I was heavily into Mk2 warmahordes competitively but locally nobody is really playing anymore, even after Mk3 dropped. The only people still playing are the super hardcore guys who go to every convention. Some newbies picked up the new boxes for Jr. Leagues but attendance is dropping off hard. It seems like after the initial burst people realized it was basically the same game so all it really did was alienate the people who were into it to begin with, and all the people who quit Mk2 just kinda dropped off again. Locally it seems everyone wants to play guild ball because the pace is faster and it's way cheaper to play.
Like, Templecon is coming up and it looks like events are still open. That was definitely not the case a couple years ago.
I feel like literally everything else PP has made has lost them money because nobody wants to play it and the fluff isn't strong enough to make people get into it for its own sake. Under city, Level 5, and especially the fucking Warmachine video game seemed like they just drained them financially and I'm watching them flail about trying to turn a profit. There isn't even a warmahordes thread active now.
Pic unrelated.
Andrew Davis
Bump
Anthony Ward
>Warmachine video game
W-was it shit? I'd be surprised if the fanbase wouldn't have supported it.
> the fluff isn't strong enough to make people get into it for its own sake
That's a bummer. I was never into the setting but it sucks to hear that no one else was either.
Ian Gonzalez
It was unadulterated garbage. Most players were backing it for the minis and it ate up most of their budget to produce them.
Aiden Parker
Ooof that's fucking rough. A good videogame will do a lot to bring people into the world. The fact that they got a shit one...ooof.
Liam Cook
I only play against my buddies so the local meta doesn't really matter to me, but the Mk.3 stuff looked to be picked up well at my LGS. And with it only being an edition change its not like there was much new released to change up the game. There isn't a slew of new releases for the community to gobble up and try out, so most people will already have what they want/need for their faction, unless their bandwagoning onto the next new hotness.
Personally I like the lore, I only wish they fit in more into the books. The last few books seemed rather light IMO. Kinda sucks as a Skorne player too, with Vintear out of the picture, the faction doesn't have any interesting grand goal, their just jobber bad guys at this point.
But I still think PP has good ideas where it counts. The new starter boxes are awesome, the only flaw being the plastic the minis are made from. But otherwise, cheap, with dice, tokens, a battle matt, the minis are faction colored, and best of all a complete mini rulebook (as far as I can tell). The box is even good enough to use to carry it all around in.
Warroom is also a pretty sweet app. Too bad about the actual game, it runs like shit on my laptop so i never gave it much of a try. But the only reason it was started was because (IIRC) the developer modeled jacks for a tech demo, it went viral, and PP kick started it.
Michael Harris
I dunno, my local groups have actually grown lately. Mark 3 brought in a lot of people who want to bash heads in with giant robots/ warbeasts.
Jaxon Bailey
The base setting, Iron Kingdoms, is fucking great. Like, every D&D or fantasy setting always sets out with this idea of making things different, but always failing or just making it stupid.
IK has a setting where everything is distinctly different while at the same time still feeling like high fantasy. It's world building is incredible, and it's got all those little details to make the setting feel really good.
Problem is, the war game fiction barely shows any of that. Mk2 was pretty famous for it's fiction being formulaic to the extreme, with not a lot that was really interesting happening. Mk1's fiction was a lot better, it varied itself more, and they focused more on telling a solid story then introducing the new warnouns of the book.
Mk3 is supposed to be pulling away from talking about the fluff based on releases, so it might see a return to better formed fiction.
Nicholas Roberts
War Room is a tragedy, man. When a single dude can design a better system in his free time, you know you've failed as a software dev.
Fuck, it's written in Unity. Fucking Unity. And at release, WR2 was fucking larger than Hearthstone on IPad. A reference program with practically no animation had a larger filesize than a full fledged game.
It's PDF reader is an abortion as well, which is hilarious.
Andrew Stewart
I hear yah. For me personally the art style just rubbed me the wrong way and I got some tonal issues with the wargame.
I do hope that the quality of those stories does go back to former glory and the game keeps alive. I have a buddy who likes the setting more than I do so I hope a good videogame can get me into it more.
