OK, so there is a 3rd edition now? Free rules online is a change for sure.

But reading online I'm sort of piecing together a story about forum wars, theme lists making people mad (why), people saying it is dying, general internet salt, and other stuff but I'm not getting the whole story. I feel like I'm reading a book with huge chapters missing.

Can someone please tell me what happened between when it was booming in 2nd edition and now?

 Phobos wrote:
OK, so there is a 3rd edition now? Free rules online is a change for sure.

But reading online I'm sort of piecing together a story about forum wars, theme lists making people mad (why), people saying it is dying, general internet salt, and other stuff but I'm not getting the whole story. I feel like I'm reading a book with huge chapters missing.

Can someone please tell me what happened between when it was booming in 2nd edition and now?

I went to a flea market for gamers this weekend and guys were desperately trying to sell their warmahordes stuff for upto 50-75% off. You couldn't seem to give away the models.

One guy bought out a story that was discontinuing the line, he thought he could make some bucks, but apparently not.

Apparently lack of event support is the problem. They got rid of their event staff.

They made a lot of kirbyesque desicions right when GW started getting thier gak together.

I gave an $800 nib cryx army to a charity auction partially because selling/trading it wasn't worth the effort.

Warnahordes once had the Internet hype of being balanced and the best competitor miniature game. Cheap buy in and no massive expensive models.


Then miniature bloat caught up and huge models, overpowered lists, and nerds cane and people got salty. It once was the anti wh40k and not it’s the same thing just with less quality scrulpts.

I think the main "event" you may be missing is:

- Towards the end of 2nd edition certain lists were getting very broken, and some players (and even prominent podcasts) questioned balance and even switched entirely to other systems such as Guild Ball or Malifaux

- PP put out 3rd edition with little build-up or testing to address this, while claiming to have been working on it for 3 years. But glaring problems like the basic throw rules not working, or an entire faction being unplayable (Skorne) led to people doubting this.

- PP near simultaneously removed their Press Ganger program for organized play (citing legal issues with Magic judges) and removed their faction forums from their website. Effectively, the two most common ways to organize / talk about their games disappeared together.

I think PP could have overcome any one of the above, but taken together it very effectively killed the game in many local areas, mine included, while reducing its structure for bringing in new players. So, almost like GW's last Kirby-decision in killing WHFB, but without the huge investment and effort GW was prepared to put into rebuilding its player base.

As others have said, this happened while GW has really turned around and been doing basically what their fans are asking for. PP has been doing the opposite, and there are just too many good options to play instead...

Theme lists are annoying in the same way formations in 40K are annoying. Now, if you like one model, you know you're missing out if you don't also put all of its theme buddies into the same list. It emphasizes skewed lists and taking multiple copies of the same thing, when that's already the default way to build powerful lists anyway.

If a model is really useful in a powerful theme, you know they're not going to care about how it's balanced when it's used outside of that theme.

When they release new models, they can use themes to force you to buy a whole set of new models instead of adding the one you really like to the army you have.

Just another one of my predictions come true. GW outlast and crushes all. Folks don't like it, but its just true.

I'm not a white knight just a soothsayer. i.e.40k command points, wounds for vehicles, the change of BS/WS attributes(stolen from FoW, but predicted change for GW).

I've been through so many game systems since 1995. GW is still king. Its just true. Sorry haters.

Increased competition and the pace/sales of the game started to slow, and they seemed rush out the third edition but REALLY bungled the release and very nearly killed the game. They’ve been recovering though and a few years later the game isn’t in a bad place. Locally we don’t have the numbers of its heyday, but it’s still the strong second after Games Workshop.

I think another stumble for them was switching materials around the time GW was stepping up with some really sharp plastic designs.

It seriously became a drag for me to even think of adding to my Warmahordes collection when I was facing the prospect of cleaning restic infantry. The prices were high for the quality as well.

It's a pity too, because while they're not GW quality the few hard plastic warjacks Privateer put out are nice. I just wish they'd followed through.

Like the OP, I was away from the game for a while. When I moved country, all my models got broken in transit and I was too depressed to fix them for a couple of years. This spring I finally bit the bullet and fixed my Trolls and Legion, and assembled all my Blindwater dudes.

Then I noticed that all the WM and Hordes stuff in my local game store was half price. I picked up a few bits and pieces for my Blindwater and a few minis I liked for Dungeons and Dragons half price, and asked the guy in the shop what was going on. He said the entire community had bailed on the game with the release of MK3.

Couldn't really find out what had happened, but it really does show that PP had a much less resilient playerbase than GW. GW have put out turds 2 editions running in the past and still had a big playerbase, I think because in the end their miniatures were always consistently good. PP just did not have the same level of consistency in their miniatures range at all.

I'm not sure that PPs player base was less resilient,

It's just they were a lot smaller than GW (even though they were No2 for a long time in terms of sales) so when a significant number of people did drop (as did a significant number of GW players during the Kirby era) it was a lot more noticeable especially when you look at whether it makes financial sense for game stores to stock them

And size gives inertia. Gw stays up a lot because it has large playerbase so finding opponents is easy. If your player base is small even smaller relative drop can make finding opponents harder which makes self feeding spiral...

GW is also a public company with vertical integration. It gives them some insulation against smaller independent stores not carrying them.

They did a lot of bad decisions, and while the game is still well balanced IMHO, it's very confusing with a lot of things going on. The main reason I stopped playing is that there were so many things you had to keep track of during a game, it started to make my head hurt, especially since forgetting any one of them could mean you lost.

Here, most of the Warmahordes players went to a different store that has a lot more competitive play, so the store that used to be "the" hub has barely any interest now and is mostly a 40k shop again.

It's still going strong, just dipped in popularity because I think a lot of people played it as an alternative to 40k when 40k was a dumpster fire; now that 40k has improved in many ways, there was no reason to continue. Along with PP killing their forums for the same reason GW did, getting rid of their volunteer program, and moving away from many of the things that attracted their fanbase in the first place.

Did PP retain the discount max they tried to enforce around the time of 3E? I know that caused some friction as well, with Miniature Market temporarily dropping selling PP until they got a better deal.

WMH, both the game and the community, was outright hostile to new players to the point where a new player that stuck around for more than a month or two was as common as a unicorn.

The old players got upset that Mk3 wasn't Mk2, and during its initial growing pains, they all left for 40k (in my group, most of the WMH players were lapsed, bitter 40k players, so when 40k was good again and WMH less so, they switched). They also don't like theme lists and think the CID program, while necessary, makes it difficult to keep up with the everchanging meta.

PP has been basically a huge dick to everybody, killing their press ganger group and neutering their official forums, not to mention threatening online retailers.

The model quality is terrible and the prices are high. The restic models are some of the worst (and most expensive) miniatures in the industry. Their plastic models are decent, but there's what, like 7 of them? Everything else is resin + metal. I'd say that if you compared the number of players who play the game but don't paint the miniatures versus the players who paint them but don't play, it'd be about 100:0.

Warmachine, as the community plays it, just isn't a very good miniatures game for all but a very small, select type of wargamer - and they left for greener pastures.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Warmachine, as the community plays it, just isn't a very good miniatures game for all but a very small, select type of wargamer - and they left for greener pastures.

I recently moved away from my old gaming area, but I'm still in touch with some of the players in the area. Apparently the decade-old WM/H group has finally given up the ghost, and they've moved en masse to Guild Ball.

Guild Balls been on a diminishing cycle as well at the moment it seems. Lots less interest there as well.

Phobos wrote:OK, so there is a 3rd edition now? Free rules online is a change for sure.

But reading online I'm sort of piecing together a story about forum wars, theme lists making people mad (why), people saying it is dying, general internet salt, and other stuff but I'm not getting the whole story. I feel like I'm reading a book with huge chapters missing.

Can someone please tell me what happened between when it was booming in 2nd edition and now?

You are generally correct in what you heard. WMH did really well for the first couple of years of Mk2, but by the time late-Mk2 was rolling round, the game was getting extremely large and bloated and there were a lot of balance issues, busted lists and the game, essentially was ‘solved’ and to a large extent, stagnant. You can be cheeky and say that this wasn’t entirely due to PP, the player base itself (or maybe the large influx of players used to a specific way of playing) stopped being creative, and advice to new players became less about being creative and innovative in ‘how’ they played and more about ‘take this list and let it play for you’.

When I got into the game in Mk2, the game was big, but manageable. You could learn it. Now its huge. And not in a good way. It used to be daunting for a new player, whilst still being a challenge that was appealing. Now it’s almost inaccessible to fresh players because of the bloat of fifteen years of expansions and the burden of knowledge required to play (ie needing to keep track of everything going on, and to be competitive, you need to know all the synnergies in all the factions…). So you will see fewer and fewer people buying in, and really just the ultra-hardcore continuing on. Basically, fewer and fewer playing. And the ultra-hardcore can also be unwelcoming for some, and right at the time when the game needs to be opened up. Combined with a less-active playerbase (no pressgangers) and you have a toxic mix.

PP did a lot of things at once – they ditched the forums (I have no issues with this – they were a toxic mess that did nothing but enshrine group-think and added nothing productive or creative to the hobby), ditched the pressgangers – and this was huge – this tore the ground out from under the playerbase and a lot of gaming groups in a lot of ways, unless said groups were any bit able to self-organise (which as gamers go, is not likely for the most part!). The result, sadly was overnight nearly, the playerbase didn’t so much dwindle as evaporate. A further issue was their implementation of Mk3, which was ‘OK’ but had huge flaws – for example Skorne had to be completely re-re-designed after the start as they’d gotten so many things spectacularly wrong. Beyond that, while Mk3 fixed some issues, PP just baked in new ones, and it felt a lot of Mk3 was a ‘change’, rather than an ‘improvement’ with tough and reposition being handed out as band-aids for everything. I think it was fair to say at the start of Mk2, PP were amongst the movers and shakers in the industry. They did so many things right. Now? They’re essentially doing the same things GW did and got criticised for, so it’s no surprise that the exact same dynamics are happening to PP and the fans are losing interest.

Regarding theme lists, the issue with them is if you want to stand toe to toe, you need a theme list. The game is now balanced around theme lists (Mk3 theme lists are more like Mk2 Mercenary contracts). The ideas is generally sound but there are consequences for the game at large. Generic lists are dead. Theme lists essentially play with a 20% points advantage over non-themed lists and have other baked in advantages. My issues with themes is they force you into very specific builds first and foremost, but really, it feels like a ‘GW codex’ approach. PP used to release new stuff for all the factions once or twice a year. No more. Whatever new theme they’re working on (currently Khador MoW) and up-and-coming is Circle (Tharn) gets all the releases. The ‘themes’ are the new ‘factions’ and are released in the way that GW release faction-specific ‘codices’ and if the ‘themes’ are the new ‘factions’, then it’s fair to say that the old ‘factions’ are now a ‘product catalogue’ that feed into the ‘themes’.

Beyond this, PP have gone and done a Kirby with shifty rules, some dodgy models and some truly shocking pricing – look at the cost of the chosen of everblight for an example. Here in the UK, its £90 retail for 5 ‘cavalry’ models. Even GW are not evil enough to try for that! Also, while some of the recent sculpts are outstanding, some of them are really terrible. It’s a real ‘hit or miss’ affair, and PP, whilst often ranging from decent to pretty good, have never been outstanding in model quality.

On top of this, GW have been doing good things lately. Yes, their prices are a wee bit too high, and the game is unbalanced (point me to one that is n’tthough…) but they’ve done a lot in the last year or two to win back a lot of disgruntled fans, and their profit margins are showing this. Heck, everyone I know has a 40K project on the go again. The other games like WMH and Infinity are getting less table time as a result.

Basically, for PP, it’s a perfect storm of a lot of issues. Some of their own making, some as the consequences of their history/wave nature of their game, and some things out of their control. They still have loyal fans and groups, but it’s like the old days of Mk1 and they’re a lot less visible again. They lost a lot of players in the transition to Mk3. Regarding the second hand market, its usually a good indicator for the health of a game – if lots of people are buying/selling, it means there is interest. If they’re not, it points to a problem. I do know that there is still a market for 2nd hand PP stuff, but its limited and it’s generally hard to move stuff. A few years ago, when me and the wife moved house, I sold off a lot of my excess warmachine stuff. Mainly Khador and Circle. They literally ran out the door. Recently, I decided to slim down on my Wargame stuff to fund new projects (GW Dark Angels and Death Guard, amusingly!) and as part of that, I decided I’d sell on the WMH stuff I wasn’t going to use – my non-tharn circle and my retribution (I’m keeping my tharn and khador!). So I sold my Circle stuff, and a mate is buying my Retribution, but I had this stuff on sale for literally ages before anyone showed any interest. Compared to a few years ago, it was an eye-opener. I don’t think it bodes well for the future. PP need to do a lot of things, like gut the game of its bloat.

Sqorgar wrote:WMH, both the game and the community, was outright hostile to new players to the point where a new player that stuck around for more than a month or two was as common as a unicorn.

That's very close to trolling. WMH is a hard, unforgiving game. When the game was smaller, this represented a manageable, but appealing challenge. You earned your wins.

But to say the community is 'outright hostile' to new players? No sir. As a (lapsed) member of that community, and on behalf of my friends that still play, I find this comment appallingly rude and condescending. Some of the nicest people I've gotten to know through gaming play or played warmachine. Now fine, there are trolls that play WMH and go about noobstalking. I know some. Thing is, those same trolls play other Wargames and stalk noobs there too. It's not a WMH thing. It's a gakky gamer thing. Equating that to WMH is inaccurate, misleading, and just really rubbish behaviour on your part. Please don't. Please, don't tar a whole community as TFGs.

Deadnight wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:WMH, both the game and the community, was outright hostile to new players to the point where a new player that stuck around for more than a month or two was as common as a unicorn.

That's very close to trolling. WMH is a hard, unforgiving game. When the game was smaller, this represented a manageable, but appealing challenge. You earned your wins.

But to say the community is 'outright hostile' to new players? No sir. As a (lapsed) member of that community, and on behalf of my friends that still play, I find this comment appallingly rude and condescending. Some of the nicest people I've gotten to know through gaming play or played warmachine. Now fine, there are trolls that play WMH and go about noobstalking. I know some. Thing is, those same trolls play other Wargames and stalk noobs there too. It's not a WMH thing. It's a gakky gamer thing. Equating that to WMH is inaccurate, misleading, and just really rubbish behaviour on your part. Please don't. Please, don't tar a whole community as TFGs.

I bought the Khador Battlegroup box after playing a demo game at a con. Built & painted it, then got turned down for a game by a dozen different players across three clubs because I was a noob. Just because Sqorgar and my experiences are different to yours doesn't mean we're trolling.

My personal experience is that a lot of players stopped playing and I stopped playing as well because of that. And it wasn't just that the game suddenly became less balanced. My brother, for instance, played an infantry heavy skare list. With the new edition the way the warcaster played became fundamentaly different. He could no longer make a playable list with his current colection because all of his warcasters were changed and no longer matched his army.

Deadnight wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:WMH, both the game and the community, was outright hostile to new players to the point where a new player that stuck around for more than a month or two was as common as a unicorn.

That's very close to trolling. WMH is a hard, unforgiving game. When the game was smaller, this represented a manageable, but appealing challenge. You earned your wins.

But to say the community is 'outright hostile' to new players? No sir. As a (lapsed) member of that community, and on behalf of my friends that still play, I find this comment appallingly rude and condescending. Some of the nicest people I've gotten to know through gaming play or played warmachine. Now fine, there are trolls that play WMH and go about noobstalking. I know some. Thing is, those same trolls play other Wargames and stalk noobs there too. It's not a WMH thing. It's a gakky gamer thing. Equating that to WMH is inaccurate, misleading, and just really rubbish behaviour on your part. Please don't. Please, don't tar a whole community as TFGs.

I assure you, I am not trolling, regardless of how offended it may make you. I was going to link you to a particular thread on Lormahordes, but it appears to be down at the moment. There was a thread which was literally about what to do in order to draw new players to WMH, and the general sentiment was, "feth 'em".

Sure, there were one or two posters who were saying, "Without new players, our game will eventually die", but generally speaking, the response was, "why should I change how I play just to let some newbies win? I had to learn the hard way, so should they. After they lose their 30th tournment-style match in a row, they'll have gained valuable experience needed to play the game at a somewhat competent level." They literally shouted down someone suggesting that they play smaller point games and play inefficient lists to give new players a chance to actually play the game instead of being curb stomped in the second round.

The WMH community is absolutely the most anti-newbie community I have ever seen in my life, across all games, genres, and hobbies. I don't even blame the game itself, though it does have a learning curve. I think WMH can be played narratively or casually, but the community doesn't allow it. They don't make the game look good, they don't make it fun to play, they don't make it fun to belong, they don't make it easy to follow, and they don't allow for any variation in how others are allowed to enjoy it.

That's why WMH is dying but GW survived much worse sins. GW was always bringing in new players and making them feel special and like they belonged, while WMH players were telling them that "you'll lose the first 20 games you play (and won't have fun for most of them), but eventually, I'll bother playing you once you 'git gud' with your two tournament armies"

beast_gts wrote:
I bought the Khador Battlegroup box after playing a demo game at a con. Built & painted it, then got turned down for a game by a dozen different players across three clubs because I was a noob. Just because Deadnight and my experiences are different to yours doesn't mean we're trolling.

And I'll bet you money that the vast majority of them didn't have a single painted model.

 Sqorgar wrote:


Sure, there were one or two posters who were saying, "Without new players, our game will eventually die", but generally speaking, the response was, "why should I change how I play just to let some newbies win? I had to learn the hard way, so should they. After they lose their 30th tournment-style match in a row, they'll have gained valuable experience needed to play the game at a somewhat competent level." They literally shouted down someone suggesting that they play smaller point games and play inefficient lists to give new players a chance to actually play the game instead of being curb stomped in the second round.

Oh god, I remember those types of arguments on the PP forums. I played a lot of MK1 and the consensus seemed to be "take your licks and get beaten until you get good" which fell in line with the Page 5 chest pumping machismo of the time.

Refusing to play battlebox games is really poor form. I always found them really fun, and teaching new players is rewarding. Unfortunately some groups get into a fixed mindset around a certain style of play and never want to do anything else.

Sqorgar, when I read your first post I had a few thoughts, and with this follow-up wanted to share:

- The "Lormahordes" site is going to have mostly old vets, similar to going to an "Oldhammer" site, so that's not indicative of all players / groups, or even most.

- The only reason I personally came to play warmahordes was my awesome "Casualmachine" local group, and a really cool press ganger who ran it.

So, both of those things combined, I think you should post your personal experience as just that, rather than the state of the game / community. I've seen you post similarly about WHFB - for any of these games, if you talk to a crusty old gamer, you'll get told to "Get off my lawn!" . But it's certainly not indicative of the entire group.

As I posted before, PP's huge mistake was killing their press ganger program / forums / etc at the same time as they put out the new edition (with all its initial flaws). So they removed their mechanisms for recruiting new players, just as they lost a lot of existing ones... not a model that works well for any company (even GW, who put a Ton of recruiting work into resurrecting their fantasy line after Kirby's mistakes).

beast_gts wrote:
I bought the Khador Battlegroup box after playing a demo game at a con. Built & painted it, then got turned down for a game by a dozen different players across three clubs because I was a noob. Just because Sqorgar and my experiences are different to yours doesn't mean we're trolling.

Yet There is a difference between saying you have had a bad experience, or gone to a bad club, and referring to the 'community' as 'outright hostile' .Saying the former isn't trolling. I've been there myself. I've also experienced it and spoken about it too. saying The latter is perilously close to it, as it tars me and my WMH playing friends as 'outright hostile' by default. There are a hell of a lot of people that play WMH and The vast majority of them are pretty decent folks.

And why I find that so damned offensive is I'm the guy who has gone to cons, or clubs, and without even being a pressganger, played dozen demo games with folks that were interested or even mildly interested, just to show the game off. And these were not the 'assassinated th noob turn 2 with something out of the blue lol' games either. these were games where we talk it out, walk it through, point out fun shenanigans that can be done, have 'take-it-backs', and do as much as I can to allow folks to explore the game. And for what it's worth, here where I can play/live, while I can think of 1 TFG who represents everything that is wrong with the hobby as a whole, I can think of a dozen guys that represent everything thstthst is right.

Sqorgar wrote:
I assure you, I am not trolling, regardless of how offended it may make you. I was going to link you to a particular thread on Lormahordes, but it appears to be down at the moment. There was a thread which was literally about what to do in order to draw new players to WMH, and the general sentiment was, "feth 'em".
Sure, there were one or two posters who were saying, "Without new players, our game will eventually die", but generally speaking, the response was, "why should I change how I play just to let some newbies win? I had to learn the hard way, so should they. After they lose their 30th tournment-style match in a row, they'll have gained valuable experience needed to play the game at a somewhat competent level." They literally shouted down someone suggesting that they play smaller point games and play inefficient lists to give new players a chance to actually play the game instead of being curb stomped in the second round.

Then if you are not trolling, you'll happily walk back your comment about 'the community' being outright hostile, and clarify it as a bunch of donkey-caves you may have had personal contact with and the fact that really, a lot of it boils down to it being a game you personally dislike.

Pointing to a thread of a forum means very little - a post by a handful of people on the internet is not representative of the community. the internet is not representative of wargaming for the most part. Most WMH people I knowledge (actually, most wargamers in general that I know, not just WMH players) don't actually post online, either on lormahordes (never even heard of it), fb, or the pp boards (when they were alive).

But you know what? I will accept your point about that forum. I have no doubt that there's a thread that is derogatory towards new players. What I doubt Is that it is emblematic of 'the community'. It seems it's just your bias playing up. Because while I don't doubt what you say was said, I can also say I've seen dozens of similar threads here on dakka, on warseer, heck, on portent or earlier boards about loads of different games (40k, warhammer fantasy, Aos ), saying similar things about new players. Which leads me to believe it's not a WMH thing, but simply a jerk gamer thing. I am also pretty positive if I looked, I could find positive posts/threads (from back when it was more popular, haha) from people getting into the game, and their awesome pressgangers/welcoming communities or else positive threads regarding building a community, or getting others into the gsme.

Maybe you've met some jerks. Fair enough. I have too. The difference is I don't tar the rest of the community by association.

Sqorgar wrote:
The WMH community is absolutely the most anti-newbie community I have ever seen in my life, across all games, genres, and hobbies. I don't even blame the game itself, though it does have a learning curve. I think WMH can be played narratively or casually, but the community doesn't allow it. They don't make the game look good, they don't make it fun to play, they don't make it fun to belong, they don't make it easy to follow, and they don't allow for any variation in how others are allowed to enjoy it.

There you go again. 'The community' isn't a hive mind.

I've played narrative WMH. And I've played plenty 'casualmachine'. In fact, most of my games these last few years have been 'casualmachine' rather than 'tourney prep'.

Sqorgar wrote:
That's why WMH is dying but GW survived much worse sins. GW was always bringing in new players and making them feel special and like they belonged, while WMH players were telling them that "you'll lose the first 20 games you play (and won't have fun for most of them), but eventually, I'll bother playing you once you 'git gud' with your two tournament armies"

Warmachine may or may not be dying. I genuinely hope it's not. I don't doubt it has declined, But we shall see. And hope. I don't want it to go it would be a genuine shame I feel it did. That said, There's a lot of reasons for it's decline. Playing 'hard', playing 'fair', 'earning' your wins based on earned skill and harder earned experience, losing your first dozen games getting to that point was always a draw for a lot of people. I maintain That even though you dislike that kind of game, that's not the reason WMH is in decline. The bloat of the current game (it's about two or two and a half times the size it was for the mk2 launch, when you factor in the new factions and various expansions), and the burden of knowledge required to play to a decent level is a far larger aspect of the decline as it's those things that are truly unfriendly towards prospects, rather than 'play hard'. Some people enjoy playing halo on legendary. Or playing Starcraft against Koreans. A hard game is not necessarily a bad thing. dont mistake what you don't like or a universal truth.

Sqorgar wrote:
And I'll bet you money that the vast majority of them didn't have a single painted model.

I have seen a lot more unpainted gw armies than WMH armies.

Speaking of my own warmachine stuff.

Khador - 211 models painted. 100% painted.
Retribution - 100 off models painted. 100% painted.
Circle (including what I'd recently sold) - 89 models painted. 100% painted.

And it's painted to a pretty decent standard too. For what it's worth, quite a number of my friends are excellent painters too, and I can think of a few WMH armies I've seen that are to die for.

A perfect storm is really the only way to describe it. There's really no one answer, as it all comes down to a chorus of things all hitting at once. At the heart of it though, is definitely a lack of new blood coming into the game. As much as there's a sense of old players rage quitting, the truth of it is many of them had just moved to a place in life where the hardcore tournament treadmill they were running wasn't lining up with work and family and any significant change was the push they needed to move on. The lack of new players to replace them is really what turned this into a sustainability issue for the game.

I do think one aspect that is often overlooked is competition from videogames like Hearthstone, League of Legends and Overwatch. These games attract very similar kinds of players. The avatar driven character selection is very similar to the appeal of Warcasters and the rather straightforward sense of competitive gameplay translates rather directly. These games feed that "play like you've got a pair" attitude with more immediate access and rewards, and I get the feeling the e-sports craze soaked up a ton of would be Warmachine players.

That said, for me, I'm mostly just disappointed in the community. PP is far from blameless, but when I play the game, it really feels like the best its ever been both mechanically and from the sense that armies feel cool and less gamey. The hyper focus on a flavor of the month tournament meta just turned the game into a treadmill that was easy to fall off and impossible to jump on. The podcast crowd really cultivated a culture of absolutes in list design, and the number of times players would come to me feeling completely defeated by things that weren't even played or owned locally got pretty depressing. The speed at which the community took every opportunity to tear itself apart was certainly the most disappointing part of it all.

I had a bad experience once playing my first 40k game , did I label every player of 40k as a jerk? Nope... was my opponents army painted? No, and I didn’t go around saying all 40k players don’t paint their armies.
Labeling a whole group of people just because you had a bad experience with one or two people don’t make that entire group bad people. This way of thinking causes many of the problems we see in society

 RiTides wrote:
I think the main "event" you may be missing is:

- Towards the end of 2nd edition certain lists were getting very broken, and some players (and even prominent podcasts) questioned balance and even switched entirely to other systems such as Guild Ball or Malifaux

- PP put out 3rd edition with little build-up or testing to address this, while claiming to have been working on it for 3 years. But glaring problems like the basic throw rules not working, or an entire faction being unplayable (Skorne) led to people doubting this.

- PP near simultaneously removed their Press Ganger program for organized play (citing legal issues with Magic judges) and removed their faction forums from their website. Effectively, the two most common ways to organize / talk about their games disappeared together.

I think PP could have overcome any one of the above, but taken together it very effectively killed the game in many local areas, mine included, while reducing its structure for bringing in new players. So, almost like GW's last Kirby-decision in killing WHFB, but without the huge investment and effort GW was prepared to put into rebuilding its player base.

As others have said, this happened while GW has really turned around and been doing basically what their fans are asking for. PP has been doing the opposite, and there are just too many good options to play instead...

I'm curious about the Magic part, but first, you do mean MTG by WoTC right? If so, did this have something to do with all the issues relating to allegations of pedophilia and other sex crimes in their judge program, or was this something else entirely?

 Togusa wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
I think the main "event" you may be missing is:

- Towards the end of 2nd edition certain lists were getting very broken, and some players (and even prominent podcasts) questioned balance and even switched entirely to other systems such as Guild Ball or Malifaux

- PP put out 3rd edition with little build-up or testing to address this, while claiming to have been working on it for 3 years. But glaring problems like the basic throw rules not working, or an entire faction being unplayable (Skorne) led to people doubting this.

- PP near simultaneously removed their Press Ganger program for organized play (citing legal issues with Magic judges) and removed their faction forums from their website. Effectively, the two most common ways to organize / talk about their games disappeared together.

I think PP could have overcome any one of the above, but taken together it very effectively killed the game in many local areas, mine included, while reducing its structure for bringing in new players. So, almost like GW's last Kirby-decision in killing WHFB, but without the huge investment and effort GW was prepared to put into rebuilding its player base.

As others have said, this happened while GW has really turned around and been doing basically what their fans are asking for. PP has been doing the opposite, and there are just too many good options to play instead...

I'm curious about the Magic part, but first, you do mean MTG by WoTC right? If so, did this have something to do with all the issues relating to allegations of pedophilia and other sex crimes in their judge program, or was this something else entirely?

This thread will help: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/720317.page

Basically WoTC judges were suing claiming that they were performing in the role of employees and should receive the benefits of employees. PP presumably didn't like where that case was going and axed the PG program.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Togusa wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
I think the main "event" you may be missing is:

- Towards the end of 2nd edition certain lists were getting very broken, and some players (and even prominent podcasts) questioned balance and even switched entirely to other systems such as Guild Ball or Malifaux

- PP put out 3rd edition with little build-up or testing to address this, while claiming to have been working on it for 3 years. But glaring problems like the basic throw rules not working, or an entire faction being unplayable (Skorne) led to people doubting this.

- PP near simultaneously removed their Press Ganger program for organized play (citing legal issues with Magic judges) and removed their faction forums from their website. Effectively, the two most common ways to organize / talk about their games disappeared together.

I think PP could have overcome any one of the above, but taken together it very effectively killed the game in many local areas, mine included, while reducing its structure for bringing in new players. So, almost like GW's last Kirby-decision in killing WHFB, but without the huge investment and effort GW was prepared to put into rebuilding its player base.

As others have said, this happened while GW has really turned around and been doing basically what their fans are asking for. PP has been doing the opposite, and there are just too many good options to play instead...

I'm curious about the Magic part, but first, you do mean MTG by WoTC right? If so, did this have something to do with all the issues relating to allegations of pedophilia and other sex crimes in their judge program, or was this something else entirely?

This thread will help: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/720317.page

Basically WoTC judges were suing claiming that they were performing in the role of employees and should receive the benefits of employees. PP presumably didn't like where that case was going and axed the PG program.

Thanks! I will check it all out. But I'm not surprised this is the case. WoTC was definitely taking advantage of the compensation issues for Judges. That's partially why I stopped supporting that company a few years back.

Semi-related: But, with regards to this topic, I'm not surprised. A couple of the PP groups in my area dried up and either switched to 40K/AoS or moved on to other hobbies.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I assure you, I am not trolling, regardless of how offended it may make you. I was going to link you to a particular thread on Lormahordes, but it appears to be down at the moment. There was a thread which was literally about what to do in order to draw new players to WMH, and the general sentiment was, "feth 'em".

This one? As that is literally what is not happening in that thread. Don't make up gak to support your own narrative mateybobs.

There are a couple of players saying what you claim in that thread but the vast majority are appropriately blasting them for it.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
I assure you, I am not trolling, regardless of how offended it may make you. I was going to link you to a particular thread on Lormahordes, but it appears to be down at the moment. There was a thread which was literally about what to do in order to draw new players to WMH, and the general sentiment was, "feth 'em".

This one? As that is literally what is not happening in that thread. Don't make up gak to support your own narrative mateybobs.

There are a couple of players saying what you claim in that thread but the vast majority are appropriately blasting them for it.

That's the thread - and I recommend anyone interested in this discussion go read it. I think there's enough of what I said going on in that thread that you can't accuse me of making anything up. For one thing, it is obvious that the people defending new players are doing so in spite of the general sentiment, not sharing in it. The OP and first few posts are people talking about how experienced players will refuse to play with newbies and why that's a bad thing.

Personally, I've never seen a thread for any other game asking what concessions the community needs to make to keep their new players from bailing. I've seen threads about how to bring in new players (if they try it, they'll love it), but never one in which new players are buying into a game, playing it, and then choosing, en masse, to not continue with it. And it ain't because WMH is a bad game.

You said:

Sqorgar wrote:There was a thread which was literally about what to do in order to draw new players to WMH, and the general sentiment was, "feth 'em".

That is not what I'm getting from that thread at all, and it's certainly not the general sentiment of it. You're badly misrepresenting it to support your point here, imo.

As for veterans with tough lists stomping new players, it gets complained about in every game system, has personally happened to me in 40k, WHFB, and Warmahordes, and is not at all unique to any one system. (The complexity of Warmahordes does make the learning curve a lot steeper, though).

 Byte wrote:
Just another one of my predictions come true. GW outlast and crushes all. Folks don't like it, but its just true.

I'm not a white knight just a soothsayer. i.e.40k command points, wounds for vehicles, the change of BS/WS attributes(stolen from FoW, but predicted change for GW).

I've been through so many game systems since 1995. GW is still king. Its just true. Sorry haters.

Which is all nice and fine, but until they resurrect a 'ranks and flanks' game I'm still out. Regardless of how great AoS might be, there are cheaper options for skirmish games.

I agree that the release of a weak 3rd edition, killing the Press Ganger program and removing the forums really was the perfect storm to kill or dry up WarmaHordes in most locations including locally.

One of the other big things mentioned was the unfriendliness to new players... I have met about the same good and bad players that I do in 40k/AOS so i don't think its really the players
but the rolling combinations that new players don't know about, causing them to get curb stomped in about every game. It doesn't set well if you are a new player and needs to buy the super
special combo guys and not the figures that you like just to be able to have a chance to win a game.

@ Phobos:

I was getting out of 40k around the time 3rd Edition WMH was starting. I've only ever known 3rd edition. I haven't played much, as my local store (Game Chamber, London, ON, Awesome people!) have their WMH night on Fridays and that's not in my schedule most of the time. I also kind of fell off the wagon in terms of getting my game on track. I wanted to get my army fully painted. Oddly enough, I never had that concern with 40k but there are so few models I feel slovenly not getting it all painted up.

I have no problem with losing a game. I'm that rare player that doesn't mind taking a kicking to get my skills up. I learn from losing. I'm good with it.

To be honest though... there's too much for me to learn about individual casters and their interactions to get "good" at the game, with the amount of time and effort I want to devote to it. I love the game. I mean it. I just wish my casual/competitive garage gaming buddies would get into it. I've played with them for years, and I still like the non-store experience better than the store experience.


From what I've gathered, 3rd is very different from 2nd, but that was nothing to me. I find the game is better balanced than any edition of 40k, which I like. They did end their community forum like, 2 weeks after I joined. And they ended their press ganger program which meant no more "official" support at the store level, though everyone I met was pleasant. I was able to find some "low point" games to get started, and away I went. I heard that there was a lot of community backlash, and as was noted, this was about the time that GW was getting their gak together and coming out with decent games again. (I hated 7th, with a passion!)

For me, Theme lists are essentially mini-factions or "Formations" of units that give you a strong benefit to use the limited selection. I'm all for limiting the scope of interactions if it leads to better balance, by which I mean limiting unit selections. I don't mind it, and it has given me (As a Retribution player, hooray for CID changes coming up!) 4 easy-to-follow Themes to build multiple lists around. As a newbie, I find themes to help me in learning about the game and the probable things I will encounter when facing other themes. I don't have trouble finding games, there's always a few people ready to play on Friday nights, I just have trouble getting there on Fridays.

So what I've been kind of working away at, is building and painting 4 starter boxes (WMH is Sooooo cheap to get into right now, because everyone's getting out...) of different factions so that I can start a group in my hometown to try and generate some interest in the game. There's lots of gamers around. I hope I can put on a few demo games, convince people it's fairly cheap to get into, and see if I can build a playerbase without a store. No big whoop.

I enjoy the game. I figure if I can get a few people, even a regular group of 6 or 8 people interested, I could have a game or two every other weekend at my place or someone else's, and help to shape a welcoming environment for new players in a casual/competitive environment. The benefits of being a late-30's gamer.

I hope you give it a shot, and have the opportunity to enjoy the game.

Everyone here hit on it, but the game just grew too big and people lashed back at how GW clone that it became.

In my locale, not a lot of love, and the rpg is literally falling apart on the shelves in two of the stores I go to. Too much change, the Roundtree efforts to kill the community, and too many new guys too fast killed a lot of enthusiasm to the game.

From an outside perspective, I started playing Warhammer 40k back in 5th right as warmachine was getting big. I remember being very thankful for it because it became a weird sort of "containment zone" for a lot of the really toxic players we had in our area. The guys who would argue every rule, try to slight of hand dice, lie about abilities, something about warmachine really drew them in. There were cool guys in warmachine too, I had a couple of interesting demos with I'm assuming the local press ganger, but never felt it was for me. I remember once warmachine took off I felt like my experience with TFG's dropped quite a bit. The "play like you got a pair", whether it was intended or not, absolutely colored warmachine's player base to a degree and definitely colored outside opinion of the game. I'm not saying everyone on the planet was that way, but in my neck of the woods it was absolutely noticeable and sentiment online backed up my experience that other areas had it too.

On top of that, one of the major selling points of the game was literally "it's more balanced than 40k and meant for tournaments". When 40k started clawing its way back (note I never said fixed ) I remember seeing tons of posts from people on various forums and in stores saying warmachine's balance was suffering. When half the reason your game took off was "at least it's not 40k" and that advantage disappeared, it's going to really damage your player base.

I think this tied into other things, like less painted armies and less focus on lore. Yes those are theoretically small things but often these are key elements in drawing in fresh blood. Warmachine absolutely had a reputation of being weak in those areas and regardless of the fact that I'm sure there were casual warmachine painters and players, they were nowhere near as common as 40k, fantasy, or historical players. That goes for personal experience and from what I've seen online just way too common online to be a coincidence. I fully understand there are areas that probably had a healthy area of painters and hobbyists, but that's not what the game was known for, and from all the advertising, events, community interaction, even the main rulebook, the game came across as a hardcore experience for the most diehard competitive players. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think an earlier poster brought up an excellent point in the rise of e sports as well, as that definitely competed with the idea of warmachine. There is absolutely a market for that kind of game and it's proven lots of people like to play that way. The issue was that warmachine marketed itself as a competitive game, yet did steps that seemed to infuriate it's main tournament crowd which hurt the scene and is something they could ill afford with gw on the comeback.

I know there are warmachine players in this thread who don't like to hear that, but you have to realize that whatever your experience was, public perception still matters and when people are debating on dropping hundreds of dollars on plastic models and books that can make or break a game. Warmachine teaches an important lesson in that if you don't police your player base and take steps to curb a toxic community (or the perception that there is one) itcan and will hurt a game. Magic is dealing with it, 40k has had issues with it as long as I've played, heck even x wing had issues with it. The difference however was that X-Wing embraced the "fly casual" motto, even at top tables, meanwhile the only thing people knew warmachine for was "play like you have a pair." Fantasy Flight even embraced the "fly casual" motto, while Privateer Press never tried to distance themselves from the perception of their unintentional slogan. Justified or not, you have to be aware of these things or else you won't make it long in any business, especially not one as niche as tabletop wargames.

I'm going to catch flak for this post I'm sure, but I've called out games I love way more than this. Lord knows I have a mountain of posts critiquing 40k, the combo shenanigans X-Wing has devolved into, problems Bolt Action have, and many more. I'm just being honest here in what I've heard and experienced over the years across the USA, something that warmachine players need to be aware of if they plan on growing their game again.

Thanks everybody for taking the time to write some well thought out explanations and personal experiences.

My own experience with WMH was I purchased the 2nd edition 2 player starter boxes for both games as well as a few other models that I thought were cool looking. For some reason, the lore of the game clicked with me and drew me in. I bought a few of the army books and read them cover to cover, which is a very unusual thing for me to do. At this point, I had not even played a game or even really touched the minis, I just liked the lore and artwork.

So I was pretty excited to get to work painting them up. However, the quality of the minis I got are absolutely, hands down, the worst I have seen from any legitimate source. I could not believe how bad the mold lines were, where they were located, and how difficult it was to remove. I ended up giving up and sort of half arseing cleaning them up because it was just taking too long that I got to a point of eh, good enough. I think I ended up priming my sons Circle army and just throwing my guys in a shoebox out of disgust and frustration and putting it all at the back of my game closet where they sat until I rediscovered them all this past weekend, which got me thinking about the game again, doing some internet research and eventually creating this post.

Frankly all this talk about how deep and complex the rules are is scaring me off from the game. I really am not interested in anything like that at all. I just don't have the time or desire to deal with it. I've put enough time between the horrible mini quality and now that I can finish painting them and just live with them, but I just can't commit the time it seems this game will require. Is anyone aware of some simple, stripped down casual ruleset for the game, either official or otherwise?

Counts as AoS?

If it's just you and a couple other people, you probably won't have that hard of a time with it, especially if you grow slow.

The game only really gets daunting when you're facing a large pool of "competitors". If you're playing casual with one or two casters that you get to know pretty well, it's less complicated then it looks. Took me about 3 games to get the major rules down.

Most of the rulebook is rules for "unusual" models. The first few games you play, don't worry about any of the slam, headbutt, throw... umm... whatever other special attacks there are. Just get comfortable with model on model combat. Roll 2d6 and add your attack skill, to match or exceed their Def stat. After that, roll 2d6 and add your Pow+Str to exceed their Armour stat. For every point you exceed, you inflict one damage point.

Infantry can either Run (double move) and do nothing, Charge (Move +3 towards an enemy) and then fight, or walk and fight / shoot. If infantry charge at least 3 inches, their damage roll is boosted (3d6 for damage)

Jacks have to spend focus, allocated from your Warcaster in order to do those things. They can also buy extra attacks (melee only) or boost attack / damage rolls.

Your casters can cast spells, using their focus.

You can pre-measure, and you should. It's a game of fractions of an inch, when it comes to positioning.

In general, a solid strategy is piece trading. You sacrifice a cheap unit to take a bigger, more expensive unit. Tit for tat, and try to score objectives while you do it.

Don't let your caster die.

That's the core rules, right there.

Reading all these response the other thought that struck me is the reason Warhammer 40k kept it's momentum isn't just getting new players in - it's keeping old players to at least some degree. I know people go on and on complaining about edition changes or new prices or models, but they generally still play and from what I've seen generally pay out for the new stuff.

And I think that's because of the lore to a big extent. 40k isn't a complex or even that well written setting, but it's huge and over time more and more gets added. 18 chapters of marines, their histories and iconography, craftworlds of Eldar, huge numbers of different Guard regiments. There's just such a massive canvas that people can latch onto this or that part that they like.

Warmahordes broke ground (to me) in being a setting with some tropes but some differences at well. I started out when it was actually new (still have some of my old black and white cards) and having a setting without bow wielding elves and axe swinging dwarves, where most of the factions could be seen as both good guys and bad guys, was interesting.

Then as the game grew I think the creativity of the setting dried up, it went back to here's some elves, here's some dwarves, here's some spooky pumpkin stuff from Nightmare Before Xmas. Nothing really kept me caring about the setting.

 RiTides wrote:
You said:

Sqorgar wrote:There was a thread which was literally about what to do in order to draw new players to WMH, and the general sentiment was, "feth 'em".

That is not what I'm getting from that thread at all, and it's certainly not the general sentiment of it. You're badly misrepresenting it to support your point here, imo.

Like I said, the forum was down when I posted, so I didn't have a chance to reread the thread. My impression, reading it a few months ago, was that people weren't making headway in the "new player problem" because WMH players weren't interested in solving it. I remember multiple posters that basically said "feth 'em", and a couple posters saying, "No, feth you", but reading the thread again, I admit that "feth 'em" the general sentiment of the thread... but it is the general sentiment of the community. The thread is almost entirely people complaining about how common this attitude is! If you read through that thread and don't think WMH has a "new player problem", I don't know what to tell you.

The thread is filled with horror story after horror story about how new players are treated. Even people in that thread who think that new players are valuable tend to agree with the sentiment that everything rests on the newbie's shoulders. It is their responsibility to get good, their responsibility to take a curb stomping graciously, their responsibility to get better at the game without guidance. Here's some quotes from that thread:

Blargalicious wrote:"The aspiring competitive gamers need to be told that they will have their head handed back to them on a regular basis. They are going to lose, a lot, on a regular basis, until they can turn those losses into learning experiences. They need to figure out that they need to become good at the game in general before they can start becoming good at competitive tournament play. If they are going to play a competitive game and lose without having learned anything then they deserve the misery that comes with their misplaced grief."

dogganmguest wrote:"So, I've now seen:

Don't like the way that themes have infested the game? Leave.
Don't want to play 75 point steamrollers on a deathclock every time? Leave.
Don't want to play list-of-the-month or get completely run into the ground? Leave.

Ladies and gentlemen: the welcoming and inclusive Warmachine community.

Provengreil wrote:"I have a friend who went to his local club to try out warmachine after I told him I was buying into it. He bought a starter set, asked for a few battlebox level games (MK 2, so ~10-15 points I think it was) and he got turn 2'd three times since he didn't really understand the game. When he asked for help, their apparent response was "page 5, man"."

sirbrokensword wrote:Yes, if they are unhappy with playing good players with strong lists they should find a game that doesn't care about competition and leave the rest of us to play the game we want. There's lots of those wargames out there, theres only one warmachine.

Walden wrote:So In my meta we exclusively play 75 pt lists, except with absolute newbies who have small model collections. For them we set a specific time to play them. If they come to a game night usually it is to play 75pt steamroller format.

Cygnarstronk wrote:You don't get stomped, you don't get good. I've got a frined who alsways stomps me, better lists and better player, but i don't back down. If you only want to play "fair and balanced" you don't get the game, it isn't fair and it isn't balanced. List chicken is real, player gap is real, and if a newbie doesn't respect it and ackwnoledge the situation he is gonna leave the game sooner or rather. He is gonna step out of his protective bubble sooner or later, and it is better to do that soon.

"feth 'em"

Oh, another thing that’s made me lose a lot of interest is they changed how the release the fluff and stories. You used to get the anthology books that would have stories from the point of view of each faction and what they were up to. They stopped doing those and mostly just do the novels now, and nearly everything is from the point of view or Cygnar. Nothing from my primary faction, Cryx, for years now. Nothing to keep me invested in the story.

 Byte wrote:
Just another one of my predictions come true. GW outlast and crushes all. Folks don't like it, but its just true.

I'm not a white knight just a soothsayer. i.e.40k command points, wounds for vehicles, the change of BS/WS attributes(stolen from FoW, but predicted change for GW).

I've been through so many game systems since 1995. GW is still king. Its just true. Sorry haters.

The only winning move is not to play.

Interesting that the dive seems so universal. It was big at one store here and I played a game or 2 back in Mk2 - seemed to me that the armies were about the size I wanted to commit to. There were frequent events and it was much stronger than 40K which saw only occasional old timer games.

Then they cut the pressganger program, and it literally vanished instantly, or so it seemed to me.

I dropped out mid-2nd edition when the local scene was taken over by page 5 tryhards and I simultaneously realized my faction hasn't had a new model in 2 years.

Yeah, I'm dealing with the collapse of WMH in my various other game groups. WMH provided a really great quarantine area for all the competitive douchenozzle players with its bro-tastic "PLAY LIKE YOU'VE GOT A PAIR" advertising and "page 5 bruh" attitude, and when it was at its peak all you had to do to never have to deal with the dozen or so total jerks in the area was not show up on WMH night, and fend off the occasional foray into other gaming groups from one of the guys trying to get people to play a "real game."

Now the game has gone onto the discount shelf in every game store I know of in the area, and while most of them are thankfully still so blindly bitter towards Games Workshop that they won't play 40k, my attempts to get together a small group to play Necromunda, join in a local Blood Bowl group, or check out how Malifaux is doing these days have caused me to run into a number of annoyingly familiar faces from the old days using the same kind of tactics to win I remember from my old days starting to play 40k.

In my necromunda group, one of the guys joined in and found out that you get more "reputation points" (ie victory points for winning the campaign) if you win a mission with a smaller-value gang than your opponent. You're also much more likely to be able to choose what mission you want to play. So he set up his gang as a single heavy weapons guy with a heavy bolter, and a naked commander with no weapons at all but a special ability that let him re-activate a guy who's already taken his turn.

Every time he got to choose the mission, he'd pick one mission where he was trying to destroy some object in the enemy deployment zone. He'd set up his heavy bolter, double-activate it, and kill the object with his first activation, scoring a ton of Rep points. Any mission he didn't get to choose, he'd just say "I concede, you get the points, now let's roll again to see who picks."

Needless to say, he "won" the campaign after two days, so now he's done and we're all continuing to play to "see who gets second place."

In my necromunda group, one of the guys joined in and found out that you get more "reputation points" (ie victory points for winning the campaign) if you win a mission with a smaller-value gang than your opponent. You're also much more likely to be able to choose what mission you want to play. So he set up his gang as a single heavy weapons guy with a heavy bolter, and a naked commander with no weapons at all but a special ability that let him re-activate a guy who's already taken his turn.

Every time he got to choose the mission, he'd pick one mission where he was trying to destroy some object in the enemy deployment zone. He'd set up his heavy bolter, double-activate it, and kill the object with his first activation, scoring a ton of Rep points. Any mission he didn't get to choose, he'd just say "I concede, you get the points, now let's roll again to see who picks."

Needless to say, he "won" the campaign after two days, so now he's done and we're all continuing to play to "see who gets second place."

Amazing stuff. Im at a loss to fathom what glint of satisfaction he could glean from such banality.

Wow he really did not get the point of Necromunda.

 kestral wrote:
Interesting that the dive seems so universal. It was big at one store here and I played a game or 2 back in Mk2 - seemed to me that the armies were about the size I wanted to commit to. There were frequent events and it was much stronger than 40K which saw only occasional old timer games.

Then they cut the pressganger program, and it literally vanished instantly, or so it seemed to me.

Yeah, it collapsed fast and hard. Some areas that had really strong groups kept having successful events, but stores that used to be packed for a WMH event now have ample room.

The game has two main problems: attracting new players, and keeping the old ones. New players face arguably the harshest learning curve in mainstream hobby gaming, and while some areas were good about cultivating new players, others were not. WMH is somewhat unique in that a caster kill ends the game, so new players can not only lose hard, but fast. Turn two losses are very common, while even the most lopsided 40k game usually goes four turns. Pressgangers did a lot of the grunt work of bringing in new players. They ran demos, usually ran smaller events or journeymen leagues, and usually helped new players find games. Ending that program had huge consequences.

As for keeping old players, the causes are bit more obscure. Mark3 was clearly the tipping point for a lot of people (I've yet to play a game under Mk3), but clearly the disgruntlement was building before that. It's easy to say that PP went down the GW path, but there are some interesting parallels. There was overt power creep throughout MK2, with colossals really changing the meta in some strong ways. The newer models were high cost for a mixed bag of sculpt quality and production value. I think that the game was getting less fun in late MK2, with many games being brutal slogs. The focus on tournament play, coupled with the expanding scope of the game, made keeping up expensive and taxing. Basically, "getting good" at WMH took a lot of effort. The people that I saw drop away the fastest were the middles class of gamers: the guys that went 2-2 at events. The game isn't fun enough to play when mediocre, and too time intensive to become better at.

Finally, the last five years or more have seen a real blossoming of mainstream choice in hobby gaming. When WMH stumbled, games like guildball, x-wing, infinity, kings of War, and malifaux were there with wide distribution and fan bases. When PP didn't immediately right the ship, the eventual development of AOS and relase of 40k 8th edition really kept them from recovering.

the_scotsman wrote:
WMH provided a really great quarantine area for all the competitive douchenozzle players with its bro-tastic "PLAY LIKE YOU'VE GOT A PAIR" advertising and "page 5 bruh" attitude, and when it was at its peak all you had to do to never have to deal with the dozen or so total jerks in the area was not show up on WMH night...

I'm about 99% sure that this was meant as tongue-in-cheek advertising in an attempt to make some digs at GW - Privateer Press also had something in their original ads about the game being "Full Metal Fantasy" and how pewter is awesome and not wussy plastic like those "other" miniature games out there. Unfortunately, gamers being what they are, all of that went straight over most people's heads and all they read was "Play like a d-bag and stomp anybody who tries to beat you!". Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I've always seen Page 5 more as a "play your best game and be a good opponent" thing, though obviously PP took it up to 11 with the wording. There's a reason that Page 5 no longer exists in any of the books: because they realized that all it was doing is creating toxic attitudes and bros who saw it as an excuse to be jerks.

All that said, I personally stopped playing for several reasons.

1) I didn't have the time to devote to it anymore. Meaning that in order to get better at the game, you have to play it a LOT. Once a month won't cut it, and I didn't have the time or the inclination to study up on rules interactions in my spare time.

2) PP's insane insistence on sticking with pvc plastic(restic) for a lot of their sculpts. The hard plastic warjacks are fine. The resin and the pewter is fine. Anything restic is an unpleasant nightmare to clean. Painting and hobbying take precedence over playing for me, so by keeping a lot of their releases in pvc they've effectively eliminated the larger part of what I enjoy doing.

3) The CID cycle. I've heard that it helps improve the game by adjusting things to better fit with themes, etc. To me, it feels like perpetual playtesting, and again, I have no time to keep up with it.

4) Themes. I don't like them. Much like formations at the end of 7th edition, giving out free points/models as an incentive to stick to a theme means that if you're not playing in theme, you're effectively handicapping yourself. Not a fan.

I sold off a full Circle army and have no regrets about it. Keeping my Khador for now, just as an option, but for now I'm happy playing 40k.

I would say AoS is a direct response to Warmachine. An attempt to make a skirmish game that focuses on heroes and big monsters with supporting infantry, where rules are present on cards and everyone has synergistic special abilities. It has a very "Warmachine" feel from that direction. What they did was strip out the competitive aspects, at least at first, and generally keep it a bit more loosey goosey, while also having better miniatures (if you like the aesthetics).

It seems to have worked, if the relative vibrancy of the two online communities are anything to go by. But it seems to me that AoS is potentially vulnerable to the same out of control bloat that killed the fun in Warmachine in the end. Once you hit a critical mass of complexity, it becomes difficult for novices to join.

Sqorgar, such horror stories can apply to any game, and if those are the worst quotes you can find in that thread (while literally cherry picking for them out of pages and pages) it, again, doesn’t back up your sweeping statements. I can tell you you’d find Much worse in a random 40k newbie thread on Dakka lol .

Anyway, I guess we’ll agree to disagree, but I’m glad you can at least admit that the “general sentiment” of the thread does not match what you thought.

Just FYI, I stopped playing Warmachine in Mk3 myself, but it isn’t because of anything to do with the community - I had an absolutely Awesome one! It was the company and their handling of the game, like Kirby did with GW, until they finally came to their senses. I’ll be happy to come back if they make a similar turn toward customer-friendliness like GW has, too

 Da Boss wrote:
Wow he really did not get the point of Necromunda.

No kidding.

"Competitive Necromunda" isn't even a phrase that should exist.

 RiTides wrote:
Sqorgar, such horror stories can apply to any game, and if those are the worst quotes you can find in that thread (while literally cherry picking for them out of pages and pages) it, again, doesn’t back up your sweeping statements. I can tell you you’d find Much worse in a random 40k newbie thread on Dakka lol .

Anyway, I guess we’ll agree to disagree, but I’m glad you can at least admit that the “general sentiment” of the thread does not match what you thought.

Just FYI, I stopped playing Warmachine in Mk3 myself, but it isn’t because of anything to do with the community - I had an absolutely Awesome one! It was the company and their handling of the game, like Kirby did with GW, until they finally came to their senses. I’ll be happy to come back if they make a similar turn toward customer-friendliness like GW has, too

I think you can find aggressive, overly competitive types in any game, but they were always going to be more common in WMH because it was simply designed for them. Even in local shops, most players are focused on competitive play, rankings, and "the meta." Even if you took the exact same personalities, WMH is so unforgiving that it cannot be simply taught. Well, you can teach the basic rules, but you can't teach somebody to be a good player. That takes experience and time spent learning what basically every caster and most units can do.

Contrast that with 40k, which not only offers and encourages casual play, but it's also pretty simple to learn. A competent WMH player could be a competitive 40k player in probably less than six months. Pick a good army, learn to play it, learn what the other good armies do, and get some quick experience with things like target priority. A competent 40k player would need much, much longer to become a competitive WMH player.

Overly competitive is one thing. Poor sports are another.

I’ve absolutely no problem with not only getting my head kicked, but my teeth knocked out during a game, if my opponent is fun to play, and offers tips and pointers after a proper beatdown. Or explains (once in position) why what they just did worked so well.

And that ain’t the game that needs to do that, but the player base. 40k, AoS, 9th Age, Warmahordes, X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux. All of them. They need a good part of the community to be welcoming to newcomers, and help get them up to speed. And people feel the game itself encourages NooB Stomping, they’re wrong.

Even the infamous Page 5. Its ‘play like you gotta pair’. Not ‘be a total Richard all the time, every time’.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Overly competitive is one thing. Poor sports are another.

I’ve absolutely no problem with not only getting my head kicked, but my teeth knocked out during a game, if my opponent is fun to play, and offers tips and pointers after a proper beatdown. Or explains (once in position) why what they just did worked so well.

And that ain’t the game that needs to do that, but the player base. 40k, AoS, 9th Age, Warmahordes, X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux. All of them. They need a good part of the community to be welcoming to newcomers, and help get them up to speed. And people feel the game itself encourages NooB Stomping, they’re wrong.

Even the infamous Page 5. Its ‘play like you gotta pair’. Not ‘be a total Richard all the time, every time’.

It may not actively discourage new players, but it's got all the strikes against it. High investment, complex ruleset, and a focus on competitive play coming from the parent company.

That's going to both attract TFGs and discourage newbies trying to get in. 40k has all the strikes except the last one.

 RiTides wrote:
Sqorgar, such horror stories can apply to any game, and if those are the worst quotes you can find in that thread (while literally cherry picking for them out of pages and pages) it, again, doesn’t back up your sweeping statements. I can tell you you’d find Much worse in a random 40k newbie thread on Dakka lol .

Anyway, I guess we’ll agree to disagree, but I’m glad you can at least admit that the “general sentiment” of the thread does not match what you thought.

Just FYI, I stopped playing Warmachine in Mk3 myself, but it isn’t because of anything to do with the community - I had an absolutely Awesome one! It was the company and their handling of the game, like Kirby did with GW, until they finally came to their senses. I’ll be happy to come back if they make a similar turn toward customer-friendliness like GW has, too

I was interested, so I went and had a look at that thread. I have to say it confirmed what Sqorgar said. Sure, it wasn't a constant stream of "git gud newb!" comments but the general attitude of a significant minority of people on that thread swung between toxic and sociopathic. It reflects a lot of the comments people make locally about WM/H. As such, I think it's fair to say WM/H at the very least has a problem with how the community is perceived, and may have a problem with the community itself in many areas.

I think part of the problem the game is having is that I'm not sure it was ever quite as popular as the players made it out to be. As such, any drop in player numbers has a significantly greater effect on the popularity of the game. Where I'm based, in Scotland, WM/H was never that popular but even in the most "vibrant" communities in England the numbers always seemed to be significantly smaller than 40k or X-Wing. I think that's just amplified the problems that PP's recent mistakes have caused.

 Da Boss wrote:
I would say AoS is a direct response to Warmachine.

I kind of agree with this; but what really didn't help WHFB was the fact most unit box sets were average $40 each and you need 10+ of them for a starter army..
Then wonder why they couldn't get new players.

Warmahordes simply didn't take off in my area. A few of the complaints I heard was that it was easy to exploit the hell out of the mechanics and just make every battle the same kind of 'screen' game. That, and the materials and bases were a pain to deal with.

Can't confirm myself, I saw the models and wanted nothing to do with it.

It didn't help that about half of the models are kind of hideous Warcraft-esque abominations.

Anecdotally, what put me off WMH was the ‘kill the caster’ mechanic.

Whilst I never played all that many games, I found those I did very ‘samey’, with everyone having the same single strategy.

Not saying that’s an inherent flaw, it just didn’t appeal to me at all.

The V3 release really hit Warmachine really hard. V2 was getting bloated and needed a fix but it was a critical time and V3 was painfully under play tested. The new model they have for fixes and releases seems to have fixed that. If they'd repeated the V2 release format then V3 probably would have been ok.

I think that the comedically bad pricing for plastic miniatures is what continues to hurt them. This was always all over the place but the swing in the value of the £ sent it over the edge.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Anecdotally, what put me off WMH was the ‘kill the caster’ mechanic.

Whilst I never played all that many games, I found those I did very ‘samey’, with everyone having the same single strategy.

Not saying that’s an inherent flaw, it just didn’t appeal to me at all.

Do you not like Chess either? Do you not like playing Undead in WHFB?

 Mr. Grey wrote:


I'm about 99% sure that this was meant as tongue-in-cheek advertising in an attempt to make some digs at GW - Privateer Press also had something in their original ads about the game being "Full Metal Fantasy" and how pewter is awesome and not wussy plastic like those "other" miniature games out there. Unfortunately, gamers being what they are, all of that went straight over most people's heads and all they read was "Play like a d-bag and stomp anybody who tries to beat you!". Maybe I'm in the minority here, but I've always seen Page 5 more as a "play your best game and be a good opponent" thing, though obviously PP took it up to 11 with the wording. There's a reason that Page 5 no longer exists in any of the books: because they realized that all it was doing is creating toxic attitudes and bros who saw it as an excuse to be jerks.

It absolutely was tongue in cheek (though you would not think that from the amount of people that claim to have "read" it ) It was a swipe at the big dog. PP were the counterculture at the time and this was their mission statement, it was to tell you this game pulled no punches (unlike the other game that shall not be mentioned. ) though some people took it seriously, because they're quite clearly being serious when they said they're going to deplete the world of pewter by 2008 and murder your grandmother with their newly spike-covered reinvented wheel...

Around here it had a strong following, IIRC most of the local players were also Press Gangers, but it was mostly killed off by the one store who sold it no longer wanting to support it and V3 happening.

I tried to play it myself and good balance aside, it was in my eyes very newbie unfriendly, it certainly didn't help that my introduction to the game was starter boxes, my Khador against Cryx, during which I got thoroughly tabled every game without landing a single blow while being told it was part of learning the game.

 BrookM wrote:


I tried to play it myself and good balance aside, it was in my eyes very newbie unfriendly, it certainly didn't help that my introduction to the game was starter boxes, my Khador against Cryx, during which I got thoroughly tabled every game without landing a single blow while being told it was part of learning the game.

If you played against Denny1 then shes not exactly a fun game for experienced players, let alone newbies.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 BrookM wrote:


I tried to play it myself and good balance aside, it was in my eyes very newbie unfriendly, it certainly didn't help that my introduction to the game was starter boxes, my Khador against Cryx, during which I got thoroughly tabled every game without landing a single blow while being told it was part of learning the game.

If you played against Denny1 then shes not exactly a fun game for experienced players, let alone newbies.

Corrosion scarred me for life.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 BrookM wrote:


I tried to play it myself and good balance aside, it was in my eyes very newbie unfriendly, it certainly didn't help that my introduction to the game was starter boxes, my Khador against Cryx, during which I got thoroughly tabled every game without landing a single blow while being told it was part of learning the game.

If you played against Denny1 then shes not exactly a fun game for experienced players, let alone newbies.

This pretty much encompasses the attitude our local group had towards the game. I hear pretty much similar stuff in most competitive tabletop groups: lots of self-deprecation about how much of a big jerk they're being for playing this thing, everyone agrees they're a jerk...then they just go ahead and play it and make everyone have a gakky experience.

it definitely exists in 40k, but at least in 8th, the GW response to a lot of these wonky/fun-ruining type tactics has been to smash the units involved with a giant nerfbat and just invalidate the investment of the people who bought, say, 250 dollars of Razorwings to run their "Dark Eldar" army. The WMH/MTG response is usually to release a counter-unit to defeat the ridiculous strategy in kind of a clever/gamey way, which encourages the powergamey tactic to ease out of the meta via further powergaming and people figuring it out.

which is great for people who are immersed in the competitive meta, follow it, learn the counters, etc, but works terribly for casual/infrequent players who aren't interested in the competitive meta, or new players.

the_scotsman wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 BrookM wrote:


I tried to play it myself and good balance aside, it was in my eyes very newbie unfriendly, it certainly didn't help that my introduction to the game was starter boxes, my Khador against Cryx, during which I got thoroughly tabled every game without landing a single blow while being told it was part of learning the game.

If you played against Denny1 then shes not exactly a fun game for experienced players, let alone newbies.

This pretty much encompasses the attitude our local group had towards the game. I hear pretty much similar stuff in most competitive tabletop groups: lots of self-deprecation about how much of a big jerk they're being for playing this thing, everyone agrees they're a jerk...then they just go ahead and play it and make everyone have a gakky experience.

That's some damn fine twisting of my words there. I was simply stating a fact, Denny1 (especially in Mk2 and early Mk3) is somewhat antisocial to play against, there is a reason she's not in the starter anymore and anyone who's even rudimentarily familiar with WMH knows this. It wasn't a calling card for a license to be a bellend. Denny1 is pretty much a hard counter to Khador as she bypasses two of the biggest things Khador rely on- Their armour and the fact their casters have no built-in knockdown protection (save a scant few) . BrookM walked into pretty much the worst first game of WMH you could have IMO and that was what was being referenced.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Overly competitive is one thing. Poor sports are another.

I’ve absolutely no problem with not only getting my head kicked, but my teeth knocked out during a game, if my opponent is fun to play, and offers tips and pointers after a proper beatdown. Or explains (once in position) why what they just did worked so well.

And that ain’t the game that needs to do that, but the player base. 40k, AoS, 9th Age, Warmahordes, X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux. All of them. They need a good part of the community to be welcoming to newcomers, and help get them up to speed. And people feel the game itself encourages NooB Stomping, they’re wrong.

Even the infamous Page 5. Its ‘play like you gotta pair’. Not ‘be a total Richard all the time, every time’.

Agreed. But regarding the original Page 5, too many people did interpret it as "be a total Richard all the time, every time" to the point that the company essentially had to intervene by re-writing that page in later editions and back tracking hard from the tone and intent of the original. Which is good, the original was pretty toxic in hindsight, though at the time it did add to the rebellious feel of the game.

 George Spiggott wrote:
The V3 release really hit Warmachine really hard. V2 was getting bloated and needed a fix but it was a critical time and V3 was painfully under play tested. The new model they have for fixes and releases seems to have fixed that. If they'd repeated the V2 release format then V3 probably would have been ok.

I think that the comedically bad pricing for plastic miniatures is what continues to hurt them. This was always all over the place but the swing in the value of the £ sent it over the edge.

This is my reason for quitting. I decided to quit near the end of MKII. I spent a few hundred to get into it during MKIII with a new faction but the plastic boxes price change was noticeable.

@ Stevefamine: Interesting. I was actually taking about how they were almost randomly priced because their price was linked to the exchange rate when they were released. The price difference between different Circle Orboros Griffons are a good example of this. I didn't realise the problem extended to the home market (USA) as well. There's also the issue of large resin releases being special order/import only.

There have been a few too many warcaster/warlock releases that invite spam lists for my tastes as well. This was also a problem at the tail end of MKII. It may get fixed in the next couple of months with the upcoming Circle CID.

I haven't quit, although I haven't played in ages. I'm trimming down to one faction (from effectively five) and following events. That has become more difficult since PP shredded their forums.

Probably worth a separate thread but do people think the Facebook/social media trend with PP (and several other manufacturers) is helping or hindering the hobby?

 Sqorgar wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

Sqorgar wrote:WMH, both the game and the community, was outright hostile to new players to the point where a new player that stuck around for more than a month or two was as common as a unicorn.

That's very close to trolling. WMH is a hard, unforgiving game. When the game was smaller, this represented a manageable, but appealing challenge. You earned your wins.

But to say the community is 'outright hostile' to new players? No sir. As a (lapsed) member of that community, and on behalf of my friends that still play, I find this comment appallingly rude and condescending. Some of the nicest people I've gotten to know through gaming play or played warmachine. Now fine, there are trolls that play WMH and go about noobstalking. I know some. Thing is, those same trolls play other Wargames and stalk noobs there too. It's not a WMH thing. It's a gakky gamer thing. Equating that to WMH is inaccurate, misleading, and just really rubbish behaviour on your part. Please don't. Please, don't tar a whole community as TFGs.

I assure you, I am not trolling, regardless of how offended it may make you. I was going to link you to a particular thread on Lormahordes, but it appears to be down at the moment. There was a thread which was literally about what to do in order to draw new players to WMH, and the general sentiment was, "feth 'em".

Sure, there were one or two posters who were saying, "Without new players, our game will eventually die", but generally speaking, the response was, "why should I change how I play just to let some newbies win? I had to learn the hard way, so should they. After they lose their 30th tournment-style match in a row, they'll have gained valuable experience needed to play the game at a somewhat competent level." They literally shouted down someone suggesting that they play smaller point games and play inefficient lists to give new players a chance to actually play the game instead of being curb stomped in the second round.

The WMH community is absolutely the most anti-newbie community I have ever seen in my life, across all games, genres, and hobbies. I don't even blame the game itself, though it does have a learning curve. I think WMH can be played narratively or casually, but the community doesn't allow it. They don't make the game look good, they don't make it fun to play, they don't make it fun to belong, they don't make it easy to follow, and they don't allow for any variation in how others are allowed to enjoy it.

That's why WMH is dying but GW survived much worse sins. GW was always bringing in new players and making them feel special and like they belonged, while WMH players were telling them that "you'll lose the first 20 games you play (and won't have fun for most of them), but eventually, I'll bother playing you once you 'git gud' with your two tournament armies"

beast_gts wrote:
I bought the Khador Battlegroup box after playing a demo game at a con. Built & painted it, then got turned down for a game by a dozen different players across three clubs because I was a noob. Just because Deadnight and my experiences are different to yours doesn't mean we're trolling.

And I'll bet you money that the vast majority of them didn't have a single painted model.

I liked the game for the "git gud" aspect, but yes, Warmahordes (as a general concept) was extremely unforgiving, and playing to win was all that mattered for many in that game.

My breaking point came during a steamroller where I lost 3rd place because my opponent did half a turn of illegal moves for a WC kill. When I called the TO over and showed him what happened, his response was "well, can't take back moves, sorry!" Like moving two models back 7" would have been difficult....

The community, as a whole, never was very newbie friendly. Even when I started, with Skorne in MK2, people would play me with the meanest, nastiest thing they could and pummel me over and over... it wasn't much fun, and yes I did get much better, but for a lot of people the steep curve and Dark Souls punishing games are too much.

My breaking point came during a steamroller where I lost 3rd place because my opponent did half a turn of illegal moves for a WC kill. When I called the TO over and showed him what happened, his response was "well, can't take back moves, sorry!" Like moving two models back 7" would have been difficult....

The community, as a whole, never was very newbie friendly. Even when I started, with Skorne in MK2, people would play me with the meanest, nastiest thing they could and pummel me over and over... it wasn't much fun, and yes I did get much better, but for a lot of people the steep curve and Dark Souls punishing games are too much.

That TO was absolutely 100% in the wrong on that ruling. No idea why he wasn't willing to rule in your favor, especially when it comes to making a bunch of illegal moves. Sorry you had to deal with that.

Re: "the community" - I keep seeing people making statements like yours about how very unfriendly the community is to newbies, but I think this depends entirely on your local groups/game stores. In my area here there have never been issues like this that I've noticed, and our biggest store runs frequent Slow Grow leagues to get more people into the game. Even the top tier players were always willing to play against someone new and give them games at lower levels. All that said, the game has a VERY steep learning curve, and unless you're willing to put in a lot of time and effort, you *will* end up losing a lot of games until you get better.

 Polonius wrote:
Finally, the last five years or more have seen a real blossoming of mainstream choice in hobby gaming. When WMH stumbled, games like guildball, x-wing, infinity, kings of War, and malifaux were there with wide distribution and fan bases. When PP didn't immediately right the ship, the eventual development of AOS and relase of 40k 8th edition really kept them from recovering.

When GW can hand s rank newbie a single sheet of paper containing ALL of the AoS rules, that's a pretty strong bonus in terms of being able to get them to try the game. Who can't play that?

OTOH, when the most honest and earnest Press Ganger tells someone that their game is this much larger pile of rules, and BTW you're gonna get brutally curbstomped for the first few months, with barely any chance to learn anything from those turn 2 kills, it's not hard to go back to the AoS and start there.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Do you not like Chess either? Do you not like playing Undead in WHFB?

Pretty sure it's almost impossible for a halfway attentive Chess player to lose on Turn 2. OTOH, WFB 5/6, it was possible for DoW and Undead to lose before the first turn, and no, people didn't like that.

The meta was also quite daunting yeah, I remember Press Gangers lamenting that certain games were just unwinnable because of certain caster match ups.

I really like the warmahordes universe, and the models, but the game didn't seem to last in my group, and people were starting to play it right when I moved and stopped playing with them as often... so I ended up never really getting into it too heavily. I had a Skorne army that I bought, painted and sold, and then a Khador army that I bought, kinda painted, then forgot about.

I didn't realize it was struggling though.. they seem to have a bunch of cool new steady releases, so they must still be doing well enough?

I guess maybe I just have an awesome utopia of a local meta lol as I never experienced any of these negatives for the most part. It was so much fun at the height of Mk2...

 Necros wrote:
they seem to have a bunch of cool new steady releases, so they must still be doing well enough?

I won't lie, Skarre 3 on the giant wreck of a ship had me reaching for my wallet. That is just a gorgeous model in my opinion. I hear it is a tough build and I ultimately decided not to buy because the initial release had QC problems, but it is one I'd like to eventually add to my aging Cryx collection.

1. People finally woke up and realized that all of the assertions being made about “better rules”, “more balanced game play”, “cheaper models”, “more customer focused company” etc. were all false.

2. The community basically ate itself alive. The toxicity got to be so bad that people (players, organizers, community leaders, etc.) just walked away. The online community disbanded and I know of four areas, each separated by 50+ miles, where the PP community collapsed under the weight of its own vitriol.

Some of my fondest memories...

I once had a Press Ganger do a Warmahine demo with me and the whole time he only trashed GW and W40K. When I asked “What sets this game apart from W40K?”, he said nothing about Warmachine or or PP, he only continued to trash GW and W40K. I was so disgusted that I cut him off mid-sentence and explained to him that his approach to recruiting players is deplorable.

Here’s another great Press Ganger interaction story… I was visiting my home town (~150 miles away from where I had the wonderful demo game mentioned above) and stopped by the LGS. Well wouldn’t you know it, the local Press Ganger was there and after I purchased something W40K related the Press Ganger chimes in “You should just toss that in the trash and learn how to play a real game.”

Sadly, my experiences with the player base isn't any better.

Here's my problem with posts like oni's above, though:

It sounds like you have never liked Warmahordes, especially with your point #1 and the "fondest memories" you listed. While the community did disband in many areas (including mine), it's not because of "toxicity". I listed the "perfect storm" of events that happened that caused a huge drop in players for Warmahordes earlier, and a lot of posters in this thread echoed it:

 RiTides wrote:
I think the main "event" you may be missing is:

- Towards the end of 2nd edition certain lists were getting very broken, and some players (and even prominent podcasts) questioned balance and even switched entirely to other systems such as Guild Ball or Malifaux

- PP put out 3rd edition with little build-up or testing to address this, while claiming to have been working on it for 3 years. But glaring problems like the basic throw rules not working, or an entire faction being unplayable (Skorne) led to people doubting this.

- PP near simultaneously removed their Press Ganger program for organized play (citing legal issues with Magic judges) and removed their faction forums from their website. Effectively, the two most common ways to organize / talk about their games disappeared together.

I think PP could have overcome any one of the above, but taken together it very effectively killed the game in many local areas, mine included, while reducing its structure for bringing in new players. So, almost like GW's last Kirby-decision in killing WHFB, but without the huge investment and effort GW was prepared to put into rebuilding its player base.

As others have said, this happened while GW has really turned around and been doing basically what their fans are asking for. PP has been doing the opposite, and there are just too many good options to play instead...

Some of you, imo, are just piling on and listing all the things you don't like about Warmahordes / PP. And while some of your points have merit, that is Not (imo) what happened to it. Rather, what happened is what's in my quote above... a terrible convergence of bad decisions on the company's part, and bad timing, which led to a lot of players leaving and finding other games to play.

The really hard thing is rebuilding a community, especially with all the home runs GW is hitting recently. I have heard MK3 is quite good now, but all my local group (including myself) have moved on to other games...

Eh, ... why not both? PP made some poor decisions. Some communities imploded.

I agree that the people saying Warmachine was cheaper than GW were just wrong - the models are similarly priced and often of poorer quality. I love some of them, like the Dire Troll Mauler and the Earthborn and Mulg, but others in the same range are terrible, with awful proportions and no consistency.
The GAME could be cheaper, but on a model by model basis GW was often cheaper than PP.

But the rules were more balanced, at least up to the middle of Mk2 when I stopped playing. Far more balanced than almost any set of rules GW had ever put out, only the Ravening Hordes period was as balanced. This was because of the strategy of updating all factions simultaneously. As I understand it, this sort of fell by the wayside, and now due to the games overabundance of factions and minis within those factions the balance is apparently not as good. But for a long time it was pretty good. There were some lists that had an edge, but you could give it a good go with any list and win. And most of the time with rare exceptions, every faction had one of the "power lists" with the hard edge, so you could play whatever faction you liked at the top tier. I played a fairly non-standard Troll list (didn't use a Krielstone for example) and I did win a tournament using it. Compared to my travails through three editions of 40K bringing Orks to tournaments, that was a real breath of fresh air. GW has some golden boy favourites who always get treated well and some neglected stepchildren who always get the gakky end of the stick, and in some cases get entirely written out of the game.

That said, it is undeniable from what people are saying here that it was not very newbie friendly in many ways. Some of this is just down to the complexity and learning curve, but there was also a tendency to a certain mentality among players.

40K has a wider appeal I think, and certainly appeals more to casual gamers and less to the tournament crowd. PP was chasing the tournament folk, and that has an effect on the overall community. That is not to say that there are not extremely welcoming and chilled out groups, but the general tendency is not in that direction.

It is a shame that the game has died. It was a lot of fun, and especially for a tournament or whatever, it was a well designed game. I had a lot of fun playing it and introduced it to my entire friend group, some of whom are still really into it to this day. I wouldn't mind picking it back up, but it seems like the local scene is completely dead.

 Da Boss wrote:
I agree that the people saying Warmachine was cheaper than GW were just wrong - the models are similarly priced and often of poorer quality. I love some of them, like the Dire Troll Mauler and the Earthborn and Mulg

Those are still my 3 favorite models of the range (in metal) and the ones I started with

JohnHwangDD - You're right of course, it can always be a mix, and Warmahordes has always had some of the weaknesses people are pointing out in this thread. But the question was "What happened?". As obviously, it was doing pretty well despite its shortcomings, until suddenly it wasn't. And I think that has more to do with the events I listed above, rather than the more general dislikes people are posting about the game (imo, of course).

I basically put a list together of the models I liked, made one or two concessions to synergy, but apart from that it was just stuff I liked the look of. And once I learned how to use it, I could compete in tournaments. That is rarely true with GW.

Regarding costs, it may be a North America vs Europe thing. WMH is much, much cheaper to buy into in my experience, particularly startup costs.

In Ontario, Canada, I can buy a battle box for $45 (CAD) This includes about 30 points of Jacks, and a Warcaster. This also includes the unit cards (also available for free, online) as well as a hard copy of the rules (also available for free, online). This gets you started at a "0" point game, which sounds weird, but there you go. If you buy a second starter box, you'd have a 30/75 points for a full-sized army, for $90.

Now, admittedly, things get pricier. A couple of 10 dude boxes, with attachments, is going to add about $130, depending on what you're after. Another heavy Jack will be $35. Let's say 4 more solos will tack about $70 on. So your first, full, playable at a tournament army will cost about $325 for models and rules. Many factions have some reusable parts between themes, so making a second list that reuses some / most of the Jacks might tack another $200 on. So for about $500 to $600 you have the rules and models to attend a 2-list Steamroller. That's new, off the shelf pricing at my FLGS. Not all factions can do that. There are factions, similar to Forge World, that are more expensive to play.

Compared to $70 for the 40k rule book and $50 for a codex, totalling $120.

Start collecting boxes are $100 each. I'm guessing about 400 points in the box? I am taking an uneducated guess. Add to that 5 more boxes at $60 each and you've spent $620 to buy the models and rules for one 1500 point army with no swap-outs.

WMH is cheaper to play, with more variety, in Ontario, Canada.

So I started playing at the beginning of the game after it was shown at gen-con. I never thought of it as better than the GW games I played just another game to enjoy. Which I did until the middle of Mk2.. I stopped enjoying the mechanics at that point and quit playing tho I did keep up with it. Mk3 took the game in a direction that I felt was even worse. So I got rid of everything and haven't looked back. I love the world and I consider the Trollbloods one of the best factions to ever be created for a game. However the over competitive community, overpriced and poor quality models along with the changes at privateer itself forced me to move on. Every store within 2 hours of me has either put the product on clearance or is getting ready to and all the players have quit and moved to other games.

not sure, its still pretty much top dog here, only X-wing is more popular, pretty much noone around here plays 40k and AoS never got off the ground (Kill team is looking like its attracting a lot of attention locally)

 RiTides wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
I agree that the people saying Warmachine was cheaper than GW were just wrong - the models are similarly priced and often of poorer quality. I love some of them, like the Dire Troll Mauler and the Earthborn and Mulg

Those are still my 3 favorite models of the range (in metal) and the ones I started with

JohnHwangDD - You're right of course, it can always be a mix, and Warmahordes has always had some of the weaknesses people are pointing out in this thread. But the question was "What happened?". As obviously, it was doing pretty well despite its shortcomings, until suddenly it wasn't. And I think that has more to do with the events I listed above, rather than the more general dislikes people are posting about the game (imo, of course).

I think the big thing that impacted PP was X-wing. You mention Malifaux and Guildball, but feel and saw in my local scene X-wing have the biggest impact. In various threads (even now in this one) that would devolve into GW bashing, X-wing was always held up to mock GW prices.

Why buy this one model when you can get a complete competitive list for X-wing for the same cost.

Problem is the same applied to WMH. A colossal is just as eye watering price wise as a knight. I play AOS, but also play Infinity and Batman and when I grab some GW boxes, I think, Damnn, I can start a whole new army for that price in X

Plus, as many people pointed out in the past, WMH tournaments often were seas of unpainted and even unassembled models. X-wing came out with tight rules, zero model prep, and a massive IP. That not only sucked a lot of players away from GW, it sucked players away from PP. While GW cultivated their HHHobby where they appealed to modelers and painters as well, PP's playerbase pushed mostly the game play and rules. As pointed out, PP puts out some good models, but very few that would grab the painters or hobby people. Throw in PP's PVC figs, they didn't have a hobby base to help cushion any falls. What happens to a game that prides itself on the power of its rules when a better game with other advantages appears? It suffers.

X-wing might now be suffering for bloat and FF's own money grubbing schemes, but it was very accessible for enough time to really hurt PP.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just wanted to add one more thing regarding player community, while the first press ganger in my area was a horrible "Page 5" guy who didn't last. We had several great guys followed up as Press Gangers to help build the WMH community. Have friends who moved to WMH after WHFB 8th and AOS and feel the community is welcoming.

Would have been playing WMH if it weren't for the caster kill mechanic. Just rubs me the wrong way.

In the early days of mid mk2, it was fun for me. I got stomped but everyone was friendly. Pg 5 never came across to me as permission to be a gakker, nor did I ever run into people irl that felt that way. Pg 5 to us meant "Hmmm ive got a crazy scheme that has a 5% chance of winning the game, but if it fails I've got a 99.9% chance of losing immediately, hmmmm. Oh well, pg 5, lets do this!".

Time went on, unbalanced themes started being a thing, didn't like that. Mk 3 dropped, and the rules were wonky, skorne was boned, but I didn't really mind to be honest. What I did mind was the community slowly growing more aggressive and less fun. Nobody cared about jounreyman leagues for new players. Nobody cared about narrative campaigns that saw one of your dudes level up and become stronger. It was 50 pt steamroller or nothing. I tried for a long time to squeeze blood out of that turnip, but to no avail. In the end, I had more fun playing niche games like malifaux and infinity, or dead games like confrontation, hell dorado, anima tactics, and all that jazz with one other dude who was always down to try something new, as opposed to a community (that shrunk) of people that only wanted to play tourny lists and formated all day erry day, and if you don't want to then they simply wouldn't play you.

To my eye as an outsider, it seemed like they ran out of new/interesting things to make with their universe and aesthetic right around the same time GW started getting their own lines in order.

The later Warmachine releases were just kinda "now it is really big" "now this caster has 4 models" "now the same stuff you thought was innovative 5 years ago are finally plastic"

 RiTides wrote:
Here's my problem with posts like oni's above, though:

Dude, seriously, you're shouting down anyone who's had a worse community experience than you. Your happy little groupo is no more representative of the community than the heaps of posters' who were turned away by the toxicity.

Mk3 happened

Wildly undertested (pre-fix Una 2 rivals anything GW has done in the tedious spam department)

A breath taking lack of awareness and/or arrogance from PP, thinking 'better' rules justify higher prices and lower quality models, without seeming to be aware of the vast range of alternatives now available

I still play from time to time as plugging a new caster into my existing collection is a lark, also helps my fellow local players are virtually horizontal in the laid back stakes

Yeah, have to add my own horror stories to this heap as well. Our FLGS tried to start up a Warmahordes community during the height of GW hate. The Press Ganger was a nice guy as I recall, and the demo he did impressed me enough to buy a starter copy and pick up the rules. I had my first double-take when I read page 5, and it made me cautious about playing with others - I’d had my head stomped in trying to learn 40K, and I wasn’t looking forward to a repeat performance. The PP guy had been nice enough though, I decided I’d give it a go.

So I practiced using the Warmachine video game to get some experience under my belt - at least a token level. Once I felt like I at least knew what I was doing at a basic level (and that took a few games at that), I took my Cygnar list to the shop to see if I could get a game in.

What I saw being played at the FLGS made me do an immediate 180 and walk out. It was the same “Play like you got a pair” sort of BS I had walked away from in 40K - but even worse. I could tell that not only would my list not have a chance nor did it have enough points to garner more than a few sneers at its size, the game banter wasn’t even pleasant to listen to. I felt like I was being sized up like an animal for slaughter; they were just looking for fresh meat for another notch on their belt.

Oddly enough, as soon as Mk 3 came out, the entire local community vanished. I haven’t heard of anyone at the local FLGS playing WarmaHordes, and the store isn’t stocking any product any more.

So is WMH generally now dead in most areas?
I recall around 2012-14 it being quite strong over here but havent kept tabs on it since.

It is dead in a lot of places. I know the Dublin scene is still somewhat active - a friend of mine is in the ETC group for WMH and he says it is still going strong.

But a lot of local groups in smaller cities have collapsed. Nürnberg used to have an active group playing twice a week, now it is completely dead within a year.

Sorry if it came across that I was ignoring your view, lord_blackfang! What I really wanted to focus on was this:

 Stormonu wrote:
Oddly enough, as soon as Mk 3 came out, the entire local community vanished. I haven’t heard of anyone at the local FLGS playing WarmaHordes, and the store isn’t stocking any product any more.

This matches what happened in a lot of areas where warmahordes was thriving, and so focusing on the events leading up to that, rather than just general like/dislike of the game, is more relevant to the cause (imo, of course!).

Yeah that was more Deadnight earlier on given his comments on peoples experiences within the Warmahordes communities that weren't positive.

 Da Boss wrote:
I basically put a list together of the models I liked, made one or two concessions to synergy, but apart from that it was just stuff I liked the look of. And once I learned how to use it, I could compete in tournaments. That is rarely true with GW.

And on an anecdotal level, that is the opposite of my own experience. I went in saying "the big dragons are cool, I want to run big dragons, what do you have to do to do that" and chose my caster based on that desire, got all the correct support elements, and put together a competent enough high-offense big monster list.

and I got absolutely hammered, game after game after game, by people running tournament meta netlists which were, to make matters worse, made extra confusing by the massive use of semi-assembled models and proxies. I never played against an army that had anything painted, and I probably played against more beaten up old GW dreadnoughts and starter pack space marines than PP models.

At the height of the scatbike/wk/formation madness of 7th edition 40k (the reason I was trying out WMH in the first place) competitive warmahordes lists felt less fun and interactive to play against. After all, who doesn't love playing against a circle list that slowly walks impenetrable lines of trees across the battlefield to get their massively tanky treemen in your face, or a list that knocks down all your monsters turn after turn so you can't do anything? And if the game's no fun, you can just enjoy listening to the wonderful community babble almost entirely in jargon broken up by the occasional rape joke if someone's army contains a female model.

I probably played 10-12 games just due to my own sunk cost fallacy before I realized I could just go on any number of swap sites and trade off my painted army for an unpainted 40k army worth three times as much.

Anecdotal evidence isn't worth anything to anyone but the person who had the one experience, for the most part.

Fair cop, mate. Being an Ork player for a long time, my experience with 40K was long periods of frustration with brief periods of intense enjoyment when we got a new book, until it was surpassed by the next new hotness and had to wait through the years long cycle of marine variants.

I don’t play as much, personally as far as communities go the ones I’ve been in were no worse that 40K communities (and better than the worst 40k community I ever had the misfortune of being part).

The online communities were exceptionally cutthroat though, and had a bad case of “bitter ex-spouse” syndrome when it came to GW games.

I didn’t mind mk 3 that much, I liked Jacks being a bigger part of the game again (especially after mk 1 and 2 saw lists minimizing if not outright removing them entirely).

But at the same time I saw what mk 3 did for some armies. For example, Skorne were so bad that PP needed to have a complete do-over with them.

I’m also not a huge fan of the way they handled the community with killing their forums and axing the PG program.

I also don’t like their new model and book release system. I liked how they would put out a book with a few new models for everybody and fluff that advanced the storyline.

One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

PP made some big mistakes all at once and burned bridges - hopefully they can turn it around and I would trust them to do so. It's still the second biggest game to Warhammer; its still got a strong set of rules and good models and it would be crying shame to see them fall apart after years of great gaming.


Sure things are a bit harder now; GW has awoken and the slumbering dragon has flexed its might with changes and shown that its still got a loyal following of addicts . That said I still think the market has room and that PP can stil rise up from these doldrums.

I only had a few interactions with WMH players, and they were mostly all positive. But I only tried MK2. Can’t speak for anything before or after.

 Krinsath wrote:
One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

In some ways, Warmachine is a good example of the problems with the online discount model. A big part of its rise was definitely the price, but that price wasn't really that much lower without considering the online discounts. The problem with this though, is the game was really only thriving through the sales of a couple major outlets. At a local level, a lot of stores were pretty frustrated with the game. They stocked it because people played, but nobody actually bought the stock. You had the enthusiasts buying in heavily, and then bringing those heavy investments in to places that didn't see a dime of it and were mostly taking a loss on what they kept in stock to support this popular thing that filled their shop. Battleboxes sitting on shelves got replaced with products people bought off the shelves and with that, there were definitely fewer new players. The discount limits were pretty necessary, but they kind of exposed the truth that the game really wasn't any cheaper than 40k and rather than people buying locally at prices more in line with what they could get online, a lot of people just stopped buying.

I'm not exactly sure how you go about fixing this, but I think Warmachine is probably the game that was most affected by the online discount bubble, and has certainly suffered after it popped.

 silent25 wrote:


Would have been playing WMH if it weren't for the caster kill mechanic. Just rubs me the wrong way.

I always loved that mechanic. Because regardless of how badly i was getting my ass kicked. I still had a chance to comeback and win.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

In some ways, Warmachine is a good example of the problems with the online discount model. A big part of its rise was definitely the price, but that price wasn't really that much lower without considering the online discounts. The problem with this though, is the game was really only thriving through the sales of a couple major outlets. At a local level, a lot of stores were pretty frustrated with the game. They stocked it because people played, but nobody actually bought the stock. You had the enthusiasts buying in heavily, and then bringing those heavy investments in to places that didn't see a dime of it and were mostly taking a loss on what they kept in stock to support this popular thing that filled their shop. Battleboxes sitting on shelves got replaced with products people bought off the shelves and with that, there were definitely fewer new players. The discount limits were pretty necessary, but they kind of exposed the truth that the game really wasn't any cheaper than 40k and rather than people buying locally at prices more in line with what they could get online, a lot of people just stopped buying.

I'm not exactly sure how you go about fixing this, but I think Warmachine is probably the game that was most affected by the online discount bubble, and has certainly suffered after it popped.

Good points, but wouldn't a lot of that be offset by a store having an active (and capable) Pressganger? MY LGS was a huge hub of WM/H from MK1-3, and only this last spring did they clearance out all of their PP stuff. Prior to abandoning the system the LGS had an active PG and a thriving community. I know that PG drove sales to the store because he was really good at selling the game and getting people enthusiastic. I am sure not everyone who played there bought there, but the store devoted a substantial amount of shelf space to PP games for years, so it was obviously worth their while to stock the full range-- until it suddenly wasn't.

If a company is going to kill online discounts and drive sales to B&M stores, they need store liaisons pure and simple.

 Overread wrote:
PP made some big mistakes all at once and burned bridges - hopefully they can turn it around and I would trust them to do so. It's still the second biggest game to Warhammer; its still got a strong set of rules and good models and it would be crying shame to see them fall apart after years of great gaming.


Sure things are a bit harder now; GW has awoken and the slumbering dragon has flexed its might with changes and shown that its still got a loyal following of addicts . That said I still think the market has room and that PP can stil rise up from these doldrums.

I'm not sure that will be possible at PP. GW is a public company and it's revival was triggered by a new CEO who shook things up by kicking out certain upper managers and start listening to the rest of the staff. PP is privately owned by Matt Wilson and run by his wife. Talking with people who worked at PP, Wilson's wife keeps a pretty tight grip on operations. The perfect storm of bad decisions stemmed from them. Barring the sale of the company by Wilson, I don't see this happening.

Also, X-Wing has the prize for second biggest game next to 40k. PP use to crow about being the second biggest miniature game company out there, but since X-wing came out, they've stopped saying that.

 AduroT wrote:
Guild Balls been on a diminishing cycle as well at the moment it seems. Lots less interest there as well.

I think that's what you get when you sell your game on competitive play. If you let the "balance" slip, or something else comes along, then the players are off because it's the competition they're into, not necessarily your game. Warmachine started with a fairly interesting setting, then abandoned a lot of the exploration, IMO, to double down on adding things to the gameplay, rather than the world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Crimson Devil wrote:

 silent25 wrote:


Would have been playing WMH if it weren't for the caster kill mechanic. Just rubs me the wrong way.

I always loved that mechanic. Because regardless of how badly i was getting my ass kicked. I still had a chance to comeback and win.

Gameplay, not setting. Works for some people, but not for me. I see why you like it, but from a story point of view, it never sat right for me.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Mk3 happened

It was dead round here long before mk3 came out (and that actually caused a bit of a resurgence!). The tournament scene appeared to have moved on to Malifaux and Guildball. These days it looks like X-Wing and a hint of Shadespire.

In a wierd sort of related news the announced Malifaux Version 3 and the killer off certain characters making them unplayable in the game. I look to see them in bargain bins too.

thing is Mk3 wasn't terri-bad (from a non-Skorne POV) but far from what was promised

I don't like caster kill either but it has its place in a tournament focussed game

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

Warmachine started with a fairly interesting setting, then abandoned a lot of the exploration, IMO, to double down on adding things to the gameplay, rather than the world.

The setting really was a hidden gem. I have all the old D20 rpg material and pretty much all of the current ikrpg stuff.

I disagree that they stopped adding to the world. I think they started adding too much to the world and in the wrong way. When I started you had five warmachine factions and four hordes, plus mercs and minions. Now add to that convergence, crucible guard, grymkin and they've spoken about a new faction Every year. Now, the setting is the size of Western Europe but there is only so much space for this bloat of factions.

The ikrpg was a fantastic way of adding to the world, and it's a shame they've stopped publishing expansions to it (really wanted an ios one!). What they're currently doing though is adding bloat, without adding depth.

And it's a shame.

beowulfhunter wrote:
In a wierd sort of related news the announced Malifaux Version 3 and the killer off certain characters making them unplayable in the game. I look to see them in bargain bins too.

A similar thing happened with Infinity where CB split one of factions up due to a civil war/uprising. Players of that faction were not happy since a number of them found large chunks of their army unusable. While an evolving story world can be interesting, it can also turn off people when story events impact actual game play.

While not perfect, GW has at least included rules and points/rules for some of their old WHFB units for AoS so people can still play with them. They openly state though they are not meant for competitive play. Wyrd would be smart to include legacy rules so people aren't completely screwed in the new edition.

 silent25 wrote:

beowulfhunter wrote:
In a wierd sort of related news the announced Malifaux Version 3 and the killer off certain characters making them unplayable in the game. I look to see them in bargain bins too.

A similar thing happened with Infinity where CB split one of factions up due to a civil war/uprising. Players of that faction were not happy since a number of them found large chunks of their army unusable. While an evolving story world can be interesting, it can also turn off people when story events impact actual game play.

While not perfect, GW has at least included rules and points/rules for some of their old WHFB units for AoS so people can still play with them. They openly state though they are not meant for competitive play. Wyrd would be smart to include legacy rules so people aren't completely screwed in the new edition.

beowulfhunter is being disingenuous, Wyrd are doing exactly the same as what GW did with their legacy stuff. On the new edition launch, the removed masters are getting released in a "Dead Man's Hand" format, where they aren't tournament legal as standard(although a TO can elect to allow them) but they have full rules for any other game. Unfortunately for some, this isn't enough it seems, because the Malifaux community have been very angry with it in some places

On PP and WarmaHordes though, I would agree with the general sentiment presented here. The absolute failure of the Mk3 launch, public relations bungles and proliferation of themes destroying balance are the major things at play in terms of the lost playerbase. My personal experience with the local group was like this, as we first had major balance issues (Cryx got nerfed sure, but it was definitely too far in places, and Skorne were straight up unplayable), then we lost forums and the online community fractured (becoming even more toxic in a lot of places) and then themes started to hit. The free models on top of theme bonuses was really what killed them IMO, because it makes out of theme lists useless in comparison, and they've moved to a GW style of release with them. If you aren't one of the more recent CID factions with a new theme, you're pretty much left behind. And some factions also don't have all their theme lists yet, so if you're playing one of those themes, you're in worse luck (but IIRC this is almost not an issue)

beowulfhunter is being disingenuous, Wyrd are doing exactly the same as what GW did with their legacy stuff. On the new edition launch, the removed masters are getting released in a "Dead Man's Hand" format, where they aren't tournament legal as standard(although a TO can elect to allow them) but they have full rules for any other game. Unfortunately for some, this isn't enough it seems, because the Malifaux community have been very angry with it in some places

For some if it's not tournament legal, it might as well have been cut as it can influence a community to overall get rid of them.

Interesting points brought up and here I am just hoping pp keeps their painta available because I have taken a serious liking to what they are doing in that department. I always hated the resi . Loved the settings and asthetics and the complexity. I am a total complexity guy when it comes to wargaming but thy dropped the ball. Something corporations need to learn is customer service, it isn't just a problem I wargaming, it's a problem in almost every industry. They get cocky, arrogant, and take the customer for granted. Then it just falls apart. Most folks forget how Grass Roots GW once was, a game company for gamers. They got big and several times their arrogance has almost brought them tumbling down.

Smaller compo don't have that kind of luck or endurance to handle falling on their pride and living long enough to heal or just having a big enough global empire to make it through.

I don't really have a horse in the Malifaux argument, but my experience has been that if a model is not tournament legal, potential opponents will generally avoid playing against it. Usually this is because they're practicing for a tournament or tuning a list for one.

I used to see this all the time with special characters in 40k and Fantasy back in the day, and DZC had the same issue with their special commanders.

From the perspective of having started in Mk 3, I get the feeling that it is a much different game to Mk 2. It's like PP is starting a new game that basically has next to nothing in common with previous editions.

It's not that Mk 3 isn't a good game on it's own merits, because I think it is. It's that previous players obviously liked what was previously happening, and this game is no longer that. Which means that previous players don't like this new thing, and Mk 3 has to start over like a new game.

Like any new game, it needs "founders" to grow the community. And PP axed their previous "official" ambassadors. So as a business, I could easily see this as needlessly daunting to act as a founder for Mk 3 while 40k was hitting a renaissance. No unpaid support, angry fans, better financial opportunities meant all 3 legs of support went out from under the game.

I have every reason to believe the game will come back. I hope to act as a "founder" for this game in my home town because I like it, and want opponents to play against.

 greatbigtree wrote:
From the perspective of having started in Mk 3, I get the feeling that it is a much different game to Mk 2. It's like PP is starting a new game that basically has next to nothing in common with previous editions.

It's not that Mk 3 isn't a good game on it's own merits, because I think it is. It's that previous players obviously liked what was previously happening, and this game is no longer that. Which means that previous players don't like this new thing, and Mk 3 has to start over like a new game.

Like any new game, it needs "founders" to grow the community. And PP axed their previous "official" ambassadors. So as a business, I could easily see this as needlessly daunting to act as a founder for Mk 3 while 40k was hitting a renaissance. No unpaid support, angry fans, better financial opportunities meant all 3 legs of support went out from under the game.

I have every reason to believe the game will come back. I hope to act as a "founder" for this game in my home town because I like it, and want opponents to play against.

I agree. The only people I saw majorly grumbling* about Mk3 were the people that ran terrible skew lists that no longer worked and they had to buy new stuff (oh, the horror!). PP already attempted to accommodate them by removing the FA on certain units so all of those theme lists would be legal again, but that wasn't enough. They basically wanted Mk2 and were unwilling to learn a new game. "Competitive" to them meant I want to win every game all the time with no learning time in between.





*Yes, yes. There was Skorne too but they kinda had a point, unlike the other guys.

nobody wrote:
I don't really have a horse in the Malifaux argument, but my experience has been that if a model is not tournament legal, potential opponents will generally avoid playing against it. Usually this is because they're practicing for a tournament or tuning a list for one.

I used to see this all the time with special characters in 40k and Fantasy back in the day, and DZC had the same issue with their special commanders.

I try really hard to be empathetic with gamers about changes, but the way people react when models become cut from tournament play shows a really undignified aspect of the hobby. Malifuax isn't crazy expensive, but a single master model is still a small chunk of most people's collections. WMH shows what happens when you keep adding more and more characters to a game: bloat, repetition, and brokenness. I get it, it sucks if you love a model and can't play it anymore, but if a game has, in any way, a tournament scene, then the odds are really good that there are models that are de facto unplayable anyway. I'd rather a company be honest with me, and just say "you can't use Jimmy the Steampunk Samurai in tournaments" rather than look at my new rulebook and find out that Jimmy is now wildly overcosted and niche. (see, for example, Titans in 8th edition 40k)

 Polonius wrote:

nobody wrote:
I don't really have a horse in the Malifaux argument, but my experience has been that if a model is not tournament legal, potential opponents will generally avoid playing against it. Usually this is because they're practicing for a tournament or tuning a list for one.

I used to see this all the time with special characters in 40k and Fantasy back in the day, and DZC had the same issue with their special commanders.

I try really hard to be empathetic with gamers about changes, but the way people react when models become cut from tournament play shows a really undignified aspect of the hobby. Malifuax isn't crazy expensive, but a single master model is still a small chunk of most people's collections. WMH shows what happens when you keep adding more and more characters to a game: bloat, repetition, and brokenness. I get it, it sucks if you love a model and can't play it anymore, but if a game has, in any way, a tournament scene, then the odds are really good that there are models that are de facto unplayable anyway. I'd rather a company be honest with me, and just say "you can't use Jimmy the Steampunk Samurai in tournaments" rather than look at my new rulebook and find out that Jimmy is now wildly overcosted and niche. (see, for example, Titans in 8th edition 40k)

It's undignified to be upset that a model you enjoy using (and paid for with no expectations of it being removed in the future) has been cut based on the whims of the people writing the books? Especially with how synergistic Malifuax is so sometimes it's not just a single model that ends up hurt. It's not as if people were expecting a standard like Magic or card games to pop in after a bit so to see it appear here in this fashion certainly turned some of the people I know who play it off.

I don't personally play it myself, but I know plenty that do, so I am just hearing it from second hand sources on this example.

I actually agree with Polonius on that front - I thought it was noble that PP tried to never invalidate models, but it also meant there were all these rather terribly sculpted mercenaries from Mk1 that just kept hanging around and having to be accounted for, but rarely fielded.

They took up design space that new releases could have used, and invalidating a few solo models wouldn't have been very bad for anybody, imo (as opposed to full units or warbeasts that got drastically better/worse in edition changes, which made a much bigger impact).

Just my take, of course, but it's something that has me interested in and considering Malifaux 3rd edition, that they're willing to actually make updates and cycle some things out if needed.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

nobody wrote:
I don't really have a horse in the Malifaux argument, but my experience has been that if a model is not tournament legal, potential opponents will generally avoid playing against it. Usually this is because they're practicing for a tournament or tuning a list for one.

I used to see this all the time with special characters in 40k and Fantasy back in the day, and DZC had the same issue with their special commanders.

I try really hard to be empathetic with gamers about changes, but the way people react when models become cut from tournament play shows a really undignified aspect of the hobby. Malifuax isn't crazy expensive, but a single master model is still a small chunk of most people's collections. WMH shows what happens when you keep adding more and more characters to a game: bloat, repetition, and brokenness. I get it, it sucks if you love a model and can't play it anymore, but if a game has, in any way, a tournament scene, then the odds are really good that there are models that are de facto unplayable anyway. I'd rather a company be honest with me, and just say "you can't use Jimmy the Steampunk Samurai in tournaments" rather than look at my new rulebook and find out that Jimmy is now wildly overcosted and niche. (see, for example, Titans in 8th edition 40k)

It's undignified to be upset that a model you enjoy using (and paid for with no expectations of it being removed in the future) has been cut based on the whims of the people writing the books? Especially with how synergistic Malifuax is so sometimes it's not just a single model that ends up hurt. It's not as if people were expecting a standard like Magic or card games to pop in after a bit so to see it appear here in this fashion certainly turned some of the people I know who play it off.

I don't personally play it myself, but I know plenty that do, so I am just hearing it from second hand sources on this example.

I dont' play either, but I'm familiar with the game, and reading Wyrd's own description of how they are changing the Masters in 3rd, some are changing factions, many are changing play styles, and they are all gaining more of a key word based crew building. In short, nearly all synergies are going to change anyway.

I'm not a big fan of invalidating models just because, but when there is a major edition change, and everything is getting blended anyway, dropping a few models to clear up design space is a defensible position. And I'd rather see them just ax a single model (which is what, $20?) if that keeps the game fresh.

We should probably take the Wyrd / Malifaux discussion to the appropriate thread - here's a link to the Malifaux thread, with an update on the Masters who are being cycled out, the fluff reasoning behind it, and where/how you can still use them:

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/1650/560907.page#10083001

So, let's take further discussion on that specific topic over there

What happened to WarmaHordes? Privateer Press happened.

It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
It's undignified to be upset that a model you enjoy using (and paid for with no expectations of it being removed in the future) has been cut based on the whims of the people writing the books?

Hissy fits are the definition of undignified.

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

Unless you were Cryx. Then you got stomped because Cryx could just raise their guys back up.

I loved PP fluff until the end of MK 1. Between Hailey smacking the crap out of Skarre in Skarre's own territory, and the Butcher somehow not dying when wounded and surrounded by a unit of sword knights, well, I just gave up caring about the dramatic tension in the stories. It seemed clear that the non-Cryx characters would always get away, while Cryx's characters would be killed and resurrected for next week's cartoon, oops, sorry I meant story.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

Unless you were Cryx. Then you got stomped because Cryx could just raise their guys back up.

I loved PP fluff until the end of MK 1. Between Hailey smacking the crap out of Skarre in Skarre's own territory, and the Butcher somehow not dying when wounded and surrounded by a unit of sword knights, well, I just gave up caring about the dramatic tension in the stories. It seemed clear that the non-Cryx characters would always get away, while Cryx's characters would be killed and resurrected for next week's cartoon, oops, sorry I meant story.

The Butcher story arc was good, just poorly executed (mainly as we'd been conditioned to know characters survive. My own personal headcanon is WMH, despite being written in the present tense is a story being retold by its survivors). The guy was gone for quite a significant amount of time in in universe time and was presumed dead by everyone. This a good are they/aren't they narrative arc that a lot of other fantasy works do better (i.e. GoT) but wasn't pulled off as well as it could have been IMO.

Thing is, it's been retconned into his background now and how he's represented on the tabletop. He has the most damage boxes of any human sized caster with 20 and was given Tough in Mk3 to also represent this. Dude is a survivor.

Plus there are a few non-Cryx characters that have died and only come back due to miraculous circumstances. Off the top of my head Vlad killed Harbinger simply to prevent Gaspy getting his hands on her (yes, Harbinger can come back, but Vlad didn't know that). Vlad himself got killed (interesting side note, this was a nice "fulfilling of the prophecy" moment as Vlad's death coincided with the coming of Everblight) only to be resurrected by The Old Witch.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

In some ways, Warmachine is a good example of the problems with the online discount model. A big part of its rise was definitely the price, but that price wasn't really that much lower without considering the online discounts. The problem with this though, is the game was really only thriving through the sales of a couple major outlets. At a local level, a lot of stores were pretty frustrated with the game. They stocked it because people played, but nobody actually bought the stock. You had the enthusiasts buying in heavily, and then bringing those heavy investments in to places that didn't see a dime of it and were mostly taking a loss on what they kept in stock to support this popular thing that filled their shop. Battleboxes sitting on shelves got replaced with products people bought off the shelves and with that, there were definitely fewer new players. The discount limits were pretty necessary, but they kind of exposed the truth that the game really wasn't any cheaper than 40k and rather than people buying locally at prices more in line with what they could get online, a lot of people just stopped buying.

I'm not exactly sure how you go about fixing this, but I think Warmachine is probably the game that was most affected by the online discount bubble, and has certainly suffered after it popped.

The way you solve that problem is by stopping trying to prop up a business model that no longer functions, at the expense of people who never even used it. For every person buying stuff online at deep discounts then going into a store to play, I guarantee you there was at least one other person buying stuff online at deep discounts and playing in homes, or in clubs, or at stores that charge for tables - why should they subsidise B&M stores that refuse to adapt to the changing marketplace? Why should the rest of the world, where clubs and home play are even more common, subsidise American stores & gamers where store-based play is dominant?

The discount limits were not necessary, and they weren't for the benefit of indie B&M stores at all, as others have noted the lie was put to that notion by these companies inevitably immediately turning around and taking some action that completely undermines stores like PP's cancelling of the Press Gangers programme or GW shifting huge chunks of their range to webstore exclusive. They're about making the official webstores for these companies selling at full RRP look more reasonable by comparison, and to prevent retailers from dumping stock when game companies produce a complete flop of a product. If FFG or GW or PP thought for one nanosecond they would make more money by doing it, they would throw B&M stores under a bus without a moment's thought or hesitation.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

Unless you were Cryx. Then you got stomped because Cryx could just raise their guys back up.

I loved PP fluff until the end of MK 1. Between Hailey smacking the crap out of Skarre in Skarre's own territory, and the Butcher somehow not dying when wounded and surrounded by a unit of sword knights, well, I just gave up caring about the dramatic tension in the stories. It seemed clear that the non-Cryx characters would always get away, while Cryx's characters would be killed and resurrected for next week's cartoon, oops, sorry I meant story.

The Butcher story arc was good, just poorly executed (mainly as we'd been conditioned to know characters survive. My own personal headcanon is WMH, despite being written in the present tense is a story being retold by its survivors). The guy was gone for quite a significant amount of time in in universe time and was presumed dead by everyone. This a good are they/aren't they narrative arc that a lot of other fantasy works do better (i.e. GoT) but wasn't pulled off as well as it could have been IMO.

Thing is, it's been retconned into his background now and how he's represented on the tabletop. He has the most damage boxes of any human sized caster with 20 and was given Tough in Mk3 to also represent this. Dude is a survivor.

Plus there are a few non-Cryx characters that have died and only come back due to miraculous circumstances. Off the top of my head Vlad killed Harbinger simply to prevent Gaspy getting his hands on her (yes, Harbinger can come back, but Vlad didn't know that). Vlad himself got killed (interesting side note, this was a nice "fulfilling of the prophecy" moment as Vlad's death coincided with the coming of Everblight) only to be resurrected by The Old Witch.

I still stand by the claim that PP's fluff is a cartoon. Even having Vlad and the Harby come back vaporizes all of the emotional impact and weight of their deaths. It is like Duke in the GI JOE cartoon movie miraculously surviving Serpentor's snake to the chest. It robs the supposed sacrifice and makes the death meaningless if only a few pages later some hokey hand waving is done and the character pops back up.

I know why PP did this (and Hasbro did the GI JOE thing) but it doesn't make the story any less boring.

Another example: The battle of the Thornwood was fething epic! Literally, it is what introduced epic Casters to the game, with all of the factions assembling in one location to have a massive throw down. And the only casualty was Denegrha? Fething laaaaaame. Oh, I guess Captain Darius got his eye poked out by Skarre. Why she didn't slit his throat is beyond me, but you know, cartoon so can't have Captain Porta-Potty die since he is a good guy.

 oni wrote:
1. People finally woke up and realized that all of the assertions being made about “better rules”, “more balanced game play”, “cheaper models”, “more customer focused company” etc. were all false.

2. The community basically ate itself alive. The toxicity got to be so bad that people (players, organizers, community leaders, etc.) just walked away. The online community disbanded and I know of four areas, each separated by 50+ miles, where the PP community collapsed under the weight of its own vitriol.

Some of my fondest memories...

I once had a Press Ganger do a Warmahine demo with me and the whole time he only trashed GW and W40K. When I asked “What sets this game apart from W40K?”, he said nothing about Warmachine or or PP, he only continued to trash GW and W40K. I was so disgusted that I cut him off mid-sentence and explained to him that his approach to recruiting players is deplorable.

Here’s another great Press Ganger interaction story… I was visiting my home town (~150 miles away from where I had the wonderful demo game mentioned above) and stopped by the LGS. Well wouldn’t you know it, the local Press Ganger was there and after I purchased something W40K related the Press Ganger chimes in “You should just toss that in the trash and learn how to play a real game.”

Sadly, my experiences with the player base isn't any better.

It the 'Sega does what Nintendon't' consoles wars phenomena (hey kids, did you know that Sega used to the top competing console to Nintendo? ). They actually buy into 'if you're not playing the right game, you're doing it wrong, and that's terrible.'

My interaction with Pressgangers was always good, but I just never got into it beyond my immediate group. That's kind of the problem with jokes like 'play like you've got a pair,' because there are people who are going to internalize that not as something tongue in cheek, but a credo to live by. Although in my personal opinion, it was the loss of the Pressgangers that really did it. Dedicated community supported like that is almost priceless, for helping grow and maintain communities.

That's the problem when you make your armies function around named characters. You kill off one and you just removed someone's favorite. If they just suffer comic book character deaths and eventually come back, then there are no real stakes. Games like 40K you have the option for and people who still like using the generic heroes over named ones. Cutting out Cypher and Doomrider from CSM going from 3.0 to 3.5 didn't cause a fraction of the backlash that cutting Daemons off into their own codex did in 4th. Even then, GW is still not very good at it. Look how few Primarchs are confirmed dead, and that was before they saw the table top in any form. Look at how many Tau heroes should have been dead by the end of the Indominus Crusade.

I got out of WMH in MK1. The last model I bought was not-Baba Yaga who just came out and then mostly because I like Baba Yaga. Mostly because the few friends I had who liked it (a few got badly stomped trying to learn and soured to it) and I found it to be going towards the MtG combo heavy gaming and because infantry was better to take than the giant robots. That said, my games outside my small group of friends that played often featured a lot of rules lawyers that made many bad ones in 40k seem pleasant. I try to make sure that I make sure my opponents are paying attention to what I'm moving, by how much, and to where. I can't tell you the number of times I'd go to start attacking and mention flanking and all of a sudden I'm being accused of moving too far or moving their model so I could flank. No comment when I initially moved my model though. Then again, many of them probably quickly realized that if they made a stink about anything and refused to settle for a die roll, I'd let them do what they want. Of course if that seemed to be happening more than a few times, I'd tell them they won, packed my stuff, and never played them again.

Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. If they have migrated to other games it would be games with similar competitiveness/depth which have been on the rise in recent years with more and more appearing on the market, as this hobby is really growing in popularity both in terms of players and creators at a rate it never has before from what I'm seeing.

Acquiring new players is definitely their biggest problem, which GW probably DOES have a big affect on for a multitude of reasons. Model bloat is definitely a huge issue PP need to address as it is just overwhelmingly bad in WM/H. I like losing the first several games of something to other people, getting completely stomped shows me that theres a lot of room for me to grow as a player in it and those are the kind of games I have always been most drawn to, its very much a 'challenge accepted' moment for me. The trouble with WM/H though is you could probably go 50 games against so many different lists and combos and you still are no closer to winning as theres just too much to learn and going that long with a W or even being close is just too much for most people..

I think the best way to combat this might be to approach it how MTG does and have different formats for competitive play, like the legacy format that has access to pretty much everything where more experiences vets can play, then formats with lower card pools or in this case model counts so you can learn what your stuff and your opponents do in more manageable chunks.

People already declaring the game 'dead' is kind of silly, very much depends on the area... still many active scenes.
I think PP will be ok, they will adapt and survive, whats great about wargaming now is there's so much competition from different company's everyone's having to step up their game to stay relevant. Their new Monsterpocalypse game looks like a fun little side game that I'm certainly interested in trying and may lead others to WM/H that arnt currently aware of its existence.

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. .

Found the Page 5 player!

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. If they have migrated to other games it would be games with similar competitiveness/depth which have been on the rise in recent years with more and more appearing on the market, as this hobby is really growing in popularity both in terms of players and creators at a rate it never has before from what I'm seeing.

While anecdotal at best, I can say that I know several people (myself included) who used to be Warmachine/Hordes players and now play AOS and/or 40K. Like just under a dozen that I can name first-hand. And of those, very few delved into Malifaux, Guild Ball, or Infinity (which are sometimes compared as other "competitive" games). I think in some cases, it came down to being sick of the "Page 5 LOLOLOL" attitude that a lot of us saw (and for the record, most of my immediate group started Warmachine in Mk 1) continually growing in the local scene, and just said feth it.

Are GW games as 'crunchy' as others? No. But I have honestly had more fun games in AOS in the last year and change that I've been playing it than I had in the last 3 years of Warmachine while I was still playing it.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

Unless you were Cryx. Then you got stomped because Cryx could just raise their guys back up.

I loved PP fluff until the end of MK 1. Between Hailey smacking the crap out of Skarre in Skarre's own territory, and the Butcher somehow not dying when wounded and surrounded by a unit of sword knights, well, I just gave up caring about the dramatic tension in the stories. It seemed clear that the non-Cryx characters would always get away, while Cryx's characters would be killed and resurrected for next week's cartoon, oops, sorry I meant story.

The Butcher story arc was good, just poorly executed (mainly as we'd been conditioned to know characters survive. My own personal headcanon is WMH, despite being written in the present tense is a story being retold by its survivors). The guy was gone for quite a significant amount of time in in universe time and was presumed dead by everyone. This a good are they/aren't they narrative arc that a lot of other fantasy works do better (i.e. GoT) but wasn't pulled off as well as it could have been IMO.

Thing is, it's been retconned into his background now and how he's represented on the tabletop. He has the most damage boxes of any human sized caster with 20 and was given Tough in Mk3 to also represent this. Dude is a survivor.

Plus there are a few non-Cryx characters that have died and only come back due to miraculous circumstances. Off the top of my head Vlad killed Harbinger simply to prevent Gaspy getting his hands on her (yes, Harbinger can come back, but Vlad didn't know that). Vlad himself got killed (interesting side note, this was a nice "fulfilling of the prophecy" moment as Vlad's death coincided with the coming of Everblight) only to be resurrected by The Old Witch.

I still stand by the claim that PP's fluff is a cartoon. Even having Vlad and the Harby come back vaporizes all of the emotional impact and weight of their deaths. It is like Duke in the GI JOE cartoon movie miraculously surviving Serpentor's snake to the chest. It robs the supposed sacrifice and makes the death meaningless if only a few pages later some hokey hand waving is done and the character pops back up.

I know why PP did this (and Hasbro did the GI JOE thing) but it doesn't make the story any less boring.

Another example: The battle of the Thornwood was fething epic! Literally, it is what introduced epic Casters to the game, with all of the factions assembling in one location to have a massive throw down. And the only casualty was Denegrha? Fething laaaaaame. Oh, I guess Captain Darius got his eye poked out by Skarre. Why she didn't slit his throat is beyond me, but you know, cartoon so can't have Captain Porta-Potty die since he is a good guy.

Well, they did kill Severius in one of the novels (Hexeris shoved that glaive he's got into the Hierarch's chest, he was administered last rites by Durant, buried in Imer), but that's one guy among... quite a few more.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. .

Found the Page 5 player!

Yes, we are on page 5 of this thread now. How observant of you.

heh, I've always read into that page 5 quote as go at it, don't play too tentatively, play aggressively experiment and learn....

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. .

Found the Page 5 player!

No, he's right. The sheer lack of variety in a turn of 40K is still the biggest barrier to my returning to the game in any meaningful way. I'd forgive the cost, balance issues and demands on both space and model count if I found the game attractive to play. But when so many of the other more popular games offer so much more to think about in a turn (unit activation order, action order during activation, allowing for/anticipating opposition reactions to my actions) on top of the handful of things that 40K does require (model positioning and target priority, but that's about it after the list's built) that 40K just comes across as My First Wargame™. It's the Duplo to the Lego of other systems. Which is not to say entertainment can't be found with Duplo, it's just that at some point some people will want to move on to something which allows them to create something more involved.

 Valander wrote:

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. If they have migrated to other games it would be games with similar competitiveness/depth which have been on the rise in recent years with more and more appearing on the market, as this hobby is really growing in popularity both in terms of players and creators at a rate it never has before from what I'm seeing.

While anecdotal at best, I can say that I know several people (myself included) who used to be Warmachine/Hordes players and now play AOS and/or 40K. Like just under a dozen that I can name first-hand. And of those, very few delved into Malifaux, Guild Ball, or Infinity (which are sometimes compared as other "competitive" games). I think in some cases, it came down to being sick of the "Page 5 LOLOLOL" attitude that a lot of us saw (and for the record, most of my immediate group started Warmachine in Mk 1) continually growing in the local scene, and just said feth it.

Are GW games as 'crunchy' as others? No. But I have honestly had more fun games in AOS in the last year and change that I've been playing it than I had in the last 3 years of Warmachine while I was still playing it.

Well for me personally I feel like games that lack depth/strategy and rely too much on dice rolling luck to just not really engage me much mentally .... I prefer games that give my brain a good workout, games that I can think long and hard and develop strategy's for while I'm away from the game too... I mean games like chess are fun to me and many would consider that a total bore or chore. I like to creatively problem solve and theres more of that involved in a game like WM/H, or a Malifaux and why I'm sticking with Infinity and not delving into kill team (for now.)

anab0lic wrote:

 Valander wrote:

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. If they have migrated to other games it would be games with similar competitiveness/depth which have been on the rise in recent years with more and more appearing on the market, as this hobby is really growing in popularity both in terms of players and creators at a rate it never has before from what I'm seeing.

While anecdotal at best, I can say that I know several people (myself included) who used to be Warmachine/Hordes players and now play AOS and/or 40K. Like just under a dozen that I can name first-hand. And of those, very few delved into Malifaux, Guild Ball, or Infinity (which are sometimes compared as other "competitive" games). I think in some cases, it came down to being sick of the "Page 5 LOLOLOL" attitude that a lot of us saw (and for the record, most of my immediate group started Warmachine in Mk 1) continually growing in the local scene, and just said feth it.

Are GW games as 'crunchy' as others? No. But I have honestly had more fun games in AOS in the last year and change that I've been playing it than I had in the last 3 years of Warmachine while I was still playing it.

Well for me personally I feel like games that lack depth/strategy and rely too much on dice rolling luck to just not really engage me much mentally .... I prefer games that give my brain a good workout, games that I can think long and hard and develop strategy's for while I'm away from the game too... I mean games like chess are fun to me and many would consider that a total bore or chore. I like to creatively problem solve and theres more of that involved in a game like WM/H, or a Malifaux and why I'm sticking with Infinity and not delving into kill team (for now.)

I see this criticism a lot. And, honestly, used to say more or less the same thing. But, after actually playing more GW recently, I will begrudgingly admit they're not as simplistic as I once made them out to be. Now, that's not to say they're super "deep" either (and frankly, I didn't see Warmachine as that "deep" but my background was cut on the likes of Star Fleet Battles), but they are more than just Checkers + Yahtzee (which I used to claim they were as well). Honestly, AOS is more akin to a CCG than a "wargame," but then Warmachine was also that way from the get go, focusing on synergies and mega combos. There is just the same amount of reliance on dice in WM/H as there is in AOS, it's just not quite as obvious.

And my time as an Infernal showed me a lot of the ugly underside of the Warmachine community, and just how "balanced" that system really was. I bailed just before Mk 3 dropped, and from what I've seen it isn't enticing me to come back.

 Mangod wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

Unless you were Cryx. Then you got stomped because Cryx could just raise their guys back up.

I loved PP fluff until the end of MK 1. Between Hailey smacking the crap out of Skarre in Skarre's own territory, and the Butcher somehow not dying when wounded and surrounded by a unit of sword knights, well, I just gave up caring about the dramatic tension in the stories. It seemed clear that the non-Cryx characters would always get away, while Cryx's characters would be killed and resurrected for next week's cartoon, oops, sorry I meant story.

The Butcher story arc was good, just poorly executed (mainly as we'd been conditioned to know characters survive. My own personal headcanon is WMH, despite being written in the present tense is a story being retold by its survivors). The guy was gone for quite a significant amount of time in in universe time and was presumed dead by everyone. This a good are they/aren't they narrative arc that a lot of other fantasy works do better (i.e. GoT) but wasn't pulled off as well as it could have been IMO.

Thing is, it's been retconned into his background now and how he's represented on the tabletop. He has the most damage boxes of any human sized caster with 20 and was given Tough in Mk3 to also represent this. Dude is a survivor.

Plus there are a few non-Cryx characters that have died and only come back due to miraculous circumstances. Off the top of my head Vlad killed Harbinger simply to prevent Gaspy getting his hands on her (yes, Harbinger can come back, but Vlad didn't know that). Vlad himself got killed (interesting side note, this was a nice "fulfilling of the prophecy" moment as Vlad's death coincided with the coming of Everblight) only to be resurrected by The Old Witch.

I still stand by the claim that PP's fluff is a cartoon. Even having Vlad and the Harby come back vaporizes all of the emotional impact and weight of their deaths. It is like Duke in the GI JOE cartoon movie miraculously surviving Serpentor's snake to the chest. It robs the supposed sacrifice and makes the death meaningless if only a few pages later some hokey hand waving is done and the character pops back up.

I know why PP did this (and Hasbro did the GI JOE thing) but it doesn't make the story any less boring.

Another example: The battle of the Thornwood was fething epic! Literally, it is what introduced epic Casters to the game, with all of the factions assembling in one location to have a massive throw down. And the only casualty was Denegrha? Fething laaaaaame. Oh, I guess Captain Darius got his eye poked out by Skarre. Why she didn't slit his throat is beyond me, but you know, cartoon so can't have Captain Porta-Potty die since he is a good guy.

Well, they did kill Severius in one of the novels (Hexeris shoved that glaive he's got into the Hierarch's chest, he was administered last rites by Durant, buried in Imer), but that's one guy among... quite a few more.

That happened after my time I am afraid, PP novels weren't a thing when I played just No Quarter and the actual rule books moved the fluff. What other major Caster/Warlock characters have had a final death? Not a "oops I ded, pls bring me bak" type death?

 Valander wrote:

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. If they have migrated to other games it would be games with similar competitiveness/depth which have been on the rise in recent years with more and more appearing on the market, as this hobby is really growing in popularity both in terms of players and creators at a rate it never has before from what I'm seeing.

While anecdotal at best, I can say that I know several people (myself included) who used to be Warmachine/Hordes players and now play AOS and/or 40K. Like just under a dozen that I can name first-hand. And of those, very few delved into Malifaux, Guild Ball, or Infinity (which are sometimes compared as other "competitive" games). I think in some cases, it came down to being sick of the "Page 5 LOLOLOL" attitude that a lot of us saw (and for the record, most of my immediate group started Warmachine in Mk 1) continually growing in the local scene, and just said feth it.

Are GW games as 'crunchy' as others? No. But I have honestly had more fun games in AOS in the last year and change that I've been playing it than I had in the last 3 years of Warmachine while I was still playing it.

I think too many people underestimate the fun factor of a game in it's appeal. As others mentioned in this thread, it's not that AoS or 40k rules became amazing, they became good enough where the pluses from the other elements of the game made it a more appealing package. Plus GW is shooting out games at different levels of size and complexity. Talking with some of the WMH guys the other day, they're starting to talk up Shadespire. A couple have played some games and it's scratching their itches better than WMH is right now.

 silent25 wrote:


I think too many people underestimate the fun factor of a game in it's appeal. As others mentioned in this thread, it's not that AoS or 40k rules became amazing, they became good enough where the pluses from the other elements of the game made it a more appealing package. Plus GW is shooting out games at different levels of size and complexity. Talking with some of the WMH guys the other day, they're starting to talk up Shadespire. A couple have played some games and it's scratching their itches better than WMH is right now.

I was actually gonna mention shadespire. I played my first game of it tonight and thought it was excellent. I'm getting my own warband as soon as I can.

As you say, the rules don't have to be 'excellent'. 'Good enough' is fine, especially when you don't treat a game as 'srs bsnss' and when other factors are positive. I can work with the rest, and I can deal with the issues if they pop up. There was a time when I wanted big, complex serious games that were a 'white knuckle ride' and got my brain working overtime. I don't necessarily want that anymore. 'Complex' can be a turn off.

On the subject of SKU and model bloat, a lot of miniatures games could probably use some consolidation. If they want to eliminate a Malifaux master or some random WarmaHordes merc solo from the game, making them an official proxy for some other figure would go a long way.

FLGS just got a new shipment of crucible guard and some other new minis and there were about 30 of us in their either buying, painting or playing, pretty sure the game is doing pretty good. I can believe other areas are not the same, after all there are places where AoS and 40k are still popular.

 silent25 wrote:

 Valander wrote:

anab0lic wrote:
Don't agree with the notion that the new 40k and AOS has taken Warmachine players, that's like going from chess to checkers... seriously GW's games are so dumbed down and lacking depth and 'thinky-ness' in comparison they just don't scratch the same itch for that kind of hardcore gamer, most would get bored very quick. If they have migrated to other games it would be games with similar competitiveness/depth which have been on the rise in recent years with more and more appearing on the market, as this hobby is really growing in popularity both in terms of players and creators at a rate it never has before from what I'm seeing.

While anecdotal at best, I can say that I know several people (myself included) who used to be Warmachine/Hordes players and now play AOS and/or 40K. Like just under a dozen that I can name first-hand. And of those, very few delved into Malifaux, Guild Ball, or Infinity (which are sometimes compared as other "competitive" games). I think in some cases, it came down to being sick of the "Page 5 LOLOLOL" attitude that a lot of us saw (and for the record, most of my immediate group started Warmachine in Mk 1) continually growing in the local scene, and just said feth it.

Are GW games as 'crunchy' as others? No. But I have honestly had more fun games in AOS in the last year and change that I've been playing it than I had in the last 3 years of Warmachine while I was still playing it.

I think too many people underestimate the fun factor of a game in it's appeal. As others mentioned in this thread, it's not that AoS or 40k rules became amazing, they became good enough where the pluses from the other elements of the game made it a more appealing package. Plus GW is shooting out games at different levels of size and complexity. Talking with some of the WMH guys the other day, they're starting to talk up Shadespire. A couple have played some games and it's scratching their itches better than WMH is right now.

I think it depends on what makes a game fun for each person. The better the rules, the more fun I'll be having that's for sure. If I enjoyed WMH (or could afford it, really) I'd probably be playing by now. Same for 8th 40k.

meatybtz wrote:
Interesting points brought up and here I am just hoping pp keeps their painta available because I have taken a serious liking to what they are doing in that department.

Good point! I've got to stock up on the colors of theirs I use just in case...

 Vulcan wrote:

meatybtz wrote:
Interesting points brought up and here I am just hoping pp keeps their painta available because I have taken a serious liking to what they are doing in that department.

Good point! I've got to stock up on the colors of theirs I use just in case...

they released some new colors today, I grabbed eldritch, boiler black, and deathless metal

This thread has been interesting.
One point I would like to raise is the meta and indeed theme change for every faction. Units that used to be good and builds that used to be powerful where removed and replaced with a completely thrown meta, forcing players to rebuild their armies from practically the ground up. This, coupled with the model bloat and the poorly designed rule set and dropping of the PR units led to the game drop into a rapid decline with many older players including myself just hanging our stuff up and accepting we where not going to play any more. Invalidating the stat cards was icing on the cake for me.

As a Cryx player the above really hit hard as well. Thanks to the whining from certain factions the once counter-meta Cryx where reduced into a nerfed version of other factions, retaining the crappy durability but losing the edge on Defense. Coupled with the nerfs to other casters and units and it felt like a real kick in the teeth from PP.

 master of ordinance wrote:
Units that used to be good and builds that used to be powerful where removed and replaced with a completely thrown meta, forcing players to rebuild their armies from practically the ground up.

Why is this a bad thing?

 Sqorgar wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Units that used to be good and builds that used to be powerful where removed and replaced with a completely thrown meta, forcing players to rebuild their armies from practically the ground up.

Why is this a bad thing?

This practice works in games like League of Legends, where players can easily afford to change their vehicle of play.
But in Tabletop games, it might as well render the value of your purchases moot.
You now need to buy a whole new army. And for PP, that's pretty outrageous.
A solid PP army isn't that expensive - certainly less than most 40K armies.
But being forced to shelf your list and fork out another fistful of cash because your army is no longer competitive in a game that is designed around always taking the best options and reinforcing that mindset through its events, players and rules?
Yeah, why is that a bad thing?
/sarcasm

In actuality, this just encourages players to turn to E-bay and get cheap armies or borrow entire armies for events.
Neither of which help the game, community or FLGS at all.

1) I think you are exaggerating. I don't think you need to "buy a whole new army". Maybe a few new models, but you don't have to replace everything (unless your entire army is 30x of the same model,which is putting all your eggs in one basket).

2) Changing a model's MAT by 1 and increasing its cost a little doesn't "render the value of your purchases moot". Competitive gamers are weird. A difference of 5% chance to hit can be the difference between best model ever and irredeemable trash.

3) The majority of the hobby is making lists and buying/painting models. If having to make new lists and buy/paint new models is that big of a problem, maybe there is a more appropriate hobby out there for you.

4) Most WMH players I've seen don't even paint their models and proxy half of them, so they aren't nearly as affected by this as you are suggesting. Only tournament players really do it, and only because they have to, and given the costs associated with travel and tournaments, I doubt the army is the most expensive part.

5) WMH isn't designed around always taking the best option (if you go by all the material they put in No Quarter that no WMH players actually read). That is an expectation created by a community that, unfortunately, let its most competitive and abusive players lead the pack for too long. WMH can be played casually, narrative, and openly, but the community is uninterested in that and is only interested in whatever the current tournament meta is - even people who don't actually play in tournaments. That's why ou think you need to buy a whole new army all the time - you are chasing a worthless meta and ruining the entire game experience for yourself. Frankly, if WMH comes out with a casual-focused Mk4, it will be the smartest and most healthy decision that PP has ever made.

 Sqorgar wrote:
1) I think you are exaggerating. I don't think you need to "buy a whole new army". Maybe a few new models, but you don't have to replace everything (unless your entire army is 30x of the same model,which is putting all your eggs in one basket).

2) Changing a model's MAT by 1 and increasing its cost a little doesn't "render the value of your purchases moot". Competitive gamers are weird. A difference of 5% chance to hit can be the difference between best model ever and irredeemable trash.

3) The majority of the hobby is making lists and buying/painting models. If having to make new lists and buy/paint new models is that big of a problem, maybe there is a more appropriate hobby out there for you.

4) Most WMH players I've seen don't even paint their models and proxy half of them, so they aren't nearly as affected by this as you are suggesting. Only tournament players really do it, and only because they have to, and given the costs associated with travel and tournaments, I doubt the army is the most expensive part.

5) WMH isn't designed around always taking the best option (if you go by all the material they put in No Quarter that no WMH players actually read). That is an expectation created by a community that, unfortunately, let its most competitive and abusive players lead the pack for too long. WMH can be played casually, narrative, and openly, but the community is uninterested in that and is only interested in whatever the current tournament meta is - even people who don't actually play in tournaments. That's why ou think you need to buy a whole new army all the time - you are chasing a worthless meta and ruining the entire game experience for yourself. Frankly, if WMH comes out with a casual-focused Mk4, it will be the smartest and most healthy decision that PP has ever made.

Same thing as above could be said about WH40K. In fact, the exact same thing. From chasing meta to "following" tournament meta and then complaining, even if they don't do tournaments. Same goes for buying and painting models, list changes, etc. Aka, powergaming and min/maxxing only the uber is worth at all, spam all the cans, etc, be it on the table top (pen and paper RPG or wargames) or on the computer tends to be very toxic to the community.

Though I can throw a stone at 40K for "re-rolls for EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!", utter trash gaming.

meatybtz wrote:
Same thing as above could be said about WH40K. In fact, the exact same thing. From chasing meta to "following" tournament meta and then complaining, even if they don't do tournaments. Same goes for buying and painting models, list changes, etc. Aka, powergaming and min/maxxing only the uber is worth at all, spam all the cans, etc, be it on the table top (pen and paper RPG or wargames) or on the computer tends to be very toxic to the community.

Though I can throw a stone at 40K for "re-rolls for EVERYONE!!!!!!!!!!", utter trash gaming.

I don't play WH40k, but I'm sure my opinion would be much different there. At the very least, I do appreciate the GW goes out of their way to make competitive 40k look like a niche segment of the game, rather than the core demographic.

As near as I can tell, competitive gamers just like to go around and talk about how miserable they are with their current game - how the company is screwing them, how the game is screwing them, how everything seems to be this big, frustrating obstacle to their true happiness - while all the non-competitive gamers are going around talking about how miserable the competitive gamers are making them. Competitive gamers only seem to be happy when they are with other competitive gamers, and they are winning. I'm not saying there is a right way to enjoy playing miniature games, but it really doesn't feel to me that they are enjoying it at all.

And the thing is, they are ruining games like WMH. They will blame everybody else for why it is dead, and never take responsibility for their own nasty behavior.

Why doesn't WMH have more new players? Obviously, it is because PP killed the press ganger program and the game is too challenging for new players to grasp - it can't possibly be because they are abusive and unaccommodating to potential new players. There's no way that the fact that the typical WMH table, with a bunch of flat terrain, brass rings, and a horde of unpainted models looks like the wargame equivalent of vomit, is preventing people from becoming interested in the game.

Why is WMH losing players? Obviously, it is theme lists ruining everything, not the fickle and self centered competitive attitude that is preventing them from enjoying a game unless they can dominate the table with the same list they did last year. No, people are abandoning WMH because Mk3 - which is not appreciably different from Mk2 - is oh so wrong in everything it does.

Why are WMH models so terribly made? Obviously, it is because PP is cutting corners and producing shoddy work, and not because competitive WMH doesn't give a gak about the model quality and so they'll pay top dollar for substandard models that they won't even care enough to fully assemble or paint anyway. When the majority of your playerbase is happy to just play with empty bases, why would you bother to improve your models?

Sqorgar wrote:1)
2) Changing a model's MAT by 1 and increasing its cost a little doesn't "render the value of your purchases moot". Competitive gamers are weird. A difference of 5% chance to hit can be the difference between best model ever and irredeemable trash.
3) The majority of the hobby is making lists and buying/painting models. If having to make new lists and buy/paint new models is that big of a problem, maybe there is a more appropriate hobby out there for you.
4) Most WMH players I've seen don't even paint their models and proxy half of them, so they aren't nearly as affected by this as you are suggesting. Only tournament players really do it, and only because they have to, and given the costs associated with travel and tournaments, I doubt the army is the most expensive part.

(2)Changing a models spell list/feat/abilities can 'render the value of purchases moot' or in practical terms can also entirely change the purpose/function of a specific model. This can have an effect when the army suddenly functions in a completely different way to one you enjoy based on a whim of a designer.

(3) there is a different between making new lists and buying/painting new stuff and being made to make new lists, and buy/pant stuff because of a cynical game choice make by games designers to invalidate current builds and force the purchase of the new shiny. That just sticks in your craw. Example being the old 'nidzilla' lists of forth and fifth edition 40k.

(4) irrelevant. It's the principle, more than anything. always cheeky as hell to force someone to purchase a new thing for no other reason than you wrecked their old thing. How would feel if the car dealership made you buy a new car because they removed the engine block from your current one? Sure, you can walk or,cycle, but sometimes you need that damned car.

Sqorgar wrote:
As near as I can tell, competitive gamers just like to go around and talk about how miserable they are with their current game - how the company is screwing them, how the game is screwing them, how everything seems to be this big, frustrating obstacle to their true happiness - while all the non-competitive gamers are going around talking about how miserable the competitive gamers are making them. Competitive gamers only seem to be happy when they are with other competitive gamers, and they are winning. I'm not saying there is a right way to enjoy playing miniature games, but it really doesn't feel to me that they are enjoying it at all.

Competitive is a spectrum. Anyeay, what you describe is WAAC. There is a difference. Not that you seem willing to appreciate it. And You've made that error before (remember when you used 'tournament player' as a derogatory term)?

Sqorgar wrote:
And the thing is, they are ruining games like WMH. They will blame everybody else for why it is dead, and never take responsibility for their own nasty behavior.

It's almost what you say is predjudiced. Or,are you saying no competitive players are decent folks that can be a pleasure to play against, or game with?

And again - Waac. There is a difference.

Sqorgar wrote:
Why doesn't WMH have more new players? Obviously, it is because PP killed the press ganger program and the game is too challenging for new players to grasp - it can't possibly be because they are abusive and unaccommodating to potential new players. There's no way that the fact that the typical WMH table, with a bunch of flat terrain, brass rings, and a horde of unpainted models looks like the wargame equivalent of vomit, is preventing people from becoming interested in the game.

So are you saying it has nothing to do with pp axing the pressganer programme and the game being too daunting to grasp in terms of its knowledge burden and bloat?

And I take it you know for a fact that all competitive players are abusing and unaccomadating? Predjudiced much? Never mind that thread that you claimed 'proved this' despite your proof being six posts out of 11 pages, one of which was obviously sarcasm and another being selectively edited. Or and no examples of quite a few that were there of players being accommodating and helpful. Almost like you are twisting facts to fit your predjudice.
And I take it you've seen all the WMH tables. Most that I've seen have had 3D terrain. And as I've pointed out, plenty are painted. Or will I point you to the grey legions of Aos and 40k?

Sqorgar wrote:
Why is WMH losing players? Obviously, it is theme lists ruining everything, not the fickle and self centered competitive attitude that is preventing them from enjoying a game unless they can dominate the table with the same list they did last year. No, people are abandoning WMH because Mk3 - which is not appreciably different from Mk2 - is oh so wrong in everything it does.

So are you saying that theme lists have had no impact on the state of the game? Or that there were no errors in the introduction of mk3 that drove a lot of people away?

And again, what you describe as the 'competitive attitude' is Waac. Competitive can also be both welcoming and empowering. But hey, why have nuance when you can have predjudice.

Sqorgar wrote:
Why are WMH models so terribly made? Obviously, it is because PP is cutting corners and producing shoddy work, and not because competitive WMH doesn't give a gak about the model quality and so they'll pay top dollar for substandard models that they won't even care enough to fully assemble or paint anyway. When the majority of your playerbase is happy to just play with empty bases, why would you bother to improve your models?

So are you saying pp don't cut corners and produce some absolute howlers with dodgy QC? And that their model quality has nothing to do with people not being interested in Getting involved

And how do you know for a fact that competitive people don't give a damn about model quality? Plenty people have posted about leaving, or having issues with the game for precisely this reason.

And can you prove that the majority of the player base is happy to play with empty basic or is this just your predjudice again? I call 'fake news' on you. Because in steamroller, you need to have the damned model to play it. And there's plenty people, across all spectrums or Wargame playing, from casual to competitive that would refuse, simply on principle the idea of playing empty bases.

Let me put this another way:
I had a good and fun to play Cryx army in MK2. In MK3 only my Bonejacks remain (barely - thanks Cygnar/Khador whiners) relevant, My Bile Thralls have been nerfed into the dirt, my Bloat Thrall somehow managed to get worse, my Helljack lost a chunk of his stuff and my casters changed radically so I dont know what to do with them anymore. My Mechanic will always be useful, and my Pitol Wraith still seems to be good, but that is it.
I dont have loads of free income, and I do not have the capacity to just rebuy everything. Even my current units are unplayable unless I fork out for the cards. Why should I keep playing?

 master of ordinance wrote:
Why should I keep playing?

1)Cards are free online
2) it’s cheaper then a bad heroin habit

Deadnight wrote:
(2)Changing a models spell list/feat/abilities can 'render the value of purchases moot' or in practical terms can also entirely change the purpose/function of a specific model. This can have an effect when the army suddenly functions in a completely different way to one you enjoy based on a whim of a designer.

And this happens all the time. Seriously, 40k is on the 8th edition. There isn't a single model more than a year old that hasn't been changed significantly. Things need to change over time in response to new releases, balance imperfections, and direction changes. It happens in every game to every model. If you are buying a model for a very narrowly defined, specific purpose that you know will one day be nerfed, removed, enhanced, modified, or otherwise changed, isn't it your fault for having absolutely unrealistic expectations of an ongoing game system?

(3) there is a different between making new lists and buying/painting new stuff and being made to make new lists, and buy/pant stuff because of a cynical game choice make by games designers to invalidate current builds and force the purchase of the new shiny. That just sticks in your craw. Example being the old 'nidzilla' lists of forth and fifth edition 40k.

Cynical? If anything, game designers are optimists. They think all the changes they make are for the greater good of the game and that whatever sacrifice is being asked of the players is ultimately worth it. It's the players who are cynical.

(4) irrelevant. It's the principle, more than anything. always cheeky as hell to force someone to purchase a new thing for no other reason than you wrecked their old thing. How would feel if the car dealership made you buy a new car because they removed the engine block from your current one? Sure, you can walk or,cycle, but sometimes you need that damned car.

Probably the same way I'd feel when the new iPhone doesn't have a headphone jack, my computer no longer runs DOS games, or when the guy I didn't vote for gets elected into office. Sometimes, things change, and not always for the better, and being able to adapt to change is the mark of maturity.

Competitive is a spectrum. Anyeay, what you describe is WAAC. There is a difference. Not that you seem willing to appreciate it. And You've made that error before (remember when you used 'tournament player' as a derogatory term)?

Competitive is not a spectrum. There's a wide variety of different personality types that enjoy competition, but they do not enjoy it for the same reason. I don't call all of them competitive players. I define "competitive player" as someone for whom the game ceases to be worthwhile without the promise (threat?) of competition. Like, for example, a WMH player who won't play Battle Box games with new players. Those aren't WAAC players, but their behavior may have just as high a cost.

WAAC is someone who will literally "win at all cost". They'll cheat, whine, exploit, manipulate, throw fits, and generally use any action available to them in order to chase victory. Competitive players are a different breed. They aren't trying to win at all cost, they are trying to compete at all cost. They may desire fair competition, and generally be decent opponents to play against, but the only thing they care about is their selfish desire to make all games into a competition of skill, willpower, and intelligence. The Necromunda player mentioned earlier in this thread is a good example. They aren't a WAAC player, but they are trying to make a game competitive that really isn't designed for it.

So are you saying it has nothing to do with pp axing the pressganer programme and the game being too daunting to grasp in terms of its knowledge burden and bloat?

Yes. I don't think you need an official program for players to act as ambassadors for it, and if you need some sort of badge or reward or else you won't do it, then the problem isn't the with the program stopping. And WMH's bloat is most felt when played in a very specific way. There's plenty of opportunities to play the game in a less bloated manner (playing journeyman leagues, battle box games, company of iron, heavy metal games, narrative games) which are much more welcoming to new players. But if you only play 75 pt Steamroller games with the intent of winning against every single overpowered combo in every single faction across Warmachine and Hordes, then yeah, it's a bit bloated.

Someone more up to date on WMH that I should intentionally create a newbie-friendly subset of models - maybe one or two casters, a couple jacks, and a couple units per faction (equivalent to the initial release of mk1) - which doesn't include any curbstomp combos or the trickiest caster spells or any of the bloat. Something where a new player can pick any combination of any faction's models and just play it against any combination of another faction's models and have a game that will last at least 3 turns.

So are you saying that theme lists have had no impact on the state of the game? Or that there were no errors in the introduction of mk3 that drove a lot of people away?

I think people who would drop a game and sell all their models after investing hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars for the better part of a decade over temporary balance issues are mentally ill.

And can you prove that the majority of the player base is happy to play with empty basic or is this just your predjudice again?

Of course I can't prove that. That would require a survey sent out to every single WMH player out there. But it happens enough that I've seen it multiple times, from different people in different places. It's like those stupid brass rings. Even though they look awful on the table, there's a certain amount of ubiquitous minimalism going on in the WMH community that seems closer to laziness than utilitarianism.

I call 'fake news' on you.

Jet fuel can't melt steel beams.

I would guess that the activity in the second hand market is an indicator on the health of a game. Based on all the armies on trade sites that are not selling even at deep discounts, I think the game is in a steep decline.

 Illumini wrote:
I would guess that the activity in the second hand market is an indicator on the health of a game. Based on all the armies on trade sites that are not selling even at deep discounts, I think the game is in a steep decline.

A fair assumption, but part of it is some models just won't shift because they aren't part of a theme list or because they have to compete for slots against similar priced, both in money and points, models with far better stats, eg Circle Orboros have 3 Griffon options but only 1 really sells

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Illumini wrote:
I would guess that the activity in the second hand market is an indicator on the health of a game. Based on all the armies on trade sites that are not selling even at deep discounts, I think the game is in a steep decline.

A fair assumption, but part of it is some models just won't shift because they aren't part of a theme list or because they have to compete for slots against similar priced, both in money and points, models with far better stats, eg Circle Orboros have 3 Griffon options but only 1 really sells

That's not really good either! When you are trying to shift stock but they are that bad that nobody really wants them.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

 Illumini wrote:
I would guess that the activity in the second hand market is an indicator on the health of a game. Based on all the armies on trade sites that are not selling even at deep discounts, I think the game is in a steep decline.

A fair assumption, but part of it is some models just won't shift because they aren't part of a theme list or because they have to compete for slots against similar priced, both in money and points, models with far better stats, eg Circle Orboros have 3 Griffon options but only 1 really sells

That's not really good either! When you are trying to shift stock but they are that bad that nobody really wants them.

Indeed but nearly all games have models that are like that

 Turnip Jedi wrote:


Indeed but nearly all games have models that are like that

But other games don't aim to be or advertise to be that awesome, finely balanced competitive game to gloss over the fact that the miniatures themselves are both expensive and poor in quality.

And other games at least sell their miniatures for their aesthetical value alone...

Apart from my other points I think another issue PP has is the massive variable in quality across the range with some models matching GW and others being shoddy beyond belief

Hearthgut Hooch Hauler, only available through the Privateer Press online store "Black Anchor Heavy Industries", $164.99. You'll never be able to get it at a discounted price as it's not available outside of the PP webstore. $164.99. Let that sink in for a moment. We're talking almost Forge World prices for resin and some metal with nowhere near the detail of Forge World. And yes, PP made the rules for the Hearthgut Hooch Hauler very attractive to Trollblood players.

Don't be looking at this topic from a strictly gaming perspective, but from a $$ perspective. The game was competitively priced against all it's competitors with the advantage of far fewer models on the table. The CiD revolves around new models and making new themes and rules for older models that don't sell well. Example: Cygnar Longgunners. Worst unit in the game IMHO. When the Cygnar CiD game around, instead of addressing this issue, they released an almost identical unit: Trencher Longgunners. WTF. Two units of Longguuners, one with the additional keyword "Trencher" and Tough. Mind boggling.

Rules bloat, model bloat, and $$ bloat. This is what is killing WarmaHordes.

 Tamwulf wrote:
Hearthgut Hooch Hauler, only available through the Privateer Press online store "Black Anchor Heavy Industries", $164.99. You'll never be able to get it at a discounted price as it's not available outside of the PP webstore. $164.99. Let that sink in for a moment. We're talking almost Forge World prices for resin and some metal with nowhere near the detail of Forge World. And yes, PP made the rules for the Hearthgut Hooch Hauler very attractive to Trollblood players.

We're talking a large resin and metal model that you'll never get discounted from PP, vs a large resin model from FW that you'll never get discounted and there's a distinction where?

The "detail" argument has been done to death and is a complete non-starter. Extra skulls don't miraculously make a model better value. What you're actually saying is "I don't like the aesthetics of the model enough to pay the price asked" which is totally fine, but don't try and present it as some sort of objective argument. To my eye it fits in just fine both with the WMH aesthetic broadly and the Trollblood one more specifically.

So, it's a large resin model that costs quite a lot, in a world where large resin models are generally expensive, and it's a centerpiece model that has good rules? Well good. I can't think of anything worse than paying a bunch of cash for something to use in a game and finding out it sucks.

I can't see any specific criticism of PP here that any other number of companies that are near completely identical in their approach aren't just as guilty of. In fact, "big model that has high production costs that costs a lot but has good rules" isn't really a criticism. Your only valid point is that you don't appear to like it, which is perfectly valid but not PP's fault.

 Chute82 wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
Why should I keep playing?

1)Cards are free online

Well, that is something I guess, but it feels like too little too late

2) it’s cheaper then a bad heroin habit

Sometimes I look at my sprawling collection and wonder

2) Changing a model's MAT by 1 and increasing its cost a little doesn't "render the value of your purchases moot". Competitive gamers are weird. A difference of 5% chance to hit can be the difference between best model ever and irredeemable trash.

Play Cryx and then the 5% change is a severe understatement.

Edit: Never mind.

 wuestenfux wrote:

2) Changing a model's MAT by 1 and increasing its cost a little doesn't "render the value of your purchases moot". Competitive gamers are weird. A difference of 5% chance to hit can be the difference between best model ever and irredeemable trash.

Play Cryx and then the 5% change is a severe understatement.

This. Cryx relied on that 5%, they lived and died on it. Cryx units have piss all armour and less hit boxes than any equivalent unit in any other faction. All that kept them alive was a good DEF and not being hit. The new edition brought both buffs to the MAT of many unit and a colossal nerf to the DEF of most Cryx units.

 master of ordinance wrote:
This. Cryx relied on that 5%, they lived and died on it.

Not sure you understand how statistics work. A 5% difference wouldn't change a single game. It means that if you were to take hundreds, or even thousands of dice rolls, the difference in rolls would approach an average of a 5% increase (law of really big numbers). So each roll would have a 1 in 20 chance of rolling slightly better - remember, this isn't a 5% increase in successes, but in the increase of roll value - which may be meaningless if you already have a very high or very low chance already. A 5% is better than a 0%, and a 95% is better that a 90%, but they are, for all intents and purposes, identical tactically (you aren't going to decide to hit on a 5% or not hit on a 90%). So, it is only in the less common circumstances where a 5% increase is functionally important - a success where one was not before. Getting a 6 when a 5 would do doesn't change the outcome. This will happen far less than 1 in 20 rolls. Similarly, randomness only averages out over a large number of rolls. You might, for example, only get that boost from 1 in 40 rolls or get it 1 in 5 rolls. This means that Cryx will, on average over a great number of games, be slightly better, but means absolutely nothing for predicting the outcome of a single match. So that 5% difference probably won't affect the overall win rate of Cryx in any appreciable way. It would probably be something like 0.02%, but no doubt the mental effect on wargaming nerds is much more profound.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:
Hearthgut Hooch Hauler, only available through the Privateer Press online store "Black Anchor Heavy Industries", $164.99. You'll never be able to get it at a discounted price as it's not available outside of the PP webstore. $164.99. Let that sink in for a moment. We're talking almost Forge World prices for resin and some metal with nowhere near the detail of Forge World. And yes, PP made the rules for the Hearthgut Hooch Hauler very attractive to Trollblood players.

We're talking a large resin and metal model that you'll never get discounted from PP, vs a large resin model from FW that you'll never get discounted and there's a distinction where?

The "detail" argument has been done to death and is a complete non-starter. Extra skulls don't miraculously make a model better value. What you're actually saying is "I don't like the aesthetics of the model enough to pay the price asked" which is totally fine, but don't try and present it as some sort of objective argument. To my eye it fits in just fine both with the WMH aesthetic broadly and the Trollblood one more specifically.

So, it's a large resin model that costs quite a lot, in a world where large resin models are generally expensive, and it's a centerpiece model that has good rules? Well good. I can't think of anything worse than paying a bunch of cash for something to use in a game and finding out it sucks.

I can't see any specific criticism of PP here that any other number of companies that are near completely identical in their approach aren't just as guilty of. In fact, "big model that has high production costs that costs a lot but has good rules" isn't really a criticism. Your only valid point is that you don't appear to like it, which is perfectly valid but not PP's fault.

I don’t mean to speak for Tamwolf, but the distinction lies in the quality.

The quality of the Privateer Press minis I have is downright appalling. They are so bad, they sapped my enthusiasm for the game and undermined my confidence in the hobby. And at least I knew enough to know there was something wrong with them. Could you imagine what someone new to the hobby would think!

Someone in this thread made a Comment along the lines of “privateer press knows that their player-base doesn’t care about their miniatures “, Based on my own experiences I would tend to agree with that statement. It is pretty much agreed that the starter box minis are the worst quality they have. So the question I have is why? Why would a company make what is likely to be someone’s first encounter with their products, such substandard quality? You have to assume the company wants to attract and retain players. So why are the minis crap? The only possible answer is because they think it doesn’t matter to the gamers who buy the game.

Forgeworld now being the pinnacle of quality?

I lolled.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
This. Cryx relied on that 5%, they lived and died on it.

Not sure you understand how statistics work. A 5% difference wouldn't change a single game. It means that if you were to take hundreds, or even thousands of dice rolls, the difference in rolls would approach an average of a 5% increase (law of really big numbers). So each roll would have a 1 in 20 chance of rolling slightly better - remember, this isn't a 5% increase in successes, but in the increase of roll value - which may be meaningless if you already have a very high or very low chance already. A 5% is better than a 0%, and a 95% is better that a 90%, but they are, for all intents and purposes, identical tactically (you aren't going to decide to hit on a 5% or not hit on a 90%). So, it is only in the less common circumstances where a 5% increase is functionally important - a success where one was not before. Getting a 6 when a 5 would do doesn't change the outcome. This will happen far less than 1 in 20 rolls. Similarly, randomness only averages out over a large number of rolls. You might, for example, only get that boost from 1 in 40 rolls or get it 1 in 5 rolls. This means that Cryx will, on average over a great number of games, be slightly better, but means absolutely nothing for predicting the outcome of a single match. So that 5% difference probably won't affect the overall win rate of Cryx in any appreciable way. It would probably be something like 0.02%, but no doubt the mental effect on wargaming nerds is much more profound.

Whilst its too early for precise maths im assuming the 5% is more of a ballpark, and is a guesstimate of how a stat going up or down by 1 may change things, but in Cryx's case a model losing say 2 off its defensive stats and opponents forces picking up 2 on the offensive stats is quite the swing especially given how squishy they are

Not sure you understand how statistics work.

I gave a class about algebraic statistics several times.
My feeling is that with my beloved casters the percentage is about 20% or so.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
Whilst its too early for precise maths im assuming the 5% is more of a ballpark, and is a guesstimate of how a stat going up or down by 1 may change things, but in Cryx's case a model losing say 2 off its defensive stats and opponents forces picking up 2 on the offensive stats is quite the swing especially given how squishy they are

Generally speaking, these changes aren't made in isolation. PP isn't going to raise the MAT by 1 and leave it at that. As such, the relative balance of the game after a group of changes will swing considerably because many of those changes will affect each other, compound their effects, or interact with other parts of the game differently.

I'm specifically talking about how I see competitive gamers discuss individual models. Despite the fact that probability is an abstract science that breaks down at the individual level (it isn't likely you roll all 1s in a single game, but it is possible that you just roll 1s on a few important rolls and the fact that it is unlikely doesn't mean anything for the game in which you do). I see competitive gamers use probability as a hammer when factoring in the worth of units, and almost every time, they seem to get it wrong. I've seen a number of threads where people declare certain units to be trash while simultaneously see those same units decried as being overpowered and broken in another.

You can not use probability to declare the absolute value of a unit based on stats alone. Most likely, that small difference in chance to hit will be less important to the game than proper use of cover, the unit you are fighting against, which buffs you have available, what kind of terrain is in play, who you are playing against, or even whether the dice you used are perfectly balanced or not. Playing a game on the table is not laboratory conditions, so the abstract value of a unit is rarely as relevant as mathhammer nerds would suggest.

 Grimtuff wrote:
Forgeworld now being the pinnacle of quality?

I lolled.

Out of curiosity, what other company (companies?) that work in resin at the volumes Forge World does are better? Resin is a difficult medium to use. It has to be at the right temperature, has to be mixed correctly, has to be allowed to cure, and even with the most careful of pours, can induce air bubbles into the material.

Kromlech comes to mind for great resin models, but they do nothing close to the scale Forge World produces. Is there a company out there that does and for what game?

 Tamwulf wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Forgeworld now being the pinnacle of quality?

I lolled.

Out of curiosity, what other company (companies?) that work in resin at the volumes Forge World does are better? Resin is a difficult medium to use. It has to be at the right temperature, has to be mixed correctly, has to be allowed to cure, and even with the most careful of pours, can induce air bubbles into the material.

Kromlech comes to mind for great resin models, but they do nothing close to the scale Forge World produces. Is there a company out there that does and for what game?

All of the Chinese fw stuff I have has been consistently better than actual Forgeworld products.

As for PP it’s been dead in my area since right after mk3 launched. Most stores clearanced it off and no longer stock it and most people are now back to playing 40k, including me. The restic models in the new starters are basically garbage and a terrible way to introduce new players as mentioned before. The last straw was when they lied and said they had been working on mk3 since mk2 came out. With all the problems and it being an obvious rush job I totally lost faith in them. Sad as I had been playing off and on since mk1 launched.

Locally where I live the result for warmahordes is a mixed. There is decent sized group that shows up every week at one of the stores locally. A lot of same people that I saw years ago and some new faces. The group is smaller maybe 6-8 people normally. The local stores either don't carry PP stuff or have decided to stop carrying it and are trying to sell off their current stock with no plans on replacing it. That was several months ago and very little of the that stock has moved. A lot of cities around where I live though have seen their warmahorde communities disappear. Either people just quit, went back to playing 40k, or have started playing Guild Ball. Guild Ball really took off apparently after mk3 dropped. I don't play the game but I can see the appeal for warmahordes players.

It's obvious that PP took some misteps, and kind of bungled the release of MK3, the worst of which was neutering almost all online sales and introducing their MAP.
Looking back now, all the steps make sense really.

I think their biggest problem is competition. There are just tons of options now to eat away at my gaming dollars, and a lot more options with better models.
The model quality of PP is worse than CMON's board game miniature quality and I think this, along with killing the Press Gang and introducing the Free Rider policy is what might be putting the nails in the coffin.

PP is unable to compete with other miniatures manufacturers, and is now competing against board games. Except I can get a board game for less than a single Hooch Hauler. In fact, I can almost get two massive board games for that price.

Another problem is the model and rules bloat.
That's why games like Guild Ball and the new hotness is doing better - less to deal with and remember.

Like others have said, it's a perfect storm of bad decisions, and extremely good competition. It's no longer a game of just competing with GW. PP has a lot more competition from a lot more companies and directions. And unless they can diversify, and start expanding their catalogue (which they seem to have tried and failed at) , there isn't much at all to entice new players - it's a steep learning curve, the models are mediocre, and the rules are I a constant state of flux. None of that is attractive to new players.

I was reading about the "Rolling Thunder" releases that WotC did for Legend of the Five Rings (and a couple other CCGs they did at the time), where they changed how they released their expansions. Going for more of a comic book vibe, the idea was to replace rarity with scarcity, such that there were no rare cards and it would be easy to collect a complete set, but not if you waited too long and the next set was released.

What they ultimately found is that, despite rarity being the biggest complaint that players had against their games, when they actually removed rarity completely, the sales basically dropped to zero. An actual quote from Ryan Dancy:

Rarity is essential to the CCG biz. Without it, sales slow and interest wanes. CCGs therefore are a hobby for people who can afford to chase rares. If you don't like chasing rares, find another hobby.

Now, obviously, the CCG market eventually crashed, taking with it just about every CCG under the sun save Pokemon and Magic. When other companies, like FFG, tried to make card games, they tried to distance themselves from the collectible aspect as much as possible, and even now, I think the term has a particularly poisonous connotation outside of Pokemon/Magic. So the players didn't like chasing rares, but when they couldn't chase rares, they didn't really know what else to do. Eventually, they got tired of chasing rares and not knowing what else to do, they left.

And it just reminded me of Warmachine, for some reason. Warmachine is a hobby for people who can afford to be competitive. If you don't like being competitive, find a different game. But when given exactly what they are asking for (constant balance updates through the CID program, theme lists designed to increase the number of viable army builds), it turns out that it isn't what most players wanted after all. More than that, Warmachine - the premier competitive wargame - is crashing pretty hard right now and there's a bunch of scandals threatening numerous tournaments and high profile tournament players, to the point that maybe we are approaching the point where "chasing rares" is no longer enough to support a game by itself and foil cards are no longer fooling anybody.

 Sqorgar wrote:

And this happens all the time. Seriously, 40k is on the 8th edition. There isn't a single model more than a year old that hasn't been changed significantly. Things need to change over time in response to new releases, balance imperfections, and direction changes. It happens in every game to every model. If you are buying a model for a very narrowly defined, specific purpose that you know will one day be nerfed, removed, enhanced, modified, or otherwise changed, isn't it your fault for having absolutely unrealistic expectations of an ongoing game system?

And the fact that this happens all the time in all games makes it OK? People walked away from those other games when it happened there. Same thing is happening here.

And no - I don’t see it as my ‘fault’ for expecting my product to stay relevant/functional. I don't expect the ink in a book to evaporate, I don't expect a DVD disc to shatter after x amount of time.

I don’t mind broken things being toned down, I don’t mind underpowered things being beefed (actually, I encourage these), I do mind change for the sake of change, especially when it is not an overall improvement. I also mind things being nerfed, not because they were causing issues, but solely in order to push the ‘new stuff’. You don’t need to nerf the older stuff to keep folks interested in the new stuff.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Cynical? If anything, game designers are optimists. They think all the changes they make are for the greater good of the game and that whatever sacrifice is being asked of the players is ultimately worth it. It's the players who are cynical.

It’s got a lot less to do with the ‘greater good’ than dictats from management about pushing the new shiny at the expense of the old.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Probably the same way I'd feel when the new iPhone doesn't have a headphone jack, my computer no longer runs DOS games, or when the guy I didn't vote for gets elected into office. Sometimes, things change, and not always for the better, and being able to adapt to change is the mark of maturity.

I genuinely doubt you prefer to sit back and let yourself get screwed over
.
As you say. Adapt to change. Or suffer.

So when, for example Apple do dodgy, cynical things with the new iPhone, while I could accept it, and shrug my shoulders and say 'ah well, change happens', I don’t actually have to just sit there and take it on the chin. In this specific example, There is a reason both me and my walk walked from Apple.

In this topic, We are talking about why people are ‘adapting’ and turning their backs on Privateer Press, rather than ‘suffering’.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Competitive is not a spectrum. There's a wide variety of different personality types that enjoy competition, but they do not enjoy it for the same reason. I don't call all of them competitive players. I define "competitive player" as someone for whom the game ceases to be worthwhile without the promise (threat?) of competition. Like, for example, a WMH player who won't play Battle Box games with new players. Those aren't WAAC players, but their behavior may have just as high a cost.

WAAC is someone who will literally "win at all cost". They'll cheat, whine, exploit, manipulate, throw fits, and generally use any action available to them in order to chase victory. Competitive players are a different breed. They aren't trying to win at all cost, they are trying to compete at all cost. They may desire fair competition, and generally be decent opponents to play against, but the only thing they care about is their selfish desire to make all games into a competition of skill, willpower, and intelligence. The Necromunda player mentioned earlier in this thread is a good example. They aren't a WAAC player, but they are trying to make a game competitive that really isn't designed for it.

‘Competitive’ is very much a spectrum. If you have a wide variety of different personality types enjoying competition for different reasons, that very much points to a spectrum of what 'competitive' represents. ‘Competitive’ means different things to different people, regardless of what you yourself (or I) call it. It’s a gradient, not a ‘line in the sand’. And you can’t take an extreme fringe element of this spectrum, especially one you don’t like, and slap a label most people would call ‘generic catch-all term’ on it, you are opening yourself to claims that you are deliberately misrepresenting and skewing the picture to push your own narrative. The necromunda player mentioned earlier was a tool – I agree, but is certainly not a good example of a lot of competitive players. He is a good example of an donkey-cave gamer. And as someone who has played competitively, I find the comparison that both he and I see the same to be both inaccurate, condescending and extremely damned rude.

You need to be very careful about your definitions, especially the ones that you define on your own terms that are at odds with what others define it. The kind of gaming you call ‘competitive’ is what I refer to as ‘competitive at all costs’ for example. Now, I will agree with you here – this type of gaming certainly can be destructive to a community when it's not held in check or kept to the right place. But 'competitive' as a whole? In my experience, competitive can be both extremely positive and empowering for a lot of people.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Yes. I don't think you need an official program for players to act as ambassadors for it, and if you need some sort of badge or reward or else you won't do it, then the problem isn't the with the program stopping. And WMH's bloat is most felt when played in a very specific way. There's plenty of opportunities to play the game in a less bloated manner (playing journeyman leagues, battle box games, company of iron, heavy metal games, narrative games) which are much more welcoming to new players. But if you only play 75 pt Steamroller games with the intent of winning against every single overpowered combo in every single faction across Warmachine and Hordes, then yeah, it's a bit bloated.

I think if you put the effort into building a community, organising events and acting as an ambassador for a game, especially in a volunteer capacity, you should get something out of it. To me, that goes for anything people put their time and effort into. I have Marshalld for several marathons (as well as run them). I stood there I never godawful weather, cheering and directing people on the course. At the end of the day, I got a free t-shirt. Totally fair, considering the time I'd put in.

Losing the pressganger programme took the incentive away from a lot of people to be community builders. Also, PP gave a lot of support and tools to pressgangers that helped organised things that is extremely difficult to replicate.

That said, I agree with the second part of what you say. There are plenty other ways of playing the game. Id actually also argue there are plenty other ways of playing effective 75pt tournaments than what the internet says, but there can be a certain stagnancy of thought about these things on line.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Someone more up to date on WMH that I should intentionally create a newbie-friendly subset of models - maybe one or two casters, a couple jacks, and a couple units per faction (equivalent to the initial release of mk1) - which doesn't include any curbstomp combos or the trickiest caster spells or any of the bloat. Something where a new player can pick any combination of any faction's models and just play it against any combination of another faction's models and have a game that will last at least 3 turns.

I am a big fan of the idea of more restrictive formats. For me, a start is ‘current versions’ of casters only. I like the idea of something like a ‘legends’ format which is a format where what is ‘game-legal’ is what was around at the time of the ‘legends’ expansion of Mk1. As you say, limit the casters, jacks and units but still leave enough there that you can sink your teeth into.

 Sqorgar wrote:

I think people who would drop a game and sell all their models after investing hundreds (if not thousands) of dollars for the better part of a decade over temporary balance issues are mentally ill.

And you didn’t answer my question. Are you saying PPs shift to ‘theme’ based list building (effectively akin to a GW ‘codex’ style release schedule) and CID as opposed to ‘open’ lists didn’t sour some people on how the game was presented and built?

PEople left 40k, for example, when GW brought in 'allies' as it brought in a huge range of problems. People can leave WMH because go with the company is building/supporting its game no longer matches what they want to play.

What killed it for me was destroying theme forces in MKIII. I had a 150 pnt Ashlynn force I could no longer field , it was not overpowered or broken. Sure, other companies do it but combined with mark iii with its extensive play testing by rabid fan boys who wouldn't criticise anything it was enough to destroy my interest and that of 9 other friends.

GW gets our money and our support now and that's very very unlikely to change. MKiii is so bad now that most of the UK sellers who buy secondhand models in bulk will no longer buy the stuff at all.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
What killed it for me was destroying theme forces in MKIII. I had a 150 pnt Ashlynn force I could no longer field , it was not overpowered or broken. Sure, other companies do it but combined with mark iii with its extensive play testing by rabid fan boys who wouldn't criticise anything it was enough to destroy my interest and that of 9 other friends.

GW gets our money and our support now and that's very very unlikely to change. MKiii is so bad now that most of the UK sellers who buy secondhand models in bulk will no longer buy the stuff at all.

Honestly, this is much more accurate to what happened to Warmahordes than the long debate above, imo. Lots of people have posted along these lines, but it's getting a little drowned out in this thread just due to a few posters arguing.

Basically, PP dropped the ball really, really bad with MK3's rollout and the events that happened around the same time. Anecdotally, it effectively ended play in our group and the local stores in the same way it did for Twilight's above (with the exception of Wehrkind and I continuing to play for a bit in his basement ).

Whether or not someone likes / doesn't like "competitive" games is kind of irrelevant to all this, and of course GW is genius in that they make both (cadual-style AoS and a tight ruleset like Shadespire). It's all about the implementation, and unfortunately PP handled their new edition about as badly as it was possible to do!

I will say I'm not seeing a lot of great deals on E-bay, though I do see a lot of "or best offer". Demand hasn't completely collapsed. (edit, oops had that reversed before).

 Grimtuff wrote:
Forgeworld now being the pinnacle of quality?

I lolled.

I'm pretty firmly in the "warmachine models are crap" camp and I still have to back this up a bit.

Forgeworld has some technically beautiful models, but their casting is abysmal sometimes. I've seen recasts that legitimately seem to have higher success rates than the original molds, which is ridiculous for the price you pay on forgeworld models.

This isn't really an argument for or against either company, just that I'd have a hard time holding up either as the pinnacle of casting and model design.

If you're going to go with the pinnacle of model design, it's either going to be GW plastics on a purely technical level (skulls and goofy designs aside, they have some of the most technically impressive wargaming models and jam packed sprues in the business) or aesthetically speaking there are dozens of boutique companies out there that have just gorgeous quality and yet somehow still understand quality control to boot while being in the same price range or cheaper than PP and FW.

 Tamwulf wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
Forgeworld now being the pinnacle of quality?

I lolled.

Out of curiosity, what other company (companies?) that work in resin at the volumes Forge World does are better? Resin is a difficult medium to use. It has to be at the right temperature, has to be mixed correctly, has to be allowed to cure, and even with the most careful of pours, can induce air bubbles into the material.

Kromlech comes to mind for great resin models, but they do nothing close to the scale Forge World produces. Is there a company out there that does and for what game?

The resin Dropzone and Dropfleet Commander uses is better in every way. Same thing with Prodos'/Archon's resin and their new one piece gimmic resin. Those are two companies who surely put out quantities of resin miniatures comparable to Forgeworld, but whose quality blows Forgeworld out of the water. I don't have a good feel for Mierce, but from what I hear they als compare well with FW.

The problem is that what Force World is doing is kind of insane. Resin casting is a small run process and they've turned it into an assembly line, at the cost that most of their castings are flawed.

It's like they're whittling wooden spoons on a conveyor belt.

 RiTides wrote:
Sqorgar, your points here come across just as someone who is against competitive play, but GW obviously feels differently as they've released games on the whole spectrum from casual (AoS in certain modes) to very competitive focused with tight rules (Shadespire). Basically, your points are completely off regarding why Warmahordes suddenly failed, as they're the kind of thing someone who just Really doesn't like the game would say, rather than a loyal customer who decided (for reasons like Twilight posted here, which closely mirror my own) to suddenly stop playing.

1. I like Warmachine. I think the game is pretty good and occasionally brilliant, and I've been with it since literally before it was released (I played a demo at a con before the boxes were available and preordered it). I have several armies (Cryx, Khador, Menoth, Convergence, and Retribution - and I bought a mk3 battle box for Cygnar with the intention of starting them in mk3). Theme lists almost brought me back (and I thought Mk3 address many of my gameplay complaints from mk2) and I was THIS close to getting the Armored Corp box (I might still get Sorscha3 to paint) - There's a thread here somewhere in which you can see me wavering. Ultimately, I decided not to come back. What I don't like is the Warmachine community, how they play the game, how they talk about the game, and how they demand the game be tailored to them.

I don't know what your definition of a loyal player is, but I've been playing and following the game since the beginning. I lapsed the first time after my first child was born. I lapsed the second time because I got tired of getting curb stomped on the second turn by frustrating combos performed largely by unpainted proxies on a flat field. I only briefly flirted with going back a third time recently, but I still bought two battle boxes, the hardback rulebook, and a plastic Stormclad (just to see if the plastic model quality was any good) - but I had intended to buy about $200 more of Man-o-War models. I was a Warmachine customer for a decade, and I'm still a potential customer, honestly. WMH could EASILY get me back if it wanted me.

2. WMH is failing because too few new players are coming in and a large portion of the old players are leaving - the net change in players over time is negative. We can debate why these two facts are what they are, but that's the short of it. Warmachine was unsustainable and operating on borrowed time. It would've crashed sooner or later regardless of theme lists or CID or press gangers. That net negative change in players goes back to the latter days of Mk2, and while Mk3 may have expedited the game's illness, it was inevitable without a trajectory change.

3. Games Workshop doesn't put all their eggs in one basket with competitive gaming. Even their competitive products have non-competitive uses. Shadespire figures can be played in Age of Sigmar, and the General's Handbook has as much open play and narrative content as it does matched play. GW has competitive games, but it doesn't rely on competitive gaming.

The problem with Forge World is price, when combined with quality. The "they do so much" isn't an excuse for quality. It never is. If you can't produce a quality product (regardless of the number of units, or the scale of the actual model) then don't do it.

If Forgeworld was about 30-50% cheaper, it'd be worth it, given the casting issues I've seen. They're charging a premium price for what is absolutely NOT a premium product.

I've received bad resin from two companies in the UK who were not Forgeworld. The best ones I've received were from Russia and Poland, and wherever TT Combat is located at the moment.

Some of these companies even charge close to Forgeworld prices for a similar item, but the quality has (thus far) been far superior than the resin I've received from Forgeworld - and that I've witnessed from friends. I do think some of the Forgeworld stuff looks better now than it did back in the early 2000's, but that's not saying a whole lot.

Forgeworld also often commits the sin of "forgetting what medium we work in" with some shockingly stupid model decisions when you know you're making it in resin - looking at you Heirophant or whatever the huge spindly legged Tyranid mega-creature was. Same with generally spindly, thin models covered in thin details which are extremely prone to mis-casting or breaking.

I generally have a negative opinion of any gaming miniature which becomes "model first, gaming second" with regard to design. I think a key component to a miniatures company's designs should be remembering who is going to buy the model and use it - to remember someone needs to stash this in a foam/cardboard box and might fly across the world with it to play in a game. GW is making some silly models with regards to this issue lately and Forgeworld has long had some questionably designed minis.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Not sure you understand how statistics work.

I gave a class about algebraic statistics several times.
My feeling is that with my beloved casters the percentage is about 20% or so.

87% of the statistics found from the Internet are wrong.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 master of ordinance wrote:
This. Cryx relied on that 5%, they lived and died on it.

Not sure you understand how statistics work. A 5% difference wouldn't change a single game. It means that if you were to take hundreds, or even thousands of dice rolls, the difference in rolls would approach an average of a 5% increase (law of really big numbers). So each roll would have a 1 in 20 chance of rolling slightly better - remember, this isn't a 5% increase in successes, but in the increase of roll value - which may be meaningless if you already have a very high or very low chance already. A 5% is better than a 0%, and a 95% is better that a 90%, but they are, for all intents and purposes, identical tactically (you aren't going to decide to hit on a 5% or not hit on a 90%). So, it is only in the less common circumstances where a 5% increase is functionally important - a success where one was not before. Getting a 6 when a 5 would do doesn't change the outcome. This will happen far less than 1 in 20 rolls. Similarly, randomness only averages out over a large number of rolls. You might, for example, only get that boost from 1 in 40 rolls or get it 1 in 5 rolls. This means that Cryx will, on average over a great number of games, be slightly better, but means absolutely nothing for predicting the outcome of a single match. So that 5% difference probably won't affect the overall win rate of Cryx in any appreciable way. It would probably be something like 0.02%, but no doubt the mental effect on wargaming nerds is much more profound.

Cryx lost 5 - 10% of their defensive stat and other factions gained 5 - 10% on offensive stats. As another poster said it made a massive difference. Cryx just die now, there is no real purpose to run them. If you try to run you have to either aim for the caster and get an assassination run asap, or die.
That 5% is massive when it is the only thing keeping you alive.

The percentage discussion is misleading, imo. A stat swing of 2 in MAT or RAT often distinguishes auto-include models from those that aren't usually worth their points.

The fact that the Skorne faction didn't work at all on release kind of points to how little testing they did ahead of time

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:


The resin Dropzone and Dropfleet Commander uses is better in every way. Same thing with Prodos'/Archon's resin and their new one piece gimmic resin. Those are two companies who surely put out quantities of resin miniatures comparable to Forgeworld, but whose quality blows Forgeworld out of the water. I don't have a good feel for Mierce, but from what I hear they als compare well with FW.

The couple pieces I have gotten from Mierce are perfect. A bit of gap fill with joining limbs, but nothing on the scale of what friends have had to go through with their WMH figs. Mold slip a mm thick.

PP got leapfrogged by the smaller competition on miniatures. Their rules were the only thing people could hold up as being the draw for the game. With that being gone, they are now just another small miniature game company competing among the crowd.

Not a WMH player, but back in the day I often liked their character and Warjack sculpts. Character miniatures were (and are) also usually cheaper than GW ones (particularly plastic GW characters are crazy expensive).
Later on, I thought PP sculpts became increasingly cartoonish compared to earlier, more gritty and serious tone and in general they seemed to run out of ideas what kind of models to design anymore. GW suffers from similar issues, but IMO less so. PP infantry models do not compare well, with lack of poses, use of PVC and so on.
Side note, a weird thing is how tiny pictures PP uses of its models on the website. Hello, 1999 called and wants its 800x600 resolution back.
And Colossals/Gargantuans...mostly meh looking models, and I predicted they would cause similar issues than GW Apocalypse scale units when they were added to regular 40k.

The Characters are still worth the buy if you like them, as are some of the Jacks.

I'm pretty happy with PP's restic when it costs me $2.50 per mini. I might go as high as 5 for Menoth or Convergence. Love their over the top style.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I'm pretty happy with PP's restic when it costs me $2.50 per mini. I might go as high as 5 for Menoth or Convergence. Love their over the top style.

maybe i am a weirdo, but other than GW's LOTR (especially the finecast, which I love) I think PP's minis are much much better than GW's...for full disclosure, I may also be one of the 4 or 5 people on earth who liked the PPP for Confrontation.

 thekingofkings wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
I'm pretty happy with PP's restic when it costs me $2.50 per mini. I might go as high as 5 for Menoth or Convergence. Love their over the top style.

maybe i am a weirdo, but other than GW's LOTR (especially the finecast, which I love) I think PP's minis are much much better than GW's...for full disclosure, I may also be one of the 4 or 5 people on earth who liked the PPP for Confrontation.

I wouldn't say better than GW's, but I like how stylish and different many of PP's designs are (were?). I liked the Confrontation Ragnarok plastics, too, although I haven't taken them out of their tub in the closet in half a decade. And I also like Reaper Bones, and also Nolzur's Pre Primed minis, and also Mantic's plastics, and Star Trek Attack Wing, and also Defiance UAMC, and also old Warzone plastics...


Maybe I have no taste.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
What killed it for me was destroying theme forces in MKIII. I had a 150 pnt Ashlynn force I could no longer field , it was not overpowered or broken. Sure, other companies do it but combined with mark iii with its extensive play testing by rabid fan boys who wouldn't criticise anything it was enough to destroy my interest and that of 9 other friends.

GW gets our money and our support now and that's very very unlikely to change. MKiii is so bad now that most of the UK sellers who buy secondhand models in bulk will no longer buy the stuff at all.

Its strange but true, one misleading edition could kill a gaming company and PP is in this position.
The general rule set of MK3 is generally solid but theme lists are annoying if you ask me.

I don’t really have a horse in this race (never liked WMH models so never got any) but have seen WMH die on its arse at our club too where it was once very popular.

I get the impression from there and this thread that notwithstanding the MK3 abortion, WMH just never had the fluff to hook people like say 40k does. So that even through bad editions people had less incentive to stick with the game.

WMH competitive focus was good while the game was good but a massive weakness when it was not.

I don’t really have a horse in this race (never liked WMH models so never got any) but have seen WMH die on its arse at our club too where it was once very popular.

Then you are on the better side.
Selling PP stuff seems to be impossible these days.

There are definitely some models from their line that I want, though I loathe oversized shoulders, which cuts out about half their stuff. I recall that at one point I was starting to go bigger into it, but got turned off by the modeling, especially after the tourney rules where you couldn't use 3rd party bits on your models came out (or that was how it was interpreted here). I'd been kind of doing Egyptian theme Cryx, and that pretty much killed it. In 40K you can build your own stuff, in warmachine/hordes you're really limited as to what you can do creatively with your models. Much less scope for converting and scratch building.

 kestral wrote:
There are definitely some models from their line that I want, though I loathe oversized shoulders, which cuts out about half their stuff. I recall that at one point I was starting to go bigger into it, but got turned off by the modeling, especially after the tourney rules where you couldn't use 3rd party bits on your models came out (or that was how it was interpreted here). I'd been kind of doing Egyptian theme Cryx, and that pretty much killed it. In 40K you can build your own stuff, in warmachine/hordes you're really limited as to what you can do creatively with your models. Much less scope for converting and scratch building.

The 3rd party rule was only for PP sponsored events such as Lock and Load. It has no effect on any other SR tourney being ran anywhere else, just like GW's identical ruling affects zero tourneys outside Warhammer World.

Unfortunately Grimtuff, if the company puts something like that out, many TOs and players will take it as gospel for their own games so it does have an effect.

Weirdly I have been doing a lot of painting and modeling for Hordes recently. I would argue that there are actually some lovely models in the range. I am doing Gatormen after they have been sat in my cupboard for six years and the original metals are mostly very nice. Snapjaw is gorgeous.

I don't imagine I will actually play the game, likely I will use the minis for Dungeons and Dragons now. I dislike the idea of themes, though I would probably play without them and still enjoy myself, but the local scene has completely imploded and I am not motivated to try and start it up again.

The MK3 thing saddens me, because even when it first launched, I liked it a whole lot better than MK2. There seemed to be an absolute desire from the community to crucify PP on it though and honestly I don't know why. The one glaring, obvious gap in it was that it was pretty clearly playtested with a rule that you couldn't attack your own models, and every major failing was a result of that being dialed back to being unable to charge them.

The other early gaffes were RAW loopholes that happen in every game (including MK2) that get resolved as they come to life. No, it was never intended that you couldn't technically charge KD'd models. That was pretty obvious, but the players decided that was somehow an apocalyptic sign of a broken game, when pretty much every other system suffers a similar goof and players are happy with the devs saying "no, don't play it that way, a fix is coming".

It felt to me that there was a lynch mob out there before MK3 launched that was hunting for rope to hang them with. I guess they succeeded? Either way, its disappointing, as on the whole, I like the actual game more than I ever have; I'm just tired of working with a community that feels increasingly self destructive.

In my area, all of the events and tournaments and even casual games went by the rule that you had to have the official model. No proxies allowed. no conversions allowed.

Its a big reason why I got out of WM long ago.

 Da Boss wrote:
Unfortunately Grimtuff, if the company puts something like that out, many TOs and players will take it as gospel for their own games so it does have an effect.

Weirdly I have been doing a lot of painting and modeling for Hordes recently. I would argue that there are actually some lovely models in the range. I am doing Gatormen after they have been sat in my cupboard for six years and the original metals are mostly very nice. Snapjaw is gorgeous.

I don't imagine I will actually play the game, likely I will use the minis for Dungeons and Dragons now. I dislike the idea of themes, though I would probably play without them and still enjoy myself, but the local scene has completely imploded and I am not motivated to try and start it up again.

You talk like I've not played in several wmh tourneys....

That rule has been ignored in every single one. Every. One.

I said many, not all. I have also played in tournaments and that rule was enforced in every single one.

Maybe you are right and it is less commonly enforced than I think, but it is enforced in some places.

According to BoLS / ICv2, Warmachine was the third best seller in Spring.

Okay what are Marvelous Mini's, this is literally the first time I've heard of them? I'm really curious about the results that came to this conclusion.

beast_gts wrote:
According to BoLS / ICv2, Warmachine was the third best seller in Spring.

Yeah, and that's a big change from a few years ago, when WM/H were always in the top 5.
Now, only Warmachine is, and FFG and Wizkids are competing against GW and PP.
That's twice as many competitors in the top 5 compared to just a few years ago.

The pie is only so big, and can only be sliced so many ways.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Okay what are Marvelous Mini's, this is literally the first time I've heard of them? I'm really curious about the results that came to this conclusion.

RPG's are bigger now than you realize? There is a reason Reaper Bones is crushing it on KS.

From another thread:

 judgedoug wrote:
the caveat for ICV2 is that it is done of informal polling of game stores only, and does not account for hard numbers (or sales from webstore-only shops, etc)

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:
Okay what are Marvelous Mini's, this is literally the first time I've heard of them? I'm really curious about the results that came to this conclusion.

https://wizkids.com/dnd-unpainted/

I'm curious where Hordes went. ICV2 has always separated Warmachine and Hordes out as separate games, and I always thought they sold pretty close (never saw Skorne, but Trollbloods were more common than Menoth in my area). Did Legion and AoS sell better than only Hordes, or does ICV2 now count them as one game system?

Edit: Also, where did X-Wing go? Wasn't it #1 for the past couple years? There's no way it is doing worse than Age of Sigmar's 1st edition, unless the announcement of X-Wing 2nd killed all sales momentum.

RPG's are bigger now than you realize? There is a reason Reaper Bones is crushing it on KS.

I'm sure they are... I've just never heard of this one specific product until someone pointed out the link. I was actually hoping it was a DnD miniatures and not just individual models for a game.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Edit: Also, where did X-Wing go? Wasn't it #1 for the past couple years? There's no way it is doing worse than Age of Sigmar's 1st edition, unless the announcement of X-Wing 2nd killed all sales momentum.

Zero new releases since December I assume in a game that was choking on bloat.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

RPG's are bigger now than you realize? There is a reason Reaper Bones is crushing it on KS.

I'm sure they are... I've just never heard of this one specific product until someone pointed out the link. I was actually hoping it was a DnD miniatures and not just individual models for a game.

They're actually pretty nice, and come pre-primed. There's still mold lines, but for cheap, grab and paint for RPG's, they're awesome.
My LGS actually has a large shelf dedicated to just those models, and the monsters are almost always sold out.

And to add to the discussion - 2nd Editon X-Wing killed all 1st ed. sales. It's not really a surprise, and I'm sure it will jump back up there once 2nd hits.
ICv2 results can always be taken with a grain of salt. But, there is every indication that a large majority of sales of any game is through an LGS or some sort of physical retail location.

I like them (the D&D minis), but they are mostly gaming tokens. Shallow detail, sort of blobby at times, and all that. But they are good for grab, paint, play, and you can get all sorts of stuff for Dungeons and Dragons like Bards and the like for pretty cheap.

I am surprised at Hordes not being more popular, in my local areas it has always been the bigger game. I think the Warlock mechanics are more fun than the Warcasters, and the Hordes sculpts to me are way better than the Warmachine ones.

 Da Boss wrote:

I am surprised at Hordes not being more popular, in my local areas it has always been the bigger game. I think the Warlock mechanics are more fun than the Warcasters, and the Hordes sculpts to me are way better than the Warmachine ones.

I think the Warjacks are the big draw for the universe regardless. I agree that my Trolls are my better looking models, but when I'm itching to play Warmachine, its largely for Juggernauts.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I'm curious where Hordes went. ICV2 has always separated Warmachine and Hordes out as separate games, and I always thought they sold pretty close (never saw Skorne, but Trollbloods were more common than Menoth in my area). Did Legion and AoS sell better than only Hordes, or does ICV2 now count them as one game system?

Edit: Also, where did X-Wing go? Wasn't it #1 for the past couple years? There's no way it is doing worse than Age of Sigmar's 1st edition, unless the announcement of X-Wing 2nd killed all sales momentum.

Hordes has generally been a couple of places below warmachine on the icv2 (dakka won't line this up but it should give you the idea)

Warmachine position from Spring 18 to Spring 2012: 3,3,5,3,4,4,4,3,4,3,2,3,2
Hordes position from Spring 18 to Spring 2012: -,-,-,5,-,-,5,-,5,5,5,5,4

 Sqorgar wrote:
Edit: Also, where did X-Wing go? Wasn't it #1 for the past couple years? There's no way it is doing worse than Age of Sigmar's 1st edition, unless the announcement of X-Wing 2nd killed all sales momentum.

As others have said, X-Wing is pretty much in stasis/limbo right now in the lead-up to 2nd Edition in September. I wouldn't necessarily say 2E killed sales momentum (as that has a pretty negative connotation for the health of the game), but everybody is doing the sensible thing and not buying product that will be non-usable in a month and a half. Thus far though that seems pretty much in line with FFG's expectations for the roll-out of the new edition. They've hinted that come September we will see a very aggressive pace of new releases to catch back up.

https://store.privateerpress.com/what-s-hot/mystery-box-blowout

Hmmmm......

I had occasion to look at the miniatures shelves of my local store more closely yesterday, and I noticed all PP products were at 20% off, which I expect means they're being liquidated. Since this is a store with active wargaming club activity and where I've actually played Warmachine in the past, this is worrying.

 kestral wrote:
There are definitely some models from their line that I want, though I loathe oversized shoulders, which cuts out about half their stuff. I recall that at one point I was starting to go bigger into it, but got turned off by the modeling, especially after the tourney rules where you couldn't use 3rd party bits on your models came out (or that was how it was interpreted here). I'd been kind of doing Egyptian theme Cryx, and that pretty much killed it. In 40K you can build your own stuff, in warmachine/hordes you're really limited as to what you can do creatively with your models. Much less scope for converting and scratch building.

You’re welcome for that rule, it was totally in response to my work.

 Ghool wrote:
https://store.privateerpress.com/what-s-hot/mystery-box-blowout

Hmmmm......

Oh no, that is scary.

Maybe now I will never get around to getting that Skorne Hydra.

 AduroT wrote:
You’re welcome for that rule, it was totally in response to my work.

Please elaborate.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 AduroT wrote:
You’re welcome for that rule, it was totally in response to my work.

Please elaborate.

I did an Afflictor conversion for someone where I made it look less like a Mutalisk and more like a wasp, which involved some Hormagaunt scything talons for legs. He took it to Adepticon and used it there, and when the PP judge on staff (Hungerford iirc) saw it on the table he DQed it for having non-PP parts. It was pointed out to him that that rule was nowhere to be found in any of the documents. It was about a month after that they updated the Steamroller rules with the changed conversion policy banning other company’s iconic IP (which amusingly wouldn’t have effected the afflictor as the talons are rather generic). I also heard from one of their other staff that my heavily Necron themed Cryx were a part of their internal discussions on the policy.

 Ghool wrote:
https://store.privateerpress.com/what-s-hot/mystery-box-blowout

Hmmmm......

Description: We need to make room in our warehouse and are clearing space by offering an incredible deal: Get nearly $230 worth of WARMACHINE or HORDES models and an accessory (at least a $242 value) for only $59.99 (Domestic US shipping included!). Each mystery box will contain an assortment of models from a single, random Faction, and include one huge-base model. Up to 5 mystery boxes can be purchased in a single transaction without any duplicate factions.

Supplies are limited, and this offer will end on August 31st.

Looks indeed scary.

 TwilightSparkles wrote:
What killed it for me was destroying theme forces in MKIII. I had a 150 pnt Ashlynn force I could no longer field , it was not overpowered or broken. Sure, other companies do it but combined with mark iii with its extensive play testing by rabid fan boys who wouldn't criticise anything it was enough to destroy my interest and that of 9 other friends.

GW gets our money and our support now and that's very very unlikely to change.

Really? You are going to the company of Squats, WFB Mercenaries, Chaos Dwarves, WFB in general, Kroot mercenary, the Lost and the Damned, etc, because you are angry about companies that make armies obsolete and not valid anymore?
I just really really don't understand the reasoning here.

Squats, WFB Mercenaries, Chaos Dwarves, WFB in general, Kroot mercenary, the Lost and the Damned,

They never were competitive.
Their mere existence is fake news.

 wuestenfux wrote:

Looks indeed scary.

I suspect you'll get a resin colossal that's redone in plastic.