Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So take MK1, integrate the FAQ that they used to have on their website and a few ideas here and there from MKII and MKIII (shaking, jacks not destroyed after losing 3 systems and stuff like that) and republish Prime.

Launch new miniatures, maybe in 42mm scale, made entirely of resin and metal and start the whole Warmachine train over again.

The new page 5 should emphasize:

Painting your miniatures
Telling stories on the table top
Playing to see what happens rather than to always win

--

This is pretty much what it would take for me to return to Warmachine. The new page 5 plus the change in scale invalidating everyone's army should do a good job of pruning the community of it's most toxic members who turn every game into tournament practice. The massive decrease in available models will also get rid of the synergy spiral where a new player pretty much has no choice but to accept that everything they bought so far sucks and they basically need to start their army over again getting only the tiny subset of their faction that is actually good.

I think I also miss the lower model count of MK1. It seems like 75 points today is like 1000 points back then.

No.

Heck No.

Do you remeber MK 1? It was terribly unbalanced and involved one player steamrolling the other until you mercifully finished them off.

I played in all organized play leagues through the entirety of MK1. Outside of a few particularly bad combinations (Skarr Bomb) and some rules blunders (Scorsha freezing everything not just in LOS) it was actually more balanced than MK3. The reason being that there were simply way, way less models to choose from. Now that there are so many the power level between a well made list and a new person's list has never been greater.

It was also a super fun game for modes of play other than tournament type games.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
A really strong feature of MK1 was that you could take your army and switch your caster and have a totally different game experience that would still work. In the current state of things, your army will simply fall apart (unless the caster you switch to just happens to have a similar area covered in the feat and abilities). The new caster likely won't have the tools needed to support the extreme levels of synergy needed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
In MK3 such a small subset of models are worth taking that Privateer is clearing out their warehouse of all the crap that doesn't sell at basically 75% off retail. The only catch is you don't get to choose what you get. Wonder why? Probably because no one would take it if they knew what they were getting.

https://store.privateerpress.com/mystery-box-blowout

MK3 is the biggest balance failure in Warmachines history because of the proportion of each factions model base that is useless has never been higher.

No wonder they have to clear it out.

I say do a hard reset. Go back to what worked when the company was growing rather than this late stage stagnation.

Chamberlain wrote:
So take MK1, integrate the FAQ that they used to have on their website and a few ideas here and there from MKII and MKIII (shaking, jacks not destroyed after losing 3 systems and stuff like that) and republish Prime.

Launch new miniatures, maybe in 42mm scale, made entirely of resin and metal and start the whole Warmachine train over again.

The new page 5 should emphasize:

Painting your miniatures
Telling stories on the table top
Playing to see what happens rather than to always win

This is pretty much what it would take for me to return to Warmachine. The new page 5 plus the change in scale invalidating everyone's army should do a good job of pruning the community of it's most toxic members who turn every game into tournament practice. The massive decrease in available models will also get rid of the synergy spiral where a new player pretty much has no choice but to accept that everything they bought so far sucks and they basically need to start their army over again getting only the tiny subset of their faction that is actually good.

I think I also miss the lower model count of MK1. It seems like 75 points today is like 1000 points back then.

A change in the game’s scale invalidating everyone’s army would do more than prune the toxic members of the community – it would kill it off entirely. It’s a massive FU to absolutely everyone who plays the game at any level. WMH has enough issues at the moment that you don’t need to be doing this on top of everything else.

Im on board with a return of Page 5. But the Mk2 version was essentially solid. Play the best game you can, give it your all, be a decent chap, and don’t use the game as an excuse to be a douche to folks. PP do encourage painting – IMO, putting in a basic official painting requirement to the game would be enough here.

It seems to me that essentially, you don’t actually want to play warmachine – the way to get you to return to the game is to change absolutely everything about it to the point that essentially all its keeping is the name. what’s the point? At this point, you’re better playing something else.

Now, funnily enough, I do agree with the basic direction of your OP. the game is far too massively bloated at this point, to the point where the burden of knowledge to play the game is too big a hurdle to new blood getting involved, and to former players looking to jump back in. Personally, I’m on board a ‘legends’ format where what is legal is defined as the most recent version of a character (warcasters etc), and the game releases up to the point at the end of Mk1, only with Mk3 rules. And no themes. Then again, rather than invalidating peoples whole collections of models, I would personally carefully prune the faction rosters, amalgamate some unit choices and tidy them all up – for example, for me, there should be no druid ‘units’ in the Circle rosters. Druids should be solos or unit leaders/UAs. Units like kossites, idrians and the like should be folded into a generic ‘irregular’ unit. This would go a long way.

Chamberlain wrote:
I played in all organized play leagues through the entirety of MK1. Outside of a few particularly bad combinations (Skarr Bomb) and some rules blunders (Scorsha freezing everything not just in LOS) it was actually more balanced than MK3. The reason being that there were simply way, way less models to choose from. Now that there are so many the power level between a well made list and a new person's list has never been greater.

Remember ‘Vlad 2 and the flying Drakhun’, or the games where Bane armies with counter strike counter striking the counter strike that counter struck the initial attack happened. Or cryx ghost armies. Ghaspy? No, Mk1 was broken as all fethery, especially by the time of ‘legends’. It was not ‘better’ by any stretch of the imagination. Having a smaller selection of models didn’t make it any less broken when a handful of models like Vlad2 essentially won every tournament and dominated everything else.

Chamberlain wrote:
It was also a super fun game for modes of play other than tournament type games.

It was no more or less fun that it is now. PP have always published more scenarios than just their organised play stuff – the Escalation campaign being a personal favourite. PP still release loads of one-off, and narrative scenarios in NQ. Its just a matter of playing them.

Chamberlain wrote:
A really strong feature of MK1 was that you could take your army and switch your caster and have a totally different game experience that would still work. In the current state of things, your army will simply fall apart (unless the caster you switch to just happens to have a similar area covered in the feat and abilities). The new caster likely won't have the tools needed to support the extreme levels of synergy needed.

You exaggerate. This was never any different, even in Mk1. Try getting Irusk 2 to run a jack-based army back in Mk1. Things didn’t ‘just work’ back in the day sadly. I'm sure if we 'list-fu' the stuff from mk1 to the same degree that things are examined today, you'd see little difference, if any. What you are referring to seems to me to be an overemphasis on ‘group think’ in the community.

Chamberlain wrote:
In MK3 such a small subset of models are worth taking that Privateer is clearing out their warehouse of all the crap that doesn't sell at basically 75% off retail. The only catch is you don't get to choose what you get. Wonder why? Probably because no one would take it if they knew what they were getting.
https://store.privateerpress.com/mystery-box-blowout

PP clearing out their warehouse worries me far more than for that reason. I think it’s an ominous sign.

Chamberlain wrote:
MK3 is the biggest balance failure in Warmachines history because of the proportion of each factions model base that is useless has never been higher.
No wonder they have to clear it out.

A few of my friends still play though, and they disagree. Ive heard more than a handful of accounts that the state of balance of WMH is better than its ever been. Personally, I don’t think the balance is ‘bad’, but its not amazing either. Its probably ‘pretty decent’, to be fair. The current issues, more than anything else are the pre-eminence of theme-based listbuilding and the sheer bloody bloat of the game.

Chamberlain wrote:
I say do a hard reset. Go back to what worked when the company was growing rather than this late stage stagnation.

Can they do that and survive though? Can they recreate the conditions they had when the game was expanding, and they were a smaller company? I genuinely doubt it. It’s a different gaming landscape now than back in 2010. ‘going back to what worked’ would essentially kill them. What worked then may not work now. Especially after you've invalidated everyone's armies and forced them to buy in again. Sadly, PP are at the size/age where they are basically locked into pushing a product a certain way. The ‘wave’ nature of TTGs makes any kind of change out of this incredibly difficult. Truth be told, you’re probably better off just getting into a new game.

Deadnight wrote:

PP clearing out their warehouse worries me far more than for that reason. I think it’s an ominous sign.

I'd not be too concerned about this. The warehouse clearance seems to largely be a result of their attempts at sprue plastic. Since it was outsourced, they had to put in a print run order and that order had to be large enough to cover the initial store demand at a distributor level and future stock as a second print run would likely run into a good number of delays. This happens pretty often whenever you outsource production, particularly on something like sprue plastic where large orders get you steep discounts. Eventually sales level off and you get an idea how much extra you have in stock you ended up with and sell it off because.... well, it was borderline free to produce so selling it cheap is still pretty profitable.

This is particularly true for PP who traditionally has done production in house and could largely control production to meet demand. The move to resin really helps them return to this format and I suspect they're finding themselves happier having control than reacting to overseas manufacturing. In that case, if the main demand for warehouse space is to store plastic colossal kits, which we've seen is a design space with high but limited demand, well... clear them out and focus on what works for you.

Chamberlain wrote:So take MK1, integrate the FAQ that they used to have on their website and a few ideas here and there from MKII and MKIII (shaking, jacks not destroyed after losing 3 systems and stuff like that) and republish Prime.

...

I think I also miss the lower model count of MK1. It seems like 75 points today is like 1000 points back then.

First off, Page 5 was just the basic rules for having a good game. It told the obnoxious to back off and the hesitant to grow a pair. It's sad if people need this to be a reminder. Everything you put in was rather pointless around that. If you want a narrative game, they have scenarios for that or you can create your own. If you want to only play against painted models, that's your choice, but good luck having many games.

The lower model count of Mk1 was due to many factors, but as with all games, they are mostly dependent on the people you are playing with, not Privateer Press.

More importantly, Warcasters and Warlocks cost points to take in Mk1. They literally were a super solo with a battlegroup. Mk2 introduced the WJ/WB points to get people to bring in more models, and its not like you have to use all your WJ Points as it is, it's just not wise.

Deadnight wrote:Now, funnily enough, I do agree with the basic direction of your OP. the game is far too massively bloated at this point, to the point where the burden of knowledge to play the game is too big a hurdle to new blood getting involved, and to former players looking to jump back in. Personally, I’m on board a ‘legends’ format where what is legal is defined as the most recent version of a character (warcasters etc), and the game releases up to the point at the end of Mk1, only with Mk3 rules. And no themes. Then again, rather than invalidating peoples whole collections of models, I would personally carefully prune the faction rosters, amalgamate some unit choices and tidy them all up – for example, for me, there should be no druid ‘units’ in the Circle rosters. Druids should be solos or unit leaders/UAs. Units like kossites, idrians and the like should be folded into a generic ‘irregular’ unit. This would go a long way.

Great, let's go back to the days where the only ones who have Jr Warcasters and Lesser Warlocks to take their beasts are Cygnar and Minions. Everybody but Ret would lose Eiryss, so I guess that would be a good thing... Sure it would reduce the sku list, but we'd have to release some new models to fill the void or just rewrite old models to have new names to fill them.

No premeasuring - no interest.....

Deadnight wrote:

A change in the game’s scale invalidating everyone’s army would do more than prune the toxic members of the community – it would kill it off entirely. It’s a massive FU to absolutely everyone who plays the game at any level. WMH has enough issues at the moment that you don’t need to be doing this on top of everything else.

You're probably right about this. The biggest issue with the current product line is how it has sprawled. So if they did return to a core vision and had only a portion of the current product line available, you'd probably get a nearly equally negative reaction. A scale shift and an across the board invalidation sends a pretty clear message that the old is over. It's just probably also the case that their business would be over as well.

It seems to me that essentially, you don’t actually want to play warmachine – the way to get you to return to the game is to change absolutely everything about it to the point that essentially all its keeping is the name. what’s the point? At this point, you’re better playing something else.

Over the years I've seen a change from the game being a miniatures wargame with terrain and a pretty wide variety of how people approach it to a laser like focus on tournament type games. Even terrain has disappeared from many people's tables and has been replaced by mousepads. Wouldn't the miniatures pretty much be cylinders at this point?

Perhaps MK3 could be replaced with a board game with laser cut pog discs that you use on your mousepads? A new expansion comes out and you can buy a pack of all the new stuff for a faction on a couple laser cut card sheets? And maybe bundle things with the mousepad terrain and objective area templates so it's not all third parties making the money on those? Miniatures are then an optional upgrade?

Personally, I’m on board a ‘legends’ format where what is legal is defined as the most recent version of a character (warcasters etc), and the game releases up to the point at the end of Mk1, only with Mk3 rules. And no themes.

This might actually solve my main issue with the game. Some time in the middle of MKII the game hit a tipping point when it came to synergy. When the difference between a properly constructed list and one that had some issues widened like an enormous canyon.

Remember ‘Vlad 2 and the flying Drakhun’, or the games where Bane armies with counter strike counter striking the counter strike that counter struck the initial attack happened. Or cryx ghost armies. Ghaspy? No, Mk1 was broken as all fethery, especially by the time of ‘legends’. It was not ‘better’ by any stretch of the imagination. Having a smaller selection of models didn’t make it any less broken when a handful of models like Vlad2 essentially won every tournament and dominated everything else.

Yes, there would definitely need to be a review. Which is kind of what happened for MK2, I guess.

It was no more or less fun that it is now.

I disagree. The "everything is broken" thing works really well when you don't tune your lists. Or when you simply could not tune them as far because you didn't have nearly the number of options. Yes, you have some things like Vlad2 causing problems but when you just took what you thought was cool your army still felt like it does stuff. In MK2 and 3 if you mismatch things a bit, things feel useless. Probably purely as a result of the sheer amount of synergy you can now put in a list.

So I think the Legends format is actually the real solution here.

You exaggerate. This was never any different, even in Mk1. Try getting Irusk 2 to run a jack-based army back in Mk1. Things didn’t ‘just work’ back in the day sadly. I'm sure if we 'list-fu' the stuff from mk1 to the same degree that things are examined today, you'd see little difference, if any. What you are referring to seems to me to be an overemphasis on ‘group think’ in the community.

I think that's fair. Which is part of the problem. The more casual players locally have all been driven away. Their collection of models that they got because they thought they were cool are all totally pointless against a current tournament proven army. And playing tournament practice type games has become far more the accepted norm in a lot of places.

Though I also think I'm correct for the same reasons you mentioned the Legends format. If you have less units to choose from then the odds of your army being heavily reliant on the perfect combination of abilities is lower. So the more general the army, the more likely a warcaster will be able to contribute something.

A few of my friends still play though, and they disagree. Ive heard more than a handful of accounts that the state of balance of WMH is better than its ever been.

I have no doubt that the game is balanced between opponents who take equally tuned lists. The problem is that the larger model pool gives increased options so that the power level between lists can be enormous.

PP clearing out their warehouse worries me far more than for that reason. I think it’s an ominous sign.

Perhaps I've come too soon. That I'm simply too early in making this thread.

Instead of bloating the major factions more, I would be happy if they just focused on the smaller limited release factions, or just worked on getting out more new ones like the Crucible Guard or Infernals.

 Chamberlain wrote:

It was no more or less fun that it is now.

I disagree. The "everything is broken" thing works really well when you don't tune your lists. Or when you simply could not tune them as far because you didn't have nearly the number of options. Yes, you have some things like Vlad2 causing problems but when you just took what you thought was cool your army still felt like it does stuff. In MK2 and 3 if you mismatch things a bit, things feel useless. Probably purely as a result of the sheer amount of synergy you can now put in a list.

Functionally irrelevant. Just taking 'what you thought was cool' won't do jack when what I take is Vlad 2 [insert what's broken]. It's irrelevant how much or little you tune your handful of options, or your gazillion options. Broken is broken.

Hard counters have been a part and parcel of warmachine since the original butcher1 'get off mah lawn' model and the original ironclad metal that made Matt Wilson saw 'guys, the only way we can sell this is by turning this rpg into a wargame'.

 Chamberlain wrote:

You exaggerate. This was never any different, even in Mk1. Try getting Irusk 2 to run a jack-based army back in Mk1. Things didn’t ‘just work’ back in the day sadly. I'm sure if we 'list-fu' the stuff from mk1 to the same degree that things are examined today, you'd see little difference, if any. What you are referring to seems to me to be an overemphasis on ‘group think’ in the community.

I think that's fair. Which is part of the problem. The more casual players locally have all been driven away. Their collection of models that they got because they thought they were cool are all totally pointless against a current tournament proven army. And playing tournament practice type games has become far more the accepted norm in a lot of places.

Then play casual games and ignore the tournament builds? I did it a few years ago with a few mates from Glasgow - we weren't interested in 'swimming with the sharks' with the tournament builds of the day - we just wanted to get our stuff out and play some games. And as soon as we put a big 'not interested in tournaments' flag up, loads of former players driven out by the tournaments arms race came back in.

How you and your community approaches the game matters. But you decide how you play. You decide what kind of game you bring to the table. No one else. If you and a bunch of mates want to play a particular way, then chuck 'the meta' under a bus and just do your own thing.

I totally agree Deadnight,

We have managed to get people interested in the game at our store in the sleepy little town I live at by just throwing out goofy fun lists, and playing on *gasp* 3d terrain.

I would rather have a slightly less exact game on 3d terrain than be worried about every millimeter on 2d terrain. And you know what, once we started playing on 3d terrain and just playing for the fun of it... People started coming by our tables to check it out and ask questions.

TBH I have found the only thing that is needed to attract people to the game has been a good friendly attitude and creating a welcoming environment to play in. WM/H is designed to be a game that has a winner and a loser and has defined win/lose objectives. Also pretty much all of the rules are tight and there is no need for rules lawyering. The issue is not the game, it’s the community.

Our gaming group has been very successful in attracting new people to it and keeping them. We are open, have good laugh and don’t take it all too seriously. Interestingly though half of us are quite high level tournament players. But we believe in not rofflestomping noobs, we believe in running teaching games where we coach people through games over a cup of tea (or something stronger), we believe strongly in painting. We grow the community we wanted.

Re-terrain im a very strong advocate of something I like to call “2.5D” terrain. There is now loads of good quality, accurate 3D terrain that for exactly on top of some of the SR/2D terrain templates on the market. So we have our beautiful 3D terrain on top of a 2D template so if we need to remove it for some reason on measurement or model overhang we can without disrupting placement. I was hopeful that PP would produce more terrain after they put out the trench set a few years ago, but alas.

Returning to some strange idea of Mk1 is a total nonstarter. The answer is to build strong communities and that starts with us.

Deadnight wrote:
Then play casual games and ignore the tournament builds? I did it a few years ago with a few mates from Glasgow - we weren't interested in 'swimming with the sharks' with the tournament builds of the day - we just wanted to get our stuff out and play some games. And as soon as we put a big 'not interested in tournaments' flag up, loads of former players driven out by the tournaments arms race came back in.

A few years ago that would have worked great. Now 90%+ of those people are back playing their first love, the Warhammer games. I think perhaps the window for this might have closed. And perhaps as well as being too early in my call for some sort of reboot, I may also be too late.

What's funny to me is how Warmachine's Page 5 pitched it as a game that forces you to be aggressive, when in reality the way threat ranges, trades, and assassins work out is that you have to play very carefully, and the scenario needs to force people into the middle of the table.

Meanwhile, they were making fun of WH40K, which often has pickup games of people charging straight across the board at each other as quickly as possible. I think Warmachine came out around when Rhino rush was popular.

Anyway, the alpha strike of 8th edition means people are gearing up their armies to deliver as much firepower as possible in the first turn. That's playing like you got a pair. When a Warmahordes player figures out how to cause some damage in the first turn, the player base whines until it's errata'ed away.

When I tried Warmachine back in 1st edition, my friends and I thought that single caster games were just the warm-up to playing with more than one caster at a time. I wish the game went in that direction instead of filling up every card with special rules.

I wouldn't want to go back to 1st edition, but I'll take a 3rd edition with simplified cards and 3D terrain.

Pink Horror wrote:
What's funny to me is how Warmachine's Page 5 pitched it as a game that forces you to be aggressive, when in reality the way threat ranges, trades, and assassins work out is that you have to play very carefully, and the scenario needs to force people into the middle of the table.

Forces? No. Page 5 was an encouragement for a hesitant to take a risk, because that is how you get the payday and create a memorable experience. That's partly why a Warcaster and Warlock are so powerful and tough (when compared to a solo of similar size). Playing a hesitant game leads to a boring game where it is too predicable.

Pink Horror wrote:
When I tried Warmachine back in 1st edition, my friends and I thought that single caster games were just the warm-up to playing with more than one caster at a time. I wish the game went in that direction instead of filling up every card with special rules.

You can play with more than one caster at any time and at any point level, so long as your opponent agrees to it. People get too locked in to very artificial constraints.

Given that he contrasted that with the amount of rules present on each card, I think it's safe to assume Pink Horror thinks the rules don't support multi caster play very well.

I tend to agree. There's enough stuff going on without adding another list of abilities, spells and a feat.

I happen to like the higher rules concentration on fewer models myself, but I get what Pink Horror is saying.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
And I think Pink Horror is actually right that for all the talk of aggression and exciting stuff happens, the game actually encourages a lot of caution. Part of any new player's learning curve is the game suddenly ending because they were not cautious and hesitant enough.

It doesn't just punish you for exploring through risk taking, such behaviours immediately end the game.

This is true of all versions of Hordes/Warmachine though. Though I guess with the increased synergy and every spell, ability or feat that adds to your army's offensive power, the worse the situation get.

 Chamberlain wrote:

Painting your miniatures
Telling stories on the table top
Playing to see what happens rather than to always win

I admire your dedication to what true gaming WAS...but your finger is nowhere near the pulse.
Gamers today don't give a feth about any of that.
They just want to use their toys to humiliate people and earn bragging rights.
That's all that matters now sorry.
It is a shame though.

You're probably right about that.

In our local group (which have all left warmachine) we have to really actively guard against new people bringing in such an approach. Step one is insisting there can be no unpainted miniatures on the table at all. That gets rid of 90% of the problem players right there.

 Chamberlain wrote:
You're probably right about that.

In our local group (which have all left warmachine) we have to really actively guard against new people bringing in such an approach. Step one is insisting there can be no unpainted miniatures on the table at all. That gets rid of 90% of the problem players right there.

And 95% of your new players. This is how gaming Metas die.

 Chamberlain wrote:
You're probably right about that.

In our local group (which have all left warmachine) we have to really actively guard against new people bringing in such an approach. Step one is insisting there can be no unpainted miniatures on the table at all. That gets rid of 90% of the problem players right there.

Great way to drive away business if your group doing this at a shop, for the sake of the owner I hope your playing at home. Might want to try not being so self righteous

 Chamberlain wrote:
Given that he contrasted that with the amount of rules present on each card, I think it's safe to assume Pink Horror thinks the rules don't support multi caster play very well.

I tend to agree. There's enough stuff going on without adding another list of abilities, spells and a feat.

I happen to like the higher rules concentration on fewer models myself, but I get what Pink Horror is saying.

0 pts, 2 Battlegroups, no Theme. Model count is actually considerably less then if you take a Battlegroup-centric Theme. All it takes is the will to play it.

There are many different units and solos which add different lists of spells and abilities, and Attachments which add a "feat" to the unit. And its not like the list has grown that much on the average card. There are just far more cards available to work with.

There’s lots of fun alt formats people refuse to acknowledge online. Cons generally see some thunderdome which is pretty awesome and zero point multicaster games are good fun too.

Those alt formats sound great. Though I think Pink Horror was hoping something like that would be more the norm rather than alternative.

ChargerIIC wrote:

And 95% of your new players. This is how gaming Metas die.

We're still growing. Just not with Warmachine players. The remnant of them definitely couldn't handle a painting requirement.

Chute82 wrote:

 Chamberlain wrote:
You're probably right about that.

In our local group (which have all left warmachine) we have to really actively guard against new people bringing in such an approach. Step one is insisting there can be no unpainted miniatures on the table at all. That gets rid of 90% of the problem players right there.

Great way to drive away business if your group doing this at a shop, for the sake of the owner I hope your playing at home. Might want to try not being so self righteous

Strategies in Vancouver seems to do pretty well with their painted only policy. It makes sure the games people see when getting into the hobby don't look awful. Like a bunch of grey crap on mouse pads.

We mostly play in space we rent (and home gaming) and when we do play in stores, store owners remark positively about everything being painted.

If someone has standards and that makes you think they are self righteous, that's probably more of an indication of your own insecurity than anything else.

Our group originally started as a warmachine hordes club. Other games beat that game out over the last few years. The local scene really took a nose dive after all that mouse pad terrain proliferated and every game because tournament practice all the time.

None of the five people who have been pressgangers locally over the life of the game still play the game. Something is pretty bungled when your most passionate players don't play anymore. My idea of a new figure scale and something closer to Mk1 is likely a non starter, but I think something needs to change.

This sub forum is probably more viewed by current players, but I bet dakka has loads of ex wmh players. I wonder if anything would bring people back at this point. My bad idea would probably only get me and a couple others back in though. And my main issues are more about faction bloat though

 Chamberlain wrote:
Step one is insisting there can be no unpainted miniatures on the table at all. That gets rid of 90% of the problem players right there.

That's always a good idea.
You can already tell the types of people you'd want to keep out from the aggresive reactions to this statement.
They are of course no loss. Players with no self respect who are happy to put 0 effort into their intetests have no respect for others and should be shunned vigorously.

Historical players pretty much have an unspoken and unwritten law about gaming only with painted miniatures. Yet historical gaming is still growing strong.
So it says allot about certain groups apposed to effort.

Wow. I like playing with and against painted minis, but I’d rather have a good game against the grey horde than people judging a person’s worth based on whether or not their minis are all painted.

To each their own, and good on you folks for having a group of like-minded players you enjoy playing with.

I paint, the guys at the store paint. We play Warmachine. I prefer WMH to other games I’ve played. I’ve only played 3rd, and it’s fun for me. Even if I don’t have the time and effort to master the meta, I just like the game.

No judging a person's worth at all. 90% of problem players having unpainted miniatures does not in any way mean that 90% of people with unpainted miniatures are problem players. That's simply not the case. The vast majority of people who play with unpainted miniatures are reasonable people. They just want different things for their games and that's cool. They're welcome to join in any painted only game they want to when they get around to painting their miniatures. People have busy lives so I totally get it if that's not a priority for people.

I think Privateer is probably going to have to put some serious thought into the future of Warmachine and Hordes. They're still holding on alright in some areas, but GW's massive resurgence has probably hit them pretty hard. Maybe I'm wrong that they should copy GW's approach of being really hobby and story focused. Maybe they should double down on their competitive side of things.

I just found the MK1 period pretty consistently fun and the early MK2 period probably the best time for the game, even if it was getting more competitive and tightly focused on powerful lists more widely. I don't actually think there's anything wrong with MK3 other than the huge amount of available models means that the power level of a well designed list is super high and no faction really has any niche protection any more.

 Chamberlain wrote:
No judging a person's worth at all. 90% of problem players having unpainted miniatures does not in any way mean that 90% of people with unpainted miniatures are problem players. That's simply not the case. The vast majority of people who play with unpainted miniatures are reasonable people. They just want different things for their games and that's cool. They're welcome to join in any painted only game they want to when they get around to painting their miniatures. People have busy lives so I totally get it if that's not a priority for people.

I think Privateer is probably going to have to put some serious thought into the future of Warmachine and Hordes. They're still holding on alright in some areas, but GW's massive resurgence has probably hit them pretty hard. Maybe I'm wrong that they should copy GW's approach of being really hobby and story focused. Maybe they should double down on their competitive side of things.

I just found the MK1 period pretty consistently fun and the early MK2 period probably the best time for the game, even if it was getting more competitive and tightly focused on powerful lists more widely. I don't actually think there's anything wrong with MK3 other than the huge amount of available models means that the power level of a well designed list is super high and no faction really has any niche protection any more.

Can we just take a moment and appreciate how the avatar and post content synced there for a moment?

*shrug* When someone says they get rid of 90% of "problem" players by insisting on fully painted armies, I have a hard time not perceiving this as a form of judgement of their worth. Creating an arbitrary system by which a person is "good enough" to play with.

Essentially, if I want to get rid of 90% of Fish players, and I insist that all games must be played on land, then I'm getting rid of all Fish, aren't I? I judge that 90% of Fish aren't fun to play with, even if 10% of them are ok, I still won't play them because they're Fish. That's, uh, whaddyacallit? Prejudice? Making wide sweeping assumptions about all Fish based on their inability to play above water? Anyhow, just my take. Different people like different styles of games, and all the power to them.

I find 3rd works just fine for my casual interest in it... though I would like to see some decrease in bloat to make it a bit easier to get into it in a more competitive approach. Kind of too much to learn / get exposed to for me to get into the hard competition aspect.

Since not playing with unpainted miniatures is based on actions and not on people's personal characteristics, I don't think it's prejudice in any real sense of the word. Unpainted miniatures is not a race, religion, creed, culture, sexual or gender identity or any other personal characteristic that it's actually bad to discriminate against. It's the opposite. It's as action based as it can get.

Those good people who are excluded from participating because they don't paint their miniatures tend to just get over themselves and join in after they get around to painting enough stuff for a given league or whatever.

ValentineGames wrote:

You can already tell the types of people you'd want to keep out from the aggresive reactions to this statement.

I can see that.

Well adjusted people simply don't cry "prejudice!" when someone says they only play with painted miniatures on the table. They go "okay, I can see the appeal but I don't have time" and get on with their lives, touching base again in the future when they've managed to find time to paint.

Greatbigtree, I don't think you really are "crying prejudice" but simply trying to get me to see that my position might be. And you've done so in a very reasonable fashion. I just don't think something based on actions (do you paint miniatures) and not characteristics can be that sort of prejudice.

BIG EDIT:

Screw it. I'm dropping it. Both of our heads can't fit in there.