The Recent Games Company Cull (Part 2)

In my last wall of text, I related my personal experiences as a gamer/customer in trying to support a Spartan Games product.  In this post, I'll go through some of the pitfalls that Spartan both could have avoided as well as those that were out of their control; if Monday morning arm chair quarterbacking isn't your thing then it might be best to skip this post. 

Halo, being a big licensed IP, was likely quite expensive to acquire as well as maintain.  Additionally, to my knowledge, the Halo Fleet Battles product line was the first to feature outsourced styrene plastic models instead of the traditional resin in house manufactured models in their wholly owned game lines which likely also required a significant initial cost.  That large amount of money needed upfront likely way over and above what Spartan was accustomed to made me wonder why they chose to do a space battle game as their initial foray.  The Halo games absolutely feature some impressive space battle set pieces (one or two of which were playable in fighters) but the game focuses on small unit combat with special characters.  Even in the multiplayer, the largest battle typically seen in most of the games was big team battle wtih 16 v 16.  In a universe that seems to be tailor made for 28mm skirmish combat on the tabletop expandable to the occasional vehicle, Spartan instead chose to do yet another space battle game.  Now I'm a fan of the genre who played my fair share of those types of games from FASA Star Trek (my first ever tabletop hobby game) to Babylon 5 (Wars and Fleet Action) to Full Thrust and even X-wing (albeit that last one is fighter centric and not capital ship focused).  I had tried Firestorm Armada a couple of times and didn't find the bucket o' dice mechanics to my liking nor the resin brick models either.  I was excited that the Halo line would include ship designs that I actually liked in a better IMO material but I always wondered despite my own bias why they decided to not only go with the obvious to me skirmish genre choice but also to cannabalize their own Firestorm Armada sales with a second space ship combat game.

Additionally, I was worried that Spartan's well established reputation of only focusing on one game at a time and switching focus before it was properly taken care of would continue.  I hoped that they would not do this with such an expensive licensed IP but that sadly did not appear to be the case.  The rules had issues that remained unaddressed for months and previewed follow up ships took months to arrive and when they did had serious casting issues that the company tried intially to dismiss.  Without even a proper and critical look at the rules as well as the release of already shown ships, Spartan announced in less than 6 months the next Halo game in yet another genre (15mm mass battle) that wasn't well suited to the IP and yet again competed with another of their existing product lines (the 10mm Firestorm Planetfall) released a couple years earlier.  Worse yet, the Halo Ground Battles products were deemed overly expensive by many gamers compared with other 15mm offerings with sales likely suffering along with perception.  This of course was in addition to their Steampunk Dystopian Wars ground and naval ship game lines that had been languishing for a while seemingly at the time.  Simply put... Spartan Games were seemingly living up to their reputation as a games company that couldn't properly focus on and support their existing lines before adding more to their plate.  Additionally, both genres had increased competition throughout the industry with games like Dropzone and Dropfleet Commander as well as other new kickstarted IPs in both genres as well as the first inklings from GW that specialist games like BFG and Epic might be making a return as well. 

On top of the issues above of their own making, it appears from the announcement that the owner, Neil, had some sort of serious health issue that precluded him from being as active in the company and it doesn't appear that anyone either was allowed and/or capable of acting in his stead so that the work flow suffered.  Additionally, their big and expensive Halo IP had actually become less popular in terms of raw sales with the buggy Masterchief Collection and followup Halo 5 significantly underselling compared with previous titles overall on top of the overall decline of the xbox as a platform due to poor choices with Xbox One marketing and design.  As I mentioned before, the expected (by me as well as my local store owner) local interest in the game simply never materialized and the poor choices by Spartan quickly eroded support that did come in.  Since my departure in 2016 from regular Spartan community contact, they've hit the reset button again on their other two lines via Kickstarter.  Dystopian World funded last year but was only partially delivered at the time of Spartan's closure.  Firestorm Armada which had just gotten its 2nd edition in late 2014 a couple months prior to the Halo Fleet Battles announcement was getting a third revamp in the ongoing Galaxy Kickstarter when the closure was annouced.  I'm not sure if any of their other lines got revamps as well in the meantime but I think that in the span of less than 3 years (late 2014 to mid 2017) that coming out with two completely new IPs and revamping two existing ones is quite a lot to do for a medium sized gaming company especially when those games directly compete with each other for the same gaming dollars.  Finally, the sudden closure of *everything* Spartan literally overnight meant that fans were yet again left in a lurch as years worth of fan made and even official but optional rules and scenarios disappeared along with many hobby blogs hosted on the official forums with no backups.  My own Halo hobby work here was simultaneously cross posted there and would be gone forever with no notice if I didn't also have a google blog. 

I'll end this 2nd part the same way that I started the first.  I wish the employees and owners of Spartan the best in the upcoming trying times as well as hope that their games and the fans that supported them land on their feet as well.  Regardless of my thoughts on how the company was seemingly run (I can only go off of speculation, common sense, and my own experiences.. no insider info here!), there were likely dozens of folks living their dream jobs in the industry and thousands more enjoying the fruits of their work that will now be affected in some way or the other.  I've toyed with the idea of selling my painted fleets but I think I'll keep them for use in some potential future game system or even a return to the agnostic Full Thrust rules that I previously enjoyed.  Thanks to any potential readers out there for bearing with me on this likey typo ridden wall of text as I put down my thoughts on the subject. 

The Recent Games Company Cull (Part 1)

Ashley over at the Paint it Pink Blog posted an article about the closure of Spartan Games last week and I figured I'd add my own thoughts (likely a two part series) on the subject as well given that I had (unsuccessfully) supported the Spartan Games' Halo Fleet Battles line in the past on this blog.   Before getting into the specifics on my experience with Spartan, I'd like to also add that it's been a particularly bad week for mid to small sized games companies with the closure of Tor Gaming last week as well as the prior closure of On the Lamb games as well that wasn't publicized as much.  I had never ordered from either company as their niche products didn't really scratch any of my own hobby itches but I have interacted with one of the owners of OTL on dakka in the past as was sad to hear about the closure.  In any case, the following will probably be a semi-stream of consciousness wall of text so consider yourselves warned.   The following blog posts/thoughts/guesses are my opinions going largely off of my own (occasionally flawed and admittedly biased) memory and experiences as well as publicly available information as I have zero insider knowledge of the behind the scenes happenings at Spartan.  I'd normally quote more sources to back up some of my comments but all hands (including the official news blog and forums) went down suddenly with the Spartan ship last week with no backup on waybackmachine.  In this first part, I'll start off with my own personal experiences and then later in the second post go over what I suspect lead to that downfall.

First off, I'll say that regardless of my thoughts that I'm never happy to see fellow gamers leaving the dream so to speak lose their job (some probably permanently in the industry).  There were indeed some talented and dedicated folks at Spartan games and I wish them well in their future endeavors.  That said... I fully believe that a large part of the failure of Spartan Games falls squarely on the shoulders on its leadership.  When I first considered getting into Halo Fleet Battles shortly after its announcement, these are some of the responses in the dakka thread that greeted me from their current and former customers:

"Spartan Games is branching into yet another game?"

"They will only drop it six months down the line. Give the license to a company who will support it."

"Maybe they'll have a special clause in the contract stating they should at least show some effort and give it a full year?"

"I'm not surprised... but I do think it means they'll spread themselves even thinner right when Planetfall needs (and deserves) full-time nurturing to get it established."

"This announcement does leave me with mixed feelings, as I want to like what Spartan has done recently in improving themselves, but I'm doubtful they could support a 5th game/3rd universe already. Time will tell."

 

"I am looking forward to Halo 2.0 (which will really be the 4th iteration of the same book and the 25th iteration of the same ruleset) in 18 months' time."

 "I believe the sentiment is more about Spartan's somewhat lack of attention span when it comes to their rules. Their first few years were a never ending cycle of revisions and half measures and starting up new games only to neglect them or other games. The new 2.0 rules mark a change where they've finally sorted out the problems and more or less established their 'core' products. "

Dakka has a rep for being a bunch of grumpy grognards (largely amongst unscrupulous small companies and their white knights) but I've found that alot of truth is found in posts on independent forums since other locations like facebook and company specific forums truly give companies a pass (and clamp down on anything else) too often despite objectively consumer unfriendly moves.  Obviously given the above comments (and this was NOT the first time I had heard about Spartan's reputation regarding long term support for their games), I can't claim to have gone into Halo with anything but my eyes open.  I simply hoped that with such a likely expensive IP that they would treat it right.  I was a bit surprised that they decided to take a video game that was almost exclusively about skirmish level combat focused on special characters and lead with a ship battle game but my own interest in the genre made me hope that it would be a success.  Unfortunately, I was wrong on both accounts.

After buying into the game with the core set and later some ship add ons, I found out that no one else bought anything from the line at my store including the friend of mine who initially was supposed to be buying his own core set and splitting the contents with me (with one of us getting the humans and the other the aliens).  That small initial shipment the owner ordered sat there on the shelf untouched until the store closed down the next year.  When the local Spartan game demo reps showed up the month after the release of the game, I came to the store hoping to get in a demo as my own minis were as of yet mostly unassembled.  The two company reps (two brothers) basically responded quite unprofessionally and angrily that they had zero interest in the game.  They were firmly fans of the existing OTHER Spartan games spaceship game (Firestorm Armada) and had no plans to demo, support, or even try the game when I offered to bring in my own minis.  They backtracked a bit later that evening with some more diplomatic "clarifications" of their earlier statements but their true feelings were quite obvious and were another warning sign for me.

Still mostly undaunted, I finished painting and assembling my minis now for both fleets as I fully expected that I'd have to bring both painted to realistically get anyone to try the game.  I found the actual minis to be of high quality and very intuitive to assemble.  I did have some issues with the packing leading to some damaged ship pieces and Spartan was VERY generous in replacing the damaged parts.  I had expected them to send me just the damaged individual pieces but instead they sent the entire sprues.  During the time it took me to build and paint my minis, I was active on the Spartan forums and kept hoping for more new ships to come out and both bolster my fleets as well as more importantly add some variant playstyles.  Unfortunately, the half dozen upcoming ships previewed both at the pre-release Salute convention as well as at the big GenCon premiere (hinted as future plastic releases) mostly didn't materialize in that first key 6 months.  Instead. the same three ships for each faction fromthe starter set were repackaged a myriad of times in different quanities and combinations with occasionally some minimally variant rules.

Finally around Christmas post release, the first of the ships previewed earlier finally came out in resin (instead of rumored plastic) and unfortunately had serious QA issues.  The large ships were obviously 3D printed and Spartan hadn't even bothered to clean up any the 3D printing lines on the ships so they showed very obvious stepping from the prototyping process.  When complaints were raised about those $85 (55 GBP) large centerpiece ships, the intial response on the forums and social media was to delete the complaints instead of addressing them.  Obviously that did not go over well with folks who paid so much for those products and the complaints increased.  Forum white knights started berating their fellow customers with the usual buck passing responses only further fanning the flames but eventually Spartan did the right thing and said they would address the situation.  Ultimately, they were very generous in their resolution again just shipping full new replacement ships to customers who complained but the damage was already done.  Folks like myself who witnessed the quality issues had already decided to wait and see what future ships would look like in person (or at least on the web post release) before ever ordering any of their resin products.

Over the next couple months, more ships were previewed but actual new releases were still a trickle (and strangely NOT the ships previewed almost 6 months earlier).  Issues with the rules were largely ignored until they started dominating the conversation about the game at which point they'd get a quick one line fix for that single issue.  Youtube channels that had covered the game previously either fell silent or announced they were dropping coverage of the game.  At that point, I sold most of my remaining unbuilt ships leaving myself with only the damaged parts sprues that I had gotten replacements for as well as those I had painted and I put my follow up fighter/bomber stands project on hold (I had hoped to replace the tokens with tiny miniatures instead).  This was in part a response to the worsening general tone of the conversation surrounding the game as well as my own personal inability to convince even a single person to just try the game when bringing two painted fleets to the FLGS.  More resin ships were finally making some progress in the pipeline to arrive early next year when Spartan made the annoucement that mostly killed my remaining enthusiasm for the game and proved the dakka grognards correct... after 6 months and only two flawed and expensive new followup product releases, Spartan was pleased to announce the release of the NEXT Halo game... the 15mm Halo Ground Combat.  At that point, I largely said my goodbyes on the official forums (and I certainly wasn't the first) but kept my painted ships just in case I had a future use for them in a generic ship combat game.  Over the next couple of months, I saw some news about them finally releasing the ships previewed the year before as well as announcing a Second Edition of the game rules less than a year after the release of the game (another bulleye for the dakka crowd).

With the next blog post, I'll go over some of the issues that I think contributed to the failure of both the above Halo Fleet Battles game as well as that of the company that made it.

2015 and Beyond... Part II

And now we get to what I unfortunately did not finish during 2015 as planned.  First up would be my long planned but stalled 28mm VOTOM/Heavy Gear squad.

While I did try a few paint schemes and techniques like traditional painting as well as washes/drybrushing, I never got the models to quite look how I wanted them toand stripped them down.  I dont think I ever covered it here on the blog but I also converted a snub cannon for the fifth model as well as some extra comm gear for the Jaeger Command squad leader.  I still plan on working on them eventually but the wait and see approach to the Heavy Gear kickstarter I took somewhat drained my enthusiasm for the project.  Perhaps the potential fulfillment of the rewards this year (delayed four months or more so far) will have the opposite effect.

The second project that I had planned but didn't complete was my small Space Wolf 40K Primarch ally force.

While I didn't touch Logan Grimnar on the right, I did a few coats of grey and some metallics on the Iron Priest on the left.  I again wasn't quite happy with the preheresy scheme effect I achieved but I also wasn't unhappy enough to strip it off either.   We'll have to see if I end up able to salvage it in the end.  Like the VOTOMS above, I don't really have a practical use for these in any future foreseeable game so they'll likely stay on the backburner for a while.

Finally, I'm back to what was posted on my last real hobby update and my first really hobby work of the new year...my 40K Tau Broadside conversion.

He's currently primed green with recesses washed black and ready to paint.  With even my glacial pace of painting, I should be able to finish him completely this month and be done for a second time with my Tau side project.  

After that, I'm not sure what I'll do in what order in 2016 but I do have a few ideas knocking around my head.  The easiest would probably be a set of house rules for improving (hopefully!) the effectiveness of fighter/bomber wing combat in Halo Fleet Battles as well as incorporating the boarding actions into the normal mechanics of the rest of the game instead of being entirely separate.  My tentative name for the house rules would be "Their Finest Hour" and I hope to start posting them next month.

Besides my two main stalled projects above, the only hobby work I've got planned is to repaint one of the new T-70 xwings in Poe Dameron colors after seeing the movie.  While I thought the movie was better than the prequels, it didn't entirely captivate me as I found most of the characters uninspiring (except Ray) and the plot too derivative of the original movie.  I did however like the battle scenes and especially the new xwing both in design and Poe's color scheme.

The other thing I'd like to do more of in 2016 is actually play games.  For a variety of different reasons, I only played a grand total of 4 games in all of 2015 from all game systems combined.  I'd probably focus on Halo if given a choice with the upcoming house rules needing some real world testing but I'm not particularly picky!  I'm not sure if my cellphone camera is up for it but I'll likely post battle report videos of any games I play this year both on youtube and linkef here on the blog.

Thanks as always for reading and I hope I didn't cause anyone to nod off while reading!  I've been pecking away at my tablet typing this so I apologize for any typos as I'll hopefully correct them in short order.

2015 and Beyond... Part I

I had initially planned on doing a detailed review of the year 2015 but something derailed my plans... netflix!  I had gotten a membership to the service for Christmas and ,instead of working on the final hobby project of the year and the year in review post, I've been watching things like Knights of Sidonia and Jessica Jones!  It's a bit late for a proper year in review but I'd still like to share a couple of some thoughts on 2015 and 2016 in a sort of State of the Blog address.

First, we'll start with 2015.  While it didn't feel like a particularly productive year, I did mostly accomplish several projects that I set out to do.  The first is my Farsight Tau ally army.

I actually completely finished this project around the summer but then ran into a bit of a snag as credible rumors started coming out about a new set of rules for the army.  When they did a few short weeks later, I realized I'd probably want to add another model to my small group to make it a functional force with the new rules.  I built, primed, and washed that final model (my Broadside conversion) but failed my will save vs Netflix and binged on some shows instead of finishing the model.  I do hope though to get it done this month though.

The next project that I worked on this year was my set of house rules for the Robotech Tactics minis game that I dubbed "Vermilion Squadron".

I got in early on the game's kickstarter in large part because of a promised set of small model count skirmish rules.  When half the rewards were finally released a year late (with the remaining half still pending and approaching three years late...grumble... grumble), the skirmish rules were unfortunately not included and got lost along the wayside.  I decided to try and make a relatively quick set of house rules to retrofit back into the game that functionality.  It wasn't as large in scope of a house rule product as my Heavy Gear houserules but I'm happy with the results.

The final main project that I worked on was two fleets for the newly released Halo Fleet Battles game.  I initially thought that I'd do only a single fleet that was easily divisible in half for demos; after finishing that first fleet, I decided to just make a proper OpFor for the game.

With a few non-modelled options like Spartans and Zealots onboard ships, I'm at around 900-1000pts for each fleet with regard to what I can carry in my foam case.  Not pictured above is the extra base of small UNSC frigates that replace the second large carrier for that faction.

Of course, not everything is rosy as I did have a pair of projects that I had planned to complete in 2015 that I didn't.  I'll be discussing them along with some initial thoughts on 2016 in the next post that I'll hopefully put out today as well.

The Alien Armada has arrived

Well, I finished up my Zentraedi themed Covenant fleet.  I tried to incorporate all the main colors (green, black, yellow, and grey) but had trouble putting the grey in.   There is usually a trim of black across the middle of Zentraedi ships that "blooms" into a grey area but I couldn't really find a good place to do it.  I tried putting a grey areas on the top, on the back "wings", and just on various struts underneath.  The biggest model, the ORS cruiser, has a spot for it on the top front but I wanted a consistent design throughout and didn't really find one so I decided to just accentuate a few minor fins in grey.

 
Normally I overcoat a few times with gloss spray and then do a final dull coat to take off the shine (too many layers of dull leads to frosting!)... but, as a nod to the usually metallic reflective Covenant color schemes, I decided to leave it shiny.  I think it's a nice juxtapostion to my dull coated utilitarian brick UNSC ships.

I've got more ships to build for both factions but I'll probably take a break from them for a bit because I don't actually have any space left to put more models in my carrying case for this game.  The above fleets give me roughly 800pts worth of ships for each side which is enough hopefully to get a taste of the game in practice and for unofficial demos.

Next up, I've got one more Tau Broadside battlesuit left to build for my small retaliation cadre to finish off the hobby work for the year.  While I didn't plan it that way, one more green model is on the way in 2015!

Have the Zentraedi joined the Covenant?

Just a quick update... I've decided to continue painting some of my Halo Fleet Battles ships to give myself a fleet to fight against with my UNSPACY fleet.  I had already dipped my toe in the Macross pool with my decals on the human fleet and my previous Covenant paint scheme (the "Tron Legacy" look) didn't work out as well as I had hope so I just went full in on the Macross crossover theme.  I'll be painting up my Covenant ships in the typical Zentraedi paint scheme from the anime shown below:

Zentraedi Fleet Paint Scheme

Sorry for the bad cell phone pic in a dimly lit basement but I just finished the work for today.  So far, I've done the base coat, a wash, and a drybrush of the base color again to highlight the raised parts.  I just have to pick out which parts I'll be detailing in black, grey, and yellow next.

I took out my x-wing miniatures from my carrying case so I have a little bit more room to play with.  Initially, I planned on just dividing up my human fleet down the middle for demos but the extra room gives me enough space to instead put in a roughly equal Covenant fleet along with an RDF/UEDF force for the Robotech minis game as well (my zentraedi were to be split down the middle for demos as well previously).  Now I'll have the rules, dice, counters, and minis for two separate Heavy Gear, Robotech, and Halo factions if I find someone interested in playing them.  On another side note, I finally got my Tau model over the weekend as well so I hope to finish off the year with that quick project to complete my mini-tau Farsight force.

Slipspace rupture detected!

I had planned on working on some Tau but there was/is a small complication with that plan so I worked on Halo instead.  Regarding the Tau, I picked a model on ebay and didn't notice that the seller had given himself a very generous two week handling time (in addition to shipping).  I haven't seen something like that on ebay for an "in stock" since the days before paypal when you'd send postal money orders in the mail and cross your fingers but it's my fault for not noticing that buried in the description.  

In the meantime, it's been a blessing in disguise as I've been able to work on my Halo Fleet Battles starter UNSC fleet instead.  There is nothing too fancy here but here is about a starter set's worth of ships (one big ship added, 15 of the tiny frigates not done).   The paint scheme is a simple two tone grey followed by a wash, drybrush, detailing, and edging. I unfortunately dont have an airbrush so no fancy engine or weapon lighting effects in this fleet. The scheme needed a little something more to accentuate the colors so I dug through my pile of decals and came up with the closest things to the UNSC eagle and title I could find.  I planned on working on another nine frigates this weekend but ironically my carrying case is completely full with this fleet so I'll probably hold off until I can find a regular opponent.

This fleet comes out to 1000-1250pts depending on how I configure the models in squadrons and how many fleet options that don't require physical models (like Spartans) I use.  I haven't played a game yet but from watching various youtube battle reports it should be on the low end of average for game size.

Halo Fleet Battles Assembly Review

I got a bit more done with my Halo UNSC fleet so I figured it was a good point to stop for a bit and post a quick review.  Just in case it comes up, I was not reimbursed for this review but got the kits on my own.  If anyone from Spartan Games reads this, I wounded certainly not be opposed to recieving and reviewing further kits.  :)

I started with the UNSC human fleet first.  Overall, I'm very impressed with the kits and sprues.  The sprues were very well laid out and labelled with very little confusion in assembling the models.  The one time I had a question that wasn't clear just from looking at the parts and finished model, the answer had its own little box clearly the orientation needed for the parts.  Small details like recessed Battlestar Galactica style fighter launch and landing bays were hidden under the forward wings of the carrier model.

So far, my starter fleet will consist of two large carriers, four medium cruisers, and four stands of three frigates each.  For potential demos, I can divide the force in two.  Small fighter combat is a big interest of mine in space games so I'll be using left over Babylon 5 Fleet Action scale Earth fighters mounted multiple on each 20mm base instead of just counters.  I've also decided to lighten up my proposed two grey paint scheme from the previously posted pic by one shade.  Later tonight I'll be testing out my various washes to see which ones will make the panel lines pop out the most.

Autumn Update

Sorry about the big break in posting but frankly I haven't had much hobby progress to report.  I'm largely done with my Tau Farsight ally force except for two Remora drones and the rumors of an upcoming codex this past summer put a hold on future purchases until I could see the new rules.  The rumors are now fact as two of the new upcoming models have started to get official previews so I'll revisit my Tau again in a few weeks to see how/if I can use the Remoras as something official from the codex.

In the meantime, those sneaky Brits came out with another nice game that caught my eye and scratched an itch I didn't know I still had for over a decade.  Halo Fleet Battles came out and the minis were nice and I've been a longtime fan of the universe (games and books).  The price point for a starter is a bit high but I got a good trade done for the game with my existing pile o' shame.  I did some quick initial test pieces to see how my ideas for a paint scheme would work.  I planned to do the Covenant in a new Tron style look whereas the UNSC would be a rather typical two tone grey.  Both would use my left over Robotech decals.

The tron scheme turned out to be alot harder to pull off than I initally thought without an airbrush.  The yellow in the pic is actually alot brighter in person (crappy picture lighting) but I do think I overdid the decals on the ship.  The UNSC bigger ships would get more edge highlighting than shown above (the ships there are 1-1.5" long... tiny!).  I hope to get at least my UNSC initial fleet assembled and painted up in the weeks to come.  Hopefully, in the meantime, I'll find an opponent to actually play against!