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Sadly, you are right on Odingrandson. Others will prosper if GW falters.

Regarding Shatterpoint, I expect the games it will impact the most are Atomic Mass Games own stable! I think it will cannabilize from Legion, Armada, X-wing and Marvel Crisis Protocal, and leave the alternate Star Wars games pretty much dead.

I am curious if Warcradle can make in roads in the US Game Store market. Battletech has had a lot of success in the US market, and is taking up the space War machine use to have.

Warlord is the flagship of "Historical" models, and have surpassed Battlefront/Flames of War in this space. I do not see this changing anytime soon.

One bonus Warcradle has is its bolted onto Wayland Games. So they can afford the slow build approach to market. They don't have to make fast inroads, just steady gains

 odinsgrandson wrote:
The heyday of Warmachine coincided with an era when GW was batching things pretty regularly.

This is undeniable, but let's not sell PP short. Warmachines rise and fall were both due to a fairly complex set of factors. Warmachine's heyday was undeniably MKII, which ran from 2010 through 2016, but the game had a lot of buzz before that. Now, 2010 does happen to be when 8th edition WFB dropped, which began the tail spin for that game, and it was also about halfway thorugh 5th edition 40k, which saw some of the nastier Codex creep with Grey Knights being huge, but the nadir for GW is usually seen as a bit later. Still, GW's faltering was an opening for everybody, and nobody except X-wing (released 2012) made more hay out of GW's missteps.

I think that Warmachine was, simply put, a tight, well designed game (especially by MKII), and it lent itself readily to competitive play, which GW games did not (and arguably still might not They also had a really dedicated group of pressgangers which ran a lot events, and helped build a lot of energy. I think it was the right game at the right time. The lore was solid, although the need to not kill any named characters kept it boxed in. The sculpts were... fine, with some high points and some low points, but they did well as the last great pewter game.

Likewise, no one thing killed. Sure, supply issues outside of the US hurt, cancelling the pressgangers hurt, and the launch of MKIII was poorly received. But the problems were deeper. For starters, the range was gargantuan. A dozen or more factions, each with a hundred or more different kits? Very few stores could stock it all, and after the game peaked few even tried. As the game expanded, the need to remember feats, spells, and other "gotchas" expanded dramatically. Player skill was still important, but to even be able to learn the skill you needed to understand literally hundreds of crucial rules and powers. Finally, the push towards competitive play left less space for narrative, casual, or hobby gamers. 3d terrain gave way to precut flat templates. It was hard to pick up a game that wasn't steamroller.

Perhaps not coincidentally, this is the same general arc behind guildball, which while it never had the major reach of WMH MKII, had a real nice run.

 Polonius wrote:

Likewise, no one thing killed. Sure, supply issues outside of the US hurt, canceling the press gangers hurt, and the launch of MKIII was poorly received. But the problems were deeper. For starters, the range was gargantuan. A dozen or more factions, each with a hundred or more different kits? Very few stores could stock it all, and after the game peaked few even tried. As the game expanded, the need to remember feats, spells, and other "gotchas" expanded dramatically. Player skill was still important, but to even be able to learn the skill you needed to understand literally hundreds of crucial rules and powers. Finally, the push towards competitive play left less space for narrative, casual, or hobby gamers. 3d terrain gave way to precut flat templates. It was hard to pick up a game that wasn't steamroller.

As the OP, I didn't want to turn this into a Warmachine bashing thread, but you nailed what Privateer Press has to get past to climb out of the hole they are in right now. The only thing I would add is that I think a lot of PP's key people are also gone, I am thinking that Most of Atomic Mass Games are Ex Privateer Press employees. That can really hurt a company. Also, my personal feeling on this is, I am done with the model design of most of the models they are making, the game itself was never unplayable, but I was living in a small area with limited players, so when I would travel to a larger town to get a game in, It would usually be the player that no one would want play for the reason everyone but me was aware of, and like you said, it would be a quick "gotcha" and curb stomp. game over. That doesn't encourage new or casual players to continue.

But back on topic, with 10th Edtion around the corner and Star Wars Shatter Point being the only other real contenders for 2023. There might be a Kickstarter that might hit that will surprise us all but I see nothing right now that is exciting me.

Yeah Warmachine's failings were not one single one but a combination which then snowballed along with minor issues (that every single game has) and just burned itself out in a blaze.

Don't forget they also did other things - eg they closed most of their faction forums at a time when their forum was honestly very active and FB and other social media sites for them were not as active. That along with the PG shutting down were two big social blows that perhaps didn't directly rattle many people; but it rattled the most keen, the most involved and those who (esp the PG) held together local groups and local interest.


I also think as a game it struggled with identity.
Warhammer leaned more and more into wargame as time went on; armies got bigger, the model range got bigger and we use way more models now than in the past.

Infinity on the other hand has kept itself small even with their range expanding. Granted one trick they have is removing and reintroducing models over time so that helps spread out the expansion of their range.

Warmachine I felt tried to kind of ride between the two. I think it was also held back by the fact that they never managed to move well into plastics. That in turn I think held them back from going full wargame with multipart plastics, sets of multiple models on a sprue and other things that would have let them lean into more of a larger scale wargame that would fit with the expanding ranges and collections.
So they kind of tried to be a skirmish-wargame and it got a bit messy.



Again it wasn't just that. It was sad but they basically had a really bad year at the same time GW had a seriously good year and the two effects snowballed for PP.

From what I see, 40k will be S tier.
AOS, MCP and Shatter will be A tier.
There are a large number of mid tier.
Soiaf, battletech, bolt action, conquest, infinity, malifaux, warmahordes, lotr, kings of war, etc.

I should clarify that these tiers reflect overall sales, not the quality of the games.

I really do not see much change.

I think there is still a sleeping giant: d and d. Stores sell tons of those unpainted minis. They have new plastic figures.
A good set of rules could make a run for A tier or even S tier. Probably more than a year out though if they decide to do it.

I dunno - right now I'd expect Warmachine to be way below Infinity and Battletech in sales.

Though this is a UK view and the USA scene might be a bit healthier; but right now I feel like they are recovering from being a rock bottom. Which I feel is also reflected in them going for 3D printing instead of Siocast or other options for manufacture.
I do think that they've fantastic potential to recover and if they play their cards right they could recover fairly swiftly, but its going to be a slow road for a while.


AoS could move up or down a bit and I think a BIG test for that is going to be when GW releases Old World and we see if both lines can sustain and grow or they are going to poach off each other.

Battletech is definitely a rising star. I think its kind of a mess as a game personally, but it finally has the one thing that truly held it back for decades now: an accessible product line of reasonable quality.

Agreed. I'd be hesitant to predict its growth since Kickstarters can be notorious for skewing results and sometimes big KS for games can be quickly followed by a sales lull for various reasons (company smothered in providing for the KS lacks capacity to keep retail provided for; customers in retail get a glut on the KS and slow spending after etc....)

But if things keep going as they are BTech I think will very quickly rise up much faster than most other newer wargames.

Because in the end its not really new, its an oldhand that's had a very long period of really diminished size.



Meanwhile games like Dystopian Wars are on the up, but at a much more normal steady rate of growth.


It will be interesting to see what CB does with their potential space game with Infinity. Battlefleet Gothic has been the elephant in the room for years but hasn't reared its head; Firestorm Armada died with Spartan Games and whilst WC have the licence and have released concept art and some beta gamework, they've not brought it to market and DWars is their main Spartan focus right now.
Meanwhile Dropfleet Commander never really capitalised on ending up with the whole market to itself and honestly I feel like both it and Dropzone have failed to grow as much as I would have expected.

Naval combat games really seem to struggle to gain a foothold. I'm not sure I've ever seen one actually played other than Armada since I last saw BFG played 15+ years ago.

I sometimes wonder if its just because GW hasn't supported one in a big way in a long while and the market just needs cracking with a huge amount of marketing, advertising, push and such from a leader to help the concept of the game establish itself in more people's minds eye.

Then again human characters are often more readily identified with people (its a big reason why a lot of TV series and films will use humanoid characters as leads even in fantasy/alien shows).
Meanwhile a lot of Naval games often focus a lot on the machines of war and much less on the characters of war. Even GW failed a bit on that front outside of Abbadon.

So it might just be that the Navy games aren't doing enough to create stories, lore, artwork that promotes more than just the battleship/spaceship.

Victory at Sea and Black Sails from Warlord seem to be doing fine.

Do you mean a sci-fi naval combat game?