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We have some great news from Warcradle Studios!

We are proud to announce that we have acquired all rights and materials relating to the Dystopian Wars, Firestorm Armada and Uncharted Seas settings.

Dystopian Wars, Dystopian Legions, Armoured Clash, Firestorm Armada, Firestorm Planetfall and Uncharted Seas were created by the team at Spartan Games and we are excited to now be able to explore these settings further. We will also be developing and expanding on a large number of exciting scenic products to support these ranges.

We are actively working to bring the games to a wide audience from next year. Through Warcradle Studios, Wayland Games will be investing in all aspects of the design, development and supply of these worlds.

We are committed to producing an exciting range of new plastic and resin miniatures to support the growth of our games. These will build on the established releases as well as introduce new narrative and competitive gaming opportunities.

We are planning in-store organised play support for our games as well as a range of exciting events planned throughout 2018 and beyond.

Look out for our announcements of new products and show attendance in the coming weeks!

Take a look at our announcement on Beasts of War:
http://www.beastsofwar.com/warcradle-studios/warcradle-studios-acquires-dystopian-firestorm-settings/

That's wonderful news. I liked Firestorm and it's goodto see it won't die out.

Hmmm with warcradle also buying up the Wild west exodus IP and developing that on top of this I do think they may be taking on too much. Thats alot of systems they now manage.

Is Warcradle the company that had that weird hex-based skirmish game on KS a while back?

 Nostromodamus wrote:
Is Warcradle the company that had that weird hex-based skirmish game on KS a while back?

Its Wayland games studio

 Mothman wrote:
Hmmm with warcradle also buying up the Wild west exodus IP and developing that on top of this I do think they may be taking on too much. Thats alot of systems they now manage.

Well, that's conditional on the resources they have to hand surely? It's only "too much" if they've got insufficient staff etc to manage. I've no idea what their current set up is or their plans for the future, but one assumes anybody with half a brain would have considered this before they committed funds to buying it.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Mothman wrote:
Hmmm with warcradle also buying up the Wild west exodus IP and developing that on top of this I do think they may be taking on too much. Thats alot of systems they now manage.

Well, that's conditional on the resources they have to hand surely? It's only "too much" if they've got insufficient staff etc to manage. I've no idea what their current set up is or their plans for the future, but one assumes anybody with half a brain would have considered this before they committed funds to buying it.

Didn't consider it at all, haven't spent any time expanding resources and capacity in any way at all whatsoever

I did say anyone with half a brain...

I'd love for these games to get consistent and solid support. Fingers crossed this is a way for the games to get out there again.

Cautiously hopeful

Neat

though dang, bone zoned with the kickstarter then. didnt really expect much but still sucks.

This is certainly interesting, and the best possible outcome given the circumstances, I think!

Great to hear that these games aren't disappearing into the annals of wargaming history !

Good news: The games are not dead

Neutral news: Its Wayland, so if its in stock it only might be. Can you wait 6 months mate? Its really in stock honest. OK its not.
I'll see how this pans out before I buy anything.

Bad news: The guys that backed the KS on this. I feel for you man, I really do.

Really great to see all the products kept under one rood as it were; and great to see a big name picking them up and able to put serious investment and have support behind a relaunch. I greatly look forward to next year!

Any word on if you'll be able to contract any of the former Rebel staff such as designers? Also will you keep the range resin or shift toward plastics (or is it way too early to be maing such choices)

Congrats to Warcradle! Looking forward to seeing them develop things...

Definitely pleased and cautiously optimistic.

I mean, sure, was I working on a set of Orbats for my group to get us by and now that work feels pointless? Yes. But overall, this is good news.

 Hulksmash wrote:
I'd love for these games to get consistent and solid support. Fingers crossed this is a way for the games to get out there again.

And hopefully a solid ruleset as well. There was a lot of neat conceptual stuff in Dystopian Wars especially, but in hindsight there was some bad special rules bloat, poor rules presentation and combat tended to boil down to "how many sixes can you roll?".

I'm very glad to hear all these great lines are going to continue, Best of luck Warcradle!

I think that's good news indeed. I'm particularly pleased to hear that Uncharted Seas is still in the mix. It was always my favourite game and I was disappointed when it got dropped. I still play it, and while I did invest in DW and to a lesser extent FA and Planetfall, I preferred the simpler gameplay and pseudo-medieval fantasy background of US to the more complex steampunk and sci-fi of the other games.

The biggest thing I hope to see from this is Warcradle really getting to grips with the rules and rationalising their exposition. The rulebooks as they stand are laid out in a way that is very offputting for new gamers (or old gamers like me who play lots of different systems, and have to get our heads around it afresh each time after playing other games). Warcradle do seem to have a good studio which cracks on and really thinks about playability and such things (at least from what I have heard about the new WWE ruleset), so I am very optimistic on this front.

Another thing is that Wayland as a whole is keyed into the wider gaming world, and has a much less insular company ethos than Spartan had. Neil was great, but I very much got the impression that he didn't look far beyond his own ideas and the more "traditional" wargaming background he came from. I may be doing the gentleman a disservice, but that was my impression. Wayland however have a lot of experience of pretty much everything that is out there, whether good, bad or indifferent, so are well placed to take advantage of some of the recent advances in materials (for instance), so again I am optimistic that we may see some new models in hard plastic or even some of the new "miracle" resins that some of the more innovative companies are using. Something I personally would love to see would be the smaller Planetfall models made out of something more appropriate than big blocks of resin which resulted in huge infills between the legs - a major aesthetic issue for me.

All good stuff. Looking forward to seeing developments which may end up in my buying new models from these ranges for the first time in a few years!

Great news. First job is to get the models back into production, they have the benefit of having loads of unreleased models from the DW kickstarter that they can bring out as new releases without all the development costs. Not sure how far the firestorm stuff got, not sure it went further than renders.

Haven't managed to get my money back from the kickstarter, so paying for stuff twice will hurt, but I'm sure I'll end up buying most of it again.

I'm saddened by the loss of the Halo games, but maybe somebody will pick up a new license from 343 and make the 28mm scale game we all want.

They claim they didn't get any miniatures from the kickstarter.

IIRC there were 3 auctions, their casting machinery, their existing stock and the intellectual property.

It's possible Warcradle only got the IP

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
IIRC there were 3 auctions, their casting machinery, their existing stock and the intellectual property.

It's possible Warcradle only got the IP

It's possible, but not what has happened. Talking about machinery etc just isn't as exciting as talking about the games

Very glad to hear this, I honestly really enjoy both FireStorm Armada and Dystopian Wars. I am hoping that both games get a new good set of rules and consistent attention.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
IIRC there were 3 auctions, their casting machinery, their existing stock and the intellectual property.

It's possible Warcradle only got the IP

There was also the auction for the customer list/data.
Based on a few comments at the end of the Spartan thread it appears Warcradle picked that up as well

I believe they have the customer list as I and others have reported emails from Wayland to the effect that they have our details and we can opt out or continue to get messages from them. Since Wayland already have my email its not an issue for me.

It sounds like Wayland took the opportunity to walk in and pretty much buy Spartan Games out-right.

With the exception of the halo stuff, that was tied up by the licensing it does look like wayland have brought out Spartan lock, stock and barrel.

But then what happened to the Kickstarter stuff? I got the idea it was already produced and ready to ship when they turned off the lights?

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
But then what happened to the Kickstarter stuff? I got the idea it was already produced and ready to ship when they turned off the lights?

From what i recall seeing a good part of them were ready molds done and stuff.

i think egypt was not ready yet nor leauge crimson.