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Not sure that having games with -small- numbers of minis is a bad thing, it's one of the reasons I dropped 40k for a few years for Warmachine, and I find that the "small skirmish games" are quite enjoyable, and hardly "played rarely", and their release schedule has kept up to their publications nicely. It might be expensive to scale up, but then again, most of my stuff from GW is classic metal, or heavilly loaded up with bitz so it's really no better there, as I haven't felt the need to convert much of anything for WM, the fluff is compelling enough for me not to customize)

Slipstream wrote: Once you've collected a skirmish faction
there's not really much incentive to continue.How many of
you have multiple large 40k forces?Now, how many have large
Warmachine armies? Finally how many have large multiple
war machine armies?

Damn near everyone I know... Now this may be a matter of market penetration in the UK, but WM came on strong and hard and swept the local gaming group where I played.. I was a relitivly late comer, but I still ended up with 3 armies, what's more since the units were small, it was a direct encouragement to get them painted and playable quickly, which I haven't done with -any- of my 40k stuff..

Skirmish games are fine ,but they don't really evolve into anything.

I think you're a little hung up on Metal = Expensive = Numerically Small Units = Small Games = Not Often Played
First off, as I've pointed out, conversion costs can rapidly push GW stuff back to metal costs, if they're not there allready because you're buying GW metal, they don't have plastic for -everything- Peek at the DH Rhino in my Gallery, that's about $100 just on parts, for that I could have bought 3-4 WM units if I had been playing at the time. Secondly, Warmachine -does- scale up nicely even if the units are 1/3 the size of a WH unit, (which is neutralized since since you're not removing 3 minis a pop in combat resolution) the game mechanics of unit and character interaction, provide a nice incentive to keep your army growing, because you're not just bringing in more models to the field, you're brinign in gains changes in abilities and tactics, so it -continiously evolves..

Plastic may be the way for rivals to level the playing field and
attract the mass market,if they did so,perhaps their games would be more
popular and played more.At the moment they are just niche games stuck in a
bubble,going nowhere.

Well Privateer is going into plastics allready, and in my opinion, despite their player base it seems to be GW that's going nowhere, the -game- hasn't changed much in all the years I've played it. WM on the other hand -is- going somewhere, with new dynamics and units added with every expansion, instead of the same units being endlessly requantified, they've got good customer support, and if they feel that can grow into "mass market" (not that I see GW in the real Mass Market, they're not in Wally World yet) at their own pace, so be it.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: GW however have, erm....taken inspiration from numerous places for their games.

PP isn't exactally short on "inspiration", considerig you can have John Henry going mano-a-mano with Baba Yaga... One of the major reasons I got into it, was that I had just ripped through Marrion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books and was seeing major parallels between their fluff and the 100 Kingdoms stories (StormQueen, Hawkmistress, etc..) there, as time has gone by it's just gotten better..

Not a lot of variety in there. The game was in it's infancy. Over time the range was expanded as the game caught on, and now we're looking at it's 2nd Edition.

Also, don't forget to throw Hordes in there, it's compatable, and pushes things more toward the high fantasy, racking PP up to 13 Factions (4 in WM, 4 in Hordes, 4 Merc Contracts plus the Pirates (who cover Ord pretty well) with the Retribution on the way, what's more each of the major faction usually has at least 3 viable subgroups

It's about keeping the gamers in house. PP are doing ok I guess. Not my cup of tea, but until they branch out with other games, I don't see them getting to GW size. And look what happened to Rackham as well!

Oh, and Monsterpocalypse to boot... now with (*Action) FORM BLAZING SWORD