Sqorgar wrote:


Sure, there were one or two posters who were saying, "Without new players, our game will eventually die", but generally speaking, the response was, "why should I change how I play just to let some newbies win? I had to learn the hard way, so should they. After they lose their 30th tournment-style match in a row, they'll have gained valuable experience needed to play the game at a somewhat competent level." They literally shouted down someone suggesting that they play smaller point games and play inefficient lists to give new players a chance to actually play the game instead of being curb stomped in the second round.

 Togusa wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
I think the main "event" you may be missing is:

- Towards the end of 2nd edition certain lists were getting very broken, and some players (and even prominent podcasts) questioned balance and even switched entirely to other systems such as Guild Ball or Malifaux

- PP put out 3rd edition with little build-up or testing to address this, while claiming to have been working on it for 3 years. But glaring problems like the basic throw rules not working, or an entire faction being unplayable (Skorne) led to people doubting this.

- PP near simultaneously removed their Press Ganger program for organized play (citing legal issues with Magic judges) and removed their faction forums from their website. Effectively, the two most common ways to organize / talk about their games disappeared together.

I think PP could have overcome any one of the above, but taken together it very effectively killed the game in many local areas, mine included, while reducing its structure for bringing in new players. So, almost like GW's last Kirby-decision in killing WHFB, but without the huge investment and effort GW was prepared to put into rebuilding its player base.

As others have said, this happened while GW has really turned around and been doing basically what their fans are asking for. PP has been doing the opposite, and there are just too many good options to play instead...

I'm curious about the Magic part, but first, you do mean MTG by WoTC right? If so, did this have something to do with all the issues relating to allegations of pedophilia and other sex crimes in their judge program, or was this something else entirely?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Overly competitive is one thing. Poor sports are another.

I’ve absolutely no problem with not only getting my head kicked, but my teeth knocked out during a game, if my opponent is fun to play, and offers tips and pointers after a proper beatdown. Or explains (once in position) why what they just did worked so well.

And that ain’t the game that needs to do that, but the player base. 40k, AoS, 9th Age, Warmahordes, X-Wing, Infinity, Malifaux. All of them. They need a good part of the community to be welcoming to newcomers, and help get them up to speed. And people feel the game itself encourages NooB Stomping, they’re wrong.

Even the infamous Page 5. Its ‘play like you gotta pair’. Not ‘be a total Richard all the time, every time’.

 Necros wrote:
they seem to have a bunch of cool new steady releases, so they must still be doing well enough?

 LunarSol wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
One factor that I've seen mentioned but not really explored is the war with online discounts they embarked upon shortly before Mk. 3 was released. While they said it was to level the playing field for B&M stores, they then moved a bunch of their SKUs to special orders and did away with the Press Ganger program which would seem to be fairly anti-B&M moves. So in essence it seemed they managed to anger both online and B&M partners in the span of a couple months which is...generally a dumb idea for any supplier in any industry. That could have factored into some stores deciding they no longer wanted to bother carrying the lines which in turn does torpedo marginal communities quite effectively. As some have said, a perfect storm of ill-advised decisions by PP.

In some ways, Warmachine is a good example of the problems with the online discount model. A big part of its rise was definitely the price, but that price wasn't really that much lower without considering the online discounts. The problem with this though, is the game was really only thriving through the sales of a couple major outlets. At a local level, a lot of stores were pretty frustrated with the game. They stocked it because people played, but nobody actually bought the stock. You had the enthusiasts buying in heavily, and then bringing those heavy investments in to places that didn't see a dime of it and were mostly taking a loss on what they kept in stock to support this popular thing that filled their shop. Battleboxes sitting on shelves got replaced with products people bought off the shelves and with that, there were definitely fewer new players. The discount limits were pretty necessary, but they kind of exposed the truth that the game really wasn't any cheaper than 40k and rather than people buying locally at prices more in line with what they could get online, a lot of people just stopped buying.

I'm not exactly sure how you go about fixing this, but I think Warmachine is probably the game that was most affected by the online discount bubble, and has certainly suffered after it popped.

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

Unless you were Cryx. Then you got stomped because Cryx could just raise their guys back up.

I loved PP fluff until the end of MK 1. Between Hailey smacking the crap out of Skarre in Skarre's own territory, and the Butcher somehow not dying when wounded and surrounded by a unit of sword knights, well, I just gave up caring about the dramatic tension in the stories. It seemed clear that the non-Cryx characters would always get away, while Cryx's characters would be killed and resurrected for next week's cartoon, oops, sorry I meant story.

The Butcher story arc was good, just poorly executed (mainly as we'd been conditioned to know characters survive. My own personal headcanon is WMH, despite being written in the present tense is a story being retold by its survivors). The guy was gone for quite a significant amount of time in in universe time and was presumed dead by everyone. This a good are they/aren't they narrative arc that a lot of other fantasy works do better (i.e. GoT) but wasn't pulled off as well as it could have been IMO.

Thing is, it's been retconned into his background now and how he's represented on the tabletop. He has the most damage boxes of any human sized caster with 20 and was given Tough in Mk3 to also represent this. Dude is a survivor.

Plus there are a few non-Cryx characters that have died and only come back due to miraculous circumstances. Off the top of my head Vlad killed Harbinger simply to prevent Gaspy getting his hands on her (yes, Harbinger can come back, but Vlad didn't know that). Vlad himself got killed (interesting side note, this was a nice "fulfilling of the prophecy" moment as Vlad's death coincided with the coming of Everblight) only to be resurrected by The Old Witch.

 Mangod wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
It also seemed to be that all the characters used to end up in fights and never quite manage to do anything to each other - it was very Saturday morning serial.

Unless you were Cryx. Then you got stomped because Cryx could just raise their guys back up.

I loved PP fluff until the end of MK 1. Between Hailey smacking the crap out of Skarre in Skarre's own territory, and the Butcher somehow not dying when wounded and surrounded by a unit of sword knights, well, I just gave up caring about the dramatic tension in the stories. It seemed clear that the non-Cryx characters would always get away, while Cryx's characters would be killed and resurrected for next week's cartoon, oops, sorry I meant story.

The Butcher story arc was good, just poorly executed (mainly as we'd been conditioned to know characters survive. My own personal headcanon is WMH, despite being written in the present tense is a story being retold by its survivors). The guy was gone for quite a significant amount of time in in universe time and was presumed dead by everyone. This a good are they/aren't they narrative arc that a lot of other fantasy works do better (i.e. GoT) but wasn't pulled off as well as it could have been IMO.

Thing is, it's been retconned into his background now and how he's represented on the tabletop. He has the most damage boxes of any human sized caster with 20 and was given Tough in Mk3 to also represent this. Dude is a survivor.

Plus there are a few non-Cryx characters that have died and only come back due to miraculous circumstances. Off the top of my head Vlad killed Harbinger simply to prevent Gaspy getting his hands on her (yes, Harbinger can come back, but Vlad didn't know that). Vlad himself got killed (interesting side note, this was a nice "fulfilling of the prophecy" moment as Vlad's death coincided with the coming of Everblight) only to be resurrected by The Old Witch.

I still stand by the claim that PP's fluff is a cartoon. Even having Vlad and the Harby come back vaporizes all of the emotional impact and weight of their deaths. It is like Duke in the GI JOE cartoon movie miraculously surviving Serpentor's snake to the chest. It robs the supposed sacrifice and makes the death meaningless if only a few pages later some hokey hand waving is done and the character pops back up.

I know why PP did this (and Hasbro did the GI JOE thing) but it doesn't make the story any less boring.

Another example: The battle of the Thornwood was fething epic! Literally, it is what introduced epic Casters to the game, with all of the factions assembling in one location to have a massive throw down. And the only casualty was Denegrha? Fething laaaaaame. Oh, I guess Captain Darius got his eye poked out by Skarre. Why she didn't slit his throat is beyond me, but you know, cartoon so can't have Captain Porta-Potty die since he is a good guy.

Well, they did kill Severius in one of the novels (Hexeris shoved that glaive he's got into the Hierarch's chest, he was administered last rites by Durant, buried in Imer), but that's one guy among... quite a few more.

Deadnight wrote:

Now, 'bonus time' - we need to clear the warehouse, here's a mystery box at 75% off. That same part of my brain is saying 'fire-sale'....

 Mangod wrote:

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

Now, 'bonus time' - we need to clear the warehouse, here's a mystery box at 75% off. That same part of my brain is saying 'fire-sale'....

It does have a Palladium feel to it, doesn't it?

It's late, I'm tired, quick TLDR on Palladium and what they did, please?

 silent25 wrote:


The only show I know that they would loose a lot of money on was their booth as San Diego Comic Con. They had a decent size booth dead center of the vendor hall among all the big media booths. People who worked at PP told me it was pure advertising and was for Matt Wilson to try to push the various PP IP on Hollywood by making it look like they were big players in the industry. It's been several years since I've been to SDCC, so don't if they still do the show and my contacts at PP are no longer with the company.

 AduroT wrote:
That was a popular theory but I don’t believe it was ever confirmed. PP basically just went radio silent on MonPoc for awhile and wouldn’t talk about it at all.

Fede Alvarez, who directed the remake of 'Evil Dead,' is attached to co-write and helm the adaptation of the board game. Warner Bros has won the heated bidding war for the adaptation of Monsterpocalypse, the cult board game, with Fede Alvarez, helmer of the Evil Dead remake, attached to co-write and direct.

The package for the project hit the town last week and quickly generated interest and bids from studios, including DreamWorks and Sony on top of Warners. The bidding escalated quickly, hitting at least the mid-six figures against seven figures for just the rights and writing alone. Warners is now in negotiations for the package.

Monsterpocalypse is a board game from Privateer Press and created by Matt Wilson that pits humans in robot suits against monsters. An adaptation was previously attempted around 2010 with a package that included Tim Burton as director and John August as screenwriter. It stalled in development after Crimson Peak filmmaker Guillermo del Toro made a competing humans-in-robot-suits-against-monsters, 2013’s Pacific Rim.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that the new package has a take that is substantially different from that of the previous iteration, as well as Rim's, although the core concept — humans versus monsters — remains.

Alvarez will write the screenplay with his writing partner Rodo Sayagues.

Alvarez demonstrated a passion for the material with his regular works in the horror and robot subgenres. He made his breakthrough debut with the popular short Panic Attack!, which featured giant robots attacking the South American city of Montevideo, which led to his directing 2013’s remake of Evil Dead. His latest, Don’t Breathe, is a horror movie that Screen Gems will release Aug. 26.

Alvarez is repped by WME, Anonymous Content and Jackoway Tyerman. Wilson is repped by Stone Genow and Heitmann Entertainment.