Another GW poll

At the current moment the results from our latest GW pricing poll are:

Have you stopped playing GW games due to their prices?

* Yes: 42% (64)
* No: 18% (27)
* Not yet but may: 22% (34)
* Don't play/buy GW products: 7% (11)
* Buy from eBay or online retailers: 11% (16)

Its interesting to see that nearly 20% of the respondents still play GW games regardless of the prices but if I were GW I'd be worried by the even larger number that are considering quitting GW games due to recent price increases.

Close more than 40% of the respondents (and close to half of the people who do/did play GW games) are no longer GW customers. I'm not sure how a company can bleed customers like that and still stay in business.

Especially considering that GW is still continuing with their yearly price adjustments and reviews.

Well I guess its an opportunity for companies like Mongoose and Privateer Press but one really has to wonder what GW thinks they are going to accomplish with their continuing series of price increases.

Stop me if you can guess the subject of this post

Well another day another post about Hordes.

Work progresses on the Circle Warpack. I have three three Warbeasts basecoated and am starting on the skin for Kaya. I hope to have those done by next weekend with any luck.

I assembled the second Trollblood Warlock Hoarlock Doomshaper last night. He went together quite well and looks very good. He has a long metal scroll that is supposed to lie astride the front of the base but I have poured some plaster and am making a small rock outcropping that I will use to drape the scroll over so it takes up less space but also looks a bit more natural and is less of a PITA when playing.

I used him in a game this afternoon and one of the immediate problems with a Warlock with seven Fury is that you need to force your Warbeasts even more to maintain your Fury. Which is a bt funny given that Hoarlock is a more defensive Warlock than Madrak and yet you need to be pushing and riling your Warbeasts more to make sure that he has seven Fury has turn. Yet another twist of this game.

I'm getting quite enamoured of this new game and I think that it is going to easily become a contender for my favourite game. Great figs, fun rules, an interesting game dynamic and some competitive play experiences.

More Hordes comments

So some more general impressions from our Unleashed event yesterday.

Shredders are actually quite nasty when used effectively and its easy to underestimate the effect of an 11" charge distance. As well, they look small and ineffective but two of them can take down a Light Warbeast.

Warlocks appear to be easier to kill than Warcasters. During one of my games I had a Troll Impaler almost take out Lylyth with a single spear throw. Pushing your Warlock in to attack another Warlock appears to be a lot riskier than it was in Warmachine.

The boxed starter sets give you a much better game than the Warmachine sets.

Critical Slam with the Troll Impaler is wonderful thing :-)

Unleased event

So our FLGS has its Unleashed event today. We anly had eight players participating and from that group four of them were playing Everblight. I can safely say that I have had my fill of Shredders for the moment :-)

The only other Trollblood player left the tourney about half way through (not sure why) so I won the Trollbood medal by default. Mind you the Skorne and Circle players also won theirs be default as well.
I found it a bit odd that there were so many Everblight players since no-one seemed to be interested in them when they game was first starting to be promoted. Also odd was the fact that not a lot of people in our area appear to be playing Circle. I am building a force to use for demos and I may expand it...who am I kidding, I'll be expanding it.

All of the games were fun except for my first game against Everblight which was a trouncing. I think I may have done better in that game if I had been able to kill one of his Shredders but I rolled a 2 for damage when the thing only had five damage circles left. That would have opened my other Impaler for a shot against a Shredder which was right in front of Lylth and I was hoping to slam the Shredder and knock Lylyth down.

I actually managed to get a lot of Critical Slams with my Impalers. And in one game I managed to slam a Carnivean twice in two consecutive turns. Certainly a nice way to keep him out of the battle.

My last game, need I say it was against an Everblight player, was truly an example of monstrously bad dice rolling. My opponent attacked my Axer with his Carnivean and it did three points of damage over five attacks. He managed to roll triple ones for three out of four attacks.

Truly epic...but not in a good way.

So the day was a pretty good learning experience. I think we all had a good time and I am certainly looking forward to more Hordes games.

The perils of reviewing miniature games

Well perhaps not perils in a general sense but perils in a personal sense. You see I really like wargames. And I especially like games where I can put down minis on a table and play games with them. And unlike a lot of gamers I appear to not really lack and discrimination in what genres I will play. I have 40K figs, Warmachine, Hordes, Confrontation, D&D Miniatures, Void, Warmaster, Warmaster Ancients and I have been putting off getting into 6mm Napoleonics for some time.

I just really like miniatures.

Now this makes reviewing these games tough. The only game I have played in the last few months that I didn't like was Urban War. Unless a game is total and utter crap I am probably going to get some enjoyment out of it. And any game that bad probably wouldn't be around long enough to make it to my desk to test and review.

I like to think of a review as less of an opinion statement than a guide by which people can make an informed purchasing decision. I can't tell you the number of glowing reviews I have read for video games that have made me not buy a game. The authors may have loved the games but they told me enough about how well it played to allow me to know that I wouldn't like it. Although whoever gave Sled Storm a positive review deserves to be knee capped.

A review doesn't have to be negative to make you not want to buy a game, it just needs to be informative. And that is what I aim to do when I review games. If I see warts I like to think that I point them out.

Mind you one person's "wart" is another person's positive feature. Case in point, the Skorne. I really don't like them. They are the Hordes equivalent of the Menoth faction from Warmachine. I don't really like the Skorne minis (although Morghoul has a really great pose) and the background for them leaves me unimpressed.My friend Ryan loves them though. He loves the figs and he loves the background. And its just opinion. And there isn't any way to escape that in a review.

Hordes review posted

Well it took a while but I finally managed to get the whole Hordes review done and posted.

Its a pretty big review (15,000+ words) so it had to be spilt into smaller reviews. The link above is just a portal page with links to the rest of the content.

Prior to doing the review I was actually ambivalent about the game. Getting my hands on the rulebook changed that. Its an exceptional piece of work. The game itself is also very good and a very nice twist on Warmachine's gameplay.

One thing that I did find interesting was the reading the rulebook totally changed my decision as to what factions I was playing. I always intended to play two (Trolls and Everblight initially) but after reading the Circle background and unit descriptions I was hooked.

Check out the review, as well as a nice painting article by Kelly Kim, and if you have a local store hosting an Unleashed event tomorrow go check it out.

GW Pricing poll

We recently ran a poll on TGN asking if people though GW figs were too expensive.

Now while this sounds like an obvious poll I added it specifically because I was curious to see if complaints about GW's prices were just a case of the outspoken majority raising a lot of fuss. As is often the case on the Interweb.

The results are interesting

Yes: 81% (109)
No: 10% (13)
No opinion: 1% (1)
Don't purchase GW minis: 8% (11)

Not only were the results wildly one-sided but the number of people who thought GW figs were not over-priced was only slightly higher than the number that don't purchase them.

Stunning.

Hordes gaming

Some, not exceptional, pictures from our Hordes gaming session last night.

Zach, Pawel and I got together to try out the game and check out the new miniatures. Instead of doing some one-on-one games we had two three player games. I had the Trollblood, Pawel had Everblight and Zach played Skorne.

Its still taking some time to get used to the way energy is created and used in the game. And the Animus system is also an interesting hitch in how it changes the options available to each Warlock.

We managed to get two games in and I think we all had a good time. The game is definitely interesting.

All done

So Zach came over last night to help get the last two starters assembled. Sadly I was a bit tired from all the earlier work so what it means is that I have one very well assembled Everblight Carnivean (done by Zach) and a rather quickly assembled Skorne starter done by yours truly.

That said though all four starters will be ready to go tonight for the evening of review gaming.

Two down, two to go

So I managed to put together two of the four starter sets done for tomorrow. The Trollblood and the Circle starter are done and I just need to get the Everblight and Skorne starters finished. I should have one or two helpers this evening to try and finish the other two for the big day of review gaming here tomorrow.

I've also assembled all of the colour Hordes tokens into two PDF files for easier printing and cutting and I will get copies of those done tomorrow so we can have some colour counters to use in our games.

I don't think I'm going to want to pin, glue or use green stuff for a while after today though :-)

Hordes has arrived

Well my plans for the week just got radically changed. The four Hordes starter sets due for release on April 22nd just arrived. I got advance copies of them to use for a review at TGN so it looks like my Thursday Ancients game is cancelled as I scramble, with some help hopefully, to assemble four starter sets and get some games in to write the review with.

My girlfriend handled my insane giggling this morning with very good grace.

Pictures and comments will most likely be reserved for teh review so check out TGN on the 22nd as I plan to have the review ready for the site on the Hordes release date.