Reaper in the Black?

Honestly, after seeing the Soles and Wilson train wreck of MK3, I kind of want someone else to come in and take control. What that means long-term I'm not sure, as I don't know if it will be a significant shift in the focus of the game and the way it is played, but I do know that the Wilson/Soles combo has done enough damage already, so I'm willing, as a consumer, to gamble.

I feel like there are a lot of assumptions here.

First, there is the assumption that Bones Black is going to be good, and that Reaper has all the distribution and supply chain figured out, and that distributors and FLGSs are more likely to stock Warmachine just because it is made by Reaper and not PP. I don't know what the scene is like in Europe, but I know my FLGS in Canada got out of Reaper and switched to WizKids because they were easier for them to get in from distribution. I'm hopeful for the quality of the models and will definitely be picking up that Owlbear in January to test them out, but while it looks promising, we aren't sure yet how it will go.

Then, do we know that there actually are plans to sell the company, or that their financials are in bad shape, or that rent is causing them problems? Wasn't that all speculation and internet chatter? And even if they do want to sell, do we think Reaper would be actually interested? They've made some games off and on, but it seems to me like they want to just focus on miniatures and not get into game design - didn't they just do the miniatures for CAV and get someone else to do the rules? Making games seems like going outside of their core competency. Especially given that the Warmachine community has very high standards on things like balance, etc.

Finally, once all is said and done, are we sure that Reaper will be able to do it cheaper? First, the cost of miniatures is largely based on spreading the tooling costs out over a large number of units sold. Part of the reason why Reaper is able to do that with Bones is because they rake in millions of dollars on kickstarters which can pay off the tooling and then everything else is gravy. Does PP have the same volume of sales as Reaper has, including Bones kickstarters? Second, I suspect that one of the reasons why Reaper miniatures are so cheap compared to a lot of others is because they don't have the same overhead that a game company has. They don't have to write rules, or playtest, or manage organized play, or pay someone to read everything on the CID forum. All the money to cover that overhead has to come from somewhere, and given that books aren't a thing anymore, the rules are free, and War Room has its own overhead from having to pay the folks at TinkerHouse, that's probably baked into the cost of a mini. So, once we factor in the overhead and the possible differences in volume, it is far from clear that Reaper would be able to do it cheaper.

So, the long and short of it is that we don't know if PP wants to sell, Reaper wants to buy, or either party wants a merger, and we aren't sure if there would actually be any benefits if something like this came to fruition. And there's not really anything we can do about it, given that anything like this would be a negotiation between two privately owned companies.

I don't see this happening for a lot of reasons.

1. Reaper has fairly consistently shown a lack of interest in making games. They made Warlord and CAV, but haven't updated either in a decade. CAV (the rules) is now done by someone else.
2. Reaper moves a lot of miniatures, but they're actually a pretty small company. I think they have approximately the same number of employees as Privateer Press. They almost certainly don't have the capital to outright buy PP.
3. Reaper's Bones supply chain comes from China, so while they could have a better relationship with the Chinese factories that makes things smoother, they are in the same general situation as PP when it comes to acquiring plastic minis.
4. Even if PP was being sold, and even if all the "big names" at PP decided to up and move shop to Texas, they'd still lose a lot of their employees (who don't want to move) which would do a lot of short-term damage to the company.
5. I do love Reaper, but I would take their Bones Black Press Release with a grain of salt. I imagine that Bones Black has more detail than regular Bones, but it's probably a bit of puffery to say it has the detail of resin.
6. Even if the companies wanted to merge, you can't just redo thousands of molds into the new format. Reaper has only scratched the surface of converting their back catalog into Bones and they've been working on it for 5+ years now.


It's not strictly impossible that there could be collaboration between these companies, but the odds of that happening are vanishingly low.

You post too many topics.

crimsyn That's all perfectly understandable. I follow politics quite closely, so I am familiar with the trick of speculation used as an argument in bad faith. I asked questions because I didn't know enough about the particulars to have a clear picture of the potentials. FWIW, I am looking for possibilities about which to be optimistic, even though I might be reaching further than I'd realized. If I wanted to grouse about my anxieties I would focus more on indicators like the Seattle real estate market, the clearance sales, and the personnel shifts. But those could also be indicators of a move, a sale, or a change in materials or supply chain.

I must admit that the real problem is those worries but they might be much less pervasive among the players if PPS would ever tell us anything.

Paint is another good point... even if PP and Reaper were to merge, the PP paint line would likely be straight up discontinued because Reaper manufactures their own paint in house and has no need to continue paying HMG (I think?) to produce paint for them. Especially right after they discontinued one of their own paint lines.

Which, I suppose is one way to get #DropperBottleCID...