"G.W. Specialist Games are back: but in what form?" Topic

I am starting to find the whole argument funny now.

Got into 40K in the 80's Played 3rd edition, almost every army. Favorite is still my squat army and I still have it. Watched them bring out Necro and bought into it. Warmaster, Mordheim…Yep was there for those also. Even had a few Warhammer armies. Then after the catch and release game they played with BFG ( release, print full line, then dump on specialists games) I learned. Have not played a single game of 40 K since 4th edition, dropped out of warhammer soon after. SOld aobut half my 40K armies over the years, same with Warhammer, even dumped some Warmaster stuff unpainted.

Point being after the bait and switch games of the 90's I learned and stopped buying new games. By the early 2000's I stopped buying anything GW at all and have E-bayed a large chunk of what I had bought. Never played anything newer then 4th Ed 40K, I think the last new armies I got for Warhammer were the new Saurus and Dark Elves. The lost me as a paying customer 15 years ago or so.

Now IF Necro, Warmaster, or BFG come back then I might get back into it. Their re write of Warhammer has compleatly lost my interest. As for 40K, I want to play with tanks I will play Bolt action. At least I know the stats for the vehicles will stay the same reguardless of rules rewrites.

Now GW is not alone here in the catch and release game. Was a pressganger for Hordes/Warmachine for 4 years. When they pulled a GW and rewrote the rules for Mk2 I walked away and never looked back. Had almost every book for Flames of war then they went 3rd edition and reprinted them all wanting me to dump another 1k in cash to rebuy them. Again walked away from them. Point is I buy into a game, collect the rules and sups, and build armies. You get greedy and tweak everything so I have to rebuy everything you lose me as a paying customer. GW did it a long time ago, Warmachine and FLames of war more recently.

Got to be a lesson here someplace.

I think the lesson is in your post. The three biggest, or three of the biggest, companies use the same strategy, to sell their stuff.

I guess it is a good business strategy.

Pictors: It's not only a good business strategy, it's a pretty standard one.

It's a fairly well-known fact in the 'hobby industry' that they will have a roughly 90% turnover over the course of four years, with 90% of the hobbyists drifting off, discovering girls don't have cooties, or spending not much more than maintenence (i.e. new brushes, the odd pot of paint, etc.) When they hit that point, the hobby company has the choice of making an effort to attract entry level customers, or cater to the whims of their increasingly jaded 10% 'hard core' audience.

Look at the lifespan of the average edition of wargames like Flames of War, Warhammer, etc. How long is it? About four years, you say? hmm…

@Pictors

Or maybe not a good strat,
I rarely see GW games played anymore in my area. Have not seen a Warmachine/Hordes game in years, and Flames of War is dying fast. On the other hand games like Bolt action and Saga are catching on. Smaller armies and simple rules seem to be taking over. Most Warhammer players refuse to go AoS and go KoW instead with armies they already own. There is some anticipation for GW to bring back the long dead games though.

I guess a lot of us older types who spent a lot of cash and time collecting and painting our armies just do not have the time to do it again anymore.

As for the company strat depending on turnover for sales….well…cash is not as free as it used to be and kids have online games that meet the same goals these days. Some of the companies may find out they NEED us old lead pushers to keep them from dying.

GW thinks that they don't.

I keep thinking these boards are for intelligent discussion by people whose hobby is 'Gaming'

………..then I remember TMP is an equal ops provider which also has room for people whose hobby is 'Griping And Mocking Other People For Enjoying Something They Don't.'

It takes diff'rent strokes, eh?

I think that what Wonkothesane, Pictors, and others are saying here is really very simple.

People are reading too much into this.

GW is a business. They aim to produce quality products and make a profit doing it. We could debate all day long if GW's prices are fair, have gotten out of control, etc. I would say that in many regards GW's prices were totally fair for a long, long time, and only recently with the new AOS minis did the pricing really go too far.

But, be that as it may, their specialist games, now that I think about it, weren't even really specialist games – not in the way I see them.

GW produced boxed games that you could play straight out of the box, and then other games where you got a starter box set, with the understanding that you needed to commit additional resources to buy supplemental things to play it completely and fully.

In either case, GW was writing, designing, and producing a PRODUCT. You, as the customer, would choose to buy for example Warhammer Space Marine (that epic scale 40k box from way, way back). You knew what you were getting in the box. You knew that you had to paint them. You knew that you were getting a set of rules you could use.

There was no false advertising on the cover or on the back of the box. You were buying Space Marine.

NOW, if GW a year or more later, decided to produce "Space Marine II" hypothetically, what exactly happened there? One could say it's gouging just to keep competitive players buying new editions, and to keep gamers buying in general – OR – could it be that GW included new minis in Space Marine II, and also improved on the existing rules?

OR – is it both? Well, if it's both, um, can we blame GW for making new products that keep people buying them? Isn't that what car companies do ALL the time? The 2009 Honda Civic comes out, and as soon as you've bought it, they're talking all the new cool things that will be coming in the 2010 Civic. Car companies are positively brutal when it comes to keeping people thinking that they need the next thing.

Cell phone companies are an even better example! You can't keep a phone for more than a few months now without a commercial telling you it's garbage, but if you buy the Galaxy VII, OH now you've got a good phone! I mean with technology the pressure to keeping buying new things is out of control.

So in comparison, I see GW over the past 20 years as being fairly mild when it comes to the ways it enticed gamers to spend money.

And, with specialist games, they never came with any promise that they would be supported indefinitely. You bought the game at the time it was produced. You paid the money, now you own it. You can play the game casually, at home, at a club, at a tournament, you can set it on fire and dance around it, you can give it to your kid brother to play with.

I mean seriously! GW as I've said, is a BUSINESS! They are not forcing you to buy any new edition of anything, unless you want to. They produce new miniatures in the hopes that you'll be excited about them enough to buy some of them.

But, last time I checked, the Games Workshop Warhammer Police didn't come crashing through my front door down because I was still playing Warhammer 7th edition with my old armies from ten years ago.

You buy a product, you own it. GW sells games and miniatures to make money. That's pretty much it.

So Shadowcat20, your contention is that a company that managed to become publically traded and control probably something like 90% of their market did not have a good business strategy.

I guess I'd like to hear what you benchmarks you think make a good business.

I've been playing all sorts of games for longer than I care to think, and I try to take a balanced view on the state of the wargames industry.

To be fair, and without wishing to just provide ammo to those whose only hobby is GW-bashing, the GW company has made a fair few mistakes. That hasn't killed them or the hobby. BP and VW have made bigger mistakes: they're still trading and I'd far rather be sitting on their pre-tax profits (or GW's for that matter) than my own.

One of the mistakes was massive over-production, especially of the so-called 'specialist' games such as Epic, BFG, Necromunda, GorkaMorka, et al. This resulted in a mega-sale where they were, in some cases, quite literally giving the stuff away.

I think this impacted on the mindset of some gamers. Some were bitter because they'd paid full whack and felt they were made to look foolish when others cashed in on the mega-sales. OTOH, those who got the games for next-to-nothing in the sales felt they were entitled to gaming-on-the-cheap (a phenomenon previously reserved for the somewhat tight-fisted 'historical'end of the gaming spectrum) and felt they were onto a good thing that would and should, by right, last forever.

Both groups felt entitled that the gravy train should keep rolling and that GW would 'support' unprofitable game systems ad infinitum.

This is a bit of a strange thing that a lot of us gamers fall into. We believe our hobby exists outside the real world (well it's all 'fantasy') and that games companies don't really have to operate as businesses, and hence they must be thoroughly evil should they attempt to do so. We seem to believe that games companies exist purely to satisfy our individual gaming desires.

The other Big Mistake on the Specialist front was the ridiculous 'promise' GW made to offer 'support' for specialist games FOREVER. They said it multiple times in the Necromunda Mag, Town Crier, etc,. and perpetuated it even when the interest and support was dwindling so badly that these mags had to be compressed into a single, multiple-interest Specialist Games Mag.

To be honest, it was a stupid promise and one so obviously stupid and unsustainable that the blame lies as much with the fools who believed it as those who said it.

But I think therein lies no small measure of the bitterness and acrimony extended to GW over their previous history with Specialist games support.

The question with rereleasing these old specialist games is whether the old fans who are in favour of a rerelease will actually buy new stuff.

As an "old fan" of Specialist Games, I'd say yes, provisionally.

Blood Bowl – I'd buy the new box set if only to get myself a pitch board and the various markers and accessories. Depending on which teams they rerelease (and based on the examples for the new Human and Orc teams I've seen) I'd probably buy some of those, too.

BFG – Honestly… I probably already have more miniatures than I need for my Imperial, Chaos, Ork, Eldar and Tau fleets. I might buy a new box just for the rulebook but probably nothing else.

Necromunda – I'd definitely buy a starter box of these guys, and several new gangs. I've got a couple already but if the updated miniatures are good, I'd buy more.

Mordheim – Again, I'd buy the starter and probably several warbands. I've got a few Mordheim miniatures but not really enough for most of the factions.

Epic – I'd be totally in for, as I always wanted to try this game but never got around to it.

Now, this is all dependent on additional factors. If they change the scale of BFG and make my old fleets obsolete, I have no reason to buy something new. If they make the new releases one-shot, stand-alone games and not open systems like before, I have no reason to buy something new. If the miniatures just suck, I have no reason to buy something new.

Only time will tell.

Never had trouble selling the board games back in the 1980s. Never carried any GW miniatures as stock unless I got them from a store dropping the range or going out of business. Even then one of my workers bought the stock to sell and not the store.

Pictors,

I find it funny that the people who built GW are now running Warlords for the most part.

Rather then getting into a griping match I will just say this. You make a game and release armies for it I will play. You release new rules every few years just after finishing all the support releases, then tweak figure abilities to make the poor sellers must haves and the strong sellers fodder I am gone.

If I spend time and money to support their line they can at least support us. Rewriting the rules I can almost understand, Rewriting EVERYTHING just to sell it again will chase me away.

In realty I have more problems with the players who have to play the newest version and will not play older versions. I would play 40K 3rd edition tomorrow….but WILL NOT spend cash I no longer have free to buy into a never ending cycle of release, print full line, rewrite, repeat.

Funny thing is they had to trash a main line game and rewrite and sculpt it because of the resale market of their figs. People learned to by used rather then buy new and people dumped old armies rather then keep them to finance new armies.

GW has glutted the market and are trying to reset it. Unfortunatly another company has come along and wrote rules that allow you to use the older figs. What is cheaper? Buying everything new or changing rules and reusing your old figs?

That is one of the main reasons I prefer historicals, the rules may change but the figs are good forever.

I play 40K 3rd edition. Why wouldn't you keep playing it? I'm just repainting my Dark Eldar now to play 3rd edition against my 30K World Eaters.

That being said, GW have been the most profitable wargaming company in history. So profitable that it is almost not worth while comparing them to any thing else.

While you may not like what they have done, you seem to be inconsequential in them making money.

The business model is a good one, it has lasted for 30 years now. It may not go on forever but most things don't.

Even GM had to get a government bailout.

That being said, GW still seems to be going strong. 40K is still the most played and bought miniature game at most of the stores I go to.

While you don't like the churn of the rules some people do. They may bitch about it but their hobby is creating unbeatable armies. If GW didn't change the rules or put out new supplements then one army would become dominant and not only one army but one way of playing that army.

Everyone would either play that or try to come up with armies to beat it, if it really is that killer of an army tournaments would lose interest.

Any system this complex will take a while to figure it out, but people will do it and share the information online. Then everyone will do it.

If you don't put out new stuff and new rules, the game will be boring for competition players.

I don't play competitively so I don't really care if they change things or not.

My figures are all still good. Here are some 20+ year old models that fought in our campaign just over a week ago.

Lots to read.

I was interested to read that paint is a big seller for GW. of course it is. I believe it may actually be their biggest seller, at least profit spinner. A few mls of paint for 6 dollars Aus. You can buy 6 liters of house paint for 40. I know the chemistry must be different, but there is a big markup.

Which brings me to the point I wish to make.

Pre painted minis like xwing have been mentioned. I can not understand why GW has not started selling prepainted figures. Or perhaps I do, they make a lot from paint. Even so, their "modern" stance on CGI figures, pumped out as big blobs of plastic in china, does seem to point them in that, mass produced, mass market direction. Far from a small hobby manufacturer.

Any who. I guess Im just wandering if they may bring out the specialist games as prepainted, mass market releases, for board game shops and the like, like xwing. Maybe a good idea, but probably not what they are thinking.

Abandoning 'regular' unpainted minis and going exclusively to prepaints has killed at least one well-regarded manufacturer (Rackham) – for many people (myself included) painting and assembling your armies is one of the major draws to the miniatures gaming hobby. How would GW pick (for example) a single Space Marine chapter to offer as prepaints? There is simply too much variety to realistically pull that off.

Switching to prepainted minis almost killed Mongoose too.

Yeah. But it didn't kill Reaper. I could see GW having 2 lines, regular and prepainted. Lots of people have no interest in modeling or painting and offering a low cost (cough, cough GW!) alternative may boost sales and not turn people away from their games before they begin. Perhaps releasing them a bit like action figures or micromachines, that type of packaging, and put them in toy stores to boost sales. Perhaps a tie in cgi (cough, choke, yuk!) animated affair on tv. Even "Aging Sick Ma" type rules, packaged with the figures.

Alternatively they could do this for their board type games they have been pumping out, so people can play right out of the box. Prepainted heros and the like. Prepainted Space Hulk? Could work. Just to try out the idea, see what sales do, before launching into the main lines.

But it has to be the paint, the only reason they have not done this. They make loads selling paint, and not just for their minis remember, lots of people use their paint and if they gave it up they would lose out big time to model colour and vallejo?.

As for the marine question, they would perhaps just pick the main 4, Ultras, Darks, Bloods, and Wolves. (did I say that? I meant of course, Sons, Eaters, Irons…)

Okay, there's Reaper but you also have to look at all the other ones that have tried and failed – remember Heroscape? *Huge* game a decade or so ago, now just a memory. Mage Knight? Crimson Skies? That Shadowrun skirmish game with 'action figure sized' prepainted minis? Same deal. Only Heroclix has kept Wizkids going and then only barely. Although companies like WotC and Paizo are having a small resurgence with things like D&D prepainted minis, the glory days of the mid 2000s are far behind them.

I just don't think GW believes that there is anything to be gained from putting out prepaints. They are, however, getting ready to release some sets (Marines and Orks) into the big box retail stores that include paints and glue at a reasonable cost to try and encourage people that might otherwise be unaware of the hobby to give it a go.

I'd like to point out that X-wing miniatures are an exception, in that they are quite expensive per fighter, and that it's much easier to make a fighter look presentable with a wash and detailing than it is to produce humanoid 28mm figures that don't look crude.

X-Wing is succeeding because its a vastly better designed game than anything else on the market.

GW had the market to itself so could push poorly designed games as gamers had little choice (other than design their own). The need for opponent who knew the rules drove the market to become a near monopoly.

Now GW has substantial compitetion. Gates of Antarias, for instance, being a much better design than typical GW products. Their best design still remains the original Space Marine – an almost exact copy of Frank Chadwick's Command Decision and now years out of print.

The breaking of the GW monopoly is great for gaming though it has fractured the market making it hard for gamers to speak the same language – necessary in our essentially social hobby. The compitition should drive GW to make better products at more reasonable prices – unless gamers just continue to consume their inferior designs at high prices thus distorting the market.

Interesting years to come.

TomT

With Crimson skies, Shadow run, D&D and heroclix, these are all licensed properties, not owned by the company making them. These tend to be flash in the pan, as the license runs out, or get to expensive, loses popularity or simply fail to sell. Again the modern cheap plastic hit and run philosophy holds true, Mantic's Mars attacks, now walking dead. There's even a new turtles game o kickstarter and so on. They try to get their money quick, then get out before it all falls around their ears. No good for longevity.

As GW make their own ip (usually) it means licensing is no problem for them.

If GW makes it, someone will buy it. They wouldn't keep making $40 USD+ figs if this was not the case. So a few dodgy prepaints, perhaps in a sealed boxed game, will sell. Look at Whinecast, they put that in boxes, so you don't see the faults until you get home. Even then they offered replacements at times. They could do the same for prepaints.

They don't need to be prepaints anyway, there are methods of printing onto minis, look at lego, mincraft or wrestler minis and others, many have printing (or stamping or stenciling) on the 3d form.

GW may not think prepaints are a good idea, but they do think overpriced (compared to some competition) cheap plastic (look at Perry's prices) and dodgy resin (resin is dodgy compared to metal) aaaaannd killing off their flagship game are good ideas. Prepaints can't be so bad.

X wing prepaints being quite expensive??!!! GW should be all over this idea like a cheap coat!

As GW now has major competition, perhaps it is a good time for it to try a few new things, such as prepaints. Or actually advertising. I remember my first exposer, apart from a brief Tactics article in Disney Adventures, was picking up my first White Dwarf at a newsagent. The issue with the temple guard painting on the cover, 2??. It had a section all about starting out in mini gaming, a great mag. I believe it may have been designed, in part, to be the first issue for a number of newsagents, being so good for new people. Now, however, we have a (often sealed) expensive book of pretty (gah! plastic) figures. No info as to the reason for their existence or what to do with them. All the while White Dwarf is store only, if its still available at all. Crazy.

Ah, yes specialist games. Blood bowl orks v humans with prepaints, board game style in Toys R Us, with extra booster boxes available. I can see it working for the mass market. Mini wargaming is niche, mass retail market is where the money is. I can see GW heading in that direction again, as others are trying to push them out of hobby wargaming. Don't forget the specialist range is basically old ip trash to them, they can easily use it to try something new and not care if it fails, look at 3ed space hulk, better figs and fancy flooring and it was expensive, it could easily have gone belly up, but as a limited (???) edition thing, who would care. Look what happened though, now they seem to be making other similar boxed games. If they gave perpaints a go, who knows what may happen?

Sorry. Just another thing. GW games, as they are, going into mass market retail will not work, as they demand a lot of shelf space, paint, boxes, blisters, books. But a boxed game and a few booster boxes may work. Thats why those blind boxes minis worked, because they were a single product that used little shelf space. You got all your elves, dwarves, human and bad guys in one little box.

Thats why those blind boxes minis worked, because they were a single product that used little shelf space. You got all your elves, dwarves, human and bad guys in one little box.

Correction: you get a whole lot of figures that you don't want and the ones that you do want might not even be in any of the blind boxes in the store

And regarding the price of X-wing, as someone who collects prepainted Japanese toys, including tanks and ships and the whole gamut of other things, I consider the Xwing stuff to be very expensive compared to other items of similar or superior quality. I think Xwing's stature is inflated because of Star Wars, and to be honest I am not a fan of Star Wars, just like how many people detest grimdark.

Correction correct. You keep buying the blind boxes in the hope of getting what you want. Then you trade on the secondary market. The stores happy, your happy. You also help to prolong the usefulness of the product after it has gone from the shelves. Some people may even buy entire cases of them. How many people buy entire cases of current GW stuff (Bill Gates could have, before he started giving his money away).

Also I was not commenting on the xwing price. Just that, as you suggested their expense, to which I do agree as you can buy an issue of Star trek/wars starships for about the same price and get a better ship, I thought it played in to the GW philosophy quite well.

If we think xwing is expensive, we should prepare ourselves, in case GW do release prepaints. (Also, if you don't want to pay that much for xwing, I see the new micro machines are going on sale, equaling about 2 Aus per ship, and being slightly smaller makes for grander games, also MM fighters would look better next to xwing (or even starships) destroyers and the like).

To further add to this. I do not believe that GW will just paint existing minis. Instead new designs and moulds will be made just for creating prepainted figures. But, as they are making new moulds for mew figures all the time, this may be easy enough to budget. Painting would have to be done in the asian region, as would casting and packaging.

How much better would a perpainted figure look and sell in a clamshell, as opposed to a "broken", unpainted piece of resin or plastic. Parents buying for kids would delight in the finished appeal, as opposed to half finished figures and expensive paint on the carpet. Children would not get bored by modeling and painting before even playing a game and could, instead get stuck in right away. Old geezers would also benefit by not having to try to paint fiddly little things.

Honestly, I think the number of people who want to paint AND play mini games is dwarfed by the number who solely want to play. Board games are going nuts, and its not because people want to paint race cars and top hats. As always in the modern world time is the issue. And dealing with shrink wrap takes more than enough time for most people. They just want to play.