Battle Cards Supplement

[Brummbär]

Got my notification this morning that the battle cards supplement is out - congrats!!!

One question: why does the PDF have 24 cards and the card deck 31?
Are there any cards in the deck which are not in the PDF version or are there just multiple versions of dome cards?

Thanks!

[AlexiusBasileus]

The printed deck includes multiples of some cards (like Hold The Line) where armies can take more than one of the card to support play on the table. The PDF contains the unique cards.

[Brummbär]

Thanks for the clarification!

[Brummbär]

Purchased, downloaded and quite disappointed...

I thought that the digital version also includes the digital cards so that I can print out a complete set.
Seems not to be the case - for me personally 20$ for this seems to be a bit too much.
Especially if I compare that to the price for the complete Triumph!-rulebook.

First time that I am really feeling bad after purchasing something for my prefered set of rules.

[David Schlanger]

Purchased, downloaded and quite disappointed...

Sorry that you feel that way. I know we do not want customers and fans of the game to feel disappointed.

However, I firmly believe that the quality of the game and the products we have created for it are top notch, and are well worth the price.

DS

[Brummbär]

I would have been absolutely ok with the price if the cards would have been included (digital version).
And yes: the products are super and I like the system a lot, but in this case I feel like something is missing...

[David Kuijt]

Seems not to be the case - for me personally 20$ for this seems to be a bit too much.
Especially if I compare that to the price for the complete Triumph!-rulebook.

Hm.

We're happy to increase the price of our rulebook if that makes you feel better.

Otherwise, I'd suggest you get over it. $20 won't buy you a single resin hero figure from GW, for example. It won't buy you a movie ticket these days. It won't buy you dinner for two at McDonalds. I teach college (Computer Science and Engineering) -- one of my class textbooks is $342 new; $280 if you buy it second-hand.

For the Battle Card book WGC got an artist to do art for 24 cards, based on historical models and images, and that process took several years. We had to pay her (and she did good work, we are very happy with it). If we were interested in making money on this Battle Card books, we would have priced it at $40 or more. As another measure -- I've put something more than 6000 hours of work into the army lists on Meshwesh over the last six or eight years. We are asking you for what, to pay me back for my effort? If you can't stand $20 for the battle card book, I really don't have much sympathy. My attitude is that nothing in wargaming is as inexpensive as Triumph, comparing apples to apples. Totally aside from the quality of the product.

[Brummbär]

Got it!

All I wanted to tell you was that it would have been nice if the cards (which are included in the book) would have been arranged in a way that it would be possible to print them out and use them on the gaming table as you have done in a great way with the terrain cards in the main rulebook. Nothing more. That would have made it for me into a perfect product.
You are all doing a great job with the system and I really appreciate this.

No sarcasm needed to make your point!
Maybe there is also a kind of "language misinpretation" here, as I am not a native english-speaker/ or writer in this case...
Sorry if my criticism was too harsh!

[David Kuijt]

Got it!

All I wanted to tell you was that it would have been nice if the cards (which are included in the book) would have been arranged in a way that it would be possible to print them out and use them on the gaming table as you have done in a great way with the terrain cards in the main rulebook. Nothing more. That would have made it for me into a perfect product.

We discussed that possibility, and decided that it would add another 15 pages to the document (31 cards, counting duplicates) without really adding much other than visual appeal -- the rule-snippet that fits on the card is necessarily simplified, so in 1/4 of the cases has to make a reference back to the rules anyway. Physically printing the cards yourself onto card stock was going to be expensive and difficult. And it would have delayed the BC rules another three months (our editor/format guru has other projects he works on, he isn't a WGC employee). So we decided not to do it. Like all cost/benefit analysis choices, other people might have chosen differently.

You are all doing a great job with the system and I really appreciate this.

No sarcasm needed to make your point!

It was more grumpy than sarcasm, but it's widely known that my communication skills are not well-suited to customer service

Maybe there is also a kind of "language misinpretation" here, as I am not a native english-speaker/ or writer in this case...
Sorry if my criticism was too harsh!

No, it's more that it triggered a pre-loaded response that I've given (out loud, or sometimes muttered under my breath) many times. Historical gamers are notoriously tightwads -- six months or so ago WGC gave a Triumph demo at a gaming convention where Age of Sigmar, WH40K, and other similar GW systems featured prominently. There were about 70 tables of people playing AoS who had invested maybe $3000 in the figures for their armies. EACH. We sold a bunch of rules sets, so it would count as a success, but it was really frustrating to look at all those people playing a crap system (IMNSHO) and then to go to an historical gaming convention and have people bitching about paying $30 for our rulebook. What historical gamers really want is to pay the same $4 or $6 that they paid for a cheap mimeograph 12-page rulebook in 1984, but they want to get a 60page book with full-color and super high quality. It makes me tired.

[David Kuijt]

No sarcasm needed to make your point!

Ooo, I spotted the sarcasm-appearance part of my post -- where I said "we're happy to increase the cost of the rulebook if it makes you feel better."

That was sarcasm, but it was also not -- we've been talking about what pricepoint to set the Fantasy Triumph rulebook (when it comes out), and what pricepoint to set the Grand Triumph rules (too small to be a book), and what pricepoint to set the Campaign Book in the future -- and so one of the things we recently talked about was increasing the cost of the current main rulebook. So it wasn't completely sarcasm. But we aren't going to be increasing the main rulebook cost any time in the next few years, so if you want to buy a few more copies without selling your house, you still have lots of time to do that.