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 -Loki- wrote:
Dakka has always been quiet on non-GW games, because it's predominantly a GW game forum. Malifaux can barely squeek out a handful of posts in a month, Infinity is basically a dozen people talking amongst ourselves, and most games are relegated to some miscellaneous sub forum and if it's lucky a News and Rumours thread. All that changed lately was the staff took the sub forums that no one posted in and consolidated them into Miscellaneous sub forums.

So the current atmosphere os mostly GW talk isn't really new.

I guess it was just my imagination but it felt like there was more discussion about non-GW games back when I first joined around 2014-15.

 durecellrabbit wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
Dakka has always been quiet on non-GW games, because it's predominantly a GW game forum. Malifaux can barely squeek out a handful of posts in a month, Infinity is basically a dozen people talking amongst ourselves, and most games are relegated to some miscellaneous sub forum and if it's lucky a News and Rumours thread. All that changed lately was the staff took the sub forums that no one posted in and consolidated them into Miscellaneous sub forums.

So the current atmosphere os mostly GW talk isn't really new.

I guess it was just my imagination but it felt like there was more discussion about non-GW games back when I first joined around 2014-15.

being "dakka" I am surprised there is any non gw talk at all.

 thekingofkings wrote:
being "dakka" I am surprised there is any non gw talk at all.

If I remember correctly dakkadakka was initially a forum for a local store/community or something like that. It just slowly expanded over time and started including more than just GW games.

Mario wrote:

 thekingofkings wrote:
being "dakka" I am surprised there is any non gw talk at all.

If I remember correctly dakkadakka was initially a forum for a local store/community or something like that. It just slowly expanded over time and started including more than just GW games.

Correct, but as far back as I recall (I started coming here... around 1998 I think? Back when it was still on EZboard with the flash menu) it was a dedicated online forum community, just it had an attached legit store (also called DakkaDakka IIRC) with a real-life community as well.

I've only seen a few people playing GW games at my LGS, 40k or Shadow War (that Necromunda style one?).

The X-wing scene has been great up until fairly recently when the player who'd be doing most of the organizing and FB posts moved out of the area. Since then it's up and down as people just sporadically show up.

You never really know how important an organizer is, even if it's just for weekly stuff, than when you don't have one.

GW is a wasteland here, but alot of other games have people actively promoting them so that does have a lot to do with it.

I decided to finally jump into FoW with the release of V.4 and there's a pretty solid group of people that play mid-war in our store along with plenty of LW and EW players. There's a pretty big BA group that have a league going and I'm thinking about joining it. Also, I think Battlegroup has a nice stable of players in my area. I stopped playing X-Wing a year ago but it's still pretty popular at my store and so is Armada.

GW probably still has the largest player base in my store though.

Flames of War really looks like a damn good game, IF I was in to historicals I would certainly give it a go!

FoW is pretty good, V4 as a set of rules is "ok", not what was needed but there you go - the current lists are anaemic as hell though compared to the last version which is what has caused many of the issues.

Plus unless you want the war in the desert it basically doesn't work

If you're doing historical WW2, skip FoW and go for the Battlefront series ---- absolutely heads and tails above FoW.

 Elbows wrote:
If you're doing historical WW2, skip FoW and go for the Battlefront series ---- absolutely heads and tails above FoW.

X2!

I would also strongly recommend Chain of Command too!

Instead of the game for nine year old players, tonight, we are having a painting session.

Of those four players, only nine are showing up, with two skipping the session. (Yes, I know that the math doesn't work - some of these kids aren't in any of my games - Sam is bringing in players from her Pathfinder game.... Such a pushy young woman. )

The Auld Grump

 Elbows wrote:
If you're doing historical WW2, skip FoW and go for the Battlefront series ---- absolutely heads and tails above FoW.

I've not heard of the Battlefront series. Do you mean Battlegroup? If so I agree they are superb rules.

Not played COC, but I can recommend Crossfire if you want to play an infantry based company level game. Might take some getting used to as it doesn't use a traditional turn based structure, rather one player has the initiative and gets to move and shoot to their hearts content untill they lose it by failing to do something when the initiative switches to the otherc player. Once wrap your head round it it's a great game.

 Easy E wrote:

 Elbows wrote:
If you're doing historical WW2, skip FoW and go for the Battlefront series ---- absolutely heads and tails above FoW.

X2!

I would also strongly recommend Chain of Command too!

Own but have yet to play Chain of Command, the deployment system looks amazing, why don't more games have something like that in there?

Also heard good things about Battlegroup

I nearly got a small group interested in FOW but the terrible plastic infantry killed it stone dead. Bolt Action is the WW2 game of choice right now with strong showings of Dan Mersey's rampant series at times. We are currently playing the early mediaeval period with Lion Rampant, Middle Earth with Dragon Rampant, ECW with Pikeman's Lament and Colonial imagi-nations with The Men Who Would Be King.

Yes sirree, 25mm round bases are de rigueur at the moment...

Infinity is the only game I play. I just started a 40k army because I made a deal with my friend. If he buys Infinity I'll buy 40k.

Other gaming = desperately fighting the temptation to start playing the new Legend of the Five Rings LCG.

Too many things competing for my time these days to play more than Warhammer 40,000.

The only non-GW games played at my club are Infinity (~3-4 people, I have models but haven't played yet), Malifaux (the same people as Inifnity) and Dropfleet Commander (me and two others). The X-Wing guys have a club of their own. Other than that it's all 40k, Necromunda and AoS, all the time. AoS has been growing continually and I'd say we're almost up to 40k in terms of players. Currently a guy is running a very succesful Firestorm Campaign for AoS although I don't have time to participate myself :( Necromunda has been and will be huge. The only person I know who is interested in alternative rule sets and buys rule books from companies like Osprey and Mantic is me, although no one wants to play them with me I don't think anyone else has even heard of them. Rank and file died with WHFB, only a single person keeps trying to get someone to play 9th Age but no one is interested, even those with big WHFB armies. I've never heard anyone mention KoW. There is absolutely zero interest in historicals as well, we are all fantasy/sci-fi nerds.

Dropzone Commander, D&D, and so on is 100% me getting players together to game

Guildball, Infinity, and Warmachine is doing great at the local stores, MKIII damaged Warmahordes a bit - it's not as strong. Maybe 10-15 players vs 20+

The 8th edition being played at my LGS is mostly new people or older 40k players who picked up the game again after quitting, there didn't seem to be any overlap with other game systems.

DZC/DFC is mostly the same (2) people, the uncertainty of the future of the games in the US due to the recent purchase of the company makes it difficult to drum up interest.

WM/H still gets played on open nights, my understanding is that people who left it due to their feelings on the direction of the company mostly went to Guildball (which has a bit of a following here) on the official WM/H nights.

Armada/X-Wing tends to have a lot of people, though it's not consistent. I've seen nights where it was virtually every table and nights where there was no-one.

Infinity quietly disappeared a couple of years ago, there's allegedly FOW and Team Yankee but they don't show up on open gaming nights.

People blame GW for the decline in non-GW but rarely the involved companies.

Privateer since Mark iii is a textbook case of destroying your own fan base through indifference and boardroom echo chamber.

Mantic positioned themselves as a value alternative to GW but then proceeded to raise prices without raising quality and disincentivise retailers through using KS to launch everything.

Warlord turned Bolt Action into a game 40k 7th lite then also increased prices and release ranges supported for a few months.

Hawk killed themselves with KS.

FFG can't maintain a supply chain with reliability and somehow have failed to really capitalise on the resurgence in Star Wars, less said about Runewars the better.

Everyone else basically put prices up so much that GW now looks reasonable and has good support and a decent interaction with customers.

A lot of it is also, often, the reluctance of people to try something new. A lot of these games are made by much lesser-known companies, and in the USA at least are harder to get stocked in a store, so you often find communities that would be interested in a game, but won't take the plunge to try it because they can't just walk down to the store and get it, and because there's not already support. It's a lot harder to build a community from the ground up when you can reasonably get like 40k people who used to play or are familiar with it at least to give it a shot; that's much harder with a game like Infinity or Malifaux or Bolt Action where it's a lot less well known.

I don't get to the local shop here a lot, but when I do I have not seen a miniatures game other than 40k; there is a lot of MtG and Yu-Gi-Oh there, along with RPG groups. There's another shop a bit farther out and the people there seem to have a bit of X-Wing mixed in with the GW. Personally a friend of mine and I have split a couple of X-wing starter sets and purchased some other ships, but the power explosion in that game has completely turned me off to trying to keep up or play with anyone else, not to mention the fact that X-wings suck in a game called X-Wing. I do want to try Malifaux, but I don't know anyone else that has any interest at all.

Seems to be a bit of a connection between Kickstarter and games floundering - seems a very easy way to make sure FLGS lose interest in supporting and promoting.

Can see the utility of it, but as with mantic its a great way to kill interest.

Seems also to kill the companies who end up with no actual sales.


Agree on Bolt Action, Warlord's historical games (black powder etc) have a very solid IMHO set of rules, Bolt Action could have done with more focus on command and control and less on being yahtzee WW2. Its "ok" but it suffers from 40k disease, trying to be a 10mm - 15mm game in 28mm.

two squads, a support unit and maybe a light vehicle or gun and its good, trying to be a tank v tank game?

I wish I had more to add to this. I finally am getting the budget to where I have a significant disposable surplus to spend on plastic. Every time this has happened, a new line of Transformers comes out. Same currently, but I was going to save enough to start into Star Trek: Attack Wing. Now I hear that the game has pretty much gone from company support to life support, and I'm terrified to sink money on what will essentially be a Startfleet ship collection instead of game pieces.

Past that, it's been Classichammer damn near once a month.

leopard wrote:
Seems to be a bit of a connection between Kickstarter and games floundering - seems a very easy way to make sure FLGS lose interest in supporting and promoting.

From the perspective of a small games company, a very difficult decision we face is whether to use retail at all... the FLGS seems important in the US, but less so in the UK. But selling through retail will require us to literally double our prices, and still make less profit. The question is, does the increased exposure offset the sales lost through high pricing? Or is selling direct only the better option?

Either way, I know a number of other small miniature companies that have seen drastically reduced sales over the last year, with regular customers stating that they were buying Bloodbowl / 8th and HH stuff instead, so the resurgent form of GW is definitely having an impact.

Kings of War has a pretty big following in my area. 9th age is basically non existent.

Flames of War was my main game, 4th edition divided it big. I am mixed, I like some of the changes to 4th, like arty, but the move orders, smoke, spec rules kinda suck. Probably need to play it a bit more, but I felt they could have just did a 3.5 for balance and it would have been better.

Sooo, that led me back into 40k, been away since 5th to 6th transition, everyone is saying 8th is really good, so back to 40k.

Kids of War going on right now, and once again, the kids don't really need me.

The scenario is a homebrew mess - meeting engagement, two armies meeting on the road - and deploying during their first turn - out from the road.

First turn, only half the army is deployed, the rest come in on turn two. Units with Vanguard are having fun.

Meeting engagements aren't planned - they just happen.

The outcome of this battle will have direct repercussions in a role playing game.

The Auld Grump

Test of Honour and infinity with a touch of Gates of Antares.

I am lucky to live near the host of the biggest x wing scene that is not the national finals. Friday nite X-wing went from bi-weekly to weekly replacing magic and we get 70-80 people average can spike when nationals are coming up.

8th had a very brief revival and then died on its arse again. Still have a couple.of AoS players. Shade spire sadly did not sell well I think I was one of a handful who picked it up.

On the whole I can get a game of most things with a few days notice so a kinda golden age or it would be if I had any time.

@TheAuldGrump , I am loving how you describe your "Kids of War" games, I laughted when you mentionned that of your 4 players "only" 9 showed for your painting session. ^_^

Myself I am currently more occupied by my ongoing D&D 4th edition campaign and I play a lots of boardgames that occupy my time, but I am still deeply involved in KoW and trying to recruit more of my friends (most of them stopped playing when they got kids (plus AoS), and I a hopping to convert them once the kids will be old enough that the parent are no longer as exhausted (or even better old enough for the kids to play themselves )