Spiel
I noticed Spiel, one of the largest game conventions in Europe, is coming up in October.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeklis...l-2014-preview
Ares was there last year displaying new products. I wonder if Ares will reveal any future SOG products this year or possibly the finished models of Constitution and Victory that we will be recieving?
I also wonder if any of our European members will be attending?
Id love to attend, but financially its not possible sadly.
Those who do attend please share the experience.
Sadly my health don't allow me to be there this year.
It will be interesting to see what Ares puts out for display.
I'm guessing their emphasis is going to be on Wings of Glory (B-17 and Lancaster bombers) and the Battle of Five Armies.
They still haven't received or posted any information on the Constitution and Victory pre-production models, which makes me think we wont see anything at Spiel that's SoG focused? Maybe by then they'll have the scenario contest winners available for download, but that's all going to be online?
I think you're right. I don't believe SOG is high on their priority list right now. You're right about the Battle of Five Armies. That will probably be one of their biggest sellers considering the popularity of the theme.Originally Posted by Nightmoss
Right--like I said on another thread, if I haven't heard anything new by Friday I'll give the folks at Ares a nudge.
Makes you wonder if the reason they haven't put out anything is because they don't even know what they're going to do for wave 3.
Bobby, Wave 3 is already decided--a few of us were consulted on it, some of our advice taken and some rejected.
More is not yet mine to say, but the Wave 3 list is set and now hunting for draughts to design the tooling.
Battle of the Five Armies shipped yesterday. Playing it should gear me up for the final film. I think I will reread The Hobbit this fall; Tolkien in the fall is hard to beat.
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ― Plato
You'll have to let us know what you think of game after playing it. Sounds like it will be pretty good, especially with the planned expansions.
I will, but first, I need to write some SoG solo AARs before I am forced to walk the plank.
I have not paid attention to the expansions. I pre-ordered the game awhile back, so I am a bit out-of-the-loop.
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ― Plato
I guess the issues I see are (a) how/when do we know they are really serious about producing it in a reasonable timeframe, and committing resources to that end [plans are cheap], (b) what is the tentative schedule [and what are the risks and unknowns that will cause it to slip], and (c) even if they are committed, it may take a good while to get from here to there, so loop us in on the process instead of making it a black box
'Course if they're NOT serious about it right now I wouldn't want to be strung along with empty promises...
I would like to attend, but have to consult the travel department first. As we are near Essen the week before, I do have some doubts though. Anyway, even if I will not attend, my brother-in-law wil probably go and I will ask him to take pictures of the Ares booth (and if they sell some ships, I will get those first rates).
We had this discussion on the german board and I think at least Utheroc will be there, but he will have to work.
Maybe if Victory and Constitution passed the final quality check this week, they will show these two.
I will be there for a few days....
Usually Ralf (Uthoroc) has a Profantasy booth there. Maybe we can get him to do some spying for us.
Fred, that's a big part of why they're slow to announce, I think--the Chinese factories are notorious for "highest priority goes to the highest bidder", and Ares will probably never be big enough to even approach the same league as FFG or the various Mattel and Hasbro brands.
I think everybody understands the problem of items being made in China. The question is: If Ares knows what wave 3 is going to be, why not release the information? Ares seems to let everyone know what the next wave will be for WOG pretty far in advance. Series 8 information for WGF has been out for a year and it probably won't be released until the end of this year or early next year. Is that it will be well over a year, maybe 2016, before wave 3 is released?
Bobby, some of it is also that there is a HUGE roll of the dice involved in selecting designs to sculpt after. WGF and WGS are relatively known quantities, everyone knows the shapes of the aircraft involved and plans still exist for virtually all of them--with ships, given that we're talking a game set 200 years ago, there's always the risk that they may decide on a sculpt for which plan's don't even EXIST anymore--we already know Santissima Trinidad is going to involve a lot of best-guess work since there are no original draughts for her rebuild as a four-decker.
I've been trying to encourage them to consider "parallel development" for each category, say if we're talking about a British 64 select two candidate sculpts, start to develop both up to the "Ready for Production" level, then table whichever one is less "iconic" if they both make it to that point--if one looks slower to develop or hits a No Data Available snag, then shelve it and proceed with the backup.
I know I'm preaching to the choir, but... as long as they maintain radio silence, there's no way to distinguish "we're working hard on it, although it will take a while" from "poor stepchild, on hiatus, maybe we'll take a look at it again someday (or maybe not)...". Many people will assume it's the latter and lose interest.
If it IS the latter, then by all means I understand them saying nothing (and frankly some game companies should do this--if everything they say has to be mentally padded by two years, they should just say nothing). But if Ares wants to persuade us it's the former, they should throw bones.
Would there *really* be a problem if they announced "we are currently in the data gathering phase, we expect it to take X months, we expect to do ships A, B, C and D; but we might not find the plans and if so we'll have to adjust..."?
I've lived the overstretched small business life. I know it's hard to find time to communicate, and there's always a desire to keep mum, so as to reserve as much flexibility as possible. But trying to maintain the black box has a price too
Also, I can't tell you what, but there IS an SGN project that hasn't been discussed around here much that I've seen the "paint maps" for (which is usually relatively late in development)--it's not really going to break much new ground, but it will be a relatively quick turnaround and it will be something.
It better be pirates, arggggh!?!? Oh, damn, we've talked about pirates A LOT!!?
Well, it can't really be pirates if it's described as not breaking much new ground. Sounds like a reissue of the wave-1 ships with some new paint jobs. Which would be a good thing--the basic third rates should always be available.
Hm, maybe not napoleonic, a new timeline?
There can be so many, english-dutch war, armada, galleys in mediterrean, roman timeline even more modern timeline is possible ( us-spain war, russia-japan war, ww1, ww2 )
It's still Napoleonic, I can tell you that.
Maybe merchant ships? We have discussed this in the past, but not at the same level as fighting ships? While it's fun to speculate, it's also rather fruitless until Ares decides to release 'official' information.
Maybe Ares should look at big money investors or a merger so they can provide more power to production? Asmodee Games just bought out/merged with Days of Wonder, which most folks see as a good thing. Ares might need to grow if they're going to keep offering new IP's and such?
Well, small products at big companies have their own slew of issues. All things considered, it's probably better if SGN is at a boutique that has some sentimental attachment to it. As I've said before, I don't mind *slow*, as long as I know things are *steady*. For the latter I want continual reassurance
Nothing extravagant as ships. I would think it would be a campaign with scenarios, map, etc.
That would be a fine addon, maybe with solo rules.
Something like this could attract more players.
Also, I would suspect that to some degree they expect those of us they've brought in to talk a little, possibly even rely on us as an additional line of comm (hence Roberto's comment about "ambassadorship" in another thread)--I may be overconservative on what is and is not Fair Game for me to say, but in my experience better safe than sorry. :)
Quite likely as DB refers to "paint maps". Wont do me much good unless it comes with solo rules.
Um, a "paint map" is just how the paint goes onto a product. Don't read anything into it... it just designs the printing pads, masks, etc.
Slow and steady isn't as appealing to me as it once was. I just turned 62, so the clock is ticking on years of quality gaming that remain.Well, small products at big companies have their own slew of issues. All things considered, it's probably better if SGN is at a boutique that has some sentimental attachment to it. As I've said before, I don't mind *slow*, as long as I know things are *steady*. For the latter I want continual reassurance
Slow and steady isn't as appealing to me as it once was. I just turned 62, so the clock is ticking on years of quality gaming that remain.
Never fear, 60 is the new 40, right?
Hey, if 40 is the new 30... LOL (and I HOPE so, since my gal's what could be termed a "cougar"... ;) )
Never fear, 60 is the new 40, right?
My Friend, you are well preserved. I would not have guessed this at all.
We did do research awhile back on merchants if any of you remember. Hmmm. I wonder if we'll see these come to life.
“You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than in a year of conversation.” ― Plato
Maybe they don't talk about wave 3 because there is still a lot in the production line we haven't seen yet.
1. Victory and Constitution: final production approval should have taken place last week
2. Starter Kit reprint: not sure if we had news on that. Since I own one and don't want a second, I don't keep track.
3. Wave 2 replacement: I think last I red (on this forum thouhg), was that production was approved and started
4. Scenario contest: According to one post, this was due two weeks ago and I'm desperatly waiting for this.
Maybe Ares thinks giving us bits of information on these four topics every other week keeps us happy. The other problem is that Ares spreads their information on different channels. Some official or indirekt news in this forum, some updates on their Facebook page, updates to the KS project, general comments at the KS, comments to the udates on KS. This makes it rather hard to track news. I'm not a member of facebook and I do not check the KS news regularly except officila updates because I'm alerted by mail.
But to give credit to them, I do now they are a very small company, with less than ten employes and they are working on quite a number of games.
Ares seems tospread their information like governments, a little leak here, a small announcement there...drip feeding the public, afraid too much information might provoke an unwanted response...
September first, Ares comment on KS Update 70:
"We finished the production of the new batch of ships in late July, then transit from China to USA... Nothing exciting happened unfortunately :-(
[except our record breaker event at GenCon of course]
We will have good news later this week, though, as the shipment should finally land at our warehouse and we will start shipping - more news as this actually happens. We are also waiting for the final Pre-production samples of Victory and Constitution this week, so we'll have more news about them as well."
So, pre-prod samples should be in and just waiting for announcement about if they pass muster.
Right. So, if those samples were received no later than the 5th (end of the week they posted that on KS) they've had them for a full week as of today. I think the work week is over in Europe at this point (it's likely after 10 PM there). Did they not receive them or did they not pass muster?
Last edited by Nightmoss; 09-13-2014 at 18:14. Reason: typo
Could be that they're still in review, too... or that they've been too busy pushing something else out the door to comment.
Very true. As premium ships I expect they're going to be especially critical. MSRP will be interesting to see versus what the KS backers put down for theirs?
Also, per this thread on BGG:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/...t-then-sinking
At some point, we'll see the names of the Kickstarter Exclusive ships again, but they will have new paint schemes--our Kickstarter colors were the "One and Done" part, along with getting early access to those eight stat-sets. I just hope they don't wait until after I repaint my Redoutable into her Trafalgar reddish-brown...
Last edited by Diamondback; 09-13-2014 at 10:24.
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