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 d-usa wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
GW releases special rules and missions in WD: "I have to pay $x for a magazine full of advertisements for GW to get the rules/missions? And once it is sold out I don't get it anymore? This is stupid, they should release it separately!"

No one would complain about content in WD.

Yes they would. They have done so on a regular basis for the reasons I posted. Didn't get the WD with the flyer rules or the SoB mini-dex? Well, they are sold out, touch luck until we decide to publish them another way.

I think you are being rather facetious here d-usa?

No-one objected to the rules being available in WD - it was the fact that they were not available in any other format, other than to pirate them, after the mag had sold out.
Surely the sensible option would have been to put them in the magazine, give it a couple of weeks grace period or so, then just have a simple download PDF from the website in the way that the Specialist Games rules are handled? Instead, they have taken the option of reducing WD content still further and charging extra for these.

Although, to be fair it is a long time since GW gave anything away for free - you could say that this new development is entirely in line with the past few year's releases, and in some ways a lot more acceptable than some of the stuff BL is doing (charging for wallpaper, or for a 6-page story!)

And now that they are publishing things apart from WD, people are complaining that they should be in WD instead.

That is the "no matter what they do, people will complain about it" I'm talking about.

Of course I haven't played a game of GW anything in almost a year. They priced me out of the game and I am enjoying other games at the moment, but it is still interesting to watch.

 lonedrow02 wrote:

No one would complain about content in WD

Yea people raged about flyer rules in WD and now their raging about the new flyer supplement........Damned if you do, damned if you dont.

they are making the fliers available in every format they sell and people are still complaining because it isn't "free".

Some People will refuse to pay regardless of format and pirate it no matter what and their answer is "make it free and I won't pirate it". This is also why there is no reason to spend 10 times the effort to support android devices with their fragmented OS to support android customers who are notoriously bad for not purchasing apps anyways.

Let's bend to the whims of non-customers? That is always a good business model.

 d-usa wrote:
Yes they would. They have done so on a regular basis for the reasons I posted. Didn't get the WD with the flyer rules or the SoB mini-dex? Well, they are sold out, touch luck until we decide to publish them another way.

That's not complaining about content, that's complaining about not being able to get the content. Massive difference.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 d-usa wrote:
And now that they are publishing things apart from WD, people are complaining that they should be in WD instead.

It's like you're intentionally trying to miss the point.

nkelsch - I'm not sure that is what people are saying at all, quite honestly. The main complaint with WD is that it is content-lite; one way to improve upon that is to put rules and scenarios back into WD, you know, like they used to. Of course, this goes hand-in-hand with making the issue freely available and not selling out within seconds, again, like they used to. Most of the complaints over the Sisters rules and the Flyer rules were not that they were crap or that they were printed in WD, but rather that it is near enough impossible to get hold of a copy of the mag after the fact - not like it used to be when you could order back issues.

Of course, for those people who didn't want to buy WD or hack up their copies, GW used to release content in handy annuals or compendiums so you had the best of both worlds; content and interesting material printed in WD so that it remained a relevant resource and content printed in book form and not made direct only or limited edition or some other nonsense so that it was freely available for those without the magazine.

I have no issue with GW charging for this stuff (I'm not going to buy it but I don't have a problem with it) but rather that it is only available to a small portion of the player base. If they really are concerned with making WD relevant again (and one can only suppose that it is a goal given the resources they have thrown at 'revamping' it) then why undo most of that work by releasing content via app store or some other equally obscure method? Here is a 'quick win' to make WD relevant in the eyes of gamers; print content in it!

If you want to guarantee you get a WD, get a subscription. That is what they are for. Allows companies to know how much to make without making a ton more which rot and lose them money. If you don't want a subscription, don't complain when you don't get one.

Now making every issue valuable so people want subscriptions is a different issue, but even if every issue was gold, people would complain as they only want some of it and want it for free. They only want the 4 pages of rules and think they should only pay for 4 pages of content. If only porno mags worked that way too?

And not just handy annuals - they put up PDF's. Think of how many Apoc formations they put up? I think they even eventually put of the Spearhead rules. And the Blood Angel WD Codex for that matter.

nkelsch wrote:
If you want to guarantee you get a WD, get a subscription.

*head desk*

Now you're missing the point. Read what filbert wrote again. Really read it this time.

nkelsch wrote:
If you want to guarantee you get a WD, get a subscription. That is what they are for. Allows companies to know how much to make without making a ton more which rot and lose them money. If you don't want a subscription, don't complain when you don't get one.

Now making every issue valuable so people want subscriptions is a different issue, but even if every issue was gold, people would complain as they only want some of it and want it for free. They only want the 4 pages of rules and think they should only pay for 4 pages of content. If only porno mags worked that way too?

To reiterate, I think most people *aren't* complaining that they want stuff for free (apart from a small minority anyway) and even so, there will always be a section of an audience in any environment that refuses to pay for supplemental content. That isn't the point I am making; rather than instead of making and disseminating the content to the widest possible audience (ie. via WD, back issues, supplemental books/codexes, app store), GW seem intent on restricting this only to those few that can get hold of a WD when they release new rules/scenarios (the fact that you get no prior warning of it coming up in WD notwithstanding) or those who own an ipad. Again, the issue is not that you have to pay for it but rather that GW seem intent on promoting a rather bizarre business plan that seems to focus on selling this stuff to the smallest amount of people.

I'm one of the people that bitched about the rules for the Dakka Jet not being readily available. I don't have an iPad and the WD issue is sold out, so it isn't readily available. I'm buying the flier book that comes out in 2 weeks so that I can have the legal rules for the model instead of pirated pdfs from the internet or copies of another friend's copies of another friend's WD.

Most of the rest of that book isn't going to be useful to me, unless we play some one-off games.

I've been considering getting an iPad with my tax refund this year, but not for GW gak. I'll probably buy GW gak for it, but mostly I want to play Angry Birds and read kindle books.

I'm very interested in all of these battle mission pdfs or iPad files or whatever the hell you call them. Our group played the hell out of the Battle missions book that came out 2 years ago. It's a shame that these missions aren't going to be in a book, as my group would probably buy 3 or 4. As it is, we'll be getting 2 copies max.

nkelsch wrote:
If you want to guarantee you get a WD, get a subscription.

"Hi! I'm new to 40k and I think the Sisters of Battle have amazing fluff! Where can I legally buy the rules to play them?"

This right here is the fething problem with WD updates to codecies and other must-have rules like the Dakka Jet and Daemon Flamers and so on...

Battle Missions aren't must-haves. If you miss out, that's not the end of the world.

 d-usa wrote:
GW doesn't release any new content like missions or special rules: "GW is bad, they should release those kind of things."

GW releases special rules and missions in WD: "I have to pay $x for a magazine full of advertisements for GW to get the rules/missions? And once it is sold out I don't get it anymore? This is stupid, they should release it separately!"

GW releases special rules and missions as a separate supplement: "This is dumb. Why can't they just add that to a WD instead?"

I guess anything other that a free PDF is just GW being GW...

GW releases special rules and missions in WD, then a few months later puts them online for free: "Thanks GW"

 Ravenous D wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
GW doesn't release any new content like missions or special rules: "GW is bad, they should release those kind of things."

GW releases special rules and missions in WD: "I have to pay $x for a magazine full of advertisements for GW to get the rules/missions? And once it is sold out I don't get it anymore? This is stupid, they should release it separately!"

GW releases special rules and missions as a separate supplement: "This is dumb. Why can't they just add that to a WD instead?"

I guess anything other that a free PDF is just GW being GW...

GW releases special rules and missions in WD, then a few months later puts them online for free: "Thanks GW"

This is what they used to do, and why people are understandably upset that they've switched their business model to:

GW releases rules to some fliers and Codex: Daemon Models and the entire Codex: Sisters of Battle in WD, but only releases the first 2 in iPad format and doesn't release Codex:Sister of Battle in ANY other format, because feth you, potential Sisters of Battle players!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:


It's like you're intentionally trying to miss the point.

Its a pro GW thing, ignore all evidence and call everyone a whiner.

GW has in the past released free PDFs on their "gaming resource" section of their website after an issue has sold out or is no longer available. Evidence? Blood angels, apocalypse stuff, kroot mercs etc, and for a good 3 years they were releasing the chapter approved books.

In fact, I just dug out the 2003 annual right now, it has the feral ork list, Tanith first and only list, Armageddon ork hunters, death korps of krieg, the savlar chem dogs, elysian drop troops, city fight guard, kroot mercs, seeding swarm tyranids, the trial assault rules, minor pychic powers, an entire listing of fire points and access points for every single transport that was previously assumed, deathwatch kill team, the emperors champion, an entire FAQ and errata, updated dark eldar vehicle upgrades, and a dark angels update. Holy that was all in one year! This book is bigger then the hardback dexes and sold for $35. And people were happy to buy it despite most of it also being online for free. The last 10 years have been cruel to GW apparently.

I'm not pro-GW, just look at my non-caring cat!

Best thing that DakkaDakka has done for me has been to introduce me to other systems. I hobby, I don't HHHobby.

This is madness.

Rules in WD get slated as WD sells out and the rules are no longer available.

Now they provide additional missions and sell them only to those who have bought into apple.

My mind boggles at this it really does.

Digital products are a solution to the issues received from the WD rules and in a sense I support this. These rules releases were something that made sense to me as it got sales of the mag up, But failing to ever release the rules later as PDF's or cheap ebooks is an oversight of massive proportions.

Now they move to the digital side of things but it's Apple only. Not available to those without an apple product. Another oversight of massive proportions. I would be happy to get these but I did not cash into the cult of Apple and thus do not own a device capable of displaying the information I need.

How this is any different to WD selling out I dont know. At the end of the day some people who want the product cannot get it.

They have replaced one problem with the same problem. Sheesh.

 lonedrow02 wrote:

 d-usa wrote:
GW doesn't release any new content like missions or special rules: "GW is bad, they should release those kind of things."

GW releases special rules and missions in WD: "I have to pay $x for a magazine full of advertisements for GW to get the rules/missions? And once it is sold out I don't get it anymore? This is stupid, they should release it separately!"

GW releases special rules and missions as a separate supplement: "This is dumb. Why can't they just add that to a WD instead?"

I guess anything other that a free PDF is just GW being GW...

This. Sticky please.

It does deserve the face palm but not for the reason you likely support. Its incredibly simplistic to just assume that all the above options are mutually exclusive. There is no reason that precludes GW from using all of the above in a staggered fashion including the free PDF option. Publish everything in WD... when that sells out, make a purchasable ebook with fancy art and 360* pics... then finally release 6 months to a year later less convienent free pdfs PDF individually for each model without any art (like forge world does with experimental rules).

yeah,
I I bought all three Altars of War last night with the intention of both giving a review and trying them out.
The following is my initial thoughts, having just looked through what I've just bought.

I also copied this review/info to the threads first post.


+++
Altar of War - Space Marines
Published: 06 August 2012

Altar of War - Space Marines
- 26 pages containing 6 battle missions.

SM description wrote:Altar of War missions provide all the information required to play games inspired by the battlefield tactics of the different Warhammer 40,000 armies. This book contains six brand-new missions which you can use instead of the Eternal War missions in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook if you or your opponent has a Space Marine army, allowing you to fight the daring lightning assaults, surprise planetfall attacks and heroic last stands of the Emperor’s Space Marines.

Photos
Basic Mission break down:
1) Two objectives one in the middle and one in the enemy deployment zone. All Spacemarine infantry units counts as scoring.
2) Moddified VP game enemy group in the middle and Space Marines come in from all angles from reserves.
3) Single objective in the middle and Space Marines must hold it.
4) Moddified VP - HQs are more valuable.
5) Race for the Objectives game, only fast attack start on the board. vehicles (and squads in transports) can arrive from turn 1, everything else arrives from reserve as normal.
6) Objective game, Half the Space Marines must be held in reserve, but they all arrive together.

And a Wonderful spread of deployment Maps


A lovely little package of battle missions.
Exactly what your expecting when you pay your £5
5/5 Stars


+++
Altar of War - Dark Angels
Published: 02 February 2013

Altar of War - Dark Angels
- 26 pages containing 6 battle missions.

DA description wrote:Altar of War missions provide all the information required to play games inspired by the battlefield tactics of the
different Warhammer 40,000 armies. This book contains six brand-new missions which you can use instead of the
Eternal War missions in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook if you or your opponent has a Dark Angels army, allowing
you to hunt the Fallen – traitors of the Chapter’s ancient past – or unleash the elite Deathwing and Ravenwing on
your foes in all their devastating glory.

Photos
Basic Mission break down:
1) Objectives in the enemys deployment zone and the Dark Angels want them.
2) Objectives. The enemy sets up with hidden deployment rules. Only ravenwing and scouts start on the board.
3) Objectives. Ravenwing and Deathwing start in reserve, dark angels lose points for calling them early and gain points for calling them in late in the game.
4) Objectives. Enemy deploy in the middle. Dark angels all go into a modified stealthy reserve.
5) Objectives in the Dark Angel deployment zone. Dark angels only deploy troops plus D3 units at start of the game.
6) reroll mission 1-5 and play that - plus a random independant character is a member of the fallen or a agent of the fallen worth extra VP to both armies..

A batch of very similar deployment Maps...

They are all top to bottom with a varying ammounts of no-mans land in the middle... bland.

A repetitive package of standard objective based battle missions.
But the implementation of Ravenwing and Deathwing in missions are done very well.
I especially like mission 6 it's very flavourful as it depicts the dark angels discovering info on / a member of the fallen while engaged on another mission.
Not bad for your £5
4/5 Stars


+++
Altar of War - Chaos Space Marines
Published: 02 February 2013

Altar of War - Chaos Space Marines
- 28 pages containing 6 battle missions.

CSM description wrote:Altar of War missions provide all the information required to play games inspired by the battlefield tactics of the
different Warhammer 40,000 armies. This book contains six brand-new missions which you can use instead of the
Eternal War missions in the Warhammer 40,000 rulebook if you or your opponent has a Chaos Space Marines army,
allowing you to wage wars of vengeance, launch a dreaded Black Crusade, or simply unleash indiscriminate
carnage on your unsuspecting foes.

Photos

Basic Mission break down:
1) Accumlitive Objective mission. Like Control modes in FPSs you score points for every turn your holding an objective.
2) Victory Points, all non vehicles are 'without number.' and return to play when dead and can be killed again.
3) Objectives. All terrain is either on fire or smoking so they block all LOS plus are either dangerous or proving +1 cover.
4) Relic varient.
5) Victory Points, 1 (or more) random unit is more valuable.
6) Modified objectives. Chaos player rolls three time on a table for his secondary objectives.

And a copy paste disappointment of deployment Maps

Map 1,3 and 5 are the same and 2,4 and 6 are the same... seems like GW put in no effort in here.

When I pay my £5 I expect a little bit more divergence in deployment zones. The maps are very dissapointing!
The Battle Missions are great.
4/5 Stars

Panic...

Thanks for the reviews!

Cool, thanks for the reviews. Looks like they updated a lot of the content from Battle Missions for 6th.

Thank you for the review. The Space Marines one seems worth it to me, but the others seem a little bland.

I'm of the opinion that they should have done another Battle Missions book. I suppose they may still compile all of these plus future ones. I'm rather old school and like to have a physical book in my hand and wont bother with these digital products unless they're dirt cheap and/or I just can't resist.

I'm good with iPad releases. Also the price Point is decent. A bit higher per mission than the battle missions book but low enough to make it a "why not?" kind of buy.

I grabbed the chaos one. Good stuff can't Wait to try them out.

The only thing better would be a "book" on different environments. Like the daemon worlds in crusade of fire. Maybe 5 or 10 of those would be awesome.which I'd happily pay another $15 or so on.

Oh well, these seem interesting, and I'd probably buy a Tau equivalent one, except, I have a Kindle Fire, and that doesn't support iBook format

 warboss wrote:

It does deserve the face palm but not for the reason you likely support. Its incredibly simplistic to just assume that all the above options are mutually exclusive. There is no reason that precludes GW from using all of the above in a staggered fashion including the free PDF option. Publish everything in WD... when that sells out, make a purchasable ebook with fancy art and 360* pics... then finally release 6 months to a year later less convienent free pdfs PDF individually for each model without any art (like forge world does with experimental rules).

Would have to ask why would you deliberately give a digital product a shelf life of only 6 - 12 months for a system with a shelf life of 4-6 years? The extra shiny bits in an ebook version may be nice, but people will always go for the lower end product if it is free. Worse you reduce sales because people will not buy the ebook knowing a free version is several months away.

Curious as to where Ozymandias got the 90% of sales are on the iPad? If that is true, it makes sense to only pursue iPad releases. Why waste more resources to only get a couple more percentage points of market? Especially given Android isn't a single system and has unique versions among multiple manufacturers. I would like to see a Kindle version of these products so I can use it, but understand there is no point in wasting money on diminishing returns. Of course I grew up in the 80's and my computer was a Mac. It wasn't fun.

I've got a both a brother and a friend in software development and the 90% number seems slightly high as they've both said about 75-80%

but as it varies depending on what sort of apps you're talking about 90% for this sort of thing does not seem unreasonable

The first thing to consider is apple devices are much more expensive, so tend to sell to the reletivly weathly

another aspect is you can generally charge a bit extra for the equivalent on apple as their apps have a higher quality perception

silent25 wrote:

Curious as to where Ozymandias got the 90% of sales are on the iPad? If that is true, it makes sense to only pursue iPad releases. Why waste more resources to only get a couple more percentage points of market? Especially given Android isn't a single system and has unique versions among multiple manufacturers. I would like to see a Kindle version of these products so I can use it, but understand there is no point in wasting money on diminishing returns. Of course I grew up in the 80's and my computer was a Mac. It wasn't fun.

If you ask anyone who works in the mobile software/games business, they'll have similar numbers. iOS sales are miles ahead and are causing quite a few managers I know to consider dropping support for Android/WinOS support altogether, especially when you add in the fact that those platforms don't have fixed resolutions like iOS does (on which they only have to support a maximum of 4 or 5 screen sizes, iirc?).

Note that this might not translate into iBooks sales, of which I have no knowledge... But yeah, that 90% is pretty accurate in terms of mobile platforms app sales.

GW has in the past released free PDFs on their "gaming resource" section of their website after an issue has sold out or is no longer available. Evidence? Blood angels, apocalypse stuff, kroot mercs etc, and for a good 3 years they were releasing the chapter approved books.

In fact, I just dug out the 2003 annual right now, it has the feral ork list, Tanith first and only list, Armageddon ork hunters, death korps of krieg, the savlar chem dogs, elysian drop troops, city fight guard, kroot mercs, seeding swarm tyranids, the trial assault rules, minor pychic powers, an entire listing of fire points and access points for every single transport that was previously assumed, deathwatch kill team, the emperors champion, an entire FAQ and errata, updated dark eldar vehicle upgrades, and a dark angels update. Holy that was all in one year! This book is bigger then the hardback dexes and sold for $35. And people were happy to buy it despite most of it also being online for free. The last 10 years have been cruel to GW apparently.

Point taken.
____________________________________________________

The SM AOW deployments are similar to the SM battle mission deployments...looks like it? .The others are really boring.
Edit:Quote nightmare...

silent25 wrote:

Would have to ask why would you deliberately give a digital product a shelf life of only 6 - 12 months for a system with a shelf life of 4-6 years? The extra shiny bits in an ebook version may be nice, but SOME people will always go for the lower end product if it is free.

Corrected that for you. The people that are willing to wait 1-2 years for an article to go from a White Dwarf to an ebook to a free no-frills relatively inconvienent download as I suggested are not generally people who will actually buy any of the former more convientent items if there will never be a free pdf.

I wish they would sell these as PDF's for a few dollars, like Paizo does for Pathfinder campaigns.

Because once a .PDF is "in the wild", it's basically free to all at that point?

And yet, Paizo remains in business.

And DriveThruRPG. And FFG. And Catalyst. And all the other companies that regularly release paid PDF copies of their works.