Awesome news?

[Dark_Ghoul]

I had the pleasure of speaking with Mike Noe of Iron Wind Metals at Origins. We spoke for about 10-15 minutes after I asked if they picked up the ACTA line and that led to a nice conversation. He said he and Matt spoke at the GAMA Tradeshow in Vegas and a deal came together. Some highlights of the conversation I had were:

1. The molds for both scales (ACTA and FA) are going to be picked up in July (I think this week).
2. The molds are going to be inspected and new ones made if needed to get quality up to where IWM got it for the Ral Partha and Battletech lines.
3. His target was to get this going before the Fall '08 at the latest.
4. Mongoose has about 18 months left on the license from Warner Brothers. IWM has that long to turn a profit and show Mongoose this is viable. They are paying some royalties to Mongoose/WB, but it sounded like the contract had an option to extend if Mongoose renewed with Warner Brothers.
5. While he confirmed that Mongoose had new designs on the board for ship stats, and some concepts of minis as well, the likely hood of new ship types as minis in 2008 would be small. It very much depended on how sales of the existing ships went.

What this means is that now is a perfect opertunity to grow our game/hobby. I asked my LGS owner to stock some basic fleets and he said he would. The two other guys and I have had others watch what we were playing and have asked about the minis in the past but we had to tell the about the End of Line Sale. Now that this is going forwad again, I look forward to contributing to the expansion of the player base, as well as druming up sales for IWM. My LGS will also order 3 copies of P&P for us when it releases, so I hope the rules issues work themselves out.

If you haven't take a look at IWM's website. They don't have anything about B5 yet, but you can see what their release schedule is like for Battletech. While I understand this is not binding, it was what I understood from our conversation.

As for who is Mike Noe, he's "Da Prez' as he puts it.

Greg

 

[Davesaint]

I am a big fan of IWM. My question is, do you order the figs through Mongoose or IWM? Also, if your LGS wants to get the figs after release, do they order through Mongoose or IWM?


Dave

 

[Omnipotent]

Heh, have not checked this forum in a while, and when I return I read this NICE :lol:

Now if they fix the Abbai and boresight issuse til the next time I log in, I´m in heaven

 

[Lokai]

pretty sure i read in another thread that there was supposedly some kind of fix in the worx for boresite, but i don't know how concrete that is......hopeing for the best. will probly be buying up a fleet or 2 when new minis are up as it will be the last time i can for some time. going back to school is gonna cause troubles for my gaming funds

 

[tneva82]

Yes, it is all true.

Wohoo! 2008 looks lot brighter already!

Any chance SST might be incorporated into this in future or is SST truly dead meat?

 

[tneva82]

You weren't the only one to despair. Many of us gave up hope very quickly.

To all those who predicted the ACtA project would fail in its mission.

Faith manages.

You know remembering serie history this whole thing has been somewhat...appropriate :wink: Reminds me a lot of 5th season troubles(or reading about near-cancellation of 4th season due to budget mistake...).

 

[Poi]

I'm a little confused. Matt said this was not allowed under the licence, but hey, back in production is good.

I'm hoping the Fleet Action toys will also see the light of day. Budget fleets would mean more of us with more fleets.

Who will we order from in future? Ironwind or Mongoose?

 

[MongooseMatt]

Who will we order from in future? Ironwind or Mongoose?

Books from us, miniatures from Iron Wind.

 

[Stonehorse]

After a long time away from the forums, I have to say this is very good news to read, my only concern is that a lot of damage may have already been done to the reputation of Mongoose and ACTA. Since the news that Mongoose were pulling out of the miniatures market I think I've seen four or five games played at my club.

I really hope that Iron Wind Miniatures do turn the damage around, and ACTA recovers from the blemish.

If Iron Wind Miniatures do indeed do Fleet Action miniatures I know I'll be investing in some new fleets.

To second tneva82's comment, I also hope that Iron Wind Miniatures can also bring a new life to SST.

 

[[Omicron]Urobach]

oh..nice. FREUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU :lol:

 

[Right Hand of God]

Good to hear that FA scale ships will be available again. Hopefully this will attract some gamers to the smaller scale which makes playing huge games a lot easier. A lot of the problems that plague the game, PL, BS, swarm fleets, disapear completely in much larger games.

I have to agree with one of the earlier posters though, it was stated that there was no chance of this happening under the terms of the liscence, so what changed?

 

[Foxmeister]

. A lot of the problems that plague the game, PL, BS, swarm fleets, disapear completely in much larger games.

I don't want to start a debate here, but IMHO, it's in the larger games where most of these problems surface.

Regards,

Dave

 

[Da Boss]

Good to hear that FA scale ships will be available again. Hopefully this will attract some gamers to the smaller scale which makes playing huge games a lot easier. A lot of the problems that plague the game, PL, BS, swarm fleets, disapear completely in much larger games.

I have to agree with one of the earlier posters though, it was stated that there was no chance of this happening under the terms of the liscence, so what changed?

No objection really myself but in the past people have raised issues with different ized ships and more importantly their base sizes..........

 

[Right Hand of God]

My mates and I routinely play games at 20-25 points of war. Between us we have every fleet going and have played enough games against different fleets to have a fair feel for swarms, BS and the vagaries of the PL system.

OK so I would prefer a points system but I think the PL system is less broken in larger games. The problems with BS don't occur because there is such a target rich environment. Swarms in large games are their own worst enemy, you don't need to target every ship, just the central ones, exploding ships will cause significant damage in a swarm fleet in high level games. Even the Demos seems less OTT, when I field my centauri fleet I use 8 Vorchan and 8 Demos, I can't pick between them so have a couple of squadrons of both running interference while my big ships try and get into range.

Infact the only thing that to our group doesn't get any better or even out in large games are the Shadows, the fighters still suck and the fleet still remains a poor choice compared to all the others out their. In really large games Vorlons absolutely rock. The sheer fire power that squadrons of heavy and light cruisers can put out has a huge area denial effect which makes up for most of their inherrent weaknesses.

 

[Hans Olo]

I'm a little confused. Matt said this was not allowed under the licence, but hey, back in production is good.
?

Yea good news, but I have to stick with Poi here.
First Mongoose said an outsourcing to a third party its impossible because of the licence, causing panic purchases where some overstretched (not me) and then a few months later magically having the solution at hand with IW which was first meant to be impossible because of the licence.
So which future announcement can i ever believe again?
Its kind of disturbing somehow, despite the good news.

 

[Ripple]

It is great news...

Totally disagree on the game gets better as you go up in scale. The problems all still exist and eventually return as you whittle the forces down. I would also expect the BS issue to be worse... as more wasted firepower happens.

Ripple

 

[locarno24]

First Mongoose said an outsourcing to a third party its impossible because of the licence, causing panic purchases where some overstretched (not me) and then a few months later magically having the solution at hand with IW which was first meant to be impossible because of the licence.
So which future announcement can i ever believe again?

Well - presumably that's the point of the delay (which, whilst shorter than feared, did happen). If production could simply have been handed over then we wouldn't have been waiting.

One assumes the intervening time was spent applying motivational beatings/bribes/Jedi mind tricks/Ted Chang to the people from Warner Bros to sort this one out.

 

[tneva82]

One assumes the intervening time was spent applying motivational beatings/bribes/Jedi mind tricks/Ted Chang to the people from Warner Bros to sort this one out.

Or they simply pointed out how many models Mongoose sold after announcement and used it as a proof there's big demand and WB decided they might profit from this as well(do WB get any share of money from model sales?). $$$ can be powerful negotiation tool :wink:

 

[Tolwyn]

I'm with tneva82 here. Even if Matt told us that they could not produce minis via 3rd party some months ago, the huge demand of minis until April is a good reason to keep production running. Why not the negotiate a new deal with Warner if all partners have the share of the profit?

One problem I see is that it could be hard to get back the trust of the players here in Germany. As Hans Olo pointed out there are more then a few who lost faith in the company. Figure availability has not been the best in Germany after all, but since March few German shops offer B5 minis at all, so it's very hard to impossible to get new players into the game.

I hope this will change in the future with IWM :wink:

 

[MustEatBrains]

Cool.

I feel inclined to end my days of lurking and return to a life as an active poster on the forum.

I might even dig out the old stuff I´d been working on before.

But I think I´ll still wait and see for a while more - I could finish painting my ships in the meantime, though, to get into the right mood again... :roll: