Mk4 distribution method

Warmachine
1

Hello everyone. Just to understand, i know and understand that pp Is lagging behind and Is running to give US a good game.
But then i would understand why they are not giving us army box buyable in multiples, but with “useless” models playable in multiple Copy ( warcasters, charachter models etc) .

So far i have seen that the boxes are good starting point but lacks flexibility on list Building without the opportunity of maxing out on fa of some units.

So… Why not make 2 big boxes with unità, solos and attachement at half fa?so if i Wish i could buy 2 boxes to Max out some unit, solo or attachement.

Eg waiting for dusk…

Starter have
Caster
2 jack
4 units
2 attachement
1 solo.

Expansion box have
Caster, char solo,
2 units and generic solo.

If you leave out at least the warcaster ( if not Also the jack) and char solos , you can Just make

Starter ( warcaster and 2 jack) ( as the preview)
“Commander box” ( 2 other caster and char solo)
80 mm solo blister
Jack a and B blister

Box1
1x hunter , Guardian, Slayer, seeker adept,
2x ua , 1x void shaper

Unit box 2
1x archers,cavalry and blademaster,
1x scyr.

So, if i Wish, i can buy double Copy and have full ( for fa2) or at least half ( for fa 4 units) of the " unit box" and i am not suffering behind the Freedom of list Building Legacy army have atm.

AND … Privateer Press, you sell more boxes!

So i am asking to you as well as myself, why cant you change future boxes in that way or a similar one, as everyone ( us player and you , privateer Press) can benefit from this?

1 Like
2

I’ll take a quick stab at this.

Because the strategy seems to be “sell players one box that allows them to play a full game, really for real”, not a ‘starter box’ that requires the player to go out and buy twice as much stuff before they can play a ‘real’ game."

This strategy is unlike their MKs I, II, III strategies where the battlegroup box really was the first in a series of purchases, and unlike most of the GW boxes I’ve seen, where the “starter” is really more like “this contains 1/4 of the models you need to buy to play a normal-sized game.” Even the Leviathan box has only roughly half the models needed for a standard-sized game, with the additional weirdness of having contents for two different factions, meaning players either have to split with another person or end up with a pile of models they might not want or use.

Players can play a legitimate, really for-real Warmachine MK IV game with the contents of their starter box, with options to go up to ~55-60 points, depending on the box and the exact 'jack options chosen.

The current strategy gives players a roughly $350-$400 buy-in to own literally their whole faction, period, done. Which is…rather unusual, for games of this type and scale. :slight_smile:

<snip all the rest of my comments, that’s the crux of it, I think>

4 Likes
3

What Michael said, plus the goal of reducing the number of SKUs on store shelves. A store can stock the starter and Expansion for each Army plus the 80mm and the third caster and have all their bases covered for new player impulse purchases. If someone wants something more specific they or the store can direct order individual models once they become available.

To even double-down on Michael’s point about the box being a playable army. With infantry now being almost all single-piece models you could very easily give someone a demo, sell them a starter box and some glue, and have them playing the game with their own models inside 30 minutes. Which is pretty much impossible with any other wargame I’ve seen besides the pre-painted Star Wars games.

3 Likes
4

It is worth considering that even though you would end up with a warcaster as a repeat out of the army boxes, they are still a good deal for 2 of everything in the starters. I suspect for my Dusk force I will pick up a second starter box. Not sure about the expansion but I need to get some games in first to see what I might want more of.
But we have also seen the individual unit boxes in the wild (at Gen Con) so they are coming soon.

5

Well, but with my idea you have same SKU but Better chance of selling more!
Actuallly Is

Preview
2xwarjack
1x big solo
1x third warcaster
1x starter
1x exp

Ok?

Preview ( Just like old starter, Always available)
2xwarjack
1x big solo
1x charachter exp ( 2x warcaster and char solo)
Army starter ( lower price )
Army expansion ( lower price)

Sooooo you have to take preview and at least 1 army box BUT i can like nobrainer take 2 of the same box and be ok, and as a player i can buy as much as 4 army box to have a wider game selection. It Is the exact same stuff, but slightly rearranged.

Also i Hope they start production and distribution in Europe with this method of 3d printing because Is the Major flaw to the game starting out as hell here ( models are stratosferic!)

1 Like
6

I am waiting for dusk. And as i would like to try out a vampire only force, i should at least buy a second expansion. Maybe.

What if i can Just duble tap on the box without having to think about unusable Pieces?

Cannot Say for overseas, but here in Italy the community Is already shrinked, Just because you cannot build the army that you want, and a simple and Easy solution would be Just to slightly rework the existing boxes. I was not there but many people said to me that at gencon there were more people to younger game booth than at the pp booth. Don’t get me wrong i love wm, suffered as i learned my old faction are no more but i am tryng to support the game and pp as much as i can ( i am even tryng to let some board gamer learn and play wm with my older Legacy army , but there Is then the Wall of " hooo i want to make a full cavalry cygnar army. Can i do that?" Or something similar… )

So i am really wondering why po’ didnt choose to make a more rewarding for them , and for us player, distribution of models.

7

Again I think their goal was to have a starter box that someone could buy and immediately have enough models to start playing. Ideally once they have caught up on production (which it seems they almost have; Brinebloods starter is going to meet or at most slightly miss it’s August date from the roadmap) you will be able to order individual model boxes to fill out your force if having a handful of duplicates is really bothering you.

The two main pillars of the Mk4 army release strategy seem to be new player onboarding and ease of stocking. People can come in to a shop and walk away with exactly what they need to play a game of Warmachine. No need to get a book, no need for the store employees to be knowledgeable of what to recommend for next purchases, no models that they buy and then find out don’t work well with the caster they have. Buy a box, play the game. Want more stuff? Grab the Expansion. After that you’ve probably played enough to have an idea of “oh I’d like another warjack or a second one of these solos” and by then those should be available individually.

For those of us who are already familiar with the game we can decide if it’s worth it to us to buy multiple starters or wait for the single boxes, but for new players there is a very clear order of what to get to expand their collection. I think it’s a really smart move for pulling more people into the game.

1 Like
8

Mmhhh still cant get It.

I May aknowledge that maybe they cant keep up with a greater production now.

But truly, at the expense of Just “impose” 1 box instead of 2 with a greater deal of flexibility.
( And improved Number of sold box) i really cant understand, Also because the game live so much on competitive play, but you have “fixed” mk4 army, not so easily adaptable and Legacy army that can be well built competitively but a new player Is difficult to put in the game with an army no more supported and nearly impossible to start from 0. Here in Europe Is a Great deal to face, as many other “younger” game doesnt have those problems. Add to this the difficulty to get the new Pieces of you don’t know about the few shop that have It… It Is difficult to raise new player

9

I believe this is also something PP is trying to change. A game cannot live forever off of catering to only tournament players, it needs to appeal to new and casual players. I think the new Starter and Expansion boxes are intended to attract new and casual players by providing a single easy entry point to the game rather than just to competitive players who will do a bunch of research to figure out what’s currently strong in the meta and buy only those things.

I get where you’re coming from, but IMO Warmachine needs to get a lot of new more casual players in to the game and having a single serving release serves that purpose. Those of us who don’t need that kind of guidance aren’t the market they need to capture, we’re already here :slight_smile: .

1 Like
10

Eh don’t tell me … As i said, the problem Is that nowdays, at least in Italy you show off the faction of the game, maliciously or not many ask for specialized Building " oh can i go all tanks? Can i go full infantry? Monopyg?monomonster? Etc."

And when they see that other games let them buy exactly what they want, It Is a problem…
Even if It Is a dumb list.

11

Fortunately that should be a solvable problem in the nearish future as production catches up and the individual boxes become available :slightly_smiling_face:

Also just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding I’m not trying to convince you that you are wrong for feeling the way you do about the release plan. I think there’s definitely trade offs made in this structure be the more traditional open structure of miniatures releases. It’s certainly a bit less convenient for veteran players who have the knowledge to be able to just pick what they want and go.

I’m just trying to explain what I see as the reasoning and advantages of this strategy from PP based on public statements they’ve made about Mk4 and just general vibes from being around the tabletop wargame community for a good while now.

1 Like
12

There are, I think, many “problems” here:

  • The old players, or “you have BadWrongFun players” that actively try to dismiss the game, be it because they are really invested in GW and don’t want anything else to ever have a chance to grow again, or because they were players at some point during mk1-mk3 and feel betrayed enough to actively hate the game and try to make sure everyone shares their hate and is aware of it.

  • The release strategy and the Starter Boxes not being Starter Boxes but almost full Army Boxes.

  • $ and € being very different things, with very different amounts of available cash for hobbies, in which US gamers have both more available cash, cheaper prices and not too many barriers (shipping fees, import taxes, etc). Making our (EU, specially countries in the lower half of salaries) boxes, models, etc much more expensive that what people in the US gets.

I think that 1 is unsolvable, there will be always something to complain, and if there isn’t they can invent half-truths or direct lies until something sticks. We saw that with the active intents of linking Privateer Press with Rusia invasion of Ukraine.

For 2, I wish they would let the 70$ battleboxes as a standard SKU, that would be both a Starter Point that marks the “you don’t have to decide between hobby and paying rent” checkbox (which, IMHO, is needed to consider something a Starter set), and a “your next purchase is this if you are more warjack/beast inclined, for units you have the expansion box”, in case you started with the Army Box.

For 3, it must be difficult to control, but maybe it would help to have the web-limited offers to be available to distributors, for example. So you can go to your store, say “I would like this Stryker box, and 2 units of Cavalry Cygnar” (once available, they added a pair of Winter Korps units some hours ago, so probably others will be added soonish). And the store can get them via distribution without too much hassle. For the $-€ conversion it seems that it’s a little better controlled now, but in the past it used to be ridiculous (not exclusively from Privateer, everyone applied a 1-1 conversion that made our stuff like 25-30% more expensive.

But for what OP says, I think #1 is the biggest problem, and it does have a solution.

13

Here I see great potential in outsourcing the printing to EU subcontractors. Having the stuff for the EU market produced in the EU would greatly reduce the extra costs of import taxes and shipping. Depending on where in the EU the subcontractor is, the labor costs would likely be lower than in the US, too.

Brexit, unfortunately, made a big mess out of the European market. PP had good contacts with British operators (and sharing a language probably helped too), but none of that helps mainland EU any more than being in the US now. I mean, I guess shipping from the UK is a little cheaper than shipping across the Atlantic, but the taxes are unavoidable.

1 Like
14

What I would prefer though, is the current SKU format with slight tweaks.

Current:

  • Starter Box incl. Warcaster A, Warjack A, & Warjack B
  • Expansion Box incl. Warcaster B
  • Warcaster C
  • 80mm Solo
  • Warjack A
  • Warjack B

My Suggestion:

  • Battlegroup Box consisting of Warcaster A, Warjack A, & Warjack B only
  • Starter Box incl. Warcaster B, Warjack A, & Warjack B
  • Expansion Box incl. Warcaster C
  • 80mm Solo
  • Warjack A (maybe)
  • Warjack B (maybe)
    *Caveat: all items in the bundled boxes are sold ala carte on PP’s website a couple of months after box release date.
1 Like
15

I know and i have seen they are releasing units on website , only with the same Number of Sku only i thought that at launch a more versatile release would have been Better . :grin:

16

The plan was always to have the individual models available eventually for people who want to fill out armies. The idea is that stores only need to hold stock of the main 6 SKUs though, anything more specific can be special ordered. Keeps the shelf space requirements simple and compact.

17

So, right now, if a physical retailer wants to stock the entire MK IV product line, they have to care about a total of approximately 45 SKUs:

6 per army, 6 armies total (Winter Korps, Storm Legion, Orgoth Sea Raiders, Brineblood Marauders, Dusk House Kallyss, Khymaera once they release), for a total of 36 SKUs
7 (?) Mercenary models

And that’s it. :slightly_smiling_face: The retailer has the entire product range.

That contrasts sharply with, for example, 40K, Age of Sigmar, Marvel Crisis Protocol, Star Wars Legion, and pretty much every other major game I can think of.

2 Likes
18

Remember that each faction should have at least a second army . So at least double up of those numbers ,of these are “standard” release . I think at some point some box should rotate. Oh and Add the cadre …

19

Second armies and the cadres themselves aren’t even anywhere on the roadmap yet, so I didn’t mention them. :slight_smile: I figured that projecting ≈6 months out was good enough for this discussion.

But, regardless: add 1 cadre per army and that’s another 6 items to stock, total.

Add 1 more army, that’s another 6 SKUs. Fully double the entire Warmachine MK IV product range, and you’re still at less than 100 items.

Even then, a retailer can fully stock all of Warmachine MK IV for less bookkeeping hassle than any given single 40K army. (I wanted to put concrete numbers to this, but I couldn’t even find a current list of SKUs for 40k; that either indicates that I really don’t know what to search for, or it indicates the sprawling state of 40k model ranges. You decide. :slight_smile: )

1 Like
20

I mean, if you have 999* Space Marine Chapters which share most models but have some unique special characters, vehicles or units, calculating the number of boxes per army becomes preeeetty difficult.

*Grey Knights are technically a Space Marine Chapter but entirely different model-wise.

But yeah, one could also compare Mk4 to Mk3 and see the difference in SKU numbers. That’s one big reason why the edition change was done in the first place. I admit, I miss the times when we coud get excited every year to get something new for our faction, but I understand that the world is finite.

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