V.2 the book version

[jdm]

Nearly right Tim, firstly we are using a commercial POD printer and effectively we need to order in minimum batches, to try and keep the price within any reasonable scale. this is almost 200 pages, a hardback book and in terms of quality we hope you will se no discernible difference. It's also been a bl***y mare to pull all of this together so we hope that you will enjoy the finished versions So effectively now we are here, we hope to be able to support the system in a much simpler way going forwards.
We will be announcing the final price shortly but I can confirm it will be comparable with version 1

Regards
JDM

[Polkovnik]

Now we now its all sorted and have a better idea when we will get stock, we are going to start taking pre-orders. We just need to set up the page. Hopefully this will be live this week.

Can you tell us how much it's going to cost us then ?

Edit - answered above (sort of).

[timmy1]

JD
We REALLY appreciate what you are going to on our behalf...

[IainMcNeil]

They are POD but in small print runs. The original rules were printed in their tens of thousands. To make it completely single item POD would be prohibitively expensive for something of this quality, so we have to print in batches of a few hundred to keep the price we charge comparable with version 1. Even this massively increases our costs but we are sucking up that expense. For a single item POD it would probably double the price we would have to charge and it would price us out of the market.

[AlanCutner]

With apologies to Slitherine....but thinking the unthinkable......are there sufficient changes to warrant buying a new book at similar cost to original? If a substantial portion of the rules are re-worded a purchase will be justified and I'll buy the book. If its basically just tweaking, and something I can pick up in 5min conversation then I don't see myself spending the money.

[marshalney2000]

Alan, as a Scot all I can say is "Who says the English are mean."
As Britcon and World Champion surely you will need the latest set.
John

[grahambriggs]

Assuming it's similar to the Beta trial, there will be:

- the same fundamental rule structure (e.g. POAs, impact, hand to hand, etc)
- significant numbers of changes to individual rule areas, some of which will interact. These will be a mix of changes to interactions (which you could call making it more historical or bug fixes - e.g. making elephants better at impact plus make losing impact phase alittle bit of a worse thing) and nixing of the bad game play bits of v1 (over manouvre, grit and air, benny hill)
- cleaning up of sloppy wording in the rules.

Of course, some people won't find that worth the price. Those of us with pushing 20,000 points of troops on the other hand might view it as a fraction of the cost of a tournament attendance or army.

[bahdahbum]

If at least we could pre-order them !

[spike]

If at least we could pre-order them !

Well I will pre-order as soon as the shop lets us get in.

Spike

[Vespasian28]

Of course, some people won't find that worth the price. Those of us with pushing 20,000 points of troops on the other hand might view it as a fraction of the cost of a tournament attendance or army.

Exactly.
The original rules were £25 so that works out at £6.25 per annum so far and how many pence per game and how many pence per hour of enjoyment? Well, not so sure about the enjoyment considering my die rolls

But anyway consider the cost of visiting Warfare last month for a few hours or going to see the latest James Bond picture and the cost in those terms is negligible and my wargaming budget in these times is pretty small but I will be getting V2. Or Santa will.

[jdm]

With apologies to Slitherine....but thinking the unthinkable......are there sufficient changes to warrant buying a new book at similar cost to original? If a substantial portion of the rules are re-worded a purchase will be justified and I'll buy the book. If its basically just tweaking, and something I can pick up in 5min conversation then I don't see myself spending the money.

sigh.... Why do your comments not surprise me

[philqw78]

Alan, as a Scot all I can say is "Who says the English are mean."

We forced him out. He's too dour and mean to be English. Just hope its not genetic though as he seems to have done a good job bringing his son up who appears untainted by Cutner evil.

[philqw78]

Somebody, not Alan, sent me this in reply. From outside of this forum but has some very good points and I thought it was worth sharing.

And of course, Slitherine's approach of announcing a digital-only version that none of their customers actually wanted or had asked for, waiting a few weeks in silence before bowing to the resulting shit-storm, then implementing the digital version very badly, and in a way which put their own obsession with excessive DRM control way ahead of usability, features or cross-platform availability such that the resulting product is objectively worse than a scan-to-pdf of the hard copy rules, not actually publishing any support or list of changes for owners of the previous edition, and then following all of this up with comments along the lines of "you should all be bloody grateful for what we are giving you" have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the fairly obvious and widespread lack of enthusiasm for V2.0 at all....

[shadowdragon]

Somebody, not Alan, sent me this in reply. From outside of this forum but has some very good points and I thought it was worth sharing.

And of course, Slitherine's approach of announcing a digital-only version that none of their customers actually wanted or had asked for, waiting a few weeks in silence before bowing to the resulting shit-storm, then implementing the digital version very badly, and in a way which put their own obsession with excessive DRM control way ahead of usability, features or cross-platform availability such that the resulting product is objectively worse than a scan-to-pdf of the hard copy rules, not actually publishing any support or list of changes for owners of the previous edition, and then following all of this up with comments along the lines of "you should all be bloody grateful for what we are giving you" have absolutely no impact whatsoever on the fairly obvious and widespread lack of enthusiasm for V2.0 at all....

It's all well and good to sling mud, but at least get the facts right:

"not actually publishing any support or list of changes for owners of the previous edition"

The announcement contained a list of changes with a more detailed list on the website, which you quoted on page 2 of the announcement thread.

viewtopic.php?f=20&t=35719

"waiting a few weeks in silence before bowing to the resulting shit-storm"

The announcement of an e-version was made 12 July. The announcement that Slitherine would look into options for a hard copy book version was made on 23 July (see above thread). That would be 11 days or taking weekends into account, 7 working days later. It's more than one week, but "weeks' stretches it a bit.

Hard to comment on statements that are a subjective evaluation of the product, other people's motivations or other people's words.

[philqw78]

It's all well and good to sling mud, but at least get the facts right:
........................
which you quoted on page 2 of the announcement
..............................
Hard to comment on statements that are a subjective evaluation of the product, other people's motivations or other people's words.

Exactly, they're not my facts but had some good points

[shadowdragon]

It's all well and good to sling mud, but at least get the facts right:
........................
which you quoted on page 2 of the announcement
..............................
Hard to comment on statements that are a subjective evaluation of the product, other people's motivations or other people's words.

Exactly, they're not my facts but had some good points

Sorry. To have my statement read correctly, it should have been read as "it's all well and good to sling mud, but [the author of the statement quoted should] at least get the facts right".

In my view there is a point about IP rights since it is also my view that we're a society that's becoming bound by excessive IP claims. Good for lawyers I guess. In a recent conversation someone mentioned that we confuse "trade secrets" from "intellectual property rights". Too true. Then there's the "gaming of the system". The Supreme Court of Canada recently chastised the Pfizer drug company about their viagra patent since their patent submission was far to vague. They were reminded that IP rights are a bargain between society and a creator of new knowledge.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/commenta ... le5172101/

I completely agree with the Courts on this principle.

[timmy1]

I can't vouch for Alan but I can honestly say that David is as nice an opponent as you could wish for to hand you your arse on a plate...

No I am not at all bitter about the two 20odd to not very much thrashings I took from David...

[timmy1]

If I were Slitherine I would have thrown up my hands and said 'sod you' for all the abuse they have received over this. Yes they handled it badly (VERY, VERY BADLY to be honest) initially but they seem to be trying to put it right. If there is no FoG:AM v2 in Santa's sleigh then it is time to lock them in a room with dave rubbish and the BHGS politburo, until then lets cut them some slack...

[marshalney2000]

I agree I think that some of the criticism is way over the top. If it was me I certainly would have given two fingers to many of the complainers. They are a bit like the parliamentary party in opposition who can slag off all they want without having to produce any ideas of their own. Many complainers ( and I am not referring to any individuals ) who complain the most are in my experience often those who could not arrange the proverbial piss up in a brewery themselves. Look at the similar vitriol that preceded Britcon this year but in my opinion that was in the end a well organised show which deserved a lot of praise. The continual carping of certain people has however resulted in the prime organiser stepping down from next year's show. With what result I am not yet sure.
As a war gamer friend of mine continually says when things get heavy "Look we are playing with bloody toy soldiers at the end of the day."

[philqw78]

I agree I think that some of the criticism is way over the top. If it was me I certainly would have given two fingers to many of the complainers.

Complaining about complainers. me'h.

Look at the similar vitriol that preceded Britcon this year but in my opinion that was in the end a well organised show which deserved a lot of praise. The continual carping of certain people has however resulted in the prime organiser stepping down from next year's show. With what result I am not yet sure.

Hammy or Nobby? Really. Please answer this if nothing else because I would like to know. However:

We are in a now world. the digital version is no better than a printed version. The printed version despite the promises, and consistent with the promises that it would not ever happen, has not materialised.
Perhaps people are a bit peeved after putting in so much effort. The beta forum had lots of input from gamers all over the world. V2 has arrived and ..................................queue tumbleweed