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I'm definitely tempted by some of the Zerg models, and I absolutely want a Hydralisk model. Just one would be fine for me, though. Not sure if I care at all about the terrans, which dampens my enthusiasm for starter sets. (They were also my least-played faction during the Star Craft video game's heyday.) I guess I could check with the wife, since she was a big Star Craft fan back in the day. If she's nostalgic enough for it to be excited for a miniatures game, that'd make it a worthwhile investment for me.

A 3-4 year run sounds about right to me, unless Star Craft nostalgia truly is something unique and bigger than I anticipate. For one thing, there's a natural limit to the number of new models they can sell to expand the game since they presumably won't be making brand new ones up (and even if they could and did, would they sell?). Without the capability of indefinitely expanding on the universe and models, it's hard to see Star Craft becoming an enduring challenge to 40K dominance. Could still be a great game, of course, and if it ends up with a tighter ruleset, that's potentially a great feature rather than a bug.

Since a lot of my models run 28 to 32mm, the Star Craft ones are likely to look a bit too large for most of my collection, which is too bad because I love mixing different franchises together. The Zerg seem like the most adaptable models given their non-humanoid monstrous forms.

All in all I'm unlikely to go in for this in a big way, but I am glad it's happening, and given the remarkable progress Prodoss has made in plastic casting quality, I hope they have great success with this.

Are they planning to release the drones, scv’s, pylons, etc.? I’m more interested in those than more human troopers.

Pylons already appear in the protoss starter pack. Unless you meant probes - and yes I'd love to see drones/probes/scv!

I do really like those Protoss...I don't know if I can justify starting a new game though.

I would have killed for those models (especially the marines) in the late 1990s/early '00s.

 warboss wrote:
I would have killed for those models (especially the marines) in the late 1990s/early '00s.

Same, now I get the same feeling I got from Rivenstone and that's not a good thing.

The amount of doom posting is unwarranted and honestly tiresome. Like them or not, Archon haven't been Prodos for a long time and to my knowledge have delivered all of their projects in full since then.

I backed their US MotU Kickstarter and that delivered more or less on time with no problems. Plus MotU Battlegrounds has been receiving products for 4 years at this point and still has new stuff coming even though it's a fairly small game.

For StarCraft specifically they've said multiple times that they have license to use everything official from Blizzard. The games, the books, concept art from cancelled projects, literally all of it. With just StarCraft 2 alone they estimate about 9 years worth of quarterly releases when you consider that Co-op commanders will be getting Subfactions in the miniature game.

Despite StarCraft being an older franchise at this point it has a decent amount of nostalgia and hasn't been milked as a franchise yet. I grew up with SC1 and honestly have more nostalgia for it than 40k. If Blizzard do announce a new Helldivers/Space Marine 2 style SC game this year, then that could do a lot to change things as well.

I’m basically hoping to get everything at this point. Even if I’m just playing alone, I’m super keen. I honestly find the negative posts here strange.
Like even with the history they have been doing well it seems for all there products now.

Also, StarCraft helldivers. I don’t need another game like that. Please blizzard I can’t.

I think the doom is just the natural doom that arises during the pre-launch phase when there's enough marketing to get excited, but also no actual moving product to latch onto. People thus start to remember all the other things they got excited over which failed/didn't deliver/weren't as good as they thought.


Granted we are very close to launch so normally that doom is easing off - honestly I think some of is less "doom" and more "heck I want this but who will play with me so I can justify to myself the buying of legions models"

 Overread wrote:
Pylons already appear in the protoss starter pack.

Perhaps Archon must construct/include additional pylons?

 Jack Flask wrote:
The amount of doom posting is unwarranted and honestly tiresome. Like them or not, Archon haven't been Prodos for a long time and to my knowledge have delivered all of their projects in full since then.

People aren't doom posting because it's Archon, people are doom posting because of a well known and researchable history regarding licensed games and the majority of non-GW games.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ffifcbvb9eaxcv72mlmky/Starcraft-TMG-10-02-26.pdf?rlkey=gq97akhbqv0gloeevtf952hcn&st=yku4e900&dl=0

Beta rules for the game taken from the subreddit. Play testing seems to be ramping up a bit. Further iterations of these rules will probably pop up on the subreddit throughout the next month or two.

It struck me when looking at these models, and thinking about what I enjoyed when I played Starcraft, is that they should have gone for a smaller scale, with more dudes on the table. I'm not sure the designs stand up so well when reproduced in relatively large scale models like this. And that would have made it easier to incorporate the bigger units. Starcraft without Battlecruisers just seems...wrong.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Jack Flask wrote:
The amount of doom posting is unwarranted and honestly tiresome. Like them or not, Archon haven't been Prodos for a long time and to my knowledge have delivered all of their projects in full since then.

People aren't doom posting because it's Archon, people are doom posting because of a well known and researchable history regarding licensed games and the majority of non-GW games.

That's the point. Remember Archon was Prodos Games and we all know how AvP and Mutant Chronicles IP were managed.

I'm going to get a founders edition starter and see what I think, give it a fair chance.

 Snord wrote:
It struck me when looking at these models, and thinking about what I enjoyed when I played Starcraft, is that they should have gone for a smaller scale, with more dudes on the table. I'm not sure the designs stand up so well when reproduced in relatively large scale models like this. And that would have made it easier to incorporate the bigger units. Starcraft without Battlecruisers just seems...wrong.

Maybe, but if they'd done that scale you'd not be able to see Raynor or Kerrigan very much. Felix in Dragoon form you might be able to pick out as they'd be more chunky, but otherwise most of them would be tiny. Sure you'd get that grand scale battle, but most of the characters (Bar overmind) would be tiny. Also we know that in general smaller scale games have a harder time selling.

So this scale lets you have loads of detail over most of the army and characters and have the greater chance of success. I call that a win - plus it means getting proper detailed zerglings and hydralisks.

 Snord wrote:
It struck me when looking at these models, and thinking about what I enjoyed when I played Starcraft, is that they should have gone for a smaller scale, with more dudes on the table. I'm not sure the designs stand up so well when reproduced in relatively large scale models like this. And that would have made it easier to incorporate the bigger units. Starcraft without Battlecruisers just seems...wrong.

I agree. When I think of StarCraft, the first thing that comes to mind is the sound of a dozen siege tanks firing at once (probably at a zergling). With this scale, I doubt I’ll even get one siege tank. $$$BIG GAME HUNTERS$$$ is off the table.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Was StarCraft really a game people played for the characters? I’d much prefer the scale and rts feel of the game transported to the tabletop than super accurate minis of that guy with the funny voice and the girl on the cover.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Was StarCraft really a game people played for the characters? I’d much prefer the scale and rts feel of the game transported to the tabletop than super accurate minis of that guy with the funny voice and the girl on the cover.

Starcraft 2 was. The campaign characters became so popular that they formed the majority of Blizzard's post-launch money stream via the (non-canon) co-op missions game mode, in which they essentially developed a subfaction for almost every meaningful character from the SC2 campaign, including ones that are dead or canonically enemies.

While I agree with the idea of wanting to put a dozen siege tanks on the table from a vibes perspective, a character focus is probably safer. Characters like Artanis, Zeratul, Alarak, Nova and Tychus are popular.

Whilst the Characters in the original were not the power-house focus that they were in Starcraft 2; they were still very key to the advance of the story and plot.

Thus they were really popular in their own right.

I never played SC 2. Most of my experience with the first game was the online PVP matches.

Then you've missed one of the best campaigns in a PC game.
The SC1 campaign was my Lord of the rings before there was Lord of the rings - when I was 13-18 I' d replay it about once per year, sometimes more often. I think a Starcraft novel might have been the first novel I bought on my own.

SC1 had a great campaign. Maybe some bias from playing it when I'm about 13 or so but it works very well. Twists and turns, victories and defeats. It felt epic because it was.

SC2 not as much. Blizzard's comic book style of lore continuity had grown grating. Arguably why the RTS genre fell of a cliff, because its clearly just window dressing for multiplayer.

SC was the first PC game I ever played and yeah it was fantastic from the story in the manual to the whole game (something we lost as we went from box to CD case was the loss of 100 pages of lore in game manuals)

SC2 was great fun and is a fantastic game; but its very different. First off they shifted the lore about and then messed with it in a very "comic hero" style. This also carried through to the campaign which felt a lot more "on the railroads" and scripted than earlier ones. It's not just SC2; a lot of RTS games fall into the trap of scripting the campaign missions to be fancy and end up missing out the problem-solve aspect of the game and also the freedom to let people try other approaches. Often its "here's a new unit, oh and gosh its just what you need to win" or "time attack, win in X minutes or the world blows up or something".


I still count it as a great experience and I still want a SC3, but perhaps one that's more in touch with its RTS roots. You can "Feel" that SC2 was made by designers with a lot of mmo experience

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Then you've missed one of the best campaigns in a PC game.
The SC1 campaign was my Lord of the rings before there was Lord of the rings - when I was 13-18 I' d replay it about once per year, sometimes more often. I think a Starcraft novel might have been the first novel I bought on my own.

I played it a couple times. I don’t remember the storyline so much, other than cut scenes of Arcturus Mengsk declaring himself emperor and that Protoss guy sacrificing himself at the end.

I still have that novel I, Mengsk. Worth a read?

Its an epic storyline all the way through all 5 games for me. All of the main characters, and a few of the secondary ones have satisfying arcs. Raynor is the only one that stays pretty much the same all the way through., but I guess there has to be some kind of stability somewhere to show the change of others. Mengsk from terrorist to tyrant, the betrayal of Kerrigan followed by her various redemptions and growth, the Protoss going from arrogance, to homeworld loss, to rediscovery. I love it all

I mean I am a simple soul at heart, so I doubt any of it is terribly complex, but it is satisfying

Yeah, I only played SC2 (and learned the SC1 lore later), but I thought it was alright.

It wasn't some mindblowing writing, but perfectly entertaining.

The first game also just absolutely nailed the atmosphere. The artwork, story, music, tone. When Broodwar hit they mastered it. The Protoss music was that bit more sombre after the fall of their Homeworld.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
Then you've missed one of the best campaigns in a PC game.
The SC1 campaign was my Lord of the rings before there was Lord of the rings - when I was 13-18 I' d replay it about once per year, sometimes more often. I think a Starcraft novel might have been the first novel I bought on my own.

I played it a couple times. I don’t remember the storyline so much, other than cut scenes of Arcturus Mengsk declaring himself emperor and that Protoss guy sacrificing himself at the end.

I still have that novel I, Mengsk. Worth a read?

I have read three SC novels, but not that one, sorry.

This made me look up SC novels and wow, never knew there were that many.
I guess when the SC hype hits me again I got something to read up on.

 Overread wrote:

 Snord wrote:
It struck me when looking at these models, and thinking about what I enjoyed when I played Starcraft, is that they should have gone for a smaller scale, with more dudes on the table. I'm not sure the designs stand up so well when reproduced in relatively large scale models like this. And that would have made it easier to incorporate the bigger units. Starcraft without Battlecruisers just seems...wrong.

Maybe, but if they'd done that scale you'd not be able to see Raynor or Kerrigan very much. Felix in Dragoon form you might be able to pick out as they'd be more chunky, but otherwise most of them would be tiny. Sure you'd get that grand scale battle, but most of the characters (Bar overmind) would be tiny. Also we know that in general smaller scale games have a harder time selling.

So this scale lets you have loads of detail over most of the army and characters and have the greater chance of success. I call that a win - plus it means getting proper detailed zerglings and hydralisks.

The characters in the computer game weren't particularly unique in terms of appearance - mostly just slightly modified normal units. Most of the success of SC came from the multiplayer angle, which would suggest to me that bigger battles would have wider appeal. I am also dubious that many players of a tabletop version will really be into the detail levels of the models (the models also look as though they may be rather fiddly to assemble, especially with all that clear plastic). The LotR 'battle game', which seems like a good comparison, was very successful despite using relatively small models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
The first game also just absolutely nailed the atmosphere. The artwork, story, music, tone. When Broodwar hit they mastered it. The Protoss music was that bit more sombre after the fall of their Homeworld.

The original SC was brilliant. I played that to death - both the campaigns and in multiplayer. I don't think bothered finishing the campaign for SC2.

 Overread wrote:

 Snord wrote:
It struck me when looking at these models, and thinking about what I enjoyed when I played Starcraft, is that they should have gone for a smaller scale, with more dudes on the table. I'm not sure the designs stand up so well when reproduced in relatively large scale models like this. And that would have made it easier to incorporate the bigger units. Starcraft without Battlecruisers just seems...wrong.

Maybe, but if they'd done that scale you'd not be able to see Raynor or Kerrigan very much. Felix in Dragoon form you might be able to pick out as they'd be more chunky, but otherwise most of them would be tiny. Sure you'd get that grand scale battle, but most of the characters (Bar overmind) would be tiny. Also we know that in general smaller scale games have a harder time selling.

So this scale lets you have loads of detail over most of the army and characters and have the greater chance of success. I call that a win - plus it means getting proper detailed zerglings and hydralisks.

All those characters could have been done in smaller scale.

I have a 10mm Nagash for Warmaster and it is brutal, just see the (hand sculpted and cast in resin) Argatoria 10mm line. Make those in a (for example) 20mm scale and they would be even better. But no, they had to try to fight against WH40k in their own turf of brutally scale-crept 3Xmm models.

Edit: an SC game without siege tanks, battlecruisers (they could be like the Epic Armageddon Tau Manta for instance), etc... just