Warhammer Quest: Cursed City - News and Rumours

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**Sarouan**

NinthMusketeer wrote:
So the official line from GW has changed to say Cursed City is out and will not be restocked? And they were definitely saying it would be an ongoing availability like Blackstone Fortress before (or is my memory failing me?) so something must have happened. Disrupted shipping and the like wouldn't cancel all future printings of the product.

To resume good old Ash's final opinion on this topic : "Yes, I think it will come back if they manage to make it worth it for their business costwise and logistically speaking. No, it won't if they don't manage to do that. If they don't manage, it will be a tough decision, even meaning cancelling planned expansions - which I don't know if they are, I'm not in their secret, I'm just a fan who happened to receive a free copy for review - but in the end, they own the brand, they'll do anything with it and they will do what every business do in the world : make the decisions according to what is best for them to stay on the scene and keep making money."

After the anger and thinking rational...yeah, makes sense. If a pandemic is around for a long time and feth completely the costs, product release calendar and logistic, maybe it will be bad enough for GW to make a tough decision. Even if Cursed City was sold out fast online...it's still a Specialist Game product in the end. And we all know what is their fate on long term...see where's Black Fortress at the moment. Nowhere seen on their webstore, right ? That's where.

**NinthMusketeer**

Seems strange to me, surely they could just come out and state 'hey we can't do this right now because pandemic, but we will get to further print runs in 2022.' If profit margin is the problem they can increase the price. Certainly there is demand.

**Sarouan**

Motograter wrote:
Don't get why GW don't have their own in house card printing. It's not like they can't afford to do it themselves. I mean pretty much every game they make requires card components that instantly sell out cos there's nevwr enough of them while if they had in house printing it wouldn't be an issue. They know people want them so give it to them

Like Ash said in his video, it's just a matter of other people doing it cheaper for you because they already have everything. At the time Cursed City was thought, it was certainly the best solution costwise to produce the cardboard part elsewhere. Now with the pandemic, it sure sounds very different, but who could plan for that at that time the decisions were made ? This game was definitely not made just a few weeks ago, that's not how a game is made.

**Daedalus81**

NinthMusketeer wrote:
Seems strange to me, surely they could just come out and state 'hey we can't do this right now because pandemic, but we will get to further print runs in 2022.' If profit margin is the problem they can increase the price. Certainly there is demand.

I think that picture gets a little more complex, because GW can't know for sure that they can make that happen and making that promise and going back on it would be even worse.

**Sarouan**

NinthMusketeer wrote:
Certainly there is demand.

Question is : is this demand enough for the cost of making that many boxes again ?

And another important question as well : will it still be that popular when the boxes for Soulblight Gravelords will be released later ?

Given the time needed to launch another production with the needed separate parts, we don't know how far we are from the new undead battletome we know is coming. And we know the new skeletons and zombies have a similar design to what is in the Cursed City box.

This is not just a question with one easy parameter. There are a lot of unknown variants. Pandemic is still around, Brexit as well. And businesses hate unknown variants.

**kodos**

GW made not enough boxes in the first run and now rather chancel it instead of doing another print run
the big question is still "why" because there was no explaination (also not in the video) why they had to do it that way, for that 1 game

"too expensive to make more" is no reason why there were not enough in the first place or why there is no "cast on demand" but removing everything after the release
(not like they could have said this a week ago if the reason were the one stated)

Sarouan wrote:
Motograter wrote:
Don't get why GW don't have their own in house card printing. It's not like they can't afford to do it themselves. I mean pretty much every game they make requires card components that instantly sell out cos there's nevwr enough of them while if they had in house printing it wouldn't be an issue. They know people want them so give it to them

Like Ash said in his video, it's just a matter of other people doing it cheaper for you because they already have everything. At the time Cursed City was thought, it was certainly the best solution costwise to produce the cardboard part elsewhere. Now with the pandemic, it sure sounds very different, but who could plan for that at that time the decisions were made ? This game was definitely not made just a few weeks ago, that's not how a game is made.

only if you look at CC in a vaccum, it is not about only this game
GW has a lot of cards, boards, boxes printed, and they knew for years that this is a problem with necessary cards for their games are a one time thing and never return

but now it is a problem for 1 boxed game so they need to chancel everything
for the very same reason they would need to remove Blackstone Fortress as well any other box with a lot of cardboard

and one thing GW knows for sure, doing things externally is never cheaper than doing it on your own, the questions is always just how many years it takes until you make the initial investment back

still no reason to chancel 1 new product out of many and removing it from the store instead of any of the others that are marked as "out of stock"

**Daedalus81**

When you say there were not enough made how many is that, exactly?

There is absolutely no info on how many they made. Nor is there an easy path to predict the appropriate demand during a pandemic where people are getting $1,400 checks and video cards have tripled in price.

But let's presume they make another run. How many is appropriate for that? What is the demand? Are the people complaining on the internet interested or just complaining? How many boxes will languish in stores, because people opted to not go look for them? People are making a killing on this panic, because they're going to those shops and buying out the stock and reselling them on eBay for almost twice the price.

**Sarouan**

kodos wrote:
only if you look at CC in a vaccum, it is not about only this game
GW has a lot of cards, boards, boxes printed, and they knew for years that this is a problem with necessary cards for their games are a one time thing and never return

but now it is a problem for 1 boxed game so they need to chancel everything
for the very same reason they would need to remove Blackstone Fortress as well any other box with a lot of cardboard

and one thing GW knows for sure, doing things externally is never cheaper than doing it on your own, the questions is always just how many years it takes until you make the initial investment back

still no reason to chancel 1 new product out of many and removing it from the store instead of any of the others that are marked as "out of stock"

Yeah, but again, at the time Cursed City was thought and planned, I'm pretty sure there was no sign of a global pandemic ready to burst out. Same for other GW products using cards so far. Simply put, the decisions made at that time took what was cheapest and easier to do for them.

Thing is, only GW knows the process they decided to at that time. And sure, with pandemic plans change, but the time needed to shift them means it's not something that will be solved by snapping your fingers right now...

Even Mantic Games is in this bad situation. And you know Mantic Games can't make everything by themselves. Frankly speaking, even GW can't. There is no fully self sufficient business in the whole world, they're all interdependent for something.

Like Ash said, yep this situation sucks, but it's no conspiracy - it's just a set of bad circumstances happening. Unfortunate, but it affects everyone.

**lord_blackfang**

C'mon guys we heard like 2 pages ago that their whole workflow software went belly up to the point they've had to cancel new releases for the forseeable future, can we drop the evil empire/Chapterhouse/microchips in the glue applicator angles.

**kodos**

Sarouan wrote:

Like Ash said, yep this situation sucks, but it's no conspiracy - it's just a set of circumstances. Unfortunate, but it affects everyone.

yeah, but this is no explanation for what for what has happend here

if cardstock is the big issue, because it was done externally and cannot be done again for now because of the pandemic, why are all the other products with external done printed paper still on the website
all this would be valid if GW would have either marked that box as currently anavailable or removed everything else as well

if not getting enough plastic raw material, the very same thing, why was CC removed as well as all the hints saying it will stay, while other stuff is still ther but just marked as "sold out"

if this are Brexit/China problems, why just that game?

all those arguments work very well if you only look at that game, but very unlikley that it did not affect any other product in the same that GW saw the need to remove every sign of it from the shop

**Sarouan**

kodos wrote:

if this are Brexit/China problems, why just that game?

Because the initial stock was sold out online in less that one hour ? Because it's a Specialist Game and thus the numbers initially planed and made weren't as high as, said, something planned for one of their true core games like AoS and 40k ? Because on the opposite of AoS and 40k, this game needs some specialized components GW can't produce alone and the deals they made at the time they came with this project aren't the same anymore now ?

Again, bad circumstances happening at the worst time...

**Wha-Mu-077**

lord_blackfang wrote:
C'mon guys we heard like 2 pages ago that their whole workflow software went belly up to the point they've had to cancel new releases for the forseeable future, can we drop the evil empire/Chapterhouse/microchips in the glue applicator angles.

That is still no explenation of them being so secretfull about it and refusing to tell that everyone.

**Kalamadea**

Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

That is still no explenation of them being so secretfull about it and refusing to tell that everyone.

Another point from the video: GW is a publicly traded company, they are likely more concerned about potential losses and shareholder blowback by publicly disclosing the problems just to appease some online fanboys that will buy the product anyways. It makes more sense for the company to remain silent than potentially upset the market.

Also, he brings up that it's just general standard marketing to delete old tweets and announcements that have conflicting info about a product, not just GW but in general. You don't want customers stumbling across old info that contradicts and getting confused. It's not evil empire conspiracy stuff, just general marketing practice

**Sarouan**

Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
C'mon guys we heard like 2 pages ago that their whole workflow software went belly up to the point they've had to cancel new releases for the forseeable future, can we drop the evil empire/Chapterhouse/microchips in the glue applicator angles.

That is still no explenation of them being so secretfull about it and refusing to tell that everyone.

Even if someone came with explanations, you don't want to hear it. Hell even watch a video coming with one. Just because it doesn't fit your narrative and you feel better thinking they're bootlickers.

Keep wearing your tinfoil hat, then.

**kodos**

this Video was not an explanations for CC but the general problems GW might have, nothing on that video explains what happend

Sarouan wrote:
kodos wrote:

if this are Brexit/China problems, why just that game?

Because the initial stock was sold out online in less that one hour ? Because it's a Specialist Game and thus the numbers initially planed and made weren't as high as, said, something planned for one of their true core games like AoS and 40k ? Because on the opposite of AoS and 40k, this game needs some specialized components GW can't produce alone and the deals they made at the time they came with this project aren't the same anymore now ?

Again, bad circumstances happening at the worst time...

so answer my question, why is Balckstone Fortress still on the website but Cursed City is not
what was the reason that all of your above arguments made GW to remove that one game on the website but leave the other one in?
why are the above arguments a reason that CC will never come back but Blackstone Fortress will?
and if CC comes back, why was it remove form the webstore?

**Wha-Mu-077**

Sarouan wrote:
Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
C'mon guys we heard like 2 pages ago that their whole workflow software went belly up to the point they've had to cancel new releases for the forseeable future, can we drop the evil empire/Chapterhouse/microchips in the glue applicator angles.

That is still no explenation of them being so secretfull about it and refusing to tell that everyone.

Even if someone came with explanations, you don't want to hear it. Hell even watch a video coming with one. Just because it doesn't fit your narrative and you feel better thinking they're bootlickers.

Keep wearing your tinfoil hat, then.

I don't want some random to come out instead of GW and offer excuses. I want GW, themselves, to directly tell everyone exactly what drove them to stopping production and not telling anyone they're stopping productions and deleting all previous info about wheather or not Cursed City is a mainstay. Y'know, have some basic decency?

**Sarouan**

kodos wrote:

so answer my question, why is Balckstone Fortress still on the website but Cursed City is not

Dunno for you, but I can assure there is no french version of Blackstone Fortress anymore on my country-friendly GW webstore. And definitely no more expansion at all.

So maybe you have luck and still have stock in your country ?

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

I don't want some random to come out instead of GW and offer excuses. I want GW, themselves, to directly tell everyone exactly what drove them to stopping production and not telling anyone they're stopping productions and deleting all previous info about wheather or not Cursed City is a mainstay. Y'know, have some basic decency?

You can be angry about it all you want. And you may even be right to feel angry at the situation...but still, it's not because you want it that you will obtain it. Certainly not like this.

If you do that request to GW's customer service, I'm pretty sure they will do their best to give you a personnalized apology for that.

**OrlandotheTechnicoloured**

I guess another big question is how the Indomnitus made to order went,

how many boxes were ordered,
how many were ordered then the individual/store decided they didn't want them after all but before production happened
how many were ordered, producted and then rejected by the individual (using handy distance selling regs)

it may be the whole thing was enough of a pain that even though it looks like they could sell a bunch more, that it isn't anthing like as clear cut when you look at the numbers from a similarish recent item

**Dysartes**

Daedalus81 wrote:
When you say there were not enough made how many is that, exactly?

There is absolutely no info on how many they made. Nor is there an easy path to predict the appropriate demand during a pandemic where people are getting $1,400 checks and video cards have tripled in price.

But let's presume they make another run. How many is appropriate for that? What is the demand? Are the people complaining on the internet interested or just complaining? How many boxes will languish in stores, because people opted to not go look for them? People are making a killing on this panic, because they're going to those shops and buying out the stock and reselling them on eBay for almost twice the price.

If they wanted to establish a rough idea of current demand, they could easily run a Made to Order for it, though probably in H2 to give some of the palaver time to die down.

A M2O isn't going to pick everyone up who might want a copy, but you set some benchmarks and see if there's enough demand for it to then consider a, doing expansions; b, returning it as a BSF line item; or c, both.

**kodos**

Sarouan wrote:

So maybe you have luck and still have stock in your country ?

I don't talk about stock, but that the game can still be found in the store, anything you mentioned as "explaination" does not solve the question why Cursed City was removed from the store
not simply being out of stock, but not being there at all

only explaination is that GW will never bring it back (like your French version of Blackstone Fortress), and again, none of the problems you mentioned explains why it is impossible for GW to bring it back when there is the possibility to bring back (the english version) Blackstone Fortress (as if cardboard is too expensive and hard to get, they would have removed that one too)

**lord_blackfang**

Wha-Mu-077 wrote:

I don't want some random to come out instead of GW and offer excuses. I want GW, themselves, to directly tell everyone exactly what drove them to stopping production and not telling anyone they're stopping productions and deleting all previous info about wheather or not Cursed City is a mainstay. Y'know, have some basic decency?

Can you find an example of a corporation doing that?

**Kalamadea**

GW also hyped the hell out of this. While it's an AoS setting game, it shares a very VERY Old World vibe for most of the monsters and heroes. Silver Tower had very little hype, and the theme of Silver Tower didn't have nearly the universal appeal as Cursed City. Blackstone Fortress also lacks the same general appeal as a general fantasy Warhammer Quest game: BSF was was popular, but not crazy popular, which is likely why you can still buy it: extra copies are still in the warehouse ready to be sold.

If GW had ordered and planned the release numbers for Cursed City by using Silver Tower and Blackstone Fortress numbers then they likely SEVERELY underproduced.

I would not be at all surprised if GW thought they made enough to last a couple years and instead couldn't even fill preorders when it went up, then realized they'd never be able to reprint/make2order at any sort of reasonable cost with the state of Covid/Brexit/ERP issues

There's no bigger conspiracy here, it wildly outsold what GW expected and it doesn't make economic sense to reproduce it any time soon. It also doesn't warrant an explanation that may drop company stock prices, radio silence is better than publicly admitting a problem. Between Covid/Brexit/ERP I don't even think we need an official explanation, especially since we're unlikely to get one direct from GW.

**Overread**

If GW can't profit from Cursed City due to Brexit and Covid that also means any other card-stock heavy game is at risk. It means any other Warhammer Quest or side game or anything with card stock and overseas produce (endless spells and terrain) would all start to be hit hard and very fast the same way Cursed City is.

**Kalamadea**

Overread wrote:
If GW can't profit from Cursed City due to Brexit and Covid that also means any other card-stock heavy game is at risk. It means any other Warhammer Quest or side game or anything with card stock and overseas produce (endless spells and terrain) would all start to be hit hard and very fast the same way Cursed City is.

That's my biggest worry. I said it a page back, if Brexit/Covid/ERP issues make a Cursed City reprint non-viable, that also certainly affects printing new games. Cursed City would have been nice to have, I'll still get it if I can but I also won't lose sleep over missing it, but I have REALLY been looking forward to some of the Barnes & Noble special boardgames announced

**Smaug**

chaos0xomega wrote:
Smaug wrote:
The story I heard was a set of molds were shipped face down and somewhat loosely strapped down to a pallet. This was before GW was cut their own molds. I can’t imagine trying to ship a injection molding setup and hoping it will stay calibrated, but then again I think GW had one at a UK games day where they were handing out figures literally hot off the press. The only thing I can think of that would need to be changed over would be the power control module so the UK 230V 50Hz can run on the US120V 400Hz.

Woah woah woah, 400hz power isn't the US standard by any means, I assume you mean 40hz (I actually work in a facility that uses 400hz power, biggest pain in the ass ever).

I don't think what you heard would be entirely accurate - GW moved away from using Renedra to cut its tooling in the mid/late 2000s (around 2007 to 2008 timeframe I believe). Production in Memphis ended around 2011-2012 from what I've been able to gather. Mind, it could have been a lengthy drawdown I guess, but it seems there would have been a bit of a gap there. Then again, I don't doubt the possibility that they were shipping molds from the UK, from what I understanding the Memphis facility was somewhat under-staffed/under-equipped and never achieved the capability that it was intended to have - it was meant to be a full duplicate of the Nottingham facility so that they could switch production to the US in the event of a disaster, etc. (would be real handy now with the whole Brexit thing ), but I think it was mostly used for metal/finecast production and only had limited capacity for plastics. iirc the machines were generally older than the ones used in Nottingham and they had fewer machines as well and only had plastic molds for the x most popular/top selling kits in the range at the time (whereas their metal/finecast capabilities from what I understand actually put Nottingham to shame, in that they had molds that HQ did not have).

Sorry I screwed up on the cycles it should have been 60Hz. The equipment I work on in 400Hz.
To my knowledge GW never produced any figures in Memphis. I thought the early 2000’s or late 1990’s was when they where trying to set it up. When did they change over from metal to fine cast, early 2010’s?

**Ahtman**

lord_blackfang wrote:
microchips in the glue applicator angles.

Just glancing over as I scrolled by thought it said "microchips in the alligator" which was much more interesting.

I imagine this means the price for the individual characters/bits on ebay and the like are going to be quite something. I was only interested in a few characters for CoS army but I have a feeling the price is going to sting at this point.

**Togusa**

OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
I guess another big question is how the Indomnitus made to order went,

how many boxes were ordered,
how many were ordered then the individual/store decided they didn't want them after all but before production happened
how many were ordered, producted and then rejected by the individual (using handy distance selling regs)

it may be the whole thing was enough of a pain that even though it looks like they could sell a bunch more, that it isn't anthing like as clear cut when you look at the numbers from a similarish recent item

I had extreme levels of buyer's remorse for Indomitus. We had a second round of orders at our FLGS and of the 10 copies ordered, 9 still sit on our shelf.

**jake**

Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Sarouan wrote:
Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
C'mon guys we heard like 2 pages ago that their whole workflow software went belly up to the point they've had to cancel new releases for the forseeable future, can we drop the evil empire/Chapterhouse/microchips in the glue applicator angles.

That is still no explenation of them being so secretfull about it and refusing to tell that everyone.

Even if someone came with explanations, you don't want to hear it. Hell even watch a video coming with one. Just because it doesn't fit your narrative and you feel better thinking they're bootlickers.

Keep wearing your tinfoil hat, then.

I don't want some random to come out instead of GW and offer excuses. I want GW, themselves, to directly tell everyone exactly what drove them to stopping production and not telling anyone they're stopping productions and deleting all previous info about wheather or not Cursed City is a mainstay. Y'know, have some basic decency?

Why do you need that information?

The game is no longer available. It possibly will be available again at some point. If it is you can choose to buy it or not.

What other information do you need? why is having it important? Why do you feel entitled to this information?

**Wha-Mu-077**

jake wrote:
Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
Sarouan wrote:
Wha-Mu-077 wrote:
lord_blackfang wrote:
C'mon guys we heard like 2 pages ago that their whole workflow software went belly up to the point they've had to cancel new releases for the forseeable future, can we drop the evil empire/Chapterhouse/microchips in the glue applicator angles.

That is still no explenation of them being so secretfull about it and refusing to tell that everyone.

Even if someone came with explanations, you don't want to hear it. Hell even watch a video coming with one. Just because it doesn't fit your narrative and you feel better thinking they're bootlickers.

Keep wearing your tinfoil hat, then.

I don't want some random to come out instead of GW and offer excuses. I want GW, themselves, to directly tell everyone exactly what drove them to stopping production and not telling anyone they're stopping productions and deleting all previous info about wheather or not Cursed City is a mainstay. Y'know, have some basic decency?

Why do you need that information?

The game is no longer available. It possibly will be available again at some point. If it is you can choose to buy it or not.

What other information do you need? why is having it important? Why do you feel entitled to this information?

Idk I feel like a company saying why they felt the need to overnight go directly against their promises, cease communication and start rapidly deleting all evidence of them completely backtracking on their words is something that shouldn't be easily forgiven y'know? Or they could even give the bare minimum and ACKNOWLEDGE the fact they backtracked and deleted their own comments? Like, are you just going to forgive and tell everyone to move on if GW starts lying from now on and never tells you when a kit is model to be available and for how long? Are you gonna go "why do you feel entitled to that information" if GW puts out a new starter set for 40k and then takes it down at midnight and pretends it never existed?

**totalfailure**

Daedalus81 wrote:
When you say there were not enough made how many is that, exactly?

There is absolutely no info on how many they made. Nor is there an easy path to predict the appropriate demand during a pandemic where people are getting $1,400 checks and video cards have tripled in price.

But let's presume they make another run. How many is appropriate for that? What is the demand? Are the people complaining on the internet interested or just complaining? How many boxes will languish in stores, because people opted to not go look for them? People are making a killing on this panic, because they're going to those shops and buying out the stock and reselling them on eBay for almost twice the price.

Actually, we do have some clues on how many there were. In the US, there were around 5600 of those silly keys available. All of those were gone, and the game was still on sale for a while after that with no key on the GW webstore. So we know GW had at least 5600+ copies in the US to sell on its own website. And that wouldn't include whatever was sent to GW and independent stores in the US. So it was a not inconsiderable number.

And it does seem someone miscalculated on Indomitus. After the initial outrage came the Made to Order. But it has not been difficult to just buy one off the shelf locally since Made to Order. A couple of my local stores still have copies.