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

I think Who's the Boss really benefits from the raw appeal of Warcaster variety and in part works because you go in looking to explore that knowing that control of what you have and what you face is taken from you. The "what you face" is actually quite important as one of the things that has always been a problem for the game is oppressive casters in the meta. There's always SOMETHING in the meta that really punishes casual play and its a layered enough problem that fixing the top doesn't always improve what lies below.

That's an area I think Champions is really alluring in, but my main issue is just that its not really an improvement. If PP would take that idea of 4-5 casters and really launch a season with that group rebalanced to be interesting a varied tools against one another I think it would make for a super interesting format. As is, I like it, but it feels like a restricted format that's just restricting things without using that smaller pool to make for a better format.

 LunarSol wrote:

That and something to cut down on the SKU bloat. A lot of casters versions could be cut with the remaining revamped into more fully featured ideas of the character (see Madrak1) and done well, with the cut versions working as valid alt sculpts. It's a great game that's just bloated from years of success that's in need of some modernization, mostly of the way its sold. We just don't live in an era where an endless backlog works the way it used to, and PP has suffered probably more than any other company from the change.

I agree. I think the 'burden of knowledge' stemming from the huge back catalogue, and the thousands of interactions that come from this are a huge contribution to the 'too high a barrier' for a lot of people to get into the game. Mk2 was probably the perfect 'size' of game to dive into - mk3 is just sooooo much bigger.

That said, I would go further than you. It's not just a lot of the former caster versions that can be retired - I think a lot of the units could be consolidated, modernised and tidied up as well. Or just cut.

To be honest though with games like this, sorting the back catalogue, while great for us, won't work for pp. new stuff is what sells. Not old. They've made their money on the khador range for example. They could cut it all, and probably not lose a huge chunk and that probably where I see them going - 'maintenance' of WMH, no huge investments, keep it on life support and gradually wind down support while they develop new games and ips. I'd argue There's only so much more development they can do with WMH Since it's such a 'mature' system. Gw did this with warhammer fantasy, and I think pp will ultimately go down this road, and maybe I'm being a cŷnic, but I see it sooner rather than later.

 LunarSol wrote:


We don't NEED PGs or the PG program in order to have fun events. Nor do we need to focus on Steamroller to be a thing in order to enjoy the game. I honestly think that if we were able to take time and explore different formats, it would make the overall game experience more interesting.

If the game (and the company behind it) isn't going to commit to some substantial changes to the game and community, then you do need the PG program - the PG program is what helped the game succeed in spite of its community as PG's needed to run events other than Steamrollers or SR format games in order to max out their credit with PP, this in turn forced at least a segment of the games community to come out from behind their Steamroller packets once in a blue moon and made he game more accessible and enjoyable for casuals.

The infernals certainly has an end times vibe, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. I don't think they'd drop the line entirely though, but rebooting it post apocalypse similar to Sigmar isn't out of the realm of possibility, particularly if that reboot comes with a new release structure.

Mostly just an excuse to forget about kits though. I mean, Nyss have managed to be irrelevant for years now and no one is truly sad, even everyone who owns them. Khador is one of their big draws still, but that doesn't mean there's not a wise way to keep models that make sense around while culling all the bloat.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:


We don't NEED PGs or the PG program in order to have fun events. Nor do we need to focus on Steamroller to be a thing in order to enjoy the game. I honestly think that if we were able to take time and explore different formats, it would make the overall game experience more interesting.

If the game (and the company behind it) isn't going to commit to some substantial changes to the game and community, then you do need the PG program - the PG program is what helped the game succeed in spite of its community as PG's needed to run events other than Steamrollers or SR format games in order to max out their credit with PP, this in turn forced at least a segment of the games community to come out from behind their Steamroller packets once in a blue moon and made he game more accessible and enjoyable for casuals.

The problem with that is suggesting that groups cannot do it on their own. People became dependent on the PGs with WMH, so when they dropped, a lot of that dropped, too. As bad as GW's system is, it never made a system like PGs. Maybe that is why the casual meta in Warhammer never took the hits that WMH had when things went wonky.

But no, the metas need to survive without PGs, or find someone who is willing to organize with the LGS in order to get back up and running. But I guess I'm just asking too much, right?

Edit: Missed a word.

The theme lists basically scream "SKU bloat." Outside of the mixed faction forces opening up more buying, I mean, options, a lot of theme forces basically divide armies into pretty neat subfactions.

Nobody wants to lose rules for models in hand, but I don't see how else to fix the game from a massive learning curve.

Themes are great, but they've also shown how limited PPs ability to review them all is. 3-5 themes per faction is great until you realize that 1 theme gets reviewed every 2-3 years or so.

I'd almost favor if they boiled each faction down to one theme. Make it big, include some iconic units, but just rip the bandaid off. Cygnar is all storm division, Khador is all winter guard, etc.

The models go to direct only, and they have rules for legacy casual play, but competitive play gets pruned down to a manageable workload. Then you can resculpt and rejigger the units and reintroduce them, primaris style.

That is, essentially what the upcoming WARCASTER game is.

Ditch all the baggage of Mk3, try something new. (And probably sell the company if it fails.)

You can't ditch half the model line and in the same breath say "everything is going good". The FIRST thing everyone would assume is that the company is heading for a disaster of a death and would jump ship (gamers don't like to invest into games and companies that don't appear to have a good few years life in them).

Their plan of a new game using the original models/characters that takes things to a new direction is far more sensible. They've not lost anything old; the old game is still there; they just introduce a new mode of play.

That way they are achieving the same result, but there's no hint of things going bad or a panic model stripping.




Another option is shifting to a new material; if PP could shift to a really good "GW style" plastic then they could start to strip out more models and release combined kits. Eg take three or four light warbeasts off market, but re-release them at the same time in a single combined "small warbeast" pack of plastic sculpts.
Again its achieving the end result, but again its not going down that panic path of stripping models from their inventory and sales.

I admit, I'm concerned for my meta, at least. At this point it's me and one-and-a-half other players. I haven't been able to get a game in in six months, and whenever I did, people would stop and ask, "Do people still play Warmachine?"

That's not a great comment on the strength of the game. When combined with some of the decisions and personnel changes at PP HQ, I've certainly asked more than one person if the game was dying.

Just keep buying and playing! If nothing else, build some terrain and get those models painted. Be friendly and welcoming to anyone who shows any interest. Try to have a good time.

 Overread wrote:

Another option is shifting to a new material; if PP could shift to a really good "GW style" plastic then they could start to strip out more models and release combined kits. Eg take three or four light warbeasts off market, but re-release them at the same time in a single combined "small warbeast" pack of plastic sculpts.
Again its achieving the end result, but again its not going down that panic path of stripping models from their inventory and sales.

Sprue plastic really isn't a great fit for the kind of models they like to design. It's far from impossible to translate, but without the ability to do the tooling themselves, most of their style would either be lost or turn into Malifaux levels of fiddly. I think they've found their groove with Resin, but its really not a good fit for large units simply due to price. I'm actually curious if one solution is to just generally make unit sizes smaller in a revamped version of the game as a way to keep old stuff valid while revamping things in a way that works better as a modern product.

I think most of us who have been around for ten or more years realize that we don't use 60-80% of our collections on a regular basis, and 30-40% (conservatively) probably never see any use. If this is the case, shouldn't we be okay with large swathes of the line being discontinued, or "no longer considered for competitive play?" The Oblivion crisis might be a good time to do this culling narratively as well.

 Bloviator wrote:
I think most of us who have been around for ten or more years realize that we don't use 60-80% of our collections on a regular basis, and 30-40% (conservatively) probably never see any use. If this is the case, shouldn't we be okay with large swathes of the line being discontinued, or "no longer considered for competitive play?" The Oblivion crisis might be a good time to do this culling narratively as well.

There's a big difference between having a choice of using one of your toys and being told flat out that you cannot use the model and that furthermore it will no longer be sold.

Plus this assumes that everyone is using and wanting to use the same models in your percentages. Chances are whilst multiple people might only use 40% of their models, they might well be using different models to each other. Therefor removing models might affect some more than others.


Again if you turn around and say "That Everblight Angelus is not the most cost efficient choice to take" then I, the player, can make the choice to take it or not. I can even choose to buy it purely to build and paint. But if the company turns around and says "That Angelus we are removing it from sale and making it non-legal in all games from henceforth." Now I've got a negative connection to the game and company.

GW gets away with this typically because whilst they remove models, they also tend to add them as well, or the model can slip into a counts-as (such as many of the flavoured removed Imperial Guard forces). If PP were to start just removing models then they end up in Age of Sigmar territory and that was NOT popular in general. In fact that combined with rules problems almost sank the whole game at launch and its not helped it when GW has dropped things like large swathes of the elf and human models.

Warmachine was huge at my LGS for the first 12-18 months following MK3 release. But 40k 8th came along and the simplicity of learning 8th, the getting started boxes kind of spelled the doom of Warmahordes in my area.

The stores owner had made the choice to liquidate all PP inventory and focus on 40k which was a smart choice for him. Instead of the 4 normal WMH players that existed there are now over a dozen 40k players and there are more starting up every month. He sold maybe a dozen WMH products per month, now he sells dozens of 40k products per week.

FYI my town is tiny so while 13 players might seem small to some on these forums it's quite large in a town of 13k people.

 Overread wrote:

GW gets away with this typically because whilst they remove models, they also tend to add them as well, or the model can slip into a counts-as (such as many of the flavoured removed Imperial Guard forces). If PP were to start just removing models then they end up in Age of Sigmar territory and that was NOT popular in general. In fact that combined with rules problems almost sank the whole game at launch and its not helped it when GW has dropped things like large swathes of the elf and human models.

I think they'd just need to be smart about grandfathering in rules. The easy example is Warcasters, simply because every alt sculpt just doesn't need its own set of rules; to a degree, they've actually done this already, particularly with MiniCrate. By the same token, there's a lot of solos and such that could be merged up with units to count as a leader model or something similar. Plenty of options really; it just depends on what they look to do. I agree though, an AoS "everything you love is DEAD" is probably a bad idea; particularly if combined with some early AOS rules...

They could certainly retire warcasters down to having 1 version of each character based on base size. So the 4 or so versions of Lylith for Everblight would just drop to two - her regular infantry version (of which there's at least two or three different forms) and then one for the sledge version.

That would instantly drop the number of warcasters for each faction by over half and yet by making them the same caster the old models still count and players can just choose which they'd like to use at the time.

Solos I agree could be teamed up and such or made default additions to existing infantry parties etc... There are indeed ways they can scale things down without stripping any models.

 LunarSol wrote:
I think they'd just need to be smart about grandfathering in rules. The easy example is Warcasters, simply because every alt sculpt just doesn't need its own set of rules; to a degree, they've actually done this already, particularly with MiniCrate. By the same token, there's a lot of solos and such that could be merged up with units to count as a leader model or something similar. Plenty of options really; it just depends on what they look to do. I agree though, an AoS "everything you love is DEAD" is probably a bad idea; particularly if combined with some early AOS rules...

So, the question is, how do you grandfather them in? For some of them it is rather easy, but for others it can start to be a challenge. Would Stryker, Xerxis, Vlad, and Kreoss have Dragoon options, or just have an upgrade to Cavalry? Morghoul and Makeda get really interesting since they change weapons as they change versions as well as adding retinues.

 Charistoph wrote:
As bad as GW's system is, it never made a system like PGs.

If by "never made" you mean "created". The Pressganger program was modeled on GW's Outrider program, which was then briefly replaced by the Kommando program, as well as the more store-oriented Rogue Trader program, before that was all killed in the early 2000s The Pressganger program was in many ways identical (and was in fact based directly on it, I know this because I am friends with one of the people who was involved with/consulted on the creation of both GWs and PPs organized play programs). Just like with the loss of PGs, the termination of the Outrider/Kommando program had a negative impact on the community but it was less noticeable because GW stores continued to have staff members organize events and do the community stuff through their own stores (a luxury which PP does not have) and GW itself continued to run their own events (which they then later scaled back, which also had a negative impact on the community as well until a handful of larger organizations backed by retail stores, like Frontline Games, stepped in to fill the void with independently organized events), but many independent stores suffered as a result of the programs being killed - my own store, for example, used to have a vibrant community of a couple dozen guys in playing two days a week, after the Outrider/Kommando and Rogue Trader programs were terminated a lot of those guys slowly dwindled away and disappeared. We've had a couple of brief renaissances when someone steps up to run community events, etc. and some of those guys come out of the woodwork again, but invariably that only lasts for a few months at a clip until the organizers decide its taking up too much of their time and money to keep up with it.

But I guess I'm just asking too much, right?

I think so, yes. I used to do a lot of community organization type stuff at my local store. Its a lot of work, and I, as an individual, had to pay for a lot of things out of pocket to make it happen. Its a thankless, time consuming, and financially burdensome thing to do, and at the end of the day you are really doing it for someone elses monetary benefit - you absolutely should be getting compensated for doing it. Active communities sell games, they drive sales to existing customers and are the #1 marketing tool for bringing in new customers who happen to wander by and get curious as to what people are doing pushing toy soldiers about on a table, whether it be your local store compensating you or GW itself - surprise, surprise, the only stores locally with active GW playerbases are the ones that have people on payroll to organize events or offer some form of compensation to community organizers to make it worth their while.

I'd almost favor if they boiled each faction down to one theme. Make it big, include some iconic units, but just rip the bandaid off. Cygnar is all storm division, Khador is all winter guard, etc.

So, basically just do away with themes and let the factions be factions again?

That is, essentially what the upcoming WARCASTER game is.

Ditch all the baggage of Mk3, try something new. (And probably sell the company if it fails.)

We don't really know much about WARCASTER yet though? There could still well be theme lists, what we do know is that its a smaller game set in the same universe but not the same setting (different planet, different factions), and that Warcasters won't be "fixed" characters but instead will be "build your own", etc.

Another option is shifting to a new material; if PP could shift to a really good "GW style" plastic then they could start to strip out more models and release combined kits.

Really good "GW style" plastic kits aren't really an option, nobody can touch their quality, its basically their baked-in competitive advantage. The closest you're going to get is sourcing your production from the same guys that do the plastics for Malifaux, Marvel: Crisis Protocol, etc. Its a more brittle plastic and the part divisions are insane (hope you enjoy having to attach someones moustache as a separate piece to their face, which is in turn a separate piece to their head, to which you also have to attach the bottom half of their left ear as a separate piece) for a number of reasons (but it basically boils down to a lack of expertise on the designers end for designing miniatures for production via injection molds, and a lack of expertise/understanding on the manufacturers end for designing kits to be more robust and more easily assembled for wargaming purposes (the plastics manufacturers being sourced for wargames minis in china sprung out of the fine scale model industry which has very different considerations in terms of the design and assembly of kits).

 Charistoph wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I think they'd just need to be smart about grandfathering in rules. The easy example is Warcasters, simply because every alt sculpt just doesn't need its own set of rules; to a degree, they've actually done this already, particularly with MiniCrate. By the same token, there's a lot of solos and such that could be merged up with units to count as a leader model or something similar. Plenty of options really; it just depends on what they look to do. I agree though, an AoS "everything you love is DEAD" is probably a bad idea; particularly if combined with some early AOS rules...

So, the question is, how do you grandfather them in? For some of them it is rather easy, but for others it can start to be a challenge. Would Stryker, Xerxis, Vlad, and Kreoss have Dragoon options, or just have an upgrade to Cavalry? Morghoul and Makeda get really interesting since they change weapons as they change versions as well as adding retinues.

I think people overvalue the appearance of weapons. If you haven't figured out which Makeda you're playing against before it matters whether she's got one big sword or a pair of katanas, you've already lost this game. Overall, Warcaster weapons just don't matter the way they once did, but even when they do there's probably value in some of the different versions; just that a lot of them lacked a meaningful distinctions. Butcher has something like 8 models at this point that are all more or less the same thing. That one time he has a pair of puppies and maybe the definitive version has puppies or maybe they make it so the retinues cost points that you can choose to include or not. Dragoons could be cool for sure. It's also possible to just make certain casters legal alts for others. If for example, Irusk would die in the fluff and be succeeded by Malakov who has always felt like a successor to his mechanics; Irusk could make a fine alt for that set of rules.

Mostly though I'd just like to see casters get a modern redesign that really captures what they're all about. So many modern casters have uninspiring feats because they already did something amazing on a prior version or just come across diluted. Madrak1 is such a great example of a modern, all encompassing ideal of what Madrak represents that even happens to have one of the newer sculpts. I think that ethos would do wonders for the game. I love what themes do for the game in taking groups of models and defining a playstyle for the list as a whole. I think the same idea very much applies to casters. PP has shown the ability to make some really modern mechanics with their casters in the last 5 years or so. If every caster was as interesting as the likes of Butcher3, Haley3, Gearhart, Borka2, and a lot of the others that have gotten really thoughtful designs since the waning days of MK2, I think it would be a vastly more exciting game.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:
As bad as GW's system is, it never made a system like PGs.

If by "never made" you mean "created". The Pressganger program was modeled on GW's Outrider program, which was then briefly replaced by the Kommando program, as well as the more store-oriented Rogue Trader program, before that was all killed in the early 2000s The Pressganger program was in many ways identical (and was in fact based directly on it, I know this because I am friends with one of the people who was involved with/consulted on the creation of both GWs and PPs organized play programs). Just like with the loss of PGs, the termination of the Outrider/Kommando program had a negative impact on the community but it was less noticeable because GW stores continued to have staff members organize events and do the community stuff through their own stores (a luxury which PP does not have) and GW itself continued to run their own events (which they then later scaled back, which also had a negative impact on the community as well until a handful of larger organizations backed by retail stores, like Frontline Games, stepped in to fill the void with independently organized events), but many independent stores suffered as a result of the programs being killed - my own store, for example, used to have a vibrant community of a couple dozen guys in playing two days a week, after the Outrider/Kommando and Rogue Trader programs were terminated a lot of those guys slowly dwindled away and disappeared. We've had a couple of brief renaissances when someone steps up to run community events, etc. and some of those guys come out of the woodwork again, but invariably that only lasts for a few months at a clip until the organizers decide its taking up too much of their time and money to keep up with it.

First I have heard of this. Learn something new every day. Interesting how nobody mentions it any more, though.

chaos0xomega wrote:

But I guess I'm just asking too much, right?

I think so, yes. I used to do a lot of community organization type stuff at my local store. Its a lot of work, and I, as an individual, had to pay for a lot of things out of pocket to make it happen. Its a thankless, time consuming, and financially burdensome thing to do, and at the end of the day you are really doing it for someone elses monetary benefit - you absolutely should be getting compensated for doing it. Active communities sell games, they drive sales to existing customers and are the #1 marketing tool for bringing in new customers who happen to wander by and get curious as to what people are doing pushing toy soldiers about on a table, whether it be your local store compensating you or GW itself - surprise, surprise, the only stores locally with active GW playerbases are the ones that have people on payroll to organize events or offer some form of compensation to community organizers to make it worth their while.

Way to take it out of context. No, I'm not suggesting someone take up a financial burden of being a PG. What I'm suggesting is that metas take responsibility in staging events and encouraging new players. Did you know that Warhammer hasn't had that much problem staying ahead in most areas without their equivalent of PG? People took up the responsibility to run them for Warhammer. However, people just keep moaning about the loss of PGs when it comes to WMH.

LunarSol wrote:

 Charistoph wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I think they'd just need to be smart about grandfathering in rules. The easy example is Warcasters, simply because every alt sculpt just doesn't need its own set of rules; to a degree, they've actually done this already, particularly with MiniCrate. By the same token, there's a lot of solos and such that could be merged up with units to count as a leader model or something similar. Plenty of options really; it just depends on what they look to do. I agree though, an AoS "everything you love is DEAD" is probably a bad idea; particularly if combined with some early AOS rules...

So, the question is, how do you grandfather them in? For some of them it is rather easy, but for others it can start to be a challenge. Would Stryker, Xerxis, Vlad, and Kreoss have Dragoon options, or just have an upgrade to Cavalry? Morghoul and Makeda get really interesting since they change weapons as they change versions as well as adding retinues.

I think people overvalue the appearance of weapons. If you haven't figured out which Makeda you're playing against before it matters whether she's got one big sword or a pair of katanas, you've already lost this game. Overall, Warcaster weapons just don't matter the way they once did, but even when they do there's probably value in some of the different versions; just that a lot of them lacked a meaningful distinctions. Butcher has something like 8 models at this point that are all more or less the same thing. That one time he has a pair of puppies and maybe the definitive version has puppies or maybe they make it so the retinues cost points that you can choose to include or not. Dragoons could be cool for sure. It's also possible to just make certain casters legal alts for others. If for example, Irusk would die in the fluff and be succeeded by Malakov who has always felt like a successor to his mechanics; Irusk could make a fine alt for that set of rules.

My point was how to keep them "grandfathered" in while still keeping them relevant. One way is to treat them all the same, but that falls flat. The point I was making about weapons was that unlike the Butcher, who only lost Lola in his Riot Quest version and is no longer a Warcaster, Some weapons change all around, with Morghoul having 3 different loadouts across his iterations, and not including his entourage. Makeda isn't very dissimilar. Then there's Thagrosh whose almost a Dragonsapwn in his second iteration. Of course, this is attacking it from a Neo-Mechanika and Warhammer angle. It's a totally different case if you're attacking it from a retirement angle so that the latest version of a model (except for Riot Quest) is considered the only viable option so the likes like Vlad, Stryker, and Kreoss are no longer off their horse, no matter their protests, and Butcher, Makeda, and Morgoul will carry on with their entourages. What could be interesting, though this won't address sku bloat, would be to consider every version the same when it comes to spell list and Feat, the only thing that really changes is weapon, mount, and entourage, and that part is consistent with the number (which I believe you were getting at in the next paragraph), which would make the likes of Madrak 1 & 2, Makeda 1 & 2, and Butcher 1 & 2, basically resculpts for all intents and purposes.

In order to reduce sku bloat effectively, though, the units and solos need to be reduced as well and be able to make multi-kits for every version thereof, ala Infinity. That won't work for everything, though, as a Merc player the number of solos I can do that with is extremely minimal, and what multi-kits could be done pretty much are (except for the Steelhead artillery).

 Charistoph wrote:
What could be interesting, though this won't address sku bloat, would be to consider every version the same when it comes to spell list and Feat, the only thing that really changes is weapon, mount, and entourage, and that part is consistent with the number (which I believe you were getting at in the next paragraph), which would make the likes of Madrak 1 & 2, Makeda 1 & 2, and Butcher 1 & 2, basically resculpts for all intents and purposes.

Yeah, this is what I meant. Sure, they're technically different, but Lola and Fell Lola are close enough that if the game went to having only one version of Butcher, either works fine. I mean, you can technically swap it out with candy cane Lola as a legal resculpt now as is. It's harder with more extreme variations in caster base size, but most of those have a little stronger case for being different versions. If for example though, Grim2 was the only Grim but I really liked the Grim1 model for some reason.... well, it makes a fine alt sculpt I suppose.

I think something similar could be done with other models, but it depends on how you go about it and what kind of sales model and game style you're revamping into. Malifaux 3rd Ed is a good example of a system that repackaged its existing content in line with a totally new way of selling the game. I think Warmachine could do something similar, but its got to be a little more willing to reorganize things along the way.

Way to take it out of context. No, I'm not suggesting someone take up a financial burden of being a PG. What I'm suggesting is that metas take responsibility in staging events and encouraging new players. Did you know that Warhammer hasn't had that much problem staying ahead in most areas without their equivalent of PG? People took up the responsibility to run them for Warhammer. However, people just keep moaning about the loss of PGs when it comes to WMH.

But thats not really true. GW stores exist, the staff at GWs stores function in the same way as PGs dis (with more direct responsibilities for sales on top). Thats where the most active communities for the game continue to exist, I have encountered very few independent stores that have thriving communities, and theres a reason for that.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Way to take it out of context. No, I'm not suggesting someone take up a financial burden of being a PG. What I'm suggesting is that metas take responsibility in staging events and encouraging new players. Did you know that Warhammer hasn't had that much problem staying ahead in most areas without their equivalent of PG? People took up the responsibility to run them for Warhammer. However, people just keep moaning about the loss of PGs when it comes to WMH.

But thats not really true. GW stores exist, the staff at GWs stores function in the same way as PGs dis (with more direct responsibilities for sales on top). Thats where the most active communities for the game continue to exist, I have encountered very few independent stores that have thriving communities, and theres a reason for that.

Not quite. You're not dealing with a volunteer doing it for random prizes in a brick & mortar store. In a B&M you're dealing with paychecks, rents, and expectations that the volunteer PG group did not have to.

Which is irrelevant, because at the end of the day what we are discussing is someone who has the responsibility for running demo games and organizing community events such as tournaments, mega battles, etc. GW staff still fulfill this function at their own stores. Period, end of.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Which is irrelevant, because at the end of the day what we are discussing is someone who has the responsibility for running demo games and organizing community events such as tournaments, mega battles, etc. GW staff still fulfill this function at their own stores. Period, end of.

But you're the one who brought up financial responsibility, so I guess it is relevant. I know plenty of LGS which organize their own tournaments for multiple systems. In our meta for WMH we have had one or two people directing events for several LGS so they don't overlap, and I don't think he's employed by any of the stores.

The simple fact is that organising and running events and doing demos and getting new people involved; advertising the group and game etc..... These things all involve costs in time and money.

That person running demo games each week - they are sacrificing regular game time to run demos to get new people involved. That person paying out of their own pocket to rent the venue that's money going out for the group etc...


Now there are ways to combat this. A Press Ganger system can provide rewards and support. This might mean they provide some event organising material; some posters and banners to help advertise and might even give those donating their time a store discount or even limited edition product to basically provide a compensation for the time and energy put into the program. Of course some will abuse the system, but many won't.

A store is no different its just a more direct and formal contract that comes with a lot more increased compensation (pay); but with vastly increased time demands.



Both serve a similar funciton, the store is just a more direct system that also blends in retail support direct to the community.


Also a PG system is just like a volunteer system; it requires someone at the top to organise it. Without PP doing it on their own the system quickly falls apart. The compensation is lost, but also the motivation, unity, organisation, support etc.... In very rare situations a community can rally around and restore some functionality; but this is very hard over large geographical territories and even harder internationally*.
Even if PP was only doing a token handthrow amount of support for a PG system, it still helps keep it running.







* it can be done, the Bloodbowl system was running on such a setup for quite a while. It even had added pressure that for many years there were no more models being produced and even when production did return it was a good while before it was from GW.

Press Gang won't return unless PP moves out of Seattle.

My biggest problems with Warmahordes (outside of the poor management of their production and distribution) is the scenarios themselves.

Caster Kill always wins a game even if that is not the scenario. I've had games where my opponent had not taken out a single of my models but then they assassinate the caster. Now if the scenario was caster kill, that would be OK, but the scenario was one of the flag scenarios. If the scenario is that you need to take an objective, the army isn't going to throw down their arms and run away if the caster is killed. The scenarios become almost meaningless. Caster kill should only win a game in a caster kill scenario. The caster is a powerful character and hurts if killed, but it shouldn't end the game. Because of this, the game is boring.