Age of Sigmar - Slaanesh Replaced? plus big book, stormcast archers, dismounted celestan

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**Herzlos**

monders wrote:
Does anyone else do focus groups in the industry?

Not as such, a lot of companies and authors go to events (shows/tournaments) though and ask people about the hobby.

**Herzlos**

Bottle wrote:
Herzlos wrote:
monders wrote:
Does anyone else do focus groups in the industry?

Not as such, a lot of companies and authors go to events (shows/tournaments) though and ask people about the hobby.

Don't forgeworld events and games-day (warhammer day?) also have similar parts? I don't know I've never been to one.

They have Q/A sessions, where the customers can ask them questions and the designers/authors may answer some questions about that specific subject, but from what I can tell there's no real feedback channel. They don't ask "So where would you like to see WHF go next?"

**Herzlos**

Bear in mind that they don't seem to have an actual marketing or PR department. It's entirely possible the designer was involved in the marketing work, or office friends of someone else who did the work (but is pretty much guaranteed not to have any marketing experience).

**Herzlos**

notprop wrote:
There were probably 20 stands with GW product on it, so a stand with full RRP isn't much of an addition if they are not previewing anything.

Also for practically as long as there has been a Salute the was a GW games Day. I guess they always felt they had it covered?

Nothing stopping them bringing some of the thousand or so online only items along (which they don't even do at Games Day), or bring some authors for signings or something.

**Herzlos**

jonolikespie wrote:
notprop wrote:

Also for practically as long as there has been a Salute the was a GW games Day. I guess they always felt they had it covered?

So with Games Day dead and gone what's their excuse this year?

It's not gone, it's just the games that have gone. It's now WarhammerFest.

**Herzlos**

NAVARRO wrote:
Also noticed something that did not happen in past, at least not to this extent... went to wayland to check some 40k stuff at the middle of the show around 11ish did not get anything because there was other more cool bits on the other shelves... returned to the same stand at the end of the day for a last check on 40k stuff and errr the shelves looked untouched and most was still there... mind this was 40k not WFB. Thats just weird.

GW stuff has been getting less and less popular at the shows I've been to as well. I don't know if it's because people are using the opportunity to buy new stuff (and the GW stuff you get at shows is the same GW stuff you get online or in your FLGS), or if there's just less interest in GW stuff in general. Shows up here have gone from maybe 50% of stalls with GW to maybe 20-25% and the boxes don't seem to be moving.

**Herzlos**

kodos wrote:

Warhammer, "mass fantasy battle" game still has the same core rules which are from a skirmish game. There are a lot of rules taken from an old edition which are not needed and instead of simplifying things, warhammer gets more complicated.
To many special rules are another problem. Instead of different game play, we just get "good" armies with a lot of special rules and "bad" armies with less special rules or the same amount for more points.

That's the problem. Despite many revisions of the rules, the core has never changed and it's been cludged together with 8 updates and endless special rules. Each edition seems to answer some questions and generate more new ones rather than actually tightening up the rules.

For instance, Infnity 2 is a vast improvement over infinity 1, and is pretty balanced. Malifaux 2 is a vast improvement over Malifaux 1, and is pretty balanced. Why does it take Warhammer 9 editions (or 30 years) to approach that level of clarity and balance? Because they aren't interested in the rules as anything other than a mini selling system.

WHF really needs a good reboot, but I doubt GW has the staff to do that now, so we'll see a reboot done on the cheap that manages to address almost none of the problems.

**Herzlos**

silent25 wrote:
A WHFB unit might have a slew of equipment and special upgrades. A chaos warrior unit has four different marks to choose from, four different weapon options, shields or no shields, and several different magic standards to choose from. That is over a hundred different combinations that need to be checked and balanced against. That doesn't even take unit size into consideration. You are probably seeing GW moving to units like Blight Kings and Warmongers just to minimize the amount of variety they have to balance against.

Which makes sense in a skirmish game, but in a mass battle game you shouldn't be mucking about with the armament of your warriors in such minute detail, especially when it has minimal impact on the unit/game itself.

Loads of other mass battle games don't allow that level of detail and work fine.

**Herzlos**

Because they want to maintain control. You can't tweak the rules to boost model sales if you don't control the rules.

**Herzlos**

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:
And if, God forbid, an excellent, balanced set of rules came out, we'd be locked in stasis. People would be happy with the rules, and be in no rush to buy the next broken book, Codex hop, etc...

Indeed. We could spent all our money on minis instead

**Herzlos**

Fayric wrote:
Azreal13 wrote:
That's pretty standard retail strategy, you place the things people buy most somewhere which means they have to walk past other items that you'd like to get more attention.

It could be indicative of a push on Fantasy, but is probably more likely the result of a competent manager or somebody at HO.

I know it works for ordinary grocery stores, but for GW?
How many people walk in to the store and dont even know if they want to get a fantasy or 40k kit?
I dont know how the standard consumer do, but I rarely just throw in an extra fanatsy box just for the heck of it on my way to the register.
Besides, because GW even remove the least seling stuf from the stores, Id say this sales tactic is all but unknown to the company.

There are plenty of price-insensitive customers that just come in for something cool to paint, who could easily spot a fantasy box to buy that they'd never see if they only looked at the new stuff. Lots of GW stores already do this anyway.

The only downside to this approach is if the new stuff is so far back it puts people off.

**Herzlos**

Mr Morden wrote:

but would have thought it would be more like:

1.Tribes of Men - Empire and Bretonia
2, Dwarf Holds
3. Chaos - Daemons, Beastmen and Warriors
4. Orcs, Goblins and Ogres
5. Elven Kingdoms
6. Lands of the Dead - Khemri, Nagash and Vampires

Allies:

Chaos and Orcs,
Humans, Dwarves and Elves

Undead can ally either with either group (but not both in one army) as in the fluff.

Skaven and Lizardmen are the big missing parts here if restricted to 6 armies......

Dwarfs will likely be rolled in with the men, freeing up a slot for Skaven.

**Herzlos**

Mort wrote:
If they do make a move to round bases, is it possible that -both- round and square would be acceptable for casual play, and GW will just start selling all their models with round bases from that point on?

I mean, would a company like GW really expect people to completely rebase hundreds of figures to make the switch to round?

Oh, wait...

Why rebase when you can buy new ones?

**Herzlos**

Bottle wrote:
The six factions thing is odd because it goes against what GW has done with 40k which has been to make more and more factions (and to break existing factions into multiple books).

Now, obviously they could be trying a totally different approach to WHFB. But if we were to speculate from 40k it seems likely that the "six factions" may just be a way of making allies much more an integral part of Fantasy, and we can still expect a multitude of different books for each race, but under a wider banner (such as Warhammer Armies: Order - Army Book Empire).

6 factions doesn't necessarily mean 6 books. How many Imperial books are there for 40K? They might just provide a 'Man' army book with expansions for 14 Dwarf clans, and so on.

**Herzlos**

HobbyBox wrote:

Granted, I may be trying to give GW too much credit, but I just wouldn't see them doing that to their stores, as it will impact their employees from being able to capitalize on sales. If they have pre-orders go up online on a holiday and the stores aren't open, all of the "eager hobbyists" that GW prides themselves on building a relationship with will pre-order their stuff on the webstore and not pre-ordering in store. Which then means the GW store managers don't get credit for the sale.

It just leads me to think this is as one of the rumors said and some sort of board game that helps to bridge the gap somehow into 9th Ed.

If you lean towards incompetence; I wouldn't be surprised if the people at GW Nottingham realised July 4th was a major US holiday. We work for a US company and forget about it every year until our US colleagues go away for the weekend.

If you towards malice; If most of the FLGS's are closed on the 4th, the fans will have to pre-order from the website to get delivered or picked up from a store. So it's a brilliant way of shafting the independents again.

**Herzlos**

Talys wrote:
I'm lost. What's so special about July 4 (Independence Day)? The release is July 11, isn't it?

Is the idea that people will rush out on July 4 to their FLGS to preorder something? O.o Because that makes so little sense -- I email my preorders to my store as soon as I know about them from leaked white dwarf New Items pages -- so Tuesday/Wednesday, of the week before, really. And at least in this area, GW allows stores to officially release product on Friday at 4pm or so (maybe to synchronize with GMT? I dunno). But anyhow, most stores aren't very good with the embargoes

Because it'll no doubt come with dozens of stock limited products that they will assume will sell out on pre-order day.

If the FLGS's are closed, lots of people who don't keep as up to date on rumours won't get a chance to pre order. Unless they use the GW site direct.

I think it's more likely they just don't realise that the colonies have different national holidays.

**Herzlos**

Talys wrote:
Herzlos wrote:
Talys wrote:
I'm lost. What's so special about July 4 (Independence Day)? The release is July 11, isn't it?

Is the idea that people will rush out on July 4 to their FLGS to preorder something? O.o Because that makes so little sense -- I email my preorders to my store as soon as I know about them from leaked white dwarf New Items pages -- so Tuesday/Wednesday, of the week before, really. And at least in this area, GW allows stores to officially release product on Friday at 4pm or so (maybe to synchronize with GMT? I dunno). But anyhow, most stores aren't very good with the embargoes

Because it'll no doubt come with dozens of stock limited products that they will assume will sell out on pre-order day.

If the FLGS's are closed, lots of people who don't keep as up to date on rumours won't get a chance to pre order. Unless they use the GW site direct.

I think it's more likely they just don't realise that the colonies have different national holidays.

I guess I understand why someone might fear this, but it isn't founded.

First, FLGS all get allocations of constrained items (I assume based on their sales volume, but I don't know this for a fact). They don't place their orders until the week of release (ie Monday or later), so internally, their own reservation list just happens in whatever way they choose -- probably first come first serve reservations. So, let's say White Dwarf comes out Wednesday or Thursday. Friday they get 3 preorders, Saturday they are closed, Sunday they get 5 more preorders.

Monday rolls around, they place an order for 12, and everybody's happy. Or the rep says, I can only give you 7, and then the last person is bumped, and none for the shelf. Normally, the week before, the store can call their GW rep and get an idea of how many they can get, if it's a high demand, constrained item. That way they don't take 20 reservations for Shield of Baal, and get 1 copy, or something stupid like that.

Assuming of course, that if the FLGS is closed on the Saturday (or even the whole weekend) the customer will be able to visit on the Monday/Tuesday to order, and that there will be any left.

I think there is some pre-allocation given to stores based on sales, which should be done before the pre-orders on the website, so it's minimal.

**Herzlos**

Grimtuff wrote:
Herzlos wrote:

Assuming of course, that if the FLGS is closed on the Saturday (or even the whole weekend) the customer will be able to visit on the Monday/Tuesday to order, and that there will be any left.

I think there is some pre-allocation given to stores based on sales, which should be done before the pre-orders on the website, so it's minimal.

Most GW stores that are 1 man are closed on monday/tuesday...

Good point. Some customers might not be able to pre-order anything until Wednesday (they might not be old enough for a credit card to use online, for instance).

I'm chalking this one firmly up to incompetence, as it'll hurt GW stores more than independents.

**Herzlos**

Kanluwen wrote:
Hah, Alessio Cavatore and "Balance". That's a good one!

What's so bad about Alessio and Balance? It seems he's responsible for what are generally regarded as GW's better games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessio_Cavatore)

OK so Mordheim was apparently pretty badly balanced, but Warmaster, LOTR, Bolt Action?

**Herzlos**

endtransmission wrote:
Herzlos wrote:
Kanluwen wrote:
Hah, Alessio Cavatore and "Balance". That's a good one!

What's so bad about Alessio and Balance? It seems he's responsible for what are generally regarded as GW's better games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessio_Cavatore)

OK so Mordheim was apparently pretty badly balanced, but Warmaster, LOTR, Bolt Action?

Notice the other person involved in all of those systems... Rick Priestly.

I did, but are you implying that it's all Priestly and not Cavatore?

In any case, neither of them work for GW now so there's a serious risk that a WHF reboot won't be of the same calibre.

**Herzlos**

Boss Salvage wrote:
I've passed on several GW hardbacks due to $$$ ... but I'd totally fire sale some stuff if offered

This is Games Workshop. Whilst it's a fire sale, it's still a fire sale at full RRP.

**Herzlos**

Hulksmash wrote:
I might check in at my local store to see what they are offering for the books. If he's willing to drop to cost to get rid of them I'll pick some up because I like them and they are pretty.

He certainly won't be able to do anything officially, but there's no harm in asking. They are just going to get pulped anyway.

**Herzlos**

It makes me think of a Dwarven shield or something like that. It'll probably be the colour of the flagship UltraSigmarines.

**Herzlos**

agnosto wrote:
ntdars wrote:

I couldn't see GW removing so many awesome plastic kits though, especially ones like Dwarves that are still relatively new

Well, we're talking about a company that made plastic sprues for one event and has not sold them since. Also, the End Times stuff is all really new and is being pulled according to some.

Quite a few companies have made single run plastic sprues for events (like Salute) or occasions (I've got a few LE Malifaux mini's in plastic). With cheaper aluminium moulding you can get a short production run for a reasonable price now.

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Desubot wrote:
Hulksmash wrote:
Why? If they are rebasing why go thru the trouble of doing a new kind of base. When it came to 40k the 32mm rounds make more sense aesthetically for certain 40k armies and fit the theme. And if some people want to rebase they can. If you're going to make people rebase regardless why spend the money on hex molds? Not like a 2 month jump on 3rd party customs (which people will wait for if they want it) is going to be huge sales...

Makes people buy new bases.

Feths 3rd parties

Fethin brilliant!

For all of about an hour, then they'd have their range remoulded into hexes. They could probably still get them shipping out before GW's pre-release.

**Herzlos**

It rarely works like that any more; more stores are dropping/marginalizing GW than seem to be taking them up.
5 years ago you'd be correct - no mini's based gaming store would survive without GW, but now it's not the case.

Particularly in Oz, I've heard of stores that have managed to strike up pretty good deals with GW in terms of freebies in order to be displayed.

GW Rep: "Do you like selling Space Marines?"
Store Owner: "To an extent"
GW Rep: " Do you think you can keep your store afloat on Warmachine alone?"
Store Owner: "Easily"
GW Rep: "Oh, so how many boxes of Age of Sigmar will I put you down for?."
Store Owner: "Until I know what it is, none."

**Herzlos**

It probably varies across even the UK. Up in Scotland most of the FLGS's have been stocking less and less GW stuff in absolute terms and in percentage terms.

I think in Glasgow the only place to get GW now is the GW store, as the others dropped them (whilst I can get X-Wing in a few stores). Edinburgh has 2 FLGS, one has gone from maybe 50% GW to 25% GW, the other doesn't stock. Gaming shows have a much lower ratio of GW stuff Vs 5 years ago (from maybe 50% to 10% of stalls stocking GW).

Even online, stores sales ratios for GW seem to be reducing (Wayland have stated significant growth in last couple of years, none of it coming from GW).

So they are still big, but they don't control the market like they used to. I don't think they really have the sway to bully independents anymore.

**Herzlos**

I think there's plenty of people will jump into Fantasy if it comes out as it sounds - smallish skirmish game. I'll likely be one of them, with enough existing mini's to get a few factions started.

But many are apprehensive because we've seen what they've done to 40K and pretty much any release in the last decade.

**Herzlos**

Thargrim wrote:
Charles Rampant wrote:
That book synopsis is pretty weird, and pretty hard to believe (simply taking a photograph of the map would surely have been enough to prove his point, but obviously nobody has any kind of portable camera on them these days). That said, I can imagine them wanting to break the Empire apart and turn the map into more city states (easier to have a more diverse 'Human' faction that way, especially one that fights against itself). Where do the Elves go, though? Are they on other worlds? Is this basically going to turn into Thor 2, and if so, do Dark Elves get way cool shard space ships?

Lol sarcasm i'm hoping, 90% of people I know how a little something called a cellphone which most modern ones are capable of taking very crisp images. The fact that people supposedly get their hands on this stuff, and don't take images leaves me with the impression they are either brain dead or don't care to be taken seriously. No images, and i'm not gonna believe what someone says. As for the elves, that's anyones guess, besides we don't even know if this rumor is valid or not.

Not everyone who has access to these things has the ability to take a photo. Most print shops will have a no phone policy, for instance. Alternatively, they've been asked not to take any photos to avoid the leak being identified.

That said, it seems to tie in with the previous rumours and has GW's trademark lack of inventiveness with "Sigmarall". It's also overly complex and doesn't make any sense. So I don't see how we can differentiate it from the real deal.

There being a book call Age Of Sigmar fits their form. I really hope it comes out at the same time as the starter set, and it's not the July 4th release on it's own though.

**Herzlos**

£25 will no double be the hardback novel explaining the fluff changes.

Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
What kind of company is this? What kind of company engages in such kamikaze business practices?

I think they assume their customers will continue to indulge their hobby of buying GW mini's from the 40K range in the mean time, to stock up on fantasy stuff before it goes out of production, or hold their money back to spend it all on launch weekend.

Real world economics have never really bothered them before.

**Herzlos**

A Town Called Malus wrote:
adamsouza wrote:
Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

What kind of company is this? What kind of company engages in such kamikaze business practices?

GW makes the bulk of their sales on any given product upon it's initial release. Any Fantasy product sales in the last few weeks would have been miniscule at best.

Continuing to sell the product after it's initial release is something they have to do, for us to be able to build complete armies, but isn't the most profitable.

But selling nothing in the run up to your big release is worse, in every single way, than selling a minuscule amount of other stuff in the run up to your big release.

Imagine if Apple stopped selling all of their other products for the 3 weeks before a new iPhone came out, or Microsoft stopped selling all versions of Windows weeks before releasing their new edition.

It's just pure idiocy.

To be fair, not many people buy an iDevice 3 weeks before replacement apart from when it's discounted, because they usually sell/support 2 generations at a time.

Microsoft usually offer a free upgrade if you buy an edition just before a new one too.

Fantasy was barely selling by that point anyway. Would anyone think it crazy if they just dropped LOTR for instance?