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His problem was that he was comparing starfighters, not ferraris.

 Arschbombe wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:

The figures don't include miniature sales at all, and that's my point. They only included Games Workshop starter sets, the figures are for non-collectable boxed games.

No. X-wing tops the chart for Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Games, not board games. Your protests are misplaced.

The protests are not misplaced - the figures relate to non-collectable boxed miniatures games, I never at any point said board games. Warhammer is not a non-collectable boxed game as it requires peripheral sales which X-Wing does not, therefore the two are not comparable.

X-Wing does not "top the charts", it tops the chart they have created using badly collected data.

If they had actually compiled the figures including Gw's own sales plus preipherals Warhammer would still be in the top slot.

It's just sensationalised reporting using terrible statistics.

StraightSilver wrote:

Warhammer does not fall ino this category as boxed sets such as Age of Sigmar and Dark Vengeance are a tiny percentage of overall sales and also require peripheral sales to play the game - which X-Wing does not.

Therefore you cannot really compare X-Wing to Warhammer - it is like trying to compare apples with oranges..

You haven't played X-wing have you? The Core set is as much "the game" as Dark Vengeance is to 40k. FFG just doesn't make you buy an inane number of $50 codexes to have all the rules and the miniatures are prepainted and preassembled.

 bocatt wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:

Warhammer does not fall ino this category as boxed sets such as Age of Sigmar and Dark Vengeance are a tiny percentage of overall sales and also require peripheral sales to play the game - which X-Wing does not.

Therefore you cannot really compare X-Wing to Warhammer - it is like trying to compare apples with oranges..

You haven't played X-wing have you? The Core set is as much "the game" as Dark Vengeance is to 40k. FFG just doesn't make you buy an inane number of $50 codexes to have all the rules and the miniatures are prepainted and preassembled.

I have played X-Wing and am aware that there is the core set along with the add on ships including cards etc.

There are as many addtional peripheral sales in X-Wing as there are in GW products however my point is none of this was taken into account during the survey.


The entirity of Asmodee market share in the tabletop / board game market last year was 24%. This means that X-Wing's market share was below 24%. GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.


Just to point out I'm not trying to White Knight GW and also not trying to derail the thread or be controversial.

The point I am making is I hate lazy sensationalist reporting using massaged figures to make claims when in fact the origianl survey was incredibly poorly carried out and only has access to a very limited amount of information.

StraightSilver wrote:

 bocatt wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:

Warhammer does not fall ino this category as boxed sets such as Age of Sigmar and Dark Vengeance are a tiny percentage of overall sales and also require peripheral sales to play the game - which X-Wing does not.

Therefore you cannot really compare X-Wing to Warhammer - it is like trying to compare apples with oranges..

You haven't played X-wing have you? The Core set is as much "the game" as Dark Vengeance is to 40k. FFG just doesn't make you buy an inane number of $50 codexes to have all the rules and the miniatures are prepainted and preassembled.

I have played X-Wing and am aware that there is the core set along with the add on ships including cards etc.

There are as many addtional peripheral sales in X-Wing as there are in GW products however my point is none of this was taken into account during the survey.


The entirity of Asmodee market share in the tabletop / board game market last year was 24%. This means that X-Wing's market share was below 24%. GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.


Just to point out I'm not trying to White Knight GW and also not trying to derail the thread or be controversial.

The point I am making is I hate lazy sensationalist reporting using massaged figures to make claims when in fact the origianl survey was incredibly poorly carried out and only has access to a very limited amount of information.

Yeah, but whats paint sales got to do with anything? Its not "top 5 non collectable paint lines"

StraightSilver wrote:


I have played X-Wing and am aware that there is the core set along with the add on ships including cards etc.

There are as many addtional peripheral sales in X-Wing as there are in GW products however my point is none of this was taken into account during the survey.

The entirity of Asmodee market share in the tabletop / board game market last year was 24%. This means that X-Wing's market share was below 24%. GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.

Your white knighting is cute, but wrong-headed. The charts are not trying to determine if FFG has more revenue than GW. Peripheral sales are not germane to the discussion. No one cares if GW is selling a bunch of green stuff, files, and paint. This chart is about which games are selling best in independent stores in the US. That's it. X-wing has surpassed 40k, and rolling greens stuff and paint into the numbers is not going to change that fact. It doesn't matter if 40k is still doing great in the UK, EU or down under. It doesn't matter that 30% of GW sales are direct.

StraightSilver wrote:
The protests are not misplaced - the figures relate to non-collectable boxed miniatures games, I never at any point said board games.

Really? Your own words say otherwise.

StraightSilver wrote:
The point is the figures relate to "non-collectable" board games.

These are self contained boxed games with no peripheral sales (minis, paints, rule books etc).

I'm sorry but you're misinterpreting the article. The ICV 2 rankings have been for years about general product lines and not the artificial distinction you're making about boxed vs blisters. The only confusion in that link is the new classification of "warhammer" instead of the previously separately named and ranked 40k and fantasy. We just don't know if that is a typo or if they are indeed lumping AOS and 40k together; there has traditionally been the same confusion with war machine (I.e. does it include hordes?).

 Arschbombe wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:


I have played X-Wing and am aware that there is the core set along with the add on ships including cards etc.

There are as many addtional peripheral sales in X-Wing as there are in GW products however my point is none of this was taken into account during the survey.

The entirity of Asmodee market share in the tabletop / board game market last year was 24%. This means that X-Wing's market share was below 24%. GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.

Your white knighting is cute, but wrong-headed. The charts are not trying to determine if FFG has more revenue than GW. Peripheral sales are not germane to the discussion. No one cares if GW is selling a bunch of green stuff, files, and paint. This chart is about which games are selling best in independent stores in the US. That's it. X-wing has surpassed 40k, and rolling greens stuff and paint into the numbers is not going to change that fact. It doesn't matter if 40k is still doing great in the UK, EU or down under. It doesn't matter that 30% of GW sales are direct.

That's not true thhough is it? X-Wing is not outselling Warhammer in the US or anywhere else in the world for that matter. The survey only took sales figures from limited products and compared them against a product that is actually very different and also excluded the largest seller of Warhammer - Games Workshop.

If you actually took slaes figures from all over the US and only compared like for like and included games Workshop it would be a very different story.

The point about paint is that it's grossly unfair to include Warhammer in a category it isn't suited to. Warhammer is not a non-collectable miniatures game. It is an entire hobby and it's peripheral products such as paints and miniatures make up the majority of it's sales.

 Arschbombe wrote:



Your white knighting is cute, but wrong-headed. The charts are not trying to determine if FFG has more revenue than GW. Peripheral sales are not germane to the discussion. No one cares if GW is selling a bunch of green stuff, files, and paint. This chart is about which games are selling best in independent stores in the US. That's it. X-wing has surpassed 40k, and rolling greens stuff and paint into the numbers is not going to change that fact. It doesn't matter if 40k is still doing great in the UK, EU or down under. It doesn't matter that 30% of GW sales are direct.

This.

When you ask a US retailer which product line is doing the most to keep the lights on and his lil ones fed, its not GW anymore.

A non-GW retailer's only concern about 30% GW online sales is that he/she gets no shot at that 30%. In fact, GW is parasiting off the non-GW retailer. GW wants the non-GW retailer to sell the box set, get the customer interested in the game, and then loose every other sale to GW because GW won't allow the non-GW retailer access to the 'GW exclusives".

In a world of finite disposable income and game loyalty, the worst thing a new retailer can do is push GW games as a product line.

StraightSilver wrote:
GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.

Can you post a link to the verifiable third party source of your 70% number for the industry? Because all I see is someone criticizing his own extrapolated "flaws" in the only industry publication source we have her simultaneously pulling a number out of a bretonnian horse's rear. And, preemptively, no, your local FLGS' s manager's small talk confiding in you doesn't count as proof for the industry in the whole of the UK let alone the rest of the world.

StraightSilver wrote:

The point about paint is that it's grossly unfair to include Warhammer in a category it isn't suited to. Warhammer is not a non-collectable miniatures game. It is an entire hobby and it's peripheral products such as paints and miniatures make up the majority of it's sales.

Erm, no.

Wargaming is the hobby and Warhammer is just one game amongst those on offer for people in the hobby of wargaming.

 warboss wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:
GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.

Can you post a link to the verifiable third party source of your 70% number for the industry? Because all I see is someone criticizing his own extrapolated "flaws" in the only industry publication source we have her simultaneously pulling a number out of a bretonnian horse's rear. And, preemptively, no, your local FLGS' s manager's small talk confiding in you doesn't count as proof for the industry in the whole of the UK let alone the rest of the world.

The figures are quite old (2010) but to be honest not a huge amount has changed since then but in 2010 the world wide sales figures for tabletop wargaming was estimated to be around £150 million. GW's turnover for that year was £126 million. That put GW's market share at 84%.

GW has claimed it's market share to remain consistently at 80%, I used a conservative 70% because I feel in the face of the rising popularity of board games such as Zombicide, X-Wing, Drop Zone etc has no doubt dented that.

Asmodee last year reported as a group that they held 24% market share of the board game / tabletop wargame industry but they are a huge company that sells multiple product lines that don't just include board games or table top games, so if you went for a very generous guess that X-Wing made up 50% of their sales then X-Wing as a product would have about 12% market share - so 5 times less that GW.

And i suspect if the survey had asked what percentage of your sales come from GW products the figures would have been incredibly different - but that isn't what the survey asked.

As an example, my local independant store sells a ton of X-Wing stuff and has a regular tournament every couple of weeks with a regular gaming group of about 100 players. This is far in excess of the local 40K or AoS community and sales of the core X-Wing set massively outstrip Dark Vengeance or Age of Sigmar.

However 80% of the store's sales come from GW products when you factor in peripheral items.

My point is that the survey didn't collect enough sufficient data to make the claim that X-Wing is the number 1 selling game in the US. It may very well be, but there is no way of knowing as the data it has collected is un-useable.

And also: "And, preemptively, no, your local FLGS' s manager's small talk confiding in you doesn't count as proof for the industry in the whole of the UK let alone the rest of the world" - That's exactly what this survey has done though isn't it - which is the whole point of my argument.

Does that mean all those years of 40K at #1 should be disregarded as well due to the same factors?

In this particular survey? Yes.

My whole argument isn't whether or not GW is outselling other manufacturers etc, my argument is that the survey itself is flawed.

StraightSilver wrote:
In this particular survey? Yes.

My whole argument isn't whether or not GW is outselling other manufacturers etc, my argument is that the survey itself is flawed.

Do they outsell other paint manufacturers then?

StraightSilver wrote:

 warboss wrote:

StraightSilver wrote:
GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.

Can you post a link to the verifiable third party source of your 70% number for the industry? Because all I see is someone criticizing his own extrapolated "flaws" in the only industry publication source we have her simultaneously pulling a number out of a bretonnian horse's rear. And, preemptively, no, your local FLGS' s manager's small talk confiding in you doesn't count as proof for the industry in the whole of the UK let alone the rest of the world.

The figures are quite old (2010) but to be honest not a huge amount has changed since then but in 2010 the world wide sales figures for tabletop wargaming was estimated to be around £150 million. GW's turnover for that year was £126 million. That put GW's market share at 84%.

GW has claimed it's market share to remain consistently at 80%, I used a conservative 70% because I feel in the face of the rising popularity of board games such as Zombicide, X-Wing, Drop Zone etc has no doubt dented that.

Listen.. I'm not trying to pick on you but your stance is deeply flawed and you're not holding yourself or GW to the same standards that you are ICV2. I asked you for a third party link and you repeated an unsubstantiated supposed first party biased statement from a company NOTORIOUS for boasting that they don't do any market research. Even IF gw said they have a 70%-80% market share, they have a stake in the game and are certainly not above spinning bad numbers to make them look better despite talking from a point of complete ignorance.

I'm not saying it's impossible that they claimed that but where is the link? Where is the third party verification of that supposed wild guess? Since they're proud they don't do market research, it can only be a guess. Secondly, the info is WAAAAAY out of date. You know what came out since 2010? Xwing for instance.. and kickstarter's significant effect in gaming since 2012 (although they were technically started in 2009)... and a massive retail board game resurgence... and you, know, the 7 years worth of growth that the ICV article this thread is ostensibly about reported that GW's own financials have NOT shown apply to them. Thirdly, your data is almost completely useless without further details that might exist in the link you didn't post. Is the data for the entire HHHobby market since GW calls itself "the hobby" and made board games at that time? Or is it just for the even more niche minis game market? Does it even include the tens (or is it already hundreds?) of millions of USD that crowdfunding tabletop games has raised or is it just retail? How do they get the data about what other companies sell via retail from retailers and customers that they don't ask since they find market research otiose? Is it only for the UK as the proportion of indy stores to GW company stores is much lower than the US/NA data the ICV reports? Or is it worldwide?

Your number is unsubstantiated, deeply biased due to the source even if substantiated, severely lacking the necessary detail to see if it's even a tomato to apples comparison, and woefully out of date even if ALL of the preceeding points are corrected. The industry has CHANGED since 2010; your info from then is about as useful to us now as polling information from the 2010 US congressional races are to the current US presidential party primaries.

Fenrir Kitsune: you seem to be fixated on paint.

X-Wing is ranked number one in this survey purely on the basis that it is a self contained PRE-PAINTED boxed game.

The survey then compartes it to a product that requires PAINTING - therefore paint sales, which are an important component of the GW hobby as a whole, along with the actual miniatures and peripheral items needed should be included.

The argumant is that it is unfair to compare a pre-painted board game with a tabletop wargame.

Again it's comparing apples and oranges.

Paint sales as well as miniature sales are an important thing to include when looking at sales of warhammer which this survey did not do.

StraightSilver wrote:
Fenrir Kitsune: you seem to be fixated on paint.

You brought it up!

StraightSilver wrote:
Fenrir Kitsune: you seem to be fixated on paint.

X-Wing is ranked number one in this survey purely on the basis that it is a self contained PRE-PAINTED boxed game.

The survey then compartes it to a product that requires PAINTING - therefore paint sales, which are an important component of the GW hobby as a whole, along with the actual miniatures and peripheral items needed should be included.

The argumant is that it is unfair to compare a pre-painted board game with a tabletop wargame.

Again it's comparing apples and oranges.

Paint sales as well as miniature sales are an important thing to include when looking at sales of warhammer which this survey did not do.

Wasn't aware that GW needed to be painted to be played and enjoyed. I feel bad for the guys in my club with their weekly sad experience of playing the gray legions. I will offer them a tissue.

I am also confused why you seem to harbor the belief that Xwing is a board game when GW's offerings are not. Neither has a board. There is no Park Place, no chute nor ladder. No farm to raise sheep on.

Both may have obstacles placed on a defined area of a table that is agreed upon as the "playing surface". Both require the use of miniatures to represent the physical location of units within the game. Both roll dice. I have not purchased a GW core box set in a couple years, so I am uncertain if measuring devices are included in that set...it maybe that the tape measure industry needs to be included in the broader "GW Hobby".

StraightSilver wrote:
Fenrir Kitsune: you seem to be fixated on paint.

X-Wing is ranked number one in this survey purely on the basis that it is a self contained PRE-PAINTED boxed game.

The survey then compartes it to a product that requires PAINTING - therefore paint sales, which are an important component of the GW hobby as a whole, along with the actual miniatures and peripheral items needed should be included.

The argumant is that it is unfair to compare a pre-painted board game with a tabletop wargame.

Again it's comparing apples and oranges.

Paint sales as well as miniature sales are an important thing to include when looking at sales of warhammer which this survey did not do.

I don't see the point you're trying to make?

Are you trying to argue that GW is bestest, despite for the first time this survey, regardless of its accuracy overall, has reported using the same criteria for some years, shows 40K isn't number 1?

Do you think somehow that GW having a larger share of a much smaller niche of the market than Asmodee somehow proves anything?

The reality is this. I played 40K. I now play X Wing. The money I spent on 40K models now is spent on X Wing. I bought Citadel paint, I now buy mostly Vallejo. While X Wing is my "main" game, every other game I've an interest in is a non GW one. My tools, brushes, green stuff and glue all come from non GW sources.

I am not alone.

This is why 40K, by any measure, including GW's own figures, is descending, whereas every other part of the industry is reporting growth.

You need to clarify your argument, because right now you're just throwing a bunch of numbers around that are either unverified or don't correlate we each other and claiming... something?

StraightSilver wrote:
Fenrir Kitsune: you seem to be fixated on paint.

X-Wing is ranked number one in this survey purely on the basis that it is a self contained PRE-PAINTED boxed game.

The survey then compartes it to a product that requires PAINTING - therefore paint sales, which are an important component of the GW hobby as a whole, along with the actual miniatures and peripheral items needed should be included.

The argumant is that it is unfair to compare a pre-painted board game with a tabletop wargame.

Again it's comparing apples and oranges.

Paint sales as well as miniature sales are an important thing to include when looking at sales of warhammer which this survey did not do.

The point you may have missed is that this is not a survey of hobby categories, it is a survey of what independent retailers and distributors say they are selling well.

This thread is starting to feel like a Kafka novel.

Everyone knows this is a crap survey. however, it is the only survey we have, and for years 40K was on top, with Warmachine and hordes close behind. The fact that those other games are doing so well is news, as older surveys used the same crappy methodology, so we really are comparing apples-to-apples.

Now, I know X-wing has way better distribution as you can walk into a big-box retail store and pick up the core box. GW hasn't had that level of penetration since LoTR days.

If you recall GW's reason for getting that license, they may have missed out by not tying up the Star Wars license too. If it was even available to them or they had the cash for it.

To me, it makes reasonable sense that you would see GW dropping off of ICV2 sales. Solid business move or not, GW has been moving further away from independent sales and focusing on their own B&M stores. This doesn't even consider the strength of their existing IP's, which could also (potentially) contribute to lower sales.

 -Loki- wrote:

Mario wrote:

 Cave_Dweller wrote:
The X-Wing game...I've seen this in every gaming store I've been to. But I've never actually seen anyone playing the game or even heard people talking about it.

Could it be that the game is a bit easier to play at home than a traditional tabletop wargame. Some of the buyers might be more board game-ish people who just play at home and are not even used to playing at stores.

It's still got list building with some not so simple synergies and uses terrain (asteroids), requiring a 3x3 space to play on.

Most people use two dimensional terrain cut-outs, and 3'x3' fits on a typical dinner table. It's much easier to play at home that most tabletop wargames.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

StraightSilver wrote:
The point is the figures relate to "non-collectable" board games.

These are self contained boxed games with no peripheral sales (minis, paints, rule books etc).

You are laboring under a misapprehension of what a "non-collectable" game is.

A collectible game is something like MTG or the old Hero Clicks where you purchased a box/package of random stuff not knowing what's in them.

Non-collectible refers to games where you specifically purchase what you want.

 Accolade wrote:
To me, it makes reasonable sense that you would see GW dropping off of ICV2 sales. Solid business move or not, GW has been moving further away from independent sales and focusing on their own B&M stores. This doesn't even consider the strength of their existing IP's, which could also (potentially) contribute to lower sales.

Except we know for a fact that the spread across their 3 channels, ie direct, indirect and online, hasn't changed that dramatically, despite their flashy £4m website.

It might be their desire, but it's a long way from the reality.

StraightSilver wrote:

The entirity of Asmodee market share in the tabletop / board game market last year was 24%. This means that X-Wing's market share was below 24%. GW's market share in the tabletop market is somewhere in the region of 70%, which means that there is no way if you take all sales figures into account that X-Wing is outselling Warhammer.

All the number crunching I've seen has GW at being closer to 5% of market share than 70%. For a start, you're conflating GW's global annual revenue with US sales. So you're out by a factor of about 3 already. So that's about 25%

You're also using a figure from GW (who do no research) from before the explosion in the industry, where a huge number of companies have come into existence (including 3 of the games in the top 5) and the estimated 20% year-on-year growth, so the market is at least twice as big as in 2010. So you're down to 12.5%

Then you're missing the literal thousands of small traders that don't use the US indy chain.

Now no-one is arguing that GW is the bigger company, but the market is much bigger than you are assuming, as there's all of the historics companies producing plastic kits (so there's plenty of demand). In most industries the biggest player, whilst being many times bigger than it's rivals, still tends to be under 25% of the market.

So if Warhammer (40k et. al.) is not a non-collectable miniatures game then what is it?

I have always considered it a non-collectable miniatures game as collectable miniatures games generally come in blind boosters. With Heroclix I never know what I'm getting until I open the box, hence it forces me to collect until I get a pull that I want; the converse of that is that with a game like Warhammer or Warmachine I buy a box and I know what the contents of that box will be, no need to collect more than is necessary for my purposes.

Is there a different definition that I am not aware of as to what constitutes a non-collectable v. a collectable miniatures game?

xraytango wrote:
So if Warhammer (40k et. al.) is not a non-collectable miniatures game then what is it?

I have always considered it a non-collectable miniatures game as collectable miniatures games generally come in blind boosters. With Heroclix I never know what I'm getting until I open the box, hence it forces me to collect until I get a pull that I want; the converse of that is that with a game like Warhammer or Warmachine I buy a box and I know what the contents of that box will be, no need to collect more than is necessary for my purposes.

Is there a different definition that I am not aware of as to what constitutes a non-collectable v. a collectable miniatures game?

Only if your trying to make the data say something else.

StraightSilver wrote:

I understand that but to say that X-Wing has overtaken Warhammer in terms of sales is entirely misleading because it isn't true.

How do you know it isn't true?