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I started with GW, but never stopped playing different systems when my attention was caught. The trouble is to find players and time to invest in these new games.
As I'm aging and my circle of players dwindling naturally, I find less time to give to play lots of different game systems and collect the appropriate miniatures. After a period where I left GW to see if the grass is greener elsewhere, I have known a few games disappeared and investment "lost" as their player communities dried up. GW is the only one strong enough to still be there and still having their universes around.
So I went back to GW, and was overjoyed when they changed their attitude. Even if in the end, it's the same "tricks" to make you buy their products, I realize that as the market works now, games get shorter lifespans and replaced faster than before. Only GW still has a long term view (in comparison) with their core games. They are also more reliable to support their games in the future.
I don't want to see my collection taking dust as no one is playing that game anymore and there is no possibility to complete my armies since the miniatures aren't sold anymore, other than looking on Ebay and pray you don't get screwed by vulture speculators. At least, no more.
Sure, Privateer Press is still there, but I'm tired with the competitive scene. GW still has that more "relaxed" view with their games, and I also like it. So there's that as well.
It's a golden age for miniature games, but there are disadvantages as well. We are almost swarmed by new miniature games everyday and there's not enough time to play them all. Not even talking about Kickstarters and how the support suddenly stops as soon asthey are delivered...
So yeah, GW is the most "safe and stable" place right now, to me.
It's a golden age for miniature games, but there are disadvantages as well. We are almost swarmed by new miniature games everyday and there's not enough time to play them all. Not even talking about Kickstarters and how the support suddenly stops as soon asthey are delivered...
.
Indeed, I'm trying to stick to 3-4 'main' games system which means I've had to skip games like Infinity or Malifaux, did cave on Gaslands mind as poundshop cars, glue and spare 40k guns is a silly cheap buy in
I think having a few systems on the go is mostly positive as sticking to one tends to lead to burnout, I'm fairly sure I overdid X-Wing
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/21 12:12:01
"AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME...SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED."
"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
-----
"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal
I play Infinity (very deep rules with awesome dice mechanics) and Frostgrave (nice beer/pretzels skirmish campaign game) and DnD.
I stopped Fantasy a long time ago and stopped 40k during 6th. Tried 8th, thought they'd turned it around and then the flood of codices came and killed any enthusiasm I had.
I play Infinity with a few local guys and have a ton of terrain for it (it needs a lot) . I travel for tournies since there's not many local. I played in a tourney a few weeks ago and had a blast getting my butt kicked (my first tourney with Infinity). Out of five games that weekend I got a rule book out maybe once. I love that, clear rules with lots of support. They have a free online wiki with built in FAQ. Really nice game if you can wrap your head around the possibilities in the rules. If you think you're a good strategist with 40k, try Infinity and it might ruin that idea. Lol
"Holy Sh*&, you've opened my eyes and changed my mind about this topic, thanks Dakka OT!"
master of ordinance wrote: I think the majority of us here started with Games Workshops games initially - and who didnt really? They where readily available and everyone knew about them. Of course, we spent money on them and then eventually some of us moved on. The big problem GW always had was that it relied on its IP to attract and retain players, but at least the games where fun back then, and diverse in nature. Sadly these days GW is catering less and less to the hobbyist and more and more to the normie and the child, alienating the traditional target audience, and pushing away more mature newcomers.
Myself, I started back when Fantasy was Fantasy, but the prices pushed me away when I learnt of other game systems which where cheaper. These days I retain my GW stuff for fun and the memories, but that is it. Other games such as Infinity, Battletech, Kings of War and Bolt Action all fill my wargaming urge without robbing my pocket or forcing me to play at one braincell level (do not try to defend it, AoS and 40K 8th are both braindead games with no tactical depth at all. I have played both.), so they do me well.
Funny you say say this, I’ve heard GW being accused of living off the short term (attract “a 15-year-old”, get them to buy in for a couple hundred $$$ in about 2 years time , then drop them for the new suck...er, customer; rinse and repeat) since at least the days of 4E.
And to be honest, I do think GW STILL does not care about keeping their customers long term; as long as they can push the new shiny, that’s all they’re in for.
I started hobby gaming with card games, moved on to Games Workshop products starting with 40k 3rd Edition. I became interested during 2nd Edition (mid-late '97), but didn't have the wealth to purchase any of the boxed sets that were available.
When I did eventually start, 3rd Edition had been released, so I had the boxed starter set and started Space Marines, though I had considered Praetorians, Tyranids or Sisters as possible 2nd Edition armies.
As for alternatives, I played some 15mm WW2 games including early Flames of War, I tried Warmachine but I didn't enjoy it that much.
Locally, Games Workshop products I think went through diminished period around 7th Edition.
Warmachine was picked up as the replacement game with infinity being present but with fewer players. When X-Wing was released that kind of took over the entire war gaming scene here.
The local store owner told me right out that he got the sense that Fantasy Flight Games owed a lot of their financial success to Games Workshop driving customers away.
That trend has also reversed itself from the point that 8th edition was released.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/22 18:05:10
I started GW games in 40k 3rd edition and left completely when 7th dropped.
I still kinda keep track on what's going on with the games and fluff, but I have no desire to play any of their game systems.
For reference, played WHFB in 6th (meta died completely before that 7th ed dropped), and dabbled in BFG when it was still being actively supported back then.
I found that GW games are the ones you’re guarenteed to find an opponent for. I’ve invested in so many miniature games only to find I have noone to play against. Which sucks, as I hate AOS, and swore off 40k(grey knights player). Frostgrave was barely played by me and dried up fast(not sure why, it’s a great game). Saga switched to an unnecessary and worse 2nd edition. Pulp Alley was around for a little while. Even D&D Adventure League sucks since as soon as you get to a decent level a new campaign comes out and it’s time to start a new level 1 PC.
Now I only play Necromunda with a small group, which I love now that they changed the ammo roll rule, and old school boardgames with the gf.
As long as there's, you know, sex and drugs, I can do without the rock and roll.
The only problem with debates like this for me is that it doesn't really matter if there's better stuff than GW, in my area there's absolutely no one to play anything with, and even if there were, the two game stores near me (which are half-assed at best), are each more than 20 miles away in opposite directions. I already have to collect and paint both sides of any game I'm interested in, lately I have to beg my couple of old opponents so hard I might as well pay someone to be an opponent, lol.
"By this point I'm convinced 100% that every single race in the 40k universe have somehow tapped into the ork ability to just have their tech work because they think it should."
I love fantasy (not WFB, the genre) and I wargamed since mid high school. GW just had thier barrier of entry too high. Till AoS, just grab some dudes and play, before you know it you will have spent the amount that put you off anyway.
Getting into WoC/StD got me looking at daemons, then there was a good second hand deal on some daemons and suddenly I could play 40k. That got me into a gaming club, it is everywhere. Club exposed me to KoW and Infinity (became very appealing after I finally got fed up with GW's lack of balance).I still have the daemons for KoW, so csn and do play a Warhammer when asked or if I want a more casual game (choosing my opponents wisely though).
Malifaux was "not played in this city" if you asked, it was accepted that there was no community. Till someone started, turns out that there were a bunch of people interested, but we all thought no one was interested. Now that we're playing the models, theme and low barrier to entry attracts more players.
Automatically Appended Next Post: I'm seeing a lot of "I have too much 40k stuff", you know you can sell it, right? Skirmish games like Infinity and Malifaux don't need many models to play (less than 20), many people get more, but that's because the games and mini's are awesome.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/25 12:01:50
I actually started boycotting GW in 2012 because I thought they were taking the proverbial. Questions about the quality of Finecast aside (I've not actually personally witnessed any dire examples), the fact they also combined it with the yearly price rise when part of the long time excuse for putting up prices had been the rising price of tin was just too much.
Also, 5th Edition 40k had invalidated my Space Marine army (which had been converted to use the 4th Edition Chapter Traits, which suddenly disappeared), the rumour that the same thing would happen to Doctrines (which it eventually did) caused me to abandon my Imperial Guard project, and that had left me with just an Eldar army... which because everything in the game could now run meant that it had lost most of its agility advantage. (I know people will say "But Fleet still let you charge...", but most of my models could do exactly the same as they had and didn't necessarily want to charge anyway, but everyone else's could now do more).
And 7th Edition Fantasy's change of making unit ranks 5 wide rather than 4 wide meant that I would basically have had to redone all of my unit-wide basing and I simply could not be bothered. There was also no support for Specialist Games, so even though I remained fanatical about Inquisitor, there was nothing I needed to buy from GW.
This eventually lead me in the direction of Infinity. I'd already been drifting in the direction of skirmish gaming for some time (The most fun I'd had with WH40K and WHFB was often 500- 1000 pt games), and detailed models where I could put lots of effort into each one, along with rules that encouraged a cinematic play-style, and transhuman fluff where digital reincarnation was a thing meant I could indulge my RPing side by actually believably developing up models as individuals.
... that went quite well until the release of the updated Human Sphere book for 3rd Edition, at which point they completely rewrote the background for two of my absolute favourite models. That put me on a real low for the game for some time.
Now it's become clear to me that Corvus Belli are set on constantly moving forward their background, even if those changes can heavily invalidate hobbyists' collections, which is enough that I really cannot build up any enthusiasm for actually trying to get back into the game. Why would I put in the effort and money if the company have shown that they'll decide that entire factions can break in two and potentially leave me with two half armies?
I've actually started putting money in to GW again, as I think that they're actually now behaving more like a reasonable company. Not *much* money, because I'm still very much on the skirmish end of things, so I've only got things like Shadow War and 28mm Inquisitor* to really go with, but they have become a significant portion of my wargaming expenditure again, including things like Made to Order.
*Although the new Necromunda is tempting, as far as I'm aware they've yet to release the dang rulebook on its own - while I know it is "out there" on the internet, aside from the ethics of pirating it, I do actually like my rulebooks in hard copy. (Including stuff I've written myself - I run off hard copies of my WIP fan edition of Inquisitor every few revisions, annotating other changes as they're playtested).
MarcoSkoll wrote: This eventually lead me in the direction of Infinity. I'd already been drifting in the direction of skirmish gaming for some time (The most fun I'd had with WH40K and WHFB was often 500- 1000 pt games), and detailed models where I could put lots of effort into each one, along with rules that encouraged a cinematic play-style, and transhuman fluff where digital reincarnation was a thing meant I could indulge my RPing side by actually believably developing up models as individuals.
... that went quite well until the release of the updated Human Sphere book for 3rd Edition, at which point they completely rewrote the background for two of my absolute favourite models. That put me on a real low for the game for some time.
Now it's become clear to me that Corvus Belli are set on constantly moving forward their background, even if those changes can heavily invalidate hobbyists' collections, which is enough that I really cannot build up any enthusiasm for actually trying to get back into the game. Why would I put in the effort and money if the company have shown that they'll decide that entire factions can break in two and potentially leave me with two half armies?
This invalidation thing often sound so silly. If your models have absolutely no use in the game (I mean like squats) them sure, I feel you. The rules changed and you can no longer do the exact things you could before the change? Get over it, you can still use the miniatures, they just work slightly differently. Either the new rules are meant to be better, or (often in CB's case) the company wants to get you excited by figuring out your army again. How long were you going to enjoy the same thing anyway?
On the JSA thing; CB actually checked their data and found that JSA players and Yu Jing players didn't mix the two very often and then made models that were used across the line legal proxies for an equivalent in the other faction.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Anyone know if there’s another miniatures company out there with their factory?
I know FFG and PP at least used to use factories in China, but haven’t kept up.
This isn’t intended as some sideways criticism. Any new company is gonna have to outsource, because your own setup ain’t cheap beyond garage casting.
Warlord IIRC, Wargames Factory is definitely one but it's tied to Warlord and I'm not sure if it's a subsidiary a la Forge World or its own thing that Warlord use. Wargames Factory, while lesser known, is probably just as big as GW production wise, if not bigger, because not only do they manufacture their own stuff (and the aforementioned Warlord kits), they're also used by other companies for production. Wyrd Miniatures is one that have in the past, although I'm not sure how much is Chinese made and how much is WGF
DarkBlack wrote: The rules changed and you can no longer do the exact things you could before the change? Get over it, you can still use the miniatures, they just work slightly differently.
I don't really give a damn about whether they nerfed my favourite tactics*. A lot of the models I used were models I used because I liked them as models (although I did find that, often, they were a lot more viable than people said).
I'm angry that a game that was developed from a homebrew RPG, including deliberate background elements to allow characters to survive death, has absolutely no consideration for players wanting to develop their own characters and stories in the universe and is prepared to entirely retcon setting background - three editions and a full decade (to say nothing of the time before Infinity was published) is a point by which they really should have got their poop sorted out.
* Okay, I'll be honest, there was something I was not at all happy about from a rules perspective, but it wasn't a profile change - it was them deciding that doctors were forced to activate servant remotes if they had any, therefore preventing those doctors from joining coordinated orders. I would have accepted if servants couldn't be activated in a coordinated order or if servants counted towards the limit of coordinating 4 models, but them forcing the doctors to not coordinate at all was taking the proverbial. Given that I often made heavy use of doctors/servants, making those profiles a complete double-edged sword was NOT popular with me.
It didn't even make sense - doctors could still only activate ONE remote even they had several, so apparently they could be disconnected from remotes...
Getting hit with background changes that spat in the face of characters I'd spent ages developing and their models that I'd put painstaking effort into converting (and that illogical rules change that made many of my favourite profiles half-useless at the same time) was definitely enough to put me off the game, and frankly, I don't have the motivation to get back in when for all I know CB might decide that one of my factions having a civil war and splitting in two would make a great plot for their next event season.
I've not even got the option to go find some "Oldfinity" community if I decide that I'd really prefer to continue playing with the old background that I'd invested myself into.
You may not agree with my point of view, but if you think it's silly, then you've not got any real grasp on why I'm involved in the hobby.
I'm an author and artist - my games tell a tale. You might say that "Ah, but these campaigns tell tales"... but they don't, not in that way. When it comes to war films, they're not documentaries, they don't try to tell the tale of entire wars (unless we're talking fantasy settings like Star Wars or Lord of the Rings where one small cast of characters has a grossly disproportionate impact).
For something like Saving Private Ryan, the greater war is irrelevant - it's a question of rescuing one man so that his mother doesn't lose all four of her sons.
Black Hawk Down is a battle that the US/UN basically lost when it comes to the big picture, but it's a tale of leaving no man behind.
Where Eagles Dare is simply about plugging an information leak.
The Train is about stopping the Nazis stealing art!
I want that out of my games. I want the small stories, the ones I can actually relate to, where the big picture is there to help tell those stories, rather than getting in the way of them. And, right now, Corvus Belli are handling Infinity in a way that gets in the way of my small stories.
Hence why I'm drifting back to GW - because they have actually handled even big developments like the Indomitus Crusade or the setting jumping forward two hundred years in ways that allow new stories (the next Inquisitor event I've got planned has actually managed to use the new background as part of the plot), but which haven't derailed the old stories I've been telling for the last decade.
Some people might call it stagnant, saying that nothing that happens in WH40K ever actually means anything, but honestly if you're writing a setting that other people are going to be telling their own little corners of, you shouldn't be making big changes on a regular basis.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/25 18:44:40
TBH Marco, I don't get the impression GW are handling things any differently.
Look at how they introduced Primaris - Robute flies about personally commanding every chapter master to take them, and upon people pointing out that there are chapters who would hesitate to take orders from Robute especially given how he came back, they added a blurb into the Custodes book stating that a Herald went with Robute to tell every chapter that Primaris were a gift from the Emperor and could not be refused. They're very much in an "our way or the highway" mode with their new stories in 40K and AoS, we're long past the days of Armageddon and Imperial Armour style plots and soft retcons to include new gear and units where you could choose to take it or leave it.
And there's no sign they intend to stop advancing the timeline and focusing in further on "big name" players engaging in galaxy-quaking events, there are doubtless more loyalist Primarchs on the way, Cawl is waiting in the wings to cause radical shifts in the Mechanicus, they've completely rewritten how things are supposed to go for the Eldar and so on.
I'm firmly convinced GW are purposefully moving away from the idea of a shared sandbox where they flesh out a history leading up to a set "present day" and then let players tell their own stories - they want a much more saturday morning cartoon setup where they tell stories about the Big Damn Heroes(or Villains) and then sell you models of those specific larger-than-life individuals so you can "play along" with their story as GW tell it to you.
"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
-----
"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Anyone know if there’s another miniatures company out there with their factory?
I know FFG and PP at least used to use factories in China, but haven’t kept up.
This isn’t intended as some sideways criticism. Any new company is gonna have to outsource, because your own setup ain’t cheap beyond garage casting.
Warlord IIRC, Wargames Factory is definitely one but it's tied to Warlord and I'm not sure if it's a subsidiary a la Forge World or its own thing that Warlord use. Wargames Factory, while lesser known, is probably just as big as GW production wise, if not bigger, because not only do they manufacture their own stuff (and the aforementioned Warlord kits), they're also used by other companies for production. Wyrd Miniatures is one that have in the past, although I'm not sure how much is Chinese made and how much is WGF
As far as I understood, Wargames Factory is no more - the company got chopped up and parts sold out between Warlord and Dreamforge Games. That is, Warlord owns some of the molds, Dreamforge got the others - the rest of the company was dissolved.
Yodhrin wrote: TBH Marco, I don't get the impression GW are handling things any differently. Look at how they introduced Primaris
Honestly, I think Primaris are about the best compromise that could actually be struck between finally sorting the fact that Space Marines models aren't the right size compared to other models, but also not completely invalidating people's collections.
Even if you might think the Primaris have been handled heavy handedly, what originally put me off Infinity was retcons that would have been like GW just replacing Space Marines with Primaris as if they'd always been that way, with no explanation whatsoever.
That CB are now messing around with swapping units between factions or blacklisting models from events because of the central story is the barrier that makes me wonder if I actually want to bother to give Infinity a second chance, knowing that I could quite likely again have stories/models/characters I've put heaps of effort into completely derailed.
Yodhrin wrote: TBH Marco, I don't get the impression GW are handling things any differently. Look at how they introduced Primaris
Honestly, I think Primaris are about the best compromise that could actually be struck between finally sorting the fact that Space Marines models aren't the right size compared to other models, but also not completely invalidating people's collections.
Even if you might think the Primaris have been handled heavy handedly, what originally put me off Infinity was retcons that would have been like GW just replacing Space Marines with Primaris as if they'd always been that way, with no explanation whatsoever.
That CB are now messing around with swapping units between factions or blacklisting models from events because of the central story is the barrier that makes me wonder if I actually want to bother to give Infinity a second chance, knowing that I could quite likely again have stories/models/characters I've put heaps of effort into completely derailed.
As the phrase goes, "Once bitten, twice shy".
Well that's my point, there was a better way - introduce them the same way they always introduced things, as a new tool in the toolbox that players could make part of their force or not as they saw fit - introducing Primaris didn't require Robute making them mandatory additions to every chapter with the backing of a holy proclamation from the Emperor himself. Or better yet, just make properly sized Marines, which wouldn't have "invalidated" anyone's collections any more than 3rd Ed plastics did to 2nd Ed, or Deathwatch & Thousand Sons & Death Guard etc did to the 3rd-7th era plastics. GW have been increasing the scale of their models, sometimes in pretty big jumps, for decades, there's no reason they couldn't have again, they just didn't want to because the aim wasn't to avoid "invalidating" anything, it was to shove folk towards buying a whole new army.
Like yourself the appeal with GW's settings for me was always that they were just that; settings. GW established them, fleshed them out, gave them a sense of history, but after that they just played in the same sandbox as the rest of us and you had a "Shoredinger's Storyline" kind of situation where everyone's headcanon version of the setting was both accurate and not at the same time. Now though, they've opened the box, they've decided what version is "real", and they very much intend to keep making that decision as they see fit if AoS is any indicator - time jumps, political and territorial shifts, character deaths, locations destroyed, institutions altered, all by fiat. They're even wise enough now to recognise that big participatory campaigns have to offer merely the illusion of player agency so as to avoid messing up the plans they have, routing towards one or two predetermined outcomes like conversation trees in a Bioware RPG.
For me, I can't function creatively in that kind of environment. I can't muster up the energy to write up character backgrounds and army backgrounds and fictionalised battle reports and develop my own rules etc etc if two months down the line GW are going to blow up the subsector I was using, or fundamentally change the nature of the faction in question, or jump the timeline forward by a century so any baseline humans involved in my fiction would be dead or decrepit. It's dispiriting. In the end, I don't really see a difference between what they're doing and what CB are doing based on your description, the key commonality is that they're both simply uninterested in providing players with a genuine sense of agency - it's their world, the rest of us are just permitted to visit.
In order to keep enjoying their settings, I've had to basically disconnect 40K and WHF from Dark Imperium and AoS, treat them as different IPs entirely, and essentially do "historicals" for Warhammer. Easier with AoS since it's such an obvious and intentional departure, whereas with 40K they evidently learned from the backlash there and tried for a middle ground where they change loads of stuff but still assert it's the same setting. It's murder on getting a chance to play games because you're removing the one key advantage of GW - a big common world that you can inhabit equally well in your local shop or on a kitchen table on the other side of the planet - but at least it gives me back some semblance of structure and control.
And yes before the cavalry ride in - that is an analysis based on my own personal preference, and an ongoing "themepark" style plot under the explicit direction of GW/anyone else is not objectively bad
"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
-----
"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal
No I totally see the same thing with 40k too. I have a Lamenters army, you know, the incredibly unlucky guys sent on a penitant crusade straight into a hive tendril with no reinforcements allowed for 100 years.
It was really confusing opening the blood Angels codex and seeing a primaris in lamenter livery with no explanation about whether he was a reinforcement or just a new founding. Kind of screwed up that whole notion that they were completely boned and living on borrowed time.
'I've played Guard for years, and the best piece of advice is to always utilize the Guard's best special rule: "we roll more dice than you" ' - stormleader
"Sector Imperialis: 25mm and 40mm Round Bases (40+20) 26€ (Including 32 skulls for basing) " GW design philosophy in a nutshell
MarcoSkoll wrote: Black Hawk Down is a battle that the US/UN basically lost when it comes to the big picture, but it's a tale of leaving no man behind.
I'd struggle to call the incident which black hawk down is based on a failure.
From WIkipedia: Reliable estimates place the number of Somali insurgents killed at between 800 and as many as 1,000 with perhaps another 4,000 wounded.
That's to 19 dead US soldiers.
Any army ever would pray for ratios like that. Seems to me the only reason they 'lost' was after 'Nam America was a little pissy about losing soldiers halfway across the world in something that didn't directly concern America, so they pulled out.
iGuy91 wrote: You love the T-Rex. Its both a hero and a Villain in the first two movies. It is the "king" of dinosaurs. Its the best. You love your T-rex.
Then comes along the frakking Spinosaurus who kills the T-rex, and the movie says "LOVE THIS NOW! HE IS BETTER" But...in your heart, you love the T-rex, who shouldn't have lost to no stupid Spinosaurus. So you hate the movie. And refuse to love the Spinosaurus because it is a hamfisted attempt at taking what you loved, making it TREX +++ and trying to sell you it.
Elbows wrote: You know what's better than a psychic phase? A psychic phase which asks customers to buy more miniatures...
the_scotsman wrote: Dae think the company behind such names as deathwatch death guard deathskullz death marks death korps deathleaper death jester might be bad at naming?
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Anyone know if there’s another miniatures company out there with their factory?
I know FFG and PP at least used to use factories in China, but haven’t kept up.
This isn’t intended as some sideways criticism. Any new company is gonna have to outsource, because your own setup ain’t cheap beyond garage casting.
Warlord IIRC, Wargames Factory is definitely one but it's tied to Warlord and I'm not sure if it's a subsidiary a la Forge World or its own thing that Warlord use. Wargames Factory, while lesser known, is probably just as big as GW production wise, if not bigger, because not only do they manufacture their own stuff (and the aforementioned Warlord kits), they're also used by other companies for production. Wyrd Miniatures is one that have in the past, although I'm not sure how much is Chinese made and how much is WGF
As far as I understood, Wargames Factory is no more - the company got chopped up and parts sold out between Warlord and Dreamforge Games. That is, Warlord owns some of the molds, Dreamforge got the others - the rest of the company was dissolved.
To my knowledge, the actual production facility still exists; they simply became a producer-only rather than attempting to have their own brand which was mainly started when they essentially seized the Wargames Factory name due to non-payment by Tony Reidy. Their style of sprue makes it likely they're the chief plastics producer for Kingdom Death and a few of the Maelstrom's Edge kits, and legoburner put up an interesting blog post about his visit there.
In the scope of Doc's question though, they're not owned by anyone and thus are "just another Chinese outsourcer" (albeit one that can put some pressure on GW with the right designer).
Yodhrin wrote: Or better yet, just make properly sized Marines, which wouldn't have "invalidated" anyone's collections
That's not entirely practical from a production perspective, as it would have required completely redoing the Space Marine range in short order in order that units still due for a scale update didn't see a massive tank in sales.
It's also arguable whether that could be said to have not invalidated anything. Replacing everything would have forced the removal of the older models, and a lot of people simply would have ditched their old Marine armies, being unwilling to continue them in a new sizing. Primaris offer an opportunity to overhaul the range, and by making the difference between the models canonical, it avoids the issues some people would have had.
Pushing them into the story - well, I suspect that in the long run the intention is indeed that the original range will be phased out, so yeah, I can understand that they don't want to deal with the "Oh, but X chapter refused Primaris" further down the line.
For me, I can't function creatively in that kind of environment. I can't muster up the energy to write up character backgrounds and army backgrounds and fictionalised battle reports and develop my own rules etc etc if two months down the line GW are going to blow up the subsector I was using, or fundamentally change the nature of the faction in question, or jump the timeline forward by a century so any baseline humans involved in my fiction would be dead or decrepit.
Well, the Dark Imperium fluff does specify that the laws of time have really begun to fray after the Great Rift has spread across the sky, with some worlds experiencing decades as others experience but a moment. Not to mention that the Imperial dating system was really shaky anyway. With that in mind, there will be a large number of even the lowest dregs of society who may have seen those two centuries pass.
I take a "between the canon" rather than "in the canon" approach to WH40K story telling. I've almost always chosen to set things in my own sectors, worlds and characters, and for a long time I've been involved in the Carthax Sector project run by The Conclave forums. Keeping things in our own corner of the universe meant that GW wouldn't rule that any of those planets had blown up - and it meant we also had the authority to blow those planets up. (Also, having a cluster of sectors is more plausible than when people write Inquisitorial warbands with characters from all the most famous planets of the Imperium, regardless of where those planets are in the galaxy).
I tried taking that same approach into CB's universe, but eventually I just wasn't left enough safe corners in their setting.
MrMoustaffa wrote: Kind of screwed up that whole notion that they were completely boned and living on borrowed time.
Doubtless there are some people for whom this has changed things.
But, personally, it's all been stuff I can weather. Even for the fluff from the article from WD284 about the regiments fighting against the 13th Black Crusade that I loved so much that I made an exception to my normal rule of giving the canon breathing space and just outright pilfered the illustration and background about the 303rd Mordant Acid Dogs so that I could have that exact Sergeant in my Inquisitor games.
Did GW finally deciding to go with an actual version of how the 13th Black Crusade ended need me to adjust her background a bit? Sure, I had to slightly rethink how she ended up where she is now. However, it didn't make any fundamental changes to how she now is as a character, so it doesn't invalidate any of the games she's been involved in - and that makes it a rather better change for me than some of the background retcons CB have asked me to swallow, where regiments have been re-written from units who'd calmly and efficiently be the rearguard when retreating from Hell itself to hot-headed religious nutters.
Maybe things have been different for you, but as right now GW haven't done anything that's left me with steam coming out of my ears, but CB has.
CREEEEEEEEED wrote: I'd struggle to call the incident which black hawk down is based on a failure. <snip> Any army ever would pray for ratios like that.
As phillv85 has already pointed out, inflicting enemy casualties was not the mission objective. (In fact, seldom is raw casualties an actual mission objective unless you're playing tabletop/video games... or perhaps a terrorist).
The mission was supposed to be a fairly routine one hour mission to grab some clan leaders, and it turned into a fifteen hour Charlie Foxtrot that killed 19 Americans, wounded 73 more, caused a few deaths and injuries amongst the supporting UN troops that had to be pulled in to get them out, killed a couple of hundred Somali civillians with stray gunfire, created several hundred martyrs for the Somali National Alliance, destroyed two $20 million helicopters, and helped stoke domestic sentiment that forced the withdrawal from the conflict entirely.
That is not a successful mission.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2018/06/29 03:28:23
DarkBlack wrote: The rules changed and you can no longer do the exact things you could before the change? Get over it, you can still use the miniatures, they just work slightly differently.
I don't really give a damn about whether they nerfed my favourite tactics*. A lot of the models I used were models I used because I liked them as models (although I did find that, often, they were a lot more viable than people said).
I'm angry that a game that was developed from a homebrew RPG, including deliberate background elements to allow characters to survive death, has absolutely no consideration for players wanting to develop their own characters and stories in the universe and is prepared to entirely retcon setting background - three editions and a full decade (to say nothing of the time before Infinity was published) is a point by which they really should have got their poop sorted out.
* Okay, I'll be honest, there was something I was not at all happy about from a rules perspective, but it wasn't a profile change - it was them deciding that doctors were forced to activate servant remotes if they had any, therefore preventing those doctors from joining coordinated orders. I would have accepted if servants couldn't be activated in a coordinated order or if servants counted towards the limit of coordinating 4 models, but them forcing the doctors to not coordinate at all was taking the proverbial. Given that I often made heavy use of doctors/servants, making those profiles a complete double-edged sword was NOT popular with me.
It didn't even make sense - doctors could still only activate ONE remote even they had several, so apparently they could be disconnected from remotes...
Getting hit with background changes that spat in the face of characters I'd spent ages developing and their models that I'd put painstaking effort into converting (and that illogical rules change that made many of my favourite profiles half-useless at the same time) was definitely enough to put me off the game, and frankly, I don't have the motivation to get back in when for all I know CB might decide that one of my factions having a civil war and splitting in two would make a great plot for their next event season.
Infinity has moved very far away from a RPG. Expecting a company that is moving their fluff forward to do so in way that will always be consistent with what you have for your characters is not realistic though.
It pain me to say it, but by the sound of what you are looking for a tactical skirmish game (like Infinity) is probably not a good place for you, maybe a campaign based warband game like Shadespire, Mordheim or Frostgrave?
Does not make Infinity a bad game though or CB as bad as you make them out to be. Again, CB did research into what people bring to the table and only split Yu Jing after finding that very few players mix the Japanese with other Yu Jing (with the exception of ninja, which are still available in both factions).
I greatly enjoy Infinity and want other people to find the same enjoyment (really wish someone told me about it sooner); so reasons to play Infinity are:
-Balance, which I define as not being able to predict the winner based on the matchup or lists (unless one is really bad, which is easily avoided in any faction)
-Community; the rules keep even a WAAC in check, your list will not win for you. So the game does not appeal to the worst kind of donkey-cave.
-It's intense; there is hidden information and you are always involved (but at a disadvantage in your opponents turn). The rules translate well into the experience the designers were aiming for.
-Online support. There is an official army builder online, it has all the current (they get updates) stats, weapons, skills and equipment for all units in all factions. I you make a list with it then it has a nifty check mark in the corner, so your opponent knows your list is legal, even though you have hidden information. All the rules for said stats, weapons, skills and equipment are in the rulebook (which is why it is so thick, but you don't need a codex). Said rulebook can be downloaded for free (full PDF), you can get a hardcopy with fluff if you want it though.
-The core rules and mechanic is actually quite simple; there is just a lot of weapons, skills and equipment (many are unique to factions or even models). Everything is in the books (there is an expansion of extra rules, also free to download), so no having to "trust" the guy who "forgot" his codex.
For the "GW vs .." part of the OP;
The weaker balance allow people who would exploit it to get a cheap win the ability to do just that. People who go for cheap wins are poison to a gaming community IMO.
I'm getting a little salty about the number of books I need to keep playing GW games with active gamers.
I personally enjoy the experience offered by Infinity more. Which is a matter of taste and does not make any game or company better than another
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/29 11:51:11
Flashman wrote: Since 2015, I've mostly been playing Guild Ball and Bushido.
The key difference between these games (aside from the low model count) and GW stuff is the dice mechanics.
GW... roll to hit, roll to wound, roll to save. Just an ever decreasing dice pool where probability determines the outcome without much input from the player
I'm not going to go into the dice mechanics of Guild Ball and Bushido, but they are far more interesting and thus so are the games.
This is pretty much where I'm at. I l like games that give my brain a good workout and I just don't get that from most of what GW has to offer. I'm the same with video games, I suppose GW are like the AAA publishers of the video game industry to me, they have all the money, they make games that are pretty to look at, have high production values etc but there's not much there under the surface mechanically, little depth and strategy and mastery to their games.
I do hope they bring in better rules writers, maybe even make alternate advanced/competitive rulesets for existing games, but I'm just not sure that's who they are targeting as an audience.
SAGA,Warmachine,Infinty,Malifaux,Guildball,Bushido, Godslayer(just discovered this one) and quite a few others all have so much more going on than anything GW has to offer.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2018/06/30 00:22:14
Nightstalkers 
Dwarfs 
GASLANDS! 
Holy Roman Empire 
2800pts/1200 painted
217pts/151 painted 
