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I don't think anyone is; but without further to really talk about its kind of shifted into a discussion on the pressures on modern miniature wargames in general. Or at least for those looking to shift from small boutique lines into a serious marketed game.

That said its important to remember that these are pretty much golden times for wargames and miniature makers in general. We've gone from a time where GW was pretty much the only serious market; to where Privateer Press pushed in - to today where we've got multiple game lines going on

Even with Spartan Games closing down, we are in a Renascence of table top gaming that hasn't been seen since the early 80's. Heck, it's even bigger then it ever was back then. Gamers have never had as many choices or great models and rules to simulate battles on land, sea, air, or space. Truely, we are living in the Golden Age of Gaming.

I'm going to miss Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada, much like Uncharted Seas, the game that put Spartan Games on the map.

I wouldn't pin this on GW or any other company.

People in this market (like all markets) will go broke. Before the days of Kickstarter, PP or Wyrd made it while things like Confrontation or Ex Illis folded.

For Spartan in particular, former Spartan employee David Lewis launched his own Hawk Wargames, in direct competition to many Spartan products, and did it better (if anything, Hawk Wargames would be a competitor more directly taking a chunk out of Spartan's potential customer base than GW) and commercially successfully.

Overall, if there're more companies and projects in the TT field than there were 10 or 20 years ago, it means more companies will go broke (in absolute numbers), even if the relative % of companies going out of business remains relatively unchanged.

Indeed. It's normal for small businesses in a crowded field to struggle and fold.

Whilst there are more companies, and a whole lot more choices out there, I wonder if the amount of clients has increased at those levels as well.

But yeah, then I'm entering a discussion about the tabletop wargaming market in general rather than the demise of Spartan Games specifically.

Maybe something to discuss elsewhere?

Sadly until there's news its not much else to say about Spartan and the way these things tend to go there will likely be A LONG period of silence.


Market I think has expanded, but not at a huge rate. If anything we've seen a few randoms such as the Lord of the Rings game; but otherwise tabletop is still VERY much a pure geeky thing. I think the core problem at present, esp for smaller companies, is advertising. The internet and local shops are ok but they only really reach most existing customers. I think the next big thing miniature wargames need if they want to break out is to have advertising that targets and focuses upon bringing in a lot more casual/regular players/people.

Overread, I agree with your suggested problem re: market. I think you're probably right that most gaming companies at this point will be more likely to dig into the existing market than they are to expand it.

The hobby aspect will always make it something of a niche market. I'd probably argue the two games that most expanded the market outside of 40k are Heroscape and X-Wing just because of the accessibility factor.

As far as the question of whether Spartan is closing because of market changes; I think people are mostly leaning that way due to the hat trick of Tor and Lamb also closing their doors. If it was Spartan alone I think we'd really be more focused on their problems supporting their games.

Still, the market conversation is way more interesting and fruitful than doing an autopsy.

Lunar - agreed on both counts. Pre-painted tends to get pushback from the community that's established; but there's no denying that assembly and painting is a skill and time curve that's not small. Certainly if you overcome those with affordable pre-painted then you can quickly build a new market of gamers who can be entered into the market. Once in they can then spread out into other franchises as they desire.

What I really want to know is where can I get their stuff cheap? No going out of buisiness sale? I really wanted a dystopian ottoman cruiser!

 kestral wrote:
What I really want to know is where can I get their stuff cheap? No going out of buisiness sale? I really wanted a dystopian ottoman cruiser!

Looks like miniature market already put all their stuff on clearance:

https://www.miniaturemarket.com/table-top-miniatures/spartan-games/dystopian-wars.html#/?_=1&filter.category_hierarchy=Table%20Top%20Miniatures%2FSpartan%20Games%2FDystopian%20Wars%2FOther&page=1

I am Saddened but not Surprised.

I hope there will be somewhere online where I will still be able to share the Minis that I Paint.

I have a lot of Painted and Unpainted Spartan stuff. and my FLGS still has some stock.

Is there a section on Dakka or another Forum that will be Spartan Addict Friendly?

WA

nobody wrote:

 kestral wrote:
What I really want to know is where can I get their stuff cheap? No going out of buisiness sale? I really wanted a dystopian ottoman cruiser!

Looks like miniature market already put all their stuff on clearance:

https://www.miniaturemarket.com/table-top-miniatures/spartan-games/dystopian-wars.html#/?_=1&filter.category_hierarchy=Table%20Top%20Miniatures%2FSpartan%20Games%2FDystopian%20Wars%2FOther&page=1

MM always has had most of Spartan Games on clearance. Nothing really news worthy.

I'm cautiously optimistic that "parting out" the Spartan IPs may be for the best. For example, I have a bunch of stuff for Dystopian Wars, but was never super crazy about the rulesets(s). I'd certainly be interested if a company bought the IP and wanted to re-start the game with something that can use existing minis (but tempt me to buy more, of course) and sells me a 'product' in the form of a nice-looking book.

One big loss is I have the 2.0 PDFs, which are fine, but they totally abandoned a 'traditional' army book in that the army lists were basically word docs converted to PDFs, without artwork... So I'd have to use an online store or similar to identify which model is which.

To be honest, if someone would buy some of the core games from SG, just using the existing models could work for Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada. Both of those already have a strong basis of models to be used by gamers, so that they can be satisfied for a long time, and just asking some game support so that the communities can recruit and make the game living in their town.

You could as well use the former rules and just "patch them", rather than taking a whole different direction. Then later, when everything is stabilised, you can think about expanding the games. Basically, it's about counting on the existing fanbase the time to let it flow again, then keep it realistic with what it is (a niche game for a niche market) and most important of all don't try to eat something way bigger for your mouth or trying to hunt multiple rabbits at the same time and ending with none caught in the end.

It happened with Alkemy (https://alkemy-the-game.com/en/), a french fantasy skirmish game, that was bought by a fanbase when it was first sunk. It sures is small and is really a niche, but by being faithful to what was the core of the game and mainly keeping the former products, they managed to keep the game living with those enjoying to play it.

Something similar may happen for Firestorm Armada or Dystopian Wars. Planetfall...yes, it could as well, but I don't know, I feel like this game is "less strong" as a potential for a recovery. And I would rather advise to focus on one game system at a time, unless you have the team ready for the work to come.

A lot depends on who picks it up. Dystopian Wars could survive if just the renderings are bought up and put into production with rules.
The real clincher is if they can continue to expand the game or not; Planetfall would benefit a lot from that.

Then again Spartan always had a lot of renderings and I'm willing to bet that there's a legion of content unpublished - of course that might or might not be part of the sale deals.

What will happen to the Halo games now?

 Ginsu33 wrote:
What will happen to the Halo games now?

Dead like the rest of the range that Spartan produces unles someone buys up and puts the products back into production.

Halo is more complex since its a licence so it might be that the licence and all its content reverts to the original licence owners. Regardless the moulds/sculpts/renders are worthless at present unless sold with the licence or if a company buying them can then approach the Halo licence owners for a new production licence.

The only bonus Halo might have is that its attached to an existing firm so they could push that back to the market if they so chose by securing another deal.



That said, honestly, I'd expect Halo and Uncharted seas to be the most likely of all the Spartan games to die fully. Followed by Planetfall and Legions. Dystopian and Firestorm are the most likely to survive if anything survives at all.

That really blows...

People say we're in a golden age of miniature gaming.. perhaps, but people invest in these hobbies and when they shut down, it just trashes the whole thing for collectors/gamers who play with friends. It isn't going to bother the hard-core types who play a bunch of miniature war-games already, but a lot of people only have 1 or even 2 games they stick with, so this really would suck for someone who thought Halo was a good idea.

I almost jumped in with a couple of mates who I played Halo with back in the day, lucky we never got around to it... stuff like this makes me very thankful for Games Workshop, despite the pros and cons, at least you know they will still be around a decade from now.

Well, aside from GW, I don't play miniature tabletop games that have proprietary components. Song of Blade and Heroes... Frostgrave... Savage Worlds... and plenty of other universal rulesets to choose from, many free or less than $10. FFG's RuneWars and CMON's Song of Ice and Fire were met with questions if they would support their game lines, even before product was released.

Who's up for a game of Mage Knight 1.0?

That sucks to hear about the rules going down along with everything else in the sudden closure. I can't imagine the forum costs weren't prepaid even for a few days to not allow them time to close new comments on the forums but still allow read only access so folks could download scenarios, custom rules, and their own blogs and such. I hadn't thought about that additional complication.

Yeah, I totally get not wanting to deal with the forum exploding, but it would have been nice to leave it up as read only, even for only a month or something.

It's not just whether your product is good, it's also how you run your business.

As others have noted, wargaming is seeing a definite upswing if not outright surge in popularity. That attracts new business to the marketplace, and can encourage others to expand.

But both of those options will quite often involve the borrowing of money to fund - especially if you want to keep as much of the production in-house as you can.

Now if that all works, great. Your business expands, profits rise, and you get rid of the debt. But should something, anything go wrong? You may wind in up in the situation where you can't borrow any more money, or worse, can't service your existing debt.

And that's not just limited to 'sales are 10% down on prediction'. It can also be clients going bust themselves, leaving you with unpaid invoices, and little chance of getting that money. If some sod crashes their car into a power substation, you could be left without the capacity to produce, meaning you miss orders. A cheque could bounce unexpectedly, meaning your suppliers no longer offer you credit. It could be any combination of the above.

You can be a complete fool with no business sense and go under. You can overreach your hand and go under. You can be the greatest business person in the world, and outside influences can still shaft your company out of existence.

I own a retail store and for me, I think the 3 biggest things that caused Spartan to fold were...1.They stopped selling to distribution. When that happened, we stopped carrying their product. Naturally the store promotes the things we can sell, so other miniatures games took over and Spartan faded into obscurity. 2. They kept writing and rewriting rules instead of taking the time to get it right the first time. 3. They relied too heavily on their exploding d6 gimmick. My group played their fantasy sailing game. I quite when one of my battleships was sunk by a volley of three dice fired from a frigate that my lucky friend kept rolling 6's for. And no, I didn't just rage quit. We had a long discussion about it and most of my group felt that the exploding d6 mechanic made it more of a beer and pretzels game, not one you could take seriously, or at least not one to waste time on.

Smellingsalts wrote:
I own a retail store and for me, I think the 3 biggest things that caused Spartan to fold were...1.They stopped selling to distribution. When that happened, we stopped carrying their product. Naturally the store promotes the things we can sell, so other miniatures games took over and Spartan faded into obscurity. 2. They kept writing and rewriting rules instead of taking the time to get it right the first time. 3. They relied too heavily on their exploding d6 gimmick. My group played their fantasy sailing game. I quite when one of my battleships was sunk by a volley of three dice fired from a frigate that my lucky friend kept rolling 6's for. And no, I didn't just rage quit. We had a long discussion about it and most of my group felt that the exploding d6 mechanic made it more of a beer and pretzels game, not one you could take seriously, or at least not one to waste time on.

This. All of this.

Bad rules.

Bad support.

Combined, led to no lasting player support, which meant nothing to fall back on when Halo failed.

Smellingsalts wrote:
I own a retail store and for me, I think the 3 biggest things that caused Spartan to fold were...1.They stopped selling to distribution. When that happened, we stopped carrying their product. Naturally the store promotes the things we can sell, so other miniatures games took over and Spartan faded into obscurity. 2. They kept writing and rewriting rules instead of taking the time to get it right the first time. 3. They relied too heavily on their exploding d6 gimmick. My group played their fantasy sailing game. I quite when one of my battleships was sunk by a volley of three dice fired from a frigate that my lucky friend kept rolling 6's for. And no, I didn't just rage quit. We had a long discussion about it and most of my group felt that the exploding d6 mechanic made it more of a beer and pretzels game, not one you could take seriously, or at least not one to waste time on.

I wasn't aware they dropped out of the traditional distribution chain. As for the exploding d6 mechanics, did you get a chance to try the Halo version? If not, in a nutshell they had varying levels of explosion rerolls and you never got more hits than the number of dice you initially rolled.

I don't think they dropped completely out of traditional distribution networks. I was able to get items through my local game store, but things would take months to come in. The local owner said that restocks at the distributed level were few and far between, but he'd keep trying (and eventually things would come in). It was too bad since their resin minis were some of the best I've seen. The compression molds they started using with distopian wars allowed for some truly impressive models.

Yep, they did drop out of distribution. Your local game store may have tried going directly to Spartan, which would account for the long wait times and infrequent stocking because he had to have those figures shipped from England. When you consider that while he is trying to get those figures for you, Spartan is competing with his store and selling directly to his customers, it becomes problematic. GW also competes with brick and mortar stores with their online service, but they at least distribute to non-GW stores

Smellingsalts wrote:
I own a retail store and for me, I think the 3 biggest things that caused Spartan to fold were...1.They stopped selling to distribution. When that happened, we stopped carrying their product. Naturally the store promotes the things we can sell, so other miniatures games took over and Spartan faded into obscurity. 2. They kept writing and rewriting rules instead of taking the time to get it right the first time. 3. They relied too heavily on their exploding d6 gimmick. My group played their fantasy sailing game. I quite when one of my battleships was sunk by a volley of three dice fired from a frigate that my lucky friend kept rolling 6's for. And no, I didn't just rage quit. We had a long discussion about it and most of my group felt that the exploding d6 mechanic made it more of a beer and pretzels game, not one you could take seriously, or at least not one to waste time on.

What's wrong with rare golden BB shots? Sure it sucks when it happens to you, but it's not like this concept is unique to Spartan's games. The FW rules for superheavies and Titans previously had the Chain Reaction result which if you were really lucky could result in a one shot kill too. Battletech had the gauss rifle round to the head one shot decapitation, and so on for other game systems.

As to distribution: I thought they were trying to move so retailers would have a small, possibly rotating, line of stuff for whatever their newest games are available. So if Dystopian Wars was being featured, they'd have a starter box and a small selection of fleet boxes for each force available. I know I got hit because the individual ships moved to only being available from their store if they were available at all.

Speaking of rules, I did feel like they were just clunky and didn't flow. Annoyingly, in some ways they got worse as 1.0 became 2.0, especially as they stopped shipping cards. There were a lot of 'feel' issues that made the balance weird.

If I had bought the IP (which i don't think is in my budget...) I think I'd want the new rules to basically throw out the old and forge new ground, albeit using the old background and models.

Give each nation a few clear niches or specialties, and don't take away from those with follow-ups. For example, my DW forces are mostly the Brits, so the three strengths in canon are:

1. Submarines... Which several others got, often better. And the sub rules weren't that great anyway as they tended to be swapping offensive ability for a deep-dive of negligible value.
2. Torpedos: Mostly work, albeit they're not really 'special' and the torpedo seemed to be one of the weakest weapons in general (also useless for mixed-theater combats).
3. Bomber-type aircraft: Reasonably good, but ...