http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/27898.html

After reading that article, I've now lost all interest in D&D attack wing. I noticed Ziran's comments early in the article about "moving figures between the two lines"... I immediately thought to myself "of course they will, they will make sure to reuse sculpts". But here I thought it was just the dragons. Near the end of the article is where I see just how far WK will go to reuse sculpts... figures on the ground fighting dragons in the air.

Thanks, but no thanks.

I don't mind sculpt reuse myself... but the whole ground troops thing.. need to see more how they are going to do it first.

I'm getting a feeling that they will be like the Fighters we have, each time they take damage you strip off a layer until they are all defeated.

*COULD* be interesting.. only time will tell.

Sounds like it could work, and makes sense for this game.

It wouldn't make much sense to have ground troops fighting in AW or XW. There are never ground troops running around in space.

It seems to make sense in this type of source material. Ground troops running around fighting against dragons who are flying overhead. I think it could be cool and work.

This has greatly diminished my want of this game. I just wanted dog fighting Dragons.

I get the feeling there was a brainstorming session around the question "How can we get players to buy more miniatures for an attack wing game?" and ground troops was the answer.



My only hope now is that ground troops are an optional addition to the game and not a core aspect.

If they demo this at one of the Cons I will probably check it out. I've got my Superheros with Clix, my space with X-Wing and Attack Wing, but I have no fantasy games right now (just can't do RPGs any more). This may get some interest from me and my son.

I figure their brainstorming session included the question "how do we maximize sculpt reuse for the D&D lines?".

I don't understand how they would reuse sculpts, unless they don't intend to make any attempt at a consistent scale (like AW I guess ). Dogfighting dragons that are to scale with Patherfinder-sized D&D miniatures would take up too much space and be too expensive for the average player, so they are going to be much smaller. If that's the way they go, that would take the interest they'd generated in me and kill it quick. It'll be just like Heroclix, where folks want to use their goofily out-of-scale miniatures "because we paid for them!" No thanks. No interest in another game where that controversy exists.

I'm currently optimistic that they are not going to go this route and they'll figure out some way to brilliantly mix the two lines.

I'm sure the motive is sculpt reuse, but it could work.

To me, the best way to use the D&D minis in an Attack Wing dragon game would be as army/unit markers, rather than individuals, like you would in board-games or mass battle tabletop wargames. There's also the issue of power scales. One guy on the ground doesn't really fit the power scale of the game, but several humans trying to fight off a dragon makes more sense, and is pretty fitting of the genre.

Sure, stands of multiple tiny human/humanoid minis would probably be preferable since they'd be in-scale (or closer to it), and numerically representative, but I think some degree of abstraction is OK when you're dealing with a game that has to represent creatures ranging from goblins to dragons. In that scenario, a single out-of-scale single figure to represent a group of smaller creatures is a reasonable solution, and one that's commonly used.

Not that I'm convinced that's what WK will do, but it's what I think they should do, short of multi-based in-scale figures (but then people would probably complain that they're too small, and you can't seen any detail).

I guess that all depends on you perception of aerial battle games.

To me, it doesn't make sense because the FP system is all about the dynamic movement and combat of flight. I don't think ground troops will enhance that. If it does anything, I think it will take away from the game. (Which is probably why we won't see ground troops in games like Wings of Glory).

I've been scouring the 'net using my best search-fu for some more info on this and I happened across a pic! I copied it and posted (lest it be removed from it's original host). It clearly shows the scale of the dragons vs the ground units and I can't say I'm impressed.


D&D Attack Wing

Awesome.

'DD attack' is a good name for the pic K.

Is that a cross between the old mage knight large things and a vehicle base? I doubt the female thing is a D&D model because if they are going to make minis they will be the same size as the Pathfinder ones so they can blend the two lines. It makes more sense for them to scale the D&D ones so they can sell more Undead Horde or We Be Goblins gravity feed without actually saying do so. I can most assure you that people playing 3.5 (or the evil 4th) will buy Pathfinder boosters and vice versa. I am going to get a few of them at least for sculpts.


The only thing Worrying me is if that is supposed to be Tiamat then her heads are in the wrong place.

Whew!!!! You had me worried.

Hahaha, nice!

It did occur to me, and I should preface this by saying I know very little about digital sculpting/3D printing, that if the sculpts are digital (most/all of WK sculpts these days?), then they should be able to very easily scale them down to very small, for the Dragon Wing game, right?