Privateer Press - A Cautionary Tale Of Wargame Mismanagement..
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 31 июл 2024
- In this episode we talk about the rise and fall of Privateer Press and their flagship game - Warmachine/Hoards. We touch on how this relates to how Games Workshop Operates and where there was anything learned along the way.
In Canada?
Check out our webstore here:
lordsofwargames.com/
International orders or fan questions send here:
lordsofwarstore@gmail.com
If Like Our Content and would like to send a tip or more, check out our patreon below.
/ lordsofwargamesandhobbies
Interesting take from a store perspective.
The full quote is: "The customer is always right, in matters of taste" ie if they want to buy something ugly, let them
Someday the full beans are going to get spilled on the Privateer Press story, and it is going to be a fun ride.
We all love some drama, tell us more...
@@GlassHalfDead rumors froi have heard from people that have worked there is that they are massive assholes
Yeah.
@@GlassHalfDead I'd rather give my perspective on everything that happened at PP while I was there, and before that, in a better format than a comment 😉
@@willschoonover8654 I, liked the rest of the internet, love drama that I'm in no way involved in!
I hope you do some further dives into Warmachine. One of its issues, to my mind was that the onramp for new players was brutal. In the early days you could always recruit a few new players, and everyone I know said the early days of playing Warmachine against another new player were always the most fun. But later in its life span, the skill curve was so steep that you were fighting uphill vs experienced players who were still getting better at the game ahead of you. A player I saw played for a year and half and never got a win. Its "page 5" mentality didn't really foster new players. A lot of people played 1 game, got destroyed in ways they couldn't understand and never played again. Once the new player ponzi scheme bottomed out, only the people who were most committed to the game continued, which made it even more difficult for new players to break in.
There's a lot of important lessons in Warmachine about how constantly giving customers what they want isn't always the best strategy.
i saw this "page 5" mentioned in the wikipeda entry. What's it mean?
Page 5 was the page of the rule book that covered the ethos of the game. It promoted playing as competitively as possible, amongst other things.
Your mention of Page 5 is an encapsulation of your main point. Unless someone was really into Warmahordes, they would have no idea what that means!
@@remulean 'Page 5' was a page in the main rule book (go figure, page 5) that said 'play like you got a pair', in other words play hard and don't whine. It was fine as the game was aimed to be a tournament style game and not really a 'beer and pretzels' game.
@remulean there's a wee bit of missing context here as well - the mkI Page 5 was extremely toxic in terms of "this isn't a game for sissies. If you can't stand seeing your little special guys get mashed, smashed into paste, and dragged through the mud this isnt the game for you. Go play dollies tea party".
There was worse stuff to it, but overall it was part of a very edgy branding, which was retired with "Page 5" becoming more and more of a players code, and dialing back the toxic machismo/testosterone poisoning, and asking players to play hard, be merciless in game, but also not be shitheads to other people.
However the infamy of the original Page 5 is something of an old shame that the company has never quite lived down
Im just getting back into warmachine with their newest edition, I def feel they had some missteps but the game looking to be making a comeback.
Honestly I miss P3 Paints the most. Really quality paints, I wish someone could buy off their paint range and continue to sell it.
Even in a market overly saturated with numerous paint ranges, I think P3 could do well. It is simply a very different paint than most, as it has a better consistency for wet and two brush blending, and dries to a nice, durable satin finish. When you already have a number of other paints on your desk (I have about 6 ranges I use regularly), P3 is the paint I reach for when I need a quick, buttery smooth paintjob. Since these have disappeared from stores, I have had a real hard time finding any other paint that fulfills that niche.
Yeah the brushes and paints were awesome. I had a P3 brush that was fairly inexpensive that rivaled my windsor and newton series 7 detail brushes. It was my go to work horse, and would buy three more to ensure I had enough to last the rest of my life.
Just throwing this out there, P3 as a hobby range is still sold. Paints and brushes :)
@@GlassHalfDead It is, but sporadically. I have tried to order from several stores numerous times over the past 4 years, and still have yet to get another detail brush.
I have no idea why that is. I assume production/stock issues, but good luck finding what you need. Their own website shows little in the existence of this once lauded product line, a mere shadow of what it was. Thamar Black is just a legend at this point, whispered in back rooms. The 'good' paints are no longer being sold, thus likely no longer produced. Shame. Their inks and washes were pretty good too. Armor Wash was Nuln Oil before Nuln Oil even existed.
PP should be leaning into their paint line. It’s the only good product they are selling right now.
I think it was a perfect storm of things that took WM/H down. So much of which came from the very beginning of the game. They were so determined to be the opposite of Games Workshop at the outset, which was a massive breath of fresh air in 2004, that they neglected the hobby aspect and went hard for a tournament balanced game. I remember reading Army Composition guidelines for a Warhammer Fantasy tournament around that time and being appalled with how much you were punished for using the good stuff in your army because it was "cheesy" or "beardy." PP was all "every model is cheesy." GW scores painting, so PP encourages you to glue enough of the model together for it to be recognized and that's playable. GW gets rid of it's forums? Come to PPs and get insulted by Jason Soles. This was never a tenable position long term. Tabletop games live and die by the hobby aspect and the lore. The lore wasn't nearly as good as it could have been, and the tournament chads didn't want to be bothered with the hobby aspect to the point of demanding 2d terrain because it allowed for more accurate measurement. I remember the meltdown when Hardcore format was introduced with painting requirements. It was spectacular.
The mk3 release was an absolute disaster and it was compounded by the dissolution of the Press Gang in a relatively short period of time. I'm given to understand that the PGs were collateral damage from various legal actions against WOTC because of shenanigans with the DCI and Judges program. They were getting hit with labor law violations for unpaid con staff as well as a couple of nasty cases where bad actors were using their quasi official status to abuse people. WOTC killed the program as it existed at the time, and PP followed suit.
@@vicbadger8902 I can attest to unpaid con staff. My wife was "required" to work two shifts on the floor at GenCon after paying to be there in 2008. After that, the dinner at the RAM with Matt and Jason sitting at an elevated table and ignoring everyone in the room soured the company and the game for us.
"How could Warmachine make a comeback" would be a video I would love to watch!
Short video. It could be summed up as simply a 2 second clip of them saying "You don't."Sadly this is the tailspin spiral that cant be recovered from. This is us watching it fall from the sky and crashing.
They tried. It’s done.
It already is.
@@photonfartsqueeze6694 They're actually releasing the new Cryx army soon, and I have new models on order from them :)
@@Colorcrayons Well I have models on order and will be playing soon :P
I’ll say that MK4 has turned around some of the issues in the past. The cons of this year have brought in more players than in years past. In the next year or two I think we will see a resurgence.
This really highlights a new analogy I have regarding GW. Their products are like a plant. You want that plant to grow, but to be healthy, you need to keep it trimmed and cleaned up. This allows it to remain vibriant and healthy.
Yes, trimming is a very important process in this cycle; but its also the thing that is very hard for the average Player to understand, especially if their units/armies are removed from the game.
I was part of a massive Warmachine community 2010-2012, I had returned after being a Pressganger volunteer back in Mk1 in 2006-2008. It was the main game system for my local store and MTG was the other main breadwinner for the shop. It felt like 40k had fallen off a cliff and WFB was pretty stale, people loved Warmachine and there was so much interest in other smaller systems like Infinity and Malifuax. The local events we ran always enforced painted models only and there were some great looking forces on the tables. The game felt really balanced and competitive play was really fun. I returned to wargaming last year (40k) and was puzzled to see how the Warmachine community just evaporated, never would have thought it ended that way. The factions they released after I left the scene were questionable and did not fit the original theme I thought. Privateer Press removing the faction sections from the forums was bizarre as well. I don't think I could appreciate the art and models today like how I did back then, my tastes have definitely changed. You perspective about the stock issues to is really interesting. It was a great system at its peak and I'm glad have been part of it.
Had a. Friend who made mi is for them. (and by that I mean he poured molten pewter into the machines, not sculpted them.)
He actually got his name in the hordes book as a beta tester. I haven't thought of the world/games in decades)
What killed it was they moved to a CID system, where every couple of months, a faction would be tweaked and changed so that it played differently, which meant that a meta was never able to develop for competitive play. Warmahordes really catered to the tourney crowd and this hurt that community. Also in 2017, GW came out with 8th Ed which was the best edition of 40k since probably 3rd Ed. So it didn’t take longer for the tourney crowd to migrate over to 40k, and once that happened Warmahordes died, since the competitive meta had long scared away casual gamers. Casual 40k gamers weren’t hurt because they all moved to Horus Heresy.
I lived in Seattle during the Warmachine boom and knew a bunch of dudes from PP - there were a ton of stories about how management was super toxic and there was constant disagreements about the direction of the company, and it seemed to only get worse over the years.
It's interesting how you both saw the SKU Bloat, Power Creep / Pegwarmer succession, and Distro Price Corrosion in Mk2. Most of that became apparent after the Death of the PressGangs and Mk 3 transition for the entire line.
From the player perspective there are a couple things that killed WM/H. The game really hit its stride in 2nd ed with a lot of tournaments as you mentioned, which was the game's bread and butter. The company was very player focused in an era when GW was saying 'fk you, just buy stuff', then 2016 came. They fixed the issue you mentioned about internet retailers being able to undercut brick and mortar, but instead of just quietly putting a minimum advertised price on their stuff they went and called all the internet retailers 'free riders'. The problem is the biggest advocates for the game were some of those internet retailers, and surprise surprise they don't like being called free riders, mooches, etc. This started creating bad blood in the community. The thing that drove the final nail was 3rd edition, it was an unbalanced mess, got delayed a few times, and all-in-all was just a disaster; considering this was a tournament style game that doesn't work out too well. By this time GW had pulled its head out of its ass, got more player focused, and got rid of Tom Kirby, so people ended up going back to GW games.
The player base is still an issue because most of the veterans only want to play at 100 points, which are massive armies compared to MK1 and MK2 where you could fight with just a battlebox and maybe a few blister packs.
I played the shit out of WM and Hordes when it was released later, supported the company, ran tons of tournaments, and for a long time considered WM to be 'THE' best miniatures wargame on the market. MkIII release was a bit rough (complete re-design of the Skorne faction, anybody?), but locally we toughed it out even after the dissolution of the Press Gang. A lot of people consider the CID to have been a nail in the coffin but I welcomed it as a breath of fresh air after years of PP saying 'our playtesting is flawless, everything works exactly as it was/is intended'. The PP plastics were...okay...but clearly not possessing an 'industry leading' level of detail. What I saw happening, and as a major indicator of impending doom, was the rate of releases for both WM and Hordes was only accelerating despite the bloat already present in the game, not to mention concurrent with other games (particularly Riot Quest, whose models had rules for WM/H). Theme list bloat was also a thing - before if you had faced Irusk, a Behemoth, Widowmakers, Iron Fangs and Winterguard you at least had an idea what they did and how they worked, but as more and more theme lists came out the increasingly convoluted ways in which previously released models worked meant you had exponentially more combinations to account for, and a greater obstacle for new (or returning) players to overcome.
And yet, with all of these issues, I still liked WM and kept trying to play it. What ultimately killed it for me was that the only players I could find were hardcore competitive players who weren't interested in playing someone unless they were also shooting for tournament-level play. I had fully painted armies, cool conversions, and I was a good player even if I wasn't playing anything overtly 'meta' but I couldn't get a game in to save my life. Now MkIV is a thing, I'm not into the 3D printing hobby, and I have no idea whether I can even use my old WM/H models and I'm not interested in buying entirely new collections just to try a new version of a game - even if it is one I used to love.
I think a lot of people felt the way you did for sure. A great universe with cool models but not enough focus or leadership from the company on other pillars such as painting/hobby and casual play
I started with them at the beginning and I was never so let down by a company in my Life. I still love the Trollbloods and consider them one of the best factions of any Game system.
11:54 Mk3 was the best ruleset, but the change from Mk2 to Mk3 was horrendous. So many players left.
Warmachine seems to be making a solid comeback. We're seeing lots of players joining and returning locally.
World Team Championships are sold out, RheinCon had 80 players, Welsh Masters has more than 50 people registered.
Current MKIV ruleset is the best yet, the new 3D printed models are gorgeous. The new MKIV model range is a lot smaller with far fewer SKUs.
Absolutely all models ever produced for Warmachine are legal to play with, and have rules in MKIV. About 30% of the old legacy models are no longer allowed in the competitive format, but everything can be played in Unlimited.
I'm happy to hear that. In Canada you can find warmachine in the bargain bin or completely off the shelf of shops. Distributors have dropped almost all of it.
Sad but true.
i've been playing since Mk1 and took a break when PP killed the Pressganger program because it basically singlehandedly killed my local meta.
i'm coming back for MkIV and it feels like the strongest the game has ever been. the rules have been streamlined and are very, very tight without losing the core identity of the property. the models are really quite incredible. they've made some bold lore choices to really change up the game which i think is a great idea while still keeping the back catalogue playable.
it's heartening to hear it's picking up in your area because i really do think when Warmachine is good, it's just some of the most fun you can have gaming.
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905
Doesn't mean it can't turn around. Especially since GW sculpts are becoming more and more dog 🐕 sh@t ugly.
Yeah my friends and I are new. Our local shop only supports 40k but everyone is getting sick of GWs shit. So we came over to warmachine. It feels better, they actually know how to balance their game and keep it fun.
@@Dntbehasty I'm all about consumer choice in wargaming. Everyone thinks that if people can't find a wargame they like, they will just tolerate and play.
Most of the time people just bow out or never start.
Interesting to see your perspective as a store. At the moment MK4 is my favorite game. Though I am buying most my figures online and playing most my games with friends not in stores.
Privateer Press was a meat-grinder for; product, players, wholesalers, retailers, and employees.
Great show. Always enjoy your perspectives. It is so interesting!
Warmahordes 2010-2015 was PEAK gaming, loved it. Then MkIII came along and the CID stuff and it just slowly killed the game off for us.
Thanks for this, I was out of the hobby for a while so it's nice to get caught up on what the heck happened.
I loved the look of warmahordes but all I’d ever see being played was the same handful of units among each army while so much of the range just sat around the flat paper terrain and grey legions didn’t help it much when trying to bring it to life but I always loved the art and the buffet range of minis in each force
Hearing about another company's successes, failures and lessons from the business perspective was very interesting 👍
The designers putting energy into poorly-done side projects was a big deathknell around our parts. Riot Quest (and the cringe-iest game video since the live action Shadowrun commercial) was a huge wet fart, and following with a direct/Kickstarter only Warcaster Neomechanica made all the stores by me say “nahh, we’re out”
Warmachine was awesome.
Still is.
Reminds me a company called Rackham that had a skirmish fantasy game called Confrontation which was giving GW a run for their money around 2005. They had amazing figs, a strong ruleset, along with a strong tournament scene. The problem was they went public, and had to show consistent revenue growth which KILLED changed their business practices which alienated their customers and it killed the fanbase and company.
They tried something a bit crazy back then.. going from beautiful models and art style to pre-painted vinyl plastic.. absolute antithesis to what their customers bought into.. Perhaps a future video :)
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 A video would be awesome! I placed 2nd in the last National Tournament at GenCon. Still have a bunch of the amazing figs if you need some pictures!
Going public killed Rackham because they turned from an Company run by artist to a crack addicts desperate for their next fix (revenue growth). ;o(
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 Rackham, and especially their artists need more recognition. AoS is essentially copying their homework till this day.
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 AT-43 was enough of a success that they thought they could finally transition Confrontation from a skirmish game into a big battle unit game. And missed that people were buying AT-43 for different reasons than Confrontation. Simultaneous with that manufacturing prepaints in China got more expensive and they had to cut back on the number of paint steps, tampos and washes (As IIRC did WotC with their prepaint D&D minis)
The latter issue killed Battlefield Evolution as well.
Gosh, I miss Rakham. Id love to pick up a couple of their minis just for painting's sake, but they seem incredibly hard to come by.
I loved Warmachine back in the day. I still think the rules are the best of any miniature game out there. It was on an obvious decline for a few years, and once covid happened it died completely here.
You've focused on the shop based problems in the game. This misses out on Riot Quest being a reason for everyone to buy at least one model in the game that invalidated multiple models across multiple factions or fall behind. You died before the agony started.
PP have gone out of their way to make their own games unplayable.
3.0 wasn’t good. It took them a lot of time and fixes to get it playable. Several factions where unplayable upon launch. It bled SO MANY players
Warmachine was a great game and system back in the day. It was small easy to learn and really tactical, but late 2nd edition the games got bigger. From a small skirmish force to almost 40k army number of models. Certain units were useless and a lot of "power-gamers" would declare the game over mid game if a specific power/ability didn't go off. Also the loss of the pressgangers system really hurt the community since there were little to no one else driving events/hobby moments. I still use the models for DnD games but not much else.
I still have a pretty large collection of Warmahordes stuff. My recollection of the series of events, from a player’s perspective, was as follows...
Things were already starting to feel a little weird with Warhammer Fantasy when 8th edition released in 2010. I remember a lot of people feeling that the new rule set really favored much larger units and it was seen as a way of forcing people with existing armies to retool their lists. You already saw that coming in the transition from 6th to 7th edition, when GW changed the minimum rank size from 4, up to 5. The old unit boxes were sold in sets of 16 models, so you could make a 4x4 unit of infantry and get the maximum rank bonus. When they changed the frontage requirement to 5, to get the rank bonus, it meant buying an additional box of 16 (dwarfs for example) just to boost your units from 4x4 to 5x4.
But I’m off into the weeds here a bit... The bottom line is that the big jump in Privateer Press market share coincided with the general decline and destruction of Warhammer Fantasy, as well as the disaster that was the initial release of AoS.
It seemed like, once GW got it’s stuff together and came out with 8th ed 40k and 2nd Ed AoS people just dropped Warmahordes and went back to GW.
Nah. Warmahordes took off years before AoS - I remember the Grey Knight codex around 2010 turning a bunch of 40k players like myself off the game due to seeing constant large powercreep every codex release.
Not only did you have a company that was openly marketing towards being player friendly, but you could get the starter set for a song and play real games with the included models!
That was part of my initial word salad... a lot of players were already getting disillusioned with the direction of Fantasy as early as 2010, when 8th edition dropped. Not sure about 40k players. While GW had always viewed its game systems as vehicles to drive model sales, it was just starting to be too completely obvious that the rules were being changed almost exclusively to drive sales, and not to provide customers with a better game for their existing collections.
@@earnestwanderer2471 The second edition launch in 2009-10 was what boosted WM the biggest. It brought in a ton of new players and maintained their interest for years until the third edition launch gave a bunch of people their first excuse to step away from the game. Everything after the 2016 edition change felt like a neverending death spiral compared to the heights of 2012-15.
It had nothing to do with AoS. Warmachine had already peaked and was starting to decline once AoS came out. As others have said, it was more a case of 40k being rubbish at the time and people were happy to look for an alternative. I also came from Fantasy rather than 40k, but pretty much everyone I played warmachine with were ex-40k players.
Was into this game big during its mk2-3 heyday. I remember seeing the CID thing unfold and I remember people just stopped buying stuff because they were worried it'd just get nerfed into the ground two months later. I feel it's actually a cautionary tale for GW with their balance updates. Not that balance updates are a bad idea, quite the opposite, but more about avoiding a state of constant flux in the rules where players don't want to bother with it anymore.
Anyway, I loved the tightly written rules of the game, but always felt the game lacked support (or encouragement) for the hobbiest/casual player. I remember one time my friends and I scrubbed out of a tourney and decided to just randomly homebrew a 3 player king of the hill type game on a spare table while they played out the finals of the event. The tourney crowd looked at us like we had 2 heads😂. I don't actually blame them though, it was just kinda the culture of the game that had evolved that just lacked casual support from the company.
Anyway, enough of my rambling.
Thanks for making this video. I got out of miniature wargaming back in 2012 and Warmachine/Hordes was my game at the time. I just recently got back into the hobby and was surprised to see that Privateer Press was almost non-existent. This helps explain what the hell happened.
It’s always interesting to hear discussions about the downfall of Privateer Press. I was very invested in Warmachine for years. Back then it looked like the company was just getting bigger and bigger: spin-off games, multiple big game books a year, novels, magazines, video games, toys, a paint range. An absolutely fantastic setting in the Iron Kingdoms. It seemed like they would become as big as GW someday. Then it all went away and now they’re 30 people doing 3D prints and you can’t even find them on store shelves. I think you nailed the two biggest problems they ran into: bloat and a community of hardcore gamers who didn’t see it as a hobby. When you have people playing with empty bases on flat terrain that just isn’t a miniatures game anymore. And it’s absolute death to anyone who sees it as their first impression of the game and the world. I’m really saddened about all of it and I wish things had gone differently. I’ve looked at the new MKIV stuff but in my opinion whatever magic they once had is gone.
Agreed. Maybe my tastes have changed, but the new MKIV stuff just leaves me cold. I think 3D printing was a good choice and I really want to like the new models but they seem to have lost the magic.
Solid assessment.
It's the fine line between keeping the game 'alive' with regular releases versus SKU bloat.
Aren't the guys who ran Privateer press into the ground, the same guys over at AMG? They have run the SW games into the ground also.
I think the SW thing is a bit different, and a good topic for another video. IP based products kind of have limited life spans.
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905I’m not sure. I feel like x-wing was murdered well before its time. The game was strong going into Covid. It survived via TTS keeping us connected. The AMG version of the game using the same pieces but changing a lot of the game is what did it in I think.
They had so much untapped potential to work on, and if they reached into nostalgia they could have kept it going. It would have made sense to put old models into a rotation and revisit when they reprint and are legal again, but that’s another issue. The core rules of the game changing significantly is what murdered my community.
Interestingly enough, one of the things AMG did to xwing was significantly compress the points asap. The game was 200 points with good granularity, and you could weigh down ships with upgrades or you could run more leaner ships. AMG came around and said nope 20 points and that only buys ships, each pilot has a “loadout” currency they can use for upgrades. But now that meant the usable pilots got compressed and now you’re only taking the best in class.
In effect, AMG devs made all the same mistakes they made at Privateer.
@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 thry only had and created marvel crisis core. They had no intention on sw stuff until asmodee moved it to them. That being said, they did create insane rapid bloat with small character oacks for marvel and many people can't help themselves but buy everything. Especially since it doesnt have factions in the traditional sense.
Remember the rest of the maxim, "The customer is always right, *in matters of taste*. But in games, taste matters a great deal.
The video touches on the most important reasons of PP's decline. The timing of this video is really weird, though. A year ago there would not have been much to be added, especially with the underwhelming MK4 launch. But right now MK4 is picking up speed again. Warmachine tournaments are getting back to conventions e.g. in the US and there is reasons for this as well. The game is still great, the 3D printed models are fantastic in terms of design and quality, rules and thus entry are free, etc. My personal issue is that from outside the US we are not supplied properly but that does not apply to the US market.
I really loved the game when I played it back in 2007 to 2009. I remember how nice it was to not have to constantly be referencing charts.
It was really popular in the Indianapolis area. They had a huge presence at gencon.
I liked their paint line as well.
Warmachine got me into the hobby. The timing was right, Dawn of War the PC game brought attention to Tabletop Gaming in general and around that period, there was grumbling about Games Workshop doing price gouging, killing off online retailers, messing with sites like Beasts of War and of course, the biggest kerfuffle at the time was The End Times which killed off WHFB and alienated that player base. I was drawn to the game for the reasons you guys mentioned, the smaller model count and relatively cheaper prices but the problems for me was just the learning curve of the game. The game had a very tight ruleset as you mentioned but it also attracted a very spikey uber-competitive player base which made the barrier to entry moreso a skill issue than anything else. And in my experience, a super-competitive player space can't attract the casuals which are going to make up the bulk of your community. Later, I think the hopes that the Warmachine Tactics PC game would bring more eyes to the tabletop product fell flat and the momentum started to turn. When PP decided to let the Community police its own balance, that was it.
I was making these arguments to PP staff. It was like the housing bubble (A model bubble?). Eventually it would just pop, and everything would come crashing down. A buisness model like that would never last. And it didn't.
Great as always , Guys ;-)
I am completely oblivious about business side, but I think I started playing at the tail end of mark 1 with trollbloods. I think some of the biggest mistakes game wise were making mercs as a faction, de-emphasizing of assassination as a win condition, and the introduction of the colossal/gargantuan (making them FA:U was the final blow.)
I still check in on them because I love the world, Mark 3 seems like a confusing conglomeration of a glut of factions. Mark 4 is a complete reset, they seem to be taking a fully digital approach, smaller factions but more of them 🤷♂️.
Certain businesses succeed because they were a first mover and established a pseudo-monopoly position not because everything they do is actually good business. And certainly almost none of their actions are decided for the benefit of the consumer. Because that's what a monopoly is. They can make bad decisions because of their monopoly advantage. Competitors fail mainly because they are competing against a monopoly.
Most people (I hope) understands that everyone is at the mercy of the monopoly. Just try not to "make a virtue out of necessity."
PP is certainly interesting lesson in how NOT to run a miniature company in multiple facets. I've actually been getting back into Warmachine as its seen a resurgence in my area with Mk4. Picking up lots of huge army lots for cheap has helped lol. I do think they made THE hard decision which was kill off any non-3d Printed models to not be continued forever and the limited Legacy armies are fun though we'll see down the line if it proves an issue for them.
My main issue with Mk4 is mostly with the material and production itself. I don't mind 3D Printed Miniatures I have a 3D Printer at home. But I prefer it for bits and bobs or 'upgrades' to my existing minis since I love the hobby part of it. Not to mention the fragility of 3D Printed Resin. Its too much money for an inferior material in comparison with PVC plastic, vinyl, polyurethrene resin, and of course HIPs plastic. I'm sure the 3D Printing models was an "Oh fuck we're going to have jack shit if we don't do this" but I hope down the line they move away from 3D Printing models.
Though even at their current scale they've already hit some supply chain issues to various stores and keeping up new products. I think the 3d Printing gamble is already starting to bite them in the ass as many new releases are delayed such as long awaited return of Cryx and restocks to their suppliers. We will see. I love the setting and I love the models so I hope they can figure it out. Alas more likely than not they'll join the mass grave of GW Competitors.
I've got all of my WM/H stuff in a box ready to go in the bin. No interest in playing it or carrying it around with me when I move.
Sell it, there are several pieces that people are desperately looking for.
I have some formula P3 paints,and really like them, shame they are getting harder to find.
Only problem with P3 paints other than availability is the McVey's decision that real painters don't use dropper bottles.
@@Octarinewolf so flip tops is better?
@@charleswatson2605 Mrs McVey thought so, because she had a decade of painting at GW using the lids as palletes. She also thought we shouldn't mix paints by drops rather than by eye since she didn't need to.
All my P3's have been decanted into dropper bottles.
There is clearly some appetite for persistent content but they put the cart before the horse, basically having an uncontrolled expansion of units/ models drive the game into the ground in a vicious cycle. For younger generations of players there is almost an expectation for games to be "living" but the monetisation of that in a wargames model where profits are still driven by the models is tricky.
There is a level of agility deployment required that we have not seen yet where the game is kept fresh without making the model offering overhwhelming. CB did this well with their pseudo app army builder but that's kind of yesterday's news.
I still have a few large boxes of Warmahords miniatures I bought for pennies on the dollar. One of the local stores would have a auction a couple of times a year and there would always be people bringing in the miniatures. I still find funny that some people would bring in large armies and still try to get hundreds of dollars for the army. I was there when the game started and I see it almost like what happened to Target games.
12:28 which is unfortunate because they (p3) had a great paint line.
That was the great irony, they had a fantastic paint line
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 You talk as if the company is already dead. The paint line is still being produced.
@@marcderuiter1147 yet impossible to find in most hobby shops.
It would be interesting if you make a video explaining some of gw business practices, like gutting some models or the release shedule of their editions. I see a lot of people angry in the internet that do not have the slightest idea of how a business works.
As long as the models don't start feeling "seasonal". I don't want them to introduce models that they retire within 1 edition. Unless that unit is absolutely useless.
Mk4 is Warmachine making a comeback. it’s smaller scale, less ambitious, and the game now comes in two formats: Prime, which includes all the new models from Mk4 and Unlimited, which includes all the past models - the SKU bloat that became unmanageable towards the end. It took Privateer Press a whole year to update the rules for all those past models and in the end, I think, people will still gravitate towards Prime, which includes a selected number of Legacy (pre-Mk4) models.
it is kind of a shame they fell so hard, as it is an excellent game with one of the tightest rulesets I’ve ever played, but their new approach really seems like they’ve learned their lessons. I think they need to cultivate the hobby aspect a little more, but their rollout now is so much better and they’ve got a really store-friendly SKU system. I think one way they can come back is to have a very good presentation for retailers on how to maintain a small, constantly moving display instead of an uncontrollable SKU bloat.
the new models are absolutely fantastic, the ruleset is better than it has ever been, and the releases are slow and steady. hopefully they eventually get a foothold in the wargaming community again.
I think it's dead and done.
Agreed about the game and models but re-establishing their presence without customer advocates in the form of Pressgangers, with difficulty getting it into stores now, and with GW in a strong position along with a dozen other miniature companies competing for those wargaming dollars they may only just be able to survive.
@@jeancouscousYou can think that but their sales say otherwise and are seeing good turn out at conventions.
@@jeancouscous they'll be fine. Mk4 models are bonkers good.
Bokur Brawl had 100 players this weekend...
How horrible. Just like Warlord games or any of the historical wargame companies, that don't retire figures.
Warlord have retired a LOAD of their old 2012 era plastics and metals.
@@MrTumnus1987 Not making them is different to making them unplayable.
Cool video, I never played warmachine but I always liked the look of everything in that world. I'm looking forward to your License games video. I'm probably wrong but my guess is that license games tend to die out quickly because what they ask for is either too much/too complicated for the appropriate audience and lacks the hobby liquidity for the intended audience.
Warmachine/Hordes used to be a major game amongst my group of gaming friends. When Mk4 came out and Privateer Press' attitude was 'buy a whole new army, your old one is invalidated (practically, I know some stuff had up to date rules)' along with releasing their stuff in big expensive boxes containing a small army just put us all off.
And while yeah, some stuff is usable with supported rules, I'm (was?) a Retribution of Scyrah player. My favourite army got written out, my favourite Warcaster was unceremoniously killed off (Ravyn) and they seem to expect me to be happy to jump on over to the Dusk faction?
No.
If I wanted a faction like that in the beginning I would've chosen Cryx or Legion of Everblight. And when I did decide to buy one of their new models (Eiryss) here in the UK, I waited almost a year for it to be delivered!
Agreed, losing Ios sucks. Requiem stuff has some/lots of the Retribution survive by being outside Ios when it exploded, and hints there may yet be hope for resurrecting the gods...
But at days end, the damage is done. Undoing it won't fix my voided army, and honestly defeats the point a bit of making the new faction.
So logically, Ios/Retribution isn't coming back in a timeframe or way that matters.
Ravyn is playable in MK4 Prime...? You can play Ravyn in any tournament, fluff game, etc.
@mikemooney15 sure, but like Severius, Stryker, Vlad, Goreshade(s), and many more, she's super dead in lore.
And I can totally understand someone being like "well, they killed my faction, killed my favorite characters... killed my interest in the game too! Triple kill!"
@OrigamiShinigami I get all that, but I played Sevy a couple weeks ago. Stryker just went undefeated in the Storm Knights Army at Bokur Brawl this weekend. Goreshade is also in MK4 Prime. Vlad is the only one that is only in unlimited; but if you're referring to the fluff, yeah, they're all dead in the fluff (Goreshade could be back like Krueger). I actually had the Acontecimento army squatted in Infinity; my Wood Elves were squatted in AoS after I rebased them(I kept them and am doing OW/9A). So yeah, getting squatted is a thing...but the rules are all out there, and the community is growing.
@@mikemooney15 acon is coming back according to people last time I complained we got squatted. And really, at days end, people shouldn't need to defend losing interest in a game if it managed to lose them.
Are there any other miniature war games with models as easy as Warmachine? I can't stand putting models together but I love this game. Just bought 3 battlegroups the other day 2015. I don't do Mk 4 or tournaments. I want easy modeling. I bought Cygnar, Skorne & Trollbloods. I was thinking about going with the Last Argument of Kings.
I hope Wyrd is paying attention. They should be protected at all costs.
Wyrd gave up to the canadian market, future video :)
I bought all the Warma/Hordes stuff I wanted from MKII / MKIII on super discount. I really enjoy their old lore and playing small scale games.
I still play it at home with some friends and family. To be fair PP did nix most of their line for MKIV...
And were now at a point where warmachine and privateer press is dead in the water and GW have brought back warhammer fantasy just because they can for shits and gigs 😂 its so weird to think that this was a genuine threat back in the day!
It was never a genuine threat. Privateer Press was always a mere fraction in size to GW. If you want to talk about a company that is comparable in size you are talking about Asmodee.
They are selling out constantly now *shrug* But are a far leaner company.
You mentioned you had blisters for PP on the wall, can you put them in the online store???
no we never carried it :)
Did you guys have any experience with X-Wing TMG? I had a good group during it's peak and into 2.0 before things happened and now it's basically gone. It was a tremendously enjoyable game to play in a casual setting.
That’s basically what happened to us. Had an amazing community in 2.0 - it actually revitalized a lot of us into trying again instead of the “old things must stay in dustbin”.
We survived covid on TableTop Simulator. Then AMG (the same privateer devs) came along and totally ruined the game with their 2.5. We played 2.5 exactly once, with its compressed points value, with its disgusting loadout trying to force you to have hundreds of triggers to remember (I really liked my leaner ships)….. and trying to hold still in space to secure objectives.
We said “forget this” and never looked back. My LGS has the xwing in the clearance bin and it’s not moving. The game died around us. The only people playing with xwing models at my store are playing a community driven 2.0 ruleset based narrative campaign that feels more like an rpg with xwing elements than a true xwing minis game.
It was a great game that got me back into the hobby 11 years or so ago. What made me quit the game was mk3 and this constant changing with the tierlist meta. it was annoying to see your army to swift from 1 spam of a unit to the other. I had a Legion of everblight army that forced me to play their ugly ass ogres figures and by the time i would painted those it would have switch to the next new unavoidable meta tier list (if you didn't played in a tier list, you are playing with 50% less minis almost). And of course player base dropping significantly. Almost no one played around. Sold my 2 armies at a loss for the quality of the paintjob i've done.
I ran Trollbloods and was an awful player but did have fun taking certain units either for "rule of cool" (that toad/frog troll with the tongue) or an animus (flaming caber throwers anyone??) but lost most of my games. Our group would do some 40K, then Warmachine, then WFB and it was fun when it lasted until the passing of our organizer.
It's like anything else, things come/go, just the circle of life and crap.
Actually they're arrogance killed them. Specifically Matt Wilson's arrogance. Shoddy material that was used to create they're plastics, the blotched as hell launch of Mark 3. The fact that they based the game around the competitive community was a major mistake. You could not play the Game casually at all. Then when things started going downhill they cut off the forums. They where the first company to price Calvary figures at 20 bucks a pop, not even GW was that stupid at the time. Moving to digital only publications with no hard copy. Lord where does It end.
I agree with your opinion on the competitive community. Although I have played a lot of tournaments, I prefer narrative play more. Competitive play breeds powercreep, which never is a good thing. You can see it happen still in MK4. I really like the rules for MK4 and play only with Legacy Armies, but when you compare those models to new solo's like Krueger they are laughable. The new models are so much better it's painfully obvious they're trying to sell that stuff.
I own a hordes army that is rather big. I lost interest in the game after a while so my stuff is in storage.
I don't think a lot of people understand that Warhammer 40k is headed in a very similar direction. In it's current state 40k has devolved into a board game as opposed to a wargame. "Red flags" in a wargaming sense are evident throughout the game. Tables have fixed symmetrical layouts and instead of an overarching objective for an army, battles are based around "scoring" ever changing objectives that can hardly be put together to make some actual narrative to the fight. Armies are no longer based around real world organizations and the economy of war is forgotten. I joke with friends that a modern 40k army feels like attacking an enemy with a squad of navy seals, backed up with some army rangers mounted in a blackhawk helicopter, and marine recon running overwatch. All watched over by an F-16 and A-10. I could create a wall of text with how many of these issues exist, and while most players may dismiss their impact on the game, added up they are akin to an iceberg and what you didn't see is what caused your demise. Yes, the game can be played in other ways than "matched play" but just browse youtube battle reports and you'll see how uncommon that scenario is.
I’ve been away from 40K for A couple of editions I came back and split thr leviathan set. I’ve been watching YT videos to learn the game. I feel the same, 40K isn’t the game I last played. I’m not saying it’s good or bad, it’s just different. It feels a lot like warmachine now. I remember when warmachine was going strong and I tried it out, I thought it was ok but too rules heavy. GW has definitely taken a page from WM/H, it’s much more based around the tournament scene. I used to love the imperial guard and their organization but it’s nothing like it used to be.
I realize things change and change isn’t always bad, but I wonder if GW isn’t careful if they won’t end up in the same situation. GW is a much bigger company and can take a hit much better than PP but I can see a lot of similarities in 40K now.
Going the same way, yet has never been played as much or bought as much, as now. And with the 3 year rules cycle they can quickly course correct should it become bad. They have the money and resources. PP didn’t and don’t
100%. Competitive players crying for hyper, chess-like balance will ruin it, among a slew of other reasons.
I agree. It feels like most wargames anymore feel like board games.
Video drops on the heels of Bokur Brawl, a PP specific con that 100+ folks attended to play WM/WC/etc.
I think all hobby shops could sell Magnus and Carver...they play in all 40 armies.
100+ people out of how many of thousands of wargamers in the US/world though?
@tinyfishhobby3138 the polish masters was another 64, Vancouver had a big 60+ person thing tournament and a few small steamrollers in the south all in the samec2 week period isn't bad. In GW for every tournament player there are 10 casuals.
Really interesting, if kinda sad video. But I think it illustrates something fundamental about games which own their IP rather than being driven by the "real world" in that even if you tank the games design element, miniatures retain some usefulness/value because they can be used in other "real world" systems. "Flames of war" dropping the ball so badly is the case in point - even if FOW ruleset version whatever sucks, you can still play "O-Group" or "Battlegroup" or whatnot with those same minis which is something you cant say for Warjacks. The other thing that jumps out at me about this commentary is that the relationship between retail and player bases in the US is much, much tighter than it is in countries where people play at clubs rather than at the FLGS. Games don't "die" when shops stop carrying them, because what retail shop ever carries 15mm ancients for example? But week after week I turn up and see people playing with armies they painted in the 80s. So there's something implicit about the scalability in the mix here. For example, Corvus Belli who make Infinity used to have a very nice 15mm historical range, but they canned the whole thing and chased their "Infinity" game with it's proprietary IP. There's a business case to be debated about whether selling a reliable X number of generic figures because they are not tied to an IP vs investing heavily in product development for a bespoke product that relies on in-house rules and setting and is therefore only one bad edition away from tanking.
"Why? Because we've always done it that way!"
Didn't the high point of PP also coincide with GWs Finecast disaster? Or maybe my dates are off.
The timelines overlap for sure. But I would also remind that PP never mastered good plastics. So GW always had them beat in the model quality - finecast aside.
I was out of the hobby when war machine was a thing, so interesting story. Do customers know what they really want. People don’t actually like the forever game as they get bored. They want new meta and new toys. On the other hand it does suck if you don’t personally like the changes.
The first thing anyone who survives dealing with the public at large is; don't sell to people's stated preferences.
There's an unfortunate push/pull between stability and new hotness. I think this manifests in this hobby marketplace as A) people entering the ecosystem want to experience new things, B) companies (attempting to retain customers) need to have a constant flow of new stuff, C) customers have burnout and either 'settle down' with a product/range that they're comfortable with or leave altogether.
Yeah, we want both. To an extent its us rather than GW cranking the meat grinder handle. Hopefully we come to terms with that.@@tempusavatar
people like "forever games" just fine. We are still playing variations of DBA to this day and that came out in 1988.
Tried ADLG, not a fan. Should try DBA at some point. The historicals audience is different, and there are still trends but some evergreen games.@@jaeledwards1367
Looks like it was just sold off to Steamforged Games.
Page 5
Simultaneously the best and worst thing imaginable... it set the tone, bringing most people's best face to the table. All while giving certain people "permission" to be their worst selves. Humbling them.was a joy.
I loved mk2. It was an amazing time in my life. I was mediocre at warmachine because i was just there to have fun. I would randomly just win... but I played retribution and they had one game plan... kill the caster.
For me it was the joy of derp killing a caster or the horror of slowly waiting for an opportunity and not biting at the bait.
At the time I was traveling a lot every city I went to had a club or lgs with warmachine games. It was my game from 08 untill mk3 gutted the local community. I had stopped the traveling in 2013 taking a more stable position. So when the local community went under and took 2 game stores with it along with the press gang. I walked away from privateer press completely disappointed that a company that could have given GW a run for its money botched the whole thing so badly.
Because mk2... was the opportunity to take down the king and privateer press decided it would loot it's own butthole.
I never cared about any game play, I just wanted the models to paint and display. I get tired of seeing stuff and usually give it away. PP was always a good buy compared to Warhammer. I still have boxes of unopened PP horded away. I just dislike WH's predatory sales practices. I wanted a Titan but the $$$..ugh..I ended up buying a recast just to have one.
I so loved that game. Watching Privateer Press self imolate was fascinatingly painful. They really had a moment to build on the goodwill of their playerbase and they fucking blew it.
The death knell was when they started selling the army boxes online. The oversaturation of the market was insane.
Cautionary tale on thumbnail managing.
GW is still in business so they must be doing something right
They do 95% right. The last 5% is just talked about all the time
@@martinjrgensen8234 95% is generous.
11:51 I work at a grocery store, and all of the stockers *hate* the 8 foot section of imported mostly Jewish food, that sits there until it goes out of date and comes in massive fuck off boxes (shelf holds 10 items, item comes in a box of 80, we sell 2 of them in a month, FML)
And even though we work at a multibillion dollar company, not nobody can do anything about it.
I also really hate the “natural” chips. We get too much, the computer doesn’t append the amounts we get and the warehouses just bukke us with boxes of shit that doesn’t sell. We will manually correct the balance on hand in the system, and the computer resets back to what it’s “objectively correctly set to be” (even though the allocations can’t actually fit the shelf) so I’m like “how many do I have to say I have so this shit drops coming?”
No offense to Warmahorde players, but PP did the wargaming community a disservice in promoting the fiction that miniatures games could ever be a competitive vehicle for the expression of player skill. About the best part about the game is that it tended to siphon off the sweatiest of competitive players from other communities, and for that reason I'm sorry to see that it has receded into the murky depths of "dead games".
Y’all are focusing on SKUs, but that wasn’t their deathknell.
It was Mk 3.
Before launching Mk3, they claimed they were balancing armies against each other.
They applied a formula across everyone, and didn’t test anything.
Upon Mk3, Trollbloods and Skorne, two of the worst of the 8 main factions in Mk2, who should be getting closer to MID, became worse than Minions and Mercs (two non-major factions)
The next major issue is that after receiving deserved hate from those players on their own forums, they nuked their forums. Facebook groups weren’t great, Twitter was only gaining in popularity, and Reddit isn’t what it was today. They scattered their community, all because they couldn’t handle criticism
I can assure you, playtesting happened and there was no "magic formula" to balancing the game.
Cope.
Warmachine MK4 is doing great.
Stop the hate.
did so well they had to sell it off.
@@flameknightdragon Its doing so well that they could sell it off.
Terrible take.
Legion of Everblight FTW!
Apparently PP almost made Marvel Crisis Protocol? I guess the deal with Disney fell through, hence why half the company left to found Atomic Mass and run with the project. Second/third hand info and can't verify either way, but it would be a very different world if PP had released a Marvel game.
They did actually make it.
They absolutely did make it, on retainer from Asmodée. There were rumours of a Asmodée buyout of PP, that fell through. When it did, Asmodée recruited (well, poached, really) Will Shick and Will Pagani from PP's design team and set up a studio of their own (Atomic Mass) that they proceeded to unload the Star Wars games on.