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| It does look utterly bloody brilliant if you ask me! |
Right first things first, I wasn't going to talk about this quite frankly because I just looked at it, thought nice model, bit expensive. However, I've had a lot of you email me outraged at the price of the miniature and asking me what I think. So it would be pretty dumb of me not to talk to you all about something that interests you, when I've explicitly told you to let me know what sorts of things you want me to cover. Hows that for peer pressure! So then where do I start? Firstly I think it's an absolutely brilliant looking miniature. Honestly I fracking love it to tiny little bits, and seeing it painted and in pictures just gave me a little hobby nerd rush. I guess you could say I swooned! Rotating the 3D image and pouring over every detail I have to say the design team and sculptors deserve a big old pat on the back and a bottle of Champagne. It's also got me really excited to see exactly what the Retribution Colossal will look like when completed.
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| I don't know who did the paint job, but it's cool. |
So it generated a fair bit of hobby 'buzz' for me and I started getting a little bit psyched about the new add on book for Warmachine. We all like a bit of hype, right? Well... then I scrolled down the page and nearly choked on my cup of Earl Grey tea. Well I am British! The price looks pretty darn hefty at $135USD, and in real money that equates to £85, or given the way the Privateer Press prices seem to work here in the UK on average probably £89.95. Holy cow, what a buzz kill! I had to take a pause and let that price point sink in. Honestly, I was expecting Battle Engine type prices of £59.95, and at that price I'd have probably grumbled and sold my left nut for one. But £89.95? I almost certainly won't be saving up for it, nope it'll be the sort of purchase I make IF I get a job and don't have anything else that month to spend my fun money on. Now what I'm going to say next might annoy some of you lot, and if it does I'm sorry , but bear with me and I'll explain... I'm OK with it. Privateer Press aren't holding a gun to my head and telling me to buy it. Plus HoMachine is just one of many games that I play so it's not like I can't get my hobby fix elsewhere.
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| The pistols and engine and gubbins looks brilliant. This is a highly detailed piece of kit. |
Plus when I look at comparatively sized miniatures from the likes of Forge World or indeed the recent Banelegions range it's actually not too badly priced, and is pretty much in keeping with other peoples pricing policy. So to me it's like any other really big nice miniature painting project, worth it if I want to paint one and probably a bit of a treat if I do. I am not however the worlds most avid HoMachine player, and if I was I'd certainly view the release ever so slightly differently. Now I say the following with the caveat that we really don't know what these bad boys can and can't do yet on the table, OR how many points they'll cost. But, I'm going to be brutally honest here and say if someone drops £135USD or £89.95GBP on a fracking miniature to play in a game then:
- It better be bloody awesome in the game or you can go whistle Dixie if you think I'm spending that much dosh on a chocolate tea pot!
- It's likely to be pointed so they can indeed be used in a standard sized game of say 50 points, I'm not so sure they'll be squeezable into 35 points!
This means that market forces dictate they better rock the Casbah and then some. Or Privateer Press might need a really big warehouse to store them all.
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| But will you buy one? |
So Privateer Press leave themselves with a bit of a commercial quandary I guess. Do they balance these Colossal's and run the risk that they won't shift that many and only sell them to collectors who would buy them any way... OR do they make them ever so slightly 'bent' so that more people feel the need to splash huge sums of cash to remain competitive? My friends we have a moment of truth time on our hands I think. One that will tell us much about Privateer Press as a company and what we can expect from them in the future. If they go down path 'A' and point Colossals fairly, and have them as a personal choice rather than a no brainer necessity, then yes I'll applaud them for maintaining their games integrity. And for giving us such awesomely cool models as options. If they go down path 'B' and pretty much say to their loyal following you have to spend the money to stay competitive, then I'll not be far less impressed. I want to trust them to do the right thing by their fans, I really do, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't have a nagging doubt. I don't think the Battle Engines came out too bad in the end (Cryx aside) so perhaps we should all show a little more faith in them. I suppose as always we should wait and see before we all break out the pitchforks and torches and go on a witch hunt. Right? Peace out!
Good read sir!
ReplyDeleteThe funny thing was before the price point was revealed, the PP forumites were Doom saying about how they'll be OP and forcing everyone to buy them and that they hope PP will keep them balanced and not forced to buy them.
Now that the price is revealed, they all want them to be "broken" (No one said this word but implied rules need to be awesome which I read as broken) to be worth the price.
ugh its frustrating to read.
Side note, rumors mostly are that they be about 20 points.
If you take one at 50 you almost lose half you points.
I very and I mean VERY rarely pop over and participate in the PP forums. First time I did I got somebody yelling at me / calling me names for starting a new thread. They were also the same person who had a go at me for commenting in a thread and asking a question when it was 2 weeks dead apparently...
DeleteNow if lots of others had said oh get over yourself / leave the guy alone I'd have been cool. But loads of cronies popped up to make snide comments about my intellect and my parentage. So I thought well these pages seem to be frequented by a bunch of f*** nuts and I've rarely been back.
It's a shame because actually there are some really helpful peeps on there, and some genuinely nice people with interesting things to say, and others are just genuinely funny. But they seem to get drowned out a lot of the time by the white noise. Just like a lot of forums.
The PP forums really are a bit special at times, and you're not the only newcomer to be turned off by a negative initial response.
DeleteI pop back in occasionally, and it does amuse me when I get shit from people. I want to point to my member number (which is in double digits) and prove that I'm no newbie. Ultimately I just give up, again, and get my info elsewhere.
I don't care that people call me a n00b. It's that rather than actually sitting there and discussing stuff with you they just dismiss you and insult you. I just think all round it's a piss poor community for sensible debate, and the valuable members on there get drowned out or hero worshiped in a bizarre way that even they themselves seem uncomfortable with. So I just don't bother with it anymore.
DeleteThe PP forums are frustrating to read. Period.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I'm hoping that they're playable at 35pts. 20pts (minus the 'caster discount) is pretty good, and leaves a few points left over for some infantry and/or lights to bolster numbers. They're big and tough, but no more so than a couple of heavys.
As for balance, I don't know about elsewhere, but Battle Engines haven't broken the game locally. They're good in certain situations, but not invulnerable. Figure out the weak spots and you're golden.
No I've found most Battle Engines to be absolutely fine, and the points to be about right. Nope the issue is once more 'Cryx' with their Wraith Engine's, I say engines because there are people who take multiple ones. For a lot of army builds and some factions they're impossibly hard to deal with.
DeleteAs for Colossal's playable at 35pts, we'll see I guess. I'm not averse to that being the case, as long as they're sensible. My worry is that if they're not sensible hen that's PP sticking two fingers up to their fans and saying £89.95 please. Sorry but if people call shenanigans on GW for what they do... they'll have to do the same with PP if that is the case.
People seem to have problems with Cryx generally. After a few games people will figure out ways to beat them. Sure, it will be harder for some factions, but then it can be hard for most Warmachine factions to take on a Blindwater Congregation force. Gotta love all that water.
DeleteWhat I'm hoping is that you can have a perfectly viable force without including a Colossal. Also, if they do end up being like 'jacks when it comes to allocating focus, that should limit their effectiveness signifigantly.
Oh, and I'm more than happy to call PP only any shit they pull. At least they release book-based updates for all armies at once (or twice, I guess).
Andrew, I've never actually lost to Cryx in MKII. But I can say that of all the factions it HoMachine it is Cryx that causes me the most problems. And unlike many factions my Angry Elves actually do have plenty of magical attacks. I just think looking at all the factions I can see stuff that I like the look of and think looks nasty, but Cryx has stuff I look at and simply go "WTF", normally followed by "they only cost HOW much?!?!" Normally ended with an exasperated "No fricking way". I just think they're OP and have some things that on the table are utterly sick. The Wraith Engine is just one of them.
DeleteIt's a giant Thunderhead - instant win on the artistic side.
ReplyDeleteAs for the price... wow. I don't think I've ever bought a single model for that price. Hell, I've never even bought a single box of minis for that price. Plus the book so you can use it and that's about £110-£120. I can build some 40k armies for that much (admittedly some of the weirder ones like Raven/Death/Draigowing). I'm not used to saying that.
Frankly I play WM for skirmish-level play, so I can't see me wanting one of these tactically, so it's no big deal for me.
It does look nice though.....
Yeah... it's steep. But as I say Comparable to similar sized mini's out there. Plus you might not need the rulebook if the rules aren't too weird as the mini cards in PP releases give you the rules. But yeah I do share your general sentiment overall. It's interesting because I'm currently writing an article on PP and scale. I guess I need to change some of what I was saying, but this kinda just backs up what I was saying any way.
DeleteI'll probably buy one...but the reason is that I am looking for an impressive model to do some work on; I play Nids and Khador, so I am looking at dropping £150+ on some Forgeworld gargantuans or £90 on a Colossal.
ReplyDeleteYep and that's sort of how I see this myself. I've brought huge big lumps of resin myself in the past and they've been brought as 'treats' as it were. The difference though with Forge World stuff is that it actually is an added optional extra. With the Colossals we are actually talking about core PP product line, not optional extra's.
DeleteI'm a little torn on these. On the one hand it's an absolutely FANTASTIC model, well worth the price tag. The size, the detail, the general design aesthetic (more jacks need to be proportioned like that) all look great. Plus, it's a giant freaking robot! You can't go wrong with giant freaking robots! Still debating whether I'll be picking one up, although I feel the model is worth that much money it's still a hefty chunk of change to drop all at once on a single model and I don't know that it would see much time on the table for me. Gonna be one of those "maybe eventually when I have a that much spare cash" type purchases.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, it represents everything I'm coming to hate about PP and GW. The "more More MORE!, bigger Bigger BIGGER!" escalation the games are going through, pushing larger and larger armies with more and more models on the table, beyond what the game was really designed to do. Warmachine is designed to be fairly small scale skirmish, but most of the fluff now tells of these huge, sprawling battles and the models are going towards things that really shouldn't be in a battle that is a dozen models a side except maybe as scenery and scenario objectives. It's like titans in 40k, they exist in the setting and they're awesome, but the sheer size of them means that while you CAN include them in a 28mm game they really are just too big for the scale, and you're much better off just playing Epic. Even if colossals are properly balanced (and I have no doubt they will be) it's often no fun to go up against super tanks/robots/units in small games. If you take 20 guys and I take 1 guy worth 20, it FEELS unbalanced when my one guy kills 19 of yours, even if he loses to the 20th guy.
Yeah, I think you are expressing opinions the majority of gamers have. It certainly resonates with me and what I've written. We'll have to wait and see what they're like on the board I guess before judging totally. But I can understand many peoples worries over them.
DeleteI'm gonna be frank, I hate the aesthetic of HoMachine. It's the same overexaggerated shoulderpad nonsense that I hate about the WoW style. It really does break my suspension of disbelief, and I lean more towards the 'realistic fantasy' aesthetic that the LotR movies pulled off and that Oblivion and Skyrim kinda get.
ReplyDeleteBut, this one isn't too bad. The legs actually look strong enough to support the machine's weight, the head's got a Gundam feel to it, though the shoulderpad mounted cannons still look very impractical. So, one of my favorite models from PP, but that's not saying much, is what it boils down to.
You aren't the only person I know who has expressed similar thoughts on the HoMachine aesthetic. I suppose it is quite a divisive design style. I happen to quite like the look, but I totally understand why others don't.
DeleteIt's mainly the Soviets that keep me from putting it down on my 'never gonna try, ever' list of things.
DeleteAre you saying you don't like Khador or that you do like them?
DeleteI actually really like the Khador faction, they're the faction the cursed plays. They have some really cool looking mini's.
I'm only in it for Khador, let me put it like that.
DeleteSteampunk Russians with magically-controlled robots? Please take my money.
PMSL.
DeleteThat's what I thought you meant buddy. I too have a bit of a soft spot for Khador. I was torn when I got back into the game around MKII relaunch as I really liked Khador. But, I'm a big girly elf player at heart... so I went with the Angry Elves. I reasoned I would always be able to do Khador as my second force, then the cursed started doing them as did a few other I know.
Bugger!!!
That's a shame, I think Khador lucked out and got one of the best-looking Colossals. Sure, we haven't seen the models for the other three, but that's beside the point. Khador FTW!
DeleteYeah I agree, although the renders of the Ret Colossal actually looked pretty sweet to me. I just love Khador Jacks though, they just look so utilitarian. Awesome stuff.
DeleteI'm starting to wonder about the direction that PP are taking Warmachine. Say what you like about GW, and their money grabbing ways, but, despite how much money they could make from it, they've never broken the taboo that is models & rules for the Space Marine Primarchs.
ReplyDeleteI always looked at the Colossals as being PP's version of the Primarchs - the battle engines were the first trickle of water through the dyke, the Colossals have punched a big hole in it, and I suspect the Orgoth will be along shortly to wash away any trace of integrity that WM has as a skirmish game.
Probably deviating from your point, but I feel a wargame's background can be enhanced if there's some kind of uber-unit in the fluff that isn't in the game. It makes you feel that this 1750 point game of 40k or whatever is just a small part of a much bigger universe, or a larger conflict, and when you scale it up, that illusion that you've conjured in your mind is dispelled slightly, because your imagination will always make it more epic than the modellers and the game designers could, bless their hearts. It's like when you finally see the monster in a horror film, you go 'oh, it's just special effects' or whatever.
DeleteThis is why I hope the Primarchs will always remain these mysterious demi-gods in the background (I semi-object to them being in the HH novels actually for the reason listed above), as well as the larger titans and some of the IG command vehicles.
In Fantasy, kinda everything is on the board short of the Gods themselves (not just the Chaos lads) - but they can pull off that entire 'Gods playing dice with the fate of mortals' yadda yadda in that case, so I feel it's all good.
LotR should be confined to scenario driven skirmish games except for when you want to do Minas Tirith, Helm's Deep or Battle of Five Armies scenarios.
The exception to the rule would be fleet-based wargames, where it concentrates on the uber-units, as it were, instead of the lowly grunt soldeiers. I think it should be an either-or situation; either massive conflicts using fleets and titans and tank legions or a more localized smaller-scale game concentrating on squads of infantry or just individual soldier a la Infinity. By focusing your game to be *this* kind of game instead of spreading out into the universe you created just for the sake of it, I think the game will benefit from that. Maybe.
Ugh, I have too many opinions...
I hadn't thought about it like that Heid, but you're right. I just assumed like you we wouldn't see Colossals at all. Or maybe years in the future if PP got round to setting up their own version of Forge World. While part of me thinks it is really cool we get to see them, and that they're official. Once the little kid in me has calmed down a bit I can hear the gamer in me tutting at the back of my mind, and he's probably shaking his head too. I'll reserve judgement until I've seen the rules, but if you own Cavalry, Battle Engines and Colossals there will come a time when players will start saying "hey I want to use all my toys". The current rules aren't designed for that sort of game I don't think. Be interesting to see how it evolves.
DeleteSlightly annoying/confusing: these Colossals are not the Colossals that always were spoken of in the fluff. These are new-and-improved oversized Warjacks...which means they're indulging in the kind of marketing DoubleSpeak that annoys me no end.
DeleteYeah that's also a fair point, but I guess they'd just say its the factions / tech / world / fluff moving on. All I will ask myself is "are the models awesome?" that's in terms of looks and rules. Everything else is marketing speak and I zone out when that stuff is being pumped into the ether. :P
DeleteI have a real, sincere and growing issue with model pricing. I'm just waiting for a company to realize that people in the hobby will continue to buy miniatures regardless and they don't need to charge ridiculous sums for a few models. In my personal experience, very few gamers ever stop buying models, they just find another army that interests them and start building lists. Makes the models more accessible from a price point perspective and keep cranking out content and the dollars will flow. Model pricing is quickly moving towards prohibitive.
ReplyDeleteHmm, its a vicious cycle isn't it? I mean as a company sometimes you need to charge more to pay the bills as a company. But by doing so your sales go down slightly. So next year you have to put your prices up again and...
DeleteWell you get the picture. You are of course right, gamers will get their toy soldier fix somewhere. Mantic are trying to tap into that, and I'm sure the rapid growth some of these skirmish games are enjoying isn't a coincidence either. Then there's the growth in people playing 15mm Sci-fi games too. It's certainly seem there are more people seeking out more reasonably priced products doesn't it?
Right from the outset I'll say that I'm a big fan of PP. So perhaps this will colour my views, but there it is. I have been playing WM/H for around 5 years now, and the reason I am such a fan, is that PP have never let me down. They have never broken the game or produced models you 'must have' to win. They have never given the feeling that another company has (to me) that all they want is my money and give nothing in return.
ReplyDeleteAs someone pointed out on a recent podcast - when cavalry came out peoople screamed 'it'll break the game'!!!! It didnt.
When epic warcasters came out peoople screamed 'it'll break the game'!!!! It didnt.
When battle engines came out peoople screamed 'it'll break the game'!!!! It hasn't.
There is no evidence in 10 years of being around, that PP will produce a model to be a must-have, broken OP model. I seriously doubt that the Collosals will change this trend. If anything they might end up a little underwhelming to avoid power creep, much like the general consensus seems to be about the Battle Engines.
My expectation is that they will be 18-20pts (as announced) and have double the damage grid. Hyperion will be DEF12,ARM18/19 and have basically twice the normal weaponry. So it means you tackle it like you would two heavy warjacks. No big deal, just a bigger presence on the tabletop. These are not Titans. Just impressive looking warjacks. You can field them in a 35 point list, if you would normally feild two heavies. You gain a good model to control some real estate, but you lose the versatility and weapon load-outs of two different jacks. If your faction has the option, you probably still want to find space for an arc node in there somewhere too. Lack of versatility will be the biggest weakness of these monstrosities.
Senor FG mentioned the Cryx BE as a potential issue. Interestingly, its viewed (on the PP forums) as the worst of the WM options. I think (as a Cryx/Ret/Troll player) that the reason so many people struggle with Cryx as a faction, is that your normal game plan doesnt work. They arent any better, they just present different challenges, which many people struggle to adjust to. If you sir have never lost while weilding Ret, despite the lack of Stealth mitigation, then that speak volumes to your ability as a player - nicely done.
Yep never lost with my Ret, if I'm outmatched and I know it at the start of the game I either go straight for the caster kill or the objective mercilessly and ignore my opponents army as best I can, and casualties be damned!!! I think a lot of HoMachine gamers get sucked into playing their opponents army rather than the mission or the game. As for stealth... yeah I really struggle with it BUT the way I look at it is that it makes my target acquisition that much easier... I just don't bother with them until I have too! No point throwing your strong stuff at an area your weak against. Makes no tactical sense.
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