This will be a bit of a read, so apologies ahead of time, but this comes from a first-time Kickstarter that (is likely to have) failed to succeed.

TL:DR; Kickstarter is fickle, and marketing, visibility and reach is more important than you might think.

Our first efforts on Kickstarter have resulted in what looks to be a failure to meet the campaign goal. Some of this is undoubtedly down to the nuances of being new to the production of commercial boardgames, but a lot of it is down to visibility. I have spoken to many people (of both successful and unsuccessful Kickstarter campaigns) who have provided an overwhelmingly aligned opinion – going onto Kickstarter without a prebaked audience is almost guaranteed to result in a failure.

That’s not to say this is the case with everyone. Those with the ‘killer product’ are just as much likely to have runaway success as those that are just ‘in the right place at the right time’ (another form of ‘secret sauce’ that eludes many of us).

Marketing is expensive. I ran a multi-week Facebook campaign that yielded a decent ROI on money spent vs. new backers. If all of my backers came from that avenue, I calculated that I would’ve spent about 30% of my budget on marketing to assist in reaching my goal. That’s a decent chunk of your operating profit right there.

My naivete in launching a campaign without much market reach was a mistake. I felt that we had a strong campaign pitch and pretty good graphic design / assets. We were a couple of days late with a playthrough video, but based on the analytics from Kickstarter, only about 46% were willing to watch a 2 minute promo video right to the end. I’m not sure how this compares with other campaigns.

I was happy with the conversion rate of visitors vs. converted backers – this tells me that the campaign does have enough meat on the bones to be viable. But again, the numbers do show that there weren’t enough people from non-KS origins hitting the page. The often given values of ‘50% from Kickstarter’ are pretty accurate, in my opinion, so that effectively validates the proposition that you need to generate 50% of the campaign’s funding from other sources.

These are hard, but valuable lessons to learn by being burned on the first try.
Part of the problem is that if you’re an independent developer, there is no capital to start producing great prototypes for sending out to reviewers and other such mechanisms that seem to be part and parcel of many successful Kickstarters. That’s not to say you can’t start basic and ‘work with what you’ve got’, but in reality – the best campaigns, and those that seem to succeed, seem to have all of these pieces in concert.

This won’t be the first and last time I’ll try. It’s hard to watch something you’ve laboured over for years get lost in the dust of bigger and better things going on, but this industry seems less about being ‘the next big thing’ and more about being visible, even at a low level. Building an audience and cultivating awareness about-a-thing is just as , if not more important than the quality of the actual campaign that promotes it.

Hopefully I can look back on this post one day and see that the application of these lessons allowed me to navigate the murky waters of Kickstarter successfully, so that we can at least have the first title under the belt.

Like I already said. Love the deck. Curious how it plays. The pdf is missing the health chart though and here DROID ARMY is no power combat and has no value I believe that is wrong?

We’ve run three FlickFleet projects on Kickstarter and they’ve all had a lot of backers come from Kickstarter. Though I wonder at the accuracy of that – it’s in Kickstarter’s interest to show how much they bring to the party, so backers who followed a link in an ad and then clicked the remind me link and back after the reminder email – do they count against the ad or Kickstarter: Reminder email?
I think if your project is successful, you tend to get featured more by KS too, our projects:
1) Funded with 4 hours to spare, 101% funded, KS brought 46%
2) Funded in 3 days, 188% funded, KS brought 56%
3) Funded in 15 mins, 3744% funded, KS brought 67%
So funding early means you get more KS support. We’re going back to Kickstarter again in 3 weeks, so I’ll have more data soon!

Just a side note: INTO THE WOODS has all 3 symbols, each on one different card.

Raistlin

Hey there isn’t a back for these guys? It’s the same as page 1

You guys should do a Boba Fett and Fennec Shand deck, that would be really cool!

Its been awhile since I’ve played/haven’t seen Mandalorian but check the site now and again.

32 hit points does seem ludicrously high. Most sets in SWED don’t have more than 28, and we’re talking all the points being “major characters”, *and* there’s the potential for “wasted damage” (if your killing blow on one of the troopers does more damage than the health a trooper has remaining, it doesn’t transfer to another trooper.)

Even if the deck itself somehow played moderate or weak, it still seems like a heck of a lot of hit points to carve through for no reason, given you said even all four of these guys are no match for a jedi.

I’d probably do 5 or 6 hit points each (6 would best fit the normal distribution of “total hit points” for a deck, while 5 would be accommodating the fact that these guys are all major characters. I could see a case for 7 if you only had to kill 3 of the 4 to win, even then 8 would kinda seem like a lot.

Where are the rules of the game?

Hi. I would like to know about the “rules” of the game?

Hey, the link doesn’t work? any chance this could work again?

I know, the Boost 4 for those cards may be very strong. It is the tweak I’m monitoring the most.
Alternatively I also considered to remove it and add the “DRAW 1 CARD.” text as the last sentence in Arthur’s ability (so he can draw when feinted).

Great deck this one. It depicts the characters very well, thematic and strong.

In the end I tweaked one card (at least for now): COUNTERPUNCH. I limited its direct damage to only 1.

A very strong ranged deck.
For a ranged deck, Medusa has too many defences in my opinion, granting her a bit too much staying power, so I tweaked one card, HISS AND SLITHER; now it has defense 2.

This deck is really straightforward and strong. A bit too much in my opinion.

So, for now, I tweaked two cards in Bigfoot’s deck to better balance it. LARGER THAN LIFE is now Attack 5 and IT’S JUST YOUR IMAGINATION is now Defense 1.
I think it should be enough to better balance it.

I really like the game, but King Arthur is WEAK. No doubts about it.

Here are the tweaks I adopted to rebalance him.

EXCALIBUR: attack value is now 8
THE LADY OF THE LAKE: added “Gain 1 action.”
COMMAND THE STORMS: added “Draw 2 cards.”
SWIFT STRIKE and REGROUP: the Boost value on these cards is now 4

Tweaks motivations:

EXCALIBUR: well, it must be better represented. The magical sword should have had a unique, powerful ability in my opinion. Now, at least, it has a unique powerful value. 8 is a really high value in Unmatched, but considering that on average we will strike with EXCALIBUR once in the game, I think 2 more damage are acceptable. I know, it can be boosted too, but boosting it’s not so automatic with King Arthur as many of us has seen during play. In the end I consider EXCALIBUR a bit like Bowcaster for the Han-Chuby’s deck in Epic Duels, which also has a ‘tutor’ card to find it in the same way THE LADY OF THE LAKE does.

THE LADY OF THE LAKE: giving to this card the “Gain 1 action” ability will grant a half surprise effect. Half because the opponent will know that your next action will probably be an EXCALIBUR’s attack, but it’s now to you to bluff or not. Anyway the other half of the surprise effect resides in the fact that you can now strike with EXCALIBUR in the same turn you draw THE LADY OF THE LAKE, which is great in my opinion.

COMMAND THE STORMS: the deck has a terrible lack of drawing power, mostly considering King Arthur’s ability. So I checked all cards, trying to find the one to power up. I wanted a sure un-feintable draw effect, so I opted for a Scheme card. COMMAND THE STORMS is a so and so card by its own, so I found it perfect for the tweak. Now you move all characters 3 spaces and draw 2 cards. It’s strong as a defense, putting spaces between you and the opponent if you need it, for a breath moment; but it’s strong also in offense, shortening distances for an attack, if desired. To be honest I would liked most a King Arthur’s card, but Merlin is quite resilient and it shouldn’t be a great problem to rely on him.

SWIFT STRIKE and REGROUP: I wanted here some better Boost cards. I chose SWIFT STRIKE and REGROUP because they are not those great cards to play, so at least now they have a better, alternative use.

Ok, I’ll check the page you suggest.
Yes, I see you produced two games. Congratulations! I’ll check them too.

I’ve seen your Mandalorian deck. It’s interesting. Ah, by the way, I added some Battle Systems pieces to my SW Epic Duels scenery. Maybe you know the Battle Systems productions. The sci-fi environment is suitable fo SW Epic Duels.

I’m watching The Mandalorian and I like it. Finally something interesting from the Star Wars universe… I don’t know what you think about it, but the last trilogy was really BAD in my opinion, a total mess and a wasted opportunity to say something new. I think the SW movie saga is irretrievably dead… sigh 🙁

Maurizio

Un saluto dall’Italia 🙂

Hi Roman, I’m happy to see you always active at the game table. I bought Unmatched too and I like it very much. I think I’ll buy everithing of the game; I miss the Star Wars brand, to be honest, but I like so much the game system that it’s ok anyway.
I’m quite satisfied with the average balance of the characters; while one is clearly weak (Arthur) and some are a bit too much strong (Medusa, Bigfoot, S. Holmes), generally the authors did a really good job – also with theme, artwork and new twists to the mechanics.
You know, I’m obsessed with balance in games, so I’m already tweaking here and there to better balance the whole eheh. However the premises are good, I think I will not have too much work to do in Unmatched! 🙂

Now I salute you, old friend. In time we will meet again.
See you!

Maurizio “Raistlin”

Bonjour,

Je découvre votre site ce jour.
Mon fils adore ce jeu.
Je voudrais lui offrir des extensions.
Est-il possible d’en acheter?
Mes compétences en informatique sont très minces……..

Merci pour votre aide.

Nice, I actually was thinking about that he left his biggest impact after his death. So I think this is very fitting. Exar really is the obvious choice even though I always dreamed about a cool deck featuring Aleema and Satal Keto because they are pretty cool and unique but never received any love.

I absolutely love this game. One of my favorites, and the app is spectacular for solo play.

I think you should check out Champions of Midgard as well.

There is a lot of helpful info on all the character cards and creating decks, but how did you determine the HP for everyone?

This is SUPER handy! But how did you determine HP for each character? Is there some kind of method for that?

May I also suggest that “I will do what I must” could be switched to, “Don’t lose it again” referencing in Attack of the Clones, when Obi-Wan gives Anakin his lightsaber back after chasing Zam?

I feel like “I will do what I must” is such clearly a reference to Obi and Anakin’s battle in ROTS that it doesn’t make sense that the card would heal Anakin.

I posted this comment on the Anakin sith page as well, but I’m just looking for more ways to get into this game.
This page is so cool, my friends and I have been getting SUPER into epic duels the past few months and we’re looking to update our decks to keep things exciting, how would you go about finding physical copies of these decks, figurines, and character sheets?? I would love to find and buy an Anakin Sith and General Grevious if you have any suggestions of websites or other locations!

I also read these comments and it seems like a lot of people print off character cards themselves?? if you could give a brief explanation it would be SO appreciated, thank you very much!

This page is so cool, my friends and I have been getting SUPER into epic duels the past few months and we’re looking to update our decks to keep things exciting, how would you go about finding physical copies of these decks, figurines, and character sheets?? I would love to find and buy an Anakin Sith and General Grevious if you have any suggestions of websites or other locations!