Spartan is Dead

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>>55056252
Better luck next time, kid.

>>55056252
Who?

>>55056252
Link won't work.

Are they out of business or selling off or something?

>>55056343
>Initially the business outsourced production but following quality control and production management issues, manufacturing was moved in house between 2009 and 2011.
>Over this time and since, significant investment was made into machinery and infrastructure.
>The business also expanded to provide models for a well known video game, moving this into the tabletop games arena.
>However, significant new development costs, timing issues and the deflection of management time from the core games brands resulted in a significant trading loss for 2015/6.
>The business was able to continue to trade by raising additional finance and refocusing on core brands, and direct / online trading improved significantly.
>Results for 2016/17 were significantly improved.

>However, despite this it continued to encounter challenging trading conditions and it became clear this month that the company could not continue to service its liabilities, particularly given the burden imposed by the amounts owing to finance companies.

Closing and liquidating by the looks of it.

Microsoft is gonna be pissed.

>>55056343

Huh. Link works for me. I'll pull some relevant quotes, though.

>"Following a prolonged period of challenging trading and despite the directors’ best efforts to manage through, Rebel Publishing Ltd was unable to continue to trade and the directors have taken the difficult decision to cease. All members of staff were made redundant."

>"However, despite this it continued to encounter challenging trading conditions and it became clear this month that the company could not continue to service its liabilities, particularly given the burden imposed by the amounts owing to finance companies."

>"We would encourage anybody who may be interested in acquiring either stock, assets or the business to make contact as soon as possible. Spartan Games and its product lines have a strong reputation in its markets together with an asset base which may be of interest to a number of parties, and a variety of machinery in addition to Intellectual Property."

>>55056334
Seconded. I've never heard of them until now.

RIP in piece.

I guess I'll never get more people to play Dystopian Legions now.

>>55056334
>>55056438

Firestorm Armada, Dystopian Wars/Legions, and the Halo Miniatures/Fleet Battles games.

That last one is the one that hurts-- they were making awesome Halo miniatures.

didn't they just literally announce a new kickstarter?

>>55056740
They just cancelled it. It was almost funded.

>>55056856
Which is a bummer, as their Pathogen ships looked pretty good.

Sad to see Spartan go, but not really surprised.

I feel for all the Spartan fans who bought into their games, I really do.

But this is what you get when a company can't keep their ADD in check

>>55056856
how the fuck do you waste time setting up a kickstarter when you know you're going bankrupt? jesus this company was incompetent.

It's nothing worth worrying about, they won't support their liquidation and after max 2 years they'll abandon it and have the company back on track.

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>>55056252
W-what

I thought they would go the way of ironwind metals and just become a tiny online only retailer

They even had their new kickstarters, shit the dystopian kickstarter was even funded wasn't it? Are all those backers just SOL now?

This is very saddening, although I guess not surprising. I played dystopian wars in 2011-2012 heavily and that was always a fun time. After that, it seemed like Spartan had lost its mind and kept switching focus to new IPs instead of digging in and improving what they already had.

I feel like a lot of their talent jumped ship to hawk wargames too, that was honestly about the same time that the dip in quality happened

>>55056934
From their official statement, it seems like Neil tried to use KS to prop up the company whole, not just fund project:
>The company was in the process of running a Kickstarter project to raise funds for expansion of one of its successful product lines. This was well supported and positive feedback on the new products was given showing the popularity of the product line and ongoing demand. However, this does not, unfortunately, provide the full range of success and resources needed to sustain the business.


What can I say...I'm not surprised one bit.

>>55056934
If the KS had been a big success then they likely could have continued operating for a while longer, but the statement indicates that it wasn't going to meet their hoped level of funding (it would likely have succeeded, but they'd have had a hard time making fulfilment).

>>55056252
They deserved it. They didn't try to adapt, they have ridiculous shipping rates and never ship on time, "Muh resin is expensive", made shit rule sets, over reached too often and didn't make anything interesting.
Fuck 'em.

>>55056252
Why the fuck did they start a kick-starer and then die?

I was just about to buy some more planetfall models. Guess I'm waiting for the super sale now.

>>55056454
tfw was on the fence about dystopain wars

it's all ogre now
fuck I hope Dream Pod 9 doesn't go this way, I want to get people into Heavy Gear.

>>55057007
>Are all those backers just SOL now?

"If customers have made a deposit or paid for goods or services by credit or debit card and the goods or services are not going to be received by the due date, they may be able to get their money back by claiming a refund from their card issuer. They should contact their card issuer as soon as possible. Further information including time limits that apply is available from the UK Cards Association: Credit and debit cards: A consumer guide. Similar schemes exist in other countries."

I am actually pissed because I wanted a 15mm Scarab. I mean, fuck everything else about that company, but I wanted that one thing.

>>55057025
But the dystopian wars Kickstarter was a success wasn't it?

And the firestorm one seemed like it was about to succeed

Is this the first time where a Kickstarter didn't ask for enough money?

>>55057067
asking for enough to remain solvent would likely have meant the failure of the KS.
I have no idea what this'll do for the Dystopian KS, but the Armada one is cancelled.

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>Throughout the years that Spartan Games has traded, it has prided itself on the highest level of product quality and customer satisfaction.
>This has been delivered consistently and is evidenced though annual customer research that the company has undertaken.

>the highest level of product quality has been delivered consistently

Fucking liars can't even be honest in death.

>>55057063
There's probably still one on miniature market or warstore

>>55057050
Believe it or not it's pretty unusual for a miniature company to straight up close instead of just downsize into a teeny tiny in house thing

>>55057081
I suppose, although that begs the question of just why the fuck was their financial obligation that high in the first place

Did they bank on the halo miniatures being enormously popular like Xwing and pay an absurd amount for the license?

FUCK
I LOVED HALO FLEET BATTLES

That's what happens when you have gaming ADD and fail to support any games

>>55057133
I love they space ships, a bit too big compared to other games, but specially the later stuff was pretty good.
Who will get them, who's big enough to buy the minis?

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>>55057133
Was it actually fun?

I always liked the space battles in halo books but I never gave the game a chance

>>55057181
Hopefully someone that actually likes and supports the franchise.

>>55057188
Dude it was SO good.

Maybe they will have a liquidation sale so that I can get those sweet planetfall models!

>>55057129
If I had to guess, that could well be a desperate attempt to get an actual money-maker.
Their existing model lines were somewhat popular, but they were decidedly niche, and not widely known.

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Honestly I don't know how you could have "/pol/, the alt-history game" and still fuck it up.

Lightning shooting Germans jumping out of their zeppelin on steam jetpacks to board an enormous Russian land dreadnought is just such cool imagery.

How can someone fuck that up so badly?

Also how do you even go out of business as a miniature company when you have literally *any* fanbase? Were their license fees so great that they went bankrupt?

There are a million and 1 tiny miniature companies that get by on just online only sales and a small but devoted fanbase, I think Spartan could have had it if they weren't run by a madman.

I'm glad Dave got out and made Hawk before things went to shit, that's an appropriately run business.

Hawk is a very appropriately run business. With amazing customer service and a great PR face of Dave being literally any grognard here and dorking out at how cool railguns ought to be when they smash into something, etc.

Spartan meanwhile, lost too much faith. I loved them... like, 6 years ago. After they messed up Dystopian wars with more or less random revisions, some improving, some not... and multiple random games that should never have existed (and dropping support for others), it was a matter of time. Just so much poor decision making.

>>55057494
>I'm glad Dave got out and made Hawk before things went to shit, that's an appropriately run business.

What? I'm not familiar with this. Did the guys from Hawk spin out of Spartan?

>>55057607
Yeah Dave is former spartan, like >>55057596
said he's pretty much /ourguy/ and after having all his input ignored left and made some genuinely innovative games.

Dropzone is hit or miss (although 2.0 is coming out with some good fixes) but Dropfleet is a genuine advancement of the tabletop spaceship game genre.

There goes support for Halo then. At least Hawk Wargames is still kicking.

>>55056252

We kept fucking telling them to just consolidate their core IP and stop fucking around with so many spin-offs to just focus on their few core brands: Dystopian Wars, Firestorm: Armada, and Halo: Fleet Battles.

But they had to release a new game every month while their old staples got the shaft. And when we kept pointing this shit out to them (yes, everyone who commented on their open feedback page for their kickstarter) they just sort of did the text equivalent of shrugging and saying "I don't even know what that means" despite having it explained to them in detail.

They overstretched themselves to death.

>>55057596
>>55057646

And Hawk fucking had Dropzone for years before they decided on chancing an expansion into Dropfleet, releasing a full game with four complete fleets and a fleshed out rule system at once.

>>55057633
Dropzone is actually a super good game in terms of how cleanly and well it plays, and how impactful your decisions are. The new edition is going to shake up the meta principly by patching some rules (which held up pretty darn well since it's like what, 8 years old?), so looking forward to that. A lot.

>>55057633
Eh, I'm not a huge fan of the orbital levels and heat/energy/whatever signature mechanics in Dropfleet. I'd played FSA and really enjoyed the slugfest feel of it where capital ships could tank quite a few shots. Not sure if that comes across in Dropfleet.

Dropzone looks kinda cool, but I haven't had a demo of it yet, so I'm not sure if it would "click" with me.

>>55057696
Oh don't get me wrong, I think Dropzone is fun as fuck (and I wish I could play it in Seattle) but it was rough around the edges just due to inexperience. Also the starter set models were either quite good or kind of meh, with the later ones clearly being better designed in terms of aesthetics.

Dropfleet feels like it was made with some hard lessons learned from Dropzone and felt very polished. More over, I think all 4 fleets have beautiful miniatures which I think is a first for me.

>>55057711
>Eh, I'm not a huge fan of the orbital levels and heat/energy/whatever signature mechanics in Dropfleet.

It adds a lot of thought to gameplay, which is hard to do in a space game beyond "okay here are more asteroids to maneuver around".

>I'd played FSA and really enjoyed the slugfest feel of it where capital ships could tank quite a few shots. Not sure if that comes across in Dropfleet.

Dropfleet is more submarines in space, PHR and Shaltari can tank fairly well but in general its positioning that keeps you alive. I always have BFG if I want age of sail in space slugfests.

>>55057567
>>55057545
>>55057772
Stop your trash right now, go to /pol/ to fling shit.

>>55057679
The also cummed up a board game too which seen them soundly laughed into silence on their facebook page

>>55056252
Ha! I KNEW something was wrong when they kept releasing new shit constantly without stopping.

This is a day of death, /tg/.
>/v/ confirms Half-Life 3 is dead
>/fit/ loses top tier /fit/izen
>/tg/ loses Spartan

>>55058480
>/fit/ loses top tier /fit/izen
What happened?

Pure sickened now, we have a decent sized group in my flgs for dystopian wars and were getting more people interested. Guess now I wont be expanding past a naval battle group for my Japs.

>>55058527
Rick Piana (leave humanity behind, 4 scoops guy) died

>>55058609
If NetEpic has proven anything, its that a fanbase can outlive the official life of its game by decades.

>>55058480
>/v/ confirms Half-Life 3 is dead
Did that really surprise anyone?

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>>55058631
Everyone had kind of hoped that it was going to be the flagship of Source 2 and valve was waiting to make sure it was an innovative product

Its like the police finding the body of your long lost relative. You always knew, you just didn't want to.

>>55056252
>Firestorm Armada, an exciting space combat game featuring highly detailed starship models
>exciting
maybe their products would have sold better if they stopped lying and made better products.

>>55058685
t b h the Firestorm 2.0 ships and the kickstarter ships looked alright. Boring as fuck setting though.

>>55057755
>which is hard to do in a space game beyond "okay here are more asteroids to maneuver around".
>Not playing Full Thrust with physically accurate vector movement
>Not planning the entire engagement beforehand
pleb

>>55058761
Yeah and if literally anyone wanted to play full thrust I would, except it plays like Asteroids on paper.

At least Aerotech was vaguely interesting.

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>>55058624
>Rick Piana
This can't be natural gain

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>>55058761
Well now that Spartan is dead, easiest way to get all those ships from Halo and Firestorm in action again is to make Full Thrust rules for them. Not like the base rules are hard.

It also lets you throw them against each other, BFG ships, the FT ships, and whatever the fuck you want to throw in from other settings. Flexible build rules are great things in wargames.

>>55056416
>Microsoft is gonna be pissed.
>Decide they can't let halo wargame die
>GW get halo IP
>Now we have to share release date with halo and LoTR
>Halo becomes ridiculously popular as a wargame
>40k and AOS get sidetracked
I fear the future anons

>>55057181
Microsoft hopefully

>>55057459
The problem was that they barely advertised themselves, a Halo tabletop at 15mm is a license to print money, but you got to let people know.

>>55059142
I dont think Halo is quite that popular in general

>>55056252
Well, thats what happens when you fuck up royally by making a new game every year and not caring about the older games

>>55056466
>Halo Miniatures

The 15mm game?

>>55059229
they had 2, the 15mm ground combat one and their fleet battles game.

>>55059142
>40k and AOS get sidetracked

I like the future, speaking of...

here is M$ response:

https://twitter.com/HaloGear/status/901108780661747712?s=09

>>55056252
Probably the best thing to happen to Dystopian Wars in years. Now the game can either die properly or have a chance of getting picked up by a competent company

>>55058869
After having to listen to five months of dumb chadmarine jokes, I'm happy to see your idol dead.

>>55059476
I know Dave didn't work on dystopian Wars but it would be funny if the rights were bought by Hawk. Small chance though

I just hope someone picks up the Halo license soon, that 15mm game was supposed to be a license to print money.

I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner.

>>55056252
Huh, turns out blindly jumping from one IP to the next and never finishing anything is ...bad?
Shame, too, I enjoyed Firestorm Armada.

>>55059622
I'm sure FFG will make a shitty board game for it.

>>55059661
Honestly I really like the rules so that's what I'm hoping they keep, along with the models

>>55059686
FFG won't keep the rules, they'll change them so they can foist a ton of cardboard and custom templates on the player.

>>55059686
Be prepared for ten billion tokens, seven different sets of dice and a absurdly expansive card set for basically every detail.

>>55059711
>>55059722
They are the ones behind x-wing right?

Honestly the rules are the best thing

>>55059760
The rules are good, no doubt. I just prefer not having to lug around all that extra shit that's prone to getting lost.

>>55059779
You mean the rules or X-wing?

I remember when they first released the dystopian legion Templars I was super pumped, but then nothing ever came of it.

How come they never followed up on IPs?

I would go balls deep in, and impregnate, an FFG Halo LCG.

>>55059524
t. manlet

Damn, I was just thinking of buying the starter of Halo Fleet Battles.

>>55061750
Consider your money saved.

>>55062134
It is still a pity tho, since it had so much potential.

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I've got a ton of Spartan stuff, this is real sad news. The company always felt like they missed the cusp of greatness.

Firestorm 2.0 is a really solid game with a couple easily fixable issues. I'm going to continue playing as long as I have opponents

>>55058681
dude half life 2 wasn't even that good. glorified physics demo.

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Not surprised at fucking all. Company was mis-handled, and constantly in search of the new "killer app" of a wargame. Which is a damn pity, 2.0 was very solid, with a few bugs that could be easily fixed with balancing and small rule changes.

Good.
Hopefully the IPs will be bought by a group with competence and an attention span.

>>55062528
I concur

>>55056947
underrated

>>55062528
>>55062731
Third.

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Firesale and discounted materials when?

I might still buy a firestorm armada set to proxy into battlefleet gothic. Good idea or no

>>55062833
Wait for the inevitable firesales. The models are big, but quite nice.

>>55062403
>>55062589
What are the physical dimensions of their ship models? Largest and smallest should be enough for me to get an idea of the range.

>>55062879
Frigates are roughly 6cm long, cruisers 8-10cm, and battleships 12-18cm. Width differs widely.

>>55063048
Thanks. So quite a bit bigger than the Battlefleet Gothic ships, then.

>>55063250
Yes. They're oly slightly larger than the Dropfleet models for example, but way thiccer.

>CB goes from irrelevancy to number 3-4 in a few short years mostly propelled by a new 2 player starter and gencon appearances.
>Spartan carves out a niche for themselves and literally adhd themselves into bankruptcy.
Mismanaged.

I bet those Halo licenses weren't cheap either.

>>55057050

DP9 survived this long. Plus they aren't run by an actual lunatic with ADHD who kept trying to put out new system after new system and never developing any one of them.

They had the Halo license. The goddamn Halo license and the last thing we saw of that was over 6 months ago.

Meanwhile, we were seeing a new version of FSA, a new version of DW (neither of which needed them) and a brand new sci-fi fighter combat game BECAUSE THERES A MARKET THAT ISN'T BUTTONED UP BY FFG FOR SURE.

Spartan Games were always going to explode like a popped balloon sooner or later. The only things I'm sad about is that they never did make that 3mm post 45 WW2 game.
Because it's the ONLY post 45 WW2 game I've ever seen that DOESN'T give the Nazi's werewolves or power-armour.

>>55057633

The thing about Dropzone is that Dave was trying for YEARS to get Spartan to make that game but they kept saying no, they don't think the market is there, etc etc.

He leaves and puts out Dropzone, within 3 months Spartan are revealing Planetfall ENTIRELY BY FUCKING COINCIDENCE.

I'll miss the Halo ship models, but I've always loved the ships from Halo, so that's not really a win for Spartan.
Even there they somehow fucked it up. Players of Halo:Fleet Battles were lucky they even managed to get the Autumn, you know the main ship from the first game and our primary first point of contact for human ship aethstetics for the entire franchise, before they went bankrupt.

I mean fucking christ that class should have been available on release in the goddamn core box. This is not fucking difficult. At least they knew to put Spartans in the coreset for the ground game.

>>55063385
Agreed, having the license to Halo was like having a cheat code for a game, and they still lost.

>>55063385
>The only things I'm sad about is that they never did make that 3mm post 45 WW2 game.

Don't be sad. It was one of the few times they were talked out of yet another fucking game.

>>55059278

Does... does Microsoft just not know who has what licenses right now? Have they just plain forgotten they lent out the Halo license to some guys from britain because they were called "Spartan Games"?
Were... were they drunk when they did it, and completely forgot about it the following morning?

This would, actually explain a whole lot. Plus it wouldn't be the first time something like that happened. Didn't somebody get the Space Hulk videogame license from GW because they ended up sharing a spot next to a hotel fire to Kirby?
I'm pretty sure Bloodbowl happened because Cyanide were basically ALREADY making a Blood Bowl game just called something else so GW basically shrugged and threw them a bone, as it's not like GW were even properly supporting BB at the time.

>>55063506
Pride of authorship.

Neil (?) didn't want anyone else's name front and center on a Spartan product and thought all his ideas were golden gooses so he let Dropzone Dave go.

>>55063530
>>55063385
Eh, Halo doesn't print money the way it did 5+ years ago.
That ship has sailed, and it won't be coming back.

>>55061750

Do it anyway, and then sell it for x3 price on EBAY.

>>55063590
He probably bought the license off of them for a lot of money.

That's how these things usually work.

>>55063385
>Because it's the ONLY post 45 WW2 game I've ever seen that DOESN'T give the Nazi's werewolves or power-armour

That's actually pretty rare.

>>55063506
That's another thing they really needed to release the iconic ships to get people to come in, and actually promote the game, and actually release models consistently

>>55063624

...Neil would be just crazy enough to think he could afford the license to Halo isn't he. Even though he is literally running a business from a third rate business estate near Weymouth.

Those licenses might well have been what killed them, but honestly I don't think we'll ever know for sure if it was that, or their constant and expensive attempts to reinvent the wheel over and over again.
Also, jesus guys, you COULD stand to make those ships a bit smaller, use a little less resin eh?

>>55063666

Thanks Satan. I mean, they did okay with the Covenent in that regard, but the humans really needed the Autumn front and center. Plus I'm still not entirely sure if Spartans trademark "More Dice than a fiveway Shadowrun Gunfight*" method of game design really works with Halo? I know they only have that one system, but perhaps something similar to Dropfleet.
Hell Dropfleet would actually work really well for a Halo Game. The big question is: Is Dave a big enough madman?

*Well, maybe not that many. There aren't that many dice in the world.

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>>55063693
>Also, jesus guys, you COULD stand to make those ships a bit smaller, use a little less resin eh?

apparently fucking not.

Uh, has anyone else noticed that they've removed ALL REFERENCES to Halo from their website?

When did that happen?

>>55063506
that's not true - dropzone commander came out in june 2012; planetfall came out in September 2014

>>55063735
>Hell Dropfleet would actually work really well for a Halo Game. The big question is: Is Dave a big enough madman?

I would go as far as to say that UCM burn through lasers are entirely supposed to capture the feeling of a MAC cannon cruiser.

>>55063744
those iceberg White Base gundam carriers never even shipped to backers did they? Shame.

Love the Prussian dreadnought until the day I die though.

I wonder if Spartan even has much spare inventory to sell off, especially for the Halo ranges.

>>55064048
The way they described their move to web-only(ish) a few months ago, it sounded like they were going to make things to order instead of stocking regularly.

>>55059206
Halo popular, but not with people who are going to pay money for a game of tiny toy mens. They play vid. 15mm is wargame grog territory.

>>55063762
They were on a 3 year contract with M$, messing with their baby. They might be getting ready for the incoming legal shitstorm, or M$ already knew and took away their license, who knows maybe the Halo tabletop games might find a house quicker than thought

>>55064391
There was a release for HFB like a month ago, they were still trying to stay on top of the contract but mismanagement fucked everything

>>55064407
Honestly they should ditch FSA and the range of futuristic games since those had the smallest fan base, and gone for Halo on Futuristic 15mm and fleet game and DW and stuck with those 2 franchises

>>55064439
There's an insane amount of things Spartan should have done. But bad businesses gonna bad business.

>>55062528
This is really apparent in the expansions. Both episodes were just
>look, we gave you YET ANOTHER PHYSICS PROP
Contrasted with Opposing Force, which could have been twice as long before they exhausted the gameplay space Valve left them with.

>>55064116
>15mm is wargame grog territory
This, Ground Command needed to be casual 28mm aimed at the niche overlap of people who were wargame-curious and also Halo fans - a brand that hasn't really brought in anyone new in great numbers in 10 years. I picked up the starter set second hand but since then AdMech have caught my eye and now the box lies on my shelf, under a prepped and painted mechanics start collecting set.

I always meant to paint them up and order some spartan scenics to go with them. Maybe it's my fault they're dead.

>>55065699
I Honestly believe that 15mm was the right choice, 15mm Sci fi has no competition and at that scale they could get every vehicle.

>>55065817
True I guess, was a good size to play a proper battle, and made the idea of one day fielding a scarab that little bit more feasible. Perhaps the issue was just in lack of advertising. They only seemed to have 2 or 3 recurring uninspired art pieces they used in the book and to advertise, from a fanbase that would have done all the work for them if they played it right. Shame.

i lost over 475£ on this 250 in the ks that was supose to be sent this week and 225 in orders for the New Sto and Canadians.... chargebacks have been sent to my bank i expect i wont be able to get anything back, i knew something was up when the forums went Down this morning and i couldnt Message them on FB

>>55066081
Which is why I said they should have ditched the FSA range completely and concentrated their on Halo, hell if kickstarter would've been about fleet battle it would've been 100% founded in a day.

>>55058631
Nobody called it dead. It's just not being worked on.

>>55063601
Halo 5 proves you wrong though.

>>55067269
It's dead, saying otherwise is just denial and has been for some years now.

>>55060762
>How come they never followed up on IPs?

Because they were spastic monkeys.

>>55068161
Because Neil Fawcett was the company, both in spirit and in all matters decision-related, and Neil Fawcett, while not a terrible person, has one of the shortest attention spans I'm aware of.

>>55057050
>tfw no HGU updates

>>55063940
There was Firestorm: Invasion first. A set of two boxes of terrans and dindrenzi that shared almost no aesthetics with the later Planetfall release, but existed for a short while. it was released in 2012 and, unsurprisingly, died right away.

>>55064439
FSA was their bestseller in the short period between 2.0 release and Halo. Halo is what fucking killed them, but it was entirely self-inflicted. Apparently Neil didn't want to balance FSA fleets cause he didn't feel like it was worth it over releasing new models.

This.

The guy who would be writing the script literally just posted what the game script would have been, with the genders swapped around to protect the identities of the innocent online.
RPS were doing a story on it.

>>55068364

So, he was to Spartan what Kevin Siembieda is to Palladium?

>>55069702
Yes, except without kevins' ability to retain white knight whales.

Welp, there goes my money. No wonder I never received the KS and that other order. Gonna be a pain to get either the minis or the money now.

Sad day. No sympathy for Neil though, the dude is incredibly incompetent to sail that ship into rocks.

>>55069949
KS is probably too late, but if you paid with Paypal for the order, try a claim there.

I was moderately lucky - since I entered the KS in the starter box level only, I already received it about a month or so ago.

I'm shit out of luck in the campaign books, which I pledged as an add-on, though.

>>55069988
not sure you still can - you can make a claim until 45 days from the date of payment, no?

>>55070005
It's been extended to 90 I think, at least for Ebay, but you can try. No harm in asking.

>>55069694
Thats a relative term and Halo is a widely known IP, so it has a far better reaching, nevermind it consistently sold out at events and they couldn't even keep up with the demand.

>>55071018
And yet they went under. Cost of license for shit properties is usually high, and cost of high-profile (if waning in popularity, like halo) is astronomical. I seriously doubt they could've sold enough (especially bizarre stuff like SPACE game for franchise best known for it's super-human soldiers) to balance it out..as proven.

>>55056947
I don't understand how that works. Could you elaborate a little?

>>55059647
I enjoy Firestorm Armada still. We regularly play it with friends. What irks me most at the moment is that I cannot get the models I'm missing now.

>>55071093
Bout the reason why they didn't sell as much was because barely anyone knew and then they decided to go on a year long hiatus after only releasing about a dozen ships total.

>>55068364
His short attention span was one of the things I valued about Spartan, the other being quite a lot of the miniatures (plus the dice buckets worked pretty well for FSA, gave a good broadsides in space feel).

I do not much care for continued support in a game, but new games from a source I like (see miniatures above) I am always looking forward to.

On the other hand, it was pretty obvious that while their approach pleased me personally, it would eventually crash the company. And it did. A bit sad.

>>55071093
Tho I would agree with you that they should've started with something lime Ground Command first then moved on to something like fleet battles

Alright. Realistically, who, if anyone, is going to buy Spartan IP? There's a lot of love for the models, and a reasonable amount for the games.
But I can't see any of the same breed of wargaming company buying it up. By which I mean the guys who make their own rules and their own models for their own rules. Hawk, CB, PP etc. I could maybe see one of the model making companies (along the lines of Brigade and Ground Zero Games) maybe buying it up, and making the models, but then the rules would probably go to the fans to tinker with?
Alternatively, there's the chance that fans get together and buy it. It happened to Alkemy. But how much is that realistically going to cost, and how long is it going to be before the great difficulty of trying to get it back off of the ground wrecks them?

>>55071672
no one. The only property Spartan has that is worth anything is HALO.
The Spartan original IPs are dead.

The master molds? Those might go places.

>>55071672
The IP is worth nothing. Dystopian Wars might have some success because it's just about unique as a well-known naval wargame that isn't set in space. But even then that's a stretch. Too many models, too few players.

HALO isn't Spartan's IP and, if Microsoft wants to give the license to someone else, you can bet that it won't be about spaceships.

>>55072011
>too many models
No such thing. I wouldn't say that their IPs of note is worthless, just perhaps not that valuable. Smaller brands have changed hands.

>>55072011
Halo: Fleet Battles was actually decently popular at conventions

>>55072155
I've never seen anyone buy or play it. I've heard of one person in my city of 3 million that bought it.

>>55072155
Halo isn't Spartan's to sell and any plastic crap with HALO slapped on it will sell just as well. I see no reason anyone would buy the rights to Halo: Fleet Battle when they could do their game with their own style using the same license.

>>55072128
There's such a thing as too many models. It means that whatever company wants to buy the rights to DW will have to be big enough to endure the logistics of getting a couple hundreds new references, or will have to cut a large part of the game.

>>55072237
>or will have to cut a large part of the game.
Yes, and? You don't have to make whole range available at the start. You can reintroduce the other releases at later date similarly to new releases and repackage them as well.

>>55072237
I think we can all agree that if one bought the range, there'd be no point in re-releasing the land models, and large number of sea units was redundant (same with air, to lesser degree). The models can serve perfectly as generic steampunk armies with only 10-15 model types per side, and you don't have to buy all the ranges, or re-release unpopular lines.

>>55072288
No we can't, I play the land game much more than the naval one.

>>55072299
You and three more people. Land part of the game was incredibly unpopular, and no attempts (like the Armored Warfare game...anyone remember that abortion?) could change it. Dystopian Wars was a naval game with air units, and anyone buying the moulds would be insane to rerelease anything but those. I'm not even talking about re-releasing the rules, cause you can write better ones in about month.

>>55072128
Yeah, I think saying DW or FA are worthless are gross overstatements.
The Critical Mass line got bought up less than a week after they announced they were ceasing trading. I know Facebook likes aren't the hardest measure of support, but Critical Mass had just under 400 like likes, and Spartan has just under 12,000, 2000 more than Hawk.

>>55072334

you mean vidya game w/ modern tanks and unarmored wheeled vehicles?

>>55072623
I was "following" spartan on FB despite not buying anything of theirs for 2 years, and not wanting anything else to do with them. Firestorm KS got around 400 backers before closing. Double the number, and that's probably the realistic number of customers they had in the last few months.

>>55072638
No, Spartan had attempted a few years back to release a land-based mass-combat game based on DW land models. it worked so well you don't even know it existed. Not that AW the videogame is doing any better last time i checked, actually.

>>55072206
That's mostly because there was a lack of advertising for it, M$ decided that putting so much as a leaflet inside of the Halo 5 or HW2 case promoting the game was too much work, and Spartan Games not only failed to promote it outside of their regulars and at conventions.

Hopefully they learn from their mistakes.

>>55072669
Warthunder ERA 6 will just completely murder it

>>55072669
Now's a time to take stock of all of the shit which got in the way of what should have been Spartan's only games, Uncharted Seas, Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada.

There was:
-Armoured Clash
-Firestorm Invasion
-Dystopian Legions
-Halo: Fleet Battle
-Firestorm Planetfall
-Halo: Ground Command
-Firestorm Taskforce
-Dystopian Wars: Fleet Action

These are just the projects which actually saw it to market!!
Plus scenics! 28mm sci-fi scenics when they made no 28mm sci-fi games! Although they fucking planned to. I've literally just discovered Uncharted Lands, a 28mm Uncharted Seas skirmish game, was supposed to be a thing too. And there was that 15mm Dystopian Wars project they wanted to Kickstart which rapidly got shouted down. And then finally that fucking Firestorm fighter squadron game.

I hope someone kicks Neil in the balls and tells him exactly how retarded he is.

>>55073075
If they had stuck to those three they could have safely added in Halo, thanks to instant name-based starting playerbase. That they did THAT MANY is utterly insane, though.

Does this mean I'll be able to pick up Ground Battle on the cheap or will it raise in price.

I'm having an expensive month already.

>>55059524
> true Chads never die
> they just go MIA
He is up/down in heaven/hell now, making angels/devil's feel insecure and fucking all the hottest chicks.

>>55072645
But they still have much more name recognition. If you rebrand the games making clear this is a new management with intent to support these lines, you might get some more of the old guard along.

>>55056252
The question is: Is this the beginning of a mass extinction of smaller Wargame companies?

>>55073327
No?

>>55073333
Tor Gaming went out of buisness just like yesterday?

>>55073115
You gotta strike pretty much now or in the next few days before shit rises.

>>55073327
Probably not, Spartan went down due to their own over-stretching of their resources.

>>55073360
And? Small businesses go out all the time. Double so on this market, where most small manufacturers are hobbyists expanding to commercial level, rather than savvy businessmen.

>>55073432
>>55073360
Still sad to see Tor gaming go, they had some charm on their products.

>>55073393
Funny. I very nearly impulse bought the starter a few days ago.

I'm gonna let it go. I bet the Pelican and Scorpion will be high on my /tg/ regrets list soon.

My backlist is too long to justify them.

>>55073075
How was Taskforce an inherently bad idea? The whole point was that its cheap and easy to play and serves as an entry point to FSA.

>>55071152
It's a joke.

Halo FFG LCG when tho?

>>55073393
I was looking at Firestorm Armada stuff on ebay a couple of days ago, and looking now a lot of shit has already disappeared. It's either now, or wait and hope there's going to be some stock to shift.

>>55073591
Admittedly AC, Taskforce and Armoured Clash were glorified ways to release games for DW and FA, using exactly the same models just a different rules set. But the effort should have gone elsewhere, like promoting and working on the main games.

>>55073709
Hopefully soon, but I rather they don't change anything.

>>55074453
Don't get me wrong, I love HFB but LCG's are my jam.

>>55074134
Armoured Clash was a rather big expansion on the Armoured theatre. 24 models, IIRC. Awesome models for the most part, too.

>>55074611
Sucks because I really enjoyed the land game, pity Spartan never managed to work out how to make it popular.

>>55074020
Yeah, I'm also seeing a lot of stuff dissappearing from stores like Noble Knight and Miniature Market quickly, and the latter had some of the better deals.

thewarstore had good ones too,
but the owner is trying to offload it quick.

>>55073709
The only issue the two Halo games had was that they were shackled to Spartan games. The models were great, people who played say the fleet rules at least were great, lots of room for expansion, but being Spartan games everyone in my area knew they were going to abandon it instantly.

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>>55074661
I'll tell you this much, if someone does pick up HFB, get in on the ground floor. You won't regret it.

>>55074611
Yeah, lots of cool and wacky shit. American land trains, Japanese flying tanks. Still, the development time of the new rules set to go with them, not so cool.

>>55074642
I guess it's because naval action is a lot more of a rarity. I can't think of any other non-historical naval wargame. Land DW had some awesome shit (Prussian Iron Cross mobile airfield!) but the actual concept of land war, even with massive tanks the size of a city-block, wasn't as unique as naval war.

>>55057633
Nice models by Hawk, but I don't think it's wise for me, a Continental European, to invest in a new minis game that'll have a 33% tariff slapped onto it in less than 2 years.

>>55071672
You can always make your own models and your own ruleset and setting. Spartan's designs are cool but not unique, so why spend money on their IP? You'll need a competent designer or two anyway, so why not start from scratch.

>>55076300
Good point, but it's a pretty cheap game as is. IIRC, a full tournemant sized army/fleet for either DZC or DFC runs somewhere between 170-210 eruos; more or less depending on what exactly you get.

Cheap per army, fairly cheap per model, but expensive for the actual amount of plastic you're getting.

>>55058631
Stop this meme . Nothing official was said.

>>55076300
That's why you should order a fleet nao. The new boxed set look pretty sweet.

>>55076835
Even if new Half-life comes down the line at some point, it will probably have as much to do with previous installations as Bethesda Fallouts.

>>55076667
>170-210 eruos
>for 1 army
>cheap
For a fleet game? That's a lot.

>>55067293
How? It is the worst and least selling(?) game of the franchise.

>>55073459
Yes, but it was niche of a niche. If they'd stayed at "fans doing fun side project" thing, like so many gaming companies do, itd work fine.

>>55077276
Oh, not denying that. I bought a single starter from them years back for puppets. The knightly goblins looked pretty fun, when they came out. Too bad couple of factions looked a bit unappealing.

>>55072992
Warthunders publisher is getting so greedy it is crashing as fast.

>>55077075
The fleet boxes are much cheaper than that and should contain minimum what you'd need for a full fleet.

>>55077432
http://www.firestormgames.co.uk/ucm-fleet-box

>>55071093
It wasn't the cost of licensing that killed them though. It was the cost of running a failing miniatures business, doing all production in-house, and having hundreds of pounds of resin sitting around doing nothing for months at a time while still paying designers to design more pieces for new games.

>>55077075
To be fair, for DFC, they do give you lots of options. Each cruiser sprue can make something like 10 or 11 different ships.
If you're autistic enough to magnetize, it becomes exceedingly cheap.

Halo never had staying power. The game reached it's peak on the original Xbox for crying out loud with Halo 2.

At the end of the day, it's ultra generic human space soldiers plus one cool power armor guy, versus some pretty ok alien humanoids. Add in a few The Things, and that's it.

For space and mass ground combat, those kinda could have been any sci-fi universe. The setting does not have the ability to tell any stories except very generic space war, particularly with the way the inbalance between Earth and the Covenant is portrayed.

>>55079014
Let's also be honest: average DFC fleet is perhaps 4-5 cruisers, maybe a battleship or battlecruiser, and 8-12 Frigate sized vessels.

You get that from two faction starter sets and a battleship, for about 100-120 USD. That's a pretty affordable game.

>>55080806
>I never read anything related to Halo ever and I'm to retarded to start now, The post.

Damn, I was looking forward to the marine and ODST lists. Those ultra models were impressive too.

I'm torn whether to buy both the starters or not, the price is only going to go up but is it worth it for a ded game.

>>55072992
The Tier VI tanks look impressive, too bad they're locked behind a +500 hour grind.

WTS one Dindrenzi fleet for ownership in dying company run by adhd monkey

>>55072992
As well as actual Warthunder. The game is such an unfun slog once you get past WW2 tanks. Missile tanks are such a fucking joke.

>>55071152
I was referring to how they tended to release each game and drop support shortly after to focus on a new shiny.

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>>55073075
Oh, I'd forgotten about Project Gotterdammerung too. That game which no one had heard announced, turned up at one show and then was never mentioned again, as far as I can remember.

>>55086619
As with everything Spartan, it was really cool, and I would have bought in, but for one reason- Spartan themselves. Everyone knows that it would have been released and then dropped instantly.

>>55081088
>I read Halo "literature" and that makes you the retard!

Well, someone will pick up Halo eventually. I know Microsoft could have gone with a bigger company for the minis... I wonder if someone just like "These guys are called Spartan Games! Let's give them the license!"

I wouldn't even put it past them. 343 is a lot of Halo fanboys who make poor decisions.

>>55090171
Or neil made a stupid offer for the licence that killed the company (quicker).

>>55086619
>Achtung Dawg! I heard you like panzers...

>>55090236
Probably a little of both.

I never saw that much talk of the games, but everyone says Spartan was quick to drop games and move on, so that's probably why. I remember a few things building up to when Ground Command would come out, then pretty much nothing after that.

>>55090171
No one will pick a franchise as ill-suited to tabletop as Halo, and as unpopular in comparison. I'd sooner expect witcher the tabletop than anyone being dumb enough to go for that disaster.

>>55091572
Do you have a hateborner for Halo or something? It's not as popular as it once was but saying it's unsuited for table top? FFG just announced an OT Star Wars game and that universe has far less stuff suitable for a wargame.

What will the wrap up look like?
If they 'planned' the liquidation then I can imagine that they would spin off a tiny company to run out of a garden shed but still have the ability to grow again but crash Spartan with all of the denbts.

Or will even their death be a colossal fuckup?

The models are still cool and surely the molds have to go somewhere

>>55063590

Spartan probably had a great pitch. I mean, they kept releasing new games it seems like the guys in charge only knew how to pitch things, rather than settle down and slow-grow them.

I mean, we all saw the Spartan Games logo with the master chief helmet as their logo. That was probably not incidental or after-the-fact, but a direct pull from their pitch to MS. And what you can pitch vs. what you can provide is always a different beast.

>>55057050
DP9 doesn't have ADD like Spartan Games did though. Spartan kept on cranking out system after system with zero attempt at supporting a community.

The problem with Dream Pod 9 is that thanks to the new plastics people will want to games with 15+ miniatures and HG Blitz chokes at more than 8. They also moved all their molds from China to Indiana so inventory control is much much tighter.

Seriously don't know what's up with the new rules. Just as clunky as the old and now adds problems like "Gunnery and Piloting essentially meaningless in opposed rolls."

>>55091832
Well there very corporately worded announcement says at the end:
"We would encourage anybody who may be interested in acquiring either stock, assets or the business to make contact as soon as possible. Spartan Games and its product lines have a strong reputation in its markets together with an asset base which may be of interest to a number of parties, and a variety of machinery in addition to Intellectual Property."

So at least somebody thought about what to do with all the cool shit Spartan had lying around. Probably the debt collectors though to be fair.

What's hopeful to me in the immediate future is that it's implied there is stock left to acquire, so there should be some models left to go into the marketplace, at least for a little while.

I kinda hope that someone from Spartan who had all the draft documents and designs for shit lying around releases it into the wild. Or at least talks about that shit to someone. Project Gotterdammerung and that 15mm DW game were interesting ideas, even if in the broader scale for Spartan they were terrible ideas. Though it's kinda surprising no employees have gone onto any forums or anything and explained exactly what the situation was, and what might be happening now.

>>55057633
I've never gotten into DZC or Dropfleet because the main person I play against is my brother and we both only like the PHR models.

>>55063341
CB?

>>55092163
I don't know why the fuck they did 15mm firestorm before 15mm DW, since DW infantry are at least really cool in concept and missing from DW proper (model wise)

>>55063590
Microsoft is big enough that the people in charge of licensing Halo merchandise are in no way affiliated with the people in charge of Halo in general.

>>55063341
I've spun this dit a few times, but essentially I was at a seminar by Gutier from CB, and he was asked about making a new game. He said sitting down and thinking hard about a new game would take CB at least a year to hammer out basic design and game concepts, and probably another year for it to actually see market.
CB have gone balls deep into one game and its really worked for them. Spartan did the opposite and paid for it.

>>55092293
Planetfall was more oddball in that it was 10mm. Much less proxying appeal for buying 10mm stuff.

>>55092410
No wait, I went back and checked something I wrote about that seminar closer to the time and Gutier said if everything went flawlessly, it would take three years minimum to launch the game. Spartan was around for 9 years and had around 10 games.

>>55092410
Well, if you want to go deep into it, CB did start with historical minis and then expanded into fantasy, until they started to make scifi game, dropped the rest after some years and the rest is history.

Interesting to see, how their second game will work out in the long run. It seems to be much more limited in scope.

>>55092948
Ah, I don't think he was talking about Aristeia!; that's just a board game prettied up with nice models as far as I can tell.
He was talking about a theoretical second war game.

>>55088707
ngl Halo books are probably the best sci-fi I have read in the last 20ish years

Is it lame that Spartan's closing has had me depressed since the announcement? Dystopian Wars appealed to me in a way no other tabletop miniatures game ever has. I've collected the line for five and a half years, own hundreds of models across a half-dozen fleets, backed the KS, and even ran demo games at a convention once- in terms of time and money invested it's probably been my single biggest hobby activity since 2012. Part of me knows it's foolish to have been so invested in something so trivial but I feel genuinely betrayed.

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Well, the next company that picks up Halo has it easy when it comes to marketing strategy.jpg

>>55095390
Honestly, it's not like you're losing existing support if you already own your fleets. Games with a dedicated community can long outlive their official lifespans, just look at Epic

>>55096754
Part of it is they owed me my KS shipment- which was one of the smaller ones- and I had heard from Lizzie just a few days before that it would be shipped soon. Part of it is that I was really looking forward to the Canadian fleet. Part of it is the lack of finalized 2.5-compliant ORBATs. Part of it is plans I made to attend PAX Unplugged in November with the primary intention of playing DW, and now I kind of doubt there will be much of a crowd for it, though I suppose that remains to be seen. I guess I kind of doubt the dedication of the community, given how much Spartan alienated people in general and the circumstances of the closure.

>>55092291
Corvus Belli - the creators of Infinity

>>55095527
laughed

I've been looking back at posts/comments on Spartan's FB page (before the closing announcement) - it's rough. No one seems to be happy with the DW kickstarter and all Spartan can do is reply to every top post more or less saying "plz no bully."

It's a real shame, too. I got a chance to try out Halo: Fleet Battles last month and was thinking about buying into it. Looks like I dodged a bullet.

Mothershitfuck. And I was just about to get the Ground Command starter.

>>55056252
So this is the power of games workshop

>>55098696
Nah. It is the power of bad management and a way to bloated market.

We have hundreds of miniture companies with an ever increaasing range of minitures but only a limited supply of hobbyists/money.

>>55098718
The only reason GW has a monopoly is because it was just here first. Everyone else is just playing catch-up hoping to steal a few of their customers. Such is the peril of a niche market.

Well damn, I really liked Firestorm Armada. I hope somebody picks up the license and does something good with it.

>>55058869
He injected some weird oil into his muscles along with long term steroid use. Those gains be far from au natural.

>>55098718
No, in Spartan's case it was 100% bad management.

Sea, Space, ship combat at fleet level was not a saturated market when Spartan first rolled into the scene. Armada wasn't around, X-wing, still in infancy. Naval combat was nearly non-existent.

Then they killed Uncharted Seas after they barely released a new faction for it, released Firestorm Armada and Dystopian wars then started fucking about with multiple scales and conflict level without developing a core audience.

The day before Spartan died my Fall of Reach box set, plus Halberd expansion, arrived in the mail. What sucks is that the Halberds came with a notice stating that the overlays were out of stock and that they would ship them as soon as they got them. Guess I won't be getting them.

>>55094037
Jesus christ, read some actual science fiction. If you want Military, do some Forever War, Mote in Gods Eye, or Old Mans War or something.
If you want real science fiction, read some classics like the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, or newer gen stuff like Hyperion.

>>55099694
in the last 20ish years, i said. The old stuff I read when before that, and the new stuff is derivative nonsense. I even had the misfortune of reading the first book of that ghastly expanse series

>>55099694
Fuck, if he wants some not decades old mil-scifi, go for Stark's War trilogy.
>>55099242
When Spartan started, there was NOTHING on the space-combat market back in 2008 that wasn't ancient or extra-niche. GZG's Full Thrust was the only thing close to popular, and it was decade old. I remember when the first sculpts were released, and everyone in the little niche that space combat was got fucking hyped. They had all the tools and chance to become the next Gothic before X-wing came.
>http://www.star-ranger.com/images/FirestormArmadaSculpt.jpg

>>55063341
CB has focused on single game for the last 12 years. I'd say they really started to get traction during the last five years, but that's how long it take to build a loyal customer base.

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>>55091572
>Halo
>ill-suited to tabletop
What the fuck?

>>55102118
Well it's true.

>>55102425
Elaborate. It's basically 40k on a smaller scale. In fact, it IS 40k on a smaller scale.

>>55102474
Halo is just generic sci-fi that you could get anywhere, and is long past its peak popularity.

>>55102118
The series focuses almost solely on one super-marine vs mob of enemies, which translates poorly to tabletop. The space battles and large scale stuff with basic humans is in background only. Then you have the fact that unlike SW fans, which many are nerds in general, Halo fans tend to be dudebros who will not flock to your ghey toy soldier game.

>>55099839

Well, there was BFG, but that had been long unsupported by that point.

>>55102964
>The space battles and large scale stuff with basic humans is in background only.

Sources like the books and Halo Wars elaborate on that side of the conflict. Questioning whether there is a large enough enthusiast audience for the more gritty side of Halo is one thing, saying that the universe cannot thematically support a tabletop wargame is another thing entirely.

>>55104175
I think a halo fleet battles game was a good idea, they just shot themselves in the foot with advertisements and support, as usual

>>55106052
You mean lack thereof?

>>55099694
Old man's war sucked. But that's just my opinion.
It was like a retard writing Heinlein fanfiction.