In Place of Chainmail?

[Voneth]

Thinking outside of the box and on Occom's razor

I for one am seeing too many people equate "random" with "collectable scheame."

Until I hear more, I am going to assume random means just that they are more interested in stuffing more boxes per hour compared to hand picking that each box has an identical assortment. If anything, the stat cards will see more action and be photocopied and sent around to other players.

If my assumption is right, then I'll wait until race/faction boxes come out and start my purchases and trades then.

Odds are that unlike MK, Chainmail II rules won't care if you have a partiuclar model unless it is a big king commander type. A 5 dwarf unit with a veteran will still only be 5 dwarf figs with me telling my opponent which one is the veteran, just like a regular wargame. Their particular poses will be irrelevent.

And if the paint jobs suck, that's still a step above the primer job that has sat on my figs for 10 years now.

 

[Pramas]

Re: Thinking outside of the box and on Occom's razor

I for one am seeing too many people equate "random" with "collectible scheme."

Of course it's going to be collectible. This is the company that invented collectible games after all. That's the whole point of the pre-painted plastic switch.

 

[Voneth]

Re: Re: Thinking outside of the box and on Occom's razor

Of course it's going to be collectible. This is the company that invented collectible games after all. That's the whole point of the pre-painted plastic switch.

I can see your point. But if that was the case, I would expect them to say collectable right off the bat, not random. WotC wouldn't be shy about clarifing the point.

I am still just going to wait until there is the offical press release or what not before I start screaming.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

"Random" is a euphemisim for "collectable".

They use it to cut down on the screaming.

 

[Pramas]

Re: Re: Re: Thinking outside of the box and on Occom's razor

I can see your point. But if that was the case, I would expect them to say collectable right off the bat, not random. WotC wouldn't be shy about clarifing the point.

You're reading an awful lot into the choice of words of a retailer reporting what he heard from his rep on the phone. WotC hasn't even officially announced the product. I'm 100% certain the new game will be a) collectible and b) not called Chainmail. WotC won't say much about it until they are ready to properly announce the game, with its new title, logo, release date, SKU numbers, and so on.

 

[trancejeremy]

Collectible & Random really need to go together.

If it's not collectible, then the only point of making it random is for sealed official tournaments. And while that's nice, I guess, how many people play official tournaments? (100s, maybe 1000s)

While collectible doesn't have to be random, it makes more sense that way (I think). Part of the appeal of buying a sealed booster pack is the gambling factor.

 

[Kesh]

* Where'd these Chainmail factions come from?

I guess you didn't read the fiction in the rulebook. It lays it all out there, and provides a rather interesting campaign setting as well.

* Why weren't there specific rules to convert D&D characters and monsters to Chainmail in the basic set?

Because it's really a crap-shoot. There's loose guidelines, but you really have to tweak and test to get it to work properly. Not to mention choosing Point values is highly subjective.

 

[mmadsen]

I already have mini's. I don't want to buy more. Especially ones that have to be painted and require assembly.

I don't think you can blame Wizards of the Coast then, if they don't consider you their target demographic. A miniatures game aimed at people who don't want any more miniatures? What'll that sell? Maybe one book?

Where'd these Chainmail factions come from?

Yeah, they're not exactly leveraging their Greyhawk property and its immense history when they make up all new factions out of whole cloth.

Why weren't there specific rules to convert D&D characters and monsters to Chainmail in the basic set?

Again, that, to me, is one of the key strengths of a D&D miniatures game; you can use it with your existing D&D campaign.

 

[Pramas]

Yeah, they're not exactly leveraging their Greyhawk property and its immense history when they make up all new factions out of whole cloth.

When Chainmail first started, I assumed it would be set in Greyhawk, since that was the default setting for 3E. We were told, however, that Greyhawk "belonged" to the RPGA and was thus off limits. That's when I conceived the Sundered Empire setting and created the factions. A year or so later the political landscape within WotC had changed, as had the brand/business manager for minis. At that point, I was asked how hard it would be to integrate the Sundered Empire into the WoG. I said, "Well, there's an enormous continent that's basically vacant, so not too hard." I did make efforts to create ties between the settings, apparently too subtly in the game's intial material (Can you guess the origin of the Baklien, for instance? Ever wonder how the sky was darkened in the last days of the Demon War?). Later Erik Mona and I began to have meetings about "filling in" the area between the Flaeness and the Sundered Empire. I wanted to add an Asian faction to Chainmail and that of course was the natural place. Ties got stronger with the release fo the drow faction, Kilsek, since I went all the way back to the Vault of the Drow for their origin. Of course, Chainmail was cancelled shortly before Kilsek debuted, so I'm sure a lot of people missed it.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Actually, I thought the Kilsek reference was one of the more clever things in the backstory. I was kind of hoping that a "Sundered Empire Sourcebook" might eventually be produced for D&D Campaigning.