There I said it. I was a massive fan of starship troopers. I'd like to reference that a small bit. First off the rules worked for sci fi, mongoose could do the work, we can see this from the several army books produced, and there were some really nice miniatures in the range.
Despite some issues such as quality control, which was always handled well by the company when someone had problems, and the artwork, which seems good so I hear from the likes of the Wraith Recon previews I heard, and some of the sculpts, I'm sure the company has learned its lesson in those regards, and there has been a nice amount of time passed for retailers to maybe forget about some of the quality control and casting issues.
Anyhow I digress, I want a miniatures game that is sci fi, that is a decent sized battle scale, and is not ridiculously overpriced like some of the competitors. There was some bad feelings over prepaints, and the purpose of this post is not to fire up those old coals of bitterness, so please don't pose if your going to comment on them, but a lot of people forget how reasonable Mongoose was when the game was active:
1 ) Units were not charged for based on how important they were in the game
2 ) If there was a hiccup or things went pair shape, the company tried to fix them ASAP. Considering some companies in miniatures, like the big one, have to stock pile things and design them years in advance, even with their resources and cashflow, without having to keep role playrs happy also, it was impressive how mongoose took something like the cock up like the plastic Light armour mobile infantry promised that a factory screwed up, not them, and bring out the metal ones for the same price. That was really taking one for the customers, regardless of what anyone says.
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Anyway now that that is out of the way I want to focus talking about a Sci fi table top game.
Warhammer 40,000 works because it is dark and gothic, and it has been around a while. Some don't like it, some do. I do, but it never felt 100% 'Sci-fi' to me, and it takes fantasy arch types, and puts them in space. While cool, when you hear about different novels being written by famous authors, you realise how much GW stuff has been transplanted from novels and authors, such as Chaos from Elric, or the fat that the inspiration from Space Marines is Knights in Space.
I felt AT43 hit the mark with being a good sci fi game with a cool world, and got a lot of things right, like the background, feel and sculpts. However it is quite expensive for what you get, and the quality of the prepaints is not good enough for what you pay in my opinion. I like to paint, and model, and convert, and get more stuff for what I pay. Prepaints always seem like collectibles to me. I have mixed feelings toward them, more like they are a display piece or a toy than a real gaming component.
I think Mongoose did pretty well with Starship Troopers. There would be a lot of people who could give out or have bad feeling against the company over what happened. Again I will not go into details about it or express negativity.
But with this point I must stress the question. Why? Why were these gamers so annoyed at the departure of Starship Troopers?
Because they cared about it so much. Why did they care? Because it rocked. Plain and simple.
I would like to see Mongoose have another go at it. Maybe involve the online community a tiny bit more with input. After all if it is being made for gamers, communication between designer and customer is essential.
One little idea I got just now. A lot of the old players of Starship troopers who wanted the original game to come back got annoyed. We know that. But how many people do we remember giving out and complaining that the prepaints had ceased too? Not as many, because they were never on the Wargamers wagon to begin with.
Again, Mongoose, please have another stab at it. I heard speculation in another thread, and would appreciate it if Matt read this and gave some tiny input on what he thinks about the company have another go and to maybe discuss it in this thread.
Well, that was long. I hope you enjoyed reading my post, since I have not been on the site that much lately.
Despite some issues such as quality control, which was always handled well by the company when someone had problems, and the artwork, which seems good so I hear from the likes of the Wraith Recon previews I heard, and some of the sculpts, I'm sure the company has learned its lesson in those regards, and there has been a nice amount of time passed for retailers to maybe forget about some of the quality control and casting issues.
Anyhow I digress, I want a miniatures game that is sci fi, that is a decent sized battle scale, and is not ridiculously overpriced like some of the competitors. There was some bad feelings over prepaints, and the purpose of this post is not to fire up those old coals of bitterness, so please don't pose if your going to comment on them, but a lot of people forget how reasonable Mongoose was when the game was active:
1 ) Units were not charged for based on how important they were in the game
2 ) If there was a hiccup or things went pair shape, the company tried to fix them ASAP. Considering some companies in miniatures, like the big one, have to stock pile things and design them years in advance, even with their resources and cashflow, without having to keep role playrs happy also, it was impressive how mongoose took something like the cock up like the plastic Light armour mobile infantry promised that a factory screwed up, not them, and bring out the metal ones for the same price. That was really taking one for the customers, regardless of what anyone says.
-------------
Anyway now that that is out of the way I want to focus talking about a Sci fi table top game.
Warhammer 40,000 works because it is dark and gothic, and it has been around a while. Some don't like it, some do. I do, but it never felt 100% 'Sci-fi' to me, and it takes fantasy arch types, and puts them in space. While cool, when you hear about different novels being written by famous authors, you realise how much GW stuff has been transplanted from novels and authors, such as Chaos from Elric, or the fat that the inspiration from Space Marines is Knights in Space.
I felt AT43 hit the mark with being a good sci fi game with a cool world, and got a lot of things right, like the background, feel and sculpts. However it is quite expensive for what you get, and the quality of the prepaints is not good enough for what you pay in my opinion. I like to paint, and model, and convert, and get more stuff for what I pay. Prepaints always seem like collectibles to me. I have mixed feelings toward them, more like they are a display piece or a toy than a real gaming component.
I think Mongoose did pretty well with Starship Troopers. There would be a lot of people who could give out or have bad feeling against the company over what happened. Again I will not go into details about it or express negativity.
But with this point I must stress the question. Why? Why were these gamers so annoyed at the departure of Starship Troopers?
Because they cared about it so much. Why did they care? Because it rocked. Plain and simple.
I would like to see Mongoose have another go at it. Maybe involve the online community a tiny bit more with input. After all if it is being made for gamers, communication between designer and customer is essential.
One little idea I got just now. A lot of the old players of Starship troopers who wanted the original game to come back got annoyed. We know that. But how many people do we remember giving out and complaining that the prepaints had ceased too? Not as many, because they were never on the Wargamers wagon to begin with.
Again, Mongoose, please have another stab at it. I heard speculation in another thread, and would appreciate it if Matt read this and gave some tiny input on what he thinks about the company have another go and to maybe discuss it in this thread.
Well, that was long. I hope you enjoyed reading my post, since I have not been on the site that much lately.
