Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

For a while I've wondered why there hasn't been a viable (Cheaper?)
alternative to 40k. There may be good rules kicking about out there,but I
think the sticking point is this:figures.The big advantage that GW
has over any other companies is that they have a huge range of plastics
that allow us to have as big or small battles as we wish.Other companies
may have a rule system that works,but as they only cast in metal,this
makes building up big armies impossible in terms of cost.So are they
dooming themselves to just being small skirmish games that we play
rarely?Wwith more and more historical companies making plastic figures
will Scifi/fantasy manufacturers follow?This is the only way anyone
will wrestle GW's stanglehold on the market.If they have a genuine
rival who can produce rules and figures that are aimed at the 40k sized
armies,hell,we may have a price war aka Asda and Tescos!
What do you think?

In my opinion just about every one of GW's competitors put out a superior ruleset, however very few of them even sell mini's for said games. Such examples include Battlefield evolution, 5150, and most historic games.

Having a ton of minis is not necessarily a Good Thing (TM). I like skirmish games because they don't require as much time or effort. To some extent 40K went from a skirmish game to a squad game by removing a lot of options and flavor.

You can definitely have a fun game with just a handful of models, Warmachine is an excellent example of this. Before that was Chainmail, and there's Flames of War, which has more models, but less bases on the field. Can't really comment on the collectable games, but a number of them get by with much fewer models. Uncharted Seas appears to be doing very well with few models. Not reallly impressed myself, but I know it's flying off the shelve at the local gaming store.

In my mind having less stuff to push around is a Good Thing, since it reduces the tedium. I refuse to bring a Ork horde to a tourney at 1000+ points, just too much effort involved. Then there's all the painting, etc that goes into having a ton of models. Really I think that the only winner of the big army game is the miniatures pusher, ie GW in this case.

I think the problem for people to rivial GW is not anything to do with rules, but everything to do with history. GW has the fluff and modeling base that keeps its game really strong. For all the compeititive gamers their is a 1000 more hobbists that are content with playing one game a every month but modelling and painting the rest of the time.

A rival will on develop overtime and they must have a really compelling back story to even have a chance.

Warhammer 40k has a certain amount of popularity due to plain old network effect. If you're looking for a game to get into, 40k is one where finding opponents is likely to be easy. Even those who just like to model and paint stuff can have fun as the models are recognizable to a large group. Smaller games have to fight this, and really can't easily compete in that sense.

Slipstream wrote:For a while I've wondered why there hasn't been a viable (Cheaper?)
alternative to 40k. There may be good rules kicking about out there,but I
think the sticking point is this:figures.The big advantage that GW
has over any other companies is that they have a huge range of plastics
that allow us to have as big or small battles as we wish.Other companies
may have a rule system that works,but as they only cast in metal,this
makes building up big armies impossible in terms of cost.So are they
dooming themselves to just being small skirmish games that we play
rarely?Wwith more and more historical companies making plastic figures
will Scifi/fantasy manufacturers follow?This is the only way anyone
will wrestle GW's stanglehold on the market.If they have a genuine
rival who can produce rules and figures that are aimed at the 40k sized
armies,hell,we may have a price war aka Asda and Tescos!
What do you think?

You're talking about AT-43:

http://www.tabletopgamingnews.com/2009/04/27/26186

Rackham Entertainment is launching Army Boxes for its games, AT-43 and Confrontation. These new products will provide the players with a « ready to play » or rather « ready to battle » army worth 2000 points. In fact, each box will contain everything necessary to battle another army of the same game: a fully detailed army list and the corresponding miniatures, their cards, the necessary gaming accessories, terrain elements, as well as a booklet with a summary of the rules. The basic infantry troops fight alongside heroes and/or prestigious armored fighting vehicles.

Rackham Entertainment seeks to fulfill the players expectations by offering these products at the very attractive price of 70 €/USD. The company wishes to stress the accessibility and ready to play aspect of its ranges, and the Army Boxes are the first step towards this strategy.

Content of the Red Block Army Box:

1 unit of 12 Krasnye Soldaty: regular infantry containing three grenade launchers, two medics and an officer
1 unit of 8 Krasnye Soldaty: regular infantry containing one grenade launcher, two mechanics and an officer
6 Dragonov Kommandos: elite infantry with one sniper rifle, an electronic warfare specialist, a medic and an officer
Odin O-1 and Manon O-2: the Red Blok’s two greatest heroes
1 Urod: Odin O-1’s and Manon O-2’s combat strider
1 Dotch Yaga: the most heavily armored combat strider to ever grace the battlefield
6 low walls
1 container
Introductory Rules
1 Red Blok revolutionary forces tactical manual
1 game poster
12 dice
1 “Red Blok” ruler
1 explosion template
26 game cards

Networking is a huge factor (as Balance said). From personal experience I've seen lots of people get into Warmachine, LOTR, etc... and quit playing because the local pool wasn't big enough.

Fluff and minis are secondary, but nearly as important factors to me. Look at the all of the collectible mini games that have come and gone (dnd minis, the clix games, etc...). There is no vested interest in keeping the older minis as something new is always on the verge of coming out. Granted that happens with GW product as well, but the amount of players is so great that 40k and Fantasy aren't as hard hit when something comes and goes.

Yup, minigaming is a social activity. Without other people to play with, a game is worthless (I say this knowing full well there are games with a soloplay option- that died with the advent of decent videogames). Since GW has built up a network of stores and players over the last 20 years, this is a big advantage. Quality of rules and figures is secondary.

Things needed

1. Plenty of players.
2. Solid rules
3. Miniatures

GW has 1, 3 and almost 2, what i am thinking is the competition from new companies will motivate them to tighten up there rules a bit and then they will be the immortal king of wargaming

Not sure that having games with -small- numbers of minis is a bad thing, it's one of the reasons I dropped 40k for a few years for Warmachine, and I find that the "small skirmish games" are quite enjoyable, and hardly "played rarely", and their release schedule has kept up to their publications nicely. It might be expensive to scale up, but then again, most of my stuff from GW is classic metal, or heavilly loaded up with bitz so it's really no better there, as I haven't felt the need to convert much of anything for WM, the fluff is compelling enough for me not to customize)

Thanks for all the replies and the alternative rulesets.

I'd like to respond to some of the views.
Maybe part of the problem with other rulesets that only get
played rarely is this: Once you've collected a skirmish faction
there's not really much incentive to continue.Eg How many of
you have multiple large 40k forces?Now, how many have large
Warmachine armies? Finally how many have large multiple
war machine armies?

Skirmish games are fine ,but they don't really evolve into
anything.What I was suggesting was maybe the way for rivals to
ensure that their systems get played more is to take the step
into plastics like the historicals are doing.Remember,it won't
only be GW who have to raise the metal fig prices.

Plastic may be the way for rivals to level the playing field and
attract the mass market,if they did so,perhaps their games would be more
popular and played more.At the moment they are just niche games stuck in a
bubble,going nowhere.

I'll tell you one reason. And one reason only to why no one can beat GW.


Long history ( good or bad no matter ) basically a game that will stick around.

I can garuntee you if other companies started at the same time as GW ( 30 years ago is it? ) They'll blow GW out of the water. But atm , GW have like 20+ year worth of stuff over their competition.

LunaHound wrote:
I'll tell you one reason. And one reason only to why no one can beat GW.


Long history ( good or bad no matter ) basically a game that will stick around.

I can garuntee you if other companies started at the same time as GW ( 30 years ago is it? ) They'll blow GW out of the water. But atm , GW have like 20+ year worth of stuff over their competition.

Well, I think that this was true at one point, but it's becoming less of an issue now that BattleFront/FoW and Privateer Press have both been around for a while. They are nolonger newcomers, which could go under at any moment, but rather established systems.

Being big and established doesn't necessarily mean that it's going to continue either. There was a time when the biggies were CarWars and Battletech. CarWars folded under the weight of all the expansions, and FASA was abandoned when the founder started WizKids. Battletech is sorta back now, but it doesn't seem to be a big as it once was. Supposedly 40K & WHFB have their roots in another system, DBA, which is almost non-existent, but once held the crown.

Slipstream wrote:Once you've collected a skirmish faction
there's not really much incentive to continue.Eg How many of
you have multiple large 40k forces?Now, how many have large
Warmachine armies? Finally how many have large multiple
war machine armies?

Warmachine has a good mechanic to keep you buying after you complete a skirmish sized force of 20-30 models, which is the Warcasters. Change the Warcaster, and all of the sudden you're playing a different army with new strengths and weaknesses, so some of the other units from your faction start to look good. Keep this up and you end up buying everything (which I'm doing for 3 out of the 9 factions at the moment). I was in the 'build a 2000 pt army and call it done' section for 40k players, mostly because I was only interested in tournaments. Warmachine actually has me buying more stuff than 40k did, which is crazy!

Just anecdotal evidence from my personal experience, but Warmachine/Hordes, when it reaches the critical mass of players needed to sustain itself in an area, will compete with GW just fine.

Privateer Press won't have its own marketing wing/cloning centers, though.

Of course, that also means they won't have the overhead required to maintain such places...

?Wwith more and more historical companies making plastic figures
will Scifi/fantasy manufacturers follow?

Yes, more and more historical companies are indeed making plastic miniatures...something I'm not all that happy with as I don't care too much for plastics. But they are still the minority.
The difference is with the exception of a few of the companies that have adopted the GW pricing model (Foundry springs to mind) most of the historical miniatures companies have managed to keep the costs of metal minitaures more or less reasonable.

TR

Slipstream wrote: Once you've collected a skirmish faction
there's not really much incentive to continue.How many of
you have multiple large 40k forces?Now, how many have large
Warmachine armies? Finally how many have large multiple
war machine armies?

Damn near everyone I know... Now this may be a matter of market penetration in the UK, but WM came on strong and hard and swept the local gaming group where I played.. I was a relitivly late comer, but I still ended up with 3 armies, what's more since the units were small, it was a direct encouragement to get them painted and playable quickly, which I haven't done with -any- of my 40k stuff..

Skirmish games are fine ,but they don't really evolve into anything.

I think you're a little hung up on Metal = Expensive = Numerically Small Units = Small Games = Not Often Played
First off, as I've pointed out, conversion costs can rapidly push GW stuff back to metal costs, if they're not there allready because you're buying GW metal, they don't have plastic for -everything- Peek at the DH Rhino in my Gallery, that's about $100 just on parts, for that I could have bought 3-4 WM units if I had been playing at the time. Secondly, Warmachine -does- scale up nicely even if the units are 1/3 the size of a WH unit, (which is neutralized since since you're not removing 3 minis a pop in combat resolution) the game mechanics of unit and character interaction, provide a nice incentive to keep your army growing, because you're not just bringing in more models to the field, you're brinign in gains changes in abilities and tactics, so it -continiously evolves..

Plastic may be the way for rivals to level the playing field and
attract the mass market,if they did so,perhaps their games would be more
popular and played more.At the moment they are just niche games stuck in a
bubble,going nowhere.

Well Privateer is going into plastics allready, and in my opinion, despite their player base it seems to be GW that's going nowhere, the -game- hasn't changed much in all the years I've played it. WM on the other hand -is- going somewhere, with new dynamics and units added with every expansion, instead of the same units being endlessly requantified, they've got good customer support, and if they feel that can grow into "mass market" (not that I see GW in the real Mass Market, they're not in Wally World yet) at their own pace, so be it.

... simply because you can walk in to a GW store and get everything you want in one, which to a newbie is great. As you get older and more cynical you are more than happy to trawel the web to find the rules and models you want.

As an example I will use my interest in the source book 'A Very British Civil War'. It's a source book exploring the idea of a British Civil war in 1938, no rules or figures, you find your own. Me and my mates have spent the last few months hunting out company's that make the models that we want to use. The same with a ruleset. Once this is up and running I'm sure their will be a lot of interest, however there is no way a newbie would of done all this work, this comes later if they are still in the hobby and are open minded to other systems.

Critical mass and first mover advantage.

GW built a player base when there wasn't really any competition, got itself to the point where it has stores and so forth. Now it has masses of players for word of mouth, stores for picking up randoms and popularity. People are playing GW so other people play GW to get games.

If a company really wants to compete it's gonna take a hell of a lot of investment or a hell of a lot of time and determination. Investment they won't get because the returns are not there in any sort of reasonable time frame.

Edit: Also another intresting point about mass market (wally world) I'm UK so not sure what wally world is but if it's a toyshop then here in the UK GW are in toyshops and used to be have pretty big sections. They developed hero quest and space hulk and blood bowl especially for this market with help from MB games and later again with that hero quest redux game that I forget the name of. They seem to have scaled back out of it though (or maybe I just dont hit up enough toyshops these days).

main advantage of GW is the fan base. When I travel around the world for work, i can bring some toys with me and find somebody to play.

Wally World is slang for Walmart that some people use. I don't hear it that much where I am, but I'm sure it's regional.

Leotilt wrote:
GW built a player base when there wasn't really any competition, got itself to the point where it has stores and so forth.

Actually there was quite a bit. The DnD Battlefield game, CarWars, Battletech, Silent Death, TOG (future tanks game), DBA, and tons of historicals.

Leotilt wrote:
Edit: Also another intresting point about mass market (wally world) I'm UK so not sure what wally world is

Slang term for Wal-Mart. When something becomes a commodity it's in Wally World somewhere....

As others have said, it's about their sheer size. GW are an extremely big fish in an extremely small pond.

Now, many people seem to like Warmachine, but the very nature of the game gives it an Achilles heel which Fantasy and 40k don't have. It's theme. I just don't get on the with game, no so much because of the rules, but because of Steampunk. Steampunk bores my tits off. Majorly. To my mind it is an abomination that cannot die off quickly enough. But this is just my opinion (k? No personal attacks!)

GW however have, erm....taken inspiration from numerous places for their games. Take Fantasy. Bretonninas offer a distinctly Medieval flavour, whereas as Empire is more Renaissance to Napoleonic (with daft Warmachines liable to hurt you as much as the enemy) you have Aztec/Mayan/Incan flavours in the Lizardmen, classical vampires, Egyptian Pharoahs, plus the Fantasy staples of Elves, Dwarves, Orcs and Goblins. Chances are if you're into Fantasy fiction, GW offer an army to your tastes. 40k also has a variety of inputs, and a fair variety of force types, stemming from it's original incarnation as a series of adaptive rules in White Dwarf for Fantasy.

Glancing at my Army Books, I'm counting....13 different armies for Fantasy. Thats a lot of selections right there. Now lets examine Warmachine. Started out with 5 factions. This is not laziness or a lack of imagination, but far more depressing restraints of feasiblity. Check out Warmachine Prime. Not a lot of variety in there. The game was in it's infancy. Over time the range was expanded as the game caught on, and now we're looking at it's 2nd Edition. From what I understand, all current units will be in the one book, and then seperate Faction books will be released later on. NOW, PP are in a position to introduce other, perhaps smaller factions. One kingdom that sticks in my mind is Ord. Been a while since I dabbled, and I'm fairly sure Khador humped it out of existence, but even so. They are now in a position to release a whole new faction, or even race.

So in the world of wargaming, size would appear to be everything (trying not to deal in definites hear!). GW currently run 3 or 4 main systems. LotR/WotR, 40k and Fantasy, plus numerous races and factions for each. This means, broadly speaking, they are more likely to have something which appeals to a budding gamer, or someone looking for a fresh challenge. It's about keeping the gamers in house. PP are doing ok I guess. Not my cup of tea, but until they branch out with other games, I don't see them getting to GW size. And look what happened to Rackham as well!

Workshop of Games is like, their biggest competition.

On a serious note, games-wise I think Wizards of the Coast would be a main competitor, simply because they put out games with the same flavor in their games. DnD is similar to Fantasy because they are both Medieval-like in appearance.

Slipstream wrote:For a while I've wondered why there hasn't been a viable (Cheaper?)
alternative to 40k. There may be good rules kicking about out there,but I
think the sticking point is this:figures.The big advantage that GW
has over any other companies is that they have a huge range of plastics
that allow us to have as big or small battles as we wish.Other companies
may have a rule system that works,but as they only cast in metal,this
makes building up big armies impossible in terms of cost.So are they
dooming themselves to just being small skirmish games that we play
rarely?Wwith more and more historical companies making plastic figures
will Scifi/fantasy manufacturers follow?This is the only way anyone
will wrestle GW's stanglehold on the market.If they have a genuine
rival who can produce rules and figures that are aimed at the 40k sized
armies,hell,we may have a price war aka Asda and Tescos!
What do you think?

GW is the pot of gaming. It is a gateway game. Eventually everyone moves on to the harder stuff like Battle tech, or Historicals, or flames of war, or one of the numerous skirmish level games out there.

I'm seeing alot of Alternative WW2 types, the Star Wars, the D and D, the 35mm stuff, etc.

GW holds onto its lead by a handhold. It wouldn't take much to stomp on the fingers of progress.

Yes. Handhold. Thats right. Damn their titchy 60% or so share of the Wargames Market! Which of course means the other 40% or so is split between *every other wargames company out there, including historicals* Rackham at one point were mooted to be GW's biggest rival. They are a PLC. You can see their Yearly Figures online (or at least you could, no idea whats happening with them!) and to be honest, their turnover was actually slightly more than GW's gross pre-tax profit.

GW is indeed the Cannabis of gaming. Usually enough for most users, but also a gateway to other games and manufacturers of said games.

Wally World

Is a Water Park in Canada near London Ontario that closed down in the last 5 years. If they had GW there I would be REALLY impressed.

PS: I use all caps because I do not know the HTML for italics. (If HTML is even used on this board.)

Wally World is also an infamously closed amusement park from National Lampoon's Vacation.

Ratbarf wrote:

Wally World

Is a Water Park in Canada near London Ontario that closed down in the last 5 years. If they had GW there I would be REALLY impressed.

Oh man, I loved Wally World (I live in London Ont.). Shame it got closed down to build Mal-Wart.

But how. How...will GW compete with Eastpark?! It's not even possible.

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: GW however have, erm....taken inspiration from numerous places for their games.

PP isn't exactally short on "inspiration", considerig you can have John Henry going mano-a-mano with Baba Yaga... One of the major reasons I got into it, was that I had just ripped through Marrion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books and was seeing major parallels between their fluff and the 100 Kingdoms stories (StormQueen, Hawkmistress, etc..) there, as time has gone by it's just gotten better..

Not a lot of variety in there. The game was in it's infancy. Over time the range was expanded as the game caught on, and now we're looking at it's 2nd Edition.

Also, don't forget to throw Hordes in there, it's compatable, and pushes things more toward the high fantasy, racking PP up to 13 Factions (4 in WM, 4 in Hordes, 4 Merc Contracts plus the Pirates (who cover Ord pretty well) with the Retribution on the way, what's more each of the major faction usually has at least 3 viable subgroups

It's about keeping the gamers in house. PP are doing ok I guess. Not my cup of tea, but until they branch out with other games, I don't see them getting to GW size. And look what happened to Rackham as well!

Oh, and Monsterpocalypse to boot... now with (*Action) FORM BLAZING SWORD