Apologies for the tongue in cheek title but it seemed appropriate given the penchant for the dramatic displayed by Palladium Books in the pastcompany in question (see below for an explanation). Palladium Books has finally thrown in the towel on their Robotech RPG Tactics Kickstarter with less than 30 days left in their license for the property. After raising over $1.4 million USD in 2013 and claiming for years that the game was fine despite delays, they now claim that after producing only roughly half the rewards (more by model count, less by individual sculpt count) that they ran out of money years ago and can't produce the remaining rewards nor refund customers.
As a backer, I've covered this project and even come out with my VERMILION SQUADRON house rules for it (link here). I've avoided criticizing it too harshly here in the past as the project was by the barest definition "ongoing" but Palladium has officially abdicated their substantial remaining contractual obligations after 5 years (four of which had *ZERO* rewards fulfilled). The initial wave of miniatures were unfortuantely very poorly designed with upwards of 20 parts of a 40mm scale figure with seemingly unnecessary splits including 3 part heads and 4 part legs that somehow still result in a lack of real poseability. There was a little hope mid 2017 with the announcement
that a "project manager" was hired for the company and specifically for
the project but his biweekly updates soon turned into useless filler
that ignored the real issues of the campaign in favor of answering
questions no one asked as well as posting a single typo ridden minor
rules supplement using uncredited pilfered creative commons art.
It's long been speculated that the company used backer funds that were supposed to be reserved for the production of wave 2 to instead purchase most if not all of the thousands of retail copies of the game. Prior to the crowdfunding, Palladium was in dire financial straights after a years earlier embezzlement by an employee (which they named the "Crisis of Treachery" and which was the inspiration for this blog post title parody) and were frequently unable to reprint books from their catalog for years at a time. One of the stated goals of the crowdfunding in interviews was to allow Palladium to be on stable financial footing and they magically were able to suddenly reprint titles after the crowdfunding as well as finish their prior crowdfunded RPG books that were a year overdue. Now they claim that they also have no money yet they're sitting on thousands of retail boxes that they seemingly couldn't afford either. Their pricing breakdown for the production and development costs certainly do nothing to dissuade that theory either as the per unit cost to produce the boxes would put them at a loss if the funds only account for the backer copies they were supposed to pay for.
While Palladium is offering a trade program of sorts for your remaining credit, the relative values are increadibly skewed in their favor. The remaining outstanding Wave 2 rewards in the base pledge according to their add on math come to over $200 yet they're offering roughly $30 in trade for existing items. Additionally, backers must pay for shipping depite it being included in the original crowdfunding as well (and Palladium apparently having a reputation for charging exhorbitant shipping costs as well traditionally). To say that many backers are disappointed would be an understatement. After years of misleading backers, Palladium waited until just a few weeks before their license expired to finally come clean as to the supposed real state of the project and to offer a pittance of credit for product backers already have that they themselves would contractually be required to destroy in a few weeks. Other than cases of outright fraud, I can't think of a gaming related crowdfunding project that started out so promising and was mismanaged so badly. Palladium truly deserves the permanent hit to their already lackluster reputation that they'll inevitably get for how they've treated their most loyal customers since 2013.
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Showing posts with label Kickstarter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kickstarter. Show all posts
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Tuesday, November 11, 2014
It's been a while...
Sorry for the lack of updates but I've been slowly working my way through a bunch of different projects over the past couple of months after some initial delays.
Starting with the last topic I covered, I managed to get a full squad of VOTOMs to use as Gears in a 28mm Heavy Gear game. It took me a few weeks but I finally got them from overseas. Because the plastic felt different, I decided to test my planned green base coat on one of the rifles I wouldn't be using (due to the bazooka conversions) and the plastic in the figure reacted strangely to the spray paint. I suspect that the figs are vinyl due to their feel which should (according to the label) work with the paint I chose but unfortunately it remains "sticky" for weeks. The only slapdash solution I found was to coat the spray with normal acrylic paint but I'm not sure if whatever the chemical reaction is will eventually leech through the second layer of paint. I've tried instead hand painting with acrylic over the VOTOMs and, while not visually as good, serves the purpose of dulling the sheen on the figs. I'll post pics of the results (I tested washes on the figs as well as repainting) in the future when I finish all five.
In the meantime, I finally got my wave 1 box from the very delayed Robotech kickstarter. Due to the unfortunate backtracking and intentional misleading of pledgers by Palladium in the intervening 18 or so months, I frankly don't have too much interest in putting together the dozens of minis at this point. Another local gamer at my FLGS got in on the KS as well and we'll be trying out a game in a few weeks hopefully. I'll try putting together my resin Miriya QRaus and he's planning on putting together his battlecry pledge so we should have enough figs. The KS, even with just wave 1, gives you an impressive amount of figs for the price. Unfortunately, the sprues for the figs seem badly designed with tons of very tiny and easy to break parts seemingly unnecessarily broken down into multiple parts. When the other gamer was assembling his command pack models, he lost a part and broke off two more when cutting them from the sprue. I suspect most Robotech models will be modelled with "battle damage" after only a few games regardless of how much care you take in storing them.
Also in Kickstarter news, Heavy Gear is currently running a KS for plastic minis to accompany their new edition.
The KS went through some serious rejigging during its multiple previews on the official DP9 forums and is probably now at a good point. The initial ideas were frequently downright bad but it has improved significantly since then. It funded (admittedly to my surprise) in less than a day and is fast approaching what I consider to be a good value in the realm of plastic starter sets. Once it reaches around $105k, you'll have a color starter rulebook along with four armies to play with (Caprice, CEF, North, and South). While you'll need to combine them into two armies to play the optimal sized game of HG with the new beta rules, the KS gives you four average sized forces using the Blitz rules. At $130 CAD (including shipping), that's a pretty good deal compared with current metals and even other plastic starters.
Finally, this isn't mech related but I did start working on some 40k models. I picked up my first GW kits in a few years and decided to make a small ally force of Space Wolves. I had gotten some primarchs a while back in a trade and figured I'd try to make them into "true scale" Space Wolves characters. Horus has become my Logan Grimnar whereas Ferrus Manus is now an Iron Priest. I picked up the Logan Grimnar boxed set despite my dislike for the stupid Santa sleigh idea for the wolves to accompany Horus. I plan on turning the sled into an Iron Priest land speeder and to turn the Logan model within into another Iron Priest. I've got some work to do on that but within a week or so I should be able to post some pics of that.
Once again, sorry for the delay and the above wall of text but I should have some visual indications of progress on a few different fronts to post in the near future.
Starting with the last topic I covered, I managed to get a full squad of VOTOMs to use as Gears in a 28mm Heavy Gear game. It took me a few weeks but I finally got them from overseas. Because the plastic felt different, I decided to test my planned green base coat on one of the rifles I wouldn't be using (due to the bazooka conversions) and the plastic in the figure reacted strangely to the spray paint. I suspect that the figs are vinyl due to their feel which should (according to the label) work with the paint I chose but unfortunately it remains "sticky" for weeks. The only slapdash solution I found was to coat the spray with normal acrylic paint but I'm not sure if whatever the chemical reaction is will eventually leech through the second layer of paint. I've tried instead hand painting with acrylic over the VOTOMs and, while not visually as good, serves the purpose of dulling the sheen on the figs. I'll post pics of the results (I tested washes on the figs as well as repainting) in the future when I finish all five.
In the meantime, I finally got my wave 1 box from the very delayed Robotech kickstarter. Due to the unfortunate backtracking and intentional misleading of pledgers by Palladium in the intervening 18 or so months, I frankly don't have too much interest in putting together the dozens of minis at this point. Another local gamer at my FLGS got in on the KS as well and we'll be trying out a game in a few weeks hopefully. I'll try putting together my resin Miriya QRaus and he's planning on putting together his battlecry pledge so we should have enough figs. The KS, even with just wave 1, gives you an impressive amount of figs for the price. Unfortunately, the sprues for the figs seem badly designed with tons of very tiny and easy to break parts seemingly unnecessarily broken down into multiple parts. When the other gamer was assembling his command pack models, he lost a part and broke off two more when cutting them from the sprue. I suspect most Robotech models will be modelled with "battle damage" after only a few games regardless of how much care you take in storing them.
Also in Kickstarter news, Heavy Gear is currently running a KS for plastic minis to accompany their new edition.
The KS went through some serious rejigging during its multiple previews on the official DP9 forums and is probably now at a good point. The initial ideas were frequently downright bad but it has improved significantly since then. It funded (admittedly to my surprise) in less than a day and is fast approaching what I consider to be a good value in the realm of plastic starter sets. Once it reaches around $105k, you'll have a color starter rulebook along with four armies to play with (Caprice, CEF, North, and South). While you'll need to combine them into two armies to play the optimal sized game of HG with the new beta rules, the KS gives you four average sized forces using the Blitz rules. At $130 CAD (including shipping), that's a pretty good deal compared with current metals and even other plastic starters.
Finally, this isn't mech related but I did start working on some 40k models. I picked up my first GW kits in a few years and decided to make a small ally force of Space Wolves. I had gotten some primarchs a while back in a trade and figured I'd try to make them into "true scale" Space Wolves characters. Horus has become my Logan Grimnar whereas Ferrus Manus is now an Iron Priest. I picked up the Logan Grimnar boxed set despite my dislike for the stupid Santa sleigh idea for the wolves to accompany Horus. I plan on turning the sled into an Iron Priest land speeder and to turn the Logan model within into another Iron Priest. I've got some work to do on that but within a week or so I should be able to post some pics of that.
Once again, sorry for the delay and the above wall of text but I should have some visual indications of progress on a few different fronts to post in the near future.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
State of the Blog Address (Part 2)
Thanks for bearing with the last post and I promise this one will be a bit more upbeat since I plan to focus on the hobby progress I've made over the past year. While honestly it didn't seem like I accomplished much due to months long stretches of not working on any minis (and having paint dry up unexpectedly during that time!), I was pleasantly surprised by what I accomplished in the meantime.
I pretty much finished up (except for less than a half dozen figs) my entire 40k collection and mostly sold off the stuff that I never planned on finishing. My 6000pt Blood Angel, 2500pt Deathwing, 2500pt IG, 3000pt Eldar, and 2500pt Tau armies are officially done except for two figures. The only other 40k related things I have left are 5 "truescale" marines that I kitbashed back when I was attempting to run a regularly scheduled Deathwatch 40k RPG campaign that has since sputtered out. Mainly due to a lack of HG playerbase and the Robotech KS delay, 40k has actually been my second most frequently played game after X-wing.
Over in HG land, I've made some significant progress. I sold off my unwanted southern minis and actually finished the ones that I picked up post Forged in Fire. My Heavy Assault King Cobra squad is done as is my platoon of Visigoth Khan tanks. My support options models (airstrikes and turrets) were also completed along with a cityscape set from Dropzone Commander to use as terrain. My Nucoal army went from completely in the blister due 2/3 done with two squads of hovertanks along with two sections of hoverbike GREL infantry. The only Nucoal models left are my Chasseur MK2's that will make up a veteran GP squad. I picked up a painted northern army as well and then spent a lot of time dealing with the dozens of breaks (and even a few missing parts) due to very, very poor packing for shipping. I've picked up more northern minis (likely too many for blitz!) that are still unfortunately in the package though. With the delay of Robotech, I had expected to instead work on my Northern minis but the 3 month delay and counting since the advertised Jan delivery date has put a damper on that. Despite being a playtester, I don't know how much the product changes after it leaves our hands so I'm avoiding putting together the models until I see what the final pdf looks like.
X-wing is a pre-assembled and prepainted game so there isn't too much of a hobby aspect in that sense but I managed to get into some trouble with it anyways. After reading some interesting reports over on Board Game Geek, I decided to make my own version of the Corellian Corvette model and rules. I picked up an old 1990's toy in roughly the same scale and made a custom base to place it on along with some datacards and scenario rules. Additionally, I made some 3D asteroids out of lava rocks to use during games. At some point, I'd like to convert my TIE Advanced into Avengers but I'll likely leave that one till after the TIE Defender model comes out as that will be their squadron commander. At that point, all my favorite LucasArts XvT models will be out and I'll be a happy starfighter pilot.
All in all, I'd say that the past year (or technically about 16 months) has been quite productive despite the relatively large gaps. Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to finish my 40k figs and might post them here. I'm going back and forth whether I should buy any more as I think GW has officially gone bonkers with their recent pricing but the new tau commander crisis suit looks pretty darn incredible. As a grimdark mech, I'll post about that one if I end up acquiring and working on it. Additionally, I hope to finish my truescale Deathwatch marines along with a kitbashed Aegis defense line and turret. After that, assuming the Northern book doesn't come out, I'll work on my TIE Avengers and possibly the Nucoal GP squad.
In any case, thanks again for reading and I promise the next update won't be a solid wall of text but rather filled with pretty pictures of mediocre painted minis like usual! :)
I pretty much finished up (except for less than a half dozen figs) my entire 40k collection and mostly sold off the stuff that I never planned on finishing. My 6000pt Blood Angel, 2500pt Deathwing, 2500pt IG, 3000pt Eldar, and 2500pt Tau armies are officially done except for two figures. The only other 40k related things I have left are 5 "truescale" marines that I kitbashed back when I was attempting to run a regularly scheduled Deathwatch 40k RPG campaign that has since sputtered out. Mainly due to a lack of HG playerbase and the Robotech KS delay, 40k has actually been my second most frequently played game after X-wing.
Over in HG land, I've made some significant progress. I sold off my unwanted southern minis and actually finished the ones that I picked up post Forged in Fire. My Heavy Assault King Cobra squad is done as is my platoon of Visigoth Khan tanks. My support options models (airstrikes and turrets) were also completed along with a cityscape set from Dropzone Commander to use as terrain. My Nucoal army went from completely in the blister due 2/3 done with two squads of hovertanks along with two sections of hoverbike GREL infantry. The only Nucoal models left are my Chasseur MK2's that will make up a veteran GP squad. I picked up a painted northern army as well and then spent a lot of time dealing with the dozens of breaks (and even a few missing parts) due to very, very poor packing for shipping. I've picked up more northern minis (likely too many for blitz!) that are still unfortunately in the package though. With the delay of Robotech, I had expected to instead work on my Northern minis but the 3 month delay and counting since the advertised Jan delivery date has put a damper on that. Despite being a playtester, I don't know how much the product changes after it leaves our hands so I'm avoiding putting together the models until I see what the final pdf looks like.
X-wing is a pre-assembled and prepainted game so there isn't too much of a hobby aspect in that sense but I managed to get into some trouble with it anyways. After reading some interesting reports over on Board Game Geek, I decided to make my own version of the Corellian Corvette model and rules. I picked up an old 1990's toy in roughly the same scale and made a custom base to place it on along with some datacards and scenario rules. Additionally, I made some 3D asteroids out of lava rocks to use during games. At some point, I'd like to convert my TIE Advanced into Avengers but I'll likely leave that one till after the TIE Defender model comes out as that will be their squadron commander. At that point, all my favorite LucasArts XvT models will be out and I'll be a happy starfighter pilot.
All in all, I'd say that the past year (or technically about 16 months) has been quite productive despite the relatively large gaps. Over the next couple of weeks, I plan to finish my 40k figs and might post them here. I'm going back and forth whether I should buy any more as I think GW has officially gone bonkers with their recent pricing but the new tau commander crisis suit looks pretty darn incredible. As a grimdark mech, I'll post about that one if I end up acquiring and working on it. Additionally, I hope to finish my truescale Deathwatch marines along with a kitbashed Aegis defense line and turret. After that, assuming the Northern book doesn't come out, I'll work on my TIE Avengers and possibly the Nucoal GP squad.
In any case, thanks again for reading and I promise the next update won't be a solid wall of text but rather filled with pretty pictures of mediocre painted minis like usual! :)
State of the Blog Address (Part 1)
I was checking out my blog links to see what new stuff other bloggers added and I realized that I completely missed the first anniversary of my blog earlier this year. To celebrate the passing of that first year, I decided to follow the US government tradition of posting a "State of the Blog Address" going over the past year and my hopes for the coming year.
When I started the blog last February, my goal was to focus on my house rules for improving the Heavy Gear Blitz game under my catchy little "Flash" title. At the time, I had some ideas that I wanted to publish before getting involved in some official playtesting which would possibly limit what I could post due to the likely NDA. I've been burned before in the past by Heavy Gear and DP9 making bad decisions (like flipflopping through rules editions and dropping the old RAFM scale gears unceremoniously) so I figured I'd try to get more involved and hopefully prevent another debacle especially given the relatively poor (and deserved) reception the Forged in Fire Southern Field Guide got.
I'd say that I definitely met my goals for improving the blitz game. Though the rules went a bit further than I initially had planned and still need some more testing, I'm happy with the overall final results. In the end, it doesn't seem like anything will be incorporated into the next HG edition due to the vastly different rules in open alpha right now. I actually joined the alpha in the spring of last year (right around the time I stopped posting large updates to the FLASH! rules and switched to modeling!) so the scope of the changes were not a shock to me this past January. I think that the core rules have a lot of promise but obviously still need work. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the army lists, there still exists plenty of room to screw up the whole endeavor. As for Blitz, I got involved in the Northern playtesting as well and anxiously await the release of that final product for the venerable Silhouette system. Just don't expect it to be as broken, unfair, and overpowered as the Paxton release for several reasons. The most important is that the lead playtester's primary faction is Paxton so they naturally got the best stuff (and paid nothing for it frequently) but also because cooler heads were involved in the development of the Northern book. The north was originally my faction back in the old RAFM 1st edition days and I worked on a northern army over the past year as well... but the difference is that I view army guides that I play no differently than ones I don't so I tried to keep that in mind while still trying to give it a unique feel. I have no idea when the North guide will finally come out (the January release has slowly crept into April now and counting) and I'm not entirely happy with the results (especially one very key aspect) but I would like to see HGB given its last hurrah before the release of the Beta files this summer.
The other big game that I expected to cover frequently this year was Robotech Tactics. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing has gone right since the end of the kickstarter for that game. Only a few days after taking pledger money, Palladium announced that they were releasing convention only minis that people had been clamoring for but excluding backers from getting them via the upcoming pledge manager. A contest run during the KS to design ace veritech paint schemes ended up running 6 months late and only had a single winner instead of multiple. Everything was just fine and dandy with empty platitudes about how things were progressing for months until just 4 weeks before the October delivery estimate (revised just days after the end of the KS) at which point it was delayed till January/February.
Since then, the project feels like its just treading water with the delivery date now at June/July and counting and frankly that date looks incredibly unlikely given that no moulds have even been started on. The rules have not and apparently won't be previewed so they're another big question given Palladium's very poor (to put it mildly) history of RPG rules. We're finally seeing prototype minis but the part count is ridiculous (30+ pieces for 40k terminator sized figures) and the seams between the parts almost exclusively run RIGHT ACROSS THE FRONT OF THE MODEL WITH BIG GAPS. The TL;DR version is cheap looking overly complicated models that will come out at best 8 months late. I've avoided talking too much about Robotech because I don't want the blog to turn into my private whine fest but it deserves mention in this end of the year post as I had expected to cover the game significantly over the past year but haven't been able to.
That's it for part one of the State of the Blog address where I cover things overall. Part 2 will deal with what I've done hobbywise during the past year. Thanks for reading and bearing with me in the meantime. :)
When I started the blog last February, my goal was to focus on my house rules for improving the Heavy Gear Blitz game under my catchy little "Flash" title. At the time, I had some ideas that I wanted to publish before getting involved in some official playtesting which would possibly limit what I could post due to the likely NDA. I've been burned before in the past by Heavy Gear and DP9 making bad decisions (like flipflopping through rules editions and dropping the old RAFM scale gears unceremoniously) so I figured I'd try to get more involved and hopefully prevent another debacle especially given the relatively poor (and deserved) reception the Forged in Fire Southern Field Guide got.
I'd say that I definitely met my goals for improving the blitz game. Though the rules went a bit further than I initially had planned and still need some more testing, I'm happy with the overall final results. In the end, it doesn't seem like anything will be incorporated into the next HG edition due to the vastly different rules in open alpha right now. I actually joined the alpha in the spring of last year (right around the time I stopped posting large updates to the FLASH! rules and switched to modeling!) so the scope of the changes were not a shock to me this past January. I think that the core rules have a lot of promise but obviously still need work. Unfortunately, as demonstrated by the army lists, there still exists plenty of room to screw up the whole endeavor. As for Blitz, I got involved in the Northern playtesting as well and anxiously await the release of that final product for the venerable Silhouette system. Just don't expect it to be as broken, unfair, and overpowered as the Paxton release for several reasons. The most important is that the lead playtester's primary faction is Paxton so they naturally got the best stuff (and paid nothing for it frequently) but also because cooler heads were involved in the development of the Northern book. The north was originally my faction back in the old RAFM 1st edition days and I worked on a northern army over the past year as well... but the difference is that I view army guides that I play no differently than ones I don't so I tried to keep that in mind while still trying to give it a unique feel. I have no idea when the North guide will finally come out (the January release has slowly crept into April now and counting) and I'm not entirely happy with the results (especially one very key aspect) but I would like to see HGB given its last hurrah before the release of the Beta files this summer.
The other big game that I expected to cover frequently this year was Robotech Tactics. Unfortunately, absolutely nothing has gone right since the end of the kickstarter for that game. Only a few days after taking pledger money, Palladium announced that they were releasing convention only minis that people had been clamoring for but excluding backers from getting them via the upcoming pledge manager. A contest run during the KS to design ace veritech paint schemes ended up running 6 months late and only had a single winner instead of multiple. Everything was just fine and dandy with empty platitudes about how things were progressing for months until just 4 weeks before the October delivery estimate (revised just days after the end of the KS) at which point it was delayed till January/February.
Since then, the project feels like its just treading water with the delivery date now at June/July and counting and frankly that date looks incredibly unlikely given that no moulds have even been started on. The rules have not and apparently won't be previewed so they're another big question given Palladium's very poor (to put it mildly) history of RPG rules. We're finally seeing prototype minis but the part count is ridiculous (30+ pieces for 40k terminator sized figures) and the seams between the parts almost exclusively run RIGHT ACROSS THE FRONT OF THE MODEL WITH BIG GAPS. The TL;DR version is cheap looking overly complicated models that will come out at best 8 months late. I've avoided talking too much about Robotech because I don't want the blog to turn into my private whine fest but it deserves mention in this end of the year post as I had expected to cover the game significantly over the past year but haven't been able to.
That's it for part one of the State of the Blog address where I cover things overall. Part 2 will deal with what I've done hobbywise during the past year. Thanks for reading and bearing with me in the meantime. :)
Saturday, January 18, 2014
NuCoal ready for action! UNSPACY on the way?
Well, the Christmas sales are long over and I've spent the month working on getting my NuCoal tank regiment painted up. I've finished the two hovertank squads as well as the two sections of GREL hoverbikers in the paint scheme I borrowed from my first 40k army. I was going for some sharp differences in the colors and I accomplished that but I'd be lying if I said I was completely happy with the results. On top of that, the overcoat seems to have gone on unevenly on the tanks (less so on the bikes) likely due to the unseasonably cold weather delaying the drying (and allowing more of it to drip). I didn't use any thicker coats or longer sprays than previously so I suspect the ambient temperature where I spray (60F roughly) had something to do with it. In the end, it's not exactly what I hoped but it also isn't bad enough that I'd consider stripping it and starting over like I had to do with my southern army after a primer cake-on mishap.
The finished force
Primed
Some initial paint coats
The black on the primed picture definitely came out very washed out in the picture but not on the model; the primer coat you see in that picture is the same black in the initial paint coat picture (although I did cover up mistakes with a second brush coat of black on the finished models).
For NuCoal, I've still got a GP/Strike squad of Chasseur MKIIs to work on. I'm debating whether I should start prepping some northern models in anticipation of the pdf release later this month or finish of the NuCoal. I'll likely go with the later just to get the force completed (like my southerners) and leave myself with only one paint scheme and army to worry about.
While the paint was drying on the NuCoal models, I also put together my broken 1/200 Battletech/Macross models you see in the background of the finished pic. The Robotech minis kickstarter delivery date has unfortunately started backsliding (a month passes and the delivery date is pushed back MORE than a month) so I'll have to get my Robotech fix via other methods. I dug up my Battletech Unseen minis and put together a preliminary force idea of how to use them in Heavy Gear. Basically, I plan to use the Veritechs as Fusilier hovertanks with a ground mode added to them and the destroids as striders (Mammoths seem to be the best fit statwise with all the recent buffs to strider defense stats and the unloved expansion of gearstriders). The hovertank mode gives the transforming fighters the mobility they should have along with relatively appropriate weapons (lasers, missiles, autocannon) and they just need a walker mode to finish off the "counts as". I initially thought the gearstriders would be a good match for the destroids but the idea of the veritechs having the same maneuverability seemed odd so I'll be looking instead at the Mammoth variants... more armor but easier to hit feels right for that counts as.
Friday, May 3, 2013
Heavy Gear Kickstarter Musings and Robotech Update
The Robotech Kickstarter I posted about last time is still going strong and likely to reach $500,000 tonight with a free Khyron in an Officer's Pod to celebrate. If you haven't checked it out or only checked it out in the first few days, feel free to click the link below and take a peek as they have added plenty of designs in the meantime.
Since I've been following the Robotech Kickstarter, I've also been thinking about the kickstart that I believe Heavy Gear needs. Most gaming kickstarters tend to be glorified preorders that simply cut out the middlemen (stores, distributors) and pass on some of the savings to consumers but the core original idea of the platform is to fund things that otherwise wouldn't get funded. Almost every time a discussion about increasing the output of Heavy Gear products or revamping the game completely comes up on the DP9 forums, some fanboy brings up the fact that DP9 has only a small core of full time employees that can't handle the added workload and the company can't afford the increased pace anyways. A kickstarter for a truly new edition (and not just a minimal Locked and Loaded revision every 2-3 years for full $$ price) would help both of those problems as the earned funds could pay the salary of another full time employee. That is a change and effort that I would indeed support assuming that the scope of the project was broad enough and re-examined everything about the game from the ground up. No turning the whole herd into sacred cows though!
The proposed change that I suspect would be the most controversial would be simply rebooting the entire universe ala Battlestar Galactica. The Scifi channel didn't just take the Richard Hatch BSG proposal that simply continued the 1970's show into the new millenium but rather revamped the original into a modern show that still kept the core feel and ideals of that original but updated everything else. Heavy Gear needs that type of change if it wants to be a more successful wargame. Right now, every possible change for an existing army (especially the North and South) is buried under literally thousands of pages of fluff and history for an RPG that has effectively been abandoned by its maker for almost a decade. When the RPG first came out around 1994, it had the unique "hook" of a real time advancing storyline for the world that aged with us. Despite how good that was in the RPG, the wargame doesn't need that and instead suffers from it. Take a page from the comic book industry and reboot the Heavy Gear wargame as an alternate universe set at the end of or right after the first Earth Invasion. Mold the universe and the fluff around what the wargame needs instead of continuing to shoehorn the wargame into a decades old RPG universe. If the RPG is no longer weighed down by it's own rules and fluff, why the heck is the spin off wargame that didn't need 90% of it in the first place?
Take the time to re-examine the rules and pick either a skirmish game or a full scale wargame... you can't have both if you want to do a good job! Right now, Heavy Gear is a skirmish game effectively as the complexity of the rules leads most players to play games of less than 15 models per side (infantry not included of course) in order to finish a game in one evening... but it pretends to be a wargame in its army building portion with 5 gear squads as the core unit. That dichotomy is the main reason this blog exists as I couldn't finish a full wargame sized battle in a single evening and wasn't satisfied with what I was given in the size game I could finish.
Finally, update the production and materials to the current millenial standards of plastic sets. Take the opportunity that the release of the upcoming video game gives you to revamp the look of the models to modern robot aesthetics. People who will be crossing over from the video game will be expecting modern scifi robots and not early 1980's VOTOMs. As much as I personally like the classic look (and I really do), they don't sell the game as effectively as they did when they were first released. The Xacto update from the frequently goofy looking Tactical minis was a great move but that was almost a decade ago and the game needs another makeover. Keep the older minis as officially "legal" in the rules but revamp the design to better match the aesthetics shown in the video game concept art. (I'm not a fan personally of what they're showing for the south but the concept art for the Hunter is kick ass.) New startups are using kickstarter to raise funds and coming out with plastic lines from the get go. Take the time and effort and redesign the core minis in the North and South for the rebooted universe/timeline in plastic for an upcoming big starter set of 40+ minis. Include revised Hunters/Jaegers, Iguanas/Cheetahs, Mambas/Jaguars, and Grizzlies/Cobras in plastic along with the new rules in a wargame style big boxed set like the upcoming Robotech game or like GW has been doing for almost two decades.
I want Heavy Gear to grow and I think the kickstarter platform gives DP9 the opportunity to create the changes needed with less financial risk. You can't please everyone and you'll inevitably lose some core fans with the scope of the changes above but you'll likely bring in newer fans as well. I've frequently criticized DP9 for pointless changes that decimated player collections (minimally revised rulebooks that invalidated editions after 2-3 years released for over a decade, tactical minis making the old RAFM ones obsolete and out of scale, etc) but I'd support financially a truly new edition that was worked from the ground up as a wargame.
Since I've been following the Robotech Kickstarter, I've also been thinking about the kickstart that I believe Heavy Gear needs. Most gaming kickstarters tend to be glorified preorders that simply cut out the middlemen (stores, distributors) and pass on some of the savings to consumers but the core original idea of the platform is to fund things that otherwise wouldn't get funded. Almost every time a discussion about increasing the output of Heavy Gear products or revamping the game completely comes up on the DP9 forums, some fanboy brings up the fact that DP9 has only a small core of full time employees that can't handle the added workload and the company can't afford the increased pace anyways. A kickstarter for a truly new edition (and not just a minimal Locked and Loaded revision every 2-3 years for full $$ price) would help both of those problems as the earned funds could pay the salary of another full time employee. That is a change and effort that I would indeed support assuming that the scope of the project was broad enough and re-examined everything about the game from the ground up. No turning the whole herd into sacred cows though!
The proposed change that I suspect would be the most controversial would be simply rebooting the entire universe ala Battlestar Galactica. The Scifi channel didn't just take the Richard Hatch BSG proposal that simply continued the 1970's show into the new millenium but rather revamped the original into a modern show that still kept the core feel and ideals of that original but updated everything else. Heavy Gear needs that type of change if it wants to be a more successful wargame. Right now, every possible change for an existing army (especially the North and South) is buried under literally thousands of pages of fluff and history for an RPG that has effectively been abandoned by its maker for almost a decade. When the RPG first came out around 1994, it had the unique "hook" of a real time advancing storyline for the world that aged with us. Despite how good that was in the RPG, the wargame doesn't need that and instead suffers from it. Take a page from the comic book industry and reboot the Heavy Gear wargame as an alternate universe set at the end of or right after the first Earth Invasion. Mold the universe and the fluff around what the wargame needs instead of continuing to shoehorn the wargame into a decades old RPG universe. If the RPG is no longer weighed down by it's own rules and fluff, why the heck is the spin off wargame that didn't need 90% of it in the first place?
Take the time to re-examine the rules and pick either a skirmish game or a full scale wargame... you can't have both if you want to do a good job! Right now, Heavy Gear is a skirmish game effectively as the complexity of the rules leads most players to play games of less than 15 models per side (infantry not included of course) in order to finish a game in one evening... but it pretends to be a wargame in its army building portion with 5 gear squads as the core unit. That dichotomy is the main reason this blog exists as I couldn't finish a full wargame sized battle in a single evening and wasn't satisfied with what I was given in the size game I could finish.
Finally, update the production and materials to the current millenial standards of plastic sets. Take the opportunity that the release of the upcoming video game gives you to revamp the look of the models to modern robot aesthetics. People who will be crossing over from the video game will be expecting modern scifi robots and not early 1980's VOTOMs. As much as I personally like the classic look (and I really do), they don't sell the game as effectively as they did when they were first released. The Xacto update from the frequently goofy looking Tactical minis was a great move but that was almost a decade ago and the game needs another makeover. Keep the older minis as officially "legal" in the rules but revamp the design to better match the aesthetics shown in the video game concept art. (I'm not a fan personally of what they're showing for the south but the concept art for the Hunter is kick ass.) New startups are using kickstarter to raise funds and coming out with plastic lines from the get go. Take the time and effort and redesign the core minis in the North and South for the rebooted universe/timeline in plastic for an upcoming big starter set of 40+ minis. Include revised Hunters/Jaegers, Iguanas/Cheetahs, Mambas/Jaguars, and Grizzlies/Cobras in plastic along with the new rules in a wargame style big boxed set like the upcoming Robotech game or like GW has been doing for almost two decades.
I want Heavy Gear to grow and I think the kickstarter platform gives DP9 the opportunity to create the changes needed with less financial risk. You can't please everyone and you'll inevitably lose some core fans with the scope of the changes above but you'll likely bring in newer fans as well. I've frequently criticized DP9 for pointless changes that decimated player collections (minimally revised rulebooks that invalidated editions after 2-3 years released for over a decade, tactical minis making the old RAFM ones obsolete and out of scale, etc) but I'd support financially a truly new edition that was worked from the ground up as a wargame.
Monday, April 22, 2013
Robotech Kickstarter in progress!
While I'm not a fan of Palladium and some of the rather dubious choices they've made over the past 15 years, I am an unabashed fan of Robotech and Palladium is running a Kickstarter for the upcoming Robotech minis game. The first era covered will be Macross and the kickstarter runs to May 20th and the initial rush funded the first goal in less than three hours. Long live the 80's childhood nostalgia! :)
FUNDED!
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