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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yet it left a helluva impression.

As ever I’m not knocking the game, or even the player base as such. Just illustrating I was unlucky enough to be shown the ropes by those solely interested in quick and easy wins against a clueless newcomer.

That would put me off any game. It just so happened to be Warmachine for me.

I wasn't there so I can't say either way, but I wonder how much of this experience people have is due to the huge learning curve warmachine has?

It is very much a game like chess, where the person with the most experience is going to resoundly beat new people to the game. Which stings, but is also a great way to learn... that is of the person winning has the good grace to go over what mistakes were made and help you become a better player. If they won and gloated, then yeah... they got the wrong end of the stick when reading page 5.

For me, I think it’s only fair to factor I’d been a GW Till Monkey, which means I was well versed in running effective intro and tutorial games, where the aim was to show off the mechanics of the games and start passing on a bit of nous and subtlety.

Warmachine may have had a steep learning curve (I wasn’t encouraged to hang around long enough to find out), but like X-Wing (which I did hang around for) it’s something you need to coach someone in.

Not play the game for them as such, but try to get them thinking about things in the right way. X-Wing, like Chess requires more forward planning, and anticipation of where your opponent might be in a couple of turns, and what options you might have to exploit that.

Simply Noob Stomping someone achieves none of that. At all. And as my experience suggests, First Impressions Count. If, as was my particular experience, it’s all pretty negative, where’s the incentive to come back for another game, if the learning curve looks insurmountable.

That of course is kind of nothing to do with the game itself, but the community. Yet any game lives or dies by the size and engagement of its community. If your early adopters in a given town are just in it for the easiest wins, and gain that by flattening any new blood without coaching them, then your growth in that town is gonna be limited.

And I guess that is magnified in the modern age due to echo chambers. If I’m not the only one reporting “all my opponents were power gaming noob stomping anuses”, and that experience just happens to be matched by a couple of others, in different areas? You can end up with a narrow view perspective that everyone who plays that game is therefore a power gaming, noob stomping anus. And if that becomes accepted wisdom (however flawed and anecdotal the evidence), then it can become a self perpetuating truth.

It is still anecdotal. For example the Polish WM community is full of stories like one about a WTC veteran guiding his less experienced opponent through an assassination on himself during a tournament game, prefering to show the opponent the ropes rather than win

So yeah, communities vary.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
For me, I think it’s only fair to factor I’d been a GW Till Monkey, which means I was well versed in running effective intro and tutorial games, where the aim was to show off the mechanics of the games and start passing on a bit of nous and subtlety.

Warmachine may have had a steep learning curve (I wasn’t encouraged to hang around long enough to find out), but like X-Wing (which I did hang around for) it’s something you need to coach someone in.

Not play the game for them as such, but try to get them thinking about things in the right way. X-Wing, like Chess requires more forward planning, and anticipation of where your opponent might be in a couple of turns, and what options you might have to exploit that.

Simply Noob Stomping someone achieves none of that. At all. And as my experience suggests, First Impressions Count. If, as was my particular experience, it’s all pretty negative, where’s the incentive to come back for another game, if the learning curve looks insurmountable.

That of course is kind of nothing to do with the game itself, but the community. Yet any game lives or dies by the size and engagement of its community. If your early adopters in a given town are just in it for the easiest wins, and gain that by flattening any new blood without coaching them, then your growth in that town is gonna be limited.

And I guess that is magnified in the modern age due to echo chambers. If I’m not the only one reporting “all my opponents were power gaming noob stomping anuses”, and that experience just happens to be matched by a couple of others, in different areas? You can end up with a narrow view perspective that everyone who plays that game is therefore a power gaming, noob stomping anus. And if that becomes accepted wisdom (however flawed and anecdotal the evidence), then it can become a self perpetuating truth.

Ex GW till Monkey here as well (Leeds, West Yorkshire), so I totally get you on the aim of an intro game. GW intro games could be fudged quiet a bit to allow the new person better chances of winning. At the time we made sure that the new person won, not always by a massive amount, but enough to feel like they achieved something.

I don't think such a thing is possible in Warmachine, the rules are far too tight for a bit of fudging here and there.

It sounds like you had a very bad experience, which is a shame. I can honestly say that in all my 30+ years in wargaming, nothing has been as fun as Warmachine was until InfantryMachine ruined it.

Sadly most gaming communities have nob heads who only care about winning. It does sour any game system they find themselves in.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Complete anecdote in terms of “evidence”? I dabbled in Warmachine when it first came out. But I was put off by the few games I could find being “Everyone Stomp The Noob” affairs.

Add in the perspective I got from online sources was just “play like you got a pair. Git gud scrub, plya 2 win” etc. Which just isn’t my bag.

Truly anecdotal. I had very much the opposite experience in Mk. I, and Mk. II. Much of that seems to be what what fostered by local groups, as most of that mentality was something the "TFG's" already had, but felt obligated to exude that mentality as a rationale behind being jerks.

Any community has their jerks that poison a meta, Page 5 was just an easy excuse for some.

I had an amazing time in Mk. I, and Mk. II when I was playing and running demo games. I played many a pick up or garage table game of Mk. I and Mk. II, and many of my previous play group from where I lived still call those years the most fun we have had playing tabletop games.

Mk. III was where the game started to be something I didn't enjoy but still played due to the setting.

Mk. IV.... isn't what I wanted out of the game and setting. And feels really disappointing to see where this company has ended up. With most of the fault being on their management.

My experience was just the opposite-the community was toxic and i hated MK I/II When MKIII came out i finally started enjoying the game. i always enjoyed the setting but our FLGS now has a far more casual view of the game and perhaps because i didn't really start playing actively until MKIII i had no problems with it.

On the final point i completely agree. the 3d printing and modular models thing to reduce sku bloat is fantastic from a production/shipping perspective. however after looking through the MK IV beta rules it isn't war machine. or rather not what i am looking for in warmachine. it may work well to draw in the 9th ed style 40K crowd ( i also despise 9th ed 40K for the dumpster fire it is ) But as somebody who has rules and minis for a dozen different game systems, i play WM/H for the different rule set and game play experience. it keeps me from getting burned out by playing the same system over and over (i play a lot every week). i actually enjoy the rules they are removing from the game. I have zero interest in MKIV at this point and will continue to play MKIII with the large active community we have at our FLGS. I just need to grab a few more officer attachment models before they disappear.

I just kind of love that it was Guildball that led to Warmachine’s fall, but even if vastly diminished it still outlasted Guildball. I’d wager Steamforged is doing better as a company than Privateer though as they’ve moved away from table top and into IP mining and Kickstarter churn and dump.

Cyel wrote:
It is still anecdotal. For example the Polish WM community is full of stories like one about a WTC veteran guiding his less experienced opponent through an assassination on himself during a tournament game, prefering to show the opponent the ropes rather than win

So yeah, communities vary.

Oh it’s absolutely anecdotal. What I was trying to express is that a handful of anecdotally negative experiences can seriously colour the view of outsides considering getting into the game.

Sadly I didn’t have the maturity back then to parse bunghole players from Bad Game in terms of factual accuracy/

I have the feeling those "inovative improvments" PP advises with their MkIV announcement are exactly the same mistakes and issues which lead to their demise they had with MkIII?

It's like "we had introduced ghak A and ghak B which killed the game, let's intensifies ghak A and ghak B, the player base will love it!".

They want to focus on that ghak with which they killed their own reputaion - how ignorate and stupid are they?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Yet it left a helluva impression.

As ever I’m not knocking the game, or even the player base as such. Just illustrating I was unlucky enough to be shown the ropes by those solely interested in quick and easy wins against a clueless newcomer.

That would put me off any game. It just so happened to be Warmachine for me.

Sadly my experience was similar to yours, I was interested in it but the local community was really anti new players.

After finally getting a couple of intro games, they then absolutely demolished me and just turned around and told me to f off until i was worth playing. Lost all interest at that point until a work collage finally introduced me to it properly a couple of years later. Its been mostly dead in my local area for years though now.

RazorEdge wrote:
I have the feeling those "inovative improvments" PP advises with their MkIV announcement are exactly the same mistakes and issues which lead to their demise they had with MkIII?

It's like "we had introduced ghak A and ghak B which killed the game, let's intensifies ghak A and ghak B, the player base will love it!".

They want to focus on that ghak with which they killed their own reputaion - how ignorate and stupid are they?

Well... ALL of their dev team from Mk.I to Mk. III has seemingly left for other companies at this point.

They are facing the same issues that AMG (who are ex-Privateer Press devs) faced with the transition of Star Wars games to their firm, relative unfamiliarity and nowhere near enough previous thinkers and minds of the previous dev team to not have to repeat previously discussed and solved problems.

Biggest difference between AMG's fairly rough transition to the transition of PP's new dev team.... is they don't have somebody like Asmodee backing them.

Shoot, as much as I love Privateer Press, the bad rep surrounding them seems to have spread pretty far and wide in the community. The Warcaster: Neo Mechanika Reddit page only had 916 members last I checked a week or two ago.

Will Hungerford's Warcaster: Neo Mechanika fantasy knockoff with World of Warcraft aesthetics from a no name company that he left PP to make had a more successful Kickstarter campaign than PP's last cancelled Warcaster campaign. Hungerford even managed to scalp the last PP employee who seemed to relatively understand Warmachine and Hordes with Faye. Faye put out the last big points rebalance for Warmachine and Hordes that felt like a step in the right direction (for the most part).

I think they very well new that they'd anger a lot of old or long-term fans with some of the rule changes in exchange for being able to cast a wider net. I'm biased for sure, as I don't care for overly competitive tabletop games that much, but the market they use to have doesn't seem to have grown at the rate that the overall hobby has with more casual games (like 40k now days and things like frostgrave) being a much larger market share. A lot of video games sites now cover tabletop gaming (polygon covers 40k and Modiphius stuff for example) in addition to RPGs and as more people come into the hobby the hard to learn games tend to gain the least from that grown (this happened with video games 20 years ago and has been going on with RPGs for several years now).

I doubt these decisions were made in a void and PP looked at where they could be with a game that was just a few changes from MK3 (especially against AMG and Infinity) vs making the game simpler and appealing to the larger group of people and made the decision to go for simpler and faster. It will also take years to really know if it was the right decision as they're almost starting from scratch here going after a different audience.


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 NH Gunsmith wrote:


Shoot, as much as I love Privateer Press, the bad rep surrounding them seems to have spread pretty far and wide in the community. The Warcaster: Neo Mechanika Reddit page only had 916 members last I checked a week or two ago.

Reddit is a horrible metric for tabletop games not owned by GW or D&D related. Facebook and Discord are where the vast majority of the hobby is. For example the infinity subreddit may only get 1 post a week if that (sometimes there no posts for a whole month) and it's a very popular game.

I was thinking about the current mini range they are dropping and the negative effects this stunt alone will cause.
Just talking about minis not the game changes.

So if you are a rarity of a PP miniature collector and painter and you already struggled to get specific models its going to be almost impossible to find those and why even bother now. The prices even on discount bins are not really appetising and will probably be higher on eBay. I think like many other companies that folded the range will just vanish never to be found again. Maybe they will rerelease some in the future for easy cash grabs, which at that point people moved elsewhere. Its just really sad to see a large range of hundreds of minis just flushed down the toilet. No matter how they want to sugar coat this turd its a turd of a move.

If you are a gamer well seems like old minis is not going to be compatible with the new game range and magnets BS.

If you are a store you are left with a load of dead and now officially buried product and surely if you have been putting in bins for years now, your going to need a larger bin... why would a store would even want to carry any new PP at all at this point? Specially with that silly price tag...

Distribution? Hell is that even a thing outside US? Maybe PP wants those new facilities to do the distribution themselves XD XD They will print some brochures and knock at your door too.

So yeah while some people have good will towards, you know, supporting tabletop companies in the need, I just think a lot of bad blood was created in the past and the "attitude" or has you guys say "ego" of PP is still quite alive... Specially when you read the silly jabs at GW on their press release.
I mean this is PP big reveal and they spend a part of it talking about GW!

The future is brighter, well I hope so for fans sake, because PP does not seem to have learned a damn thing.

I enjoyed the days of great concept art and a nice and steady growing range of minis, hit and miss and overpriced I give you that, but you could always pick up some gems ( if they were in stock) for your collection.

I still need to get plenty of Troolbloods but yeah screw that.

Open question on that note.

Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question on that note.

Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?

Well we have examples of that with Rackham confrontation, and those models were like the holy grail of sculpting... Yet all IP take overs seem to have missed the mark.
Question would be, is any company able to do it right?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question on that note.

Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?

I could see someone buying the Iron Kingdoms IP for the right price to continue an RPG line, but to put in all the extra effort supporting a miniatures wargame would require makes me doubtful that WARMACHINE would be continued if PP went under.

If GW bought it (it’s not a rumour. Stop that. Step away from Reddit and 4chan this instant!)…would that be the wargames equivalent of Sonic on Nintendo?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question on that note.

Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?

Seeing as you rightly pointed out how a lot of people had bad experiences with the game due to those doing demo games. I think those bridges have been burnt.

What could happen is take the core mechanics that work, ditch those that don't and just reskin the models and setting. The biggest thing that could help would be to move away from the PP name. I think that name carries too much baggage for a lot of people now sadly.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question on that note.

Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?

I think it could be possible that one of the original Devs could take the IP and try to bring back Classic WM and make a complete reboot with a ruleset tributing MkI and MkII.

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question on that note.

Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?

Well we have examples of that with Rackham confrontation, and those models were like the holy grail of sculpting... Yet all IP take overs seem to have missed the mark.
Question would be, is any company able to do it right?

There are a host of problems.

Rackham is the prime example of where the IP gets bought by what are basically crooks and the material gets banded around but never anything good done with it (heck last I recall the CEO was up for charges in France - turns out you can't just keep making subsidiary companies and bankrupting them to hide debt!)

Spartan Games is another good example where the firm fell apart and instead of a smooth transition the firm that bought all the stock of the company basically had to start again from scratch to get things going again. Granted along the way they've shifted toward using plastics and have made serious investments, but its still taken them something like 5 years to get part of 1 game back on the market. Furthermore almost all the original moulds, models and design work is "lost". Wayland did put a good chunk back into some slow production for a time, but from what I gather they basically got pallets of jumbled moulds and a computing system that wasn't well maintained/updated. I'm assuming as a result a vast amount of design, planning and other work has been totally lost

Sometimes its goes generally well, Dropfleet and all have done ok since being bought out. Though they've had some issues with resin casting quality control over the years and it feels like, esp with Spartan games going belly up, that thye never really capitalised on the fact that Dropfleet basically has the entire market to itself for several years. It just never seems to have broken its shell despite having some very good multipart space kits. Feels like stalled growth, but steady. And heck Infinity has been much the same in being a steady growth game and they seem to be really coming into their own in the last year or so.



A firm going belly up is always a period of confusion and chaos. A lot of it depends on how it dies and if it goes through a merger/buyout or if it goes through administration and bankruptcy. The latter has a much higher chance of losing sculpts, machines, equipment, staff and that's before the risk that different parties buy out different parts of the company. You could well end up with it fragmented with bits of the IP held by different firms or lines of models held in different groups. If there's no interest (or not enough) some might wind up held by legal firms who just mothball it as its not their area or dump it.
Mergers have a much greater chance of working out well. Though my impression is that as mergers are often done because the firm has failing finances, this can still lead to very heavily stalled growth for several years after the merger. Furthermore if the core company had issues, then depending how they merge, those core issues could still maintain and prove to be a problem.



Personally I hope PP don't close their doors. They've had a poor and rough patch through various reasons but I'd rather they arose a phoenix from the ashes.

 Overread wrote:
(heck last I recall the CEO was up for charges in France - turns out you can't just keep making subsidiary companies and bankrupting them to hide debt!)

Yet you can buy an existing company, funnel all the money out of it to settle your other debts, and then bankupt and close it and that's totally legal(RIP ToysRUs).

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Overread wrote:
(heck last I recall the CEO was up for charges in France - turns out you can't just keep making subsidiary companies and bankrupting them to hide debt!)

Yet you can buy an existing company, funnel all the money out of it to settle your other debts, and then bankupt and close it and that's totally legal(RIP ToysRUs).

If memory serves the Glazer (Glazier?) Brothers bought Man Utd by putting Man Utd (which they didn’t own at that point) up as collateral?

I don’t even pretend to understand big finance!

I’d give my right arm for the IP, me and Warmachine go back a way as some folks who know me know...

But I’ve not got the cash Matt (allegedly) wanted when he did look to sell and I doubt the boss (Modiphius) does with, nor is it the type of game Chris would want to make.

Hell, I’ve even got an idea of what I’d do with it...

I’m sad to see the state PP are in even with my history with them and hope they do pull it around. They’ve made some bold decisions that I totally understand given my grasp of where things are for the industry as a whole (not called GW) and many of the choices are things we’ve considered for sure.

They are not where I want the industry to go at all, but they are all very sensible at least in principle.

Pp have become the canary in the coal mine for sure.

They got rid of themed lists, thankfully. I like some of the other rule changes as well. My son and I are possibly going to give it a go. We haven't played much in years. We'll see.

Theme lists were an attempt to keep the game skirmish whilst tackling big collections. If they are stripping armies back then theme lists being taken out makes sense.

 NH Gunsmith wrote:
Will Hungerford's Warcaster: Neo Mechanika fantasy knockoff with World of Warcraft aesthetics from a no name company that he left PP to make had a more successful Kickstarter campaign than PP's last cancelled Warcaster campaign. Hungerford even managed to scalp the last PP employee who seemed to relatively understand Warmachine and Hordes with Faye. Faye put out the last big points rebalance for Warmachine and Hordes that felt like a step in the right direction (for the most part).

Soles is still there, so there is a continuity from Prime in development.

 Overread wrote:
Theme lists were an attempt to keep the game skirmish whilst tackling big collections. If they are stripping armies back then theme lists being taken out makes sense.

understood, we just hated them. And there was nothing Skirmish about 25-75 point games. Lots of crap on the table, large units, etc.

$200. Wow

DID they get rid of Theme Lists? Are Armies not just mandatory Theme Lists without the special benefits?

 AduroT wrote:
I just kind of love that it was Guildball that led to Warmachine’s fall, but even if vastly diminished it still outlasted Guildball. I’d wager Steamforged is doing better as a company than Privateer though as they’ve moved away from table top and into IP mining and Kickstarter churn and dump.

I really don't think one had to do with the other.

Biggest difference between AMG's fairly rough transition to the transition of PP's new dev team.... is they don't have somebody like Asmodee backing them.

And two of the biggest IPs with huge reach and fandom outside of the existing tabletop community underpinning them.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Open question on that note.

Do you think there is enough good will left for the game and models, to make the possibility of someone else buying the IP should PP completely blow it and go under?

I could see someone buying the Iron Kingdoms IP for the right price to continue an RPG line, but to put in all the extra effort supporting a miniatures wargame would require makes me doubtful that WARMACHINE would be continued if PP went under.

Based on how other wargame IPs have gone, a new buyer would basically trash the existing model line entirely too (or give a half hearted "you can use your old minis to proxy" type solution. Theres not much money to be made for a new buyer by letting people use their existing product with no significant investment into new minis.


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 AduroT wrote:
DID they get rid of Theme Lists? Are Armies not just mandatory Theme Lists without the special benefits?

Armies are 100% mandatory theme lists.

Personally, I think its a good way to expand the game. The endlessly expandable factions of oldmachine burned a lot of people out (especially those who played "collector factions" like Khador, Trollbloods, and Skorne which tended to be less focused and more flexible than factions like Cygnar or Menoth where you basically didn't need to buy half of the models in the range to have a huge number of possible competitive builds available to you), the new way keeps things relatively more compact and lets players have a bit more control over how they engage with the game IMO.

That being said, $200 minimum buy ins are awful.

Guildball definitely stole a little bit of Warmachine’s steam. It used their Focus mechanic and build a game around that, then added it’s own flare. It’s first big outing was an appearance at Warmachine Weekend. I forget if that was officially part of the event or just totally coincidentally happening at the same hotel on the same weekend in this other side room, but PP was not happy about it. The slowdown led to them panic releasing MK3 early to try and get back ahead of it, and well we know how the MK3 release went.