A thought came to me on the weeked that it might be an idea to sell a box with 50% male and 50% female cannon fodder sprues. Perry do something of the kind with their Franco-Prussian Prussians - selling "Advancing" and "Skirmishing" versions of those troops, with the difference just being the sprue mix.
Each version of CF has a slightly different gear mix as well, so it would end up being possibly a more attractive purchase than either of the original kits.
No extra sprue development cost, just a new box art and whatever overheads there might be at the inventory and boxing level.
It would be very appealing to those looking for a mixed force. I already have multiple boxes of both sets but for a new buyer it would be a good option.
These are one of the most versatile sets that WGA have created so I hope they are inspired to expand the team with a good support sprue that could be added in!
The existing Deathfields support sprue might work.
I don't know; while it does sound like a good idea, "sku bloat" is a real thing that should be avoided at all costs.
Oh, and the idea was also done with those RGD Gaming Centaurs/Fauns. The Centaur kit has some Faun sprues and the Faun kit has some Centaur ones. But a male/female CF kit feels like a much more natural idea.
@Mark Dewis Could even throw in the bonus sprue maybe.
A mixed box of either male & female sprues would be welcome, also because you don't need so much female figures (or males' ones, if you're planning an amazon brigade!). Naturally it could be a 'net orders' only, given the costs of packaging .
@Alessio De Carolis jumpsuits are mostly modern or science fiction, where gender differences are less important. Naturally this would not replace the existing two kits. But is more for when you need a starship crew and don't really want to shell out for two boxes.
doing a third box might be tricky sales wise, since it takes sales away from the two dedicated boxes. (and i suspect the male only box will be the most popular anyway, given the general mindset of a lot of minis gamer's i've met.)
i'd say your best bet would be to make it a new product, and market it towards a different style of gamer. the current box basically geared for mass battle games, with its 24 figures. which also puts the price point on the higher end.
but gamers who just want a small unit for games like stargrave, zona alfa, and other skirmish rulesets, often don;t really need a full 24 figures. so why not do a half sized box, with one sprue each of male and female cannon fodder, plus the up[grades sprue to let you customize them more? you could then price it lower (say only $20, or maybe discount the upgrades sprue cost to make it $18). it would sell better to skirmish gamers, and would make for a way for gamers who are curious about Wargames Atlantic's products could check their figures out without having to invest in a full sized box.
you could easily do similar smaller boxes for most of the other factions, especially once they each get additional boxes. Grognards could have 9 infantry (3 half-sprues iirc, with one or more of the head sprues) and one sprue from the command and heavy support box.
and so on.
How about the plastic bag with stapled header that some companies use, rather than a dedicated new box? They could even make the option only available as an online order via their website to keep costs low, rather than shipping them to individual retailers.
It would be a cheaper way to make combined sets of sprues available for sale, rather than relying on third party re-sellers to put them together. Unless WGA finds that too hard and are willing to let others benefit from re-selling their excellent products!
The sampler idea has merit. 6 male and 6 female CF at, say 60% cost of a 24 figure box?
@Mark Dewis Actually I think a 1 sprue each sample bag might work (CF1's body sprue, CF1's Weapon sprue, CF2 sprue, the bonus custom sprue).
@Brian Van De Walker pretty much what i had in mind. lower price point, while getting enough figures and customization bits to put together an interesting skirmish team or squad.
ideally you'd want to keep the price below $20. the closer to $15 the better price wise, since that is an easy amount to budget for.
hmm.. what combinations would work for the other factions? and could you stretchthis out to the other ranges, like historicals? could see a late Roman sampler with one sprue of the Lorica hamata legionaries and maybe 2 of the unarmored late roman infantry. that would give 4 armored and 12 unarmored troops
@Mithril2098 Given the asking price of the individual sprues on ebay and elsewhere I would say $16 at best, but $18 to $20 is more realistic given how things are right now.
I would get this, having neither cf box so far (monetary issues at the time), but with Xenos Rampant now released, who knows
@Brian Van De Walker that is actually why i say the closer you can get to $15 the better. resellers always mark up their sprues, and if you want the product to be more attractive than just buying from a reseller, you need to beat their prices.
a full sized WGA box of cannon fodder gets you 24 figures for $30. a box set that gives you half as many needs to be close to half the cost, otherwise there is little incentive to buy the smaller box. so ideally a half sized box should cost half as much, or $15. with the addition of the customization sprue you can raise this a little but not a full $5.
given that WGA sells these sprues for more than it costs to produce, they can accept a lesser profit margin on ap roduct if it sells well, and i think a $16 box with 12 highly customizable figures would sell well.
@Mithril2098 Actually its 30 figures for the male set, 24 for the female set. Both sets cost $32 to $35 normally.
@Brian Van De Walker somehow a lot of us forgot that. One set of each sprue would give 11 figures; a 50/50 box isn't actually possible - you'd need to either have two or three sets of sprues for the males for 10 or 15 of them. Swapping out two of the male sprue pairs for two female frames should be possible, though, for 27 figures.
eh.. ideally you'd want to get as close to 1/2 the size of a normal box as possible.
i would argue 11 figures is viable, especially when you consider the added customization sprue.
5 men and 6 women might not be the ratio some gamers might prefer, but if the set is cheap enough i doubt that most gamers would care.
@Mithril2098 agreed. Anyone wanting bulk figures is going to get the main boxes anyway and will probably end up with extra guys.
i will say that for this sort of product, WGA may want to create a new customization sprue to use, one with a couple types of backpacks, holsters and belt pouches, grenades, scopes, various gadgets, and other sorts of kit that can be used to fancy up a skirmish squad. the current customization sprue is mostly just more types of guns and a few alt-heads, which certainly would be useful, but a sprue with all the tacticool bling that you can fit on it would be ideal for this sort of product. would make it even easier to turn each figure into the kind of quasi-unique specialists that scifi skirmish games often focus on.
Great idea Mithril2098! Extra specialist kit, especially with either moulded hands or open hands to accomodate the pieces would be an excellent addition. Those kinds of items are ideal for distinguishing unique character models in skirmish games like Stargrave.
And there's no reason they can't use the digital resources to feed into something like that. December has some, and it's likely other months will add more variants for the ever versatile CF kits. At some point WGA is going to have a well tested collection of parts that can be thrown together into a sprue; if there is enough demand for it, it's fairly likely something of the sort will happen.
