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Rule #1 please

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

There's also a copyright infringement rumour milling about as well.

Can't say I've heard of this rumour, care to elaborate?

 stonehorse wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

There's also a copyright infringement rumour milling about as well.

Can't say I've heard of this rumour, care to elaborate?

There's no evidence for it, GW pulling mentions of the product so completely are just considered by folks to be consistent with the actions of someone subjected to a cease & desist notice.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

 stonehorse wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

There's also a copyright infringement rumour milling about as well.

Can't say I've heard of this rumour, care to elaborate?

There's no evidence for it, GW pulling mentions of the product so completely are just considered by folks to be consistent with the actions of someone subjected to a cease & desist notice.

Well, https://ageofsigmar.com/cursed-city/ is still online, so...

They just pulled sales-related links, no?

 Togusa wrote:

Luke82 wrote:
Well i’m not mad about it, as i wasn’t overly interested in picking the game up, but i do find the surrounding mayhem entertaining, in particular the desire for people to avoid any acceptance that this is an engineered scenario from a company that makes its money by selling its brand rather than toys and games... forced scarcity (and high prices) are all a part of this.

You can see for yourself a ways back someones screen grab of a reply from the warhammer community team, take a few moments to do so please.

You mean the one that says nothing of the sort and says they cannot confirm or deny reports that the game is coming back for a second run? All from a team that a lot of those arguing this point say isn't reliable in the first place?

It's okay to admit when you don't know. I don't know either what the real explanation is. Insisting it's some grandiose scheme to somehow make money off FOMO when it has been shown that 10 X more money would have been made with a larger stock pool is just as nutter as Alex Jones chattering about gay frogs.

Well I most definitely dont know. But all the evidence points to this being gone, and all the talk of it coming back boils down to nothing more than wishful thinking, so we’ll each of us have to just go with whichever way makes sense to us, gay frogs or not.

Its happened many times before (im still bitter about missing shadow war!) so the talk of ‘unanticipated demand’ just doesnt wash. If it sold out in a month, perhaps, but these things consistently sell out before pre-orders are done... the ‘bad PR’ this supposedly causes hasnt dented GW sales one bit as it is a tried and true method to increase perceived brand worth, which is why I believe GW has shifted focus to pushing their brand rather than their games (which are not great on their own merits but played anyway). Their models are of excellent quality so yes this does weave into their brand quality.

I thought they also nixed articles from the WarCom site relating to the game? It's entirely possible I've been misinformed by idiots, of course.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:
I thought they also nixed articles from the WarCom site relating to the game? It's entirely possible I've been misinformed by idiots, of course.

Nope. It‘s all there, as far as I can tell: https://www.warhammer-community.com/?s=Cursed+City

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

Danny76 wrote:

Thing is, might as well stop arguing about it. As those who think more are coming can’t win the argument.

If they don’t do more, they never were going to.
If they do more, it’ll be they didn’t plan on it but quickly produced more. Rather than just had a next wave coming.
If it ends up being permanent, it “wasn’t meant to be and they changed plans” as opposed to being like every other Quest anyway.

Do you need any help nailing yourself up on that cross or is our passive acceptance of your distasteful martyr complex enough?

Right..
You obviously don’t spend a lot of time here.
That’s exactly what happens whenever further information or hindsight comes later in the year.
We don’t know that they weren’t planning more (and there’s plenty of evidence to say they were, in the rulebook regarding expansions for instance etc), yet if more comes it will be because of this “backlash” that they changed their mind, rather than it was always the plan.

The point is despite all this evidence provided on both sides, we are still no further to knowing the answer. So the discussion going round and round is pointless.

TheGoodGerman wrote:
Brexit-related issues might also explain their silence. This is very political, and GW is probably conscious not to be seen complaining about Brexit or the UK government's handling of it, as taking sides (either way) could alienate large parts of their UK customers.

Thing is, Games Workshop never really explains their choices in detail anyway. Concerning Brexit for example, they just said they'd handle the customs/VAT at no extra cost for the customer and that's it. No need to get into the "why", customers are mainly interested in the "what".

But here, I don't recall a previous time when the "what" was so incredibly unclear. At this stage, there has been clearer communication about the mysterious "Warhammer Fantasy 2: Old World Boogaloo" than about a potential Cursed City restock. And by that, I don't mean messages on Facebook or wherever, but on the actual Warhammer Community website. That website with daily articles which is their main way of communicating to presumably most of their fan- and customerbase (along with the newsletters, which link directly to WarCom).

The original announcements of Cursed City made no mention of it being a one-off run, and as others have pointed out repeatedly to those diving deep into FOMO conspiracy theories, they would have if it was planned. The main one-off with which they tried to attract early and quick sales was this decorative key. We know what GW creating artificial scarcity looks like, and this wasn't it. Had this been planned as a limited release, we would not be discussing it right now! Their advertisement style would have left 0 room for doubt about that. If anyone needs a reminder, this is what it looks like:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/04/18/know-no-fomo-order-2-heroes-for-just-2-weeks/

While I won't speculate on the reasons for a seemingly sudden change of plans (tariffs, release schedule delays and overhaul, whatever), it's quite clear something has happened.

Given that the rulebook apparently mentions expansions, it will certainly be interesting to see if those will emerge, or whatever created the current situation has changed the future of those too.

Two final points:

- The Facebook (was it?) response that they are not "expecting" a restock doesn't mean never. Even if they aren't planning it now, they leave open the door for a change of plans. It does however guarantee it won't be back on the shelves any time soon.

- The lack of clear communication surrounding all of this has been quite unprofessional to say the least. Whatever the reasons (and whether or not they would disclose them), it should have been possible to get some article on WarCom within a day, whether it's to say it's gone, it's not to return soon or it will be back eventually, though unsure when. Even an article stating they're not sure whether it will return (if there are complex issues in the production/distribution process that might or might not be resolved) would be more informative than complete silence. I've seen badly run Kickstarters that were clearer about their plans than GW has been here.

Danny76 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
There will be more.

I tend to think the same, though I wouldn't be surprised either way.

Thing is, might as well stop arguing about it. As those who think more are coming can’t win the argument.

If they don’t do more, they never were going to.
If they do more, it’ll be they didn’t plan on it but quickly produced more. Rather than just had a next wave coming.
If it ends up being permanent, it “wasn’t meant to be and they changed plans” as opposed to being like every other Quest anyway.

At the end of the day there's multiple premises that lead to them either not continuing it, or continuing it.

On the balance of evidence, I think there's a good chance there'll do another run, it seems like they sold a lot less than they could have, and given the effort they put into marketing I imagine they were trying to exploit a greater proportion of sales than they did. I don't place a lot of weight on statements made on Twitter by a community rep. Maybe they represent some overarching word passed down from on high by the actual heads and decision makers at GW, but I think it's just as likely some off the cuff comment made with little more knowledge than the community in general has.

Of course maybe they don't do another run, maybe it was because they planned to and changed their mind, or maybe it's because they never planned to and don't think there's enough benefit in changing tack now.

GW have always been good at hiding the true reasons for doing things and letting the community waste days, weeks, months and years arguing over their motivations.

Geezus, the new Shadespire vamp band the Crimson Court seems to have had a similar 3-minute sell-out. Fingers crossed my online retailer of choice actually do manage to get a restock as they claim next week.

What is going on?! Certainly suggests Cursed City's supply issues go beyond just that range - to my mind, at least.

Hopefully - IF it is a case they blew through an enticipated 3-6months worth of stock in the pre-order phase alone, it won't affect any plans for expansions or additional print content through WD. Odd that it doesn't feature in the latest issue, though, at all. Really fun game. Needs a little more variety, of course, but a great next step in the WQ line.

If they’ve maxed out their production capacity and literally can’t make any more without delaying other more profitable things and thus causing a drop in their profits, then it’s not artificial scarcity. It’s just scarcity.

For realsies question here; to those who think this is gonna become available again, what makes you think this? Not trying to be facetious here, genuinely curious.

To me it also seems insane to not want to make enough stock to meet demand but this keeps happening. Dismiss FOMO manipulation as a conspiracy theory, fine, but to say ‘something has obviously happened’ seems to me to gloss over that this has happened many times before, and will most likely again.

Perhaps it is GW’s release schedule outpacing their manufacturing capacity, but this to me is still manipulating scarcity... the obvious answer being to slow down the release schedule.

Its a weird and befuddling situation, and also very interesting. It must bite them in the bum at some point. Fatigue with the shenanigans must surely burn out the market at some point?

Luke82 wrote:
For realsies question here; to those who think this is gonna become available again, what makes you think this? Not trying to be facetious here, genuinely curious.

To me it also seems insane to not want to make enough stock to meet demand but this keeps happening. Dismiss FOMO manipulation as a conspiracy theory, fine, but to say ‘something has obviously happened’ seems to me to gloss over that this has happened many times before, and will most likely again.

Perhaps it is GW’s release schedule outpacing their manufacturing capacity, but this to me is still manipulating scarcity... the obvious answer being to slow down the release schedule.

Its a weird and befuddling situation, and also very interesting. It must bite them in the bum at some point. Fatigue with the shenanigans must surely burn out the market at some point?

Given how everyone keeps buying their gak despite them constantly pulling stuff like this, I very highly doubt it's gonna have literally any consequences for them.

I think the reason people keep buying their stuff despite things like this happening is simply because to most people it’s just not that big a deal. If I miss out on a product I wanted, okay I’m disappointed for a while, but there’ll be something else I want coming along soon enough. At the end of the day it’s just toy soldiers and nothing I’m going to be genuinely upset about.

Luke82 wrote:
For realsies question here; to those who think this is gonna become available again, what makes you think this? Not trying to be facetious here, genuinely curious.

To me it also seems insane to not want to make enough stock to meet demand but this keeps happening. Dismiss FOMO manipulation as a conspiracy theory, fine, but to say ‘something has obviously happened’ seems to me to gloss over that this has happened many times before, and will most likely again.

Perhaps it is GW’s release schedule outpacing their manufacturing capacity, but this to me is still manipulating scarcity... the obvious answer being to slow down the release schedule.

Its a weird and befuddling situation, and also very interesting. It must bite them in the bum at some point. Fatigue with the shenanigans must surely burn out the market at some point?

For me, it's because my FLGS has told me they're getting more copies from GW in May. Combined with the fact that they went through all of the trouble to build a website, and the fact that the game is self flat out says there will be expansions inside its core rulebook. It doesn't make sense to make 100K units, sell out in a week and then never touch it again. In my mind, this is literally the result of Covid/Global Shipping Problems/Brexit and a huge host of other possible issues. I'm choosing to wait and see what happens.

Plus, I got my copy.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MonkeyBallistic wrote:
I think the reason people keep buying their stuff despite things like this happening is simply because to most people it’s just not that big a deal. If I miss out on a product I wanted, okay I’m disappointed for a while, but there’ll be something else I want coming along soon enough. At the end of the day it’s just toy soldiers and nothing I’m going to be genuinely upset about.

Well you have to wonder. There are a lot of people who play 40K only. They probably wouldn't even care about this product, not to mention AoS folks who may or may not care about it too. Heck, I myself only bought one because the FLGS had some and I was looking for a weekend hobby project since I have three days off from work.

 Agamemnon2 wrote:

Danny76 wrote:

Right..
You obviously don’t spend a lot of time here.

...riiiiiiight.

See that little box to the left of this post. Where it says "Joined"? Note the year there is 2005. I have spent considerably more time here than an upstart crow like yourself.

Ha, well when you’re done puffing your feathers out you can calm down, it’s tongue in cheek.

Joining somewhere means nothing for a start. I’d been visiting on here long before I joined as I posted on Warseer for years rather than over here. I was 20 when you joined here, far from being an upstart.
And joining something doesn’t mean you visit a lot which was my point.

People in here, and the internet in general, love to prove they were right - when there’s no way to prove one way or the other, even if it ends up coming back, we don’t know what the original plan was. That’s being an upstart crow btw.
It’s the nature of arguments on here. My whole standpoint in this thread has been we don’t know and there’s arguments for both sides.


Anyway,
I’ve only just read the original post that the WarCom reply was to.
It’s interesting to see that half that comment was about whether he would get the novel.
So potentially the reply could have been about that (I will say either way, they’ve replied terribly vaguely).
We can only hope that maybe this weekends articles have some kind of announcement regarding it..

Upstart crow? Now that was a wonderful reference. Well done Aggy.

Clockpunk wrote:
Geezus, the new Shadespire vamp band the Crimson Court seems to have had a similar 3-minute sell-out. Fingers crossed my online reyailer of choice actually do manage to get a restock as they claim a week later.

What is going on?! Certainly suggests Cursed City's supply issues go beyond just that range - to my mind, at least.

Hopefully - IF it is a case they blew through an enticipated 3-6months worth of stock in the pre-order phase alone, it won't affect any plans for expansions or additional print content through WD. Odd that it doesn't feature in the latest issue, though, at all. Really fun game. Needs a little more variety, of course, but a great next step in the WQ line.

LGS here got 1! Belakor model, so they put it up for charitable auction and are taking preorders for wave 2 of him. Something seriously borked at GW, lol.

Yeah, this now looks like communicating with us is the least of their worries at the moment. Something big blew up and we’re not seeing artificial scarcity here. I‘m guessing it‘s mostly Brexit and lack of preparation for it. Maybe worsened by Covid delays that led them to sit on stocks which should have been moved last year under ‚old‘ rules.

Still, they should up their game when it comes to communication.

I would also assume Brexit (I’m aware of some supply chain issues in a similar-ish company)

That plus covid has got to have an impact.

Luke82 wrote:
For realsies question here; to those who think this is gonna become available again, what makes you think this? Not trying to be facetious here, genuinely curious.

It's just on balance of evidence I think there's a good chance they'll do another run. Maybe they won't, but I'm leaning towards maybe they will.

They seemed to have over-marketed it for an extremely-limited-one-and-done type deal. If they never planned on selling many, why bother making a website for it, why bother sending them out to review sites, why bother hyping it up for a couple of months beforehand. Then you also have the evidence of planned expansions, it seems odd for them to make expansions for a very limited game that no one can buy any more.

Luke82 wrote:For realsies question here; to those who think this is gonna become available again, what makes you think this? Not trying to be facetious here, genuinely curious.

To me it also seems insane to not want to make enough stock to meet demand but this keeps happening. Dismiss FOMO manipulation as a conspiracy theory, fine, but to say ‘something has obviously happened’ seems to me to gloss over that this has happened many times before, and will most likely again.

Perhaps it is GW’s release schedule outpacing their manufacturing capacity, but this to me is still manipulating scarcity... the obvious answer being to slow down the release schedule.

Its a weird and befuddling situation, and also very interesting. It must bite them in the bum at some point. Fatigue with the shenanigans must surely burn out the market at some point?

I'm not convinced it'll be available again, but also not convinced it won't be. Mostly because every previous WHQ release has stuck around for 1 year+ and also because the game talks about expansions, and it's a hugely accepted no-no in the board game world to try to sell expansions when the base game is no longer available. The amount of times I've heard "we have an expansion planned and designed but it's on hold as the base game is sold out but we're not sure there's demand for a reprint".

Also GW haven't been great at getting their facts right the past few months no? We've seen examples of outright lies from them around certain things (I'm no GW hater but have to admit recently there's been either some major cock-ups or horrid business practices) so I'm equally not taking their word that something they say won't be available again won't be.

The only reason I can imagine that they've cut it short is that the models in this boxed set are going to be released in other boxed sets linked to the upcoming campaign books and Vampire books and thus they don't want a huge discount set on the market when those produce hit the shelves.

One downside of Blackstone is that the models had a limited shelf life for GW. Many were popular designs but were ultimately slaved to a short term game. Meanwhile Cursed City appears to have more models that would have a role in other armies and such very easily.


They've certainly made a lot of links between Cursed City and the upcoming vampire force and Cities of Sigmar have already got 2 characters hinted at coming in a campaign book for which they look like perfect Cursed City expansion content.





What's baffling is GW's refusal to give us a clear answer. One can only hope that in the coming week they at the very least give a clear community message. Yes it won't be popular, but its not as if this is something that people are going to ignore or forget.

Luke82 wrote:
For realsies question here; to those who think this is gonna become available again, what makes you think this? Not trying to be facetious here, genuinely curious.

To me it also seems insane to not want to make enough stock to meet demand but this keeps happening. Dismiss FOMO manipulation as a conspiracy theory, fine, but to say ‘something has obviously happened’ seems to me to gloss over that this has happened many times before, and will most likely again.

If by "this has happened many times before" you mean that they sell out within minutes of pre-orders going live, yes, that happened a few times in recent years. But as far as I'm aware mainly for things that were either intended to be strictly limited (artificially, yes) like, say, the first Sisters of Battle box, or they simply sold out for the initial stock due to severe production limitations or at times perhaps unexpected demand. For the latter, however, the product would typically return later after more were produced, unless it was intended as a one-off and the produced stock was expected to last longer.

Selling out of (not intentionally limited) products incredibly quickly due to production/distribution limitations is clearly detrimental for them too: if you sell out within 20 minutes, you will be guaranteed to have made more sales and more money if you had produced more of the product. And that last reason is exactly why, assuming no unsurmountable problem is stopping them from doing so, it seems entirely sensible to create another batch of these.

If GW wants to create FOMO, they produce a strictly limited run of something and advertise it as such. They do it constantly, with special boxes, books, miniatures. Assuming Quest was supposed to be a part of the regular range for the medium term (2-3 years if BSF is any indication, and the indicated planned expansions support this idea), they don't gain anything from selling out this soon and not producing more. They don't have to create FOMO for regular products, as they have been known to sell out on pre-order (for initial stock) regardless, and they don't gain anything from selling out in 10 rather than 20 minutes next time. If they can produce the right amount to nearly sell out during the one-week pre-order period, they will literally make several times as much money. Unless we assume 99% of the interested customers got a copy in those first 20 minutes, but that seems highly unlikely.

I can only say that I expected the game not to be limited due to the amount of efforts done marketing it. It seems like wasted money.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

Luke82 wrote:
For realsies question here; to those who think this is gonna become available again, what makes you think this? Not trying to be facetious here, genuinely curious.

To me it also seems insane to not want to make enough stock to meet demand but this keeps happening. Dismiss FOMO manipulation as a conspiracy theory, fine, but to say ‘something has obviously happened’ seems to me to gloss over that this has happened many times before, and will most likely again.

If by "this has happened many times before" you mean that they sell out within minutes of pre-orders going live, yes, that happened a few times in recent years. But as far as I'm aware mainly for things that were either intended to be strictly limited (artificially, yes) like, say, the first Sisters of Battle box, or they simply sold out for the initial stock due to severe production limitations or at times perhaps unexpected demand. For the latter, however, the product would typically return later after more were produced, unless it was intended as a one-off and the produced stock was expected to last longer.

Selling out of (not intentionally limited) products incredibly quickly due to production/distribution limitations is clearly detrimental for them too: if you sell out within 20 minutes, you will be guaranteed to have made more sales and more money if you had produced more of the product. And that last reason is exactly why, assuming no unsurmountable problem is stopping them from doing so, it seems entirely sensible to create another batch of these.

If GW wants to create FOMO, they produce a strictly limited run of something and advertise it as such. They do it constantly, with special boxes, books, miniatures. Assuming Quest was supposed to be a part of the regular range for the medium term (2-3 years if BSF is any indication, and the indicated planned expansions support this idea), they don't gain anything from selling out this soon and not producing more. They don't have to create FOMO for regular products, as they have been known to sell out on pre-order (for initial stock) regardless, and they don't gain anything from selling out in 10 rather than 20 minutes next time. If they can produce the right amount to nearly sell out during the one-week pre-order period, they will literally make several times as much money. Unless we assume 99% of the interested customers got a copy in those first 20 minutes, but that seems highly unlikely.

While I fully agree, this does not answer whether they'll make more Cursed City after all that's happened recently.

I think they will. Quest as a line is clearly regarded a success, be it on its own or as a gateway for boardgamers into GW's main lines, or both. For Cursed City, the heavy lifting has already been done, they just need to make more and it will sell (quite well, I assume). Likely they also have expansions ready to go into production, if production has not already started. For any successor Quest, GW will have to start the design process all over again. And for NextQuest, the market might not be significantly larger than the remaining market for Cursed City, which in view of the already-prepared expansions will only grow by making the core game available again.

The reason I think they will is Space Hulk, additionally, Warhammer Quest is a game, whether the models get released separately or not neither here or there really, as it isn't AoS, it is a separate game that happens to have characters and units that can be played in AoS.

I intended to buy two boxes at some point, assuming this wouldn't be a limited run. I think many customers would do the same.

Additionally, my counter argument for those saying it was meant to be an intended run, why on earth go to the trouble of making the moulds and the website etc etc, all up front costs when they can now just manufacture re-run copies for the most minimal of cost assuming they've already turned a profit on the initial run (which they will have)? It's about as close to printing money as you can get with demand for it at the moment.

I think something has come up in regards to the supply where they cannot currently guarantee when they can re-stock. Heck, the blockage in the Suez canal the other week could be a very considerable for all we know (it probably hasn't but just one example).

Someone was selling the rules, boards and essentially everything but the figures for around 15 bucks online, so I decided that for that amount of money, i can give it a try. I have enough nighthaunts to easily stand in for all the undead and enough other models to use for heroes so it works out just fine.

 Overread wrote:

What's baffling is GW's refusal to give us a clear answer. One can only hope that in the coming week they at the very least give a clear community message. Yes it won't be popular, but its not as if this is something that people are going to ignore or forget.

There likely isn't going to be a clear answer, other than "we're looking into things". Whether that's worth a Warcom article or just a facebook update I'm not sure, but I'm surprised there's not been some vaguely open-ended reply.
I suspect it's because there's still stock out in stores, so would prefer people go get those (or wait til they are returned) before telling people not to worry and just wait. Afterall, Cursed City is still available, just not from their online store.