There will be no Mk4, and PP has a plan - the L&L address
Jul 1, 2019 5:30:18 GMT
dirtyharrypotter, snoozer, and 1 more like this
Post by Blargaliscious on Jul 1, 2019 5:30:18 GMT
First off, this is not intended to be a Doom Post, but I think it will certainly sound like one.
The "there will be no Mk4" line is a bit click-baity, but I think it is a natural result of what PP is looking to do. You see, I think PP has realized that Warmachine has reached the end of its expansion phase in its life-cycle, will not get another one, and is on the decline. They see a lot of events / market forces coming together that have made them realize that they need to, and can, change gears. Without saying so explicitly, their Lock & Load address – including the Riot Quest and Neo Mechanica portions, had a lot of hints that indicated what they are going to do. Follow along:
The Mk1 to Mk2 rules change was a desperately needed clean-up, and the change from M2 to Mk3 was, as far as the rulebook is concerned, more of a fine-tuning. After some Infernals-related rules brush-ups they think that they have got the rules to such a point that they feel safe printing a new rules digest for the Oblivian box set. Notice that they made a point to note that the complete rules for Warmachine and Hordes are in the same book? Considering the previous strategic emphasis on doing things electronically only, this is a bit of a change in direction. Expect that digest to be around as-is for a long time.
But, while the core rules are solid, and PP was concentrating on making such good battleboxes for Mk3 (you gotta admit that they are pretty good) that they crapped up the rules for the units. If they did a beta test for Mk3 like they did for Mk2 then things would be a lot different. (We all know this, but if I didn’t say it after the previous paragraph, some anal-retentive jerk would have started a stink about it. Just covering my bases…)
Remember #DesignSpace? PP needed more design space so that they had more stuff to sell, and things like battle engines and colossals only gave so much room. (Never mind the rules bloat.) So instead of growing outward a lot with full-blown new factions (How much do you think they are going to fill out the Crucible Guard and the Grymkin?) they decided to grow their factions deeper with new mini-factions – themes. They screwed that up also. CID comes in – time to do clean-up. CID has pretty good results, but the medicine is as bad as the illness. Players are leaving with all of the change being generated and the theme army generation rules are becoming a mess. Did the L&L announcement that the theme force rules were going to change to just simply give freebies for every 25 points seem to come out of nowhere to anyone else? Smart idea, but it also tells me that the design guys are giving up.
Riot Quest gets officially announced. PP says it is pretty much the game that depicts what the Iron Kingdoms are like after the Infernals get their way. Since Iron Kingdoms – Mad Max Edition would be a pretty boring and depressing game that nobody would play, they dress it up with cartoony graphics. Yay! So, what happens if the Infernals *don’t* get their way and don’t collect their 2/3 of all souls?
I think that is where Warcaster – Neo Mechanica comes in. The Infernals don’t get their pile of souls, so they withdraw their part of the bargain. The magic takes 5000 years or so to start to decline. As the magic declines, technology begins to take its place – hence the importance of the Convergence of Cyriss and them being alluded to at the end of the Warmachine / Oblivion clip.
So, if Riot Quest is what happens if the Infernals get their way, and Warcaster – Neo Mechanica is what happens if the Infernals don’t get the bargain fulfilled, what does that make Oblivion? It is the T-intersection that ends the road with 2 different paths. Being the story tellers that they are, PP have decided that Oblivian is going to be the beginning of a back-burner / slow decline ending for Warmachine / Hordes.
How is PP going to proceed from here? Well, most of everything that was created back in Mk2 days has already been withdrawn from active production and made something that you have to special order from Privateer Press. (Why not, the shrinking market is already saturated for the foreseeable future.) More items will join that list as their sales drop below a certain threshold – distributors and stores won’t want to carry it. It will make room for more items that come out to round out themes and Neo Mechanica stuff. Don’t expect any more plastic kits like the colossals, Slayer chassis, Kodiak chassis, and the Berserker chassis – their tooling costs (and the US / China trade war taxes) won’t be supported by the lower volume of sales. Everything else from here will probably be resin and pewter.
Warmachine and Hordes are not dead. If PP does it right the game will get further releases and live for a long time. It is just not going to be their main focus anymore. But this is just my opinion, I could be wrong.
The "there will be no Mk4" line is a bit click-baity, but I think it is a natural result of what PP is looking to do. You see, I think PP has realized that Warmachine has reached the end of its expansion phase in its life-cycle, will not get another one, and is on the decline. They see a lot of events / market forces coming together that have made them realize that they need to, and can, change gears. Without saying so explicitly, their Lock & Load address – including the Riot Quest and Neo Mechanica portions, had a lot of hints that indicated what they are going to do. Follow along:
The Mk1 to Mk2 rules change was a desperately needed clean-up, and the change from M2 to Mk3 was, as far as the rulebook is concerned, more of a fine-tuning. After some Infernals-related rules brush-ups they think that they have got the rules to such a point that they feel safe printing a new rules digest for the Oblivian box set. Notice that they made a point to note that the complete rules for Warmachine and Hordes are in the same book? Considering the previous strategic emphasis on doing things electronically only, this is a bit of a change in direction. Expect that digest to be around as-is for a long time.
But, while the core rules are solid, and PP was concentrating on making such good battleboxes for Mk3 (you gotta admit that they are pretty good) that they crapped up the rules for the units. If they did a beta test for Mk3 like they did for Mk2 then things would be a lot different. (We all know this, but if I didn’t say it after the previous paragraph, some anal-retentive jerk would have started a stink about it. Just covering my bases…)
Remember #DesignSpace? PP needed more design space so that they had more stuff to sell, and things like battle engines and colossals only gave so much room. (Never mind the rules bloat.) So instead of growing outward a lot with full-blown new factions (How much do you think they are going to fill out the Crucible Guard and the Grymkin?) they decided to grow their factions deeper with new mini-factions – themes. They screwed that up also. CID comes in – time to do clean-up. CID has pretty good results, but the medicine is as bad as the illness. Players are leaving with all of the change being generated and the theme army generation rules are becoming a mess. Did the L&L announcement that the theme force rules were going to change to just simply give freebies for every 25 points seem to come out of nowhere to anyone else? Smart idea, but it also tells me that the design guys are giving up.
Riot Quest gets officially announced. PP says it is pretty much the game that depicts what the Iron Kingdoms are like after the Infernals get their way. Since Iron Kingdoms – Mad Max Edition would be a pretty boring and depressing game that nobody would play, they dress it up with cartoony graphics. Yay! So, what happens if the Infernals *don’t* get their way and don’t collect their 2/3 of all souls?
I think that is where Warcaster – Neo Mechanica comes in. The Infernals don’t get their pile of souls, so they withdraw their part of the bargain. The magic takes 5000 years or so to start to decline. As the magic declines, technology begins to take its place – hence the importance of the Convergence of Cyriss and them being alluded to at the end of the Warmachine / Oblivion clip.
So, if Riot Quest is what happens if the Infernals get their way, and Warcaster – Neo Mechanica is what happens if the Infernals don’t get the bargain fulfilled, what does that make Oblivion? It is the T-intersection that ends the road with 2 different paths. Being the story tellers that they are, PP have decided that Oblivian is going to be the beginning of a back-burner / slow decline ending for Warmachine / Hordes.
How is PP going to proceed from here? Well, most of everything that was created back in Mk2 days has already been withdrawn from active production and made something that you have to special order from Privateer Press. (Why not, the shrinking market is already saturated for the foreseeable future.) More items will join that list as their sales drop below a certain threshold – distributors and stores won’t want to carry it. It will make room for more items that come out to round out themes and Neo Mechanica stuff. Don’t expect any more plastic kits like the colossals, Slayer chassis, Kodiak chassis, and the Berserker chassis – their tooling costs (and the US / China trade war taxes) won’t be supported by the lower volume of sales. Everything else from here will probably be resin and pewter.
Warmachine and Hordes are not dead. If PP does it right the game will get further releases and live for a long time. It is just not going to be their main focus anymore. But this is just my opinion, I could be wrong.