In Place of Chainmail?

[BButler]

Re: Re: A plea and recommendation to Hasbro

But no clicky-bases and it cannot be collectible. Just imagine Joe Gamer who wants the brand-new Chainmail 2 'Half-Orc Monk' figure, because it's perfect for his D&D game! Now imagine that he has to buy a dozen different boxes just to find said figure, or wait on a store to open a few boxes and sell individual figures (at marked up prices for 'rares').

You've hit the nail on the head there. The "collectable" concept is exactly what has kept me from playing MageKnight and its progeny. I can tolerate the clicky bases (though my aging eyes don't read those ultra-tiny numbers lilke they used to.) I could even learn to live with the less detailed, badly painted miniatures. The fact that you can't just buy the figure you want at a reasonable retail price just makes me crazy thouigh.

Sure, you can buy bucketloads of "commons" at $.50 a piece, but if you want a specific model that's worth putting in an army, you'll either have to buy box after box and hope you get lucky or pay a nice high premium to buy it singly.

Of course, I like miniatures games, and I'm looking at it from that perspective. However, if it's true, and i think it is, that what D&D only players want are figures to represent their PCs and common monsters, they'd find the collectable system frustrating as well.

Of course I don't know if the WOTC folks are going to see it that way--when you look at WizKids, collectible miniatures games seem like a license to print money.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Re: A plea and recommendation to Hasbro

How many figures even come with the Chainmail starter set?

How did they choose the figures they chose for the starter set? Were they trying (too hard) to differentiate themselves from Warhammer?

 

[Zaruthustran]

Starter set

I think Rune had a great idea, with making the figures in the starter set easy to use right out of the box but making certain later figures more complex.

I think Warhammer, and especially Chainmail suffer by forcing the buyer to commit 1-40 hours of work before the product is usable. When I buy Axis and Allies, I can set up and play as soon as I get it out of the shrink wrap. When I buy WH or CH, I've got at least a weekend's worth of work. Much more if I want my figures to look like the ones on the box.

Mageknight, on the other hand, is playable instantly. And Mageknight exploded in popularity, while CH did not. And WH is fueled by old-school gamers from back in the day recruiting new players--if WH came out today, I don't think it would succeed.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Starter set

I think Rune had a great idea, with making the figures in the starter set easy to use right out of the box but making certain later figures more complex.

It seems perfectly natural to me. You want to make the game as easy as possible to get into -- cheap, enough figures to play a decent battle, everything ready to go out of the box -- but with room to get bigger and more complex, so you can keep selling product to the hardcore contingent.

 

[mmadsen]

Re: Starter set

I think Warhammer, and especially Chainmail suffer by forcing the buyer to commit 1-40 hours of work before the product is usable.

So true. Games Workshop did a better job with their Lord of the Rings strategy battle game, but you still need to clip the plastic figures out of their sprues -- and you may want to be very careful about that -- and you have to put the figures into their bases -- which generally requires gluing, which you may not want to do until you've painted them.

What they did do well was: (a) provide lots of figures, in different shades of gray, in the basic game, (b) provide fairly simple rules, optimized for mass combat, and (c) provide expensive add-ons of elaborate metal figures you can collect and paint.

Something they did very poorly is that they filled the rulebook with scenarios you can't run with the figures you get, or that expect elaborate scenery you won't have sitting around ready to go.

 

[mmadsen]

The obsessive Warhammer "If you want to include the High Inquistor of Doom in your army you must have the actual $39.95 miniature that represents it painted appropriately" concept is one of the things I dislike about their games as well, followed by a close second with the strategy of "Buy our newest army splat book! Everything in here is better than anything else we've ever released!"

I have no interest in collecting figures from a product line that follows those strategies, and they only work to the extent that a product has monopoly power (from positive network externalities).

 

[mmadsen]

The more interesting one for Sci-Fi folks are the replacement parts for The Queens Gambit

Seriously. Not the biggest SW RPG fan but really, 65 of those battle droids for $3? 21 palace guards for $2? 12 of the destroyer droids for $1.50?

If only I wanted/needed Star Wars figures...

So, we've already established we want lots of cheap, ready-to-use plastic figures in "Chainmail II" -- and they certainly seem easy enough to crank out -- and we'd like complex, metal, challenging-to-assemble-and-paint figures as add-ons for the serious hobbiest. Seems simple enough, no?

 

[Zaruthustran]

mmadsen, what's your gaming background? As in, do you work for a game company?

 

[mmadsen]

mmadsen, what's your gaming background? As in, do you work for a game company?

Nope, I don't work for a game company. Some people here have tried to convince to put out some products (e.g. Little Changes with Big Flavor), but no, I'm just a guy who's played various games on and off for awhile.

 

[mmadsen]

As in, do you work for a game company?

Would it be better or worse if I worked for a game company?