New Wyrd Army-scale Game: Ruined Planet

[Manic Mouse]

Apologies if there's already a thread, but I did a search and couldn't find one!

 

This is really, really exciting especially since it seems like it might be hard sci-fi and a lot different than malifaux in space!

 

http://www.thed6generation.com//d6g-ep-142-wyrds-next-big-thing-wild-west-exodus

[Emberlost]

I listened to this. Army-scale games aren't really my 'thing' anymore (time & money issues). but this sounds interesting. I'll certainly be following its development.

[MooseMCA]

Wait.. What?

I'm going to have to give this a listen.

[Manic Mouse]

I listened to this. Army-scale games aren't really my 'thing' anymore (time & money issues). but this sounds interesting. I'll certainly be following its development.

 

Yeah, conceptually skirmish hold more appeal to me.  But if I were to play any army-scale game it would be the Wyrd one!

[Roleand]

Sounded really promising, but it also sounded like it's still a couple years away

[Poko]

All of my yes.

[bbb]

Here's a summary of the show segment from Dakka

 

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/582588.page

 

 

Ruined Planet is army sized miniatures game. 30-40 models for elite squad, maybe 100-150 models on the table depending on faction. Malifaux will never have an "army" scale. It's skirmish and will never change from that.

Very early in the development cycle. Just getting sketch work done and it is even possible that they never actually produce it. Mack essentially dropped everything to start working on it over Christmas break.

Six or seven factions. Two developed. One is the United Worlds of Sol - orbitals based on America. Radiation weapons, few bullets/projectiles because no mining. The second is the Pandemic. Related to the picture of the cube he's always had around. Alien super virus sort of thing. Spore cloud weapon? Requires higher brain functions so it can't use animals. Mexico built a wall to keep Americans out because America was hit hard by the outbreak.

Story is progressing, unlike 40k. Player actions at conventions and sanctioned tournaments will affect how the game narrative moves. Possible that tournament players will have their characters (captains and such) incorporated into the background somehow, should that player keep winning games and such.

Marines are short because they work and train in higher gravity (grav plates) and this reduces their height. Shorter is seen as military and taller is seen as lazy.

Dice, not cards. Too many cards to flip or models in the unit don't feel to be contributing in any meaningful way other than a "+1" bonus. Dice allow each model to feel like a contributor without weighing down gameplay with excessive flipping. If you have a unit with ten guys, you don't want to be flipping ten times.

Alternative actions, not turns. I do something then you do something. Reaction tokens.

As you lose dudes, your remaining dudes get stronger. You can resupply somehow, based on faction.

LoS is hard to do in a miniatures game. Ruined Planet will not use true LoS. Blocked = no shot. Exposed = bonus to shot. Otherwise all else is considered to have some sort of LoS but not entirely a clean shot. Game assumes that stuff is is the way unless exposed or blocked.

Every game has an attacker and a defender. Every location such as Dallas, Chicago, etc. has its own tables - one for the attacker and one for the defender. Attacker gets to choose major objective and the deployment. The defender gets to choose the minor objective and the conditions the battle will be fought under. The players get to move the other guy's pick up or down one place on the table. So, you make your choice, say number five, I get to move it to four or six. You get the same with my selection. Meta can involve either playing to win or playing to hose your opponent.

Wyrd believes there is plenty of room in the market. A game like this will have to be a big push on Wyrd's part, should they go with it because of the amount of figures to make and the price of the molds.

Too early to tell if vehicles are going to be in the system but he has them incorporated into the initial design. There are Independence and Constitution class dropships he's worked up but they currently just fly over and deploy, they don't land like currently in 40k.

[Poko]

Interesting, details, but...yay for another americentric setting. Because I sincerely doubt places like France, Poland or Japan will get a lot of official conventions and sanctioned tournaments, so their impact on the story is minimal. Then you have of course the action taking place in "famous" places like chicago or dallas, which I totally understand, but what about Budapest, Beijing or Athens? I hope I'm just reading too much into a very short initial pitch of an idea.

[Hagisman]

Sounds like this is a refinement of the Story Encounters from Malifaux.

I can't wait to see this fleshed out a lot more. I'm a SciFi fan and few interest me. 40k held my interest because it was the most prominent. Also Orks...

[Rathnard]

Well I'm excited to see what Mack comes up with, although I suspect we won't see anything of it until next year. At the earliest. 

 

One of the things that has me curious though, is what scale they'll go for? 40k is 28mm, but for a genuine army-scale game building a full list becomes very expensive. So will it be smaller, and if so how small? 15mm (Flames of war), 10mm (Dropzone Commander) or even 6mm (Epic)?

[edonil]

I think they might aim for taking a shot at 40k, honestly. Depending on how it's done, it may not be all that expensive to do at that model count. GW has many, many, many things driving up the cost of their game artificially that aren't necessary, which could be kept cheaper.

[Chucklemonkey]

Whilst not hugely into sci-fi, I would be interested if they went with the Dropzone Commander Scale. I do think Edonil might be right that they end up looking at a 28-32mm scale army game and just try to price it in the same way as Mantic's Kings of War.

[Gorbad]

Not really into army scale games anymore but the bit that sealed the deal for me was how the story will progress bases on results from conventions and tournaments. That does not at all sound like something I want to get invested in. Partly for the reasons already mentioned, but also just because I'd much rather see planned story progression, not this semi-random thing.

[Chucklemonkey]

Yes, really not too sure about that part of it either. It all sounded a bit 'gates of antares' (failed kickstarter project).

[edonil]

Honestly, I think you'll still see a planned story, it'll just be one with paths, like a flow chart. "This city was heavily damaged, that means you'll have x happen as a consequence." Reminds me of what the old Eye of Terror campaign was supposed to do, but failed because, frankly, the Imperium can't lose if the setting is to continue. But to allow these factions to thrive or lose, with none of them having 'unbeatable' or 'must always fail', that will be interesting.

[edonil]

And Gates of Antares had a lot of reasons it fell apart, honestly. Too much of it was unfinished, so people looking to chip in on a game were staring at it somewhat blankly going 'I have no idea what this is. What am I buying?'

[Ausplosions]

Not really into army scale games anymore but the bit that sealed the deal for me was how the story will progress bases on results from conventions and tournaments. That does not at all sound like something I want to get invested in. Partly for the reasons already mentioned, but also just because I'd much rather see planned story progression, not this semi-random thing.

 

Yeah, this part of it turns me off too.  

[Hagisman]

Well I'm excited to see what Mack comes up with, although I suspect we won't see anything of it until next year. At the earliest.

One of the things that has me curious though, is what scale they'll go for? 40k is 28mm, but for a genuine army-scale game building a full list becomes very expensive. So will it be smaller, and if so how small? 15mm (Flames of war), 10mm (Dropzone Commander) or even 6mm (Epic)?

Not sure how accurate it is to the scale. But Russ emailed a bunch of the guys in my game group that it sounded like a competitor to 40k.

[Mason]

I can get behind the advancing story thing, but we really just don't have room for another war-scale game at our store.  I had to fight to get Malifaux on the shelves, and that won out because it's a low model count game that functions much differently than any of the other games.  Another sci-fi game with the same scale as 40k isn't going to make a dent; people are just going to keep playing with the 40k armies they've already bought with all that money. 

 

There's only so much shelf space to go around. 

[Hagisman]

I can see that. Wargames require a lot investment. You can cannibalize shelf space of an old game for another too easily.

I'm for the new game to be 40k scale. Sadly 40ks story just isn't as interesting to me as it used to be. And I'd like something that allows the players affect the story like the eye of terror campaign.

I just hope that if they do that they don't make the victory/defeat conditions the collapse of the entire game world. Unless they are ready for that change.

[Math Mathonwy]

Sounds like this is a refinement of the Story Encounters from Malifaux.

o_O

That's certainly a somewhat bold leap. "Hey Mack, refine these Story Encounters for Malifaux, please." "Sure thing! Here - have an army scale scifi game with dice."

I think they might aim for taking a shot at 40k, honestly. Depending on how it's done, it may not be all that expensive to do at that model count. GW has many, many, many things driving up the cost of their game artificially that aren't necessary, which could be kept cheaper.

Unfortunately GW plastic is still quite a bit cheaper than Malifaux plastic. I mean, economics of scale enter into in a big way, naturally, and in an army scale game you could expect the minis to be cheaper, but they would need to be hugely cheaper for it to really work out.

I dunno, I think that getting off a 28mm army scale game is a herculean task. Having said that, I wish Wyrd luck with the project and will be following it with interest for sure.

[Hagisman]

o_O

That's certainly a somewhat bold leap. "Hey Mack, refine these Story Encounters for Malifaux, please." "Sure thing! Here - have an army scale scifi game with dice."

Unfortunately GW plastic is still quite a bit cheaper than Malifaux plastic. I mean, economics of scale enter into in a big way, naturally, and in an army scale game you could expect the minis to be cheaper, but they would need to be hugely cheaper for it to really work out.

I dunno, I think that getting off a 28mm army scale game is a herculean task. Having said that, I wish Wyrd luck with the project and will be following it with interest for sure.

More or less. The rules for story encounter seem like the rough experiment of the rules Mac outlined in the podcast. Attacker and defender, with varying objectives.

Sounds awesome. And especially with how the setup for narrative tournaments sounds I'd like to see what comes out.

Be cool if they could keep character sheets from every player who wished to participate. Hell, I'd even sign up if they had it that if your commander died in battle he died in the lore.

[rancor709]

My army scale days are likely behind me. Its intriguing concept the have but it is worry some. Other is a reason there aren't a lot of successful large scale games on the market. While I applaud the ambitious project its jut not where I'm at in gaming. I'll say

[Emberlost]

Unfortunately GW plastic is still quite a bit cheaper than Malifaux plastic. I mean, economics of scale enter into in a big way, naturally, and in an army scale game you could expect the minis to be cheaper, but they would need to be hugely cheaper for it to really work out.

Yeah, they'd seriously have to get down near GW's price/model to make this work. Maybe they could talk to Mantic for advice? Mantic makes some decent models at a pretty low pricepoint.

[Attrition]

At 28mm scale, at a model count similar to 40k, and set in a science fiction universe (albeit hard scifi), I can't see how it would avoid competition with 40k.  I have a tremendous amount of trust in Wyrd to pull off whatever they put their energy toward, but I'd prefer to see them develop products for less saturated sectors of the tabletop wargame market.  I really want to be excited for Ruined Planet, but it just doesn't sound particularly interesting or original.

 

When Mack first mentioned that he was working on another major project on one of the Malifaux podcasts, I hoped that Wyrd might be working on a fantasy game, which with the decline of WHFB is becoming an underrepresented setting.  I imagined a round-based, non block infantry, large skirmish scale game played with alternating activations in a very Wyrd fantasy setting.  I suppose that might sound like it would compete with Hordes/Warmachine, but that setting is so far from Tolkienesque fantasy that I think there's plenty for room for a grittier, less technological fantasy skirmish game.  Maybe I just prefer fantasy to science fiction. 

 

Projects this ambitious require a tremendous amount of financial investment, and given its scale, Ruined Planet sounds like it may entail milling even more expensive plastic molds than Malifaux.  My sense is that Wyrd is doing well as a company, but I can't help but feel concerned that this new venture may pull resources away from Malifaux.

 

My concerns and minor disappointment aside, of course I wish Wyrd the very best and, given their consistently impressive track record, I genuinely hope to be pleasantly surprised by this new project.