Ogniem i Mieczem - By Fire and Sword

So in the last months we were talking in the German Forum (byfireandsword.de) if BFS is dead in Germany or just our German forum. You can find a link to the discussion below:
http://byfireandsword.de/showthread.php?tid=1636

We discussed a lot of topics and reasons why there is a decline of the game and gamers for BFS in Germany. (for example the not existing rulebook in German, the complex rules of BFS, the niche-problem, the problems of communication of Wargamer with us the players.)

I want to talk especially about the last point I mentioned.
What and where is the communication-strategy of Wargamer?

Some observations:

1. Last update of the Website (english and polish Version in January, in J A N U A R Y. Today is August!
2. No further informations about the future? (Where is the 2 Players starter set? What is with "English civil war? Publication plans? What is going to come? I want to be curious and excited!)
3. On Facebook there are mainly informations about conventions or some offers in the onlines shop.
4. This forum: In the english part of the forum there are barely new posts. I have the feeling this forum and the other communities in other countries have similar problems as we have in Germany.
5. There was a time when annodomini1666 was promoted very strong. Where is it now? Is it dead? The annodomini part of the forum ist dead definetly.
6. Where are new products? (new factions, new languages for the rulebook, new Units, some Youtube-Videos etc.)
7. There are no tournaments for BFS in Germany anymore (Before there were minimum two torunaments every year). Now there are too few players left. Even new players give up playing BFS very quickly.
8. My friends who were very interested in the game before, are not interested anymore. They moved on to other tabletop games...

Take GamesWorkshop for example. On their Homepage and their Facebook page there are DAILY some news to stick to their customers. They give them Information about their products and daily news!!!!! They try to keep their customers excited.
I know that Wargamer is not a big company, but this cannot be an excuse, because so Wargamer is loosing their customers and of course money.

I also know that there was a similar discussion in the polish part of this forum (by miszczu).

I also know that there was some movement in the last months (Wilanow-tournament, plastic horses, some new skirmish-lists etc.). But from my perspective there is very little movement or there is movement, but we are not informed about it.

My request towards Wargamer:

Change your communication strategy. Keep us excited and curious!!! (Or many will leave, many did already...)

Greetings from Germany
Paul

PS: Sorry for my English, it's not the best.

Seems to me Wargamer is too busy to making stuff for the Anno Domini 1666 Kickstarter to think about BSAF for the time being. Lots of companies have broken their backs on too ambitious Kickstarters, let's hope that doesn't happen to Wargamer. On the other hand, if it gets too successful BFAS might slip down on the priority list. Let's hope for moderate sales and a return of focus back to BFAS. After all it's a limited number of people who now have to concentrate on several product lines with little in common.

As for BFAS activitity, while there has been a steady stream of new figures it has mainly been redesigns of existing product codes. Not necessarily much improvement IMHO, and certainly not enough to improve sales for neither new players or veterans with existing collections. But the free PDF rules and Republic in Flames are nice and might ease recruitment.

As for ECW, I'm on the fence here. With BFAS Wargamer had the edge of extensive research not easily available outside Poland, and very little competition figures-wise. For ECW you'll have a lot of self-appointed experts in the gaming industry (including several members of the Sealed Knot reenactement society) who won't be pulling any punches with regard to historical errors, and a much more crowded existing market (both rules- and figure-wise) which will be harder to break in to. Also there are really only two factions to play, so you lose the multi-faceted appeal of BFAS here. IMHO it would be better to extend BFAS to a generic TYW+ ruleset, with the ECW available as one supplement (much like Warlord is doing). At least the figures are similar enough between the ECW and TYW, especially with head swaps. Another possibility would be the Venetian-Ottoman wars in Crete and the Peloponnese. Seems like most of the figures exist already, all we need are some army lists.

Fully agree that the Med. (Venetian/Ottoman) would be a better direction than the ECW, and if they did go for 1640s then TYW with an ECW variant would be better. For another option I would hope for something like the Russo-Persian war 1651 (I think someone mentioned Persia before in the forum).

And I am one of the ECW reenactors who would look very closely at any ECW variant. I would not rule out buying the rules, but already have figures (in multiple scales)

Paul - thanks for your feedback.

The main reason of our lesser activity is indeed Anno Domini 1666. People working on BFaS and AD1666 are exactly the same people. And the same people are running (or at least heavily support) our daily operations as webstore and distributor too, especially as we have holiday season.

AD1666 is our priority at this moment and it consumes at least 90% of our time as publisher. We just need to send game to KS backers and then introduce it to retail very soon. I'm sorry but this is the biggest project in history of our company and it just must happen quick. When this happen we can focus on BFaS again but before this moment nothing will change - we have learned that should talk only about plans we can achieve in a very short time. We don't want to promise anything what doesn't have date set in stone.

I hope you will see a big change when AD1666 is published and we could back to supporting BFaS in a way it should be supported.

Thanks for explaining! I have confidence that the flow of new material will pick up again once Anno Domini is completed.

I akso look forward to ECW. I assume this will only be a prelude to other releases, for instance TYW.

Thank you for the information. I decided to do something about the situation in Germany and make BFS more popular.
So I created a Youtube-chanel to make German Videos about BFS, tabletops, painting and terrain-building. I hope to get more people in Germany interested in BFS.

My Youtube-chanel with some Videos (more to come):
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvyXYO ... Zi11yWUgNA

Greetings Paul

Great! I will follow it :-)

Great work Paul!

Thank you Paul for this post and for your effort with your YouTube channel in German.

At least it inspired me to start painting again :-)

To the supject of other periods/theaters of war I strongly recommend not to pursue the ECW as a main subject. There is a very strong competition.
The other mentioned parts of middle, south and southeastern Europe together with the Ottoman Persian war are much more promising in my eyes.

Translation by Google Translate and me:

After a long investigation and a lot of collected information about Youtube and the German law for social media channels, as well as informing me about problems of other Influencers / Youtubers, I have decided to delete my channel. If you look at the legal situation in Germany (surreptitious advertising, imprint obligation, warnings, etc.), then you get sick of it. Although I really want to continue to produce videos, I can not afford to be warned by any lawyers about every little sh... Also, I refuse to publish my real name with address and phone number on Youtube in the imprint. I do not even want to start talking about the problem of advertising labeling in the German law (which is ridiculous, since I do not get any money / compensation for my videos from Wargamer).
Some of you will consider this an exaggerated reaction or think that I'm overreacting. It may be like that, but I do not want to risk anything here. Why should I take the risk of paying hundreds of euros of warning fees or thinking about whether a lawyer letter will be in my mailbox just because of not marking something. I don't feel like it...
I hope you can understand my motivations. I am sorry that I am not running the channel anymore.
Personally, I am also very sad at the moment because I really enjoyed the channel and cannot continue this part of my hobby now.

At the end I wanted to thank all of you for watching my videos and subscribing. Before deleting my channel I had 32 Subscribers, 18 videos and over 1250 views.

best regards
Paul