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 AduroT wrote:
What game even still has that kind of ambassador type program? I’m not aware of any.

Conquest TLAOK pushes its Vanguard program really hard.

 Overread wrote:
The problem is PP isn't in "get new people" mode. They are still trapped in "please our current customers" mode because they 100% need them.

Warcaster didn't take off in a big way and has been even quieter with news than Warmachine has (a sad thing, but Warcaster was impressive in coming out during Covid without many issues and yet it just never got any traction)

Whilst the PP side of Monster Apoc is good; the recent disaster is going to tarnish that with a huge slew of issues IF it fails to deliver (or delivers only with a sharp price spike for customers)

So PP 100% needs their current Warmachine market on their side.


That would also fit with their £150 bracket new sets. That is not a welcome pack; that's a pack for existing customers.

Funnily enough the one side of PP that seems to be doing well are the Iron Kingdoms books for 5e. Time really is a flat circle.

Granted, you could sell raw sewage on Kickstarter and if it had a "5E license" it would make a quarter of a million, but they've been doing pretty good numbers on their books even when delving into the pretty niche parts of the setting like the Deep Wilds. Aside from a few copies of the initial corebook having dodgy binding the distribution side of it has gone pretty well too.

Honestly I'm constantly amazed how much 5th ed books from 3rd parties fund for on Kickstarter. Even fairly unknown or small name or just new firms seem to do really well with that market.



That said I think it highlights why we have so much chatter about PP and why they haven't vanished - PP can do things. They are not an outright failure; far from it. However they seem to have glaring holes and problems and appear to make choices that don't set them up for good progress and growth.

PP feel to me very much like GW did in the last years of the Kirby management team - chock full of wasted potential and making choices that, to customers and fans on the outside, seem to just miss the mark

With the right manager, the right team and the right choices I feel PP could turn things around a lot from what they currently are. But getting there and getting there on a damaged income is certainly not easy.

 Overread wrote:
Honestly I'm constantly amazed how much 5th ed books from 3rd parties fund for on Kickstarter. Even fairly unknown or small name or just new firms seem to do really well with that market.



That said I think it highlights why we have so much chatter about PP and why they haven't vanished - PP can do things. They are not an outright failure; far from it. However they seem to have glaring holes and problems and appear to make choices that don't set them up for good progress and growth.

PP feel to me very much like GW did in the last years of the Kirby management team - chock full of wasted potential and making choices that, to customers and fans on the outside, seem to just miss the mark

With the right manager, the right team and the right choices I feel PP could turn things around a lot from what they currently are. But getting there and getting there on a damaged income is certainly not easy.

That's kind of like saying your local team could win a world Cup if it just had better players.. PP now is a totally different group of people and likely staffed by fanboy's unable to create because they're obsessed with the status quo they adore so much (true for most industries these days.) Lack of experiences outside of their pet game leads to stagnation more than anything else.

Nepotism is also a huge deal in wargaming. If you're part of the Nottingham crowd you can get a game off the ground super easy a lot of the big ones are the same bubble in warlord, mantic etc. All being GWs retirement location. Breaking in fresh is super difficult and often the ones that do are an older version of GWs rules retooled..

Maybe it's being in the UK and our attitude to sportsmanship but seel clubbing is usually a failure to communicate. Most competitive players are happy to play softer lists if asked. I never had that problem unless tournament training was on and then I knew I was taking a clubbing to get a game. A smaller size game usually meant less broken combos and weaker casters didn't take much storage space to bring a switch. I was heavily online at the time as well and the page 5 thugs didn't seem to crop up until 2d terrain by which time I considered the game dead any way. Maybe that's part of it?

Yo7 wrote:
Press gangers being cancelled was over a wotc judge Labour laws.

That’s the PP spin on it, sure. Of course, pressgangers were very different from the WOTC judges. Who, it turns out, had the case dismissed in 2017.

I never believed that line, and in retrospect it’s even sillier. It was an expense and by then, PP was eating its seed corn.

The problem with PP is they fell below critical mass of participants. You need to get a certain level of people playing the game to make it look more attractive for new people to get into that game and find opponents. It often takes luck to hit that number, and once you do it can sustain itself fairly well unless something F’s it up. Warmachine came out and was middling. They geared up into the improved mkII right about the same people were most fed up with GW which gave them a good boost and let them blow up nice. Guild Ball was able to piggyback off them later which gave GB a good boost. However this caused WM numbers to dip a bit, and PP way overdid their reaction to this and dropped mkIII too early before it was ready, and that bungled released tanked their player base below that good critical mass and it’s really hard to recover from that. GB meanwhile got pretty successful for awhile, too successful for Steamforged who could not supply the models for players. People Wanted to play that game but Couldn’t get it. Then SF discovered how much money they could make far easier running board game Kickstarters for popular video game IPs that they could just print and dump out there and didn’t have to worry about supporting them. Never mind they always deliver way late. GB was summarily dropped without even being finished. Oh, and they blamed the players for it.

Over here, bushido also ate into the conpetitive circuit (and more recently marvel crisis protocol s)

 AduroT wrote:
The problem with PP is they fell below critical mass of participants. You need to get a certain level of people playing the game to make it look more attractive for new people to get into that game and find opponents. It often takes luck to hit that number, and once you do it can sustain itself fairly well unless something F’s it up. Warmachine came out and was middling. They geared up into the improved mkII right about the same people were most fed up with GW which gave them a good boost and let them blow up nice. Guild Ball was able to piggyback off them later which gave GB a good boost. However this caused WM numbers to dip a bit, and PP way overdid their reaction to this and dropped mkIII too early before it was ready, and that bungled released tanked their player base below that good critical mass and it’s really hard to recover from that. GB meanwhile got pretty successful for awhile, too successful for Steamforged who could not supply the models for players. People Wanted to play that game but Couldn’t get it. Then SF discovered how much money they could make far easier running board game Kickstarters for popular video game IPs that they could just print and dump out there and didn’t have to worry about supporting them. Never mind they always deliver way late. GB was summarily dropped without even being finished. Oh, and they blamed the players for it.

9th ed 40k (Maybe 8th? I lose track of the hard reboot editions these days) was the real killer as I recall. GW put on the good cop act for 6 months and all the suckers ran back to the price hike merry go round. I'll even admit I bought a few books intending to try then never did.

Ah, true, I did forget the detail they bungled their mkIII release right into GW’s successful PR reboot. Turns out when your initial brand recognition is the anti-GW and you build your base off of disgruntled GW players angry at their current behavior, mimicking that behavior at the same time the other company is trying to appear to turn it around is going to see the base flip flop right back to their former love.

And that's why I hate when fans (or even a firm) market themselves as the "anti-GW". Because if how you're introduced to something and how it presents is starting off on a negative foot and starting off with "we are better than X, X is evil and horrible and you should hate them"

Well it doesn't produce fans and an attraction beyond that. Which means if X goes and does something good, suddenly all that "anti" marketing flies right out the window.

Yo7 wrote:

9th ed 40k (Maybe 8th? I lose track of the hard reboot editions these days) was the real killer as I recall. GW put on the good cop act for 6 months and all the suckers ran back to the price hike merry go round. I'll even admit I bought a few books intending to try then never did.

8th was the reboot that you are referring to, I think. I don't think it was the 'real killer' on its own, though it was a significant part of it.

Truth was, gw under roundtree made some significant shifts in direction from the kirby era that have been massively successful. 8th was a part of it. Better community outreach (still enjoy my regimental standard), social media use, nicer models as well as the reintroduction of their 'specialist games', and intro boxes/boxed games have all played their part. I don't think it's so much a 'good cop act' as an acknowledgement thst kirby era gw was myopic and short termist and frankly they needed to do better. Respectfully, calling people 'suckers' id uncalled for. No, gw are not our 'friends' and yes, they charge through the nose, but as someone who firmly 'refused to buy gw' for about 10 years, and had a blast on the pp train for mk2, its gw games/products that i have genuinely enjoyed the most these last five years. This is neither 'bad' or 'wrong'. I don't think I'm the only one in this boat.

Yeah Kirby was very much by the numbers short term gains kind of management. It worked and lets not forget he turned GW around from a company bleeding money when he took over to one that was very profitable by the end of his time.

However I think his short term goal approach, whilst good for the company in the early days of his management at getting the finances in order; wasn't something that resulted in a firm doing its best in long term gains.

Essentially he took over GW, repaired it and built it up, but it needed a different style of management and a different approach to actually take GW up from the foundation he helped establish in his time.


Other things like a lot of separation of the top end from the fans were also issues. GW was doing abnormal things at a time when every other firm was jumping into social media and "esports/geeksports" was starting to grow from a handful of people doing a LAN party to big events - GW was backing out of all of that; heck it outright shunned and feared the internet.

So yeah when Roundtree took over there were big changes and it took what Kirby helped establish and grew from it. Sure GW are still GW and still have GW issues with things like rules; but no longer are we having to rely on rumours to know what's coming in a few weeks or such

Overread wrote:And that's why I hate when fans (or even a firm) market themselves as the "anti-GW". Because if how you're introduced to something and how it presents is starting off on a negative foot and starting off with "we are better than X, X is evil and horrible and you should hate them"

Well it doesn't produce fans and an attraction beyond that. Which means if X goes and does something good, suddenly all that "anti" marketing flies right out the window.

One page rules community is doing that right now. It's not a problem if you have something to back it up. It becomes a problem when all you have is bile. Warmachine was the anti gw in pretty much every way but it was also a solid game. You're always being compared to the biggest thing in town so you may as well embrace it and run with it. But that doesn't mean every post is based around GW models or how much their games such, which is an issue with OPR right now, its being used as a waiting room for 10th ed.

Overread wrote:Yeah Kirby was very much by the numbers short term gains kind of management. It worked and lets not forget he turned GW around from a company bleeding money when he took over to one that was very profitable by the end of his time.

However I think his short term goal approach, whilst good for the company in the early days of his management at getting the finances in order; wasn't something that resulted in a firm doing its best in long term gains.

Essentially he took over GW, repaired it and built it up, but it needed a different style of management and a different approach to actually take GW up from the foundation he helped establish in his time.


Other things like a lot of separation of the top end from the fans were also issues. GW was doing abnormal things at a time when every other firm was jumping into social media and "esports/geeksports" was starting to grow from a handful of people doing a LAN party to big events - GW was backing out of all of that; heck it outright shunned and feared the internet.

So yeah when Roundtree took over there were big changes and it took what Kirby helped establish and grew from it. Sure GW are still GW and still have GW issues with things like rules; but no longer are we having to rely on rumours to know what's coming in a few weeks or such

I thought they kept the hype window pretty small still? Maybe its because I don't follow GW and don't care about them in any way but I see 3d print stuff releasing almost immediately when something is revealed. When I've been given GW models as gifts I've found the sprue lay outs confusing and tedious to build. Half a foot attached to a base and the kneepad to neck line stuff just isn't fun to me. Makes me hate building models when I feel guilty for not building a gift I got. So could just be my ignorance and my interest in 3d printing exposing me to more of it than the main channels. But I'm also an old man and I hate hello fellow kids posts that make up most companies social media stuff. I would rather have an impersonal distant company than a Web 3.0 one posting memes and paying off YouTube crestors. Seen enough space marine painting tutorials for a life time and the new 40k box is being sent out for free to a lot of people spamming my feed yet again...

One thing that I found sad, but also gave me some hope. I was in the One Page Rules Discord (basically the heartland of their online interactions and all) and someone joined their general chat complaining that they had to leave another group because it was full of GW fans. They left the OPR Discord not an hour or two later because they found that even OPR fans on the OPR Discord also still played Warhammer and bought GW models and liked them and complimented them.

It was sad in that it was 100% backing up that concept that hate bred hate. However it also gave me hope because honestly whilst there are those who are die-hard haters; the overwhelming majority run the gauntlet from "I don't care" to "I love both".




As for GW's marketing today, they give about a 3 month release window on upcoming things. So within a bit we tend to know what's going to roughly happen for about 3 months. This varies, there are times when its just before a big event preview where we know a little less and GW has experimented with roadmaps and other slightly longer term marketing.

I do agree 3D printing is scary fast and GW can now expect anything previewed to be a 3D model by the end of the day; if not a few days later.

Personally I find such copy-cat work boring and dull. I far prefer when designers go their own way and do their own models and styles.

 Overread wrote:


It was sad in that it was 100% backing up that concept that hate bred hate. However it also gave me hope because honestly whilst there are those who are die-hard haters; the overwhelming majority run the gauntlet from "I don't care" to "I love both".

Agreed. I remember when I was 'selling' wmh to other players back in the day, I would try and sell the game on its own merits and not misleading 'but its cheaper' arguments or 'hating on gw' bile.

Haters will always be haters and its disheartening. I remember once back in the day a couple of haters unloading on gw as 'terrible and out of touch' because the then-new stormcast had helmets with a sun-motif (or halo) and since most kids were atheist it was proof gw were out of touch and incompetent. I mean... how can you argue with that?! Tying so much of your emotional health and identity
with the actions and products of a company that just makes toy soldiers is unhealthy. There's a point where you should just take a step back, and maybe just go for a long walk snd enjoy the sunshine. Fandoms can be incredibly problematic.

 Overread wrote:


I do agree 3D printing is scary fast and GW can now expect anything previewed to be a 3D model by the end of the day; if not a few days later.

Personally I find such copy-cat work boring and dull. I far prefer when designers go their own way and do their own models and styles.

There's a bunch of 'not-kriegsmen'*and other 'not-marines' that keep popping up in my fb. I mean... fair enough and whilst cheaper which isnt a bad thing, it would be nice to see sculpts that are not just obviously low-effort piggy backing on gw's ip with known/popular sculpts.

*gasmasks have 2 hoses and the filter casing is behind, not in front.

 Polonius wrote:
I think that PP is a little bit like a band that recorded a fluke one hit wonder. The thing with a lot of one hit wonders is that they didn't have another hit because they just didn't have the talent or ideas to merit one.

Warmachine was a buzzy, minor player in Mark I. It was in MK II that it really blew up. Instead of asking why they've dwindled since then (they clearly aren't a well run company), the question is why did it blow up? Why did it become such a big hit?

I think it had a lot of the stuff that you need (decent to good models, great lore, etc) but I do think the competitive aspect was the key. Steamroller was, at the time, such a change to how games can be played. Having objectives plus caster kill, with two lists, made things really interesting. And when you got rocked, it was quick.

But that's not enough in 2023. Other games have better scenarios, and other game certainly have comparable to better lore and models. I think they've just been out of ideas since early MKII.

I think its easy to underestimate how much Warmachine really changed table top games. Steamrollers objectives are one thing (also one that was fan created) but the real breakthroughs come from the Focus system adding a resource management layer to turns and probably most importantly, rules being codified into a consistent language that players could rely on being consistently applied. These things seem obvious now, but back in 2010 they were definitely not the norm. To a degree this was taking what Magic was doing and applying it to the table top space, but at the time is was the exception and definitely not the norm. The problem now is of course that those innovations are the norm. The kind of rules language PP used is pretty standard, and secondary resource mechanics are the heart of nearly every system to the point where GW finally went back and retrofitted one into 40k.

As for Warmachine's stagnation, I see it more as a path to hell paved in good intentions. I mentioned a way back about PP having a problem listening to their fans, and this is where it really kicked in. They got into the business of making their game the best it could be and addressing fan complaints. The rules got tighter, cleaner, with almost every spec of grey washed out, but the focus for years was making the game fair over making the game fun. You can really see it in feats, which lose that wow factor by mk3 and become very safe and simple effects overall. Always siding with precision, the game got "better" but only in the ways that appeased the tournament crowd and pretty quickly that built a steeper and steeper hill to climb with no place to start.

As much as losing the PG was a loss, I've never considered it that big of a deal. The free stuff was a nice perk, but if that's what it took for people to sell the game... IDK, most games have people that do that work actually for free. Losing the badge really didn't change anything for me personally. For me the real issue was that long before the PG was disbanded, the game had just become impossible to sell to new players. Even in the last years of MK2, there was just absolutely no support for anything short of 50 (modern day 100) point games. You could demo fine, but people quickly bounced off of a community that was only willing to play tournament practice. The appeal of Journeymen events had long since dried up.

To a degree the community is to blame for this, but I also kind of get it. That's where 100% of PPs efforts were put and honestly, 35 or smaller point games were miserable and lacked any of the scenario support that the game had come to rely on to force engagement. Even in MK2, Steamroller had been pushed to stretch large armies thin and just did not work well with less. More than anything that's my frustration with Mk4. It's just a huge improvement to a more approachable game, but with scenario support back to 100 or bust.... Pretty much everything they sacrificed is all for nothing, IMO.

 Overread wrote:
One thing that I found sad, but also gave me some hope. I was in the One Page Rules Discord (basically the heartland of their online interactions and all) and someone joined their general chat complaining that they had to leave another group because it was full of GW fans. They left the OPR Discord not an hour or two later because they found that even OPR fans on the OPR Discord also still played Warhammer and bought GW models and liked them and complimented them.

It was sad in that it was 100% backing up that concept that hate bred hate. However it also gave me hope because honestly whilst there are those who are die-hard haters; the overwhelming majority run the gauntlet from "I don't care" to "I love both".




As for GW's marketing today, they give about a 3 month release window on upcoming things. So within a bit we tend to know what's going to roughly happen for about 3 months. This varies, there are times when its just before a big event preview where we know a little less and GW has experimented with roadmaps and other slightly longer term marketing.

I do agree 3D printing is scary fast and GW can now expect anything previewed to be a 3D model by the end of the day; if not a few days later.

Personally I find such copy-cat work boring and dull. I far prefer when designers go their own way and do their own models and styles.

I'm with that guy tbh. If I want warhammer I can get warhammer any where online, I don't need OPR to be warhammer lite with furries. There's not much value in that compared to even other games like Kings of war, which is warhammer lite but still distinct beyond that. And the OPR community is a joke compared to the people paying the bills for it. There's very little activity on any of the hubs for how large the patreon is, it really is people buying GW proxies and the rules basically exist away from that.

I think you underestimate the good hate does. Its easy to say it only spews bile but it doesn't just do that. If I hate what PP has done to warmachine and make my own open source version my hatred lead to a new and possibly better game system. Hate is a fantastic motivator when you properly direct it. PP did that with warmachine and it went really well for them. Hate isn't a bad thing, it's one of the best tools any one can have, it's the bitterness that ruins things. People need to move on and find something to focus on instead of whine about their ex game. Their ex isn't changing course because of them and its better to accept it and use the hate of what that game became to build a new collection of models and invest in a new community. I had to do the same thing with a tcg recently and how bad that game got and how much I hated playing it lead me back to mini games and finishing old projects so they're table ready

On the game size thing. I felt like 35 points in mk2 was the sweet spot. But PP were trying to keep up with GW with huge models. The new bloodthirster looks mighty big compared to even the extreme models. So it's identity of big smash robots tried to keep up and look what happened there.. Colossals were essential not to be left behind by GW and look impressive on the table but the game warped completely around using them and the small skirmish game many of us bought into was gone. 3 Jacks, a unit, caster and 1 or 2 solos were no more. Brawl tried to recapture that magic but I don't know how that stands in the mk3 to 4 limbo land were in.

Yo7 wrote:

 Overread wrote:
One thing that I found sad, but also gave me some hope. I was in the One Page Rules Discord (basically the heartland of their online interactions and all) and someone joined their general chat complaining that they had to leave another group because it was full of GW fans. They left the OPR Discord not an hour or two later because they found that even OPR fans on the OPR Discord also still played Warhammer and bought GW models and liked them and complimented them.

It was sad in that it was 100% backing up that concept that hate bred hate. However it also gave me hope because honestly whilst there are those who are die-hard haters; the overwhelming majority run the gauntlet from "I don't care" to "I love both".




As for GW's marketing today, they give about a 3 month release window on upcoming things. So within a bit we tend to know what's going to roughly happen for about 3 months. This varies, there are times when its just before a big event preview where we know a little less and GW has experimented with roadmaps and other slightly longer term marketing.

I do agree 3D printing is scary fast and GW can now expect anything previewed to be a 3D model by the end of the day; if not a few days later.

Personally I find such copy-cat work boring and dull. I far prefer when designers go their own way and do their own models and styles.

I'm with that guy tbh. If I want warhammer I can get warhammer any where online, I don't need OPR to be warhammer lite with furries. There's not much value in that compared to even other games like Kings of war, which is warhammer lite but still distinct beyond that. And the OPR community is a joke compared to the people paying the bills for it. There's very little activity on any of the hubs for how large the patreon is, it really is people buying GW proxies and the rules basically exist away from that.

I think you underestimate the good hate does. Its easy to say it only spews bile but it doesn't just do that. If I hate what PP has done to warmachine and make my own open source version my hatred lead to a new and possibly better game system. Hate is a fantastic motivator when you properly direct it. PP did that with warmachine and it went really well for them. Hate isn't a bad thing, it's one of the best tools any one can have, it's the bitterness that ruins things. People need to move on and find something to focus on instead of whine about their ex game. Their ex isn't changing course because of them and its better to accept it and use the hate of what that game became to build a new collection of models and invest in a new community. I had to do the same thing with a tag recently and how bad that game got and how much I hated playing it lead me back to mini games and finishing old projects so they're table ready

I think what you call "hate" is what I'd closer consider "dislike"

It's fine to dislike something; totally fine. You can dislike something but still respect it and those who take part in it.
You can also take your dislike of something and turn it into something good by identifying what you dislike and why and then providing something that resolves those problems into something you do like; with the view that others will have a similar liking for what you've designed.


Hate on the other hand is slightly different. Hate isn't just disliking something; its deeper than that. It's also generally not seen that those who hate something will show respect toward those who don't hate that thing.



Disliking GW is when you move onto other games; when you try something else; promote that other thing locally and aim to encourage others to join in by showing how much fun you can have and how its different and better than flaws in GW.
Hating GW is when you move onto other games but still spend time being snide toward GW/those who enjoy GW. It's when instead of encouraging others to take part in another game, you deride their enjoyment of GW.



Dislike is simply that and can be used in a very positive way
Hate is not just disliking but hating, its a negative element. Those who hate will sling that hate at others.

I can't speak for everybody, but right around when MKIII dropped I moved away from my gaming group, and never really played WMH again. After a while, I realized why I didn't miss it: I never had fun playing it, at least not after the first few battle box games.

The game was too hard to play casually. Unless you exactly match skill levels, games can and will end super fast. that's fine if you're trying to "git gud," but it doesn't make for a particularly relaxed affair.

Yo7 wrote:

On the game size thing. I felt like 35 points in mk2 was the sweet spot. But PP were trying to keep up with GW with huge models. The new bloodthirster looks mighty big compared to even the extreme models. So it's identity of big smash robots tried to keep up and look what happened there.. Colossals were essential not to be left behind by GW and look impressive on the table but the game warped completely around using them and the small skirmish game many of us bought into was gone. 3 Jacks, a unit, caster and 1 or 2 solos were no more. Brawl tried to recapture that magic but I don't know how that stands in the mk3 to 4 limbo land were in.

The Brawlmachine folk got upset about MK4 and quit. I haven't followed the specifics of it too closely as the Discord became a hotbed for bitterness and I decided to cut it out of my list. 50 pt MK4 honestly captures the same spirit and due to the smaller unit sizes honestly feels more varied and interesting than Brawlmachine lists at that size. The main issue is the lack of official scenarios for that size. The brawlmachine scenarios are still available and work great though. I use them for 75 as well. If you want to capture the Brawlmachine spirit a little closer, I'd also recommend reducing the FA on models by 1 for every 25 points played below 100 (this effectively makes most things FA:2 and removes huge bases from 50/limits them to 1 at 75). Personally, I'm preferring 75 points just because Warlocks get very restricted at 50 with their minimum beast loadout, but either option with significantly more terrain than usual has really provided the experience I've been looking for.

Somebody mentioned the idea of a critical mass of gamers, and I do like that idea. It also means you have people coming up with different gaming modes. It's easy to forget, but stuff like MTG Commander and even modern 40k missions are basically fan products adapted. Once a game loses the fan base to create play modes, it really does lock into the ride or die folks.

I think people chase alternate games more as an ideal more than a reality. I can't say I've seen many that aren't geared towards competitive play that have worked out as well as people imagine they will. The casual playerbase is absolutely vital though, as it's what makes games feel like a community that outsiders want to be a part of. It's also what ensures new players can get in some fun games while they learn.

 LunarSol wrote:
I think people chase alternate games more as an ideal more than a reality. I can't say I've seen many that aren't geared towards competitive play that have worked out as well as people imagine they will. The casual playerbase is absolutely vital though, as it's what makes games feel like a community that outsiders want to be a part of. It's also what ensures new players can get in some fun games while they learn.

Depends where you play. A lot of groups hidden away in garages play a hell of a lot of alternative games. It's more about finding a public venue that does it.

Yo7 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I think people chase alternate games more as an ideal more than a reality. I can't say I've seen many that aren't geared towards competitive play that have worked out as well as people imagine they will. The casual playerbase is absolutely vital though, as it's what makes games feel like a community that outsiders want to be a part of. It's also what ensures new players can get in some fun games while they learn.

Depends where you play. A lot of groups hidden away in garages play a hell of a lot of alternative games. It's more about finding a public venue that does it.

This.

It's very easy to assume "Game X is a failure or dead" when you never see it at the FLGS. But, let's be honest, not everyone plays at public places. Hell, I haven't played a game in any of my LGSes in years (even before Covid), because, well, I have the space and I like not having to deal with randos, and can curse and be an ass as much as I want with my buddies at my (or their) home without worrying about offending kids or something. That said, seeing what stock moves at various shops can give some indication of whether or not there's a hidden community, but with as much online purchasing as is available these days, even that isn't totally telling.

"Alternate" games like OPR, Frostgrave, A Song of Blades and Heroes, etc. probably do quite well in those hidden clubs/homes that we don't have insight into. When they're also miniature agnostic rulesets, it's even harder to really judge how many people are playing them.

Still, Warmachine/Hordes certainly feels like it's fallen off quite a bit from its heyday. And I know many shops won't stock it now, due to some of the past issues. I have no clue how much "private" PP gaming might be happening, but signs are that it isn't doing the gangbuster comeback that it sounded like they were hoping for.

Big stores like Wayland and Firestorm in the UK still stock Warmachine and Hordes, but I notice that they don't make much noise about it (granted wargames in general don't get much noise unless your GW).

So there's still some customerbase. However smaller stores don't seem to stock it at all.


In contrast you can find quite a few stocking games like Infinity, Malifaux, Dystopian wars and such.

I agree, lots of games happen in private with friend and social groups; but if the stores (esp online) aren't really stocking a game in a big way that's a sign.





Also today I'd say social media is also a good measuring stick. You might not see much One Page rules in highstreet stores, but you certainly see lets-plays, painting guides and more getting steadily more common on youtube, twitch and FB.
Again if there's an active community you'll get content appearing; if there's no active community you won't.

NOTE - social media is also somewhat age reliant, some older generations might make less use of it or operate on older/less well travelled websites .

 Overread wrote:
Big stores like Wayland and Firestorm in the UK still stock Warmachine and Hordes, but I notice that they don't make much noise about it (granted wargames in general don't get much noise unless your GW).

So there's still some customerbase. However smaller stores don't seem to stock it at all.


In contrast you can find quite a few stocking games like Infinity, Malifaux, Dystopian wars and such.

I agree, lots of games happen in private with friend and social groups; but if the stores (esp online) aren't really stocking a game in a big way that's a sign.





Also today I'd say social media is also a good measuring stick. You might not see much One Page rules in highstreet stores, but you certainly see lets-plays, painting guides and more getting steadily more common on youtube, twitch and FB.
Again if there's an active community you'll get content appearing; if there's no active community you won't.

NOTE - social media is also somewhat age reliant, some older generations might make less use of it or operate on older/less well travelled websites .

I see where you're coming from but there's 2 points I've learned over the years.

The internet is not real. Social media absolutely will lie to your face and manipulate you if it can get you to see an extra ad. I've noticed when I've tried to use it that I often miss new things to get old posts shoved in my face. So it's very hard to judge real engagement on those communities, especially with how common bots are across the board. Too much keeping up with the Jones to use it as a real gauge.

More related to computer games then tabletop but in my experience the people most often in threads are the least likely to be players. If I can play lets say Halo or I could talk about it, you need a damn good reason not to just play Halo. So the most talkative online don't represent the actual players, usually quite the opposite. It's a problem I noticed on the PP forums and wider blog sites today. There's loads of articles complaining about stuff no one playing the game cared about. I was reading a Kings of war article and it threw in modern politics commenting on the tomb Kings.. No one at the table has ever cared about skeletons shooting poison arrows while wearing vaguely historical head wear. But you find a lot of complaints like that on sites like reddit and twitter. And I doubt those people even really care, it's just easy attention while screaming into the void that is a million sad and lonely people desperate for attention online..

It's sad to hear about the brawlmachine guys but I can understand why squatting everything may have been the end for them. Again I'm really hoping we see a 3d print focused rule set based on older editions. The core rules are really strong and there's potential for making something great out of them. I'm not a good enough player to balance such things and I don't know how popular sticking to prime factions and ret would be. Everything else seems gimmicky if not desperate and you would need to cut the bloat some how. You would also need to decide if you allow the massive models or not and i can see slap fights whichever you pick. They're expensive but also game warping.

Yo7 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I think people chase alternate games more as an ideal more than a reality. I can't say I've seen many that aren't geared towards competitive play that have worked out as well as people imagine they will. The casual playerbase is absolutely vital though, as it's what makes games feel like a community that outsiders want to be a part of. It's also what ensures new players can get in some fun games while they learn.

Depends where you play. A lot of groups hidden away in garages play a hell of a lot of alternative games. It's more about finding a public venue that does it.

Typo on my part. I mean alternate game modes. I play like 20 systems and posted nearly the same sentiment a few back because I totally agree.

 LunarSol wrote:

As much as losing the PG was a loss, I've never considered it that big of a deal. The free stuff was a nice perk, but if that's what it took for people to sell the game... IDK, most games have people that do that work actually for free.

In my experience - no they don't. Setting up, organizing, and running events and building a community is hard work, for those that do it well its like a second full time job. I don't know anyone who truly does it for free for any game on a long term basis, most people I've find that start doing it either find a way to get compensation for it or quit if they don't. Locally, the only community organizers at my local stores are all getting paid out for the effort one way or another, even for 40k.

Also don't undervalue the power of group support. Having a formal organised network of people all doing the same thing - organising local games, events, drumming up support and such - can be a huge mental support and form of encouragement to people.

It can also help open doors, build associations between clubs; allow for inter-club events; swap ideas etc....


Even before you get to a few perks from the company, you've already got a huge support structure that; properly run; helps motivate people.



It's also not simple and takes up time running such a system. So if the parent company closes it down its REALLY hard for scattered people to unite and organise and such.


A bit of formality can also help keep people engaged, they've an invested and vested interest in the game doing well and keeping going because that means more perks for them; more gains and such.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

As much as losing the PG was a loss, I've never considered it that big of a deal. The free stuff was a nice perk, but if that's what it took for people to sell the game... IDK, most games have people that do that work actually for free.

In my experience - no they don't. Setting up, organizing, and running events and building a community is hard work, for those that do it well its like a second full time job. I don't know anyone who truly does it for free for any game on a long term basis, most people I've find that start doing it either find a way to get compensation for it or quit if they don't. Locally, the only community organizers at my local stores are all getting paid out for the effort one way or another, even for 40k.

It is indeed lots of work, that is basically what i have been doing since 2008 when i took over the Saturday late night gaming volunteer position at my FLGS. although i do not run tournaments anymore, i just set up for pre-planned games. The reason why our store does so well and attracts players from all over (some people drive up to an hour just to get there) is the community. It is in a way a full days work that is also a funs days work. i bring a full car load of extra gaming aids, terrain, and even minis or armies for people to use. My compensation is having a space to play all day long (usually from 2pm to sometime after 3am) and hang out with fellow gamers. the game system being played doesn't matter. people at the store play a couple dozen different game systems.