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LotR obviously had an over inflated popularity due to the movies, but it could have remained as popular as GW's main games if GW had of treated it right instead of acting like it was going to be an endless cash cow that would sell itself.

That said, I don't think GW should have pursued LotR as a main game simply because of licensing. LotR isn't their universe, they can't do whatever they want with it.

Also wasn't the LotR stuff (pre-Hobbit) sculpted purely by the Perry brothers? I wonder if there was some agreement in place.

As much as I personally like LotR and prefer LotR humanoid figures to the bobble-headed ones in GW's main games, I don't think it would have been a good move for GW to focus fully on it. If anything GW should have been pushing WHFB more to try and keep their own universe appealing against LotR, I know a lot of my WHFB friends moved to LotR and never came back to WHFB even after LotR died in the arse.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
LotR obviously had an over inflated popularity due to the movies

Honestly, I think LOTR never reached its full potential even with the movies to help it. I mean, where does this "LOTR won't be popular without the movies" assumption come from? Even without that marketing spike we're still talking about a genre-defining work with immense popularity and cultural significance. Everyone who knows anything at all about the fantasy genre is familiar with the books, and usually with a favorable opinion. Compare that to the fluff of WHFB/AoS, which seem like nothing more than generic fantasy settings that wouldn't merit a second glance without the games attached to them. And from an aesthetic point of view the LOTR models are far superior to most of WHFB/AoS, especially at the time the LOTR games were first released. The only real argument for the success of WHFB/AoS seems to be the fact that they're the primary GW fantasy game, and everyone wants to play the primary GW fantasy game because it's what everyone else is playing. That's nothing more than inertia, not a superior product. It's very easy to imagine an alternate history, where GW never released WHFB/AoS, and their LOTR miniatures are dominating the market.

Yeah I can agree with that, I think LotR's popularity was over inflated by the movies but that doesn't necessarily mean more potential wasn't there, it's just all other things being equal the movies obviously boosted sales.

But my thought with LotR... isn't the licensing a nightmare?

From what I understood GW licensed the movie content from New Line/Warner Bros/Time Warner, not a generic Middle Earth license, with Peter Jackson being buds with the Perry brothers (PJ's WW1 exhibition includes 54mm Anzac models sculpted by the Perry brothers via "Perry Miniatures" rather than "GW/Citadel").

BUT, on the flip side, doesn't the Tolkien Estate hate everything to do with the movies? With the movie rights being sold specifically back in the 60's by JRR.

Surely that must make the whole situation awkward. GW wouldn't have be able to license video games like Total War that has recently made them some good profits, other companies could swoop in to make non-movie related Middle Earth miniatures and if GW wanted to branch out more they could find themselves fighting against the Tolkien Estate to do so.

GW could bend and twist the WHFB world to become whatever they needed it to be to sell what they think will sell (of course like dumbarses they just killed it ), they have rights to not only the miniatures but any other products that may come out of the world and they don't have to deal with the Tolkien Estate vs New Line/WB issue that comes with doing a LotR line.

Peregrine wrote:Honestly, I think LOTR never reached its full potential even with the movies to help it. I mean, where does this "LOTR won't be popular without the movies" assumption come from?

The nature of media in our society? How things come and go in fads? The lack of a major LOTR miniature game before the movies other than what Mithril Miniatures small range of stuff? That even during the height of D&D in the 80s into the 90s, Middle Earth Roleplay was never more than a third tier product? That the novels are written in a style that isn't very popular today and before the movies were (and now area again) largely only read by the most nerdy among us? The fact that the fantasy genre owes so much to LOTR that LOTR has largely become generic?

I'd say the odds of LOTR being popular without the movies is almost zero. And now that the movies have come and gone, LOTR themed stuff has faded back to its pre-movies levels of popularity. It's still around, of course, but now it's around like it was in 1999. Only the truly devoted really care about it.

It's very easy to imagine an alternate history, where GW never released WHFB/AoS, and their LOTR miniatures are dominating the market.

Had GW taken up the LOTR license in 1983 and came out with an LOTR game instead of WHFB, they would have had the same third tier success with he game in the 80s that Iron Crown Enterprises did with the license. And without the success of Warhammer, it's entirely possible that 4 years later Warhammer 40,000 would never be made and GW might not even exist today as another other than a tiny company in the UK.

I imagine many LOTR fans looked around in the early 2000s and were like "finally the rest of you see how great this is!" to the rest of society. But the truth is, the rest of us were simply impressed by a series of movies and shiny marketing and like every other media event, it ebbed in popularity to the point that it's now largely once again the domain of only the die hard fans.

 frozenwastes wrote:

Peregrine wrote:Honestly, I think LOTR never reached its full potential even with the movies to help it. I mean, where does this "LOTR won't be popular without the movies" assumption come from?

The nature of media in our society? How things come and go in fads? The lack of a major LOTR miniature game before the movies other than what Mithril Miniatures small range of stuff? That even during the height of D&D in the 80s into the 90s, Middle Earth Roleplay was never more than a third tier product? That the novels are written in a style that isn't very popular today and before the movies were (and now area again) largely only read by the most nerdy among us? The fact that the fantasy genre owes so much to LOTR that LOTR has largely become generic?

I'd say the odds of LOTR being popular without the movies is almost zero. And now that the movies have come and gone, LOTR themed stuff has faded back to its pre-movies levels of popularity. It's still around, of course, but now it's around like it was in 1999. Only the truly devoted really care about it.

It's very easy to imagine an alternate history, where GW never released WHFB/AoS, and their LOTR miniatures are dominating the market.

Had GW taken up the LOTR license in 1983 and came out with an LOTR game instead of WHFB, they would have had the same third tier success with he game in the 80s that Iron Crown Enterprises did with the license. And without the success of Warhammer, it's entirely possible that 4 years later Warhammer 40,000 would never be made and GW might not even exist today as another other than a tiny company in the UK.

I imagine many LOTR fans looked around in the early 2000s and were like "finally the rest of you see how great this is!" to the rest of society. But the truth is, the rest of us were simply impressed by a series of movies and shiny marketing and like every other media event, it ebbed in popularity to the point that it's now largely once again the domain of only the die hard fans.

I'd say it's higher than it was before. They still pump games for LoTR not focused on the hobbit.

Lord Kragan wrote:
I'd say it's higher than it was before. They still pump games for LoTR not focused on the hobbit.

Yeah, there are still video games being made and whatnot. Ones with solid, but not amazing sales. Don't think an LOTR video game ever made it onto any best selling list though.

Had GW fought against the fading of the fad in the mid 2000s, they would have poured money into a declining product. Had they made LOTR instead of Warhammer, they might have missed out on the massively popular 40k product line.

In terms of the question "What Game Lines Do You Think GW Should Focus On?" the answer can't really be LOTR at this point. The video games based on the title aren't even breaking out in sales terms. They're doing fine and all.. GW would be far, far better off concentrating on their own worlds. Certainly better than putting money into promoting someone else's brand.

frozenwastes wrote:I'd say the odds of LOTR being popular without the movies is almost zero. And now that the movies have come and gone, LOTR themed stuff has faded back to its pre-movies levels of popularity. It's still around, of course, but now it's around like it was in 1999. Only the truly devoted really care about it.

I'd say that's a bit of an exaggeration. There's a bunch of people who barely knew about LotR before but are still in to it now thanks to the movies.... I know because I'm one of them

Warhammer Fantasy/40k are just another generic fantasy/sci-fi worlds, the reason Warhammer is so popular is largely thanks to how GW expanded their operations and introduced people to those worlds rather than because those worlds are actually tremendously appealing above and beyond other options. Through the LotR days 40k's popularity was probably helped by LotR, with people coming in because of LotR but getting drawn in to 40k as well.

Where GW lost their way was around the LotR boom where they seemed to think the world just so desperately wanted to buy anything labelled GW that they could do no wrong, when the movie hype wore off their profits dropped like a rock and they're just slowly coming to learn plastic doesn't just sell itself because it has a GW logo on the sprues. I'd suggest the weak start to AoS probably helped drive that message home.

frozenwastes wrote:Yeah, there are still video games being made and whatnot. Ones with solid, but not amazing sales. Don't think an LOTR video game ever made it onto any best selling list though.

Most of them haven't been that good and games that aren't good don't tend to sell well regardless of the label on them, Shadow of Mordor was decent and sold (according to VGChartz) 5.4 million copies on consoles, Steamspy estimates another 2.8 million copies on PC. That's not far behind The Witcher 3's Steam sales and frankly TW3 is classes above Shadow of Mordor in quality, so the LotR license is obviously doing something.

That's also higher rated on Steam than Space Marine the video game (which was also a pretty good game IMO) and Dawn of War 2.

Had GW fought against the fading of the fad in the mid 2000s, they would have poured money into a declining product.

Sometimes it's best to ride the popularity wave and then settle in to normalcy rather than letting the bubble burst and end up flat at the end.

Had they made LOTR instead of Warhammer, they might have missed out on the massively popular 40k product line.

Yeah I doubt that. It just wouldn't have been called "Warhammer 40k", or it might have been but there would have been no "Warhammer Fantasy".

Certainly better than putting money into promoting someone else's brand.

At the end of the day I think this is why GW are better off sticking to their own licenses. Not because LotR can't be hugely popular, but lack of control.

If GW thinks a race of Lizardmen with Mesoamerican traits is a cool idea, they can do that in Warhammer, they can't do it in LotR. The world can be manipulated to what GW wants to sell rather trying to extract things from an existing world.

I think we kind of are heading into a rabbit hole so I'll limit myself to point out that the witcher III didn't have as much of an intense marketing campaign as shadows of mordor.

Lord Kragan wrote:
I think we kind of are heading into a rabbit hole so I'll limit myself to point out that the witcher III didn't have as much of an intense marketing campaign as shadows of mordor.

I don't really pay enough attention to mainstream marketing to subjectively gauge them, but TW3 apparently had $35M spent on marketing and I can't find any details of how much was spent on Shadow of Mordor.

But either way, a lot of things go in to the popularity of a video game, from the quality of that specific game, the pedigree of the games that came before it, the marketing campaign... and crossover licenses (outside of sports games for some bizarre reason) aren't necessarily going to be a goldmine, if anything I reckon they can be a trap for publishers more than original IP.

I was just pointing out on the topic of LotR video games not doing great, it's not really surprising when for the most part they haven't been all that good, and the one that comes to mind as having gotten pretty good but not exceptional reviews (Shadow of Mordor) has also sold, well, pretty good but not exceptional

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
I think we kind of are heading into a rabbit hole so I'll limit myself to point out that the witcher III didn't have as much of an intense marketing campaign as shadows of mordor.

I don't really pay enough attention to mainstream marketing to subjectively gauge them, but TW3 apparently had $35M spent on marketing and I can't find any details of how much was spent on Shadow of Mordor.

But either way, a lot of things go in to the popularity of a video game, from the quality of that specific game, the pedigree of the games that came before it, the marketing campaign... and crossover licenses (outside of sports games for some bizarre reason) aren't necessarily going to be a goldmine, if anything I reckon they can be a trap for publishers more than original IP.

I was just pointing out on the topic of LotR video games not doing great, it's not really surprising when for the most part they haven't been all that good, and the one that comes to mind as having gotten pretty good but not exceptional reviews (Shadow of Mordor) has also sold, well, pretty good but not exceptional

It went as far as bribing a ton of youtubers, go figure how much they spent on both regular and irregular channels.

Plus it's heavily inspired in Assassin's creed's mechanics (it even use assets from II), so it didn't just draw from one crowd.

Lord Kragan wrote:
It went as far as bribing a ton of youtubers, go figure how much they spent on both regular and irregular channels.

That doesn't say much. Bribing a bunch of youtubers who are working out of makeshift studios in their parents' basement is a cheap form of advertising and not remotely indicative of the total marketing budget.

I remember seeing a bit of mainstream advertising for TW3 and a bit of mainstream advertising for SoM, no idea which had more marketing overall though.

Plus it's heavily inspired in Assassin's creed's mechanics (it even use assets from II), so it didn't just draw from one crowd.

Admittedly I only played it for a little while but it didn't remind me a hell of a lot of Assassin's Creed. Either way that's a rather tangential and insignificant point to make (especially from someone who didn't want to go down the rabbit hole ), obviously when you make a game in a certain genre it's going to appeal to people of that genre. Space Marine wasn't just supposed to appeal to fans of Space Marines, it's going to appeal to 3rd person shooter fans, Dawn of War isn't just going to appeal to 40k fans but RTS fans, Total War: Warhammer isn't just going to appeal to Warhammer fans but also Total War fans, The Witcher 3 isn't just going to appeal to Sapkowski fans but also action-role-play fans.... it's kind of stating the obvious that a game with a license in a given genre is going to draw both from the license's fans and also the genre's fans minus any overlap

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
It went as far as bribing a ton of youtubers, go figure how much they spent on both regular and irregular channels.

That doesn't say much. Bribing a bunch of youtubers who are working out of makeshift studios in their parents' basement is a cheap form of advertising and not remotely indicative of the total marketing budget.

Yeah, me thinks here we have an understatement. But we are indeed derailing too much and all.

Lord Kragan wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Lord Kragan wrote:
It went as far as bribing a ton of youtubers, go figure how much they spent on both regular and irregular channels.

That doesn't say much. Bribing a bunch of youtubers who are working out of makeshift studios in their parents' basement is a cheap form of advertising and not remotely indicative of the total marketing budget.

Yeah, me thinks here we have an understatement.

Obviously I was being a bit hyperbolic but the point remains In the context of a marketing campaign that costs 10's of millions of dollars (as I said, TW3 supposedly had an advertising budget of 35 million), bribing a few reviewers is cheap. I doubt they were bribed with anything significant, and even if they were, do you really think it's a significant chunk of advertising costs??

It's not like companies go "well geeze, we've spent soooo much on advertising, I guess this next 10 million should go towards bribes"

I haven't been able to find anything related to the advertising budget of Shadow of Mordor, you're the one who brought it up and your only support is that they tried to bribe some youtubers, but bribing youtubers is hardly indicative of a large marketing budget, if anything it's something you do when you can't afford a proper marketing campaign and are willing to take a gamble on bribes instead.

But we are indeed derailing too much and all.

That's not how this works, you don't raise a point then say "but we are derailing". If you fear we are excessively derailing in a discussion on the value of the LotR IP, simply stop replying and stop raising more points which continues to draw on the discussion

I am not a big fan of the 40K board game releases. Its enough to learn 1 or 2 sets of rules, not 5 or 6

I wouldn't want to see 40k return to a skirmish game. A lot of the current players like the game because of the epicness of it, and those that still play from 2nd edition must most likely still like it (or they would have quit for other skirmish games). Give the board games/Necomunda/Mordheim to the skirmish fans and keep 40K big.

Having said that most of the delay I find playing 40k is not the number of models, but the poor layout of the rules and bloatedness of it.


So in summary focus on 40K and AoS, just streamline the rules of 40K

For now, they just need to keep on doing what they're doing - just perhaps with less Limited Items.

For what seems like a long time, they only really did 40k and Warhammer at their standard scales and upwards.

But now, they're playing around with the size of games much more, from traditional dungeon crawls to gang scale warfare. That they're doing so on a relative shoe string (very few have 'only useful in this game' pieces, which means expansion is done through the main range) is intriguing.

On the one hand, it's just good business sense. Take Quest. Rules for a plethora of additional characters are available, all using the models they already make for AoS. So that keeps the development costs down - which is sound practice even if the game is an absolute sales winner.

On the other hand, it's arguably restrictive, or been done a wee bit half arsed. To stick with Quest - sure I can pick up any character model and go get them horribly murdered in a dungeon - but what about the gribblies to go and do the murdering? So far we're stuck with what's in the boxes, plus the odd 'exotic adversary' stuck in WD or in the back of the books. It can't be too much development work (and therefore cost) to blow the Critter List wide open, surely? At the very bare minimum, just whack the rules on the instructions and online. You give us ability and opportunity - and of course temptation. And the more we can theme a dungeon (even just using the floor plans available) the more we're likely to buy - and the more we're likely to buy, the greater the chance a collection of Nasty Gribblers can be formed into an army, probably with just a couple of centre piece purchases.

Long live the revolution, I say. The greater the variety of games, the wider the audience you appeal to.

And here's my current Watchlist.

1. Shadespire. Very, very interesting. Card based and expandable, with the competitive spirit in mind. I think that's an outright first for GW, so I'm intrigued to see how it goes (early impressions from those who've played it seem quite enthusiastic)

2. Quest. Yes I love my Quest! Hammerhal was a pleasant surprised, but still work to do here. Bestiary would be warmly welcomed, as would dungeon expansion packs. The core rules are pretty solid for me.

3. Shadow War. The name layout suggests Armageddon is the first of a variety of settings. To truly compete with Necromunda, they need to give me more Post Battle fun. It's one thing to kill an enemy trooper, but quite another to see the poor goon running around still missing his arm after Mental Dave, your combat specialist chopped it off.

4. Adeptus Titanicus. It was my first proper GW game, even if we didn't really understand it (I was 10, ok!) so it has a special place in my heart. And any return to Epic is most welcome.

Mordian2016 wrote:I wouldn't want to see 40k return to a skirmish game. A lot of the current players like the game because of the epicness of it, and those that still play from 2nd edition must most likely still like it (or they would have quit for other skirmish games). Give the board games/Necomunda/Mordheim to the skirmish fans and keep 40K big.

I think a separate Necromunda/Mordheim game is not a great idea compared to having the 40k rules support both the smaller games and larger games like AoS does. There are all sorts of giant characters and monsters in AoS and people manage to play very small games and enjoy them. There are even transport vehicles in AoS now.

Well, Necromunda and Mordheim are much more that just Warhammer and Warhammer40k litte.

The campaing system, skirmish system with individual models representing individual units, etc, etc... you can't have a good Skirmish-Campaing game and a Good mass battles game.

Its just imposible.

Compare Necromunda to 2nd edition 40k. All the campaign stuff, figuring out how models are wounded and what happens after the game is all just bolted onto an edition of 40k.

Now take new40k and do the same thing. Shadow War Armageddon but where the core resolution system is new40k rather than 2nd edition.

Not impossible at all.

And just put it and the stats for all the start collecting boxes and any new starter set contents right in the new core rulebook. Or Warmaster's Handbook or whatever they call it. So anyone starting out can just take stuff from their start collecting box and get playing a skirmish game and as they expand their collection, the full 40k game uses the same core resolution mechancs, turn structure, etc., with the only real difference being the larger variety of models you can take and you start activating units instead of individual models.

I'd really appreciate if they would make their own version of the FFG RPG systems (Dark Heresy, Only War, Death Watch, etc etc). Those were really fun systems and it was sad to see them discontinued the way they were. You cannot get the core rulebook anymore for under $200+ (originally was a $50 book....).

 frozenwastes wrote:
Compare Necromunda to 2nd edition 40k. All the campaign stuff, figuring out how models are wounded and what happens after the game is all just bolted onto an edition of 40k.

Now take new40k and do the same thing. Shadow War Armageddon but where the core resolution system is new40k rather than 2nd edition.

Not impossible at all.

And just put it and the stats for all the start collecting boxes and any new starter set contents right in the new core rulebook. Or Warmaster's Handbook or whatever they call it. So anyone starting out can just take stuff from their start collecting box and get playing a skirmish game and as they expand their collection, the full 40k game uses the same core resolution mechancs, turn structure, etc., with the only real difference being the larger variety of models you can take and you start activating units instead of individual models.

And you can't play a game of 2nd 40k edition with more than 80 models and Wraitknights and Titans and Knights if you don't want to die before ending it.

Mass scale battles games need a more straitforward rules. They don't need to be Epic-level but you can't have the level of detail that you need to have in a Skirmish game to made the game interesting. Just look at Killteam. It really failed as a good Skirmish game because it was basically W40K litte.

 Galas wrote:


And you can't play a game of 2nd 40k edition with more than 80 models and Wraitknights and Titans and Knights if you don't want to die before ending it.

Mass scale battles games need a more straitforward rules. They don't need to be Epic-level but you can't have the level of detail that you need to have in a Skirmish game to made the game interesting. Just look at Killteam. It really failed as a good Skirmish game because it was basically W40K litte.

The rules that differentiate things more in Necromunda/SWA are just bolted on. What happens after the save is failed? It's just a substitute procedure. Killteam was missing it, SWA is not. So new40k Skirmish needs it. As well as all the other little bolt on elements. When it comes time to play a larger game, you just don't use those. You don't roll to see what happens after a model goes down, it just gets removed. You don't roll at the end of the game to see the fate of the downed models. You attack units with units rather than individual models with models. The skirmish game also needs some rules to get back into battle. And most importantly of all, scenarios and some pre-game and post game decision making to make a simple campaign system. They already have proven versions of these mechanics and nothing about them is married to the edition of 40k or fantasy that made up the base game. They can be easily applied to a new version.

Kill team just didn't add enough of the stuff that made Necro/SWA and Mordheim work. There's nothing preventing that from being done in a future product though. Hopefully the massive popularity of SWA compared to Kill Team will clue in GW's design team a bit and they'll make a new40k version a priority. It's probably too late for it to get into the new40k rulebook, but it might be a great candidate for a chapter in a follow up Warmaster's Handbook. Or as a pamplet they put into the start collecting boxes and as a pdf.

Well, I differ here. To me a good skirmish ruleset should had a deep rules for ingame actions to individual models. Supression fire, KO, jumping, taking cover, "overwatch", hiding, and a great personalization for individuals.

A good Great Battle games where you have squads and dozens of models, tanks, robots, flyers, and giant beast, you can't have all of that because the game just slow downs to the infinite.

Is not only that the difference between Skirmish and Big Battle games is about the pre and post battle phase.

I don't think it needs to be your idea of a good skirmish game. I think that goes too far and I don' think a 40k core rulebook would go full on skirmish. It still needs to transition players to the full size game. So they might want more rules than Kill Team, but not quite as many extra rules as Necro/SWA.

I also think the over personalization and all sorts of random equipment that doesn't exist in the full game is also a bad idea. Making a model for a smaller skirmish game shouldn't end up making it not be viable in a normal army sized game. LIke you probably shouldn't be able to give a guy a plasma bolter combo and then the squad entry in the army game doesn't have the plasma option. That sort of thing. Limit things to the normal game entry for options. Or even the model kits.

Basically I'm thinking not a deep skirmish game, but a skirmish game aimed at new players. More individual model specific rules than kill team, but not necessarily a full on Mordheim or Infinity type game. It's also probably not a good idea to start off asking new players to customize miniatures and convert models and do weapon swaps and green stuff work and all that. And it should probably start off aiming at the contents of the start collecting boxes.

Take the 4 page AOS rules. Take the parts of necromunda/SWA that deal with individual models and with what happens after models drop and then have the rules for the start collecting boxes that spell out how they work as individuals as notes on the dataslates for the full size game. 4 page rules + 2-4 page skirmish changes + data slate notes.

It's entirely possible though that the AoS approach is already good enough for smaller games and transitioning players to larger games and that once new40k is more like AoS, the demand for something like Shadow War Armageddon will transfer to new40k.

1) Have continued dedicated support for the many ways to play the game. Kill Team is a big one, next step combat patrol-1000pts, 1001 - upwards games etc.

2) Keep up the board games if anything for good bundles with that added special character etc

3) Expand Age of Sigmar. Not necessarily by pumping out more Sigmar Marines or Blood-Khorne-Mc-Bloodface's but with fluff that fills in the gaps and makes it seem realistic and less vague. Change the policy on battlefield scenery too. Make it worth fighting over rather than that ruin or realmgate in the dead wasteland left by Chaos. It needs some ordinary free-peoples guys to balance the drab setting and hyped up goodies and baddies.

4) Keep testing the water with specialist games for variety.

I could go on, but these points are to me the most important.

40k.

AoS

Shadow War / Necromunda

Battlefleet Gothic

Epic

I think that focusing on two, then one, game was part of what was causing GW to fail.

They need to broaden, rather than focus, their offerings. (Which, to be fair, the new CEO seems to be making some real headway on.)

How long is Rountree going to be the 'new' CEO, anyway?

The Auld Grump

well, after playing a few matches of Shadow War I can honestly say GW knocked it out of the park with this release. That being said, I'd love to see a little more support including more in-depth rules (separate itself from how 40k plays completely) a re-release of the old gangs would be awesome and maybe multiple campaign supplements. Overall our group is really enjoying it though.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:
I think that focusing on two, then one, game was part of what was causing GW to fail.

They need to broaden, rather than focus, their offerings. (Which, to be fair, the new CEO seems to be making some real headway on.)

How long is Rountree going to be the 'new' CEO, anyway?

The Auld Grump

I'm honestly considering him just the CEO by now. And they already do focus, if not as much, in more than 2 games: AOS 40k and Bloodbowl. Talisman is coming back this year and there's the additional specialist games that are still in progress. They are expanding alright.

I want 4 tiers of games in both fantasy and sci-fi.

Tier 1- 1:1 skirmish campaign gamesuch as Shadow War: Armageddon

Tier 2- Platoon Plus wargame where the main unit is a squad.

Tier 3- Army/Company scale Games- Big units fighting big battles.

Tier 4- Support games that focus on supporting warfare elements in the game world. I.e. BFG for sci-fi and Man O' War for fantasy Naval.

That way, I would never need to leave the worlds creted by GW to get a gaming fix. Everything a gamer could want would be catered to.

They had it.... and then squandered it. It may be too late to get it back.

 TheAuldGrump wrote:

How long is Rountree going to be the 'new' CEO, anyway?

Until the taste of Kirby (and Bligh) is gone from our collective?