Meta (from the Greek preposition and prefix meaning "beyond") is a prefix used in English to indicate a concept which is an abstraction behind another concept, used to complete or add to the latter.

The game = ALL rules, all maps, all figures.

The meta game = Only the rules, maps, tactics and figures in combinations that players actually use.

"META = most effective tactics available" is a sarcastic backronym, that I actually did not intend to use here.

6 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

If I wanted a board game like that I'd play Monopoly or RISK. This is a model diorama that comes to life.

Then actually, we're talking apples and oranges here. There is a group of players, that do not play a "diorama coming to life" but a "competitive game, that happens to have cool looking game pieces".

You are playing a whole different game than some of those guys you are talking to atm. I repeat myself: "Judge not, ..."

Oh and by the way, Monopoly and RISK are the worst possible examples in that context. Both games are decided mainly by dice rolls, not by tactics. Chess would have been a comparison applying to us competitive players ...

10 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

That is an interesting point about the self fulfilling prophecy. It makes sense mathematically. I avoid tournaments like the plague though.

Now, I think I get it.

I also like non-tournament play, but sometimes I want to play in the tournament. And this is highly competitive environment. I dont think one can realistically expect that people will not use one of the top-tier lists when playing in tournament.

But, if we play friendly game without a material prize, I would agree with all the critique of meta-list. When I play with my friends, I try to came up with new, non-obvious ideas, that sometimes may work better than expected, and sometimes not. But, importantly for me, these are my ideas.

Well with any luck I'm going to be playing a lot more soon... I finally found a Nelvaanian Warzone rubber mat that wasn't priced to the moon! Being able to just roll it out and play will probably be the best thing ever for me to get more games in.

6 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

Being able to just roll it out and play will probably be the best thing ever for me to get more games in.

As an unapologetic playmat elitist, I can say it certainly makes playing a bunch of scenarios in rapid succession, not unlike a tournament for instance, much more enjoyable. Roll 'em out!

I just think the way the prices go up when they are oop is weird. Considering they become "obsolete" for official tournaments, you'd think the price would drop like old 40k codices. Nope.

16 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

I just think the way the prices go up when they are oop is weird. Considering they become "obsolete" for official tournaments, you'd think the price would drop like old 40k codices. Nope.

I agree. In fact, one store in Ontario sold the obsolete ones for half price. The others stores are allowing theirs to gather dust...literally...LOL

17 hours ago, cleardave said:

As an unapologetic playmat elitist, I can say it certainly makes playing a bunch of scenarios in rapid succession, not unlike a tournament for instance, much more enjoyable. Roll 'em out!

Apparently these guys had no problem busting out the vinyl mats on stream at a Nationals. LOL. Fight the power!

@TauntaunScout

I never heard of the "out of rotation" mats going UP in cost. Very weird economics there since the demand for it should go down, not up.

@NeverBetTheFett

If FFG wants to go out and make it harder for whoever organized that one to be able to hold it next year, I suppose it's their prerogative. I don't know how successful that will be, but there it is.

It's too bad they don't take phone orders for the mats from their Event Center(sic) as I would easily make that happen each time something rotates in. That Swamps one I got us was the cheapest I've seen it yet, including shipping, but I'd be willing to slide a bit up in price if it meant getting the mat essentially on Day 1 to maximize my time with it, rather than waiting months at a time for them to appear in the wild.

To anyone reading this that lives near the Event Center(sic), I'm telling you now, go in there and buy them all up and resell them on eBay for let's say +$10 for what you paid, attach an at-cost shipping to it and you'll make some decent pocket change from the global IA community for the service of getting the mats out to us faster than our terrible distribution chain.

It's too bad they won't put out paper mats as part of cheap little skirmish starters.

4 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

It's too bad they won't put out paper mats as part of cheap little skirmish starters.

You'll be holding your breath a long time if you think that they're ever going to sell components for this game as separate Skirmish or Campaign packs.

I'd love to be wrong here, but the path is pretty clear; it's a dual product and all the SKU's are going to remain that way.

A little pack of maps, campaign missions, and command cards. Works for both games!

Add a dice pack and your favorite unit blisters and you have a skirmish playset. Put one out every year and have it be the map rotation.

28 minutes ago, TylerTT said:

A little pack of maps, campaign missions, and command cards. Works for both games!

Add a dice pack and your favorite unit blisters and you have a skirmish playset. Put one out every year and have it be the map rotation.

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with your idea, but I can't imagine FFG adding more SKU's to the IA fire for stockists to worry about juggling. It's bad enough we're cresting the 50 mark with Heart of the Empire.

I would agree. Skirmish seems to be a "bonus game" when you buy the campaign game, and unlikely to be supported by it's own product line. They give you all the cardboard map tiles you need when you buy the minis. Frankly the whole idea of "rotation" seems to be equally distributed between keeping the battles fresh and unpredictable, and making you buy the latest boxed expansions for the map tiles. Adding a competing, low margin, product line seems unlikely at best.

This is similar to how people say they need a skirmish starter pack beyond the core game. Unlikely to ever happen, the core game has all you need to play. The 40k and other miniatures games starter boxes don't come with competitive armies either, they come with enough models to play. Not enough to win a gold medal.

I think there is a huge missed opportunity.

the only people equipped to attend skirmish events are people who are likely running campaigns! Campaigns full of players who may start buying their own stuff is the start up costs were not so insane.

they could 2-4x the purchasing player base if they had a product to get people skirmish event prepped.

map tiles blow chunks for events!

Give me a pack of paper maps, campaign missions for them and command cards.

I know a lot of people playing skirmish only, that have one of everything...

But you're right, puzzling map tiles really s*cks. And the official maps are too expensive. 3$ for a PVC map vs 30$ for an official map is really disproportionate.

What is the actual MSRP on the roll out skirmish maps? I can't figure it out cause the internet sellers are so weird.

I think they've crunched the numbers with accountants and decided that they'll make more money selling higher priced items to fewer players. You might be losing out but there is no missed opportunity on their part. The judgements of the Market are true, they are righteous altogether.

2 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

What is the actual MSRP on the roll out skirmish maps? I can't figure it out cause the internet sellers are so weird.

I think they've crunched the numbers with accountants and decided that they'll make more money selling higher priced items to fewer players. You might be losing out but there is no missed opportunity on their part. The judgements of the Market are true, they are righteous altogether.

MSRP is $25 for the mats.

As far as I have understood, the IA playmats are currently (again) produced on FFG's own print by demand services. At some point they may have been produced elsewhere, but it started at print-by-demand and now it's back.

So, there is no economy of scale, if there ever was.

8 minutes ago, a1bert said:

As far as I have understood, the IA playmats are currently (again) produced on FFG's own print by demand services. At some point they may have been produced elsewhere, but it started at print-by-demand and now it's back.

So, there is no economy of scale, if there ever was.

The catch is that you can't buy them directly from their website, like all IA product.

I've heard various rumblings about distributors not getting stock of them either, which of course makes it effect as the most in terms of supply since we can't easily buy it directly from FFG unless you go to their store in Roseville, or until said store lets us do phone orders or something.

$25 is surprising to me. I always see them for $35, at least once they go out of rotation. The in-rotation ones I rarely see at all. Not that I keep as close a track as most of you. I just wanted the Hoth one... if I'm going to pay extra to conveniently roll out a battlefield, it's going to be Hoth.

21 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

$25 is surprising to me. I always see them for $35, at least once they go out of rotation. The in-rotation ones I rarely see at all. Not that I keep as close a track as most of you. I just wanted the Hoth one... if I'm going to pay extra to conveniently roll out a battlefield, it's going to be Hoth.

That's baffling to me. In Toronto, it's all reasonably priced, and sometimes the out of rotation ones even go on sale. I can't imagine what the market is for jacking up an out of rotation map.

The problem is that when they take so long to actually get in stock, a lot of players then start thinking about how much value they're going to get from the mat for competitive purposes when they all have that built in expiry date.

For me, I was collecting them from Day 1 so I have them all. The first map that would have been slated to rotate out was the one people were least interested in buying while players all grabbed the "freshest" map in droves.

At least long term you always have the extra mats for any other casual play you want to get up to with them, or see how current builds would have worked in older mission packs.

This constant shifting of tournament legal product makes it an unattractive item to stock in your FLGS, where the rest of the IA line is not only always "tournament legal" but is an engaging and fun campaign game in itself. Those tubes take up a lot of space and if they're not selling well, then they're not going to be restocked in the future.

I have yet to buy a mat locally in the Toronto area, as they all take way to long to get them in, and I wind up (with the exception of my last two trips to Worlds where I bought the newest maps on-site) having to look to US retailers or eBay just to get my hands on one while I can.

17 hours ago, cleardave said:

That's baffling to me. In Toronto, it's all reasonably priced, and sometimes the out of rotation ones even go on sale. I can't imagine what the market is for jacking up an out of rotation map.

The problem is that when they take so long to actually get in stock, a lot of players then start thinking about how much value they're going to get from the mat for competitive purposes when they all have that built in expiry date.

For me, I was collecting them from Day 1 so I have them all. The first map that would have been slated to rotate out was the one people were least interested in buying while players all grabbed the "freshest" map in droves.

At least long term you always have the extra mats for any other casual play you want to get up to with them, or see how current builds would have worked in older mission packs.

This constant shifting of tournament legal product makes it an unattractive item to stock in your FLGS, where the rest of the IA line is not only always "tournament legal" but is an engaging and fun campaign game in itself. Those tubes take up a lot of space and if they're not selling well, then they're not going to be restocked in the future.

I have yet to buy a mat locally in the Toronto area, as they all take way to long to get them in, and I wind up (with the exception of my last two trips to Worlds where I bought the newest maps on-site) having to look to US retailers or eBay just to get my hands on one while I can.

This is the only problem I really have with this game. Setting up the tiles is stressful and time consuming. Yet, if we don't have access to the FFG mats, how is this fair? So really at the premier events you need to have the FFG mats. I've gone to two Worlds with tiles and it's been a disaster. Next Worlds I'm not bringing tiles.

FFG needs to step up and provide the new maps at premier events. They could raffle them off after or take the loss. Anyone know how much one of those cost to produce? No need for packaging even.

Setting up the map is definitely my least favorite thing about the whole IA experience. And then having to put it away again after is not great either. I think when my roll out map gets here I will play a lot more. I get not wanting to run a whole other product line but at least a paper skirmish map in the core box would have been nice. I'm also surprised that, from what I hear, they phase maps in and out 4 at a time. That seems off. If there are 4 tournament maps, they should add one, drop one, every year. Or two. But to do a 100% rotation at midnight Dec 31st (or whenever it is) seems so weird.

30 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

I'm also surprised that, from what I hear, they phase maps in and out 4 at a time. That seems off. If there are 4 tournament maps, they should add one, drop one, every year. Or two. But to do a 100% rotation at midnight Dec 31st (or whenever it is) seems so weird.

That's not the case. 3 maps are tournament legal. 4 times a year 1 map is exchanged. I.e. each map is in for 9 moths.