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 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Rumours, claims.......nothing concrete then, just wishlisting and a desire to see the great satan apparently "pushed out" by the savior of GW.

You're reading into what I'm saying too much. Its not wishlisting and it isn't desire, both mean a feeling of hope that something will happen, but this has already happened. I don't need to have any feelings about it. My opinions here are allowed to be based on rumors, though I believe they are based on reasoned inferences. You're entitled to your choice to disregard them.

It is fact, that he isn't in a position of authority at GW. He is no longer CEO and while he remains on the Board of Directors at GW the role of a Board of Directors is chiefly to help the CEO get whatever financial resources he needs and to assist with tax structuring and not to make operational decisions.

I don't think of Roundtree as a savior and I didn't think of Kirby as a "great satan". If Kirby had a sin it was ignorance and misplaced view of GW's products as collectables; a view at the root of what drove his decision making. From all accounts and a number of public presentations, Alan Merett was portrayed by Kirby as the one most chiefly responsible for his views of GW's customers and the company's operations. Roundtree's experiences heading the more appreciated branches of GW shows he is at least aware of where the customer bases' interests lie, but at the same time he seems committed to certain practices that continue to erode GW's market share and presence in retail outlets. GW's present course has and will continue to boost sales from established customers, but despite product bundling the barriers to entry into the hobby still remain. Whether you agree with my reading of events or not, Alan Merett's departure is indicative of a change of perspective at GW that is directly tied to these other executive personnel changes.

 aka_mythos wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:
Rumours, claims.......nothing concrete then, just wishlisting and a desire to see the great satan apparently "pushed out" by the savior of GW.

You're reading into what I'm saying too much. Its not wishlisting and it isn't desire, both mean a feeling of hope that something will happen, but this has already happened. I don't need to have any feelings about it. My opinions here are allowed to be based on rumors, though I believe they are based on reasoned inferences. You're entitled to your choice to disregard them.

It is fact, that he isn't in a position of authority at GW. He is no longer CEO and while he remains on the Board of Directors at GW the role of a Board of Directors is chiefly to help the CEO get whatever financial resources he needs and to assist with tax structuring and not to make operational decisions.

I don't think of Roundtree as a savior and I didn't think of Kirby as a "great satan". If Kirby had a sin it was ignorance and misplaced view of GW's products as collectables; a view at the root of what drove his decision making. From all accounts and a number of public presentations, Alan Merett was portrayed by Kirby as the one most chiefly responsible for his views of GW's customers and the company's operations. Roundtree's experiences heading the more appreciated branches of GW shows he is at least aware of where the customer bases' interests lie, but at the same time he seems committed to certain practices that continue to erode GW's market share and presence in retail outlets. GW's present course has and will continue to boost sales from established customers, but despite product bundling the barriers to entry into the hobby still remain. Whether you agree with my reading of events or not, Alan Merett's departure is indicative of a change of perspective at GW that is directly tied to these other executive personnel changes.

I agree with you, aka_mythos. A rational interpretation of these developments is more valuable than a hyperbolic distortion of what it all means.

GW is not going to change overnight, and changes in leadership are simply that, new people with new ideas. It remains to be seen how this would actually affect the company.

Still, nothing on any search engine confirming this rumor. This rumor started on Dakka, spread to Beasts of War (refers back to dakka), and nothing.....

The Ward rumor could be found on legit "news" sites at least...

I'm calling BS on this rumor, until there's proof positive.

 russian69hitman wrote:
Still, nothing on any search engine confirming this rumor. This rumor started on Dakka, spread to Beasts of War (refers back to dakka), and nothing.....

The Ward rumor could be found on legit "news" sites at least...

I'm calling BS on this rumor, until there's proof positive.

The Ward "rumor" is from the horse's mouth - it's from his own Twitter account. This one I still don't totally buy.

*delete*

Hitman meant the Merett rumor

 angelofvengeance wrote:





Back on topic: So, what else do we think the post-Merett/Kirby era will bring?

Plastic Praetorian Imperial Guard!!!!!!!!

No,I'm not serious.

One of the rumours I heard years ago was that Alan Merrett canned production of the Praetorians as he considered pith helmet Victorians IN SPAAACE was a step into silliness.

No idea if that dit is true but if it is, the Praetorians were a joke that opened a market for Victoria Lamb, Rob Angell's Curious Constructs and a couple of other companies.

The praetorians were a studio army at first, but players showed so much interest back then that they decided to sell them for a while.

 BrookM wrote:
The praetorians were a studio army at first, but players showed so much interest back then that they decided to sell them for a while.

That's right. The originals were knocked up by the Perrys purely for the Games Day Big Toof display. Then someone thought "We could sell a limited box of that" following what I believe was a large amount of pestering at that Games Day.

The point being is that Merrett allegedly let his personal view affect the ongoing sales of an IG range. The truth is possibly more mundane such as sales not making it worth renewing worn out molds but hey, the truth should never get in the way of a good story.

 russian69hitman wrote:
Still, nothing on any search engine confirming this rumor. This rumor started on Dakka, spread to Beasts of War (refers back to dakka), and nothing.....

The Ward rumor could be found on legit "news" sites at least...

I'm calling BS on this rumor, until there's proof positive.

I'll be blunt, most companies don't advertise people leaving or arriving.

I got the word from an acquaintance on Facebook who heard it from another acquaintance. It might be true, it might not. I wouldn't jump to call bs on it due to the fact five minutes google-fu can't locate a bbc news article on it though, that's as sketchy a reason to reject as it is to accept.

alphaecho wrote:


No idea if that dit is true but if it is, the Praetorians were a joke that opened a market for Victoria Lamb, Rob Angell's Curious Constructs and a couple of other companies.

Hell, GW's decisions to cancel model ranges and entire games have allowed many new companies to flourish. And GW has only themselves to blame for the very existence of much of this competition.

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

alphaecho wrote:


No idea if that dit is true but if it is, the Praetorians were a joke that opened a market for Victoria Lamb, Rob Angell's Curious Constructs and a couple of other companies.

Hell, GW's decisions to cancel model ranges and entire games have allowed many new companies to flourish. And GW has only themselves to blame for the very existence of much of this competition.

Just imagine if GW made clear concise rules with balanced books/codices and still supported the tourney scene, Privateer Press might not even exist. There would be no Warmahordes and maybe no X-wing to get into games cheaper with great clear concise rules as well.

You are oh so correct. GW have opened the market for other companies to come in and take part of their share. If they still existed they wouldn't be so dominate as they are now, that is for sure. Amazing what happens when you upset your fan base and look down upon them.

Sounds like the big boss is starting to get traction and looking at work performance...

Didn't they hire a Big time fashion magazine editor that was the one to recommend breaking up the magazine
into a weekly magazine and a monthly magazine... I am sure he is looking for a job now also since they
are now going back to what the originally did..

 Genoside07 wrote:
Sounds like the big boss is starting to get traction and looking at work performance...

Didn't they hire a Big time fashion magazine editor that was the one to recommend breaking up the magazine
into a weekly magazine and a monthly magazine... I am sure he is looking for a job now also since they
are now going back to what the originally did..

That person may have already got another job and GW have gone back to what they originally did due to being clueless as a result. You don't know one way or the other.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Genoside07 wrote:
Sounds like the big boss is starting to get traction and looking at work performance...

Didn't they hire a Big time fashion magazine editor that was the one to recommend breaking up the magazine
into a weekly magazine and a monthly magazine... I am sure he is looking for a job now also since they
are now going back to what the originally did..

That person may have already got another job and GW have gone back to what they originally did due to being clueless as a result. You don't know one way or the other.

They went from monthly White Dwarf being available in almost every newsagent in the UK and selling reasonably well to having Warhammer Visions in a very few newsagents barely selling and a weekly White Dwarf in games shops which only really sold if it had a decent freebie. Lots of Visions and weekly White Dwarfs were being returned for credit.

Davor wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

alphaecho wrote:


No idea if that dit is true but if it is, the Praetorians were a joke that opened a market for Victoria Lamb, Rob Angell's Curious Constructs and a couple of other companies.

Hell, GW's decisions to cancel model ranges and entire games have allowed many new companies to flourish. And GW has only themselves to blame for the very existence of much of this competition.

Just imagine if GW made clear concise rules with balanced books/codices and still supported the tourney scene, Privateer Press might not even exist. There would be no Warmahordes and maybe no X-wing to get into games cheaper with great clear concise rules as well.

You are oh so correct. GW have opened the market for other companies to come in and take part of their share. If they still existed they wouldn't be so dominate as they are now, that is for sure. Amazing what happens when you upset your fan base and look down upon them.

Little off topic but how the is X-wing a cheaper game? $30 bucks for 3 pre painted minis the size of old D&D minis, made out of the same cheap material as MechWarrior and ___Clix games. Only reason these games seem cheaper is there is fewer models needed to get started, but model for model come on man. GW ain't that bad.

GW does need to back to 3rd ed. rules though and bring back tourney's and stuff.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

alphaecho wrote:


No idea if that dit is true but if it is, the Praetorians were a joke that opened a market for Victoria Lamb, Rob Angell's Curious Constructs and a couple of other companies.

Hell, GW's decisions to cancel model ranges and entire games have allowed many new companies to flourish. And GW has only themselves to blame for the very existence of much of this competition.

Just imagine if GW made clear concise rules with balanced books/codices and still supported the tourney scene, Privateer Press might not even exist. There would be no Warmahordes and maybe no X-wing to get into games cheaper with great clear concise rules as well.

You are oh so correct. GW have opened the market for other companies to come in and take part of their share. If they still existed they wouldn't be so dominate as they are now, that is for sure. Amazing what happens when you upset your fan base and look down upon them.

Little off topic but how the is X-wing a cheaper game? $30 bucks for 3 pre painted minis the size of old D&D minis, made out of the same cheap material as MechWarrior and ___Clix games. Only reason these games seem cheaper is there is fewer models needed to get started, but model for model come on man. GW ain't that bad.

GW does need to back to 3rd ed. rules though and bring back tourney's and stuff.

They just announced the AoS Grand Tournament for 2017

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

Davor wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:

alphaecho wrote:


No idea if that dit is true but if it is, the Praetorians were a joke that opened a market for Victoria Lamb, Rob Angell's Curious Constructs and a couple of other companies.

Hell, GW's decisions to cancel model ranges and entire games have allowed many new companies to flourish. And GW has only themselves to blame for the very existence of much of this competition.

Just imagine if GW made clear concise rules with balanced books/codices and still supported the tourney scene, Privateer Press might not even exist. There would be no Warmahordes and maybe no X-wing to get into games cheaper with great clear concise rules as well.

You are oh so correct. GW have opened the market for other companies to come in and take part of their share. If they still existed they wouldn't be so dominate as they are now, that is for sure. Amazing what happens when you upset your fan base and look down upon them.

Little off topic but how the is X-wing a cheaper game? $30 bucks for 3 pre painted minis the size of old D&D minis, made out of the same cheap material as MechWarrior and ___Clix games. Only reason these games seem cheaper is there is fewer models needed to get started, but model for model come on man. GW ain't that bad.

GW does need to back to 3rd ed. rules though and bring back tourney's and stuff.

Cheaper techincally for a playable force. The starter and a few additional ships gives you lots of options.

Price argument falls flat when you consider competitive play though and the need to buy ships you don't want just for the upgrades you do want.

However, there's plenty of games out there that are more expensive than GW on a per model basis but far cheaper on what you need to actually play, skirmish games like Frostgrave, Infinity, Saga, Malifaux, etc come to mind..

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Only reason these games seem cheaper is there is fewer models needed to get started,.

Does there need to be more than one reason that a game is cheaper before anyone is allowed to point out that it is cheaper...?

 Manchu wrote:

 Tannhauser42 wrote:
His CHS testimony alone should, from a PR standpoint, have been enough to give him the boot.

As far as PR goes, nutters like us posting on a forum are the only ones who care - and I doubt we move GW's bottom line. As far as the testimony goes, and the whole CHS action for that matter, it's hardly fair to blame the witnesses for being sorely underprepared much less for a woefully inadequate approach to the case generally. That's as much as I'll say about the matter.

I think it's hard to understate the reputational damage to a company when their head of IP testifies in court that he doesn't know the difference between copyright and trademarks.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Little off topic but how the is X-wing a cheaper game?

You don't need 100 of them.

 insaniak wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Only reason these games seem cheaper is there is fewer models needed to get started,.

Does there need to be more than one reason that a game is cheaper before anyone is allowed to point out that it is cheaper...?

Pretty much this. A game is as expensive as the company designs the game around a playable force. GW want games where you need to bring several suitcases of miniatures, and then prices them quite high. Other companies price their miniatures even higher, but you need far, far fewer.

The cost of the game is when you look at the cost of an average starting force, not the individual miniatures. A box of 10 tactical marines is cheaper than 10 Infinity models, but those 10 Infinity models will very likely make up a complete, competitive list, while the Marines make up 1/10 of a competitive list.

 KingmanHighborn wrote:

Little off topic but how the is X-wing a cheaper game? $30 bucks for 3 pre painted minis the size of old D&D minis, made out of the same cheap material as MechWarrior and ___Clix games. Only reason these games seem cheaper is there is fewer models needed to get started, but model for model come on man. GW ain't that bad.

$30 for 3 is an awful lot cheaper than a lot of GW's range for similar sized items.

How much is an average GW character blister these days, and how much is an X-Wing ship blister?

The fact is though that you can be up and running in 40k or aos pretty cheaply now. Battle for vedros is $50 the storm of choas aos starter is $33 dollars. That is pretty comparable to a $40 x wing Starter. Of course these are not what we have come to view as full armies but they are very reasonable entry points to playing the games. Gw currently has a much better path towards entering the hobby than before.

Gw seems to realise the problem that Loki mentioned. One of the upcoming Aos events at warhammer world has skirmish rules and points for armies with just a handful of models. I hope they make this kind of thing official.
I have long thought that they should make a infinity style skirmish game for for each system if only to leverage their character clam packs.

The top down review that the new ceo promised to do actually seems to have produced some good results so far. I hope they continue to experiment with entry points into the hobby.
If Merret was resisting this, it is good he is gone

I hope so, small skirmish Warhammer is exactly what I was hoping AoS would be.

It's hard to know what to make of second hand accounts of his personality, but Merrett's performance in the Chapterhouse case was astonishing. It's been covered well, but the guy just didn't seem to know what he was doing. He was corrected in the trial on a few points, and believes that ideas are the same as copyright. Most pointedly was the way he claimed that GW is entirely original and they have nothing from outside, they just think stuff up apparently. This is in strong contrast to older sources describing how they had refer nce material on the shelves and the historical and pop-cultural references throughout Warhammer are just obvious to anyone with eyes.

It strains credulity that people are expected to believe they create everything in a vacuum, yet he claimed this in court so I guess it has to be true, right? That and the lack of basic knowledge on how copyright and other forms of intellectual properties work, and it seems like he was given the IP role as a big position gift for a long time member of staff to exercise his will over creative content, rather than because he understood the legalities of IP.

Chikout wrote:
The fact is though that you can be up and running in 40k or aos pretty cheaply now. Battle for vedros is $50 the storm of choas aos starter is $33 dollars. That is pretty comparable to a $40 x wing Starter. Of course these are not what we have come to view as full armies but they are very reasonable entry points to playing the games. Gw currently has a much better path towards entering the hobby than before.

Gw seems to realise the problem that Loki mentioned. One of the upcoming Aos events at warhammer world has skirmish rules and points for armies with just a handful of models. I hope they make this kind of thing official.
I have long thought that they should make a infinity style skirmish game for for each system if only to leverage their character clam packs.

The top down review that the new ceo promised to do actually seems to have produced some good results so far. I hope they continue to experiment with entry points into the hobby.
If Merret was resisting this, it is good he is gone

It's a start, and it's nice that they're at least trying, but it's not going to help unless it becomes the norm for regular gamers. If you go to a store for a pickup game, people expect a certain size game. Smaller games are balanced around small points limits and it's actually recommended you don't play above them.

Malifaux, for example, is balanced at 50pts. The average starter is 25-30pts, and can be made into a 50pt list with 2-3 additional purchases, which will actually include more models than you will need which opens up options. Jakob Lynch, a box of Beckoners, a box of Depleted and Mr Graves is around the $110au mark. Similarly Jack Daw, a box of Drowned, a box of Hanged and Jaakuna Ubume is around the $130au mark. Both of those give you much, much more than 50pts worth which lets you experiment. Infinity, an Imperial Service starter and a box of Wu Ming is about $100au and gives you a tournament ready 300pt list, as does a Hassassin starter and a Muyib box.

Now, I haven't played 40k or Fantasy in a couple of years, but from memory people erred on the side of larger games. 40k for example had a standard in my parts of 1500-2000pts. Dark Vengeance had maybe a third of that, pushing it with upgrades and the like. I have the Chaos side, got it when it released. I priced out expanding it to 1000pts and ended up needing to spend another $200au on top of the $90 I spent splitting it with a friend, and that was prior to 2 years of price increases that we have now, so I'm being generous to 40k here, as the other games don't have such price increases at regular intervals. $300au for a force that wouldn't even get me into local pick up games due to the small size compared to ~$100au for tournament ready forces is quite a difference.

Then, due to the way games work, if I wanted to drastically change the way my 40k force worked, I'd need to spend several hundred dollars more (again, Australian prices here) filling out a new formation. If I want to drastically change how my Infinity or Malifaux armies play, I buy a single box or a couple of blisters for ~$40.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 KingmanHighborn wrote:
Little off topic but how the is X-wing a cheaper game?

You don't need 100 of them.

Don't you need like 6-7 Kihraxiszisisisaed to get enough crack shots for a crack swarm?

So much useless plastic for such little useful cardboard.

You can buy singles of the cards.

Back along this (really old and well worn) argument popped up in another thread, I ultimately didn't post my findings but I did price up Paul Heaver's last world championship winning list (Poe Dameron, couple Y Wings etc)

It was £130. That was based off RRP and cost of Buy It Now eBay auctions for the single cards needed that were genuinely available at the time I did it, and including postage.

All someone has to do to prove GW is cheaper is find a tournament winning list that retails for less than £130, I won't even stipulate world championships, as of course GW don't do that, and we'll say no more about it

Let's wait until December and see how much it costs to play bloodbowl.

I've got plenty of both, but comparing the cost of a full army of multipart miniatures to x-wing game pieces is a pointless comparison, but it does seem that GW are trying to let you begin playing for less.