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Surprised this hasn't already come up...

This was reported by TTGN yesterday. Looks like the last hurrah for poor old R.E.

A shame, I've got tons of fond memories of CF 1-3.5 and I really enjoyed repainting my UNA and REdvBlok.

So I guess this means no AT43 2.0?

Maybe Hasbro or someone else can pick up the bits and pieces left

If Hasbro/WotC couldn't get STAR WARS miniatures to last, they won't do the same thing with an otherwise unknown AT-43.

I guess , worth a shot.

Oh well... there goes that idea of getting a Therian force.

The end of a long agony...

Just pick up the games and factions for pennies and keep playing.

I don't play any rackham games myself but you can be sure that a devoted fan base will have some ideas for fan based updates even if no minis are available.

too bad....i have a good collection of confrontation minis, that i just loved painting. good sculpts and a decent game system with AT-43, and conf... maybe someone will pick up the licence and re launch the games.

This is a shame although I was not a fan of the last version of Confrontation and the horrible bendy plastic miniatures, the metals where some of the most original miniatures of the last decade or so. I remember discovering them onlline one day and being blown away a lot of searching later I found where to buy them from of course the booklet etc was all in french but that just added to the fever. Rackhams big mistake was waiting so long to get a decent translation to English published.

good riddance! My store had a large following of rackham for confrontation 2 & 3, it beat out warhammer for a bit even. Incredible models, great game that had a great depth of rules without being too complicated and played well. Incredible art and fluff, very high-quality rulebooks with a good campeign supplement. But they just kept doing strange stuff over and over as a company that drove more and more players away, it was almost like they were making a concious effort to piss off their customers.

For a company that made it's name on beautifully sculpted models and with realatively in-depth rules, they suddenly pulled a 180 and canceled their metal line in order to focus on a diametrically opposed market, the pre-painted fad. Though they were decent models for prepaints and the game was decent enough, it completely alienated their core customer base and they were left trying to restart their market from scratch, which was impossible with all the initial delays to AT-43.

You can't crap on a customer base that you've developed for years like that, then expect those people to give you any sympathy when you fail to get a foot in the new market. At least with GW it's just corporate ambivalence, rackham had to go out of their way to do the wrong thing at every turn it seems

A very poorly managed company.

I really liked their metal miniatures, remarkably attractive.

The strength of the euro, strikes in France and continued poor release schedules and frankly bizarre and arrogant seeming emails to their customers all aided the death of this.

I hope someone does pick up AT-43 and run with it, I think it does have solid potential if handled with some TLC.

Well, that explains why the on-line store has been off-line all week now and why they haven't made an update concerning everything since September. gak, I really wanted those ONI Mercenaries.

Even miniature market is running very low on stock.

Rackham shot themselves in the feet regarding distribution, translation and rules quality; and failed to learn their lesson. But they did the job when they outsourced production to China.

There is a lesson for everyone else too. The de facto core of the company is Chinese not French, though Rackham faileed to realise that. It is the Chinese who make the molds and make ther miniatures. Now Rackham is over they can do what they want really.
Outsourcing your core manufacturing to China is dangling your balls in the vice. Lots of companies are getting stung this way.

Half of the real problems the company had was regarding their complete lack of control over their product. The Chinese not Rackham decided when it was time to ship. I hope Privateer Press takes notice and joins GW with a home manufacturing base policy.

True about poor management. I mean for crying out loud they show off minis and dont even release them! Stupid ONI Mercs. And yea the metals is a big issue too. Those were some good models

I know its only a small ray of light, but isn't DUST Tactics pretty much what AT-43 should have been? I say this, not being 100% sure of whether all the AT-43 miniatures would be relevant to DUST or if even the scales match.

Delephont wrote:I know its only a small ray of light, but isn't DUST Tactics pretty much what AT-43 should have been? I say this, not being 100% sure of whether all the AT-43 miniatures would be relevant to DUST or if even the scales match.

I think theres a conspiracy

http://sdtaylor.wordpress.com/2010/04/06/the-inevitable-debate-about-dust-tactics/

The influence of the Rackam metals was fairly wide spread as welll just look at how many other miniatures now have a very rackam vibe going on and the rules where really good oh well all good things must come to an end.

I never played any of their games, but I bought several of their minis from the FLGS just because i really like the way the mini looked. They had great looking sculpts and I'll miss their products.

Orlanth wrote:Even miniature market is running very low on stock.

Rackham shot themselves in the feet regarding distribution, translation and rules quality; and failed to learn their lesson. But they did the job when they outsourced production to China.

There is a lesson for everyone else too. The de facto core of the company is Chinese not French, though Rackham faileed to realise that. It is the Chinese who make the molds and make ther miniatures. Now Rackham is over they can do what they want really.
Outsourcing your core manufacturing to China is dangling your balls in the vice. Lots of companies are getting stung this way.

Half of the real problems the company had was regarding their complete lack of control over their product. The Chinese not Rackham decided when it was time to ship. I hope Privateer Press takes notice and joins GW with a home manufacturing base policy.

That's rubbish in all sorts of ways. I know it's fashionable in many parts of the world to bash China, and God knows their government is nothing to admire, but you appear to have no idea how many successful businesses use China for their manufacturing. For instance, you appear to be blissfully unaware of the fact that GW have moved their paint manufacturing to China, and FW have moved their casting to China, resulting in a big improvement in quality in both. Have you noticed how much better the recent FW casts are? China has real issues with IP, but these hobby products are not popular enough to be greatly affected by the problems of IP piracy that plague the music and movie industries.

Rackham screwed up their business model, abandoning what they did best and jumping on a bandwagon that seems to have hit the wall. That's what killed them, not China.

Achilles wrote:Surprised this hasn't already come up...

This was reported by TTGN yesterday. Looks like the last hurrah for poor old R.E.

A shame, I've got tons of fond memories of CF 1-3.5 and I really enjoyed repainting my UNA and REdvBlok.

Cant say I'm the least bit suprised. After burning your customer base with the variatiosn of the miniature confrontation game, then switching to prepainted and killing the thing that made you stand out, the writing was on the wall a long time ago..

Metal minitaures they made rocked. Buisness and game wise not so much.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Orlanth wrote:Even miniature market is running very low on stock.

Rackham shot themselves in the feet regarding distribution, translation and rules quality; and failed to learn their lesson. But they did the job when they outsourced production to China.

There is a lesson for everyone else too. The de facto core of the company is Chinese not French, though Rackham faileed to realise that. It is the Chinese who make the molds and make ther miniatures. Now Rackham is over they can do what they want really.
Outsourcing your core manufacturing to China is dangling your balls in the vice. Lots of companies are getting stung this way.

Half of the real problems the company had was regarding their complete lack of control over their product. The Chinese not Rackham decided when it was time to ship. I hope Privateer Press takes notice and joins GW with a home manufacturing base policy.

Totally disagree. Many of their problems happened long before outsourcing to china. Thats just the nail in the coffin.

Tailgunner wrote:

Orlanth wrote:Even miniature market is running very low on stock.

Rackham shot themselves in the feet regarding distribution, translation and rules quality; and failed to learn their lesson. But they did the job when they outsourced production to China.

There is a lesson for everyone else too. The de facto core of the company is Chinese not French, though Rackham faileed to realise that. It is the Chinese who make the molds and make ther miniatures. Now Rackham is over they can do what they want really.
Outsourcing your core manufacturing to China is dangling your balls in the vice. Lots of companies are getting stung this way.

Half of the real problems the company had was regarding their complete lack of control over their product. The Chinese not Rackham decided when it was time to ship. I hope Privateer Press takes notice and joins GW with a home manufacturing base policy.

That's rubbish in all sorts of ways. I know it's fashionable in many parts of the world to bash China, and God knows their government is nothing to admire, but you appear to have no idea how many successful businesses use China for their manufacturing. For instance, you appear to be blissfully unaware of the fact that GW have moved their paint manufacturing to China, and FW have moved their casting to China, resulting in a big improvement in quality in both. Have you noticed how much better the recent FW casts are? China has real issues with IP, but these hobby products are not popular enough to be greatly affected by the problems of IP piracy that plague the music and movie industries.

Rackham screwed up their business model, abandoning what they did best and jumping on a bandwagon that seems to have hit the wall. That's what killed them, not China.

Spoken like someone who stopped playing when they went PPP. I think I'm going to go with the more rational, less -left-over-bitterness explanation.

Orlanth wrote:Rackham shot themselves in the feet regarding distribution, translation and rules quality; and failed to learn their lesson.

But they did the job when they outsourced production to China.

There is a lesson for everyone else too. The de facto core of the company is Chinese not French, though Rackham faileed to realise that. It is the Chinese who make the molds and make ther miniatures. Now Rackham is over they can do what they want really.
Outsourcing your core manufacturing to China is dangling your balls in the vice. Lots of companies are getting stung this way.

Half of the real problems the company had was regarding their complete lack of control over their product. The Chinese not Rackham decided when it was time to ship. I hope Privateer Press takes notice and joins GW with a home manufacturing base policy.

Wow, what misguided, xenophobic, anti-Chinese nonsense.

Poor management is the problem, compounded by not knowing how to outsource intelligently.

A well-run company will save real money outsourcing, knowing what to outsource, what standards to set, and so forth. That's why GM, Boeing, Dell, and the Japanese so on do just fine with outsourcing. Rackham was poorly run, and they got what they deserved (and paid for) - the lowest quality at the lowest price. Outsourcing out of desperation isn't the answer.

GW is already outsourcing their most expensive products (FW) to China, so hopefully, PP joins GW in this. In all likelihood, they have already done so, and it's just not well known yet.

Rackham. Your minis will be missed. Not your antics.

Outsourcing really does mean a slow death for the manufacturing capability of any countries involved in doing so. Its a real shame that companies based in the western world, their own home territory, don't seem to see this. Yes, it is a financial reality to send work to where the labour is cheap, and government legislation offers benefits over their own countries, but I guarantee, this relatively, short term, financial gain will mean a long term financial and social loss!

On topic, I've tried to pick up some of the old Confrontation Metals, and ironically, the only place that appeared to have any in any real amount was China very expensive though!

Start buying up the AT-43 stuff you want now. As soon as this news becomes common people will drain the last of it from stores, sit on it for a couple months then ebay the stuff for 2x or 3x retail.

on hte plus side places like thewarstore and FRPGames will likely be doing closeout sales soon as RE fills then will their remaining inventory at low prices.

Not surprising, and very well-deserved in my opinion.

Not surprised, though I am still bummed. Bye-bye to my 3,000 points of Una and 3,000 points of Red Blok...

_Tim?

Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:Not surprised, though I am still bummed. Bye-bye to my 3,000 points of Una and 3,000 points of Red Blok...

_Tim?

Not necessarily, I mean, you have the rules and the armies, (I'm gonna assume you have some guys to play against) theres no reason why you need to stop playing. You could generate your own scenarios, and your own campaigns, hell, within your group you could even push the story line forward (if you wanted)

If you are really bored with the rules, or even the game setting, because the miniatures are relatively generic, you could use them with more independant gaming rules like Star Grunt II for example.....

Just a few ideas, theres actaully quite a lot you could do with your Rackham collection....I think.

Some_Call_Me_Tim? wrote:Not surprised, though I am still bummed. Bye-bye to my 3,000 points of Una and 3,000 points of Red Blok...

_Tim?

What?! Why? Does Rackham still own them? Are they being sold off in the liquidation?

This is as ridiculous a statement as the 3.5 players who insist that Rackham "ruined" C3.5. Like somehow Rackham moving on to other games reached beyond time and space and undid all of their previous enjoyment of the game.

Come on Scotty - you know what people mean when they say stuff like that.

They're upset that the version they like is gone, and there will be no more 'official' support, no more new rules, and, most likely, no more new players (of their version!).

And a slow (if you're lucky!) erosion of the player base that will eventually result in no more players at all...

So, as for this news...

I can't say I am surprised, but I am surprised that they lasted as long as they did!