the click bases do, for the most part limit minis to MW, there are no other games that utilize the click dial system, and many of the mechs have yet unknown stats so using them in CBT is not as viable as it whould be. if they come out with a TRO then this game's cross-playability would be tremendous, if not perfect!

Being away for a few months... (years?)

I found the news regarding lay-offs from the icv2 site... Darn. I wish goodluck to the guys who handled MW at WK. I don't play much anymore but i still buy some boosters from time to time.

@HaloGrunt
There are guys who (try) convert or (try) to decipher stats for the MWDA era at the CBT forums, you might like to get in touch with them there. I've seen people making bigger 1.6" hexes for it too.

What WizKids needs to do is to treat their brands in much the same way as car companies do.

Very few have the means to buy a Cadillac as soon as they get their learner's permit. Instead, they buy an entry level Chevrolet.

After owning that Chevrolet, that person now has the option to "trade-up" to a more upmarket car made my the same company, or go shopping elsewhere. Hopefully that buyer will be happy enough with his Chevy that he will go out and buy a more expensive Pontiac and then maybe trade that in on a Cadillac later.

For WizKids,

• Pirates and BSG = Entry level
• HeroClix = Mid-level
• MechWarrior = Premium brand

As a Premium brand, Mechwarrior would have fewest players, but players of lesser games should aspire to play it. To do this, it must have the most interesting units, best prize support, and above all, customer service.

I was never sure why their first sports game was based on Baseball. It's a popular game in the US, to be sure, but it's a very limited board. I would have expected something with a lot of movement of individual figures, like Football or Hockey or possibly even Soccer (IF you're going for the international crowd).

I still think, for the racing game, they should have gone for minis and not 3d Stock. Sure, that's cheaper, but if you made a licensing deal with Matchbox, imagine the sales boost you'd get. You could even keep the booster packs with cards for upgrades and to swap out equipment while keeping the car minis as individual models.

@DBlizzard,
The thing WoTC has going for it is that they have solid games that have been around for much longer and have a much larger player base.

Star Wars and Dungeons and Dragons have huge followings that MW simply can't compete with right now.

@Freeptop,
You are quibbling over semantics with the "beind laid off isn't the same as being fired"

You still aren't getting a check every two weeks from the same people and you didn't voluntarily leave the company, that's getting fired.

You don't have to have done something wrong in order to be fired.

And even they've been going through force reductions over the last couple years. Never mind the flops that they've had.

I beg to differ. You may not think it matters, but it makes a BIG difference when you go looking for a new job. 'I was fired' implies you did something wrong as companies generally dont get rid of you for no reason. 'Laid off' gives a reason, and shows you had no control over it. If you tell a possible future employer you were fired, that is going to set off alarm bells in their heads. So no, it's not quibbling over semantics.

That's true, it's semantics. However, there are different connotations associated with different words, so semantics can be important. Tell someone you were fired and they'll think "what did you do?" Tell someone you were "laid off" and they'll think "that's a shame."

The implications between the two are very different, and even implying that someone was removed from their jobs because of their personal performance rather than a layoff could be regarded as making a knowingly false statement that impacts someone's reputation in print - i.e., libel.

While I doubt any of the WizKids folks would ever actually file a suit, it is really in your own best interest to be in the habit of being more precise in your communications, so that you never do get caught up by someone who does decide to take you to court.

Sure, it's all semantics. But semantics is everything in a court of law.

Besides, it costs next to nothing to be more precise in your communications, anyway. Why not make it easier for others to understand exactly what is meant, rather than use improper terms that generate confusion?

for the most part, i can convert stats to and from CBT to MW, it's hardly an exact science, and it's based on averages, which lead to MANY innaccurate results, and then i have to account for faction paradigms, scult inaccuracies, and so many other things. the way i figure it, and this is the way that takes LOTS of working with

MW max range is about CBT medium range, approximated for multiple weapon types. damage is 1 MW for every 7-10 CBT, 10 on assaults and 7 on lights, usually. that's just used to figure what the weapon systems are. the speed is usually the CBT running speed, so an 8 move would be or a 5/8 mech.

its VERY innaccurate, but if you use all the factions, look at the sculpts, and account for the DA love of LBX weapons having high damage, you can do it.

oh, and the SEs are near impossible to deal with. i think AP goes to anything that can do over 20 damage in a shot, pulse goes for either pulse lasers or large amounts of laser weaponry, which can also get alpha strike, and so on.

and im sure that Kelly will be laughing at my efforts, cause i'm sure im as far off the deep end as a scientologist in salt lake city.

*somewhere, a bunny giggles*

I'd just convert from the listed equipment and weight for the piece (this was easier when dossiers were made), stat it up in CBT terms and not worry about the fact that it'll perform differently in CBT than in MW.

I can tell you why there isn't much of a cross Market between CBT and Mechwarrior Darkage.

1. The scale isn't the problem.
2. The lack of stats for many of the pieces hurts.
3. Why buy plastic prepainted figs when they can get better quality and scale Ironwind minis especially when the prepainted figs don't even match the paint schemes they want and repainting a MW fig is difficult.
4. Everytime they introduce a new figure and call it an old mech design they royally piss off a good portion of the CBT player base.
5. Some of the Units when converted into CBT are umm well useless. Others are good, but a Gyrfalcon in CBT is a waste of mech space while Hauberks are to put it mildly digusting battle armors.

So in short they got superior metal minatures they can buy, the units are not painted in the paint schemes the cbt players would want, many of the units are useless unless used as a representation of a different unit and the scale is a mess. Also many of the storyline elements in Mechwarrior Dark age offend them and thier ideals.

Catering more to the CBT players would probably help, but everytime they try they take 10 steps back for every step forward. The historical pieces are excellent examples of things that if done better could have attracted more players, but ended up alienating more of them.

So, you've done a poll of every single CBT player out there that you can state this for a fact, have you? Stop making it seem like your personal opinion is a fact. It doesnt do you, or the community at large, any favors.

You know, projecting your own opinion on to everyone else is not necessarily the most accurate means of determining answers to questions. I can't speak for the community as a whole, either, but I can speak about myself, and several of the people I've met.

A very large number of the people I know who play MWDA are also into CBT. Yes, there does seem to be a greater customer base in CBT - 20 years of developing a customer base can have that kind of result. In my personal case, I started wtih MWDA, and have been picking up CBT products (with luck, someday I'll get to play a game...) Either the venues I've played at are all outliers in the statistical model (which I can't discount as a possibility), or else the blanket statement doesn't apply across the whole world....

For the points below, I can only relate my own, personal opinion, so I don't mean this to be any sort of accurate reflection on the community as a whole.

I'll mostly agree here. While it would be nice to have the same scale between the two games, it is possible to make it work. Personally, I recently discovered that 'Mech bases fit decently well on Heroscape tiles, thus making it easier to build hexmaps that can be used with MWDA figures for CBT rules (even nicer, the Heroscape tiles are stackable, making elevation differences more obvious!)

I'll agree with this as well, though I will say that with more CBT designs coming out in MWDA, and more TRO-style information being posted on LinkNet, this has become less of a problem.

This is where I'll disagree. Not everyone has the patience to carefully handpaint and assemble little metal figurines. Many people don't care if the paintschemes match exactly, so long as they aren't plain. For people that really care about accuracy in paint schemes, this is important. For players that, well, to be honest, simply don't care that much, having pre-painted figures is much nicer, even if the paintjobs don't necessarily match.

I can't dispute this one, since I've seen it time and time again. Of course, I've also seen several people be glad they changed the appearance. For me, personally, it depends on the design. I personally thought that some of the old designs they changed were definitely for the better. Some, on the other hand, weren't. But that's just one person's opinion ;)

Well, Kelly has said that when she makes the designs, she's making them for the Clix game more than for CBT, so that can certainly end up happening. That said, one nice thing about using MWDA designs in CBT is that, since most of them aren't official anyway, you can always modify the CBT stats to make them more useful for your own games.

Well, whether or not the metal miniatures are superior is a matter of opinion. I did buy an IronWind Metals 'Mech. I opened the blister pack, took a look at it, and thought it would look really cool, once I found the time to paint and assemble it. I'll note that it's still sitting, in pieces, unpainted, in that blister pack, though I've had it for probably about a year now. Plus, none of the joints secure together without glue, so once it is assembled, it won't have any articulation whatsoever. (I got a Scorpion, so the bipedal designs might be better on this score - I don't know),

As for storyline elements offending old-time CBT players - come on. That's like asking ten different people to all agree on pizza toppings. CBT players as a whole can't even agree on which storyline elements from FASA were offensive or not, of course many of them weren't going to like WizKids' storyline progression. (As just one example: how many old-time CBT players feel the coming of the Clans was the worst thing to ever happen to CBT? I know I've met more than a few).

To a certain degree I agree, in that I think it would be better for WizKids to pay more attention to certain things from CBT, such as making sure pilots are put in 'Mechs they are well-known for using, giving 'Mechs to the factions that designed them, and maybe paying more attention to how new designs fit into CBT, as well as MWDA.

On the other hand, I don't feel MWDA should wholly cater to CBT fans. There already is a game that does that. MWDA wants to draw CBT fans in, but it also wants to appeal to folks who aren't interested in CBT - especially the people who don't want to spend hours painting and assembling little figures, and obsessively pouring through numerous expensive books. (I buy them and enjoy them, but dang, are CBT books expensive for their page count! ;) ).

CBT Players fall into different groups.

1. 3025 vrs 3050+
Some players prefer old school 3025 tech and wish none of the new junk had ever come out and are especially hateful of the Clanners.

2. Standard Engine Mafia vrs XL Engine Mafia.
There are players who consider any mech that doesn't use a standard engine to be a pile of garbage. There are further breakdowns some like Light engines and Clan Xls others are extremely fundamentalist in thier dislike for non Standard Engines.

3. Warship Vrs AntiWarship
There are a large group of the player base who dislike Warships being able to make battlemechs useless as a Warship can come along and render an entire planet uninhabitable. Most of them have never played with even a single warship. Others think Warships should exist as massive fleets befiting the economy of the Inner Sphere.

4. Jihad/Anti Jihad
Personally I'm strongly anti jihad as I don't feel its a remotely accurate event. Other players are all for it.

5. Clan Roleplayers
There are a large percentage of Clan players who like roleplaying the Clan doctrine. Largely made up of Ghost Bears and Jade Falcons. They find the concepts introduced like hippie bears and Mongul Jade Falcons as offensive.

So yeah player base in CBT is not something you can do an accurate single polling of, but a majority of the player base will find one or more things about Mechwarrior Dark Age offensive enough to not want to play.