Paizo has announced they’re no longer with Ninja Division for Starfinder Masterclass miniatures. They’re not the only publisher to have fled the controversial company.
At the start of the year, IDW dropped Ninja Division from all projects. The drama around Ninja Division centres around unfilled Kickstarters. At one time the tabletop company was nearly $5m in annual sales and had pulled in $3m more from Kickstarter pledges.
The Idaho Statesman reports on the trouble that followed. Ninja Division launched more Kickstarters without fulfilling the previous ones. Eventually, the Attorney General got involved.
Ninja Division told the Idaho Statesman that they had every intention of fulfilling pledges. However, they won’t use Kickstarter any more, citing how toxic the platform had become.
Who are Archon Studio?
Geek Native wrote about Archon Studio after UKGE this year. The Polish company could make minis by using hard plastic injection techniques.
In Europe, only Games Workshop and Archon could. At the time, America and China looked like they would include tabletop games, including models, in the trade war. As a result, Archon found itself in a strong place; it had advanced model-making techniques and wasn’t part of the tariffs.
Michal Hartlinksi told Geek Native why other companies didn’t also make use of hard plastic injection.
It’s not easy – gently put. The process is very complex, and there are very few specialists who know how to prepare miniatures for injection moulding technology. And they also are still learning it every day. Basically – everything you have learned while creating metal or resing miniatures is useless when you switch to hard plastic.
What’s going to happen with Starfinder Masterclass backers?
Archon Studio will fulfil backer rewards from the Starfinder Masterclass Kickstarter instead of Ninja Division.
It also means that the Starfinder Masterclass minis will no longer be resin. They’ll be plastic.
There’s a backlog to get through, and so Archon will ship in waves of 6 months. If you have any questions about your pledge, then Paizo can’t answer and wants to direct you to the Kickstarter project page instead. Ask there.
Has Paizo done the right thing? Do you think Ninja Division has been treated fairly?
I wonder whether Pazio realise that Archon have a number of unfinished KSers and are Prodos Games by another name. The guys that never fully fulfilled AVP