While that sounds fun, buying something that can only be pre-ordered is crazy (especially for fifty quid). What incentive is there for the seller to ensure it's not crap? Even pre-orders for something that will be on general sale is fairly suspect in my opinion.
It's fairly common in the boardgame industry, especially for boutique games like 7th Continent, Gloomhaven, or Kingdom Death: Monster.
These games don't fit well into the general mass production/sell in your local game store/keep stock on hand long term and sell online models. Too heavy, too many specially cards, too weird of a form factor, etc.
The 2017 Kickstarter campaigns for all 3 of these games were actually their second runs - previous KS had run and generated a lot of hype for the games, and were massive hits the first time around.
A lot of the time you are betting on a designer with a past track record. Other times you get drawn in by a concept that sounds interesting. But for these second production runs, it's more just pre-ordering a known quantity that doesn't lend itself to constant general availability.
In this case, the authors are two guys who have already produced some niche game. This is actually their second kickstarter campaign, and they delivered for the first campaign so I am pretty optimistic to get something. But I agree that it requires some blind faith.
