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MadMarkMagee wrote: I'd say with a lot of those old IG models - they're still selling.
I would be surprised. I think them keeping the old metal IG around has more to do with it not really costing them much to do so, so they don't have to sell bucketloads of them to justify not dropping them.
If they sold well you could make the argument, why haven't been expanded in the past couple of decades and advertised more.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Ghaz wrote: So they're supposed to keep kits that don't sell in production indefinitely?
I think there's several things to keep in mind.
Firstly, often the customers perceive that the reason they aren't selling is largely because they haven't been supported well. So when your favourite army gets dropped you do have a sense of "Damn you GW, you didn't give them a chance!".
Secondly, people would like some lead time to know when something is being discontinued so they can either stock up or stop buying as they see fit. The nature of 40k and WHFB armies is they are often bought piecemeal over the course of months or more likely years. But then GW turns around and says "LAST CHANCE!" on a Saturday and by the Sunday it's gone. I do understand that it can be difficult if moulds degrade and masters degrade to the point you can't keep casting without investment remaking them, but I think gamers would appreciate some effort on GW's behalf to actually give people a chance to do something when their army is on the chopping block.
If WHFB and 40k were small scale games which weren't so open ended where an army cost you maybe $200-300 and you just bought an army in a single weekend and were done with it, people would care less.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/04 18:04:40
The metal IG have been "Last Chance to buy" in every way except name. Every time one of the items in the range finally sells out, it quickly and quietly is removed from the webstore like the specialist games were.
I think the last-chance to buy was more or less a marketing strategy to get fans to buy up the last stock on WHFB items at full retail. Well they have done it with SOME 40k items, it's clear the focus has been on WHFB.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/04 18:34:15
Lockark wrote: I think the last-chance to buy was more or less a marketing strategy to get fans to buy up the last stock on WHFB items at full retail. Well they have done it with SOME 40k items, it's clear the focus has been on WHFB.
Possibly, but I wonder if it'd be better to tell people a month or two or three in advance, you'd still clear out the stock pretty quick and then when you do just put a "Expected delivery 1-2 months" on the stuff that sells out quickly to allow you time to manufacture or shift stock around for the last bunch of them so everyone can finish off their armies.
Lockark wrote: The metal IG have been "Last Chance to buy" in every way except name. Every time one of the items in the range finally sells out, it quickly and quietly is removed from the webstore like the specialist games were.
But they've disappeared from the webstore and then have appeared again. How long have they been one of the few metal models on the webstore? 3, 4 years? They must still be in production. They've been there for too long. If they weren't making more than they would have become "no longer available".
Kid_Kyoto wrote: So now that Brettonians and Tomb Kings are gone-gone-gone anyone care to speculate who will get the ax next?
Sisters of Battle - it's been 12 years since the last release and their sole plastic kit is OOP. Even if plastics are coming the metals certainly won't stay around. Half the line is already gone. Stock up now.
Inquisition - See Sisters of Battle. Only more so since they're fairly easy to convert so you don't have 10 years of screaming fans demanding they stick around.
Black Templars - It's been... what? 10 years or more since the last release and their 3 remaining products are web-only. Not even whispers of a codex or dataslate. If you need some more shoulder pads buy your $33 sprue now while it's still around.
2nd and 3rd edition IG - Now we're looking at 20 years for the Mordians, Tallarn etc, and 15 years for Steel Legion, the Vostryans are spring chickens at only 10 years since the last release. Buy em now.
Furies - GW never really developed undivided chaos into its own thing, and now seems to prefer 4-color chaos. Furies are just kind of there on their own, expect them to quietly vanish.
I know for some older fans like me it seems impossible. I remember the days when one could call the UK and order literally any model GW had ever made. And now...
None of these are bold predications (except maybe SoB), certainly nothing as bold as blowing up the whole Warhammer universe, cancelling and restarting White Dwarf, killing metal, killing and (maybe) resurrecting specialist games, so I'd say most of these will happen before April 2017.
Inquisition will be brought back as plastic models for a board game that's my prediction. It's to easy for GW to print money with this setup right now.
Sisters as we know them will get squatted. However GW has been also making money on these supplemental codexs like harlequin and cult mechanicus and I truly believe they have a hard time permanantly squatting sisters. However a full codex I don't forsee for them some type of eclestiastical codex under the imperium of man unbrellanisnmy guess.
Black Templars are already rolled into space marines. They are going no where. There are much worse chapters that don't recieve any attention.
Furies and csm as a whole are just going to be revamped. You might lose them who knows. Csm is anyone's guess right now.
Guard having multiple factions that have no esthetic match makes no sense business wise. They are all disappearing except Cadian and krieg (from forgeworld and that's only because they sell). Slowly but surely all the catachan models will disappear. They are already direct only.
Zywus wrote: I reckon more or less everything Fantasy released before the end times will end up in the Last Chance bin within the next few years.
At least anything that hasn't any indication of magic or otherworldlyness on their models, such as Empire state troops or plain old Dark elves with swords and shields.
Stuff like the Mutalisk or those deamonic dark elf sorscerer riders will probably be kept for a while.
I think you're technically right - but not because of the lack of "otherworldyness".
AoS has marked a change in the business model from GW - no longer will it be codex rehashes and army resculpts. I don't think we'll ever see resculpts for WHFB or AoS ranges again. GW will instead constantly release new ranges/armies instead. That means all the End Times stuff and even things like the Fyreslayers will eventually be gone too (even if it is 20 years down the line). If everything is new there are no vets who won't buy something because they already have it - and if nothing is updated ever, GW won't be held obliged to give unpopular ranges an update too.
Oh, you mean they've gone utterly, utterly mad. Gotcha.
"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
-----
"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal
Lockark wrote: The metal IG have been "Last Chance to buy" in every way except name. Every time one of the items in the range finally sells out, it quickly and quietly is removed from the webstore like the specialist games were.
But they've disappeared from the webstore and then have appeared again. How long have they been one of the few metal models on the webstore? 3, 4 years? They must still be in production. They've been there for too long. If they weren't making more than they would have become "no longer available".
It could just be that they have a few big buckets of the models sitting at Nottingham and when they sell out they box up some more to restock. They may or may not actually be making more, we really have no idea.
Also one of the big strengths of metal is it's not hard to make models on-demand. Right up until the masters get too poor to make a mould, metal casting is cheap. Once the masters need to be remade they might just flat out disappear.
Fact is we don't know, maybe they are selling well, I tend to think that's unlikely and rather it simply doesn't cost them much to keep them in the store.
Ghaz wrote: So they're supposed to keep kits that don't sell in production indefinitely?
They could easily move slow sellers to a print-on-demand service, where they get moved to a cheaper warehouse somewhere* and pulled out to cast with a 2+ week lead time. One of the biggest advantages of GW (and Reaper) is the range of stuff they stock. If they keep purging ranges at that rate, in a few years time they'll easily have less range than their competitors. Warlord does this to an extent - there's loads of things that are marked as being cast on demand with a few day (3-4 IIRC) lead time.
Another option is to rotate through "classics" and bring back 4 or 5 metal minis at a time.
Not everything they make needs to be available all the time.
*Assuming they don't have the space at HQ, considering how sales volumes in general are declining.
If I ran GW I'd run a monthly 'cast on demand' offer. Just offer up a dozen or more metal models as a set (say all of the old RT adventurers, or all of the Escher models, or all the old epic titans) for $100 or so.
The limited time would get in the all the panic buyers, the unpredicatable nature would get people to check the store more often, and the fact that it's a one-off preorder set means no inventory issues.
But there's lots of things that would be different if I was in charge...
If I ran GW I'd run a monthly 'cast on demand' offer. Just offer up a dozen or more metal models as a set (say all of the old RT adventurers, or all of the Escher models, or all the old epic titans) for $100 or so.
The limited time would get in the all the panic buyers, the unpredicatable nature would get people to check the store more often, and the fact that it's a one-off preorder set means no inventory issues.
But there's lots of things that would be different if I was in charge...
Alternatively, they could embrace an 'internal Kickstarter', and offer some sort of subscription service, where they put out word of potential casting runs, and if enough people made prepayment, they would do a casting, or refund the money. That way, they could say that they were really letting us put our money where our mouth is, and genuinely see if the market would support things.
Alternatively, they could embrace an 'internal Kickstarter', and offer some sort of subscription service, where they put out word of potential casting runs, and if enough people made prepayment, they would do a casting, or refund the money. That way, they could say that they were really letting us put our money where our mouth is, and genuinely see if the market would support things.
Nice!
When I'm in charge you can be my head of marketing!
The only problem might be is if you lose the guy who dose the casting (I can see working with molten metal being a uncommon skill) or some law going into effect as it can be seen as a fire hazard
2000 6000 with Reaver Titan guard 2k
2500 (imperial force)
2500 (trimming down in 8th)
TS 30k at 5k points
Yes I have a problem
It's pretty easy to cast lead models, especially as you can recycle your failures very quickly.
The "Kickstarter" idea is nice, but there are various business and marketing reasons why GW are unlikely to go for it, so I don't think we will ever see it happen.
Oldmike wrote: The only problem might be is if you lose the guy who dose the casting (I can see working with molten metal being a uncommon skill) or some law going into effect as it can be seen as a fire hazard
Pretty much anyone working in the gaming industry except the retail front has done spincasting; whilst it's dealing with molten metal it's pretty straightforward. Put a mould on the machine, start it spinning, pour metal in, wait, open mould. Plus, as it's metal you can re-melt any miscasts.
There are probably hundreds of people within an hours drive of WHW that can do it well enough to train up some new guy. I think every other gaming company in the area still does metal casting. Worst case is that they outsource it to someone like North Star.
Oldmike wrote: The only problem might be is if you lose the guy who dose the casting (I can see working with molten metal being a uncommon skill) or some law going into effect as it can be seen as a fire hazard
Eh? Metal casting is not exactly a rare or massively specialised skill. With some proper training, you could train a technician up to do spin casting. As for it being a fire hazard, well plenty of industrial equipment is potential a fire hazard if it is misused.
Here's a nice video on the process courtesy of Mantic:
Oldmike wrote: The only problem might be is if you lose the guy who dose the casting (I can see working with molten metal being a uncommon skill) or some law going into effect as it can be seen as a fire hazard
Eh? Metal casting is not exactly a rare or massively specialised skill. With some proper training, you could train a technician up to do spin casting. As for it being a fire hazard, well plenty of industrial equipment is potential a fire hazard if it is misused.
I did casting in lead before I was playing war games. (1975 - learning to fire muskets, which meant being able to cast musket balls. This was in the lead up to the Bicentennial.)
The Auld Grump
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2016/04/08 15:25:02
Kilkrazy wrote:When I was a young boy all my wargames were narratively based because I played with my toy soldiers and vehicles without the use of any rules.
The reason I bought rules and became a real wargamer was because I wanted a properly thought out structure to govern the action instead of just making things up as I went along.
Herzlos wrote: I wonder if that just means they found a box in the warehouse somewhere.
Discussed this in the N&R thread, but...
Long story short? No, it doesn't. If they had found a box in the warehouse--they'd just have reposted them without any notice. This happened with the Chaos release where stuff actually got removed from the webstore and then came back the next week when stock was found, with no notice.
Have GW perhaps realized people like these kits, they weren't selling because they were poorly supported not because they were duds.
Fafnir wrote: Oh, I certainly vote with my dollar, but the problem is that that is not enough. The problem with the 'vote with your dollar' response is that it doesn't take into account why we're not buying the product. I want to enjoy 40k enough to buy back in. It was my introduction to traditional games, and there was a time when I enjoyed it very much. I want to buy 40k, but Gamesworkshop is doing their very best to push me away, and simply not buying their product won't tell them that.
What about Attilans, Elysians, Death Korps, penal legion, and beast men?
My gosh... I actually forgot some...
Well I left of the FW once since we're talking GW, the one or two beast man models are already OOP (might as well have thrown in the Arcadian Spiders if I was doing that) but I will cop to forgetting the very mighty Attilans.
As pennance, one of these days I'll have to do a vet squad of Attilans on foot, just because no one else has
"Your society's broken, so who should we blame? Should we blame the rich, powerful people who caused it? No, lets blame the people with no power and no money and those immigrants who don't even have the vote. Yea, it must be their fething fault." - Iain M Banks
-----
"The language of modern British politics is meant to sound benign. But words do not mean what they seem to mean. 'Reform' actually means 'cut' or 'end'. 'Flexibility' really means 'exploit'. 'Prudence' really means 'don't invest'. And 'efficient'? That means whatever you want it to mean, usually 'cut'. All really mean 'keep wages low for the masses, taxes low for the rich, profits high for the corporations, and accept the decline in public services and amenities this will cause'." - Robin McAlpine from Common Weal
The GW store in Manhattan just posted a last chance to buy image, some might be already OOP, some might be going web only, some might be repackaged, and some might be going OOP.
The interesting ones there for me are the chaos spawn, the Ork Codex, the Tau Pirana, the Blight Kings and Maggot Lord.
I bet Blight Kings and Maggot Lord are being repackaged with round bases, not much to worry about.
Orc Codex probably going softcover, like the other codex re-prints after the initial run.
Something happening with Chaos Marines, there were already two threads about this yesterday.
Sisters of Battle - it's been 12 years since the last release and their sole plastic kit is 
2000 
6000 with Reaver Titan 
guard 2k
2500 (imperial force)
2500 (trimming down in 8th)
