Ganso
Junior Strategist
Posts: 932
|
Post by Ganso on Mar 6, 2019 19:56:59 GMT
I'll give you a different perspective.
8 years ago, when Mk2 started, my "basement" meta of 5 guys formed relatively easy when we decided to try Warmachine.
We decided we wanted to play a miniature wargame again. We decided it should not be 40k since we were fed up with it from before. We decided we would try Warmachine.
We got on Youtube, saw some old videos from Beasts of War and Miniwargaming, and we ordered our starters from The War Store.
Within a month we were playing at 35 points and getting steady deliveries from War Store almost weekly, without much of an issue, and without a local Store.
All of that we could not replicate today. And I don't think any other meta, not serviced by an awesome FLGS that is on top of everything, could emerge under the current supply chain.
Even though learning the rules is so much easier now due to the amount of content out there for Mk3, the fact is we cannot get our new minis in our hands in a reasonable time frame.
Just a few months ago our Cryx and Retribution players who needed a few bits and bobs to finish up some theme forces had to wait almost a Month to get them due to stocking issues.
A slow supply chain is not tenable. And PP needs to fix their supply chain.
|
|
|
Post by mydnight on Mar 7, 2019 9:40:12 GMT
I guess PP figured out how to increase the sales of Cygnar, Khador and CG
|
|
|
Post by tjhairball on Mar 9, 2019 15:05:35 GMT
This is one of the few sensible posts in this thread. There are quite a lot of worse-than-amateur suggestions and analyses here. There are a number of very fine and very smart FLGS owner blogs out there, and you can learn a lot from their tradecraft talk. I encourage everybody to go read and learn if they are interested. Spoiler: it turns out that the list is completely expected. If it were a newspaper headline, it would probably read like this: “Warhammer continues to dominate thanks to its massive install base and enthrenched audience” Or “Minis game with one of the most lucrative mass-market licenses (Star Wars) sells well at release” The only people who know exactly how well Privateer is doing work at Privateer. (I suspect there are about five of them.) A number of distributors could band together and give us a good estimate of how much PP product they move, but for obvious reasons that’s probably not likely to happen. A much more important question for everyone here to ask themselves is this: do you have more fun playing Warmachine than you do playing 40k/Legion/whatever? If so, does this periodic ranking even matter? (Spoiler: rankings change over time.) Perhaps one of the most frustrating points that are brought up by the "everything is perfect" crowd is that "if you're having fun, what does it matter". Well, it DOES matter, it matters a lot, because people don't want to invest in a game they have long term fears about its viability. WM/H is evaporating from store shelves, has a dwindling player base (except for your area, I know), and has had a lot of upheavals recently, with the warehouse sales, sr staff leaving en masse, NQ prime, the need to kickstart a product, I mean, there is a lot to be concerned about (and I haven't listed all of the concerns) and when we see that its no longer even one of the top 5 after a decade in that stack rank, that's a lot to think about. The cost of a WMH list pair to play with your buddies or at a local event is REALLY high now. Like, upwards of 8 or 9 bills. If I had any concerns I would not want to spend that kind of cash on that game. So, yes, the long term viability matters to a game. Yes, stack ranks will change over time, but there are just too many things going wrong right now to really just sweep under the rug. Sure, they likely don't mean anything significant long term, and when MKIV launches, it'll likely put them above AoS for a bit, and they will go back and forth, but until then, MKIII has a lot of problems from a public perception concept and PP needs to start working to turn that around for MKIV. As someone who just dusted off his Warmachine miniatures and started touching them up after they spent a lot of time in the closet, the fact that going to the (enormous! huge! has beer and coffee and snacks! has thirty or other forty people present playing games!) local game shop on Warmachine night gives me maybe a 50-50 shot of getting one game in makes me very skeptical about buying more things.
Seriously, it's not a hole in the wall game shop. It's an enormous store with more area devoted to table space than the total footprint of the game stores I occasionally played at in California, and they're doing well. But even with that excellent space and a thriving gaming community overall, there just aren't many Warmachine players showing up for casual pickup games.
I did make a couple of purchases right at the start of my dusting things back off, because I thought the local scene was more active than that, but if I want to actually play miniatures games with people, I should be buying something different.
|
|
|
Post by beardmonk on Mar 9, 2019 16:31:17 GMT
I dont think that the competitive side of WM/H is dying off. In the London and SE England area the comp scene seems as strong as ever. We have even had some growth in terms of numbers. The issue is that we seem to have lost the non competitive players and the smaller local groups and we have solidified around a number of key meets and groups.
Our group of friends has now pretty much stopped playing WM/H. I cant get them to be interested anymore. And even with one of my friends now helping out/running at a games club locally, he has no plans to try to introduce it. He seems to have converted over to GW stuff and is only using his Circle for painting practice and showcase models. Its a slow drip drip drip of things. Cost, complexity, CIDs, the availability of models, what they see as poor decision making by PP etc.
PP AND the community needs to attract back the non 2 list SR crew. Without new casual player and YOUNG BLOOD coming into a game, that game will die
In terms of buying miniatures, in London our largest B&M gaming store and gaming venue dropped PP entirely. So has a few of the major online retailers.
For my own part i have not brought any PP products apart from paints at RRP for over 2 years. Its all been from flash sales and ebay. I am not planning to buy anymore for the foreseeable future. I will keep playing, investing my time, but not my money at this stage. Almost everyone i speak to is doing the same, only buying 2nd hand and from sales. Am i part of the problem? Maybe. But i cannot invest the level of money that the new WM/H cost especially when i have such concerns about the direction and future of the game.
Despite some good work PP has done to fix Mk3 and the efforts of the community (like Chain Attack community builders) the community itself still feels deeply unhappy and troubled.
I suspect that if WM and H were listed together then they would receive a much better ranking than they currently have in terms of sales numbers. But it has been a slow decline for the game over the past few years. People will not invest in a game they do not find fun or about which they have issues/concerns. Mk3 has been like watching a dear friend contract a infection and, while having good days and bad days, overall getting slowly get more and more sick. Im hoping and wishing for an uptick and change in direct from PP. The recent developments are good (UK/Europe distribution for example). But for now I will play and keep a watching brief. Also Malifaux M3E will be released this year. So i may find myself playing that as my main game for a while, rather than my off game. And that will be yet another casualty for WM/H.
Im not sure I answered the OP at all.... Que a very British "something must be done"!
|
|
|
Post by challenger on Mar 9, 2019 23:52:19 GMT
One other problem i find with new players and continuing players is how match ups shake out.
There's a fairly frequent thing in warmachine where you might have say, a list that relies on guns and your opponent has a list that just nullifies guns essentially. You might run into a situation where your A list is good against the opponents 2nd list, but your A list gets crushed by their first list, and their 2nd list beats your B list. Bad matchups in warmachine can be really not fun, and list chicken can feel like you won just because you guessed the right list to drop better than your opponent (or lost)
this effect bothers invested competitive players a lot less, who put in a lot more reps into bad match ups to practice them until they are reasonable, who stick to specific top tier or B tier casters who have the best shot of winning in these situations or building their lists to minimise these situations. But i find as time goes on, the situation gets worse when it comes to building "all comers" list pairs. a good friend of mine cares a lot about going to tournaments where he has to face a wide field, and he hates that circle just has some awfully bad matchups into skorne to the point where he doesn't want to keep bringing out circle because his tournament success is essentially "did i dodge the skorne builds i need to dodge?"
It just makes for a super unpleasant experience for many people. i can think of a few games where match ups aren't as 'polarised' as they can be in WMH when you run into a skew your list isn't built face, and overall you an just enjoy things a lot more.
The downside - this problem is essentially baked into Warmachine at this point, you'd have to fundamentally change every faction to prevent it. best thing that can be done is to encourage players to do something like agree on a scenario and faction match up, go away and write 1 list, maybe with a gentleman's agreement not to spam something dumb that turns it into a binary game, and come back and play it. But i find a lot of people are just "heres my 2 SR lists, whats your 2?"
|
|
|
Post by Charistoph on Mar 10, 2019 0:51:59 GMT
One thing that Infinity does is have you make your list after you designate the scenario. That's because a pre-built army can be totally boned on scenario. You already have your tools ready to go, you just pick from them as you go in. In terms of the number of selections, they aren't too much different from WMH, WMH just has multiple models in a selection and every selection has to carry its own weight.
If SR and other tournament options were set up so that each scenario required different options so that you bringing even 2 lists would see you lose 4 of the games, then it might be a consideration. However, it would almost require smaller point values to be effective.
But if you're going in to a store, and the only thing they are talking about is 2 list SR, then the issue is not PP, it is the meta. Yes, PP tournaments use 2 list SR, but that is not a requirement to use it everywhere else. I found it a block in 40K when they would only consider 1750 or 1850 games and ignore my 1000 points, and I find it a block now. I was grateful when I showed up on a Valley-wide JML opening night at the club and someone was willing to play a battlebox game with me, as my table time is ridiculously low.
|
|
|
Post by challenger on Mar 10, 2019 1:05:35 GMT
One thing that Infinity does is have you make your list after you designate the scenario. That's because a pre-built army can be totally boned on scenario. You already have your tools ready to go, you just pick from them as you go in. In terms of the number of selections, they aren't too much different from WMH, WMH just has multiple models in a selection and every selection has to carry its own weight. If SR and other tournament options were set up so that each scenario required different options so that you bringing even 2 lists would see you lose 4 of the games, then it might be a consideration. However, it would almost require smaller point values to be effective. But if you're going in to a store, and the only thing they are talking about is 2 list SR, then the issue is not PP, it is the meta. Yes, PP tournaments use 2 list SR, but that is not a requirement to use it everywhere else. I found it a block in 40K when they would only consider 1750 or 1850 games and ignore my 1000 points, and I find it a block now. I was grateful when I showed up on a Valley-wide JML opening night at the club and someone was willing to play a battlebox game with me, as my table time is ridiculously low. Infinity's pick up match list building (know enemy faction, know scenario, and possibly have seen table in some situations) as well as Infinity having less match up skewing makes a huge deal. There's definitely some situations that put you in a very large disadvantage such as if you bring a TAG vs JSA who have hidden deployment instant kill swords, but since you know enemy faction ahead of time you can leave the Avatar at home.
But its just like the culture WMH has cultivated among its playerbase that everyone does the 2 list SR thing. i think because WMH has always had that massive tournament focus and it's original draw was "tight ruleset and balance compared to GW" which brought over people wanting strong tournament play.
|
|
|
Post by gobber on Mar 10, 2019 6:14:41 GMT
Just want to chime in on legion: it's doing alright for its young age and the playerbase seems to be slowly growing (though it's nowhere near the size of WMH). It's finally getting to the point that there's actually a diverse army roster for each side, with great scenario play, turn order trickery, and simple movement rules. The hobbyist/terrainmaking/3d printing community has taken to the game with great enthusiasm, resulting in the most beautiful game boards I have ever seen (with print shops like imperial terrain really proliferating this). In addition for wonderfully cinematic games, it makes for some good social media and a lot of "holy crap what are you playing on?" walkups in the game store as well. This German tournament took it to an extreme, though a lot of this is the ubiquitous Imperial Terrain or free thingiverse designs (including one of mine) www.facebook.com/WargamesIllustrated/videos/2032371787063595/
|
|
privvy
Junior Strategist
Formerly The Nomad on PP's forums
Posts: 317
|
Post by privvy on Mar 12, 2019 17:05:45 GMT
Well, it DOES matter, it matters a lot, because people don't want to invest in a game they have long term fears about its viability. Tell that to plenty of other dead games with a dedicated player base, like HeroScape. If PP went under, the rules we currently have would be the rules unless we start doing our own CID type processes. The game could still be played, there could still be GenCon tournaments, the only thing missing would be official support. Long term, I don't see PP being a monolith like GW. The player base is in a weird flux. But I'm not going to worry about the company when the game can be played until the minis erode into dust.
|
|
joedj
Junior Strategist
Posts: 513
|
Post by joedj on Mar 13, 2019 19:41:08 GMT
Well, it DOES matter, it matters a lot, because people don't want to invest in a game they have long term fears about its viability. Tell that to plenty of other dead games with a dedicated player base, like HeroScape. If PP went under, the rules we currently have would be the rules unless we start doing our own CID type processes. The game could still be played, there could still be GenCon tournaments, the only thing missing would be official support. Long term, I don't see PP being a monolith like GW. The player base is in a weird flux. But I'm not going to worry about the company when the game can be played until the minis erode into dust. Were PP to fold, the catalog of models available would allow a number of different formats, aka 'Vintage, Modern, Standard, Commander', for continuing WM/Hordes far into the future. There would most likely be a fall off of tourney-only folks, but the casuals would have a field day with fan-fic building a Skryx (Skorne+Cryx) mixed format army...
|
|
|
Post by subversive on Mar 13, 2019 23:59:52 GMT
It's pretty simple: if you want to get into a game, you need other people to play. That happens either from your friends saying "come play this game with us!" or walking into a store and seeing what's being played there. GW is knocking it out of the park with cool looking minis, and they're in front of everyone's face in the FLGS. They've got products for full scale army vs. army, small scale skirmish, warband, and even short form card game style games. After two decades of mismanagement, they've finally got their shit together and are wiping the floor with everyone. And I say this as a PP fanboi who will do whatever I can to get people playing WMH. But it's a hard fight with all the competition, both from GW and from other small systems.
PP needs to get back on the FLGS shelves, and I think they can do that with their force boxes and going direct or by-order with individual SKUs.
|
|
|
Post by beardmonk on Mar 14, 2019 9:56:58 GMT
PP needs to get back on the FLGS shelves, and I think they can do that with their force boxes and going direct or by-order with individual SKUs. This. But with a shrinking casual meta, the bridges PP have burnt by messing LFGS about, cost of product and a rampant GW it’s unlikely that this will happen any time soon. In the UK, much like the playing scene we seem to have consolidated around a few online retainers as many other large stores have dropped PP products entirely. From where I am on the outskirts of London I have: Firestorm – Online, still stocks PP Wayland – Online and B&M. Big gaming venue. Stocks some limited PP. Full stock of other games Element games - Online and B&M. Big gaming venue. No stock of PP online and no plans to refresh. Full stock of other games Dark Sphere – Online and large B&M store in London. Big gaming venue. Ditched all PP stock and publicly stated that it will no longer support the game or host events for the system. Full stock of other games. Magic Madhouse – Gaming venue and store. No longer carries PP on the shelves. Limited remaining stock available. Traveling Man – Games and comics store No longer carries PP. Stocks core GW products. My LFGS 1 – B&M store with 4 tables. Use to have regular WM/H nights as well as Malifaux and other games. About 7 months into Mk3 had a fire sale of all their PP products and ebayed what didn’t go. Now has a very poor opinion of PP as a company and wants nothing to do with their games. Still carries GW, Malifaux and other historical games. My LFGS 2 – B&M and general hobby store. Use to be happy to do PP orders but will no longer do so. Carries core GW products. As Subversive said, people need to see the game on the shelves and being played. However, in and around the capital city of the UK, WM/H is not being played in shops. It has very exposure to new players. And if game stores are unwilling to carry the product or only have limited supplied of Battle Boxes etc then it’s a hard hard fight.
|
|
|
Post by blackdog on Mar 14, 2019 10:40:42 GMT
In my area the number of active players have gone down during the last couple of years. Their motives are varied. Some did not like the constant CID changes. Others find the miniatures expensive and let's be honest here, although last models are great in quality terms the old ones are sometimes awful. So if you compare them with the amazing plastic Wyrd has, or the quality in metal Infinity has, or GW kits, or ... PP never took care of these things and perhaps not for everybody but for some players is a reason to choice one game system or another.
There is also a lack of new players here. But in every war-game. Some old GW players have come back to GW due the new versions of their games. But for each new guy who starts to play war-games many more abandon the hobby due to family issues, lack of time, ... Being an adult is often a big pile of sh**.
What I think is a solution for PP to recover its position in the market? First of all, PP needs to return the Press Ganger program. Seems they removed it to some legal issues in the US so perhaps they will need to think carefully how to do it, but they have to do it. The game, not only this one but all of them, needs visibility. And the store owners will no risk their money buying some stuff nobody will play because nobody knows it nor is played in the area. So the PG guys need to come back to do demos, to make the game known among the wargames community.
And then PP should start to think carefully about what to do with old models, where they want to place their game and start to work in that direction. Running constantly from a random point to another random point is never a good business plan. I wish with the new CEO they start to do the things good again.
At least it seems we will be able to order BAHI models here in Europe without the awful shipping cost and custom conditions we had until now.
|
|
shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
|
Post by shiver on Mar 14, 2019 16:12:21 GMT
Well, it DOES matter, it matters a lot, because people don't want to invest in a game they have long term fears about its viability. Tell that to plenty of other dead games with a dedicated player base, like HeroScape. If PP went under, the rules we currently have would be the rules unless we start doing our own CID type processes. The game could still be played, there could still be GenCon tournaments, the only thing missing would be official support. Long term, I don't see PP being a monolith like GW. The player base is in a weird flux. But I'm not going to worry about the company when the game can be played until the minis erode into dust. Tell that to plenty of other dead games with a dedicated player base, like HeroScape. If PP went under, the rules we currently have would be the rules unless we start doing our own CID type processes. The game could still be played, there could still be GenCon tournaments, the only thing missing would be official support. Long term, I don't see PP being a monolith like GW. The player base is in a weird flux. But I'm not going to worry about the company when the game can be played until the minis erode into dust. Were PP to fold, the catalog of models available would allow a number of different formats, aka 'Vintage, Modern, Standard, Commander', for continuing WM/Hordes far into the future. There would most likely be a fall off of tourney-only folks, but the casuals would have a field day with fan-fic building a Skryx (Skorne+Cryx) mixed format army...
I understand there is a following for some dead games. I play Advanced Squad Leader. It's a dead game. REALLY dead game. I also play Silent Death. Also a Dead game. Just because there are pockets of hold outs, and in some cases, a couple of thousand hold outs, doesn't mean the game still isn't dead AF. Dead games don't have new releases. It's pretty simple: if you want to get into a game, you need other people to play. That happens either from your friends saying "come play this game with us!" or walking into a store and seeing what's being played there. GW is knocking it out of the park with cool looking minis, and they're in front of everyone's face in the FLGS. They've got products for full scale army vs. army, small scale skirmish, warband, and even short form card game style games. After two decades of mismanagement, they've finally got their shit together and are wiping the floor with everyone. And I say this as a PP fanboi who will do whatever I can to get people playing WMH. But it's a hard fight with all the competition, both from GW and from other small systems. PP needs to get back on the FLGS shelves, and I think they can do that with their force boxes and going direct or by-order with individual SKUs. The best game is the one your friends are playing. The second best game is the one you can go to just about any store and play. WMH used to be able to do that. They can't anymore. there are concerns about that. Also, agree that GW is killing it. they have finally figured out they make a game to go with those pretty minis and with the new AoS skirmish game coming out, I think that spells a lot of trouble for their competitors, especially if its even as remotely well recieved as kill team was. PP needs to get back on the FLGS shelves, and I think they can do that with their force boxes and going direct or by-order with individual SKUs. This. But with a shrinking casual meta, the bridges PP have burnt by messing LFGS about, cost of product and a rampant GW it’s unlikely that this will happen any time soon. In the UK, much like the playing scene we seem to have consolidated around a few online retainers as many other large stores have dropped PP products entirely. From where I am on the outskirts of London I have: Firestorm – Online, still stocks PP Wayland – Online and B&M. Big gaming venue. Stocks some limited PP. Full stock of other games Element games - Online and B&M. Big gaming venue. No stock of PP online and no plans to refresh. Full stock of other games Dark Sphere – Online and large B&M store in London. Big gaming venue. Ditched all PP stock and publicly stated that it will no longer support the game or host events for the system. Full stock of other games. Magic Madhouse – Gaming venue and store. No longer carries PP on the shelves. Limited remaining stock available. Traveling Man – Games and comics store No longer carries PP. Stocks core GW products. My LFGS 1 – B&M store with 4 tables. Use to have regular WM/H nights as well as Malifaux and other games. About 7 months into Mk3 had a fire sale of all their PP products and ebayed what didn’t go. Now has a very poor opinion of PP as a company and wants nothing to do with their games. Still carries GW, Malifaux and other historical games. My LFGS 2 – B&M and general hobby store. Use to be happy to do PP orders but will no longer do so. Carries core GW products. As Subversive said, people need to see the game on the shelves and being played. However, in and around the capital city of the UK, WM/H is not being played in shops. It has very exposure to new players. And if game stores are unwilling to carry the product or only have limited supplied of Battle Boxes etc then it’s a hard hard fight. It's the same on my dusty path too. My LGSs refuse to deal with PP, and won't let me have more than A table to play on, and refuse to stock anything, and one just won't let me bring a PP model in their store they are so pissed at PP. I travel a lot for work, and this is not an isolated case, MOST game stores I go into that support tabletop gaming have completely ditched PP in favor of more GW cause it's just jumping off the store shelves. Hell, I watched the Chapter Approved 2018 book sell 22 copies in the time I was in talking to my friend, who is the game store owner, about business and just catching up. (Keep in mind, I grabbed us lunch and was there for some time, but still, 22 books in a day. in a town of 200,000. Thats...Impressive...). I would give my left arm to understand how I could do that with the new campaign book for PP, but I don't think I'm going to have the chance at it.
|
|
|
Post by gobber on Mar 15, 2019 4:29:14 GMT
I keep seeing this described as a binary GW vs PP comparison, when from what I can tell the pecking order is definitely FFG>GW>PP.
|
|