Mongoose to Kill Babylon 5 Miniature Line?
According to this TMP link, Mongoose Publishing is reportedly going to discontinue its A Call to Arms Babylon 5 miniatures line. To honest, this doesn’t come as that big of a surprise. Last year it was becoming obvious that the miniatures were becoming harder and harder to come by, and a lot of merchants were letting them sell out without restocking (largely because, in some cases, they *couldn’t* restock because there just wasn’t a source to restock from).
I am glad that Roy got me those Ipsha Battleglobes (which Mongoose calls warglobes — geez, they can’t do anything right, can they? A little bit of research from a primary source [JMS usenet postings] is just too much hassle for them, I guess) and Lumati transport for Christmas. They were the last ones that Thoughthammer had in stock! I kind of would have liked some of the Gaim possibly, too, but given the horrible quality issues with most of the Mongoose original miniatures it is probably better that I didn’t purchase any (the Ipsha ships I have will need epoxied rather than glued because the idiots couldn’t figure out that a mounting peg might have been useful for the fins).
I have to say that of the B5 license holders, Mongoose may have been the most prodigious, but they seem to have managed to achieve that through a mix of directly reusing previous product line elements (Agents of Gaming’s full scale miniatures) and adopting ideas that made Galoob’s “Ma’caroon cruiser” seem intelligent by comparison. I have long thought about buying some more of the Mongoose RPG books just to see how mad they make me — the Minbari book had me rolling my eyes constantly. Yes, some of the concepts in them would have made for an interesting alternative universe campaign, but they have no place in the actual Babylon 5 universe (Shadow Minbari? Yeah, right. Vorlons massacring the primitives? Oh, yeah, that makes sooooooooooo much sense!). It is like they were spoon feeding story hooks to those GMs that aren’t imaginative enough to think of their own story concepts.
Whoa, this has really evolved into an anti-Mongoose rant… and I didn’t even have to buy one of their books to make me fist-shakingly irate!
Edit: It is confirmed: http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/news/news_item.php?pkid_news=201
I think I have most if not all of the 1st edition RPG products. I couldn’t justify the expense when they went to 2nd edition and kept on cranking them out.
That said, some of their weirder ideas never offended me to the extent that they did you, but it was a factor in my decision not to pursue any of the 2nd ed material. Of course, I was (and am) tempted by the ship design book for all the obvious reasons, but so far I keep making my saving throws.
As for the minis, I was kind of surprised, but not really. Mongoose has a history of just dropping something out of the blue with the explanation of “it cost too much” or “wasn’t panning out as we expected” It makes it hard to take any new offerings seriously, since you can pretty much expect any new product lines won’t be developed to completion.
Of course, the irony is that if they had gone forward with the Fleet Action scale instead of the B5Wars scale they could have had the sales to cover the costs of remastering the old molds as they wore out. Coulda, woulda, shoulda, didn’t.
All of the books I have are first edition, and even then they are pretty limited. I have the 1E RPG Core Book, the Minbari source book, the League book, Galactic Guide, Fiery Trial, Point of No Return and I think maybe one other book. The only 2E book I bought was the Ships of the Galaxy book. The artwork in the book is horrible, but I bought it for conversion ideas
I had hoped to pick up some of the other source books cheap to look at them, but the prices raised on Amazon so I didn’t pay much attention after that. To tell you the truth, I haven’t completely read through any of the books I did purchase…
As for how they should have launched the miniatures line, I think they would have been better served by going with Full Scale for capital ships, and then a mixed scale (reusing some Fleet Action miniatures, but not all of them) for the smaller ships. This has the advantage of leaving nearly all of the iconic B5 ships as large miniatures (good for the collectors) while leaving the frigates and such as smaller units that fit better on the board. As for fighters, I am not sure what to do with them. The FA fighters I don’t care for in the slightest. I kind of like the Full Scale fighters better… I think a middle ground in size combined with one-per-base on a small base may have worked.