by Zac Belado
This article appeared in an edited form in Ravage Magazine

One of the more interesting facets of the miniature gaming hobby over the last few years is that way in which the Internet has taken what used to be a parochial and national hobby, especially in North America, and turned it into a very diverse and international pastime. There are, I believe, some interesting implications of this not only for gamers but also for miniatures and game producers.

Ten years ago the main producer of miniatures and miniature games was, at least in my city, Games Workshop. And while this may seem like an international company selling in Canada it really wasn’t. The product may have been shipped from the UK but it was sold and distributed by a Canadian company and I bought it from a local game store often learning about it via that same store. There were no foreign language games or miniatures available and the only people playing German and French board games were those who brought them back from holidays. And they also had to know how to read German or French as the games were not available in English. The hobby itself was also more insular. The opinions about games that I got were either from local gamers or from magazines like White Dwarf, Wargames Illustrated or Avalon Hill’s The General.
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A version of this article appeared previously in Ravage Magazine

Odds are that if you were a fan of the recently released Dark Heresy RPG you were quite the annoyed consumer last month after Games Workshop decided to pull the plug on their Black Industry subsidiary and cancel further work on the Dark Heresy RPG and halted production of the Talisman board game. To say that this annoyed fans of the RPG and board game is an understatement. To say that the decision to scrap a product that had sold out online in minutes and was flying off the shelves in local games stores was puzzling is an even grosser understatement. It is not difficult for people on the web to develop a sense of outrage disproportionate to the actual cause but even taking this into account the reactions on the Black Industry message board, and on others, was, to be polite, highly passionate. There was, though, a silver lining in that dark brooding cloud.
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Now this is probably asking for trouble but I would like to make a few comments about Rackham and their new business plan. First off let me make it clear that I have spent a long time being quite annoyed at Rackham. Mostly as a result of the boxes of metal Confrontation figures that I have with which I am never going to be able to make a CaoR army out of. I have managed to do some trades locally to build up a very nice Griffin army for CaoR but there is little chance that my Drune, Mid-nor or Kelt figures will ever see the table.

Part of the reason why I was able to reconcile myself to this new business plan of Rackham’s is that I am primarily a gamer and I simply want to play fun games. For me the miniatures are important but not as much as the game. I play AT-43 because it is a fun game, I play AE-WWII because it is a fun game and I played Confrontation 3.0 because it was a fun game. As much as I liked the Confrontation figures I played the game because of the game itself and not because of the figures.

Now there are some people that were big fans of both the game and the figures and for them the decision by Rackham to pursue a prepainted plastic game is obviously disappointing. If you liked the intricate detail of the metal sculpts these new figures can’t possibly fire your imagination and certainly won’t satisfy your desire for great figures.
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One of the local gamers here in Vancouver has started to use his real name in message boards and has a .sig that suggests to others that doing so will help build a better community. It seems to be working on our local board as I have noticed people adding their real names to their .sigs.

I think that for a local message board it is a very good idea. There is nothing quite as odd as going to a local convention and having to figure out which person at the event is “mistwizard16″. We also refer to each other by our “real” names when we get together and so having those displayed on a message board are, I think, one more step to building a robust and healthy gaming community.
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Now normally this wouldn’t rate being labelled as an editorial but since I have officially griped about Rackham here on the site I thought it only fair to post a small “mea culpa” on the site as an editorial.

In previous posts and comments I have complained about not being able to field a Confrontation army with my existing Griffin force. While this is technically true in that I could not field a single legal unit under the new Confrontation: AoR rules with the figures I had based and available for the Confrontation 3 skirmish rules I had “one or two” blisters of Griffin troops set aside which when assembled allowed me to build a 2000pt force. And of course when I say “one or two” I mean a small box.
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Recent rumours about the next edition of 40K have got me thinking about 40K and what Games Workshop can do to bring in new gamers. The reason being that the reactions from 40K gamers regarding the changes that have been posted (rumoured changes of course) have been quite dramatic and for me the potential tweaks to the 40K rules have really left me uninterested.
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written by TGN head geek Zac Belado

It’s been a busy year. So busy in fact that the month by month examination of the high points of the year that I did for 2006 isn’t really a possibility this year. Not only are there some local matters that have dramatically cut into my free time, but we posted probably four times the amount of news in 2007 than we did in 2006 making the task a lot more difficult.

Instead I thought that it might be interesting to take a look at, and discuss, some of the more interesting developments of 2007 and look at their impact and how they may effect the future of our hobby.
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Here is a list of some of the games and miniatures that I thought were interesting and fun with a few comments added about them. Perhaps its just that we cast our eyes further afield for news this year or perhaps it was that there were just more fun games and miniatures released this year but 2007 brought us 100s of great new figures and games.

Now some of you may recognize these as the original Reader’s Choice nominations. One of my personal goals with the Awards (and with the Editor’s Choice Award later this month) is to not only recognize the best that the industry has created but also to serve as a reminder of some of the great work that has gone on in the hobby over the course of the year. And I thought it would be useful, and fun, to reuse that list and post it as a reminder of the great minis, games and accessories that the people in the hobby worked to produce this year. Feel free to post your own favourite from the last year.
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For a while now I have been running ads with links to products on Amazon.com but I have removed them here, and on another websites, as of today. The reason for this is simply that Amazon is a discount reseller and their sales ultimately cut into the sales for local game stores. Now I have no basic issues with Amazon. I use the Canadian site frequently to get books ever since the local bookstore I used went out of business (unrelated to online competition).
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The newly released Confrontation prepainted plastic figures will, it is said in various sectors of the Interweb, not only lead to the end of Rackham as a company but also spell the end of gaming as we know it. At least that is what various posters on message boards and forums are saying.

The internet is great in that it allows you to connect to hundreds of people with similar interests and it is a poor communication medium in that it allows, some might say induces, people to yell the most inane things in the hope of being noticed. Separating the signal from the noise is often difficult to do.

The internet also seems to fear change. Or at least view it as an opportunity to wail and moan about the end of the earth, the end of the hobby, the end of… well the end of almost anything. This isn’t to say that there aren’t people with legitimate complaints and that there aren’t companies that act in ways that are mystifying to gamers. Rackham is certainly an example.
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There has been a lot of talk on the Interweb about the upcoming Apocalypse rule release from Games Workshop. If you’re not familiar with it, the ruleset is for larger (3000+ point) games with no army list restrictions and a pile of special effects for units and weapons. It also marks the return of the Vortex Grenade to 40K.

I made a comment in a discussion here this week that this seemed to be a return to the wild days of 40K Second Edition with its seeming lack of army list balance, crazy effects (who didn’t think that the Grot Gun wasn’t cool?) and mad rules. It appears that is a deliberate choice on the part of the 40K design team as, was pointed out to me, Jervis Johnson makes this very point in the latest Standard Bearer article in White Dwarf. Apocalypse is aimed to be a wild and fun game that people can play to simply have fun. The game also seems to borrow a concept from Warmachine in that it is easy to balance a game when everyone has some outlandishly powerful effect they can bring into play.
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A few years ago I remember reading a comment by Jervis Johnson that he enjoyed gaming without point costs. Whether it be scenario based games or simply putting together armies that looked like fun to game, his point was that he thought that point systems weren’t a necessary part of social gaming. I don’t recall what my exact reaction was to the idea but I think that disbelief is a succinct way to sum it up.

I have a lot of respect for Jervis. He has produced some of the most enjoyable games to come from GW and he certainly knows a heck of a lot more about game design that I ever will but at the time I thought that the idea of playing games without point systems was a recipe for disaster. Now, I am thinking that perhaps Jervis is right and point costs are a wasted effort
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Thanks to some expeditious ordering from The Warstore our local gaming group has finally been able to get some games of AT-43 under our belts and get an idea not only of the game but also some experience gaming with these prepainted miniatures.
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We’ve talked here in the past about the impact of Games Workshop and the valuable service it provides the rest of the hobby by creating a flow of customers for other companies. This is, of course, not what GW wants. It wants to retain those gamers and keep them happily buying 40K figures. But over the last few years there has been a broadening of interest in new games and new genres that has been facilitated, in part, by a movement of gamers away from GW products. This is, to my mind, a good thing. Even if GW doesn’t retain those customers the hobby as a whole appears to be keeping them. This helps to create and foster other companies that produce more games and miniatures for us all to partake in.
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Now before anyone reads the title of this editorial and wonders, I was not recently at a week long retreat in Nottingham where I spent 60 hours watching Tom Kirby inspirational videos while eating a diet of low protein gruel. And I most certainly haven’t change my opinion that the current management of GW are slowly killing a great company. That said, I think we all need to make sure that we distinguish between our dislike of the actions of the current management and the company itself.
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Companies in your browser window may appear larger than they are

The internet is a great tool for leveling the playing field and giving small companies quick and easy access to their customers. TGN is an example of this as are the many message boards, websites and Yahoo Groups that exist to help connect gamers with companies willing to supply them with product.

I would say that in the past four years it has become substantially easier for gamers to find companies and products and it will continue to do so as companies continue to expand their use of the web. There is a downside to this though in that it often gives people a distorted impression of the relative size of the companies in the industry.
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Recently Ryan S. Dancey posted some 2007 predictions for the Hobby Gaming industry in his blog. I’ve read through the article a few times and thought that I’d post my own comments on his predictions. For the record I don’t think that Ryan is necessarily wrong its just that a few things he says don’t sync with my own feelings.

That said, Ryan has far more experience in this industry than I do and indubitably has contacts in the companies that he discusses. I suspect that he has more concrete information than he leads one to believe in his blog post but is just presenting his comments as his own predictions to protect his source, or more commendably, to not be name dropping.

That said, here are my own thoughts regarding some of the issues he discusses.
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The adage says “Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes”. And I have to say that there is no way that I would have wanted to be in Matt Sprange’s shoes for the last few weeks. Mongoose Publishing has been heavily promoting their new miniature game Battlefield Evolution and the prepainted miniatures that the game uses. It turns out that the images they have posted on their site for the last few months weren’t the same quality as the shipping models.
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2006 was a great year. New companies came out with a wide array of great new miniatures and products. New paint lines were announced and released. And if you were a tabletop gamer it was a difficult to say “no” to all the new figs and games that were made available. Here is a list, with commentary, about some of the more memorable stories from the year arranged by the month in which they were posted.

January

• Alpha Forge releases Star Mogul
  28mm sci-fi manufacturer Alpha Forge releases rules to support their own range of miniatures.
• GW stock warning and analysis
  Who could have foreseen a dramatic drop in Lord of the Rings sales? Almost everyone except GW it appears.
• Dark Realms Miniatures website opens
  Brand new 6mm sci-fi manufacturer opens their new website

February

• Harbinger ceases production
  Print magazine Harbinger stops publication
• Black Devils released
  More great 15mm WWII troops from Resistant Rooster. This time its Soviet Naval troops.
• Excelsior loses licenses
  Warzone licensee Excelsior has their license pulled and the company slips away
• Classic Battletech rerelease
  Battletech fans rejoice at the prospect of a return to the “classic” Battletech rules.

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I have to admit to being confused by Wizards. The company produces games such as Axis and Allies, Star Wars Starship Battles and the upcoming Axis and Allies: War at Sea and does little to nothing to promote them. Mind you, the gaming industry isn’t renowned for its ability to self-promote but a company the size of Hasbro, which owns Wizards of the Coast, should certainly have the wherewithal to be able to send out some press material in order to get gamers interested in their products.
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Now GW gets more than its fair share of abuse. Even here at TGN the company probably gets more negative commentary than any other company. I am, myself, not a big fan of the company despite being a very big 40K fan and a very big fan of the entire Inquisitorial theme in 40K. That said, I’m willing to guess that almost everyone reading this has at least one GW miniature in their collection and perhaps a Warhammer or 40K army. I know I have a lot of them.

GW’s mandate, and rightly so it has to be added, is to sell as many miniatures as possible to its customers and so it focuses its attention on providing rules and background that facilitate the purchase and use of large armies. One has to wonder though if GW might be able to make even more money from selling and supporting rules that allowed gamers to play smaller scale games with the same miniatures.
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Battlefield Evolution stock levels

Mongoose Publishing recently issued a warning that stock levels of their upcoming Battlefield Evolution game may be low in North America. Well technically they said in the US but one assumes that the condition will exist in Canada as well.

According to Mongoose, distributors in Europe have already grabbed 90% of the planned stock of the game and the only way they can assure North American gamers of stock is if they pre-order from the Mongoose Publishing website.
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This was originally intended to be an informal weekly discussion of the news but I’m going to attempt to give myself a little more free reign to discuss gaming in general with an aim to still keep my writing informed by the news.

Prepainted miniatures
Mongoose Publishing recently posted details of the first seven releases for their new Battlefield Evolution game. Rackham has also been busy posting new photos and giving demos of their AT-43 game.

What has been interesting is that the discussion of these games has quickly moved on from whether people like prepainted miniatures to what sort of games you can proxy Therian for or whether the Battlefield Evolution tanks are in scale with the troops. This is an interesting shift since it makes me think that people have accepted the idea of prepainted miniatures and moved on to discuss how to use these “miniatures” in their games.
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Working together
Its been a bit of a theme this week (and last) on the site but the more I look for it the more I find great examples of small gaming companies working together to provide mutual support for one another. Black Hat Miniatures is currently offering a special on their Three Musketeers range of miniatures to coincide with the release of Rattrap Production’s Gloire ruleset. Crusader and Artisan, last month, announced a range of Pirate miniatures they were working on jointly, each selling a portion of the range on their individual stores.

Stephen Cole also discusses this idea of mutual aid in a recent blog post and I find this quote particularly interesting.
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Rules and Settings
Our recent poll discusses an issue that is, for many of us, at the heart of our hobby. Various companies, such as GW, Crocodile Games and Privateer Press for example, create unique settings for their games and miniatures. Sometimes people like the settings, or just the miniatures, but they aren’t so fond of the rules. Other companies, such as MJ12 or Wargames Unlimited, produce generic rules that can be used with any miniatures. But nowhere in the sci-fi/fantaasy genre do we typically see people producing settings or miniatures that are used with other rules.
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Some commentary and discussion about some of the stories that were posted this week.

Bases
Some people talk about living in a Golden Age in terms of miniatures but one area that is often overlooked is the wealth of gaming accessories that we also have access to. This week MicroArtStudio and MICROCONSTRUCT both announced new resin bases. MicroArtStudio released several very interesting round and square bases including a very unique 60mm Infested Base that would be great for a 40K Chaos Dreadnought or Daemon as well as 25mm round wood bases. The MicroArtStudio site is filled with excellent bases for various games and various types of terrain.
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Some extended commentary and discussion inspired by the stories that were posted to TGN this week. I’m still working out what this weekly feature will be so comments and feedback are always appreciated.

Metropolis: Battle-force Conflicts
Urban Mammoth began to publicize their new Metropolis game this week with a small teaser on their website. The game appears to be an amalgamation of the unit quality system from Urban War with the previous Void 1.1 rules. I’ve always been a fan of the Void rules so I’m always interested in hearing about these rules being resurrected from their dormancy (with apologies to Scotia Grendel) but I am rather hesitant about using the unit calibre system from Urban War in the new game. Individual figures of varying abilities seems to fit into a skirmish game but is this the level of detail that you want or need in a game that has multiple units each with multiple figures in it? Its certainly going to be interesting to see how well this idea meshes with the rest of the Void rules.
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I’m starting an experimental weekly roundup where I will focus, and comment on, three stories from our weekly roundup that are of particular interest picked from amongst the stories in the weekly update. Comments, suggestions or any feedback on this new feature are greatly appreciated.

Antenociti’s Workshop hover tank
Jed at Antenociti’s Workshop posted pictures of the master for a 28mm sci-fi hover tank that they will soon be casting. Antenociti’s is mostly know for their terrain products so this tank is new for them but its a very strong first product in what I hope will be a long line of sci-fi vehicles.

Normally I’m not a fan of 28mm sci-fi (or near Modern) vehicles but this one has really caught my eye. The detailing is very crisp, especially on the turret, and while you may or may not like the side wings or the turret wings the fact that it is a kit allows you to assemble the miniature as you see fit. And the side wings might also make very nice weapon platforms on their own.

No price or a release date on this product yet but I am sure that the folks at Antenociti’s Workshop will keep everyone posted.
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