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Beasts of War are reporting that Bastion Studios are gone as well


..If this is true -- and it's not confirmed yet AFAIK.. man, tough times for the industry indeed it seems.

Would anyone really be surprised though? Ex-Illis and similar games are computer assisted gaming, and if you're going to go that route you might as well play computer games.

Hmm. Seems sad.

Hope they recover, as any venture like this was built with enthusiasm and care.

Good luck chaps

This is sad for the industry, but to be honest I'm not super surprised by this (assuming it's true).

The game was a computer game. It could be played completely sans-table if you wanted.

You mean an expensive miniature game that forces you to use a computer went out of business? Shocker of the week there

Sounds like a cool game, but not a single person bought a set in my area due to the total mismatch of style

It was a miniatures game with what is essentially DRM for the miniatures themselves. It wasn't too popular to begin with.

Kudos to the company for trying something new, but the aesthetic really didn't match anything else at the time, and the miniatures themselves had "DRM" that really harmed the third party market.

There was very little incentive at all for a store to try and carry it, and it could be a big PITA to demo. You didn't need the big screen TV to demo it, supposedly, but they always used one.) With no idea how i'd support the game, I passed on it.

One store in the area did get some in. Couldn't sell it. They are also out of business too. Coincidence of course, but glad I passed on Ex-Illis.

Is it now Ex-Ex-Illis?

Wasn't a very good game and the miniatures were just awkward-looking (remember the massive troll/demon thing with the scythe and the prison in its belly?)

Kirasu wrote:You mean an expensive miniature game that forces you to use a computer went out of business? Shocker of the week there

ROFLed so hard I almost choked, thanks!

Reasonable minis, but a flawed gaming system really. That's what you get for making the game too complicated to play for gamers who want to play without computers or iPads but still need to calculate the fethtons of needless stats and modifiers that each unit has.

Dont neccessarily think it was a flawed idea, just one that was too far ahead of its time. When items such as ipads are in more common usage then it maybe it might have some potential. For the most part many people said the same thing about games being released on pdfs 10 years ago and now look at it. There are entire companies that exist off making or distributing PDFs.

mikhaila wrote:There was very little incentive at all for a store to try and carry it, and it could be a big PITA to demo. You didn't need the big screen TV to demo it, supposedly, but they always used one.) With no idea how i'd support the game, I passed on it.

One store in the area did get some in. Couldn't sell it. They are also out of business too. Coincidence of course, but glad I passed on Ex-Illis.

Is it now Ex-Ex-Illis?

Legions has had 2 boxsets sitting on the shelf since the game first demoed! Maybe theyll be collector items now

Can't say I'm sad, disappointed or surprised to see them go. The minis/style was gak, the setting was meh, and the rules were bleh. I give them credit for trying something new, the concept wasn't bad, but the execution was terrible.

I always thought it was a cool idea but not many would be into it. Would have been better to do something like have regular ole dice rules, and then make an official iphone app that you can use instead of you wanna.

Wow..... it's been a great week in gaming. Actually forget that a great month now (please note total sarcasm). So Ex illis is gone, WF is probably done, and very possible that Chapter House Studios is going to not exist much longer.

dammit, I wanted to try that game.

Its sitting at the FLGS... owner said no.

Jeeze they are dropping like flies!

Wonder how long until someone blames GW for this one as well.

Only one post my friend...... GW is pretty durn sneaky...... they will probably take down Privateer next

I blame GW! They clearly had a superior game system on the market that prevented Ex-Illis from succeeding! Monopoly! Monopoly!




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dammit ninja'd by brettz123!

absolutely no surprise here. considering the game started out with a lie here on dakka and followed that up with aggressive marketing and shouting down those with any slightly negative critique of their minis (including by the company's founder who made an account to do just that), i doubt i'll shed a tear if this is true.

anyone remember how a new member posted a "leak" here of that giant demon mini base that had detail so bad that it looked like it came from a dollar store toy soldier set? that same "leak" was posted on *every* minis site on the web over the coarse of a day... then there was the idea that you should have to unlock your minis online in order to use them since they didn't actually supply you with the rules ... and they never answered my question of what you were supposed to do if you sold the minis to someone since they then couldn't "use" them online as the unique activation number was linked to the owner and they had no method of transferring it... what are the people who actually bought those minis now supposed to do when the servers invariably go down when the company stops paying for them? i guess they'll just have some expensive monopose medieval minis. the final kicker for me was when their most vocal advocate on the web declared it would be awesome if they made a mini of their super evil medieval pope with a knife through his chest. i don't wish anything bad to happen to game companies (the industry is niche enough already) but i can't think of something that this company did that didn't offend me in some way; that's not a good way of getting a chunk of my gaming budget.

edit: almost forgot about this gem on their website.

Oh, now that I have read the last post, seems like the deserve to go burn in their elitist views.

I fully support something computer aided, with things scaled properly (imagine 5 space marines taking on like 100 guardsman, that should be near proper according to the canon fluff), but make it somewhat open source. Or fully open source. I imagine it would be somewhat of a hit.

I keep hearing that there were some real big shots involved with Bastion. Is this true? I have no idea who was involved in this.

brettz123 wrote:I keep hearing that there were some real big shots involved with Bastion. Is this true? I have no idea who was involved in this.

No idea. If there were, they weren't at the booth at Gencon in 2009 when they were showing the game off for the first time. We asked there why you need the models at all if there's no webcam or similar tracking them, and they couldn't really give us a satisfactory answer. They just kept pushing how awesome it was that you used your iPad to play it, how convenient that was(because you didn't have to keep track of dice, rulers, books, etc.) and that the models were high quality..

Honestly, this is meh worthy news to me. The only time I ever saw some of the sets available was at a Hobby Town here in town. Every single set they ever had? Still there on discount. People just didn't seem to buy it.

Wargame Factory probably going down, and now these guys?

There is a Miniature God and it hates shoddy miniatures as much as I do.

I think the article linked above puts things in the proper perspective;

Like them or not, this is a real pity for the industry, as we would like to see more risk-taking like this, not less. My gut tells me that it could be a while before we see a similar conjunction of talents and skills, have a crack at something like this again.

While some people oddly seem happy about this, this would seem to be just another bad sign in a season of bad signs for the hobby as a whole.

Buzzsaw wrote:I think the article linked above puts things in the proper perspective;

Like them or not, this is a real pity for the industry, as we would like to see more risk-taking like this, not less. My gut tells me that it could be a while before we see a similar conjunction of talents and skills, have a crack at something like this again.

While some people oddly seem happy about this, this would seem to be just another bad sign in a season of bad signs for the hobby as a whole.

it could be that we were completely turned off by what they did with that collection of talents and skills. changing basketball by replacing the hoop with a hole in the backboard and adding roller skates is "innovative" but that doesn't mean it's fun and that people will want to play it.

I bought a couple of boxes of their Priest/Monk miniatures – the guys in the big cloaks with the holy symbols and whatnot. I converted them all into imperial monks cut cutting off all the other symbols and replacing them with Aquilas and things like that.

The models themselves were good, there were a lot of options there to make them all look different, and their method for making sprues was excellent. I had no interest in playing the game though. It was an interesting concept though, even if the first attempts at it won’t completely successful.

I guess that means you can’t get their game board then. Ah well...

I was just way to turned off by the thought of mini's with DRM.

Buzzsaw wrote:
While some people oddly seem happy about this, this would seem to be just another bad sign in a season of bad signs for the hobby as a whole.

We're "happy" (although I would say "bemused" would perhaps be a better term) because this is simply the effect of open-market capitalism.

Putting out bad product whilst simultaneously forcing your customers to use propietary software to play your game, with the ironically-stated attitude of not being 'elitist', is simply Bad Business 101. No one wanted to play their game because they realized what a hunk of junk it all was.

Not entirely sure why that is a "bad sign" for the industry. If anything, this should force other company's to review their own product before foisting something that is essentially broken upon their consumers.

Ghost studios was the manufacturer for both companies. To early to tell, but the two announcements might be related.

I am making this up, but maybe a chinese molding company wants to get directly involved in selling minis?