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chaos0xomega wrote:
Point of fact, they could not. Don't ask me why because I will not say (other than it being an issue of licensing and approval) but if you're curious as to what my source is you can look up my location indicated in my Dakka profile and cross reference that with where wizkids is headquartered.

Well that's truly disapointing then. If Wizkids tried and was specifically told no, then that is really unfortunate for gamers.

I do find it strange that WotC would allow 3rd party publishing under OGL and also license the board game mechanics verbatim for Tomb of Annihilation, and ALSO allow a D&D skirmish game to be made, but not allow it to be a proper D&D-skirmish or D&D-lite. And if WotC won't allow it because it's their flagship IP, they should release their own damned rules, which they won't because they no longer want to produce miniatures, which was their entire reason for licensing figures out to Wizkids.

I really hate WotC sometimes

it may well be that (at least for the moment) the appropriate 'stuff' that wizkids would have needed is licenced elsewhere exclusivly (given that so many D&D licences exist)

The_Real_Chris wrote:
So if its FFG design ideas, I am guessing lots of little bits of cardboard and cards?

Contents of the box includes:

16 Dial Cards
26 Standard Cards
44 Mini Cards
71 Tokens

Which is pretty similar to what comes in the Warhammer Underworlds: Nethermaze box. Cards and tokens are expected in a board game, for this type of crossover product it’s not unexpected

Ancient Otter wrote:
Well they have a web-site, so they are already one up on X-Wing 2.0! Seriously, not even a proper dedicated page for X-Wing on the AMG website after how many years?

AMG hasn't been in charge of X-Wing for a full year yet. FFG had a site and active forum. Of course AMG should still have something, but I think the lads there just aren't that interested in the property that got dumped in their laps as Asmodee prepared itself for sale.

 Arschbombe wrote:

Ancient Otter wrote:
Well they have a web-site, so they are already one up on X-Wing 2.0! Seriously, not even a proper dedicated page for X-Wing on the AMG website after how many years?

AMG hasn't been in charge of X-Wing for a full year yet. FFG had a site and active forum. Of course AMG should still have something, but I think the lads there just aren't that interested in the property that got dumped in their laps as Asmodee prepared itself for sale.

It was announced Nov 2020. They should have had a website ready for the announcement, or heck within a couple of weeks but here we are 18 months later and the AMG website still looks like they only make Crisis Protocol.

MaxT wrote:

 Arschbombe wrote:

Ancient Otter wrote:
Well they have a web-site, so they are already one up on X-Wing 2.0! Seriously, not even a proper dedicated page for X-Wing on the AMG website after how many years?

AMG hasn't been in charge of X-Wing for a full year yet. FFG had a site and active forum. Of course AMG should still have something, but I think the lads there just aren't that interested in the property that got dumped in their laps as Asmodee prepared itself for sale.

It was announced Nov 2020. They should have had a website ready for the announcement, or heck within a couple of weeks but here we are 18 months later and the AMG website still looks like they only make Crisis Protocol.

From the sound of it, AMG had next to no notice that they were having the Star Wars licence transferred to them from FFG. It doesn’t excuse how slow they have been to react since though.

Things have actually started to improve this last week with the first Star Wars legion article being added to the website and some Star Wars activity on AMGs social media.

Hmm, let's see. Chainmail the miniatures game that more or less started, or co-started D&D. Then there was Swords & Spells. Then Battlesystem. These were not really skirmish games, but they were for miniatures. Then there was a new Chainmail ( from WotC). After that came the imaginatively named D&D Miniatures game. It was followed by an odd one called Dungeon Command. Now D&D: Onslaught. It'll end up on the heap along with all of the aforementioned games, especially at the price WizKids is asking. These sorts of games have a way of withering on the vine when they come from WotC and its afiiliates. With cards, dice, pre-painted minis and tokens on a 2-d terrain map, it looks a lot like the D&D Miniatures game. WotC had a Star Wars game that was similar too.

 Red Harvest wrote:
These sorts of games have a way of withering on the vine when they come from WotC and its afiiliates.

That's possibly overstating it a little. D&D minis lasted for 8 years (longer than most miniatures games stick around) and including around 20 expansions. Both it and the Star Wars miniatures game were commercially successful, and D&D minis had the added bonus of being a ready supply of minis for the RPG. But when you're relying on a collectible format, and there's a finite pool of interesting options to draw from, sooner or later the well is going to run dry.

Ah yes, WOTC's Chainmail. I loved that game and had some of my best miniature gaming experiences playing that game, sad to see it get axed so soon (and apparently because the WOTC leadership wanted to go in different directions, not because it was unsuccessful.)

The game had some pretty fun rules that were just simplified 3E, a quick play time and small-foot print/model count, and some pretty cool lore. The minis were also pretty nice for the time and had some really unique stuff in there (Undead Dwarves, Undead Gnoll Abominations, Half-Dragons, Underground Dwarf Rangers, etc).

I think that was the last REAL (as in miniatures you have to assemble/paint, non-collectible) miniature game WOTC did.

 Sabotage! wrote:
Ah yes, WOTC's Chainmail. I loved that game and had some of my best miniature gaming experiences playing that game, sad to see it get axed so soon (and apparently because the WOTC leadership wanted to go in different directions, not because it was unsuccessful.)

The game had some pretty fun rules that were just simplified 3E, a quick play time and small-foot print/model count, and some pretty cool lore. The minis were also pretty nice for the time and had some really unique stuff in there (Undead Dwarves, Undead Gnoll Abominations, Half-Dragons, Underground Dwarf Rangers, etc).

I think that was the last REAL (as in miniatures you have to assemble/paint, non-collectible) miniature game WOTC did.

Definitely. A pretty decent game that they gave pretty decent support for before its sudden demise. Fondly recall it as one of the most competent contemporary designs that died an undeserved death.

They wete tapping into gws market and could have been an actually relevant contender. I have always held a grudge against cmg for presumably killing this, even though i know my ire is misdirected.

 Wiz Warrior wrote:

 Sabotage! wrote:
Ah yes, WOTC's Chainmail. I loved that game and had some of my best miniature gaming experiences playing that game, sad to see it get axed so soon (and apparently because the WOTC leadership wanted to go in different directions, not because it was unsuccessful.)

The game had some pretty fun rules that were just simplified 3E, a quick play time and small-foot print/model count, and some pretty cool lore. The minis were also pretty nice for the time and had some really unique stuff in there (Undead Dwarves, Undead Gnoll Abominations, Half-Dragons, Underground Dwarf Rangers, etc).

I think that was the last REAL (as in miniatures you have to assemble/paint, non-collectible) miniature game WOTC did.

Definitely. A pretty decent game that they gave pretty decent support for before its sudden demise. Fondly recall it as one of the most competent contemporary designs that died an undeserved death.

They wete tapping into gws market and could have been an actually relevant contender. I have always held a grudge against cmg for presumably killing this, even though i know my ire is misdirected.

Yeah, even though I wasn't a great painter at the time, seeing the CMGs which followed, with their terrible looking miniatures and way less interesting rulesets was a pretty big bummer.

I still have a bunch of the metal minis even though a good portion of them were redone in the plastic minis game.

 Wiz Warrior wrote:
I have always held a grudge against cmg for presumably killing this, even though i know my ire is misdirected.

Nah, it is well deserved ire, WotC killed Chainmail because they specifically didn't want to become a miniatures company and CMGs fit better with their business model. Chainmail was pretty popular at my store for a while and I had that same aversion to the CMG version for the same reason, took me until the Dragoneye set before I started getting into it and that was mostly to use the models in actual 3.5 D&D, took me even longer to start playing the CMG as a game on it's own. I still would have preferred Chainmail to it, since Chainmail used actual wargaming terrain and measuring tapes instead of grid maps.

And nowadays most of my gaming is weekly D&D on Roll20 and Discord, so Onslaught being on a grid is actually a boon for when we actually get together in person anymore. Or it would have been a boon, at that price I don't think I'll be buying into it on the off chance it sees the table. Still hoping for a cheaper unpainted option.

 Red Harvest wrote:
<snip>...Then there was a new Chainmail ( from WotC). ...<snip>

This was the best of the lot and still an admirable design that saw command limitations incorporated into a skirmish design (as one sees in some historical wargames). I absolutely love that Chainmail ruleset and still rank it as one of the top 5 skirmish rulesets I've ever played (weighed down mainly by D&D's reliance on the d20).

 insaniak wrote:

 Red Harvest wrote:
These sorts of games have a way of withering on the vine when they come from WotC and its afiiliates.

That's possibly overstating it a little. D&D minis lasted for 8 years (longer than most miniatures games stick around) and including around 20 expansions. Both it and the Star Wars miniatures game were commercially successful, and D&D minis had the added bonus of being a ready supply of minis for the RPG. But when you're relying on a collectible format, and there's a finite pool of interesting options to draw from, sooner or later the well is going to run dry.

Well, the CMG died because the blind purchase prepaint minis industry as a whole became unprofitable. They made those Raveloft board games just to have something to do with the sculpts they'd already made.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Red Harvest wrote:
Hmm, let's see. Chainmail the miniatures game that more or less started, or co-started D&D. Then there was Swords & Spells. Then Battlesystem. These were not really skirmish games, but they were for miniatures. Then there was a new Chainmail ( from WotC). After that came the imaginatively named D&D Miniatures game. It was followed by an odd one called Dungeon Command. Now D&D: Onslaught. It'll end up on the heap along with all of the aforementioned games, especially at the price WizKids is asking. These sorts of games have a way of withering on the vine when they come from WotC and its afiiliates. With cards, dice, pre-painted minis and tokens on a 2-d terrain map, it looks a lot like the D&D Miniatures game. WotC had a Star Wars game that was similar too.

Someone remembers Dungeon Command!

 LunarSol wrote:

 Red Harvest wrote:
<snip>... It was followed by an odd one called Dungeon Command. ...<snip>

Someone remembers Dungeon Command!

This I picked up after its short lifespan, mainly to discover other tactical arena combat games that preceded GW's Warhammer Underworlds (quite possibly GW's best game of the last 22 years). What are your thoughts on Dungeon Command, seeing as all I've done is read through the rules/cards?

Some people appeared to like it, but it was mostly reviled because it took the DDM minis and ditched the dice, instead using a card based summoning and combat system that made the game feel like Magic The Gathering. It's what i was refering to when I said "at least Onslaught appears to use D20s and target AC to hit" a bit up thread. A D&D game needs to roll a D20 to hit or it isn't a D&D game. I kept trying to like it since DDM died so suddenly (and was so good), but the combat system tried to be entirely too clever for it's own good. The people that liked the change really liked the game, so if you have it, give it a try.

Onslaught appears to be doing what Dungeon Command attempted, with the prebuilt warbands and "competative" branding, but this time somebody remembered "oh yeah, the game that spawned the entire D20 system that overtook the industry for a decade should probably roll to-hit dice"

I was a playtester on dungeon command. Long story short, its a very different game than what was offered in playtest proposal, and much worse as well.

There was no iterating between playtest and retail. They zigged when they should have zagged.

It wasnt just the dice that made it not very compelling. The card play is somewhat at fault, and how the design changed from playtest making it feel very thematically divorced in comparison.

Wasnt a bad game, but without some very innovative mechanisms being introduced into the game, it was just... ok.

If Wizards of the woke wanted to impress, they would reissue Chainmail, and run the figures in the dark harder plastic with a reasonable price range, and an added book to add in more of the figures that are already out.

This new trash is coming from the same mentality as those trying to elbow in their Magic into a D and D crowd, as they throw shade at those that came before them.

The full chainmail miniatures game rulebook is still available as a pdf. Though i think WotC took it down from online distribution, since i bought it from drive thru games and cannot access it any longer in my account. I think i saw it on scribd...

With all the minis around nowadays, its not hard to treat chainmail as miniature agnostic, especially with the 3rd ed party generator used by chainmail.

Found that Chainmail rulebook PDF and was going over it for the first time in many years, never realized how close they still were to the DDM and DDM2.0 rules, even to the point that the Chainmail rules & scenarios should probably work pretty well with the DDM Guild stat cards

Onviously not 100% match, it'll take some work and house rules and might not even be worth it in the end, but it's better than anything else on the horizon and might just hit that sweet-spot skirmish D&D game I've been pining for.

Yep, have the PDFs of all the books on the computer. The "complete(best way to describe it I guess)" rulebook WOTC put out as a PDF is still out floating around the internet. I'm visiting an out of state buddy (we used to play Chainmail together back in the day) and we started talking about it. I decided I'm going to bust out the old Ahmut's Legion stuff and he is going to bust out his Naresh stuff, and we will play a few games when I head out there. We'll just use whatever minis we have to fill in blanks for stuff we don't have from the official line.

Looking forward to playing it again for the first time in about 20 years.

 Kalamadea wrote:
Found that Chainmail rulebook PDF and was going over it for the first time in many years, never realized how close they still were to the DDM and DDM2.0 rules, even to the point that the Chainmail rules & scenarios should probably work pretty well with the DDM Guild stat cards

Onviously not 100% match, it'll take some work and house rules and might not even be worth it in the end, but it's better than anything else on the horizon and might just hit that sweet-spot skirmish D&D game I've been pining for.

Is that the complete data base of the DDM cards? Because if so, that's filling the one missing link to resurrecting Chainmail as a playable contemporary skirmish game. WotC in their infinite wisdom, only ever packaged the stat cards with their respective figs. If you lost that, you lost the ability to play them in Chainmail.

And even if not perfect, thats fine. What game is perfect really?

Since the game is essentially dead, I dont have any reservations in recommending folks find the PDF's online. Because they exist and are complete.

 Wiz Warrior wrote:

 Kalamadea wrote:
Found that Chainmail rulebook PDF and was going over it for the first time in many years, never realized how close they still were to the DDM and DDM2.0 rules, even to the point that the Chainmail rules & scenarios should probably work pretty well with the DDM Guild stat cards

Onviously not 100% match, it'll take some work and house rules and might not even be worth it in the end, but it's better than anything else on the horizon and might just hit that sweet-spot skirmish D&D game I've been pining for.

Is that the complete data base of the DDM cards? Because if so, that's filling the one missing link to resurrecting Chainmail as a playable contemporary skirmish game. WotC in their infinite wisdom, only ever packaged the stat cards with their respective figs. If you lost that, you lost the ability to play them in Chainmail.

And even if not perfect, thats fine. What game is perfect really?

Since the game is essentially dead, I dont have any reservations in recommending folks find the PDF's online. Because they exist and are complete.

What is nice is that the expansion books all have the rules for the previous set of minis in the back, so the first expansion book "Blood and Darkness" has all the cards for the initial releases in its back, "Fire and Ice" has all the cards from the second release, and "Shadow of the Drow" has all the cards from the third release. Things get a little more difficult for the set 4 ones. You pretty much need the cards or you are out of luck. I know I don't have cards for my Ahmut's Legion stuff, so I'm just going to print some from the PDFs on heavier paper and sleeve them up for my upcoming games. My buddy is planning on doing the same.

Gonna guess that WotC's fishing for whales. The prepaint bricks evidently sell, since they're sold on Amazon, and cost $100+ a brick. Maybe WotC is thinking if they sell a game with prepaints, they'll get an infusion of customers who buy the bricks. Note that I said "sell" rather than "get customers to play". I know the Dwarven Forge gamers like their prepaints, but I can't see how a random assortment of miniatures is how you buy miniatures for a published adventure? But I only bought some packs long ago before bricks were popular, and stopped paying close attention when I was pulling outworld monsters that I would *never* play in a game. I did pick up the Basic Set that had miniatures, and have one of each of the Dungeon Command factions boxes -- not that I've played them yet.

I know it's not super comparable (prepaints vs sprues) but my money will rather be going towards Masters of the Universe Battlegrounds.

Interesting development. After the lackluster sales of Arena of The Planeswalkers, I can see Wizards not wanting to be in the skirmish wargames market again.

I don't think the price is out of line compared to GW, and I wouldn't be surprised if the game is good, but I also will not be buying. There are such great minis-agnostic games that can be played for a fraction of the investment, with figures I already have or that I really want to buy, that there really is little to attract me to buying into another system.

Two observations...

1) WizKids is certainly the right company to do this as prepainted. If you've seen their recent Heroclix figures, the sculpting and paintwork has jumped forward leaps and bounds from just a couple years ago.

2) Do we have confirmation of scale? Heroclix have had scale creep over the years but they jumped the shark in terms of scale recently and went from an average of about 35mm to new figures being 40mm and above. They've scaled themselves right out of compatibility with even the larger end of wargames figures. If the D&D game is coming in Heroclix scale then I think there will be even less interest from miniature wargamers.

Here's a pic of 3 new heroclix (40mm+) next to 2 old (34mmish)

Note that the mouth on the furthest left figure is odd because a piece broke off, not the original condition.

I came across this because I recently bought a TON of Heroclix figures to quickly and cheaply populate my Christmas O-Gauge layout. Basically I bought anything civie-looking that was a buck or less on Troll and Toad. Almost everything was the standard from a couple years ago. That is tosay, between 33 and 36mm sole-to-eye which is perfect for 1:48 scale and not unreasonably bigger than most of my wargaming figures so they have crossover potential there. However, a couple new figures slipped in my price point and were unuseably tall as seen above. I did a blog post about what I bought. If you're looking for cheap civies for wargames or model railroading it might be useful.
https://chicagovalleyrailroad.blogspot.com/2021/12/heroclix-cheap-painted-148-figures-for.html

callidusx3 wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:

 Red Harvest wrote:
<snip>... It was followed by an odd one called Dungeon Command. ...<snip>

Someone remembers Dungeon Command!

This I picked up after its short lifespan, mainly to discover other tactical arena combat games that preceded GW's Warhammer Underworlds (quite possibly GW's best game of the last 22 years). What are your thoughts on Dungeon Command, seeing as all I've done is read through the rules/cards?

My buddy and I love that game (Dungeon Command). When I tried it at Gencon the year it was released, people were not enjoying it at all. I later discovered the demo team was forgetting a crucial rule.
With a good read-through of the booklet, and sometimes a glance at a very short FAQ, it turned out to be a really enjoyable game. Maybe we'll do a flashback play through on our YouTube channel sometime.
But I digress off topic here...

Did anyone pick this up? It's sold out and awaiting reprint at Wayland Games so I think it came out I haven't heard any buzz here or at my other online haunts

Being a pre-painted minis game I don't think Dakka would be the target audience. A quick search showed it only just started getting into most people's hands a week ago so I'd expect some chatter on it on youtube and other sties soon. Assuming that D&D official content still isn't being boycotted.