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 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I find this whole thing fascinating. Normally when there seems to be a grey area in morality, it's because of conflict between two ideals or two people's rights. Here, it's simply that this guy seems very willing to lie and mislead, but for a very benign goal: making HIPS miniatures.

So, we have some shady means leading to quite positive ends. An interesting prism for anybody's ethics, I suppose.

If you're willing to believe his side of the story and ignore the various business partners and contractors that allege he either took money from them without delivering promised services or took services from them without delivering promised money, and customers whose money was taken without delivering the purchased goods, then sure, no harm was done, all very morally grey.

Now, I haven't read even a percentage of all the problematic business dealings related to Reidy/Wargames Factory/Defiance Games and Troll Forged Miniatures/Torn Armor/whatever else is out there, but I find it difficult to believe that it would be a coincidence that the one consistent factor in all these failures is Tony Reidy. Sure, he didn't apparently take the money and run (well, not the last part at least), but he did leave others out of pocket or led them to go out of business when he set up new companies under a different business and personal name, apparently finally succeeding for the time being as Wargames Atlantic.

Troll Forged miniatures that's a name I haven't heard in a long time what happened there?

 Albertorius wrote:
Meanwhile, I don't expect Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books to do anything at all about the Robotech KS, and they didn't even hide themselves, bankrupt themselves or anything like that...

...so yeah

They did give credit to backers. Which was a bit of a raw deal since they losing the Robotech license and could no longer sell the game but there you go.

And Palladium is basically a zombie company now anyway, not produced even a new Rifts book in years.

See the link in my sig if you'd like to know more.

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

 Polonius wrote:
I find this whole thing fascinating. Normally when there seems to be a grey area in morality, it's because of conflict between two ideals or two people's rights. Here, it's simply that this guy seems very willing to lie and mislead, but for a very benign goal: making HIPS miniatures.

So, we have some shady means leading to quite positive ends. An interesting prism for anybody's ethics, I suppose.

If you're willing to believe his side of the story and ignore the various business partners and contractors that allege he either took money from them without delivering promised services or took services from them without delivering promised money, and customers whose money was taken without delivering the purchased goods, then sure, no harm was done, all very morally grey.

Now, I haven't read even a percentage of all the problematic business dealings related to Reidy/Wargames Factory/Defiance Games and Troll Forged Miniatures/Torn Armor/whatever else is out there, but I find it difficult to believe that it would be a coincidence that the one consistent factor in all these failures is Tony Reidy. Sure, he didn't apparently take the money and run (well, not the last part at least), but he did leave others out of pocket or led them to go out of business when he set up new companies under a different business and personal name, apparently finally succeeding for the time being as Wargames Atlantic.

Troll Forged miniatures that's a name I haven't heard in a long time what happened there?

Here's some more info on Dakka: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/840/482700.page#10127571
While their kickstarter updates make for sobering reading, with an external party (very) slowly doing their best to deliver some physical products or provide alternatives over the course of many years: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/131182444/assimilation-alien-host/posts
Troll Forged's original owner, Ed Fortae, started doing work for Defiance at some point but allegedly was not paid (see e.g. comments under https://www.beastsofwar.com/sci-fi-wargaming/defiance-games-ready-german-armour-alien-war/)
Probably as much as I'll get into here without derailing the thread further.

Coenus Scaldingus thank you for the links and information.

Poor Ed, I always loved his work back then.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Albertorius wrote:
Meanwhile, I don't expect Kevin Siembieda and Palladium Books to do anything at all about the Robotech KS, and they didn't even hide themselves, bankrupt themselves or anything like that...

...so yeah

They did give credit to backers. Which was a bit of a raw deal since they losing the Robotech license and could no longer sell the game but there you go.

And Palladium is basically a zombie company now anyway, not produced even a new Rifts book in years.

See the link in my sig if you'd like to know more.

Credit was gak, and of no use whatsoever to people from outside the US. Plus, only useable on the gak that they already gave us.

And they lost the license due to this clusterfeth, so that's ALSO on them.

They might not have produced anything (other than Titan Robotics, that I know of), but they HAVE licensed Rifts to another publisher (Savage Rifts, https://peginc.com/savage-settings/rifts/) to great success and multiple supplements, for which they get royalties, so it's not like they haven't been getting money either... they're just not doing anything to earn it.

But you won't hear them ever thinking about making wrongs right.

I bought some Wargames Factory Celts and Vikings years ago in a physical shop. And that's pretty notable - a lot of stuff I see online these days is never available in a shop where I live. I think they're not the best miniatures in the world but all the same I like them and the value for money was incredible. I've also used the crapton of bits that came on those sprues in many other projects over the years.

And likewise, Wargames Atlantic is physically available in my local shop. I can walk in there and pick up a box. So I don't have to worry about "Will they deliver this time" because I'm only buying what is available in my local shop. If the Damned show up there someday I'll pick up a box. I'm looking forward to these space frogs coming at some stage, will definitely pick up a couple of boxes at least to do some Slann in 40K.

I'm done with pre-ordering miniatures. I'm glad I didn't get burned on the KS I backed (Tre Manor's and the Mantic Dungeon Saga one) which both delivered to my satisfaction.

On a more practical note

Remember when the modern civilians were being previewed and some folks said wouldn't it be clever if their protest signs were printed on the back of the box to be cut out? They are!

 lord_blackfang wrote:
On a more practical note

Remember when the modern civilians were being previewed and some folks said wouldn't it be clever if their protest signs were printed on the back of the box to be cut out? They are!

That's a really smart idea, most people just toss the box anyway so may as well put some of that effort printing it to work.

Plus cast signs/banners tend to look too thick anyway because of the limits of the material.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Im surprised people are surprised by this revelation. WGA and Defiance used the same artists and sculptors, very similar marketing and branding, website design, packaging, etc. It was obvious there were strong through-lines from the get-go, and the vociferous denials -now in fact revealed to be direct *LIES* - of association or connection between the comlanies were dead giveaways.

SU-152 wrote:
WGA is the only producer of 10mm plastic miniatures (and if GW's BoFA never existed all that time ago, WGA would be the only EVER producer).They got me there. So I do not care who's behind all.

This isnt even remotely true. Armoured Clash from Warcradle, Epic Warpath from Mantic, Dropzone Commamder from TTC, and Epic from Warlord are all plastic 10mm.

Epic from Warlord is not 10mm at all, check your sources. and the others have nothing to do with fantasy.