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Wait, wot?
Tabletop Community Watch
- Thread starter IAmNotAlpharius
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The city of Bellevue, WA wanted their location to build a new transit hub, and after rejecting offers for a couple years they just said fuck it and bought it out from under them via eminent domain so they had to get a new location. Instead of moving somewhere cheap when they had already lost most of their staff anyway, they moved up the road and didn't check with the zoning and it wasn't an industrial area and ran into problems with that regarding metal production, which eventually wound up with them switching to in-house 3d printing. The move itself being one of the reasons they basically cleared out their entire inventory doing multiple "mystery box" sales to just get rid of shit at the end of mk3.
This was roughly the same time they lost half their staff to Atomic Mass Games(to go make Marvel Crisis Protocol, supposedly Privateer Press passed on that because they wanted to try rebooting Monpoc for the 2nd or 3rd time), had another well known guy leave for Broken Anvil Miniatures(kickstarter fail company that basically just scammed people out of money), and a few others went elsewhere as well.
Basically Matt Wilson(PP owner) is terminally retarded.
edit: More privateer press stupidity.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Warmachine/comments/15xpml5/can_we_talk_about_bruno_storage_locker_madness/
The story behind this is that apparently someone at Privateer Press "forgot" to pay the bill for a storage unit they had, likely because it was cheaper to just default on a storage unit payment rather than dump the product. But actually included some of their masters in it. Buyer initially thought it was worth a shit like Warhammer, but eventually wound up just selling it over time for 5-10% of(not off) MSRP because mk4 had already launched and nuked the entire model range from orbit.
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- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
This was the image the anon always posted when he joined a thread.
These 2 would be posted right after and talk of PP's 3d printing services being low quality and sending uncured resin.
It was a consistent poster who either worked for PP and left on very bad terms or had a personal grudge against the game. Some of the points are valid, but any mention of page 5 sent him off the deep end. Page 5 and 2d terrain were his trigger words and he could not hold back any longer. With the game going into hibernation most people gave up trying to make threads. The occasional one did well once he left the board but there wasn't much steam.
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2022
Judging by the print on the right, that looks like it was done at 50 micron. They were probably doing that for speed/laziness. While you're printing minis at that layer height you may as well print them via FDM. That looks like utter shit.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
The early 3d printed stuff was dangerous. The images came from the first batch of pre-release starters they sold at gencon. Fan reaction was negative but PP did listen and improved the quality by the time more were being sold. That anon kept posting the same images after the problems had been fixed. It wasn't a fan warning people of problems, it was a grudge.
- Joined
- Jul 4, 2022
I'd hope they'd improve after looking at that, because those two examples are grim.
I don't mind their sculpts. I bought some recasts of their Cryx stuff from BMM to use in some Dark Mechanicus conversions and the sculpts themselves were really nice.
Maybe the guy had a touch of the 'tism, but this is Privateer Press we're talking about. He was probably a former fan. There are only so many times you can watch Privateer Press run around in a field of rakes and get hit by every one.
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2019
Kinda late to the discussion but I was wondering what happened with War Machine. It was really big when I was in high school and almost nobody talks about it now. Now I know why. It's a shame too.
Didn't know they were using layers that thick... jesus...
As far as the rest of his complaints, he's got plenty of shit wrong.
Abandoning the press ganger program wasn't for no reason. It was a kneejerk reaction to WotC and their judge program blowing up in their face when the state of Washington got involved regarding volunteer/unpaid labor and simply wanting none of the mess.
The loot boxes definitely didn't make them money, it was to clear out unsold inventory. They were something around "$300 worth of product" for $70 or so(covered in my previous screenshot regarding the office move). The problem is not only did they actually do this twice, it was also after they fucked their distributors and retailers had already long begun abandoning them and selling their shit on clearance at 70% off for black friday, $5 a box for units, etc. just to get rid of it. This started due to PP pissing off their distributors with their infamous "Free Rider" rant back in 2016 that fucked them long term by having the opposite intended effect
Brain drain with people leaving the company with nothing lined up? No. Pagani, Schick, and Dallas Kemp wound up at Atomic Mass Games and took a bunch of other people with them. Hungerford went to Broken Anvil but I believe he left by himself for that.
They had been in a mad dash for the skirmish shit for years prior trying to double dip on warmahordes and a new IP with Riot Quest having initially teased it with this pathetic video, and remember this is the company that 4 years prior was making a dent in GW's wallet. It just goes to show how fucked they were with no budget for anything by 2018 and when they decided to try and copy Corvus Belli's Aristeia! in 2022 with a kickstarter to just sell Riot Quest as a boardgame, they had basically no interest and had to cancel it
Their complaint about the grymkin shipping to the UK... it was an issue for the entirety of Europe due to not having any distributor there worth a shit, and it was far more than grymkin. They wouldn't even sell their Black Anchor Heavy Industries(equivalent of GW Forgeworld in a way except the models were more essential to their armies off and on) which hilariously led into....
Hiring Bob Watts as their CEO https://home.privateerpress.com/201...-bob-watts-as-new-chief-executive-officer-d1/
He was previously running a european distribution company, Cerberus Entertainment. As in, one of the distributors that couldn't get product from Privateer Press for Europe. Eventually be bailed on them after a year and a half(because PP was going nowhere) and went in on another project people may have heard of that turned out to be far more successful https://transatlantisgames.com/ to manufacture and distribute(asmodee was doing the NA distribution) for https://www.kickstarter.com/project...rhodes-painting-academy-two-thin-coats-paints (same company as the kickstarter creator)
Clearly there was nothing left to drain at Privateer Press when Bob Watts was there, because the company was in such bad shape going in on a fucking paint kickstarter made more sense, and Privateer Press already still had a reasonably popular paint brand at the time(kind of, it was already getting hard to find on shelves as I believe they had ceased manufacturing by then).
So that anon may have had his heart/'tism in the right place, but he's got half the story about public shit so I wouldn't even believe he was an employee. But, if there were a miniature company that themselves would be a lolcow, it would be privateer press.
edit: Shit was so bad, that their tranny homunculus community manager "Faye"... I can't think of any pozzed shit they did
When this is the least of your problems, you've fucked up.
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- Joined
- Jul 30, 2017
Does anybody want me to sperg out on Monsterpocalypse or is that too autistic for this thread?
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
MKIII was one of the biggest fuck ups the industry had ever seen. The rules leaked a month early and everyone said they were unfinished because so much of it was unchanged or cut back. They were real and the MKIII launch went terribly. The big announcement stream for the event was just revealing Jason Sol's pet nightmare before Christmas faction that no one wanted and then it just ended.
Starter boxes were impossible to buy in Europe. The UK being one of the biggest markets for the game making new players struggle to get into the game. The above post sums up a lot of the problems like this so read that to get the full story. The only thing it's missing is when infantry units went up to $100s for 10 models, while the 2nd hand market was off loading at 25% retail just to get rid of old armies.
In terms of a game MKIII killed its self with bad design decision after bad design decision. The small skirmish game had been turned into a mass battle game unless you were running a competitive 3 model (2 titans and 1 warcaster) list that became all too popular. They started forcing theme forces by giving free models and very strong bonuses so players were forced to buy multiples of the same unit and 3 solos or they were fighting an uphill battle before the game even started. You went from factions to theme lists so if you liked to mix different faction's elements you got punished for it. You would run Trenchers or Storm legion and taking any models outside of it lost you 10 points of free models and all your bonus rules in a 50 point game. Competitive scene got more insular and started to use 2D terrain because it was the competitive game. Made the tables look ugly and got the game a bad reputation at conventions. Podcasts and youtubers of the time spoke about how let down they were seeing a PP tournament room when GW were pumping out gorgeous diorama tables for theirs. They pushed for larger games and as model prices went up the average game size became unapproachable for new players. Which is a problem every game is suffering from in the internet era where competitive play is pushed the hardest. But PP's model prices went from slightly above GW's for 1/5th the models to twice the price of GW's for the same amount of models.
And the biggest problem was GW changed. A lot of PP's success was to spite GW and find a new game that didn't have Swiss cheese rules. When the new edition of 40k was released and GW started to engage online the old fans went back to it. MKIII was still born and GW promised it had recovered from the rules bloat and ignoring it's fans.
It was intentional. He would be corrected and ignore it.
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- Nov 4, 2017
sure why not, it'll be like taking an asperagus piss into an ocean of piss
and its less autistic than some sperg trying to use the words of one fired bong shitlib who worked onit for about 10 minutes that 40K is only supposed to be chud-dunking satire.
- Joined
- Jan 13, 2018
It's an industry of lolcows, which is why GW, despite hosting its own comedy of errors, so often wins by doing nothing.
I don't see why it'd be too autistic for the thread. It's a thread about companies, games, and their communities. Sperg away. I personally don't know much about it other than being some blind box bullshit at one point, and repeated failures of it in the market.
Well he's a retard then.
Some of those bullshit themes were as much as 30 points worth of "free" models in a "standard" 75 point game. It was disgusting because even if you did play with the theme to get your shit, if you were playing against an army that simply got a lot more of it, you were playing against someone with 40% more points on the fucking board.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
He was malicious. Warmahordes upset a lot of casual players. The community always did well by me and I never saw them cause any problems online. The reputation in those threads is that players would walk in with shoe boxes of broken models. Turn them upside down on the table and then play the game. Being WAAC and using page 5 to justify cheating or being a dick. I don't know where that reputation came from and I think it's fanfiction from people watching too many Jewish high school movies about nerds getting revenge.
It got that bad? I didn't play much MKIII. I saw lists with 3 free solos and thought it was closer to 10.
Yeah, I believe Cryx had one like that, can't remember who else did. But there was definitely no "balance" in terms of benefits gained.
Imagine playing a game of 40k and because your opponent used a random fucking force org chart, they gained an extra 500-800 points on their list in a 2000 point game. How the fuck is that sensible?
Then that wasn't even the worst shit they did for themes and trying to get players to buy more crap. They started adding cross faction themes, that just so happened to all be pretty good. Cygnar had a Mercenary and Khador theme. Khador/Menoth had a shared theme. Cryx, Convergence, Cygnar, Mercenaries had a shared theme. And then some models were cross faction to encourage you to pick up a faction, so Khador's Old Witch 2(the colossal warcaster) was also in Grymkin as Old Witch 3 and if you bought such an expensive model may as well buy the one of the theme force bundle boxes to use it in a whole other army too.
As far as the community going WAAC. There was the spray template incident. The short version of this is that people had been using the spray template at times as a measuring stick. Eventually someone discovered that due to manufacturing, some of the spray templates would be 1/32nd of an inch or so longer or shorter than others, meaning someone trying to stay away from an 10 inch spray would suddenly still be under the template if that player had a longer one(also came up for charges). This actually prompted people to run to stores with calipers to find the longest versions possible. Most of the drama was on FB so it's hard to find now, but here's an image from a conversation of people complaining about the newer spray templates being too long. The simple fucking reality is that tiny fucking fractional difference is going to be irrelevant as you're holding over the models on the table anyway, nevermind the possibility of bumping shit a fraction of an inch trying to measure. It's pathetic when 40k tournament players have a more reasonable handle on "I moved this in from deepstrike, it'll be a 9 inch charge" "ok, 9, got it" without feeling the need to quadruple check that it's actually not a fraction of an inch closer or further away.
Yes, there was bickering over that tiny fucking nub of a difference. The older spray templates were apparently 9.97" or whatever, and the solution was for one of the PP staff to finally just nut up and tell people to only use the spray template for measuring sprays instead of distances.
Just to make sure I wasn't misremembering I looked it up. Themes granted 1 req point per 25 points played(75 being the standard). So the benefits would be listed out as spending a req point on
A solo 5 points or less
2-3 whatever solos that could be 1-3 points each.
A CA/WA attachment that was usually 2-4 points
A free weapon unit that could be 3-5 points
and sometimes other models, but you'd also get things like warjacks gaining extra uses of things, or just extra abilities overall. Or in some cases like Cygnar Storm Division the entire army just becoming immune to electricity and knights gaining an extra 2 armor in melee while another faction gains a fucking re-roll for seeing who goes first. I'm pretty sure they re-balanced themes and req points a couple of times so they may have fixed some of them being too egregious on free points they were giving out by the end of mk 3.
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- Apr 16, 2025
Early warmachine bases are also smaller than later ones. They increased the 25mm round a little. You can compare them and see. Did they ever handle that?
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- Jan 13, 2018
40k 7e did try that with the Marine Detachment that gave them free transports, although you'd have to skew around it to get to 500 points of 35-point Rhinos and 55-point Razorbacks.
7e was also, notably, the very nadir of the game and the time that it most looked like other wargames might have a shot at first place.
Yeah I recall some bullshit necron one as well. Toxic as fuck idea for a miniature wargame, and GW at least had the sense to abandon it.
No idea, I wasn't around for the mk1->2 changeover and they didn't seem to have any issues selling mk2 packaged product well into mk3.
- Joined
- Apr 16, 2025
It was MKI prime days. MKII had the proper sized bases.
Speaking of which, Wyrd Miniatures and Malifaux, absolutely murdered their game with 3rd edition(making people buy overpriced card packs, distribution problems even though they weren't a new company, etc.).
Apparently they announced a 4th edition a couple days ago
Uhh... yeah, good luck with that guys. 4 hours for a skirmish game is definitely idiotic. Honestly even 2 hours is kind of excessive but if that's for a more casual game it's probably fine but I'd expect the longer end of a skirmish game these days to be closer to 90 minutes.