Definitely trying to mimic Infinity with those sculpts.
Fluff for the fluff gods:
Architects, Keepers, 1000 Worlds. Low grade stuff that's indistinguishable from a doormat.
Arcanessence. Seriously, this makes me wretch a little bit. Four paragraphs later its simply 'Arc.' Better, but that's actually a real word with an unrelated meaning. Why are you so bad at this?
Racks. C&C module for warcasters who... are in space now, while their units are planetside. The rack is also a card deck for 'spell-like' cyphers (call them spells, OK?) that's built pre-game.
So really boring generic terms, and pointless technobabble terms, and game terms that don't mean what the words actually mean. Exciting.
Cyriss is now the entire galaxy. And the galaxy is being killed by harvesting Arc to fight and travel and stuff. Yeesh.
The inhabitants of the galaxy are trapped in a cycle of consuming Arc to fight for the ability to harvest more Arc.
OK, setting premise is everyone is a gibbering moron. Thanks.
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Alternate activation, round trackers (yay, more crap on the table) that 'governs scoring opportunities.' Yay, a score based game. Exciting.
Casualties respawn as reserves. Could be good or bad, but given the emphasis on scoring and targeting 1-1.5 hour games, this sounds like padding so the game doesn't just end when someone's winning.
Both squads mostly have guns, but the Infinity Paladins squad has a sword-and-shield guy, and both squads have 'dude with staff' which is a bit puzzling if the warcasters are sending mana from above.
Bonus point for the paladin mech not having PP leg syndrome
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Negative one thousand points for the use of stupid icons to delineate game size and scale. PP overuses icons already.
No denying, I like the models. Curious to see what medium they'll be made in.
Interesting to see it's going to Kickstarter.
Last time I saw an established company try to come to KS for a mass combat game was Wyrd's "The Other Side." That didn't exactly set the tabletop world on fire, despite having some cool systems in place (which we're still waiting for a supposed 2 player starter set to actually materialize for).
Worst case if buy-in isn't too bad I'll get them and put them to use elsewhere. Or wait for the inevitable PP clearance if I can stomach the patience.
The models look nice, very nice even. Very mid00s anime, and not as liefeldian as warmachine. No gonna KS it, but mainly because I don't KS stuff on principle- I will gladly check it out once it's in general circulation.
I really hope this does well for PP and I do like the look of the models. Fingers sort of crossed that they bring some mech-beasties in for a "future hordes" style alongside.
Well, that truly is a monkey's paw WRT the whole "customisable warcaster" thing that was promised...
Yup, they are custom insofar as their spell decks. No model at all, all you have is mooks. Hard pass ATM. I was expecting "evolved" forms of the Warmachine armies, so we have Cygnar, in spirit, but now having expanded out beyond the stars, same goes for Khador (Khador is not a place! It's a people!) with them aggressively expanding heir new interplanetary empire with Karchev and Butcher both having been soul transferred as the Motherland will not let them die.
Either, neither or both of those displayed factions could be them, but there is nothing to indicate that that I can see, nothing there to hook the existing WMH player with signifiers to show this is "your" faction that you are familiar with.
I feel it's going to suffer from the same problem AoS had on launch. Too many things that are unfamiliar and the playerbase trying to rationalise them knowing that this is the future timeline of their previous game.
Eh I don't think its as bad as AoS since PP isn't going to destroy the old game. If anything this could be the fresh breath that PP needs to focus on whilst letting warmachine and hordes tick over for a while. Perhaps letting them focus on updating old sculpts in that line rather than pushing for new stuff all the time.
Meanwhile giving them a new game with smaller and fewer armies to let people sink their teeth into something fresh without the rules and model bloat.
Not a fan of the miniatures and kickstarter will keep people away. It was my understanding that this was supposed to be the next main game for them but instead looks like another small side game that will fade away like riot quest. If it wasn't for the wm ip this would be completely dead on arrival.
Overread wrote: Eh I don't think its as bad as AoS since PP isn't going to destroy the old game. If anything this could be the fresh breath that PP needs to focus on whilst letting warmachine and hordes tick over for a while. Perhaps letting them focus on updating old sculpts in that line rather than pushing for new stuff all the time.
Meanwhile giving them a new game with smaller and fewer armies to let people sink their teeth into something fresh without the rules and model bloat.
But... PP IS destroying their old game. The Oblivion campaign setting sees the Infernals come out and [spoiler alert] kill, like, everyone. Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika is literally the Iron Kingdoms timelined forward.
As for whether or not PP will keep producing for WarmaHordes.... <shrug> Who knows?
Overread wrote: Eh I don't think its as bad as AoS since PP isn't going to destroy the old game. If anything this could be the fresh breath that PP needs to focus on whilst letting warmachine and hordes tick over for a while. Perhaps letting them focus on updating old sculpts in that line rather than pushing for new stuff all the time.
Meanwhile giving them a new game with smaller and fewer armies to let people sink their teeth into something fresh without the rules and model bloat.
Sorry, I didn't mean in the vein of destroying the world. I mean like HH to 40k. Just reading a few posts on Reddit etc. people are already asking "Where's me Khador" (or words to that effect) upon seeing the factions. From what we have seen so far, there is nothing that is familiar, save some terms like "Warcaster" and "Cyriss". Just like with AoS when it launched, there was so much unfamiliarity and uncertainty that was juxtaposed with what little there was for background and players desperately trying to find a foothold with "their" factions.
I see the same happening here, as I already said, from what we can see there is nothing to indicate what factions (in spirit) these two are. Nothing that an existing player can point to and go "Oh, that's future Cygnar!" which immediately gives existing players a visual "hook" to draw from, now this is exacerbated by the lack of physical models for the Warcasters; who are the literal figureheads of the armies. Now, very few of these will make it over; given it is set 5000 years in the future of the timeline but it would be nice to have a visual link to the genesis game.
Lotta hate here (I presume former players of warmachine?)
From someone who never played, so I have absolutely no pre-existing bias, this looks interesting. Only thing I don't like is the scale being 35mm, but it's really not a big deal if the models are nice.
I like the aesthetic--it's a bit like Tau meets Infinity. I also like the emphasis on alternating activation and fast play time, and the size of the play area. I love Kill Team, but just wish it was a 3x3 play area as standard.
Quasistellar wrote: Lotta hate here (I presume former players of warmachine?).
Okay, I'll call your bluff- where's this so-called "hate"?
All I see is people expressing opinions on what little has been announced and not throwing around internet buzzwordery.
To be fair when I started that post (I had to come back to finish it--I'm at work ) there were only a few responses and half of them were pretty. . . severe.
Also don't forget we've only a few marketing photos - no 3D surrounds - no on the table shots etc... There's a lot of material still to be seen and explained.
Also PP's last KS for an artbook has gone well (got mine and its great).
I don't... need this. The models look great; a style I desperately want more of in tabletop gaming, but also similar enough to Infinity that I can happily pass. I'm curious if some of that is just the factions shown and if a later one will appeal to me more. Mostly though, it'll be a question of gameplay. Interesting enough to give it a try, but it's got a lot of competition.
Overread wrote: Eh I don't think its as bad as AoS since PP isn't going to destroy the old game. If anything this could be the fresh breath that PP needs to focus on whilst letting warmachine and hordes tick over for a while. Perhaps letting them focus on updating old sculpts in that line rather than pushing for new stuff all the time.
Meanwhile giving them a new game with smaller and fewer armies to let people sink their teeth into something fresh without the rules and model bloat.
I dunno. Personally, I think pp is far closer to doing a 'warhammer fantasy battle' on the WMH setting than people want to realise, and this is their AoS.
My thoughts on this game.
Its interesting...
Immediate take aways: alternative activation. The warcaster themself is also not a model, or fielded on the board. They're seemingly a rack (sorry, deck of cards) and they hide on a space ship and direct from there. Interesting take on the classic idea of a warnoun though I have images in my head from the yu-gi-oh cartoon. Customised models/builds. Scale is 20-30 models, for now. Gates/Reserves concept is interesting. So seemingly skirmish plus, rather than pseudo-army. 'High speed' - maybe implies warcry/shadespire level/style gameplay rather than highly involved WMH style or infinity as suggested earlier? Played with dice and cards supports this, potentially. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I hope for more than just a clone if true. Also kickstarter. Remembering Spartan financing 'new' projects this way. Not necessarily a good thing...
Very Nice models too. Wasn't sure what to expect. No idea on materials yet.
I am intrigued and I've subscribed to the newsletter.
Miniatures look fine so far. I agree they feel a lot like generic anime SF soldiers.
I guess the two factions presented are intended to be both starters.
35 mm scale. It keeps increasing...also it certainly means the prices will be as high.
Using Kickstarter is a good way to check the popularity of this new game. On the other side...it means waiting, and at the time it's finally out, the retailers may have already drop the ball for the new shiny game that will come out meanwhile.
35mm means cheap soft plastic, most likely the same as their awful battle boxes. If so, that means I'm out! The main reason to increase size is that the cheap stuff only works at larger scales.
The mushy or bulbous details on a bunch of their miniatures also indicates cheap plastic.
If it's easy to work with, I don't care. I'm kinda over hyperdetailed stuff, I don't have the patience anymore.
As for the AoS/Killing off Warmahordes, I was under the impression that thing was almost dead anyway? As long as they don't pull an actual End Times and rub the existing player's faces into it, they might get away without rousing the angry grogs, and hopefully they can focus on marketing towards other groups of players, without, finally, the legacy of Page 5 cringe.
I'm reminded that whilst I love the painting on the Infinity models, their models are tiny and very fine detailed. I'd honestly rank them pretty darn high in terms of the skill level you need to paint to achieve good results with them. Sometimes a simpler and more bold style that isn't as hyper fine detail is more practical to paint up and get looking good for the tabletop.
I'd be worried if its plastics unless PP can change from the one they used before. Considering many disliked those plastics heavily I can well expect that if PP is going the plastics pathway they are going with a different formula.
They might also have made the models with plastic in mind and yet still use metal/resin. So the first run turns into metal-resin and then later if it gets big they can shift effortlessly into plastics. They might even stage the KS so that if a threshold is reached they shift into plastics.
Vertrucio wrote: 35mm means cheap soft plastic, most likely the same as their awful battle boxes. If so, that means I'm out! The main reason to increase size is that the cheap stuff only works at larger scales.
The mushy or bulbous details on a bunch of their miniatures also indicates cheap plastic.
They haven't used PVC for their models for at least a couple years. Some of the initial grymkin infantry was the last time I recall seeing it. Since then, its been a really nice (but expensive) resin with metal bits for everything; including 30 mm infantry.
As for the AoS/Killing off Warmahordes, I was under the impression that thing was almost dead anyway? As long as they don't pull an actual End Times and rub the existing player's faces into it, they might get away without rousing the angry grogs, and hopefully they can focus on marketing towards other groups of players, without, finally, the legacy of Page 5 cringe.
wizards of the coast lost a lawsuit vs event organizers so privateer press had to scuttle its press ganger program which was the main driving force to sales
My understanding is both Riot Quest and Warcaster are alternate realities branched from the Oblivion event. Riot Quest was stated as a reality where the Infernals won. Warcaster is supposed to be the far future of a universe where Cryiss intervened.
This game solidly has my attention. Probably won't join the KS as I tend not to and woudl ather give money to the FLGS at release, but done right I could see me falling hard for this.
Hopefully PP casts these models in metal or hard plastic, their PVC are amongst the worst I have ever seen.
The miniatures look.....fine? They are decent but clearly borrow a lot from Infinity. Nice to see the Infantry don’t have shoulder pads as big as the models are.
The fluff is pretty bad.
Last time I played Warmachine/Hordes in 2nd the game was an awful mess, and everyone I have talked to says it’s worse now. I haven’t been to a gaming store that has stocked it in two years.
All things considered I wish for PP to make a decent game and have some success, but I feel they are on their last legs and this might just be their last gasp.
According to fb it was confirmed that everything is metal/resin. That said, the models shown are not that detailed. PP can make nice stuff but the quality is all over the place and mostly poor.
I don't understand why anyone is comparing this to Infinity? It seems nothing like Infinity in neither gameplay nor aesthetic. If Warmachine basically ripped the giant-shoulderpad+small-feet aesthetic of Warcraft, this seems to basically be Starcraft-meets-Overwatch.
Immediate thoughts: Its a Kickstarter game, which means it will be dead on arrival just like The Other Side, All Quiet on the Martian Front, Wrath of Kings, Robotech RPG Tactics, Alien vs Predator, and countless other wargames that have launched by Kickstarter. The only real exceptions to the trend are A Song of Ice and Fire (which was DoA and then suddenly surged in popularity for reasons unknown), Dropfleet Commander (which was DoA but is slowly being resuscitated by new ownership), and Blood & Plunder (which is alive and healthy, but not particularly popular and has next to no presence in retail stores).
I'll still back it.
Grimtuff wrote: I was expecting "evolved" forms of the Warmachine armies, so we have Cygnar, in spirit, but now having expanded out beyond the stars, same goes for Khador (Khador is not a place! It's a people!) with them aggressively expanding heir new interplanetary empire with Karchev and Butcher both having been soul transferred as the Motherland will not let them die.
They told us explicitly that this was not going to be the case when they first announced the game about a year ago. They were pretty clear that its set 5000 years down the line in a time and place that is nowhere near Immoren, and that we shouldn't expect to see most of the Warmachine factions (I believe they referenced Cyriss as the only exception) in Space, nor should we expect to really see any of the Warmachine species/races or anything else for that matter.
Eh I don't think its as bad as AoS since PP isn't going to destroy the old game.
You don't know that. The Oblivion storyline seems pretty "end of the setting" to most of us. The fact that most of the Warmachine/Hordes future development looks to be based on the Riot Quest timeline rather than the prime timeline seems to imply an end of the world scenario. They've already killed a number of major characters in the ongoing Henge Hold Scroll fluff.
wizards of the coast lost a lawsuit vs event organizers
Irkjoe wrote: According to fb it was confirmed that everything is metal/resin. That said, the models shown are not that detailed. PP can make nice stuff but the quality is all over the place and mostly poor.
Anything "with metal bits" means I'm out. It's 2020 FFS. Plastic/resin + metal mix should have stayed in the 1990s. PP needs to stop being so cheap and properly invest in the model range - they're Kickstarting the damn thing - just make the goal higher and make them proper plastic. Dozens of smaller, less established companies have managed to do so.
HIPS is pretty expensive and Privateer didn't do so hot with it when they tried years ago to move warmachines to it. They like to be able to cast things up as needed to they're not left with tons of stock. I'd love plastic over the metal resin mix but I think it doesn't work for their current size and customer base. If they would have moved during their hayday it would have been easier now but having to order a minimum of 1500-2000 of an individual sprue combined with months long waits to get things made and shipped from china they'd not only have to store all that but if it sold well they'd be in the same boat as CMoN and FFG where nothing is in stock and reprints rarely happen. Historicals can do it as they're a much wider audience and can sell more and pay to have more factory time.
You don't know that. The Oblivion storyline seems pretty "end of the setting" to most of us. The fact that most of the Warmachine/Hordes future development looks to be based on the Riot Quest timeline rather than the prime timeline seems to imply an end of the world scenario. They've already killed a number of major characters in the ongoing Henge Hold Scroll fluff.
I mean, besides the wave of Convergence of Cyriss stuff, and a year full of Hordes releases.... sure, ONLY Riot Quest haha.
And I mean, they really haven't killed off THAT many "major" characters in the Hengehold Scrolls fluff. And in all honesty, I am glad they finally got to the point where they took the plot armor gloves off and decided to go wild with the fluff.
With the game being able to be played in darn near any period of time in the modern Iron Kingdoms era (much like, say, the elephant in the room called Warhammer 40k), having a multitude of fresh new-blood warlocks and warcasters to play with seems far more interesting than them trying to make Sorscha0/1/2/3 and others play different while feeling the same.
Absolutionis wrote: I don't understand why anyone is comparing this to Infinity? It seems nothing like Infinity in neither gameplay nor aesthetic. If Warmachine basically ripped the giant-shoulderpad+small-feet aesthetic of Warcraft, this seems to basically be Starcraft-meets-Overwatch.
The shiny armor guys look pretty much exactly like some of the Infinity Panoceania knights to me. Except for the Warmachine scale vs Infinity scale guns, which changes the aesthetic from semi-serious to comical.
PP plastic is all garbage, the restic pvc whatever and the hard plastic. Their attempt at selling low quality chinese miniatures at a premium because a lot of their players just don't care about the hobby aspect. Their newer resin looks pretty sharp, so there's a glimmer of hope even though the miniatures shown so far are uninspiring.
I think the initial reaction here is a good indication of how this might go. Even on warmachine specific boards and communities, I've seen a similar reaction.
The models look fine, but generic. Imagine them all painted the same colour scheme. They look like they could be from the same faction.
Privateer Press's steady decline and issues that they've had since half way through MKII might also keep people who feel like they were burned from playing. I loved MKII when playing it as a skirmish level game. But the company really pushed to make it an army level game, which in my opinion didn't work.
I know it's regional, but I haven't seen warmachine played or even in stock at any game stores I've been to.
I think they're trying to play it safe... but if you combine that with a fanbase that's pretty gun shy because of past issues, I don't know how well it'd be... even though I'd love to play a game like warmachine again.
I think they're trying to play it safe... but if you combine that with a fanbase that's pretty gun shy because of past issues, I don't know how well it'd be... even though I'd love to play a game like warmachine again.
Kickstarter is an interesting choice in this scenario. On the one hand, its safe, but on the other they might get an uncomfortable lesson in how much their community trusts them.
Of course, Kickstarter says to me that they don't have a lot of confidence in the project (or also just lack money).
I get KS for video game projects, rather than turn to the big publishers with bad contracts, but for launching their '40K...' it'll be interesting to watch. But from a financial and psychology standpoint, not a game standpoint.
Monkeysloth wrote: HIPS is pretty expensive and Privateer didn't do so hot with it when they tried years ago to move warmachines to it. They like to be able to cast things up as needed to they're not left with tons of stock. I'd love plastic over the metal resin mix but I think it doesn't work for their current size and customer base. If they would have moved during their hayday it would have been easier now but having to order a minimum of 1500-2000 of an individual sprue combined with months long waits to get things made and shipped from china they'd not only have to store all that but if it sold well they'd be in the same boat as CMoN and FFG where nothing is in stock and reprints rarely happen. Historicals can do it as they're a much wider audience and can sell more and pay to have more factory time.
If we're to be convinced PP is actually dedicating themselves to this game, then they may as well make their introductory or starter sets in HIPS especially when they expect 20-40 models per side. Wyrd does all their stuff in HIPS and variants for their mainline and side game.
PP already has a reputation of making awful quality PVC miniatures that, while low cost, are basically CMON-like in quality.
I'm a sucker for GW fluff and "arcanessence" still made me cringe a little. The short version of "arc" I like, but... Why not just call it "arcane essence" if it is going to be shortened anyways? Bit strange.
Fluff I was meh on until they got to the galaxy being Cyriss and Arc being her lifeblood. That is is a bit more interesting. Civilizations burning arc to secure the ability to harvest more of it? The idiocy is only exceeded by its realism, and I can appreciate the real-world commentary there.
Mini's are nice. Not totally my preferred style but definitely something I could like, and certainly something I could customize. Unfortunately...
Yeah. Quite frankly if I am going to invest in another miniature game I have hundreds and hundreds of 28mm models I would really prefer to be of matching scale for proxy/counts-as/conversion/crossover play. Yeah I know that means me buying less of the new game's miniatures, but right now my plan is the alternative of none at all.
I'm not sure why some of you are making a big deal of the 35mm scale- most Privateer models have been around that size for a while now. Just measured a good chunk of Riot Quest models, Morrowan, and Crucible guys and they're all clocking in at around the same scale.
Also keep in mind they haven't made anything in PVC for a few years now. It's like people still complaining about Mantic's restic models which haven't really been a thing for a while either.
I will agree with the metal bits being a dumb idea and would much prefer they just go all resin or metal instead.
Sad that it sounds like a lot of the previous races and places won't make the jump, as I think it'd be fun to see what they could do with all the various Minions races evolving into space faring peoples.
Monkeysloth wrote: HIPS is pretty expensive and Privateer didn't do so hot with it when they tried years ago to move warmachines to it. They like to be able to cast things up as needed to they're not left with tons of stock. I'd love plastic over the metal resin mix but I think it doesn't work for their current size and customer base. If they would have moved during their hayday it would have been easier now but having to order a minimum of 1500-2000 of an individual sprue combined with months long waits to get things made and shipped from china they'd not only have to store all that but if it sold well they'd be in the same boat as CMoN and FFG where nothing is in stock and reprints rarely happen. Historicals can do it as they're a much wider audience and can sell more and pay to have more factory time.
PP didn't try to move to HIPS they moved to gakky PVC … and then never improved the quality in the next 10 years of using it. They have a small handful of HIPS kits for most factions - and those are actually pretty nice.
Launching a new flagship game on Kickstarter in resin (and worse, resin with metal bits) basically is saying "hey we're making a new niche game that we don't expect to go anywhere." Crowdfunding it in proper plastic would draw a MUCH bigger audience and make a statement about how they, as a company, believe in the game and are willing to take a risk the right the ship. Instead they are doing the thing PP always seems to do - investing the bare minimum into the game and condemning it to mediocrity. Which is funny from a company that used to encourage people to play like they had a pair.
highlord tamburlaine wrote: I'm not sure why some of you are making a big deal of the 35mm scale- most Privateer models have been around that size for a while now.
'Around,' yes. Meaning a few are 35, some are 32 (like Cygnar sword knights), others are 28 (like Trenchers), and some scale all the way down to maybe 25 for the Black 13th Gun Mages, all of which are normal humans in the same faction.
Their inability to manage a consistent scale was far sadder than the leg issues on some of the beasts and jacks.
It is just a personal preference; I want to keep all my wargames at the 28mm scale to have some cross-compatibility. That is important to me personally, not an objective statement about the game's quality.
I think their biggest mistake is not bringing over the old factions or at least races. Why make it the same universe at all if you’re not bringing over Cygnar, Khador, Cryx, etc. Seeing the Protectorate advance knowing that another goddess saved everyone and existing in her universe would be interesting.
It would also give current fans something to connect to in the new system. As someone said above, this feels like a last gasp from PP. They have been a sinking ship for a while now and there seems to be no move to correct the situation from the company.
Absolutionis wrote: I don't understand why anyone is comparing this to Infinity? It seems nothing like Infinity in neither gameplay nor aesthetic. If Warmachine basically ripped the giant-shoulderpad+small-feet aesthetic of Warcraft, this seems to basically be Starcraft-meets-Overwatch.
The shiny armor guys look pretty much exactly like some of the Infinity Panoceania knights to me. Except for the Warmachine scale vs Infinity scale guns, which changes the aesthetic from semi-serious to comical.
and in return everything in Infinity is generic animu+Blizzard aesthetic, so I guess you're right. I mean, i don't see it, I see generic anime scifi aesthetic, but to each their own.
it is a pretty great game though imo
Not in my experience. Warmahordes have some interesting concepts, but it always felt like a ccg that was sadly saddled with miniatures in how it focuses on resources and combos.Plus you know, the worst fanbase in gaming, even more so than 40k which is kind of amazing.
Also, resin+metal means all interest lost. I'd rather try to shave my chest with a stick of butter.
Nothing selling me on this. Models will usually get me hype without any real digging into lore or rules, but it just looks like they took nearly nothing and put it in a large blandron collider.
It doesn't look good to me.
The models look like they're from 10 years ago (conservative estimate) and they're generic sci fi dudes and robots, which infinity does better, these look closer to mantic's sculpts and that isn't a good thing.
Resin and metal? Consider monsterpocalypse and riot quest boxes; that's the minimum price point. It's going to be a rather expensive game.
"fast paced action packed miniatures game" (or equivalent synonyms) If I had a dime for every time a company has vomited those meaningless buzzwords I would have made my own miniatures game and tagged those words right onto it.
The whole "warcaster isn't on the table" seems a bit cheap because both starters have an arc node model dude that channels the spells...So will this model be the game mechanics equivalent of the iron kingdoms warcasters, but with less personality?
Does the game end when the arc node dude is removed?
So Arc-o-bs (as noted rapidly dubbed arc because it sounds less stupid) is focus, but not exactly because it can be given to any/all units...So it's more like a generic limited ressource available to all factions.
I understand that PP wants to move away from the now tainted warmachine (or maybe simply because they've run out of ideas?)...But replacing their unique style with generic scifi doesn't seem like a good idea.
Worse still, proposing yet another generic miniatures game on kickstarter is giving me gates of antares flashbacks.
The background fluff is that this IS what happens when the Infernals won. The infernals are the end times of warmachine, There are two spin offs: riot quest is what happens to those that stayed behind neo mechanika is what happens to those that went through the portals.
I liked look of models. Its initial lore is trash, but that is something which you have to build overtime. Even Warhammer lore once upon the time was quite bad. I like general rules of gameplay and I'm open in seeing how this game plays out. Though, I'm more concerned about other factions and their esthetics.
Initial factions are doing nothing to entice me in, and the fluff is pretty much non-existent at this stage, but hopefully the full KS launch will change this .
I'll keep an eye on this one to see how it goes.
Oddly I find Infinity less interesting model wise. I think its because a lot of the characters feel very Samey in designs - then again it was Aleph that attracted me first and they tend to have a lot of the very similar designed warrior models.
Partly I suspect its because I like somewhat bigger and bolder model variation whilst Infinity is far more subtle in that respect for many things.
The way I see it...now is a perfectly good time to try and launch a new sci-fi miniatures game. With a low-ish model count and cheaper resin sculpts.
As an infinity player, I know some are unhappy with the direction CB is taking the game in cancelling factions/sectorals and placing a focus on their new Code One which doesn't use sectorals at all (which for some players is all they play). It also seems like they are spreading themselves thin with Aristea and now Defiance. People are hoping the 4th edition doesn't mess things up further or cancel support for their collection.
40K has become an unbalanced bloated mess again. With price points that still make it challenging to get new players into the game. 8th started off so well and has now devolved back into "power creep = sells models" mode again.
The Other Side has major balance issues and Wyrd hasn't been able to address it. It also has been plagued with a very slow release schedule. Also, this game could still be considered more Steampunk than Sci-fi.
So, what's left? Gates of Antarres? Genesis Project? The only real contender here is Star Wars Legion which is also starting to exhibit power creep and balance issues (i.e. Shoretroopers and Tauntauns).
TL;DR If the rules-set is as tight as Warmachine and there is tournament support I can see players jumping ship from existing sci-fi games for this game.
azoxystrobin wrote:I understand that PP wants to move away from the now tainted warmachine (or maybe simply because they've run out of ideas?)...But replacing their unique style with generic scifi doesn't seem like a good idea
I wonder how much will be generic and how much will be cribbed from Vor the Maelstrom, which is where Matt Wilson got his start (and the enduring legacy of tiny leg syndrome) and the Trollbloods got their look.
So, the decision to use Kickstarter is interesting, because they state they plan on June 2020 delivery. That suggests that this stuff is either being made, or is already sitting in a warehouse, or both.
If done well, Kickstarters do build hype, and if you can shorten the delivery window, and match it with retail releases, you can really help launch a new game. the kickstarter fees are easily made up for not selling your stuff to wholesalers, so that PP will still make a healthy profit even with the inevitable bundle discounts.
By going KS they're pretty much aiming the game at direct sale rather than distribution (at least in the short to medium terms) as distributors won't want to invest in a game where a lot of the early sales are already gone
but not a necessarily a bad thing as PP seems to be trying to do a lot of direct selling at least to US audiences..... It's probably going to kill it outside the US though, as shipping and taxes to Europe are going to be prohibitive
The one thing that has hurt KS wargames most is early backers having a whole load of stuff that then has to slowly trickle out to retail and therefore nothing new to keep them interested (being able to buy new stuff is vital even if most of it ends up in boxes under gamers beds or in cupboards)
hopefully they keep back enough that they can do paired releases 1 box of stuff that was on KS (for new players) and 1 box of something totally new (for KS backers and new players)
azoxystrobin wrote:I understand that PP wants to move away from the now tainted warmachine (or maybe simply because they've run out of ideas?)...But replacing their unique style with generic scifi doesn't seem like a good idea
I wonder how much will be generic and how much will be cribbed from Vor the Maelstrom, which is where Matt Wilson got his start (and the enduring legacy of tiny leg syndrome) and the Trollbloods got their look.
I will agree with the metal bits being a dumb idea and would much prefer they just go all resin or metal instead.
Mixing metal and resin is WAY better than going entirely for one or the other. The resin is used for large solid pieces where the brittle nature of resin doesn't matter while still being lightweight like a plastic. The metal bits keep things like swords and other potentially brittle bits from breaking. As a side bonus, I find metal glues to resin a lot stronger than resin to resin or metal to metal. Honestly, with as many games these days jumping to resin, most of the time I really, really wish they would do some of the parts in metal instead.
Absolutionis wrote: I don't understand why anyone is comparing this to Infinity? It seems nothing like Infinity in neither gameplay nor aesthetic. If Warmachine basically ripped the giant-shoulderpad+small-feet aesthetic of Warcraft, this seems to basically be Starcraft-meets-Overwatch.
The shiny armor guys look pretty much exactly like some of the Infinity Panoceania knights to me. Except for the Warmachine scale vs Infinity scale guns, which changes the aesthetic from semi-serious to comical.
and in return everything in Infinity is generic animu+Blizzard aesthetic, so I guess you're right. I mean, i don't see it, I see generic anime scifi aesthetic, but to each their own.
it is a pretty great game though imo
Not in my experience. Warmahordes have some interesting concepts, but it always felt like a ccg that was sadly saddled with miniatures in how it focuses on resources and combos.Plus you know, the worst fanbase in gaming, even more so than 40k which is kind of amazing.
Also, resin+metal means all interest lost. I'd rather try to shave my chest with a stick of butter.
I like your take on WarmaHordes - here's my addition that I feel strangely compelled to blast out into the void.
IIRC the core rules & world design started as RPG supplements and then they made miniatures to go with it and then they made a wargame.
In addition to there being a conflict between the wargaming elements and the CCG-like combo elements there are also (or were in MkII) old ancient RPG-inspired elements. Tiny poorly defended units that were meant to go across the board and collect different resources, make skill checks and build new things mid-game. Possibly inefficient and unreliable in a normal wargame - completely laughable in a hyper-combo warmachine game.
That three-way pull was reflected in the gamers too all the way from the fluffy people trying to make custom casters a thing to the people playing unpainted minis on a 2-D map with construction-paper blob terrain.
Regarding the new stuff. A collection of perfectly acceptable, totally passable models that spark no joy in me whatsoever. Also I have no intention of jumping into another PP caster-based game again.
Re. the style... actually getting a bit of Mantic Enforcer vibe. Maybe shared similar inspirations.
but not a necessarily a bad thing as PP seems to be trying to do a lot of direct selling at least to US audiences..... It's probably going to kill it outside the US though, as shipping and taxes to Europe are going to be prohibitive
If there's one thing that PP has consistently done, it's show that they're astonishingly disinterested in figuring out how to sort out international shipping and distribution. They are completely inflexible in their distribution agreements and the management is (was) unwilling to consider how their model prevents sustainable market penetration.
The laughable irony of their EU distribution hub being set-up in the UK AFTER the Brexit vote was also apparently completely lost on them. (Did they ever even bother finishing it?)
Don't they now have a new CEO since those choices were made? One who used to work for GW USA? One might hope that that could result in changed attitudes to the international market
Overread wrote: Don't they now have a new CEO since those choices were made? One who used to work for GW USA? One might hope that that could result in changed attitudes to the international market
Maybe. The PP market collapsed where I was living a long time ago now. Since I was partly responsible for the local resurgence during Mk II I was hoping to do something more - both nationally and regionally - but PP's agreement structure would have entailed me taking 100% of the financial risk of growing the Chinese language market for them while starting out with distribution "incentives" that were only equal to retail discounts. Plus the unintelligent shipping from their side and disinterest in finding a better solution.
Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika—Answers to Your Burning Questions!
By
Privateer Press
on
February 20, 2020
Yesterday, on a special installment of Primecast, we broke our long silence on our next big project: Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika. As the segment was just a preview and an announcement that we’d be offering Warcaster through Kickstarter first, there were quite a few questions about the game and our future plans. I noted as many as I could and hope to compile answers for the most frequent questions here. So, let’s dive right in and see how many of those burning questions I can shed light on…
WHY KICKSTARTER?
Let me start with an excerpt from our Kickstarter campaign page, currently under construction. This is directly from the obligatory “Why Kickstarter?” section:
We here at Privateer Press are committed to getting the best games possible into the hands of our customers. But like retail throughout the world, the landscape of the hobby game industry is changing, and one of the issues continually brought to us by players and retailers is the difficulty in obtaining our product, despite the availability of the product in our warehouse. While we will still use traditional distribution for our current game lines and future products, Kickstarter provides a tried and proven platform for getting our games directly into the hands of the players and retailers who want them. It also allows us to get in front of players who may not be familiar with our products or may not have even heard of Privateer Press, and it allows us to gauge demand so we can better manage our production pipeline to be as efficient as possible.
While brevity on a Kickstarter scroll is good practice, I have the luxury of going into more depth here.
One of the biggest challenges in releasing a new product in our current market is gaining visibility among the literally hundreds of new products that come out every month. Many products are here today and gone tomorrow, and by the time players and even retailers learn of them, they’re no longer available through the standard distribution channels. Kickstarter provides a means for greater visibility. It’s a crowded space in its own way, but the medium lends itself to sharing while providing a solid mechanism for potential customers to lock in an order on something they don’t want to miss out on. Kickstarter’s greatest strength is that it provides as true a measure as you can get to gauging the actual demand for a product.
This is important information for us. While we make the miniatures in our own factory right here in Woodinville, Washington, we outsource many other components like packaging, bases, dice, and cards. Knowing ahead of time how many of any one component we may need helps keep us from having to speculate too wildly and making costly mistakes, both by over-ordering as well as undersupplying.
And in the best-case scenario, we hope what a successful Kickstarter launch can do for Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika is show retailers, distributors, and the world at large that there is a significant demand for the game and that the game is going to be around for a while, so it’s worth adding to their catalog of offerings with a plan to keep it in stock in the future.
The Kickstarter is the launch of the game, but this isn’t a one-and-done product run. We are creating a new miniatures game, and we have years of content planned for it. A year from now, when someone discovers Warcaster for the first time, they’re not going to be able to go to Kickstarter to get a starter set, they’re going to have to find it in a store. By launching through Kickstarter, we hope to raise a community around the game that will sustain it and grow in the months and years to come so that retailers and distributors will be confident it is an evergreen product line worth their time and money to stock.
WILL WARCASTER: NEO-MECHANIKA BE OFFERED THROUGH RETAIL STORES?
Our Kickstarter campaign will include a retailer pledge tier for any retailers who want to get in on the cutting edge and take advantage of the benefits of pledging during the campaign. We will also offer the products through standard distribution and retail channels with ship dates set shortly after the product rewards are delivered to backers of the campaign. This means retailers who back the campaign will, in fact, receive the products ahead of orders placed through other channels later.
WHEN IS THE KICKSTARTER GOING TO LAUNCH?
In our 20 years of being in business, one lesson we’ve learned is to be very cautious about announcing exact dates. Anything could happen tomorrow or the next day that might cause us to have to delay a day or two, which then looks like we’ve missed a deadline at the risk of disappointing all of you. So, what we’re willing to commit to right now is that our plan is for it to launch within the next month or so, and sooner rather than later. We’re within striking distance of that launch, which is why we have emerged from our design cave to start talking about it, and we’ll announce the go-date about 48 hours before we’re ready to push the button.
MORE IMPORTANT, WHEN WILL WARCASTER: NEO-MECHANIKA DELIVER?
Many projects that use Kickstarter have long development and production timelines and require a great deal of patience from backers. We know how this goes, both on the backer side as well as the project creator side. But we’re not fans of waiting or making people wait, so our target for the release of Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika has always been to do so prior to Lock & Load this year. Thus, June 2020 is our target delivery window. So, let’s say you back the Kickstarter in March. You’ll then be waiting approximately three months for delivery of the first rewards. Hopefully that doesn’t seem too long! It’s about the same amount of time between new products being advertised in catalogs and when they hit shelves for the first time. Producing the miniatures in our own factory gives us a great advantage, as we don’t have to spend months creating tools overseas before the minis start getting made.
WHAT MATERIALS WILL THE MINIATURES BE MADE OF?
Everything we produce in our Woodinville facility is made in tin-based metal or resin. We choose the material based on what will be the most economical for our customers. Metal is fast for us to make, but the material is expensive, so big, chunky things can get costly quickly. Resin, on the other hand, is painfully slow to make, but the material is much less expensive, so we can produce larger pieces while still keeping the prices reasonable. With metal, you’re paying for the material; with resin, you’re paying for the significant labor that goes into crafting the models. We try to balance it out as best we can.
Right now, most of the models we’ve previewed so far will be made in metal, even the warjacks. That could change between now and when the models start getting molded, as they undergo a significant analysis that includes not only evaluating mass but also shape and detail before the material is selected. And most certainly, as we tackle larger pieces for Warcaster—like bigger warjacks or vehicles—we’ll be utilizing resin with more frequency.
HOW MANY FACTIONS ARE THERE?
We will be featuring three Factions in our Kickstarter campaign. The starter boxes for the two that you have seen so far—the Marcher Worlds and the Iron Star Alliance—will ship in our first wave of rewards. The third Faction, which we are going to reserve showing until the Kickstarter launches, will ship about a month later in our second wave of reward deliveries. There will be more, but that’s all we are willing to divulge right now—a company has to have some secrets, right? Otherwise, how do we get you to come back tomorrow?
IS THIS THE IRON KINGDOMS IN SPACE? ARE THERE ALIENS?
This is not the Iron Kingdoms in space, but the settings are inexorably linked, and if you happen to have followed the Henge Hold Scroll storyline, then you already know how. But saying Warcaster is the IK in space is like saying a giant redwood tree is just a tall seed. We planted seeds in the Iron Kingdoms, and we brought some of the DNA of warcasters and warjacks into the new setting, and you might even see the occasional nod to an Iron Kingdoms character, but it’s a new setting with new stories and characters and worlds to explore. You don’t need to know anything about the Iron Kingdoms to dive into Warcaster, but if you’re a lore expert on the Iron Kingdoms, you’ll likely enjoy some of the Easter eggs that have found their way into the game and setting.
Aliens are a different subject altogether. In a sense, humanity is the alien invader of the Cyriss galaxy. And at one point, the galaxy was populated with all manner of intelligent life. But when humanity shows up, the only intelligent life they encounter are the architects responsible for the network that connects all the worlds in the galaxy. Suffice it to say, that meeting doesn’t go so well, but that’s a story for later.
The current focus is on the human factions, but as we go forward, we’re pushing further and further out from what defines something as human, and we have some pretty far-out ideas we intend to explore.
IS WARMAHORDES ENDING?
Gord Lord, no! We have 20 years of world building invested in the Iron Kingdoms, not to mention a vast library of models. And hopefully, Will Hungerford’s peek into the future releases of WARMACHINE and HORDES gives you something to look forward to.
The narrative event planned for Lock & Load this year will cap off the Oblivion storyline, and to be sure, the Iron Kingdoms is never going to be the same, but then it never has been one year to another. It’s been a living, ongoing saga since it was birthed in the first book of the Witchfire Trilogy.
We have much more planned for WARMACHINE, HORDES, the Iron Kingdoms, and Immoren itself. We have great stuff planned around the Strangelight Workshop in the future, and we have new stories to tell in the Iron Kingdoms that we very much hope will keep you as invested in its future as we are.
I’m sure there are many more questions to come—answer one and two more take its place—so we’ll try to keep up in the days and week ahead with answers and more info as we continue to draw back the curtain on Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika. If you haven’t already, please sign up for our mailing list so you’re among the first to know of all-new news and developments. We’ve got lots to come and couldn’t be more excited to finally be sharing it with you.
Matthew D. Wilson
Chief Creative Officer
Community, Company, Frequently Asked Questions, News, Warcaster
Overall a very positive article and nice to see it out so fast after the teaser info!
Also this "June 2020 is our target delivery window." Is ambitious but a very good sign. Whilst I'd expect it to slip dates (nearly EVERY KS slips dates); I'd expect it this year which is a big benefit to any KS.
I am SUPER curious how the Oblivion storyline is going to wrap up at LnL. The story finales have been great the last two years; particularly last year's Stormbreak, mostly only dulled by players lack of interest in the fluff. With Oblivion having everyone's attention, they've got a great stage for a big finale.
Editorializing a bit... but I think this is kind of PP's last chance and based on the current reaction on here and other boards it doesn't seem to be going well. And I don't know if their latest post changes much for me.
It kind of seems like PP's trying to do what worked 10 years ago. The landscape is very different. When MK2 got the big bump, everything GW was in a pretty big slump, there weren't as many games, and distribution was very different. At the time, it was "Do you want fantasy, but not warhammer? This is it!"
The question I think that will get asked by a lot of people before backing is: "Why would I get this over all the other games out on the market?"
Lots of people compare it to infinity as far as aesthetics, which I think is fair. It's anime sci fi guys. I've got a game that scratches that itch, why would I jump to this?
Lots of people are fans of Warmachine, but MK3 was a pretty big flop. What are they doing different this time? Am I going to buy this game that you're saying is 10-20 minis, then a year later you introduce something like colossus's or just scale up the size of the engagments without any rule tweaks?
Lots of people are playing 40k and Age of Sigmar. Why would I leave that, to give PP another chance?
Lots of retailers will likely not want to stock. Warmachine's habbit of throwing as many skus out as humanly possible, probably burned a lot of them. Add to that, kickstarter? I couldn't imagine a lot of retailers would want to risk it again.
There's no denying that PP and Warmachine have been in a bad place in the last four years. What are they doing different this time other then just saying "Warmachine. In. SPAAAAACCCCEEEE"
They really needed to announce this with more then "It's like warmachine, but not... we'll tell you later"
Lots of people are fans of Warmachine, but MK3 was a pretty big flop. What are they doing different this time?
One of the big oddities is just that MK3 really isn't any different from MK2. There's some changes, almost entirely positive, but the core game and mechanics is an errata level change outside of the new rule that lets you actually run warjacks. MK3's failings seem to be almost entirely a mix of player burnout and a lack of new players to replace them over anything wrong with the game itself. What's different here? Well, at least the new player barrier is unlikely to be quite as high maybe? I'd wager at the very least we're going to see a much more box set driven game, but hard to say at the moment.
That article says these are being produced in house, so I think that's a huge plus (i.e. no PVC). I recently picked up one of their current models (made in the last year), and it was resin with a single metal bit (a spear). L
Honestly, the production value of this model vastly exceeds most of what I've gotten from them in the past. I don't know if it's because demand is lower, but whatever the reason, the end result is a much better product that actually seems worth it, imo.
...one of the issues continually brought to us by players and retailers is the difficulty in obtaining our product, despite the availability of the product in our warehouse. While we will still use traditional distribution for our current game lines and future products, Kickstarter provides a tried and proven platform for getting our games directly into the hands of the players and retailers who want them.
(SNIP)
A year from now, when someone discovers Warcaster for the first time, they’re not going to be able to go to Kickstarter to get a starter set, they’re going to have to find it in a store.
The distribution problem doesn't go away just because some retailers might be willing to buy product from Kickstarter. As far as I can tell, this just makes people pay high costs for shipping through Kickstarter using whatever pedestrian method PP can be bothered setting up during the KS, and then kicks the can down the road for future would-be customers who still need to find a store that was able to procure stock through PP's broken distribution model.
So the reason they chose Kickstarters is to get better visibility, reach new players who don't know PP and putting the product directly into the hands of retailers / players ? Are they living in another world ? Kickstarter is already bloated with dozens of similar projects !
The part about making the product "directly available" for retailers and players makes me actually worry for the future of this game. I mean, it's good for the backers, sure, but what happens after the project ended and all rewards are delivered ? Do they really believe they will solve their distributor troubles like this, by fething them up with the Kickstarter launch ?
It really sounds like it will be another game that will end being forgotten once the delivery is made for the backers...
While there is some truth to Kickstarter projects generating some buzz and awareness, I think it's important to consider that the main reason to do a Kickstarter is to raise funds so you can do the thing. When an "established" company goes to KS, I usually feel like that means they don't have the financial stability to take on the initial product development and production, which to me is a sign that they're not doing all that hot financially. Given the constant dwindling of seeing any Warmachine in my neck of the woods (their home turf, at that!), I have a bit more belief that's the case here, too.
From what I've seen so far of it, nothing inspires me to wanting to take a risk on a Kickstarter miniatures game (sooo many of those, as others have pointed out, arrive DOA to regular retail; KS is not a good platform for traditional minis games that continually expand).
RiTides wrote: That article says these are being produced in house, so I think that's a huge plus (i.e. no PVC). I recently picked up one of their current models (made in the last year), and it was resin with a single metal bit (a spear). L
Honestly, the production value of this model vastly exceeds most of what I've gotten from them in the past. I don't know if it's because demand is lower, but whatever the reason, the end result is a much better product that actually seems worth it, imo.
PPs metal/resin models are quite nice. I've seen good and bad resin casting, and the (admittedly few) examples I've seen from PP were all crisp and clean.
I'm 100% ready to dogpile on PP, but they seem to have finally settled on a material choice that makes sense. Metal only got silly with the larger warjacks, the PVC was an abomination, and the handful of HIPs models were fine but not cheap enough to switch from metal.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Valander wrote: While there is some truth to Kickstarter projects generating some buzz and awareness, I think it's important to consider that the main reason to do a Kickstarter is to raise funds so you can do the thing. When an "established" company goes to KS, I usually feel like that means they don't have the financial stability to take on the initial product development and production, which to me is a sign that they're not doing all that hot financially. Given the constant dwindling of seeing any Warmachine in my neck of the woods (their home turf, at that!), I have a bit more belief that's the case here, too.
From what I've seen so far of it, nothing inspires me to wanting to take a risk on a Kickstarter miniatures game (sooo many of those, as others have pointed out, arrive DOA to regular retail; KS is not a good platform for traditional minis games that continually expand).
A three month shipping window pretty much means that the models are sculpted and the molds made, they just need to know how many to make. It sounds like the Kickstarter is just a way to do a direct to consumers launch.
I don't think this means we shouldn't have faith in their finances, but rather that they don't have the faith that they can drop this in normal distribution and have it succeed.
Dakka makes me laugh, just a little bit ago Corvus Belli finished up their Defiance Kickstarter to fund a whole bunch of new models... and the overall opinions and positivity were great.
PP launches a Kickstarter for models that have already been completed... and people are saying that PP using Kickstarter is unprofessional for a "large" company (of a few dozen people), it is their last gasp of air, the company is dead.
Steamforged has done fairly well with marketing their Kickstarters as a means of retail distribution. My FLGS got burned hard by their distribution woes, but have been very happy with the way RE2 and Godtear worked out. I feel like PP is trying to use Kickstarter here in a simlar manner; less as a way to get product to players, but as a way to get players to get their store to back the game to help get it on shelves.
NH Gunsmith wrote: Dakka makes me laugh, just a little bit ago Corvus Belli finished up their Defiance Kickstarter to fund a whole bunch of new models... and the overall opinions and positivity were great.
PP launches a Kickstarter for models that have already been completed... and people are saying that PP using Kickstarter is unprofessional for a "large" company (of a few dozen people), it is their last gasp of air, the company is dead.
Never change Dakka.
Was it the same people? Or do you simply think Dakka a six-person hivemind?
LunarSol wrote: Steamforged has done fairly well with marketing their Kickstarters as a means of retail distribution. My FLGS got burned hard by their distribution woes, but have been very happy with the way RE2 and Godtear worked out. I feel like PP is trying to use Kickstarter here in a simlar manner; less as a way to get product to players, but as a way to get players to get their store to back the game to help get it on shelves.
How does Kickstarter help stores? Most fulfill orders directly to the backers, skipping stores and the distribution model altogether. That doesn't help stores, it actively hurts them.
Personally I've never had a problem with PP's resins/metals beyond what I'd expect from resin/metal from anyone else. Plastics are nice, but not everyone has GW's plastic technology and resources; trading with factories in china can come with huge issues - I've seen more than one major KS have huge problems with production delays or quality control issues etc... Even GW has been bitten once or twice such as the terrain pack for AoS that was missing a whole sprue from every single pack to the point GW just had to change the contents.
Plus like the GW incident, many of those issues don't always get detected until the product is arriving in customers hands.
In-house has huge benefits and resin/metal isn't that hard to work with. A few moments to wash it; cleaning is pretty easy and you're good to go.
I'm really hopeful PP can pull this off.
Also lets not forget, Dakka "TENDS" to have a bit of a negative slant at the best of times. Heck if you read half the 40K/AoS threads you'd get the impression everyone hates them too.
Thanatos73 wrote: I think their biggest mistake is not bringing over the old factions or at least races. Why make it the same universe at all if you’re not bringing over Cygnar, Khador, Cryx, etc. Seeing the Protectorate advance knowing that another goddess saved everyone and existing in her universe would be interesting.
Thanatos73 wrote: I think their biggest mistake is not bringing over the old factions or at least races. Why make it the same universe at all if you’re not bringing over Cygnar, Khador, Cryx, etc. Seeing the Protectorate advance knowing that another goddess saved everyone and existing in her universe would be interesting.
I wanna Warpwolf in a spacehelmet.
Only if its as awesome as the original metal pure warpwolf sculpt - in space armour!
How does Kickstarter help stores? Most fulfill orders directly to the backers, skipping stores and the distribution model altogether. That doesn't help stores, it actively hurts them.
Steamforged has a "retailer" pledge level available to backers who confirm they run a FLGS. You get something like 6 sets of the kickstarter at wholesale prices to sell in your shop.
Lots of people are fans of Warmachine, but MK3 was a pretty big flop. What are they doing different this time?
One of the big oddities is just that MK3 really isn't any different from MK2. There's some changes, almost entirely positive, but the core game and mechanics is an errata level change outside of the new rule that lets you actually run warjacks. MK3's failings seem to be almost entirely a mix of player burnout and a lack of new players to replace them over anything wrong with the game itself. What's different here? Well, at least the new player barrier is unlikely to be quite as high maybe? I'd wager at the very least we're going to see a much more box set driven game, but hard to say at the moment.
I take it you didn't play any of the armies that got completely and utterly borked by MK3, like Skorne. MK3 came with a large number of issues that affected several armies severely that they had to address both quickly, and over a long period of time. To say it was entirely positive is surprising to see.
It's not reminiscent of Infinity, but more of absolutely generic sci-fi, really. The models are not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but they are pretty bland boilerplate scifi. They could be part of the artwork on nearly any scifi novel out there.
How does Kickstarter help stores? Most fulfill orders directly to the backers, skipping stores and the distribution model altogether. That doesn't help stores, it actively hurts them.
Steamforged has a "retailer" pledge level available to backers who confirm they run a FLGS. You get something like 6 sets of the kickstarter at wholesale prices to sell in your shop.
Interesting (and kudos to Steamforged). But I doubt it applies here. PP has a shaky relationship with retailers (too many SKUs didn't help from the beginning), and turning GW on them and dictating discount maximums didn't help either. Neither did skipping traditional distributors and selling directly from their website, and offering sales that stores couldn't (and weren't allowed to) match.
Unless they also pull back on the retailer policies they've currently got in place, I doubt they're going to make the Kickstarter for Warcaster40K retailer friendly.
How does Kickstarter help stores? Most fulfill orders directly to the backers, skipping stores and the distribution model altogether. That doesn't help stores, it actively hurts them.
Steamforged has a "retailer" pledge level available to backers who confirm they run a FLGS. You get something like 6 sets of the kickstarter at wholesale prices to sell in your shop.
Interesting (and kudos to Steamforged). But I doubt it applies here. PP has a shaky relationship with retailers (too many SKUs didn't help from the beginning), and turning GW on them and dictating discount maximums didn't help either. Neither did skipping traditional distributors and selling directly from their website, and offering sales that stores couldn't (and weren't allowed to) match.
Unless they also pull back on the retailer policies they've currently got in place, I doubt they're going to make the Kickstarter for Warcaster40K retailer friendly.
Actually, they specifically stated in a press release that retailers can pledge at the retailer level and get stock to put up in their stores. Now, without the KS being released yet, we can't know what kind of retailer price they're getting, but I suspect PP is doing the same thing as Steamforged.
Whether or not anyone will take them up on it remains to be seen.
I've seen Wayland games pick up retail options for a few KS over the years. I think PP has a big bonus of a LOT of other KS companies in that PP has been around for a good number of years and is pretty stable all told. They've already got the offices, company site, equipment, skills etc... Plus they've got several regular revenue streams coming in as well. So this makes them a very safe Kickstarter bet.
If they offer a good enough deal through the KS then I can see retailers who are aware of it being more likely to get engaged with it. Perhaps they'll offer better than normal rates through the KS for the retailer to entice them on board.
Overread wrote: I think PP has a big bonus of a LOT of other KS companies in that PP has been around for a good number of years and is pretty stable all told. They've already got the offices, company site, equipment, skills etc...
True, but they did semi-recently move offices out of their Bellevue location and into Woodinville, and apparently with that they also lost over half their staff. According to some Glassdoor reviews (which I'm not going to link since it's really kind of off-topic), they're now around 30 people, which is down significantly from their peak of about 100.
More on topic, though, nothing about this game so far "grabs" me. Models are "meh" to me, premise/setting is not interesting or even very plausible to me, and very unsure about the gameplay. I used to be very much into Warmachine (some may recognize my avatar...), but I dropped near the end of Mk II because I felt the rules bloat was getting unbearable, and it's not much better from what I've seen of Mk III. Given that history, I worry about the actual design of this game, and given how most of their other side-games have gone (Heap, Bodgers, Zombie thing, etc.), I don't know if this has the staying power. MonPoc might, but only if they don't bloat it into something that becomes unplayable.
If this is out and successful and shows stability, great, I may look at it again in a year or so if it's still around.
I hope PP reps actually read this thread. Any time you add more hoops for customers to jump through, you make it less likely that retailers will carry your product. In the old days PP miniatures came with cards with stats. Then they got rid of those (1st hoop). So I would have to bust out the faction book to tell a customer what a model did, until they got rid of those (2nd hoop). Now I have to tell customers that if they want to play this game they have to go online and get the app (3rd hoop). You must then have your I-phone available to play. Believe it or not in this day and age there are still people who don't have I-phones/computers, or who don't have access, or who just prefer books. In addition, PP got rid of two revenue streams that were making retailers money (cards and books). Many of the arguments made on this thread come from consumers who buy online and want deep discounts, but one of the reasons retailers stopped carrying PP products was online discounters doing deep discounts. FLGS cannot compete with that, so they went elsewhere. The limit on discounting came too late. Finally, GW sculpts are just superior and hard plastic is a better medium than metal and resin. PP are making 80's miniatures in 2020! That is why they are dying. In addition, as far as game play, most skirmish games have gone to alternate activation. They should have done that a long time ago and I think it might be too little too late for this game. Also, Warmahordes games are time consuming and frustrating for new players. Since there is no randomness in movement, turns are micro measured, which leads to arguments and takes way too much time. Simply adding a random factor to movement would make it hard to micromanage and cut down on that aspect of the game. Also, as revenue began to shrink, PP started selling direct and directing people towards their own site and away from the few FLGS that still carried their product. If I were going to save PP, I would switch to hard plastic models and a cad design program. Then redo Warmachine and Hordes taking into account the points I made above, and then I would reduce skew bloat by making multikits that could wipe out 4-5 skews with one box. But PP probably can't do this because they seem to be on their last legs and I doubt they can keep afloat much longer unless Warcaster is a hit.
I've not been impressed with what I've seen so far. The miniatures feel like some first generation/pre-CAD Infinity miniatures in detail. The setting, another sci-fi game in a bleak dying galaxy, doesn't differentiate itself from most the other similar games out there. There may be be more coming, but this feels like it's a decade or two too late.
But, I really want this to succeed too. PP used to have the most concise, solid rules and interesting new setting. Hopefully they can recapture that in Warcaster without the baggage of Warmachine.
Success for this means more opportunities for all their other lines. So maybe less random mini crates, and more of their core games.
I dunno, I'm liking what I've seen so far. The models are much more to my preference than Warmachine. The fluff is fine for a first look. It's certainly no worse than what AoS started with.
Cronch wrote: And AoS was nearly killed by it's launch....
There were multiple reasons for that though - lore writing was only one tiny bit.
The slashing of armies; the fragmenting of others; the dropping of a game that they'd just spent several months marketing heavily (for the first time in a long while too); the dropping of all the game rules and points; replacing said rules with "joke" rules.
I mean there was a huge number of reasons that AoS just utterly flopped which aren't being repeated here. PP isn't abandoning Warmachine/Hordes; they aren't destroying their own lore; this is a full game with rules; they haven't been marketing Warmachine/Hordes like mad and then suddenly dropped them etc...
Overread wrote: ... they haven't been marketing Warmachine/Hordes like mad and then suddenly dropped them etc...
No, they have just dropped it like a hard case on squishy toes. Warmachine/Hordes aren't taking over any market share, most of the news that get shared suggest opposite - their share is shrinking. This new game doesn't look like an upcoming hit either, it is "more of the same", which doesn't inspire confidence in their design department. And unless they start shouting about it from every horn throwing money and inciting interest - and hiring people to do so - what are the chances it will be anything but their yet another side project? And even if it would become an outstanding success, unless they are prepared to invest big - wouldn't it take all the wind out of the WM/H development to support and expand a new game?
I will be following these news and wishing them luck, but I am afraid that in two years time we wouldn't hear either this name or WM/H. Or even PP themselves. :(
As befitting the ragged and stalwart forces of the Marcher Worlds, the Dusk Wolf is a formidable engine of war. Its dependable and durable chassis supports a versatile weapon system featuring multiple specialty cortex options alongside a lethal array options for armament.
Spoiler:
Armed with rapidfire Harbinger Cannons, the Paladin Annihilators provide heavy support to Alliance forces on the battlefield. While charged with Arc, the weapons' advanced smart lock targeting system robs its targets of the defensive benefits of cover.
Spoiler:
Accompanying the Alliance's forces on the battlefield, the Paladin Weaver acts as a living focus for the Warcaster's arcane might. The destructive Fury Cyphers channeled through the Weaver unleash all manner of psychokinetic ruin upon those who would face the Paladins in battle.
Spoiler:
This is the kind of thing I love to see. I'm very interested in Warcaster. Not sure if someone already posted these, but Privateer Press is doing previews on Twitter.
Also don't forget even within scales the whole fantasy/scifi thing can mean that scales vary somewhat between the number on the manifesto and the scale you end up with.
Plus many things, like terrain, are already out of scale even when made for a specific scale and a lot of it is pretty generic anyway.
Da Boss wrote: 35mm scale kills this for me. I hate scale creep.
Does it really count as scale creep if it’s a brand new game?
To me, yes. 28mm has been the standard for skirmish games since I started in the hobby. PP has always been on the bigger side, 30mm and up sometimes, and I always hate that and how they were never able to keep the scale or proportions of their minis consistent because of poor quality control.
Now GW is scaling stuff up, putting stuff on bigger bases and generally biggersizing everything and PP is gonna jump one further. I hate this, and will not buy any miniatures in that scale. I like cross compatibility.
I have no issue with PP going to KS, it's for everyone! It's a great medium to generate a marketing channel for cheap AND get a feeling for success. Selling directly is also quite nice and if their first KS is any indication, nice for both sides (PP and customer). That stores aren't happy about it, I couldn't care less. The smart ones will stock product when there's interest and the foolish ones will go out of business soon enough...
My first issue with the minis is that most look like they took infinity models and took a air-compressor to them to blow them up. Then some have Tau like (drone) elements.
The second issue is that it's Fantasy in Space with technology... There were a few D20RPG products that went that way. It can be done great like Starfinder or Dragonstar. Warcaster doesn't feel 'great', it feels a bit like a paper bag full of water, with the water seeping through. They went the 'cheap' way and made the fantasy setting into sci-fi, GW always hinted at this with WFB and 40k, but there's a difference between hinting and just doing...
The third issue is material. Resin/metal sculpts... Yuck! The reason why PP hasn't sold any new minis to me in four years. Their PVC was mostly garbage (their minis for the boardgames they KS was better though) and the amount of HIPS releases was way to limited. As a result I used to buy second hand minis that were assembled (and often painted quite well). I would expect that an organization like PP would go the HIPS route with this release. Smaller organizations then PP are doing plastic for years!
The scale issue seems odd to me since none of these designs look like they represent a biological human being, even if they were supposed to. They’re all just robots. (Or cybernetic post-humans if that’s your flavor.) This is Mantic’s Enforcers all over again.
To me these large robots look like they’re perfectly in scale with 28mm humans.
But, I really want this to succeed too. PP used to have the most concise, solid rules
Wait. Stop. PP's approach to rules was strangle them with multiple clauses until they bled. They were relatively solid after a thorough reading, digestion and several passes of errata, but never concise.
'Double move and take no other action.' (Run) is currently two full paragraphs and a bulleted pair of special requirements (for jacks and troops respectively). If you're looking for concise rules, that's abhorrent.
Throwing and being Thrown take up a half a page and a third of a page respectively, and are inexplicably 15 pages apart, in different sections of the rulebook (which is baffling and inexcusable incoherence in the layout of the book). That also doesn't include the general rules for power attacks, collateral damage or deviation. That's the opposite of concise. And this is the 3rd edition version, after they'd learned clarity and legalistic rituals to tighten up their rules writing.
There are actual charts in the back of the book laying out the timing of Activation, Spellcasting and the Attack Sequence- the latter has 14 frikkin' steps, 3 of which have 5 (or in one case, 7) substeps to go through, and two of those substeps have to be repeated for each model affected. Each and every attack in warmachine is functionally a 28 step process (minimum), and fully half of those steps are function calls to other abilities that may or may not need to be resolved at that point in process (which may or may not interrupt it, or require further abilities to be resolved). Some steps you can skip sometimes, or even often, but there are times you can and will spend five minutes resolving a single attack, figuring out which special abilities have priority, and who gets what buffs, debuffs and/or tokens once it resolves
Overread wrote: I think PP has a big bonus of a LOT of other KS companies in that PP has been around for a good number of years and is pretty stable all told. They've already got the offices, company site, equipment, skills etc...
True, but they did semi-recently move offices out of their Bellevue location and into Woodinville.
That move was forced due to zoning law changes and not because of financial reasons. Legally they could no longer manufacture at the site they were at.
Overread wrote: I think PP has a big bonus of a LOT of other KS companies in that PP has been around for a good number of years and is pretty stable all told. They've already got the offices, company site, equipment, skills etc...
True, but they did semi-recently move offices out of their Bellevue location and into Woodinville.
That move was forced due to zoning law changes and not because of financial reasons. Legally they could no longer manufacture at the site they were at.
That and the zone they were in was also priced a lot higher. So chances are they've reduced their overhead considerably.
Contraction within a company is not a bad thing. Done at the right time it can allow a company to better operate within its means and within its market position. Leaving it in a potentially stronger position to expand again later. Don't forget a lot of roles in a miniature company can be done with work-for-hire and short term contracts. Even GW makes use of short term staff. I'd rather PP downsized a bit, stabilised themselves and then grew big again, rather than try to retain a working staff too big for its needs and potential waste resources (money) as a company, which could hamper its chances at expansion.
If PP isn’t in financial trouble why did they clear tons of stock at basically cost price throughout Q3/4 last year ? They blamed the warehouse move but given that shipping costs etc have all gone up it makes no sense to dump stock at cost going into what should’ve been the best sales period.
Rules wise Warmahordes was tight until MK iii. The rules were very clear provided you understood English writing concepts like what a full stop means. Essentially MKiii went wrong because they listened too much to a vocal section of the internet and tournament fan base. That and destroying so many theme armies.
After they screwed me over with my Ashlynn theme force I sold up and ain’t ever touching the brand again.
It could be, if it was the only thing going on. But we know they sell less stuff, and if the glassdoor reviews are to be believed (and from my experience, one negative review could be just salt, but all of them corraborating the story is unlikely to be just salt), they don't really re-hire to fill those positions, just forcing existing employees to spread themselves thinner. It's got all the hallmarks of a flailing mom and pop business.
It could be, if it was the only thing going on. But we know they sell less stuff, and if the glassdoor reviews are to be believed (and from my experience, one negative review could be just salt, but all of them corraborating the story is unlikely to be just salt), they don't really re-hire to fill those positions, just forcing existing employees to spread themselves thinner. It's got all the hallmarks of a flailing mom and pop business.
In terms of Glassdoor?
My employer has a hideous rep on there. But, I’ve been with them for 8 and a bit years, and frankly the reviews on there, and the god awful hatchet job televised ‘exposé’ (which was clearly a conclusion in search of evidence ) simply don’t match my experience at all.
Not to say that’s universal and often where there’s smoke there is indeed fire, just to say Glassdoor is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
It could be, if it was the only thing going on. But we know they sell less stuff, and if the glassdoor reviews are to be believed (and from my experience, one negative review could be just salt, but all of them corraborating the story is unlikely to be just salt), they don't really re-hire to fill those positions, just forcing existing employees to spread themselves thinner. It's got all the hallmarks of a flailing mom and pop business.
In terms of Glassdoor?
My employer has a hideous rep on there. But, I’ve been with them for 8 and a bit years, and frankly the reviews on there, and the god awful hatchet job televised ‘exposé’ (which was clearly a conclusion in search of evidence ) simply don’t match my experience at all.
Not to say that’s universal and often where there’s smoke there is indeed fire, just to say Glassdoor is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
This. Glassdoor is basically an outlet for ex employees with a grudge, real or perceived. Using it as a bellwether for anything is just the modern equivalent of gossiping.
It could be, if it was the only thing going on. But we know they sell less stuff, and if the glassdoor reviews are to be believed (and from my experience, one negative review could be just salt, but all of them corraborating the story is unlikely to be just salt), they don't really re-hire to fill those positions, just forcing existing employees to spread themselves thinner. It's got all the hallmarks of a flailing mom and pop business.
In terms of Glassdoor?
My employer has a hideous rep on there. But, I’ve been with them for 8 and a bit years, and frankly the reviews on there, and the god awful hatchet job televised ‘exposé’ (which was clearly a conclusion in search of evidence ) simply don’t match my experience at all.
Not to say that’s universal and often where there’s smoke there is indeed fire, just to say Glassdoor is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
This. Glassdoor is basically an outlet for ex employees with a grudge, real or perceived. Using it as a bellwether for anything is just the modern equivalent of gossiping.
It could be, if it was the only thing going on. But we know they sell less stuff, and if the glassdoor reviews are to be believed (and from my experience, one negative review could be just salt, but all of them corraborating the story is unlikely to be just salt), they don't really re-hire to fill those positions, just forcing existing employees to spread themselves thinner. It's got all the hallmarks of a flailing mom and pop business.
In terms of Glassdoor?
My employer has a hideous rep on there. But, I’ve been with them for 8 and a bit years, and frankly the reviews on there, and the god awful hatchet job televised ‘exposé’ (which was clearly a conclusion in search of evidence ) simply don’t match my experience at all.
Not to say that’s universal and often where there’s smoke there is indeed fire, just to say Glassdoor is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
This. Glassdoor is basically an outlet for ex employees with a grudge, real or perceived. Using it as a bellwether for anything is just the modern equivalent of gossiping.
Or listening to Yelp.
Basically this. Also positive reviews are generally forced or paid for by the company. Last two I worked at made people go write good reviews for the company. One of them, after I was no longer there, even made it mandatory if you wanted to keep said job (and no this isn't illegal in my state) the other gave giftcards out if you did.
TwilightSparkles wrote:If PP isn’t in financial trouble why did they clear tons of stock at basically cost price throughout Q3/4 last year ? They blamed the warehouse move but given that shipping costs etc have all gone up it makes no sense to dump stock at cost going into what should’ve been the best sales period.
But it was. Most of the kits were HIPS that they had to order in huge numbers and just weren't selling so why pay to move everything to a different location? They probably have a much smaller warehouse and they've gone back to manufacturing to fill orders (like reaper does for it's metals) as opposed to trying to keep everything in stock. They've had a big dip in popularity, no argument there, so why not offload that stuff for a slight profit instead of keeping it sitting around for a long time which requires space which costs money. A way to stay out of financial trouble is to cut costs. Can't act like your the 2nd largest player in the hobby if you're not anymore. If they tried to keep doing that they would be in trouble.
Scaling down doesn't mean they're closing down. Not scaling down when you should means you will surly will go under.
TwilightSparkles wrote: If PP isn’t in financial trouble why did they clear tons of stock at basically cost price throughout Q3/4 last year ? They blamed the warehouse move but given that shipping costs etc have all gone up it makes no sense to dump stock at cost going into what should’ve been the best sales period.
There are many reasons why they might have done this, and only one of them involves any kind of financial hardship. Unless any of us have access to their financials, there's really no way to tell.
It could be, if it was the only thing going on. But we know they sell less stuff, and if the glassdoor reviews are to be believed (and from my experience, one negative review could be just salt, but all of them corraborating the story is unlikely to be just salt), they don't really re-hire to fill those positions, just forcing existing employees to spread themselves thinner. It's got all the hallmarks of a flailing mom and pop business.
In terms of Glassdoor?
My employer has a hideous rep on there. But, I’ve been with them for 8 and a bit years, and frankly the reviews on there, and the god awful hatchet job televised ‘exposé’ (which was clearly a conclusion in search of evidence ) simply don’t match my experience at all.
Not to say that’s universal and often where there’s smoke there is indeed fire, just to say Glassdoor is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
This. Glassdoor is basically an outlet for ex employees with a grudge, real or perceived. Using it as a bellwether for anything is just the modern equivalent of gossiping.
That really does depend. I worked at a place where 99% of the bad reviews (and they were myriad) were fully justified. I'm fully aware that glassdoor and related services don't give you full view, but if enough ex employees are complaining about the same thing, it usually means it's a real thing within the company.
TwilightSparkles wrote: If PP isn’t in financial trouble why did they clear tons of stock at basically cost price throughout Q3/4 last year ?
Because they had massive backstock due to much of the range going direct only AND their new warehouse being much smaller than the old one.
It was also not the first time they have done similar. It’s not that unusual.
For me the 2 factions do not jump out for me specifically, but I like where it is going.
Keen to jump on board and get some new minis to try in a new game. I also hope they keep a lot of there design ideas, but change it up so it’s familiar but different.
Don't forget all we have is one leader, one regular troop and one mech for each of the two factions. That's tiny and isn't showing them at their most varied.
Heck I didn't like Genestealer cult vehicles until GW added the light version, bikes and buggies. The rockgrinder and co stood out like a sore thumb when the whole rest of the army was IG tanks and such. But nestled next to other ramshackle mining vehicles they look better.
TwilightSparkles wrote: If PP isn’t in financial trouble why did they clear tons of stock at basically cost price throughout Q3/4 last year ? They blamed the warehouse move but given that shipping costs etc have all gone up it makes no sense to dump stock at cost going into what should’ve been the best sales period.
Companies liquidate assets all the time for various reasons.It could also be likely that they would have rather sold stock off than pay to move it to their new location. Since they now control their own manufacturing for minis they can replenish as needed. Or, perhaps they needed space for Monsterpocalypse which keeps churning out new models and units and/or Riot Quest which they are also marketing more than Warmachine/Hordes. Now, they have a whole new game to warehouse and manufacture.
I'm willing to bet the Kickstarter will be successful. For me personally, I will hold off until they release more than 3 factions.
Overread wrote: PP isn't abandoning Warmachine/Hordes; they aren't destroying their own lore; this is a full game with rules; they haven't been marketing Warmachine/Hordes like mad and then suddenly dropped them etc...
Yeah, they even kinda announced Gunbjornn 2.
Gunbjornn being the only warnoun I ever owned, the only warnoun I ever played, and the warnoun I themed my whole force around thematically, conversions included, I just have to buy Gunbjornn 2!!
So, I like what I see so far. PP is finally getting modern with rules.
But we definitely need to see a full sized game since one of PP's biggest problems was that the Battle Box was a very poor representation of what a full game tended to be.
I am seeing the resemblance between the factions and Warmachine models more than I thought from the initial announcement. I think it would actually be really obvious if the color pallets were swapped.
ImAGeek wrote: The Marcher Worlds models have grown on me quite a bit since we first saw them.
Same.
Also, I was looking through guerilla Miniature Games' Lets Talk channel (looking for something entirelu different) and game across a snippet from June last year when Ash and owen were discussing Warcaster. It seemed it was teased back then, so I can only assume the rules and units have been i testing since then.
I remain interested rather than excited, but given my flgs has stopped stocking WMH due to falling demand I don't see them stocking this either, so the KS may be a necessity.
That was a very weird, interesting game. I'd like to play a few demo games, or at least watch a few more games, to get a better grip of it. The whole resurrecting units, and portals, and activation token? I'm not getting a good view on how it all works and what makes people win game yet.
Activations aren't tied entirely to rounds. Instead, each player alternates activating units. Every time you finish activating a unit you put an Activation token on it to mark it as activated, and can't be activated again until the token is cleared. When all your units on the table have activation tokens, you remove all activation tokens. Looks like removing activation tokens will be a common thing in the spell cards, so expect cases where units act more than once before the board is cleared.
Once players activated a number of units per round,, That triggers the pulse round, which I think is mainly for scoring, although they're not clear on what else. You do not remove activation tokens when a pulse round is hit.
Having had chance to really watch and think out the game, if anything I'm more inetersted now. I definitely want to see more and can imagine the tactical possibilities.
The pulse round scoring especially has my attention, although I wonder if it's an over complication.
Talked with a couple friends who were ex-WMH players this weekend about Warcaster and their thoughts. Basically, zero interests. They have no faith in PP anymore and their rules writing. They always held up PP for the rules and they said that before they end of MK2, they starting losing faith in PP's rules ability. They only kept playing WMH out of habit for a while, but moved onto Infinity now. For all it's flaws, they have more faith in CB than they ever had in PP and this is post Yu Jing split/ Sectrol Elimination shenanigans.
PP has a steep hole to climb out of to make this game succeed. They've lost most their base audience and most game stores wont touch them. Given this is a KS, they have the additional hurdle of live time managing of production problems. This will be interesting. 2020 is not 2005 and trying to stand out is a lot harder.
Man, I thought I was down on Privateer Press, but y'all in here making me look like a fanboi by comparison.
HIPS isn't happening, the market for PPs product has shrunk considerably and its not feasible for them to do so. Wyrd is a terrible example to use here, because Wyrd has been struggling financially for some time and is slowly pulling back from being an all-plastic miniatures line as well.
Complaints about 35mm scale are silly. Newsflash, 40k hasn't been 28mm scale in years, nor has Warmachine been 30/32. The last few years of PP releases were already in 35mm scale, likewise the last few years of GW have been edging slowly in the same direction. The entire industry is moving towards larger minis, its a fact of life at this point, get used to it.
etc etc etc
Does it look like the next big thing? Hardly. Its absolutely derivative generic sci-fi. if you would have told me these were Infinity models I wouldn't have doubted you. Kickstarter is a terrible way to try to launch a game like this based on the historical trends, but maybe they'll surprise us. But some of these complaints are absolutely just nitpicking things which are totally irrelevant.
Funny things about the impression's of PP's rules writing ability. I still think they write good concise rules when you look at individual rules, or smaller groups.
But they fail a lot in terms of predicting/creating metas, hence the need for CID. On top of that they stay beholden to certain "hardcore" ideas that for some reason have to stay in the game, and they do, until ages pass and they have to remove it.
Why I'm hopeful about Warcaster is, well, it sheds a lot of the baggage that made their rules style not work so well. Units are small, so you're not individually rolling giant masses of infantry. Alternating activations helps even out the most powerful abilities. You bring back units during play, which means even if you make a mistake, or someone uses a giant ability and your units get wiped? Bring them back on the table.
And that giant elephant in the room that hardcore fans loved and said will never go: No Caster Kill.
I was quite quite surprised at the changes and despite the many, many ways I dislike PP's methods, this might mean someone else is in charge. I am pretty damn impressed with what they have, and they even identified a bunch of issues and fixes that more recent games are addressing.
People who think GW has been having scale creep lately have not been playing much attention. AoS is the same scale as 8th Fantasy, 40k 8th is the same scale as 7th and 6th before it. Model lines that are bigger (Stormcast, Primaris) are bigger in the fluff as well; it isn't scale creep when they represent beings which are actually larger in size. Compare the likes of Warcry cultists to empire soldiers, or Blackstone Fortress traitor guard to cadians. The scale creep actually took place some time ago and things have remained largely static the past decade or longer.
Posted on another forum I read for those who ain’t watched the stream
I can't watch the stream anymore but this is what I got:
-There are no points during army building; you get X number of units ("units" are everything in the game, including solos and warjacks) agreed upon by your opponents, and you can have a reserve that sounds unlimited, I guess? You pay some kind of summoning points for adding models during the game.
-It's I go you go, with kind of a weird system they call the Pulse Round. You activate a model and do your thing, then I activate a model and do my thing, and each round of activations you advance the Pulse Tracker towards a number determined by scenario. The Pulse Round is important to scenarios (it may be where you score objectives, etc.) and some in-game effects.
-When you activate a unit, that unit gets an activation flag and cannot activate again until that flag is cleared; you automatically clear all activation flags once every unit has one. Every time you activate, you get unit + solo - So you can go warjack + solo, unit of dudes + solo, or solo + solo. They do their thing and then your opponent gets to react. You can move or attack or attack and move, in any order you choose, but you cannot double up (no move-move or attack-attack).
-Your spells (called Cyphers) are played at the beginning of a round and again at the end. You have a hand of five; there are deckbuilding rules they didn't get into. There are buffs that affect dudes, jacks, etc. that are different kinds, global type buffs, and offensive spells called Furies. Furies have to be channeled through a Weaver, there's no range restriction on the other kind.
-You have a well of 7 ARC. You can allocate one ARC to anything you want at the beginning of a turn. Units can do cool things with it like get better at hurting stuff and have a rule called a Spike, which lets you spend the ARC once a trigger has been met to do some neat effect. I saw a Weaver able to burn an ARC to increase the range of a spell, but there's certainly other stuff they can do. Once an ARC is spent it goes back to your well. I have no idea what else the ARC does. Each unit has a Focus stat that tells you how much ARC you can allocate, I guess.
-Units of dudes move via the unit leader; you measure the move and then place the dudes in the unit in unit coherency with the unit leader, which specifically allows leapfrogging tactics.
-When you make an attack, you roll dice equal to your MAT or RAT score, and your target rolls dice equal to their Defense score. If you win they get hit, if they do you miss.
That's all I saw before I had to get back to work.
Unit is a squad of 3, a solo, or a warjack.
Starter box is a squad, 2 solos, and a jack.
Rules
30"x30" board is 8 units max per side
48"x48" board is 15 units max per side
Your "sideboard" is unlimited and costs are based on summoning
There is no kill, it is scenario and victory points
Scenario is called Recon. They mention having terrain with vertical elements being awesome and they back up the Rick and Morty idea of the 1000 worlds having all kinds of terrain.
The scenario points in Recon are permanent, others will have scenario objects that move or can/must be moved.
Pulse round is when scoring occurs and when most effects expire (every 3 game rounds is one Pulse round in Recon). Pulse rounds remove activation tokens but not Arc.
The Pulse round timer means that the games ends after a certain number of rounds.
Scenario points are equal to the Pulse round (1 for 1, 2 for 2, 3 for 3 the last round).
Deployment is done from your side of the table out to a certain distance and they both start with 2 units out and draw 5 cards.
4 kinds of cards:
Harmonics (they didn't mention the color) are global cards
Overdrives (blue) are jack cards
Geometrics (orange) are unit cards
Furies (red) are spells with ranges that come from weavers
Cypher (card), activate unit(s), Cypher, place summoning well/Summon is one turn. Can also discard a card and draw up to 5 at the end of each turn.
Arc
Arc not in play is your well, 7 total. A bigger well means more powerful spells. You can pull any Arc back at the start of your turn or place 1 Arc.
Arc on a model can be spent like fury/focus. Each unit also has charge and spike abilities. The example is a Spike ability for the Marcher World fire team, they can move 3" when spiked with Arc.
Summoning/Gates
Only 2 gates in play for each player
Summoning gates have Arc on them and it takes a turn to summon and the other player can damage the gate and delay/stop/mess with summoning.
Gates need to be placed within 5" of human model not just summoned or 5" from your table edge.
Can move through gates.
Gates you get a base and a token to put in the base.
Combat/Movement rules
Each unit moves and attacks but you can do it in whatever order you want, attack/move or move/attack.
Full pre-measure.
Cover exists and is probably similar to WMH rules.
Only white and red die, no blue.
(I have not used the Riot Quest or Mon Poc dice but it seems kinda annoying)
No facing and no arcs for models.
Jacks do not have systems or arms or anything, just HP.
LOS is volume to volume (matters for height) and RNG is base to base.
If you have the high ground you basically always have cover and cover is 2 red die.
Jacks can use all their weapons when they activate.
Can shoot into and out of melee, no freestrikes in this game, no engagement.
There is falling damage and if you get damaged when falling your activation ends.
Can climb ladders on terrain.
Can't move through models.
Blasts are measured from the hit model and sprays are just what is under your tape measure, no templates.
Slamming is a thing and adds a red die.
Units
Jacks are customized based on the cortex and the build-points (hard points). There are rules associated with building them (they play with 5 points in jack customization).
Iron Star Alliance is like the Empire
Marcher Worlds is like the Outer Rim
Iron Star Alliance squad range is 12".
Dusk Wolf has 3 HP.
Marcher World Hunter solo is SPD 7 and RNG 15 and RAT 6. Having an Arc on him added a red die to his attack. He also has an ability to move 3" after shooting.
Jacks can have up to 3 Arc and the Iron Star jack gets +1 to it's melee for each arc and the Dusk Wolf gets +1 SPD.
Iron Star Weaver has 2 HP and died in 1 shot from the Jack.
Gates have good defensive stats and when damaged Arc gets pushed off them.
Jacks are on 50mm bases (so maybe no heavy jacks?)
There are cards that can remove activation tokens meaning you can activate the same thing multiple times out of the normal order.
There are attachments in the game.
My Thoughts
Summoning is the big strategy here and how you think ahead.
The card deck is cool.
The Arc well is cool.
Stuff dies easily and in a 15 unit game I bet it gets pretty complicated.
Can't say I am a fan of the dice but I haven't used them before. Having to roll to hit, roll to defend, roll to damage seems kinda annoying.
The game basically ends at the start of Pulse round 3 because one player will win based on the positioning of the objectives and the increasing scenario point values. I think that is fine?
Skirmish seems like a good size to play, 8 units (2 starters is their example) on a 30"x30".
Im really liking the gameplay mechanics and the fact that its full 3D terrain. WM/H can sometime look naff if people go all out on 2D terrain all the time. We play mostly 3D at our place so its good to see it crossing over. I hope this game does well.
Definitely interesting. I did 'call' the shadespire link.
Cards seem like a random draw from a premade deck.
Attack/defend and roll damage dice rolls - seems fair. I like it.
Can folks confirm - standard d6 or custom? I think they're custom.
And interestingly - no points. There is a 'unit cap' on the game, but not really the same thing. I wonder how this will feed into the 'points or no points' eternal debate.
It seems to me that warcaster is a 'fresh take' on the ideas that created Warmachine. WMH is a very mature game, and it's probsbly well past the point where these lessons can be applied back to WMH. Far better to take the lessons and build something new. it seems that a lot of the game mechanics and game concepts in warcaster are based on sometimes rather ingenious solutions to the problems and limitations that WMH has. Yeah, I'm intrigued.
Too early to say whether this will be the next big thing for me and my group but I'll probsbly dip my toes in.
Can folks confirm - standard d6 or custom? I think they're custom.
They're custom. I didn't catch the details, but the red dice score higher than the blue, I believe, and you need to meet certain conditions to use them.
As a Saga player, the mechanic aroun marking units as activited and being able to remove those marks through spells midway through the round appealed to me.
In fairness you see the same thing from "ex-gamers" in most cases. Don't forget Warmachine MK3 isn't "that old" so many who have drifted away have only done so recently and it was a fairly sharp decline rather than the GW decline of players which was typically more gradual and spread out.
So a lot of them are still in their "I don't like it" phase where even if PP was making the best of the best of the best, they'd still be against it or not enthusiastic about it.
Plus don't forget right now its all pre-release material. There's no youtube channels or twitch streamers showing games nor showing off painting and model options. There's no hype nor buzz and even if there was you can't actually play yet. Plus we've only seen the starter-set for two factions so far.
I'm not surprised that some who might not like PP at present are not bowled over by it. This might well change once the KS launches - once it finishes and also once the game ahs been out for a while.
Can folks confirm - standard d6 or custom? I think they're custom.
They're custom. I didn't catch the details, but the red dice score higher than the blue, I believe, and you need to meet certain conditions to use them.
As a Saga player, the mechanic aroun marking units as activited and being able to remove those marks through spells midway through the round appealed to me.
It’s the same dice they use for MonPoc and Riot Quest. So far they’re only using the white and the red dice, no blue. White dice have hits on half the sides, with one of those having two hits. Red dice have hits on five sides, with one of those again being two hits. Essentially it’s a 4+/2+ to hit with a crit on the six. If they do end up using the blue dice, those are your middle of the road 3+ to hit.
So after watching the demo video this is what i see
.Part heavy gear-alternating unit activation-move+ attack actions paired with attack dice roll VS defense dice roll
.Part magic-drawing random action cards
.Part monster apocalypse-specialized hit dice.
I like control sheets like those found in battletech, B5 wars, heavy gear or even the stat cards in monpoc/WM but i hate actual card deck games including malafaux, magic and the turn draw random objective maelstrom cards used in 8th ed 40K .
As such this is certainly not my type of game.
Best of luck to them but as far as PP is concerned i will stay with monpoc and WM.
My enjoyment for this setting of skirmish level SCIFI battles is already filled with infinity.
As said, the custom dice aren't all that custom. Pretty easy to play with standard D6's if you REALLY want as long as you have two different colors.
Gameplay has some intriguing elements. I think the spawning mechanic is far and away the most interesting element, particularly because there's kind of some negative incentives to spawning stuff in the activation system. The lack of points in army building seems well handled to that end and the jack customization feels well done.
Demo took me from wait and see to on my radar. I need to see a lot more, but this feels like it takes the things I liked about Riot Quest and puts them in a more tactically interesting system.
Only just peeked at that demo vid and seen the photos on PP's Insta, but I continue to be intrigued. Honestly the #1 thing holding me back is that I already own a huge amount of unbuilt or unpainted WMH stuff and frankly don't feel like I should be giving PP more money when I have minis that will otherwise never do anything but take up space in my closet, with how poor WMH's resell value is. (#2 is that I really do love the Iron Kingdoms setting and #3 is that I already have too many games!)
No criticisms on the game really. There does seem to be a lot of random in the mechanics, which is rather unexpected coming from WMH. Plus I loathe custom dice but hey, guessing you still only need 5 max? Demo should tell me more in that vein.
Vertrucio wrote: Funny things about the impression's of PP's rules writing ability. I still think they write good concise rules when you look at individual rules, or smaller groups.
But they fail a lot in terms of predicting/creating metas, hence the need for CID. On top of that they stay beholden to certain "hardcore" ideas that for some reason have to stay in the game, and they do, until ages pass and they have to remove it.
PP is really good at making interesting economic systems. Where they fail is they often leave elements of their games that don't participate in those economies, leading players to ignore them in favor of things that don't require making hard choices. The system gets "fixed" by oversupplying the resource and then it winds up overpowered. The good recent example is Infernals. The first version of the summoning rules was incredibly interesting.... except their cheap cultist unit basically gave them unlimited Essence at any point in the turn and removed any chance of being unable to pay the tithe no matter how many things were summoned.
I think Jason Soles is just kind of a double edged sword for the company. In terms of rules, he seems brilliant, but he's so biased towards specific styles and themes their metas collapse under his pet faction with all the rules. The biggest threat to NeoMechanika is honestly probably just a faction with skulls on the models.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People who think GW has been having scale creep lately have not been playing much attention. AoS is the same scale as 8th Fantasy, 40k 8th is the same scale as 7th and 6th before it. Model lines that are bigger (Stormcast, Primaris) are bigger in the fluff as well; it isn't scale creep when they represent beings which are actually larger in size. Compare the likes of Warcry cultists to empire soldiers, or Blackstone Fortress traitor guard to cadians. The scale creep actually took place some time ago and things have remained largely static the past decade or longer.
No, I'm pretty sure scale creep is real.
Spoiler:
(edit: yes, I recognize that some of these don't meet the scope, but it's before coffee, and there are plenty of examples, like much of the chaos lines, eldar, deathwatch vs. normal marines, etc.)
NinthMusketeer wrote: People who think GW has been having scale creep lately have not been playing much attention. AoS is the same scale as 8th Fantasy, 40k 8th is the same scale as 7th and 6th before it. Model lines that are bigger (Stormcast, Primaris) are bigger in the fluff as well; it isn't scale creep when they represent beings which are actually larger in size.
I have to disagree. You can argue that there is more justification for that sort of scale-creep (though, to my mind at least, 'we need scale-creep because the fluff we just made up now on the spot say so' is a pretty weak justification), but "justified" scale-creep is still scale-creep.
Moreover. I would argue that scale-creep can take many different forms - including pushing the game in a certain direction.
As an example, these are the special characters from the 8th edition Vampire Counts book:
Spoiler:
In case you can't tell, these are all infantry-sized models. Aside from the last one (who was just riding a regular horse), they were all on standard 20mm bases.
Now Vampire Counts technically don't exist as an army anymore (thanks, GW), so instead we'll look at the special characters in Legions of Nagash (which most of the Vampire stuff was rolled into):
Spoiler:
The first three above are on 120mmx92mm oval bases, whilst Nagash sits proudly on a 130mm round base.
I can understand Nagash being big but there is no reason beyond scale-creep why the other three all need to be riding absurdly-large monsters (there isn't even an option to take them on foot or on a smaller mount).
I honestly don't see this doing well. Not from malice but because the TT market is pretty full with all kinds of established games. Add in the fact that WM/H has been in a pretty steady decline, I just don't know how it's going to go. Hopefully there's enough of an interest that the KS is successful. The models look good so hopefully that'll draw them the attention they need to succeed.
LunarSol wrote: I think Jason Soles is just kind of a double edged sword for the company. In terms of rules, he seems brilliant, but he's so biased towards specific styles and themes their metas collapse under his pet faction with all the rules. The biggest threat to NeoMechanika is honestly probably just a faction with skulls on the models.
point is, a company that does not use a specific scale for their main games, cannot suffer from scale screep
GW's scale was once, "all infantry models are 28mm from Base to Eyes, no matter what they size they would be" and therefore all tanks were the same size too
than they changed to making more HIPS models, failed at the design step and called it "28mm hero scale"
GW scale means that their normal models are ~1:50-1:56 while Marines are 1:65-1:70, Tanks are 1:50 and Weapons are 1:35
there is also the problem that 28mm Base to Eyes means 32mm total for human models while some take it as 28mm total.
For PP, I don't really care what scale the new game is, als long as they use one and the models match the size of their RL counterparts
New guy is kinda neat, except hardly innovative: once you remove the Cephalyx/Cryx recycling, Infinity-esque cabling/"muscles" and extra arms (not that they have a monopoly, but they are established competition), and cyberpunk mask, what you're left with is a scary medic in a beat up coat with PP signature chunky boots.
Glad to see some more variety, but I'm really not sold on the setting.
spiralingcadaver wrote: New guy is kinda neat, except hardly innovative: once you remove the Cephalyx/Cryx recycling, Infinity-esque cabling/"muscles" and extra arms (not that they have a monopoly, but they are established competition), and cyberpunk mask, what you're left with is a scary medic in a beat up coat with PP signature chunky boots.
Glad to see some more variety, but I'm really not sold on the setting.
Once you remove all the fancy details, you’re left with a miniature without fancy details.
spiralingcadaver wrote: New guy is kinda neat, except hardly innovative: once you remove the Cephalyx/Cryx recycling, Infinity-esque cabling/"muscles" and extra arms (not that they have a monopoly, but they are established competition), and cyberpunk mask, what you're left with is a scary medic in a beat up coat with PP signature chunky boots.
Glad to see some more variety, but I'm really not sold on the setting.
Once you remove all the fancy details, you’re left with a miniature without fancy details.
It's a little bit like when people say there's "only seven stories in the world" or whatever number it is that a book made popular. Indeed once you remove much of the components of a story and break it down to its most bare structural elements you can indeed find that lots of stories are very similar to each other. It's a dangerous thing I think because it encourages a way of viewing things in such broken down concepts that you actually lose sight of the whole creation.
You know, there're a lot fewer pics than I expected in a N&R thread. Here's the minis from the two faction starter sets:
Spoiler:
Keen to see the third faction, Fleshcrafter Mercenary-Guild Nomads (or whatever) tends to push my buttons a little more than the Marchers or Iron Star (tho I guess Marchers with a gun to my head).
Boss Salvage wrote: You know, there're a lot fewer pics than I expected in a N&R thread. Here's the minis from the two faction starter sets:
Spoiler:
Keen to see the third faction, Fleshcrafter Mercenary-Guild Nomads (or whatever) tends to push my buttons a little more than the Marchers or Iron Star (tho I guess Marchers with a gun to my head).
It's like they took a bunch of unused Infinity designs and applied some sort of chonky filter in their 3d modelling program. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
The infantry look a little boring, but the jacks look cool. I'm hoping the third faction they reveal with the Kickstarter will knock it out of the park.
40k uses both dice and cards for randomness so I don't understand that criticism.
D6Damager wrote: The list building is straight from Monsterpocalypse as well.
30"x30" is a weird board size when most people already have 36x36 (Malifaux or Star Wars Legion) or 48x48 (Warmahordes or Infinity).
30"x30" is only for small games. They mentioned larger games will use 4x4 tables, and that may end up being the standard once the game has been out long enough.
Kanluwen wrote: I'm a fan of the Marcher Worlds, personally, but I think it's the color palette that gets me.
Iron Star is too close to Infinity for me to really enjoy it.
The color palettes are very weird and seem to be trying to deliberately hide their inspirations. If Marchers were Blue/White/Gold they would be pretty obviously Cygnar for example.
warboss wrote: It's like they took a bunch of unused Infinity designs and applied some sort of chonky filter in their 3d modelling program. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Yea, I'm not in love. I do think the Mantic connection is a little stronger than the Infinity connection, due to chonk levels maybe (and Angel not having painted these). Honestly the basing style is particularly reminiscent of Infinity's promotional painted minis for me. Also not thrilled that these are metal, I'd rather they went with resin + token metal parts, especially when it comes to magnetizing the 'jacks, which I'm assuming is a thing? When they talk about customization and all that? I mean, ideally they'd take a page out of Puppets War* and include sculpted magnet holes and magnets with the big guys. But I have a doubt.
warboss wrote: It's like they took a bunch of unused Infinity designs and applied some sort of chonky filter in their 3d modelling program. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Spoiler:
Yea, I'm not in love. I do think the Mantic connection is a little stronger than the Infinity connection, due to chonk levels maybe (and Angel not having painted these). Honestly the basing style is particularly reminiscent of Infinity's promotional painted minis for me. Also not thrilled that these are metal, I'd rather they went with resin + token metal parts, especially when it comes to magnetizing the 'jacks, which I'm assuming is a thing? When they talk about customization and all that? I mean, ideally they'd take a page out of Puppets War* and include sculpted magnet holes and magnets with the big guys. But I have a doubt.
*Speaking of chonk ...
Yeah, that's about right, lol. Did you make that image up right now or is that a thing/meme?
warboss wrote: It's like they took a bunch of unused Infinity designs and applied some sort of chonky filter in their 3d modelling program. I'm not sure how I feel about that.
Yea, I'm not in love. I do think the Mantic connection is a little stronger than the Infinity connection, due to chonk levels maybe (and Angel not having painted these). Honestly the basing style is particularly reminiscent of Infinity's promotional painted minis for me. Also not thrilled that these are metal, I'd rather they went with resin + token metal parts, especially when it comes to magnetizing the 'jacks, which I'm assuming is a thing? When they talk about customization and all that? I mean, ideally they'd take a page out of Puppets War* and include sculpted magnet holes and magnets with the big guys. But I have a doubt.
AduroT wrote: Once you remove all the fancy details, you’re left with a miniature without fancy details.
Once you get rid of recycled and cribbed details, you're left with nothing original.
No, I don't believe that every story is another story retold, nor do I believe that every model is another model recombined: certainly it takes rare genius and/or an utter rupture with society to create something radically new, but that doesn't excuse a lack of basic/some originality. The point was, I saw zero originality, just tired repetition. Even GW occasionally has a spark of something fresh in their setting that's 30+ years old, but I see no new life here.
I’m interested in the not-Broadside, but not much else. To be frank, my Warmahordes stuff is sitting in a drawer with just a handful painted. Might grab a few neat models, but I can’t imagine investing in the game itself.
Boss Salvage wrote: You know, there're a lot fewer pics than I expected in a N&R thread. Here's the minis from the two faction starter sets:
Spoiler:
Keen to see the third faction, Fleshcrafter Mercenary-Guild Nomads (or whatever) tends to push my buttons a little more than the Marchers or Iron Star (tho I guess Marchers with a gun to my head).
I don't know what you guys are complaining about. I see some awesome Gue 'Vesa auxiliaries with a Primaris Psyker backup and some pretty sweet Van Saar.
The lack of unique characters is notable. Maybe were past the "avatar gaming" era and that doesn't matter, but it does make it a little harder to care about what happens to these models.
'Recycling' the units seems to double down on that as well.
Warmachine got to the point that it had named Warjacks with personalities and veteran sergeants and named solos. This seems more like endless waves of nameless clones. It doesn't matter who dies or what they do as long as you toggle victory points in the scoring phase.
I think its better that way. No wierdness when you and the opponent bring the same named character. No grumping when you customize a model and 'XXX doesn't look like that'.
Still, letting game designers instead of dedicated ambassadors for your game host a demo is an odd choice.
Not necessarily. The game designer is the person most familiar with the new system, which does rather make them the most qualified to run a demo, at least from a rules and gameplay perspective.
And if the company doesn't currently have a dedicated brand ambassador, or that person isn't on top of the new system yet, then that does restrict the options a bit.
Still, letting game designers instead of dedicated ambassadors for your game host a demo is an odd choice.
Not necessarily. The game designer is the person most familiar with the new system, which does rather make them the most qualified to run a demo, at least from a rules and gameplay perspective.
And if the company doesn't currently have a dedicated brand ambassador, or that person isn't on top of the new system yet, then that does restrict the options a bit.
A quick search of YouTube will prove this statement false.
It’s quite easy to send out demo copies to proven and popular channels which will provide companies with much better gameplay overviews, hype and marketing. All for the cost of a cheap prototype or PnP.
In this day and age, there is absolutely no reason to not have someone charismatic present your game and run a demo.
Don’t make excuses for less than stellar marketing.
Still, letting game designers instead of dedicated ambassadors for your game host a demo is an odd choice.
Not necessarily. The game designer is the person most familiar with the new system, which does rather make them the most qualified to run a demo, at least from a rules and gameplay perspective.
That's almost never true in my experience. Most designers are dealing with rules in flux, and make mistakes based on rules that have changed or been adjusted (or will be adjusted).
If its someone else, you can just give them a packet with the current snapshot of the rules, have them play some practice games, and then plop them in front of a camera. Its much smoother.
Even if they do make mistakes, Ghool is right. The charisma difference matters a lot more than little mistakes (that with a new game, the viewers won't necessarily even recognize as mistakes).
Canadian 5th wrote: I watched the demo, and it might just be that the hosts have zero charisma, but the game just seems a bit sterile and boring.
The demo interaction was awkward at best, and annoyingly clunky. I agree that designers are not usually a good demo team, and PP should have made a different choice.
I had trouble getting though it so unrehearsed, but the system does seem a bit interesting. I'm also curious about appearance of third faction.
A quick search of YouTube will prove this statement false.
It’s quite easy to send out demo copies to proven and popular channels which will provide companies with much better gameplay overviews, hype and marketing. All for the cost of a cheap prototype or PnP.
Er... some random YouTuber is not a dedicated brand ambassador.
That sort of arrangement can work. The problem is that it removes the control of the presentation from the hands of the company, which can be a very bad thing. You also have no guarantee when sending out a sample like this that the presenter will actually do anything with it. An awful lot of sample material just disappears into the ether. And, of course, sending out actual copies of the game to people outside the company means that your product is now out in the wild, which is potentially not what the company wants.
And, of course, some random guy on YouTube who has skimmed through the rules to put together a review or a playthrough video is not going to have as thorough a knowledge of the rules as the guy who wrote them, which was my original point.
I mean, it would be great if every miniatures company could have a dedicated marketing team producing slick videos and running demos and the like... but ultimately, I'd rather see a presentation with the correct rules, than a slightly slicker presentation from someone who doesn't actually know how to play the game properly.
A quick search of YouTube will prove this statement false.
It’s quite easy to send out demo copies to proven and popular channels which will provide companies with much better gameplay overviews, hype and marketing. All for the cost of a cheap prototype or PnP.
Er... some random YouTuber is not a dedicated brand ambassador.
That sort of arrangement can work. The problem is that it removes the control of the presentation from the hands of the company, which can be a very bad thing. You also have no guarantee when sending out a sample like this that the presenter will actually do anything with it. An awful lot of sample material just disappears into the ether. And, of course, sending out actual copies of the game to people outside the company means that your product is now out in the wild, which is potentially not what the company wants.
And, of course, some random guy on YouTube who has skimmed through the rules to put together a review or a playthrough video is not going to have as thorough a knowledge of the rules as the guy who wrote them, which was my original point.
I mean, it would be great if every miniatures company could have a dedicated marketing team producing slick videos and running demos and the like... but ultimately, I'd rather see a presentation with the correct rules, than a slightly slicker presentation from someone who doesn't actually know how to play the game properly.
You still aren't necessarily getting the correct rules. I've seen Jervis flub Warhammer rules in person, on editions where he was the primary author.
He at least (at the time) had enthusiasm going for him, but it still made the room awkward.
You still aren't necessarily getting the correct rules. I've seen Jervis flub Warhammer rules in person, on editions where he was the primary author.
He at least (at the time) had enthusiasm going for him, but it still made the room awkward.
Given Jervis' general 'the rules don't matter' attitude, that doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I'm not sure that GW are the best example of anything here, though, since getting rules wrong is fairly endemic with them regardless of who it was written by... likely due to everything always being in such a state of flux.
That's an odd thing to say, given that Warmachine has lasted 17 years, so far... In a niche where most games are lucky to last 5, it's a venerable ancient.
Which is disappointing - as it makes it sound like only the biggest of units will get resin pieces. (Apparently the 2 jacks we've seen so far don't qualify as big yet).
It would have been cool if the jack kits, made in a more appropriate material, would have been hot-swappable without the hassle of magnetizing. (ala Rivet Wars - RIP) - since it sounds like they each will have a few different loadout options.
Still, letting game designers instead of dedicated ambassadors for your game host a demo is an odd choice.
Not necessarily. The game designer is the person most familiar with the new system, which does rather make them the most qualified to run a demo, at least from a rules and gameplay perspective.
And if the company doesn't currently have a dedicated brand ambassador, or that person isn't on top of the new system yet, then that does restrict the options a bit.
If the company doesn't have a brand ambassador they might want to hold off on launching a new brand until they have one and that person is up to date on the product. This is business 101...
Most companies don't actually have unlimited resources... If nobody released new product until they could afford a social media professional on staff, there would be an awful lot less product being released.
The artwork for the other two factions looked cool as well. Although the three factions are all sort of looking like the same thing in different colours, so far. Maybe it's just because they're new and I'm not used to the visuals yet, but it feels like the factions in Warmachine and Hordes all had much stronger aesthetic differences.
The core factions of Warmachine look quite similar: both Cygnar, Protectorate and Khador look relatively similar, especially with their core, like for instance warjacks. Horde factions and other Warmachine factions and further expansions on the core factions look much more different from one another.
Automatically Appended Next Post: So the main factions are the lawful neutral big very imperialist, technologically advanced faction, the chaotic neutral band of rogues and commandos, and the neutral evil necromancer cult?
Ideally I'd prefer another faction at launch, but I'll settle for artwork and details for them.
From the gameplay video the only things I don't like the look of are the custom dice (not a fan), spell cards (more custom stuff, but it's mainly the randommes of their avialability) and the being able to re-summon bakc dead units.
But that is on first glance, and I'm keeping an open mind as we learn more.
So far, this game is still growing on me. I stil want a warpwolf in a space helmet though.
insaniak wrote: Most companies don't actually have unlimited resources... If nobody released new product until they could afford a social media professional on staff, there would be an awful lot less product being released.
Most new startups form around the idea of promoting themselves via new media. PP with a 30 person staff should have at least one person who's capable of presenting a product on camera. Worst case they can, in grand American tradition, hire a couple of unpaid interns to take on the challenge.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
ZebioLizard2 wrote: The Red and Black gang look like they've dropped out of Destiny a bit.
They apparently not only dropped out of destiny but also never found any cosmetic upgrades. That black and red they have going on just doesn't work for me.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: The core factions of Warmachine look quite similar: both Cygnar, Protectorate and Khador look relatively similar, especially with their core, like for instance warjacks.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
I dunno. I feel like these factions look/feel about as different as the initial Warmachine factions do. Warjacks all had/have a pretty similar silhouette.
That's an odd thing to say, given that Warmachine has lasted 17 years, so far... In a niche where most games are lucky to last 5, it's a venerable ancient.
Where are all the wargame stores stocking it then?
Where are the huge events?
Where are all the articles in wargaming magazines?
Where is ANYTHING?
Where are all the wargame stores stocking it then?
Where are the huge events?
Where are all the articles in wargaming magazines?
Where is ANYTHING?
Not cutting PP any slack, but WM is still stocked but only in heavily active areas. The huge events are at big cons. But that's about it. As I've said before, WM is only played by the hardcore fans, of which there are still a significant amount, but they're being enticed away by all the other games slowly.
As for WNM, the biggest problem with the minis shown so far is that their silhouettes are all similarly bulky, which yes, is because of the chonk factor. The guys with lighter armor and cloaks still occupy the same silhouette space as form fitting metal armor. Hopefully they can do some rescaling of various elements to push the silhouettes on a per faction basis. Both light jacks using the same leg joint structure is a problem too. Although I suspect the heavy warjacks will vary more since they have more volume to work with.
A lot of the chunk level also depends on the material used...
Where are all the wargame stores stocking it then?
Where are the huge events?
Where are all the articles in wargaming magazines?
Where is ANYTHING?
Up until fairly recently, all over the place.
If your metric for a game being successful enough to be worth playing is that it has a huge following after almost two decades, there are very few playable games out there from any company. It's an odd thing to single out PP for.
Where are all the wargame stores stocking it then?
Where are the huge events?
Where are all the articles in wargaming magazines?
Where is ANYTHING?
Up until fairly recently, all over the place.
If your metric for a game being successful enough to be worth playing is that it has a huge following after almost two decades, there are very few playable games out there from any company. It's an odd thing to single out PP for.
Yeah, but in PP's case they had that and then fumbled it away. Then GW scored and hit the 2 point convert with AoS and 8th edition and the game was over...
It's only natural to look at PP now versus the high of mk2 and see PP as a failure.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: The core factions of Warmachine look quite similar: both Cygnar, Protectorate and Khador look relatively similar, especially with their core, like for instance warjacks.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
Yup. While the core Jacks all share the same 'big torso, tiny legs and head' construction, they have very clear aesthetic differences: Cygnar are all rounded, Khador are square and blocky, Menoth pointy and angular, and Cryx more organic looking.
The factions shown here don't have that level of distinction. The Jacks are all hunched and rounded curves, and look largely interchangeable, and the Infantry all just look like generic sci fi guys, with the only real distinction being that one lot have bigger shoulder pads.
It's like the models were designed by people who feel that the models don't matter, which would make a certain amount of sense given what I've seen of Warmahordes games over the years, with their largely unpainted and often not even completely assembled hordes... But it's disappointing given just how strong the visual appeal of us Warmahordes range was.
Voss wrote: 'Recycling' the units seems to double down on that as well.
Warmachine got to the point that it had named Warjacks with personalities and veteran sergeants and named solos. This seems more like endless waves of nameless clones. It doesn't matter who dies or what they do as long as you toggle victory points in the scoring phase.
sounds a little like moba-wargaming. Not literally, but the idea behind it of just using waves to capture VPs.
As for models, I like them, and I finally know what they remind me of. mid-00s superhero comics. The style of the guns and armor and the hex plates all makes me think of goons in something like Runaways or...those other comics. I know it's not helping my case that they all blur together
Vertrucio wrote: So then, Warcaster could be their way back to being competitive.
It's got growing pains, but there's more framework to grow on in Warcaster than Warmachine currently.
Maybe if they hadn't already torched their FLGS bridges and their entire European fanbase but now... This new PP could barly run a demo that was watchable. This is likely a soon to be DOA turd...
Where are all the wargame stores stocking it then?
Where are the huge events?
Where are all the articles in wargaming magazines?
Where is ANYTHING?
Im not White Knighting for PP. As a long term player I have serious concerns about the company and some of the decision it has made since the launch of Mk3. But I would answer your questions simply –
We are where we have always been. In our own metas doing our own thing.
Even in the heights of Mk2 before the dip that Mk3 caused the UKWM/H community was doing its own thing away from the GW crowd. When I stated the game we had to go online to find players, once we found a club that the local community met at, we were surprised at how many people were playing. That is initially why I got into the game, the strength of the rules and the community.
PP has (had) its own forum and now has its own web pages, official FB pages, factions pages, CID forums etc. Even in the heights of Mk2, how many articles were features in places like BoLS? Very few. We made our own communities and cracked on.
As for the huge event, again they are exactly where they were. UKTC, UK Masters, Welsh Masters, Regional SR comps, ETC, WTC, LVO, Iron Gauntlet, Lock and Load etc. The really big ones are all streamed and recorded by PP and put online. Something it was doing way before GW decided to try their hand in that space. The game has taken a battering but the comp scene is still really strong – which to be fair is a strength AND a weakness of the game.
Where are all the games stocking it? You mean apart from Firestorm, Wayland, Patriot, Goblin etc etc etc? Supply has been a real issue due to issues with the distros. That is getting better now.
The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
Sunno wrote: The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
When people have to find your game, rather than being able to discover it at any FLGS, that's usually a very bad sign.
Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote: The core factions of Warmachine look quite similar: both Cygnar, Protectorate and Khador look relatively similar, especially with their core, like for instance warjacks.
I don't think that's necessarily true. Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
Yup. While the core Jacks all share the same 'big torso, tiny legs and head' construction, they have very clear aesthetic differences: Cygnar are all rounded, Khador are square and blocky, Menoth pointy and angular, and Cryx more organic looking.
To be fair, when I first saw WM miniatures all those years ago, I couldn't really appreciate all the distinctions either. It's impossible for me to look at them with "new eyes" at this point. I remember I really disliked the aesthetic when they came out, and it was only the Mariner that really turned me around.
Sunno wrote: The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
When people have to find your game, rather than being able to discover it at any FLGS, that's usually a very bad sign.
depends on the location, here you have to go to the GW or you wont see any GW games being played, but we all know its likely the #1 miniatures game company. I havent seen a game of 40k played at any flgs not named GW in close to a year.
Sunno wrote: The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
When people have to find your game, rather than being able to discover it at any FLGS, that's usually a very bad sign.
depends on the location, here you have to go to the GW or you wont see any GW games being played, but we all know its likely the #1 miniatures game company. I havent seen a game of 40k played at any flgs not named GW in close to a year.
You won't ever see the like of this written about a PP game.
Sunno wrote: The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
When people have to find your game, rather than being able to discover it at any FLGS, that's usually a very bad sign.
I am not saying its a great way to run a community. I am just saying "twas ever thus". WM/H community has always stood apart.
Which as I said, is probably a mistake and an attitude we need to change. I think it comes from the slightly elitist attitude that many used to have around "page 5 y'all" and seeking to be "the best competitive game, frack GW" crowed. Which again was an attitude I didn't really get.
Sunno wrote: The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
When people have to find your game, rather than being able to discover it at any FLGS, that's usually a very bad sign.
depends on the location, here you have to go to the GW or you wont see any GW games being played, but we all know its likely the #1 miniatures game company. I havent seen a game of 40k played at any flgs not named GW in close to a year.
You won't ever see the like of this written about a PP game.
Or probably any other game that isn’t Games Workshop.
ImAGeek wrote: Or probably any other game that isn’t Games Workshop.
D&D? MtG? Pokemon's TCG even?
Or Video games, if were gonna look at completely different types of game.
I’ve gone pretty cold on PP games, so I’m not really defending them. I just don’t understand this idea that if your game isn’t as big as Games Workshop, it’s a failure, because that would make Games Workshop the only successful tabletop wargaming company.
ImAGeek wrote: Or Video games, if were gonna look at completely different types of game.
I’ve gone pretty cold on PP games, so I’m not really defending them. I just don’t understand this idea that if your game isn’t as big as Games Workshop, it’s a failure, because that would make Games Workshop the only successful tabletop wargaming company.
I just rattled off games you could find by walking into an FLGS.
Vertrucio wrote: This new PP could barly run a demo that was watchable. This is likely a soon to be DOA turd...
I've never had any interest in anything PP has made, but I found that video completely watchable and interesting and now I'm planning on supporting this kick starter.
Canadian 5th wrote:
Sunno wrote: The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
When people have to find your game, rather than being able to discover it at any FLGS, that's usually a very bad sign.
Nearly every miniatures game except for 40K has to be sought out and discovered by customers. No other game, except XWing in its prime, has the kind of market penetration where you can expect to walk into a game shop and find it. Thats a standard that nothing in the industry is living up to except 40K.
jake wrote: Nearly every miniatures game except for 40K has to be sought out and discovered by customers. No other game, except XWing in its prime, has the kind of market penetration where you can expect to walk into a game shop and find it. Thats a standard that nothing in the industry is living up to except 40K.
That might explain why so many games don't make it to the decade mark within this market. The industry needs to slash prices and adapt quickly or somehow launch with sculpts and models to make GWs look like cheap knockoffs for the same price.
That might explain why so many games don't make it to the decade mark within this market..
Nevermind a decade, three years is a bridge too far for many. Anyone still get passionate over Warpath, Dreadzone or Gates of Antares? I believe all three still exist, but have passed under the threshold of noticeability ages ago.
That might explain why so many games don't make it to the decade mark within this market. The industry needs to slash prices and adapt quickly or somehow launch with sculpts and models to make GWs look like cheap knockoffs for the same price.
Most of the industry is already significantly cheaper than GW. Prices aren't the problem, it's the general reluctance so many people have to look at anything that isn't already being played by everyone around them. A game needs a following for people to want to play it, which obviously creates a bit of a catch 22.
insaniak wrote: Most of the industry is already significantly cheaper than GW. Prices aren't the problem, it's the general reluctance so many people have to look at anything that isn't already being played by everyone around them. A game needs a following for people to want to play it, which obviously creates a bit of a catch 22.
Then it's up to companies to spend more on marketing and convincing stores to routinely demo their games. Its why the Press Gangers were brilliant, I wouldn't have a 25 point Kara Sloan list from MkII if not for that exact recruitment method.
If something seems like an obvious answer, but isn't currently being done, it's usually a fair assumption that the answer isn't actually the right one.
The marketing discussion is probably best carried on elsewhere, though.
insaniak wrote: If something seems like an obvious answer, but isn't currently being done, it's usually a fair assumption that the answer isn't actually the right one.
The marketing discussion is probably best carried on elsewhere, though.
This entire conversation basically came from my saying that Warcaster is probably going to be DOA and given how many games come out, burn brightly for 6 months, and are basically dead within a year that seems germane to the topic at hand.
Heck, your Maelstrom's edge signature makes me laugh a little seeing as Spiral Arm Studios don't appear to be doing well enough to maintain their own company website at the moment; check out http://www.spiralarmstudios.com/ to see what I mean.
10 years for a product is a pretty decent lifespan. Just saying.
let's not forget that in any industry, most companies fail within first 3 years or so. That's to be expected.
Cronch wrote: 10 years for a product is a pretty decent lifespan. Just saying.
let's not forget that in any industry, most companies fail within first 3 years or so. That's to be expected.
Is it though I've got a pair of game consoles sitting next to me that are older than that and my current phone is pushing 6 years old already. I'd rather invest in something that's built for the long haul than chance a game that'll be gone before I can even really get invested.
I mean, games are entertainment, not lifelong commitment. Investing in them makes no sense as a collector, your ROI is always negative.
On the other hand, this game will absolutely be DOA no matter what, seeing as we're busy discussing just about anything but the main attraction. I've seen zero buzz on the wider internet too, with a lot of derisive comments instead. Hell, I like the models, and I've absolutely no intention of buying into it either.
You can't use it as an effective measuring stick because EVERY GW release for the last decade or more was "the last deathnail that will never sell and the company will burn in the fires and die". Granted its not as bad as it was in the end of the Kirby days, but by and large that's the typical Dakka response to most things
Dakka has a negative slant by and large as a result of a population that seems to have retained a large number of cynical people coupled with a good few who have honestly moved on from specific games/companies/wargaming, but who hang around for the community.
Plus lets not forget so far we've 2 basic warbands, 1 gameplay video and a few bits of art with no prices; purchase options nor real glances at the future. At present the marketing isn't in the hard-sell phase; its in the wetting apatite and spreading the word - and I'd argue 9 pages based on that tiny bit of information is actually a positive thing.
If PP were really outright dead we'd have less than 1 page and mostof that would be the same person posting new posts as info came out.
That one is the most obvious space-Cryx of the bunch. The elongated neck and clawed fingers on the jack stand out, and the arc node solo heavily shares Denny's silhouette.
insaniak wrote: Most of the industry is already significantly cheaper than GW. Prices aren't the problem, it's the general reluctance so many people have to look at anything that isn't already being played by everyone around them. A game needs a following for people to want to play it, which obviously creates a bit of a catch 22.
Then it's up to companies to spend more on marketing and convincing stores to routinely demo their games. Its why the Press Gangers were brilliant, I wouldn't have a 25 point Kara Sloan list from MkII if not for that exact recruitment method.
I'm entertained by your world of unlimited funding.
Overread, I'm not talking about Dakka. I'm yet to see a single message board etc. that has any significant hype about it. I'm sure it'll reach whatever basic goal it sets itself up for, but it'll end up no different to The Other Side I think.
Cronch wrote: Overread, I'm not talking about Dakka. I'm yet to see a single message board etc. that has any significant hype about it. I'm sure it'll reach whatever basic goal it sets itself up for, but it'll end up no different to The Other Side I think.
Pretty much all of PPs discussion happens on Facebook these days. Dakka is the last message board I see traffic on much at all anymore honestly, and I mostly stick around because its somehow marginally less miserable than FB or Twitter.
You're right about that - we don't get many PP players here (although I myself was one, very heavily, for a long time). After they nuked their forums, the discussion fractured into separate facebook groups, so it's hard to get a good read on the "community" as a whole (and, honestly, that community was greatly hurt by the loss of official faction forums and ending of the press ganger program).
Overall, I am interested in what I'm seeing here. Although moreso in Boss Salvage's memes . The one thing I don't like is the head-in-torso look of the jacks/robots... really would've liked to see them branch out from that aesthetic. I loved the tan colored robot at first, because I didn't see the small head in front, and thought it just had sensors... take the head off and it's a way better concept imo.
I will definitely be keeping an eye on this launch! (And if we could try to avoid doing tooooooooooo much PP bashing in this thread, that would also be great . I will also be keeping an eye on the thread...)
Facebook I find is very impersonal also the groups only have one long stream of posts. It's like a single forum subsection. For actual hobby discussion its a really bad platform.
It's great for connecting with people and updating a club for a weeks events and such; but for forming a community online and for retaining access to old discussions and such FB is years behind forums.
I also find it affects the kind of conversations you get so it can be really hard to judge a community.
I agree PP did themselves a huge disservice nuking their own, very active, forums and shattering their own community. What baffles me is that they've stuck with this plan and not revitalised their own forums even though they've got the whole infstrastructure there. I'd bet if they restored them to their own function they could spark up some renewed interest even now - at least being a single hub of interest.
Then again PP's online stuffis a bit spotty at present - eg the website gallery still hasn't got a page for Infernals to look at.
I could also guess that Flames of War might be ahead of anything PP is producing as well.
Flames of War is still around? That's not me being pithy but an honest question. The only store I've seen it in in the past 7 years across 5 states was a single HobbyTown USA with like 4-6 boxes of stuff gathering dust on clearance. Compared to PP which still had fairly large sections in most of those stores.
Sunno wrote: The WM/H community has always been off doing its own thing. Which in retrospect, has probably been a mistake as it really hamstrung our recovery after the disaster that was the Mk3 launch. But that has forced the communities to change. All im saying is that if you go looking for the PP community in the UK, you will find us :-)
When people have to find your game, rather than being able to discover it at any FLGS, that's usually a very bad sign.
depends on the location, here you have to go to the GW or you wont see any GW games being played, but we all know its likely the #1 miniatures game company. I havent seen a game of 40k played at any flgs not named GW in close to a year.
You won't ever see the like of this written about a PP game.
You know, if the price to pay for normies to stay out of my game and 40 years-old wino-mom ex-Staceys to remain ignorant of my plastic mandoll obsession is my flaghead game to remain less popular, I'll gladly pay it. As for products I have everything Warmahorde stocked at my LGS. Way bigger frontstore presence to Infinity.
Overread wrote: I agree PP did themselves a huge disservice nuking their own, very active, forums and shattering their own community. What baffles me is that they've stuck with this plan and not revitalised their own forums even though they've got the whole infstrastructure there. I'd bet if they restored them to their own function they could spark up some renewed interest even now - at least being a single hub of interest.
Then again PP's online stuffis a bit spotty at present - eg the website gallery still hasn't got a page for Infernals to look at.
Not many companies are running active forums these days are they? I mean, a few have them, but they all seem pretty dead when I visit. I don't like what's replaced them personally, but there seems little interest in starting up a forum these days and even less interest in keeping up to date with forum software.
In terms of their gallery, it was essentially abandoned after they redid the store. I'm kind of surprised they haven't shut it down as its mostly a bit of confusion now that most of the content from it is in the webstore. Pretty common trend across the industry really.
I could also guess that Flames of War might be ahead of anything PP is producing as well.
Flames of War is still around? That's not me being pithy but an honest question. The only store I've seen it in in the past 7 years across 5 states was a single HobbyTown USA with like 4-6 boxes of stuff gathering dust on clearance. Compared to PP which still had fairly large sections in most of those stores.
Yes, it's still very much around. It also has a post-war counterpart game in Team Yankee. Both games have a very active following at my FLGS. WMH used to be an extremely popular game at my FLGS. But if my local srore still has any product, it's on the discount rack. No one plays it there anymore.
Here's my concerns over this; PP asked it's employees to take a pay cut to launch the 2nd Monsterpocalypse(sp?) That speaks volumes to how they're doing as a company. WM/H armies can be bought for next to nothing on the secondary markets. Online retailers have dropped their products. They've launched approximately 10 products including WM/H, of which 2... maybe 3 were supported for more than a year or two. Now Warcaster is going to KS. Leaving aside the minis (which I do kinda like), I personally see this as a last attempt to remain viable as a company. I think it's a shame. PP has some good people who work there and if this fails, I don't think they'll ever really recover.
I was a long time player and PG'r. I got to know quite a few of the people at PP and overall, they are (were?) a good company. The launch of MK III, the CID program encactment and the dissolution of the Press Gang happening all rapidly really hurt PPIMHO, the catalyst for some of their "core" people leaving. I do hope this works out for them, but I personally won't be supporting the KS.
Vertrucio wrote:So then, Warcaster could be their way back to being competitive.
I had the most fun with Warmachine back when it was all metal and was special order only or had a tiny single rack at a couple local places. I had the least fun when there was this established tournament meta and the CID and all that. And the grey board gamey plastic. Ugh. Hated it.
If Privateer does this with kickstarter and keeps to metal (resin for larger pieces) and designs for a fun experience rather than a tournament scene, I'll strongly consider backing. And then when the first expansion is another kickstarter in 2021, if they've kept their focus on the basics and didn't make it like late mk2 or into mk3 wm/h, I'll back again.
Overread wrote: I agree PP did themselves a huge disservice nuking their own, very active, forums and shattering their own community. What baffles me is that they've stuck with this plan and not revitalised their own forums even though they've got the whole infstrastructure there. I'd bet if they restored them to their own function they could spark up some renewed interest even now - at least being a single hub of interest.
Then again PP's online stuffis a bit spotty at present - eg the website gallery still hasn't got a page for Infernals to look at.
Not many companies are running active forums these days are they? I mean, a few have them, but they all seem pretty dead when I visit. I don't like what's replaced them personally, but there seems little interest in starting up a forum these days and even less interest in keeping up to date with forum software.
In terms of their gallery, it was essentially abandoned after they redid the store. I'm kind of surprised they haven't shut it down as its mostly a bit of confusion now that most of the content from it is in the webstore. Pretty common trend across the industry really.
Forums seem to be dying in favor of Facebook pages, which I'm not a fan of. My own local club migrated off of Facebook and opened up a forum instead, and we're looking to get our own website this year.
Overread wrote: I agree PP did themselves a huge disservice nuking their own, very active, forums and shattering their own community. What baffles me is that they've stuck with this plan and not revitalised their own forums even though they've got the whole infstrastructure there. I'd bet if they restored them to their own function they could spark up some renewed interest even now - at least being a single hub of interest.
Then again PP's online stuffis a bit spotty at present - eg the website gallery still hasn't got a page for Infernals to look at.
Not many companies are running active forums these days are they? I mean, a few have them, but they all seem pretty dead when I visit. I don't like what's replaced them personally, but there seems little interest in starting up a forum these days and even less interest in keeping up to date with forum software.
In terms of their gallery, it was essentially abandoned after they redid the store. I'm kind of surprised they haven't shut it down as its mostly a bit of confusion now that most of the content from it is in the webstore. Pretty common trend across the industry really.
Fantasy flight and corvus bellies bouth have forums for xwing and infinity with good content and activity
That might explain why so many games don't make it to the decade mark within this market..
Nevermind a decade, three years is a bridge too far for many. Anyone still get passionate over Warpath, Dreadzone or Gates of Antares? I believe all three still exist, but have passed under the threshold of noticeability ages ago.
I bought Antares plastics and Dreadball minis in the last 4 months. I plan to buy the Warpath novel by CL Werner when it comes out (if it comes out), and the Antares anthologies have been solid. If Antares releases a new plastic kit this year, I'll likely buy one, and I'm waiting to strike on a Star Saga expansion whose prices are going crazy with Amazon algorithms.
But I'm not about to drop $100 on any new releases*, and I doubt many Mantic or Antares customers are, so a scaled back approach is wise for them.
*except maybe the DFC fleet boxes, if they ever show up in my FLGS.
Heck, your Maelstrom's edge signature makes me laugh a little seeing as Spiral Arm Studios don't appear to be doing well enough to maintain their own company website at the moment; check out http://www.spiralarmstudios.com/ to see what I mean.
You can't use it as an effective measuring stick because EVERY GW release for the last decade or more was "the last deathnail that will never sell and the company will burn in the fires and die". Granted its not as bad as it was in the end of the Kirby days, but by and large that's the typical Dakka response to most things
I think it's doing a huge disservice to the Dakka community to just dismiss the reaction here as some sort of Dakka hivemind negativity, frankly. The post Kirby reception to pretty much every GW release has been largely positive, at least in regards to the models. And Dakka's reaction to other ranges has generally been either positive or leaned more towards indifference than negativity.
Agamemnon2 wrote: Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
When you are very used to it and notice the difference and faction-specific style, yes. To a newcomer? They are all tiny leg dreadnoughts, with pretty small differences. At least I can say this was my opinion when I started the game. The Horde side was were the beasts were all very different, the warmachine side? Most of the difference was in the infantry and color scheme.
insaniak wrote: While the core Jacks all share the same 'big torso, tiny legs and head' construction, they have very clear aesthetic differences: Cygnar are all rounded, Khador are square and blocky, Menoth pointy and angular, and Cryx more organic looking.
The only one where I'd notice clear difference as a newcomer were Cryx. Which clearly had a slightly different aesthetic, thanks to being weird undead creations. And I suspect that the 3rd Warcaster faction, which we haven't seen a lot of, is going to be the one that stands out the most at start.
insaniak wrote: and the Infantry all just look like generic sci fi guys, with the only real distinction being that one lot have bigger shoulder pads.
That's really not how I feel. The snipers have cloth and a rugged look, the paladins have a cleaner look.
Heck, your Maelstrom's edge signature makes me laugh a little seeing as Spiral Arm Studios don't appear to be doing well enough to maintain their own company website at the moment; check out http://www.spiralarmstudios.com/ to see what I mean.
It's a link to a holding page that we aren't currently using for anything. We're a small company, and so we use our resources to maintain the website for the product we're actually selling, rather than a corporate website that would currently do nothing more than link back to the product website.
None of which has anything to do with the lengevity of the game or, more importantly for this thread, Warcaster: Neo-Mechanika. If you really must bash Maelstrom's Edge, please take it to somewhere more appropriate.
Agamemnon2 wrote: Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
When you are very used to it and notice the difference and faction-specific style, yes. To a newcomer? They are all tiny leg dreadnoughts, with pretty small differences. At least I can say this was my opinion when I started the game. The Horde side was were the beasts were all very different, the warmachine side? Most of the difference was in the infantry and color scheme.
Agamemnon2 wrote: Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
When you are very used to it and notice the difference and faction-specific style, yes. To a newcomer? They are all tiny leg dreadnoughts, with pretty small differences. At least I can say this was my opinion when I started the game. The Horde side was were the beasts were all very different, the warmachine side? Most of the difference was in the infantry and color scheme.
I wholly disagree:
They literally said Cryx were the exception in the same post.
Cygnar and Khador are drastically different as well. Cygnar has distinctive spherical shoulders. Khador tends to look like a T-34 with an early war turret in silhouette.
Of key note is that yes, Cryx uses the double knee joint style. Both light jacks in WNM use that.
AduroT wrote: Also it’s hard to notice the different aesthetic themes with a sample size of one.
Not sure what you mean here. We've seen three factions so far.
Automatically Appended Next Post: In the interests of not just being negative, though, I will mention that as much as I feel the factions could use more distinction, I do like the design of the jacks. They're solid looking warmachines, and look like they would be fun to paint.
AduroT wrote: Also it’s hard to notice the different aesthetic themes with a sample size of one.
Not sure what you mean here. We've seen three factions so far.
Right, and only one ‘Jack for each. So which details are the style of the setting, which are the style of particular weapon types, and which are the styles for the factions? We haven’t seen the patterns yet to know what’s supposed to be different and how.
Are you really arguing that you don't see an aesthetic difference between the factions?
Cygnar had a very clear mixture Revolutionary War, WWI, and traditional european fantasy.
Khador was a mixture of Soviet aesthetics with diesel-punk
I notice you completely leave Retribution, Menoth, and Convergence out of your argument. Retribution was the faction that immediately caught my eye when I was a newcomer due to the fact that you never see elves with a rugged military aesthetic like they have.
The factions shown so far absolutely have clear aesthetic differences setting them apart from each other as well. The Iron Stars all have that sleek, rounded high tech look to them. The Marchers have a rugged, cobbled together look to them, very reminiscent of Retribution in my eyes. The third faction are all pointy, edgelords with long coats.
Agamemnon2 wrote: Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
When you are very used to it and notice the difference and faction-specific style, yes. To a newcomer? They are all tiny leg dreadnoughts, with pretty small differences. At least I can say this was my opinion when I started the game. The Horde side was were the beasts were all very different, the warmachine side? Most of the difference was in the infantry and color scheme.
I wholly disagree:
They literally said Cryx were the exception in the same post.
Red herring to see if you would notice I mixed up models between the Warcaster bands.
Tbf, I would agreethat the old school faction jacks did have fairly distinctive 'silhouettes' that differed between factions, especially when you factor In The retribution and cryx. They said, I do find that the crucible guard jacks are somewhat lacking in distinctiveness. In terms of stats, I will say I got tired of seeing lots of repetition of spd4, arm20, and almost identical hit boxes across the heavier chassis between the factions. That said. I'm too familiar with the range to try to claim 'it all looks the same from the POV of a newb'. I could count the rivets on khador jacks and could tell you the tiniest of differences at one point.
When it comes to wnm, I don't think there is not enough there yet to speak about hugely distinct faction 'looks', at least in comparison to other sci-fi. Whereas with the iron kingdoms, it did present a different (usually quite imaginative and quite often, quite brilliant) twist on a lot of the traditional fantasy tropes they to me, really mde it stand out from the pack. I'm not really seeing it here. It's human-centric sci-fi. It's not remarkably different to other stuff out there. At least internally as well, the 'look' difference is more limited/subdued. To me at least. That may change. And for what it's worth, I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. The models do look pretty cool.
Then again, a lot of this is perception. And familiarity. I remember at one point on this forum defending Corvus belli's Infinity range and arguing that their curious factions all had distinct looks - the person at the other side of the argument claimed they couldn't see any kind of a difference between any of the factions in Infinity and claim mash all the models on a board and you wouldn't be able to tell what was what or who was facing who.
As someone who doesn't play Infinity, I can't. However a lot of that is not because everything looks the same so much as I can't see a distinct style separating fractions. Different units on the same team often look as different from one other as those on other teams.
Agamemnon2 wrote: Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
When you are very used to it and notice the difference and faction-specific style, yes. To a newcomer? They are all tiny leg dreadnoughts, with pretty small differences. At least I can say this was my opinion when I started the game. The Horde side was were the beasts were all very different, the warmachine side? Most of the difference was in the infantry and color scheme.
I wholly disagree:
They literally said Cryx were the exception in the same post.
Red herring to see if you would notice I mixed up models between the Warcaster bands.
I was actually pretty sure you had but was too lazy to verify.
That you felt verification was needed at all proves the point; it wouldn't be needed to tell menite infantry from khadoran, or cygnar from retribution--it would be immediately obvious.
Not that more or less aesthetic difference is an inherently good or bad thing. But there is definitely more of a difference between warmachine factions than what we have seen in warcaster... so far.
They looks for me bland and boring. What is ain't cool. Fallen Frontiers and last edition of Warzone wgot way more nice minis. And I don't mention Infinity. And I always looks on minis first then rulles and then lore. For me if PP would get good cad artist and refresh miniatures(change human proportions, better female faces etc.) for WH like Corvous Belli did with n2 to n3. And introduce system to play side to old one. I will be interested. Now, nach to generic. I dont even see one mini what I will say. Ow thats sweet.
Many companies have ditched their own personal forums because using facebook groups and independent platforms like dakka costs less and increases content visibility to those who are outside of the closed community bubble of a private game-specific forum and helps draw in new audiences etc as a marketing tool.
Its a double edged sword however, as I think private forums tend to generate better and more focused content and provide more visibility to certain topics/posts than is possible with facebooks algorithm.
Most companies that I see dropping forums tend to drop them when the forum itself is dead and other avenues have taken over. In PP's case other avenues hadn't taken over and the forum was very much alive. IT also had a decent community, it wasn't like the dark days of the old GW forum and a hotbed of infighting and fighting the company etc...
That was the real difference. Most companies that have a forum drop it once it no longer generates much activity; PP had an active forum that they self gutted which creates an entirely different situation.
Didn't most official (niche) game forums shut down due to the EU's new data laws around the same time? It was definitely the final nail in the coffin for a lot of official RPGs and tabletop forums.
As much as I LOVE Warmachine/Hordes, the lore of The Iron Kingdoms, and have a favorable opinion of Privateer Press...
I really can't get behind this game. Them using Kickstarter doesn't bother me at all, but the models look so boring, and I couldn't make it more than 15 minutes into the gameplay demo before just turning it off.
Barzam wrote: I notice you completely leave Retribution, Menoth, and Convergence out of your argument.
Keep in mind what sparked the conversation: it was about how different factions in Warcaster looks like, compared to how different factions from Warmarchine look like. Warcaster currently only has 3 factions, and we haven't seen models for one of them.
Even for those factions, we have only one unit, one solo and one warjack, so pretty limited selection.
So we are comparing how different those few models looks like, and how different the earliest releases from Warmachine looks like.
I'd happily include Menoth in the discussion, and I think the point still stands if you include their jacks. I agree Convergence and Retribution have a style that sets them much more apart from the core 4, with cryx being quite different from the other 3.
Agamemnon2 wrote: Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
When you are very used to it and notice the difference and faction-specific style, yes. To a newcomer? They are all tiny leg dreadnoughts, with pretty small differences. At least I can say this was my opinion when I started the game. The Horde side was were the beasts were all very different, the warmachine side? Most of the difference was in the infantry and color scheme.
I wholly disagree:
Woah, thanks to that huge distraction you planted there, AND the use of grey-scaling which made noticing, for instance, the Marcher Worlds use of cloth, cloaks and hoods that contrast with the pure metal of the Iron Star Alliance much much harder to notice, people missed that you exchanged a few marcher world infantry for paladin infantry and vice versa.
Hey NinthMusketeer, can you say without cheating if this illustration is Marcher World or Iron Star Alliance?
Overread wrote: PP are metal and resin - Infinity is still mostly metal if I recall right?
All metal. The first plastic mini I've ever seen from them is the Megalodron out of the Defiance expansion, which isn't out until this summer and may or may not have rules in the main game.
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Deadnight wrote: ...Then again, a lot of this is perception. And familiarity. I remember at one point on this forum defending Corvus belli's Infinity range and arguing that their curious factions all had distinct looks - the person at the other side of the argument claimed they couldn't see any kind of a difference between any of the factions in Infinity and claim mash all the models on a board and you wouldn't be able to tell what was what or who was facing who.
Infinity's problem is that the distinct elements between armies or between units in armies tend to be small and subtle. It's pretty straightforward for someone who knows the game to take a Jannisary (inset rivets, bulkier/lower-tech weapons), a Mobile Brigada (inset angular lines, split rabbit-ear antennae), an ORC (solid rabbit-ear antennae, four eyes), and a Zuyong (lamellar-esque pauldrons, animalistic head shape) and tell you what power-armour trooper goes to what faction, but the fiddliness of the detail combined with the fact that a lot of human factions share some weapon models (which are often in-universe literally the same gun bought from the same manufacturer) can make it difficult.
(I still can't tell the difference between my Knights Hospitallier and my Montesa Knight without looking them up.)
Barzam wrote: I notice you completely leave Retribution, Menoth, and Convergence out of your argument.
Keep in mind what sparked the conversation: it was about how different factions in Warcaster looks like, compared to how different factions from Warmarchine look like. Warcaster currently only has 3 factions, and we haven't seen models for one of them.
Even for those factions, we have only one unit, one solo and one warjack, so pretty limited selection.
So we are comparing how different those few models looks like, and how different the earliest releases from Warmachine looks like.
I'd happily include Menoth in the discussion, and I think the point still stands if you include their jacks. I agree Convergence and Retribution have a style that sets them much more apart from the core 4, with cryx being quite different from the other 3.
Agamemnon2 wrote: Even in bare metal / resin, a Templar feels fairly different to a Juggernaut or a Defender.
When you are very used to it and notice the difference and faction-specific style, yes. To a newcomer? They are all tiny leg dreadnoughts, with pretty small differences. At least I can say this was my opinion when I started the game. The Horde side was were the beasts were all very different, the warmachine side? Most of the difference was in the infantry and color scheme.
I wholly disagree:
Woah, thanks to that huge distraction you planted there, AND the use of grey-scaling which made noticing, for instance, the Marcher Worlds use of cloth, cloaks and hoods that contrast with the pure metal of the Iron Star Alliance much much harder to notice, people missed that you exchanged a few marcher world infantry for paladin infantry and vice versa.
Hey NinthMusketeer, can you say without cheating if this illustration is Marcher World or Iron Star Alliance?
Hey NinthMusketeer, can you say without cheating if this illustration is Marcher World or Iron Star Alliance?
It's Tau, corrupted by Human Sphere, or V.V. The point is moot as most players will never paint them anywhere close to this art, thus greyscale (or tin-scale) is what we will get. Now if iron star would be metal, marcher worlds - resin and whatever new necromancers are would be PVC...
I've suffered through the Staff Showdown presentation for 40 minutes. Terrible. Not even a "fanboy-in-your-face" sellable to a new player.
- 7 focus in a small game and 7 focus in a big game will end up being two very different game modes. One will definitely die of "this stuff is unplayable" syndrome.
- "Anything and a solo" will lead to solo creep and solo spam.
- 3D terrain will be reduced to "cover-or-not" and then - to templates. Volumes, S1-6, whatever, will be shortcut to "who is higher".
- Rolling lots of colored dice - it's OK. Could have been worse.
- Pulses - fishing for a victory condition, who would have thought...
I will postpone final judgement until KS starts, but so far - not a snowfake chances.
I haven't been following this particular discussion, but the quoted phrase is used exclusively by people who have lost an argument think it will somehow save them some face by trying to paint the other party as hysterical ro irrational.
) there were only a few responses and half of them were pretty. . . severe.
Was surprised the internets couldn't provide.
