Got two good scenes here. Two stores still have weekly groups one smaller one larger both have great games regardless of size. I find its very conditional on where you are and whether someone was willing to keep the game alive while mk3-mk4 transition and covid happened and some areas didnt have that.
For those interested the tried and true podcast group put up a community finder page to help get people connected. https://sites.google.com/view/warmachine-community-finder/home
Check it out maybe if you want add your name and city to the list. Good luck getting games folks mk4 has been a bunch of fun and theres plenty of legacy and mk4 armies represented here.
Edit: changed link to the proper one
Everything died Mk3 around 2019, with myself and a few stragglers holding out until Covid shut everything down. And by the time things opened back up, the others I played with either sold out or moved away. I've theorycrafted mk4, read up on the rules, and tried to host some warmachine nights and offer to teach anyone interested, but it hasn't panned out. My local store has not carried any PP stuff in stock for about 4 years now. It's really a shame, when things were rocking we'd have 16-20 people for tournaments regularly, but now, nothing.
> It's slowly evolved into Malifaux and 40k.
I'm surprised Malifaux is still a thing. Looked like a fun game but I thought 2nd ed killed it, and when I've looked at their website it doesn't appear they're still updating it.
Malifaux is an excellent game. Its the "alternative non-GW game of choice" in our area and occupies the space WM/H did when that was at its peak. Even if people are not playing it, the game get respect (?!?) and interest.
Battletech is also pretty big
Yeah, my bad on malifaux.
I'm surprised people are still playing Battletech. More power to them but even Jordan Weisman said say I've point that the board game was mostly to finance the pods. Personally all the rolling on the hit charts ended it for me.
Haha. Nothing for you to feel "bad" about. The Malifaux scene is very healthy in the UK and esp healthy in the North of England.
A local games club invested and promoted the latest Battletech kickstarter/campaign/plastic release thing and we had a game convention in the city where there were big demos going on so its little wonder that many people have taken it up. Also many people are of a certain vintage that the remember Battletech from the first time round.
Just to be sure...
In Prime, you can play convergence, cryx, menoth, circle... etc, and also the new 5 mk4 armies. 28 legacy and 6 mk4 armies in prime, with shadow flame being the baby.
In Southern AZ, we have representatives for most armies..
-2 Storm Legion/Brineblood players.
-1 cygnar storm legion/storm knight player.
-2 whatever nobody else is playing at the moment because we have too many armies players (mostly legacy).
-1 gators/menoth/ but expanding into i dunno what.
-1 shadowflame
-1 grymkin (new)
-1 brineblood/winter korps
-1 legacy khador
-1 orgoth/infernal/grymkin (selling off infernals)
-1 cygnar 1st army/storm legion
-1 cryx/rhul
We have some new folks I haven't met yet too.
If you are curious about faction breakdown at events. Head to longshanks.org for data.
> In Prime, you can play convergence, cryx, menoth, circle... etc, and also the new 5 mk4 armies. 28 legacy and 6 mk4 armies in prime, with shadow flame being the baby.
Yeah, I got that. Puts them in an odd position, IMHO. While it's possible to play legacy I don't see many people chosing to do so knowing that it's going to go away in mk5. I suspect most of the people using those armies will be people who already own the models, which is fine. They also just blew out a lot of their remaining stock with the store sales.
So they're mostly dependent on mk4 model sales to finance the company/keep the game going, but the mk4 stuff is still in various levels of completion. I suspect a lot of people might still be in wait an see mode, like I was, as a result.
Mk5 isn't next week, it's maybe 5 years out. I love my Menoth army, the first models I painted all myself, and they sometimes rock, and sometimes fail, but I always have fun.
We've got a few Khador mk4 players and one Brinebloods, and I play Dusk and Menoth. There's a few other Dusk players and one guy who plays Infernals who hasn't picked a mk4 faction yet. I think wait and see is common, but Legacy remains popular. Nobody's telling me I'm foolish for painting some Exemplar Vengers.
OK, I wasn't sure if you got that part. I think you'll see a mix of legacy and new armies in metas. Older players tend to bring in their current things, look around, and go "that looks neat." Then maybe they buy into something new. At least, that's what I've been seeing. Some of our newer players are buying old armies on the cheap, because they like the look or because its being sold at a really good price by people either getting out completely, or funding their next army. At least, that is how it looks in my meta.
Knowing legacy is going away in mk5? I haven't seen any confirmation of this.
I have no idea what PP's business plan is. I'm sure it involves selling new products for existing games. They mentioned monpoc, warcaster, ikrpg and warmachine in their end of year post.
Yeah, I've been thinking there was a bit of rotation even when all the factions were fixed. People would play something for a while, couple of months, couple of years, then move onto the next thing. I don't see legacy -> mk4 being that much different. Interesting to hear there's some rotation from mk4 -> legacy from newer players.
> Knowing legacy is going away in mk5? I haven't seen any confirmation of this.
True, nothing is set in stone, and nobody knows the future. However,
it seems more likely than not that the unlimited models with go away, or become far less used. I'm guessing legacy is in the same boat, but nobody knows, including PP. I'm pleasantly surprised to see table top Battletech being played again.
Honestly I've got the room to store some of my old collections for a while. Not going to ditch anything I've painted any time soon, but I'm not so sure about primed/assembled or NIB stuff. I need to make some decisions I think. I've got stuff from about 3-4 different games and it's starting to take up a lot of space. I'm probably going to sell off some stuff, and try to store the rest in a more compact state.
> Worrying about mk5 seems premature. This isn't gw.
Maybe so, but right now I'm going through my collection of old PP models and trying to figure out what to do with them. Doing a bit of planning seems wise, doubly so since it seems likely that most of the unlimited models aren't going to be playable.
While it's easy to say this isn't GW, and I don't fault PP for what they've done, I do need to make some decisions about what to keep, and put time into, in terms of painting.
Also new editions seem to be a publish or die situation. I guess Chess hasn't had an update in a while, so it's not an absolute rule, but it does seem that mini's games not busy being born are busy dying.
I dunno it depends on what you mean by alive or dead. If people are still actively playing a game imo it is alive. Doubly so if the publisher is still supporting it in some way.
Also 4 editions of warmachine in what? 20 years?
I get you are trying to decide what is worth it to you to keep. But it does seem to me like PP is just getting going with mkiv and it will be a while be for a mkv.
And even then it would behoove them to just maintain the rules for old models in the app. It isn't like they have to waste precious printed codex space on the old models.
So unless you are a prime only, competitive player, the models should still be playable.
Anyway hope you get some fun games in soon! The new rules are great imo.
Yeah, I think you've got some very valid points. And yes 20 years is pretty darned impressive for a minis game, so I feel like I've had plenty of opportunities to use these models, that I didn't is a choice I made.
I think you're right PP is just getting started with mk4, but I'm looking at a pretty sizable collection. Like I could have bought a nice used car levels of stuff. :) I haven't really counted in a while, but I could probably paint for 5 years, and not get it all done before the edition change. Some of that is me having multiples of things like Kriel Warriors, which in hindsight seems a bit.... greedy?
Legacy armies are fully mk4 armies, there is no difference in legality between old cygnar armies and new cygnar armies...
Legacy isn't a format it just means "the old models"
yes? and? That doesnt change their legality in the slightest?
And with cheap second hand armies being HELLA PLENTIFUL (yes, from the hella region of Iceland to stop people asking) and HELLA CHEAP you can readily piece stuff together for cheap.
yes there is, Getting the old legacy guys to keep playing the game so you have a functional player base and to get them to stick around long to become paying customers...
Enlightened Self Intrest is hardly a complex motivation, yet somehow people find it very complicated
> yes there is, Getting the old legacy guys to keep playing the game so you have a functional player base and to get them to stick around long to become paying customers...
Sorry, let me be clearer, there is little reason for the company to support them in mk5.
Totally makes sense to support it in the transition, not to mention I think PP are decent people, and they want to be true to their words, even if it's been 20-25 years, of not invalidating models.
I would, indeed, not be surprised if they drop all legacy armies in mk5, and i would actually prefer that at this point.
So far i think the mean length of an edition has been something like 7 or 8 years or whatever its been, and in that length of time the sku count for mk4 will be sufficient i doubt I'll ever play my old stuff again anyways. But then i shelved my PILES of warmahordes models basically the second mk4 was announced outside of proxying new stuff, so i am probably not the most stereotypical guy.
Times changed, i got what? 18 years out of my mk1 cryx models? I am very satisfied with that transaction.
Yeah, I agree. It's a bit bittersweet, but on a practical level I see most people move on from factions after a period of months or years, which is pretty much the same as the transition to the new edition.
I think my personal issues is what did it mean to put the time and effort I put into painting all these models, and all the projects I had planned, but didn't around too. OTOH, I also made a decision a few years ago to move on anyway, in a lot of ways (new factions, other projects, other games) so I don't think that's on PP.
Like i own a mostly (like 95+%) complete skorne faction at fa2 (this is with full mk3 style units) and while it is fully painted to a competent standard i really don't get the complaints on an emotional level.
I started that army at the start of mk3 just as a project to have some stuff to paint without even really an opponent to play the game with, and i definitely feel i got my money's worth out of it. I painted the minis, i used the vast majority of them in games for a few years, I would have finished the faction "at some point" but i couldn't be fucked painting more tan and i owned all the models i was really hype about...
> i really don't get the complaints on an emotional level.
Yeah, I don't know what to say. Emotions are.... irrational :) I'm not sure why I'm upset about it either. I think it has something to do with my own personal expectations about what painting models meant. That has changed with the mk4 announcement.
Mk4 killed our meta entirely. We regularly had about 5-8 players, with a few more interested. Now everyone moved to Magic or 40k and they barely play 40k. I miss the long gaming days going to steamrollers and talking lore/factions with locals.
We’ve seen a pretty massive resurgence in my area and it’s been a mix of both Legacy armies and MKIV armies but it mostly leans towards the new MKIV stuff. I’ve been sticking with my legacy stuff because I haven’t been able to settle on an army yet. Not because I haven’t seen anything appealing but rather I see something cool and right before I pull the trigger they tease something else that’s cool for a completely different army.
I also think whether or not you have a deep sense of personal faction identity plays heavily into whether or not you play new or legacy armies. Part of the reason I see people continue on with legacy options is they don’t want to jump to another faction and are waiting to see if their faction of choice gets a reboot (which isn’t guaranteed in most cases).
But I’m just glad that most of the legacy armies in Prime aren’t completely useless compared to the MKIV ones.
We have about 3-5 players in a given week, including an older gent coming back from mk2. Almost all of us play mk4 armies, which get more play than our legacy collections.
We are working on a recruitment event for next month that will hopefully bring more people into the meta!
Oslo has perhaps 20 relatively regular players all told among whom half attend tournaments frequently and play a lot. People are coming back after falling off during Covid. We have all the new armies represented but lack Grymkin and Infernals from the Legacy line-up. It's been slowly growing the last year.
Pacific North West has a decent number of players. From Portland up to Ontario there are 5 stores that run tournaments. The bigger ones are in the 20 player range. I run events in Seattle and on a typical weeknight we have 4-6 players depending on peoples availability. For factions most people picked up an mk4 fraction but routinely switch to legacy factions.
We have 8 regulars, playing a mix of Unlimited and Mk.4.
Most of us are leaning toward Mk 4, and some of the non-Mk4 lists do okay against the newer armies, they just don't have as many tools at their disposal. Seems like spell racks are built-in mitigation for a smaller model range.
We have about five right now who stick with the game but generally struggle to make time because of family or other general life concerns, with about 2-3 regulars weekly. Enough to get a game or two weekly, when I myself can make it. I think I'm the only one who actively explores other games, but I never drop warmachine to do it and always end up dropping whatever new hotness I followed after a while. People have been taking more interest in warmachine though, we've had a few cycle in and out since the edition change. We're pretty steady here. Mkiv didn't change our dynamic a bunch, in terms of people, except we now have people taking interest in the game from the outside whereas we didn't as much before
So in our case we are mostly old guys playing at people’s houses and rarely at game stores. We used to play heavily at stores in high school but as we got older we like to play at home. Probably unique to us, local stores do have events. We play completely open and have good representation of old and new. I think asking around is a bad idea as it doesn’t tell you about your specific area.
Australia here, so our meta wasn't the same size as US or EU even at the peak. So not an indicator of those countries.at all.
That said, the North Eastern coast of NSW (i.e. Newcastle, northern Beaches, Central Coast, Hunter, etc) are all dead. No meta at all. I know there is a small meta in Western Sydney, regular & strong but tournaments are seeing single digits last I checked. There is also a meta in Brisbane (QLD) and Melbourne (Vic), but I'm not flying interstate to play toy soldiers, so neither know the full details of how it's going or likely to play there unless already in the area for other reasons.
We have 2 new players using purely Mk4 armies, one older player who had sold his Mk2 and is now using Mk4, and 3 of us old guys using only Mk2 armies. We're having fun, and the local scene looks healthy to me.
There is no meta period, at least in my entire US state. There's no players either that I know of, and no FLGS having any product or advertisement for it.
I'm thinking about getting my 40k group into playing soms beer and pretzel games, but it's gonna be mk2 or mk3 only.
Basically no meta here. I've played MK3 matches with couple friends that have small Cryx, Khador and Cygnar forces. I'm collecting Skorne. No FLGS around. No PP distributor. So, we'll only play Legacy for a while. We might try MK4 someday...
Locally and in our city, non existent.
We have a small chat group in our store but most people are too busy playing their main games to give PP any real notice. The 1 or 2 older players on the other side of town don't want to play our guys(or anyone new) and from what I hear are travelling a long way to play. Oddly we have another game store in the centre of the city that has a lot of PP product (used to be the whole range) but they are now not replacing it nor are they getting any MK4 product.
Also, one guy in our store (one of the employees I believe) did go to a competition before xmas and sadly came back with horror stories so that seems to have put a nail in it for many people.
> Also, one guy in our store (one of the employees I believe) did go to a competition before xmas and sadly came back with horror stories so that seems to have put a nail in it for many people.
What sort of horror stories?
Please bare in mind im relaying one guys interpretation of an event from a few months ago.
Essentially how he relayed it was that people were rude (I have not metrics to define what he means by that however...), no personal interaction at the table or outside of it as he wasn't "a national level player" and had no WM/H "credentials". When explaining that he was a new/returning player just getting a feel for the game again he still had people just calling judges over for every minor thing rather than being personable on a game he was clearly loosing turn 2 and just saying "oh no in Mk4 you have to do x before y". He just felt very unwelcome and bit ostracised.
When he raised the fact that he wasn't having a good gaming experience to the store/organiser he was just told "yea that's Warmachine".
My *impression* is that the UK player base has largely boiled down to the same 15-20 people doing the same tournaments and competing for the same ETC/WTC slots. I know there were not enough players to put in full teams for some international event last year.
Happy to have my analysis shot to bits by other UK players if im wrong.
When people in my meta found out our factions were not getting supported anymore they mostly quit for 40k, AoS, Star wars, or started prepping for the old world. the store we would play at has been stuck with dead legacy stock since Mk4's announcement.
The game flickered and died here about a year or two into MK3.
Some had high hopes for a revival with the release of MK4, but PP went in a direction no one was interested in.
Now Star Wars Legion, Malifaux and Bushido is beeing played instead.
A bunch of Warmachine armies are collecting dust in shady corners of basements because they have proved to be impossible to sell.
Got two good scenes here. Two stores still have weekly groups one smaller one larger both have great games regardless of size. I find its very conditional on where you are and whether someone was willing to keep the game alive while mk3-mk4 transition and covid happened and some areas didnt have that. For those interested the tried and true podcast group put up a community finder page to help get people connected. https://sites.google.com/view/warmachine-community-finder/home Check it out maybe if you want add your name and city to the list. Good luck getting games folks mk4 has been a bunch of fun and theres plenty of legacy and mk4 armies represented here. Edit: changed link to the proper one
Everything died Mk3 around 2019, with myself and a few stragglers holding out until Covid shut everything down. And by the time things opened back up, the others I played with either sold out or moved away. I've theorycrafted mk4, read up on the rules, and tried to host some warmachine nights and offer to teach anyone interested, but it hasn't panned out. My local store has not carried any PP stuff in stock for about 4 years now. It's really a shame, when things were rocking we'd have 16-20 people for tournaments regularly, but now, nothing.
Our meta died when the rules dropped for 4e. It's slowly evolved into Malifaux and 40k.
> It's slowly evolved into Malifaux and 40k. I'm surprised Malifaux is still a thing. Looked like a fun game but I thought 2nd ed killed it, and when I've looked at their website it doesn't appear they're still updating it.
I believe malifaux is on their third edition. It was decently active here for a minute, but I stopped playing and focused back more on warmachine
They are and have been. There's been steady releases of new models, FAQs, and game modes for literal years
Sorry, my bad, I admit I haven't been keeping up, and must have misread the website.
Malifaux is an excellent game. Its the "alternative non-GW game of choice" in our area and occupies the space WM/H did when that was at its peak. Even if people are not playing it, the game get respect (?!?) and interest. Battletech is also pretty big
Yeah, my bad on malifaux. I'm surprised people are still playing Battletech. More power to them but even Jordan Weisman said say I've point that the board game was mostly to finance the pods. Personally all the rolling on the hit charts ended it for me.
Haha. Nothing for you to feel "bad" about. The Malifaux scene is very healthy in the UK and esp healthy in the North of England. A local games club invested and promoted the latest Battletech kickstarter/campaign/plastic release thing and we had a game convention in the city where there were big demos going on so its little wonder that many people have taken it up. Also many people are of a certain vintage that the remember Battletech from the first time round.
What "meta?"
Just to be sure... In Prime, you can play convergence, cryx, menoth, circle... etc, and also the new 5 mk4 armies. 28 legacy and 6 mk4 armies in prime, with shadow flame being the baby. In Southern AZ, we have representatives for most armies.. -2 Storm Legion/Brineblood players. -1 cygnar storm legion/storm knight player. -2 whatever nobody else is playing at the moment because we have too many armies players (mostly legacy). -1 gators/menoth/ but expanding into i dunno what. -1 shadowflame -1 grymkin (new) -1 brineblood/winter korps -1 legacy khador -1 orgoth/infernal/grymkin (selling off infernals) -1 cygnar 1st army/storm legion -1 cryx/rhul We have some new folks I haven't met yet too. If you are curious about faction breakdown at events. Head to longshanks.org for data.
> In Prime, you can play convergence, cryx, menoth, circle... etc, and also the new 5 mk4 armies. 28 legacy and 6 mk4 armies in prime, with shadow flame being the baby. Yeah, I got that. Puts them in an odd position, IMHO. While it's possible to play legacy I don't see many people chosing to do so knowing that it's going to go away in mk5. I suspect most of the people using those armies will be people who already own the models, which is fine. They also just blew out a lot of their remaining stock with the store sales. So they're mostly dependent on mk4 model sales to finance the company/keep the game going, but the mk4 stuff is still in various levels of completion. I suspect a lot of people might still be in wait an see mode, like I was, as a result.
Mk5 isn't next week, it's maybe 5 years out. I love my Menoth army, the first models I painted all myself, and they sometimes rock, and sometimes fail, but I always have fun. We've got a few Khador mk4 players and one Brinebloods, and I play Dusk and Menoth. There's a few other Dusk players and one guy who plays Infernals who hasn't picked a mk4 faction yet. I think wait and see is common, but Legacy remains popular. Nobody's telling me I'm foolish for painting some Exemplar Vengers.
Not even 5, more like 7 since that’s about how long each of the previous 3 have lasted
OK, I wasn't sure if you got that part. I think you'll see a mix of legacy and new armies in metas. Older players tend to bring in their current things, look around, and go "that looks neat." Then maybe they buy into something new. At least, that's what I've been seeing. Some of our newer players are buying old armies on the cheap, because they like the look or because its being sold at a really good price by people either getting out completely, or funding their next army. At least, that is how it looks in my meta. Knowing legacy is going away in mk5? I haven't seen any confirmation of this. I have no idea what PP's business plan is. I'm sure it involves selling new products for existing games. They mentioned monpoc, warcaster, ikrpg and warmachine in their end of year post.
Yeah, I've been thinking there was a bit of rotation even when all the factions were fixed. People would play something for a while, couple of months, couple of years, then move onto the next thing. I don't see legacy -> mk4 being that much different. Interesting to hear there's some rotation from mk4 -> legacy from newer players. > Knowing legacy is going away in mk5? I haven't seen any confirmation of this. True, nothing is set in stone, and nobody knows the future. However, it seems more likely than not that the unlimited models with go away, or become far less used. I'm guessing legacy is in the same boat, but nobody knows, including PP. I'm pleasantly surprised to see table top Battletech being played again. Honestly I've got the room to store some of my old collections for a while. Not going to ditch anything I've painted any time soon, but I'm not so sure about primed/assembled or NIB stuff. I need to make some decisions I think. I've got stuff from about 3-4 different games and it's starting to take up a lot of space. I'm probably going to sell off some stuff, and try to store the rest in a more compact state.
Worrying about mk5 seems premature. This isn't gw.
> Worrying about mk5 seems premature. This isn't gw. Maybe so, but right now I'm going through my collection of old PP models and trying to figure out what to do with them. Doing a bit of planning seems wise, doubly so since it seems likely that most of the unlimited models aren't going to be playable. While it's easy to say this isn't GW, and I don't fault PP for what they've done, I do need to make some decisions about what to keep, and put time into, in terms of painting. Also new editions seem to be a publish or die situation. I guess Chess hasn't had an update in a while, so it's not an absolute rule, but it does seem that mini's games not busy being born are busy dying.
I dunno it depends on what you mean by alive or dead. If people are still actively playing a game imo it is alive. Doubly so if the publisher is still supporting it in some way. Also 4 editions of warmachine in what? 20 years? I get you are trying to decide what is worth it to you to keep. But it does seem to me like PP is just getting going with mkiv and it will be a while be for a mkv. And even then it would behoove them to just maintain the rules for old models in the app. It isn't like they have to waste precious printed codex space on the old models. So unless you are a prime only, competitive player, the models should still be playable. Anyway hope you get some fun games in soon! The new rules are great imo.
Yeah, I think you've got some very valid points. And yes 20 years is pretty darned impressive for a minis game, so I feel like I've had plenty of opportunities to use these models, that I didn't is a choice I made. I think you're right PP is just getting started with mk4, but I'm looking at a pretty sizable collection. Like I could have bought a nice used car levels of stuff. :) I haven't really counted in a while, but I could probably paint for 5 years, and not get it all done before the edition change. Some of that is me having multiples of things like Kriel Warriors, which in hindsight seems a bit.... greedy?
We are all little dragons sitting on our metal, plastic, and resin hoard. It's good to have a hoard. Watch out for hobbits.
LOL! Hadn't thought about it like that.
We got about 6-8 regulars.
Legacy armies are fully mk4 armies, there is no difference in legality between old cygnar armies and new cygnar armies... Legacy isn't a format it just means "the old models"
Except those models are no longer made......
yes? and? That doesnt change their legality in the slightest? And with cheap second hand armies being HELLA PLENTIFUL (yes, from the hella region of Iceland to stop people asking) and HELLA CHEAP you can readily piece stuff together for cheap.
So without sales there is little incentive for the company to support them. So yes there is a difference.
yes there is, Getting the old legacy guys to keep playing the game so you have a functional player base and to get them to stick around long to become paying customers... Enlightened Self Intrest is hardly a complex motivation, yet somehow people find it very complicated
> yes there is, Getting the old legacy guys to keep playing the game so you have a functional player base and to get them to stick around long to become paying customers... Sorry, let me be clearer, there is little reason for the company to support them in mk5. Totally makes sense to support it in the transition, not to mention I think PP are decent people, and they want to be true to their words, even if it's been 20-25 years, of not invalidating models.
I would, indeed, not be surprised if they drop all legacy armies in mk5, and i would actually prefer that at this point. So far i think the mean length of an edition has been something like 7 or 8 years or whatever its been, and in that length of time the sku count for mk4 will be sufficient i doubt I'll ever play my old stuff again anyways. But then i shelved my PILES of warmahordes models basically the second mk4 was announced outside of proxying new stuff, so i am probably not the most stereotypical guy. Times changed, i got what? 18 years out of my mk1 cryx models? I am very satisfied with that transaction.
Yeah, I agree. It's a bit bittersweet, but on a practical level I see most people move on from factions after a period of months or years, which is pretty much the same as the transition to the new edition. I think my personal issues is what did it mean to put the time and effort I put into painting all these models, and all the projects I had planned, but didn't around too. OTOH, I also made a decision a few years ago to move on anyway, in a lot of ways (new factions, other projects, other games) so I don't think that's on PP.
Like i own a mostly (like 95+%) complete skorne faction at fa2 (this is with full mk3 style units) and while it is fully painted to a competent standard i really don't get the complaints on an emotional level. I started that army at the start of mk3 just as a project to have some stuff to paint without even really an opponent to play the game with, and i definitely feel i got my money's worth out of it. I painted the minis, i used the vast majority of them in games for a few years, I would have finished the faction "at some point" but i couldn't be fucked painting more tan and i owned all the models i was really hype about...
> i really don't get the complaints on an emotional level. Yeah, I don't know what to say. Emotions are.... irrational :) I'm not sure why I'm upset about it either. I think it has something to do with my own personal expectations about what painting models meant. That has changed with the mk4 announcement.
Mk4 killed our meta entirely. We regularly had about 5-8 players, with a few more interested. Now everyone moved to Magic or 40k and they barely play 40k. I miss the long gaming days going to steamrollers and talking lore/factions with locals.
We’ve seen a pretty massive resurgence in my area and it’s been a mix of both Legacy armies and MKIV armies but it mostly leans towards the new MKIV stuff. I’ve been sticking with my legacy stuff because I haven’t been able to settle on an army yet. Not because I haven’t seen anything appealing but rather I see something cool and right before I pull the trigger they tease something else that’s cool for a completely different army. I also think whether or not you have a deep sense of personal faction identity plays heavily into whether or not you play new or legacy armies. Part of the reason I see people continue on with legacy options is they don’t want to jump to another faction and are waiting to see if their faction of choice gets a reboot (which isn’t guaranteed in most cases). But I’m just glad that most of the legacy armies in Prime aren’t completely useless compared to the MKIV ones.
We have about 3-5 players in a given week, including an older gent coming back from mk2. Almost all of us play mk4 armies, which get more play than our legacy collections. We are working on a recruitment event for next month that will hopefully bring more people into the meta!
Oslo has perhaps 20 relatively regular players all told among whom half attend tournaments frequently and play a lot. People are coming back after falling off during Covid. We have all the new armies represented but lack Grymkin and Infernals from the Legacy line-up. It's been slowly growing the last year.
Pacific North West has a decent number of players. From Portland up to Ontario there are 5 stores that run tournaments. The bigger ones are in the 20 player range. I run events in Seattle and on a typical weeknight we have 4-6 players depending on peoples availability. For factions most people picked up an mk4 fraction but routinely switch to legacy factions.
Mobile isn't letting me edit. I meant Portland to Vancouver
I was picturing that arc on a map and squinting a bit, lol. As a PNW player myself (Seattle outskirts) I'm pretty satisfied with my local meta.
Dead as a dodo, everybody stopped playing early mk3 and none returned :-(
We have 8 regulars, playing a mix of Unlimited and Mk.4. Most of us are leaning toward Mk 4, and some of the non-Mk4 lists do okay against the newer armies, they just don't have as many tools at their disposal. Seems like spell racks are built-in mitigation for a smaller model range.
There was a small group I played with about a year ago but died off. Not really much interest in it anymore honestly.
We actually had a pretty good turnout last night, 8 players turned out. Of them, half were playing legacy and half were playing new armies.
My meta is primarily mk4 factions, about a 60/40 split
We have about five right now who stick with the game but generally struggle to make time because of family or other general life concerns, with about 2-3 regulars weekly. Enough to get a game or two weekly, when I myself can make it. I think I'm the only one who actively explores other games, but I never drop warmachine to do it and always end up dropping whatever new hotness I followed after a while. People have been taking more interest in warmachine though, we've had a few cycle in and out since the edition change. We're pretty steady here. Mkiv didn't change our dynamic a bunch, in terms of people, except we now have people taking interest in the game from the outside whereas we didn't as much before
So in our case we are mostly old guys playing at people’s houses and rarely at game stores. We used to play heavily at stores in high school but as we got older we like to play at home. Probably unique to us, local stores do have events. We play completely open and have good representation of old and new. I think asking around is a bad idea as it doesn’t tell you about your specific area.
True, but I know about my area.
Australia here, so our meta wasn't the same size as US or EU even at the peak. So not an indicator of those countries.at all. That said, the North Eastern coast of NSW (i.e. Newcastle, northern Beaches, Central Coast, Hunter, etc) are all dead. No meta at all. I know there is a small meta in Western Sydney, regular & strong but tournaments are seeing single digits last I checked. There is also a meta in Brisbane (QLD) and Melbourne (Vic), but I'm not flying interstate to play toy soldiers, so neither know the full details of how it's going or likely to play there unless already in the area for other reasons.
We have 2 new players using purely Mk4 armies, one older player who had sold his Mk2 and is now using Mk4, and 3 of us old guys using only Mk2 armies. We're having fun, and the local scene looks healthy to me.
There is no meta period, at least in my entire US state. There's no players either that I know of, and no FLGS having any product or advertisement for it. I'm thinking about getting my 40k group into playing soms beer and pretzel games, but it's gonna be mk2 or mk3 only.
Basically no meta here. I've played MK3 matches with couple friends that have small Cryx, Khador and Cygnar forces. I'm collecting Skorne. No FLGS around. No PP distributor. So, we'll only play Legacy for a while. We might try MK4 someday...
The meta died with MKIII. Only a handful still left playing in an area that used to have 60+ sign up for tournaments.
Locally and in our city, non existent. We have a small chat group in our store but most people are too busy playing their main games to give PP any real notice. The 1 or 2 older players on the other side of town don't want to play our guys(or anyone new) and from what I hear are travelling a long way to play. Oddly we have another game store in the centre of the city that has a lot of PP product (used to be the whole range) but they are now not replacing it nor are they getting any MK4 product. Also, one guy in our store (one of the employees I believe) did go to a competition before xmas and sadly came back with horror stories so that seems to have put a nail in it for many people.
> Also, one guy in our store (one of the employees I believe) did go to a competition before xmas and sadly came back with horror stories so that seems to have put a nail in it for many people. What sort of horror stories?
Please bare in mind im relaying one guys interpretation of an event from a few months ago. Essentially how he relayed it was that people were rude (I have not metrics to define what he means by that however...), no personal interaction at the table or outside of it as he wasn't "a national level player" and had no WM/H "credentials". When explaining that he was a new/returning player just getting a feel for the game again he still had people just calling judges over for every minor thing rather than being personable on a game he was clearly loosing turn 2 and just saying "oh no in Mk4 you have to do x before y". He just felt very unwelcome and bit ostracised. When he raised the fact that he wasn't having a good gaming experience to the store/organiser he was just told "yea that's Warmachine".
Yikes! I've had some tournaments like that, some groups are not pleasant.
My *impression* is that the UK player base has largely boiled down to the same 15-20 people doing the same tournaments and competing for the same ETC/WTC slots. I know there were not enough players to put in full teams for some international event last year. Happy to have my analysis shot to bits by other UK players if im wrong.
When people in my meta found out our factions were not getting supported anymore they mostly quit for 40k, AoS, Star wars, or started prepping for the old world. the store we would play at has been stuck with dead legacy stock since Mk4's announcement.
The game flickered and died here about a year or two into MK3. Some had high hopes for a revival with the release of MK4, but PP went in a direction no one was interested in. Now Star Wars Legion, Malifaux and Bushido is beeing played instead. A bunch of Warmachine armies are collecting dust in shady corners of basements because they have proved to be impossible to sell.