Ah,....I have an idea....Is the goal really to increase booster sales or is it to increase revenue on the Mechwarrior product line???

Why aren't there supplementary MW products like.....
* 3-D tournment legal terrians
* Special map sets (like CBT has)
* Special rulebooks with alternate game rules
* Scenario books that would allow people to run campaign style battles
* "Big" dropship-like pieces (Similar to MK Conquest, HC Sentinel, etc...)

I wonder if there would be any market for this type of stuff.....

How does set retirement affect power creep. Each release will still have to be better than the one before it. Power will still creep forward.

Set retirement solves a bunch of non-problems. It is really aimed at veteran players that no longer buy manny boosters

I take your challenge!

You want some fixes, then here are a few ideas...

New units, classic units, new abilities, and combinations of existing abilities including combinations of the same type of equipment (such as move equipment). Use existing molds to release non-unique versions of existing sculpts as was recently done with the SunCobra and Shockwave.

New Targeting special ability:
Smart Target Link Up- If friendly unit has line of sight on enemy unit, it allows all friendly units within a 6" radius to target enemy units with their ballistic weapons as if they had the Streak Missiles special ability. (Keep this ability limited to vehicles and mechs of light and medium categories.)

Aerospace Strike-Unit calls in a aerospace strike. The strike is either a ballistic or an energy attack (this varies from unit to unit)and uses a pog like an artillery unit. This is typically a single use piece of equipment and typically has a 3" to 4" blast (or strafe) radius.

New Ballistic Special ability:
Cluster Missiles-Missile warhead separates into smaller warheads right before reaching the target. Decreases the damage to the primary target by one but deals one minus the primary damage (to a maximum of 2) clicks of damage to any unit in base contact with the targeted unit.

New Energy Special Ability:
Coolant-Close combat use on a friendly mech cools the mech 2 clicks of heat.

New Units:
Raven-standard sculpt-Green, Vet, & Elite pieces.
All pieces have Evade and Smart Target Link Up special equipment, ballistic and energy weapons (each of 2 to 3 at best), and a move of at least 8. The Vet version has heavy armor. The Elite has Decoy and Pulse. All are 150 pts or cheaper.

Hunchback IIC-standard sculpt-Green, Vet, & Elite pieces.
Most of the variants do 5 clicks of armor piercing ballistic damage with a 8" range (2 targets), an energy of 3 with 12" range, and have a defense of at least 20 with a targeting of at least 9. The Green has only Hardened Armor special equipment but has a 22 defense. One of the Vets has a beserk dial going up to 6 ballistic while the other has pulse and both have Heavy Armor. The Elite has Evade and Improved Targeting. All are 220 pts or lower.

Commando-Standard scuplt-Green, Vet, and Elite pieces.
All have either jump jets or evade. All have either an energy or ballistic special equipment. The Elite has the new cluster missiles special equipment.

UrbanMech-Standard scuplt-Green, Vet, and Elite pieces.
All have both Electronic Camouflage, Jump Jets, and Streak Missiles. The Vet Elite has armor piercing and the Elite has Improved Targeting.

Mad Cat-Unique (but several)
All with Jump Jets or Evade. Heavy or Reactive Armor.

The Archer-Standard scuplt-Green, Vet, and Elite pieces.
All have ballistic weapons with damage of 4 to 5 with ranges between 12" and 16"(4 targets). Each version has a different type of ballistic special equipment. One of the Vets has evade and the Elite has Improved Targeting and Cluster Missiles.

Daishi-Unique
6 Ballistic damage with a range of 14" (3 targets), 4 Energy with Pulse with a range of 12" (2 targets), 7 move, 12 Targeting, 24 Defence with Heavy Armor. Vent 4 with the shorter heat dial but with positive heat effects. I'm guessing it would be around 350 pts.

Coolant truck-All have the new coolant special ability. Several of them are single use

Aerospace Command Vehicle-Has two to three uses of the Aerospace Strike special ability and after using them gains command.

Combat Technicians-All have the Repair AND the Bypass Special ability. Combat technicians have one special ability that no other repair unit can do, they can actually make repair formations.

Revenant Recon VTOL-Each has weak attack but good move and the Smart targeting special equipment.

How can they run out of factions? Granted, there are a finite number of factions left from CBT that haven't made the jump to MWDA yet (Houses, Invading Clans, Homewrold Clans, Periphery nations, pirates) but if WK releases 1 or 2 new factions per year, that's good for at least 10 years considering that there were nearly 20 clans alone pre-Jihad. Also, how can they run out of factions if they are creative? They could always introduce totally new faction, just as they did with BR, which has no analog in CBT times. Heck, they introduce new mechs all the time (Crimson Hawk, Arbalest...), why can't they create new factions whenever they want?

Let me also add the reused sculpts.

Vulture, Panther, Wolfhound, Catapult, Cygnus, Ryoken II, and Thor. Saves time, money, and trouble to use these. That is some of what they are after right?

Other new scuplts could include Loki, Grasshopper, and Mazakari.

ok, I will throw my hat in this fight.

I consider myself a casual player. I play one evening a week and the occasional Saturday tourny. I have been gaming for about 25 years and have spent about $400 on the game.

To keep me as a customer and spending money. Wizkids needs to keep the #### out of sets. #### comes in 2 forms those units that are useless no matter what (ie laser batteries, HL Uller) and those units which I have no desire to have (ie those not in the factions I collect, I play the good guys, Highlanders, ROTS, and SC)

I feel it is completely within wizkids ability keep totally useless figs out of the sets. I am spending $10 and I dont want to get 4 figs no one will ever play or trade for.

As to the second kind of #### I think Wizkids needs to produce more than one kind of booster. I agree that faction pure boosters would be cool but it would be too many things. I would produce 2 or 3 three lines per set and break them up into 3-4 factions per subset. ie (pro republic, anti republic, clan/house) I would mix mercs into each of the subsets.

I have no real desire to play the latest ultra competitive armies so I would like to see more campaigns that are faction pure. I will spend money to play in a cool campaign with rules that require non tourny standard pieces.

Set retirement only convinces me to not show up at events that require it.

I play to have fun and to have cool looking pieces. I dont know how many people I represent but I do know I have 3 times the disposable income off your average 14 year old.

THANK YOU ENGINE OF DEATH FOR ACTUALLY BRING UP MY POINT AGAIN LOL

THE REASON THIS PRODUCT SELLS IN THE NEW UNITS NEW SCULPTS AND NOT JUST SE COMBINATIONS.

ALSO MAKE CAMPAIGNS UNRESTRICTED IT WILL ALLOW PLAY FOR THE RESTRICTED UNITS EVERYONE LOVES MORE REGULARLY

You have a good point. Also, if many of the existing Factions will be worked back into the Houses or parent Clans, the units logically wouldn't be retired but assigned posts within the House. So retirement makes no sense from a 'fluff' perspective as well.

LOL. Don't mention it.

I will also say that I believe some of the old molds can be used as well. I'm sure that the clan players would actually like more 'clan' mechs that already exist like the Thor, Warhammer IIC, Cynus, Jupiter, and Vulture. I'm sure that their are all kinds of other pieces out there that other factions would like to see in their own armies (I'm happy to have a Bannson's Behemoth). ;)

There does need to be new sculpts too. You want to sell more Wizkids? Then listen to the players. They want the Daishi and the Urbanmech. They want more Faction abilities like Liao. They want friggin' Ghost Bear. They want more events like Faction Wars and they want more unrestricted events.

And to go a bit further than my previous comment about this, here's why:

When a set gets rotated out, the remaining stock of boosters from retired sets will moulder on a shelf somewhere. If and when FFE gets rotated out, that's when I will never buy that set again.

Which is a key problem with set rotation. Rather, it moves up the focus on the newest sets, and they will sell, but only as long as the players can use the pieces as they see fit.

Regarding Banning:

If you ban, say 5 units from any given set, that leaves a pool of over 100 figures that are still playble.

And game balance is still achievable.

Balance and power creep is not a issue. Paying money for more boosters of more stuff that players already have, is. After all, I have probably spent close to 1k on this game, and I do not feel the need to spend more. However, how much more money does WK expect me to have to play this game? What, do I look like I am made of money? :)

When you look at it from that angle, and if WK expects us to buy 3 boosters a month(i'm just assuming sealed and no other 'side' purchases), it adds up quickly. It's not that hard to see.

And discerning customers can and will see this, and decide whether or not MW is worth the money to continue or not. By no means am I obligated to buy this game, when there are other alternatives.

CBT looks good to me. As does my 40k army(mmm Tyranids), and also War Machine. Although those games do not have the collectible appeal as does MW, I also like to do paint, and the other aspects of those games that MW does not have.

If you think retirement is gonna increase sales, maybe it will, but only if it can convince a lot of people that it will be worth doing so.

I do not know a single person that buys for the sculpts. They purchace for the dials more because that is where the game really is.

You can't mean that if there were no figures on TOP of the dials that people would be as in to this game.

I have to agree w/ DrEvil... I think they should *smartly* market & produce terrain, bigger pieces, maps, etc. GW makes a killing on terrain.
I also have to say I buy almost EXCLUSIVELY for the sculpts... but I'm not a very good player... I fielded a 3-SC ghost army once and got slaughtered, but I looked good dying!

Yellow jacket

the atom

ant man


"invisible" invisible woman