels. But that’s still under 100 which is close to half of the sets from Wildlands. Also, assuming that the contents of each district and landmark is clearly visible, It’ll be pretty easy to figure out the equivalent cost of individual pieces. I know the goal is to have around $50 off of the overall price for landmarks but there’s a big difference of $50 off for two more rooms or $50 off for a crane building add-on you really only want one of.
Conclusions
It may sound like I have a lot that I’m arguing against in this kickstarter and that’s probably somewhat true; but I do like a lot of the direction they’re taking. Having clear add-ons sets that every build consists of fixes a large number of the stocking issues they have, though even 70 products is still too many when you consider that Wizkids entire Warlock line is only 36 different products. I feel like the landmarks are going to be used to display what the terrain pieces are capable of but there’s probably too great of an artist's focus on making them look good instead of making them have a number of different use cases, but finding great uses is best left to the consumers.
I’m curious to see what a district looks like as it should stand out as significant as the mega-pledges did in Wildlands. The advantage of the design by add-ons is that there’s really no limit to the number of districts and landmarks that they could release. They’re basically all “sample pledges”. Customers could even assemble their own landmarks as they end up more like a build of the month than a unique build. I’ve said for a long time that the time spent building on shows like On The Anvil should focus on building from existing sets to essentially create a new product line. It looks like that is exactly what is happening with Cities Untold. I’m excited to see where this takes us as I’m digging the potential for both the scaffolding and double height wooden buildings that we’ve seen so far. Will I end up grabbing a landmark plus some add-ons instead of going all add-on? My guess at this point is no, but I could be surprised.