Alas, I called my FLGS to see if my pre-order was in, and was informed they had not received enough to fulfil the Shadow War preorders. So, now I'm one of the rest of the grumpy kids, sad because I'm missing out.

At the very least, I'm hoping GW takes from this just how badly pent up 40k fans are for a skirmish size game. I didn't even realize I wanted such a thing, but I tried to buy two, so I guess I did.

It's worth mentioning, as appealing as this box set was, have you noticed how unappealing the thought of buying the terrain separately and getting the rules from an Ebook is? I'm not sure why, but doing that, versus the $130 box set, just feels like a let down. I think on some level, I just want Shadow War to be a forever thing, to lure in new players, even though in my own life I really don't need marine scouts or Orks...

I'm surprised they don't do a series of bundle deals on line with an ebook rules, the terrain combo and a choice of opposing kill teams to reap the potential lost sales

I'm surprised they haven't done a variant on that as a starter bundle for 40K for years (1 HQ, 1 Troop, 1 other thing plus Codex for a bundled discount) but clearly they've got some reason not to, or haven't thought of it.

if they sell out they'll do a second run of the set. thats how these things work. I suspect GW may be, pleasently suprised, with the sales figures here

And how happy would they be when they sell more and more kits from all kind of ranges well outside the usual three months window because said kits suddenly get a new game ro be played in? This is not SGs where they have to offer Necro gangs, no, every added team list for a game that uses the regular model line would generate new sales for a moderate amount of effort in the form of supporting it instead of fire and forget. Still not as much as a new release or codex would generate, sure, but those are easily additional sales for everyone not wanting to start whole new army X or plays an army that never gets a codex update. Buying a single box for a team is just so easy to scratch a small itch.

But they need a supported and available game for such spontaneous purchases. 40k isn't that game anymore. SW won't be, it seems.

 davou wrote:
Missed sales when you made all the money that you set out to make is much healthier for a company than unsold product sitting on shelves because you decided to make tons of it 'just in case'.

Once again, this is not necessarily true. It relies on the assumption that the cost of storing, recycling or disposing of leftover copies would exceed the extra revenue gained from however many more they could have sold. It's not at all as simple as 'not selling all of them is bad'.

It also overlooks the knock-on effect of disappointed customers taking their hobby dollars elsewhere as a result of not being able to buy this release.

BrianDavion wrote:
if they sell out they'll do a second run of the set. thats how these things work.

Not if you rely on third parties to produce components for you. Then your second run is at the largesse of those third parties, when they can accommodate your second run, and whether that timeframe makes sense..

If you're making electronics and are updating your products once a year, this isn't too much of a big deal, but if your business model is hyping up the latest thing while moving on the next week/month, a four month delay in restock can make it effectively irrelevant.

 Azreal13 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
if they sell out they'll do a second run of the set. thats how these things work.

Not if you rely on third parties to produce components for you. Then your second run is at the largesse of those third parties, when they can accommodate your second run, and whether that timeframe makes sense..

If you're making electronics and are updating your products once a year, this isn't too much of a big deal, but if your business model is hyping up the latest thing while moving on the next week/month, a four month delay in restock can make it effectively irrelevant.

It could take 4 months just to get a spot, then 2 months to ship the components from China back to GW. Then you got the boat ride for them to get to America for us across the pound.

If that be the case, there might have been an issue with the production itself.

Personally, I see this as an honest !@#$ up. Someone in the line missed communication on the production issue, and there is more then likely an additional issue that came up at the 9th hour that wasn't known.

The local store that I got mine from tells me that the scenery is coming out next week. That means that the current boxed set is going to be refilled when the site says - "Temporarily out of stock."


Feth me, I never thought I would ever defend GW, but I have seen this issue come up first hand in a couple of real world examples. One was, for someone I worked for- about training manuals. The printer was supposed to have cranked out 100, but internally, and not know to us, there was a 50 book limit for printing. We had to go back and revamp the order and got the other 100, after picking up the 50 initial manuals after putting in two more orders. ( And the printer was right next door... 3 buildings down.) We didn't find out about the limit until after the initial order.

Another one is in Project Management, Here is a textbook case of one of those issues that needs to be addressed in a project by the developers. It happens more then you think, every day- in a lot of industries.
Another question not brought up is going to be about different colors for the templates.... (Red? How about other colors,,,are they going to be available and for sale individually in sets?)


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 Lockark wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
if they sell out they'll do a second run of the set. thats how these things work.

Not if you rely on third parties to produce components for you. Then your second run is at the largesse of those third parties, when they can accommodate your second run, and whether that timeframe makes sense..

If you're making electronics and are updating your products once a year, this isn't too much of a big deal, but if your business model is hyping up the latest thing while moving on the next week/month, a four month delay in restock can make it effectively irrelevant.

It could take 4 months just to get a spot, then 2 months to ship the components from China back to GW. Then you got the boat ride for them to get to America for us across the pound.

You beat me to it.

I think it may be a case of the 8th edition release in a few months killing the chance of a full reprint. They can get the digital rules up next week, but if it takes a few months to get a full reprint, then you're edging into the 8th edition release, and GW can't have a fully separate, stand alone game competing with their flagship product.

It sucks, but if you ignore the terrain aspect of the box set, it's still a super low buy in for a game. You're looking at hopefully a $20-30 digital rulebook, free faction rules, and pretty much $30-50 for a faction, depending on what faction you pick. Obviously you need lots of terrain for this game, but presumably people will already have this, or can play at their local store otherwise.

This is the cheapest buy in to 40k available in decades and has tried and tested rules that still hold up, over 20 years after their initial release. For all the negatives about availability, let's keep in mind 2-3 years ago no one would have imagined you could get into a GW game for that price point.

I don't know why people its so surprised that GW failed to do proper market research for this.

They haven't done it in 20 years, they are still learning how to do it

 Grot 6 wrote:
If that be the case, there might have been an issue with the production its

In which case you notify your customers that there was a production issue that limited the number of copies initially available, but that more stock is coming in however long it's going to take.

The fact that that response from GW instead was 'Holy crap, people actualy wanted to buy this thing that they've been asking us for, for the last 15 years! Who knew? '

Which suggests that, no, it wasn't a production issue. They're simply completely out of touch with their customer base.

People say a lot of things, doesn't mean they follow through.

For example, "Bring back the Squats!" Welp, GW did that. How well are the selling?

"Plastic Sisters of Battle!!!" Yeah, that's gonna sell so good...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
People say a lot of things, doesn't mean they follow through.

For example, "Bring back the Squats!" Welp, GW did that. How well are the selling?

"Plastic Sisters of Battle!!!" Yeah, that's gonna sell so good...

When did GW bring back the squats? In "Made for order" format?

I think it is rather odd how we still have people saying that this debacle is some sort of ideal situation and a triumph of risk management.

This was a cluster feth right from the get go. When you sell out worldwide on something that you never advertised as limited (and in fact, went out of your way to make sure everyone saw it as the next big thing), and don't even have a plan in place to release the book digitally until people are screaming for answers, and stores can't even fulfil their orders 'cause no one told them it was limited, then you've done something wrong.

When the biggest stores in the country have used up over half their allotment 5 minutes after opening, something is wrong.

Some of you are making this out to be some sort of calculated move, or something that any business would be proud of. Are you insane? Misleading your stockists (let alone your own retail stores) and engendering anger in your customer base that missed out (because they never thought it'd be limited), is not something a company strives for.

I'm happy to accept that the popularity of this game took them all by surprise - a reoccurring theme in recent months with GW; get it together folks! - but to make it so limited that most people don't get it? That's mind-boggling.

But this was GW's "master plan", and it is something that they should do more of/should be proud of.. get outta town. That's nonsense.

In other news, the place I originally ordered it from is going to be able to complete 70% of their pre-orders. Whether that includes my copy or not I do not know.

 Galas wrote:
When did GW bring back the squats? In "Made for order" format?

He's talking about the sky pirate Dwarfs... sorry, Duardin™.

Of course they're not out yet, so saying "And how well are they selling" is quite disingenuous (typical trait of ol' DD there). And they're not Squats either, so it's a false comparison and even more disingenuity from Johnboy.

Oh, ok, thanks! I tought that I missed some Squat re-release from GW!

And about the Kharadron Overlords... I have seen a good amount of "hype" about them. I expect them to sell well, I think they are from a desing and thematical standpoint the best 100% AoS product line. Very good theme and I think, well executed.

 Galas wrote:
Oh, ok, thanks! I tought that I missed some Squat re-release from GW!

And about the Kharadron Overlords... I have seen a good amount of "hype" about them. I expect them to sell well, I think they are from a desing and thematical standpoint the best 100% AoS product line. Very good theme and I think, well executed.

Here's hoping they ship enough to meet demand. I would consider myself a bit of a GW apologist but there is no question that this has been a badly bungled release and GW's communication which has been much better in recent times, has been very poor on this occasion.
If they had simply said from the start that this was a limited bundle with a rule book coming later, a lot of the problems could have been avoided.
I am sure that GW will do more limited boxed games in the future, but they need to communicate clearly about the nature of the product and have provisions in place if a product proves unusually popular.

I personally think that the "Limited run" was something decided in the last moment, like the drop in cost. I don't know why they did that, because as we have seen, was a absurd movement and a total failure.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
"Plastic Sisters of Battle!!!" Yeah, that's gonna sell so good...

The Dark Eldar and Necron plastic ranges would like to disagree with you.

Are the rules going to be available separately? I'd like to get a 40K scene going in my club, and a squad level skirmish game like Kill Team is the perfect way to do it. Lots of us have old 40K armies but haven't played in several editions. I play/used to play Raven Guard Space Marines, and I have an old Gaunt's Ghosts collection that I didn't know what to do with until now, it would be perfect for Kill Team. And I'd probably expand on them with Victoria Miniatures' Rangers.

None of us play Orcs, and I have all the Scout infantry I could ever desire (~25, being a Raven Guard player), and we're making our own terrain, so I'm not interested in getting a £90 box set just for the rules. But I would buy a complete, separate rulebook in a heartbeat. I'd probably start a Skitarii Kill Team too.

They'll presumably be in the electronic version of the rulebook which GW will gak out at some point in the near future.

Don't expect a free lunch.

 Zethnar wrote:
They'll presumably be in the electronic version of the rulebook which GW will gak out at some point in the near future.

Don't expect a free lunch.

Not asking for one. I'd happily buy a hardback rulebook.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Are the rules going to be available separately? I'd like to get a 40K scene going in my club, and a squad level skirmish game like Kill Team is the perfect way to do it. Lots of us have old 40K armies but haven't played in several editions. I play/used to play Raven Guard Space Marines, and I have an old Gaunt's Ghosts collection that I didn't know what to do with until now, it would be perfect for Kill Team. And I'd probably expand on them with Victoria Miniatures' Rangers.

None of us play Orcs, and I have all the Scout infantry I could ever desire (~25, being a Raven Guard player), and we're making our own terrain, so I'm not interested in getting a £90 box set just for the rules. But I would buy a complete, separate rulebook in a heartbeat. I'd probably start a Skitarii Kill Team too.

No definitive release date, but some people have said digital rules available as soon as next week.

 insaniak wrote:

 Grot 6 wrote:
If that be the case, there might have been an issue with the production its

In which case you notify your customers that there was a production issue that limited the number of copies initially available, but that more stock is coming in however long it's going to take.

The fact that that response from GW instead was 'Holy crap, people actualy wanted to buy this thing that they've been asking us for, for the last 15 years! Who knew? '

Which suggests that, no, it wasn't a production issue. They're simply completely out of touch with their customer base.

You forgot to add this-
Personally, I see this as an honest !@#$ up. Someone in the line missed communication on the production issue, and there is more then likely an additional issue that came up at the 9th hour that wasn't known.

The local store that I got mine from tells me that the scenery is coming out next week. That means that the current boxed set is going to be refilled when the site says - "Temporarily out of stock." Of course, he's saying he's getting at least 2 sets of each, and I of course, ( Being the guy that wanted 2 boxed sets,) told him to drop a few off the truck for me.

Out of touch with not only their fan base, but those same cats that sold this pitch at GAMA, the internal department heads, and of course the online store.

In the grand scheme, they are out of touch, and that illustrious "someones" !@#$ing head needs to roll over this million dollar cock-up.

WE were ( The local game scene) notified about the game 3 weeks beforehand that this was going to be an ongoing product line, from the vary same stockiest. Imagine the crow he was eating Last week and yesterday, when we both found out, almost together that what was sold 3-4 weeks ago was not in fact, going into the plan.

He's not having a laugh when he has got no less then 50 people on deck waiting for the next run, only to find out the little on line tidbit, that was never even in the cards, 3-4 weeks ago. The other store damn near had a riot over it.

I do agree with you, though- Someone over in GW needs to hit the bricks over this one.

FLGS got enough to cover pre orders, but none for the shelf. So you were SOL if you didn't place a preorder. Standing in line would not have helped this morning there....I got my copy, but feel a little guilty, as I did not want it that bad. But I am not one of those eBay scalpers. Nothing in this set has any real rarity, but the hard copy of the rules, apparently. Everything else can be had now, or shortly.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Are the rules going to be available separately? I'd like to get a 40K scene going in my club, and a squad level skirmish game like Kill Team is the perfect way to do it. Lots of us have old 40K armies but haven't played in several editions. I play/used to play Raven Guard Space Marines, and I have an old Gaunt's Ghosts collection that I didn't know what to do with until now, it would be perfect for Kill Team. And I'd probably expand on them with Victoria Miniatures' Rangers.

None of us play Orcs, and I have all the Scout infantry I could ever desire (~25, being a Raven Guard player), and we're making our own terrain, so I'm not interested in getting a £90 box set just for the rules. But I would buy a complete, separate rulebook in a heartbeat. I'd probably start a Skitarii Kill Team too.

THIS game can work with any of the figures. Your going to have to cut and paste them into a workable team, and you might want to keep notes into the tone of the teams you use, for when we need to start building a community section for team development. I have Vic's figures as well. going to put together the Penial Squad I have and see how it goes with a development model for my contribution. I also want to look into getting a Gaunt ghosts team, and Last Chancers team, and a regular straight leg Cadian team. Inquisitorial team- not even a conversation.

In fact I'm going to dig out my Gaunts Gjosts miniatures right now, they're shoved to the back of my computer desk behind all my paints and miniature backlog, underneath the monitor gathering dust.

What would people see as a "fair price" for the rules and tokens? These are the only unique items, no?

My local store doesn't even know if we got any or not, his rep delayed shipment to try to force the store to by troop kits to go with shadow war.

Ehldar wrote:
What would people see as a "fair price" for the rules and tokens? These are the only unique items, no?

Unless you count the red templates, yes. As for fair price - whatever the market will bear. This is another shining example of GW stumbling into an alliance with scalpers. I think the rulebook should be sold by GW in softcover for 25 USD. Seems to be going on ebay for as much as 100 USD. Just the reference card sold for 25 USD.

Ehldar wrote:
What would people see as a "fair price" for the rules and tokens? These are the only unique items, no?

"Fair" id pay 30$ for the book. The tokens I could careless as I can make nice tokens using images online for near nothing

That said,, the rulebook alone has SOLD for 60-90 on ebay so

WH stores are giving away tokens with purchase of $25 or more of cwrtain products (i.e., models you can take in Shadow War).

Just saw this on B&C

BattyBattyBats and Redemption_NL posted pics of some hints of more Sector Mechanicus kits (with new sprues) in the future

The crane is from the oil rig in the April WD Shadow War batrep.

Yes, but it does look like a dedicated kit and not a conversion

As much as those parts may be from additional kits, it's also just as likely something they designed and ultimately decided there wasn't room for in any of the sets. It's kind of like the other set of cities of death tiles GW never released.

Manchu wrote:

Ehldar wrote:
What would people see as a "fair price" for the rules and tokens? These are the only unique items, no?

Unless you count the red templates, yes.

As for fair price - whatever the market will bear.

I like the red templates! Much prettier than my old smoke set.

It'd be nice if GW sold the rules and templates and tokens together as a set. Oh, well.

They should really sell the tokens and rulebook at the very least!

notprop wrote:
Selling out is good, it's how you manage that fortunate situation that governs whether or not is is a success. Now if as I am lead to believe there is distribution stock that is to be made available then they can leverage what will already been seen as a successful release into a great one. It's only day 1 of release, let's see what happens in the new week before declaring ruination and disaster.

There were so many nested quote tags there, I hope I'm attributing the above the right person.

I agree completely with what is above.

The declaration of it being failure is based on the money they missed out on had they known what the real demand for this product would have been, but no one can provide any quantifiable factor that GW could have reliably known in advance to know to produce more, nor have they said anything about how their pet reason (it's obvious people would want it! it's necromunda and people have nostalgia!" or "people want 40k universe with good rules" or whatever) would have been reason enough to make more than their known sales figures for their other stand alone products or their terrain kits.

Yes, they underestimated demand. Now they know. And their "punishment" for figuring out the demand for 40k with different rules was something people wanted is to have blown away their sales goals and set themselves up for meeting that demand with a new version of 40k, an electronic release of the SWA rules and possibly another box or bundle. Yes, they left money on the table. So now they need to figure out how to get as much of that money as possible going forward.

455_PWR wrote:So a few folks got upset. They can buy pdf rules later to use their existing models. Anyone can buy the scenery. Their main games are 40k and aos anyway. Sorry but selling out sw:a isn't going to ruin gw folks, even if a handfull walk away upset.

Exactly. And given what they know quantifiably know about the demand for 40k games using different rules than current 40k, support for a lower model count, cool terrain bundled together, how effective their marketing team was, etc., it could well be that they'll make a plan for new40k that makes it the best selling edition of 40k in the game's history. Their return on investment for their new approach to marketing might be that good.

All the people saying this is so awful for business and they alienated all these customers who wanted one may find themselves totally shocked by future financial reports.

Blackwing530 wrote:QFT. In any publicly owned business, maximizing shareholder wealth is paramount. Another poster above said the same. While perhaps not a failure, per se, this can absolutely be considered a squandered opportunity.

They suceeded in meeting their goals with the SWA product, but are in the process of possibly squandering the opportunity to make more. It's possible that they'll get a digital copy out fast enough and offer some cobbled together version or a bundle or something and still capture much of that money. Or a lot of that money will still be there to be captured by new40k.

streetsamurai wrote:Calling a succes selling out a product when there is a lot of angry customers who aren't able to purchase it, shows an alarming lack of business sense.

I think that's totally over estimating the effect of these angry customers. Odds are the number angry enough to hurt GW's bottom line is really, really low and many of them will be offered something they want in the near future.

But just for the amount of ill will and bad publicity that this has generarted, it is far from a success. At least, lest hope that this force GW to change some of its pratices, and that they start to do that weird arcane thing that is market research.

I'll ask this again, what form of market research would you suggest for figuring out that the demand for this would have been higher than sales levels of their other stand alone products? Furthermore this research needs to be such that you can actually make decisions based on it and it needs to show that they should ignore their internal sales data for stand alone games. And on top of that, it needs to be done in a time line that allows them to make meaningful production decisions in advance of the launch date. And as well, it needs to not be based on hindsight. The fact that we know now that there was greater demand, does not mean it was something that could actually be known in advance.

The funny thing is that you are talking about market research as if it is an arcane spell they can cast and suddenly know to ignore their previous sales numbers and make more of something just because of our current position of hindsight. You are asking for a magic trick.

Starfarer wrote:I think it may be a case of the 8th edition release in a few months killing the chance of a full reprint. They can get the digital rules up next week, but if it takes a few months to get a full reprint, then you're edging into the 8th edition release, and GW can't have a fully separate, stand alone game competing with their flagship product.

This. I believe Mikhaila's trade sales rep who said this was a tiding over project before the new edition.

It sucks, but if you ignore the terrain aspect of the box set, it's still a super low buy in for a game. You're looking at hopefully a $20-30 digital rulebook, free faction rules, and pretty much $30-50 for a faction, depending on what faction you pick. Obviously you need lots of terrain for this game, but presumably people will already have this, or can play at their local store otherwise.

This is the cheapest buy in to 40k available in decades and has tried and tested rules that still hold up, over 20 years after their initial release. For all the negatives about availability, let's keep in mind 2-3 years ago no one would have imagined you could get into a GW game for that price point.

It's actually really quite shocking how good of a value the whole thing is. If you make your own terrain (remember when that was part of the hobby?) or go in on it with others or use club or store terrain, then this is one of the cheapest ways to do 40k in the history of the game.

Galas wrote:I don't know why people its so surprised that GW failed to do proper market research for this.

They haven't done it in 20 years, they are still learning how to do it

See my questions above on what kind of market research would be needed to actually know to make more of these boxes in advance.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I think it is rather odd how we still have people saying that this debacle is some sort of ideal situation and a triumph of risk management.

It's not a "triumph of risk management." Risk management is an explanation of their decision making process. And it goes to show you that without hindsight and results oriented thinking, GW's process is sound in this area. They did the right thing given what they could have known and now have to deal with the reality of having gotten their assessment of the demand wrong, but without any real means of knowing what the real demand would be without trying. Without releases a product like this to test the waters and see.

When the biggest stores in the country have used up over half their allotment 5 minutes after opening, something is wrong.

Yes. They got their demand assessment wrong when it comes to a game where there was no real way of knowing what it should be without trying a product release out to see what the demand is really like.

Some of you are making this out to be some sort of calculated move, or something that any business would be proud of. Are you insane?

The only insanity I see is people expecting GW to be psychic. Or to cast some sort of "market research" incantation to somehow know what they should have done. From a position of hind sight. That's the only delusion here. Are you insane?

Misleading your stockists (let alone your own retail stores)

Being wrong is not misleading your stockists. They actually thought their production run would be sufficient or they would have made a larger one. No one lied to anyone.

and engendering anger in your customer base that missed out (because they never thought it'd be limited)

How would they have gotten it if they knew it was limited? It would have still sold out in preorder exactly the same. Or maybe even faster. This makes no sense.

But this was GW's "master plan", and it is something that they should do more of/should be proud of.. get outta town. That's nonsense.

It is never nonsense to consider your margins and return on capital when launching a product. It is never nonsense to consider the sales numbers of other products in your line when making a new product. GW has their sales data of both their stand along games and their terrain kits to take into consideration.

The product designers, the rules team, the marketing team and the 3d designers who worked on the terrain should all be proud of what they have accomplished.

I would even go so far as to say whoever made the decision to make the smaller print run should also be proud of themselves. They made the right decision with the information they had. Even if some angry people on the internet with 20/20 hindsight can point out they made too few. You need to be disciplined when it comes to product runs. Especially when the majority of your revenue comes from the splash period of a new release. Why?

I really don't think it's true that everyone who missed out on this product now has a bunch of money that GW will somehow never get. If they want GW's products so bad that they feel angry about missing out on something that was so popular, something tells me GW can come up with something that will meet their demand. It's been a fething weekend. The release date for this game was earlier today!

What they do going forward is going to be about how much gravy they can get. How much of that missed demand (over and above their goals for the product) they can still capture. And how to factor this release into their plan for new40k. They can still get the digital rules out, maybe make a print run of books, make some terrain bundles, whatever. And they can also make sure they do the same thing in terms of marketing, social media usage, and so forth when it comes to new40k. As well as taking into consideration how positively people responded to the rules that support a lower model count when making their game that also needs to scale up into a larger model count.



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Manchu wrote:They should really sell the tokens and rulebook at the very least!

If and only if the turn around time will have it not conflict with a new40k release later this year. If it would, they are better off making sure to include small model count play as a feature of new40k and accomplish what this game does within new40k itself.

If they can find a printer (preferably one with an existing relationship) to rush print and ship their additional books and counters, then by all means I think they should do so. And since they then have those, they may as well run off some boxes and sprues and make more of the game boxes to sell. But only if it doesn't disrupt production for a future product and certainly not if it drags this game into new40k hype season as a distraction.

Ya know ... these narrow, multi-level catwalks don't have a ton of relevence to 40k proper. The existence of the kits themselves seems to point to bigger plans for Shadow War or some kind of skirmish game than a simple hijacking of Necromunda for a splash release.

Is there any Shadow War branding on any of the terrain releases? All the images so far make them look like general 40k pieces.

I think many people are just a bit miffed about the size of gap between what GW thought they could sell versus demand. It just seems to be very large.

I take the points that they don't want unsold stock and that GW are not psychic.

It sucks that people can't get the box set when they wanted it. And that GW messed up and made too few for the demand.

I get why people are angry, I really do. I just don't think this was actually avoidable without asking GW to be able to know things they could not have known, but we now know with the aid of hindsight.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Is there any Shadow War branding on any of the terrain releases? All the images so far make them look like general 40k pieces.

My point was, multi-level catwalks have very limited mechanical relevance in 40k - these kits seemed to have been designed for a skirmish game rather than a battles game.

We have a new contender for 'Donkey Cave Of The Year'...

http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/302277824703?_mwBanner=1

the kit if build like on the box cover is actually unusable in 40k
as it count as difficult terrain and you need very good dice rolls to climb 2 levels in one turn.

Maybe in 7th is is but with 8th round the corner. It wouldn't supise me if it was fine in 8th

 frozenwastes wrote:
I just don't think this was actually avoidable without asking GW to be able to know things they could not have known, but we now know with the aid of hindsight.

I think you are pushing it a bit past credibility here. This isn't a case of a minor miscalculation, as for example when GW was caught by surprise by the demand for Genestealer Cult dice. Or when they were shocked by the demand for Skavenblight dice. Or when the demand for Dwarfs Giants dice baffled them. Wait, how many times can you claim to be surprised about the same damn thing happening over and over before it's obvious to everyone that you aren't actually surprised? But yeah, anyway, this wasn't a minor miscalculation, where 1000 people wanted something GW thought only 500 people would want. There appears to be a yawning chasm between supply and demand in this case.

I honestly wonder if this was initially planned as a limited release with X units. Then, after some fraction of X had been produced, the idea was rethought - maybe because the box was considered too cheap, maybe because somebody thought it should be marketed differently or that it would conflict too much with more important releases, or whatever reason - and so the rest of the production was halted. But of course GW would still need to sell through whatever they made. The GAMA presentation, the nature of the terrain kits, even the giant oil rig presented in WD ... none of this adds up to the conclusion that this was supposed to be one and done or that the company not only had no idea of how popular it could be but also could not have had any idea that it would be so popular.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We have a new contender for 'Donkey Cave Of The Year'...

http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/302277824703?_mwBanner=1

Which seems shocking until you see that there are 18 bids on this lot...

http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/Warhammer-40-000-Shadow-War-Armageddon-Rulebook-Tokens-Templates-Dice-/262928733333?_trkparms=aid%253D222007%2526algo%253DSIC.MBE%2526ao%253D1%2526asc%253D20150519202351%2526meid%253Dcd926511e2db44959f3824e05c6f6cbe%2526pid%253D100408%2526rk%253D4%2526rkt%253D25%2526sd%253D302277527068&_trksid=p2056116.c100408.m2460

People are indeed stoopid it seems. I shall commission a T-Shirt.

What do you think is wrong with that listing?

Forty quid for a soft back book that could be made available at any point this week is a bit premature, oh and a box.

 notprop wrote:
Forty quid for a soft back book that could be made available at any point this week is a bit premature, oh and a box.

Well that has contents at least and it's just people bidding it up, the starting price was only 99p. The other one Johnny posted was an empty box, nothing but the box, and asking 5 quid buy it now price for it.

The question of whether or not selling out that quickly on a product is a business success or not is focusing on totally the wrong area IMHO.

The purpose of a product like this is not necessarily to make a profit in and of itself, but to act as a gateway drug. Two scenarios of the top of my head.

Scenario 1): Little Timmy walks into his FLGS and sees this cool looking terrain all setup with guys playing. Little Timmy asks his parents if he can have it, and hey £80 for a fully self-contained game isn't too bad. 6-months down the line some of the little Timmies will be badgering for more terrain, new teams and maybe the rules for this "40k" game, which won't cost them anything extra, honest, because he's already got the models to use.

Scenario 2): Older Jadenim missed out on the original Necromunda, but all the grognards on the net make out that it was the best thing since sliced bread. I've got a bunch of mates who hardly play 40k now, because it takes hours to setup, play and tear down and they have families and whatnot, but a short skirmish game is something we can probably work with. And hey, get some cool new terrain that I can bolt on to my existing Cities of Death. Hmm might want to get some Haemotrope reactors and pipes whilst I'm at it too. And I've always fancied those Skitarii models, but there is no way I'm starting another army. A little Killteam wouldn't hurt though, would it?


Tell me how the profitability (or not) of Shwarma as a single box is any way relevant to either of those, particularly in comparison to the importance of continuing availability?

Rulebook + tokens + templates + dice ... sure 40 GBP would be steep for RRP on an in-stock, non-limited product. I'm not saying the going prices on ebay are reasonable but I don't find them shocking or see them as grounds to call the bidders stupid - especially given that folks following this very closely have no reason to believe a reprint of that book is coming anytime soon, and certainly not this week.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jadenim wrote:
Shwarma

Delicious.

 frozenwastes wrote:

I'll ask this again, what form of market research would you suggest for figuring out that the demand for this would have been higher than sales levels of their other stand alone products? Furthermore this research needs to be such that you can actually make decisions based on it and it needs to show that they should ignore their internal sales data for stand alone games. And on top of that, it needs to be done in a time line that allows them to make meaningful production decisions in advance of the launch date. And as well, it needs to not be based on hindsight. The fact that we know now that there was greater demand, does not mean it was something that could actually be known in advance..

They could have released trial rules through White Dwarf or the website to judge potential interest through the downloads. They could have run leagues through their stores. They could have visited trade shows and gaming conventions with preview copies, run gaming sessions and taken pre-sales from retailers. They could have held retailer information sessions where they talked about their upcoming releases and confirmed potential customer interest with the people who actually deal with said customers day in, day out. They could have opened up pre-orders early enough to actually queue up extra production if necessary. And most obviously, they could have spent some time interacting with their customers, at which point it would have been made apparent very quickly that said customers have been asking for small-scale skirmish rules for 40K for a very long time, and that the Necromunda rules are widely regarded as perfect for that purpose.






Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The other one Johnny posted was an empty box, nothing but the box, and asking 5 quid buy it now price for it.

The listing is at least very clear that it is just the empty box. That and the low Buy It Now price suggest that it's legitimately there on the off-chance that someone would like the box enough to part with a few quid for one. Which does happen.

If it was intended as a scam, it wouldn't have had the Buy It Now, and the fact that it's just an empty box would have been buried in the description in the hope that people would miss it and bid up to something stupid for it thinking it was the full product.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
We have a new contender for 'Donkey Cave Of The Year'...

http://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/302277824703?_mwBanner=1

Whats wrong with that?

The person makes it absolutely clear in the header that it is an empty box.

 frozenwastes wrote:
It sucks that people can't get the box set when they wanted it. And that GW messed up and made too few for the demand.

I get why people are angry, I really do. I just don't think this was actually avoidable without asking GW to be able to know things they could not have known, but we now know with the aid of hindsight.

Crazy idea, I know, but...how about extending the pre-order period?

Having pre-orders start one week before release is pretty pointless. Either it sells out in minutes and you can't get it unless you were sitting on their website waiting for it to go live (and sometimes not even then), or it isn't such a hot seller and you can just pick it up at the store a week later anyway with no real need to pre-order in the first place. Having pre-orders start far enough in advance can give GW a better idea of what the demand for the product is like.

Or they could just not do limited release boxed games?

I don't mind the odd 'one and done' miniature, as you don't miss out on much if it's gone before you get into gear.

But a game like this? Please, no more. I mean, it's not as if they won't be selling most of the components separately, is it?

For a higher price, yeah. The terrain kits are insanely expensive by themselves and cost a lot more than the boxed game does. And you don't get the rules, tokens, or any other actual gaming stuff with it.

I'm also one of the ones who likes having a physical rulebook. Don't really feel like bringing my tablet to game with. So if the rules are strictly digital only then I can't be bothered, honestly.

I wonder if it would be feasible for GW to set up in-house printing. They do ship quite a lot of paper lately.

 insaniak wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
The other one Johnny posted was an empty box, nothing but the box, and asking 5 quid buy it now price for it.

The listing is at least very clear that it is just the empty box. That and the low Buy It Now price suggest that it's legitimately there on the off-chance that someone would like the box enough to part with a few quid for one. Which does happen.

If it was intended as a scam, it wouldn't have had the Buy It Now, and the fact that it's just an empty box would have been buried in the description in the hope that people would miss it and bid up to something stupid for it thinking it was the full product.

Yeah I never said it was a scam, I was just pointing out the difference between asking 5 quid for an empty box and asking 99p for the box, rules and templates and it getting bidded up to 40 quid.

Even though lots of people here seem horny over the terrain more than anything, I'm sure there's plenty of people who just want the rules in print form even if it means paying a bit more for them.

 insaniak wrote:

They could have released trial rules through White Dwarf or the website to judge potential interest through the downloads.

This is something that could have been done in the planning stages of the project. It would however, need even more lead time as White Dwarf has lead times as well. That said, would there be any actual usable data in terms of production runs? How do they interpret the number of downloads? What are they comparing them to? Despite there actually being a quantity (the number of downloads), I don't think you can make interpretations of that number until you have a baseline to use for comparison and a proven correlation between downloads and sales.

They could have run leagues through their stores.

So they need to do the game development work in advance (enough to run a league, not just demos of a simplified version) and run the league to its completion and then analyze participation rate? Sales of unit box sets to league participants? What kind of participation do you need to increase the supply for the launch? Again, there's no base line. How many units of the box set do you increase the production run if the average participation in each store is 3.7 players? What does it mean if the opening week had an average of 3.2 players, the middle week 5.1 and the final week 4.7? How long does it need to go for with regular attendance before you increase production?

They could have visited trade shows and gaming conventions with preview copies, run gaming sessions and taken pre-sales from retailers.

So they need to do the design and tooling enough to make the plastic terrain and run off their preview sprues, so there may be a timing issue here as now they are increasing the time between the completion of design and full production to allow for an increased amount of time spent on promotions and sales (and whether or not a suitable trade show and time to close sales based on interest and leads gathered there). At least in this case they'd end up with an actual firm number of placed orders from real trade clients. This one is actually useful in deciding to print at least that many plus what's needed based on normal sales levels for similar products in their webstore.

Timing is a big issue though as they'd need to take these extra perorders into consideration before they schedule time with whoever produced the rules and tokens. So the typical retailer might ask when this comes out and when the answer is next quarter, they might not really want to place a special preorder so far in advance. I think most would be like "is this going to be in your normal ordering system for new products? Cool. I'll order it then."

They could have held retailer information sessions where they talked about their upcoming releases and confirmed potential customer interest with the people who actually deal with said customers day in, day out.

At that convention? Or conference calls? Or have additional trade sales team members added to call each account for a chat? And what kind of answers would you need to add copies to the production run over and above the sales levels of other terrain kits or stand alone games? "Oh yeah, I think that'd be a cool product." Well that's nice. Should we produce twice as many as Bloodbowl because a handful of retailers who happen to respond or attend the seminar say it sounds good?

They could have opened up pre-orders early enough to actually queue up extra production if necessary.

I'm not sure how many stores want to make preorders for things before things go off to printers and a container of books starts being packed up in China. These things have huge lead times. So you're going to not get a firm answer from a good portion of your trade accounts. And you'd be asking your trade sales team to get preorders for things that aren't yet available rather than making real cash generating sales for the current new release.

And most obviously, they could have spent some time interacting with their customers, at which point it would have been made apparent very quickly that said customers have been asking for small-scale skirmish rules for 40K for a very long time, and that the Necromunda rules are widely regarded as perfect for that purpose.

I think that might be the opinion of a few die hards on some forums, but I'm guessing the majority of their customers have never played Necromunda and wouldn't have been able to tell them anything about it.

But still, how do you use that to make decisions about production numbers? The guys on the internet like Necromunda? Print quadruple the supply! Who cares if our own internal numbers for Necromunda's last sales run wasn't that impressive. The people on the internet like it! There's just no grounds for a meaningful decision here without hindsight.

Hindsight tells us they made too few, but there really isn't an credible way they could have justified the risk of a larger print run. When you take the portion that goes through trade sales and their own cost of retailing into consideration, the damage an extra 25% that just sits there does to the overall margins and return on capital of the investment is huge. You need real facts to justify a larger production run.

That said, they need to start doing at least some of the things you suggest so they can start having useful baselines to compare. They put out all sorts of PDF rules for the other 40k factions, so now the next time they do something like that, they can actually compare download rates with something. So that's a start. Many of your ideas would certainly work for future products, but only when you have enough information to actually make meaningful decisions. Hopefully as the transition away from Kirby's approach to customer and retailer communication continues, they'll start setting up some of these base lines and can start making meaningful decisions based on them. Wouldn't have helped for this project though.

 Sidstyler wrote:
For a higher price, yeah. The terrain kits are insanely expensive by themselves and cost a lot more than the boxed game does. And you don't get the rules, tokens, or any other actual gaming stuff with it.

I'm also one of the ones who likes having a physical rulebook. Don't really feel like bringing my tablet to game with. So if the rules are strictly digital only then I can't be bothered, honestly.

£90 vs £80?

I know you get a lot of other stuff thrown in, but if you're just interested in the scenery then buying separately probably works out roughly the same

We also don't know how many people really missed out on this because of the lack of supply. If they made 10,000 copies and 2500 people missed out, that could account for all the complaining about stock levels but still mean that had they gone with 20,000 copies, the whole project could have gone from a success to a failure with 7,500 copies sitting there. And if your instinct is to reply with "well then 13,000 copies would obviously have been the right amount" that would be a perfect example of an illusion of expertise through hindsight.

The smart thing is probably to make the copies you know you can sell within your expected time frame and then respond to additional demand as required. GW now has a new data point in terms of the rate of sales of a 40k based smaller model count game. Hopefully they learn from that going forward.

 frozenwastes wrote:

But still, how do you use that to make decisions about production numbers?

You use your 30+ years of accrued sales and marketing data to extrapolate from the quantity of people expressing an interest in a given product to the expected quantity of sales said expressed interest is statistically likely to translate into and work from there, I would imagine.

Much as I think the majority of complaints about GW are for the sake of complaining ... they pretty clearly ballsed up on this one, however it's looked at.

Demand was clearly way over what they thought and they should have gauged it better

Hopefully they are beginning to see that stuff like this is actually deserving of major future investment

 frozenwastes wrote:
We also don't know how many people really missed out on this because of the lack of supply. If they made 10,000 copies and 2500 people missed out, that could account for all the complaining about stock levels but still mean that had they gone with 20,000 copies, the whole project could have gone from a success to a failure with 7,500 copies sitting there. .

Would it?

How much do those 7500 units cost them in manufacturing and storage, compared to the profit margin on the 2500 extra copies that would have sold in your hypothetical?

Remember to factor in that most of the contents of those 7500 units can actually be recycled into other product codes if they turn out to be surplus to needs.

@ HMV

Printing in the UK is not economical compared china to the point where allot of type of print types aren't don't here anymore.

That's not to say there aren't printers here but given the demand and opportunity for this they might be a fair trade off cost against programme and revenue, assuming they can find one with available resources.

 notprop wrote:
@ HMV
Printing in the UK is not economical compared china to the point where allot of type of print types aren't don't here anymore.

GW does not print in China any more, they do it in Poland

They seem to do a lot of their printing in the UK from what I understand. Just picking up a few books on my desk to see:

GHB - printed in the UK,
GA: Order - printed in the UK,
White Dwarf - UK
Deathwatch Overkill - China

Those are all 2016 publications. The Deathwatch Overkill book has a different finish to the AoS books (gloss vs matte finish). The SW:A book seemed more akin to the AoS books in terms of finish.

insaniak wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:

But still, how do you use that to make decisions about production numbers?

You use your 30+ years of accrued sales and marketing data to extrapolate from the quantity of people expressing an interest in a given product to the expected quantity of sales said expressed interest is statistically likely to translate into and work from there, I would imagine.

Make some sort of appeal to sales data from products sold 10, 20 or even 30 years ago despite it not necessarily having any relevance now? Just extrapolate based on "expressed interest" when they have nothing to compare it to? And no way to know the degree to which expressed interest translates into sales given the changes over those 30 years in terms of technology, how product is distributed, their new marketing plan, social media and so forth? I see. So no actual methodology then? I'm sorry if this sounds sarcastic, but I think you're giving GW way too much credit it terms of the information they have and what they can do with it.

How do you statistically analyze "expressed interest" and come up with actual production numbers when methods of communication are being used that weren't even in place 6 months ago? And how do you use the sales and "expressed interest" analysis from the time when Kirby was intentionally opposed to customer and retailer communication?

insaniak wrote:
Would it?

How much do those 7500 units cost them in manufacturing and storage, compared to the profit margin on the 2500 extra copies that would have sold in your hypothetical?

We can look at cost of goods sold, their production cost, the standard retailer discount, GW's own retail costs and a bunch of other data from their latest financials and do some quick math. GW has outlined what percentage goes through which sales channel and the expenses for that channel. We also know their standard retailer discount. We can use this to arrive at an portion per £ sold as a baseline. Then it's just a matter of multiplying our arbitrary numbers in different situations to see what effect unsold copies would have. We would figure out the revenue GW would get per sales channel based on the average costs of those channels. And the costs they would incur by having expenses related to sales but without the revenue by sales channel.

I promise you GW did this. The guy running the company is a chartered managerial accountant and that whole discipline is about how to use financial information to make meaningful decisions. They did so but with their far more specific and accurate internal data. And their actual sales data for similar products.

They just had no way of backing up any assertion that demand would be higher. They're missing a bunch of the metrics that would make some of your suggestions useful because they rely on comparisons and interpretations. They should start doing those sorts of things so they can hone in on their production numbers even better, but that wouldn't have helped them here.

Remember to factor in that most of the contents of those 7500 units can actually be recycled into other product codes if they turn out to be surplus to needs.

Not if they've been distributed to retail locations across the world and are just sitting there. Then you've got an administrative nightmare to bring them back in and tear them open and repack them. I'm also not sure they necessarily want to stock 7500 scout squads or 7500 ork squads.

Let me know what you actually disagree with:

GW made an analysis of their internal sales data and arrived at a production number for this product.

They underestimated demand and made too few (though how many more would suffice is impossible to say as we don't know either their production run or their actual shortfall)

People are expecting them to have fixed the issue immediately. They didn't leave a plan or person in place to respond immediately so it took a bit for them to start talking about making more sets or putting the rules up as a digital product.

I suspect it's this one:

GW used the information they had available to make the best decision possible in terms of a production run. And they were wrong only because of demand they could not have seen coming. They still did the right thing in terms of the data they had to work with at the time. And keeping with a disciplined approach to allocating capital to new projects. Now that they know, they can respond. They could not have before.

And possibly this:

GW's current management probably shouldn't be blamed for their lack of market research information and data that can be used for comparisons to actually make a model of interest to help with production estimates as the company just exited a period where the guy running it was expressly against having this information and actually liked surprising both retailers and customers with each release rather than using the releases to gain useful information.

 Bottle wrote:
They seem to do a lot of their printing in the UK from what I understand. Just picking up a few books on my desk to see:

GHB - printed in the UK,
GA: Order - printed in the UK,
White Dwarf - UK
Deathwatch Overkill - China

Those are all 2016 publications. The Deathwatch Overkill book has a different finish to the AoS books (gloss vs matte finish). The SW:A book seemed more akin to the AoS books in terms of finish.

It's printed by panda game manufacturing in China, so it says on my gold leaf rulebook

 frozenwastes wrote:
We also don't know how many people really missed out on this because of the lack of supply.

Given how quickly it sold out in spite of being 1 per customer, I'm going to say quite a few (especially if you consider a lot of people wanted to buy multiples).

Either that or the GW customer base are extremely well trained puppies sitting at their computers hitting the refresh button just at the right moment every saturday morning I'm sure there's some element of that, but I'd have my money on a good twice as many sales could have been made if they'd made twice as many and upped the limit to, say, 3 per customer instead of 1.

From Panda's website:

How long does it take to complete a project?

...
6 to 16 weeks for Mass production (Full-scale production commences, components are shipped to our main assembly base, printed components are climatized, quality assurance is conducted)
4 to 7 weeks for Shipping to North America or Europe

http://pandagm.com/question/how-long-does-it-take-to-complete-a-project/

GW could not have turned on a dime and promised immediately to have new copies if getting new books might take 10 weeks.

Presuming there is no queue

 frozenwastes wrote:
GW could not have turned on a dime and promised immediately to have new copies if getting new books might take 10 weeks.

Of course not, the best they could have done was turn around and say "we're looking at manufacturing more but it'll be several months away, we'll have more updates later this week".

Vorian wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
They seem to do a lot of their printing in the UK from what I understand. Just picking up a few books on my desk to see:

GHB - printed in the UK,
GA: Order - printed in the UK,
White Dwarf - UK
Deathwatch Overkill - China

Those are all 2016 publications. The Deathwatch Overkill book has a different finish to the AoS books (gloss vs matte finish). The SW:A book seemed more akin to the AoS books in terms of finish.

It's printed by panda game manufacturing in China, so it says on my gold leaf rulebook

Thanks for the heads up. I wonder what that means for the chances of a second print run.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
We also don't know how many people really missed out on this because of the lack of supply.

Given how quickly it sold out in spite of being 1 per customer, I'm going to say quite a few (especially if you consider a lot of people wanted to buy multiples).

Either that or the GW customer base are extremely well trained puppies sitting at their computers hitting the refresh button just at the right moment every saturday morning I'm sure there's some element of that, but I'd have my money on a good twice as many sales could have been made if they'd made twice as many and upped the limit to, say, 3 per customer instead of 1.

That's entirely possible, but we don't know. Sadly GW doesn't even really know as they may have lots of hits on the website but they might not be able to extrapolate their conversion ratio and they also stupidly didn't do something like have a thing where you click to be notified when it's back in stock. They also can't really know how many people showed up at various retailers around the world and left without a product as most of that likely won't get reported. Maybe they'll ask their own store managers and some larger trade partners and make some estimates. Something tells me though that GW employees won't be that keen to spend that much time collecting data to prove how badly they screwed up. Bad for the career.

Yep, they missed out on money they could have made had these been more available. The question is how much of that money can they still capture with either the digital version, the terrain kits sold individually (or possibly in bundles at a discount) and new releases that will satisfy people as an alternative thing to spend their money on.

If they're smart they will make new40k scratch the Shadow War Armageddon itch right out of the box. Capture all this demand plus new40k demand.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
GW could not have turned on a dime and promised immediately to have new copies if getting new books might take 10 weeks.

Of course not, the best they could have done was turn around and say "we're looking at manufacturing more but it'll be several months away, we'll have more updates later this week".

And if several months away is either a big "Coming Storm" release for 40k or perhaps even the launch of a new edition of 40k, are they going to want to split their marketing focus to sell more SWA at the same time?

If GW DIDN'T predict this quick sell out...Sheesh. What they are paying so much for market department? Those get more salary than game designers and would have to be pretty grossly incompetent if they didn't realize this would sell like hot cake.

Maybe GW should consider putting some of their game designers as marketers. Might do better job at it than the "pro" marketing staff.

It went out of stock on the UK store, then came back into stock (presumably because they ordered another production run). Warhammer Community says the rules "will be made more widely available". But you all seem to think its Limited Edition? Has it gone out of stock in the US?

 frozenwastes wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
GW could not have turned on a dime and promised immediately to have new copies if getting new books might take 10 weeks.

Of course not, the best they could have done was turn around and say "we're looking at manufacturing more but it'll be several months away, we'll have more updates later this week".

And if several months away is either a big "Coming Storm" release for 40k or perhaps even the launch of a new edition of 40k, are they going to want to split their marketing focus to sell more SWA at the same time?

I'm sure they could arrange it so it's not in the window of a conflicting release. Like, release it in the same window as an AoS release or a Blood Bowl release. They could also do it as a midweek release.

It might be awkward if they are genuinely releasing a full new edition of 40k a week before the orders come in from China (assuming they are done in China and can't be fast tracked in the UK based on volume of people who asked to be notified or even put in a preorder system, as far as I'm aware it's only the printing that was done in China, not the whole set).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
It went out of stock on the UK store, then came back into stock (presumably because they ordered another production run).

I doubt it was another production run, it was probably more likely a website glitch from the webstore being overloaded as the website was also being sketchy and dropping out at the time.

Sometimes stock is reserved when someone starts placing an order, so stock level goes down, and when those people don't or can't actually place the order a short time later the stock becomes available again.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
It went out of stock on the UK store, then came back into stock (presumably because they ordered another production run). Warhammer Community says the rules "will be made more widely available". But you all seem to think its Limited Edition? Has it gone out of stock in the US?

The problem seems to be with some Dakkanauts that they can't distinguish between a "Limited Edition" (an intended one time offer) and a limited print run (a fact of most game related manufacturing processes) only ever seeing the word limited and then flying into a tizz.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I'm sure they could arrange it so it's not in the window of a conflicting release. Like, release it in the same window as an AoS release or a Blood Bowl release. They could also do it as a midweek release.

Absolutely.

It might be awkward if they are genuinely releasing a full new edition of 40k a week before the orders come in from China (assuming they are done in China and can't be fast tracked in the UK based on volume of people who asked to be notified or even put in a preorder system, as far as I'm aware it's only the printing that was done in China, not the whole set).

If I was them, I'd go with digital only for the full rulebook in their epub3 format and ibooks as soon as possible and then offer a bundle of the terrain and orks and scouts at the same price as before and have it be direct only and include the digital version as well. Then go with a limited run of UK printed books for their web store, their stores and trade sales. A conservative run at a very high price relative to the digital version.

 frozenwastes wrote:

Make some sort of appeal to sales data from products sold 10, 20 or even 30 years ago despite it not necessarily having any relevance now?
.

If spending 30 years selling a product doesn't give you some insight into ongoing trends and what is and isn't likely to sell, you would have to be either deliberately not paying attention, or just in the wrong line of work...

 insaniak wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:

Make some sort of appeal to sales data from products sold 10, 20 or even 30 years ago despite it not necessarily having any relevance now?
.

If spending 30 years selling a product doesn't give you some insight into ongoing trends and what is and isn't likely to sell, you would have to be either deliberately not paying attention, or just in the wrong line of work...

Again, no methodology.

I'm guessing from GW's improving sales figures and their maintenance of their really impressive margins that they do indeed know how to figure out how many products to produce.

Don't know why it's so hard to accept they got blindsided here but that their general approach to figuring out how much to make is based on their own internal data and has been working for them. That they made the right call with what they could have known and that hindsight is 20/20.

Then why was no one told it was limited?



On another note, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster?

Why was no one told it was in infinite production?

 notprop wrote:
Why was no one told it was in infinite production?

If you're going to debate in bad faith, don't debate at all.

If they'd mentioned it was a splash release when they first showed it off, then the whole debate would be very different.

That's what's peeved me. My copy is on its way, but now the campaign I planned to run at the club may not happen, because I think I'm the only one who bagged a copy.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I'm guessing from GW's improving sales figures and their maintenance of their really impressive margins that they do indeed know how to figure out how many products to produce.

Those two things aren't necessarily directly related.

And they've held their hands up on this one.

Which is nice. Not 'sorry about that, we'll get more copies made ASAP' nice, but nice all the same.

Absolutely they held their hand up. This isn't the GW from a few years ago.

I still think they'll keep the spin generally positive though and pretend that whatever solution to the unexpected demand they come up with is the best thing ever even if it's not what everyone necessarily thinks is best.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 notprop wrote:
Why was no one told it was in infinite production?

If you're going to debate in bad faith, don't debate at all.

He's not. He's making a good point by flipping your statement around.

Early he mentioned people also don't seem to understand the difference between limited edition and limited (which all products that aren't print on demand are).

Anyone who wants more of the terrain will be able to buy it. Same goes for the models.

For the rules, people might have to settle for an electronic version.

And the discount on bundling it all together? That might be gone as well. Or they may make an item in their online store that offers a discount like the box set.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
On another note, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/01/shadow-war-armageddon-pre-order-and-downloads/

Theres also a download tab on the Shadow War page in the UK store.

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Shadow-War-Armageddon-ENG

Apparently the core rules and rosters for Space Marines, Orks and Astra Militarum are currently only available in the box set, but Warhammer Community says the rules will be made more widely available soon.

I hope so, I have Raven Guard and Gaunt's Ghosts. I don't want the box set, but if they make the rules available I'll probably buy and convert a squad of Catachans, and get a Techpriest (the old metal one) and maybe some Ogryns to bulk out my Ghosts. So GW will still be making sales by making the rules available seperately.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If they'd mentioned it was a splash release when they first showed it off, then the whole debate would be very different.

That's what's peeved me. My copy is on its way, but now the campaign I planned to run at the club may not happen, because I think I'm the only one who bagged a copy.

you need to have multiple copies of a bunch of cardboard tokens to play a game? The only thing REQUIRED in that box to play your campaign is the book, which will be available very soon independent of the boxed game; and even if it wasn't I see people all the time playing games without official books, either via borrowing or outright downloading them.

 notprop wrote:
Why was no one told it was in infinite production?

Since you seem to be struggling with the topic of the discussion I will copy and paste the following from GW's webstore.

"£80
Description

This product will be released in stores on Saturday 8th April but is no longer available for pre-order here. Find your local store.

Available while stocks last!"

Highlighted the relevant section, also if you bothered to read the thread you may have seen Wayland confirm this was a limited release.

As for your inane and irrelevant straw man, I assume that you must have been in shops or made online purchases as such you would have seen that regular products are the norm and as such only limited products that are outside the norm are listed as such.

We play a game called This is Not a Test which is a skirmish warband game very similar to Necromunda, and inspired by Fallout 3 (I'm playing NCR Rangers).

We don't use cardboard tokens, we tear up little squares of paper into chits and write on them. "S7 Sniper hit, Grazed, Stunned" etc.

No but seriously, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster yet? I have the kill team rules, I mean the blank roster sheet. I can't seem to locate that anywhere.

 frozenwastes wrote:
He's not. He's making a good point by flipping your statement around.

He's debating in bad faith. His retort adding nothing to the debate, was basically a giant strawman, and is tantamount to trolling.

GW did not say this was limited, they hyped it up as the next big thing, they took it to trade shows, and they in no way indicated to stockists that once gone it would be gone. They had ZERO plans in palce for supporting this beyond its initial release, and the complete lack of immediate digital release shows that they never planned for that either. We're a week beyond pre-orders and they've done nothing. GW stores were hardly getting enough copies to satisfy the people who showed up and waited for the stores to open. You really think they count this as as success?

Insaniak's point about them having YEARS to get their gak together in this arena, from basic market research to communicating with their target audience is totally sound and you have yet to come up with anything to counter it.

Your constant apologising for GW, and worse, acting as if it was some accidental bit of genius on their part is mind numbing. The fact that you started by saying that they should have made the box even more expensive is also quite telling.

This was a colossal screw up from start to finish.

 davou wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If they'd mentioned it was a splash release when they first showed it off, then the whole debate would be very different.

That's what's peeved me. My copy is on its way, but now the campaign I planned to run at the club may not happen, because I think I'm the only one who bagged a copy.

you need to have multiple copies of a bunch of cardboard tokens to play a game? The only thing REQUIRED in that box to play your campaign is the book, which will be available very soon independent of the boxed game; and even if it wasn't I see people all the time playing games without official books, either via borrowing or outright downloading them.

I don't, no.

But other players in my club may not want to play a game they don't themselves own,

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but seriously, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster yet? I have the kill team rules, I mean the blank roster sheet. I can't seem to locate that anywhere.

there's one on the 4-chan thread that pops up every once in a while; I just tried to find it but couldnt. sorry dude


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

 davou wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If they'd mentioned it was a splash release when they first showed it off, then the whole debate would be very different.

That's what's peeved me. My copy is on its way, but now the campaign I planned to run at the club may not happen, because I think I'm the only one who bagged a copy.

you need to have multiple copies of a bunch of cardboard tokens to play a game? The only thing REQUIRED in that box to play your campaign is the book, which will be available very soon independent of the boxed game; and even if it wasn't I see people all the time playing games without official books, either via borrowing or outright downloading them.

I don't, no.

But other players in my club may not want to play a game they don't themselves own,

so they will have to wait the few days it takes for the rules to be released is what you meant to say?

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but seriously, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster yet? I have the kill team rules, I mean the blank roster sheet. I can't seem to locate that anywhere.

Ten minutes with GIMP to tidy it up a bit:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
No but seriously, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster yet? I have the kill team rules, I mean the blank roster sheet. I can't seem to locate that anywhere.

Not that I've seen. I have the packet of sheets from the promo kit and there is a sheet in the book like the Necromunda book had. Im happy to scan them, but I'm not going through the trouble of making a pdf file. I can host the image in the Dakka gallery if that works.

Edit: Ninja'ed.

 davou wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But other players in my club may not want to play a game they don't themselves own,

so they will have to wait the few days it takes for the rules to be released is what you meant to say?

Where are you getting the info that the rulebook will be released in a few days? I get the impression they'll knock out some kind of apple version for a swift profit but everyone I game with always likes to own their own real rulebook.

And as Mad Doc said earlier in the thread, things would have been different if it had been announced as a splash release. To that I agree. If everyone had known it was a quick flash in the pan, they may not have even bothered with it. As GW let everyone believe it was a new supported game, it sold out. Was this a crafty ommision by GW to ensure a final box set went fully sold before they needed shelf space for the new 40k?

Have we fully jumped the shark into conspiracy theories now?

 Starfarer wrote:
Have we fully jumped the shark into conspiracy theories now?

There's been several for quite a few pages now.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
On another note, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster?

We just published Battlescribe catalogs yesterday. Double-check everything with the rules though; this is all brand new so there will be a few mistakes.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
We play a game called This is Not a Test which is a skirmish warband game very similar to Necromunda, and inspired by Fallout 3 (I'm playing NCR Rangers).

We don't use cardboard tokens, we tear up little squares of paper into chits and write on them. "S7 Sniper hit, Grazed, Stunned" etc.

Just want to give you a stealth, high-five. People in this thread rightly angry over not having access to this release would do well to spend a few bucks on TNT's rules. It really is a superior Necromunda, if you don't mind the different theme.

 frozenwastes wrote:

notprop wrote:
Selling out is good, it's how you manage that fortunate situation that governs whether or not is is a success. Now if as I am lead to believe there is distribution stock that is to be made available then they can leverage what will already been seen as a successful release into a great one. It's only day 1 of release, let's see what happens in the new week before declaring ruination and disaster.

There were so many nested quote tags there, I hope I'm attributing the above the right person.

I agree completely with what is above.

The declaration of it being failure is based on the money they missed out on had they known what the real demand for this product would have been, but no one can provide any quantifiable factor that GW could have reliably known in advance to know to produce more, nor have they said anything about how their pet reason (it's obvious people would want it! it's necromunda and people have nostalgia!" or "people want 40k universe with good rules" or whatever) would have been reason enough to make more than their known sales figures for their other stand alone products or their terrain kits.

Yes, they underestimated demand. Now they know. And their "punishment" for figuring out the demand for 40k with different rules was something people wanted is to have blown away their sales goals and set themselves up for meeting that demand with a new version of 40k, an electronic release of the SWA rules and possibly another box or bundle. Yes, they left money on the table. So now they need to figure out how to get as much of that money as possible going forward.

455_PWR wrote:So a few folks got upset. They can buy pdf rules later to use their existing models. Anyone can buy the scenery. Their main games are 40k and aos anyway. Sorry but selling out sw:a isn't going to ruin gw folks, even if a handfull walk away upset.

Exactly. And given what they know quantifiably know about the demand for 40k games using different rules than current 40k, support for a lower model count, cool terrain bundled together, how effective their marketing team was, etc., it could well be that they'll make a plan for new40k that makes it the best selling edition of 40k in the game's history. Their return on investment for their new approach to marketing might be that good.

All the people saying this is so awful for business and they alienated all these customers who wanted one may find themselves totally shocked by future financial reports.

Blackwing530 wrote:QFT. In any publicly owned business, maximizing shareholder wealth is paramount. Another poster above said the same. While perhaps not a failure, per se, this can absolutely be considered a squandered opportunity.

They suceeded in meeting their goals with the SWA product, but are in the process of possibly squandering the opportunity to make more. It's possible that they'll get a digital copy out fast enough and offer some cobbled together version or a bundle or something and still capture much of that money. Or a lot of that money will still be there to be captured by new40k.

streetsamurai wrote:Calling a succes selling out a product when there is a lot of angry customers who aren't able to purchase it, shows an alarming lack of business sense.

I think that's totally over estimating the effect of these angry customers. Odds are the number angry enough to hurt GW's bottom line is really, really low and many of them will be offered something they want in the near future.

But just for the amount of ill will and bad publicity that this has generarted, it is far from a success. At least, lest hope that this force GW to change some of its pratices, and that they start to do that weird arcane thing that is market research.

I'll ask this again, what form of market research would you suggest for figuring out that the demand for this would have been higher than sales levels of their other stand alone products? Furthermore this research needs to be such that you can actually make decisions based on it and it needs to show that they should ignore their internal sales data for stand alone games. And on top of that, it needs to be done in a time line that allows them to make meaningful production decisions in advance of the launch date. And as well, it needs to not be based on hindsight. The fact that we know now that there was greater demand, does not mean it was something that could actually be known in advance.

The funny thing is that you are talking about market research as if it is an arcane spell they can cast and suddenly know to ignore their previous sales numbers and make more of something just because of our current position of hindsight. You are asking for a magic trick.

Starfarer wrote:I think it may be a case of the 8th edition release in a few months killing the chance of a full reprint. They can get the digital rules up next week, but if it takes a few months to get a full reprint, then you're edging into the 8th edition release, and GW can't have a fully separate, stand alone game competing with their flagship product.

This. I believe Mikhaila's trade sales rep who said this was a tiding over project before the new edition.

It sucks, but if you ignore the terrain aspect of the box set, it's still a super low buy in for a game. You're looking at hopefully a $20-30 digital rulebook, free faction rules, and pretty much $30-50 for a faction, depending on what faction you pick. Obviously you need lots of terrain for this game, but presumably people will already have this, or can play at their local store otherwise.

This is the cheapest buy in to 40k available in decades and has tried and tested rules that still hold up, over 20 years after their initial release. For all the negatives about availability, let's keep in mind 2-3 years ago no one would have imagined you could get into a GW game for that price point.

It's actually really quite shocking how good of a value the whole thing is. If you make your own terrain (remember when that was part of the hobby?) or go in on it with others or use club or store terrain, then this is one of the cheapest ways to do 40k in the history of the game.

Galas wrote:I don't know why people its so surprised that GW failed to do proper market research for this.

They haven't done it in 20 years, they are still learning how to do it

See my questions above on what kind of market research would be needed to actually know to make more of these boxes in advance.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I think it is rather odd how we still have people saying that this debacle is some sort of ideal situation and a triumph of risk management.

It's not a "triumph of risk management." Risk management is an explanation of their decision making process. And it goes to show you that without hindsight and results oriented thinking, GW's process is sound in this area. They did the right thing given what they could have known and now have to deal with the reality of having gotten their assessment of the demand wrong, but without any real means of knowing what the real demand would be without trying. Without releases a product like this to test the waters and see.

When the biggest stores in the country have used up over half their allotment 5 minutes after opening, something is wrong.

Yes. They got their demand assessment wrong when it comes to a game where there was no real way of knowing what it should be without trying a product release out to see what the demand is really like.

Some of you are making this out to be some sort of calculated move, or something that any business would be proud of. Are you insane?

The only insanity I see is people expecting GW to be psychic. Or to cast some sort of "market research" incantation to somehow know what they should have done. From a position of hind sight. That's the only delusion here. Are you insane?

Misleading your stockists (let alone your own retail stores)

Being wrong is not misleading your stockists. They actually thought their production run would be sufficient or they would have made a larger one. No one lied to anyone.

and engendering anger in your customer base that missed out (because they never thought it'd be limited)

How would they have gotten it if they knew it was limited? It would have still sold out in preorder exactly the same. Or maybe even faster. This makes no sense.

But this was GW's "master plan", and it is something that they should do more of/should be proud of.. get outta town. That's nonsense.

It is never nonsense to consider your margins and return on capital when launching a product. It is never nonsense to consider the sales numbers of other products in your line when making a new product. GW has their sales data of both their stand along games and their terrain kits to take into consideration.

The product designers, the rules team, the marketing team and the 3d designers who worked on the terrain should all be proud of what they have accomplished.

I would even go so far as to say whoever made the decision to make the smaller print run should also be proud of themselves. They made the right decision with the information they had. Even if some angry people on the internet with 20/20 hindsight can point out they made too few. You need to be disciplined when it comes to product runs. Especially when the majority of your revenue comes from the splash period of a new release. Why?

I really don't think it's true that everyone who missed out on this product now has a bunch of money that GW will somehow never get. If they want GW's products so bad that they feel angry about missing out on something that was so popular, something tells me GW can come up with something that will meet their demand. It's been a fething weekend. The release date for this game was earlier today!

What they do going forward is going to be about how much gravy they can get. How much of that missed demand (over and above their goals for the product) they can still capture. And how to factor this release into their plan for new40k. They can still get the digital rules out, maybe make a print run of books, make some terrain bundles, whatever. And they can also make sure they do the same thing in terms of marketing, social media usage, and so forth when it comes to new40k. As well as taking into consideration how positively people responded to the rules that support a lower model count when making their game that also needs to scale up into a larger model count.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

Manchu wrote:They should really sell the tokens and rulebook at the very least!

If and only if the turn around time will have it not conflict with a new40k release later this year. If it would, they are better off making sure to include small model count play as a feature of new40k and accomplish what this game does within new40k itself.

If they can find a printer (preferably one with an existing relationship) to rush print and ship their additional books and counters, then by all means I think they should do so. And since they then have those, they may as well run off some boxes and sprues and make more of the game boxes to sell. But only if it doesn't disrupt production for a future product and certainly not if it drags this game into new40k hype season as a distraction.

You seem to not really know what market research is all about. Extrapolating sales based on previous standalone game is a very very basic way of estimating demand, especially since the others stand alone games were much more limited and not really comporable to this one. As to what they could have done, well first of all, they could have done a few surveys or interviews. They could have done a few product test at gaming conventions. The fact that they were surprised that this product sold so well when it was asked for years by numerous GW customers shows just out of touch they are with their customer bsae. Same thing when they released AOS with joke rules and no points. That whole ridiculous embargo on anything coming out of the studio is the main reason why such a disconnection exist, since they have no way to gauge the popularity of an idea before it hit the market (though that seems to have gotten better recently)

 Starfarer wrote:
Have we fully jumped the shark into conspiracy theories now?

It doesn't sound so much like a conspiracy theory if you term it as "SW:A had a limited release because there was only so much machine time available before they needed to start producing the new 8th Ed starter sprues."

 frozenwastes wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

They could have released trial rules through White Dwarf or the website to judge potential interest through the downloads.

This is something that could have been done in the planning stages of the project. It would however, need even more lead time as White Dwarf has lead times as well. That said, would there be any actual usable data in terms of production runs? How do they interpret the number of downloads? What are they comparing them to? Despite there actually being a quantity (the number of downloads), I don't think you can make interpretations of that number until you have a baseline to use for comparison and a proven correlation between downloads and sales.

They could have run leagues through their stores.

So they need to do the game development work in advance (enough to run a league, not just demos of a simplified version) and run the league to its completion and then analyze participation rate? Sales of unit box sets to league participants? What kind of participation do you need to increase the supply for the launch? Again, there's no base line. How many units of the box set do you increase the production run if the average participation in each store is 3.7 players? What does it mean if the opening week had an average of 3.2 players, the middle week 5.1 and the final week 4.7? How long does it need to go for with regular attendance before you increase production?

They could have visited trade shows and gaming conventions with preview copies, run gaming sessions and taken pre-sales from retailers.

So they need to do the design and tooling enough to make the plastic terrain and run off their preview sprues, so there may be a timing issue here as now they are increasing the time between the completion of design and full production to allow for an increased amount of time spent on promotions and sales (and whether or not a suitable trade show and time to close sales based on interest and leads gathered there). At least in this case they'd end up with an actual firm number of placed orders from real trade clients. This one is actually useful in deciding to print at least that many plus what's needed based on normal sales levels for similar products in their webstore.

Timing is a big issue though as they'd need to take these extra perorders into consideration before they schedule time with whoever produced the rules and tokens. So the typical retailer might ask when this comes out and when the answer is next quarter, they might not really want to place a special preorder so far in advance. I think most would be like "is this going to be in your normal ordering system for new products? Cool. I'll order it then."

They could have held retailer information sessions where they talked about their upcoming releases and confirmed potential customer interest with the people who actually deal with said customers day in, day out.

At that convention? Or conference calls? Or have additional trade sales team members added to call each account for a chat? And what kind of answers would you need to add copies to the production run over and above the sales levels of other terrain kits or stand alone games? "Oh yeah, I think that'd be a cool product." Well that's nice. Should we produce twice as many as Bloodbowl because a handful of retailers who happen to respond or attend the seminar say it sounds good?

They could have opened up pre-orders early enough to actually queue up extra production if necessary.

I'm not sure how many stores want to make preorders for things before things go off to printers and a container of books starts being packed up in China. These things have huge lead times. So you're going to not get a firm answer from a good portion of your trade accounts. And you'd be asking your trade sales team to get preorders for things that aren't yet available rather than making real cash generating sales for the current new release.

And most obviously, they could have spent some time interacting with their customers, at which point it would have been made apparent very quickly that said customers have been asking for small-scale skirmish rules for 40K for a very long time, and that the Necromunda rules are widely regarded as perfect for that purpose.

I think that might be the opinion of a few die hards on some forums, but I'm guessing the majority of their customers have never played Necromunda and wouldn't have been able to tell them anything about it.

But still, how do you use that to make decisions about production numbers? The guys on the internet like Necromunda? Print quadruple the supply! Who cares if our own internal numbers for Necromunda's last sales run wasn't that impressive. The people on the internet like it! There's just no grounds for a meaningful decision here without hindsight.

Hindsight tells us they made too few, but there really isn't an credible way they could have justified the risk of a larger print run. When you take the portion that goes through trade sales and their own cost of retailing into consideration, the damage an extra 25% that just sits there does to the overall margins and return on capital of the investment is huge. You need real facts to justify a larger production run.

That said, they need to start doing at least some of the things you suggest so they can start having useful baselines to compare. They put out all sorts of PDF rules for the other 40k factions, so now the next time they do something like that, they can actually compare download rates with something. So that's a start. Many of your ideas would certainly work for future products, but only when you have enough information to actually make meaningful decisions. Hopefully as the transition away from Kirby's approach to customer and retailer communication continues, they'll start setting up some of these base lines and can start making meaningful decisions based on them. Wouldn't have helped for this project though.

A lot of these suggestions are pretty good ways to estimate the potential demand for a product, especially if you combine some of them. It makes no sense to dismiss them as unrealistic or useless.

The weirdest part is that you seems to excuse GW because they have no previous informations with which they could do comparaison, while this is exactly the jist of my (and insaniak) argument. This is the kind of things that GW should have started doing a long time ago. They are not a mom and pop business that have their operation in the basement of their home. They are a big corporation that have upward of 200 millions pounds in sales and have pretty much created the whole wargaming industry 30 years ago.

At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
We play a game called This is Not a Test which is a skirmish warband game very similar to Necromunda, and inspired by Fallout 3 (I'm playing NCR Rangers).

We don't use cardboard tokens, we tear up little squares of paper into chits and write on them. "S7 Sniper hit, Grazed, Stunned" etc.

Just want to give you a stealth, high-five. People in this thread rightly angry over not having access to this release would do well to spend a few bucks on TNT's rules. It really is a superior Necromunda, if you don't mind the different theme.

Fair point, but at $74 for the rules only shipped to the UK, it's a pricey alternative.
I've honestly had loads of fun with Mutants and Death Ray Guns recently. Not as complex as Necromunda but just as much fun and open to way more types of figures.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:
Have we fully jumped the shark into conspiracy theories now?

It doesn't sound so much like a conspiracy theory if you term it as "SW:A had a limited release because there was only so much machine time available before they needed to start producing the new 8th Ed starter sprues."

That's not what I'm talking about, though. The insinuation was GW intentionally misled buyers about the limited nature of the release to increase demand through scarcity.

This of course requires that you ignore all the official messages from GW explaining how they were surprised just how popular the game is, and instead they were acting maliciously to trick their customers. It also presupposes that the people buying this in droves didn't actually want it, but only bought it because it's limited, or that being a one shot release for physical rules means it won't get any further support, despite direct statements to the contrary from GW.

I'm as disappointed as anyone about the limited nature of this, but I also managed to get two sets, so I'm certainly not as angry as people who missed out altogether. That said, this was at worst a miscalculation by GW. They now know the demand exists, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a new Shadow War box down the line. Of course this will require people to out their money where there mouth is and actually buy the rules, digital or otherwise, if they are released separately. If GW doesn't see decent sale for a stand alone rulebook, they'll likely assume they more or less met demand with the splash release. I know some people will argue they don't like digital, but I would argue if they are that interested in this type of game, they would get over that and just print out their digital copy. There haven't been many complaints about the free faction rules, despite those being digital only, so I find it hard to believe the digital rules release is that big of an issue outside of a handful of people who have a bone to pick already.

 frozenwastes wrote:
Was there something about Rountree that makes you think he doesn't understand the bigger picture?

I never said he didn't, try to read next time instead of responding to a strawman. I was objecting to someone else basically saying "accountants don't know anything but numbers".

 streetsamurai wrote:


At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

So we're holding the company as it currently exists to a statement made years ago by a former CEO? And you're calling other people ridiculous?

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:


At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

So we're holding the company as it currently exists to a statement made years ago by a former CEO? And you're calling other people ridiculous?

Have they said or done anything that gives any indication that this have changed since then?? No (at least, not before adepticon, since this could mark a change in their strategy. And let's hope that this fiasco make them realise the folly of their ways)

Talk about being ridiculous

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:


At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

So we're holding the company as it currently exists to a statement made years ago by a former CEO? And you're calling other people ridiculous?

Have they said or done anything that gives any indication that this have changed since then?? No (at least, not before adepticon, since this could mark a change in their strategy. And let's hope that this fiasco make them realise the folly of their ways)

Talk about being ridiculous

They've made a ton of changes since Roundtree took over, nearly all of them good, and widely praised even here, and even by the career GW bashers.

They've been promoting their products at trade shows for over a year now. You don't think they aren't talking to the retailers there about their market demographics? And you mention yourself they showed up at Adepticon, and provided previews of upcoming products. Do you think maybe market research told them people wanted to know about things ahead of time, and that generates excitement?

Seems the change in strategy happened long before you think.

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:


At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

So we're holding the company as it currently exists to a statement made years ago by a former CEO? And you're calling other people ridiculous?

Have they said or done anything that gives any indication that this have changed since then?? No (at least, not before adepticon, since this could mark a change in their strategy. And let's hope that this fiasco make them realise the folly of their ways)

Talk about being ridiculous

They've made a ton of changes since Roundtree took over, nearly all of them good, and widely praised even here, and even by the career GW bashers.

They've been promoting their products at trade shows for over a year now. You don't think they aren't talking to the retailers there about their market demographics? And you mention yourself they showed up at Adepticon, and provided previews of upcoming products. Do you think maybe market research told them people wanted to know about things ahead of time, and that generates excitement?

Seems the change in strategy happened long before you think.

All conjectural evidences. And the current fiasco seems to point that the change still haven't happened yet

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Insaniak's point about them having YEARS to get their gak together in this arena, from basic market research to communicating with their target audience is totally sound and you have yet to come up with anything to counter it.

That's laughable.

My counter is that GW failed to have the baseline needed for any of his ideas to have actually worked and they need to get started building that baseline and collecting that data going forward. As well his point was totally lacking a working methodology for actually getting any actionable conclusion.

Your constant apologising for GW,

Even more laughable.

Sorry you can't accept the realities of business being based on data without thinking it's me apologizing for GW. Don't know what to tell you.

GW didn't have the information they needed and couldn't have known better precisely because of years of ignoring their customer base and being contemptuous of communicating with them.

But I must be an apologist right? Even though the reason the type of things that caused them to assess the demand incorrectly is a direct result of years of bad practices when it comes to customer and trade account communication?

Now who's arguing in bad faith? Is this "apologist" line all you have left?

and worse, acting as if it was some accidental bit of genius on their part is mind numbing. The fact that you started by saying that they should have made the box even more expensive is also quite telling.

Sorry, but businesses need to make decisions based on real data, not internet wisdom. And the relationship between demand and price has been established for a long time in economics. Of course a product with higher demand can support a higher price.

When you have increased demand you can maximize revenue through both an increase in supply as well as an increase in price. "Should" in the case of my earlier post is me engaging in some hindsight no different than those advocating for an increased supply. Even though I've clarified later on the way in which my advocating for higher prices was wrong given what was known at the time and GW's business model and how they forecast production runs.

This was a colossal screw up from start to finish.

The type of colossal screw up where you sell everything you needed to meet your goals and now can worry about getting the most of the money from the additional demand that you possibly can?

Did I ever deny that money was left on the table? No. Never. Not once. They obviously underestimated demand and could have sold many more copies. I just question if it was something that could have been known in the moment. And how all the internet wisdom can't provide any real insight into just how much more GW should have made given what they knew at the time.

I've been watching people argue about GW's financial performance and business moves for years. At times I've been very, very negative about their prospects. I also think for most of their life, they've been a net negative for the hobby.

But I'm not going to join in the crowd of complainers when they make an assessment for a product's volume and get it wrong because they could not have known better. And note, I say "known" better. Not hoped. Or thought maybe. Or had an inkling. When you go into a meeting to figure out order sizes and production runs, you need real data, not your hindsight and bias.

I own a FLGS. I told my customers about the game 2 weeks before release. When it arrived I had 3 on hold, leaving 7 to sell on the floor. The last one sold at 7pm that night. In my area (San Diego) I figure everyone who really wanted a copy got one. Those who snooze, lose. I could have ordered more had people asked me to. I wonder how similar my experience was to other FLGS? It seems a lot of panic happened when the online store sold out, but I bet there are games still available through brick and mortar.

Here are the reasons my position is a better explanation of what went on here than some assertion of this being a failure or an internal communication disconnect, or GW being misleading about how limited this product run would be or any of the other competing theories.

1) It is consistent with GW's business practices over the last number of years. GW has been a premium priced, lower volume seller since Mark Wells.

2) It is consistent with principles of managerial accounting which says you should make decisions based on real data like their sales numbers for previous terrain kits and stand alone games.

3) It is consistent with the break down of sales by channel and GW's costs by channels for them to make conservative production runs if they want to preserve margins (something they have stressed in their financial reports for years).

4) All proposed means of them knowing there was increased demand don't actually work in anything but a position of hindsight. Or are based on making interpretations that require data not available like the relationship between social media activity or retailer feedback and actual sales numbers. It is consistent with what GW can and can't know given their past practices.

5) It takes into consideration production lead times based on those clearly stated on their supplier's website. Advocates of an earlier preorder to assess demand run into an issue of stores needing to preorder product for future quarters (!) rather than future weeks.

6) It doesn't multiply elements beyond necessity like introducing theoretical communication breakdowns between GW departments or a secret plan to mislead retailers at a tradeshow. In short, it requires no conspiracy theory type thinking.

7) It is consistent with what GW has actually said about the product. They said the demand was unexpected. That it caught them off guard.

8) It doesn't write off missed sales volume as permanently lost revenue and allows for the high demand of this type of product to be exploited in the future rather than assuming GW missed their one shot. Maybe they'll print more rulebooks or offer a digital version or bundles or something.

9) It credits identifiable factors (though in hindsight) with the increased demand and acknowledges that GW is just learning the positive benefits of business practices derided by the previous CEO. An approach to 40k miniature gaming with rules that are not 40k. GW's change in marketing and customer/retailer communication compared to the Kirby approach.

10) It takes into account GW's larger strategic concerns like their Adepticon presentation revealing a move toward a new version of 40k. This is in contrast to people who think this product should be some sort of evergreen gateway game or that GW intended it to be, but someone deciding on production numbers didn't get the memo.

For some people though, the emotional need for GW to be wrong or evil is just too strong. This has to be a great failure that is angering their customer base and will cost them dearly!

Sorry, no.

-

 axisofentropy wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
On another note, is there an electronic version of the kill team roster?

We just published Battlescribe catalogs yesterday. Double-check everything with the rules though; this is all brand new so there will be a few mistakes.

Excellent - thanks for letting us know - awesome job - I just built a Grey Knights Kill Team list using them (typo in there toopers instead of troopers) - I guess that the Genestealer Cult will be added in an update?

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:


At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

So we're holding the company as it currently exists to a statement made years ago by a former CEO? And you're calling other people ridiculous?

Have they said or done anything that gives any indication that this have changed since then?? No (at least, not before adepticon, since this could mark a change in their strategy. And let's hope that this fiasco make them realise the folly of their ways)

Talk about being ridiculous

They've made a ton of changes since Roundtree took over, nearly all of them good, and widely praised even here, and even by the career GW bashers.

They've been promoting their products at trade shows for over a year now. You don't think they aren't talking to the retailers there about their market demographics? And you mention yourself they showed up at Adepticon, and provided previews of upcoming products. Do you think maybe market research told them people wanted to know about things ahead of time, and that generates excitement?

Seems the change in strategy happened long before you think.

All conjectural evidences. And the current fiasco seems to point that the change still haven't happened yet

And you have provided zero evidence of anything other than a quote from several years ago from a different CEO. Your argument boils down to "GW still sucks." You have nothing to back up your statements but your feelings, which frankly mean less than nothing.

Evidence to the contrary shows GW is marketing their products ahead of release, and big surprise, it generated more interest in a product that went from "It's not proper Necromunda, who cares" to "OMG why did it sell out in minutes, GW has no idea how to run a business selling miniatures!!".

Them underanticipating exactly how much demand this would have does not mean they did no market research on this, it just means they missed the mark somewhat. By how much we frankly don't know. A handful of people online complaning doesn't give us anything but anecdotal evidence one way or the other.

That still has zero to do with your ridiculous comparison that GW does zero market research because a former CEO said so nearly 5 years ago.

Physical rule book up for preorder 22nd April. Will include rules for all factions plus sisters and inquisition. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/09/shadow-war-armageddon-the-rules-available-soon/

Huh, would ya look at that.

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Starfarer wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:


At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

So we're holding the company as it currently exists to a statement made years ago by a former CEO? And you're calling other people ridiculous?

Have they said or done anything that gives any indication that this have changed since then?? No (at least, not before adepticon, since this could mark a change in their strategy. And let's hope that this fiasco make them realise the folly of their ways)

Talk about being ridiculous

They've made a ton of changes since Roundtree took over, nearly all of them good, and widely praised even here, and even by the career GW bashers.

They've been promoting their products at trade shows for over a year now. You don't think they aren't talking to the retailers there about their market demographics? And you mention yourself they showed up at Adepticon, and provided previews of upcoming products. Do you think maybe market research told them people wanted to know about things ahead of time, and that generates excitement?

Seems the change in strategy happened long before you think.

All conjectural evidences. And the current fiasco seems to point that the change still haven't happened yet

And you have provided zero evidence of anything other than a quote from several years ago from a different CEO. Your argument boils down to "GW still sucks." You have nothing to back up your statements but your feelings, which frankly mean less than nothing.

Evidence to the contrary shows GW is marketing their products ahead of release, and big surprise, it generated more interest in a product that went from "It's not proper Necromunda, who cares" to "OMG why did it sell out in minutes, GW has no idea how to run a business selling miniatures!!".

Them underanticipating exactly how much demand this would have does not mean they did no market research on this, it just means they missed the mark somewhat. By how much we frankly don't know. A handful of people online complaning doesn't give us anything but anecdotal evidence one way or the other.

That still has zero to do with your ridiculous comparison that GW does zero market research because a former CEO said so nearly 5 years ago.

you have given zero evidence that they have changed, only shallow conjectural evidences, and since that the only known fact is that they were doing no market research, we have to assume that this is still the case (at least, it was the case for SWA, since as I said before, the latest adepticon MIGHT (and I say might) mark a change in that strategy).

To think otherwise only drift from a juvenile desire to defend GW


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Chikout wrote:
Physical rule book up for preorder 22nd April. Will include rules for all factions plus sisters and inquisition. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/09/shadow-war-armageddon-the-rules-available-soon/

Great. this should be a lesson to those that think that complaining is worthless,
I really hope that this game get continual support and an expanded campaign supplement.

Smellingsalts wrote:
I own a FLGS. I told my customers about the game 2 weeks before release. When it arrived I had 3 on hold, leaving 7 to sell on the floor. The last one sold at 7pm that night. In my area (San Diego) I figure everyone who really wanted a copy got one. Those who snooze, lose. I could have ordered more had people asked me to. I wonder how similar my experience was to other FLGS? It seems a lot of panic happened when the online store sold out, but I bet there are games still available through brick and mortar.

Pretty similar to what happened at my GW. I went down there at opening to preorder, it sold out while we were completing checkout. The manager set one aside from the allotment for me due to this and offered to for another customer that was there. Yesterday there were 6 people including myself waiting before opening to get a copy.

Someone called like 15 or 20 minutes after opening asking about copies, and the Manager told him they just sold out, and the guy freaked out on him on the phone. We both said afterward, if he cared that much he would have gone down to the store when it opened, or called at any point in the week of preorder and be told if he wanted one to be there at opening because they were going to go quick.

You snooze you lose is exactly right. I managed to get 2 copies, one in store and one on ebay under retail value, with very little effort. I then sold the second book to someone in need for a reasonable price because I'm not looking to gouge anyone on this.

And as I said earlier, if the terrain included was priced lower individually, I doubt there would be anywhere near the resentment. People are pissed they missed a good terrain bundle price and a printed rulebook. Those that want to play the game will still be able to do so, and at a buy-in well under $100 for rules and a faction or two. Hell, the only reason I got a second copy was for the terrain.

Good news !

Great news for those of you after a copy of the rules for Shadow War: Armageddon.

Following the unprecedented demand for this game, our book team have thrown themselves into creating a new rulebook you’ll be able to order separately. Not content just to make the book a copy of the one that appears in the boxed game, though, they have also added in all the extra content too: all the factions that have had their rules published as PDFs will be included. And, following numerous requests we’ve received from the community (that’s you), we’ll be adding in two new factions – the Battle Sisters of the Adepta Sororitas and warbands from the Inquisition.

How cool is that?

The book will be available to pre-order on Saturday the 22nd of April.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/09/shadow-war-armageddon-the-rules-available-soon/

Chikout wrote:
Physical rule book up for preorder 22nd April. Will include rules for all factions plus sisters and inquisition. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/09/shadow-war-armageddon-the-rules-available-soon/

Now watch how quickly the argument shifts to people who bought the box set got ripped off because their hard copy doesn't include all factions.

And this time, the Pre-order last several weeks so they can know the aproximated demand!

Now they are learning.

It is a rip of if Sisters and Inquisition is exclusive to the new book

 Galas wrote:
And this time, the Pre-order last several weeks so they can know the aproximated demand!

Know they are learning.

Hey,. but I tought that according to some in here, this was impossible to do


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:
It is a rip of if Sisters and Inquisition is exclusive to the new book

Agreed. but they probably will put them in the pdf version freely available

 Rayvon wrote:
Good news !

Great news for those of you after a copy of the rules for Shadow War: Armageddon.

Following the unprecedented demand for this game, our book team have thrown themselves into creating a new rulebook you’ll be able to order separately. Not content just to make the book a copy of the one that appears in the boxed game, though, they have also added in all the extra content too: all the factions that have had their rules published as PDFs will be included. And, following numerous requests we’ve received from the community (that’s you), we’ll be adding in two new factions – the Battle Sisters of the Adepta Sororitas and warbands from the Inquisition.

How cool is that?

The book will be available to pre-order on Saturday the 22nd of April.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/09/shadow-war-armageddon-the-rules-available-soon/

Excellent - I will buy this. Good to see that facebooking them is not wasted

"You missed something out of that game"
"Cheers for asking. OK. We've come up with rules for the things you wanted and they're in this book plus w..."
"RIPOFF"

Don't go changing, internet. They're pretty obviously gonna throw them up online for free.

I'm pleased for people who didn't get it, but I'm slightly annoyed that my copy in the box is slightly outdated now.

 kodos wrote:
It is a rip of if Sisters and Inquisition is exclusive to the new book

How many times does it take to assume the worst and be proven wrong before you give them the benefit of the doubt?

Well I'm looking forward to picking up the book!

 JohnnyHell wrote:
"You missed something out of that game"
"Cheers for asking. OK. We've come up with rules for the things you wanted and they're in this book plus w..."
"RIPOFF"

Don't go changing, internet. They're pretty obviously gonna throw them up online for free.

HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT YOU HAVE NO EVIDEENCCCCCCE!!!!1!!

/s.

 ImAGeek wrote:
I'm pleased for people who didn't get it, but I'm slightly annoyed that my copy in the box is slightly outdated now.

Talk about the End-times book being outdated 4 months after his launch. Now this is a new record!

 Starfarer wrote:

Chikout wrote:
Physical rule book up for preorder 22nd April. Will include rules for all factions plus sisters and inquisition. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/09/shadow-war-armageddon-the-rules-available-soon/

Now watch how quickly the argument shifts to people who bought the box set got ripped off because their hard copy doesn't include all factions.

To be fair, it sounds like a legit complaint that yr new rulebook is already out of date within a month.

Poof! GW has already responded on FB, that Adepta Sororita and Inqusition rules will be available separately.

But they obviously are intentionally evil and don't ever change...

 Starfarer wrote:

Chikout wrote:
Physical rule book up for preorder 22nd April. Will include rules for all factions plus sisters and inquisition. https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/04/09/shadow-war-armageddon-the-rules-available-soon/

Now watch how quickly the argument shifts to people who bought the box set got ripped off because their hard copy doesn't include all factions.

Assuming the book doesn't sell out during preorder, with a note saying the item is no longer available, but to buy it in your local store on release day, only to discover the store only got two copies and employees bought them

 Starfarer wrote:

 kodos wrote:
It is a rip of if Sisters and Inquisition is exclusive to the new book

How many times does it take to assume the worst and be proven wrong before you give them the benefit of the doubt?

after 10 years of bad stuff they need more than just one lucky release before I trust them again

Wow! Excellent news about an expanded rulebook print run with an extended pre-order period. Just another sign that GW is changing for the better.

According to GW via FB, the SoB and Inq lists will be available via WD. They will also be available as free PDFs.

Hopefully they will be free like it is for the other factions. I really hope that the success of the game does not encourage them to nickel and dime it.

Come on GW give me a reason to complain


Edit: putting them in wd is an acceptable compromise

So GW wasn't sitting on their hands over the weekend. They've already got a source lined up for printed rulebooks.

That's pretty cool for people who want them. I might snag the digital edition. I like that even more factions are included.

 ImAGeek wrote:
I'm pleased for people who didn't get it, but I'm slightly annoyed that my copy in the box is slightly outdated now.

This is fething awesome.

Excellent, this is exactly what I was hoping for - I'd have been happy if they just reprinted the rulebook as it is, but the bonus/collated content is very welcome too. Now watch the price of the rulebook on eBay start to plummet ...

In case anyone missed my edit above - the SoB and Inq lists will also be available as free PDFs. So those hwo nabbed the box will not need to buy the second run rulebook.

There will also "a photo-copyable page in the new print book will all the tokens on."

i am really pleased with GW for turning around this problem so quickly. As I sais previously, it is so nice to be able to genuinely like this company again.

2 thumbs up from me. They put themselves in a gakky situation, but they managed to turn ot around rather quickly. Only negative is that i wont be able to get much from the rulebook from my second boxset

 streetsamurai wrote:
This is the kind of things that GW should have started doing a long time ago.

I completely agree. But because they didn't, they can't use information they don't have. So they should probably do more to make it happen going forward.

At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

It's really a shame that once a CEO makes a statement like that it is binding on all future CEOs.

Oh no wait. That's not how things work.

I should have complained about no Thousand Sons or Deathwatch. Seems Inquistion are going to be awkward at best and SoB always seem like a waste of development time ;p

Well now that this situation has been diffused, I would like to bring up something else: on pre-order day, SW:A was listed as one per order. But it turns out that you could just make two separate orders. I know it because I managed to do it. Just struck me that the one per order limitation is not much protection against scalpers, especially when the item in question meets the free shipping threshold. Now, I never intended to scalp my second copy but I reckon others did.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
This is the kind of things that GW should have started doing a long time ago.

I completely agree. But because they didn't, they can't use information they don't have.

At the end of the day, it is ridiculous to defend GW on this, since they are the one who were bragging that they weren't doing any market research

It's really a shame that once a CEO makes a statement like that it is binding on all future CEOs.

Oh no wait. That's not how things work.

Youre using the same fallacious argument as starfarer. So the same answer apply to you as well

SeanDrake wrote:
SoB always seem like a waste of development time

do you want to get baned because this is how youget baned

Manchu wrote:
Wow! Excellent news about an expanded rulebook print run with an extended pre-order period. Just another sign that GW is changing for the better.

According to GW via FB, the SoB and Inq lists will be available via WD. They will also be available as free PDFs.

Well... I often feel like Victor Meldrew when mentioning GW, but this time, I'm well impressed. I'll certainly be pre-ordering a rulebook - although I'm gonna have to find where all my old GW special dice have been hiding for years.

I'm a bit sad that the rulebook I just bought became outdated before I even received it, but I'm very happy to hear that my Sisters of Battle will be getting their own list, so...

Happysad!

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Galas wrote:
And this time, the Pre-order last several weeks so they can know the aproximated demand!

Know they are learning.

Hey,. but I tought that according to some in here, this was impossible to do

The original books were printed in China with long lead times. Pretty much everyone who pointed that out also speculated that they could perhaps find a printer closer to their distribution system and get a rush project in place.

Hopefully they'll release the additional lists for free like the original units.

I wouldnt call it outdated. Only incomplete

 streetsamurai wrote:
Youre using the same fallacious argument as starfarer. So the same answer apply to you as well

In order to falsify that argument I just need to provide an example of actual change right? Your argument basically boils down to there being no evidence of actual change.

So what would be something that GW used to not do, but now does?

There couldn't possibly be anything could there?

Zwan1One wrote:
Hopefully they'll release the additional lists for free like the original units.

They said on FB they will.

Can't we just, as customers, be happy that our complaints have been answered by the company?

50 pages of talk to see who its more correct on the internet...

It's been months since I've been involved in a truly protracted thread arguing about stuff.

I actually like how much it doesn't matter. I think if I took a deep dive into a thread about Syria or something, I'd get damned depressed compared to arguing about not enough toy soldiers.

And yeah, them getting a plan together to address the demand that blindsided them while also addressing customer feedback is definitely worth being happy about.

Well for a start, they could directly say thay they are now doing market research.

If weve seen any job opportunities in market researchthat eould also gives us a proof that they are now doing it (havent seen any).

Or we would know of customers who participated in a focus group.

Ah man this thread is so delicious.





I didn't get a copy but 4 other people at our store did. They're being cool and letting us use their books to build gangs, and since many of us are doing gangs other than the three core gangs (guard, marines, orks) we have the downloadable rules from GW to work with. Sure it stinks that I didn't land my own personal copy but it certainly doesn't get in the way of us playing a game or enjoying the format. We're doing what people have always done and getting together as a community to pick up where things have fallen short. I get that there's some people who feel they've gotten a raw deal by not getting a box and I'm in that situation too, but rather than cry about it I've gotten together with my fellow players and we're helping each other out which I think helps enrich the community rather than letting saltiness divide things.

Woo great news! Can't wait to pre-order this new book!

 streetsamurai wrote:
Well for a start, they could directly say thay they are now doing market research.

If weve seen any job opportunities in market researchthat eould also gives us a proof that they are now doing it (havent seen any).

Or we would know of customers who participated in a focus group.

Kirby said a lot of questionable things. He's still on the board in a non-executive and possibly semi retired kind of capacity. It's one thing to change the direction of the company, it's another to directly repudiate what the former CEO said or did when you're still going to see him at the office some times and when he's still one of the largest shareholders of the company. I wouldn't expect any directly repudiating statements.

Did you know GW hired Bare International to do customer experience research for them? They didn't announce it, but they definitely did it.

Youre in the weird position of trying to argue everything and its opposite. On one side, you say that GW took the best decision considering the (lack) of data they had. And on the other side, youre saying that they are doing market research (which would have given them some betterdata to extrapolate demand if done correctly)

 frozenwastes wrote:
But because they didn't, they can't use information they don't have.

What a crock. You think a company that makes, retails and wholesales its own product doesn't have at least some archival information it could mine for data? A publicly listed company with legal obligations to keep detailed financial records? Even if previous administrations didn't choose to use those records?

 Azreal13 wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
But because they didn't, they can't use information they don't have.

What a crock. You think a company that makes, retails and wholesales its own product doesn't have at least some archival information it could mine for data? A publicly listed company with legal obligations to keep detailed financial records? Even if previous administrations didn't choose to use those records?

I think I was very, very clear about them using their sales data. That using financial data to make business decisions is probably the first priority of managerial accounting.

What I said was they don't have the baseline needed to get data that could have informed the decision to increase the production run which also requires being able to make some sort of correlation between sales and other factors. Especially given the years where customer and retail communication was at an all time low.

The data that I am talking about them missing is the kind of data that would allow them to confidently produce more product than their previous sales of terrain kits and stand alone box products would indicate.

GW just described the unforseen demand as unprecedented. So I'm guessing when they looked at their actual data they found it... without precedent.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 streetsamurai wrote:
Youre in the weird position of trying to argue everything and its opposite. On one side, you say that GW took the best decision considering the (lack) of data they had. And on the other side, youre saying that they are doing market research (which would have given them some betterdata to extrapolate demand if done correctly)

Or there might be a difference between customer experience research and the kind of research needed to predict the, in GW's words, "unprecedented demand" for this product.

Yeah. And it was obvious to what i was referring to when i mentionned market research. At this point its getting obvious that you are arguing for the sake of it

What I said was they don't have the baseline needed to get useful information out of specific strategies suggested by a specific poster that requires being able to make some sort of correlation between sales and other factors.

Which is still a deeply, deeply tenuous argument.

We know from the CHS case that they know the quantity sold by SKU in each territory.

They've also had more than enough big box releases in the last 2 years, Blood Bowl being a particularly informative one, not to get caught out to the same degree. Yet here we are.

 Azreal13 wrote:

What I said was they don't have the baseline needed to get useful information out of specific strategies suggested by a specific poster that requires being able to make some sort of correlation between sales and other factors.

Which is still a deeply, deeply tenuous argument.

We know from the CHS case that they know the quantity sold by SKU in each territory.

They've also had more than enough big box releases in the last 2 years, Blood Bowl being a particularly informative one, not to get caught out to the same degree. Yet here we are.

I maintain they did just that. That they did look at Bloodbowl and all the other big box releases (and likely terrain kit sales data) and came to the production number they did.

And the demand was truly unprecedented.

And I'd go further and say that it's entirely possible that the type of data needed to allow them to confidently produce more kits than their own sales data would indicate in anticipation of this demand might not be the kind of data they had or perhaps even could possibly get for this project. This data would need to be strong enough for them to go beyond their own sales data.

I don't know why people are having such a hard time with the possibility that GW might be telling the truth and they really were caught off guard by unpredicted (or even unpredictable) levels of demand.

Why does it have to be malice or part of some plan or an extra special level of incompetence? Why can't it just be them doing what they thought was best and being surprised?

Why is that possibility so hard to accept?

Two local stores apparently got in enough stock to have copies beyond what people reserved. Two other local stores did not. I was able to get a copy held for me when I asked about it on Wednesday, so I would definitely check with any/all stores in people's area before going the 2nd hand market route.

 streetsamurai wrote:
Yeah. And it was obvious to what i was referring to when i mentionned market research. At this point its getting obvious that you are arguing for the sake of it

My apologies if I wasn't clear. I was just explaining why the current CEO might not repudiate what the past CEO did in clear language. And giving an example of a form of customer research that GW is doing, but was not formally announced in some press release. That's it.

 Azreal13 wrote:

They've also had more than enough big box releases in the last 2 years, Blood Bowl being a particularly informative one, not to get caught out to the same degree. Yet here we are.

Blood bowl is not even remotely the same as Shadow War/necromunda. You have a fantasy sports sub genre and a sci-fi skirmish that you are trying to fit into the same slot. The only similarity is that they are boxed games and that's a very broad brush. Sci-fi & 40k is a much stronger market at least in the US so using a fantasy sports game as the yardstick isn't going to be anything remotely reliable. It'd be much better to base their estimates on stuff like Calth or Overkill which for all we know they did, but even those aren't great predictors since neither has plastic terrain nor the Necromunda pedigree.

GW may very well have given it their best estimates and sometimes no matter how well you think you know your target audience they are going to surprise you. Peopel should be happy that the game sold out so well as it really gives them a reason to pause and figure out why it's such a high demand item and then figure out how to support it. The worst thing that can happen is that a product makes a lackluster release as it's easy to just accept it and move on to something else. This release gave GW the biggest possible sign that this is a product format that people want more of and it's not going to be able to be ignored. Sure there's a few hiccups along the way but it's a good thing as it sends a very clear signal.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
Yeah. And it was obvious to what i was referring to when i mentionned market research. At this point its getting obvious that you are arguing for the sake of it

My apologies if I wasn't clear. I was just explaining why the current CEO might not repudiate what the past CEO did in clear language. And giving an example of a form of customer research that GW is doing, but was not formally announced in some press release. That's it.

yeah, but I was talking about market research (more specifically demand analysis), not customer experience research, which is so vast a term that it can mean something completely different

 stanman wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

They've also had more than enough big box releases in the last 2 years, Blood Bowl being a particularly informative one, not to get caught out to the same degree. Yet here we are.

Blood bowl is not even remotely the same as Shadow War/necromunda. You have a fantasy sports sub genre and a sci-fi skirmish that you are trying to fit into the same slot. The only similarity is that they are boxed games and that's a very broad brush. Sci-fi & 40k is a much stronger market at least in the US so using a fantasy sports game as the yardstick isn't going to be anything remotely reliable. It'd be much better to base their estimates on stuff like Calth or Overkill which for all we know they did, but even those aren't great predictors since neither has plastic terrain nor the Necromunda pedigree.

GW may very well have given it their best estimates and sometimes no matter how well you think you know your target audience they are going to surprise you. Peopel should be happy that the game sold out so well as it really gives them a reason to pause and figure out why it's such a high demand item and then figure out how to support it. The worst thing that can happen is that a product makes a lackluster release as it's easy to just accept it and move on to something else. This release gave GW the biggest possible sign that this is a product format that people want more of and it's not going to be able to be ignored. Sure there's a few hiccups along the way but it's a good thing as it sends a very clear signal.

They have several key elements in common, they're both re-releases of older games (in spirit at least) and BB also initially struggled to cope with initial demand.

There's also being surprised and being caught completely unaware.

 stanman wrote:
This release gave GW the biggest possible sign that this is a product format that people want more of and it's not going to be able to be ignored. Sure there's a few hiccups along the way but it's a good thing as it sends a very clear signal.

I think they're actually getting the message as well.

When Rountree was appointed CEO, I was like "this is the former financial officer and former chief of operations. This is one of Kirby's insider yes-men and nothing is going to change."

I'm happy to be continually proven wrong about that.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 stanman wrote:
This release gave GW the biggest possible sign that this is a product format that people want more of and it's not going to be able to be ignored. Sure there's a few hiccups along the way but it's a good thing as it sends a very clear signal.

I think they're actually getting the message as well.

When Rountree was appointed CEO, I was like "this is the former financial officer and former chief of operations. This is one of Kirby's insider yes-men and nothing is going to change."

I'm happy to be continually proven wrong about that.

This we can agree on. Roundtree so far, while not perfect, has done some excellent changes to GW

 streetsamurai wrote:
yeah, but I was talking about market research (more specifically demand analysis), not customer experience research, which is so vast a term that it can mean something completely different

It was just an example of something GW has been doing that they haven't announced. Sorry about any other implications the terms have.

Did you know they also have test programs for turning single employee stores back into multi-staff stores?

Frozenwastes wrote:I don't know why people are having such a hard time with the possibility that GW might be telling the truth and they really were caught off guard by unpredicted (or even unpredictable) levels of demand.

Because getting this sort of thing right when you're a global, publicly listed company is really important, and this isn't the first time.

They're not a first time one man band, running a KS.

 frozenwastes wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
yeah, but I was talking about market research (more specifically demand analysis), not customer experience research, which is so vast a term that it can mean something completely different

It was just an example of something GW has been doing that they haven't announced. Sorry about any other implications the terms have.

Did you know they also have test programs for turning single employee stores back into multi-staff stores?

That's cool I guess.

You know all of this, yet you're not able to point out to a single instance of GW doing any market research. Which is why the most logical conclusion is that they still aren't doing any.

Anyway, this is getting boring.

Peace

 streetsamurai wrote:
This we can agree on. Roundtree so far, while not perfect, has done some excellent changes to GW

I want to apologize for misunderstanding you earlier. Given what you said here, I went and reread some previous posts and reinterpreted them in the light that you do recognize that some changes have actually happened. My apologies.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 streetsamurai wrote:
You know all of this, yet you're not able to point out to a single instance of GW doing any market research. Which is why the most logical argument is that they still aren't doing any.

Or that they simply haven't announced it? What's more likely, that they aren't doing any market research or that you just don't know about it? And since there are so many different kinds of market research, what happens if you don't like the type they have chosen and don't want it to count? What if research into the experience of the customer buying their product doesn't satisfy your idea of what market research should mean? I for example, think they'd be better served by looking into the customer's experience of the actual product through its entire life cycle.

Sorry this is boring you, but some of us find this stuff fascinating. We may even have done it (or do it) for a living.

I happen to be a prof in management in marketing at an university. I find this stuff fascinating. What I find boring is making baseless hypothesis on what GW is or is not doing. The only concrete fact that we had is that they aren't doing any market research. Any other opinion is just based on assumptions

Why would they announce that they're doing market research? That's something you do, not something you boast about... unless you're Tom Kirby of course, but then he's no longer making any kind of statements on GW's behalf. There hasn't been a bad word about Kirby from GW thus far, I don't expect to go out and explicitly call him out anytime soon.

As I said before (this is getting redundant), if they were doing market research, we would have heard of some customers who were part of a focus group, or we would have seen job opportunities in this field on their website.

Yet, we have seen none of this, and we have this terrible failure of potential demand analysis that is SWA. So the only logical conclusion is that they still aren't doing any market research

I see taking a statement made by a former CEO and maintaining it still applies as a concrete fact to be a baseless assumption.

 frozenwastes wrote:
What's more likely, that they aren't doing any market research or that you just don't know about it?

Given previous statements from the company that they don't do market research, 'not' would seem to be edging into the lead, there...

 streetsamurai wrote:
As I said before (this is getting redundant), if they were doing market research, we would have heard of some customers who were part of a focus group, or we would have seen job opportunities in this field on their website.

But professor, you didn't hear about the customers that were part of the customer experience work with Bare, so why should you hear about that?

 frozenwastes wrote:
I see taking a statement made by a former CEO and maintaining it still applies as a concrete fact to be a baseless assumption.

That's absurd.

You're the one who was talking about falsification not too long ago.

Since there is nothing that can falsify this 'theory' we have to assume it is still true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 frozenwastes wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:
As I said before (this is getting redundant), if they were doing market research, we would have heard of some customers who were part of a focus group, or we would have seen job opportunities in this field on their website.

But professor, you didn't hear about the customers that were part of the customer experience work with Bare, so why should you hear about that?

Yet you knew about them, andfor all the time you've been digging, you never were able to find a concrete case of market research made by GW

 insaniak wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
What's more likely, that they aren't doing any market research or that you just don't know about it?

Given previous statements from the company that they don't do market research, 'not' would seem to be edging into the lead, there...

I don't think that follows given it was the statement of one CEO and not the current one. Who has done all sorts of things differently than the old CEO.

Then there's a larger question of what you would count as market research but other people might say is. Street Samurai wants focus groups and demand analysis. I'd advocate whole lifecycle customer experience research. Others want them to survey trade accounts to get more information there. So many options.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 streetsamurai wrote:
Since there is nothing that can falsify this 'theory' we have to assume it is still true.

That might not be how theories work.

Yet you knew about them, andfor all the time you've been digging, you never were able to find a concrete case of market research made by GW

Some people would consider customer experience research as part of market research... Though some would disagree and I understand where their disagreement comes from, even if I think knowing something about the experience of the portion of the market that currently buys from you is valuable knowledge. As I've already said we all may have very different ideas about what activities we would require before we agree they have done market research.

To relate this back to SWA, am i assuming too much if I think your position is that their failure to meet demand is a direct result of their lack of demand analysis market research?

Sorry I meant hypothesis, not theory

And in a thread about GW catastrophic failure at predicting the demand of a product, it is obvious to what kind of market research we are refering to.

Gentlemen, please feel free to continue the debate about whether GW does or does not do market research in another thread in the General Discussion sub-forum.

For anyone just tuning in, here's the latest:

- GW will print the softcover rulebook for Shadow War: Armageddon
- pre-orders willbegin April 22
- the pre-order period will be longer than the usual 7 days
- this printing will include all of the lists released via PDF
- this printing will also include lists for Adeptus Sororitas and Inquisition
- the Sisters and Inq lists will also be available via WD
- they will also be available as FREE downloads
- if you have the box set rulebook you will not miss anything by not getting this rulebook
- the second runrulebook will also include a photocopyable page of counters
- a digital version of the rules will also be available on April 22

- MSRP is not known
- whether this will be a limited release is not known

Apologies for whining, but can we have a separate thread for GW planning and market research rumors, so this one can actually be about Shadow War? Pages and pages a day of nonsense arguing and bickering about things we can't actually know.

Edit: nevermind, Manchu's got this.

Thankyou Manchu!

Is there ever going to be an actual Necromunda with actual gangs, or is this it? I mean, this looks great and I always liked the 40K Kill Team battle reports in White Dwarf way back in the early 2000's, but I'll be disappointed if the classic Necromunda gangs won't be returning, they were such a cool grimdark aspect of the 40K lore. I was a kid back in the early 2000's with only enough disposable income for a single game (Lord of the Rings) but I loved reading battle reports and conversion and painting articles for Necromunda, mordheim, warhammer fantasy, inquisitor, 40K etc.

Another quotation from Gw via FB:

Games Workshop wrote:This book was not planned originally, but is a direct result of the huge popularity of the game.

Sure. I've said my piece. I'd like to think though, that when people complain about GW dropping the ball on this release, some insight into what might be going on there might actually be on topic.

I do get it though that more people are likely to be interested in talking about the actual product rather than the business factors around it.

I hope this actually ends up having some sticking power and we see people post gangs and terrain pictures in the showcase section of Dakka. I really enjoyed the occasional inquisimunda or inq28 post over the years and hope people get just as creative with this.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Is there ever going to be an actual Necromunda with actual gangs, or is this it?

Based on GW's FB comments, I don't think Necromunda proper is coming back or that there will be official lists for the old houses/gangs. GW suggeted using AstraMil rules if you want tomuse the old models. The other thing is, GW has the post-CH suit policy of only writing rules for models they make (although this doesn't hold true 100% - e.g., BB).

Now whether "this" (currently available lists plus SoB and Inq) "is it" - I really doubt that! My impression from the FB comments is more lists are on their way but we shouldn't expect them to cover every single model.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Thankyou Manchu!

Is there ever going to be an actual Necromunda with actual gangs, or is this it? I mean, this looks great and I always liked the 40K Kill Team battle reports in White Dwarf way back in the early 2000's, but I'll be disappointed if the classic Necromunda gangs won't be returning, they were such a cool grimdark aspect of the 40K lore. I was a kid back in the early 2000's with only enough disposable income for a single game (Lord of the Rings) but I loved reading battle reports and conversion and painting articles for Necromunda, mordheim, warhammer fantasy, inquisitor, 40K etc.

I want to see necro return, but I don't want the classicall gangs (at least not all of them). Some of them were really boring (Van Saar, Orlock) or too similar to one another (Cawdor and redemptionist/ Goliath and Escher). In a perfect world (at least for me ), they would keep the more iconic ones (Goliath, Redemptionist, DElaque, Scavvy, pit slaves, Spyre) and reimagine the others.

Manchu wrote:
Gentlemen, please feel free to continue the debate about whether GW does or does not do market research in another thread in the General Discussion sub-forum.

For anyone just tuning in, here's the latest:

- GW will print the softcover rulebook for Shadow War: Armageddon
- pre-orders willbegin April 22
- the pre-order period will be longer than the usual 7 days
- this printing will include all of the lists released via PDF
- this printing will also include lists for Adeptus Sororitas and Inquisition
- the Sisters and Inq lists will also be available via WD
- they will also be available as FREE downloads
- if you have the box set rulebook you will not miss anything by not getting this rulebook
- the second runrulebook will also include a photocopyable page of counters
- a digital version of the rules will also be available on April 22

- MSRP is not known
- whether this will be a limited release is not known

Thanks.

Sometimes these news threads become completely impossible to follow.

 frozenwastes wrote:
some insight into what might be going on there might actually be on topic

Yes, it definitely has been - especially up until the reprint was announced. But we have come to the end of what can usefully be said about the issue in this thread. Please feel free to continue the discussion in a separate thread.

Manchu wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Is there ever going to be an actual Necromunda with actual gangs, or is this it?

Based on GW's FB comments, I don't think Necromunda proper is coming back or that there will be official lists for the old houses/gangs. GW suggeted using AstraMil rules if you want tomuse the old models. The other thing is, GW has the post-CH suit policy of only writing rules for models they make (although this doesn't hold true 100% - e.g., BB).

Now whether "this" (currently available lists plus SoB and Inq) "is it" - I really doubt that! My impression from the FB comments is more lists are on their way but we shouldn't expect them to cover every single model.

Well, a little while ago, Necromunda was going to be the Specialist Game they worked on after Adeptus Titanicus (according to reports from an event).

Thanks Manchu!

With the inclusion of Inquisitor gangs, this has basically become Inquisimunda: The Game. There's gonna be so much mileage one could theoretically get out of this rule book. AHH so excited to start playing!

Manchu wrote:


For anyone just tuning in, here's the latest:

- whether this will be a limited release is not known

LOL! The burn! Even if it was not intentional...

T

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Thankyou Manchu!

Is there ever going to be an actual Necromunda with actual gangs, or is this it? I mean, this looks great and I always liked the 40K Kill Team battle reports in White Dwarf way back in the early 2000's, but I'll be disappointed if the classic Necromunda gangs won't be returning, they were such a cool grimdark aspect of the 40K lore. I was a kid back in the early 2000's with only enough disposable income for a single game (Lord of the Rings) but I loved reading battle reports and conversion and painting articles for Necromunda, mordheim, warhammer fantasy, inquisitor, 40K etc.

I want to see necro return, but I don't want the classicall gangs (at least not all of them). Some of them were really boring (Van Saar, Orlock) or too similar to one another (Cawdor and redemptionist/ Goliath and Escher). In a perfect world (at least for me ), they would keep the more iconic ones (Goliath, Redemptionist, DElaque, Scavvy, pit slaves, Spyre) and reimagine the others.

How was the Escher gang similar to any of the others in terms of the minis

I have two complete painted Escher Gangs otherwise they would be a great candidate for the GW produce to order thingy. A "Gang" list would be a fun thing for a GW article or a future publication.

Thanks Manchu for sorting the thread out.

 Bottle wrote:
AHH so excited to start playing!

You and me both! Let's hope GW sees the value in doing something similar for AoS, preferably along the lines of your game Bottle.

Shadow War has already given me "permission" to pick up AdMech and GS Cult models,a bunch of terrain, and even .. gosh who would have ever thought, some Vostroyans! I remember a decade or more ago standing in a mall GW looking at some Vostroyans in a display case wondering if I would ever actually get any ... I suspect it is only a matter of time before I order some Steel Legion guys as well.

I'm painting my Gaunts Ghosts now which have been sat on my desk gathering dust for years, and I've ordered two Gaunt's Ghosts that I was missing off ebay, plus the missile launcher girl from the Last Chancers. Probably won't use them for a long time but hey, its gonna be fun to paint.

Might use them in This is Not a Test actually.

Kitbashed together some custom Scions myself.



It's also great news to see that both the Sororitas and Inquisition will be included down the line, can't wait to see their files pop up on the site.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Thankyou Manchu!

Is there ever going to be an actual Necromunda with actual gangs, or is this it? I mean, this looks great and I always liked the 40K Kill Team battle reports in White Dwarf way back in the early 2000's, but I'll be disappointed if the classic Necromunda gangs won't be returning, they were such a cool grimdark aspect of the 40K lore. I was a kid back in the early 2000's with only enough disposable income for a single game (Lord of the Rings) but I loved reading battle reports and conversion and painting articles for Necromunda, mordheim, warhammer fantasy, inquisitor, 40K etc.

I want to see necro return, but I don't want the classicall gangs (at least not all of them). Some of them were really boring (Van Saar, Orlock) or too similar to one another (Cawdor and redemptionist/ Goliath and Escher). In a perfect world (at least for me ), they would keep the more iconic ones (Goliath, Redemptionist, DElaque, Scavvy, pit slaves, Spyre) and reimagine the others.

How was the Escher gang similar to any of the others in terms of the minis

I have two complete painted Escher Gangs otherwise they would be a great candidate for the GW produce to order thingy. A "Gang" list would be a fun thing for a GW article or a future publication.

Thanks Manchu for sorting the thread out.

Goliath were punk man and Escher were punk woman.

Manchu wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
AHH so excited to start playing!

You and me both! Let's hope GW sees the value in doing something similar for AoS, preferably along the lines of your game Bottle.

Shadow War has already given me "permission" to pick up AdMech and GS Cult models,a bunch of terrain, and even .. gosh who would have ever thought, some Vostroyans! I remember a decade or more ago standing in a mall GW looking at some Vostroyans in a display case wondering if I would ever actually get any ... I suspect it is only a matter of time before I order some Steel Legion guys as well.

Thanks Manchu! Hinterlands has continued to be bewilderingly popular with the community and GW have definitely noticed it. So let's hope for something in the future.

Yes, I am also looking at branching out and getting more gangs. I have models for GSC and Skitarii so I am perhaps thinking of Canoness Veridyan getting a squad to join her and maybe making an Ork gang out of the 2nd Edition starter set models for some true nostalgia!

Manchu wrote:
Shadow War has already given me "permission" to pick up AdMech and GS Cult models,a bunch of terrain, and even .. gosh who would have ever thought, some Vostroyans!

The genestealer cult section of the 2nd edition Tyranid codex was amazing. I haven't looked at the more recent rules, but I passed over the models because I didn't expect to get any game use out of them. But now...

Hmmm. Such nice models.

Will have to ask around and see if anyone else is interested in this sort of a game locally.

 Bottle wrote:
so I am perhaps thinking of Canoness Veridyan getting a squad to join her

Damn it, I also have her, means I'll have to get her a posse as well when the rules drop.

what's the scenery in the box precisely? I'm asking cause comeone want to sell it to me for a 100 cad and I'm wondering if its worth it

Good news While I have a copy of Shadow war on its way, I could be tempted to grab this version as well. Having a 2nd rule book wouldn't hurt and the expanded factions in print is definitely a draw. Hopefully GW will see the worth in supporting the game in the future. More "faction" rules covering more of the 40k range would be very welcome.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

 davou wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But other players in my club may not want to play a game they don't themselves own,

so they will have to wait the few days it takes for the rules to be released is what you meant to say?

Where are you getting the info that the rulebook will be released in a few days? I get the impression they'll knock out some kind of apple version for a swift profit but everyone I game with always likes to own their own real rulebook.

Voila, its officially announced. Good enough?

GoatboyBeta wrote:
Good news While I have a copy of Shadow war on its way, I could be tempted to grab this version as well. Having a 2nd rule book wouldn't hurt and the expanded factions in print is definitely a draw. Hopefully GW will see the worth in supporting the game in the future. More "faction" rules covering more of the 40k range would be very welcome.

Yeah I'll probably pick it up too. Means a copy each when I play anyone and all the factions in one book appeals to me.

So its (hardcopy rulebook) announced and ten minutes later people are not only saying that they will buy a copy, but that they will buy it despite already having it....

Anyone wanna tell me again how GW selling a product out in under 10 minutes was a failure for the company?

 streetsamurai wrote:
what's the scenery in the box precisely? I'm asking cause comeone want to sell it to me for a 100 cad and I'm wondering if its worth it

http://battlebunnies.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/shadow-war-armageddon-unboxing.html Battle bunnies have a good unboxing video. Looks like the box contains the Ferratonic furnace and Alchomite stack kits along with a support strut sprue and the straight and curved walkway/platform sprues that are in the Galvanic magnavent set.

 davou wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

 davou wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But other players in my club may not want to play a game they don't themselves own,

so they will have to wait the few days it takes for the rules to be released is what you meant to say?

Where are you getting the info that the rulebook will be released in a few days? I get the impression they'll knock out some kind of apple version for a swift profit but everyone I game with always likes to own their own real rulebook.

Voila, its officially announced. Good enough?

You do realize he posted prior to GW's announcement?

 davou wrote:

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

 davou wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:

But other players in my club may not want to play a game they don't themselves own,

so they will have to wait the few days it takes for the rules to be released is what you meant to say?

Where are you getting the info that the rulebook will be released in a few days? I get the impression they'll knock out some kind of apple version for a swift profit but everyone I game with always likes to own their own real rulebook.

Voila, its officially announced. Good enough?

Yeah. I ate my humble pie about 3 pages back... so glad I was wrong.

 Gimgamgoo wrote:

Well... I often feel like Victor Meldrew when mentioning GW, but this time, I'm well impressed. I'll certainly be pre-ordering a rulebook - although I'm gonna have to find where all my old GW special dice have been hiding for years.

So?

Welp, I sure wish I hadn't spent most of the weekend writing up rules for using Sisters and Inquisition kill teams in this! Thought I'd get a couple of months grace before GW put their own out, since there's so many plastic factions left to do...

Never mind!

 Galas wrote:
Can't we just, as customers, be happy that our complaints have been answered by the company?

Not at all. See we've reached the second phase of this argument. Originally it was:

"This was a major screw up!"
"Nonsense! This GW showing how business savvy they are. Besides, it's not a big deal, everything is available outside of the box except the rules necessary to play the game, but despite them not having a plan to have the book available digitally this is somehow still ok and totally in keeping with their genuius and how much GW has changed for the better!"

Now we're onto:

"Ah good. They're going to print a stand alone version of the rulebook. And with more rules!"
"Ha! Told you so! We totally knew they were going to do this. GW are getting better every second of every day and all your haters can do is complain!"

The difference is subtle, I give you, but it's there.

Preferably there'd be no arguing, but Dakka will be Dakka. Gods forbid there was a thread with civil discussion without people attacking each other. Despite Rule 1 and all. Hey ho.

The argument hasn't changed people have just chosen to fixate on a single detail of the argument as if countering it in part is the same as countering it in totality.

The availability of the rulebook and terrain outside the starter box doesn't change my opinion on how it was a failure in having such an insufficient supply of starter kits. While there is a demand for the rules and a demand for the terrain, both that can now be met, there was also a demand for starter kits that they have failed and seemingly refuse to meet.

Also I want to add that I think it's great that GW are making a rulebook available on its own, regardless of the fact that I now have a stack of brand new yet immediately outdated books.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I haven't looked at the more recent rules, but I passed over the models because I didn't expect to get any game use out of them. But now...

Hmmm. Such nice models.

Will have to ask around and see if anyone else is interested in this sort of a game locally.

Overkill is a nice buy for the GS Cult models - -lus it's hard to believe there won't eventually be a DW list.

 davou wrote:
So?

Well, if you're going to be an arse about it..

You claimed the rules would be available in a few days, GGG queried where you got this information. The announcement was for a pre order next week with an indeterminate number of weeks to run before the book would be available, placing it firmly in the "if they've got to get it printed up by someone else, it's going to take a while" camp that people have said it would.

GGG was gracious enough to take that as proof he was wrong and walk back his comments, the least you can do is be magnanimous about it, especially as it was you who was basically wrong.

Separate print rulebook confirmed to be 200 pages.

The rulebook was announced to be available digitally the same night that they sold out IIRC; that was what I was referring to

If it wasn't for the fact that I got all of the terrain and Miniatures for a steal, I would be a little bit irritated that the book is effectively incomplete. However I don't have any qualms with printing off the PDF versions of the factions and putting them in a binder.

It is actually pretty cool that GW actually went ahead and did this.

 davou wrote:
The rulebook was announced to be available digitally the same night that they sold out IIRC; that was what I was referring to

Ah, ok, so the digital rulebook comes with the extra attitude, and it's only discussion about the dead tree version where honestly asked questions can be answered politely without snark?

Manchu wrote:

 frozenwastes wrote:
I haven't looked at the more recent rules, but I passed over the models because I didn't expect to get any game use out of them. But now...

Hmmm. Such nice models.

Will have to ask around and see if anyone else is interested in this sort of a game locally.

Overkill is a nice buy for the GS Cult models - -lus it's hard to believe there won't eventually be a DW list.

I have to imagine some of the pre-existing Necromunda fan groups will be stepping up to fill the gaps that GW hasn't shown interest in filling.

It maybe too much wishful thinking but I can't help but imagine that GW might have some future plan to do additional Killteams. Deathwatch being such a in demand one may be central to that plan.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Thankyou Manchu!

Is there ever going to be an actual Necromunda with actual gangs, or is this it? I mean, this looks great and I always liked the 40K Kill Team battle reports in White Dwarf way back in the early 2000's, but I'll be disappointed if the classic Necromunda gangs won't be returning, they were such a cool grimdark aspect of the 40K lore. I was a kid back in the early 2000's with only enough disposable income for a single game (Lord of the Rings) but I loved reading battle reports and conversion and painting articles for Necromunda, mordheim, warhammer fantasy, inquisitor, 40K etc.

Those rules are available for free on Yaktribe.org. Alternatively you could use GSC or Imperial Guard lists in Shadow War. Not ideal, but it's workable.

Edit: disregard the spoilered part, I went back and checked his post and he stated he was not working on Necromunda concepts. I guess I misremembered that over the last 16 months.

 Bottle wrote:
With the inclusion of Inquisitor gangs, this has basically become Inquisimunda: The Game. There's gonna be so much mileage one could theoretically get out of this rule book. AHH so excited to start playing!

Yep, this is going to be such a boon to the Inquisimunda community simply because official rules make it so much more accessible and people reading Blanchitsu articles in White Dwarf can now look at free faction lists to get inspired to make their own.

 davou wrote:
So its (hardcopy rulebook) announced and ten minutes later people are not only saying that they will buy a copy, but that they will buy it despite already having it....

Anyone wanna tell me again how GW selling a product out in under 10 minutes was a failure for the company?

I'm probably going to buy the rulebook again as well. Haven't decided if I'll get the digital, which I was already considering, just to have a physical and digital, and digital usually gets updates for errata and FAQ, which is cool. Although having a printed version with all the factions in it is appealing, despite all those factions being available separately.

More importantly, though, is showing GW this type of game is not only drawing demand, but significantly so. This well may lead to Necromunda being fast tracked, hopefully for Fall after 8th edition has fully rolled out and just in time for the holidays that might be wishful thinking though.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 davou wrote:
The rulebook was announced to be available digitally the same night that they sold out IIRC; that was what I was referring to

Ah, ok, so the digital rulebook comes with the extra attitude, and it's only discussion about the dead tree version where honestly asked questions can be answered politely without snark?

No, snark comes free when someone suggests that just because they weren't able to get a boxed copy of the game for each of their friends, their planned campaign is effectively dead.

Or as a free side when people suggest that a company releasing a product and selling it out in under 10 minutes (all on pre-order) is somehow a flubb for the company.

Five pages back you have people making the argument that this will cause some kind of reaction that chases people away from GW products, and on this page you have people saying that they will buy an extra copy of something that they already have; The disengagement with reality here is laughable, and I'm laughing at it.