Maps

[dmedesha]

How about a subscription? Quarterly? Every six months? Annual? Lower per-unit purchase price, but higher overall total. Less yelling at my house.

[larry marak]

EFD and Bulge could certainly benfit from a makeover. And of course, the Winter Wonderland maps in BoB style is an independent issue...they might sell on their own in a pack for $20.

Keep in mind that when Empires Fall comes out, there will be 10 current art style maps available of the same terrain as where much of EFD, RTB, and WE scenarios are set. It might make sense to port many of those scenarios to the new maps...actually it would make a lot of sense in many cases.

[Hugmenot]

I don't see how porting the scenarios benefits Avalanche Press, Larry. The last repackaging, Eldeweiss IV, was the only new product listed in the Summer sale (30% or 50% off if GC member), a sure sign that sales were not as good as expected. Given Indian Unity and War on the Equator were not big sellers either, I think Mike will stay away from PG repackaging unless the product can be significantly improved.

Jim Stear has done a great job at improving the GWAS series and the repackaged boxes include far more scenarios than the original releases. I don't expect (nor want) PG 4th edition to be much different than 3rd edition and I am not sure how Eastern Front Deluxe can be improved enough me to want to want another copy; 112 scenarios is more than good enough for me.

[Shad]

For an additional perspective, only about 1/5th of the 5,000 plays recorded to PG-HQ were on non-standalone, multimap scenarios and therefore possibly had mixed artwork style on the table.

While throwing down an EFDx board beside a FaoF board might be jarring, it just doesn't happen that often.

I think a comprehensive map pack will remain the domain of the compulsive collectors and rich folk.

I still believe a digital ala carte approach is workable, provided Guy get's a large chunk of every sale since AP is basically incurring zero overhead costs.

[guyriessen]

For an additional perspective, only about 1/5th of the 5,000 plays recorded to PG-HQ were on non-standalone, multimap scenarios and therefore possibly had mixed artwork style on the table.

While throwing down an EFDx board beside a FaoF board might be jarring, it just doesn't happen that often.

That is particularly good info, thanks!

While I know this group represents a small portion of the community, I'm taking that into account. People here represent the hard-core player-base. If 15 people respond and 2 have valid reasons why they wouldnt want to pay for an upgrade--that can be easily extrapolated into, a much larger percentage of the non-web-vocal players would not be willing to go that route. But I do have other ideas I'm talking to Mike about, and in the meantime, I have lots more maps to make in the next couple months.

Thanks for the dialogue, guys!

[joe_oppenheimer]

It's a nice idea, but there are too many other things competing for cash. I'm much more likely to buy a new game then to buy replacement maps for one I already own.

[Matt W]

Despite Guy's decision and having come to this discussion late. I would have loved to have seen EFD, RTB and BOTB re-made to recent standards.

This forum is not attended by enough 'mouth-pieces' to accurately draw a conclusion of how much real interest there would be. More than likely, the APL website might be better osome other outlet ?

On the copyright business, I like Shad thought an indeprendent service might be feasible too. That way they could have been produced with less parties involved. This came to mind given Critical Hit's just released pack of ASL maps 1-16. How on earth they have got round that remains to be seen, but I am presuming there must be some 'tad' of a difference for them to get away with it ? (if indeed they do).

But to finish, I'd repeat that I would be very keen on such a project.

Vince,

What I have seen and heard is that Critical Hit's maps "emulate" the terrain on the original ASL maps. They actually have indicated that playing the existing scenarios on their maps will be like "new".

I expect that such an approach is carefully calculated to keep them from any concerns over copyrights...

[campsawyer]

One though on the maps, update one set and see how this flies with people purchasing them. I would suggest BotB as this the one out of the three that needs the most updating. If there is good sales for this go on to another set. If they don't do well at least you tried and hopefully enough sell to cover the cost.

I am not a big fan of the Print and Play for the maps and feel that this might not be good for sales. Most people do not have printers that can handle doing a good job at the odd sized paper needed to print these things out. I would be more willing to pay for printing and get the final maps. Counters are one thing as they can be handled by you average consumer printer and a box of good paper from Staples.

[Shad]

I made my suggestions based on the assumption that buyers would then get them professionally printed. This is very easy and cheap in China. It also allows beto print them at any dimensions desired. Perhaps it's less doable in the West?

[guyriessen]

I made my suggestions based on the assumption that buyers would then get them professionally printed. This is very easy and cheap in China. It also allows beto print them at any dimensions desired. Perhaps it's less doable in the West?

It would be cheaper and of better quality (not to mention qualitatively consistent with existing maps) to have them printed at APLs printer. Unless you were just going to print them out on plain paper, you couldn't get a 1-off, cardstock, high-quality print with gloss coating for less than $5 each at a local printer in the US.

It took more than a year of Winter Wonderland maps being available, for them to cover production costs and start to make money--APL quite simply isn't willing to go that route. Crowd-funding was another possible solution but without an overwhelming response here, it would be unlikely to meet its production goal either.

I just floated an idea for scenario books which could be used to bring replacement maps a couple at a time. For instance Aachen 1944 would've been a good candidate--it used only the Elsenborn maps plus maps 10 and 12 from BotB. It could still be a candidate since it's OOP and with only 10 scenarios it could use expanding, and included counters so you could play with just Elsenborn plus the 2 additional maps. But regardless of that specific example, 10 completely new scenario books would be a way to release those primary 20 non-updated maps.