"Flames Of War 'Swallows' Easy Army" Topic

A fairly solid rumour.

Does anyone know of a link ?

Does anybody know what this even means? 8)=

Guessing that means Battlefront is finally bringing the Easy Army online army lists inside.

It's rumoured that Easy Army has been taken over by Battlefront lock, stock and Kingtiger :-)

Presumably the price for access to future books will reflect this :-(

Makes sense, with EA there was not a real reason to purchase the books.

I have several real FOW books, and have used EA to see if I like the options that the book presents. Then I buy the book.

If I have to pay a significantly larger fee to use EA, I will feel far less inclined to buy the book as well.

This could be akin to killing the Golden Goose to get at the gold inside.

I am hoping the PDFs and V3 Forces book remain free. Also hoping this doesn't impact EA's work on Bolt Action and Kings of War.

Look under the headline Forces of War on their main page for what details they have released:
flamesofwar.com

From the FoW homepage:

Forces Of War!
For many years one of our play testers and proof readers Gregg Sitter has in his spare time been running Easy Army. He created it out of a personal desire to have a tool to manage his armies but it has grown so that many other people can now do the same. For those of you who don't know this is a force building software package that helps you create and use army lists. When we gave Gregg the okay right at the start to do this we always assumed this would evolve into something more and now that time has come.

Easy Army is going to evolve into Forces of War. This will be an official FOW army builder that at its core uses Easy Army but now will have more features and graphics than ever before. We still have a little more work to do until we can show you the final version but our goal is to have it up and running before our next book, Barbarossa, is out in October. Stay tuned for more news as we will be showing you what it looks like and how it will work in the coming weeks.

~John Paul

I had missed that they used the term 'army builder' in their announcement.

Lone Wolf Development is big on protecting their trademarked army builder term even when fans call another company's product that on forum discussion. Don't know if Lone Wolf still has steam left to pursue this sort of thing like they did in 2010.

Note, I'm not agreeing with Lone Wolf just noting their previous approach when the term army builder gets used.

link

Nazrat,

If I said what I thought it meant, I'd be Doghoused….

;)

I wonder if I will be grandfathered in with the "books" I paid $2 USD for in the past ?

I own and paid for all the books I "need". However I use Easy Army to do the math and print put a lovely OOB for my games. I could throw my back out lifting my books. I feel I am entitled to EA.

Easy army in its current form is one of the big selling points for FoW in our area. I hope they don't kill it. The bit about more graphics than ever and great improvements scares me. Whenever a company like BF or GW uses phrases like that it means they are about to break something that works perfectly as it is.

Please BF. Just leave EA the way it is, and don't eliminate a perfect gateway to the game.

The nice thing about Easy Army being a man made product is that another person could always make another just like it.

The problem is the issue Grumpy Monkey indicated above:

Makes sense, with EA there was not a real reason to purchase the books.

Anecdotal evidence aside, if you had EA, you could spend your money there and none of it (or little of it depending on how EA and BF had their agreement set up) went to the actual holder of the IP – which is the army list and point values. I don't know about you, but if someone was making money off of my IP, and I was seeing a drop in revenue because of it, I'd do something about it.

That being said – I can envision a lot of ways BF could do it "right" – one being including an EA license with each book purchase for free.

It really depends how cynical you are. I have had several long conversations with senior battlefront staff who have told me that battlefront make no money from the briefing books.

Personally I think that is hogwash and that they do make money from the books, it is just that they choose to lump a lot of costs associated with the whole BF experience into the books. Essentially the prices of the books is covering things like getting the models painted to make the books look pretty and to sell BF models.

I am not a big fan of paying for advertising so I am very very picky as to which books I buy. I used to buy them all but with the incredibly rapid obsolesence in some of their books I eventually gave up trying to get the latest books and just went with Easy Army.

I have bought several 'books' on EA that I would not have bought physically but mainly these purchases have been so I can check army lists for the many events I run.

If EA becomes less accessible or more expensive I may well just get access to the lists I really want and then stop list checking for tournaments. That may mean I end up stopping running tournaments. I suspect that is not what BF want.

I agree with Dan and Hammy. With one addition – the promise of "more graphics" does not particularly thrill me.

Profit and control.

Otherwise they wouldn't be doing this. My basic math skills still work so EA not required plus I am not of the tournament mind set. Just enjoy fun games and purchase of old fashioned BF books after the "must have" crowd surge subsided. Collection has almost all book variants since Ver1.0 (2004) except for the last year's worth purchased at bargain cost.

Funny. They make a lot more money off me from the books. I don't buy any of their figures. Too many cheaper alternatives of comparable or better quality.

So buying Army BuiLder is ok but not so for Forces of War ?

Profit and control.

Otherwise they wouldn't be doing this.

That's really to be determined. We don't know yet what the $ arrangements will be. Access might not cost any more than it has been.

When Gregg started EasyArmy, BF wanted to bring this "in house" right away. But Gregg did not want to be tied to the BF timelines since he was just doing it out of his free time. Nonetheless, BF supported him and his efforts by giving him early access to upcoming books so he could get started early on them.

Now I'm not sure, but it seems to me there was an agreement made where Gregg would not post new list on EasyArmy until sometime after the books were released so that EasyArmy access did not cut into the big initial sales push when a book was released and when I believe most are actually sold. I expect that policy, if it actually is one, to continue.

Basically it seems to have been a fairly friendly relationship between Gregg and BF that has well served the FoW gaming community. I don't really see that basic construct changing much.

So buying Army BuiLder is ok but not so for Forces of War ?

AB is just a "framework" the actual list data stuff (i.e IP) is done and posted in free files by users not by AB. You don't pay for any "lists" with AB. You pay for a base program that is devoid of any Intellectual Property at all, which then uses data in fan generated files/sites to let you do what you do with it. That's likely why AB was able to continue on in light of GW's well known IP protection policies and efforts.

The nice thing about Easy Army being a man made product is that another person could always make another just like it.

Absolutely! Might even be better. That's primarily why I don't think we'll see any major cost increase with this informal arrangement now becoming formal. If they get unreasonable in terms of price it just inspires the next dude with some decent programming skills and a love of the game (or money) to do about the same thing that EA did but cheaper..a'la AB.

It's an interesting evolution, but the cries of "Evil BF" here may be a bit premature. I recall being told over and over here and in forums elsewhere how there was no way BF would be lowing their prices when they started to offer plastics, because they were just about squeezing every last dime out of us! But whoa and behold, when BF released plastics they were significantly cheaper than their metal/resin models. It was a break for us customers and the company both. Might be something similar here in the end.

Cheers, VB

I'm thrilled by this. Not unlike many ideas where outside developers create nice, usable services that are then brought into the fold. I love EA but it's a bit clunky, so the prospect of some nicer graphics, design and functionality is most welcome.

Sounds fairly appalling on multiple levels……

If Hollywood could have bought bit torrent, it would have. There lies your answer.

Either way, there's always a certain blog with every list available for free…

jameshammyhamilton wrote:

It really depends how cynical you are. I have had several long conversations with senior battlefront staff who have told me that battlefront make no money from the briefing books.

Personally I think that is hogwash and that they do make money from the books…

As I am in the printing business, I can tell you that it's not likely hogwash. The retail price may be $50 USD, but the wholesale cost is between $25 USD and $30. USD The printing cost of that book is at around half of that, and the shipping costs are pretty significant. Don't forget to pay the writers, graphic designers and artists. When you throw in promotional costs, you're looking at maybe $5 USD/book left over as "profit" – if that.

The business model you should be looking at is the same as for the video game console or printer makers – you sell the machine (rules) at, or near, cost, because you're going to make your money on the games/ink cartridges/miniatures.

Wyatt

That makes it sound like making free PDF rules like they have for certain forces would be cheaper. No shipping costs. Everybody gets free access to rules for their new toys which they'll psychologically feel freer to buy (I don't have to buy the campaign book so I can buy those Pershings!).

+1 to Hammy.

I quite like the FOW system (despite having no opponents within an hours drive each way), but while driving to work a thought struck me.

Barbarossa is due out soon after several years of poor excuses (Like many I have the PDF from way waaay back). Earlier this year the Blitzkrieg system published a Barbarossa book, and I can't help but wonder if Battlefront are finally reacting because of that. Even with Easy Army, a Barbarossa book for FoW is going to be a monster seller, and given the success of EA this does rather smack of Battlefront grabbing a cash cow and potentially throttling it to death.

If Battlefront price the Easy Army version of Barbarossa (and all future books) at a greatly increased price, or delay the Easy Army version for a considerable period, I fear it will again alienate many WW2 gamers – just like the fiasco over 'Battlefront Only' models did a while back.

I hope I wrong, but betchu a dollar ?

Actually the more I think about it, the more I think VonBurge is probably right. If they were really concerned with EA cutting into their take they would have slapped it down a while ago. If they only make round $5 USD a book, then charging $5 USD or similar per list in EA may work out for both them and customers. They've done some good work with the Wargames Illustrated app, didn't ming spending about six dollars to get their two ACW archives.

I hope I'm right! We'll see!

VB

How about like when you buy a vinyl record these days, they often come with a free code to download the digital file. Would be great to buy the FOW hard copy book and get the list free on EA. If you don't want the book, just sell the list on EA for a couple bucks.

So is this happening still? If so, when?

Easy Army is now "Frozen" in place. It will still work for the next year (now all of 2015), but only for what has been already purchased. No new books will be added to Easy Army and there will be no option to buy access to any past books.

Staring with Barbarosa, new books will be on "Forces of War" instead of Easy Army. I imagine BF will "work backward" to add older books into "Forces of War" at the same time as they add new books moving forward.

Until recently BF planned to pull the plug on Easy Army in "early 2015." I'd have to assume that this date had something to do with when they thought all previous EA books would be availble on "Forces." Guess we'll see.

So what you're going to see is a gradual transition into
Forces of War" starting ….right about now!

And is "Forces of War" going to be hosted on the main Flames of War site, or is it going to be an independent site?

I ask mainly because "Forces of War" also appears to be some sort of app-based game, with its own website.

I suppose it will move from the EasyArmy website to something under the Flames of War website.

Interesting that there's already an app-based game called "Forces of War." I wonder if that might force a name change for this new BF effort?