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I know a guy who knows a guy and the rules Alesso is working on will be free.

Square basers rejoice!

Actually I was chatting with Jim from Mantic at GenCon and he told me about the rules. I have his blessing to post this news and the official announcement should be out next week. He also showed me a picture of one of the new Orc greens and I have to say these will be their best minis yet. I hope they post some pics so everyone can see them.

I ordered the battleset last weekend!

I think this is actually a decent idea for a gaming company. Gives the rules greater distribution, and the only reason the rules exist at all is to drive model sales. Isnt that what GW taught us? Kinda disappointing to realize games rules are nothing more than adverts, but hey.

Heresy! The only way a business can survive is by squeezing every last penny out of their cowed fan base!

niceguyteddy wrote:I have to say these will be their best minis yet.

Well that shouldn't be too hard considering what their other minis look like


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grizgrin wrote:I think this is actually a decent idea for a gaming company. Gives the rules greater distribution, and the only reason the rules exist at all is to drive model sales. Isnt that what GW taught us? Kinda disappointing to realize games rules are nothing more than adverts, but hey.

I don't think that is actually such a big problem because it isn't mutually exclusive to making a good tight set of rules. Unfortunately for GW they could never settle on one set of rules and want you to have to upgrade your rules and army book every few years. After so many editions even old veterans have to roll their eyes and wonder if they really need warhammer verson 25.

The only problem that "free rules" sometimes suffer is lack of updates and support.

Though this can happen even when you have to pay through the nose for rules... well... unless you are a space marine...

But I think it is pretty cool they are making the rules free. I can only assume that they will still be selling rule books etc, but simply for having everything set down in a book, rather than printed off the internet?

It'll be interesting to see what Mantic comes up with.

I wonder if GW is gonna wake up.. Mantic could produce their entire core line and offer them to people for 25% or less of the cost of GW. (100 dollar mantic undead of just CORE units costs over 400$ in GW bucks)

Most intelligent businesses would consider this a big deal. We'll prob just get price increases tho to combat lower sales :p

I see 0 reason to buy GW vampire count skeletons, ghouls or wraiths and soon blood knights.. nor really any dwarves besides some specialty units mantic doesnt make. 40k is safe due to copywrite and a more unique design but WFB is basically middle earth + a few fluff revisions done later

brettz123 wrote:
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grizgrin wrote:I think this is actually a decent idea for a gaming company. Gives the rules greater distribution, and the only reason the rules exist at all is to drive model sales. Isnt that what GW taught us? Kinda disappointing to realize games rules are nothing more than adverts, but hey.

I don't think that is actually such a big problem because it isn't mutually exclusive to making a good tight set of rules. Unfortunately for GW they could never settle on one set of rules and want you to have to upgrade your rules and army book every few years. After so many editions even old veterans have to roll their eyes and wonder if they really need warhammer verson 25.

Who even said it was a problem? And really, if you are making your money in models, and using the rules as a leader into the model sales, it would stand to reason to make the best rules you can. I mean, that's really just paying for crap advertising isn't it?

Kirasu wrote:I wonder if GW is gonna wake up..

GW will "wake up" when they can't boost their profit margin anymore. Well, maybe they will. I cant help but wonder if they just take it for granted that at some point they wont be able to operate their business model anymore, and just plan to close up shop when that happens.

People have been pestering GW to do this for years, and now have a chance to put their money where their mouth is. My guess is that this noble experiment will fail, though.

Well, going by the interviews on Beast's of war, the idea behind the free rules is a Public beta, to get feed back and ideas to improve the rules from us the gamers, will be buying and playing the game. Its a pity GW didnt think of that idea of a public beta, but then it would get in the way of makeing money.........lol

It's not like you couldn't NOT download them if they weren't. See what I did there?

I want to see these Orcs. I'm becoming very impressed with Mantic as a company. They seem to be listening, and giving us what we want. Weird

That happens? Dez, you must be living in some silly wacky bizarro world, lol!

I wonder if the rules will only be free online.. or if you can get an official paper copy from Mantic or other places.

It would be NICE (but expensive for Mantic) if I could cart around a hard copy that the company made.. but I am perfectly fine with binding printer paper myself at a copy-center.

-P

If I understood the BoW interviews, the rules will not only be in th estarter boxes but al other boxes too!

I hope that is correct but not sure.

That just leaves more rubles in my pocket to spend on figs. Cause there's no way in bloody hell I'm shelling out $75 for a rulebook. That's about 3 regiments of Mantic figs, I believe. Warhammer just got more unappealing.

Hopefully no army books either!
£17.50 = a box or two of mantic's finest

Yes chibi I am pretty sure they come in all boxes, at least thats what I have heard from a friend who stocks mantic models and has been keeping up to date with the rules. Each box will also contain stats for the unit.

I really hope mantic do well as I think they have a good attitude to the game and their models are really nice.

Having seen a basic run over the rules I am slightly worried about the simplicity of the rules as they are quite basic. I think this is intentional, but it still concerns me. Apparently they can fit on 1 a4 sheet of paper.

I still think it is something I may get into purely because the undead models are amazing, and it could possibly replace WHFB for me.

Its the mantic elves that'll steal my money away from GW, i don't like the mantic dwarves but the elves look pretty good, though a little birdy tells me that they're a little weedy compared to the GW ones.

4M2A wrote:Having seen a basic run over the rules I am slightly worried about the simplicity of the rules as they are quite basic. I think this is intentional, but it still concerns me. Apparently they can fit on 1 a4 sheet of paper.

Wow, that's not a lot of rules. It is but an atom when you compare it to the gargantuan behemoth that is the BRB.

4M2A wrote:I still think it is something I may get into purely because the undead models are amazing, and it could possibly replace WHFB for me.

I don't think i'll ever switch from WHFB to mantic, just use their models in place for some of GW's ones.

The rules don`t fit on an a4 except you think of a summary, then yes.

The thing with Mantic's rules is that they are brand new.

WHFB has had 27ish? years to keep adding layer after layer, until eventually things become a lot more complicated than they need to be (imo).

By keeping it simple at the start, until they have a lot more models, it is the best idea for now.

Once they have hundreds of models from a huge variety of armies the core mechanics may need to change a bit.

No army books. apparently the rules for seperate units will be packed in thier boxes.

Thanks 4M2A

With regard to the HE's Mantic look more true scale as opposed to GW's herois figures.

I personally don't mind either from what I have seen.
If anything slightly favour Mantic as for my tastes I prefer true scale.
Mantic elves are skinny in comparison if you are used to seeing the pumped up GW elves.
They are elves after all and supposed to be lithesome imho

Will be getting the dwarves though not totally convinced, but for the money I may as well whack on a load of GS.

I am still under the impression that the marketing policy and game system will be excellent for large scale 28mm battles.
Mantic seem to have packaged their product very well.
Love the idea of a viable unit in a box

I've got the Dwarves and they are a bit taller and broader than GW dwarves, but I think it's not TOO obvious unless you're really picky about that sort of thing. I like the proportions on Mantic Dwarves a lot more, I have to say. I own a lot of GW dwarves, and I'm comparing the two and sighing, because I can see a lot of model replacement in my future

As to the rules, the WOTR rule basics fit on an a4 or two, and they've got lots of tactical depth. I imagine that Mantic can manage something good. I'll be looking to get in on the beta. Actually, the whole prospect of a "ground floor" plastic heavy fantasy wargame has me quite excited.

Duncan_Idaho- I don't claim to know a huge amount but the guy who told me (who happens to be very reliable and is a member of our gaming group) told us that it would actually be a very simple rules set and that it would be much smaller that many otehr large games. I don't think this is neccessarily a bad thing as in the BoW videos Allessio mentioned the idea is to be simple but tactical. The impression I get is it's more about placement of units and combining them that some units being better than others.

From the information I have been given it's going to be a very tactical game but not as in depth as WHFB, this allows much larger games and it will be a lot easier to pick. That's meant to be a key point of the game.

With the opportunity to go at it from scratch I really think this could be something really good as they aren't restrained by old mechanics as GW games are.

Da Boss wrote:I've got the Dwarves and they are a bit taller and broader than GW dwarves, but I think it's not TOO obvious unless you're really picky about that sort of thing. I like the proportions on Mantic Dwarves a lot more, I have to say. I own a lot of GW dwarves, and I'm comparing the two and sighing, because I can see a lot of model replacement in my future ...

Agree that it's exciting to see an alternative that could be big for rules and minis.

I also point out that the 'really picky' crowd you're mentioning about the Dwarf taller/broader thing tend to be the same lot who refuse to use BfSP Dwarves because they all look too 'samey' but then never get around to painting them and/or much beyond priming.

The orcs, from what I've seen, seem to be just this shy of freaking awesome. Couple those with the Aow characters and holy hell, I can finally have a Orc horde army that won't cost me my first born.

Actually the WHFB rules allow less tactical and strategical gameplay because of their complicatedness. Complexity does not mean thousands of rules.

Agamemnon2 wrote:People have been pestering GW to do this for years, and now have a chance to put their money where their mouth is. My guess is that this noble experiment will fail, though.

It will only fail if we let it, even if we let it. Personally whatever the rules are like I'm definitely getting mantic models for my Dwarves and starting an Undead army with the £30 box of 50 Zombies that they're releasing soon, no way in hell am I paying 45 quid for a rulebook, so I'm definitely looking for alternatives.