Slitherine

azrael86 wrote:IIRC Santa hernandad nueva castilian has a quite convincing record against Aztec....

I take it you mean Tlaxcallan with Cortez commanding and a single Spanish BG to go with all the locals.

In FoG, late Medieval armies do really well against Aztecs that stand and fight in the open. My guys learnt not to do that and then we had nocte triste

My thoughts on the armies I'm considering are as follows -- please correct me if I'm offbase on any of the game-based assessments:

OLD/MIDDLE KINGDOM:

Advantages: famous army (they built the pyramids after all), army has a firm core of Superior troops (great weapon or Bow) that support each other well plus lots of filler, it would be easy to expand it into TWO different armies (OKE and Nubian)
Disadvantages: it's just NKE without the mounted

MOCHE:

Advantages: lots of Superior Heavy Weapons troops, the nobles were very impressive in appearance, as a people they were picturesquely cruel (a least by our standards)
Disadvantages: very one dimensional army


YAYOI JAPANESE:

Advantages: people constantly ask for them, relatively few troop types make it economical to make
Disadvantages: pants army?

TIMUCUAN:

Advantages: As advised, a good army as Blood and Gold goes, the soldiers were impressive in appearance, simple troop mix means I can probably get away with 10 poses (three spoon, three spear, three archers with killer arrows, one commander) making the army very economical to produce
Disadvantages: total obscurity and a lack of massed battle history

Plus two mounted armies I'm squeeking in:

WALLACHIAN:

Advantages: Dracula, naturally! Plus the figures could be made with a flamboyant, slightly horror oriented look which gamers might find inspiring (troops carrying torches for "The Night of Terror," etc.)
Disadvantages: Seems a rather pants army for a mixed arms force


CHRISTIAN NUBIAN:

Advantages: successful in multiple game systems, a good mix of troop types, but no one makes models exactly for them
Disadvantages: many people probably already have "make do" figurines, a bit obscure historically, complex troop mixture means high production overhead (lots of sculpts, lots of moulds to be made)

OLD/MIDDLE KINGDOM: Dull, why not have NKE?


YAYOI JAPANESE: worth trying.

TIMUCUAN: level of interest in B&G beyond the existing aztec and Inca (plus maybe Mayan) is hard to judge

WALLACHIAN: Surely this is a pretty crowded market already?

CHRISTIAN NUBIAN: stand to be corrected, but I don't believe that players pick CN because they love the period.

azrael86 wrote:CHRISTIAN NUBIAN: stand to be corrected, but I don't believe that players pick CN because they love the period.

It covers a long period, but I don't think you'll be corrected.

azrael86 wrote:WALLACHIAN: Surely this is a pretty crowded market already?

Perhaps, but not the way I am considering making them!

Talking of inventive cruelty, the Timucuans were apparently fond of seeing how far an arrow would go up the rear end of their defeated foes. Could make an interesting casualty/disrupted marker. Particularly nasty given their arrows are apparently long and solid enough to qualify as Light spear! I believe they also attached severed body parts to poles around their homes, theres the camp done.

So 3 with spoon, 3 with spear, 3 with bow, general, Face down "disrupted" marker and Cadaver poles.

Its a range that almost designs itself!

Martin

I'd say the Moche and Timucuan would be obscure armies. They're both decent, so some players would go for them. The other reality is that few people make figures for B+G armies so, perhaps, people would re-use the figures for other armies too. Yayoi is kind of similar as well, though perhaps the figures are less re-useable. I'd say the issue with all of these is whether you'll sell enough to cover costs.

Wallachians sound a fun army and reasonably competitive.

Christian Nubian should sell well. Yes, lot's of people have 'make do' figures but might replace and quite a few people people would be looking to build a CN army based on their success.

grahambriggs wrote:
Wallachians sound a fun army and reasonably competitive.

Christian Nubian should sell well. Yes, lot's of people have 'make do' figures but might replace and quite a few people people would be looking to build a CN army based on their success.

Wallachian is one of those armies that looks good but doesn't deliver, a bit like Bactrian Greek. It has all the right bits, but - probably because it is both fiddly and expensive, in the end it struggles. Obviously it doesn't help that in period it has to handle Hungarian, Ottomann, Lithuanian etc - all of which are quite similar but in some way better.

Somebody already does a vlad set I think.

grahambriggs wrote:I'd say the Moche and Timucuan would be obscure armies. They're both decent, so some players would go for them. The other reality is that few people make figures for B+G armies so, perhaps, people would re-use the figures for other armies too. Yayoi is kind of similar as well, though perhaps the figures are less re-useable. I'd say the issue with all of these is whether you'll sell enough to cover costs.

Wallachians sound a fun army and reasonably competitive.

Christian Nubian should sell well. Yes, lot's of people have 'make do' figures but might replace and quite a few people people would be looking to build a CN army based on their success.

Instead you could look at providing for ranges where there is only one pose available.
There is not a lot of mongol, assyrian, mameluke, russian superior armoured cavalry that is armed firing a bow. Oupost have a good dynamic bow shooting ghilman but its only one pose. Essex do a single pose for Bzaninte and assyrian superior/elite bow. I have mine based for DBM so mostly with lance. in Fog they are lance to front and bow to rear and generally Fog requires more troops. If there were a range of dynamic poses I'd 'Fogify' my thematics and assyrians with whole bases of bow armed troops if they existed in more than one pose.

There was a huge opportunity for this with amulgvars but eureka have that covered already now and its an excellent range so its hard to top. Rather than looking for entire armies that are not covered it might be more profitable and more widely recieved to flesh out existing high use armies with alternative poses.

Eg for a lpost mongol russian army almost the entire army is armoured bow aremed cavalary but there are not enough poses in ranges that mix well t odo an entire arm of them well.

expendablecinc wrote:

grahambriggs wrote:I'd say the Moche and Timucuan would be obscure armies. They're both decent, so some players would go for them. The other reality is that few people make figures for B+G armies so, perhaps, people would re-use the figures for other armies too. Yayoi is kind of similar as well, though perhaps the figures are less re-useable. I'd say the issue with all of these is whether you'll sell enough to cover costs.

Wallachians sound a fun army and reasonably competitive.

Christian Nubian should sell well. Yes, lot's of people have 'make do' figures but might replace and quite a few people people would be looking to build a CN army based on their success.

Instead you could look at providing for ranges where there is only one pose available.
There is not a lot of mongol, assyrian, mameluke, russian superior armoured cavalry that is armed firing a bow. Oupost have a good dynamic bow shooting ghilman but its only one pose. Essex do a single pose for Bzaninte and assyrian superior/elite bow. I have mine based for DBM so mostly with lance. in Fog they are lance to front and bow to rear and generally Fog requires more troops. If there were a range of dynamic poses I'd 'Fogify' my thematics and assyrians with whole bases of bow armed troops if they existed in more than one pose.

There was a huge opportunity for this with amulgvars but eureka have that covered already now and its an excellent range so its hard to top. Rather than looking for entire armies that are not covered it might be more profitable and more widely recieved to flesh out existing high use armies with alternative poses.

Eg for a lpost mongol russian army almost the entire army is armoured bow aremed cavalary but there are not enough poses in ranges that mix well t odo an entire arm of them well.

Seconded!!!


Madcam.

expendablecinc wrote: Instead you could look at providing for ranges where there is only one pose available.
There is not a lot of mongol, assyrian, mameluke, russian superior armoured cavalry that is armed firing a bow. Oupost have a good dynamic bow shooting ghilman but its only one pose. Essex do a single pose for Bzaninte and assyrian superior/elite bow.

Would it make much business sense to make a range of figures that just fills gaps in other peoples ranges.

You're not going to retire on those sales.

An alternative to Yayoi is Kofun Nara. A better army - I've seen it used a bit with the wrong figures!

grahambriggs wrote:An alternative to Yayoi is Kofun Nara. A better army - I've seen it used a bit with the wrong figures!

I believe Khurasan already does Kofun-Nara.

I would go for the Wallachians myself.

Khurasan does indeed produce Kofun-Nara. I have never seen a more elegant line, by anyone in any scale.

philqw78 wrote:Would it make much business sense to make a range of figures that just fills gaps in other peoples ranges.

You're not going to retire on those sales.

Well, you can't retire on any of this stuff!

But you're right, naturally I'm not going to invest thousands of dollars to make incomplete lines of models, in order to help competitors sell their models.

Yes Graham, I do make Kofun!

http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/ko ... anese.html

When are you going to sell THAT cat

khurasan_miniatures wrote:

philqw78 wrote:Would it make much business sense to make a range of figures that just fills gaps in other peoples ranges.

You're not going to retire on those sales.

Well, you can't retire on any of this stuff!

But you're right, naturally I'm not going to invest thousands of dollars to make incomplete lines of models, in order to help competitors sell their models.

Yes Graham, I do make Kofun!

http://khurasanminiatures.tripod.com/ko ... anese.html

So . . . which comes out first? KM-1706 and KM-1707, or the new infantry army?

The kofun mounted have been sculpted for months now. Just waiting to get them cast. That is the longest part of the process.

Anyway it's two different sculptors so not an either/or proposition.

philqw78 wrote:When are you going to sell THAT cat

Sorry Phil, it doesn't count as a pachyderm under any game system....

It might be worth thinking about the American Indian armies in a Rennaisance context as well. What (if any, I know almost nothing about the period) armies will be of interest when the American FOGR supplement comes out?