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 Eilif wrote:
I've been gaming for 25 years and one constant is that most games die after a few years. I thinks folks need to take a bit of perspective here. Maybe in 3- 4 years Runewars will be dead, but in the meantime players will have regular releases, tournament support, and very likely a farily active local fan presence. Can you say the same for Wrath of Kings, Clan War, Chronopia, AVP, etc, etc...

Well, I think there's a difference between say, BattleLore dying with all of THREE playable factions, and Warhammer FB dying off with a dozen.

Will Runewars really get regular releases? Here's the real honest answer: we don't know. Based on how some of the their earlier games have gone, it's possible that come end summer someone in charge looks at the financials and says "done". But they won't bother to tell anyone.

I don't *want* Runewars to fail, but I also want BattleLore to get more expansions so there is an option for someone who wants more than a boardgame but less than an entire hobby. They understand board game markets, but I don't see any history that tells me they really understand traditional miniatures markets, and this is much closer to that than X-Wing ever was.

I would also be curious to see if a community develops around Runewars that doesn't actually care much about painting the models, which would not be so unusual given the state of most of the Warmachine and 40K armies I see in my local stores. But this does bring me back to my original question, who exactly is this game targeted at? Miniature enthusiasts will balk at the limited troop selection, lack of customization options for the models themselves, and frankly a cost structure that doesn't undercut their competition. The board gamers may well be looking at this saying "what, I'm expected to paint these things?" and wondering where the hexes are. There may well be a huge untapped segment for this, I just don't see it right now.

 Eilif wrote:
I was that reviewer. It's true I wouldn't have picked up the game if it hadn't been given to me, but that has much more to do with my love of indie wargaming and my satisfaction with the games I've been playing, (in some cases for years) rather than the cost of this set.

I think, though, that your typical wargamer's "satisfaction with the games (they've) been playing" certainly is a major barrier to entry to RW.

Do we have any numbers or threads of new miniature wargamers who pick a new system with proprietary figures over current established ones? I know Kings of War, Frostgrave, and Songs of Blade and Heroes gained a foothold because you can use your own miniatures. I'm guessing that Warmachine Hordes and Malifaux entered the market because they were unusual enough from generic fantasy for gamers to pick up. X-Wing certainly was different enough that it could tap a larger market, of miniature gamers who liked Star Wars and didn't want to paint miniatures. (Anyone know how Star Trek: Attack Wing is doing and why?)

And, as rmeister0 says, I'm also curious about the market for unpainted miniature wargaming. Anyone here live nearby the FFG event center and can take photos of RW games a few months from now?

ced1106 wrote:

And, as rmeister0 says, I'm also curious about the market for unpainted miniature wargaming. Anyone here live nearby the FFG event center and can take photos of RW games a few months from now?

I'm sure I'll be popping in. My wife and I like using the table space there and, weirdly enough, they have more 40K and WM/H games going on there then I ever see at the bigger game store just a few miles distant.

ced1106 wrote:

Do we have any numbers or threads of new miniature wargamers who pick a new system with proprietary figures over current established ones? I know Kings of War, Frostgrave, and Songs of Blade and Heroes gained a foothold because you can use your own miniatures. I'm guessing that Warmachine Hordes and Malifaux entered the market because they were unusual enough from generic fantasy for gamers to pick up. X-Wing certainly was different enough that it could tap a larger market, of miniature gamers who liked Star Wars and didn't want to paint miniatures. (Anyone know how Star Trek: Attack Wing is doing and why?)

And, as rmeister0 says, I'm also curious about the market for unpainted miniature wargaming. Anyone here live nearby the FFG event center and can take photos of RW games a few months from now?

There are exceptions, but most folks I've met who buy games that don't require specific miniatueres are longer-term gamers who have already tried the all-in-one thing and are looking for something different. These are also the folks who are more likely to already have figures from other games to use in these games. However, I am active on other forms where these rules are quite popular and most folks who play them end up buying new figures for the inde rulesets they like. I've bought hundreds of figs for games that have no minis line of their own.

As for the market for gaming with unpainted minis, have you been to an FLGS? I don't think I've ever been to an FLGS Warmahordes night where more than 35% of the minis on the table were painted. I've been to 40k nights where more than 50% were painted, but it doesn't seem to be the norm. I doubt that Runewars will be much different. This is a large part of the reason I prefer to game with my club, but I'm willing to give the Runewars scene a chance if one develops.

rmeister0 wrote:
I would also be curious to see if a community develops around Runewars that doesn't actually care much about painting the models, which would not be so unusual given the state of most of the Warmachine and 40K armies I see in my local stores. But this does bring me back to my original question, who exactly is this game targeted at? Miniature enthusiasts will balk at the limited troop selection, lack of customization options for the models themselves, and frankly a cost structure that doesn't undercut their competition. The board gamers may well be looking at this saying "what, I'm expected to paint these things?" and wondering where the hexes are. There may well be a huge untapped segment for this, I just don't see it right now.

Board gamers throw fits over basic assembly. Battles of Westeros required the player to glue the figures into their bases, and it was a constant source of anger and frustration for a lot of players. Even Super Dungeon Explore moved away from figures that required (painful) assembly to preassembled figures. I'm not sure I would release a game that required assembly, much less painting to a board gaming audience...

That being said, on BGG, I see a lot of people actually painting their board game figures as a way to pimp their gaming experiences. If the game was really, really exceptional, I guess it could draw painters to it. But I think it'll be another Warmachine - a game without the hobby element for the majority of its players.

I'm not picking up Runewars because A) I'm bitter as hell over FFG's treatment of BattleLore (through THREE editions) and B) everything about the idea of painting Runewars is offputting to me. A massive number of models, many of them identical, that feature sculpts that don't excite me? I'll never finish painting that. It'll be the Bloodreavers all over again. Besides, Shadow War: Armageddon is in the mail.

 Pacific wrote:
The fact that it's a better game maybe?

(I realise that seemingly comes as a lower priority in some cases, compared to which company's logo is on the side of the box)

you mean like the Star Wars logo???
;p

 Eilif wrote:
As for the market for gaming with unpainted minis, have you been to an FLGS? I don't think I've ever been to an FLGS Warmahordes night where more than 35% of the minis on the table were painted. I've been to 40k nights where more than 50% were painted, but it doesn't seem to be the norm. I doubt that Runewars will be much different. This is a large part of the reason I prefer to game with my club, but I'm willing to give the Runewars scene a chance if one develops.

Hmm... Come to think of it, the manager of my FLGS is a Crystal Brush participant and teaches his employees to paint, so maybe that has something to do with it...

Anyway, Bobb on BGG said: "There have been 2 other post XWing ganes using the Attack Wing system, and one failed (a fantasy game no less) and the other is a struggling niche game. The original Wing of War/Glory system remains a niche game. Star Wars is the main reason XWing is so popular, not the system."

http://islaythedragon.com/featured/to-boldy-go-far-far-away-a-comparison-of-star-wars-x-wing-miniatures-game-and-star-trek-attack-wing/

I don't know if Star Wars is the sole reason for X-wing's success, but I feel the reason for the other flight path systems's failure is simple: Wizkids. Specifically:

Break-neck pace of releases
Xwing is on wave 11 for expansions. Star Trek, which came out a year after, is on wave 31. DnD Attack Wing had the equivalent of a wave every month for 6 months after release. Having to buy every x-wing expansion is something you're either ok with or you're not, but multiply that experience by a factor or 3-4, that's the Wizkids attack wing experience.

Meta-defining cards / ships limited to OP prize support.
X-wing has a fiercely competitive scene, but prizes are cool swag that pimps out your collection, like acylic tokens, alternate card art, dice, etc. ST Attack Wing has had 8 OP events with exclusive winner and participation prizes, the absolute nadir for me was when even the ship you got for winning or joining was randomized.

Dumb rules.
This is personal, so YMMV. But in DnD Attack Wing, to prevent turtling, ballistas were given a penalty any turn they stood still and fired, forcing you to move trundle them around the battlefield for them to be of any worth. Every single wargame I have ever played be it on tabletop or heck even video games penalizes catapults / trebuchets / ballistas / scorpions etc for moving and shooting, but in DnD AW its the norm, because you know, anti-turtling. This rule alone made me not want to play the game at all.

So yeah if you can tell, I don';t like WK games much haha. But to my original point, I feel the reason they failed was because they have no idea how to balance a game, make decent rules, and their tendency to use exclusives to drive sales. And not anything to do with the flight path system per se.

ced1106 wrote:
I'm guessing that Warmachine Hordes and Malifaux entered the market because they were unusual enough from generic fantasy for gamers to pick up.

Before Malifaux, Wyrd Miniatures started off making a few steampunk-ish miniatures with no game attached. Move down the line a few years, here comes Malifaux, building on that miniatures range. It's the same way Games Workshop, Freebooter, Black Scorpion and I'm sure others I've missed started out. Ganesha Games are going the other way - they're known for doing sets of rules with no miniatures range, and are now Kickstarting a space fighter dogfight game with a range of miniatures. Presumably you get to a point where you're shifting enough of your miniatures that making a whole game to capture your market is the logical next step.

For me, the reasons why I didn't pick up Star Trek: Attack Wing and D&D: Attack Wing are: SW has poor miniatures. The X-Wing models are good models, regardless of what I do with them. I can use them to play X-Wing, or Full Thrust, or simply run around the lounge making "pew pew pew" noises. The Star Trek models, by contrast, look cheap. I have never looked at a ST:AW blister and thought "that looks cool". I've thought "I've got 30-year-old minis from Citadel and FASA that look better than those". D&D:AW had some cool big dragons, but then for some reason thought what everyone wanted from that game was expensively-packaged cheap-looking mobs of ground troops that I can get from Reaper for half the price.

I collected a lot of the Pirates of the Spanish Main ships because that was a fun game and within the context of the medium, the models were pretty good. I also have loads of Hoororclix Alien vs Predator models and Haloclix models, again because they're good models. With Star Trek, it looks like they thought they could coast by on the name.

I'd rather play Tail Feathers, even with its limited unit count, or Wings/Sails of Glory (the original, and IMO the best, of all these games).

The Runewars Learn To Play book and Rules Refference (rulebook) are up at the FFG site.

The back page of the Learn to Play also shows the options on all the dials included in the game.

It's at the bottom of the main product page:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/runewars-the-miniatures-game/

I'm really liking these rules especially the part where you can reform your unit while engaged with the enemy so another one can charge in. Can you really do that? Rotating around a corner element then aligning with the enemy (effectively exposing your flank to it), but giving another unit the chance to charge in?

Lord Kragan wrote:
I'm sure plenty of people will like it. Just that I HIGHLY doubt it will get much from the old WHFB crowd, if at all.

Keep an eye on the mid-Atlantic US. I'm pretty influential in the GT scene over here, and I intend show it to everyone I can convince to try it.

Latari Elves announced.
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2017/4/10/guardians-of-the-deepwood/

I'm not looking to start an elf army, but I'll definitely be choosing whatever unit looks like the most fun to ally to my Daqan via Kari.

I really like those archers.

It's also sort of funny they can "shift" after they attack and do the game's analogue to an x-wing barrel roll. Though you don't get to place anywhere on the template, it's just a sideways move:



Though I must admit the more I look at them, the more those puzzle bases annoy me with how they look. And with the way they integrated them into the templates instead of just having them anchor on the corners means I don't think I'm going to be getting into this after all.

Zetan wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
I'm sure plenty of people will like it. Just that I HIGHLY doubt it will get much from the old WHFB crowd, if at all.

Keep an eye on the mid-Atlantic US. I'm pretty influential in the GT scene over here, and I intend show it to everyone I can convince to try it.

Do I care? Frankly this comment sounded a lot like ego-stroking.

Lord Kragan wrote:

Zetan wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
I'm sure plenty of people will like it. Just that I HIGHLY doubt it will get much from the old WHFB crowd, if at all.

Keep an eye on the mid-Atlantic US. I'm pretty influential in the GT scene over here, and I intend show it to everyone I can convince to try it.

Do I care? Frankly this comment sounded a lot like ego-stroking.

I got a very Ron Burgandy "I'm kind of a big deal" vibe when I read that

Within every community there are individuals who set the tone. It happens sometimes that people realize they can do so. That they can have massive influence on what goes down because they find themselves in a sea of followers, introverts and those without a plan. Pretty much happens in every walk of life, and organization as well.

It might even be you.

I hate to be a critic, but the elves are just...too generic. There's absolutely nothing about them that is stand out. They could have at least gone for something other than the bog standard brown and green.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
I hate to be a critic, but the elves are just...too generic. There's absolutely nothing about them that is stand out. They could have at least gone for something other than the bog standard brown and green.

They are nice models, tbh, but yeah they aren't really "fresh". An issue I've seen for most of the presented factions (that is humans and elves) is that FFG seems to make choices of colour scheme even worse than GW's 'Eavy Metal guys. Humans would look more nicer with steel schemes not that gaudy blue and gold colours that make them look like the soldiers from stormwind.

Surprised they're not at least offering a pdf with rules (and printable dials?) for all the Descent miniatures out there.

They are literally the same setting and could, for the most part, actually show up in a battle in this setting, no?

Seems like an easy way to jumpstart this without giving away sales to another company and/or make the transition easy for people with existing FFG-fantasy-miniatures.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
I hate to be a critic, but the elves are just...too generic. There's absolutely nothing about them that is stand out. They could have at least gone for something other than the bog standard brown and green.

I think it's FFG's boardgame background showing through. The majority of the Runewars miniatures being shown are directly based on miniatures from the original Runewars, which were not designed to be individually interesting. In fact, I think the fact that they were green is probably the most noteworthy thing about them. I think this shows that boardgame pawns and miniature game models have different design requirements that FFG isn't fully taking into account.

(In their defense, I think some of RWM's heroes and monsters are pretty cool, but the rank and file is just mind numbingly boring).

As an Hard-core Warcraft Fan, the fact that they just don't bought the Warcraft license to make this a Warcraft Wargame just enrages me!

His desing its just totally Warcraft, just look at the humans swordmans and compare them with the typical Lordaeron or Stormwind Footman of Warcraft! Even the Human General its a carbon copy of Lord Othmar Garithos!

So, why rippof the cartoon-Warcraft aesthetic when you can just go totally and make a licensed product?

Wonderwolf wrote:
Surprised they're not at least offering a pdf with rules (and printable dials?) for all the Descent miniatures out there.

They've done it before. In the past, the original Descent heroes (along with RuneWars and DungeonQuest) also had cards for RuneBound - and Descent 2E had an upgrade pack which included cards for all Terrinoth heroes released so far. But since RuneBound 3E, they stopped doing it, actually forcing players to rebuy Descent figures they may have already had to get their cards. RuneBound 3E and BattleLore 2E both seem dead now, so it seems like whatever benefits a cross-game setting like Terrinoth once offered no longer applies.


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 Galas wrote:
His desing its just totally Warcraft, just look at the humans swordmans and compare them with the typical Lordaeron or Stormwind Footman of Warcraft! Even the Human General its a carbon copy of Lord Othmar Garithos!

Runewars is to Warcraft as Warcraft is to Warhammer. What comes around, goes around, I guess.

Lord Kragan wrote:

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
I hate to be a critic, but the elves are just...too generic. There's absolutely nothing about them that is stand out. They could have at least gone for something other than the bog standard brown and green.

They are nice models, tbh, but yeah they aren't really "fresh". An issue I've seen for most of the presented factions (that is humans and elves) is that FFG seems to make choices of colour scheme even worse than GW's 'Eavy Metal guys. Humans would look more nicer with steel schemes not that gaudy blue and gold colours that make them look like the soldiers from stormwind.

I would be legimiately tempted to just replace everything with Heroscape pre-paints. :/

Definitely like the look of the new elves, although the treeman thing looks like it doesn't want to be there!

Promising though that there is news of the next new faction coming along, hopefully the army lists of the existing two will be padded out along the same time.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Galas wrote:
His desing its just totally Warcraft, just look at the humans swordmans and compare them with the typical Lordaeron or Stormwind Footman of Warcraft! Even the Human General its a carbon copy of Lord Othmar Garithos!

Runewars is to Warcraft as Warcraft is to Warhammer. What comes around, goes around, I guess.

I'm not saying that to accuse Runewars of plagiarism. I just say that because... if you are gonna be basically the same, why don't just pay for a licensed product?

PD: I know, having more control abour your IP and all that...its just that I want a Warcraft wargame

That's a reasonable point in that, if FFG had the Warcraft license, it would certainly have had a marketing potential to a hell of a lot more customers.

Considering the supposed history of Warhammer/Warcraft, I'm actually amazed that it wasn't something that has happened..

There is a likelihood it was done with an original IP due to them just losing the GW IPs. A bit of being gun shy after seeing several product lines come to an abrupt halt.

Have to say, while the elves are fairly generic, for some reason I find them a bit more tolerable. Not exciting enough to get me to push this game, but enough that I could see myself getting into it if someone else I know does. Maybe it's because they have a more flattering paint scheme?

I actually like the aesthetic going on for the elves. There is a distinct lack of pretense there I find refreshing.

Just simple wood elves.

Good on them.

The only criticism is the same I have for everything based in terrinoth. And that is their ridiculous names for the fauna in that property. "Leonx"? Pfftt! Whatever. Just make it as obtuse and unintuitive as possible. Trust me, nobody is going to steal the names for your creations.