As Graham points out, Scott Rouse (brand manager for D&D) made a post on Wizards yesterday that explains the changes. To me, the most important part of the whole thing is:
November’s release of Demonweb will be the last new set that includes skirmish statistics… official sanctioning of D&D Miniatures skirmish events will cease right after D&D Experience in February.
I started with Harbinger all those years ago, and really had a blast playing the skirmish game. As a long time fan of skirmish-level minis games (Mordheim and Bloodbowl being among my favorites), DDM had the advantage of being relatively quick-playing, using familiar D&D characters and creatures, and most of all, I didn’t have to paint the damn things.Unfortunately, as the years went on, it became impossible for me to find players. Many of my friends (including several who write for this site) stuck with Warhammer, but I knew that wasn’t for me any longer. I tried getting them into it by attempting to organize booster drafts, but those always fell through. Eventually I gave up, and never got a chance to play with the revised DDM rules. I continued to buy them (even going back and buying packs from sets I missed while I was poor), but only for use in D&D. The skirmish stats became largely irrelevant, although during my last D&D 3.5 campaign, I used the RP side of the cards in almost every battle. My guess is that I wasn’t alone, and D&D players became easily the dominant buyers of the minis, which makes some sense as to why they would change how they were being sold.
Anyway, with DDM becoming an abondoned game (though The Rouse does say that they’ll follow through with their promise to update all old minis to the new rules), and Mage Knight having long ago tanked, that leaves no strong fantasy collectible minis game with good IP.
Well, except for this one thing…
Anyway, I highly recommend giving the article a read, especially since it answers all the questions I had from the first announcement, and it’s a rare chance to see some honest talk about the business end of a WotC product.
I thought the article was very informative and I do understand their concerns and why they had to do it. I wasn’t a collector of the DDM game, but I did play a few games with my friend’s warbands, and it was very fun. Despite lack of sanctioned play, I’m thinkin’ the DDM community is going to pick up DDM and keep it alive, much like old D&Ds have been.
Wyatt´s last post: Paizo Watch: The CP Machine Keeps On Truckin’
I do agree that it’s been a while since WoTC had decided to have a more sincere talk with their customers and it’s nice to see that the miniature skirmish players are getting this sort of treatment to the end of another game.
Questing GM´s last post: Word of Wizards – Excerpts: Brown Dragon
Well it’s about time I say. I don’t know _anyone_ who played D&D skirmish seriously, and with other more established minis games out there (and better one’s i’m sure), I think the product was a poor-bandwagon decision from the get-go. The quality of them was pretty bad too.
However, I love playing D&D and would GLADLY buy theme packs so you know…I could actually field a bunch of undead/goblins/orcs/gnolls or whatever. But buying random packs with no chance of getting the pieces needed to run a purchased module? No thanks.
So while they’ll lose some customers from the pure skirmish days (obviously), I think at this point they have a a lot more to gain selling to people like me who want themed minis for my D&D campaigns and modules. (and don’t have time to paint them all).
I’ll gladly pay a bit extra for better quality and getting nice minis that I can actually use.
I almost had a play group going when I left for the great empty West. I was a little sad that I had to leave a group of players that I had turned onto a game, but now I’m kinda relieved that I didn’t push them all the way Into it.
I played at a few tourneys in Salt Lake, but that’s about it. And I think that this new method of distribution will be better for the RPG. Only about 30 percent of the randomized minis were things that I’d typically use in a campaign.