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Post by borderprince on Jul 11, 2017 14:22:26 GMT
Some clarity as it stands: is it one of each (unit, BE, solo) or "pick one thing"? My reading of the quoted text is that an army could have one of each. "a non-Mercenary, non-Minion army made using a theme force can include up to one Mercenary solo, unit, and battle engine". If a theme list could only include one mercenary choice, then the final "and" should be "or". "And" does not function as a disjunctive conjunction, which is what would be required to permit only a single mercenary choice. But the quoted text also doesn't look to be the final rule, as it permits only "Mercenary" models, with no reference to minions, which would make this a very pro-Warmachine change (I know what the intent is, but PP are usually better at drafting than this). Frankly, the recent CiD announcements are the first time I have ever thought to myself that PP really don't know what they're doing and haven't got a coherent vision of what they want the game to be. The proposed Eilish Garrity is far too good for his points (balanced, perhaps, by being very fragile) and doesn't fit with the fluff for Eilish that we have seen so far, although there are hints in one of the Strangelight stories that he is going down a darker path. Adding mercenaries to theme forces universally, rather than for background reasons, suggests that PP haven't worked out what they want theme forces to be, especially if one is permitted a unit, solo and a battle engine, rather than just one in total. It looks like they are trying to row back on one of the fundamental features of Mk3 (themes as central to list building) by adding a kind of artificial field allowance gap. This worries me. It's not about whether I like the predominance of themes or not, but that PP seem to be flailing around.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Jul 11, 2017 15:32:25 GMT
Pagani said over Twitter that some Hot Fixes for Mercs-in-Theme would be comming this morning, so I'm guessing by 10AM Pacific we will have a better idea of what PP is planning to avoid too much craziness.
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Post by Blargaliscious on Jul 11, 2017 16:56:28 GMT
Frankly, the recent CiD announcements are the first time I have ever thought to myself that PP really don't know what they're doing and haven't got a coherent vision of what they want the game to be. The proposed Eilish Garrity is far too good for his points (balanced, perhaps, by being very fragile) and doesn't fit with the fluff for Eilish that we have seen so far, although there are hints in one of the Strangelight stories that he is going down a darker path. Adding mercenaries to theme forces universally, rather than for background reasons, suggests that PP haven't worked out what they want theme forces to be, especially if one is permitted a unit, solo and a battle engine, rather than just one in total. It looks like they are trying to row back on one of the fundamental features of Mk3 (themes as central to list building) by adding a kind of artificial field allowance gap. This worries me. It's not about whether I like the predominance of themes or not, but that PP seem to be flailing around. I understand where you are coming from, there have been a lot of changes relating to the fundamentals in how they run the game and rules-wise that give pause for concern. The fact that PP has also done some things without announcing *why* has made the sense of unease worse. Allow me to offer a personal anecdote regarding Will Pagani, who has become the face of their new rules testing. I actually know Will, while I doubt that he remembers me anymore. I was one of the people that showed up at his store opening night when he and a buddy opened up a gaming store in Houston, TX - Asgard Games. It was pretty much a Warmachine / Hordes gaming store that had some Flames of War on the side. No GW. (Will and his buddy both used to work at a local GW store.) A couple of years after I got laid off from my job and moved back to Ohio I went to Gencon with a couple of buddies. While we were standing in line waiting to get our passes Will and some of the Houston guys came up to me and said hi. Will is an exceptionally nice guy - even when he is being nasty and snotty about something, he does it nicely. But nice is not his only attribute. Will is also smart. I don't remember him being super book smart, but more like a good combination of smart and cunning. You know, dangerous. Thankfully he's a nice guy. He also *knows* Warmahordes. Several years ago Will was going around winning or placing in pretty much every tournament that he entered. I'm betting that the PP guys got to know Pagani from handing him so many trophies that they decided to offer him a job. If Will (and the rest of the PP crew, who haven't done that bad of a job the past 10 years) are doing something obviously screwy, they have a reason why. They are probably looking for 2 different reactions: the main reaction, and any unexpected reactions from the mini-Paganis out there.
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Post by sand20go on Jul 11, 2017 17:25:12 GMT
Good take Blar.
To me they are running up against an issues that really should have been addressed in MK2 to MK3 transition (and probably the issue that they have gotten past the size that they can adhere to the "vision" of one guy for how "his game" should be played).
There are, in my mind, at LEAST three core business decisions that are key challenges.
1) "no model will ever be retired" you run into real issues. First, you HAVE to continue to support those models which means that you have on-going costs that are added for every model you add.. Now PP has taken steps to scale that support (warroom; digital cards; CID so they get crowd sourced beta testing) but it still demands support). This also causes inventory challenges for retailers, meaning EITHER that those retailers need a huge SKU inventory (and shelf space to support) the line _OR_ they have to stock an ever changing core (which as we can see now can shift quickly - think the sudden demand for Rev Pirates created by Ghost Fleet) _OR_ they give up sales to largely on-line retailers who have only warehouse requirements (and inventory capital) for order fulfillment.
2) They believe in "balance" and "competitive play". This creates problems. Since they have really ONLY supported competitive play (look at the Lock and Load schedule and the lack of support for more narrative based play akin to GW) you end up driving most of your demand not on sculpts or fluff or generally easier things to support but on "power". As they have grown in size (and thus revenue demands) this creates challenges because if power stagnates you don't move models.
3) But power creep can stagnate demand. If Haley2 is the only thing that works well you don't sell 11 other models (but still have costs associated with support them). Thus themes. But now we are increasing SKU bloat.....and run the risk of cutting #2 because we are rewarding players largely for "winning" and not much else.
I am not going to compare PP to the other company but I will say that they did some smart things in both AoS and Edition 8. First, they fully embraced that growth is NOT going to be about power gamers that travel out of state for conventions. They dumbed it down so they could sell more models to more people who are largely interested in rolling a bunch of dice around the table and having fun. Second, they long ago stopped some of the idiocy in trying to make their game into a version of on-line sports. If I were king for the day the FIRST SECOND AND THIRD thing I would do is yank PP support for these national and international competition. By fueling the idea that there is a "best warmachine player" you really do exacerbate problems 1,2, and 3. Finally, I would execute a business plan and strategy. At least from the outside what PP is doing doesn't seem to be one - largely playing wack a mole.
And I will say this - we are seeing some of what they are reaping in my meta as fewer folks are coming in, the "power gamers" create a high barrier to entry that is a challenge and there has been some migration in play to 40K.
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Post by Armchair Warrior on Jul 12, 2017 0:32:02 GMT
Sometimes I think they put crazy crap in at the beginning of Cid that are there too powerful are way under powered, just to gauge reaction from week to week. Remember how crappy old which two was at the beginning of CAD and at the end of the process I thought she looked great. We still haven't seen a final model but I'm confident that it's going to be good and playable .
I don't think that whatever emerges from CID is going to be bad. As long as people focus on giving constructive feedback and play testing models I'm sure I'll be fine. That said, I'm confident that they'll take some actions to tone it down through the CId process.
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Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
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Post by Ganso on Jul 12, 2017 5:48:47 GMT
Good take Blar. To me they are running up against an issues that really should have been addressed in MK2 to MK3 transition (and probably the issue that they have gotten past the size that they can adhere to the "vision" of one guy for how "his game" should be played). There are, in my mind, at LEAST three core business decisions that are key challenges. 1) "no model will ever be retired" you run into real issues. First, you HAVE to continue to support those models which means that you have on-going costs that are added for every model you add.. Now PP has taken steps to scale that support (warroom; digital cards; CID so they get crowd sourced beta testing) but it still demands support). This also causes inventory challenges for retailers, meaning EITHER that those retailers need a huge SKU inventory (and shelf space to support) the line _OR_ they have to stock an ever changing core (which as we can see now can shift quickly - think the sudden demand for Rev Pirates created by Ghost Fleet) _OR_ they give up sales to largely on-line retailers who have only warehouse requirements (and inventory capital) for order fulfillment. 2) They believe in "balance" and "competitive play". This creates problems. Since they have really ONLY supported competitive play (look at the Lock and Load schedule and the lack of support for more narrative based play akin to GW) you end up driving most of your demand not on sculpts or fluff or generally easier things to support but on "power". As they have grown in size (and thus revenue demands) this creates challenges because if power stagnates you don't move models. 3) But power creep can stagnate demand. If Haley2 is the only thing that works well you don't sell 11 other models (but still have costs associated with support them). Thus themes. But now we are increasing SKU bloat.....and run the risk of cutting #2 because we are rewarding players largely for "winning" and not much else. I am not going to compare PP to the other company but I will say that they did some smart things in both AoS and Edition 8. First, they fully embraced that growth is NOT going to be about power gamers that travel out of state for conventions. They dumbed it down so they could sell more models to more people who are largely interested in rolling a bunch of dice around the table and having fun. Second, they long ago stopped some of the idiocy in trying to make their game into a version of on-line sports. If I were king for the day the FIRST SECOND AND THIRD thing I would do is yank PP support for these national and international competition. By fueling the idea that there is a "best warmachine player" you really do exacerbate problems 1,2, and 3. Finally, I would execute a business plan and strategy. At least from the outside what PP is doing doesn't seem to be one - largely playing wack a mole. And I will say this - we are seeing some of what they are reaping in my meta as fewer folks are coming in, the "power gamers" create a high barrier to entry that is a challenge and there has been some migration in play to 40K. Your three points were spot on San, but I disagree that killing competitive formats will help at all: WMW and WTC are the premiere events in the game and have zero interference from PP. And even if you think things will improve by killing SR, then I just need to remind you that WTC was born out of the ETC, a fan run event for GW games, not to mention conventions Adepticon (again, zero involvement from GW, still a big tournament turn out). The only way to fix the three issues you mention is to reduce the SKU count by either rotating them out of standard SR or/and discontinuing them all together.
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Post by Rowdy Dragon on Jul 12, 2017 6:02:01 GMT
Honestly im not ok with rotation.
Im not interested in winning tournaments. Im interested in playing with armies that I make.
And if the rotation was only for tournament players, then they would screach and yell until only the releases for the new rotation got any attention.
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kaos
Junior Strategist
Posts: 268
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Post by kaos on Jul 12, 2017 11:35:15 GMT
I wanted to quote this because looks quite interesting. Especially:
"growth is NOT going to be about power gamers that travel out of state for conventions"
It's probably true but also the popularity of a game is heavily dictated about the tournament support it has. When AoS first come out, it was a striclty beer and pretzel game and didn't get enough traction. Only after GW come up with the general handbook and supporting tournaments it started to gain some traction.
Warmachine was always marketed as the "competitive tabletop wargame" and it got immediately traction. I still have the Mk1 manual and competition was what the game was about (remember page 5...)
Problem is MK1 had obviously broken combo, mk2 less and mk3... well that's at best questionable. People have a range of opinions.
The problem of a game is always balancing the fun with the competitive, since if we were interested only in the competitive we would be playing chess and if we would be interested only in fun we would be playing... probably brickwars.
So you need that people to travel around to interest some people and you need the game to be fun to hook up other players. Is a bit like DOTA and LoL. You get your average player having fun with his casual game and you get the super pro playing for 1 million dollars and your average player can follow him and look at videos and get hyped.
I think the game that managed to melt these aspects in the best way is Magic the Gathering, but Magic become what become, because a incredible work was profused in having a incredibly refined competitive environment, where you get players playing in the pro-tour and other players playing the Friday nigh magic instead, where the environment is much more relaxed.
I mean there are so many nuances and complexities in the growing of a product we aren't even scraping the surface. And I'm sure not even PP or GW are marketing their products in the best possible way.
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Post by smoothcriminal on Jul 12, 2017 11:55:49 GMT
Wmh became popular mainly due to competitive players jumping ship from 40k. They shouldn't alienate those people or it's over for the system.
It's not like they didn't try other forms of play. Remember Colossal wrestling and Company of iron? Huh, what are those I wonder, if only anybody cared.
But I don't know how any of it relates to theme forces and mercs. Theme forces are an okay way to make new releases, I guess? Better than powercreep at least. Still has it's limits. And if you're to go through with themes being the main way to play then allowing mercs is logical next step.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Jul 12, 2017 12:01:40 GMT
But I don't know how any of it relates to theme forces and mercs. Theme forces are an okay way to make new releases, I guess? Better than powercreep at least. Still has it's limits. And if you're to go through with themes being the main way to play then allowing mercs is logical next step. Would it perhaps make more sense to design themes specifically around including mercs, than to simply say "Oh, just go ahead and takes mercs in your themes"?
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Post by smoothcriminal on Jul 12, 2017 13:38:50 GMT
From what we've seen so far different themes have different merc allowance. Storm legion can take up to 1 solo, 1 unit, 1 BE. Skorne can take any number of minion things.
Which leads me to believe jack themes won't be allowed merc units.
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Post by jonnyboy on Jul 12, 2017 13:51:46 GMT
But I don't know how any of it relates to theme forces and mercs. Theme forces are an okay way to make new releases, I guess? Better than powercreep at least. Still has it's limits. And if you're to go through with themes being the main way to play then allowing mercs is logical next step. Would it perhaps make more sense to design themes specifically around including mercs, than to simply say "Oh, just go ahead and takes mercs in your themes"? I think that would be a great idea. It would almost represent a 'no theme' list. One theme per faction that has the option to take one of each solo, unit, battle engine from mercs. That's the themes specialty. Maybe for each 20 points of units, 25-30 of warjacks, or 10-15 points of solos you get a free merc solo. Only once though. This might lessen the skew between 'no theme' and theme. The 'no theme' get 4-7 free points and access to mercenaries. Theme lists get 8-20 points free and no access to mercenaries. I like this idea waaaay better.
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Post by sand20go on Jul 12, 2017 13:54:29 GMT
Wmh became popular mainly due to competitive players jumping ship from 40k. They shouldn't alienate those people or it's over for the system. It's not like they didn't try other forms of play. Remember Colossal wrestling and Company of iron? Huh, what are those I wonder, if only anybody cared. But I don't know how any of it relates to theme forces and mercs. Theme forces are an okay way to make new releases, I guess? Better than powercreep at least. Still has it's limits. And if you're to go through with themes being the main way to play then allowing mercs is logical next step. I am not convinced that is where growth is coming from now. Far more common in my meta is people adding warmachine, because of combos and general cross pollination from being sold in the same place is magic players picking up the game.
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Post by Soul Samurai on Jul 12, 2017 14:06:59 GMT
I think that would be a great idea. It would almost represent a 'no theme' list. One theme per faction that has the option to take one of each solo, unit, battle engine from mercs. That's the themes specialty. Maybe for each 20 points of units, 25-30 of warjacks, or 10-15 points of solos you get a free merc solo. Only once though. This might lessen the skew between 'no theme' and theme. The 'no theme' get 4-7 free points and access to mercenaries. Theme lists get 8-20 points free and no access to mercenaries. I like this idea waaaay better. Well, not necessarily just one "merc" theme, but allow mercs in ways that makes sense for the themes involved. For example, something like a new "black ops" allowing Kayazy, AKs, and one Merc solo, unit, and battle engine as long as the mercs have Stealth. Or a "fast response" theme that only allows Khador and Merc cavalry solos and units.
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Post by sand20go on Jul 12, 2017 15:10:52 GMT
I think that would be a great idea. It would almost represent a 'no theme' list. One theme per faction that has the option to take one of each solo, unit, battle engine from mercs. That's the themes specialty. Maybe for each 20 points of units, 25-30 of warjacks, or 10-15 points of solos you get a free merc solo. Only once though. This might lessen the skew between 'no theme' and theme. The 'no theme' get 4-7 free points and access to mercenaries. Theme lists get 8-20 points free and no access to mercenaries. I like this idea waaaay better. Well, not necessarily just one "merc" theme, but allow mercs in ways that makes sense for the themes involved. For example, something like a new "black ops" allowing Kayazy, AKs, and one Merc solo, unit, and battle engine as long as the mercs have Stealth. Or a "fast response" theme that only allows Khador and Merc cavalry solos and units. I like this! My own belief is that trying to test in any meaningful way 25 to 30 themes with all the possible combos of mercenaries is essentially impossible. Now SOME are variations on a theme (for example, I want to simply for FUN run Lug and Brun who are in my painting que with Stark 2 and LOS). But others I think we REALLY need to see on the table for an extended period of time to make sense of to understand if they move the power curve/power creep too much. One I thought of last night would be EITHER of the Sorshas, The Seige Crawler, TAC and then McDougal in probably Jaws. Does that much good shooting in combination with say a large number of boxes (Juggers, Kodiaks, etc) create real problems. Yes, I know, play it and let us know. But sometimes Real life gets in the way. Give me 4-5 weeks and I probably can but probably not if it takes up my game play time.
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