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Picked up some minis for this game from the Miniature Market Thanksgiving sale. They're really nice plastic. I've never heard of this game, though? Do people still play it? Is it any good?

It was made by Rackham, who also made AT-43. The company collapsed around 2010, but had been in decline for a while, I think the player base for the game has been dead for a long while now.

From what I have heard, the pre-painted update of the game was not well received by fans, but I am not sure if it was just the miniatures or also the rules that were disliked.

Its a great game and plays well. The compnay went tit's up mainly about the fact that they were designers and not business people and so kind of 'blew it' when it came to smart decisions.

Still the models are very nice. And if you grab a pdf of the rules and give a go are fun.

Their is a loyal following and people do still play.

I still play both Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok. I have 2,000+ point armies of Wolfen, Scorpion and Griffon, and my buddy has the same amount of Lions and Ram. I started with AT-43 when it first came out years ago, but got into Confrontation back when Fantasy Flight Games had it's huge holiday sales from back when they carried the game. Very, very glad I did.

You will have to kitbash some of the units and/or characters that were not released, but the game plays solid and fun. Either track down the PDF's, or buy the army books and rules for idiotically cheap at Miniaturemarket.

This is the address of a forum for both games that I was a part of and believe is still active, or is at least a good place to delve for ideas and material.

http://at-43.understairs.nl/forum/index.php

It's highly depressing the Confrontation is being remembered as a game of prepainted plastics, but I guess they were trying to actively screw over their own legacy when those decisions were made.

No, it was because they made an attempt to expand their market, as the sales of metal miniatures were stagnant and the game was shedding players. With AT-43 being a relative success, they made the decision to go down that route with Confrontation. This was also an opportunity to streamline the number of armies which had grown too big and entire factions suffered from poor sales and thus support, the same issue GW is now going through with WFB.

The new iteration was a different beast entirely, but I considered it both a necessity and improvement. C4 was a better army game than C3.5 was a skirmish game. In truth, C3.5 was a complete mess that only the most die-hard players managed to follow, and was rather inimical to newbies. That, and it was broken as all hell, balance-wise. C4 fixed both of these issues and provided a very fast-paced, deadly experience.

Were the miniatures worse? Sure. Was the target audience different? Yes, it was. Was the decision right? Apparently not, but as I mentioned, the other route was a dead-end. At least with C4 they had a shot at keeping the company afloat.

The game was fun when i played it, the metal miniatures are gorgeous the quality of the AT-43 pre-painted stuff was pretty good, gonna use them for dust tactics/warfare.

As I recalled, AT-43 could be considered a success in North America. The main problem is Jean, the CEO's poor marketing skills. Rather than developing one faction at a time, he put into production of part of the army and then started on a new fraction. No one was able to fulfill their own list. Besides, it took a long time for the products to arrive. While AT-43 has not firmly established its popularity, Jean started on Confrontation AoR. The pre-painted figures are not bad but no comparison to the metal ones which are designed for pro-painters to do due to its fine details. Again, players could only buy part of each army. He tried to put out army boxes for a cheaper price but with simpler painting schemes. That had a mixed effect. The end result is an epic failure.

I am surprised that no company wants to pick up AT-43, possibly due to the global meltdown around that time. It is very unfortunate because AT-43 is a very good game.

Confrontation can be quite good fun - I tend to play Devourers - Giant WereWolves who also wear full plate armour unlike thier stupid Cousins, they also have 10ft longbows

Played in a local Tourney last year - came mid-table but racked up most kills so I was happy

Agree that pre-paints are not bad but the metal - especially the more unusual stuff was awesome - you can see some of the same style in some other games as the sculptors are working there now.

Like I said, other than some (rare) wonky parts (mostly the way the rules are explained, probably due to bad translation), both AT43 and Confrontation AoR are damn solid rulesets, other than the tendency for the more expensive Incarnates (army champions) in CAoR to be far too overpowered. But all the standard units and lower champions play very well.

As a 20-year veteran of gaming, I found Confrontation to be a very cool fantasy alternative to Warhammer, but with 40K-style unit cohesion rather then stiff ranks like Warhammer. Griffons are very Empire-feeling, with handguns and cannons beside horses and greatsword models. You can actually fill lots of the holes in the printed armies with other companies' metal and plastic models. For instance, the centaurs of the ram (undead) are easily made with GW plastic skeletal horses and skeleton or Chaos Warrior upper bodies.

AT-43 is an awesome game, with some really evocative fluff (Therians are actually the "real" humans, and the game takes place in another galaxy 100,000 years in the future), that was killed, like many games, by the capabilities of the owning company.

Unfortunately there is lots of bad press about Confrontation AoR for newbies to see because lots of the veterans of previous Confrontations that loved the metal models blew a friggin fuse when the change to Pre-paints happened, even though lots of the armies that did not get made before Rackham went under can only be played with those metals! they used to swarm the old forums trying to get new players to boycott Confrontation AoR. It was-surprisingly- even more vehement than when 40K switched from 2nd edition to 3rd edition, which shocked me.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Unfortunately there is lots of bad press about Confrontation AoR for newbies to see because lots of the veterans of previous Confrontations that loved the metal models blew a friggin fuse when the change to Pre-paints happened, even though lots of the armies that did not get made before Rackham went under can only be played with those metals! they used to swarm the old forums trying to get new players to boycott Confrontation AoR. It was-surprisingly- even more vehement than when 40K switched from 2nd edition to 3rd edition, which shocked me.

Yeah... great days. Actually, what I remember about those days on the Rackham forum were the warnings issued by at least 90% of the player base that very few people would bother with a range of prepaints, and Rackham going ahead regardless after issuing a statement that all their research (which turned out to be an informal Q&A at a single French tournament) said the market was there. Well, it wasn't.

Also, wasn't there supposed to be a new version out... last year? As I recall, Cyanide own the IP (for those Aarklash PC games), and CMoN have a licence to make a game. Not that anyone would be able to agree just how it should come back.

The mini's looked great, and I can see the reasoning behind pre-painted plastics. I've been slowly collecting the Acheron Undead mini's.

The PPP Confrontation is not a bad game, and the miniatures were nice. Moving Confrontation to plastic was a reasonable idea as the main carry for the company was going to be AT-43, which had a lot of promise.

The real problem was that established Confrontation customers were used to a skirmish game of high quality metal miniatures, and instead got a messed combat medium quality plastic miniatures game. This was not what they wanted, not that the game itself was bad.

However that was not what killed Rackham. What killed Rackham was outsourcing all their production to China. The company was nominally French, but as it outsourced EVERYTHING to China, it was up to the factory in China when Rackham got its supply. The factory was only interested in one thing, making the minis and getting paid, so they were happy. Customers and Rackham were less happy when half of the units were out of stock for months at a time, and the rest were delayed until the manufacturers felt like making them. Half the factions for AT-43 were thus unplayable because half the unuit attahments and key items you simply could not get, some things you could get loads of, which meant in reality Rackham had a lot of toxic stock.
Sure the factory could technically print out massive numbers of AT-43 and Confrontation stock quickly, but it was an outsourcing factory, so it had other contracts also. Probably Disney stuff or Pikachus or some such. Whatever it was it was bigger than Rackham and had priority time.
On paper the business decision was sound, Rackham could have shipped and sold AT-43 big time, and have it become one of the big names in the gaming community, but distribution killed it.

Catalyst Gaming labs fared the same when their 25th Anniversary boxset for Battletech became an actual 29th anniversary boxset. Fortunately Battletech doesn't rely on that supply but on Iron Wind Metals and its own separate publications, if it did to the extent as Rackham it would have folded also.

Bottom line, outsource to China, you might get what looks like a good dal with a factory that can manufacture what you want quickly and in vast quantities for little money, but unless you are a big player, or know exactly what you are doing you are their bitch.

But surely the outsourcing was a direct consequence of the decision to go prepainted? The metal figures would have been made locally, I'd assume.

 Riquende wrote:
But surely the outsourcing was a direct consequence of the decision to go prepainted? The metal figures would have been made locally, I'd assume.

Yes. The decision to go prepainted was not a bad one, it was mishandled very badly.

Rackham did after all get masses of stock at the low price it negotiated for, but only on certain lines. With better communications and a presense in China they could have made sure they got the supply prioritised from the source. They didnt. The factory doesnt care, they still get paid for the units they produce whether they are all of one type or the correct mix for sale.

For all its active fanbois Confrontation the old skirmish game was a sideshow, Rackham saw their chance to compete with GW and PP, and their vector was AT-43. It could have worked also. The background was appealing the rules were mostly ok and they were simple, and the miniatures were great.

The old Confrontation players who abandoned Rackham thought they were winning, and their protest was causing the company harm. They wre deluded frankly their custom was relevant, but not critical, and most would have returned to the hobby, especially the home French market. Especially as you could buy card decks to include the old miniatures in the new game and the new game held promise.

When Rackham moved into PPP they became a much bigger player, able to shift out masses of stock in a flash product rather than small blisters of metal product. They were also just about the only sizable company doing so, so they had a fresh market. When they sold unmainted miniatures in blisters they competed with GW and other players, and were always behind.

They played high stakes, and crashed. Under better savvier hands they could have outstripped Privateer Press and be firmly in the #2 spot for miniatures gaming by now. That isnt to say that AT-43 was that good a game, it isnt, but the basic strategy was very sound indeed.
After all look how X-Wing has taken off.

 Orlanth wrote:

The old Confrontation players who abandoned Rackham thought they were winning, and their protest was causing the company harm. They wre deluded frankly their custom was relevant, but not critical, and most would have returned to the hobby, especially the home French market. Especially as you could buy card decks to include the old miniatures in the new game and the new game held promise.

It might have held promise to some, but it was an objectively different game to Confrontation 2/3/3.5. I recall being singularly unimpressed by it, by just how much it lacked the depth and feel of the older game. Nobody thought they were 'winning' by not playing the new game, it just wasn't the same thing. Not spending money on something that has changed isn't necessarily spite, it can also be because you're not interested in the new product.

If Fantasy Flight scapped their current X wing rules, and made a 2nd edition where you just flew the models round by hand making 'pew pew' noises, would you blame the players if they just dropped the game overnight, or chose to keep playing the earlier edition? Because as dumbed down as Age of Ragnarok seemed to be, this was essentially asking the players to do the same thing.

It's possible that if Rackham had tried to change either the models or rules they could have gotten away with it, with built up good will letting them ride out the transition, and then making the other change a little later. But with both collectors and gamers being 'betrayed' at once, there wasn't anyone left to give a crap about them, and down they went.

I do wonder though, what might have happened if they'd stayed the course. It's taken Corvus Belli years to get Infinity (arguably the Confrontation 2/3 of Sci Fi) to a point where they can be described as a major player - perhap's Rackham's biggest mistake was peaking 6-7 years ahead of their time?

It's obviously you are hugely biased, even after all these years, but at least in the States, it always seemed to me that many more people played CAoR than any of the previous editions of Confrontation. Before I started with even AT-43, I had plenty of people tell me that the early Confrontation games just weren't worth the trouble unless you just wanted to paint the figures- which had their own set of problems, most of which stemmed from them being probably the most brittle pewter on the market even to date.

And Confrontation was not a "dumb" game, unless you figure the editions of 40K from that period "dumb", as I compare it and AT43 to them in terms of complexity and playability, after playing both companies' games pretty extensively.

Rakham was just guilty of not being close to what they had to be to compete on a GW or PP level of the wargaming market when it came to marketing. Not only were they not able to keep solid stocks of the prepaints for either game, thus killing all their armies, they also (especially in the latter days of AT43) suddenly and inexplicably showed themselves completely incapable of game design of any sort any more, when they started out great!

For instance, the COG's, one of the last two armies for AT43, are nearly universally considered ungodly overpowered. A shooty army with extremely high accuracy, rate of fire, AND extensive rerolls, even on their most run-of-the-mill troops was worse than anything GW ever put, ever. Or the same army replicating the "bring in completely free vehicles each turn" ability of the Therians, without the balancing drawbacks that were put on the Therians with official Errata after that ability was proven extremely overpowered for them. Or the ONI having special (ranged!) weapons that allowed them to turn huge amounts of the casualties they inflicted into absolutely free troops that were now immediately fighting for them? Ugh.

Later Confrontation Incarnates did the same thing, being able to kill huge swathes of the opposing army with little effort. It was like Rackham started big, had some really awesome ideas about how to break into the army-scale wargame market, and then after those took off, they turned into a completely different company that seemed to have no idea what the earlier group succeeded at.

But as long as a player can be happy with the armies that came out early for either game (AT43: Red Blok, UNA, Tharians, Karmans) or (Confrontation: ignore all the OP incarnates)they can be as fun as any game out there.I know I own and play multiple sci-fi games, but Confrontation AoR is the only medieval fantasy game I play.

It's obviously you are hugely biased, even after all these years,

It's easy to throw out accusations of 'obvious bias'. It's apparent in here that a couple of people are 'obviously biased' against C3 players for not rolling up their sleeves and mucking in with the task of saving Rackham so they could keep playing their beloved AT-43 and AoR. Maybe what we're dealing with isn't actually bias at all, but just conflicting personal preference.

it always seemed to me that many more people played CAoR than any of the previous editions of Confrontation.

Throwing anecdotal evidence out there in the hope that some of sticks is also easy to do, and of similar worth. See:

I never saw it played, or any figures purchased in the FLGS. I think the owner sent his stuff back after a couple of months (including the promo Abel that he's tried to shift for free at one point) and it was never spoken of again. I also remember him havin gsom eAT-43 stock for a while, but I don't remember its fate. There was one guy who was keen, but I don't think he bought it as he couldn't get anyone else to show the slightest interest.

Regardless of your lovely stories, and however many more people you saw playing it, it didn't seem to be enough to actually save the company.

And Confrontation was not a "dumb" game, unless you figure the editions of 40K from that period "dumb", as I compare it and AT43 to them in terms of complexity and playability, after playing both companies' games pretty extensively.

I do believe it to be reduced in depth and complexity in comparison to previous Confrontation versions. I was not playing 40K at the time so cannot compare (nor do I particularly care). I did not play AT-43 (I did read through the rules once and it didn't appeal).

But all of that is a side issue. The main issue is that it was a different game, not simply an evolution of the previous one, and I don't feel that blame can be placed at the door of C3 players for not buying into it.

Look, I'd be up for a decent conversation about the fate of Rackham, the evolution of the company's growth and the stages of its collapse. It's still an interesting topic to me, and I enjoy talking about games I liked.

I'm not, however interested in a moanfest and attempted slanging match from later PPP-era players than the earlier fans didn't stick around to keep the company afloat for no good reason other than they want to keep playing AT-43. It's 'obviously' still a raw nerve for some people, maybe time to get over it now guys?

Okay guys, I think that about does it. I've got what I need.

Riquende, I just hate the fact that a group cannot look for positive talk about Confrontation AoR even after all the years since Rackham "died", without a bitter player of the previous Confrontations coming around and giving them hell for playing such a "sub-par" game that killed their favorite game. It's like a private Godwin's Law for this game. I don't particularly want to blame you for being one of those people, but you have to respect what for me is something that is a sore spot after years and years of the same thing happening like clockwork. I've never read a thread where it didn't happen. It's nothing but negativity that never ads positively to topics about what is a completely different game.

I know that while it may be a huge deviation from the previous editions of Confrontation, but I would quite probably play the game even if it were only with non-prepainted minis. I bought several of the pewter minis of Incarnates to paint that were not available in pre-paint (and a sweet worg for my wolfen) for playing in my personal games.

Old-era players not being willing to change over to a new system did not make any dent in what Rackham did to themselves. I know because it was depressing being what I consider to be a very involved member of the old AT-43 and AoR Rackham forums for the years that those two games were alive, and having to watch the company sputter and die even while I got to talk to lots of other people who loved both of the pre-paint games.

No one should be in any doubt about the amount of terrible business decisions Rackham made. But as far as I could tell at the time, in the end, the company's downfall was not (directly) self inflicted.
By all accounts the army boxes for both games sold like hot cakes, and that is why they were planning on expanding the number of army boxes available. There were two planned for Therians, UNA and Karmans for sure, and I've no doubt they would have ended up with every of the games-armies-factions having a box (Union, Mind, Centcom etc)

In the end, the company which owned them (as a result of the bankruptcy protection) went to the wall, and took Rackham with them.

R-E Company is in liquidation since last tuesday, due to the liquidation of her only owner since Dec. 2009, Global Technologies. We will try and keep you informed of the following of the universes and games created by the Studio.
It has been a tremendous pleasure to make this wonderful games for you.
Good game!

On the other hand, having been privy to the planned AT43 V2 rules, I'm not sure many of the existing players would have been happy to carry on. They were planning on pulling a Confrontation on AT43, as it were!

All true. I never was very sure why the heck they were thinking about releasing an AT43 2.0 ruleset, when it worked perfectly fine with the official errata.

At least the ability to get a lot of the unit boxes from MiniatureMarket makes Confrontation AoR still a perfectly playable game, as long as players are fine with converting proxies for the units that were never released for the existing armies. Which is actually pretty easy give the wide range of models available nowadays.

-Scorpions: The Scorpio (ballista) can easily be proxied with the Legion or Everblight catapult from Hordes, the Spawning Vessel from the same army makes a great Dirz Cloning Tank. Not sure about the Nefarious Prime, although there is an official pewter model if you can find it.

-Griffon: there are tons of awesome Griffons w/ riders out there.

-Wolfen: The Worg had two official models that can work for the same profile, otherwise the Hordes Warpwolf works awesome (and is customizable so no "clones" if you want more than one)

-Lion: Ballistas can be made from High Elf Bolt Throwers, that's where mine is from. Swordsmen/Royal Guard can be hard, though there are official models that can be tracked down.

-Ram: If you can find the army box for the basic troops within, that is the hardest part. Apart form that, lots of good Ghoul models out there, Cerberus can be made "good enough" with Chaos Hounds, and Centaurs can be converted Chaos Knights with torsos in the place of the horsehead, or just directly proxied as more conventional "death knights on horseback" with the Black Knights from Warhammer Vampire Counts, though that way loses the cool undead centaur theme.

Lots of the Incarnates had official metal models, or converted from all the fantasy models out there (my Sered for the Griffons is from Reaper's Warlord line).

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Riquende, I just hate the fact that a group cannot look for positive talk about Confrontation AoR even after all the years since Rackham "died", without a bitter player of the previous Confrontations coming around and giving them hell for playing such a "sub-par" game that killed their favorite game.

To be fair, you can hardly blame them with how far out of their way Rackham went to alienate the old customer base, it's the old business truism of a happy customer telling a person or two about the experience while they'll tell 6 people of a bad experience. Confrontation in 2004/2005 was immensely popular and for good reason. Locally it was more popular than 40k and WHFB for about a year and a half, at a time and in an area where any game (even WHFB) rarely outplayed 40k for more than a month before players lost interest. It was a game that sold mostly on on the quality of the miniatures, many of the sales at my FLGS were to people that just wanted to paint or use them for RPGs. Once you slogged your way through the poorly translated rulebook, the actual game was quite good and still remains one of my absolute favorites. I still have quite a few warbands although my group flat-out refuses to play it out of spite. That goes well beyond the standard internet hyperbole for "you like something I don't like", these were die-hard fans of the game and personal friends that refuse to play a game where all of the rules and miniatures and terrain would be provided, not even as a personal favor to me so many years later. That's a special level of vitriol Rackham garnered. Even Wyrd, with their bungled kickstarter and edition change doesn't bring such hatred with it. I'd even say it surpasses the hatred that D&D 4E generates

It's a shame Rackham handled the game as they did, if they had simply given the older figures and rules a modicum of support instead of sweeping them aside completely then they would not have burned so many people. I have no dislike of the PPPs, indeed I own quite a lot of them (mostly bought cheaply for use on other projects) and remade my con3.0 wolfen completely out of the PPPs as I feel those are actually better than much of the metals for the range. The PPP game itself I have no particular like or hatred of, though I have very little interest in it. I never played Rag'Narok either, even though I had enough Wolfen to do so, I just wasn't interested in that scale for the game then or now. I think the rules work fine for what they are, but it was a VERY different game from what came before and should have been treated like a different game and not a reboot of the same game

In the end, if you picked up a playable amount for cheap, play it. It's a fine game, especially if you and your group has none of the baggage from the old editions

There's no support for it here. It seems unlikely that I'll find any support for it nearby, either.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
It's obviously you are hugely biased, even after all these years, but at least in the States, it always seemed to me that many more people played CAoR than any of the previous editions of Confrontation.

From my point of view that is absolutely true. I know about three or four dudes who bought the metal figures but never played. When it went to plastics I know a half dozen people who bought them and we played many games. It was a fun ruleset.
AT-43 was, of course, infinitely superior to 40k and any other mass market game system at the time.

Confrontation 3.5, however, was a giant mess and after reading the rules I had zero desire to ever play it. Thankfully I gave CAoR a chance due to it being like AT-43 and had dozens of fun games with the ruleset. Lion and Ram are still the best prepainted plastics on the market and straight up some of the best plastic sculpts ever made.

I liked Confrontation 2 , 3 and 3.5. I even played a game of Rag'Narok (you know, that game that Confrontation was supposed to be the "stopgap" for, that ended up being about five years late. ). The plastic mass-battle game had the possibility to be really good, but they flubbed it.

One thing that's not been mentioned is that the choice of minis for the starter set was awful. With AT-43, you had different units so the two sides played differently and had their own character. In C: AotR, both sides needed the same scores to hit each other, and the same scores to wound each other; it was all a bit boring.

I've still got my stuff, and I'm still missing the Griffin Cavalry box set (a casualty of the manufacturing issues Orlanth described), although I managed to get the command. I doubt they'll ever see daylight again, though. I'd quite like to play Hybrid some time, but I really can't face that terrible mess of a rulebook again.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
C: AotR, both sides needed the same scores to hit each other, and the same scores to wound each other; it was all a bit boring.

Oh god, this is depressingly accurate. I think they were the other way round (one needed 4's then 3's, the other needed 3's then 4's), but yeah, the starter box was a travesty. Needed a cannon and a worg in there.

The rules in a greater sense, to me at least, were not much better though. The only mechanic they seemed to want to implement for special rules was "read the UTR one column left or right". And that got boring super quick, when it's repeated across every unit in all 5 armies. And the extremely limited options for paring incarnates to units made for repetitive army building.

If the CAOR rules had been closer to the previewed Ragnarok 2 rules, I think it would have been a better game and I also think they might have kept a few more "metal conf" players. AT43 was based on Rag2, but stripped back and altered for ranged combat. When they then took that system, and tried to re-apply it to a close combat game, it no longer worked. They needed to go back a step first.

Almost universally excellent models though (metal and plastic and resin. My Tarascus, Belial, Hydra, Dirz wrym and resin Molochs will never be painted to a fitting standard!)