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 Albertorius wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I thought that Utopia was supposed to be a big money-maker for the Pod, right? According to their fans, it was an easy sell, right?

I don't really remember any of their fans saying that, honestly. Most said the contrary to that.

Indeed, it was flat out mystifying as to why DP9 pushed Utopia before PRDF/NuCoal.

 John Prins wrote:

Indeed, it was flat out mystifying as to why DP9 pushed Utopia before PRDF/NuCoal.

Get it over and done with I suppose. It is the one of the two weakest current lines and would have likely failed if not for people pledging in part or full to make a personal and financial statement about supporting the company rather than specifically because they want the rewards. If it were up to me, I'd have probably run it first as well just to see if the faction had enough of a fanbase to ever expand on in the future. That's not really a question with Nucoal and Paxton IMO. As always, YMMV.

 warboss wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

Indeed, it was flat out mystifying as to why DP9 pushed Utopia before PRDF/NuCoal.

Get it over and done with I suppose. It is the one of the two weakest current lines and would have likely failed if not for people pledging in part or full to make a personal and financial statement about supporting the company rather than specifically because they want the rewards. If it were up to me, I'd have probably run it first as well just to see if the faction had enough of a fanbase to ever expand on in the future. That's not really a question with Nucoal and Paxton IMO. As always, YMMV.

It doesn't seem a great move to put your worst foot forward right after a cancelled KS, but as you say, maybe Robert views PRDF and NuCoal as slam dunks with the right stretch goal structures.

At the very least, the renders are mostly done, so that's one monkey off Robert's back. Obviously he wants to get all 3 KS done in rapid succession so he can have all of them done in parallel (save on shipping), but I wouldn't expect much in the way of rules changes for a good while.

Also, working alone is just bad from a safety standpoint, especially if you're working with hot metals and spinning equipment. I hope he can find some part time assistance with casting at a minimum.

Or maybe just not cast at all. Someone here (not sure if you) said they hadn't come out with any new non-crowdfunded products in over a year. If sales of the traditional line have slowed because of the lower amount of visibility and the almost complete lack of 3rd parties stocking them, he may have enough on hand of most of the line to keep going for a while. It all depends on sales figures and business plans that we have zero insider knowledge of.

Sounds to me like they just don't have the resources (i.e. financial credit & capital) to do new product without crowdfunding revenue.

That would be consistent with laying off 50% of the team, along with the all new product being serial kickstarter.

 warboss wrote:
Or maybe just not cast at all. Someone here (not sure if you) said they hadn't come out with any new non-crowdfunded products in over a year. If sales of the traditional line have slowed because of the lower amount of visibility and the almost complete lack of 3rd parties stocking them, he may have enough on hand of most of the line to keep going for a while. It all depends on sales figures and business plans that we have zero insider knowledge of.

That was me. IIRC, the last new product was a resin helicopter (Fuzion does their resin casting, not in-house), not even spincast metal. As I said earlier, I'd be happy to help with their cash-flow problems by buying some of the stuff being held over for the PRDF Kickstarter. If they honestly can't afford to make the molds on those, then they should be stretch goals on the 2nd (cancelled) KS rather than add-ons.

Mostly I figured the molds for pewter stuff are good to go and Robert was holding it back to pad the KS numbers.

Wow, someone is unloading a ton of 1/87 RAFM on eBay...

Is that you, warboss?

No, not me although it did ping on my saved search notification. Lots of good stuff there but too rich for my blood already considering I have yet to paint any of my assembled ones with days left to go. My guess is that the final price on each lot will end up somewhere around $10-15 per gear overall.

LOL, ok, just curious - it would have been a funny coincidence

Also, isn't $10/gear what the Pod charges for 1/144?? The big RAFM stuff is a steal at that price!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
LOL, ok, just curious - it would have been a funny coincidence

Also, isn't $10/gear what the Pod charges for 1/144?? The big RAFM stuff is a steal at that price!

As long as you appreciate the slightly different styling and don't mind a scale for your collection that is visually incompatible with likely 95%+ of the collections in the world. In my case, I hadn't been able to drum up a single full heavy gear game in years with my multiple fully painted blitz scale armies and I was very nostalgic for them (they were the first ever minis I bought and painted as a faction).

Yeah, at those prices I really should prepare some of my stuff to sell. It's been years since last time I did anything with them but painting, and I have entirely too much of both scales >_>.

So, due to fan outcry (feedback) Rob has switched back to the previous rules set.

http://dp9forum.com/index.php?/topic/18278-hgb-living-rulebook-january-2018-update-roll-back/

Shortest-lived edition of HGB, ever!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Shortest-lived edition of HGB, ever!

Not even close. The LRB was updated on 2016-07-17 and then again on 2016-07-18, though that was some of the peripheral files AFAIK.

Not sure all of the updates consitute a new "edition" especially in a LRB that is supposedly meant to be incrementally updated. In any case (and in other news), the RAFM minis are almost up to $300 for all the lots combined. Wow, there sure is alot of interest in that scale!

 warboss wrote:
Not sure all of the updates consitute a new "edition" especially in a LRB that is supposedly meant to be incrementally updated. In any case (and in other news), the RAFM minis are almost up to $300 for all the lots combined. Wow, there sure is alot of interest in that scale!

$300 doesn't seem unreasonable considering how much of it there is. The RAFM stuff is generally more fun to paint, though their QC was crap and some of the designs are too crowded to even pose (Kodiak and King Cobra were really bad in this regard).

Makes me wonder what a RAFM scale redux with Blitz improvements with regard to clearances and missile pods would look like.

 John Prins wrote:
Makes me wonder what a RAFM scale redux with Blitz improvements with regard to clearances and missile pods would look like.

If they were plastics and produced by Bandai, theyd be awesome.

 John Prins wrote:
$300 doesn't seem unreasonable considering how much of it there is. The RAFM stuff is generally more fun to paint, though their QC was crap and some of the designs are too crowded to even pose (Kodiak and King Cobra were really bad in this regard).

Makes me wonder what a RAFM scale redux with Blitz improvements with regard to clearances and missile pods would look like.

I agree that it's a big lot and with it being almost entirely NIB instead of having to break some dumb noob's poor posing apart and clean off the glue while stripping the crappy paint job (an accurate description of my initial RAFM collection's condition when I sold it around 2001ish) is definitely more valuable compared with most similarly sized lots. I agree about the QA and roughly 1 in 3 blisters I got have a major uncorrectable mistake (like the a wrong head or missing backpack).

While my first instinct is to applaud a RAFM scale redux, the question is much more complex than initially it seems. Would they go with the original RAFM style sculpts? Or go with the supposedly exact to the RPG tactical scale? Or the exaggerated for 12mm LeClerc blitz era proportions? Then there is the veritable minefield of invalidating the plastics and existing collections yet again in the eyes of some players. Let's face it, DP9 is now apparently a one man operation and Robert is probably not capable or knowledgeable enough to wear all hats at once for a single marquee product line let alone an additional related spin off.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
Makes me wonder what a RAFM scale redux with Blitz improvements with regard to clearances and missile pods would look like.

If they were plastics and produced by Bandai, theyd be awesome.

The irony... it would make my neural net explode...

Honestly, a RAFM scale redux isn't happening - ever - and I'd personally rather push for a 28mm line, but it's interesting to think about.. The RAFM era stuff had its flaws - and I don't just mean in the casting and QC - but I honestly think HG would be more popular today if they had stuck with HO scale.

RAFM was hurting the line with their crap QC, but the scale change alienated a lot of the players. Invalidating someone's models will do that. Add in the poor reception to the Tac era minis, and it wasn't until the current Blitz lineup that we got more attractive proportions.



Yes I'm comparing a Warrior to a Hunter, I haven't painted LeClerc era Hunters.



I mean, look a the loss of 'bulk' in the Tac scales from the RAFM era, and then LeClerc bulked it back up again, which was a good decision. Now, the Tac scale rocket pods are pretty much iconic, and I'm halfway tempted to strip down and retrofit a RAFM era gear with them to see how it looks.

For a lot players, though, it was too late. The RPG was effectively dead because 3rd Edition and SilCore weren't well received, even if Blitz turned out all right (relatively speaking).

Unfortunate that DP9 couldn't get the RAFM molds/masters, but IIRC there was also the matter of USA lead laws that had to be addressed, making casting more expensive and prompting a move to a smaller scale for economic reasons alone. I wonder where we'd be if they had stuck with HO, though. Obviously gears would cost more, and we might have moved entirely to resins at this point, but the various scale and proportion changes were only bad for the community.

 warboss wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 John Prins wrote:
Makes me wonder what a RAFM scale redux with Blitz improvements with regard to clearances and missile pods would look like.

If they were plastics and produced by Bandai, theyd be awesome.

The irony... it would make my neural net explode... ]

Pretty much what I was thinking. Though 1/20 is a bit big. when 1/35 is a much better match for scale:


However, for tabletop gaming, 1/72 would be just about ideal, producing roughly 2.5" Gears.

1/35th is huge, and roughly equivalent to 54mm scale.

For 28mm one would be talking 1/48th, 1/56th, or 1/60th scale.

The first being a tad too large, the second is the sweet spot according to all my WW2 gaming friends, and the third would do too.

@Ashley - 1/35 *is* big for tabletop wargaming, but not too big if you were doing 1v1 or 2v2 duels on a 4'x6' tabletop.

But then consider that Mobile Suit Skirmish is 3-5 MS per side, typically standing 5" tall, like the 1/35 scale Gasarki kit above.

That's why I suggest 1/72, which gets the typical size down to a RT-era Dreadnought, allowing to fit multiple squads and combined arms with infantry that aren't too small, nor AFVs that aren't too big.

I wasn't actually referring to the scale in that original pic in case it's not obvious but rather the circle of life irony of bandai making votom inspired gears while also making historically making votoms as well..

Yeah, too big. I LOVE the Gasaraki designs, but those models are about the size of 1/144 Gundams



There are 1/48 VOTOMS out there (and ironically enough, 1/144 as well). Closest scale shot I could find is next to a Tamiya paint bottle



I like VOTOMS as a show, but the designs have never really captured me, even the re-imagined recent versions still have that torso that's just a little too big compared to the arms and legs and the huge dome-top head for my taste in mechs. I'd love some 1/48 fully detailed Heavy Gear models, however. The RAFM ones are just a bit too small, but some 3" Gears would be great, especially if outscourced to that resin company DP9 uses. I really wish I'd picked up some of the 4" Pathfinder Exos for JC when they were available.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
like the 1/35 scale Gasarki kit above.

Makes me want to dig out my Gasaraki VHS tapes. One of the few series I know of that involved actual economic warfare, on top of mecha combat.

Heh, I actually liked the fact that, for the most part, VOTOMS were fuction over form.

 Albertorius wrote:
Heh, I actually liked the fact that, for the most part, VOTOMS were fuction over form.

I did too. I also used to like the lesser extent version of that which HG had where the solution to everything wasn't just to make gears ever bigger and more powerful.

 warboss wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Heh, I actually liked the fact that, for the most part, VOTOMS were fuction over form.

I did too. I also used to like the lesser extent version of that which HG had where the solution to everything wasn't just to make gears ever bigger and more powerful.

Oh, absolutely. That's one of the charms of the setting, and it made it be very believable. Particularly because it was extrapolated to everything, not only Gears and Gear-adjacent stuff.

 warboss wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Heh, I actually liked the fact that, for the most part, VOTOMS were fuction over form.

I did too. I also used to like the lesser extent version of that which HG had where the solution to everything wasn't just to make gears ever bigger and more powerful.

I wonder when we'll get color-coded Gear Combiners, requries a set of 5 to make a Mega Gear!

Soon, from the looks of it.