Why hate on the TT?

Sagrilarus wrote: I realize most here find Ancients a less-than-gripping theme, but if you're willing to play with War Elephants instead of Dreadnaughts you have a lot of choice and the pieces mix and match easily as long as your bases match.

I've played Ancients quite a bit back in my miniatures gaming days. I found two major reasons it didn't click with me. First I didn't like the silly history match ups - the way you could have Greek phalanxes fighting Celts, or Vikings squaring up against tribal Africans. That's a general issue I have will all historically based miniatures games. Second I found that with just humans and no magic there simply wasn't enough variety to keep the system interesting. The designers tried hard with special rules and army lists but there just wasn't enough - too many of the armies looked too much alike.

MattDP wrote: - too many of the armies looked too much alike.

That's a pretty solid reflection of history. Short of East/West differences most technologies crossed the lines. The genre isn't for everyone, that's for sure.

S.

Jeff White wrote: Yeah, Da Bid Dabid is right. If you're thinking minis = Warhammer/warmachine I can see the intimidation with time and money. I stick to the GW specialist range (Mordheim, Necromunda, BloodBowl, etc) All have free rulesets online and only require @10-15 models which can be had cheap. Mantic puts out a great budget fantasy line (10 models @ $15 MSRP). There are also lots of newer free rulesets as well. Mongoose has recently released their Judge Dread rules for free, and they have some neat looking 2000AD models. Again, no need for a lot of models here or can proxy others (Heroscape minis come to mind). Finally, playing the skirmish level games makes it easy to convert your board-gaming friends. Low buy-in.

I cannot emphasize this enough. If you want skirmish, even if you DON'T like Judge Dredd, then get the rules for GOMCO. It's superior to Necromunda in every way.

Rliyen wrote:

Jeff White wrote: Yeah, Da Bid Dabid is right. If you're thinking minis = Warhammer/warmachine I can see the intimidation with time and money. I stick to the GW specialist range (Mordheim, Necromunda, BloodBowl, etc) All have free rulesets online and only require @10-15 models which can be had cheap. Mantic puts out a great budget fantasy line (10 models @ $15 MSRP). There are also lots of newer free rulesets as well. Mongoose has recently released their Judge Dread rules for free, and they have some neat looking 2000AD models. Again, no need for a lot of models here or can proxy others (Heroscape minis come to mind). Finally, playing the skirmish level games makes it easy to convert your board-gaming friends. Low buy-in.

I cannot emphasize this enough. If you want skirmish, even if you DON'T like Judge Dredd, then get the rules for GOMCO. It's superior to Necromunda in every way.

Does it have a consistent campaign mode like Necromunda?

SleightOfHand12 wrote:
I'm really surprised that more people haven't given Monsterpocalypse a shake now that the game's switched to a non-collectible format. The Two-Player Battlebox contains everything that two players need to play, including maps, buildings, all the necessary accessories (dice, etc.) and two complete and fully playable faction armies,

1) at a price point of $35 online (or $50 MSRP.) That's a HELL of a deal, and at the very least it's significantly more game for less money than Assault on Black Reach (which I believe is still the current 40k intro box set.) And this is in addition to the upcoming DMZ expansion, which for $40 MSRP (we're guessing $30 online) you get a faction-specific box containing the rest of your faction's monsters, another bevy of units from Series 2-3, and a handful of faction-specific installations. If I hadn't gone crazy on Ebay and booster cases a couple years ago, this is DEFINITELY how I'd have wanted to get into the game.

ARRRRRRRRRRRRGH, I totally posted a response to this last night and had it vanish into the 4th dimension.

Is the plan with Monpoc still to rerelease everything in a non-collectible format? I know they have that one starter set, and the DMZ, but is everything coming back? Is DMZ truly non random or will it be like the starter set where you don't know what faction you're buying for?

Stonecutter wrote: Is the plan with Monpoc still to rerelease everything in a non-collectible format? I know they have that one starter set, and the DMZ, but is everything coming back? Is DMZ truly non random or will it be like the starter set where you don't know what faction you're buying for?

As far as I know (or at least as far as people close to PP tell me), yes. With DMZ, Privateer Press will have reissued all of Series 1-3, which contained the original six factions. We're currently waiting for news about the release of Series 6 to complete the six new factions introduced in Series 4 and 5. My -guess- is that they'll release it the usual way - in blind boosters - and then start repacking Series 4-6 in a non-collectible format while they're dealing with Series 7-9 and the Dreamworks/Burton flick.

In other news, PP is releasing freakin' sweet new hyper forms ("Quantum" forms) for Series 1-3 monsters; they've announced that Quantum Deimos-9, Quantum Zor-Magna, and Quantum Cthugrosh will be available at Gen Con and have others in the works. The upcoming prize kits for local tournaments are supposed to be bringing back hard-to-find Mega forms for Series 1-3 monsters as well. Given that Monsterpocalypse doesn't do the Heroclix thing where chase-rare's are better than everything else in the game - that is, that promotional monster forms aren't strictly better than stock Ultra's - I'm really hoping that they'll eventually just release more boxes of Mega forms like the one they did for I Chomp NY.

As far as the DMZ expansion goes, it will be totally non-blind - each box will be marked the faction it contains, as seen here . You can also check out the contents of each box here . Again, it's a hell of a lot of stuff.

Just to follow up, the new Quantum forms being released are:

Quantum Deimos
Quantum Magna
Quantum Defender X
Quantum Rakadon
Quantum Cthugrosh
Quantum Zorog

So if anybody here is going to be at Gen Con and doesn't mind swinging by the Privateer Press booth for me... 0:-)

SleightOfHand12 wrote: As far as the DMZ expansion goes, it will be totally non-blind - each box will be marked the faction it contains, as seen here . You can also check out the contents of each box here . Again, it's a hell of a lot of stuff.

Damn it... now I'm gonna... buy this... fuck.

One more thing. If I buy a 2 player starter set, are there only 3 possible combinations (A/B, C/D, E/F) or could you wind up getting any 2 forces?

MonPoc looks really cool. I love Heroscape because it takes tabletop gaming and streamlines it. How does MonPoc compare, rules-wise?

Jeff White wrote: Ouch, sorry to hear about the car. I hope everyone is alright.

3/4s of the group live in Kyle, plus we don't really want to haul a table plus terrain in to downtown Austin every week. However, we do have a guy that drives in from pretty much Round Rock. We could probably arrange a carpool or something.

Yeah, everyone was OK. I gotta say I have a full on Mordheim infection going on in my brain. I've been reading the rule books and pouring over people's thoughts on the different warbands and tactics online. I hope I'll be able to play.