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by Wizards of the Coast??

What? Well I like WotC, but i don't think they know a damn about miniature business.

Not really. We'd probably get pre-painted space marines though.

Probably not, as they would just get taken over by another corporate entity who cares just as much about customers as GW does. As well, the design staff would probably remain the same, as some of them are still the original creators of 40k etc.

Are we talking about the WoC that was taken over by Hasbro and ceased to be an independent company (and grounded both of its miniature lines)?

Heck no!

If you are unhappy with the path GW has been on, then acquisition by WoC would be a giant leap in that direction.

And if WoC did try a different direction, it would be lower quality, prepainted, vinyl figures.

More tournament support. Tighter rules.

What about an alliance between GW and Mantic Games?

I guess everyone here are knee-jerk WotC-haters.

Truth is, they're a great company. Their only downside is that they're enormous and that lends itself some drawbacks - they usually only stick with things that sell, and they flip-flop between being very risk-averse and flying rodent gak crazy.


Regardless, the communication between WotC and its customers is amazing. When cards or decks in Magic are unbalanced, they consult their fans. When D&D 4th edition ended up being sub-par, they acknowledged this and actually tried to fix it. They make Magic cards based on people that win tournaments. Their Magic spokesperson/face Mark Rosewater is well known and loved in the community. They are in constant contact with their customers and fans.

Wizards of the Coasts's games are balanced. They spend an extensive amount of time balancing the tremendous amounts of cards/skills/models in Magic, D&D, and Star Wars Minis. They have successfully made several games that are actually legitimately competitive while still remaining fun (unlike Warhammer).

Wizards don't do irrational price-hikes. Originally packs of Magic cards have been $3.00, and that price has only increased to $4.00 in a period of 18 years. D&D books have been consistent in price for the past 10 years with some even going down in price.

Wizards loves its international market. They encourage other countries to play their product and don't impose embargoes. Their games are translated into many lanagues with Magic being in nearly 10. This likely comes from that fact that there are no "wizards of the coast" stores.

There are no Wizards of the Coast stores. As such, they rely exclusively on B&M Retailers and Online Retailers. Walmart, Target, Barnes and Noble, etc are there, but thtie primary support is to Local Game Stores. Go to a major release and their prize support is generous. WotC actually cares.

Their magazine, Dungeon and Dragon, have been made online-only as of recently. Regardless, it's a good magazine compared to White Dwarf (which isn't saying much). They're not afraid to advertise other companies products. Each Dungeon Magazine has at least 4-5 full adventures in it (equivalent to GW publishing 4-5 enormous missions per magazine). Each Dragon magazine has a plethora of options; they may not be the best quality, but it's there. Their magazines are not just overpriced catalogues. All this and the subscription for both and onlince accessibility for a price lower than a White Dwarf subscription.

WotC is a great company in spite of their size and corporate status. Just because historically WotC has messed around with prepainted miniatures doesn't mean they'd take Warhammer in that direction. They only took that direction with SW and D&D Miniatures because that's what people wanted.

n0t_u wrote:Not really. We'd probably get pre-painted space marines though.

Is that a bad thing? Getting prepainted alongside normal unpainted high-quality miniatures would make tons of people happy.

Lightcavalier wrote:Probably not, as they would just get taken over by another corporate entity who cares just as much about customers as GW does. As well, the design staff would probably remain the same, as some of them are still the original creators of 40k etc.

You either are unfamiliar with WotC or you don't realize how much GW doesn't care about its customers.

Kroothawk wrote:Are we talking about the WoC that was taken over by Hasbro and ceased to be an independent company (and grounded both of its miniature lines)?

D&D Miniatures is still there.
Star Wars Miniatures ran its course and the license expired. You can only do so much with an IP that you're not allowed to change.

So no, we're not talking about the same WotC.

The Epic Chaosdude!!! wrote:What? Well I like WotC, but i don't think they know a damn about miniature business.

And GW does?

Thats the best bit of hypocracy i have seen in a long time...

Absolutionis wrote:

n0t_u wrote:Not really. We'd probably get pre-painted space marines though.

Is that a bad thing? Getting prepainted alongside normal unpainted high-quality miniatures would make tons of people happy.

If they could actually produce both side by side then no, that wouldn't be a bad thing. I dunno if I really trust them to do that, though. They used to make metal D&D minis that you had to paint and assemble yourself back when 3rd edition was still new, and they abandoned that altogether not long after for pre-painted plastic sold in sealed boosters...needless to say that Reaper got a couple new customers after that.

Paul wrote:Thats the best bit of hypocracy i have seen in a long time...

lol, wut? From who?

It's madness to expect WotC to get rid of the best material and intellectual assets GW have - namely their world class plastic and resin/metal model production facilities and staff. Be sensible. They went prepainted with their own line, sure, but that was an infrastructural decision. Once they'd committed, they had to hold to it.
If they bought GW they'd be assuming control of a fantastic miniature production facility and a staff of extremely talented miniature designers and casters. They'd be idiots to throw it away, and they're not idiots.

Changes I'd expect from a WotC run GW:
-Tighter rules, but less focus on the weirder, grimdark aspects of the fluff. I expect they'd make everything a bit cleaner and more genre focused.
-Better game balance.
-GW stores turned into independants/WotC stores/Shut down.

What would you expect to change with a takeover/

Anyone buying into GW would be buying the access to their market and their fanbase. If it were WOTC (Hasbro) I could see a cull on anything not mainstream 40k or fantasy, ceratnly a culling of non profitable model lines and little or no new development. Given the Hobbit is out next year you could see 40k and WHFB sidelinedto concentrate on LOTR - rubbish perhaps but if the profit is there.

Yes you might get tighter tournaments (but those players are the minority) simply because the number of rulebooks would be cut , suggest one to cover all with maybe an expansion set now and then. Certainly no codex type books.

By the same token why merge with Mantic, who are relatively successful only by tapping a little into GW's market. No amerger makes no sense.

The quiet success of allowing Fantasy Flight limited licenses has borne fruit and could be the future. Getting smaller companies to produce Blood Bowl, Epic, Space Hulk and Boardgames while the parent company concentrates on the core miniature lines.

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:by Wizards of the Coast??

OH FETHING NO!!

I remember when they hired Bob Watts away from Ral Partha to start up their DnD miniature line.

-He couldn't have a sculpter start a miniature until the "artistic department" sent sketches
-Sculpters had to work with sometimes horrible pictures and not vary from poses that just didn't translate to miniatures.
-Stuff was 6 months late, and then he was told he had to have the first dozen models done by a deadline, that the "artistic department" didn't seem to care about.
-Final sculpts all had to be approved by the guys doing the drawings, and had to be done over.

In the end, a couple of guys sculpted everything in about 1/10th the time, they casted and shipped them all, and they wer crap. Whole project went down the drain and Bob went on to from Sabertooth games and do all the 40k and WFB cardgames and other cool stuff. He's over in Europe running stuff for Privateer last I heard.

WOTC does some things great, but they are horribly over organized, and screw up as much as they get right.


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Absolutionis wrote:Kroothawk wrote:
Are we talking about the WoC that was taken over by Hasbro and ceased to be an independent company (and grounded both of its miniature lines)?
D&D Miniatures is still there.
Star Wars Miniatures ran its course and the license expired. You can only do so much with an IP that you're not allowed to change.

So no, we're not talking about the same WotC.

No - They cancelled DnD miniatures. Was announced months ago.

Go back and look at the metal miniatures lines that WOTC tried to produce.

Some of what you say is true about WOTC, not all of it. And they know nothing about running something like GW. What emerged would be some horrible parody of what we have now.

Absolutionis wrote:
Wizards loves its international market. They encourage other countries to play their product and don't impose embargoes.

It is prohibited for US retailers to sell sealed product overseas so that WotC can charge more in Europe. Exactly the same deal as GW and Australia.

WotC already destroyed almost thirty years of D&D roleplaying for me, I won't stand to let them do the same for 40k.

They do MtG well, but their other offerings are so-so at best.

If Wizards owned 40k, I could see them emulating Wizkids and going with crappy, pre-painted figures on odd bases, with clicky bits on them to keep track of stats.

Miniatures would be purchased in random blisters, and every three months new sets would be released, invalidating previous sets.

There is a lot I have to gripe about GW, but there is also a lot that they do right. WotC would not do these things right IMO.

I dunno, I do feel however, that when GW goes under/up for sale (unless the guy that takes over once the current crop of people in charge cut and run is a genius), there are only 2 real choices to take over.

1) Hasbro, aka WOTC. I don't think it'd come under the WOTC banner, but would more likely remain GW as a banner name.

2) Disney. With them now owning Marvel, it's plausible for disney to try to take on Hasbro and WOTC. Hasbro movies and Marvel ones do seem to be tackling each other a lot in the box office.


I honestly can't see either major option being a particularly 'bad' but both would be a major, major change.

We would have 3d SM cards...

I think it'd be a substantial improvement if and only if WOTC managed the business end. So yes, this means that they don't touch the manufacturing process of the minis, nor do they fire any of the creative staff. Can you imagine if GW reversed the embargo, dropped the prices, hired people to tighten up the rules and playtest, and actually communicated with their consumer base?

I don't like what they did with D&D 4th edition (and neither do a lot of people), but they could hardly do worse than GW. I'd rather take a 10% chance of wanting to buy GW products ever again than a 0% chance.

Hasn't Wizards pretty much driven every miniatures game they've ever been behind into the ground? Granted they've all been pre-painted stuff, but I really don't think they know what they're doing with minis.

After what they did to Battletech? No, I would not like to see WotC take over. They have differebt ideas on wargaming. Glad it works for them, but keep them away from my 40k, thanks.

lord_blackfang wrote:It is prohibited for US retailers to sell sealed product overseas so that WotC can charge more in Europe. Exactly the same deal as GW and Australia.

It's obviously not enforced, then, because I've bought quite a few SWM booster cases from the US and UK.

Brother SRM wrote:Hasn't Wizards pretty much driven every miniatures game they've ever been behind into the ground?

Not really, no. While the tournament support had pretty much dried up, and communication with the company had started to lag, SWM was supposedly still doing pretty well when it was canned. They just (or so the public story went)chose to not renew the licence because they needed to refocus a little on their own core brands.

Mind you, that refocusing is exactly why a GW takeover by WotC wouldn't happen. They simply don't have the resources to manage anything that big in conjunction with D&D and Magic.

Mastiff wrote:After what they did to Battletech? No, I would not like to see WotC take over. They have differebt ideas on wargaming. Glad it works for them, but keep them away from my 40k, thanks.

When did WotC get ahold of Battletech?

Balance wrote:

Mastiff wrote:After what they did to Battletech? No, I would not like to see WotC take over. They have differebt ideas on wargaming. Glad it works for them, but keep them away from my 40k, thanks.

When did WotC get ahold of Battletech?

They didn't. I suspect that someone's a little confused between WotC and Wizkids.

Absolutionis wrote:
There are no Wizards of the Coast stores.

Maybe they've closed them or something, since this was about 5ish years ago, but I have personally been in a Wizards of the Coast store.

mazik765 wrote:

Absolutionis wrote:
There are no Wizards of the Coast stores.

Maybe they've closed them or something, since this was about 5ish years ago, but I have personally been in a Wizards of the Coast store.

I think most of them closed years ago... Wikipedia says they all closed in 2004. I know they had a mix of small shops that mostly sold boxed games and such (board games, etc.) and larger stores that had gaming area, LAN gaming, etc.

The one local to me was pretty large, but I don't think it had a lot of gaming space. It was also in a real mall, and probably somewhat expensive to keep open.

insaniak wrote:
They didn't. I suspect that someone's a little confused between WotC and Wizkids.

This.

Jordan Weisman is behind Wizkids - he was also behind FASA. Wizkids and WotC (whatsie) are two different and unrelated companies.

Son_Of _Deddog wrote:by Wizards of the Coast??

Sorry. Are you serious?!!

Wizards of the Coast are struggling to sell Dungeons & Dragons to role-players. They couldn't sell Star Wars. Star Wars sells itself and WOTC messed that up. They got given the fantastic Heroscape, and killed that too. They made a total mess of D&D miniatures and D&D RPG (although 4th Ed. has started to improve). Overall WOTC are totally useless as a gaming company and kept around by Hasbro to be written off as a bad debt when the time comes. And that's before we get onto the shoddy way they have treated staff.

Gamma World RPG had been the only decent thing they've done recently, and that was a limited three suppliment release.

And really, do you want WOTC quality miniatures? I've moved on from that.

Ugavine wrote: They couldn't sell Star Wars. Star Wars sells itself and WOTC messed that up.

Star Wars Miniatures was reportedly outseling D&D for a while there. Again, the decision to drop the Star Wars licence was nothing to do with it not working for them. It was expensive, and it was pulling resources away from D&D and Magic because they couldn't focus on everything at once, and so when their core brands started to suffer they pulled in and consolidated.