WizKids :)

[Relando]

More News at bottem

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www.wizkidsgames.com/wk_article.asp?cid=41914

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[tkaz84]

I suspected something like this might happen.

[Pop goes the world]

Screw pre-painted mini games. They are destroying the hobby. I never liked any of the WizKid stuff any way. Bunch of overly-simple tween games.

[dragonbait]

I really don't want to go into a rant, but......

Up until about the last year or so, I have been involved in Wizkids Games since about late 2003. I fail to see how pre-painted minis games destroy the hobby. There are those that enjoy playing minis games, those that enjoy painting said minis, and then the hybrid that enjoy both! Overly-simple, what is? The rules? The gameplay? That doesn't mean that strategy takes a back seat or that army composition doesn't matter. For fans of the superhero and villain genre, point me into the direction of ANY better minis game than Heroclix. I already know there are better mech games, but Mechwarrior flows a hell of a lot easier and more fun than any game of Classic Battletech I've ever played. Wizkids gave minis a new way to play where you didn't need ridiculous tome sized rulebooks and codecies with it's innovative clix'. I was never a fan, but even they're constructible card games like Pirates and Star Wars were something quick, fun, and easy. Game design aside, Wizkids was the best at something most other companies barely seem to lose sight of or don't even care about. Community and sportmanship. I'm almost certain it was a reason of their eventual downfall, but the fact that they devoted time, effort, and money to create a coherent and cohesive community to embrace the gaming hobby was amazing. Weekly tournaments, with FREE prize support every one of those weeks. Can't name anyone else who does that without making the venue or the players pay for them one way or another. I could really go on and on, but for the sake of not going overboard and throwing a lot of profanity I will not. I was really passionate about the work I did for Wizkids over the past few years and the friends I made across the country that did the same. I know for a fact I've been more involved with them more than ALL of you combined. I'm sure my thoughts above are a bit jumbled and probably biased, but don't bash people that are part of the SAME hobby you're into. It's like me saying Privateer Press sucks. I don't know jack about that company or their games so I can't validate my point. Not trying to make a personal attack on you Adam, sooner or later I would have had something to say about them shutting down regardless. I only ask that everyone respect that many gamers have lost the continuation of their game.

[Andrew]

QFT. On the plus side, people still interested in playing will pay more for them on ebay. Maybe.

[tkaz84]

Well said. As a wargamer, I really appreciate a minis game that is ready to go right out of the box with no assembly required. I know many of you really enjoy gluing, painting, and modelling your forces to make them unique, and that's great. But to me, time spent putting my pieces together and painting them is time that I could be spending playing something else. Thus I find CMGs extremely attractive, as they combine the "ooh I wonder what I got this time" aspect of CCGs with the tactical depth of a traditional miniatures game without having to spend extra money on glue, paint, and modelling tools.

P.S. Tom and I just started playing MW. We need more players!

[Pop goes the world]

I still stand by my argument that pre-painted minis ruin the hobby. Note: I said hobby. There is no 'hobby' aspect to the pre-painted crap- it is just buying big, randomly-filled boxes of crappy plastic toys, so you have to spend twice as much as you normally would in order to get the minis you want (or, you could go online and pay out the nose for 'singles'). After the 'collecting' aspect, it is just a board game- it is barely passable as a miniatures game.

Don't even get me started on 'simple and fun!' rules systems... That is an easy recipe for a game with a 10 minute novelty value and 0% long term playability. I've played most of the WizKids rules, and found them all lacking.

I don't tend to levitate towards hobbies geared towards 12 year olds, and the WizKids stuff definitely falls into that category. So does 40K anymore, and I don't play that either.

If you like that, more power to you, I just think it cheapened an otherwise complex, involved hobby.

Maybe I was too hasty in grouping collectible, pre-painted miniatures games with real tabletop war games. I guess that the only people who would abandon real games for the CMG stuff weren't that into the hobby anyway, so the impact was probably negligible.

And yea, Privateer has a stupid CMG out now too, and it also sucks and is bad. And should fail, leaving designers time to focus on real games.

[Leudast1215]

I blame the economy .

Ok wise cracks aside, always a bummer to see something in the gaming/hobby industry go down cause it lessens variety and ultimately competition in the long run. I sympathize with Frizzell (stupid me if i misspelled that again) there's a lot of game types and many of them go under-appreciated for one reason or another. There is something to be said for clean/quick game play because as much as i would love to spend an afternoon in a single game sometimes you just don't have the time or the mood to to do it (especially with research essays up the wazoo...). For what it's worth, the very few Mech Warriors pieces I have, I'm always willing to play.

With regards to PP, I also agree that their card game gave me a "wtf" moment. PP You make spectacularly over-priced and beautiful miniature models with some of the coolest steam-punk fluff around, focus on reconciling the fact that you might be going the same way as Mech Warrior by becoming far too diverse and big for your own good considering the extraordinarily tiny market you're actually selling to .

Oddly I don't really see this happening with Warhammer or Warhammer 40k because GW has done a very good job for the most part of keeping additions to the game in the form of "tweaking" like the main rule books, the codices and creating better models for stuff that already exists. In the case of PP, The only thing they're doing now in Warmachine/Hordes is making newer (and often better) models that are new units. Trouble is... The average game could have like 15-20 models in it with 3-4 unit types. There's gotta be a hundred different unit types, I cringe to look at PP's money books for these two miniature games because they've glutted the market for their own game over a relatively short period of time by providing so much choice they'll never possibly sell everything... they probably would though if they dropped their prices (6 models are not worth $35; even GW knows that for many of its basic troop choices). I'd buy em up by the box load.

[RARE CHOICE GAMES]

I have to agree with Adam on this one...I cant stand pre-painted mini's.

I dont judge anyone for playing them, whatever tickles your pickle, but they never did anything for me and annoyed me for some odd reason.

So for me its no loss, it sucks for everyone who enjoyed so I am sorry for those people but as a whole I dont feel its a huge loss.

[Pop goes the world]

Nov 11, 2008 17:02:17 GMT -6 Leudast1215 said:

Ok wise cracks aside, always a bummer to see something in the gaming/hobby industry go down cause it lessens variety and ultimately competition in the long run.

In all seriousness, I totally agree with this statement.

I still think pre-painted minis are dumb, though.

As for your comments about Privateer, I think you are a little off-base on a few points. First off, I was referring to their stupid 'Monsterpocalypse' pre-painted collectible game. The Infernal Contraption card game was a non-collectible, one off stand alone, and it is acutually pretty fun (Like Guillotine or Gloom).

As for their pricing/ selection- they are a very different company from GW with a very different set of games and business model, and I think you might misunderstand some of their premises. Yes, it uses fewer minis. Yes, they are all metal (and of a much higher quality than GW), so you pay more for units. But, like you said, you need fewer. They go for a 'quality over quantity' model selection, and for a single Army, one is not expected to have everything from their wide range of models. Plus, each of their models is a playable entity, unlike all the 'wound marker' troops in GW games that only exist to get taken off the board as casualties.

Anyway, I don't want to hijack this thread any further than I already have, so I will say that yes, it sucks that another gaming entity dissipated, but the systems that will survive the current economic downturn will be made stronger through the culling of the herd.

[siriq]

surprisingly, I agree with everything adam said. I never liked wiz kids games.

[typo]

Late to the party on this one, but I want to throw a couple cents in:

The plastic mini games that Wizkids produced were never all that great. It was a clever concept, and the core mechanics were decent, but they just didn't balance the games well. They introduced way too many lousy minis into the games as filler, and it really hurt them overall.

Their mini/card games, however, both Pirates and Rocketmen, were fantastic. Pirates suffered by having a few seriously overpowered bits in the first few releases, but the core mechanics still make it one of the best pick-up-and-play games I've seen in a long time. Rocketmen was an improvement in almost every respect and is one of the more original games I've seen in a long time, but, well, nobody bought it.

It's a shame to see Wizkids die off in an already troubled market, but I feel like they've been digging their grave for years.

[Relando]

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catalystgamelabs.com/2008/11/17/catalyst-game-labs-submits-offer-for-wizkids-properties/

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[tkaz84]

Well that's good to hear. I've always been a BattleTech universe fan, so if CGL can acquire the Mechwarrior product line hopefully they can get it going again. it's so much easier to play than Classic Battletech (which is not meant to detract from Classic BT in any way. CBT is an awesome game, but rather thick compared to MW)