Warlord open day BRS talk write up
Warlord Open day BRS talk with Andy Chambers 22/9/18
The warlord open day was great, Ken Natt (of "Ready Room" fame) was organising the tournament today and we managed to get two rounds in between the BRS talk and the "breaking the box" heavy bomber rules-test.
We dashed over to catch the talk and stumbled in after it had started, Andy Chambers and some other bloke from warlord I didn't recognise and wasn't introduced to was there (pleasant chap!).
First up was a discussion on a "ground attack" supplement which we would end up testing an iteration of later that afternoon which will be going for public beta via the ready room soon-ish. The idea is that this will come out next year as a PDF. There was a lot of talk about how warlord had originally pitched the game as a fighter game and wanted to keep it "core" to the experience and were resisting temptation to "mission creep" and build into a much more bomber-focussed game.
To that end, there was an inflection from the speakers, that we as players shouldn't expect lots of direction change from the figher plane experience in future.
Talk soon changed to new shinies and recent releases.
F4F's and Kates were recapped, german wave re-confirmed for jan time.
Metals were discussed as preferrable as warlord haven't go the kit/staff to do large scale resin work and plastics are hugely expensive to develop with long lead times. Metals can be spun up quickly, molds are durable and detail is good and it can be done in house so little lead time.
New metals coming:
The guys elaborated a bit on "variant" planes, ie spitfire mk9 and were quite happy to go down the path of "a spitfire is a spitfire" and instead of devoting a lot of time to redoing planes, batting on at this time to get more new planes out. Variants are going to be covered instead by variant cards using the same base model. Likelehood of card packs around xmas-ish with brits/gerries first and PTO following. Card packs also include trait cards (great climb on late spitfires for example)
Variants "might" receive some love via metals for things deemed to be popular enough to warrant the investment. general trend is late war upping firepower at cost of low agility so takes some getting used to vs early war yaks/spits etc.
Cards will include equipment upgrade cards like rockets/gun pods/drop tanks etc to sync in with the new campaign pack (we playtested a few of them in the bomber test).
Warlord also have the license with 2000AD license and will be doing Johnny Red and Falcon squadron (lots of cheers, i had no idea what this is about, apparently I'm too young?!?!)
The speakers acknowledged PTO needs some love and were happy to announce a new starter box next year with a "midway" focus. It will likely include missions that feed from the campaign pdf (ground attack on ships with torpedo rules etc).
Q+A
Decals-more decals to come but researching is time consuming and margins low. Will be some coming for new plastic boxes "soon".
Paint kits-Working with army painter at present for bolt action stuff, if works well will continue with BRS
Biplanes-in awkward place as need to decide how best to represent them. high AGI stat? special trait card? needs more work and testing at developer level. some italian planes mentioned as potentials but limited interest for kits from warlord as focus is on single piece kits for the boardgame market. Likely card release only, planes to be bought by players by 3rd party therefore.
Advantage bases-yep, plans to sell separately, same with bomber bases and inserts. likely on market before xmas
Design ethos-Originally desinged with board ganers in mind "thought it would be in museum shops etc". really happy that "harcore" gamers picked it up and loved it as was "rsky" vs the concept of other air combat games. Think it fills a void ass people like seeing wings of planes down and other games focus on only a couple of planes. Really happy with how its grown but now warlord need to be cautious as over expansion can be extremely costly for a company. Resins went "badly", defiant was time intensive, slow and bad quality. difficult to get numbers out due to miscasts. Plastics very expensive. likely to have mixed line now of hard plastics and metals.
The warlord open day was great, Ken Natt (of "Ready Room" fame) was organising the tournament today and we managed to get two rounds in between the BRS talk and the "breaking the box" heavy bomber rules-test.
We dashed over to catch the talk and stumbled in after it had started, Andy Chambers and some other bloke from warlord I didn't recognise and wasn't introduced to was there (pleasant chap!).
First up was a discussion on a "ground attack" supplement which we would end up testing an iteration of later that afternoon which will be going for public beta via the ready room soon-ish. The idea is that this will come out next year as a PDF. There was a lot of talk about how warlord had originally pitched the game as a fighter game and wanted to keep it "core" to the experience and were resisting temptation to "mission creep" and build into a much more bomber-focussed game.
To that end, there was an inflection from the speakers, that we as players shouldn't expect lots of direction change from the figher plane experience in future.
Talk soon changed to new shinies and recent releases.
F4F's and Kates were recapped, german wave re-confirmed for jan time.
Metals were discussed as preferrable as warlord haven't go the kit/staff to do large scale resin work and plastics are hugely expensive to develop with long lead times. Metals can be spun up quickly, molds are durable and detail is good and it can be done in house so little lead time.
New metals coming:
- stuka
- corsair
- beaufighter
- macchi 202
- lagg 3
- defiant re-run in metal
The guys elaborated a bit on "variant" planes, ie spitfire mk9 and were quite happy to go down the path of "a spitfire is a spitfire" and instead of devoting a lot of time to redoing planes, batting on at this time to get more new planes out. Variants are going to be covered instead by variant cards using the same base model. Likelehood of card packs around xmas-ish with brits/gerries first and PTO following. Card packs also include trait cards (great climb on late spitfires for example)
Variants "might" receive some love via metals for things deemed to be popular enough to warrant the investment. general trend is late war upping firepower at cost of low agility so takes some getting used to vs early war yaks/spits etc.
Cards will include equipment upgrade cards like rockets/gun pods/drop tanks etc to sync in with the new campaign pack (we playtested a few of them in the bomber test).
Warlord also have the license with 2000AD license and will be doing Johnny Red and Falcon squadron (lots of cheers, i had no idea what this is about, apparently I'm too young?!?!)
The speakers acknowledged PTO needs some love and were happy to announce a new starter box next year with a "midway" focus. It will likely include missions that feed from the campaign pdf (ground attack on ships with torpedo rules etc).
Q+A
Decals-more decals to come but researching is time consuming and margins low. Will be some coming for new plastic boxes "soon".
Paint kits-Working with army painter at present for bolt action stuff, if works well will continue with BRS
Biplanes-in awkward place as need to decide how best to represent them. high AGI stat? special trait card? needs more work and testing at developer level. some italian planes mentioned as potentials but limited interest for kits from warlord as focus is on single piece kits for the boardgame market. Likely card release only, planes to be bought by players by 3rd party therefore.
Advantage bases-yep, plans to sell separately, same with bomber bases and inserts. likely on market before xmas
Design ethos-Originally desinged with board ganers in mind "thought it would be in museum shops etc". really happy that "harcore" gamers picked it up and loved it as was "rsky" vs the concept of other air combat games. Think it fills a void ass people like seeing wings of planes down and other games focus on only a couple of planes. Really happy with how its grown but now warlord need to be cautious as over expansion can be extremely costly for a company. Resins went "badly", defiant was time intensive, slow and bad quality. difficult to get numbers out due to miscasts. Plastics very expensive. likely to have mixed line now of hard plastics and metals.
I get the impression that BRS has been a surprise success for Warlord, and that they've been caught off-guard by the demand. You'd think that for the Battle of Britain, they would have had some Hurricanes and more German bombers ready right off the bat.
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