Prime war

So I am posting this here because I am currently not to thrilled about some info I received so hoping when gtg team gets back from gen con they can explain this in a bit more detail or possibly others. It looks like the way I understand it, sentinel tactics broken city and for profit has been canceled and instead they r doing something called prime war? Those that backed these products will get prime war instead? So what is prime war and how is this going to all work?

i am also disappointed I had to hear this thru the grapevine of people who went to gen con instead of a post explaining it all. I understand gen con season is busy time for everyone but a little more info about this change before the gen con announcement would have been nice for those who couldn't attend and are now scratching their heads on what's going on

I agree that some heads up would have been nice, but I volunteered for a friend who is a much smaller guy on the scene for Gencon. It was brutal to get everything together, shipped and thought thru, and we live in Ohio which is only a 3 hour drive and could fit all the games and booth set-up into a car or two.

Imagining what GtG was going thru, with their only slightly larger staff and the added weight of being a company with multiple successful games? I fully understand how a few balls are getting shaky in their juggling act.

chaosmancer I understand, however based off some conversations they only mentioned prime wars because someone asked about sentinel tactics so it sounds like a spur of the moment type thing. 

With  that being said I would love an official explanation on everything now that gen con is over

An official post is definitely on its way. Adam indicated as much at the Q&A panel.

On its way, like the game was being focused on, so next month sometime 

I'd rather they take the time to get the information down clearly in order to prevent a knee-jerk reaction.
As a plus to all of this, it's reminded me that I need to alter the address for the pre-order. I'm assuming that can be done through the 'Contact Us' section?

That would have been a good reason to not say anything on the Q&A panel except to refer questions to the upcoming announcement.

Summed up exactly why i am upset over all of this.

Prime War Update!

I suspected as much, curious to see how the new scenarios unfold

I'm excited that the tactics line of games is continuing.

I to am curious, though more about the rule changes than the scenarios truth be told. I didn't jump onto Tactics when it was first released - maybe this will tip me over the edge. Keen for more information when it is revealed.

I want to know the timeline for when this might come out so i can make an informed decision about a refund. Also are we going to have to buy an upgrade kit or anything to get orhinal flames of freedom to work with this product? Not too happy that they are not contacting the preorder people, but making the customer contact them for refund.

Given the size of the company and the amount of sales of this product, them personally contacting everyone who pre-ordered is completely unfeasable. That being said, it seems that the refund is pretty much automatic so long as you can prove you pre-ordered it off GtG.

Contact Craig through email. Your best bet at a personal answer from >G will be there and probably not on the forums

Good lord.  Why should the customer have to dig at GtG to get that basic level of information?  GtG has a list of everyone who pre-ordered, right?  They should have already sent a personal email to each of them spelling out the issue and offering a link to click if the person wants to cancel the pre-order, but giving them all the reasons why they'd be better off if they didn't.  Expecting your customers to beg you for the information they need to make an informed decision about your inability to deliver what you promised is bad.

Am not saying it's right or wrong Spiff, I'm just giving the reality of the situation at hand.

Of course.  I wasn't directing anything at you.

Will Agree with Godzilla on the timeline part. At least tell us what stage of production it is. Do the play testers have anything from this in hand yet? Also curious what was wrong with broken city and for profit that they had to scrap it and create a completely new expansion instead of just modifying it. Just kinda curious why the revamp couldn't be done with that expansion since I thought that was the point

Finally any any word of what is going on with the expansion that has to do with the villian that controls land? I remember Adam and Christopher designed it one day on stream and said it would be a mini expansion then silence. Never can remember it's name. 

Playtesters are working on the new tactics, mostly on the core mechanics and trying to refine and improve them.  It is important to remember that Flame of Freedom was new to everyone, and we know a lot more about the game then we did when it was released.

Broken City was going good, I really hope we nail this one and it does well enough that Broken City gets to be made, because while it wasn't finished by a long shot, some of the characters were fabulous.

The problem is this next set is going to be a re-launching of the franchise, and Broken City isn't a good place to relaunch from.  Just like Rook City, which is my favorite SotM expansion, wouldn't have been a great point to launch that game.  Prime War has more iconic characters, and much more overlap with the original base set of characters from SotM.  It is a much better flagship for the franchise than Broken City and For Profit, purely from theme and the faces on the box.

A lot of the revamping is for retail and drawing in new fans.  The SotM fanbase isn't going to latch on to tactics as a whole, the games are very different and appeal to a different style of gamer.  There will be a lot of cross-over, but not enough to sustain the game with that group.  They need to bring in new fans and players or the franchise will die.  That is the sad reality of where Tactics is right now.  This expansion is trying to draw in as many new players as possible, and inspire the players who didn't love tactics to give it another try.

We haven't heard about Akash'Bhuta yet, no clue if she is getting pushed back as well.  The focus is on the game system right now, Akash may have to wait until that is finished before she gets worked on.

The way it sounded to me, is that they weren't certain Broken City would be... for lack of a better term, flashy enough. A lot of the heroes in the set are powerless or have minor powers. Fixer, Expat, Chrono-Ranger, Setback, Becky Blast, Heartbreaker, Hippoacolapse (sp?), Chairman Pike

On the flip side, Prime Wars is going to have a lot of high powered heroes and flashy effects. Fanatic, Tempest, Argent Adept, Captain Cosmic, Sky Scraper, Apostate, The Vampire Blood Countess, The Ennead, Anumbis.

Wonder if I can get the team photo's in the post to compare them



One is defintely more action packed looking than the other. One would probably feel more superheroic than the other.

My understanding is there is supposed to be an upgrade kit made available (possibly free to current pre orders) to make core 1 compatable with core 2. Can anyone confirm?

That's the plan, yes! :)

So if we preordered both games and the figures. Is there going to be a prime war and a smaller expasion to make up for it? Im assuming the models with just be the new models anyway.

[quote=“Christopher”]

The Prime War core game will include the six members of the Prime Wardens (The Argent Adept, Captain Cosmic, Fanatic, Haka, Tempest, and Sky-Scraper!) facing off against their villainous foes, including Apostate and Blood Countess! The accompanying expansion will be the Rise of the Ennead, as the new bearers of the relics of Egyptian power have been drawn together by said relics, and must learn how to work together… before it’s too late

[/quote]

Ok thank you. Sorry i missed that when i was reading through. Where did he say that might i add?

No worries. Here to help!

On the announcement post on the front page currently 

https://greaterthangames.com/content/announcing-prime-war

Or click the blue “Christopher” in my post. (Which might not be there since I edited it in.)

You know one way that has been proven to increase board game sales is make a video game. And greater than games do know some people that could easily make sentinel tactics the video game and release it around the time of prime wars comes out... Depending on the time table for prime war which we don't know yet

I don't know about "easily."  Of course it depends to an extent on how much the gameplay changes, but solo play of Sentinel Tactics would require AI, which SotM does not (as the villain and environment simply follow directions on the cards).  Plus of course Handelabra are committed to season two.

Anybody know any XCOM-2 modders? That would be a great platform for a Sentinel Tactics total conversion.

Why does Argent Adept have a book of magic instead of an instrument? What happened to Absolution, when was it broken? When did Tempest regrow its arm? And why is Captain Cosmic only controlling the yellow light, I thought he had the green as well as of the latest variant card coming our way soon?

Tempest only lost his arm in the Iron Legacy timeline with Freedom Six Tempest.  He has both arms on his other variants.

We don't know, yet! Isn't that intriguing?!

I don't remember the card, but I remember seeing it break in an attack on one of Dawn's Citizens – Truth, maybe?

Just a guess, but his brother probably passed on once Oblivion was gone. That mixed-mode of the brothers working together was likely a short-term thing.

Argent Adept - No idea, maybe it's a book of songs?

Absolution - Was broken against Citizen Truth I believe, all her current SotM promos show it as broken.

Tempest - Explained above.

Captain Cosmic - Purged the Green to destroy Oblivaeon?

Critical Multiplier in Parses deck is the card that shows Absolution breaking All Fanatics promos since then have the sword broken

You can see this pictured in Parse's deck when Truth shatters Fanatics Absolution. There's a great discussion on the forums somewhere on the metaphore of it all

I keep saying it where I go - I just want a COOP version of this game.  My son and I would play the crap out of it.  And I could get more of the gaming group to play as well.  

Personally, I love the characters for Prime War more than Broken City/For Profit.  I still hope they make the other, but I'm excited for PW.  Captain Cosmic is a favorite because of Green Lantern, but I also like Fanatic a lot.  I really enjoy her in SoTM.  My son is a big Haka fan and my buddy Nick likes Sky Scrapper.  And now with all this super hero talk I'll be playing some SoTM this weekend for sure.  

I mean, Tactics has always been "semi-coop". You just always need at least one person to play the big bad in the 1 v all scenarios (which hopefully will be much more balanced and robust than the scenarios of the initial release). I just don't see it becoming full co-op. It's an itch you can already scratch with >G titles like SotM and GSF

What you just described is player vs. player.

Except in the case of the villain trying to make a balanced fight for the heroes rather than fighting them. Like a game master.

What you're describing is known as "one-vs-many", and it's considered to be cooperative-adjacent because of the high level of teamwork needed to win. 

The villain player is trying to make a balanced fight for the heroes?  I thought the villain player was trying to win because only one side can win in a PvP game like Tactics.  I must have been playing wrong because I thought the game consisted of actual direct competition between players rather than competition-adjacent activities like game mastering.

After making my snarky comment, I realized that I think the game probably would be better if it were competition-adjacent, with a game master running his friends through a fun, engaging, story-driven challenge.  But that's not Tactics (at least, as it stands now).

true but Migrantp has acknowledged in the past that he has experience with this and there are many board games out there that support ai players. So it is doable. Again this goes back to how long are they talking for prime wars. If they just started we could be talking a year before we see prime wars at least which gives handelabra plent of time to finish the expansions for sotm and start a new project 

I'm just not sure how willing they'd be to develop a video game based on a board game that didn't do so well.

But CC is not green latern , I mena come on the power it self is not just for GL . Any character could have that power

Sorry I just had to say  that =/

There's nothing wrong with comparing Captain Cosmic to being like Green Lantern.  It is an easy one to make considering both work off of creating items of pure energy.  

Yes that is true but still it's just not right to give GL so much credit like there the only ones that can have that power

He is the most well known character that has similar a similar power set and it makes sense to list it out that way.   There is nothing wrong with giving credit to Green Lantern.   Other characters may have similar powers but they are not as widely known.  

Honestly, it is when I play the villain. I actually have a friend who is competitive and doesn't like playing Tactics with me on their team, because I play in character.

So unless I'm playing someone like Bunker, I'm probably not making the best tactical decisions but doing something fun and interesting that is in character.

(There's a reason I don't play in tournaments…)

Same. It might be my gm experience, but I DON’T play to win as the villain. I play to keep it looking as if I could win at any moment. Because it’s no fun to me if I play competitively as it is now. Maybe in prime war, but not like this.

FWIW, I hope that the Prime War scenarios will show some more character/storyline development, as that felt a bit thin in Tactics (if only because there is less opportunity to show card-art). Personally I do think that Prime War/Ennead will be more colorfull and action-packed than Broken City/For Profit and will allow way more storyline progression and as such am really looking forward to it. 

Perhaps an idea for the pot: what about including an app with or shortly after Prime War to release, make or generate additional, fan-made or random scenarios? Released scenarios by themselves (without the in between comic-book stuff) could already suggest a story-progression similar to the many cards in SotM. Furthermore, this could also be a nice medium to release tournament maps etc.

Regarding timeline, I fear we are talking a kickstarter in February and a year on top of that for release. However, this time I sure hope that GtG uses it's ability to hype things up during the kickstarter and continues that until delivery, even if it is just a snippit of (unfinished) art, hero power, game-mechanic to show that they are either not rushing things or suffering from problem-avoiding behavior (which long silences, a delay and then a fizzle tends to suggest). In other words: this time round, please keep us informed as things progress/develop!

I don't think we're going to see another Kickstarter for this; given that they already had a preorder campaign for Sentinel Tactics Core Set #2, I imagine they already have the money to make Sentinel Tactics Core Set #2. There may well be a delay in its release due to the change, but not a year-long one.

and this is why I am interested in knowing a rough timeline of what they are thinking even if it's not exactly what will happen

Hard to make an informed decision on getting a refund until they say something more, like when we might get the product, what is in for those that  are letting them use thier miney for years interest free, and are they charging for a conversion kit or will it be free for those that have preordered? So far no word on this, and i am willing to bet money, if no one had asked at the gencon panel about tactic, we would have only heard about orime war in jan when they delayed tactics again. So far greater than games customer service when it comes to the tactics preordered has sucked. We have to beg for updates which are minths or now half a year apart. They got the money so now they will use it for other projects and will keep us updated if and when they fill like it, which it seems they have not felt like it recently.

I also have to agree with Godzilla.  I am a HUGE G>G fan, I mean most of us who are here are.  I've been around since the start and love them so much I've dumped hundreds in them over the years.  I normally tolerate a lot but even I question this update.  I mean I parted with nearly $170 Feb 2015.  When this game was initially delayed closer to the expected launch for the major overhaul I had full faith in the guys and just said to myself, "Oh well, it happens".  I knew nearly a year delay was a lot but would likely make sense and more then worth it and they told us their full plans including new time line.  This time though they make a huge decision to throw out something they said last time was going back to the drawing board and was going to take months of redesign to now do the same thing but say we're starting basically from scratch and give us nothing to go from.  No concrete details of play style or who else is included in the games such as all of the characters for this amount of money.  I mean seriously will this fully be a even swap out to what I already ordered ad paid for.  Also No time line to go from period.  The newest estimate given was Junuary 2017 nearly two years after most of us paid, how much of a delay are we talking here.  March 2017 or something even more like summer 2017 so over a year from now and nearly 2 and a half years from when we pre-ordered and paid.  Also I am never a fan of simply saying "we're working on something for our true believers"  What is that.  Please tell me because it will directly influence my decision of if I need a refund.  No offense, like I said, I love G>G, but I know they are not a fan of exclusives.  With the first Sentinel Tactics on KS, we were told the biggest bonus to paying more there was of course getting it first and the rare 8 extra cards that wouldn't be released anywhere else but conventions and they later they listed on their online store for less then $10.  It seemed wrong, who's to say our big reward for trusting and giving up our funds over two years in advance where interest is being collected isn't equally tiny and pointless.  For truly help them and trust in them, I want to know a little more about what is going on,  I never would have ever considered I'd want to ask any sort of refund from G>G ever, but this does have me questioning things as I could really use the extra funds now. 
 
Please G>G, respect back your true fans and give us a little more to go off of to make well informed decisions.

No concrete details of play style or who else is included in the games

The play style will still be Tactics, just with polished and updated rules. They said at least that much, so I wouldn't expect a completley different game than the first set, just hopefully a more polished version (think original release SotM compared to the later released Enhanced Edition).

They listed a ton of characters already. Announced characters include 6 Prime Wardens (Tempest, Cap Cosmic, Haka, Fanatic, Argent Adept, Sky Scraper), Apostate, Blood Countess, and the entire Ennead (Shu, Set, Isis, Osiris, Nuit, Neph, Tefnut, Atum, Geb). Thats 17 characters announced right there, and theres a chance that number will actually be higher.

Hope that helps cement some of the announced details.

foote, no offense but I think the detail a lot of people want to know is a rough timeline.

Foote answered a particular question that person had and singled out that quote in his reply to relay that.  

So far the timeline seems to be when the game is right.  Personally I think we won't get too much on it until Christopher is done with his work on OblivAeon.  Having two projects delayed too much is worse than having one delayed too much.

OblivAeon is a huge undertaking and is going to require a lot of the company's attention.  Once that is off to the printers I expect Tactics to get a lot of attention.

Assuming the RPG doesn't get plugged in the middle of Oblivaeon and Tactics.

Its projected timeline (Kickstarter in a year with a basic kit similar to the demo they run now for sale) isn't going to be hard to meet.  Also the other people inolved are doing a lot of the work on it, so it doesn't require the time that SotM requires from him.  I don't think that will be a big issue.

We didn't think getting Broken City out in a reasonable timeframe would have been a big issue either though, to be fair.

I think there might have been an internal disconnect in the projected timeline for BC/FP. >G probably estimated their ability to turn an expansion at a similar rate to, say, Vengeance, as a large update to a game mode, but with relatively little underlying mechanics to update. Shattered Timelines came out May 2013, and Vengeance was out Feb '14, so a year of dev time probably seemed more than generous. I'm actually very proud of >G, as someone who loves Tactics, for not putting out a hard and fast realease date yet, as I personally want them to make sure the game is done right, as opposed to done now. I can keep playing Flame Of Freedom and Uprising, while looking forward to a good expansion that will hopefully breathe life into the game for new, yet-to-be introduced players, which seems to be the goal for Prime War.

As a pre-orderer, sure, I want the product I pre-ordered, but I also want a quality product; not just a box i'll use once and put away, as we've heard multiple people did with the first wave.

Yeah, and Starcraft 2 took 800 years, so we can never expect anything ever.  Everything is a lie.

No, just the cake.

Brood War held up incredibly well way past its prime. RIP mass dragoon rush. I miss you dearly every waking day.

Thanks for you feedback and questions, everyone! I want to be as open about this as possible, so here is all of the information we have right now!

1) The timeline on Prime War is much harder to predict than for any other project we are currently working on. The reason for that is that we have never done a strip-down and re-build of an existing game before, and it is more important to us that we get it completely right this time around than that we hit a specific timeline. However, if I had to predict right now, I'd say that between art and development time, we're looking at something very approximately one year from now.

2) We are definitely going to make a retrofit-kit that upgrades all of the Flame of Freedom and Uprising characters to be 100% compatible with the Prime War characters. This will take the form of an upgrade kit, which will come with new character panels, a few power cards, and anything else needed to upgrade those characters. That upgrade kit will be sold, probably for $5-$10, as an option for people who participate in the future Prime War pre-order. However, it will be sent free of charge to any current pre-orderers.

3) We are going to break with our traditional practice and do something genuinely exclusive for Broken City pre-orderers who stick with us on this. We are not certain what we'll be able to do, but are looking into several ideas that seem very cool to us. We do know, however, that it will *not* be something with game play content (like the extra power cards from Flame of Freedom).

That is all that we know on this right now! I definitely understand how frustrating this might be; we had a lot of discussions about whether it was worth it or not, and we ultimately decided that we'll wind up releasing a much better game if we completely rework it as we are now. However, we definitely understand that there have been a ton of delays on this project, and that a bunch of you pre-ordered it a long time ago already, so we are very happy to give out refunds to anyone and everyone who requests one.

Paul thank you for your responese on this. i plan to stick with my preorder. However i would like to suggest because of all the delays with this occasional updates on this product even if it is hey we are working on it and this is what we been trying would be great. This has been one of the largest problems with Broken City and the feeling that it has been thrown into a box that will never see the light of day due to lack of communication. Please do not become like Niantic Labs, the creators of pokemon go when it comes to communication. I know theres only so many playtesters but you have a large community that would love to give their input on ideas you guys may have on the game on what they would love to see.

One thing as feedback i will give you on the senarios that my gaming group did not enjoy was there being a series of scenarios for one story. I will use baron blade scenario as an example. scenario 1 you could play easily on your own. but then if you jump to scenario 2 you were almost forced into playing scenario 3 and vice versa. Moving forward I would love to see these scenarios be more self contained so i could pick and choose what i want to play and when. Since the scenarios you are trying to design remind me of mice and mystics a bit I would recommend taking a look at how they created their scenarios and rules to be able to accomplish this easily.

I like the idea of more self-contained scenarios too. I just want to pick one and go. 

So August 2017, or maybe longer. I wrote off that money nearly a year ago, what's another years wait.

My biggest concern is my mailing address has changed. How the heck do I update my address for my pre-order?

One thing I have not heard about is the dice issue. None standard sided dice are the absolute worst. Ok maybe its not really a big issue, or even an issue at all. I just want to nerd rage on something.  But really, if you are rebuilding from the ground up, fix the dice. Pretty please.

@NinjaMonkey

Don't worry! We'll let everyone know a few weeks before it ships so that mailing addresses can be updated. I guarantee we're gonna have our work cut out for us updating mailing addresses by the time this is done...

@igneus

Yes, that will also be something we fix :)

I believe a message to contact@greaterthangames.com would work.

Personally, I love that the dice are spindowns! It's so nice to be able to use them as counters for things or to easily spin to another number (such as if Omnitron's or Visionary's dice change).

From what I understand, the reason dice were set up with opposites (1 across from 6, 2 from 5, etc.) was to avoid cheating with dice, as having a "flattened" die will result in two sides coming up more frequently than the others. We don't really have that issue, anymore (that I know of) – it's not like folks are going to bring their cheat dice to a Tactics game.

That's just me, though.

Ha! Ninja'd by Paul, himself!

The conversion kit is interesting, and I'm glad it will end up being free.

I've played Tactics a little, but not enough to feel I have an in-depth understanding of the characters, what do you guys suppose will be the changes they make?

Hej Paul, thanks for the update and for throwing in a bone or two for Broken City pre-orderers.

However, I'd rather keep updated regularly on how Prime War progresses, both in art, character abilities and game-play reworks. Just to see the project move forward instead of it seemingly beach within oblivion as happened with Broken City.

Intnetional? For a game intended to ‘reboot’ the game and to act as a ‘primer’ to the tactics universe, the box art prominently says PrimeR.

Sorry, since when was SS a part of the PW?

Since the reintroduction of the team in Tactics

So you all beleive that Sky Scraper is part of the Prime Wardens rather than "just" a sixth character in the box, like Ra was in the original set (connected but not part of)? I don't see any evidence of this one way or the other.

It says it in the description https://greaterthangames.com/content/announcing-prime-war

>

The Prime War core game will include the six members of the Prime Wardens (The Argent Adept, Captain Cosmic, Fanatic, Haka, Tempest, and Sky-Scraper!)

That'll teach me to rely on my memory!

There's actually 7 Prime Wardens in the RPG, because Sky-Scrapper joins them as well.

I have an image of a Thorathian Mechsuit made of junk parts for Sky-Scrapper. It's glorious.

Edit: I was trying to Reply to Skippy's comment about SS being the 7th member of the PW

Either you're joke flew over my head or I need to know who this mysterious 6th member of the PW is... I was generally shocked that the Naturalist has not joined the team yet (dunno what he's up to, that incap on desparate prey was confusing). But Sky-Scraper is my favorite and the fact that she's in my favorite team is stellar = )

If you're referring to Sky-scrapper, it was a common mis-spelling of Sky-scraper on these fora when people started talking about her. At least, I interpreted it as a joke referring to that.

That makes me think of my friend who saw Sky -Scraper the first time and thought it said Sky-Crapper

*Bump*

How are things going with this project? Are any of the reworks showing up to have some merit? And if so; what can we expect from that? Are there also ideas to make the environment more interactive (eg items and npc's that can be used to assist the addressing player)?

Can't say much at this phase, but I really like some of the changes we are testing, even some I was quite skeptical of.  Can't speak to the second part at all right now.

We currently have no plans to make the environment have more merit!

Right now I'm waiting on other people (not you guys) before I can move forward, but as soon as I hear back, I should be able to return to semi-regular updates :)

Thanks man!

What triggered me to ask about the environment was seeing what "guardian chronicles: a clash of heroes" did with it. Looked very interesting and some of these ideas / principles could bring the environment in Tactics forward a bit, rather than providing some mild ambience.

*Bump*

Is there already some news/art/progress on Prime War yet?

Are the long awaited map scenarios part of Prime War?  Some explicit mention would be nice.  

The original report was that you took the scenarios off the maps because the font turned out unreadable and they would shortly be available as pdf's.  That really implied you actually had scenarios ready to go.  So couldn't we at least see those first versions to tide us over?  Perhaps they would give the maps some entertainment value beyond the tetris puzzle of finding shelf space for those long boxes.

The map scenarios are about to enter their final wave of changes, and should soon be available for all!

Promo art would be fun to see. :) (OK, I admit I just kinda want to see more of Argent & Haka's new looks...)

Hooray, thanks for the great news!

i'll believe it when i see it.  According to the start of affair post, it seems tactics is greater than games redheaded stepchild that no one wants.

Then get your believing glasses on, because they're coming soon! :)

(As the person specifically working on Tactics literally right now, I am a pretty good source for this kind of thing!)

Actually it is the one they really like, and want to use to carry the story and Sentinels Games past the end of the card game, but also the one that underperformed.

So now it is in the midst of a big evaluation process that has gotten the short end of the stick because in order to do it right it either needs to take a back seat to some other things or the company needs to drop everything else in order to put in the required work.

Also that would be blue bearded stepchild.

I admit, I do keep forgetting about Prime Wars and Broken City, but I can see them really focusing in on it more once the pipelin is cleared of the other material.

It is also interesting to look at the State of the Game post and think about the backdrop of all this happening. GTG was having finiancial issues, this product was underpreforming, and they were worried about the state of the company as a whole.

They didn't communicate this to us, but I can see why, and in the juggling act of trying to pull through this, Broken City and Prime Wars get held back until the known money-makers can help the company balance out.

That's my thought proccess at least, they are still doing better than the D&D History DVD I kickstarted that ended up embroiled in legal issues (half their team took the footage to make a competeing movie) and I don't even see a light at the end of that tunnel after.... 5 years for that, and I still expect that one day I will recieve that film

I, too, am frustrated by the long delays in delivering on the Tactics Kickstarter. Before Tactics was released, I longed for some way to run tournaments with Sentinels of the Multiverse. I was organizing events at local gaming stores, and while fun, I wanted SotM to take off the way Magic had, for droves of people to show up every week looking to play. When Tactics was released I was cautiously interested. Then I played in a tournament. Oh My Gawd! So Awesome!

I was inspired. I excitedly watched videos from the tournaments at PAX East and PAX South. I organized a local tournament at Who's Yer Con. I created the Indianapolis Sentinel Tactics League. I took Sentinel Tactics to gaming stores and other conventions to introduce it to new players. I followed the championships at GenCon. I ran a local tournament again at Who's Yer Con the next year. But eventually I had to admit that Tactics just wasn't making it. Yes, it had a little bit of a following, but GtG was having trouble filling tournaments. It took longer than I liked to teach the game, so people not really inclined to tactical games would lose interest,  and then the end result wasn't complex enough for people who were really inclinced to tactical games. The core of the game is really, really interesting to me -- a relatively streamlined way to get into superhero tactics with characters that I already love -- but if you weren't already invested in the characters, there wasn't a broad enough appeal.

GreaterThanGames seems to have come to a similar conclusion. They poured money into the Tactics tournaments -- really excellent, technical equipment, impressive cash prizes. Despite that, interest flagged. Now, they are trying to rework some aspects of the game to make it easier to learn and faster to play. They switched out the original Kickstarter characters with ones that are more well known.

Should they have figured out the need for this switch before launching the Kickstarte? Maybe, but they didn't, so they're at least offering refunds.

Should they have focused more on the Tactics work rather than launching a bunch of other games? Maybe, but they decided that financially they couldn't afford to. This isn't just a money grab. Cash flow issues caused them to have to back out of PAX South and to take paycuts. It's a small company. They have _got_ to bring in cash.

GtG are certainly not perfect. The scenarios in the original game were in some cases pretty broken. They promised scenarios for the extra maps, and haven't delivered them after a long period of time.

So, yeah, as a Tactics fan, this situation sucks. Even so, I don't see a path for GtG that's better than the one they are on. From what I've seen in the playtester forums, the changes to Tactics and the scenarios that we'll get will be very good. 

Broken City/For Profit was a Preorder not a Kickstarter.  

I second the observations that Tactics took too long to learn and will add that it ended up a bit fiddly while playing. Fine for me as an invested person, but my wife (although invested in some of the characters) could not stomach the flow of the game, as it took too long and paid of too little (compared to the card game). As a result, I rather teach people SotM, hoping they get invested in the characters enough to eventually want to play Tactics, rather then teaching them Tactics straight away.