Looking at the numbers villians has been selling about 5-6 more times as broken city. I wonder what people are seeing that concerns them with sentinel tactics that they are not purchasing yet. Its a great game the biggest issue I have been having is finding other humans to play it half the time.
My opioion is with how much there is to order there are a lot of people who ordered villians first and once they get paid they will order the tactics stuff.
Sotm is an older and better known product than tactics. That’s probably a factor as well.
Tactics Is also more expensive, $40 dollers, and then if you want minutures than another $30-$90 for each set.
I am consedering Buying Tactics now that I have watched the Twitch feed from Pax South
But it is an investment of $130 per set if you want the painted mintures
Compared to $40 a set for SOTM
And then you have the new maps at $20 a pop
It is alot of money
It looks cool, and would be great to play. but your talking a sizeable investment to get all the sets up to $500
Just note that while the minis (especially the painted ones) are awesome as hell, you really don't need them to make the most out of A Tactics purchas. The game is a huge favorite in my game groups and I don't have minis. It would be a shame for folks to pass on tactics just because they can't get minis. Missing out big time.
That is good to know, I was not sure how well it played without them. So once I get pay then I will have to order it then.
I will agree with you on the money issue. There is a lot of stuff. honestly I dont have the minis and dont plan too. I just use the tokens that come with the game. It works just fine either way so dont want to invest too much into it. The map packs right now were the biggest issue for me because 20 dollars for a map is a lot of money. However there is enough difference in each of the maps that it looks like they each should be fun.
My biggest issue is finding people to play with. my gaming group isnt that large right now plus time issues so we are lucky to get three people together right now. This game screams I want 4-5-6 characters on the board minimum. Especially in scenario mode. I am still getting it because I do set up and play againist myself in a play chess againist yourself format to just keep my brain going when not doing school.
A lot of people kickstarted Tactics because they love SotM. Tactics is very different than SotM, I assume they lost a lot of buyers of Tactics (over 2000 backers) because of that. Tactics is a great game, but doesn't have the accessability of SotM.
I'm a huge Tactics fan, I think it is a phenomenal game, and can't wait for playtesting to start for the new stuff. I understand why we are seeing the numbers difference though, and here are my thoughts:
1. I expect the tournaments to help get the game some publicity, but it is going to take a while to build its own name. If the tournaments do well as they hit bigger cons, and the demo's work as well as the SotM demos do, I expect it to gain ground and become a more widely supported product.
2. Another problem is the markdown many people are looking at online, Tactics hit a lot of discount websites and drastically lower prices, so a lot of players are going to wait for it. This isn't a kickstarter, and lack of initial purchasers won't cause this game to not be made, so why not wait and get it cheaper?
3. Shipping plays into that, and shipping for tactics is going to be worse than Villains, Villains offsets that with extra decks and 7 promo cards.
4. Tactics does not have an as popular and established bonus structure as SotM, so offsetting shipping with the bonus incentives isn't that big a thing. It is for Villains.
5. Broken City is more expensive. Some people are going to have to choose between them, and Villains is going to win out.
6. There are problems with Tactics that have not been worked out. We need some errata that is hopefully coming soon that will fix basic problems with several of the Scenarios.
I have passed on picking up Tactics to date. Mainly due to known issues with getting it to the table since it pretty much requires multiple players* and then will be competing with a lot of other games - including SotM.
* - Yes, I can probably solitaire it. But SotM itself works for that as well.
There's also the total lack of timeframe, it's still unclear what will come out first I want to order both but if tactics delays my getting villains they are certainly not going in the same order meaning I'm still waiting to put my preorder in
Completely concur. The first half dozen games or more that I played were with the tokens. They are pretty!
Have you gone back after playing with the minis?
I won't play with minis any game that would require mini's and tokens. That wrecks the whole effect of the minis.
I also don't want minis on a flat map, so I don't own any minis yet. Spiff's terrain is making it tempting though.
Sort of. When I only had the unpainted minis, I actually liked the tokens better.
We expected the Tactics stuff to sell more slowly because Tactics is still in the early stages of the product line, whereas SotM is a best-selling product line that's been out for nearly 4 years! Right now, things are lining up right around where I expected them to be, and we'll be doing a ton of cool Tactics stuff this year to promote that game.
One of the most awesome is the tournaments, which, if you haven't seen them, I definitely recommend checking them out at www.youtube.com/greaterthangames, and watching our next tournament live from PAX East at twitch.tv/greaterthangames!
In addition to looking awesome and being a ton of fun to run, those tournaments are like a superbowl commercial for Tactics - expensive and complicated, but incredibly effective! We actually wound up selling more Tactics than SotM at PAX South.
To add to this, I have 0 doubt that a few updates about the new Tactics games with info on characters and such would drive hype even more especially from fencers.
I doesn't surprise me that Tactics sold better at PAX. Once you get to try it out and see it in action you'll be hooked.
I’m definitely going to back for the complete package, color minis and all, by the end of the campaign, but I haven’t had time to build up funds for it yet. So there’s 1 more that’s not on there.
I can’t say it doesn’t SURPRISE me that it outsold Sentinels, just considering how well that sells, and how many different items there are for it TO sell – but I can definitely understand why it would. It’s a great, fun game, it expands on the world of Sentinels, and there are a lot of people who have everything Sentinels but haven’t tried out Tactics, so there’s a large market there.
Thanks for the recommendation of the tournament videos. I'm still waiting on my copy of Tactics because it won't ship until the add-on maps are done, so it's great to be able to get a sense of what the game is like to play. It's definitely pushing me towards pre-ordering Broken City and For Profit, even before I get to try the first game for myself.
I do have to say, though, I feel super-uncomfortable with some of the tournament line-ups. Baron Blade and Legacy being on the same team, or Legacy and Beacon being on opposite teams, is just something that shouldn't happen. When I see a member of the Freedom Five hitting "Paul's little girl," it's like something is wrong in the multiverse!
I can attest from first hand experience that the Tactics demo table at PAX South was always busy and everyone I demo'd for at least had a great time (and many of them went up to purchase the game). I'm really glad it sold that well as I saw a lot of folks buying SotM stuff too
You do get used to it pretty quickly. If not you'll probably prefer the scenarios, which are a lot of fun too.
And Beacon's a big girl now. 