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I think you guys get a bit too hung up on the analogy of the movie theatre. It was used as an example from another industry to illustrate how (increasingly) higher production/up-front costs drive a business-model (increasingly) focussed on more initial/hyped sales over a shorter periord (rather than, as many people seem to assume, more expansive plastic moulds need to ameliorate themselves through longer runs).

If the movie analogy is a bridge to far for you, look at other toy companies. Lego increasingly moves to "available for a limited time only", often licenced sets of products with a specific theme that will be gone again after a year at most. Mattel no longer stocks a fixed range of Barbies or Matchbox toy cars like they used to. They run yearly editions and special collections and keep the influx of "new" to drive sales. Computer games, again an imperfect analogy, clearly illustrate how small games can be profitable over long runs but "big-up-front-cost/high-quality" productions succeed or fail on a blockbuster-style marketing in the initial sale phase.

The point is not whether film studios earn money on DvDs five years old or not. The point is that, the "bigger" the movie, the "more reliant" it is on a quick recouping on investment. The small(cheap) arthouse movie can work on a long-term model, just like the small(er) mini-companies can calculate the return of their investmets over longer periods. But the bigger(higher quality, computer mini-design, full-colour book, etc..) company GW increasingly relies on "blockbuster-style"-sales as a result of the high up-front costs. And the "better" (more expensive up-front) their products become, the more they will have to rely on blockbuster-style sales and the less they will be able to serve the somewhat misplaced sense of entitlement of many-a-hobbiest that "I bought X 5 years ago, I expect it to be just as viable and supported today as it was on the day I bought it". Sorry. It's not gonna happen. And not because GW is "stupid" or "evil", but because of simple economics.

You seem to discard the nature of the product... a WFB army usually takes years to be fully painted and ready to hit the table... a movie takes a couple hours to consume, a video game 1 month, a toy has no life apart the use you give it... but a game that demands you to buy hundred of miniatures that need to be fully painted for some years you better expect them to NOT be discontinued... And this is were the economics need to be adapted to the biz model and not the other way around... Well GW can go that route but then don't expect people to follow... If the armies GW releases were to be discontinued after a few months I doubt anyone in their right mind would invest in them.


In the case of this game yeah I can imagine it to be discontinued like spacehulk and all other non core GW games... but then again its a factor to put on the table every time GW releases one of those... So no relevant support after release or expansions to boost interest and reboot the game are very important factors to some of the potential clients.

Me? Well I got spacehulk... and would get warhammer quest or a cool skirmish game even if discontinued... this one, no chance, it looks bad theres no reviews good or bad and when one review hits the net its safe to say it discontinued... so I have my reasons to not jump in on this, being the silly looks the most important one.

NAVARRO wrote:
Me? Well I got spacehulk... and would get warhammer quest or a cool skirmish game even if discontinued... this one, no chance, it looks bad theres no reviews good or bad and when one review hits the net its safe to say it discontinued... so I have my reasons to not jump in on this, being the silly looks the most important one.

That is exactly what this is. A cool naval skirmish game. Two sides. Each ship/character is unique. A setting for them to fight in which includes terrain and scenarios... It is a skirmish game. But with boats.

NAVARRO wrote:You seem to discard the nature of the product... a WFB army usually takes years to be fully painted and ready to hit the table...

Honestly, I would be surprised if even 10% of all minis sold by GW get a proper paintjob eventually. Enough just stack the shelves, land under the christmas-tree only to be never fully painted/assembled, circulate eBay or fill the evergrowing grey tides of bit-boxes that far outsize any painted army in the house of almost all GW hobbyists I have ever met. No to mention the legions of Space Marine mini's that end up in the box of all those young boys who stay in the hobby for about 2 months max.

If GW would get paid only the moment stuff is fully painted, you'd have a point. As it is, actually painting stuff isn't a prerequisite and not a huge factor in the calculation.

Did you get the file, notprop? And if so, what did you think?

I don't think I can access it at work, either, but I can send it when I'm home if you still haven't gotten access to it.

Apologies to back track on this but

Smashing the enemy ships to bits, maybe?

I know, I know... fantasy... suspension of disbelief etc
But when I first saw that hammer I tend not to think "What a cool way to smash ships."
Rather how pointless, cumbersome and let's make a vessel incapable of being fast enough and manouverable enough to get in position to use it.

It is nought but a water slapping device

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Apologies to back track on this but

Smashing the enemy ships to bits, maybe?

I know, I know... fantasy... suspension of disbelief etc
But when I first saw that hammer I tend not to think "What a cool way to smash ships."
Rather how pointless, cumbersome and let's make a vessel incapable of being fast enough and manouverable enough to get in position to use it.

It is nought but a water slapping device

Exactly. Not like any real naval ships ever had something designed to smash down onto an opposing ship and allow boarders to cross like this seems to be able to do.

Oh wait:



Obvioulsy GW added quite a bit of fantasy element to it, and focused on the smash though the text does also mention boarders then using it to cross, but there will have been some historical precedent.

Oh yes that is so much like a steam powerd hammer for smashing a ship to bits with no provision for boarding

oh wait...

RiTides wrote:Did you get the file, notprop? And if so, what did you think?

I don't think I can access it at work, either, but I can send it when I'm home if you still haven't gotten access to it.

Yeah got it now thanks mate.

I know a man who knows a bloke who is friends with a feller who has a computer slightly better than the crap I have for work that emailed it in response to my hissyfit.

As to the contents, allot of nice pictures, what we've seen but closer in. But i think the only biggie for me was the number of copies produced. I wonder how 65k compares to the Spulk production run?

Of course the WD section was also interesting, I wonder why we have't seen one of these releases before?

Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:Oh yes that is so much like a steam powerd hammer for smashing a ship to bits with no provision for boarding

oh wait...

It does seem to allow boarding:

the victim will get off lightly and escape serious damage, but with a decent D6 roll this attack can break a warship in half - and that's before whole armies of heavily-armed cutthroats swarm across to finish the job.

And the steam power is to winch it back up, it falls via gravity. Kind of like the picture I posted.

Again, I DID state GW added a fantasy element. But again, there is some historical precedent for that concept.

I have the new White Dwarf, it is full of Dread Fleet goodness and some surprise tool releases, including liquid greenstuff and special resin tools.

You obviously completely missed the tongue in cheek nature of what acknowledged as a subjective opinion.

Not seeing the boarding bridge myself
But still stand by the fact that such apparatus and weight of machinery makes the whole thing unworkable.

Tinker Bell makes a pirate ship fly with fairy dust. Will buy that for a jolly prank
Steampunk dreanoughts cruise through the skies using handwavium/ Will buy that for the cool factor
Mechanical squid in a fantasy world is pushing it

Steampowered hammers and classical physics on sailships are unworkable.

I think it is crap and that is fine, you think it is cool and that is fine
end of story..

Zweischneid, you make an interesting comparison, but I think it is not quite right.

Where it falls down is that movies, videogames, even lego kits are all relatively solitary or passive activities. Videogames require no where near the learning curve, just to play, that board or tabletop wargames require. Many videogames seem to live forever, even if the game itself is out of date and no longer produced. The limited run lego kits don't require someone else just to build it.

Dreadfleet requires someone else to play against. Unlike hopping in the car to see a movie, or two buddies buying a video game they can play together, for dreadfleet both need to invest time, energy, and resources to learn the game. Unlike videogames or movies, these complex board games (or skirmish wargames) require a lot more time to learn before being playable. That doesn't even start on the painting aspect.

Once the game is sold out, it is going to be very difficult to convince new players to try to learn it. What's the point? It could be viewed, in the future, that the game was so bad it was discontinued, or if they like it, they can never have it for themself. Thus, zero incentive to learn.

So, the problems with blockbuster model for this product are: it does not allow passive or solitary enjoyment, requires relatively large time investment to learn, and requires at least one other person to make that same commitment. This other opponent must be face to face, so unlike mmo/xbox live games, you don't have a worldwide opponent pool.

I understand the comparison to blockbuster releases , but for above reasons I don't think the analogy works for this product.

Please forgive any typos.

CptJake wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:
Me? Well I got spacehulk... and would get warhammer quest or a cool skirmish game even if discontinued... this one, no chance, it looks bad theres no reviews good or bad and when one review hits the net its safe to say it discontinued... so I have my reasons to not jump in on this, being the silly looks the most important one.

That is exactly what this is. A cool naval skirmish game. Two sides. Each ship/character is unique. A setting for them to fight in which includes terrain and scenarios... It is a skirmish game. But with boats.

If its cool game rules wise is yet to be established, but at this time I can say that; its not cool mini wise and unfortunately the looks is about 75% of the deal for me. With so many COOL and FREE skirmish games on the market its hard to get this one just based on the price tag and walking the risk that the game turns out to be gak.
If I liked the minis, the rules would not matter much and neither would the price.

@Zweischneid You may try to discard the very nature of the product with any lateral argumentations like ( most people dont paint, only 10% is painted etc) but all of that does not for moment blur that... These games were designed for you to buy lots of regimental boxes that you have to built and paint in order to participate in official tournaments... So yes the product itself should determine its target and the way its marketed, just because you can do that with lego kits it does not mean you can convert that biz model to warhammer.
Thats why for example you buy a TV and you get guarantee its supported for a couple years and maintained for free ( and tv models get to change 1 or 2 times a year)... Since GW is a different beast for some of the clients the supporting the product factor does bear much importance... Specially if your looking into several years to finish up a army.
If GW squatted, SM, Nids, Orks etc because they were not the flavor of the month believe me they would shut down operations very quickly. Its not realistic to think that the lego or other similar model would be executable with warhammer.

Again for this game its Okish since its what they do... yet many do not like that and would prefer if we had spacehulk orks eat sisters expansion.

New Blog post on GW site - http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=18300011a

Pretty cool stuff.

Zweischneid wrote:Yes, there are differences between GW and a movie studio. But both (increasingly) rely on a short-term, massive sale ("hype") to recoup their costs.

Funny, I had heard that movie studios actually increasingly rely not on big splash releases to recoup their expenses but on sales from the international market, with many international releases taking place weeks or months after the US release (depending on how long translation/subtitling takes). That's why movie theaters all over the world follow the same strategy as GW and peg ticket prices to a decades-old exchange rate equivalent of their domestic price, as opposed to charging what the local market will bear.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

CptJake wrote:Exactly. Not like any real naval ships ever had something designed to smash down onto an opposing ship and allow boarders to cross like this seems to be able to do.

Oh wait:

[snip]http://www.livius.org/a/1/romanempire/corvus.jpg[/snip]

Obvioulsy GW added quite a bit of fantasy element to it,

See when I think of the words, "quite a bit" I must think of a different quantity than you. I think, "Cinnabon rolls have quite a bit of sugar in them." Perhaps to you the Pacific Ocean contains "quite a bit" of water, yes?

My objection to the CRASSUS ASSAULT HAMMERMAN is not that no ship in history ever had a vaguely similar weapon. My complaint is that the CRASSUS ASSAULT HAMMERMAN looks fething stupid.

Zweischneid wrote:I think you guys get a bit too hung up on the analogy of the movie theatre.

Pro-tip: You can't keep arguing a point and then complain that the other side is getting too hung up on that point...

TalonZahn wrote:New Blog post on GW site - http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/blogPost.jsp?aId=18300011a

Pretty cool stuff.

Nice!

Also, when does the white dwarf come out... this weekend? Sorry, I should probably know this by now...

I got mine at my store today.

insaniak wrote:

Zweischneid wrote:I think you guys get a bit too hung up on the analogy of the movie theatre.

Pro-tip: You can't keep arguing a point and then complain that the other side is getting too hung up on that point...

Sure I can, if people don't argue my point in the first place.

I use the movie theatre analogy... which perfectly illustrates how "big" movies stay in theatres shorter and shorter these days (compared to .. say .. five years ago) while production budgets sky-rocket. It also illustrates prefectly who small productions can work over longer times while big productions require a big recoup.

But if people first don't seem able to grasp what an analogy is and second don't argue the point the analogy serves to illustrate, and instead detract from the very point by going into other topics like the DvD market, it seems necessary to remind what the original point was.. irrespective of whether or not an analogy was used or which analogy was used.

The mistake I made was not the analogy. The mistake I made was expecting people here to be able to grasp such an illustration, which was evidently misplaced.

Zweischneid wrote: The mistake I made was expecting people here to be able to grasp such an illustration, which was evidently misplaced.

That's one way to look at it.

Alternatively, you might consider that if people didn't 'grasp your point' the problem may well have been with the delivery, rather than everyone else on the forum being stupid.

insaniak wrote:

Zweischneid wrote: The mistake I made was expecting people here to be able to grasp such an illustration, which was evidently misplaced.

That's one way to look at it.

Alternatively, you might consider that if people didn't 'grasp your point' the problem may well have been with the delivery, rather than everyone else on the forum being stupid.

Not really, because plenty of people did get my point (and even made valid counterarguments, e.g. NAVARRO). So it is possible on this board to have a valid discussion, including one that uses analogies. But the disruption by people who think that they do make some sort of contribution by nitpicking (always imperfect; nature of the beast really) analogies, rather than the actual points (with or without analogies) being discussed, is no less aggravating for it.

To use an (again imperfect) analogy, it's like someone using the expression of apples and oranges to make a point, only to have someone else start a lecture on how apples and oranges might indeed share 99,9% of their genetic constitution and are very much alike. It misses the point same as you did with going into DvD sales, because apples and oranges (or movie theaters and DvDs) wasn't the topic of the discussion. Rather, they served as illustrations for another point.

In my case, the underlying point was the inverse nature relationship of up-front investment to the time period to re-coup the costs; which I argued stands opposed to the often voiced assumption that higher up-front costs (like more expensive plastic moulds) require longer production runs to be profitable (as a result of interest, marketing costs, tied up liquidity, opportunity costs for pushing other products, etc..). One can speak to the contrary of this argument, like NAVARRO for example did, and disagree with me. But nitpicking the (always imperfect, think I said it before and acknowledged it often) analogy I used to illustrate my argument like you adds nothing to the discussion either way and essentially amounts to trolling.

WD spilled some more fluffy info on the captains:

- Roth is out for revenge after Noctilus killed his family. His father, also slain by the evil count, left him three magical items with which he could have his vengeance.
- Noctilus was once Nyklaus von Carstein and used his magic to transport his castle from Sylvania to the Galleon's Graveyard.
- Aranessa Saltspine, who some say is the daughter of Manann, is claimed to be a Norse mutant who cut off her fish tail when she was cast out. Her art certainly makes her look like a mutant, complete with webbed hands and spines all over her body.
- King Amanhotep's tombs were raided by Roth and as an act of vengeance he summoned his undead legions to build him a warship worthy of vengeance.
- The Golden Magus is an eccentric wizard who comes across as a decant fatty, but is really a powerful wizard who has bound many powerful spirits to his will. Two of these are shown on the ship model.
- Captain Vangheist of the Shadewraith is a tale of infamy. The captain slew his wizard master, wanting to keep immortality for himself. And immortality he received at the end of his journey, as both ship and crew have rotten away, leaving only a ghost ship carried aloft by its dead crew, as even the ocean recoils from its touch.
- Red Brokk is angry dwarf who has a bone to pick with the other stuntie. He built a massive Grudgebreaker-class battleship that doubles as an aircraft carrier for a fleet of dirigibles.
- Tordrek Hackhart is the other stunty and master of building submersibles. His rivalry with Red led to his exile and he escaped in his fever-dream fuelled creation the Black Kraken.
- Prince Yrellian of Ulthuan is son of the Phoenix King and has daddy issues. When his younger brother was eaten by a Leech Wyrm he swore he would not return before he could present a body to his father.

Last but not least and certainly very cool: The Skaven rat-lord known as Skretch, Warlord of Clan Skurvy, was once a prosperous piratical mastermind. But his luck ran out when his flagship was swallowed up by an Orb Leviathan, having mistaken its bioluminescent lure of a haul of warpstone. With verminous desperation to survive, the trapped Skaven ate the giant beast from the inside out, but were asphyxiated before they could escape the sea monster's husk. Discovering the drifting cadaver, Count Noctillus cast a mighty Necromantic ritual to raise the beast, but he also brought the skaven back to life, whom built warstone generators to power the cannons and use corpse gases to propel the carcass.

BrookM wrote:- Roth is out for revenge after Noctilus killed his family. His father, also slain by the evil count, left him three magical items with which he could have his vengeance.
- Noctilus was once Nyklaus von Carstein and used his magic to transport his castle from Sylvania to the Galleon's Graveyard.
- Aranessa Saltspine, who some say is the daughter of Manann, is claimed to be a Norse mutant who cut off her fish tail when she was cast out. Her art certainly makes her look like a mutant, complete with webbed hands and spines all over her body.
- King Amanhotep's tombs were raided by Roth and as an act of vengeance he summoned his undead legions to build him a warship worthy of vengeance.
- The Golden Magus is an eccentric wizard who comes across as a decant fatty, but is really a powerful wizard who has bound many powerful spirits to his will. Two of these are shown on the ship model.
- Captain Vangheist of the Shadewraith is a tale of infamy. The captain slew his wizard master, wanting to keep immortality for himself. And immortality he received at the end of his journey, as both ship and crew have rotten away, leaving only a ghost ship carried aloft by its dead crew, as even the ocean recoils from its touch.
- Red Brokk is angry dwarf who has a bone to pick with the other stuntie. He built a massive Grudgebreaker-class battleship that doubles as an aircraft carrier for a fleet of dirigibles.
- Tordrek Hackhart is the other stunty and master of building submersibles. His rivalry with Red led to his exile and he escaped in his fever-dream fuelled creation the Black Kraken.
- Prince Yrellian of Ulthuan is son of the Phoenix King and has daddy issues. When his younger brother was eaten by a Leech Wyrm he swore he would not return before he could present a body to his father.

Last but not least and certainly very cool: The Skaven rat-lord known as Skretch, Warlord of Clan Skurvy, was once a prosperous piratical mastermind. But his luck ran out when his flagship was swallowed up by an Orb Leviathan, having mistaken its bioluminescent lure of a haul of warpstone. With verminous desperation to survive, the trapped Skaven ate the giant beast from the inside out, but were asphyxiated before they could escape the sea monster's husk. Discovering the drifting cadaver, Count Noctillus cast a mighty Necromantic ritual to raise the beast, but he also brought the skaven back to life, whom built warstone generators to power the cannons and use corpse gases to propel the carcass.

You're turning this into a Malifaux plot with the game centering around personalities rather than mass armies. I wonder how much theme this game can pull off?

Sort of reminds me of Battle Beyond The Stars, but fantasy.

'Allo lads. I've been away, so forgive me if this has been asked before but my trawl of this thread has yeilded no answer. So: Does anyone know how the scale of these models compares to Spartan Games' ships?

BrookM wrote:- Aranessa Saltspine, who some say is the daughter of Manann, is claimed to be a Norse mutant who cut off her fish tail when she was cast out. Her art certainly makes her look like a mutant, complete with webbed hands and spines all over her body.

Hmm...

Mermaid pirate captain, yay!
Mermaid pirate captain that cut herself in half, boo!

AlexHolker wrote:

BrookM wrote:- Aranessa Saltspine, who some say is the daughter of Manann, is claimed to be a Norse mutant who cut off her fish tail when she was cast out. Her art certainly makes her look like a mutant, complete with webbed hands and spines all over her body.

Hmm...

Mermaid pirate captain, yay!
Mermaid pirate captain that cut herself in half, boo!

I think it is less "girl with flippers for feet" and more "girl who has two legs and had a fish tail"

Zweischneid wrote: But nitpicking the (always imperfect, think I said it before and acknowledged it often) analogy I used to illustrate my argument like you adds nothing to the discussion either way and essentially amounts to trolling.

It's not trolling to point out that an analogy doesn't match the situation. If you don't want the reasons your analogy doesn't work to be pointed out, I would recommend using a more accurate analogy.

So if you're done complaining that the stupid people don't understand why your imperfect analogy should be accepted as proof of, well, anything really, how about we let the thread get back on topic, hmm?

AlexHolker wrote:

BrookM wrote:- Aranessa Saltspine, who some say is the daughter of Manann, is claimed to be a Norse mutant who cut off her fish tail when she was cast out. Her art certainly makes her look like a mutant, complete with webbed hands and spines all over her body.

Hmm...

Mermaid pirate captain, yay!
Mermaid pirate captain that cut herself in half, boo!

I know right

Thanks for posting the info, BrookM!

@ htj - Kroothawk has a post several pages back saying that the scale matches up, but I'd have to search... there's a pretty big pic in it showing some Spartan Games ships if you want to skim for it, I think.