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LundaHound: Are you referring to the support units described in Frostbite? They're basically mini specialist squads.

I'm not familiar with Therians, but I know there was a custom Golgoth floating around before the model was released. I think it is/was on the AT-43 board in the modeling section.

As clearly stated at the beginning of my review I wrote it so that the information was out there for people to see when they were looking into AT-43 because this information can otherwise only be garnered through some concerted effort and research on your own with considerable correction for the bias of the information sources.

I am arming people with information. They can choose to do with it what they will - but I, personally, as a consumer feel that I want the most information I can get before I spend dime one, and when I was starting out in AT-43 myself the best information I could get came from:

1) The AT-43 forums, which is clearly biased as they're all hardcore AT-43 fans

2) Niche-game sub-forums on the major TTW sites, and it's reasonable to suggest that the people actually spending their time on said niche forums are primarily fans of the game, and therefore the potential for bias here is also very high


I'm giving out information which is as objective as I can make it. Clearly I continue to have no vested interest in bashing the game for the sake of bashing it considering I am invested more heavily in AT-43 right now than some players who have been there since day one. Given a choice, I would prefer that AT-43 become a HUGE game that I can play at any wargaming club without concern like I can with Warhammer 40,000 and to an increasing degree Flames of War, seeing as how I have three 6,000 point AT-43 armies at my house!!


I give props to the game where they are due. Quickness of play. Simplicity of ruleset. I pointed you in the direction of getting fan-produced materials which otherwise you might never have even heard of which can richly improve your gaming experience with AT-43. If I was just trying to bash the game, I would have omitted all of that.



@ Orlanth

First of all thank you, a lot, for the thoughtfulness and quality of your response. It's discourse like that which makes me want to post about TTW in the first place.

When I say "rock-paper-scissors" I am specifically referring mostly to the very first round of AT-43 gameplay. Unlike in tabletop wargames where armies deploy in their entirety for the most part and work in concert as a single army, in AT-43 in the first turn it's this rock-paper-scissors game, and then whoever survives the first turn becomes "the army" for the rest of the game, and even then the rock-paper-scissors gameplay is still there.

It isn't a matter of "queen pieces" or anything...this isn't necessarily a game in which armor rules the day and infantry is there more for support and taking objectives, per se. Each of the AT-43 armies is quite capable of fielding forces which can be deadly to just about any sort of unit out there for the most part. The fact that infantry units can split fire between regular weapons and special weapons helps this a lot...regular weapons shoot at infantry and heavy weapons shoot at vehicles, for instance, which makes it easier to multi-purpose units in AT-43 than in any other game I've ever played.

So the "triangle" you refer to doesn't really exist in AT-43, per se, though I pick up what you're putting down about the design theory. Competitive AT-43 players, from what they talk about on the forums, tend to eschew specialized units like DeathDealer TacArms and Jam Tac-Arms to take Steel TacArms instead because Steels can damage vehicles OR infantry, not one or the other. If the majority of U.N.A. players on the AT-43 forums actually take the specialized battlesuits more often than not they're quiet about it.

I bought one of each type of TacArm unit anyway, because I love battlesuits. The Shock TacArms are actually some of my favorite toys in the U.N.A. line!

I actually had no problems with the AT-43 turn system at all. It took me a learning curve of two games to figure out how to handle activation order and such. It isn't terribly-complicated...which is part of the point of the AT-43 game, to be simple as it is designed to cater to a non-tabletop-wargaming audience, i.e. people who don't want to learn a bunch of rules or build or paint anything, and that's a valid market to go for IF you know how to market to them properly.

I personally feel that Rackham could go the toy route all the way and sell AT-43 in Toys R Us stores in the boardgame department and make a killing. Make a cartoon, get some media presence...could be a lot of money to be made there. If you look at Rackham's upcoming product, the "Death Race" type car-racing game set in the AT-43 universe, it's clearly a boardgame with kiddie-type artwork. This may be a very good move for them.

Again, I get why Rackham did what they did with terrain tiles and small playing spaces. It's trying to make the game accessible to people without specialized game spaces. It's not a bad idea...but then don't treat the game like a tabletop wargame. It's a boardgame at the point you're using 2D map tiles.

You can use your own terrain for AT-43, absolutely...but in most of the circumstances in which I've heard of this being done gameplay has been radically-different from the gameplay provided by using the AT-43 scenarios which pretty much define the game.

U.N.A. armies, for example, are reported as having massive advantages on proper 6' by 4' tables, and Red Blok armies are reported as being at massive disadvantages unless the tables are practically choked with terrain.

There is, I think, perhaps one mention in the main rulebook of using "homemade" terrain, and absolutely zero official content produced by Rackham on the subject of building terrain for AT-43. This feels like something that tabletop wargamers who pick up AT-43 do, but not something that the intended audience for AT-43, who are not tabletop wargamers, are expected or even anticipated to do.

AT-43 gameplay depends extremely heavily on published scenarios, and if you use your own terrain you cannot play the Operation Damocles campaign unless you build tables to mimic the gaming posters and tiles, you cannot play the Operation Frostbite campaign unless you build tables that mimic the Operation Frostbite tiles....and AT-43 shines best in scenario-based play according to most of the hardcore AT-43 players I've conversed with, never mind what *I* might think...

Some of the hardest-core AT-43 players I know absolutely refuse to play on anything other than gaming tiles and with published scenarios because they recognize the way gameplay changes once you step out of the scenario setups and don't like it.

A local store had an AT-43 tourney last May, using a custom mission system based on the AT-43 random mission cards I referenced over on Warseer, using regular TTW tables and terrain. They had fun, but half their missions were unbalanced and wonky..and that was the best they could do because there's no official recognition or support from Rackham that people may want to play AT-43 without using gaming posters or tiles, so fans are on their own to devise their own systems.

Rackham only gives us two scenarios which can be played on anything other than a precisely-prescribed playspace which don't require gaming posters or gaming tiles. If Rackham had designed proper pick-up play rules and guidelines themselves, testing them for balance and stability, and then included them in the rulebook so that established tabletop wargamers could easily adapt the ruleset to play on "standard," 6' by 4' wargaming tables with homemade terrain, it would be an entirely different ballgame!

Officially, AT-43 is not two games...in practice it may become two games like you say, but Rackham does not acknowledge or support, officially, this "second" game you speak of where tabletop wargamers are taking boardgame rules and adapting them for play in tabletop wargame spaces.

On the Army Boxes, I've seen no evidence that Rackham is aiming towards tabletop wargamers any more so now than before, if anything I think they're going even further to the side of boardgames. The toys will be of lesser quality, the sets are coming with gaming posters for you to use, and you're certainly not going to be able to support "open tabletop wargaming" table setups with six low walls, three High walls, and two shipping containers.

If RE were to make more of a point of selling AT-43 as the boardgame/wargame hybrid which I think it is, I think they'd actually have an easier time of it. If you want to be a different product, be a different product. The reason AT-43 has been relegated to niche status is precisely because it is trying to operate within the tabletop wargaming industry and just flouts too many of the conventions which make massively-popular tabletop wargames masssively-popular and thus able to set the conventions.

This is what makes AT-43 the "red headed stepchild" of the tabletop wargaming world right now - because it isn't actually, in rules design and marketing, a tabletop wargame. It is something else, and needs to embrace that and change its marketing schemes accordingly.

I'm telling you, move this to Toys R Us, make a cartoon or something. It would totally sell.

And I agree that Rackham pricing is still flawed. There is going to be a major price shock to new gamers who pay $61 shipped for 2,000 points of Cogs and then find themselves paying $60-$90 for single units to add to that collection.



@ all the AT-43 disciples:

Don't take my review personally. Unless you designed AT-43 such that as a creative work it represents you personally in some fashion, there's nothing to fear from an objective review. Keep playing AT-43 if you love it!!

I just want people looking into the game to be able to get a perspective on AT-43 which is otherwise utterly unavailable on the internet through easy, quick searches.

Do I hate AT-43? I can honestly say no. I still love the toys. I may keep one army out of the three so that if my friends who have the game want to play I may play it with them, as the social aspect of gaming is the most important aspect to me.

I'm not a fan of AT-43, as well, which means I have no more interest in being positive than I have in being negative. It's just another game among games to me, which is the best place to be in to write a review.

I would have more difficulty writing an objective review for Flames of War because I love the game so much, and would have to put a lot more effort into finding the weaknesses in the system because all the strengths, for me, outweigh those weaknesses so much that I don't even notice the weaknesses, much as the AT-43 fans who are the primary source of information on the game online might not only simply not notice weaknesses in AT-43, but also due to the fact that AT-43 is a niche game, and due to Rackham's bad rep, and the negative press on AT-43, have a vested interest in specifically not copping to any objective analysis which may not put AT-43 in the absolute best light.

The survival of their game is at stake. I don't blame them for not wanting to cop to those weaknesses. If I were as emotionally-invested in AT-43 as they are, I wouldn't want to either.


Incidentally, I picked up the "rock-paper-scissors" analogy from the mouth of a Rackham Sentinel on their forums for what that's worth...I thought it was an excellent metaphor and decided to adopt it for my own, private use. You can take what you will from the origin of the analogy.



@ Anyone who is using my review as an impetus to take a closer look at the game:

Good! I am glad if my review makes you look at AT-43 closer for your own self! It was actually a decidedly-negative review of the AT-43 toys which made ME take a look at AT-43! (Someone was mocking the Space Gorillas).

IMHO the best reviews should cause free-thinking people to look into things for themselves and see whether they agree or not. The purpose of a critic in society, IMHO, is to get people thinking, not to convince them of one thing or another.



@ the "toys versus models" argument:

You may call AT-43 toys "models" if you wish, and call proper models "toys" if you wish, but I think that if we look objectively at the question there's a clear difference between the meanings of these words. Clearly there's some sort of basic differentiation to warrant the usage of two different words in the first place!

Like I said I am an avid toy collector and an avid modeler/painter, so I have plenty of both toys and models to compare and contrast AT-43 toys with to figure out into which group they belong.

Ask yourself: are AT-43 "items" more like Star Wars toys (pre-assembled, pre-painted, soft plastic, not-too-detailed molds) or more like Warhammer 40,000 models (require assembly, paint yourself, high-quality plastic, incredibly-detailed molds)?

I'm unwilling to engage in a protracted semantic debate on this point lest anyone read this part of my response as an invitation to engage on the subject - I just wanted to provide my thought process here, in the interest of fairness.



@ everyone asking me "Can I Has Yur Stuff?"

Thanks for the smiles this gave me.

I'll probably first decide which of the three armies I may want to keep, probably U.N.A. as I did conversion work on them, have some OOP items like Star Troopers in the original color scheme which may never see the light of day again, and also because I can repurpose them as Imperial Guard when the next Codex comes out if I want to try proxying what people are saying are going to be ridiculous armies.

Everything else will slowly go up on eBay. The decision I have to make now is whether I do touch-ups and repaints and sell at the 66% off prices I bought them at, and provide some lucky AT-43 players with superlative AT-43 models to make all their AT-43 friends jealous, or whether I put them up as-is. It's not a decision I need to rush.

The gogolth behind the Baal seems to have some sort of extra *stuff , what is it?

Just an opened up Wraith. Nearly all walker have fully modeled cockpits, but some of them are glued shut.

Also , all the support x troops ( in easy at-43 ) is that what im supposed to do with the left over special weapons?

Yes. supprt troops are also featured in Frostbite.

@ everyone asking me "Can I Has Yur Stuff?"

Thanks for the smiles this gave me.

I'll probably first decide which of the three armies I may want to keep, probably U.N.A. as I did conversion work on them, have some OOP items like Star Troopers in the original color scheme which may never see the light of day again, and also because I can repurpose them as Imperial Guard when the next Codex comes out if I want to try proxying what people are saying are going to be ridiculous armies.

Everything else will slowly go up on eBay. The decision I have to make now is whether I do touch-ups and repaints and sell at the 66% off prices I bought them at, and provide some lucky AT-43 players with superlative AT-43 models to make all their AT-43 friends jealous, or whether I put them up as-is. It's not a decision I need to rush.

Have you tried "Bartertown" ?

@Cairnius

As a person who avidly plays FoW (5000+ Brits and Germans) I am quite disgusted at the way you act towards Rackham and its product. And every single member of our quite large FoW group considers it to be bad behaviour, too.

Putting rumours on the internet that a company might go belly up while in truth they are in a better shape than ever before is something that would put most companies in lawyer mode.

If you have objective evidence to the contrary that Rackham has been in financial trouble and now has a lot on the line with these Army Boxes to try and reinvigorate AT-43, or to suggest that AT-43 will, indeed, be just fine if this Army Box initiative fails to make the impact it is designed to, by all means release said information. Publicize it. You'd be doing Rackham a favor.

In the absence of said information, all we have to go on is our individual experiences. AT-43 is relegated to "other game" forums on major tabletop wargaming sites. More people, if you polled the activity at their LGS, would report AT-43 not being played than being played based on what low level of chatter the game generates. There is more than enough evidence to support my analysis, which is all that really matters.

You should be thanking me for getting people talking about the game, which is part of what any good critic does for his chosen subject matter.

Fortunately in America, you cannot sue someone for stating the facts as they see them. If you can locate what you consider to be a more "objective" analysis of the entirety of the AT-43 hobby - model quality, rules quality, gameplay, size of player base - which was not written by an unabashed AT-43 fan, by all means post up the links for people to see. They will see through fan content immediately and know you're publishing links to good, "less biased" content than mine.

Otherwise...unfortunately for some, I've provided the best you're going to get. I gave AT-43 more than its fair shot to impress me, and it did not.

In the absence of neutral, widely-accepted criteria by which to judge something, the next best, objective way to do so is to compare something to its contemporaries, to the entirety of the media or field in which the piece of work is placed.

That's precisely what I've done. Find someone else to write something better if you don't like my review - but complaining about one person expressing their opinion honestly makes it sound like you have something to worry about by him doing so.

If you have faith in your game, you don't need to worry about anything.

Actually I do have evidence to the contrary of what you are saying, and everbody else can get it to without "having to sneek in".

Besides, every company uses starter boxes to pull in more gamers, are they all in financial trouble?

Also there are many better reviews on AT linked on TGN.

So provide the links, Duncan, rather than making the statements. Let your evidence speak for you.

Also, note that I said in the review "What MAY do Rackham in..." as opposed to "Rackham is ABOUT TO BE done in." And my expressed concern was for the future of AT-43 based on the results of this Army Box initiative, not the future of the company. That will be determined not by one game, or one event, but by a multitude of events and business decisions to take place over a very long period of time.

I have no vested financial interest in seeing them fail, as I don't own stock in any rival company...their existence or nonexistence doesn't ultimately effect me no matter what happens, past any interest I may have as a wargamer watching the industry...

Cairnius, this is in no way a review, let alone an objective one; it’s a list of complaints, some of which I actually agree with, many of which I don’t.

There is no Faction analysis, description of army building, example of play to illustrate the rules, etc. It’s impossible to get any sense of the game through what you have produced. Is it d6 based? What are the funny markings on the back of the measuring tape? What’s the playing time? Have people you played with enjoyed the experience?
These are parts of a review.

I have played and still play many game systems including AT-43, but if I read this review, irrespective of whatever game system being discussed, I would certainly get the impression that it has been written by someone with some form of axe to grind purely based on the tone.

I have been gaming and painting since the eighties and have always referred to own my stuff as toys, but have always acknowledged that other people dislike that term, so I refrain from using it to describe their stuff. Your distinction is spurious, subjective and creates an implied hierarchy of gaming which many people would find quite offensive.

Your continuing insistence that this is any kind of review, and the acknowledgement that it will be there for others to read on the internet, feels like something written in bad faith as the entire structure of the post seems purely designed to highlight problems with game.

I can honestly say that if this had been titled “Glaring Issues Inherent in AT-43 and Rackham” rather than “Objective Review of AT-43”, I wouldn’t have even bothered to post, because I would have said, “Fair enough – the man’s got a right to an opinion.”

Some of what you say is valid, but this "review" still has the smell of someone with some unknown agenda to push. I have no idea who you are or what you intentions are, but that is the way your post portrays you, at least to me and apparently others here, and that's rather unfortunate because it detracts from the relevant problems that you do point out. All this simply because the title is entirely misleading. Change the title and you may have a list of gripes where things could and should be improved.

And you’ve also pointed out something quite true, there is in fact a lack of proper reviews of the game in its full company-based aspect, rather than the old reviews which focussed on the Damocles Initiation Set. Someone should write one of those someday.

Please don't feed the troll. He has been spamming this editorial all over the place

pixelgeek wrote:Please don't feed the troll. He has been spamming this editorial all over the place

Ah, yes. I see what you mean now; someone's had a busy day around the internet. Definite troll. I'll say once again "This is not a review", and then walk away from this thread to let it die in the obscurity it deserves.

Hold on guys remember where we are:

Madness? This is Dakka!

On Dakka we feel free to tell the 'truth' as we see it. No fanboi culture, no 'use tactics', and the sacred cow is in danger of being slaughtered.

We talk smack about GW if we feel they need it and so we should feel free to talk smack about other game companies. Personal insults to each other are not allowed, but if someone thinks GW bean counters are idiots, or their game designers are idiots we dont beat about the bush. Write a crap codex, beware - expect to see it torn apart here.

Why should we be any different about AT-43? Someone comes along with critques, whether they clearly err towards a negative opinion so be it. I know I am talking to a some thinly disguised Rackham Sentinels, who might not like what they read I have no problem with that or problems with you.

On the At-43 forums the 'TOG' is unmentioned and certain faults are challenged with care, but Dakka is independent of any game company control. We are free to think and speak for ourselves. If Cairnius thinks AT-43 sucks or Rackham sucks, or might suck, or are in danger of soon sucking he will find room to vent his views here because there are plenty of people who will say same about Warhammer, GW or other games and companies; and those sorts of people are welcome.

Cairnius, speak on. Say what you will other might challenge your standpoint of 'objectivity', that much is fair; but noone should really be trying to stop you being a hard critic of a games company or system, it would be a travesty to stop such voices here, and we would no longer be.... Dakka.

Dakka Dakka! Don't ruin dis moment wif' aimin' Boyz!

When it comes to reviews, "objective" does not mean "Fair, even, balanced, and devoid of any sort of judgment one way or the other." In fact, any review which fails to express an ultimate judgment of a product is of no use whatsoever to the consumer. If Consumer Reports did not ultimately tell you which products were better and which were worse from a certain point of view then the magazine wouldn't be of use to anyone.

If the vaccum cleaner doesn't pick up the dirt from the floor as a reviewer of vaccum cleaners I don't say "Well, the suction mechanism needs a massive retooling but overall it works okay." I tell you the vaccum cleaner sucks and go buy another one.

"Objective" in the context of a review means "Went into the decision making process without any preconceived notions of value, judging the object in question solely on its own merits, and then comparing to the established standards of what else is out there."

I spent THREE MONTHS literally morphing into a berserk AT-43 fan in order to figure out what I thought of it. I had to give up my opinions on the value of pre-paints, seek the value of predefined terrain versus setting up tables, totally adapt to a system which was almost alien to the sort of strategic planning I do in Flames of War or the sort of "whole army" tactical thinking that comes with Warhammer 40,000.

I don't blame the Sentinels for trying to dismiss me as a troll...because any objective, non-AT-43-fan reader is hopefully going to see that I've done my homework here.


Strahd, you make some good points...but I'm not writing an exhaustive design analysis of AT-43. No one needs me to tell them about Faction analyses - those are specifics you would get into AFTER making the decision to buy into AT-43. That's game-specific minutiae. Do you expect people expressing a summary of their opinions about Warhammer 40,000 to review all nine of the major 40K armies and all the formally-published variants of those armies?

Do you expect a summary review of Flames of War to go into the specificities of all their rules and the various kinds of army variants you can get moving from Early War, to Mid War, to Late War and from Campaign Book to Campaign Book?

Honestly Strahd, anyone doing a review of AT-43 on a tabletop wargaming site of such massive audience and notoriety as Dakka Dakka.com might be construed as insulting the intelligence of the audience here to not expect them to automatically make certain basic and rather safe assumptions about AT-43 the moment they start reviewing it in the context of "tabletop wargaming:"

- It uses models of some sort
- It involves rolling dice
- It is played on a gaming table
- It uses measuring devices to measure distances for weapons ranges, movement distances, and the like
- It has different armies with different characteristics meant to play differently to account for individual playstyles

Those things hold true for Warhammer 40,000, Battlefleet Gothic, Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Necromunda, Flames of War, Blood Bowl, Warmachine, Hordes, Infinity, and of course AT-43.

Reviews of game rules for AT-43 are available places like here:

http://at-43.understairs.nl/index.php?cat=Miscellaneous&page=AT-43%20for%2040K%20Players

But this is outside the intent of my review, which is to provide a summary specifically for tabletop wargamers from a tabletop wargamer who is in touch with the modern state of wargaming and the most popular systems available.


In terms of tone, here's the thing, Strahd...

When it comes to things like movies, music, video games, or tabletop wargames, there are no truly objective standards in the way some people would like to think of the word "objective."

None.

So, the "objective standards" become "the best of what the tabletop wargaming world has to offer." The best rules, the best player bases, the best sculpts, the best paint jobs, the most balanced gameplay.

That's how I reviewed AT-43. If people don't like the "tone," i.e. the results, then perhaps they should demand a higher-quality product from Rackham?

The audience for my review is not people who already play AT-43. They've made up their minds already. My audience is tabletop wargamers who don't play, who may have thought about playing but don't know much about the game yet, and whose general information is otherwise ONLY coming from AT-43 fans who have no objectivity whatsoever, or websites with a vested interest in not appearing critical at all...


The irony is, I've read Rackham Sentinels and regular players on their forums cop to all sorts of problems with AT-43 rules, models, lack of tournament support, all of which they readily agree with in spades across the board. They only do it behind closed doors.

Everything I said about what people need to be prepared to do, not necessarily will have to do, comes straight from the mouths of Rackham Sentinels themselves! They are the steps suggested to me by the unofficial salespeople of Rackham Entertainment - provide armies to people yourself so they don't have to buy them to play the game, play AT-43 all the time in your gaming store to keep up the visibiilty (one Sentinel actually chided me for wanting to take a break and play another game for a week because "It was my responsibility as a Sentinel to eschew all other gameplay in favor of AT-43!!!!)...I was admonished, upon lamenting my inability to find local players, specifically to seek out local gaming conventions and put on demos and basically, literally become an unpaid salesperson...

...if AT-43 is such a great game, shouldn't it be selling itself when I demo it at my gaming club and offer guys at the club 6,000 POINTS worth of one of three AT-43 armies to draw their demo armies from? "Here, guys, play whatever you want! I've got the models, and the terrain, and the gaming aids...have fun with it!"

Should I have to try so hard to sell a game without pay if it's really good quality?

Here's the comparison...my gaming club actually used to run in a Games Workshop branch store. You could not ask for a better example of a club which was absolutely, positively dominated by GW ideology, and often rather hostile to any other game company's products in some circles.

Once the branch store closed we moved to a neutral location and had the freedom to try other games. A few guys brought in Warmachine, mostly.

Then a friend of mine convinced me to buy into Flames of War with him because he wanted to start playing but refused to play the Germans because he's Jewish (true story) and I was Italian with some German in me so I got the short end of the stick morality-wise.

Fine. Dropped $350 on army, rulebooks, models, let's go.

We started playing on brown gaming tables using construction paper for our terrain because we had NO 15mm terrain in the store. We did this for a month or so with primed, black models. I.E., so beyond "impressive" so as to be tragic.

Someone saw us playing Flames of War. They instantly recognized it. They started watching, they bought an army.

Someone else who plays the game, but hadn't been attending the club because no one else played the game, he showed up and started playing, also mostly with bare-metal and primed armies.

In pretty much no time at all, 10 of us have full 1,500 point armies or more, one guy is jumping in with THREE entire armies, another friend of mine is learning the rules, even the former GW redshirt is working on some Italian Veterans, and we've got a massive 15mm terrain-building initiative taking place and an invite with a historical wargaming club to start some cross-club play.

You cannot say "unfair comparison, Flames of War is still a game with modeling and painting" because anyone who knows Flames of War knows that the modeling is VERY different and rather basic, the painting you have to do to get FoW mans looking pretty good is very simple comparatively-speaking to what you have to do for 40K models to get them looking "pretty good," and we sold Flames of War at my club with primed black models and construction-paper terrain.


I use games like Flames of War as part of my objective criticism of AT-43.

If AT-43 is really this great game that I'm just maniacally-maligning for the hell of it because I'm a "troll," explain to me why AT-43 didn't garner the same level of attention that Flames of War did when I was playing AT-43 with painted models, gaming tiles, the right terrain - you pretty much could not have asked for better demo setups than $1,000 paid for. Models from all three armies, the best of the respective line-ups and chosen specifically for maximum display value as someone who knows how to paint pretty damned well and who has judged painting at tournaments, out on display even if I wasn't using them just so people could sample the various aesthetics and maybe get interested in U.N.A., Therians, or Red Blok.

Results?

Two grown wargamers who purchased At-43 armies and are already going to sell them out of dissastisfaction, and two long-time wargaming vets who played once, said "I'd play if you gave me models to use," and then showed zero interest whatsoever in ever playing again.

So...do I live in some sort of gaming bubble, some Lost Continent of tabletop wargaming, such that my personal experiences have absolutely no direct observational value?

The Sentinels like Duncan_Idaho, should have let me post my review and let it go. If you truly have faith in something you can let it stand even in the face of the harshest of criticisms because you know "When someone really decides to look at the game they won't listen to this guy and will fall in love with it just like I did!"

My review clearly didn't paint AT-43 in the best light, but I was pretty fair about pointing out what strengths the game DOES have and making it excruciatingly-clear that things I reviewed as detractions were not considered as such by adherents of the game...the undercover Sentinels here would have been well-advised to let the people who saw the review and said "Huh, short games? Not really complicated rules like 40K can have, even if they aren't perfect? Don't have to paint stuff and so I don't care what the quality is? Hell yeah, I'll check AT-43 out!" react to the review without their interference.

Word to the wise: there's no such thing as "bad press." Sentinels who privately kvetch and moan about the crappy P.R. they think the company they're unofficial Ambassadors for has should take this lesson to heed real quick.


Orlanth is right, fair readers....on the AT-43 forums you actually have to use the acronym "ToG" in reference to "The Other Game," or Warhammer 40,000, because Rackham is so rightfully nervous about the competition on the block. If your product is solid, should you have to be so guarded? Shouldn't your product hold up to objective comparisons and analyses?

Shouldn't you welcome those comparisons, getting your name out there next to the name that actually garners the media attention, if you have a product of equal or superior value?

Or do you not want your players, who have now expressed interest in a tabletop wargamish product for the very first time (according to the Sentinels, the target audience for AT-43, people who never looked twice at tabletop wargames due to the need for building and painting but who now have had those obstacles eliminated for them) to discover a proper tabletop wargame, see the sick models they could own, find TTW friends who own said models, hear, "Yeah, it's not so hard to paint these things," and say "Wow, these models are cool, and make my AT-43 toys...well, yeah, they're just toys."


Strahd, an properly "objective" review should point out just about every negative aspect of the thing being reviewed because you know what happens when all things to be reviewed get the same treatment and the reviewer has little to say that is negative?

That's when readers know they've just honed in on a quality product whose purchase they can already have a tremendous degree of confidence in before they even go looking at it themselves, and they go into their research with that mindset in place from the get-go.

My wife is a fashion reviewer. She gets sent free clothes all the time and she lets go with both barrels blazing in her reviews on a regular basis because her readers know that if she holds back, she's hiding something. Do you know what happens when she reviews something positively?

The sales for that item go through the roof, because her readers know she won't lie to them.


If a reviewer carefully avoids any language which may paint a game in ANY sort of negative light, don't you think that discerning readers know something's missing?

Anyone who tries to be objective and say that AT-43 has the sort of tactical depth or strategic subtlety of Warhammer 40,000 or Flames of War is utterly kidding themselves. Why lie about it? And honestly, do you think that anyone at Rackham Entertainment thinks that the mainstream tabletop wargaming audience I'm speaking to here and on Warseer are the intended audiences for AT-43?

What agenda could I possibly have? I don't own stock in any gaming company. I don't produce games myself. I'm a writer who enjoys writing. I'm a gamer who enjoys learning, analyzing, and reporting on other game systems. The same friend of mine who stared up FoW with me just got some game called "Fighting Age of Sail," and I have no idea what the hell that is but I'll learn to play it anyway just because it's another game to play, and Im sure I'll eventually review that as well if it is new enough to give a voice on the subject some meaning...

My "agenda," if anything, is to make sure that, as you correctly observed, that SOME kind of objective review, i.e. based on a comparison of the popular TTW systems right now which therefore set the tone for TTW game quality, exists somewhere on the web.

You would think that if there were non-fan-produced reviews that were *more* fair than mine that one of the Sentinels would have been plastering its url all over this thread at SOME point since I first posted my review, wouldn't you?

I'm honestly a bit shocked (perhaps I shouldn't be, this IS the internet after all) of the vehemency of the responses. As someone who has been looking into AT-43 and already taken advantage of the FF fire sale (purchased 2 Damocles sets plus several unit boxes), I agree with a lot of what the OP wrote. In fact, AT-43 is exactly what I've been looking for as a bridge between a board game and a war miniatures game - not neccessarily to play at the club, but to play with my kids. I can't speak as to the stability of Rackham but as of right now, I know of one other guy in town that has a AT-43 army and the only 2 gaming stores in a 60 mile radius doesn't sell AT-43. If it's hot in your area, be thankful but realize that it's not the same everywhere.

Nono Cairnius , we arnt trolling you to give us your army for free.

We want you to sell us the army since you are dissatisfied.

I would never suggest something silly to get free stuff!

Vladigar wrote:I'm honestly a bit shocked (perhaps I shouldn't be, this IS the internet after all) of the vehemency of the responses. As someone who has been looking into AT-43 and already taken advantage of the FF fire sale (purchased 2 Damocles sets plus several unit boxes), I agree with a lot of what the OP wrote. In fact, AT-43 is exactly what I've been looking for as a bridge between a board game and a war miniatures game - not neccessarily to play at the club, but to play with my kids. I can't speak as to the stability of Rackham but as of right now, I know of one other guy in town that has a AT-43 army and the only 2 gaming stores in a 60 mile radius doesn't sell AT-43. If it's hot in your area, be thankful but realize that it's not the same everywhere.

They're reacting with such vehemence because they're Rackham Sentinels, who are essentially volunteer employees of Rackham Entertainment charged with being unpaid salespeople for the game. When I was a Sentinel I was actually browbeaten about not wanting to give tabletop wargamers at my club "the hard sell."

They're also reacting with such vehemence because this is the only "objective" review of AT-43 by their standards which they can point to:

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2007/01/07/5105

That was published in January...of 2007.

It's only about the Operation Damocles Initiation Set which any veteran of AT-43 can tell you doesn't even feature models of quality as the standard unit box releases, which would provide for a better, more positive review of the toys than that review does.

It cannot speak to the actual rules and how they work, how the actual gameplay works in that Op Damocles is AT-43 as much as the Battle for Macragge 40K 4th Edition little starter booklet was actually 4th Edition Warhammer 40,000, it can't speak to 95% of the toys, it can't speak to pretty much anything of comparative value to my review.

When I started doing my research into AT-43 this was the best and only objective review I could find of AT-43 on the entire internet with basic Google searches. That no one else has bothered to do what I did two years later probably ought to be a source of serious concern for the Sentinels.

I kind of hope I get them off their arses to find whatever else is out there and start posting links. That extremely outdated TTWN article was the best first shot a Sentinel was able to throw at me on another message forum. Not the most auspicious beginning to a solid, objective counter-argument, if unofficial Rackham employees are even able to provide such an objective counter-argument...

Is it any wonder why the Sentinels don't like that I chose to fill the gap with an objective comparison of AT-43 to the industry leaders in the tabletop wargaming market who are recognized as the leaders? Do we want to argue that Games Workshop models suck when they're painted up properly? Do we want to argue that in an objective analysis of finished product - to finished product, i.e. a finished Flames of War infantry stand, a finished Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine, and an out-of-the box Steel Trooper, Storm Golem, Krasnye Soldaty or Kaptar, that the AT-43 models (to use their word) don't utterly pale in comparison?

Do we want to honestly argue that the AT-43 rules hold up to a direct comparison with Flames of War rules, which are only in their second edition, which are widely regarded as some of the most balanced rules in the tabletop wargaming market, and that this isn't a fair and objective comparison of game to game?

Do we want to argue that Flames of War rules don't deserve their reputation and therefore aren't an adequate objective method of comparison based on their nigh-universal acclaim?

The Sentinels want me to be "objective," but the sort of objectivity they're asking for isn't appropriate for reviews of tabletop wargames, books, movies, or music. True "objectivity" would require universal criteria which are utterly removed from any sort of personal opinion, by anyone, whatsoever.

That's not possible...so the only "objective" criteria we can use as a basis for comparison is to take the best of the best not through popularity but through professional, industry acclaim, and make the comparison that way - which is precisely the objective underpinning of my review, and it's painfully obvious to anyone well-schooled in tabletop wargaming.

LunaHound wrote:Nono Cairnius , we arnt trolling you to give us your army for free.

We want you to sell us the army since you are dissatisfied.

I would never suggest something silly to get free stuff!

That's awesome.

Hey, if someone wants to cough up $1,000 they can have everything I've got! They'd get two Star Troopers unit boxes which are OOP, a bunker which is almost impossible to get a hold of, gaming tiles which take no small amount of work to track down, three boxes of Assault Meduas which take some effort to find...I've got a bunch of stuff which you can't even get anymore.

Whoever bought my collection would also get some conversions, some Fire Toads you cannot purchase anymore...they'd be a happy camper!!!

Alas, no one's going to buy the whole thing, lock, stock and barrel. I'd love them to. My wife was rather displeased that I decided to take up yet even more of our valuable closet space with 75% of all the product Rackham Entertainment currently has on the market! LOL

And I have one person I've made friends with, who I like and respect very much, and who also plays 40K but who prefers AT-43. I play games for the social aspect more than anything, so it may actually be worth sitting on $1,000 worth of stuff to play AT-43 with a friend of mine who I would like to get to know better. It's only $1,000, after all. *grin*

Cairnius you really need to get a different hobby than this. You're posting multi-thousand word responses on multiple boards to "review" a game that you supposedly spent $1000 on and never played.

You're even recycling your own material. I've seen this

so the only "objective" criteria we can use as a basis for comparison is to take the best of the best not through popularity but through professional, industry acclaim, and make the comparison that way - which is precisely the objective underpinning of my review, and it's painfully obvious to anyone well-schooled in tabletop wargaming.

posted on at least two other sites.

Sorry buddy but this is all bs. I think you've just got nothing better to do with your time and are having a go at AT-43 fans. Or just trying to make yourself feel important.

Either way, its really sad and you should spend your time doing something more productive than this.

pixelgeek wrote:Cairnius you really need to get a different hobby than this. You're posting multi-thousand word responses on multiple boards to "review" a game that you supposedly spent $1000 on and never played.

Yes, I have absolutely nothing better to do than lie to a bunch of complete strangers online. You have found me out, sir.

pixelgeek wrote:Sorry buddy but this is all bs. I think you've just got nothing better to do with your time and are having a go at AT-43 fans. Or just trying to make yourself feel important.

Either way, its really sad and you should spend your time doing something more productive than this.

Yeah, it might be that I want to have a go at AT-43 fans or it might be that I'm a tabletop wargamer who enjoys writing and reviewing things and so reviewed a tabletop wargame on a tabletop wargaming site, if you can accept the ludicrousness of the proposition. Occam's Razor and all that.


Pointing out my cross-posting as a fallacy, by the way, is like indicting news organizations for sharing AP material...I kind of want you to head over to the other forums and respond to me there, as well, to complete the joke.

I don't know much about AT-43, but I got the starter box for Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok, and those miniatures are crap! Not the paint job, but the miniatures themselves. Half of them fell apart before we got three games finished. The 3" Star Wars and GI Joe action figures are way better, and better-looking. The D&D miniatures are better, limp swords notwithstanding. Yes, the rules are a little screwy, but not as bad as 40K.

warpcrafter wrote:I don't know much about AT-43, but I got the starter box for Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok, and those miniatures are crap! Not the paint job, but the miniatures themselves. Half of them fell apart before we got three games finished. The 3" Star Wars and GI Joe action figures are way better, and better-looking. The D&D miniatures are better, limp swords notwithstanding. Yes, the rules are a little screwy, but not as bad as 40K.

Look in my gallery, all the AT-43 paint job are NOT touched, straight out of the box.

I dunno.... they look really good to me...

*edit , Dont want to beat a dead horse but... we all saw recently what a $65 paint job for a certain GW mini look like right?

@Cairnius

At least with me you couldn't be further from the truth. I have been working and still do with most companies in the games business and you would get the same response from me if you would rant e.g. against Battlefront or GW. Your review lacks even the basic structure and con/pro-arguments every reputable journalist would use in his article, though you claim it to be in this line. But aside from such formal issues it's your repeating all over the internet that Rackham is close to going belly up. It's definitely not true. Rackham has just restructured and this has done by a person (Lucas) that is specialised at bringing back companies that got a little bit derailed along their course (something similar happned to GW somwhere around 1990). You can check the name in newer publications by Rackham in the editorial and even if you do lackluster research you will easily find out that this person has always been succesfull and I see no reaseon why he should fail. Additionally your reserch was lackluster. You claimed that Rackham went into chapter 11 in 2008 while a short search on TGN would have revealed that Rackham went into restructuring in 2007 for half a year and because of the success of the restructuring got another hald year by the court to protect it during this stage. I don´t want to check every mistake/misinformation in your text, but there are many that even basic reserach on the internet (and a good journalist does not only rely on the internet) would have revealed them.

And that´s what I can't stand. Bad research and intentional lying about the financial situation of a company. With GW you would already have a lawyer at your heels for posting such repeated comments all over the web. Rackham is much nicer with regards to this, but that's no reason to still write such stuff.

Cairnius wrote:

Hey, if someone wants to cough up $1,000 they can have everything I've got! They'd get two Star Troopers unit boxes which are OOP, a bunker which is almost impossible to get a hold of, gaming tiles which take no small amount of work to track down, three boxes of Assault Meduas which take some effort to find...I've got a bunch of stuff which you can't even get anymore.

Ok if you are happy to sell to us I think we can possibly arrange something, howeever it might take several buyers who between us front $1k and for that much we would want to know what we are getting.

Do it this way. It will be fun for you to watch the sharks frenzy over the carcass. LunaHound is hungry, I am hungry, St Anumen looks like he is hungry. Lets open up a new thread but come on now, no first come first serve, open up the dinner and watch us squabble.

Cairnius wrote:

If the vaccum cleaner doesn't pick up the dirt from the floor as a reviewer of vaccum cleaners I don't say "Well, the suction mechanism needs a massive retooling but overall it works okay." I tell you the vaccum cleaner sucks and go buy another one.

Bad analogy.

Cairnius wrote:
Orlanth is right, fair readers....on the AT-43 forums you actually have to use the acronym "ToG" in reference to "The Other Game," or Warhammer 40,000, because Rackham is so rightfully nervous about the competition on the block. If your product is solid, should you have to be so guarded? Shouldn't your product hold up to objective comparisons and analyses?

I think it is because At-43 by not being as big as some other systems, 40K in particular has not generated independent forums. There is a limit to how much you can criticise PP on their forums. GW forusm, now mercifully crushed were known as Eye of Terror, and had a poor rep because of kiddy hordes and excessive management that would spam bans and thread deletions whenever someone was critical, or worse mentioned the word squat.

If AT-43 gets big enough to get its own main forums outside of company control it may get its grognards, or its rumour mongers or use tacticians as 40K boards have developed character. So TOG attitude is not unusual.
It brings me back too, I always prefered T.O.G to Renegade Legion [in joke].

LunaHound wrote:

warpcrafter wrote:I don't know much about AT-43, but I got the starter box for Confrontation: Age of Ragnarok, and those miniatures are crap! Not the paint job, but the miniatures themselves. Half of them fell apart before we got three games finished. The 3" Star Wars and GI Joe action figures are way better, and better-looking. The D&D miniatures are better, limp swords notwithstanding. Yes, the rules are a little screwy, but not as bad as 40K.

Look in my gallery, all the AT-43 paint job are NOT touched, straight out of the box.

I dunno.... they look really good to me...

I wasn't commenting on the paint job, but on the structural durability. They fall apart really easy, at least the infantry do. I haven't got my hands on a vehicle yet.

I wasn't commenting on the paint job, but on the structural durability. They fall apart really easy, at least the infantry do. I haven't got my hands on a vehicle yet.

Thousands of AT miniatures went through my hands and onyl the usual few had such problems. Most of the times rough handling by transport companies was the main problem. (And transport companies sometimes act quite stupidly. Just a month ago I saw them unloading Xbox 360s and Playstations by throwing them to the ground from a truck (probably 4-5 ft.)).

@forums
Actually in Europe there are quite some independant forums. Probably the US is slighlty behind on this issue.

Duncan_Idaho wrote:@Cairnius

At least with me you couldn't be further from the truth. I have been working and still do with most companies in the games business and you would get the same response from me if you would rant e.g. against Battlefront or GW. Your review lacks even the basic structure and con/pro-arguments every reputable journalist would use in his article, though you claim it to be in this line. But aside from such formal issues it's your repeating all over the internet that Rackham is close to going belly up. It's definitely not true. Rackham has just restructured and this has done by a person (Lucas) that is specialised at bringing back companies that got a little bit derailed along their course (something similar happned to GW somwhere around 1990). You can check the name in newer publications by Rackham in the editorial and even if you do lackluster research you will easily find out that this person has always been succesfull and I see no reaseon why he should fail. Additionally your reserch was lackluster. You claimed that Rackham went into chapter 11 in 2008 while a short search on TGN would have revealed that Rackham went into restructuring in 2007 for half a year and because of the success of the restructuring got another hald year by the court to protect it during this stage. I don´t want to check every mistake/misinformation in your text, but there are many that even basic reserach on the internet (and a good journalist does not only rely on the internet) would have revealed them.

And that´s what I can't stand. Bad research and intentional lying about the financial situation of a company. With GW you would already have a lawyer at your heels for posting such repeated comments all over the web. Rackham is much nicer with regards to this, but that's no reason to still write such stuff.

I don't know how many times I can say it...the sort of pro/con argument you're referring to is not accepted as some sort of objective standard, itself, for reviews in an artistic vein - and this is how I and many others would categorize a review of a tabletop wargame. There simply are no truly objective criteria to apply to an analysis of AT-43 right now...so a pro/con analysis which is being given for the benefit of tabletop wargamers has to look at the popular tabletop wargames of the time period in question, which it is reasonable to argue set the standards for what tabletop wargamers consider "quality," and then make that your basis for comparison like I did.

If you can think of a better way, please find a non-AT-43-fan, get the game and toys into their hands, and ask them to write a review for you! I did the best I could, trying to be honest and neither only a savage critic nor an AT-43 fanboy, but most of the "positive" points I could have made would have required my turning a blind eye to some of the things I've seen lately. Rulings like allowing troops to target friendly troops with direct-fire weapons. How can I objectively argue anymore that the ruleset is "solid" when basic gameplay like this changes on the whim and single post of a Rackham Entertainment rules designer, and that information isn't even put out in a F.A.Q. such that anyone who doesn't know this is essentially playing the game wrong?

How can I make an objective assessment as to the size of the player base, which is a very important piece of information for anyone who is considering spending a sizeable amount of money to buy into AT-43, and not report what I'm seeing around me?

If Rackham Entertainment wants to sell AT-43 as a "miniatures game," thereby invoking the central importance of the miniatures, how can I make an objective assessment as to their quality without directly comparing them to the finished products of the other "miniatures games?" Can you objectively argue that one of the demo models in the AT-43 rulebook compare in quality of mold to the 'Eavy Metal team models on the back of Warhammer 40,000 boxes? Here we CAN begin to apply some aesthetic, artistic critieria involving technique, and now, decidedly, AT-43 toys lose in comparison.


Duncan, you've always been a really nice guy on the Rackham forums....I'm not just trying to stab you in the heart here. When I looked into information online about AT-43 as a tabletop wargamer, that TTWN article was the best I could find.

I don't think you can blame me for wanting to put something up which is specifically designed for the eyes of a tabletop wargamer who is in precisely the same position I was in January of this year, looking for information and not being able to find any - until I wrote this review.


In terrms of this continued perception you seem to have that I'm saying Rackham Enterainment is about to go belly-up, I really suspect you might be being oversensitive here because you're reading into things which don't exist.

I did say that these Army Boxes initiatives are tied very heavily into the fate of AT-43 as a game, whether it will survive or not. I don't think you would honestly disagree with me if you have the sorts of industry awareness you have - and comparing Games Workshop's re-org with Rackham's buyout couldn't be more apples and oranges. Games Workshop was already a monster of a company when it went through what it went through, right? Rackham is decidedly not in the same league GW was in at that time by comparison.

I did NOT say that the fate of AT-43 would be the fate of Rackham Enterainment, and you really need to acknowledge that because it's in the review for anyone to read, hence if there's any libel taking place here, it might not be on my side of this conversation.

I've already acknowledged that I probably had the date of the bankruptcy wrong...I went on stuff a Rackham Sentinel said on the AT-43 forums and were I a professional reviewer then yes, I should have dug a little harder. Unfortunately I am not paid for writing these things, and so the amount of effort I was willing to put on top of three months of AT-43 playing and living in their mindset, and on top of spending $1,000, may have slacked a little. Throw me a link to a definitive primary source as to when Rackham went into restructuring, not a TTWN article, and I'll amend the review here and anywhere else I posted it.

If that's the only true correction I have to make to my review, however...that still makes it a pretty damned good review.

@Cairnius

I want to ask you a question , its abit personal.
You can reply in PM if you dont feel comfortable replying here. However i do want the absolute truth ( if you do chose to answer ) , but if you dont im fine without an answer rather than a lie.

My question is, what happend that was so bad to make you go on a personal vendetta to go around so many forums to spread this? Because honestly, its not common that someone does this based on "just not satisfied with something " .

Absolute truth?

I wrote that review because no one else has. It's that simple. If I had any annoyance in play at any point, it was that when I was a tabletop wargamer, someone who played Warhammer 40,000 and Battlefleet Gothic and Flames of War, and wanted to find information about AT-43 as it stood in January of 2009, the best I could do was the Op Damocles review on TTWN from January of 2007.

I decided I would try to fill the gap, here. This is no vendetta - I've quite readily admitted that I am reviewing from what I consider an "objective" perspective in any artistic milieu, namely comparison to verified, readily-agreed-upon standards of quality and success. I cannot be held personally accountable for the no-holds-barred results of such a comparison. All I did was say what many, many people have already thought before me, but ostensibly lacked the interest to write up in a formal review.

I can see people not wanting cats out of the bag as they're so difficult to herd back in, but really I'm just giving voice to something which the vast majority of tabletop wargamers I've met who encounter AT-43 think and feel...I just took the extra step of giving it three months, and suspending my disbelief, to verify whether any of those thoughts and feelings were reflective of the reality of AT-43.

Some weren't. More were. That's just how it is. Don't blame me, I didn't design AT-43...

If you're asking "Was there a singular flashpoint that caused you to want to write this review?" I would say no, it was a series of continuing disappointments which I suppressed in the interests of trying to not develop the critical conclusions I finally had to admit to, mostly because I had put so much time and effort into the project of learning AT-43...but in the end, I believe that you have to be honest with yourself, and other people, so I came to my conclusions and wrote them up in a review so that people who are in the position now that I was in back in January finally have something to work with per thinking about AT-43.

Again, there's no such thing as bad press, Luna. I may actually have done a favor for the AT-43 fans who want people reading about this game. I would hazard a guess that I've just inspired more continuing attention on AT-43 here and elsewhere online than otherwise would have taken place for two months prior to the release of the Army Boxes.

Therefore, the potential audience for the Army Box initiative may be larger now than it would have been before. If they turn out to be quality products, that will help Rackham Entertainment and the Rackham Sentinels here, not hurt them.

Actually i was referring to the Sentinel part.

It doesnt seem normal to me what you did.

Ah.

On that score...being a Sentinel isn't actually something hard to do. You just ask to become one, and they let you in. So, if you were thinking that there was some modicum of effort that went into my becoming a Sentinel which then would make my turning my back on them seem odd, there's no effort going in, so there's no loss of investment going out, if that makes sense to you.

They pretty much give Sentinel-dom away like candy. You could go become a Sentinel in a day or two, most likely, and get early access to the Cog Army Book, see pictures of the models going into the Army Boxes, etc.