Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Alpharius wrote:Oh, I think Rackham's got GW beat by quite a bit in that department...

Yup. Rackham filed bankruptcy. GW didn't.

If I were a gaming store, I wouldn't touch Rackham with a 10-foot pole.

GW was quite close to bancruptcy at the end of the 80´s.
Oh, and Rackham filed for protection according to french law, which is not the same as the american Chapter system. They were under protection to avoid being bought by competing companies.

It's not quite the same, but it's close enough. It still says "we have a cash flow problem and require protection from our creditors, or we'll be bankrupt in short order"

GW and rackham are quite diferent.

I get the feeling rackham is lost and in panic searching for something that catches mainstream public eye. I'm probably wrong though.
Maybe all the bad feelings rackham generated inside and for themselves and their core clientelle is part of a wider plan. I just dont get it.
All I know on my micro reality is that other companies are filling the gap Rackham left by trashing the high quality miniatures path.

After all, Privateer Press did bring out some action figures of some Cygnar heroes IIRC. They only did the one or two, so I guess they didn't take off as a concept, but if PP thought it was a good idea to try then there's no reason for R not to try as well.

Looks like they are trying to make that the game though....

Really feels like they are just clutching at straws now.

Pity, really. Rackham was on track to give GW a real run for the money, with AT43 going after 40k and Conf going after WFB.

What I'm taking away from this is that naysayers are dead wrong when they say that GW needs to make radical changes to either gaming system. At least, if they're not trying to destroy GW gaming in the process.

Still, I guess GW is laughing all the way to the bank.

I dunno. Rackham, despite being GW's biggest competitor (yes PP fans, it is, or at least was, true!) still made a fraction of the money GW did, and thats without the international chain of stores.

The only way GW can lose it's market dominance is through it's own gross stupidity, which it seems to be tackling even as we speak. It's just one of facts of life now!

Rackham outsells PP? I think Conf 4 may have fixed that. There are no publicly available figures available for PP's turnover but I doubt AT-43 (Rackham's most popular line) outsells Warmachine/Hordes internationally. Also PP have just released Monsterpocalypse (which is nice for people who like that kind of thing - which I don't).

Isn't there a distributors top selling game chart somewhere on the net? That's give us some idea.

None of the people I knew who played Conf 3 (myself included) play Conf 4. I was looking forward to Conf 4 myself as I found some elements of Conf 3 a little clunky but I loved the models. Conf 4 killed it stone dead for me and everyone I know who played it, including one of the guys who helped translate the AT-43 book.

George Spiggott wrote:Rackham outsells PP? I think Conf 4 may have fixed that. There are no publicly available figures available for PP's turnover but I doubt AT-43 (Rackham's most popular line) outsells Warmachine/Hordes internationally. Also PP have just released Monsterpocalypse (which is nice for people who like that kind of thing - which I don't).

Isn't there a distributors top selling game chart somewhere on the net? That's give us some idea.

None of the people I knew who played Conf 3 (myself included) play Conf 4. I was looking forward to Conf 4 myself as I found some elements of Conf 3 a little clunky but I loved the models. Conf 4 killed it stone dead for me and everyone I know who played it, including one of the guys who helped translate the AT-43 book.

Amen brother!

I was sad to see it (C3) go, but it (Confrontation in general!) is now GONE...

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Looks like they are trying to make that the game though....

Really feels like they are just clutching at straws now.

As I said in another thread, all will be revealed next week and suffice it to say those are NOT for a game.

I can't say much more because we were asked not to discuss it until after the official announcement other than to attempt to dispel negative or just plain wrong rumors.

Platuan4th wrote:

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Looks like they are trying to make that the game though....

Really feels like they are just clutching at straws now.

As I said in another thread, all will be revealed next week and suffice it to say those are NOT for a game.

I can't say much more because we were asked not to discuss it until after the official announcement other than to attempt to dispel negative or just plain wrong rumors.

Lets hope they surprise me in a good way. Its about time they invert the tendency for bad news.

Agreed!

A 'good' surprise is LONG overdue from Rackham!

Alpharius wrote:Agreed!

A 'good' surprise is LONG overdue from Rackham!

Only here. Dakka is by far the most Anti-Rackham forum I have ever been on.

AT-43 is a very young game, and is doing pretty well from what I can see.

Yeah, AT-43 is doing well and C4 is doing decently. The new things coming down the pipeline excited me(and several other Sentinels) when we found out about it, but that may be a personal opinion thing. I think you'll only have to wait until next Tuesday. That's at least when JB wants to announce, but it may not be up to him completely.

Kill CAoR off, carry on developing AT43 (which is a really good system and the pp models work well) and relaunch C3 and the metal models. Nuff said.

methoderik wrote:Dakka is by far the most Anti-Rackham forum I have ever been on.

I don't think Dakka is more anti-Rackham than we are anti-GW...

Please!

Rackham did the worst bait and switch job EVER with the whole "Oh, this is Ragnarok 2, not C4" swindle!

And then drove the Confrontation game (and name!) into the ground on the worst nose dive in of all time.

And the level of activity on the 'official' Rackham Confrontation boards dropped to just about zero shortly thereafter.

I'm happy that some people still love what R's selling, but they took their fanbase of a serious 'prison date'.

With no lube.

methoderik wrote:

Alpharius wrote:Agreed!

A 'good' surprise is LONG overdue from Rackham!

Only here. Dakka is by far the most Anti-Rackham forum I have ever been on.

AT-43 is a very young game, and is doing pretty well from what I can see.

You should take a look at www.rackhamistheantichrist.com

Is that for real?

I mean sure, they are, but...

Kilkrazy wrote:

You should take a look at www.rackhamistheantichrist.com

I stand corrected.

Rackham did the worst bait and switch job EVER with the whole "Oh, this is Ragnarok 2, not C4" swindle!

Actually Mongoose did an even worse job with SST, which I really would have liked to succed.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Actually Mongoose did an even worse job with SST, which I really would have liked to succed.

QFT there, Duncan !!! Mongoose made a mess of SST and Battlefield EVO with their empty promises and lack of follow-through.

I only see Rackham going through some growing pains as they try to find their niche.

Was Mongoose's botch up really worse than more or less misleading the entire Confrontation fan-base?

I'll admit that I don't really know enough about the whole SST problem, but what Rackham did was borderline criminal!

OK, that's a bit of a stretch but they were *deliberately* misleading their existing customers knowing full well what was really going to happen.

Getting everyone excited for "Ragnarok 2" and "Confrontation 4", driving sales of miniatures for both games, while knowing exactly what was going to happen?

Lame.

Alpharius wrote:Was Mongoose's botch up really worse than more or less misleading the entire Confrontation fan-base?

I'll admit that I don't really know enough about the whole SST problem, but what Rackham did was borderline criminal!

OK, that's a bit of a stretch but they were *deliberately* misleading their existing customers knowing full well what was really going to happen.

Getting everyone excited for "Ragnarok 2" and "Confrontation 4", driving sales of miniatures for both games, while knowing exactly what was going to happen?

Lame.

Oh, I don't think anyone other than Rackham can say what Rackham was deliberately trying to do. Who of us can know for sure? They may have had every intention to support "R2" and "C4" but economics and company survival may have dictated a quick deviation from that course. They did file for "Protection" in order to retain their business and restructure it.

Yes, we all feel slighted when we have a strong affinity for a game, a system, a company and they "betray" us. I feel that way toward Mongoose who really strung SST fans along and "drove sales of miniatures knowing exactly what was going to happen". They never learned from their experience with Battlefield: Evolution but claimed a "We have learned and you'll be amazed" stance. Lots of promises for the long-promised drop ships. They were "dropped" alright !! Along with the entire line due to, what appeared to us fans, gross incompetance rather than a forced financial decision. A lot of people burned means a suddenly barren field of SST opponents and a lot of useless minis. But that's my opinion based on my experience with Mongoose. Although, they do have a history of botching things (other than SST).

At any rate, we love to hate ... look at how GW is villified. And now Wizards since they've decided to pull a Mage Knight and cancel their DDM Skirmish v.2.0 just a few months after launch.

I'm gonna take the wait-n-see stance with Rackham because:
a) I do enjoy their games and products (PPP and metal)
b) They haven't, in my opinion, burned me like Mongoose did.

How specialised do miniatures have to be, before they become useless?

I didn't buy any Mongoose figures so perhaps I shouldn't pass remarks. But really, can't those figures still be used with the SST rules or other generic SF rules? If you want dropships, there are various models available.

As long as manufacturers stay within recognised common scales, players can mix and match figures and make coherent forces for a variety of games.

Figures like Pig Iron show there is a place for miniatures that are not specifically tied to one company and their ruleset.

BrookM wrote:FFG are a bunch of bastards in my books, still nothing on a reprint of Dark Heresy.

My copy of Dark Heresy is from FFG and has ads for FFG games in the back. Other books are in the reprint pipeline. Maybe you need to ask your store why they don't have a copy, since it's been out for a few months already.

-John

Myrthe wrote:
Oh, I don't think anyone other than Rackham can say what Rackham was deliberately trying to do. Who of us can know for sure? They may have had every intention to support "R2" and "C4" but economics and company survival may have dictated a quick deviation from that course. They did file for "Protection" in order to retain their business and restructure it.

I think you have to possess an almost extra-planar level of idealism to not realize that Rackham knew exactly what they up to when they launched their Pre-Painted line of miniatures and completely gutted the Confrontation skirmish game using the deceptive practices that they did.

But hey, at this point, whatever.

They shot themselves in the foot on that one, and it is a long road back from that.

Especially on one foot.

Jbuckmaster wrote:

BrookM wrote:FFG are a bunch of bastards in my books, still nothing on a reprint of Dark Heresy.

My copy of Dark Heresy is from FFG and has ads for FFG games in the back. Other books are in the reprint pipeline. Maybe you need to ask your store why they don't have a copy, since it's been out for a few months already.

-John

They keep telling the store that they haven't got any reprints yet.

Co3 was already dying when they decided to switch over. Actually they did their best to keep it alive until it was no longer possible to control the rules monster they created.

Skirmish games survive only that long on the market without a drastic change. Normally it´s five years, and there are many dead companies to proof it. Co3 was mostly bought for the nice miniatures and that hurt the sales. Cause people were no longer collecting armys, but picking only some minis.

Co3 was the best try too keep it alive as long as possible to fund a new system. Rackham has a bad reputation for PR, but they all the time cared for the gamers. In the end Co became to complicated, even the designers were not able to grasp the whole system any longer. (Check the Wiki for the Warmachine rules if you want to see how much of a mosnter a Skrimish can become, no matter how good the intentions in the beginning were) They could decide to march on into oblivion or step on quite some toes and survive.