AT43 Addict

The post over at tabletop gaming news sparked a small firestorm and after the dust settled there was a lot of valuable feedback. There were a few recurring themes that players kept returning to. Most of them revolve around releasing in a timely fashion and communicating with the public. Here are a few excerpts to illustrate the point.

Grant said.

The following would help rejuvenate the game for me:

• Updated website that is actually kept up to date
• A steady flow of new releases (the Cog previews have been around how long?)
• Consistent paint schemes, i.e., no new camo schemes on reprints
• Regular CHO in PDF format
• More sensible packaging of the unit and attachment boxes (this is happening, albeit slowly)
• Frostbite rules available separately from the campaign box
• Some sort of organised play

neorage said

• Keep the products available. Every time a customer can not buy his intended product should be considered as permanently lost revenue
• Keep the paint schemes. In a prepainted game the models coloring must keep the same look and feel over time.
• Quickly add some “bombs” to the product line. If some of the very cool looking tanks were introduced, this might turn the flood.

PanzerKraken

I think part of the problem is that they seem to be taking approach that they can do all the communication of the game to the public through the CHO, when it’s just newsletter those subscribe to will get. It doesn’t really get out the information to the public unless someone specifically takes the info out to show to the public as TGN sometimes does. Basically they are too bottled up. Like I mentioned above, will Rackham even be showing up to Gencon? Tournaments? Organized play?

veritas

Rackham needs to change their packaging. I refuse to order anything else until the packaging becomes sensibly sized. I live in Japan so a LOT of my minis come from overseas orders. Even a SMALL order of AT-43 or C:AoR minis comes in a box that looks like I’m buying an office chair.

a_thousand_hats

I think, as others have mentioned, Rackham need to be more proactive on the Press Release and public relations side of the business.

gavroche

I would buy more AT-43 miniatures if:

they were a bit cheaper
there were more releases
it was available at my local shop

doc_savage

I think they need to do a few things.
1 – regular releases on time.
2 – Support smaller army games – Tactics is not enough; I want to be able to play with about 20-30 figures per side and not have to jump through hoops to field an army. If I buy a unit box I should be able to field those guys.
3 – Vehicles.

Lots of good feedback and the takeaway is really that rackham needs to better communicate with their player base. Even if it is a blog update every couple of days so that people see that there is someone home. CHO is good, but it cannot be the only line of communication. People have to sign up to get it and new people aren’t really going to be able to do that, especially if the signup link looks like it could just be a page that was put up accidentally.

Is there anything you think Rackham can do better that isn’t covered? If so what is it?

This entry was posted on Friday, February 20th, 2009 at 1:34 pm and is filed under Articles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.