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 emptyhat wrote:
One concern I have is with the sprues for the Eschers and Goliaths. They're great and have some really nice parts but I wasn't expecting to get two of the same sprue for each gang.

I expect that there is scope for more releases later on, a veteran ganger box with heavier equipment and some more bling parts, and bodies with slightly different poses/details on them, and a juvie box with the opposite of that but adding more variety in parts. With three sprues that would really expand the scope of what you could do. It's just, listening to you all go back and forth on the release schedule for the core gangs it makes me wonder if that is actually something that will happen and how long it might take.

I'm not super worried about the current trickle, it's going to take me a while to get around to painting it all up and finding some games anyway, if at all. I'd just like the chance to make a larger number of unique gangers and while kitbashing outside the range is going to happen for sure sooner or later only having that one sprue is going to be a limiting factor.

Forgeworld have spoken about doing upgrade packs and weapon packs for each house, I would expect juves, heavies and alternate leaders here. how modular they are is anyone's guess though.

Even though old Necromunda was spread out over a few books and years, there's no need for it this time.
Last time, they were adding to it as they knew how things worked, and pulled in fluff from elsewhere as it was written. Now though, everything has been in place for a long time, they have had the rules for years to read through, and fan-made content to skim off.
So, the only reason to spread this version over so many books is for money. Everything has been written, it could have been released at the start.
Putting all of the rules in the main rulebook would have been best, with gangs released later in pairs.

What they have done right is telling us how long we have to wait for each part. Knowing that it will all be out within a year, I am avoiding going to 3rd party model makers to get the Van Saar models I want.

 emptyhat wrote:
One concern I have is with the sprues for the Eschers and Goliaths. They're great and have some really nice parts but I wasn't expecting to get two of the same sprue for each gang.

Don't blind purchases. They have pictures of the sprue on the website, there're dozen of unboxing videoes during the two week preorder period that you can see for yourself. Don't buy without knowing what you are getting.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
So... is there any info on how you actually go about recruiting Gor Half-Horn (or any other hired gun for that matter) in a Newcromunda campaign game? Because going by the rules pdf, apparently you need to spend 235 credits to have it for just one game, and that can't possibly be right.

...right?

I'll pop my one open tonight, see if the rules inside explain that.

Thanks!

 Skinnereal wrote:
Even though old Necromunda was spread out over a few books and years, there's no need for it this time.
Last time, they were adding to it as they knew how things worked, and pulled in fluff from elsewhere as it was written. Now though, everything has been in place for a long time, they have had the rules for years to read through, and fan-made content to skim off.
So, the only reason to spread this version over so many books is for money. Everything has been written, it could have been released at the start.
Putting all of the rules in the main rulebook would have been best, with gangs released later in pairs.

What they have done right is telling us how long we have to wait for each part. Knowing that it will all be out within a year, I am avoiding going to 3rd party model makers to get the Van Saar models I want.

Or production limitations?

Or it's the business model best placed to sustain gamer investment in the game over a longer period, thus adding to the system's longevity?

Cawdor concept sketches are done, but models not sculpted. From what I could glean, no concept sketches shared of Delaque yet. Does that sound like they were in a position to release everything all at once?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
But they are treating us in a straight forward way?.

Perhaps, but that doesn't mean it's the "right" way, as far as some people are concerned. Also, the reality of how they'll deliver the game only came to light quite late on in the process, so there's a question of just how open they were, and when.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Necromunda Underhive is a deliberate, 'all in one' boxed game. With no need to expand upon it. It's a complete gaming experience in and of itself.

Necromunda Gang War are expansion rules for those of us who want to delve deeper.

The part of the company running this show is comparatively tiny. Finite resources, finite man hours. So they've plumped for a longer release schedule so they can get the product out on shelves sooner rather than later.

The inner workings of a company are irrelevant to me as the customer as far as excusing their business practices is concerned. There may be legitimate logistical reasons for a certain approach but that's the company's problem, not mine. If I, as a customer, feel it impacts the quality of the product or leads to business practices I think are wrong, the background reasons behind those decisions don't really matter. The impression it creates is what matters. If logistical issues prevent the game releasing in a feature-complete state it's up to the business to figure out how to solve that. The complaints people have been making relate to the way GW have chosen to address this issue. Simply stating the reasons for doing something doesn't magically make it OK.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
They've not been dishonest with us at any point, so where's the 'business ethics' there?

This all boils down to 'well it wasn't like this in the past'.

Yes. Yes it was. Necromunda didn't launch with everything released. I can't remember the exact release schedule, but it wasn't a one and done. You may have come along when everything was out - but it still took time to get there. Hell, this was a time when GW were releasing one Imperial Assassin a month, let alone all the models for an entire game system.

The original Necromunda was a feature-complete game with rules for all 6 House gangs, all available weapons and a complete campaign system, including a number of Hired Guns and a full post-game sequence. The current Necromunda doesn't have that. The real problem is that GW have chosen to call the game Necromunda. That name means something to a lot of people. It implies a game based on a campaign system with gang progression and a fairly involved post-game sequence. It doesn't imply a pick-up style pseudo-board game. GW are trying to trade on the name so I think people are within their rights to complain about the numerous ways they have diverged from what Necromunda was and the way they have cut up the various parts of the game in what many see as an attempt to nickel and dime the player base.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Ultimately, GW are doing what they think is the right thing in the situation. That you happen to disagree doesn't make them wrong.

As for longevity? Having fairly regular releases and additions is a way to keep the game's profile up. If everything was out on release day, you get Shadow War Armageddon - lovely when it comes out, but soon lost amongst the tumult of general releases.

OTOH, if enough people are turned off by what they see as shady, money-grabbing policies there won't be a community by the time enough material is released for them to consider the game feature-complete.

So we come back to the salient point.

Buy, or buy not. There is no whine.

Business practices are business practices. FFG are a bunch of mercenary little toads in my eyes when it comes to how they sell stuff for X-Wing. Can't say it's made a noticeable difference to the game's success.

The old Necromunda didn't make enough money. So it ended.

The new Necromunda is aiming to make more cash and keep going longer.

The format may of been a bad choice, but if we want necro they need to make it profitable. If you want to be a customer there needs to be a product to buy. Like you say it works both ways, but they tried one way of doing things and it didn't work out.

I can see and understand the points people are making but luckily I only play casual and amongst friends so little of it is of much concern to me.

EDIT: my only real concern is people getting bored between releases. I would of thought 2 gangs per book would of avoided a lot of this upset plus lead to healthier campaigns sooner.

I just wish the new gang war books will contain TP and weapon stat lists that will contain all the weapons, both the old ones and the new ones, rather than the information being scattered across several books. It is already annoying with two books and the PDF, it will be utter nightmare when there will be more books unless there is a master list containing all weapons in one book.

Unless the subsequent books add more equipment available to all gangs, that doesn't concern me. I play Escher - I don't need the stats for Orlock-only weapons, so I don't need to reference GW2.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 Skinnereal wrote:
Even though old Necromunda was spread out over a few books and years, there's no need for it this time.
Last time, they were adding to it as they knew how things worked, and pulled in fluff from elsewhere as it was written. Now though, everything has been in place for a long time, they have had the rules for years to read through, and fan-made content to skim off.
So, the only reason to spread this version over so many books is for money. Everything has been written, it could have been released at the start.
Putting all of the rules in the main rulebook would have been best, with gangs released later in pairs.

What they have done right is telling us how long we have to wait for each part. Knowing that it will all be out within a year, I am avoiding going to 3rd party model makers to get the Van Saar models I want.

Or production limitations?

Or it's the business model best placed to sustain gamer investment in the game over a longer period, thus adding to the system's longevity?

Cawdor concept sketches are done, but models not sculpted. From what I could glean, no concept sketches shared of Delaque yet. Does that sound like they were in a position to release everything all at once?

Uuh if they aren't sculpted yet we are looking at like 2019 release. Late 2018 in hopefully.

And of course he wasn't saying they could release the models right away? Seen in text you quoted.

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:

EDIT: my only real concern is people getting bored between releases. I would of thought 2 gangs per book would of avoided a lot of this upset plus lead to healthier campaigns sooner.

That's what the "legacy gangs" pdf is for. Plenty of time to run a campaign now, then for the Orlock players, GW2 comes out early next year in time for the next campaign season.

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
The old Necromunda didn't make enough money. So it ended.

You have evidence though? Hopefully your evidence of it is not it was killed off because GW has killed off games that exceeded their own expectations at 400%. Why they would greenlight anything if they expect to sell so little that 400% exceedings aren't enough?

tneva82 wrote:

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
The old Necromunda didn't make enough money. So it ended.

You have evidence though? Hopefully your evidence of it is not it was killed off because GW has killed off games that exceeded their own expectations at 400%. Why they would greenlight anything if they expect to sell so little that 400% exceedings aren't enough?

IIRC it was when GW switched over to "Finecast". They decided the old pewter models weren't worth switching over to the new production method as they were less profitable than 40K, Fantasy and LoTR's. I will try to find the article where I read that but it was a while ago now.

tneva82 wrote:

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
The old Necromunda didn't make enough money. So it ended.

You have evidence though? Hopefully your evidence of it is not it was killed off because GW has killed off games that exceeded their own expectations at 400%. Why they would greenlight anything if they expect to sell so little that 400% exceedings aren't enough?

What is this '400% expectation' game you speak of?

I am struggling to find anything solid as evidence. There is a 4 page Dakka thread where pretty much everyone agrees it was against GW's current business model to support SG. Cash flow is usually the reason that GW do strange things. Its why the old world got blown up (still saddens me) and why we have two tiers of space marine.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So we come back to the salient point.

Buy, or buy not. There is no whine.

Business practices are business practices. FFG are a bunch of mercenary little toads in my eyes when it comes to how they sell stuff for X-Wing. Can't say it's made a noticeable difference to the game's success.

I have decided not to buy (and got a bunch of people criticising me for saying as much, I might add).

I am not whining. This is a discussion forum, yes? I am discussing the reasons for me not buying and attempting to explain them, to further understanding and discussion.

I know some people aren't a fan of FFG's business model and that's fair enough, but there's more to the success of a game than how it is sold but the effect the business model has on sales is part of the overall picture that determines success. FFG seem to have been successful by having a number of factors in their favour:

1. Star Wars!
2. A good price point
3. Support for competitive play, which generates goodwill and buzz in FLGSs

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
The old Necromunda didn't make enough money. So it ended.

You have evidence though? Hopefully your evidence of it is not it was killed off because GW has killed off games that exceeded their own expectations at 400%. Why they would greenlight anything if they expect to sell so little that 400% exceedings aren't enough?

What is this '400% expectation' game you speak of?

Epic Armageddon. Exceeded sales by 400% according to Jervis Johnson(the guy in charge of specialist games)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
I am struggling to find anything solid as evidence. There is a 4 page Dakka thread where pretty much everyone agrees it was against GW's current business model to support SG. Cash flow is usually the reason that GW do strange things. Its why the old world got blown up (still saddens me) and why we have two tiers of space marine.

Or it was false view by Kirby that SG's are competing with FB/40k. Why sell 4 games to players if GW can drop resources to all but 2 games and players shift 100% purchaces to FB/40k. That was the theory anyway. Didn't occur that some people actually might not want just FB/40k and so would spend more money with more games available.

I am not saying it was a smart idea to get rid of SG. It was a terrible decision IMO. As was blowing up the Old World and Primaris Marines (again IMO).

But if GW didn't feel it was profitable enough (regardless of whether that was mismanagement or actually true) then its not surprising they are doing something differently this time.

This was pretty much the point I gave up on GW, its only the recent changes that have brought me back.

I thought SG were dropped when Hobbit/LotR came out because they needed to focus all their resources to a third main game. It’s been a long time and I’m getting older by the moment, so I could be misremembering.

 Theophony wrote:
I thought SG were dropped when Hobbit/LotR came out because they needed to focus all their resources to a third main game. It’s been a long time and I’m getting older by the moment, so I could be misremembering.

That could well be true, like I say it was a long time ago. I always got the impression they wanted to remove the option of having 20 model collections in favour of 100+ model collections.

Slipspace wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So we come back to the salient point.

Buy, or buy not. There is no whine.

Business practices are business practices. FFG are a bunch of mercenary little toads in my eyes when it comes to how they sell stuff for X-Wing. Can't say it's made a noticeable difference to the game's success.

I have decided not to buy (and got a bunch of people criticising me for saying as much, I might add).

I am not whining. This is a discussion forum, yes? I am discussing the reasons for me not buying and attempting to explain them, to further understanding and discussion.

True... But this is News and Rumours and not General discussion... We really had this ad infinitum now.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
Unless the subsequent books add more equipment available to all gangs, that doesn't concern me. I play Escher - I don't need the stats for Orlock-only weapons, so I don't need to reference GW2.

They said they would expand the trading post, everyone can use thise items.

tneva82 wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
The old Necromunda didn't make enough money. So it ended.

You have evidence though? Hopefully your evidence of it is not it was killed off because GW has killed off games that exceeded their own expectations at 400%. Why they would greenlight anything if they expect to sell so little that 400% exceedings aren't enough?

What is this '400% expectation' game you speak of?

Epic Armageddon. Exceeded sales by 400% according to Jervis Johnson(the guy in charge of specialist games)


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
I am struggling to find anything solid as evidence. There is a 4 page Dakka thread where pretty much everyone agrees it was against GW's current business model to support SG. Cash flow is usually the reason that GW do strange things. Its why the old world got blown up (still saddens me) and why we have two tiers of space marine.

Or it was false view by Kirby that SG's are competing with FB/40k. Why sell 4 games to players if GW can drop resources to all but 2 games and players shift 100% purchaces to FB/40k. That was the theory anyway. Didn't occur that some people actually might not want just FB/40k and so would spend more money with more games available.

Have you got a source for where Jervis said that? I'd be interested in reading where he's talking about actual percentages.

Upon further inspection I found out Goliath gang store description is wrong.

They have 8 heads on each sprue, 3 of them have mask, 1 mask is accessory hanging on the belt. It mean 8/10 ganger have access to mask.

Which is kinda ironic because Escher was the house of chemical and poison weapon but they only have 2 mask on each sprue, 1 of them isn't even a respirator, it's just a cloth mask.

Chopstick wrote:
Upon further inspection I found out Goliath gang store description is wrong.

They have 8 heads on each sprue, 3 of them have mask, 1 mask is accessory hanging on the belt. It mean 8/10 ganger have access to mask.

Which is kinda ironic because Escher was the house of chemical and poison weapon but they only have 2 mask on each sprue, 1 of them isn't even a respirator, it's just a cloth mask.

They can afford better tech, so rather than Respirators they have Filter Plugs…..

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So we come back to the salient point.

Buy, or buy not. There is no whine.

That's a false dilemma, and a double one, at that. You can like some of the decisions made for the game and buy it while at the same time not liking others, so even if you "buy" you can "whine".

Plus, stating what you like and what you don't is not "whining", its giving an opinion. Saying that the game is incomplete when compared with the "core Necromunda" that people has come to expect is stating a fact, no matter how complete or incomplete might the core box be in relation with itself.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
I am struggling to find anything solid as evidence. There is a 4 page Dakka thread where pretty much everyone agrees it was against GW's current business model to support SG. Cash flow is usually the reason that GW do strange things. Its why the old world got blown up (still saddens me) and why we have two tiers of space marine.

Usually it has more to do with allocation of resources. Not so much "this game doesn't make money" as "the resources spent doing this game would make much more revenue when used on this other stuff" kinda deal. That's what they told us back in the day to the lowly redshirts when they discontinued the SG lines.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
So we come back to the salient point.

Buy, or buy not. There is no whine.

Business practices are business practices. FFG are a bunch of mercenary little toads in my eyes when it comes to how they sell stuff for X-Wing. Can't say it's made a noticeable difference to the game's success.

''Whining'' gives feedback to a company, feedback that any good company should use in order to improve.

Slipspace wrote:
I am not whining. This is a discussion forum, yes?

The two are not mutually exclusive. Look, this is what GW offers. Explaining why it upsets you to us doesn't change it. I mean, this thread has added a dozen pages since the game launched and I don't think I've seen anybody actually admit to playing it (I'm still assembling Escher myself). It's just been nonstop complaining about a game people refuse to try for being a game they don't want that's too similar or not similar enough to a game they can't get over. There's only so much discussion to be had there. Eventually, the people who actually bought and played the game deserve to be the center of the discussion.

I know some people aren't a fan of FFG's business model and that's fair enough, but there's more to the success of a game than how it is sold but the effect the business model has on sales is part of the overall picture that determines success. FFG seem to have been successful by having a number of factors in their favour:

1. Imperial Assault doesn't include models for the movie heroes or villains. It just included tokens for them and expected you to buy Darth Vader or Boba Fett (who is on the cover) separately. Buying them often exceeds the cost of the original game expansions.
2. Arkham Horror LCG is a cooperative card game that basically requires you to buy a second core set and then literally throw over half the cards away.
3. Runewars TMG puts valuable upgrade cards in unit packs, so even if you buy the starter set, you'll lack the two or three cards which make the units effective without rebuying units you already have.
4. FFG likes to abandon games without notice, well before they are "complete". Ask players of BattleLore 2E or Runebound 3E if they feel their games are complete.

The first three are things that FFG does that I think are worse than the Gang War situation in Necromunda. The fourth though is what keeps me up at night, and why I hesitate to jump into another FFG game system. Say what you will about Necromunda's release schedule, it's comforting to know it has one and that if the game is incomplete, it won't stay incomplete forever.

Ruin_In_The_Dark wrote:
The old Necromunda didn't make enough money. So it ended.

The new Necromunda is aiming to make more cash and keep going longer.

The format may of been a bad choice, but if we want necro they need to make it profitable. If you want to be a customer there needs to be a product to buy. Like you say it works both ways, but they tried one way of doing things and it didn't work out.

I can see and understand the points people are making but luckily I only play casual and amongst friends so little of it is of much concern to me.

EDIT: my only real concern is people getting bored between releases. I would of thought 2 gangs per book would of avoided a lot of this upset plus lead to healthier campaigns sooner.

Yeah, but the thing is that business model probably will hinder sales instead of inproving them. I can't think that dripfeeding the gangs will mak people more willing to buy the base games. Same thing for the rules. Hell, I unfortunately think it will have the opposite effect. How many games failed cause they weren't enough factions in the beginning!!??? Really weird that GW, choose this approach. Seems like they don't really believe in this project and gave only a tiny amount of ressources to it. Self-fufilling prophecy as they say