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Watched the LoTR trilogy over the course of last week and feeling a bit nostalgic for all things Middle Earth, I picked up the Fellowship of the Ring Journey Book today. I was really only expecting a handful of scenarios, but was gobsmacked by the level of content. Not only are there 18 scenarios but it has painting articles for pretty much every miniature used in the book as well as handy how to guides for making all the scenery. It occurred to me that all the Codexes, Army Books and White Dwarfs used to include this sort of stuff, but open an army book these days and all you get is a chunky background section (75% of which has been copy and pasted from previous edition) and the army list itself. And don't get me started on what White Dwarf has become.

So why has the hobby disappeared from the publications? This has been a fairly recently change (the Fellowship Journey Book was first published in 2005) and seems to coincide with the appearace of an expanded plastic scenery range i.e. "Why make your own scenery kids, when you can just buy it? It will look much cooler than anything you could make and did we mention the skulls?"

Now I kind of understand that promoting the modelling side of the hobby when you're selling your own scenery pieces is effectively persuading people to not buy your stuff, but I think it's a shame regardless. And in any event, I still would have bought the things like the Watchtower and Dreadstone Blight because they do indeed look cool. However IMHO, they would look even more cool if they were standing alongside a collection of home made Emipre townhouses rather than being placed adjacent to another hunk of plastic like the Temple of Skulls.

What I really don't understand is why all the painting stuff is also beginning to vanish. In the Necron release White Dwarf, the sum total of painting articles was half a page. And there hasn't been a single step by step painting guide in an Army Book or Codex for aeons. Is it purely because a new paint range is rumoured to be on the horizon and they want people ready to adopt a new painting methodology or is it because they want all the miniatures in their books to look immaculate, because then we'll buy more? (I suspect the latter)

I fear that Games WORKSHOP (super sized for irony) has long favoured the idea that the hobby should be pushed aside in favour of shifting more plastic. Yet for me, the traditional aspects of the hobby (town house made out of foam core and plasticard) are what has kept me interested and enthused over the last 20 years, whilst the appearance of yet another Skull Tower this month has just left me cold

Prelude to the Official Games Workshop Prepainted Figure Line?

But....the skulls?

The way I hear it, the shareholders want more cash. More cash is made by selling more stuff. Selling more stuff is done by promoting your own stuff, rather than promoting DIY scenery.

It's a shame, but that's what GW has become.

Yep. The plastic scenery has nixed any more how-to- make articles. They had two excellent editions of their How to make Terrain books, if you can find them, which are great for DIY people.

snurl wrote:Yep. The plastic scenery has nixed any more how-to- make articles. They had two excellent editions of their How to make Terrain books, if you can find them, which are great for DIY people.

Those books are amazing. Same with Nigel Stillmans Stillmaina articles in the old WD's. Those days are long gone and never comming back just like getting 30 Imperial Space Marines for $30.


I can understand why they did it, so they can pimp their own plastic terrain kits. But to totally ignore any customization is just wrong imho.

Plastic scenery superseded the majority of their terrain building articles, and the painting guides have been moved over into WD and "How to Paint X" books.

All of those "Do I really need to paint my models, base my models, etc.?" polls that crop up on a regular basis seem to indicate a common attitude toward modeling.

Lazy is easy.

As for the disappearance of the how to build stuff, there's always the internet anyway. Not that I didn't enjoy those articles, they used to be why I brought WD at all; without them there's no point.

Juicifer wrote:All of those "Do I really need to paint my models, base my models, etc.?" polls that crop up on a regular basis seem to indicate a common attitude toward modeling.

This.

Hell, with the current attitude of GW's demographic (10 year olds) who want instant results and don't want to have to paint cos they want to play CoD, I wouldn't be surprised if they DID do prepainted models at some point...

And the ocean is a little wet

GW is not what it used to be, been seeing that for a long time

The manager at a battle bunker was asking for ideas for themed tables.

But he could not use half the ideas because every table (over a dozen) had to use the realms of battle skull hill thingy.

So no space hulk board, no Mordheim board, no urban war... Unless you can integrate skull hills into it.


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If you remember during 2nd edition GW publications almost never showed conversions or OOP models, to promote the current line. I imagine that's the pressure stores and editors are under similar pressure now.

If it has to have that damn skullfilledskullpitswithskullhillsofskulls board in it, point to the extension pieces that are just blank squares.



At the very least I'd have thought they could make Necromunda or Mordheim on them.

Poor a big tub of glue ofver the skull, Sands it, and grass.
But yeah,
Could that be why they are removing the paint line?

They can't sell you more models if you know how to sculpt your own.

Simple financial stuffs.

hotsauceman1 wrote:Poor a big tub of glue ofver the skull, Sands it, and grass.
But yeah,
Could that be why they are removing the paint line?

Paint line isn't going anywhere.

I wouldn't be against pre-painted models.

I've thought for years that anything to reduce the "grey hordes" effect would be good.

It would be easy for GW to introduce multi-colour kits, especially for SMs. That would be a big step forwards.

Kilkrazy wrote:I wouldn't be against pre-painted models.

I've thought for years that anything to reduce the "grey hordes" effect would be good.

It would be easy for GW to introduce multi-colour kits, especially for SMs. That would be a big step forwards.

I hate grey hordes too. I can tell HQ from troops.

DeadlySquirrel wrote:
Hell, with the current attitude of GW's demographic (10 year olds) who want instant results and don't want to have to paint cos they want to play CoD, I wouldn't be surprised if they DID do prepainted models at some point...

Damn kids these days! When I was your age I grr grr grr
Kids haven't changed one bit. Today's Call of Duty is yesterday's Goldeneye, is yesterday's Space Invaders and is the day before's Saturday morning cartoons.

hotsauceman1 wrote:
Could that be why they are removing the paint line?

This isn't happening. Like, there's literally no way this is happening and I have no clue where you're getting this idea from.

Emerett wrote:They can't sell you more models if you know how to sculpt your own.

Simple financial stuffs.

This is the correct answer.

Back when the realm of battle was introduced, Jervis remarked in his column in WD about how gamers had to make do with polystyrene hills and home made terrain up until the ROB was introduced....
Rubbish.
The terrain building part of the hobby is alive and well despite what GW would have you believe.
Sometimes you just have to look around outside of GW land to see what else is out there.

Kilkrazy wrote:I wouldn't be against pre-painted models.

I've thought for years that anything to reduce the "grey hordes" effect would be good.

It would be easy for GW to introduce multi-colour kits, especially for SMs. That would be a big step forwards.

But wouldn't that kill the appeal of the game?
Its the hobby that is keeping the system alive. Without it, its just another board game. And the rules really aren't that good enough to rely on that. I mean, when were the Tau last updated, again?

You had better tell that to GW. It would be of no concern to me if GW evaporated overnight.

People need to remember the difference between the GW HHHobby and the wargaming hobby.

I wouldn't mind if they poofed either, but being stuck in 5th ed, with GK's the way they are right now would kind of suck.

Kilkrazy wrote:You had better tell that to GW. It would be of no concern to me if GW evaporated overnight.

People need to remember the difference between the GW HHHobby and the wargaming hobby.

You are still so cool Killkrazy, nicely said <3


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Flashman wrote:Watched the LoTR trilogy over the course of last week and feeling a bit nostalgic for all things Middle Earth, I picked up the Fellowship of the Ring Journey Book today. I was really only expecting a handful of scenarios, but was gobsmacked by the level of content. Not only are there 18 scenarios but it has painting articles for pretty much every miniature used in the book as well as handy how to guides for making all the scenery. It occurred to me that all the Codexes, Army Books and White Dwarfs used to include this sort of stuff, but open an army book these days and all you get is a chunky background section (75% of which has been copy and pasted from previous edition) and the army list itself. And don't get me started on what White Dwarf has become.

So why has the hobby disappeared from the publications? This has been a fairly recently change (the Fellowship Journey Book was first published in 2005) and seems to coincide with the appearace of an expanded plastic scenery range i.e. "Why make your own scenery kids, when you can just buy it? It will look much cooler than anything you could make and did we mention the skulls?"

Now I kind of understand that promoting the modelling side of the hobby when you're selling your own scenery pieces is effectively persuading people to not buy your stuff, but I think it's a shame regardless. And in any event, I still would have bought the things like the Watchtower and Dreadstone Blight because they do indeed look cool. However IMHO, they would look even more cool if they were standing alongside a collection of home made Emipre townhouses rather than being placed adjacent to another hunk of plastic like the Temple of Skulls.

What I really don't understand is why all the painting stuff is also beginning to vanish. In the Necron release White Dwarf, the sum total of painting articles was half a page. And there hasn't been a single step by step painting guide in an Army Book or Codex for aeons. Is it purely because a new paint range is rumoured to be on the horizon and they want people ready to adopt a new painting methodology or is it because they want all the miniatures in their books to look immaculate, because then we'll buy more? (I suspect the latter)

I fear that Games WORKSHOP (super sized for irony) has long favoured the idea that the hobby should be pushed aside in favour of shifting more plastic. Yet for me, the traditional aspects of the hobby (town house made out of foam core and plasticard) are what has kept me interested and enthused over the last 20 years, whilst the appearance of yet another Skull Tower this month has just left me cold

Its all about immediate + fast + profits.

If GW shows us how to build stuff from scratch, they arnt making full profit off us.
Majority of the materials used can be bought for cheaper somewhere else , e.g GW dont even sell plasticard or tubes

Scratch built stuff can have infinite use. This does not sit well with GW. A $5 piece been used over and over again? No DESU! .
What they need is, NONE generic pieces that makes it less convincing to be used as "everything" hence you need more, and you buy more of their ready made kits.

Scenaries are also cheap, compared to GW units. GW can kill units on a whim when ever they want to push new products... making what we already own, obsolete.
They cannot kill sceneries or hobby related items....

But if they vanished, then there probably won't be updates in a long time, due to the sheer scale of the legal battles that will follow.

Lots of good points made. This has become my major bugbear with GW over the last few years. As a few others have remarked, if you strip out the hobby element, then why bother?

Kid_Kyoto wrote:The manager at a battle bunker was asking for ideas for themed tables.

But he could not use half the ideas because every table (over a dozen) had to use the realms of battle skull hill thingy.

And people wonder why I so despise that thing. As someone who loves building terrain the RoBB represents to be the exact opposite of freedom of choice. You can have any terrain you like as long as it involves hills.

Now I like hills – I even like GW’s hills, especially the modular one – but as you’ve just pointed out Kyoto, that RoBB limits what you can do because those hills always there (unless you spend even more on getting the blank pieces... which makes me wonder why you wouldn’t just buy a 4x6 piece of MDF and use the money saved on actual terrain). And that’s the other part, once you’ve gone to the (huge) expense of getting a RoBB you still don’t have any terrain.

I find it sad when every picture GW puts out has nothing that cannot be bought in store. The surface is always a RoBB, the trees are always that plastic tree kit, and everything else is a building or a crater or something you can buy. IMO it’s stifling the hobby, and turning everything that you can do into a packaged commodity.

I think it’s a bad thing when seeing scratch-built terrain comes as a shock.

I dont know if its disapearing or just being streamlined but the latest Heavymetal works do seem to be quite nice IMO.

To be honest I dont collect WD for years and I find myself much more interested in collecting things like old rogue trader book or old WD with genestealer cults etc etc...I mean the appeal is still on the old stuff so I have what I need from them.

Would I like to see black gobbo back or cool articles about modelling? Yes but the internet is here for those of us that like to use it and its been very kind, if GW is still faling short on that department and not using its own private traditional mags to fill that gap then OK its their call.




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H.B.M.C. wrote:
I think it’s a bad thing when seeing scratch-built terrain comes as a shock.

A bad thing for them they only can controll themselves, as for any modelist will surelly have fun scratchbuilding their own stuff for its homemade tables etc.

Also the saturation of the same terrain over and over again is also a problem for them because the last thing they want is people to be fed up with their imagery and skulls etc... but hey if they are happy with sales why change?

I'm not so sure - I approach this from the opposite viewpoint really. When I started playing 40k and Epic, my friends and I were of course hugely inspired by the scratch built terrain that used to feature in White Dwarf. Unfortunately, none of us had either the talent, the expertise, the materials or the funds to produce anything remotely decent. Most of my early and formative days were spent playing on green painted MDF boards with hills hacked out of polystyrene packaging and inexpertly flocked, ugly looking cardboard 'ruins' and crudely constructed stands of trees using railway modelling supplies. Hence why I am allergic today to trying to make my own - I have neither the inclination, aptitude or time to make my own terrain so why should I when stuff is available to buy that is 1000% better than anything I could make? And unlike most of GW's range, their plastic terrain kits represent pretty good value IMO.

These days gamers are spoilt for choice; if they want to build stuff, the knowledge is available to do so - there are tutorials aplenty and the old GW Terrain making books are still out there. The problem is for lots of people and for various reasons, whether it is time, ability or aesthetic preference, buying pre-made kits is always their preferred option. As far as I am concerned, I would rather have the choice between the two options. Yes, every GW battle report seems to be geared towards shilling terrain pieces but then again, it has always been the case, it's nothing new or shocking.

I'm with filbert on this one. I like the choice of a professionaly made piece of scenery and doing my own. While there will be a HUGE difference between the two it's the balance of looks good to I did this myself . Can't remember offhand who is making them now but the resin pieces I got are the battlefield in a box stuff now, used to be target games I think when I picked them up. But GW's scenery (barring that awful board) is surprising. It's good, if slightly skully, and reasonably priced for what it is imo. Temple of skulls is not only huge, but fits in well with my chaos stuff for example, at under the cost of a regiment box of marauders or warriors from them.
That said I used packaging polystyrene and a wire cutter to make hills, so cost me the cutters cost (investment item people!), have built card buildings, steel wool hedges, aluminium mesh chain fences and barbed wire myself so enjoyed the creativity side too. My board itself cost me under £15 for 3 pieces of 4'x2' MDF board and then something like £5 on the paint to get it grey.
I lament that they have stopped the build your own stuff as occasionally they did some great stuff that even I could make look okish with my poor skill, especially years ago when starting out, but can see why they have now turned away from it.

I don't think it's anything 'new' really, it seems to have been happening for a while now.

I know when I bought the last DA codex, I was suprised there was no 'how to paint a Dark Angel' section in it. No big deal for me, but could be a bit awkward for a newb.

I agree with many of the comments here - it's all money related, with the 'how to paint this' & 'how to paint that', but surely they could do some WD or web articles showing how to combine different scenery kits together, or how to 'personalise' them, afterall that would help to sell stuff as well, right?