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The Dark Series gears were all just upgraded (and stealthed up) Northern and Southern gears. The Claw series were all experimental Paxton gears introduced in "Black Talons: Mission to Caprice" that were re-named, given a stealth coating and crammed into the 'all new' Black Talon army for Blitz.

Black Talons were horrible to play against. They had 3-4 dice for offense and defense and often you couldn't even shoot them because of Stealth, and most of them were carrying one-hit-kill weapons thanks to superior fire control, accuracy and the many, many dice they could throw. Due to the Priority system they weren't unbeatable - elite armies had MORE objectives to fulfill than lesser armies, but that usually meant your tactics vs Black Talons was "fulfill one objective then run and hide the rest of the game".

Hopefully the changes in the rules (especially Stealth) make them more tolerable to play against. They'll never go into plastics, though, they're far too low volume an army (half the units of anything else).

bound for glory wrote:
I was thinking of taking advantage of the great prices on Amazon, ATM.

Can't beat those with a stick. Mean to say, I was going to buy a few sets to use as some sort(not thought too deeply into it as yet)ofpowered armor units in GRUNTZ.

But then i got to thinking I could use them for Heavy Gear

Thanks for the pointer! I might actually buy something!
___

$15-ish squads?

I might just get those Armadillos and Frames after all.

OTOH, not much savings on infantry platoons.

John Prins wrote:
The Dark Series gears were all just upgraded (and stealthed up) Northern and Southern gears. The Claw series were all experimental Paxton gears introduced in "Black Talons: Mission to Caprice" that were re-named, given a stealth coating and crammed into the 'all new' Black Talon army for Blitz.

Black Talons were horrible to play against. They had 3-4 dice for offense and defense and often you couldn't even shoot them because of Stealth, and most of them were carrying one-hit-kill weapons thanks to superior fire control, accuracy and the many, many dice they could throw. Due to the Priority system they weren't unbeatable - elite armies had MORE objectives to fulfill than lesser armies, but that usually meant your tactics vs Black Talons was "fulfill one objective then run and hide the rest of the game".

Hopefully the changes in the rules (especially Stealth) make them more tolerable to play against. They'll never go into plastics, though, they're far too low volume an army (half the units of anything else).

Believe it or not, they were not much fun to play with either. Imagine playing an army where you are out numbered 2 or even 3 to 1, that's incredibly difficult to lose a model, but if you do, you are . And any enemy model you wanted to kill? You could pretty much easily kill. It was like you were playing a totally different game then your opponent. It was an army that either won big, or lost big, with nothing in the middle. It won far more then it lost unless your opponent tailored a list or was really, really good.

Amazon has a fire sail going on the old metal stuff, eh? Hmm...

John Prins wrote:
The Dark Series gears were all just upgraded (and stealthed up) Northern and Southern gears. The Claw series were all experimental Paxton gears introduced in "Black Talons: Mission to Caprice" that were re-named, given a stealth coating and crammed into the 'all new' Black Talon army for Blitz.

Black Talons were horrible to play against. They had 3-4 dice for offense and defense and often you couldn't even shoot them because of Stealth, and most of them were carrying one-hit-kill weapons thanks to superior fire control, accuracy and the many, many dice they could throw. Due to the Priority system they weren't unbeatable - elite armies had MORE objectives to fulfill than lesser armies, but that usually meant your tactics vs Black Talons was "fulfill one objective then run and hide the rest of the game".

Hopefully the changes in the rules (especially Stealth) make them more tolerable to play against. They'll never go into plastics, though, they're far too low volume an army (half the units of anything else).

Agree completely. The only thing I might add is that their achilles heel (multiple super recon gears like weasels plus lots of indirect fire) made them not very fun to play with because they suddenly lost half their abilites (namely stealth). It was very much a rock paper scissors game in that you'd (given normal dice rolls) likely know the outcome of a game just from looking at the armies. If the talons faced a normal force, they easily won. If the other player had the $$ to build a decidedly anti-talon force with minmaxed recon gears then the talons usually lost. The whole premise of an elite army of invisible super gears piloted by the best of the best of the best (because the BOTB was already a TN planet faction thing!) whose abilities consisted of multiple gamebreaking mechanics to ensure your opponent's models literally couldn't do ANYTHING is great for RPG or story fiction... but sucks as a tabletop gameplay mechanic. I had a talon army that I played twice... once against in a demo (the guy was frankly a TFG new talon player who picked up a few models at gencon who refused to acknowledge the "fanzine" gear up points cost boosts because it had the word optional in the article) with a balanced southern force... and the talons won but at least I put up a fight. I then said lets play another with mirrored forces and I absolutely creamed him and asked him if he thought that was a fair matchup. Needless to say I never heard from him again. I would also point out that you could achieve in all fairness almost Talon levels of unfun games by taking multiple stealth squads in polar factions as well (especially the south).

As you said, balance is better now by virtue of the stealth rules not being completely stupidly broken but the talons IMO still aren't very balanced. When I looked at like for like models (as close as I could at least) like the Snakeye Mamba vs Dark Mamba comparison. For 1pt, you get an MRP, 1" reach on your vibroblade, autopilot, and an extra hull point. Each one of those is easily a 1pt upgrade each for other factions but talons get each of them for 75% off. The sniper panther vs dark jaguar sniper variant is another. The North version gets a HRF instead of a MRF.. but the talon gets autopilot, extra hull, 1" range on the vibroblade and a 1pt discount compared with the northern gear. I'd easily given the option ALWAYS take the talon versions of those gears instead of the polar ones. The point values for the other talons including claw series are spitballed as well (no real VCS in nublitz to ignore like was the case in normal blitz for paxton and nucoal) so in all likelihood have the same discounts factored in as well. It's not as bad as in blitz but the trend does continue.

 Tamwulf wrote:


Believe it or not, they were not much fun to play with either.

I generally found people went with Black Talons because it required the minimum number of models to paint. It was extremely inexpensive to get started with BT, but it's the exact wrong army for a starter to play. Someone who knew what they were doing with BT was really unpleasant to play against.

 Tamwulf wrote:

Amazon has a fire sail going on the old metal stuff, eh? Hmm...

Not on .ca they don't. -_- $76 for a single Owl. $121 for a Red Bull. $27 for transfers!

John Prins wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:


Believe it or not, they were not much fun to play with either.

I generally found people went with Black Talons because it required the minimum number of models to paint. It was extremely inexpensive to get started with BT, but it's the exact wrong army for a starter to play. Someone who knew what they were doing with BT was really unpleasant to play against.

That's why I picked it up as a opfor for my primary (at the time) southern force. Low model count, easy paint job, great fluff, different tactics... but still the gears that I loved. Even for a relatively veteran player (in terms of years a fan not necessarily in person blitz games sadly), it wasn't the right army to play in demos or anything other than the flying pink unicorn rarity of a HG tourney.

 Firebreak wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:

Amazon has a fire sail going on the old metal stuff, eh? Hmm...

Not on .ca they don't. -_- $76 for a single Owl. $121 for a Red Bull. $27 for transfers!

Amazon is like that. There's always somebody listing something you want at 4x the retail price, counting on suckers.

A bit off topic but a few years ago, there was an interesting article about an experiment watching two robosellers. Basically, the sellers would see what the cost was of an item on amazon including shipping and list it for a few bucks more. They basically programmed their algorithm to account for the possibility (the author postulated) of *BUYING* it from a cheaper seller when someone actually bought it from them at a higher price and then recycling it back to the end consumer. This process was likely automated by a program. It was interesting because there apparently in this case were only two "sellers" of a particular used out of print text book, both of whom were robosellers. One was apparently set to match the price to a buck or two under the next lowest competition and the other was roboset to sell it at several dollars above the highest.

The second seller would, for example, see the book at $15 so would charge $5 more at $20. The first seller's program was set to for example sell at $2 under the next lowest and later that hour raise the price to $18.. which in turn would cause the second seller to increase to $23... ad nauseum. With the two programs alternately increasing each price, the book went from a price in the teens to several thousand dollars with no purchases nor likely any human interaction. Please not that I used the term robo so this aside is totally on topic for a robotech thread.

FWIW, that's how prices get set for rare comic books, stamps and baseball cards... The numbers are meaningless, because they almost never get sold as a one-off to a consumer. And when they do, it's part of a big retail cross-trade of "like for like", where the values can be set to anything both sides agree on.


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 Firebreak wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:

Amazon has a fire sail going on the old metal stuff, eh? Hmm...

Not on .ca they don't. -_- $76 for a single Owl. $121 for a Red Bull. $27 for transfers!

FWIW, there's a Red Bull strider on Amazon US for $19.99
https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Gear-Peace-River-Strider/dp/B001NH01IU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471910929&sr=8-1

And the Primary Team (including 1 Owl) is only $17.99
https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Gear-Black-Primary-Insertion/dp/B003TLV4T8/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1471911023&sr=8-17

For the price delta, you could probably pay to have it shipped to the US.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

FWIW, there's a Red Bull strider on Amazon US for $19.99
https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Gear-Peace-River-Strider/dp/B001NH01IU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471910929&sr=8-1

And the Primary Team (including 1 Owl) is only $17.99
https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Gear-Black-Primary-Insertion/dp/B003TLV4T8/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1471911023&sr=8-17

For the price delta, you could probably pay to have it shipped to the US.

If you're outside the US of A, it will certainly be much cheaper than trying to buy directly from DP9, anyways.

This exchange is pretty telling:

Stuart Tonge wrote:Guys I just got a mail asking for $109 in postage for this - is that accurate? I am presuming it's in CAD but it's still £63. I was thinking more a tenner or fifteen tops.
It's almost have the price of backing the kickstarter.. is it accurate?

Stuart Tonge wrote:I can see from reading the immediate comments that the likely answer is yes and.. just wow. To say I'm unbelievably disappointing is just way way beyond how I feel right now. Half the price of the game in shipping? You guys saw me coming or what?

The Robster wrote:@ Stuart. Sadly we can't control the Canadian dollar exchange rate or the insane international shipping costs from Canada or the USA once the packages go over 4 lbs the shipping costs go up a lot. A single Core Starter Set weights 2.77 lbs so goes as 3 lbs and costs $53 CAD to ship internationally.

Well.... I guess they saved the backers the VAT costs? Shame about the shipping, though, but it is still kind of baffling to see those kind of quotes for shipping compared with many, many other Kickstarters. Probably having an approximate amount written on the KS from the start might have assuaged some aggravation, but of course it might also have resulted in lower numbers of international backers...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
FWIW, that's how prices get set for rare comic books, stamps and baseball cards... The numbers are meaningless, because they almost never get sold as a one-off to a consumer. And when they do, it's part of a big retail cross-trade of "like for like", where the values can be set to anything both sides agree on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Firebreak wrote:

 Tamwulf wrote:

Amazon has a fire sail going on the old metal stuff, eh? Hmm...

Not on .ca they don't. -_- $76 for a single Owl. $121 for a Red Bull. $27 for transfers!

FWIW, there's a Red Bull strider on Amazon US for $19.99
https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Gear-Peace-River-Strider/dp/B001NH01IU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471910929&sr=8-1

And the Primary Team (including 1 Owl) is only $17.99
https://www.amazon.com/Heavy-Gear-Black-Primary-Insertion/dp/B003TLV4T8/ref=sr_1_17?ie=UTF8&qid=1471911023&sr=8-17

For the price delta, you could probably pay to have it shipped to the US.

Despite the little flag, I am indeed Canadian, and shipping from the US usually amounts to "Sure. Bend over first."

Another reason Black Talons kind of wound up in a weird place as a popular starter army, is that up until recently anyone who remembered Heavy Gear most likely remembered it from the game starring said specop birdies, so who wouldn't want them?

I never played the HG game, although I did play a little BT Mechwarrior back in the day.

I kinda have my eye on the Utopian stuff they're clearing out, simply because it's so bizarre.

 Firebreak wrote:
]Despite the little flag, I am indeed Canadian, and shipping from the US usually amounts to "Sure. Bend over first."

The only place it's remotely fair to ship to Canada from is the UK, thanks to Royal Mail and Canada Post being all buddy-buddy (ask to see if they'll ship Royal Mail). If they use USPS ground from the USA it's not super-duper horrible, but it's still "You want how much?" expensive. Anything with FedEx, UPS or the like is robbery-at-gunpoint expensive.

What with customs and VAT and the price of international shipping, it's a small wonder anyone orders anything international.

John Prins wrote:

 Firebreak wrote:
]Despite the little flag, I am indeed Canadian, and shipping from the US usually amounts to "Sure. Bend over first."

The only place it's remotely fair to ship to Canada from is the UK, thanks to Royal Mail and Canada Post being all buddy-buddy (ask to see if they'll ship Royal Mail). If they use USPS ground from the USA it's not super-duper horrible, but it's still "You want how much?" expensive. Anything with FedEx, UPS or the like is robbery-at-gunpoint expensive.

Not so much even to the UK, it appears, as the exchange quoted was specifically talking in pounds, so at least in this instance it also was on a "making stones bleed" level.

What with customs and VAT and the price of international shipping, it's a small wonder anyone orders anything international.

Sometimes, you just don't have any other choice. Except just not buying what you wanted, that is.

 Albertorius wrote:

Not so much even to the UK, it appears, as the exchange quoted was specifically talking in pounds, so at least in this instance it also was on a "making stones bleed" level.

What with customs and VAT and the price of international shipping, it's a small wonder anyone orders anything international.

Sometimes, you just don't have any other choice. Except just not buying what you wanted, that is.

I just did some shipping quotes on Canada Post's website, and yeah, those prices seem pretty legit. I did notice that the volume seems to have a much bigger effect on shipping price than weight. A small 4 pound box was $26 to ship, while a 12" cube (same weight!) was $96. Geez.

Did the original pledges promise to include everything in the final retail packaging? I thought in all the quotes above that would come later. If anything, if it were up to me and possible (just spitballing here), I'd offer to ship it without the retail box in a smaller format if it fits and saves everyone money. I at least offer that to folks who buy stuff from me in the Swap Shop that comes in a big empty box.

 warboss wrote:
Did the original pledges promise to include everything in the final retail packaging? I thought in all the quotes above that would come later. If anything, if it were up to me and possible (just spitballing here), I'd offer to ship it without the retail box in a smaller format if it fits and saves everyone money. I at least offer that to folks who buy stuff from me in the Swap Shop that comes in a big empty box.

KS backers aren't getting the retail packaging (99% sure on that). That might save 25% of the volume on a core starter. The RTT starter had what, 34 minis? The sprues for HG are more compact but I think we're talking comparable bulk. I'm guessing based on the quote that the guy had a double core, which is what I based my 12" cube box on, though the weight is just a wild guess on my part.

John Prins wrote:

 warboss wrote:
Did the original pledges promise to include everything in the final retail packaging? I thought in all the quotes above that would come later. If anything, if it were up to me and possible (just spitballing here), I'd offer to ship it without the retail box in a smaller format if it fits and saves everyone money. I at least offer that to folks who buy stuff from me in the Swap Shop that comes in a big empty box.

KS backers aren't getting the retail packaging (99% sure on that). That might save 25% of the volume on a core starter. The RTT starter had what, 34 minis? The sprues for HG are more compact but I think we're talking comparable bulk. I'm guessing based on the quote that the guy had a double core, which is what I based my 12" cube box on, though the weight is just a wild guess on my part.

Honestly speaking, I would need to actually see the sprues in the flesh. So far, most of the Gears' sprues look similar in size to GW's character sprues (that is to say, I actually have no real idea how big they are).

I do know though that come october I will be getting two full Conan Boardgame King pledges, with the full retail packaging plus the full King Pledge packaging, plus a full load of add ons, for $50 shipping (included multiple shipping waves for the add ons), from the USA.

I still think that the problem is that DP9 didn't give even an approximate shipping costs quote during the KS, so a lot of people was expecting way less than what they're expected to pay now.

As a last note, they were supposed to be sending all UK/EU pledges in bulk to an UK distributor, so individual bulk should not be an issue as far as the canadian mail is concerned, only the overall bulk for all pledges.

I suspect companies got tired of paying for their own mistakes and missteps resulting in 12+ month delays during which their shipping costs increased which is why we saw free shipping and flat rat subsidized shipping fall out of favor instead for nebulous TBD future "actual" shipping. Even if DP9 isn't profiting off of the shipping, they did a poor job of managing expectations of the shipping during the KS. I suppose actually putting realistic shipping rates per pound to various sample countries (say one on each continent) for an estimated weight even at 2014 prices might have cost them some pledges. After seeing what happened with this KS (even if it isn't a direct fault of DP9's), I don't think I'd ever pledge for a kickstarter with a completely open ended future shipping cost. Luckily, as a disgruntled Robotech backer watching the kickstarter platform do absolutely nothing to even declare the KS the partial failure it absolutely is, I won't be crowdfunding anything soon.

How is the Kickstarter a partial failure?

Nomeny wrote:
How is the Kickstarter a partial failure?

That would be DP9 choosing not to deliver, nor to replace, all of the Gears that they took people's money for...

Same as PB kicking the can down the road.

 warboss wrote:
At 1/500 or roughly about a third the size of a current gear, they're probably not going to work for what I had intended (namely a 6mm epic 40k style travel heavy gear mass battle game variant).

It does make them the right scale for a Heavy Gear/Jovian Chronicles crossover, though.

I'm late to the party, again.

Can you link me to where The Pod screwed people ot of gears?

Nomeny wrote:
How is the Kickstarter a partial failure?

Are you asking me? I was referring to Robotech in that sentence in case you missed that.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 bound for glory wrote:
I'm late to the party, again.

Can you link me to where The Pod screwed people ot of gears?

In a nutshell, the canadian dollar's value tanked after the kickstarter. DP9 watched it tank for months and did nothing (like moving it into US currency). Because their kickstarted funds lost roughly 15-20% of their value, they rolled back two funded stretch goals (one mini each) and did NOT replace them with the metal models at the same price as they promised in their kickstarter campaign or (iirc but not 100% sure) offer refunds but instead just offered them at a discount still above what the kickstarter charged or allowed folks to shift funds to other models. They "made it up" to backers by including extra bits (which would have been on the sprue anyways because the alternative was... what?... empty space?) and tweaked the Caprice sprue to get in another model iirc (again... they would have done that anyways unless they wanted obviously barren sprues). Google heavy gear kickstarter and look for the updates roughly late last year for the direct quotes.

In the end, it was IMO a regrettable blunder 90% their fault but not a deal breaker partly because they were timely in telling us and open about it (unlike Palladium). YMMV and other(s) certainly viewed it in a worse light.

You know, I was very pro pod just a few months ago, because, well, I'm getting old(near 50, sad to say) and I remember the fun I had buying first the big RAFM figures(which, again saddly, I sold, because I liked the new scale, when they went to almost 10mm) then the newer 10mm stuff(going to my flgs and buying the singles was fun).

When you get older, you remember things differently. There was a flgs that just went out of business. Long story short, it was part of me growing up. Heck, I was 12 years old when I first took a long bus ride with a friend to check the joint out.

It was amazing. They had a hell of alot in 1979! We took the long bus ride nearly every saturday for over 2 years, it was that good.

Anyway, I hav'nt been to the place in 20 years. In fact, the last time I was there, I had just gotten my first car)a Datson 1973 240z) and I went to just see the old place. At that point in my life, I had girlfriends, and well, gaming was not on my agenda, if you know what I mean...

So I went in and they had sold all the miniatures and gaming stuff. They had a little corner with what was left. I remember I bought one of those awesome TRAP books)I can't for the life of me rememder the name of that series. But the had really cool traps for RPG's) just to buy something.

Anyway I know, TL;DR, but the place just went out of business after being there for 40 years. I told my wife I wanted to go once more, because I just KNEW they would still have the box of dice under the counter, and I would have bought the whole box. Just because...

I saddly could'nt go, as my beloved mother died that week, and I had other things to do.

 warboss wrote:


In a nutshell, the canadian dollar's value tanked after the kickstarter.

This. The only thing I can add is that they did put an extra Acco in because of the logistics of casting; the Acco was on the same sprue as the legs and bodies for all the other Caprice stuff, and you needed 5 casts to make the Caprice army set. So instead of 4 Acco, you get 5. Not exactly compensation for the loss of the Sidewinder and Tiger sprues, and I wouldn't tout 'finding room for more parts on other sprues' as something they did as compensation (it was something we all expected them to do if possible).

But at least they owned up to the screw-up. If Palladium had done the same early on I might have written off RTT long ago, rather than still being in axe-grinding mode years later. Then again, Palladium's shenanigans probably went beyond mere screw-ups.

LOL! Do you have a link to Palladiums shenanigans? Back in the day, my group played the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG.

 bound for glory wrote:
LOL! Do you have a link to Palladiums shenanigans? Back in the day, my group played the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/651554.page

This is the second thread complaining about the three years delayed kickstarter with no realistic end in sight for half the rewards. The previous thread was locked after 200 pages when palladium with great aplomb announced a "restart" of the conversation regarding the kickstarter and a new openness... followed by a full year of showing almost nothing and months without a peep (even copy pasted KS updates). Google robotech kickstarter for their "spin" and read the thread above for the reactions.

 bound for glory wrote:
LOL! Do you have a link to Palladiums shenanigans? Back in the day, my group played the first Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles RPG.

Head on over to the Robotech thread in this forum: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/651554.page. It's a truly epic tale of idiocy, but it's a long read. It started with the Kickstarter being done in partnership with Ninja Division, which got a LOT of people's attention. Then when the KS was closed, Ninja Division was suddenly 'out of the picture' with 'their obligations fulfilled'. TRANSLATION: Palladium wanted to keep all the money themselves.

Three years later, the money's gone, RTT is a dumpster fire and Wave 2 is never happening as long as Palladium can keep saying "Soon we'll tell you more..."