AT-43: The Bittersweet Tang of Going-Out-of-Business Sales

[The Other Dave]

So you all probably heard that Rackham went under. A fun game with great minis, sunk by terrible terrible distribution.

What that means is that a few companies are offering lots of AT-43 stuff on the cheap. Both Miniatures Market and Fantasy Flight Games are having big old clear-the-shelves sales, at a deep enough discount that even with the ridiculous shipping both places charge for international orders you can pick up a bunch of stuff for a pretty reasonable price. (The FFG site says they can't ship Rackham outside of North America, but the internet rumormill indicates that, with Rackham gone, so is that agreement.)

So all you folks who want some cool toys to proxy in 40K, or have always had a vague idea of picking up some minis and seeing what AT-43 was about, now is the time!

[Spevna]

Cheers for the heads up mate.

[Admiral-Badruck]

Got most of what I wanted... I really need a to get some more money... to get a few more ... Karmans

[Konrad]

News to me. Just goes to show how hard it is to compete with GW. Even with gorgeous pre-painted miniatures, simple rules, rich background and lavish illustration, they still could not make it in the long term. Though, on second though, how long was Rackham in business? 10 years or so?
How was the distribution terrible?

[The Other Dave]

News to me. Just goes to show how hard it is to compete with GW. Even with gorgeous pre-painted miniatures, simple rules, rich background and lavish illustration, they still could not make it in the long term. Though, on second though, how long was Rackham in business? 10 years or so?
How was the distribution terrible?

They were in business since, oh, the late 90's, I guess, but the move to pre-painted plastics happened in 2006 or so.

They had huge problems with distribution, mostly because of underestimating the trouble involved with producing the models in China and selling them from France. It was simply really difficult to get miniatures once an initial run ran out, since there was such a long turnaround time between Rackham learning that there was demand for a given unit, sending the order to China to produce more, producing them, and shipping them back to France and then to distributors around the world, dealing with customs on the way. (It seems, actually, that they were sort of hoisted on their own petard, as it were - they had a lot more demand than they thought they would right from launch, and never really recovered from the backlog.) Customs and production delays happened regularly, sometimes holding things up for 4 or 5 months, which made it hard for people pushing the game to get folks interested. In the past year or so they started getting back on track with the army boxes and so on, but it was apparently too little too late.

I think they could have done really well if they'd just done a better job of getting the models out to the stores. Pre-painted plastics is an underdeveloped niche, and there seems to be a lot of interest in it - not to mention that it is, at heart, a pretty well-designed game.

Ah well. I still have my minis, and more than enough of each of my 4 armies to do plenty of gaming.

[Admiral-Badruck]

I cant wait until my models get here... I would like a game of AT-43... how would you feel if I proxyed Battle suits for Karmans...haha this is going to make peoples heads explode

[The Other Dave]

I cant wait until my models get here... I would like a game of AT-43... how would you feel if I proxyed Battle suits for Karmans...haha this is going to make peoples heads explode

Heh. I'm sure I have more than enough to boost you up to whatever points value you want to try playing. Heck, I think I have about 4000 points of Karmans before my King Mammoth arrives.

I'm also very doki doki. I've got about $100 from each of Miniatures Market and FFG in the mail.

[Admiral-Badruck]

so that is who has been buying up the stuff..

[Primarch]

I cant wait until my models get here... I would like a game of AT-43... how would you feel if I proxyed Battle suits for Karmans...haha this is going to make peoples heads explode

Heh. I'm sure I have more than enough to boost you up to whatever points value you want to try playing. Heck, I think I have about 4000 points of Karmans before my King Mammoth arrives.

I'm also very doki doki. I've got about $100 from each of Miniatures Market and FFG in the mail.

Planning to resell it on ebay or are you going to keep it all for yourself in a secret hoard?

[The Other Dave]

Planning to resell it on ebay or are you going to keep it all for yourself in a secret hoard?

Keepin' it. Hoping to play as much as possible, of course, but also realizing that trying to drum up interest in a dead game might be tough, heh.