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 John Prins wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
It's also the fact that it's kinda big... but have not much detail to speak of. Kinda like the old Armorcast titans back in the 90s and the like.

Smooth surfaces was basically the deal with Utopian units. The lack of greebling becomes more obvious when you go to bigger units.

Smooth is not undetailed, though, and it certainly does not redeem the shallowness of the interior of the tracks (it simply looks like they designed it as a solid and added the inner wheels with no thought about how it looks or how it should work).

I mean... this is smooth, too. And probably quite a bit smaller:




Or hell, you could go bigger! I hope you'd agree with me that these guys look smooth but not in the least bit undetailed:

Some very good examples. I posted something similar (albeit without pics as I figured John didn't need them as a fellow tau player) last page about the devilfish. Looking at more examples in your post, Albertorius, I think the key to pulling it off is occasionally punctuating those large flat spaces with smaller areas festooned with gribbly bits. Other than maybe the tracks (which barely count since the level/depth of detail on them is so low), I don't see any detailed areas breaking up the smooth lines.

 Albertorius wrote:

 John Prins wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
It's also the fact that it's kinda big... but have not much detail to speak of. Kinda like the old Armorcast titans back in the 90s and the like.

Smooth surfaces was basically the deal with Utopian units. The lack of greebling becomes more obvious when you go to bigger units.

Smooth is not undetailed, though,

Fair enough, and I've personally never liked the Utopian aesthetic, but it seems reasonably consistent with the aesthetic. And it seems to have more texture detail than the KS render, plus it's lacking full assembly of turrets and whatnot. I'll reserve judgement until we see it fully assembled and painted, but again, I'm not a fan of Utopian designs.

i remember when the game first came out and when a lgs by my college put them in the clearance bin I bought 2 minis and a bazooka pack cause I loved the designs of the suits. Too bad it was too expensive to play back then, what sucks even more is that hasn't changed plus the whole rules thing doesn't work quite well. Which is funny cause I still got one of the mechs and bazooka pack in pkg and one mech open, go figure.

Dax415 wrote:
i remember when the game first came out and when a lgs by my college put them in the clearance bin I bought 2 minis and a bazooka pack cause I loved the designs of the suits. Too bad it was too expensive to play back then, what sucks even more is that hasn't changed plus the whole rules thing doesn't work quite well. Which is funny cause I still got one of the mechs and bazooka pack in pkg and one mech open, go figure.

$4-7 USD iirc per miniature in a game that typcially only had 4-6 minis per side was too expensive? For the amount of metal you got, it was actually quite a deal. The books on the other hand were alot more expensive for their relatively small page count (core book obviously excluded) compared with other games at the time with softcover b&w art. Were you referring to that? I was on a limited budget at the time as well being a high school student then college freshman working only two shifts a week part time at minimum wage but the buying a mini every week or two was well within my grasp. The monthly or more frequent book releases though were difficult to keep up with due to the prices.

Over here price per mini for Gears was more in the line of 10-12€, with Striders going for about 30€ and tanks anywhere between 40 and 50, so...

buying directly from the Pod was cheaper... as long as you bought enough stuff to qualify for max shipping cost AND as long as customs officials didn'd decide to stop the pavkage. If they did, ir turned out more expensive.

OTOH, the spanish edition of the books were quite competitively priced, so that was good

 Albertorius wrote:
Over here price per mini for Gears was more in the line of 10-12€, with Striders going for about 30€ and tanks anywhere between 40 and 50, so...

buying directly from the Pod was cheaper... as long as you bought enough stuff to qualify for max shipping cost AND as long as customs officials didn'd decide to stop the pavkage. If they did, ir turned out more expensive.

OTOH, the spanish edition of the books were quite competitively priced, so that was good

Was that during 2nd edition? I don't think the Euro existed as a currency when HG was created but I could be wrong.

 warboss wrote:
Was that during 2nd edition? I don't think the Euro existed as a currency when HG was created but I could be wrong.

We started using the euro after december 31st of 1998, and the spanish edition was published from 1999 onwards. I got aquainted with the game due to the spanish edition, so... ^_^

When you compare it to the outlay required for a GW game, Heavy Gear was never an expensive game to play. I think more people got turned off by the majority of models being metal than had issues with the price. Most folks prefer dealing with plastic.

 Albertorius wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Was that during 2nd edition? I don't think the Euro existed as a currency when HG was created but I could be wrong.

We started using the euro after december 31st of 1998, and the spanish edition was published from 1999 onwards. I got aquainted with the game due to the spanish edition, so... ^_^

I didn't consider the delayed translation and release. The English release happened in 1994 so the five years inbetween plus internation distribution costs could lead to that increased price on the minis for you compared with initially here in North America. I'm a bit surprised that you were able to get a collection of the Rafm minis as by the time the Spanish edition was published in 1999 they were discontinued. With how multifaceted international distribution is, I'm surprised that they were able to stock them two years after the switch to Tactical 1/144 scale; did the minis arrive prior to the release of the rpg?

 warboss wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Was that during 2nd edition? I don't think the Euro existed as a currency when HG was created but I could be wrong.

We started using the euro after december 31st of 1998, and the spanish edition was published from 1999 onwards. I got aquainted with the game due to the spanish edition, so... ^_^

I didn't consider the delayed translation and release. The English release happened in 1994 so the five years inbetween plus internation distribution costs could lead to that increased price on the minis for you compared with initially here in North America. I'm a bit surprised that you were able to get a collection of the Rafm minis as by the time the Spanish edition was published in 1999 they were discontinued. With how multifaceted international distribution is, I'm surprised that they were able to stock them two years after the switch to Tactical 1/144 scale; did the minis arrive prior to the release of the rpg?

The RAFM minis never "arrived", per se. I just scoured ebay and similar outlets to get minis ^^. The ones that edge ent released over here were the tactical scale ones. I got "some" of those too .

 John Prins wrote:
When you compare it to the outlay required for a GW game, Heavy Gear was never an expensive game to play. I think more people got turned off by the majority of models being metal than had issues with the price. Most folks prefer dealing with plastic.

The cost per model absolutely was a factor inhibiting its popularity local to me. I mean, the argument is probably sound that the total cost for a force is less than that for a 2,000-point 40k army, but when a metal CEF hovertank (back when they first came out) was well over a tenner, then I'm putting it back on the shelf and picking up something cheaper instead. The DP9 models seemed to be more expensive without actually seeming to be worth it.

The material was irrelevant (in fact, the DP9 models seemed to be made from a softer alloy than GW used, as were Rackham's, so cleaning mould lines was a bit easier). Everyone was selling metal models, so there was no stigma against them.

Well, apparently Jovian Chronicles just launched it's next kickstarter.

Venus.

Adding link for completeness.

(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/heavygearblitz/jovian-wars-venus-forces-kickstarter)

The funding goal looks reasonable given the overall interest in the property. I dabbled a bit in Jovian Chronicles years ago in the late 90s but I haven't followed it since. Did Dave change the rules?

I think it got it's own Alpha/Beta rule set, at least for the fleet scale that this KS is for. I'm really not that interested in FS games at the moment though, so I really haven't been paying attention.

It's Jovian Wars now, they're similar to SW:Armada from comments I've seen (I have not played either system). You can download the beta rules free

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/201440/Jovian-Wars--Alpha-Playtest-Rules-Package-v1?cPath=73_124&affiliate_id=4310

I picked up the Exos and Fighters to use for the old Lightning Strike system despite owning dozens of the larger ones. Assembly on the larger ones SUCKS and most are still in blister, but the fleet scale is all single piece or 2-piece. Still need to finish the ships and actually get a game w/ them, but I love the smaller scale Exos, may pick up some of these when they hit retail since a lot of these designs were never actually made in the old scale

The other nice thing about the little ones is they paint up SUPER quick

Thanks for the clarification. I've still got the old rulebooks for both JC and LS (iirc both editions) somewhere in the basement but the figs are long gone in my case. I'm not the target audience for that kickstarter but I wish them luck in the crowdfunding.

I'm thinking about getting a RAFM Cobra - it'd be 2.5" tall vs 1.5" tall?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'm thinking about getting a RAFM Cobra - it'd be 2.5" tall vs 1.5" tall?

None of mine are assembled but still in the blister. I saw that a ton of RAFM stuff popped up on ebay for reasonable buy it now prices. I was tempted but my pile of shame is already too high. I'll check my Grizzlies if you want although I'm not sure how that'll translate over.

Thanks! I don't need it to the mm - just trying to understand the scale change for a "super-size" unit.

No problem. I'll check it out when I get home tonight and post it.

I measured last night but forgot to post it. My grizzlies are about 52-54mm to the top of the missle pods which is usually the highest point. The kodiak comes in a bit taller at around 58mm to the top of the AGM launcher on the back. I don't have my models mounted on bases so that's the heights of the models themselves and it obviously varies a bit depending on how you pose them.

Thanks! Somehow, I thought the RAFM models would be bigger, like a SM dreadnought

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Thanks! Somehow, I thought the RAFM models would be bigger, like a SM dreadnought

The striders were pretty big with the mammoth iirc being bigger/heavier/deadlier in a sock than an old metal 2nd edition SM dread. The gears were a big under old Tau crisis suit size.

Thanks for the comparison picture!

The Cobra looks great, even on the undersized base. I'm estimating that a 1/144 scale Tactical Gear comes roughly to the waist of the RAFM version, so they will be hugely imposing by comparison.

Taking it to the next level, I kind of want a RAFM Mammoth... I should probably hold off for maybe later.

Definitely, I need 1/144 infantry for scale

That's one of the few pics I found back when I was doing my own searches for Rafm minis and also found it helpful. For a time, I actually considered doing a Tau crisis suit army with RAFM HG minis but decided against it eventually.

Those RAFM Gears look a lot better than the G1 Crisis Suit, that is for sure!

FWIW, I finally put up a PDF version of my old comic book format Tales from Terra Nova Issue #1 battle report from years ago. God, that was the last full game that I played with a voluntary, willing opponent and it was around 4-5 years (?) ago back during the "alpha" phase iirc of what would become the current ruleset (although I used the old blitz L&L format plus maybe some of my house rules). I have no idea why the link doesn't want to work here in the post while centered but I've tried to edit it a bunch of times.

https://sitzkrieg.blogspot.com/2018/11/tales-from-terra-nova-issue-1.html

Ah, I remember that one. Still looks good!