B5 - End of Days |
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clausewitz
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Post subject: B5 - End of Days  Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:20 pm |
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| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2005 2:02 pm
Posts: 916
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
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Many thanks Otterman. Exactly on pg 12 
Shame they don't do any bigger ships.
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wargame_insomniac
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Post subject: B5 - End of Days Posted: Sun May 25, 2008 12:14 am |
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| Purestrain |
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Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2004 6:42 pm
Posts: 3305
Location: West Yorkshire, UK
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This news still annoys me some 3 months later. Mongoose has been a textbook example of how not to manage a gaming company with customers disapointed at the way Battlefield Evo pre-painted plastics and entire Starship Troopers games were cancelled. They had poor production quality (appalling flash and misaligned pieces), dire minature design and rulebooks full of errors and typos.
I understand that their B5 licence had less than one year to run and that the old Agents of Gaming moulds were starting to deterirate and would need replacing. Thus they faced having to pay potentially higher licence fees and also extra production costs. And with the age of the series I guess demand might fade over time.
As a result they closed down ALL minature ranges and concentrated on RPG's and rulebooks. They would have got a fair boost of sales from their closing 20% sale. I know many players including myself would have taken the final opportunity to finish off their fleets before the minatures became OOP.
Supposedly Mongoose intendd to reenter the minature market in 2009. But I will beleive that when it happens.
Until then I will use generic systems such as Full Thrust and Starmada to play B5 starship combat. And plus you can still play ACTA- just because they are not selling it doe nt mean you cabt still play it. And without a stream of new releases you wont have to worry about yoiur fleets suddenly being nerfed or invalidated.
Cheers
James
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Helcarexe
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Post subject: B5 - End of Days Posted: Tue May 27, 2008 6:59 pm |
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| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Tue May 27, 2008 3:33 pm
Posts: 3
Location: Des Moines, IA
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I know it's a shame how we lose a minature line for our space games. I feel the same way and hope that we can get more back in the future.
The future in gaming maybe the generic ship games and odd fleets provided by the few remaining companies.
_________________
FieldMarshal Helcarexe
Of The Stellar Confederation Of Planets
Tactical Command Games
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clausewitz
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Post subject: B5 - End of Days Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 4:05 am |
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| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2005 2:02 pm
Posts: 916
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
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As a follow up to my previous post..
I splashed out and ordered a bunch of stuff from the end of line sale. What has arrived so far has been good*, but I am still awaiting the end of my order - three months later.
I would have possibly ordered more once I'd seen the stuff I ordered, but the sale was closed before I got anything.
ACTA seems to have a fairly active community going so I would expect the game to go on for a while (money on Net:ACTA in a few years? ).
James, does Full Thrust capture the "spirirt of the show" in the manner that ACTA does?
*Early EA, EA 3A, Narn, Centauri and Vree fleet boxes and a few other ships. Since I am used to GW pricing and value for money the ACTA fleet boxes seem reaaly good value in terms of weight of metal.
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wargame_insomniac
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Post subject: B5 - End of Days Posted: Fri May 30, 2008 1:27 pm |
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| Purestrain |
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Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2004 6:42 pm
Posts: 3305
Location: West Yorkshire, UK
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Yes- the fleets boxes are great value- especially if you bought themn in sale or got them online at discount. For my fleets I usualy bought one fleet box and then 1-2 blisters extra- that was usually enough to get each fleet up to 5 points Raid which is standard game size. I did nt get to buy all the fleets I wanted- I dont have any Narn or Vree- at some point I may pick them up second hand but I am in no hurry- I have enough to get me started.
I would have liked some of the EA Hyperion variants. But as these were new scuplts released one month before the news, they were not included in the closing sale and were thus too expensive.
I think ACTA will be better at capturing the spirit of B5 than a generic game. But then I don;'t think ACTA was perfect- with way crits work it biases against big ships which means swarm fleets will proliferate if playing competitively. That is a shame for me because it means you don't get to see the likes of Sharlin, Omega and Primus which we saw on screen.
Luckily a lot of people at my local gaming club have ACTA fleets so hopefully game wont die locally. Atr the moment the Mongoose official forums are still quite lively- there is the reisk that Mongoose might close that section of forum down in the future. Although they have said they would nt, from their perspective why would you incur costs on supporting a game that you no longer sell and is in fact a reminder of poor decisions.
The advantage of Full Thrust/Starmada is that you can mix B5, Star Trek, Star Wars & BSG. I have seen a Star Trek Mod for ACTA that I might try given that it focuses on TNG/DS9 era.
Cheers
James
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clausewitz
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Post subject: B5 - End of Days Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 1:19 am |
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| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Thu Jul 07, 2005 2:02 pm
Posts: 916
Location: Glasgow, Scotland
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Thanks for the summary James.
As a newbie to ACTA I read much of the Mongoose site, so in the games my friends and I have played so far we have a ship limit as well as the usual FAP allocation to avoid the swarm problem (though I admit the boresite/initiative sink issue can't be totally avoided). We aren't playing to tournament competativeness level, so I think we can choose to avoid 10 Saggitarrius fleets and so on.
There are also very nice ACTA mods for BSG and SG1 if you are interested. I haven't played them but the rules look ok (as far as I can tell) and the counters are nice.
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wargame_insomniac
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Post subject: B5 - End of Days Posted: Sat May 31, 2008 1:10 pm |
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| Purestrain |
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Joined: Sat Jan 31, 2004 6:42 pm
Posts: 3305
Location: West Yorkshire, UK
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A few years back I spoke to Matt Sprange at Salute. He told me that they had tried to balance ACTA for campaign play and then had to make constant changes to get it balanced for 1-off tournament games.
This was unfortunate as the vast majority of us play 1-off games at agreed points level, whether in tournaments or casual games against friends. As a result Mongoose never quite got ACTA right if play it more competitively.
If you play it casually amongst friends it can still be a good game. If you dont overdo the swarm ships and have ships at about the same priority level then it is great. I remember the first turn of shooting I had when fielding a Sharlin- it was great to see the devastation wrought and felt very true to the show.
However unless Mongoose can rsume some sort of minature support in 2009 then I can see the game slowly dieing as memories of the series fade. Unless the new 3 episode mini-series take off but the first one (The Lost Tales) was ok, nothing more.
Cheers
James
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