Waiting sucks; we get it. Knowing there are loads of players just waiting to dive in to the new edition but who are held back due to the release schedule weighs on us and pushes us at all times. Rest assured, though, we’re doing all we can to get them out as fast as possible and in a satisfying state for those who are waiting.

About 99 percent of our last three months of development work has gone into meeting our goal of making sure every Faction would have a Prime Legacy army ready to go at the beta launch of the MKIV WARMACHINE app. What this means is we’ve had to put off development of new material. Of course, this puts us in a precarious place because we know everyone wants to see new stuff, but they also want to have all the old stuff updated. In the end, we must choose a path that necessitates compromise on both sides. We don’t have the staff resources to rapidly convert the back catalog of Legacy models while still developing new material at a pace that both satisfies the demand for new content and sustains our business and ability to actually create new content. We knew this was going to be a hot topic heading into MKIV, so we mapped this out in our MKIV announcement to be as up front about as possible about how things would go. We knew whichever side of the line you’re on—[update everything old now!] or [give us new stuff now!]—that because we are merely mortal, we’d only be able to produce content so fast and could never deliver everything for everyone all at once. (But we do love that the content is in demand!)

In keeping with the plan laid out in our MKIV announcement, we managed to get the MKIV conversions done for one Prime Legacy army per Faction for the beta launch of the WARMACHINE app. But now we need to focus attention on new development, or we’re not going to make our goals of releasing the new warlock-led armies next summer. That means the Legacy model conversions will have to slow down. We’re committed to making sure we get at least one Prime Legacy army out per month through the next year, and alongside that, we’ll be releasing rules for Legacy models that are not Prime Legacy but that fill out the Unlimited arena.  We still have the goal of having all of this done by the end of 2023 (just like we originally announced), but we need to put the majority of our attention back on new content development, or we won’t have new products to release that sustain our business and our ability to create the new as well as old content WARMACHINE players want.

We know what you really want at this moment is to know when new rules for your models are going to be available, and no matter the reason for the delay, the fact will remain that you’re stuck waiting. The reality is that based on the timeline we have laid out, some players are going to be happy very soon, and others are going to have a bit longer wait. Since we know waiting sucks, we think it’s reasonable to offer the community some agency on the timeline of releases…

So, the release order of the remaining Prime Legacy armies will be decided by the WARMACHINE community through participation in multiple events.

Warfaire Weekend is nearly upon us. This celebrated annual event is one of the greatest gatherings of the WARMACHINE community that exists, and it is auspiciously timed to become the first arena where the WARMACHINE community can determine the order in which the Prime Legacy armies will be developed and released in the months ahead. 

So, at this year’s Warfaire Weekend, participants in Privateer-related House Wars events and the Iron Arena will be able to cast votes for the thirteen remaining Prime Legacy armies yet to be released. Every time WARMACHINE players participate in a House Wars event or redeem points for Iron Arena, they’ll receive a voting ticket that can be dropped in a bucket representing their army of choice, and at the end of Warfaire Weekend, all the tickets will be tallied up to determine the next four Prime Legacy armies to be developed as well as their release order. So, if you plan to be at Warfaire Weekend and you want to help influence the order in which the forthcoming Prime Legacy armies are developed and released, then make sure you jump into the Iron Arena, take part in the House Wars, and allocate your votes toward the army you want up next!

We do our development in chunks, which means that we’re not testing one army at a time but multiple. So, this event will determine the next four Prime Legacy armies, and they will be released in the order based on which army has the most votes cast for it. Why not just release all four armies at once, you might ask? Well, after we determine the next four Prime Legacy armies we’ll develop from the results of Warfaire Weekend, we’ll put those four armies into our playtest process. But once they’re done, they each have to go through an editing and refinement process as well as have their data entered and tested in the WARMACHINE app. That’s a linear process, not something that can be done in parallel, because as mentioned earlier, we are but mortal. So as such, we’ll execute the editing and data entry of each army in the order that the voting process determines, and at our projected pace of at least one Prime Legacy army per month.

By the week of November 7th, we should be able to provide a roadmap for the Prime Legacy army releases for the next four months. How will we determine the following block of releases? Great question, and we’re already discussing that. All we’re going to say right now is, be ready to do some painting…