Given how Catalyst's
current KS for Shadowrun is going, I advise everyone to be vary wary of backing this. This has been the shadiest KS I've ever backed, and I say that having backed Myth and MERCS Recon. The entire thing has been horribly managed on Catalyst's end of things - ineptly might be a better word. What is of the most concern to backers right now is a series of errors between Catalyst and their warehouse that caused hundreds of backers to get duplicate copies of the game, leaving Catalyst unable to fulfill ~900 EU pledges, but IMHO that's just the tip of the iceberg.
The SR KS consisted of a core game box for $50 and two expansions for $25 apiece. You could then Add-On 2 alternate boards for $10 apiece and an extra set of dice (its a dice-rolling game) for $25. I pledged $120 to get the game, both expansions, and both alt boards.
During production it was nonchalantly mentioned in a KS Update video (not the text of the Update that everyone reads) that Catalyst was going to give us a "Legendary box" which was a custom larger box that could hold everything - the core game, the expansions, the alternate boards, and all of the Stretch Goals (which included a 3rd alternate board) - because it all couldn't fit in the retail box. This sounded great. I mean a big cool box for free? Who doesn't like that?
What really happened was that instead of shipping all of the components to the US individually and having each backer's order collated at their US warehouse, Catalyst had the orders collated in China. And somewhere during that process, I'm guessing due to minimum print runs and the cost of collating each individual order, they realized that it was just cheaper to just give everything to everyone, whether they paid for it or not. So they made a box big enough to fit all 4 boards and the insert from the retail box and dropped them in along with the components from the Co-op Expansion which was a KS-exclusive (and thus had no box of its own). The other expansion did get its own box b/c it will be available at retail.
In case you didn't catch it, the "Legendary" box replaced the retail box for backers. And the kicker is that it's still not big enough to hold everything from the KS. I have to keep 5-6 Player expansion cards in their retail box and I haven't sleeved any of my cards.
So in the end, people who only backed $50 for the base game, or $75 for the game + 1 expansion, got everything that I paid $120 for. Now this isn't the first time that I've seen something like this happen, but it's the first time I've seen it happen with up to $70 worth of product. And it is the first time that I've ever seen a KS be so duplicitous about it.
And the backers who forked out money for extra dice haven't gotten any because for some reason Catalyst hasn't had them made yet and hasn't said why not.
And here's another kicker for all of you who are thinking that backing the KS will save you money over buying at retail - we paid more. The core game is retailing for exactly what we paid for it ($50) but they set the MSRP of the 5-6 Player expansion at $5 less than what they charged backers for it. And we had to pay an extra $26 for shipping.
There were several other questionable things too, but these were the main ones for me. They're already talking about KSing another Shadowrun board game, but there's no way in hell I'll be backing it. If you want to learn more, I'd suggest following the link at the top of my post and checking the comments and updates.