Ease of set up and play will be key. If Warcrow requires Infinity-esque terrain, that's gonna be tough. If it's Hell Dorado-esque (3'x3', one terrain feature per square foot), that will take it a long way. I do love big, impressive tables, but there's something to be said for being able to set up a "full" game on your kitchen table.
I'm so excited by this announcement ! It's been a while since I have my Fantasy minis on a shelf because I really love more Fantasy than SciFi and I refuse to play the GW games anymore. Everything in the annoucement sounds really cool for me. The dice system, because the one at Aristeia is really good, the kind of fighting, the different races, classics and new ones, etc. You can do so many things with symbol dice that numbered dice cannot... so wait and see how the dev team improved the A! system, and D8 is different than D6. I'm pretty sure the game will be with no "wait and see how the other player does his full turn", because CB's motto is "it's always your turn". I like the fact that this will be a completely different line and independant from Infinity, so that each game has his own life, with its support, new releases, competitive seasons, etc. So a big shout to CB for this and wishing you a lot of bravery and luck in the amount of work to be done now that it has been annouced with such a schedule !! It will be hard to wait so many months from now on. Please @Koni give us regular updates on it ! And please please, make it translated and published in other languages than English and Spanish only. Communities worldwide will appreciate it and you'll reach a higher number of new fans !
I'm a pretty big fan of Frostgrave/Stargrave. I hope it's kind of similar but not as campaign oriented and not focus on one particular model (Wizard/Captain) in that case. I really hope that it's not race based either (elves vs humans vs dwarves). I want to be able to mix them up if I want to. I essentially want to play my D&D group vs another D&D group. Mercenaries, Adventurers, Clandestine Society, Cult, etc. all with different races, warrior types, religions. Then it's up to you to make like a all human group that's based on religious cult, or all elf rangers.
If we take Infinity as a precedent on CB's approach to factions, cross faction mercenaries and defectors aren't uncommon. While I doubt it'll be "Build a warband from any and all profiles in the game" you might see a Wolfman mercenary available to an Elf faction, for example. Plus it'll probably have the same proxy rules as ITS.
Aesthetic cohesiveness sells models. A box of humans/elves/dwarves/Ferret-folk that have a coherent look is attractive to people and makes it easy to say "I like these Salamander people, and this box gets me everything I need to play, so...". Something like 5 factions, and they mix and match within certain constraints and you can play almost any model together as long as their factions get along mean that players often don't know where to start. That said, it is definitely possible to make a Adherents of Aspic faction, that's a mix of dwarves, orcs, and ferret-folk (or all races) and give it a cohesive look. Might be neat to have two factions that represent organizations while the rests represent nations. Or, heck, have one or two very heterogeneous nations.
One thing that weighs on me a bit - multiple versions of the dice (like Aristeia) add a fair amount of depth. Blue is good for defense, orange for attack, yellow for special, etc. I just hope, if there are multiple d8 patterns, that whatever they choose is colorblind friendly.
I really liked Confrontation (by french company Rackham) back in the day. I think is is the closest comparison to what I hope Warcrow will be. Gorgeous models. 5-15 units. Fantasy setting with a twist that made it stand out. Alternating between activating one unit each. Another more recent game that I think is interesting is Marvel Protocol. Of course not even the same genre but interesting nonetheless.
Listen to wise words of @bladerunner_35 - just make a better Confrontation and it will be beautiful! Handful of great miniatures, where every soldier counts and can take some damage and even every wound is important, because it can affect this units capabilities. Small board, not too much of terrain and streamlined rules - not too easy, but also not too complex. CB can do it. PozdRawiam / Greetings
I can't believe I forgot Confrontation. I never got to play it but I absolutely loved the figures. My biggest hobby regret is selling off my MId-Nor dwarves.
Oh I'm sure you can find old Confrontation minis for a very, very reasonable pri- Oh. Oh my. Oh no. Oh wow, ok, things may have changed a bit. There's a massive Mid-Nor lot on eBay for 350.
Thermoplastic is a very generic term that doesn’t actually tell you what the material is. Siocast (some polyamide blend) and PVC are both thermoplastics, as is ABS/Styrene (GW style “hard plastic”).
Also re: the WHFB relaunch - just as a matter of scale (number of models, scope of battles), Warcrow is going to be more of a competitor to Warcry than AoS or WHFB. Same way that Infinity is more comparable to Kill Team than 40K.
I did a quick count and it's definitely less than $10 per mini, maybe closer to $6? Either way, if no one else has an army... Man, i don't think anything could make me get back into large, 28/32mm scale armies these days. IF I'm gonna do a massive army, it's gonna be 6 to 15mm.
Though we know they're using Siocast, they have only rarely actually called it that. I don't know if they want to avoid naming it or if there might be a contract thing or whatever. Siocast has mentioned CB a few times as well, but CB prefers to refer to it as thermoplastic rather than the specific trade name.
Yeah, it’s just led to a bit of ambiguity/confusion a few times so I was spelling it out. I think that by, say, a year or two from now, it’ll be much more established what CB means when they talk about in-house thermoplastic production.
We didn't called it Siocast in our publications, we always refer it to thermoplastic: https://forum.corvusbelli.com/threads/official-announcement-injected-thermoplastic-miniatures.40092/ https://infinitytheuniverse.com/blog/injected-thermoplastic So, when we call "the thermoplastic production in-house" is the same production that we use for the plastic miniatures you know from Infinity. I can tell you that, for the wargame, we're aiming to use 15-20 units per player, and a rulebook that will have around 50 pages. And obviously, our quality of sculpts for the miniatures :)
@Koni . . . Is just a weird idea, but ideally each of CB "Core Staff" probably will have their say in contributing creating some of the Factions; whould You perchance maybe thinking of doing somethink "Scorpion Themed". .? Not meaning "Scorpion Centauroids" ("Scorrows" that were a race in Forgotten Realms; also "The Rock" battleform in the "Mummy" Second Movie was clearly influenced by them) or the Drows of Eberron (that, for a twist had a Offshoot Subculture, Patriarchical and anthithethical to Lolth "Spider Matriarchy" living on Surface Jungle and revering Scorpions, and using Scorpion-Themed "Guard Wargolems"). . . It could be something far simpler, like vaguely Egyptian-Styled Desert Dwellers that have "Scorpion Livery" on buildings, standards, weapons and armour (like in the aforementioned "The Mummy 2" or in "Gods Of Egypt" for the Minions of Set). . .?? Or You will leave the "Scorpion Theme" just for the Tunguskan Sport Team. . . . .???