Reduction at the front end, in packaging, is pretty much the only answer - but big companies just don’t care so customers need to vote with their $,£ etc to force them - so, in this respect, you were right all along Zac.

I think its best to be on the safe side to have the clearance where the spears are not touched at all during casual pressure from the box than to have it snap off.

The Starter box is big. That’s fine. The Templar box shown is too large, has a bad choice of interior color (the templars get lost with the off white back blending into their white robes) and is far too tall. Overall it gives a very bad impression of what might be fine product. The same cannot be said of the starter box because you can see that there is more behind it including a terrain piece, rulebook and playmat.

If the templars box was half as thin (or thinner) it might not feel so empty. And subsequently worth the monies ($25-$30) that they will be asking for the 6 figures. Right now - I think it will be hard to sell because of the large quantity of Chinese air folks will be buying contained in that packaging. Never mind the shelving issues. :-(

The spacing from the actually window of the box and the plastic tray where the miniatures are held is necessary to allow casual pressing on the window to not touch any of the spears that stick out.

I’m not so sure about the quantity comparison. At least as far as PP is concerned, the package for a human-sized unit of 6 troopers definitely has much less empty space than this one. Which would make sense considering that their purposes are completely different (simple box vs. display case). The quantity of material isn’t that large so differences might look small, but I wouldn’t be surprised if this Rackham unit box had at least twice as much plastic and cardboard than one from PP.

The shelf space is apparently an issue they did not consider as crucial while other companies put a lot of thinking into that. Asmodée for example surveyed quite a few store owners to come up with boxes as small as possible for the whole range, a bi-monthly release schedule, and even a convenient battlefield size, all for the sake of saving store space.

Well that doesn’t sound like much fun and appears to leave out a heck of a lot of the game

Where I would prefer that the packaging be recyclable, the actual size of the package and it’s contents matter more to me as a merchant. If I have a package that is 100% recyclable but 3″ tall, 3″ deep and 9″ wide just to display 6 figures - it’s too darn big. I’m guessing the dimensions from the pictures shown. I don’t know the real ones.

And if the package _looks_ empty becuase of the wasted interior volume and bad color choice, it’s grand I can turn it into new paper somewhere else… but chances are for the $25 or $30 my customers are going to have to pay for it they will feel cheated and not buy it to begin with.

Where the current AT43 packaging is a little wasteful, I can live with it because the product is well display within the package. The Templars box set is so badly designed from a display and value perception angle I can’t believe it. If that is the final packaging for the product I will be forced to analyze the actual sales that CAoR has had for me so far (small) the amount of space they want to take up on my wall and shelves (big) and only order in the bare minimum at a time and encourage folks to order ahead for it or just outright leave a catalog by the voluminous starter box and ask folks to order from that.

Of course at some point environmental issues will be seen as matters of life and death for our species. When that happens we won’t have as much time to push lead.

This leaves aside the exploitation of Chinese labour and the ruination of that huge country to meet the insatiable demands of the first world consumer market for toys etc., or the fact that almost 20% of world oil consumption is used by merchant marine vessels, yadda, yadda….

I don’t particularly think this is an environmental issue as there isn’t that much more plastic and card used per box than I get with other companies such as PP or GW and there isn’t any polstyrene. But it just feels over-bulky, and I can see why vendors will get irritated trying to find shelfspace.

I mean I do buy into the whole eco-packaging debate, and do consider most products to have way to much packaging around them, and believe that producer should be restricted in how much they are allowed to use. But I don’t think R are worse than anyone else in this regard, so its probably not fair to slam them for it.

The packaging issue certainly has environmental/ recycling impact, but it also seems, as already commented, to be part of a business case. My impression is that Rackham have tried to follow the same approach with CAoR as AT43.

Now that makes sense for a new product. You will interest enough new and old gamers to make that first purchase. But that’s not the case with CAoR.

As Zac, me, and obviously many others have done, we’ve all been trying to work out if we can play with what we’ve already got. My project for today is rebasing my Griffin and Wolfen on to round bases and then to play a game with the downloaded rules. So we’re not out there buying the starter set and sitting down to play.

On the positive side, Rackham have been great in providing web material to keep players of the previous incarnations interested. That’s fine in the long term because some of us may continue to play.

But in the short term and bearing in mind Rackham’s financial situation, it makes me wonder just how many of the starter sets have been sold. I suspect older players like me with metal collections are waiting for the seperate sale of individual bits and pieces to see if we like them and if they fit in with our collections. So who buys the starter set?

With Battlefield and ST Evo looking to have bitten the dust, Rackham are at the forefront of the pre-painted for wargaming experiment. Having provided me and many others with some great products for over the last ten years, I hope this change in direction won’t be too much of a business challenge.

Well I’ve not tested it in a game but I was going to use:

Templars with Warstaff and Sered
Spearmen
Fusiliers with Ambrosius
Thallion Riders
Cannon

I’d be very interested to see your list since I’m unsure what would make a solid Griffin list. I bought a wide selection of Griffin stuff and a bunch of characters.