[TheAmishStig]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

Some, if not all, of the cards were made at a short-run print house.

The car minis were 3-D printed by a former employee. The car bases were laser-cut and -etched acrylic, done in-house.

The dashboards were also done in-house, with the basic shapes laser-cut and then fleshed out with very, very careful detail work using laser-printed sticker paper. (That was Sam. Sam is an out-of-this-world prototyper.)

I'm pretty sure the tokens were laser-printed stickers on cardstock, but they may have been printed directly to the cardstock.

Some of the dice are samples from our manufacturer; the rest were stickered blank dice.

That's a fascinating look behind the scenes...and is exactly the kind of thing I was in the middle of fawning about when I hit 'preview' to keep the session alive and saw a new reply on the stack.

"Sam is an out-of-this-world prototyper"...you can say that about four more times! The dice at the table I was playing on [closest to the 'autograph rules' stand-up] were stickered, it's what gave them away.

I stand by my statement: SJG had me fooled until it fessed up. The cars looked great [and the color-coding of decks/dashboards/acrylic is a nice touch...I hope that makes the final cut, but I won't be heartbroken if it doesn't as it's likely going to be murder on the production costs], and had I not been told everything else was prototypes/mock-ups, I never would have known.

Originally Posted by ColBosch

I edited this down a bit to these two statements, since I think they're most-relevant to what I'm trying to say here.

I also remember feeling outraged circa 2000. In fact, it was a personal message from Paul Sjardin - a longtime behind-the-scenes contributor to BattleTech - that snapped me out of it. This, eventually, led to me joining the tabletop development team about a decade later. But not everyone can have the benefit of such direct contact. One of the things I love about SJ Games is that the company's officers and authors are fully willing to get out there and give their side of the story, unvarnished and honest. If CWC's sales don't warrant further reprints (or, fingers crossed, new material), then Phil, Andrew, or even SJ will tell us so, likely with an apology.

Back to BT, I don't think Topps - at the time, actually Wizkids - ever made the direct statement that MWDA was a replacement for BattleTech. I believe the outrage stemmed from awkward early marketing. MechWarrior: Dark Age was originally named BattleTech: Phoenix Rising and billed as the future of the franchise; this ruffled not a few feathers. Then, because collectible miniatures games were the New Hotness, MWDA could be found at a lot of places that never carried BattleTech in the first place, leading to frustration both among fans and sellers. Add in your usual internet echo chambers, and you've got a misconception that's lasted almost two decades.

SJ Games has, I believe, done what they can to avoid the same problems with Car Wars. It's now on us, the old-school players, to act as "brand ambassadors." If we see people getting worked up over the new design, then we can pour water on the flames. Remind folks that Car Wars simply ran out of steam back in the 90s, and yet SJ Games kept the core game in print for years and years. They've even reprinted a huge number of the most-iconic games and supplements. If they bring up MWDA, show how the new game is different: no hidden stats, no randomized boosters, gameplay that tries to capture the essence of car vs. car combat while hiding a lot of the math.

Anyway, I think that's far more than my two cents. If you couldn't guess, I am a wee bit passionate about the topic.

Just a wee bit...the passion and the unique position of having been both outside-looking-in and inside-looking-out is what makes you such an invaluable resource at times like this. :)

I never had such a moment with BTclix...being left to flame out instead, feeling burned and withdrawing to play with what I had because I wasn't able to get more, before hitting the point of "let go, but remember" with the re-release as 'Classic Battletech' (which further drove home the impression that it was relegated to deep on the undercard, fair assessment or not). Only really gave it a chance when ClickyTech was already on its way out (having picked up some on clearance), and didn't really appreciate the nuances until about a year ago when I talked to whoever it was and he pulled a Drew, Andrew, or Steve and spilled his passion all over the place, talked about what they were trying to accomplish with various mechanics and things, which bits they considered so important they had to find a way to work them in and his frustrations with where the Clix engine fought them on it.

And agreed wholeheartedly...that I can come here, or the Facebook page, or into a KS comments section with a startled 'Uhh, guys?' and get an honest, book-laid-bare answer is one of the key reasons I respect the company as I do. That Drew, Julie, and Steve all had 'Oh, I know that name!' moments, that Drew took half an hour out of his day to talk shop about scenario creation, that they had to keep dragging Steve away from the Triplanetary table Desert Scribe set up because he kept slipping away to watch us play and tell stories, that Andrew felt comfortable enough to sign a pair of bookmarks for me the way he did, that Randy spilled his guts re: the development of CW6, and that every one of them treated lowly old me as a full-on peer really speaks to the kind of people SJG are. I should not have spent the $1600 to go to Fnordcon...but I don't regret a minute or a penny of it, won't forget it any time soon, and won't hesitate to do the math if they announce another one.

Here's one for you...was there any type of product shortage between when FASA spun down and when Fanpro was up to speed? It's not a time where I would've been watching the business close enough, but another thing that comes to mind with that whole mess was Sea the Source in Chambersburg, PA [not a FLGS, but an, erm, 'tobacco accessories' shop in the mall...it was an era and an area where gamers couldn't be picky about where they got their stuff] being unable to get anything but the clicky stuff...which was irritating because a friend had a couple books I really wanted. That would've been sometime in 2001 or Jan-May 2002, but I don't have a more exact date than that.

To circle back to Car Wars...I've been cautiously optimistic as far back as the 'two sweeping needles' dashboard, but after this past weekend the 'cautious' bit got thrown in the trash can. Not just from getting to play it, but also from talking to Randy and hearing how much soul he's put into it, how much care went into "It's not the same implementation, but we felt it wouldn't be Car Wars without [concept]", and just how often he circled back to "We want to work that in somehow, but for right now we need to get the foundation, the starter set, as bulletproof as possible" when asked where something missing got to. That statement last night might make it sound like I'm a detractor, but I meant what I said in another post...once CW6 shows up on my doorstep, I don't see CWC coming out of the box for anything but Nostalgia sessions at conventions...and that's largely because I don't want to snub the couple guys who had "Oh my god, I haven't played this in..." moments and actively seek me out at those events.

A clickytech style outrage is not what Car Wars needs...but it's something I'm afraid of because I can go searching through the forums to see how CW5 was received. At this point I'm convinced the biggest threat to CW6 isn't an over-saturated games market...it's guys who will refuse to give it a fair shake on grounds of being different. I don't want it to come to that, because I can picture at least one headline that reads "it's back and firing on all cylinders".

Eric Dow put it best when he, Magesmiley, and I were eating dinner Saturday: It's an easy comparison to X-wing because of the movement sticks, proprietary dice combat, etc...but to describe it as "X-wing with [...]" is unfair, as it's doing so much more in a way that's no less elegant than Fantasy Flight's space dogfighter.

Ok, now I'm no longer responding, I'm back to fawning...so I best shut up and go do something else for a while. I swear, I'm going to write and post an 'impressions' piece...when I settle down enough to be objective and not devolve into fawning fits like this. It's been 3 days and I'm still prone to it...