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I've sold off most of my 40k stuff, and still want to get rid of the rest. As far as I'm concerned, 40k (the game) is dead and buried in an unmarked grave somewhere. The lore is still amazing. Just the game is toast. GW has blatantly stated time and again that the game only exists because people want a game to use their models for, as well as not caring about making a well constructed game. These are in their company preambles-it's in the public domain. So, yes, it's dying, and there is plenty of proof that it is going downhill. Is it a year from death? 5 years? 50? Yes. Who knows when, depends how long they can keep going, but it is spiraling downwards.

Yeah, it is true all you said that everyone and their mother can now spamvgrav centurions, riptides and dreadknights thankfully no sane tournament organizer will allow unbound. Also, 7th fixed the allies matrix pretty well. As you said you can always refuse to play against such lists. I wouldn't say it is dying tho.

I am the author of that video and pretty happy to see someone referencing it and making a thread

40k is primarily dying because the game has been bloated due to GW focusing too much on paper publications than actual models and a tight ruleset.


7th edition is in fact the first, real, "house rule edition" where more than at any point before (at least since 3rd ed) you are likely to agree with your opponent in stuff that you dont want to field, like multiple CADs, allies, flyers, non-IC LoWs, etc.

GW tried to "balance" the numerous, but ultimately limited deathstar builds of 6th by basically allowing for unlimited shenanigans now (like allies being able to use each others transports, FA drop pods etc.) so no deathstar will really come out on top because there'll always be a hard counter for it. Good job, GW. By doing so they completely wrecked the competetive tourney scene and you can see this as the tourneys today are a far cry of how populated they used to be in the mid and late '00s.

And then you have GW's whole supplement policy. Some hardback, some digital dataslate, and then formations (GW's newest strategy to increase kit sales by making people buy more of the same stuff just to be rewarded with a special rule). A clear cash-grab example of this is the new Helbrute formation - field 3 and you can deepstrike them. Wow. Of course. Multi-melta Helbrutes fresh out the Dark Vengeance box were lame. So you either pay more money and buy the actual kit from GW, allowing you to kit it out with better weapons, or field 3 and you can DS them.

And then you have the codexes (as well as the BRB) focusing more and more on showing big, glossy pictures of GW's citadel range rather than dedicating pages to artwork and fluff.

GW somehow tries to argue against this by saying that their newer codexes contain 40+ pages of background while their older 6th edition dexes only contained 25 pages of background, but you must remember that the unit description bestiarum section was where a good deal of additional fluff lay, one that is far more abridged in the newer codexes due to the increased size of the photos that have replaced the unit artworks. And then you have the removal of any and all characters and units that didnt have models for them due to the Chapterhouse lawsuit, so of course there's more room in the newer codexes for a bigger background section.

Also, GW often dedicated more than half a page for a single soldier artwork, and this process is repeated 3 to 4 times in the Dark Eldar codex just with a different coat of paint for each Kabalite Warrior. Lots of white space wasted in the background section.

And last but not least you have more competition in the miniatures market - back in the mod 00s, GW was the only real deal. Now, Malifaux, Infinity, Warmachine, Warmahordes, Privateer Press, Victoria Miniatures and countless others have their own great rulesets and game styles, making the rather clunky looking GW citadel range seem outdated.


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Poly Ranger wrote:
I'm not a fan of games workshop (to put it mildly), their price hikes, ways they try to get extra money out of you (by not including all options), the way they have completely invlidated some peoples armies by getting rid of characters and units that they can't be bothered to make units for etc...
Having said that, I think 7th has brought so many advantages.
-Maelstrom is far more tactical and prevents gunlines to an extent.
-It evened out the power of MCs compared to walkers, with smash nerf, area terrain gone, fmcs spending a turn between flight modes etc.
-It bought a more tactical choice with the new jink rules.
-Psychic phase means ld10 psykers aren't almost always auto passing everything and gives you a chance to cancel buffs.
-They have tried to stop the codex creep and have tried to strengthen weak dexes with supplements; cypher, hellbrutes, IA:13 for csm, formations for nids and orks.
-Forgeworld are creating units to help challenge the imbalanced units (obvious example being the sicaran to combat serps - although this was in 6th).
-All the recent dex releases seem very balanced against each other.

- Maelstrom only makes the current top tier army (Eldar) even more powerful.
- The only army really relying on MCs was Tyranids. And they already sucked in 6th - now they're worse. Of course, Dreads are better in CC vs the big bugs now, but still.
- True, but now skimmer DTs with jink are even more survivable - and the skimmer DT we all hate is the Wave Serpent
- psykers were never overpowered. now the rules are just even more bloated. and besides, armies fielding only 1 overpowered psyker are now doing even better because excess warp charges coming from rolling the D6 (in addition to the ML dice of your psyker) means the entire pool is his to use
- which once again means even more rules that arent found in any codex you can pick up at your GW store
- fair point

-Maelstrom stops the boring sit back and shoot that 6th edition had the problem of. It makes it actually tactical during the course of a game rather than last turn objective grab.
-Deamons/wraithknights/avatars/riptides - whether relied upon or not have now been slightly brought down to scale. Of course if an army relied on them, it would be a problem.
-I still believe wave serpents ridiculously overpowered, however gaining just +1 to the save from last edition definitely does not make up for having to snap fire.
-End of 6th mass divination in guard armies. Divination just in general. Also huge amount of eldar psychic buffs and debuffs most of which couldn't be countered.
-I personally have no problem with there being extra rules, as I don't own every single main codex, so I'm not going to always have access to all the rules anyway.

I'd hardly call Maelstrom 'tactical'.

What it is, is random.

You aren't reacting to the player across from you, you're reacting to a random card drawn, of potentially wildly differing difficulties of achieving them, if at all, which is followed by a random dice roll to determine the number of VP on some of them.

If you're playing Maelstrom exactly by the book, you might as well just roll a D6 at the beginning of the game to determine who wins.

Lord Castellan wrote:
40k is the Austria-Hungary of the gaming world: the decaying power that fails to incorporate its heavily-fragmented interior in an efficient way that could satisy everyone, that shocks the entire world by its mere existence year after year.

Wouldn't that last part be the Ottoman Empire ?

 Blacksails wrote:
I'd hardly call Maelstrom 'tactical'.

What it is, is random.

You aren't reacting to the player across from you, you're reacting to a random card drawn, of potentially wildly differing difficulties of achieving them, if at all, which is followed by a random dice roll to determine the number of VP on some of them.

If you're playing Maelstrom exactly by the book, you might as well just roll a D6 at the beginning of the game to determine who wins.

Modifying Maelstrom makes for a much more dynamic game. Random VPs is unacceptable and should be thrown out by any competitive scene. Of course your turn based objectives are random, but then the missions you roll up at the start of the game are also random along with deployment. Playing with Maelstrom missions just makes for a far more interesting gaming experience as opposed to 6th editions 'let's wait for turn 5 and jump on objectives when the music stops' musical chairs. And when your Maelstrom cards are known to both players it does allow you a sense of playing against the opponent also.

http://spikeybitsblog.com/2014/10/rumors-gw-corporate-strategy-exposed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SpikeyBitsFeed+%28Spikey+Bits%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Here's what one guy thinks it going on.

I think GW's made the game less accessible. You can't get all the game's models in stores and the rules are on the verge of requiring a GM or someone outside the 2 players to establish how the game will be played. The do anything and everything rule set demands someone establish structure to game play. I'd guess the areas where the game continues to thrive are those where the local gaming community has people who are helping organize game play and the areas where the game is failing just aren't as fortunate.

Perhaps Warhammer 40,000 is merely changing in ways that some find exhilarating and others find greatly upsetting.

If you're not happy, be free!

 dakkajet wrote:
The hobbit is "dead", even though it has a solid rule set and fare stats.
40k is not exactly "dead" when you compare both. It still has an okay fan base is some areas. While the hobbit dosent.
The rules, I will agree are dead!

Could you elaborate why the rules are dead?

In our group, 40k is still vital. We had an internal tourney with 8 players recently.
Moreover, we organize an Apoc battle each month. There are 6 to 8 players who participate normally.
However, player are buying less 40k items atm due to prices.
Fantasy is absolutely dead. Players wait for the new edition to start again.
WM/H got a boost. Almost everybody in our group has started a PP army.

10 years ago the LotR boom began to end. GW found that their strategy, whatever it was, had failed. Sales dropped off rapidly and fixed costs were so high they actually made a loss.

A new strategy was adopted. Focus on core games, don't 'fix' the rules but keep changing them, cut costs by reducing shop staff, tournaments and so on, and increase prices rapidly.

This proved unpopular with veterans. There was much complaint which of course was often dismissed then as now by comments that people always moan about whatever GW does.

More importantly though, sales remained broadly flat, showing that people were buying fewer items at higher prices. Profit was good because the cost cutting worked.

GW decided that the price increase strategy could be applied to rulebooks too. They doubled the price of a codex and introduced supplements that were only semi-optional. Sales fell off a cliff. Model sales followed, as there is no point buying new models if you don't have the rules. GW's reaction was to double down on this strategy by issuing 7th edition and splitting the rules up even further so that to have all the rules for your army you need to buy about five different codexes, dataslates and what not, all costing more than the complete codex would have cost a few years go.

The strategy appears to be that the remaining customers who like GW will buy lots more stuff at higher prices, and the moaners can go away.

This may work. If you lose half your customers, but the ones who stay with you will pay triple the money than before, then actually sales will go up.

We shall see in the next financial statement.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
10 years ago the LotR boom began to end. GW found that their strategy, whatever it was, had failed. Sales dropped off rapidly and fixed costs were so high they actually made a loss.

A new strategy was adopted. Focus on core games, don't 'fix' the rules but keep changing them, cut costs by reducing shop staff, tournaments and so on, and increase prices rapidly.

This proved unpopular with veterans. There was much complaint which of course was often dismissed then as now by comments that people always moan about whatever GW does.

More importantly though, sales remained broadly flat, showing that people were buying fewer items at higher prices. Profit was good because the cost cutting worked.

GW decided that the price increase strategy could be applied to rulebooks too. They doubled the price of a codex and introduced supplements that were only semi-optional. Sales fell off a cliff. Model sales followed, as there is no point buying new models if you don't have the rules. GW's reaction was to double down on this strategy by issuing 7th edition and splitting the rules up even further so that to have all the rules for your army you need to buy about five different codexes, dataslates and what not, all costing more than the complete codex would have cost a few years go.

The strategy appears to be that the remaining customers who like GW will buy lots more stuff at higher prices, and the moaners can go away.

This may work. If you lose half your customers, but the ones who stay with you will pay triple the money than before, then actually sales will go up.

We shall see in the next financial statement.

TL;DR version... for about 10 years GW have been implementing a strategy of making the most amount of money from the least amount of customers

ThatSwellFella wrote:
Yeah, it is true all you said that everyone and their mother can now spamvgrav centurions, riptides and dreadknights thankfully no sane tournament organizer will allow unbound. Also, 7th fixed the allies matrix pretty well. As you said you can always refuse to play against such lists. I wouldn't say it is dying tho.

How did it fix stuff? It buffed imperials who got more battle brothers, nerfed tau/eldar ,kept the same ++2 re-roll inv for eldar/deldar baron lists. I don't play tau, but I wouldn't call nerfing one army, which wasn't even the best army in 6th, balancing.

Playing with Maelstrom missions just makes for a far more interesting gaming experience as opposed to 6th editions 'let's wait for turn 5 and jump on objectives when the music stops' musical chairs.

realy? the I drive or drop with my MSU on objectives turn one hoping you have drawn 3 missions you can do and your opponent didn't is more fun? Specialy for armies who don't have cheap and fast and resilient MSU?

I think it is due to GW being under the same company for so long with only 2 major games. This also means it has a large amount of former players. You look at most games like 40k they go belly up after a few years and get restarted by a new company or changed completely.
Like Mechwarrior that has changed hands a lot.
But GW has managed to keep the game alive for so long under the same company, thus profit generated sales equals company that does not go with the run by gamers banner. Yes run by gamers companies are generally cheaper and slimmer to the point rules. But GW has never sold out or restarted they became a major power in gaming. All model based games are compared to GW because they are the bar in the industry. But with that said they have very complex or open rules because they have been making rules for the game system for so long. And TO's almost always make modifications to those rules thus is the open part of the rules.

Playerbases shift everywhere all the time, but 40K still has the largest or the 2nd largest playerbase on the planet. So no, not dying at all.

Having a large playerbase currently doesn't mean its not dying, it just means its not dead.

All numbers point to a shrinking playerbase. I'm no businessologist, but that's not a good thing, and not something I'd call healthy.

 mondo80 wrote:
http://spikeybitsblog.com/2014/10/rumors-gw-corporate-strategy-exposed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+SpikeyBitsFeed+%28Spikey+Bits%29&utm_content=FaceBook

Here's what one guy thinks it going on.

Just wanted to make sure these videos didn't get passed up. They're very interesting.

I'd say that GW is more like the Roman Empire at the end. No one thought it would fall even though there was evidence all around, Rome being sacked, barbarianism of the legions, loss of Britain, most of Gual and then North Africa, etc. (Okay, a few did.)

It was a giant bloated mess that kept going on its own inertia. Everyone just assumed it would keep going until within the space of a few decades it fell and fell hard.
And having a large player base doesn't mean its not falling. You're saying it hasn't fell. True. But it is in the process of falling as evidenced by retailers turning their back and the dramatic decline of revenue.

The video guy is just bitter, because he had several shops and had to close them, when people stoped buying stuff in his stores. The fact that it was GW stoping him from selling them is IMO not that important.

He didnt sound bitter at all.

AlexRae wrote:
He didnt sound bitter at all.

Bitter - A way to dismiss someone with first hand experience and knowledge.

Makumba wrote:
Yeah, it is true all you said that everyone and their mother can now spamvgrav centurions, riptides and dreadknights thankfully no sane tournament organizer will allow unbound. Also, 7th fixed the allies matrix pretty well. As you said you can always refuse to play against such lists. I wouldn't say it is dying tho.

How did it fix stuff? It buffed imperials who got more battle brothers, nerfed tau/eldar ,kept the same ++2 re-roll inv for eldar/deldar baron lists. I don't play tau, but I wouldn't call nerfing one army, which wasn't even the best army in 6th, balancing.


The Baron is gone.

Awesome and pin point deep striking is in. Seer star with serpents is still alive. But you are right eldar lost 2 out of 3 top tier that let them dominante, now the poor schmucks are left with only one,they still had 2 out of 3 from 6th for a long time. But now that has ended . Oh what ever will they do now.


He is bitter, because his shops went down. I have no knowladge of trading market and no one has to tell me that, if you get good at out sourcing someone else stuff, sooner or later the main company will do everything to take it away from you.

"I think", a phrase that would greatly aid your social discourse

In other words, you can't objectively state that he is bitter because you have no way of knowing. You can think, and you can assume. But that's all it is, an assumption.

 MWHistorian wrote:
But it is in the process of falling as evidenced by retailers turning their back and the dramatic decline of revenue.

Firstly, the decline of revenue isn´t really dramatic in the scale GW is at. Secondly, for all the retailers that "turned their backs" that you know, how many do you think exist that haven´t done so and make most of their profits from GW products? I´d say the "back turners" are in the vast minority.

And again, all companies have good and bad years and it doesn´t mean anything in the end necessarily, even if the revenue continues to decline over multiple years. This happens all the time to companies around the world, companies that continously increase revenue and profit for the entire duration of their existence are rare. And the profits of a company haven´t got much to do with one of their games being alive/dead. Even if GW got downsized to the size of Privateer Press ( around 10 times smaller, which in itself is a stretch ) things still keep going. And were that to happen, so what? PP is doing fine in their current size, so will any other company. Downsizing doesn´t mean going under ( should GW even downsize ) and anyone who can´t realize that must really be oblivious to the realities of the business world. A GW having the revenue equal to their competitors ( instead of 10 times larger ) is not the end of the world, and like I said before it´s unlikely even that happens. It could be a good thing too, maybe they´d have to think about their strategies harder.

There is no process of 40K falling necessarily, there is just a company that has suffered some loss of revenue in a market where there´s more competition now than ever before, which partially makes the forementioned self explanatory.

Not buying doesn´t equal less gaming activity, downsizing doesn´t equal going under, revenue and profits doesn´t equal loss of playerbase. And in the end, as stated a thousand times before, we active forum users are a fraction of the total playerbase. Anyone just plain stating "the playerbase is decreasing/game is dying" hasn´t really got a clue, just their own assumption most likely based on the userbase of their go-to forum(s) which again, are a glass of water in the ocean, or people they know, which are probably a rain drop.

One day Privateer Press could reach GW´s size, and at some point they will also have loss of revenue. Will you people be here saying WM/H is dying, PP is going under too, or is it just a GW thing?

40K is still most likely the most played miniature wargame in existence. It can change though. But let´s say WH40K and WM/H would have an equal sized playerbase, companies behind them and popularity for example, or even the other way around than currently. So what?

What you seem to ignore is that despite it being currently the most played, all evidence points to that being a shrinking number.

Why is that important? One of the biggest draws of the game is its ubiquity; I can go to nearly any city of a decent size and find someone who plays 40k. I can't say the same about games like Firestorm Armada, unfortunately yet. However, when that changes, and it is, 40k won't really have much of a selling point. In fact, 40k has several barriers that are keeping people from playing. The cost of entry and the complexity of the rules are significant barriers to entry, especially when other games are considered. The best entry level product they have doesn't include the rules to expand the army, forcing the players to buy in for another $60, which again further slows down someone's ability to enter the game.

The biggest draw to 40k is the lore, for people who are entering via 40k video games, and the model aesthetics. There's nothing inherently enticing about it other than those two factors once their ubiquity stops being a major selling point. Already, games like WM/H are becoming prevalent enough that people are entering the hobby through PP games.

If your game isn't doing anything to draw new blood to it, its not going to survive. Your arguments consist entirely of looking at the now, and not the actions that will be causing things in the future. Every other game is cheaper to get into and stay in. Every other game has better written rules and better balance. Every other game communicates to some extent with their customers.

So while you're right that its the biggest playerbase currently, its pretty disengenious to say that it'll always be that way.

 Blacksails wrote:
What you seem to ignore is that despite it being currently the most played, all evidence points to that being a shrinking number.

I don´t ignore this fact, the amount of competition in wargames currently is larger than ever before. That alone causes such an effect, among other things.

It´s true that 40K could be harder to get into than other games on average, but there´s some variables there too regarding what a person wants to beginwith. A person might not, for example, care about having more complex rules or "entry fees." I think it´s more common than not to choose your ( at least initial ) wargame based on entirely different things than what is the cheapest or easiest to learn. I certainly haven´t met anyone who has said "guys I want to start a wargame, what is the cheapest and easiest to learn?" Most often they already know what they want to start playing, based on other things than those two. The reasons vary from the general look of the miniatures, the universe, look of certain army/miniatures, what their buddies play and so on. Ofcourse those two reasons ( money and ease of rules ) are also a factor, though.

 Blacksails wrote:
So while you're right that its the biggest playerbase currently, its pretty disengenious to say that it'll always be that way.

 RunicFIN wrote:
most played miniature wargame in existence. It can change though.

Store owner: Hey, can I help you?
Customer: Just looking around. I kinda want to do something, but don't know what.
Store owner: Well, we got Warhammer, 40k, Warmachine, Infinity, FOW and Maliefaux.
Customer: Cool. What do I need to play 40k?
Store owner: Well, the rule book is $90, the codex is $60 and a 1,000 army will cost you about $400.
Customer: Whoa...um...that's a little steep.
Store ownder: Well, you can play X-Wing, Infinity has free rules and you'll only need about $150 for a full sized 300pt force.
Customer: That sounds good. Tell me more about that.

Future GW customer lost. It's pretty simple. Repeat that a bunch of times and soon 40k is no longer the dominant game and will then have little reason to play it.

Well that's true. We all agree that getting new players into the game is very difficult these days.
In our gaming club we have a few player who quit the game for a while and came back recently.
This seems to be the only way to get new blood.

 RunicFIN wrote:

I don´t ignore this fact, the amount of competition in wargames currently is larger than ever before. That alone causes such an effect, among other things.

It´s true that 40K could be harder to get into than other games on average, but there´s some variables there too regarding what a person wants to beginwith. A person might not, for example, care about having more complex rules or "entry fees." I think it´s more common than not to choose your ( at least initial ) wargame based on entirely different things than what is the cheapest or easiest to learn. I certainly haven´t met anyone who has said "guys I want to start a wargame, what is the cheapest and easiest to learn?" Most often they already know what they want to start playing, based on other things than those two. The reasons vary from the general look of the miniatures, the universe, look of certain army/miniatures, what their buddies play and so on. Ofcourse those two reasons ( money and ease of rules ) are also a factor, though.

The universe and aesthetics are definitely a draw; its certainly the only two reasons I'm sticking around. Speaking from my own experience, friends have expressed interest in wargaming, and when I explained the cost of my army, they turned white. When I showed them the rules, they just stared blank faced at it. When I showed them X-Wing, it was fun from the first moment.

Now, X-Wing and 40k are fairly different, but it illustrates the ease of getting someone into a game, and willing to spend more in the future. Anecdotal again, but I showed my friends Firestorm in one game and they picked it up easily. When I showed them the cost, they already drafted up plans to buy fleets.

Point is, while cost and ease of learning aren't the most important things for some people, I'd wager they're fairly important for many people. The more people you have playing a game, the easier it is to get more people to play, which turns into a positive upward spiral. GW is facing the opposite, with a customer base looking elsewhere, and having difficulty recruiting new blood to the barriers I mentioned.

The universe and aesthetics can override some of that, and it did with me initially, but having read the fluff and looked in depth at the models of other companies, I'm not convinced 40k is unique or cool looking enough to carry it through the other issues it has a game. Besides, if someone is interested in models and fluff only, it'd be an easier sell to get them into the RPGs. At least that way you're more intimate with the few models you do use, and it'd be cheaper initially and in the long run, while still being immersed in the fluff.

At the end of the day, I don't think there's a whole lot that really keeps 40k going as a wargame. Most of the positive experience of 40k can be got from the RPGs, or just collecting, or using them in other games adapted to 40k models.

 RunicFIN wrote:
most played miniature wargame in existence. It can change though.

Was this in an edit? Must've missed it, but yes, I agree.