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Right, being a PLC, if any of us had a big enough windfall, that person could buy GW lock stock and barrell.

So, as a bit of fun, what would be your five point manifesto of power? Can be as serious or as silly as you like. The thread isn't meant to be taken too seriously!

Here goes.

Step 1. Hunt down Pete Haines, and make him personally, and out of his own pocket, travel the world apologising to each and every gamer for the Iron Warriors list, and the current Dwarf Book.

Step 2. Bring back Squats, but make them intentionally really lame, just to annoy those poseurs who have recently started gaming, and start espousing false nostalgia.

Step 3. Get Chaos Dwarfs done ASAP. And properly. And not do the plan for the Squats.

Step 4. Hire some beefy playtesters just in case the word monkies get steps 2 and 3 confused. Not only can they then playtest, but also beat up anyone who gets it wrong.

Step 5. Start a Gaming Roadshow, where we put on a non-competitive meet and greet for gamers in various locales at a largely central location. This would not be a tournament, just an opportunity for local gamers to get together and meet. This ought to help grow the hobby.

Now your turn. And if you have more than a 5 point manifesto, so be it. Would be your company after all.

***In a surprise move GW announced the transfer of its headquarters from England to Texas. All codexes will now be published in English and Spanish…

***The return of Specialist Games.

***Revise 40K away from IGO YGO to something else.

***All would fear the power of the Guard. The phrase “those cheesy guard” would be a rhapsodic melody I would never tire of.

***New races/lists. Demiurg, Pan-Fo, Cheesy git species 1327, Codex Taco

1) I would track down fat bloke to do WD

2) bring back rick priestly and get him to do the SW dex

3) open the GW forums up and let all the people who complain here complain on that forum, then i would tell them all to kiss my hairy A$$ and finally put it to rest that they are not GW main cash cow and no longer important

OK Mad Doc, here goes my list.

1. I would have the winners of the Hard Boyz, and GT in England purpose "break" every codex before it was published so that the "cool" but oh so broken rules do not make it into print.
2. I would hire a technical writer and editor to edit the rules and make sure that terms are used the sameway throughout the rules set.
3. I would scale the models so that the a strength 9 laser on a vehicle looks the same as a strength 9 laser with the IG looks the same as a strength 9 laser held by a marine.
4. I would change the way that returned models are handled and start an ebay store that unloads returned and out of production stock.
5. I would actively work with local gaming stores to develop partnerships and have my sales staffwork to run tournements, and hobby days at the stores.

I would:

Make a lot of crap that nobody cares about, and then charge through the nose for it;

Turn White Dwarf into nothing but a glossy catalog and raise the price by 25%;

Publish rules-sets that are badly proofread and have rules holes you could chuck a Squig through, and then intimate that anybody who has a problem with this are "bad sports" that are in the hobby "for the wrong reasons";

Banish all the interesting GW games to an internet gulag where they can waste away, forgotten.

...Wow. Maybe I already OWN GW, eh?

1. Rewrite 40 and every codex rapidly following over a single year. Get it right. As a marketing issue include Forgeworld models from the outset. Incordporate Forgeworld rules into 40K, with a sensible designer for quality control over both. Replace the detachment system with a scalable system (similar to that in Fantasy) extend unit types to include various types of what is terms 'legendary unit'. All are valid in normal play.
So for example if someone wants to bring a Warhound titan to a 1500pt battle and their force org allows them to they can. If the rules are properly balanced this should not be an issue. Players should expect gargantuan creature ansd super heavies, and every army should have measn of dealing wih them.

2. Produce a 'Ravening Hordes' for 40K and Fantasy, and update "Ravening Hordes" with each new edition in the boxset or rulebook.
In Ravening Hordes you include every army including LotD, chaos dwarves and squats, and other for which GW in the past made a full model line. Include a firm promise that in all future editions of the game a basic army list will be guaranteed, or a list of official 'counts as' for one off units e.g. zoats = big mutants as part of the companies continued customer service policy. Although make it clear that "GW no longer supports squats and other discontinued army lists and they may not officially remain in canon.

3. Amend codex/army books to properly include all previous miniatures within reason. again as a "continued customer service policy" promise.

4. Then update the codexes for 40K twice yearly as extended scenario packs, adding new units to certain armies, a bit like the Imperial Armour books, but less expensive, with normal citadel metals and plastics, some resin for special stuff (which Forgeworld handles - no they dont get to do as they please, they get a work schedule). also these packs will include storylines from multiple perspectives. Yes we understand we only think as humans, but players play the alien races, thus they should be represented for game immersion. Tolkien could do it, they way to is clear enough.

5. Relaunch many specialist games, include Lord of the Rings as amongst them. Keep the three core unit split, but the products should be 40K, fantasy and specialist games.



The aim for the initial; five point plan is to restablish customer confidence but promising not to disavow their armies. To steamline and amalgamamte the 40K IP to include battles at all scales in the same rule system. Apocalypse would not exist, instead you just play larger 40K games. Rules ammended as needed, I have ideas but the post is too short for them.

Commissar Molotov wrote:I would:

Make a lot of crap that nobody cares about, and then charge through the nose for it;

Turn White Dwarf into nothing but a glossy catalog and raise the price by 25%;

Publish rules-sets that are badly proofread and have rules holes you could chuck a Squig through, and then intimate that anybody who has a problem with this are "bad sports" that are in the hobby "for the wrong reasons";

Banish all the interesting GW games to an internet gulag where they can waste away, forgotten.

...Wow. Maybe I already OWN GW, eh?

How did Tom Kirby get a dakka account?!?

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Step 4. Hire some beefy playtesters just in case the word monkies get steps 2 and 3 confused. Not only can they then playtest, but also beat up anyone who gets it wrong.

Where do I apply?

1: Re-release Space hulk, sell it everywhere.

2: Re-release Necromunda and Gorka Morka with a combined background (think post third Armageddon War) and a new non 40k (or Inquisitor) derived game mechanic. Re-scale it using plastic Inquisitor scale figures.

3:Re-release the Dark Angel, Black Templars and Blood Angel Space Marine Codices as White Dwarf Articles before reprinting them as PDF's and a WD compilation. Then continue to do so for all Space Marine sub Codices. Whenever Space Marine sales flagged I'd release a new Space Marine chapter in White Dwarf.

4: Dock Games devs pay each time they gave a slowed response to a reasonable rules question e.g. Dark angels & SM Wargear.

5: Make Rogue Trader a specialist game with a long term plan to rework it as a super-skirmish game.

6: Give each game it's own dev team.

thelosttau wrote:

1. I would have the winners of the Hard Boyz, and GT in England purpose "break" every codex before it was published so that the "cool" but oh so broken rules do not make it into print.

This is already done in most popular CCGs (hell, I've had input on 2 myself), and "breaking" a codex should be one of the playtesters' main concerns, a balanced army list still plays well in fun games, it also levels the playing field in tournaments.

And I don't want to hear the "well this isn't a tournament oriented game" argument. If it wasn't, GW wouldn't be sponsoring tournaments.

Also, before anyone brings up the "well this is my favorite army so I'm going to keep it broken" bias: If you give the list to enough groups (most games run 4-6 playtest groups from the community around the world), you will be able to see the bias and ignore (or pay less creedence to) the bias group's suggestions. Also, paying your testers in product goes a long way to eliminating bias. You'd be surprised how honest people are about broken lists/mechanics if it means losing free product

1) a REAL Chaos book für 40k. Marines, traitors, Lost and the friggin' Damned, demons.

2) Re-release Mordheim

3) Produce a new skirmich system within the 40k universe, but with more interesting gangs than 6 kinds of different flavored humans

4) Codex: Inquisition. No Grey Knight Landraiders.

5) Kick LotR.

5 things?
1. Warhammer Armies: Dogs of War
2. Kill Team - skirmish battles in the far future
3. plastic Eldar Cobra & Scorpion "Engines of Vaul"
4. moar Apocalypse!
5. there is no 5.

Hi all.

One , Take everyone outside and show them the company name.GAMES WORKSHOP.Most people think we are about making great games.They expect great games.MAKE GREAT GAMES and the people will buy lots of minatures from us to play our great games!

Two. We are not a charity, people will only pay what they think our product is worth.Not a penny more.

Three. We have to give value for money to more people.Grow the biusness by providing qualiy product at a reasonable price point.

Four .Artificialy inflating mark up by isolating GW product from the rest of the wargames market cost more than it generates.So go for competative priced product in a much wider market.

Five, Recive adulation from thousands of gamers....

TFN
Lanrak.

Oddly enough, and people might scoff at this, but there's not a huge amount I'd change if I owned GW. Most of my changes would be attitudinal, rather than proceedural.

The main things would be creating a couple of different groups of playtesters who's only job would be to break new lists so that they can be as balanced as possible without compromising the current GW business model (ie. make the new stuff sell better than the old stuff by giving it better rules).

These same people would be responsible for updating the FAQs and making sure that good answers were given rather than the crap they give us now.

This would be part of an attitudinal change towards the rules. They would no longer be a necessary evil or a means to an end (the end being the selling of model kits), nor would the players demands be seen as attacks against the people writing the rules. The players would not be the enemy. If our rules allow people to abuse the game and make 'unfair' rules, then we won't call the player 'unscupulous' (to quite Andy Hoare), we will regard ourselves as failures, and do something about fixing the mistakes in the rules. The rules would be seen as slightly less core than the model kits (as I acknowledge that GW is a model company first - but they don't have to be a rules company last like they are now).

I'd make all Rulebooks and Codices available in PDF format - not free mind you, you'd still have to pay for them - but I'd release them maybe a month or two months after the book version hit shelves.

I'd keep the 'wave' structure of new releases, but I'd make it transparent. I wouldn't leave people guessing for a year whether there was actually a Battlewagon model coming.

Less secrecy overall really, another attitudinal change. The 6-month and 3-month window crap would be done away with. Not full disclosure - there are IP reasons why things are kept behind closed doors - but there's no reason to be as secretive as GW is. This would involve list previews and tests, with feedback being welcome.

I don't know enough about how badly or how well LOTR is doing to say whether I'd drop it or not.

White Dwarf would become the hobby magazine it was, not the shiny overpriced catelogue it is currently.

Beyond those, everything is mostly find. Except the prices, but that's, again, not something I know 100% about, so I won't make any bold claims there.

BYE

I would take the rules seriously. That alone would cover many problems.

As someone already pointed out, invite the high ranking GT and 'Ard Boys (nationals) players to play test new codices. Right now GW's playtesting and codex editing is a joke. There are perhaps thousands of players that think they are experts. (Apearantly even the guys that write the stuff think they know what they're doing). But very few actually are experts. The large national tournaments are a great place to recruit players with a solid grasp of the game as a whole. And they can provide great insight to the strengths and weaknesses of various codices... for free! GW can even hire them as official play testers if they need to.

~Logic

Well if I owned GW i would bring back over watch. Find real game testers. Find and drag back the old dev teams. Chain fat bloke to the editors desk of wd.
Have them fix the broken army's and level out the playing field. oh yea 3d space hulk steping off

#1: Divide WH40K into a 30MM skirmish game and a 15MM scale big battle game that is halfway between the original Epic and the current 40K.

#2: Research a way to make it cheaper to produce plastic miniatures!!!!!

#3: Make White Dwarf a PDF that you could sign up to get via e-mail, like Cry Havoc!.

#4: Reconnect the Fluff and the Rules!!!

#5: Do #1 with WFB also.

One thing only; hunt down Gav Thorpe and force him to re-write the 3rd edition CSM 'dex with everything in the armouries.

I like the free White Dwarf, especially considering it is all advertising anyway.

1. Bring specialist games back to the forefront (at least 1 article a month in White Dwarf, and one shelf in each GW that rotates bi-monthly to highlight games).

2. A 40k 'part' magazine, like battle games for middle earth but for 40k. For those that do not know what this is, it is basically a 48 page fortnightly magazine which has a free sprue on the cover (or some small pots of paint, starter brushes, etc), and is very reasonably priced at around £2-4. Using the great artwork that has been produced for 40k over the years on the cover and letting people build up useable armies that they can paint easily over a few months would be a great way to expand the word of GW. Subscribing to the magazine means you get a bit more every 2 weeks and get a nice army very quickly which you can expand with other purchases. I'd probably put space marines and daemons as the two armies (possibly with a couple of small squads of allied forces too such as Tau and CSM).

3. Much better web presence - allow US retailers to sell online again (why restrict people who can make better shops than you, and who will pay to market on your behalf!?), have a massive gallery of painted miniatures on the GW website - every single 'eavy metal model for a start, make the website easier to navigate and keep content consistent across the globe.

4. Vastly improve white dwarf - use the 40k part magazine for the heavy promo stuff, make white dwarf appeal more to hobbyists and veterans and the newbies will catch up quickly with all the resources available online. That means more modelling, more army profiles, better (and crazier) battle reports, etc.

5. Buy up battlefront and publish flames of war (keeping them as an independent studio). FoW could use a lot of investment and promotion and GW could use a mainstream historical game (and I agree with the above poster, 15mm is sorely needed too).

oh and though it was only supposed to be 5, my 6th act would be to sell the starter box sets (with paints and brushes) everywhere humanly possible, getting in to as many toy departments and shops as realistically feasible. This is not such a big deal in the UK where almost everyone knows about warhammer from school, but in the US and elsewhere there are still a vast majority who have never heard of it. Asia would respond very well to this tactic too I think.

1: Fire Alessio & Tom Kirby. (one can't write decently balanced or thought out rules for crap and puts out retardedly oversimplified, quick and dirty, unbalanced products, the other debt finances company payment of dividends to double his salary)

2: Redevelop 40k to a detail level roughly that of Battletech, and refocus 40k away from Space Marines, emphasize all armies roughly equally. Emphasize campaign and narrative type games through supplements.

3: Issue *real* FAQ's every few months, on a scale roughly that of INAT FAQ.

4: Change production schedule from one army codex every couple months, to "New Edition, new book with all armies included, release update books with new sublists, units, FAQ's, and updates every year"

5: Bring Specialist Games out of the attic and back where they should be.

With regards to Tom Kirby, you may not have to fire him if you bought the company. Not owning shares, he'd have to step down from the board.

And moar things to be added to my Manifesto.

6. Hire a team to do nothing but sit in a room, and surf the Forums. Their task? Seek out whinging and see that is rewarded with even moar to whinge about. The idea? Just to annoy people who aimlessly whinge.

7. Re-organise Gorka Morka, Necromunda and Rogue Trader into a single Warband level game, mainly focussing on Rogue Traders doing what they do, with the option to run Alien Warbands as you see fit. Just think this would be cool!

8. Having finished his world tour of apologies, strap Pete Haines into the worlds first Penitent Engine.

9. I am going to shamelessly pinch the idea of a compendium of older now retired armies.

10. To go with the compendium, I would splash release old models, so newer players can field one without being ripped off my greedy little chancers on Ebay trying to make a quick buck. Plus, more experienced players will be able finish off existing forces, all the time adding to the company monies.

11. Rejig the Tournaments run by the company so that they are for friendly play, essentially encouraged by no placings, and no prizes. Entry fee would be scrapped, and a large trade stall added, including pre-release goodies.

Cheese Elemental wrote: Two thing(s) only; hunt down Gav Thorpe. And get someone else to re-write the 3rd edition CSM 'dex with everything in the armouries.

Fixed

Funnily enough there are firm plansto buy GW, however the folks in the ivory tower know they wont survive a handover because they know they dont deserve their jobs.

So they do the only thing they can do, entrench and white knuckle grasp their shares.

Really? (not meant to sound sarcastic. More of an interest piqued really than a disbelieving really!)

Where'd you hear about that? Any more details? (again, meant to be expressing genuine interest in the above statement than any sarcasm)

i would first lower the amount of metal models produced and increase plastic.

second beat the people that let the Australia GW site fall into dis repare and hire some good people to fix this ASAP

Amend dex's and update them ASAP too, we all know that dark eldar and guard need it bad and promise to update the 4 oldest 40k dexs a year, bring in another race, and introduce the dex:inqisitors, Kroot mercenries, harliquines, Feral Orks, custodians.

Start bitz packs [plastic] such as spare gunz and arms and stuff that are forgotten for not included in existing packs

Have roadshows.

Vaktathi wrote:2: Redevelop 40k to a detail level roughly that of Battletech, and refocus 40k away from Space Marines, emphasize all armies roughly equally. Emphasize campaign and narrative type games through supplements.

Funny... I didn't see "Sink the company" as one of your stated goals, because refocusing the game away from Space Marines and making it as ludicrously complex as BattleTech is would do just that.

Like it not, Space Marines are 40K. Once they're not the centre, 40K ceases to be as a viable main commercial product.

BYE

Judging between Classic Battletech (I gave up playing before the Clans came out) and 40K I would say 40K is a significantly more complicated game in many ways.

SM are the core of the game.

Oh, and I would immediately set my Finance and Planning Chimps into researching the viability of promoting the Historical Side more, and producing a Necromunda scaled Gaslight period game. Because I like that setting (Gaslight not Steampunk) and there isn't a great deal serving that right now.