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And do you think a reboot of these TT games from them would be successful?

I can't say as to why they abandoned them. If they handled it well then a reboot would probably be very successful, personally I'd be interested in both.

Edit: that said I'm not sure I trust GW these days to actually handle it well...

They dropped them because they weren't making enough money. I think they could be released again and be successful... but maybe not successful enough for GW to actually do it.

If you consider "success" as being that the game costs less to maintain than it pulls in sales, I think they would be successful. But GW may want more than that out of them.

I'm still very pissed off Aeronautica Imperialis was dropped. It was not marketed at all and I didn't even know it existed until it had already been around for several years, then I started collecting a couple of squadrons (which aren't cheap at all mind you) and GW/FW pulled the rug from under me right when I was part way through Imperial Navy, Ork and Eldar squadrons.

They dropped the Specialist Games because their main lines (40K and WFB) were more profitable, and they assumed any money gamers spent on the Specialist stuff they would continue to spend on the main games, thus leading to higher profits, which are the most important thing if you happen to be a somewhat short-sighted shareholder looking forward to dividends.

And in a world where GW were the only providers of table-top fun, it would have worked.

Because they hate fun.

Next question.

In a nutshell small scale skirmish games no longer fit into GW's business model.

In other words games where you only need maybe up to a dozen figures to play just aren't what GW are about these days, they want to sell you as many models as they possibly can.

Other games such as Malifaux and Infinity have partly filled the void and prove that the games can work but they just don't sell anything like 40K and WHFB in terms of volume of sales and add on sales (paints, scenery etc).

However having said that if supported properly GW could make them work, I just don't think they want to....

If you look at the way they have pushed for bigger and bigger armies in their main two games, you'll see that skirmish games just don't fit their business model. Necromanda and similar were created in a time when fantasy and 40k were smaller games. Today specialist games are probably seen as being just too good value for money when you look at the hours of use and enjoyment you get from a relatively small number of models. They don't drive enough sales.

This logic does assume that people will just buy a lot more 40k if they can't necromunda, but I think it's false because different people buy different things and a lack of product diversity hurts them overall. GW have said that the hobby is people 'buying what we sell', and they seem to be under the impression that if they narrow GW products down to a couple of high cost games, they can somehow coerce all their customers into buying big games.

That's probably another reason for falling sales. You can't force a market to buy stuff your way, they'll go elsewhere which is clearly what's happening.

A big problem with these games was that they didn't use Fantasy/40k minis. If you started with Necromunda/Mordheim and wanted to go on to bigger things, you had to start from scratch. Now that might seem like a good thing for GW, but I think that it would have been a lot easier to ease people over to the bigger games if they could build on their existing collection, however small it was.

I think they dropped Nerco/Mordheim/all Specialist Games because they had LotR to deal with and that sucked in existing resources and delivered a huge glut of turnover and margin.

Specialist Games simply couldn't compete with that from a business perspective. Obviously there was an attempt to keep them going but without dedicated resource and the release of new product even life support was only going to stymie sales before they failed to generate enough sales to necessitate a new production cycle.

Further the move to resin meant that low sale lines that were suited to metal casting probably weren't viable.

All in all a right frigging mess.

I have hopes that the obvious failure of the Hobbit licence will see in-part a refocusing on these much neglected lines but we shall see.

Epic and Bloodbowl would be my guess at lines that get released first. Both were strong sellers in their time.

I always thought their decline coincided with the rise of LotR and the Hobbit games, and just assumed there was only so much space/time to go around.

That was my observation at the time, but not based on and real info.

Well they did also drop Epic and BFG at the same time, and many people (myself included) have huge armies / fleets for those games. But the same logic applies, they thought the money not spent on those games would be spent on 40K, WFB and LotR instead, meaning a simpler overall range of products, cheaper manufacturing and stocking etc, and higher profits for all (board members).

Which in one way is great, because now we have Malifaux, Infinity, Firestorm Armada, Planetfall, and just too many other great games to list here, all flourishing all the more in the huge gap in the market left by bad decisions at GW towers.

It's a matter of sales, they don't want you to play the game where you a usable force costs £20-30. They want you to play the game where a usable force costs £200-300.

The mistake in this is assuming that Necromunda and Mordhiem players would simply surrender and start playing 40K and Fantasy instead and perhaps this was the cast about 10 years ago when they first phased them out and GW still had market dominance.

But in the last 5 years or so where non GW games have started breaching the mainstream of the gaming community this is no longer the case. My own club has transformed from one that was almost exclusively a GW club to one where games of Warhahordes, Saga, Infinity, X-Wing Miniatures, Star Trek Attack Wing, Bolt Action, DZC, Deadzone and Dreadball are played regularly and on any given night the non GW games being will usually equal the number of GW games.

I don’t know if GW are still sticking their head in the sand and telling themselves they are the only player in town, but if so they need to remove is sharpish.

I think Necromunda restart would be a wonderful intro game into 40k. But keep it cheap and here is now.. The new sprues they are making are packed (very little dead area) so you could easily get 5 figures on to one sprue. Write the game were Gangs, Retinues or War-bands targeted around 5- 10 miniatures in a skirmish game. Make the book a free PDF and instead of cardboard box use plastic bagging that can be placed on hangers, Less space in the store, less packaging cost and a way to get new people into the game. The whole drug phenomenon is "first one is free", keep it as cheap as possible. Then when they like the game.. They need to expanded their gang , buy paints and etc.. Then the smart thing would do is to write in genestealer cult rules.. chaos cult rules.. imperial guard ganger rules.. that would allow you to add the forces to your 40k armies.. Or allow 40k forces into the skirmish game ..Hence what a intro game should do..

My non gamer colleagues that visited my house are amazed at my miniatures.. Then i tell them that a single unpainted, unassembled ,one inch figure is $25 and they look at me like I am crazy... I am sure you will have a kid walk into games workshop store and see a cool dreadnought; Only to find out its $50 and you can use it in a game without buying a bunch other figures and you need the rule book and an army book. That nice dreadnought turns into $300; that is 5-6 brand new video games..

Genoside07 wrote: "first one is free"

Yeah, that won't happen with GW products.

Quite simply video games in places you only need maybe up to number of numbers to play merely are not just what GW are usually regarding nowadays, they would like to promote an individual as numerous designs as they possibly can.

 LuciusAR wrote:
It's a matter of sales, they don't want you to play the game where you a usable force costs £20-30. They want you to play the game where a usable force costs £200-300.

I heard from someone fairly senior-ish that this, amongst some other reasons, was the case. A few others NotProp pointed out, in terms of the need to consolidate product range.

The interesting thing is that the SG would have disappeared completely, a hell of a lot earlier, had it not been for Jervis Johnson. Apparently he offered to take stewardship of the range entirely on his own back, and in addition to his basic responsibilities within the company. He was obviously only allowed to do this for so long, before the games went the way of Warhammer Historical.

I would be very, very surprised if the games ever came back in more than single-release, limited-run form (aka Space Hulk), unless there is a major personality and culture shift within the upper management.

Fortunately, the 'market has spoken', and we now have great 3rd party producers for miniatures of a lot of those games, as well as other games which have filled the void of game type that SG have left behind. Mantic's games being chief amongst these.

I can't say from a sales perspective what happened with those games, but I can give you some info about the manufacturing side.

Mordheim and Necromunda had way too many parts and took a long time to produce molds and castings for them.

After making the master molds and casting master tins, we would cast anywhere from 10-30 pieces of each part then we would have to clean the mold lines off all of those parts.

Each set of tins was comprised of one code, and we would have 10-13 pieces that we would have to clean the mold lines off of.

Take for example the Pit Fighter Warband. It had 14 components. Each component had between 10-30 tins that needed to be cleaned at an average of 1 hour per set (sometimes longer). Just cleaning the tins for one warband takes time away from all the other items that need to be made, both from SG and the main range.

Then you have to make (at least) one mold per component, we usually made 2-3 and we rarely used mixed molds at this time since mixed molds caused confusion and mispacks. So now you have 42 molds to be made just for that one warband.

One silicone mold takes 2 hours to vulcanize, one hour to post-cure then anywhere from 10-20 minutes to cut in. And we had 42 molds to make for just that one warband with a staff of 6 people (at the time).

Then you had the other 3-4 warbands that were released that same week to deal with, in addition to all the other new releases from the main ranges and also molds to replace worn out molds.

Necormunda was just as bad, so was Inquisitor. They just had too damn many parts.

There were times that Specialist Games was releasing twice the amount of new product as the main ranges (40K and WFB).

That's a hell of a lot of work to get done, so we were frequently behind schedule.

From what I was told, manufacturing all that product was starting to interfere with the manufacturing of the main ranges.

We did try to have a separate cell dedicated to SG product, but they inevitably would be making molds for whatever was needed and we also didn't want to double-up on equipment (that would just increase our costs as well). So everything was done just from one department.

Now the above example was my experience in Baltimore and Memphis, not Lenton. I know Lenton had a larger staff than we did, so maybe they had it easier.

-

I think MechanicalHorizon gives some of the most useful inside info I've seen.

As for the final deletion of the range, it isn't hard to figure. GW had a set of games for which new products had not been released for the better part of a decade and had not been sold outside a GW store for even longer.
If those lines are seen as not worth the manpower to produce and distribute and/or as cannibalizing GW's other games, and/or seen a distraction from the companies direction, and/or as part of a move away from metal figures then they would be dropped.

I think the initial decision to slow and end support of what came to be called "specialist games" was folly, but it was easy to see many reasons why they may finally have dropped the lines entirely.

The board only focuses on maximizing profit, Anything that doesn't do that gets scrapped, too bad that the specialist games were great entry games into the HHHobby.
And a lot of Veterans play(ed) them. But thanks to GW's wisdom other companies filled that void and now we have Dropzone, infinity, x-wing and many more to scratch that itch.
(really miss Necromunda and Battlefleet Gothic though).

Let's be fair to GW. They dropped Specialist games after they spent ten years not supporting them.

I'd guess that any game after ten years of no support won't be bringing in the revenue they've come to expect.

Mymearan wrote:
A big problem with these games was that they didn't use Fantasy/40k minis.

Yet the Empire Free Company and Skaven Night Runners were lifted straight from the Mordheim boxed set for use in WHFB.

 Ghaz wrote:

Mymearan wrote:
A big problem with these games was that they didn't use Fantasy/40k minis.

Yet the Empire Free Company and Skaven Night Runners were lifted straight from the Mordheim boxed set for use in WHFB.

It has always struck me as odd that if they thought they were cannibalizing their own sales with the specialist games why not reinvent them to be a feeder system to the larger (and much more expensive) games.

A Fantasy and 40k skirmish system which used the existing races and their miniature ranges which encouraged you to play escalating points with a campaign system that could link to the main systems would have been very advantageous for them.

 odinsgrandson wrote:
Let's be fair to GW. They dropped Specialist games after they spent ten years not supporting them.

I'd guess that any game after ten years of no support won't be bringing in the revenue they've come to expect.

Keep in mind they also dropped the FW specialist games that were supported up until I think 3 or 4 years before they were dropped.

Though they were idiots for not advertising the FW games, most people didn't even know they existed.

StraightSilver wrote:
In a nutshell small scale skirmish games no longer fit into GW's business model.

In other words games where you only need maybe up to a dozen figures to play just aren't what GW are about these days, they want to sell you as many models as they possibly can.

This actually doesn't make sense, given that GW know the majority of their customers don't stay with them long enough to dump a full army worth of money into their bank account. Skirmish games are perfect for what they consider their core market - kids that dump one birthday and one Christmas worth of money into the hobby.

A game like Necromunda or Mordheim would be far more attractive to those they consider their core market, since the idea of getting a complete game for that money would draw more customers.

A reboot might have potential -- these games have enough of a following, and GW can still make awesome-looking models.

But it's more likely that poor business decisions and marketing will screw it up -- Dreadfleet was an ok game with really cool models and it didn't do very well.

I'd still probably give them money if they rebooted gorkamorka.

I agree on the reasons why they were dropped.
Not going to get into the details of that though

i have a few remarks on te games though...
1. Personally, I liked o loved several of them.
Loved- Blood Bowl, Necromunda
Liked Gorkamorka
Never tried but SO wanted to- the space ship one, Dark future and mordheim

2. The gangs/teams and such are/were VERY easily converted from basic plastic troop kits. This included combinations such as fantasy s being mixed with 40k guns and weapons to make gangs. I actually found this easier to do and far cheaper than using the official metal models. Often looked far better too. So releasing ow to" tutorials for doing this could ost the sales of the models that are ought for that reason without having to o overboard sculpting new ones.

3. Been a while since I looked but I remember them having the rules up as a free download on their site with updates (living rule book for blood bowl for example). Havnt seen them for a while but since they were put up as free downloads, they shouldnt complain if we find copies of those free downloads and used them.

4. Not hard to customize the free download rules to suit individual gaming clubs/shops and all to suit our own needs. After all, they arent supporting them, why shouldnt we make sure they suit our needs.

5. You can find or customize similer games pretty much anywhere. However, they dont all have the same fluff or flavor or feel that we grew to love in these games. I would even be tickled to death if they "sold" the games to other companies so that they could support them and help them grow while keeping the flavor and feel we love. Unfortunately, I dont see that happening.

6. Yes, i would buy reboots of the games I listed as loving and proably also the ones I listed as liking and maybe even Dark Future if they rebooted it. (although i think they may have sold the rights to dark future. i remember someone telling me that the novels were picked up by someone else and I really wanted to see how some of them "wound up".

I don't think Dark Future was taken up by anyone. What happened was that a different line of books called Dark Future appeared and even though GW had stopped making any Dark Future models or books, they sued them anyway.

Does anyone else think that the new edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle might have a Mordheim-esq element?

The rumors basically say that the new game will be playable at a skirmish level, instead of always working with huge companies of minis.

I think it makes a lot of sense for GW to roll Mordheim into WFB. Simply make a skirmish format for WFB, rather than requiring a new rulebook.

That way, if you hook people with the skirmish game, they're more likely to eventually 'up grade' to large WFB armies (they'll already have the rulebook).


There's always the possibility that a big change that GW makes might actually include some good things too.

 mechanicalhorizon wrote:
I can't say from a sales perspective what happened with those games, but I can give you some info about the manufacturing side.

Mordheim and Necromunda had way too many parts and took a long time to produce molds and castings for them.

After making the master molds and casting master tins, we would cast anywhere from 10-30 pieces of each part then we would have to clean the mold lines off all of those parts.

Each set of tins was comprised of one code, and we would have 10-13 pieces that we would have to clean the mold lines off of.

Take for example the Pit Fighter Warband. It had 14 components. Each component had between 10-30 tins that needed to be cleaned at an average of 1 hour per set (sometimes longer). Just cleaning the tins for one warband takes time away from all the other items that need to be made, both from SG and the main range.

Then you have to make (at least) one mold per component, we usually made 2-3 and we rarely used mixed molds at this time since mixed molds caused confusion and mispacks. So now you have 42 molds to be made just for that one warband.

One silicone mold takes 2 hours to vulcanize, one hour to post-cure then anywhere from 10-20 minutes to cut in. And we had 42 molds to make for just that one warband with a staff of 6 people (at the time).

Then you had the other 3-4 warbands that were released that same week to deal with, in addition to all the other new releases from the main ranges and also molds to replace worn out molds.

Necormunda was just as bad, so was Inquisitor. They just had too damn many parts.

There were times that Specialist Games was releasing twice the amount of new product as the main ranges (40K and WFB).

That's a hell of a lot of work to get done, so we were frequently behind schedule.

From what I was told, manufacturing all that product was starting to interfere with the manufacturing of the main ranges.

We did try to have a separate cell dedicated to SG product, but they inevitably would be making molds for whatever was needed and we also didn't want to double-up on equipment (that would just increase our costs as well). So everything was done just from one department.

Now the above example was my experience in Baltimore and Memphis, not Lenton. I know Lenton had a larger staff than we did, so maybe they had it easier.

However, in my own experience, people were much more likely to repurpose Warhammer miniatures than buy Mordheim miniatures - a trollslayer is a trollslayer. The pitfighters were mostly made from repurposed Chaos thugs and Goliath gangers from Necromunda.

The plastic Empire Infantry and, later, Empire Militia boxed sets provided entire warbands.

Folks bought quite a few of those Mordheim accessory sprues from GW mailorder for the backpacks, lanterns, bucklers, etc..

In my area, right now, there is a Mordheim campaign running - while Warhammer has been completely replaced by Kings of War. (And the plastic War of the Roses figures by Perry Miniatures are providing entire warbands....)

And now most of the warbands use miniatures by a whole bunch of companies - at least a few have no GW minis at all. (For irony, some of the Kings of War armies are composed entirely of GW miniatures.)

Folks 'round here aren't afraid to repurpose miniatures.

The Auld Grump