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I'm not sure what PP thinks they're focusing on now. They sold.... from what I can see everything except MonPoc? I think they're done.

As for Warmachine.... man, I do not know. The game is great. This could be what both it and Steamforged need to get back on track. It's also likely to fall victim to Steamforged's hubris. Just have to see what the future holds I suppose.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I'm not sure what PP thinks they're focusing on now. They sold.... from what I can see everything except MonPoc? I think they're done.

The way it reads, it seems like PP gets to focus on the rules and design with Steamforged doing the marketing, releasing, et al.

So it seems like its mostly a distribution deal. I suppose that makes sense. Our recently closed FLGS couldn't get PP stuff at all due to a lack of distribution but had no trouble stocking SFG.

 rybackstun wrote:
As I said in the other, earlier, thread: I wonder if this is because PP just can't handle it any more or if the Mythic Deal really did put them under.

I don't think Mythic really impacted them at all. It obviously killed MonPoc 2.0, but that was already having issues of bloat and the Mythic thing seemed more of a way to keep it going while PP put their focus back on Warmachine.

I'm pretty sure its entirely about distribution. It's been impossible to get PP products in stores for years now. For a whole bunch of reasons both industry driven and of PPs own making, their products have effectively been direct order only for most of Mk3. They've needed a distribution partner for quite a while, which I suspect is how Asmodee ended up with most of their staff and MCP. I'm not sure if they went with SFG out of desperation or the promise of more autonomy, but it seems like that's the driving force of this deal.

The big question is whether SFG is just looking to pad their portfolio to get bought out. No clue who they could sell to at this point, but there's a bit of brand fluffing going on there in general.


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 Overread wrote:
I was just working up to trying that new "its not everblight but it is" bunch of models. I was a little surprised as they went into 3D print production that they didn't try and at least do what Mantic and Mierce have done and start doing STL sales as well of their models for additional income.


Fingers crossed something good comes of this

STL sales can support a single artist or two, but not a company. There's a reason you don't see STL lines with an actual game behind them.

 Da Boss wrote:
I have Gatormen, Trollbloods and Legion of Everblight armies. Am I right in thinking PP did an End Times and my armies don't really exist in the same form any more?

They exist as their themes in Mk4, but there's changes to unit sizes and stuff. So for example, Gatormen are still very much a Gatormen army with those units and Warlocks and beasts, but the Gatorman unit itself is locked to 3 mans. Anything that was a 10 man is capped to 5 now.

Trollbloods got broken up into their Storm of the North army with Northkin stuff and a United Kriels army with a lot of their gunline units as the focus. Legion was split into an army of the Ogruns and Grotesque stuff and an army of Blighted Nyss. There's an Unlimited option for every faction that has rules for everything they've had in the past all in one, but its not considered part of the "standard" army range.

 Overread wrote:
Same as how PP at launch of MKIV didn't want to do cheap starter sets but £100 sets as their main products and seemed to only come around to cheaper sets later.

PP was really focused on how their out of control SKU bloat killed them with distribution once warehousing kind of stopped being a thing. Honestly, the new army sets are pretty great, fairly equitable with Combat Patrol and give you a ton of game. The real issue is just that they really should have also seen the value in those preview battle boxes right away and made them a product as well rather than turning them into 3 SKUs which....was kind of the whole thing they were trying to avoid....?

 .Mikes. wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It's also likely to fall victim to Steamforged's hubris.

I don't think I agree with this, but ST's handling of the ending of Guildball was overly aggresive to the player base. I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, and would love to dust off my old WMH's minis, but then they go and respond to a comment on Reddit with this: https://www.reddit.com/r/Warmachine/comments/1d786a1/comment/l6xpgb5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

Yes that could be entirely transparent and just the psoting of somone genuinely excited about the game, but after Guildball it's hard not to read more into it.

So, I say hubris as someone who's honestly been a big fan of Steamforged... just in spite of the arrogance the company has always swaggered. Their games are good, but their owners have always spoke of them as perfect; immune to all the mistakes "the other guys" make. Honestly, I didn't even take offense at the way they killed Guild Ball, because that's just the way they've always acted about their designs, even when talking about the endless ways they need to change them. I legitimately like their work, but long term support has never been one of their strong suits and they have a perfectionist tendency to need to constantly tweak things and then get bored and give up when perfection isn't as easy as it seems. And I stress, I say this as someone who's a big fan of their games.

I am glad this is at least happeneing in the age of 3D prints. One of the things that kinda killed GB me before they killed GB was the switch from models with a great sense of fluid motion to PVC sculpts that were mostly in flat footed poses. That's really killed a lot my enthusiasm for their more recent games, even if I'm a big fan of the games themselves.

Sad you missed out on Devil May Cry. I feel like that's the best of their Capcom board games, though the boss battles are hugely disappointing compared to what they accomplished with Dark Souls.


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Cyel wrote:
Oh, I wish the game was as streamlined as advertised. The amount of exceptions, corner cases, unintuitive interactions and clarifications just for unit movement ( which was supposed to be simplified) takes as much space as rules for some full board games.

I get mail notifications from the current PP forum and 90% of topics seem to be rules questions...

It's streamlined in play but reuses too much Mk3 rules to be streamlined in text. The actual experience of playing the game is significantly snappier, but the core rulebook could be cleaned up significantly.

 aphyon wrote:
the aesthetic is no longer black powder/steam tech (hell cygnar has rail guns).

A huge part of this is the heavy NMM pain schemes they went with for the studio models. The game looks far more familiar in person with models painted with less high contrast color schemes and aggressive highlights. Orgoth being the most notable in that regard, looking far better with simple metallics. It's also pretty clear that they've pulled back from that a bit. Almost every release outside the first wave has added more in line with the old aesthetic. Orgoth getting monstrosities and doom reiver blades, Cygnar going a little more (Nikola) Tesla and the newer factions in general leaning away from that overly shiny look that got pushed in the first wave of releases.

 aphyon wrote:

It has absolutely nothing to do with the paint jobs. the represented tech level is completely different.

These are the same named models-man o war suppressor tank solo
the first one is steam tech with pepperbox black powder cannons.



the second one is the new MKIV-it looks more at home in infinity with belt fed mini-guns-



A cygnar example- both are the "sharp shooter" model.





One is not like the other.

Cygnar had mini guns like that since the start of Mk2.

And the Storm tech line has always been more high tech than the trencher line. At least compare the new Storm Sharpshooter to the old Storm Gunner he's replacing:

 Da Boss wrote:
Aesthetics are always gonna be subjective, but I do see a style difference between the old and new models.

There's absolutely a modernization to the newer armies. There's about a decade timeskip between Mk3 and Mk4 and some of that is entirely intentional. It's just not as extreme as people make it out to be; particularly when you see the models on the table.

 Da Boss wrote:
I think they look like they're part of the same world, for sure. And I could tell the Jack was Khador from lots of the details. But I can see why the Cygnar model was chosen, it looks properly Sci Fi to me.

Yeah, its easily the most over the top of the line and I thought they went a little far with Storm Legion myself, particularly with glowy bits in the armor. Part of the whiplash definitely comes from Cygnar's Storm tech not being particularly competitive in the past though. You weren't likely to see this style on the table very often and then they pushed it to the forefront with the new edition.

 Overread wrote:

Now perhaps the partnership might allow them to bring back classic armies for sale or push forward releasing new reimaginings of older factions that don't yet have an army or which can be subfactions of current ones that embody classic design elements. Ergo there are ways to do it without rocking the boat too much.

Bringing back old armies really isn't an option. The vast majority of the line was either PVC kits that they don't have the molds for anymore or metals that aren't a realistic medium anymore. Basically, everything would need a degree of resculpting on some level, which is effectively what a lot of the Mk4 armies are accomplishing while streamlining a lot of the bloat and implementing the rather fantastic modular jack and beast designs.

They're definitely looking to bring back classic aesthetics though. Cryx is a very similar to its old style and driven heavily by popular demand. Trenchers are another classic return and its very likely Gun Mages will show up shortly along with it. The second Khador army plans look to be where we're going to see something similar to either Circle or Grymkin. It's just going to take time.

 Overread wrote:

I believe PP had to stop putting magnets in the packs at some stage. I seem to recall some shipping restrictions came into play that complicated international shipments and might have raised shipping prices domestically?
But its only a vague recollection that something like that happened.

Shipping loose magnets has problems in certain states and countries so they had to take them out of the boxes themselves and make the magnet packs a separate product that is offered as a free bonus with the purchase of the army boxes. Most stores I've seen seem to understand and offer the same deal.

I'm not sure where the 40k comparison comes in. The main difference I've noticed between the new and old Warjacks is they're slightly less top heavy with better leg proportions. As for weaponry, that's up to the list. This is a character Dire Wolf add on that's upcoming, but whether you have a big gun or a big mace is a list building choice.

I mean.... I guess? I was more focused on the dreadnought comparison. Heavy boters aren't exactly high tech and the Iron Kingdoms is full of high caliber cannons. To me, its quite similar to other weapons in the game. A little more modern, but mostly just sharper details than 15 year old PVC.

 Overread wrote:

I think the leg change is a welcome one honestly; some of the old jacks look almost comical with their tiny legs

I just appreciate that the legs are no longer flat footed. Some of the newer stuff was better, but those PVC kits have the most boring stances.

https://steamforged.com/blogs/brands/iron-kingdoms-manifesto-part1

Probably the big news here is that those models pictured are from a new character model 2 player starter that will be done in HIPs.

Mk3 let me play with Jacks finally, which is all I really wanted. I'd rather play it over Mk2 though the Mk2 era was certainly more enjoyable because the community was so fun. Honestly though, I feel like people have a lot of rose colored glasses when it comes to the actual experience of the actual game in Mk2. I can't help but feel the change just gave people an opportunity to hop off a treadmill they were already tired of running.

My one big gripe with Mk3 as a whole was that they narrowed the focus of armies so much with themes, but didn't shrink the size of games. I had a lot of bloat that could cover it, but it really made the tail end of mk2 problem of only playing full sized armies much worse by requiring more FA.

That's actually an issue I feel Mk4 solved, but the community wasn't keen to follow and PP hasn't really stuck to it. 50 point games in Mk4 honestly feel pretty good, though 75 is where it feels like armies can have more varied strategies and my preferred size. 100 just feels bloated again, but a bloat that most players have rushed back to. I really feel like they need to adjust FA down for each game size for it to really work.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
Yeah, towards the end.

That was an entire edition thing, it wasn't just towards the end. I played the majority of MkII with free Exemplars.

Theme lists existed since the beginning of Mk2, but were caster locked and more often than not, not terribly powerful. As the game grew, PP definitely started pushing themes a bit more, but it also took the community quite a while to unlock their potential so it was easy to feel like they didn't exist early on.

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Actually that makes me wonder - one of the arguments we saw for them taking down the Press Ganger system was legal issues regarding voluntary work and pay (I believe around the time a bunch of MTG judges sued Wizards for pay?).

I wonder if this partnership might release that issue from "PP"?

Whilst there was not one thing that caused the steady decline in Warmachine, I do think that one of the big elements was the shutdown of the PG system. PGs had a vested interest in running, organising and hyping up the game at the local level and I think when that went it was both all too easy for people to not bother and also try out other games and before you know it no one was holding a torch for a few weeks and suddenly everyone moves on.

That was a fan speculation but Matt has said many times in interviews they closed it down because the person running it stepped down from that position (as they had been pulling double duty) and basically PP didn't have anyone else to run it (or wanted too). While Matt never went into it's probably because they couldn't afford to have someone just working on Press Gangers as it was implied that it was a massive workload to run.

It's worth noting that Steamforged took the opportunity to shut down their own volunteer program around the time PP did. I wouldn't expect it to return.

Basically, they removed the $200 entry level and leaned into the Battlebox concept as the primary starter. In its place, they've reshuffled things so the previous Core Starter can still act as a stand alone army or can expand the Battlebox. The Axillary expansion seems to be designed to be the must have purchase that turns either starting point into a full game.

In terms of cost....

Previous:
$200 - Core Army Starter
$130 - Army Expansion
$13 - Solo Caster
$13 - Character Upgrade
$20 - Heavy Body for Upgrade

$376 - Total

New:
$70 - Battlegroup Box
$160 - Core Expansion
$150 - Auxiliary Expansion

$380 - Total

So mostly a remix rather than a price increase, though it looks like they cut a standard bearer from the starters, which is rather unfortunate and definitely an odd gouge seeing as the prices otherwise are pretty much the same.

I've got the whole Khador line so far minus the colossal. The models are wonderful. Huge jump in detail over the previous metal and HIPS stuff. Zero assembly and minimal cleanup. I've been really happy with everything so far.

Sunno wrote:
The new Khador sculpts are very nice although im still not totally sold on the slight change in Jack design. However, that could just be the paint job.

Im trying to find the image but SFG did state on their discord that they will only be producing the nu stuff. So all old non-Mk4 models are now gone. Which is interesting because entire factions like Rhul are in that category.

PP had already discontinued production on the old models I believe over a year ago. Anything they had for sale was old stock.

Johanxp wrote:
Can't find a rulebook to buy in the shop. Where can I find game rules?

Everything is in their app. It's just called Warmachine App and more or less completely free. You can subscribe to get Lore releases and some league event stuff, but there's no paywall for the rules for the game or models.

Johanxp wrote:
When the preorders are supposed to be shipped?

Mid July I believe.

Longstrider wrote:
https://home.privateerpress.com/2024/05/14/print-your-army-info-from-the-warmachine-app/

There's one, which hopefully still works.

Re: news - apparently the pre-orders are pushed back to the end of the month. I've been following the AMAs and blog posts, and I must say I'm being drawn back in, along with two other home-gamer friends. By all accounts from the discord the resin is still a little inconsistent, and SFG is still working on getting a European distribution service up (and is apparently making progress on NZ/Aus), so we're still wait-and-see.

But they're certainly saying all the right things (for us anyway - 3D terrain, a hobby focus, legit development for smaller game sizes, etc. etc.) so we're continuing to keep an eye out. Just broke out some old minis we had and enjoyed a 30 point game last weekend.

PP is still doing the manufacturing so I'd assume the actual prints won't change at all really. I've been really happy with everything I've bought though and the few bad prints I've gotten have been replaced by PP within a week.

Looks great. Rules for the casters are quite interesting as well. Definitely excited for this one.

 Dysartes wrote:
Do we know what the unit/Jack/Solo are? They weren't listed in the blog post SFG did about the wave of pre-orders.

Rules for most of the Cryx stuff is already in the app, including the stuff beyond the starter.

For the Khador vs Cygnar box, the casters have been revealed but the rest has not been revealed.

Almost everything we're seeing was already happening with PP; you just had to be paying attention to their web page or Facebook to know about it. SFG has done a great job putting this stuff out there for people to actually see.