I need to vent about a gaming company that I've enjoy their products for a while now, until today that is. Today I got an e-mail right after the Wave 7 announcement which took me from yay to nay in about .3 seconds. Spartan Games is no more and I had a $200 pre-order with them. I knew the company was struggling after last years kickstarter and missed delivery dates and product release schedules that went from once a month to we might see them next year. But I still had some faith in them, plus I really enjoyed their Firestorm Armada game and the amazing sculpts. Now they're relegated to the dustbin of history.

In the press release people who have pre-orders and awaiting kickstarter rewards are instructed to essentially protest the charge with your credit card company. As Spartan is not issuing refunds.

2 hours ago, outerrimrebel said:

I need to vent about a gaming company that I've enjoy their products for a while now, until today that is. Today I got an e-mail right after the Wave 7 announcement which took me from yay to nay in about .3 seconds. Spartan Games is no more and I had a $200 pre-order with them. I knew the company was struggling after last years kickstarter and missed delivery dates and product release schedules that went from once a month to we might see them next year. But I still had some faith in them, plus I really enjoyed their Firestorm Armada game and the amazing sculpts. Now they're relegated to the dustbin of history.

In the press release people who have pre-orders and awaiting kickstarter rewards are instructed to essentially protest the charge with your credit card company. As Spartan is not issuing refunds.

Holy cow, man, that sucks. Hope you get your money back.

On the other hand, is it such a bad thing for such a company to close, that takes your money but doesn't give you what you purchased?

Also, they're the guys who did Halo: Feet Battles, right? Maybe I can get the models for cheap now. . . even painted ones.

Yes, they put out Halo Fleet Battles. You might find them cheap on flea-bay but most online stores were dumping or special order only SG stuff this year.

Rereading the press release some people may get their orders and their kickstarter rewards (from last fall) but otherwise... SOL. I already started the dispute process with my CC company.

I was speculating with a buddy that SW: Armada may have played a part in the demise of the company (only enough time for one fleet battle game in my life, and many others I suspect), but mostly it sounds like poor business planning.

I'm sad to see them go, as some of the ship designs were quite nice. I may have to see if I can snag some ships at a discount myself.

i wasn't sad to see Halo or Firestorm go, really... I tried them, I gave them a shot, but they were just... sameish sameold.

Now, Dystopian Wars, that I am sorry to see go. That seemed a unique-ish concept in a tough market... If I had the capital and the capability, I'd be trying to pull Dystopian Wars out of the conglomerate and push it as its own secondary concept. With an investment in marketing (and background storyline additions, putting that out), I think out of all of them, it would be the most successful.

But alas, unless I win the Lotto, there would be no capital.

I feel the same way Dras, DWars is what first turned me onto Spartan, but locally there were more Firestorm players so I switched over. I feel bad for everyone who pledge the kickstarter last year, SG had just started delivering backer rewards....

Another UK gaming company just announced their closing, Tor Gaming, the company who made Relic. Short n sweet, market share and dropping sales led to no capital.

On 8/26/2017 at 0:50 PM, Drasnighta said:

Now, Dystopian Wars, that I am sorry to see go. That seemed a unique-ish concept in a tough market... If I had the capital and the capability, I'd be trying to pull Dystopian Wars out of the conglomerate and push it as its own secondary concept. With an investment in marketing (and background storyline additions, putting that out), I think out of all of them, it would be the most successful.

My buddies and I got into Dystopian Wars for a while (that includes @geek19) and we were underwhelmed. The exploding d6s mechanic was super random, linking fire was needlessly complicated, they loved using initializations for everything so you were constantly cross-referencing an alphabet soup of game terms and upgrades and the game had huge balance problems (the US faction was bonkers, Germany was meh), at least when we played. It was a ponderous imbalanced mess.

Which is too bad, because the minis were cool and the setting was interesting. I just didn't/don't have much faith in Spartan Games when it comes/came to rules sets. It's sad that gamers are out of a hobby, though, even if we're likely to disagree about Spartan Games.

3 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

My buddies and I got into Dystopian Wars for a while (that includes @geek19) and we were underwhelmed. The exploding d6s mechanic was super random, linking fire was needlessly complicated, they loved using initializations for everything so you were constantly cross-referencing an alphabet soup of game terms and upgrades and that and the game had huge balance problems (the US faction was bonkers, Germany was meh), at least when we played. It was a ponderous imbalanced mess.

Which is too bad, because the minis were cool and the setting was interesting. I just didn't/don't have much faith in Spartan Games when it comes/came to rules sets. It's sad that gamers are out of a hobby, though, even if we're likely to disagree about Spartan Games.

I'll agree on the random balance of everything, and I'll chime in that there was very little part of me that enjoyed playing as the "Steampunk US except the traitors won the Civil War." Not super fun, that.

I am too.

Its always sad to see gamers out of a hobby.

And the only thing I liked about Dystopian Wars as the Setting, and its scale... It seemed unique. It seemed interesting. So it felt redeeming, versus say, Firestorm, which was just another space game... Not that space games are bad, but externally, there seemed to be little redeeming to set it apart. Armada is lucky that it has the universal IP for that. Without that, you need to forge a story of your own, and I never saw that from Spartan.

2 hours ago, geek19 said:

I'll agree on the random balance of everything, and I'll chime in that there was very little part of me that enjoyed playing as the "Steampunk US except the traitors won the Civil War." Not super fun, that.

Yeah it's not uncommon for variant history settings to change who won what war or what the majority culture is like (see: in Scythe for some reason the Brits are much more Celtic than Anglo, the Prussian German faction is "Saxony," which wasn't in the same league as Prussia, etc.). Normally I just kind of shrug and go along with it because it's the laziest possible way to be different, man, but the South not only not losing the Civil War but actually winning so hard so as to be the preeminent North American state and either eclipsing or absorbing the Union (I forget which)? That's some of the stupidest bull alt-history I've ever read.

3 hours ago, Drasnighta said:

I am too.

Its always sad to see gamers out of a hobby.

And the only thing I liked about Dystopian Wars as the Setting, and its scale... It seemed unique. It seemed interesting. So it felt redeeming, versus say, Firestorm, which was just another space game... Not that space games are bad, but externally, there seemed to be little redeeming to set it apart. Armada is lucky that it has the universal IP for that. Without that, you need to forge a story of your own, and I never saw that from Spartan.

The scale was solid IIRC (it's been years....) And the fighter on fighter combat was decent. Again, IIRC.

I will say now that Legion is coming out, how many other companies are pulling their shirt collars right now?

6 hours ago, Snipafist said:

but the South not only not losing the Civil War but actually winning so hard so as to be the preeminent North American state and either eclipsing or absorbing the Union (I forget which)? That's some of the stupidest bull alt-history I've ever read.

Actually, it isn't that far fetched. Winning, anyway. Immediately after the first battle of Bull Run, with the Union Army in retreat, it was possible for the South to have won. All they needed to do was send some men ahead of the retreating Union army, and when that demoralized group of men found their foes in front of them, with the rest of the enemy army coming up behind, they'd likely surrender. After that, it's just a short hop and a skip to Washington, with the entire Confederate force against a city guarded by 3000 troopers. If Washington fell, the Union fell, and the war would be over.
I don't think the South would have tried taking over the North (as they were fighting to be separate, occupying the land doesn't make sense), but it's likely that they would've agreed to some treaties or other that allowed the US to continue existing, but limited it's ability to strike back and control the decision-making processes of the to-be-added states.

Edit: And those treaties may very well have caused the eclipsing of the US, for it would be down 13 states, and likely down more, as new states may have agreed to join the CSA, especially those that conformed more to their style of life and beliefs then the union's (maybe 50% or 40% of future states).

Harry Turtledove has a series based on the Confederacy winning the Civil War called the Great War. It spans the time from the end of the Civil War through the end of WW2. I thought it was really good but he didn't go to the extreme of allowing the South to conquer the North.

Super bummed to hear this. I had purchased several of the Halo fleet battles because I loved the models... Sad to hear that it is no more.

I have to say that I am not really surprised, I bought a bunch of stuff for Halo Fleet Battles, and overall thought that it was a better game than Armada as you actually had fleets, but it was so expensive that no store even around me would stock it. Played a couple times, but again due to the cost no one else would get anything, and found the customer service to be lacking, the plastic bases broke so much that I am not sure I have enough left to field a fleet for a single side anymore, when contacted them in effect was told to bad so sad, not our problem. So bottom line I am sorry to hear this as the only game of theirs that I played I really liked, but I am not surprised in the least due to it looking like the business model they were using was the 40K business model.

On 8/29/2017 at 8:28 PM, Snipafist said:

Which is too bad, because the minis were cool and the setting was interesting. I just didn't/don't have much faith in Spartan Games when it comes/came to rules sets.

That was pretty much my impression too. Really good models but all their games were just variations on a mediocre mechanic.

My biggest complaint about Spartan was that they could never finish anything. They release Armada 2.0, then the faction guides, by time they had finally finished releasing all the ships for the minor factions they wanted to start a whole new edition of the game. People would proxy, kit-bash and convert so they could field complete races. The owner/founder did not help matters, he had game developer AD-HD, every time he turned around it was a new game or new sub-game. I swear if they had taken all that capital from failed games like Armoured Clash, Firestorm Task Force, even Dystopian Legions, they'd still be in business.