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I hope your being sarcastic, as it's even named BattlELOID.

However, it does remind me somewhat of an Avatar mechsuit.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
In otherwords, some startup is trying to sell "Battloid" robots on Kickstarter.
http://www.gamewire.belloflostsouls.net/invasion-kickstarter-updates-presenting-battleloid/

I'm pretty fething sure that's an outright trademark / copyright issue that confuses with the Robotech property.

Maybe somebody can sic Harmony Gold on them.

Me, I'm just going to get out my popcorn.

hard to tell when you are making a joke John, you just don't have the follow thru part of the joke down.

Asterios wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
In otherwords, some startup is trying to sell "Battloid" robots on Kickstarter.
http://www.gamewire.belloflostsouls.net/invasion-kickstarter-updates-presenting-battleloid/
I'm pretty fething sure that's an outright trademark / copyright issue that confuses with the Robotech property.
Maybe somebody can sic Harmony Gold on them.
Me, I'm just going to get out my popcorn.

hard to tell when you are making a joke John, you just don't have the follow thru part of the joke down.

I think our PB "friends" are a bit short on cash or they would jump right on that IP challenge.
I think I missed the plot here too.

Well, I think I found a new theme song for the PB experience, I can thank my kids for pointing me to this earworm: open if you dare.You have been warned.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It turns out that the Shermans are very poorly molded and designed. They're simply awful to build, with horrible cut lines and shrink / warp that makes it really hard to get a crisp build out of them. I got a marginally better build out of it. One side closed up pretty good, but there's still a clearly visible gap on the other side.

I'm surprised to hear that. I've never put together any of the BF plastic Shermans, but the plastic Panthers and StuGs I've got all went together perfectly. No gaps or molding issues.

 mdauben wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It turns out that the Shermans are very poorly molded and designed. They're simply awful to build, with horrible cut lines and shrink / warp that makes it really hard to get a crisp build out of them. I got a marginally better build out of it. One side closed up pretty good, but there's still a clearly visible gap on the other side.

I'm surprised to hear that. I've never put together any of the BF plastic Shermans, but the plastic Panthers and StuGs I've got all went together perfectly. No gaps or molding issues.

It was specifically the ones in the original Open Fire! set which make Palladium look like the paragons of plastic engineering. The new ones are excellent kits, though PSC is definitely a viable option for those who prefer them. However, other than pointing out that competition is better for consumers than exclusive licenses held by disinterested companies, there's not much relevance to the topic at hand here.

One interesting on-topic thing is "who has the legitimate rights to miniatures games?" I know that PB had to market this as an outgrowth of the RPG because that's what their license allows. Is that because a "real" miniatures game might conflict with another license held by another company? If so, does anyone think they might be interested in PB potentially poisoning the well for any future product this hypothetical company might develop? Doubt it's a viable avenue to be pursued, since this hypothetical company is keeping an extremely low profile, but the value of their rights is being damaged so perhaps they would seek redress with Harmony Gold, which in turn makes them get off the sofa to slap PB into actually doing something?

 mdauben wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
It turns out that the Shermans are very poorly molded and designed. They're simply awful to build, with horrible cut lines and shrink / warp that makes it really hard to get a crisp build out of them. I got a marginally better build out of it. One side closed up pretty good, but there's still a clearly visible gap on the other side.

I'm surprised to hear that. I've never put together any of the BF plastic Shermans, but the plastic Panthers and StuGs I've got all went together perfectly. No gaps or molding issues.

It appears to be specific to the Shermans included in the starters from a year or two ago. In trying to show you...
http://theminikingdom.blogspot.ie/2013/01/flames-of-war-open-fire-sherman-fixes.html

It's pretty ugly.

As above, the current set is probably on par with a 70s Airfix kit, so there shouldn't be any issues. Same with any of their newer stuff. Still, I'll prefer PSC for armor.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Krinsath wrote:
It was specifically the ones in the original Open Fire! set which make Palladium look like the paragons of plastic engineering.

However, other than pointing out that competition is better for consumers than exclusive licenses held by disinterested companies, there's not much relevance to the topic at hand here.

One interesting on-topic thing is "who has the legitimate rights to miniatures games?"

Exactly.

My point in sharing was simply that that model was worse to build than Palladium's Valks, which have issues with the arms going into the body, not that competition is good and licensing is bad.

I assume that the RPG tie is required because someone holds the scale models license, separate from the RPG gaming license.

 Krinsath wrote:
One interesting on-topic thing is "who has the legitimate rights to miniatures games?" I know that PB had to market this as an outgrowth of the RPG because that's what their license allows. Is that because a "real" miniatures game might conflict with another license held by another company? If so, does anyone think they might be interested in PB potentially poisoning the well for any future product this hypothetical company might develop? Doubt it's a viable avenue to be pursued, since this hypothetical company is keeping an extremely low profile, but the value of their rights is being damaged so perhaps they would seek redress with Harmony Gold, which in turn makes them get off the sofa to slap PB into actually doing something?

I don't believe there is such a company.

Personally, Occam's Razor would indicate that the reason PB tied this in with their existing RPG licence was to save them the costs of acquiring another licence. Not because someone else already had the licence and was doing nothing about it. Although I could also see HG allowing PB to make this 'extension' to their existing product to get another company off their feet about doing a proper miniatures game [and probably doing a better job than PB - which may make HG sit up and take notice].

However, on the premise that there is such a company, they ought to be mad as all heck right about now. In the time PB have been "working really hard, honestly, guys" company 'B' will have had the time to have developed better models, better rules, and probably have already solved the scale equation. Maybe they will even drop a bombshell and have a full range of product in the stores in time for Christmas [beating PB by several months or more.] This would of course have been from a standing start compared to PB's running start but falling over their own feet every step of the way. It's just unfortunate at this time that everyone but PB have realised that PB have been going to the toilet in that pool for years.

 Conrad Turner wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
One interesting on-topic thing is "who has the legitimate rights to miniatures games?" I know that PB had to market this as an outgrowth of the RPG because that's what their license allows. Is that because a "real" miniatures game might conflict with another license held by another company?

I don't believe there is such a company.

However, on the premise that there is such a company, they ought to be mad as all heck right about now.

If there were such a company, they didn't do jack gak before the RRT KS, so feth those guys. If they had announced mid-KS that they would be launching a scale range of 1/100 HIPS Macross models, I probably woudn't have split in on the RRT KS. Their inaction is their fault.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Conrad Turner wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
One interesting on-topic thing is "who has the legitimate rights to miniatures games?" I know that PB had to market this as an outgrowth of the RPG because that's what their license allows. Is that because a "real" miniatures game might conflict with another license held by another company?

I don't believe there is such a company.

However, on the premise that there is such a company, they ought to be mad as all heck right about now.

If there were such a company, they didn't do jack gak before the RRT KS, so feth those guys. If they had announced mid-KS that they would be launching a scale range of 1/100 HIPS Macross models, I probably woudn't have split in on the RRT KS. Their inaction is their fault.

there is no Company, this all stems from a court order which does not allow HG to issue any more licenses (in other words they are stuck with the licenses they currently have and can issue no others), they have a license for RPG so they can still do RPG whether PB sticks with it or not, if HG issues a license for a miniature game which they did not have, they would revoke all rights to anything dealing with the mecha from Robotech Macross, furthermore there is currently an issue in regards to the Robotech movie, Sony wanted to do the story, but the mecha they want to use, HG does not have the rights too, but HG is still persisting on a right of distribution and such of all things Macross in the US, which the other companies are not giving up so Sony will not be making a Robotech movie anytime soon, all they paid for was the option from HG.

furthermore on IP rights in accordance with Japanese Law the rights HG is toting are going to expire and the whole mess will become public domain, except for names and such, but the mecha designs will be.

PB has but a short while to get wave 2 out or they will never bother with the game since the mecha will show up everywhere.

Asterios wrote:
PB has but a short while to get wave 2 out or they will never bother with the game since the mecha will show up everywhere.

When? And how? Like HQ25?

its hard to say, but the thing of it is, anybody could sue HG now for the rights to do mecha from the original show and win, but no one will cause it costs money. right now the only thing protected by copyright and or trademark is the story and the names and places and such from the story. as to images and even mecha designs HG has already lost some cases even, but like I said people and or companies are not bothering since it will cost them money to fight it in court on a property that is not as big as most would think.

@JohnHwangDD - That's funny. As much as we've clashed over assembling the PB models, I have the Open Fire set and don't recall having much issues with the shermans (at least, not as much as I was fuming at the PB models). I remember the pac guns giving me some concern, but not the shermans. And I know the set I got was before the revised one.

If yours went together clean, I'm glad for you. Mine didn't.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 Conrad Turner wrote:

 Krinsath wrote:
One interesting on-topic thing is "who has the legitimate rights to miniatures games?" I know that PB had to market this as an outgrowth of the RPG because that's what their license allows. Is that because a "real" miniatures game might conflict with another license held by another company?

I don't believe there is such a company.

However, on the premise that there is such a company, they ought to be mad as all heck right about now.

If there were such a company, they didn't do jack gak before the RRT KS, so feth those guys. If they had announced mid-KS that they would be launching a scale range of 1/100 HIPS Macross models, I probably woudn't have split in on the RRT KS. Their inaction is their fault.

I don't think there is any company with such a license.
I think Yune heard "game" and sent the two guys who brought it to them over to Palladium.
That fits in with what we know.

Wasn't that Paulson Games, Introduced to PB by Red Duke Games?

No, I approached HG on my own and was told that I needed to go through PB as they had the rpg license.

Whatever Tom was doing was his own separate thing, initially he was trying to do stuff with 1/100 scale models then later wanted to partner up and use my minis which I never agreed to. He was never involved with my project or the creation of the miniatures I was working on. He did a really irritating job of trying to inject himself into things where he was never asked to involved, they kept him on with RRT because we was willing to do volunteer work for free.

I had to ask him to take down my photos that he'd re-posted on his blog as he was using them to make it appear as though he was a partner or co-developer in my effort, which he had never had any association with. He also tried to wedge himself into discussions with PB which there was no need, the only people I needed to deal with at that time was Kevin and Tommy Yune. Given that Kevin had no experience with any sort of miniature design it really muddied the waters and unfortunately they relied on a lot of bad info that didn't come from me. It seems that Kevin prefers to side with advice from his inner circle despite what people with tangible experience tell him. As a result he gets pulled in too many directions at once and that's probably why the project is in it's current state.

Tom may have been involved with introducing ND to Palladium? (I don't know for certain as that was several months after I'd dealt with PB and been cut loose)

*Sigh*, the "what might have been" makes me wonder. Do you still have those photos anywhere? I'm curious about what your take would have looked like.

If the rights ever came up in the future Paulson, would you be willing to look at doing minis or has this whole KS tainted any desire to ever deal with this IP/KS/backers?

These are buried deep in the old thread, I originally started on this stuff in 2010 so it's been a while. These were some of the prototypes that I presented to PB & HG all the way back at the beginning. They aren't perfect as there's some minor tweaks that needed to be made before they would have seen production but they were pretty close to finished. I sculpted each of the destroids, Sean did the Zentraedi. I also completed 3d sculpts for the Veritechs but I didn't get them printed at the time I left the project. I'm not going to repost all of the pics but here's a few.

The painting and color photos were done by Winterdyne Studios (and totally kick butt).




As for working with PB in the future? No way in hell. Kevin completely burned that bridge last time we spoke when he insulted my integrity and business. This KS crashing and burning is all on him and he's earned every bit of it.

 paulson games wrote:
Tom may have been involved with introducing ND to Palladium? (I don't know for certain as that was several months after I'd dealt with PB and been cut loose)

Correct. As per The Great History Of Everything:

It was also Tom who first suggested Palladium talk to Soda Pop Miniatures/Ninja Division about working with us to make the game pieces

Thanks, Paulson - Warhammer/Tomahawk is my favorite destroid, BTW.

As for doing the figures, I appreicate and understand the response, but I meant sepearate and without PB's involvement - i.e., they lost the game rights and it was up for grabs. Though it sounds like this IP is burnt enough it's not worth approaching even in that case.

Even if PB somehow lost their license I think it'll remain toxic. People have always disliked how HG controlled the IP, then PB's efforts haven't endeared themselves with anyone and just made things much worse. Even if it were to get new ownership (which is near impossible) I don't think this one can ever be restored to what people had hoped it'd be. Because of all the difficulties and mismanagement I think the game will continue to flounder around on discount shelves for a while and never take flight beyond the initial offerings of the KS. The later generations simply don't have the sales strength to outshine the Macross arc, there's certainly fans that like them but if the Macross arc can't make it as a successful product the later arc's won't stand a chance.

IMO the well has been tainted far too deeply, nobody wants to deal with the legal mess, it's a stale and aging IP. PB has managed to scorch what little remaining good will there was with the fans. Robotech's potential was entirely fueled by nostalgia which was already wearing thin and anything that remained was crushed by the attitude of PB. There are so many better options and properties to pursue, anything made since the turn of the century would be far more relevant with the gaming crowd. The greater portion of the gaming market wasn't even born until 15-20 years after Robotech aired, they don't connect with it and the way HG/PB treats the fan base only serves to further erode an already limited pool of buyers.

Hey guys just curious if anyone here might have a spare Gencon Miriya or Max they would be willing to sell or know where I could find one, thanks. I can't find any for sale anywhere!

Pretty sure there will be loads of them at any Con PB will be attending in the forseeable future. Either go there, or have someone who goes buy them.

Or wait until the next PB's sale from their web. Surely they'll be there too. Or call them, they will probably sell them to you anyways.

I'll see if I can contact them. Thanks for the advice!

Did I miss any updates from Adepticon?

How did the 'tournament' there go?

Did anyone talk to [whoever from PB that was there] and learn anything new?

The update dropped into my mailbox earlier, I thought someone else would have added it here.

Basically Kevin didn't go to Adepticon, was sick. Relevant KS update as follows:

We’re happy that so many of you came to our booth at AdeptiCon and saw the SDF-1, Armored Valkyrie and YF-4 pieces we had on display. As Wayne may have mentioned to some of you, we recently got some tooling quotes for Wave Two, and we’re discussing piece breakdown with the manufacturer. More to come as things continue to percolate on this front on several different levels.

....

Yes, that was a stupid long time for "tooling quotes" to be gotten. We're not going to see stuff in 2016 even at the most positive, I think.

Yeah, 2016 is right out. According to someone who attended Adepticon, Chuck himself admitted wave 2 wouldn't be shipping this year (which yes most of us are completely unsurprised to hear, it's more surprising that someone associated with PB even said it aloud).

Far as I know there wasn't an RRT tournament at the convention, just NMI running demos.

Wave 2 not coming this year doesn't mean they aren't trying the relaunch this year.

But it does shoot any effort to relaunch in the foot.

Jefffar wrote:
Wave 2 not coming this year doesn't mean they aren't trying the relaunch this year.

But it does shoot any effort to relaunch in the foot.

So they get to pick from excessive tardiness or rampant stupidity. Yay for options!

I'd still like to see a single set of sprue layouts before I'll concede the first half (at least) of 2017 as a write off too. Because as much as they may not want to admit it, the 10 months from start of PPP to starting delivery was them busting their asses and prioritizing RRT over pretty much everything. Now, I can't see them prioritizing RRT over anything. And if they miss GC2017, making two straight years without anything new (no, promo figs don't count), then what's the point? I can't imagine sales of the existing product SKU's are doing gangbusters. That's just not the way the hobby works.

Anyway, my bet's on excessive tardiness. While I can see them being silly enough to relaunch with nothing new to add, I feel betting on inertia (and the first seven words on Newton's First Law) is the safer bet. Anyone willing to wager an internet cookie the other way?

I don't think a relaunch this year would work without wave two. If Kevy thinks using what little KS funds are left to make more limited metal miniatures will save rrt, then he's wrong and is really out of touch. If he does try this year it'll be a wonk, wonk event. No one will care.