Update on Battlefield Evo - The Full Scoop

[DaWarbossMI]

Greetings all!

I just wanted to chime in. I actually got a chance to see the minis in person last night (I have an in...but if I told you about it I'd have to kill you)! I saw 'em up close and personal. I've also seen the pics on the site (both old and new). Let me offer a bit of a preface...

I'm a gamer but also a painter. I paint a lot of contracted works for other gamers in my area for a multitude of games and scales. I've also got some competitions under my belt. I'm certainly not "Golden Daemon" grade, but I do a fairly decent job for the table top. There are two overall standards of painting out there and each has different requirements: competition and table top.

Competition grade is that level where minis look absolutely phenomenal. You get right in close, gaze in wonder, and ask if the painter does anything else with their time. If you take this mini and put it on the table for play, all of that wonderful detail washes out from 2-4 feet away. It looks like a swirl of wonderfully blended color, with no detail.

Table top grade is the more typical level. You pick it up and look close (or bend over and squint) and the detail is harsh, the colors less blended, and the tones exaggerated. Up close, hmmm, lets say it won't win you awards. Place it on the table however, different story. During game play, the details pop out at you! That nose you though looked like hell from close suddenly stands out as an actual facial feature rather than a blur of pink (or green or purple depending on the creature)! When an army is painted to a decent to high table-top standard, it is actually (in my humble opinion) a better sight to see during the normal game!

(Keep in mind, the larger the scale the more detail you can place/ blend and have it work on the table. A 10" tall mini can be painted to a stupidly high standard and still look great on the table)

OK back on topic...

Like I said before, I saw the actual Battlefield Evolution minis last night. I was duly impressed. Most of the new pics are on target for their actual appearance. Some don't do the mini's justice (but if you look at a typical White Dwarf with Golden Daemon coverage, the pics of those mini's don't either. I've seen some of the entries in Baltimore and they rock!). I placed a pre-order for some of the Brit forces a while back. I'm not planning on recinding that order. I'm happy with the minis. Partly because they look good, partly because I have literally hundreds of unpainted metal and platic minis in my basement that really tick of the wifie! That's one of the benefits of pre-painted. NO WORK!

I understand some of the concerns people have. The eyes do make some of the figs look downright shocked and awed. This can be fixed with about 15-30 seconds of paint per mini. A large dot of black, a slightly smaller dot of white, and another smaller dot of black. Viola'! Estimating the typical BE consumer will have 2-3 squads of infantry, and each squad has 8 figs, that's about 16-24 minis. So about 8-12 minutes of work to fix the eyes. That's a hell of a lot better than the hours and hours of work to clean, assemble, primer, paint, flock, and varnish a normal mini.

The tanks really don't need any work. They look great and are a good deal at the going rates.

Lastly, a note on Mongoose. This is the only company of which I'm aware that interacts with its customers at this level. We can all think of the other companies out there and realize that this is so (certain others REALLY stick out, but let's not name- names). Some deserve the reputation they have- others do not. There's a lot of talk about the paint jobs on these minis. The SYSTEM however, is great! I've play tested some of the rules state-side here from the SST:Evolution arena (same basic system). Good solid rules = good solid game. Since everyone here is a gamer as well as hobbyist (otherwise you wouldn't even think of buying pre-painted minis. What would be the point?!), its safe to presume that we llike good solid game systems. If you consistently run rough-shod over a group of game designers who are (as Mongoose seems to be) really trying to put out good games, they get worn down. If they get worn down, they stop making games. We all lose.
I'm not saying that constuctive criticism is a bad thing; far from it. The only way to improve is to accept a helpful critique. Let's keep the feedback constructive. So here's mine:

1. the sculpts are great
2. the tanks are top notch
3. the eyes are a little off, but not a deal breaker
4. the camo is a little jumbled, but hey...its camo! again not a deal breaker
5. I appreciate the feedback and comments from the Mongoose staff, as this is rare these days
6. rules are solid!
7. the minis are, overall, some of the best pre-painted stuff on the market
8. give that manufacturer a good solid talking-to! If a five minute time-out won't do the trick just hold tight, I'm sure my idiot President will invade China shortly...sigh... then its free minis for everyone!

Thanks for listening to the rant here. Sorry to bore you all, I felt like I needed to chime in. Good Night and Good Gaming!

Jay

(p.s. for all of you conspiracy theorists out there... NO, I'm not on the Mongoose payroll, nor compensated in any way for this. I'm just a blowhard with a heart-o-gold)

 

[Larac]

But then again Jay as you said, You have an In.

I think we all might feel better if we could see them up close, and in person.

But all that does not change the facts.

A: They are not what we were shown

B: Matt did a 180, from will not sell to likes them


Those that have the full rules say they are great, but most of us, without connections, have to take Mongooses word on it, and that is not what it once was.

I still have preorders in, not as much as before we saw the real minis, but still a good amount, I would feel better about my orders if I could see a set with my own eyes, but that will not happen until they arrive, I asked for them so I will not stick my FLGS with them.

I hope it all works out, for the Flagship Product of Evo, seems a bad start.

Good Gaming
Lee

 

[Mr Evil]

many thanks DaWarbossMI for your great post.

Wich box sets struck you as the nicest and worse in your opinion ?

 

[Cailet]

Matthew,

Any plans for an openday so we can all come and play BF:Evo and look at the minis in person,
this may put some of our conserns to rest :lol:

You know, I was thinking about this today. Anyone free on a Saturday near the end of the month?

You complete and utter [censored] I have a job at last and you time your projected open day for the week after payday *shakes fist*.

I'll be there though

 

[Low Roller 1-1]

Matthew,

Any plans for an openday so we can all come and play BF:Evo and look at the minis in person,
this may put some of our conserns to rest :lol:

You know, I was thinking about this today. Anyone free on a Saturday near the end of the month?

You complete and utter [censored] I have a job at last and you time your projected open day for the week after payday *shakes fist*.

I'll be there though

You had better you still owe me some food fromlast time :wink:

 

[Low Roller 1-1]

what gets me is why arnt the pla better painted than the rest youd think the little chineese painters would put some national pride into them.

Sory to double post but :lol: :twisted: :lol:

 

[BuShips]

many thanks DaWarbossMI for your great post.

Wich box sets struck you as the nicest and worse in your opinion ?

Jay looks at Mr Evil's current avatar and thinks in his answer he'll start with the "bad news"... :lol:

 

[erion]

Pics?

 

[Mac V]

See any wave 2?

 

[Reborn]

i shall command a force of pla verses whatever you can muster you shall bend to the way of the red star.

My my Evil, I'd heard you bent both ways but this is just ridiculous :roll:

 

[Galatea]

8. give that manufacturer a good solid talking-to! If a five minute time-out won't do the trick just hold tight, I'm sure my idiot President will invade China shortly...sigh... then its free minis for everyone!

Muahaha, that saved my day!

And yes, I think the manufacturer really should have a serious discussion with the business end of an Abram's barrel.

Hope the Mongooses learned something and assure this won't repeat in the future.

 

[hisshers]

Weren't additonal pics supposed to be added today (Friday)? Did I misinterpret that, am I missing them, are they not there?

 

[Paladin]

Weren't additonal pics supposed to be added today (Friday)? Did I misinterpret that, am I missing them, are they not there?

They were released early on Thursday. Check page 10 of this thread for them all side by side.

 

[hisshers]

Ah, these I have seen. I thought there were more to be released.

 

[SeattleGamer]

Jay, that was a well thought out explanation, and I appreciate your perspective. I personally don't think this was an intentional case of bait and switch. I think the upload of the "new" piccys caught them off-guard, and Matt's initial reaction is the same that any gamer would have. Forget his position in the company, when Matt made that initial post he was Joe Gamer in my eyes. I thought that was very cool.

So what went wrong? Looks to me like poor project management (I've been doing project management in the software industry now for 15 years so I know a little about how projects should be run). When you farm anything out to a subcontractor, you have GOT TO MONITOR their stuff. How the minis could take a total nose-dive this close to release means that somebody wasn't doing their job. Either the person who was supposed to monitor was not, or the top project manager didn't build that in as a responsibility. In either case, something this seriously botched should result in heads rolling.

That would be the first step to explain to your client base that you take quality screw-ups dead serious.

But that brings you to the next step ... Now What? Any company faced with a deadline and finding themselves NOT where they wanted to be get to make a choice, deliver on time (the cash box may be okay but your reputation will take a hit) or you deliver late (your cash box takes a hit but your reputation is intact.

Most businesses (IMHO) opt for the money and deliver a flawed product, figuring they will make it better later. The damage to their reputations though costs them permanent customers, making the next delivery even more important, and when your staff are spending their next "development" cycle actually fixing past cycle problems, they then fall behind, and the "rushed but flawed" mentality sets in.

I understand why they do it, but I've always thought it was penny-wise, pound-foolish. I think they would have been better off delaying the roll-out, but living up to their promise of top quality painted minis. Because let's face it, most of the hype has not been around the game rules but about the minis being pro-painted quality.

Anyway, in looking over your list I would opine this way:

1. the sculpts are only so-so (many are stiff and lifeless), but usable
2. the tanks are questionable (countless posts about them being out of scale) but usable
3. the eyes would be better off painted over with flesh tone (by the factory). As a pre-paint, the buyer shouldn't have to do anything to remove the bug-eyed look
4. the camo is poor
5. I DO appreciate the feedback and comments from the Mongoose staff,
6. rules are an unknown, but not the main selling point anyway
7. the minis are, overall, a little better than, say, the D&D CMGs, and about equal to the MageKnight figs. But given that the D&D would rate a D+ on their best day, and MageKnight a C-, that makes these squarely a C. Only average. All the hype about pro-painting is gone. These are now simply "servicable" pre-painted plastics. Not as ugly as D&D, about as usable as MageKnight, but nothing somebody will look at and say "Wow, those are cool. Where can I get me some!"
8. The manufacturer may have done a very poor job, but the fault for this lies at Mongoose HQ. Let's say you contract somebody to paint your house, and they show you a piccy of their last job and it's excellent. So you hire them, knowing the job will take 3 months to do. You should be checking it EVERY DAY. Why wait until the last week to see the colors are off, the paint dripped everywhere, and your initial reaction is one of dismay and disappointment.

I really, REALLY want Mongoose to pull off the whole reasonably priced, pro-painted, non-collectible 28mm minis thing. It would be great for the industry, and for the bulk of us who are gamers first, painters a distant second.

But BF:E as it stands today probably lost most of the folks who were going to buy the minis to use in other games (including myself) and some of the folks who were on the fence (perhaps because of the genre, or the minis being plastic, or the rules being too detailed or not detailed enough, etc). That means they may have lost half their market, and that could mean the line is a resounding drip rather than a big splash. It's long-term viability is now in question.

And that's sad.

Steve

 

[wildger]

Well said and right on.

 

[Quark]

OK, I thought I was done with this, but the more I think about it the bummed/irritated I get. I've been praying for years that somone would a game just like BFE and now this happens...

DaWarbossMI:

You're right about something-There is a huge difference between "competition paint" and "gaming paint". That being said, I couldn't paint this poorly on my WORST day. It took me a while to get use to the idea of pre-paints (I've been doing this for over 18 years), but when I saw that these would be at least close to the paint jobs I normaly field AND I wouldn't have to suck down super glue fumes anymore I was getting pretty excited. But these, well, it took me a LOOOOOONG time to reach the level of painting I'm currently at, and fielding these would be like going back ten years for me. No thanks. I'd paint over 'em but I have my doubts about how well this plastic is going to tolerate that, and oh yeah, those sculpts are seriously week. They remind me of more colorful versions of the little green army men I used to get when I was a kid. The only difference is the ones I had when I was little were 50 cents, and you got about a hundred of 'em in a bag! Also, let's not forget-

to quote Matthew, "These will be better than 90% of the painters out there can do." Apparently MGP doesn't think much of the skills of it's gamers. Either that, or they've just seriously underdelivered. Again. Either way, it turns out that yes, Scipio was in fact right...

Even with all that though, I have a challenge to issue- I've done some serious bitching about all this w/out much in the way of solutions. So I may be out of line here, but as a show of good faith, if MGP drops the price on the first wave they have my word that I will sink my entire Christmas bonus into this game just to help get it going in Pittsburgh (don't laugh- I got Vor, Chronopia, AND Clanwar going at my 4 LGS's). The local stores are quite peeved w'MGP right now, but I have ins with all of them I know that sounds a little silly considering what I just said, but at this point I feel like it's time to put or shut up. Let's really get the ball rolling in the proper direction again, or just admit that MGP= great rules and awful product. In which case we should just give up and become like the Magic players (lifeless drooling husks...) :lol: I realize in the grand scheme of things me sinking some cash into this isn't going to cause some crazy miracle or anything, I guess I would just like to see something posative happen at this point...

 

[SeattleGamer]

Quark, I LOVE your enthusiasm, but the reason I won't do what you just said you would be willing to do has to do with standards.

If you rail against something being wrong, and then give in (for whatever reason) you are rewarding the behavior. If a restaurant burns my steak I don't say "Well, it's now a brick of charcoal, but if you cut the price in half I'll still eat it. No, I turn it back, and probably leave the restaurant (worried about what an angry chef might do to my next steak).

If I set a curfew and my kid breaks it, and they know (because I said so) that if they break it they are grounded for a week, they should be grounded for a week. If two days later my beautiful blue-eyed teenage daughter bats those baby blues and wants to go out, and I say it's okay, what are my odds she will be on-time that night? Not good. She has no incentive to meet my expectations, because I don't stand by what I said.

Mongoose spent months telling us these were going to be better than 90% of the painters out there, the figures would rock, they would be expert-level painted. I think the customer base should hold them to it. If they did, and sales are horrible, then perhaps two things will happen.

#1 they fire the person who is responsible for this slip up (sending the message to the rest of the staff that this sort of MAJOR screw-up will not be tolerated) and

#2 they will work harder in the future to meet their promises and our expectations.

Until Mongoose changes the way they do business, buying ANY of the BFE line is simply supporting their bad practices. So I'm thinking that this is more a "tough love" situation. I'd be a better friend if I helped with an intervention to get somebody off of drugs or alcohol or whatever, and not simply enable their continued bad behavior. And I'm being a better customer if I tell Mongoose "This is sub-par. You promised better and I believe you. When you can deliver on that promise, I'll be there, but not before."

Steve

 

[Quark]

You're absolutly right, and maybe it was a bit much but I'm afraid I've been waaay negative about their stuff latley, and I just felt the need to say SOMETHING posative. At the very least I appreciate the fact that MGP provides this forum for us and listens to our opinions, and I like them (generally speaking) as company and would like to see 'em succeed. Believe me though, I'm not about to reward bad behavior carelessly. I haven't bought any MGP stuff since the Plasma bug came out largely due to quality control issues. I would just like to see something get worked out here that's amenable to both sides. I think it speaks to MGP 's character as a company that they still have people willing to buy their stuff at all and it would be a shame to toss all that. That being said though, I've been patient as hell here, but if they release these things at full price as though nothing went wrong it'll be the last straw for me. Beyond that though, yeah, you're right...

 

[DaWarbossMI]

Well... I think that 14 pages of one thread certainly shows some interest at least at some level! This is, overall, a good thing. Were I the owner of a gaming company, I'd rather people be passionate about my products than completely ambivalent.
Most of the posts that I have seen have been just that- passionate. Some few have sunk to mere ranting and raving (anyone see the way such ravings under the anonymity of internet posting was handled in 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back'? Gosh it gives me tingles!).
SeattleGamer brought up some good points. I'd personally put the BE minis above the MageKnight minis (not to mention the way Wizards handled the whole MK v.2 release thingie).
As far as the sculpts go... It is hard to compare sculpts. Most gamers will compare sculpts across lines of pre-assembled and regular minis. I don't think this is a comparison one can fairly make (Seattle... I'm certainly not accusing you of doing this, I'm merely explaining my assessment of the sculpts). Many times the poses for pre-assembled (and even plastics in general for that matter) have to be less dynamic due to the casting process. Metal minis can be FAR more dynamic since they are cast entirely differently and unassembled minis can almost be as dynamic as the imagination/ technology allows. When I say that they are "great sculpts" I am comparing them to prepainteds already on the market. It wouldn't be fair to compare them to the metals that are on the market. Some of the best, most consistently phenomenal sculpts come from a select few companies (who tend to pilfer each others sculptors by the way). GW tends to produce to consistently high standards (but at a high price) and the same goes for Rackham (can anyone say Confrontation: Wolfen!). Dark Age sculpts are ridiculously dynamic!Crocodile Games makes a phenomenal line for Wargods (but has very slow releases). Privateer Press has incredible sculpts as well (but they're prices are rising, but reasonably...)Mongoose has some sweet sculpts in the SST Arachnid (the basic warrior ROCKS!) and Skinny (warchief anyone?) lines. I just don't think you'll see a Werner Klocke quality sculpt in a pre-assembled/ pre-painted line. If we did we'd be auctioning off kidneys to pay for them! Believe me... I've thought about selling my superfluous kidney for minis before!
While I can't say I'd sell it off to purchase the BE minis, I'm still more than happy to work some overtime to stock up! I would loved to have the minis be the same quality as originally shown, but I'm not about to let that stop me. Given their track record, I'm sure Mongoose is taking steps to ensure a second run will be better.

Good gaming to all!

Jay

P.S. A note on scale... the tanks are scaled properly to the infantry. The infantry have bases (at least 1/4" of height added) where the tanks do not. The average modern Main Battle Tank has a crew of 3-4. These brave soldiers aren't exactly sittin' in comfort in there either! The quarters are cramped and, from what a tank commander buddy of mine who games tells me (he's currently deployed in that cluster in Iraq...stupid President again) they tend to jostle one around a bit! If you picture the miniature soldier seated/ squashed into the MBT... well, you see they're to scale.