MarsNZ wrote:
GW is the only company that actually tries to introduce people into wargaming,.

Care to explain? Because that sounds ridiculous

 Crevab wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
GW is the only company that actually tries to introduce people into wargaming,.

Care to explain? Because that sounds ridiculous

Thats an easy one. How many GW stores have an intro table where the staff member will play a fun and friendly game with you and explain the rules and phases? Every single one of them!

Now tell me where you can go to learn any other system of gaming where you can just walk in and get a intro game that isn't a local gaming group bringing a friend into the fold. Yes i am sure you could think of a few but GW has that market cornered.

Yeah, "market cornered" is different from "everyone else is a parasite"

 XdeadpoolX wrote:


Now tell me where you can go to learn any other system of gaming where you can just walk in and get a intro game that isn't a local gaming group bringing a friend into the fold. Yes i am sure you could think of a few but GW has that market cornered.

Not GW, because the only two near my house are out of business, and the next nearest one is 20 miles away, staffed by one person who cannot step away from the register for 2 hours to demo games.

I don't claim to be a business guru or some sort of anti-GW saint or anything like that, but the fact that the last 4 or 5 of GW's financial reports show a decline in revenue (i.e. actual number of sales) is almost indisputably a bad thing. I expect they will stick around for a while, sure, but when a vocal portion of your consumers (even a minority) says "Here are things we want produced/changed" and GW's says "No," followed up by 2 years of declining sales, it might be prudent to produce/change at least a few of those things the customers were talking about.

Garage gamers, the silent majority. There exists a large group of gamers who only play with a friend or two in their basement or garage. If they buy from a store at all, they show up once every few months, buy several hundred dollars worth of kits and are rarely seen again. They don't typically frequent forums, they don't play in tournaments, they don't always even stick with the most recently updated rules. They just drink a few beers, roll some dice and shoot the breeze with their buddies. They're the reason GW has shifted away from the tournament scene and towards "Play how you want," and why GW employees refer to the forums as the loud 1%. Balance isn't an issue with these players; for them COOL is king. They're the market GW is chasing, as they're the ones keeping the lights on.

GW have also taken several economical measures which, at least in short term have slowed down their financial decline.

Their prices keep increasing (so the actual sales loss isn't 100% reflected in revenue loss)

Many new rules seem built with the intent to move more models, game quality be damned.

They have acceletated their release schedule a lot.

None of these are IMO sustainable long term, but short term they make GW look way better than they really are from a financial point of view.

 Massawyrm wrote:
Garage gamers, the silent majority. There exists a large group of gamers who only play with a friend or two in their basement or garage. If they buy from a store at all, they show up once every few months, buy several hundred dollars worth of kits and are rarely seen again. They don't typically frequent forums, they don't play in tournaments, they don't always even stick with the most recently updated rules. They just drink a few beers, roll some dice and shoot the breeze with their buddies. They're the reason GW has shifted away from the tournament scene and towards "Play how you want," and why GW employees refer to the forums as the loud 1%. Balance isn't an issue with these players; for them COOL is king. They're the market GW is chasing, as they're the ones keeping the lights on.

Probably the loud 0.1%. There's roughly 30 people that play 40k at my FLGS and i've had this conversation with the majority of them:
"I read on dakka...."
"What's dakka?"
"A 40k forum where--"
"Oh. I don't waste my time reading forums."

And almost every person buys all of their GW merch at full price from our FLGS, myself included.

 XdeadpoolX wrote:

 Crevab wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
GW is the only company that actually tries to introduce people into wargaming,.

Care to explain? Because that sounds ridiculous

Thats an easy one. How many GW stores have an intro table where the staff member will play a fun and friendly game with you and explain the rules and phases? Every single one of them!

Now tell me where you can go to learn any other system of gaming where you can just walk in and get a intro game that isn't a local gaming group bringing a friend into the fold. Yes i am sure you could think of a few but GW has that market cornered.

There are 2-3, or at least were, FLGS in my country per every large city. There is 1(one] GW shop in the capitol and from what I heard about it, it is not a place where you can play. I think there are more countries like that, then those that look like UK.

I guess we'll see if GW's new release schedule and new factions turn them around. If the trend continues from last year's report, they won't have much more to lose before they start running in the red.

LordBlades wrote:
None of these are IMO sustainable long term, but short term they make GW look way better than they really are from a financial point of view.

The trouble is that,, in a post-ebay world, wargaming isn't sustainable in the long term. It's not a consumable medium. Every kit they produce is likely to end up on the secondary market sooner or later, leaving them to compete with themselves. In order to stay profitable, they need to go the M:TG route and phase out old units in favor of the brand new ones (which won't work) or release new models that don't have earlier replacements. The increase in prices and reduced model production is a deliberate attempt to stymy the secondary market, keeping ebay prices teetering near Online-discount new kit prices in the hopes that players will just opt to pay a few bucks more to get a new item over a used one. It has met with limited success.

People talk about the shrinking player base, but the evidence is entirely anecdotal. The truth is measuring GW financials or tournament attendance tells us nothing about how many people are actually playing 40k. To do that, we'd have to track ebay and recaster sales as well as privates sales via trading forums. And that data just isn't available.

 Massawyrm wrote:
Garage gamers, the silent majority. There exists a large group of gamers who only play with a friend or two in their basement or garage. If they buy from a store at all, they show up once every few months, buy several hundred dollars worth of kits and are rarely seen again. They don't typically frequent forums, they don't play in tournaments, they don't always even stick with the most recently updated rules. They just drink a few beers, roll some dice and shoot the breeze with their buddies. They're the reason GW has shifted away from the tournament scene and towards "Play how you want," and why GW employees refer to the forums as the loud 1%. Balance isn't an issue with these players; for them COOL is king. They're the market GW is chasing, as they're the ones keeping the lights on.

I play rarely, and when I do it's in a friends Kitchen with beers, where gaming is second to socialising.

If GW bothered to balance the game and write better rules I'd buy more minis and play in a wider circle - going to clubs and attending tournaments.

You don't have to write bad rules to appeal to someone like me. If they wrote better rules, I'd spend more money with them.

If they keep financially alive and don't tank? They would have found a way out of the cycle they've been trapped in for a little while I suppose. The one where sales fall and price rises and cost cutting is meant to have a parachuting effect which sadly continues that cycle as more get priced out.

Really it likely started after the first LoTR stuff, they got a kick up the butt in profits and I suppose tried to hold onto that after it died out. They likely need to take a risk with cutting prices and increasing advertising to try to mainstream more to get more customers in the door to increase sales, but I think maybe they're unable to take that hit. There has to be some reason beyond "mah divadends guise".

Bartali wrote:
If GW bothered to balance the game and write better rules I'd buy more minis and play in a wider circle - going to clubs and attending tournaments.

You don't have to write bad rules to appeal to someone like me. If they wrote better rules, I'd spend more money with them.

Except that the rules aren't *bad*. They break down at the competitive level, which isn't the core of their market. The core rules of the system haven't changed in decades. They've simply added more things to it. Terrain rules, super-heavies, formations. It's the same ruleset with more options and less focus on, as you said, balance, because garage gamers enforce their own sense of balance through unit selection, social intimidation and houserules. *You* might buy and play more if the ruleset allowed for competitive play, but Joe Garagegamer sure loves his Baneblade, and his buddy went out and bought an Imperial Knight so he can have as much fun as Joe.

If D&D 4th ed taught the gaming industry anything, it is that the general TT gaming audience doesn't care about balance and stability. They want cool options.


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 n0t_u wrote:
They likely need to take a risk with cutting prices and increasing advertising to try to mainstream more to get more customers in the door to increase sales, but I think maybe they're unable to take that hit. There has to be some reason beyond "mah divadends guise".

The majority of their stockholders (at least as of a few years ago) are UK pensioners. Hits to the stock price and dividends means retirees have less money to live on. As I've been told, that's a major deciding factor of GW playing it safe.

 Massawyrm wrote:

Bartali wrote:
If GW bothered to balance the game and write better rules I'd buy more minis and play in a wider circle - going to clubs and attending tournaments.

You don't have to write bad rules to appeal to someone like me. If they wrote better rules, I'd spend more money with them.

Except that the rules aren't *bad*. They break down at the competitive level, which isn't the core of their market. The core rules of the system haven't changed in decades. They've simply added more things to it. Terrain rules, super-heavies, formations. It's the same ruleset with more options and less focus on, as you said, balance, because garage gamers enforce their own sense of balance through unit selection, social intimidation and houserules. *You* might buy and play more if the ruleset allowed for competitive play, but Joe Garagegamer sure loves his Baneblade, and his buddy went out and bought an Imperial Knight so he can have as much fun as Joe.

If D&D 4th ed taught the gaming industry anything, it is that the general TT gaming audience doesn't care about balance and stability. They want cool options.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 n0t_u wrote:
They likely need to take a risk with cutting prices and increasing advertising to try to mainstream more to get more customers in the door to increase sales, but I think maybe they're unable to take that hit. There has to be some reason beyond "mah divadends guise".

The majority of their stockholders (at least as of a few years ago) are UK pensioners. Hits to the stock price and dividends means retirees have less money to live on. As I've been told, that's a major deciding factor of GW playing it safe.

This actually makes a lot of sense then.

 Massawyrm wrote:

Bartali wrote:
If GW bothered to balance the game and write better rules I'd buy more minis and play in a wider circle - going to clubs and attending tournaments.

You don't have to write bad rules to appeal to someone like me. If they wrote better rules, I'd spend more money with them.

Except that the rules aren't *bad*. They break down at the competitive level, which isn't the core of their market. The core rules of the system haven't changed in decades. They've simply added more things to it. Terrain rules, super-heavies, formations. It's the same ruleset with more options and less focus on, as you said, balance, because garage gamers enforce their own sense of balance through unit selection, social intimidation and houserules. *You* might buy and play more if the ruleset allowed for competitive play, but Joe Garagegamer sure loves his Baneblade, and his buddy went out and bought an Imperial Knight so he can have as much fun as Joe.

If D&D 4th ed taught the gaming industry anything, it is that the general TT gaming audience doesn't care about balance and stability. They want cool options.

Except the rules are bad. As in, elements of them do not function, and in some cases there is no clear indication as to the intent behind them. The biggest example is the way psychic characters work when attached to a unit, but there's plenty of other indications where the rules don't work as written. This isn't inherently an issue, because mistakes are almost an inevitibility in a document as complex as the 40K rulebook, but that's ok, because things can always be FAQ'd right?

Oh, right, apparently not.

This lack of support would be fine for a garage company or someone making rules available for free download, but it is possible to spend literally hundreds of pounds on a 40K rulebook, and even the standard prices are the most expensive of any game I'm aware of on sale.

As for Joe Garagegamer? Sure, he's having fun! The issue arises when he decides to broaden his horizons, but Johnny Noob, who Joe may have met at the local store and arranged a game with, has already given up because he built his army by collecting models he thought looked cool, and first time out got dissected by an optimised Eldar list, decided he wasn't having fun, chucked the lot on ebay and went back to Xbox.

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 n0t_u wrote:
They likely need to take a risk with cutting prices and increasing advertising to try to mainstream more to get more customers in the door to increase sales, but I think maybe they're unable to take that hit. There has to be some reason beyond "mah divadends guise".

The majority of their stockholders (at least as of a few years ago) are UK pensioners. Hits to the stock price and dividends means retirees have less money to live on. As I've been told, that's a major deciding factor of GW playing it safe.

Aside from Kirby, the majority of stockholders are institiutional investors, some of those may be pension funds, I'm really not motivated enough to do the research, but they operate on a different agenda to individual investors anyway. When GW failed to pay a dividend back along, they lost several of their existing larger investors. They were replaced with others, of course, but it is a pretty incontravertible example of the motivations of these larger institutions.

GW aren't playing anything safe. They're, at best, responding to sales of different products by doubling down and making more of what they think is similar. Trouble is, they don't know why things do well, because market research is otiose. Therefore every release is a roll of the dice as to whether they've correctly responded to past sales indicators and got either the aesthetics or rules correct. By making what they think their customers want gets us big bloated, directionless messes like 7th and cookie cutter model releases like the legion of plastic Space Marine characters that have been slowly grinding out over the last 12 months or so.

The safe way to conduct business would be to support their rules, conduct customer research, find out what their customers want and sell it to them. But GW clearly know better than to follow established and proven business practices, and that's why they're two or three reports at current pace away from making a loss.

Even though GW's profits are in decline, it is still currently profitable.

Regarding why it is still currently profitable - I think 'gamers', to a certain extent, do underestimate the volume that 'collectors' purchase.

Even with no new models or rules, but as long as the fluff is there, some folks out there will purchase the same set of Space Marine models and paint them as Ultramarines, then another set and paint them as White Scars, and repeat - throughout their lifetime.

The question is whether this core set of 'collectors', plus however many 'gamers' are happy with things, will be enough to keep GW profitable indefinitely, once it has declined to the point where all the other 'gamers' that are unhappy with GW have transitioned to something else.

Edit - Btw, I'm not saying that what GW is doing is 'right', I'm just offering a potential explanation of the current situation.

Unquestionably, that's the case for some, but their revenue has fallen in every report for the last two years or so (this means people are spending less money with them) and their profits have also fallen (despite price rises and cost cutting.)

The big issue for GW is, largely thanks to their stores, which conceivably cost more to run than they generate in income, they have a substantial overhead to cover. As a consequnce, their revenue is perilously close to dropping below their expenditure. There's nothing indefinite about GW's situation as it stands, they've essentially run out of meaningful things to cut, and it seems people aren't giving them as much money as they were.

Things are far from irretrievable, but things are equally a lot more perilous than some posters here would have people believe.

They sell a product that has demand and they can set the price higher and higher and people still buy it. When the price gets to a point where the high price is out of balance with the number of sales, the price will hold and new products will come out to entice buying yet again such as a new codex.

What you're describing is 'Price Elasticity Of Demand' and that elasticity can snap very quickly once a line is crossed.

 KiloFiX wrote:
Even though GW's profits are in decline, it is still currently profitable.

Regarding why it is still currently profitable - I think 'gamers', to a certain extent, do underestimate the volume that 'collectors' purchase.

Even with no new models or rules, but as long as the fluff is there, some folks out there will purchase the same set of Space Marine models and paint them as Ultramarines, then another set and paint them as White Scars, and repeat - throughout their lifetime.

The question is whether this core set of 'collectors', plus however many 'gamers' are happy with things, will be enough to keep GW profitable indefinitely, once it has declined to the point where all the other 'gamers' that are unhappy with GW have transitioned to something else.

Edit - Btw, I'm not saying that what GW is doing is 'right', I'm just offering a potential explanation of the current situation.

The current situation is actually not very mysterious, at least for people with a decent understanding of finance.

So, bear with me while I try to convey this in understandable English. It will probably also be a fairly lengthy post, and I can't be bothered to fact-check all the details (such as which year and when), but errors should only be minor. Let me know if you spot any.

First off, GW's revenue (i.e., the amount of money that comes in to GW trough sales, and not profit which is revenue - expenses) is a lot worse than it may seem. Inflation adds up to a lot more than you'd think over a lot shorter period than you'd think. Inflation means your money becomes worth less over time, like how your grandparents could buy a new car for £50 or whatever. I'm sure you've heard complaints about the glorious past with its cheap everything. Luckily you're earning somewhat more than your grandparents did, though. In effect, this means when talking about growth for a company, we can talk about nominal growth and real growth. Nominal growth is the actual figure; GW made £100 last year, and £102 this year. 2% nominal growth. But with an inflation rate of 2% that would be zero real growth. With an inflation rate of 3% that would be a real decline.

For instance, GW's peak was in 2005, and had their revenue growth matched inflation, their revenue in the recently concluded financial year (FY) would have been in the neighbourhood of £210m. It won't be. It was £123.5m last year, and is looking like it will end up around £115m this year. That means in a decade they've effectively halved in size.

In addition to this, GW's prices have increased well above inflation (spending forever and a half to dig through the numbers and only ending up with an approximation, due to lack of data on sales distribution, is not particularly appealing to me, but it's not exactly a controversial statement. Also, bear in mind that non-identical replacement products (such as a plastic Librarian taking the place of an older finecast version counts for this, and as do new products like Imperial Knights, LE codices etc)). As a result, this means that unit sales for GW are way down from their peak. Unit sales, by the way, refers to how many boxes of Tactical Marines they have sold over a year, while revenue refers to how many pounds they received from selling boxes of Tactical Marines.

Lower unit sales (especially in conjunction with declining revenues) means fewer customers. In general, a fewer customers doesn't have to be a bad thing. Let's say I have a lemonade booth. A cup of lemonade costs me 50p to make, and I sell them for £1. Every day I sell 100 cups. £100 revenue minus £50 expenses equals £50 profits. Not bad. But, what if I increased the price to £10 per cup? Obviously that's quite a lot for some lemonade, so now I only sell 10 cups a day. But, my revenue remains the same at £100. My expenses, however, are now only £5. Which means a £95 profit. Nice! This means my profit margin has increased, i.e., that for every £ I collect, 95p are straight profits.

The two above phenomena (unit sales and profit margins) are important when looking at GW's current situation. Over the last two-three years GW have introduced several products that have very high profit margins. Limited edition books, high-cost units (Imperial Knights, Wraithknights etc), and hardcover codices, as well as a push towards their online store. The latter (everything you purchase directly from GW, including FW and BL), for example, only accounts for about 20-23% of GW's revenue, yet accounts for half of GW's profits (the other half is from sales to independent retailers ("trade accounts"), while GW stores are losing money). This is connected with lower unit sales in the way that while you might have been spending £300 every year on GW products, but if you got yourself a £100 LE codex and two new Imperial Knights this year you will have contributed a lot more to GW's profits than from buying Tacticals and Terminators previously. In the end, GW is able to maintain profits through declining revenue. At least for now, but we'll get to that.


One other thing also needs to be taken into consideration; the cutting of expenses. Unfortunately for GW the lemonade example from above doesn't quite work in the real world due to overhead. Overhead is the expenses that don't really change whether you sell one or two boxes of Space Marines, like rent for their HQ, the salary of the administrative staff etc. Well, I say don't really change, but this is where GW has been doing a lot of their cutting. Mainly in two areas; their retail division and regional HQs. The retail cuts should be familiar to most of you; one-man stores, smaller stores, cheaper locations. In addition they used to have larger regional HQs that were responsible for GW's sales regions, but they have been severely downsized (North America) or axed altogether (Europe, which has been brought under central control along with the UK).

So what's the problem with this? Two things mainly; one, they can't keep cutting forever since they need to actually make a product to be able to sell it, and two, the retail cuts will lead to decreasing revenues both in the short term (shorter opening hours, lower staff, poorer locations) and the long term (how are potential new customers supposed to buy stuff if they don't know it exists?). This is also connected with GW's status as a niche, luxury product. Since GW is a small company, they can't afford expensive marketing campaigns to entice new customers. That's ok, since they get to benefit from the network effect; that is, you are a GW customer, you want to play GW games, so you get your friends to play too. Or, you like comics, you go to the comic book store, you see people playing 40k, it looks awesome, you're hooked. Or, you walk past a GW store, it looks awesome, you go in, get a demo game, buy some stuff, show up every week for some games against the other guys there, buy more stuff, etc. Declining revenue is bad in itself, but due to the network effect, those declining revenues also shut off potential new customers, either through independents or GW stores no longer carrying GW products/being located in the boonies, or your friends never started playing in the first place, and obviously then did not introduce you. And now it becomes hard to regain that foothold, especially if Warmahordes steps in to fill the gap. And if GW fails to turn this around, sooner or later it's all over.


Finally, there's a popular trope in the 40k internet discussion forums that GW customers are all 70 year old luddites who are convinced the internet is just a fad, and never, ever play with strangers, if they even play the game at all, which apparently no one does. Amirite? So, there are actually surveys about how much wargamers spend on their hobby annually, not just GW games, but in general. One recent one from the US put the average spending at $450 per year. Or about £300. If you've bought all the codices GW has put out this year, you're already well above that. Or three Imperial Knights. Or 3 LE codices. Or half an army. You get the point. It's not an unreasonable average to apply to GW customers, and, if anything, the GW average might even be higher. If GW shows a revenue of £115m this year, that equates to 383,000ish customers. Let's round it up to 400,000, because why not. That's not a lot. I listened to a Frontline Gaming podcast recently and they've got 1,500 people on their list of people having participated in ITC events this year. And that's mostly on the US West Coast, in addition there's the South, and the North East with significant tournament scenes. North America has about a quarter of GW's sales. Or, 100,000 customers. See where I'm going with this? Are tournament gamers a small minority of GW's customers? Yes. Obviously. But, during Las Vegas Open earlier this year there were more than 1,000 people watching the games live. MiniWargaming have 160,000 Youtube subscribers, and enough paying subscribers to pay the salaries of, what, five-six people? Dakka has 90,000 members. How many are active? One sixth? For every one those tournament players, how many don't go to tournaments but play at a store or a club? Bag them all together as those who engage in organized play, how many have you got? 10,000? 20,000? That's a minority, but still a good chunk of revenue right there, and that brings me to a very important aspect of business; it's not a democracy. Even if the happy-go-lucky, only-collecting, maybe once-in-a-blue-moon play a game in the kitchen with mates people are the majority of the customers (which they very well might be, as just like GW I haven't done any market research on their customer base), driving away the gamer segment, while still slashing overheads to maintain profits, is not just poor business strategy, it's ridiculous. And it's very unsettling for someone who wants their hobby (yes yes yes, there are other games, blah-blah-blah) to actually be around for a while longer.


TL;DR: GW maintains profits by cutting costs, focusing on products with higher profit margins, and hoping everything turns out alright, somehow, and, just because Jervis once said no one actually plays their games doesn't make it true.

Edit: Apparently I write "GW" way too often.

 Massawyrm wrote:
Garage gamers, the silent majority. There exists a large group of gamers who only play with a friend or two in their basement or garage. If they buy from a store at all, they show up once every few months, buy several hundred dollars worth of kits and are rarely seen again. They don't typically frequent forums, they don't play in tournaments, they don't always even stick with the most recently updated rules. They just drink a few beers, roll some dice and shoot the breeze with their buddies. They're the reason GW has shifted away from the tournament scene and towards "Play how you want," and why GW employees refer to the forums as the loud 1%. Balance isn't an issue with these players; for them COOL is king. They're the market GW is chasing, as they're the ones keeping the lights on.

I think this is largely the situation. In my experience the forums, podcasts, tournaments, blogs, etc...is where I hear all of the doom and gloom chatter. when I am in the stores and at friends houses there is not a lot of that. Too read things on the internet you would think the sky is falling, nobody can possibly have fun with such a broken game, and GW is ready to collapse under its own weight. I just don't see that reality once I look up from my computer screen.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I have noticed that there exists a group of people who love the idea of making 40k armies. That group then buys an army and paints a couple of models. They then quickly move to a new army do the same thing. Some of these people sell before moving on, others horde.

I personally think its these people who spend a load of cash on GW more so than anyone else. One of my friends is like this. Constantly buys whole armies then sells them really cheap. Loves coming up with army ideas but doesn't look like he actually enjoys playing the game.

Of course there are people who do this and love the game, but in my experience there aren't heaps of those.

The amount of money people from this group spends is huge. Add the cost of a 1800 point army, then (in the case of a friend) multiply that by 10+ armies and it adds up.

Almost like an addiction really.

But other than financial reports there isn't really hard info on GW and their downfall. As much as I think they won't last people have been saying it's coming since before my time.

I'm an 26 year old investment banker on Wall Street in NYC (and yes I play 40k). I'll took a look at their financials and any equity research coverage. GW is a public company folks TICKER is GAW on the LSE. Anyone can access their financial statements.

They ARE tanking. Their 2012 revenue was 131.0M GBP 2013 was 134.6 then 123.3 and 119.5M (2014) their earnings was 14.7 16.3 8.8 7.0M GBP (2014) so they been steadily going down since 2013. The thing is their 2014 COGS (cost of goods sold or the money it takes to actual MAKE the miniatures is only 37.1M so 31% is raw materials/transport/etc cost but their SG&A is 68.4M GBP or a whooping 57% so add that 88% is cost out the window and add in one-time expenses and other extraordinary items the company makes only 7.0M out of 119 top line which is a pathetic 5% profit margin.

I wonder why their SG&A is so high and I'd have to see the UK FSA filings on how much their executives make but clearly they are NOT making a killing. I wouldn't invest in TICKER:GAW. If they sold their miniatures any cheaper they would be losing money. They only make 7.0M GBP a year.

The ideal solution is to raise sales AND cut SG&A to slightly lower prices through a combination of efficiency and higher revenues (by a better price point) but there is so much competition from Warmachine, Infinity, etc right now. Put me in charge of GAW and I'll would cut SG&A, streamline playtest rules through open community playtesting in the UK, and lower prices in hopes of gaining more market share, change the approach to brick and mortar stores, and I would kill some non-selling factions like Sisters of Battle - I mean sorry guys. Basically make a last ditch bid to be great again. If I fail I would bring down the company and bring the END of 40k because no Private Equity shop will do a buyout of a toy company with such pathetic profit margins. I would only take a salary of 175,000 GBP a year to save the company that I love. Also feth Nottingham I'm moving the HQ to some cheap location where its livable. haha

I can argue GAW might be better as a private company like Privateer Press and not have to worry about the market as much. Who wants to do a LBO (Leveraged Buyout) of GAW like Dell did, go private, and put me in charge?

Loborocket wrote:

 Massawyrm wrote:
Garage gamers, the silent majority. There exists a large group of gamers who only play with a friend or two in their basement or garage. If they buy from a store at all, they show up once every few months, buy several hundred dollars worth of kits and are rarely seen again. They don't typically frequent forums, they don't play in tournaments, they don't always even stick with the most recently updated rules. They just drink a few beers, roll some dice and shoot the breeze with their buddies. They're the reason GW has shifted away from the tournament scene and towards "Play how you want," and why GW employees refer to the forums as the loud 1%. Balance isn't an issue with these players; for them COOL is king. They're the market GW is chasing, as they're the ones keeping the lights on.

I think this is largely the situation. In my experience the forums, podcasts, tournaments, blogs, etc...is where I hear all of the doom and gloom chatter. when I am in the stores and at friends houses there is not a lot of that. Too read things on the internet you would think the sky is falling, nobody can possibly have fun with such a broken game, and GW is ready to collapse under its own weight. I just don't see that reality once I look up from my computer screen.

I'd counter that by stating that things like GW's financials just aren't on the radar of the people you're talking about. Equally, they're not going to be aware of the scale of brokenness unless they trip over it (and let's face it, if they were seriously motivated to be winning games they'd be on the net looking for an edge.)

Ignorance is bliss.

I did some digging on my bloomberg terminal and the CEO of GAW only makes 257,000 GBP a year. The highest paid person is the Chairman with 500k GBP a year but I'd bet he owns a decent slice of the company.

The CEO of GW which at the end of the day is not rocking it with the private jets.

Investment Banking Managing Directors in London make 500-2.0M GBP at decent banks and they are a dime a dozen.

Being the CEO of GAW is NOT lucrative lmao.

Up until recently, the Chairman and CEO were the same person, who also happens to own the largest individual stake in the company (~8% IIRC)

If you think £500k isn't lucrative, no wonder the bankers screwed the economy!

 Azreal13 wrote:
Up until recently, the Chairman and CEO were the same person, who also happens to own the largest individual stake in the company (~8% IIRC)

If you think £500k isn't lucrative, no wonder the bankers screwed the economy!

Given the kind of responsibility the CEO of a struggling company has to bear, 500k doesn't seem that much. Think of it like this: other people make 5-10x more for kicking a ball across a patch of grass.

Do you know how much a flat in South Kensington or West Village, Manhattan costs?

You'll need to save up for years to afford those esp. after UK or US taxes. Face-palm*


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LordBlades wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Up until recently, the Chairman and CEO were the same person, who also happens to own the largest individual stake in the company (~8% IIRC)

If you think £500k isn't lucrative, no wonder the bankers screwed the economy!

Given the kind of responsibility the CEO of a struggling company has to bear, 500k doesn't seem that much. Think of it like this: other people make 5-10x more for kicking a ball across a patch of grass.

500k is for the Chairman of the Board, the CEO is getting only 257k. The Chairman likely owns a decent % of the company (hence he's like an owner, rather than an employee)

If you don't think that kind of money is "lucrative", then you're insane, that's more than enough to put in the top 99.99% of earners in developed, industrialized nations, much less the planet at large.

No, it's not Warren Buffet rich, but that's plenty rich to afford to live just about anywhere without a 10 digit pricetag attached. That the kind of money that buys a multi-million dollar home (not outright perhaps, but mortgaged), with multiple luxury cars, and every creature comfort short of a private jet or a massive yacht one could want.

 DorianGray wrote:
Do you know how much a flat in South Kensington or West Village, Manhattan costs?

You'll need to save up for years to afford those esp. after UK or US taxes. Face-palm*

You know neither of those places is near Nottingham right?

You know that Kirby's getting £100Ks from dividends too?

Outside of London, and even then only select parts, £1-2m can get you an astonishing property.

 Swastakowey wrote:
I have noticed that there exists a group of people who love the idea of making 40k armies. That group then buys an army and paints a couple of models. They then quickly move to a new army do the same thing. Some of these people sell before moving on, others horde.

I personally think its these people who spend a load of cash on GW more so than anyone else. One of my friends is like this. Constantly buys whole armies then sells them really cheap. Loves coming up with army ideas but doesn't look like he actually enjoys playing the game.

Of course there are people who do this and love the game, but in my experience there aren't heaps of those.

This describes me (love to make 40k armies) but I don't sell them, though I do occasionally gift old models. There are a few people at my store that are like me, and it's the old "80/20" rule of retail -- 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers.

My store knows that if it's 40k to hold aside 1 of any new kit for me (though there are a couple of factions I don't take), and I'll tell them ahead of time if I want multiples. When my store has a boxing day or other type sale, where they'll give me > 30% discount, I will literally go in and buy out whole shelves -- like, "just box up what's left of the space marines and imperial guard shelves".

I also love playing the game, but because game nights basically stretch into the entire night, my friends and I (who all have families) can't do this often -- couple of times a month is all we can get away with.

Note that I don't exclusively collect GW stuff. I buy a ton of PP models, almost every new Infinity release, and a ton of modelling supplies (Woodland Scenics, etc.). At the end of the day though, I simply buy more GW and it excites me more because there's something new almost every week.


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 DorianGray wrote:
I did some digging on my bloomberg terminal and the CEO of GAW only makes 257,000 GBP a year. The highest paid person is the Chairman with 500k GBP a year but I'd bet he owns a decent slice of the company.

The CEO of GW which at the end of the day is not rocking it with the private jets.

Investment Banking Managing Directors in London make 500-2.0M GBP at decent banks and they are a dime a dozen.

Being the CEO of GAW is NOT lucrative lmao.

It's still a healthy job More than I make!!

Though I bet you I have more time to paint space marines than the CEO of GW, so THERE.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 DorianGray wrote:
Do you know how much a flat in South Kensington or West Village, Manhattan costs?

You'll need to save up for years to afford those esp. after UK or US taxes. Face-palm*

You know neither of those places is near Nottingham right?

You know that Kirby's getting £100Ks from dividends too?

Outside of London, and even then only select parts, £1-2m can get you an astonishing property.

To put into context the CEO of Goldman Sachs received $41.0M (26.21M GBP) in total compensation in 2014. That is more than 100x the compensation of the CEO of Games Workshop.

Lloyd Blankflein is wealthy, the CEO of GW is merely middle class. That's all I'm saying. Among the rank of CEOs, Games Workshop is really far down the totem pole.

You have a really distorted idea of what constitutes "middle class" (it's a socio-economic group, not purely economic.)

What's the valuation of Goldman Sachs vs GW? I think that may give you a clue as to the disparity.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 DorianGray wrote:
Do you know how much a flat in South Kensington or West Village, Manhattan costs?

You'll need to save up for years to afford those esp. after UK or US taxes. Face-palm*

You know neither of those places is near Nottingham right?

You know that Kirby's getting £100Ks from dividends too?

Outside of London, and even then only select parts, £1-2m can get you an astonishing property.

Indeed. Between his salary as CEO & Chairman, and dividends, his yearly intake was likely just about a million Pounds. That's about ~$1.6 Million/year.

There's a reason he *borrowed* money to pay dividends

 DorianGray wrote:
I did some digging on my bloomberg terminal and the CEO of GAW only makes 257,000 GBP a year. The highest paid person is the Chairman with 500k GBP a year but I'd bet he owns a decent slice of the company.

The CEO of GW which at the end of the day is not rocking it with the private jets.

Investment Banking Managing Directors in London make 500-2.0M GBP at decent banks and they are a dime a dozen.

Being the CEO of GAW is NOT lucrative lmao.

The CEO salary seems low due to GW's executive salary structure. In a couple of years it will have tripled (and that's without counting the stock options and bonuses).

If you have some google fu, you should be able to dig up an article from a year or two ago, showing that compared to company size, Kirbz was the highest paid executive in the UK.

Don't worry about Kev. He'll be able to buy shiny things soon enough.

 DorianGray wrote:

To put into context the CEO of Goldman Sachs received $41.0M (26.21M GBP) in total compensation in 2014. That is more than 100x the compensation of the CEO of Games Workshop.

Lloyd Blankflein is wealthy, the CEO of GW is merely middle class. That's all I'm saying. Among the rank of CEOs, Games Workshop is really far down the totem pole.

I will happily agree with you that there is an avalanche of higher-paid CEOs than Games Workshop's. Then again, Games Workshop is a tiny company compared to a lot of publicly traded companies, which just shows you what a niche market miniatures are. In the context of CEOs of miniature and wargaming companies, he's probably one of the best paid

However, the CEO of GW is NOT "merely middle class". If you take "middle class" to mean, either mean or median income of the entire population of the UK, it's nowhere near 250k GBP, hehehe. Median income, I'm going to guess that he earns 10 times or more than the average wage earner.

500 k, I would trade him jobs in a minute but I don't think Kirby has the balls to work in a state prison as a guard. 500k doesn't seem like a lot when comparing him to other companies but it's a lot for a nitch market. Iam sure Kirby lives a pretty comfortable life or at least I would making that kind of money

People hear declining profits and automatically assume GW is losing money and in the red. I've had discussions with my local group about this and there is so much misperception about this.

Although GW isn't making as much money these days, they are still making money. So to easily answer the OP, the reason GW isn't tanking, is because they are still turning out a profit.

riburn3 wrote:
People hear declining profits and automatically assume GW is losing money and in the red. I've had discussions with my local group about this and there is so much misperception about this.

Although GW isn't making as much money these days, they are still making money. So to easily answer the OP, the reason GW isn't tanking, is because they are still turning out a profit.

For now. Nobody thinks GW is going to die next week. The important thing to note is that if the revenue trend they've been on for the last ten or eleven years continues, they won't be making a profit anymore in 4/5/6 years. And it's clear GW has seen this too, hence the radical changes in 40k and Fantasy over the last 12 months.

riburn3 wrote:
People hear declining profits and automatically assume GW is losing money and in the red. I've had discussions with my local group about this and there is so much misperception about this.

Although GW isn't making as much money these days, they are still making money. So to easily answer the OP, the reason GW isn't tanking, is because they are still turning out a profit.

Wait, your argument is "GW isn't taking because they still are making a profit"?

If GW gets to the point where they're having a net loss of money on a yearly basis, they're gone. Toast. Immediately, they'll be on the chopping block very quickly and the company would go through some really violent changes if it were to even theoretically continue.

In the meantime, they're shedding upwards of 10 million pounds of revenue on a nearly yearly basis and have shrunk from their height around 2005 at 200 million to close to $100. I suppose that doesn't qualify as "straight into the drain", but I think it's in the category of "dire straits." That, compounded with no evident turn-around in sight, and I think there is a great deal of evidence to be concerned (that is, if you're interested in this stuff, of course).


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 Vaktathi wrote:
For now. Nobody thinks GW is going to die next week. The important thing to note is that if the revenue trend they've been on for the last ten or eleven years continues, they won't be making a profit anymore in 4/5/6 years. And it's clear GW has seen this too, hence the radical changes in 40k and Fantasy over the last 12 months.

Yeah, I think this will be the clearest example of whether GW can turn it around. If Super All-Stars WHFB ends up being massively popular, then I think a lot of misgivings will start to go away. However, if this attempt at revitalization fails and WHFB ends up in an even worse spot...well, I guess GW will be able to just knock the "S" off their signs and consider THAT their fancy new makeover.

If you're measuring the success of Games Workshop base on enthusiasm from people on this forum then you are making a huge mistake. The reality is that the majority of GW players enjoy the game/hobby and do not see a diminishing return in regards to cost/quality. Not to say those players don't have concerns or criticisms, but 40k is a popular game and is fully capable of supporting GW, atleast for the time being.

No, I'm measuring the success of GW by the only metric that matters, which is how much cash their customers give them, and it's falling.

Let's not forget that Mr. Kirby saw fit to give himself a 24%(24-26, I can't recall exactly) raise last year. I'd love to get that big of a raise.

@Thud. Thank you for your concise and eloquent evaluation; you stated some of the items that I've tired to convey in better terms than I did.

Thud and DorianGray posts were pretty informative. 7m a year is pretty low for a company with the global reach GW has. That SG&A expense is mind-blowing.

As DorianGray, I wouldn't put one cent on GW if I didn't know what was its business. Andd by the expenses on SG&A, selling models ins't it

 Las wrote:
If you're measuring the success of Games Workshop base on enthusiasm from people on this forum then you are making a huge mistake. The reality is that the majority of GW players enjoy the game/hobby and do not see a diminishing return in regards to cost/quality. Not to say those players don't have concerns or criticisms, but 40k is a popular game and is fully capable of supporting GW, atleast for the time being.

While the majority of GW playets might be still enjoying the game, their finances seem to point out pretty clearly there's less and less GW players as time goes by.

 Thud wrote:
Finally, there's a popular trope in the 40k internet discussion forums that GW customers are all 70 year old luddites who are convinced the internet is just a fad, and never, ever play with strangers, if they even play the game at all, which apparently no one does. Amirite? So, there are actually surveys about how much wargamers spend on their hobby annually, not just GW games, but in general. One recent one from the US put the average spending at $450 per year. Or about £300. If you've bought all the codices GW has put out this year, you're already well above that. Or three Imperial Knights. Or 3 LE codices. Or half an army. You get the point. It's not an unreasonable average to apply to GW customers, and, if anything, the GW average might even be higher. If GW shows a revenue of £115m this year, that equates to 383,000ish customers. Let's round it up to 400,000, because why not. That's not a lot. I listened to a Frontline Gaming podcast recently and they've got 1,500 people on their list of people having participated in ITC events this year. And that's mostly on the US West Coast, in addition there's the South, and the North East with significant tournament scenes. North America has about a quarter of GW's sales. Or, 100,000 customers. See where I'm going with this? Are tournament gamers a small minority of GW's customers? Yes. Obviously. But, during Las Vegas Open earlier this year there were more than 1,000 people watching the games live. MiniWargaming have 160,000 Youtube subscribers, and enough paying subscribers to pay the salaries of, what, five-six people? Dakka has 90,000 members. How many are active? One sixth? For every one those tournament players, how many don't go to tournaments but play at a store or a club? Bag them all together as those who engage in organized play, how many have you got? 10,000? 20,000? That's a minority, but still a good chunk of revenue right there, and that brings me to a very important aspect of business; it's not a democracy. Even if the happy-go-lucky, only-collecting, maybe once-in-a-blue-moon play a game in the kitchen with mates people are the majority of the customers (which they very well might be, as just like GW I haven't done any market research on their customer base), driving away the gamer segment, while still slashing overheads to maintain profits, is not just poor business strategy, it's ridiculous. And it's very unsettling for someone who wants their hobby (yes yes yes, there are other games, blah-blah-blah) to actually be around for a while longer.

This is a pretty cool breakdown, and on an unrelated note is why all the people with their "40K is just as big as Star Wars or LOTR make a movie please!" threads are ignorant. 383,000 fans worldwide is not a very big number.

 greyknight12 wrote:

 Thud wrote:
Finally, there's a popular trope in the 40k internet discussion forums that GW customers are all 70 year old luddites who are convinced the internet is just a fad, and never, ever play with strangers, if they even play the game at all, which apparently no one does. Amirite? So, there are actually surveys about how much wargamers spend on their hobby annually, not just GW games, but in general. One recent one from the US put the average spending at $450 per year. Or about £300. If you've bought all the codices GW has put out this year, you're already well above that. Or three Imperial Knights. Or 3 LE codices. Or half an army. You get the point. It's not an unreasonable average to apply to GW customers, and, if anything, the GW average might even be higher. If GW shows a revenue of £115m this year, that equates to 383,000ish customers. Let's round it up to 400,000, because why not. That's not a lot. I listened to a Frontline Gaming podcast recently and they've got 1,500 people on their list of people having participated in ITC events this year. And that's mostly on the US West Coast, in addition there's the South, and the North East with significant tournament scenes. North America has about a quarter of GW's sales. Or, 100,000 customers. See where I'm going with this? Are tournament gamers a small minority of GW's customers? Yes. Obviously. But, during Las Vegas Open earlier this year there were more than 1,000 people watching the games live. MiniWargaming have 160,000 Youtube subscribers, and enough paying subscribers to pay the salaries of, what, five-six people? Dakka has 90,000 members. How many are active? One sixth? For every one those tournament players, how many don't go to tournaments but play at a store or a club? Bag them all together as those who engage in organized play, how many have you got? 10,000? 20,000? That's a minority, but still a good chunk of revenue right there, and that brings me to a very important aspect of business; it's not a democracy. Even if the happy-go-lucky, only-collecting, maybe once-in-a-blue-moon play a game in the kitchen with mates people are the majority of the customers (which they very well might be, as just like GW I haven't done any market research on their customer base), driving away the gamer segment, while still slashing overheads to maintain profits, is not just poor business strategy, it's ridiculous. And it's very unsettling for someone who wants their hobby (yes yes yes, there are other games, blah-blah-blah) to actually be around for a while longer.

This is a pretty cool breakdown, and on an unrelated note is why all the people with their "40K is just as big as Star Wars or LOTR make a movie please!" threads are ignorant. 383,000 fans worldwide is not a very big number.

I disagree. To see how many people spent money on a franchise in the previous year is a horrible metric by which to measure whether a company would be successful in the movie or other businesses.

For example: how many people went to see the first Iron Man movie, who hadn't bought a Marvel comic book in.... more than a decade? How many people are aware of and love Star Wars, but spent NOTHING on it last year? How much money did you spend on Star Trek last year -- but would you see a new Star Trek movie? How many people had heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy before the film? The list could go on forever.

If you measured the number of people who played 40k since its inception in the mid-80s, you might be closer to a useful number -- quite possibly, still not nearly the threshold to invest a quarter billion dollars or more into a motion picture. But still, remember that Marvel was going out of business not that long ago -- according to fans, mostly because comic books were just too expensive for the everyday person, Marvel was mismanaged, was going bankrupt (actually, it did file for bankruptcy protection in 1996). It was to be the end of a once glorious era. All because of greedy executives who wanted to milk their rapidly shrinking subscriber base.

Wanna know something funny? In 2007 Marvel Entertainment, LLC's annual revenue was HALF of Games Workshop's today ($125.7 million USD). It was purchased by Walt Disney for $4 billion.

So don't be laughin' at that GBP 115m revenues all that hard. You might just be able to take it to the bank.

Marvel didn't turn that around by doubling down though. Ultimately, money spent in the previous year is pretty much how the success of businesses are measured. But then it comes down to other factors like brand recognition and the mood of the fanbase - if the people that paid to watch the movie thought it was a stinker, they're less likely to watch the next one.

 Las wrote:
the reality is that the majority of GW players enjoy the game/hobby and do not see a diminishing return in regards to cost/quality. Not to say those players don't have concerns or criticisms, but 40k is a popular game and is fully capable of supporting GW, atleast for the time being.

The majority of gw players or the majority of gw players that are left? Because there are seemingly fewer people playing now than before!

And your proof that the majority both enjoy the game/hobby anddon't see a diminishing return in regards to cost/quality is?

 Talys wrote:

 greyknight12 wrote:

 Thud wrote:
Finally, there's a popular trope in the 40k internet discussion forums that GW customers are all 70 year old luddites who are convinced the internet is just a fad, and never, ever play with strangers, if they even play the game at all, which apparently no one does. Amirite? So, there are actually surveys about how much wargamers spend on their hobby annually, not just GW games, but in general. One recent one from the US put the average spending at $450 per year. Or about £300. If you've bought all the codices GW has put out this year, you're already well above that. Or three Imperial Knights. Or 3 LE codices. Or half an army. You get the point. It's not an unreasonable average to apply to GW customers, and, if anything, the GW average might even be higher. If GW shows a revenue of £115m this year, that equates to 383,000ish customers. Let's round it up to 400,000, because why not. That's not a lot. I listened to a Frontline Gaming podcast recently and they've got 1,500 people on their list of people having participated in ITC events this year. And that's mostly on the US West Coast, in addition there's the South, and the North East with significant tournament scenes. North America has about a quarter of GW's sales. Or, 100,000 customers. See where I'm going with this? Are tournament gamers a small minority of GW's customers? Yes. Obviously. But, during Las Vegas Open earlier this year there were more than 1,000 people watching the games live. MiniWargaming have 160,000 Youtube subscribers, and enough paying subscribers to pay the salaries of, what, five-six people? Dakka has 90,000 members. How many are active? One sixth? For every one those tournament players, how many don't go to tournaments but play at a store or a club? Bag them all together as those who engage in organized play, how many have you got? 10,000? 20,000? That's a minority, but still a good chunk of revenue right there, and that brings me to a very important aspect of business; it's not a democracy. Even if the happy-go-lucky, only-collecting, maybe once-in-a-blue-moon play a game in the kitchen with mates people are the majority of the customers (which they very well might be, as just like GW I haven't done any market research on their customer base), driving away the gamer segment, while still slashing overheads to maintain profits, is not just poor business strategy, it's ridiculous. And it's very unsettling for someone who wants their hobby (yes yes yes, there are other games, blah-blah-blah) to actually be around for a while longer.

This is a pretty cool breakdown, and on an unrelated note is why all the people with their "40K is just as big as Star Wars or LOTR make a movie please!" threads are ignorant. 383,000 fans worldwide is not a very big number.

I disagree. To see how many people spent money on a franchise in the previous year is a horrible metric by which to measure whether a company would be successful in the movie or other businesses.

For example: how many people went to see the first Iron Man movie, who hadn't bought a Marvel comic book in.... more than a decade? How many people are aware of and love Star Wars, but spent NOTHING on it last year? How much money did you spend on Star Trek last year -- but would you see a new Star Trek movie? How many people had heard of the Guardians of the Galaxy before the film? The list could go on forever.

If you measured the number of people who played 40k since its inception in the mid-80s, you might be closer to a useful number -- quite possibly, still not nearly the threshold to invest a quarter billion dollars or more into a motion picture. But still, remember that Marvel was going out of business not that long ago -- according to fans, mostly because comic books were just too expensive for the everyday person, Marvel was mismanaged, was going bankrupt (actually, it did file for bankruptcy protection in 1996). It was to be the end of a once glorious era. All because of greedy executives who wanted to milk their rapidly shrinking subscriber base.

Wanna know something funny? In 2007 Marvel Entertainment, LLC's annual revenue was HALF of Games Workshop's today ($125.7 million USD). It was purchased by Walt Disney for $4 billion.

So don't be laughin' at that GBP 115m revenues all that hard. You might just be able to take it to the bank.

Meanwhile, in the real world, Marvel Entertainment LLC did not exist until 2009, and Marvel Entertainment Inc (which I assume you're referring to) had an annual revenue of $485.8 million USD in 2007. Which then grew to $676.2 million USD for 2008. They also had net profits of $205.5 million USD in 2008, after $139.8 in 2007. And assets of close to one billion USD. They were then bought by Disney in August 2009 and turned into an LLC.

Source: Page 26 of the pdf, page 18 of the document.

Why are some people assuming that 40k players are responsible for the revenue decline? Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that LotR sales are tanking hard, since LotR was also responsible for the huge rise in revenue in the 2000s? Combined with the apparently abysmal sales of Fantasy and a steadily increasing number of competitors, I'm not surprised at the falling revenue.

It would be interesting to see GWs revenue before LotR. If it was more along the lines of their current revenue or even less, then is it not possible that what happened is this: The success of LotR caused GW to grow faster than they could reasonably sustain in the long run. With LotR and Fantasy sales falling rapidly, and the competition growing fiercer every day, they are now forced to take desperate cost-cutting measures to avoid shrinking back to a more sustainable size (which is probably what they actually should do). At the same time they cut LotR and make a last ditch effort to save Fantasy.

@thud - in 2008, the first Iron Man movie was produced. Disney bought Marvel following its success.

I took the 2007 revenue number of $125.7m from Marvel's Wikipedia entry.

But my point stands: in the late 90s, fans thought marvel was going to die because they wouldn't listen to fans, made overly complicated crossover story arcs that forced you to buy 6 titles, and jacked prices to something fierce. By the mid-200s hardly anyone bought Marvel comics.

Yet, a disproportionately large percentage of moviegoers watch Marvel movies. A lot fans haven't bought a comic since the 80s. This was the analogy I was trying to make -- that the number of current 40k/fb players from last year are irrelevant.


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Mymearan wrote:
Why are some people assuming that 40k players are responsible for the revenue decline? Wouldn't it make more sense to assume that LotR sales are tanking hard, since LotR was also responsible for the huge rise in revenue in the 2000s? Combined with the apparently abysmal sales of Fantasy and a steadily increasing number of competitors, I'm not surprised at the falling revenue.

It would be interesting to see GWs revenue before LotR. If it was more along the lines of their current revenue or even less, then is it not possible that what happened is this: The success of LotR caused GW to grow faster than they could reasonably sustain in the long run. With LotR and Fantasy sales falling rapidly, and the competition growing fiercer every day, they are now forced to take desperate cost-cutting measures to avoid shrinking back to a more sustainable size (which is probably what they actually should do). At the same time they cut LotR and make a last ditch effort to save Fantasy.

In past incarnations of this debate, this has been argued effectively. Some think GW got used to the nice LoTR profits, and tried tocompensate as that dried up.

Personally, I hope fantasy makes a resurgence, even though I am not a big fan. Most of my stores sell practically no fantasy stuff anymore.

 DorianGray wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 DorianGray wrote:
Do you know how much a flat in South Kensington or West Village, Manhattan costs?

You'll need to save up for years to afford those esp. after UK or US taxes. Face-palm*

You know neither of those places is near Nottingham right?

You know that Kirby's getting £100Ks from dividends too?

Outside of London, and even then only select parts, £1-2m can get you an astonishing property.

To put into context the CEO of Goldman Sachs received $41.0M (26.21M GBP) in total compensation in 2014. That is more than 100x the compensation of the CEO of Games Workshop.

Lloyd Blankflein is wealthy, the CEO of GW is merely middle class. That's all I'm saying. Among the rank of CEOs, Games Workshop is really far down the totem pole.

According to Wikipedia, GS has a revenue of about $40bn, or about 30 times that of GW, so GW's CEO's base salary is 3x that of the total compensation given to the GS CEO, as a ratio of revenue.

But there's more. Kirby was also Chairman, so got a salary of around £300k, and owns 7.9% of the stock, so gets about £400k/dividend, or £1.2m/year, so his total compensation in 2014 was about £1.5m, or about 20x less than GS. That means the GW CEO gets something like 15x more than the CEO of Goldman Sachs, compared to revenue.

That's a hell of a lot of money.

Mymearan wrote:

It would be interesting to see GWs revenue before LotR. If it was more along the lines of their current revenue or even less, then is it not possible that what happened is this: The success of LotR caused GW to grow faster than they could reasonably sustain in the long run. With LotR and Fantasy sales falling rapidly, and the competition growing fiercer every day, they are now forced to take desperate cost-cutting measures to avoid shrinking back to a more sustainable size (which is probably what they actually should do). At the same time they cut LotR and make a last ditch effort to save Fantasy.

This is a graph I've kept running for the last few years, well decade. You can see how GW's revenues and profits have performed since 1997, and the impact that the stock exchange listing and the LOTR effect have both had in that time.

The dark lines show real value (i.e. discounted for RPI), and the lighter lines show cash values.

Just to confirm that the LOTR bubble effect seems to have ended in 2006, and since then LOTR sales have been pretty negligable overall. As was said earlier in the thread, the real sales, which are a proxy for their voume sales show a very worrying trend, i.e. that the amount of product sold now is no larger than it was at the turn of the century, and given GWs price rises proably outstrip UK RPI, they are probably actually somewhat less. 15 years of no net volume growth says all it needs to say about Kirby and his teams abiities to grow a business.

 Swastakowey wrote:
The amount of money people from this group spends is huge. Add the cost of a 1800 point army, then (in the case of a friend) multiply that by 10+ armies and it adds up.

Yep. The app world calls them "whales". They're the small percentage of players who spend the most money and sustain the company. I guess it's the 80/20 rule all over again.

Also, many hobbies have a 400 lb gorilla, which, afaik, is considered to be the "gateway" into the hobby -- and many hobbyists don't look further or need to:
* Miniatures wargames: 40K
* CCGs: Magic
* Comic books: Marvel and DC
* RPGs: D&D
* Cards: Poker
* Boardgames: Chess and Monopoly

 Talys wrote:
@thud - in 2008, the first Iron Man movie was produced. Disney bought Marvel following its success.

I took the 2007 revenue number of $125.7m from Marvel's Wikipedia entry.

But my point stands: in the late 90s, fans thought marvel was going to die because they wouldn't listen to fans, made overly complicated crossover story arcs that forced you to buy 6 titles, and jacked prices to something fierce. By the mid-200s hardly anyone bought Marvel comics.

Yet, a disproportionately large percentage of moviegoers watch Marvel movies. A lot fans haven't bought a comic since the 80s. This was the analogy I was trying to make -- that the number of current 40k/fb players from last year are irrelevant.

I know Iron Man came out in 2008. I don't actually live in a cave. Also, I read the report I used as a source in my previous post which refers to its success. Also, Marvel's comic book sales were steadily rising throughout the '00s (while licencing revenue was skyrocketing).

I'm not arguing that 40k (or GW) has too few fans to have a box office success, nor that the 400,000 figure is relevant to how many people would watch a 40k high-quality movie, but rather that your comparison between Marvel and GW is way off base. I mean, you're comparing the giant of a niche market to the comic book publisher that didn't have Superman or Batman and acting as though their products are comparably mainstream, based on how the total annual revenue of one is not enough to estimate total potential fanbase, but the partial annual revenue of the other somehow is? What? Also, Marvel has spent the last two decades transforming itself from a comic book publisher to an IP producer/seller and film maker. GW also licences its IP, it's just that Marvel gets about 200 times as much licencing revenue as GW. Marvel is also making almost as much from making their own films as from licencing, btw.

And finally, whether or not Marvel fans were sure Marvel was going down in the late 90s means nothing. I'm sure if you dig around, you'll find GW fans claiming impending doom in 2002-2003. So what? Some people were wrong? This, at best, really isn't relevant to anything in this thread, or, at worst, is a logical fallacy ("in the past people thought GW was in trouble, and were wrong, therefore people who now think GW are in trouble are wrong"). Things change. GW is in a precarious situation, and they don't seem to know what they're doing.

I'm not a Marvel (or DC) fan, but I know enough about them to know roughly what Iron Man (or Batman, Spiderman, Superman, Hulk, Avengers, Thor, Daredevil) is to consider going to see a film about it. And whilst I'm not a comic book fan (I prefer fiction novels), I can still enjoy the films.

40K just doesn't have anywhere near the broad market appeal. I'm not sure I've ever had to explain to anyone who Iron Man or Batman is, but I'd certainly need to explain who Horus is ("No, not the Egyptian God").

So, sure, there probably are more than 400k people who might be interested in a 40K based film, but it must be a few orders of magnitudes away from the numbers of people who'd go and see any Marvel film.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talys wrote:

However, the CEO of GW is NOT "merely middle class". If you take "middle class" to mean, either mean or median income of the entire population of the UK, it's nowhere near 250k GBP, hehehe. Median income, I'm going to guess that he earns 10 times or more than the average wage earner.

Average full-time adult salary in the UK is about £24k (£32k in London). Kirby makes about 10 times the average salary *before* stock, or about 60 times after. Average workers don't get any stock bonuses.

Not to mention that most CEOs are vastly over-compensated, and that being compensated in stock and options is typically a counter-incentive to the company's continued financial success.

 DorianGray wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
I have noticed that there exists a group of people who love the idea of making 40k armies. That group then buys an army and paints a couple of models. They then quickly move to a new army do the same thing. Some of these people sell before moving on, others horde.

I personally think its these people who spend a load of cash on GW more so than anyone else. One of my friends is like this. Constantly buys whole armies then sells them really cheap. Loves coming up with army ideas but doesn't look like he actually enjoys playing the game.

Of course there are people who do this and love the game, but in my experience there aren't heaps of those.

The amount of money people from this group spends is huge. Add the cost of a 1800 point army, then (in the case of a friend) multiply that by 10+ armies and it adds up.

Almost like an addiction really.

But other than financial reports there isn't really hard info on GW and their downfall. As much as I think they won't last people have been saying it's coming since before my time.

I'm an 26 year old investment banker on Wall Street in NYC (and yes I play 40k). I'll took a look at their financials and any equity research coverage. GW is a public company folks TICKER is GAW on the LSE. Anyone can access their financial statements.

They ARE tanking. Their 2012 revenue was 131.0M GBP 2013 was 134.6 then 123.3 and 119.5M (2014) their earnings was 14.7 16.3 8.8 7.0M GBP (2014) so they been steadily going down since 2013. The thing is their 2014 COGS (cost of goods sold or the money it takes to actual MAKE the miniatures is only 37.1M so 31% is raw materials/transport/etc cost but their SG&A is 68.4M GBP or a whooping 57% so add that 88% is cost out the window and add in one-time expenses and other extraordinary items the company makes only 7.0M out of 119 top line which is a pathetic 5% profit margin.

I wonder why their SG&A is so high and I'd have to see the UK FSA filings on how much their executives make but clearly they are NOT making a killing. I wouldn't invest in TICKER:GAW. If they sold their miniatures any cheaper they would be losing money. They only make 7.0M GBP a year.

The ideal solution is to raise sales AND cut SG&A to slightly lower prices through a combination of efficiency and higher revenues (by a better price point) but there is so much competition from Warmachine, Infinity, etc right now. Put me in charge of GAW and I'll would cut SG&A, streamline playtest rules through open community playtesting in the UK, and lower prices in hopes of gaining more market share, change the approach to brick and mortar stores, and I would kill some non-selling factions like Sisters of Battle - I mean sorry guys. Basically make a last ditch bid to be great again. If I fail I would bring down the company and bring the END of 40k because no Private Equity shop will do a buyout of a toy company with such pathetic profit margins. I would only take a salary of 175,000 GBP a year to save the company that I love. Also feth Nottingham I'm moving the HQ to some cheap location where its livable. haha

I can argue GAW might be better as a private company like Privateer Press and not have to worry about the market as much. Who wants to do a LBO (Leveraged Buyout) of GAW like Dell did, go private, and put me in charge?

If you promise to put me in charge of tech continuity in 40K, I might know a few people who MIGHT be convinced to do such a buyout.

MB


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 DorianGray wrote:
I did some digging on my bloomberg terminal and the CEO of GAW only makes 257,000 GBP a year. The highest paid person is the Chairman with 500k GBP a year but I'd bet he owns a decent slice of the company.

The CEO of GW which at the end of the day is not rocking it with the private jets.

Investment Banking Managing Directors in London make 500-2.0M GBP at decent banks and they are a dime a dozen.

Being the CEO of GAW is NOT lucrative lmao.

£257K/yr is roughly $400K/yr.

That isn't chump change, AND he gets a hefty bonus and stock dividends that amount to about 2X to 3X his salary.

MB


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Las wrote:
If you're measuring the success of Games Workshop base on enthusiasm from people on this forum then you are making a huge mistake. The reality is that the majority of GW players enjoy the game/hobby and do not see a diminishing return in regards to cost/quality. Not to say those players don't have concerns or criticisms, but 40k is a popular game and is fully capable of supporting GW, atleast for the time being.

And this is completely lately irrelevant to the state of the company.

The fan's could be willing to kill themselves to save the company.

But if they, collectively, do not produce enough sales, then it does not really matter.

The die-hard fans are not what keeps the company afloat.

MB

Back to the OP's Question. What keeps GW financially alive?

I don't even think GW knows anymore. The rest of us are just speculating.

 Massawyrm wrote:
Garage gamers, the silent majority. There exists a large group of gamers who only play with a friend or two in their basement or garage. If they buy from a store at all, they show up once every few months, buy several hundred dollars worth of kits and are rarely seen again. They don't typically frequent forums, they don't play in tournaments, they don't always even stick with the most recently updated rules. They just drink a few beers, roll some dice and shoot the breeze with their buddies. They're the reason GW has shifted away from the tournament scene and towards "Play how you want," and why GW employees refer to the forums as the loud 1%. Balance isn't an issue with these players; for them COOL is king. They're the market GW is chasing, as they're the ones keeping the lights on.

That shoe fits, so I'll wear it...

IMO, the are a couple of key reasons that GW continues to make sales.

1) The game is not stagnant. They are continually releasing new models for people to buy and have moved to an incredibly fast release schedule. New products have to be offered to continue to extract money from the populace and GW is doing that.

2) People play what their friends play. As long as there is a community that allows people to get relatively easy games, people will not drop the game. In areas that are heavily GW dominated, starting a new game like X-wing, is even more challenging because people are already established in one game, making it harder to switch to something new. There is also a large community for the game, making pick-up games easier and online resources available.

3) The game is playable enough and isn't drastically worse than anytime in the past. Due to item 2, where people may not play other games, there is the chance that people will never be exposed to other games and discover how poor GW rules are.

4) The fluff is pretty good, even though it is wildly inconsistent, but it's still fun.

5) Reasonably available everywhere.

GW turn and burn release schudele is what's keeping them alive at the moment. Making people update rule books and codex every two years is making them short term profits. Changing a few words here and there, a lot of copy and paste and boom new rulebook or codex. I totally expect 8th edition 40k to be released this time next year with the cost of the new rulebook costing $99.

I've played plenty of other games, and 7th is my favourite edition so far. I think GW is still here because they're catering to people that like 40k, and enjoy playing it, and not people whose hobby is running it down.

And the pool of people that like 40K is shrinking....

But that couldn't possibly have anything to do with how GW is running things, now could it?

In any business, if your base is shrinking while your competitors' are growing then you have a problem.

If your base is shrinking while the industry that you are in is growing then you have a bigger problem.

GW has a bigger problem.

I think one of the root causes is that for a long time GW really didn't have competition. They had nothing to measure themselves against.

Now that they do have competition they have no idea of what to do.

When the CEO of a company proudly proclaims that they do no market research then the company really needs a new CEO.

When a company that relies on their customers to do their advertising for them starts to alienate those customers then they will lose customers.

GW is losing customers.

Saying 'They know what they are doing!' does not work when the raw numbers are saying 'They really don't know what they are doing'.

They really don't know what they are doing.

I love it when somebody throws in 'They are too big to fail!'

GW is small.

The industry is small.

The Crown will not step in to save GW from bankruptcy. Being too big to fail simply means that the collapse of a company would do enough damage that it cannot be allowed to fail.

GW is not one of those companies - if it failed today it would be replaced by half a dozen others.

The Auld Grump - I remember when folks thought that TSR was too big to fail....

Point of order, The Crown wouldn't step in to save anything, we're a constitutional monarchy, it would be the government that stepped in.

The Queen's not actually in charge you know!

I can't come close to topping what Thud and others said. Bravo guys. But I'll stick my oar in anyway. To the OP (and Easy E): Inertia, bubbles, and a degree of institutionalisation that'd make Brooks Hatlen take a step back and exclaim 'buddy, there's something wrong with you."

XdeadpoolX wrote:
Thats an easy one. How many GW stores have an intro table where the staff member will play a fun and friendly game with you and explain the rules and phases? Every single one of them!

Now tell me where you can go to learn any other system of gaming where you can just walk in and get a intro game that isn't a local gaming group bringing a friend into the fold. Yes i am sure you could think of a few but GW has that market cornered.

I joined a club where I didn't previously know anyone and promptly introduced them to Hail Caesar and Black Powder. Sure, it can be a bit more convenient in GW (though how much since so many changed to one-man stores? And what about the ones still crowded with aromatic neckbeards...?) but like I'm fond of arguing, that doesn't make it completely impossible anywhere else, and might not even be that beneficial in certain ways, to gamers and to GW itself. That's that third thing I mentioned above. Some gamers, weirdly enough, gather together the resources to put on intro games for the systems they like and want others to try. I've done it myself, once or twice. (It helps that many, many games don't cost nearly as much as GW rules and armies, and that some minis can be used for multiple games.)

Massawyrm wrote:Garage gamers, the silent majority. There exists a large group of gamers who only play with a friend or two in their basement or garage. If they buy from a store at all, they show up once every few months, buy several hundred dollars worth of kits and are rarely seen again. They don't typically frequent forums, they don't play in tournaments, they don't always even stick with the most recently updated rules. They just drink a few beers, roll some dice and shoot the breeze with their buddies.

I agree with this, mostly...

They're the reason GW has shifted away from the tournament scene and towards "Play how you want," and why GW employees refer to the forums as the loud 1%. Balance isn't an issue with these players; for them COOL is king. They're the market GW is chasing, as they're the ones keeping the lights on.

... but not this. I play in clubs where I know (and, this is crucial, get to know) other gamers, and over kitchen tables. I don't play in GW stores, FLGSs, and definitely not in tournaments, not since my round of vets got shoved out of GW Belfast. Socialisation is the thing, but it helps to do it with good, well written games, otherwise you might as well be shooting the breeze by watching movies or... traffic. I don't like playing games I don't like, strangely enough, which largely boils down to badly written games that provide all the stimulation of rolling a dice to see if you land on a snake or a ladder, but cost a truckload more. I'm fortunate that the folks I play with mostly gravitate towards the type of games I do like, too. I don't know if playing bad games - feeling like nails-on-blackboard for a whole evening - necessarily makes or merely leaves the socialisation completely enjoyable..
Which is a drawn-out way to say, I don't doubt that part of that demographic is only looking to spend piles of money so they have brightly coloured objects to look at while they sink beers, but not all of it.

deviantduck wrote:And almost every person buys all of their GW merch at full price from our FLGS, myself included.

I don't think you lot are going to be enough to save them.

Accolade wrote:well, I guess GW will be able to just knock the "S" off their signs and consider THAT their fancy new makeover.

They could call themselves WorkHOP and sell pancakes?

(FinecakesTM made from plaster instead of flour and sold for $20 each)

Azreal13 wrote:Point of order, The Crown wouldn't step in to save anything, we're a constitutional monarchy, it would be the government that stepped in.

The Queen's not actually in charge you know!

Amazing how many people don't seem to get this.

If I was feeling particularly uncharitable I'd have added "just like Obama!"

 Azreal13 wrote:
Point of order, The Crown wouldn't step in to save anything, we're a constitutional monarchy, it would be the government that stepped in.

The Queen's not actually in charge you know!

Given that, as far as I know, neither Crown nor Parliament has ever spoken up to prevent a corporation from failing... a mute point. (Get it, not speaking up, mute? Huh, huh?... never mind.)

The Auld Grump

Oh, the govt stepped in and spoke up when all the banks were wobbly, the people technically own one of the largest in the UK at the moment.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Oh, the govt stepped in and spoke up when all the banks were wobbly, the people technically own one of the largest in the UK at the moment.

Heh, I wasn't thinking about the bank bailouts - either in the UK or the US.

For some reason I was fixating on manufacture, production, etc.. (Specifically the big car manufacturers, here in the States.)

But I am pretty sure that the bank bailout dwarfed that....

The Auld Grump - never assume that an industry will police themselves... they won't.

Well, the last time GW went wobbly, Kirby et al stepped in to bail it out, so who knows, if they continue to wobble..

@Azreal13.
I thought the management buy out was when Steve Jackson and the other co founders moved on and the remaining management team bought it off them.
I did not think the company was in any financial trouble back then?
Or are you referring to the decision to make GW a plc? Again I did not think the company was in financial difficulty...

I could be mistaken remembering this , or simply forgot stuff.(Its old age you know... )

I think the UK is propping them up. they seem to be failing pretty hard in north america.

I remember back in 5th everything seemed much busier.

Lanrak wrote:
@Azreal13.
I thought the management buy out was when Steve Jackson and the other co founders moved on and the remaining management team bought it off them.
I did not think the company was in any financial trouble back then?
Or are you referring to the decision to make GW a plc? Again I did not think the company was in financial difficulty...

I could be mistaken remembering this , or simply forgot stuff.(Its old age you know... )

IIRC Bryan Ansell bought it from Jackson et al, and Kirby led the buyout from Ansell. I may just be assuming the financial trouble bit, but that's often the situation that leads to a buyout. But equally time, lack of Internet and GW not having to make all matters public back then may mean I have the specifics wrong.

It's only ever been said that Bryan Ansell lost interest in GW when it became just the big business Warhammer on the horizon.

I'd like to add my 2 cents, as both and ex GW employee (from the early 00's glory days) and now a retail business owner.

Firstly, retail has changed. I've worked as in retail for half my life and my entire working life and dynamism drives companies forward, it's steadied well thought out business models who thrive on service (John Lewis for all you brits) and killed off those unwilling to change or too blinkered to see change until it is too late (Blockbuster). People's buying habits have changed but GW's is a business that cannot adapt in a way others have. It relies on customer facing retail in order to drive customer stimulation but due to the low internet-only overheads it cannot rely solely on retail stores to compete. I personally see GW essentially normalising.

LOTR was a blip, a good blip but a blip nonetheless, it was always going to be a short-ish term project, a true "make hay whilst the sun shines" scenario with a limited shelf life, and if it wasn't viewed as such by management and investors then there truly is no hope! GW's overall failing with LOTR was not converting enough players onto their other games in my eyes.

I would imagine a significantly larger proportion of GW's sales are through independent retailers, a number who will have no bricks and mortar outlets, purely online, where price is the biggest overriding factor. This is fine, it keeps cashflow steady but it reduces margin. Obviously GW would rather you buy through their stores but as long as people are buying product and they can operate within those margins, fine. The only way to increase that revenue is either to cut wholesale margin (which will just make stocking GW product not viable) or increasing prices. Option 2 has clearly been taken; but there will come a point where the product will become prohibitively expensive.

GW cannot close too many of it's retail stores because that truly will destroy the brand and my recent experience has been that they have probably trimmed their customer facing expenditure to the bone.

In my eyes, a true reflection would be to know the volume of units GW moves but that info is almost certainly unavailable to a very select few.

I truly do not see GW going completely, it's ripe for someone with clearly greater business acumen to repair it, but it does want to be run more like a business than a hobby.

doctor_zoidburg wrote:


LOTR was a blip, a good blip but a blip nonetheless, it was always going to be a short-ish term project, a true "make hay whilst the sun shines" scenario with a limited shelf life, and if it wasn't viewed as such by management and investors then there truly is no hope! GW's overall failing with LOTR was not converting enough players onto their other games in my eyes.

Then there may truly be no hope, as there was absolutely no attempt to duplicate the success of LotR with The Hobbit. It would have been ambitious to expect a similar level of success, but the extent of GW's attempts was to put it on the site and in White Dwarf - essentially preaching to the choir.

I would imagine a significantly larger proportion of GW's sales are through independent retailers, a number who will have no bricks and mortar outlets, purely online, where price is the biggest overriding factor. This is fine, it keeps cashflow steady but it reduces margin. Obviously GW would rather you buy through their stores but as long as people are buying product and they can operate within those margins, fine. The only way to increase that revenue is either to cut wholesale margin (which will just make stocking GW product not viable) or increasing prices. Option 2 has clearly been taken; but there will come a point where the product will become prohibitively expensive.

GW won't allow a company to open a trade account without a B+M location, and the split of their revenue is roughly 40/40/20 Indy/Direct Store/online, Black Library and Forgeworld.

GW cannot close too many of it's retail stores because that truly will destroy the brand and my recent experience has been that they have probably trimmed their customer facing expenditure to the bone.

That's a very UK centric view, other markets are largely composed of Indys doing all the customer facing stuff just fine, and carrying all of the risk. It was a mistake to double down on their own retail stores in the first place, as they're not making the company money, it was a bigger mistake to piss the Indys off with various anticompetitive clauses in their trade agreements and there's now no easy way back.

In my eyes, a true reflection would be to know the volume of units GW moves but that info is almost certainly unavailable to a very select few.

I truly do not see GW going completely, it's ripe for someone with clearly greater business acumen to repair it, but it does want to be run more like a business than a hobby.

Unit sales leaked on a document that was part of the Chapterhouse case - they were a lot lower than you think. But falling revenue in the face of rising prices means that volume is almost certainly down significantly, and as more players quit both simultaneously feeding the 2nd hand market and removing the opportunity of someone else to play against, I can only see it going one way. Perhaps it will find equilibrium, maybe it won't.

Ironically, while they no doubt need some more competent people in key positions, I think they need reminding that they're in the hobby business, and they could be a little less mercenary and a little more fanboy.

doctor_zoidburg wrote:
I'd like to add my 2 cents, as both and ex GW employee (from the early 00's glory days) and now a retail business owner.

Firstly, retail has changed. I've worked as in retail for half my life and my entire working life and dynamism drives companies forward, it's steadied well thought out business models who thrive on service (John Lewis for all you brits) and killed off those unwilling to change or too blinkered to see change until it is too late (Blockbuster). People's buying habits have changed but GW's is a business that cannot adapt in a way others have. It relies on customer facing retail in order to drive customer stimulation but due to the low internet-only overheads it cannot rely solely on retail stores to compete. I personally see GW essentially normalising.

LOTR was a blip, a good blip but a blip nonetheless, it was always going to be a short-ish term project, a true "make hay whilst the sun shines" scenario with a limited shelf life, and if it wasn't viewed as such by management and investors then there truly is no hope! GW's overall failing with LOTR was not converting enough players onto their other games in my eyes.

I would imagine a significantly larger proportion of GW's sales are through independent retailers, a number who will have no bricks and mortar outlets, purely online, where price is the biggest overriding factor. This is fine, it keeps cashflow steady but it reduces margin. Obviously GW would rather you buy through their stores but as long as people are buying product and they can operate within those margins, fine. The only way to increase that revenue is either to cut wholesale margin (which will just make stocking GW product not viable) or increasing prices. Option 2 has clearly been taken; but there will come a point where the product will become prohibitively expensive.

GW cannot close too many of it's retail stores because that truly will destroy the brand and my recent experience has been that they have probably trimmed their customer facing expenditure to the bone.

In my eyes, a true reflection would be to know the volume of units GW moves but that info is almost certainly unavailable to a very select few.

I truly do not see GW going completely, it's ripe for someone with clearly greater business acumen to repair it, but it does want to be run more like a business than a hobby.

As another former employee who also has 10 yrs management experience (not with gw), I completely agree with all of that.

A major problem is that I believe that GW far over values their IP.

It happens - WotC was utterly convinced that the value of D&D was entirely in the trademarked name - that entirely changing the game would not much matter, and folks would continue to buy more D&D than any other role playing game.

Only to find out, after Pathfinder claimed the #1 spot, that, no, it wasn't. People like being able to update their games - and do not like being told to just start over.

I believe that somebody in WotC's marketing department even said 'what are they going to do? Buy something else?' (And it turned out that, yes, they would go and buy something else.)

Blackberry, likewise, thought that their name was enough.

The Auld Grump

Perhaps, but it is understandable when it is all they really have. I suppose it comes down to whether they value it because they truly believe in its real worth, or if it is blind hope that if they push the value hard enough everything will work out. It's probably somewhere in the middle.

Their name is categorically not all GW have.

They are the largest wargaming manufacturer by an order of magnitude, in fact, by several orders of magnitude.

There is no way on God's Earth, given their market dominance, economies of scale and income that they should have gotten to the position they have.

They have it within their power to undercut the competition, or do it better, or buy it out or poach the staff.

They have created spaces in the market place by ending the specialist games range, they have persistently withdrawn from communicating with the player base, which, in turn, has driven people to games from companies who are run by normal people.

All of this set against a background of increasing rules volume, but decreasing quality, an ever increasingly disillusioned collection of players, production of miniatures priced as collectors items produced in a medium best suited to mass volume.

It is really, really hard to find tangible value in GW miniatures when compared to their competition, sure, supporters will talk about the fluff and how "nothing else scratches the itch" and more power to them, but when you take the emotional component out of the equation it's really hard to see GW prices as anything other than a necessity to cover the huge overhead they've saddled themselves with which utterly eviscerates their ability to react to changes in the market.

My humble opinion - the kits will (nay, already have) leave the reach of the typical entertainment budget. The fluff is fun, the models are great, but when it costs 1000 bucks to collect, paint, and play an army, you will miss out on customers. You see it on dakka all the time - "no money, wrong hobby" and varients.

Fewer customers = less business = price hike, repeat.

How high does the margin go on stamp models until it is too high?

But then again, I know nothing of GW financial status. Maybe they are doing better than ever on the business side. Feels like the good faith bank has dipped though.

JamesY wrote:Perhaps, but it is understandable when it is all they really have. I suppose it comes down to whether they value it because they truly believe in its real worth, or if it is blind hope that if they push the value hard enough everything will work out. It's probably somewhere in the middle.

I'm one to believe that the truth is firmly in the middle.

I think GW will muddle their way through little ups and little downs. If they're lucky, at some point they'll get a real hit or do something really right that will have potential customers re-evaluate them. What they have going against them is the large companies have a tougher time changing gears; on the other hand, what they have going for them is that as a larger company with a fairly reliable revenue stream, even a bad year better than the best year of a lot of competitors, so they have the staying power to tough it through mistakes.

Plus, as they shed customers, the ones remaining are progressively the ones that largely spend more and are less sensitive to price -- and as evidenced by LE codex releases gone in the blink of an eye, there are still an awful lot of those.

TheAuldGrump wrote:Blackberry, likewise, thought that their name was enough.

I think that's way oversimplifying Blackberry. Research in Motion thought that they genuinely had an awesome product, and that companies valued bulletproof security and keyboard productivity over Angry Birds, touch screens, and fart apps.

They were totally wrong -- the world wanted Angry Birds, touch screens, and fart apps, and didn't really care about security at all. At least, if not if it meant there were fewer free fart apps.

Research in Motion is also a terrible comparison with Games Workshop, because RIM was doing just fine until 3 competitors that were a thousand times bigger (Apple, Google, and Microsoft) decided they wanted in on the fun and dump more money into development and marketing in one year than RIM could ever dream of.

There is no company on Earth that would decide to invest $500 million into wargaming to show Games Workshop and launch overnight with more of everything than GW's catalogue, stunning them with a grand opening where a thousand kits and a thousand stores just sprouted from the ground.

If for no other reason than that there's absolutely no way doing so would make wargaming anything more than the niche hobby that it is... meaning that relative to the investiment, there's no money in it Even if the whole wargaming industry were worth $1B a year (and I'd find that pretty shocking), that's not even the gross on the next (or last) Marvel film. Really, a company has better odds making a profit by a nice spot up north in Canada hauling out that shovel and digging for oil, gold, silver, or natural gas.

Yeah I think people forget just how tiny a market wargaming really is, and, as hobbies go, it isn't that expensive.

@zgort I completely disagree, I think the issue is the amount of time people are prepared to collect for before having an army. You can buy dark vengeance and a couple of boxes over the course of three months and have a perfectly gameable army, then build a new one as you can afford. If you start fishing, you don't go out fully equipped until you have been doing it a while and built up a collection of equipment. If you bake you don't buy everything you will ever need on day one, you build up your tools and appliances over time. It does feel good to be able to buy an army in one blast, but I enjoy that because I remember being a collector with very little money and having to build an army for two years before it was big enough for a game.

If GW are to create a major new hit, what is it going to be?

All the signs of the past few years are that they see the future as more fiddling with 40K and WHFB, not anything really new.

Even if Sigmar Returns is a completely revised and much improved WHFB rules that I might like to play, the price of the supporting codexes and models will be prohibitive. It might sell a lot of rulebooks to lapsed established fantasy players, I suppose.

My optimism for a GW plc turn around to engage with customers and grow GW sales volumes is jaded by the fact,
In 2007 Tom Kirby openly stated in the share holder pre amble that GW plc had grown fat and lazy on the back of the easy successes the LoTR had brought them.
And then they have proceeded to conduct business in the same way for 8 more years.(Increase retail prices to adjust for falling sales volumes..)

ANY competent C.E.O. would look to proper market research to find out why sales volumes are falling and establish who exactly GW are making stuff for.

I suppose the only reason GW plc is still going is that there are some people who have a similar high valuation of GW IP as Tom Kirby does.
Either because of total engagement in the background and art.
Or the sheer desperation of ''I have spent so much on GW stuff, I HAVE to keep trying to make it work buy buying new stuff when it comes out.''

It is obvious from the financial report the last few 'loyal fans' are not going to be able to sustain GW plc long term.

I find it VERY worrying a company that had near total market domination, is now relying on selling 'high cost limited release publications ' to prop up sales.

When lots of their competition gives away FREE rules and army lists , and they are growing their company size and customer base.

JamesY wrote:Yeah I think people forget just how tiny a market wargaming really is, and, as hobbies go, it isn't that expensive.

@zgort I completely disagree, I think the issue is the amount of time people are prepared to collect for before having an army. You can buy dark vengeance and a couple of boxes over the course of three months and have a perfectly gameable army, then build a new one as you can afford. If you start fishing, you don't go out fully equipped until you have been doing it a while and built up a collection of equipment. If you bake you don't buy everything you will ever need on day one, you build up your tools and appliances over time. It does feel good to be able to buy an army in one blast, but I enjoy that because I remember being a collector with very little money and having to build an army for two years before it was big enough for a game.

I think that a part of the issue is that there is a subgroup of wargamers (perhaps significant in number; I don't know) who treat wargames like video games. They expect that after reading the Internet for a few hours, they can prepare their battleforce in a short time, and then when they play their first game, they'll have an ideal army, and that this army should have a good win ratio against someone who's played for decades.

In any case, this is the group that (correctly) states that, if you're starting out 40k and want to win competitive events, your best bet is to figure out exactly what models you want, skip all the Dark Vengeance and stepping stone stuff, and just buy it all in one go, put it together in a weekend, and paint it the next week. Hence the thousand dollar price tag.

It's a form of impatience that maximizes efficiency for a computer game, and I think is totally counterproductive if one is to enjoy 40k -- or most larger scale miniature wargames in general.

However, reality is what it is, and I think that GW should try to appeal to these folks in some way. The solution, I think, the smaller scale game that uses the same models, rather than trying to figure out a way for someone to pay for, build, and paint an army to fit a 6x4 table in a short amount of time and with a limited budget.

Kilkrazy wrote:If GW are to create a major new hit, what is it going to be?

All the signs of the past few years are that they see the future as more fiddling with 40K and WHFB, not anything really new.

Even if Sigmar Returns is a completely revised and much improved WHFB rules that I might like to play, the price of the supporting codexes and models will be prohibitive. It might sell a lot of rulebooks to lapsed established fantasy players, I suppose.

If the rumors are to be believed, the box contains everything you need to play, including stats for all models in the game, so no other rulebooks at all. And it's supposed to be playable from a relatively low model count to a high model count, so that's good, right?

The question from the legacy perspective is whether this will appeal to the traditional WHFB player. In a sense, I suppose it doesn't matter to GW as they see 8e Fantasy as flogging a dead horse. I know in my hobby shops, the sales ratio is something silly, like 20 or 30 to 1.

Which actually brings me to a system that I would FAR prefer to see for 40k (prices would be inflation-adjusted, of course):

1. An annual armies book set that's USD$100, containing stats for every army. No fluff, and only sparse pictures. Don't need descriptions of items, here just what it does. Includes every formation from every official source.

2. Regular Errata/Clarifications, published for free online and printed right into the rule book annually; you can have a new copy every year for $60 if you want. Or just download the FAQ file.

3. Every 3 years or 4 years, a major rule book revision that's $60, the current BRB (without the 2 fluff books); also available bundled with a starter box for free in mini form.

4. A full set of fluff books, each of which gets updated whenever GW feels like, about USD $25 for softcover or USD $50 for hardcover. No rules, just the fluff and artwork. No gaming purpose to buy.

So, to get into the game, you'd need to spend $100 on the army book, $60 on the rule book, and *probably* your own fluff book. And maybe another fluff book. Then, every year, they'd get $100 out of you for the armies book; plus a lot of people will just buy the annual rulebook. And they can limited edition everything for a bazillion dollars.

 Talys wrote:
[
In any case, this is the group that (correctly) states that, if you're starting out 40k and want to win competitive events, your best bet is to figure out exactly what models you want, skip all the Dark Vengeance and stepping stone stuff, and just buy it all in one go, put it together in a weekend, and paint it the next week. Hence the thousand dollar price tag.

It's a form of impatience that maximizes efficiency for a computer game, and I think is totally counterproductive if one is to enjoy 40k -- or most larger scale miniature wargames in general.

However, reality is what it is, and I think that GW should try to appeal to these folks in some way. The solution, I think, the smaller scale game that uses the same models, rather than trying to figure out a way for someone to pay for, build, and paint an army to fit a 6x4 table in a short amount of time and with a limited budget.

I agree with some of what you are saying. I don't think it is the right attitude though to say that if someone who is just entering the hobby and wants to be competitive straight away should be accommodated differently to anyone else. If you want to be competitive at something and be successful, it takes time and experience. You need to play lots and lots of games, be prepared to go through the stepping stones to learn the finer points of the rules, and have time to develop a playing style and build an army that you know backwards and enjoy using. One of the big problems is that people want to win, so they look for net lists rather than doing the ground work, and see how much that army costs in one go. Often they buy it, but because they aren't actually very good at the game, they loose with it, can't understand why because they haven't thought about the tactics the army requires or how to adapt it to different opponents, and so blame the game, newer codices etc. Then they look for another net list, see the price, remember the money they have spent previously and suddenly feel ripped off. It's completely the wrong approach, although, admittedly, one that paid my rent for a while.

 JamesY wrote:
I agree with some of what you are saying. I don't think it is the right attitude though to say that if someone who is just entering the hobby and wants to be competitive straight away should be accommodated differently to anyone else. If you want to be competitive at something and be successful, it takes time and experience. You need to play lots and lots of games, be prepared to go through the stepping stones to learn the finer points of the rules, and have time to develop a playing style and build an army that you know backwards and enjoy using. One of the big problems is that people want to win, so they look for net lists rather than doing the ground work, and see how much that army costs in one go. Often they buy it, but because they aren't actually very good at the game, they loose with it, can't understand why because they haven't thought about the tactics the army requires or how to adapt it to different opponents, and so blame the game, newer codices etc. Then they look for another net list, see the price, remember the money they have spent previously and suddenly feel ripped off. It's completely the wrong approach, although, admittedly, one that paid my rent for a while.

Well, frankly, I don't think it's possible for someone with this attitude to jump into 40k as it exists today and be happy, and I'm not changing the fundamentals of my game to accommodate them either, so I hear what you're saying.

On the other hand, there are people who feel this way who have lots of fun with other games. Typically, they're much lower model count, have more straight-forward (or at least fewer) rules, the games run quicker (so a loss isn't as big a deal), and are less dependent on list-building -- or rather, you can't screw yourself as badly by reading bad advice somewhere and investing hundreds of dollars on an army that has a playstyle totally incompatible with your own.

Instead, I think GW should make/promote (or integrate into the main game) something much like Kill Team: the models and stats and rules are essentially the same, but they're 200 point games with many restrictions on what may/must be taken and some of the core and special rules are simplified. It gets people into the 40k world and playing competitively with a chance to win, and perhaps entice them into larger games.

XdeadpoolX wrote:

 Crevab wrote:

MarsNZ wrote:
GW is the only company that actually tries to introduce people into wargaming,.

Care to explain? Because that sounds ridiculous

Thats an easy one. How many GW stores have an intro table where the staff member will play a fun and friendly game with you and explain the rules and phases? Every single one of them!

Now tell me where you can go to learn any other system of gaming where you can just walk in and get a intro game that isn't a local gaming group bringing a friend into the fold. Yes i am sure you could think of a few but GW has that market cornered.

Umm... Clubs...? Indy stores...?

Here's the thing: most of us don't have a Games Workshop store anywhere near us. I've been into this for over two decades and have yet to set foot in an official store. All my gaming is done in clubs or at someones home.

The stores have allowed Games Workshop to have a stanglehold on their home marked. But the rest of the world could hardly care less. For us, clubs and indies are what's driving the hobby.

riburn3 wrote:People hear declining profits and automatically assume GW is losing money and in the red. I've had discussions with my local group about this and there is so much misperception about this.

Although GW isn't making as much money these days, they are still making money. So to easily answer the OP, the reason GW isn't tanking, is because they are still turning out a profit.

They're still making money, but only barely.

And considering that they've all but gutted themselves in order to remain profitable, one has to wonder what's going to happen in a few years time when they go into the red?

Nothing left to cut... No plan to turn things around...

Games Workshop has backed themselves into a corner. They desperately need to cut prices, but doing so would send them into the red immediately. So they keep on increasing them, even though it's slowly killing them.

Azreal13 wrote:Their name is categorically not all GW have.

They are the largest wargaming manufacturer by an order of magnitude, in fact, by several orders of magnitude.

There is no way on God's Earth, given their market dominance, economies of scale and income that they should have gotten to the position they have.

They have it within their power to undercut the competition, or do it better, or buy it out or poach the staff.

They have created spaces in the market place by ending the specialist games range, they have persistently withdrawn from communicating with the player base, which, in turn, has driven people to games from companies who are run by normal people.

All of this set against a background of increasing rules volume, but decreasing quality, an ever increasingly disillusioned collection of players, production of miniatures priced as collectors items produced in a medium best suited to mass volume.

It is really, really hard to find tangible value in GW miniatures when compared to their competition, sure, supporters will talk about the fluff and how "nothing else scratches the itch" and more power to them, but when you take the emotional component out of the equation it's really hard to see GW prices as anything other than a necessity to cover the huge overhead they've saddled themselves with which utterly eviscerates their ability to react to changes in the market.

That's the irony of the thing: they've dug their own grave.

They should use their size and their in-house design and manufacturing capabilities to undercut their competitors at every level. But instead of flooding the marked with cheap models, they've set up a crazy situation where they're selling a mass-combat system at skirmish-level prices. And that just doesn't work.


So to answer the original question, they very much are tanking. Not as fast as some of us predicted, but tanking nonetheless. And even worse, they have no real way of getting out of the mess they've gotten themselves into. They refuse to engage with their customers on social medias. They don't do surveys. They need to cut prices but they can't. They need to reinvigorate the community, but they've burned all the bridges behind them.

@ Talys I agree with you there, and think an intro level game (like space hulk) should always be on the shelf.

People do tend to blame gw though for not being able to afford an army, when there is absolutely no reason why you can't play 200-500 point games and keep the size small. As you've said, kill team rules are brilliant for this, so is it the fault of customers for choosing to ignore this option (or being ignorant to it because they haven't researched what they can do with the game), or the company for not actively promoting a rule set they have made (which could inhibit short term sales, but possibly maybe lead to more long term sales?

 JamesY wrote:
I agree with you there, and think an intro level game (like space hulk) should always be on the shelf.

People do tend to blame gw though for not being able to afford an army, when there is absolutely no reason why you can't play 200-500 point games and keep the size small. As you've said, kill team rules are brilliant for this, so is it the fault of customers for choosing to ignore this option (or being ignorant to it because they haven't researched what they can do with the game), or the company for not actively promoting a rule set they have made (which could inhibit short term sales, but possibly maybe lead to more long term sales?

The problem with Kill Team is that it really highlights how badly designed the game is.

Quite simply, the rules break down completely at those levels, requiring a lot of fiddling and gentlemen's agreements to get it to work. I think the Heralds of Ruin did a great job with their version, but that's really something that Games Workshop should have done themselves.

And honestly, if you want to play skirmish games there are much better rules out there.

EDIT:

A point I forgot...

There's also the pressure from the players themselves. Many players that I have talked to want to play at 1500+ points so they can have all the goodies in their army. And after all the time and money needed to collect a sizeable army, I can't really blame them. So when a newb comes along and wants to play a Kill Team game, not only does he have to content with a lot of house rules, he also has to find someone who'll actually bother to play such a small game.

I think most clubs, players are willing to play the occasional small game to help new players out. But that is the essence of the hobby, collecting more toy soldiers. My original point was that many people don't seem to accept that they might have to build the army they want over time if they aren't in a position to afford that army in a single purchase.

JamesY wrote:Yeah I think people forget just how tiny a market wargaming really is, and, as hobbies go, it isn't that expensive.

If you start talking about ferraris and golf clubs I'm going to reach through the screen and do bad things.

Wargaming, as a whole, is not as expensive as other hobbies. That doesn't mean that it can't be expensive at all, or that the expense is worth the value, and GW is the poster child for that. The two main reasons people give for quitting, that I keep seeing, are rules churn and the fact that it just costs too much.

Lanrak wrote:
I suppose the only reason GW plc is still going is that there are some people who have a similar high valuation of GW IP as Tom Kirby does.
Either because of total engagement in the background and art.
Or the sheer desperation of ''I have spent so much on GW stuff, I HAVE to keep trying to make it work buy buying new stuff when it comes out.''

Ha! And those are two of the main reasons for sticking, that I keep seeing. That engagement with the story somehow requires masses of little plastic ornaments, and the sunk cost fallacy. (Not a lot that the game itself is much good, tho)

 JamesY wrote:
I think most clubs, players are willing to play the occasional small game to help new players out. But that is the essence of the hobby, collecting more toy soldiers. My original point was that many people don't seem to accept that they might have to build the army they want over time if they aren't in a position to afford that army in a single purchase.

The issue here is that all the costs are front loaded. You need to spend a lot to get to a 'standard' sized game. Even with incremental purchases, and scaling up from 500-750-1000pt games, you won't really get to that sweet spot where you can have proper sized armies. The problem with those smaller games is the game very easily breaks down at that level. So are you going to build up slowly, whilst all the time having an unsatisfactory experience, or not play because you're not at where the game wants to be? This isn't the full story, but I think it is probably a contributory factor.

Compared to warmachine which can be quite pricey as well - you don't feel as if you are being gouged. Those costs aren't entirely front loaded. You can easily but a new unit, caster etc every month and building up to having a sizeable 'sideboard'. Those incremental purchases can radically change how everything else in your army operates. Thing is - you will also be playing proper sized games from the get go. That's a crucial point for me, and seemingly a lot of other people.

I think gw needs to have a dedicated smaller scale game, or rules set. But they won't go there as thry seemingly view these smaller games as cannibalising on sales of their main games. Whereas they should be seen as a jumping off point.

Yes I completely agree with that. I'd love to see an intro level game that deliberately leads onto the full game. That's what the boxed games are meant to do, but the gap between there and your chosen 1k army is a large one.

 JamesY wrote:
My original point was that many people don't seem to accept that they might have to build the army they want over time if they aren't in a position to afford that army in a single purchase.

I respect what you are trying to say - you will not be top dog instantly. There is a pretty significant barrier to step one, basic entry though. The BRB costs $80, your army codex is $60, by the time you throw in ONE model, let's be generous at $40, and some paints, glue, and brushes - you are looking at over $200 before anything is even on the table.

If I can't get some decent fishing/baking stuff for $200 I have done something wrong.

I get that there are sets like the DV, but what if you don't want space marines? Just seems like a poor way to attract new customers is all. Don't get me wrong, I love playing Warhammer, but it is easy to see why the hobby is not 10x more popular than it is - price.

Is Kill Team still in the £55 main rule book that apparently is out of print at the moment, or do you have to buy a £30 supplement of some kind to get the rules?

I don't think there's currently any official rules available.

Heralds Of Ruin has a fairly nice set of rules, complete with army lists, missions, and a campaign system.

Kilkrazy wrote:Is Kill Team still in the £55 main rule book that apparently is out of print at the moment, or do you have to buy a £30 supplement of some kind to get the rules?

f2k wrote:I don't think there's currently any official rules available.
Heralds Of Ruin has a fairly nice set of rules, complete with army lists, missions, and a campaign system.

If you look on the GW site, you will find Kill Team It's only $10 USD/ $12 CAD.

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-CA/Warhammer-40-000-Kill-Team-Interactive-iBook-Edition

Well, I'll be damned...

I guess that just goes to show how long it's been since I visited their site. :-)

f2k wrote:
The problem with Kill Team is that it really highlights how badly designed the game is.

Quite simply, the rules break down completely at those levels, requiring a lot of fiddling and gentlemen's agreements to get it to work. I think the Heralds of Ruin did a great job with their version, but that's really something that Games Workshop should have done themselves.

And honestly, if you want to play skirmish games there are much better rules out there.

EDIT:

A point I forgot...

There's also the pressure from the players themselves. Many players that I have talked to want to play at 1500+ points so they can have all the goodies in their army. And after all the time and money needed to collect a sizeable army, I can't really blame them. So when a newb comes along and wants to play a Kill Team game, not only does he have to content with a lot of house rules, he also has to find someone who'll actually bother to play such a small game.

I'm not sure if you've ever played Kill Team. And you obviously don't like 40k very much.

40k is optimized around a 6x4 or 8x8 (or larger) table with a lot of terrain and the largest miniature army that a person can practically transport. At it's best, the turns are about half an hour long, and a game is about 3-4 hours, plus some time for setup. This is what the rules are written for - a big game that takes the maximum length of time that the median player is able to play a game for.

Kill team is a subset of the rules where every model moves independently, and although taken as squads, are treated as independent units for all other purposes. You can take 0-2 troops, 0-1 FA, 0-1 Elites, and there are severe restrictions (such as no 2+ save models, no combined armor > 33, no W3+ models, minimum infantry, et cetera). The stated point level is 200 points, though of course, some people choose to increase this. Kill team is played on, and optimized for, a 4x4 table. Each turn takes about 5 minutes.

One game is not superior to the other. They are different There is a group of players at my FLGS who have moved to playing 75% of their games as Kill Team, even though most of them own 20,000+ points of models between their various armies, because these people don't have as much time, and many pop in for just an hour to play a single game. Once in a while, they'll still play standard 40k games, though -- basically, if they happen to have more time.

What I'm saying is, a veteran player doesn't have to play KT as a favor to a person with fewer models. It's a fun game unto itself, and you can play it with exactly the same models you use in standard 40k (ie the only thing you pack in addition is a sheet of paper with your KT list).

I'm not going to engage in "this skirmish game is better than that" because I don't think they're mutually exclusive, and at the end of the day, it's just all preference. But I will mention that if you buy WMH, it is NOT suitable to play on a 6x4 or 8x8 table with an army that fills out the table. The rules would be terrible (unplayable), and anyways, once you kill off the warcaster, the game's effectively over.

I lost interest when you said 40K was optimised.

Deadnight wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
I think most clubs, players are willing to play the occasional small game to help new players out. But that is the essence of the hobby, collecting more toy soldiers. My original point was that many people don't seem to accept that they might have to build the army they want over time if they aren't in a position to afford that army in a single purchase.

The issue here is that all the costs are front loaded. You need to spend a lot to get to a 'standard' sized game. Even with incremental purchases, and scaling up from 500-750-1000pt games, you won't really get to that sweet spot where you can have proper sized armies. The problem with those smaller games is the game very easily breaks down at that level. So are you going to build up slowly, whilst all the time having an unsatisfactory experience, or not play because you're not at where the game wants to be? This isn't the full story, but I think it is probably a contributory factor.

Compared to warmachine which can be quite pricey as well - you don't feel as if you are being gouged. Those costs aren't entirely front loaded. You can easily but a new unit, caster etc every month and building up to having a sizeable 'sideboard'. Those incremental purchases can radically change how everything else in your army operates. Thing is - you will also be playing proper sized games from the get go. That's a crucial point for me, and seemingly a lot of other people.

I think gw needs to have a dedicated smaller scale game, or rules set. But they won't go there as thry seemingly view these smaller games as cannibalising on sales of their main games. Whereas they should be seen as a jumping off point.

I hear your point of view, Deadnight, but miniature companies, wargaming companies and local hobby shops are in trouble if a wargame can't have an entry price of at least as much as a video game console and a title or two, with the same type of ongoing costs for content.

The problem with a game that costs $80 and nothing to keep playing is that how does a company make a business of it? Considering how tiny the gaming population is, if this is the true market, hobby shops are doomed. Especially since people expect to have a place to go and play for hours on end. I mean, who in their right mind would open up a hobby shop instead of sell consoles, $70 titles, accessories, and used games?

If anything, I think that a miniature wargame should be priced at slightly higher than an XB1/PS4 as a starting point. You get a lot of physical "stuff", and much more importantly, it's an infinitely smaller niche.

To satisfy the the one-time-purchase-and-play-forever, there are board games (Space Hulk, Bloodbowl are 2 of my favorites, Talisman too, though that has no models). The thing with board games, with the exception of a few like Talisman and Supremacy, is that once you buy it, that's more or less it. Other than the odd expansion here or there, you can't buy and customize what you play.

Historical wargamers are used to preparing entire armies before playing games. But I think we tend to be the older dudes who probably started when it took longer to load a computer game off cassette that it took to play one.

 Azreal13 wrote:
I lost interest when you said 40K was optimised.

Should read it to the end of the sentence at least. Apparently you have to bring those massive models to play the game properly.

 Talys wrote:

Deadnight wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
I think most clubs, players are willing to play the occasional small game to help new players out. But that is the essence of the hobby, collecting more toy soldiers. My original point was that many people don't seem to accept that they might have to build the army they want over time if they aren't in a position to afford that army in a single purchase.

The issue here is that all the costs are front loaded. You need to spend a lot to get to a 'standard' sized game. Even with incremental purchases, and scaling up from 500-750-1000pt games, you won't really get to that sweet spot where you can have proper sized armies. The problem with those smaller games is the game very easily breaks down at that level. So are you going to build up slowly, whilst all the time having an unsatisfactory experience, or not play because you're not at where the game wants to be? This isn't the full story, but I think it is probably a contributory factor.

Compared to warmachine which can be quite pricey as well - you don't feel as if you are being gouged. Those costs aren't entirely front loaded. You can easily but a new unit, caster etc every month and building up to having a sizeable 'sideboard'. Those incremental purchases can radically change how everything else in your army operates. Thing is - you will also be playing proper sized games from the get go. That's a crucial point for me, and seemingly a lot of other people.

I think gw needs to have a dedicated smaller scale game, or rules set. But they won't go there as thry seemingly view these smaller games as cannibalising on sales of their main games. Whereas they should be seen as a jumping off point.

I hear your point of view, Deadnight, but miniature companies, wargaming companies and local hobby shops are in trouble if a wargame can't have an entry price of at least as much as a video game console and a title or two, with the same type of ongoing costs for content.

The problem with a game that costs $80 and nothing to keep playing is that how does a company make a business of it? Considering how tiny the gaming population is, if this is the true market, hobby shops are doomed. Especially since people expect to have a place to go and play for hours on end. I mean, who in their right mind would open up a hobby shop instead of sell consoles, $70 titles, accessories, and used games?

If anything, I think that a miniature wargame should be priced at slightly higher than an XB1/PS4 as a starting point. You get a lot of physical "stuff", and much more importantly, it's an infinitely smaller niche.

To satisfy the the one-time-purchase-and-play-forever, there are board games (Space Hulk, Bloodbowl are 2 of my favorites, Talisman too, though that has no models). The thing with board games, with the exception of a few like Talisman and Supremacy, is that once you buy it, that's more or less it. Other than the odd expansion here or there, you can't buy and customize what you play.

In this day and age, a miniature wargame is kind of a hard sell compared to consoles...for most people. The problem is, the entry cost. Most wargames are indeed very expensive, but have a lot lower bar for entrance than 40k. So if someone comes in and is curious but sees a price tag of $140 just for rules, he's going to keep walking. He's not going to think "But it costs less than a game console." Game consoles are established, probably all his friends have them, he knows them. What he doesn't know is this new form of hobby. That's why it has to be cheaper. It's a harder sell due to not being as popular, easy and as widespread.
To compete, there has to be a low bar for entrance. To pretend otherwise is unrealistic.
Now, once they've bought in, then the company can have it so they keep buying. New models, cheaper ways to start new factions, expansions, etc. Thus keeping the company and local game stores in business.
That is how you get new players and keep them. As opposed to keeping new players away and pushing out veterans. (not a good business model)

 Talys wrote:

f2k wrote:
The problem with Kill Team is that it really highlights how badly designed the game is.

Quite simply, the rules break down completely at those levels, requiring a lot of fiddling and gentlemen's agreements to get it to work. I think the Heralds of Ruin did a great job with their version, but that's really something that Games Workshop should have done themselves.

And honestly, if you want to play skirmish games there are much better rules out there.

EDIT:

A point I forgot...

There's also the pressure from the players themselves. Many players that I have talked to want to play at 1500+ points so they can have all the goodies in their army. And after all the time and money needed to collect a sizeable army, I can't really blame them. So when a newb comes along and wants to play a Kill Team game, not only does he have to content with a lot of house rules, he also has to find someone who'll actually bother to play such a small game.

I'm not sure if you've ever played Kill Team. And you obviously don't like 40k very much.

40k is optimized around a 6x4 or 8x8 (or larger) table with a lot of terrain and the largest miniature army that a person can practically transport. At it's best, the turns are about half an hour long, and a game is about 3-4 hours, plus some time for setup. This is what the rules are written for - a big game that takes the maximum length of time that the median player is able to play a game for.

Kill team is a subset of the rules where every model moves independently, and although taken as squads, are treated as independent units for all other purposes. You can take 0-2 troops, 0-1 FA, 0-1 Elites, and there are severe restrictions (such as no 2+ save models, no combined armor > 33, no W3+ models, minimum infantry, et cetera). The stated point level is 200 points, though of course, some people choose to increase this. Kill team is played on, and optimized for, a 4x4 table. Each turn takes about 5 minutes.

One game is not superior to the other. They are different There is a group of players at my FLGS who have moved to playing 75% of their games as Kill Team, even though most of them own 20,000+ points of models between their various armies, because these people don't have as much time, and many pop in for just an hour to play a single game. Once in a while, they'll still play standard 40k games, though -- basically, if they happen to have more time.

What I'm saying is, a veteran player doesn't have to play KT as a favor to a person with fewer models. It's a fun game unto itself, and you can play it with exactly the same models you use in standard 40k (ie the only thing you pack in addition is a sheet of paper with your KT list).

I'm not going to engage in "this skirmish game is better than that" because I don't think they're mutually exclusive, and at the end of the day, it's just all preference. But I will mention that if you buy WMH, it is NOT suitable to play on a 6x4 or 8x8 table with an army that fills out the table. The rules would be terrible (unplayable), and anyways, once you kill off the warcaster, the game's effectively over.

40K isn't optimized for anything other than wringing every last penny out of the few remaining players.

You're right - I don't like 40K. In fact, I don't like it at all. I used to, back in the days when it was a skirmish game, but every iteration seems to have made it worse. Fair enough that you want a mass-combat game, just don't base it upon skirmish rules. In fact, Games Workshop used to have a fairly good mass-combat game - it was called "Epic". Unlike that, 40K is not, in any way whatsoever, geared to be a mass-combat game. The level of abstraction is all wrong.

It's nonsensical. It's non-intuitive. It's bugged down by a ton of unnecessary special rules. In fact, I only hang on because I like the setting. Even though they seem to be doing their best to destroy that as well...

Right... Rant over... Back on track...

Yes, Kill Team comes with a lot of restrictions (as I already mentioned) but I still find it horribly unbalanced and way too easy to abuse. Even more so that 40K, you really need to play it with goods friends and plenty of beer and pretzels. As soon as someone decides to go competitive you're in for a world of hurt. The Heralds Of Ruins systems seems better, but I haven't tried it yet, so I'll withhold judgement for now.

GW stays afloat thanks to all the brainwahed fanboys scarificing their lives (money) to the Emperor of the imperium.

if you are stupid enough to throw away your money at GW then you deserve to be pennyless. If you buy an op and imba army and then they nerf it, then you deserve that pile of plastic garbage. If you buy their rule book and it gets out dated then you deserve that toilet paper. If you buy their tools and that breaks then you deserve to have shoddy farm impliments. If you buy their paint and it chips off easy then you desreve that bottle of slime.

I am 100% supportive of GW ripping people off and especially people on this forum.

 Filch wrote:
GW stays afloat thanks to all the brainwahed fanboys scarificing their lives (money) to the Emperor of the imperium.

if you are stupid enough to throw away your money at GW then you deserve to be pennyless. If you buy an op and imba army and then they nerf it, then you deserve that pile of plastic garbage. If you buy their rule book and it gets out dated then you deserve that toilet paper. If you buy their tools and that breaks then you deserve to have shoddy farm impliments. If you buy their paint and it chips off easy then you desreve that bottle of slime.

You seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder there...

Bit early to be drinking isn't it?

Well, that there makes me look like a GW sympathizer....

[MOD EDIT - RULE #1 - Alpharius]

They make sizeable profits. A company operating around the £10 million profit point that has actively cut its over heads is unlikely to go under anytime soon. They would be the envy of many. Biggest surprise yet......lots of us still like the worlds of warhammer.

Knockagh wrote:
They make sizeable profits. A company operating around the £10 million profit point that has actively cut its over heads is unlikely to go under anytime soon. They would be the envy of many. Biggest surprise yet......lots of us still like the worlds of warhammer.

Separation of artist and art. I like Ender's Game, but my do I despise Orson Scott Card.

 Filch wrote:
I am 100% supportive of GW ripping people off and especially people on this forum.

Well then....


I've not bought anything from GW since about 2012.

 Filch wrote:
GW stays afloat thanks to all the brainwahed fanboys scarificing their lives (money) to the Emperor of the imperium.

if you are stupid enough to throw away your money at GW then you deserve to be pennyless. If you buy an op and imba army and then they nerf it, then you deserve that pile of plastic garbage. If you buy their rule book and it gets out dated then you deserve that toilet paper. If you buy their tools and that breaks then you deserve to have shoddy farm impliments. If you buy their paint and it chips off easy then you desreve that bottle of slime.

I am 100% supportive of GW ripping people off and especially people on this forum.

Whoa there, easy Tex.
No one's stupid because they like a game. It's a matter of opinion and priorities.
For you, and a growing number of people...including me, GW seems silly and kind of lame. Not to mention expensive and rules made more for fleecing their customers than actual gameplay.
But some people don't mind the prices and like the game despite its many faults. Power to them. They're not foolish or stupid, they just have a different mind set. Their priorities are different than ours.
I like a game that has clear rules, allows player choice to determine winner, has interesting rule interactions, a healthy community and armies that aren't clearly superior to other armies.

 Filch wrote:
I am 100% supportive of GW ripping people off and especially people on this forum.

You have chosen a ranking track based on their IP. You clearly aren't actually that against their products.
Or you still really love them, underneath the vitriol.

 DarkHound wrote:

Knockagh wrote:
They make sizeable profits. A company operating around the £10 million profit point that has actively cut its over heads is unlikely to go under anytime soon. They would be the envy of many. Biggest surprise yet......lots of us still like the worlds of warhammer.

Separation of artist and art. I like Ender's Game, but my do I despise Orson Scott Card.

I've known Orson Scott Card for a while now. He's a great guy in real life. I just think his stroke has altered his mind in an unfortunate way.

 Talys wrote:

I hear your point of view, Deadnight, but miniature companies, wargaming companies and local hobby shops are in trouble if a wargame can't have an entry price of at least as much as a video game console and a title or two, with the same type of ongoing costs for content.
.

Which was my point?

 Talys wrote:

The problem with a game that costs $80 and nothing to keep playing is that how does a company make a business of it? Considering how tiny the gaming population is, if this is the true market, hobby shops are doomed. Especially since people expect to have a place to go and play for hours on end. I mean, who in their right mind would open up a hobby shop instead of sell consoles, $70 titles, accessories, and used games?

Theatre survives in the age of cinema, DVDs and tv. Tabletop wargames will survive in the same way.

To answer your question, 'buy moar' is the answer. the intro box shouldn't be 'the game'? It should be well representative of 'the game', but with enough of a hook to make you want to go out and expand your collection. Bigger armies? Sure...more factions? Sure. Expansions? Eg a cavalry expansion for a fantasy game, a spec ops expansion for sci fi etc. sure. campaign books? Lore books that expand on the IP in meaningful ways? Awesome. There is a lot of scope beyond just the 'all in one box' where a company can make a business. Add to that things like clear, open and two-way communication, support for organised play and you have enough materials to generate a self sustaining gaming ecosystem.

 Talys wrote:

If anything, I think that a miniature wargame should be priced at slightly higher than an XB1/PS4 as a starting point. You get a lot of physical "stuff", and much more importantly, it's an infinitely smaller niche.

non computer gamer here. How much is a ps4?

Personally, I think the £100 mark is solid for an all in one box, but this includes rules, tokens, gaming aids and miniatures for both sides.

 Talys wrote:

To satisfy the the one-time-purchase-and-play-forever, there are board games (Space Hulk, Bloodbowl are 2 of my favorites, Talisman too, though that has no models). The thing with board games, with the exception of a few like Talisman and Supremacy, is that once you buy it, that's more or less it. Other than the odd expansion here or there, you can't buy and customize what you play.

There is scope for wargames/board game crossovers too.

Sega (and other console makers) used to sell consoles at a loss. (Maybe still do?) The point wasn't to sell consoles, it was to sell games. Get someone to buy a console and they'll buy games.
That's how starter boxes should be (Maybe not at a loss) the entryway to buying more stuff. More units, more options, more factions, etc.

Seriously - RULE #1 - NOT OPTIONAL.

Regarding the rules not working at different sizes. 40K, as presented, is a game about large-scale battles. Nothing whatsoever in the rules or any of their published material (except, obviously, Kill Team stuff) even suggests that people should play the game with six models a side. Why would you do that? That's what Necromunda and Gorkamorka are for. And those rules DO work - Necromunda is the best game the GW ever produced.

They also don't suggest you play with ten thousand models per side. That's what Epic is for. Epic was overloaded with rules in its Space Marine days, but it was an insane amount of fun. They killed it almost totally by simplifying the rules due to player complaints.

40K is often presented by the GW themselves as a game where around 1500-2000 point battles are ideal, with larger games of 15000 points or so covered by Apocalypse.

It's hardly amazing that the rules don't always hold up when you're playing on a scale that many or most people simply won't play, and that the developers wouldn't have intended.

 Talys wrote:


I hear your point of view, Deadnight, but miniature companies, wargaming companies and local hobby shops are in trouble if a wargame can't have an entry price of at least as much as a video game console and a title or two, with the same type of ongoing costs for content.

They seem to do fine with X-Wing (as in, the only way to keep any stock is to nail it to the shelf), which you can get started for £30/$50, less than a new video game or the Space Marine army book.

The problem with a game that costs $80 and nothing to keep playing is that how does a company make a business of it? Considering how tiny the gaming population is, if this is the true market, hobby shops are doomed. Especially since people expect to have a place to go and play for hours on end. I mean, who in their right mind would open up a hobby shop instead of sell consoles, $70 titles, accessories, and used games?

Almost no-one just stops after their initial buy in, there's always something new to add, but it's optional and adds variety, rather than being required and repetitive. FFG bring out new waves of X-Wing ships every few months, which cost about $20 each, and there's 3 factions.

If anything, I think that a miniature wargame should be priced at slightly higher than an XB1/PS4 as a starting point. You get a lot of physical "stuff", and much more importantly, it's an infinitely smaller niche.

You can get a phenomenal amount of historics stuff for the cost of a PS4. Any wargaming product should have an entry point closed to a new game (indeed most can be started comfortably for £100/$150).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Deadnight wrote:

non computer gamer here. How much is a ps4?

Cheapest new one GAME sells is £329.

That's a starter box/set for: Flames Of War, Malifaux (Book + Army box), Bolt Action, Judge Dredd and Warmachine combined.

I don't think x-wing should be used to typify the market, as it will sell purely based on the brand. I think the game is great (it's based on wings of glory mechanics, so it's going to be) and it's great that it has bought a huge number of new people to miniature wargaming, but I wonder how many of the gamers it's attracted would be interested in moving beyond the star wars universe later on. Hopefully most, and the hobby will continue to grow and accommodate more and more great companies.

@Deadnight - I largely agree with many of your points. I was talking about your specific issue of front-loaded costs. I am only saying that I believe that the entry point of a wargame being in that low dollar range would make it difficult for a hobby shop.

@Herzlos - While I don't disagree that there should be gaming options that start around $150 or less, the original discussion was about buying the cost of a full-sized 1850/2000pt 40k army. Of all the non-historical games, 40k/WHFB is the largest scale (most miniature, largest table) game, and I think the starting price for filling a 6x4+ table game should be higher. If one's budget is lower, buy a game to fit a smaller gaming table.

@Deadnight/Herzog - I disagree with your price of a PS4/XB1.

PS4 + free game = $399 on Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/PlayStation-Console-Free-Remastered-Voucher-4/dp/B00RY3GIDE/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1434922650&sr=8-3&keywords=playstation+4


Xbox One + free game = $347 on Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Xbox-One-Assassins-Creed-Unity-Bundle/dp/B00NFXON1Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1434922705&sr=8-1&keywords=xbox+one

Those are good titles, too.

You can get the XB1 with the Halo Master Chief Edition for $350 as well, or the XB1 with 1TB and Master Chief for $400.

I think your average kid who gets into XB1/PS4will spend around $700-$800 in their first year, however, once you include accessories and more titles. For instance, rechargeable batteries & charging station, extra controllers, headsets, games, XBLive/PSNow subscription.

Likewise, I think **in my local scene** the average person who really gets into wargaming will spend in that price range in their first year.

And I guess I just don't see a problem with it. It averages out to about $70-$80 / month. I mean, really, is that such a huge deal for something you enjoy?

Also, I understand that there are front-end costs. But these existed in 1985, when I was in grade school, and made $15 a shot writing resumes or designing flyers. Back then, I saved up so that I could afford something that was a couple hundred dollars. Surely, people still do this, rather than expect that whatever luxury thing they want to get into should be something they can buy with spare change?

@MWHistorian - This iteration of XB1 is actually the first one Microsoft has sold the console not at a loss. The difference between console and wargames, of course, is that after an initial purchase, you MUST buy more games, and in a relatively short period of time or you have an expensive media player

 JamesY wrote:
I don't think x-wing should be used to typify the market, as it will sell purely based on the brand. I think the game is great (it's based on wings of glory mechanics, so it's going to be) and it's great that it has bought a huge number of new people to miniature wargaming, but I wonder how many of the gamers it's attracted would be interested in moving beyond the star wars universe later on. Hopefully most, and the hobby will continue to grow and accommodate more and more great companies.

As opposed to GW, who actively campaign to convince their customers that there is nothing to wargaming beyond their products?

 Azreal13 wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
I don't think x-wing should be used to typify the market, as it will sell purely based on the brand. I think the game is great (it's based on wings of glory mechanics, so it's going to be) and it's great that it has bought a huge number of new people to miniature wargaming, but I wonder how many of the gamers it's attracted would be interested in moving beyond the star wars universe later on. Hopefully most, and the hobby will continue to grow and accommodate more and more great companies.

As opposed to GW, who actively campaign to convince their customers that there is nothing to wargaming beyond their products?

Well, back in the day, it would have been pretty weird for TSR to advocate for any RPG other than one of theirs

JamesY has a valid point, though. XWing isn't at all typical of tabletop strategy/war games. It's probably the only one I can think of with prepainted models that's successful; partly because the models lend themselves to that. It is built on top of a very successful franchise -- probably the most successful scifi franchise of all time -- and although you have people who play other wargames try out XWing, the amount of crossover from people who got into XWing first and then try other stuff like Malifaux seems more limited.

I'm glad XWing is around though. I hope Halo will be good -- there's another franchise that could entice a few people into the miniature/tabletop/strategy world.

I really wish I'd posted after Herzlos to say that somebody would be along shortly to list all the reason why X Wing was a bad example. I didn't expect multiples!

There's a whole world of difference between not sending your customers to the competition and outright denying their existence to them.

Equally, did nobody buy Heroclix?

 Azreal13 wrote:
I really wish I'd posted after Herzlos to say that somebody would be along shortly to list all the reason why X Wing was a bad example. I didn't expect multiples!

There's a whole world of difference between not sending your customers to the competition and outright denying their existence to them.

Equally, did nobody buy Heroclix?

Isn't Heroclix prepainted marvel miniatures? I seem to recall that they looked very toy-ish or action-figure-ish. I recall some prepainted LoTR miniatures too.

To me, there's a world of difference between that kind of thing and 40k miniatures (and what I'm prepared to pay for them). Ironically, I would pay much more for an unassembled kit than a prepainted miniature hehe. Generally, "model kit" means more to me than "game piece". I suppose if I had never gotten into 40k, I would probably be building model Millennium Falcons and XWings and AWings. IIRC those kits aren't cheap either.

By the way, it isn't that XWing is a *bad* example. It's that XWing is rather unique, and (a) it would be hard for another company do something similar (though there's Halo, and that's a good thing), and (b) I'm not sure how much migration there is from XWing to other stuff.

 MWHistorian wrote:
Sega (and other console makers) used to sell consoles at a loss. (Maybe still do?) The point wasn't to sell consoles, it was to sell games. Get someone to buy a console and they'll buy games.
That's how starter boxes should be (Maybe not at a loss) the entryway to buying more stuff. More units, more options, more factions, etc.

Yes, they still do. The Wii sold at a profit for mostly reusing Gamecube tech, but other than that consoles sell at whatever loss the company things it can bare, and only make a profite on unit sales once production has advanced to a certain point, which is generally when you see the prices getting dropped further, but not always. The PS2, for example, was profitable even when selling for $99 at the end of its life.

 Powerfisting wrote:
So, this comes up every once in a while and I have not seen the whole scoop. Why is Games Workshop not tanking?

Two words: this guy.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/545092.page

Just scroll down for a while...

MWHistorian wrote:Sega (and other console makers) used to sell consoles at a loss. (Maybe still do?)

I can personally verify that Sega don't sell consoles anymore. Pardon me while I go cradle my old Saturn.

NoPoet wrote:Regarding the rules not working at different sizes. 40K, as presented, is a game about large-scale battles.

Aye, as presented. Not as originally developed.

Nothing whatsoever in the rules or any of their published material (except, obviously, Kill Team stuff) even suggests that people should play the game with six models a side. Why would you do that? That's what Necromunda and Gorkamorka are for.

Who said anything about six models? (Mind you, from some tales I've heard about grey knights...)

And those rules DO work - Necromunda is the best game the GW ever produced.

Wasn't that basically 2d ed 40K with no squads and a slightly wonky campaign system? Maybe not the best argument for 40K as a mass battle system, especially if Necromunda is the best rendition of it.
(I only 'discovered' 40K during 3rd ed, meself; but when some of us got round to looking at Necromunda, the rules weren't exactly a completely new experience)

They also don't suggest you play with ten thousand models per side. That's what Epic is for.

Hyperbole, or...?

Epic was overloaded with rules in its Space Marine days, but it was an insane amount of fun. They killed it almost totally by simplifying the rules due to player complaints.

Dunno about Epic 40K, but Epic: Armageddon is insane fun, mostly because the mission was to avoid overloading it with rules, and let the tactical mechanics shine through.

40K is often presented by the GW themselves as a game where around 1500-2000 point battles are ideal,

I'm gonna be honest with ye, these days I view 'presented by GW' with a similar amount of trust and enthusiasm as... 'written and directed by George Lucas', or 'a brand new miniatures line by wargames legend Tony Reidy!' Roughly how many models or units is 1500-2000 points, in seventh ed? (Genuine question) How much has that count changed over editions? What points level do folks really play?

with larger games of 15000 points or so covered by Apocalypse.

Ah, Apocalypse, where a single turn lasts longer than an entire game of Epic. Fantastic example of how 40K is geared for mass battles.

It's hardly amazing that the rules don't always hold up when you're playing on a scale that many or most people simply won't play, and that the developers wouldn't have intended.

Which scale is that, and who's playing it? As far as I can tell, this is what the developers intended.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
And the pool of people that like 40K is shrinking....

I don't agree with that, Not the amount of people that like 40k is shrinking (well maybe a little)
The amount of people that buy GW stuff is shrinking, Even in Japan at the board game days meetings i run into people who
switched to board games or play more smaller scale wargames

I wanted to buy the new interrogator chaplain for my guardians of the covenant
"army" But it cost 30$ for one plastic miniature? i rather buy a kingdom of the death boutique miniature for that kind of money.

For 30$ i can buy a PS4 game , or big gundam kit, or a bluray movie.

 Vermis wrote:

40K is often presented by the GW themselves as a game where around 1500-2000 point battles are ideal,

I'm gonna be honest with ye, these days I view 'presented by GW' with a similar amount of trust and enthusiasm as... 'written and directed by George Lucas', or 'a brand new miniatures line by wargames legend Tony Reidy!' Roughly how many models or units is 1500-2000 points, in seventh ed? (Genuine question) How much has that count changed over editions? What points level do folks really play?

1850 is a very popular North American tournament/event points level. The GW store hosts games (events) locally here at 1000, 2000, and 3000 points. I usually play with my friends at the 2000 or 2500 mark, but basically, if the number of models scales down, we scale up the number of points. It takes less time to tell 1 Imperial Knight what to do than a company full of tactical marines, right? (60 space marines = 420 points base, about the same price as a slightly upgraded Knight)

The rule of thumb is that for an average army played by a COMPETENT, quick commander, every 1000 points of models takes 15 minutes per full turn (your turn my turn). So 2000 points = 30 minutes to complete turn 1. 6 turns = 3 hours. Of course, it depends on how much BS and yabber the two players go at it, how experienced and used to playing with each other you are, and obviously how many models your army is. But a 2000 point game including setup can be comfortably completed in 4 hours, so from this perspective, I think it's about right. I'm talking about an army that has a mix of vehicles, infantry, specialists, etc.

In the hands of people who just are more social and move at a more glacial pace or get more animated in their turns, 5 hours for an 1850 point game would be more than ample (a pace that would irritate a more gogogo player).

A 2000 point game can range anywhere from a tiny number of models (think Imperial Knights), to a massive horde if it's truly MSU. But the it's usually somewhere in between, as neither of these armies are really super common. 30 - 100 models would probably cover a really large spectrum of stuff that people field. If you're really curious beyond that, I suggest just looking on the 40k lists forum, pick a faction and look at what people build.

When I first played Warhammer 40,000 during Rogue Trader, I think I fielded 3-4 tactical squads, a scout squad and an assault squad. There was also a medic and a couple of Personalities (ICs). No vehicles of any sort, and I didn't know how to assemble a (metal) dreadnought Keep in mind that tac squads were 10 back then, and you could really load them up with stuff (like, give sergeant a vortex grenade, take D-Cannon, rad/virus grenades, et cetera). So I would say, 50+ models?

The main difference as the years have gone by for me is not the number of models but the size and type of model. Now you have tons of tanks and little walkers and giant stompy robots and drop pods and jets and choppers. But the number of actual game pieces, at least for me, has not appreciably gone up or down as a result of this. Yes, yes, you can break this by just taking 7 flyrants, or 7 wave serpents or 5 knights or whatever... I'm talking about "normal looking armies"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

For 30$ i can buy a PS4 game , or big gundam kit, or a bluray movie.

In fairness, for $30, you can't buy a new release PS4 game or blueray movie, or at least not one I'd want to spend money on (and for $5 you can buy two old ones of either). You can also buy a box of 10 Kabalites for the same price. Or you can buy a WMH Warcaster for the same price too.

The character models are often paraded as "OMG miniatures are so expensive!" but actually, they're a terrible example of the price of miniatures. You don't buy very many of them, and if you can't afford them, you almost never need to buy one as you can kitbash it out of other stuff. I believe there's a plastic chaplain in the Reclusiam Command kit, for less than $100 you get a Rhino plus 5 models you can use as specialist characters, including a really nicely sculpted chaplain. Or take any space marine, stick on a Crozius and some purity scrolls, paint him black, done!

I don't get why X-Wing doesn't count as a game. Sure it's pre-painted, and is based on probably the strongest sci-fi IP (that I'm sure GW could have licensed), but it's a great game and despite possibly the lowest buy in, people drop crazy amounts of money on it.



I loved Heroclix too (I've still got a handful of uniques). It's not just marvel, they cover almost everything (including LOTR and Iron Maiden). Quite simple but brilliant system.

 Talys wrote:

@Herzlos - While I don't disagree that there should be gaming options that start around $150 or less, the original discussion was about buying the cost of a full-sized 1850/2000pt 40k army. Of all the non-historical games, 40k/WHFB is the largest scale (most miniature, largest table) game, and I think the starting price for filling a 6x4+ table game should be higher. If one's budget is lower, buy a game to fit a smaller gaming table.

I think that's goalpost shifting, but yeah, in the sci-fi/fantasy range in 28mm, WHF/40K are the biggest games in terms of figure count, but that doesn't mean it's good at those scales (I like 40K at Kill Team, it's a chore at 3000pts a side). There's loads of smaller mini scale games that play much better at huge model counts.

@Deadnight/Herzog - I disagree with your price of a PS4/XB1.

That'll be a US/UK thing, we normally pay about £=$ on consoles, so whilst it's $399 for you, it's £329 for us.

Likewise, I think **in my local scene** the average person who really gets into wargaming will spend in that price range in their first year.

Easily the same here for most games. Take Malifaux for example, we've got a fairly active scene, and whilst it costs £45 to get playing (crew + rules + cards), no-one has stopped there, everyone has multiple super-sized crews (standard games are 25-50pts, and most will have 100+ points of crew). The distinction being that you can start at a tournament ready level and add variety.

And I guess I just don't see a problem with it. It averages out to about $70-$80 / month. I mean, really, is that such a huge deal for something you enjoy?

Not at all, $80/month is pretty low for a hobby spend. But you can get so much more from non-GW companies for your $80.

Also, I understand that there are front-end costs. But these existed in 1985, when I was in grade school, and made $15 a shot writing resumes or designing flyers. Back then, I saved up so that I could afford something that was a couple hundred dollars. Surely, people still do this, rather than expect that whatever luxury thing they want to get into should be something they can buy with spare change?

When I got into gaming in about 1996, GW was still mostly metal and did everything in blisters so you could buy things with pocket money every week, even if it was just a blister of 3 metal guardsmen. No need to save up and buy in bulk.

@Herzlos - Well, you can't buy blisters for pocket money, but a box of 10 Imperial Guard are still pretty darn cheap (barely more than 10 Guardsmen in 1985, especially adjusted for inflation). Sure, they're plastic, but those plastic kits aren't cheap to tool up for, and the models are way better when finished.

But in 1996, buying 3 metal guardsmen would be as useless as buying 1, 3, or 10 plastic guardsmen in 2015. You can't do anything with them, until you buy and paint all their buddies. I mean, what did you do with your blister, other than collect it and paint it until you had 20 more blisters?

I think that you prefer smaller games. I can appreciate that, but it's not for everyone. My enjoyment comes in playing 6x4 and larger tables, with ample terrain and 50+ models a side (minimum!). I just don't get the same enjoyment out of a smaller game. I also like a visual feast. I would rather play a computer game than play in the barren desert and paper boards that fill the gaming tables of many other games.

While there may be other games that are large-scale, not a single one is scifi, so that doesn't help me any. Note that I also don't play Warhammer Fantasy Battle, so it's not a "I support GW" thing. I like big scale Scifi games, with all the bells and whistles: jets, stompy robots, infantry, tanks, exotic guns, kits that have a bazillion options -- the whole nine yards. I think the 40k experience is rich and endless, whereas every other game world I've played is finite and can be quickly exhausted if I put my mind to it.

A $50-$150 kit every time I go to the hobby shop, whether it's a twice in the same week or once in a month might not be pocket change -- but as far as the credit card goes, it's not a big hit. I mean, that's groceries, dinner out, a night at the movies, a video game... whatever. It just doesn't feel like a crushingly expensive hobby -- and I buy way, way more than most people.

Of course X-Wing is a game, so is Heroclix. However they both are different kinds of games to 40K, because you buy relatively small boxes of pre-painted units that also come with their rules, and there is a collectible element to it.

The Heroclix models are pretty nice, actually, slightly taller than 40K but can be used for various purposes such as RPGs, or squads of alien creatures or robots that are a different size to humans. I have a collection of Halo Spartan Marines, for instance. I got them cheaply after the craze for the game had finished.

Back on topic, although Talys is correct that there are various price points and so on, the bare fact is people who used to play 40K have given up because of the prices. I gave it up when the rules went from £30 to £50 and codexes went from £15 to £30, with no added benefit.

As I have said before in these kind of threads, once I didn't buy the new rules and codexes, I didn't bother buying any new models either. Now that I am two years behind the curve, I am unlikely ever to buy back in even though Gw have realised their error and attempted to compensate by issuing old-style softback codexes at £25 rather than £30 for the hardback. However it is sill too expensive, and too little too late (there isn't even a proper schedule for issuing the "cheap" codexes.)

So GW have entirely lost me as a customer. I am not unique, therefore there must be a fair number of ex-players in a similar situation.

To be frank, you only need to have read DakkaDakka and seen the progress of the forum over the past few years to know that many players who used to be pretty hardcore GW have given it up and turned their attention to many different other games ranging from Infinity to X-Wing to Historicals.

Most of the moderators are in this category. Think of that! The biggest wargame forum in English and the most pro-40K, but most of the "staff" have moved on to other things. It surely helps explain GW's consistent reductions in sales revenue over the past few years.

GW are still in profit at the moment. If the sales decline should continue they will find themselves in loss in a couple of years, though. Then it will all fall apart very quickly.

GW guards monkeys are a joke. 10 guys for THAT much money compared to e.g. Perry's models...


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GW guards monkeys are a joke. 10 guys for THAT much money compared to e.g. Perry's models...

So incoherent he said it twice.

Anyhoo to the subject; I just ran a Dunn & Bradstreet report on GW and they are current rating GW as 4A1 (this is good) with an overall risk rating of 97% of UK companies are in a higher risk category than them. This equates to a 0.03% chance of failure vs. an industry (HOBBY, TOY & GAME RETAILERS) average of 1.18%.

They are reasonably cash and assets rich and generate cash at good rates.

They pay in good time and usually to terms (55%) and when late (44.8% of the time) it is still within 30 days. Which is good and denotes little in the way of supply chain issues.

So what are GW still alive because they have a core of sound Financials, as you would expect being as they are run by accountants.

Now, this based on their 2014 accounts and while monitored and updated throughout the year will not be reflective of the latest report (when it is published) for a month or so.

GW are running a cash surplus, so should have no problems with liquidity in the short term. What happens when that changes is anyones guess.

 Talys wrote:
@Herzlos - Well, you can't buy blisters for pocket money, but a box of 10 Imperial Guard are still pretty darn cheap (barely more than 10 Guardsmen in 1985, especially adjusted for inflation). Sure, they're plastic, but those plastic kits aren't cheap to tool up for, and the models are way better when finished.

They went from 20/box for ~£18 to 10/box for ~£18 a few years ago, for a huge jump.

But in 1996, buying 3 metal guardsmen would be as useless as buying 1, 3, or 10 plastic guardsmen in 2015. You can't do anything with them, until you buy and paint all their buddies. I mean, what did you do with your blister, other than collect it and paint it until you had 20 more blisters?

Except they cost like £4 a blister, and some units were useful (like ratlings or ogyrns, or comissars) out of the blister. Sure you couldn't do anything with them officially, but you could paint them up during the week and then buy more, adding them to your army in bits.

I think that you prefer smaller games. I can appreciate that, but it's not for everyone. My enjoyment comes in playing 6x4 and larger tables, with ample terrain and 50+ models a side (minimum!). I just don't get the same enjoyment out of a smaller game. I also like a visual feast. I would rather play a computer game than play in the barren desert and paper boards that fill the gaming tables of many other games.

I prefer smaller games with appropriate detail, and large games with appropriate detail. My next planned game is an English Civil War game, with a target of 500 mini's a side. Most of my armies are in 15mm so I can field hundreds of mini's a side, all nicely ranked up. I also have games with 3-10 figures a side. Both can be good.

No board should be barren unless that's the theme, even with 8 mini's a side you can have an involved game where it looks good.


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 Talys wrote:

40k is optimized around a 6x4 or 8x8 (or larger) table with a lot of terrain and the largest miniature army that a person can practically transport. At it's best, the turns are about half an hour long, and a game is about 3-4 hours, plus some time for setup. This is what the rules are written for - a big game that takes the maximum length of time that the median player is able to play a game for.

I thought I'd resurrect this, because I remembered my experience gaming at Warhammer World. 40K works best on much larger tables than that. For 1000-1500pt games it works so much better on an 8x6 or an 8x12 than it does on a 6x4, because the range is meaningful (you can be out of range for all but the largest of weapons like the Earthshaker) and the position of units matters. It turns it from carparkhammer into an almost strategic game. Unfortunately, it requires an inordinate amount of space to play. That's why I dropped down to 15mm for my large scale games - I can field 20 tanks and 2 infantry companies on a 6x4 table whilst still having space to manoeuvre.

Fantasy isn't as bad on a 6x4 but I bet a standard 2000pt game would work so much better on a table 2-4 times that size.

I like how I can now play Epic Armageddon with my Warhammer collection! Knights and everything!

Do a forum search for this same topic and you will have entries dating back for a decade. People always say the sky is falling on GW. They don't collapse because people still buy and play their games, regardless of how much they hate prices.

"People have always said this, therefore they have been and always will be wrong."

Air tight argument.

 bdix wrote:
Do a forum search for this same topic and you will have entries dating back for a decade. People always say the sky is falling on GW. They don't collapse because people still buy and play their games, regardless of how much they hate prices.

Yeah, we'll just ignore such things as earnings statements and other forms financial reporting that show that GW is hemorrhaging cash and just say that what came before will always be....speaking of the sky is falling, the people in the resort areas around Mt. Vesuvius felt much the same way as you and that completely worked out, right?

 Talys wrote:
I believe there's a plastic chaplain in the Reclusiam Command kit, for less than $100 you get a Rhino plus 5 models you can use as specialist characters, including a really nicely sculpted chaplain.

There is a chaplain in that kit. The Reclusiam is MSRP $110CDN.

TBH: Compared to other games in a vacuum, pricing model for model, it isn't bad. For us grognards, its the knowledge that any "bundle box" you buy is 10% of what you need that makes the vets give their heads a shake. The new battleforces are a pale imitation of the bundles of yesteryear. The current SM bundle saves you $15. The original SM battleforce gave you a free squad of terminators (MSRP $45) and terrain (MSRP $10). I know the contents have rubbish options by today's standards, but when it was released, those kits were from the current model line.

1998 SM Battleforce: MSRP: $100CDN ($139 2015 dollars): 10x Tac Marines, 5x Terminators, 3x Bikes, 1x Landspeeder, Gothic Ruins
2005 SM Battleforce: 10x Tac Marines, 5x Tac Marines, Command Squad, Razorback
20?? SM Battleforce: 10x Tac Marines, 5x Tac Marines, 5x Assault Marines, 5x Scouts, 1x Rhino
2015 SM Battleforce: MSRP: $120CDN: 10x Tac Marines, Captain, Dreadnought

I think that GW's hard core approach to sell each customer one army and then cut them loose is their primary problem. For super-enthusiasts that are not fussed about the present prices... if the models were cheaper, you'd just buy more AMIRITE??!???? On top of that, cheaper models would make impulse buying and one-offs a thing again. The current prices don't support that.

Actually, these days the bundles match up to formations.

 keezus wrote:
On top of that, cheaper models would make impulse buying and one-offs a thing again. The current prices don't support that.

What? You mean people just don't walk into a FLGS or GW and impulse buy over $100 in rulebooks plus another $120 to get a single unit that isn't enough to field a legal army? Insanity!!


/pithy comments.

You mean like the 10 man assault squad?


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 agnosto wrote:
What? You mean people just don't walk into a FLGS or GW and impulse buy over $100 in rulebooks plus another $120 to get a single unit that isn't enough to field a legal army? Insanity!!

Ya... But you lots of extra value with enough bits to upgrade your whatevers to whichevers, if you choose to buy them. This works especially well with the vehicle kits.

In all seriousness though, the move to make the chapter upgrade sprues separate is what they should have done ages ago. This lets the enthusiasts buy as many as they need and allow the players to NOT PAY for them if they don't need them. They should do this with the vehicle kits. @_@.

 keezus wrote:

In all seriousness though, the move to make the chapter upgrade sprues separate is what they should have done ages ago. This lets the enthusiasts buy as many as they need and allow the players to NOT PAY for them if they don't need them. They should do this with the vehicle kits. @_@.

Tell me about it!

I totally went crazy on the chapter upgrade sprues. They are perfect -- and in the grand scheme of things, "well priced".


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Herzlos wrote:

I thought I'd resurrect this, because I remembered my experience gaming at Warhammer World. 40K works best on much larger tables than that. For 1000-1500pt games it works so much better on an 8x6 or an 8x12 than it does on a 6x4, because the range is meaningful (you can be out of range for all but the largest of weapons like the Earthshaker) and the position of units matters. It turns it from carparkhammer into an almost strategic game. Unfortunately, it requires an inordinate amount of space to play. That's why I dropped down to 15mm for my large scale games - I can field 20 tanks and 2 infantry companies on a 6x4 table whilst still having space to manoeuvre.

Fantasy isn't as bad on a 6x4 but I bet a standard 2000pt game would work so much better on a table 2-4 times that size.

This is a good point. However, as others have brought up before when I throw on a picture of a larger table, 6x4 or 8x8 is the largest size that most people have access to.

Personally, I do not like 8x12; I think 7' deep is the deepest useful size -- but I don't have gorilla arms It's just, anything deeper than 6' and I can't reach the midtable comfortably, or I might knock things over reaching units.

Incidentally, I agree with you that technically a smaller scale like 15mm is superior for this size of play. However, I don't like 15mm miniatures, as they don't allow me to express my creativity to the same degree; each model doesn't feel "personal". For instance, I couldn't get into Epic.


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 Kilkrazy wrote:
To be frank, you only need to have read DakkaDakka and seen the progress of the forum over the past few years to know that many players who used to be pretty hardcore GW have given it up and turned their attention to many different other games ranging from Infinity to X-Wing to Historicals.

Most of the moderators are in this category. Think of that! The biggest wargame forum in English and the most pro-40K, but most of the "staff" have moved on to other things. It surely helps explain GW's consistent reductions in sales revenue over the past few years.

It's a pity. And I get that the price bothers a lot of people, though for most people who are employed and have a little bit of spending money, I think that the needle moved from something that had toy-like prices to an something that has hobby-like prices. Sure, in 1990, 40k was a really cheap hobby, accessible with allowance money (maybe?), and now it's probably out of that range (for most kids?). But most hobbies have "overperformed" inflation too, like RCs and model trains, and you don't hear that crowd complain to nearly the degree of the 40k crowd. Most kids' electronics have really gone up in price too.

I guess I have simply been fortunate enough to have gainful employment most of my life, to the degree that $50 or so here and there has just never been a big deal. I probably visit 3 different hobby shops each 1-4 times a month, and I usually buy *something* even if it's small (like a White Dwarf). I have never, ever been in the situation where I had to think "do I buy a Wraithknight or pay rent?" though certainly, I've thought, "do I buy a Wraithknight or an airbrush?"

I guess what I'm saying is, I imagine that for some people, the increase in price is more a psychological hit than an affordability issue. They are less bothered by similar prices from companies like Privateer Press because the prices from them started out a lot higher per miniature, and, to an extent, GW's price increases have desensitized people to 25mm models being anywhere from $5 to $30 per model.

Incidentally, if other companies (like Mantic) start to have more vehicle kits like GW, there is a high probability I would shift some more of my hobby spending their way.

Holy crap. 7 feet deep? I think that 4 feet is plenty for my T-Rex arms...

As a side note to the upgrade sprue thoughts... if GW had separated out the base kits and the upgrade kits ages ago AND priced them reasonably - I doubt we would see the proliferation of magnetizing as it is a stopgap which arose from the increases in price AND GW's frustrating many kits, 1 body policy.

*On another tangent* Here in Toronto, price of real estate is getting up there as well. There really isn't the room for my many bawkses of 40k stuff anymore. This has really informed my buying in the last 10 years.

=TalysIt's a pity. And I get that the price bothers a lot of people, though for most people who are employed and have a little bit of spending money, I think that the needle moved from something that had toy-like prices to an something that has hobby-like prices. Sure, in 1990, 40k was a really cheap hobby, accessible with allowance money (maybe?), and now it's probably out of that range (for most kids?). But most hobbies have "overperformed" inflation too, like RCs and model trains, and you don't hear that crowd complain to nearly the degree of the 40k crowd. Most kids' electronics have really gone up in price too.

I guess you don't hear the RC and Train crowd complain because what they do with their stuff hasn't got demonstrably worse for many, and tech has measurably improved many aspects alongside the price.

Aesthetics aside, a 1999 plastic kit and a 2015 kit from GW don't differ in any meaningful way, yet the price is higher. For many the rules have eroded the enjoyment they get from the game, or simply various factors have driven people out so they can't get a game. Yet if they wish to keep playing they are required to buy more, more expensive, models in order to tread water, yet those models offer small, incremental, improvements over their 20 year old equivalents, in fact some people seem to be of the opinion that some of the changes (ie more greeble, more bit) are for the worse.

For an Rc racer, perhaps an equivalent car costs 20-30% more than 20 years ago, but I bet that person can point to a bunch of things which make the modern car superior. Put the new devastators next to the old, I could point out differences but not necessarily improvements.

You don't hear near so many complaints outside of the GW sphere either.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Aesthetics aside, a 1999 plastic kit and a 2015 kit from GW don't differ in any meaningful way, yet the price is higher. For many the rules have eroded the enjoyment they get from the game, or simply various factors have driven people out so they can't get a game. Yet if they wish to keep playing they are required to buy more, more expensive, models in order to tread water, yet those models offer small, incremental, improvements over their 20 year old equivalents, in fact some people seem to be of the opinion that some of the changes (ie more greeble, more bit) are for the worse.

I get what you are saying... kits now-a-days have gone into the "almost self-parody" grimdark skulls mode, but lets not discount the fact that the MKII Rhino, Landraider and Terminators were giant leaps forward for GW.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Aesthetics aside, a 1999 plastic kit and a 2015 kit from GW don't differ in any meaningful way, yet the price is higher. For many the rules have eroded the enjoyment they get from the game, or simply various factors have driven people out so they can't get a game. Yet if they wish to keep playing they are required to buy more, more expensive, models in order to tread water, yet those models offer small, incremental, improvements over their 20 year old equivalents, in fact some people seem to be of the opinion that some of the changes (ie more greeble, more bit) are for the worse.

Ya know, Az, I love ya I'm not trying to give you a hard time, but I hear this ALL THE TIME, and I dunno how people get this, man, I really don't. Compare these two:





I mean, seriously?

Look at the basic space marine:



This is not just "skulls and purity scrolls". A blind man with a stick could tell the one on the right is a better model, man.

Now go back and read the bit where I said "aesthetics aside" and the other bit where I was comparing plastic kits to other plastic kits.

Then have another go.


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Hell, scale aside, there's little difference between the modern Rhino and the original RT era one. Other than its ~6x the price.

@Talys: Dude. There is functionally almost no difference between SM circa 1998 and today, other than addition of more greebles. -edit- The screamer killer was a product of its times... this is the same era that provided this:



@Azreal: I hear what you say about aesthetics! We are on the same page there! I have to respectfully disagree about the rhino! The RT era Rhino is half a kit mirrored w/ no interior. Aesthetics aside, the current Rhino added an interior (albeit crude), an operable ramp (albeit crude) and included crew (albeit crude!!!!). IMHO, these are additional features that go beyond aesthetics.

 keezus wrote:
@Talys: Dude. There is functionally almost no difference between SM circa 1998 and today, other than addition of more greebles.

@Azreal: I hear what you say about aesthetics! We are on the same page there! I have to respectfully disagree about the rhino! The RT era Rhino is half a kit mirrored w/ no interior. Aesthetics aside, the current Rhino added an interior (albeit crude), an operable ramp (albeit crude) and included crew (albeit crude!!!!). IMHO, these are additional features that go beyond aesthetics.

Wow, sorry, I totally disagree with both of you. Aesthetics aside, they're not even close to comparable. I mean, really, you think the original metal Carnifex is an amazing model? All of the original space marines in the plastic kit had that silly hunchback pose. Now, you can pose them in shooting position, standing at ready, running, leaping, looking back, and any number of things. If you don't appreciate that sort of modelling flexibility, GW kits were definitely not made with you in mind.

Put it another way, could GW or any other company sell the original carnifex or original space marine today, at any price?

If you just want to talk about game functionality, attach a cardboard triangle to a round base, and that will be as functional now as it was then.

@keezus -- look at the pose of that model and how awkward it is. Plus, consider how many head/weapon options you have now. But, modern GW kits are all about tons of tiny details and many kitting options. If that's not your thing, I doubt you'll enjoy GW products as a hobby. Again, you couldn't sell that model on the shelf today, not even for $10.

As a person who loves space marines, I even appreciate the difference between the 2005 Devastators and today's Devastators. I think the difference is phenomenal, much less compared to the old 1988 heavy weapons guys. I guess, to each their own.


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Alright Az, Keezus, please tell me you can see the difference in detail between these two pairs of legs, and that the difference isn't just "greeble":

Those were the Marines that were 30 to a box for £10.

I prefer them to the modern ones, especially the metal ones of that era. Each one was a character, 3 for £2.50

@Howard - Fair enough, but they are comparable because they're non-character models which now come in 10's for Tacticals and 6's for devastators. If you want to compare metal models (which were way more expensive than the plastic 30s), you would have to compare them to modern plastic character models, like this:



The technical capabilities of multipart plastic cannot be denied. With metal models, you have many undercuts; for instance, there is nothing between the back leg and a cape, or behind a tabard but solid metal. If these things don't matter to you -- in other words, both technical complexity and aesthetic improvements -- NOTHING would justify price increases beyond inflation.

Incidentally, I have almost every one of those metal models painted

 Talys wrote:

 keezus wrote:
@Talys: Dude. There is functionally almost no difference between SM circa 1998 and today, other than addition of more greebles.

@Azreal: I hear what you say about aesthetics! We are on the same page there! I have to respectfully disagree about the rhino! The RT era Rhino is half a kit mirrored w/ no interior. Aesthetics aside, the current Rhino added an interior (albeit crude), an operable ramp (albeit crude) and included crew (albeit crude!!!!). IMHO, these are additional features that go beyond aesthetics.

Wow, sorry, I totally disagree with both of you. Aesthetics aside, they're not even close to comparable. I mean, really, you think the original metal Carnifex is an amazing model?

I love that model. Sure, it's relatively simple, but it's got a ton of character to it an a very "80's scifi/heavy metal" look to it that really defined 40k. It's not a stellar model by today's standards, but it's got enough "cool factor" to still stand on its own.

Put it another way, could GW or any other company sell the original carnifex or original space marine today, at any price?

The original Space Marine plastics? Probably not, but then, stylistically they're not really "it" either, a lot of their goofy dimensions weren't entirely by mistake, they matched the artwork of the day very well, and when painted well they don't actually look really stylistically similar to something you'd see out of a comic book of the time. When you match those RTB-01 plastics to the cover art of the box (and the RT rulebook since it's the same image), their goofy dimensions fit the artwork of the time.

The old Carnifex could probably be sold and still makes sales today. Not at $60 or whatever a Carnnifex goes for now, but at $30? Yeah that model could sell.

 Talys wrote:
Alright Az, Keezus, please tell me you can see the difference in detail between these two pairs of legs, and that the difference isn't just "greeble":

Hi. 1998 calling and noting that we're talking about the 3rd Ed marines that haven't seen any improvement in 15 years and not the difference between RT and current models.

Y'know: These guys:



vs



There's some refinement to be sure, but nothing like MK1 rhino to MK2 rhino scope of improvement.

Thanks.

The earliest metal figures don't compare well to today but the later ones do. When GW switched to Finecast many figures previously in metal were reproduced in resin, they're still available now. The price made a leap and frankly the quality was abysmal. Figures made since then have mostly been in plastic and while multipart is nice, the detail isn't as good as metal or what resin could be if they actually tried. Forgeworld are leading the way here but they are a small part of GW. It's not a problem with the casting material, it's a problem with GW. There are many companies making better quality figures in metal/resin than GW and they charge less.

I prefer RT era for stylistic reasons. I can see the more recent ones are better for detail but generally compared to the wider modern marketplace, they aren't all that.

You have to see them side by side, but the most recent Tactical box is far ahead of the 3rd edition one.

Nomeny wrote:
You have to see them side by side, but the most recent Tactical box is far ahead of the 3rd edition one.

In what way? Most of the additional parts added to the kit are purely superficial. They're constructed in exactly the same way.

I wonder if there is a point where too much bling actually reduces a persons' desire to buy a model, especially a noob that is learning how to/never painted before?

 Talys wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
I don't think x-wing should be used to typify the market, as it will sell purely based on the brand. I think the game is great (it's based on wings of glory mechanics, so it's going to be) and it's great that it has bought a huge number of new people to miniature wargaming, but I wonder how many of the gamers it's attracted would be interested in moving beyond the star wars universe later on. Hopefully most, and the hobby will continue to grow and accommodate more and more great companies.

As opposed to GW, who actively campaign to convince their customers that there is nothing to wargaming beyond their products?

Well, back in the day, it would have been pretty weird for TSR to advocate for any RPG other than one of theirs

Back in the day, TSR used to have advertisements from other RPG companies in Dragon Magazine, and even *gasp!* did reviews of them - often positive. (More often than not - somebody had to want to review them.)

And they had occasional bad reviews of TSR products. (Including at least one that I liked - the review of the Birthright setting in Dragon was not a positive one.)

The Auld Grump

Grimtuff wrote:

Nomeny wrote:
You have to see them side by side, but the most recent Tactical box is far ahead of the 3rd edition one.

In what way? Most of the additional parts added to the kit are purely superficial. They're constructed in exactly the same way.

If by a leg, two torso bits two arms a weapon and a head, yeah. If you mean the quality of the plastic output, it isn't even close. The newer plastics are smoother, crisper, mote detailed, with deep, clean recesses and sharp relief. The new poses and armor plates are excellent.

If these types of things don't excite you, another company's products will serve you better. For me, seeing every incremental improvement in plastic is really exciting. The modeling aspect is very cool, for me, and I would rather pay more for a more complex kit. Also, go look at a 2000 sprue versus a 2015 sprue and tell me you don't see a ton more stuff per frame.

Easy E wrote:I wonder if there is a point where too much bling actually reduces a persons' desire to buy a model, especially a noob that is learning how to/never painted before?

This is a valid point. Keep in mind that there are simple models and complex ones. Almost all the very blingy models are space Marines, too (or Imperium). Most of the Xenos are quite straight forward in comparison (look at eldar, necron, tyranid) as well as imperial guard, minus characters and special units.

Space Marines also have by far the most gearing/configuration options. No other faction has multiple armor marks, different types of helmets, an avalanche of special weapons, and so on. Pick necron, and suddenly your gearing options and model build options are a lot simpler.

In comparative terms, it takes me 2-4 times longer to paint a space marine than almost any other faction in infantry size. Now, mind you, I go the distance, even when it's just a basic tactical.

 Jehan-reznor wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
And the pool of people that like 40K is shrinking....

I don't agree with that, Not the amount of people that like 40k is shrinking (well maybe a little)
The amount of people that buy GW stuff is shrinking, Even in Japan at the board game days meetings i run into people who
switched to board games or play more smaller scale wargames

I wanted to buy the new interrogator chaplain for my guardians of the covenant
"army" But it cost 30$ for one plastic miniature? i rather buy a kingdom of the death boutique miniature for that kind of money.

For 30$ i can buy a PS4 game , or big gundam kit, or a bluray movie.

Looking at the local market and the number of players...

Yes, shrinking number of players, not just customers.

I do not know if it was the major sticking point, but the loudest complaints were about the random charge distance and the psycher phase. (It seems that there have always been complaints about the magic in WH40K - so that was nothing new.)

Most of the losses for Warhammer 40K are to Warmahordes, and an entire large group switched to Kings of War in place of Warhammer Fantasy (and the last was purely a loss of players, not customers - for the most part the players continue to use their WHFB armies, just with the KoW rules).

There are maybe half as many WH40K players as there was two editions ago, and no Fantasy players left at all. (The last WH40K edition that I liked was 3rd - but I liked 3rd a lot more than either 1st or 2nd as well.)

The Auld Grump

*EDIT* For the record - Captain Karlaen typifies what I do not like about GW's current run of plastic character models, in particular the hair.... GW used to know how to do hair and fur....

The quality of plastics dramatically increased in 2009 when they bought an incredibly fine tungsten needle to tool the molds for space hulk. The quality since then has massively increased. If the models are just a necessity to play a game then you are right in that you are paying more for the same item, but on the same score you could cut the models out altogether and use bottle caps (which one rule book I have suggests). If it's the models themselves that get you excited, then better detailed kits are worth the price difference.

 JamesY wrote:
The quality of plastics dramatically increased in 2009 when they bought an incredibly fine tungsten needle to tool the molds for space hulk. The quality since then has massively increased. If the models are just a necessity to play a game then you are right in that you are paying more for the same item, but on the same score you could cut the models out altogether and use bottle caps (which one rule book I have suggests). If it's the models themselves that get you excited, then better detailed kits are worth the price difference.

The technical quality of the models has improved - the originality and the quality of the sculpts has plummeted.

But I am willing to admit that the lack of quality in some of the sculpts has more to do with the artists than with the mold making. Goodwin still does a fantastic job - but then I look at things like the wolves pulling Grimnar Claus's Sleigh.... And I am of the opinion that the failure is due to plain old laziness more than lack of skill. It is easier to paste a whole bunch of triangles over a model than it is to sculpt fur.

The Auld Grump

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
The quality of plastics dramatically increased in 2009 when they bought an incredibly fine tungsten needle to tool the molds for space hulk. The quality since then has massively increased. If the models are just a necessity to play a game then you are right in that you are paying more for the same item, but on the same score you could cut the models out altogether and use bottle caps (which one rule book I have suggests). If it's the models themselves that get you excited, then better detailed kits are worth the price difference.

The technical quality of the models has improved - the originality and the quality of the sculpts has plummeted.

But I am willing to admit that the lack of quality in some of the sculpts has more to do with the artists than with the mold making. Goodwin still does a fantastic job - but then I look at things like the wolves pulling Grimnar Claus's Sleigh.... And I am of the opinion that the failure is due to plain old laziness more than lack of skill. It is easier to paste a whole bunch of triangles over a model than it is to sculpt fur.

The Auld Grump

I actually wanted to kit bash that grimnar sleigh with a gyrocopter to make a dwarf fishing boat...

Why is it that people trying to prove that GW current products are worth the money , ALWAYS show really old GW models that were limited by the tech at the time , and the style of the studio at that time.And compare them to the modern plastic where more current production methods allow better quality/more detail.

Yet NEVER show the models that have not been upgraded in the last 15 year or so, and look really poor next to more modern releases .

Eg the Catachan boxed set of 10 infantry with limited upgrade options.They charge £18 for!
But say you are happy to just buy 2 x 10 man box sets from GW for £36 , as that's not bad is it 20 models to build and paint..(£1.80 per minature.)
But this £36 buys only a small fraction of a 'full army'.


However, compared to the excellent 28mm infantry box sets from other manufacturers, it looks a bit poor.

EG look at what you get for £1 less from The Plastic Soldier Company.

Here is a £35 'Army Deal ' for 28mm Soviet infantry.(Suitable for Bolt Action or other WWII rules set or converted to 'not IG ' if you like!)

FIFTY SEVEN infantry with multiple weapon and equipment options.(Rifles SMGs LMGS and officers /NCOs etc.)
4 heavy machine guns and crew.
4 mortars and Crew.
4 anti tank rifles.
1 45 mm Anti tank gun and crew
1 76 mm infantry gun and crew.

I know PSC are at the 'value' end of the range available , but they paint up well and are a good way to get a core for an army quickly.IMO.

Even Warlord and Perry Minatures 28mm infantry kits , that are more 'multi pose' and customisable, and better quality in terms of detail and options on sprue than the GW offering.
Are much better value at £26 for Thirty infantry , and £20 for thirty eight infantry respectively.

 JamesY wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
The quality of plastics dramatically increased in 2009 when they bought an incredibly fine tungsten needle to tool the molds for space hulk. The quality since then has massively increased. If the models are just a necessity to play a game then you are right in that you are paying more for the same item, but on the same score you could cut the models out altogether and use bottle caps (which one rule book I have suggests). If it's the models themselves that get you excited, then better detailed kits are worth the price difference.

The technical quality of the models has improved - the originality and the quality of the sculpts has plummeted.

But I am willing to admit that the lack of quality in some of the sculpts has more to do with the artists than with the mold making. Goodwin still does a fantastic job - but then I look at things like the wolves pulling Grimnar Claus's Sleigh.... And I am of the opinion that the failure is due to plain old laziness more than lack of skill. It is easier to paste a whole bunch of triangles over a model than it is to sculpt fur.

The Auld Grump

I actually wanted to kit bash that grimnar sleigh with a gyrocopter to make a dwarf fishing boat...

Or with a balloon holding it up?

*Blink Blink*

Post it when you do - that actually sounds cool. (And leaves out the wolves entirely - which is also a good thing.)

The Auld Grump - Anyone else remember Circus Imperium from FASA?

JamesY, you are a font of knowledge with these interesting little GW facts. I suppose this is why when Space Hulk 2009 first came out, we all thought that they had the greatest models ever (between it and the rereleasw, I've bought 6 copies ;D )

Now that you nail it with a date and a reason, it all makes sense. The post 2009 models ARE of a massively superior resolution. Even something as simple as a space marine leg is much crisper and smoother. It's like the difference between an inkjet and laser printer.

Do you know if they did anything to the plastic process? Aside from the detail, the new plastic kits just need far less remediation if you want to get rid of the imperfections in the plastic (like sanding down a cylindrical leg with 1000 grit so that it's perfectly smooth and cylindrical).

Yeah, those Cadian and Catachan molds have been paid for a loooong time ago but why keep prices for models in line with inflation when you can cut the volume in 1/2 and charge 2X as much?

For the older kits, it's like paying buying paying full price for a half-filled soda can.

I always like the "bottle cap" argument but as has been said before, GW need not alienate gamers to make collectors happy when they have the ability to make upgrade sprues. Armchair CEOing, I'd make a basic kit and sell upgrade sprues as options that way people like me don't have to throw half-filled sprues in the trash because I'll never use all the bits and bobs.

@TheAuldGrump - I agree that the Santa sleigh was dorky. Probably the dorkiest GW model ever made

 Talys wrote:
@TheAuldGrump - I agree that the Santa sleigh was dorky. Probably the dorkiest GW model ever made

No, the Razorgore wins that distinction.

Nomeny wrote:
You have to see them side by side, but the most recent Tactical box is far ahead of the 3rd edition one.

i totally agree with this...
the latest version of the Tac. Squad box is my favorite, and i have been on this ride since the very first Marines came out...
the stances have become more upright, and the assembled Marines seem to have been scaled up just enough to notice a difference from the previous kit...
the newest Marines feel just that little bit bigger, and it makes a huge difference to my eye...
there are more new weapon options then ever before, new helmet and backpack styles, nicer shoulder pads, cooler arm poses, deeper detail, and now we even have bigger, better bases to put them on...

for my money, there is a worthwhile improvement to each generation of plastic kit that GW has released...
i really enjoy watching the kits evolve and improve, and that is that keeps me buying...
to me, kits like the plastic Vanguard Vets blow away the previous metal kit, and i love metal models...
the Sternguard might be a tie, because the older Vets had a lot of style, and the new kit has more options...
unforunately, a lot my metal vets suffered from a slight distortion of the helmets, not badly, but enough that i notice it...
that doesn't happen with plastics...
the new Devastator kit not only looks cooler to me, but comes with more weapon options than ever before, and bigger bases...
the new Assault Squad has even more dynamic leg poses than the previous kit, more weapon options, and scenic bases...

it seems to me, there is everything to like about each new generation of plastic kit, as they clearly do improve over previous sculpts...
if price puts anybody off, that is fine, and i really can't argue with that, as it is a personal choice...
if your complaint is that the new kits are too expensive, that is totally reasonable, but if the complaint is that the newer kits are no better than the previous versions, i completely disagree...

as long as GW's kits keep evolving, they will continue to give me a reason to keep buying...

cheers
jah

@ Lanrak in the last 18 months I have bought miniatures from gw (both citadel and fw), pp, reaper, mantic, hi-tech, studio McVey, Tor, antimatter, avatars of war, Spartan, victrix, mirilton and a few more. I'm really not fussed about the miniature count per pound, I'm bothered about having the models that excite me and make me want to paint them the most. GW make the models that excite me the most, and when I compare them to the models of the other companies that I have bought from, I genuinely think that they are better.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Talys wrote:
JamesY, you are a font of knowledge with these interesting little GW facts. I suppose this is why when Space Hulk 2009 first came out, we all thought that they had the greatest models ever (between it and the rereleasw, I've bought 6 copies ;D )

Now that you nail it with a date and a reason, it all makes sense. The post 2009 models ARE of a massively superior resolution. Even something as simple as a space marine leg is much crisper and smoother. It's like the difference between an inkjet and laser printer.

Do you know if they did anything to the plastic process? Aside from the detail, the new plastic kits just need far less remediation if you want to get rid of the imperfections in the plastic (like sanding down a cylindrical leg with 1000 grit so that it's perfectly smooth and cylindrical).

I don't know if they made any changes to the plastics, but I'll pop my head around the door next time I'm at whw and try to find out for you.

 JamesY wrote:
@ Lanrak in the last 18 months I have bought miniatures from gw (both citadel and fw), pp, reaper, mantic, hi-tech, studio McVey, Tor, antimatter, avatars of war, Spartan, victrix, mirilton and a few more. I'm really not fussed about the miniature count per pound, I'm bothered about having the models that excite me and make me want to paint them the most. GW make the models that excite me the most, and when I compare them to the models of the other companies that I have bought from, I genuinely think that they are better.

this is the point that i emphasize in every thread like this...
i buy minis from at least a dozen different manufacturers, but none of them get me as excited to paint as a GW Space Marine...

cheers
jah

I can understand that people that just collect and paint minatures are free to buy what they like.
What you 'like the look of best' is subjective , and so there is not any objective reason to argue against why you like a particular model.

So collectors will buy what they like if they are happy with the price the retailer charges,The price is the only 'objective' value in their considerations.
Think of the last model you bought.
Would you have paid double that price?
What if it cost ten times that price ?
What about if it cost a hundred times the price?

At some point the price charged can make the minature not good enough value for money, for any collector to want to buy it.

However, my point is that people who buy minatures to game with , will look at the total cost of getting an army together.And look at the cost of the rules and army list they need too.

And when they can see other companies offering much better value for the GAME they sell.It is harder to justify buying into GW games.

I would say that the value for money from a game players perspective is MUCH lower for GW products, than for other companies products.
And probably why game players can not see why GW plc has not priced it self out of the market yet.

However , the constant drop in sales volumes, is starting to out pace the raising of retail prices.

As GW is having to increase prices at an even faster rate, they will reach the tipping point a lot quicker than some 'collectors' think, but a lot later than some game players think.

I agree that GW plc is just targeting 'collectors'.And giving game players very little value for money comparatively.

So a lot of the people who used to enjoy playing 40k and WHFB have had their favorite game system 'ruined ', in the name of chasing easy success /focus on short term profit.

Eg Focusing on selling stuff to people who never play, or who do not think the rules GW sell are all that important.

These arguments about how much better a modern SM is than a 1987 version are irrelevant if not enough people think the 2015 version is worth the extra money.

The financial signals are that GW are selling fewer and fewer of these in some people's eyes much better and definitely much more expensive models every year.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
These arguments about how much better a modern SM is than a 1987 version are irrelevant if not enough people think the 2015 version is worth the extra money.

The financial signals are that GW are selling fewer and fewer of these in some people's eyes much better and definitely much more expensive models every year.

While it doesn't matter to the people who aren't prepared to buy models that are $5-$30 per model, it's highly relevant to the people who GW are targeting.

For example, I would rather pay $25 for a new, better death jester than an old $$18 death jester; I'm happy to pay $50 for a box of new devastators, but would be unhappy if they had increased the old box from $35 to $50.

In other words, if we accept this theory that GW is targeting collectors and more modelling-centric buyers, the quality and incremental improvement of the models is highly relevant to the retention (or growth) of those customers.

I fully accept that this subgroup is less profitable than a bigger tent which includes gamers that want cheaper models over tungsten tooled plastic, but maybe GW just doesn't care, and would rather make less money doing what it likes to do, so long as that is viable. For the record, I would prefer a compromise that is more inclusive, though not at the cost of what I perceive as model quality.

I don't necessarily mind the prices, as in I'll buy the models I really like, but I don't like how the prices are decided, and I don't like the inconsistencies in pricing, eg witch elves against eternal guard.

 jah-joshua wrote:

 JamesY wrote:
@ Lanrak in the last 18 months I have bought miniatures from gw (both citadel and fw), pp, reaper, mantic, hi-tech, studio McVey, Tor, antimatter, avatars of war, Spartan, victrix, mirilton and a few more. I'm really not fussed about the miniature count per pound, I'm bothered about having the models that excite me and make me want to paint them the most. GW make the models that excite me the most, and when I compare them to the models of the other companies that I have bought from, I genuinely think that they are better.

this is the point that i emphasize in every thread like this...
i buy minis from at least a dozen different manufacturers, but none of them get me as excited to paint as a GW Space Marine...

cheers
jah

I think the important point to note is that 10-15 years ago that list of comparable producers would have been a lot shorter. The gap has narrowed, disappeared altogether, or even gone the opposite way depending on your thoughts of aesthetics. And, if you're wargaming on a budget, there is a big impetus towards a lot of those other miniature lines.

Personally I think if we're talking sculpt detail and intricacy some of the stuff coming out of Spain and France at the moment is industry leading, but I realise that it's subjective.

 Talys wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
These arguments about how much better a modern SM is than a 1987 version are irrelevant if not enough people think the 2015 version is worth the extra money.

The financial signals are that GW are selling fewer and fewer of these in some people's eyes much better and definitely much more expensive models every year.

While it doesn't matter to the people who aren't prepared to buy models that are $5-$30 per model, it's highly relevant to the people who GW are targeting.

For example, I would rather pay $25 for a new, better death jester than an old $$18 death jester; I'm happy to pay $50 for a box of new devastators, but would be unhappy if they had increased the old box from $35 to $50.

In other words, if we accept this theory that GW is targeting collectors and more modelling-centric buyers, the quality and incremental improvement of the models is highly relevant to the retention (or growth) of those customers.

I fully accept that this subgroup is less profitable than a bigger tent which includes gamers that want cheaper models over tungsten tooled plastic, but maybe GW just doesn't care, and would rather make less money doing what it likes to do, so long as that is viable. For the record, I would prefer a compromise that is more inclusive, though not at the cost of what I perceive as model quality.

Well, I think the biggest question will be whether this group of collector purchasers will be big enough to sustain GW, or whether there is a significant level of replenishment of collector-type customers to sustain attrition of collectors (for any reason-age, income, etc.). It'll be curious as to where GW's profits will bottom-out if they are able to achieve this collector-type environment.

I'm guessing the company would have to go even more dramatic cuts, which will probably have to come from the B&M side of things (which are a huge expense for the company) and transition to where I honestly think they want to be exclusively- online via direct ordering. In that regard, I really don't see GW disappearing (at least not any time soon), but I do see them effectively working themselves into a boutique company, largely out of game stores and the community overall. Which for the collectors is fine- I just think it's a poor future for the game that used to dominate tabletop gaming.

 Accolade wrote:
Well, I think the biggest question will be whether this group of collector purchasers will be big enough to sustain GW, or whether there is a significant level of replenishment of collector-type customers to sustain attrition of collectors (for any reason-age, income, etc.). It'll be curious as to where GW's profits will bottom-out if they are able to achieve this collector-type environment.

I'm guessing the company would have to go even more dramatic cuts, which will probably have to come from the B&M side of things (which are a huge expense for the company) and transition to where I honestly think they want to be exclusively- online via direct ordering. In that regard, I really don't see GW disappearing (at least not any time soon), but I do see them effectively working themselves into a boutique company, largely out of game stores and the community overall. Which for the collectors is fine- I just think it's a poor future for the game that used to dominate tabletop gaming.

Indeed, that is the essential question.

I don't think that GW will go direct-only, though perhaps shedding many of their retail stores in markets already served makes a lot of sense to me. GW might account for a ratio of revenue from hobby shops, but at the moment, in our area, it's still huge. Our local stores have many customers who are $10,000+ annual spend "GW Customers" that are bread-and-butter for them. I know for a fact that it's important, reliable income -- they can essentially forecast a segment of their revenue based on GW's projected new release schedule. It's the reason why almost every store that carries GW has the GW stuff front and center, prominently displayed... they are hoping to grab another crazy spender.

There are also a good chunk of gamers to whom price is not really an issue, at least not at the current levels, nor even if 40k doubled or quadrupled in price. But what would impact them is if they had fewer play partners. I must say, again, just in our local scene, the 2015+ rule philosophy ("Decurion" style) has really excited this group, and they've been buying models like crazy and playing much more than I've observed in the past.

To someone else's point earlier, I also wish GW would embrace a basic set + many upgrade sprues philosophy. That would be a wonderful thing -- though I will say that the releases in the last half year have been a lot better with regards to kits coming with more of what you're likely to need (but it leaves room for improvement still).

To the point of a game that once dominated tabletop gaming... well, other than historicals, at one point, there wasn't much choice Nobody ever thought that would continue forever. It's actually kind of remarkable that no other scifi/fantasy company has really grown anywhere near GW's size; really, PP is the only ecosystem that's even close. I guess Mantic wants to be? We'll see there, too. Choice is good, and competition keeps everyone honest, right?

I genuinely hope that GW doesn't become a high-end boutique product. It doesn't make sense for things like HIPS kits anyhow, as those require volume to be economical. I guess, we'll see!

 Talys wrote:

For example, I would rather pay $25 for a new, better death jester than an old $$18 death jester; I'm happy to pay $50 for a box of new devastators, but would be unhappy if they had increased the old box from $35 to $50.

Malibu Stacey! She has a new hat!!

In other words, if we accept this theory that GW is targeting collectors and more modelling-centric buyers, the quality and incremental improvement of the models is highly relevant to the retention (or growth) of those customers.

What about the increasingly toy like aesthetic and lack of refinement?

It is to target these people that FW exists, tungsten this or diamond edged that still doesn't make plastic better than resin for quality individual models. It is best suited for mass production, which is completely at odds with what GW is trying to do.

I fully accept that this subgroup is less profitable than a bigger tent which includes gamers that want cheaper models over tungsten tooled plastic, but maybe GW just doesn't care, and would rather make less money doing what it likes to do, so long as that is viable. For the record, I would prefer a compromise that is more inclusive, though not at the cost of what I perceive as model quality.

They're a publicly listed company, they don't have the luxury of doing what they like (side note: anthropomorphise much?) It clearly isn't viable, their revenue and profit is falling, and if they have to compromise on quality to start bringing the cash back in, then I'm afraid you'll have to learn to love it.

I definitely agree that I don't want to see GW become a high-end boutique model company. Getting back to the hey-days of 5th would be my best hope for the game.

I'm watching the re-make of WHFB to see whether GW can get things right when their butts are to the fire. If WHFB Bubbles turns out to be a flop or is priced at even *higher* levels to take advantage of the lower model count that it predicted to have (or if GW learns nothing and just bloats things even further), then I think I will have lost faith in company's ability to turn things around. If WHFB ends up a success, then there may be hope that things can improve.

 Azreal13 wrote:
They're a publicly listed company, they don't have the luxury of doing what they like (side note: anthropomorphise much?) It clearly isn't viable, their revenue and profit is falling, and if they have to compromise on quality to start bringing the cash back in, then I'm afraid you'll have to learn to love it.

They are a *small cap* publically listed company. They're just barely a public They don't even report every quarter.

I have served as a Chief Operating Officer and been a board member of a small cap public company. Being public means nothing other than that you have a vehicle to buy and sell equity of the company (and therefore raise money or get out). The company is still entirely controlled by its Board of Directors, so much so that even significant shareholders can be powerless. To take control of the Board can be insanely hard -- often, without spending way, way, way more money than it's worth and enriching the people that you're trying to get rid of in order to buy control, it's impossible.

They have a fiduciary duty to do what is best for the shareholders, but this is so vague as to be useless. Other than not robbing the company blind or defrauding its investors, this is carte blanche for the board can steer it in whatever direction it sees fit. As long as they accurately report what has occurred (spin permitted) and clearly describe all forward-looking statements as such (forecasts, not promises), they're golden. Even with a large cap company, this is almost always so; there's just more press around it, and more lawsuits. Just look at Nokia: they first went to Windows Phone over the alternatives (like Android) and then sold their core business (cell phones) to Microsoft, and there was nothing even institutional investors who were not on board could do about it. I'm not saying that it wasn't a good idea, just that it was entirely decided by the board, shareholders be damned.

The only real exception is if a company gets into financial trouble, needs to borrow or raise money, and makes promises in order to get that money. In that case, they had better do what they promised they would with the money, or directors and officers can be in some pretty hot water. But then, they signed a contract to that effect.

Again, you didn't address my whole point, if focussing down on to a smaller market isn't working, and the evidence suggests it isn't, they don't have the luxury of carrying on like some garage company doing what they love, they have to find a solution that works, not out of any duty but because they won't be able to pay dividends (heck, they might not ultimately be able to keep the lights on) and once their stock price is in the toilet, anything could happen, little of it good.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Again, you didn't address my whole point, if focussing down on to a smaller market isn't working, and the evidence suggests it isn't, they don't have the luxury of carrying on like some garage company doing what they love, they have to find a solution that works, not out of any duty but because they won't be able to pay dividends (heck, they might not ultimately be able to keep the lights on) and once their stock price is in the toilet, anything could happen, little of it good.

Maybe I wasn't really clear --

The board can absolutely do what it feels like, so long as they're not defrauding investors or unfairly enriching themselves. They don't need to increase revenue or profits as a public company, any more than they would need to as a private company -- this is a fallacy, a misconception about public companies. They don't need to pay dividends, and if you want to take a particularly twisted view, there are companies that put themselves in a hole so that the insiders or related parties can buy back stock cheaply.

The shareholders -- unless they can somehow muster 51% of shares that vote and then at the next AGM vote in a new board -- have no control over any of this. Their sole remedy is to sue for oppression -- that is, that the board or majority shareholders are acting for their own benefit and to the detriment of the minority shareholder. However, this, will almost universally be unsuccessful if the company is just doing what it loves, and that happens to be a bad idea.

To take a big company example, Steve Jobs was famously quoted as saying that he'd spend Apple's every last penny to put Android out of business if that's what it took. Apple literally made terrible business decisions for many years to exercise essentially a personal grudge with Google. What can shareholders do? Absolutely nothing. 100% of the power of the company rests in the board, with the sole exception that the shareholders can elect a new board. Once a year. In a company run by a cult of personality, the guy on top essentially makes all the big decisions. Microsoft is Bill Gates' company. Whatever he wants, goes. It doesn't matter if it's a terrible idea, or what will happen to the stock.

Since GW isn't raising capital, and has positive cash flow, the board might not really care about stock prices going up at all. Or they might care a lot, because one of them wants an exit strategy and wants to sell out in 5 years. But then, they might be better off personally or having the company buy back stock (reducing dilution) and then cashing out in 5 years when some new strategy bounces the price of the shares.

And besides, pricing, releases and all that matters not a bit. If you want to be really cynical, it's not even about whether you've ever made money or whether you ever will make money. It's all about the brokerage and your stock promoters, your bundlers and how you're able to convince someone who's never touched a miniature in their life that your business will become 20 times bigger 5 years from now. Maybe get a movie producer to say a few words, and then all the sudden, people are thinking major motion picture, and the stock price quadruples overnight. Then the movie doesn't happen, stock price plummets, but in the meantime, the people who want to sell some stock have done so. It's a very dirty business

I think Azreal means that they dont have the luxury to do what they want IF what they're doing isn't working AND they want to stay in business and be functionally able to continue to do what they want.

Yes, I had though that pretty self evident.

Forgot who I was talking to!

 agnosto wrote:
I think Azreal means that they dont have the luxury to do what they want IF what they're doing isn't working AND they want to stay in business and be functionally able to continue to do what they want.

I guess we're not connecting.

1. GW is in the black and has cash on hand
2. GW doesn't need money and doesn't want to raise money, so it doesn't need to impress investors, except as an exit for insiders
3. Despite whatever contraction, they appear to still be staying profitable.

Given these 3 things, my point is that GW being a public company doesn't matter at all. The board of directors can elect for GW to do what it wants, rather than what makes boatloads of money. They can even do it in the guise that somewhere in the long term there will be boatloads of money because the market will change. My point was that being publicly traded doesn't change anything other than the need to fill out paperwork -- unless there's some chance that you'll have enough shareholders to edge out board control.

At the moment, GW DOES have the luxury of doing what they want (and it can be what they love, not what's more profitable). Will that change one day? Maybe, but probably not any time soon. Certainly not July 28 They sure must have suitcases of cash from somewhere, because all those molds to make the **boatloads** of AdMech and Harlequin releases didn't come cheap.

A better question is, "What does GW want?"

I think: Making cool products for in a midrange hobby catering to people who enjoy painting, modeling and collecting, and playing with those collections.

A decent second question is, "What doesn't GW want?"

I think: to compete with companies that make small scale, games for the eyeballs of customers who primarily want to play small model count games that might or not involve painting, modelling, and collecting.

I don't even believe that, at this point, GW wants to be in that space. They'll cede it to other, smaller competitors (perhaps unwisely) because they don't see it as their core competency or core business. Of course, these are just my thoughts. I have nothing to back it up; only my interpretation of GW's actions. Also, I define "midrange" as something which costs hundreds of dollars a year; something that a person with a stable, average job with extra money can participate in with relatively low barriers to entry. As opposed to a high-priced hobby, such as sailing (where it's expensive and, well, you need a boat) or a low-cost hobby such as hiking (where all you need is a decent pair of shoes).

Apparently what they want is to go out of business.

 Talys wrote:

3. Despite whatever contraction, they appear to still be staying profitable.

When this is no longer true, it will be too late to save the company. You seem to have the attitude that should GW go into the red, they will have the luxury of plenty of time to turn things around. I very highly doubt this assumption.

Also, comparing 40k to sailing to justify it as a "middle" cost hobby? That's some laughable upper-class blindness there. To the rest of us peons, sailing is a hobby for the rich to the ultra-rich; calling it "high-cost" is a huge understatement. For people who want to play with their toys and play fairly with others (not just fill shelves with nice, uniform "product lines"), GW's products are high-cost, meh-value games, and the market seems to be insufficient to support them at the moment.

 Xca|iber wrote:

 Talys wrote:

3. Despite whatever contraction, they appear to still be staying profitable.

When this is no longer true, it will be too late to save the company. You seem to have the attitude that should GW go into the red, they will have the luxury of plenty of time to turn things around. I very highly doubt this assumption.

Also, comparing 40k to sailing to justify it as a "middle" cost hobby? That's some laughable upper-class blindness there. To the rest of us peons, sailing is a hobby for the rich to the ultra-rich; calling it "high-cost" is a huge understatement. For people who want to play with their toys and play fairly with others (not just fill shelves with nice, uniform "product lines"), GW's products are high-cost, meh-value games, and the market seems to be insufficient to support them at the moment.

You greatly overestimate the cost of sailing. My neighbor bought his sailboat on eBay (no joke) for $7,500, drove down to California with a couple of friends and his wife, and sailed it back up the coast to BC. The greatest cost is moorage.

It's actually cheaper for him than *golf* and I spend more on skiing (at least, on a year to year).

You may have sailing confused with yachting. Still, considering moorage, upkeep, and that kind of thing, it will probably cost a couple thousand a year, and the occasional new sail will cost a few hundred bucks, plus insurance and the boating equivalent of AAA (emergency tow insurance).

The way I see it, 40k is a expensive game or a midrange hobby.

To your other point, many companies at someone in their existence go onto the red. It's not the end of the world (or the company).