Future of 2000AD Gaming

[DyN]

I like judgedoug's idea of clip together city blocks - I can imagine getting more and more to build bigger and bigger!

Some of the metal minis given away could also be from the existing range which would cut down costs and allow people to know exactly what they are buying in those circumstances.

I think that if this is truly to be a 2000AD game then it should start as such, so istead of Judge Dredd: Total War, maybe go for 2000AD: Total War (although if we somehow are lucky enough to have a Dredd sequel then subtitling it Dredd might help sell it). The I would add possible other plastic ranges like RT Norts, RT Southers, ABC Volgans - I'd suggest a widely publicised voting option for fans to pick the kind of forces they would want...

 

[Greg Smith]

And I found Wargames Factory zombie vixens quite poor

Really? I like 'em.

They are really nice sculpts, but I find the heads look too big for the bodies. Also the joints are just flat - they could do with a nub and a hole or something. Finally it is a pain that the parts are joined to the sprue by the joint part.

 

[Rabbitz]

Do it. Take my money please.

And then please do a Bad Company game as well.

 

[Clanger]

I think Strontium Dog would be a good skirmish game

 

[Surtur]

And I found Wargames Factory zombie vixens quite poor

Really? I like 'em.

They are really nice sculpts, but I find the heads look too big for the bodies. Also the joints are just flat - they could do with a nub and a hole or something. Finally it is a pain that the parts are joined to the sprue by the joint part.

WGF is still going through growing pains imo. Their sculpts are getting better, but they're lagging behind others like Mantic badly. Mongoose on the other hand has easily surpassed WGF.

 

[Ben2]

I was going to bring up the Dreamforge kickstarter, as it shows the WGF are making huge strides since the company was 'reorganised'.

It also shows the potential of 3D sculpting.

I would be very interested in knowing the costings to get a sprue done.

 

[judgedoug]

I'm not sure what to make of that comparison, Mongoose doesn't tool plastics...?

The Wargames Factory Dreamforge kits are the highest quality plastic kits ever made for the wargaming market, using slide-core tooling, with kits featuring ball joins and pistons. Wargames Factory also produces the Malifaux plastics for Wyrd. They went from being the crappiest plastics company for wargames, to the best, in a few years.

I have some of WGF's older kits and they are pretty crap. But their recent stuff is incredibly detailed. The new Apocalypse Survivors kit is astoundingly detailed (http://wargamesfactory.lefora.com/2013/01/08/apocalypse-survivors-2013/page3/#post45). The WSS Artillery kit, also fantastic - it actually was what snowballed into me getting into gaming WSS (now I have 300 some WSS miniatures, lol). The Samurai and Ashigaru are also just incredible.

And then of course their crowning achievement, the Dreamforge kit, which just annihilate every other plastics company, Games Workshop and Renedra (who tools for Perry, Mantic, Fireforge, etc) and whoever else.

The only reason for a company not to use WGF at this point is because WGF's schedule might be getting full. It's financially stupid to use Renedra for tooling nowadays, as their 3up pantographing is SO much more expensive.

 

[judgedoug]

I was going to bring up the Dreamforge kickstarter, as it shows the WGF are making huge strides since the company was 'reorganised'.

It also shows the potential of 3D sculpting.

I would be very interested in knowing the costings to get a sprue done.

Depending on the size of the sprue, the Dreamforge stuff cost about $4000-$8000 per sprue to tool using Wargames Factory and 3D sculpts.

Traditional 3up pantograph sculpting (where a model is sculpted at 3 times it's normal size, then digitally scanned it, and converted and downsized and then tooled into steel molds) can cost from $30,000-$60,000 per sprue depending on the size.

 

[Ben2]

A $4-8k per sprue figure makes the idea of plastic judges and sovs fairly achievable. On a kickstarter you'd need something like 30-60 $150 pledges per sprue.

It does lead to some interesting possibilities. Particularly if you start thinking of the Star Fleet stuff, which is already 3-D sculpted.

 

[Surtur]

I'm not sure what to make of that comparison, Mongoose doesn't tool plastics...?

The Wargames Factory Dreamforge kits are the highest quality plastic kits ever made for the wargaming market, using slide-core tooling, with kits featuring ball joins and pistons. Wargames Factory also produces the Malifaux plastics for Wyrd. They went from being the crappiest plastics company for wargames, to the best, in a few years.

I have some of WGF's older kits and they are pretty crap. But their recent stuff is incredibly detailed. The new Apocalypse Survivors kit is astoundingly detailed (http://wargamesfactory.lefora.com/2013/01/08/apocalypse-survivors-2013/page3/#post45). The WSS Artillery kit, also fantastic - it actually was what snowballed into me getting into gaming WSS (now I have 300 some WSS miniatures, lol). The Samurai and Ashigaru are also just incredible.

And then of course their crowning achievement, the Dreamforge kit, which just annihilate every other plastics company, Games Workshop and Renedra (who tools for Perry, Mantic, Fireforge, etc) and whoever else.

The only reason for a company not to use WGF at this point is because WGF's schedule might be getting full. It's financially stupid to use Renedra for tooling nowadays, as their 3up pantographing is SO much more expensive.

But those Dreamforge really aren't WGF's sculpts. I mean it was about a year ago they put these out:

http://wargamesfactory.com/webstore/rising-sun

And while they're fair models, they still have very wonky things going on. The Perry brothers are doing much better in the historical market. But I fear we're taking this topic off course so let's continue this in private chat if you'd like.

 

[Ben2]

I think that plastics moulding is actually very on topic.

I think looking at Wargames Factory you have to disregard what happened before the change of ownership. The problems before then have continued with Tony's new venture (and the 200 page thread on Frothers pretty much covers those), which pretty much establishes where they lay.

The new stuff is a completely different level of quality, and a lot of that is down to the 3D sculpts they're working from. 3D sculpting is the future and a fairly big chunk of the present.

 

[tnjrp]

I have no idea who actually did the digital sculpting for DF Eisenkerns but they are indeed of surprisingly high techincal quality (not so keen on aesthetics personally but that's a different issue). Therefrom I'm deduce that if the pledging public could be convinced that the so-far hypothetical Apocalypse War plastic Judges will be of the similar quality, then an even fairly ambitious KS should succeed with flying colours. As to how to make the peeps believe it I unfortunately have no suggestions.

 

[judgedoug]

I have no idea who actually did the digital sculpting for DF Eisenkerns but they are indeed of surprisingly high techincal quality (not so keen on aesthetics personally but that's a different issue). Therefrom I'm deduce that if the pledging public could be convinced that the so-far hypothetical Apocalypse War plastic Judges will be of the similar quality, then an even fairly ambitious KS should succeed with flying colours. As to how to make the peeps believe it I unfortunately have no suggestions.

Simple. The benefit of sculpting in 3D/CAD is the ability to have rapid prototypes printed. That would be shown immediately, so the pledging public could see physical prototypes of the eventual plastics.

(Mark Mondragon, owner of Dreamforge Games, sculpted the Dreamforge stuff. There's a surprising number of competent 3D sculptors out there - many freelance for Wyrd/Malifaux, Raging Heroes, etc...)

 

[Sneaky Chris]

Im on board......

 

[squattingmouse]

My main concern is the risk of trying to wring too much out of one setting and it getting a bit tired and worn. The question is which setting is being used for a mass battle game - Rogue Trooper or Judge Dredd (unless my recent pause from gaming means I've missed news of Rogue Troopers demise). My gaming group has played with Rogue Trooper but can't see the mileage in it as the sides are too similar and it sounds fairly similar here as the diferences between the sides are only significant on the small scale skirmishes we see them on currently.

This does sound worryingly similar to what another certain gaming company did which resulted in them killing off the support for their more popular skirmish/gang warfare games as it detracted sales from the tabletop games which had vast investment in moulding etc (admittedly here it is happening in reverse) as lots of people will go for the free rules if they want to play a Dredd mini game over the expensive big box. There are a lot of big box wargames coming out soon/recently from many companies both small and large which are all vying for attention and kickstarter is reaching the stage of "not ANOTHER project with a huge promise list".

With the mob rules in Block War a large scale battle could be fought with the addition of some more units for the Justice Deprtment and East Meg Forcesto make them a bit less hero centric (or an allied list for Justice Deprtment and Citi-def) just for this setting. I'd say no to this as there are still plenty of things in the Skirmish game to be finished or even have some sculpting for (I'm not saying make every mini you'ld ever need or all the options - conversions are still fun!) such as the generic vehicles in Block War, bike kits for people other than the judges and possibly weapon packs for conversions.

 

[muzfish4]

A bit of thread necromancy here but I'm just wondering if any decision has been reached or if this is all still at the conceptual stage or even if the plan has been shelved entirely.

In all honesty, I'd probably back another Judge Dredd KS be it either for skirmish or larger size games. Probably doesn't make me the most useful critic though.

One thing which made the original JD KS campaign so attractive was the postal costs. A lot of boardgames on KS will charge ridiculous amounts to ship outside the 'lower 48' turning a good deal into more-than-retail. Thankfully Mongoose didn't do that.

The plastic kits are potentially attractive, but do represent a bit of a risk. A KS combining extant miniatures with future releases would seem to be the way to go, I suggest. If this is still on the drawing board I'll give the matter some cogitation and try to post something more useful later.

 

[MongooseMatt]

We are not going to be looking at any 2000AD-related KS projects until we have finished fulfilling the existing ones - we are just a few months away from finsihing both now, but no thought going into a 2000AD KS project until then (and it would look very different from the past two, _if_ we did one).

 

[Rabbitz]

I would definitely back another JD kickstarter, although I would prefer to keep JD as a skirmish game and expand on that. 2000AD has such a vast amount of character that I would love to see in metal, Bad Company, Strontium Dog to name just two.

There is also the potential for more city-def, punks, robots, mutants, civilians and civilian vehicles, 2000AD specific terrain like holding posts etc.

There is so much more I would gladly throw my money at.

 

[Rick]

Strontium Dog as a small-scale skirmish game might be really good. I'd definitely be interested in that. 8)

Or - what about a board miniatures game of Aeroball, with the Harlem Heroes and other teams. It would have to be different enough from dreadball and bloodbowl, but it could be a winner!

 

[Swan Bones]

I am less interested in a full-on wargame version of Dredd. I like Dredd for the story and character-driven scenarios that skirmish level games can just about cope with. Even the Dredd epics that you cite (Apocalypse War, Judgement Day) are presented in the comics on much more of a skirmish scale to fit a similar emphasis on Dredd as a character/scenario driven strip. I wonder if such a project might not be able to capture the short, intense encounters in the tight confines of a sprawling future city that the Dredd story does so well. I'm more into emphasising the character of the city (and beyond) and the unique challenges of the Dredd story, and how this can be brought to life in-game, than expanding the scale of the armies.