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Planet of the apes meets space marines!

Please don't attach non wargaming images to Dakka.
reds8n

http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/502316/rackhams-history-how-age-of-ragnarok-came-to-be-an

About 60-70% of the story he got right. Most of the wrong stuff is towards the end.

Let´s just say that Rackham was on its way up again when the investor bought it.

Sadly the last investor that bought Rackham was a company that was itself in financial trouble and needed the money that came with Rackham to hide its troubles. They let the team believe that they could order products and produce stuff but when the invoices came they never payed since the money had already been squandered to hide their own financial trouble. This fraud killed a Rackham that would otherwise have been able to start anew.

Rackham had made some bad business decissions but never that bad that they would have been beyond rescue. As far as I know the case is still investigated and it will take years to unravel the whole thing.

-----Edit-----

Whoops, came back and edited this after re-reading it, I really really should'nt post on DakkaDakka at 4am when I'm in a bad mood.

Sorry all, my bad.

-----Edit-----

 Sidstyler wrote:
Wait, did Rick basically say they weren't going to make (any/many?) female models because they wouldn't sell as well as the male models? Yeah, that'll win people over I'm sure.

What if they're zombies with cat heads? And posed like strippers?

So, Planet of the Apes rip-offs have wide market appeal, but 50+% of the population doesn't appeal to gamers.

How about walking breast-monsters? We can have them fight Woody Allenites with tentacle penises or something to show we're mature patrons of the arts.

I honestly don't care what races are in the game. It could be furries and cybersmurfs and CVzombies and s&m lollipop ladies for all I care. I want a good, generic, sci fi wargame. None exist right now that fills that void. The closest would be Stargrunt and Tomorrow's War, but these have their own share of problems (I do like a point system for pick up games, don't always have the time to create balanced scenarios). I am in this project because I trust Priestley's rules writing abilties, as I'm in love with the last half-dozen rulesets he's written. I already own large forces of Urban War Viridians, Pig Iron troopers, and Copplestone Assault Troopers, all with mixes of Antenociti's Workshop vehicles, etc.

I haven't seen anything where GoA requires you to use their miniatures when playing the game; what's to stop anyone from using pre-existing furry minis or greenstuffing tails onto the plastic wardrones?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Basically I'm thinking (and wishing) GoA is the same thing as Hail Caesar and Black Powder and Warmaster and Bolt Action; well written and highly adaptable rules for any miniatures you want to use for the period that it represents. In this case, sci-fi. Most other time periods are covered by the aforementioned excellent systems.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 scipio.au wrote:
http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/502316/rackhams-history-how-age-of-ragnarok-came-to-be-an

There's so much wrong with that article, but, it's an opinion piece. AT-43 was in development for years. Hell, I've got some of the original beta test cards and such ("White Stars Trooper", etc, from 2004/2005). AT-43 was a huge project for Jean Bey, and was actually making them money. Now, take this with a grain of salt, as this is a "I heard this from someone who talked to someone in the company" kind of things, but the collapse of R-E occurred when they couldn't pay the bills for Wave 1 Confrontation AoR plastics after Wave 2 had shipped; and management made a terrible gamble by releasing most of the AT-43 Cogs first instead of the Oni. Apparently sales of the Oni stuff were through the roof with two production waves selling out almost immediately, but it wasn't enough to keep R-E afloat; they couldn't afford to pay to have another Oni production run made of the Wave 1 figures. Red Blok and UNA were constant revenue streams; many of the models were unavailable shortly after launching them and they had problems keeping up with demand for them throughout 2007-2008.

Now all the AT-43 steel molds are slowly rusting in a warehouse in China. They're apparently available for sale, to the tune of like 400k euro.

 Melcavuk wrote:
Rick said they wouldnt be the primary focus because commercially they dont sell as well, he didnt rule out female miniatures nor say there would be none in the initial figure list.

I've heard this song before. But as long as women are stuck with monopose metals for their rank and file while men have dozens of dedicated plastic kits for theirs, that's never going to change.

Yeah. Wargaming is a "man's game", but it's mostly because the people selling the models want to keep it that way, and it seems DSC, despite all it's talk of wanting to take risks, shake up the industry and push wargaming in a new direction, is really no different in the end. If you really wanna make a positive change then start acknowledging that women not only exist and actually want to engage in stereotypically nerdy, male-dominated hobbies (despite massive resistance from said dominant, nerdy males), but that they want to be as important as the men, they don't want to be stuck forever in the background as eye-candy for the prepubescent nerds or as the sexy sidekick to the real, male hero, who inevitably ends up becoming his "prize" in the end when the day is won. And that's the best-case scenario, if you want to see the your other options as a woman then go read Mat Ward's Grey Knight fluff, or his other fluff piece in the Blood Angels book about Flesh Tearers where even more Sisters were slaughtered by the so-called "good guys" with absolutely no consequence, other than the fact that other chapters kinda look down on them for their tendency to murder friend and foe alike and they're trying to change their reputation.

And it's a little disheartening considering that this new game is supposed to be all about player input. We're being told we can finally have a say in how things go down and influence the development of the game, it's the whole fething point of their Kickstarter ("...and YOU!"), and they just flat out tell us they're not going to do something because it won't sell well, or that it isn't a "priority" but if they do make them then they'll do them right and not sell us the same tired cheesecake gak like everyone else does. While I'm glad that means I'll probably have more of this to look forward to in the future, and not this, it seems odd to me to deliberately choose not to take an opportunity to prove that you really are interested in what the community wants, and I assume there are a decent amount of people who want this or he wouldn't have wasted time addressing the question in a video in the first place. "Not a priority"...just sounds strange when you consider that getting ANY minis done at this point should be a priority, considering how abysmal their project is doing. You'd think they would be falling head over heels to try and include as many people as possible, they need the fething money, but no, women (and men who want realistic and diverse armies) and furries need not apply I guess.

I just don't see any reason why they can't include female soldiers from the start. That's the funny thing about his comment: it's not really something that has to take "priority" over anything! Instead of releasing a unit of all-male soldiers make one or two of them female, problem solved. What, are you going to tell me Kev White doesn't have experience sculpting women or that he just plain doesn't want to or something? We've seen his work on the Sedition Wars game so we know it's possible. You don't have to make a big deal out of it, making them a special unit with their own background or going to the extreme and making an all-female army to appease us, just mix them in here and there, and give us a female character or leader now and then. "They don't sell" is a bs excuse, you could make people buy them by doing male and female sculpts and boxing them together. Dark Eldar apparently sold very well when they were finally released, despite both core troops and just about every other unit in fact having a fairly even split of male/female heads/bodies, and they were pretty much universally praised even though all the pimply nerds were being "forced" to buy female models. There was a minority of people who didn't think wyches were "sexy" enough and thought male wyches were weird, but they could have easily been ignored. It was one of those rare times where it seemed like everyone was happy, the "haters" and the "fanboys" were both in agreement and the Games Day thread that year was basically just a huge, multi-page thread of "Oh gak, Dark Eldar! Jes is the man!" over and over. Even the prices were kinda decent at the time...although it kinda went to gak when the metal beasts came out a few months later. But yeah, I'd almost kill for $30 sets of metal incubi now.

Keep in mind here also that I'm only praising the Dark Eldar models, the rules are abysmal and GW can go straight to hell for dicking an army over so badly in such a short span of time, after letting them rot in limbo for over a decade. Barely two years after their release, which also marked the last time GW made a big deal out of any release and had actual previews and time spent leading up to it with videos, concept art, etc., and they're already irrelevant again. What the feth, why? Why waste all that time and money just to do that? Whatever, moving on...

I used to be one of those guys that thought modern-day feminism was all a load of bs, but sexism in geek culture has been a pretty hot topic here lately and after reading Melissia's thread in particular it's starting to make more sense now. For all the progress we've supposedly made in the past few decades, it still looks like sexism is alive and well if something as simple as equal representation for half the population is literally impossible to achieve. It's kinda sad when the best we can possibly hope for, from a company basing its entire existence on listening to fans and including them in the design process, is that if they do female models then they probably won't be cheesecake. And honestly I don't expect that to last, either, I'm almost willing to bet money we'll see some sexy concept art go up before the end when the team realizes their project just isn't going to make it and they start getting desperate.

Oh, and as for that whole "women can't be warriors" thing, because "It's just biology!", we're talking about a setting that takes place possibly millions of years in the future, where extreme gene manipulation is painless and apparently very commonplace. You have people turning themselves into animal hybrids just for kicks, I think the idea of women being augmented or taking advantage of the technology available to become good fighters is not exactly a fething stretch of the imagination, is it? You can literally wake up one day and decide you want to be a bird, or a lizard, but if you're a woman who wants to kick ass, now that's a pipe dream.

 Sidstyler wrote:
Wait, did Rick basically say they weren't going to make (any/many?) female models because they wouldn't sell as well as the male models? Yeah, that'll win people over I'm sure.

One more reason he should talk to DreamForge. Mark put the Ada "Kickstarter-special" mini up and people went wild for it, asking for entire female Sturmtruppen squads, which he ended up doing based on fan-feedback!!!


I still dream

Yeah, funny when other Kickstarters do the whole "We listen to fans" thing better than the ones using it as a marketing gimmick.

 Sidstyler wrote:
You don't have to make a big deal out of it, making them a special unit with their own background or going to the extreme and making an all-female army to appease us, just mix them in here and there, and give us a female character or leader now and then. "They don't sell" is a bs excuse, you could make people buy them by doing male and female sculpts and boxing them together. Dark Eldar apparently sold very well when they were finally released, despite both core troops and just about every other unit in fact having a fairly even split of male/female heads/bodies, and they were pretty much universally praised even though all the pimply nerds were being "forced" to buy female models.

I don't agree with this. I don't want to be forced to buy male sculpts to get the female sculpts, I want it to be just as easy to build an all-female army as it currently is to build an all-male army, and that means dedicated kits. Let people buy the two in whatever ratio they please.

They should just give in and make a kinky catgirl army and watch their KS get funded in 2 days.

The Amazons of Catopia, riding giant Cyber Kittens with Rainbow Cannons.

As a potential customer, I demand that this be included, or it proves that they're not serious about listening to public feedback.

I think the main issue with cat-folks et al and female soldiers is that they will have lots of historical sales and marketing data and from what their joined manufacturing team will be telling them, these dont sell as well as the main "guys in spppaaaccceee!" ever will.

So i can understand a reluctance to go and make these and find all they do is sit on shelves for years.

However in saying this i Rick didnt rule any of this out entirely, on women he said he was wary of ending up with the over emphasised female form\erotic side, as that wasnt the aesthetic, however stretch goal development could see the availability of female troops, anthropomorphic aliens etc etc.

Its not set in stone and once the set is complete thats it.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
You don't have to make a big deal out of it, making them a special unit with their own background or going to the extreme and making an all-female army to appease us, just mix them in here and there, and give us a female character or leader now and then. "They don't sell" is a bs excuse, you could make people buy them by doing male and female sculpts and boxing them together. Dark Eldar apparently sold very well when they were finally released, despite both core troops and just about every other unit in fact having a fairly even split of male/female heads/bodies, and they were pretty much universally praised even though all the pimply nerds were being "forced" to buy female models.

I don't agree with this. I don't want to be forced to buy male sculpts to get the female sculpts, I want it to be just as easy to build an all-female army as it currently is to build an all-male army, and that means dedicated kits. Let people buy the two in whatever ratio they please.

Well, in a perfect world maybe. But when faced with these options: a) having no female sculpts at all, or b) having female sculpts come later, after all the men are done (which will take x amount of months/years/etc. and could potentially not happen at all), or c) having both male/female sculpts in the same box from the start, I think I would prefer having both in the same box from the start. Yeah, it might "force" people to buy models they might not want, but it didn't seem to negatively impact sales of Dark Eldar models when GW did it with them, so I don't think it would do so here, either. If the models are good enough they'll sell regardless.

If you want it done your way you're going to be kept waiting for a while, because for some reason men have to take "priority" over women and we simply can not design and sculpt both at once, that would be crazy.

Pfft, stretch goals? I don't think we'll be seeing any of that, they set the goal so stupidly fething high we might not even see it get funded, let alone make beyond what they're asking.

If financing a company in the right way and not half-way is stupid I now start to understand why so many companies hit the wall after 3 years latest.

And once again:

I don´t have a problem with critizism, but what some do here is very close to activly hurting the KS campaign by distributing a doom and gloom full 30 days before the KS ends. This KS is not what you want? OK, you voiced it, we heard it, but I am loathe to hear it page after page after page after page...

Guess why most of the more positive guys have moved on to the DSC forums. And, no, not the loudmouths dictate the direction, it´s the DSC team that does choose the direction, but it listens to the really good suggestions and they made it quite clear from the beginning that it will work this way.

And as with DakkaDakka, there is 1 interesting comment for 10-50 stupid ones most of times. Still I would not dare to call DakkaDakka a lost case...

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
If financing a company in the right way and not half-way is stupid I now start to understand why so many companies hit the wall after 3 years latest.

You keep claiming that GoA has somehow magically superiour accounting than CMON, McVey, Mantic Games, etc.. . But other than your personal bias, I've seen no evidence of that yet. Where does this come from?

If you could back-up that claim with transparent, bias-free evidence, it wouldn't be the worst argument to make in favour of GoA.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
I don´t have a problem with critizism, but what some do here is very close to activly hurting the KS campaign by distributing a doom and gloom full 30 days before the KS ends. This KS is not what you want? OK, you voiced it, we heard it, but I am loathe to hear it page after page after page after page...

If you didn't expect this on Dakka then you probably haven't been reading a lot of the other Kickstarter topics. Dakka should not make or break a Kickstarter though, and TBH being so defensive and belligerent about it is IMO (as a neutral party who would like to see it funded but doesn't have any emotional investment in it and has spunked on too many other KS to make a big £ pledge) not helping either.

It surly helps more than your doom and gloom. And if you can´t stand the heat get the hell out of the kitchen .

@Zweischneid
Ask anyone that does plastic kits... if you ask nicely they will tell you how much this stuff costs.

What most of you still don´t get: SW, and many of the other KS are done out-house when it comes to fabrication. GoA is more of an in-house thing though Warlord will do the production stuff. That costs more in the beginning but later saves you a lot of money and you can react faster towards increasing demand.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:

@Zweischneid
Ask anyone that does plastic kits... if you ask nicely they will tell you how much this stuff costs.

Well. I am asking you.

If you're a decade-long veteran of the game industry, as you claim, and privy to insights into the inevitable financial doom of companies such as McVey or Mantic Games, which seem themselves yet unaware of their bleak future, I'd kindly ask you to enlighten us.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
And if you can´t stand the heat get the hell out of the kitchen .

Says the guy complaining about the heat.

Not heat, just ignorance.

@production
out-house you rent the time at a factory which costs you much less then building the production department yourself. Drawbacks are: Moulds are not owned by you unless you agreed otherwise, you have to book production time, you have to have on guy that now and then visits the factory to make sure everything is still running it is working out as expected.

in-house is more expensive in the beginning, but allows you to scale much better with the demand and you can produce stuff whenever you need it and not when a time-slot is free. Also changes to the moulds are much easier to do and you save on transport.

I never said that McVey and Co are going to hit the wall. And for what they now produce this way does work out quite well. But somewhere in the future they will have to move production in-house when they reach a certain demand level. DSC at this point in time will have an advantage cause they had it in-house all the time. Also SW and other products are still small games that get extended box by box, but GoA is a full blown TT. The investment in the latter is higher in the beginning. And 300.000 is quite a normal budget if you start with a TT that starts at the intended size.

It´s the same as with LGS. Sure you can open up a shopt with 30.000, but a shop that starts with more realistic 80.-100.000 will do better much sooner.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Not heat, just ignorance.

How am I being ignorant? Because I have an opinion you don't agree with?

Rick_1138 wrote:
I think the main issue with cat-folks et al and female soldiers is that they will have lots of historical sales and marketing data and from what their joined manufacturing team will be telling them, these dont sell as well as the main "guys in spppaaaccceee!" ever will.

So i can understand a reluctance to go and make these and find all they do is sit on shelves for years.

However in saying this i Rick didnt rule any of this out entirely, on women he said he was wary of ending up with the over emphasised female form\erotic side, as that wasnt the aesthetic, however stretch goal development could see the availability of female troops, anthropomorphic aliens etc etc.

Its not set in stone and once the set is complete thats it.

It looks like the "guys in spppaaaccceee!" aren't selling at the moment. Which I think is part of the overall thing that there are so many SF lines on the market now, it is difficult for them all to be well supported.

Though to be fair, lots of Kickstarters go through a long period of low pledges in the middle of the campaign, and zoom up in the last few days.

 Duncan_Idaho wrote:
Also SW and other products are still small games that get extended box by box, but GoA is a full blown TT.

Perhaps. But what is wrong with starting with a smaller game and scaling up interest and demand to a full-blown TT. Not least by not planting a new factory into the British Midlands on the arrogant assumption that one will be the next 40K in a year or two.

Sedition Wars (if it proves popular enough) WILL be a full-blown TT in an (ex-GW-employee-made) full-fledged sci-fi wargaming universe. And when that time comes, it can launch it on years of (a) fan-feedback, (b) proven delivery of products, (c) established, organically grown background. Warpath is even further along the road (and Alessio Cavatore isn't any less "open" to fan-feedback than Rick Priestley).

And to me, not building the factory right away, in case you might not become the next Warhammer 40K and perhaps remain a more niche-company sounds like a rather smart business decision for a start-up. Because having your own in-house production might be easy to scale-up. It's rather hard to scale-down however.

You're whole "GoA is doing it better" is based on the fallacy that GoA will, inevitably, be the 40K-Killer that hasn't materialized for the last 25 years and - not unlikely - may not materialize for another 25 years. Utopian dreaming like that is not a "good business practice"

Sidstyler, agreed. Miniatures wargaming is one of the worst geek cultures when it comes to excluding women. Even videogames, which are often appallingly sexist, have made it to a point where almost half the gamers are women. Miniatures wargaming still feels like a boys' club that deliberately tries to stay that way.

There's a huge demand for well-done female SF / near future soldiers because pretty much no-one is doing them, particularly in affordable multi-part plastic kit form... I don't see anyone being put off by including say 2 women in a 10-person infantry pack. Old-school sexist wargamers can swap or sell their 'spare' women infantry. Gamers wanting an all-women army for whatever reason will ensure there's a demand for that. Most people won't mind either way.

Perhaps. But what is wrong with starting with a smaller game and scaling up interest and demand to a full-blown TT. Not least by not planting a new factory into the British Midlands on the arrogant assumption that one will be the next 40K in a year or two.

Too many companies out there that offer small lines. You need to offer more if you want to survive and more minis right at the beginning helps a lot. Just have a look at Dust, without the huge number of plastic kits within 1-2 years they would be just another Weird War game trudging along. But now they are ahead of companies that have been producing such miniatures for years. And they don´t need to build a huge factory, the production facility Warlord invests in will do for the time being and can grow with the demand.

Sedition Wars (if it proves popular enough) WILL be a full-blown TT in an (ex-GW-employee-made) full-fledged sci-fi wargaming universe. And when that time comes, it can launch it on years of (a) fan-feedback, (b) proven delivery of products, (c) established, organically grown background. Warpath is even further along the road (and Alessio Cavatore isn't any less "open" to fan-feedback than Rick Priestley).

Some time in the future, yes. Though I assume SW will get there earlier than Warpath. But if everything works out DSC will move there much faster.

And to me, not building the factory right away, in case you might not become the next Warhammer 40K and perhaps remain a more niche-company sounds like a rather smart business decision for a start-up. Because having your own in-house production might be easy to scale-up. It's rather hard to scale-down however.

Actually Mantic quite wished they had a small factory when they ran into problems ith Renedra time-booking and the Goblin-problem. Factory does not mean a big 900x900ft block, it just needs to be a bigger garage with some casting machines inside. Besides, when the machines are not needed for GoA they do the job for Warlord.

You're whole "GoA is doing it better" is based on the fallacy that GoA will, inevitably, be the 40K-Killer that hasn't materialized for the last 25 years and - not unlikely - may not materialize for another 25 years. Utopian dreaming like that is not a "good business practice"

Sorry, but you have to be quite stupid to assume that any company will "kill" GW in the next 5-7 years. At the moment GW is it´s own worst enemy and Rackham was the only company that came even close to being a GW-killer were it not for Rackham being somtimes its own. worst enemy. You don´t need to kill the market leader. But you better make sure in any business that you are among the 3-4 leading companies in that business rather earlier than later cause only then you have a chance to get to the top.

Only just stumbled into this so I haven't had much time to read up. But while a bundle with models would make the most sense to pledge for in terms of actually playing the game eventually, the lack of ready models is a problem for me personally. Whether or not I like the models (like how Warmachines has well-made miniatures but the style just doesn't appeal to me on the whole) is basically a make or break thing for me in a miniature game, regardless of how good the rules are. Spending £125 for example for the Feeder level just doesn't seem such a good idea taking that into consideration!

£65 Dark Energy provides rules (start and PDF, no hardback), dice, templates, limied ed model and by the latest sample lists either one average army, or two small armies. Its a reasonable starting point.

Bear in mind more greens/concept art are on the way soon, personally Feeder is a good level for me as it give you the option of 2 decent sized armies (ideal for you and an opponent)

Edit:

If you want to see more join the discussions on the forum here:
http://www.darkspacecorp.com/forum/index.php

Well, I suppose the question with the difference between Dark Energy and Feeder is one of army sizes in general, as in how big of an army you need to play effectively.

Plus in my case I might just need enough models for two armies, so that I could actually lure someone into playing with me. Very unlikely anyone local would fund this KS and thus have an army of his own to start with.

The sample effective army lists put them at 240 credits + 20 Wardrones each to be a relatively good size.

So to field 2 effective (average sized) armies you're looking at Feeder level (500 credits, 40 drones)