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Neil Fawcett joins Craig and Russ in the third chair. Neil has lead Spartan Games through the uncharted seas of the miniature gaming industry, through the firestorm of competition, and emerged with a rather successful miniature war gaming company. (See what I did there? Couldn't quite fit dystopian in...)

Up first, Russ and Craig discuss the miniature manufacturing process with Neil. How exactly are miniatures made, and how has the process changed and improved over the years.

Later the three consider what kind of mechanics best emulate realstic timeflow in miniature games.


All that and our other not-too-horrible segments including:
- Total Fan Girl
- Do You Ever Notice
- When you wish upon a game
- & More


Link to episode:

http://www.thed6generation.com/webpage/d6g-ep-104-miniature-manufacture-mulling-mechanics-emulating-timeflow

Please let us know what you thought of the show!

Great episode as usual!

I'd liked to have heard Neal talk more about the story of Spartan Games. It's been amazing to see them start with a rulebook and four starter fleets for Uncharted Seas and moved on to 3 full games with massive ranges of miniatures for each in the span of a few years. How did they scale up that quickly and work with the community to get such goodwill even though the rules history of Uncharted Seas was rough sailing for a while? It’s one thing to have a well received game, it’s another to be able to so rapidly scale up and grow new ranges at the same time.

As far as producing minis, I think the segment would have worked great as a series. One segment could have been devoted to just metal minis. Maybe get someone from Iron Wind Metals or Reaper to comment on that as they've been doing it for years. One segment could have been on plastics. Maybe get someone from Renedra to speak on that as they've been involved in that for a long time and have been the source of most of the smaller company plastic releases over the last few years. Then Neal would have been great for just resin as Spartan has done the most resin casting by far compared to any miniature manufacturer of which I know. Beyond that I'd love to hear more about the plastic-resin that companies like Mantic and Avatars of War have started to use.

Any plans to get someone from Mantic to come on the show? I'd love to hear you guys do an interview about how they started and have grown over the last few years.

bbb wrote:
I'd liked to have heard Neal talk more about the story of Spartan Games. It's been amazing to see them start with a rulebook and four starter fleets for Uncharted Seas and moved on to 3 full games with massive ranges of miniatures for each in the span of a few years. How did they scale up that quickly and work with the community to get such goodwill even though the rules history of Uncharted Seas was rough sailing for a while? It’s one thing to have a well received game, it’s another to be able to so rapidly scale up and grow new ranges at the same time.

The Spartan Origin Story? Well we didn't ask him about that because he's already been on the show and given it to us!! Have a listen to Ep 71:

http://www.thed6generation.com/premium/d6g-ep-71-spartan-games-interview-deathwatch-rpg-detailed-review

Also, that interview had some audio challenges, so we summed it up in a lost chapter as well.

Oh, and as for Mantic...that may just happen.

Thanks, Russ, I'll have to check out the Lost Chapter version as I remember not being able to hear the interview very well at all.

Looking forward to the Mantic story!

No hate, but...

I don't think the D6G format is amenable to drunken podcasting. Unless that was (understandably) sleep deprevation and I just misinterpreted some comments.

The D6 Generation cannot guarantee the sobriety of its guest hosts located more than

Drunken podcasting= Approved!
Some of the most memorable moments in my podcast listening history over the past 5 years have been "Sauce Casts". I hope we get more!

Also, I'd love to see a review of the new Wizkids Lord of the Rings "co-opetition" game where the players play Nazgul fighting the Fellowship and vying for Saurons favor. I saw a released copy this past weekend at Origins this past weekend and it looks great.
By the way- in case you were wondering- Origins is not dead! It was a great time, despite the fact it was held very early this year. Some said this "mis-secheduling" during the school year would kill the Con, but I think it was more or less the same as it has been in previous years, The CABS boardgame room was amazing, as it is every year.
My highlight? I played a 5 player Twilight Imperium there in 4.5 hrs. Great game, great players, and a great time!

Long live the Sardakk N'orr!!!

Great show, guys!

Joe W

Another great show guys! Sorry I missed the comment threads from the last couple of shows; I've been getting behind in my podcast listening again. I was too excited when I heard that Neil was going to be in the 3rd chair though, so I just had to skip ahead .

I found the discussion on simulating simultaneous action quite interesting; I have to say, of the various ways there are to capture that feel on the table, I like the integrated turn approach the best. I should caveat that by saying that I haven't played Dust Warfare yet.

I was a little disappointed that Neil didn't have any big revelations to make on the show, but after a few of the reveals from his first interview didn't pan out (or at least haven't panned out yet), I can understand why he would be a little more guarded .

Haven't listened to all of it yet, but I will comment on one thing: one of these days you guys have to get hold of a geek polymer chemist and have him sort of the resin/plastic/"different plastic than polystyrene" chaos.

[edit] I have now listened through the episode and I have to admit that I found the main topic discussion a bit too rambling, unfocused and unspesific (with exeptions, as always) to give me much food for thought. More structure to it might have helped.

Liked what you guys were talking about like with realistic gun ranges. I ran into that issue with my game Early on when I first started posting test rules I had this one guy send me a long email listing the effective ranges of every historical gun you could think of, followed by an essay about why he won't play my game if this or that rifle can only shoot like 24 inches.

In the next version of the rules I did, I added a paragraph saying basically that there's no way to have any kind of realistic gun ranges in a game like this and it would be pretty boring if everyone set up their figures on opposite board edges and then just stood there shooting clear across the board and never moving an inch. I mean, if folks want to play a game with 5000 tables to weed through, that's great. But I want a quick & fun beer & pretzels skirmish game. Guess you can't make everyone happy

Great job again fellas,

Neal was very interesting to listen to, the whole way through the casting discussion I was thinking of a picture I saw in WD circa 92 of some grizzly looking dudes in the citadel factory showing off the molds with shiny new lead miniatures inside. I always wondered why they got the local chapter of the Hell's Angels to work in the foundry, but I guess that went with the territory back then.

Speaking of territory and back then, I saw a bunch of guys in the airport the other day with Bolt Thrower t-shirts on - who remembers them?

Oh, on miniature wargames and realistic weapons ranges, in my experience of real world Cityfight, Apocalypse and the usual missions, it absolutely would devolve into, "well, I'm going to sit here until the *insert Forgeworld flyer of choice here* turns up and drops *insert favourite support munition here*, then we'll go mop up"!

I was thinking about how to simulate time too, and came up with this - alternate unit activation, but if you like, you can just keep activating the same unit, the game end comes when a set number of unit activations has occurred, which is linked to the points value of the game, in order to simulate immediacy of action, but also that in any given fight, a small number of units tend to do the majority of the maneuvering, whilst many take a (fire) supporting role.

Would love to know the team (and the rest of Dakka's) thoughts....

Hazrat

Guys, can you include the books you mentioned in the podcaste in the show notes? I listen to you in the car and can't write down the titles. Then tonight I find out Audible has a 25% off sale on everything and I can't remember the books you talked about and I don't have my iPod with me... ARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!

ZombiEd wrote:Guys, can you include the books you mentioned in the podcaste in the show notes? I listen to you in the car and can't write down the titles. Then tonight I find out Audible has a 25% off sale on everything and I can't remember the books you talked about and I don't have my iPod with me... ARRRRRRGGGGHHHH!

Good call, we'll try to do that going forward. As for what was mentioned in ep 104:

Russ: The Stand
Craig: Monster Hunter Alpha, Troy Rising Series

Craig - I enjoyed (well, not sure 'enjoyed' is the proper word...but, for lack of something better I'll go with it) the new Did You Ever Notice segment (as usual). I feel those same frustrations as I visit various message boards and see similar postings from similarly minded folk as the one who I believe inspired your comments this episode.

And if the individual in mind is who I think, you forgot to throw in the fact that they've admitted to never having played the game in question, and yet are more than qualified to criticize it...all in the name of improving the game for all to enjoy. What a humanitarian!!

I found it to be a pretty good show.
I drive about seven hours a day for work. Truck driver. Having your show every couple of weeks is a nice change from the old books I usually listen to.

Thanks again.

I found the discussions about miniature production reasonably informative. It is a little hard to wrap my head around the scale of Spartan's operations.
The discussion of miniatures rules was also good. The whole gun range thing has always been bugging me until I came to the same conclusion not long ago, that it is a game and not a direct simulation. The time thingy is also curious. I think I like Mantic's approach a bit better than Spartan's and Dust's sounds like a pretty nifty compromise. I wonder if I won't some time write my own rules which will be a big mash up of everyone else's. I'm sure it will look great on paper.

Great show, as I have come to expect.

It was interesting how Total Fan Girl's topic dove-tailed into Mulling Mechanics (ie - Too much realism isn't fun.)

Neal was a great guest. I just wish he would have let more slip about what is coming from Spartan. There has to be something that Charlie was able to uncover.

Fantastic insight into wargame rules design and model making!
Thanks also for doing such a great job with the Kaiju City ad!
It caught me quite by surprise to hear it on the podcast.
I actually had to stop what I was doing and call my family in to hear it.
Hopefully its the first of many to come as we move into the crowdfunding phase.
Thanks!

On the issue of varying scale, Gear Kreig by Dream Pod 9 did that (robot walkers and super science in WWII). The rules were all based on a standard value (I forgot what it was called) and the size of that value depended on the scale you were playing.

So a weapon may have a range of 5 and if you were playing 28mm each 1 would be 5" so a range 5 would be 25" but if you were playing 1/48 scale, a 1 would be 7" so range 5 became 35".

It worked pretty well and didn't cause very much confusion because the multiplier was constant in the game.

The only real problem with Gear Kreig was there was never a good reason given for having walkers in WWII. There wasn't a compelling tactical reason for them, so you added them to your force because they were cool, but you made sure to include tanks and infantry as well.

Argh, still catching up. While I didn't agree with everything (army scale is more than 20 guys, especially in a game based on WWII ) it was an interesting episode.

It seems that no-one was willing to get behind IgoUgo systems, and - convtroversially - I like this system. Personally, I think that with a good command and control mechanism and a well integrated interupt/overwatch system, I far prefer IgoUgo games. But, I do think that the two systems lead to two different-scaled games. For me, alternating activations give a 'front line' feel, while IgoUgo gives a 'commander' feel, and while I will admit that alternating activation is more interactive and fun, I do think that IgoUgo is more tactical, and that is something that I am looking for.

Alternating activations allows individual formations to react to enemy movements and keeps the pressure up in a more immediate sense. IgoUgo better represents the commander making a plan and passing orders out before re-evaluating and reacting. I do think that alternating activations is mistakenly labelled as more 'realistic' in error very often. While I agree that (to paraphrase Craig - sorry Mr Galant) armies don't all move and then stand still and do nothing while the enemy has a go at moving and shooting at them, neither will an army move a unit while the entire rest of the force stands to watch and wait to see what the enemy does next. Neither are 'realistic', but do capture different aspects of what we are trying to represent. IgoUgo gets a bad reputation a lot of the time, and I think that a lot of this is because it is currently 'unfashionable', more than real detriments to the mechanic, and that it has been mis-applied in the past.

All of this is seperate from overwatch/reactions. Overwatch is useful in both systems, for IgoUgo when you don't want to be caught doing nothing in your opponents turn, and in alternating activations when you have activated a formation/unit and - again - it is now spent until its next turn and open to being jumped on.

I am currently listening to ep. 104, and having finished the section on molding technology, I feel compelled to post the following:

Russ,
As a fellow engineer and also a native speaker of Technobabble, I understand the difficulty in using a non-native language such as English, but there are many tools available to help the typical engineer blend into "regular" conversation. So I include a link to such a tool to help with your "processes" speech impediment.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/audio.php?file=proces03&word=processes&text=\-%3Cspan%20class%3D%22unicode%22%3E%CB%8C%3C%2Fspan%3Ese-s%C9%99z%2C%20-s%C9%99-%2C%20-%3Cspan%20class%3D%22unicode%22%3E%CB%8C%3C%2Fspan%3Es%C4%93z\

I include this link in case my Forum-fu fails me:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/process

These kind word-geeks have implemented this awesome tool for many of the common words in English. Please use it. Please.

Well, back to listening, before I fall even further behind.

Mike

P.S. To hear one so adept in the use of the Force to mold the slang of a person thousands of miles away from you is truly beautiful. I am awed by your subtle but awesomely direct manipulation of your guest host. The skill shown by how even Craig almost missed the awesome first time that Neil succumb to your influence. Truly, the force is awesomely strong in you.

Awesome, with Awesome sauce, Master.
-M