WizKids - A new renaissance?

I must confess I don't keep up on the news regarding WizKids. They fell off of my radar a decade ago when they went under prior to being revived by NECA.

But after seeing their Deep Cuts unpainted line, I was shocked. Quality sculpts in a non blind buy purchase that is quite reasonable. The complete opposite of what they are known for. For someone who used to buy Mechwarrior and some other Clix, this is a really big deal.
Then I hear that they are producing models for Magic: the Gathering later this year, and my heart skipped a beat. Because I can still add content to my Arena of the Planeswalkers game for items that aren't simply Grizzly bears or other generic tropes. This is a seriously good thing for the game, even if they aren't being produced specifically for that game. just like using Heroclix figs for Heroscape content. When I consider the quality of the Deep Cuts sculpts, then the quality for MTG figs goes up since the AotP figs were barely decent enough for the asking price of the games.

With these recent bits I have seen, I think Zev is making a decent run there.

But I do not buy any of their other games, Like the MageKnight euro, or Star Trek, or anything else they offer. So I remain largely ignorant.

So I ask all of you, many of whom seem to be pretty knowledgeable of the industry and everyone else who are just all around intelligent community of posters, what do you think of the state of Wizkids and their growing library of licenses?

Their board game lineup is very interesting and fairly risk-taking tbh. Stuff like Sidereal.

You should definitely keep your eyes out this Summer for their upcoming action extravaganza, SEAL Team Flix.

It happens to be designed by yours truly, and that vagabond, Pete Ruth.

In all seriousness, Pete and I are very excited about how it's coming along, and there is nothing like it out there right now. Full co-op, tactical dexterity with a counter-terrorism theme. Think Rainbow Six / Counter-Strike / Call of Duty.

hotseatgames wrote: You should definitely keep your eyes out this Summer for their upcoming action extravaganza, SEAL Team Flix.

It happens to be designed by yours truly, and that vagabond, Pete Ruth.

In all seriousness, Pete and I are very excited about how it's coming along, and there is nothing like it out there right now. Full co-op, tactical dexterity with a counter-terrorism theme. Think Rainbow Six / Counter-Strike / Call of Duty.

I’m going to wait for the Hogan’s Heroes retheme.

Gary Sax wrote: Their board game lineup is very interesting and fairly risk-taking tbh. Stuff like Sidereal.

This. Sidereal and Wartime were two of my favorite games from last year and both were pretty risky releases from a major publisher. Wartime looks to have flopped unfortunately (it seems like no one else besides me has played it), but Sidereal is still getting some love in discussions.

Geoff's take on The Expanse was also among my favorites of the year, but this wasn't quite as outside the norm of the industry. I still really dig it as a very concise take on Twilight Struggle/COIN.

Sagrilarus wrote:

hotseatgames wrote: You should definitely keep your eyes out this Summer for their upcoming action extravaganza, SEAL Team Flix.

It happens to be designed by yours truly, and that vagabond, Pete Ruth.

In all seriousness, Pete and I are very excited about how it's coming along, and there is nothing like it out there right now. Full co-op, tactical dexterity with a counter-terrorism theme. Think Rainbow Six / Counter-Strike / Call of Duty.

I’m going to wait for the Hogan’s Heroes retheme.

Escape from Colditz: DISCS OF FREEDOM

I hadn't looked at the Wizkids lineup in awhile, was interested to see they are moving to a non blind buy format for Dicemasters.

Maybe they can fix and complete Star Trek Fleet Captains now. Yeah, maybe not.

jpat wrote: Maybe they can fix and complete Star Trek Fleet Captains now. Yeah, maybe not.

The utterly shite components are what prevented me from buying it.

I haven't played Starfleet captains, so I have no clue.

I did see their unpainted ships though and compared them to the prepaints.

I wonder if that was their problem. Trying to imitate the success of x-wing using a very poor paint sweat house by comparison.

The unpainted models are pretty damned nice. Or maybe I am thinking of attack wing?

Isn't WK doing Old World era GW boardgames now? I thought I heard something about a Troll Slayer boardgame or something?

Fleet Captains had unpainted models. They were the fucking sticky click models, which I hate with a passion. Plus they were wedged very tight into the plastic insert and had to be pried out.
Plus for the space tiles they didn't even use cardboard, but really thin cardstock that slides around too easily.

Attack Wing has pre paints, but they pale in comparison to the paint jobs on X-Wing and Armada. Its pretty bad.

Msample wrote:

Attack Wing has pre paints, but they pale in comparison to the paint jobs on X-Wing and Armada. Its pretty bad.

When I was tempted to buy a few to play with, I thought some were okay. They completely blew it with the intro package though. If there's a ship they needed to get right, it was the Enterprise. The one in the box was terrible, and the NCC-1701 wasn't much better.

Msample wrote:

jpat wrote: Maybe they can fix and complete Star Trek Fleet Captains now. Yeah, maybe not.

The utterly shite components are what prevented me from buying it.

They should re-release it as a kickstarter with premium models.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think of WizKids is "crappy components." I am not making this up.

People no longer buy games. They buy components. If they bought games then Cheapass would be selling stock options right now.

cranberries wrote: The first thing that comes to mind when I think of WizKids is "crappy components." I am not making this up.

.

This.

It kind of says a lot about whoever controls the Star Trek IP that they saw WizKids spewing out all those crappy pre paints for years and didn't yank the license, esp compared to what other companies like FFG do with Star Wars or GF9 did with Ascendancy.