While not the game directly, is anyone else excited about the upcoming kickstarter for the iron kingdoms rpg update.
While DnD 5e isn't my favorite, I am looking forward to new solid books of iron kingdoms fluff
greenskin lynn wrote: While not the game directly, is anyone else excited about the upcoming kickstarter for the iron kingdoms rpg update.
While DnD 5e isn't my favorite, I am looking forward to new solid books of iron kingdoms fluff
I wont be personally as its not my thing. But im really pleased PP is expanding (or re-expanding in this case) its line of products into different areas and hopefully connecting with new players and people who may become interested in other PP games and products.
The 3rd edition bestiaries were very fun, basically provided you a fully stocked extra set of monsters to give a different flavour to your world. I sold mine when I moved country, but I wish I hadn't because they were awesome.
There has been a lot of negative chatter around the recent sculpts and releases of late. Sculpts not being to many people taste or being seen as a step back. Renders used for solicitation not being the same as the model that’s actually supplied. Complaints that the “RQ style” is creeping into the main WM/H style and ruining it for some people. Switch to almost exclusively to metal. Etc etc.
I've noticed, with some sadness, that PP is using more and more 3D renders rather than models to push sales. They aren't alone though - its become annoyingly common for a lot of companies and its very frustraiting as 3D renders often lack any sense of real scale; don't show up real world detail and give a sense that the firm isn't confident in their own casting and product.
Also the lack of seeing real world painting can be a huge issue - that render above doesn't look anything like as awesome as it will do with a few layers of proper paint on it and a good rotation photo.
Grimkin though were a bit of an outlier even in Hordes setting; they are a quirky force by their very design.
Usually PP releases a painted version about a month before its actual release. Renders have definitely become more of a norm than I'd like though. PPs renders are generally pretty good. The shaders applied do a solid job of conveying detail which often gets in greyscale.
Personally, I think the RQ models are quite in line with the rest of the range. They're a little more modern and expressive, but painted in the same palette as the rest of your army makes them just another solo. I'd say maybe the Terrorizer goes too far, but big expressive characters are what the game is known for. When I think of the game, I think of figures like Broadsides Bart or Borka or Kromac, all of which would be right at home in Riot Quest.
I suspect the RQ is more to do with the art than anything, which gets back to the idea that people seeing painted models or just what the model is "supposed" to look like really matters.
I ordered Dr. Stygius recently for my very small Cephalyx force. And holy crap is it huge.
PP wasn't always great with their scales *coughBlack13thcough* but this guy just threw me completely.
Compared to the other, later Cephalyx, which also had some major scale creep, he's about double the width of the Cephalyx Dominator and Agitator, and he's nearly double the height of Ayana & Holt. Which puts his total height from feet to top of head at 50mm. That's the helmet top, but even so, the head under the helmet still puts his height at 42mm. Kind of a tall humanoid for what is supposed to be 28mm scale. Or 30mm. Or even 35mm.
That's just.....crazy? amounts of scale creep.
The "CHONK!" has reached levels of ludicrousness I could only have imagined.
While bigger models make for easier painting, this miniature is so out of scale with everything but RQ minis, and he weighs almost as much as a metal Heavy Warjack.
I left off Stygius's mechanical arms myself. He's about the size of the other Cephalyx from their big release a few years ago otherwise. He's actually shorter than both the Dominator and Agitator even with his extra psychic hood thing. Thicker, but PPs style has always been about skipping leg day.
greenskin lynn wrote: While not the game directly, is anyone else excited about the upcoming kickstarter for the iron kingdoms rpg update.
While DnD 5e isn't my favorite, I am looking forward to new solid books of iron kingdoms fluff
I am pretty excited just for the lore updates post Oblivion. While not a fan of 5th, it is the 800lb gorilla in room, especially since people are leaving Pathfinder. I don't think it is because the Pathfinder system is any better or worse. I have played alot of systems and they are just, well different. But the YouTubers have figured out reporting on 5th gets views and monies, so begins the vicious cycle.
Lucky with the IKRPG system conforming so closely to the wargame, it should be to hard to figure out conversions between 5e and IKRPG for us beardy people. The good thing about 5th is it will help introduce other people to the Iron Kingdoms fluff and verse.
A side of the game that has been lacking in competitive scene (no shame that game, I love you playing and losing against the tourney players out there, diversity is just the spice of life so never let up, never slow down).
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Overread wrote: New Grimkin article and photos and stats on the Dread Harvester - aka headless horseman!
I am all in on Grymkin so I am pretty much going to marry this model.
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Overread wrote: I've noticed, with some sadness, that PP is using more and more 3D renders rather than models to push sales. They aren't alone though - its become annoyingly common for a lot of companies and its very frustraiting as 3D renders often lack any sense of real scale; don't show up real world detail and give a sense that the firm isn't confident in their own casting and product.
Also the lack of seeing real world painting can be a huge issue - that render above doesn't look anything like as awesome as it will do with a few layers of proper paint on it and a good rotation photo.
Grimkin though were a bit of an outlier even in Hordes setting; they are a quirky force by their very design.
Model was and game design wise. I love painting and playing them. Mechanically they just play like their personality and with the Arcana you do feel like they are reshaping the world around them in response to what the other player is doing.
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Kommisar wrote: Wow, that horseman could’ve been awesome but that’s just terrible
I play Grymkin. A horse head vomiting into a pumpkin head is what I show up for.
So I have to ask - I'm on Safari on a Mac and every time I click a link like this that leads to the PP page I get a warning that says "This connection is not private. This page may be impersonating home.privateerpress.com to steal your personal or financial information. You should close this page."
Is that an issue on my end, or is this something that Privateer Press needs to look into on their end? When I click "Show details", it looks like the site may have an expired certificate.
I think its your end, since I don't get any warning and Opera shows it as a secure site. It might just be that your local cache is holding old data from when their licence/certificate lapsed one time and your end hasn't refreshed so it keeps flagging the same warning. Clear cookies/cache for the site and see if it keeps throwing up the error.
LuckGod has been running a campaign with a group called The Grey Lanterns, and they play on Twitch and post the recordings on YouTube. I haven't kept up with it, though.
Sunno wrote: Interesting to see that PPs latest kickstarter was fully funded again in under 30 mins and unlocked all the stretch goals soon after that.
Not my thing but did anyone get on the IKRPG?
It was an interesting system, very much a translation of the wargame's rules into an RPG but they did enough work to make it feel like it was an actual RPG... if that makes sense? Downside was the lack of depth for non-combat situations and pretty much requiring grids for combat (if you were a theatre-of-the-mind type bunch you were out of luck). The physical copies were of a good production quality which was always nice and character creation was extremely quick, but with a pick-two-class system which made for some interesting combos to prevent the one class choice feeling too 'stock'.
I think it suffered in terms of sales because it came out around the time story-driven/crunch-lite systems were starting to gain prominence but it wasn't crunchy/old fashioned enough for your OSL types, whilst the wargaming crowd didn't buy into it because there's surprisingly little overlap with that camp (especially in a community like Warmahordes where the lore usually takes a backseat in people's minds compared to something like 40k). It must've sold well enough to say it got a Hordes-themed corebook and a few decent supplements.
I'm not surprised to see the Kickstarter doing so well though. It's a pretty fondly remembered setting from the 3e days and Eberron's often too magikpunk for the steampunk audience - stuff like Gun Mage and Warcaster is always going to go over well if it's coming from a very professional-looking source, even if you're not playing the Iron Kingdoms setting.
I have IKRPG and ran it for over a year (tend to swap game systems I run for my group ever 12-14 months) and Arbitrator is pretty spot on with how it played and the weaknesses.
There are a few other issues where a lot of things had the same/similar stats as the wargame and could easily be ported over but PCs and some NPCs were just too powerful and could easy mow down stuff.
And example would be having a warjack as a player. There really is no reason and they could almost get oneshot and they're super expensive to maintain and transport around that it was impractical to use one as no player could afford one without military support (to a degree understandable) but they also just were useless in combat.
Never played the Hordes version of the game so I cannot comment on how warbeasts worked out but probably similar unless you can use your hero/feat points to heal them like you can yourself in the middle of combat.
That being said it was one of my groups most like rule systems we've done in the past 10 years, just needed a bit of non-combat support and a few other adjustments to be really solid. PP teased this update as a separate expansion called Strangelight Workshop for several years that would be mostly non-combat related and then combinable with IKRPG to get whatever playstyle you like. Sadly that never happened (but now they're teasing Strangelight for 5E).
The two class system was definitely my favorite part of it. It just really did a good job of forcing you to come up with a backstory that justified both roles, particularly if you took a combat and social class pair.
Warjacks were pretty funny. They essentially took a small army to run and weren't realistically useable if you really tracked your resources correctly. Most of the time we didn't really bother.
Depends on the Jack. The problem is they have very inconsistent lore around them as you see solo mercs using them (Rutger Shaw) as well as lots of RPG content showing jacks as common farm/labor instruments that are not that hard to get ahold of. On the other hand they clearly take some inspiration from mechanized infantry and how those need to be supported and transported (like you need a group of mechanics that have to follow you around and wagons of coal to run them for more then 10min) in other areas of the lore. So a Strange mix of Rule of Cool and "trying to be realistic" which don't mesh. I think the heavier the jack chasy the more support you needed would have been a good way to do it as heavy warjacks should be more of a pain to use. But lights? Nah.
Then there were the prices (remember common labor device) and it was something like 100gp to run for one hour in just coal alone (Or something similar, I'd have to pull out the books) and people were like "What?" that 100gp would be like a years salary for one person and it costs that to run one for an hour. There's no way anyone would ever us a jack. So PP had to errata some costs of coal to be a fraction of that and I think extend the time they could run off of coal as well.
As for should they be usable by a party? Well, that's a big marketing thing with the setting and there's again, solo mercs with warjacks (and farmers and boat captains, and warehouse owners, and random gobbers) so it's the rule of cool that can exist so of course people want them.
It would be like having a Star Wars game without Lightsabers.
Agreed, heck the wargame itself was skirmish based (very heavily so at the start) which is basically 1 person and a few other troops controlling at least one or more warjacks. Players basically expect them to be a thing.
Now if they put years of marketing behind other optoins like GW has with things like Rogue Traders or Starwars has with Mandalorians then they could make and market an RPG game around those and have it work. Heck a Mandalorian RPG right now would likely do well for SW, but that's after putting a huge amount into basically taking what was 1 character who had a tiny amount of screen time in the original films and bulking it out. Today it would work, in the 80-90s it would have failed or at least been a hard sell.
Warmachine is just the same, all their marketing (even the name) is in Warjacks being part of the game.
Monkeysloth wrote: Depends on the Jack. The problem is they have very inconsistent lore around them as you see solo mercs using them (Rutger Shaw) as well as lots of RPG content showing jacks as common farm/labor instruments that are not that hard to get ahold of. On the other hand they clearly take some inspiration from mechanized infantry and how those need to be supported and transported (like you need a group of mechanics that have to follow you around and wagons of coal to run them for more then 10min) in other areas of the lore. So a Strange mix of Rule of Cool and "trying to be realistic" which don't mesh. I think the heavier the jack chasy the more support you needed would have been a good way to do it as heavy warjacks should be more of a pain to use. But lights? Nah.
Then there were the prices (remember common labor device) and it was something like 100gp to run for one hour in just coal alone (Or something similar, I'd have to pull out the books) and people were like "What?" that 100gp would be like a years salary for one person and it costs that to run one for an hour. There's no way anyone would ever us a jack. So PP had to errata some costs of coal to be a fraction of that and I think extend the time they could run off of coal as well.
As for should they be usable by a party? Well, that's a big marketing thing with the setting and there's again, solo mercs with warjacks (and farmers and boat captains, and warehouse owners, and random gobbers) so it's the rule of cool that can exist so of course people want them.
It would be like having a Star Wars game without Lightsabers.
Ah, I did not fully understand the larger context.
Yeah, the operational limits were the problem. I get the why but it doesn't fit the setting well at all and put a heavy crimp in some iconic portions of the setting.
The real limitation should have been the cortex. Military grade are very rare in the setting so most of the civilian jacks you see are more like MAT 2/RAT 1. The warcaster/jack marshal classes would theoretically have to devote most of their Focus to boosting to hit which would have made for a solid puppet master style class that could evolve into more as the party is able to upgrade the brain of their machine.
On that note, the other quirk in the system is that all magic is tied to being Gifted, which really limits your options if you choose another specialization as none of the classes were limited the same way. It wasn't a huge deal but definitely had an element of a feels bad trade off.
I played in a fairly long IKRPG campaign, and one of the things that our GM did was to basically abstract out the money. I don't play a lot of rpgs, so I don't know if that's common practice or just something he did, or maybe he just did it becuase the economics in the game were trash. We were a mercenary company, and we had an idea of where we stood and our rough prosperity level, but we never worried about the amount of cash we had. If we ever asked, all we got was "enough" or "not enough for that."
So, I think warjack logistics had a way of only being a problem when they needed to be for story reasons.
I think how much a DM deviates from the core rules depends on their skill and on what the player group wants and finds fun. IT's always been my impression and experience that Roleplay games are best run when the DM has skill enough to use the core materials, but also the ability to adapt them to suit the playgroup.
If they find the group wants a warjack and the rules don't work to let them then they can work within the rules to push the player team in the right direction to achieve it; or they can' adapt the rules. If they could never afford the gold costs to refuel just change the cost.
It works in RPG games because the entire game runs through the DM directly. It also helps that they are often game VS NPC affairs so you don't need perfect balance, just fun balance for the group.
It's different to wargames or card games which run player VS player and thus whilst you can home rule and adapt things it can be more tricky at times.
LunarSol wrote: Yeah, the operational limits were the problem. I get the why but it doesn't fit the setting well at all and put a heavy crimp in some iconic portions of the setting.
The real limitation should have been the cortex. Military grade are very rare in the setting so most of the civilian jacks you see are more like MAT 2/RAT 1. The warcaster/jack marshal classes would theoretically have to devote most of their Focus to boosting to hit which would have made for a solid puppet master style class that could evolve into more as the party is able to upgrade the brain of their machine.
Honestly I never looked at Warcaster that much, had banned them in my game as we were doing a converted Witchfire trilogy and didn't think they fit, but if they had made the class more like your puppet master (if choosing a Warmachine) I think it would have been pretty cool way to do things instead of the heavy armor warrior mage that also gets a pet that pretty much no one else can get. And if they can it's like half as effective.
Speaking of magic. The new preview has some spells and low and behold it's got non-combat spells. I had spent way to much time last week arguing with people in the IKRPG facebook group about the need for them vs some strange idea that the setting doesn't support their existance.
I think that's how a low level Warcaster should have been played. I didn't think it was particularly powerful as a class in the game. My gun mage was way more capable of absolutely absurd things just by virtue of having a boostable gun.
LunarSol wrote: Yeah, the operational limits were the problem. I get the why but it doesn't fit the setting well at all and put a heavy crimp in some iconic portions of the setting.
The real limitation should have been the cortex. Military grade are very rare in the setting so most of the civilian jacks you see are more like MAT 2/RAT 1. The warcaster/jack marshal classes would theoretically have to devote most of their Focus to boosting to hit which would have made for a solid puppet master style class that could evolve into more as the party is able to upgrade the brain of their machine.
On that note, the other quirk in the system is that all magic is tied to being Gifted, which really limits your options if you choose another specialization as none of the classes were limited the same way. It wasn't a huge deal but definitely had an element of a feels bad trade off.
Ya, getting military cortexs even from the junkyard is hard when you are a civy.
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LunarSol wrote: I think that's how a low level Warcaster should have been played. I didn't think it was particularly powerful as a class in the game. My gun mage was way more capable of absolutely absurd things just by virtue of having a boostable gun.
IKRPG did a good job of keeping the game "realistic". It felt ALOT like full metal fantasy Shadowrun or original Dark Heresy. You are just a chum trying to cut a living and entities like dragon CEO's are just beyond your keen. Same jam with IKRPG. You could be a warcaster and even at epic certain legendary characters were just, well legendary.
It is not for everyone but then again, some people like the grit and others don't.
greenskin lynn wrote: While not the game directly, is anyone else excited about the upcoming kickstarter for the iron kingdoms rpg update.
While DnD 5e isn't my favorite, I am looking forward to new solid books of iron kingdoms fluff
Seen alot of people who are fringe familiar or totally unknown to it getting excited about the IK, which is a good thing. PP as a whole seems to be turning the ship. Whatever they are doing I hope they keep it up.
LunarSol wrote: Yeah, the operational limits were the problem. I get the why but it doesn't fit the setting well at all and put a heavy crimp in some iconic portions of the setting.
The real limitation should have been the cortex. Military grade are very rare in the setting so most of the civilian jacks you see are more like MAT 2/RAT 1. The warcaster/jack marshal classes would theoretically have to devote most of their Focus to boosting to hit which would have made for a solid puppet master style class that could evolve into more as the party is able to upgrade the brain of their machine.
Honestly I never looked at Warcaster that much, had banned them in my game as we were doing a converted Witchfire trilogy and didn't think they fit, but if they had made the class more like your puppet master (if choosing a Warmachine) I think it would have been pretty cool way to do things instead of the heavy armor warrior mage that also gets a pet that pretty much no one else can get. And if they can it's like half as effective.
Speaking of magic. The new preview has some spells and low and behold it's got non-combat spells. I had spent way to much time last week arguing with people in the IKRPG facebook group about the need for them vs some strange idea that the setting doesn't support their existance.
Warcaster's don't start out with warjacks. Most of their early career is spent on using focus for spells and obtaining arcantric equipment that they can put their focus into.
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LunarSol wrote: I think that's how a low level Warcaster should have been played. I didn't think it was particularly powerful as a class in the game. My gun mage was way more capable of absolutely absurd things just by virtue of having a boostable gun.
From my experience with the IKRPG warcaster PC's where short of what you would see on tabletop even at the epic levels. Gun Mage could definitely wipe out most at the early levels since most warcasters where like weak tea sorcerors with the ability to use arcantric weapons effectively. The gap got less as the caster got access to more focus, warcaster armor, arcantric gear and such, but even with warjacks...warjacks were basically like having an ogrun on the team if DM'd correclty.
Warjack's shouldn't have military grade cortexes especially newer ones (something entire mercenary companies have a hard time getting a hold of) and you have to gear them up Mad Max style over time to make them any good at fighting. Sure they can hit hard but they got to hit. Cost on repairs, fuel, ammo is high, and limited effectiveness based on environment.
Not that warjacks were useless in the IKRPG but they were tools. You deployed when neccessary.
With things starting to unlock here in the UK and Europe (somewhat....) are people seeing any uptick in people picking up the game of coming back after a break?
Post Covid could be a great opportunity for PP and the community to expand the player base not only for WM/H but with their other games. And to fight much of the negative messaging around the game.
I do agree any company that plays their cards right now could see a nice surge in popularity post-covid. I would guess model games will see an odd pattern in so much as what we might get is a drop in sales and uptake and a rise in gaming events. Representing people getting their lives back to more normality; having less hobby time, but also wanting to go out and socialise and play with their armies and such. So it could be a good time for club growth, or perhaps at least for old members ot come back and such. PROVIDED local clubs and groups market heavily to remind people that they exist and such.
However going out is going to be the big thing - restaurants, parks, leisure centres, fitness and all the rest might well see a surge once people can feel safe going out again. At least that is what I'd hope to see
The main issue as ever will be PP logistics outside the US I broadly gave up at the sheer irritation at trying to get hold of product in the UK, and Event of not I don't think it'll change
Yeah, I think post-lockdown here WM/H isn't going anywhere. Still very restricted on a playerbase. I'm hunting on Ebay for stuff since I've got a very small crowd going. Currently hunting for CoC on Ebay deals. Trying to get a Steamroller kit is near-on impossible unless you want to pay huge postage from US.
Element Games still stock 'em, does anyone have any experience with PP from Element?
From what I've heard Element's restock dates are just their weekly order date, so it doesn't always mean that those items will be restocked then. Which can be annoying if you want something that they will stock, but which they don't get in for a bit.
I get ya! I've heard some horror Stories from Wayland has anyone had experience with either Firestorm or Wayland?
I just want a consistent retailer who can sell and deliver for me. I feel this is WM/H main barrier of entry as well as the cost for the PVC models is horrendous for what you get imo.
The Warp Forge wrote: I get ya! I've heard some horror Stories from Wayland has anyone had experience with either Firestorm or Wayland?
I just want a consistent retailer who can sell and deliver for me. I feel this is WM/H main barrier of entry as well as the cost for the PVC models is horrendous for what you get imo.
A lot of Waylands horror stories were back before they updated the website to live inventory. Back then you'd order something and it "might" be in stock or it might not be so you'd get a shock that suddenly it was back-ordered. Today that's not an issue at all as its linked to their inventory so you know if its in stock or not at the time of ordering. Both Wayland and Element can take a week longer to order things in from what I've seen; I think its simply a case that they process so much stock that they hit the cap from distributors/suppliers, eps on popular lines (eg GW).
Wayland I've generally always had good experiences, outside of waiting on some products that were out of stock, they've always got me what I've ordered. Heck I even ordered something that spent about 6 months backordered (at the manufacture not Wayland) and they emailed me several times to confirm if I still wanted to wait or wanted a refund.
I regularly use Firestorm and Wayland without issues. Wayland tends to get the better deals, but Firestorm tends to have a bit more stock on hand at times so can be a bit more speedy.
Probably going to use Brawlmachine for a while since I can't bulk buy as much as I used too. Looking forward to coming back with afresh faction and fresh opponents!
I also caution against Wayland. While they are "local" to me, i would never order from them. As others said, they used to show available on their webstore but never have it in stock.
Sadly, a really poor interaction with Wayland was what stopped a friend of mine from playing WM/H. Basically ordered a load of stuff, waited months, was told by the store that they couldn't get it from PP, PP customer services said that the store had not ordered anything from them and all the orders they had they had sent out. My friend cancelled the order, pissed at Wayland, pissed at PP and walked away from the game without really ever playing.
Wayland are also meant to be the host location for games for the regional meta but from what I have heard, they often screw them over, not honouring table bookings and so on. to stress that is 2nd hand info. but a number of the local meta guys were starting to come to our local club just before lockdown so we got some of the stories and moans.
Thankfully there are reliable stores in the UK for PP products, thinking of mainly of Firestorm & Patriot Games
We’re getting ready for the first Brawlmachine update, and what does that mean? Two new scenarios! An updated scenario! Potential changes to the epic list! And a three week beta league starting on May 1 with Registration closing April 30! Come check out all the details in this quick update announcement!
How can I win if welps are FA 1 for Brawlmachine? It's like every crook I need to win LOS robs me of it. What do you want me to do? Strategize!
It's not entirely LOS's fault as they didn't change the purchasing method of Whelps. Still, they could have considered an exception in this case. They may in the future, as I hear they are looking to take MacBain off of the ban list, so nothing is purely set.
Providing feedback from games might help in making those changes.
Yea the FA1 thing for Whelps is annoying but as a troll player i'll take that hit for now because of all the other benefits that Brawlmachine brings and HOPEFULLY we might be able to salvage something of our local player base post covid.
We need to respect that LoS are doing gods work and pretty much keeping the WM/H player base alive in many places.
PP have essentially taken their hands off the tiller and abdicated all responsibility for community development.
Well, it seems the Protectorate is more or less gone in the Iron Kingdom 5e book. That sets up some... interesting implications for the future of Warmahordes, assuming the narrative continues past Oblivion.
Arbitrator wrote: Well, it seems the Protectorate is more or less gone in the Iron Kingdom 5e book. That sets up some... interesting implications for the future of Warmahordes, assuming the narrative continues past Oblivion.
That feels very odd post Oblivion. You'd think there would be an explosion in popularity after the literal rapture. I could see them folding in with Khador more, but odd still.
Arbitrator wrote: Well, it seems the Protectorate is more or less gone in the Iron Kingdom 5e book. That sets up some... interesting implications for the future of Warmahordes, assuming the narrative continues past Oblivion.
That feels very odd post Oblivion. You'd think there would be an explosion in popularity after the literal rapture. I could see them folding in with Khador more, but odd still.
The Protectorate apparently had a lot of Infernal infiltrators within the Priesthood (which seems really bizarre with how powerful and effective their secret police is) which shook a lot of people, plenty of Menites evacuated off Caen and Durant took most of the rest to Zu. What's left of the Protectorate are is a literal and proverbial ghost town with what few clergy are left desperately trying to hold onto what few citizens are left and fighting one another. Warjack production has also ceased, in no small part because most of the Vassals were executed.
I agree though, the fact the mortal races won and in part because of the Archon's means religious fever would probably be on the up. Cygnar of course is doing absolutely fine and Khador's turning into more of a police state.
When can we get the Iron Kingdoms 5E book for retail?
Also anyone know where we can find out all the lore from inception right up to most recent events? I find the hardest part of getting folks into the game is that they want to know the story but trying to find lore on this game is like squeezing blood from a stone. Anyone know if there's a WM/H Wiki or something just on it's story/setting?
I'd just like a nice list of whats happened to named characters
i know a few from models/some pp postings
Vlad-died
Striker-also dead i think
Nemo-soul in a machine
as for the Protectorate, could be the secret police maybe backfired, since if they went dark side, it would still seem business as usual, least that would be my guess
The way they tie most factions to the southern continent of Zu is interesting since its both a solid way to expand the rpg and the wargames and could give some idea for how they plan to expand both
Charistoph wrote: Did all the Protectorate forces in Llael head to the Portal, or did some stay behind?
They were gradually transferred back to the Protectorate when things started hitting the fan or went to Hengehold. A lot of what remains of the Protectorate's forces just leave their posts once it becomes clear there's not really much of a Protectorate left, or were taken out by the Resistance. One of the Backgrounds for your PC is actually Northern Crusader, which assumes you just started wandering because there was pretty much none left to tell you not to.
with the bulk of the protectorate moved to the southern continent, i wonder if/when we could see new menoth models to reflect that, much like how trollbloods had the northkin
The best thing they could do right now is the very same thing GW does - product line update.
They've a lot of older sculpts now and PP could very easily do a MK4 with a big relaunch of the game coupled to updated classic sculpts. GW has been doing that for years - heck some model lines haven't seen "new" concepts of models for decades - heck Primaris are released alongside Space Marines and the Primaris are, by and large, just redesigns of the same concepts Marines have had for decades.
PP could use that moment to create middle of the row boxed sets to cut down on SKU. Not quite the £100+ sets they've been trying with, which work at cutting down SKU, but are very expensive. Instead I'd hope they'd aim for the £30-60 bracket with fewer models per box, but a more affordable price.
I've some old models like the Everblight Angelius- if PP updates it to a brand new fancy metal/resin sculpt (or finally gets a good quality plastic) then releases it with a bunch of others that means I'm happy because my old models are still 100% valid. It means I'm double happy because a favoured model gets a new version that I'm likely to pick up because I'm still a fan; new people get models and get to start playing and stores/stockists have a smaller SKU line to stock and PP can still do individual models through their website.
It's a pattern that has worked for GW for 30+ years and it clearly works. It favours both the established player and the new player. The last thing PP can afford to do right now is throw away what community they have left and scupper the chances of returning community members. They cannot afford to do an "Age of Sigmar Kirby Era" style approach to their game.
Heck I hope that the whole idea of summoning units to the tabletop that they've been doing with Warcaster gets ported into Hordes/Warmachine. I think its the ideal way to have a skirmish level game with lots of niche units and variety, whilst at the same time also having a diverse and large model range. Being able to bring in any model into the battle means that you can have those niche and situational models becuase those niche situations will turn up in games. Things that in "competitive metas" which would never get chosen because they aren't statistically "the best" at the meta. Things that might only come out a few times ,but which would have a fair chance in such a system.
I think skirmish with active in-game sideboards beats a tournament style sideboard that relies on multiple games to come into effect. That works for Magic the Gathering because each game might be only a few minutes long - its unlikely you'll get games lasting 4 hours. For a wargame its less ideal and its nearly useless outside of a tournament setting - where many clubs might only game once or twice a night.
I generally gave up following the Oblivion lore because I don't bother with Twitter. But, didn't my best gator get his claws on the Harbinger of Menoth right at the end?
Overread wrote:Heck I hope that the whole idea of summoning units to the tabletop that they've been doing with Warcaster gets ported into Hordes/Warmachine. I think its the ideal way to have a skirmish level game with lots of niche units and variety, whilst at the same time also having a diverse and large model range. Being able to bring in any model into the battle means that you can have those niche and situational models becuase those niche situations will turn up in games. Things that in "competitive metas" which would never get chosen because they aren't statistically "the best" at the meta. Things that might only come out a few times ,but which would have a fair chance in such a system.
I think skirmish with active in-game sideboards beats a tournament style sideboard that relies on multiple games to come into effect. That works for Magic the Gathering because each game might be only a few minutes long - its unlikely you'll get games lasting 4 hours. For a wargame its less ideal and its nearly useless outside of a tournament setting - where many clubs might only game once or twice a night.
That would be hard to justify. Portal tech is pretty advanced. Unless you can provide a way to provide such or similar for everyone, that it would lead to a very unbalanced game.
Oh, sure, some could be expected to create a form of it, either through tech or primal magic, but for others... Unless it is a ubiquitous arrangement on Caenn, or at least Western Immoren, then it just won't fly. Keep in mind that in Warcaster, those portals are at least as available as airports, if not even more common.
There's a few ways to explain it and the simplest is magic. Warcasters can now cast spells that allow them to open rifts in the world following the huge invasion of the Infernals. These rifts allow the passage of humans and even whole warmachines to the battlefield. Introduce some resource aspect, limits and such and you've got a lore system.
You still build your starting force; you've got all the internal combos native to a PP game and yet you've got the option to diversify and portal in models.
I think its a practical way to keeping the game small on model count whilst allowing a high diversity of model use over time.
It's a practical way for them to stick to metal and resin without having to port into plastics. Plastics would let them essentially "scale up" to larger battle systems like 40K or AoS have, but at the same time come with huge upfront costs and issues. PP has been burned on them and I don't get the impression they are ready for that kind of change again.
Ideally they oculd run Warcaster and Warmachine/Hordes similar ot how GW runs AoS and 40K - use one to test features that get released in the other and then bounce ideas around between them. Giving distinct play styles to each, but also being able to move what works around between them.
Ostensibly you could test it out right now, if you have a willing group. Start out with a Brawlmachine list and the put a summonable side-board list.
Still, I still say that either portals would have to become ubiquitous or some extensive tech and magic discoveries would be needed.
Of course, it doesn't require magic or tech to do it. Gatormen, for example could place a pond or river in their deployment zone, and that's how they would arrive. Legion Warlocks bleeding to summon new Warbeasts.
Of course, just utilizing a basic Reinforcements protocol ala 40K would also be in keeping. They aren't being summoned, per se, they are just arriving on scene. Units using Ambush or similar abilities would automatically be put on the side board just as Infiltrators and Deep Strikers are automatically in Reserves.
Another thing to consider, Warcry has you divide your army in to 3 groups. The deployment card says where each group sets up, and even when they arrive (Turn 2 or Turn 3). I don't know how practical it would be with a game that has a constant King-Kill condition, but it could be adjusted so that there is the Core that is always deployed, this would be a Brawlmachine-sized group, and then a 75 point list would have the remaining 50 points split in half and allowed entry at different turns.
rather then portals, the new rpg book mentions improvements in airships, so you could have troops dropped into combat zones like that for cygnar and khador
cryx could have some kind of undead delivery system
for hordes...um.....new beasts that are being used to rapid move troops perhaps
as for the old model line, they could start switching things over to something like the army boxes, but focused on the classics
say, 3 to 5 old infantry units with a couple solos, call them classic or historic boxes
maybe repack warcaster/warlocks so you get all 3 versions of someone together, or a box that contains x number of basic/advanced casters together
TBH I don't feel like games of WM&H happen in the Iron Kingdoms anymore.
It kind of started with absurdly cartoony Grymkin, and was followed by
- iconic units like Gun Mages or Storm units or Skorne Titans becoming obsolete and disappearing from the tables due to the power creep
- nonsensical Riot Quest models everywhere, with their aesthetics aimed at Fortnite crowd
- faction-identity-denying theme forces (Judicator is the best Khador jack, apparently) designed to sell models to a wider playerbase
- Archons, which for me belong in something like Heroes of Might and Magic
- general non-stop escalation of epicness/weirdness
It feels as if just having an electricity-loving crazy scientist fight a flame-thrower wielding religious zealot or a soul-devouring necromancer is not cool enough anymore. You need a humanoid pig warlady on a motorbike fighting a Cryx warcaster, who is actually a Convergence warcaster running a pirate colossal, supported by an assortment of angels and a Gobber flying warjack.
Any pretence of a consistent, coherent and compelling setting that was Iron Kingdoms is gone for me in favour of a random vomit of discordant pop culture tropes mish-mashed together, like in a modern online video game such as Overwatch - a kind of "anti-aesthetics" which I really loathe.
A lot of that depends on what you see as the Iron Kingdoms. Honestly, I feel like the Riot Quest stuff is more in tune with the early RPG stuff than where the series grew to. I'm still rather fascinated by how much the art style affects people, as realistically the figures aren't all that different from what came before. Part of that is just that Mercs/Minions has always been the weird faction. Helga2 is after all in the same sub-faction as a guy who gave himself the name Lord Carver, Bringer of Most Massive Destruction, Esquire the Third that's centerpiece model is a giant steamroller.
A lot of the crossover themes have been in the works for ages as well. Vlad recruiting the forces of Menoth has been his story for the entirety of Mk2 and 3. Nemo had the Cyriss emblem in Mk1. That said, I do agree they've got some problems with game identity, I just think its rooted more in the power creep dynamic that's made worse by just having too many themes to address efficiently. Even if they did one a month, it would take 5 years for PP to get through all of them currently.
Ultimately though I think everyone knows that the problem is simply that the game is too big for its own good, but no one is willing to give up anything to make it better. I don't really know the answer either. I suspect it involves something along the lines of Age of Sigmar at this point, and I think if they make it different enough they can probably get away with some kind of "Legends" style support of MK3. Definitely have their work cut out for them though.
I think the easiest way to handle it would be to collapse similar choices into a single, new unit that will eventually get a completely new model. For example, Cygnar could turn Trenchers, trencher commandos, rangers, longgunners, and trencher longguners into a new Cygnar Riflemen unit. so, use what you have as the new models, but PP will release a hopefully badass new kit.
You could cut the game in half or more through consolidated very similar units and warjack chassis. Bin 80% of the casters and solos, and you can start with a much cleaner playing field.
LunarSol wrote: A lot of that depends on what you see as the Iron Kingdoms. Honestly, I feel like the Riot Quest stuff is more in tune with the early RPG stuff than where the series grew to. I'm still rather fascinated by how much the art style affects people, as realistically the figures aren't all that different from what came before. Part of that is just that Mercs/Minions has always been the weird faction. Helga2 is after all in the same sub-faction as a guy who gave himself the name Lord Carver, Bringer of Most Massive Destruction, Esquire the Third that's centerpiece model is a giant steamroller.
I admit that I am not a fan of Farrow or Gators but they weren't a part of my introduction to the game. As nobody in my group played them then I didn't have to care about their existence. As a result my first few years with the game fluff-wise were more like playing a steampunk version of the Game of Thrones not some kind of post-modern "gotta satisfy them all*" video game like Overwatch or League of Legends.
*-when I think about brainstorming creative sessions for such games I imagine the participants saying things like
-some kids like dinosaurs!
-others like cowboys!
-my daughters like ponies!
-my children love robots!
-and many children adore ninjas!
-monkeys are cute!
-as are penguins!
-let's have snowmen!
-and puppies! Don't forget the puppies
etc.
And at the end everything is incorporated into the game, creating indigestible mess :]
I'm not a fan of binning what they've already got. I think trying to do that whilst keeping the game going is a bit like what GW did with AoS right at the start. Gamers just won't like it and the last thing you want is an irate fanbase because as soon as you've got that even those who are new to your franchise will be turned and encouraged away.
I think if they wanted to drop 80% of the model line into some kind of hyper consolidated system it would be better to say. "Iron Kingdoms had its run, it was a good fun run, so in 2 years we are ending production/going made to order only. However we are launching a brand new game set along similar lines blah blah blah"
Sure you've got complaints that the old game is going away, but at the same time you've got a new game to hook people with that's a fresh start. No hanging on elements.
Of course another approach is to slowly lowre support for one game and raise support on another - etc... There's a lot of ways to phase in such a change.
In the end I don't think gutting the game would work. Sure from a balance point of view it would work and it would "get it back to its roots" but you can't just do that now its grown and changed since then.
I mostly agree, but I'm curious how well it would really work out for them. I've long been in favor of consolidating casters down to something more iconic, but I'm curious how successful their resculpts actually are. Every so often they revamp old caster models and I'll be honest, I rarely pick them up even though they're vast improvements. I definitely see things like Kovnik Joe's sculpt being retired and just being an option for the Winter Guard Kaptain or something like that.
I think the big shift needs to be a cultural one. There NEEDS to be less focus on exact models and more acceptance of alt sculpts that represent less specific things. MiniCrate has already done some good work on this regard. Similarly, they need to find a way to make the limited format work. I think the big problem they've had in the past is just that the formats they make are too limited to gain wide acceptance. 4 casters and 2 themes feels like it cuts out a lot of very modern releases arbitrarily. Having a limited format that casts a wider net while also having room for significant chunks of the game to be retired to an "Eternal" format would do wonders.
I think the limited factions have done a solid job of showing us what a modern take on the game could really be. 2 themes and about 6 casters. The difference is that the themes themselves are a little broader, and the casters tend to have a bit more of a niche and well rounded toolkit. If I was to really push to modernize the game, my goals would essentially be:
- Consolidate themes down to 3-4 per faction, with 2 being pushed as the focus of the new edition and 1-2 left in some kind of "Legends of the Iron Kingdom"
- Pick 6 characters to be the focus of each faction and design a new ruleset for each of them that picks distinctive aspects of their various incarnations.
The big question I have is how far can the game be shrunk. I'm mentally liking its size at 50 points currently, but I'm not sure if what it needs is smaller units. 3-5 models rather than 6-10 for example. Not sure if that's necessary, but it might help keep the game size down while making it cleaner to relaunch with new sculpts.
I feel like WM/H has many issues but I don't think it's ruleset, nor it's model range is the issue. I think they need to expand upon units to make them feel as though a force could be used rather than a unit that is just forgotten.
Here's the issues I find when trying to get new blood into the hobby:
- Barrier to entry is a very big problem for WM/H. We get it, these models are a luxury hobby and yada, yada, but I feel the price they put out isn't justifiable for the cost of the plastic they use. I find the PVC material really irritating to work with and found the a lot of their mould lines destroy the detail of the models I buy when they appear. While GW is expensive, WM/H don't help themselves when their prices are now as competitive as theirs for a worse material. Either make them cheaper or make it all HIPs plastic. That and we need better distribution for the game.
- The core rules are fine. They need a bit of flexibility so we can make use of more 3D Terrain but that's it. I find the issue of convolution of rules lies in the theme lists. As a returning player, I can deal with Casters, stats and army synergy. What I can't deal with is the volume of themed lists that bombard you with incentives to take. It feels too much like Formations back in 7th ed. 40k. and Strange bedfellows themed lists just feels inherently wrong to me here. That's something to see in a narrative game, or a team game. I don't really want to play a "Menoth" army when all that makes it Menoth is the caster and everything else is Mercs and Cygnar units, etc. If I want to see a weird consortium of characters in a single session I would play the IK RPG and construct a story around it. Either take the themed lists out, or flip them to be restrictive to play lore friendly. In addition if we still need sideboards, I would highly recommend only having a sideboard for Merc units. It feels more lore-friendly to me and allows better tactical thought.
- The mentality of the need for certain units. From what I understand Archons are the new hotness along with Gaspy4 and I ask "Why?". I feel this is more of a community mindset thing and maybe, to reignite the playerbase we all need to take a step away from this mentality if there is need to make the game grow once again.
Personally I think cutting models away from the game will be a death knell. GW could get away with it in AoS and even their flagship Marines because they are the Monopoly. They can give us on a golden platter and the community as a whole would lap it up because there is no real competition that competes to their level. Now PP do the same to a game that has made it own course as a "fall from grace" and tells us they would be taking units away from the game and it will end up with more of whoever is left jumping that ship. When companies cut existing ranges away it only serves to construct distrust between the company and the consumer. After all, why bother investing in an army of something when they could take a unit you just forked out £40 for?
In terms of game direction I think all the needs to be done is to take the game back into its roots. I came for the game to play with Warjacks. People came to Hordes to play with Warbeasts. Let them have fun! I would say scaling back the points for the standard game to be 30-50pts. The rules are fine but the terrain rules need to be better worked on and that's it.
Also make the lore easier to access. There's tons of lore I'd love to know about as well as it's ever growing story but trying to find out lore about this amazing world is like squeezing blood from a stone! You can't hardly find it anywhere, and bits you can are just very, very small snippets.
The problem is all the stuff is effectively beyond the market's capacity to get to consumers and PP's ability to keep modern and fresh. It doesn't matter how much people have if new players can't access it.
I'm all for keeping everything around in some kind of Eternal format, but there's SO much garbage in the line at this point that it's shut out the ability to sell the game. PP needs a way to focus it down to forces they can support and new players can get into.
The interesting thing is that most of the units in the main armies won't be a problem. Praetorians are all the same body and head, just arm swaps, same with most of the Trenchers, Blighted Elves and Ogruns, etc.
Where we start getting in to issues is in the Characters, particularly Character units, and Mercs and Minions have a LOT of Character in them.
Someone suggested getting all the Warcasters and Warlocks in the same box. Well, Halley, Makeda, and Morghoul, have 3 forms, one of which literally comes with 2 MORE models, of which Halley is 2 more forms.
Then there's Stryker, Vlad, and Kreoss who have 2 unmounted forms and 1 mounted. Trying to fit all 4 forms of Goreshade or Nemo in to one kit could be frustrating OR expensive.
That's only true if they stick with PVC. I think most people are hoping for resin/metal resculpting. A lot of people expect HIPs, but I don't think it fits PP well at all.
I think a big problem is just how dam expensive so many of the kits are. GW gets away with it because of popularity inertia, strong box set offerings, and because their models are extremely high quality at the end of the day. They are plastic, details are sharp and well-realized, proportions are consistent across related models. Meanwhile PP has like, aesthetic schizophrenia with worse materials and at comparable prices to GW.
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Charistoph wrote: The interesting thing is that most of the units in the main armies won't be a problem. Praetorians are all the same body and head, just arm swaps, same with most of the Trenchers, Blighted Elves and Ogruns, etc.
Where we start getting in to issues is in the Characters, particularly Character units, and Mercs and Minions have a LOT of Character in them.
Someone suggested getting all the Warcasters and Warlocks in the same box. Well, Halley, Makeda, and Morghoul, have 3 forms, one of which literally comes with 2 MORE models, of which Halley is 2 more forms.
Then there's Stryker, Vlad, and Kreoss who have 2 unmounted forms and 1 mounted. Trying to fit all 4 forms of Goreshade or Nemo in to one kit could be frustrating OR expensive.
I think they could go through and narrow each warcaster/lock down to their current narrative incarnation while giving a selection of popular ones a 'classic' version chosen from more basic/iconic versions. Then do a rotating made-to-order system like what GW does sporadically, but make it annual and planned out so people can still access older sculpts.
Rebox units to replace a few grunt models with the champion/standard upgrade, then all of those separate SKUs can be cut. And like you and others have mentioned collapse similar units down into one option with a new kit representing that option while allowing players to use their older ones as well.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think they could go through and narrow each warcaster/lock down to their current narrative incarnation while giving a selection of popular ones a 'classic' version chosen from more basic/iconic versions. Then do a rotating made-to-order system like what GW does sporadically, but make it annual and planned out so people can still access older sculpts.
Rebox units to replace a few grunt models with the champion/standard upgrade, then all of those separate SKUs can be cut. And like you and others have mentioned collapse similar units down into one option with a new kit representing that option while allowing players to use their older ones as well.
So we'd be dropping the dead ones like Stryker and Mordikaar, all the Cryx Goreshades, the human Nemos, etc? There are going to be a lot of people who are disappointed in the opportunities, especially if they look up old battle reports or story lines, even more who have this huge collection which are now largely unusable. It's a good way to get long-time players off the game.
rather then drop them, perhaps move them to being PP store direct only in an, i don't know, legends section
since the fluff keeps going, you could then shift old models/units whatnot to the legends section over time, and maybe update tournaments to reflect that with a sort of pre and post oblivion list or something if that would work (i'm not a tournament player, never have been, so unsure how it would do) Just thinking about how MtG has the different formats
There is a HUGE difference between storing Magic cards and Warmachine models, though. Also models often add a personal investment with both building and painting that Magic cards only have someone else's painting on them.
Games Workshop and MtG are the only two companies/games in the hobby that have the clout to kick their customers repeatedly and still have them begging for more. Any other company that follows their lead will fail.
PP needs to fix things, and I honestly don't have the first clue how they should do it. I do know that moving even more models, and iconic units like casters no less, to direct only will lose them the last of their retail presence. And, simply saying 'we don't have tournament rules for some of your models anymore' will lose me as a player.
They created this problem by churning out to many factions and variations in the first place. Then they doubled down with the mass influx of models from Riot Quest. Riot Quest might be a fun game on it's own, but it's pollution to WM/H
Mtg was probably the wrong thing to use, it was just the first thing i thought of that had multiple formats to fit people with old extensive collections and people using modern stuff
PP could perhaps release something similar to the oblivion campaign book, but set with a ton of the classic battles, maybe with footnotes or something to show when certain units become available during the timeline or get removed
like after x battle, prime versions of a caster are replaced or something
either way, they need to address army/faction/sku bloat, but whatever they do is going to piss off some group or another
I agree with earlier posting that some things could be condensed together, like the mentioned trenchers, but then you run into them all having different add-ons and attachments
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think a big problem is just how dam expensive so many of the kits are. GW gets away with it because of popularity inertia, strong box set offerings, and because their models are extremely high quality at the end of the day. They are plastic, details are sharp and well-realized, proportions are consistent across related models. Meanwhile PP has like, aesthetic schizophrenia with worse materials and at comparable prices to GW.
This is a hard issue to tackle as they are located in a pretty high cost of living area, even though they've recently moved to a cheaper area Seattle is not cheap, and cost of materials keep going up and up while average worker earnings isn't so the models seam more expensive when people's pay isn't just keeping up.
You can't just take Warmachine back. Imagine if GW decided to update Tyranids by scaling them back to just Hive Tyrants, Warriors, Gaunts and Zoanthropes and the screamer killer like they were at the start.
Would fans REALLY like that? Would it get any positive reception or uptake? I'm sure some would like it from a sense of making the game easier to carry in a case and cheaper and all those things, but in the end they'd have a huge rafter of models suddenly invalidated.
As noted above its important to realise that wargames do not fit a disposable commodity model and any attempt to treat it like that fails. You can do that with models for something like Dungeons and Dragons because that market has far less general investment in individual models. They are the kind of market that is happy with a cheap prepainted model because it might only appear once in a campaign IF the players take the right path.
Wargamers are much more invested into the hobby side of things. Even historical games have a strong attachment to it. People spend hours building these models, painting them, converting. One of GW's great strengths is a long lasting product.
Also you say that GW can kick their customers hard and still have them come back, yet when AoS landed people didn't come back. If anything they left in droves and took others with them. Sure AoS at launch had some fans, but a good number were simply buying models to then use in 9th age or Kings of War or other game systems. They were no longer GW loyal in that period, they were simply buying cool models and had GW stuck with it the 3D printing market and 3rd parties for fantasy would have had a storm of sales. If anything it would have unseated GW from the fantasy market entirely and left them relying totally on 40K.
GW only recovered because they changed a huge number of policies, attitudes and the product direction and even then it took several years to get to 2.0 and start building the game up and the fanbase up properly.
The thing is what some are proposing PP do is like in an RPG game on a PC when you want to go back to the start of the game. When levels are fast, when new abilites appear fairly quickly, when its simpler and yet at the same time engaging. You can do that in a PC game; you can't do it with a physical model line so easily.
Honestly I think if you want the clock back on a PP game Warcaster is where you want to go. Yes its sci-fi-fantasy but that's where PP IS doing smaller games; where it has fewer choices; where they don't have the same warcaster mechanic system etc... That's where the new fresh start is. It's not taking Warmachine and Hordes back; they've moved on; its taking a new game in a new direction with a fresh start.
They created this problem by churning out to many factions and variations in the first place. Then they doubled down with the mass influx of models from Riot Quest. Riot Quest might be a fun game on it's own, but it's pollution to WM/H
Unfortunately they didn't create this problem. It's the nature of 'wave based' games. Most income comes from new stuff in the fist few months after release. It's the same for gw. If they want to keep the lights on,they have to expand the game, or release new games. It was fine in the naughties when they could get away with the mercenary expansion, or the cavalry expansion, but that can only go so far. Sooner or later you need the new faction. Every year.
The back catalogue is extensive, but financially its worthless.
Honestly I loved wmh but they need to 'old world' the iron kingdoms and maybe bring it back in some morevreatducted form in the future. I think pp.agrees. most of their money comes from minicrate, most if their development is going into warcaater, wmh is a back-burner product at best.
And yet look at GW armies today - Lets look at Tyranids
Warriors, Hive Tyrant, Carnifex, Zoanthrope, Gaunt, Hormagaunt, Gargoyle, Lictor. Going from memory that's pretty much what they had in GW 2.0.
ALL those models are still around today, heck gaunts and warriors are still of the same scale as they were back then (more or less).
What GW has done over the years is re-release those same models, that same "back catalogue" over and over again. Each time updating it with new sculpts that take advantage of their improving sculpting and casting. They've also steadily upgraded the sizes of some; again as things have changed. Making Hive Tyrants the size they are now back in the 80-90s wasn't viable in metal and in resin it was but that was their Forgeworld line nor their main model line to retail and the highstreet.
PP could very easily do the same. They don't need to rebuild Everblight from the ground up again; they can re-release new shredders and new warbeasts and new troops - taking advantage of the advances they've made over the years and just a different twist and style on the sculpting. Heck that's 100% just what mini-crate is doing just that its a bit more niche (its 100% boutique).
The only difference is that minicrate is a bit more fancy/silly at times and is a one-time deal (which works for and against it -there are a few that I wanted that I couldn't afford at the time).
GW has done this game for years and its worked; new models generate new sales. Old customers like to swap over to new designs if they are still active; new customers get drawn in; it acts as a huge marketing move and generates loads of buzz and interest.
It's important to understand that one of the things that trips PP up is that it's models always represent a single unit with a single set of rules, with no options or upgrades. That makes modeling easier, and when the game was smaller, made it super simple: an Ironclad always had a quake hammer and open fist, for example.
But this boxed them in, as the game expanded. GW could add options to a unit, and that would justify a new kit. Look at how many iterations of Devestators GW has released, as either the sculpting improved, or they added new options to the kit. This allowed GW to Sell a New kit for an old unit.
I certainly understand that culling the line would have a negative impact on the community, but I think the comparisons to AOS are apt. WFB players left, but eventually new players came in. Right now,t he game is daunting. It's too big for stores to fully stock, and it would take months of real work and study to learn what every caster does. I just don't see how the game can grow with such a bloated range.
Personally, I think as a system Mk3 is great, but at 75 points shows its age. Playing at smaller points results in a much snappier experience more competitive with more modern systems.
Overread wrote:Also you say that GW can kick their customers hard and still have them come back, yet when AoS landed people didn't come back. If anything they left in droves and took others with them. Sure AoS at launch had some fans, but a good number were simply buying models to then use in 9th age or Kings of War or other game systems. They were no longer GW loyal in that period, they were simply buying cool models and had GW stuck with it the 3D printing market and 3rd parties for fantasy would have had a storm of sales. If anything it would have unseated GW from the fantasy market entirely and left them relying totally on 40K.
GW only recovered because they changed a huge number of policies, attitudes and the product direction and even then it took several years to get to 2.0 and start building the game up and the fanbase up properly.
I know of quite a few people who went back to AoS after the release of the first GHB. They've been gathering more, too. They also went back to 40K with 8th Edition. They are loyal to the game because that is where the bulk of their models come from.
LunarSol wrote:What's wrong with the rules?
Personally, I think as a system Mk3 is great, but at 75 points shows its age. Playing at smaller points results in a much snappier experience more competitive with more modern systems.
There are some (I'm not necessarily including Musketeer in this) that view Steamroller as part of the rules.
Still, when compared to how quickly you can move models around in 40K or AoS, it can seem like there there is a problem with the rules.
Still, when compared to how quickly you can move models around in 40K or AoS, it can seem like there there is a problem with the rules.
Not sure I totally follow this.
The big thing I'd love to see is better terrain rules. The main one is just that rough terrain is ridiculously punishing for a game in which it takes very little reduction in movement to be meaningful. Every edition it's too punishing, so they add a ton of rules to let people ignore it, so it becomes meaningless. Cutting pathfinder out of most units but dropping it to a flat -2" would be a huge improvement to board interactivity.
Overread wrote: And yet look at GW armies today - Lets look at Tyranids
What GW has done over the years is re-release those same models, that same "back catalogue" over and over again.
PP could very easily do the same.
You make some fair points overhead, but in some ways you actually kind of prove my point as well.
And Maybe I phrased it poorly but you are arguing against things I didn't say.
I wasn't talking about resculpts. I was talking about the back catalogue. The old models/sculpts. Afyer that 6 month window, those sculpts are not worth much. Sales drop off. The second hand market rapidly becomes the enemy. Gw often regarded the second hand market as their greatest competition, not competing companies.
And the fact that resculpts can be a thing kind of proves my point. And even then,there has to be the caveat that people still want it. There's a lot more tyranid players than khador players sadly. And for wmh players,painting and modelling is typically not the strongest draw. And I say that as someone who always championed painting and modelling within the game.
Gw's old catalogue was the same. Cries of 'classics' aside the old models wouldn't sell today. They sit there. Hence the need for a new release, a new faction, or an expansion to the game.
And you can only go so far with redoing the old. Pp have done some resculpts,mainly casters and Jacks and some units in plastic (the less said about thr latter, frankly, the better!) As a % of a faction, resculpts were quite small. And I mean no disservice. Some are among my favourite models, such as the Butcher 1 resculpt. I still grab it and feel that wow factor. But people want 'new'. My understanding is 'New' new trumps 'new' resculpts, at least in terms of sales. And as above, 'new' stuff is insulated both from the second hand market and grognards who already have 3 squads and don't want to buy their army again.
That said, and far more importantly, could pp 'easily' do it? Would it be worth their time to do it? They have 30 people working for them now, down from a hundred. Minicrate brings in more $$$ than wmh. Everything I've read indicates the place is chaotic.
Still, when compared to how quickly you can move models around in 40K or AoS, it can seem like there there is a problem with the rules.
Not sure I totally follow this.
WMH is a model on model game, even though there are units. By this I mean that a unit of Trenchers going after a unit of Praetorians will still focus on targeting a single model at a time, often on a model by model basis.
40K and AoS are unit games, meaning every interaction is on the unit level, i.e. a unit of Imortals shoots a unit of Intercessors, not the Intercessor Sergeant model.
Movement and range also play a huge part. While there is little difference between and Advance and Run, the Charge is +2D6 after one has Moved, as opposed to WMH +3" improvement. The average range of a Ranged Weapon in 40K is about 24". In AoS, I think it's about 15-18", though I'll admit it's been a while since I took a perusal. In WMH, it's about 10-12". That's in threat range of the average Charging unit.
With the beginning of 8th Edition, unit rules were made very very simple, meanwhile WMH kept adding more and more rules to each unit and model with Mk 3. That obviously changed as the codices came out and each unit's datasheet can be as complex, or more than any unit or model in WMH.
A good balance between melee and ranged threat is a huge positive for the game, IMO. Those mechanics are hands down the biggest problems with GW's systems and a huge part of why they have to fight so hard to keep their games from devolving into turn 1 alpha strikes.
I do think a LITTLE variance on PP's threat ranges would be a positive. In the current system a 1" advantage is almost impossible to properly account for in other stats. Still, I'd look more towards something like ASOIAF's 1D6 charge over anything resembling what GW does.
People went back to GW when they made sweeping changes across the board to how they interacted with the community up to and including dramatic price decreases on a decent selection of models.
As to 'fixing the rules' for WMH, that was poorly communicated on my part. What I mean is that the entire system and dynamic around the rules needs to be fixed. They are opaque to newcomers, lack physical books (and require, rather than have, an app), relatively dense and complex, full of 'gotcha' moments where one small mistake costs the game, and at the end of the day a new player is looking to lose dozens of matches before they understand the system well enough to win.
I'm not sure what I think about the gotcha element. In the era where the game was really picking up steam and dominating, I actually found that to be something that really drew players in. Big, dangerous effects unique to each caster created a dialog between players from the outset, and players were often really excited to see how these moments shaped the game.
I think what really drags that feeling down now is just volume. There's around 20 of these per faction now and in an effort to make every one unique, a lot of them are honestly just dull combinations of passive traits or global spell effects. They're way more mechanical than memorable. More of a grind than an experience.
Personally, I'd love to see them reuse feats, particularly between different versions of the same character. There are so many "Epic" versions of casters that lack that big moment that made their predecessors, well... epic. I think expecting new players to win a bunch of games early on isn't super practical. I don't think its real in any game worth investing any real time or money. The important thing is making the game itself big and memorable. The best games are the ones where losing is it's own kind of fun.
WMH could probably use some unit consolidation. They've so far avoided any squatting and I think that's a good policy, but there are a lot of redundant units.
Let's just look at Cygnar, because that's a faction I'm familiar with. Do we need both Precursor Knights and Sword Knights as distinct units? What about Long Gunners and Trencher Long Gunners? I'd vote they should combine each of those pairs into a single unit entry, discontinue whichever set of models sells worse, and make either set of models legal for the new entry. And that's just a couple of examples, any of the major factions is seriously bloated at this point and could be similarly trimmed to simplify the game. This would also reverse the SKU bloat that tends to hurt retail presence.
The multiple versions of Warcasters are a prime target for this. Do we really need 4 versions of Caine and of Nemo?
NinthMusketeer wrote: People went back to GW when they made sweeping changes across the board to how they interacted with the community up to and including dramatic price decreases on a decent selection of models.
As to 'fixing the rules' for WMH, that was poorly communicated on my part. What I mean is that the entire system and dynamic around the rules needs to be fixed. They are opaque to newcomers, lack physical books (and require, rather than have, an app), relatively dense and complex, full of 'gotcha' moments where one small mistake costs the game, and at the end of the day a new player is looking to lose dozens of matches before they understand the system well enough to win.
People went back to GW because they put out a new edition and all their friends were playing it. GW posting quirky social media videos and producing one discounted starter box per faction (which most returnees probably already had models of anyway) wasn't a sweeping, dramatic change, but it was such a below-ground bar of improvement for them that people desperately wanted to latch onto literally anything that could convince them to 'trust' GW again.
I still stand to the belief that the Warmahordes surge was always just a temporary holiday, because how quickly people ran back to GW so completely even before MK3 was a mess, shows it was always 'doomed'. MK3 could have been the best ruleset ever designed in wargaming, ever, but if everybody was checking out 8th 40k then that's what everybody was always going to go back to, it's a vicious cycle.
Yup, people swarming 8th ed WH40K instead of 3rd ed WM&H is saying a lot about expectations an average wargamer has for rules quality (consistency, intelectual challenge, number of options/decision points, control over randomness, balance).
Cyel wrote: Yup, people swarming 8th ed WH40K instead of 3rd ed WM&H is saying a lot about expectations an average wargamer has for rules quality (consistency, intelectual challenge, number of options/decision points, control over randomness, balance).
the funny thing is... 8th/9th edition 40k are actually the strongest editions of 40k for things like consistency, meaningful decisions, and control over randomness. Balacne remains elusive, but we also watched PP have to rewrite Skorne from scratch in 3rd edition, so it' might be that balance is really hard.
I played a lot of Mark 2 and hated 40k 6th/7th, but I"ve never played Mark 3 and I'm loving new 40k. If I were to explain why, it would simply be that WMH required more effort than I was interested in giving it. It truly is a game of skill, but I wasn't interested in busting my balls to get good at it.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think feeling the need to re-phrase my position as "expecting new players to win a bunch of games early on" says a lot by itself.
Like as a community culture thing I agree, but as the rules for the game I'd argue otherwise. I can't say that I go into any game system expecting to win a bunch of games before I know what I'm doing. That said, if players are just pouncing on baby seals and running off to celebrate their victory... they can probably do that in any game system out there and that's a player problem. Working with players to help them learn the game is part of every system out there.
Polonius wrote: I played a lot of Mark 2 and hated 40k 6th/7th, but I"ve never played Mark 3 and I'm loving new 40k. If I were to explain why, it would simply be that WMH required more effort than I was interested in giving it. It truly is a game of skill, but I wasn't interested in busting my balls to get good at it.
I think it was that and (according to people here at the time) Themes doubling down on what 40K had just gotten rid of that was killing 40K (i.e. Formations with free units and super extra rules). The Themes weren't here right away (though there was an example with Cephalyx), they came out pretty quickly.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I think feeling the need to re-phrase my position as "expecting new players to win a bunch of games early on" says a lot by itself.
Like as a community culture thing I agree, but as the rules for the game I'd argue otherwise. I can't say that I go into any game system expecting to win a bunch of games before I know what I'm doing. That said, if players are just pouncing on baby seals and running off to celebrate their victory... they can probably do that in any game system out there and that's a player problem. Working with players to help them learn the game is part of every system out there.
This was the role of the PGs, but since they were no longer around the "I'm tweaking a list for my next tournament" crowd were favoring seal clubbing with turn 1/2 assassinations. This probably could have been mitigated if they were able to get games with the more casual WM/H players, but all the ones I knew of went back to 40K or other game systems as of MK3.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Also, I'm very much in favor of line consolidation. Long Gunners haven't been relevant since MK1. I don't think Storm Guard were ever relevant.
Both should be rolled into other units (Trencher Long Gunners and Stormblades respectively) and the original lines spun down to direct order and then ended at some point after that.
NinthMusketeer wrote: People went back to GW when they made sweeping changes across the board to how they interacted with the community up to and including dramatic price decreases on a decent selection of models.
As to 'fixing the rules' for WMH, that was poorly communicated on my part. What I mean is that the entire system and dynamic around the rules needs to be fixed. They are opaque to newcomers, lack physical books (and require, rather than have, an app), relatively dense and complex, full of 'gotcha' moments where one small mistake costs the game, and at the end of the day a new player is looking to lose dozens of matches before they understand the system well enough to win.
People went back to GW because they put out a new edition and all their friends were playing it. GW posting quirky social media videos and producing one discounted starter box per faction (which most returnees probably already had models of anyway)
This is probably the wrong forum to talk about what you're saying here, looks like you should be posting that here
Cyel wrote: Yup, people swarming 8th ed WH40K instead of 3rd ed WM&H is saying a lot about expectations an average wargamer has for rules quality (consistency, intelectual challenge, number of options/decision points, control over randomness, balance).
the funny thing is... 8th/9th edition 40k are actually the strongest editions of 40k for things like consistency, meaningful decisions, and control over randomness. Balacne remains elusive, but we also watched PP have to rewrite Skorne from scratch in 3rd edition, so it' might be that balance is really hard.
I played a lot of Mark 2 and hated 40k 6th/7th, but I"ve never played Mark 3 and I'm loving new 40k. If I were to explain why, it would simply be that WMH required more effort than I was interested in giving it. It truly is a game of skill, but I wasn't interested in busting my balls to get good at it.
GW took a significant step up in rules quality around the same time WMH took a significant step down in balance. It is hard to overstate how much an improvement 8th was over 7th. I recall the sentiment surrounding Mk 3 was significantly different.
Interesting how perceptions vary. When 8th WH40K hit I had already been playing WM&H or some years (and modern board games for more) and 8th was very bad in my opinion. The game was about making a couple of mostly obvious decisions once every 15 minutes and then spend said 15 minutes as a mindless random number generating bot for the game. Not that earlier WH40K editions were much better - I compare it to more modern game design. Basically WH40K going AoS rules-wise was a nail in the coffin for my Tyranids and Eldar. We all remember the memes
The game itself had a lot of 'crutch' units, go-to casters and obvious decisions, and towards the end of mk2 a dearth of creativity. Mk3 has only enhanced this in some ways with 'go theme or go home'.
In terms of 'in game', you get a A frantic few minutes against the clock in your turn, and then you remove models for the next ten. The interactions and dynamism was minimal - I'd just gotten off a spell playing infinity, shadespire and (yes, laugh a little) lotr:sbg and found the model to model interactions and more integrated turn structures more dynamic and immersive (the fight roll off in lotr, reactions in infinity, attack and defence rolls in shadedpire) and just got bored of wmh's 'rolling against a static number' and 'when it's not my turn I'm no more than a number' lacknof involvement in an 'absolute' igoyougo format.
I was playing my favourite casters- Butcher 3 and Vladimir 3, and I'll say this with genuine sadness- I was genuinely bored out of my skull with the games I was playing.
I used to love this game, but in all honesty, the most fun my group and I have had with ttgs in the last 2 years has been gw. Shadespire, newcromunda, warcry and Blackstone fortress.
I think a lot of the popularity of Brawlmachine is just that it shows that at smaller point values, you get a more responsive game while still keeping a lot of the "combo chain" feel that makes WMH fun. As much as I prefer other games like Malifaux, Marvel, Monpoc and MInfinity these days, I do find the lack of unit combos rather disappointing. It's just so trivial to counterplay a 2 activation combo in an alternating activation game, so they tend to revolve around independently powerful units over any cohesive list strategy.
LunarSol wrote: I think a lot of the popularity of Brawlmachine is just that it shows that at smaller point values, you get a more responsive game while still keeping a lot of the "combo chain" feel that makes WMH fun. As much as I prefer other games like Malifaux, Marvel, Monpoc and MInfinity these days, I do find the lack of unit combos rather disappointing. It's just so trivial to counterplay a 2 activation combo in an alternating activation game, so they tend to revolve around independently powerful units over any cohesive list strategy.
IMO brawlmachine may end up saving WMH and PP as a whole.
The game itself had a lot of 'crutch' units, go-to casters and obvious decisions, and towards the end of mk2 a dearth of creativity. Mk3 has only enhanced this in some ways with 'go theme or go home'.
In terms of 'in game', you get a A frantic few minutes against the clock in your turn, and then you remove models for the next ten. The interactions and dynamism was minimal - I'd just gotten off a spell playing infinity, shadespire and (yes, laugh a little) lotr:sbg and found the model to model interactions and more integrated turn structures more dynamic and immersive (the fight roll off in lotr, reactions in infinity, attack and defence rolls in shadedpire) and just got bored of wmh's 'rolling against a static number' and 'when it's not my turn I'm no more than a number' lacknof involvement in an 'absolute' igoyougo format.
I was playing my favourite casters- Butcher 3 and Vladimir 3, and I'll say this with genuine sadness- I was genuinely bored out of my skull with the games I was playing.
I used to love this game, but in all honesty, the most fun my group and I have had with ttgs in the last 2 years has been gw. Shadespire, newcromunda, warcry and Blackstone fortress.
Hmm, I disagree. But I for example don't see rolling dice as a player action - it's an administrative chore required by the game's engine, like deck shuffling in a card game. The less of it, the better. Rolling for saves during enemy turn doesn't make me involved, it just makes resolution longer as compared to actual gameplay - which is decisions. If anything it makes me feel more divorced as gameplay is paused and randomness makes my decisions less important. There's a reason why video games hide automatic RNG in the background where it doesn't interrupt gameplay.
And the ratio of time spent on making decisions and solving problems as compared to the mindless, administrative tedium of generating random numbers is incomparably in favour of WM&H, compared to 40K (or GW games in general).
Hmm, I disagree. But I for example don't see rolling dice as a player action - it's an administrative chore required by the game's engine, like deck shuffling in a card game. The less of it, the better. Rolling for saves during enemy turn doesn't make me involved, it just makes resolution longer as compared to actual gameplay - which is decisions. If anything it makes me feel more divorced as gameplay is paused and randomness makes my decisions less important. There's a reason why video games hide automatic RNG in the background where it doesn't interrupt gameplay.
I'm not talking about rolling armour saves. I'm talking about actions/reactions in game representing frantic simultaneous activities, which also represent player agency. Neither wmh or 40k does this well at all
In Infinity, the game could be described as 'always being your turn. They declare an action,I declare a reaction (shoot back, dodge, etc) and there is a roll-off as to who 'wins'. Its not takinf your turn rolling against a static number and then being the static number for the other guy.
In lotr, which in my mind is a brilliant and yet elegantly simple game, you get a very basic flavour of this with a simultaneous fight phase where there is an engaging mechanic where both players are involved who determines who 'wins' along with a more integrated turn structure (move/move/shoot/shoot/melee) as opposed to STRICT Igoyougo.
Its not taking turns swinging at each other and seeing who falls down first. And if you have a shield you can choose to defend itself.gameplay actions.player decisions. Agency.
I found these turn structures, interactions and mechanics in these games very immersive and engaging. Went back to wmh and took turns swinging at each other, rolling against a number rather than a more dynamic mechanic like I'd experienced in infinity or lotr and it genuinely left me cold.
As for time spent making decisions and solving problems, while 40k has plenty 'randumb' stuff and pointless dice rolling, the phrase 'analysis paralysis' is often very apt for wmh, especially for less experienced players (well, both of them now, since wmh has a problem attracting people :p)
Hmm, I disagree. But I for example don't see rolling dice as a player action - it's an administrative chore required by the game's engine, like deck shuffling in a card game. The less of it, the better. Rolling for saves during enemy turn doesn't make me involved, it just makes resolution longer as compared to actual gameplay - which is decisions. If anything it makes me feel more divorced as gameplay is paused and randomness makes my decisions less important. There's a reason why video games hide automatic RNG in the background where it doesn't interrupt gameplay.
I'm not talking about rolling armour saves. I'm talking about actions/reactions in game representing frantic simultaneous activities, which also represent player agency. Neither wmh or 40k does this well at all
In Infinity, the game could be described as 'always being your turn. They declare an action,I declare a reaction (shoot back, dodge, etc) and there is a roll-off as to who 'wins'. Its not takinf your turn rolling against a static number and then being the static number for the other guy.
In lotr, which in my mind is a brilliant and yet elegantly simple game, you get a very basic flavour of this with a simultaneous fight phase where there is an engaging mechanic where both players are involved who determines who 'wins' along with a more integrated turn structure (move/move/shoot/shoot/melee) as opposed to STRICT Igoyougo.
Its not taking turns swinging at each other and seeing who falls down first. And if you have a shield you can choose to defend itself.gameplay actions.player decisions. Agency.
I found these turn structures, interactions and mechanics in these games very immersive and engaging. Went back to wmh and took turns swinging at each other, rolling against a number rather than a more dynamic mechanic like I'd experienced in infinity or lotr and it genuinely left me cold.
As for time spent making decisions and solving problems, while 40k has plenty 'randumb' stuff and pointless dice rolling, the phrase 'analysis paralysis' is often very apt for wmh, especially for less experienced players (well, both of them now, since wmh has a problem attracting people :p)
What’s interesting about the game you’re describing is that it already released a long time ago.
And that take was Helldorado. Too bad it flopped. It wasn’t a standard igougo system and worked better than Infinity.
It’s interesting to note that the theme was seen as too out there as well.
Personally I think the game, the sculpts and theme were far ahead of its time. Which is why it likely failed.
WM/H needs an overhaul and update to more modern systems. If they lose players as a result, that’s what happens and they have to forge on.
Either that or they can leave it in the state that it’s in and move onto other things. Which seems to be the case.
WM/H needs an overhaul and update to more modern systems. If they lose players as a result, that’s what happens and they have to forge on.
Either that or they can leave it in the state that it’s in and move onto other things. Which seems to be the case.
TBH when you come down to it, that there is the essence of all the issue with the company, the game, production, relationships, communications etc
PP need to modernise.
Not sure how we fix the community issues but the company needs to take ownership and lead. And that requires modernisation.
WM/H needs an overhaul and update to more modern systems. If they lose players as a result, that’s what happens and they have to forge on.
Either that or they can leave it in the state that it’s in and move onto other things. Which seems to be the case.
TBH when you come down to it, that there is the essence of all the issue with the company, the game, production, relationships, communications etc
PP need to modernise.
Not sure how we fix the community issues but the company needs to take ownership and lead. And that requires modernisation.
They're trying to, I think, but these days they're a smaller company of far more modest means and they're still dealing with the fallout of a lot of anti retailer decisions they made with wmh, hence their new love of kick-starter. For all that, pp are an interesting company with some interesting ideas and they can sometimes be way ahead of their time. Ten years ago, they were movers and shakers in the industry. It could come back round, you never know.
Thing is, wmh is too 'big' and 'old' to save. The time to save it was 5 years ago. You are correct, they need to modernise and overhaul. And they are. But most of their development time and fifteen years of lessons are going into warcaster and a new ip, not into wmh. Wmh is a back-burner product, they'll keep.it, and give it a light touch every now and then, but dont expect them to turn around, invest more than a token effort and turn wmh into the game people want or imagine it could be. Wmh can't be that game, I feel. It's just too late. I also suspect pp thinks this too and feels warcaster, possibly could be.
Deadnight wrote: In Infinity, the game could be described as 'always being your turn. They declare an action,I declare a reaction (shoot back, dodge, etc) and there is a roll-off as to who 'wins'. Its not takinf your turn rolling against a static number and then being the static number for the other guy.
Heh, could you imagine if Counter-Charge, Counter-Blast, and Admonition were standard options for everything in WMH instead of a carefully parsed out Special Rule?
Still, the LotR turn structure you mentioned (which is similar to Battletech's, but they are AA within the Phases) would make such considerations almost unnecessary. Those above rules are incorporated because you as the player can't otherwise be doing anything else and no capacity to react to the other player's actions. By alternating such actions, reactions can be incorporated as part of the normal game structure.
A quick reminder that registration for the Brawlmachine Update 1 league is open until April 30 and begins on May 1, along with information about submitting lists for the league!
Line of Sight is proud to announce registration opening for the 2021 Brawlmachine Team Championship on Wartable.online! This three person team event has registration open until May 21, 2021, with list lock on June 11, 2021 and first round beginning on July 2, 2021.
LoS_Jaden wrote: Line of Sight is proud to announce registration opening for the 2021 Brawlmachine Team Championship on Wartable.online! This three person team event has registration open until May 21, 2021, with list lock on June 11, 2021 and first round beginning on July 2, 2021.
Look. I appreciate what your group does for this game.
But at this point, why?
The hype this game had is long gone. Why haven't you moved on to a better game? Or better yet, why aren't you creating that better game (And making it your own?)
It's time we memorialized and buried Warmahordes. The rotting corpse is such a foul scent.
LoS_Jaden wrote: Line of Sight is proud to announce registration opening for the 2021 Brawlmachine Team Championship on Wartable.online! This three person team event has registration open until May 21, 2021, with list lock on June 11, 2021 and first round beginning on July 2, 2021.
Look. I appreciate what your group does for this game.
But at this point, why?
The hype this game had is long gone. Why haven't you moved on to a better game? Or better yet, why aren't you creating that better game (And making it your own?)
It's time we memorialized and buried Warmahordes. The rotting corpse is such a foul scent.
Why - because people still enjoy the game and people still have the models for the game and still want to buy more.
Because they enjoy the style and design of models; the lore; because they've sunk hours in to building and painting their army; because they enjoy the style of the game; the look on the table and a load of other reasons.
Just because its not the "new hotness" doesn't mean its invalid. I've often noted that there's a segment of gamers always eager for the next revolution in gaming design and style; yet in reality its rarely a revolution and more just some different and new and fresh (to them) mechanics. Often they are just old ideas brought around again or put together a slightly different way .
LoS_Jaden wrote: Line of Sight is proud to announce registration opening for the 2021 Brawlmachine Team Championship on Wartable.online! This three person team event has registration open until May 21, 2021, with list lock on June 11, 2021 and first round beginning on July 2, 2021.
Look. I appreciate what your group does for this game.
But at this point, why?
The hype this game had is long gone. Why haven't you moved on to a better game? Or better yet, why aren't you creating that better game (And making it your own?)
It's time we memorialized and buried Warmahordes. The rotting corpse is such a foul scent.
Brawlmachine has actually been a single thing in the last few years that made MORE people play the game where I am, with a few starting and a few returning. Apparently the 2x75pts standard was a huge turn-off for most, but the most hardcore, WTC-oriented guys.
The entire PP activity has been pushing people away from rather than into the game. I appreciate that LOS managed to buck this trend.
I see how WM&H is in a decline but I see no problem with finding ways you can still enjoy it. All you need is 2-3 people who want to play the game with you. After all if you buy a new board game for your group to play you don't care if there's a community or continuous support around it, what matters is that you have 3-4 players to play it. Why would you care with WM&H?
If you’ve ever wanted to play a Skirmish, narrative based game set in the Iron Kingdoms, this is for you. If you’ve ever wanted to fully customize a Warband of deadly models to your desired specifications and set them loose on your friends, this is for you. Line of Sight is proud to present the next update to Fallen Corvis, with huge new ways to experience Warmachine on the tabletop. Come and see, it’s worth a look!
LoS_Jaden wrote: Line of Sight is proud to announce registration opening for the 2021 Brawlmachine Team Championship on Wartable.online! This three person team event has registration open until May 21, 2021, with list lock on June 11, 2021 and first round beginning on July 2, 2021.
Look. I appreciate what your group does for this game.
But at this point, why?
The hype this game had is long gone. Why haven't you moved on to a better game? Or better yet, why aren't you creating that better game (And making it your own?)
It's time we memorialized and buried Warmahordes. The rotting corpse is such a foul scent.
I've thought about this question a lot over the last few weeks, because it's not the first time someone has asked me.
First off, I've played every single major miniatures game on the market at this point. AoS, 40k, Infinity, Malifaux, Warmachine, MCP, Judgement, I've played them all. I keep coming back to Warmachine, and I think that it's important that someone be making the things that I've been making.
There are good arguments along the lines of "yes, the company should be doing them" to be had to that point, and I can't deny that it would be cool if PP was creating Brawlmachine and Fallen Corvis (hey check the post above this one, I think it's a super fun game!). But they aren't. Maybe they can't. And I can. And it's making a difference.
Which brings me to my next point. The things that I'm doing are making a difference. I've received literally hundreds of messages from players who are either finding the game or coming back to the game through Brawlmachine. There are places in the world that have gone from 2 players to 20 players and all they play is Brawlmachine. If Warmachine is going to come back, it's going to be through that avenue.
Why aren't we making our own game? Well I kinda did/am already. Fallen Corvis is essentially an RPG/Tabletop blend game with a proprietary ruleset that I developed. Maybe in the future you'll see a kickstarter announcement for something we make, but how can we make a good game of our own without making good games in an existing place first? None of us are game designers. I'm a music teacher, Chandler does voice over work, Bret does IT. If we ever wanted to make a game, these two are great training grounds for game design.
Warmachine is one of the most engaging games when it's done well. I'm just doing what I can to show that to more people.
SuperHappyTime wrote: The hype this game had is long gone. Why haven't you moved on to a better game? Or better yet, why aren't you creating that better game (And making it your own?)
It's time we memorialized and buried Warmahordes. The rotting corpse is such a foul scent.
Warmachine isn't a bad game, though. In fact, it is better than most. Right now the biggest problems are PP's interactions with resellers and the competitive gatekeepers who push Steamroller. No one but PP can handle the first part, but people like those at LOS are doing what they can about the latter.
FWIW, I've seen that post verbatim in several different places. I'm pretty sure its mostly trolling. The concerted will to make sure Warmachine dies has been one of the weirder social media things I've seen. It's been going on since the waning days of MK2, but there's just these people that need it dead for some reason.
I'll be curious to see what PP does next. Covid gave them a chance to balk on Steamroller and let the game coast for a bit. Prior to the lockdown, Hungerford was actively trying to steer the game towards smaller point levels, but the community lashed out hard at the idea. I find it interesting that by letting their hand off the wheel, the game seems to have drifted that way naturally.
I've heard the one big thing PP hasn't been willing to do to do Brawlmachine themselves is ban models. I think the lack of huge bases in particular is something they're a little shy of officially declaring, which I get both sides of. Personally, I'm hoping they come out with 50 pt SR soon, but at the moment, I think they're mostly happy to let the community drift away from the hardcore SR on its own.
I wouldn’t put it the same way that SuperHappyTime did. But regardless of the causes or drivers the simple fact is WM/H is not in a good place and hasn’t been since the bungled Mk3 launch. Either in term of the game, position and reputation with stores and how it viewed by the rest of the wargaming community. And im really not certain that in its current form, with how PP is right now, that its going to get any better. Its going to stay where it is with mostly the same community and with most people outside the game believing what they believe about it. In this world perception is everything.
For me, im waiting to see what the rest of 2021 brings. But I think the game is really stuck where it is near the bottom of the wargaming market and consciousness.
Unless PP has the balls to properly modernise the company and overhaul WM/H with a formal fresh edition, nothing is going to change. Especially with so many people out there actively “against” the game.
That said, I desperately hope that in a years’ time I can look back at these posts and laugh about how wrong we all were. But iv not seen anything coming out of PP that convinces me otherwise.
I'd chime in to add that I think WMH would be really well suited to a PC format. A direct port, no real time nonsense, move of the game to online PC would solve a ton of problems.
1: It allows players and designers to consign units like in M:TG. No need to paint, model, then cry when you unit gets nerfed or banned from a particular tournament format.
2: The computer deals with the fiddly rules. For many people the high skill ceiling of the game is pretty much the point: if we are going to lose, we like losing because of some really clever use of the byzantine rules. It is a bit of a pain for new players, however, and even experienced ones forget important rules now and again. Let the computer deal with measuring, rolling dice, rule interactions, etc.
3: Much faster games. Getting curb stomped is less painful when it is quick and you can try again easily. I remember playing M:TG games in under 5 minutes front to back in college, getting some 10 games an hour. compare that to one game in a relaxed mode per afternoon, and that is unappealing. If I could play 2-3 games in an evening with a buddy while still relaxed and chatting, that would put a huge buffer around the negatives of one particular game.
In general, I think WMH was a good game that appealed to a very different part of the mini-hobby from 40k: the part that thought it was fun to study to get better. I know I spent a lot more time studying than playing. I never quite got that from 40k. As such, I think WMH can't quite work the same as 40k in business strategy, and I think PP stumbled over that.
That said, I haven't played much in the past 3 years, moving around too much. Mk3 definitely put me off, and our local group, but I think it could have been done well, as there was still a lot of activity around Mk2 that was squished.
Wehrkind wrote: In general, I think WMH was a good game that appealed to a very different part of the mini-hobby from 40k: the part that thought it was fun to study to get better. I know I spent a lot more time studying than playing. I never quite got that from 40k. As such, I think WMH can't quite work the same as 40k in business strategy, and I think PP stumbled over that.
When I talk about WMH, I often quote you saying that WMH is a "bathroom game" because of how much time you need to spend reading up on the various factions, themes, units, abilities, etc. One presumes while pooping, as with all serious reading
I've been pretty interested in Brawlmachine, and have almost ordered a Cyrenia army several times. But I've since convinced myself that I'll be just as happy finally painting a solid 50 pts of all this Cryx I've got built and primed, which I'm more likely to maybe play in the grim darkness of the near future, assuming BM doesn't catch on wildly in the post-Covid life of my FLGS.
EDIT: If we're making minimum viable wishlists for WMH, mine's pretty simple: lower point games (50 please) and no more facing. The (IMO archaic) minutiae of facing is easily the biggest drag on actually playing for me, and sure its removal would take some tactics and special abilities out of the game, but I think speed and fluidity of play increases for it. I mean, Warcaster already removed it, right? It also helps with stated issues above about units being really cumbersome. I 100% would remember more about unit coherency and stuff if I wasn't ultra-paranoid about how rotated each dude in the unit was.
Oh, and I guess wishlist #3, cooler themes please. Themes are one of the reasons I threw in with WMH so hard in MK2, a feeling that MK3 has successfully 180ed to be very much a turnoff.
FWIW, removing facing was one of the first things mentioned in a dev talk interview for things they'd like to do.
Personally, I like facing, just because it helps draw the battleline that creates that football scrum feeling that I find so unique to the game. Models with 360 arcs had weird interactions much of the time in my experience, though I think there are definitely ways to change the rules to make it work without them and I totally agree it would vastly speed up the game.
Wehrkind wrote: In general, I think WMH was a good game that appealed to a very different part of the mini-hobby from 40k: the part that thought it was fun to study to get better. I know I spent a lot more time studying than playing. I never quite got that from 40k. As such, I think WMH can't quite work the same as 40k in business strategy, and I think PP stumbled over that.
The funny thing is, 40K was that way for a LONG time. It wasn't as noticeable due to the scale the two games operated at, but it really came to a head in 7th Edition, which is notable for being one of the most hated 40K editions.
The reason it wasn't as noticeable in 40K was two fold. 40K fielded a lot bigger armies, which means that "gotcha" moments tended to not carry the same weight as they do in WMH. If you lose your Troop unit, that was one out of 10 units in your army, but in WMH losing a unit mean that a quarter to a third of your army is now gone, and it gets worse with Steamroller scoring.
The second part is that WMH is focused on the Warcaster/Warlock, so most of that "gotcha" is focused on all the spells and the Feat of said character. For all the power some units had in 40K, no Pysker had the spell list of a Warcaster or Warlock, nor were they so disproportionately healthy and resilient when compared to almost any other unit they were with. In many ways, WMH is still in their "HeroHammer" phase, and I don't know of a way to get out of that part. And without doing that, there is always going to be a bit of that "studying the enemy" aspect to WMH.
Boss Salvage wrote: Oh, and I guess wishlist #3, cooler themes please. Themes are one of the reasons I threw in with WMH so hard in MK2, a feeling that MK3 has successfully 180ed to be very much a turnoff.
I agree, the Mk 2 Themes seemed more in control than they are in Mk 3. Part of that is due to how Mk 3 Themes fit numerous Warcasters and Warlocks in them while Mk 2 focused on the one. Then there is also the factor that Mk 3 Themes allow for "free" models which means playing outside of Theme is stupid. Now, some of the Mk 2 Themes did have "free" models in them, but they weren't that common or only applied to Attachments.
Personally, I like facing, just because it helps draw the battleline that creates that football scrum feeling that I find so unique to the game. Models with 360 arcs had weird interactions much of the time in my experience, though I think there are definitely ways to change the rules to make it work without them and I totally agree it would vastly speed up the game.
I agree. It's a perfect rule IMO.
- it's easy - LOS, back strike bonus, done.
- it's intuitive - it's obvious for everyone that you can't attack what you can't see and you're easier to hit from behind
- it's based on player's agency - no randomness or gotcha! effects or obscure combos, just plain, good maneuvering
- it's impactful - there are decisions involved, not always easy, there's opportunity for neat moves and for mistakes, you feel rewarded for doing it well
I wish all rules could come in such a nice, elegant package of all 4 qualities a good rule can have.
I do also see the issue they present with units though. Worrying about the facing of 10+ models can be very fiddly and only REALLY matters in rare instances.
Mr. Grey wrote: Maybe the key is to keep facing only for certain units?
Huge bases - which have the facing presculpted on the base - are probably the strongest argument for keeping a large-scale version of facing around, with the addition of L/R grids and weapons.
The rules for WmH are going to stand the test of time, I think. It is a good base system and works brilliantly for the scale of game WmH is. There are many tweaks that can be made, but at its core, the system is good. Facing can be removed, or used on just some model types, and personally I'd like more of the old power attacks and slamming or throwing your own dudes-stuff back. It was fun and allowed for some interesting interactions that were mainly ruined by some models getting rules that were too good at exploiting it.
The issues we're seeing now are not a new thing for me - we saw the same amount of craziness back in 2008 and 2014, although it is exacerbated by the larger model line, multi-faction themes and RQ model insertions. I will definitely be playing Brawlmachine in the coming year, and get in a few 75 pts games as well.
I feel the opposite. Wmh was a game that in many ways frankly was ahead of its time, ten or fifteen years ago. These days its showing its age, especially at the size of game its currently played at. it's an igoyougo game firmly based in the 90s and noughties- to be fair 40k has elements stemming from the 70s and 80s. Hell it took until convergence before its signature mechanic (focus) could be all it could be.
So many of these elements of games have evolved, even in the last ten years. Igoyougo, resource management, game size/accessibility.
Pp for all their faults, are often clever enough to innovate. It's not for me, but look at warcaster. I like the 'list-less' nature of the game, and the mechanic that translates better accuracy into more damage us quite clever. And while you can see ita wmh roots, it has moved on. I suspect this is wmh's legacy.
"Evolved" is a funny word when it comes to activation systems. I have played games with alternative activation systems over twenty years ago. And I have played what I perceive as actual skirmish games (that is, 5-10 models at most) older than that. IGUG and AA (to take two activation models) can exploit different rules mechanics (as can 40k's phase systems) than each other. They have different strengths and weaknesses.
You are talking about fashions more than evolution, I believe - although the finesse of a system can always be improved of course. But I do agree that the Warcaster (great game) way of using point-less (not pointless) lists and instead integrating it into the summoning mechanic is pretty clever, and I have not seen that particular variant before (which does not mean it did not exist before WC). The dice system it uses is slight variant of the Monsterpocalypse system, which is over 15 years old by now.
Kaptajn Congoboy wrote: "Evolved" is a funny word when it comes to activation systems. I have played games with alternative activation systems over twenty years ago.
Indeed but i wasn't referring to aa. I was thinking specifically of igoyougoo and very specifically along the line of Infinity.
(For the record, i tend to prefer phased igoyougo (like, say, lotr sbg) gamea or Infinitys dynamic igoyougo to aa)
Infinity is, after all, technically an igoyougo system, but its a very 'modern' take on it, and I find it very clever, dynamic and immersive. I think its fair to compare Infinitys system to older, more 'traditional' igoyougo' systems abs see an evolution in mechanics.Then again, I'm.probably a bit biased here as while I don't really play Infinity any more, I still rate it as probably the most technically brilliant wargame out there. (But these days, I prefer warcry, shadespire and newcromunda..go figure!)
Note as well,I'm.not saying one is better than the other. I've defended igoyougo on these boards before.
Infinity's system is nothing new either - activation pool systems I have also seen decades ago in other games. It was, I understand, actually one of the early design models for WmH back in the late 2000s, with the focus mechanic providing activations with some models being able to hold more than others. The ARO mechanic is, if I recall correctly, based on RPG mechanics from when Infinity was imagined as an RPG.
I still argue it is mostly fashion. I abandoned Infinity myself, although many of the people I recruited stayed, as it was not giving me the casual skirmish firefight gaming experience I thought it was going to give me.
Dump facing for infantry and certain small beasties, keep it for all the big stuff. Especially warjacks and cavalry. Going from WHFB where everything had facing to AoS where nothing does, and I only feel like it's missing on the bigger stuff. The infantry feel like they should be able to turn in place readily. It still doesn't change their formation so getting flanked and such is still bad.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Dump facing for infantry and certain small beauties, keep it for all the big stuff. Especially warjacks and cavalry. Going from WHFB where everything had facing to AoS where nothing does, and I only feel like it's missing on the bigger stuff. The infantry feel like they should be able to turn in place readily. It still doesn't change their formation so getting flanked and such is still bad.
Agreed. With big models it makes sense and adds micro, but you won't have many big models anyway. With smaller infantry its often a level of micro that's more annoying than anything else. AT least with army scale games.
I think if you want facings and infantry it works best with movement blocks
I think the biggest sins of facing, and they are big, is the 1: lack of sculpted bases and 2: how the arc interacts.
1: Seriously, how do you NOT have sculpted bases, or at least a little plastic or metal arc to glue onto the damned base if you are going to care about facing? Maybe use hex bases since you include bases anyway? PPs sloppiness here aggravated me to no end, such that RiTides, Jin and I actually manufactured my own bases to correct this.
(Yes, you can buy tools to paint on arcs as well. But buying a third party tool does not bode well for PP, and trusting other people's painted arcs... well, I have seen some questionable ones. There's no need for that.)
2: I played Circle, and yea, 360 arcs were awful. The rule about getting free strikes when your opponent leaves your arc meant that enemies could tapdance all around an Argus and he couldn't do anything about it, but something without a 360 arc could punish the enemy before it got behind them. The obvious fix would be to give model A a free strike when the opponent B moved within A's arc but did not have A within B within it's arc. I.e. A gets a free strike when B is in A's arc but B turns its back on A.
In general, I like facing rules, but only if they are easy to adjudicate. Kings of War has sort of wonky LOS rules when charging (common to many unit scale systems) but it would be worse without them. I personally think that circle based games should switch to hexes, octagons or squares (or pentagons!) for ease of facing. Circles are very elegant and visually pleasing, so if designers want to stick with them, they should at least make them support facing more clearly. It isn't THAT hard.
Well, they tried the video game thing, and it didn't work. PP in general, as a company, is not in a place financially where they can successfully fund a good video game translation of the current WMH miniatures game.
Warmachine/Hordes worked perfectly fine for a very long time, until suddenly it didn't. I think there's certainly room in the wargaming hobby for a ruleset like PP's that emphasis good, fairly balanced rules and a competitive mindset. Through a combination of various factors, Privateer Press ended up either mismanaging or dropping a lot of balls and that's how we ended up here in this thread, discussing all of this.
Re: Video Game: Was that actually a turn based direct port? I didn't get into the KS, and then ignored the game on Steam while it languished on my wishlist. My sense was that it was very tarted up, fancy graphics etc. instead of just solidly implementing the rules. I have seen lots of people playing TTWGs online with programs basically consisting of circles and rectangles (what was the one you used to play on, Salvage?) so it seems like a version of that that looked pretty and took care of rules too should be fairly popular and cheap. Maybe not though.
PP definitely dropped their balls, then sat on them, with regards to the Press Ganger program and Mk3. It might have been different other places, but in Northern VA and MD where I played I saw interest and fandom just go off a goddamned cliff. And then they closed the forums, so I had nothing to read while I hid from my family on the pooper*. That pretty much spelled the end of world of PP for me.
*I am too old to get into Reddit, and I can actively feel FB sucking at my soul if I am on it too long, so those were non-starters.
Wehrkind wrote: I have seen lots of people playing TTWGs online with programs basically consisting of circles and rectangles (what was the one you used to play on, Salvage?) so it seems like a version of that that looked pretty and took care of rules too should be fairly popular and cheap.
Online options for tabletop minigames were around before the pandemic, but the last year has seen people get into them in a more serious way. WMH is played on Vassal or War Table, Kings of War on Universal Battle, 40k / Kill Team / Infinity on Tabletop Simulator, etc. Personally, I can't stand TTS because it simulates the experience of playing a game with 3D models, dice and terrain, which is clunky and disappointing when you're a kinaesthetic player (i.e. I want to see my actual minis and roll actual dice). This also means it poorly simulates playing the actual game, as so much goes into the simulation of the physical game (but let's be real, Warhammer is barely about the game and more about scooting things into position and seeing how well you can coerce as many dice as possible towards peak performance). UB on the other hand does KOW well, but KOW is a happily abstract game so it translates well - if again, no minis, no real dice, and computer measuring leads most players to strive for a level of geometric perfection that is rare in the real world (i.e. games take fething forever, thanks in part to being able to undo/redo everything).
I have no experience playing WMH online, but both tools are very abstract and seem to support the game well. I've thought about giving it a shot some time, despite being a very mini-driven miniwargamer, especially as I like skew lists that cost $$$ to build and probably suck. But I'm often held back by being pretty out of touch with actually playing WMH at this point :/
PP'#s forum kill off was really odd. Normally firms wait for forums to die on their own and for 3rd party or other social media sites to pick up and then gently close things down. Instead PP sort of tried to kick everyone out - which coupled to everything else at the same time I think just shattered the online community whilst the PG shutting down shattered the in person and the MK3 created an unsettled market.
Basically they made/were forced to make a series of bad choices all around the same time. Coupled to that GW had a big turn around at the same time. So everyone jumped ship
I have no experience playing WMH online, but both tools are very abstract and seem to support the game well. I've thought about giving it a shot some time, despite being a very mini-driven miniwargamer, especially as I like skew lists that cost $$$ to build and probably suck. But I'm often held back by being pretty out of touch with actually playing WMH at this point :/
Wartable is a very good tool for online play of WmH as well as Guild Ball and Judgement. For games that emphasise precicion placement and are not all that worried about 3D (elevation) it is almost the perfect program. TTS is a mess for miniature games, as you note the simulation is a poor man's version of actual play and very vulnerable to issues with load times on weak connections. It is, however, better at simulating elevation which is why you see people playing stuff like Infinity and Warcaster on it. Overall, I am not a big fan of online play, but when I play online I gravitate toward Wartable unless I am doing playtesting that only has mods on TTS.
Alternating activations is definitely fashionable at the moment. I'm not sure its strictly superior, but it's very popular. I think it definitely has some big advantages, primarily in the form of reducing extended downtime for the inactive player, but it has a lot of quirks that can really cripple it if developers don't go out of their way to limit the power of things like activation advantage and really reduces model synergy. I haven't seen an AA game that can capture the sense of mechanical army identity Warcasters provide, even in games that have similar central character commands.
The main thing with WMH's implmentation at this point is just turn length. The opposing player is just out of the game for too long at the current game size and mistakes a player makes take too long to bare out. I'm not entirely sure what the best way to fix it is, but I definitely think something would be lost changing to full AA.
(Yes, you can buy tools to paint on arcs as well. But buying a third party tool does not bode well for PP, and trusting other people's painted arcs... well, I have seen some questionable ones.)
Tools? All you need is a piece of checkered paper.
As for Wartable, I think it is awesome and I recommend it to everyone. Excellent for smaller battles (BM) especially, as the games take longer than ones with models.
Wehrkind wrote:Re: Video Game: Was that actually a turn based direct port? I didn't get into the KS, and then ignored the game on Steam while it languished on my wishlist. My sense was that it was very tarted up, fancy graphics etc. instead of just solidly implementing the rules.
Warmachine Tactics had most of the mechanics from Mk 2, with the army purchasing of Mk 1 and the unit interactions of Company of Iron. Focus mechanic was there, spells were there, turn-based IGOUGO actions, but there were no actual units. Each "model" was its own thing, and never in a unit. Some models could still do unit actions like CMA, provided there was a similar model close enough to do the job. In the multiplayer army builder, you're not even required to have a unit leader.
I've not made it past the 3rd (or is it 4th?) mission in the campaign as yet. There is a bit of a crashing problem and while the models do look good, the "cinematics" tend to be more about a camera panning around statues while the characters talk (not even mouth movement). It would have been better to have stills they panned across as they could have had more impact for much cheaper. Story-wise, from what I understand, focuses on Cygnar's Junior Warcaster, Allison Jakes, as she follows her mentor, Commander Dalen Sturgis, in a response to a Khador invasion. She apparently grows in to a full Warcaster through the campaign and something happens to her mentor. It's not even very long, only comprising about 10 missions, I think.
LunarSol wrote:Alternating activations is definitely fashionable at the moment. I'm not sure its strictly superior, but it's very popular. I think it definitely has some big advantages, primarily in the form of reducing extended downtime for the inactive player, but it has a lot of quirks that can really cripple it if developers don't go out of their way to limit the power of things like activation advantage and really reduces model synergy. I haven't seen an AA game that can capture the sense of mechanical army identity Warcasters provide, even in games that have similar central character commands.
The main thing with WMH's implmentation at this point is just turn length. The opposing player is just out of the game for too long at the current game size and mistakes a player makes take too long to bare out. I'm not entirely sure what the best way to fix it is, but I definitely think something would be lost changing to full AA.
Having more of a reactionary system would help make it be more healthy. Right now, the only normal reaction system is Free Strikes, with Counter-Charge and Counter-Blast requiring the model to have the rule to use them.
The alternative is to go Warhammer and treat units as a cohesive whole with models as Damage markers instead of the model on model interaction they have been going with. Alternatively, is of course, smaller games, such as Brawlmachine or the 50 point games some have used.
Wehrkind wrote: I have seen lots of people playing TTWGs online with programs basically consisting of circles and rectangles (what was the one you used to play on, Salvage?) so it seems like a version of that that looked pretty and took care of rules too should be fairly popular and cheap.
Online options for tabletop minigames were around before the pandemic, but the last year has seen people get into them in a more serious way. WMH is played on Vassal or War Table, Kings of War on Universal Battle, 40k / Kill Team / Infinity on Tabletop Simulator, etc. Personally, I can't stand TTS because it simulates the experience of playing a game with 3D models, dice and terrain, which is clunky and disappointing when you're a kinaesthetic player (i.e. I want to see my actual minis and roll actual dice). This also means it poorly simulates playing the actual game, as so much goes into the simulation of the physical game (but let's be real, Warhammer is barely about the game and more about scooting things into position and seeing how well you can coerce as many dice as possible towards peak performance). UB on the other hand does KOW well, but KOW is a happily abstract game so it translates well - if again, no minis, no real dice, and computer measuring leads most players to strive for a level of geometric perfection that is rare in the real world (i.e. games take fething forever, thanks in part to being able to undo/redo everything).
I have no experience playing WMH online, but both tools are very abstract and seem to support the game well. I've thought about giving it a shot some time, despite being a very mini-driven miniwargamer, especially as I like skew lists that cost $$$ to build and probably suck. But I'm often held back by being pretty out of touch with actually playing WMH at this point :/
Vassal! That's the one I was thinking of! I am imagining the effective implementation of say Blood Bowl with the ability to place terrain etc. like Vassal. I would probably skip the AI entirely except in the form of a very basic tutorial bot to practice combos against.
TTS... I want to love it. I built a port for a board game into it some years back and it was good for that, but I haven't tried any actual gaming. Still, if one could optimize something similar to give 3d models, terrain they stand on, and then have it handle the rules, that wouldn't be the worst.
Oh, and also a HARD stop turn timer (They did that in the pc version of Blood Rage, which works very nicely as a game I think, if only a distant second to playing in person.)
RE: Warmachine Tactics: Aye, that sounds about right; I was thinking it wasn't exactly WMH on the pc, but a different game set in the world. I still don't get why companies do that... playing on the table with paints and dice and drinks and smells, totally different than playing online. I doubt many people will drop one for the other, but rather pursue online when it is more feasible than in person. I can only imagine the kind of filthy lucre one could have made offering a WMH or 40k tabletop-on-pc experience during the past year.
LunarSol wrote: Alternating activations is definitely fashionable at the moment. I'm not sure its strictly superior, but it's very popular. I think it definitely has some big advantages, primarily in the form of reducing extended downtime for the inactive player, but it has a lot of quirks that can really cripple it if developers don't go out of their way to limit the power of things like activation advantage and really reduces model synergy. I haven't seen an AA game that can capture the sense of mechanical army identity Warcasters provide, even in games that have similar central character commands.
The main thing with WMH's implmentation at this point is just turn length. The opposing player is just out of the game for too long at the current game size and mistakes a player makes take too long to bare out. I'm not entirely sure what the best way to fix it is, but I definitely think something would be lost changing to full AA.
As I wrote earlier, it is a choice in design. I know a lot of people that like the downtime of a I Go You Go system because they use it to think about their game. AA makes that more difficult, as does constant interruptions in the form of things like Tough Rolls (or AROs, or Overwatch rules, or a number of other not-your-turn activity). I also know personally like the "Plan Coming Together" aspect of sequential activation of all your models in a WMH IGYG turn. A lot reaction stuff messes that aspect up.
I think the key is balance. I go You Go is fine so long as one player can't wipe the other out in the first few turns super easily. The issue in 40K and AoS is that often as note you can do such significant damage in a single turn early on that it puts the opponent in a really bad position.
AoS even gets worse with having the doubleturn - which I think has a muted impact only because close combat alternates in its phase so the attacked player can at least make some first attacks during that phase. However as ranged units become more common and other things (like always attacks first) appear I figure people will start to feel the pinch more and more.
The issue in GW games is more that its super easy for some armies to simply steamroll early.
Instead what should happen is that steamrolling should be a mid to late game event and the result of key planning and playing early in the game; which should be more trading off like for like punches between armies.
My understanding was the forum closure was just another reaction to the WotC lawsuit. Their forums were being run almost entirely by unpaid volunteers and when they removed those programs they didn't have any way to moderate them.
LunarSol wrote: My understanding was the forum closure was just another reaction to the WotC lawsuit. Their forums were being run almost entirely by unpaid volunteers and when they removed those programs they didn't have any way to moderate them.
That was my understanding as well. There was a LOT of worry in the whole US part of the wargame industry about potential fallout from the Yale vs WOTC/Shawn vs WOTC cases and the later Emerald City comic con one. The end result was settlements in all three cases, but the judges ruled that the judge and con volunteer programs all clearly were volunteer programs, so the complaints did not look like they had much in the way of legs.
I still think it was a premature decicion by PP, but many gaming companies did some heavy backtracking during these cases.
LunarSol wrote: My understanding was the forum closure was just another reaction to the WotC lawsuit. Their forums were being run almost entirely by unpaid volunteers and when they removed those programs they didn't have any way to moderate them.
A large number of reddit subreddits are moderated by unpaid volunteers as well, and reddit isn't shutting down anytime soon. All I'm saying is that maybe PP acted a bit hastily in that decision(and I still think shutting down Pressgangers was one of the dumbest things they could have done) and closing the public forums on their website effectively scattered all fans of PP across the multitude of the internet instead of giving them a single, main focal point to discuss the game.
I think part of PPs decision to can the forums was also due to the generally very negative response to Mk3. I feel that negativity was justified, and PP played that very badly. I think PP would have done better to acknowledge the community's frustration and admitted Mk3 had issues, they were working on them, etc. instead of taking their (forum) ball and going home. For me at least it solidified a sense that PP had become rather petulant and entitled towards their customers, much like GW had.
I hope PP can turn things around and that a Mk4 comes out that redeems the company and game. I really liked WMH Mk2, and I think the game has a lot of legs left to it. Arguably, they could probably release a Mk4 that is Mk2 with the worst balance issues fixed and just never release another new model, treating the game as a finished set, and do pretty well.
Thing is minicrate apparently makes a lot of money for them and whilst there is a collectable aspect to it; its basically at its core alternative sculpts for core models.
What they could (should) do is turn that on its head; start making actual replacement sculpts for models for existing armies. When you look at GW armies a lot of the core have been the same for years and years. Big forces with regular updates like Marines haven't had all that many totally new ideas over the years; just reimagined ones. Heck Primaris just copy-cat the same unit slots and types broadly speaking
PP could easily do several years of just updating models for hteir core line whilst adding one or two new models. The balance would remain fairly flat over that period in terms of adding new tricks; but it would let them get new fancy models out and I'm sure they've learned a thing or two since hteir first editions.
Wehrkind wrote: I think part of PPs decision to can the forums was also due to the generally very negative response to Mk3. I feel that negativity was justified, and PP played that very badly. I think PP would have done better to acknowledge the community's frustration and admitted Mk3 had issues, they were working on them, etc. instead of taking their (forum) ball and going home. For me at least it solidified a sense that PP had become rather petulant and entitled towards their customers, much like GW had.
Eh, there was a lot of it before Mk 3 was launched. Mk 3's launch just didn't do much to reduce it.
Overread wrote: Thing is minicrate apparently makes a lot of money for them and whilst there is a collectable aspect to it; its basically at its core alternative sculpts for core models.
What they could (should) do is turn that on its head; start making actual replacement sculpts for models for existing armies. When you look at GW armies a lot of the core have been the same for years and years. Big forces with regular updates like Marines haven't had all that many totally new ideas over the years; just reimagined ones. Heck Primaris just copy-cat the same unit slots and types broadly speaking
PP could easily do several years of just updating models for hteir core line whilst adding one or two new models. The balance would remain fairly flat over that period in terms of adding new tricks; but it would let them get new fancy models out and I'm sure they've learned a thing or two since hteir first editions.
Minicrate is a nice income source I am sure, but I have in on good authority that what makes them the big bucks is new faction releases or large releases for old factions.
I heard a great quote about GW from someone on the inside there: -"GW's most secure and largest source of income is a large number of guys buying the same Space Marine over and over, forever"
Minicrate is a nice income source I am sure, but I have in on good authority that what makes them the big bucks is new faction releases or large releases for old factions.
I heard a great quote about GW from someone on the inside there: -"GW's most secure and largest source of income is a large number of guys buying the same Space Marine over and over, forever"
Generally that's true for the industry, hence the 'wave' nature of most releases. Pp were no different, with annual hordes and wm releases and then more recently 'one new faction every year'.
However, regarding minicrate, I've heard it from my own sources that minicrate is, or at least was pp's primary income, at least up to very recently. Wmh apparently barely keeps the lights on any more. Most of their r&d is going into warcaster as well, not wmh.
Locally to me, Warmachine died when Mk3 came out. Which was a pity, as I was actually starting to get interested in it again after sitting out most of mk2.
To me, it seemed like the local competitive player base didn't care about Warmachine - they just wanted tournament events. Once Warmachine had a "wobble" in that competion gameplay, everyone moved over to Malifaux almost overnight. Then Guildball, then X-Wing.
40k has survived for thirty years despite the reputation of its rules by making something a lot of people get emotionally invested in - I kept my army despite it being rubbish for an edition or two because there was all that backstory to it that was what interested me. Warmachine started out like that, but then there was a year-long hiatus where all that happened was rules updates, with nothing of any interest coming out until Hordes began to add more narrative material again.
I've still got a couple of boxes of Menoth models - that thought of a huge Exemplar army is still one that tempts me - but they just gather dust now. :(
40k has survived for thirty years despite the reputation of its rules by making something a lot of people get emotionally invested in - I kept my army despite it being rubbish for an edition or two because there was all that backstory to it that was what interested me. Warmachine started out like that, but then there was a year-long hiatus where all that happened was rules updates, with nothing of any interest coming out until Hordes began to add more narrative material again.
I think this is something that is often overlooked about GW games. Rules wise they are not the greatest. But for 80-90% of the Wargaming community, the rules are "good enough" to have a fun game with friends on a Saturday afternoon. The entry level of the game is presented as such. the community is built around a fun game and hobby to play with friends backed up by amazing lore. Competitive play is something you can seek if you of a mind to. But most people really just play basement-hammer games for their entire involvement in the GW games.
The WM/H community is built around formal competition. Casual/narrative play and hobby are an add ons or niche corner cases you can go seek if you want to and can find the people who are like minded. But the general stance of the community is all about competition. Its how we measure ourselves and the success of our community. Its how we judge the worth of a model, list, theme, caster etc. Its all about that top table stat line. And PP seems unable or unwilling to say any different. If the game is to recover or regain its previous popularity etc, it needs that casual, hobby driven, basement machine crowd.
The WM/H community is built around formal competition. Casual/narrative play and hobby are an add ons or niche corner cases you can go seek if you want to and can find the people who are like minded. But the general stance of the community is all about competition. Its how we measure ourselves and the success of our community. Its how we judge the worth of a model, list, theme, caster etc. Its all about that top table stat line. And PP seems unable or unwilling to say any different. If the game is to recover or regain its previous popularity etc, it needs that casual, hobby driven, basement machine crowd.
I wouldn't mind if Warmachine had some way or method of playing a more "beer and pretzels" game built into the rules. A tight competitive ruleset is one thing, but sometimes it's nice to just hang out with a buddy and have a more casual game.
This is how our group played for many years before some people started to move away from the area. We were playing in our basement (well kitchen actually) totally oblivious to "the meta" and the wider community. The tight ruleset meant we could have fun games without needing to debate rules every 5 minutes. When my mates and I decided that to stop things getting repetitive we should look to play other people we went out to the wider world......
......and that's when our love of the game started to diminish if im honest. While we have met some lovely people, for the most part people we have met have been completely different from us in outlook, approach. We realised pretty swiftly that if we were going to play these people we needed to "get good" and spend hundreds of pounds to buy whatever the meta lists were at that time. And from there over the course of Mk3 im the only person left in our game group who has the remote interest in the game and any form of positive view of it.
I know, tiny violin, woe is me etc. But its a story iv heard over and over and over again. PP has huge issues as a company. But the community and the community attitude is one of the big reasons that WM/H is avoided by many people and stores and has such a large group of people actively advocating against it.
I found the meta- tourney vs casual issue with PP pretty similar to the one with GW. There always seemed to be a group who wanted to throw down unpainted meta armies and be kind of unpleasant, others who wanted to play nicely painted and entirely unworkable fluff armies, and some in the middle who had nice armies and were trying to win but were good sports. I think the PP system maybe favors more of the former, rather unpleasant group, but really I have seen about equal numbers of both.
That said, I have been very lucky to have pretty good gaming groups for a long time, and have been able to identify and hang out with the guys who can appreciate "I want to try out a new silly list" vs "Let's try and sharpen ourselves on each other's knives" kind of games, and enjoy both.
Mr. Grey wrote:I wouldn't mind if Warmachine had some way or method of playing a more "beer and pretzels" game built into the rules. A tight competitive ruleset is one thing, but sometimes it's nice to just hang out with a buddy and have a more casual game.
It does as much as 40K or AoS does. What matters is the attitude and willingness of the people who play it. It might surprise you to know that the only limitations on scenario is what you and another person are willing to work with, same as Warhammer. It might also surprise you to know that No Quarter often had scenarios which were purely narrative and not meant for the competitive scene at all. Yet, it was the local groups which determined how hard-core they were willing to accept.
For some evidence of that, look up Brawlmachine and how the response for it has been.
Wehrkind wrote:I found the meta- tourney vs casual issue with PP pretty similar to the one with GW. There always seemed to be a group who wanted to throw down unpainted meta armies and be kind of unpleasant, others who wanted to play nicely painted and entirely unworkable fluff armies, and some in the middle who had nice armies and were trying to win but were good sports. I think the PP system maybe favors more of the former, rather unpleasant group, but really I have seen about equal numbers of both.
That said, I have been very lucky to have pretty good gaming groups for a long time, and have been able to identify and hang out with the guys who can appreciate "I want to try out a new silly list" vs "Let's try and sharpen ourselves on each other's knives" kind of games, and enjoy both.
I think one of Warhammer's advantages is that their rules are just bad enough so that people don't take it too seriously. And yes, there are as many of the tourney people in 40K in the local area as there are in WMH. But Warhammer's rules are just so dang senseless at times it is harder to take seriously without damaging one's sense of logic. Warmachine is sold on that tight design, so I guess some people get caught in a competitive trap cycle.
I think too many people were caught up with the Steamroller scene that they lost sight of the numerous other ways people could choose to play the game. I also know of some that took off more for X-Wing where the rules are similarly tight, but didn't have to deal with the hobbying side of it. WMH models are quite nice, but they do have a lot of detail which can be intimidating to paint.
I admit I find it hard to relate to what some of you describe "mk3 was not so great so people went back to WH40K".
I, personally, do not consider WH40K to be a substitute to WM&H any more than Monopoly would be a substitute for me if for some reason I couldn't play Brass or Arkwright or 18XX. So for me it is surprising that for so many players they are really no different and just the fact that both are miniature wargames makes them interchangeable.
It does as much as 40K or AoS does. What matters is the attitude and willingness of the people who play it. It might surprise you to know that the only limitations on scenario is what you and another person are willing to work with, same as Warhammer. It might also surprise you to know that No Quarter often had scenarios which were purely narrative and not meant for the competitive scene at all. Yet, it was the local groups which determined how hard-core they were willing to accept.
That was a part of the game from the very beginning. The Escalation campaign for Mk1 was purely narrative, a way to play through the storyline of the book with some possibility of variation. We did some of it back around 2008-2009 but with first the Superiority and then the Legends releases coming people wanted to play the new stuff and it eventually fell off. Oblivion's campaign system is another attempt to push narrative play after NQ went under, but as you write, local groups have individual preferences. That being said, most local (and we have 3 clubs) attempts at narrative play seem to sputter out no matter the system. Our Infinity: Paradiso campaign also failed, and with a few rare exceptions, narrative play campaigns for 40k locally don't have the legs to survive more than a few games.The ones that manage it are the groups dedicated to narrative play, and they tend to give tournament types and people in the middle (like me) a wide berth. Which is kind of sad. It doesn't help that many campaign systems that try to implement an "XP" or resource gain system barely survive more than four to five games because the gap becomes too big and the losers just give up. That was the fate of the Corellion campaign we did in Armada and I've never seen a Mordheim or Necromunda campaign survive more than four or five rounds either.
Cyel wrote: I admit I find it hard to relate to what some of you describe "mk3 was not so great so people went back to WH40K".
I, personally, do not consider WH40K to be a substitute to WM&H any more than Monopoly would be a substitute for me if for some reason I couldn't play Brass or Arkwright or 18XX. So for me it is surprising that for so many players they are really no different and just the fact that both are miniature wargames makes them interchangeable.
It's for the same reason that some people watch rugby and some people watch football, and some people are happy to watch sports, regardless of thr shape of ball being kicked.
People went back to 40k for a lit of reasons, but I dont think mk3 was one of the biggest reasons. Truth is, I think the wmh malaise had set in mid way through mk2 and the rot had set in towards the end. Alomg with pp's other obvious missteps, Mk3 didn't do enough to grab those that remained (I'm in this camp) and didn't do enough to attract back those who'd gone back to gw games. And by that time you also have the 'playerbase' dilemma - fewer people playing wmh makes it harder to get people interested, whereas for gw it was the opposite.
I think in a way you are both right. 40k for me doesn't scratch the same itch as WMH; Frostgrave might be a better replacement in that regard. On the other hand, going back to 40k is key: damned near everyone has a 40k army (or 5) so if your goal is to play a game of an evening with a friend, that's an easy one.
Add in "Hey, 40k doesn't suck so bad anymore!" along with "WTF happened to my army with MK3?!" and you will get a lot of people thinking "Hey, we used to play 40k. Let's dust those little guys out".
That said, while I pulled out the Sisters for a few games, I didn't get pulled back into 40k. I just stopped playing wargames for a while, albeit mostly due to life changes in general.
Automatically Appended Next Post: As a side note: with WMH Mk3 and wtf happened to my army:
From my own experience, the changes to Circle around Shifting Stones, power attacks and a few other odds and ends, I really didn't care much for how they played. My nascent, all conversion Skorne army... yea that didn't see the field again for a while. My Merc list was largely unchanged, but it was more a fun silly list than anything I wanted to play in a tournament.
So that's what I meant there. I know a lot of people really liked the changes in their chosen factions, but for me my core faction of Circle just stopped working the way I enjoyed, and my sub factions either got gutted or just a one off to begin with. (It didn't help my sub factions were 50-100% conversion custom armies that were only tournament legal with approval.)
Part of the problem is that a lot of the more narrative games tend to be very easy to break with certain casters. Particularly in MK2 where PP put more effort into narrative leagues, someone like Haley2 would auto win a lot of scenarios pretty trivially while Gaspy2 would laugh at anyone attempting a fair fight.
Truthfully though, I think the big problem just came down to recruiting new players. I distinctly remember the big convention when MK3 leaked and probably the most memorable thing about it was how much the conversations had changed. Most of the crowd was talking about their recent wedding or a baby on the way. It was pretty clear life was going to kick them off the treadmill of 5+ games a week pretty quickly. A lot of them talked about things like Overwatch or Hearthstone or other things that didn't involve heading out for the night.
Not an unusual thing in and of itself, but there just wasn't any new blood taking the reigns. I'd basically spent the last year of MK2 trying to find anyone capable of doing the PG job. My own baby girl had taken a hit out of my ability to run demos and events but there just wasn't new players with the same drive to expand the game anymore.
A big part of THAT I put on the relentless focus on tournament play. 2 full sized 50 point (equal to 75 points today) armies was kind of the bare minimum and sadly PP's starters were in no way helping people get there. A big problem is just that for as great as the rules are, a lot of the industry had caught up. Games like Malifaux, Guild Ball and especially X-Wing all offered the same focus on clean consistent language while being dramatically easier to buy into. Selling people on Warmachine was a tall order, one which PP's SKU bloat and lack of enticing entry points made almost impossible.
AndrewGPaul wrote:To me, it seemed like the local competitive player base didn't care about Warmachine - they just wanted tournament events. Once Warmachine had a "wobble" in that competion gameplay, everyone moved over to Malifaux almost overnight. Then Guildball, then X-Wing.
LunarSol wrote:A big problem is just that for as great as the rules are, a lot of the industry had caught up. Games like Malifaux, Guild Ball and especially X-Wing all offered the same focus on clean consistent language while being dramatically easier to buy into. Selling people on Warmachine was a tall order, one which PP's SKU bloat and lack of enticing entry points made almost impossible.
Worth noting that Warmachine, Malifaux, Guildball and X-Wing are all direly struggling games at this point. Infinity and Kings of War are the only non-GW minigames that I've heard growing in numbers (tho I'm sure my feed skews things a bit, there could be some new hotness waiting to burst out of the pandemic ...? Stargrave certainly has a lot of hype, even if I really doubt it'll gain much local traction outside of dedicated gaming groups.)
Brief comment on 40k, 8E brought me back to actually playing after leaving the game in 5E. I still think 9E is a good edition, but the codex release schedule is maddening and, frankly, the imbalance is so insane that I can't say 9E has held onto that Best Edition status. Even without the pandemic happening, and even as a strictly casual player, I can't really play 40k until either of my factions' rules release, which will happen at an undisclosed time. That's ... kind of bad for a ruleset. But here I am still watching batreps and still keeping up with the meta, despite being vaguely dissatisfied with the game. (Partially because there's so much content to ingest when it comes to 40k, which is hardly the case for many, many games! Warhammer's strength truly is that it's ubiquitous and eternal.)
EDIT: I actually played the gak out of Kill Team, and have played a few distanced games during the pandemic. But in that case the lack of support from GW is both a blessing and a curse - for those that follow it, the pseudo-9E update they did recently was terrible and very shortsighted. In other words, pretty GeeDubby.
Malifaux seems to be doing as well as its ever been. It just never had the explosion in popularity the others saw and has been consistently fueled by a hardcore niche. It seems to do a solid job of drawing in new players (particularly M3E) but its never gotten the focus of "the herd".
I agree 9th has been a serious regression, though some of that might just be pandemic delays mixed with people forgetting how rocky the early days of 8th were. Space Marines were for a moment impossibly OP before everyone else made them irrelevant and oh those poor Grey Knights. More than anything though, I think GW's recent success has been driven by the ability reliably release something new every week. It's kept the focus on their products and ensured the internet always has something to talk about. Warhammer Community has become one of the most consistent marketing engines I've seen from a single company.
They've also completely conquered the age of one and done distribution. Most of the rest of the industry has been crippled by SKU bloat and a business structure that has no ability to reason to stock old product. GW's push towards loss leader box sets and new army releases that are almost entirely supported by direct orders have turned one of the big problems in the industry (players make most of their purchases initially then massively cut back) into a perpetual cycle that among other things, pulls in new players. How long that can go before burning out remains to be seen.
These days I just play a bit of everything. My focus is on smaller stuff like Malifaux, MonPoc, Infinity, with Crisis Protocol probably being the thing I'm most excited for. I've got 40k/AoS and Warmachine armies, but they require a bit more planning to have everything on hand.
Crisis Protocol! I knew I was forgetting the new hotness. Star Wars Legion seems to be riding high still too?
I do not get a strong vibe from Malifaux's current state, and the MFX thread here in N&R can attest to that. Personally, this has to do with just really disliking the Wyrd plastics and never wanting to build another one ever *he said looking at his huge backlog of MFX to build/sell* I'm actually trying to get back into the game in a small way, because I miss how extremely different it plays from my other games, but that's also largely because virtually all of my gaming club bought into it post-WHFB, while ALL of us have stopped playing it because KOW is where it's at.
Has the MFX thread here ever been THAT lively? Like I said, its not that the game is burning up the charts, just that it feels like its in the same comfortable niche its been since the start of M2E.
M3E is really good for keeping a small force, fwiw. You can really get away with picking a master and just sticking to their keyword models, plus maybe a few versatiles. I sold off a lot of my excess stuff in the transition and moved towards more of a collection of the most fun and flavorful crews regardless of faction.
Cyel wrote:I admit I find it hard to relate to what some of you describe "mk3 was not so great so people went back to WH40K".
I, personally, do not consider WH40K to be a substitute to WM&H any more than Monopoly would be a substitute for me if for some reason I couldn't play Brass or Arkwright or 18XX. So for me it is surprising that for so many players they are really no different and just the fact that both are miniature wargames makes them interchangeable.
Well, when 8th Edition came out and did away with all of 7th Ed's troubles while MK3 started doubling down on Themes, it rather falls flat to players who have both. And as someone said, most already had 40K armies. I was trying to get rid of mine at the time because I was still pissed off at the Grand FAQ from the year before, so I didn't trust the rule makers with it.
Kaptajn Congoboy wrote:That was a part of the game from the very beginning. The Escalation campaign for Mk1 was purely narrative, a way to play through the storyline of the book with some possibility of variation. We did some of it back around 2008-2009 but with first the Superiority and then the Legends releases coming people wanted to play the new stuff and it eventually fell off. Oblivion's campaign system is another attempt to push narrative play after NQ went under, but as you write, local groups have individual preferences. That being said, most local (and we have 3 clubs) attempts at narrative play seem to sputter out no matter the system. Our Infinity: Paradiso campaign also failed, and with a few rare exceptions, narrative play campaigns for 40k locally don't have the legs to survive more than a few games.The ones that manage it are the groups dedicated to narrative play, and they tend to give tournament types and people in the middle (like me) a wide berth. Which is kind of sad. It doesn't help that many campaign systems that try to implement an "XP" or resource gain system barely survive more than four to five games because the gap becomes too big and the losers just give up. That was the fate of the Corellion campaign we did in Armada and I've never seen a Mordheim or Necromunda campaign survive more than four or five rounds either.
There are two types of narrative play, quick scenarios that are not tied down to the tournament scene, and narrative campaigns. I agree that holding up ANY campaign is a challenge as people tend to peter out of it as life interferes. But when no one can get even a quick scenario or alternative size game in besides Steamroller, then things boil down to the most competitive players in the area who only have new Steamrollers moving in to the area as new people to play.
LunarSol wrote:A big part of THAT I put on the relentless focus on tournament play. 2 full sized 50 point (equal to 75 points today) armies was kind of the bare minimum and sadly PP's starters were in no way helping people get there. A big problem is just that for as great as the rules are, a lot of the industry had caught up. Games like Malifaux, Guild Ball and especially X-Wing all offered the same focus on clean consistent language while being dramatically easier to buy into. Selling people on Warmachine was a tall order, one which PP's SKU bloat and lack of enticing entry points made almost impossible.
The sad part is that the relentless focus on tournament play is totally caused by the players, and has little to do with PP.
I can't think of a starter which will put you in a good position to be doing tournament play right out of the box. Either one of two things happens: you get a good sized kit, but they are buried by the meta; OR, they are about one-fifth of what you are going to start out with.
Battleboxes tended to be the worst of both worlds having only a few models to start with, and most of the models being outpaced once you started growing your army. However, in terms of learning the basics of the Focus/Fury mechanics, the Battleboxes were and are still the best places to start, which is why the building league starts with them.
The larger starting boxes, tended to fall in to the first category, offering up enough models to get most of a Steamroller started with, but often were out-paced by the meta. And this is where the Steamroller mind-set continues to counter the efforts of bringing people in, especially if you run in to some of the, "We only play Steamroller here.", mentality who push new players to buy and build without really giving them any decent growing play time.
Boss Salvage wrote:Crisis Protocol! I knew I was forgetting the new hotness. Star Wars Legion seems to be riding high still too?
SWLegion is going pretty strong here in the Phoenix market, it seems. The Facebook page is pretty active at least, some were playing at home, and a few stores that have opened their doors to regular play even have a night dedicated to it. Army-wise it seems similar to WMH, but far less reliant on a key figure for everything (both a strength and a weakness of WMH).
While I have access to the local Crisis Protocol page, I have lost interest in it (I find 2 faction games to be boring) so I don't know how well it survived the store closures.
LunarSol wrote:A big part of THAT I put on the relentless focus on tournament play. 2 full sized 50 point (equal to 75 points today) armies was kind of the bare minimum and sadly PP's starters were in no way helping people get there. A big problem is just that for as great as the rules are, a lot of the industry had caught up. Games like Malifaux, Guild Ball and especially X-Wing all offered the same focus on clean consistent language while being dramatically easier to buy into. Selling people on Warmachine was a tall order, one which PP's SKU bloat and lack of enticing entry points made almost impossible.
The sad part is that the relentless focus on tournament play is totally caused by the players, and has little to do with PP.
I can't think of a starter which will put you in a good position to be doing tournament play right out of the box. Either one of two things happens: you get a good sized kit, but they are buried by the meta; OR, they are about one-fifth of what you are going to start out with.
Battleboxes tended to be the worst of both worlds having only a few models to start with, and most of the models being outpaced once you started growing your army. However, in terms of learning the basics of the Focus/Fury mechanics, the Battleboxes were and are still the best places to start, which is why the building league starts with them.
The larger starting boxes, tended to fall in to the first category, offering up enough models to get most of a Steamroller started with, but often were out-paced by the meta. And this is where the Steamroller mind-set continues to counter the efforts of bringing people in, especially if you run in to some of the, "We only play Steamroller here.", mentality who push new players to buy and build without really giving them any decent growing play time.
All very true.
I think part of the problem on insisting for a need for narrative play is that its not really for beginners either. Generally it takes some experience to understand a game well enough to play a fun narrative experience. What's really needed is a low investment way to play. Single list, small points needs to be available and more importantly needs to feel supported.
While I have access to the local Crisis Protocol page, I have lost interest in it (I find 2 faction games to be boring) so I don't know how well it survived the store closures.
You're in luck! Crisis Protocol has like..... 15 factions now!
On his penultimate article in this series, Phil discusses Minions in Brawlmachine with a suggestion for starting each of the four theme forces they have access to!
I think part of the problem on insisting for a need for narrative play is that its not really for beginners either. Generally it takes some experience to understand a game well enough to play a fun narrative experience. What's really needed is a low investment way to play. Single list, small points needs to be available and more importantly needs to feel supported.
Well, how do you define "supported"?
The Battlebox game is specifically for beginners to learn the ins and outs of Focus/Fury mechanic. So that's the 0 point game.
Line of Sight has been good enough to flesh out a Steamroller-style 25 point game called Brawlmachine. That seems to be well received.
Steamroller exists, and is the go-to for 75 point games.
Privateer Press puts out a narrative league almost every single year, and were putting out narrative scenarios in No Quarter. Funny how we rarely see people actually talking about them when bringing up narrative games.
When I see people talking about WMH support, they come across as wanting specific tight guidelines and scenarios from Privateer Press. Realistically speaking, it is the player base that needs to be supporting these variations to get anything out of it.
While I have access to the local Crisis Protocol page, I have lost interest in it (I find 2 faction games to be boring) so I don't know how well it survived the store closures.
You're in luck! Crisis Protocol has like..... 15 factions now!
I've only seen people reference Heroes and Villains. Are they making distinctions between Avengers and X-Men, AIM and Hydra?
Random question folks, and I apologize if I missed it in the thread (very possible), but can Riot Quest minis be used in Warmahordes? I'm really liking the look of the Karchev/Deathjack2...
On Episode 167 of Line of Sight, Will Hungerford joins the gang to discuss a huge variety of topics. While the current Riot Quest Kickstarter takes a well deserved center stage for the beginning of the episode, the conversation quickly turns to the Crucible Guard Dynamic Update, timelines for the Steamroller 2021 CID, Iron Kingdoms Requiem Development, Wills favorite Brawlmachine list, and much, much more!
godswildcard wrote: Random question folks, and I apologize if I missed it in the thread (very possible), but can Riot Quest minis be used in Warmahordes? I'm really liking the look of the Karchev/Deathjack2...
I think part of the problem on insisting for a need for narrative play is that its not really for beginners either. Generally it takes some experience to understand a game well enough to play a fun narrative experience. What's really needed is a low investment way to play. Single list, small points needs to be available and more importantly needs to feel supported.
Well, how do you define "supported"?
The Battlebox game is specifically for beginners to learn the ins and outs of Focus/Fury mechanic. So that's the 0 point game.
Line of Sight has been good enough to flesh out a Steamroller-style 25 point game called Brawlmachine. That seems to be well received.
Steamroller exists, and is the go-to for 75 point games.
Privateer Press puts out a narrative league almost every single year, and were putting out narrative scenarios in No Quarter. Funny how we rarely see people actually talking about them when bringing up narrative games.
When I see people talking about WMH support, they come across as wanting specific tight guidelines and scenarios from Privateer Press. Realistically speaking, it is the player base that needs to be supporting these variations to get anything out of it.
What I'm saying is that a narrative league is probably a little too hardcore for the kind of support that pulls in new players. They don't need flourishes; they want to play the base game, just smaller. Battlebox games are fun, but don't last long because there's no real support for it. If you've ever watched players play more than a demo on an empty 4x4, things get weird fast. The game really needs a scenario to force engagement as the footsie nature of the game starts to click. By supported I mean that PP needs to promote nominal scenarios for a smaller experience similar to what 40k has been doing with Combat Patrol and Incursion. PP themselves have done a great job with it in Warcaster, and those 3 little scenarios have probably done more to get people to try the game than anything else from people I've talked to.
The problem has always been that once you learn the game, anything less than 75 points just isn't fun and a lot of that is simply that PP has never put the effort anywhere else to force engagement like Steamroller. Without it, the game becomes something of a gentlemen's agreement to move forward and kind of crumbles as soon as anyone backs up (looking at you Caine....). Now, I will say that PP did try with the small table variant where you deployed on your first turn, but that mostly just seemed to show that the game really demands 4' between players to minimize the alpha strike. I'd still like to see scenarios with that kind of focused combat on a 4x4 or 4x3 though, specifically for smaller point games.
While I have access to the local Crisis Protocol page, I have lost interest in it (I find 2 faction games to be boring) so I don't know how well it survived the store closures.
You're in luck! Crisis Protocol has like..... 15 factions now!
I've only seen people reference Heroes and Villains. Are they making distinctions between Avengers and X-Men, AIM and Hydra?
There technically isn't even Heroes and Villains and never was. You can mix and match whatever characters you want. Cap and Red Skull? Sure.
What they do instead is have Affiliations. Certain characters have a Leadership rule on them that gives a global bonus to your team. To unlock it you need more than half of the models on the table to share that character's affiliation. In addition, among the Team Tactics "mini feat" cards are ones that both require you be in affiliation and generally only benefit members of the affiliation. Thus far it's walked a pretty fine line of teams being pretty open to playing favorites but still a big enough benefit that no one ignores them and lots of characters see the table in thematic setups because they help unlock the leadership.
The core set had two Leaders; Cap and Avengers and Red Skull leading the Cabal. It felt a lot like the Legion box set which is probably why people expected the same kind of 2 faction problem. Almost every month has seen new Affiliations added though. Wakanda, Asgaard, Guardians of the Galaxy, Black Order, Inhumans, X-Men, Brotherhood, Criminal Syndicate, Spider-Foes, Web Warriors, Defenders and A-Force currently available. X-Force should be released in the next month or so. You can see the full list here:
xxxBy supported I mean that PP needs to promote nominal scenarios for a smaller experience similar to what 40k has been doing with Combat Patrol and Incursion. PP themselves have done a great job with it in Warcaster, and those 3 little scenarios have probably done more to get people to try the game than anything else from people I've talked to.
So you basically supported what I said about:
Charistoph wrote: When I see people talking about WMH support, they come across as wanting specific tight guidelines and scenarios from Privateer Press. Realistically speaking, it is the player base that needs to be supporting these variations to get anything out of it.
You're not recognizing the responsibility of the player base to actually engage with what is provided. Privateer Press does NOT have to provide everything in order to play at certain levels, even though they have in the past. Brawlmachine is a perfect example of this.
LunarSol wrote: What I'm saying is that a narrative league is probably a little too hardcore for the kind of support that pulls in new players. They don't need flourishes; they want to play the base game, just smaller. Battlebox games are fun, but don't last long because there's no real support for it. If you've ever watched players play more than a demo on an empty 4x4, things get weird fast. The game really needs a scenario to force engagement as the footsie nature of the game starts to click. ...
The odd part is that you can use the scenarios provided in the narrative leagues without tying them in to the larger campaign. This is even better when those scenarios are designed for smaller groups, which Oblivion has several. And it's not like there are not 9 basic scenarios provided in the Prime/Primal that pretty much are handled using the same rules as the average Steamroller or Brawlmachine. The only true limitation is the player group that you are with, and I've seen so many of the old players push in to Steamroller that it becomes sink or swim, and so new players just drop it in favor of other games.
A year and a half ago, a few gentles were willing to play me at 25 points utilizing Steamroller scenarios. They trounced me, as expected, but they were willing to talk to me and try to force me in to a full Steamroller game, and I got a few good licks in. The best game I gave was pretty much decided on The Mage Hunter hitting his Warlock while she was knocked down. Snake eyes pretty much allowed him to win on Scenario as his Legion was faster than my Mercs.
So again I will restate, it is the player base who needs to engage with these lighter games to get people engaged, and it is not encumbant on PP. GW survived for decades with them only providing an occasional nod to the building game, and that is because the players were willing to engage with the smaller games.
LunarSol wrote: The problem has always been that once you learn the game, anything less than 75 points just isn't fun and a lot of that is simply that PP has never put the effort anywhere else to force engagement like Steamroller. Without it, the game becomes something of a gentlemen's agreement to move forward and kind of crumbles as soon as anyone backs up (looking at you Caine....). Now, I will say that PP did try with the small table variant where you deployed on your first turn, but that mostly just seemed to show that the game really demands 4' between players to minimize the alpha strike. I'd still like to see scenarios with that kind of focused combat on a 4x4 or 4x3 though, specifically for smaller point games.
I have seen a lot of experienced players extol Brawlmachine. Maybe its because the limits that are imposed on it, maybe not, I can't say. Most of the recent games in my market are on the other side of town, too far away for me to meet up with, and the one night I can get away is currently Battletech night at a closer location with no one there showing an interest in WMH, even though they recognize the tokens I sometimes use.
I don't really believe you can hoist the job of creating a path for new players on the community. If that happens to happen? Great, but no company should expect to grow sitting around hoping someone will find a way to make their product enticing for them. New players need something to have faith in and "my homebrew scenario" has never really been the kind of thing that sells someone on a game.
Brawlmachine is definitely an outlier in that regard, but no small part of that is due to the amount of effort put not only into the scenarios that drive it, but the marketing behind it. They've done a really great job of it, but its really only necessary because PP failed to recognize the need for something like it themselves.
I'm also probably not being particularly clear with what I mean when I say the narrative scenarios are too hardcore for new players. I'm not referring to the commitment to the league itself, I'm talking about the actual scenarios. New players tend to want to charge in and smash face and the league scenarios tend to overcomplicate that. Part of the reason the Battlebox works on new players is they play it "correctly". Part of the reason Steamroller has always been so popular is that it demands that aggressive clash even to players that have learned they could just back up.
That's really all 25 and 50 point needs; something that requires players to slam in the center, scaled to that game size. The biggest problem I've had with smaller games for the last several years is that the Steamroller scenarios and pushed to spread 75 armies out more and more. Trying to play them with even 50 leads to very scattered armies that can't meaningfully contest and lead to very one sided wins in a lot of situations.
LunarSol wrote: I don't really believe you can hoist the job of creating a path for new players on the community. If that happens to happen? Great, but no company should expect to grow sitting around hoping someone will find a way to make their product enticing for them. New players need something to have faith in and "my homebrew scenario" has never really been the kind of thing that sells someone on a game.
Then you've missed two different points. First, Privateer Press HAS provided several paths to do it, but they've been ignored by people like you for years now, even before Mk 2 was done. Second, any gaming community that wants to grow, will need to make some effort in order to make it enticing to new players. They won't come in on their own.
And as for "my homebrew scenario", that happens in almost every other game system. Dungeons & Dragons is built on the idea. I did it in the 90's with Battletech, even though I had the majority of scenario packs. The average pickup game in 40K can be set to it as a lot of the base scenarios get altered with home-rules based on the players' capacities, to say nothing about all the TC packets.
LunarSol wrote: Brawlmachine is definitely an outlier in that regard, but no small part of that is due to the amount of effort put not only into the scenarios that drive it, but the marketing behind it. They've done a really great job of it, but its really only necessary because PP failed to recognize the need for something like it themselves.
False. They built up the community first, and then proceeded to build Brawlmachine to help build their community even more. They recognized that the Steamroller mentality was depriving them of new players, so developed Brawlmachine to act as a second step that was a bit more flexible than the JML. Oddly enough, it follows the pattern of the Journeyman League (which hasn't been updated since the change to Requisition), and expands on it.
LunarSol wrote: I'm also probably not being particularly clear with what I mean when I say the narrative scenarios are too hardcore for new players. I'm not referring to the commitment to the league itself, I'm talking about the actual scenarios...
Easy to do when you immediately talk about people not following up on campaign and nothing about the scenarios involved.
LunarSol wrote: ..New players tend to want to charge in and smash face and the league scenarios tend to overcomplicate that. Part of the reason the Battlebox works on new players is they play it "correctly". Part of the reason Steamroller has always been so popular is that it demands that aggressive clash even to players that have learned they could just back up.
That's really all 25 and 50 point needs; something that requires players to slam in the center, scaled to that game size. The biggest problem I've had with smaller games for the last several years is that the Steamroller scenarios and pushed to spread 75 armies out more and more. Trying to play them with even 50 leads to very scattered armies that can't meaningfully contest and lead to very one sided wins in a lot of situations.
And while focusing on those Steamroller at 75 scenarios, you missed all the ones in No Quarter and in the Oblivion book. Am I incorrect on that?
And if new players want to just charge in and smash things, wouldn't those narrative scenarios help train them to focus away from the center brawl?
LunarSol wrote: I don't really believe you can hoist the job of creating a path for new players on the community. If that happens to happen? Great, but no company should expect to grow sitting around hoping someone will find a way to make their product enticing for them. New players need something to have faith in and "my homebrew scenario" has never really been the kind of thing that sells someone on a game.
Brawlmachine is definitely an outlier in that regard, but no small part of that is due to the amount of effort put not only into the scenarios that drive it, but the marketing behind it. They've done a really great job of it, but its really only necessary because PP failed to recognize the need for something like it themselves.
I'm also probably not being particularly clear with what I mean when I say the narrative scenarios are too hardcore for new players. I'm not referring to the commitment to the league itself, I'm talking about the actual scenarios. New players tend to want to charge in and smash face and the league scenarios tend to overcomplicate that. Part of the reason the Battlebox works on new players is they play it "correctly". Part of the reason Steamroller has always been so popular is that it demands that aggressive clash even to players that have learned they could just back up.
That's really all 25 and 50 point needs; something that requires players to slam in the center, scaled to that game size. The biggest problem I've had with smaller games for the last several years is that the Steamroller scenarios and pushed to spread 75 armies out more and more. Trying to play them with even 50 leads to very scattered armies that can't meaningfully contest and lead to very one sided wins in a lot of situations.
So I guess I'm not quite understanding what you're saying here. On one hand, you say that Brawlmachine is an outlier and its great. On the other hand you keep saying things like "that's all that 25 and 50 points needs, something that requires players to slam in the center". That's exactly what Brawlmachine is. Are you saying that PP needs to develop something similar?
As far as Brawl being an outlier, I'm reasonably confidant at this point that more players in the world play Brawlmachine than Steamroller, and with how many conventions are requesting us to come run events at brawlmachine scale for late 2021 and early 2022, I think that trend is going to continue.
You make a lot of assumptions. I'd take it more personal, but... I understand.
I was the local PG from the beginning of MK2 through the end of the program and its not really a hat I ever stopped wearing. I've run all the leagues up to and including Oblivion. There's always been demand for them and I'm more than happy to oblige.
The problem has always been that these scenarios just don't spark the same kind of joy out of players I've seen with Steamroller. I've had the fluffiest of bunnies ask me mid event if they could just play a normal game instead of the special scenario PP put out that they asked me to hold the event for. They sound fun on paper, but on the table they seem to detract more than they add, even from players who think that's what they want.
What I've seen for years is that people really like the core game. Building an army and slamming it against an opposing army with almost every important decision funneled through a single character on the board still hums. All scenarios really need to do is enable this, but for years the scenarios we've gotten have increasingly only really worked correctly at 75 points.
So I guess I'm not quite understanding what you're saying here. On one hand, you say that Brawlmachine is an outlier and its great. On the other hand you keep saying things like "that's all that 25 and 50 points needs, something that requires players to slam in the center". That's exactly what Brawlmachine is. Are you saying that PP needs to develop something similar?
As far as Brawl being an outlier, I'm reasonably confidant at this point that more players in the world play Brawlmachine than Steamroller, and with how many conventions are requesting us to come run events at brawlmachine scale for late 2021 and early 2022, I think that trend is going to continue.
Brawlmachine is an outlier in the sense that its a fan created system that's really clicked with players and gained traction with a wider audience. That's all I mean by that. I think a big reason for that is that it focuses on providing the same kind of incentives that drive Steamroller, simply optimized for 25 points instead of 75. It's absolutely something PP needs to focus on, and has really needed for years.
A lot of my feelings just come from trying to scale down things to 50 for a while. Long enough that I was trying to scale it down to 35 (in MK2). Each Steamroller just kept spreading armies thinner and thinner and smaller games turned into fast armies collapsing one side of the board and winning on scenario almost instantly. They just weren't fun at all at anything less than 75. It's also the point when it became incredibly hard to sell people on the game, as they never got to see anything but the full massive investment requirement. I think Brawlmachine has definitely succeeded in providing a viable small scale alternative. I'm just really hoping now for a middle ground that can help bridge the SR crowd with the skirmish set.
Honestly, I should probably just try the Brawlmachine scenarios at 50 points sometime. Just haven't gotten in many games in the last year for obvious reasons.
I'd definitely like to see huge bases at 50 in some sort of limited fashion. They just get so much attention and having fallen rather in love with Crucible Guard I REALLY feel their absence in Brawlmachine.
I am feeling both of you on this. All up in there.
On the one hand, I always wanted to play 50-75 point lists (Mk2-3) because that felt complete, in the sense that I had all the things I wanted in a list. Less than that, and it felt like an important part was missing, and definitely there was no room for a sorta fun unit. (Ahem bloodweavers)
On the other hand, that's a lot of stuff to have and keep track of for a new player, and without a scenario to add a layer of complexity to the game it didn't always go well. Sometimes it is more fun to just play with a handful of critters and robots, but then you run into balance issues. Some models ask questions you can't answer in a small list.
Long way short, I do think the game was tuned more for larger games, both in how spread useful interactions were and how sometimes you need a specific unit to answer a specific problem, and without 2-3 of those units you are really playing rock paper scissors. There were ways to play small games and bring people in, but there wasn't an obvious gradual way. Building lists based on "This unit looks cool!" is a trap, and explaining to new players "Consider copying these net lists and building to that" is a little off putting. Perhaps it shouldn't be, but it is a bit.
LoS_Jaden wrote: After we finish Fallen Corvis up, you might be happy to hear that a specialized 50 point packet is the next thing on our list of "to dos" then
The problem has always been that these scenarios just don't spark the same kind of joy out of players I've seen with Steamroller. I've had the fluffiest of bunnies ask me mid event if they could just play a normal game instead of the special scenario PP put out that they asked me to hold the event for. They sound fun on paper, but on the table they seem to detract more than they add, even from players who think that's what they want.
What I've seen for years is that people really like the core game. Building an army and slamming it against an opposing army with almost every important decision funneled through a single character on the board still hums. All scenarios really need to do is enable this, but for years the scenarios we've gotten have increasingly only really worked correctly at 75 points.
This is why I never got into warmachine. I love the setting and art style of the minis and have friends that were big into it (even wrote for privateer) but the whole slam into each other ala Bravehart battle scene or stand lined up a few inches apart and shoot civil war style is not what I enjoy. I get that you're also trying to protect the warcaster as all of that is going on but every game is basically the same objective and one that is my least favorite in wargaming. I'd much rather have a game designed around scenarios like Infinity or Fallout. I really wanted to like Company of Iron but it just didn't click.
Though they're doing something right with the minis as they've gotten a good amount of money from me despite not liking the core game they're used in. I would like to see them take a stab at the casual "Adventure Wargaming" as Modiphius calls it (Fallout, Rangers of Shadow Deep, 5 Parsecs from Home) as I think they could do a very cool solo/co-op narrative game that would give a lot of use to older and non-meta figures.
LoS_Jaden wrote: After we finish Fallen Corvis up, you might be happy to hear that a specialized 50 point packet is the next thing on our list of "to dos" then
That is great to hear! I keep thinking which scenarios to use for ~50pts events. I was considering some older SR scenarios from early mk3 (75pts armies back then looked like 50pts armies now after all - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bueoMjfPU6o ) or Brawlmachine scenarios, maybe played to 5CP difference, but I am not sure about either.
This Saturday, May 1st, we will be streaming our very first Iron Kingdoms adventure on twitch.tv/loswarmachine!
The Henge Hold Scrolls detailed many events surrounding the Oblivion crisis; the lives and deaths of heroes and villains alike as the Iron Kingdoms we knew was thrown into chaos by the Infernal invasion. Much of these tales we know, but unknown to most, a final scroll, a final tale, was written of these end times.
Aurora's messenger reached the Khadoran airship, the Storm Breaker, with a plea for help. The Cyriss Portal has been secured, but an elite team is needed to fight through dangers unknown to bring it online fully. Will these heroes bring about the salvation of the mortal souls of Immoren... or fail, dooming them to the clutches of the Infernal Masters?
Come check it out at 12:00 (noon) Pacific on Saturday, May 1st, on the Line of Sight twitch stream!
Boss Salvage wrote: Crisis Protocol! I knew I was forgetting the new hotness. Star Wars Legion seems to be riding high still too?
I do not get a strong vibe from Malifaux's current state, and the MFX thread here in N&R can attest to that. Personally, this has to do with just really disliking the Wyrd plastics and never wanting to build another one ever *he said looking at his huge backlog of MFX to build/sell* I'm actually trying to get back into the game in a small way, because I miss how extremely different it plays from my other games, but that's also largely because virtually all of my gaming club bought into it post-WHFB, while ALL of us have stopped playing it because KOW is where it's at.
Everything outside of 40k has become a little more regional in its popularity. Press Ganger program seems more like a net benefit program than loss post pandemic. Maybe even kickstarter a digital High Command game that plays just like a digital card game with match making would be cool.
I think part of the problem on insisting for a need for narrative play is that its not really for beginners either. Generally it takes some experience to understand a game well enough to play a fun narrative experience. What's really needed is a low investment way to play. Single list, small points needs to be available and more importantly needs to feel supported.
Well, how do you define "supported"?
The Battlebox game is specifically for beginners to learn the ins and outs of Focus/Fury mechanic. So that's the 0 point game.
Line of Sight has been good enough to flesh out a Steamroller-style 25 point game called Brawlmachine. That seems to be well received.
Steamroller exists, and is the go-to for 75 point games.
Privateer Press puts out a narrative league almost every single year, and were putting out narrative scenarios in No Quarter. Funny how we rarely see people actually talking about them when bringing up narrative games.
When I see people talking about WMH support, they come across as wanting specific tight guidelines and scenarios from Privateer Press. Realistically speaking, it is the player base that needs to be supporting these variations to get anything out of it.
While I have access to the local Crisis Protocol page, I have lost interest in it (I find 2 faction games to be boring) so I don't know how well it survived the store closures.
You're in luck! Crisis Protocol has like..... 15 factions now!
I've only seen people reference Heroes and Villains. Are they making distinctions between Avengers and X-Men, AIM and Hydra?
Line of Sight, Warmachine U and Qiot Rest doing a great job in this regard. Lormahordes as well.
LunarSol wrote: I don't really believe you can hoist the job of creating a path for new players on the community. If that happens to happen? Great, but no company should expect to grow sitting around hoping someone will find a way to make their product enticing for them. New players need something to have faith in and "my homebrew scenario" has never really been the kind of thing that sells someone on a game.
Then you've missed two different points. First, Privateer Press HAS provided several paths to do it, but they've been ignored by people like you for years now, even before Mk 2 was done. Second, any gaming community that wants to grow, will need to make some effort in order to make it enticing to new players. They won't come in on their own.
And as for "my homebrew scenario", that happens in almost every other game system. Dungeons & Dragons is built on the idea. I did it in the 90's with Battletech, even though I had the majority of scenario packs. The average pickup game in 40K can be set to it as a lot of the base scenarios get altered with home-rules based on the players' capacities, to say nothing about all the TC packets.
LunarSol wrote: Brawlmachine is definitely an outlier in that regard, but no small part of that is due to the amount of effort put not only into the scenarios that drive it, but the marketing behind it. They've done a really great job of it, but its really only necessary because PP failed to recognize the need for something like it themselves.
False. They built up the community first, and then proceeded to build Brawlmachine to help build their community even more. They recognized that the Steamroller mentality was depriving them of new players, so developed Brawlmachine to act as a second step that was a bit more flexible than the JML. Oddly enough, it follows the pattern of the Journeyman League (which hasn't been updated since the change to Requisition), and expands on it.
LunarSol wrote: I'm also probably not being particularly clear with what I mean when I say the narrative scenarios are too hardcore for new players. I'm not referring to the commitment to the league itself, I'm talking about the actual scenarios...
Easy to do when you immediately talk about people not following up on campaign and nothing about the scenarios involved.
LunarSol wrote: ..New players tend to want to charge in and smash face and the league scenarios tend to overcomplicate that. Part of the reason the Battlebox works on new players is they play it "correctly". Part of the reason Steamroller has always been so popular is that it demands that aggressive clash even to players that have learned they could just back up.
That's really all 25 and 50 point needs; something that requires players to slam in the center, scaled to that game size. The biggest problem I've had with smaller games for the last several years is that the Steamroller scenarios and pushed to spread 75 armies out more and more. Trying to play them with even 50 leads to very scattered armies that can't meaningfully contest and lead to very one sided wins in a lot of situations.
And while focusing on those Steamroller at 75 scenarios, you missed all the ones in No Quarter and in the Oblivion book. Am I incorrect on that?
And if new players want to just charge in and smash things, wouldn't those narrative scenarios help train them to focus away from the center brawl?
You make good points.
Outside of the free narrative league content that was coming out every year, PP was realizing historical gameplay scenarios, mini-games, some with maps through NQ and NQ Prime. Without support though, I don't know what people are wanting. I see GW put a lot less work on scenario play than WMH, Malifaux, Infinity, etc. and yet standard is so high. Great source material doesn't always = explosion in player base. Battletech is a testiment to this. You choose an era and even campaign in it. But compared to 40k, popularity is regional.
I really think the sentiment from complainers is more along the lines of, I'm older now, and I like how convenient the 40k scene is and unless I get that level of convenience, I am not coming back.
Which is okay, just seeing endless complaints without any intention to play from this thread in its entirety wigs me out. Ya, I could undertand early days of Mk2 but between LoS's work, Wartable, and PP support the issue seems to be more will to play and life happening than anything PP can solve.
The problem has always been that these scenarios just don't spark the same kind of joy out of players I've seen with Steamroller. I've had the fluffiest of bunnies ask me mid event if they could just play a normal game instead of the special scenario PP put out that they asked me to hold the event for. They sound fun on paper, but on the table they seem to detract more than they add, even from players who think that's what they want.
What I've seen for years is that people really like the core game. Building an army and slamming it against an opposing army with almost every important decision funneled through a single character on the board still hums. All scenarios really need to do is enable this, but for years the scenarios we've gotten have increasingly only really worked correctly at 75 points.
This is why I never got into warmachine. I love the setting and art style of the minis and have friends that were big into it (even wrote for privateer) but the whole slam into each other ala Bravehart battle scene or stand lined up a few inches apart and shoot civil war style is not what I enjoy. I get that you're also trying to protect the warcaster as all of that is going on but every game is basically the same objective and one that is my least favorite in wargaming. I'd much rather have a game designed around scenarios like Infinity or Fallout. I really wanted to like Company of Iron but it just didn't click.
Though they're doing something right with the minis as they've gotten a good amount of money from me despite not liking the core game they're used in. I would like to see them take a stab at the casual "Adventure Wargaming" as Modiphius calls it (Fallout, Rangers of Shadow Deep, 5 Parsecs from Home) as I think they could do a very cool solo/co-op narrative game that would give a lot of use to older and non-meta figures.
" "Adventure Wargaming" as Modiphius calls it (Fallout, Rangers of Shadow Deep, 5 Parsecs from Home)"
Warmachine with something akin to Rangers of Shadow Deep sounds pretty boss.
I don't think people are asking for the popularity of the 40k scene, they are just asking that Warmahordes get back to the level of community it previously had. And really, it is on the company to convince players to spend money on their miniatures.
NinthMusketeer wrote: I don't think people are asking for the popularity of the 40k scene, they are just asking that Warmahordes get back to the level of community it previously had. And really, it is on the company to convince players to spend money on their miniatures.
That's only part of the equation, though. If everyone who is involved with their product is "Steamroller-only", then people who either don't want to do Steamroller, or are just plain brand new and get intimidated by Steamroller, won't bother collecting and/or bringing those collections to play in community areas like the FLGS.
Getting a 75 point list NIB is expensive and represents a considerable investment in time. If you're lucky, you can grab what you want from people selling their collections and getting out of the game, but otherwise, it is a lot to get started with.
This also doesn't include all the information that comes at the new player, from Focus/Fury mechanics, to model rules to all the unique rules that abound on each individual card. When you add a certain charm of "surprise" added on by some players who take pleasure in beating down the noobies, it can make it hard for a game with that reputation to grow.
If you want to talk about Privateer Press having lost the trust of the wholesalers that LGS get their stock from, or their difficulties in getting a cost-effective shipping point in the Euro-sector, then by all means, this is something that is entirely on PP's shoulders. The local scene, though, has been and always will be up to the community, and PP has no control over that, with or without Press Gangers or equivalents.
As an example, a new store just opened up just a few miles from my house. They have a Battletech night. There are some people who have kept up with the game who have started getting that night reserved. This is as far on one side of metropolis as one can get, but the Catalyst Demo Agent (Press Ganger equivalent) is on the other side, and focused his attention there (can't blame him, he lives there). No Demo Agent was needed to get things going, just a bunch of people who wanted to play the game. Over the last 3 weekends since I started going, there were 2 brand new players, 1 returning player (besides me), along with myself and a few old other hats who were getting the game going, plus a couple other new guys who have shown interest on the metro's FB page.
TL;DR If you go through your gaming life expecting the company to provide everything for you to play, you will be disappointed. Be prepared to get out and help as much as you can.
I think PP has more ability to affect the local scene than you give them credit for. New releases for any game out there generate buzz and fuel excitement and more than anything, bring in new players. It has been a long long time since PP released anything that really enticed new players. It's almost entirely been attempts to appease the existing playerbase that increasingly just don't need more stuff.
Releases that make players feel like they're a good jumping on point are huge for any game. The number of people suddenly interested in MCP because of X-Men for example, or every time GW releases one of these army boxes with a really cool unique hero in them. I play a bit of everything and no matter how many demo days or events I run, it's immediately noticeable when there's a new release that gets a lot of hype. These things bring in new players, whether they play other systems and like some new shinies or are complete new to the hobby.
PP needs to signal to people that they should start Warmachine. Everything for years now has been selling the game as this infinite wall with no foothold to climb.
LunarSol wrote: I think PP has more ability to affect the local scene than you give them credit for. New releases for any game out there generate buzz and fuel excitement and more than anything, bring in new players. It has been a long long time since PP released anything that really enticed new players. It's almost entirely been attempts to appease the existing playerbase that increasingly just don't need more stuff.
Releases that make players feel like they're a good jumping on point are huge for any game. The number of people suddenly interested in MCP because of X-Men for example, or every time GW releases one of these army boxes with a really cool unique hero in them. I play a bit of everything and no matter how many demo days or events I run, it's immediately noticeable when there's a new release that gets a lot of hype. These things bring in new players, whether they play other systems and like some new shinies or are complete new to the hobby.
PP needs to signal to people that they should start Warmachine. Everything for years now has been selling the game as this infinite wall with no foothold to climb.
There are two ways to do starting points: new Edition/Mark or all-in-one army sets.
While I won't argue a new edition is warranted, we've already been over the problems with the all-in-one sets in that they rarely stay relevant for very long. I don't think we'll be seeing anything until they get off their Riot Quest kick. I think part of Riot Quest is to provide the funds to keep things going while they decide what to do next. Of course, they could also be looking at refining things with Warcaster so as to decide where they want to take WMH next on a rule scale.
Next problem is their distribution systems. Few wholesalers are providing stuff to the retailers. Even few retailers are providing their stuff in stores now, and haven't for some time.
And finally, if new players still feel blocked by the Steamroller crowd, there is little that Privateer Press can do. I know that there is a big enough crowd of burned players that will talk down new players from getting in to the game for precisely this reason.
Even with all that, you're still relying on a company to do what you cannot orwill not: inspire new players to join. If you can't do that now, it's still going to be hard no matter how "new" and "fresh" new stuff is going to be.
Charistoph wrote: TL;DR If you go through your gaming life expecting the company to provide everything for you to play, you will be disappointed. Be prepared to get out and help as much as you can.
A nice sentiment. Let me tell you how reality works:
Warmahordes is competing for appeal with Warhammer. The models are similarly priced for lower quality, and harder to physically obtain. The Warhammer community is huge and easy to access, the Warmahordes community is... not that. You want to tell people to get out and work so they can enjoy the hobby, while there is another hobby without that requirement right beside it? Don't start any businesses.
If you want to go through life with the naivety of a child as to how the world works fine, but don't expect actual adults to do anything but mock you when you try to imagine you're on some high and mighty platform above us. That you think a company can't affect it's own community is even more laughable.
Charistoph wrote: TL;DR If you go through your gaming life expecting the company to provide everything for you to play, you will be disappointed. Be prepared to get out and help as much as you can.
A nice sentiment. Let me tell you how reality works:
Warmahordes is competing for appeal with Warhammer. The models are similarly priced for lower quality, and harder to physically obtain. The Warhammer community is huge and easy to access, the Warmahordes community is... not that. You want to tell people to get out and work so they can enjoy the hobby, while there is another hobby without that requirement right beside it? Don't start any businesses.
If you want to go through life with the naivety of a child as to how the world works fine, but don't expect actual adults to do anything but mock you when you try to imagine you're on some high and mighty platform above us. That you think a company can't affect it's own community is even more laughable.
So many people see only the absolute in statements. Keep in mind of what you quoted, and I highlighted the significant above. Do not expect the producing company to do everything. This does not mean that the company cannot affect the situation, just that they can't be expected to do EVERYTHING. Even more so if they do not control every event for the game that is put on. It's not like they have an active control on every pickup game there is.
Actually, I find your sentiment naive in thinking that the work of the community is not needed in order for the community to grow. How much does Games Workshop actually do? The answer is, less and less. They used to have official events around the world, but nowadays, most "official" events are put on by local groups or Conventions, and have utilized their own tournament rulesets for years now. They used to have a forum, but now they don't. There are far more forums upkept by individuals and groups with no direct connection with Games Workshop, and the same could be said of Facebook groups.
This isn't to say that producing companies cannot affect the situation. Privateer Press's loss of wholesalers emphasizes this point quite well. However, Privateer Press did not require a person at one of the LGS in my metropolis to state, "We only play Steamroller here." That was all on him and the group at that store. Privateer Press made the Steamroller pamphlet, but does not require it to be the only way of playing the game. Privateer Press made the Journeyman League growth program, but one is not required to use it exclusively to grow the game in your area, even more so with Brawlmachine providing a new growth option.
A nice sentiment. Let me tell you how reality works:
Warmahordes is competing for appeal with Warhammer. The models are similarly priced for lower quality, and harder to physically obtain. The Warhammer community is huge and easy to access, the Warmahordes community is... not that. You want to tell people to get out and work so they can enjoy the hobby, while there is another hobby without that requirement right beside it? Don't start any businesses.
He's not exactly wrong though. For the same reason that live Theatre survives in the era of blockbuster movies and sports other than football are still a thing, there is space for other games. No question though we are dealing with vastly smaller numbers though.
At the end of the day there will be those thst take the easy option, and those who find those gw games attractive. And there will be those that for whatever reason don't want to be involved in the gw bubble or simply want a break or a change- wargamung is not a marriage. It's not cheating to play another game.
With 40k as dominant as it actually is, it will take more legwork to get things moving. This isn't a bad thing or a naive thing, just an realistic assessment.
If you want to go through life with the naivety of a child as to how the world works fine, but don't expect actual adults to do anything but mock you when you try to imagine you're on some high and mighty platform above us. That you think a company can't affect it's own community is even more laughable.
It's not naive, at least to my reading- if yoy want to do.something other than what the popular kids are doing, you'll need to put in a lit more effort. Whether that's worth it can only be determined by you. I don't see that as being on a high and mighty platform and I don't think much of people mocking someone for not doing what the popular kids are doing.
A company can affect its community, but really can only do so much. especially in gaming, its just one side of a two sided coin. with such a social.front end, the community aspect (involvement, divergence or apathy) cannot be undervalued or underestimated either. In real life, community activism often gets things done when polichickens fail or cannot be bothered and community activism is what he's talking about here. Don't dismiss it out of hand.
WM&H definitely lacks an affordable and accessible starting point. The only product that came near were the 2-player starter boxes. Really cheap and contained enough to have a meaningful experience.
Battle boxes are unfortunately not that. Minimum battlegroup doesn't offer anything but the possibility of learning the rules of the game.
LOS had a few articles describing "budget" Brawlmachine forces. I appreciate the effort but it also shows what "budget" means in the world of WM&H - 170$ for 25pt, 13 model skirmish force !!! Wanna know what I've got recently for ASOIAF with that amount of money?
Widely available starter sets with, say 25pts armies (battlegroup, a unit, UA, some solos), somewhere around 80$ would make a lot of people try the game out, be hooked and buy more I think. Even lower quality plastic (like that in battleboxes) would do to make it more affordable for a wider audience.
Cyel wrote: LOS had a few articles describing "budget" Brawlmachine forces. I appreciate the effort but it also shows what "budget" means in the world of WM&H - 170$ for 25pt, 13 model skirmish force !!!
I had the same thought when those articles went up - I've got a 25 pt Menoth force I'd like to play, but $200 new (and a ton of work)* for it means I'm more likely to stick to my existing minis and just play Menoth online, if that's a thing I really need.
It feels relevant to look at how Warcaster has been rolled out, since we're talking about PP's efforts to get people to play a game they're more actively investing in, not the massive, overburdened ship that is Warmachine. Personally, I failed to see much value in the Kickstarters (the discount wasn't steep enough compared to KS shipping, the stretch goals were IIRC in fact just more add-ons and I knew I'll eventually be able to pick the game up with some kind of discount if I just wait). At $70 USD the starters seem ... ok? I wish they were resin and not metal, but I'll take metal over restic, especially PP's restic. It seems pretty clear you'll want much more than that starter, but I'm going to assume that PP has built the missions and game to scale up from that starting point? Or maybe I'm just so out of touch with Warcaster that there's already a scene of people who demand to only play whatever the equivalent of 75 points is
* I'mma be real here: modern GW pricing is also preposterous for an army-scale wargame, which I usually justify because they make the best plastic wargaming kits available, but I've recently come to terms with as a major impediment to Running What You Want. Like, I feel for Ork players, who have to pay $$$$ to field an army that also sucks, versus marine players who have to pay $$/$$$ for an army that's competent to great. Feels like simple economics, while also being a bummer. Outside of Howlers, I'm not quite sure if PP stacks up the same way, plus the occasional hemorrhaging of the secondary market helps make WMH more affordable.
Charistoph wrote: TL;DR If you go through your gaming life expecting the company to provide everything for you to play, you will be disappointed. Be prepared to get out and help as much as you can.
A nice sentiment. Let me tell you how reality works:
Warmahordes is competing for appeal with Warhammer. The models are similarly priced for lower quality, and harder to physically obtain. The Warhammer community is huge and easy to access, the Warmahordes community is... not that. You want to tell people to get out and work so they can enjoy the hobby, while there is another hobby without that requirement right beside it? Don't start any businesses.
If you want to go through life with the naivety of a child as to how the world works fine, but don't expect actual adults to do anything but mock you when you try to imagine you're on some high and mighty platform above us. That you think a company can't affect it's own community is even more laughable.
Good points on why Press Ganger program needs a relaunch. Wyrd has one, Mantic has one, don't know why PP discontinued. I don't know maybe it has to do with Seattle and Antifa presence "I am a press ganger ego I need pay". If so, come down to Texas!
Widely available starter sets with, say 25pts armies (battlegroup, a unit, UA, some solos), somewhere around 80$ would make a lot of people try the game out, be hooked and buy more I think. Even lower quality plastic (like that in battleboxes) would do to make it more affordable for a wider audience.
I agree on the first part, but hard disagree on the second. If PP wants to recover any sort of market share(and appeal to current/former Warhammer players), they need to ditch the cheap, lower quality plastics and move on. Even less popular games like Bolt Action and Konflict '47 have better plastics than the pvc stuff that Privateer Press offers. Before they shut their forums down, there were complaints for literal years about the plastics quality, and I thought when the company started slowly introducing HIPS miniatures that they were moving on the right path. Now obviously they've had some sort of setback with their Chinese production facility - I've heard something about the facility refusing to release various molds back to PP's control - but that's a setback they need to overcome. As it currently stands, you can't expect to charge premium prices for subpar quality plastics, no matter how good your game rules are.
Similiar situation just happened to Telsa. When will people learn. PP is going to lose their IP to China just like they lost control of MonPoc to Hollywood for years. I guess there is a light, we could all be playing Warmachine, Chinese Communist Party WMH's.
Charistoph wrote: TL;DR If you go through your gaming life expecting the company to provide everything for you to play, you will be disappointed. Be prepared to get out and help as much as you can.
A nice sentiment. Let me tell you how reality works:
Warmahordes is competing for appeal with Warhammer. The models are similarly priced for lower quality, and harder to physically obtain. The Warhammer community is huge and easy to access, the Warmahordes community is... not that. You want to tell people to get out and work so they can enjoy the hobby, while there is another hobby without that requirement right beside it? Don't start any businesses.
If you want to go through life with the naivety of a child as to how the world works fine, but don't expect actual adults to do anything but mock you when you try to imagine you're on some high and mighty platform above us. That you think a company can't affect it's own community is even more laughable.
Good points on why Press Ganger program needs a relaunch. Wyrd has one, Mantic has one, don't know why PP discontinued. I don't know maybe it has to do with Seattle and Antifa presence "I am a press ganger ego I need pay". If so, come down to Texas!
Widely available starter sets with, say 25pts armies (battlegroup, a unit, UA, some solos), somewhere around 80$ would make a lot of people try the game out, be hooked and buy more I think. Even lower quality plastic (like that in battleboxes) would do to make it more affordable for a wider audience.
I agree on the first part, but hard disagree on the second. If PP wants to recover any sort of market share(and appeal to current/former Warhammer players), they need to ditch the cheap, lower quality plastics and move on. Even less popular games like Bolt Action and Konflict '47 have better plastics than the pvc stuff that Privateer Press offers. Before they shut their forums down, there were complaints for literal years about the plastics quality, and I thought when the company started slowly introducing HIPS miniatures that they were moving on the right path. Now obviously they've had some sort of setback with their Chinese production facility - I've heard something about the facility refusing to release various molds back to PP's control - but that's a setback they need to overcome. As it currently stands, you can't expect to charge premium prices for subpar quality plastics, no matter how good your game rules are.
Similiar situation just happened to Telsa. When will people learn. PP is going to lose their IP to China just like they lost control of MonPoc to Hollywood for years. I guess there is a light, we could all be playing Warmachine, Chinese Communist Party WMH's.
Cyel wrote: LOS had a few articles describing "budget" Brawlmachine forces. I appreciate the effort but it also shows what "budget" means in the world of WM&H - 170$ for 25pt, 13 model skirmish force !!!
I had the same thought when those articles went up - I've got a 25 pt Menoth force I'd like to play, but $200 new (and a ton of work)* for it means I'm more likely to stick to my existing minis and just play Menoth online, if that's a thing I really need.
It feels relevant to look at how Warcaster has been rolled out, since we're talking about PP's efforts to get people to play a game they're more actively investing in, not the massive, overburdened ship that is Warmachine. Personally, I failed to see much value in the Kickstarters (the discount wasn't steep enough compared to KS shipping, the stretch goals were IIRC in fact just more add-ons and I knew I'll eventually be able to pick the game up with some kind of discount if I just wait). At $70 USD the starters seem ... ok? I wish they were resin and not metal, but I'll take metal over restic, especially PP's restic. It seems pretty clear you'll want much more than that starter, but I'm going to assume that PP has built the missions and game to scale up from that starting point? Or maybe I'm just so out of touch with Warcaster that there's already a scene of people who demand to only play whatever the equivalent of 75 points is
* I'mma be real here: modern GW pricing is also preposterous for an army-scale wargame, which I usually justify because they make the best plastic wargaming kits available, but I've recently come to terms with as a major impediment to Running What You Want. Like, I feel for Ork players, who have to pay $$$$ to field an army that also sucks, versus marine players who have to pay $$/$$$ for an army that's competent to great. Feels like simple economics, while also being a bummer. Outside of Howlers, I'm not quite sure if PP stacks up the same way, plus the occasional hemorrhaging of the secondary market helps make WMH more affordable.
Warcaster is not built like a regular wargame. 15 models sit on a bench (repeats can only be 4 not counting characters) and then you use focus and void gates to pay models to enter the board. Most of the time you have 5 models on any given moment. When models "die" they go on the bench.
Mr. Grey wrote: As it currently stands, you can't expect to charge premium prices for subpar quality plastics, no matter how good your game rules are.
I don't know ... I think new players would rather start with affordable entry level than swag. They don't know if the game is worth it yet. In GW terms: new players buy inexpensive "start collecting" sets and space marine tactical squads, vets buy Nagashes and Baneblades. If you want to convince someone to try, you tell them it's not that expenisve to start, not that the models are exquisitly detailed. Newbies often don't even notice these differences, you should see what people on boardgame forums consider good models or good paintjobs.
I don't think there's anything wrong with having cheap starter sets of average quality to pull people in. For instance ASOIAF is doing pretty well with really average models, of more boardgame than wargame quality.
Widely available starter sets with, say 25pts armies (battlegroup, a unit, UA, some solos), somewhere around 80$ would make a lot of people try the game out, be hooked and buy more I think. Even lower quality plastic (like that in battleboxes) would do to make it more affordable for a wider audience.
I agree on the first part, but hard disagree on the second. If PP wants to recover any sort of market share(and appeal to current/former Warhammer players), they need to ditch the cheap, lower quality plastics and move on. Even less popular games like Bolt Action and Konflict '47 have better plastics than the pvc stuff that Privateer Press offers. Before they shut their forums down, there were complaints for literal years about the plastics quality, and I thought when the company started slowly introducing HIPS miniatures that they were moving on the right path. Now obviously they've had some sort of setback with their Chinese production facility - I've heard something about the facility refusing to release various molds back to PP's control - but that's a setback they need to overcome. As it currently stands, you can't expect to charge premium prices for subpar quality plastics, no matter how good your game rules are.
Maybe they should talk to whoever does Catalyst Gaming Labs' miniatures for their Battletech starters and new Lance/Star Packs. The detail on them is actually quite good, and they come assembled!
Charistoph wrote: TL;DR If you go through your gaming life expecting the company to provide everything for you to play, you will be disappointed. Be prepared to get out and help as much as you can.
A nice sentiment. Let me tell you how reality works:
Warmahordes is competing for appeal with Warhammer. The models are similarly priced for lower quality, and harder to physically obtain. The Warhammer community is huge and easy to access, the Warmahordes community is... not that. You want to tell people to get out and work so they can enjoy the hobby, while there is another hobby without that requirement right beside it? Don't start any businesses.
If you want to go through life with the naivety of a child as to how the world works fine, but don't expect actual adults to do anything but mock you when you try to imagine you're on some high and mighty platform above us. That you think a company can't affect it's own community is even more laughable.
So many people see only the absolute in statements. Keep in mind of what you quoted, and I highlighted the significant above. Do not expect the producing company to do everything. This does not mean that the company cannot affect the situation, just that they can't be expected to do EVERYTHING. Even more so if they do not control every event for the game that is put on. It's not like they have an active control on every pickup game there is.
You started this by depicting my sentiment as a polarized absolute that is completely different from my opinion, so I assumed that was the level you wanted to converse on. If you want your positions to be treated with respect to nuance do the same for others.
Charistoph wrote: TL;DR If you go through your gaming life expecting the company to provide everything for you to play, you will be disappointed. Be prepared to get out and help as much as you can.
A nice sentiment. Let me tell you how reality works:
Warmahordes is competing for appeal with Warhammer. The models are similarly priced for lower quality, and harder to physically obtain. The Warhammer community is huge and easy to access, the Warmahordes community is... not that. You want to tell people to get out and work so they can enjoy the hobby, while there is another hobby without that requirement right beside it? Don't start any businesses.
If you want to go through life with the naivety of a child as to how the world works fine, but don't expect actual adults to do anything but mock you when you try to imagine you're on some high and mighty platform above us. That you think a company can't affect it's own community is even more laughable.
So many people see only the absolute in statements. Keep in mind of what you quoted, and I highlighted the significant above. Do not expect the producing company to do everything. This does not mean that the company cannot affect the situation, just that they can't be expected to do EVERYTHING. Even more so if they do not control every event for the game that is put on. It's not like they have an active control on every pickup game there is.
You started this by depicting my sentiment as a polarized absolute that is completely different from my opinion, so I assumed that was the level you wanted to converse on. If you want your positions to be treated with respect to nuance do the same for others.
You said:
NinthMusketeer wrote:I don't think people are asking for the popularity of the 40k scene, they are just asking that Warmahordes get back to the level of community it previously had. And really, it is on the company to convince players to spend money on their miniatures.
I highlighted the point. You did not represent this as not needing anything from the community. While a company can do a lot to influence something, if a community is not there to accept it, what the company does will not matter.
Good points on why Press Ganger program needs a relaunch. Wyrd has one, Mantic has one, don't know why PP discontinued. I don't know maybe it has to do with Seattle and Antifa presence "I am a press ganger ego I need pay". If so, come down to Texas!
The official reason given is the press ganger program got to large and they didn't have the resources to properly manage it. Think it was similar to the Book line where they got someone to run it, that person did very well then they left the company and PP didn't really have the ability to bring someone in to take over (probably cost related as replacements would need to be more experienced to run existing projects then people with no experience starting something from scratch) but instead handed it off to someone else in the company that didn't have the time to properly deal with the extra work so they killed it.
Covid not withstanding, the fact that we are still discussing the same issues, problems, pains and blockers around WM/H and PP without any real sight of resolution or improvement many years after Mk3 launch says it all. In fact its arguably got much worse.
Looking back over all the posts here and on social media its just depressing. Iv just reached the end of my willingness to let it take up my time.
Iv made the decision over the weekend that I will just continue to paint the stuff i already have. I will check back in and reassess my involvement with the game once I have completed my house move over summer. Depending on how things are with my new location and the game in general i'll either pick it up as my second game or walk away entirely for now.
I hope that PP can improve things but im another once loyal and enthusiastic player on the verge of calling it a day.
I'm actually writing up a wee homebrew at the moment.
Think late 19th century skirmish, strongly inspired by infinity and simplified like warcry. It's the game the guys in my group have wanted for a long time, so I might as well try my hand at it. I don't expect it to be very good, but that's nearly besides the point.
I'll be using my wmh infantry models for this, and instead of a warcaster, led by a gun mage and a sergeant. :p
Very much not-wmh at all but at least for me, a way to upcycle them.
Deadnight wrote: I'm actually writing up a wee homebrew at the moment.
Think late 19th century skirmish, strongly inspired by infinity and simplified like warcry. It's the game the guys in my group have wanted for a long time, so I might as well try my hand at it. I don't expect it to be very good, but that's nearly besides the point.
I'll be using my wmh infantry models for this, and instead of a warcaster, led by a gun mage and a sergeant. :p
Very much not-wmh at all but at least for me, a way to upcycle them.
Deadnight wrote: I'm actually writing up a wee homebrew at the moment.
Think late 19th century skirmish, strongly inspired by infinity and simplified like warcry. It's the game the guys in my group have wanted for a long time, so I might as well try my hand at it. I don't expect it to be very good, but that's nearly besides the point.
I'll be using my wmh infantry models for this, and instead of a warcaster, led by a gun mage and a sergeant. :p
Very much not-wmh at all but at least for me, a way to upcycle them.
Sunno wrote: Covid not withstanding, the fact that we are still discussing the same issues, problems, pains and blockers around WM/H and PP without any real sight of resolution or improvement many years after Mk3 launch says it all. In fact its arguably got much worse.
Looking back over all the posts here and on social media its just depressing. Iv just reached the end of my willingness to let it take up my time.
Iv made the decision over the weekend that I will just continue to paint the stuff i already have. I will check back in and reassess my involvement with the game once I have completed my house move over summer. Depending on how things are with my new location and the game in general i'll either pick it up as my second game or walk away entirely for now.
I hope that PP can improve things but im another once loyal and enthusiastic player on the verge of calling it a day.
Congratulations on the house move. Sounds more like life happening than the game itself. Social media is fun, but you can't let it dictate your reality. From what I gather between these forums (which usually have old dudes) and the new blood it really sounds like the community consists of older crowd lamenting that they don't play anymore usually this has more to do with family/career growth intermixed with nostolgia of good times lost, and young people who are enjoying the game.
Mr. Grey wrote: As it currently stands, you can't expect to charge premium prices for subpar quality plastics, no matter how good your game rules are.
I don't know ... I think new players would rather start with affordable entry level than swag. They don't know if the game is worth it yet. In GW terms: new players buy inexpensive "start collecting" sets and space marine tactical squads, vets buy Nagashes and Baneblades. If you want to convince someone to try, you tell them it's not that expenisve to start, not that the models are exquisitly detailed. Newbies often don't even notice these differences, you should see what people on boardgame forums consider good models or good paintjobs.
I don't think there's anything wrong with having cheap starter sets of average quality to pull people in. For instance ASOIAF is doing pretty well with really average models, of more boardgame than wargame quality.
Even GW's Start Collecting boxes are their own full-quality minis, though. What I'm trying to get at is that quite often, Privateer Press is charging near-GW prices for miniatures that aren't even close to that quality, and even an entry-level set should be at least decent.
I can see that between online discounts and occassional PP online store deals the price point is pretty good. I guess it could be done at the retailer level but distribution is so bad at the hobby level right now unless you are GW or WOTC it seems like PP is more invested on individual retailers and those relationships.
I think when we were seeing super low WMH model prices, 1) China wasn't screwing foreign companies for their IPs as much 2) online store policy was super loose. Just like Tesla recently learned the price of buying into the China dream without having a politician in you pocket, PP is learning the value of in house plastic casting.
Sunno wrote: Covid not withstanding, the fact that we are still discussing the same issues, problems, pains and blockers around WM/H and PP without any real sight of resolution or improvement many years after Mk3 launch says it all. In fact its arguably got much worse.
You're not wrong. PP presence was dropping too fast for years now. The last year didn't help at all, but they were out of most of my metro's LGS had clearanced them out before anyone had heard of lockdowns.
I can see that between online discounts and occassional PP online store deals the price point is pretty good. I guess it could be done at the retailer level but distribution is so bad at the hobby level right now unless you are GW or WOTC it seems like PP is more invested on individual retailers and those relationships.
Maybe it's a US thing.
Here's my preferred Polish online store and it's prices (lower than the other 2 that also sell WM&H)
Why would a gaming store put any effort into promoting or hosting WMH when they can't sell the product line? It would just be spending money and labor with little to no return.
There’s a similar discussion happening on somethingawful right now, I think this quote by the poster stabbington there sums it up pretty well:
Honestly the big problem at the heart of all of it is that Privateer's hot combo of miserably egomaniacal leadership and poverty wages in the increasingly expensive Seattle metro area led to basically every bit of design and logistics talent they've ever had bailing on them over the period encompassing the end of Mk2/beginning of Mk3. Killing their relationship with game stores by getting addicted to the convention/internet pre-release dollar (guaranteeing that their core, hardcore audience bought direct instead of from the stores that should be stocking things with the hope of growing the game), their piss-poor output of hard plastic models, Mk3's rules being undercooked on release, their absurdly bad european allocation of Mk3 launch product, it all traces back to an inability to retain talented people because the bosses are too up their own asses and the money isn't good enough to put up with the bs.
Kommisar wrote: There’s a similar discussion happening on somethingawful right now, I think this quote by the poster stabbington there sums it up pretty well:
Would yoy mind pm'ing me a link - I wouldn't mind seeing an alternative pov.
On topic,I've heard less than stellar chat about working at pp.
I recently tried to rejoin Warmahordes with my Trollbloods, because god damn it the MOUNTAIN KING (caps needed) is one of my fave models of all time.
I got up to date with the rules, played at 50 pts aaaand... wow I forgot how much I hated Caster Kill insta losses and how themes basically made my collection from mk2 split up and unable to fit neatly in any with the annoying "free models" which I've hated in any game system ever.
I'd love to play more of it, but the game needs a retool from the ground up, and Im nearly convinced PP doesn't have it in them. They've pretty much been cut off from most local hobby stores who refuse to even try and order in PP products
Wages causing people to leave is understandable. But it's not like this hobby is aflush in money unless you're a higher up in GW (though I understand they pay better then most companies for in house staff, just not as much as they could). Margins are really low on lots of this stuff because we balk at paying anymore for it.
I do find it funny how much people hate Matt. I think too much gets blamed on him as he's the public face and easy to hate on pretty much to a crazy conspiracy level. It makes it hard to take any other statement included with such casual hate towards him as being of any value because I've never heard anything that's even somewhat believable proof that he's this evil, egotistical human being out to destroy everyone favorite game. People like that aren't good at hiding it and if it were true Matt would make Kevin Siembieda look respectable.
I've always just gotten the impression he's more interested in art and world building than managing a product line. He's "accomplished" the whole minis game creation thing and is looking for more. He's just butting up against an industry that isn't nearly as popular as it needs to be to take him where he wants to go.
I think the wages issue is likely an issue for where they are based, being in an expensive region to operate in lumps increased costs not just on the business but on the employees as well. GW might be in the UK but they are far far away from the mega-cities like London.
From what I gather PP has had a rising problem with it because the area they are in has steadily grown more and more affluent which means prices on a lot of things have likely risen locally as well. So wages that worked 5 or 10 years ago now can't cut it.
Of course relocation of a whole business can be a huge problem. You can't just up sticks and move several counties over to a low cost area and expect everyone to follow you.
Of course, they can't just keep sticks in place and expect everyone to follow them, either It might work out to be low opportunity cost for them. They at least have an advantage in being in an industry that is very appealing for certain people to be in.
It is a bit sad that, as others noted, the issues of PP have been on repeat for years. I stopped paying attention to them about 3 years ago a bit after MK3 came out, and I find I can step right back into the conversation without ever asking "Wait, what happened?" Still losing some key employees, fumbling about community wise, still producing expensive, subpar models from inferior materials, still a pain to buy locally, etc. Some of those problems as fixable, some might not be, I don't know. I hope they get their act together, or some other company takes up the reins, as I do miss the game. As much as I dislike most of the models in the range, the game was good enough to keep me interested in buying them.
PP found it's niche: the small isolated "survivor" communities of WMH players in the US that still play. It's probably enough to keep lights on, just,but they almost certainly lack the capital to break out again...and they're fighting against the Page 5 legacy, which isn't helping.
I bet in 5 years time we'll still be here (hopefully!) and PP will be in the same spot. The question is will it be here with all of it's games...
Overread wrote: I think the wages issue is likely an issue for where they are based, being in an expensive region to operate in lumps increased costs not just on the business but on the employees as well. GW might be in the UK but they are far far away from the mega-cities like London.
From what I gather PP has had a rising problem with it because the area they are in has steadily grown more and more affluent which means prices on a lot of things have likely risen locally as well. So wages that worked 5 or 10 years ago now can't cut it.
Of course relocation of a whole business can be a huge problem. You can't just up sticks and move several counties over to a low cost area and expect everyone to follow you.
I think this was why PP relocated out of the Seattle/Bellevue area and are now located in a more rural area on land that they own. Costs of operating in that area were getting too intense, on top of the usual problems with the area like packs of roving homeless teens, and Antifa deciding they need to fight the power by burning businesses to the ground while never actually taking the fight to centers of power.
There some creators on YT who are over on work visa or green card and they do before and after videos of what the place used to look like. It is interesting to see how people from other countries who live in the area see the situation from the ground.
I would be surprised if PP could hold another Lock and Load in that town due to the situation there.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Cronch wrote: PP found it's niche: the small isolated "survivor" communities of WMH players in the US that still play. It's probably enough to keep lights on, just,but they almost certainly lack the capital to break out again...and they're fighting against the Page 5 legacy, which isn't helping.
I bet in 5 years time we'll still be here (hopefully!) and PP will be in the same spot. The question is will it be here with all of it's games...
For me the problem happened when they gave up Page 5. Things grew under Page 5, they didn't shrink. That happened with PP gave up its punk, in your face, alternative image to follow GW's foot steps. They haven't gotten to the same level of audience pandering as some other companies like WOTC to get the younger woke audience, but not everyone wants to be woke or have your standard vanilla corporate experience with a product.
As a brand you always double down on audience and experience your product provides. You never vanilla-ify it when there are other vanilla options out there and are market dominate. It wasn't like PP was cratering under Page 5 and when they removed it in MK3 they had a rush of consumers who were just waiting for PP to toe the woke line and left after thinking "what is the problematic legacy of Page 5"?
Page 5 gave PP a huge audience with military, small business owners, civilian rebellious types from the hacker-space and others. When Page 5 was removed in Mk3, I remember alot of people from those backgrounds being iffy about the future of PP.
If PP was just going to vanilla-ify their brand and follow the footsteps of GW instead of being innovative, what was the point? PP was the same company that did a CID process when working on Mk2 when the industry didn't even have a term for it. Open play test was a digital term.
Talk to any aging punk rocker, counter culture is hard to keep up.
Page 5 blew up in their face, it was used as an excuse to be a jerk to your opponent, to play obviously unfair combos and then laugh in your opponents face.
it doesnt matter what the intent or the true meaning of page 5 was, people used it to be jerks.
They haven't gotten to the same level of audience pandering
That's a very weird way to say they're failing to find an audience. Which is sort of the whole point of running a company in capitalism.
Under page 5 PP grew...and then they captured the whole market of people who care about winning Very Much. And models, unlike burgers, aren't very perishable, so they had to find new people to keep selling to. But by that time WMH had a reputation...and here we are.
Monkeysloth wrote: Wages causing people to leave is understandable. But it's not like this hobby is aflush in money unless you're a higher up in GW (though I understand they pay better then most companies for in house staff, just not as much as they could). Margins are really low on lots of this stuff because we balk at paying anymore for it.
I do find it funny how much people hate Matt. I think too much gets blamed on him as he's the public face and easy to hate on pretty much to a crazy conspiracy level. It makes it hard to take any other statement included with such casual hate towards him as being of any value because I've never heard anything that's even somewhat believable proof that he's this evil, egotistical human being out to destroy everyone favorite game. People like that aren't good at hiding it and if it were true Matt would make Kevin Siembieda look respectable.
I don't hate Matt, he is a fantastic world builder. The guy is like the Elon Musk of world building. His move to Creative Director from head of the company was a good thing. But I think him and his wife need to loosen the riens a bit more. Great IP but too many misteps in managing it.
1. Lost rights to publish MonPoc in the early 2010's when MonPoc was at the height of its popularity (it was bigger than MK1 WMH) due to a failed movie deal and trusting Hollywood lawyers. You are an indie product, start off by networking with indie film companies.
2. Video game launch was over ambitious and White Moon Dreams or whatever basically conned the player base and PP out of money to launched a failed gaming studio. Should have just done a High Command digital card game or something like Battletech from Harebrain Schemes or an IKRPG video game. With a healthy apology and some scaled back ambitious they could still KS a digital game. I think most people understand that White Moon Dreams oversold and scammed PP and their audience and if PP shows lessons learned. I think a RQ overhead display game or even a IKRPG game under their old system would be great.
3. Gave up on open play test for MK3, the process that actually put PP on the map. Decided to do everything in house. Made the launch a total fail. And they ended up having to go back to it anyway with CID.
4. Killed PG program instead of relaunching. Ya, WOTC lawsuit was a lesson but an okay lawyer could have provided them a modified boiler plate license agreement for PG's to sign in order to participate.
5. Killed online stores. Not every store carries PP products and some people live in places where stores are far away in the U.S. Online stores made the product available to people outside of Seattle, like in rural USA and the rest of the world.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Kinda of a wierd flex, looking at the new communities out there, I don't hear any complaints about new players looking to get into the game. They have already established new communities. Most players in the community at this point are new players.
I hear alot from old players looking to get into the game and complaining about Page 5 for some reason, when it is more love-hate nostolgia sourced from life happening and regretting it for some reason.
Beause the scene is competitive is a strange flex. Any less competitive than any GW scene, or any other IP worth playing in the market?
As someone with a career, my own family, and property, competitive players never bothered me because we all choose where to put our energy into and what to be good at. I can't remember the last time I won a game.
If anything Page 5 was a working class joe magic circle. It allowed the people who wanted to be competitive and to be their best the encouragement to do so and the rest of us who drink beers and lose every weekend could enjoy the experience, Page 5 also kept away the worst kind of audience.
The one that wants to win with no real effort (which probably speaks alot to behaviours outside of game) and is very fragile. Who wants that as a customer base? Sounds like standing on sand during a hurricane.
The potentially triggering and problematic legacy of Page 5 is not what hurt the company. It was a whole history of IP mismanagement. The good thing is PP can and has been fixing it, but they need to be bolder. Especially with Co-Vid and everyone holding on to their money to see if the entire market is going to collapse.
Gir Spirit Bane wrote: I recently tried to rejoin Warmahordes with my Trollbloods, because god damn it the MOUNTAIN KING (caps needed) is one of my fave models of all time.
I got up to date with the rules, played at 50 pts aaaand... wow I forgot how much I hated Caster Kill insta losses and how themes basically made my collection from mk2 split up and unable to fit neatly in any with the annoying "free models" which I've hated in any game system ever.
I'd love to play more of it, but the game needs a retool from the ground up, and Im nearly convinced PP doesn't have it in them. They've pretty much been cut off from most local hobby stores who refuse to even try and order in PP products
As a hobbiest I like the themes. Keeps the aethetic cohesive like we see with 40k factions and mini-factions. And Warmachine without caster kill as one of the win conditions. Why even play? Sounds like every other game on the market.
1. Lost rights to publish MonPoc in the early 2010's when MonPoc was at the height of its popularity (it was bigger than MK1 WMH) due to a failed movie deal and trusting Hollywood lawyers. You are an indie product, start off by networking with indie film companies.
There's really no proof of this. The game died when literally every other prepaint line died. Costs to produce them became completely unreasonable and the whole industry went under over a few years. There's no reason to believe PP could keep producing the game when the biggest companies in the industry stopped producing theirs a the same time.
As far as Page 5 is concerned, I get what you're saying. The attitude was what was important and losing that hurts. The language itself was toned down in the MK2 version, and honestly, I never heard a complaint about that version. Every time Page 5 comes up, it seems to come from someone who had a bad experience in MK1 and never let it go. Half of the time, it comes from someone who heard about someone who had a bad experience in MK1 and never let it go. It may simply be that Page 5 gives something to attach an unpleasant experience to. It's certainly not an experience created by Page 5 itself. I've found it just about everywhere.
hotsauceman1 wrote:Talk to any aging punk rocker, counter culture is hard to keep up.
Page 5 blew up in their face, it was used as an excuse to be a jerk to your opponent, to play obviously unfair combos and then laugh in your opponents face.
it doesnt matter what the intent or the true meaning of page 5 was, people used it to be jerks.
Page 5 did not blow up in their face. If it did, the game wouldn't have reached Mk 2. Mk 2's Page 5 wasn't quite the same and even elucidated on each point, and that one was 6 years old when Mk 3 started and people started dropping WMH.
To quote Mk 2 Page 5: Page 5 is not an excuse.
They dropped Page 5 in Mk 3, but people still dropped WMH. If anything, history points to Page 5 being needed more than a hinderance.
How many people playing today or who played in the early days of Mk 3, ever read Prime Mk 1 and its Page 5? More than likely, more read Mk 2's Page 5, if they read any of them at all. Heck, it took me a while just to find a copy of the Mk 1 to actually be able to read it.
Page 5 was not an excuse during Mk 1. It was explicitly stated to not be an excuse in Mk 2. it is too old for it to be an excuse today when it doesn't even exist as such in the current edition and those who did play under the original are now 11 years older, at least. If anyone wants to keep pushing Page 5 as an excuse, I'll point them back to Mk 2's and it will explain it perfectly.
And yet ironically anyone doing that was doing everything against the spirit of page 5.
page 5 also stated that it was never an excuse. It was never a license to diminish another player, it was not permission to be a jackass in the name of competition, or a shield to hide behind.
It ended by saying respect each other because we are all here out of love for a great game.
Mk2 page 5 was empowering in a lot of ways. I really missed it when they took.it out.
I did read the Prime mk1 page 5. And it was an excuse. And in mk2 they toned it down, but by that point you managed to foster a whole community focused on WAAC and everyone and their mother knew what Page5 meant in practice. You might've soiled your pants once, 5 years ago, but you better believe the whole workplace will forever know you as Stinkypants.
Cronch wrote: I did read the Prime mk1 page 5. And it was an excuse. And in mk2 they toned it down, but by that point you managed to foster a whole community focused on WAAC and everyone and their mother knew what Page5 meant in practice.
This. It was "cool" and "edgy" when it came out. Now, even with the disclaimers, it's a relic of a bygone era, and good riddance. People who legitimately and un-ironically miss Page 5 make me wary and disinclined to play them or the game in general.
"Fortunately" (?), in my area there's no scene anyway, so it doesn't matter. The "scene" for me is me and a friend who play once every six months or so. So take my input with a grain of salt.
Cronch wrote: I did read the Prime mk1 page 5. And it was an excuse. And in mk2 they toned it down, but by that point you managed to foster a whole community focused on WAAC and everyone and their mother knew what Page5 meant in practice. You might've soiled your pants once, 5 years ago, but you better believe the whole workplace will forever know you as Stinkypants.
With respect, That's not true. You shouldn't be so quick to judge and tar a whole community.
Sone of the most wonderful and kindest people I knew (they have since passed sadly - if anyone has played in Scotland and knew pressganger Alan you'll know who I'm talking about... years after, he's still very fondly remembered and sadly missed) , and know were people I got to know through warmachine and hordes.
Of all the people I knew here, and played against, precisely one was focused on waac, and believe me, folks did not appreciate him.
Page 5 was not an excuse. Anyone being a plank was completely missing the point of it. People doing this then were doing it in spite of page 5, it's right there in the words.
And at the end of the day, the one thing I could do in wmh that I couldn't do in 3rd and 4th ed 40k was fight back and give as good as I got. 'Axe to face' worked.
I think there is a bit of a cultural divide. Here in the US page 5, even when it explicitly said it is not an excuse, was used as an excuse. It directly taps into an extremely strong culture of competitiveness which is actually brilliant for driving initial appeal in this country. The problem is that mindset often (read: not always) turns to toxicity when given time to ferment. It wasn't about some huge donkey cave obviously using page 5 as an excuse, it was that up front there was a subtext of 'this is a competitive game for competitive people' which with our culture is just poison waiting to brew.
They should have cut it entirely for Mk2 IMO. Mk1 they needed the 'clickbait' attention-grabber to start a community. But when it came to expanding and managing an existing one the same thing that helped them get going became a burden.
Culture divide I think has to be part of it because page 5 is something I never really heard of as a "problem" or anything in the UK at all. In fact it still surprises me that a single page in the whole thing that basically says "play nice, play well" creates such contention
I think the problem I was always noticed was just how serious the game was.
I went to a few tournaments and it was just, not fun, you couldnt tell people where playing a game they love because they where all dour with frowns on their face. No jokes, no fun remarks, if you went up to them, they would glare.
Contrast to other tournaments, where you could tell people where having fun
Overread wrote: Culture divide I think has to be part of it because page 5 is something I never really heard of as a "problem" or anything in the UK at all. In fact it still surprises me that a single page in the whole thing that basically says "play nice, play well" creates such contention
It really only takes a third or so of people reading it as 'this is a competitive game for competitive people and non competitive people should be crushed' to catalyze the descent of an entire community. They go on to recruit others of like mind, push people on the fence into arms races, and drive off more casual players. Not in dramatic reality TV fashion but rather as slow trends that build up over time. It happens a lot in this country, even to games that don't have a page 5 equivalent. The difference is that page 5 made that mentality far more contagious across the game than it otherwise would have been.
It helps to understand that in the US anything that could by any stretch become competitive, will be taken to that level. There's competitive fething Catan.
My thoughts on page 5 it's a rather silly argument as honestly the number of people that cared about it being there or not or bothered to actually read it is probably single percentile of the player base who are overly represented in these discussions. Page 5 is just used as placeholder for casuals vs hardcore players and the game would be in the same place regardless if it ever existed or was still in the rulebook. One line does not make a player base toxic. Nor does it keep thousands of people playing.
marxlives wrote: 4. Killed PG program instead of relaunching. Ya, WOTC lawsuit was a lesson but an okay lawyer could have provided them a modified boiler plate license agreement for PG's to sign in order to participate.
As I mentioned previously it didn't have anything to do with the WOTC lawsuit. It was talked about on some podcast a few years ago but basically the program was to big and the couldn't afford to pay someone to run it full time the way it needed to be run so they killed it. You can argue if that was the right move but in PP's mind they could either just let it languish and provide no support to press gangers or end the program.
1. Lost rights to publish MonPoc in the early 2010's when MonPoc was at the height of its popularity (it was bigger than MK1 WMH) due to a failed movie deal and trusting Hollywood lawyers. You are an indie product, start off by networking with indie film companies.
There's really no proof of this. The game died when literally every other prepaint line died. Costs to produce them became completely unreasonable and the whole industry went under over a few years. There's no reason to believe PP could keep producing the game when the biggest companies in the industry stopped producing theirs a the same time.
I agree with LunarSol. They never lost the rights to their own game as that's not how Hollywood options work. I looked up who represented Matt and they also currently represent "Quentin Tarantino, Christian Bale, Daniel Craig, Anthony Hopkins, and producer Jason Blum". There's no reason they'd try and scam out some dinky boardgame that made less in a year earnings wise then the company made off of the bigger names. Really wouldn't be worth the effort for them.
The other big rumor around the game was more plausible that they decided to cancel a release and design new stuff around the movie that then never happened. Since the designs are owned/co-owned by the production company PP really couldn't release those without paying money and, as was mentioned previously, and since deigning and manufacturing plastic like that takes 12+ months and it hadn't seen any releases in a year they probably thought it best to walk away.
That's, again, just a rumor but usually with these things the simplest explanation is the correct one. That blind buy Pre-paints just died, surprisingly quick, and at the time it was too expensive to do non-blind figures.
Monkeysloth wrote: One line does not make a player base toxic. Nor does it keep thousands of people playing.
I am sorry to say; you've got a real rude awakening on the horizon
Are you suggesting that the way to restore Warmachine is simply to release the MK3 rules with the original Page 5 from MK1 restored?
Wargaming, esp fantasy/scifi has always had a huge problem with teaching and communicating actual playing tactics. You can find hundreds of videos and articles on how to sculpt, build, convert and paint models and terrain. We can build freaking awesome stuff and teach others to build the same. We can argue and debate points to a knifeedge of mathematical balances
But when it comes to actual playing of the game its a wasteland of nothing. To the point where the double turn in AoS actually forced some to learn about things like unit screens, to the point where they consider them "double turn tactics" not just regular tactics for a wargame. Warmachine attracted a lot of higher level players who were very into the tactical end of the game. The rules were tight, but also invited certain interpretations and conclusions (eg the old "declare failed charges to move further than running in the early part of the game) which gave advantages, but which weren't overtly obvious to start with. Very much the same kind of things you get in top level magic the gathering play.
It was all logical, but wargamers don't do game teaching well so you end up with a two tier society - those at the top who really know their stuff and those who generally point and shoot/charge with their armies. The skill divide is real and often as not the higher skilled find it hard (or are oblivious) to "scaling down" their game for newer players.
Monkeysloth wrote: One line does not make a player base toxic. Nor does it keep thousands of people playing.
I am sorry to say; you've got a real rude awakening on the horizon
Why? What Monkeysloth said is very true IMO.
In Poland the playerbase is anything but toxic - those players are helpful, taking care of every new member of the community. We have stories of WTC players helping new ones to perform an assassination on them, step by step (when newbie didn't see the possibilities) during master-class tournaments. Giving up their tournament win to teach a new player.
hotsauceman1 wrote: I think the problem I was always noticed was just how serious the game was.
I went to a few tournaments and it was just, not fun, you couldnt tell people where playing a game they love because they where all dour with frowns on their face. No jokes, no fun remarks, if you went up to them, they would glare.
Contrast to other tournaments, where you could tell people where having fun
I remember having the realization after I moved away from my MK2 group, and hadn't played in a while... that I didn't miss it, because it wasn't fun.
I liked painting and even theoryhammering armies, but actually playing the game was always work.
That's, again, just a rumor but usually with these things the simplest explanation is the correct one. That blind buy Pre-paints just died, surprisingly quick, and at the time it was too expensive to do non-blind figures.
Just a bit of inside ball. I was friends with some people working on a pretty successful prepaint line (not MonPoc) at the time and basically what happened was the quotes for new models started coming back at 600%+ of what they'd been, making them completely unmarketable. No new orders, but because plenty of stuff had already been paid for, it took a year or two for releases in the pipeline to bleed out. A lot of games tried to keep things going by repurposing existing stock and hoping they could ride it out until prices became reasonable (99% sure this is why PP put out the faction box sets). Even Clix died at the time and at the dawn of the MCU no less. I'm sure it would have stayed dead if a sudden massive demand for superhero stuff hadn't revived it.
Cronch wrote:I did read the Prime mk1 page 5. And it was an excuse. And in mk2 they toned it down, but by that point you managed to foster a whole community focused on WAAC and everyone and their mother knew what Page5 meant in practice. You might've soiled your pants once, 5 years ago, but you better believe the whole workplace will forever know you as Stinkypants.
Okay, point out which part of Mk1 Page says to be an a-hole.
Simply put it doesn't. It is being used as an excuse, but it isn't an excuse. There is no excuse for being an a-hole, It says to bring your A-game and not whine if you get beat. If you can't handle being beat, then don't show up. It is the spirit behind "Play like you brought a pair". This is talking to the people who AREN'T a-holes who need to buck up and get more aggressive than in games where they can be more defensive, like some armies in Warhammer.
Overread wrote:Culture divide I think has to be part of it because page 5 is something I never really heard of as a "problem" or anything in the UK at all. In fact it still surprises me that a single page in the whole thing that basically says "play nice, play well" creates such contention
I never heard about it being a problem until people started blaming it on why the game died. This was after Mk3's launch and when the population started dying down to being a majority of "Steamroller-only" in many areas. That Page 5 hadn't even been a live thing for 6-7 years at that point, and had been replaced by Mk 2's version for most of that time.
NinthMusketeer wrote:It really only takes a third or so of people reading it as 'this is a competitive game for competitive people and non competitive people should be crushed' to catalyze the descent of an entire community. They go on to recruit others of like mind, push people on the fence into arms races, and drive off more casual players. Not in dramatic reality TV fashion but rather as slow trends that build up over time. It happens a lot in this country, even to games that don't have a page 5 equivalent. The difference is that page 5 made that mentality far more contagious across the game than it otherwise would have been.
It helps to understand that in the US anything that could by any stretch become competitive, will be taken to that level. There's competitive fething Catan.
I think it takes more than that, actually. I've seen 40K communities which didn't devolve like that while having a much higher ratio of hyper-competitive people. The problem isn't the ratio, but the absolute numbers. If you're the only person in your WMH community who won't play Steamroller, and there are 5 other people there, you're stuck with either dropping the game, diving in to Steamroller, or waiting until someone who is willing to play something beside Steamroller shows up.
But yeah, there are Americans who make anything a competition. Just ask Jeff Foxworthy about a competition his extended family had in Hawaii that his Aunt Rose won.
Mr. Grey wrote:The Page 5 in Mk1 Warmachine was very much not "play nice, play well". It was more "This is a ruleset for non sissies, be a man, stomp your opponent into the ground in whatever way you can, rawr, macho!!!". ...to paraphrase slightly. I'm about 85% sure it was also meant to be completely tongue-in-cheek, but a lot of people didn't read it that way.
Mk2's Page 5 was far more along the lines of what you're describing.
People will often read what they want out of text, especially if they think it gives license to unleash their baser instincts. Page 5 was never an excuse to be an a-hole. It was a direction to play hard and as best you could, but those aren't the same things.
Monkeysloth wrote:That's, again, just a rumor but usually with these things the simplest explanation is the correct one. That blind buy Pre-paints just died, surprisingly quick, and at the time it was too expensive to do non-blind figures.
I don't know if they died, but rather never got the community support that the producers thought they would get. AT-43 came out at about the same time and while it was interesting with some very well done models, also fell flat. Part of the reasoning at the time is that they were being released in hobby game stores, but there was no hobby needed for them.
Of course, fast forward a few years and start with one of the most popular IPs and make a clean game out of it, and it will take off. While MonPoc and AT-43 couldn't quite break that hold on the market, Fantasy Flight's X-Wing could and did. Oddly enough, it didn't extend to their Legion line that is more recent.
For me the problem happened when they gave up Page 5. Things grew under Page 5, they didn't shrink. That happened with PP gave up its punk, in your face, alternative image to follow GW's foot steps. They haven't gotten to the same level of audience pandering as some other companies like WOTC to get the younger woke audience, but not everyone wants to be woke or have your standard vanilla corporate experience with a product.
As a brand you always double down on audience and experience your product provides. You never vanilla-ify it when there are other vanilla options out there and are market dominate. It wasn't like PP was cratering under Page 5 and when they removed it in MK3 they had a rush of consumers who were just waiting for PP to toe the woke line and left after thinking "what is the problematic legacy of Page 5"?
Page 5 gave PP a huge audience with military, small business owners, civilian rebellious types from the hacker-space and others. When Page 5 was removed in Mk3, I remember alot of people from those backgrounds being iffy about the future of PP.
If PP was just going to vanilla-ify their brand and follow the footsteps of GW instead of being innovative, what was the point? PP was the same company that did a CID process when working on Mk2 when the industry didn't even have a term for it. Open play test was a digital term.
Page 5 was the very epitome of cool and in-your-face aggressiveness back in 2003, 18 years ago, when Warmachine Prime first released, because Privateer Press at the time was a nobody company trying to edge into a market that was completely dominated by all things Games Workshop. Both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battle were THE wargames on the market and at a guess, had probably 90% of the customer base. Page 5 was a very tongue in cheek call out attempt to grab the interest of competitive players by being brash and forward about what the game represented. I think it certainly worked on a lot of people.
Have you read the original Page 5 recently? Because I have, and it really, really, really hasn't aged well at all. In fact, today it reads a little like it was written by some edgelord teenager on a livejournal blog trying to intimidate and bully his enemies. And whatever you may think about Page 5, I don't think it is or was a great way to retain modern customers. Just look at any discussion on Warmachine and you'll inevitably find stories about potential new players who get absolutely curb stomped during a demo game due to the Page 5 attitude of the person giving the demo and then never return. I've heard so many complaints about the way that Page 5 seemed to give competitive jerks an excuse to be absolute donkey caves to all of their opponents.
Whatever you may think, it's not about being "woke" as much as it is about today's new players wanting a fun game experience. Frankly I'm glad that Page 5 has gone, because all it did was drag down the game, and even now a lot of people still have bad memories about the experience.
Taking it out in Mk3 and totally leaving behind their indie roots to imitate GW really exploded their player base. Hell, I can't even wander into a random game store without encountering WMH players taking up all the tables!
"A good way to test the popularity is look up an IP for a lore chan, battle report, whatever and see the views and subs for those chans.
Battle report views over last month
40k - 110k - 123k
AoS - 2k - 33k
SWL - 4k-5k
Marvel Crisis Protocol -1k - 2k (big splash on views when 1st drop, recent numbers are low, probably wont support license cost unlike SWL)
Infinity - 1k - 2k
Battletech 100's - 2k
Malifaux - 100's - 2k
Kings of War - 100's - 1k (other Mantic properties did 0 interactions for the month)
Warmachine and Hordes 100s - 1k (other PP properties did 0 interactions for the month)
Lore video views over last month
40k - 100k - 333k
Marvel Crisis Protocol - 100's - 256k (Same as with SWL, IP views is not translating into miniature game interactions)
SWL - 40k - 247k (the gap between people who engage with the lore vs the licensed game is pretty big, makes me wonder if Asmodee can keep releases going)
AoS - 4k - 15k (for non video game content)
Battletech 100's - 9k (shows a healthy relationship between lore and gameplay interactions)
Kings of War - 100's
Malifaux - 100's (lore is picking up albeit, like Warmachine still pretty low but matching with the number of gameplay interactions)
Warmachine and Hordes 10s
Infinity - none for this month, seems like a year ago lore was really taking off with 6k - 7k views. No interactions today over a month is not a good sign.
The writting on the wall is pretty clear. I would be surprised if SWL and MCP remain a thing due to the disparity between IP lore engagement is not translating to hobby miniature sales. Especially with Marvel licensing out to HeroClix and their Deep Cuts line making, well deep cuts. Battletech seems like the King of the Bottom Tier when it comes to owned IP vs licensed and they got their other properities like video games to lean on.
When it comes to Mantic, Wyrd, PP, and Corvis Bell; their footprint is incredibly small. Like they could probably make more money doing 40k lore videos small. So it is actually surprising they can put out product and have anything resembling a scene.
I hope this puts things into perspectve and does a Great Reset on expectations. And before people say "well back in the day PP", Miranda's Wargamer Girl top vid is like 61k, 7 years old, top notch production quality, while your BB Stan 40k battle report easily doubles that in a month. And she has top count.
Best thing these companies can do is take from BT's book and KS some HareBrain Schemes scale of their Shadowrun and Battletech in IKRPG, Through the Breach, Vanguard, and Paradiso."
Cronch wrote: I did read the Prime mk1 page 5. And it was an excuse. And in mk2 they toned it down, but by that point you managed to foster a whole community focused on WAAC and everyone and their mother knew what Page5 meant in practice.
This. It was "cool" and "edgy" when it came out. Now, even with the disclaimers, it's a relic of a bygone era, and good riddance. People who legitimately and un-ironically miss Page 5 make me wary and disinclined to play them or the game in general.
"Fortunately" (?), in my area there's no scene anyway, so it doesn't matter. The "scene" for me is me and a friend who play once every six months or so. So take my input with a grain of salt.
Lol, Page 5 was everything that was wrong with the game, glad they abandoned it.BTW the game is dead in my area and I don't play anymore. Grain of salt? This is a disjointed, cognitively dissonate salt mine!
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Overread wrote: Culture divide I think has to be part of it because page 5 is something I never really heard of as a "problem" or anything in the UK at all. In fact it still surprises me that a single page in the whole thing that basically says "play nice, play well" creates such contention
Cultural divide in the US was has most peope who compalin about Page 5 are or were not players. They are mostly lurkers who did a demo game one time, 5 years ago. When PP abandoned is indie atitude and page 5 was gone in Mk3 had people just up in leave right away and some in a year.
PP abandoning Page 5 was PP abandoning all its successful indie strategies to imitate GW. Well publically traded companies that I can buy stock in play by different rules. PP learned that the hard way.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
LoS_Jaden wrote: Sorry to completely change the topic, but Phil has finished up the last of the Brawlmachine primer articles with Retribution!
I've always read page 5 as "don't be a powergamer".
.."no pride to be won with a fail-safe formula..." "damn the status-quo" "defy convention"
is clearly
"don't copy other people's successful lists from the internet" and "come up with your own, risky, unorthodox ideas" in my opinion.
For me the problem happened when they gave up Page 5. Things grew under Page 5, they didn't shrink. That happened with PP gave up its punk, in your face, alternative image to follow GW's foot steps. They haven't gotten to the same level of audience pandering as some other companies like WOTC to get the younger woke audience, but not everyone wants to be woke or have your standard vanilla corporate experience with a product.
As a brand you always double down on audience and experience your product provides. You never vanilla-ify it when there are other vanilla options out there and are market dominate. It wasn't like PP was cratering under Page 5 and when they removed it in MK3 they had a rush of consumers who were just waiting for PP to toe the woke line and left after thinking "what is the problematic legacy of Page 5"?
Page 5 gave PP a huge audience with military, small business owners, civilian rebellious types from the hacker-space and others. When Page 5 was removed in Mk3, I remember alot of people from those backgrounds being iffy about the future of PP.
If PP was just going to vanilla-ify their brand and follow the footsteps of GW instead of being innovative, what was the point? PP was the same company that did a CID process when working on Mk2 when the industry didn't even have a term for it. Open play test was a digital term.
Page 5 was the very epitome of cool and in-your-face aggressiveness back in 2003, 18 years ago, when Warmachine Prime first released, because Privateer Press at the time was a nobody company trying to edge into a market that was completely dominated by all things Games Workshop. Both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battle were THE wargames on the market and at a guess, had probably 90% of the customer base. Page 5 was a very tongue in cheek call out attempt to grab the interest of competitive players by being brash and forward about what the game represented. I think it certainly worked on a lot of people.
Have you read the original Page 5 recently? Because I have, and it really, really, really hasn't aged well at all. In fact, today it reads a little like it was written by some edgelord teenager on a livejournal blog trying to intimidate and bully his enemies. And whatever you may think about Page 5, I don't think it is or was a great way to retain modern customers. Just look at any discussion on Warmachine and you'll inevitably find stories about potential new players who get absolutely curb stomped during a demo game due to the Page 5 attitude of the person giving the demo and then never return. I've heard so many complaints about the way that Page 5 seemed to give competitive jerks an excuse to be absolute donkey caves to all of their opponents.
Whatever you may think, it's not about being "woke" as much as it is about today's new players wanting a fun game experience. Frankly I'm glad that Page 5 has gone, because all it did was drag down the game, and even now a lot of people still have bad memories about the experience.
Taking it out in Mk3 and totally leaving behind their indie roots to imitate GW really exploded their player base. Hell, I can't even wander into a random game store without encountering WMH players taking up all the tables!
"A good way to test the popularity is look up an IP for a lore chan, battle report, whatever and see the views and subs for those chans.
Battle report views over last month
40k - 110k - 123k
AoS - 2k - 33k
SWL - 4k-5k
Marvel Crisis Protocol -1k - 2k (big splash on views when 1st drop, recent numbers are low, probably wont support license cost unlike SWL)
Infinity - 1k - 2k
Battletech 100's - 2k
Malifaux - 100's - 2k
Kings of War - 100's - 1k (other Mantic properties did 0 interactions for the month)
Warmachine and Hordes 100s - 1k (other PP properties did 0 interactions for the month)
Lore video views over last month
40k - 100k - 333k
Marvel Crisis Protocol - 100's - 256k (Same as with SWL, IP views is not translating into miniature game interactions)
SWL - 40k - 247k (the gap between people who engage with the lore vs the licensed game is pretty big, makes me wonder if Asmodee can keep releases going)
AoS - 4k - 15k (for non video game content)
Battletech 100's - 9k (shows a healthy relationship between lore and gameplay interactions)
Kings of War - 100's
Malifaux - 100's (lore is picking up albeit, like Warmachine still pretty low but matching with the number of gameplay interactions)
Warmachine and Hordes 10s
Infinity - none for this month, seems like a year ago lore was really taking off with 6k - 7k views. No interactions today over a month is not a good sign.
The writting on the wall is pretty clear. I would be surprised if SWL and MCP remain a thing due to the disparity between IP lore engagement is not translating to hobby miniature sales. Especially with Marvel licensing out to HeroClix and their Deep Cuts line making, well deep cuts. Battletech seems like the King of the Bottom Tier when it comes to owned IP vs licensed and they got their other properities like video games to lean on.
Lol if you think MCP is gonna die anytime soon, its a growing game that is blowing up. people love it. and star wars legion.
Youtube channels are not a good way to guage lol.
One thing to remember, several of the designers behind the game designed alot of warmachine.
Monkeysloth wrote: One line does not make a player base toxic. Nor does it keep thousands of people playing.
I am sorry to say; you've got a real rude awakening on the horizon
Are you suggesting that the way to restore Warmachine is simply to release the MK3 rules with the original Page 5 from MK1 restored?
if you're someone that says either "I normally wouldn't be a jerk but this one page give me justification so I will" then you've got other issues at hand. If you really love the game and everything about MK3 and stopped playing because of the Page 5 removal and that by adding it back you'd start playing again then I don't know how to respond without sounding insulting.
That's, again, just a rumor but usually with these things the simplest explanation is the correct one. That blind buy Pre-paints just died, surprisingly quick, and at the time it was too expensive to do non-blind figures.
Just a bit of inside ball. I was friends with some people working on a pretty successful prepaint line (not MonPoc) at the time and basically what happened was the quotes for new models started coming back at 600%+ of what they'd been, making them completely unmarketable. No new orders, but because plenty of stuff had already been paid for, it took a year or two for releases in the pipeline to bleed out. A lot of games tried to keep things going by repurposing existing stock and hoping they could ride it out until prices became reasonable (99% sure this is why PP put out the faction box sets). Even Clix died at the time and at the dawn of the MCU no less. I'm sure it would have stayed dead if a sudden massive demand for superhero stuff hadn't revived it.
That's a very interesting. I was big into clix at the time and it was really bouncing back and forth between dead and alive and volitile prices were not something I was considering as generally one of the reasons for plastic was stable pricing, unlike metal which swings a lot. Maybe there was just too much demand for the number of factories that could do the work? As prepainted were really popular back then.
Charistoph wrote:
I don't know if they died, but rather never got the community support that the producers thought they would get. AT-43 came out at about the same time and while it was interesting with some very well done models, also fell flat. Part of the reasoning at the time is that they were being released in hobby game stores, but there was no hobby needed for them.
Of course, fast forward a few years and start with one of the most popular IPs and make a clean game out of it, and it will take off. While MonPoc and AT-43 couldn't quite break that hold on the market, Fantasy Flight's X-Wing could and did. Oddly enough, it didn't extend to their Legion line that is more recent.
With AT-43 you can have the right game at the wrong time. Maybe releasing a few months earlier or a year later could have changed it's fate but I've never heard anyone really talk about it being a bad game. Which says something about it.
Star Wars games are hard, in my opinion, as there's not really a lot to the license for a war game. 2 factions in each of the different eras with a lot of design similarities. It gets boring and it's hard to add in non-movie stuff as it's never at that scale. X-wing was, relatively, a cheap buy in at first with a lot model count and a clear nitch to fill and lightning struck. A lot of time what makes a game go gang buster is pure luck or the perfect conditions that no company has any control over.
Monkeysloth wrote: One line does not make a player base toxic. Nor does it keep thousands of people playing.
I am sorry to say; you've got a real rude awakening on the horizon
Are you suggesting that the way to restore Warmachine is simply to release the MK3 rules with the original Page 5 from MK1 restored?
Certainly not, I'm actually baffled to how you drew that conclusion from what I said so I am guessing I communicated poorly.
What I meant to say is that huge numbers of people can and will base their attitudes towards an entire game/subject based entirely on a single sentence. And we do it all the time. I was referring to the rude awakening that people are so, so much dumber than he seems to believe.
That's a very interesting. I was big into clix at the time and it was really bouncing back and forth between dead and alive and volitile prices were not something I was considering as generally one of the reasons for plastic was stable pricing, unlike metal which swings a lot. Maybe there was just too much demand for the number of factories that could do the work? As prepainted were really popular back then.
Clix is an interesting one. It technically died for about a year in 2008-09 before NECA bought it from Topps. I'm sure Iron Man had something to do with that.
As I heard, there were a bunch of factors. This was the 2008 economic crisis and budgets were tight. The price of oil spiked, which upped the cost of the plastic a bit but really upped shipping costs more. This was also China's economic boom and the cheap labor painting the things was far less cheap. I think the price hike was a total for the whole process and not the whole thing. I suspect it had a lot to do with cutting the molds though, as existing models seemed to get repurposed easily enough. That Ravenloft board game was totally about repurposing the D&D sculpts in a format that wasn't actually prepainted.
The prepaint industry itself is a pretty interesting look into economy of scale. It basically doesn't work at anything short of being sold at a major retailer like WalMart or in a pinch, Toys R Us. Thousands of stores buying crates of product before its even produced is the only way to justify the risk. That's a big part of the blind purchase packaging. One SKU per set is something the big box stores will actually bother with and you don't have to worry about an unpopular SKU sitting unsold and tanking the whole line. Prior to Kickstarter, it was really the only way to afford plastics in general, but prepaints are a tier above that.
It's worth noting that X-Wing often gets cited as the exception, and that mostly comes down to the kind of models they're painting. Beyond being a huge mass market appeal, the models don't have much in the way of manual labor. A lot of their paint jobs can be done by machines and a LOT of them are mostly just a wash. That's why despite being wildly successful (but not QUITE making it to big box) X-WIng's success didn't translate into prepaints for Legion or Imperial Assault. The cost of pre-paints like that are another level.
I want to suggest a different take on the Page 5 thing: It is a promise by PP to make a balanced game.
I think the context of other popular games is really important here. The two biggest game types at stores around here at least were 40k/WHFB and M:TG/Pokemon. The GW games were rather imbalanced, and very specifically avoided combinations. There was a strong sense that certain armies and builds were just crazy over powered, some armies hadn't seen a codex in a core rules edition or two, and GW was pretty open about not caring about balance. This grew into the "Forging a narrative" stance that was much mocked. About the only thing GW did to try and avoid too much brokenness was to specify within codices that certain rules or units didn't work together, to try and avoid synergies. What little there was often was decried as beardy or cheesy.
On the other hand, there were other fingers. Also, card games that were built specifically around building neat combos and synergies. Tournaments were common and popular, and the producing companies did work on balance, restricting or even banning cards after a release, limiting the pool of cards per season, etc. Being as clever as possible and getting the most out of your cards and hand was part and parcel of the game. Really counter intuitive or strange decks that didn't meet the fluff at all were considered better, or at least not looked down upon. Plus, unlike GW, the rules were rather tight and so knowledge of how the system works can give an edge to a player, both in deck building and playing in game. Benefitting from a very keen understanding of GW's rules generally got you called a rules lawyer.
Here comes PP, and in some sense said "We can make a minis game with the rigor of a competitive card game." They put in Pg 5 to essentially say:
This game is balanced and the rules are complete and consistent. The most over the top clever combo will have a foil, you just have to find it. We promise we did our part, so get to work and get good so you can do yours.
That was a huge departure from GW's style of "We are a miniatures company, not a rules company" demanding that players just deal with the problems of the game.
Now, I will admit, it makes for a game that does start to drift towards work when really playing. That isn't a downside for some people. I really enjoy a worthy problem to solve, and really love solving it. My wife, on the other hand, describes basically all my hobbies and pass times as being too much work to be fun. Different strokes. That said, I have had some really fun and social games that were also got really intense, so I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.
As soon as they moved from metal to cheap Chinese PVC I was done. It was Finecast all over again. Most of the new stuff is some awful resin/metal hybrid, and the bad plastic is still there.
I don't think the MTG-style business model works for expensive miniatures anyway. The bubble was going to burst sooner or later.
Gir Spirit Bane wrote: I recently tried to rejoin Warmahordes with my Trollbloods, because god damn it the MOUNTAIN KING (caps needed) is one of my fave models of all time.
I got up to date with the rules, played at 50 pts aaaand... wow I forgot how much I hated Caster Kill insta losses and how themes basically made my collection from mk2 split up and unable to fit neatly in any with the annoying "free models" which I've hated in any game system ever.
I'd love to play more of it, but the game needs a retool from the ground up, and Im nearly convinced PP doesn't have it in them. They've pretty much been cut off from most local hobby stores who refuse to even try and order in PP products
As a hobbiest I like the themes. Keeps the aethetic cohesive like we see with 40k factions and mini-factions. And Warmachine without caster kill as one of the win conditions. Why even play? Sounds like every other game on the market.
I think themes could of been a good option, but they're basically mandatory as the benefits you get from in theme heavily outweigh not being in theme. It also naturally causes heavy skew which on a local level if your opponent cant deal with it, game may as well be over a lot of the time. And in casual we dont lug around 2 different lists like in tournaments.
And Caster Kill is unique to WHM but its just a preference. I'd much prefer if the game continued after caster kill since you can try to win on scenario points and accept your warjacks/beasts are now out of commision and your opponent still has their caster to wreck face. Again this is just my thoughts on the game, I'd find it much more enjoyable if that was addressed. Locally some players like the models but the only actual players left are tournament players, us casual people have either faced with dilemma of buy loads more to make a theme (seriously, I loved my trollkin sluggers covering fire my fennblades :( ) or play themeless and what feels like a big handicap.
I wish PP all the success, Mk2 was a TONNE of fun and had so much love in my community and I am genuinely sad Mk3 killed all hype, CID was a pain in the arse to follow and every major decision led local players to bleed and sell their armies, leaving roughly 10-15% of the players left.
Caster kill mostly serves to end the game when its over rather than force people to play to a forgone conclusion. Honestly, I find the game dreadfully dull without a caster and really wouldn't be all that excited to keep playing.
That said, I think it works better when caster kill demands a certain degree of fighting through the army first. I'd be very happy to see casters made more resilient to long range attacks in general.
I rather liked caster kill as a mechanic, as it really allowed for turn overs and high risk reward gambits. I appreciated another level of possible strategy and concern beyond objectives etc. It definitely does add a lot of mental overhead to keep track of, and it may well have gotten much too easy with some lists, so I can see why people might not like it. Overall, though, I really liked it as a permanent secondary win condition along with scenario. (Playing games without it on occasion was pretty fun too, but only with very unit heavy lists.)
For me the problem happened when they gave up Page 5. Things grew under Page 5, they didn't shrink. That happened with PP gave up its punk, in your face, alternative image to follow GW's foot steps. They haven't gotten to the same level of audience pandering as some other companies like WOTC to get the younger woke audience, but not everyone wants to be woke or have your standard vanilla corporate experience with a product.
As a brand you always double down on audience and experience your product provides. You never vanilla-ify it when there are other vanilla options out there and are market dominate. It wasn't like PP was cratering under Page 5 and when they removed it in MK3 they had a rush of consumers who were just waiting for PP to toe the woke line and left after thinking "what is the problematic legacy of Page 5"?
Page 5 gave PP a huge audience with military, small business owners, civilian rebellious types from the hacker-space and others. When Page 5 was removed in Mk3, I remember alot of people from those backgrounds being iffy about the future of PP.
If PP was just going to vanilla-ify their brand and follow the footsteps of GW instead of being innovative, what was the point? PP was the same company that did a CID process when working on Mk2 when the industry didn't even have a term for it. Open play test was a digital term.
Page 5 was the very epitome of cool and in-your-face aggressiveness back in 2003, 18 years ago, when Warmachine Prime first released, because Privateer Press at the time was a nobody company trying to edge into a market that was completely dominated by all things Games Workshop. Both Warhammer 40,000 and Warhammer Fantasy Battle were THE wargames on the market and at a guess, had probably 90% of the customer base. Page 5 was a very tongue in cheek call out attempt to grab the interest of competitive players by being brash and forward about what the game represented. I think it certainly worked on a lot of people.
Have you read the original Page 5 recently? Because I have, and it really, really, really hasn't aged well at all. In fact, today it reads a little like it was written by some edgelord teenager on a livejournal blog trying to intimidate and bully his enemies. And whatever you may think about Page 5, I don't think it is or was a great way to retain modern customers. Just look at any discussion on Warmachine and you'll inevitably find stories about potential new players who get absolutely curb stomped during a demo game due to the Page 5 attitude of the person giving the demo and then never return. I've heard so many complaints about the way that Page 5 seemed to give competitive jerks an excuse to be absolute donkey caves to all of their opponents.
Whatever you may think, it's not about being "woke" as much as it is about today's new players wanting a fun game experience. Frankly I'm glad that Page 5 has gone, because all it did was drag down the game, and even now a lot of people still have bad memories about the experience.
Taking it out in Mk3 and totally leaving behind their indie roots to imitate GW really exploded their player base. Hell, I can't even wander into a random game store without encountering WMH players taking up all the tables!
"A good way to test the popularity is look up an IP for a lore chan, battle report, whatever and see the views and subs for those chans.
Battle report views over last month
40k - 110k - 123k
AoS - 2k - 33k
SWL - 4k-5k
Marvel Crisis Protocol -1k - 2k (big splash on views when 1st drop, recent numbers are low, probably wont support license cost unlike SWL)
Infinity - 1k - 2k
Battletech 100's - 2k
Malifaux - 100's - 2k
Kings of War - 100's - 1k (other Mantic properties did 0 interactions for the month)
Warmachine and Hordes 100s - 1k (other PP properties did 0 interactions for the month)
Lore video views over last month
40k - 100k - 333k
Marvel Crisis Protocol - 100's - 256k (Same as with SWL, IP views is not translating into miniature game interactions)
SWL - 40k - 247k (the gap between people who engage with the lore vs the licensed game is pretty big, makes me wonder if Asmodee can keep releases going)
AoS - 4k - 15k (for non video game content)
Battletech 100's - 9k (shows a healthy relationship between lore and gameplay interactions)
Kings of War - 100's
Malifaux - 100's (lore is picking up albeit, like Warmachine still pretty low but matching with the number of gameplay interactions)
Warmachine and Hordes 10s
Infinity - none for this month, seems like a year ago lore was really taking off with 6k - 7k views. No interactions today over a month is not a good sign.
The writting on the wall is pretty clear. I would be surprised if SWL and MCP remain a thing due to the disparity between IP lore engagement is not translating to hobby miniature sales. Especially with Marvel licensing out to HeroClix and their Deep Cuts line making, well deep cuts. Battletech seems like the King of the Bottom Tier when it comes to owned IP vs licensed and they got their other properities like video games to lean on.
Lol if you think MCP is gonna die anytime soon, its a growing game that is blowing up. people love it. and star wars legion.
Youtube channels are not a good way to guage lol.
One thing to remember, several of the designers behind the game designed alot of warmachine.
"Lol if you think MCP is gonna die anytime soon, its a growing game that is blowing up. people love it. and star wars legion. Youtube channels are not a good way to guage lol."
is the most financially illiterate statement I have read since I read The Communist Manifesto and Kapital.
I provided hard numbers which you can get from the publically traded corps like GW but not from the private companies. So unless you are privy to those financials, interactions are the only non-bias non-ancecotal evidence available. Money is just a representation for the value of the labor that was used to buy back the debt created by the rate of borrowing from whatever the reserve currency is. Today the reserve currency is the USD.
Based on the world economy and the function of reserve currency, online interactions via YouTube and independent creators is an excellent valuation for a product like miniature wargames because it shows, not just the interactions and ad revenue gained by the the business, but also the value generated through 3rd party markets. The video itself is a product of labor and the likes and views represent a collective valuation of that product. The GW space is so profitable that even 3rd parties can spend value and labor to make views that are carry so much value, as determined by the community, that the incomes of those creators either match or exceed the salaries of the company owners of Atomic Games, PP, Wyrd, Corvus Belli.
When it comes to in house licensed product, Everything else pales in comparison to GW. Battletech would be second but a distant second to GW. The evidence is there, the numbers are there, the only thing you have is "well it is hawt in my Pacific Northwest metroplex". It is sad when people swim outside their current into the ocean of Hi/lo estimates, white papers, projects plans, SOW's, mergers&acquisitions, and corporate/client facing products and services. Hotsauceman, you have left your stream and you should swim back because out here life comes at you fast.
Even then their inhouuse digital properities like comics, books, video games keep GW and Catalyst pretty secure. For long term growth I would advise Wyrd, PP, Corvus Belli, and Mantic to expand into those markets. Even via mod space, Spotify/YT audiobooks, and literature produced via Substack would be better than what they have now. Footprint is everything and if Atomic Games, Wyrd, and PP are hoping that they Pacific NW metroplex scene will carry them, especially after 2020 and 2021 reports are showing more and more money is leaving those areas they need to adapt and move fast.
Battletech is smaller but it can survive tough times because their footprint and diversity of products is so immense. Their mini-profits might be small but they swing a heavy profolio. What do Wyrd, PP, Corvus Belli, and Mantic have outside of minis? I feel Corvus Belli will be in a good spot post Co-Vid due to their location. It makes them competitive against international shipping rates and their 3rd party creation and interactions eclipsed Star Wars and Marvel Whatever miniature wargames pre-Covid. The flags indicate the drop off is really just Europe Covid related (is there a post period with a truely global pandemic?).
Atomic Mass is even in a worse situation than Wyrd, PP, Corvus Belli, and Mantic. And the acquisition of the Star Wars Legion license is even worse. For the amount of footprint those IP's already had the hard numbers for interactions and 3rd party content creations should be through the roof. It should be equal or greater than GW's footprint. And it is, for Marvel movie and comics movie trailers, lore videos, Easter eggs, T-shirts, LEGOS, action figures, criticism but not wargames. SW had significant value in the miniature wargae market and Asmodee got all value out of that market. Crisis Whatever doesn't even pair up with Star Wars, another Disney owned property in terms of content creation and interactions.
This is bad for a company who owns no meaningful IP and is licensing a second one. Ya...Star Wars, but did Asmodee, corporate organization filled with smart people hired all over the world, give up on the Star Wars license because Atomic Mass is just so damn good, or is it beause they made the money they needed to make off the IP, Disney was going to charge more for the license on a contract renewal and Asmodee thought we get 15k interactions easily on Descent videos we don't even produce from multiple creators on an IP we own vs I don't know 1k on a clearly overvaluated product based on a legendary IP. Atomic Mass is going to pay for the privelage to produce for a game that Asmodee has squeezed all the value out of.
Unless Atomic Mass has been acquired by Disney, they are paying those licensing fees. This is a common thing in comics too as sales have dipped Disney is looking to outsource their production to 3rd party licensing. The reason why they are doing it with Atomic Mass and are transitioning comics into this is that the venture in itself is not seen as profitable from a corporate position. It is better to have 3rd parties pay for the privelage of the license to make comics and minis when the risk is seen as too high There is no downside for Disney. Take this into account that Heroclix is still a thing. I can find HeroClix Marvel minis at Walmart. They are about a staple as Magic the Gathering and DnD is most game stores. So Disney has Atomic Mass competing with HeroClix for the same audience in the miniature market.
Looking at the numbers, and the overall business strategies and processes being employed by each player in the industry, I don't even know what "some of those guys worked for PP" even means Maybe it means something in the Pacific Northwest Metroplexes and if those guys are going to pay Disney money to cottage industry a region of the US and use regional clout to profit, well who am I stand in the way of making money. I love making money myself and I respect a good hussle more. Business is a blast.
But outside of GW and Battletech, I don't see any long term winners out of the Pacific Northwest. Corvus Belli has potential due to its Eurasian position, and maybe it can pull some moves to get literature produced via Substack, 3rd party content and interactions will drive up, generous licensing moves into manga and video games. I hope PP and Wyrd do the same thing, though for some reason they are doubling down on the whole cottage industrying the Pacific Northwest gig. Very sad. Not just unpunk fo them, so very ungrunge of them.
Atomic Games is doing the same wierd PNW cottage industry hussling too but their stance is more precarious. They have 2 IPs that they don't own and are overvaluated for their market, based on the numbers. In one case Disney has AG fighting a more dominate HeroClix in parallel spaces in an industry that produces low revenue for everyone but GW, on the other SW miniature space has been squeezed dry by Asmodee and they let some fools pay for the privelage of producing a game FFG discarded. And they are paying for the privelage of getting the Disney shaft. Not enough to hurt the cottage industry hussle in the every depopulating PNW, but enough to make it a non global player like GW or Catalyst.
So now for my anecdotal evidence. I live on the Border. I work with people from all 6 continents, either locally, or virtually. No one around here has even heard of Marvel Crisis Whatever but a GW, MTG, and HeroClix tournaments can fill up multiple games stores and swamp parking, sometimes 3 different languages will be spoken in the same building during these tournaments, mostly it is 2. Before Covid, and pretty soon again, people would cross over the Border from Mexico to play. There are no mini cottage industries within 1000 miles of me.
This is what real economic reach looks like. This is what all the other companies in the PNW should be aiming for rather than hussling the region.
Gir Spirit Bane wrote: I recently tried to rejoin Warmahordes with my Trollbloods, because god damn it the MOUNTAIN KING (caps needed) is one of my fave models of all time.
I got up to date with the rules, played at 50 pts aaaand... wow I forgot how much I hated Caster Kill insta losses and how themes basically made my collection from mk2 split up and unable to fit neatly in any with the annoying "free models" which I've hated in any game system ever.
I'd love to play more of it, but the game needs a retool from the ground up, and Im nearly convinced PP doesn't have it in them. They've pretty much been cut off from most local hobby stores who refuse to even try and order in PP products
As a hobbiest I like the themes. Keeps the aethetic cohesive like we see with 40k factions and mini-factions. And Warmachine without caster kill as one of the win conditions. Why even play? Sounds like every other game on the market.
I like you idea of Caster kill granting points rather than an ending. Have you tried playing a steamroller scenario and keep the 5 more than the other player win condition but add in caster kill = +1 automatic VP per turn? Might be worth a shot.
I think themes could of been a good option, but they're basically mandatory as the benefits you get from in theme heavily outweigh not being in theme. It also naturally causes heavy skew which on a local level if your opponent cant deal with it, game may as well be over a lot of the time. And in casual we dont lug around 2 different lists like in tournaments.
And Caster Kill is unique to WHM but its just a preference. I'd much prefer if the game continued after caster kill since you can try to win on scenario points and accept your warjacks/beasts are now out of commision and your opponent still has their caster to wreck face. Again this is just my thoughts on the game, I'd find it much more enjoyable if that was addressed. Locally some players like the models but the only actual players left are tournament players, us casual people have either faced with dilemma of buy loads more to make a theme (seriously, I loved my trollkin sluggers covering fire my fennblades :( ) or play themeless and what feels like a big handicap.
I wish PP all the success, Mk2 was a TONNE of fun and had so much love in my community and I am genuinely sad Mk3 killed all hype, CID was a pain in the arse to follow and every major decision led local players to bleed and sell their armies, leaving roughly 10-15% of the players left.
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LunarSol wrote: Caster kill mostly serves to end the game when its over rather than force people to play to a forgone conclusion. Honestly, I find the game dreadfully dull without a caster and really wouldn't be all that excited to keep playing.
That said, I think it works better when caster kill demands a certain degree of fighting through the army first. I'd be very happy to see casters made more resilient to long range attacks in general.
Take a steam roller scenario and play with standard 5 more VPs than the other player but add "Players recieve +1 VP when their opponent's warcaster is permenantly boxed or removed from play, and +1 VP at the beginning of each turn." in addition to the zone, objective, and flag rules. See how it plays out.
The Brawlmachine Team Championship Sign Ups are closing in just over two weeks! We've already got a healthy number of teams signed up, but we're no where near our cap and we'd love to have you come play.
What: 3 person team event, one round per week.
When: Registration is closing after May 28, lists due June 11, Games begin July 2.
@Marxlives
You do know the AMG is Asmodees right?
Like they are just like FW is to GW, same company.
Asmodees owns the rights to marvel card, board and wargames, same with star wars.
AMG is just their new wargames studio to keep FFG focused on card games.
hotsauceman1 wrote: @Marxlives
You do know the AMG is Asmodees right?
Like they are just like FW is to GW, same company.
Asmodees owns the rights to marvel card, board and wargames, same with star wars.
AMG is just their new wargames studio to keep FFG focused on card games.
And after losing the Star Wars games, FFG is an empty husk of it's former self.
It truly has been hollowed out by Asmodee, and why Legion was moved to AMG.
Asmodee has gotten their money out of FFG, which is why it's being hollowed out and will soon be sold.
I'd say that was the main reason Legion was pulled from FFG, as AMG has a better handle on marketing to a smaller audience.
While some may disagree and say that MCP is nothing because of the area or whatever. But Asmodee isn't running out of money anytime soon.
Which is why I believe that AMG will be around for a few years yet, and once folks can go to the movies again, that Marvel license will be worth a lot more to them.
The MCU being on hiatus for 2+ years hasn't helped the brand with visibility. But, since CMON just did their largest funded KS ever with Marvel United X-Men, I'd say there is plenty of interest and money to be made from the Marvel properties.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Are they losing just star wars in general or the games with minis? Because there are card games FFG sells for them right?
Just the games with Minis and RPG. FFG still produces the boardgames and card games (assuming there are new ones being worked one).
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hotsauceman1 wrote: @Marxlives You do know the AMG is Asmodees right? Like they are just like FW is to GW, same company. Asmodees owns the rights to marvel card, board and wargames, same with star wars. AMG is just their new wargames studio to keep FFG focused on card games.
Ya. it's hard to take the rant seriously when such a fundamental fact is wrong. But if we look at the relevant stuff Marxlives is saying (and drop the strange PNW fixation which adds nothing to the discussion) it's just a reality of licensed products that they have a shorter lifespan then successful internally owned IPs but the advantage of them are you don't have to build up a fan base. It took Corvus Belli like 8 years to build up Infinity to the point that people in the hobby actually know the game exists while a licensed game can get the news/name recognition almost instantly. The reasons they don't last long is basically money as the license holder generally demands more each time the license renews (this is well known with Star Wars and why WoTC had to drop it, the fees Lucas Arts wanted after a certain amount of time so high that WoTC would loose money on each sale even when the RPG and minis game were really popular at launch) and you're stuck with the whims of how the license owner is handling the property in terms of keeping it relevant. Also sometimes the licenser just has no problem walking away from a successful partnership just to try something else. We do know, as well, that Disney is really charging a lot for the Marvel IP which is why Knight Models dropped their Marvel stuff. They're getting DC and Harry Potter for less then Marvel alone would have cost them when they went back to renew with Disney. So Atomic Mass has the unfortunate luck of having the two most expensive IPs to license most likely but also very popular ones (with Starwars being in the top 5).
Battletech is an interesting exception to some of these rules as it's the only licensed IP for a wargame that I know of where the licensee also has the rights to develop the fluff more being able to do more then just sell minis as Marxlives says. It also helps that the original creator of Battletech successfully shifted to videogames years ago and licensed his creation for that medium bringing the IP to a much wider market then the original game's popularity never would have managed on it's own and is still making games for it.
I'm just surprised Asmodee is trying a more traditional Tabletop game as I don't think unpainted HIPS model kits are going to hit that crazy flash in the pan that X-Wing got where, as a lot of people that follow the industry think, it got close to or outsold all of GW's games for 2 years . Sure Atomic Mass could build up something over years of work but Asmodee doesn't seam to be the company that cares about long term profits only short term stock value.
Also basing the health of a game off of just one data point, in this case youtube videos, is a very poor proof of argument unless it's pure sales by volume (which we'll never get from 98% of the industry). I play lots of various games and I never watch a single thing on youtube about them just like there's people that watch those videos that never post in forums or Facebook groups. Heck, I know people that play various Table Top Games, and have for like 20 years, that have never once posted online about them or watched a video. Just basing things off of youtube views also is only targeting a younger demo which tend to have less money to spend. So even if a game, not named Warhammer, had lots of views there's no indication those views translate into dollar sales for the product.
It is funny cause youtube vidoes is literally my entire exposure to Battletech. The thing is deader than doornail except or pockets of veteran fans, while Infinity is stocked by just about every LGS in europe that isn't purely GW.
And of course the whole ramble doesn't take into account that CB for example purposefully keeps itself small to keep using spanish govt. tax breaks for small businesses as far as I know.
I'd wager that, like a lot of governments and government based payment systems, the issue might also be that CB can't see how to expand themselves fast and big enough to make up for the loss of the government tax breaks.
I see the same thing in the UK with people on disability allowances. A good many of them want to work longer hours and such, but they can't because doing so would leave them financially worse off when the support payments reduce/cease.
Basically there's a dead zone where you are worse off by improving/expanding. You have to be able to either muscle through that and keep expanding or improving by basically burning through savings whilst investing in expansion; or do it in one super fast movement of expansion so that you basically blaze past the dead zone.
I can well appreciate that CB might not easily see a means for themselves to push past in one go and could run the risk of ending up trying to expand, failing and then getting stuck half way - which inevitably then will mean downsizing to get back under the limits, which could mean customers see the firm drop products and such.
Overread wrote: I'd wager that, like a lot of governments and government based payment systems, the issue might also be that CB can't see how to expand themselves fast and big enough to make up for the loss of the government tax breaks.
I see the same thing in the UK with people on disability allowances. A good many of them want to work longer hours and such, but they can't because doing so would leave them financially worse off when the support payments reduce/cease.
Basically there's a dead zone where you are worse off by improving/expanding. You have to be able to either muscle through that and keep expanding or improving by basically burning through savings whilst investing in expansion; or do it in one super fast movement of expansion so that you basically blaze past the dead zone.
I can well appreciate that CB might not easily see a means for themselves to push past in one go and could run the risk of ending up trying to expand, failing and then getting stuck half way - which inevitably then will mean downsizing to get back under the limits, which could mean customers see the firm drop products and such.
I think I was at the Gencon where Carlos said that and always took it as him misspeaking due to him using the wrong words in English and he's pushed back against that concept when asked in person. But Spain is known to have some of the highest business taxes in the EU so it easily could be they're purposefully growing the company slowly due to the tax increase that goes along with it. I remember when Angel was printing his first book and it sold out in like an hour and he really didn't want to do a second run as he said the taxes alone from printing more might completely negate all the profit made from the first run and the book would need a third run to make money.
hotsauceman1 wrote: Are they losing just star wars in general or the games with minis?
Because there are card games FFG sells for them right?
Just the games with Minis and RPG. FFG still produces the boardgames and card games (assuming there are new ones being worked one).
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hotsauceman1 wrote: @Marxlives
You do know the AMG is Asmodees right?
Like they are just like FW is to GW, same company.
Asmodees owns the rights to marvel card, board and wargames, same with star wars.
AMG is just their new wargames studio to keep FFG focused on card games.
Ya. it's hard to take the rant seriously when such a fundamental fact is wrong. But if we look at the relevant stuff Marxlives is saying (and drop the strange PNW fixation which adds nothing to the discussion) it's just a reality of licensed products that they have a shorter lifespan then successful internally owned IPs but the advantage of them are you don't have to build up a fan base. It took Corvus Belli like 8 years to build up Infinity to the point that people in the hobby actually know the game exists while a licensed game can get the news/name recognition almost instantly. The reasons they don't last long is basically money as the license holder generally demands more each time the license renews (this is well known with Star Wars and why WoTC had to drop it, the fees Lucas Arts wanted after a certain amount of time so high that WoTC would loose money on each sale even when the RPG and minis game were really popular at launch) and you're stuck with the whims of how the license owner is handling the property in terms of keeping it relevant. Also sometimes the licenser just has no problem walking away from a successful partnership just to try something else. We do know, as well, that Disney is really charging a lot for the Marvel IP which is why Knight Models dropped their Marvel stuff. They're getting DC and Harry Potter for less then Marvel alone would have cost them when they went back to renew with Disney. So Atomic Mass has the unfortunate luck of having the two most expensive IPs to license most likely but also very popular ones (with Starwars being in the top 5).
Battletech is an interesting exception to some of these rules as it's the only licensed IP for a wargame that I know of where the licensee also has the rights to develop the fluff more being able to do more then just sell minis as Marxlives says. It also helps that the original creator of Battletech successfully shifted to videogames years ago and licensed his creation for that medium bringing the IP to a much wider market then the original game's popularity never would have managed on it's own and is still making games for it.
I'm just surprised Asmodee is trying a more traditional Tabletop game as I don't think unpainted HIPS model kits are going to hit that crazy flash in the pan that X-Wing got where, as a lot of people that follow the industry think, it got close to or outsold all of GW's games for 2 years . Sure Atomic Mass could build up something over years of work but Asmodee doesn't seam to be the company that cares about long term profits only short term stock value.
Also basing the health of a game off of just one data point, in this case youtube videos, is a very poor proof of argument unless it's pure sales by volume (which we'll never get from 98% of the industry). I play lots of various games and I never watch a single thing on youtube about them just like there's people that watch those videos that never post in forums or Facebook groups. Heck, I know people that play various Table Top Games, and have for like 20 years, that have never once posted online about them or watched a video. Just basing things off of youtube views also is only targeting a younger demo which tend to have less money to spend. So even if a game, not named Warhammer, had lots of views there's no indication those views translate into dollar sales for the product.
Unless you got their financials, measurable interactions by customers via YT and other online platforms is the only real data we have. Everything else is just "personal experience". Doesn't measure up to much on a planet of 7.5 billion people.
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hotsauceman1 wrote: @Marxlives
You do know the AMG is Asmodees right?
Like they are just like FW is to GW, same company.
Asmodees owns the rights to marvel card, board and wargames, same with star wars.
AMG is just their new wargames studio to keep FFG focused on card games.
You must not really know how spin offs and mergers work. AMG is a sub company of Asmodee like FFG. This allows Asmodee to keep their board game brands intact, and hollow out the SW and Marvel IPs until they spin off AMG without consquence. MCP still suffers from the problem of a interactions for the miniatures games do not match up with the other aspects of the brand.
Unlike Descent, a board game Asmodee could probably get novels written on (if they haven't already), comics, and video games the SW and MCP are not owned by Asmodee. The only place it could go is eventual discontinuation and no support unless Asmodee gets bought by Disney. If you think AMG being held to the whims of 3rd party license rather than their own property is a good thing you are kidding yourself.
So keep your fingers crossed for that. Heck share with all of us if that is the case so we can hit that early buy window.
marxlives wrote: Unlike Descent, a board game Asmodee could probably get novels written on (if they haven't already), comics, and video games the SW and MCP are not owned by Asmodee. The only place it could go is eventual discontinuation and no support unless Asmodee gets bought by Disney. If you think AMG being held to the whims of 3rd party license rather than their own property is a good thing you are kidding yourself.
I think you're a little wrong in that area. So long as Disney develops both the Star Wars and Marvel universes, there is always opportunities to expand. FFG showed the way be bringing back Legends ships such as the Tie Defender (before being reintroduced in Rebels) and the Moldy Crow (from the Dark Forces series). Almost every single hero and villain in the Marvel universe has numerous costume iterations which can be produced and sold before looking at MCU developments. Many also have skill tiers which can be utilized as variants as well, and we haven't even gotten in to the possibilities of the Avengers Initiative that was around for a while. MCP actually has a lot of depth that can be explored even if Disney shuttered both the Marvel comic line and the MCU right now. Star Wars is the only one that truly suffers if they stopped right now.
Still, if your point is that Asmodee cannot develop them independently like Descent, then you are correct, but it's only a limitation if the IP's owner keeps everything stagnant themselves.
Bringing this back towards PP, I have heard recently that they may have had a break up with their Chinese manufacturers, and that said manufacturers may even be keeping the molds. Just a rumor, but serious if even partly true.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Bringing this back towards PP, I have heard recently that they may have had a break up with their Chinese manufacturers, and that said manufacturers may even be keeping the molds. Just a rumor, but serious if even partly true.
I thought that was one of the main reasons PP were stuck with some of their bad plastics. If they've actually had a full on break up that could be a short term pain, but a long term gain if it means that they are then going to have to invest into new approaches and no longer be slaved to a manufacturer that was keeping their moulds at ransom
on a golden platter and the community as a whole would lap it up because there is no real competition that competes to their level. Now 
(They did that in the 
) 
