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Still have players and stock if any one needs something to round out thier collection pickings are good for some armys still others not so... but the fan base is looking at 5051(twohourwargames) as a alternet rule set as all the races are can be represented with at-43 figures.
I have an old set of Star Wars Mini's and a A&A the board game both have been a good companion of mine over the years Ill be treating AT-43 the same way. Thanks and have fun!

The biggest issue for me, and many others, was the horrible 'bait and switch' they pulled when "previewing" the rules for a new version of 'Rag'narok' (their mass battles game) while at the same time promising continuing support of their skirmish game, "Confrontation".

All the while saying "Stock up now for the new Rag'Narok as you'll need those big units!".

And then, well, the rest is history, I suppose...

what was the bait and switch? i know they pretty much dropped support for their minis line and the prior skirmish rules but i didn't hear about the b&s.

Yeah, a lot of it is personal interpretation. But I'm too lazy to write up my own report.

It does a pretty good job of explaining to newcomers how the original customer base was alienated in the shift to catering to a broader audience, which didn't exist.

Anyways, if anyone's interested, here's a good resource for cards and rules for Confrontation 3.0:

http://www.confsden.com/

To be brief (though I guess I kind of already said most of this...):

Rackham was trialing the rules for Rag'narok 2 and calling it just that - the rules for the next version of their "Warhammer", more or less.

They were also saying support would continue for the skirmish scale game "Confrontation".

Then, after urging people to buy lots of miniatures IF you wanted to play the new Rag'narok 2, they canned Confrontation as a skirmish game (with a vague promises of 'some sort of skirmish version eventually, maybe') AND switched whole cloth to Pre-Painted-Plastics.

So, I suppose karma is what followed, as one screw up after another has lead us to where we are now.

Was a sad day, it would seem someone in Rackham followed the 'Wizkids' school of thought on how to alienate most of your user base in one smooth step.

Loved the models, had a brief run with them, I picked the Mutated/multily limbed fellas and my wife played the werewolves (totally forgotten the faction names now) based out of box that had a few of each. We added about £30-40 worth to each force, then after a few months of playing and really enjoying it, thinking about adding second factions, we heard about confrontation 2 and paused on buying while we waited for more info.

Then when the news broke about the change over to Ragnarok, we figured we can stick to Warhammer if we want that kind of game, the reason we liked confrontation was the skirmish aspect.

Pity, think all we have left now are two of the female weres.

HudsonD wrote:Rackham. Your minis will be missed. Not your antics.

+1

Morathi's Darkest Sin wrote:Was a sad day, it would seem someone in Rackham followed the 'Wizkids' school of thought on how to alienate most of your user base in one smooth step.

Loved the models, had a brief run with them, I picked the Mutated/multily limbed fellas and my wife played the werewolves (totally forgotten the faction names now) based out of box that had a few of each. We added about £30-40 worth to each force, then after a few months of playing and really enjoying it, thinking about adding second factions, we heard about confrontation 2 and paused on buying while we waited for more info.

Then when the news broke about the change over to Ragnarok, we figured we can stick to Warhammer if we want that kind of game, the reason we liked confrontation was the skirmish aspect.

Pity, think all we have left now are two of the female weres.

Mid-Nor and Wolfen... two of the coolest factions, though to be honest, they were all pretty awesome.

And at the risk of firing up Scotty... All gone now, like tears in rain!!!

Alchemists of Dirz were here, mutating your thread into something hideous and awesome.

The silver lining: secondhand Rackham minis will be cheaper as people jump ship.

I don't recall anybody mentioning this earlier, but I thought that Fantasy Flight Games were buying Rackham.

sorry to see them go. i'll echo the sentimensts that the metal minis really were top notch, inovative and inspireing.

i'll also agreee that it wasa poorly run company.

On the bright side though i satill have an insane ammount of the minis and catalogs, as well as the mags. so aside from dwelling on the loss, i can always look at hte old or even paint what isnt finished yet.

Alpharius wrote:

Mid-Nor and Wolfen... two of the coolest factions, though to be honest, they were all pretty awesome.

And at the risk of firing up Scotty... All gone now, like tears in rain!!!

Ah, it was just Wolfen. Cheers.

Also thanks to Ahtman jogging my memory with his post, my force was actually the Dirz fellas, (we started with the box that gave you three Wolfen, a plant thing v's five elite guard types of the Dirz force.) I must be getting confused with the multi-limbed aspect, been a couple of years since we had them, so memory is hazy. I still oddly have the box they came in, I use it to bring figures to paint into work occasionally as I love the pic on the cover.

If I'm thinking right, the Mid-nor where the blue Dwarves? If it is those ones, they where the second faction I was considering before we paused, well either them or the faction that had the Red Lion character, she was a great mini. sadly I hadn't made my final decesion before the Rag news hit.

Lots of the Dirz guys also had extra limbs, but they were mostly mechanical arms with scythed blades on the end.

The Mid-nor Dwarves were the demon possessed ones that were all stitched together (the Rackham paint scheme was heavy on the blues and purples, yes).

Now that Rackham is dead I'm finally planning to paint my Drune warband. For some reason knowing that there won't be any new models only makes this easier.

Orlanth wrote:Rackham shot themselves in the feet regarding distribution, translation and rules quality; and failed to learn their lesson.

But they did the job when they outsourced production to China......

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Wow, what misguided, xenophobic, anti-Chinese nonsense.

Poor management is the problem, compounded by not knowing how to outsource intelligently.

A well-run company will save real money outsourcing, knowing what to outsource, what standards to set, and so forth. That's why GM, Boeing, Dell, and the Japanese so on do just fine with outsourcing. Rackham was poorly run, and they got what they deserved (and paid for) - the lowest quality at the lowest price. Outsourcing out of desperation isn't the answer.

GW is already outsourcing their most expensive products (FW) to China, so hopefully, PP joins GW in this. In all likelihood, they have already done so, and it's just not well known yet.

It isnt xenophobic at all. I would be saying the same thing if Rackham outsourced to the Uk and if the UK had the same tendencies.

GM, Boeing and Dell are bigger. They can negotiate with some force and get the manufacturers to deliver on schedule. They can also afford to back out.

PP have already outsourced their plastics to China, and apparently had distribution time delay problems already.

Forgeworld is a bad example, its made to order. Its a good example of a product that benefits from outsourcing. Labour there is cheap but more to the point the worker has to work to quality and schedule or gets replaced. So the individual worker does a better quality job than the old Forgeworld crew who didn't give a feth if some of the pieces were miscast.

Tailgunner wrote:
That's rubbish in all sorts of ways. I know it's fashionable in many parts of the world to bash China, and God knows their government is nothing to admire, but you appear to have no idea how many successful businesses use China for their manufacturing. For instance, you appear to be blissfully unaware of the fact that GW have moved their paint manufacturing to China, and FW have moved their casting to China, resulting in a big improvement in quality in both. Have you noticed how much better the recent FW casts are? China has real issues with IP, but these hobby products are not popular enough to be greatly affected by the problems of IP piracy that plague the music and movie industries.

Rackham screwed up their business model, abandoning what they did best and jumping on a bandwagon that seems to have hit the wall. That's what killed them, not China.

Paint manufacturing is another bad example, and something that should be outsourced. In the same way that a lot of whiskey comes out of the sme factory with different labels so does paint. The paints used are coded according to the chemical dye, so its not suprising that many companies use the same paint, and even the same paint company. You will find that Wizkids PPP mechs use Dark Angels Green, try it out, its the exact sme paint. vallejo also use the same pigment. GW can afford to outsource this, and codexes too (printed in China). Its easy to outsource and easy to recover if things go wrong.
Note that GW also outsources so limited edition stuff to China, again relaible if your company is big enough to have enough weight to say, 'we want our product'. Space Hulk fits this decription. Its not an ongoing product line so it was safe to outsource. GW has its business relations with chiona done correctly, outsource some items but not others.

Rackham however had its stones in the hands of the manufacturer, they couldnt go elsewhere, they could not withdraw. If Steel Troopers were unavailable for three years they were unavailable for three years, suck it up Rackham.
Where would GW be if it outsourced and could not recover the outsourcing and an ongoing key plastic kit, like Rhinos or Devastator boxsets went 'temporarily out of production' and was not available until say 2013.

You think this is isolated. The 25th Anniversary Boxset for Battletech is still not out yet and we are near the end of year 26. Also the previous core boxset with the same 24 mechs in it is out of production informally.

There are so many ways you can have your fingers burned by outsourcing, and the deliberate IP rip-offs havent even made the list, yet.

Oi... this could get interesting. On the one hand if they go totally tits up, that could be the end of ANY models from them. On the other, if they sell off to a company that realizes their metals were made purely of awesome and win, and starts cranking them out again, I will be in hog heaven.

For the moment, I guess the only thing to do is see if I can get a hold of one of the plastic chimeras from the Rag'narok starter, as that's the only plastic model they make that I am really interested in :(

Ah, Dirz!

They WERE awesome indeed, and some of their bigger constructs were incredible miniatures.

I am now more sad than I realized over R's death (alleged).

Though I suppose there's always a chance someone (Cipher?) could pick them up and restart the skirmish thing?

Although hardly one with a mind for a canny investment, would many not be put off by Rackham's repeated ressurections? After all, it appears fan-wise they've done their damnedest to burn bridges in the past, and one wonders if too much damage has been done to the brand as a whole?

Yes and no.

If someone completely unrelated to the past group of... wonderful people came in White Knight sytle... maybe?

Other than that, you're probably right.

It depends what form the resurrection takes. If someone starts producing the old metals with cards and rules available on-line with the possibility of new quality sculpts in the future then I'd be all over that. There's not a lot of buy-in there on the part of the customer.

This assumes that the original molds of the metal models still exist. Given that the latest owners seemed to think that era was complete garbage there's a good chance they don't. I think they referred to the retailer that they sold their existing stock to as a "scrap merchant" in a newsletter.

Shame, I really did like the rackham minis a lot. Luckily I own every single good metal miniature rackham produced. I had heard that they were going to make some unpainted plastics for AT43 but it seems that it will never happen.

plastictrees wrote:It depends what form the resurrection takes. If someone starts producing the old metals with cards and rules available on-line with the possibility of new quality sculpts in the future then I'd be all over that. There's not a lot of buy-in there on the part of the customer.

This assumes that the original molds of the metal models still exist. Given that the latest owners seemed to think that era was complete garbage there's a good chance they don't. I think they referred to the retailer that they sold their existing stock to as a "scrap merchant" in a newsletter.

And there's the rub. How much of such purchases would be people rounding out collections? How sustainable would this interest be? Hate to sound like I'm being a hair splitting knobend, but I'd venture there's a reason that free, online rules haven't really been adopted elsewhere. Could of course be that no one has ever tried it before, but I'm sure many would have considered it. The lack of buy in is quite possibly seen as a lack of profit potential. Take GW and PP. They sell their rules in printed books, because the Games are about more than shiny models and game rules. The books allow a real showcasing of background, art, hobby activity etc. That's a high level of buy in on all levels. A book once read, then put on the shelf, is still in view. A file on a pc....not so much. Plus we are men. I don't know about you, but I read on the toilet. And if I'm not currently reading a novel, you can bet your arse it's a Codex, Army Book or White Dwarf with me in the cludgy. Never my laptop though!

The story of Rackham is a sad one. Never cared about the rules but loved most of the miniatures, still using many.
They were the first tabletoppers to dare going prepainted plastic (Mongoose was second and first to fail). Might have worked, but failed in practice. Rackham never recovered (first bankruptcy, then selling stuff only to North America to cover low production numbers). Final nail in coffin was to fire "Mr. Rackham", the designer of everything.

Achilles wrote:Surprised this hasn't already come up...
This was reported by TTGN yesterday. Looks like the last hurrah for poor old R.E..

Well I was offline several days to visit the world's biggest game's fair (Spiel 2010 in Essen, Germany, 154.000 visitors)

NAVARRO wrote:they were really autistic to what was happening around them, crapped on fans, on distributors on prety much everything and from there on they felt on their skins what genuine fans had been warning them about... a major drop from everyone.

Are you talking about GW or Rackham?

Kroothawk wrote:
Are you talking about GW or Rackham?

At least dark eldar updated

It's a shame, but it really looks like they had it coming... I was sorely tempted by the same Fire Toad that Manchu mentioned earlier, and actually would have been interested in getting into AT-43. Seems like they had chance after chance... and just seemed to make bad decisions at every turn...

Alpharius wrote:To be brief (though I guess I kind of already said most of this...):

Rackham was trialing the rules for Rag'narok 2 and calling it just that - the rules for the next version of their "Warhammer", more or less.

They were also saying support would continue for the skirmish scale game "Confrontation".

Then, after urging people to buy lots of miniatures IF you wanted to play the new Rag'narok 2, they canned Confrontation as a skirmish game (with a vague promises of 'some sort of skirmish version eventually, maybe') AND switched whole cloth to Pre-Painted-Plastics.

So, I suppose karma is what followed, as one screw up after another has lead us to where we are now.

I think the problem was,they weren't making money off of Confrontation,or at least not enough. Rackham had awesome mini's,but the problem with any skirmish scale miniatures game is no matter how awesome your mini's are,people don't have to buy very many of them to play. How many skirmish scale games has GW come up with that either fallen to the wayside or relegated to the "Specialist Games" catagory? The high quality of the mini's also probably meant higher production costs,shrinking their profit margin on the mini's they did sell. Rackham probably figured that if they continued to support Confrontation,then people would just continue to play Confrontation and not step up to Ragnarok. That said,it's still dirty that the claimed they would continue to support Confrontation,then completely dropped it.

I got into Rackham's products over the summer when I picked some AT-43 stuff for cheap.

I'm very glad I did. AT-43 is about the perfect game for me--I have no inclination to assemble and paint miniatures, so the pre-paints are a HUGE plus. The designs are wonderful (I love the Red Blok in particular), the rules offer a good level of complexity without getting bogged down in minutia, and you don't need that many units to have a decent army (although I now own at least one of almost every unit for five of the six armies--those 50% off sales are hard to resist!).

Still, as much as I love the game, it was pretty obvious that Rackham was having issues. No new product in months. Essential units being out of stock for years (Steel Trooper Attachment Boxes, I'm looking at you! ). A disturbing amount of power creep in new factions (ONI Heavy Battle Tank, Cog heroes, etc). Poor packaging decisions (i.e. one Dragonov Kommando AT Gauss gunner per attachment box even though you need three of the buggers to make a max size unit).

So, I can't say I'm surprised to see this happen.

But I've got enough AT-43 minis to keep me entertained for years--I have no plans to stop playing this game anytime soon.

(Although, I have to admit, I'll probably dabble in Dust Tactics with the money I won't be spending on future AT-43 minis.)

Ebonsword wrote:AT-43 is about the perfect game for me

I now own at least one of almost every unit for five of the six armies--those 50% off sales are hard to resist!).

But I've got enough AT-43 minis to keep me entertained for years--I have no plans to stop playing this game anytime soon

Very nice. As I saw it, AT-43 PPP is a great game for those who just want to *play* a TTMG like a sexy boardgame to the max. To me, it occupies the same niche as the Pirates card/minis game - a tailorable game that's not too big, nor too expensive. Buying on clearance is great.

So my question is...do I sell off these Wolfen (new, plastic) Im not using now, or wait a little while and see if they go up in demand/value...


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Saint Anuman wrote:but the fan base is looking at 5051(twohourwargames) as a alternet rule set as all the races are can be represented with at-43 figures.

Also check out the old Shock Force rules. They are quite simple but allow for full custom creation of troops, heroes, vehicles, weapons, etc. Its a really good system if you want to do huge battles and dont want to take 6 hours to do it.

The fluff sucks really bad though...its actually comically bad. Id say the sole reason the game failed.

Mad4Minis wrote:So my question is...do I sell off these Wolfen (new, plastic) Im not using now, or wait a little while and see if they go up in demand/value...

The plastics will not go up in value. There are still too many comapnies trying to dump their stock. The metals will increase in value because many people consider them to be collector's pieces, and want them either to fill a hole in their collection, want to paint them, or both. The plastics don't fit either niche.

If anyone knows of a good sources for the metal minis I'd love to hear about them.