"What is the future fo The Hobbit range and game from GW? " Topic

It looks pretty grim to me. Do you have any news about it?

(apologies for the spelling mistake in the title)

Desolation

Throw the ring and go home.

While they renewed the license a few years back, every sign points to the slow death of the range. Nothing is getting replaced as it falls out of stock, and the new releases have been few. Supposedly part of the problem is that The Hobbit range was designed with two movies in mind, and the late switch to three movies messed up their release schedule.

Some of the stronger rumors about WFB 9th edition suggest that some of the principles of LOTR are being adapted to WFB--round bases for skirmishing and the use of the sabot trays to rank up these round-based miniatures.

There are some new rumors that they have renewed the license and are about to reprint the SBG sourcebooks. That said, the shift to expensive finecast for both heroes and warrior models in the new releases, plus the high prices and shift to 10 to 12 plastic minis in a box with attendant price hikes has probably pushed the game out of the realm of affordability for anyone but a long term LOTR gamer that is just adding bits and bobs to existing forces. Time (or a new release) will tell.

PS – reminds me that the Elves call the fight with Melkor and Sauron the Long Defeat in time they will sail to Valinor and LOTR SBG will be a memory of a fairer time.

Mordor won. I am not being flippant. Mordor won.

This may be of interest to you, kehanubaal. It does not deal with LotR, but rather WHFB. Since WHFB is more important to GW than The Hobbit, etc., it indeed does not bode well. Rumors, but credible.

Given GW's track record with spinoff games, I suggest you get what you want, now. I am sorry the Tolkien people contracted with GW, but there it is. I see all of it as a house of cards at this point.

link

I think GW did pretty well by this range. I predicted that they would drop it when the third movie came out in the mid 2000s. The range did well and they supported it well beyond that point. After the movies were gone they did the War of the Ring thing and kept putting out new models for a while.

When the new movies came out they had some decent releases up front. I would imagine that the studio saw how much they made off of the last set and increased the cost of the license but I have no facts to back that up.

The Hobbit stuff was certainly more expensive, less impressive and seemingly less voluminous. I haven't really seen anything for the BoFA. There were releases but I was expecting a boxed starter set with elves and dwarves and orcs in it.

I don't think that GW would drop a profitable range. As the movies were less than inspiring and the first two didn't really give much gaming potential and the whole thing wasn't new, I'd imagine that revenues were not as great as they had been the first time around.

Understandably GW did not keep putting resources into a product that wasn't selling terribly well.

There doesn't seem to have been that much at all by way of support to the game (figures, scenario books).

The basic boxed set is very nice though.

The problem was that War of the Ring would have been perfect for the release of the last LOTR game. There were still a load of active players then. However, by the time WotR did come out most players had left the game behind and stores had dumped there inventory. Too little, too late. The plastic sets used to be a very nice value. No longer. The game is dead.

I saw a huge upswing in painting of LotR stuff when WotR came out. I hadn't seen any for a little bit and then that came out and I started getting orders again like crazy.

I think the big problem with the Hobbit stuff is that the advert for the product, the movie, wasn't that good. The first time around they basically had a really good multi-million dollar advert for their toys. This time it was still expensive but wasn't that good.

Then there wasn't really much fighting either. The first boxed set was a good value still but there is a reason why my FLGS still has the limited edition version on the shelves.

There are only 20 "evil" releases in the current Hobbit line total. Pretty anemic but I'd imagine that the releases follow the buying pattern and did not cause it.

Let's face it. The Hobbit movies just were not as good as the 3 LOTR films. I don't think that they struck the same chord with modellers and with the younger audience.
GW relies on the younger people to keep buying their product.
It seems that the Hobbit movies did not inspire the same fervor that the original flicks did.

"It seems that the Hobbit movies did not inspire the same fervor that the original flicks did."

Probably because the LotR films were actually pretty good with some timeless themes, whereas The Hobbit was at best mediocre. Stretching a short three childrens book into three epic movies was never going to be easy.