FYI: This thread is not just about GW's Tolkien-based products but about GW's practices more generally as they relate to the Tolkien franchise (for example, does GW have any idea how to handle a license?), the late-2012 market for war game miniatures, and the long term market -- looking backward and forward -- for Tolkien-based miniature wargaming.

IIRC, GW's LotR:SBG and WotR games have never been too popular. I have never known anyone in person who played either. Is all this talk about their Hobbit franchise-refresh having disastrous sales a reaction to this low popularity persisting during the film release and Christmas season? If so, that sounds like a retailer mistake. Or was the Hobbit a failure even compared to lifetime sales for the line?

Does anyone have a more detailed picture of what's going on with the Hobbit than the usual one-liner assumptions that fit so well into the much-beloved past time of GW-trashing? From what I know about SBG and WotR, the rules were pretty good. And new minis look as good and in some cases (e.g., wargs) much better than existing models.

Actually, LOTR was quite popular around my area. Several people played it, at one event a club got together and made an entire siege of Isengard diorama with a ton of scratch built Ents and tons of orcs and such. I myself have a small force of Rohan, a small force for Moria and bought the Mines of Moria boxed set. There's a lot of things I love about the LOTR range, I just haven't gotten in to it because I feel GW haven't really fleshed out the armies to the point where I'd like. It seems like that's the way they were heading, but then it kind of petered out.

I think the reason The Hobbit is unpopular is simply because the box set is not good value. I was ready to jump on The Hobbit bandwagon and give it a shot, but saw the price and contents of the boxed set and was like "err, no".

I still have a very close eye on LOTR/Hobbit and if GW can actually expand the armies I'll be very interested in collecting a full army. The new Dwarfs already look rather promising.

Let's talk about the starter set. I think that's a great, please pardon the pun, place to start.

Where did you think it came short as far as value? Just in terms of the price of miniatures compared against the product line, it wasn't bad. Was it more a matter of the actual units included?

LOTR never really seemed to take off as a game but the models seemed to fly off the shelves. I got into the hobby at that time and own hundreds of dollars worth of models but only ever played one real game of it.

I think what went wrong with The Hobbit is that LOTR was a easy sell to 12 year olds because it was $35 for 24 models, their parents would happily pay that. Even though the game never really took off the models sold.

The Hobbit was way too expensive on launch, you can't expect a parent to buy their kid 12 models for $55 (all Au pricing btw) as an impulse buy like you could LOTR.


Over all the entire release felt like GW were expecting it to be just as big a success so they got arrogant and raise the prices a little bit more, which pushed lots of people away.

So do you think the Hobbit was a casualty of practices regarding the other lines and the reaction to those practices?

Yes, I think the company has changed a lot since the LOTR release and the Hobbit has suffered directly as a result of GW dumping all their crap on this new line at it's release, while looking back on LOTR it looked to be mostly free of and sort of corporate pressure. 24 for $35 is possibly the cheapest GW models have ever been (cirtainly since I have been in the hobby) and it sold well, GW have gotten greedier since then though and seem to have developed a 'we make it and people will buy it no matter what' mindset so they are charging about 150% more then scratching their heads when that business model fails.

It is well established that GW made a ton of money off the LotR merchandise. However, the LotR movies, I believe were hugely more successful than the Hobbit movie and certainly more heavily marketed. The scope of the LotR movies was enormous in terms of geography and possible armies compared to the Hobbit as well.

I believe that the GW LotR merchandise sold a lot better in the UK and Europe than it ever did in the US. In all my years of gaming at several flgs I have never seen anyone play a single LotR game. I have observed plenty of other games and not just FoW and Warmahordes, but 15 mm martian, Battle fleet Gothic, and other sci fi miniature games, but never LotR.

Price of the Hobbit range could be a barrier or it could be that the Hobbit movies just didnt excite the same interest as LotR.

Speaking as not an LotR or Hobbit player, I think some of the explanation is that The Hobbit film wasn't as good or popular as the LotR films.

Also, people who were into their Tolkien battles possibly had been satisfied by the LotR releases. What did The Hobbit game/rules offer that was different and interesting?

I understand that from a licensing point of view it's an absolute necessity for a relaunch/rebranding of the LOTR line with the film release, it's also a pretty poor excuse. With the exception of the special characters, the existing LOTR line already has a plethora of choices for dwarves, elves, men, goblins, orcs, wargs, the white council and pretty much anything else to be found in the Hobbit.

The Hobbit just isn't a very good basis for a TTWG, there is only one massive battle, and another one spoke of in the past tense. The Hobbit is about a band of adventurers and really more like an awesome game of D&D.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Speaking as not an LotR or Hobbit player, I think some of the explanation is that The Hobbit film wasn't as good or popular as the LotR films.

Also, people who were into their Tolkien battles possibly had been satisfied by the LotR releases. What did The Hobbit game/rules offer that was different and interesting?

Finecast Characters?

 Oakenshield wrote:
The Hobbit just isn't a very good basis for a TTWG, there is only one massive battle, and another one spoke of in the past tense. The Hobbit is about a band of adventurers and really more like an awesome game of D&D.

MERP...

That is a big factor, although there are some new people to Tolkien, most the people I knew who bought into the first round were my age or older...and then they didnt actually use them for GWs game. The figures were an inexpensive alternative to Mithril figures to build big armies in the Middle Earth setting.

The new releases lack the price point, and the new movie really hasnt had the draw due to the nature of the story. As a result, the customer base has gone back to the company who has been doing Tolkien figures for 20+ years.

Battle of Five Armies is worth doing, surely?

There are a few things I think are factors:

The Hobbit isn't as big a franchise as LOTR.

The first film doesn't contain a single big battle (apart from a flashback), so there's really not anything to work with.

GW has engaged in no advertising about it, except to it's existing customers. Even a poster up in any cinema showing the film with "you've seen the film, now play the game" would have had a huge impact. There will be plenty of film fans that don't know the game exists.

And for those that do, the prices are a joke. The entry point on the starter set is too high for an impulse post-cinema purchase, and even after consideration you still need the BRB to play outwith the starter box. A lot of the other box sets are terrible value for money compared to other lines (LOTR, 40K, anyone non-GW).

I've certainly looked at the starter a few times, because I want Thorins company to paint, but at that price I'll wait and get it after the films are done and the people are dumping them on ebay.

Herzlos wrote:

GW has engaged in no advertising about it, except to it's existing customers. Even a poster up in any cinema showing the film with "you've seen the film, now play the game" would have had a huge impact. There will be plenty of film fans that don't know the game exists.

That's another thing, I first found out about GW from the magazine that they did for the LOTR release. It clearly worked well for them but they have really cut back on the advertising.

Cost! It is just far too expensive for a starter box set. £75 is not an impulse buy and really makes you consider whether you will actually get to play against anyone else.

I love the whole Tolkien world but after seeing no-one ever play LoTR games I decided I am very unlikely to see anyone play this as LoTR had a more armies and a better ability to play big battles.

The Hobbit isn't about big battles but the long journey. Apart from fighting Smaug and the end Five armies battle there really is nothing else.

I support the "Hobbit not for wargaming" thesis. And concerning just collecting miniatures or using them for rpg, while they don't have the aesthetic of the movie, in my shelf those beautiful sculpted Mithril figures still have the bar raised too high for GW. Who wants Heroic Scale if he can have heroes instead?

Also need to remember GW had to pay about 5 times as much for the Hobbit license than for the LOTR one. The starter set is actually really great value, its just that all of the GW starter sets are costing more. There are actually several LOTR players in my area (Melbourne, AU), however it seems most of them already had their armies, and didn't really see much reason to expand. If I recall correctly, the Hobbit didn't introduce any complete armies, just more options for already existing ones. I personally love the LOTR ruleset, however haven't really played a lot (lack of funds, lack of interest painting, relative lack of people playing compared to 40k or fantasy).

The biggest strength of LotR game was the system so the basis of the Hobbit game is sound.

I confess to have never having bought too much LotR stuff really just the Fellowship from eBay but always had a strong desire to he a Rohan Cavalry force. I decided to get this just as GW ramped up the rates/reduced the box contents.

Now I have spare cash for toys but I object to being fleeced so didn't bother. The hobbit follows this trend and is really unattractive to people already exposed to GW as a result.

I also have to say the starter set goblins are pap, the rest of the contents are nice though to be fair.

So in summary, too much for vets and not attractive enough for greenhorns.

1) No marketing.

2) Insane prices.

3) No marketing.

4) Boring starter set.

5) No marketing.

6) Presented as a separate product, not part of the greater LOTR product line.

7) No marketing.


Seriously, blame the lack of marketing. A Hobbit game is the perfect opportunity to expand GW's market to people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in miniatures games, but they completely blew it. How they could spend a bunch of money on the license and not even attempt to market the game properly, I have no idea. That's just a staggering level of incompetence, and if I was a GW shareholder I'd demand the immediate firing of GW's entire management over it.

 Peregrine wrote:
1) No marketing.

2) Insane prices.

3) No marketing.

4) Boring starter set.

5) No marketing.

6) Presented as a separate product, not part of the greater LOTR product line.

7) No marketing..

To highlight the shameful lack of marketing here, ask yourself this: as a miniature wargaming player who is significantly involved in the community and well-informed compared to the average (since you're posting on a wargaming forum), how much marketing did you see for the Hobbit releases? Did you see anything outside of GW's "what's new today" page and maybe a few pictures in the magazine nobody reads? Yeah, didn't think so. If GW can't even get their core customer base to notice a major new release what do you think their chances of having any meaningful sales are?

Perhaps the lack of marketing partly comes from the lack of community enthusiasm for LotR.

GW basically have two types of marketing:

1. You happen to walk past a shop and decide look inside.
2. Friends, older brothers and club members tell you about the games.

Remove no.2 from the equation and you are left with walk-in trade.

GW put out their initial release and seems to almost have walked away from the product entirely. Then again, what are they supposed to make other than goblins? Well, I suppose they could do Dwarves vs. Orcs per the flashbacks. The Hobbit just doesn't translate very well into a tabletop wargame, I guess.

Oh, in case nobody mentioned it, the prices seem a little on the steep side.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
GW basically have two types of marketing:

1. You happen to walk past a shop and decide look inside.
2. Friends, older brothers and club members tell you about the games.

Which is incredibly stupid. It's just unbelievable that a company in 2013 could come to the conclusion that marketing (as in actively trying to reach new customers) is completely unnecessary. You pretty much have to come to the conclusion that GW is a charity that exists for the sole purpose of employing managers who are too utterly incompetent to keep a job at a real company.

Remove no.2 from the equation and you are left with walk-in trade.

Which is a great plan when your stores are in the middle of nowhere instead of in places that actually get significant walk-in traffic from people other than existing customers. Depending on the impulse buy from random people walking past a display might have made sense if they'd put up Hobbit displays in walmart/bookstores/etc, but the way they actually did it was just insane.

I remember that Lotr gw miniatures, books etc were sold also by planet agostini publications, each month a mini some fluff etc etc at good prices, this had a HUGE market penetration because all of a sudden these minis were at every corner newspaper store... People unaware of GW ( 99.999999%) now could buy GW minis and they did.

As far as I know the Hobbit is not sold outside GW stores and these are just not practical or visible enough for the hobbit fans. The biz model GW chooses for distributing the Hobbit its just not helping... even more than prices.

I hadn't considered the fact that the Hobbit game offers nothing to LOTR players. The LOTR game was about big battles, and War of the Ring was about bigger battles. What do LOTR players need with the Hobbit? Why would they want to buy a super-expensive rulebook that's going to be supercooled by the Desolation of Smaug book in a year, and then again by the There And Back Again a year later? Sure the final film has a nice big battle that might appeal to them, but up until that point you've got a story that is structured in a very different way to the LOTR books and lends itself more to an RPG than a "tactical skirmish game" or whatever they're calling it.

 Manchu wrote:
So do you think the Hobbit was a casualty of practices regarding the other lines and the reaction to those practices?

I think that when the LOTR bubble burst GW saw how fleeting high sales were for a product like this. So when the Hobbit came around they planned ahead, making sure that the goal became to make as much money from it in the short term before the inevitable bursting of the Hobbit bubble. This is why the Hobbit minis cost so damned much.

If it's not going well for GW then they are simply victims of their own hubris and even greed.

Even though as a GW fan I knew about the game, it was that mag that got me to pick it up, because I'm a sucker for a magazine with info and lots of good photos and stills, with a seemingly free figure on the front.

Think I collected it to about issue 48 ish (maybe just past 50) before I finally dropped it and left Lotr, but by then GW had seen a good three to four hundred pounds from me in Lotr stuff and I wasn't really even playing the danged game.

LotR seemed pretty big, there are lots of accounts of it being a big seller and I remember people complaining about how it was overshadowing fantasy/40k, so I don't think there doubt about its success.

Someone claims GW paid five time more for the Hobbit license, where's the source on that? Seems a little unlikely and if so is rather too much. The Hobbit just seems a smaller franchise, I don't see the massive presence of it generally in toy shops.

As a game from GW it's been released with a bit of a whimper. It doesn't feature strongly in any LGS I've been in, but equally I can't say if it's been selling poorly. But if I didn't read Dakka I probably would barely have registered its existence.

The ludicrous prices are just the final barrier. I just don't know who would pay them other than the most dedicated LotR gamer. They are not casual purchases.

Agree with what most have said.

LOTR was a huge success, because De Agostini made standard marketing with TV-ads for their magazine+sprue products. Each issue, a bit of painting and a bit of rules were revealed, with pointers at GW stores to get more. Worked wonders, GW products became non-niche. GW decided to never do something like this again, as it cloggs the stores with customers and the cashiers with money.

Raising the prices by 100% on average for the Hobbit also wasn't helpful, as it cut off the main target customers. And yes, the Limited Edition is still available all over the world.

 Kroothawk wrote:
GW decided to never do something like this again, as it cloggs the stores with customers and the cashiers with money.

That and Agostini are a bunch of freeloaders, how dare they to make money out of GW toys?

Yeah I agree that the deAgostini magazine was a huge contributor to the success of LotR, it was apparently their best selling line ever by a considerable margin (according to Wikipedia). They had adverts on normal TV which is surely a big boost too.

I simply don't understand why GW don't advertise, at all. It makes no sense, how many other companies would do that? I guarantee that if I asked people I work with if they've ever heard of GW or warhammer etc they wouldn't have, and that's surely not right for a company with a store in most major towns and cities in the UK.

As far as the Hobbit releases go, they've not been given anywhere near the same treatment as the initial LotR releases. It's almost like GW refuses to admit that it's actually part of the LotR game system and not an entirely new game, they sort of make a cursory mention that you can use your existing collection too. Very few releases so far given no more coverage than the advert in WD at the front, and that's it really. My local GW doesn't have much shelf space devoted to it either, and it's tucked away in a dark corner.

Of course, the insane pricing doesn't help either does it. £50 for 3 trolls? Please, I could afford it if I wanted to but I still don't like being ripped off!

I don't think that GWs pricing strategy helped, but I think you have to place the blame on the film itself.

It wasn't bad entertainment as such, but I don't think many would argue that it was the equal of the original trilogy.

Consequently, I don't think there was the same level of enthusiasm for the game this time around.

Even within GW's own advertising book (White Dwarf), The Hobbit has not received the same attention that LOTR got at this point in its lifecycle, 12 years ago. Back then WD had the upside-down segment of 20+ LOTR exclusive pages in WD. This latest issue, I don't think there was a single page?

Pricing is a major factor here. LOTR when it started was a cheaper alternative to 40k, giving you 24 Warriors of the Last Alliance models for $35 rather than 10 space marines for $40 (AUD). Compare that to the current 3 trolls for $140... It's no longer a cheaper viable alternative.

(On a related note: Oooh, Rivendell cavalry? shiny, would go well with my... WHAT? twice the price of the Angmar Warg Riders?)

One reason to rule them all - Price.

GW's greed and assumption that people will flock to buy their products at over inflated prices.

Manchu wrote:Let's talk about the starter set. I think that's a great, please pardon the pun, place to start.

Where did you think it came short as far as value? Just in terms of the price of miniatures compared against the product line, it wasn't bad. Was it more a matter of the actual units included?

Well I don't know the US prices, but I believe the Mines of Moria was $85AUD, Escape from Goblin Town is.... $205. I don't think it's terrible value for the amount of plastic you get compared to other GW lines (not necessarily awesome value, but similar arena), but you're paying a lot for a bunch of plastic terrain and just me personally I have little to no great desire to paint the ugly boil covered goblins and Mr. Scrotum Beard.

The scene in the movie didn't have nearly the sort of impact that the Mines of Moria had, the models don't look as nice and they cost too much. I would like to get Thorin's company, but I'm not paying that much for it. I wouldn't say I bought Mines of Moria on impulse, but the value definitely played a part of which The Hobbit has none.

The lack of marketing definitely hurt them as well. If they were expecting to sell it to randoms walking in to their shops and no one else, they were a bit silly.

Breotan wrote:GW put out their initial release and seems to almost have walked away from the product entirely. Then again, what are they supposed to make other than goblins? Well, I suppose they could do Dwarves vs. Orcs per the flashbacks. The Hobbit just doesn't translate very well into a tabletop wargame, I guess.

Oh, in case nobody mentioned it, the prices seem a little on the steep side.

Actually, GW haven't walked away from The Hobbit release. Just this past round of releases they released 2 new plastic boxed sets and 3 new character sculpts, overall since they've released the main game they've released 5 plastic boxed sets and half a dozen character models for "good" and, what, 2 or so boxed sets and a a few characters for evil as well.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Breotan wrote:GW put out their initial release and seems to almost have walked away from the product entirely. Then again, what are they supposed to make other than goblins? Well, I suppose they could do Dwarves vs. Orcs per the flashbacks. The Hobbit just doesn't translate very well into a tabletop wargame, I guess.

Oh, in case nobody mentioned it, the prices seem a little on the steep side.

Actually, GW haven't walked away from The Hobbit release. Just this past round of releases they released 2 new plastic boxed sets and 3 new character sculpts, overall since they've released the main game they've released 5 plastic boxed sets and half a dozen character models for "good" and, what, 2 or so boxed sets and a a few characters for evil as well.

But...

Someone who is active on a GW related forum didn't know it, that says a fair amount as to why you don't have clamoring from the masses regarding the products...even if you were to discount the price and subject matter. The tree has fallen in the forest, but no one has heard it.

As someone who had first person experience of working in GW during the release of LoTR, I have to say it was absolutely mental - this was back in the days of 4 staff working in one small store mind (how long ago that seems now!), and we working all day without breaks and the units of the games were flying off the shelf faster than we could put them out in some places.

Now of course this is many years later, but it was with some confusion (and I have to be honest, a little consternation) that going past the same store on the weekends in the run up to Xmas to see the same stuff sat on the shelf. Kids in the store yes, but most of them are hanging around the 40k or WFB stuff. I guess there could be any number of reasons for it (and TBH we will probably never know how well it sold - just from my impression, it could surely only have been a fraction of the heady days of the LoTR game releases)

The Obvious ones; prices and marketing. The former was too high, nothing like enough of the latter. I've heard it said that the original LoTR was sold at very little profit, which obviously lead to a lost opportunity as so many of the kids I saw coming into the store to buy a starter box never came into the store again (again though, this is just my impression). So I can understand GW wanting to make some money on the starter set and rulebook. That being said, if that price is too high (as was the case I think) then you stop those sales. And as for marketing? Well, its an oft discussed issue, personally I think there current methods are completely incomprehensible. Why plow millions into making and releasing these things, then not tell anyone about it?

 Pacific wrote:
Why plow millions into making and releasing these things, then not tell anyone about it?

We have a simple rule of thumb: no advertising. - Tom Kirby, Chairman's Preamble, 2003 FY Report

The starter set never appealed to me. The goblins, their king and their town, although an enjoyable scene, were only about five minutes of full movie time. I would've preferred a group of Wargs and Warg Riders led by the big one armed white Orc (name escapes me). The Warg Riders were a constant source of tension in the movie and seemed to have the dwarves number whenever they met. If it was Thorin and Co. vs. White Orc and Co., the scenario's in the book could've been more tense, more action packed and dare I say it.... cinematic. This starter set just seemed like Mines of Moria with pale goblins.

And speaking of the pale goblins, I hated the GW paint scheme of them the moment I saw them. A darker, dirtier shade would've matched the movie better.

So the starter set never grabbed my attention. Great sculpts of all parties involved in the set, but I had no desire to see about a dozen dudes wade through a horde of Goblins. I've done it before.

NELS1031 wrote:The goblins, their king and their town, although an enjoyable scene, were only about five minutes of full movie time. I would've preferred a group of Wargs and Warg Riders led by the big one armed white Orc (name escapes me).

To be fair, movie production was a mess, and toy manufacturers including GW were kept in the belief that the white orc character is killed early and his son is the main orc character. Also making three instead of two mvies was a late decision (see all those wood elf action miniatures). And the Moria escape is also only 10 minutes or so.

Pacific wrote:As someone who had first person experience of working in GW during the release of LoTR, I have to say it was absolutely mental - this was back in the days of 4 staff working in one small store mind (how long ago that seems now!), and we working all day without breaks and the units of the games were flying off the shelf faster than we could put them out in some places.

Not enough time for the staff left to say: "GW products are a niche market, right?

Or, as I said in another thread:
"Niche product" is marketing manager talk meaning "we massively lose customers and sales but that's okay and totally not our fault"

I did not know about the DeAgostino connection to the success of LotR, and it explains a lot.

Despite online social media "earned" channels, blah blah modern marketing... TV (and cinema) is still a massive driver of sales, but it probably only works for products that can fit into a mainstream consciousness.

The combo of DeAgostino TV and the film trilogy all over the normal press, made a fantasy wargame for a while into a mainstream product.

I don't think GW's other games would do as well through TV advertising. It is hard to make something like 40K look anything but weird to a mainstream audience, (for good reasons when you think about it.)

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I did not know about the DeAgostino connection to the success of LotR, and it explains a lot.

Despite online social media "earned" channels, blah blah modern marketing... TV (and cinema) is still a massive driver of sales, but it probably only works for products that can fit into a mainstream consciousness.

The combo of DeAgostino TV and the film trilogy all over the normal press, made a fantasy wargame for a while into a mainstream product.

I don't think GW's other games would do as well through TV advertising. It is hard to make something like 40K look anything but weird to a mainstream audience, (for good reasons when you think about it.)

Video games manage to do it every day though. While I don't know if you will find quite the same level of turnover as many games will - they still look weird to a lot of the mainstream audience (SimCity commercials for example come to mind).

Videogames have had enormous amounts of TV and cinema advertising for decades. Many of them being recreations of bits out of action movies, with fast moving visuals we all know from the cinema, and things like sports and driving which are mainstream already. Even my father plays flight sims and he is 84.

It is rather different to a game in which you push little plastic space men around a tabletop, shouting Waaagh and Blood for the Blood God.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Speaking as not an LotR or Hobbit player, I think some of the explanation is that The Hobbit film wasn't as good or popular as the LotR films.

Also, people who were into their Tolkien battles possibly had been satisfied by the LotR releases. What did The Hobbit game/rules offer that was different and interesting?

I liked The Hobbit movie better but I agree that that itch had already been scratched for folks wanting minis.

Plus new rules for a similar game/idea is very off-putting. And people saw GW's tactics and lack of follow-up with LOTR already.

I don't think TV advertising is right for GW but some adverts in certain magazines likely to be read by people interested in fantasy films and toys would be worthwhile. But alongside GW's anti advertising approach is their flat refusal to respond to any kind of media requests even to defend themselves from criticism over something like the Space Marine book. In fact their response to that was to shut down their Facebook page. Their 'fortress walls' is more if a bunker mentality.

They could sell themselves in a very positive way and at little cost, but they are determined not to engage with anyone. Perhaps they are just scared of being asked something awkward or made to look silly (but they're only a fancy toy shop so why would soneone be trying to trip them up?)or maybe they think they are being cool, elitist and niche, but that's a bit hard to reconcile with the fact you're a high street chain retailer.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

They could sell themselves in a very positive way and at little cost, but they are determined not to engage with anyone. Perhaps they are just scared of being asked something awkward or made to look silly (but they're only a fancy toy shop so why would someone be trying to trip them up?)or maybe they think they are being cool, elitist and niche, but that's a bit hard to reconcile with the fact you're a high street chain retailer.

You were here when "Become Legendary NA" was posting job openings right?

Unhappy customers will take any chance they get to try to trip up representatives from the company they feel has "wronged" them personally.

I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Videogames have had enormous amounts of TV and cinema advertising for decades. Many of them being recreations of bits out of action movies, with fast moving visuals we all know from the cinema, and things like sports and driving which are mainstream already. Even my father plays flight sims and he is 84.

It is rather different to a game in which you push little plastic space men around a tabletop, shouting Waaagh and Blood for the Blood God.

Maybe that is a easy bullet to dodge? I mean a good publicity agency can hide 40k or wfb bloody nature and concentrate on things like painting miniatures as a family activity... don't underestimate the capacity of advertisement when done with brains in the right platforms. There are clearly some conflicts between GW target demographic and their products... some things should probably be rated etc but thats not a problem that cannot be addressed.
Look at TV today you see crazy violent cartoons for children in primetime backed up with violent toys commercials that should be on teen channels and not children ones... etc Hell I have seen some freaking commercials for cleaning bathrooms etc in children channels! Those things if ingested by kids are fatal! But I digress.

GW could use that publicity tool like it did with Lotr... but looking at all these years I get the feeling that they consider strategic alliances like some kind of loosing control thing...

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

Yeah, but in this age of blogs and Youtube interview channels--anyone can be a "journalist"!

Despite LOTR being by far my favourite miniature wargame, I haven't picked up the rulebook. Why? I'm expecting them to do what they did last time and release a rulebook for each movie and then a definitive one. Even if they only have the Unexpected Journey book, then I still won't buy it yet because I don't know if they will change it.

Also, none of the models fit into any of my armies.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

Yeah, but in this age of blogs and Youtube interview channels--anyone can be a "journalist"!

And that alone is a good reason to not be silent about your own products!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Videogames have had enormous amounts of TV and cinema advertising for decades. Many of them being recreations of bits out of action movies, with fast moving visuals we all know from the cinema, and things like sports and driving which are mainstream already. Even my father plays flight sims and he is 84.

It is rather different to a game in which you push little plastic space men around a tabletop, shouting Waaagh and Blood for the Blood God.

Really no more difficult than selling anything else. Target your audience and make the product fit.

While you are literally just pushing around plastic figures, you are doing more than that in the minds eye. For the Hobbit, take segments from the movie and morph them into the figures when the take the same pose, have those spin out of seen and after 3 or 4, cut to a scene with a few guys around the table of a game store (or family game night depending on your audience) reenacting the battle.

For 40K, they can use live action scenes (or more likely 3D animation) to show cut scenes of people taking commands from a radio. After a bit, flash out to show a guy at a table with miniatures that are obviously representative of the cut scenes.

They dont even need to be that direct either. MtG has done coomercials from their start...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7I71KnRG2Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZ7J1tLAMvo

 NAVARRO wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Videogames have had enormous amounts of TV and cinema advertising for decades. Many of them being recreations of bits out of action movies, with fast moving visuals we all know from the cinema, and things like sports and driving which are mainstream already. Even my father plays flight sims and he is 84.

It is rather different to a game in which you push little plastic space men around a tabletop, shouting Waaagh and Blood for the Blood God.

Maybe that is a easy bullet to dodge? I mean a good publicity agency can hide 40k or wfb bloody nature and concentrate on things like painting miniatures as a family activity... don't underestimate the capacity of advertisement when done with brains in the right platforms. There are clearly some conflicts between GW target demographic and their products... some things should probably be rated etc but thats not a problem that cannot be addressed.
Look at TV today you see crazy violent cartoons for children in primetime backed up with violent toys commercials that should be on teen channels and not children ones... etc Hell I have seen some freaking commercials for cleaning bathrooms etc in children channels! Those things if ingested by kids are fatal! But I digress.

GW could use that publicity tool like it did with Lotr... but looking at all these years I get the feeling that they consider strategic alliances like some kind of loosing control thing...

There is of course a positive story to be told around the satisfaction of collecting and building your own stuff, art and craft skills, social interaction and other good things.

As a family man I think Warhammer and 40K in particular might have an image problem that isn't found in lots of other miniature games. The presentation in 40K of the "Hero" faction as a hyper-violent, xenophobic fascist dictatorship probably could challenge the PR people to put a positive spin on things.

Despite the above, GW did very well in the era when they made a variety of games and sold them through more general outlets like Toys'R'Us, so clearly the problem isn't a major one.

 Manchu wrote:
FYI: This thread is not just about GW's Tolkien-based products but about GW's practices more generally as they relate to the Tolkien franchise (for example, does GW have any idea how to handle a license?), the late-2012 market for war game miniatures, and the long term market -- looking backward and forward -- for Tolkien-based miniature wargaming.

IIRC, GW's LotR:SBG and WotR games have never been too popular. I have never known anyone in person who played either. Is all this talk about their Hobbit franchise-refresh having disastrous sales a reaction to this low popularity persisting during the film release and Christmas season? If so, that sounds like a retailer mistake. Or was the Hobbit a failure even compared to lifetime sales for the line?

Does anyone have a more detailed picture of what's going on with the Hobbit than the usual one-liner assumptions that fit so well into the much-beloved past time of GW-trashing? From what I know about SBG and WotR, the rules were pretty good. And new minis look as good and in some cases (e.g., wargs) much better than existing models.

In three words?

Movie promotion product. No one gives a gak about it after about two weeks to a month after the next hit of the week takes numbah 1.

GW should have stuck to common sense and left the movie business alone. The game sucks assets away from thier main mission, and turned the company into a joke. Only thing missing is the gw lable on the action figures and funny gandolf hats with the spinners on them.

They need to part with this tick ASAP and focuis on thier own issues, instead of taking on the issues of Warner Bro's, or New Line's.

As a family man I think Warhammer and 40K in particular might have an image problem that isn't found in lots of other miniature games. The presentation in 40K of the "Hero" faction as a hyper-violent, xenophobic fascist dictatorship probably could challenge the PR people to put a positive spin on things.

I would agree with this sentiment and add the fact that pocket/birthday/Christmas money is better served going to other companies products. My lads and their friends get a lot more value for money out of console games, card based games and even books and magazines.

We all love LoTR mainly for the figures. when GW first released their products I was all over it, Painted up tons of figures for display and skirmish play. I had a look at the Hobbit, and was interested, then I picked up a blister containing Gollum and Bilbo - £20!

£20 for tiny resin figures and a 1/3 of the pack is some scenic component that won't get used! Not to mention £75 for Escape from Goblin Town. I'll pass, my lads will pass and my wife won't be picking up figures for me to paint for her. So GW just put off a veteran, little timmy (their target) and a passing fancy of a hobby widow.

I can also imagine that the lacklustre release of the film has hurt sales, not just of GW licensed gear either.

The release of the next instalment may see even less return for Licence holders and may see GW fall back on a price increase yet again to claw something back.,

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

Yeah, but in this age of blogs and Youtube interview channels--anyone can be a "journalist"!

Why are your responses so deliberately obtuse? I'm talking about professional writers, why should some disgruntled bloggers lead to GW refusing to talk to business publications, the BBC, Guardian or Financial Times? I've seen them all comment that GW don't do interviews of any sort, so have written articles without their input. They're a toy company, not a religious cult.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

Yeah, but in this age of blogs and Youtube interview channels--anyone can be a "journalist"!

Why are your responses so deliberately obtuse? I'm talking about professional writers, why should some disgruntled bloggers lead to GW refusing to talk to business publications, the BBC, Guardian or Financial Times? I've seen them all comment that GW don't do interviews of any sort, so have written articles without their input. They're a toy company, not a religious cult.

It's really not hard to see why it's far easier for them to have a blanket "no comment" policy than to continually respond to any kind of request for interviews.

Look at the whole thing going on right now with the revised trade terms in North America. MWG is "closing down" and it's currently being spun as though GW's revised trade terms are the biggest reason that this is happening. How could they respond without somehow making themselves look like "the bad guys", responsible for the closing of an independent retailer which is much beloved by a part of the community which closely follows GW's every move?

If GW were to do interviews, it would be no different than how EA is continually presented after any interviews they give. People pick and choose what they actually hear/read from these interviews.

When LotR was out, I could buy GW's LotR miniatures in every bookstore, toystore and DVD store within 50 miles of me.

Bookstores had a display next to the book sets.
Toys R Us had it right next to the action figures.
Suncoast had it right next to the DVD boxed sets.

Today, every bookstore near me is out of business. Movie stores do not exist and people buy DVDs at the grocery store or digitally. No sign of anything at the toy store.

When you have to go to a store you don't know exists or a website for a product you don't know exists, how can you buy it? At least before there was a TON of stumble upon traffic.

I know we see things from the POV of gamers, but LotR had lots of crossover into non-gamers and I met people who don't wargame but enjoyed painting models when they were kids take a crack at buying LotR models. It was all about putting it in people's faces and getting them to try something.

I am a HUGE LotR fan. I loved the Hobbit. Sure, it wasn't LotR, but you can't expect this. I actually considered buying the minis, but when I saw the price, I just laughed and forgot about it.

I mean, really.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

Yeah, but in this age of blogs and Youtube interview channels--anyone can be a "journalist"!

Why are your responses so deliberately obtuse? I'm talking about professional writers, why should some disgruntled bloggers lead to GW refusing to talk to business publications, the BBC, Guardian or Financial Times? I've seen them all comment that GW don't do interviews of any sort, so have written articles without their input. They're a toy company, not a religious cult.

It's really not hard to see why it's far easier for them to have a blanket "no comment" policy than to continually respond to any kind of request for interviews.

Look at the whole thing going on right now with the revised trade terms in North America. MWG is "closing down" and it's currently being spun as though GW's revised trade terms are the biggest reason that this is happening. How could they respond without somehow making themselves look like "the bad guys", responsible for the closing of an independent retailer which is much beloved by a part of the community which closely follows GW's every move?

If GW were to do interviews, it would be no different than how EA is continually presented after any interviews they give. People pick and choose what they actually hear/read from these interviews.

The problem is, they end up in the asinine position of refusing comment to the BBC, you know, the biggest news network ON THE PLANET.

One thing I think is of some consequence however, is GW has a disconnect in their approach. They're undeniably UK-focused; they've got enormous market saturation in the UK, with stores being relatively commonplace, and public knowledge of the company and the game is higher than anywhere else in the world. However, they maintain that presence at a loss; the UK market is one of the strongest, but there's no way the starbucks-level saturation of GW stores is paying for itself. Meanwhile, with much lower saturation, the US provides equitable income, but even the US is of secondary focus to GW.

They don't advertise, because in the UK, they don't need to. They've probably got as much income from the British population as they can manage, so advertising won't significantly affect their bottom line. They instead rely on very expensive store saturation. In the US and other regions, however, they have, in general, really poor store saturation, with stores in poor locations with little traffic, and they don't advertise, and in some regions, arbitrarily charge significantly more.

GW's response is now the 1 man store, and Kirby's final solution of opening, what was it, 800 new stores? They clearly want a big share of the market, especially in the US (700 stores for them, and the US isn't charged more than the UK), but they refuse to recognize that store saturation is an extremely inefficient way of moving product and raising awareness. They're dealing with enormous geographic entities, and often low population density, and opening brick and mortar stores will only ever work in those regions if combined with raising public awareness.

That being said, I understand their reluctance, because they do have very suspect business policies which cause a lot of ire. Even the BBC article I read on them raised concerns about their price point and out-moded business policy, and wanted to ask GW why they maintained such policies when every other comparable company operates in a very different manner. They'd face a wave of difficult questions they don't particularly want to ask, and they don't want potential customers to become aware of their hostile business policies. Publicity is great when your company can foster a good image, like, for instance, Valve. Even their employee handbook being released was a major coup in terms of good publicity, I can only imagine the backlash if similar directives for GW staffers and corporate management were released.

I don't think GW will ever embrace marketing until they have a serious change in corporate direction, in which they would be able to endure tough questions and scrutiny.

As for the Hobbit, it is a victim of this environment. It's an extremely expensive niche-within-a-niche product, with zero marketing. It's not going to appeal to existent GW customers much, and without advertising, there's no way for new people to get in to it. Furthermore, it's a competing product with their own product; it's like low-points 40k with Fantasy models at a higher price point. What person with an existent 40k army will buy a whole bunch of very expensive finecast minis for a small skirmish game, when they can just do killteam? What fantasy player will invest in another expensive set of models, when they already have their larger scale fantasy battles that they enjoy, and what LOTR player will invest in new models which do nothing for their existent armies or games? GW's only customers are its existent ones, and the ones brought in by word of mouth, and I know I'm not encouraging people to come down to my FLGS for a game of The Hobbit, I'm telling them to come down for 40k.

Thus, in the end, I don't think a single Hobbit model has sold from my FLGS, and my FLGS is also a general hobby/collectors store, they've got no shortage of customers with lots of money and particular interests, from sports, to action figures, RPGs, TTWG, and even then, that product ain't moving.

Apart from the obvious mishandling of the license (no marketing etc.) I think the reason it's not a big success is it's not GW's IP. The contraction of their product line to only three games bothers me a lot and I'm sure a lot of other long time players who remember when a GW store carried a dozen games based on their properties. Really I hope the outside IP goes and GW realise there is actually money (and at least a little goodwill) to be made from supporting and creating new game systems outside of the main two.

I though WotR was a great ruleset and I used it as a quicker alternative to fantasy with fantasy models, but I always resented after getting back into the hobby to see Epic (and Necromunda and all the others but especially Epic) relegated to a niche of a niche and getting no attention. I don't know what GW are going to do when they finally have to give up the ghost of pushing Middle Earth tie ins.

Silmarillion: Song of the Ainur coming Christmas 2017. Starter box including the formless personifications of Eru's thought for £95.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

Yeah, but in this age of blogs and Youtube interview channels--anyone can be a "journalist"!

Why are your responses so deliberately obtuse? I'm talking about professional writers, why should some disgruntled bloggers lead to GW refusing to talk to business publications, the BBC, Guardian or Financial Times? I've seen them all comment that GW don't do interviews of any sort, so have written articles without their input. They're a toy company, not a religious cult.

It's really not hard to see why it's far easier for them to have a blanket "no comment" policy than to continually respond to any kind of request for interviews.

Look at the whole thing going on right now with the revised trade terms in North America. MWG is "closing down" and it's currently being spun as though GW's revised trade terms are the biggest reason that this is happening. How could they respond without somehow making themselves look like "the bad guys", responsible for the closing of an independent retailer which is much beloved by a part of the community which closely follows GW's every move?

If GW were to do interviews, it would be no different than how EA is continually presented after any interviews they give. People pick and choose what they actually hear/read from these interviews.

Your commentary, like GW's policies regarding the press, statements and advertising, go against conventional corporate wisdom.

Having PR and a relations officer or dept would do wonders simply because this, instead what you leave is a void, nature abhors that and fills it with conjecture, speculation, bs and armchair generals.

When confronted by the BBC, not some blogger demanding the Truth, but the actual British Broadcasting Corporation, GW refused to discuss an issue because it 'does not talk to the press', massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop. It's insular, clannish and weird and frankly, defend them all you want, but there really is something rotten in the state of Nottingham. What it speaks of is a company's senior management so utterly turned in upon it's self, so entirely convinced of it's mastery of all it surveys, so propped up by a culture of elevating yes men and the reek of the Peter Principal, spread through the business like dry rot.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop.

Hey they aren't totally alone, Alex Ferguson fethed them off for ten years as well!

 mattyrm wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop.

Hey they aren't totally alone, Alex Ferguson fethed them off for ten years as well!

Who?

 mattyrm wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop.

Hey they aren't totally alone, Alex Ferguson fethed them off for ten years as well!

He didn't appear for 10 years as the BBC refused to apologise for some perceived slight, so difficult to say who fethed who off!

Oh I know who he is, doesn't excuse an internationally trading company from refusing to deal with the press.

GW's refusal to speak to the press, it's constant retreating from media in general and it's continual closing ranks as the world becomes a smaller place is boggling though. Similarly, it's ongoing seeking to change the 'rules' of it's sales instead of seeking to adapt to issues of a modern market would also allude to some very strange notions of running a competitive corporate entity in today's retail landscape.

As I mentioned previous, this gulf they leave in their retreat from the new age, from criticism, from PR, from interview, from advertisement... It leaves me a sense of the sinister or the incompetent, or the sinisterly incompetent... Like some board room full of Machiavellian mustache twirling ne'erdowells demanding 'One Million Dollars!' for their latest 'must have' miniatures.

You know, the problem for me with The Hobbit is the inconsistency of the pricing. I actually don't think the starter is a terrible value, but what killed me was the pricing of the trolls. It's simply way out of line with say, a box of river trolls, or a box of bloodcrusher, etc. Same goes for the White Council.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:


GW's refusal to speak to the press, it's constant retreating from media in general and it's continual closing ranks as the world becomes a smaller place is boggling though.

I think that's what's so odd. I feel more connected with the company that made my phone or my car than I do with GW.

Although to be fair, few minis gaming companies have really figure out social media. Mantic seems to "get" Kickstarter but their FB presence is pretty much the email updates on a different platform.

It's possible to now to display any number of painted units/models/armies, show tutorials, explain how to use products, etc. The only company I've seen really do that? Woodland "we only sell to ancient railroaders" Scenics

 Polonius wrote:


It's possible to now to display any number of painted units/models/armies, show tutorials, explain how to use products, etc. The only company I've seen really do that? Woodland "we only sell to ancient railroaders" Scenics

Doesn't GW do a lot of this on their website?

Less and less, it would seem.

Hardly a month goes by without someone noticing that GW have withdrawn another set of pages that deal with scratchbuilding and so on.

Their paper publications decline similarly... How much is a copy of "How To Make Wargames Terrain" nowadays?

Fair does to GW, they want to sell their terrain kits and stuff for as much as possible. Let's just not pretend that this isn't a change of policy.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
As I mentioned previous, this gulf they leave in their retreat from the new age, from criticism, from PR, from interview, from advertisement... It leaves me a sense of the sinister or the incompetent, or the sinisterly incompetent... Like some board room full of Machiavellian mustache twirling ne'erdowells demanding 'One Million Dollars!' for their latest 'must have' miniatures.

IMO the best way to understand it is fear. GW's management is terrified of risk. It's better to cling to the business model from 1980 and keep things stagnant until they retire than to try to adapt to 2013 and risk losing their retirement fund. So marketing is of course a waste, you don't need it to keep your existing sales level (at least as long as you keep raising prices to replace the lost customers) and it would be a risk of spending lots of money without any return. And why talk to the press, it's possible that you could look bad so it's better to stay with the known situation of looking bad on forums while most people ignore you. Etc.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
GW's response is now the 1 man store, and Kirby's final solution of opening, what was it, 800 new stores? They clearly want a big share of the market, especially in the US (700 stores for them, and the US isn't charged more than the UK), but they refuse to recognize that store saturation is an extremely inefficient way of moving product and raising awareness. They're dealing with enormous geographic entities, and often low population density, and opening brick and mortar stores will only ever work in those regions if combined with raising public awareness.

And worst of all they keep opening stores in the middle of nowhere. For example, there's one GW store in all of NC. It's in a major city with multiple universities and a lot of tech industry businesses (plenty of younger adults with lots of spending money) and an established community (enough to support 3-4 FLGS in a 30-mile radius), which you'd think would be a good thing. Except it's in a middle of nowhere strip mall that gets exactly two groups of customers: the handful of people who live nearby and might see the GW store on the way to the grocery store nearby, and existing customers who make an effort to go find it. Meanwhile there are at least 2-3 major malls in the area with huge amounts of traffic, but the idiots running GW couldn't possibly see how it would be a good idea to put the store somewhere where new customers might actually find it.

The proof of this? I decided to check it and go play a game on a weekend in the middle of christmas shopping season, and in several hours of playing there were two customers. One was a friend of the people playing there getting his first models, and one was a parent buying a gift for one of the people who regularly plays there. Not a single new customer walked in.

 cincydooley wrote:
Doesn't GW do a lot of this on their website?

They used to, but they removed all of that stuff to make WD more "appealing". Now they just put up pretty pictures in their zero-content blog, which is never advertised anywhere. After all, it's important to remove the possibility of someone who isn't a customer finding it and deciding to buy something.

I don't think GW does have the same business model as in 1980.

Back then they sold a variety of imported, licensed and self-created games and models. Warhammer wasn't one of them. None of the "specialist" games had been launched.

I'm wondering what box set they're going to do for Desolation of Smaug - as the Desolation of Smaug as it occurs in the book isn't really a battle as such.

The only fight I think of between the eagle rescue and Smaug is the Spiders in Mirkwood. Yet how can you call your box set "The Desolation of Smaug" and not have Smaug as the contents?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think GW does have the same business model as in 1980.

Back then they sold a variety of imported, licensed and self-created games and models. Warhammer wasn't one of them. None of the "specialist" games had been launched.

He didn't literally mean 1980; I suspect he was speaking figuratively of times before he was born. More literally it's a marketing/communications strategy that's been evolving (and seemingly degenerating) since sometime in the mid-late 90s, sometime after they started courting the kid market, but after they decided that the Milton-Bradley tie-in games were somehow not profitable enough or worthwhile.

It's funny, because I have to say that a huge percentage of 40k and WH players I know started out with Heroquest or Space Hulk. And what originally drew me in were their advertisements- the fantastic full-page and multi-page ads they ran in Dragon Magazine when I was a kid. Ads like the four-page spread for Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness, with a Poe quote, full color art, pics of dozens of evocative figures, and some fluff. Or the single-page ads where they'd showcase a new warmachine or unit for Warhammer, with the statline, and great pic of it painted, and some fluff (often funny and well-written, with a unique and appealing ton) about it.

I didn't join this hobby until I was a bit older, but does anyone recall how hero quest was priced? Was it comparable to other Milton Bradley offerings?

 Flashman wrote:
I'm wondering what box set they're going to do for Desolation of Smaug - as the Desolation of Smaug as it occurs in the book isn't really a battle as such.

The only fight I think of between the eagle rescue and Smaug is the Spiders in Mirkwood. Yet how can you call your box set "The Desolation of Smaug" and not have Smaug as the contents?

From my understanding, the second film("The Desolation of Smaug") is going to include a few flashback sequences which would work quite well for larger battles as well as leading up to the actual rousing of Smaug and that the third film is going to include the Fall of Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies.

I could entirely be mistaken though.

 Mannahnin wrote:
It's funny, because I have to say that a huge percentage of 40k and WH players I know started out with Heroquest or Space Hulk. And what originally drew me in were their advertisements- the fantastic full-page and multi-page ads they ran in Dragon Magazine when I was a kid.

For me it was a GW ad in a wargaming magazine. I guess, all major recruiting of new customers was done by ads, mostly by companies like MB (Space Quest, Heroquest) and DeAgostini (LOTR). But nowadays, GW seems to think that magazines, TV, the BBC, the internet and gaming conventions are a fad passing any day now.

 Mannahnin wrote:
It's funny, because I have to say that a huge percentage of 40k and WH players I know started out with Heroquest or Space Hulk. And what originally drew me in were their advertisements- the fantastic full-page and multi-page ads they ran in Dragon Magazine when I was a kid. Ads like the four-page spread for Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness, with a Poe quote, full color art, pics of dozens of evocative figures, and some fluff. Or the single-page ads where they'd showcase a new warmachine or unit for Warhammer, with the statline, and great pic of it painted, and some fluff (often funny and well-written, with a unique and appealing ton) about it.

I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

Whereas some might say you're only seeing what you think is there. "Modern version". HA!

The Blue Knight strikes again.

 Flashman wrote:
I'm wondering what box set they're going to do for Desolation of Smaug - as the Desolation of Smaug as it occurs in the book isn't really a battle as such.

It will come with 2 models - Bard and Smaug - plus a single die and 4 plastic Lake Town buildings. Each turn Smaug sets on building on fire, and Bard makes one shot. On a 4+ he kills Smaug. If he fails to kill Smaug before all the buildings are destroyed, Smaug wins.

The collector's edition will come with an extra building.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

It will come with 2 models - Bard and Smaug - plus a single die and 4 plastic Lake Town buildings. Each turn Smaug sets on building on fire, and Bard makes one shot. On a 4+ he kills Smaug. If he fails to kill Smaug before all the buildings are destroyed, Smaug wins.

The collector's edition will come with an extra building.

Won't laketown be the same bridge planks from goblin town? I mean a wooden pier is a wooden pier.

I suspect the Smaug design will make or break the next release of models. The Balrog design for the movie was quite controversial and a huge sticking point as many claim that the descriptions were of 'figurative' wings instead of 'literal' wings. The design was badass and the model is amazing.

If smaug is amazing, who knows the impact.

 Kingsley wrote:
I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

While I rarely use Facebook, I have yet to see an actual add for GW there or most anywhere else online which wasn't connected to some form of Ad Word marketing scheme. With those, chances are you are seeing them because you mention GW, Warhammer or are a member of a group already that is related to them. Preaching to the choir doesn't do much good in terms of advertising.

Regarding the video games - I don't know. Most the people who I know (again - anecdotal) who play either of those two games and wargame were wargaming first. I know several who play one game or the other but still have no interest in GW and have no particular attachment to the setting...only that it is a game which filled a particular niche in their gaming time (RTS or shooter).

 Kingsley wrote:

I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

Would that be the Facebook they threw all their toys out of the pram on and then vanished from?

Reminiscing over old ads, pages 1 and 2 of the multi page ad I was talking about..





And a couple more:

 cincydooley wrote:
You know, the problem for me with The Hobbit is the inconsistency of the pricing. I actually don't think the starter is a terrible value, but what killed me was the pricing of the trolls. It's simply way out of line with say, a box of river trolls, or a box of bloodcrusher, etc. Same goes for the White Council.

Aren't Bert, Tom and Bill significantly larger than Warhammer trolls? They are mounted on 60mm bases, so they seem quite large, but I'm not finding any comparison images online.

Their pricing seems consistent to me, it's just crap pricing. The White Council is $75 for 4 finecast models, that's $18.75 each, compared to most finecast infantry sized characters which are also $15-20. The trolls add up to $28 each (not including the fireplace) which compares to $29.75 for a single plastic cave troll or $41.25 for a Morder/Isengard plastic troll.

The pricing is bad, it seems consistent though.

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

He's basically describing 'word of mouth' marketing via PC games instead of board games. It's neither original nor is it any type of 'modern' strategy that GW came up with.

I saw some people mentioning 'gorgeous mithril figs' or something like that so I went to their site and now I'm just left wondering if those earlier posters were trying to troll me.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
He's basically describing 'word of mouth' marketing via PC games instead of board games. It's neither original nor is it any type of 'modern' strategy that GW came up with.

Nor is it a replacement for other forms of marketing. GW seems to be the only company that thinks that once you've done one form of marketing you should just ignore all the others.

I'll speak to my experience with it. I like the Lord of the Rings game - it's my favourite of the three main Games Workshop games - and so I picked up the box set. I was interested in the updated rules, the Hobbit stuff in general and the possibility of playing through the Lord of the Rings: Thorin's Company Edition!

The big issue I would describe with the game is "where do I go from here?" The starter box is anemic in terms of scenarios - in particular, it doesn't even properly present a game with the entire Company in it. It sort of hints at one at the start and I think you can engineer the rules from that, but it's never laid out as a scenario like the other mini-scenarios. Unlike the LotR rulebook, the points values even for the contents of the box aren't included, so if that's all you have you can't even make your own points games with the box set - I still have no idea how much Thorin's Company is worth, for instance. So for your $205 you get an anemic set of introductory scenarios.

How do you expand from there? Well... you buy the hardcover rulebook for $140. Without doing that, you have no scenarios based on the events of the book or the film and no points values to let you use the units in any other way. Compare this to the Mines of Moria set: the points values for all the models were included in the little softcover rulebook (which is about the same size as the one in The Hobbit boxed set, and there's no reason they couldn't have included them) and the introductory scenarios end in the fight at Balin's Tomb, which features all the models in the set in a big, fun battle. You have all the points values of the box - and most of the miniature range - in the little rulebook, so you can expand your army and play points games however you want. Then if you want to play through the events of the books/movies you can pick up the Fellowship of the Ring journeybook, which isn't cheap itself at $48, but includes quite detailed instructions for playing the 18 scenarios in it, painting the miniatures used in it and building all the required terrain, much of which is very cool and detailed and with a minimum of "buy our tie-in product" (though you do need, IIRC, two boxes of "Ruins of Middle Earth", but that's it).

Basically, the Mines of Moria boxed set is a more complete product than The Hobbit, and it facilitates getting further into the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. To even play past the limited introductory scenarios in The Hobbit with the stuff you get in the box you need to pay another two thirds of the box price for a rulebook, when you already have the rules. That's a fantastic way to dampen anyone's enthusiasm, and if you think the $140 sticker shock of the Trolls isn't enough, try turning it into $280 with that rulebook.

 Polonius wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

Heroquest 9 years ago? Think you're nearly 20 years out there buddy, you may be thinking of Warhammer Quest, but even then 9 is low, nearer 15.

The scary part is that this year that $140 rulebook goes bye bye in favour of a new $140 rulebook that'll be mostly the same. It's crazy.

It's just bizarre because the boxed set is pretty useless without that rulebook. You can exhaust it in a good evening of games.

The question that comes to mind is, who exactly is that hardcover rulebook aimed at? You'd think it'd be perfect for Lord of the Rings players who wanted the updated rules but without The Hobbit miniatures (though from what I've seen there's a great deal of confusion over whether they're meant to be different games or updated rules) but you literally cannot play The Hobbit properly without it as there is no other source for the points costs or scenarios, and of course if you're just interested in the updated rules then you won't care about the Hobbit scenarios or points costs either (though it does have a number of Lord of the Rings scenarios too - how many or in what detail, I can't say, since I don't have it).

I find it difficult to conclude anything but that this was designed as an additional $140 purchase that you're supposed to be forced to make to make your previous $205 purchase usable. That's not a fantastic way to encourage people to get into the game, which is really sad because it's a very good one.

 azreal13 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

Heroquest 9 years ago? Think you're nearly 20 years out there buddy, you may be thinking of Warhammer Quest, but even then 9 is low, nearer 15.

Dawn of War was nine and four (DoW2), no? And Space Marine 2?

I think a lot of people in this thread don't understand how the Hobbit related to The Lord of the Rings. It isn't a separate entity to the fans it is a prologue. The miniatures line should have fit right in with the previous LotR releases but it would appear that this was not the case. As a huge fan of the GW LotR miniatures I will give you my take on why it didn't do that for me. In no particular order.

1. The look and feel don't fit with my old LotR miniatures!?!?!?! Well seriously WTF Peter Jackson. The dwarves don't feel like the dwarves from the LotR trilogy, Wargs are different (I think better but different), and the orcs and goblins are completely different looking.

2. The price is just insane (well for me anyway). This isn't strictly a problem with the Hobbit miniatures and started to occur when the named ring wraiths were released.

3. Do I really need my seventh Gandalf? I am kidding I actually have nine already. The answer is a resounding NOOOOOO especially not when he is $20.00. The same goes for the rest of the White Council. Most people who really got into the LotR already have at least one of each of those models so why would they shell out that much? (See number 2)

4. And last but not least a lot of the GW sculpts look like crap. For instance the trolls and the orc characters are particularly poor sculpts. There shouldn't be sharp angles on flesh and frankly while I don't think Peter Jackson helped out GW by changing the look a lot of the stuff in the movie (see #1) GW didn't help themselves any with substandard sculpts either.

5. Is it me or has the Heavy Metal team gone down hill? Some of the orcs look like turds. Seriously check out Narzug..... looks like a giant brown turd.

6. Did I mention the price?!?!?!?!?!

7. Lastly but not least where are all the little boxed vignettes from the movie? Ohhh thats right...... you can't sell them for $120 so GW just didn't make them..... did I mention the price?

HiveFleetPlastic wrote:
That's not a fantastic way to encourage people to get into the game, which is really sad because it's a very good one.

At the end of the day that's what really annoys me. LOTR/The Hobbit is an awesome lisence for GW to have and it's a good game with good miniatures but GW seem to be doing everything in their power to make it as unappealing and unpopular as possible. I'd love to have more people playing LOTR and it actually being a more major game and the main obstacle to that IMO is GW's handling of it.

 Flashman wrote:
I don't think that GWs pricing strategy helped, but I think you have to place the blame on the film itself.

It wasn't bad entertainment as such, but I don't think many would argue that it was the equal of the original trilogy.

Consequently, I don't think there was the same level of enthusiasm for the game this time around.

I am not sure I agree so much. The hobbit grossed 1 billion dollars and the entire Lord of the Rings Trilogy grossed like 2.9 billion. Obviously tickets are more expensive and inflation and all that jazz but still more than enough people to support a game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sigvatr wrote:
I am a HUGE LotR fan. I loved the Hobbit. Sure, it wasn't LotR, but you can't expect this. I actually considered buying the minis, but when I saw the price, I just laughed and forgot about it.

I mean, really.

Pretty much my reaction too.

 Polonius wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

Have you seen the recent updates regarding GW expanding its video game licensing? It seems that they're doing just what you'd want...

They're giving the rights to whomever they can for all that sweet sweet license money.

brettz123 wrote:
4. And last but not least a lot of the GW sculpts look like crap. For instance the trolls and the orc characters are particularly poor sculpts. There shouldn't be sharp angles on flesh and frankly while I don't think Peter Jackson helped out GW by changing the look a lot of the stuff in the movie (see #1) GW didn't help themselves any with substandard sculpts either.

Are you sure this is a problem with the sculpts and not simply with the way GW had them painted? I've often thought different LOTR/Hobbit models looked ugly as sin because of the images of the GW painted ones, but then when I've seen them in the plastic/metal/resin I realise the sculpts are often quite good but they've been painted with hard edges for no reason and in an attempt to bring out the face they've just made it look cartoonishly silly given the models are actually realistic scale unlike the other GW ranges.

5. Is it me or has the Heavy Metal team gone down hill? Some of the orcs look like turds. Seriously check out Narzug..... looks like a giant brown turd.

I have a feeling it's simply how they're being told to paint, more cartoonish, simpler, harder lines and for certain models (I'd argue many models) it simply doesn't work. Look at some of the lines on Narzug's legs, they make it look like the muscles are squared off instead of rounded, but if you rotate the model in the 360 view, you can see they clearly aren't.

It's not just LOTR, look at the Savage Orcs on the GW site and you would think the muscles are all unnatural and square, but the sculpts are actually fine, it's just the way GW have told their painters to paint them.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

brettz123 wrote:
4. And last but not least a lot of the GW sculpts look like crap. For instance the trolls and the orc characters are particularly poor sculpts. There shouldn't be sharp angles on flesh and frankly while I don't think Peter Jackson helped out GW by changing the look a lot of the stuff in the movie (see #1) GW didn't help themselves any with substandard sculpts either.

Are you sure this is a problem with the sculpts and not simply with the way GW had them painted? I've often thought different LOTR/Hobbit models looked ugly as sin because of the images of the GW painted ones, but then when I've seen them in the plastic/metal/resin I realise the sculpts are often quite good but they've been painted with hard edges for no reason and in an attempt to bring out the face they've just made it look cartoonishly silly given the models are actually realistic scale unlike the other GW ranges.

5. Is it me or has the Heavy Metal team gone down hill? Some of the orcs look like turds. Seriously check out Narzug..... looks like a giant brown turd.

I have a feeling it's simply how they're being told to paint, more cartoonish, simpler, harder lines and for certain models (I'd argue many models) it simply doesn't work. Look at some of the lines on Narzug's legs, they make it look like the muscles are squared off instead of rounded, but if you rotate the model in the 360 view, you can see they clearly aren't.

It's not just LOTR, look at the Savage Orcs on the GW site and you would think the muscles are all unnatural and square, but the sculpts are actually fine, it's just the way GW have told their painters to paint them.

Good points. I haven't seen them in person and am just going by the pictures on the website. Not going to drop the money to find out either .

This is what, the third attempt at a LotR/Hobbit starter set/rulebook? I bought the first three original boxes: The green Rohan riders one, the blue Gondor one and I think there was a brown box in there somewhere. Then they came out with Mines of Moria, a new rulebook and new army books and I knew, this was gonna be another GW treadmill with people running trying to keep up with all the book re-releases. So, I shelved it.

I experience enough re-releases with 40k and Fantasy. Noway I'm gonna drop $80+ on another rulebook. I'll just use the three original ones...if I ever happen to find someone who actually plays.

 azreal13 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

Heroquest 9 years ago? Think you're nearly 20 years out there buddy, you may be thinking of Warhammer Quest, but even then 9 is low, nearer 15.

He's talking about the original Dawn of War, I think.

The sculpts for the Hobbit seem great to me, far better than the previous LotR ones.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The scary part is that this year that $140 rulebook goes bye bye in favour of a new $140 rulebook that'll be mostly the same. It's crazy.

As if.

The next book will be $165

 Manchu wrote:
The sculpts for the Hobbit seem great to me, far better than the previous LotR ones.

I’m almost certain that any deficiencies in the Hobbit's (game) success or lack thereof probably has little to do with the miniatures themselves.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
The sculpts for the Hobbit seem great to me, far better than the previous LotR ones.

I’m almost certain that any deficiencies in the Hobbit's (game) success or lack thereof probably has little to do with the miniatures themselves.

Totally agree. Frankly I think the LOTR range and The Hobbit range are for the most part really nice looking models (that are sometimes let down by poor painting choices by the 'Eavy Metal team).

 Mannahnin wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

Heroquest 9 years ago? Think you're nearly 20 years out there buddy, you may be thinking of Warhammer Quest, but even then 9 is low, nearer 15.

Dawn of War was nine and four (DoW2), no? And Space Marine 2?

Ah, prefacing the list with two board games, then only referring to videogames in the time elapsed threw me, I see what he meant now.

I think the failure of the Hobbit game has less to do with GW and more to do with Peter Jackson and the movie. The movie was above average at best. After seeing the movie, my friends and I basically felt it was an ok movie, but no desire to see it again. The Hobbit came and went from the theaters.

How many weeks was the Fellowship #1? I remember it stayed in the top 3 in the US for several weeks. It was an enjoyable movie and a couple of my friends saw it multiple times. We were excited about the movie and couldn't wait for the Two Towers. The Hobbit? After seeing the movie we talked about what we were planning on doing next Friday. The movie didn't generate any excitement, so all the products tied to it didn't generate any excitement.

Kroothawk posted a number of production screw-ups for all the various tie in products. We all remember Bolg? No we don't because he wasn't in the movie! I think GW realized the cluster f' this movie was, threw the game out there, priced it to try to make back it's money, and washed their hands for the most part.

There are other issues that I think also contributed to success of LotR that aren't present anymore, but the movie itself is the main contributor to the games failure.

Hi so I haven't read the whole post to see if this was mentioned but I just wanted to put some input in as a LotR SBG player!

The new rulebook is really the only thing any previous player needed I feel was a huge thing. None of the new models really go well with the previous armies, and some of them just don't even make rules sense on their own! The hunter orcs are WORSE on their wargs? Thats idiotic!

I wanted to get them but that alone was pretty offputting. And leads me to my second point: the new models are hardly anything to build an army around. For example, Rivendell has 1 warrior choice. Azogs band has one warrior choice. Most of the new armies have no variance for warriors, what kind of crap is that!?

So basically then all the hobbit models are only good for small matches and allying, but then it doesnt make sense 1. why youd use them with war of the ring models 2. why youd buy the official rulebook over the cheap insert one in the starter for a couple profiles max.

Not to mention a bunch of the profiles aren't even new. So basically all the previous players don't even need to buy anything other than a rulebook from the starter.

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
LotR seemed pretty big, there are lots of accounts of it being a big seller and I remember people complaining about how it was overshadowing fantasy/40k, so I don't think there doubt about its success.

Someone claims GW paid five time more for the Hobbit license, where's the source on that? Seems a little unlikely and if so is rather too much. The Hobbit just seems a smaller franchise, I don't see the massive presence of it generally in toy shops.

As a game from GW it's been released with a bit of a whimper. It doesn't feature strongly in any LGS I've been in, but equally I can't say if it's been selling poorly. But if I didn't read Dakka I probably would barely have registered its existence.

The ludicrous prices are just the final barrier. I just don't know who would pay them other than the most dedicated LotR gamer. They are not casual purchases.

After reading most of the thread I think this is the post that shows what's going on inside GW HQ, they found that LotR was a success, too much of a success that was close to or outselling GW's flagships. After interest waned in the movies the all knowing board members found that a Hobbit game in the wrong hands would threaten WHFB seriously if it was allowed to flourish on the market but at the same time it would be (for GW) something linked to the new movies and then gone and forgotten, so they bidded for the license put out a game and fullfilled the minimum requirements in the contract with New Line with the aim of recouping the investement through sky high prices and then forget about the whole thing and that's the reason of the lack of marketing for the Hobbit game, GW is not interested at all on it, it was a defensive move to protect their games.

I know that the idea above sounds silly, even borders parannoia but it's the best atempt I can come with to explain why a company would spend quite a big amount of money in a license and then say it, I was never interested in the thing to beging with.

M.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
The sculpts for the Hobbit seem great to me, far better than the previous LotR ones.

I’m almost certain that any deficiencies in the Hobbit's (game) success or lack thereof probably has little to do with the miniatures themselves.

Agreed. Just assembled a pack of hunter orcs -- twelve figs' twelve poses' all dynamic, only took twenty minutes to put together.

this might seem/sound mainly OT, and to some it could certainly read as such, but as someone said earlier GW doesn't own the IP rights of LOTR/the hobbit, and i personally fail to understand the reasoning behind NOT supporting their already existing games platforms, mainly 40k/whfb, ie in the shape of: necromunda/mordheim spachulk/warhammer quest. the end result of loss of sales? not likely as those games sold out each and every time i went to order from my FLGS/GW's own mail order.

nkelsch wrote:
When LotR was out, I could buy GW's LotR miniatures in every bookstore, toystore and DVD store within 50 miles of me.

Bookstores had a display next to the book sets.
Toys R Us had it right next to the action figures.
Suncoast had it right next to the DVD boxed sets.

Today, every bookstore near me is out of business. Movie stores do not exist and people buy DVDs at the grocery store or digitally. No sign of anything at the toy store.

When you have to go to a store you don't know exists or a website for a product you don't know exists, how can you buy it? At least before there was a TON of stumble upon traffic.

I know we see things from the POV of gamers, but LotR had lots of crossover into non-gamers and I met people who don't wargame but enjoyed painting models when they were kids take a crack at buying LotR models. It was all about putting it in people's faces and getting them to try something.

This had been my experience as well. I could buy LOTR minis everywhere for several years. LOTR was what got me back into minis and gaming after 10 years out. And I went nuts. I have hundreds of LOTR figs and all the previous SBG books. Great value in the beginning and sculpts that were true-scale (comparatively) and fun to paint. The rules were fun and lite and the whole family could play them. I got my youngest son the Hobbit goblin paint/box set, and while he enjoys painting anything, I have to say those goblins are even dumber looking than their movie likeness. The only reason I bought that box was that the FLGS had it marked 30% off less than a month after the movie premiered. The price is just the final nail in the coffin of otherwise bad business practices.

Also: I live in a fairly large metro area. A few years ago we had 2 GW stores and about 5 decent size game stores. Now we have one decent store within 30 miles of me. Both GW stores crapped out. This year GW opened a new store on the other side of town. Haven't been there yet.

 Kingsley wrote:

I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

Facebook is only likely to show ads to people who are already interested in GW, so it's a terrible advertising medium.

I'm not convinced the PC/console games are great advertising either; there's no obvious link back to the miniatures games unless you're already aware of them, and as far as I'm aware they didn't ship with any additional leaflets or anything mentioning the store.

So currently GW doesn't appear to be doing much advertising outside it's existing customer base, and even then a lot of them miss stuff (like the Hobbit release).

There are plenty of missed opportunities for advertising: cinema's around the time of fantasy/sci-fi releases (they really should have given a goblin away with every Hobbit ticket sold, or had a GW voucher on the back of the tickets), and there must be dozens of magazines that are bought by GW's target demographic (mostly computer gaming or comics) that they could run ads in to try and get the attention of non-customers.

 Kingsley wrote:
I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

And WoW gamers fueled the boom of pen and paper RPGs, sure

There are almost no computer gamers that are interested in lenghthy assembly and painting and finding real life opponent procedures. And they are all aware that for the price of 6 Elven Riders or 4 wizards (Council), they get top notch value in PC games.

The mere hope that someone else advertises GW's products can't distract from the fact that GW makes no advertising itself, excusing lost sales and customers weakly as the result of being niche.

I liked it except for the singing.

Maybe everything went right with the Hobbit. Or should I say, it went as GW planned it. Maybe they did not want the game to be a success. They figured that they would have a big year of sales with 40k. They can offset some of the profits with the losses from the Hobbit. It has been mentioned in several threads that such things are desirable. If they make too much money the stock people will be suspect, and investors will also expect such profits in the future. It has been suggested that GW limits releases so as not to earn too much money. However, with a big loser like the Hobbit, they can have a gang buster year with 6th ed and tau and not appear to be too successful. Also having the license to the Hobbit is very important to GW. It means that noone else has the license. Given that they are suffering from major competition, keeping the license out of other companies hands is very important to them. Imagine if Privateer Press or WOTC got the Hobbit and did it right. They might be able to really cut into GWs fantasy business.

the movie is no more different than the first LOTR, a long introduction, the first LOTR movie was also boring as hell. Weren't people expecting too much?

About the game, i agree with most people above, the price, if you try to sell to moviegoers , than this price is ridiculous!

Wait, there was a game for The Hobbit?

 Mannahnin wrote:
Reminiscing over old ads, pages 1 and 2 of the multi page ad I was talking about..

It's got a quote from Edgar Allen Poe...! And they attribute it to him. That is awesome

As a Baltimore native, that's one way to win my heart right there

Throughout the life of the LotR lines, I never saw the miniatures sold outside of GW shops or LGSs in either southeastern MI or central VA. And I only saw LGSs carrying the line very sparsely. In Richmond today, there are three game shops I can think of and 2/3 carry the Hobbit products. TBF, one of them only carries 40k when it comes to GW and another one is selling off its Hobbit stuff at clearance. None of those three shops sells non-Hobbit LotR stuff, IIRC.

I'm starting to suspect the poor sales of the Hobbit have less to do with GW's practices and more to do with a wider lack of interest in Tolkien-based miniatures.

Ridiculous prices (who the hell would pay $75 for 4 low-quality resign infantry models?), a boring/repetitive game that inevitably drags into some band of Dwarves + Bilbo against comical Goblins, where the LOTR game allowed for epic movie-style battles between Mordor and the forces of men. Terrible marketing on GW's part, poor quality miniatures.

My FLGS foresaw this debacle and didn't order any Hobbit products. He hasn't once been inquired by a customer about a lack of Hobbit products or seen anyone int he store looking for it.

Yeah, the prices are ridiculous on their faces. Still -- as GW has demonstrated again and again -- if someone wanted them, someone would buy them.

I spent a fair bit of time around Christmas sitting in a local GW store painting, and anecdotally there was more interest in The Hobbit than anything else from people who weren't already part of The Hobby. They would enter the store, walk around the demo tables, looking around at the Warhammer and 40k shelves briefly, and then they'd see The Hobbit section, recognise it and take more of an interest. The staff were pushing it pretty hard some of the time, too.

That said, I have to admit I'm not sure I recall anyone actually buying a boxed set despite that.

If Gee Dubs really wanted to appeal to the little child that just watched the Hobbit and the parent he dragged along with him into a glorified toy store, they should've made the models pushfit and slashed the prices considerably.

Very few parents have the income to drop $125 on something their child is going to end up breaking and/or losing. $125 gets that kid a used 360 or a DS which provides many more hours of peace and quiet than fragile toys would.

GW just appears to have done an abysmal job making this product line appealing. They're caught between inflated prices and lack of marketing. Without any buzz or anticipation for the product, they weren't able to overcome the pricing structure.

Hence, they end up with poor sales. Of the three stores in the area near my home that stock GW products, the only one to bring in any Hobbit was the nearby HobbyTown USA, which is a franchisee (and according to the employee I know well there) and has a minimum stocking requirement on the product by corporate. Otherwise, they wouldn't have it in. Their Hobbit products haven't moved and currently boast a thickening layer of dust next to their GW products.

 TheCustomLime wrote:
they should've made the models pushfit

FWIW, the models are extremely simplistic -- three parts each at maximum for orc hunters, at least.

What? Dude, don't mean to pick on you but your post is riddled with financially illiterate statements. Here are a few publicly available facts:

Current Period Year Ago Period Last Year
Region Revenue Operating Profit Operating Margin +/- Revenue Operating Profit Operating Margin Revenue Operating Profit Operating Margin
UK $15,613.00 $2,324.00 14.89% 3.97% $14,818.00 $1,618.00 10.92% $31,648.00 $4,835.00 15.28%
EUR $19,628.00 $2,638.00 13.44% 2.38% $20,382.00 $2,254.00 11.06% $40,757.00 $4,000.00 9.81%
NA $18,076.00 $1,547.00 8.56% -0.70% $15,419.00 $1,427.00 9.25% $33,621.00 $4,211.00 12.52%
Australia $5,597.00 $342.00 6.11% 11.21% $5,437.00 $(277.00) -5.09% $11,328.00 $(735.00) -6.49%
Export $810.00 $202.00 24.94% 12.70% $801.00 $98.00 12.23% $1,700.00 $89.00 5.24%
Asia $1,051.00 $32.00 3.04% 77.98% $818.00 $(613.00) -74.94% $1,737.00 $(624.00) -35.92%
All Other $6,682.00 $3,429.00 51.32% 4.35% $5,042.00 $2,368.00 46.97% $10,218.00 $4,732.00 46.31%

The UK has the highest operating margins outside of direct sales (export and all other). They do not maintain a UK presence "at a loss". North America has the worst operating margins, and they are trending down. The US does not provide "equitable income". Equitable REVENUE, yes.

Sorry for the ugly table, cut and paste didn't go as planned and I don't have time to reformat it.

 MajorStoffer wrote:

One thing I think is of some consequence however, is GW has a disconnect in their approach. They're undeniably UK-focused; they've got enormous market saturation in the UK, with stores being relatively commonplace, and public knowledge of the company and the game is higher than anywhere else in the world. However, they maintain that presence at a loss; the UK market is one of the strongest, but there's no way the starbucks-level saturation of GW stores is paying for itself. Meanwhile, with much lower saturation, the US provides equitable income, but even the US is of secondary focus to GW.

Cut and paste are easily fixed with a stop-by at notepad.

I remember starting the first LoTR-game GW made and it got boring and repetetive quite fast. A bunch of people actually built armies, but have never played since.

Baxx wrote:
Cut and paste are easily fixed with a stop-by at notepad.

I remember starting the first LoTR-game GW made and it got boring and repetetive quite fast. A bunch of people actually built armies, but have never played since.

I thought the game mechanics were decent however over time with the additions of rules and models it came to me that the game was all about how many models you can field. I had a very nasty goblin army. But you are right. Very repetitive it got.

 Manchu wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
they should've made the models pushfit

FWIW, the models are extremely simplistic -- three parts each at maximum for orc hunters, at least.

That may be, but it would be an easier sell if the parent didn't have to worry about their spawn swallowing model glue or something. I know this from experience, because when I was a kid I got the... 3rd Edition I think? starter set (The one that had the crashed Aquila Lander in it. I beat myself up for not keeping it!). Anyway, my mom was wary about me having toxic glue around and I had to beg her to get it for me.

You can argue that you can easily remedy this by watching the little buggers but in this day and age few parents want or can do this. If it was just a push fit set, it would be another lego set or something to the uninitiated adult.

 TheCustomLime wrote:

 Manchu wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
they should've made the models pushfit

FWIW, the models are extremely simplistic -- three parts each at maximum for orc hunters, at least.

That may be, but it would be an easier sell if the parent didn't have to worry about their spawn swallowing model glue or something. I know this from experience, because when I was a kid I got the... 3rd Edition I think? starter set (The one that had the crashed Aquila Lander in it. I beat myself up for not keeping it!). Anyway, my mom was wary about me having toxic glue around and I had to beg her to get it for me.

You can argue that you can easily remedy this by watching the little buggers but in this day and age few parents want or can do this. If it was just a push fit set, it would be another lego set or something to the uninitiated adult.

Ah, the good old days, my parents didn't have any problem with me assembling plastic model planes when I was a kid, lol.

I'm not sure GW really wants to aim for the crowd that is old enough not to swallow parts but not old enough to handle glue or a knife.

brettz123 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

brettz123 wrote:
4. And last but not least a lot of the GW sculpts look like crap. For instance the trolls and the orc characters are particularly poor sculpts. There shouldn't be sharp angles on flesh and frankly while I don't think Peter Jackson helped out GW by changing the look a lot of the stuff in the movie (see #1) GW didn't help themselves any with substandard sculpts either.

Are you sure this is a problem with the sculpts and not simply with the way GW had them painted? I've often thought different LOTR/Hobbit models looked ugly as sin because of the images of the GW painted ones, but then when I've seen them in the plastic/metal/resin I realise the sculpts are often quite good but they've been painted with hard edges for no reason and in an attempt to bring out the face they've just made it look cartoonishly silly given the models are actually realistic scale unlike the other GW ranges.

5. Is it me or has the Heavy Metal team gone down hill? Some of the orcs look like turds. Seriously check out Narzug..... looks like a giant brown turd.

I have a feeling it's simply how they're being told to paint, more cartoonish, simpler, harder lines and for certain models (I'd argue many models) it simply doesn't work. Look at some of the lines on Narzug's legs, they make it look like the muscles are squared off instead of rounded, but if you rotate the model in the 360 view, you can see they clearly aren't.

It's not just LOTR, look at the Savage Orcs on the GW site and you would think the muscles are all unnatural and square, but the sculpts are actually fine, it's just the way GW have told their painters to paint them.

Good points. I haven't seen them in person and am just going by the pictures on the website. Not going to drop the money to find out either .

How the Trolls will look like if painted properly:



In comparison with the Heavy Metal paint scheme:



I second that the sculpts are not a problem. The presentation of the sculpts are.

@heartserensde

Those are nice trolls.

I'd personally blame the setting of The Hobbit, really.

Like others have said, it's more of an adventure than a backdrop for battles of a noticeable scale. I think the 3rd movie will probably boost sales the most, more than anything else.

The lack of marketing is also a problem too, but to be fair, when's the last time GW marketed any of their products outside of their stores (Despite the like, 2 TV ads I've seen/heard about a long while ago)

As for the 3 Trolls, the $85 GW's asking for is still cheaper than 3 LOTR metal trolls. It's expensive but you're still saving (barely).


For what it's worth, LOTR is actually decent in my area. Not anywhere near the levels of 40k and WM/H, mind you, but it's definitely played (often by younger gamers)

I'd argue the old ruleset was a great introduction to how wargaming rules generally work, but that's a moot point.

I really want those troll models.... Tha picture isn't helping. :-)

One thing I've noticed is the smaller scale gives the models a brittle, somewhat cheap feel.

 Manchu wrote:
One thing I've noticed is the smaller scale gives the models a brittle, somewhat cheap feel.

Brittle? Hrm, I never noticed that. They do push the limit of sizes on things like spear hafts, but nothing I've ever noticed that was brittle. Though I haven't bought any LOTR models for a while, maybe they changed the formula of the plastic.

The only marketting of The Hobbit I saw was a Bilbo miniature handed out at the cinema with a flyer for the local GW store.
People were clamouring for the handout, as the cinema staff walked along the aisle, but their little plastic bag has a bit of paper and a TINY figure of Bilbo in it. It was too small to make out what it was in the dim light of the cinema, befor the movie started.
Almost all of them get dumped in the popcorn box and left on the floor.

It was a good idea, I assume off the back of the local GW. Grab a likely gamer from the hordes waiting to watch the movie, but it was handled badly, like the rest of the release.

Did they really make The Hobbit its own game, seperate from LotR? To me, that would be a killer.

It would be like Heroclix making a series based on the Marvel: Civil War story and have it be incompatible with any other Marvel series they have made...Well of course it's going to fail, "duh".

Anyway...what if:

GW was obligated to do The Hobbit? What if when they signed for LotR they also had to agree to do any future movie releases based in that same world? GW somehow got a prescreening and realized how much this would not work for a miniatures game and so they opted to only put in the most minimal amount of effort in the game/promotion?

Just read the first few replies, so this is based off some of the original questions:

1) LOTR was hugely popular at one time, possibly not in established GW groups, thus the notion that not knowing anyone who played means no one played. At one point my shop was selling 8 return of the king sets a week.

2) Prices were cheaper. 24 orcs for 20 bucks. Amazing. Now its 10 men of dale in stupid hats for 30 something. Starter went from 50 to 100

3) confusion that the Hobbit rulebook is actually the current redo of the LOTR rules.

4) fatigue. This is movie 4, not as much hook to it.

5) Hobbit isn't LOTR. Shorter more whimsical book, and the movie deviates from the book, less enthusiasm from tolkien fans.

6) models not needed to recreate battles. Trolls=no fight, Men of Dale=dragonfood, Dwarves= dragonfood.

GW won't Fething give me a bit of advance info, so how the could a store get ready for the realease. I tried hard. I failed. Stuff is rotting on my wall.

 mikhaila wrote:
Just read the first few replies, so this is based off some of the original questions:

2) Prices were cheaper. 24 orcs for 20 bucks. Amazing. Now its 10 men of dale in stupid hats for 30 something. Starter went from 50 to 100

I think a lot of us are immune (or at least use to) GWs prices. So when GW released the Hobbit miniatures their prices were in line with their other games.

GW has increased their prices so much in the 10 years since the LoTR has been released that they are now way too expensive for the person coming off of the street who just has a casual interest.

I have a friend who has seen me play Warhammer 40k and he wants to get himself and his kids into the hobby and I was going to start him off with the Hobbit starter set. He ended up going into a GW store to take a look around and he had sticker shock at how high the prices are (and he makes really good money). So much so that he does not want to get into the hobby anymore.

So I think GWs pricing is what is keeping a lot of people away from the game.

After reading this thread I had to check something on the GW site, and I have to ask why they have still not released Thorin's company. Is the only way to get it still only through the plastics in the game box? Much as I loath finecast I don't understand why the only figures of the main characters are still only in lower quality plastic and restricted to the game box. I'd settle for plastic because I can't have metal.

I suppose if they charged what they do for all other 28mm finecast figures, £12 a pop seems the baseline, then Thorin's Company would be easily £100+. I guess that just shows how insane their prices are on the Hobbit range.

Probably why they have not been released as of yet. Even GW knows it would be stupid

Zero advertising, and INSANE price mainly, but also look at the initial models released, LOTR has the last alliance box, and moria goblin box released in very first wave of minis, this meant you could have a good and evil player ready for a good sized battle from the off (and at £12 for 24 minis no less!)
The hobbit just saw the release of the pretty ugly ass trolls and goblins, the only set of GOOD warriors was thorins company which came in a starter set for £70, which still requires the £40 rule book to play if you want points values and rules for ANYTHING outside of thorins company and goblin town. Thats a minumum of £110 just to get started properly. where as with LOTR you could buy the £20 rulebook between yourself and a friend, and get a £12 box of warriors each and there you go, 2 people with playable forces for £44, the kind of price you could twist dads arm into spending.

also, the biggest pull for LOTR would have been the fellowship itself, all 9 members, for £25... the hobbits equivalelt box (outside of goblin town) is the £45 for models White Council (Yes, £11.25 each) the kind of price that makes your dad hurry you out the shop and give you a little talk about the value of money.

 Blackmoor wrote:

 mikhaila wrote:
Just read the first few replies, so this is based off some of the original questions:

2) Prices were cheaper. 24 orcs for 20 bucks. Amazing. Now its 10 men of dale in stupid hats for 30 something. Starter went from 50 to 100

I think a lot of us are immune (or at least use to) GWs prices. So when GW released the Hobbit miniatures their prices were in line with their other games.

GW has increased their prices so much in the 10 years since the LoTR has been released that they are now way too expensive for the person coming off of the street who just has a casual interest.

I have a friend who has seen me play Warhammer 40k and he wants to get himself and his kids into the hobby and I was going to start him off with the Hobbit starter set. He ended up going into a GW store to take a look around and he had sticker shock at how high the prices are (and he makes really good money). So much so that he does not want to get into the hobby anymore.

So I think GWs pricing is what is keeping a lot of people away from the game.

Considering that LotR's was more or less free advertisement for GW they could have kept the prices down for the average person to get into the hobby. Then try to snag them into the more expensive games, like 40K They made their choices with how they managed their toy line concerning the Hobbit and they completely blew it. Some of us who cringed on the New Line Cinema contract. Loss of time, revenue, production that could have used on improvements on other aspects of the company instead of this fiasco. Little or no product moving due to price is what I am hearing and seeing for myself.

Very interesting thread. Looks almost as bad as Dreadfleet. Those trolls are unappealing models even if painted well, IMO.

If a good quality sculptor got ahold of the rights, and marketed them as collector/competition grade miniatures I think this would be more interesting to Tolkien fans.

Even if this was a self-contained, reasonably priced boxed set adventure game, it wouldn't even be all that interesting. It's the same game over and over. We all know the outcome of the story.

I wouldn't even want to paint these miniatures if the prices were slashed heavily. Even if you had all the stuff, seems like you'd be hard-pressed to find someone willing to play against you. They're too busy playing 40k etc.

 Cave_Dweller wrote:
Very interesting thread. Looks almost as bad as Dreadfleet. Those trolls are unappealing models even if painted well, IMO.

If a good quality sculptor got ahold of the rights, and marketed them as collector/competition grade miniatures I think this would be more interesting to Tolkien fans.

What do you feel is wrong with the trolls and the sculpts in general? To me they look quite well detailed and true to the movie renditions of tom, bert and bill.

I am reasonably impressed with the quality of Thorin's company as well. For plastic models they look great, are well proportioned, well detailed for their size (the amount they are zoomed in on the GW website might make you think otherwise, but if you see the models in reality you realise it would take a good painter to actually bring out the quality of the sculpts).

The goblins look like decent sculpts, I just don't like the aesthetic of an ugly pus oozing boil popping goblin.

Overall there's very few LOTR/Hobbit sculpts that I don't like, most of them I think are great. My only complaints with some of them are that in order to reduce the number of pieces on some of them they had a poor selection of draft angles on the moulds. But for the most part I think the LOTR and Hobbit sculpts are as good as 40k/Fantasy but with a nicer (less cartoonish) aesthetic.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Cave_Dweller wrote:
Very interesting thread. Looks almost as bad as Dreadfleet. Those trolls are unappealing models even if painted well, IMO.

If a good quality sculptor got ahold of the rights, and marketed them as collector/competition grade miniatures I think this would be more interesting to Tolkien fans.

What do you feel is wrong with the trolls and the sculpts in general? To me they look quite well detailed and true to the movie renditions of tom, bert and bill.

I am reasonably impressed with the quality of Thorin's company as well. For plastic models they look great, are well proportioned, well detailed for their size (the amount they are zoomed in on the GW website might make you think otherwise, but if you see the models in reality you realise it would take a good painter to actually bring out the quality of the sculpts).

The goblins look like decent sculpts, I just don't like the aesthetic of an ugly pus oozing boil popping goblin.

Overall there's very few LOTR/Hobbit sculpts that I don't like, most of them I think are great. My only complaints with some of them are that in order to reduce the number of pieces on some of them they had a poor selection of draft angles on the moulds. But for the most part I think the LOTR and Hobbit sculpts are as good as 40k/Fantasy but with a nicer (less cartoonish) aesthetic.

That's the problem right there. They look like the movie. The movie was entertaining, but not as good as LOTR. It just wasn't.

The characters also aren't as engaging.

I actually went over to the GW site and checked out the prices...it's just whack! I want some of whatever they're smoking. $85 for the rule book, $125 for escape from goblin town ( worst name I've ever seen for a game set!) and $85 for the trolls.

You'd better get a 2nd job and start selling blood plasma if you want to get into this game!

The quality of the sculpting on the trolls is mediocre at best, more in line with some of the D&D stuff Reaper does with its various lines, and for far less money.

In fact I'd rather buy and paint Reaper stuff any day of the week than this gak. Quite frankly these models are boring.

Sorry, you have me slightly confused, you're going to have to clarify some things.

 Cave_Dweller wrote:
That's the problem right there. They look like the movie. The movie was entertaining, but not as good as LOTR. It just wasn't.

Are we talking about aesthetic here? I agree the LOTR movies were far grander and I felt the story worked better (compared to PJ's stretching out of The Hobbit). BUT, do you also not like them aesthetically speaking? Other than the aforementioned boiled goblins, there's not much I don't like the aesthetics of in the LOTR or The Hobbit, I like the visual style and think GW captured it well.

The quality of the sculpting on the trolls is mediocre at best, more in line with some of the D&D stuff Reaper does with its various lines, and for far less money.

You're going to have to be a bit specific here because I'm not seeing it. They look fine to me...
http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/wnt/blog.jsp?pid=8200050-gws

They could maybe use a bit more skin texture, but the skin texture would be out of scale if they tried to texture it more.

In fact I'd rather buy and paint Reaper stuff any day of the week than this gak. Quite frankly these models are boring.

Really? I'm not seeing the boring, I think for the most part they are well posed, well detailed and well scaled. They are smaller than your average 40k or Fantasy models, so are actually more detailed when you see them in the plastic/resin.

I don't disagree that the prices are crazy and I don't disagree the Hobbit movie had less of an impact on my than the LOTR movies and I don't disagree GW have poorly advertised them. However when it comes to the models themselves, I really am a fan of both the LOTR and The Hobbit models (with a few exceptions like the new ugly goblins and some poorly chosen draft angles on some plastic models).

 Manchu wrote:

 TheCustomLime wrote:
they should've made the models pushfit

FWIW, the models are extremely simplistic -- three parts each at maximum for orc hunters, at least.

The Hobbit boxset models are so easy to put together. The Wargs, Hunter Orcs etc are as well, they're just a few parts, in the case of the orcs, a head, two arms and maybe a quiver to glue to the back. Hardly anything challenging at all.


My FLGS store started LOTR back up, granted only for a few weeks, but no-one has played the Hobbit scenario. We played scenarios from the original LOTR trilogy instead. I think that was the appeal, LOTR is more widely known by the general population, everyone remembers Helm's Deep, and the battle for Minas Tirith, and Sean Bean dying.again. but The Hobbit is essentially a giant nature trail, nothing has really happened in it. There's more excitement to be had for LOTR and the armies are more exciting, currently it's just a Goblin King and a shed load of goblins, hardly Helm's Deep territory when it comes to firing up the imagination. Also the advertising sucked nuts! I didn't see any advertising for the game anywhere, apart from White Dwarf.

I bought the box set because I loved the look of the models, I wanted to do a diorama with them when I eventually get them all finished. I do want all the Hobbit releases eventually, just as a collector/painter. I know i'll never play a game, which is quite sad because the rules seemed quite enjoyable!

Pricing.

Lack of advertising.

And the fact that I think the LoTR kind of milked most of that cash cow already.

Kids these days have no attachment to and/or knowledge of the Tolkien universe.

Also, every LOTR vision was crap, in my opinion, the Jackson version blew everybody out of the water with how awesome it was.

It set a pretty high bar for the Hobbit to follow, which was always hard

The Ralph Bakshi film was pretty good.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The Ralph Bakshi film was pretty good.

I loved the Bakshi version growing up. I have an autographed copy of one of the cells from the Gandalf/Saruman confrontation on my wall as I type this.

I'll throw this out there, to go along with what was mentioned about GW being afraid someone else would pick up the license.

Reaper could have been in on the bidding war, what with their desire to expand the Bones line, and in-house manufacturing.

And with the Perrys no longer GW exclusive, anyone with a license could hire them to do sculpts that would be useable alongside the LotR lines from GW, since the designs would be controlled by the movie, not GW.

Box set price about 2x what it should have been if they wanted to move plastic.
Also box set not in odd locations such as Barnes & Noble bookstores.

I have sizeable lord of the rings forces, and I enjoy the strategy battle game and War of the Ring. I prefer the scale of the minis too, it's one reason why I am a bit of a rabid Red Box Games fan.

But two things killed it for me.
1. The prices. I could probably have tolerated this but for point-
2. Incomplete rulebook in the starter. One of my favourite things about the original SBG was that the little pocket rulebook had enough points and things to make basic warbands and play out scenarios straight away. I didn't have to buy a giant overpriced hardback to play. Now I see no reason to buy the boxed set, even though I have always wanted a miniature Thorin's Company with Bilbo. I think I will just take RBG models I like and make them that way.

Price.

This also basically sums up the entire problem with GW's Hobbit:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat970013a&prodId=prod1830008a

Pity about the price as those are lovely, if extremely static, sculpts.

 Harriticus wrote:
This also basically sums up the entire problem with GW's Hobbit:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat970013a&prodId=prod1830008a

£45, that's a little over £11 a model, that's about the minimum price for a single finecast figure.

I wouldn't buy it because it has no gameplay value and you can probably get the older LOTR metal models cheaper on eBay

 Harriticus wrote:
This also basically sums up the entire problem with GW's Hobbit:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat970013a&prodId=prod1830008a

I hadn't really looked at that yet, but click on the closeup of Galadriel. She looks like Rocky from 'Mask'. Edit: okay, maybe a bit more like Cher.

Yeah that link is a pretty good example. I think Finecast destroyed so much good will GW may have had left with customers. I can't think of a product they've released that has been more of a disaster than the money cost associated with finecast.

The LOTR game was initially very successful for a number of reasons. Contrary to what some may claim it was a very good skirmish game. It was flexible, flowed well, balanced and there where very few confusing or contradictory rules.

I've not been an active player of GW games in some time but back when I was I was firmly of the opinion that LOTR was the best core system they had. Though I was in a minority in that regard.

Aside from the fact the Hobbit is nowhere near as big a film as the initial LOTR film one of the biggest factors in LOTRs popularity was the LOTR was genuinely affordable to play. The boxed sets used to provide actual value for money and an 'army' complete with characters could be bought for under £25. That was big factor in attracting kids who where gaming with pocket money or with less affluent parents.

Now the Hobbit has followed the same insane pricing policy as the rest of GW lines and firces are unaffordable.

I still maintain that LOTR is a great game, but the Hobbit didn't stand a chance.

 puma713 wrote:

 Harriticus wrote:
This also basically sums up the entire problem with GW's Hobbit:

http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat970013a&prodId=prod1830008a

I hadn't really looked at that yet, but click on the closeup of Galadriel. She looks like Rocky from 'Mask'. Edit: okay, maybe a bit more like Cher.

You really have to see the models in the flesh to appreciate them though. So much of the facial features come down to the paintjob rather than the actual sculpt. The sculpt can be bang on and then have it ruined by the paintjob.

I got some metal Sam and Frodo models for free as an apology when GW messed up an order, and I was shocked how good the sculpts were, especially the faces. I had seen the exact same models on the online store and thought they were terrible, the faces looked twisted and like they'd just gone 10 rounds with Mohammad Ali, but it was simply the paintjob, in reality the models were actually pretty good likeness of Elijah Wood and Sean Astin.

So much of how a face looks comes down to paintjob rather than the underlying sculpt. Have a look at this...

http://mamageekminis.com/blog/archives/765



For the exact same model you end up with 3 very different looks of varying distance from looking realistic.

Or even this...
http://www.coolminiornot.com/295616

The last one looks like drag queen makeup

I think if GW really wanted to show off their LOTR and Hobbit quality, they should put up unpainted or undercoated images of the models. Either that or emphasize to their painters to make them look more like the actors instead of exaggerating them and making them look cartoonish.

I'm going to be honest and say I don't have the skills to paint the faces to look anywhere near good enough, but surely GW can get some painters who can.

I do feel a lot of the accusations leveled at Hobbit/LOTR sculpts boil down to paintjob instead of the actual sculpt which to me look pretty damned good. I wish I had the painting skill to do them justice.

They could have put a dozen or so sets out to some of the more popular painting studios, along with a corresponding payment for those guys to paint them. For a few thousands dollars they could then have had a variety of different impressions of the models, populated throughout the internet, and really shown off the models to their full extent.

But I guess that would have come under 'marketing' ?

I think the sculpts on the white council are pretty nice when you consider the scale of the minis.

The worst sculpts for the LOTR range are always from Morley, or from when they have gone of piste without something in the PJ movies to act as inspiration. Then the cheesy, cartoony GW style infects the range and stands out like a sore thumb.

 LuciusAR wrote:
The LOTR game was initially very successful for a number of reasons. Contrary to what some may claim it was a very good skirmish game. It was flexible, flowed well, balanced and there where very few confusing or contradictory rules.

I've not been an active player of GW games in some time but back when I was I was firmly of the opinion that LOTR was the best core system they had. Though I was in a minority in that regard.

Aside from the fact the Hobbit is nowhere near as big a film as the initial LOTR film one of the biggest factors in LOTRs popularity was the LOTR was genuinely affordable to play. The boxed sets used to provide actual value for money and an 'army' complete with characters could be bought for under £25. That was big factor in attracting kids who where gaming with pocket money or with less affluent parents.

Now the Hobbit has followed the same insane pricing policy as the rest of GW lines and firces are unaffordable.

I still maintain that LOTR is a great game, but the Hobbit didn't stand a chance.

QFT - pretty much my feeling

 Kingsley wrote:
Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine.

The first GW computer game I played was Heroquest in 1990 (ish), GW have been making (and even publishing) games for a very long time, they had a gap of about 10 years after the decidely average Rites of War but they are obviously after the licensing money in a big way now.

Thats beside the point though, a computer game and a physical game are completely different things. yes they may bring in a few people but objectively whats the difference between the Imperium of DoW and the Wasteland in Fallout or Skyrim or any other games setting, how many people will go out and buy skyrim fanfiction? Undoubtably there are a few but its a very niche market. A boardgame is physical which will resonate much more with the player given that GW wants people to buy little plastic men.
My very first experience with GW was in an Argos catalogue where I saw Space Crusade which I subsequently got for christmas which I played a lot, the next Christmas I got a copy of Space Marine and the Ork and Squat Warlords book and following on from that GW made literally £thousands on my purchases over the following 15 or so years. Will the same thing happen with the current generation of children assuming that they are even old enough to play these games (Space Marine has a 15 rating)?

Do GW lisenced games even come with that little promotion booklet anymore? They even used to give away miniatures, does that still happen?

Games are advertising but they don't function all that well if there is no reference to the the tabletop and what GW wants to sell. I have never seen a GW advert on the web that didn't first involve me going to a GW controlled site and if I did it was so long ago I can't remember it.

As for the Hobbit it suffers from 4 main problems in my estimation.

Price - obvious

Poor quality sculpts - for a flagshop product GW really didn't cover themselves with glory

Rules - I have never had much time for the LotR skirmish game, games always tended to end up as a massive brawl in the centre of the table, and while the battle game seemed a bit more interesting it still didn't seem to be a great game (I have limited experience here though)

Finding players - I haven't even seen a game of LotR in about 3 years now, and that was a one off, and no one seems all that arsed by it.

I see no reason why I should buy any Hobbit stuff, I am very unlikely to actually use it.

I wish GW would reinstate Epic as a core game and leave LotR to its fate

The face on an LotR Model is probably smaller than of a grain of arborio rice.

 Palindrome wrote:
I wish GW would reinstate Epic as a core game and leave LotR to its fate

Now that I definitely agree with.

 Kingsley wrote:

 Palindrome wrote:
I wish GW would reinstate Epic as a core game and leave LotR to its fate

Now that I definitely agree with.

Epic and Battlefleet Gothic have a lot of potential if they were brought back and taken seriously; I still think BFG has one of the best rulesets GW has produced in a long time, and Epic really captures the feel of 40k in all its grandeur. When Space Hulk did so well, why not consider some other older products? Especially ones like BFG and Epic which are cheaper to collect, and can appeal to a broader market increasingly worn out by 40k and fantasy prices.

 Palindrome wrote:

As for the Hobbit it suffers from 4 main problems in my estimation.

Price - obvious

Very true. 85 aussie dollars for 6 cavalry models? Seriously?

Poor quality sculpts - for a flagshop product GW really didn't cover themselves with glory

Eh - not really. I think it's more to do with the paintjobs, myself. The miniatures are actually quite nice.

Rules - I have never had much time for the LotR skirmish game, games always tended to end up as a massive brawl in the centre of the table, and while the battle game seemed a bit more interesting it still didn't seem to be a great game (I have limited experience here though)

Not really. If you play with both cavalry, archers and infantry, maybe a few monsters, you'll find that the game is extremely tactical. Actually, even with only infantry it's extremely tactical. You can launch ploys, false rout, etc. It's quite amazing what people do in the game. At least, where I play it is.

The success of Space Hulk has to be contrasted with the failure of Dreadfleet.

Since I strongly believe GW should stock boxed games (made by themselves or Fantasy Flight Games, perhaps) it would be interesting to discuss their recent offerings in that area.

 Pacific wrote:
They could have put a dozen or so sets out to some of the more popular painting studios, along with a corresponding payment for those guys to paint them. For a few thousands dollars they could then have had a variety of different impressions of the models, populated throughout the internet, and really shown off the models to their full extent.

But I guess that would have come under 'marketing' ?

More importantly, it would come under 'letting the proles know that there are other companies than GW in the hobby'.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:

 Palindrome wrote:

As for the Hobbit it suffers from 4 main problems in my estimation.

Price - obvious

Very true. 85 aussie dollars for 6 cavalry models? Seriously?

Don't forget their $70 finecast commander.

 ExNoctemNacimur wrote:

Not really. If you play with both cavalry, archers and infantry, maybe a few monsters, you'll find that the game is extremely tactical. Actually, even with only infantry it's extremely tactical. You can launch ploys, false rout, etc. It's quite amazing what people do in the game. At least, where I play it is.

I played LotR for about a year with a combined arms Gondor army against a variety of opponents in 2 different clubs (maybe 15 games in all) and every game that I can remember devolved into a scrum in the centre of the table.

Well, it never really happens in the games that I play.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
The success of Space Hulk has to be contrasted with the failure of Dreadfleet.

The reasons for Dreadfleets failure are plain. Blood Bowl should do at least as well as Space Hulk but I am sure that it will be another limited release which is then never spoken of again. If nothing else it will make the Ebay scalpers happy.

I genuinely don't understand why GW no longer make stand alone boxed games, they were obviously successful in the past and they have a strong relationship with FFG which would allow them to sidestep the issues they have with MB over the rights to Heroquest and Space Crusade.

Exactly.

I would like GW to stock boxed games, not just the occasional retread of an old classic but new titles based in their existing IP and in different but related areas.

Any concern over the ability to produce such games well would be met by licensing out the design side to FFG.

The Hobbit: What Went Wrong?

The prices mainly.

And (some) of the models...

RoninXiC wrote:
And (some) of the models...

Hey, don't you diss brilliant models like;



And;

 blood reaper wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
And (some) of the models...

Hey, don't you diss brilliant models like;



And;

Is that a failcrap bubble I see in Gollum's arm?

Some friends and I were really looking forward to the Hobbit release, figured it would be our chance to jump onboard. But when it came out we found it just too pricey and we all decided we'd be better off putting our money into expanding our 40K armies. It's back to value for money, I get my value for money from my 40K, I doubt I would from LOTR.

As for GW and board games, add RPGs into that too. I can't understand why they don't at least stock their licensed products that FFG produce. Surely Relic would sell well if it were on GW shelves, and probably a lot better than just being in hidden away LGS.

PhantomViper wrote:

 blood reaper wrote:

RoninXiC wrote:
And (some) of the models...

Hey, don't you diss brilliant models like;



And;

Is that a failcrap bubble I see in Gollum's arm?

Not sure if serious! How could you doubt the 'amazing', 'ground' breaking detail provided in the Golem model! That's not a bubble, it's some form of parasite, or tumour.

That version of Gollum makes me sad...
GW is capable of creating MUCH better miniatures...

It probably doesn't help that they haven't released a number of iconic characters from the film. There are three Radagast miniatures available yet none of them come with his rabbit sled and there's no Azog at all.

I wonder if purist fans of the novel are dictating model releases?

What happened to Gollum`s hand, anyway? I remember he had fingers on the movies...

You should notice that this mini looks crap painted by GW specialists. Just imagine how crappy it would look like painted by one of us, mere mortals...

And that for 20.00???!!!! Are you kidding me??!! Does anyone know a single soul that actually intends on purchasing this... Thing?

Again, it looks like GW did a terrible paint job more than the model itself is terrible. If you look at the 3D rotating model on the website you can see several lines which GW have painted as hard lines which aren't actually hard lines, continuing their idiotic philosophy of painting all models to look cartoonish, even the ones that aren't.

The hand does look a bit odd, it's a mixture of poor painting, poor camera angle (if you look at it from another angle the thumb doesn't look quite as disproportionate) and it is a bit thicker than it should be, I'm guessing because they couldn't actually make a part that small hold detail in the moulding process. They probably would have been better off making the hand hold the side of the basket, open hands are notoriously hard to make look right, especially on that scale.

As for the price, yes, that's just absurd. It's a tiny model.

PhantomViper wrote:

Is that a failcrap bubble I see in Gollum's arm?

It's the hole for the implants. Gollum's having a boob job you see.

That's totally worth $35 AUS

I'm sick of all the trash talk and negativity about this Gollum figure. It is clear that this rendition of Warrior Gollum is prepared to cut down his foes as if they were the mightiest trees in the forrest. That alone makes it a wonderful mini.

Ni.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Any concern over the ability to produce such games well would be met by licensing out the design side to FFG.

So you mean, having FFG write rules that Citadel would sell with miniatures? Because GW seems unwilling to do it the other way around, resulting in the ugly bits in FFG's HH board game and Chaos in the Old World as well as more recently the goofy busts that come with Relic.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 George Spiggott wrote:
There are three Radagast miniatures available yet none of them come with his rabbit sled and there's no Azog at all.

Two excellent points -- considering the Rules Handbook contains stats for both!

If GW were clever they would look at the core competencies of both companies and use whichever was the best at the task.

Of course, it's possible that GW have examined core competencies, and concluded that FFG are better at rules, components and models (for boardgames). I mean, FFG are actually pretty good at all that stuff.

Even so, GW could still stock FFG games based on Warhammer type backgrounds, if they wanted to put more different lines in their shops.

I don't think players care who made the game as long as it is a good game.

I started playing the LOTR game when I picked up the DeAgostino mag from Tesco that I'd seen advertised on the TV.

The magazine came out once a fortnight ( I think) and came with a sprue or metal sculpt, a scenario to play with your new minis and cardboard sculpts to take the place of the pieces you didn't have. This magazine also has an article to paint your new minis and an article to build terrain.

None of this has happened this time out so there is no way to attract a potential gamer like myself. I did dabble in 40k and warhammer when I was younger off the back of Heroquest and another game I forget the name of (battlemasters?) but it was these mags that sucked me back in.

As a point, how good would White Dwarf be if it followed the rules of the DeAgostino mags. Imagine this month's Tau release with a sprue of Firewarriors attached and a terrain making article for Tau terrain.

Silver_skates wrote:
I started playing the LOTR game when I picked up the DeAgostino mag from Tesco that I'd seen advertised on the TV.

The magazine came out once a fortnight ( I think) and came with a sprue or metal sculpt, a scenario to play with your new minis and cardboard sculpts to take the place of the pieces you didn't have. This magazine also has an article to paint your new minis and an article to build terrain.

None of this has happened this time out so there is no way to attract a potential gamer like myself. I did dabble in 40k and warhammer when I was younger off the back of Heroquest and another game I forget the name of (battlemasters?) but it was these mags that sucked me back in.

As a point, how good would White Dwarf be if it followed the rules of the DeAgostino mags. Imagine this month's Tau release with a sprue of Firewarriors attached and a terrain making article for Tau terrain.

Unfortunately that's a fantastic idea, and we know how much GW loves those. Heck it's not like they don't already have the resources for including a snap-fit mini once a while, it's a great way of promoting the tactile nature of the hobby. It's a shame GW's convinced their models are worth their weight in gold.

Heres my take, just my opinion. The Tolkien series just doesnt inspire me as a game. The books are classics, the movies so far (including The Hobbit) are great. However, they just dont make me want to rush to the gaming table. I guess I just like them better as stories.

 Mad4Minis wrote:
Heres my take, just my opinion. The Tolkien series just doesnt inspire me as a game. The books are classics, the movies so far (including The Hobbit) are great. However, they just dont make me want to rush to the gaming table. I guess I just like them better as stories.

I actually found that the movies especially were great for convincing me to start a LotR army. The large battle scenes were so awe inspiring. I was incredibly close to starting an Isengard army but GW doubled the price of all the infantry kits (well, halved the amount in the kit anyway) before I could actually buy some.

In that way I think that the lack of real huge battle scenes in the first Hobbit movie probably didn't do GW any favours. Of course, the real reason the stuff doesn't sell that well is because they don't advertise it nearly enough and the huge leap in price from the original LotR sets.