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I made a thread last time Rackham offered 50% and worked out theresholds for whether it is cheaper to buy from them or from Miniatures Market. at 70% off the answer is a lot clearer, especially as the discount is near enough accross the board.

Rackham Online Store

AT-43 players may be slightly disdappointed, the usual missing units are still missing, but what is left is heavily discounted. Though please remember that Rackham overprices so a large discount doesnt offset as much as it looks. ONI and Cogs are at 30% discount this puts them on par in euro to the dollar prices from Miniature Market, who ships for free within the continental USA. Not good really in you live in the US, but ok if you live in Europe due to reduced shipping and no customs. Everything else is at 70% off across the board which is a genuinely good deal, excepting only the Red Blok army box which is at 15% off. The only downside is that the poor stock levels have not been adressed so if it was missing before its still missing now.

Confrontation players have similar discounts Griffin, Scorpion and Wolfen armies are at 70% off with exception of one or two units at 505 off and the Wolfen Army box at 30% off - which is no loss because the quality is poor anyway. The newer Lion and Ram armies are at 30% off, with one or two core Lion boxsets at 50% off.

Please take a look, I recommend both these games and this is a good opportunity to get into a new game. I especially recommend the three older Confrontation release armies, they are a good balasnce one 'good', one 'neutral', one 'evil' are well thought out balanced and nearly everything from the army books is present, one unreleased unit and some heroes from each.
If you are still not interested consider them for role playing miniatures and 40K/warhammer as appropriate. The scale is similar and the pre-painting quality is generally high. Some pointers for you:

SPAWN


http://store.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/scorpion/aberration-prime
A prepaint 'chaos spawn' this model is about the size of an SM dreadnought and production paint quality is fairly close to what you see here.


http://store.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/scorpion/nemesis-evolution
More spawn, the bases are 65mm 'dreadnough bases. This pair is less bulky than the previous miniature. I want about three boxsets for my Confrontation Theben horde.


http://store.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/scorpion/dasyatis-evolution
Spawn with guiant halberds, again paint quality is very good but the halbersds are soft plastic and need straightening in hot water or pinning.

Between these three sets you have conversion material for a horde of chaos spawn/chaos trolls, the paintjobs are good so if you hand prime your conversion bits before adding them you will have an easy job at making a wow unit for Warhammer or 40K.


ADVENTURERS


http://store.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/griffin/temple-west
I was very impressed by the production prepaint quality of much of Rackhams stuff. These two heroes looked like the studio paintjobs picturesd above. Rackham minitures are made of multiple types of plastic as needed, the flames are transluscent the wizard is not. Not shown here is the ornate decoration on the knights shield. There are many many more miniatures to use as adventurers but I highlighted these two especially for their exceptionally high quality.

KNIGHTS



http://store.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/griffin/praetorian-guards
These two production boxsets also very closely resembled their studio paintjobs. VERY nice unit to source for RPG miniatures.




http://store.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/griffin/knights-redemption
These three boxsets of knights make the Empire stuff look shoddy, some of the paintwork needs fixing, but not much. You can make up Exemplar Vengers from this with a little conversion, Warmachine is slightly larger scaled. Otherwise use some for character conversions for Empire. The bottom image is from Miniture Markets bitz list and is a example of what you get rather than a studio shoot.

For the rest of the bitz list, so you can see the level of quality for yourself go here.

If you like what you see dont pass it up, nice quality prepaint minitures with many uses. You might even want to use them for Confrontation, the 4th edition game is a good ruleset.

The pre-paint quality is only good as long as you don't buy the army boxes. Then you are basically buying undercoated models.

And I'm definitely going to have to look into this . . . =D

Oshova

Got me a pack of reversible tiles, Operation Frostbite and the ONI army set. An okay deal.

Oshova wrote:The pre-paint quality is only good as long as you don't buy the army boxes. Then you are basically buying undercoated models.

And I'm definitely going to have to look into this . . . =D

Oshova

Thasts true for Wolfen, less so for the others. Army box units need inkwashing, Wolfen army box units need repainting. Wolfen army box looks crap, look for the contents and buy seperately you pay about 15% more. This is especially the case because Bloodthirsty Predators and the Thone of Stars boxsets are particualarly nicely painted.
The only unit boxsets for Confrontation with a generally low quality paintjob are certain scorpion units, Sentinels in particular, Griffin Fusiliers are a little shddy too, but neither have any problem with them that cannot be fixed with an inkwash.

Redemption Riders need a partial repaint as the coloured edging and raised detail for the barding is off-center, or at least was for the minitures I got. The reins also haver a tendency to warp out of alignment, but you can leave those off or reglue them. Most cavalry minitures dont include seperate reins prepaint or not anyway.

Another sale? 70% off, what's the story here?

George Spiggott wrote:Another sale? 70% off, what's the story here?

The story is that they're trying to move back stock sitting around.

Platuan4th wrote:The story is that they're trying to move back stock sitting around.

The last one at 50% off didn't manage that? Looks like someone priced themselves out of their own market. Who would have thought the first games company to do that wouldn't have been GW?

It was, but GW recovered because at the time there was no competition. Rackham doesnt have that luxury.
AT-43 stuff is being rapid sold because a repackaging is possible to occur, depending on the extent of the rule revisions.

However it is possible Rackham are finally learning thier lesson and dealing with their two critical mistakes, first organising their game around small skirmish forces and a high RRP - both of which lead to small collections. Players will, if the prices are right and the rules support it, wish to collect far larger armies than they are currently doing.

BrookM wrote:Got me a pack of reversible tiles, Operation Frostbite and the ONI army set. An okay deal.

Any chance you could take a pic of the tiles? I see them on the website, but I want to see what the quality is really like.

Which tiles? There are three types. Cadwallon tiles, Damocles tiles and Frostbite tiles. All are of similar size and quality. Google up a picture of any and you will have your own answer.

Prophecy07 wrote:

BrookM wrote:Got me a pack of reversible tiles, Operation Frostbite and the ONI army set. An okay deal.

Any chance you could take a pic of the tiles? I see them on the website, but I want to see what the quality is really like.

I should be getting them tomorrow or Friday depending on how fast the Frog mail is.

I've caved in and have just bought a ton of Confrontation stuff in this sale; the prices are too good to pass up.

Up until a few months ago I was a fan of AT-43, although not of Rackham Entertainment itself, but had absolutely no interest in Confrontation. Then I bought the Wamphyrs unit box because they just looked cool.

Since then I've bought the Lion and Ram Army Boxes from Miniature Market, and have repainted most of my Ram characters and Devlan Mudded the undead thralls. The Lions were fairly acceptable, although I chose to invest some time in improving the characters. I've slowly grown to like the aesthetic of the Confrontation stuff. The original metal miniatures were unquestionably beautiful and while I acknowledge that the previous versions of the game were skirmish level with a small model count, there is no way I would have had the time or patience to assemble and paint armies of them, so I'm glad I can do it now in plastic.

Previously I was unimpressed by the prepainted Griffins and Dirz, but at 70% discount I've happily grabbed what I can and will fix any problems I find. The newer sculpts also appear to have improved since I saw the early releases a couple years ago.

These latter two armies kind of remind me of the Templars and monsters from Dragon Age Origins for some reason...

I can help you there Strahd, Confrontation is my major cash sink at the moment, my siggie needs to be updated.

Tell us what you have got and what you just bought, I can give you some pointers on what is what. You appear to be blind purchasing, which admittedly is what I did, but i found that some units you want one of, others you need two or three. Tell us what you have got and I can help with what you might need next.

Besides its an excuse to talk Confrontation, and we might as well do so here, the official forums are dying.

Which Griffin units were you unimpresed with, I cannot beleive you would actually be unimpressed with templars themselves, the paintjob on them is very good, I would be happy with that quality if I did it myself.

Orlanth wrote:I can help you there Strahd, Confrontation is my major cash sink at the moment, my siggie needs to be updated.

Tell us what you have got and what you just bought, I can give you some pointers on what is what. You appear to be blind purchasing, which admittedly is what I did, but i found that some units you want one of, others you need two or three. Tell us what you have got and I can help with what you might need next.

Besides its an excuse to talk Confrontation, and we might as well do so here, the official forums are dying.

Which Griffin units were you unimpresed with, I cannot beleive you would actually be unimpressed with templars themselves, the paintjob on them is very good, I would be happy with that quality if I did it myself.

No, not blind purchasing – I prefer to think of it as covering all eventualities.

I’m actually embarrassed to admit how much I have invested in Confrontation in such a short space of time. I own one of everything for Lion, Ram, Griffin and Scorpion, although I’m waiting for most of these latter two to arrive. I bought two unit boxes of both the Spearmen and basic Clones.

Over the last couple of months I’ve purchased two Lion Army Boxes and three Ram boxes. My undead legion looks rather impressive as it slowly marches across the table. I’ve supplemented it with Mantic Ghouls and I need to find an alternative to the horrendous gargoyles.

I’ve not yet settled on a system I want use all this stuff with, which is why I’ve been quite cavalier with my purchases, but I’d be interested in your opinion. Care to do a mini-review or give an opinion of what you think of the game? Confrontation is growing on me, but has yet to convince me fully; this said, I probably haven’t given it a fair try. Whatever I settle on will have to have integrated turns though – I found IGOUGO boring back when I played WHFB 3rd Ed. in the eighties. I might give WotR rules a spin as I believe they are a bit more dynamic than most GW rules. Anyway there are plenty free alternatives on the internet if the C:AOR doesn’t do it for me.

As to being unimpressed, it was actually the templars and spearmen which I didn’t like back then, but looking at the spearman in my hand now it seems to be different to what I remember. Paintjob is better and has metallic parts. Maybe it was just the ones from the Starter Set that were flat and grey. I’m eagerly awaiting the arrival of my order to see if the templars are as I recall them.

My wife is going to kill me.

Strahd wrote:
No, not blind purchasing – I prefer to think of it as covering all eventualities.

Fair enough, because the army lists are compact and the units packaged, this is something you can do with AT-43 and Confrontation that you cannot so easily do with GW and PP games.

Strahd wrote:
I’m actually embarrassed to admit how much I have invested in Confrontation in such a short space of time. I own one of everything for Lion, Ram, Griffin and Scorpion, although I’m waiting for most of these latter two to arrive. I bought two unit boxes of both the Spearmen and basic Clones.

So assuming you have one of everything, how literally do I take this. Some starters.
You got the rulebook and every codex? If not download free here and see what you are getting.
http://games.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/game-aids/rules?

Next there is the ConfrontationIntroductory box set, its a good way to get Abel and spearmen, a rulebook, a very nice terrain piece and some doggies. I will base my following advice on an intention to buy something of everything for four all five armies (I will cover Wolfen just to be completist) with troops enough for a three banner army of 11 to 15 units covering many if not all the five army lists of each army. This is where you are aiming with the size of purchase you are making for Ram anyway.


LION

Strahd wrote:
Over the last couple of months I’ve purchased two Lion Army Boxes.....

Lion is very much a character heavy army. The units are lacklustre compared to those of other lists, if you take a direct Lion to Griffin comparison the Lion units are understrength but the heroes are powerful, the Griffin are the other way around. Lion is hard to work with because much of the army is missing including their better infantry units.
With two Army boxes get: every hero box (I am assuming you have done this already) the Lahnars are a heroic army and are intentionally character heavy. To 'complete' your army you need at least two units of Knights and attachments, one boxset of archers, two guards attachments and two paladin attachments. I hope you didnt buy a boxset of each of the stock infantry because you will be drowning in them.
This will yield two full Knight units, two full Guard units (with spare), two full Archer units or three basic archer units and two units of Paladins.
Next buy this:
http://www.ludikbazar.com/product_info.php?products_id=38962
Its the metal set which gives you three ballistae, each of which is a seperate unit in the new rules at a very low price. You could buy other units here, the standard price is roughly comperable to the current sale on some lines, but the Ballistae are the only package unit of use and available to you. You will need to buy plastic bases from the Rackham store to rebase them for the current ruleset.

All told this will give you a rounded army with ability to form at least a three banner army of all five lists except Manilia, for which you would need MOAR knights, about double what I recommended.


RAM

Strahd wrote:
.....and three Ram boxes. My undead legion looks rather impressive as it slowly marches across the table. I’ve supplemented it with Mantic Ghouls and I need to find an alternative to the horrendous gargoyles.

I cannot speak for Ram, I dont know the army, but from the looks of it multiple Army boxers plus Wampyrs plus characters seems the way forward. You cannot play Hestia at all or easily play Vanth or Mantis until a greater range of minitures are released
You could fix a lot of problems by spamming a few boxes of undead knights:
http://www.ludikbazar.com/product_info.php?products_id=34127
Or you could buy some Black Knights on eBay and rebase them. However I dont recommend this and would keep your undead vanilla until the rest of the army is released. Ram are the current army so you should get new units by the autumn and have more than enough to play with in the meantime.


GRIFFIN

Strahd wrote:I own one of everything for Lion, Ram, Griffin .......I bought two unit boxes of both the Spearmen

Now we are talking. I know Lion by knowing the game, but I play Griffin. You will need a bit of expansion I am afraid, the Griffin army book is rather strange in that you need lots of different units to make up the respective banners. While all armies are like that to some extent Griffin armies are that to an extreme. Even the basic vanilla list has its oddities. There are two cannon slots which can only be avoided by buying cavalry or Griffins, the trouble is all three of those units are top end and very powerful. Some knights and a cannon being the best round off to a vanilla Griffin banner. Thus you need multiple cannon and cavalry units in every banner to build a large army, Griffins have a powergamers elite spam army built into the list as 40% of 'core troops'.
That is just vanilla. Temple of the North spams cannon, at a rate of two per banner, you can offset one with a Griffin but that is a bad idea unless you want your opponents to walk away from the table. Griffins are Titans , the only titan writen into the army books so far, and it is both severely overpowered and severely undercosted. Many Griffin players on the official forums forgo the Titanic abilities altogether, even so as a regular unit with its abilities taken away it costs less than a unit of knights and outperforms them. Titan is a proper word for it, a fully powered Griffin in a 2000-3000pt game would be about as a popular as a heavily discounted Titan in a 1500pt 40K game.
Rackham hasnt realised that yet because they haven't even released a model yet, though it will certainly be in the army box whenever that arrives. Dont let me put you off with what I have just said, Confrontation is fairly well balanced, its just that the odd occassion Rackham get the balance wrong they really get it wrong. Most players self police.
Anyway back to the lists. Other than for one banner skirmish games forget Temple of the North. Temple of the South is more balanced and has a very neat special advantage incrasing your characters magic tiem quotas by a considerable margin. Its also a more reasonable list, cavalry are mandfatory with a second cavalry slot competing with elite infantry. Again you get the cannon or titan slot but you can afford to fill those with cannon and take two cannon a fair number for a near complete three banner list. Pity the Temple of ther South heroes are not released yet.
Temple of the West has mandatory cavalry in the priority slot, three infantry and the usual cannon/Titan slot, the heroes are available and fairly good. Finally Temple of the East is an infantry army, that bans cannon and has only one cavalry slot shared with Titans. Temple of the East heroes are unreleased but are available in metal elsewhere. Temple of the East is the army to choose if you want an infantry horde and fewer special stuff.
All in all its a mixed bag that requiresd careful purchase plans.

You will need to buy extra:
Extra Templar unit and attachment boxset, an extra Redemption Rider unit and attachment boxset or two of each if you want a Temple of the West army, one more cannon. Two more fusilier boxsets an extra spearmen attachment boxset and the Introduction boxset mentioned above.

This will give you one of every unit plus two or three full Knight and Templar units, two cannons, two full fusilier units or three smaller ones, one or two full spearmen unit, one of everything else, Demon hunters, Executioners and Praetorians and all current heroes. Multiple Templar units are essential because of vanilla lists where you combine the various heroes. The Griffin army has a quirk in that at least half of the heroes can only join Templar units, though there is a way around this by mounting Thurbard and using the special ability of ther Praetorian musician. Therefore you will need two of each of cannon and Templars and three units of Redemption Riders in order to have a fully versatile collection just to cover all the bases, with three Fusilier units because a fusilier gunline is worthwhile. Due to the extra spearman boxset you bought if you get the introduction boxset you will have enough for two full size spearman units too. Everything else can stick at a single unit, most of the *** infantry is rare anyway and no Griffin army has a *** infantry slot that cannot be covered by Templars or Fusiliers instead.
As for the Griffin, I do suggest you get one, just one and tone it down as suggested stripping away its extras Titanic ability cards. This is now no longer insultingly cheap at 550pts. You can buy one by buying a MAGE KNIGHT SKYGUARD GRIFFON, its PPP and similar scaled to the Confrontation or Empire griffin and is a great straight substitute for either with suitable rebasing. I will leave you to source it yourself locally but if you can get together an order from Miniature Market you will find the Griffon is there on long term special offer for $5.50 which to me is a done deal as it eclipses the current Empire Griffin miniature. So much so I am thinking of buying a second for Warhammer.




SCORPION

Strahd wrote:I own one of everything for ..... Scorpion......I bought two unit boxes of .....basic Clones.

Scorpion armies look boring and incomplete at first glance, few command groups, no flowing banners and the paintjobs of the infantry are not quite what they could be. However the Scorpions of Dirz are fast becoming my favourite faction and I usually prefer white hat/grey hat armies. To play Scorpion you must first envision your army properly; one box of anything isnt going to be enough, heroes and Skorizes excepted. For the Dirz to prosper they use superior numbers. Two boxes of clones puts you in the right frame of mind but at the wrong scale. Clones deploy in units of 8 or 16, but a horde player knows the lower number is just a test of your faith in Arh-Tolth. Your two boxsets has bought one unit, so you need are four boxsets of Clones and two of Crossbowmen, this gives you three full sized * infantry units and even that might not be enough. I would toy with the idea of buying a total of six boxsets of Clones while you can. Hybrids Alpha are also worth doubling up on, I bought three of each in fact because Hybrids are the only unit in the army with anything resembling a proper command group, they wrok well as line fighters or as missile support and they are good hiding places for your heroes. Your Sentinels will likely need a touch up paintjob more than the others, you might also need a second unit but need not bother Sentinel are elite heavy hitting units and as you have noticed by now Dirz use something else for heavy hitting. This is doubly so of Skorize, the only high price-low number infantry unit in the army. You need Skiorize to spearhead an assault as they put pressure to bear at a single focus point, for this reason you only need one unit, but unlike Sentinels you do need them.
the main heavy hitting power comes from your monsters. First you get Phemera, unlike the other monsters they are small and weak, they also run up to the enemy and explode as suicide bombers (a recurring theme in Rackham games). phemera work well in small units so one boxset each is sufficient. For gaming sake this is all you need but to me there was something wrong with a horde army with small MSU hordes, while that doesnt work as an option for Clones of crossbowmen at all (always take full sized units) it doesnt feel right for Phemera either. see for yourself but you may be back for more.
Syhar Sighthounds are mobile but rather lacklustre, one boxset is enough for completeness. Unlike other heavy Dirz monsters the Sighthounds are weak. Whats the point of getting there if you cannot do much when there?
Dasyatis and Nemesis Evolution are very good, and fulfil different roles; you need a full sized unit, two boxsets of each, plus one extra boxset of either for when you play Theben, see below. Dasyatis and Aberration Primes are also very good, they are also quite different in application. Thus I recommend two boxsets of each, though you can stick with just one. Nefarius Prime is unreleased but the sculpts have been seen it looks nasty but is actually the least useful of the three. You will have what you need right there.

Thats it for the Scorpions, now let us see what thst gives you. Dirz factions are known for their eclectic special abilities rather than different force orgs and all include a fair mix of infantry and monsters so the force above should be easily able to field a three banner army for any faction. Only Theben needs a second glance as it gives the opportunity to increase the unit size of monster units. While deploying two Aberration Primes is a good idea anyway, I recommended two of each to play Theben. you can play Theben with one of each by proxying one as the other but it isnt the same. Big monster spamming requires not gouing cheap on big monsters. This is also why I recommend a fifth boxset of Evolutions, either Dasyatis or Nemesis, it doesnt matter which. This boxset can provide a second minimum unit of one for normal lists or be split to make two Theben units of five you want to do this because the fifth monster is free, this does mean that one of the monsters will be a proxy in one of the units but ther units are similar enough that noone should mind. Syhar Sighthounds suck enough that in Theben lists its best to leave them off rather than be forced to pay extra cash or points for the increased minimum unit size, to benefit from the Theben army advantae here you would need three boxes of Sighthounds and that simply isnt a worthwhile investment IMHO. Phemera are incremented too my answer to that is to buy two individual Phemera from Minitures Market as bitz, for now I use a spare Clone as a 'beast handler' proxy. You need to proxy anyway because the Theben heroes are not out yet, but are scheduled for release late this summer.

Dirz armies do include warmachines, bolt throwers and cloning tanks. Neither are released, the bolt thowers can be borrowed from the Lions if you buy the metal boxset, each requires a crew of ordinary Dirz crossbowmen, so setting up crew is easy enough. Frankly I wouldnt bother though, Dirz have monsters to hit as hard as artillery anyway, they also have potent mage heroes so they dont really need artillery. What they do need, especially if Theben appeals to you are cloning tanks. Again no miniture exists but Cloning tanks do not need crew ther voluntary crew you can add to it is just a Hybrid attachment box and it even says as much in the army book. I am scratchbuilding my own cloning tanks (when I get around to it) and may or may not add hybrids to it. No artwork exists so any vat-on-wheels will likely be good enough. More than likely I wont as they are not needed, if attacked the cloning tanks will not survive escort or not, they need a proper screen. Cloning tanks replace one fighter from any one unit in contact. this can include as monster, in Theben lists where the bigger monsters are in units rather than single entities this is very nasty.

You should be getting a picture of Dirz armies now, fragile but magically powerful heroes lurking amid secondary units behind a screen of creap bottom rung monsterlings and slave infantry, this is backed up by pinpoint elite linebreaker infantry and a mass of large monsters ready to exploit the collapsing battle line. Dirz armies work nicely because the units need to work together, the monsters are powerful but have few attacks and are hampered by their large bases large bases, they can slaughter trops along the line but cannot concentrate force, this is what the highly priced and fragile elite Skorize and to a lesser extent Sentinels do while everything is shielded by a disposable horde of cheap scum. The lack of character to the infantry units finally shows the true larger scale character of the army. While at first the blank similarity of the units appears boring but only when seen arrayed together you understand the style, the Dirz are a faceless horde that depends on the odd few heroes and large monsters for colour and focus.


WOLFEN

You have no Wolfen, you might not want any but if you do descide to 'complete' your collection go for:
1x Confrontation Intro boxset (you should have this with your Griffins), 1x Throne of Stars hero box, 2x Fang boxset and attachment, (optional one extra Fang unit boxset), 2x Great Fang boxset and attachment, 1x Vestal boxset and attachment, 1x Sacred Vestal boxset and attachment, 2x Shadow Tracker boxset, 1x Tracker boxset (optional, they arent very good), 2x Bloodthirsty Predator boxset, 2x or 3x Sylvan Animae Boxset. More plastic ones should be available this summer if release schedule holds in particular the Worg unit boxset and the Red Oak hero boxset.
I don't know if you are interested in Wolfen so I will spare myself the whys and wheres for now. The above army will be a good three banner balance for any list. Wolfen armies are elite and somewhat smaller. I made a mistake while "covering all eventualities" as you put it. Wolfen armies appear small on paper but Wolfen are BIG, even smaller Wolfen units have a sizable presence and footprint. I bought a 'small' Wolfen force not too much larger than what is listed above and found it to be huge larger on the tabletop than even my Dirz force.

Strahd wrote:
I’ve not yet settled on a system I want use all this stuff with, which is why I’ve been quite cavalier with my purchases, but I’d be interested in your opinion. Care to do a mini-review or give an opinion of what you think of the game? Confrontation is growing on me, but has yet to convince me fully; this said, I probably haven’t given it a fair try. Whatever I settle on will have to have integrated turns though – I found IGOUGO boring back when I played WHFB 3rd Ed. in the eighties. I might give WotR rules a spin as I believe they are a bit more dynamic than most GW rules. Anyway there are plenty free alternatives on the internet if the C:AOR doesn’t do it for me.

Confrontation is a good game system, it has fewer holes than At-43. There are some minor niggles with the rules only real issues are the rather crude scouting rules which allow a unit to deploy 'anywhere' out of contact, some badly costed magic items and unkillable or grossly undepriced Titans. The latter of which can and should be ignored entirely as they exist ancillary to the lists, the Tarascus is a nice model (miniature is not a word I would use) but is no less killable than the D&D equivalent, Belial is underpriced and while is technically killable only a battery of cannon are in any way likely to succeed in doing so. As a rule of thumb gather all the errata sheets from the internet and pay atention to them and don't deploy any titans except a neutered Griffin or the Chimera.

Strahd wrote:
My wife is going to kill me.

But its a good pain.

Gold star for doing your homework Orlanth, but you're a vicious man with your army lists and I wouldn't trust you with my credit card.

Joking aside, this is the type of useful in-depth analysis which I haven't seen anywhere else for Confrontation. Turn this into a Dakka article, if such is possible. There is a huge amount of information to digest here. I took advantage of the free downloads months ago, but never had the time to do the "Mathhammer" (Arkhammer?) of the material.

Excuse the brief response to what was clearly a lot of effort. I appreciate the time you took to provide this.

Is the AT-43 prepainted, too?

Are all of the confrontation pieces prepainted?

Strahd wrote:Gold star for doing your homework Orlanth, but you're a vicious man with your army lists and I wouldn't trust you with my credit card.

Confrontation is eating my 2010 hobby money just as AT-43 ate my 2009 hobby money. I am still wanting to get an ONI army sometime, but am happy to stick with 'only' three large armies for Confrontation, at least until I see how Rackham handles their 'Wood Elves'.
Confrontation is a more friendly system towards larger armies, wehich official play is about 2000pts many players are now fielding twice that or more. Your current armies are already about that points level, being a Warhammer scale player I collect for 6000pt+ armies which then look on the field like a reasonable sized Warhammer or Warmachine army, more or less allowing for smaller unit size bulked by a skirmish deployment. You will find that larger games allow more incarnates (heroes) and therefore more magic and other interesting stuff.

Strahd wrote:
Joking aside, this is the type of useful in-depth analysis which I haven't seen anywhere else for Confrontation. Turn this into a Dakka article, if such is possible. There is a huge amount of information to digest here. I took advantage of the free downloads months ago, but never had the time to do the "Mathhammer" (Arkhammer?) of the material.

I want to write a series of Dakka articles starting with a general play tactica and a Dirz tactica. I will be leaving it to you to cover Ram as I dont like the army very much and wont be collecting them or taking too much interest in them. I think GW and PP do a much better job of depicting the undead. Also while I like Lions there isnt too much to go for them, it mostly bland units plus interesting characters and that isnt of itself worth the investment.
The Rackham forums are really bland slow moving and short on useful information. There are only two rough tacticas out there, one for Wolfen, one for Griffin, both are incomplete. Its a piss poor coverage and At-43 forums arent much better with a one page tactica for eacgh army which is nothing more than a brisk unit overview.
If we do a good job Dakka may well become the go-to place for Confrontation tactics.

Rackham forum Wolfen tactica

Rackham forum Griffin tactica

Strahd wrote:
Excuse the brief response to what was clearly a lot of effort. I appreciate the time you took to provide this.

Your welcome, but it looks like you too are conscripted to provide the Ram how to.


Your next step is to download this piece of software at the link provided:

http://games.rackham-e.com/en/confrontation/open-r-ct

Add in your existing collection on its way and build up some army lists. the Army builder is very good but does have a few inaccuracies, such as and incorrect Griffin Redemption knight maximum unit size and an unlimited artifact limit.

So is this kind of sale typical for Rackham? It seems really... drastic. As if they were attempting to clear out their models. Do you expect them to go back to their previous prices or does this sale herald a change in the company?

I am a fan of some of the AT-43 models, which I've made 40k rules for. Maybe I'll just have to pick up some more.

Fiend wrote:So is this kind of sale typical for Rackham? It seems really... drastic. As if they were attempting to clear out their models. Do you expect them to go back to their previous prices or does this sale herald a change in the company?

Rackham has been holding off with new releases until 2nd edition comes for AT-43. When releases resume, there will be a price reduction in MSRP. No one knows yet how much MSRP will drop.

Rackham is already starting to do this with their current army boxes which are selling out pretty quickly. With the army boxes currently, you can purchase $225-$300 worth of minis for $70. Which BTW nets you enough minis for a full game.

FOXHOUND wrote:
Rackham is already starting to do this with their current army boxes which are selling out pretty quickly. With the army boxes currently, you can purchase $225-$300 worth of minis for $70. Which BTW nets you enough minis for a full game.

Lets be straight on this, its $300 cost of minis by no way is it $300 worth of minis. Even the Army Boxes are better sold at a measure of discount, many suppliers offer abnout 20% off as standard price.
The real annoying thing is that the rice in pounds and euros is the same as the dollar price, so we are paying so much more over here and 70% firesales excepted can only afford to import from the US. RRP for Rackham products is an utter non starter. Rackham need to severly reduce their prices but instead focus armies on larger collections.

They are already doing this with army boxes. Gone is the day when an army was two or three small units, and the Army boxes are screaming out 'build on me'. The real army size for both At-43 and Confrontation is now about 2.5k to 3k and retail collections are around 4k per race. Firesales et al offer armies of 6 to 10k+ at a reasonable price and thus are playable in the same way as Warhammer. Rackham are fools not to encourage this scale of gaming. Confronation scales up easily but AT-43 does not due to poor balancing choices. Plastic miniatures cost very little to manufacture, its all a matter of upping the sale vulme while reducing the price to less than the sale vuolume raised, this is best achieved by encouraging larger games and larger collections rather than trying to find new players, though the latter is important.

Orlanth wrote:

FOXHOUND wrote:
Rackham is already starting to do this with their current army boxes which are selling out pretty quickly. With the army boxes currently, you can purchase $225-$300 worth of minis for $70. Which BTW nets you enough minis for a full game.

Lets be straight on this, its $300 cost of minis by no way is it $300 worth of minis. Even the Army Boxes are better sold at a measure of discount, many suppliers offer abnout 20% off as standard price.
The real annoying thing is that the rice in pounds and euros is the same as the dollar price, so we are paying so much more over here and 70% firesales excepted can only afford to import from the US. RRP for Rackham products is an utter non starter. Rackham need to severly reduce their prices but instead focus armies on larger collections.

They are already doing this with army boxes. Gone is the day when an army was two or three small units, and the Army boxes are screaming out 'build on me'. The real army size for both At-43 and Confrontation is now about 2.5k to 3k and retail collections are around 4k per race. Firesales et al offer armies of 6 to 10k+ at a reasonable price and thus are playable in the same way as Warhammer. Rackham are fools not to encourage this scale of gaming. Confronation scales up easily but AT-43 does not due to poor balancing choices. Plastic miniatures cost very little to manufacture, its all a matter of upping the sale vulme while reducing the price to less than the sale vuolume raised, this is best achieved by encouraging larger games and larger collections rather than trying to find new players, though the latter is important.

As GW has kind of successfully done. Well they managed to get people to buy more AND put their prices up AT THE SAME TIME. And who says that GW don't know how to make money? =p

And yes I did just partially compliment GW =O

Oshova

Oshova wrote:
As GW has kind of successfully done. Well they managed to get people to buy more AND put their prices up AT THE SAME TIME. And who says that GW don't know how to make money? =p

And yes I did just partially compliment GW =O

Oshova

They did this with 6th edition and are doing it again with 8th. All this fight and shoot in extra ranks is a simple concept, sell more miniatures because people deploy larger units. Back in the 90's a unit of twenty was large and a 5x5 block was all but unheard of except for goblins. Most units were 5 or 10 with heroes everywhere. Warhammer threatens to return to this a little with the % heroes but offsets this by making large units more viable.

Confronation is a throwback in some regards, a 16 man unit is big, as big as units get, but remember all Confrontation units are skirmishers, though they can and do fight in ranks in the same way Warmachine infantry do. Note that said 16 man unit will cost 600-900pts depending on what it is, excluding any attached hero. When you compare that to an official army sizer of 2k this indicates howe small Confrontation games are/used to be. Confrontation unlike AT-43 doesnt criple its own balance when you increase the play area and encourages diversirty and thus larger armies because each army has a sizable wargear selection with lots of intersting choices but no individual hero can afford more than one or two items or spells except in the most extreme circumstances. Thus to get your magic fix in a fantasy game you need a large enough game to take multiple wizards or priests and allocate their limited magic item/spell quota to magic. There is only one mage in the entire game that plays like a level 4 wizard lord or Warcaster and that is Meliador; everyone else is lucky to have more than one spell and lucky if they get to cast it with any frequency.
Thus to get variety you need to boost your army, also Confrontation has a fairly good unit selection in fact the number of units in a Confrontation army book is roughly similar to the number of unit types in a Warhammer Army book so it wont do to deploy only or or two at once, you need over ten to get the full flavour with a bit of everything plus repeated favourite choices.
This is how Confrontation is increasingly being played, except that its fan driven whereas Warhammers game scale increases were rule driven.

kronk wrote:Is the AT-43 prepainted, too?

Are all of the confrontation pieces prepainted?

Rackham went to fully pre-painted games some time ago.

While they certainly look nice, with good pose and detail, I am terribly afraid of the plastics they use. Just thinking about some sort of "rubbery" plastic sends shivers down my spine.

Destrado wrote:While they certainly look nice, with good pose and detail, I am terribly afraid of the plastics they use. Just thinking about some sort of "rubbery" plastic sends shivers down my spine.

Rackham uses a mix of plastics on its miniatures, hard and soft transcuscent and opaque. This has lots of advantages, by and large the miniatures are resilient much more so thann GW miniatures but on the other hand some soft plastic weapons tend to warp. Must compnents are hard plastic, including most weapons but some are not dasyatis Evolution halberds, K-Warrior weapons and Golem claws tend to warp a bit, but this can be fixed by placing the miniature in hot water and resetting the plastic by hand.

Thank you for clearing that up, Orlanth. Warping plastic (and said consequences to paints) still puts me a bit off, but some of the miniatures shown here could definitely have a place in my collection. Much more inclined to buy 'em than before

It took a while to get my hobby money together, priorities, priorities. However I put my order in tonight:

AT-43 Expansion Set Elysian Cristalls x3

Red Blok Hussar x1

Cannon x1
Knights of Redemption Unit x1
Knights of Redemption Attachment x1
Fusiliers x1
Templars Unit x1
Templars Attachment x1
Executioners x1

Sylvan Animae x1

Dasyatis Prime x1
Nemesis Evolution x2
Clones of Dirz x2
Syhar Sighthounds x2
Phemera Alpha x1

Total 174.77 Euro

Your transaction has been recorded
Transaction date July 31 2010 22:45:10 (UTC/GMT)
Merchant URL www.rackham-e.com

Pity it ends in two days, I've been wanting to pick up some other choice items, but alas, payday isn't until next week.

I only just made the deadline myself.

What are you looking to get. I am curious at the scale other people buy.