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Fantasy Flight Games will discontinue distributing new products from Rackham.

From their announcement:

Fantasy Flight Games announced today that it will, effective immediately, no longer be distributing new releases for Rackham’s AT-43 and Confrontation lines. FFG will continue to supply backstock of these lines while supplies last. Specifically, FFG will not be distributing product from Wave 8 (originally scheduled for late September) and forward.

Retailers and Distributors interested in these new products are encouraged to contact Rackham directly. FFG extends its appreciation to the retailers and distributors who have carried these lines under our tenure, and to Rackham for allowing us to distribute its beautiful range of games and miniatures in the past many months.

Interesting - especially given that no-one has a distribution license for Rackham in the UK (don't know about the US)

Is it Rackham's intent that all trade should be done directly through their website?

I suggest go to At-43 english Forum in Rackham website...

Mr. Bay announced a re-birth AND it seems that something is happening in USA, the specultaion is about a office or such... s

scottywan82 says:

October 16th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Per Jean Bey himself:

No comment for tonight gentlemen, sure it’s too late…

Comment will come in time, before the end of the month as previously announced.

New releases will be available normally and MONTHLY, let’s leave it at that for this night.

Jean.

I guess at the end of the monthwe'll see what rackham is up to.

Might have hit financial troubles. Following the suspension of share last year, coupled with the current financial climate, it's entirely possible any funding arranged etc has been called in, and that would sadly be an end to them.

But this is *pure speculation* NOT a rumour.

I think it is more likely that Rackham are taking direct control of international sales now that their troubles are over. AT-43 has been selling well AFAIK, probably better than Confrontation ever did. AT-43's a good game that deserves to do well, the less said about Confrontation the better.

Where did the GrotsniK boundless optimism go?

We're draining the Warseer out of him, slowly but surely.

This is news to me!

Oh, wait a minute...

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/220501.page

Anyway, I just can't get too excited about anything R does after the whole Rag'narok 2/Confrontation 4 debacle...

This " starting something new and killing it asap" is bordering the ridiculous.
Its just the kind of company you cannot trust... specially with your money.

NAVARRO wrote:This " starting something new and killing it asap" is bordering the ridiculous.
Its just the kind of company you cannot trust... specially with your money.

I guess damage control is in order since this is getting quite out of hand.

A friend of mine who works at FFG wrote me this morning and told me:

Honestly, all I know is that it was FFG's decision. The boss called us all together and (among other things), gave a speech about "withdrawing from our colonization of mini-land, while still keeping all our other mini-series..." blah, blah, blah. Never did say why, though.

I imagine it's a perfectly mundane business/profit reason.

so there you have it.

What exactly do we have then?

We have FFG killing the distribution, not Rackham "starting something new and killing it asap".

FFG are a bunch of bastards in my books, still nothing on a reprint of Dark Heresy.

Hellfury wrote:We have FFG killing the distribution, not Rackham "starting something new and killing it asap".

LoL... I really dont care these days but if R is bad business for FFG to handle then guess who fault it his? besides I was refering not only to this in particular.

Two words. FRP Games. It's cheaper there anyway.

My guess would be that AT-43 was not selling well for FFG.

FFG have their own pre-painted game in distribution in Mutant Chronicles. I can imagine the decision was made that it wasn't beneficial to mutually support two sci-fi pre-painted plastic miniature games.

FFG has Mutant Chronicles and DUST Tactics, it´s your guess what this means...

Well, sure, but I also wonder what it means for R too...

Interesting result, I wonder who's behind it.

I'm suspecting that Rackham decided to cut FFG out of the stream and take their distribution margin back.

But it's almost possible that FFG decided that Rackham wasn't worth the effort.

The contract between FFG and Rackham was "limited time" from the beginning on.

Isn't that weird given that Dust tactics uses design elements from AT-43?

It isn't that weird, is it?

And I know that I'm very interested in DUST TACTICS, especially so I can use the models (the Mechs!) in SECRETS OF THE THIRD REICH (as I've no desire to play the actual game if it really is based off of AT-43's 'Bucket O' Dice/Exploding Sixes' System).

Weirder than all that together is the fact that Rackham decided to do Action figures... and no I'm not joking.

malfred wrote:Isn't that weird given that Dust tactics uses design elements from AT-43?

Considering DUST is what AT-43 was originally supposed to be? No.

RussWakelin wrote:My guess would be that AT-43 was not selling well for FFG.

And Confrontation 4 was probably not selling at all. Everywhere I've looked has tons of untouched CAoR boxes lying around the place. Add in the tons of valueless Conf 3 books and stuff they got left with last year and I'd not at all be surprised if FFG are struggling to find retailers willing to stock any more Rackham products. AT-43 is doing OK I think , but I'm not sure its good enough to carry the company on top of all the baggage resulting from the various Confrontation debacles.

Rackham seem to have done a fantastic job of trashing the value of their brand image. Bit like GW in that regard...

Oh, I think Rackham's got GW beat by quite a bit in that department...

NAVARRO wrote:Weirder than all that together is the fact that Rackham decided to do Action figures... and no I'm not joking.

Action figures of what? Confrontation? What would that accomplish?

warpcrafter wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:Weirder than all that together is the fact that Rackham decided to do Action figures... and no I'm not joking.

Action figures of what? Confrontation? What would that accomplish?

No idea to be honest... maybe branching to other areas.

It's a because of a magical word that sometimes works: merchandising!