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This will probably be reported by more and more GW shops worldwide today or this week. In Germany the Lord of the Rings / Hobbit range is removed from shelves in GW shops and going mailorder-only.

Hastings had rumored this a year ago when he leaked the Horus Heresy in plastic range.

I will update the 1st post with GW's announcement and more info when it gets available. Buy the models locally as long as you can.

Interesting.

This presumably means they will not bother to demo the games in shop.

If that turns out to be the case, I wonder how this will affect GW's recent announcement that they are going to carry on with the games.

Another effect is to reduce even more the diversity on offer, but in my opinion there was serious brand confusion between WHFB, AoS and LoTR anyway, so perhaps that would be a good thing in one way.

I heard this back around August. I was talking to my local GW store manager, and he said something along the lines of their license with LOTR/The Hobbit expiring some time soon. That store is small enough anyway that there never really were any of the LOTR products on the shelf, so I don't think that will mean much of a change in some of the stores. However, about the same time that he said that the license would be expiring, I heard about the rumored plastic 30K/HH kits. That's what excited me a little bit; not because I personally would play 30K, but because I enjoy kitbashing. Either way, I guess we just have to wait and see what ends up happening.

Please be a sign of more HH stuff coming out! Though it is probably more to make room for the Specialist Games stuff that will be coming out.

They can use some space to demo their board games.

With FW/Specialist Games Team hiring a writer and a model designer for LOTR specificially and Smaug selling amazingly well this will probably mean some larger kits and maybe a campaign book from FW in the not-so distant future, 2017 I guess.

Now would also be a good time to finally offer all LOTR rulebooks digital via Black Library.

I really hope this is a sign of a significant renewal.

Yes, it's true they will want space to stock and demo specialist games. However, according to other info, the first one of those will be a renwed Blood Bowl towards the end of this year, so perhaps in the meantime they will use the space for 30K stuff.

It's a sad day for the people in my local gw store ...

Good point, KK

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yes, it's true they will want space to stock and demo specialist games. However, according to other info, the first one of those will be a renwed Blood Bowl towards the end of this year, so perhaps in the meantime they will use the space for 30K stuff.

I did indeed also hear my local GW manager talking the other day about the Blood Bowl coming this year.

Well, now it really might be your last chance to get a "Limited Edition" copy of The Hobbit game.

I reckon making room for a rotating Specialist Games stand. A constantly changing stream of new games, scales and rules will probably take up the space left by the hobbit.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Well, now it really might be your last chance to get a "Limited Edition" copy of The Hobbit game.

You need to be fast. It could sell out any time now!

 zedmeister wrote:
I reckon making room for a rotating Specialist Games stand. A constantly changing stream of new games, scales and rules will probably take up the space left by the hobbit.

At my local GW, the space has been taken up by the AoS books, some of the Bloodbound, and the Chaos fortress components.

Remember that they're bringing a lot of stuff that used to be Direct Only back into the shops. Dryads, for example, were Direct Only for some time.

Could just be that they need to update the boxes to Specialist Games/Forge World trade dress.

Locally... well, the Hobbit game has given Age of Sigmar some competition for worst selling GW product. (Despite a fairly thriving LotR community. There are still folks playing the older game.)

The Auld Grump

This more or less has already happened at the Two Gamesworkshop stores in Edmonton. They did this back before Christmas.

 zedmeister wrote:
I reckon making room for a rotating Specialist Games stand. A constantly changing stream of new games, scales and rules will probably take up the space left by the hobbit.

Like the good old days

(Or not!)

H.B.M.C. wrote:Well, now it really might be your last chance to get a "Limited Edition" copy of The Hobbit game.

LOL, yeah. Maybe they are finally selling out of that limited run

Kilkrazy wrote:This presumably means they will not bother to demo the games in shop.

I haven't seen anything LoTR set up a table in God knows how long in a GW shop over here. I don't even think that there are any LoTR painted models in their display cases anymore, though I could be wrong -- I don't look that closely. In recent memory, the only game I recall that the store had set up for demos other than 40k/Sigmar/Fantasy was Space Hulk.

Thanks for posting this, Warhams!

I'm hopeful for the GW specialist game division to fill the gap... we'll see where it goes.

Do they have to dust the copies before returning them?
Just think of what horrors that dust would contain.....

I was informed by a mate on a german forum that the GW webstore has now set basically the entire LOTR/Hobbit range to 'Special availability -> Webstore exclusive'.

Not sure if this UK shop link works but you can see it by selecting 'Webstore Exclusive' on the bottom left:

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/The-Hobbit?N=102297+4294966986&Nu=product.repositoryId&qty=96&sorting=rec&view=table&categoryId=cat410002-flat

More room on the shelf for stuff that might actually sell.

Surprise Surprise ^.^

Atleast here my red shirt will use the demo space for BaC for now - think it's good for the shop since i never never never saw someone buying hobbit stuff there (although some of the lotr models are indeed cool).

The sad thing is that, while we still had a small community playing and buying before the new movies, when the Hobbit miniatures were released everything stopped.

It's like the new miniatures, or their pricing or whatever had actively killed the enthusiasm of those who were still playing the game at that time.

The main problem is this Peter Jacksons very stupid Hobbit Design combined with this prices.

RazorEdge wrote:
The main problem is this Peter Jacksons very stupid Hobbit Design combined with this prices.

It's true that the Goblin's design is the antithesis of what would make an attractive miniature.

I wonder if we are the only country that actually managed to sell all of its "limited" editions starter sets. It's sad because there were not that many for our territory if I remember correctly and yet it took years.

Wulfson_40K wrote:
It's like the new miniatures, or their pricing or whatever had actively killed the enthusiasm of those who were still playing the game at that time.

I had no interest in playing the Hobbit, but I had been waiting 10 years for the Rivendell cavalry that they released in the 1st or 2nd wave. Literally since I got my first LotR rulebook which said elves could wear heavy armour, take shield, spears and horses, I had been waiting for those models. Then they turned out to be like $70 for a box of five and I just never bothered picking them up...

So basically it has gone direct only for the last year or two (or however long) of the Hobbit licence.

Not surprising really.

Sad to hear people are quitting LOTR because of this, but I think if you really like a game you should not stop playing because the company is folding the department, changing product etc.

Nearly my entire gaming club stopped playing 40k because of GW's behaviour but we are now back at ~10 players (some new ones joined us too) and we are having fun with it again.

Make it 'your game', use what you enjoy of the available rules material, add your own rules, and buy only product that suits your need. There used to be a pretty strong LOTR community in Germany and they made some nice events but larger cons and tournaments are surely those who suffer the most when companies reduce the support of a game. It stops 'staying fresh' which seems to be necessary for a lot of people to invest their time into a game.

Epic suffered heavily at the end of the 90s because of 3rd Ed rules and skyrocketing miniature prices. It seems to get a comeback now. In between the community has kept the game alive - and made it even better than GW ever could.

 jonolikespie wrote:

Wulfson_40K wrote:
It's like the new miniatures, or their pricing or whatever had actively killed the enthusiasm of those who were still playing the game at that time.

I had no interest in playing the Hobbit, but I had been waiting 10 years for the Rivendell cavalry that they released in the 1st or 2nd wave. Literally since I got my first LotR rulebook which said elves could wear heavy armour, take shield, spears and horses, I had been waiting for those models. Then they turned out to be like $70 for a box of five and I just never bothered picking them up...

That's exactly the problem; price. I've wanted the 3 trolls for ages, but I just can't bring myself to pay £50 for them. Hopefully I can scoop a set up in clearance somewhere

Some of the Hobbit/ older LotR stuff is already on clearance at a local shop. Well, I should say WAS because I bought most of it.

I love the LotR miniatures game. The Hobbit rules were actually a slight improvement over the existing LotR rule set, which was already great. The things that did the most damage to the Hobbit was the CRAZY price hike over the existing LotR model and the incredibly vocal anti-LotR internet rage boyz. You could have long discussions here on DakkaDakka with someone over why LotR was a bad game, only to find out that person had never played a game or read the rule books. Then it became about $25 blister packs of 3 Lake Town militia or $40 blisters of 3 dwarfs. Those are not the prices you set if you want to see a game grow...

I will be buying up as much of the stuff as I can as it goes on clearance, and I'm hoping I can get a Smaug and some of the older terrain before it disappears for good. GW or not, I will enjoy playing this game with my wife and friends for many, many years.