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God Tear is okay. It's got really bad match ups and balance issues like crazy though. The character and their followers that you use to build your force often have powerful abilities against a certain type of enemy and struggle against others, so it can really matter what types you are facing. After a day of playing with different combinations that a friend got, I ended up deciding not to buy any of my own. Board game plastic is a huge "no thanks" for me already, but the game play isn't really a reason to settle for that material in this case. I'll play the game casually a couple times a year because a friend will want to though.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
How are their other games?

I know Darksouls really got crapped on, though there are some reviewers that liked it, but I haven't heard much about anything else they've released since rules/gameplay wise.

Do they actually tend to make pretty decent games are people just buying stuff for the minis?

They promise perfection and get crucified for their faults, but I overall really like their stuff.

Dark Souls is a weird situation. A lot of what's wrong with it is simply that the Dark Souls experience of dying and having to slog your way back to the boss to try again is WAY less fun in a group setting than it is solo. I feel like the whole experience comes across like a failed PUG MMO raid. You spend an hour fighting through the dungeon rather trivially, get to the actual raid, and when the party gets wiped have to convince everyone its worth trying again after a natural break point. What really hurts it is just that the dungeon part of it is very.... mechanical and the rewards are very even so its got a huge sense of grinding associated with it.

I think the boss encounters make up for it personally. They're among the most well done AI driven encounters I've played and a worthwhile play session all on their own. What's funny to me is the unnecessary nature of the dungeon is a benefit to me now. I just skip it. The rewards for it are static, so I just... take that, take on the boss and if/when I fail, try again with another dungeon runs worth of experience and gear. It's clear 90% of the design went into the boss encounters and I'm personally happy spending my time on the same part of the game the developers did.

Godtear is good, but feels more like a board game than anything that will expand for long. I think its super worth picking up say... 2-3 of each type of warband and playing it with a ban/draft setup out of a single collection. It's a fun game for sure, but doesn't really feel like it has any more room to expand than Guild Ball did.

I didn't see that coming. I was always led to understand it was relatively popular and I certainly saw it played quite alot, albeit not as much in the last couple of years. As an outsider looking in it always seemed healthy.

Blood Bowl (2016) likely didn't help, since people will almost always run back to a GW 'alternative' when it rears it's head (although the flop that is Aeronautica Imperialis arguably contradicts that).

Godtear is pretty fun, but it’s a very Rock Paper Scissors balance wise.

The above said what I’ve heard about Dark Souls from others, I haven’t played it myself.

That’s... about it I think? There was a flash in the pan GB lore based card game that nothing really came from.

Oh, Resident Evil game that I’ve seen a few people buy but never heard anyone talk about.

Interesting. While it sounds like there were definitely other issues (supply being one of the big ones), I think the validity to the claim that focus on tournament-style play to the detriment of casual/pick-up/other style has some merit.

A game has to keep releasing new models to continue to grow. Just relying on bringing in new players isn't enough. Likewise, just relying on expansion isn't enough, either. Tournament-level play makes any new releases really challenging to balance or give reason for the ultra-competitive crowd to buy into. And as you keep adding more and more stuff, bloat not only skews balance (which is a really bad thing if your claim is "we have great balance") and makes the ramp up for gaining new players a lot harder.

I think the move to PVC also hurt more than it helped. I know it kicked me off of even considering it, because I hate that material and personally have a higher bar on model quality for my games than just the game play.

LunarSol wrote:Matt and Rich definitely lost interest about a year or two in. Pretty much from the point where it was apparently that the first draft wasn't as perfectly balanced as they thought, and the game got stuck trying to figure out what to do about Morticians, Alchemists, and Union.

There's an anonymous Reddit post doing the rounds that purports to be from a SFG employee. At first I treated it with the caution that anonymous reddit posts deserve, but almost everything else it says has proven to be correct. In that it states that Matt and Rich fought for GB because it is their baby, but ultimately the money men that have been brought in wanted it gone, because who wants a funny little minis game that barely covers its costs when you can have Sonic the fething Hedghog churning millions through KS?

Arbitrator wrote:I didn't see that coming. I was always led to understand it was relatively popular and I certainly saw it played quite alot, albeit not as much in the last couple of years. As an outsider looking in it always seemed healthy.

Blood Bowl (2016) likely didn't help, since people will almost always run back to a GW 'alternative' when it rears it's head (although the flop that is Aeronautica Imperialis arguably contradicts that).

Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

 Azreal13 wrote:

LunarSol wrote:Matt and Rich definitely lost interest about a year or two in. Pretty much from the point where it was apparently that the first draft wasn't as perfectly balanced as they thought, and the game got stuck trying to figure out what to do about Morticians, Alchemists, and Union.

There's an anonymous Reddit post doing the rounds that purports to be from a SFG employee. At first I treated it with the caution that anonymous reddit posts deserve, but almost everything else it says has proven to be correct. In that it states that Matt and Rich fought for GB because it is their baby, but ultimately the money men that have been brought in wanted it gone, because who wants a funny little minis game that barely covers its costs when you can have Sonic the fething Hedghog churning millions through KS?

That's interesting and I certainly wouldn't claim to know otherwise. I know they're very proud of it, its just felt like they lost interest in maintaining it and were happy to shift it to more enthusiastic staff while they pursued new things.

There's an anonymous Reddit post doing the rounds that purports to be from a SFG employee. At first I treated it with the caution that anonymous reddit posts deserve, but almost everything else it says has proven to be correct. In that it states that Matt and Rich fought for GB because it is their baby, but ultimately the money men that have been brought in wanted it gone, because who wants a funny little minis game that barely covers its costs when you can have Sonic the fething Hedghog churning millions through KS?

Link per chance?

It’s a shame the PVC sets were so expensive, as I generally prefer that material To metal or even resin. But every time I thought about buying a set, I realized I only wanted one or two minis in the set and the price was way too high to justify.

I’m in a similar boat with Godtear, but a bit more tempted because the minis are more interesting.

 Valander wrote:
Interesting. While it sounds like there were definitely other issues (supply being one of the big ones), I think the validity to the claim that focus on tournament-style play to the detriment of casual/pick-up/other style has some merit.

A game has to keep releasing new models to continue to grow. Just relying on bringing in new players isn't enough. Likewise, just relying on expansion isn't enough, either. Tournament-level play makes any new releases really challenging to balance or give reason for the ultra-competitive crowd to buy into. And as you keep adding more and more stuff, bloat not only skews balance (which is a really bad thing if your claim is "we have great balance") and makes the ramp up for gaining new players a lot harder.

I mean, its also worth noting that there's basically no way to bring in new players when the core teams aren't available.

On the competitive side of things, I see it two ways. On one hand, I think clean rules, sound mechanics, and most of the other hallmarks of competitive play are strong, important things for a miniatures game. I think where games get in trouble is when they start mistaking complexity and mechanical minutia for signs of competitiveness. The more millimeters matter, the more a competitive environment demands precision and its often there that a game loses the ability for new players to have fun while they learn things. I've started to really come around to the widgets of Legion and Crisis Protocol, not so much because they work better than a tape measure, but they keep designers working in fairly large chunks of distance that make it harder for games to devolve into leveraging a half inch advantage in threat range. To be out of range, you usually have to be so in a more significant way that conflicts with the realities of terrain and scenario placement. I'm a strong believe in competitive play, but I think its important for developers to ensure that a competitive game isn't played all that different from a casual one.

As an aside, I think GBs big design failing was assuming players would need to put some effort into scoring. Minis games often fall apart the first time a player realized they could just back up and that moment for GBs design was almost certainly the first time someone punted the ball behind their own goal.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

People go where the players are. That's why so many Warmahordes players jumped ship back to 8th 40k at launch, despite the two rulesets being far apart in terms of 'random nonsense'.

That said, the stock issues I can definitely believe as being a huge problem. It's a similar case with Asmodee games (notably Legion and ASOI&F) where you've got new players lining up, only unable to find the required starter boxes ANYWHERE and inevitably get bored of waiting/forget about them and go back to GW.

 LunarSol wrote:


I mean, its also worth noting that there's basically no way to bring in new players when the core teams aren't available.

100% agree there. Supply issues contributed to a much larger part of the failure, I'm sure.

On the competitive side of things, I see it two ways. On one hand, I think clean rules, sound mechanics, and most of the other hallmarks of competitive play are strong, important things for a miniatures game. I think where games get in trouble is when they start mistaking complexity and mechanical minutia for signs of competitiveness. The more millimeters matter, the more a competitive environment demands precision and its often there that a game loses the ability for new players to have fun while they learn things. I've started to really come around to the widgets of Legion and Crisis Protocol, not so much because they work better than a tape measure, but they keep designers working in fairly large chunks of distance that make it harder for games to devolve into leveraging a half inch advantage in threat range. To be out of range, you usually have to be so in a more significant way that conflicts with the realities of terrain and scenario placement. I'm a strong believe in competitive play, but I think its important for developers to ensure that a competitive game isn't played all that different from a casual one.

As an aside, I think GBs big design failing was assuming players would need to put some effort into scoring. Minis games often fall apart the first time a player realized they could just back up and that moment for GBs design was almost certainly the first time someone punted the ball behind their own goal.

Agree on a lot of that, too. Micromanagement of measurement is a quick shot to the head, IMO, for any level of "casual" play. I mean, sadly, there's not much way around it even if using measuring widgets and templates; you're still going to be out of range at times that you thought you might not be. I think it's just exacerbated by the "win at all costs" mentality that starts with a focus on tournament level play (and why I generally rarely do tournaments of any kind myself; usually only at cons and even then more for the "I want to go play games" than "I must crush all competition" reason).

I don't have an answer for how to deal with balancing tourney vs. other play.

That said, I do not think "clean rules with good balance and the fewest gray areas and loopholes" is something that necessarily needs to be restricted to tournament/competitive play. Any game benefits from clean rules.

Yikes. Reading this thread has me very nervous. I just picked up Godtear and I've been enjoying it, but hearing about how some of SFG's previous games have gone definitely does not inspire me to invest in it.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

People go where the players are. That's why so many Warmahordes players jumped ship back to 8th 40k at launch, despite the two rulesets being far apart in terms of 'random nonsense'.

That said, the stock issues I can definitely believe as being a huge problem. It's a similar case with Asmodee games (notably Legion and ASOI&F) where you've got new players lining up, only unable to find the required starter boxes ANYWHERE and inevitably get bored of waiting/forget about them and go back to GW.

I think its a gross exageration to say 'so many' warmahordes players jumped ship to 40k.... perhaps a few did, but most WMH players see 40k as a joke of a game in terms of competitive play and if they left for another game it was probably something more along the lines of guildball or another game with similar tactical depth and balance.

Personally, i dont go where the players are at all, id rather play nothing at all than a game that has a big community but gamplay mechanics i find completely underwhelming. These days i spend a lot of time building communities around games that are to my tastes, takes work but totally worth it.

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

People go where the players are. That's why so many Warmahordes players jumped ship back to 8th 40k at launch, despite the two rulesets being far apart in terms of 'random nonsense'.

but my anecdotal evidence differs to yours so it appears we are at an impasse

although PP flubbing 3rd and forking the non-US supply didnt help and mishandling COI made me give up all things wmh

 Valander wrote:


That said, I do not think "clean rules with good balance and the fewest gray areas and loopholes" is something that necessarily needs to be restricted to tournament/competitive play. Any game benefits from clean rules.

"Clean"? Probably.

But less balance with a more evolving rotation of "OP" stuff and power creep to shake up the meta as well as recurring tabula rasa clean slates through edition-changes or some such certainly helps a lot.

Oldie but Goldie

 Valander wrote:
Agree on a lot of that, too. Micromanagement of measurement is a quick shot to the head, IMO, for any level of "casual" play. I mean, sadly, there's not much way around it even if using measuring widgets and templates; you're still going to be out of range at times that you thought you might not be. I think it's just exacerbated by the "win at all costs" mentality that starts with a focus on tournament level play (and why I generally rarely do tournaments of any kind myself; usually only at cons and even then more for the "I want to go play games" than "I must crush all competition" reason).

I don't have an answer for how to deal with balancing tourney vs. other play.

It's not really being out of range that creates issues. It's the opportunity to intentionally set myself out of range where things break down. Where I think Legion and MCPs widgets matter is that they are precise while also reducing the value of precision. In part, this is because the lack of a tape measure means you can't really check beyond a single action for "total threat" but it also has to do with how the range bands offer less minute ranges.

In GB and WMH notably, having a 11-12" threat puts you at an enormous advantage over a 10" threat. You can line up 10.1" away, they can't hurt you and you get to destroy them. Part of the reason that works though is because 1" advantages in threat can be leveraged without really sacrificing board position. It becomes a binary positioning issue rather than a tactical choice.

In MCP on the other hand, the difference between range 2 and range 3 is 3" and more interesting, the base range 2 is 2" longer than the range 1 that is largely only used for contesting objectives. What this means is that its far less likely that where I choose to contest an objective from affects whether I'm out of a range 3 threat range and at the same time, its actually impossible for 2 characters to contest an objective without being in the base range of one another. It creates a game where positioning matters, but not one where its one and lost on precision.

The other option you see is threat range options. One of WMH's biggest issues is that models deal the most damage when they use their longest threat. There's no real choice in this compared to say, Malifaux 3E, where if something is out of your range, you can sacrifice an attack to likely move in range, effectively halving your output to double the threat. GB sometimes gets a bit confused on this choice, as the whole playbook wrapping mechanic created some really weird incentives for threat ranges. Ultimately though, for me it comes down to how awful the difference between 1" melee and 2" melee interacted with counterattacks and unpredictable moment. That's always been the minutia that breaks the game in a casual environment because it's essentially a perfect inverse of what I said about MCP.

Sunno wrote:

There's an anonymous Reddit post doing the rounds that purports to be from a SFG employee. At first I treated it with the caution that anonymous reddit posts deserve, but almost everything else it says has proven to be correct. In that it states that Matt and Rich fought for GB because it is their baby, but ultimately the money men that have been brought in wanted it gone, because who wants a funny little minis game that barely covers its costs when you can have Sonic the fething Hedghog churning millions through KS?

Link per chance?

I have one bar of phone signal and my broadband was a casualty of lightning this morning, so I can't search for it, but it's been shared on FB and Discord, and is obviously on Reddit somewhere.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Read through the Facebook comments for the fun of it.

Lots of the competitive people are upset at being blamed. Saying you're suppose to win in a game -- don't blame us. I kind of agree with that. If you focus your game to attract that group then it's more your fault then theirs.

On person calling them Spartan Games 2.0 (ouch).

Lots of people calling out what everyone here is. Stock and price issues (as in almost doubling the cost of figures).

And like one or two people saying if Steamforge doesn't want to make the game anymore, which has been evident for years it looks like, they shouldn't and move on. Which I also agree on.

Man, that Spartan 2.0 comment . Honestly, I agree with that, the are moving from property to property so quickly.

I did pick up Godtear, after the Kickstarter (which imo was handled really poorly). But for the prices, the miniatures are so hit and miss. Some pretty darn good, others just atrocious. They sell them like they're high quality resin, when they're pre-assembled PVC.

So, yeah... I think they'll be fine commercially in a CMON-like niche, but they deserve a lot of the flak they're getting for this.

LunarSol wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

LunarSol wrote:Matt and Rich definitely lost interest about a year or two in. Pretty much from the point where it was apparently that the first draft wasn't as perfectly balanced as they thought, and the game got stuck trying to figure out what to do about Morticians, Alchemists, and Union.

There's an anonymous Reddit post doing the rounds that purports to be from a SFG employee. At first I treated it with the caution that anonymous reddit posts deserve, but almost everything else it says has proven to be correct. In that it states that Matt and Rich fought for GB because it is their baby, but ultimately the money men that have been brought in wanted it gone, because who wants a funny little minis game that barely covers its costs when you can have Sonic the fething Hedghog churning millions through KS?

That's interesting and I certainly wouldn't claim to know otherwise. I know they're very proud of it, its just felt like they lost interest in maintaining it and were happy to shift it to more enthusiastic staff while they pursued new things.

Private Equity firm put in 5million pounds. I'm surprised it took a year to kill. probably the amount of time it took for the new ower to figure out how everything is operating. Need to be careful with these investments or you end up loosing everything you wanted your company to be. They probably didn't even think the company investing would prevent them from running their game that broken even (or had like 10% return). Need to always be bringing in more and more in off of the money being spent. I don't think Godtear will last that long as there's no way the investment firm will let them keep putting money into a low margin game when they can spend the same resources on a high margin KSer boardgame. Just how the world is now days sadly. https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/business/steamforged-games-boosted-5m-investment-16194494

BobtheInquisitor wrote:It’s a shame the PVC sets were so expensive, as I generally prefer that material To metal or even resin. But every time I thought about buying a set, I realized I only wanted one or two minis in the set and the price was way too high to justify.

I’m in a similar boat with Godtear, but a bit more tempted because the minis are more interesting.

I guess I'm lucky. I've always liked the GB designs so I've managed to pick up, I believe, all the plastic sets for around $30 each since they started coming out through various sales.

Sunny Side Up wrote:

 Valander wrote:


That said, I do not think "clean rules with good balance and the fewest gray areas and loopholes" is something that necessarily needs to be restricted to tournament/competitive play. Any game benefits from clean rules.

"Clean"? Probably.

But less balance with a more evolving rotation of "OP" stuff and power creep to shake up the meta as well as recurring tabula rasa clean slates through edition-changes or some such certainly helps a lot.

Oldie but Goldie

Spoiler:

That is a good old video, actually.

By "balance" here I mean more of a "each player feels like they have a chance to win based on how they play." Sure, you can't "perfectly balance" anything, and there's definite weight to the argument that if you did, it'd be kinda boring (Go players may argue with you there). But keeping some balance to make sure you don't have "auto includes" that devolve everything into deciding a game based on the list building phase is, I think, good for any game.

Games come a go, only a rare few stick around long enough and even those seem to be struggling when the whale in the pound splashes a bit.

I remember the huge hit GB was at one particular Salute, probably one of the busiest stands at the time.
A shame to see good minis vanish but nothing we can do about it. Regarding the shifting of the blame towards others and in this case their actual clients is errrr, just don't go there, close and move along with some dignity.

In the age of 3d printing a game can truly never be dead. There's a group of fans trying to convince SFG to do just that.

 Azreal13 wrote:
[
Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

Just about everyone who was completely into Guildball has switched over to MCP at my local store.

 bbb wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
[
Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

Just about everyone who was completely into Guildball has switched over to MCP at my local store.

Despite the prices that make GW look reasonable? Wow.

 Azreal13 wrote:

Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

Eh. Honestly don't find this to be very true, I play Warmachine, and tried Guild Ball before I moved. Found the game to be quite enjoyable, but the switch from metal to PVC as I finally convinced people to give it a try once I moved killed all my interest in the game.

Playing Blood Bowl darn near everyday now, and have people joining in. While there is tons of randomness to Blood Bowl, I have found not having every model be tied to a unique and named character has been tons of fun and quite refreshing due to the amount of official and non official model choices, and the conversion opportunity.

I actually like that not every Blood Bowl team is created equal, and that some are more challenging than others to play. Been a nice change from tightly written rulesets that try as hard as possible to achieve relative balance.

Interesting to see people moving to Crisis Protocol though, haven't really given it much of a look due to not being a big super hero fan.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

Eh. Honestly don't find this to be very true, I play Warmachine, and tried Guild Ball before I moved. Found the game to be quite enjoyable, but the switch from metal to PVC as I finally convinced people to give it a try once I moved killed all my interest in the game.

Playing Blood Bowl darn near everyday now, and have people joining in. While there is tons of randomness to Blood Bowl, I have found not having every model be tied to a unique and named character has been tons of fun and quite refreshing due to the amount of official and non official model choices, and the conversion opportunity.

I actually like that not every Blood Bowl team is created equal, and that some are more challenging than others to play. Been a nice change from tightly written rulesets that try as hard as possible to achieve relative balance.

Interesting to see people moving to Crisis Protocol though, haven't really given it much of a look due to not being a big super hero fan.

You’re not playing Blood Bowl for the reasons you played GB though, which is pretty much Azrael’s point. They’re very different games, despite both having a ball.

 Dysartes wrote:

 bbb wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
[
Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

Just about everyone who was completely into Guildball has switched over to MCP at my local store.

Despite the prices that make GW look reasonable? Wow.

Whilst MCP is a bit pricey its still slightly cheaper than GW, which admittedly is still steep but I suspect its to do with why 40k characters are priced like they are as they wont sell in volume like units will, plus the House of the Mouse's cut is most likely quite hefty

 Dysartes wrote:

 bbb wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
[
Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

Just about everyone who was completely into Guildball has switched over to MCP at my local store.

Despite the prices that make GW look reasonable? Wow.

The base set is a tremendous value and gives you everything you need to play. You end up paying $20+ for each additional model you want, but you tend to only play with 4-6 models per game, so it isnt too bad.

 bbb wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

 bbb wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
[
Anyone who admires the qualities of GB will in no way find the random nonsense of BB appealing, they might both have a ball, but they couldn't be more different as games. People who are jumping ship are jumping to other low count skirmish games like Crisis Protocol.

Just about everyone who was completely into Guildball has switched over to MCP at my local store.

Despite the prices that make GW look reasonable? Wow.

The base set is a tremendous value and gives you everything you need to play.

that's pretty much any game. Base set sold at much lower margins to get people to buy in.