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 Mr. Grey wrote:

 Arbitrator wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
Right, but he leads the voyage to the stars and is still around in the Warcaster timeline. The question is more whether he's still around on Caene after the invasion in whatever the new continuity is.

Definitely a lot of major deaths in the scrolls. Some of them bafflingly recent releases. A bit of clearly of the board to focus on specific Warcasters would be great for the game, but I'm really not sure what they've got in mind going forward.

I don't think we're going to see new continuity until there's an MK4. Even then, it might still exist in the weirdly vague purgatory of a setting where you can take things like Young Severius up against the Infernals, so between things like that and characters who snuffed it during Oblivion, I doubt they care much anymore for consistency in matches.

On this note, and this just occurred to me spur of the moment, but maybe I'm thinking that keeping the setting somewhat closer to "stalemate of war" could have been a better option than a continually advancing timeline? Think closer to Warhammer 40K, which for a very, very, very long time was set at "two minutes to midnight" in the setting, where everything was stagnant and not much happened in the overall storyline. Maybe PP could have kept the Iron Kingdoms just post Khador invasion of Llael for a few years of expansions. As someone who hasn't played in a while, it feels like the last couple years of storyline were a super fast rollercoaster of apocalyptic events all happening at the same time.

WMH right now seems a lot like there's a "where do we go from here in terms of narrative" situation.

I am a IKRPG 5e backer. Narrative situation is fine. Still alot to move forward besides the grand conflicts that buitl up to Oblivion. I really don't know the worth of ANY IP imitating 40k as a success stategy. Why not play 40k or it's 2 minutes to minute fantasy alt AoS?

Even Mantic doesn't attempt that, and almost all of their forces can be 40k/WHFB-AoS proxies. Room in the industry as enough for a Pepsi or even a RC, don't see the real value long term in aspiring to be Shur Shine Value Brand Cola.

The biggest thing PP needs moving forward into next year is a diverse profolio. Some digital reiteration of MonPoc, Riot Quest, High Command, etc. Wouldn't be a bad idea for the to substack their own fiction too.

deleted

 Mr. Grey wrote:

The biggest thing PP needs moving forward into next year is a diverse profolio. Some digital reiteration of MonPoc, Riot Quest, High Command, etc. Wouldn't be a bad idea for the to substack their own fiction too.

Digital reiteration? Who's gonna handle that? PP doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to digital versions of their games, and any sort of development in that direction probably takes more funding than they have at the moment.

As for fiction... didn't they kill their line of novels/publishing arm because nobody was buying said novels?

I could easily be misremembering, but i wanna say the person that was in charge of the publishing left or changed positions or something and they didn't have anyone else lined up/ready to take over properly/in the way they wanted

One thing I think they need an overhaul of their style. When Miniature Market put a ton of their stuff on clearance a few years back followed by them doing the same thing where most deals
were about 40% of the cost, that put most players flush with about everything they needed with limited people really buying the newer stuff. When they had the loot box type releases that were Conan
and other styles of miniatures I hoped that was a way to bring in extra money to help get back on their feet. But months of game shops closed with no gaming didn't help them any.
As mentioned PP needs to change up their sculpting style like the new GW Soulblight, it has enough look for the style but good enough to be put in any tabletop game or RPG miniature.

My personal feeling is what can they do to bring back the players they lost in the past few years. Without players spreading the gospel and bring more interest to the game they have only trouble ahead.

 greenskin lynn wrote:

 Mr. Grey wrote:

The biggest thing PP needs moving forward into next year is a diverse profolio. Some digital reiteration of MonPoc, Riot Quest, High Command, etc. Wouldn't be a bad idea for the to substack their own fiction too.

Digital reiteration? Who's gonna handle that? PP doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to digital versions of their games, and any sort of development in that direction probably takes more funding than they have at the moment.

As for fiction... didn't they kill their line of novels/publishing arm because nobody was buying said novels?

I could easily be misremembering, but i wanna say the person that was in charge of the publishing left or changed positions or something and they didn't have anyone else lined up/ready to take over properly/in the way they wanted

Pretty much. Mike Ryan, the Publisher for the Skull Island Ex imprint, left and they put the No Quarter Editor in charge and he didn't have the time or desire (not sure which one really probably a mix of both as it's a lot of work) to continue Skull Island. I know several of the authors that wrote for the imprint and they pretty much said Privateer just stopped responding to them for months even though I know other books were being discussed at time time of Mike leaving. That was quite some time ago, I've not bothered to ever ask more on it as clearly nothing came of it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Genoside07 wrote:

As mentioned PP needs to change up their sculpting style like the new GW Soulblight, it has enough look for the style but good enough to be put in any tabletop game or RPG miniature.

That's a pretty subjective take as obviously different people have different tastes on what they like from the minis but I don't thing anything they do is worse quality then anything the RPG manufactures are doing. Not sure I would care for the overly busy GW style they've been going with recently and likely would increase the cost of production (molds producing less and lasting longer, more parts) which wouldn't really help either.

I don't know if appealing to the general RPG crowed will get them much as their setting doesn't fit with D&D so people really aren't going to buy the majority of stuff to use for like Forgotten Realms it doesn't even fit in with Ebberon. But selling to RPG players is a big reason they have been putting out RPG books, and now a 5e version, is to appeal to people that don't already have everything they need.

 Genoside07 wrote:


My personal feeling is what can they do to bring back the players they lost in the past few years. Without players spreading the gospel and bring more interest to the game they have only trouble ahead.

Its sonetimes far more trouble to bring back old players than it is to recruit new ones, especially with a new game/ip with none of the baggage and toxicity of the old crowd.

It's a ruthless approach but from a business pov there is some merit in this perspective.

Look at gw and the Wfb crowd. They weren't buying. Wfb was dead. Whats more, they were often toxic and actively campaigned at keeping people away from the game, either directly or indirectly (perspectives on whether this was hood or bad will differ based on your pov).Gw made the decision to send it down the swans path in a blaze of glory, build a new ip, a new type of game and recruit new players, rather than cater to the old guard they saw as salty, not worth catering to or trying to appease and probably more trouble than they're worth (their opinion, imo). And look where aos is now. Still loathed by huge chunks of the old guard (and from their perspective, rightly so) but far more successful than wfb was, especially in the last few years. From gws position it was the right call.

Back at pp and wmh. To bring back the players they'd lost, or to bring in new ones, in some ways they'd have to cut loose the reality/perception of the ultra competitive and sometimes extremely toxic remnant that is still there. Maybe even move on from wmh entirely.

My flgs resorted to literally giving away over a thousand (msrp) worth of PP models because they wouldn't sell at 70% off.

Regarding advancing storyline: I think PP's error was not advancing the story, but rather advancing it into a doom spiral of ever increasing drama/scale/end times events. Instead of advancing at the lower level of specific campaigns, reversals, and character focused drama they seemed to fall into the trap of always trying to one up themselves. Everything has to be bigger! More colossal! More earth shattering!

PP surely isn't alone in making this mistake. We see it everywhere: in movies they say "After you spend 100$ million you had better be saving the world." Videogames pretty much live in this space. Serial novels and tv shows eventually start upping the external stakes to ridiculous levels.

Still, it is a mistake, and a very avoidable mistake in the wargame story world. Total capacity waxes and wanes in wars, and theaters go quiet while others heat up, but from the perspective of the characters getting shot and stabbed, it is still pretty world shattering. You can get Great Game style cold wars, shifting localized alliances changing the balance of power in a region, etc. Stories that follow a single character or group of characters that grow in power tend to need ever more terrifying enemies to feel important, but when your characters' are but a portion of the relative power levels between opposing forces, the shifting events around them drive the importance of the story.

Dialing down the world ending drama also lets you focus on updating the model lines a bit. If Cygnar has a small campaign that focuses on riflemen and trenchers, that's a good time to update their look based on them being the "new model" unit.
If you really wanted, you could use it as a method of making sub-sets of units and possibly tier lists, having restricted sets based on specific campaigns or years. I don't know that I would do that with WMH, but it is an option. Simply adding more giant models and special characters to throw into every list doesn't really help as much.

Wehrkind sums up the lore issues very well for me as well. Upping the scale of things to be bigger and bigger and world shattering is great, but it runs away with the writer so fast that eventually you hit a point where you can't really go any further.

It all gets so huge and so extreme it ends up entering the realm of being totally silly.


I also think that the more extreme, the harder it is for readers and fans to engage with it as a setting. Settings are built on the little people, the little things that build them up. On small details, smaller events and local heroes and the like. Once you focus purely on the big scale everything has to shift into that scale to retain the structure.




And at its core Warmachine was never big scale, it was always trying to be a skirmish game.



I do also think that PP hasn't got to change their style, but they do need to keep releasing models for Warmachine/Hordes and one great way is to re-release models with new designs. They've a huge backlog of models in each force now; so instead of adding to them just go back and redesign and re-release them. Heck its what GW does all the time - if you look at the core of most long term armies it hasn't changed much in 30 years even though there have been many revisions.

Some can be annoying - eg how Tyranids (and most things) have scaled up a lot, which soft forces people to update. Meanwhlie other things have hardly changed in various redesigns - marines are a great example of many different versions but broadly the same. We only get a marked change in size when Primaris hit (and I suspect were it not for Kirby style marketing, Primaris would have just straight up replaced original marine models).

deleted

I've liked the quality and some of the quirky designs they've done through mini-crate. I just don't like that sales model because its one and done. There's been one or two that I've missed that I wanted which I either didn't know about at the time or simply didn't have the money for.


They can certainly make and sell models; they just need to rebuild their distribution, outreach programs and get some fresh sculpts (resculpts and new ideas) into the market. I'd welcome things like new angleus designs in metal/resin or in high quality plastics if they can make that move.

For one, I'm really fond of the new packaging. Hopefully they start using it for WMH soon, because the stuff they cram in those old plastic blisters is kind of hilarious.

As for the story, I think the fluff is more interesting now than its really ever been, but they need to pace it better. The big problem with the fluff in MK2 is nothing really happened. Part of the problem is that this coincided with the public love affair with Game of Thrones and if you weren't mercilessly killing off every fan favorite people thought you were boring, but truthfully.... it was kind of boring. Random "fights to the death" that couldn't really resolve in death and didn't really have further stakes to make them interesting.

The actual plot of MK2 is basically.... Khador and Cygnar are still fighting, though for what purpose isn't totally clear. Cygnar is kind of taking backing Llael sort of, but there's no clear goal. Cryx puts up an underground fortress in the middle of the war for no real reason and everyone works together to drive them away.

It's honestly just stalling for time. Hordes pretty much did the same thing. The Athenc chase has more interesting twists and turns, but ultimately its not going anywhere and doesn't really lead to anything. Everything interesting that happened in the fluff happened between MK2 and MK3 in the novels, but a lot of the interest in the fluff had been lost by then.

Then MK3 makes a bunch of changes, but they didn't feel any different. Khador and Cygnar were at war. Technically Cygnar's the aggressor this time, but the fluff was so hard to follow at this point no one was really going to notice. The Infernals are probably the first time where the fluff was readily available, and the conflict felt like it had been brewing long enough to justify. It'll be interesting to see if it has any effect on the game going forward.

I'll have to dig up a summary at some point, I totally lost track a long time ago.

 Mr. Grey wrote:


I wasn't aware of that, that's a shame. Never good when a company ghosts people.


Re: sculpting and Iron Kingdoms 5e and stuff:

I think it was less Ghost people as person who was put in charge had way too much on their plate. I think it was Doug or Matt himself that finally got a hold of them.

So having a bit of free time, i figured I'd write up some of the story/fluff advancement from Requiem

Timeline has gone forward 5 years to a period of rebuilding

Cygnar
Recovering well from the oblivion crisis, has pushed forward a national policy of working together and inclusion
so they have elements of the major religions working together, whether it be for hunting the remaining infernal
presence or working with the cyrissists to push forward on updating technology to rely on storm chambers rather
then steam.
The inclusion policy has a lot more of the non-human races moving to cygnar, which doesn't always go over well
with the old citizenship. Uptake in trolls moving in larger numbers to the wooded parts of the country also
Some of the old noble families died out during the wars/crisis, so you have a growing number of new nobles being
raised, with the inherent clash of old blood and new. King is not particularly popular, but not to the extend of
trying to boot him yet.

Khador
The courts, especially at the mid/lower status level, were gutted from traitors who became infernalists as an
attempt at more power. Civil unrest in the wake, with worker strikes that have been put down violently and
aggressively. Empress has further empowered the policing power of the greylord covenant so they can more swiftly
deal with political and social unrest. Empress is pushing national pride and the idea of new military conquest
(either back to the south, or in the other continent they mention, Zu). With Vlad dead, his domain is and ancestral
home are basically unclaimed, and the child he had with the empress is expect to claim the throne

Llael
Thanks in part to troops being pulled for other theaters during the Oblivion Crisis, the resistance forces were
finally able to reclaim most of the country. Queen married a grandson of the King of Ord, but it was a political
move with the husband basically living mostly in Ord with rumored mistresses. Most of the upper class/nobles
died during the years leading up to/during the occupation. Crucible guard has returned and rebuild chapters in
the country, with the queen giving them much more leeway and influence then they have in Ord

Ord
With the third in line for the throne married to the queen of llael, its pulled the nations much closer together.
The Order of the Golden Crucible moving its headquarters to the nation means its now trading much more in
weapons and alchemical items, with the crucible guard also allowing Ord to project force farther beyond its
borders.

Protectorate of Menoth
The protectorate is gutted. Thousands went through the gate during the oblivion crisis, with thousands more who didn't
get the chance going to the continent of Zu to start over under the direction of Durant, who is now called the prophet
of menoth. Because of population shrinkage, The capital of Imer and former capital Sul are barely populated with a fraction
of what they once contained, and things strange and terrible have started in creep in to the now desolate and half-abandoned
places. Much of the remaining population has collected at Ancient Icthier, where the Visgoth worry another charismatic leading
could emerge and lead even more people away. Paranoia during and after the Crisis led to a lot of infighting, and massive losses
in, among other groups, the Vassals of menoth that dealt with warjacks, putting the current state of things as being barely able
maintain the jacks they have. All together, the Protectorate exists more on paper then anything else.

Cryx
Not a ton going on, basically downtime as they rebuild their forces, still a strong pirate presence out as sea

Rhul
Probably one of the places that did the best during the oblivion crisis. They have taken in a large number of refugees, so there
is a lot of spy vs spy and intrigue going on in the city they've settled in, not much new beyond that really that I'm seeing.

Ios
Haunted ghost forest. Nobody is coming out of the nation, and people that go in either get turned around to wander right back out,
travel for periods of time to end up nowhere, or just disappear. The ones that do wander out report being watched by, and only really
encountering, the soulless. Elves outside the nation seem to still be fine.

As for the hordes factions, that will have to wait til they put that book out, though i look forward to it

Between the Menites that fled to Zu, the Cygnarian merchant companies looking for profit, the Piracy of Cryx and Khador looking to use
war as an internal stabilizer, it feels like we will be seeing more of the continent, though its hard to say how much will be rpg and
what elements might make it to the tabletop

thoughts
It seems like they have set up to push a new generation of Warjacks and maybe storm units for Cygnar
not entirely sure for khador, though i suppose they could expand more on the different ethnic groups and perhaps on the kayazy that have
filled part of the power vacuum
Cryx, i expect we will see some sort of replacement casters to cover goreshade and gaspy working for other factions now
Menoth- personally, i would like to see new stuff to show how they've adapted to Zu and a non-oil rich environment
Ios-i wonder if it will end up tying in to something they did to try and help their gods or maybe elevate new ones.

Edit-almost forgot, airships are a thing, though based on the artwork in the book, they are massive things like flying aircraft carriers
with colossus size units looking fairly small on the decks. I look forward to someone building a board that is two of them next to each other with troops and jacks
moving across temp bridges or something for battle

 Mr. Grey wrote:

The biggest thing PP needs moving forward into next year is a diverse profolio. Some digital reiteration of MonPoc, Riot Quest, High Command, etc. Wouldn't be a bad idea for the to substack their own fiction too.

Digital reiteration? Who's gonna handle that? PP doesn't exactly have a great track record when it comes to digital versions of their games, and any sort of development in that direction probably takes more funding than they have at the moment.

As for fiction... didn't they kill their line of novels/publishing arm because nobody was buying said novels?

Doesn't mean you don't try. Tend to forget, GW released a bunch of trash games before they had a hit. From a business perspective, giving up instead of taking a situation as a lessons learned is a great way to box yourself in and fail.

As far as fiction, Substacking it is better for their indie model. PP biggest issue is that they tried to copy GW's business model. What works for GloboCorp does not work for private business.

I swear, if you are not in business or involved in any business processes, it is best to stay in your lane on some stuff.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Genoside07 wrote:
One thing I think they need an overhaul of their style. When Miniature Market put a ton of their stuff on clearance a few years back followed by them doing the same thing where most deals
were about 40% of the cost, that put most players flush with about everything they needed with limited people really buying the newer stuff. When they had the loot box type releases that were Conan
and other styles of miniatures I hoped that was a way to bring in extra money to help get back on their feet. But months of game shops closed with no gaming didn't help them any.
As mentioned PP needs to change up their sculpting style like the new GW Soulblight, it has enough look for the style but good enough to be put in any tabletop game or RPG miniature.

My personal feeling is what can they do to bring back the players they lost in the past few years. Without players spreading the gospel and bring more interest to the game they have only trouble ahead.

PP copying GW is just not good for them. The world is only big enough for one Mantic. If they just want to be a proxy GW business, fine. But if they want to be Pepsi to GW's Coke, best to be Pepsi and embrace that. And I say that as someone who HATES Pepsi.

Even with PP not being at its highest point at the moment it is still the only company with their own IP that even competes against GW. Even on their worst day, they are pretty much the only game in town outside of Disney IPs and GW imitators.

 greenskin lynn wrote:

Edit-almost forgot, airships are a thing, though based on the artwork in the book, they are massive things like flying aircraft carriers
with colossus size units looking fairly small on the decks. I look forward to someone building a board that is two of them next to each other with troops and jacks
moving across temp bridges or something for battle

These were actually introduced in a narrative lead leading up to Lock and Load a couple years back. At Lock and Load, they built several tables of them for the finale of the league and the games played on them directly influenced the final stories of the league. Notably Stryker died bringing one down and another crashed when Lord Carver got to the helm and tried to pilot it himself. Most of the ones that survived where the craft that were used to allow everyone to flee through the gate to escape the Infernals.

Deadnight wrote:

 Genoside07 wrote:


My personal feeling is what can they do to bring back the players they lost in the past few years. Without players spreading the gospel and bring more interest to the game they have only trouble ahead.

Its sonetimes far more trouble to bring back old players than it is to recruit new ones, especially with a new game/ip with none of the baggage and toxicity of the old crowd.

It's a ruthless approach but from a business pov there is some merit in this perspective.

Look at gw and the Wfb crowd. They weren't buying. Wfb was dead. Whats more, they were often toxic and actively campaigned at keeping people away from the game, either directly or indirectly (perspectives on whether this was hood or bad will differ based on your pov).Gw made the decision to send it down the swans path in a blaze of glory, build a new ip, a new type of game and recruit new players, rather than cater to the old guard they saw as salty, not worth catering to or trying to appease and probably more trouble than they're worth (their opinion, imo). And look where aos is now. Still loathed by huge chunks of the old guard (and from their perspective, rightly so) but far more successful than wfb was, especially in the last few years. From gws position it was the right call.

Back at pp and wmh. To bring back the players they'd lost, or to bring in new ones, in some ways they'd have to cut loose the reality/perception of the ultra competitive and sometimes extremely toxic remnant that is still there. Maybe even move on from wmh entirely.

This is so spot on. In a wierd way this forum is example of what you are talking about. Most people on this thread are not active players. and usually fall into:
1. Disaffected players from days past.
2. Hate/regret nostolgia caused by life getting in the way.
3. Never played the game but maybe thought about it once in a dream or demo'ed while bored and waiting for the next round of MTG to start.

If someone went off this forum you would think the game is dead with no support. Then you go on the LoS discord and it is all young people. If old players come back, great. But alot of times, old players (like with WHFB) just take their saltiness caused by issue X and project on the hobby and are caught in a death spiral. Best to walk away to greener pastures while the radiation dies down.

 LunarSol wrote:

 greenskin lynn wrote:

Edit-almost forgot, airships are a thing, though based on the artwork in the book, they are massive things like flying aircraft carriers
with colossus size units looking fairly small on the decks. I look forward to someone building a board that is two of them next to each other with troops and jacks
moving across temp bridges or something for battle

These were actually introduced in a narrative lead leading up to Lock and Load a couple years back. At Lock and Load, they built several tables of them for the finale of the league and the games played on them directly influenced the final stories of the league. Notably Stryker died bringing one down and another crashed when Lord Carver got to the helm and tried to pilot it himself. Most of the ones that survived where the craft that were used to allow everyone to flee through the gate to escape the Infernals.

that is neat to find out, might have to look for some pics at some point to see the tables

 greenskin lynn wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 greenskin lynn wrote:

Edit-almost forgot, airships are a thing, though based on the artwork in the book, they are massive things like flying aircraft carriers
with colossus size units looking fairly small on the decks. I look forward to someone building a board that is two of them next to each other with troops and jacks
moving across temp bridges or something for battle

These were actually introduced in a narrative lead leading up to Lock and Load a couple years back. At Lock and Load, they built several tables of them for the finale of the league and the games played on them directly influenced the final stories of the league. Notably Stryker died bringing one down and another crashed when Lord Carver got to the helm and tried to pilot it himself. Most of the ones that survived where the craft that were used to allow everyone to flee through the gate to escape the Infernals.

that is neat to find out, might have to look for some pics at some point to see the tables

Yeah. PP had really upped the Lock and Load event game over the last few years. There was the whole thing with Holden being marked out by the Grymkin that culminated in a big battle to protect him at Lock and Load (Grymkin won, which is why he's now a cursed soul in their faction). The airship thing was the next step of this and the point where I felt the community was catching on and getting excited by them. It's pretty clear that the whole Hengehold Scrolls thing was building up to the battle at the gate being the huge event for Lock and Load 2020 and I think it would have honestly been really great. A real shame it was 2020.

deleted

 greenskin lynn wrote:
So having a bit of free time, i figured I'd write up some of the story/fluff advancement from Requiem

Thank you sir, exalted!

Overread wrote:They can certainly make and sell models; they just need to rebuild their distribution, outreach programs and get some fresh sculpts (resculpts and new ideas) into the market. I'd welcome things like new angleus designs in metal/resin or in high quality plastics if they can make that move.

Popping in to say that I thought of PP recently, when my LGS warned my about GW limiting store preorders (to 2 in the case of Belakor, for example, or I think 5 of Codex: AdMech) and reserving all second printings for the GW webstore. It's unclear if LGSes have to wait for third printing or what (i.e. post new release boom and ebay glut). I know the Dub has been having supply chain issues, like everybody during the pandemic, but a part of me wonders if they're taking this as a time to move towards the dream of 100% traffic through their own web portal (i.e. the land of pure MSRP no sales ever profit). What reminded me of PP was when PP clamped down on discounts above 15% and appeared to be trying to drive sales through their own webstore, like with the Blank Anchor Heavy Industries thing. Speaking of alienating LGSes and distributors.

GW can achieve 100% orders through their website without needing any tricks. They can just stop selling to 3rd parties or only sell them models at reduced discount like they do with direct orders so that 3rd party stores can't undercut GW's prices.

I think GW's order restrictions right now are purly the result of the fact that GW's revenue over the last year is 2X their previous year whilst GW has had 2 months shut down last year coupled with dramatically reduced output all through the last year. So basically GW is seeing probably double sales at a time when their production capacity is heavily curtailed.

GW simply cannot make stuff fast enough so they are having to do limited measures to try and spread the stock out as much as they can when they do have it.

I'm still pissed that Amon Ad Raza never got epic stats or a miniature. Some of the artwork for him is tremendously EPIC.

ottokill wrote:
I'm still pissed that Amon Ad Raza never got epic stats or a miniature. Some of the artwork for him is tremendously EPIC.

Only true beasts can leave the warcaster armor at home and still wreck things.

 Boss Salvage wrote:
What reminded me of PP was when PP clamped down on discounts above 15% and appeared to be trying to drive sales through their own webstore, like with the Blank Anchor Heavy Industries thing. Speaking of alienating LGSes and distributors.

I've never understood the connection made here. The MAP restriction largely came about because LGS's were heavily complaining that they couldn't compete with discount online retailers. A lot of stores I visited a the time were getting outright hostile with their customers, who kept coming in with the models that had been languishing on the shelves. I guess I don't quite understand how the MAP impacts the LGS when its mostly targeting their competition.

Likewise, huge bases were among the worst offenders and there were only a couple stores I knew that would risk stocking them. With stores not stocking them, they were pretty much the first thing distributors cut as the industry shifted to the "no restocking" model we have now. Honestly, I just assume direct order was simply the only way PP could continue to make the things, particularly after the hard plastics missed their hype window and they had to go back to resin.

Players can take figures they bought online into their flgs to play, but not to the online store they bought it from. Every time a player does that the game store is subsidizing the online sales at its expense. If the game store decides not to support a game that is costing them money, those online sales die out too. PP was protecting online retailers, and players, from themselves.

The US isn't like the UK where there are clubs at a neutral venue; if the local game stores don't host a wargame the community dies, period. The culture of play-where-you-buy is strong and without that (or the copious MtG sales) game stores wouldn't really stand as a business model. But while players will eat that 15% to support their local store, when a box of infantry costs $60 and the online retailer offers 40% off they go 'well, if it's just me buying just this unit online instead it won't make a difference' which of course just ends swimmingly for everyone involved.

ottokill wrote:
I'm still pissed that Amon Ad Raza never got epic stats or a miniature. Some of the artwork for him is tremendously EPIC.

From the new RPG material that may be the case. I think he is one of the few casters around who isn't in Zu!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Players can take figures they bought online into their flgs to play, but not to the online store they bought it from. Every time a player does that the game store is subsidizing the online sales at its expense. If the game store decides not to support a game that is costing them money, those online sales die out too. PP was protecting online retailers, and players, from themselves.

The US isn't like the UK where there are clubs at a neutral venue; if the local game stores don't host a wargame the community dies, period. The culture of play-where-you-buy is strong and without that (or the copious MtG sales) game stores wouldn't really stand as a business model. But while players will eat that 15% to support their local store, when a box of infantry costs $60 and the online retailer offers 40% off they go 'well, if it's just me buying just this unit online instead it won't make a difference' which of course just ends swimmingly for everyone involved.

America is not the UK, most people don't play in a game store. Most people in America play in their house where a starter home for a lower middle class family is 1200-1500 sq feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 baths and a garage.

Online non brick and mortar 15%+ discount makes sense for most of America AND international orders. Unless you live in the Pacific Northwest and have to pay 325,000 for the privelage or live in an apartment with 3-4 people.

The entire Portland - Seattle Pacific Northwest miniature wargaming industry is crippled by living in a region that they think is the rest of America and where people like to burn down stuff.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
The US isn't like the UK where there are clubs at a neutral venue; if the local game stores don't host a wargame the community dies, period. The culture of play-where-you-buy is strong and without that (or the copious MtG sales) game stores wouldn't really stand as a business model. But while players will eat that 15% to support their local store, when a box of infantry costs $60 and the online retailer offers 40% off they go 'well, if it's just me buying just this unit online instead it won't make a difference' which of course just ends swimmingly for everyone involved.

Oddly enough, a couple of such clubs just opened up here in the Phoenix Metro area. One is in on the east side, and one is fairly close to down town. The local FB page shows notes of regular WMH meetups over on the east-side one, but since the central one just officially opened, I don't know how well it will hold up for that.

Still, most of the meet up areas tend to be game stores here. While home is always available, it generally doesn't gather groups of enthusiasts as much as a gamestore with tables.