Urban War - Why aren't you playing it? (Or at least painting it?)

[Inso]

In case people are stirred into motion on the subject, they are still available from Scotia Grendel:

http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=60

I personally preferred (mostly) the Void1.1 ranges:

http://www.scotiagrendel.com/Products/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=217_218_59

What Urban War miniatures I did get were poorly cast so I lost interest.

[Hat Guy]

I found the system to be clunky and counter-heavy. We started playing it about the same time as Infinity and Infinity was a much better system with much better minis.

[basaint]

Always like to see this pop up. 
I actually have pushed a few friends into playing it more now that we have teams available for each faction.  Illl agree that v1 of UW was clunky but V2 is much better.  Been grabbing stuff to try V2 rules for Metropolis battles too.

Im not sure why Syntha gets a bad wrap cuz they havent owned all games we play at all.

I also wanted to look into Tyrants as i wanted to go mass battles into smaller sizes but what killed my enthusiasm was what they were asking for the minis.  Im going to get the book cuz i love the universe but Im already getting proxies to save cash.

[tnjrp]

We used to play VOID quite a lot but our group never got into UW in a big way, even tho one guy from our group played the first edition of UW quite a bit -- with his other gaming buddies. I suppose the rest of us are sorta more into ca. platoon level instead of small skirmish and frankly, the 1st ed rules were rather involved.

In the light of that, we did try Metropolis (which is something like a platoon or so scale, as per the number of minis) but by that time our gaming in general was winding down so we didn't really get into that either, and missed out on trying the UW scenario "add-on" (can't recall what it was called). By the time the 2nd and IMCO superior edition of UW came out we were playing so infrequently that after one or two games it just got rolled over by the next potential "ooh shiny" that in turn got rolled over by the next one after that and so on.

So I suppose the short version of "why I don't play the 2nd ed" is "bad timing". I do like the 2nd ed (even tho it looks like I didn't learn to play either edition that well since I never won consistently with my Syntha) and some (not all or perhaps even most) of the miniatures are nice and ubiquitous enough, but it doesn't look like I'm going to play this again.

I haven't played anything in almost a year now actually so one might even begin to think my miniature gaming days are over in general

[Nord]

I painted a few of the models used on those figure boxes. That's going back a bit though. Like others have said, the game kind of fizzled out. Some nice models in the range and I grabbed a bunch of Viridians and Triads but only painted a handful of pieces for myself.

Snap! I painted some of those too, mainly the guys in red armour, plus a handful of figures in urban camouflage. Pretty nice sculpts I thought, must be about 10 years back.

[Malebolgia]

One of the other things that really annoyed me was that they changed VASA into a faction which didn't resemble anything like the old (Kev White) VASA. Some weird Russian look, mediocre sculpts and a poor background. That really was the nail in the coffin for me.

[stone-cold-lead]

Snap! I painted some of those too, mainly the guys in red armour, plus a handful of figures in urban camouflage. Pretty nice sculpts I thought, must be about 10 years back.

I did the sumo and kabuki girl off of the Triad set shown and at least some of the Junkers models. I can't tell if they're all my paint jobs there or not though as I've lost track of how many exactly I did and another painter (possibly yourself!) did such a good job of matching the colour scheme I can hardly spot the difference. I did random bits across all the ranges I think. Some came out better than others though. Would have been about 2005 and then I packed up the painting malarky.

[Shaved Dwarf]

I encountered UW/Metropolis at a time when it was dying or was already dead, kind of hard to tell when you're new to something. At least I recall that a few online shops still offered it. But in these parts (Germany) I got the impression that it never really sold. Nevertheless I tried to find players through the official forum but there were only the proverbial handful, scattered across the whole country. The guy living nearest to me was at a distance of about 300 km, so I never started painting.
But all that didn't prevent me from buying quite some of the minis. I liked most of them (except the Junkers); I guess it was some sort of Kev White style that appealed to me, at least with the human models. And the time was favourable for buying...

[eilif]

Never had any interest in the Urban War rules.  I'm a fast-play kind of guy and while I never heard that they were particularly crunchy, I didn't hear enough good to get into the game. I have considered trying Void 1.1 at various times though...

A buddy of mine gave me a Gladiators box to paint up some years ago for our sci-fi and post apoc games like Wastelands, WarEngine/Shockforce.

I liked the figures enough that I started buying up used Void Junkers to supplement them. More of my painted Gladiators and Junkers troops, sandrunners and vehicle here:
http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/387792.page
Eventually I realized that I liked the Void Junker aesthetic more and I turned my attention to them

The project culminated in the mass painting of 47 Junker Legionnaires.
http://chicagoskirmish.blogspot.com/2012/12/fully-painted-void-junkers-and-neo.html

After which I sort of lost interest in the project. I've still got another 30 legionaires, more Sandrunners and some vehicles to paint up. I still really like the Romans-in-space aesthetic (probably partly because they remind me of Adeptus Arbites) and I hope to someday come back to the project and finish up a full army that I can proxy as Orx Mauraders in Warpath and possibly use in other games as well.

[rwwin]

Urban War, another sad chapter in my gaming life I'd forgotten.

About that time I moved to a new town and had to establish new gaming friends.  I was phasing out of 40K for a number of reasons and the group I fell into lurched from one dead end system to another for several years (Starship Troopers, Urban War, Confrontation, AT-43, Dust).  Eventually most of them returned to 40k, picked up Privateer Press or both.  I ended up with two or three playable factions for all of those games.

As to Urban War specifically, there wasn't really anything wrong with it.  It just wasn't nearly as much fun as it looked on paper.  It's been a long time and I don't remember exactly, but it had a wonky token based activation system.  I vaguely remember spending a lot of time peeking at hidden tokens trying to remember who was supposed to go next.  Also, it was at it's best with lots of terrain.  I remember that we'd have to snag just about every piece of urban terrain in the store to get a good game.

As with a lot of games I've gotten into, our group stayed interested just long enough for me to get my faction painted before interest fizzled out (4 months +/-).

On the plus side, it did have guys riding dinosaurs!

[basaint]

If anyone stateside feels like parting with their stuff, Im still grabbing them.  I wish more stateside people played because its by far my fav skirm game.

[The Gray Ghost]

I love the Syntha and have most of the figures which I use in various sci-fi games but most of the rest turn me off.

[throwsFireball]

If anyone stateside feels like parting with their stuff, Im still grabbing them.  I wish more stateside people played because its by far my fav skirm game.

The same for this but in the UK.

[mcfonz]

That, and also rather expensive for what they are.  There's a lot of competition in their niche, and Urban War has never managed to stand out from the crowd for me.

^^ This and also what others have said.

It's had it's peak I feel, and some time ago too.

There are still some good miniatures in their ranges but they can be a bit hit and miss. The viridians are useful for generic sci fi troopers - I use mine for my Nova-Fed (read Neo Sov) but they could easily make alternative colonial marines etc.

I do think the price is a little much in some instances as well.

As has been said though, it is quite a saturated market when it comes to sci fi stuff, and for a game to maintain a following now it needs continued support and needs to offer something different.

Void, in my mind, was sort of an attempt at what Mantic is doing now with Warpath etc. For a while, it was almost the only viable alternative to 40k, if you knew about it. I think there was 40k, Warzone and Void.

It is a skirmish game, but not really a progressive one. So it falls between smaller scale firefights and Necromunda.

[mrgrigson]

I never got into urban War because I picked up a crapton of the Void VASA models after the faction book came out. Shuriken Guard, winged Black Legion, 70+ Saleh Suppressors... I meant to turn it into a fun IG proxy army since nobody near me played anything but 40K anyway. I even managed to find some Gundam kits that looked like big siblings to the Shogun walkers.

Urban War came out and I DESPISED the VASA designs. Black Legion suffered from Warzone shoulderpads even worse than any Warzone models. Thick embossed logos on things. Awful, awful sculpts.

All of it is presently taking up space in the mancave. I keep telling myself I'll get to it one day, since it's the one force I actually went through the trouble of doing a formal palette for.