Warmachine/Hordes was less than half the cost to field a force at that time, and it turned out even that was more than I wanted to invest in a minis game. And then it turned out X-wing was less expensive still, and--unlike 40k or Warmahordes--had list-building as a solid an interesting component of the game. Haven't really looked back.

Well, this thread is OT anyway... I agree about the price, but I'm surprised that you didn't find Warmahordes list building interesting. Why is that? What faction(s) and point totals were you looking at?

Yeah, that's a little surprising. Considering unit synergy and caster interaction is supremely important in Warmachine, as far as I can remember.

List-building looked like a really interesting part of the game--but the problem was that buying an entire faction was prohibitively expensive, and switching one unit out for another to find a good fit has a fairly substantial cost. In X-wing, I can buy a couple of cores and a handful of expansions and have dozens of combinations to experiment with; the same (say) $150 in Warmachine buys me a lot less, as far as potential scope for list-building. Does that make sense?

I've tried to read the simirillian but I just can't it's so dull, I get a third of the way through and give up before I slash my wrists just to feel something again.

It's honestly some of Tolkien's best work, IMO, but I agree that it can be tough to get through in one shot.

Well just in case anyone cares if your looking for another mini game to get into other than SW stuff I suggest the new Mega Man board Game coming out October OR the Aliens vs Predator vs Humans table War game coming soon.

Well just in case anyone cares if your looking for another mini game to get into other than SW stuff I suggest the new Mega Man board Game coming out October OR the Aliens vs Predator vs Humans table War game coming soon.

You say this as if I'm going to have time or money left over after X-wing and Armada.

I've tried to read the simirillian but I just can't it's so dull, I get a third of the way through and give up before I slash my wrists just to feel something again.

It's honestly some of Tolkien's best work, IMO, but I agree that it can be tough to get through in one shot.

"Then Fingolfin beheld... the utter ruin of the Noldor, and the defeat beyond redress of all their houses; and filled with wrath and despair he mounted upon Rochallor his great horse and rode forth alone, and none might restrain him. He passed over Dor-nu-Fauglith like a wind amid the dust, and all that beheld his onset fled in amaze, thinking that Oromë himself was come: for a great madness of rage was upon him, so that his eyes shone like the eyes of the Valar. Thus he came alone to Angband's gates, and he sounded his horn, and smote once more upon the brazen doors, and challenged Morgoth to come forth to single combat. And Morgoth came.

That was the last time in those wars that he passed the doors of his stronghold, and it is said that he took not the challenge willingly; for... alone of the Valar he knew fear. But he could not now deny the challenge before the face of his captains; for... Fingolfin named Morgoth craven.... Therefore Morgoth... issued forth clad in black armour; and he stood before theKing like a tower, iron-crowned, and his vast shield, sable unblazoned, cast a shadow over him like a stormcloud. But Fingolfin gleamed beneath it as a star; for his mail was overlaid with silver, and his blue shield was set with crystals; and he drew his sword Ringil, that glittered like ice.

Then Morgoth hurled aloft Grond, the Hammer of the Underworld, and swung it down like a bolt of thunder. But Fingolfin sprang aside, and Grond rent a mighty pit in the earth.... Many times Morgoth essayed to smite him, and each time Fingolfin leaped away...; and he wounded Morgoth with seven wounds, and seven times Morgoth gave a cry of anguish, whereat the hosts of Angband fell upon their faces in dismay, and the cries echoed in the Northlands."

This passage (and the part that follows) gets me every time. It's fantastic, and to me, at least, it feels like some bard in a mead-hall telling an epic poem. It's got this rhythm and repetition that just feels like it should be proclaimed aloud.

The thing is, you have to get through some of the dryer earlier bits for those names to mean anything. Otherwise, you don't really get why the fate of the Noldor is meaningful, and while Morgoth is obviously the bad guy, the depths of his badness don't really sink in until you've watched him torment and destroy for a few millenia.

So for anyone who eventually works their way through the slower parts, there's a pretty big payoff. It's often tragic and painful, but it's great.

I've tried to read the simirillian but I just can't it's so dull, I get a third of the way through and give up before I slash my wrists just to feel something again.

It's honestly some of Tolkien's best work, IMO, but I agree that it can be tough to get through in one shot.

I agree that the Ainulindalë and the Valaquenta are a bit rough, but I think it's pretty awesome from there on out. I can't imagine my childhood without Tolkien (or Star Wars), and the Silmarillion was a big part of that. I doubt that they'll turn it into a movie the way that Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. It just doesn't have the following, because it's a story that works for only a select type of reader.

In many ways (ie. from a certain point of view) Tolkien himself wasn't of the 20th century, which is where we got our modern reading habits. He was stuck in another age, dreaming of making an English epic that would give England its Illiad or Beowulf. To a great extent, he succeeded with Lord of the Rings, but the Silmarillion was the real ancient epic.

Star Wars is the American epic.

So, go ahead and hate on it, but I'm a fan, and it seems like I'm not alone.

Tolkien should have sticked to the light tone in the opening chapters of LotR. When he tries epic, he is way out of his depth. His solemnity too often derails into the involuntarily comical, and he never overdoes it more than in the Silmarillion.That is why LotR is one of the rare books I don't prefer to the movie. On a similar note: why anyone would even try to write a Star Wars book is beyond me.

<snip> the Aliens vs Predator vs Humans table War game coming soon.

Err.

Care to enlighten the unwashed masses? Link please? For science?

I've tried to read the simirillian but I just can't it's so dull, I get a third of the way through and give up before I slash my wrists just to feel something again.

It's honestly some of Tolkien's best work, IMO, but I agree that it can be tough to get through in one shot.

I agree that the Ainulindalë and the Valaquenta are a bit rough, but I think it's pretty awesome from there on out. I can't imagine my childhood without Tolkien (or Star Wars), and the Silmarillion was a big part of that. I doubt that they'll turn it into a movie the way that Peter Jackson did with the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit. It just doesn't have the following, because it's a story that works for only a select type of reader.

In many ways (ie. from a certain point of view) Tolkien himself wasn't of the 20th century, which is where we got our modern reading habits. He was stuck in another age, dreaming of making an English epic that would give England its Illiad or Beowulf. To a great extent, he succeeded with Lord of the Rings, but the Silmarillion was the real ancient epic.

Star Wars is the American epic.

So, go ahead and hate on it, but I'm a fan, and it seems like I'm not alone.

Not alone!

The Silmarillion is one of my favourite books of all time.

There's a line from one of the reviews I remember vividly - "how did one man, with little over half a century of work, become the creative equivalent of a people?" something like that, anyway. The entire scope and imagination we see in Tolkien's works puts most contemporary authors to shame. Considering it was literally patched together from thousands of musings, jottings and fragments after Tolkien's death, it's amazing it can form any kind of coherent narrative at all.

The Silmarillion comprises a creation myth for Tolkien's Middle Earth; it fleshes out the world's history and gives an incredibly rich history to the characters within. It is an epic aeon-spanning tragedy, containing moments of incredible heroism and beauty (one of which Biophysical described above).

It will not be to everyone's taste, of course - it's fragmented, packed with footnotes and cross references, the writing style is archaic, almost biblical - but personally speaking I don't think I've ever read anything that comes even close.

<snip> the Aliens vs Predator vs Humans table War game coming soon.

Err.

Care to enlighten the unwashed masses? Link please? For science?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/513277403/alien-vs-predator-the-miniatures-game

Back on to off topic, am I the only guy who really liked certain HQs modifying the Force Org in 40k? Like Logan making Wolf Guard troops, Wazdakka making bikes troops, or Dante making Sanguinary Guard troops (get ready to lose that one, BA players!) all felt cool to me and allowed for really fluffy lists.

We've seen two books now moving away from that, I was STUNNED to see the removal of Wazdakka from the Ork codex and following supplement let alone not being able to take biker armies. This kind of thing is very annoying to guys like me who paid money at my local GW for armies that are now useless.

Basically since they lost to chapter house in the law suit they are removing any character that does not have a model so people can't profit from gw laziness.

Therefore preventing themselves from profiting from other people profiting from their own laziness, like Sanchez and everybody else who bought a ton of bikes because they thought biker gang orcs were cool.

Back on to off topic, am I the only guy who really liked certain HQs modifying the Force Org in 40k? Like Logan making Wolf Guard troops, Wazdakka making bikes troops, or Dante making Sanguinary Guard troops (get ready to lose that one, BA players!) all felt cool to me and allowed for really fluffy lists.

We've seen two books now moving away from that, I was STUNNED to see the removal of Wazdakka from the Ork codex and following supplement let alone not being able to take biker armies. This kind of thing is very annoying to guys like me who paid money at my local GW for armies that are now useless.

And £60 wazdakka on kustom war bike model.

With the bargain deal of buying both for £100.

Edit: and a bundle of the paints to paint him for £95 more.

Still disgusted at them for special edition books I mean £50 for a dust cover was taking the pee as it was but now it's just gone balls to the wall insane.

And a few of my Flesh Tearers:

http://i277.photobucket.com/albums/kk51/Elkerlyc/40K/char2_zpsb67b350f.jpg~original

[/spoiler}

Flesh Tearers, because the best way to kill a galaxy full of absolutely crazy ****, is to be the craziest.

Warmachine/Hordes was less than half the cost to field a force at that time, and it turned out even that was more than I wanted to invest in a minis game. And then it turned out X-wing was less expensive still, and--unlike 40k or Warmahordes--had list-building as a solid an interesting component of the game. Haven't really looked back.

Well, this thread is OT anyway... I agree about the price, but I'm surprised that you didn't find Warmahordes list building interesting. Why is that? What faction(s) and point totals were you looking at?

Yeah, that's a little surprising. Considering unit synergy and caster interaction is supremely important in Warmachine, as far as I can remember.

List-building looked like a really interesting part of the game--but the problem was that buying an entire faction was prohibitively expensive, and switching one unit out for another to find a good fit has a fairly substantial cost. In X-wing, I can buy a couple of cores and a handful of expansions and have dozens of combinations to experiment with; the same (say) $150 in Warmachine buys me a lot less, as far as potential scope for list-building. Does that make sense?

Oh, yeah, list-options-per-dollar is on par with a lot of the white metal mini games (read: quite poor). There are also a larger percentage of options that aren't generally competitive (think TIE Advanced), so between that and the higher reliance on synergy between models, it can be rough for a new player to end up with a good list.

The rules are at least an order of magnitude more complex than X-Wing, too. One of the things that I like most about X-Wing is how deep the tactical play is, given how clean and simple the rules are. It's very impressive.

It's understandable but too bad all that turned you off to it, as I think it's a very good game in spite of the shortcomings.

Bringing it back to the rest of the thread, one of the things that Privateer Press doesn't do is orphan old models with rules updates. Every WMH model cast is still list-legal, and even if their balance team drops the ball, the intent is that they're all balanced for the points. It's very obviously a decision made to draw a distinction between themselves and how GW treats their customers.

Completely agree that The Silmarillion is fantastic - it's rough at the start - I first read it at 13, and had to make myself family trees to make any sense of the first three chapters - but after that, it's off to the races.

Also, it bugs the heck out of me when people claim that Game of Thrones brought grim and dark to fantasy - The Silmarillion had the incest, nudity, corruption, over the top violence and cruelty - all done by the theoretically "good" guys. No, it doesn't describe it, but that's pretty much the only thing that Tolkien didn't do before Martin et al.

Just a general +1 for the Silmarillion; one of the greatest books of all time.

Also, I agree with millernumber1, the Silmarillion did plenty of the "dark" work for which Martin receives so much praise, but it did it tastefully (in my opinion, not everything needs to be shown to the smallest detail). Tolkien is more enjoyable than Martin in every conceivable way, though I won't say everyone should be of that opinion (even if I think it).

what I find amussing, is they claim the reason for high prices is china making knock offs for cheap.

well if your prices weren't so high people wouldn't have to buy from china.

they are pricing themselves out of the industry, bottom line

Hobojebus, on 23 Aug 2014 - 11:39 AM, said:

GW are crapping themselves right now they went down 54% in terms of year on year profits and the morons in charge have now admitted they do no customer research so they don't know why.

http://investor.game...eamble-2014.pdf

That opening line of the preamble...wow. Just wow.

"Games Workshop has had a really good year. If your measure of good is the current financial year's numbers, you may not agree."

And then it gets better from there. You really should read this, it is worth it. It is very mentally stimulating to try and understand what they are talking about...

His ramblings on 3D Printing were pretty ridiculous. It shows a high level of denial about what is actually happening in the industry. Either I read it wrong, or he feels that, for at least 5 years, people can only manufacture about 1 low-quality model in their homes per day.

I know some people who use DMLS machines to 3D print firearm parts, but they are also into household 3D printing. They can certainly produce an entire army of quality minis in a week, provided enough input materials. I suppose it all comes down to what the Chairman's definition of 'high quality' is.

Oh there's no denying kirby is ignorant of the modern world that's why he still runs the company like it's the 90s.

They are leaving it too late to make the drastic changes needed, and they are still upping prices with each new release.

They've lost the good faith of their customers and need to rebuild it instead of just ignoring them and doing what they think the customers want.

They are leaving it too late to make the drastic changes needed, and they are still upping prices with each new release.

The main price rise in Australia, for the past three years, has been Codexes going from $55 to $83 and the 40K rule book increasing to $140.

Besides that, prices have mostly been stable. I definitely hear a lot of negativity about 'constant price rises' but when I ask for proof, there's very little evidence, besides the aforementioned books. Maybe it's different in other regions around the world?

They are leaving it too late to make the drastic changes needed, and they are still upping prices with each new release.

The main price rise in Australia, for the past three years, has been Codexes going from $55 to $83 and the 40K rule book increasing to $140.

Besides that, prices have mostly been stable. I definitely hear a lot of negativity about 'constant price rises' but when I ask for proof, there's very little evidence, besides the aforementioned books. Maybe it's different in other regions around the world?

As an example they've released a skyclaw box that uses existing sprues and upped the price even though for them there is no extra cost involved, no new molds were made or anything like that.

The work release was the same three terminators sized meganobz cost £40 for three models, big guns £28 for a model much smaller than a rhino.

£20 for a plastic shock attack gun model.

So they either raise prices or keep it the same but remove models from the kit so you get less.

It's a consistent pattern we've seen all last year.

Where in the world are you located, Hobojebus?

Skyclaws are $41 AUD, which is comparable to five model SM boxes (Combat Squads) from three years ago.

No increase.

Meganobz cost $81 AUD, sure a little pricey compared to five Terminators for $74 AUD but cheaper than a box of three Centurians at $95 AUD.

Debatable increase?

Big Gunz $50 AUD. The box contains parts for three different builds. Comparable to Sentinels or Landspeeders which have been $50 AUD for at least the past three years.

No increase.

Ork Mek with Shokk Attack Gun used to be $62 AUD Finecast is now a $41 AUD Plastic Kit.

34% decrease.

I still don't see the constant price rises in Australia using your given examples?

I'm in the UK and we see price changes monthly here.

As it is down there in the criminal colony your already paying more than the exchange rates would make fair.