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 TalonZahn wrote:

 totalfailure wrote:

 Ghaz wrote:

 totalfailure wrote:
For me, it’s a hard ‘no’ on the P3 paints. They had a place at one time. But in 2024 there are way too many other good to excellent paint lines already on the market. And I’m not getting into yet another paint line you’ll likely never see in stores, and have to mail order. No thanks.

Ninjon covered these two points in the video above (starting at the 15:40 mark) and why he doesn't see them as being a problem.

I stopped watching Ninjon and Miniac long ago. You can infer from that how much I value their opinions…If the paint is successful, great for Steamforged. I won’t be backing it, or searching it out if there’s ever a retail release.

Those two will shill anything sent to them for free.

I'd be more interested if someone of solid reputation tested them.

They have alos leaned into Minitainment rather than actual painting.
It saddens me Vince Venturella, one of if not the best minitubers is friends and doesnt call them out on that.

totalfailure wrote:
I stopped watching Ninjon and Miniac long ago. You can infer from that how much I value their opinions…If the paint is successful, great for Steamforged. I won’t be backing it, or searching it out if there’s ever a retail release.

I remember he did a Temu or Wish episode reviewing a bunch of Chinese knockoffs, and even I felt that it was a bit much.

hotsauceman1 wrote:They have alos leaned into Minitainment rather than actual painting.
It saddens me Vince Venturella, one of if not the best minitubers is friends and doesnt call them out on that.

Ninjon (and a few others) are 100% background noise for me, so I need flash more than substance.

Vince requires actual watching.

As for call outs... it's a small world, man. There's rarely anything to be gained, and usually more to be lost, by creating interchannel drama. If I were to guess, Vince has a full time job (and probably a good paying one with plenty of flexibility), while Ninjon makes at least some or all of his living off his channel. things are different when it's about making a living.

I think at this point the cost of creating a paint range has gone down enough, and enough people are buying into paint ranges blind, that this makes sense even if you only sell to whales. I don't need another complete set, but they have some nice browns I wouldn't mind picking up at some point.

Goobertown hobbies made s timely video on this issue using the P3 paints as a frame this mornng:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnI6YQvqS3w&ab_channel=GoobertownHobbies

I liked the old P3 paints I had - and the ones are supposedly better (though who can say for sure yet) but they aren't really offering any value in the kickstarter to try to entice me into trying them.

I wish I could but I have been Kickstarted out. Nothing here is exclusive as I got confirmation that the Irregulars paint will eventually be on the SFG webstore so I'm just going to wait and buy singles later.

The KS seems to be doing pretty well for a miniatures paint kickstarter, with 3k people backing so far and half a million GBP (). So mission accomplished I guess.

I'll get the Irregulars because I need more of the old ones in that one and want to have a look at the changes that have been made myself, but the LGS is also bringing these paints into the store, and had most of the P3 line already, so I have a pretty extensive collection of P3 already.

P3 paints are pretty good, and the option of getting them in dropper bottles is cool because my flip tops from them all broke before the paint was used up.

But I am not gonna back a KS for paint. If they show up in my local shop in dropper bottles I'll be happy to pick some up.

I liked the light colours they had, like the old favourite, allaround champ "hammerfall khaki", as they were better than GWs flimsy light colours.
But these days GW can deliver on quality whites and even gold.

 Polonius wrote:

totalfailure wrote:
I stopped watching Ninjon and Miniac long ago. You can infer from that how much I value their opinions…If the paint is successful, great for Steamforged. I won’t be backing it, or searching it out if there’s ever a retail release.

I remember he did a Temu or Wish episode reviewing a bunch of Chinese knockoffs, and even I felt that it was a bit much.

hotsauceman1 wrote:They have alos leaned into Minitainment rather than actual painting.
It saddens me Vince Venturella, one of if not the best minitubers is friends and doesnt call them out on that.

Ninjon (and a few others) are 100% background noise for me, so I need flash more than substance.

Vince requires actual watching.

As for call outs... it's a small world, man. There's rarely anything to be gained, and usually more to be lost, by creating interchannel drama. If I were to guess, Vince has a full time job (and probably a good paying one with plenty of flexibility), while Ninjon makes at least some or all of his living off his channel. things are different when it's about making a living.
.

Yeah i respect vince because he gives actual advice in his channel, Ninjon i try watching and he just seems to know what he is talking about....but not conveying it

Got my hands on some prototypes of the P3 paint Kickstarter. For those still not sure, here are my thoughts: Smooth, satin, creamy, and high covering power. I was particularly impressed with the new Khador Red. It's a bright, vibrant red (similar to Citadel Evil Sunz Scarlet) that covers black in two thin coats without looking too pastel. The colour match to the old versions is decent, some colours are spot on, a few slightly off. The metallics are fantastic. Super smooth, with very fine metallic particles, and coverage is almost up to Vallejo Metal Color standards. Apparently, they've used a new technique with fully coloured aluminium flakes instead of mixing silver aluminium pigments with dye (Goobertown Hobbies really needs to check this out under his microscope). If you've always liked the P3 palette and love a satin finish, this Kickstarter might be for you.

Please note: I've only tested a handful of colours, so my impressions may not be representative. If you don’t know me yet, I review all the latest miniature paints on my YT channel: https://youtube.com/@stahly_taleofpainters I received the samples for free but, as always, I'm not sponsored. Full review planned when the range hits retail!

> Got my hands on some prototypes of the P3 paint Kickstarter.

fwiw, Prototypes aren't production. What you can make in small batches may not be possible in large, though hobby-level quantities certainly aren't mass market levels.

Anyway, thanks for your critique of Army Painter washes and Speedpaint a long time back! Hope you get a set of P3 to review when it hits retail!

New roadmap and update https://steamforged.com/en-gb/blogs/brands/a-roadmap-manifesto-warmachine?fbclid=IwY2xjawFimYRleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHTGQ2owKhsDSGbPie3ymaRSpEq22Oit4Rd9lSqyvIxmx_OOoIriV7IeYLA_aem_NpxwsXpoe9HGE1Tj30bFrA

AMA: https://www.reddit.com/r/Warmachine/comments/1fq2pkn/ama_mat_hart_chief_creative_steamforged/

2 personal take aways from this, FB chat and the AMA is

1) quite a big slowdown in releases vs what PP was trying to do
2) Old factions like Circle, Skorne etc are well and truly gone, retired as "armies of legends", playable but will never be getting anything else. If you played those armies you are now limited to 2nd hand market or switching to one of the nu-factions with the new looks etc. We all expected that but I think that fact is starting to brutally hit home with many people now.

I still think its a mistake to retire old factions that way - they should have just updated them with new sculpts under the same faction name.

That said a lot of the new factions are just new takes on old factions - eg there's "new everblight" that's copying many of the same design elements.

It's a choice they've made I don't fully agree with, but its there and its done and honestly I prefer a firm stance rather than a half-way "we might one day" attitude from them.At least a clear line lets you know their intentions and direction.


A slowdown is a shame, but honestly take a look at Warcradle handling Dystopian Wars and slower releases might be less "exciting" but they can make for most sustainable growth. Slow steady sales and sustainable growth is very much what they need. I'd rather that over a big blast of new stuff burnign them out and then having supply issues; big gaps; slowdown and (typically) lost communication and other stuff. And if you read the linked production update from before they very much were having issues meeting demand. Slower sustainable and reliable stocking is going to grow things far better than forever being out of stock.

The "we might someday" is because they honestly might. The original intent was clearly that Orgoth replace Cryx, but popular demand for both has us with both.

I think the problem with new sculpts is just that they'd need to resculpt everything and its just not worth doing, particularly to mostly sell to people who already have the stuff. For the most part I'm pretty happy with the greatest hits approach they've taken to Khador, with all the elements still there but clearly rethought into something more consistent than what it expanded to over the years.

Of course, they haven't left this stuff alone and its quickly bloating all over again, but I overall really like the focused design.

The range is still very limited. They will add more armies in the future for sure. And my guess is that most of them are gonna be new versions of old factions.
Hopefully Circle (which is my favorite army) will be one of them.
Judging by the new Trollbloods though, I'm not sure I am excited for this. I like the new models but they don't feel like the old Troolbloods at all. The only thing from the old army that could fit with the new is the Sea King.
Yeah the old Trollbloods were a little all over the place, but I believe they should have just picked one aspect of the army and focus on that.

I think new Trolls are quite well designed, just not a replacement for old trolls in any way. I'm kind of okay with that, honestly, but I'd not be sad to see a return of the northern tribes someday.

In terms of Circle, I'd keep an eye on Khador's second army. It looks to be a warbeast faction centered on Old Witch. It's probably something like new Grymkin, but she's always tied in with Circle as well so they might lean that way. I could definitely see Druids and Warpbeasts with like Kossites or something.

It's kinda crazy that they've put their new two player starter set up for pre-order and we still haven't had much of a look at the contents.

I suspect more will be forthcoming, but you'd think they'd be spamming pictures everywhere.

 aku-chan wrote:
It's kinda crazy that they've put their new two player starter set up for pre-order and we still haven't had much of a look at the contents.

I suspect more will be forthcoming, but you'd think they'd be spamming pictures everywhere.

Here: https://steamforged.com/en-gb/blogs/brands/new-warmachine-pre-orders-oct?fbclid=IwY2xjawFkt5lleHRuA2FlbQIxMAABHWa2HTVqzerXqkT08cILr5NDPZA4x-VELR9EZUai4LXGG0-i28cjcXG1ng_aem_nOnpEGlRH2-q0lORkfrhlQ

What’s in the box?

Major Allister Caine (Cygnar waracaster)
Deuce (Cygnar character warjack)
Captain Bastian Falk (Cygnar character solo)
The Black 13th (Cygnar character 3-model unit)
Kapitan Zahara Vilkul (Khador warcaster)
Razor (Khador character warjack)
Sergeant Goran Lazarenko, the Jackal (Khador character solo)
The Hounds (Khador character 3-model unit)
Scatter Terrain (4x Walls and 2x Shallow Water/Hazards)

NGL, 2 person starter set with terrain for about £80 is a pretty decent price point. Given the cost of a lot of the Mk4 stuff i was expecting a lot more. Be interesting to see how popular this is with new player and getting people into the game

Nice to see the Black 13th being full size! I have the originals, and they are really tiny! Caine needs to ditch the beard, though; blech.

They've got a better idea of what a roadmap is than GW!

https://steamforged.com/en-gb/blogs/brands/a-roadmap-manifesto-warmachine

Steamforge definitely came out swinging last night with a huge keynote. Tons of impressive efforts towards the brand. Notable Grymkin/Convergence/Crucible/Infernals will all return to sale full time as a direct order on demand line from SFG. They will also be doing GW style reprints of other legacy armies.

Also big news with the return of the Press Gang and Lock & Load. Beyond that the new stuff is super exciting. The new technically Khador army with its Grymkin/Circle vibe looks incredible.





Automatically Appended Next Post:
Image heavy highlights in the spoilers.

New Khador army of Old Umbrey



New huge bases for the elves and new Legion



New Troll army. This one far more tied to old Trolls:


New Cephylix. A cadre for Cryx and a solo/super heavy mercenary akin to Magnus and Carver for everyone:

I don't know who is buying this stuff, or who Steamforged are making this for, but for the sake of the IP I am glad there is a plan and SFG are.. heh.. forging ahead with it. So, good for them.

I may pick up the new Trencher battlegroup box just to have a few of the new models (which, to be fair, DO look quite nice) but I'm not seeing anything in the line-up to make me want to start a new army to replace my mercs, much less play the new edition.

A lot of its going made-to-order. So chances are so long as they've got the casting equipment and staff to streamline production of the classic models and an organised library to make it quick to pull moulds from they can likely cast-on-demand and after the initial surge of demand it should level out. It also aims to bring back old-players by letting them have easy model access whilst also pushing the new models.

Get someone to finish their old army then sell them on the new game

 Overread wrote:
A lot of its going made-to-order. So chances are so long as they've got the casting equipment and staff to streamline production of the classic models and an organised library to make it quick to pull moulds from they can likely cast-on-demand and after the initial surge of demand it should level out. It also aims to bring back old-players by letting them have easy model access whilst also pushing the new models.

Get someone to finish their old army then sell them on the new game

Just musing out loud (because I have no evidence, only poor quality hot takes), the other explanation could be that the Mk4 Models just are not selling enough as many people are just sticking with their Mk3 armies.

Personally I'm actaully quite liking the Nu-Circle and upcoming Trollbloods Kithguard but that's because they look like the older style models, not this weird "different for the sake of it". These models look like WM/H models should do based on my experience. And bringing back Cyphalyx, Grymkin, CoC and Infernals is basically resurrecting the whole old line that had been moved to Armies of Legend and thus should have been slowly sliding towards being unsupported in a few years.

Almost no old player I have encountered (limited sample size i know) wants much or any of the nu stuff. Iv said that in order for Mk4 to be a success SFG needed to sell Mk4 models and get older players to convert over. Resurrecting whole old lines feels like them admitting that this isn't happening. I like what SFG is doing, but not enough, given the history of the game and the player base for me to jump back in and make it a game i play. Im still very much in a "wait another year" mode.

New WM factions have so far just been mashups of two previous factions into 1. This is that... but more.

Circle of Khador is interesting, and there's some more Everblighty-looking trolls (not to be confused with the Trolls of the Broken Coast), but nothing really new here.

And more big models. Ehh.

Cephylix looks mostly intact, design-wise, which is nice for me personally. I always really liked their vibe.

Sunno wrote:

 Overread wrote:
A lot of its going made-to-order. So chances are so long as they've got the casting equipment and staff to streamline production of the classic models and an organised library to make it quick to pull moulds from they can likely cast-on-demand and after the initial surge of demand it should level out. It also aims to bring back old-players by letting them have easy model access whilst also pushing the new models.

Get someone to finish their old army then sell them on the new game

Just musing out loud (because I have no evidence, only poor quality hot takes), the other explanation could be that the Mk4 Models just are not selling enough as many people are just sticking with their Mk3 armies.

Personally I'm actaully quite liking the Nu-Circle and upcoming Trollbloods Kithguard but that's because they look like the older style models, not this weird "different for the sake of it". These models look like WM/H models should do based on my experience. And bringing back Cyphalyx, Grymkin, CoC and Infernals is basically resurrecting the whole old line that had been moved to Armies of Legend and thus should have been slowly sliding towards being unsupported in a few years.

Almost no old player I have encountered (limited sample size i know) wants much or any of the nu stuff. Iv said that in order for Mk4 to be a success SFG needed to sell Mk4 models and get older players to convert over. Resurrecting whole old lines feels like them admitting that this isn't happening. I like what SFG is doing, but not enough, given the history of the game and the player base for me to jump back in and make it a game i play. Im still very much in a "wait another year" mode.

I think lack of uptake of the new things has multiple elements attached to it. I also think its unbalanced.

Warmachine itself is getting reasonably faithful to original design armies under the new system. More or less if you liked the old models the new are revamped versions of them for the most part; plus under the same/similar army names. It's an evolution albeit a very heavy handed deployment because of wiping out all the old stuff in one go as PP ran out of cash to keep casting functional.

Hordes on the other hand is getting more of these adapted factions and fewer that are fully faithful to the original - of course this might just mean more faithful ones/recreations of old factions are coming later.


So you could argue that bringing back old stuff to market is 100% aiming to appease those who don't want to upgrade to get them buying again and get them supporting the game once more. It also shows things like long term planning; faithful support of the original material and a bunch of other things that give confidence to wargamers that its a brand to invest into for the long term. Which I think is something PP were also lacking in ; the longer they had MKIV the more we saw them cutting back on things; downsizing; moving and so on and so forth. Ergo whilst on one hand things were going good on the other it gave a feeling that they might just not be around again.

Steamforged I think are doing a lot more and all this new casting; new STL development; new app and other things are all big costs to invest into. They are clearly able to deploy resources that PP just didn't have any more and I think that, plus some new marketing and company direction is likely going to reward them with greatly increased sales. They already said that they upped production facilities so I think sales are happening - to new and old fans. So there's clearly enough sales volume going on to make it worth them taking these big investment steps.


I feel like we are back at the launch of MKIV where there was energy, focus and drive; only this time we've got a firm with more active resources behind it now who can make some early strategic calls to invest and do stuff that should reward and generate faster and greater growth.

 Overread wrote:


I feel like we are back at the launch of MKIV where there was energy, focus and drive; only this time we've got a firm with more active resources behind it now who can make some early strategic calls to invest and do stuff that should reward and generate faster and greater growth.

That's a damn accurate and fair way of looking at it. This years Adepcon feels like the announcements that PP should have made

But it does mean another false start/dawn or whatever. But if they have a plan to get it physically into store and physically visible and being played then that can only be a good thing. Still more to do.

It's less of a false start though because MKIV is still out in the wild. I am looking forward to them getting EU/UK production up to standard - places like Firestorm and Wayland don't have any stock at all - but they seem to be getting the new starter pack in decent numbers. So hopefully getting the 3D printing side sped up will help.

Plus the big investment into plastics means they can, in theory, steadily transition toward that. Whilst the costs are greater the ability to print at speed is WAY greater than for 3D printing.



I think there was a lot of worry when SFG stepped in that they'd take things in an odd direction or they'd just burn out like PP had done or shelve the game to back-burner. Instead we've got them making very solid headway into first solidifying the position and now it feels like they are going full on with expanding. Back-access to models, the humble bundle access to lore and other things all feel like "customer/gamer" focused choices. Things that show loads of positivity and support for the game.

I think it wasn't just a win for Warmachine/Hordes its a win for SFG and PP working together toward what should be a better future for the game.

Honestly, the MK4 stuff has always been pretty true to the Warmachine design style. The big problem is their studio painter was WAY into NMM painting that doesn't match the model style at all. Orgoth suffer the worst from this, and seeing them painted normally warmed me on the line considerably.

I will say, SFG has gotten the recent 2 player starters on shelves pretty effectively. There hasn't been a big release since to know how well that continues, but its made a difference. I'm not sure if its enough, but this keynote is definitely better than anything we've seen from PP in years.

Locally we've had bits of interest in buying things, but I've not seen a lot of gaming. I actually just broke my stuff out the other day and the game does feel really good. I still think they need to reign in the tournament crowd and make 75 points the standard with a bit of an FA cap. It feels really good there with more of an FA:1-2 range for most things.

I'm more hyped than I've been in a while for sure. I'm not sure what the local response will be but... I'm game if they are.

I feel like PP was on life-support for way too long. Too many choices made poorly compounding each other and resources and money running thin. I'm sure there's a bunch of things SFG are doing that PP wanted to do and simply didn't have any money to do so. Add to that them losing staff over the years and I think as a firm they were just ground down.
Covid killing Warcaster; the massive disaster with Monster Apoc and a bunch of other things all drained the resources PP had and sapped out money. Even though they got Warcaster out on time for a KS (which is impressive even without it being mid-pandemic); etc... It was just never enough to let it take off. Hopefully we see Warcaster make a return too!

SFG brings a big injection of staff, energy and money - its a huge resource boost that I think is going to really work wonders considering it seems like the team behind them know their stuff; know business and are fired up for the setting.