It's nice and simple. Right now, GW, PP and FFG seem to have the Hobby wargame market pretty well sewn up. And each of them offer different things. Huzzah and hoorah, the industry seems in rude health. And if GW's financials are any indication, the wider Hobby seems to be very much in growth (much as their about-face has been impressive, I struggle to credit their recent fortunes solely to that. Definitely a factor though).
But I'm not looking to discuss what survivors did right. Instead, I'm looking for opinions and discussions on what now defunct games and companies did wrong.
It's no secret that I'm by and large a GW player, so I'm afraid that as the OP, my knowledge here is pretty woeful. So rather than anything insightful, I'll just list the various games that's spring to mind. So far as I'm aware they're gone gone, rather than on 'hiatus'. But please feel free to enlighten me if I'm wrong. Ready? Here we go.
Mongoose Games, who did Starship Troopers
Rackham
Void
Vore
Firestorm Games
Flintloque
Celtos
From what I can tell, their games weren't considered poor. And their models were for the most part better than middling. Yet sadly, they're no longer with us. But why? What was it about those games that failed to attract a large enough player base to keep them going?
Whilst I won't be contributing much insight, I may and probably will be asking for clarification here and there. It's not to cast doubt or denigrate, just to make sure I'm getting it!
The harsh reality of business is you can make absolutely the right decision every step of the way and still fail.
Specifically to your list, Rackham switching to pre paints and Firestorm failing to stick with an existing product and jumping onto the next project are the factors most commonly cited that weren't the right decision.
Spartan Games were a small company that hit the big market with Dystopian Wars; but their small size and lack of effective management/investment seemd to leave them constantly chasing the next big thing for them; but also unable to keep supporting their other lines. So they'd have 5 or so games on the go at once, but only be supporting one at a time. This was coupled with a lack of communication to the fans
Fans HATE feeling like a game is abandoned and when a company doesn't just say nothing but actually misses its own internal deadlines and never says anything and then appears to have totally abandoned big releases that they were making huge noise about - its a very bad sign.
I'd say a lot of companies struggle with scale of production. EVen GW had huge problems first supporting and then bracing for the sudden drop in sales with the Lord of the Rings range. Other brands have similar problems - scaling up to meet sudden huge demand then scaling back when the hype wears off and your core market has bought up fast and is then trickling purchases rather than bulk buying.
Rackham did indeed suffer when they shifted to pre-painted. It's one thing to have range pre-painted from the start (starwars is doing very well) ; but shifting ranges means you're shifting markets totally.
Azreal13 wrote: The harsh reality of business is you can make absolutely the right decision every step of the way and still fail.
Specifically to your list, Rackham switching to pre paints and Firestorm failing to stick with an existing product and jumping onto the next project are the factors most commonly cited that weren't the right decision.
Didn't Rackham go a bit mental and flew well off the handle? I can't remember the specifics and could be entirely remembering things wrong, but the pre-paints were poor quality plastics and one of the management team basically went on a rant and gave what amounted to a hobsons choice to fans (take it or leave it). So they said sod you we'll leave it then and didn't buy anything.
It's nice and simple. Right now, GW, PP and FFG seem to have the Hobby wargame market pretty well sewn up. And each of them offer different things. Huzzah and hoorah, the industry seems in rude health. And if GW's financials are any indication, the wider Hobby seems to be very much in growth (much as their about-face has been impressive, I struggle to credit their recent fortunes solely to that. Definitely a factor though).
But I'm not looking to discuss what survivors did right. Instead, I'm looking for opinions and discussions on what now defunct games and companies did wrong.
It's no secret that I'm by and large a GW player, so I'm afraid that as the OP, my knowledge here is pretty woeful. So rather than anything insightful, I'll just list the various games that's spring to mind. So far as I'm aware they're gone gone, rather than on 'hiatus'. But please feel free to enlighten me if I'm wrong. Ready? Here we go.
Mongoose Games, who did Starship Troopers
Rackham
Void
Vore
Firestorm Games
Flintloque
Celtos
From what I can tell, their games weren't considered poor. And their models were for the most part better than middling. Yet sadly, they're no longer with us. But why? What was it about those games that failed to attract a large enough player base to keep them going?
Whilst I won't be contributing much insight, I may and probably will be asking for clarification here and there. It's not to cast doubt or denigrate, just to make sure I'm getting it!
Mongoose are still around - the owner posts on dakka quite a bit.
They made some great games and models over the year - ACTA Babylon 5, Judge Dredd and Starship Troopers being highlights for me.
IiRC, Rackham were bought out by a company that wanted to turn them into a toy business, rather than a miniatures business. So they took a range that appealed primarily to painters, and replaced it with a range of prepaints that nobody wanted.
Mongoose are still around, but took a heavy hit from their stab at prepainted miniatures after hyping a range that would be better than most people can paint and (due presumably to a lack of oversight in China) winding up with unsellable dross.
Void, Celtos and Vore, along with the original incarnation of Warzone, simply suffered from going up against GW at a time when GW was hitting that critical mass where people started buying into games based on what everyone else was playing. They were all good games, they just weren't Warhammer or Warhammer 40000, and at a different time might have turned out very differently.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ruin wrote: Void died on its arse due to one of the owners embezzling money when the company was still I-Kore IIRC.
Nowt to do with the game, it was great for its time IMO.
That certainly didn't help, but from what I recall their games had already been well and truly eclipsed by 40k and Warzone by that point.
I think the issue with Rackham was a failure to catch the English speaking market. Confrontation wasn't well translated and when they tried to spin the setting into an RPG it wasn't great.
I think if they had just stuck to their absolutely beautiful metal miniatures they'd have been ok.
The pre-paints was the nail in the coffin for them IMO. Their sci-fi line AT-43 wasn't bad for the vehicles (since they were hard plastic) but the infantry was bendy and kind of poor quality.
I think the wargaming market is super crazy tough...and I think a few too many people go into it thinking they can support 8-10-20 people with full-time salaries doing it. That's exceptionally rare, and why you'll find a lot of companies are 2-4 people who do the stuff on their weekends.
The biggest things which scream "mistake" to me are generally:
1) Super niche product...and then wonder why you're not raking in the dough. "Why isn't anyone buying my 13mm scaled Neo-Chinese Fantasy Lore game based on a space planet I invented..." If you're going to do this kind of thing, it better be a hobby and not something you expect to create profit.
2) Niche scale. Unless you're a titan of the industry (and even the titans in this industry are shockingly small potatoes compared to other companies), don't make your crap 35mm if the entire damn industry is 28-32mm. I understand the intent here is "well they'll have to buy our minis". That works if you have some stellar IP that people like - if not, you're turning away TONS of business from people who already have suitable models or terrain.
3) An IP or lore that the designer thinks is super neat...but never did any market research to see if anyone else gives a gak. Be it books, novels, movies, video games, etc...the hardest thing to latch a customer onto is really cool IP material. Universally adored stuff is few and far between. It's also paramount if you're selling a game. I don't care how animated someone is about the IP in their YouTube interviews during a Kickstarter - if the people don't like it, but you don't realize that and you dump a ton of cash into a dead end...you're in trouble. This is at least one area where Kickstarter can be a life saver.
4) Bring me something new, something better, or something neat....or don't bring me anything at all. This normally kills a company before they even take off. You see a ton of Kickstarters for what boils down to "also ran" material. generic poor 3D modeled stuff in a super generic, boring or uninspired IP...a product which offers absolutely nothing of genuine value to the consumer. There was a Kickstarter a while back for some generic named sci-fi game based around super mediocre 3D models (which, as far as I could see were all modeled out of various size blocks?). If you genuinely can't sell your game without hiding behind the "innovative, new!" kind of nonsense tag lines - I'm not gonna buy in.
5) Anchoring your miniature line with an unnecessary game or lore. Lore and IP and story can be really important for a game. It can also be the anchor which sinks it. A lot of small companies seem to try way too hard to create a brand new universe just to sell some miniatures - when, financially, they would have been better off just selling minis and saving all of the time/effort with the IP (and what might very well be a super mediocre game). I think really well done miniatures will always sell themselves, particularly if they're genre-flexible. This is where you are almost better off doing historicals, where a dozen rule sets exist to run your minis.
6) The overly successful Kickstarter. While I'm a big fan of Kickstarter, it's been shown a few times that companies try too hard and make waaaaay too many promises and then can't bring it all to market. This ends up being financially crushing for the people involved and some more restraint should have been exercised during the actual campaign. It doesn't hurt to say "Look, we're a new company we can only provide X and we'll do it to the best of our ability". If you need to promise dozens of unlocks which you won't be able to deliver...just skip it and close the campaign already.
a small business begins, it does ok, people buy the stuff and like it, but it's small, maybe local, maybe with an online following
now it could carry on like this for a long time, maybe paying enough for the owner to go full time, maybe even have a member of staff or two, but it's small
they dare to dream, everybody will like us if they could get us, how to make that happen, they've tried advertising (such that they can afford) it provides a small boost but soon levels off
only one option, mass market, distribution, the gamble that selling to a distributor at 40% of what they normally make from their direct sales will pay off with a big enough sales jump to keep the profits steady or hopefully grown them
but distribution means making more product (not having it when a distributor asks for more tends to mean at worst they drop you if you're small fry, at best stop promoting you leaving your products adrift in their catalogue competing with all the other stuff in there)
so the curse of growth starts and they look at taking out Loans
when small businesses grow they have to borrow cash, and while friends and family may suffice to start with they soon have to go cap in hand to a bank, finance firm or other shareholders who often have no real interest in the business beyond an account book showing they'll get their loan back with interest
so the small business now has the cash to pursue the owners dreams (although the owner probably owns less of the business now)
if all goes well they grow, sell more stuff, get more popular which helps sell more stuff, and so on
all well and good but it's really easy for things to go wrong,
the stuff doesn't sell as well as expected,
distributors mess them about,
interest rates change unexpectedly,
another company does similar stuff and is better received,
a shareholder dies and means they have to be bought out
the owner is almost always a game designer/sculptor or similar not a business man so as things get more complex they do a worse and worse job
a supplier they've paid a bunch of money to folds before delivery
actual deliberate fraud from within the company (or from a distributor or supplier)
etc
so now cashflow is shaky and the creditors get to hear about it and pull the loan (instant death) or demand higher interest on the loan (slow death)
Occasionally the gamble pays off and the small company becomes big enough to stablilise, but all to often they stumble from loan to loan until one finally goes wrong and kills them
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: .... Yet sadly, they're no longer with us. But why? What was it about those games that failed to attract a large enough player base to keep them going?
Honestly? In my opinion, it's down to GW's brainwashing. Everything has to be GW. The whole hobby is GW. There are such a large amount of GW players who will not try any other game because it isn't GW. I have friends who only play GW stuff. They'd refuse to try guildball or dreadball as they 'hate the genre', but the second blood bowl is released they're all over it like a rash.
It's a crying shame. There are many games out there that are as good or better, or just plain different, to GW stuff that deserve a chance, but the success of GW's marketing/brainwashing strategy has paid off.
By the way, Void is still available, as are all the figures.
Rackham's main problem was not properly managing expectations with the Confrontation: Age of Rag'Narok pre-painted mass-battle game. As well as going from a range renowned for "boutique" sculpts for painters as much as gamers to pre-paints almost overnight, they simply couldn't keep the stock available; Only two factions for months (down from the dozen or more in the metal ranges) and core units unavailable. The latter problem was also a chronic problem for AT-43. As far as I can see, it simply boiled down to poor cash flow and over-expansion.
I-Kore / Urban Mammoth's problems were partly that, partly theft by an employee (allegedly) and partly that old chestnut of not concentrating on one thing. They had Void with a decent range of miniatures which they slowly expanded (originally all four human armies used the same basic troop type, then they got army-specific sculpts of those troopers, then unique units to replace those generic troops), then Void 1.1 came along with a plastic starter box; a good idea, but that was it as far as plastics went, and they didn't match that well with the metal models. Plus there was a communications failure with the Chinese factory - the first run of models were manufactured at 3x normal size, instead of being scaled down as was normal practice). Then we got Urban War - a Shadow War-type skirmish game wich used variations on the "main" game's factions with completely new miniatures. That eventually took over the parent game. The last effort was a 6mm mass-battle game; I don't know what ever happened to that.
Then they had problems with their shop in Edinburgh flooding, then one of the owners moved to Khazakstan. TGhen there was Infinity, which did roughly the same thing as Urban War, with the same sort of influences, but with much nicer miniatures. Celtos suffered from the issues affecting the parent company, and also from them falling out with Kev White who sculpted most of the miniatures.
Void miniatures are still available from Scotia Grendel, and Celtos from Brigade Games. Interestingly, Scotia Grendel also sell the miniatures and rules for Kryomek, which was written by the two guys behind I-Kore (they also were pretty important in Target Games who did Chronopia and Warzone), and you can see how Void is basically recycling the ideas from Kryomek into a more 40k-friendly skin. It wasn't competing with Warzone - that game had died before Void came along )(other than an ill-fated attempt to reprint the rules), and Void had faded away before Prodos did their version.
Vor: The Maelstrom fell foul of FASA's decision to simply shut down one day. As well as Vor, it took Crimson Skies, Battletech and Crucible with it, and the Shadowrun and Earthdawn RPGs. Battletech and Shadowrun survived due to a massively passionate fanbase, essentially. The game's designer tried to revive it, but was a decade too early for Kickstarter, and unfortunately he owned the rights to the words and ideas, but not the pictures and miniatures. A pity, because it was an intriguing setting with an interesting story.
Mongoose appear to have tried their hand at miniatures games, and now have given up and are concentrating on the Traveller and Paranoia RPGs. They had a bit of a bad rep for churning hrough games (like SPartan), although I've no idea if that was their fault or the licensors'. Certainly they had a fairly long run with the Dredd and Babylon 5 licences. MongooseMatt is fairly active here on the Age of Sigmar board, I believe.
I replayed the old Warzone, the first edition from Target Games. Still plays good. It was limited, sure, and the combos you could make were crazy, but it hit that nostalgia spot perfectly.
Being francophone, Confrontation was great. I never saw the English version of the rules, but the fact that the booklet of rules came with every mini (before they thought a BRB would be a good idea) was fantastic. We thought up a new spell? Put the card in the blister. You want to run the spell on three models? photocopy the damn thing.
AndrewGPaul wrote: Vor: The Maelstrom fell foul of FASA's decision to simply shut down one day. As well as Vor, it took Crimson Skies, Battletech and Crucible with it, and the Shadowrun and Earthdawn RPGs. Battletech and Shadowrun survived due to a massively passionate fanbase, essentially. The game's designer tried to revive it, but was a decade too early for Kickstarter, and unfortunately he owned the rights to the words and ideas, but not the pictures and miniatures. A pity, because it was an intriguing setting with an interesting story.
Some of that is correct, and some is not. Wikipedia is actually pretty spot on with what happened.
AndrewGPaul wrote: Mongoose appear to have tried their hand at miniatures games, and now have given up and are concentrating on the Traveller and Paranoia RPGs. They had a bit of a bad rep for churning hrough games (like SPartan), although I've no idea if that was their fault or the licensors'. Certainly they had a fairly long run with the Dredd and Babylon 5 licences. MongooseMatt is fairly active here on the Age of Sigmar board, I believe.
From what I recall, Mongoose lost the Babylon 5 license through no fault of theirs. Without a show on the air, Warner Bros. just decided to pull all of the Babylon 5 licenses when they came up for renewal.
It really just comes down to organized play, support in local game stores and distribution.
Game growth is mostly pushed by local players. Local players push game growth because there is some sort of organized play format that gets you or you can earn something (usually). This promotes players to organize, learn, and grow the game.
However, none of that matters if you don't have or work with proper distribution channels so that stores can easily obtain the product.
Usually, companies get 2 out of 3 of the things correctly and have trouble with one of the things. It isn't always distribution, but a good time it is and other times it is simply organized play.
I am an old timer.. not that old.. but old enough to remember most of the releases. One of the big thing that caused the failure I feel is just not connecting with the customers.
If any game is going to survive it needs a community, if you can not find anyone that plays the game, normally you will stop playing that game.
The other thing was with games like AT-43 the game got a little wonky on its releases, trying to expand the universe quickly caused questionable choices to go to production and
then the product ended up dying on the game store shelf.
I had Vor, and absolutely loved my Growlers, but could not find anyone local that played it. With no one buying it outside of me, that caused local shops not to carry it..
But games today can go off track, look at Privateer press right now.. Locally after the sub par release of the new edition the most of community has moved to 40k and X-wing.
Not that I think it will make them die off.. but it's not as healthy as it once was and I am sure they can see it on their bottom line.
Even with X-wing, They are running out of things to produce and if a few bad movies would hit (don't think Disney will allow this) it could collapse on its self because that
would cause people to lose interest in the franchise. Kind of like the end of the run of WotC star wars miniatures..We already produced twelve Darth Vaders..think of something else.
AndrewGPaul wrote: It wasn't competing with Warzone - that game had died before Void came along )
Void and Warzone both hit their peak during 2nd edition 40k. I think Void lingered a little longer, particularly with the company changes and the switch to Urban War, but it was really just treading water by that point.
From what I recall, Mongoose lost the Babylon 5 license through no fault of theirs. Without a show on the air, Warner Bros. just decided to pull all of the Babylon 5 licenses when they came up for renewal.
Fairly sure it wasn't that the licence was pulled, but that Warner Bros had a rather inflated idea of what the licence was worth, and Mongoose decided it just wasn't worth it.
Others have covered most of this so I'll chime in on Flintloque which hasn't been talked about yet. It along with a mass battle game set in the same world (Slaughterloo) is still well supported with regular releases of new minis. From what little I understand the manufacturer (Alector Ltd aka Alternative Armies) got burned pretty hard by a lack of sales back when they did sell their products to distributors and only just survived. Thankfully for them that was about the same time that websales really started to take off so they've been able to do reasonably well for themselves selling directly to customers. Of course Flintloque and Slaughterloo aren't all they do, they also make a bucket load of other 28mm and 15mm stuff including the old Laserburn range, their own sci-fi universe called The Ion Age in both 15mm and 28mm, loads of generic 15mm historical, sci-fi and fantasy minis, games based on Celtic and Greek mythology, a post apoc game called Sulpher, the USEME range of rules, DarkStorme (pre-blackpowder fantasy skirmish set in the same world as Flintloque and Slaughterloo), the old fantasy warlord range of 28mm minis and others. I think it's fair to say that aside from visibility in FLGSs Alector/Alternative Armies are doing reasonably well with a diverse range of products readily available.
PS I am not in any was biased by the fact that I've recently got into both Flintloque and Patrol Angis (15mm Ion Age).
Another factor for Rackham was genre change for Confrontation it tried to go from a hyper detailed skirmish game to a mass battle game sort of like the problem GW had with AoS as well as the pre-paints.
Who remembers Harlequin Miniatures and their mass batle game 'Raven'? The range continues as Black Tree Design these days.
Also Clan War the mass fantasy battle game based on Legend of the Five Rings. That was dropped (as far as I know) due to the IP being sold to Wizards of the Coast for a few years.
AndrewGPaul wrote: It wasn't competing with Warzone - that game had died before Void came along )
Void and Warzone both hit their peak during 2nd edition 40k. I think Void lingered a little longer, particularly with the company changes and the switch to Urban War, but it was really just treading water by that point.
The Void 1.1 rulebook I have (and the very first Battles With Miniatures catalogue) is (c) 2000; 40k was on to 3rd edition by that point. The boxed game was 2004.
The most disappointing failure for me was Cell Entertainment in 1999. They had three games: Ronin (a game of giant robots about the size of Epic titans duelling), 1999 (a weird angels vs demons vs mutants apocalyptic 28mm game) and Lab (in which you played as competing mad scientists, building a laboratory to create mutants and devices, and sent them out to fight your opponent). Mostly I used the Lab and Ronin miniatures for other things. The Ronin models were a good source of legs for Pharon AMP suit conversions for VOR, an idea I stole from Agis Neugebauer, whose VOR pics have long since disappeared from his website.
Nick Ellingworth wrote: Others have covered most of this so I'll chime in on Flintloque which hasn't been talked about yet. It along with a mass battle game set in the same world (Slaughterloo) is still well supported with regular releases of new minis. From what little I understand the manufacturer (Alector Ltd aka Alternative Armies) got burned pretty hard by a lack of sales back when they did sell their products to distributors and only just survived. Thankfully for them that was about the same time that websales really started to take off so they've been able to do reasonably well for themselves selling directly to customers. Of course Flintloque and Slaughterloo aren't all they do, they also make a bucket load of other 28mm and 15mm stuff including the old Laserburn range, their own sci-fi universe called The Ion Age in both 15mm and 28mm, loads of generic 15mm historical, sci-fi and fantasy minis, games based on Celtic and Greek mythology, a post apoc game called Sulpher, the USEME range of rules, DarkStorme (pre-blackpowder fantasy skirmish set in the same world as Flintloque and Slaughterloo), the old fantasy warlord range of 28mm minis and others. I think it's fair to say that aside from visibility in FLGSs Alector/Alternative Armies are doing reasonably well with a diverse range of products readily available.
PS I am not in any was biased by the fact that I've recently got into both Flintloque and Patrol Angis (15mm Ion Age).
This stuff actually sounds really cool, thanks for the tip.
I occasionally lament the lack of 'rogue trader era 40k' style options for modelling, but then I remind myself I just need to gather a bunch of old toys and recycling, grab some cheap acrylic paints and brushes then have at it myself!
zedmeister wrote: Anyone have much info on what happened to the Axis and Allies lines? Love playing War at Sea every now and then, but they just seemed to vanish.
WotC found themselves overextended, and so they dropped A&A at the same time as Star Wars, in order to better focus on Magic and D&D.
Must say, this thread isn't going the way I thought it would, but in a really, really, really cool and positive way!
Chuffed to see Celtos is still more-or-less about (anyone know if they've printed a rulebook not in that font?), not to mention stuff like Flintloque (I'm a sucker for Napoleonics).
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Must say, this thread isn't going the way I thought it would, but in a really, really, really cool and positive way!
Chuffed to see Celtos is still more-or-less about (anyone know if they've printed a rulebook not in that font?), not to mention stuff like Flintloque (I'm a sucker for Napoleonics).
At the moment, I don't even know if Brigade Models are printing new Celtos rulebooks, or just sitting on a pile they got from I=Kore. They sell the models, but they've done nothing, AFAIK, to work on the range since acquiring it.
I've got a PDF copy of the rules in Arial (and all the art is horribly low-res to the point of unrecognizability), but I don't think that ever made it to print. That and a playtest copy of the Sidhe army book.
A lot fo the games in the OP are from the late 90s and early 2000s, when GW had real market dominance. The problem was that even by 2nd edition, GW could roll out 7+ factions with deep model ranges, with top shelf models, and rules that were at least average for the time.
Most of those games failed to really provide more than one or two things to complete. Confrontation had beautfil models and a huge range, but the rules were wonky and poorly translated. They than threw away the model range for pre-paints, and nobody has heard from them since.
Mongoose built a great game with Starship troopers, but the models were "okay," and focused on the movie look, which wasn't always popular. However, there were two factions, and it was tied to a "second tier" license that ended up strangling the game.
Void, and the other direct 40 competitors, just went to the way of HD-DVD. They just couldn't beat GW on grimdark gothic. the models were mostly "fine."
the thing is, at the same time that games like Starship Troopers, Confrontation, and Warzone collapsed, PP dropped Warmachine, which is the longest lasting #2. They showed up with rock solid rules (for the time), solid models, and a nice range at launch. They also had a hook: competitive gaming, at a time when GW really didn't see the merits in it.
So.. I think you can chalk most games that fail to simply not bringing anything new or improved int eh core areas: model quality, rules quality, model range, model scale, game size, or marketing. You can't just be another 28mm sci-fi game (sorry Gates of Antares), but you absolutely can be a successful steampunk/horror/western 32mm skirmish game (Malifaux, part of the upper middle class of tabletop wargaming).
Mongoose built a great game with Starship troopers, but the models were "okay," and focused on the movie look, which wasn't always popular. However, there were two factions, and it was tied to a "second tier" license that ended up strangling the game.
We didn't get the movie look "Light Infantry" or the "Exo-Suits"(which were closer to the actual book's designs, two different suit designs the "Cougar" and the "Grizzly") until the game was basically dead.
It certainly did not help that the dropships, fighters, turrets, fortified compound, etc parts that were all part of the Mobile Infantry army lists never really materialized. We saw prototypes of them but then...poof.
I think RiTides found a bunch of the rebadged Cougar/Grizzly suits and used them for a Terminator proxy army some years ago, but the models just became a letdown past the initial plastic offerings. A lot of the characters(especially the SICON Officers in longcoats) that came out looked like the sculptors just retweaked GW sculpts.
ScarletRose wrote: I think the issue with Rackham was a failure to catch the English speaking market. Confrontation wasn't well translated and when they tried to spin the setting into an RPG it wasn't great.
I think if they had just stuck to their absolutely beautiful metal miniatures they'd have been ok.
The pre-paints was the nail in the coffin for them IMO. Their sci-fi line AT-43 wasn't bad for the vehicles (since they were hard plastic) but the infantry was bendy and kind of poor quality.
Rackham had terrible customer service, which compounded their problems. They shipped models in English language boxes with only the French rules inside, and when people complained, they told them they could buy the rulebooks from their website (for about 10 Euros and 20 Euros shipping).
Mongoose also produced some models for SST that were real head scratchers. For example, they made an electrified fence thingie and a missile that both sold for $25 or more. The fence, unlike the defensive barricade GW and 3rd parties make nowadays, looked like something a starting hobbyist would build from popsicle sticks and floral wire for about $5.
The missile model, while okay looking, represented a missile in-flight (no exaggeration) for the game. Mongoose had provided a printed card missile with the game so I'm guessing not many players took the plunge for a unit that only lasted a fraction of a turn (their purpose was to blow up, after all).
Automatically Appended Next Post: On Void 1.1, I was one of the demo guys.
Every month---again not an exaggeration---they would send me probably $80 worth of metal minis and a scenario. I was expected to paint up the new stuff and do x number of demos at the LGS. I did that happily for a few months until i got burned out on the quick turnaround. I always wondered how they could afford to send such generous demo kits every month.
Spartan Games was headed by Niel who had some serious medical issues about a year ago or so (from what I gather) and which are still ongoing. If you've got a smaller company and either can't or don't want to delegate tasks that can certainly hit things hard. If someone can't pull their weight and if others can't step in it can lead to a whole host of problems; generally the worst if those who are sick are in the upper levels of the company -ergo those running and the most skilled/critical workers (ergo those hard to replace at short notice or for limited pay).
Bigger companies can generally soak this kind of problem more easily as there tends to be more staff around to either take the load or more potential finance to hire short-term help.
From what I recall, Mongoose lost the Babylon 5 license through no fault of theirs. Without a show on the air, Warner Bros. just decided to pull all of the Babylon 5 licenses when they came up for renewal.
J. Michael Straczynski owns Babylon 5, as best I understand it, entirely, through his Babylonian Productions label and it was he who put the license high enough for Mongoose to throw in the towel. It's a shame as I'd have loved to have seen a land based mini wargame and that would have been all open design terrain with the exception of the original race aesthetics.
ScarletRose wrote: I think the issue with Rackham was a failure to catch the English speaking market. Confrontation wasn't well translated and when they tried to spin the setting into an RPG it wasn't great.
I think if they had just stuck to their absolutely beautiful metal miniatures they'd have been ok.
The pre-paints was the nail in the coffin for them IMO. Their sci-fi line AT-43 wasn't bad for the vehicles (since they were hard plastic) but the infantry was bendy and kind of poor quality.
Rackham had terrible customer service, which compounded their problems. They shipped models in English language boxes with only the French rules inside, and when people complained, they told them they could buy the rulebooks from their website (for about 10 Euros and 20 Euros shipping).
Rackham also had a version of the Spartan problem: lack of focus, and too many product lines. there were armies/races for Confrontation that technically existed but were essentially unsupported, and their release dates were made of moonbeams and pixie dust. Instead of releases for army X, another month would roll on with nought but another goblin subfaction (in the form of 4 or 5 models). And that was well before the Ragnarok disaster.
In general, though, I wouldn't say it has been a matter of GW or other competition. Largely it comes from internal failures (even some that aren't strictly errors in business, like embezzlement or illness), sometimes misreading the market (Rackham) or finding some way to kill the golden goose. I honestly think privateer is on the verge of the latter, what with kicking their community out, and being suddenly sublimely indifferent to criticism of their design choices, on the basis that sometimes it is delivered in a mean fashion. Spiraling prices and must have units don't help either.
I'd honestly like to see some new companies rise, but truthfully I'm not sure if I want to see fresh ideas or a return to some traditional ones. I'd love to see a real swords and sorcery game, no WackyTech, guns, or random BDSM elements. Which honestly crop up a lot.
Not sure if this applies, but figured I would offer my own experiences.
Proxie Models was started about 7 years ago when I got a severance package and purchased some derelict plastic injection equipment. I figured there might be a market for some cheaper generic substitutes.
So what happened? Where are they?
Well, a lot of things. Actually this might be a long post...........
Kick starter began about the same time, so new companies popped up with no need for much capital investment. The concept did not really fit with my style of not wanting to take too much risk. And if I was reluctant to risk my money, I was absolutely loathe to risk money from a stranger who trusted me. Looking back, this was a really big mistake. Kingdom Death and CMON started about the same time, and both are filthy rich and rolling in millions.
I placed all my equipment in my workshop that I had used to restore muscle cars for the past 20 years. It seemed perfect, no rent and right out back of the house. But now that the tons of stuff is all there, I have to cope with the realities of zoning laws and insurance. Everything I am doing is legal, but this is the limit to what I can do. It has proven impossible to get insurance for a business at my residence, and the zoning forbids any employees. So I planted my seed in a very small pot and it is root bound and can not grow. Ever. Literally every single things has to be done by me.
I also over estimated the appeal of making things to the local community. Finding people who like to listen to music is easy. Finding people who want to make music is a lot harder. Same goes for miniatures. In spite of the very vibrant local gaming community there has not been anyone who really jumped up and said, " Wow, this is neat. I want to be a part of this." So no partners to rely on.
Sales. I know this makes little sense, but I started making bases and still sell them every day. (Except for Aug 4th, for some odd reason) Each of these has to be produced, packaged, and shipped by me. I also took on some contract work and producing those products takes a lot of time. Throw in trying to post once in a while on the internet and it leaves little time to design and make new molds. There is also the fairly typical ADHD behavior of people like me. I would get super motivated to create something and then lose interest before it was done. I have so many files stored on the hard drive it is embarrassing. But it matches the pile of unpainted armies and model cars. Being forced to step away from a project for sometimes months at a time really ruins any chance of finishing it. I forget what I was doing and where I was at.
Real life jobs also take up time. For almost all of the past 7 years I also was working a part time to full time job. When you realize there are over 200 kick starters a month in the tabletop gaming category it really takes some massive confidence to go all in on things. Life is a series of calculating risk and reward. A lot of companies chose poorly and crashed and burned. If you are in a position where your personal assets are protected it makes it a lot easier to gamble. Hence kickstarter and bank loans you can file chapter 11 on and walk away from if things go bad. It takes a LOT more nerve to put your assets on the line. Knowing your family will lose the house if things do not go well requires more guts than I can muster. So playing in the shallow end means never getting big but also never drowning.
Distribution is another issue that a company has to carefully weigh. The store gets 40%, and the distributer gets 20%. They also want free shipping, so figure another 5%. This means I have to sell almost 3 times as many items via distribution to break even with selling direct to customers. The best way to think about this is to figure you make $15 per hour and work 40 hours per week. So your boss cuts your pay to $5 per hour but allows you to work 120 hours per week. You are still making the same amount of money but putting in a bit more effort. A distributer will increase sales, so figure you are now allowed to work 160 hours per week at $5 per hour. So you are actually making more money but working a lot more hours. When faced with a serious labor shortage this model is very tough. When your business model is based on profiting from wage discrepancies between countries it is just more money.
Which brings us to labor and the introduction of Chinese mass manufacturing to the market. This is a deal breaker for a lot of companies and industries. Live in the rust belt you can see the impact this has. If you think the hobby games industry is going to remain a cottage industry, I admire your optimism. But I personally do not think this Genie is ever going back in the bottle. There will always be a place for extremely niche products. However, the big boys are going to take the lion's share.
This works both ways, as the initial startup costs to have a run of products made in China can be a major investment. I think this might explain the demise of several of the companies in the OP. It must have cost a fortune to have all those pre-paints made in China. But if you combine kick starter and Chinese manufacturing it is really a no lose situation. You have all the money in advance and know how many sales to expect.
Last week I got my Massive Darkness kickstarter in the mail. It was a real shock to me as it was the first CMON product I had ever purchased. The quality and quantity are stunning, and it really made me glad I stayed in the shallow end of the pool. They have raised the bar to an extent I never thought possible. It has also changed the direction of my efforts if and when I find time. ( I also pledged more money for their stuff. ) The only real risk I see for them is flooding the market and stealing customers from themselves. They are really looking strong as a company. They are going to be getting a lot of my money if they keep this up.
So those are a couple of things I deal with and perhaps some of the other companies deal with them also. Proxie Models is actually in pretty good shape and I am very happy to have all the tools and equipment I have packed away over the years. I can tinker as I want and if things frustrate me just close the door and go find regular work with no loss. Not sure how these other folks made out, but after being in the trenches I wish them all the best of luck. It is a fun but challenging vocation.
Best advice I got- " Stay in your lane." If you know you are driving a Pinto, don't try to get out there and run with the Mustangs.
Nick Ellingworth wrote: Others have covered most of this so I'll chime in on Flintloque which hasn't been talked about yet.
Flintloque was the first my non GW wargame that I bought into (probably in the mid 90's) although I never knew anyone else with an interest in it.
To be honest the miniatures were pretty terrible, even for the 90's.
Flintloque is definitely a game with a niche audience. I can't imagine there are many people interested in fantasy Napoleonic skirmish gaming. Luckily the latest version of the rules has a nice if simple solitaire system so if I can't find a willing human opponent I can still get plenty of use from my small collection.
I do agree about some of the sculpts being pretty poor but I also think that a lot of them aren't helped by iffy paint jobs in photos of the studio minis. For the most part though I like the Flintloque range, it's got a lot of character and a sense of humour.
As others have said, traction seems to be a significant driver.
I bought Star Ship Troopers, Void, and a few others. *My* main issue was - nobody else did locally. So I ended up buying two starter armies and failing to encourage friends to give it a go. it didn't help that I didn't know the rules off pat - so the blind never really persuaded the blind.
SST never really followed through. Thoroughly enjoyed the game - but it never really expanded. Was underwhelmed by the missile, the exosuits and the "new" race, tho if the big bugs ever show up on ebay I'll still take a punt.
AT-43 was also good, but it was dying on its feet when I bought in. When my FLGS was selling stock off cheap I didn't have the cash, so I still only have the starter set.
From what I recall, Mongoose lost the Babylon 5 license through no fault of theirs. Without a show on the air, Warner Bros. just decided to pull all of the Babylon 5 licenses when they came up for renewal.
J. Michael Straczynski owns Babylon 5, as best I understand it, entirely, through his Babylonian Productions label and it was he who put the license high enough for Mongoose to throw in the towel. It's a shame as I'd have loved to have seen a land based mini wargame and that would have been all open design terrain with the exception of the original race aesthetics.
Not quite.
There are TWO (2) sets of 'rights' to that property, which also complicates things enormously.
The Movie rights, which JMS retains through Babylonian productions.
The Television/other rights, which belong to Warner Bros.
Warzone was well liked in my area in the ninetees but their biggest issue was distribution, everyone wanted to play but getting what you wanted was difficult. Also internet was in its infancy, so getting information was a hassle.
Here's some other companies, if people could fill in the blanks
Pinnacle (Rail Wars) - I know that Rail Wars was turned into the Savage Worlds RPG, but I don't know why Rail Wars was dropped and they got out of minis games.
West End Games (Star Wars Miniature Game) - Lost the Star Wars license, shortly thereafter went belly up.
Iron Crown Enterprises (Silent Death) - I think they went belly up, but don't know why.
FASA (Battletech, Star Trek Simulator, Interceptor, Crimson Skies, etc.) - folded, rights were sold off to successor companies
Wizkids (Mageknight, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Heroclix, etc.) - A FASA successor company, they went dark/dormant for a time, and have slowly been coming back
Avalon Hill (Axis & Allies, other wargame/board games) - they were absorbed by WotC and their assets cannibalized
IIRC, Wizkids was owned by Topps, who shut them down when the pre-painted miniature market started to slow down. A bunch of fans (possibly ex-developers@) bought the name in order to keep producing Heroclix.
Game companies are niche small businesses. Almost all small businesses fail within 5 years. Heck most are lucky to survive the first year.
Any company lasts longer than that means it's got either:
a) professional management (rarely); and/or
b) stupidly ardent fans dumping vast sums of disposable income.
Also, I'd add:
- GeekChic (the failed game table maker)
- Cipher Studios (i.e. Helldorado / Anima Tactics)
Warzone was well liked in my area in the ninetees but their biggest issue was distribution, everyone wanted to play but getting what you wanted was difficult. Also internet was in its infancy, so getting information was a hassle.
Agreed Warzone 1e and 2e was good but poorly supported. The birth of command points and alternating units. Very fun.
kenofyork wrote: Not sure if this applies, but figured I would offer my own experiences.
Proxie Models was started about 7 years ago when I got a severance package and purchased some derelict plastic injection equipment. I figured there might be a market for some cheaper generic substitutes.
So what happened? Where are they?
Well, a lot of things. Actually this might be a long post...........
Kick starter began about the same time, so new companies popped up with no need for much capital investment. The concept did not really fit with my style of not wanting to take too much risk. And if I was reluctant to risk my money, I was absolutely loathe to risk money from a stranger who trusted me. Looking back, this was a really big mistake. Kingdom Death and CMON started about the same time, and both are filthy rich and rolling in millions.
I placed all my equipment in my workshop that I had used to restore muscle cars for the past 20 years. It seemed perfect, no rent and right out back of the house. But now that the tons of stuff is all there, I have to cope with the realities of zoning laws and insurance. Everything I am doing is legal, but this is the limit to what I can do. It has proven impossible to get insurance for a business at my residence, and the zoning forbids any employees. So I planted my seed in a very small pot and it is root bound and can not grow. Ever. Literally every single things has to be done by me.
I also over estimated the appeal of making things to the local community. Finding people who like to listen to music is easy. Finding people who want to make music is a lot harder. Same goes for miniatures. In spite of the very vibrant local gaming community there has not been anyone who really jumped up and said, " Wow, this is neat. I want to be a part of this." So no partners to rely on.
Sales. I know this makes little sense, but I started making bases and still sell them every day. (Except for Aug 4th, for some odd reason) Each of these has to be produced, packaged, and shipped by me. I also took on some contract work and producing those products takes a lot of time. Throw in trying to post once in a while on the internet and it leaves little time to design and make new molds. There is also the fairly typical ADHD behavior of people like me. I would get super motivated to create something and then lose interest before it was done. I have so many files stored on the hard drive it is embarrassing. But it matches the pile of unpainted armies and model cars. Being forced to step away from a project for sometimes months at a time really ruins any chance of finishing it. I forget what I was doing and where I was at.
Real life jobs also take up time. For almost all of the past 7 years I also was working a part time to full time job. When you realize there are over 200 kick starters a month in the tabletop gaming category it really takes some massive confidence to go all in on things. Life is a series of calculating risk and reward. A lot of companies chose poorly and crashed and burned. If you are in a position where your personal assets are protected it makes it a lot easier to gamble. Hence kickstarter and bank loans you can file chapter 11 on and walk away from if things go bad. It takes a LOT more nerve to put your assets on the line. Knowing your family will lose the house if things do not go well requires more guts than I can muster. So playing in the shallow end means never getting big but also never drowning.
Distribution is another issue that a company has to carefully weigh. The store gets 40%, and the distributer gets 20%. They also want free shipping, so figure another 5%. This means I have to sell almost 3 times as many items via distribution to break even with selling direct to customers. The best way to think about this is to figure you make $15 per hour and work 40 hours per week. So your boss cuts your pay to $5 per hour but allows you to work 120 hours per week. You are still making the same amount of money but putting in a bit more effort. A distributer will increase sales, so figure you are now allowed to work 160 hours per week at $5 per hour. So you are actually making more money but working a lot more hours. When faced with a serious labor shortage this model is very tough. When your business model is based on profiting from wage discrepancies between countries it is just more money.
Which brings us to labor and the introduction of Chinese mass manufacturing to the market. This is a deal breaker for a lot of companies and industries. Live in the rust belt you can see the impact this has. If you think the hobby games industry is going to remain a cottage industry, I admire your optimism. But I personally do not think this Genie is ever going back in the bottle. There will always be a place for extremely niche products. However, the big boys are going to take the lion's share.
This works both ways, as the initial startup costs to have a run of products made in China can be a major investment. I think this might explain the demise of several of the companies in the OP. It must have cost a fortune to have all those pre-paints made in China. But if you combine kick starter and Chinese manufacturing it is really a no lose situation. You have all the money in advance and know how many sales to expect.
Last week I got my Massive Darkness kickstarter in the mail. It was a real shock to me as it was the first CMON product I had ever purchased. The quality and quantity are stunning, and it really made me glad I stayed in the shallow end of the pool. They have raised the bar to an extent I never thought possible. It has also changed the direction of my efforts if and when I find time. ( I also pledged more money for their stuff. ) The only real risk I see for them is flooding the market and stealing customers from themselves. They are really looking strong as a company. They are going to be getting a lot of my money if they keep this up.
So those are a couple of things I deal with and perhaps some of the other companies deal with them also. Proxie Models is actually in pretty good shape and I am very happy to have all the tools and equipment I have packed away over the years. I can tinker as I want and if things frustrate me just close the door and go find regular work with no loss. Not sure how these other folks made out, but after being in the trenches I wish them all the best of luck. It is a fun but challenging vocation.
Best advice I got- " Stay in your lane." If you know you are driving a Pinto, don't try to get out there and run with the Mustangs.
Im really not trying to be mean but if mono pose board game minis are stunning I hate to say your a little out of touch. Yes cmon makes "neat" models, but mono pose. Thats like 90s for GW.
Have they? For characters, sure, for good or for ill (good for aesthetics, ill for the game), but there are tons of stuff coming out that has all sorts of options.
I mean the Plague Marines that are about to come out a filled to the gills with both bile and weapon options.
@KenofYork, thanks for the account. Your terrain is awesome and I recommend it to anyone! I'll post some painted stuff soon.
I loved Cell 1999, anyone know what happened there? Nearly every line mentioned so far is still around from someone, Rebel Minis has a lot of the old Starship Troopers and Judge Dredd stuff, Scotia Grendel has Void, and there was some Irish company that had 1st generation Warzone (Prince August? am I remembering right?). But 1999 just disappeared.
I think the issue here is that the market can only support so many "lifestyle" games. I'm guessing here that we're talking "lifestyle games" not "miniature companies". As someone following KS, I'm seeing *many* new miniature manufacturers enter the market, but they don't use the "lifestyle game" model of expecting customers to continually buy their product to play a game against another customer who has done the same. These miniature companies put out a few sculpts without rules, and customers buy them for whatever reason, from sculpt quality to proxies or use in other games.
Myself, I have some Crucible and Chainmail miniatures, and they, along with D&D Miniatures Game, left the shelves years before Spartan and Tor closed its doors. Of course, maybe OP distinguishes a miniatures company closing down from a miniatures line no longer supported (though I don't).
The big thing for me is most of these games are niches within a niche. That makes failure all the more likely as you need to be pretty successful in a small market in order to stay in business. If you operate in a much larger market you don't need the same level of success.
Spartan Games are a good example. Their games were apparently pretty good, the models weren't terrible (not really my cup of tea but they were OK) but I think I saw one of their games being played about 3 times in total. I'm sure there are people out there that had a thriving community playing Firestorm Armada who will tell me I'm wrong but the point is you need hundreds of similar communities, which is what GW, FFG and PP have. In order to have real success you really need your games to be played everywhere, at least to some degree.
There's also the problem that most of these companies seem to be run in a similar way to a FLGS, which is with lots of enthusiasm but not necessarily much business acumen. Too many companies seem to treat their business as a hobby, which is why they eventually fail.
I got the feeling that the JD/2000AD licence came up and Warlord decided to pick it up when Mongoose either declined to continue or was outpriced, etc. Warlord, though should definitely be in the OP as going along quite healthily, along with Battlefront/GF9.
I guess we're talking "game + models" type companies, so we can skip adding Perry, Rubicon, PSC and many others as still doing find, thanks.
A couple of corrections, though:
Firestorm GAMES is a retailer in Cardiff who are still going along fine. Firestorm ARMADA is a game that was published by Spartan Games, who went out of business.
Most of the Rackham Confrontation Prepaints are actually pretty good figures. They're far from the garbage that people attempt to make them out to be, but they're not nearly as nice as the metals that preceded them. If another company brought the same models out today, unpainted, they'd be quite well appreciated. Which is the second thing about them. Rackham had some amazing painters, and the models often appealed strongly to painters. The prepaints again were fine, tabletop quality models but obviously more than a few steps down from what a skilled painter can do. Again, if they were brought out today in a different context (by say, FFG for Rune Wars) then they'd probably do quite well.
WarZone was very popular and going strong. They were taken down via mismanagement by their parent company. I read a very good, detailed article on the whole thing several years ago, but naturally I can't find it now.
gaking on monopose models because they're monopose is just silly. Sure, you ideally don't want too many multiples of the same models as troopers, and I like kitbashing as much as the next guy, but monopose models have their place at least as much as multipose. You can do a lot with mono that you can't with multi, especially in terms of posing and overlapping elements.
Multipose models definitely have their limitations. If you don't want to go with the heavy pauldron look and huge collars you're going to have trouble providing poses that don't look like toys. (fun fact: this is also why MMOs love them some shoulderpads) In addition, legs are almost never poseable on smaller models, which means regardless of what you can do with the torso, there are pretty signifcant limits on what you can do that still looks natural.
Really dynamic single pose is fine by me, though there's no shortage of single pose models with absolutely mundane looks to them. I've kind of stopped caring about pose variety in units though. I'd generally rather play games where I'm fielding a large handful of completely unique models anyway.
@OP- Captain Obvious here but a ridiculous number of businesses fail, and it is way more that fail than succeeed. Success is the exception and not the rule.
That being said, reason #1 is cash flow can not sustain debt repayment. Hence, closure.
As gamers we tend to focus ont eh things that are least likely to cause a game to fail, the creative. However, it is much more likely the production costs, manufacturing, shipping, storage, etc. that will cause a critical failure.
Rookie mistake number one is focusing on sales. Sales do not matter is you do not make money from a sale. If you costs are too high, then it does not matter how much you sell. You can even have great sales, but if those sales are not profitable it will not matter. Professionals talk about Profit Margin and not sales.
Stormonu wrote: Here's some other companies, if people could fill in the blanks
Pinnacle (Rail Wars) - I know that Rail Wars was turned into the Savage Worlds RPG, but I don't know why Rail Wars was dropped and they got out of minis games.
West End Games (Star Wars Miniature Game) - Lost the Star Wars license, shortly thereafter went belly up.
Iron Crown Enterprises (Silent Death) - I think they went belly up, but don't know why.
FASA (Battletech, Star Trek Simulator, Interceptor, Crimson Skies, etc.) - folded, rights were sold off to successor companies
Wizkids (Mageknight, Pirates of the Spanish Main, Heroclix, etc.) - A FASA successor company, they went dark/dormant for a time, and have slowly been coming back
Avalon Hill (Axis & Allies, other wargame/board games) - they were absorbed by WotC and their assets cannibalized
ICE got dragon punched in the groin by the Tolkien Estate. They were gearing up for the LotR movies and had their license pulled. The expenses of gearing up with zero payout and lost of revenue sent them into a tailspin.
Ironically, only GW is still supporting the games they put out as result of the getting the miniature game license from ICE. All others games have long since gone to the dust bin.
Wasn't West End done in by the owner's other business (a shoe factory) going under?
A issue that comes time and again is that there are ... Gamers who think they are businessmen. When that happens, the issues boil down to basic Project Management, reach extending the grasp, and unrealistic approach to funding and production.
I'll put a point to a couple of examples, and let others take the slack.
1. Mongoose. Too much too fast. A victim of their own success.
I was on hand for Mongooses success and failure from Conan, B5, Starship Troopers, and witness to more then I honestly want to admit. I was a Game rep/ demo runner back in the time of Starship troopers, and watched as the wheels fell off the wagon with the extension of more then they could handle, the unrealistic production, the outsourcing, the oversaturation, the unrealistic time hacks, and after a fashion, the complete loss of control of the engagement to the point where consumers dissatisfaction and licensing overtook the engagement, and company holdings.
Babylon 5, in particular was a blessing and a curse, as the licensing and game stabilization ended up slitting the products wrists. Hell, even having Commander Ivanova couldn't keep the station going to keep it out of the warp. They started with the RPG, which was manageable, but then they tried to continue to push forward and add on more and more game components/ properties, and it ended up blowing up in their face, as Mongoose added on more and more unsustainable licensed products. Much like X wing, now, Mongoose had the issue of the properties that they picked up being one trick ponies.
With that, some of these ponies had only 2 good legs. RPG's, or Miniatures. Starship troopers was one of those properties that Mongoose attempted to grow too fast, and the unrealistic production schedule, lack of QAQC, and the lack of serious Business acclaim ushered in the negative reputation that wasn't adequately compensated, and continued with questionable property acquisitions, and dead dog lines, such as the Gak awful idea of the prepaints ( in which Starship troopers was in the crosshairs) the Battlefield 2 tabletop, and the Call to Arms system, that ended up closing the coffin on the companies reputation.
Add that on to Sony, and even the thought process of dealing with Sony, and you have a company that was living on borrowed time. Even the temporary help of having the Rebellion line didn't help Mongoose, as product recognition for the A.D.2000 line was, and is still a foreign concept to the majority of gamers across the world.
And in the end, even the tabletop game, which was developed off of the result of a Gak Kickstarter ended up dying on the vine, and costing much more then reputation- which at the end of the day, is the lifeblood of a solid company name.
2. VOID.
The game, which is now Urban War was put out by I-CORE, and their biggest issue was that they THOUGHT that they were competing, instead of conducting their own business.
Each of the units was almost a neck and neck run of a copy of GW, and the similarities, and generic nature of the system lead to a bland game, and an uneventful product.
As an afterthought, what you see out of Corvus Bell, now- THAT should have been ICORE, from the get go.
Example of "Gamers Who think they are Businessmen". Except that they had no serious business experience.
Great out of the gate showing, pretty shinny's, and easy to play game- but that was it. No expansion, no follow through, no Project Management experience, no Structure for growth.
Think of them as a local game shop with one table, but five or six games in one little room. everyone sitting there with a full army box, but two people playing a game, while other people look at their watch.
3. VOR The maelstrom-
Same thing, but worse. Instead of gamers with no business experience, this was a one man show with no experience whatsoever. A little seed money, backing from an established minis company, and the FASA situation, which compounded the catastrophic failure. He half heartedly tried to revive it, but it ended up crashing into a brick wall.
4. Rackham-
A company driven into the ground by greed, shortsightedness, and avarice. Let it never be said that Ego doesn't have it's own rewards.
They had some of the most top notch miniatures, in a market that they could manage, and then ended up getting involved with that AT 43, and that god awful DUST situation- the egos killed the company.
If you are running a game company, it is a business. You have to have structure, business savvy, and horse sense. Being a gamer is helpful, but it is a program management issue. You have to have a solid product, be able to stick to a vision, and plan, plan, plan for growth, failure, and your games future. It is a product, you have to be able to provide it, at a reasonable rate, at a reasonable price, and be able to fully support the range.
As mentioned earlier in the thread. 12 dudes getting stamped out of the exact same mold is not an advancement in mini manufacturing. Or does it warrant any praise IMO. I can respect if others think its neat. I'm just not one of them.
Wasn't West End done in by the owner's other business (a shoe factory) going under?
Okay I want to hear this story... I just know they lost Star Wars licence and had trouble after that..
From Wikipedia -
History
Previously a producer of board wargames, the company began producing roleplaying games in 1984 with Paranoia. The high production values demanded by the wargames industry made them one of the few companies who could compete with TSR, and they were able to acquire the license from Columbia Pictures to produce an RPG based on the film Ghostbusters. This game, Ghostbusters: A Frightfully Cheerful Roleplaying Game, formed the basis of the D6 System which was to be heavily used in many of their licensed products.
Around 1987, the company acquired the license to produce a Star Wars role-playing game. Since the films had been released some years previously, and there was (at the time) no new media forthcoming, the success of these books came as a surprise. Their early work on the Star Wars Roleplaying Game established much of the groundwork of what later became the Star Wars expanded universe, and their sourcebooks are still frequently cited by Star Wars fans as reference material. Lucasfilm considered their sourcebooks so authoritative that when Timothy Zahn was hired to write what became the Thrawn trilogy, he was sent a box of West End Games Star Wars books and directed to base his novel on the background material presented within. Zahn's trilogy, in turn, renewed interest in the franchise and provided many sales for West End Games.
The culminating event involves mismanagement between West End Games and its then parent company, shoe importer Bucci Retail Group. When the parent company filed for bankruptcy, West End Games could not survive the process and had to go under as well. [1]
The West End Games Star Wars game forms the basis of the reboot of the Star Wars universe. And is coming back.
Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.
I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.
...and? Do you have an actual point? Because all I can think of is that you dislike duplicates, which is an entirely different matter to monopose vs multipose. Or maybe you mistakenly believe that the word monopose means duplicate?
As for a comparison, here you go. Compare the poses:
Monopose models with natural and very nicely looking posing for HQ's, multi-part for things that you need in great numbers like basic troopers, etc... because other wise you enter the "Clone Wars" syndrome.
No one has mentioned Wells Expeditions, a team of WizKids veterans who put out Arcane Legions in 2009.
They tried a new business model, and it didn't work out.
First, they were selling 1/72 miniatures, a scale that was unique for FLGSs, outside of board game pieces. Second, they were doing the collectible minis thing with commons/iuncommons/rares. But! The commons were not blind-boxed, but sold in fixed army packs... unpainted, still on the sprues. The blind-boxed uncommons and rares were pre-paints.
It had some cool mechanics. Where other war games require you to base multiple models with glue and then the unit is either present at full strength or destroyed, Arcane Legions included plastic bases the figures plugged into, then you removed casualties during combat. The number of pegs on a mini's base always equaled how many wounds it took to make it a casualty.
Some say the game flopped because archery was overpowered. Or maybe it flopped because FLGS customers didn't want to buy war game miniatures still on the sprues. Whatever the case, they didn't sell enough product to retain their employees and pay for molds for a planned 2010 expansion. Eventually reduced to 80% + off MSRP, booster bricks stuck around on Miniature Market through Black Friday 2015, and the other products are available to this day.
LunarSol wrote: Multipose models definitely have their limitations.
Really dynamic single pose is fine by me,
Indeed.
Spoiler:
I, for one, and very excited over Kingdom Death shifting from multipose multi-part models to dynamic single pose models.
The whole monopose discussion should be in a different thread.
Anyway modelers often like multipose while those who just want to game don't mind monopose.
Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.
I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.
Are you talking about the easy-to-build Death Guard? i ask because you quoted £25 for 3.
If you are talking about easy-to-build DG, they are £10 for 3.
If you're talking about something else, my mistake.
I don't think anyone has mentioned Reaper as an example of what went right.
(All IIRC, don't feel like researching at this hour)
They started making metal WWII aircraft in the 90s, reproductions of WWII models used by plane spotters (in those pre radar days) and did well cashing in on the 50th anniversary.
Recognizing WWII wouldn't pay the bills forever they made life dials for some fad game called Magic (wonder whatever happened to that...).
Then they packaged the figures from the dials as stand alone figures just as Grenidier and Ral Partha got hit by the ban on lead miniatures.
So they made pewter metal fantasy figures, branched out to PVC, museum models and prepaints and here they are today.
Technically they have 2 games but I've never seen or heard of them being played anywhere at all. They make minis for painters and RPGs and I would say dominate that section of the market.
I got most of this from a video interview with the owner who was very clear, he sees himself as a hullahoop maker and always has to have an eye on the next hullahoop because his market could dry up at any time. No sentimentality about old games of D&D, no burning need to realize his vision of a fantasy world, this is a way to make a living for him.
One gets the idea that if tomorrow everyone wants duck decoys he'd abandon the whole line and go all in on duck decoy production.
That really did a lot to dent the wargames scene in my area. Shops could make a lot of money off a CCG for a relatively small footprint and gamers were flocking to them. It's a bit of a shame really because imo it was a sort of "golden era" for wargames where you had multiple really great games available, but it was hard for them to compete w/the CCG scene.
Anyone remember Chronopia? I don't recall the name of the company that made it, but it was amazing. They went under and I was never sure of the specifics.
For Mongoose - as others have said, they are (somehow) still around. They just don't make wargames anymore. They are the classic example of "the dog ate my homework". I actually helped bring in the first SST boxes off the truck at my LGS, was one of the more active members on their forum (Quark at the time), and was part of the Mongoose infantry, so nobody in my area was a bigger supporter than me. Problem is, Andy Chambers wrote a great ruleset for SST that had a few little quirks. NOthing huge provided Mongoose stayed on top of it. Unfortunately, they did not. Army balance got weirder and weirder, and the product was often brutally bad. My brain bug had so much extra pewter on it that I felt like I was basically sculpting a new one while cleaning it off with the dremel. Then, because there was no way around it, I had to actually resculpt several large sections of it w/green stuff to get the two halves to match up. This was not an isolated incident. They had issues with almost everything. We got the MI book that, for the time, was a well done, nice looking army book. Then you got the book for the Skinny army (the third faction in the game) that looked like they went to a highschool art class with some gouache paint and markers and told the kids to go to town. So you had one page with a nice-ish illustration, right next to a page with something I wouldn't even use as "concept art". There was also an apparent lack of editing that caused things like typos and/or omissions so extreme that they actually inadvertantly changed the meaning of rules (to a level I've never seen before or since). It was all WELL below the industry standard for the time, which particularly problematic for them as they had a tendency to way over-hype how amazing their stuff was going to be.
At every turn Matt (the owner) would bravely hop on the forums and proclaim that there was some crazy unforseeable incident but they learned an important lesson and this would NEVER happen again. Then, a week later, it would happen again. And again, and again. Over and over until I think people just finally gave up on them. Even now, if you read the "State of the Mongoose" post Matt does every year, there' s often one or two bad things that happen where there's a "but really, the odds of that ever happening are a million to one so there's no way WE could have seen it or prevented it and obviously it will never happen again."
I think, at least in terms of wargames, their consistent failure to deliver on even small promises really cost them. I'm also not sure they truly understood how different being a miniatures company is vs an RPG company (I'm told they tend to do RPGs fairly well). I liked the company a lot and you had to respect Matt for always being on the forums directly interacting with the pitch-fork wielding mobs, but man, you just couldn't trust them to properly execute.
Technically they have 2 games but I've never seen or heard of them being played anywhere at all.
Myself and a small group of friends played the Warlord game for years. AFAIK, that was the first wargame to have unit rules on cards that came with the minis. It was ALL the rules too, not just a basic summary. The game got a little hinky at times, but was over-all great fun!
Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.
I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.
Are you talking about the easy-to-build Death Guard? i ask because you quoted £25 for 3.
If you are talking about easy-to-build DG, they are £10 for 3.
If you're talking about something else, my mistake.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...
But that's more than I have energy to write about now.
Any chance for a TL;DR version? This thread is being really interesting, lots of stuff I didn't know about.
It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.
The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.
(The original founders went on to start Defiant which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)
The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.
Except these are £25 for 3. And you have to put them together yourself. You said about the 90's GW being monopose. Less monopose than a large amount of their new stuff.
I'm not sure what your point is. The MD figures are actually fantastic, especially some of the big gribblies.
Are you talking about the easy-to-build Death Guard? i ask because you quoted £25 for 3.
If you are talking about easy-to-build DG, they are £10 for 3.
If you're talking about something else, my mistake.
Thanks for the clarification. I didn't know plague brethren were coming out in packs of 3. Good to know.
Back on topic, one of the "good things" about Void/Void 1.1 intially was the fact that every human army had an identical set of core selections.
There were so many basic human infantry and maybe some crew-served weapons that everyone could take.
The army differences came from a few special units that only Army A could have while Army B could field its own special units.
While some argue this made army selection bland (I guess it did), it also helped game balance so that list selection wasn't as game winning a step as with other games.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...
But that's more than I have energy to write about now.
Any chance for a TL;DR version? This thread is being really interesting, lots of stuff I didn't know about.
It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.
The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.
(The original founders went on to start Defiant which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)
The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.
Ooohh boy, it just kept getting better and better Thanks for the story!
Stevefamine wrote: Mageknight 1.0 and Dungeons and Pirates of the Spanish Main were 10/10 on initial release
I got sucked in on Pirates and Mechwarrior. MW was pretty good, but the hard-on for Davion that made the Highlander mechs worthless bothered me. MW 2.0 killed the game by making everybody's old mechs worthless (they added an upgrade system that didn't work with the old mechs). Similar thing happened with Mageknight. I forget what tanked Pirates, but it disappeared shortly after they picked up the official Disney Pirates of the Carribean to add to the game.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...
But that's more than I have energy to write about now.
Any chance for a TL;DR version? This thread is being really interesting, lots of stuff I didn't know about.
It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.
The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.
(The original founders went on to start Defiant which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)
The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.
Ooohh boy, it just kept getting better and better Thanks for the story!
And trust me, this is a very short version of it. Defiance Games was not banking on this being the internet age. The end was very ugly. The Chinese factory owners were incredibly patient and gracious in the face of what was flung their way.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Oh and this list would not be complete without Wargames Factory...
It started with a lot of promise multipart plastics, historical, fantasy and sci fi. And best of all a preorder/suggestion system call the Liberty and Union League where fans could toss out ideas and build support.
The owners were not especially good managers, the sculpts were not great, some of the fan ideas were iffy (3 sets for the War of Spanish Succession? really?) and to stay afloat they sold equity to their Chinese supplier who eventually had a majority share and fired them.
(The original founders went on to start Defiant [sic] which managed to put out 2? plastic sets before disappearing with a bag full of kickstarter money)
The new owners kept on for a while but then sold off the lines to Warlord and Dreamforge with several disappearing forever. From what I hear the Chinese manufacturer is doing great, producing stuff for other name brands, and just didn't see any advantage in having their own lines.
Isn't WGF (China) still producing the plastics for Malifaux and Kingdom Death?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: .... Yet sadly, they're no longer with us. But why? What was it about those games that failed to attract a large enough player base to keep them going?
Honestly? In my opinion, it's down to GW's brainwashing. Everything has to be GW. The whole hobby is GW. There are such a large amount of GW players who will not try any other game because it isn't GW. I have friends who only play GW stuff. They'd refuse to try guildball or dreadball as they 'hate the genre', but the second blood bowl is released they're all over it like a rash.
It's a crying shame. There are many games out there that are as good or better, or just plain different, to GW stuff that deserve a chance, but the success of GW's marketing/brainwashing strategy has paid off.
By the way, Void is still available, as are all the figures.
I couldn't agree more, maybe in the dark times before the intertubes GW appeared to 'the hobby' but now there are so many easily findable non-GW choices but folks seem to be stuck in the GW rut, like you say unwilling to 'cheat' on GW by dabbling with other systems, I was partially guilty but the stinkyness of 7th jolted me out, and picked up other stuff
But in topic a lot of failure is as others have noted, too much hobby, not enough business
It wasn't that difficult back before the Internet, either. I saw Battletech, Star Wars, Aliens and Kryomek minis in my local Virgin megastore, in the early 90s.
Then they re-organised, ditched all the miniatures, and moved the RPGs and card games into the basement.
Also founded by people kicked out of their own company...
Apologies for Defiant Games if they exist. Yes it was Defiance that put out some Sci-Fi USMC, some snakes and then disappeared with some people's money.
They were very, very good as playing the martyrs after the Chinese manufacturer took over, actually they had quite a good dialogue with fans on their forums. IIRC after they lost the company they managed to keep control of the forums so managed to wage a nice propeganda war.
Like I said, a lot of promise. The whole 'pitch an idea and we'll make the most popular' plan could work. Have people put some money upfront to show commitment and provide capital, offer chances for feedback, rigorously police it for impractical ideas (again, The War of Spanish Succession comes to mind) and... it could work.
Had lots of fun back in the day arguing whether or not to put chainsaws and cricket bats on the zombie survivor sprue.
AndrewGPaul wrote: It wasn't that difficult back before the Internet, either. I saw Battletech, Star Wars, Aliens and Kryomek minis in my local Virgin megastore, in the early 90s.
Then they re-organised, ditched all the miniatures, and moved the RPGs and card games into the basement.
I'd forgotten Virgin Megastores.
Used to visit the one in Edinburgh when I was up there. Interesting to see random model ranges.
AndrewGPaul wrote: It wasn't that difficult back before the Internet, either. I saw Battletech, Star Wars, Aliens and Kryomek minis in my local Virgin megastore, in the early 90s.
Then they re-organised, ditched all the miniatures, and moved the RPGs and card games into the basement.
I'd forgotten Virgin Megastores.
Used to visit the one in Edinburgh when I was up there. Interesting to see random model ranges.
True, the Megastores of the mid-90's were pretty awesome for nerd gaming supplies, sadly my nearest one was 2 hours away as they only most existed in citys
Since the subject of Mongoose Publishing's Dredd licence was mentioned, I thought it might be semi-relevant to note that I finally got my last item from the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Kickstarter today. nearly 5 years late.
AndrewGPaul wrote: Since the subject of Mongoose Publishing's Dredd licence was mentioned, I thought it might be semi-relevant to note that I finally got my last item from the Judge Dredd Miniatures Game Kickstarter today. nearly 5 years late.
..... but you got it! That is way more than can be said of many, many kickstarters.
Probably doesn't help that you get a small company that manages to produce a very good game, but doesn't have a clue where to go next.
Dystopian wars was good, but once you have a fleet or three for it what do you do? Whats bringing in the revenue after that?
Eventually you get to the point where the new units you add are not worth bothering with, the new faction is basically an old one with different models, it stagnates.
Anyone remember Chronopia? I don't recall the name of the company that made it, but it was amazing. They went under and I was never sure of the specifics.
Chronopia was from the same company who made Warzone.
leopard wrote: Probably doesn't help that you get a small company that manages to produce a very good game, but doesn't have a clue where to go next.
Dystopian wars was good, but once you have a fleet or three for it what do you do? Whats bringing in the revenue after that?
Eventually you get to the point where the new units you add are not worth bothering with, the new faction is basically an old one with different models, it stagnates.
Yeah that I can see. I mean people talk about lack of support but Dystopian Wars had Ottoman Turks, both the English Raj and the British East India Company, Lithuania... At some point you have to ask what is feasible and what will bring in new buyers (for the record I love my Turks and they brought me in).
I can see why they tried 28mm with Dystopian Legions since the new scale appeals to new fans, but prices were GW level insane.
insaniak wrote: Dystopian Legions wasn't 28mm, despite what Spartan claim on their website.
It probably would have sold better if it was.
Wasn't it actually closer to 32mm or 35mm? Either way I'm one of those who wanted to play it but saw the prices and never took another glance. It's a pity really because there were some lovely miniatures in that range. Spartan really shot themselves in the foot with those prices. If someone were to buy the rights to that range and re release it at a sensible price point I would be all over it. Even if the rules are no good or simply discontinued because you can always find a different ruleset to use minis with.
Would that have been Golem Arcana or whatever it was called? I've never seen anything to do with that locally, if it was sold in my area it was dead on arrival.
Nick Ellingworth wrote: Would that have been Golem Arcana or whatever it was called? I've never seen anything to do with that locally, if it was sold in my area it was dead on arrival.
Ex-illis did it before Golem Arcana.
I tried Golem Arcana once, it was okay but only really worth it at the Kickstarter price.
Ex-Illis was one of those odd...place your miniatures on a gridded table...then shuffle them around...then hit this buttont to determine the effects. I.e. "you should just buy a computer game". There's probably merit somewhere for that idea, but they didn't pull it off, at all.
StygianBeach wrote: I tried Golem Arcana once, it was okay but only really worth it at the Kickstarter price.
The issue with Golem Arcana they couldn't move fast enough to make their software what it should have been from the start. Wargame with ipad interaction meant they could have designed it to 2vs2, 1vs1, etc remotely without the need to have both players present. It also would have provided them ability to play an AI. It required both players to be present at the same location, which doesn't capitalize on the ipad/computer ability. These features were supposed to come later but after 1 1/2 years, people who were waiting to buy never did and moved on to other things.
Funding Unsuccessful
This project's funding goal was not reached on December 6.
I hate how KS shows the date, but not the year, 2016? 15? earlier?
Ah there, 2013!
I wonder if I placed an order would it be fulfilled.
Always wanted their big demon dude.
I had an Emmissarius. He was impressively huge, but all of his seams were really blatant, requiring some real work to fill and hide. I ended up giving him to someone who wanted him for a Nurgle conversion. Still, not a bad buy for $50.
I think in the UK at least, the lack of independent FLGS hasn't helped non-GW games that aren't big enough to get some release through modelling stores and the like.
The taxation of smaller shops is utterly ludicrous - you need some serious cash turnover to keep even a small shop in an out of town location running. It's not just wargaming stores - music, computer gaming, electrical, clothing, there is very little that has survived other than large chain stores that have the capital to keep their retail stores running.
I definitely think that the internet has helped a great deal - helping players of smaller games to connect, and smaller publishers to distribute their games, but it's an increasingly crowded marketplace, with a lot of games and miniatures of excellent quality, and so it stands to reason that some of those companies are going to fall by the wayside.
insaniak wrote: Dystopian Legions wasn't 28mm, despite what Spartan claim on their website.
It probably would have sold better if it was.
Wasn't it actually closer to 32mm or 35mm? Either way I'm one of those who wanted to play it but saw the prices and never took another glance. It's a pity really because there were some lovely miniatures in that range. Spartan really shot themselves in the foot with those prices. If someone were to buy the rights to that range and re release it at a sensible price point I would be all over it. Even if the rules are no good or simply discontinued because you can always find a different ruleset to use minis with.
They are even bigger, i used the steam bikes as jet bikes for my space marine chapter, some of the figures were almost 40mm
The electric pen thingy was Golem Arcana, and I saw some of the actual product on seasonal clearance at Barnes & Noble a long time ago. The idea of digitally locking one's physical miniatures is just awful, not to mention the sheer inconvenience of requiring a tablet of some sort just to play. Between it and Ex Illis, I'm super glad to see that particular business model fail.
Mongoose have the most amazing rulesets. Battlefield:Evolution, and Starship Troopers are exactly how modern/sci-fi games are supposed to play. The gang warfare Dredd miniatures rulseset is nothing short of amazing. If you haven't tried it - you have to. It's the best skirmish set of rules I've ever played.
They also were very innovative in their pre-painted concept with Battlefiled. I remember the absolute vitriol thrown their way on the interwebz when they announced the pre-paints, but games like X-Wing have really shown there is a market for this concept.
Their actual miniatures though were just not that great. The Battlefield minis were true scale at a time when most people had only ever seen a human miniature in the guise of a GW plastic Catachan, and the sculpts and poses were just not very interesting. The Dredd miniatures were a disaster - monstrosities, all of them, but they have their fans out there. But damn, those rules. Matt if you're reading this: the Dredd rules are your enduring legacy to this hobby. They are criminally under-appreciated but will long be revered. You should be very, *very* proud of them.
Yeah not sure why Disney pulled it. Seemed to be selling alright, we have a ton of the figures in my house and my daughter loves being able to switch the characters out.
Mongoose have the most amazing rulesets. Battlefield:Evolution, and Starship Troopers are exactly how modern/sci-fi games are supposed to play. The gang warfare Dredd miniatures rulseset is nothing short of amazing. If you haven't tried it - you have to. It's the best skirmish set of rules I've ever played.
Didn't play Dread so I can't speak to that, but the rules for Gangs of Megacity One were amazing. Mongoose didn't write the rules for SST though. The hired Andy Chambers as a freelancer to do it, and while a very cool base rule set that was innovative for it's time, it also had some issues that became increasingly apparent as the game scaled up. MGP didn't retain Andy after he wrote those rules and they didn't seem to have anyone on staff capable of properly dealing with those issues so SST became a bit of a mess later on. Sort of like 7th ED 40k where, if you played the game at 3 different stores, you were literally playing 3 different versions depending on how each group decided to "fix" the rules. SST - you'll never play the same game twice. Literally.
I hated BFevo. It turned the SST rules into something akin to a simpler version of checkers.
They also were very innovative in their pre-painted concept with Battlefiled. I remember the absolute vitriol thrown their way on the interwebz when they announced the pre-paints, but games like X-Wing have really shown there is a market for this concept.
"Innovative" is a bit strong here. Rackham, WizKids and several others were already doing pre-paints and that's where MGP got the idea. IMO, the vitriol at the time (and you are correct, there was MUCH vitriol) was not specifically because of "pre-paints". It was because, after a long history of Matt S. coming on the forums and announcing that "This next release for xyz game system will be the single most incredible release that has ever been released!"; followed inevitably by a release that was not only late AND underwhelming, but often also terrible to the point that you wondered if you were being trolled, people got tired. So when Matt came out and said "We're going to pre-paints, but don't fret! These will be painted better than 90% of gamers can do by hand! They will be AMAZING!", people decided to yell at him right then and there rather than wait the several months for the release to happen and then yell. As you point out below, they were not wrong to be mad.
Their actual miniatures though were just not that great. The Battlefield minis were true scale at a time when most people had only ever seen a human miniature in the guise of a GW plastic Catachan, and the sculpts and poses were just not very interesting. The Dredd miniatures were a disaster - monstrosities, all of them, but they have their fans out there. But damn, those rules. Matt if you're reading this: the Dredd rules are your enduring legacy to this hobby. They are criminally under-appreciated but will long be revered. You should be very, *very* proud of them.
The EVO sculpts were notoriously bad. So bad in fact that Matt had to go online only hours after the first stores recieved theirs and started freaking out. I'll never forget him saying "This is unnaceptabe and I will get to tthe bottom of it! This is not what we approved!" or something along those lines. This was followed a bit later by him saying "I spent some time going around to the local shops looking at the EVO mminis and you know - they're not half bad.". Battlefield Evolution died right then and there. It was a classic example of MGP having a great idea, failing to deliver, and then failing to take responsibility for said failure to deliver. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about - picture the little rubber "GUTS" toys from the 80s but a little taller, a little thinner and with about the same paint job and that's what the EVo minis were.
MGP had amazing ideas for games, but was simply incapable of really delivering. The saying in my area at the time was "You've been 'goosed". Meaning you bought into the hype but now now you have a pewter Brain bug that came with two left halves and 9oz of extra flashing covering a 3 oz model. We always felt like the ultimate combo would be for MGP's idea men to get together with GW's design and production staff. THAT would have produced some truly incredible results imo.
These were the Battlefield Evolutions troop prepaints. To be honest many were worse than this. They were "poor-to-medium" tabletop quality at best in a 28mm "truescale". They weren't that bad really, (Except for the eyes! Man, those googly eyes!) and the tanks were OK (if apparently a bit small for the supposed scale of the troops) but MGP just totally lost credibility when they claimed they were the best thing since sliced bread, and it was taken as insulting when Matt claimed that 80% of wargamers couldn't paint as well as them. And they were expensive for what looked like jumped up Poundland army men.
They appealed to the "wargamer" market, but totally bypassed the "hobbyist" segment. Anyone who took a pride in their models just didn't need apply. Turned out that the "wargamer" segment of the market are prepared to pay way less for their toys than the hobbyists are. Which, if you think about it, explains a lot about GW's business model! The quality of the ruleset was good, and the models were ... adequate ... if you were more interested in playing the game than looking at the spectacle of the thing, as many wargamers are. But that market segment wasn't large enough to support the game at the prices charged. The kind of people who are more interested in the game than the painting/collecting side tend to sling their models in a fishing tackle box with no padding, and while there's absolutely nothing wrong with that (the fact is the older I get, the more like that I am becoming myself!) people with that mindset won't pay premium prices for their toys, because they are simply playing pieces for a game, with little-to-no intrinsic value to them beyond their function in the game.
If somehow the economics had worked out to enable them to market them at half the price they did, then they'd have had a chance. As it was it was always a pipe-dream.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Moving subject to Ex-illis, there is a fair summary of the way the game worked and its good and bad points on Neil Shuck's blog:
They appealed to the "wargamer" market, but totally bypassed the "hobbyist" segment. Anyone who took a pride in their models just didn't need apply. Turned out that the "wargamer" segment of the market are prepared to pay way less for their toys than the hobbyists are.
I think the actual packaging had a lot to do with it too. They were packaged less like "wargames" models, and more like "tiny toy action figures". I think a lot of people who might actually have enjoyed trying the game passed them up on the shelf because they presented in too much of a "toy" like fashion. As someone who has both a mortgage AND a room full of tiny plastic space-men, I realize that sounds a bit silly, but packaging makes a huge difference in perception.
As someone who has both a mortgage AND a room full of tiny plastic space-men, I realize that sounds a bit silly, but packaging makes a huge difference in perception.
One thing that I think works against a lot of newer companies is that they put up 3D renderings not photos of the actual models on sale. I'm willing to bet many don't try out new companies because all they can see are a couple of painted models and a lot of 3D renderings and they think "bet they aren't as good in reality".
It's one thing that Spartan Games did wrong - whilst those who were fans knew that what you saw in the render was what you'd get in the model - anyone new would be very sceptical considering how few photos they actually had.
To my mind its a huge problem - wargame packaging should have the model assembled and painted up on the box - ideally on the front if not at least on the back.
Kid_Kyoto wrote: Seems there are a couple of physical/digital hybrid games out there in the toy world.
Disney dimensions? I think? You buy figures and that lets you add them to your game.
"Toys to life" was a thing for several years, but has run its course.
Skylanders encapsulated content via non-collectible paywall figures and expansion items. They sold ridiculous numbers and ridiculous profit via what was effectively a DLC model tied to physical keys. Then they got greedy and killed the golden goose. I think they'll still launch an 8th year line, but it'll be a much lower interest.
Disney Infinity came shortly thereafter, and was cancelled immediately after the 3rd year product hit the shelves.
Lego Dimensions is dead or dying. Smaller product line, but sustainable.
As these are a video game DLC model, it's not so complicated. Especially as Skylanders simply tells the same story every year, with a tiny twist.
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Caliginous wrote: They also were very innovative in their pre-painted concept with Battlefiled. I remember the absolute vitriol thrown their way on the interwebz when they announced the pre-paints, but games like X-Wing have really shown there is a market for this concept.
Prepaint clearly works for X-wing, specifically, which has a very strong collector base willing to spend BIG money on the very distinctive models that look "just so". It would also work for Star Trek, if the property had been managed better.
Generic army men in an unremarkable style? Not so much. Same issue with the AT-43 and Dust prepaints. Too niche to support more expensive prepaint. Too bad, as the Therians were well-designed.
I remember there being such a buzz about Battlefield Evo and how that games pre-paints would start a trend in the industry. It just didn't happen, although I think there were a myriad of reasons for that.
Fun fact that Andy Chambers' SST rules were initially meant to be for 40k 4th edition, and would have constituted a complete re-write of the game and supporting codex books. But, the company took a decision not to make that step (and perhaps upset the apple cart, although there were a lot of gamers that were lamenting the route 40k had taken, even back then). So Andy left GW and took the rules to Mongoose, who built the rules into SST.
I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't enjoy the SST rules (apart from the grenade launcher scatter rules, which were awful!) It's interesting to imagine how 40k would have worked with them, certainly a big departure from what we have now
I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't enjoy the SST rules (apart from the grenade launcher scatter rules, which were awful!) It's interesting to imagine how 40k would have worked with them, certainly a big departure from what we have now
Agreed one-million percent. The reactions system alone would have fixed a great deal of what a lot of 40K players still complain about. That said, like any innovation, they weren't without their issues. At smaller scales, the SST ruleset is *easily* the best wargame I've ever played, and second place isn't even close, but once SST started to "mature", there were some issues that MGP never properly addressed ...
On SST, I've never been especially persuaded that Big Bad Andy C took prototype 40k rules to Mongoose.
At the risk of starting an argument (I'm not, just giving an opinion), anything Andy C wrote for 40k would belong to GW. Hell, if I sent in some fan art or fan fiction, their terms and conditions mean it becomes their sole property.
Apply that to someone, anyone on the actual payroll, and I hope you can see why it just doesn't sit right.
I may of course be completely wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. But I just don't buy it.
Pacific wrote: I remember there being such a buzz about Battlefield Evo and how that games pre-paints would start a trend in the industry. It just didn't happen, although I think there were a myriad of reasons for that.
Only really one main reason: they were rubbish.
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Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On SST, I've never been especially persuaded that Big Bad Andy C took prototype 40k rules to Mongoose.
At the risk of starting an argument (I'm not, just giving an opinion), anything Andy C wrote for 40k would belong to GW. Hell, if I sent in some fan art or fan fiction, their terms and conditions mean it becomes their sole property.
Apply that to someone, anyone on the actual payroll, and I hope you can see why it just doesn't sit right.
I may of course be completely wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. But I just don't buy it.
The 40k rules he wrote (if he did) would have belonged to GW. But game mechanics aren't protected by copyright, so all that would be needed is to rewrite the rules using the same mechanics but with different wording.
If what he (allegedly) presented to GW was just an outline rather than a fully written ruleset, even easier.
I don't think it's ever been confirmed, but it's certainly possible.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Of course, it's also possible that he got permission from GW to publish those rules himself when (if) they turned them down...
I don't think I've ever met anyone who didn't enjoy the SST rules (apart from the grenade launcher scatter rules, which were awful!) It's interesting to imagine how 40k would have worked with them, certainly a big departure from what we have now
Agreed one-million percent. The reactions system alone would have fixed a great deal of what a lot of 40K players still complain about. That said, like any innovation, they weren't without their issues. At smaller scales, the SST ruleset is *easily* the best wargame I've ever played, and second place isn't even close, but once SST started to "mature", there were some issues that MGP never properly addressed ...
Sst is one of my most fondly remembered wargames that never was. Easily ten years ahead of its time. Brilliant, but flawed mechanics. As cool as reactions were, they had problems. To the point where 90% of the damage the mi did wasn't in their bloody turn because they could keep reacting against everything. I remember talking to some guys who I think were playtesters, or at least 'in the know', or so they claimed, and they were talking about a second edition of the game where reactions were toned down so each unit got one reaction in the opponents tuen. But then... it went away.
Battlefield evo was interesting. Wasn't there a ww2 version as well - I vaguely remember reading rules for finns.
And tycho, for what it's worth, Matt said to me on these boards once that their judge dredd game was the spiritual successor to sst. I liked the sound of that, but I've never read the Jd rules or could claim much interest in the game as the models were, in my mind at least, uninspiring. :(
Great thread - very nostalgic, but quite a sad read in places...
I was going to give a mention to ebob miniatures. Great sculptor (Robert Souter I believe) who has worked for quite a few minis companies as freelance, I was really taken though with his WW2 POW game 'The Great Escape' - Only a small range of minis, but nicely sculpted on the whole and initially supported with some free downloadable printable scenery (I still use them for my WW2 games).
He seemed to disappear though a few years ago and no news / updates on the website or ebob facebook page. In fact there were a few disgruntled customers who had placed orders, with their money taken but no product delivered or any comms...
It appears though,that ebob are back up and running as the website has been rebranded this year as is dated 2017 (although i preferred the old one)
sculpts were notoriously bad. So bad in fact that Matt had to go online only hours after the first stores recieved theirs and started freaking out. I'll never forget him saying "This is unnaceptabe and I will get to tthe bottom of it! This is not what we approved!" or something along those lines. This was followed a bit later by him saying "I spent some time going around to the local shops looking at the EVO mminis and you know - they're not half bad.". Battlefield Evolution died right then and there. It was a classic example of MGP having a great idea, failing to deliver, and then failing to take responsibility for said failure to deliver. For those of you who don't know what we're talking about - picture the little rubber "GUTS" toys from the 80s but a little taller, a little thinner and with about the same paint job and that's what the EVo minis were.
That's right I had forgotten the debacle after the game shipped. Wasn't there a claim that the prototypes that were approved didn't match the actual production minis that shipped? So many of us were crushed by how disappointing the minis were - we were all so keen to get into modern 28mm gaming on the scale that Evo promised. We ended up playing it a couple of years later and I really liked it - SST was better, but I still thought the game was a lot of fun. But we only had a few games to give it a go. My FLGS *still* has some Evo miniatures in storage...
Tycho wrote: MGP had amazing ideas for games, but was simply incapable of really delivering. The saying in my area at the time was "You've been 'goosed". Meaning you bought into the hype but now now you have a pewter Brain bug that came with two left halves and 9oz of extra flashing covering a 3 oz model. We always felt like the ultimate combo would be for MGP's idea men to get together with GW's design and production staff. THAT would have produced some truly incredible results imo.
Very true. Take Rogue Trooper for example. Great idea. But does it *actually* translate into a viable miniatures war game? The idea is great: dystopian hard science fiction, two distinct factions, lots of hardware. But who would actually play it? The golden age for the comic was 30 years ago. Would it be continually supported? Would there be any player base? Would the minis be good? I was so close to banging the "pledge" button on KS all those years ago, but asked myself these questions, and then just put my hands up and backed away slowly.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On SST, I've never been especially persuaded that Big Bad Andy C took prototype 40k rules to Mongoose.
At the risk of starting an argument (I'm not, just giving an opinion), anything Andy C wrote for 40k would belong to GW. Hell, if I sent in some fan art or fan fiction, their terms and conditions mean it becomes their sole property.
Apply that to someone, anyone on the actual payroll, and I hope you can see why it just doesn't sit right.
I may of course be completely wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. But I just don't buy it.
Separately, can I ask why the 'big bad' description, has the impression of him changed now?
Remember that we are talking about the GW of 15 years ago, not the one of today that I've heard has very strict (including instant dismissal) controls in place around the design department.
So, one that was probably a bit more personable, not 'blokes down the pub together writing rules on a napkin' quite level, but certainly a close cadre of colleagues who enjoyed what they did, had known each other for many years (Andy being a central part of the team by this point) and probably wouldn't have had to sign NDAs for pet projects and WIPs that they were playing around with as part of their jobs.
I should imagine that it was as simple as 'I've got this idea, it's in an alpha stage, what do you think of it?' Sales/head office said no, and so off he went. He wasn't the first of the design team or the last, and others left for similar reasons, as either they or the direction of GW took different paths.
Of course that's just my impression, built on comments going around at the time (and I have more certainty around SST being written by AC, and it being based on a prototype 40k version, than I do on his reasons for leaving GW which can only ever really be conjecture)
That said, rules are mechanics and instructions. Numbers are stats. None of which have any copyright or IP at their core. The only copyright is on the specific expression (i.e. wording) of the rule, and there, only to the extent that the wording goes beyond the minimum amount required to express an idea.
A 40k 4E ruleset lightly massaged for SST could be nearly identical from a mechanics standpoint, and GW couldn't do a damn thing about it.
Otherwise, you'd have someone writing "roll a d6" and collecting royalties every time that phrase was used.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On SST, I've never been especially persuaded that Big Bad Andy C took prototype 40k rules to Mongoose.
At the risk of starting an argument (I'm not, just giving an opinion), anything Andy C wrote for 40k would belong to GW. Hell, if I sent in some fan art or fan fiction, their terms and conditions mean it becomes their sole property.
Apply that to someone, anyone on the actual payroll, and I hope you can see why it just doesn't sit right.
I may of course be completely wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. But I just don't buy it.
Separately, can I ask why the 'big bad' description, has the impression of him changed now?
Remember that we are talking about the GW of 15 years ago, not the one of today that I've heard has very strict (including instant dismissal) controls in place around the design department.
So, one that was probably a bit more personable, not 'blokes down the pub together writing rules on a napkin' quite level, but certainly a close cadre of colleagues who enjoyed what they did, had known each other for many years (Andy being a central part of the team by this point) and probably wouldn't have had to sign NDAs for pet projects and WIPs that they were playing around with as part of their jobs.
I should imagine that it was as simple as 'I've got this idea, it's in an alpha stage, what do you think of it?' Sales/head office said no, and so off he went. He wasn't the first of the design team or the last, and others left for similar reasons, as either they or the direction of GW took different paths.
Of course that's just my impression, built on comments going around at the time (and I have more certainty around SST being written by AC, and it being based on a prototype 40k version, than I do on his reasons for leaving GW which can only ever really be conjecture)
Just a title think I picked up watching Children's BBC when it was still in the broom cupboard. Andy Crane, one of the presenters, was referred to as 'Big Bad Andy C' a few times, and it just stuck.
We've covered a lot of the recent failed companies, but what about further back?
TSR makes for a great case study of over producing and not really caring about your customers, and bears some striking similarities to the way GW was going under Kirby until Rountree took over.
Avalon Hill is one I miss. Still sad that much of their library is now lost in the depths of Hasbro or other black holes of mystery. Would really like to see the rights to Magic Realm sorted out so someone could print a new edition.
Yeah looking back on Gary Gygax's first company New Infinities had a good chance of being great..
They took a 40k / Star Frontiers type game as the first outing, Called "Cyborg Commando" the art
work was sub par and the rules was bad... They even had a chapter on the odds of rolling dice..
It felt very rushed and just bad all the way around...I don't remember but I think it also kill the company.
He did recover some street cred with Dangerous Journeys but I am sure he wanted everyone to forget
Cyborg Commando ..
I never understood why companies go full pre-paint, with FF i can understand, but a company that supplied the hobbyists for years with miniatures and then ignores most of its base that got them there, is just incomprehensible.
How difficult is it to also release unpainted versions for the hobbyists?
Jehan-reznor wrote: I never understood why companies go full pre-paint, with FF i can understand, but a company that supplied the hobbyists for years with miniatures and then ignores most of its base that got them there, is just incomprehensible.
How difficult is it to also release unpainted versions for the hobbyists?
That idea came from the same line of thinking that the clix games came from. Word around the campfire was that it was supposed to be a tabletop version of BF2, but the checks written by hype were a little bit more then was able to be handled.
Then at that particular time, there ended up being some serious issues that almost seemed to pop up at once, and then compound over licensing, and the Sony thing with SST. I was pretty hard on Matt at the time, but in his realistic rear view blinders, I think that the company just rode their success a little too hard, and it ended up costing them the bank. Add on to it that they continued to lose resources, and it was a final 100 miles of bad road.
In the business, it is called a victim of your own success. You make a big win, and then end up losing the pot on the next grasp at the next big thing. It is not a rookie move, either, we can see A LOT of companies doing it, from major car manufacturers to furniture companies, to game companies.
You can see quite a few examples in game companies that run KS or Indigogo projects. When you look at the phenomena big picture wise, it is the same mentality that killed FASA, TSR, and Demonblade.
You can also end up with surveys chasing the wrong market. Asking people why they don't get into wargames and building/painting is going to be a barrier to many people starting a new game.
However that doesn't necessarily mean that when presented with pre-painted; those same people will actually want to buy them.
If you're also abandoning you core market that can be a huge backlash as well because now your core and most loyal fans are suddenly thrown out of the airlock. That creates a huge negative feeling and atmosphere which can seriously turn a community toxic- and once your community goes toxic there's almost nothing you can do to turn it around that isn't going to cost a company a fortune. Toxicity of the community can come from lots of other palces too - you see it a lot in early access computer games where developers don't keep up proper communication or have long development gaps - people whine and complain and demanding. Planetary Annihilation is a good example where miss managed community elements resulted in them having such a toxic base that it killed Human Resources which was to be their next big game.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: On SST, I've never been especially persuaded that Big Bad Andy C took prototype 40k rules to Mongoose.
Spoiler:
At the risk of starting an argument (I'm not, just giving an opinion), anything Andy C wrote for 40k would belong to GW. Hell, if I sent in some fan art or fan fiction, their terms and conditions mean it becomes their sole property.
Apply that to someone, anyone on the actual payroll, and I hope you can see why it just doesn't sit right.
I may of course be completely wrong. Wouldn't be the first time. But I just don't buy it.
Spoiler:
Separately, can I ask why the 'big bad' description, has the impression of him changed now?
Remember that we are talking about the GW of 15 years ago, not the one of today that I've heard has very strict (including instant dismissal) controls in place around the design department.
So, one that was probably a bit more personable, not 'blokes down the pub together writing rules on a napkin' quite level, but certainly a close cadre of colleagues who enjoyed what they did, had known each other for many years (Andy being a central part of the team by this point) and probably wouldn't have had to sign NDAs for pet projects and WIPs that they were playing around with as part of their jobs.
I should imagine that it was as simple as 'I've got this idea, it's in an alpha stage, what do you think of it?' Sales/head office said no, and so off he went. He wasn't the first of the design team or the last, and others left for similar reasons, as either they or the direction of GW took different paths.
Of course that's just my impression, built on comments going around at the time (and I have more certainty around SST being written by AC, and it being based on a prototype 40k version, than I do on his reasons for leaving GW which can only ever really be conjecture)
Just a title think I picked up watching Children's BBC when it was still in the broom cupboard. Andy Crane, one of the presenters, was referred to as 'Big Bad Andy C' a few times, and it just stuck.
Ah OK fair enough!
I was about to say surely that was just referring to his haircut, but then realized I was thinking of Pat Sharpe
Say what you like about the mullet, but he's one of the few TV presenters from my youth not to be picked up by Operation Yewtree. Him and Glen Michael.
Another games company from the "whoooooooooo?"* column; Stone Circle Games, cut short by some Hollywood shenanigans, apparently. Their China Town game was pretty fun - take Hong Kong martial arts movies, far eastern demons and vampires and chuck in some Yakuza cyborgs and stir well.
Overread wrote: You can also end up with surveys chasing the wrong market. Asking people why they don't get into wargames and building/painting is going to be a barrier to many people starting a new game.
However that doesn't necessarily mean that when presented with pre-painted; those same people will actually want to buy them.
Sometimes it's a matter of bringing a product to market before the market is ready for it, or the product may be missing that final element that takes it from "something I would like to have" to "OMG I must have that". I think prepaints do have a significant future in gaming, and may very well become the rule rather than the exception, but the quality needs to get higher with the price still being low enough. Perhaps as 3D printing tech improves to where we can not only print out minis affordably, but that they'll also be fully "painted" with the color in the plastic itself (easily allowing the hobbyist to just paint over with no loss of detail), that will be the tipping point.
reL Ex-Illis - I liked the concept well enough, but wasn't excited by the execution. At all. The models just didn't do anything for me. Even the ones you consider "pretty good" just don't cut it for me.
It's not like the Vor Growlers or AT-43 Therians - those were minis that I found to be inspiring (but not so much so that I'd have spent money on them).
Ex Illis has been dead for years - I remember checking out there forums back in like, 2013 - and it was just a handful of die-hards and one or two of the developers slowly fixing bugs on the software.
And I too like the concept - (one of the things that makes me a collector/painter but not a gamer is all the bookkeeping TTG require) but the minis were lackluster and the tech needs top get better and cheaper (adding another layer of expense to the already ridiculous cost of your average mini isn't gonna win many converts).
But it'd be awesome being able to keep track of xp/status effects/loot/etc without cluttering up the table with a bunch of paper, cards, tokens.
JohnHwangDD wrote: reL Ex-Illis - I liked the concept well enough, but wasn't excited by the execution. At all. The models just didn't do anything for me. Even the ones you consider "pretty good" just don't cut it for me.
It's not like the Vor Growlers or AT-43 Therians - those were minis that I found to be inspiring (but not so much so that I'd have spent money on them).
MAN I forgot about AT-43. Some great designs but the modeler in me was less drawn to the game, though did appreciate the designs overall. Nobody let me proxy things either out of the two people that played the game.
How did the mechanics work? Heard they weren't terrible but that's about it.
I still have some Ex Illis minis - converted a bunch of them into a Warhammer Empire army a few years back.
Big problem with games like Ex Illis (and Golem Arcana or whatever) is that it constantly takes your attention away from the miniatures. People are staring at a screen more than the tabletop. The miniatures seem tertiary to a pretty crappy war game - the smart phone/ tablet aspect of it really didn't add to the game as intended.
The Ex Illis designer had a creepy non-smile in all the company photos too.
JohnHwangDD wrote: reL Ex-Illis - I liked the concept well enough, but wasn't excited by the execution.
It's not like the Vor Growlers or AT-43 Therians - those were minis that I found to be inspiring (but not so much so that I'd have spent money on them).
MAN I forgot about AT-43. Some great designs but the modeler in me was less drawn to the game, though did appreciate the designs overall. Nobody let me proxy things either out of the two people that played the game.
How did the mechanics work? Heard they weren't terrible but that's about it.
I couldn't say how either game played, as I never got into Vor or AT-43. I just liked how some of the minis looked for those 2 specific factions.
Swan-of-War wrote: I still have some Ex Illis minis - converted a bunch of them into a Warhammer Empire army a few years back.
Big problem with games like Ex Illis (and Golem Arcana or whatever) is that it constantly takes your attention away from the miniatures. People are staring at a screen more than the tabletop. The miniatures seem tertiary to a pretty crappy war game - the smart phone/ tablet aspect of it really didn't add to the game as intended.
The Ex Illis designer had a creepy non-smile in all the company photos too.
You can't make a comment like that and not post one photo of him!
AT-43 had some amazing background material. The Therians and Red Blok were my favorites, but they all had something to recommend them. The vehicles were also top notch. The only vehicles that compare for sci fi bad assery are from Dust Tactics.
I really wish whoever designed Defiance Games' boxes had found more work in the industry. The timelines and maps on the back were awesome, and the flavor text cards with That's Good/That's Bad were highly amusing.
I really wish whoever designed Defiance Games' boxes had found more work in the industry. The timelines and maps on the back were awesome, and the flavor text cards with That's Good/That's Bad were highly amusing.
MAN I forgot about AT-43. Some great designs but the modeler in me was less drawn to the game, though did appreciate the designs overall. Nobody let me proxy things either out of the two people that played the game.
How did the mechanics work? Heard they weren't terrible but that's about it.
The game had already died off in my area when the more advanced army books got released, so IDK if this changed, but the mechanics were kind of basic. The ruleset wasn't terrible, but the way they did the army design for the U.N.A. and Therians that came in the initial boxed set made the game too even. The forces operated in a somewhat similar manner and the way the rules worked, those games often came down to "whomever goes last will probably win".
Like I said, IDK how that panned out once they expanded the game, but it made for a tough sell at launch. It did play VERY fast though. I wish 40k were half as fast.
I have a stupidly huge Red Blok army which looks lovely. I enjoyed the game for what it was, and always intended to use the Red Blox as proxy Imperial Guard in 40k. Then I found out that I didn't like 40k very much and that my existing Smurf army was quite enough to use for the odd time I felt I needed to play!
So, now the Red Blok lurk in a box in my attic awaiting the time I finally get round to playing AT-43 again (probably never, but never say never!), or alternatively the arrival of a new game that I can proxy them into. I had wondered about Konflikt 47, but have ended up extending my Bolt Action British army for it, and haven't really gamed much with that yet, so doing another army for the game is not a priority. I tend to like painting and collecting new stuff, rather than repurposing old stuff. I also don't think K47 is really "my" game. I've played a lot of BA, and am getting a bit bored with the gameplay, so its losing its lustre...
Hey ho! Such is the life of a Wargaming gadabout!
As for the gameplay of AT-43, I did enjoy it. I played the game about half a dozen times and used the play mats and terrain items (mainly containers and barricades) that came with the sets. I enjoyed them. The mechanics were sound, and gave interesting enough games. Mind you we played scenarios - mainly the Damocles campaign, if I remember correctly, which I always prefer over a straight "line 'em up and fight" kind of game. I seem to remember there were complaints that some of the later factions were less well balanced than the earlier ones, presumably because they had much less development time and resources put into them and were rushed into production, but that was no biggy.
Had the game continued I have a feeling I would be still playing it, but its strange how a "dead" game languishes in the cupboard, even though there is no real reason for it to - I have an opponent with an army (well three in fact - he's a bigger wargaming whore even than I am!), who also liked the game. Cult of the "New Shiney" I guess!
Vor was a great game that never had all its models out (just like its fantasy version Crucible) both of them played IMO much much better than any edition of 40k (not a bash, just a standard to measure against) the game always felt competitive and could turn around any time. AT-43 I never got much into but I heard it was not much different from the last version of Confrontation which I still play almost religiously to this day. SO yeah LOVE it.
Vor was a great game that never had all its models out (just like its fantasy version Crucible) both of them played IMO much much better than any edition of 40k (not a bash, just a standard to measure against) the game always felt competitive and could turn around any time.
Vor was amazing and had more character than just about any game that came before or since. The campaign system alone was pretty great. I played Growlers as my main army. Watching the pack evolve between games was so much fun. Seeing the pups become "One-horns" and the "One-horns" become bulls, and then the inevitable time you lose your favorite bull between games because he challenged the Chieftan for control of the pack and got killed for it. So much fun!
It was well thought out in general. I liked the "points" system they used for actions during your turn. It made for a very dynamic and interactive game IMO.
Interesting discussion all around.
On a related tangent I wonder if we as gamers are simply immune to the lesson of history when it comes to Sci-Fi and Fantasy wargames that attempt to make it BIG. As I see it, it is as simple as this:
If it is not made by one of the "Biggies" (GW, FFG, Corvus, PP, etc) It will likely not last more than 4 years.
There are some exceptions (Battletech, Malifaux,etc), but they're the exception, not the rule. Most of the other games that continue on for long term are small affairs from small shops that don't need big sales to carry on. If you're making an all-included (rules, minis, background from same producer) game system with high production values that depends on a massive playerbase and continued sales, that market is already mostly cornered to the point where it's hard to see how there's enough buyer $ our there to support a new entry.
One would think that we would either stop buying such games, or maybe even look to alternate "generic" rulesets to keep our favorite minis on the table. Yet, we don't do either. We continue to buy games that are likely to fail, from companies that are likely to fold (often KS companies that barely exist) and when the end does come, we shelve the project rather than find alternate ways to get the figs on the table.
@Eilif - It wasn't that long ago that BattleFront, Corvus Belli, Wyrd and Privateer Press were shoestring game companies hoping to get past the first year. Some games catch lighting in a bottle (Warmahordes & Flames), others do not. Some of those are lucky enough to get a strong enough following to survive in their niche (i.e. Wyrd, CB). Even if they're popular, they're still immature small businesses, of which the majority close within 4-5 years.
As for going big vs niche gaming, most of the ones that got big started small. Flames was a radical rethink of WW2 gaming, catching tremendous flak for making it 40k-like (and accessible).Warmahordes was very small when it launched, but they catered to the underserved tournament crowd, and got lucky.
BTW, it looks like Kingdom Death can be added to the list of long-term successful niche companies, where Soda Pop Miniatures seem likely to fold. In my case, I've been working on my homebrew rules to play what I like. But I'm not doing generics, because that's not my interest. Generic rules are problematic - just look how The Ninth Age now finds itself as a flash in the pan, to be forgotten soon enough.
Case in point - I first came across Battlefront when they were listed in Dream Pod 9's Gear Krieg rulebook as a source for 15mm WW2 models - third on the list, IIRC, and it was mentioned that 15mm was a rather odd/obscure scale for WW2 gaming.
I think another fault of a lot of the smaller companies was;"Okay,we've got a great idea for a range of great miniatures and an involving back story,let's release them!"
This happened with a range I collected. The Range was called 'Atlantis Imperium' and the figures they released were kind of a futuristic take on ancient Greeks and maybe Eldar. I collected the whole range,and there was promise of vehicles other factions and more importantly, a rulebook.
Nothing happened.
And as I look around at my shelves of minis, I realise that I have a quite a few ranges that didn't go anywhere. There have been a lot of companies who bring out brilliant (but small) ranges of minis,and I suspect that many of them just release them in the hope that they catch people's eyes and are used for other games,while they make some money to pay the bills.
I'll go back a few years for this next bit. The advent of plastic minis was probably the death knell for a lot of them,it must have been a struggle to try and sell mono pose models when you were up against multipose options and a higher quality of detail,let's face it, a lot of metal models are/were a bit rough. I will say that there was and continue to be many great metal miniatures/I still buy old and new.
Back in the eighties there were a lot of small companies around producing any type of mini for the roleplaying systems(for there were many back then!) that dominated back then. Then the wargame books for fantasy and Sci-fi started to appear and I started to see a decline in a lot of them.Back then their only source of advertisement was in White Dwarf or word of mouth. When GW went inhouse,they all disappeared from sight. Historical wargames magazines never seemed to take any advertisements for Fantasy/Sci fi;I always thought it was snobbery.
Come up to date and the same is true to an extent; no-one seems to bother advertising their stuff! It's a bit lazy to use social media only/it costs nothing as the followers do it for you. But you are in a wargames bubble,and only the wargamers will notice. You are preaching to a lot of players/collectors who are pretty rigid in what they buy; If x is heavily into one system how do you convince them of an alternative? Advertise/promote or rely on a few extra sales through social media?
Correct me if I'm wrong, I've known about War Machine for a long time but as far as I know it hasn't had anywhere near the impact in the UK as it has in the US, and I blame it on their lack of promotion of their ranges. Same for Infinity,know nothing about it,nice minis though.
Companies will disappear new ones will arise and then disappear as well. And all because they don't really like talking to anybody, for lack of a better term of description.
One would think that we would either stop buying such games, or maybe even look to alternate "generic" rulesets to keep our favorite minis on the table. Yet, we don't do either. We continue to buy games that are likely to fail, from companies that are likely to fold (often KS companies that barely exist) and when the end does come, we shelve the project rather than find alternate ways to get the figs on the table.
Not sure who you're putting in the 'we' category there, but the whole problem with these little games from startup companies is that people don't buy into them.
Miniature gamers tend to be fairly conservative and stick to a ruleset that they either know they like, or that they know enough other people are playing to get games in. This makes it really, really hard to get people to try new games, regardless of how good they look. Nobody wants to play a game until they know that it's going to take off and stick around... but that won't happen if nobody plays the game.
JohnHwangDD wrote:@Eilif - It wasn't that long ago that BattleFront, Corvus Belli, Wyrd and Privateer Press were shoestring game companies hoping to get past the first year. Some games catch lighting in a bottle (Warmahordes & Flames), others do not. Some of those are lucky enough to get a strong enough following to survive in their niche (i.e. Wyrd, CB). Even if they're popular, they're still immature small businesses, of which the majority close within 4-5 years.
As for going big vs niche gaming, most of the ones that got big started small. Flames was a radical rethink of WW2 gaming, catching tremendous flak for making it 40k-like (and accessible).Warmahordes was very small when it launched, but they catered to the underserved tournament crowd, and got lucky.
I think you're making my point for me on two fronts.
1) All those companies are now at least 10 years old I think. Not long in the grand scheme, but that's a veritable eternity in the gaming biz.
2) Think of how many other companies and games have come and gone in the same time. If you were betting on those companies at the very beginning the odds certainly weren't with you.
All this to say, putting your money into a new game and expecting it to stick around is a very risky maneuver. Even big properties like Dr Who, Judge Dredd, Starship Troopers, Aliens, Terminator, etc are poor indicators of long-term success.
JohnHwangDD wrote:
BTW, it looks like Kingdom Death can be added to the list of long-term successful niche companies, where Soda Pop Miniatures seem likely to fold. In my case, I've been working on my homebrew rules to play what I like. But I'm not doing generics, because that's not my interest. Generic rules are problematic - just look how The Ninth Age now finds itself as a flash in the pan, to be forgotten soon enough.
As to Kingdom Death, it might become one, but I think it's only the last couple years where it's been a product that's available for regular purchase correct?
What's the connection between generic rules and 9th age?
As for generics in general, I've played ALOT and there are good and bad ones and some really good ones. Personally I've found that most of my best gaming over the past 8 years has been with generic rulesets. Song of Blades and Heroes, Mech Attack, Dragon Rampant, etc. I'd halfway include Kings of War in that list as well though they've been making strides towards fleshing out their universe even as the game remains quite open to other miniature lines. Frostgrave is another in-between system that is fairly open with backstory that is growing.
Slipstream wrote:
I'll go back a few years for this next bit. The advent of plastic minis was probably the death knell for a lot of them,it must have been a struggle to try and sell mono pose models when you were up against multipose options and a higher quality of detail,let's face it, a lot of metal models are/were a bit rough. I will say that there was and continue to be many great metal miniatures/I still buy old and new.
Back in the eighties there were a lot of small companies around producing any type of mini for the roleplaying systems(for there were many back then!) that dominated back then.
Good Point. Starting in the late 90's, GW committing to plastic was HUGE. It took the better part of a decade to go almost completely plastic, but it funneled their financial power into a product that smaller companies just couldn't match. Even GW's worst looking multipart plastics were more flexible and customizable than the best metal figs.
As for the old figs of the 80's and 90's many are gone, but a surprising number of those lines still exist in the cottage industry of miniature gaming. Grenadier, Metal Magic, Harlequin, Ral Partha, Kryomek, Void, Celtos, and many, many more are still in production via small companies that bought the molds and masters and keep them in production.
One would think that we would either stop buying such games, or maybe even look to alternate "generic" rulesets to keep our favorite minis on the table. Yet, we don't do either. We continue to buy games that are likely to fail, from companies that are likely to fold (often KS companies that barely exist) and when the end does come, we shelve the project rather than find alternate ways to get the figs on the table.
Not sure who you're putting in the 'we' category there, but the whole problem with these little games from startup companies is that people don't buy into them.
Miniature gamers tend to be fairly conservative and stick to a ruleset that they either know they like, or that they know enough other people are playing to get games in. This makes it really, really hard to get people to try new games, regardless of how good they look. Nobody wants to play a game until they know that it's going to take off and stick around... but that won't happen if nobody plays the game.
It'd be interesting to know for sure, but I assume (only a guess, but bear with me) that someone is buying these new games because the kickstarters keep succeeding and game producers keep looking at the market and deciding that it's worth giving it a go again. Whether the interest lives beyond the initial offerings is another matter entirely and I suspect that has as much to do with poor business skills as it does with customer reticence.
You're right about the vicious circle though, which is probably at least part of the problem. Games fail, makes less people want to commit, which leads to less buyers, which leads to games failing.
As for "we" it's probably ironic in my case since for the past 8 years or so I've been buying mostly off-brand, used, and indie products. I've essentially been contributing little (maybe 20% of my spending) to the new wargames market except in that presumeably a fair amount of what I buy has been putting cash back in the hands of gamers who do buy flashy new products.
The upshot though is that with few exceptions (Deadzone...), I've not been disappointed. Even my recent foray back into big-name-game-companies with Runewars is with the full expectation that FFG may discontinue the game in a couple of years and my Daqan will live on only in Kings of War and Dragon Rampant.
@Eilif - it's only been the last couple years that Kingdom Death has gotten to be obviously self-sustaining *and* scalable. That is, the recent KS puts KD where they have the breadth of range, sheer sales volume and committed revenue and profit to exist as a long term entity.
The 9th Age is a generic not-WFB Fantasy ruleset that can use GW, Mantic or other 3rd party minis. It did great for a year and is petering out.
GW's worst looking multipart plastics were more flexible and customizable than the best metal figs.
Slipstream wrote: I think another fault of a lot of the smaller companies was;"Okay,we've got a great idea for a range of great miniatures and an involving back story,let's release them!"
This happened with a range I collected. The Range was called 'Atlantis Imperium' and the figures they released were kind of a futuristic take on ancient Greeks and maybe Eldar. I collected the whole range,and there was promise of vehicles other factions and more importantly, a rulebook.
Nothing happened.
My Atlanteans are lurking around in case I fancy trying out Tomorrow's War or something similar (although I wasn't aware of any pans for rules; I just bought them to use in other games); I might even have enough for an Astra Militarum platoon, although I'm not sure what to do with the guys with spears and shields . Studio Miniatures own them now, but they've so far only re-released the basic infantry squads for three factions.
In the days before Kickstarter, that was the risk - small companies can't afford to put out a whole range in one go, so they release them in waves - but then people don't buy into them because they're afraid they'll close up shop before the whole range is available. It's also why so many companies do Imperial Romans, late-war Germans and US and Napoleonic French - they're the best sellers - while other factions are not represented at all.
I think one thing this thread indicates is that it's bloody difficult to succeed and (especially) last any amount of time in this industry. If you do, you're in a minority!
It's actually a surprise that so many new ones still appear, stepping in amongst the bones of those that came before. But I suppose, ultimately if you last for some years, produce a good game, bring people some enjoyment and a nice pastime, does it matter if it doesn't last for ever? Very few things actually do. And the nature of the creative people working in the hobby is that they move between games and companies, trying different things elsewhere.
What's the connection between generic rules and 9th age?
You might well ask!
JohnHwang I wish you would stop sticking the knife in and twisting whenever there is the opportunity, the kind of game represented by 9th Age and the like (similar games that exist as rulebook only, and live off other miniature ranges) aren't really the focus here and deflates the rest of otherwise (I think) well made points.
On a thread about to travel to Italy. "It's a beautiful place, food, wine, amazing scenery. Unlike 9th Age, which does nothing in this area and is rubbish, everyone hates it and I hate it especially"
A lot of small ranges can survive because they're not being run as a business - If you're only casting models in your shed (or ordering a batch from Griffin now and then), it doesn't matter if you only get one order every couple of months, because that's not paying your mortgage.
Somewhat on-topic, Meeples and Miniatures had an interview with Jon Tuffley of Ground Zero Games recently - there's an example of a company that's apparently quite happy chugging along in the background.
^Yep, I mentioned this in a post earlier. I think many people think they can earn enough money to provide a meaningful living for X number of employees full-time...that's often not the case. A lot of excellent small game companies or miniatures companies are definitely "side jobs". There are heaps of small miniatures makers who've been trudging along since the 1980's, etc.
Even GW, for the size of the company, has a shockingly few employees (or has historically at least).
JohnHwangDD wrote: @Eilif - it's only been the last couple years that Kingdom Death has gotten to be obviously self-sustaining *and* scalable. That is, the recent KS puts KD where they have the breadth of range, sheer sales volume and committed revenue and profit to exist as a long term entity.
The 9th Age is a generic not-WFB Fantasy ruleset that can use GW, Mantic or other 3rd party minis. It did great for a year and is petering out.
Good to know, thanks. I'll check it out.
I don't know anything about it but I would hope that one example wouldn't be used to indict all Generic rulesets. Even good free online generic rulesets tend to have a short period of widespread interest after which the dedicated fans will stick with them. Of course a small crew of dedicated fans is all most generic rulesets (free or for sale) have anyway.
However, for sale generic sets -usually supported by expansions and the attention of their creators- can live on for a fairly long time. Witness such as Song of Blades which has been going on for over a decade, being periodically updated and expanded. Other examples include Ambush Alley, Kings of War, Pulp Alley, 5150 and other THW reaction system games. These and many others are all games that have outlasted many larger mainstream games and are still being suported.
There are a slew of historical games that fit this same mold as well. Expanded over the years
GW's worst looking multipart plastics were more flexible and customizable than the best metal figs.
Spoiler:
WAT?
Not sure what you're point is about the wychs figs.
So i recently got into pirates of the spanish main, and i have a question.
/why did it die? From what i've read it was loved, had alot of support, and while some people didn't like the gold fetching being the main game, it seemed everyone homebrewed something fun out of it.
Was it simply that the company that acquired wizkids didn't want to keep supporting it?
I think PotSM just ran out of ideas. They kept trying to cram something bigger and more exciting into each set, and you can only push that so far.
Compounded by the fact that the lifespan on collectible format games tends to be limited anyway... There was a bit of a 'bubble' when PotSM was around, where collectible games were going gangbusters. They all sort of died off around the same time, with the exception of Heroclix which just kept chugging along under the new ownership.
It was a cool little game, though, and the everything-in-the-pack format was absolutely brilliant.
insaniak wrote: I think PotSM just ran out of ideas. They kept trying to cram something bigger and more exciting into each set, and you can only push that so far.
Compounded by the fact that the lifespan on collectible format games tends to be limited anyway... There was a bit of a 'bubble' when PotSM was around, where collectible games were going gangbusters. They all sort of died off around the same time, with the exception of Heroclix which just kept chugging along under the new ownership.
It was a cool little game, though, and the everything-in-the-pack format was absolutely brilliant.
I'm always confused how herclix keeps going. I sort of wonder if the company that bought out wizkids was owned by the worlds biggest heroclix fan and they just pump funding into it. IT never sold at work, and we'd have tournements with only 5 attendees only to be told that they were "huge" in the world of heroclix. I remember it being big when i was younger but that was when the figures were better.
I do wonder if pirates pumped out its expansions too fast? something like 14 expansions in 4 years? jesus! I can imagine some buyer fatigue setting in.
Yeah, there was a lot to keep up with,and it wasn't cheap if you were a completionist.
On Heroclix, I suspect that it falls into a similar category as GW's Lord of the Rings did - bought largely by people collecting it just for the miniatures, or people playing at home rather than out in public. This gives the impression of a game that is doing far worse than it actually is, because we never see anyone playing it.
Or, as you say, it's just being run by someone with very deep pockets who doesn't care that it's not making any money.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, there was a lot to keep up with,and it wasn't cheap if you were a completionist.
On Heroclix, I suspect that it falls into a similar category as GW's Lord of the Rings did - bought largely by people collecting it just for the miniatures, or people playing at home rather than out in public. This gives the impression of a game that is doing far worse than it actually is, because we never see anyone playing it.
Or, as you say, it's just being run by someone with very deep pockets who doesn't care that it's not making any money.
Good point, Lord of the rings is thriving in private.
There used to be a store in leicester that sold only heroclix and D&D miniatures, the old rubbery ones.
It was always packed full of heroclix players, and this was, as i say, around the time when the figures were good, back when theyd just got some big licenses.
it closed after a while, popped up, thrived, sank like a stone. the players never switched to another store or even seemed to lament it.
I think whoever aquired wizkids did it purely for the licences as they cut off everything that wasn't a third party IP/
Yeah, IIRC, the Wizkids buyout was pretty specifically to keep Heroclix going, rather than to take over everything that the previous Wizkids had been producing, although they appear to have branched out a little since then.
The fun thing with the 'behind the scenes' nature of LotR popularity is that people online were convinced that it was falling back when it was at its peak. That game provided a massive boost to GW, and was for a time outselling WHFB, which was still GW's flagship game at that point. But because the greater community didn't see anyone playing it, it was 'clearly' not selling.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, IIRC, the Wizkids buyout was pretty specifically to keep Heroclix going, rather than to take over everything that the previous Wizkids had been producing, although they appear to have branched out a little since then.
The fun thing with the 'behind the scenes' nature of LotR popularity is that people online were convinced that it was falling back when it was at its peak. That game provided a massive boost to GW, and was for a time outselling WHFB, which was still GW's flagship game at that point. But because the greater community didn't see anyone playing it, it was 'clearly' not selling.
Yeah i see people calling for the games to be dropped every time forge world post something about it, saying no one plays it and it disracts from tehir game. They don't take into account that LoTR propelled gw enough in the early 2000s to actually expand like it did.
What's the connection between generic rules and 9th age?
JohnHwang I wish you would stop sticking the knife in and twisting whenever there is the opportunity, the kind of game represented by 9th Age and the like (similar games that exist as rulebook only, and live off other miniature ranges) aren't really the focus here and deflates the rest of otherwise (I think) well made points.
Dude, he's the one who raised generic rulesets, not me. If my on-topic reply just happens to allow me to grind my axe, am I to deny myself the opportunity? ____
JohnHwangDD wrote: @Eilif - it's only been the last couple years that Kingdom Death has gotten to be obviously self-sustaining *and* scalable. That is, the recent KS puts KD where they have the breadth of range, sheer sales volume and committed revenue and profit to exist as a long term entity.
The 9th Age is a generic not-WFB Fantasy ruleset that can use GW, Mantic or other 3rd party minis. It did great for a year and is petering out.
Good to know, thanks. I'll check it out.
I don't know anything about it but I would hope that one example wouldn't be used to indict all Generic rulesets.
GW's worst looking multipart plastics were more flexible and customizable than the best metal figs.
Spoiler:
WAT?
Not sure what you're point is about the wychs figs.
In the next few months, Kingdom Death will (finally!) be restocking core games with the 1.5 version. If one wanted to jump into the system, now is a good time to start saving your pennies, as the core will set you back at least $300 USD. Plus shipping. I'd budget $380 shipped against the $400 MSRP.
T9A is merely an example of a single, flawed rulest that is as flash in the pan as any of the formerly famous (but now closed) miniatures companies, and the games the once produced. Homebrews and generics will always exist as long as somebody thinks they can do better than the official rules.
The in-drag Wyches are awful. They might as well have prominent Adam's apples to go with the man hands, broad shoulders and square jaws. ____
nicromancer wrote: So i recently got into pirates of the spanish main, and i have a question.
/why did it die?
Was it simply that the company that acquired wizkids didn't want to keep supporting it?
Pirates is a great little game, and I have binders of the stuff. If you're looking for cards, I might have duplicates I can unload.
I think it was a corporate decision to focus on larger, more profitable lines after things kinda petered out. Ocean's Edge was a great set to close out the line, with really compelling variety of stuff to play with.
I loved the Rocketmen game which was basically Pirates reskinned with a retro pulp sci fi look. It was a great throw back to Flash Gordon era stuff, but sadly the game never really caught on the way POSM did. The little shield and weapon nodes very small fiddly compared to the ship sails.
On Heroclix, I suspect that it falls into a similar category as GW's Lord of the Rings did - bought largely by people collecting it just for the miniatures, or people playing at home rather than out in public. This gives the impression of a game that is doing far worse than it actually is, because we never see anyone playing it.
.
Heroclix seems to do well here in Chicago and get played regularly. Some shops around here seem to have regular events. I think folks also underestimate the crossover appeal to comics fans. You see it for sale at game and comic stores.
As for the collector's market, I'm sure that's part of it. Can't hurt that the quality and paintjobs do seem to be slowly improving (very slowly, but still it's progress).
I've not seen anything to suggest that it's losing money and is relying on some sort of deep pocketed benafactor. Unless you count all the comic fans and gamers with deep pockets full of disposable income.
insaniak wrote: Yeah, there was a lot to keep up with,and it wasn't cheap if you were a completionist.
On Heroclix, I suspect that it falls into a similar category as GW's Lord of the Rings did - bought largely by people collecting it just for the miniatures, or people playing at home rather than out in public. This gives the impression of a game that is doing far worse than it actually is, because we never see anyone playing it.
Or, as you say, it's just being run by someone with very deep pockets who doesn't care that it's not making any money.
Good point, Lord of the rings is thriving in private.
There used to be a store in leicester that sold only heroclix and D&D miniatures, the old rubbery ones.
It was always packed full of heroclix players, and this was, as i say, around the time when the figures were good, back when theyd just got some big licenses.
it closed after a while, popped up, thrived, sank like a stone. the players never switched to another store or even seemed to lament it.
I think whoever aquired wizkids did it purely for the licences as they cut off everything that wasn't a third party IP/
WizKids was acquired by Topps, Inc. (the baseball card company) in 2003. In 2009 they were acquired by National Entertainment Collectibles Association (NECA) who have around 60 licenses, ranging from 300 to Robocop to Donnie Darko.
) The only real risk I see for them is flooding the market and stealing customers from themselves. They are really looking strong as a company. They are going to be getting a lot of my money if they keep this up.
Thanks for the story! 
