Zombicide Season3

Ah zombicide, one of the more enjoyable games I've played within the last year or so. And yet now, as a franchise, it's probably dead to me. 

So what is this about? It's about Zombicide Season3 or more specifically, the Kickstarter for Zombicide Season 3. As most people know, Zombicide tends to have one new kickstarter every year to 'fund' their new expansion. And by fund I really mean people get to pay upfront for bonus stuff, CMON gets an interest free loan in publishing the game that they ALREADY know people will buy and it's a win-win for everyone. Unless you happen to not live in the US of A. 

Now I didn't back the first Zombicide KS (link) back in 2012, but it shipped for 25 USD for the basic pledge. Zombicide 2 (link)which was in 2013 shipped for 35 USD for the basic pledge. 

Then there's Zombicide 3...which ships for...

!%&#@% 95 USD. For the SAME frigging PLEDGE LEVEL. Does Zombicide S3 come with a lot more stuff than Z2? NO. 

Here, take a look at the graphics and compare. While Z3 arguably has more stuff in it, it hardly justifies a 60 USD INCREASE in shipping. I mean, 90 USD shipping for 150USD worth of stuff is just nuts. I'm not saying I've never paid 90USD for shipping from USA before but that was the price I paid for shipping battlefoam BAGS (and yes, that's plural) which are HUGE. Paying 90USD for shipping a board game is just nuts no matter how much I like it. 

"But...But...Sining, you had a chance to see how much shipping was during the KS. You could have chosen not to back it" Some might say. Uh, no I didn't. This was because shipping was never revealed during the Kickstarter campaign. 

So needless to say, after having backed the Kickstarter several months ago; back in July, I was very shocked to discover my shipping was 94 USD. Was there an indication that it was going to be 94 USD during the course of the campaign? No, and the high cost of shipping caught a lot of us by surprise. And by 'us', I mean others in the local gaming community who backed this KS. I guess it's good if you're in the USA but this? This is BS for international customers. 

Also, not to cast aspersions on CMON or anything with regards to this, but their prices are totally out of line with other boardgame kickstarters. Let's take a look at several that I've backed. Dungeon Saga, 25 USD shipping for Rest of World (ROW). Battlecon Remastered, 50 USD shipping for ROW. MERCS: Recon, 24 USD. Super Dungeon Explore: Forgotten King; 40 USD and shipping costs were calculated after the KS finished. And to be honest, I was expecting costs to be a lot closer to 40 USD than %!@(*&!@ 100 USD. Just how on earth does a smaller organisation like Sodapop have better shipping rates than CMON? Who knows.

Needless to say I'm going to try and cancel my pledge and hopefully things go well on that end as I remember CMON still allowed people to cancel their pledges bar the 10% KS fee. However, this has still left a very sour taste in my mouth due to the overwhelming shock of suddenly having a 90USD shipping bill after you've paid for your stuff earlier on. As such, I doubt I'm going to pledge for any more CMON stuff because simply put, I don't want such surprises anymore. If CMON is going to continue using such high shipping estimates/costs, I recommend they put a shipment calculator on their KS page like Reaper Bones II did so that people can get a rough estimate of how much their shipping would cost before they pledge. They obviously have a formula already considering they could tell me how my pledge would cost to ship before I even finalised it.