I'm done!

I've been thinking long and hard about how to say this, and I was up late last night, unable to sleep trying to find a way of saying this without sounding like a). A child throwing toys out of my pram, b). A rage-quitter, c). A selfish-spoilt little bitch.

The end result? I failed to come up with a single way of not making this sound like any of the above. So if you find yourself disagreeing or raging at what I say, then that's fine, but I'm not going to apologise for my own emotions.

Anyway, on with the whine.

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After last night and this morning, I'm officially declaring myself out of the running in regards to Wyrd and where they are going with Malifaux.

I've seen where they are going, I've seen what they are doing and I want nothing to do with it or them.

So as you know I was told that Leviticus would not be at GenCon, I assumed that this was because the sculpts were not up to standard and that Wyrd didn't want to put out a sub-standard product.

I said at the time, speaking objectively that was a good move and what I wouldn't want would be for sub par sculpts being sent to the manufacturer and sold to Joe Public.

I have since found out: http://www.wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?45561-Leveticus-at-Gen-Con-2013 that my assumption was completely wrong. It turns out it has nothing to do with the sculpts and everything to do with the rules. This means that he's not even in the book.

Yup, it means that there are book 2 models (Von Schill, Ophelia) who are going to be in Book 1 of v2, there are whole new masters like the Brewmaster in book 1 of v2, but an original master (Levi) will not, and instead will be treated as Wave 2 alongside masters like The Dreamer and Kirai.

But what else do we know? We know that Tara is going to be there in Nightmare Edition form, now she is not going to be there sans stat cards. No she will be there with full rules.

Let me just reiterate that. Leviticus, a master that went through the Open Beta phase and a LOT of people were very happy with is not in Wave 1, but Tara, a master who did not go through the Open Beta phase, so has not had the mass play testing as the other wave 1 models, she will be there.

Seriously, WTF?

Now I have to get my tin-foil hat on, for me this stinks of more than just quality control, this reeks in fact of marketing, and poor marketing at that.

You see, removing Leviticus from the table leaves wave 1 at 4 masters per side (when you include Tara), is that a coincidence? Maybe.

If you look around the Internet at people's opinions to the snippets of art for Tara's NE Art the reactions are very interesting, unlike previous releases there appears to be to me a LOT more who are anti Tara's look. Sure there are some who seem to be goo-ing at the stuff, but so many more going "really? That's it?"

So keeping my hat on, I'm left thinking that Wyrd do not think they are going to get as many sales of their limited run Tara, and they are thinking that they can counter this by artificially boost Nightmare Edition sales by removing competition.

And yes Tara and Levi are competition for each other, both are Outcast Masters with Resurrectionist ties and both have 'monster' style minions.

It's funny almost, it seems that the tactic is already working, I've already seen one or two people saying the equivalent of "I was going to pick up Leviticus, but if I can't now I might as well get Tara". That's a person who was NOT going to buy Tara and was going to get Levi, but now their purchase has been funnelled in a different direction.

Coincidence?

Possibly/Probably.

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It also came to light yesterday that the released this week pack University of Transmortis is not shipping with v1.5 rules, instead they are only shipping with v2 rules.

Why is this a big deal? It's a big deal because we were told, we were promised that it would come with both rule sets.

It is of my opinion that when Justin & Mack made this pledge they knew that there were no v1.5 rules for these models. They knew this and they also knew that there was either no intention of there ever being 1.5 rules, or it would be very unlikely.

But despite this, they still said those rules would be there.

Again, why is this a reason for concern? Credibility.

When people are caught out loosing credibility in one area, then by default they start losing credibility in other areas.

I've never hidden away the fact that there are certain people who I have a personal issue with at Wyrd because of attitude and behaviour, but now I'm left wondering if ANY of the statements made by this person can be trusted? In short this has made me loose the little amount of respect I had for these people.

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Last but not least, Eric has essentially issued the equivalent of a cease and desist to the Malifaux Classic project. Before this was a project being spear headed by Bill "Nix" Anderson to try and push and organise a v1.5 Malifaux community.

This was an interesting idea and one I was behind, but Wyrd have made it clear that 'we' are not welcome doing this.

Eric has also mentioned that in a couple of weeks Wyrd will be making an announcement that relates to this sort of thing.

Right or wrong, it is my assumption that it will be their announcement that they are officially removing v1.5 from their support, that models and stat cards are being discontinued, and the forums will be v2 focused and v1.5 posts will not be welcome.

I hope I'm wrong, I hope I am wrong about all of this, but I don't think I am.

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So that's it.

Like I said earlier, I'm out!

I've tried to stay positive, I've tried to give Wyrd the benefit of the doubt every single time, and I'm tired of doing so.

So I'm throwing my toys put of the pram, but I'm also picking up those toys and taking them elsewhere. I don't know where and I don't know for how long.

I saw a post a while ago about how when changing editions players go through the many stages of the grieving process. If this is true then I've gone through them all and then bounced too and fro between anger and depression.

Now I'm feeling them all at once, and I just can't do this any more.

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If you're enjoying what you're doing, then that's great! More power to you and I wish you luck in future endeavours. But I'm out.

- Your friendly neighbourhood Doctor Loxley