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New Friday Poll up - Ultra Moderns/Near Future - win prizes!

  • Ben Zed

    @Yronimos Whateley

    I never said you attacked anyone in the thread. I implied that you were. Your attacks were not direct, they were done through implication, so you could easily deny them. You reframed objection to a kit as an attack on people who like the kit, and made up a weirdly specific example of someone who apparently gets some sort of sadistic pleasure from it.

    I don’t think  anyone was worried that a person LARPing as 2000 year old elven vampire would somehow do something bad with the kit because they have an interest in torture. You made that up as some sort of weird deflection. My point was that if someone has an objection to a kit, maybe it is worth listening to what that objection is, or thinking why it could be something objectionable.

    At first I did not intend to continue this discussion, while the word you were using, and the way you were using them is very obvious to me. I was not sure if it was something you were aware of. I thought maybe you just picked up that way of speaking about these issues from other people, not knowing the ideas behind it.
    But reconsidering, it doesn't really matter if you are aware. I can still point out what is going on.

    You bring up discussion of racism and orcs. This actually is a discussion that has a lot of merit to it. We know Tolkien was anti-fasist because of his response to the appropriation of his ideas by fascists. So the question is why would they want to use his ideas.

    You bring up the word triggered, using it incorrectly, in a mocking manner. Or if you were using it correctly, you seem to feel that people who have PTSD from being attacked by some sort of gov’t affiliated group should not be able to discuss their accessibility needs.

    You mention your made up vampire and how he “isn't very good at keeping his malfunction a secret.” Not sure why you are talking about his “malfunction” like that, it seems you are trying to give him bad characterizations of mental illness, or bad characterizations often assigned to people accused of faking mental illness. In either case the vampire, and the occurrence rate of people like him, and how easy it is to discover them, is not really at all important to the idea that a set of plastic minis is tasteless

    I’m almost done with this community at this point. If statements like yours are allowed to stand unchallenged, it is looking like WGA cares more about protecting people who can’t handle critical discussion of things they like, then the harm the criticism is pointing out.

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  • William Redford

    @Ben Zed I dont think WGA looks through the vast majority of these threads, and I dont think they have a big moderator presense. So I would not link any posts that are still here as endorsed by Wargames Atlantic.

    I will admit that I did not read through either your or @Yronimos Whateley 's initial statements as I am only vaguely interested in Near future stuff, but did go back and read them after I saw your response above.

    I have seen people on Dakka requesting the fleeing/terrified civilians set and their reasons for them. They seem like legitimate uses... IE not some political or fetish agenda. I mean not for me, but that is more having to do with the near future aspect.

    I dont think anything either of you has said has been offensive though your last post above does seem aggressive. I will point out that @Yronimos Whateley 's use of "triggered" seems more like how my kids use it... as something that invokes anger, rather than trigger like something that sets off a mental condition. 

     

    Edit... : and I have been following Yronimos's posts on Kickstarter message boards and at the Reaper forum for a while. Again for what its worth. 

    I obviously dont know either of you in real life to say "i know him" but I will say that Yronimos is a great source of knowledge and I have not seen any posts here that I would consider offensive, so I have only known (I know I dont really know) him to be a stand up guy. Based soley on his posts, I could see us being friends in real life. 

    I can see that this is a personal subject for you though. This is why I dont discuss politics, or religion on line... and stick with plastic soldiers. 

  • Benjamin Hayward

    The problem with text-only communication is that tone, inflection, body language and other audio-visual cues that are huge parts of how we read context in a conversation are absent, and so the person "speaking" is speaking with our own inner voice, and we add all those context clues in ourselves.  If we think the person is being snarky or offensive, then we read their words with a snarky, offensive tone where no snark or offense may have been intended.  Lord knows I'm guilty of it, that's for sure.

    To your other point, @Ben Zed, about companies listening to people's thoughts about what might offend, that's not a bad point; understanding where folks come from is a good thing.  I'll add the "however," though, that if no offense was intended, we shouldn't attack the perceived offender.  I think the idea of a "terrified/injured" civilians set was intended by WGA to be used as others have stated: for rescue missions, objectives, etc.  Other folks seem to have read it another way, but that could be because they have a different perspective about innocents on battlefields than I do.  A few of the guys here are veterans, and maybe combat vets, so they might have seen things I'm glad I haven't, and from their point of view I might be being a bit too blasé about the subject, while from my perspective it's "...but it's a game and I'm rescuing them."

    I don't see WGA putting stuff out that they think will purposefully offend people.  Understanding each other is a two-way street, and try not to mistake WGA - or any company or person - not acting on your suggestions, or coming to the same conclusions as you, as them not listening to you.

     

  • GM

    @Benjamin Hayward Really nailed the "Elephant In The "ROOM" " I`m convinced at times that peoples intent can in no way be interprited, sadly at times, and "Offence" is seen, were none was intended. Face to face, we see the imotion, the winks, we hear the tone, laughing chuckle ,jocking Fart, etc. We say what we want, and mean, but it gets twisted. So I`ve said many times, I want the civilians, and "YES" I would love some panicked, running. teriffied faces. (Not for Real War) for Si /Fi, Alien invasions, ZOMBIES. Yep at 67 i`m a big kid, and would love diverce Civilians, even one giving Aliens, a "V".

  • Bill Thomas

    Civlians are cool with me; a number of games out there I can think of use "gen pop" as problem generators... and the Falklands, ooh, I'd be all over that... SAS for a "Pebble Island Raid"  and Paras/Marines with proper "ally berets with attitude" and SLR's/L42s would be fabulously cool 😍 Let's not forget the Argentinian SF/Buzo Tactico either (as much as I hate to say that as a Brit of a certain age 😂)...

    “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”

  • GM

    @Bill Thomas Oh yes I relate to that we had a lovely guy, Andrew, ex para, loved Falkland games, and he was their. Used  to play in 20mm with Platoon 20, and Airfix polythene civilians, and railway buildings. Any time any one was a bit energectic with the table, down went every civilian , after a while the cry of "Nuke Em, From Orbit, It`s The Only Way" would ring out,  followed by, "your turn  to stand em, you clumsy bast***. Nothing was ever taken the wrong way, (Face to Face). The time lost restanding 60 or more figures, though joked wouldn`t have happened if we had some metal with stands. Sadly we didn`t even paint them all as they were not that good, just better than a Draught piece. "Twilight 2000" was our best civilian game with Roco Minitanks and 1/87th civilian Priser? sets. 

  • GM

    @William Redford Like Bills post, I agree with you it`s to hard to read emotion on these forums. I to read posts by Jtam and Yronimos, I don`t Know either, but really wish I did, these are people, I agree I could relate to. I`ve said many times, what great games I could see on this Forum,  if we were closer Land wize. My farther gave me one really good piece of advise, "If you can`t say any thing, nice say nothing at all"  He was a very tolerent man, and I hope Im like him in that respect.  Hate to see argument from people who are so like minded, mostly due to miss interpration. Cheers all,  a Cyber Round to all the guys, I wish were closer and it was real. "To you all enjoy the Journey"  

  • Ben Zed

    @William Redford, my statements about WGA were made knowing things they have done elsewhere. I have no issue with them making kits that are offensive. If they want to make naked girls with guns or a cultist torture set, that is fine. 

    Also from the way @Yronimos Whateley is using triggered is in context of police violence and in the same breath he mocks people for bringing up racism in relation to fantasy tropes.

    My point was never about the political or fetish potential of the civinalains. It is hard for me to imagine WGA making the set so tasteless as to make me not buy their products. My issues with the concerns over the kits were dealt with. Yronimos used a note of objection to the kit, to go off on a tangent where he rambled about political correctness and brought up some weird idea he had about mental illness 

    It does not matter if he normally is a good source of info on things, what matters is his statements here and now. And I am being aggressive because of the dismissive disingenuous response I got and am still getting. He says that he is not attacking anyone except people like his fetish vampire. But in actuality he is attacking people that wonder if maybe avoiding racist tropes in fantasy would be a good idea, he is stigmatizing mental illness.

    He says it is only a small minority. But I have seen this happen time and time again. Most often 95% of the people think what happened was fine, and the people being targeted have no power in the group so they just leave. Once I saw the issue addressed proactively by a moderator, the topic being about Waffen SS units in historical world games, and it was pretty sad what people replied with.. 

    Shortly after I noticed a symbol, one commonly used by neo-nazis but also used elsewhere, in a profile picture of a person in a different wargaming group. It made me feel uncomfortable. As a hate group that uses that symbol to represent it marched twice in a city near me in the last two years. I wanted to ease my mind that this guy was not like them. But he had posts with urls for antisemetic hate groups on his profile… 

    There are big issues with gaming as a hobby. Games-Workshop, and some other big companies, had major press releases about this. Big events often ban military uniforms from the last 100 years because of stuff like this.

    You can ignore the issue, put your head in the sand, and pretend it does not exist. Maybe you don’t see it. And maybe the problem is that it is happening right in front of you and you can’t tell.

    @Benjamin Hayward the tone does not matter. It is obvious to me that he could be making a joke or using sarcasm, but that would not make the content of his statements any better. (that being said, there is nothing inherently wrong with the plastic toys, really context is what matters)

    Also “If you can`t say any thing, nice say nothing at all” is an interesting saying. It works great to prevent hurt feelings. But it does so at the expense of every person who is hurt or marginalized by the status quo.

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  • CS

    Morning All, 

    Just catching up with posts I have missed over the last couple of weeks and was wondering if the results of this poll were ever published? I'm curious as to what the popular choices were

  • Grumpy Gnome

    Well, I am no moderator. All I can do is voice my own opinion as a memberbofvthe forum. 

    I can completely understand why some folks take offense at things. I take offense myself atvthings. Some times I am more sensitive than others. I have made some poor choices in the past and will forthelft same again in the future as I am only a flawed individual. 

    You bring up some valid concerns@Ben Zed .  As has@JTam .

    While I do not think@Yronimos Whateley was malicious some of his words could have been chosen better. 

    This gaming community is small and this is a social pastime. I think it is important to listen to each other, think about the impact we have on others and be forgiving when appropriate. 

    We all want to have fun and none of us wants to feel bad. Few of us enjoy hurting others and those that do can hopefully restrain themselves for the sake of the forum and success of WGA. 

    Home of the Grumpy Gnome

    https://thegrumpygnome.home.blog/

  • GM

    @Grumpy Gnome I think Grumps post is very right, none of  us purposly go out to hurt others,  lets all try to agree that for some reasons, a hurt was done and any concerned are sorry, and try to move the conversation on. Lets get back to the need for modern figures, I actually noticed from posts that "Civilians"  are covered in many gaming field of Historical/Fantasy, Victorian, Cowboy, WW2 and then Pulp and 50`s then !!!!!!, thats it folks. Aliens are even getting their share, and Cooked Dice are going great guns. Spectra Miniatures do a few, but we have no, "Today and Tomorrow" civilians. With Last Train senerios being so cool right now, we really need them, I've played Shadowrun for years and am really fed up with proxes, I bought a set of  Old Glory Civilians from a British firm they even have prams and children with balloons. The men all are 70`s a bit flared trouserish, but still usable, I just want an up to date miniature world on my tabletop , not too much to ask for at my age "I think I`m old enough to play the age card. CHEERS ALL HAVE  A GREAT DAY , OFF TO WATCH THE JUBILEE, BYE ALL.    

  • MD

    A simple but effective way to provide Civilians for all eras is to make sure a kit has a few unarmed left and right arms. These could be gesturing, pointing, clenched, holding tools - anything really.

    All too often we just get one or two left arms per sprue, to pair with a right hand pistol. But sometimes you also want to pose soldiers with weapons holstered or slung.

    The Stargrave Crew II is a good example of how to mix up a kit for both civilian and armed use, with pistols for both hands and many good free hand options, plus bare heads and helments. The female crew kit is a bit better than the original male one - I'd guess as a function of feedback on improving the options in the year between the two kits.

    The WGA WW2 Partisans *could* have been better in this regard. The left arms are all supporting firing weapons, or carrying one, aside from one pointing left arm, leaving a bit of a shortage for the three pistol arms. Generally you don't want a figure aiming a pistol while carrying a rifle at the trail, or cradling a Sten gun. Two or three unopened hands would have been welcome.

    It could be worth an upgrade sprue. Various heads and arms, tools but no weapons. Maybe a few belt options, depending on era.

  • GM

    @Mark Dewis Nice one, it`s a sound way of doing them, and if more arms were included like the original Eisenkern then conversions become the norm. Just got to get the 2022 till ? sorted, and we`ll get our civilians. As another post stated, If cyber arms and legs were done  you`ed have all purpose sets, that wold span all time lines.

  • JTam

    @Bill Thomas @Geoff Maybury 

    Speaking of the Falklands, the latest issue of Wargames Illustrated has a nice article on painting British and Argentinian forces:

  • Bill Thomas

    @JTam excellent! I don't always buy WI but that looks worth getting... although I have a big pile of old 68 patt DPM and '58 webbing here for ref 🤣 The Argentinians (contrary to opular opinion!) did actually have some very good units, so I hope equal weight was given to them 👍  

    “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”

  • Bill Thomas

    Just for "full disclosure" I do a little light re-enacting for this period, hence the DPM and Webbing collection  😁

    “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”

  • JTam

    @Bill Thomas

    What are your thoughts/impressions of the 58 pattern battle rattle.  How well does the rear belt pouches integrate/non-interfer/or interfer with the ruck?  (Do the Brits call rucks, bergans?)  I'm a student of battle rattle and I think the P37 was in the top two webbing sets of WW2.  The '58 seems a logical evolution with the suspenders looking improved and the small pack ditched for the effectively two buttpacks.....

    The WI article does give attention to Argentian forces.  I just didn't want to post the whole article.  

    Furthermore WI promises a follow on article focused more on rules for the Falklands.

     

  • Bill Thomas

    @JTam again, excellent, I'm glad both sides are represented well :) Ah, '58 pattern... the picture you show is very much an "as issued" setup minus the waterbottle pouch (es), and generally many of us (I was actually issued with my set in about 1980 as a cadet and then as OTC!) didn't wear it exactly that way; mine is set up Light Infantry style with the "bum roll" (poncho holder) above the kidney pouches... compared to modern gear it was ungainly, and REALLY heavy when wet, but set up right was comfortable to wear and carried all you could need. It came issued with a rather horrid "large pack" so you ended up with CEMO or CEFO Central European Marching/Fighting Order with/without the pack... most of us ditched the large pack for an Infantry (or preferably if you could get one, a Para) Bergan ASAP!

    This might be of interest to you... http://www.crusader80.co.uk/webbing_contents.html

    “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”

  • JTam

    @Bill Thomas 

    Mine:

  • Bill Thomas

    @JTam lovely... and a cheeky MP40 muzzle there too 😍

    “Supreme excellence consists of breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.”

  • MD

    @Arrigo Velicogna WGF/Warlord tried and failed on the multiple option Modern Military, but the civilian Apocalypse Survivor kits were resounding successes. 

    For my money the best bet would be a Civilian kit with options for armed and unarmed. Just provide sufficient unarmed right and left arms on the sprue, with some weapon ones, maybe some improvised ones, too.

    Casting the weapons with a hand (not a full arm) is one way to optimise frame space. And there's less need to provide multiple copies of the same head type: Cannon fodder comes with a bare, helmet, cap and mask option for every body. A Civilian kit can just go with a couple of varied heads for each body (10-15 would do fine for 5-6 bodies per sprue). 

    "Terrified" is mostly a matter of posing. Screaming faces can do duty as both frightened or angry. If you want the former, put their hands in the air like they just don't care. If you want the latter, make 'em look pissed off and ready to rumble. 

  • BV

    @Mark Dewis Actually given they where always on the 40% off side of the "black Friday sale" on the old WGF store and were kind of a pain to build, I get the feeling the civilians didn't actually do that well, though I could be wrong.

    In any case I actually agree with you  that if the civilians are done (instead of something themed like say Yakuza) they should have at least a couple armed options. Heck I think they should also have some Zombie and cyberpunk parts thrown in (maybe do that for all the moderns, it would take care of a lot🤔).

    Also while WGF did do the mold work etc. for the modern troopers, the only one that released them was Warlord (if WGF made a mistake, it was not doing them earler with the first zombie sculpts). I think the root cause of the moderns trooper kit not doing well was that when Warlord did release them,  they and the other modern sculpts were overpriced for a plastic kits (Warlord was almost asking for GW prices for things that would have been better for a price at $20 or less, particularly given the low body count and that some kits had prior releases at $20-$25 prices for more bodies).

    That along with the game they chose to couple it and the other WGF modern sculpts with pretty much killed the modern line, not just the troopers (they should have just released them all in normal body count box sets and updated boltaction for big platoon style modern/apoc combat gaming, but no instead they went with selling them in yet another low model count survior horror game with card based mechanics🙄).

     

  • MD

    Yes, I agree that Warlord probably overpriced the stuff they snapped up and reboxed from WGF... but to know how much you'd need to know what they paid for it. 

    Honestly, I never liked the Modern Trooper sprue. The poses were awkward, and even before the moulds went to Warlord, I was not running towards it (you are of course correct that WGF never published it, or the Bikers, but the WIP sprue was up on the WGF forums before the end).

    Apoc survivors being big sellers was mentioned by WGF on their forums. Things generally go on sale for two reasons - to cut losses on something you want to clear stock on, and on popular products as bait to draw people into making an order, especially if the product has covered its development costs and you can afford to lose a bit of margin.

  • BV

    @Mark Dewis

    As someone else who was on those forums all the time before things died, I don't really remember them ever showing renders for the modern troopers but I will take your word on that (they did show off the prototype sprue for the bikers which was awesome but I felt they should have ditched the katana for a machete).

     I also really don’t remember them (the company) saying the survivors sold well at all, zombies and zombie vixens yes on multiple occasions, survivors no  and it was a mini company run by Chinese selling 20 to 30 figure sets at the lower prices of $20 to $25  (the main reasons WGF heavily discounted was either defects like the squat arm on the one Persian sprue or stock clearance, the popular ones where already pretty cheap meaning a 10% to 15% discount would be enough normally to achieve the drug pusher effect).

    That said you did jog my memory a bit, the survivors that were always on the deep discount end of black Friday sales were the female survivors not the males though I think they may have been at 20% which still isn’t a good sign for them, but eh things could be different now (still think they should add Zed and Cyberpunk parts).

    From what I remember, the survivors were really well loved by the people who bought them, people who were also often outspoken on the forum in their praise for the sets , but that doesn’t actually reflect high sales though, just means the people who bought them were outspoken. (Most of them also bought every WGF set they came across too, often in multiples, ah my old forum freinds who I argued with🤣).

  • MD

    Fair enough. We're both working from old memories in any case. I know I don't have any sales figures from either company. 

    One thing I'd say though, is that the miniatures scene has jumped sharply from medium to large sized armies per Warhammer Fantasy or 40K to skirmish/warband forces of 10-20 figures. And very much to my surprise tabletop roleplaying has had a big comeback with the younger generation. 

    So what might have worked ten years ago may not work so well now, and vice versa. 

  • BV

    @Mark Dewis true, but that was already happing back then, even before WGF let Warlord have the distrubtion rights for thier minis (Frostgrave already had thier plastic foot soldiers out).  And thats always been true for modern gaming which also has the problem of no clear "mainstay of the genre" rule set wise (both reasons I half heartedly argued against WA doing modern both here and on FB).

    Likewise it seems to me at least like people buy the big plastic boxes so they can make more than one warband out of them or they are shelf army building (know I am guilty of the later at least if not the former🤣).

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