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 lord_blackfang wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Any word on plastics?

They did have a guy sculpting a robot intended to be a plastic squad, but that was before the Kickstarter was cancelled.

I'm not expecting anything worthwhile to come of this. Everything they did, they bungled. That robot, for example, was being hand sculpted, despite the need for multiple, symmetrical copies of the same rigid components in different configurations. If anything should be sculpted digitally, it's that. Or their planned releases that would make themed armies impossible without buying five or six copies of the same five or six single piece sculpts, where Necromunda would give you twenty or more before you needed to double up.

That's what happens when you have a design team of people who stopped being innovative in the mid 90s and whose mentality never really moved past the "garage company" stage in any way (quality, production, nor business sense). Funnily this handicap seems to be entirely a UK-based thing.

I dunno. Warlord Games seems to be doing quite well. And, well, that's where most companies in our niche hobby seem to be, excepting for a very few of them like the ones that Hasbro ate, and FFG. PP? Wasn't McVey involved in that?

I'm not sold on the background or the models, unfortunately. It'd take a lot for something to beat 40k for me, sadly.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:
I'm not sold on the background or the models, unfortunately. It'd take a lot for something to beat 40k for me, sadly.

Come now, I know you don't play games because of background or models. You and I are Warhammer background and model fans... that play Kings of War.

I'm very excited about the possibility of a GOOD sci fi ruleset that I can use 40k models and background with.

Well, I'm clearly talking about the background and models there, rather than specific rulesets.

 AlexHolker wrote:

...our first priority to to get playable forces out for the Boromites and Algoryn we've already started to show you...

For reference, the guy in the bioengineered armour isn't an Algoryn.

So in other words, their first two races are ugly men with a skin condition, and short, ugly men with a skin condition. Was anyone asking for either of those?

If they want to sell models, they need humans in both light and heavy space armour as one of their opening factions. This doesn't just mean not-Space Marines and not-Colonial Marines- it means something that fits the sci-fi tropes that have been in existence for decades. If the models look good, they'll also be bought by the bucketful with an IG Codex right around the corner...

 ChaoticMind wrote:

They want to de-retcon the squats. Problem is you need a slightly silly game to do that and GoA, Warpath, and Deadzone are serious settings. They work in Dreadball because it is fantasy football where every team has a shtick.

I don't see squats as needing a silly game. In any case, Warpath/Deadzone already has space orcs and dancing space goblins.

I dunno. Given the job of "wargames rules designer" it seems like he could be in semi-retirement while working from home on his own schedule more or less with something like GoA (or even a limited amount of work-for-hire rules writing).


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 Compel wrote:
I know it's incredibly irrational, especially since I went into the mantic kickstarters and would still go into their kickstarters, despite them being arguably less in need of the money than Dark Space Corp are.

However, it really did raise my hackles that a couple of months after GoA was cancelled, I seem to remember reading an article that talked about how Rick Priestley had been spending the same amount of money he was asking for in the kickstarter to turn his barn into a heated gaming room.

It just makes me feel as if I've been tricked.

As I said, incredibly irrational.

Well, there's a difference between kickstarting the setting up a new company and using your savings after a lifetime of work to do some renovations. I'm sure Ronnie has quite a nice games room, and Mantic keep Kickstarting things.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

Well, there's a difference between kickstarting the setting up a new company and using your savings after a lifetime of work to do some renovations. I'm sure Ronnie has quite a nice games room, and Mantic keep Kickstarting things.

I think it speaks volumes when someone is afraid of investing his own capital into his own project. Knowing that Ricky actually had the required money on hand makes it even more obvious GoA wasn't the dream project it was touted as but just a "give me money cause I'm famous!" cash grab.

My point is that we don't know how much of his own money he was putting in anyway. I find it unlikely that he wasn't putting anything in. And frankly, it's a bit silly to suggest that he should have put in his life's savings instead of KSing it. I should also point out that I did not back GoA, and thought they were asking for way too much for way too little done. I don't mind helping others to "make it happen" with production money, but with KS I'm also not particularly interested in paying developers a year's wage for them to make it.

 ChaoticMind wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 ChaoticMind wrote:

They want to de-retcon the squats. Problem is you need a slightly silly game to do that and GoA, Warpath, and Deadzone are serious settings. They work in Dreadball because it is fantasy football where every team has a shtick.

I don't see squats as needing a silly game. In any case, Warpath/Deadzone already has space orcs and dancing space goblins.

I meant the old squats style that wouldn't bat an eye at ork rock-stars as a unit. The bikes, dwarfs, burrowing tanks Etc. can stay but to fit they need to drop the over the top style GW had at the time and instead be a "new" concept from the ground up, not just Squats / Dwarfs in Spaaaace.

Original RT-era Squats were actually pretty well not over the top. Even the later-RT things on the outlier like Living Ancestors and Hearthguard in egg-armour weren't too bad. I'd suggest the most over-the-top aspect of the old Squats was the egg-armour. The rest of them were pretty grounded, and not overly-"dwarfs in spaaaace" anyway - it looked like that's where they were going to take them in 2nd Ed before they got canned, but the RT-stuff was pretty sober and grounded. Much less cartoony than the Orks turned in 2nd ed onwards. Check out the Red Book (Warhammer 40k Compendium 1989). Clannish Miners and Biker-engineer-grease monkeys isn't exactly on a par with Goff Rokkerz and <fill in the blank> Squigs.

I never played EPIC, but their vision of Squats didn't seem ridiculous, either.

And as TechMarine1 mentioned (but I forgot) - Veer'Myn/Skaven in SPAAAAACE don't really make the Warpath Universe more serious. Considering their 40k analogues seem to be Genestealers, they seem even less so...


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 Zweischneid wrote:
[
There was far too much high-flying rhetoric surrounding the GoA Kickstarter.

That said, it is (I think) legitimate to use Kickstarter to "test" the demand for a game, rather than sinking your own life savings into a dud. Just need to avoid all that "Kickstarter-like-it-was-truly-meant-to-be-BS", which made them (Rick?) look bitter not only towards GW, but also bitter towards people having success on Kickstarter.

I'll agree with you on this. KS is what it is. High horses have really no point. I'd much rather pay to help fund the production on a project that the creators have done as much as they can to turn into a reality by themselves - like Dreamforge, DeadZone, Zombicide, Red Box's latest, Secret Weapon Tables, etc than pay a year or more's wages for someone to develop a ruleset/background/etc - and I don't find the latter any more noble than the former.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
If the furry fans want a furry SF faction they should make a Kickstarter to build one. Frankly I am tempted to do it myself because it could make some decent money and it would be brilliant to annoy all the anal anti-furry players in GW-land and so on.

I don't know what the fuss is about, really. In the good old days we used to play Traveller with the Vargr and Aslan without batting an eye at "furryism".

The internet happened, and anthromorphic animals of all kinds outside of Disney/WB cartoons and their ilk became inextricably linked with actual furries. And yiffing.


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 Gallahad wrote:


I mean, somebody has to be looking at what Mark has done with the Dreamforge Games Eisenkern, and saying "Hey! There is a market for alternative sci-fi miniatures in injection plastic!" It has always puzzled me that the historical market is packet with true plastic kits from a variety of manufacturers (Fireforge, Perry, Conquest, Gripping Beast, Victrix, etc.) but sci-fi has largely been neglected. The sci-fi market for miniatures gaming has to be 10X the size of the market for historicals.

As others have said, the current showing for Gates of Antares is pretty poor.

I wonder why Sci-Fi is always taken to be so proprietary, especially compared to historicals. I mean, I know that you can't say claim the ECW or WWII as "your IP" (even though Battlefront Tried!), but outside of Battlefront's attempts, a 15mm PzIV is a 15mm PzIV and plays in whatever game you're playing. Same with a Renaissance Pikeman or a Spartan Phalanx. Yet all the rules developers and miniature designers seem content and accepting that people will use whichever figures with whichever ruleset they like. Fantasy is somewhat in the same vein, with WFB obviously being the big dog and highly invested in their own models, but Mantic and the other smaller fantasy rulesets mostly seem to understand that we'l play with the figures we like. But then we get into sci-fi, where.. I dunno. But the companies all seem to want to have their own universes that don't really fit others' figures in as much. Mantic again have allowed for people's existing Imperial Guard and Ork armies, but that feels more like wanting to sell their figures for use as 40k-proxies - which is the big "except-for" in the room on this topic.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that GoA and others want to sell rules in order to sell their specific models - even when their own models are years away. Eisenkern and even Mantic's Corporation come to mind as "sci-fi humans" that would fit into the Warpath or GoA universe reasonably easily, so why not make them "official proxies" for an undeveloped faction. LIkewise with Eisenkern for Warpath/DeadZone.

I dunno if my message is clear - it feels a little muddled, but it's hot and I'm tired. I guess I'm just thinking out loud about how nice it would be to see producers of non-historicals, and sci-fi in particular working together a little more rather then trying to put up fences around their IP like GW do (except that almost all of them seem to be happy to make not-40k models..)

These look much better, and so does the idea of using a modified Bolt Action ruleset - I've written a few times about not wanting to see the wheel of basic rules reinvented over and over and over. My only concern with those models is they look very much to be multi-part models. While I don't mind separate-head-metals, and I'm completely fine with one-piece metal models, multipart metals are - and have always been - horrible to deal with. And even moreso for troops...

Still, they've at least gotten me interested again.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

The only thing that really bugs me so far is the background, namely genemodding things that you would normally just wear a suit (or a hat) to achieve. I don't care how good a mining job paid, I'm not turning myself into the thing just so I can walk around with no suit on. I'll take the environment suit thank you.

I'll agree with you on that (and cat people, dog noses, etc). It's actually a situation where the stale old trope works much better - "Generations ago, scienticians working fot the ebil corporation(s) (illegally) changed the prisoners/slaves ancestors via DNA/gene-splicing and these are there descendents."

 NoseGoblin wrote:

Actually I did reach out to them early in the Kickstarter for just such a proposal. They seemed mildly interested but not overly so and it just never went anywhere. I would love to work with them for a cross promotion but now that they are with Warlord, that ship has likely sailed ans Warlard makes its $$ from their mini sales.... Who knows, perhaps some day?

I am still open to the idea.

That would be awesome, because as you probably know by now, and without blowing smoke up your arse, you have some of the very best sci-fi humans out there. I know Warlord are in the business of selling models, but I can't for the life of me see why GoA couldn't have, you know, more than one kind of Earth-humans faction involved. Still, you saying this publicly is pretty cool, and with GoA still embryonic, maybe it can help something to happen...


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 Kilkrazy wrote:

There it is. If you want to build a whole package to sell, it has to be Fantasy or SF. For some reason, Fantasy is less popular, perhaps because it’s too similar to Historicals and there are heaps of generic Fantasy figures already on the market.
That said, I’ve never really understood why so many people are keen to play 40K with GW official models all the time.

Yeah, I get all of that. I guess the thing is that 40k grew up in a different time and place, and clearly filled a vacuum that was in the market. These guys need to realise that there won't likely ever be another 40k. GW may be sold off, but Hobbyco or WotC or whoever will keep the 40k train running one way or another. Yet they almost all still want to be the big dogs with their own closed rule systems and own special snowflake miniatures (half of which can conveniently work as Imperial Guard/Marines/etc). I suggested something about a unified Sci-fi ruleset awhile back in the Misc minis forum, but it quickly got overwhelmed by a combination of people thinking it would involve power-creep codices between companies, some random guy saying that his homebrew ruleset should "be it" and a couple of people just being dickheads for the sake of "getting back" at me, so I stopped reading the thread pretty quickly.

Still, when I open the Mantic KoW rulebook and see Fireforge knights in it, or look through, say, an Army Painter painting guide and see all manner of not-GW models sharing the space, I do wonder why there aren't some more slightly more miniatures-agnostic rulesets out there. The way I see it, GoA and all the rest of them are going to struggle, and most will likely die off in an incredibly fething crowded market like the corpses of 3 editions of WarZone, Vor, Trinity Battlegrounds, Sedition Wars, and so on and on. PP is the outlier, and a lucky one at that who managed to get off and keep going.

I dunno, Mark from Dreamforge seems to be willing to talk with others. I know Vic from Victoria Miniatures was also willing to get onboard with a ruleset from her comments in my thread on the topic. I know it'd make my fething year to see a few of the companies I like working together in the way I described. We're somewhat off-topic now, but Mark - you're putting together a game. Please contact Vic and get her on board. Her figures, like yours are amazing, and like yourself, she's always very nice and respectful. I'd love to see a couple of you guys make one another stronger by working on things that the others won't/can't all cover at once, rather than trying to launch a new game with 6 factions.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
[
I disagree with this idea, generic rulesets are just that, generic, deprived from flavor and direction, or on the other side of the coin arcane monstrosities of rules to cover all the possibilities, likewise, miniature lines without a background in mind are plain, maybe good, but its obvious they are generic.

A complete ecosystem benefits both the rules and the miniatures line and both are shaped by the background.

Yeah, you've missed my point entirely. So simply put: What you wrote is irrelevant. Sorry.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Azazelx wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
[
I disagree with this idea, generic rulesets are just that, generic, deprived from flavor and direction, or on the other side of the coin arcane monstrosities of rules to cover all the possibilities, likewise, miniature lines without a background in mind are plain, maybe good, but its obvious they are generic.

A complete ecosystem benefits both the rules and the miniatures line and both are shaped by the background.

Yeah, you've missed my point entirely. So simply put: What you wrote is irrelevant. Sorry.

To elaborate: the Codex/bestiary should be different for each game, but the actual core rules should be the same. You don't need twenty different ways to depict someone firing a rifle.

That, to an extent. Just sharing a core ruleset and then each game can have their own special rules, points system, whatever. But as you said, no need for 20 ways to resolve basic shooting.
More specifically what I was talking about here is that both Mark and Vic have shown interest in collaboration with others, so there's potential space for both manufacturer's kits and fluff to be part of the same universe and game - directly.

Ah, well, for the last several posts where I've been getting specific I was thinking more of Vic's stuff joining Mark's stuff in his game - rather than either having anything to do with GoA anymore. I apologise if that was unclear. And yes, I guess rather tangental to the GoA topic, but it was an organic aspect to the conversation.

 Alpharius wrote:
Are they wearing Tau Drone Underwear?

They really do have a "Tau Auxillary" feel to them, actually. Now I know what I'm going to do with my Boromi... oh, wait, I don't have any and have no intention of buying them.

 Theophony wrote:
Well it took a month, but I guess it's progress. I think I'd rather have a model of the silicone creature from the original Star Trek series that bored through the caves than these.....teeth with legs.

Spider-Squigs 4 life, yo!

There's lots of scope out there if the plan is to continue to mine bad-looking super heroes.







If Rick Priestly reads this, I have to sort-of apologise - I love your work - from 40k to BA and more recently HC - And it's been a huge, defining part of my life in many ways, but the GoA stuff is just ...not inspiring me to do much besides make jokes.

Honestly, if they came free as part of a non-negotiable set as part of one of Mantic's Kickstarters, for example, I really would be "ok, these guys can be a squad of Tau Auxillaries". (which, compared to the deep dark boxes a lot of Mantic stuff ends up in, never to be painted or constructed is at least something. But, you know, I wouldn't go out and buy them on their own merits.

This is the sort of thing I want to like, but the models don't do anything for me, nor does the fluff.

If the rules ever come out and are fast and fun to play, I'll use my existing models for them. If they happen to release models I like, they can go onto the large, long shopping list with kits from a dozen or so other manufacturers I buy from.

Reminds be a bit of a Turien from Mass Effect. Or perhaps a Dranei from Warcraft wearing sci-fi armour.

Those are much nicer models in general. I'd possibly be tempted to use them with my Tau. That is, assuming I ever assemble/paint/use my Tau...

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Barzam wrote:
I believe the higher cost of these comes from them being "made to order." For some reason they don't keep stock of these and only produce them if they get orders. I suppose that'll change when they release the final rules and have all of the factions available though.

No, it comes from the lead developer being a dinosaur still stuck in the 1980s who thinks metal is the best way to build an army.

You're both wrong - though Alex gets extra points for being needlessly insulting and Ad Hominem. I've been buying quite a lot of metal from Warlord's Historical ranges lately - much of those being made to order, larger models (including Cavalry) and most sinister - metal units for an army and they're, priced nowhere near what these are.

I can't really fathom why they're priced like that excepting the usual "sci-fi, economies of scale, blablah, etc." Mantic does a bit of this as well - But it does stop me taking a second look at them.

 Pacific wrote:

While I often appreciate your acerbic wit in other posts, think this is being a bit unfair. Warlord under Rick Priestly has pretty much ushered in a new era of plastics in the historicals scene, I think they were narrowly beaten by some of the Perry miniatures box sets, but their plastic Romans and Celts were at the fore-front of a mass of new plastic releases and now barely a month goes by without the release of a new plastic kit.

They're also doing the same with their vehicle range, releasing a bunch of very reasonably priced plastic vehicles with Italieri.

The GoA miniatures are expensive because they are a new range, and they are obviously being produced in very limited numbers. The game has to find its feet, and its obviously going to take a year or two to do this. Right now, I'm sure most Warlord fans would prefer that the company keep their resources directed towards Bolt Action and their other historical ranges. Eventually perhaps the number of players of GoA will grow to the point where Warlord can afford to sink tens of thousands of pounds into some plastic moulds, but for now I think this is the right way to go about it. For now, for the 'early adopters' £70 to play the game isn't too bad, especially as you can download the beta rules for free.

While I agree that Alex was being unfair, Priestly is a freelance rules writer, he doesn't appear to be "on staff" at Warlord (though that may possibly have changed with GoA, or they might just be a linked association), but Warlord is run by Stallard and Sawyer, so "under Priestly" should really be "with Priestly' input" perhaps, though again, he's writing rules as a freelancer, not designing or organising plastic kits. The credit for those is elsewhere in the WLG organisation.

I also don't buy them being a new range as a valid reason for their (over) pricing of them. We're also not talking about a new piece of technology where the early adopters need to pay a premium because of higher component and manufacturing costs - it's actually moving volume that will bring these to profit faster, and as we know, the better the price, the more that people on the fence will give it a try, and then they'll play, and others will see the models and game in action, and so on and on.

 mitch_rifle wrote:
some of the dreamforge stuff could probably work if the rules are good

And there's the rub. Everyone in sci-fi and fantasy wants to be a special unique snowflake and have the GW/Warhammer model of their own. At least many historical manufacturers don't go down that road to the same extent. (Seeing the very same Warlord stocking Victrix, Perry, Gripping Beast, while Battlefront is the other way.)

 MLaw wrote:
I think the notion that a company making sci-fi minis is automatically trying to make their own 40k is laughable.
These are a totally different from 40k if that was what you're implying. Are there factions? Are they sci-fi? Are some of them in armor? Yeah.. but other than the pricing, what do these guys have in common with the old Geedub?

I'll be polite and explain rather than my first instinct. I'm talking about the 40k model. Which is why I said that. This means "our game plus our models" with little to no cooperation or acknowledgement of others' products. With the result that there are a million little lines all with their own backstories, models and so forth. While I like Tre Manor a lot, he wants to make two games to go with his slightly-different fantasy model lines, and is obviously hoping for them to be successful and popular. I don't like his chances. Dreamforge and whatever his game is called. GoA. And so on and on it goes when some form of co-production between good rules writers and good model manufacturers could do so much better than putting so much work into a dozen more completely discrete game lines destined to be forgotten in 5 years. Imagine GoA or Mantic's Warpath with Dramforge's Space-Not-Nazis-No-Really as an official faction. I don't see a loser there - and huge benefits for both companies.

Yeah, random generic-ish sci-fi tank for an unproved game with little to no following isn't going to be a scratch on a WWII vehicle or unit of WWII infantry.

The Crab walkers look okay, but three of them is a pretty small number. As for the humans, I think they're better than the MEdge humans with square shoulderpads, but inferior to the other ME guys (with the masks and rounded armour).

 judgedoug wrote:
Gates of Antares models are also much, much taller than normal 28mm figures. I am pretty sure they are 1/48, much like Terminator.
Notice how large the GoA model is and I haven't even put him on a base yet.
left to right: $10 USD Battletech Hellhound, $10 USD Sigmarite, $6.50 USD Algoryn (Gates of Antares), $2 USD Easterling

SO oversized and not easily cross-compatible, like Dystopian Legions guys? That's a bit unfortunate.

Yep, that's BA, Alph.

Doug - I'm interested in this game, but none of the miniatures grab me. So any advice for appropriate models for proxying other (40k!) ranges into this if I were to just pick up the rules and templates, etc? - I assume the order dice are the same as BA's?

I'd even happily use Forgefathers as Squats. I'd just go with the 40k background and use appropriate rules etc that closest match the 40k factions...

 Barzam wrote:
You're narrowing you proxies too much by only looking at 40k. Ugly as many models may be, Warzine might be a better choice of proxies for some of the factions. Capitol for sure works as a stand-in for the Concord. Considering that atm most factions don't have much available model-wise besides troops and support weapons, I would think proxying would be even easier.

Perhaps - but unlike Doug I still wub my 40k figures. They just don't get much play these days since 40k has turned into such an absolute clusterfeth. So it's more wanting to see if I can use the GoA rules as alternate rules for my 40k figures and factions rather than caring about the GoA background (nothing personal towards GoA - I just can't seem to bring myself to care at all about anyone's new Sci-fi or Fantasy backgrounds these days.)

The whole point being to use models I like and avoid the ugly ones!

 judgedoug wrote:
paraphrasing Manchu here -
People have a real need to pigeonhole anything that comes their way into categories with which they are already familiar; hence people trying to understand the Antares setting by referencing 40k. Which, of course, considering how vastly different the background, societies, technology, etc, are is totally useless, and actually, counterproductive. It creates a false equivalency which then becomes hard to shake.

Or to put it another way - I don't give two feths about the GoA background and dislike the models, so I am looking for a nice ruleset that I can use my existing model collection with. Just like with KoW and "Mantica" or DZ/WP and whatever Mantic call their "Space Mantica".


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Manchu wrote:
You can proxy Concord with Orks. Or quarters or bottle caps for that matter. As long as the base is similar, the look of the model shouldn't matter, much less the model's fluff from a different setting/IP.

I don't care in the slightest about GoA's fluff. I'm looking for statlines/unit proxies that work well enough without expecting a pure, perfect 1-1 translation.

 Thraxas Of Turai wrote:
A preview is up on the Concord C3 Drop Command Squad:

See, those guys look like dudes in Power Armour to me. Any specific reason that using Space Marines or even Mantic's Enforcers with their rules would be an especially bad thing? I don't need to simulate the sergeant's purity seals, cameoline and auspex.