Any news of V2

[Jilu]

well V2 is dead born as i see it

[AlanCutner]

Not seeing much I like right now. Slitherine production finish has been dodgy from the start - on Fog-AM and Fog-N at least. Really not sure where they're going now. I don't want to go to DBMM. Could be my last year of serious ancients play for a while.

I've got very discouraged with wargames scene over the last few months.

[david53]

Not seeing much I like right now. Slitherine production finish has been dodgy from the start - on Fog-AM and Fog-N at least. Really not sure where they're going now. I don't want to go to DBMM. Could be my last year of serious ancients play for a while.

I've got very discouraged with wargames scene over the last few months.

Thank god there still FOG R and FOG N in hard copy.

[philqw78]

. Slitherine production finish has been dodgy from the start - on Fog-AM and Fog-N at least.

Now you are making things up. DBM finish was dodgy, five crappy little books that were amended within a few weeks of release.

[AlanCutner]

Now you are making things up. DBM finish was dodgy, five crappy little books that were amended within a few weeks of release.

May be a personal view. But I found the rule books badly laid out, extremely poor index and requiring a high level of post-publish clarification/interpretation from the authors. The good points were that they looked pretty and that the authors were very willing to engage with their public.

[philqw78]

No Alan, the big thing was you could look at them. Unlike V2.

[babyshark]

well V2 is dead born as i see it

That may be jumping too far ahead. But there are definitely worried times ahead.

Marc

[zoltan]

I get the impression there is a warehouse somewhere with a massive stockpile of unsold v1 rules and list books. Now maybe a loss/write off may help with a company's overall tax position. But surely the aim is to shift as much of the paper as possible even if it means a discount?

At the same time there are some much needed rule changes.

In addition, there is a business need to replatform from paper to digital (echoes of Phil Barker from the past along the lines of 'High production values are uneconomic for toy soldier rules'.

Picking the new platform is relatively wasy (Slitherine has bet Apple against Android). Managing the transition harder (a poor transition will undermine the new platform).

What to do?

Try and shift as much of the v1 paper through giving a v2 QRS and a fire sale price for a 6 month period. Thereafter v2 is digital only. I think folks with existing v1 rule books would pay a tenner to get a second rulebook plus the v2 changes QRS. that keeps them in the rule set for a reasonable period. Thereafter they make the choice of going digital (or not).

[philqw78]

Try and shift as much of the v1 paper through giving a v2 QRS and a fire sale price for a 6 month period. Thereafter v2 is digital only. I think folks with existing v1 rule books would pay a tenner to get a second rulebook plus the v2 changes QRS. that keeps them in the rule set for a reasonable period. Thereafter they make the choice of going digital (or not).

What pay a tenner for a rulebook I have already got! Oh no, you're saying I will get a QRS (but not the amendments) with my old rule book. Well thats really worth my tenner, plus postage. Even better value if you live in NZ.

[zoltan]

Try and shift as much of the v1 paper through giving a v2 QRS and a fire sale price for a 6 month period. Thereafter v2 is digital only. I think folks with existing v1 rule books would pay a tenner to get a second rulebook plus the v2 changes QRS. that keeps them in the rule set for a reasonable period. Thereafter they make the choice of going digital (or not).

What pay a tenner for a rulebook I have already got! Oh no, you're saying I will get a QRS (but not the amendments) with my old rule book. Well thats really worth my tenner, plus postage. Even better value if you live in NZ.

Don't be argumentative! QRS amendment sheet. Go on be generous, its nearly Christmas and Slitherine needs your money. You can write the amendments into your pristine new book (think of the production values) and hand your old v1 book onto the queue of newbs to whet their appetite (at no cost).

[bahdahbum]

FOGAM is slowly dying

[Strategos69]

FOGAM is slowly dying

It is because of a lack of cellulose

[Lycanthropic]

I am thoroughly looking forward to Fog2. It is about time!
Congrats for stepping out of the hexagon eighties and into the year 2012. Electronic version? Awesome!
Will the electronic version have a "speed-play" handbook version? Or will I have to cut and paste one?

[philqw78]

At the moment neither Dutch. You would have to get the PC version and screen shot it. Sad really. Hopefully they will see sense.

[Strategos69]

Hopefully they will see sense.

I hope so too, but they have already got mad most of players. Taking that back would not be that easy. I think that there has not been a bigger consensus through the whole V2 process than with the idea that people want a physical book.

[Jilu]

Hopefully they will see sense.

I hope so too, but they have already got most of players mad. Taking that back would not be that easy. I think that there has not been a bigger consensus through the whole V2 process than with the idea that people want a physical book.

oh the consensus was...new V2 WITH a new rule book...even WITH new army lists...
thing is i think they printed to many of both for version 1and armylists and will be with a pile of junk...
if instead of selling at big discounts on Amazon, had they sold these through the regular wargames channels they would have made a bigger profit.

all in all i think FOG was a great idea, a superb product but the marketing and selling strategy was just ....b*ll*cks.

never mind

takes care all of you ....if we have no printed version ...i say bye bye to this community i loved, and will support any other ruleset that is published in 2013 or later that will bring international players together.

this is my last message about this big mistake.

[Robert241167]

Jilu, have you not seen the other thread where JDM confirms they are looking at printed options?

Don't go just yet !!

Rob

[Jilu]

Jilu, have you not seen the other thread where JDM confirms they are looking at printed options?

Don't go just yet !!

Rob

where?

[Jilu]

Hi All
Firstly I would just like to thank you all for the feedback and comments on the forum, we do listen and its entirely appropriate to comment here, it’s what the forum is for, but I have to say there is a significant amount of misinformation, assumptions, rumor and incorrect comments about our intentions and the various platforms that we have been working on to upgrade the Tabletop FOG experience. So I will try and explain

Firstly, we are committed to FOG Tabletop rules, if this were not our intention we would simply announce as Games Workshop have done that they no longer support ancient wargames rules and they will no longer sell these. It’s as easy as that.

It’s worth revisiting what causes all of this and why we feel change in the process is necessary. We have listened to the frequent and numerous suggestions for rules changes and upgrades, we are pretty experienced in Tabletop wargaming so this is no surprise to us. No Rule set has ever been tested to the level of FOG ancients, yet after 3+ years of playing there is now a vast treasure trove of further improvements that can be made. It’s the very nature of Tabletop gaming and we more than most understand this. The dilemma is therefore not how to kill off FOG, but how to support it and we are talking the economics of Tabletop not video games here, so we have to be realistic. In the last analysis and despite our love of Tabletop this is our business.

When we looked at how we might best support the rules going forwards it became apparent that the traditional paper book method works really well for an initial release and we are fully committed to this, as I think is demonstrated by the launch of our new Napoleonic rule set, but how to support these rules going forwards is the big challenge. No one else has managed to solve this issue and remember our motivation is not connected to selling miniatures. For us this is a standalone product, so the economics have to be realistic. Warehousing, Printing, distribution and retail all add cost and so far as traditional book publishing goes you don’t need me to comment on the transitions that are taking place there. It’s hard enough to find outlets to sell the original books these days and wargames rules depend on iterations to survive, so a second version of the same product is for some hard to understand or sell.

So when agonizing over how best to support our “baby” we looked at a number of platforms and please bear in mind that each platform (e.g. ipad) has to be paid for and coded from scratch and then supported going forwards. Now if we were dealing with “Call of Duty” the economics of multiple platforms makes sense but we are not, so choices have to be made and I have to say that the touch screen, scrolling and indexing capabilities of the ipad are really suited to supporting players during games. The ability to instantly find a topic is second to none and enhances the whole game playing experience, but at present you only have my word for that and I fully understand the jury is still out. We also decided to add PC and MAC to the list of supported platforms as just about everyone on the planet now has access to these. So when one considers the cost of an army and the years of reuse in both an army and a rules set, is a potential one of cost to enhance the hours spent gaming really such a negative factor?

So where are we now? At present we are waiting on Apple approval to launch the ipad, normally no more than a couple of weeks. PC and MAC should also be ready by that time and all will be released simultaneously; at least that is our current plan.

However, we have also listened to what you have said and we are now investigating as quickly as we can a method of providing access to a “paper” version as well. We are committed to finding a solution to this and there are various alternatives that we are looking into to assess cost and time scales. We will advise further on this when we have the various responses to hand, but it is likely this will follow the release of the original platforms.

So in the last analysis the success or otherwise of all this is not just dependent on us, it needs your continuing support, but we do recognize that if we can’t deliver a quality wargames experience in our very specialist niche area then you will not continue to support the Rules.

Best Wishes
JDM

[domblas]

Hi all,

Would you please also give us details of V2 in french. If you stick to english version, you will touch half the french player you could touch with a translated version. If u translate it, please, do it correctly. The V1 in french had some flaws and ununderstandable sentences.
I still didn't see the price i will have to pay to have FOG V2 on my table top.
Regards