One wonders whether Rackham’s desire to emulate GW is a good thing, given the direction that GW appears to be heading. It seems to me that this hobby is just not “big” enough to allow a company to become a huge multinational that is a cash cow.

That said though, I agree with you. I wish Rackham all the best success, even though I don’t play any of their games and likely won’t, because it means more people more likely to join me playing Supersystem! (notice how I worked that in? :-))

I hope these prepaints do open the way for more new blood in the hobby. I myself am a product of prepainted that has gone the way to metal minis. It was Heroclix that brought me into the world of miniature gaming. This then lead me to Mage Knight which then led me to Mech Warrior which then lead me to Warhammer 40K. It was Warmachine though that really sparked my interest in metal miniatures and painting. I never could wrap my head around the rules of 40k, but my first demo of Warmachine instantly clicked in my mind.

That led me to other games such as Dark Age and Rezolution. And thanks to TNG lead me wonderful games such as Anima Tactics, Hell Dorado and AE-WWII.

Wizkids games I believe is the first to bring miniature wargames to the mainstream but I have a feeling they are failing at that. While I do see their Priates Games on the shelves of large retail stores I no longer see the HeroClix boosters. It seems to me they have gone full circle and now do these “brick and mortar” incentives instead.

If Rackham intends to compete in the mass retail market I believe their biggest competitor would be Heroscape. Heroscape is a very popular miniatures game that is very simple to learn and relatively cheap to get into. They are the first prepainted miniatures game as of late to drop the blind package method. While their sculpts an paint jobs are no where near the quality of AT-43 they are very popular among their target market and even gamers. (Just by checking the Herosapers.com and boardgame geek).

If Confrontation or AT-43 happen to be on the shelves of Wal-Mart or Toys R Us I believe most regular consumers will pass if they are see it side by side Heroscape. AT-43 starter set $80. Heroscape Starter set $40. AT-43 you get some containers and walls. Heroscape you get walls and modular terrain. AT-43 you get 19 miniatures. Heroscape you get 30. Although the quality in the games and miniatures greatly differ I don’t believe Rackham has or can priced themselves to cater mass consumers. Not right now at least.

I do think that the new Confrontation will be successful because there is a market among gamers for their miniatures. I know lots of gamers that simply have no time to paint and love the concept of prepainted. A lot of them hate to buy things blind packaged and welcomes the what you see is what you get form of distribution.

As for me, I’m a gaming junkie. I will buy the new Confrontation and try it out. :)

When Rackham says it, it doesn’t mean the same thing typical that it means when gamers say it online. Rackham means it as a sales goal and gamers mean it in a derogatory sense.

Rackham is clearly not following GWs model though. Different types of games, different market focus as well I think.

I’m certain Rackham won’t mind eating some GW sales but they are probably aiming at the Heroscape market more than the 40K market.

I paint ALL of my figs, always have, prob always will.

But I love Rackham’s AT-43 and New Confrontationfor the same reason.

I HATE playing with or against unpainted armies!

I will almost certainly apply touch ups if not outright repaint
all my new Rackham Figs… but I think prepaints are the future
because.. not everyone likes to paint.. and this open’s a lot of new blood for me to play against (and too introduce miniature gaming too)
with out looking crappy on the table (sorry heroclix)

I’m short on time, not cash. Good quality pre-paints with a deep rules system fills the niche for me.

It will also keep new parents, including our dear TGN editor, in the hobby. Previously, having a kid was a death sentence for the gaming collection, at least until they 6 years old or so. I’m sure many that have left the hobby for that reason never seem to find the time to come back.

A\s a parent of a 2 year old I have to agree with you. That’s why I love Heroscape and AT-43. Heroscape my daughter can actually play around with. AT-43 gives me the deeper rules I want. It also leads me to the trend of playing low count model games such as Anima Tactics (I can handle to paint 2 minis a month) and Hell Dorado (finished my Sarrasins starter in 1 week, only 10 models). For now the only large scale games that I will take time to paint is warmachine and hordes.

The main issue about Rackham is not the games, though there is an evident lack in rule designing… AT-43 and Confrontation AoR tried to solve the “rule design issue” but in some way, by symplifiing and standardizing the game they loose originallity.

It would be hasardous to compare AT-43 (I have it!) Confrontation AoR with games such as Warmachine, Hordes or Hell Dorado … But despite this, they’re still enjoyable to play, prepainted or not, for players who have trouble to find time to “set the table and engage the ennemy” ;o)

The future of Rackham has been hypothecated due to the poorest communication policies ever seen in the hobby (except maybe with GW?), the poorest hability to listen to their customers and the poorest hability to question the way they were running their business (mainly due to an obvious ego problem at the direction of the company)… I hope not ; but I think AoR and At-43 came very late to compensate years of abuse.

Rackham is not the hobby and the eventual death of Rackham should not be the death of the hobby… Hope this will lead to an improvement of the way companies deal with their public and encourage companies respecting their customers and playing a fair game ;o)

Given Rackham’s distribution issues, there is no way they could swing a Wal Mart. I am saddened to see them move into prepaints because I loved the artistry that went into their sculpts. But AT43 has been a good crossover game for boardgamers, roleplayers and minis players who want a 2nd game but don’t have the time. The sculpts are quality and easily repainted. If Rackham really wants to get going in a market they need to actually have coherent army book and miniature releases instead of the haphazard methods they now employ and to keep things in stock!

AT-43 is an okay game, I got into it as something different from what I usually buy (and paint). The rules are a bit basic, squad based restrictions are something I am not keen on.

The new Confrontation rules do not inspire me. I actually like C3, so whilst the prepainted minis are okay, I don’t fancy the game much. Hence I have been buying up Rackham lead before it is all gone!

One problem I have with plastic prepaints is the soft plastic and the bendy swords. Even some of the guns in AT-43 are a bit bendy, how the heck is this going to affect Griffin Duelists for example with their very slim blades?

But if what the hobby needs to compete with WoW is to evolve into something I don’t want to play, well, that doesn’t help me much.

I’d argue though that it does ultimately help you. Without new players coming into the hobby it dies.

Zac- not necessarily. The question is, how much transfer will there be between people who play prepainted plastic, and people who play painted metal? If the answer is “not much,” then its not just one hobby. It’s two hobbies, and players who enter the world of prepainted plastic do nothing to help preserve the metal miniatures hobby. In that case, prepainted plastic will do about as much for metal miniature wargaming as World of Warcraft does for Dungeons and Dragons. About zilch.

More often than not they don’t make any impact at all on the more esoteric branches of the gaming community

If they keep your FLGS in business then they do.

And every kid that wanders into a game store looking for HeroClix is someone that gets into the habit of going to those stores and can eventually be moved into other games.

I’ve seen that at my local store where the younger 40K gamers have added Hordesmachine to the games they play.

Without a doubt it makes next to no difference if these people are going to Wal Mart but getting addition traffic into our game stores is a good thing.

The three most popular sets of pages on TGN are the 40K and AT-43 category pages and any page that relates to the release of the new Confrontation game. Three of the top ten pages at TGN this month are posts about the Confrontation starter and starter set figures. We all appear to cry and moan and about the new Confrontation game and yet we all want information about it. And apparently can’t get enough of it.

There are a number of reasons why someone could be curious about this prepainted business of Rackham without being in the least interested in it. Stats can tell you pretty much anything depending on what you want to hear :)
Besides, Rackham’s been aiming at the US market when creating AT43 and now CAoR. Good for them if people on an English speaking forum indeed show interest in those products ;)

my recent painting has been for [...] pirate gaming so I’m certainly not in the mainstream in any sense.
Pirates are not mainstream? :p

To this jaded observer the “fantasy/SF toy soldier market” seems to be divided into 3 main focii with varying degrees of overlap.

These are

1/ “Traditional” metal, paint-em-yourself games.
2/ The GW plastic multi-part (rumours abound that GW is going all-plastic soon),
3/ Clix/CMG/boardgames.

Rackham’s AT-43 (having played a few games now with my nascent Red Blok) seems to fit more closely into the psychology of the 3rd bracket more closely than the other two, even though on face value it might seem to be a challenge to the 2nd.

As a 39-year-old gamer with a reasonable eye to quality AT-43 appeals because the models of the walkers look very nicely done, and while the painting and posing of the infantry is “basic”, its good enough for me for the sake of a quick game out the box of an evening. They are reasonably pretty playing pieces and no more.

And at that level it succeeds.

My “worries” for the Rackham products are.

1/ Price. They carry a hefty price tag in the UK (£20 for 6 elite infantry, £7- £10 for a solitary hero) which doesn’t sit well with them fighting against cheap-as-chips clix games for the attention of gamers wallets (typically horrorclix goes for around £5 for 4 models). Also, the hefty price tag makes me think twice about developing my “army” beyond the few units that are needed for the odd game every now and again, as opposed to developing it into something large enough for “serious” sized games and attention.

2/ Genre. Standard “fantasy” is something that hasn’t taken off in PPP even as a clix game. As such it is a big risk for R to pin their long term hopes on.

Overall, I think the issue comes down to value for money. R goods carry a hefty price tag (in Europe at least) so are R’s prepaints worthy of consideration as “value for money” to justify that level of investment by the punter? In my view they are treading a very fine line.

If they could sell their infantry units at around 1/2 to 2/3 of their current European price then I would think they could be a good bet. As things stand though with such high prices, they will only ever attract marginal interest in Europe I believe.

And as for the issue of “hits” on Rackham topics on TGB; as a previous poster said “interest” doesn’t necessarily equate to “support”. A lot of us are at lest as interested in the development of the “industry” side of things as we are in the possibility of playing the games. Rackham have rocked the boat with ditching their artisitically acclaimed metals in favour of an untried range of prepainted plastic, and a lot of us are fascinated in seeing how it all plays out.

Zac, FLGS stopped catering to the obscurer tastes years ago ;-)

Even back in the nineties the local shops over here carried only the major brands. Occasionally they’d give something less well known a try, but as this sort of thing hardly ever works out, fans of less commercially succesful lines would soon have to fall back on mail order. So much for getting kids hooked on Mass Market Game X to cross over in significant numbers to other genres.

(btw, quoting doesn’t seem to work for me today)

Apart from the ‘net, my next most popular source of purchases is independent shows or conventions. There’s no lack of “minority” games at those!

first of all, i have no problem with pre-paints. i don’t use them because i am a modeller and the cheap plastic bends and the prepaint obscures detail when repainted. my issue is that rahkam’s mission statement use to be ‘to produce the finest quality miniature’s to support the hobby.’ they use to have massive painting and hobby articles in ‘cry havoc’ and they have produced some of the finist mini’s i have ever scene. now, they are turning thier backs on the customers who brought them as far as they have gotten by putting out cheaply done, mass produced, expensive, prepaints. that is frustrating. it is really hard to find mini’s that are not just made for gaming but for modellers as well. now, i heard a rumor that the confrontation lines are going to still have a limited amount of the figs available in metal. if this is true, then i will continue to purchase confrontation mini’s.

It is but the fact is that Confrontation as it stood wasn’t the success that the company wanted it to be. It sucks that they have made this decision but for a number of reasons they never did have the success with Confrontation in its old incarnation that they could have or wanted.

Not arguing about that, but I wonder about the timing of their figuring this lack of success. Was it before they started to dedicate most of their efforts to AT43? Was it before the coffee break when they scribbled a quick version 3.5 of Confrontation that brought more problems than it was supposed to fix? Was it before they released an nth army that they hadn’t planned ahead of time and that they couldn’t support with a regular supply of new releases until it got even remotely on par with the other ones?

I feel like I could spend the day coming up with reasons why Confrontation wasn’t the success the company wanted it to be… Such a waste of talent truly saddens me.

I think that what we are having is a convergence of the technology that can produce prepaints for an affordable level and lifestyles that don’t allow for a lot of time to paint minis. The first part is self explanitory, the other is not necessarily so. When I was younger and didn’t have the Internet, 188 channel cable, computer/console games, a significant other/child//dog/cat, I had lots of free time to paint my army any way I wanted. That was before GW codified all the Marine chapters and people thought you needed to play an official chapter. But now I have limited time to paint and must admit that I really don;t like painting armies … I like painting miniatures. Rather than buy $100 worth of pewter that sits in boxes and never gets painted I can buy $100 of prepainted plastic and use it the second I tear it out of the box. Sure I could paint better than those Chinese machines, but I’m fooling myself into thinking I’ll do it before pension age. I like painting individual characters for RPGs or personality characters, but my days of painting hoards of metal or plastic are behind me.

So now I’ll buy some AT-43 minis and some Confrontation prepaints and just play the game rather than buy into the hobby mentality. When I want to paint a cool mini, I’ll do just that … paint one cool mini.

Iain.

I find it interesting that people will damn the very game they play….

I for one applaud Rackham for coming to the aid of the busy gamer. Prepaints are going to be a big part of the gaming sector due to people being insanely busy, at least in the U.S…..

A recent article in White Dwarf, a writer stated we have a great hobby (painting miniatures) that also has some great rules to allow us to play with our hobby. So GW is clearly pointed at people to paint mini’s first, game second. While Rackham new direction is to aim at gamers first, and if you wish to repaint, go for it.

And from that comment, and the fact that AT-43 did not do as well as Rackham anticipated on the European continent, I would think that Europeans, with their socialist economies and governments, which favor the workers (which is not a bad thing and I don’t want to start a debate about it) allows for people to have the time to paint mini’s. While in the U.S., with an economy that cares more for the big dogs (ie corporations) most people (like myself) work 50-60 hours a week just to make ends meet. I’d like to make ends meet, so time is a huge factor.

And for those that think the Mini’s will be as crappy as the ones from WOTC… the AT-43 mini’s are a hell of a lot better than those. So I think that the Confrontation Mini’s will be just as good if not better.

I’ve seen them at some of the booths at the Richmond night market. Along with knock-off iPods and anything else you might expect. They’re not marketed or sold as “wargaming miniatures” but just cheap bulk little toy soldiers. I’ve done my share of business with importing from China and if someone is having something made, many factory owners think there must be a market for it and mass produce knock offs for sale by dollar stores, night market booths and whatnot. Even found a couple proprietary designs for a company I used to work for– considering those were one off statues for a corporate client, it was surprising that someone saw fit to counterfeit them, cast them in hard plastic and sell them.

I did want to revisit one idea though:

But if what the hobby needs to compete with WoW is to evolve into something I don’t want to play, well, that doesn’t help me much.

I’d argue though that it does ultimately help you. Without new players coming into the hobby it dies.

The other poster was talking about the hobby as a whole. If it has to become something that I don’t want to play in order to get new players, it doesn’t help me at all. It’s like saying a new racket that gets people into tennis will help someone no longer interested in tennis. Help them with what? More potential opponents for a game they don’t play?

I’m taking the opportunity to buy the metal confrontation stuff that is being so deeply discounted at various places. I’m also not at all interested in pre-painted plastics.

One way or another, it’s a huge gamble for Rackham. They built their company on selling really high quality sculpts that really showed off one’s painting skill. They were high ticket items that really showed off what some might call the “French” style of painting miniatures. Until AT43, their core market was people wanting their gorgeous figures to paint. Now they’re completely changing gears and going with prepaints. Their existing customers aren’t necessarily going to be their future customers. Hopefully for them, they can get enough new people who are interested in pre-paints into it.

Those of us who like the metal miniatures and skirmish gaming can use them with other rules sets like Ares or Song of Blades and Heroes or some other rules. At one online store, I just grabbed over 20 metal Confrontation miniatures for $50 after shipping. It’ll be a challenge to complete my collection of a given faction before they’re gone, but I’m part way there already.