These boots are made for hiking

Well, the latest GW price sheets are out and there are some corkers on the spreadsheets. A lot of the rises are what one might refer to as incremental. Some would even say reasonable. But check out the hikes on Razorbacks and the Space Marine Battleforce and tell me that's not GW milking the old cash cow a little too much...

Any way, all this makes me very glad I bought a Cryx army from Privater Press last night. I've no idea if half the units are any good, but the worst case scenario is I end up ebaying the surplus units once I get to grips with the game.

I also enlisted as a supporter of Studio McVey's Kickstarter campaign and bought a copy of Sedition Wars. Well, I will have bought a copy whenever they actually cast and box the thing. (Still not happy about paying a UK studio to ship me a game from the States though...)

I did, however, decide against the Mantic Kickstarter though. As much as I want to support UK studios, and promote diversity in the industry in general, I really am unlikely to ever play the game or paint all the miniatures they would send me. Plus there's my experience at Salute, where people where happy to push me towards the sales stand, but not exactly champing at the bit to show me how to actually play the game.

There's one other thing about Mantic that worries me too. For all their talk about innovation, my read of the rules for Warpath, Mantic's sci-fi game, is that it's basically a simple version of 5th edition 40k. Same turn sequence, same rolls to hit and wound. The only difference seemed to be the absence of armour saves. The factions in both Warpath and Kings of War are recycled from GW's games too. So... is Mantic's mission statement basically to make the same games as GW - only cheaper?

Given the massive market share GW has, it's perhaps not the worst business model. It's just not - inspiring. Plus given that 6th edition 40k is just around the corner, isn't Mantic at risk of looking even less inventive and agile, selling a copy of an old game the market leader doesn't even make any more? But then again, Warpath isn't even officially released yet so perhaps the finished product really will be an innovative and novel take on tabletop sci-fi.