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There's no doubt a number of the big podcasts and tournament stars got married or had their first kid around the launch of MK3. I certainly ran into that problem myself in terms of being able to regular demo and run events for the game.

There's also the issue with growing a product like this, and how after a while you either run out of room to expand horizontally or you need a new product.

Nurglitch wrote:
There's also the issue with growing a product like this, and how after a while you either run out of room to expand horizontally or you need a new product.

Go go back and re-imagine what you already made. That's one trick GW has used for years and years. Whilst they expand armies outward as well, they've also spent years revisiting old models and re-releasing them in new designs. Of course one thing that lets them do this is because they continually advance their sculpting and casting options. Many smaller firms can only increase the former in-house whilst the latter can be much harder to improve when you have to hire and outside firm who might not have high quality models as their bread and butter earner or focus.

Still PP could easily start going back to first generation models and releasing new updated sculpts. Some are what, 10 years old? A new updated Warpwolf would likely be able to take advantages of shifts in their design ethos and skill even if its still cast in the very same metal.

 Overread wrote:

Nurglitch wrote:
There's also the issue with growing a product like this, and how after a while you either run out of room to expand horizontally or you need a new product.

Go go back and re-imagine what you already made. That's one trick GW has used for years and years. Whilst they expand armies outward as well, they've also spent years revisiting old models and re-releasing them in new designs. Of course one thing that lets them do this is because they continually advance their sculpting and casting options. Many smaller firms can only increase the former in-house whilst the latter can be much harder to improve when you have to hire and outside firm who might not have high quality models as their bread and butter earner or focus.

Still PP could easily start going back to first generation models and releasing new updated sculpts. Some are what, 10 years old? A new updated Warpwolf would likely be able to take advantages of shifts in their design ethos and skill even if its still cast in the very same metal.

I think the question, which is why they're still casting in resin and metal, is how many Warpwolfs can you sell? I suspect they can't sell enough to justify the cost of plastic tooling,etc. Monsterpocalypse and Grind were their attempts, as I understand it (and probably not terribly well) at mass market products, and given that the former has been rolled back to metal/resin that seems like it indicates they're inclined to cater to their existing fans rather than try to expand non-organically. I think some of the success of GW over the years has been that word-of-mouth expansion that grew the customers enough to both expand and redo their ranges.

Not to mention that some models they did revisit, such as the trollblood warbeasts, ended up vastly inferior to the originals

The problem for companies "Not GW" is that they need mass sales to make plastic work; however the modern market sort of wants plastic before it will gain mass appeal.

You can see a problem there.

Furthermore because GW sets a very high bar for plastics the bar for any company following into plastics has to be high too.



Some companies get around it by using Kickstarter, however that comes with its own rafter of risks including that you oversaturate your own market for a long period after the KS ends. You can also end up trapped in a KS pattern where you gain lots of customers who only want to spend at KS prices not at retail prices.
Or you end up trapped needing a second KS to fund the first etc... ergo you end up locked into using KS over and over.

Or you can end up with a factory that doesn't work great first time around and suddenly you've got to find a second or third one and the KS runs over budget and drains your resources.




PP might have the best approach in keeping their production in-house and perhaps working toward steady purchase of plastic casting equipment. Of course then they need highly skilled people to operate them and still mass sales to make it work. It's tough, esp as its only got more expensive ove the year; the competition has grown stronger and GW keeps pushing the bar higher.

At my LGS it was very noticeable when WM/H tapered off.

The week after the PG program ended the local (former) PG had the WM/H crowd playing Guildball. Few weeks later and the suddenly anemic WM/H section was emptied out and the shelf space was taken over by the now expanded 40K section.

You’d see more people there playing BattleTech or historicals after that.

It was 1 month after MkIII dropped at my store.

There were 10+ players on most days, then there was me.

While it has staggered back a bit, it's not nearly as large as it was during MKII days.

Again, this was at my usual store.

So, given the market conditions we've discussed, what was so appealing about MkII that wasn't appealing about MkIII. Warmahordes isn't something I was interested in playing, but I am interested in what is appealing about it to other people.

At the time of MK2 its rules clarity and resource management made it a stand out game in terms of making player decisions more impactful than dice rolls. That's still very much the case, but its also something that's become something of the baseline for a new game since its release. The whole era of "MK2" with things like Malifaux M2E, Infinity N2/N3 and the like were about taking their original rules and rewriting them in a keyword driven style similar to what made Warmachine stand out initially. Even much of the success of 8th edition involves elements of Warmachine's appeal, though I think that's more a sign that those elements have become the norm than anything.

I think whats happened (not quite) locally highlights the impact of the loss of the PG program was

The game was pretty much dead in these parts until one chap took it upon himself to start cheerleading for it on our local FB game page

Managed to get it going again and had already had a few Steamroller days with passable turn-outs with more planned, sadly the blessing of Papa Nurgle has derailed it for the time being

 LunarSol wrote:
At the time of MK2 its rules clarity and resource management made it a stand out game in terms of making player decisions more impactful than dice rolls. That's still very much the case, but its also something that's become something of the baseline for a new game since its release. The whole era of "MK2" with things like Malifaux M2E, Infinity N2/N3 and the like were about taking their original rules and rewriting them in a keyword driven style similar to what made Warmachine stand out initially. Even much of the success of 8th edition involves elements of Warmachine's appeal, though I think that's more a sign that those elements have become the norm than anything.

There's a lot to be said about games one can actually play. What about the actual game though? Does it do anything you can't get elsewhere, or was it just easier to play than what was/is available?

The big appeal of Warmachine has always been rule clarity, both in the wording and PPs efforts to ensure consistent rulings. It creates a game where the rules are a universal language, capable of showing up anywhere with your stuff and having the same experience.

As for the game itself, there's a number of things it does really well. I'd say its probably the closest approximation of the appeal of American Football out there. It drives a great clash in the center where battlelines are as much about blocking physical space as attacking one another. Your turn feels similar to a football play with certain units tasked with creating holes in the enemy lines, others passing buffs to key pieces you use the combined efforts to take out a key piece. A caster assassination has the thrill of a QB sack, while winning on scenario often feels like you've driven the enemy back to the end zone.

All said and done, Warmachine is still my favorite mass battle game. I can't think of anything where I'm running 30 or more models on the table I'd prefer to play. Honestly, the main drawback to it for me now is just that I prefer games in the 5-15 model count on my terrain heavy boards.

 LunarSol wrote:
As for the game itself, there's a number of things it does really well. I'd say its probably the closest approximation of the appeal of American Football out there. It drives a great clash in the center where battlelines are as much about blocking physical space as attacking one another. Your turn feels similar to a football play with certain units tasked with creating holes in the enemy lines, others passing buffs to key pieces you use the combined efforts to take out a key piece. A caster assassination has the thrill of a QB sack, while winning on scenario often feels like you've driven the enemy back to the end zone.

Thank you, that makes sense.

 Nurglitch wrote:
So, given the market conditions we've discussed, what was so appealing about MkII that wasn't appealing about MkIII. Warmahordes isn't something I was interested in playing, but I am interested in what is appealing about it to other people.

I liked warmachine originally because it was a mix of chess and board/card game mechanics like resource management. It was generally a great game in their steamroller format at tournaments and conventions. It wasn't nearly as interesting in a casual format.

MKIII however made a lot of core rules changes that I didn't like. For instance I never liked theme lists in MKII and MKIII made them stronger so you basically always wanted to play in theme.

Though the bigger issue with warmahordes and why I don't play MKIII much anymore is the game feels both bloated and stale. I am just kind of bored of it at this point.

 Blood Hawk wrote:
I am just kind of bored of it at this point.

There is definitely something to the simple truth that by the time MK3 came around, we had all played a LOT of games and MK3 didn't significantly change things up. I really enjoyed the change to MK3, simply because big stompy robots were finally fun to play, but its not something that significantly changed the experience.

 LunarSol wrote:

 Blood Hawk wrote:
I am just kind of bored of it at this point.

There is definitely something to the simple truth that by the time MK3 came around, we had all played a LOT of games and MK3 didn't significantly change things up. I really enjoyed the change to MK3, simply because big stompy robots were finally fun to play, but its not something that significantly changed the experience.

I would agree with that. It also didn't help that one of factions that I primarily played was skorne which sucked pretty hard after MKIII dropped.

 Blood Hawk wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
So, given the market conditions we've discussed, what was so appealing about MkII that wasn't appealing about MkIII. Warmahordes isn't something I was interested in playing, but I am interested in what is appealing about it to other people.

I liked warmachine originally because it was a mix of chess and board/card game mechanics like resource management. It was generally a great game in their steamroller format at tournaments and conventions. It wasn't nearly as interesting in a casual format.

MKIII however made a lot of core rules changes that I didn't like. For instance I never liked theme lists in MKII and MKIII made them stronger so you basically always wanted to play in theme.

Though the bigger issue with warmahordes and why I don't play MKIII much anymore is the game feels both bloated and stale. I am just kind of bored of it at this point.

See i am the opposite. i looked at WM in MKI and just could not get into it, i opted for infinity instead. i love MKIII for the most part, but then again i never play steamroller and much prefer casual games with 3d terrain and sometimes we just do army games with no warcasters(just jack marshals or their equivalent if we want jacks/warbeasts) similar to kingdom of iron but with the entire armies. i see it as something akin to warhammer fantasy with a steampunk setting in the latter version.

I also never run theme lists WM style. my theme is to take units i think look cool. my khador are a mix of manowar and winterguard units.

P.S. i looked at skorne as a hordes faction but i mainly like all the construct units-ancestral guardians, advocate zaal, supreme guardians, immortal vessels and the like. they didn't really have any beasts that i liked other than the hydra, but it did not really fit the look of the army so i never went forward with it. .

 aphyon wrote:

 Blood Hawk wrote:

 Nurglitch wrote:
So, given the market conditions we've discussed, what was so appealing about MkII that wasn't appealing about MkIII. Warmahordes isn't something I was interested in playing, but I am interested in what is appealing about it to other people.

I liked warmachine originally because it was a mix of chess and board/card game mechanics like resource management. It was generally a great game in their steamroller format at tournaments and conventions. It wasn't nearly as interesting in a casual format.

MKIII however made a lot of core rules changes that I didn't like. For instance I never liked theme lists in MKII and MKIII made them stronger so you basically always wanted to play in theme.

Though the bigger issue with warmahordes and why I don't play MKIII much anymore is the game feels both bloated and stale. I am just kind of bored of it at this point.

See i am the opposite. i looked at WM in MKI and just could not get into it, i opted for infinity instead. i love MKIII for the most part, but then again i never play steamroller and much prefer casual games with 3d terrain and sometimes we just do army games with no warcasters(just jack marshals or their equivalent if we want jacks/warbeasts) similar to kingdom of iron but with the entire armies. i see it as something akin to warhammer fantasy with a steampunk setting in the latter version.

I also never run theme lists WM style. my theme is to take units i think look cool. my khador are a mix of manowar and winterguard units.

P.S. i looked at skorne as a hordes faction but i mainly like all the construct units-ancestral guardians, advocate zaal, supreme guardians, immortal vessels and the like. they didn't really have any beasts that i liked other than the hydra, but it did not really fit the look of the army so i never went forward with it. .

Warmahordes has too many gotchas and hard counters for me to really enjoy casual play. A no warcaster game does sound interesting, though it would be hard to sell since warcasters/warlocks are so central to the games identity.

As far as skorne goes for me it was all about the beasts and light infantry. I loved nihilators (for awhile they were my only infantry I owned outside beast handlers), titans and cyclops. The bronzeback titan was probably my favorite beast.

Games without casters are honestly just kind of boring. There's nothing special about the unit rules, so its just kind of a dice and stats matchup, that is just as prone to hard counters.

My sell for khador were clamjacks and the gun carriage. i ended up with the manowar solos just because i loved the models.

Sorry gotta disagree there lunar there are a bunch of special rules that make units unique. casters themselves are supposed to be incredibly rare and only take to the field of battle in limited actions. most of the battles in the lore are fought by the line troops like winterguard, trenchers, manowar units, stormguards, deliverers and the like.

It also prevents the caster cluster. so you can use the full table and lots of terrain.

If time and money(and space) constraints were not a thing i would definately build a rhulic 50 point list with high shields, and forge guard centered around the siege crawler for a straight up phalanx caster free battle line type game in the same vein as WHFB

I stopped playing in 2011 when I got a new job that left very little time for playing warmachine. I was a Press Ganger and also ran a stand at wargaming shows throughout the UK.

When I decided to get back into wargaming, I started by looking at warmachine. As I hadn't looked at any gaming web site for ages, I was surprised how WM/H had effectively vanished here in the UK.

The lack of players at my local shop means I am now returning to wargaming with 40K - a game which I last played in 2004!

Warmahordes is a dead game, and PP may be gone soon as well. So many reasons why.

From a player stand point: Too competitive, discouraged new players. Fixed movement led to games where players micromanaged each others moves. Visually, 3d terrain was discouraged, and terrain is a major component of miniatures games. Individual mini rules were crowd sourced for corrections leading to a minimization of army strengths and weaknesses, so Vanilla.

From a distributors point of view: Too many SKU's, then went direct sales to FLGS.

From an FLGS point of view: Too many SKU, removal of revenue streams by getting rid of books and cards and moving to APP. Loss of Press Gangers to help promote in stores. Going direct to consumer with large models (the center pieces of your army).

Blunders on Privateer's part: Removing Forums, focusing on other games when their flagship game was in crisis, and staff have told me that the wife of PP owner was not easy to work with, while the owner was more interested in shopping MONPOC movie to Hollywood than running his business. Owner doesn't live in same area as business or creative staff. When your business is in crisis, you have to grab the reigns or hire someone more qualified than you to do it. Finally, trying to create a new game, then finding out you have burned bridges with distributors, so they won't carry it. Burned bridges with FLGS, so they won't carry it. Then having to resort to crowd funding to launch it.

Another thing besides way to may SKUs is the fact PP has been having major sales on everything for the past few years.
From FLGS clearance things out to Blind box armies direct sales. If anyone was looking to finish an army they've had their chance with all the major sales.

 Genoside07 wrote:
Another thing besides way to may SKUs is the fact PP has been having major sales on everything for the past few years.
From FLGS clearance things out to Blind box armies direct sales. If anyone was looking to finish an army they've had their chance with all the major sales.

Yeah, I feel like for Privateer to keep going they have to contend with a very glutted aftermarket. It's hard to sell someone on a Cryx army when folks on Bartertown are trying to offload at 25% of retail and miniature market is having a sale every quarter.

In an ideal world you'd offset that by offering either a new game (which PP is trying with their kickstarter) or offering old units in plastic (which PP doesn't seem to have capital nor the will to do).

IMO WM/H is not a dead game. However we cannot pretend that it’s a game without issues. However the issues are NOT the game itself i.e. rules and factions. The issues are around supply, cost and the attitude of large parts of the community itself. I can only speak from UK experience, a place that has struggles over the last year to get new products into the UK due to issues with distributors (Wyrd and other companies have been hit with the same issue).

The thing is if you look at the metrics of people turning up to the big National comps in the UK and Europe, WM/H numbers are rising. I believe that last year was the biggest ever Welsh master for example, with over 180 players. The other EU comps are doing well also. However this also shows a huge flaw in how we measure success in the WM/H. The community seems to care more about numbers a big events rather than developing local metas, casual play, narrative play etc. Everything seems to be about the next SR or event, not about developing the scene. This is why I think that while numbers at comps is going up, the community seems to be gathering around a number of “hubs” rather than having lost of flourishing communities all over the country. I play in a basement group and don’t really travel to the play with the wider meta. But how many basement group like ours are there? Are there lots? Are we the only ones? We just don’t know because nobody seems interested in that side of things here in the UK.

The issues around cost, the 2nd hand market etc is well known and discussed to death. However when it comes to supply what does concern me is that many stores here in the UK can get stock if they wanted to. Like many other companies, the distributor to the UK isn’t very good. Wyrd was also hit with the same issues of getting stock to the UK. Im also a big Malifaux player so we had some interesting months. All a store needs to do is set up a direct ordering account with PP (same with Wyrd). The telling thing is that of all the big online and B&M store I know of in the UK, only one has done so which is why when new stuff comes out and I want it, I go to that store. Other stores don’t really want to deal with PP all that much for WM/H although many of them are now starting to carry Riotquest and MonPoc. PP really needs to work on rebuilding its relationship with stores in UK and Europe. OR get its own proper UK/EU distribution.

I LOVE WM/H, but the other fact is im not really sure where the game goes from here. It cant keep expanding and expanding. PP seems to be going down the route of less releases but doing more campaign packs, narrative play etc with the first one being the Oblivion set (which I enjoyed a huge amount). PP seems to have a good plan for the future with product plans for WM/H, Riotquest, MonPoc and Warcaster (the new game) and I hope they do well. I expect PP to do a “final rules release” for the game and then put model releases on hold and focus on its new products and supporting the community. And I would be OK with that.

I think the market glut isn't as big a problem as people think. A huge part of it is being bought up every time by "whale" type customers who are already still fans of PP. So the stock is shifting, just on steep discount.

This suggests a basically matured market which hasn't had lots of new models to feed it for a while so they are filling in bits or buying dirt cheap models to build that "next army".


With such a system it means that there should be ample room for PP to profit and retail sale if they can resecure a NEW generation of gamers. They basically need to focus purely on marketing, recruitment and getting local-level game organising back on the table again. If they can reboot that area of the business then in theory new people join in; old gamers come back and the market starts to rebuild itself.

Right now they are heading toward a viable, but continually dwindling loyal population that isn't expanding, but contracting. They've got to turn the contraction around with new customers and new gamers if they want the game to survive.



In some ways their new game they are launching might well help with that in bringing new people in and it lets them make a lot of noise; but without their own stores they've got to find ways to get local gamers or store owners back into some kind of PG system that allows them to encourage, promote and organise local level gaming.

The aftermarket glut is worrying for PP because of the reduced focus on hobbying and the sheer amount of stuff available from MKII or earlier. Basically, if you just want models to play with, used is fine, and you don't care about them looking amazing. If anything, pre-assembled models are a bonus!

Also, dead or dying games with low supply and low demand can still sell things at a good price, because there isn't enough stuff in circulation. That's definitely not the case with PP. There are tons of armies floating around for cheap, and not enough buyers.

Secondhand can be an issue and yet not. Look at GW - there are huge volumes of secondhand models in all states and yet new still vastly outsells them.


In fact with 40K I don't tend to see new people buying used and more established people. Those after specific older models; or those after a cheap army for the new meta etc.... New people are more likely to buy into new products right off the shelf to go with their new tools and book and such.

Of course those on stricter budgets are more likely to buy used when new to a game. However one can argue that if budget forces them to buy used then they aren't even the company's target market.

I can add about second hand market. It is not as big as it was before, a lot of people had off loaded their collections already and not everybody is trying to sell them. From time to time you get someone offloading a lot, but these are brief windows of opportunity. Though, price on new miniatures are dirty cheap. Even 40 euros for colossal is a hard bargain sometimes. I'm now negotiating price between 30 and 40 euros for it. It of course depends on where item is and how powerful it is considered. I can't get for example battle engines anywhere for cheap, you can forget about new OP releases too. Yet, I was lucky enough to get my new Hyperion kit for 40 euros with no one else bidding for it. I see other such biggies go in auctions at 40-60 euros.

Entire expensive, finished 75 point armies can go for 50-200 euros. I bought one, Khador cavalry army for 60 euros + import/shipping added another 60.

Individual pieces can go for as low as euro up to 5 euros. They are assembled and sometimes painted models.