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Cream Tea wrote:No. No, no, no, no...

This is not how it's done, PP. This is Kirby style.

Just when I want to come back to PP and start collecting their minis again they do this. I stopped buying GW products because of this. Now PP is following in GW footsteps? Are they doing this so they can become "horrible" and then do a 180 and try to become the next thing to slice bread just like GW did? Maybe PP needs to hire Mr Roundtree more money if they want that to happen.

Do the Roundtree way, not the Kirby way.

Polonius wrote:PP lost a ton of good will in the last two years, but it's possible that this isn't as disastrous as it looks at first blush. If they don't move all large model to this, and keep the current kits in retail, but instead use Black Anchor to produce lower volume, higher cost models, that could allow them to make more models that might not be economical to sell through distribution channels.

Resin casting is expensive, finicky, and has a high failure rate. Even for small shops, it can be tough to do so profitably while also selling though distribution (where the manufacturer sells for about 30% of retail).

I could be wrong, and this is just another attempt to maximize profits through forced scarcity, but it's not necessarily that.

This can very well be the case. Thing is PP can explain it so, and we the community would understand. All I see right now is PP following GW past practices and now I have stopped thinking on what my next PP purchase was going to be.

I wanted to buy the Mountain Troll. I don't buy online so if I can't buy this at my store when I walk in, then it's no purchase for me. So I might as well not bother looking at PP products now and forget what I planned to do because now I don't know what is "web only" going to be now.

Davor wrote:
This can very well be the case. Thing is PP can explain it so, and we the community would understand. All I see right now is PP following GW past practices and now I have stopped thinking on what my next PP purchase was going to be.

I wanted to buy the Mountain Troll. I don't buy online so if I can't buy this at my store when I walk in, then it's no purchase for me. So I might as well not bother looking at PP products now and forget what I planned to do because now I don't know what is "web only" going to be now.

And they would need to come up with some idea to save sales to Europe. Or maybe PP players in europe are less sensitive to prices? Or market there is so small they can afford to lose it. But any sales from US basically adds not so insignificant pricehike(24% here). Is the free shipping US only or does that cover ROW as well? If not shipping too.

I know for me does shipping come from within EU or outside has impact to whether buy or not. I REALLY need to buy it to buy it. Especially as dealing with customs is extra hassle and takes up extra time as well.

tneva82 wrote:
I know for me does shipping come from within EU or outside has impact to whether buy or not. I REALLY need to buy it to buy it. Especially as dealing with customs is extra hassle and takes up extra time as well.

Same thing for me. I don't want to pay for shipping. Another reason I don't buy Forge World. I hate the idea of paying for shipping when that money could go to buy more minis.

Davor wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
I know for me does shipping come from within EU or outside has impact to whether buy or not. I REALLY need to buy it to buy it. Especially as dealing with customs is extra hassle and takes up extra time as well.

Same thing for me. I don't want to pay for shipping. Another reason I don't buy Forge World. I hate the idea of paying for shipping when that money could go to buy more minis.

At least with FW they have the free shipping when you buy enough and with FW prices that limit is easily reachable(plus at least here there's common practice to do group orders. You don't generally need more than 2 or 3 guys at most to reach that 250£ with FW prices!). So if the PP free shipping covers ROW as well and not just US then that's actually BETTER than FW.

Doesn't help with the tax issue though.

What's interesting to me is that if you look at the upcoming release list - PP's poor quality plastic is nowhere to be seen. Everything is resin/metal/a mix of the two (yuck) and the occasional HiPs kit.

Personally, I am hoping against hope that this lull might mean they are finally getting their act together inre their plastic kits. And if not (finally) moving to HiPs for general releases then at least moving to a better manufacturer of the plastic-resin stuff everyone uses.

But it does seem like every time PP takes a step forward anymore it's accompanied by a step back (or in some cases, a strange sideways step).

The saddest thing about PP is that they could be so much more than they are but they actively fight tooth an nail to prevent that from happening.

I am honestly curious what the major issues are with PP these days, I started playing in MK II and still love MK III...and this seems a logical business move, especially if the option is no more gargantuans.

Dracodile looks beautiful.

Anaxagoras wrote:
I am honestly curious what the major issues are with PP these days

Public perception. Moved cheese.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Davor wrote:

Same thing for me. I don't want to pay for shipping. Another reason I don't buy Forge World. I hate the idea of paying for shipping when that money could go to buy more minis.

I'm trying to pay a little more attention to the final price and less to the details these days. The other day I saw some game mats that I really wanted and ultimately balked on the purchase because I was paying too much in shipping. Then I was looking around and some of the competition offering free shipping and realized that the difference in price made up the difference and ultimately I'd be paying the same amount regardless of whether or not the shipping was "free".

Similarly, the first thing I noticed here was that the Dracodile is priced ~$25 less than the rest of the resin gargantuans. Even if the shipping wasn't free, I suspect the price would be cheaper than what I could get one of the others for.

Anaxagoras wrote:
I am honestly curious what the major issues are with PP these days, I started playing in MK II and still love MK III...and this seems a logical business move, especially if the option is no more gargantuans.

- A rushed and poorly thought out edition (an entire faction had to be redone, and I can get into a lot of criticism of the basic rule changes, and lack of changes in subsystems that needed it, as well as the basic layout failures of the new rulebook- like the rules for slam and throw are 10 pages away from the rules for being slammed and being thrown),

- slashing and burning their forums, basically driving out their community and customer base,

- the figures in their kickstarter boxed games are made from inferior materials, yet they publically maintained they were 'industry standard'

- issuing decrees on how their products can be sold (in a way that's fundamentally consumer unfriendly), supposedly to protect brick and mortar retailers

- and now this, which no matter how it turns out, is in direct opposition to the 'protection' of B&M retailers they were supposedly engaging in.

add in various price rises and big problems with availability for extended periods of time, as well as a fairly high rate of casting problems, missing parts and other manufacturing issues.

And this or no more gargantuans is... not necessarily true. Though personally I still think they were a terrible idea that skew and distort the game horribly, and lead to a whole slew of balance problems.

Me 6 months ago: Holy gak, theyre doing the Dracodile? I better start planning a Minions list.

Me today: direct through PP only? Good thing I was still working on my DFC and hadn't bought into Gators yet.

It seems like PP missed the boat on making HIPS miniatures and now they're in a downward spiral.

I'm kind of sad, Warmachine was my favorite game in college.

 ScarletRose wrote:
It seems like PP missed the boat on making HIPS miniatures and now they're in a downward spiral.

I'm kind of sad, Warmachine was my favorite game in college.

Yeah, that's about my feeling, too. I was seriously into the system for a while, variously got frustrated and mad, now it's just a bit disappointing that they haven't done better with where they started.

 LunarSol wrote:
Similarly, the first thing I noticed here was that the Dracodile is priced ~$25 less than the rest of the resin gargantuans. Even if the shipping wasn't free, I suspect the price would be cheaper than what I could get one of the others for.

But then again if they could be sold by distributors you would likely get them for discount and free shipping(is there miniature store worth buying from that does NOT offer free shipping?) so all gargantuans basically got a price hike.

Especially so for european players who now will not only get price hike on base price but also tax and possibly shipping price. So if base price is say 100$ rather than 90$ or so(10% discount) you pay 100$+tax(here 24% so 24$) plus possibly shipping(if shipping isn't free outside US).

Minimum of 34$ more than you would have paid for 100$ model.

Dracodile is $110 plus free shipping. The cheapest resin gargantuan on minimarket is $106 shipped for free as well. My point is that the direct price seems to be cheaper than what the msrp would have been through distribution.

Overseas is definitely a concern though. I hope PP finds a solution but I am curious to see what the full cost ends up being.

 LunarSol wrote:
Dracodile is $110 plus free shipping. The cheapest resin gargantuan on minimarket is $106 shipped for free as well. My point is that the direct price seems to be cheaper than what the msrp would have been through distribution.

Overseas is definitely a concern though. I hope PP finds a solution but I am curious to see what the full cost ends up being.

So non-direct is cheaper and likely free shipping as well(don't remember last time I bought miniatures without minimum 10% discount AND free shipping...Free shipping and no discount sometimes for paints due to needing them now and not tomorrow). Doesn't sound that good move to me. Even without tax.

I think it's adorable.

"Dawwww. Look at it. It thinks it's GW."

tneva82 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Dracodile is $110 plus free shipping. The cheapest resin gargantuan on minimarket is $106 shipped for free as well. My point is that the direct price seems to be cheaper than what the msrp would have been through distribution.

Overseas is definitely a concern though. I hope PP finds a solution but I am curious to see what the full cost ends up being.

So non-direct is cheaper and likely free shipping as well(don't remember last time I bought miniatures without minimum 10% discount AND free shipping...Free shipping and no discount sometimes for paints due to needing them now and not tomorrow). Doesn't sound that good move to me. Even without tax.

I used the cheapest Gargantuan as a comparison. There's no real way of knowing what the MSRP of the Dracodile would have been, but most of them go on MiniMarket for more than $110. We'll have to see more models released direct to get an idea how the cost compares to previous releases through distribution.

MK2 was awesome with a couple of flaws.
MK3 was half asses and riddled with quite obvious design flaws... it hit Warmachine extremely hard "all over the world"

That's my take Ronin... they actually didn't fix the Mk2 flaws with Mk3, and broke things like the throwing rules so much they had to make a major alteration to the game (not allowing it to be done to friendly models - which was a staple of warmachine).

It was also painfully clear they barely playtested it, with things that obvious missed, and an entire faction (Skorne) needing to be completely redone afterwards.

It's not terrible, but it's worse than Mk2 imo, and was handled about as poorly as you could possibly handle the rolling out of a new edition (unlike "new GW" 8th ed, despite making much bigger changes that had the chance to upset their players more!).

Supposedly they had 3 years worth of playtesting according to Jason Soles. Just very very bad playtesting apparently

Makes me wonder what they count as playtesting

Just reading the way the rules are written, particularly the way targeting restrictions changed, I assume most of MK3 was playtested where you couldn't target friendly models with attacks period.

Thread title is completely off base and is skewing the discussion a lot. Seems like most people didn't actually READ the announcement, just the thread title as PP just announced their own version of ForgeWorld, that's all. They're making and direct-selling new, more niche Colossals/Gargantuans and battle engines and, I'd imagine, other centerpieces eventually. No mention at all about existing ones going to direct only, nor do they say that all colossals are going to be direct only.

'More niche' is a huge assumption. Again, the dracodile has been #1 on the wishlist of IK creatures for years- though personally I was expected the quadruped version, not another wacky wanna-be-kaiju biped.

And the third thing in the listed line-up is a warcaster. Hardly 'niche.'

The announcement was for Black Anchor, a PP subdivision specifically created to produce large resin figures that are better suited to low production runs. That is almost a textbook definition of "niche" products. Hardly a "huge assumption" and more of a "they practically fething tell you" assumption.

A gargantuan for a minions subfaction (and skorne, to try and get people to do skorne again). A battle engine for a subfaction of trolls, and a huge based warcaster. All of those are niche compared to the original battle engines and colossals. If I still worked at a FLGS, I wouldn't want to have to stock a $100 warcaster, even for a main faction. Just how many of those do you think would sell, even in a WM heavy shop? The amount of people kvetching about not getting an online discount in this thread should tell you how well that would go over at full retail.

Well, they used to sell all of what you just described at retail. And despite your description of the Gargantuan, it was bound to be extremely popular. Minions AND Skorne AND a crossover from their RPG.

Likewise, all prior warcasters were not direct only - I'd much rather they take some of the "unit bloat", the vast majority of which is nearly useless in Mk3, and make it direct only.

I agree the reaction here was a bit skewed, but PP have been poisoning their own well...

I still might be interested in it, but it was a planned instabuy for me when it was rumored a few years ago, before their recent behavior since the release of Mk3.

I see a lot of vitriol at their behavior but honestly its just been constant overreactions to change of any sort. At least half the changes have been direct responses to the cries of the community before MK3 that turned around and spit when they got what they asked for.

I've been playing since the start of MK2 and while there's been changes, none of them have fundamentally changed the game itself afaic. The community, on the other hand, has just become kind of spoiled and toxic. I can honestly say I hang out a lot more on Dakka these days in a large part because there isn't a lot of Warmachine talk here and I know whatever PP does these days, the community is going to react in the most miserable way I can imagine.

I’ve played WM since MKI, even before the remix Prime book. PP built their company off of an anti-GW philosophy. The original Page 5 made fun of plastic models. They were all about community interaction. The game designers would respond directly to players on their forums. They were the little upstart alternative to the evil corporation. And players ate it up.

The WM community did become pretty toxic. Their forums became a cesspool where new lists and strategies were shot down because only a few lists worked and some factions were seen as garbage. I don’t know if it was just because the game got too big too fast or what but there were many problems with the community.

But PP has really driven off a lot of players, especially MKI players, with their decisions over the past two years. MKIII is not nearly what they built it up to be, nuking the forums essentially threw the baby out with the bath water, telling online distributors how to sell their product while saying it was to protect brick and mortar stores pissed more people off. Getting rid of Press Gangers, the people who helped build your community was a huge mistake too. Now moving large models to direct only is angering more people.

Is it the end of the world? No. But the lack of feedback from PP is just angering more people. The image of them becoming the “new GW”, right or wrong, is the image a lot of their player base is getting.

Well that's fair, and maybe also why they nuked their forums . But for myself, in Mk3 I see changes that didn't really make the game better, and I was just expecting a Lot more. Add the handling of the PR in, and yeah...

I'll definitely keep an eye on what they're putting out with Black Anchor, particularly the quality, and if it looks good might pick some things up. But it depends on the execution...

Oh, I agree that PP has done little to appease players the last few years. I'm just pointing out that that this isn't the end of the world announcement that people are screaming about, there's no mention of changes to currently produced models whatsoever, and it makes total sense to put these types of models direct only, just like the Extreme sculpts and IF they sell well, move them over to regular production.

I've been playing WM since it first hit, when there was no rulebook at all just the quickstart rules in the main box sets. Thanatos is 100% correct, PP built their game and their name on the community. When GW was at their worst, PP made a big point of doing things the opposite way. I played a LOT of MK1 and a fair bit of MK2. I haven't even opened my figure cases for MK3. I shake my head at nearly every PP anouncement nowadays. PP is now the GW of 2007, while GW has now become the PP of 2007. But this announcement just makes sense, and again, it isn't at all what a lot of people are saying it is. It's just a new line of figures that are direct only. As much as I've come to dislike PP and what WM has become, this isn't anything to get upset over.