As ever I’m not knocking the game, or even the player base as such. Just illustrating I was unlucky enough to be shown the ropes by those solely interested in quick and easy wins against a clueless newcomer.
That would put me off any game. It just so happened to be Warmachine for me.
I wasn't there so I can't say either way, but I wonder how much of this experience people have is due to the huge learning curve warmachine has?
It is very much a game like chess, where the person with the most experience is going to resoundly beat new people to the game. Which stings, but is also a great way to learn... that is of the person winning has the good grace to go over what mistakes were made and help you become a better player. If they won and gloated, then yeah... they got the wrong end of the stick when reading page 5.
For me, I think it’s only fair to factor I’d been a GW Till Monkey, which means I was well versed in running effective intro and tutorial games, where the aim was to show off the mechanics of the games and start passing on a bit of nous and subtlety.
Warmachine may have had a steep learning curve (I wasn’t encouraged to hang around long enough to find out), but like X-Wing (which I did hang around for) it’s something you need to coach someone in.
Not play the game for them as such, but try to get them thinking about things in the right way. X-Wing, like Chess requires more forward planning, and anticipation of where your opponent might be in a couple of turns, and what options you might have to exploit that.
Simply Noob Stomping someone achieves none of that. At all. And as my experience suggests, First Impressions Count. If, as was my particular experience, it’s all pretty negative, where’s the incentive to come back for another game, if the learning curve looks insurmountable.
That of course is kind of nothing to do with the game itself, but the community. Yet any game lives or dies by the size and engagement of its community. If your early adopters in a given town are just in it for the easiest wins, and gain that by flattening any new blood without coaching them, then your growth in that town is gonna be limited.
And I guess that is magnified in the modern age due to echo chambers. If I’m not the only one reporting “all my opponents were power gaming noob stomping anuses”, and that experience just happens to be matched by a couple of others, in different areas? You can end up with a narrow view perspective that everyone who plays that game is therefore a power gaming, noob stomping anus. And if that becomes accepted wisdom (however flawed and anecdotal the evidence), then it can become a self perpetuating truth.
It is still anecdotal. For example the Polish WM community is full of stories like one about a WTC veteran guiding his less experienced opponent through an assassination on himself during a tournament game, prefering to show the opponent the ropes rather than win
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: For me, I think it’s only fair to factor I’d been a GW Till Monkey, which means I was well versed in running effective intro and tutorial games, where the aim was to show off the mechanics of the games and start passing on a bit of nous and subtlety.
Warmachine may have had a steep learning curve (I wasn’t encouraged to hang around long enough to find out), but like X-Wing (which I did hang around for) it’s something you need to coach someone in.
Not play the game for them as such, but try to get them thinking about things in the right way. X-Wing, like Chess requires more forward planning, and anticipation of where your opponent might be in a couple of turns, and what options you might have to exploit that.
Simply Noob Stomping someone achieves none of that. At all. And as my experience suggests, First Impressions Count. If, as was my particular experience, it’s all pretty negative, where’s the incentive to come back for another game, if the learning curve looks insurmountable.
That of course is kind of nothing to do with the game itself, but the community. Yet any game lives or dies by the size and engagement of its community. If your early adopters in a given town are just in it for the easiest wins, and gain that by flattening any new blood without coaching them, then your growth in that town is gonna be limited.
And I guess that is magnified in the modern age due to echo chambers. If I’m not the only one reporting “all my opponents were power gaming noob stomping anuses”, and that experience just happens to be matched by a couple of others, in different areas? You can end up with a narrow view perspective that everyone who plays that game is therefore a power gaming, noob stomping anus. And if that becomes accepted wisdom (however flawed and anecdotal the evidence), then it can become a self perpetuating truth.
Ex GW till Monkey here as well (Leeds, West Yorkshire), so I totally get you on the aim of an intro game. GW intro games could be fudged quiet a bit to allow the new person better chances of winning. At the time we made sure that the new person won, not always by a massive amount, but enough to feel like they achieved something.
I don't think such a thing is possible in Warmachine, the rules are far too tight for a bit of fudging here and there.
It sounds like you had a very bad experience, which is a shame. I can honestly say that in all my 30+ years in wargaming, nothing has been as fun as Warmachine was until InfantryMachine ruined it.
Sadly most gaming communities have nob heads who only care about winning. It does sour any game system they find themselves in.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Complete anecdote in terms of “evidence”? I dabbled in Warmachine when it first came out. But I was put off by the few games I could find being “Everyone Stomp The Noob” affairs.
Add in the perspective I got from online sources was just “play like you got a pair. Git gud scrub, plya 2 win” etc. Which just isn’t my bag.
Truly anecdotal. I had very much the opposite experience in Mk. I, and Mk. II. Much of that seems to be what what fostered by local groups, as most of that mentality was something the "TFG's" already had, but felt obligated to exude that mentality as a rationale behind being jerks.
Any community has their jerks that poison a meta, Page 5 was just an easy excuse for some.
I had an amazing time in Mk. I, and Mk. II when I was playing and running demo games. I played many a pick up or garage table game of Mk. I and Mk. II, and many of my previous play group from where I lived still call those years the most fun we have had playing tabletop games.
Mk. III was where the game started to be something I didn't enjoy but still played due to the setting.
Mk. IV.... isn't what I wanted out of the game and setting. And feels really disappointing to see where this company has ended up. With most of the fault being on their management.
My experience was just the opposite-the community was toxic and i hated MK I/II When MKIII came out i finally started enjoying the game. i always enjoyed the setting but our FLGS now has a far more casual view of the game and perhaps because i didn't really start playing actively until MKIII i had no problems with it.
On the final point i completely agree. the 3d printing and modular models thing to reduce sku bloat is fantastic from a production/shipping perspective. however after looking through the MK IV beta rules it isn't war machine. or rather not what i am looking for in warmachine. it may work well to draw in the 9th ed style 40K crowd ( i also despise 9th ed 40K for the dumpster fire it is ) But as somebody who has rules and minis for a dozen different game systems, i play WM/H for the different rule set and game play experience. it keeps me from getting burned out by playing the same system over and over (i play a lot every week). i actually enjoy the rules they are removing from the game. I have zero interest in MKIV at this point and will continue to play MKIII with the large active community we have at our FLGS. I just need to grab a few more officer attachment models before they disappear.
I just kind of love that it was Guildball that led to Warmachine’s fall, but even if vastly diminished it still outlasted Guildball. I’d wager Steamforged is doing better as a company than Privateer though as they’ve moved away from table top and into IP mining and Kickstarter churn and dump.
Cyel wrote: It is still anecdotal. For example the Polish WM community is full of stories like one about a WTC veteran guiding his less experienced opponent through an assassination on himself during a tournament game, prefering to show the opponent the ropes rather than win
So yeah, communities vary.
Oh it’s absolutely anecdotal. What I was trying to express is that a handful of anecdotally negative experiences can seriously colour the view of outsides considering getting into the game.
Sadly I didn’t have the maturity back then to parse bunghole players from Bad Game in terms of factual accuracy/
I have the feeling those "inovative improvments" PP advises with their MkIV announcement are exactly the same mistakes and issues which lead to their demise they had with MkIII?
It's like "we had introduced ghak A and ghak B which killed the game, let's intensifies ghak A and ghak B, the player base will love it!".
They want to focus on that ghak with which they killed their own reputaion - how ignorate and stupid are they?
As ever I’m not knocking the game, or even the player base as such. Just illustrating I was unlucky enough to be shown the ropes by those solely interested in quick and easy wins against a clueless newcomer.
That would put me off any game. It just so happened to be Warmachine for me.
Sadly my experience was similar to yours, I was interested in it but the local community was really anti new players.
After finally getting a couple of intro games, they then absolutely demolished me and just turned around and told me to f off until i was worth playing. Lost all interest at that point until a work collage finally introduced me to it properly a couple of years later. Its been mostly dead in my local area for years though now.
RazorEdge wrote: I have the feeling those "inovative improvments" PP advises with their MkIV announcement are exactly the same mistakes and issues which lead to their demise they had with MkIII?
It's like "we had introduced ghak A and ghak B which killed the game, let's intensifies ghak A and ghak B, the player base will love it!".
They want to focus on that ghak with which they killed their own reputaion - how ignorate and stupid are they?
Well... ALL of their dev team from Mk.I to Mk. III has seemingly left for other companies at this point.
They are facing the same issues that AMG (who are ex-Privateer Press devs) faced with the transition of Star Wars games to their firm, relative unfamiliarity and nowhere near enough previous thinkers and minds of the previous dev team to not have to repeat previously discussed and solved problems.
Biggest difference between AMG's fairly rough transition to the transition of PP's new dev team.... is they don't have somebody like Asmodee backing them.
Shoot, as much as I love Privateer Press, the bad rep surrounding them seems to have spread pretty far and wide in the community. The Warcaster: Neo Mechanika Reddit page only had 916 members last I checked a week or two ago.
Will Hungerford's Warcaster: Neo Mechanika fantasy knockoff with World of Warcraft aesthetics from a no name company that he left PP to make had a more successful Kickstarter campaign than PP's last cancelled Warcaster campaign. Hungerford even managed to scalp the last PP employee who seemed to relatively understand Warmachine and Hordes with Faye. Faye put out the last big points rebalance for Warmachine and Hordes that felt like a step in the right direction (for the most part).
I think they very well new that they'd anger a lot of old or long-term fans with some of the rule changes in exchange for being able to cast a wider net. I'm biased for sure, as I don't care for overly competitive tabletop games that much, but the market they use to have doesn't seem to have grown at the rate that the overall hobby has with more casual games (like 40k now days and things like frostgrave) being a much larger market share. A lot of video games sites now cover tabletop gaming (polygon covers 40k and Modiphius stuff for example) in addition to RPGs and as more people come into the hobby the hard to learn games tend to gain the least from that grown (this happened with video games 20 years ago and has been going on with RPGs for several years now).
I doubt these decisions were made in a void and PP looked at where they could be with a game that was just a few changes from MK3 (especially against AMG and Infinity) vs making the game simpler and appealing to the larger group of people and made the decision to go for simpler and faster. It will also take years to really know if it was the right decision as they're almost starting from scratch here going after a different audience.
Shoot, as much as I love Privateer Press, the bad rep surrounding them seems to have spread pretty far and wide in the community. The Warcaster: Neo Mechanika Reddit page only had 916 members last I checked a week or two ago.
Reddit is a horrible metric for tabletop games not owned by GW or D&D related. Facebook and Discord are where the vast majority of the hobby is. For example the infinity subreddit may only get 1 post a week if that (sometimes there no posts for a whole month) and it's a very popular game.
I was thinking about the current mini range they are dropping and the negative effects this stunt alone will cause.
Just talking about minis not the game changes.
So if you are a rarity of a PP miniature collector and painter and you already struggled to get specific models its going to be almost impossible to find those and why even bother now. The prices even on discount bins are not really appetising and will probably be higher on eBay. I think like many other companies that folded the range will just vanish never to be found again. Maybe they will rerelease some in the future for easy cash grabs, which at that point people moved elsewhere. Its just really sad to see a large range of hundreds of minis just flushed down the toilet. No matter how they want to sugar coat this turd its a turd of a move.
If you are a gamer well seems like old minis is not going to be compatible with the new game range and magnets BS.
If you are a store you are left with a load of dead and now officially buried product and surely if you have been putting in bins for years now, your going to need a larger bin... why would a store would even want to carry any new PP at all at this point? Specially with that silly price tag...
Distribution? Hell is that even a thing outside US? Maybe PP wants those new facilities to do the distribution themselves XD XD They will print some brochures and knock at your door too.
So yeah while some people have good will towards, you know, supporting tabletop companies in the need, I just think a lot of bad blood was created in the past and the "attitude" or has you guys say "ego" of PP is still quite alive... Specially when you read the silly jabs at GW on their press release.
I mean this is PP big reveal and they spend a part of it talking about GW!
The future is brighter, well I hope so for fans sake, because PP does not seem to have learned a damn thing.
I enjoyed the days of great concept art and a nice and steady growing range of minis, hit and miss and overpriced I give you that, but you could always pick up some gems ( if they were in stock) for your collection.
I still need to get plenty of Troolbloods but yeah screw that.
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
Well we have examples of that with Rackham confrontation, and those models were like the holy grail of sculpting... Yet all IP take overs seem to have missed the mark.
Question would be, is any company able to do it right?
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
I could see someone buying the Iron Kingdoms IP for the right price to continue an RPG line, but to put in all the extra effort supporting a miniatures wargame would require makes me doubtful that WARMACHINE would be continued if PP went under.
If GW bought it (it’s not a rumour. Stop that. Step away from Reddit and 4chan this instant!)…would that be the wargames equivalent of Sonic on Nintendo?
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
Seeing as you rightly pointed out how a lot of people had bad experiences with the game due to those doing demo games. I think those bridges have been burnt.
What could happen is take the core mechanics that work, ditch those that don't and just reskin the models and setting. The biggest thing that could help would be to move away from the PP name. I think that name carries too much baggage for a lot of people now sadly.
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
I think it could be possible that one of the original Devs could take the IP and try to bring back Classic WM and make a complete reboot with a ruleset tributing MkI and MkII.
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
Well we have examples of that with Rackham confrontation, and those models were like the holy grail of sculpting... Yet all IP take overs seem to have missed the mark.
Question would be, is any company able to do it right?
There are a host of problems.
Rackham is the prime example of where the IP gets bought by what are basically crooks and the material gets banded around but never anything good done with it (heck last I recall the CEO was up for charges in France - turns out you can't just keep making subsidiary companies and bankrupting them to hide debt!)
Spartan Games is another good example where the firm fell apart and instead of a smooth transition the firm that bought all the stock of the company basically had to start again from scratch to get things going again. Granted along the way they've shifted toward using plastics and have made serious investments, but its still taken them something like 5 years to get part of 1 game back on the market. Furthermore almost all the original moulds, models and design work is "lost". Wayland did put a good chunk back into some slow production for a time, but from what I gather they basically got pallets of jumbled moulds and a computing system that wasn't well maintained/updated. I'm assuming as a result a vast amount of design, planning and other work has been totally lost
Sometimes its goes generally well, Dropfleet and all have done ok since being bought out. Though they've had some issues with resin casting quality control over the years and it feels like, esp with Spartan games going belly up, that thye never really capitalised on the fact that Dropfleet basically has the entire market to itself for several years. It just never seems to have broken its shell despite having some very good multipart space kits. Feels like stalled growth, but steady. And heck Infinity has been much the same in being a steady growth game and they seem to be really coming into their own in the last year or so.
A firm going belly up is always a period of confusion and chaos. A lot of it depends on how it dies and if it goes through a merger/buyout or if it goes through administration and bankruptcy. The latter has a much higher chance of losing sculpts, machines, equipment, staff and that's before the risk that different parties buy out different parts of the company. You could well end up with it fragmented with bits of the IP held by different firms or lines of models held in different groups. If there's no interest (or not enough) some might wind up held by legal firms who just mothball it as its not their area or dump it.
Mergers have a much greater chance of working out well. Though my impression is that as mergers are often done because the firm has failing finances, this can still lead to very heavily stalled growth for several years after the merger. Furthermore if the core company had issues, then depending how they merge, those core issues could still maintain and prove to be a problem.
Personally I hope PP don't close their doors. They've had a poor and rough patch through various reasons but I'd rather they arose a phoenix from the ashes.
Overread wrote: (heck last I recall the CEO was up for charges in France - turns out you can't just keep making subsidiary companies and bankrupting them to hide debt!)
Yet you can buy an existing company, funnel all the money out of it to settle your other debts, and then bankupt and close it and that's totally legal(RIP ToysRUs).
Overread wrote: (heck last I recall the CEO was up for charges in France - turns out you can't just keep making subsidiary companies and bankrupting them to hide debt!)
Yet you can buy an existing company, funnel all the money out of it to settle your other debts, and then bankupt and close it and that's totally legal(RIP ToysRUs).
If memory serves the Glazer (Glazier?) Brothers bought Man Utd by putting Man Utd (which they didn’t own at that point) up as collateral?
I’d give my right arm for the IP, me and Warmachine go back a way as some folks who know me know...
But I’ve not got the cash Matt (allegedly) wanted when he did look to sell and I doubt the boss (Modiphius) does with, nor is it the type of game Chris would want to make.
Hell, I’ve even got an idea of what I’d do with it...
I’m sad to see the state PP are in even with my history with them and hope they do pull it around. They’ve made some bold decisions that I totally understand given my grasp of where things are for the industry as a whole (not called GW) and many of the choices are things we’ve considered for sure.
They are not where I want the industry to go at all, but they are all very sensible at least in principle.
Pp have become the canary in the coal mine for sure.
They got rid of themed lists, thankfully. I like some of the other rule changes as well. My son and I are possibly going to give it a go. We haven't played much in years. We'll see.
Theme lists were an attempt to keep the game skirmish whilst tackling big collections. If they are stripping armies back then theme lists being taken out makes sense.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Will Hungerford's Warcaster: Neo Mechanika fantasy knockoff with World of Warcraft aesthetics from a no name company that he left PP to make had a more successful Kickstarter campaign than PP's last cancelled Warcaster campaign. Hungerford even managed to scalp the last PP employee who seemed to relatively understand Warmachine and Hordes with Faye. Faye put out the last big points rebalance for Warmachine and Hordes that felt like a step in the right direction (for the most part).
Soles is still there, so there is a continuity from Prime in development.
Overread wrote: Theme lists were an attempt to keep the game skirmish whilst tackling big collections. If they are stripping armies back then theme lists being taken out makes sense.
understood, we just hated them. And there was nothing Skirmish about 25-75 point games. Lots of crap on the table, large units, etc.
AduroT wrote: I just kind of love that it was Guildball that led to Warmachine’s fall, but even if vastly diminished it still outlasted Guildball. I’d wager Steamforged is doing better as a company than Privateer though as they’ve moved away from table top and into IP mining and Kickstarter churn and dump.
I really don't think one had to do with the other.
Biggest difference between AMG's fairly rough transition to the transition of PP's new dev team.... is they don't have somebody like Asmodee backing them.
And two of the biggest IPs with huge reach and fandom outside of the existing tabletop community underpinning them.
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
I could see someone buying the Iron Kingdoms IP for the right price to continue an RPG line, but to put in all the extra effort supporting a miniatures wargame would require makes me doubtful that WARMACHINE would be continued if PP went under.
Based on how other wargame IPs have gone, a new buyer would basically trash the existing model line entirely too (or give a half hearted "you can use your old minis to proxy" type solution. Theres not much money to be made for a new buyer by letting people use their existing product with no significant investment into new minis.
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AduroT wrote: DID they get rid of Theme Lists? Are Armies not just mandatory Theme Lists without the special benefits?
Armies are 100% mandatory theme lists.
Personally, I think its a good way to expand the game. The endlessly expandable factions of oldmachine burned a lot of people out (especially those who played "collector factions" like Khador, Trollbloods, and Skorne which tended to be less focused and more flexible than factions like Cygnar or Menoth where you basically didn't need to buy half of the models in the range to have a huge number of possible competitive builds available to you), the new way keeps things relatively more compact and lets players have a bit more control over how they engage with the game IMO.
Guildball definitely stole a little bit of Warmachine’s steam. It used their Focus mechanic and build a game around that, then added it’s own flare. It’s first big outing was an appearance at Warmachine Weekend. I forget if that was officially part of the event or just totally coincidentally happening at the same hotel on the same weekend in this other side room, but PP was not happy about it. The slowdown led to them panic releasing MK3 early to try and get back ahead of it, and well we know how the MK3 release went.
On anecdotes, I had a friend and a few acquaintances who played Warmachine. However, having played MTG with them and hearing them talk, I knew better than to play WMH with them. The whole appeal of the game was to give power gamers an excuse to be TFG. I remember hearing a lot of “if everything’s broken, then nothing is broken” and “it makes you bring your A game” and the like. No one seemed to enjoy their games unless they won, they never talked about the background at all, and rarely about the look of the minis. Apparently WMH appealed to a very specific mindset back then. And now it will have that reputation for ever.
As for the minis, I’d try them out for a reasonable price. I enjoy a lot of WMH’s designs. Their prices, though, are forbidding. Perhaps this will be an opportunity for me, as last edition change I was able to buy a bunch of the previous edition starters at attractive prices.
Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?
Anyone buying the game will have to deal with the game’s reputation, the game’s legion of disaffected ex-fans, the game’s glut of unsold miniatures/gargantuan second-hand market, and a market full of better, successful games built later using the lessons of WMH’s failure.
It strikes me as kind of funny. People are saying that $200 is a lot of money to start an army but if GW puts out a patrol for $140 that's just business as usual. GW charges $200+ for a box set of units at Christmas time that can't even be played as a stand alone force most of the time. Double standard much?
Leo_the_Rat wrote: It strikes me as kind of funny. People are saying that $200 is a lot of money to start an army but if GW puts out a patrol for $140 that's just business as usual. GW charges $200+ for a box set of units at Christmas time that can't even be played as a stand alone force most of the time. Double standard much?
GW has certainly upped the buy-in cost over the last year, esp since they started retiring the old Getting Started sets and introduced Vanguard sets which do contain more models, but at a higher price.
I think the issue with Warmachine is that the Buy In set is on its own. GW at least has as few avenues (Warcry, Underworlds Killteam) that give some options for cheaper buy-in. Furthermore Warmachine hasn't got a big fanbase, its almost hitting the market fresh. High buy-in costs are a big worry for that because its a lot harder to get your friend to start up a new game for $200 flat entry cost.
GW can get away with it because they've sheer momentum in the market. Even if those higher priced sets aren't bought up by newbies, they are bought up by established fans in droves.
It's a worry because games like Malifaux, Infinity, Dystopian Wars - all and more all have really low entry costs to get into them. Half or less than the buy-in for the proposed Warmachine.
So its not so much that the market can't take $200 sets, it 100% can and GW and many others prove it (Dystopian Wars, Dropfleet/ Dropzone - all have high priced big sets - even Infinity is now pushing into that market with £80-90 boxed sets of models). The issue is can the market take a $200 buy-in set for a game that's basically trying to re-establish itself in the market and rebuild its customer base.
The expression " A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" exist for a reason and in this case those other birds aren't just in the bush there in someone elses hands. In other words pissing off your existing customer base to try to chase customers already playing GW and similar is just moronic. Second can someone point me to this canceled Warcaster kickstarter that keeps being mentioned because I'm pretty sure its one of those internet fables like half the stuff being posted in this thread. Whats funny is if that was the case it would just reinforce the stupidity of their actions as they make WM more like Warcaster.
As to overreads point people don't seem to grok the huge inbuilt advantage GW has just by their market penetration. If I go to the game store 45 minutes west of me, I might be able to get in a game of BTech, If I go to the game store an hour south of me I might be able to get in a game of infinity but both of them as well as the other game store 45 minutes south all have just about a guaranteed opportunity to get in a game of 40k. A decent number of people play 40k because people play 40k so despite company behavior if you want to game 40k is your best shot. Privateer doesn't have that luxury.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: It strikes me as kind of funny. People are saying that $200 is a lot of money to start an army but if GW puts out a patrol for $140 that's just business as usual. GW charges $200+ for a box set of units at Christmas time that can't even be played as a stand alone force most of the time. Double standard much?
Not really. The initial buy in for Warmachine (ie, a starter box consisting of a Warcaster and 2-4 warjacks, depending on faction) was $50. Depending on how fast you wanted to scale up, you could add another jack, a solo and a unit for around another $100 and have a basic army ready to go. (early days of mark 1, mind, and yes, depending on faction you could build a far more expensive force to fit the standard point value). Over time, prices, points and size of the 'standard battle' all shifted dramatically, to the point that a single unit was $100+ (cavalry was such a 'fun' addition to the game).
And now here we are back at the beginning and a starter force is 4x more expensive than the old starting point, and more expensive than a fairly 'complete' and functional army on the low end of the points scale. And with cheaper material and cheaper machines to make it, with quality in question. (And their foray into plastic leaves a lot of doubts about their ability to quality pieces in another new medium).
Jerram wrote: The expression " A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush" exist for a reason and in this case those other birds aren't just in the bush there in someone elses hands. In other words pissing off your existing customer base to try to chase customers already playing GW and similar is just moronic. Second can someone point me to this canceled Warcaster kickstarter that keeps being mentioned because I'm pretty sure its one of those internet fables like half the stuff being posted in this thread. Whats funny is if that was the case it would just reinforce the stupidity of their actions as they make WM more like Warcaster.
As to overreads point people don't seem to grok the huge inbuilt advantage GW has just by their market penetration. If I go to the game store 45 minutes west of me, I might be able to get in a game of BTech, If I go to the game store an hour south of me I might be able to get in a game of infinity but both of them as well as the other game store 45 minutes south all have just about a guaranteed opportunity to get in a game of 40k. A decent number of people play 40k because people play 40k so despite company behavior if you want to game 40k is your best shot. Privateer doesn't have that luxury.
It wasn’t Warcaster that was cancelled, it was the move to turn Riot Quest into a full fledged board game.
As usual, PP doesn’t understand gamers in any genre based on the offering.
To say that it was poorly marketed is an understatement.
So it’s not some internet fable, simply the wrong game. And I wouldn’t suggest calling folks in this thread uninformed or trying to rock the boat. It’s quite clear we’re all fans here and want PP to succeed.
They’re just not doing a very good job of that anymore.
The cancelled Riot Quest speaks volumes about how little PP knows about marketing.
Don't get me wrong. I think $200 is a large amount of money. I haven't seen what PP is selling in their starter sets. I presume 1 Warcaster, 2-3 Hvys (or 3-5 Light) jacks, an infantry unit (or 2) and, a solo (or 2). Going off old PP prices that comes close to what you'd pay, except if you got the 2 player boxset. The starter with Caster and Jacks about 50. An extra jack about 35. A max unit around 45 and a solo 12. Total about 137 in 2017 dollars.
Again I have no idea what's in a new starter but I'm willing to wait and see.
I'm more unhappy with the fact that the "Hordes" side of the game is being ignored until at least 2024.
That one I know about but that's very different from a cancelled Warcaster that was said. I think that demonstrates PP just doesn't understand their customer base, I think that's been demonstrated multiple times since the triple whammies during the launch of Mk3.
Hordes joins Mk4 in August of 23, not that its significantly better. Of course Im really not sure what kind of game environment they think they're going to have before then anyways. I'm not sure I've ever seen such a piss poor roadmap even from Lockbonortheon.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: If GW bought it (it’s not a rumour. Stop that. Step away from Reddit and 4chan this instant!)…would that be the wargames equivalent of Sonic on Nintendo?
GW isn't a very aggressive company when it comes to expanding to other IP, the last big brand-new IP venture they made was lord of the rings two decades ago. AoS is more like a sequel to their existing IP.
I would sooner expect a big faceless multinational conglomerate to buy them up like asmodee/embracer group or some chinese mega company, they love aggressive expansion and gobbling up other IP.
It's probably to GW's disadvantage they are like that tbh. They could have capitalised on the family friendly board game boom by making or buying their own settlers of catann boardgame or something like it, and it would totally be in their wheelhouse as physical games company.
In this case it would be smart for GW to buy up PP or Warmachine even if they don't use it, just sitting on it would be smart as it would prevent Asmodee/Embracer group aggressively expanding to compete with them more directly. Asmodee/embracer do seem to have taken an interest in GW's business model considering they opened their own black library.
In this case it would be smart for GW to buy up PP or Warmachine even if they don't use it, just sitting on it would be smart as it would prevent Asmodee/Embracer group aggressively expanding to compete with them more directly. Asmodee/embracer do seem to have taken an interest in GW's business model considering they opened their own black library.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: It strikes me as kind of funny. People are saying that $200 is a lot of money to start an army but if GW puts out a patrol for $140 that's just business as usual. GW charges $200+ for a box set of units at Christmas time that can't even be played as a stand alone force most of the time. Double standard much?
I mean, at least some of us who think $200 is too much for a starter also think GW prices are insane, so no, not really.
The $200 is a whole army for MK4 right? So this is them just trying to deal with SKU bloat in a different way. Why have a $80 starter and 5-10 other SKUs to buy when you can just get everything at once I'm sure is their thinking.
It also simplifies their whole production as they never have excess stock of single figures that didn't sell well as that, likely won't exist. So less warehouse space as well.
I'm not sure the benefits on cost savings for PP will end up outweighing the people that won't try the game to the steep buy in though.
AduroT wrote: Guildball definitely stole a little bit of Warmachine’s steam. It used their Focus mechanic and build a game around that, then added it’s own flare. It’s first big outing was an appearance at Warmachine Weekend. I forget if that was officially part of the event or just totally coincidentally happening at the same hotel on the same weekend in this other side room, but PP was not happy about it. The slowdown led to them panic releasing MK3 early to try and get back ahead of it, and well we know how the MK3 release went.
I heard it straight from the mouth of a former member of the PP design team that the rushed release of Warmachine Mk3 was done to try to scoop 40k 8th. Privateer Press wanted a big summer release with major hype behind it to try to grow their market share against 40k, with the hopes of "breaking through" and challenging GWs market dominance directly in real terms (i.e. not just in the imagination of internet fanbois). Rumors were pointing to GW gearing up to release a big new edition of 40k in the summer of 2017 and the powers that be at PP knew that Mk3 would be dead on arrival and fall by the wayside if they launched it the same summer as a new edition of 40k, so they pushed to release it the summer prior instead and rushed the development process (or more accurately, reconfigured the development process so they could release a half-baked incomplete new edition that would need at least another year of development to revise all the stats and rules necessary for players to be able to fully enjoy the game with their favorite factions and warcasters, etc.).
Leo_the_Rat wrote: Don't get me wrong. I think $200 is a large amount of money. I haven't seen what PP is selling in their starter sets. I presume 1 Warcaster, 2-3 Hvys (or 3-5 Light) jacks, an infantry unit (or 2) and, a solo (or 2). Going off old PP prices that comes close to what you'd pay, except if you got the 2 player boxset. The starter with Caster and Jacks about 50. An extra jack about 35. A max unit around 45 and a solo 12. Total about 137 in 2017 dollars.
Again I have no idea what's in a new starter but I'm willing to wait and see.
I'm more unhappy with the fact that the "Hordes" side of the game is being ignored until at least 2024.
Officially, the typical army starter is going to be more like 1 warcaster, 2 warjacks, 2 large units (6 models each - typically these are "line" or "standard" infantry type units), 2 small units (3 models each - usually these are going to be medium based "heavy infantry" units or support infantry units), 1 solo. This is based on the Orgoth starter, it will vary from Army to Army (the makeup of a Man O War/medium infantry heavy army for example will cause this to look different, but the expectation is that most if not all boxes will have 1 warcaster and 2 warjacks, with the rest being units and solos).
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Monkeysloth wrote: The $200 is a whole army for MK4 right? So this is them just trying to deal with SKU bloat in a different way. Why have a $80 starter and 5-10 other SKUs to buy when you can just get everything at once I'm sure is their thinking.
It also simplifies their whole production as they never have excess stock of single figures that didn't sell well as that, likely won't exist. So less warehouse space as well.
I'm not sure the benefits on cost savings for PP will end up outweighing the people that won't try the game to the steep buy in though.
Yes and no. Mk4 has three standard levels of play, "Skirmish" @ 50 pts, "Pitched Battle" @ 75 points, and "Grand Melee" or "Total War" @ 100 points (two different play formats at 100 points). The starter box gets you a small army for Skirmish play at 50 points. The general assumption is that "standard" play (i.e. steamroller play) is going to be the Pitched Battle at the 75 point level, as you can't field battle engines, colossals, or gargantuans in Skirmish at 50 points.
I heard it straight from the mouth of a former member of the PP design team that the rushed release of Warmachine Mk3 was done to try to scoop 40k 8th. Privateer Press wanted a big summer release with major hype behind it to try to grow their market share against 40k, with the hopes of "breaking through" and challenging GWs market dominance directly in real terms (i.e. not just in the imagination of internet fanbois). Rumors were pointing to GW gearing up to release a big new edition of 40k in the summer of 2017 and the powers that be at PP knew that Mk3 would be dead on arrival and fall by the wayside if they launched it the same summer as a new edition of 40k, so they pushed to release it the summer prior instead and rushed the development process (or more accurately, reconfigured the development process so they could release a half-baked incomplete new edition that would need at least another year of development to revise all the stats and rules necessary for players to be able to fully enjoy the game with their favorite factions and warcasters, etc.).
Honestly, I think they were right that releasing around the same time as 8th edition would have not been ideal but obviously, as hindsight being 20/20, rushing turned out to be much, much worse. Everyone always wants to do their new releases around gencon or middle of summer so there's always too much competition. Wonder if trying to release around the Holidays after 8th editions release (and not announcing at Gencon) would have worked well?
Monkeysloth wrote: The $200 is a whole army for MK4 right? So this is them just trying to deal with SKU bloat in a different way. Why have a $80 starter and 5-10 other SKUs to buy when you can just get everything at once I'm sure is their thinking.
It also simplifies their whole production as they never have excess stock of single figures that didn't sell well as that, likely won't exist. So less warehouse space as well.
I'm not sure the benefits on cost savings for PP will end up outweighing the people that won't try the game to the steep buy in though.
Yes and no. Mk4 has three standard levels of play, "Skirmish" @ 50 pts, "Pitched Battle" @ 75 points, and "Grand Melee" or "Total War" @ 100 points (two different play formats at 100 points). The starter box gets you a small army for Skirmish play at 50 points. The general assumption is that "standard" play (i.e. steamroller play) is going to be the Pitched Battle at the 75 point level, as you can't field battle engines, colossals, or gargantuans in Skirmish at 50 points.
Oof, ya, that's pricy. Not really sure what they're thinking there. If that was a really nice 2 player battle box $200 wouldn't be too bad. Knight models does some really nice stuff at that prince range for Batman with punchout terrain peices.
Monkeysloth wrote: The $200 is a whole army for MK4 right? So this is them just trying to deal with SKU bloat in a different way. Why have a $80 starter and 5-10 other SKUs to buy when you can just get everything at once I'm sure is their thinking.
It also simplifies their whole production as they never have excess stock of single figures that didn't sell well as that, likely won't exist. So less warehouse space as well.
I'm not sure the benefits on cost savings for PP will end up outweighing the people that won't try the game to the steep buy in though.
Its definitely simpler for them. The 4 armies coming out over the next year will have exactly 6 SKUs each. Starter box ($200), Expansion box ($175), and then a third warcaster, the two warjacks from the first box individually, and a huge based (80mm) solo for each (because reasons). Also 6 mercs that will each work for 2 armies. That's it. That's the product line. 30 SKUs. If you want just one of the units or solos from one of the boxes, they'll eventually put them up as direct-only from their website (with the typical PP double-charge shipping cost, which is weird anyway, since I have paid for shipping from any company for years now), and the cost will not reflect the cost of buying them as part of the box sets. They're quite honest about upcharging people for them if you don't want the $375 in boxed sets. Even if you only want the second warcaster for your army, its all the models or pay a premium.
How this is going to work in the future is a mystery, since they mentioned that cadres will exist that can work for multiple armies in the same factions, but so far the plan is everything but the third warcaster and the two warjacks will be box-only or eventually direct from PP with an upcharge.
Monkeysloth wrote: The $200 is a whole army for MK4 right? So this is them just trying to deal with SKU bloat in a different way. Why have a $80 starter and 5-10 other SKUs to buy when you can just get everything at once I'm sure is their thinking.
It also simplifies their whole production as they never have excess stock of single figures that didn't sell well as that, likely won't exist. So less warehouse space as well.
I'm not sure the benefits on cost savings for PP will end up outweighing the people that won't try the game to the steep buy in though.
no, 200 is just the starter 50p at 22 models, and there lies the problems, how are you going to convince someone who has never seen or heard of this game to place 200usd on the counter for a game he/she might NOT enjoy?
cus after that, you have to pay 175usd for the army expansion that takes the force to 75p (another 15 models) and finaly add in a seperate warjack at 35-45usd to bring the force up to the targeted field of 100p.
Beginner bracket by logic should be 20-25p and be in the range of 50-70usd, and the only exuse they give is that they want to limit the SKUs in order for shops to carry the whole mk4 product line, So instead of the traditional custom slow grow you are getting a preset product.
And in todays world, fewer and fewer is going to be able to afford entry points for games that is above 70usd unless it is a two player box.
So, in short, there's not even going to be any real variation in what you field or face without some serious cash output or already owning Legacy stuff(which may not even have their rules available at launch and are excluded from most of the new features).
Platuan4th wrote: So, in short, there's not even going to be any real variation in what you field or face without some serious cash output or already owning Legacy stuff(which may not even have their rules available at launch and are excluded from most of the new features).
There will be minor variations in warjacks and casters as they will eventualy sell 1 or 2 variations of the expanion box and 2-3 months after the box deals has been released one can order induvidual models from PP webshop, but not the level of choice that mk1-mk3 has today, and that is how PP wants it to be in mk4 Primal. Less models variation, easier to remember what the models do for the opponent is their reasoning.
And yes, legacy mode is not the primary fokus of MK4, Primal is.
The unit preview shows the new Cygnar warjacks each have 64 variants. Maybe a bunch of them won’t be seen as worthwhile, and it’s not equivalent to having 64 different warjack units, but it is equivalent to a bunch of ‘old’ jack selections rolled into one.
I hope the models allow for different stances…
Racking spells, command cards, the expansion SKU talked about as giving you options, and some units (hopefully not just the new 80mm solos) can be taken by multiple armies/cadres/things in a faction all give additional variability between tabletop armies.
I’m not saying it’s super awesome, but it’s better than it appears at first.
I expect things to change over time, if things work out, as their roadmap plus some ‘Hordes factions’ probably puts them out to 2024. At that point it’ll likely be more themed armies for existing factions with more crossover units.
The $200 army is too much, they should break that SKU into two. A 25pts force (Warcaster, 2 Warjacks, and 3-6 dudes). An affordable way to get into the game. Then have the rest of what is currently in the SKU as a separate expansion box. OK it will add 4 extra SKU's, but it makes the game have a lower entry point, which is a far better way to entice people, also there are some people (myself included) who only want to play Warmachine as a small Skirmish game.
Offering a smaller way to start the game should be a no brainer... the $200 starter sets have me puzzled. Just think to do demo games, would mean buying 2, so $400. I recently picked up 2 MKIII battlegroups at £20 each, so £40 to do demo games.
Monkeysloth wrote: The $200 is a whole army for MK4 right? So this is them just trying to deal with SKU bloat in a different way. Why have a $80 starter and 5-10 other SKUs to buy when you can just get everything at once I'm sure is their thinking.
It also simplifies their whole production as they never have excess stock of single figures that didn't sell well as that, likely won't exist. So less warehouse space as well.
I'm not sure the benefits on cost savings for PP will end up outweighing the people that won't try the game to the steep buy in though.
I feel like the $200 army boxes are OK - but they really should come up with some sort of cheaper buy-in. PP needs a low cost way to get the new material minis in people's hands (for people rightly skeptical of the quality - given PP track record) and a way to let a newbie pick up the game and try it out with a friend at a much lower commitment level than "we both buy a $200 army straight off."
Maybe just something like a $100 box that contains two super tiny armies (Like say a warcaster, solo and two light jacks for each side) - but the box is merc themed so you'd be able to use the included units with whatever army box you do wind up buying should you like the game. (assuming Mercs is still going to be a thing and you can swap units into an army anymore).
It is hard to sell such an investment to new players, especially as they can see what other companies offer for a much smaller sum (A Song of Ice and Fire starters come to mind). Games need cheap starters and cheap ways of bulking the army out with grunts, they can't consist exclusively of very expensive character-like pieces.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: I’m struggling to find images of the starter sets. Can anyone provide a link?
There is no images of mk4 starters yet if that is what you seek, just a description of them in the press release that is linked in OP under the SKU section. (roadmap is allso in the press release)
Yeah, this was not a strong launch of a product, even in beta form.
But, on price, honestly I've been paying far more from GW for far less models in the Necromunda line.
And, if talk is to be believed, Army lists within factions no longer include a bunch of free extra models/units. So at least initially, fewer models counts as more points on the table. That's always been a bit of WM's thing.
I think the whole Line of Sight media dropping discreet coverage of Warmachine may have been the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of marketing, so they had to push this out the door before they had even renders of both starter sets, or production quality level prints to send out, or even time for people who received previews to fully paint them.
Every time there's a problem, the answer seems to be: it'll be better at GenCon. So maybe wait until GenCon? This may be getting ahead of GenCon to try and get some of the pre-con news cycle to themselves. At gencon, media embargoes to previewers can drop and they show their cleaned and painted models. PP can run demos and show off starters, etc.
After all, if I spend $200, and no one else locally does….what exactly has been started?
Knock them on the price, but GW does get their starter sets right, as they contain enough to self demo the game.
This also feeds back to my much earlier speculation regarding the salt PP face. And again I’m not saying it as fact or proof etc. But Mk1 was considerably cheaper to get into than GW,,which fed into the Not GW Appeal of the game.
The Heresy boxed set is of course $99 more expensive. But comes with a ridiculous number of models, all but the Terminators are brand new and all are pretty damned spanky.
There’s enough in there for two people to at least learn the ropes, and really only one of them need sink cash to see if it’s for them.
MkIV seems to be asking me to not only drop $200, but possibly double that, or persuade a friend to drop their own $200, just to get started.
Screw starter sets at this point in time with, new production cast model, new materials and unproven quality they should sell an individual jack box for people to check what is this magnets and 3D printing all about.
No way people regardless of old and new clients is getting into a starter of this price blindfolded.
Reviews in gencon may be well fine and dandy but in the EU they better up their game and start attending and invest on events.
Its a completely new product so should be handled as such.
You can say many things about other companies starters but most of the times you are familiar on what you are going to get that is not the case here.
I think releasing $200 starters is fine for the existing audience who already know they're going all in. GW does it all the time. The problem is that if they want to grow the game, surely by this point they've learnt people are reluctant to even through $10 at a system which isn't GW if they're wary none around them will be playing it?
I don't know, PP aren't the brightest sparks but I don't know if they're that naïve. Metal became untenable so they must have their finger on the price pulse at least a little. Warcaster had a pretty good spread of different starter sets at different prices around... $60-75 iirc? I'd be surprised if they didn't do something in that range eventually, or maybe Warcaster's lack of success (outside Kickstarter) is what made them think they can just lean on the diehard whales.
Arbitrator wrote: I don't know, PP aren't the brightest sparks but I don't know if they're that naïve. Metal became untenable so they must have their finger on the price pulse at least a little. Warcaster had a pretty good spread of different starter sets at different prices around... $60-75 iirc? I'd be surprised if they didn't do something in that range eventually, or maybe Warcaster's lack of success (outside Kickstarter) is what made them think they can just lean on the diehard whales.
I mean sure but those are the same diehard whales have just been told that 90% of their existing collections are invalided for the main game mode, and can’t even be used in a legacy fashion for months as they’re not even getting stat lines imminently. That’s a pretty tough sell.
After all, if I spend $200, and no one else locally does….what exactly has been started?
200 for one force, not a single word in the press release if they will make a two player box.
You get the feeling that this press release was just ment to say; Hey we are making mk4 and here is some super early beta rules where we have removed alot of wharmahordes identity, oh and btw, we are invalidating more or less the entire mk1-mk3 model range for main mk4 to get some mutch needed cash.
Con will hopefully shed some light on the issues with these new starter boxes, and i hope thouse fans that are left, can put presshure on PP to make REAL starter boxes, and make a new point bracket in the mk4 rules at around 20-25p.
And another thing folks, 200 that is for US, expect the price to be even higer for EU, due to VAT and import taxes, so they are not doing any good job in promoting this outside of US. Aus is prolly not going to any better.
I do feel like PP would have done a lot to have had a big splash of the new boxed sets and all - even just one. They REALLY should be blowing us away with models and the new production method and box contents.
And well, not really feeling it, if I can get by on a BRB I'll most likely give it a whirl, as I have nearly all the Circle stuff. mostly Ebay sourced thanks to PP's comical supply chain outside the merika (also locking some of the range behind a direct only wall, with added customs risk (and handling charges) was a donk move)
We will be bringing a very limited amount of Orgoth Sea Raiders and Cygnar Storm Legion product to Gen Con next week, consisting of the warjack A, warjack B, and warcaster C SKUs for those two armies. They will be sold as a battlegroup for $75 (purchased a la carte, they would total $95 to $105.) We will also be selling the same items online during the course of Gen Con, and we are offering free shipping on all orders over $100 to anywhere in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the UK, and the EU until the end of August 10th. Just know that depending on the number of orders we receive, delivery could take significantly longer than normal. Our hope in offering this preview is to get some of these models out into the world and maybe even on some tables so that those on the front lines of the new edition will be able to show others a bit of what’s coming this fall.
Oh, so they are offering a couple smaller demo boxes/bundles, it's just GenCon exclusive.
That $75 is a bit more than what the current Battlegrpups go for, and those are 1 Warcaster and 2- 3 Warjacks, tokens, dice, rules, and a flimsy mat. 1 Warcaster and 2 Warjacks os a bit less.
Unless the $75 is for both armies, in which case it will be a bargain.
Still, given that PP can make a small Battlegroup, I am surprised that they haven't made it a permanent thing for MKIV.
Vertrucio wrote: Yeah, this was not a strong launch of a product, even in beta form.
But, on price, honestly I've been paying far more from GW for far less models in the Necromunda line.
And, if talk is to be believed, Army lists within factions no longer include a bunch of free extra models/units. So at least initially, fewer models counts as more points on the table. That's always been a bit of WM's thing.
I think the whole Line of Sight media dropping discreet coverage of Warmachine may have been the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of marketing, so they had to push this out the door before they had even renders of both starter sets, or production quality level prints to send out, or even time for people who received previews to fully paint them.
Every time there's a problem, the answer seems to be: it'll be better at GenCon. So maybe wait until GenCon? This may be getting ahead of GenCon to try and get some of the pre-con news cycle to themselves. At gencon, media embargoes to previewers can drop and they show their cleaned and painted models. PP can run demos and show off starters, etc.
This feels rushed and a premature announcement to me.
It’s basically an alpha rules document with no models or armies to go along with it.
Those thinking that PP is all of a sudden going to have printing farms on every continent are hoping for the impossible. Anywhere outside of the US will have to wait at least a year, maybe longer, before they start seeing models made locally. And that’s only if the launch is successful. If it’s a lukewarm or poor launch?
It’s already looking to be a rushed and overly ambitious launch as it is from a company with few customers left and what appears to be very little capital left.
This press release is just a bunch of words for those of us not attending GenCon. And I would assume that the only folks going to be trying it out there of course will be the super fans and whales, whom might do nothing but gush at how awesome everything is.
Which is why I don’t understand why we wouldn’t see a bunch of previews from the painting crowd.
I’d check it out if not for the $300CAD buy in it requires. If I’m reluctant to do that as a former fan, then they have missed the mark here. We need a more affordable buy in to test the waters.
For all the complaints about buy in all people are really going to need is the (free?) app for the rules and a bunch of the cheap old minis to proxy?
people will certainly be able to figure out if they like the newer way of playing well enough before spending the $200 (or $400 if they feel they need to provide both forces)
It's not cheap to get the 'starter' but we also don't know what the finances for these are going to look like, especially if the 3D printing is being contracted out rather than being done by PP or a wholly owned subsidiary. 3D printing doesn't scale like plastic production so a $75 box may not make enough profit for anything other than an occasionally available item (not saying they won't be making anything on it, but just not enough)
What I, personally, find weird is how if they didn't offer something that was tailored for "out of the box" playing? They'd probably be getting just as much flak.
They posted the Orgoth army set:
1 Kishtaar, the Howling Silence warcaster
1 Jackal warjacks (4 heads and 8 weapon options)
1 Tyrant warjack (4 heads and 8 weapon options)
1 Assault Reavers unit + Standard Bearer (6 models)
1 Strike Reavers unit + Standard Bearer (6 models)
1 Ulkor Barrager (3 models)
1 Warwitch Coven unit (3 models)
1 Orgoth Commander solo
That's:
1x Warcaster
1x Heavy Warjack
1x Light Warjack
1x Solo
1x unit of 3 40mm or 50mm based models
2x units of 5 models with standards.
1x unit of 3 30mm or so based models
As far as I know, we haven't seen this warcaster yet. They might be the Big Based Warcaster coming for Orgoth.
Platuan4th wrote: So, in short, there's not even going to be any real variation in what you field or face without some serious cash output or already owning Legacy stuff(which may not even have their rules available at launch and are excluded from most of the new features).
Yes and no. Army lists are generally going to be overwhelmingly cookie cutter. Variation in lists will come in the form of warjack loadouts (each warjack has something like 64 possible permutations base as it comes with 4 head/cortex options, 4 weapon A options and 4 weapon B options. I assume more out there warjack designs might have some additional selections to make (shoulder mounted weapons, etc.), warcaster racks (i.e. customizable spell lists), and command cards (5 cards you choose at the start of the game that give you what are basically mini-feats), as well as what (if any) Cadres you field. For the most part though, variation will probably come down to which of 2-3 warcasters for your army are you going to take + how many Warjack A vs how many Warjack B. You can get more differentiation if you are willing to spring for the "a la carte" unit purchases from the boxes down the line, but I think most people will find that not worth it.
I think the whole Line of Sight media dropping discreet coverage of Warmachine may have been the straw that broke the camel's back in terms of marketing, so they had to push this out the door before they had even renders of both starter sets, or production quality level prints to send out, or even time for people who received previews to fully paint them.
Influencers were put under NDA and made aware of MK4 and what it would entail several months ago, PP wanted to have them on board to hype and market the new edition. LoS hasn't (and probably won't for legal reasons) said it outright, but its highly likely the reason they are dropping Warmachine coverage is because they were feeling burned by Mk4 and the forced obsolescence of the existing miniatures range, etc.
We will be bringing a very limited amount of Orgoth Sea Raiders and Cygnar Storm Legion product to Gen Con next week, consisting of the warjack A, warjack B, and warcaster C SKUs for those two armies. They will be sold as a battlegroup for $75 (purchased a la carte, they would total $95 to $105.) We will also be selling the same items online during the course of Gen Con, and we are offering free shipping on all orders over $100 to anywhere in the U.S., Canada, Australia, the UK, and the EU until the end of August 10th. Just know that depending on the number of orders we receive, delivery could take significantly longer than normal. Our hope in offering this preview is to get some of these models out into the world and maybe even on some tables so that those on the front lines of the new edition will be able to show others a bit of what’s coming this fall.
Oh, so they are offering a couple smaller demo boxes/bundles, it's just GenCon exclusive.
Not quite. These sets are just Warcaster C + Warjack A + Warjack B standalones for each Army being sold together at a bundle at a discount price of $75 per army. As the legal minimum play size for the game is 50pts, the gencon sets don't actually get you a legally playable force (Warjack A + B are sold in the starter army as well alongside 4 units and a solo, meaning that the two warjacks alone won't get you to 50 points).
Technically speaking you *can* play games less than 50 points, because the PP police aren't going to bust down your door if you and a mate play a random point value other than 50/75/100, but by RAW theres no rules support for doing so.
NAVARRO wrote: Screw starter sets at this point in time with, new production cast model, new materials and unproven quality they should sell an individual jack box for people to check what is this magnets and 3D printing all about.
In good news, of the minimal SKUs being released, individual jack boxes are one of the products.
It is worth noting that unlike the current battleboxes, the new starters come with all the weapon options for the jacks. The new jack kits aren't that different from existing kits content wise outside of not being PVC and being super easy to magnetize by all accounts (including from a friend I know personally that got a sample) but those things have always been far more expensive than the static versions that come in starters.
Not quite. These sets are just Warcaster C + Warjack A + Warjack B standalones for each Army being sold together at a bundle at a discount price of $75 per army. As the legal minimum play size for the game is 50pts, the gencon sets don't actually get you a legally playable force (Warjack A + B are sold in the starter army as well alongside 4 units and a solo, meaning that the two warjacks alone won't get you to 50 points).
Technically speaking you *can* play games less than 50 points, because the PP police aren't going to bust down your door if you and a mate play a random point value other than 50/75/100, but by RAW theres no rules support for doing so.
It varies since you can customize the jacks, but it looks like the max you can get out of the two Cygnar jacks is 29 points. The Orgoth pair can get to 31 total.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
stonehorse wrote: "Models Can Only Attack Enemy Models: We have generally removed the ability for friendly models to target other friendly models with attacks. There are some exceptions, of course, including warbeast frenzies and models with the Berserk special rule, but for the most part, you are no longer allowed to target your own models with attacks. This not only removed what we have long felt was a potentially awkward exploit in the rules but also allowed us to further streamline rules writing and interactions."
It took four editions for PP to work this one out... Jesus wept. I honestly wonder whether the designers are idiots who accidentally stumbled upon some very cool game mechanics.
I'm basically 100% convinced that this was the plan for MK3 but somewhere late in development they got cold feet, probably on account of the playtesters demanding it be integral to the experience. Almost every notable rule issue with Mk3 at launch was a result of rules from Mk2 losing friendly targeting language or otherwise only really being a problem by targeting friendlies.
I hope that they change the rules for anti-magic units. I find it weird that I can't target a unit with spells but I can effect them if I see a unit across the board from them or if there is someone behind them. It should be either a unit can be effected by magic or not. It shouldn't be based on targeting.
If you read the article, you will have to buy the starter, the faction expansion, and one extra warjack to get to 100 points. The $175+ starter will only have enough minis for the smallest game size.
I think this is a mistake.
Games Workshop can get away with those prices because of how popular it is and the quality of their sculpts...this game is trying to reboot itself out of the gutter. Not only is that 3x the cost of the previous starter boxes it's also a large gamble for small business retailers trying stock all factions at launch.
Games Workshop can get away with those prices because of how popular it is and the quality of their sculpts...this game is trying to reboot itself out of the gutter. Not only is that 3x the cost of the previous starter boxes it's also a large gamble for small business retailers trying stock all factions at launch.
Note to mention that GW does offer alternative options for those on lower budgets to get into the game.
GW hit the issues of big armies and big upfront costs to get started and it was one (not the only) contributing factors to Old World falling apart. The lack of ability for a cheap entry point with a lower model count, suitable for someone just getting started.
I agree, PP seem to really be missing a trick here. High upfront costs is only going to work for existing customers, but they are almost setting those bridges on fire with the reboot being what it is and likely to at least make some a little cool on reception. So they should be leaning super heavily into new people. Bigging up relaunching, cheap entry boxes, smaller game sizes, smaller game format, a PG scheme or similar restoration. Etc... They should be putting pressure on marketing to draw in new people and make the game as accessible as possible.
Restricting it to high value boxes will only keep the game within its current market and will stifle attempts to grow.
You're basically putting yourself in the same box as something like Adepticus Titanicus. A side game for GW that isn't expected to rival 40K or AoS or anything. A specialist niche game that I suspect is predominantly bought by people who are already GW customers and perhaps far less by those totally new to wargaming.
Going to have to wildly disagree. 2P starters only get you so far, while having a clear "progression path" gets you farther.
Look at SW Armada. The new Fleet starters are hella pricy for what they are, but from what I can tell they cannot keep them in stock on Miniature Market or at my FLGS.
Being able to just say "Hey, buy this box to start playing after you build!" has a whole better feel to incoming players.
Kanluwen wrote: Going to have to wildly disagree. 2P starters only get you so far, while having a clear "progression path" gets you farther.
Look at SW Armada. The new Fleet starters are hella pricy for what they are, but from what I can tell they cannot keep them in stock on Miniature Market or at my FLGS.
Being able to just say "Hey, buy this box to start playing after you build!" has a whole better feel to incoming players.
On a very small or non existent player pool you would want a 2player. At least you can convince your brother or friends to play a bit with you just to dip their toes. 1player starters and you are left alone with no chance to even start or introduce friends.
If you read the article, you will have to buy the starter, the faction expansion, and one extra warjack to get to 100 points. The $175+ starter will only have enough minis for the smallest game size.
I think this is a mistake.
Games Workshop can get away with those prices because of how popular it is and the quality of their sculpts...this game is trying to reboot itself out of the gutter. Not only is that 3x the cost of the previous starter boxes it's also a large gamble for small business retailers trying stock all factions at launch.
I do think the starters have too much sticker shock to really entice new players.
That said, I'd not rule out the smallest game size. Brawlmachine has proven very popular and everyone I've played Warcaster with has preferred it at the Skirmish level (myself included). I honestly hope the game finds its groove at 75 and the community can avoid bloating to 100.
Kanluwen wrote: Going to have to wildly disagree. 2P starters only get you so far, while having a clear "progression path" gets you farther.
Look at SW Armada. The new Fleet starters are hella pricy for what they are, but from what I can tell they cannot keep them in stock on Miniature Market or at my FLGS.
Being able to just say "Hey, buy this box to start playing after you build!" has a whole better feel to incoming players.
Thing is Starwars Armada has the power of Starwars.
A VAST franchise and series that has lasted for decades.You basically have to seriously seriously mess up to have something as powerful as that not sell.
Furthermore I think some of their stocking issues are because they do pre-painted which I'm going to assume is higher cost/slower turnaround compared to simply model sprue in a box of regular wargames.
Warmachine is not Starwars and over the last 5+ years Warmachine has seen a decline in general sales, popularity and awareness, coupled with the wargames market seeing a lot of general expansion of more games and many games getting bigger in fanbase. Warmachine just hasn't got the momentum it once had and that makes many of us worried when their plan seems to be to focus on fewer higher priced buy-in options to get into the game. Especially when they are doing a fairly hard re-set. Heck as a fan more of Hordes I've got to wait a whole other year before Hordes even appears on the Radar and no idea if/when Everblight (or an army associated with it) starts to get releases. So even there the slower turn around is going to mean they've got several years of existing fans having stalled uptake. Running down the current lines is sensible, but not replacing them at the same speed and leaving potentially years of nothing is a huge risk if those that do get released don't surge in sales.
His Master's Voice wrote: Have anyone manage to locate better quality images for the miniatures? Some bare resins maybe?
Surely there's someone out there with those models at hand and a phone made in this decade.
This is the main problem.
Like 3 influencers got model previews, and that’s a single Orgoth Warjack.
We’ve seen nothing of the releases, which are apparently coming out in a couple months.
From what I’ve been hearing and reading, it seems as though many current fans are in a wait-and-see mode, and new players will also do the same due to the steep buy in cost for a single starter.
Hordes is off the menu until 2024 as well.
This just seems designed to utterly fail without a massive uptake in the new edition.
Couple this with a free app that folks can just proxy with, and we’re looking at least two years of further slumping sales. I don’t know if PP has the resources to last that long.
Unless they limp along with minimal support by Kickstarting more RPG material.
I’m baffled how anyone at PP is failing to see this…..
His Master's Voice wrote: Have anyone manage to locate better quality images for the miniatures? Some bare resins maybe?
Surely there's someone out there with those models at hand and a phone made in this decade.
This is the main problem.
Like 3 influencers got model previews, and that’s a single Orgoth Warjack.
We’ve seen nothing of the releases, which are apparently coming out in a couple months.
From what I’ve been hearing and reading, it seems as though many current fans are in a wait-and-see mode, and new players will also do the same due to the steep buy in cost for a single starter.
Hordes is off the menu until 2024 as well.
This just seems designed to utterly fail without a massive uptake in the new edition.
Couple this with a free app that folks can just proxy with, and we’re looking at least two years of further slumping sales. I don’t know if PP has the resources to last that long.
Unless they limp along with minimal support by Kickstarting more RPG material.
I’m baffled how anyone at PP is failing to see this…..
PP has always been kinda terribad at marketing, honestly. Clearly, with the reduced staff now from their heyday, and also probably loss of some of their more experienced folks, they haven't learned those lessons. And, they've also always had kind of an ego (those of us that were once volunteers, like Ghool and myself can attest to this), which for a while was a "cool and edgy" thing to be the underdog against the Evil GW, but those days are long gone, and that rep is hurting them more than helping I think.
I have no ill wishes to them, I want to be clear there. I hope they succeed. But, like Ghool, I'm a bit mystified at some of the decisions they continually make.
The answer seems pretty simple. PP hasn't really been making money off of Warmachine releases for.... a couple years now probably? MonPoc, the RPG, MiniCrate, probably even Warcaster to a degree are profitable enough apparently, and when you're not publicly traded, enough can actually just be enough, especially after cutting back as much as they have.
Ultimately the community is in a wait and see mode because until we get rules for our existing armies in October..... all we can do is wait and see. Right now is the time of anguish. Hype is good, but it'll burn out by October when people can actually start putting money down. I'd expect and hope for more hype in September leading up to the actual launch, as opposed to just the announcement.
Pretty sure those are renders, tho. Or at least, highly touched up photos. I think a lot of us want to see photos of the final production models.
The pics at the start of the thread are renders. The painted pics are actual models, although whether they're actual production versions or better quality master prints is anyone's guess.
LunarSol wrote: The answer seems pretty simple. PP hasn't really been making money off of Warmachine releases for.... a couple years now probably? MonPoc, the RPG, MiniCrate, probably even Warcaster to a degree are profitable enough apparently, and when you're not publicly traded, enough can actually just be enough, especially after cutting back as much as they have.
Ultimately the community is in a wait and see mode because until we get rules for our existing armies in October..... all we can do is wait and see. Right now is the time of anguish. Hype is good, but it'll burn out by October when people can actually start putting money down. I'd expect and hope for more hype in September leading up to the actual launch, as opposed to just the announcement.
• It will take at least until the end of 2023 before we can release MKIV rules conversions for all existing models.
You might get some of your existing armies in October. You could be waiting till 2024.
Valander wrote: Pretty sure those are renders, tho. Or at least, highly touched up photos. I think a lot of us want to see photos of the final production models.
Presumably we'll be able to see those starting next week when the GenCon shipments go out. I know a few people who have gotten some early production models though and from what they've shared there are some very high points and some notable issues. For the most part I've seen very few issues of notable stepping without significant magnification, which is really hard to tell if its an issue or not. Some issues of pooling on various parts and a disappointing face on the Cygnar caster. None of it seems outrageous though and very much on a level similar to the kind of stuff I see with most materials. Some of it is a squeaky wheel problem, as there's an emphasis on the problems found, but thus far the ones I have seen have been minor enough that I don't have a strong concern until I've got it in hand to work on myself. Definitely some positives. Everyone thinks the magnetization is pretty slick. Things are big and cool and details and all the things that PP has always done well. Like most things, its just kind of wait and see until product becomes available. Until then I'm just getting my existing stuff ready to try out with the new rules and see what I think.
LunarSol wrote: The answer seems pretty simple. PP hasn't really been making money off of Warmachine releases for.... a couple years now probably? MonPoc, the RPG, MiniCrate, probably even Warcaster to a degree are profitable enough apparently, and when you're not publicly traded, enough can actually just be enough, especially after cutting back as much as they have.
Ultimately the community is in a wait and see mode because until we get rules for our existing armies in October..... all we can do is wait and see. Right now is the time of anguish. Hype is good, but it'll burn out by October when people can actually start putting money down. I'd expect and hope for more hype in September leading up to the actual launch, as opposed to just the announcement.
• It will take at least until the end of 2023 before we can release MKIV rules conversions for all existing models.
You might get some of your existing armies in October. You could be waiting till 2024.
Every faction is getting armies in October. I suspect most people will have something from their collection that makes the cut unless they focused on something really niche. Again, all we can really do is wait and see, but I personally am not in a position to be concerned about having nothing to play in October.
More nubs than most of the samples I've seen, but those will be pretty easy to clip. Loos like a pretty normal resin cast. Maybe a bit less touch up than usual.
LunarSol wrote: More nubs than most of the samples I've seen, but those will be pretty easy to clip. Loos like a pretty normal resin cast. Maybe a bit less touch up than usual.
I just can't wrap my head around how this is in any way more economical than 3d printing masters and casting with resin. Unless they literally can't afford to hire mold masters, or they're being subsidized by a printer company or something.
Yeah, it looks like a good print, but it doesn't look THAT much better than a competent resin casting, though it has fewer pieces. It's like they're trying to meet the pre-paint crowd halfway with partially assembled models.
Every faction is getting armies in October. I suspect most people will have something from their collection that makes the cut unless they focused on something really niche. Again, all we can really do is wait and see, but I personally am not in a position to be concerned about having nothing to play in October.
So, with the MKIV launch, we will release rules for one Legacy army from each currently existing WARMACHINE and HORDES Faction
1 army per faction. So a very specific set of warcasters, jacks and infantry. You might have something playable, but unless you collected that specific theme, or have a larger collection, you may have jack all to play.
LunarSol wrote: More nubs than most of the samples I've seen, but those will be pretty easy to clip. Loos like a pretty normal resin cast. Maybe a bit less touch up than usual.
I just can't wrap my head around how this is in any way more economical than 3d printing masters and casting with resin. Unless they literally can't afford to hire mold masters, or they're being subsidized by a printer company or something.
Yeah, it looks like a good print, but it doesn't look THAT much better than a competent resin casting, though it has fewer pieces.
It's PP, they probably can't afford to hire mold masters.
slyphic wrote: I just can't wrap my head around how this is in any way more economical than 3d printing masters and casting with resin. Unless they literally can't afford to hire mold masters, or they're being subsidized by a printer company or something.
Yeah, it looks like a good print, but it doesn't look THAT much better than a competent resin casting, though it has fewer pieces. It's like they're trying to meet the pre-paint crowd halfway with partially assembled models.
Costs for resin casting versus direct 3d printing are actually pretty close these days. There is the advantage of being able to print things that are not easily doable via 2 part molds, which can reduce labor costs pretty quickly. Materials wise, yeah not much difference, but the increased difficulty of having to cut models in good ways in order to make them moldable/castable is actually not insignificant, for both the "prep" stage to make the master and later for the actual casting.
There's also the advantage of saving on storage space since you no longer have to store the molds. And you're not going to have to regularly re-make the molds either (resin casting molds only will yield 20-100 parts, depending on complexity, before the mold is too worn out and needs to be remade). Again, big time and cost saving there. The consumables of printers isn't that much (most often the FEP sheets, which are a lot less than the raw RTV for mold making).
I dunno if it’s the kit photos being bright, the detail being poor, or the paint job being crap, some or all the preceding….but I am so far from impressed.
Seeing that one larger sample photo, I am wondering what printers they're using. Frankly, I can get sharper detail on my Sonic Mini 4k. Now, some of that might be the sculpt itself, but to my eye that actually looks over-cured.
A huge part will depend on how good they are at calibrating their printers and then using supports. In theory because its all in-house they could calibrate a set machine type and use a set resin and thus get some really clean prints with only a few anchor supports and the rest really low damage to no damage.
Ergo in theory they could achieve better than even the big names in the presupport market (because those have to be a little heavier because the general home user won't have perfectly calibrated machines and can have different machines and resins with varying tolerances).
Suffice to say there's certainly a lot of quality resin models out there now from 3D prints that people are more than happy with. It totally can be done.
Overread wrote: A huge part will depend on how good they are at calibrating their printers and then using supports. In theory because its all in-house they could calibrate a set machine type and use a set resin and thus get some really clean prints with only a few anchor supports and the rest really low damage to no damage.
Ergo in theory they could achieve better than even the big names in the presupport market (because those have to be a little heavier because the general home user won't have perfectly calibrated machines and can have different machines and resins with varying tolerances).
Suffice to say there's certainly a lot of quality resin models out there now from 3D prints that people are more than happy with. It totally can be done.
100% agree on that. By standardizing on a printer model and resin, they can really optimize for that. Which is something the STL Patreon community can't really do.
Valander wrote: Seeing that one larger sample photo, I am wondering what printers they're using. Frankly, I can get sharper detail on my Sonic Mini 4k. Now, some of that might be the sculpt itself, but to my eye that actually looks over-cured.
I think it's the sculpt. Warmachine always had detail levels all over the place, sometimes on the same miniature.
Valander wrote: Seeing that one larger sample photo, I am wondering what printers they're using. Frankly, I can get sharper detail on my Sonic Mini 4k. Now, some of that might be the sculpt itself, but to my eye that actually looks over-cured.
I think it's the sculpt. Warmachine always had detail levels all over the place, sometimes on the same miniature.
Yeah, the more I look at it, I think you're right that the issue is more in the sculpt. Still though, it's actually not bad; seems better than most PVC or Bones-type stuff I've seen. Granted, this is one part so it's hard to make sweeping judgements, but...
As an existing player and a real fan of where MK3 is right now, rules wise, I have to say that I really don't know who else other than a portion of the existing player base is going to be buying Mk4. Which is bad news for PP.
The view inside the PP fanbase is mixed. The view from outside the PP fanbase is largely negative and no retailer iv seen who have commented have really been interested in freeing up shelf space for this.
I really hope it not the case as I love the game and I like most of the new rule set but for a new flagship game and relaunch, this isn't even getting a lukewarm reception in the places it matters.
Ultimately the existing playerbase is dwindling and nothing done to Mk3 is going to change that. They desperately need new starter products, but making something that fits in with Mk3 is ugly at best, especially you need some of the existing playerbase to buy into it. Too much technology has changed to continue to support the endless back catalog, so they're going with the relaunch. Hopefully it succeeds, but realistically even if it fails its in more or less the same place now. The mk3 die hards can keep playing regardless of whether it dies now or later.
Overread wrote: A huge part will depend on how good they are at calibrating their printers and then using supports. In theory because its all in-house they could calibrate a set machine type and use a set resin and thus get some really clean prints with only a few anchor supports and the rest really low damage to no damage.
Ergo in theory they could achieve better than even the big names in the presupport market (because those have to be a little heavier because the general home user won't have perfectly calibrated machines and can have different machines and resins with varying tolerances).
Suffice to say there's certainly a lot of quality resin models out there now from 3D prints that people are more than happy with. It totally can be done.
100% agree on that. By standardizing on a printer model and resin, they can really optimize for that. Which is something the STL Patreon community can't really do.
Exactly. Plus if they've got all the skills in-house the volume they'd be producing at and the small library of model types (compared to your average merchant) means that they could keep refining the process. They can constantly be tweaking supports to get them lighter and to get the best angles and such.
Same for model cuts too, they've potential to do some really fancy cuts that you just don't see in the STL market because it moves at an insane speed for patreon and the like.
Yeah, duplicate models for 6 man units is really, really lazy if you're doing 3d print production. I get it when making resin casts, since you're then able to reduce the number of molds needed, but really, even a small tweak in Zbrush (or whatever their sculptors use) to get a little variance is easy, and I honestly can't see why you wouldn't do that.
Valander wrote: Yeah, duplicate models for 6 man units is really, really lazy if you're doing 3d print production. I get it when making resin casts, since you're then able to reduce the number of molds needed, but really, even a small tweak in Zbrush (or whatever their sculptors use) to get a little variance is easy, and I honestly can't see why you wouldn't do that.
This is the main problem.
Like 3 influencers got model previews, and that’s a single Orgoth Warjack.
One of them apparently doesn't have any files or sandpaper and did a 20min paintjob on the model. You would think they would send the first copies of models to good painters so the community can get an idea of their quality.
This is the main problem.
Like 3 influencers got model previews, and that’s a single Orgoth Warjack.
One of them apparently doesn't have any files or sandpaper and did a 20min paintjob on the model. You would think they would send the first copies of models to good painters so the community can get an idea of their quality.
Well, in a way, that's par for the general Warmachine/Hordes community--the number of partially assembled, unpainted models I've seen played in games is the highest amongst the Warmachine crowd of any I've ever seen. Pretty much the only time I've seen fully painted is at Adepticon, and even there it felt like most folks went for the 3 color minimum.
Now, of course, I'm sweeping with a big brush there, and there are absolutely some great painters in the Warmachine community, but I think if you go back through lots of threads you'll see a similar observation for most areas.
But yeah, as Ghool pointed out earlier in the thread, their choices of who got the preview models seemed to be... interesting.
This is the main problem. Like 3 influencers got model previews, and that’s a single Orgoth Warjack.
One of them apparently doesn't have any files or sandpaper and did a 20min paintjob on the model. You would think they would send the first copies of models to good painters so the community can get an idea of their quality.
Well, in a way, that's par for the general Warmachine/Hordes community--the number of partially assembled, unpainted models I've seen played in games is the highest amongst the Warmachine crowd of any I've ever seen. Pretty much the only time I've seen fully painted is at Adepticon, and even there it felt like most folks went for the 3 color minimum.
Now, of course, I'm sweeping with a big brush there, and there are absolutely some great painters in the Warmachine community, but I think if you go back through lots of threads you'll see a similar observation for most areas.
But yeah, as Ghool pointed out earlier in the thread, their choices of who got the preview models seemed to be... interesting.
There used to be some amazing WMH painters at GenCon, but they're playing in the Iron Arena on the premium tables with specific scenarios because they meet the paint requirements to be able to play on those tables.
They chose the 3 people that still publicly admit to playing Warmachine. I agree about the unpainted models though. I remember a lot of different colored felt circles on the table to represent terrain types and people playing with bases that had units written on them in silver sharpie. Definitely a different mindset from the 40k crowd. Then I got the models and realized why, their quality didn't really inspire a lot of high quality painting
This is the main problem. Like 3 influencers got model previews, and that’s a single Orgoth Warjack.
One of them apparently doesn't have any files or sandpaper and did a 20min paintjob on the model. You would think they would send the first copies of models to good painters so the community can get an idea of their quality.
Well, in a way, that's par for the general Warmachine/Hordes community--the number of partially assembled, unpainted models I've seen played in games is the highest amongst the Warmachine crowd of any I've ever seen. Pretty much the only time I've seen fully painted is at Adepticon, and even there it felt like most folks went for the 3 color minimum.
Now, of course, I'm sweeping with a big brush there, and there are absolutely some great painters in the Warmachine community, but I think if you go back through lots of threads you'll see a similar observation for most areas.
But yeah, as Ghool pointed out earlier in the thread, their choices of who got the preview models seemed to be... interesting.
There used to be some amazing WMH painters at GenCon, but they're playing in the Iron Arena on the premium tables with specific scenarios because they meet the paint requirements to be able to play on those tables.
I'm beginning to thing that the limited previews and such were caused by PP only recently deciding to switch to 3d printing and, likely, it took them a lot longer to find a resin that they liked then they thought it would and didn't even have more then 1-2 printers a few weeks ago. They were probably waiting for 2 part resin to come down in price as well as general logistics which was clear by this spring that it wasn't happening any time soon and they decided to explore other options.
I'm beginning to thing that the limited previews and such were caused by PP only recently deciding to switch to 3d printing and, likely, it took them a lot longer to find a resin that they liked then they thought it would and didn't even have more then 1-2 printers a few weeks ago. They were probably waiting for 2 part resin to come down in price as well as general logistics which was clear by this spring that it wasn't happening any time soon and they decided to explore other options.
Possibly. I wouldn't be surprised if their initial plan was to do in-house printing of the masters, then continue with the resin casting, and shifted gears when supply/cost started rearing its head. But, I'm sure if you ask them, they'll say they've been extensively testing this for a long time, just like they did Mk 3.
Monkeysloth wrote: Well all the poses are unique outside of 2 that looked to be axis mirrored. Still, that's pretty good..
No, the squads all have duplicated models. Some are disguised better than others by having the models oriented differently in the pic, but it's particularly obvious in the top left Cawdor unit.
These are nice enough overall, but it's all looking a bit high-tech. Also disappointing that, if those starters are anything to go by, it's still very much WarSquad rather than getting back to the Warmachine roots.
I just wish that they would have admitted how many of the MkI/MkII/MkIII 'jacks and units were basically the same things with different weapon options (or equipment options) and done the "squeeze".
Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something and they will actually do the sensible thing and convert the old legacy models to 'base + weapon option, but you've got a unique model for each, instead of swappable pieces'.
solkan wrote: I just wish that they would have admitted how many of the MkI/MkII/MkIII 'jacks and units were basically the same things with different weapon options (or equipment options) and done the "squeeze".
Or maybe I'm misunderstanding something and they will actually do the sensible thing and convert the old legacy models to 'base + weapon option, but you've got a unique model for each, instead of swappable pieces'.
That always confused me when people complained about not having 'options' in Warmachine. There were options, just each option had a unique unit profile.
But yes, it sounds like they're essentially consolidating the jacks of each type and giving them a range of options, rather than having jack fixed to specific weapons. Although going by the comments about compatibility, it's likely at least some of those options will be new.
Well those pics of starters didn't exactly warm my heart. Duplication of mono poses is bad enough with gw with 5/10 poses that get duplicated but leader, 2 poses duplicated and banner that's duplicated among squads?
And seeing it would have been easy fix with 3d printing...
An easy fix, yes. But also something else they have to pay for... 6 unique sculpts are more expensive than 4, even if they do just require some reposing (which is rarely as simple as 'just' reposing).
Duplicating unit fillers and sticking with a single jack frame per class means less sculpting cost. And keep in mind this isn't just a single unit release... they're relaunching an entire product range. If they're on a tight budget (which seems a fair assumption) they're going to be looking for every opportunity to save a few dollars.
That's not to say you shouldn't dislike it... Aesthetically it's not ideal. But it's not at all surprising.
I mean, for the most part they're not terrible compared to some of the cast resin models I've had from various companies. And the pieces that are good look perfect, with very little cleanup required. Hopefully they're still finetuning the process for more consistency...
WARMACHINE – Cygnar Storm Legion Core Army Starter
PIP 21000 MSRP: $199.99
Includes:
1 Captain Athena di Baro Warcaster
1 Courser Light Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Stryker Heavy Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Stormblade Legionnaires Unit (5 models)
1 Stormguard Legionnaires Unit (5 models)
2 Legionnaire Standard Bearer
1 Tempest Thunderers Unit (3 models)
1 Arcane Mechaniks Unit (3 models)
1 Legionnaire Officer Solo
30 Magnets
Includes:
1 Kishtaar, the Howling Silence Warcaster
1 Jackal Light Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Tyrant Heavy Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Assault Reavers Unit (5 models)
1 Strike Reavers Unit (5 models)
2 Reaver Standard Bearer
1 Ulkor Barrager Unit (3 models)
1 Warwitch Coven Unit (3 models)
1 Orgoth Commander Solo
30 Magnets
Those being the starter forces are disappointing. Are they trying to appeal to the GW crowd with the armies that most look like marines / stormcast versus Chaos? The Orgoth really don't look much like their old art from Iron Kingdoms: viking-Roman mashups with armour decorations of leering faces.
Guess I just really wanted more of that old school 'Full Metal Fantasy' look, and these guys all look a bit too sleek for me.
Shakalooloo wrote: Those being the starter forces are disappointing. Are they trying to appeal to the GW crowd with the armies that most look like marines / stormcast versus Chaos? The Orgoth really don't look much like their old art from Iron Kingdoms: viking-Roman mashups with armour decorations of leering faces.
Guess I just really wanted more of that old school 'Full Metal Fantasy' look, and these guys all look a bit too sleek for me.
Definitely not just you. My literal response was "They just look so bland." Maybe it's the renders instead of seeing painted minis(?), but they all look the same for both armies, and totally uninspiring.
I wonder if a contributing factor is how much of the 3D printing world is intended as proxies for some existing franchise. I see these images and think "Weird, they look like knockoff Cygnar models." I don't mean that as a dig on the sculpts, either. They just genuinely don't look "official" to me in those images.
Valander wrote: Yeah, duplicate models for 6 man units is really, really lazy if you're doing 3d print production. I get it when making resin casts, since you're then able to reduce the number of molds needed, but really, even a small tweak in Zbrush (or whatever their sculptors use) to get a little variance is easy, and I honestly can't see why you wouldn't do that.
Unexpected. And yes, really lazy. I don't think that's acceptable for 3d printed miniatures.
WARMACHINE – Cygnar Storm Legion Core Army Starter
PIP 21000 MSRP: $199.99
Includes:
1 Captain Athena di Baro Warcaster
1 Courser Light Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Stryker Heavy Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Stormblade Legionnaires Unit (5 models)
1 Stormguard Legionnaires Unit (5 models)
2 Legionnaire Standard Bearer
1 Tempest Thunderers Unit (3 models)
1 Arcane Mechaniks Unit (3 models)
1 Legionnaire Officer Solo
30 Magnets
Includes:
1 Kishtaar, the Howling Silence Warcaster
1 Jackal Light Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Tyrant Heavy Warjack
(4x Head 8x Arm/Weapon options)
1 Assault Reavers Unit (5 models)
1 Strike Reavers Unit (5 models)
2 Reaver Standard Bearer
1 Ulkor Barrager Unit (3 models)
1 Warwitch Coven Unit (3 models)
1 Orgoth Commander Solo
30 Magnets
...wow. There's not only duplicated poses in the same unit, the different units also share the same poses. It seems they have used the same armatures for all sculpts, just changing around gubbins.
insaniak wrote: I mean, for the most part they're not terrible compared to some of the cast resin models I've had from various companies. And the pieces that are good look perfect, with very little cleanup required. Hopefully they're still finetuning the process for more consistency...
Hm... ome of the parts have really egregious layer lines, though (much bigger than anything I've ever gotten in my dinky machines, particularly that shows on unprimed parts), and IMHO the parts look like they haven¡t really been properly cleaned before curing: there's too many shiny and whited out parts for that.
It looks kinda shoddy, or I'm a bit of a perfectionist when doing it myself, dunno.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Shakalooloo wrote: Those being the starter forces are disappointing. Are they trying to appeal to the GW crowd with the armies that most look like marines / stormcast versus Chaos? The Orgoth really don't look much like their old art from Iron Kingdoms: viking-Roman mashups with armour decorations of leering faces.
Guess I just really wanted more of that old school 'Full Metal Fantasy' look, and these guys all look a bit too sleek for me.
Yeah, there's that too... these look nothing like what I liked from IK back in the day (magic/steampunk industrial revolution). For example, these cygnars, which were the first faction I ever collected, look mostly like generic scifi armored clad dudes with added tesla coils (which, incidentally... what's with Cygnar and tesla coil flanderization, FFS).
If you mean the jack fist arm, that's an orientation issue, I believe. Should be fixable by rotating the part slightly... But yeah, not something that you want to be sending out as a promotional piece.
On both units using the same bodies, that one is no different to GW putting multiple arms in a kit to make different units.
insaniak wrote: If you mean the jack fist arm, that's an orientation issue, I believe. Should be fixable by rotating the part slightly... But yeah, not something that you want to be sending out as a promotional piece.
On both units using the same bodies, that one is no different to GW putting multiple arms in a kit to make different units.
It is that, among other things (probably a compunded issue of orientation, AA/grey levels, layer times and light off delays)... but the problem is, one would expect the people that's orienting and supporting the parts should already know this, and even if they dont, something like that should not be sent as promotional material once you've test printed it and seen it's not good enough.
I don't expect they just sent the test prints they were doing... and if they did, well, then they will be judged by them.
I'm looking at some of the parts and the support marks and nubs are rather extreme! You can 100% do better, especially if you've got design and production under one team and you are the only ones producing. Heck even presupported models for consumers, don well, can be better than some of those marks.
One thought on repeat models is that perhaps the 3D print manufacture is a plan they hope to use in the medium term not the full long term. So they design models that can be cast in the future. This leaves them the option to expand into casting in the future if sales improve; if the supply of metal improves; if the global trade improves etc.... Ergo they make the models work for them in both cast and 3D print formats so that they've got options open in the future instead of having to re-design to go back to cast models.
I sure hope they keep 3d printing as a manufacturing method and just keep improving their technique. It has its limitations, but compared to resin or metal casting and injection moulding it has several advantages, chief one being that you don't have the issue of undercuts limiting sculpting. There are some torturous solutions for 2-mould models to get around that issue...
You can also sometimes print whole models (although that in itself creates limitations) for easier assembly.
And eventually, I can't see miniatures games not moving to licenced prints. Although it is way off now as stls are so freely shared. WIth their models already being designed to be production printed they will have an easier time transitioning.
When it comes to the pictures of models with issues, we have also seen models with few if any issues and PPS_Loren has stated that models with such problems would be replaced through their replacement service.
I’d argue that STLs are so freely shared is the biggest argument against going commercial for larger companies.
Is there a way round it? Not a bloody clue as I know basically bugger all about 3D printing and that. But as ever I’m a fan of pushing back my ignorance on pretty much any subject.
Depend on printing people to pay. Not much else. Make it cheap enough people will pay it. How feasible that is to keep company sized pp float. Need steady flow of stl's to sell
Thing is, cheap enough is never going to be cheaper than free.
Consider my RPG gubbins, bought from DriveThruRPG.
I bought the big special bundle for Vampire 25th Anniversary. Gorgeous big printed book (ease of reference, personal preference) and a PDF of the same. Yes that PDF has been shared with my Players.
I don’t feel bad or naughty doing that, as VTM is, at the moment, pretty much a dead property not sold to the mass market. Same with Demon The Fallen (which I’m about to buy). I’ll have my copy for my shelf, and my players will, naturally, have access to the PDF copies.
Now, make those necessary for playing an active property? Why wouldn’t people freely share those files? Or even agree “I’ll buy STL 1-10, you buy 11-20 and Dave (there is always a Dave) will buy 21-30, and we’ll just print for each other.
3D printing is promising as a technology, but I just can’t really see it being mass market, at least not in a way that’s tasteful and worth the investment for a company, be it PP or GW et al.
insaniak wrote: I mean, Spotify exists, despite the ease with which music can be shared.
And the artists on streaming services all complain about how little they are paid unless they are mega-stars. While I get your point, I think that's the concern a lot of businesses have about similar shifts in their own industry.
There's also the cost of those streaming services. Spotify has a massive library for a low cost per user, so it's economical for their subscribers. Netflix is struggling to keep its library with new streaming services popping up everywhere, and so a lot of people are returning to pirating shows and films.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, I don't think the market will go fully 3d print until there is some sort of DRM for STLs... Or whatever format comes along to replace them.
Dunno, I remember much the same issue back then with music, movies and books, and still...
insaniak wrote: I mean, Spotify exists, despite the ease with which music can be shared.
And the artists on streaming services all complain about how little they are paid unless they are mega-stars. While I get your point, I think that's the concern a lot of businesses have about similar shifts in their own industry.
There's also the cost of those streaming services. Spotify has a massive library for a low cost per user, so it's economical for their subscribers. Netflix is struggling to keep its library with new streaming services popping up everywhere, and so a lot of people are returning to pirating shows and films.
Fair, of course, but it feels like the cat's sort of out of the bag, given how many designers already sell stl files and the number of stl patreons out there.
And yes, netflix et all keep showing that if you make something convenient and affordable people don't bother pirating, and the less convenient and less affordable you make it, the more people end up giving you the finger.
Yet people actually do buy legal stuff when it's cheap enough.
Whether they sell enough to sustain company sized PP but music industry for example has been selling digitally music now long time. Yes it gets piracied. You never can get away from that. Newsflash. People piracy physical models as well(heard the term recast?).
insaniak wrote: I mean, Spotify exists, despite the ease with which music can be shared.
And the artists on streaming services all complain about how little they are paid unless they are mega-stars. While I get your point, I think that's the concern a lot of businesses have about similar shifts in their own industry.
There's also the cost of those streaming services. Spotify has a massive library for a low cost per user, so it's economical for their subscribers. Netflix is struggling to keep its library with new streaming services popping up everywhere, and so a lot of people are returning to pirating shows and films.
Spotify has something simply going the Napster route doesn’t. An algorithm and extensive catalogue. It’s basically like a Radio station inclined to play your favourites and suggest future new favourites, with the added bonus of no moron talking over the records!
Again coming from a point of ignorance and likely failure of imagination, how would physical STL stuff compare and replicate that?
Kaptajn Congoboy wrote: I sure hope they keep 3d printing as a manufacturing method and just keep improving their technique. It has its limitations, but compared to resin or metal casting and injection moulding it has several advantages, chief one being that you don't have the issue of undercuts limiting sculpting.
Not like the sculpts shown would benefit from extreme undercuts in any meaningful way.
The vast majority of tabletop miniature designs fit just fine within the constraints of the resin medium, and GW has been showing lately how clever they can be with plastic designs.
I respectfully disagree. I think at it's heart Warmachine is a game about exploiting synergy and resource allocation/risk management that got co-opted by movement widget fetishists. It made for tedious and boring gameplay that drove the casuals (myself included) away in droves and I'm glad for it to be gone.
This is the best analysis in the entire thread. The widget fetishists seem to have found Marvel Crisis Protocol so maybe Warmachine can be left alone this time around ?
I really hope this works out for PP.
You sir are a single point of light in the infinite, all encompassing bleakness that is this thread! Privateer Press is by no means perfect (and really no wargaming company is) but the level of hate they receive around here is fanatical. Play the games you like and leave the rest alone.
Games Workshop can get away with those prices because of how popular it is and the quality of their sculpts...this game is trying to reboot itself out of the gutter. Not only is that 3x the cost of the previous starter boxes it's also a large gamble for small business retailers trying stock all factions at launch.
Note to mention that GW does offer alternative options for those on lower budgets to get into the game.
GW hit the issues of big armies and big upfront costs to get started and it was one (not the only) contributing factors to Old World falling apart. The lack of ability for a cheap entry point with a lower model count, suitable for someone just getting started. <SNIP>
GW also offer more ways to connect with the hobby than the game. Painting, or just collecting and building are seen as valid, as is reading the fiction without buying any models. PP has, for good and ill, always been more game-centric in its communication – and the online community even more so.
Right. I feel like I have to explain myself and where I'm coming from. I've played a grand total of ... maybe three Warmahordes games over the years. But I've bought a bunch of models that I like, and could probably paint up a couple of small forces to play with. I've subscribed to Minicrate for years. I like models. My mates and the community I've got here in Stockholm like models.
Models are key for us, is what I'm saying.
I'd love to see Privateer embrace the hobby aspect – not just painting, but encouraging kitbashes and proxies more. Every time I've thought about buying into the game over the years, I've stumbled when I realized that a profile I need has a single model that I'd have to use multiples of, or a model I like can't be used in that particular theme. I just want to make cool toys and play with them.
This would make the game more approachable for me and my friends. I realize this is just wishlisting and wouldn't necessarily be appealing to all people
Kaptajn Congoboy wrote: I sure hope they keep 3d printing as a manufacturing method and just keep improving their technique. It has its limitations, but compared to resin or metal casting and injection moulding it has several advantages, chief one being that you don't have the issue of undercuts limiting sculpting.
Not like the sculpts shown would benefit from extreme undercuts in any meaningful way.
The vast majority of tabletop miniature designs fit just fine within the constraints of the resin medium, and GW has been showing lately how clever they can be with plastic designs.
None shown, no. But using it well is something a studio and sculptor can develop further. Although it might be some of the coming ones we have not seen in pieces are in fewer pieces than they might have been otherwise. It is all about using the medium well (as with all others).
GW has good kits, but I have also seen people using literally whole days sniffing plastic cement solvent and cursing when they do it wrong when putting together large, complex multipart kits with way too many pieces. That is one of the contraints of their process. And I have some GW polystyrenes released recently that just don't line up as simple two-parters and require a lot of gap filling and line filing. Also a possible contraint.
It is not as much what they do for the first go as what I think is POSSIBLE for them to do in the future as they gain experience on the process.
Consider my RPG gubbins, bought from DriveThruRPG.
I bought the big special bundle for Vampire 25th Anniversary. Gorgeous big printed book (ease of reference, personal preference) and a PDF of the same. Yes that PDF has been shared with my Players.
I don’t feel bad or naughty doing that, as VTM is, at the moment, pretty much a dead property not sold to the mass market. Same with Demon The Fallen (which I’m about to buy). I’ll have my copy for my shelf, and my players will, naturally, have access to the PDF copies.
Now, make those necessary for playing an active property? Why wouldn’t people freely share those files? Or even agree “I’ll buy STL 1-10, you buy 11-20 and Dave (there is always a Dave) will buy 21-30, and we’ll just print for each other.
3D printing is promising as a technology, but I just can’t really see it being mass market, at least not in a way that’s tasteful and worth the investment for a company, be it PP or GW et al.
Just for the record Vampire The Masquerade is not a dead property as it got a recent edition and is available to buy online/FLGS etc.
Those models look pretty rough. I've bought 3D prints from sketchy guys in Eastern Europe that looked better. Between that and the pricing structure, I don't think I'll be getting back into WMH. Best of luck to them as I really liked the game when I played in Mk2
Yeah, those photos don't show a level of quality of product that I would be willing to pay their asking price for. Even if I wasn't into 3d printing myself and knew, first hand, that you can absolutely get better results, I still would find these samples inferior to even Bones Black and Siocast (both of which I don't really like all that much, though they're better than PVC and Bones White).
On distributing STLs, yeah, that's a hard one. There is no effective DRM solutions for them, so there's always the possibility they will be shared. As others have mentioned, part of the key there is making them affordable enough that people won't mind paying for them (this is where all the STL Patreons do a great job; their monthly fees are easily affordable, so they get sufficient backers; look at Artisan Guild for example, who have over 6500 patrons at ~10 bucks a month). Of course, those companies are focusing only on digital distribution, and quite probably have a much lower recurring cost of running their own businesses (no warehouse/offices like PP has, probably a lot fewer employees, etc.). I'm not sure how tenable doing both STL and physical product is, though I suspect there is still a market for that since not everyone is going to have/want a 3d printer themselves and want to go to the LGS to pick up their toys. That physical distribution has a gianormous cost in comparison to digital only, though, so... yeah.
I'll wait for some of the good Khador designs to show up, see if they can iron out the issues.
Hell, a few rough surfaces probably wouldn't deter me from buying some of my favourites, assuming they're coming back. Still cheaper in terms of man hours than sculpting and printing them myself.
...wow. There's not only duplicated poses in the same unit, the different units also share the same poses. It seems they have used the same armatures for all sculpts, just changing around gubbins.
Not just that, the standard bearers are the EXACT same, even when their weapons don't match the rest of the units. The rest of the units are just arm swaps on the exact same bodies. I'm surprised they werent magnetized as well.
This is astonishingly lazy when you have patreons pumping out better sculpts every month.
...wow. There's not only duplicated poses in the same unit, the different units also share the same poses. It seems they have used the same armatures for all sculpts, just changing around gubbins.
Not just that, the standard bearers are the EXACT same, even when their weapons don't match the rest of the units. The rest of the units are just arm swaps on the exact same bodies. I'm surprised they werent magnetized as well.
This is astonishingly lazy when you have patreons pumping out better sculpts every month.
At the very least, not making them modular for arm swapping is really lazy. And yeah, just take a look at any successful Patreon, and you get more variety in any one of their single month releases. Now, of course, those folks are doing pretty much nothing but sculpting and have a lower overhead cost I'm sure, but come on... If PP can't afford to pay the extra couple hours of a sculptor's time to do some other reposing, then they're in worse financial straits than I suspected and have very little hope of turning it around with this, IMO.
Edit: Looking at those photos, though, does answer the question of what type of printer they're using, anyway. Those kind of artifacts are absolutely DLP.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, I don't think the market will go fully 3d print until there is some sort of DRM for STLs... Or whatever format comes along to replace them.
You can't really DRM an STL. Or rather, you can, and maybe you could lock down your prints to only work on your machine that only supports files from a proprietary slicer etc, but it's highly unlikely you can develop those on your own, and if your software and hardware are based on anything resembling the current open-sourced ecosystem, someone's going to be able to reverse-engineer it.
Interestingly enough there was DRM on sliced files for high resolution resin printers a few years ago as Chitubox (well the company that owns them) was the only manufacturer for the internal logic boards for all resin printers and wanted to force people to use the paid version of Chitu to create these DRM files that the printer's board would then be willing to read.
It's why Lychee is popular now as they sprung up as a competitor software wise and I believe hardware too. I know my Phrozen Mighty 8k does not use Chitu hardware.
Monkeysloth wrote: Interestingly enough there was DRM on sliced files for high resolution resin printers a few years ago as Chitubox (well the company that owns them) was the only manufacturer for the internal logic boards for all resin printers and wanted to force people to use the paid version of Chitu to create these DRM files that the printer's board would then be willing to read.
It's why Lychee is popular now as they sprung up as a competitor software wise and I believe hardware too. I know my Phrozen Mighty 8k does not use Chitu hardware.
It wasn't really DRM, though. It was a file format change that wasn't backwards compatible and supposedly required for newer Chitu-based boards. Eventually, that got sorted out, especially after a lot of public outcry.
Short of only selling pre-sliced files for a specific printer, there's not really much you can do to embed any DRM (and even that isn't gonna really work, for obvious reasons) into STL files. They're an open format on purpose.
Monkeysloth wrote: Interestingly enough there was DRM on sliced files for high resolution resin printers a few years ago as Chitubox (well the company that owns them) was the only manufacturer for the internal logic boards for all resin printers and wanted to force people to use the paid version of Chitu to create these DRM files that the printer's board would then be willing to read.
It's why Lychee is popular now as they sprung up as a competitor software wise and I believe hardware too. I know my Phrozen Mighty 8k does not use Chitu hardware.
It wasn't really DRM, though. It was a file format change that wasn't backwards compatible and supposedly required for newer Chitu-based boards. Eventually, that got sorted out, especially after a lot of public outcry.
Short of only selling pre-sliced files for a specific printer, there's not really much you can do to embed any DRM (and even that isn't gonna really work, for obvious reasons) into STL files. They're an open format on purpose.
Pre-sliced files, at least as they are done right now, are a non starter. They'd need to be able to take into account the specific resin and machine settings for them to be something people would buy.
Pre-sliced files, at least as they are done right now, are a non starter. They'd need to be able to take into account the specific resin and machine settings for them to be something people would buy.
Yup. Definitely a no-go for several reasons. Short of having a proprietary printer which requires a proprietary resin which requires a proprietary file format, there's not much way of DRMing 3d printer files. And given all those proprietary requirements, I think that is pretty much a DOA proposition.
Albertorius wrote: That wouldn't be an issue in and of itself, I'm continually surprised by the quality our little desktop machines can churn out.
But they clearly need to do better.
Yeah, you can get surprisingly good prints out of small consumer level printers if you take the time to learn how to use them and refine your settings. This almost feels like they just grabbed a cheap printer and threw someone who's never spent much time with a printer and said, "Make it happen." As all of us in the 3d printing hobby know, there is some ramp up period and trial and error. That's fine, but pushing out stuff that is essentially your test prints, before you've done your optimizations (which, honestly, if you know you're always gonna be using X printer and Y resin, you can tune really well with a few iterations) as your sample pieces to "influencers" and as your GenCon preview is just asking for some egg on your face.
Heck, look at Greg's (3d Printing Pro) recent review of the Sonic Mighty 8k. That machine put out some amazing prints, and would be an ideal small production machine at under 1k USD and a reasonably large build plate to be able to print more at once, thus giving a time savings. But these samples look like they were done on a printer 2 generations old (pre-Mono screens maybe, definitely look like 2k resolutions). Not something that I think people would be willing to pay their asking price for.
I'm fine with 3D printed minis...as long as the quality is there. It clearly isn't with PP right now and they're gonna have a hard time selling this quality of model for $200 per starter set.
Khador preview box releasing early and I think they came off the best from the updated designs. Chonky legged Khador jacks look really good.
They've also added some cards to the beta
The 3 boxes should be up for sale this week
All orders over $100 will ship for free to U.S., Canada, UK, EU and Australia.
Also
SATISFACTION GUARANTEED Mass production using 3D printing technology is a new process for us, and as such, despite our best efforts we’re going to occasionally make mistakes. Even after 20 years of producing the good ol’ fashioned way, we still manage to make mistakes from time to time because we’re human beings making this stuff. But we always stand by our products and will make good on your purchase, so we hope you’ll be patient with us as we enter this exciting new era of production for Privateer Press.
If you receive a model part that appears to be misprinted or breaks too easily, we are always happy to replace that part for you. Just contact us through our customer support portal and we will get your replacement right out to you.
Most importantly, we want you to be happy with your purchase. If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your preview battlegroup purchase, return the complete contents of the product to us in the original packaging with a copy of the receipt within 30 days of purchase, and we will provide you a refund for your purchase.
I've had really good customer service from PP in the past with defects so hopefully, if there are issues, they're able to keep that up.
Another interesting tidbit from the blog post today
Because UV light can affect the models, it is ill-advised to expose your unpainted model parts to direct sunlight for prolonged periods of time. But this is nothing new, as we’ve seen many tragic instances of melted resin models left to bake under the sun or in a hot car. We’ve also seen way too many tragic instances of armies being stolen out of cars, so let’s just all agree not to leave our armies in cars anymore, alright? Temperature is not as much a concern as continuous exposure to sunlight, however extremes can still be harmful. This should just be more incentive to get your models painted. So, paint your models!!!
I've never really thought about that even though I've had resin printers for around 5 years now. Plus I only game at home so I never have stuff out in the sun.
All orders over $100 will ship for free to U.S., Canada, UK, EU and Australia.
That's good to hear. I have no problem with the 3d printing as is. It's the way the industry is going and kudos to PP for being the first big player to take the step. I hope it works out for them. And the quality fo the prints shown is about what I expect from such prints. The cost, though, is steep considering what you're getting. The free shipping in Aus especially where the Australia Tax is a real thing, will help.
As for the designs, I like them. Not like WM of old, with the steampunk/deisal punk esthetic, but that's been steadily evolving since the game came out, so it's easy to file away under the world just getting better at their warmachines (pun intended).
Cost is pretty decent. 2 jacks with all their weapons and a caster definitely cost more than that now and the weapon swapping give these so much more play than a traditional battlebox. Mostly though, I'm happy to pick up the Khador stuff and decide what I think of the quality before buying in at the $200 starter. These being a different caster makes it a pretty great buy all around.
It will warp in extreme heat especially that of the western US. 2 part resin that is. Not sure about printed stuff.
UV resin doesn't really warp in high heat, at least not to the same extent that mold resin does. The bigger risk is leaving it exposed to UV light for long enough periods of time that it becomes brittle. A coat of paint or primer is enough to stop that, however.
Quite enjoying list building with these new jacks. Definitely more fun to design around than the Warcaster versions. The tradeoffs are just inherently more interesting even if some of the combos are obviously bad.
Automatically Appended Next Post: The 50 point army boxes are kind of exciting designs too now that I've reverse engineered the points a little. There's actually a fair amount of list building available just by dropping a unit to give yourself the points for a more premium jack. Definitely a lot more flexible to play with than I expected.
It will warp in extreme heat especially that of the western US. 2 part resin that is. Not sure about printed stuff.
UV resin doesn't really warp in high heat, at least not to the same extent that mold resin does. The bigger risk is leaving it exposed to UV light for long enough periods of time that it becomes brittle. A coat of paint or primer is enough to stop that, however.
It doesn't actually become more brittle. UV resin reacts with sunlight until it reaches its final fully cured state. At that point it basically stops reacting. To actually do damage after that point you've got to leave it in sunlight for insane lengths of time - ergo lengths of time where most materials would discolour or be affected.
What does happen though is that some people try to under-cure a little bit so that the resin remains part-cured and a little more flexible than brittle. It's generally not advised because UV resin is generally only considered safe when fully cured. Also some of the brittle issues are, from what I've seen:
1) A result of people from PVC backgrounds (eg DnD models) who are simply not used to less durable models that you can't just chuck in a box at the end of the game session. They'd hit the same issues with regular cast resins too
2) A result of designers not being as experienced with making game models. So things like swords, arrow shafts and such are super thin, whereas someone casting would have made them thicker by design to be more durable.
3) The use of very cheap UV resins which have generally weaker properties.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: I'm curious about Khador. Are they getting a heavy and a heavier jack or is there going to be a real (not aesthetic) difference between the hulls?
There's some differences (armament options, the Great Bear has four more boxes than the Dire Wolf, etc.), but yeah, Khador doesn't do light warjacks.
Khador (formerly, I guess) had the Berserker (and Mad Dog?) chassis, which while not a light, was less armored and had fewer boxes (and a busted cortex, in the case of the Berserker).
The demolisher/devastaor/spriggan also had a different look, with more armor (but mostly on the arms and top), with the devastator being more vulnerable once it 'opened up' to attack.
The originals (destroyer, juggernaut and marauder) took a definite downgrade in sculpt quality when they moved to plastic, so there's definite concern for what their new stuff will look like, even if they can lure players back.
Rules are up. Basically yeah, the Dire Wolf is similar to an upgraded Berserker chassis. Still a heavy, but a lighter heavy with less armor and boxes. It’s weapon options feel a bit more support focused and it’s got shield guard available.
The Great Bear is the new Juggernaut chassis. Very similar stat line as before with really hard hitting guns and melee weapons. The main configs that stand out to me are a couple melee beater setups as well as a very slam focused ranged option.
The Khador rules, by the by, are stuffed into an updated version of the beta cards. In middle (pages 43-50). With the faction spells towards the end (pages 97-98). Because.
Its really weird for a Khador caster to just have a battlegroup full of arc nodes. For free.
I kind of don't like the spell racks and the customizable nature of the warjacks. It seems way too easy. All the major tools are in there, just waiting to be combo'd.
----
Kind of hate that the shield guard ability is completely independent of actually having a shield.
Very noob question here but WTF happened to WarmaHordes? I remember back when 40k 6e came out and it seemed that TONS of players were jumping over to PP and WarmaHordes was growing fast with a lot of new players seemingly everyday.
But then it all just petered out after a few years and now I don't see anyone in my local group playing it anymore. Did people go back to GW after they got their sh!t together and fixed 40k and AoS or something?
to make a long story short.
Mk3 came out and the bungled the release, Skorne needed like, all new rules, models where years late(Skorne Hydra).
Its not helped by having a reputation(partially deserved) of being for competitive WAAC players that only played tournament games and would not foster new players
This was also when 8th came out and brought alot of people back to 40k.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Very noob question here but WTF happened to WarmaHordes? I remember back when 40k 6e came out and it seemed that TONS of players were jumping over to PP and WarmaHordes was growing fast with a lot of new players seemingly everyday.
But then it all just petered out after a few years and now I don't see anyone in my local group playing it anymore. Did people go back to GW after they got their sh!t together and fixed 40k and AoS or something?
Yes and no. 6th ed 40K was a train wreck that GW killed after 2 years. it pretty well killed the game so players were looking for something else. there were loads of new options-warmachine, infinity, malafuax etc....
PP suffered from a string of setbacks at the same time GW was hitting the reset button with 8th ed 40K that showed some promise. they lost the free promotion of the press ganger teams, suffered supply/shipping issues as well as model quality issues.
They are still a tiny company that was rivaling GW at the time. the other problem was the community. because of MK 1/2 the hard focus was on tournament play that became toxic and turned off new players. MKIII was far more friendly to new players but it turned off many of the above mentioned MK 1/2 players. i actually quite enjoy MKIII as does our FLGS group (we have on average of 11 active players on any weekend) However that is mostly because our group is a casual "play what you like" sort of group so we avoid the steamroller tournament rules, themed lists. and we tend to play to the games strengths as a smaller points skirmish system.
Now the tables are sort of switched GW has once again turned 40K into a dumpster fire with 9th ed, and players are looking for other options. catalyst game labs release of affordable good quality plastic miniatures for battletech has caused an explosion of players, many moving over from 40K. PP is trying to jump on the band wagon with a complete "end times" style reset of the WM/H brand in an attempt to bring in new players with a simpler game that borrows heavily from other popular systems.
Much like 8th ed 40K on is a completely different game from the comparatively similar 3rd-7th ed 40K. MKIV WM/H is a completely different game than MK I-III.
It remains to be seen if it will draw in younger/newer gamers, some of us like what it is and will continue to play MKIII with our now "retired" miniatures.
The only real positive i see out of this is PP taking the big step into 3d printing like some other smaller companies have done to address material cost/supply issues as well as shipping.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Very noob question here but WTF happened to WarmaHordes? I remember back when 40k 6e came out and it seemed that TONS of players were jumping over to PP and WarmaHordes was growing fast with a lot of new players seemingly everyday.
But then it all just petered out after a few years and now I don't see anyone in my local group playing it anymore. Did people go back to GW after they got their sh!t together and fixed 40k and AoS or something?
This has been talked about ad nauseam for years but it comes down to a few things happening all in quick succession:
pp killed their forums, killed the press ganger program, released mk3 before it was ready, released pvc models that were literal garbage, started a cycle of community play testing that meant the game was constantly in flux, sold tons of mystery boxes of products for steep discounts that cut out flgs’s, 8th edition 40k. I’m sure there’s more but that’s a quick summary.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Very noob question here but WTF happened to WarmaHordes? I remember back when 40k 6e came out and it seemed that TONS of players were jumping over to PP and WarmaHordes was growing fast with a lot of new players seemingly everyday.
But then it all just petered out after a few years and now I don't see anyone in my local group playing it anymore. Did people go back to GW after they got their sh!t together and fixed 40k and AoS or something?
This has been talked about ad nauseam for years but it comes down to a few things happening all in quick succession:
pp killed their forums, killed the press ganger program, released mk3 before it was ready, released pvc models that were literal garbage, started a cycle of community play testing that meant the game was constantly in flux, sold tons of mystery boxes of products for steep discounts that cut out flgs’s, 8th edition 40k. I’m sure there’s more but that’s a quick summary.
I'd also add the failure to produce/transition to hard plastics in there too. When the first few jacks didn't work out they didn't seem to learn and reevaluate instead jumping to a medium inferior to both metal and polystyrene.
All of the above, and they alienated a lot of retailers by doing a poor job of being their own distributor, then they alienated most of their player base by focusing too hard on the competitive hardcore audience.
Anyway... Knowing what the latest consumer grade (cheap) printers are capable of, it's certainly possible it can work using the new 8k large format printers for both quality and volume.
Unlike other 3D printing enthusiasts, I know that not everyone can or wants to 3D print stuff and deal with that mess. Just like 3D print enthusiasts aren't going to sculpt their own STLs most of the time. A lot of the most popular STL places that are used as examples couldn't support a studio, and are usually producing knock offs (no matter how good the knock offs happen to be) of other IP, usually GW's.
Until 3D printing becomes as safe and simple as say, an office printer or a microwave, there's still an opportunity for a well made IP to produce miniatures within it.
Just hope they don't use basic AF resin that's brittle, and spring for a higher grade resin, or mixture, that's more durable.
Never heard of the infamus "failcast"?, (aka Finecast) It was the primary reason why GWs attempt to move to resin from white metal failed hard, and forced them to create better tools and machines to go 100% on plastic.
Thanks for the info guys. Wow I knew it was bad but I didn't know it was that bad. When I last seriously looked in on Warmachines back around 2014 or so everything looked on the up-and-up for PP. But it looks like they pulled a 6e 40k and it's just been mistake after mistake for them. Really hope they turn things around with MKIV
I'd also add the failure to produce/transition to hard plastics in there too. When the first few jacks didn't work out they didn't seem to learn and reevaluate instead jumping to a medium inferior to both metal and polystyrene.
I would suspect the problem there was that they were counting on those first couple of plastic kits funding the next round of development, and when that didn't happen they wound up having to dig themselves out of a hole.
ok summary from the Matt Wilson portion of primecast
- he talked honestly about while they wanted to preserve the back catalog, they are a company and need to sell models
- catalog was too big and no store nor distributor could manage it
- with such a large catalog it could take a worker half an afternoon to spin up a mold if someone ordered someone uncommonly produced
- retread about volatile metal market plus how each extra ounce increases shipping cost, plus how china plastic is unreliable with huge min orders
- 3D printing is cheaper but with increased engineering costs so its a wash and prices will remain roughly the same
- Traditional molds you would need to make things like a torso multiple pieces in order to leave a gap for a magnet. New technology gaps are easy to put in
- all pre digital sculpts will be phased out but did leave room to convert newer 3d sculpts to 3D print files if they think its needed for the game. Monpoc was used as example in that its a game where the entire line is digital sculpts so will be converted over eventually
- $75 gencon sample boxes are (from his point of view) equal value to the old $50 battleboxes when you factor in 6 year difference in value of goods plus each Warjack coming with different weapons
- European printing wont be able to avoid things like Import or VAT taxes but does let them circumvent the expensive shipping
Summary from the Soles/Erik Reiersen portion of Primecast
- Units are way more flexible in their movement with the new system
- as a counterbalance though is their smaller model count and things like AOE 2 being quite deadly to a unit where all models are 2" apart
- Casters being brought forward into Prime armies will have their abilities and spell lists evaluated and in some cases it may feel like a brand new caster
- Man o War, Trenchers, Steelhead, Cephallyx, Rhullic, Talion Pirates, Gators, and Farrow will be Prime armies
- support in those armies will be brought forward, everything that is currently man o war focused will be in their prime force
Charles Forster III summary
- prep work for new models is just 3-4 min to clip off the little nubs
- no more mold lines to clean off
- less pieces equal less barrier to entry for new players, no more Cylenna and Nyss Hunter horror stories
- magnets werent the first choice, they first experimented with friction sockets
- when magnets were chosen they wanted them to be hefty enough that arms wont fall off unless you pull. 3/16 for arms and 1/8 for smaller pieces like the light warjack head
- will be small learning curve for people who havent used magnets before. Always check polarity and make sure the glue dries before you try to attack and detach arms
- use a non metal object, like the end of an old paint brush, to push the magnets with glue into sockets
- Doug Hamilton is finishing up the last few Dusk models now so previews will be a little ways out on those
Oh yea forgot some stuff from the primecast about the new app
- you'll be able to click on card symbols and itll pull up the actual rule. Example was given for clicking on symbol for a power attack
- can print cards from the app
- localized list saving
- all rules for every faction free
- premium content for monthly fee similar to old no quarter so will provide fluff, narative style scenarios, tactical articles, etc
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Very noob question here but WTF happened to WarmaHordes? I remember back when 40k 6e came out and it seemed that TONS of players were jumping over to PP and WarmaHordes was growing fast with a lot of new players seemingly everyday.
But then it all just petered out after a few years and now I don't see anyone in my local group playing it anymore. Did people go back to GW after they got their sh!t together and fixed 40k and AoS or something?
Think people have givensome excellent points about what happened. A few points I'd like to add, which killed the game at my old club.
• Infantry where a better investment than Warjacks within the game. Which was at odds with the theme and idea of the game.
• The constant releases started to erode what made the factions unique. The lines of distinction blurred, until each faction could more or less do what the other factions did well.
I honestly think that the constant release of new, bigger, and better stuff is what has backed PP into this corner, and needing to do a hard reset. If they had of just kept the models at Prime, Primal, and do equivalent for Mercs, and the other odd ball stuff (Grymkin, Infernal, etc). Then with each new edition update those models, it wouldn't lead to such a bloated catalogue, help stop Infantry dominating, and help keep the distinctions between the factions.
I think PP got carried away with their own perceived success.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Very noob question here but WTF happened to WarmaHordes? I remember back when 40k 6e came out and it seemed that TONS of players were jumping over to PP and WarmaHordes was growing fast with a lot of new players seemingly everyday.
But then it all just petered out after a few years and now I don't see anyone in my local group playing it anymore. Did people go back to GW after they got their sh!t together and fixed 40k and AoS or something?
This has been talked about ad nauseam for years but it comes down to a few things happening all in quick succession:
pp killed their forums, killed the press ganger program, released mk3 before it was ready, released pvc models that were literal garbage, started a cycle of community play testing that meant the game was constantly in flux, sold tons of mystery boxes of products for steep discounts that cut out flgs’s, 8th edition 40k. I’m sure there’s more but that’s a quick summary.
But most of all absurd prices. Buying GW equivalents to convert (or just use outright) could be half as expensive as buying similar PP models which is really saying something.
If ~10 years ago someone told me that GW is going to be a cheap alternative to some other game, letting you save half the price, I would laugh at the joke. And yet, here we are :]
ok summary from the Matt Wilson portion of primecast
- he talked honestly about while they wanted to preserve the back catalog, they are a company and need to sell models
- catalog was too big and no store nor distributor could manage it
- with such a large catalog it could take a worker half an afternoon to spin up a mold if someone ordered someone uncommonly produced
- retread about volatile metal market plus how each extra ounce increases shipping cost, plus how china plastic is unreliable with huge min orders
- 3D printing is cheaper but with increased engineering costs so its a wash and prices will remain roughly the same
- Traditional molds you would need to make things like a torso multiple pieces in order to leave a gap for a magnet. New technology gaps are easy to put in
- all pre digital sculpts will be phased out but did leave room to convert newer 3d sculpts to 3D print files if they think its needed for the game. Monpoc was used as example in that its a game where the entire line is digital sculpts so will be converted over eventually
- $75 gencon sample boxes are (from his point of view) equal value to the old $50 battleboxes when you factor in 6 year difference in value of goods plus each Warjack coming with different weapons
- European printing wont be able to avoid things like Import or VAT taxes but does let them circumvent the expensive shipping
Summary from the Soles/Erik Reiersen portion of Primecast
- Units are way more flexible in their movement with the new system
- as a counterbalance though is their smaller model count and things like AOE 2 being quite deadly to a unit where all models are 2" apart
- Casters being brought forward into Prime armies will have their abilities and spell lists evaluated and in some cases it may feel like a brand new caster
- Man o War, Trenchers, Steelhead, Cephallyx, Rhullic, Talion Pirates, Gators, and Farrow will be Prime armies
- support in those armies will be brought forward, everything that is currently man o war focused will be in their prime force
Charles Forster III summary
- prep work for new models is just 3-4 min to clip off the little nubs
- no more mold lines to clean off
- less pieces equal less barrier to entry for new players, no more Cylenna and Nyss Hunter horror stories
- magnets werent the first choice, they first experimented with friction sockets
- when magnets were chosen they wanted them to be hefty enough that arms wont fall off unless you pull. 3/16 for arms and 1/8 for smaller pieces like the light warjack head
- will be small learning curve for people who havent used magnets before. Always check polarity and make sure the glue dries before you try to attack and detach arms
- use a non metal object, like the end of an old paint brush, to push the magnets with glue into sockets
- Doug Hamilton is finishing up the last few Dusk models now so previews will be a little ways out on those
Oh yea forgot some stuff from the primecast about the new app
- you'll be able to click on card symbols and itll pull up the actual rule. Example was given for clicking on symbol for a power attack
- can print cards from the app
- localized list saving
- all rules for every faction free
- premium content for monthly fee similar to old no quarter so will provide fluff, narative style scenarios, tactical articles, etc
This filled up some of the info gaps we had from the press release. More facts we get from the devs, the less jumping to conclusions we need to do.
ok summary from the Matt Wilson portion of primecast
- European printing wont be able to avoid things like Import or VAT taxes but does let them circumvent the expensive shipping
So we're talking $100+ gencon samples and $250+ the regular army boxes? Hm... right.
As a person in the industry, I wanted to give my perspective about that primecast info:
If they are still getting hit with, and consequently charging VAT, then the European production center is most likely in the UK. They could have avoided this by having it in Ireland for example.
I find his notes on sprue production to be on the mark based on prior knowledge, especially about the huge minimum orders.
But he could have potentially looked into us-based production companies like War Games Atlantic and had good quality plastic with (most likely) fairer production requirements.
McDougall Designs wrote: As a person in the industry, I wanted to give my perspective about that primecast info:
If they are still getting hit with, and consequently charging VAT, then the European production center is most likely in the UK..
Hope not. If this is the case then mk4 warmachine wont make any apparence in norway atleast. after brexit, any form of import from uk is more expensive and more time consuming then importing from u.s.
If they want to sell mk4 in eu, then the print center has to be located in central EU.
McDougall Designs wrote: As a person in the industry, I wanted to give my perspective about that primecast info:
If they are still getting hit with, and consequently charging VAT, then the European production center is most likely in the UK. They could have avoided this by having it in Ireland for example.
I find his notes on sprue production to be on the mark based on prior knowledge, especially about the huge minimum orders.
But he could have potentially looked into us-based production companies like War Games Atlantic and had good quality plastic with (most likely) fairer production requirements.
Privateer Press never understood the European market before, it's not a surprise they'll still miss it with this. They were always US centered.
Besides, I'm not even sure they actually think they'll make a profit in Europe anyway.
The head is still the same, hubris as well. Why would they magically change ? Because you'd think they'd be competent ? Of course they would repeat the same mistakes than before.
Wouldn't VAT apply anyway? Or doesn't US have one?
At least here you pay finnish VAT even if you are producing IN Finland.
But of course if you sell from UK to Finland you aren't at least supposed to apply UK VAT to it(that's double taxation and seeing UK gov isn't getting that money it's basically company pocketing up it for yourself) so basically you remove the UK VAT from price and then add up relevant VAT of target country.
In same way EU based stories selling to US have option for non-VAT price. Precisely when selling outside the EU so VAT isn't applied.
But whether you are selling from US, UK or inside EU at some point you are expected to pay VAT. Well maybe not in US. Maybe they don't have it? But do know UK has one.
BTW if US does have VAT is that 200$ before or after VAT?
McDougall Designs wrote: As a person in the industry, I wanted to give my perspective about that primecast info:
If they are still getting hit with, and consequently charging VAT, then the European production center is most likely in the UK. They could have avoided this by having it in Ireland for example.
I find his notes on sprue production to be on the mark based on prior knowledge, especially about the huge minimum orders.
But he could have potentially looked into us-based production companies like War Games Atlantic and had good quality plastic with (most likely) fairer production requirements.
Privateer Press never understood the European market before, it's not a surprise they'll still miss it with this. They were always US centered.
Besides, I'm not even sure they actually think they'll make a profit in Europe anyway.
The head is still the same, hubris as well. Why would they magically change ? Because you'd think they'd be competent ? Of course they would repeat the same mistakes than before.
Not unless they radically changed the way they approach business.
They are obviously competent enough to be able to find investors for this MKIV attempt.
They seem to be short-sighted and definitely not even attempting enough research (either behind-the-scenes or publicly.
My own methodology to business comes from my historical research background. For example: if I notice a problem and don't correct it, it's highly likely it will happen again.
I'm not sure whether this attempt at MkIV it will fail or succeed. I do know that 3D printing for profit does not scale well for mass produced miniature wargames items. Key word being "mass produced."
Because frankly, this is a volume business. I personally think they would be better suited engaging a US or UK based production firm and signing deals with traditional distributors like bridge distribution in the US and Sarissa in the UK.
Metal volatile, China unreliable, so we move to cheaper 3d and apparently bad quality print to save money and make it possible for you guys. Price the same though enjoy!
ok summary from the Matt Wilson portion of primecast
- he talked honestly about while they wanted to preserve the back catalog, they are a company and need to sell models
- catalog was too big and no store nor distributor could manage it
- with such a large catalog it could take a worker half an afternoon to spin up a mold if someone ordered someone uncommonly produced
- retread about volatile metal market plus how each extra ounce increases shipping cost, plus how china plastic is unreliable with huge min orders
- 3D printing is cheaper but with increased engineering costs so its a wash and prices will remain roughly the same
- Traditional molds you would need to make things like a torso multiple pieces in order to leave a gap for a magnet. New technology gaps are easy to put in
- all pre digital sculpts will be phased out but did leave room to convert newer 3d sculpts to 3D print files if they think its needed for the game. Monpoc was used as example in that its a game where the entire line is digital sculpts so will be converted over eventually
- $75 gencon sample boxes are (from his point of view) equal value to the old $50 battleboxes when you factor in 6 year difference in value of goods plus each Warjack coming with different weapons
- European printing wont be able to avoid things like Import or VAT taxes but does let them circumvent the expensive shipping
Summary from the Soles/Erik Reiersen portion of Primecast
- Units are way more flexible in their movement with the new system
- as a counterbalance though is their smaller model count and things like AOE 2 being quite deadly to a unit where all models are 2" apart
- Casters being brought forward into Prime armies will have their abilities and spell lists evaluated and in some cases it may feel like a brand new caster
- Man o War, Trenchers, Steelhead, Cephallyx, Rhullic, Talion Pirates, Gators, and Farrow will be Prime armies
- support in those armies will be brought forward, everything that is currently man o war focused will be in their prime force
Charles Forster III summary
- prep work for new models is just 3-4 min to clip off the little nubs
- no more mold lines to clean off
- less pieces equal less barrier to entry for new players, no more Cylenna and Nyss Hunter horror stories
- magnets werent the first choice, they first experimented with friction sockets
- when magnets were chosen they wanted them to be hefty enough that arms wont fall off unless you pull. 3/16 for arms and 1/8 for smaller pieces like the light warjack head
- will be small learning curve for people who havent used magnets before. Always check polarity and make sure the glue dries before you try to attack and detach arms
- use a non metal object, like the end of an old paint brush, to push the magnets with glue into sockets
- Doug Hamilton is finishing up the last few Dusk models now so previews will be a little ways out on those
Oh yea forgot some stuff from the primecast about the new app
- you'll be able to click on card symbols and itll pull up the actual rule. Example was given for clicking on symbol for a power attack
- can print cards from the app
- localized list saving
- all rules for every faction free
- premium content for monthly fee similar to old no quarter so will provide fluff, narative style scenarios, tactical articles, etc
Thanks for that summary. I don't have any interest in WM as a gamer, but I've been watching from afar. I've skeptical about some of the directions they're taking but I have always hoped that Warmahordes would revive and survive simply because it's an iconic property and competition in the industry can only be a good thing. Whatever they do, I hope it works out for them and their playerbase.
Plus, Warjacks are just cool and the wargaming world would be lessened without them. My 6 modified Khador Warjacks (run as KOW Varangur Trolls) are still among my favorite miniatures.
I've seen quite a few models from other people who go the new kits now and the stuff that's been put everywhere does not seem representative at all. I guess it says something about their confidence in the kits when they give a "satisfaction or your money back guarantee".
I see I am a bit late to the party regarding the discussion over stls and how they can be made profitable that I fell off due to RL yesterday, but I will say that I believe that the only way companies selling stls in the current environment of rampany piracy and no functioning DRM is to turn the whole thing on its head:
You have an app or program people subscribe to for all the content, and through it you get FREE stls. But the app is the only way to play the game - all the rules, cards and updates is on it. As is lore, scenarios, articles et cetera (much like War Room 3). It would have to be a pretty good piece of software, of course. And it would turn a lot of people off. But it would circumvent the sharing of stls issue.
We do not. We have percentage based sales taxes that are composed of a combination of State percentage and City Percentage with some areas of places like Florida being Duty Free for tourism.
For example, where I am in Tampa, Florida, we have a 7.5% sales tax with no tax on "grocery items"(food items that aren't pre-prepared/hot meals, sugary drinks, etc.) but when I lived in Louisiana, some areas had a 9% sales tax.
Kaptajn Congoboy wrote: I've seen quite a few models from other people who go the new kits now and the stuff that's been put everywhere does not seem representative at all. I guess it says something about their confidence in the kits when they give a "satisfaction or your money back guarantee".
Really really hope that promise does not come back to haunt/hurt them
In the EU at least, prices are always final prices, after any applicable taxes. The idea of showing prices before taxes is usually seen as anti-consumer.
So if they plan to sell inside the EU they should advertise their actual prices.
- 3D printing is cheaper but with increased engineering costs so its a wash and prices will remain roughly the same
Of course they'll do.
Most of the 3D print firms I see who are making a serious business of it and actually doing all the proper things (like paying tax) and also not running it as a hobby side business - generally are charging around the same costs as regular cast models. Suffice it to say that while "its cheaper than GW" is what drew many to 3D printing, its not perfectly cheap and when you run it as a business the costs do rise up. Plus lets face it if the price for a model on the market averages out to X a company is throwing away earning potential if they charge way under X. Plus if PP aren't in a position to grow super-fast there's no reason for them to seriously undercut on a per model basis.
Finally whlist cheap means you can buy more; most gamers hit practical ownership limits. So you can basically say that each customer will typically have a point at which they don't want or need to own more of your models. Sure you get the odd fanatic prepared to build an army of hundreds to thousands, but they are super rare.
And you don't think rules from app won't get pirated?-)
If you can get the community to accept the app as the way to play the game, it won't matter.
I am no saying it is going to be easy. I am saying it is the closest way to the way movies and music solved the piracy problem.
Well, movies (and series) at least seem to have forgotten it, as they're unsolving it as we speak.
Yeah, attempting to maximize profits while ignoring consumer friendliness will mess up any good idea real fast.
Eh, not really. Big corporations nowadays can basically do no wrong as long as they keep pumping out products and keep getting immense profits off the whales, the shills and by sheer presence and size.
Like goddamn Morbius was a financial success, and so was Diablo Immortal.
I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
I feel like its happened before. I remember one of the Guild Ball models came with magnet holes, but I don't recall if the package actually contained magnets. I can't recall anything on this scale though, and its absolutely the most exciting part of these new models.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
PuppetsWar is doing it with their models for years now
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
If you mean adding magnets as part of the product, no. Flames of War has been adding magnets to the turrets of the tanks for a decade.
As for adding slots for magnets, Titianicus did that on reaver titans and upwards so we could swap weapons around as we see fit, but they never included the magnets.
I collect both so i know of them, but there is shure to be other games that has played around with magnets as default design too.
Not unless they radically changed the way they approach business.
They are obviously competent enough to be able to find investors for this MKIV attempt.
They seem to be short-sighted and definitely not even attempting enough research (either behind-the-scenes or publicly.
My own methodology to business comes from my historical research background. For example: if I notice a problem and don't correct it, it's highly likely it will happen again.
I'm not sure whether this attempt at MkIV it will fail or succeed. I do know that 3D printing for profit does not scale well for mass produced miniature wargames items. Key word being "mass produced."
Because frankly, this is a volume business. I personally think they would be better suited engaging a US or UK based production firm and signing deals with traditional distributors like bridge distribution in the US and Sarissa in the UK.
TBH, that's a lot of "if" situations in your quote. Finding investors isn't about competence, it's all about belief. They're just using their brand name and make it look like it's still as strong as before. It's not at all a proof they know what they are doing / what their customers actually want and won't crash into horrible bankruptcy.
Yes, you're right, a good businessman should actually look at their own failures in the past and learn from it. But that's not how it happens in real life. It's not even a requisite...and sadly, capitalism works in such a way than incompetent people can actually keep being incompetent and get away with it, while a lot of other people (usually much poorer than them) pay the price for them. Never assume people with big wages are competent, because that never needed to be related in this current society.
As for the relation between 3D printing and mass production, that really depends on what scale we are talking. From what I read so far, new edition of Warmachine / Horde is still about a somewhat skirmish game, meaning a bit lower than Age of Sigmar. Warmachine / Horde was never really a "massive scale" game like historical games or hell even Warhammer Battle or Kings of War. That's why their prices were always set so high and yet still believed in the community to be "somewhat ok" in comparison to other mass battle wargames (at that time, it was really Warhammer Battle and 40kTBH), simply because you needed less models to play (at least at the beginning). That's what I call "the skirmish tax".
The real question is : will they have enough customers to make it profitable ? That's also why they don't want to keep the old models on the same level of playability : they need to sell a lot of new models, after all, not old stuff that can be found on second hand market at a way more affordable price / be already played by the "old guard" players who already have everything in their collection.
Sure you get the odd fanatic prepared to build an army of hundreds to thousands, but they are super rare.
It's not really about that, it's about PP's prices are already higher than GW's in more than one situation. Saying it will stay "roughly the same" for this new edition means the same problem than before will apply for this new edition, while they'd say the new way of production was indeed about making costs cheaper for them.
So basically, it means they're still thinking their Warmachine / Horde brand is still worth being that expensive. Thus they didn't learn a thing about their previous failures before.
By the way, I actually think these words mean prices will be more expensive than before - because inflation and whatever other excuse they'll find. There is no "roughly the same" prices that actually exist on the market. It's always about being higher and higher as years pass on.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
Does adeptus titanicus count?
Did Adeptus Titanicus come with magnets? I thought the kits were designed with recesses to put magnets in, but didn't come with the actual magnets.
And you don't think rules from app won't get pirated?-)
Generally there's little motivation to pirate something that's given away free....
Umm music books etc aren't given free. If you refer to app i was commenting on idea of stl free, app costs. So rules from app would have reason to be pirated. Same as why pirate books, music and stl's.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
Does adeptus titanicus count?
Did Adeptus Titanicus come with magnets? I thought the kits were designed with recesses to put magnets in, but didn't come with the actual magnets.
Nothing has come from GW with magnets. And the sculpted sockets aren’t exactly universal.
Reaver and Warhound are DIY in that regard sadly. Upside is a dod of blutak or similar gets the job done just as well.
tneva82 wrote: Wouldn't VAT apply anyway? Or doesn't US have one?
At least here you pay finnish VAT even if you are producing IN Finland.
But of course if you sell from UK to Finland you aren't at least supposed to apply UK VAT to it(that's double taxation and seeing UK gov isn't getting that money it's basically company pocketing up it for yourself) so basically you remove the UK VAT from price and then add up relevant VAT of target country.
In same way EU based stories selling to US have option for non-VAT price. Precisely when selling outside the EU so VAT isn't applied.
But whether you are selling from US, UK or inside EU at some point you are expected to pay VAT. Well maybe not in US. Maybe they don't have it? But do know UK has one.
BTW if US does have VAT is that 200$ before or after VAT?
That sounds correct. I am probably mistaken but I took him to be referencing import VAT/taxes.
My issues with VAT has been that the EU requires the designation of a representative based in an EU country, which means finding a business partner or contracting with a company that remits VAT.
And the companies that have sprung up to do this make it impractical based on my margins.
So I readily admit I don't know enough about the system when in-region to comment on that.
Monkeysloth wrote: The recent primecast listed out what legacy armies would get ported over to MK4. This list is from Reddit.
Mercenaries will have four seperate prime armies: Steelheads, Talion Charter, Rhul, Cephalyx
No Llaelese Resistance? Boooo
They only ever had like- 2-3 models for it? Kinda hard to make that into a standalone army. Maybe they'll flesh it out as a new army now. It seems like this new system will encourage them to produce a lot of one-off smaller factions rather than worrying about pumping out constant releases for the big 4 factions.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: I will say though that the emphasis on new models including magnets to swap parts is very exciting. Is PP the first miniature company to officially do this?
Does adeptus titanicus count?
Did Adeptus Titanicus come with magnets? I thought the kits were designed with recesses to put magnets in, but didn't come with the actual magnets.
Nothing has come from GW with magnets. And the sculpted sockets aren’t exactly universal.
Reaver and Warhound are DIY in that regard sadly. Upside is a dod of blutak or similar gets the job done just as well.
The new leviathan also has magnet sockets for the flamers/volkite secondary guns, which is neat
hotsauceman1 wrote: So just so I understand.
Some models from previous editions will still be usable?
From what they've said so far, the initial rules release will incorporate the new releases and an undefined (but small) number of existing models. Other old models will theoretically get rules for use in Unlimited play at some point in the future.
hotsauceman1 wrote: So just so I understand.
Some models from previous editions will still be usable?
From what they've said so far, the initial rules release will incorporate the new releases and an undefined (but small) number of existing models. Other old models will theoretically get rules for use in Unlimited play at some point in the future.
I think they will be fools not to carry over the gargantuans/colossals and battle engines.
They are stonking models with a very large cost premium.
Not sure if in the future would be done 3d print or continue resin though (similar to the other small number legacy models)
I have large armies of COC, Grymkin, Cygnar, Skorne, Menoth and Circle.
A handful models ported to prime from the current range I can live with, to have a game that thrives. BUT make some of those models the battle engines and gargossals.
hotsauceman1 wrote: So just so I understand.
Some models from previous editions will still be usable?
From what they've said so far, the initial rules release will incorporate the new releases and an undefined (but small) number of existing models. Other old models will theoretically get rules for use in Unlimited play at some point in the future.
I think they will be fools not to carry over the gargantuans/colossals and battle engines.
They are stonking models with a very large cost premium.
Not sure if in the future would be done 3d print or continue resin though (similar to the other small number legacy models)
I have large armies of COC, Grymkin, Cygnar, Skorne, Menoth and Circle.
A handful models ported to prime from the current range I can live with, to have a game that thrives. BUT make some of those models the battle engines and gargossals.
From the pressrelease:
"Certain models, such as Colossals and Battle Engines will only get MKIV rules when those model types are introduced into MKIV armies."
So, if you want to keep using the, you have to play mk3 for the time beeing, until PP feels the time is right to add them to mk4.
Or like our group, we like MKIII and have no interest in the MK IV rules changes or esthetics changes so we will just use our large collections to continue playing MK III.
I thought the obsession in this thread about 3d print quality was far less important than a discussion of the beta rules.
I hope this reset helps the company, any competition to GW is fine by me, however, exactly like i feel about 9th ed 40K, MKIV is not the kind of game i am interested in, they are removing things i like about the game and adding things i hate about other game systems. i am fine playing an older edition.
tneva82 wrote: Wonder will tournaments adopt prime only or go for unlimited
Depends on what turny it is and how tied with PP the turny is.
" While we will hold Unlimited arena events in the future and support this mode of play, it won’t be the competitive arena because, as we’ve established, the back catalog of models is unmanageably large and every new addition makes it less viable to balance for competitive play. "
So clubs who has no partnership with PP or dont run PP events will run local turnys in prolly both settings, or only Unlimited if they have lots of members with mk1-mk3 models. My guess is that big events like Steamroller might only do Primal, but that is something they have to comment on their own.
Yeah, it will depend on whether factions have their Legacy armies playable or if Prime tournaments will effectively be just Cygnar or Khador affairs. A bit like WFB 7th ed where, unless you played Demons or Vampure Counts, there was little reason to participate in non-comped events.
Played a 50 beta game last night and overall pretty happy with the results. Ended up proxying my Khador as Menoth against an opponent proxying some Circle/Ret as Cryx:
Spoiler:
Overall.... it works. It's definitely Warmachine and it plays a little quicker with more manageable army sizes. How much quicker remains to be seen. We kind of had an audience and spent a lot of time talking through rules changes and seeing what we could exploit with the new units.
For the most part, units worked pretty well. They still effectively tie things up, in some ways better than before, but its more of a cloud of area control than the lines of previous editions. In multiple instances though the existence of a couple models stopped an effective charge on my backline and screening jacks was as important as its always been.
I think the thing I noticed most was that there is a lot more back and forth. Wiping something out entirely didn't happen very often, so effects like Bane regeneration mattered more, and there were more instances of things taking some damage and getting a turn to respond before being finished off.
The back and forth actually makes the extra threat on ranged units less powerful than I expected. You still need to end your movement in retaliation for the most part, so its mostly that you get to attack first which was always the case. I do think that more terrain is likely in order. I intentionally put a lot of rough terrain in the middle and while it was impactful, it didn't cripple things like it did in previous editions. Dare say it, I actually kind of want to try a game with some GW forests to see if things that big work with the new rules.
Game ended very close. I won on scenario with just my caster alive at the end of turn 7. Overall it was a lot of fun, though I'm eager to try it again with a mindset of playing a game rather than focusing on seeing what mechanics could be exploited.
Spoiler:
Pretty excited to pick up a new battlegroup and see the models for myself. I'm sure there's a lot to iron out but I'm pretty happy with what I played.
Monkeysloth wrote: The recent primecast listed out what legacy armies would get ported over to MK4. This list is from Reddit.
Mercenaries will have four seperate prime armies: Steelheads, Talion Charter, Rhul, Cephalyx
No Llaelese Resistance? Boooo
They only ever had like- 2-3 models for it? Kinda hard to make that into a standalone army. Maybe they'll flesh it out as a new army now. It seems like this new system will encourage them to produce a lot of one-off smaller factions rather than worrying about pumping out constant releases for the big 4 factions.
I just can't see which faction/army Ashlynn will be part of now. She wasn't part of any of those mercenary charters listed there.
I just can't see which faction/army Ashlynn will be part of now. She wasn't part of any of those mercenary charters listed there.
She may not be in Prime at all and may end up as an unlimited mode only model.
They said Unlimited will have rules for unthemed armies, so its entirely possible she ends up there. Llael ended up in such a weird place in mk3 both in a gameplay and fluff sense. They've got some models, including a brand new version of Ashlynn herself, but the army itself is mostly just a weird collection of a few character solos that depends on importing units from other factions and has no real units of its own. If I was to do anything with her, I'd probably port her and the Thorn Gun Mages over to Crucible Guard.
I just can't see which faction/army Ashlynn will be part of now. She wasn't part of any of those mercenary charters listed there.
She may not be in Prime at all and may end up as an unlimited mode only model.
They said Unlimited will have rules for unthemed armies, so its entirely possible she ends up there. Llael ended up in such a weird place in mk3 both in a gameplay and fluff sense. They've got some models, including a brand new version of Ashlynn herself, but the army itself is mostly just a weird collection of a few character solos that depends on importing units from other factions and has no real units of its own. If I was to do anything with her, I'd probably port her and the Thorn Gun Mages over to Crucible Guard.
Not just possible, she will be there, everyone will be there. The question is whether or not she has a prime role. Yeah given the current lore I could see her and the gun mages and maybe Taryn becoming a CG cadre.
I just can't see which faction/army Ashlynn will be part of now. She wasn't part of any of those mercenary charters listed there.
She may not be in Prime at all and may end up as an unlimited mode only model.
They said Unlimited will have rules for unthemed armies, so its entirely possible she ends up there. Llael ended up in such a weird place in mk3 both in a gameplay and fluff sense. They've got some models, including a brand new version of Ashlynn herself, but the army itself is mostly just a weird collection of a few character solos that depends on importing units from other factions and has no real units of its own. If I was to do anything with her, I'd probably port her and the Thorn Gun Mages over to Crucible Guard.
Not just possible, she will be there, everyone will be there. The question is whether or not she has a prime role. Yeah given the current lore I could see her and the gun mages and maybe Taryn becoming a CG cadre.
What I mean is that there are going to be armies for Unlimited that aren't Prime, but still basically theme forces. Iron Fangs being the obvious example in my mind. I'm curious if there's just no Unlimited Llael and she just gets left as a loose option.
It's a bold move porting your biggest, most expensive models over last, which is what it sounds like will happen. Those models are the whole reason I like WMH the first time around. Telling me I might get to use them at some undefined date in the future is not encouraging me to spend $200 starting this game.
As a huge base aficionado… I kind of understand. I love love love them, but they were also a big part of what bloated the game in mk2 and with as scaled back as mk4 is looking to be, I think it’s for the best. I think they’ll work better if they’re redesigned once there’s been time to see how the rest of the changes play out.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Can't believe colossals and battle engines aren't gonna have rules day one. Seems like a slap in the face to people that paid all that money.
The main focus for MkIV is on the 'Primal' lists, and it seems unlikely that those will include Colossals given the switch to 3D printing.
Ferrum_Sanguinis wrote: Can't believe colossals and battle engines aren't gonna have rules day one. Seems like a slap in the face to people that paid all that money.
The main focus for MkIV is on the 'Primal' lists, and it seems unlikely that those will include Colossals given the switch to 3D printing.
Except there are old models in prime lists. 2 per factions. It feels odd not to have colossal in at least one.
That's very expensive model people are told are worthless now.
Part of the reasons they delayed working on Colossals unti later in the schedule is that they're restricted to 100 point games. This new edition is focused on bringing new players into the game.
That advocating aside... they should have had this setup for much longer time than this. People were clamoring for this for a long, long time, and it's their problem if they took too long to listen.
tneva82 wrote: Except there are old models in prime lists. 2 per factions. It feels odd not to have colossal in at least one.
That's very expensive model people are told are worthless now.
Sure... But if old models are included in Prime lists, they're presumably going to need to be models that people will still be able to buy. So models that PP will still be able to produce with their printers when existing cast stocks run out. And I can't see that being economically viable for the colossals.
In the meantime, the models aren't 'worthless' ... you can still use them in whatever version of the rules you were previously using them in, and they'll (allegedly) get Unlimited rules at some point in the future. I don't see that their individual price point should make them more of a priority than the masses of other models that people have in their collections.
tneva82 wrote: And they can keep producing other pre-iv models but not colossals then?
.
They can potentially keep producing any existing models that were digitally sculpted. I have no idea if that would include the Colossals or not. But their 3D printing strategy seems to be revolving auround making the models as simple as possible. Colossals are large, complex models with multiple parts, and would, I suspect, wind up being inordinately costly in both materials and printer time.
Colossals are expensive and a centrepiece for sure but I dont see why would they be any different to the guy who has loads of infantry armies that are also discontinued.
At the end of the day the majority of the old range is going to be discontinued... Which sucks.
Unlike Warhammer old hammer collectors that can find a market of minis still alive etc I think warmachine minis will just vanish for good after stock is depleted.
I just can't see which faction/army Ashlynn will be part of now. She wasn't part of any of those mercenary charters listed there.
Unlimited, of course,but in the lore, Ashlynn is now a centrally placed military commander in Llael. Llael is in a dynastic alliance with Ord. So we might see her in a brand new future faction as well.
I think PP said in their latest Orimecast that they won’t be making any more of the existing models. Once their current stock is empty they won’t be available.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: I guess that's maybe to make up for a lack of free shipping (at least for the US customers)?
but it's still not going to encourage other stores to stock this if they're 'officially' undercut by the PP store
They're not going to be undercut, I think? PP will sell individual models/units, but the packages meant for retail all are planned to be cheaper than buying it from PP direct.
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: I guess that's maybe to make up for a lack of free shipping (at least for the US customers)?
but it's still not going to encourage other stores to stock this if they're 'officially' undercut by the PP store
How do you mean? Those are the $199 starters, which at todays price is £164.04. Given the UK prices will include 20% VAT , a UK RRP of £174.99 is actually pretty decent, and with the discount is better than I expected.
Souleater wrote: I think PP said in their latest Orimecast that they won’t be making any more of the existing models. Once their current stock is empty they won’t be available.
Thee whether theyw make models or not is irrelevant for what old models are brought to prime and colossus is just as valia as man-o-wars.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote: I guess that's maybe to make up for a lack of free shipping (at least for the US customers)?
but it's still not going to encourage other stores to stock this if they're 'officially' undercut by the PP store
He said one store so sounded like 3rd party store. And pp sells on dollars sureiy being from us?
John D Law wrote: So they finally pulled the pin on the Orgoth showing up. That only leaves Ord remaining of the nations without a faction/force in the game.
Ord dropping their neutrality and bulking up their military is a big part of the new IKRPG fluff. I suspect we'll see Steelheads get a "real" army, but its also possible they get looped under Crucible Guard somehow.
I did often feel that one weakness of MK2 lore was that the game had good reason to basically curtail any new factions appearing. It's something GW felt they had a problem with in Old World as well (even though they honestly really did not)
Basically when you've a setting that restricts factions you can hit the problem that everything you release has to be for existing factions. So those factions get bigger and bigger and more bloated. Even worse for Warmachine because they never really resculpted anything*. So giving players more models mean making existing armies bigger and bigger and bigger.
Eventually you hit a point where you have to do something
*they changed materials once or twice to plastics that didn't work well, but other than that once a sculpt was out that was it.
tneva82 wrote: And they can keep producing other pre-iv models but not colossals then?
And legends rasely viable option. Is there game whese legends actually viable and not just abandoned.
Ask 40k players how often they get to use their legend models. Might just as well not have rules.
If someone brings an Unlimited army to play, I'm playing against an Unlimited army. Even if that wasn't my personal policy with gaming in general, PP is simply not releasing things quick enough for Mk4 to truly be new stuff only. We've got access to old stuff for variety, so just play old stuff. Warmachine's best feature is the endless variety of playstyles at its disposal. Unless one of the new factions hugely appeals to you, play with what you got. The community just needs to get back to playing for fun and exploring the endless variety the game has to offer. That's always been the game's biggest strength.
Overread wrote: I did often feel that one weakness of MK2 lore was that the game had good reason to basically curtail any new factions appearing. It's something GW felt they had a problem with in Old World as well (even though they honestly really did not)
Basically when you've a setting that restricts factions you can hit the problem that everything you release has to be for existing factions. So those factions get bigger and bigger and more bloated. Even worse for Warmachine because they never really resculpted anything*. So giving players more models mean making existing armies bigger and bigger and bigger.
Eventually you hit a point where you have to do something
*they changed materials once or twice to plastics that didn't work well, but other than that once a sculpt was out that was it.
They kind of resculpted some things for trollbloods IIRC they had metal versions which I love and own and then some sculpts changed.
But yes range bloat seems to be a thing once you reach a certain critical point, also happened with Rackham... Infinity seems to basically replace/ resculpt things.
Im not sure on how to place warmachine in therms of game/model count... is it a skirmish? I think if any game starts as a small skirmish and down the line starts to aim to be something bigger, more like a army game then the scaling of the catalogue was not correctly planned from day 1.
Warmachine's problem was it started as skirmish and then slowly started to become army. I think MK2 when you had al ot of people jumping over from Warhammer wanting an army game pushed it; but at the same time PP were giving you more models to play with per army so you want to use them.
So that all encouraged bigger forces; but the reliance on the whole warlock mechanic meant that the game was still trying to be a skirmish at its core.
I think that's why Warcaster did away with the idea of a caster on the table; because it was a huge limiter in expanding the game. You either kept them and stayed skirmish or you had to abandon them to go wargame (because when every game hinges on 1 character that character either has to be insanely OP or you have to turtle and hide them for the entire game otherwise everyone snipes for them)
I think that was the issue, PP tried to make a skirmish wargame hybrid.
Infinity stuck to its guns as a skirmish only game and honestly has a rather annoying policy of removing whole swathes of sculpts. Though they seem to be on the up and replacing "lost" sculpts seems to be going much faster now.
Plus because most units have 3-5 different weapon options but only 1 model with 1 non-optional posed gun; the community is in general way more open to proxies. I think that helps soften the blow at models being removed in form but not in rules cause you just proxy something as them and it works
Automatically Appended Next Post: From PP Facebook
What a Gen Con already! We want to thank everyone who has ordered the MKIV preview battlegroups for your overwhelming support. The volume of online orders has blown away our expectations and we have already surpassed the orders any previous online promotion in the company’s history! While we hate to end things early we have several weeks worth of production ahead of us to fulfill all of the orders, and to maintain our production schedule for the Core Army Starters releasing in October, we must end online sales of the MKIV review battlegroups this morning. We are extremely humbled and excited by how many have already shown interest in the next chapter of Warmachine!
Thank you for your support!
Warmachine has definitely been more army as of late. It's still technically smaller than GW games, but the lines are very blurred, particular when you factor in huge models in either system.
Mechanically though its definitely skirmish. The new unit movement rules blur this a little more, but in some ways it feels a little closer to skirmish, at least at the 50 point level for mk4.
Funny enough, while Warcaster doesn't have.... a Warcaster, I find it more limited to size than Warmachine due to the ARC mechanics and the flow of respawning and activations. The skirmish game really shines with this really engaging churn of respawning units out of the table, where I find the larger game kind of becomes a drag where stuff just kind of sits there all game and doesn't do nearly as much. Of the two, I find Neo-Mechanika is far better small, where I think Warmachine has a lot more pros and cons depending on game size. The main limit for Warmachine IMO, is whether there are scenarios that do a good job supporting different game sizes.
I think Warcaster has the potential within itself to scale up better than Warmachine without changing the rules themselves; you just adjust resource generation and limits and raise them up.
I also think its a system that can stay skirmish or wargame and in both cases support a greater diversity of models because of the active sideboard. You just increase the limit of the sideboard as army diversity increases and you can take more variety to the game and just call in what you need.
It's also neat with the respawning because it introduces the idea of sacrificial units and of units not even having to "kill back their points" or anything.
I really like both the Cygnar and Khador renders and painted models so far.
Orgoth to me is WAY overdesigned, which is a huge fault of the past five years or so in Warmachine and I hope they get rid of the need to layer on details on details.
Overdesign is, in my view, a symptom of 3D design work over physical sculpting. When you can blow the model up big enough to see the skin pours on your screen you can so easily just keep adding and adding detail. Details that can be produced.
Details that can look great as a render, but which when you've the model in hand can be so tiny as to be near invisible. Or which can make the model so "busy" to paint that its a huge challenge to get it right.
Overread wrote: I think Warcaster has the potential within itself to scale up better than Warmachine without changing the rules themselves; you just adjust resource generation and limits and raise them up.
I also think its a system that can stay skirmish or wargame and in both cases support a greater diversity of models because of the active sideboard. You just increase the limit of the sideboard as army diversity increases and you can take more variety to the game and just call in what you need.
It's also neat with the respawning because it introduces the idea of sacrificial units and of units not even having to "kill back their points" or anything.
It's a super engaging game. I really enjoy it. Now what I will say is you can certainly increase the size of the sideboard. My preferred format is actually one mentioned in the league packet that's basically Skirmish+a couple of additional units but still play the Skirmish scenarios. Like you said, it just adds diversity into the game and gives you more options to work with.
That said, I still don't like it at the larger scale. A big part of the game is the mix of alternating activations and constantly spawning out new stuff to claim more board space. In a lot of ways, you're really only focused on new spawns and a couple power pieces. On the skirmish table, everything is pretty close and units that aren't the focus can be quickly shifted to when needed. What I find in the full size game is there's a lot of stuff that just gets abandoned and sits on points somewhere on the table all game. It takes too many activations to make them relevant so they just kind of sit there all game doing nothing. The game doesn't really feel any bigger, just emptier.
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Overread wrote: Overdesign is, in my view, a symptom of 3D design work over physical sculpting. When you can blow the model up big enough to see the skin pours on your screen you can so easily just keep adding and adding detail. Details that can be produced.
Details that can look great as a render, but which when you've the model in hand can be so tiny as to be near invisible. Or which can make the model so "busy" to paint that its a huge challenge to get it right.
Warmachine models have always been overdesigned. That's kind of their charm for me. Random netting with bottles stuck in it, everyone has a pouch or keg or little bit of nonsense. It's always made the models look pretty good with little more painting skill than understanding washes exist, but it definitely takes a long time to paint all the busy little details.
LunarSol wrote: Warmachine models have always been overdesigned.
I disagree. Warmachine models might have been overtly detailed on occasion, but that's not the same as being overdesigned.
It's generally hard to pinpoint where overdesign happens, but a good starting point would be checking if you can identify primary volumes in a design at a glance.
Yeah, the overly detailed aspect of WM models was both faction dependent and got worse as they went along.
Skorne and Menoth tended to be busy, Khador and trolls significantly less so (though some troll models had a lot of... stuff, though happily normally just on belts.)
But the earlier models didn't have a lot of stuff tacked on. One of the best aspects of the early warjacks were the fairly simple lines and 'just enough' hatches and rivets. But not so many that its a nightmare to paint.
It's generally hard to pinpoint where overdesign happens, but a good starting point would be checking if you can identify primary volumes in a design at a glance.
On the other hand, this happened with several of the warjack designs, particularly with the shift to plastic. Box hands/wrist armor connected by tubes to the sphere shoulders mashed on the main block. Then add the angled head (a small cube with diagonal cuts taken out) and small tubes forming the legs (slightly hidden by simple armor plates)
So far, I’m a fan of all the new designs and sculpts. I wish we could buy individual troops for reasonable prices, because otherwise I’ll never own any of them. It’s not like 3D printed starter minis are going to hit Black Friday sales at 75% off MSRP.
?? Nothing says they can't be. But as someone who had a fully painted Menoth army (in white, no less) and a fair amount of painted skorne, they had a lot more detail to paint than Khador or even Cryx. And quite a few of the models look terrible if you tried to cut corners. Or at least mine did.
Honestly, most of my Menoth stuff was painted in a two week period where I did basically nothing else. It feels like a half-remembered fever dream, especially coming up with an off-white for thescrolls of the Choir members that didn't overlap with the white of the robes, and painstakingly marking runes on the scrolls in one go without screwing up and having to start over.
The only more miserable experience was pinning every.single.tiny.join on the Harbinger of Menoth, especially the tiny forearm holding the entire weight of that giant fething flag.
Leo_the_Rat wrote: I'm wondering if PP will have a big(ger) blow out sale to clear their warehouse of all of the non new models? Sort of a sale to end all sales.
I hope so. I may be the only gamer on the planet who likes their PVC/restic minis. At the right price.
Automatically Appended Next Post: @Voss, Ahh. I never tried to paint mine. Maybe someday I will, but for now I just enjoy looking at all the details, imagining the possibilities.
Privateer Press wrote:
We understand there are concerns over safety of our new production resin. We had the same concerns for our own production and packing staff. To ensure the wellbeing of all parties involved, from conception of this production process we put several practices in place to help guarantee the safety of all those that handle our products, and chose materials based on safety and durability.
After prints are removed from the printer, they go to the first washing cycle. Here they receive a heavy rinse and scrub, and are then submerged in water as the whole batch is processed. From there, they are divided into smaller batches and are submerged in an ultrasonic cleaner for a minimum of 30 minutes. After the second cleaning cycle is finished, they are carefully spaced out in our curing station to bring them to the right consistent rigidity. Our cleaning standards far exceed recommendations from the manufacturer. With our unfamiliarity with processing such a large volume of prints, some parts of the process had newly developed issues. We realized we needed to change out the contents of our ultrasonic cleaners much more frequently to avoid a slight white chalky texture from appearing on surfaces/in cracks. With all parts different shapes and sizes and being processed in such large volumes, we had to increase our minimum cure times to ensure that some parts didn’t get less than a minimum standard. As we rise to the exciting challenge of fully mastering this constantly advancing and evolving production method there will inevitably be growing pains, and we still vow to make good on your purchases by replacing any parts that are less than satisfactory. Our production quality is important to us, but the one thing that will always remain our top priority is the safety for all involved.
That said, this resin is not much different from other resins in that you should always be careful when handling it. Whenever sanding a resin, one should always use a respirator use a wet-sanding technique. Additionally, one should always clean their work area and wash their hands after working with resin.
That’s… not what they said? Like that literally ends with its pretty much like all other resin, use a mask, clean your desk, wash your hands.
They do address the white residue seen in pictures of the models though. Curious to see if that is indeed resolved by them changing the water more frequently.
Resin is and always has been toxic. The new resin is toxic. The old resin was toxic too. People pouring the stuff in their homes scares the flark out of me.
Probably needed an /s - but enough people were concerned that they had to put out that statement.
There's a report that someone had a skin reaction to the dust from a model purchased at GenCon. Haven't seen anything direct about it, but I assume that prompted the statement.
Once cured, 3d printed resins are pretty much like the other polyurethane resins used for casting. Yes, you don't want to inhale the dust of either one. Yes, there's a slight chance some folks might have an allergic reaction to either. Both are also terrible pre-cure.
Uuhhh….so literally no or little QC, and uncured and not even an iso bath before they sell them.
So what happened to new player friendly?
This is something else….
