shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Dec 28, 2018 8:27:03 GMT
This is pretty much it. Wargames have always had single models that cost as much as an entire board game. Wargames have always had relatively complicated rulesets. If these super streamlined low rules count games were so popular why didn't they take over the game community? AOS tried it and shit the bed and died then GW had to quickly introduce a tighter ruleset. Attitudes of the community are what keep warmachine from being casual. AoS is little more complicated now than it was in 1st edition. The main difference is matched play rules and points costs are included now, and they werent before. The game is actually streamlined from its previous incarnation, and it IS picking up speed, according to GTM. You love to bash on AoS but every time you do, you mention pre generals handbook 1st edition. I dont think you have the faintest idea of what you're talking about, and if you do you're deliberately being dishonest, and that's just worse.
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cain
Junior Strategist
Posts: 243
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Post by cain on Dec 28, 2018 10:17:58 GMT
Xwing , Guild ball and AOS are all low rules streamlined games which are doing very good.
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Post by netdragon on Dec 28, 2018 18:43:21 GMT
Not only GW's profits, ICv2 publishes a quaterly top 5 of US sales by game line. PP's games (WM and H are shown separetedly) have been under 40k, X-wing, Star Trek and D&D miniatures most of the time. Summer of 2018 here: icv2.com/articles/markets/view/41010The latest report for summer 2018 is behind a paywall here: icv2.com/articles/icv2-pro/view/41866/miniatures-games-market-report-top-brands-chart-summer-2018)It's important to note that sales from 40k's latest Kill Team launch wold mostly come from 40k sales, as the miniatures are compatible between these games. In my local european meta have seen a rise in Infinity (plus Aristeia even outside the usual wargaming LGS), Malifaux, Kill Team, X-Wing, Guild Ball (with WTC team), and even the Batman Miniature Game hving a push from the local publisher.
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Post by Havock on Dec 28, 2018 23:40:59 GMT
Also, something I think is relevant -but I might be wrong- is that the recessaion coupled with PP axing the PG program was a double-whammy: The recessaion hit most of the metas hard in that there was a relatively low influx of young blood, GW picked up the slack, but... There's just no new players coming in from 'below', the game is totally dependent on "horizontal entrees", which works if The Other Side® is shit and people are dissatisfied, less so when they are ok with being there.
End result? Playerbase grows older, people go into a life stage where things like work and family become more important, or just grow out of their interests, and keep in mind that a good number of people who started out with the game in their late teens/early twenties back in mk1 or early mk2 -the latter being a a period where WMH enjoyed a massive popularity boost- would be getting into reach of their thirties by now, or passed it even.
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Post by mcdermott on Dec 29, 2018 0:00:43 GMT
I don't care about GW's profits, those are easy to get, people are making a lot of claims about PP's profits with dick all for backup.
Its like when people saw d+d was overtaking pathfinder on roll20 and just was by far the largest # of games posted. They assumed that pathfinder was diving and that the growth of d+d necessarily came from the loss of pathfinder. But lo and behold the # of pathfinder games had grown too, just not at the same rate as the new hotness.
Y'all don't know how PP is doing financially, don't post like you do.
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Post by Havock on Dec 29, 2018 3:56:52 GMT
Don't know enough about that, all we really have is our own (local) observations regarding the state of playerbase(s).
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Post by frumiousbandersnatch on Dec 29, 2018 8:37:27 GMT
I don't care about GW's profits, those are easy to get, people are making a lot of claims about PP's profits with dick all for backup. Its like when people saw d+d was overtaking pathfinder on roll20 and just was by far the largest # of games posted. They assumed that pathfinder was diving and that the growth of d+d necessarily came from the loss of pathfinder. But lo and behold the # of pathfinder games had grown too, just not at the same rate as the new hotness. Y'all don't know how PP is doing financially, don't post like you do. We certainly have no numbers to put to PP's sales, let alone something like earnings and profits. Some of their products might be doing okay, we just don't know. The best we, the audience can do, is look at moves like the Mystery Box/Bundle sales and (more telling in my opinion) the state of the secondary market for WarmaHordes. There definitely seems to be very little demand, in fact almost zero, for second hand armies or models that are not the newest releases for each faction. Hell, it's almost impossible to GIVE models away. I'm on many buy/sell/trade groups and forums for all kinds of wargaming and tabletop stuff. There's just very little interest in WarmaHordes models and it's not uncommon to see the stuff that does get sold go for ~30% of MSRP. But yes, we really don't know how well PP is doing. We can watch and speculate and guess. All of that is really neither here nor there. Returning to the topic at hand, though, I think it's clear to see that the community and playerbase is suffering everywhere. It all seems part of the cycle of gaming companies, though. Assuming PP weathers the storm and makes it through the next time GW alienates a large fraction of its playerbase with shit edition I'm sure WarmaHordes will experience growth again. So the cycle goes.
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Post by netdragon on Dec 29, 2018 13:10:50 GMT
In my city the game is non-existent in stores. That's pretty much a hint for me.
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Post by dogganmguest on Dec 29, 2018 13:40:08 GMT
Here, the two game stores I visit have a terrible selection on display on tiny shelves, tucked away in the back corner. One of them actually refers to it as Warmachine and Hoards on their website, which shows how much they even look at the front of the boxes. The local wargarming club runs two conventions a year, and Warmachine hasn't featured in either of them for the last two years due to lack of interest.
Though it's fun to read about these magic metas where dozens show up, always willing to play the new guy at low points, and newbies are converted into regulars at an amazing rate. I hope I get to go there when I die...
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shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Dec 29, 2018 19:55:28 GMT
In my city the game is non-existent in stores. That's pretty much a hint for me. Not just your area. I travel a lot for work, and the game is all but dead in everywhere I go, if not dead completely. I travel a lot through Ca, Ut, Tx, and Az. These used to be extremely active places to go. From what I understand from friends that live in Des Moines, Kansas City, St Louis, and Indy, the game is significantly cooled down and coming to crawl in those areas too. Yes, people still play, but it isn't quite the land of abundance in terms of player base. Here, the two game stores I visit have a terrible selection on display on tiny shelves, tucked away in the back corner. One of them actually refers to it as Warmachine and Hoards on their website, which shows how much they even look at the front of the boxes. The local wargarming club runs two conventions a year, and Warmachine hasn't featured in either of them for the last two years due to lack of interest. Though it's fun to read about these magic metas where dozens show up, always willing to play the new guy at low points, and newbies are converted into regulars at an amazing rate. I hope I get to go there when I die... Yup, exactly. I really think a lot of these super vocal "everything is fine" players either truly are playing in the one in a million locations where the game is just still taking off like gangbusters, or they are just full of shit and/or have their head buried in the sand. If they truly are in the areas where they are doing great, and the game continues to grow at exponential rates, then great, that's awesome! Then share how you are so much further ahead than everyone else in terms of positive game growth. how are you doing it? What are the events you are running? how are you overcoming objections? what is the size of the metro area? Of the last 12 events that were run, how many showed up to them? What are the common objections to your JML? How many new players have you recruited in the last year? How many of them still play? Do they have any objections or concerns we can note? What did they buy to start? The list of questions and things to know just go on and on. I mean, if you have the secret to immortality, then share it with us, because for the rest of us, we are doing everything we can and this game has withered away and failed in every reasonable measure of that term. But alas, much like that magical place you mention in your post, none of the people who keep saying everything is perfect never share their success beyond the very basic and very universal "be consistent" "be fun" and "hold demos".
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Post by Azuresun on Dec 29, 2018 21:13:13 GMT
I wonder what board games you play, if the example of modern design you give is AoS, the Snakes and Ladders of wargaming. I was rather mentioning modern board games like Dominant Species, Food Chain Magnate, Blood Rage/Rising Sun, Brass, The Edge, Gloomhaven, Civ:Through the Ages, Agricola/Caverna, Scythe, Terraforming Mars, Concordia and more.
With those games the streamlined, smart, finely tuned rules do not mean simplified, shallow gameplay. The "less is more" design keeps them very deep, challenging, the perfect competition for WM&H in the "I want deep, intelectual competition with my friends" category. Most of those games look stunning too, not really worse than WM&H with unpainted models, on flat terrain and with a trash bin worth of tokens. It's hard to find an area where WM&H has advantage over those games.
All of my friends, who once were a group of 10+ casual WM&H players left for board games. The "community stayed the same, so it's not them who discouraged each other from playing. They get the kicks of having a brain-boiling intelectual challenge and great looking tabletop presence from games that cost 1/10 of WM&H price and rules that require 1/10 of the time to read and understand (and -shock! - provide as deep and complex situations/decisions during games!).
Yeah, in those games you can actually start winning right from the start (well, maybe your 2nd game) because you just need to be smarter than your opponents, not spend more time studying the intricacies of the rules. That's another good point. Board games are in something of a golden age right now, and their relatively limited scope is becoming a plus point for me--I know what sort of game I'm playing when I start Terraforming Mars / Orleans / Elysium, and I can focus on a relatively limited pool of strategies and possibilities, even if the game itself is on the intricate side. Or to put it another way, many board games feel like a strategic challenge, WM feels like a stressful memory test.
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Post by oncomingstorm on Dec 29, 2018 21:30:05 GMT
Meh, in my area WMH is doing fine, and attendance at all of the cons I've attended recently has been very high (I don't think I've attended a major tournament that wasn't at capacity.) So that's probably where the 'everything is fine' mentality is coming from - at a very high level of play, the game IS booming. However, I do think that the loss of the press-gangers (without a viable replacement strategy) has hurt new player development, as have the added barriers to entry in Mk3 with themes, increased army sizes, and a fairly unstable competitive meta. Azuresun - this is also true. With board games offering a high level of tactical depth for a fraction of the price (and with being easier to pick up and play) and increased competition from cheaper/sleeker miniatures games, I think there's an argument that the market space for PP is narrowing (I see a lot of chatter about Judgement, for instance). It's a great game if you have everything needed to play, but I think that there's a lot of competing products out there for players that might previously have been funnelled into WMH.
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Post by dogganmguest on Dec 29, 2018 23:21:03 GMT
This might be worth a new thread, but there is an interesting discussion on discord about giving up on expecting PP to do it right, and designing starter 25 point lists for new players designed to:
a) help them learn the game b) be fun to play (especially against the other lists) c) have a decent and not too expensive starting point
Given that some of the starter boxes are basically just poo in a box, this seems like the first good idea I've heard in a while. It's something that would take a good number of experienced (and possibly new) people to help with the playtesting.
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Post by Big Fat Troll on Dec 30, 2018 2:12:25 GMT
This might be worth a new thread, but there is an interesting discussion on discord about giving up on expecting PP to do it right, and designing starter 25 point lists for new players designed to: a) help them learn the game b) be fun to play (especially against the other lists) c) have a decent and not too expensive starting point Given that some of the starter boxes are basically just poo in a box, this seems like the first good idea I've heard in a while. It's something that would take a good number of experienced (and possibly new) people to help with the playtesting. I do think that this would help a lot. Since this is an unofficial thing that the players are doing grassroots-style anyway, I for one would be fine with collecting cheap models, painting the armies, and selling them complete with tokens and dice for less than retail. I already have a 3rd Axer that I'm not using and I would like to replace my two Maulers with classic ones.
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crow
Junior Strategist
Posts: 310
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Post by crow on Dec 30, 2018 7:06:30 GMT
I would not say my area is booming but I have had success in getting several new players into the game. I’d say the following is probably how I did it; Step One: Take lead. With the knowledge that PP is not going to support PGs, if you want one it’s up to you to be one. If you want things done, you’re the best one for the job! I played games with my Dad and ran demos for months until life started breathing in my local meta again. Be confident and friendly, and ALWAYS take time to offer a game if someone looks interested. (It May also be noted that having extra battle boxes will greatly help as well). Step Two: Simplicity! Drop themes, drop slams, throws, etc., and literally focus on basic movement, charges, basic attacks and the basic fury mechanic when demo-ing the battle box. I usually tell my opponent the first few fames are just about learning the basics. I then take the first few turns teaching them those basics. I then inform them I’m gonna do some really crazy stuff, but assure them that if they play smart they’ll be able to win. I will then usually kill a light, or maybe a heavy, and try to leave my caster open for Assassination. If they plan right, they should have a reasonable shot at victory. Spells, feats, and more complex manoeuvres can be taught later and subsequent games, and sometimes after the game letting people know that can help encourage them. Working for GW taught me that the biggest part of a sale is getting someone’s hands on models and getting them to roll dice. Step Three: Consistency! Yes it’s said a lot, but it is needed! Without a consistent place or time things will not settle and you’ll lose player base! Step Four: Keep competitive but discourage over competitive players. This sounds weird so I’ll explain. A lot of people I’ve met want to play the most competitive lists and try tourney level games. The problem is, most new bloods are not ready for that level of commitment. A lot of people prefer a more relaxed casual environment, and even those that want more complexity and challenge still don’t usually enjoy getting thwamped a billion times before they win. Warmachine actually has the perfect fix for that. Most tournaments are 75 point theme lists taken as part of a pair. As a result, I’ve found 50 point no theme lists to create a much more relaxed environment. At this point value you can still play basic scenario, you usually avoid the high end competitive scene, and everyone can play what ever models they enjoy. Step 5: play at their level! If someone shows up with a battle box, always try to have your own available and ask others to try and do the same. We all have to start some where, and ideally we all start around the same point. Encourage new players to grow their collection, and get excited about their hobby, their faction! Avoid trash talking models, and instead try helping new players to get the most out of the models they enjoy.
Now these are the steps I’ve found worked well for me. As always your results may vary.
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