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 Necros wrote:
Wasn't the last version of Epic Adeptus Titanicus? I think if they brought that back it would probably have titans as more of the focus.. maybe coming with 2 full legions? I'll take 10 warhounds please!

The first Epic was Adeptus Titanicus, that evolved into Space Marine, and ultimately evolved into Epic Armageddon.

First, last, same thing

They can easily put large Epic armies into boxed games if HH BaC is any indication of the amount of sprues of such a set.

Necros, you are not wrong. There was Adeptus Titanicus II, available in PDF form. The old website had it as a free download.

 Ghaz wrote:

The way GW has been packing sprues lately I would expect to see almost an entire Epic army on one or two sprues.

In the dim mists of time one of the reasons supposedly given for Epic removal as a core game was that as you could get most of an army from a couple of boxes of plastic sprues people just weren't buying enough toy soldiers.

If the new SG only intend to release minimal models (possibly only a boxed game and some expansions) then plastic sprues with a lot of content would be logical. If the plan is to release a fairly wide range for Epic then I could see some reluctance on the part of GW to release armies in a (small) box like they used to, in fact I wouldn't be surprised to see a lot of resin releases.

I am interested to see how GW will revamp these games. They only mentioned some but not all of them. No one seems to recall why these games were given up by GW in the first place. My educated guess is that their profit margins were not high enough to continue and GW only had a limited amount of resources at that time despite being a public company.
Blood Bowl has a strong player base. Its popularity is more than all the rest of the specialist games combined. It will never die. From the business point of view, it is not a profitable game to promote. Over the last number of years, the rules have evolved and reached maturity. Players have learned to bring in proxy and accessories from other companies. All have at least one to two teams to play from one season to another. In BB, all you need is one team and it can last for more than a decade until you get bored with that particular team’s playing style. What kind of profit can a company make? Besides, with its special theme, either one will get interested or not. If GW makes a totally new edition and forces players with a complete set of new rules, most of the fans will possibly get pissed off and pick up other similar football games. There are quite a number on the market.
Battlefleet Gothic once got many people’s attention. Now, the gap is filled by Firestorm Armada. There are also new game coming on the market, such as Halo and Dropfleet. All have rules that make you feel like playing a space war rather than WW1 naval battle as in BFG. Their miniature designs are far more attractive than the typical Gothic design which served no purpose. Why would anyone design a spaceship with so many pillars all over its body? No matter what GW do, no space battle game will match the popularity of Star Wars X-wing or Armada by FFG.
When people talk about a Sci-Fi skirmish game, they mostly refer to Infinity. The only issue that prevents me from trying is the look of these miniatures but the rules are very solid. It is unlikely that any existing Infinity players will switch over to Necromunda. Likely, when a new player makes a choice between the two, Infinity will probably come first.
Malifaux can easily cheat out Mordheim from underneath. That game has such a rich background and varieties of models that it can easily accommodate all tastes. With the ongoing strong support from Wyrd, new storylines and the new campaign system, there is no room for Mordheim to stand unless GW is able to match the same degree of effort. I highly doubt it.
6 mm scale only represents a small portion in the miniature market. One main reason is that it is not fun to paint these tiny figures. Those who claim that they love to paint 6 mm scale are either exceptional or simply lying. This is why no company has captured this market. Rule by itself does not sell. It is the figures that make the profit. Besides, the one for Epic is too random and dependant on chance. Unless GW revamps that entire rule system, the game will stay in the shelf for an unusual long time.
I have to mention Warmaster, another one of my favorite game. It was smashed by GW after 3 months of release. The rules are very good because it is designed by Rick Prestley who now works for Warlord games and has put out the Beyond the Gates of Antares with full support from the company. GW should follow what Warlord is doing for all its games. It is highly unlikely that GW will bring out Warmaster again.
Finally, it looks like Dreadfleet and Man o’war will continue to stay down for a good number of reasons.

My one hope would be a slightly more logical deployment of units on sprues.

IIRC there were two and threes of things on some, or enough to make 4 bases when the unit size was 5 etc etc.

Haven't played since Space Marine though (when the bases were square, the units were on cards and Nids used hexes for their force org) so I may be misrembering.

 Ghaz wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 RiTides wrote:

I can see both points of view, but love the visual . I'm also very optimistic about this (although cautiously so). It seems like it could be a very good thing, and having their own little creative bubble at GW where they won't be mired in the decision-making that has resulted in AoS and destruction of army organization in 40K, etc, is the best possible outcome for these games! They could still mess it up, but I'm willing to see where it goes

I'm just curious if they'll screw it up at the level of the FLGS peg. In a world of $30+ monopose single space marine figures, I'm guessing a tiny sprue of two plastic epic rhinos will probably run close to that.

The way GW has been packing sprues lately I would expect to see almost an entire Epic army on one or two sprues.

That's another reason why I'm interested - having Epic scale models in injection molded plastic could be incredible. And Adeptus Titanicus... this is something I would actually spring for! A table full of small titans... mmmmmm

wildger wrote:


6 mm scale only represents a small portion in the miniature market. One main reason is that it is not fun to paint these tiny figures. Those who claim that they love to paint 6 mm scale are either exceptional or simply lying. This is why no company has captured this market. Rule by itself does not sell. It is the figures that make the profit. Besides, the one for Epic is too random and dependant on chance. Unless GW revamps that entire rule system, the game will stay in the shelf for an unusual long time.

Infantry and APCs maybe, but we're also looking at Thunderhawk Squadrons, Land Trains, Capitol Imperialis, Titans, battalions of Superheavies etc..

There's plenty of stuff at 6mm that's a blast to paint.

You need Fantasy/Sci Fi 6mm though, if it's historical then there's nothing of the scale needed to be fun.

Yeah, I don't think I'd enjoy painting 6 mm space marines, but I would gladly paint an army full of titans 2"+ tall titans

There are a lot of space ship combat games out there now though, I think BFG might be tougher to pull off or at least bring in new blood, when there's games like X-Wing out there now. There will always be die hards and if the new game is chock full of new models and not just more copies of the same old cruisers then it would probably do well.

Land Trains?

I'm hopeful for this news but find Space Dwarves an unlikely backwards step (what next 40k?!?!)

All this talk about Mordhiem and BB got me to get out my skaven from both games. Man, I love those little rats.

Well, colour me impressed. Its actually true.

I'll have a sniff around if they manage to update Epic or Necromunda in a style that is consistent with my current tastes.

If I want old school GW, i'll just go rummage through my cupboards.

Here's a question: What flavour Epic do we want; 30k or 40k?

SM Legion Tanks or Tau & Tyranids?

Logic says 40k but my heart wants squadrons of Sicaran tanks flying all over the place!

Both?

Warhams-77 wrote:
They can easily put large Epic armies into boxed games if HH BaC is any indication of the amount of sprues of such a set.

This will only work if they redesign the Spare Marine infantry models. The current sculpt is out there in bucketloads and will show up on eBay the moment a new game is brought to market. Such cheap (old-style) bits will sell before FW/SG stuff unless a new and better looking design is created.

The point of 6mm scale isn't gorgeously painted detailed figures, it is a realistic look of massed troops and weapon ranges.

notprop wrote:Land Trains?

I'm hopeful for this news but find Space Dwarves an unlikely backwards step (what next 40k?!?!)

Hey, yesterday GW announced they're bringing back Blood Bowl, all bets are off. (Except Plastic Sisters, never back Plastic Sisters)

notprop wrote:Here's a question: What flavour Epic do we want; 30k or 40k?

SM Legion Tanks or Tau & Tyranids?

Logic says 40k but my heart wants squadrons of Sicaran tanks flying all over the place!

Both?

There's very little 30K specific, most of the big stuff has 40£ rules too, so I think both is feasible. Perhaps with different unit setups?

I look forward to the hilarity of Sigmarines playing football.

I'd really love to see an Inquisitor type game make a comeback, not specifically for the ruleset but for the gorgeous looking minis that they produced for that title.

It was unfortunately a bit before my time. That said, the minis pop up on fleabay (for eye watering prices!) now and again, I really regret not getting a few before specialist games was put to bed the last time.

The Eldar Ranger, Eisenhorn and Artemis were my favourites but I recently learnt that there were even 54mm Kroot and Tau Fire warriors! :O

Given £20 clampacks we have now they'd probably cost the earth if they were recommissioned but I'd love to see what they could achieve, given how lovely the last batch of models were, the clampacks featuring extra sets of weapons, headswaps and gear seemed like a great idea too.

Whilst it's nice to see GW are resurrecting some beloved classics as far as I'm concerned other companies have already stepped up and are doing it just well for far less than GW will charge.

I loved BFG, Mordhiem, Necromunda and Epic back in the 90's but these days I have Star Wars:Armada, Frostgrave, Infinity and various other rules/games that are scratching those itches and I'd rather give my cash to those guys than GW.

 Azreal13 wrote:

notprop wrote:Here's a question: What flavour Epic do we want; 30k or 40k?

SM Legion Tanks or Tau & Tyranids?

Logic says 40k but my heart wants squadrons of Sicaran tanks flying all over the place!

Both?

There's very little 30K specific, most of the big stuff has 40£ rules too, so I think both is feasible. Perhaps with different unit setups?

At that scale, there isn't enough detail on the model to showcase the difference in armor variants. I suggest make models for 40k and then put out 30k specific campaign books to fill that market niche.

 MLaw wrote:

 His Master's Voice wrote:
removed needless trolling..

As far as the idea of supporting SGs through BaC style releases is neat, but requires a number of factors to work that BaC doesn't care about, because it comes on top of a massive range of existing products.

Releasing a two gang Necromunda redux is not going to work the same way. In fact, I would say it would be much better if the new studio would come out with all resin ranges for the revived games before reinforcing the successful ones with plastic boxes.

Not sure what BaC means..
I did mention in my idea that after the initial release, the individual gangs could be done as standalone boxed sets. I did not mention any of those sets being plastic (though it seems like a direction to go). Is the HH $150 box plastic or resin or both? As to GW resin.. uh.. yeah.. didn't they try that already? Considering GW's heroes that would've been metal or resin are AFAIK being done as plastics now? One of the few things I've bought from them over the last I dunno how long was a Chaos Sorceror, who to my surprise was a plastic kit for a resin price tag.

I'd suspect that plastic characters are way more expensive to produce than resin ones because there are almost no economies of scale compared to regiments. People will buy a maximum of one of each plastic character and no more.

This is perhaps only tangentially related but I'm curious whether the return of SGs will herald the return to encouraging players to build their own terrain.

I find it incredibly strange to see whole boards for sale!

If you are clever you can put six character models into a single sprue that would normally contain 12 normal infantry, then split them into separate packs. This is more expensive than making 12 normal infantry, but it's a lot cheaper than making six separate character figures on individual sprue frames.

The reason why GW character figures cost £20 is because GW.

 Breotan wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

notprop wrote:Here's a question: What flavour Epic do we want; 30k or 40k?

SM Legion Tanks or Tau & Tyranids?

Logic says 40k but my heart wants squadrons of Sicaran tanks flying all over the place!

Both?

There's very little 30K specific, most of the big stuff has 40£ rules too, so I think both is feasible. Perhaps with different unit setups?

At that scale, there isn't enough detail on the model to showcase the difference in armor variants. I suggest make models for 40k and then put out 30k specific campaign books to fill that market niche.

There's no way I'd even considered they'd produce different armour marks at Epic scale, I suppose they could provide rules for some of the specialist units, but you'd probably use generic Marines with painted shoulders or something to distinguish.

What you'd need to do is something akin to what they do with 40K stuff, where you can have one in the army as a relic, but squadrons of the same thing in a 30K force. That wouldn't work at the scale of Epic, but something along those lines. Models wise a 30K Legion and a 40K Chapter would use almost the same models (perhaps produce Epic Primarchs, maybe?) they'd just need to be organised differently.

This topic made me come out of hiding just to comment here, again.
I actually was introduced to the 40K verse via BFG. I absolutely loved the concept of organic "ships" of the Tyranids, and their ability to literally chew through kilometre-long ships blew me away. Looking forward to playing with my Nids once more, and maybe getting some giant cathedral ships.

For the special characters... I always liked how they did the IG command squad sprue, with lots of options for lots of characters. What if instead of single pose characters they did a generic sprue.. There might only be 1 torso, but a few different legs and shoulder pads and other bits so that you could use other standard marine bodies to decorate and turn into characters too? I'd be more inclined to pay $30 for a a hero model like that, then $30 for 1 monopose guy.

 Necros wrote:
For the special characters... I always liked how they did the IG command squad sprue, with lots of options for lots of characters. What if instead of single pose characters they did a generic sprue.. There might only be 1 torso, but a few different legs and shoulder pads and other bits so that you could use other standard marine bodies to decorate and turn into characters too? I'd be more inclined to pay $30 for a a hero model like that, then $30 for 1 monopose guy.

That's basically what the Space Marine chapter upgrade sprues are.

Guys.. 3d printing has opened up a lot of doors for 6mm. You might have thought you wouldn't be able to tell much but check out these:
http://www.onslaughtmini.com/#

I know in person those details are small. Very very small.. But there are details that a clever hobbyist can pick out to highlight the differences. I'm not saying 6mm (10mm really) is going to yield amazing GD quality paintjobs, but it is not the small simple geometric field of miniatures we might remember.

That and the terrain comment a post or two up brings up another thing.. Hobbyists.. SG was a hobbyists' best friend. A lot of stuff basically required at least basic conversions and back when I played these in actual stores, people didn't scoff if you showed up with a non-amazing conversion (except that one GD level painter who mocked everything by everyone except himself). There were instructions on building your own terrain, doing your own weapon conversions, building your own tables. When 'Ard Boys and all that other nonsense pushed those players out of the way, a lot of folks took it personal. It didn't happen at the exact time SG was phased out but it was pretty close IIRC. Same era for sure..

 Azreal13 wrote:

There's no way I'd even considered they'd produce different armour marks at Epic scale,

People have sculpted their own. I have seen some really nice homemade MK3 armour and other marine sculpts that are head and shoulders above the old (and older) plastics, which are already in different marks (Mk 6 and 7).

 Necros wrote:
Yeah, I don't think I'd enjoy painting 6 mm space marines, but I would gladly paint an army full of titans 2"+ tall titans

Even still, GW wasn't exactly consistent with the scale for Epic. By their own admission Infantry was one scale, vehicles another, flyers another, and Titans yet another. While it might be off putting for those who have existing collections, I think its a good opportunity to bring them all into alignment and make the new miniatures properly scaled to one another. The way GW has organize this new division they seem to want it to take the same approach as FW, and I think that means they will want to showcase models. Its hard to do that with little lumpy marines.

If they approached the miniatures as a completely blank slate, with no regard to the previous models, I'd want to see an Emperor titan (which was under sized) approaching the size of the 40k Imperial Knight and everything else scaled accordingly. A lot of what makes it a hobby is the potential for modeling and customization and that's difficult at the 6mm scale. While infantry won't give us much of that, I'd hope the superheavies and vehicles will.

 Necros wrote:

There are a lot of space ship combat games out there now though, I think BFG might be tougher to pull off or at least bring in new blood, when there's games like X-Wing out there now. There will always be die hards and if the new game is chock full of new models and not just more copies of the same old cruisers then it would probably do well.

I think there is something to be said for approaching a revamped BFG in stages, first where it only need a few ships and eventually with larger fleets. Its the same approach FFG has taken with Star Wars Armada I think makes the game more palatable to wallets and lowering the barrier to entry. Also by making the main emphasis of the game on smaller sized engagements and allowing players to escalate the game retains a sense of scope where individual ships are important.