why is broken city not selling as well as villians?

Sotm is an older and better known product than tactics. That's probably a factor as well.

Tactics Is also more expensive, $40 dollers, and then if you want minutures than another $30-$90 for each set.

I am consedering Buying Tactics now that I have watched the Twitch feed from Pax South

But it is an investment of $130 per set if you want the painted mintures

Compared to $40 a set for SOTM

And then you have the new maps at $20 a pop

It is alot of money 

It looks cool, and would be great to play. but your talking a sizeable investment to get all the sets up to $500

Just note that while the minis (especially the painted ones) are awesome as hell, you really don't need them to make the most out of A Tactics purchas. The game is a huge favorite in my game groups and I don't have minis. It would be a shame for folks to pass on tactics just because they can't get minis. Missing out big time. 

That is good to know, I was not sure how well it played without them. So once I get pay then I will have to order it then.

A lot of people kickstarted Tactics because they love SotM.  Tactics is very different than SotM, I assume they lost a lot of buyers of Tactics (over 2000 backers) because of that.  Tactics is a great game, but doesn't have the accessability of SotM.

I'm a huge Tactics fan, I think it is a phenomenal game, and can't wait for playtesting to start for the new stuff.  I understand why we are seeing the numbers difference though, and here are my thoughts:

1.  I expect the tournaments to help get the game some publicity, but it is going to take a while to build its own name.  If the tournaments do well as they hit bigger cons, and the demo's work as well as the SotM demos do, I expect it to gain ground and become a more widely supported product.

2.  Another problem is the markdown many people are looking at online, Tactics hit a lot of discount websites and drastically lower prices, so a lot of players are going to wait for it.  This isn't a kickstarter, and lack of initial purchasers won't cause this game to not be made, so why not wait and get it cheaper?

3.  Shipping plays into that, and shipping for tactics is going to be worse than Villains, Villains offsets that with extra decks and 7 promo cards.

4.  Tactics does not have an as popular and established bonus structure as SotM, so offsetting shipping with the bonus incentives isn't that big a thing.  It is for Villains.

5.  Broken City is more expensive.  Some people are going to have to choose between them, and Villains is going to win out.

6.  There are problems with Tactics that have not been worked out.  We need some errata that is hopefully coming soon that will fix basic problems with several of the Scenarios.  

I have passed on picking up Tactics to date.  Mainly due to known issues with getting it to the table since it pretty much requires multiple players* and then will be competing with a lot of other games - including SotM.

* - Yes, I can probably solitaire it.  But SotM itself works for that as well.

There's also the total lack of timeframe, it's still unclear what will come out first I want to order both but if tactics delays my getting villains they are certainly not going in the same order meaning I'm still waiting to put my preorder in

Completely concur. The first half dozen games or more that I played were with the tokens. They are pretty!

Have you gone back after playing with the minis?

I won't play with minis any game that would require mini's and tokens.  That wrecks the whole effect of the minis.

I also don't want minis on a flat map, so I don't own any minis yet.  Spiff's terrain is making it tempting though.

Sort of. When I only had the unpainted minis, I actually liked the tokens better.

We expected the Tactics stuff to sell more slowly because Tactics is still in the early stages of the product line, whereas SotM is a best-selling product line that's been out for nearly 4 years! Right now, things are lining up right around where I expected them to be, and we'll be doing a ton of cool Tactics stuff this year to promote that game.

One of the most awesome is the tournaments, which, if you haven't seen them, I definitely recommend checking them out at www.youtube.com/greaterthangames, and watching our next tournament live from PAX East at twitch.tv/greaterthangames!

In addition to looking awesome and being a ton of fun to run, those tournaments are like a superbowl commercial for Tactics - expensive and complicated, but incredibly effective! We actually wound up selling more Tactics than SotM at PAX South.

To add to this, I have 0 doubt that a few updates about the new Tactics games with info on characters and such would drive hype even more especially from fencers.

I doesn't surprise me that Tactics sold better at PAX. Once you get to try it out and see it in action you'll be hooked.

I'm definitely going to back for the complete package, color minis and all, by the end of the campaign, but I haven't had time to build up funds for it yet. So there's 1 more that's not on there.

I can't say it doesn't SURPRISE me that it outsold Sentinels, just considering how well that sells, and how many different items there are for it TO sell -- but I can definitely understand why it would. It's a great, fun game, it expands on the world of Sentinels, and there are a lot of people who have everything Sentinels but haven't tried out Tactics, so there's a large market there.

Thanks for the recommendation of the tournament videos.  I'm still waiting on my copy of Tactics because it won't ship until the add-on maps are done, so it's great to be able to get a sense of what the game is like to play.  It's definitely pushing me towards pre-ordering Broken City and For Profit, even before I get to try the first game for myself.

I do have to say, though, I feel super-uncomfortable with some of the tournament line-ups.  Baron Blade and Legacy being on the same team, or Legacy and Beacon being on opposite teams, is just something that shouldn't happen.  When I see a member of the Freedom Five hitting "Paul's little girl," it's like something is wrong in the multiverse!

I can attest from first hand experience that the Tactics demo table at PAX South was always busy and everyone I demo'd for at least had a great time (and many of them went up to purchase the game).  I'm really glad it sold that well as I saw a lot of folks buying SotM stuff too

You do get used to it pretty quickly. If not you'll probably prefer the scenarios, which are a lot of fun too.

And Beacon's a big girl now. ;)

I bought a 2nd copy of Flame of Freedom recently to get double the tiles, also nice to have more dice and tokens. Now I can make some maps for skirmishes that are the same on both end so neither side has more of an advantage due to terrain. Can also make some pretty cool maps, like having 2 volcanoes.

I may do the same for Broken City, the 1st copy is being pre-ordered here and I'll get a 2nd copy later on a site like Amazon for cheaper as it's just for the extra components.

Honestly, I think I mightn't, or at least not totally.  I find it easy to think of convoluted scenarios for pretty much any hero vs. villain in an environment combo that the card game has to offer, but I can only make some hero + villain teams work in my head.  The thematic/story appeal of the characters is very strong for me, so I don't like to play a game whose line-up I can't imagine happening.

Yeah, that's why I put it in quotation marks.  I know my attitude is a bit silly, particularly considering that she seems more than a little reckless on the battlefield.  ;)  But even once she's an experienced hero, Legacy's allies still know how badly he was affected by her death in Shattered Timelines, so I find it hard to imagine them wanting to hurt her.

Yeah, I could see them reluctant to bring back Iron Legacy.

Not even just for the sake of protecting the world from Iron Legacy...  Tactics Paul fought Iron Legacy himself, so I think he has to have done some soul-searching and wouldn't end up going down the same dark Path if Felicia died in his own timeline.  But it would just be horrible at a human level, and so many of the heroes seem like friends close enough to be family that I can't imagine they'd want it to happen.

(It's less than a year since my own father passed away, so I am probably more susceptible than I should be to these father/daughter loss themes.)

Incapacitation's not death though. If Beacon goes down in Tactics she gets right back up again.

I know what you mean though, having say Unity attack Tachyon seems weird thematically. I guess for a game to function as a game you need a level of abstraction such that thematics don't override mechanics - it would be weird for there to be a rule saying that Character X can't be in the same team as Character Y for lore reasons (or indeed anything other than because of balance, and I'd be unhappy about a game that was poorly-designed enough that certain combinations had to be prohibited).

For what it's worth, I'm sorry about your father. :(

if you need help with justifying it, don't forgot brainwashing is a common comic trope, as well as the teaming up against a common foe.

I'm sympathetic. My parents passed away in 2011 and 2012.

Not to mention, there's always the idea of a "friendly" brawl. Think something along the idea of Smash Bros, or DBZ. You can have Mario and Bowser team up against Link and Ganondorf, since it's all in fun, rather than fighting for real, like in their games. Or how Goku and Vegeta fight to become stronger. Just because they're fighting doesn't mean they have to be FIGHTING. If it really bugs you that much, you can call it training, or sparring. Or, just try not to worry about it. It's a game, for fun. It's not real life or anything.

Edits: stupid autocorrect!

It's the Training Simulator in the Freedom Five tower :D.

That should be a series of expansions!

After seeing the consequences of Legacy go rogue, the Freedom 5 create environments in the training simulator where each hero acts as the villain, ready for the day if one of them slips... The Ice Caves of Absolute Zero, Bunker's Bunker...

If nothing else, it's a quick and dirty way of adding to the number of terrains available...

Yeah, once I saw that in the tournaments, I felt a bit better about it.  I guess that even incapacitation in the card game isn't supposed to be death, but when you see the super-sad incap sides of the Legacies, it does seem like death.

Come to think of it, what happens to Iron Legacy when he gets defeated...?  </tangent>  

Absolutely.  When I say that certain combos shouldn't happen, it's only a comment on my feelings, not gameplay.

Thank you very much (and sorry if bringing it up was an over-share).

Yes!  Perfect!  I shall use this to explain any games that bother me.  Thanks.  :)

Heh, for what it's worth, very early on what's now called a Skirmish was a scenario called (something like) "Bunker's Battle School". I don't know the official reason it changed, but my guess is it was because villains wouldn't be participating in a school Bunker was running.

Yes they have stated they will post the videos.   Probably won't be available online until February at earliest.  

Villains wouldn't, but imitations of them could and if you could simulate an environment, why not the 'enemy'. Would make hero+villain team-ups thematically weird though!

@morph147

We are working on getting the PAX South tournament posted asap! I'd guess 1-2 weeks for a timetable.

They were Awsome and Christopher is so much fun to listen to. It was all very well done.

Youtube has a speed option on it, best way to watch those videos when you don't have as much time as you thought.

What exactly IS Tactics? Is it a board game, or more like a tabletop wargame like 40K, or Warmachine/Hordes?

It's a tactical combat board game. 

Heres a video of explaining it from the kickstarter

http://youtu.be/zzbrrjOTEpQ

Ah, I see. Thank-you muchly!

A lot of fun!!!

Could the fact that this question was even asked be the answer to the question posed by the OP?