Ish

RPGs are a niche industry, even the biggest of the big, Hasbro (owners of Dungeons & Dragons) reportedly only made $787.7 million net revenue from their entire Gaming division in 2018. That’s D&D, Magic: The Gathering, Monopoly, and all their other board and card games. 

Games Workshops annual revenue for the same year was £219.9 million (about $290 million in yankee freedom bucks).

Most hobby gaming companies do orders or magnitude less: Steve Jackson Games has an annual revenue of $5.5 million; Catalyst Game Labs has an annual revenue of about $4.4 million; Chaosium does about $1.6 million...

FFG does around $21.5 million, which is pretty good by comparison, but that’s everything they make all together. The bean counters probably figured that RPGs were more drag than lift...

12 minutes ago, deadwing34 said:

I wonder if any of this has to do with them loosing/dropping support for all of the Games Workshop stuff?

Probably not directly, since GW decided not to renew the contract over two years ago... But I’m gonna guess that had an indirect effect. GW licensed products were the lion’s share of their RPG output for most of the eight years they had the license after all.

Darn shame. The FFG Star Wars line was pure gold, their Warhammer 40,000 games (Dark Heresy, etc.) were some of the most immersive books about the WH40k setting in decades (even if they lost the license a few years back), and back in the D&D3.x era FFG’s settings of Midnight and DragonStar were some of the best stuff to come out in a heavily oversaturated market.

It’s on my radar, but I’m waiting to hear more from others. I love superhero comics, I love superhero roleplaying games, and I love miniature war games (especially low model count skirmishers)... But I’ve never seen a miniature game that does superheroes very well.

The Batman miniatures game was okay... Until they added heroes and villains from outside the Batman, his rogues gallery, and the Batman Family. Focusing on just “street level” heroes, it works well, provided you have an appropriately dense terrain set up. Start adding heroes like Superman and the Flash... and it just doesn’t feel right anymore. Their powers are too big for the scale of the game... Just their movement abilities alone should keep them off the tabletop.

When I run games like Mutants & Masterminds, I don’t bother with minis and maps. Even a fairly modestly powered hero like, say, Spider-Man can cover over a hundred meters in single movement... and do it in three dimensions. 

Trying to make it “fit” in a miniature war game scale just seems impossible.

2 hours ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

Broh, they share clothes, have a pet droid...

And that’s pretty much the beginning, middle, and end of their characterization.

There’s as much romantic chemistry between Poe and Finn as between any other two characters* picked at random from the sequel trilogy.
 

You could tell me that Finn was supposed to have a burning passion for the random Stormtrooper that shouted “Traitor!” at him and I’d believe it.
 

* Excepting Han/Leia and Artoo/Threepio.

Oh, my...
 

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/heroforge/full-color-custom-miniatures-with-hero-forge-20

Yeah, it’s just that he got usurped by a crappier king.

7 hours ago, bouke said:

Did you achieve that black with blue highlights look using Contrast Paint!? If so, please tell me the terrible secrets of your foul sorcery!  

I want to paint my Necromunda Palanite Enforcers in a style that resembles classic comic book look of Judge Dredd and if there’s a way to cheat and not do painstakingly tiny edge highlights that’d be swell.

Sounds like an offer you don’t refuse.

That needs to be made into the second panel of a “Woman Yelling at Salad Cat” meme with a Rebel pilot in the first panel.

14 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

@Romans832, King Richard the Lionheart was a piece of crap King. 

Did someone mention something vaguely related to Twelfth Century England! Quickly, Robin, to the Rant-Mobile! 
 

Only domestically... and only because he was hardly ever there. He delegated almost all domestic governance to his chancellor, William de Longchamp, who served as a de facto regent.

Then John Lackland forced de Longchamp out, took over, and promptly lost the Duchy of Normandy and most of his other French lands to King Philip II of France, resulting in the totall collapse of the Plantagenet empire and boosting the power of their generations long rivals in the Capetian dynasty, who would come to dominate the next century. Cap it all off with the baronial revolt at the end of John's reign, which forced him to consent to Magna Carta and effectively end the kingship as it had been known since Cerdic of Wessex.

And, of course, all of that only matters under Matched Play.

Most Witch Elf units (e.g., Witch Elves, the Cauldron, etc.) are now part of the Daughters of Khaine allegiance, Corsairs are part of the Scourge Privateers allegiance, and most of the “generic” Dark Elf units (e.g. Spearmen) are part of the Darkling Covens allegiance... But they are all part of the Order Grand Alliance.

So you can just plop ‘em all down on the table as an Grand Alliance (Order) allegiance army or pick one of the other allegiances (probably Darkling Covens, Corsairs, or Daughters depending on your specific collection) to be your army’s allegiance and add the others as allies.

22 minutes ago, Dark Trainer said:

My big deal with Warcry and AOS, is my Dark elves have been scattered to the wind. I can't make a faction proper army or warband with the 2500pts I own!

I’m going to have to doubt you on that. Unless you had a very unusual army that revolved around some very strange interpretation of their old army book, you should be able to put any collection that was a WHFB 8th Edition legal army on the table in AoS*.

Some names special characters might no longer count as special characters (like my poor Grimgor Ironhide) and you might have to do some jiggery pokery with unit sizes... But that’s about it.

* Offer void in Khemri and Bretonnia.

18 minutes ago, DisruptiveConduct said:

Contrary to what the poll answers suggest, I am with this 100%.

Obviously, you've fallen victim to one of those dastardly Jedi and their unscrupulous telepathic manipulations. 

I had so much fun making up a Counts As Bretonnian WarCry group, I figured I'd do it again with the Sylvaneth.

Unit Counts As

Blood Stalker Krone = Krunoth Huntmaster with Krunoth Greatbow
Blood Stalker = Krunoth Hunter with Krunoth Greatbow
Blood Sister Gorgai = Krunoth Huntmaster with Krunoth Scythe
Blood Sister = Krunoth Hunter with Krunoth Scythe
Sisters of Slaughter = Dryads

Abilities

Daughters of Khaine     Universal     [Double] Lashvines: A fighter can use this ability only if they are within 3" of a visible enemy fighter with 1 or more damage points allocated to them. Until the end of this fighters activation, add 1 to the Attacks and Strength characteristics of attack actions made by this fighter. (Bathe in Blood)

Daughters of Khaine     Elite              [Double] The Dwellers Below: Pick a visible enemy fighter within 6" of this fighter and roll 2 dice. For each roll of a 4-5, allocate 1 damage point to that fighter. For each roll of a 6, allocate a number of damage points to that fighter equal to the value of this ability. (Turned To Crystal)

Daughters of Khaine     Berserkers   [Triple] Lord of Spites: If the next attack action made by this fighter this activation scores one or more critical hits, and the target fighter is more than 3" away, allocate a number of damage points to that fighter equal to the value of this ability. (Heartseekers)

Daughters of Khaine     Universal     [Triple] Gnarled Warrior: Until the end of this fighters activation, add the value of this ability to the Strength characteristic of attack actions made by this fighter that have a range characteristic of 3 or less. (Slaughter's Strength)

Daughters of Khaine     Leader         [Triple] The Wyld Hunt: A fighter can use this ability only if an enemy fighter has been taken down by an attack action made by them this activation. Until the end of the battle round, add 1 to the Attacks characteristic of attack actions that have a Range characteristic of 3 or less made by visible friendly fighters while they are within 6" of this fighter. (Sacrifice to Khaine)

Impressive. Most impressive.

Hand me a TIE/ln and a range ruler, we’ve got a galaxy to defend.

On 12/26/2019 at 12:47 AM, InfestedKerrigan said:

I can't help but feel as though they realized they couldn't treat it like Fox did X-Men.  Don't change directors in the middle of a planned trilogy if all directors aren't on board for the story.

“Planned.” 😂🤣😂

Old and Busted: Old Yoda.  

Current Hotness: Baby Yoda. 

Next Big Thing: Teen Yoda.

”Understand me, parents do not.”

The ABC Murders was a 2018 BBC One adaptation of Agatha Christie’s The A.B.C. Murders.

I was a bit skeptical of the idea of John Malkovich playing Hercule Poirot, but damn does he do a fantastic job. Rupert Grint plays a supporting role as the requisite police detective that butts heads with the private detective but comes around eventually... I didn’t even realize it was Rupert Grint for the first hour. Great performance and he’s certain not little Ron Weasley anymore.

Overall, it’s a lot “edgier” than most Christie adaptations, but I think it works very well. Christie’s novels were actually rather risqué in their day, but most people only know her work via the excellent-but-family-friendly adaptations on PBS with David Suchet as Poirot.

The main plot follows Christie’s novel rather faithfully, but they’ve added a few subplots to flesh out some of the suspects and victims. They’ve also added a backstory to Poirot... I won’t spoil anything, but some Christie purists are undoubtedly sipping their tea rather angrily over it.

I don’t know if Malkovich has any plans to do more, but if he and the rest of the team behind this miniseries decide to make more, sign me up.

(But, please god, not Murder on the Orient Express. Yes, it’s a good story. Yes, it’s Christie’s most famous work... But for [big bad swear word]’s sake there’s like 24,601 adaptations of it. How about adapting Curtain or Ten Little Indians?)

Films lead to spin-offs. Spin-offs leads to merchandising. Merchandising leads to filthy lucre.

Of course, if you’re really interested in getting some free armour, weaponry, and three at least five square meals a day week, feel free to stop by the Iota Sector Palanite Enforcer station-house. We’ve got some great pamphlets explaining the wonderful benefits of joining the Imperial Guard Astra Militarum! 
 

Old School style diamond cheques in green would look nice with the grey... or a swirly triskelion design.