I'll be playing mine unpaided, paint is a distraction, even my 40k figures are only primed and spray painted red. If the rules are good, people will play it and buy it, no matter what the mini's look like.

As for the comparison with AT-43. The box match one art from Rackham and the card rules are neary the same.

After AT-43 being take out of the shelves in North America it can be a licensed product using the same rules, same factory but different thematic

Not to be a jerk, but I just don't see this game lasting two years on the market. The units are always too expensive for mass market appeal.

I'm really hoping that the pre-painted set isn't all that limited. Theres no way I'd get into this if i'm left with a clump of green and grey men, It doesn't matter how great the detail on the figs is if they're only going to be one colour. It's fine for players who are willing to sit there and paint 30+ minis but theres a lot of players out there who just don't have the time.
I can only hope somone at FFG is taking all of thease comments onboard.

@ Sarim Rune

The prepaints are "VERY" limited as stated in the previous DUST preview.

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As for AT-43 about to crap out, Can't say that it will or will not, but the reason many people left the game is due to crappy rule complaints, There is no consanguinity in which you speak of PanzerKraken between the slipping of AT-43 and Pre-paints, all evidence points to rules. The 80 bucks is just a starter set and you do get more bang for the buck. Nearly the same amount of miniatures, a few bots a troops shy, but all pre-painted. All ready and pretty out of the box. In comparison they are little green men, good detail on the sculpts... yes, But does not do much for the evince of the game. Sculpts are on par with AT-43, they just lack the polish.

Both games are playable out of the box.

Both games will require you to purchase expansions to expand, keep fresh, and more than likely DUST will require you to  buy to keep competitive  in tournaments. Not to the point of CMGs but all game companies will allude customers some way, DUST is setup in such a fashion. I'd be OK with it, if they were pre-painted. 

And AT-43 is a game thats about to die off with how the company has handled the product line.  And the 80 box set of AT-43 was not even a complete game but a starter set, just to play a standard game of AT-43 required about another $150+ dollars of investment at minimum.

Point of dust is that there won't be tons of boxes of miniatures to buy, you get the complete game for 2 players in one single box.  It's not a miniature game in the sense that it's constrained to grid play and it does not have the collection aspects.  Also the sheer amount of figs in the box set out do anything else on the market.  If you want to call it green army men then that is just being naive, these are 33mm scale miniatures in high quality plastic with highly detailed sculpts.  Lot of talent, work, and money goes into making these figs, and much more than your standard FFG board game quality of "miniatures".

 I like the pre-primered idea.  Just as long as they are also pre-cleaned.  If I have to scrape off mold lines, pre-priming does nothing.  I think the price point seems on the money as well.  I'll be getting into this.

I have to admit that after buying a ton of W40K minis and then getting bored  to paint them and subsequently never playing the game, I do with this was pre-painted like AT-43. Then I would definately buy it. As it is, I am marginally interested in it, because I don't have the patience painting it, and I am spoiled by W40K and can't play miniature games with unpainted minis. Silly reason, but it's true.

You know this could be that"Mountains of Madness" tie in we've been looking for in AH,Now if it just had a Squad of Elder Things...............

OD

Wow, a company offers both a pre-painted and a non-pre-painted set and people still find a reason to complain. 

Proves that if you gave a person a brick of gold, they would complain about the weight...

The problem I have with the limited prepainted set is future expansions.                                                                    Will they be available as prepainted sets as well? And if they do, will they be as limited as the core set?

I could see a problem if I bought this set prepainted and then later got hold of a standard expansion. I would have to paint the models or they would look out of place. This just doesn't sound like a good deal to me.

Nice looking minis and other game aspects. Waiting for more to see.