So aside from a kickstarter to buy IWM so the holder of the miniatures game license could actually make money selling the miniatures for the game... :)
Anyway, if the whole focus of the BT line right now is, “bring in new players”, then I will admit Kickstarter may not be the best idea unless you were planning to make a stand alone board game that just used BT as a skin.
There are a couple reasons I suggested it for another combat manual: First, they already made two of them, so there is probably a pretty good idea how much it would cost to produce another, and what sort of resources it would take. This isn’t some new idea, it’s just going through a production cycle CGL already knows how to do.
Second, all indications are that people did buy the books, so there is at least some idea of what sort of market interest there could be for the other popular factions. Maybe CM: Niops Association would be an unknown, but I’m pretty sure Davion and Steiner should see similar interest to Kurita.
Third, while faction books may be questionable when everyone pays the same price for them, if you give the faction ‘Whales’ a chance to spend a couple hundred bucks to get their last name slapped on some random Major, you don’t need to move the same number of units to turn a profit. Stretch goals don’t have to be hard to execute. Things as simple as getting a copy signed by the author for an extra $10 or $20 can work.
Finally, in my opinion, the CM series was a perfect ‘What next?’ Product for the line. So, folks got their box set and picked up BMM or whatever, and they want to dig a little deeper. There is IWM for all the minis you could want, but what about CGL products? Well, I think the CM’s were a great place to point people. See that big map? Want to play the purple guys? Here, get this book and it tells you all about them, gives you an easy way to build a force that has their flavor without having to look up rules or tables in three other out-of-print products, and it looks way, way better than the old house books. I thought the CM series made sense as the next place to get money from new customers once the box set or whatever set the hook. They were up to modern standards, they were concise compared to a lot of older material, and they could be purchased outside of EBay. So yeah, they aren’t a product to bring a new body to the table, but they did seem like a great second step for new players to take.
All that put together, and Kickstarter seemed like it could be a useful way to address potential problems that came up in making the first two. I get it that you need to bring new players in, but Keeping them as fans in also important. Maybe they don’t have the widest appeal individually, but as a set I still think the CM series would make a great up-sell for anyone who ends up wanting to buy more than just a single box set.
I’m not saying anything CGL is dong is wrong. Hell, I think a their work on the fiction is a great idea, and I don’t have an unkind word to say about the new box sets. However, as much as I personally am looking forward to IlClan, it isn’t exactly a straight shot for a new player to jump from the box sets to IlClan. I’m not saying don’t put out IlClan (please, please do put it out!) but it isn’t really a ‘bring in new players’ sort of product, and I’m not sure, of the things mentioned at the What’s Up at GenCon, what is. Look, I like the direction things are moving from BMM, to the box sets, to getting the core rulebooks back in print. I trust that there is a plan...I just thought the CM series was part of that plan as the stepping stone for new people after the box sets. Personally, I’d like to see the series revived, but, my desires aside, I don’t see what is supposed to replace the CM’s.
As for kickstarters for old games that were successful...I’m not sure. I wasn’t thinking of kickstarting something that big. I was thinking of it as a way to better tap the whales in the audience. That said, I know of several video games from the 90’s that got successful sequels. I also know of some non-board game properties that have been turned into board games that seem to be successful. There is a recent one that turned the old Homestar Runner short about Trogdor the Burninator into a board game. I know the Street Fighter game got funded almost entirely because people wanted the awesome minis that came with it. I don’t think anyone even cared about the game. I never played Ogre, so I didn’t know about that one, but I think it fits. I’m pretty sure someone did kickstarters for Blood Bowl as well. Don’t recall if they were mega successes or not, but I think they funded.
EDIT: Dear god, I really can’t shut up, can I! Sorry for the wall of text.