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Made in us
Krazed Killa Kan




Homestead, FL

The area I just moved to has a single gaming store within 30 miles of me and they are currently no longer carrying GW products because of the costs associated with the product. I understand the concept that GW wants to sell everyone from their webstore to make as much profit as possible. But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players? At the current rate we won't be able to play fairly soon. So in conclusion.....RAGE!

I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you mess with me, I'll kill you all

Marine General James Mattis, to Iraqi tribal leaders 
   
Made in us
Cosmic Joe





 Ghazkuul wrote:
The area I just moved to has a single gaming store within 30 miles of me and they are currently no longer carrying GW products because of the costs associated with the product. I understand the concept that GW wants to sell everyone from their webstore to make as much profit as possible. But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players? At the current rate we won't be able to play fairly soon. So in conclusion.....RAGE!

No, they don't realize that. They don't know how the game is played outside of GW HQ and frankly, they couldn't care.
On the plus side, you can explore and find all the other amazing games out there.



Also, check out my history blog: Minimum Wage Historian, a fun place to check out history that often falls between the couch cushions. 
   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





 MWHistorian wrote:
 Ghazkuul wrote:
The area I just moved to has a single gaming store within 30 miles of me and they are currently no longer carrying GW products because of the costs associated with the product. I understand the concept that GW wants to sell everyone from their webstore to make as much profit as possible. But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players? At the current rate we won't be able to play fairly soon. So in conclusion.....RAGE!

No, they don't realize that. They don't know how the game is played outside of GW HQ and frankly, they couldn't care.
On the plus side, you can explore and find all the other amazing games out there.



assuming his local gaming shop isn't like one of mine (I have 3 gaming shops) where the only thing they sell is CCGs and a unwanted copy of the 4th edition D&D PHB

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in us
Cosmic Joe





BrianDavion wrote:
 MWHistorian wrote:
 Ghazkuul wrote:
The area I just moved to has a single gaming store within 30 miles of me and they are currently no longer carrying GW products because of the costs associated with the product. I understand the concept that GW wants to sell everyone from their webstore to make as much profit as possible. But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players? At the current rate we won't be able to play fairly soon. So in conclusion.....RAGE!

No, they don't realize that. They don't know how the game is played outside of GW HQ and frankly, they couldn't care.
On the plus side, you can explore and find all the other amazing games out there.



assuming his local gaming shop isn't like one of mine (I have 3 gaming shops) where the only thing they sell is CCGs and a unwanted copy of the 4th edition D&D PHB

Oh my word. That's terrible. Come on down to Utah, there's like a hobby store every five miles.



Also, check out my history blog: Minimum Wage Historian, a fun place to check out history that often falls between the couch cushions. 
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






Losing store access is kind of annoying, but let's not forget that you can always play at home. Organize games online, pool your resources to get tables and terrain, and play all the games you want without being tied to a particular store.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





 Ghazkuul wrote:
But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players?


No, what they realized is that the long term social storefront based model worked as much against them as it did for them. Hence they started moving toward a game that focused on garage/basement play built around larger, more diverse armies, larger models and fortifications, scenario based play, terrain that exists as more than just a cover save, and a *play how you want* mentality.
   
Made in pl
Longtime Dakkanaut




That maybe ok for US with its huge houses, but in some countries playing at home is out of the question, unless someone lives alone. And storing terrain is even a bigger problem.
In 5th we had more then 100players here. Now after 2 closed stores we are down to less then 30.

Online only stuff also means some people just can't get the stuff they need to play an army.
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






 Massawyrm wrote:
No, what they realized is that the long term social storefront based model worked as much against them as it did for them. Hence they started moving toward a game that focused on garage/basement play built around larger, more diverse armies, larger models and fortifications, scenario based play, terrain that exists as more than just a cover save, and a *play how you want* mentality.


Not really. They moved to a game that focuses on selling lots of starter sets to new players, with their stores reduced to little more than a demo table and a wall of starter sets. Modern GW doesn't care if you play the game, they just care that you say "wow that's awesome" and buy your starter set/paint/etc. And hopefully you keep buying every new release regardless of what it does in the game, but if you don't there's always another new customer ready to buy a starter set.

And no, GW's "social storefront based model" didn't work against them. In fact it was one of GW's biggest advantages. If you and your friend are playing in your garage you can play any game you want, GW's games are nothing special. But GW had something unique to offer: the ability to have guaranteed people to play with at your local store. When you bought a GW game you weren't just buying some fancy pieces of plastic, you were buying membership in a community. GW's stubborn determination to throw away this advantage is one of their worst business decisions.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in se
Servoarm Flailing Magos






Metalica

Makumba wrote:
That maybe ok for US with its huge houses, but in some countries playing at home is out of the question, unless someone lives alone. And storing terrain is even a bigger problem.
In 5th we had more then 100players here. Now after 2 closed stores we are down to less then 30.

Online only stuff also means some people just can't get the stuff they need to play an army.


This is actually something I've been thinking about lately too. It seems like everyone in the 'muricas has this awesome gaming basement.
Here in Sweden, everyone lives in a small apartment. Me and my friends have a gaming table that we've made out of three IKEA tables. This allows us to store it, but whoever has it has to store those three table tops and all the scenery. It is a problem. We don't really have that kind of storage, so we're making concessions to store it.

 
   
Made in ca
Commander of the Mysterious 2nd Legion





 MWHistorian wrote:
BrianDavion wrote:
 MWHistorian wrote:
 Ghazkuul wrote:
The area I just moved to has a single gaming store within 30 miles of me and they are currently no longer carrying GW products because of the costs associated with the product. I understand the concept that GW wants to sell everyone from their webstore to make as much profit as possible. But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players? At the current rate we won't be able to play fairly soon. So in conclusion.....RAGE!

No, they don't realize that. They don't know how the game is played outside of GW HQ and frankly, they couldn't care.
On the plus side, you can explore and find all the other amazing games out there.



assuming his local gaming shop isn't like one of mine (I have 3 gaming shops) where the only thing they sell is CCGs and a unwanted copy of the 4th edition D&D PHB

Oh my word. That's terrible. Come on down to Utah, there's like a hobby store every five miles.


ohh thats only one of the stores. the other two are great. one's a GW store and sells well GW stuff, the other is literally across the street and sells everything else. it's actually a nice arrangement and both store managers are happy to send customers to each other if they're inquiring about something the other place stocks it's actually not bad

Opinions are not facts please don't confuse the two 
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






 Purifier wrote:
This is actually something I've been thinking about lately too. It seems like everyone in the 'muricas has this awesome gaming basement.
Here in Sweden, everyone lives in a small apartment. Me and my friends have a gaming table that we've made out of three IKEA tables. This allows us to store it, but whoever has it has to store those three table tops and all the scenery. It is a problem. We don't really have that kind of storage, so we're making concessions to store it.


You don't really need that much space. A 6x4 table can be built in sections and stored against the wall in a closet and takes up very little space. Then when you want to play you can put it on top of your kitchen table. For terrain storage you just need a small bookshelf, which probably takes up less space than models/paint/etc. It's not an awesome dedicated gaming space, but most people should be able to play 40k at home if they really want to.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





 Peregrine wrote:
And no, GW's "social storefront based model" didn't work against them. In fact it was one of GW's biggest advantages. If you and your friend are playing in your garage you can play any game you want, GW's games are nothing special. But GW had something unique to offer: the ability to have guaranteed people to play with at your local store. When you bought a GW game you weren't just buying some fancy pieces of plastic, you were buying membership in a community. GW's stubborn determination to throw away this advantage is one of their worst business decisions.


Yes it very much did. While all the examples you cite are what work in their favor, you're ignoring the elements that I know from having read your posts for years that you know are true. The meta drives sales. The larger the meta, the larger the impact it has on those sales. GW wants to sell a wide range of kits across a number of armies, not just select units from a few armies. Optimally, they want to sell roughly the same number of kits of each unit that comes from the same size batch. They want to sell as many Eldar Jetbikes as they sell Necron Warrior squads as they sell Tau Crisis Suits. But in a storefront meta, your purchases become restricted based upon how the local scene plays and what they allow people to play with. In a meta in which there are a few loud players that don't like FW or superheavies, players don't buy them because they know they can't use them. In a meta where everyone thinks Eldar are broken, you can't get a game with them and, again, players won't buy them. In a meta that plays only EW missions, several armies which do far better in MoW can't compete and, once again, players don't buy them. And in a tournament meta things get bleaker, sales being restricted to only a handful of units in a handful of armies based upon whatever is dominating at the time.

In a Garage meta, your only restrictions are what you and your friend agree to, and the units you tend to run become more about what you like rather than what can handle whatever the beasts of the local meta are or what the local meta says you can use. It's a lot easier to convince your friend to let you use a Baneblade to see how it plays than it is to convince people to let you use one in an anti-LoW meta or a tournament scene that prohibits it. And issues of balance become a self correcting problem when you are dealing with friends at your house as opposed to a stranger in a neutral location. A friend who is TFG stops getting invited to 40k night until he can learn to play like a civilized human being. But finding a storefront 40k scene w/out TFG is a holy grail of a scene. So what you end up with is a broader number of sales across the entire range based upon the desires of each consumer rather than the desires of the herd mentality of local/tournament scenes.

Storefront scenes also focus upon pickup games at a very specific level. Models have to be transported and games kept relatively short, keeping armies generally small and larger models like superheavies and fortifications generally prohibited due to transportation restrictions. Games also tend to focus on one type of play - Eternal War - over the seven other styles of play that favor other armies or model sales, but require additional setup, terrain or special lists. In 5th when BATTLE MISSIONS came out, you couldn't find games using it, so it sold poorly. Now GW puts out specialized campaigns using specific armies and they sell out. Because folks can run a campaign over several weeks at their home in a way that is very hard to organize in a storefront scene.

And despite the fact that GW ceased all support of the storefront scene five or so years ago, that scene still exists. They don't need to support it for it to exist. So they get those communities where they need them, and they get a cavalcade of garage players buying armies and units from across the range rather than just whatever the big hotness on the tournament scene is.

There are serious upsides to this new model that counteract the downsides of abandoning the old one.
   
Made in cn
Elite Tyranid Warrior





 Massawyrm wrote:
Spoiler:
 Peregrine wrote:
And no, GW's "social storefront based model" didn't work against them. In fact it was one of GW's biggest advantages. If you and your friend are playing in your garage you can play any game you want, GW's games are nothing special. But GW had something unique to offer: the ability to have guaranteed people to play with at your local store. When you bought a GW game you weren't just buying some fancy pieces of plastic, you were buying membership in a community. GW's stubborn determination to throw away this advantage is one of their worst business decisions.


Yes it very much did. While all the examples you cite are what work in their favor, you're ignoring the elements that I know from having read your posts for years that you know are true. The meta drives sales. The larger the meta, the larger the impact it has on those sales. GW wants to sell a wide range of kits across a number of armies, not just select units from a few armies. Optimally, they want to sell roughly the same number of kits of each unit that comes from the same size batch. They want to sell as many Eldar Jetbikes as they sell Necron Warrior squads as they sell Tau Crisis Suits. But in a storefront meta, your purchases become restricted based upon how the local scene plays and what they allow people to play with. In a meta in which there are a few loud players that don't like FW or superheavies, players don't buy them because they know they can't use them. In a meta where everyone thinks Eldar are broken, you can't get a game with them and, again, players won't buy them. In a meta that plays only EW missions, several armies which do far better in MoW can't compete and, once again, players don't buy them. And in a tournament meta things get bleaker, sales being restricted to only a handful of units in a handful of armies based upon whatever is dominating at the time.

In a Garage meta, your only restrictions are what you and your friend agree to, and the units you tend to run become more about what you like rather than what can handle whatever the beasts of the local meta are or what the local meta says you can use. It's a lot easier to convince your friend to let you use a Baneblade to see how it plays than it is to convince people to let you use one in an anti-LoW meta or a tournament scene that prohibits it. And issues of balance become a self correcting problem when you are dealing with friends at your house as opposed to a stranger in a neutral location. A friend who is TFG stops getting invited to 40k night until he can learn to play like a civilized human being. But finding a storefront 40k scene w/out TFG is a holy grail of a scene. So what you end up with is a broader number of sales across the entire range based upon the desires of each consumer rather than the desires of the herd mentality of local/tournament scenes.

Storefront scenes also focus upon pickup games at a very specific level. Models have to be transported and games kept relatively short, keeping armies generally small and larger models like superheavies and fortifications generally prohibited due to transportation restrictions. Games also tend to focus on one type of play - Eternal War - over the seven other styles of play that favor other armies or model sales, but require additional setup, terrain or special lists. In 5th when BATTLE MISSIONS came out, you couldn't find games using it, so it sold poorly. Now GW puts out specialized campaigns using specific armies and they sell out. Because folks can run a campaign over several weeks at their home in a way that is very hard to organize in a storefront scene.

And despite the fact that GW ceased all support of the storefront scene five or so years ago, that scene still exists. They don't need to support it for it to exist. So they get those communities where they need them, and they get a cavalcade of garage players buying armies and units from across the range rather than just whatever the big hotness on the tournament scene is.

There are serious upsides to this new model that counteract the downsides of abandoning the old one.
I disagree with the statement that a storefront meta reduces sales. When people buy from an online store, they take the time to carefully consider each option before them. They think "will I use this?" and "do I actually need another box of these?" and generally make pointed, select purchases. A store meta is open to impulse purchases, people coming in and seeing "wow, you have that new Knight with the weapon options!".

Only having online stores hurts GW's ability to advertise their product. A store has the ability to draw passerbies in with displays of pretty models, allowing people that might be interested in the hobby to discover it. The stores allow people to see that there are games that involve these miniatures and what the miniatures actually look and, if people are generous, feel like.The online store does not have displays on the streets or even banner ads to advertise itself, people that use it are generally people that already play or collect models. While having a big online store might be useful for people already in the hobby, it makes it difficult and confusing to join.

Saying that stores are limited to playing eternal war is false, stores are just as capable as organising an event as four people in a garage. A store manager can decide that he wants to organise a narrative campaign or apocalypse battle and organise it with three or four of the regular players. They come in, set up, use a table with all of the narrative special rules. The only difference is that the manager might be able to help connect people that would be interested in a campaign to join you. I am taking part in a July 4th apocalypse battle with xenos trying to destroy an Imperial protected White House at my FLGS and there have been several long term campaigns in which I took part.

Back to the OP, the policy that is hurting the small retailers is the fact that they have to stock a certain amount of certain GW products, which they then need to sell to turn a profit. Shopkeepers that live in a meta without any BA players are then stuck with several boxes of BA. They are still charged for these must stock items, and GW's prices are not known for being cheap. Unless your store is in a meta where players of every army play, they are only a few releases of stuff that no one plays from being in deep trouble.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/06/28 01:27:25


Still waiting for Godot. 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





 the Signless wrote:
I disagree with the statement that a storefront meta reduces sales.

Back to the OP, the policy that is hurting the small retailers is the fact that they have to stock a certain amount of certain GW products, which they then need to sell to turn a profit. Shopkeepers that live in a meta without any BA players are then stuck with several boxes of BA. They are still charged for these must stock items, and GW's prices are not known for being cheap. Unless your store is in a meta where players of every army play, they are only a few releases of stuff that no one plays from being in deep trouble.


That wasn't my assertion at all. Instead what I was saying is exactly what you ended up stating at the end - the the local meta influences sales, and switching to a garage based meta means more well rounded sales, which is good for FLGSs. The problem FLGSs face isn't GW moving to feature more online sales, but rather the ebay retailers and mail order stores that sell GW at a large discount. GW didn't move to online sales to maximize their profits in the face of direct sell through - they did it to compete with the online retailers that were gutting those stores already.
   
Made in us
Latest Wrack in the Pits




the Signless is absolutely correct. My FLGS is currently running an Escalation League/Narrative Campaign that is going swimmingly smoothly.
   
Made in se
Servoarm Flailing Magos






Metalica

 Peregrine wrote:
 Purifier wrote:
This is actually something I've been thinking about lately too. It seems like everyone in the 'muricas has this awesome gaming basement.
Here in Sweden, everyone lives in a small apartment. Me and my friends have a gaming table that we've made out of three IKEA tables. This allows us to store it, but whoever has it has to store those three table tops and all the scenery. It is a problem. We don't really have that kind of storage, so we're making concessions to store it.


You don't really need that much space. A 6x4 table can be built in sections and stored against the wall in a closet and takes up very little space. Then when you want to play you can put it on top of your kitchen table. For terrain storage you just need a small bookshelf, which probably takes up less space than models/paint/etc. It's not an awesome dedicated gaming space, but most people should be able to play 40k at home if they really want to.

I know how much space it takes up. Please see the comment where you quoted me saying that I have a setup. Understand me when I'm saying that it's more space than a lot of us have to spare. Out of the 4 of us main guys in my gaming group, 2 of us can store it. One with quite a lot of difficulty. The other two simply don't have the room to store three table tops.

 
   
Made in us
Gargantuan Gargant





New Bedford, MA USA

 Massawyrm wrote:

No, what they realized is that the long term social storefront based model worked as much against them as it did for them. Hence they started moving toward a game that focused on garage/basement play built around larger, more diverse armies, larger models and fortifications, scenario based play, terrain that exists as more than just a cover save, and a *play how you want* mentality.


Pretty much sums up my gaming group.

We have about as many, if not more, regular players as the LGS.

Gaming in a store is only great if they people in the store understand the game and participate.

I owned the RT book but didn't really get into 40K and Fantasy until the owners of the LGS at the time wouldn't stop talking about it, the fluff, and how much they enjoyed it.

Years later, the current LGS offers us table space and product, but they don't have a clue about anything game related.

Unsolicited shout out for The Armory Wargames and Hobbies , who just opened last week in New Bedford, MA, and is run by an actual gamer. It's an amazing difference when the store owner actually knows what the heck he's talking about.

   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





Raven Cowl wrote:
the Signless is absolutely correct. My FLGS is currently running an Escalation League/Narrative Campaign that is going swimmingly smoothly.


Except that he's wrong when he suggested I thought this was the ONLY way storefront metas work. It's just the main focus of most storefront metas. Great FLGSs that know their business do this sort of thing and know how to support the scene while promoting sales. (Escalation is AMAZING for that.) But GW actually attempted this during their last gasp of store support with the LUCKY 13's campaign back in '08. It was a failure with abysmal attendance - even in large cities - and hence never repeated. So GW leaves that up to the stores themselves now.
   
Made in us
Douglas Bader






 Massawyrm wrote:
The meta drives sales.


But the meta also drives sales in a "garage" meta. People still read about what is powerful, and 40k's balance issues aren't exactly subtle. Powerful stuff will still sell to competitive players (yes, competitive players still exist in a "garage" meta) and "casual" players will still shun the overpowered stuff.

Storefront scenes also focus upon pickup games at a very specific level. Models have to be transported and games kept relatively short, keeping armies generally small and larger models like superheavies and fortifications generally prohibited due to transportation restrictions. Games also tend to focus on one type of play - Eternal War - over the seven other styles of play that favor other armies or model sales, but require additional setup, terrain or special lists.


Alternatively, "garage" players are less likely to make a massive investment in the game (since they're playing at home instead of organizing a gaming club, traveling to tournaments, etc) and will only buy fairly small armies, will play with cardboard boxes and other random stuff as terrain, etc. And they're much less likely to keep buying if their one opponent decides to move on to something else. Meanwhile the kind of people who invest tons of money into narrative armies/terrain/etc are going to do it regardless of where they play.

In 5th when BATTLE MISSIONS came out, you couldn't find games using it, so it sold poorly.


No, it sold poorly because it was a mediocre book at best. The missions were terrible for competitive and pickup games, and no better than the stuff the narrative players were already creating themselves. So its target market was the pretty small minority that don't care about competitive games but are too lazy to make their own story.

Now GW puts out specialized campaigns using specific armies and they sell out.


GW's campaign books (like a lot of GW's other books) sell out because they have small print runs, not because there's huge demand. It's a gimmick that might fool uninformed shareholders, but that's all. They aren't getting any additional sales for those products.

There are serious upsides to this new model that counteract the downsides of abandoning the old one.


No there aren't, because you're making the completely unjustified assumption that all of the former store players will become garage players and adopt the buying habits of the other garage players (which may or may not be what you think they are). If, instead, most of those store players just quit the game then GW has thrown away a major business advantage for nothing in return.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 Purifier wrote:
I know how much space it takes up. Please see the comment where you quoted me saying that I have a setup. Understand me when I'm saying that it's more space than a lot of us have to spare. Out of the 4 of us main guys in my gaming group, 2 of us can store it. One with quite a lot of difficulty. The other two simply don't have the room to store three table tops.


I just don't understand this. Are your apartments the size of closets? Or are you just confusing "I don't have any space" with "I don't want to get creative with my storage arrangements"?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/06/28 04:16:48


There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





All due respect, brother, but it doesn't sound like you understand garage gamers at all. Nobody spends money on the hobby like a garage gamer. We're the guys who build our own tables, stock entire shelves with terrain and codexes (even for armies we don't play), own multiple armies and have no cap on what we *need* for those armies. Our chief enemy is shelf space. There were a series of pictures on one of the reddit subreddits yesterday in which garage gamers posted pics of their war rooms. Just glance around those pics and see what I'm talking about. We're talking about guys who own three Warhound Titans just so they can run one and make sure their buddies can each use one too so it's fair.

While excitement on the forums might encourage sales, we're not affected by its meta. Because in our garages, in our basements, we control it. No one is ever going to show up at my house with 40 scatbikes or 2++ rerollable anything. That doesn't mean lists aren't competitive. But "competitive" and ITC-hammer are very different things. With garage gamers COOL is king, and netlists aren't cool.

Are there gamers like you're talking about, the ones who buy a starter box, a few extra units and then never buy anything else? Sure. But those aren't the guys GW is catering to. Escalation and 7th Ed weren't about trying to force tournaments to allow Superheavies; it was about giving the garage gamers a reason to buy a few more variants of baneblade, and convincing them to pull the trigger on that Thunderhawk they've been promising to buy themselves.

The problem of course is that we're the silent majority. The two hundred guys who show up to GTs aren't keeping GW afloat. It's not the loud 200 dakkanoughts that responded in that poll that they've stopped playing or buying 40k. It's the 31k members of the warhammer subreddit - the 18k on the 40k offshoot - the ones who don't even read the forums because the negativity of places like dakka harshes their buzz. It's the guys who, as the manager of my FLGS puts it, "Show up on a Saturday with a buddy, drop $500, and then we won't see them for another three months until they come back and do it again."

That's GWs target market. That's who they're catering to. That's what they want to turn the noobs into with all the "Your hobby starts here," stuff. Nobody needs a storefront to create a community. We have the internet now. That buying into a community idea works here too. Garages are just as good as a storefront - except that we have beer.
   
Made in us
Krazed Killa Kan




Homestead, FL

Massawyrm that is good for you that you can do that, a lot of others can not do that. I don't have the money to sink into that kind of stuff, I have 1 army of about 3,500pts, maybe 4,000pts. A vast majority of players have only 1 army or at most 2 armies but neither one is massive. The very idea of walking into a store and dropping $500 is absurd to me. I have spent around $450 on my army because I used ebay and dakka to acquire what I have not a gaming store because I can't afford $30 for 5 stormboyz.

Regardless I think your overestimating garage gamers a bit.

I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you mess with me, I'll kill you all

Marine General James Mattis, to Iraqi tribal leaders 
   
Made in us
Regular Dakkanaut





Most people can't, Ghaz. I certainly don't. I have an absurd amount of 40k, comparatively speaking - though not nearly as much as many of the folks I know - but that's what 10 years in the same hobby and a lot of clever trading on Bartertown does for you.

My point isn't to defend richboy syndrome, but to point out where GW has put its priorities. These people exist, there are a lot of them, and GW is giving them what they've been asking for. There's a reason pricing, rapid releases, new ally-geared armies, campaign supplements and superheavy/fortifications have gone the way they have. And it's because GW is focusing on the hobby at home rather than in store, restructuring the hobby to broaden sales across the line rather than allowing the meta to drive it. That's all I'm saying.
   
Made in ca
Lord of the Fleet






Halifornia, Nova Scotia

Regardless of the why GW does what it does, do you feel that it's a good direction for the game?

Mordian Iron Guard - Major Overhaul in Progress

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Reverent Tech-Adept






 Purifier wrote:
Makumba wrote:
That maybe ok for US with its huge houses, but in some countries playing at home is out of the question, unless someone lives alone. And storing terrain is even a bigger problem.
In 5th we had more then 100players here. Now after 2 closed stores we are down to less then 30.

Online only stuff also means some people just can't get the stuff they need to play an army.


This is actually something I've been thinking about lately too. It seems like everyone in the 'muricas has this awesome gaming basement.
Here in Sweden, everyone lives in a small apartment. Me and my friends have a gaming table that we've made out of three IKEA tables. This allows us to store it, but whoever has it has to store those three table tops and all the scenery. It is a problem. We don't really have that kind of storage, so we're making concessions to store it.


Hahaha, 'muricas? Trust me, that's far from true. Course, in Sweden everyone's on the IKEA train.
   
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Unhealthy Competition With Other Legions




Toronto, Ontario

Absolutely. I can't wait until the next release because the wider variety of stuff I face the better. I get one day free to game a week and not even everything week. Do I need 10'000 points of CSM for that? Not nessissarily, but it's anathema to me to use the exact same list twice, and I love playing big games. As a single adult with a 5 year old child to take care of, I have a very limited amount of disposable income. So I can't run out and drop 500 bucks every few months, but I can structure my budget to allow me to spend my limited 'me' funds on 40k. Because this isn't a a game, it's my hobby. I have the 80% of the NiB parts bits to finish building a defiler and 2 forgefiends, because I did 4 amazing conversions for defilers/soul grinders. I ended up making one into a small Lord of Skulls. For that I needed a chimera, so I bought a basilisk because I'll be left with a giant gun to put on something when I get inspired to. The kits I used to make 4 defiler/grinders were 2 Forgefiends, a hellbrute, a daemon prince, a basilisk, and 3 defilers. I'll be able to use, eventually, every bit left in those kits and it'll probably cost about the same if not more than if I just went out and just bought the models but if the hours of designing, building and painting weren't worth at least as much to me as the playing, I would have bought one defiler kit and have been done with it.

I have a great store to play at, but it's in a 40k lull at the moment. If I didn't love the game and where it's going, i wouldn't spend my limited resources on it. But I do, so I do.

"He's doing the Lord's work. And by 'Lord' I mean Lord of Skulls." -Kenny Boucher

Prepare yourselves for the onslaught men. The enemy is waiting, but your Officers are courageous and your bayonettes sharp! I have at my disposal an entire army of Muskokans, tens of thousands of armour and artillery supporting millions upon tens of millions of the Imperium's finest fighting men with courage in their bellies, fire in their hearts and lasguns in their hands. Emperor show mercy to mine enemies, for as sure as the Imperium is vast, I will not!
- General Robert Thurgood of the Emperor's Own Lasguns before the landings at Traitor's Folly at the onset of the Chrislea's Road Campaign

"Pride goeth before the fall... to Slaanesh"
- ///name stricken///, former 'Emperor's Champion' 
   
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Douglas Bader






 Massawyrm wrote:
All due respect, brother, but it doesn't sound like you understand garage gamers at all.


No, you're just imagining this utopian ideal of "garage gamers" that has nothing to do with reality. Playing at home instead of at a store doesn't inherently make you invest tons of money in "fluff" armies and perfect gaming tables or always bring "fair" armies, it just means that you play at home. Are there people who match your ideal? Sure, but there are also "garage gamers" who buy a starter set and play on the kitchen table with cardboard boxes for terrain.

And this is especially true when you're talking about getting rid of in-store gaming in favor of garage gaming. The former in-store players aren't going to magically become your ideal "garage gamers" just because they have to play in someone's garage instead of at the local GW store. They're going to keep playing the way they have been playing, except in a different location. Or they'll just quit the game entirely. Meanwhile your ideal "garage gamers" were already playing like they do now, and GW getting rid of in-store gaming did nothing to help them.

Escalation and 7th Ed weren't about trying to force tournaments to allow Superheavies; it was about giving the garage gamers a reason to buy a few more variants of baneblade, and convincing them to pull the trigger on that Thunderhawk they've been promising to buy themselves.


And this is just plain wrong. Your ideal "garage gamer" already had reasons to buy those units because they were able to say "hey, let's use some superheavies this time" if both players were going to have fun with it. For that kind of player Escalation was just an opportunity to pay another $50 for a literal copy/paste of some units from the Apocalypse rulebook (which they probably owned already). It was only a relevant product for people who care a lot about what is "official" and "legal". Escalation was aimed at the people who play pickup games, probably in a store, and needed a book giving them official permission to use (and buy!) their Baneblades and Thunderhawks.

There is no such thing as a hobby without politics. "Leave politics at the door" is itself a political statement, an endorsement of the status quo and an attempt to silence dissenting voices. 
   
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Trigger-Happy Baal Predator Pilot






 Massawyrm wrote:
All due respect, brother, but it doesn't sound like you understand garage gamers at all. Nobody spends money on the hobby like a garage gamer. We're the guys who build our own tables, stock entire shelves with terrain and codexes (even for armies we don't play), own multiple armies and have no cap on what we *need* for those armies. Our chief enemy is shelf space. There were a series of pictures on one of the reddit subreddits yesterday in which garage gamers posted pics of their war rooms. Just glance around those pics and see what I'm talking about. We're talking about guys who own three Warhound Titans just so they can run one and make sure their buddies can each use one too so it's fair.

While excitement on the forums might encourage sales, we're not affected by its meta. Because in our garages, in our basements, we control it. No one is ever going to show up at my house with 40 scatbikes or 2++ rerollable anything. That doesn't mean lists aren't competitive. But "competitive" and ITC-hammer are very different things. With garage gamers COOL is king, and netlists aren't cool.

Are there gamers like you're talking about, the ones who buy a starter box, a few extra units and then never buy anything else? Sure. But those aren't the guys GW is catering to. Escalation and 7th Ed weren't about trying to force tournaments to allow Superheavies; it was about giving the garage gamers a reason to buy a few more variants of baneblade, and convincing them to pull the trigger on that Thunderhawk they've been promising to buy themselves.

The problem of course is that we're the silent majority. The two hundred guys who show up to GTs aren't keeping GW afloat. It's not the loud 200 dakkanoughts that responded in that poll that they've stopped playing or buying 40k. It's the 31k members of the warhammer subreddit - the 18k on the 40k offshoot - the ones who don't even read the forums because the negativity of places like dakka harshes their buzz. It's the guys who, as the manager of my FLGS puts it, "Show up on a Saturday with a buddy, drop $500, and then we won't see them for another three months until they come back and do it again."

That's GWs target market. That's who they're catering to. That's what they want to turn the noobs into with all the "Your hobby starts here," stuff. Nobody needs a storefront to create a community. We have the internet now. That buying into a community idea works here too. Garages are just as good as a storefront - except that we have beer.


+1 on what he said.

I've probably played less than 10 games of 40k in the past year, but that hasn't stopped me from purchasing models for my 2 main armies that I play (tyranids and blood angels), picking up the ork codex and the Waahhh Ghazkhul supplement so I could buy, paint, and play the Dreadmob formation (which I still haven't gotten fully painted, but I have all the models and am slowly working on it), and purchasing an airbrush and compressor so I could better my painting game.

I'm not a tournament player and all of my games are with the same handful of guys, but I still follow the hobby through listening to the podcasts, watching the battle reports, and reading the forums. My money is just as good to GW as the guy who's playing a bunch of ITC circuit games.

To the OP: Sounds like the actual problem is the area you're now in doesn't have an active player base for the FLGS to sell to. Considering how niche a hobby this is, it's understandable. I live in a super small town between two larger towns that are around 20 miles away (one to the west and the other to the north). Both have decent FLGS, but only one carries GW product. I once asked an employee at the one that didn't if they ever considered it, and he said that they had tried in the past, but it didn't take off. In contrast, the other store's owner has mentioned that there are guys that show up and buy stuff every now and again and never even come to the store to play games. Warhammer 40k has such a fragile ecosystem.



   
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Hellacious Havoc



The Bridge

Me and my friendst play at home..more freedom and its for the most part free..also in the fact that we don't have to deal with "power gaming". We use to go to various gaming stores but most charge "fees" and make you feel obligated to purchase stuff. well 40k is really not collectable..so i'm not going to buy a box of marines everytime to keep the store owner pleased. Which leaves store owners going hmmm well i could focus on a cash cow like magic the gathering or a game where once you have enough stuff, consumers don't really buy much more. Another semi big issue with warhammer or GW products in general is the large cost attached to it, its a double edged sword where for the most part it keeps the gaming population adults. But it also drives away the curious teenage crowd thats looking for a game with some complexity(and cool figs).

I'm not sure where the sterotype that americans have giant gaming basements, hell we use to have a big old table with terrain and all that stuff in a small apartment bedroom.

Man fears what he does not understand- Anton LaVey 
   
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Latest Wrack in the Pits




 Massawyrm wrote:
Raven Cowl wrote:
the Signless is absolutely correct. My FLGS is currently running an Escalation League/Narrative Campaign that is going swimmingly smoothly.


Except that he's wrong when he suggested I thought this was the ONLY way storefront metas work. It's just the main focus of most storefront metas. Great FLGSs that know their business do this sort of thing and know how to support the scene while promoting sales. (Escalation is AMAZING for that.) But GW actually attempted this during their last gasp of store support with the LUCKY 13's campaign back in '08. It was a failure with abysmal attendance - even in large cities - and hence never repeated. So GW leaves that up to the stores themselves now.


GW does not know how to play their own game, nor do they care about it. Its about buying miniatures to them. People who actually game understand how gamers think and specifically how 40k works, do this much better. Also, a storefront meta is dependent upon the various personalities that attend the store. A couple nobs have soured entire games for me to the point I rarely play them. It is the pblic nature of an FLGS that is sometimes its own downfall.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/06/28 16:24:05


 
   
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Longtime Dakkanaut






 Ghazkuul wrote:
The area I just moved to has a single gaming store within 30 miles of me and they are currently no longer carrying GW products because of the costs associated with the product. I understand the concept that GW wants to sell everyone from their webstore to make as much profit as possible. But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players? At the current rate we won't be able to play fairly soon. So in conclusion.....RAGE!


Don't get me wrong, I've been opposed to dumping my 40k for quite some time (been playing for over 20 years), but relocating to a new gaming scene that focuses on other games has honestly made me look at 40k in a new light. I played 2 games yesterday, one goofy scenario game against an old friend of mine, and a pickup game against the newest flavor of the month Eldar cheeselist.

Game 1 was decided on the first turn when my opponent failed to seize the initiative (and, in his defense, he had a 75% chance of doing so account for scenario rules and special rules for his units). He lost over half of his army on the first turn. Bear in mind that I was playing a Renegade IG mashup with no FW or anything like that.

Game 2 was the stupidest game of keep-away I've played in my entire life, and were we not playing The Relic it would have been a one-sided stompfest. The game kicked off with the Wraithknight alt-ctrl-deleting a Russ, because str. D in regular 40k is slowed. The rest consisted of my Spawn handing off the relic to a bunch of cultists in cover, and plinking away at Scatterbikes behind AV14 hulls, praying to cause a casualty so they run off the table, and watching my opponent basically get the equivalent of 2-3 movement phases. Ultimately I won on secondaries, but it was ludicrously boring. Where is the fething narrative again, when your opponent is spamming 27ppm units that spray 4 shots, can option to cross the entire board in a turn (move, turbo, assault move), or move essentially unlimited times per turn (Warp Spiders relocating IN YOUR SHOOTING PHASE not once, but every time you shoot at them). It's not sour grapes, after all I won, but I have literally zero desire to play against the new Eldar. In a casual scene, I really don't want to be the guy who has the conversation, "Yeah sure I'll play. Oh, you play Eldar? Nevermind, I don't want to play anymore." But that's how it goes.

Tl;dr: The game simply sucks these days and thank heavens my local gaming group plays Infinity. Better models, better rules, better game, end of story. If you don't agree on the sorry state of 40k, it's because you haven't played enough games in other systems, or are otherwise incapable of comparing other games on objective criteria.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/06/28 17:25:44


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