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GW has been in a well documented slow deathslide for years now and has done absolutely nothing to halt it, in fact their cack handed actions have probably accelerated their approaching doom.

The revisiting of Specialist Games and the first sales that they have had for about 15 years, limited as they are, at least suggests that they are finally getting their act together.

Does this mean that Kirby's malign influence is finally receding and that they may one day become a good wargaming company like they used to be?

Deathslide is a bit strong and totally subjective but I agree that their inflexibility has contributed to the growth of the number of gaming companies that exist now. The market share was theirs to lose and they lost it.

I think that the success of Forgeworld due to "those who can afford it" has had a lot to do with resurrection of specialist games. Interesting to see the dichotomy between starting a games imprint and their statements at the AGM that they make models and not games...

I'm glad to see that their business model is, ostensibly, shifting away from their 1992 vision that drove the management buy out.

Although I fully welcome the return of specialist games, and will no doubt throw a wad of cash as thick as my arm at them over the next couple of years buying them, I'm not sure about what it will achieve in the long run, as we don't know the reasoning behind bringing them back. I had a chat with the Blanche about Necromunda when I was staff, and to quote him exactly "Necromunda was a great game, shame it made absolutely no profit.". This we know was the fate of all specialist games, high production costs and low model counts resulted in unsustainable games for gw. So, either they will need change something to make them sustainable (if they are to be of long term benefit), or, they will be one off boxes with maybe a couple of expansions/limited availability models, in which case, they will make a ton of money whilst doing it, then find themselves in the exact same position after.

So they might represent a change of thinking and attitude in management, in which case yes, it could be the start of a long term financial climb. It might represent a mid term cash grab, in which case it will just delay the decline for a couple of years and we'll be back to the same position we were in before this got announced/leaked.

 Weyrell wrote:
Deathslide is a bit strong and totally subjective ... ...

GW's falling sales figures, continuing year on year for several years, are documented in their annual financial reports. It's the opposite of totally subjective.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
But to address the main topic, I think GW finally realised their strategy was wrong and have decided to change course.

Their core mistakes:

Only two games.
Too complicated.
Too expensive.

AoS seems to be intended as a simple ruleset.
Bundle deals are offering lower prices.
They will renew the LoTR licence, and have three games (although one SF and two Fantasy battle games still isn't vast amounts of choice.)
The return of specialist games and boxed games will give their shop managers more variety.
The next thing is to rebrand the shops from Warhammer to Games Workshop.

My criticism of GW is well known to some dakka members

but being as subjective as I can, I'll say the following to support my argument that GW still have along way to go:

1) On the surface, the return of specialist games sounds like a great idea to re-energise the old fan base and introduce new players to some fantastic games. And yet, the fact that they're returning to old rule sets could suggest that GW have ran out of ideas, their creative stock is exhausted.

Their is also the problem of long term viability of these specialist games. The last version of Space hulk was a fantastic boxed set and a brilliant game. But once you've bought it, that's it. You don't need anything else...no expansions, army books, etc etc

2) GW have announced a whole raft of new stores in the USA, but these stores are being located in the wrong place, and often in areas where GW stores have failed before, much to the dismay of some of our American dakka members. Seems like the mistakes of the past are repeating themselves.

3) AOS. Seems to be as popular as a flatulent dog in a packed elevator.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
But to address the main topic, I think GW finally realised their strategy was wrong and have decided to change course.

Or the strategy was correct.
Killing off independents/webstores and reducing the chances of their product being diluted/undersold by other companies, cranking up the cost of product to allow room for 'deals', alienating the know it all fans that were not fully invested to find a good loyal core to build back from, reducing lurkers in their shops and turning them into efficient selling machines and not crèches.
Maybe it was all part of the great plan, tear it down and rebuild it better.

Deathslide?

Sales reducing at the same time as WHFB has been stagnating and the LotR licencing bubble burst is not a deathslide.

It has been troubling from an investment side of things as to why GW has not taken some drastic action about this prior to the release of AoS. Arguably reinforcing 40K with the increase in speed and scope of releases over this period has been an attempt to reverse the loss of sales, but was always a very "eggs-in-one-basket" approach. One that I would suggest was rather dogmatic, in a "40k has always been the big bread winner" type way.

For me (my guess) this is proof that with a new CEO organising things there is more openminded approach to GWs business. I don't know of any business that wont diversify (even within its own niche) if it can and GW has been far too narrow for some time.

SG also represent a solid PR move as well (30+ page thread in less than a weeks here). I know there are many here who will not have played these games but have heard numerous tales about them and complaints from Vets about their cancellation and how this shows GW "don't care about gamers" etc. This could well reverse the bad PR and get GW on better terms with the community.

the beauty of all this (from GWs perspective) is that allot of the leg work is already done. The rules will in most cases been done (albeit with a need for some tweaking), fluff has been expanded by BL, concepts for models/units have been expanded by GW/FW too (massively for Epic via the HH for example), they just need to sit down and concentrate on a good plan and do what GW do best and that's make terrific models.

James Y raises a good point as to the scope of many games. I think we will be more inclined to see box games than the release of whole ranges, possibly with Epic as an exception but we will see.

The main issue is they will be throwing themselves in direct competition with what's out there.

40k still holds a niche as a mass battle game. There's no other sci fi game out there that expands into the massive, massive games that 40k does with titans and aerial combat (for better or worse), and only very recently have some competitors started offering larger plastic kits. None on the level that GW themselves still make (I'm aware of model competitors like Revell, I'm talking about games companies).

Fantasys niche has been encroached on by Kings of War, and Fantasy as a whole is less popular than sci fi in the market right now. But with Age of Sigmar they seem to be trying to find a new niche for Fantasy, so we'll have to see how that pans out.

Once they relaunch some of their other games, they may have the brand and GW's in house manufacturing behind it, but gamers have largely moved on. Relaunching Epic has been a popular request, but they'll be competing with things like Dropzone Commander and Firestorm Planetfall. Necromunda will be in direct competition with Infinity and several other sci fi skirmish games. Mordheim will be up against Frostgrave and Malifaux.

These games have been making good headway in stores and clubs, so they'll have an uphill battle to recover customers they lost when they binned Specialist Games.

Then board games. The market is saturated now. Walk into any well stocked game store and you'll be spoiled for choice for them. Miniature heavy, card heavy, competitive, cooperative, sci fi, fantasy, modern day and all bits in between. Rule 34 is starting to apply to boardgames - if you can think of it, there's probably a boardgame out for it.

That's not saying GW can't do it, and they probably will. Their brand, especially around their specialist games, still holds a huge amount of favour - mostly because those gamers left before GW went full slow on their rules and pricing. But their specialist games have far more direct competition than 40k or Fantasy ever had.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

But to address the main topic, I think GW finally realised their strategy was wrong and have decided to change course.

Their core mistakes:

Only two games.
Too complicated.
Too expensive.

AoS seems to be intended as a simple ruleset.
Bundle deals are offering lower prices.
They will renew the LoTR licence, and have three games (although one SF and two Fantasy battle games still isn't vast amounts of choice.)
The return of specialist games and boxed games will give their shop managers more variety.
The next thing is to rebrand the shops from Warhammer to Games Workshop.

This... very much this.

Just my thoughts but...

it's not that their big sets like Island of Blood were bad, the contents were crazy good. It's that the gaming market now has a lot of very smart games/companies selling in it. Boardgames especially got smart.

Skirmish games with low buy-in costs, smart escalation, small model counts and tactical depth.

Boardgames where one person pops out the tokens and scenery while another reads the rules. They get in a couple of games on the first evening.

X-wing lets you start with £25 and 30 minutes to read the rules and prep the pieces. For another £25 you have a full gaming force. For another £25, you've completely altered the playstyle of your force. If GW are not looking at that game and weeping, they need to be.

Many games have simple core rules and put the rule exceptions onto event and stat cards... because nobody absorbs the whole thing first time through anyway. Battlelore and Imperial Assault have separate reference rule booklets - start playing the game with the basic 16-page pamphlets, explore the options with cards in-game, and only refer to the big fat rulebook when you need to know how rules interact or edge cases.

I think AoS was a decent idea let down by poor interaction with the customers - nobody relaunches one of their top two lines with a fortnight's notice.

There's nothing wrong with a "universal" style rulesystem and a broad range of upgrades, which is how tabletop minis games companies have traditionally worked, but GW have got to the point where thy think £500 is good deal for an army (free super-rules thrown in for you). Having to read through GW's 200+ page rulebooks is not necessarily a bad thing either, although realising that after doing so you don't even have all the stats for an army, let alone the figures, is. Same goes for big armies - nothing wrong with them, but making them the baseline was never a good idea. If I ever have to paint another clanrat, I'll... switch to 10mm.

Tighter supplemental material is no bad thing. How much of GW's line is not selling well because the units are borked in-game?

Other companies do well with the core box/steady release of cheap expansions model. GW is realising now that if I don't spend my pennies with them, I WILL spend them with someone else - and often get a complete game in the process. I've long said that a box of 40k troops is already complete force, but because GW doesn't have a skirmish-scale game that box has more utility in other people's games.

As Loki says, it's going to be tough. But they have a great universe to explore, high-street presence and in-house production of quality figures.

Stumbling blocks:

Price. Shifting units is not a virtue in itself, if you can make the same profit selling fewer models then any business analyst will tell you to go for it. But GW does not exist in a vacuum. Even if X-wing ships are expensive, and FFGs Star Wars character minis are very expensive, the games allow you to get away with buying them in cheap bites, and they actually have major in-game effects. And they're still not asking £18 for a single-pose 28mm model. Same for Infinity and the other "boutique" skirmish games.

Inward-looking corporate culture. GW seem especially bad at this, and when you start caring less about your customers than saying the wrong thing, you have a problem. They're not even the worst offenders - I do a lot of consultancy work for the NHS, and getting managers refocused on patients rather than targets is a major issue.

Rules. Gawd help 'em, GW still can't write clear, unambiguous rules for toffee. Betrayal at Calth has two different definitions of a unit - on the cards it's Sgt+9 marines, in the book it's all the figures in a hex.

Good points Loki but taking Epic as an example, GW can add a level of scope that others will not be able to and might be able to pretty much bypass any competition quite quickly.

If Epic is realised as a profitable range and fully supports (this is the Achilles heel with GW) they can produce more SKUs more quickly than anyone else. They already have a receptive and pretty loyal audience and access to a great many physical store locations.

I would be nervous if I inhabited the 6mm scifi battle genre. It's as if a great white shark has come to have a swim in my part of the pool.

On the Mordheim side of things the genre is that much more open/generic and the scope of game that much smaller so completion would be much more possible. GW would struggle to make 20 plastic soldiers/cultists for only £20 like North Star do for example.

I'm very interested in where GW Specialist Design Studio start off (and not just because I want Epic so much) .

Even if X-wing ships are expensive, and FFGs Star Wars character minis are very expensive, the games allow you to get away with buying them in cheap bites, and they actually have major in-game effects. And they're still not asking £18 for a single-pose 28mm model. Same for Infinity and the other "boutique" skirmish games.

X-wing ships can also be played straight from the box, so you're not having to invest in brushes or paints to get going, and of course, the Star wars IP dwarves anything GW has come up with.

I remember the excitement when GW was rumored to be re-releasing Man'O War, but then we got Dreadfleet.

There are some good old games on their list to be sure, but if they:
• Give them the Dreadfleet treatment.
• Price them into the stratosphere.
• Release them at their usual glacial pace.
• Cancel this new initiative like they did with Fanatic Magazine or Fantasy Forge...

...then I am not too optimistic.

 JamesY wrote:
I had a chat with the Blanche about Necromunda when I was staff, and to quote him exactly "Necromunda was a great game, shame it made absolutely no profit.". This we know was the fate of all specialist games, high production costs and low model counts resulted in unsustainable games for gw.

I think that was a major issue with Necromunda and Mordheim (and bloodbowl). You buy one box for the game, then a second box of minis. Done. No repeat custom. If production costs are lower now then they may be able to live longer, but that will always be an issue with them trying to drive those games like 40k and WHFB. They need to treat them differently. Which brings me on to this.

Momotaro wrote:

Boardgames where one person pops out the tokens and scenery while another reads the rules. They get in a couple of games on the first evening.

X-wing lets you start with £25 and 30 minutes to read the rules and prep the pieces. For another £25 you have a full gaming force. For another £25, you've completely altered the playstyle of your force. If GW are not looking at that game and weeping, they need to be.

Many games have simple core rules and put the rule exceptions onto event and stat cards... because nobody absorbs the whole thing first time through anyway. Battlelore and Imperial Assault have separate reference rule booklets - start playing the game with the basic 16-page pamphlets, explore the options with cards in-game, and only refer to the big fat rulebook when you need to know how rules interact or edge cases.

If Necromunda came out as it was before, I would probably buy one copy with my friends and then buy one house and be done.

What I would like is an x-wing/FFG style system. Give me the rules for free then sell me teams and special characters, with rules, cards etc. in small boxes, at an impulse price. I am far more likely to buy 5 separate minis, x-wing style, at £10-15 each in a month than one box of 5 at £40. Same with all the "small" games. Do a "team" box, with basic rules (also available as PDF) and some terrain or a board (for bloodbowl) then sell me individual minis, with rules cards, a bit of terrain and then I will buy them on a regular basis.

Just don't do what FFG do and make it impossible to get some very useful general cards without buying useless minis.

Companies with "stand alone" games often release oodles of expansions. GW did this a little with some of the SG's but seemed to forget that these games could be sold in othet stores and act as a gateway into the core games.

While a boardgame or skirmish game may not offer the same scope for making cash as a mass battle game, you have a much larger audience for it, as well as more distribution options. You also don't have to reinvent the wheel for each game. Core mechanics can be shared between board and tabletop games and products can be mixed between the two.

Yes/No/Maybe,

they've actually been making positive changes for a fair while though many people have not seen it

this began with the scrapping of the yearly range wide price hikes with only new kits being more expensive (sadly rather than being seen as a positive, so just used this as a reason to moan about the more expensive new kits)

An attempt to fix the terminally ill WHFB, hamstrung but a series of poor rules desisons and gamesize/model number. AoS may not be of much interest to existing WHFB players but it does lend itself to new players (probably in the UK/Europe rather than the US as it's not stranger at a store play friendly) and I can see it becoming a decent, simple entry point over time

Back to the past with 40K with Knights, Harlequins and, finally, Ad Mech all of which pleased the 'old guard' with fond memories from earlier editions, or from the background

Bundles like storm claw etc that finally offered a discount, yes they tended to be older sprues and you had to take what was in the bundle, but it's been ages since GW actually cut prices in any significant way

Digital rule books/codexes at last, a bit too expensive, but still they do them now

the youtube painting tutorials etc that tick along quietly doing a great job, (some criticise them for just doing stuff people can find elsewhere, but again for new entrants in to the hobby they are a good place to start)

and now specialist games coming back in some form, again great as entry points or just fun for those of us who've been around in the hobby for ages

my rampant positivity does not excuse the many ill considered descisions they've also made in the recent past like a lot (but not all) of the chapeterhouse debacle, the spots the space marine npnsense, lack of attention to FaqS, and the shop only website (by all means have a web store, but a separate 'official' home for background etc really is needed too),

so the supertanker is trying to turn, and has been for a while, but this takes time (most of the stuff we see has been in progress for at least 2-3 years)

I have a feeling a lot of the new specialist stuff will be direct only, just like ordering from Forge World now. We'll get the occasional boxed game/set like Horus Heresy or Space Hulk, but the majority will be sold right off the GW website. I think GW stores are mostly tiny and already have limited space, so I don't think you'll be seeing walls full of BFG and Epic blister packs like the good ole days.

I'd like to see them follow AoS's lead though for the new games.. short, free rules and free army/faction/whatever stats online. In this day and age everyone is doing free rules, and I think GW needs to do that with everything. They can still make big pretty books if they want, but make the info and what you need to know to play all out there on the web and always up to date.

If GW start turning up at non GW games days/conventions around the world, promoting their new specialist games, then you can make a good case for them changing, but until then, the jury is out.

Well, I think that board games will not have a large impact on GW's financial situation.
AoS is also a dead horse so that 40k is the only draught horse GW has.

I think it's a bit too early to say, only shares/profits will tell us (and even then, not all the story)

But I welcome the specialist games + more accessible HH. Wider variety leads to more interest - and where there is more interest, more profit is attainable.

Waaaay too early to tell.

Recent GW has been defined by good ideas which have subsequently ruined by poor quality, poor execution or crazy prices.

I'm excited for Epic, BFG and BB, but if an Epic starter set lands at the cost of a footslogging Death Korps army, then it's going to do chuff all to arrest the downward trend. This is a distinct possibility, as, while exciting to see, that resin Warlord that's looking like it may be an Epic scale version also looks like the sort of thing FW would relieve you of three figures for.

It's a step in the right direction, to be sure, but it all depends if the recent stuff is a sign that whatever disease that's afflicted them over recent years has been treated, or if someone just found some old rule books, concept sketches and designers notes in a drawer somewhere, and they're trying to spin a quick buck from it.

I'm not sure if announcing the plan for the possible return of some games in the indeterminate future is really enough to counter the damage they're doing to their 40k's playability as a result of the completely broken codexes they keep releasing.

Well, we'll see.

1 man stores and poor store placement (like placing them in over-saturated markets that already have independent stores selling GW merchandise) still isn't a great policy.

Discount boxes are alright, but they're still overpriced compared to earlier boxes that had discounts.

Specialists games returning is a big deal, but it's too early to see if it's going to be a positive or negative for them. What if they're unsupported, one-off boxes that do everything possible to try and erase the idea of what Specialist Games were before? What if, in an attempt to "rein in" Specialist Games, organizations like the NAF and NetEpic get C&D orders? What if these are Forgeworld Direct only, with prohibitively expensive miniatures?

AoS is still an utter mess, and 40k isn't getting any changes - it still has all the bloat that occured when Epic went away and GW tried pushing 40k into Epic's place.

 notprop wrote:

I would be nervous if I inhabited the 6mm scifi battle genre. It's as if a great white shark has come to have a swim in my part of the pool.

Only if what you want is GW designed rules and models. Companies like Spartan Games have their own rules and worlds that do for some people what Epic can't.

or if someone just found some old rule books, concept sketches and designers notes in a drawer somewhere, and they're trying to spin a quick buck from it.

That's my suspicion as well...

Announcing grand plans and actually doing them properly are different things. See where they are in 2 years and then decide if they've "saved themselves"

I hope GW is changing course. With a stable, well-paying job, if GW dropped their prices by 10 or 20% (laughable I know), I would start throwing more money at them instead of at eBay and other hobbies.

Also, I love 40k. Few things have gripped me in it's succubus-stare like 40k. MtG was probably the last thing to do so, but that has nowhere near as much variety, lore, and hobbying. Seeing 40k completely go down would depress me very much.

 JamesY wrote:
Although I fully welcome the return of specialist games, and will no doubt throw a wad of cash as thick as my arm at them over the next couple of years buying them.

So, just the one game then?

More seriously, this is one of two hopeful signs that I have seen for GW - the other being the Warhammer 30K box.

Mind you GW can still manage to shoot themselves in both feet - Age of Sigar... I really do not understand the train of thought that led to that station.

But I have friends that are happy as clams about Necromunda, and have high hopes that Mordheim will return.

So, I will tag this as as 'Hopeful', and hope that Kirby doesn't give the Magic 8 Ball a shake, and bring back 'Signs Point To No'.

The Auld Grump

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
I'm not sure if announcing the plan for the possible return of some games in the indeterminate future is really enough to counter the damage they're doing to their 40k's playability as a result of the completely broken codexes they keep releasing.

A point I made in the SG news thread is that with having another studio releasing other games and systems, this might actually benefit 40K (and, to a lesser extent AOS, which I think is irredeemable as the sort of game most folks are looking for at this point.) Relying on two products only with the release schedule GW maintain must be putting a fairly significant creative stress on the studio, by distributing the load, we may see an uptick in the quality of 40K too.

 Kap'n Krump wrote:
I'm not sure if announcing the plan for the possible return of some games in the indeterminate future is really enough to counter the damage they're doing to their 40k's playability as a result of the completely broken codexes they keep releasing.

A very good point. Even if the Specialist Games division ends up being five times more profitable than FW ever was, it'll still be a side division. 40K will still be the main cash cow, one which is currently dangerously ill. This is all a great idea, which shouldn't be dismissed, but there are still larger fundamental issues that need addressed.

And that's assuming that Specialist Games is a success. If the last two years are anything to go by, GW has shown us they are more than capable of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

IMHO, relaunching Specialist Games is WIN-WIN-WIN for GW. If I were helming the relaunch, I'd try to do three things with Specialist Games:

1. Use the systems as a sounding board for rules ideas for the core system. Essentially a user driven (and free) playtest system. The rules would be free as in Age of Sigmar. The model baseline would be in place from WH40k/AoS.

2. Introduce additional "conversion sprues" like exist with the current SM line. Something for mutants, guardsmen types, man-at-arms types and cultist types. These would be the bread and butter of the specialist game systems and would also be good sellers for the main lines.

Mordheim doesn't need any new models, and if GW went the route of the "THROUGH THE BREACH" sets like Malifaux, you could have infinite possibilities as the conversion kits could be used in 40k, Mordheim, Necromunda AND AoS. You'd give customers the base weapon options, the bionic arms, the female heads and torsos they've been clamoring for. I think this would be a huge win.

3. Leverage old-blood excitement and nostalgia to widen your reach to potential customers.

If done right, I can't see how reviving Specialist Games would be anything but a genius move.


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If done wrong, they'd be spending a lot of money for no returns... If that comes to pass, I have a unicorn farm I'd like to sell GW.

The "Return of Specialist Games" and some of you think the Messiah is coming to town We have no idea what form these new games will take, and GW has shown little ability to fix 10+ years of poor decision-making. Although if a single memo can generate this much excitememt and goodwill from its formerly disenfranchised customers, I have a feeling that guarded optimism is not their strong suit.