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chaos0xomega wrote:
IIRC James said that he was never sure why that delay was there or what changed, etc. I think he said that "marketing" or whatever was outside of the studios control and in the hands of other managers.

In the corporate world many things can be delayed, often hinging on trivialities - all it takes is some jerk to not want to sign onto a protocol and its gonna sit there.

I dont think the 3 month delay was 'planned'. Gw cant write rules but they can do logistics. A power play by a middle manager who didnt know/care sounds completely possible to me. Add in a touch of kirby-era hubris and contempt for the fanbase/customers and it makes even more sense. The game studio has very little 'real' power in gw at the end of the day.

Been testing out the preview scenarios and while they're not a revolution, I think they do what I need them to do to make MK4 work. The "win by 3 end of opponent's turn" does a ton of the heavy lifting in this regard. It removes the "throw stuff away or instantly lose" feeling of the old scenarios that made things miserable at low points where you didn't have anything to throw away. You need to engage or the game will get away from you, but you lose in a kind of desperate gambit that the game has always been great at creating.

Things do get spread surprisingly wide and require very specific builds to play effectively. I'm not entirely sure what I think of this, but I need to adjust a bit to get a feel for things. I kind of feel like the game is in a place where a sideboard would fit better than completely separate lists, but I'm not sure how to do that with the Warjack differences between Prime and Legacy. I kind of want to get a look at the whole packet to get a better idea here.

The other big shakeup is definitely the flags and objective terrain. I think the idea is solid, but really requires some thought on terrain setups. It's very easy to accidentally give one side no option but a big piece that is easy to contest while the other can easily score from a safe spot. Laying things out where players have 2-3 interesting choices will take some time, but is ultimately really interesting.

Here's hoping PP releases an objective pack for it soon though.

It seems here (Warsaw, Poland) that mk4 does start to make a difference.

The second half of mk3 was for us local tournaments with 6-8 participants, sometimes cancelled and it carried over to the first months of mk4...

...but now Warmachine has full attendance on local torunaments (limit of 12-16 players filled) with many new players with new mk4 armies.

Country-wise the game has died, with no bigger, national events at all (there were still a few at the end of mk3), but locally it gets better, mostly due to the efforts of one of our WTC players promoting it left and right.

Nice to hear that, Cyel.
Another thing, PP decided to make available the starter battleboxes again. This is very good news, since now there's a cheaper entry point into Warmachine.

MK4 has definitely been a success. In the beginning the year we were losing players because of the slow rollout of armies but the second half of this year turned that around. At the WTC now in october people were SO PSYCHED.

It's really been amazing how many old players are coming back and how the game has begun to grow back again.

I'm having a blast with MK4 and honestly, gamewise/ruleswise I don't think Warmachine has ever been better than it is now.

Mk 4 has made a difference in my area too. It has gone from a dead game in my region to a regularly played game.

18 peeps at our last game and demo day, and 4 4 entirely new faces coming this sunday in addition to several from the last demo. Yeah, it still seems to be working.

I can only speak for my local area but it hasn't made any impact. Many of the old guard have left and what remains are struggling to get anything together. Nobody really wants to physically stock the game.

But it has been really nice to see pics of some of the growth in Europe

Another demo day, 15 people and at least 3 groups who did not get in because the damn doorbell malfunctioned.

It's just a matter of playing and showing the game off

Apparently Mk4 wasn't enough. Looks like PP is giving things up to Steamforged:

https://steamforged.com/blogs/brands/sfg-acquires-iron-kingdoms

An interesting development for sure. Steamforged games is another small company (~40 employees) that specializes on board games mostly through Kickstarter. They also went through a force reduction of 20 employees (1/3 of the company) just last May. Despite all the negative issues I brought up a few pages back, I just didn't expect things to go down this quickly.

What is missing is what is next for PP. Are they shutting the doors entirely? Do they continue on in some sort of consulting role with even fewer employees for whatever Steamforged decides to do with the property? I wonder this only because of these sentence's from the press release below.

Pulled from the announcement: "Going forward, we’ll work together on design and development of the lines. That, along with our expertise in creating games loved by many, makes us ideally placed to collaborate with Privateer Press in shaping the future of a hugely important franchise."

What is even more curious is what actually happens next for Warmachine/Hordes. MKIV is still less than 2 years old and another reboot just seems so unlikely. I am really leaning towards Steamforged wanting to do a large scale board game with the property as a way to revitalize the brand and maybe get more people into the game. But will they actually continue production of MKIV? Will PP stay around and handle the distribution of MKIV products? So many questions at this point.

Me personally though, I would want Steamforged to do a massive reset on the setting and go back to its roots in the story/setting.

To be fair most firms in this industry are small firms. Really big ones are few and far between and many already have their own game lines they are working on.

From memory a good many of the "firm buyouts" have been retail outlets like Wayland and TrollTrader buying firms and expanding into their own modest game companies.

Or they are small firms buying other small firms - a lot of the "garage" firms often sell to each other so that their mould and model collection remains a single entity.

@Overread
I can believe that and it also makes a lot of sense that this would be the case.

I didn't mean to be too negative on Steamforged, only that the company is struggling a bit and it will be interesting to see what they are able to do with the Warmachine/Hordes property while being a smaller company that doesn't have a large war chest to throw into the game.

 Noir Eternal wrote:

Pulled from the announcement: "Going forward, we’ll work together on design and development of the lines. That, along with our expertise in creating games loved by many, makes us ideally placed to collaborate with Privateer Press in shaping the future of a hugely important franchise."

The big line for me is from the PP side of the announcement: "Privateer will continue to partner with Steamforged Games to develop Warmachine, the Iron Kingdoms RPG, and future products based on the vast intellectual property library that has sprung from the Iron Kingdoms. Privateer will also continue to manufacture Warmachine models"

It feels like PP is largely just handing over distribution and marketing to Steamforged while continuing to "make" the game. This in a lot of ways makes sense, but its definitely an odd way to structure an acquisition. Still, its undoubtably the biggest issue PP has faced since early Mk3, so I get the idea, even if the contract sounds like a nightmare.

Shipping and with the rise in metal costs then production as well; has been a huge issue for PP for a long while.

It wouldn't surprise me if they were having scaling issues trying to ramp up 3D printing to big retail amounts whilst dealing with other issues. It could be they are just stuck unable to raise enough money to invest into a big enough production setup to step up their game and continuing on as they were was leaving them floundering.

Steamforged are at least a gaming firm so should understand some of the market and have more interest in re-investment and making it work than say a private investor (and honestly I'd wager PP's company health right now isn't the best for attracting an investor)

Generally speaking there's a severe lack of a good mid range manufacturing option in the industry. You either hit public investment levels to churn out sprue plastic or print incredibly small volume bespoke resins. Small companies are killed by growth because there's just nothing that can meet the demands of a popular game that isn't backed by shareholders.

This is the oddest not-merger-but-kinda I have ever seen. But the short of it seems to be that SFG owns the IP, PP makes the game and the models (for NA in the long run) and SFG sets up production in ROTW.

As someone who does a bit of ordering for the LGS (which is basically a fan/hobby run affair at this point) from PP I know that their production has been overwhelmed and that while they have done several expansions to cover demand, it seems to be rising faster than they can expand.

We know there were talks about a buyout in the late 2010s, but not at any cost. So something has changed here, either his priorities or what SFG offered that Asmodée did not. I suspect the latter, because MW is still attached to the creative side of the IP now, something I strongly doubt he would have been under Asmodèe.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
To be fair most firms in this industry are small firms. Really big ones are few and far between and many already have their own game lines they are working on.

From memory a good many of the "firm buyouts" have been retail outlets like Wayland and TrollTrader buying firms and expanding into their own modest game companies.

Or they are small firms buying other small firms - a lot of the "garage" firms often sell to each other so that their mould and model collection remains a single entity.

There has absolutely been a number of firm buyouts, namely Asmodée buying up distributors left and right (and often shutting some or all other companies out). Pluss FFG and a ton of boardgame companies. With Asmodée recently getting saddled with pretty much all of Embracer Groups' debt after the Saudis pulled out, they've started selling some of them back, recently Lion Rampant.

The locals have thrown in the towel unfortunately, myself included, and I just want to get all the models out of my house. Wish me luck selling them...

Now that SFG has been running things for a while and taken over the full production etc, has anyone seen any uptick or interest in their local area?

Most of our people moved on and dumped their bits. A few of the old local crew are still playing, in their own small closed group, practicing only for the next UK competition. A new group was mooted and few people even tried to buy a few new models, but no games have been played.

Anyone having any local sucess?

We've had people pick up the 2P starter, but not a resurgence. I just don't think Steamforge's marketing has done much more than PP, though it is a little easier to get things through retail. It doesn't help that at least locally, Infinity's new edition has nabbed a lot of that niche attention.

I feel like they've been getting over a production hump over christmas with a bunch of larger and newer sets coming out in one big go. I don't see much stock of regular stuff in the larger retailers but the starter set appears to be well stocked.

I feel like they do need to push more marketing, but it feels like they might be turning a corner - at least I really hope it turns a corner.

I think they've also got a bit of an issue with their lack of updates. Yearly is too slow in general, but the 2025 patch really didn't excited a lot of people and really was their best opportunity to give the game a proper SFG relaunch.

Announcing the patch for the 22nd on the 8th and then deciding to drop it on the 9th was also a very very weird decision, even if the original 22nds plan was a terrible one to drop between LVO and Cancon.

Local shop used to stock loads of PP stuff but still has none despite the changes. Don't see any sign of anyone playing locally, and when I visit game stores in other areas of Germany I don't see any more PP stuff since the Great Clearance. I think the shops here just don't trust them any more.

I haven't seen any advertising or word of mouth about it. If it weren't for me finding this thread, I wouldn't even know that it was still around.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
I haven't seen any advertising or word of mouth about it. If it weren't for me finding this thread, I wouldn't even know that it was still around.

Think this is a fairly important point. m in the UK and SFG is a UK company. Iv muted the SFG and WM/H FB groups as there is nobody I can play with locally but im still part of lots of large general wargaming groups on FB as well as many large and popular youtube channels. I see models from all different game systems on those channels and group. Often the painting channels get demo models from companies to paint and do a small promotion for. Everything from Malifaux to Infinity to Moonstone and others. SFG and WM/H, not a peep. Like Lathe, I wouldn't know the game was still going. Many of the store are all out of stock or awaiting reprints for many many months

I did hear that Diamond Distribution filed for bankruptcy and that's the company that distributes SFG product internationally so that it prob having and affect.

Something must be working, because the US printing hub has quintupled production the last year and there still are shortages until the Dutch hub is fully online (in a few weeks). The Poles had a full 48 player Polish Team Tournament last November, Rhein Con has as many signups at this point as they had players last year and the Belgian Masters has doubled in size since we went last to the extent that we, signing up a month before the event, have to stay at a B&B because the hotel is full. And we had 24 people at Conquest in Oslo last weekend.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ageofsigmar/comments/1izdf5j/aos_is_back_in_the_top_5_according_to_icv2s_most/?rdt=63203

Warmachine back in the top 10 miniature lines.

In Poland mk4 is indeed causing a very significant resurgence, particularly compared to the second half of mk3 which seemed to be the dying throes of the game (interestingly, as, imo, Warmachine rules were the best ever in that period, especially after Faye's last balancing patch).

That's very good to see

Definitely exciting to see. I'm hoping these new 2P starters do the trick. The new product line is well organized and I quite like the rules of the edition itself. Here's hoping things are turning around.

Cyel wrote:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ageofsigmar/comments/1izdf5j/aos_is_back_in_the_top_5_according_to_icv2s_most/?rdt=63203

Warmachine back in the top 10 miniature lines.
.

It is ICV2, thought, which means it must be taken with a great many grains of salt. They've always based themselves on direct polling of larger distributors and select game stores, mainly in the US, but with the current state of distribution (not great) a leg fell of their two-leg table and I've never been entirely sure of their game store metrics after some stories I heard about their attempt to get european input in the 2000s.

But as stated above, the game seems to be experiencing a real resurgence, which is great.