CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
At its heart, I intend this game to evoke a darkly gothic fantasy/sci-fi feel, with battles on epic scales, which I think is something we as a community have come to love dearly. However, everything about the game is intended to be open to the community - the rules are going to be free for download with constant tweaks based on player feedback, and the game should be broad enough that just about any 15mm army you might have, or want to buy, could be used to represent one of the army lists. For instance, a mass-conscription, 20th century tech level army like the Anglian Guard could mostly be represented by someone's Flames of War WWII army, while a Primitives list would have most of its units filled by any number of ancient or medieval 15mm armies one might own.

The intention is to make the barrier for entry low and the quality of the ruleset high, and in 15mm scale, epic battles are possible without breaking the bank or taking all weekend to finish them. This will be a game for gamers, made by gamers.

CalgarsPimpHand wrote:
The rules themselves are in the alpha stages now and being playtested among friends. The core concepts of the game are morale, initiative, and leadership - it's an alternating unit activation game with a mechanism for stealing the initiative under certain situations, setting up potential combos of successful actions. Fire and maneuver and combined arms warfare are highly encouraged through widely available Reactive Fire and a damage system that puts the psychological impact of being shot at ahead of physical damage - in short, if you don't want to get pinned down or routed while crossing open ground, you had best suppress the enemy with your own heavy weapons first. Leadership is also crucial, as headquarters units make all the difference in coordinating movement, shooting, and assaults among groups of units, in rallying broken or pinned units, and in issuing special orders that can buff your troops.

How would I ever make any money on what could end up being, in some cases, a free game? That's almost a secondary consideration for me (this has been a labor of love) but I do have a plan for that. While it might be easy to represent some armies with models from other ranges, I have a growing catalog of rapid-prototype model designs I've been building up that will cover some of the more iconic or specialized units. I've been toying with rapid prototyping models for awhile now, and it's my firm belief that at 15mm scale, with the right machine, I could make perfectly serviceable models available at a relatively low price (and in lower quantities) and still keep some cash in the end. Technology for hobby users has finally reached the point where this is a feasible plan.

So based on this rough sketch of a description, I'd like to hear some feedback on when and how you all feel is best to proceed with development and launch of a game like this. Is the market saturated with so many Kickstarter newcomers, or has the tepid launch of 6th edition created an opening to grab the attention of disgruntled gamers? How many people would be interested in what amounts to not-Warhammer on an affordable scale with tighter rules from a more responsive company? Inquiring minds want to know - feedback to the left, inevitable yammering about lawsuits to the right.

I would suggest you come up with a different name. Anachron Empires sounds goofy and not in a very good way. Come up with something evocative of your setting. What you have now doesn't sound good at all.

From a gamers point of view this sounds good and bad. Good that you don't need specific miniatures to play but that is also bad because you are going to have a very hard time creating a sustainable business out of this.

I have always thought that Warhammer 40,000 would be better with 15MM miniatures. Keep everything else the same, just make all the miniatures half the size.