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WHFB was not selling. GW tried a bunch of stuff gamers said they wanted to get it to sell. "We want supplements and different ways to play!

Blood in the Badlands
Triumph and Treachery
Storm of Magic
Mighty Empires

Still didn't sell. I mean I was upset when GW killed WHFB and gave us AoS, But given just HOW MANY GAMES THERE ARE OMG JESUS GUYS, I got over it pretty fast.

Frankly, the cost of getting into the game was too big and, frankly, the culture of wargaming had been moving away from rank 'n flank for awhile. Skirmish games were, and still are, where the gaming culture is at.


Also, on a semi-related note

What the hell are people talking about "bad models" with Mantic? Like, yeah 5 years ago I would agree with you that the only minis they produce worth a damn are the Ghouls and Zombies.

Have you seen them recently? All the old stuff that looked like ass has completely been revamped. And everything else is jut straight up their own style for the world they created whidch I would hardly call "bad", Just different.

The new mantic models are great

I dont see KOW being damaged by a WHFB2.0 until its out and released

I had a Dwarf KOW army - I wouldnt have started buying GW dwarves since mine are already on square bases. I'd buy more Mantic products for my army. It's not like GW has tons of official GTs

The problem with WHFB hasn't changed. WHFB players are great at making a lot of noise but almost always fail to actually put money on the table to support the hobby. They bought thier models in 1978 or got them second hand and they are done ever buying more. The fanbase is split between those who prefer house-ruling and those who insist on only using their favorite edition. There's no significant base to make a profit from. What little there was is playing Age of Sigmar.

I see a lot of people celebrating but not actually promising to spend money at anywhere near the level needed to maintain the line. In the meantime, GW promised Sisters of Battle and people both promised and then did drop a crapton of money on their doorstep. Even Necromunda fans stepped up, drawing huge numbers into the hobby. Pretty sure the WHFB players aren't going to do any of that.

 ChargerIIC wrote:

I see a lot of people celebrating but not actually promising to spend money at anywhere near the level needed to maintain the line. In the meantime, GW promised Sisters of Battle and people both promised and then did drop a crapton of money on their doorstep. Even Necromunda fans stepped up, drawing huge numbers into the hobby. Pretty sure the WHFB players aren't going to do any of that.

Well right now GW isn't selling ANY Old World stuff, but they ARE selling Sisters of Battle.
So your argument, whilst it has some merit that many Old World fans do already have armies, it loses because right now GW isn't actually selling it. People aren't thinking about buying because there's nothing to buy and people can promise to spend millions on it and it won't mean anything. And it won't for a several years until GW brings it back in whatever form they are going to do it as.


You argument won't hold water until that date; until such time as GW puts the product on the table (with the right marketing before to make people aware of it) and see if it actually does or does not sell. Even then we have to consider how fast it sells, in what volume and what volume GW is happy with it to progress at. So its not something we are going to see resolved for a long while yet. Asa result there's little point going into the "old gamers not willing to spend" argument

I don't know how typical I am but I bought tons of WHFB minis, that I used for 40k. I loved the fluff, got tons of the novels, but the game never interested me at all.

Squares.

Paint tons of models so they can stand in squares and die in order.

Even CHAOS marches around in squares.

Now a return of Mordheim, that would get me to open my wallet.

The Perry Twins leaving in 2014 probably didn't help.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_and_Michael_Perry
They were probably a very grounding influence on the studio.
After them leaving we started to get necrosphinx, snake surfers and other highly stupid stuff

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
WHFB was not selling. GW tried a bunch of stuff gamers said they wanted to get it to sell. "We want supplements and different ways to play!

Blood in the Badlands
Triumph and Treachery
Storm of Magic
Mighty Empires

Still didn't sell..

it did sell, those things just did not changed the game or made it better and therefore no one came back nor did new players started, therefore it did not sell as good as before

the game already started "not selling" with 7th Daemon Book and just comp system helped to maintain the playerbase
8th was just one step too far for most

also a reason why T9A is not a big thing in most places, as the best balanced 8th Edition that is possible, it is still the 8th Edition

I can only tell you what happened in my area.

We had almost 60 registered active whfb players in our events.
AOS came, and that number fell to 6. Right now we hit about 12-15 in 2019 AOS. A far cry from the almost-60 that we had in 2015 when the old world went boom.

So we had a ton of activity.

However I would say almost no one was giving GW any money. They were playing a ton, but no one was giving GW a cent.

* models could be obtained from a highly soaked 2nd hand market (ebay etc)
* models could be obtained on the cheap from other companies that worked just as well
* army builder etc was used and army books were hardly bought.
* most players had the paper back rulebook that they bought... off ebay.

Additionally 8th had very few releases. It was 40k almost every day. Nothing new came out that couldn't be found elsewhere for cheaper.

I really don't buy the whole "no one wanted to play whfb" because that was not the case in my region at.all. It was no one wanted to pay GW prices and had ways to easily get an army without sending a cent to GW, and played a ton. But did not support the developer.

Kind of like everyone loving a video game but pirating it instead of buying it.

The folks that love rank and flank largely don't sit on the same communication channels as the follks that love skirmish games, so its easy to fall into the mindset that no one wants squares... they just want skirmish.

I guess I'm one of the few that actually likes Mantic miniatures, having bought lots of KoW and Warpath miniatures. Yeah they are a bit on the cheap quality side but they have a certain charm. They're definitely stepping up their quality if you haven't seen the new Ratkin (skaven) line they're making.

I am excited about the news of Warhammer The Old World. But KoW fills the void that GW imploded. If I wanted to play whfb with balanced rules and no bloat I play KoW. If I want to actually play whfb. I play 8th edition or 6th edition.

We don't even know what GW is going to do with Warhammer fantasy. That teaser image was nothing but a teaser.
I'm still waiting for my beloved Greenskinz to get a battletome or atleast get FAQ'd into Orruk Warclans because those bozo's at GW think Ironjawz and Bonesplitterz are the only two ORC tribes in the AoS universe.

If Warhammer The Old World is going to be a rank and file game then I can see this being like Horus Heresy. We don't even know if GW has the man power to have a dedicated team to only work on Warhammer The Old World.

 godardc wrote:
Are you sure about this chapter house thing ? They may have lost it but destroying WFB because they lost it seems...huge.

Saying that GW 'lost' the Chapterhouse case is a misrepresentation. They didn't, because it wasn't a straight 'win or lose' situation. They claimed IP infringement on a whole raft of stuff, some of which was upheld by the court, and some of which was not.

Enough of those infringement claims went against them to trigger the changes we saw, though. Or, at least, while the Chapterhouse case being the trigger for the nuking of WHFB and the introduction of the Citadel Trademarkium miniature naming system and the move towards removing options not represented in the model range is only supposition, the timing makes the cause and effect here fairly obvious.

I think the focus on remaking the game for IP reasons is interesting, but I wouldn't claim it was the primary reason for creating AoS or for the tone and artistic direction it ended up going in.
Rather it was one factor in a multitude that contributed to making AoS.
Consider another factor for example - the progression of the game from beginning of 6th ed to end of 8th ed.

6th ed drops and in the beginning it was focused on blocks of troops trying to out-maneuver each other for advantage.
Characters and monsters (largely) could not fight against a fully-ranked up unit and were meant to be support pieces.
"Max" unit sizes were like 16 for elite infantry and 20? for hordes - there was usually little advantage to going over that size or peole might add one extra row in case of casualties from bows - that's also what came in the box - so one box = one unit for about $30 or so?
By the end of 6th ed characters and monsters of the top armies were killing machines. Anything other than the most elite infantry was at-best ablative wounds, and at worst a slow & largely irrelevant unit you had to take to fill "The core tax" before you maxed out on highly mobile and killy cavalry and characters.

7th Edition was just a revised 6th ed that started from a higher power baseline.
Infantry units were getting larger in order to keep them alive long enough to see combat.
Infantry box prices start rising and by the end of 7th ed they started to pull boxes and repackage as 10-man units with only a partial decrease in price - so like a stealth price rise.

8th Edition promised to make Infantry the focus of the game again except they didn't scale the game back they simply gave bonuses to infantry for being in massive Horde formations.
They made them more mobile, made terrain less difficult and ultimately removed a lot of the maneuvering and strategy that made Fantasy unique from 40k.
The 10-man unit boxes become the norm along. Lots of new kits were made with typical GW details & bling (people can argue if some were too detailed) along with a higher and higher price. I think the pinnacle became the new Chaos Forsaken which reached an insane (at the time) price of $50 for 10 guys and you could easily run 2 units of 20 or 1 Horde unit of 40 - so $200 to make one unit that wasn't even a big part of your army.
Also, since they didn't want huge units to become TOO powerful so they had all the spells in 8th ed that could potentially obliterate an entire unit.
At the same time we saw Warmachine becoming very popular almost as the antitheses of everything WFB had become - lower start-up cost, smaller self-contained units that were valuable on the table, emphasis on precise movement etc. Also a very active company that ran leagues and tournaments.

I can see how all those factors and more led into the decline of WFB.
If you're looking at it as a company and you know the only way to fix it is burn it down and start again you might as well burn it down and go in another direction and also solve some IP issues and throw the alternative miniature market for a loop.

However I would say almost no one was giving GW any money. They were playing a ton, but no one was giving GW a cent.

Which is how we end up here. This situation was endemic to the WFB side of things. On a personal, admittedly biased level, I believe we will see a repeat of the situation if GW will go for anything more ambitious than a few 2-player boxed sets. The very nature of WFB encouraged people to not buy models, because unit filler made out of terrain pieces or modelling rocks worked just as fine.

WHFB was not making money. The second hand market was too big and, after GW stopped supporting tournaments, the restriction of using GW models was gone so smaller companies *cough* Mantic *cough* were able to sell alternatives cheaper that also cut int GW sales.

6th edition was the edition I started in and, to this day, remains my favorite and most balanced system. However let's not pretend it did not have problems. (How many power dice could a Tzeentch Chaos army bring to the table? was it 21 or 24?)

7th edition fixed a bunch of problems with 6th but the Army books killed that edition HARD. I was a tournament players during 7th edition and unless you brought Dark Elves, Vampires or Chaos Daemons don't expect to rank anywhere near the top. (there were exceptions like my Empire War Altar/Steam tank I ran once in a tournament and managed to get 3rd...every other list I brought put me on the bottom tables)

GW refusing to FAQ or Errata any of those army books led to 8th edition which tried to fix the army book issue with the core rules. The fix that edition provided can be boiled down to "Buy more minis and Horde your way to victory!" Which, while I enjoyed, was clearly a cynical ploy to sell more models.

If WHFB comes back it will not at all be like anything we've seen from 6th to 8th....or even 9th age (which I do enjoy as well).

 kodos wrote:
I am still surprised that the main argument against a game that makes clear that you can use whatever miniatures you like, are the bad models

QFT. There's also a disconnect reading tweets by Games Workshop fan boys gaking on Mantic's minis, when GW makes the best plastic kits in the industry. There is no competition, even if there are some sci-fi (Maelstrom's Edge?) and fantasy (Shieldwolf, Mantic) who are getting closer. Though I will say GW has fething terrible resin compared to the boutique resin you can get for often lower prices, except we're supposed to ignore that while trashing Mantic for daring to compete with the Dub.

Re: WHFB's decline, I'll echo Auticus on the lack of new stuff during 8E. It very much felt like armies were largely given a new book, a new monstrous cavalry unit, a new monster and a new hero to buy, and that was mostly it - and buy it they did, because you gotta have your book and because those few new models were often Obviously Good and instantly picked up by the meta. But there wasn't much else to invest in, since we all already had armies and the meta was stagnating pretty hard there at the End Times.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
I don't know how typical I am but I bought tons of WHFB minis, that I used for 40k. I loved the fluff, got tons of the novels, but the game never interested me at all.

Squares.

Paint tons of models so they can stand in squares and die in order.

Even CHAOS marches around in squares.

Now a return of Mordheim, that would get me to open my wallet.

I also bought a ton of fantasy miniatures for conversions or merely the pleasure of having them. I have almost every BL novel printed up to 2017, and many printed later. I bought 3 editions worth of army books for the fluff. I never bought minis second hand because I always wanted all the bits. Never played a single game. I know others in a similar situation.

By the end, the combination of higher prices and fewer posing options made the newer miniatures less attractive to me, and my purchasing slowed way down. I started buying from other companies, including Mantic. I've got hundreds of Mantic miniatures that I bought for less than the cost one modern GW boxed set. Thanks to Mantic, Northstar, Warlord, Wargames Factory, and others, my internalized measure for value-per-dollar has been recalibrated to the point that I doubt I could ever justify buying a lot of GW minis again. WHFB was infamous for requiring huge blocks of pricey, samey models for very little benefit. I just can't see this working out unless GW changes something drastically.

 Alex Kolodotschko wrote:
The Perry Twins leaving in 2014 probably didn't help.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_and_Michael_Perry
They were probably a very grounding influence on the studio.
After them leaving we started to get necrosphinx, snake surfers and other highly stupid stuff

You mean highly interesting stuff. No one was buying Tomb Kings because they loved the rank and file skeletons.

 Boss Salvage wrote:
Though I will say GW has fething terrible resin compared to the boutique resin you can get for often lower prices, except we're supposed to ignore that while trashing Mantic for daring to compete with the Dub.

I don't think anyone ignored how bad Finecast was when its much hyped launch fell flat. Its improved I'm told, but its forever tainted in my mind and I wouldn't touch a GW Finecast mini with 4 editions of those red WHFB whippy measuring sticks taped together. And I don't believe I'm alone.

 Boss Salvage wrote:

Re: WHFB's decline, I'll echo Auticus on the lack of new stuff during 8E. It very much felt like armies were largely given a new book, a new monstrous cavalry unit, a new monster and a new hero to buy, and that was mostly it - and buy it they did, because you gotta have your book and because those few new models were often Obviously Good and instantly picked up by the meta. But there wasn't much else to invest in, since we all already had armies and the meta was stagnating pretty hard there at the End Times.

Well those were new and no one had anything like that previously so, yeah, people bought them. Regular rank and file though? Well I have my metal Greatswords I bought during 6th edition, no way I'm buying a 10 man box of plastic Goldswords for the same price as metal models.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
WHFB was not selling. GW tried a bunch of stuff gamers said they wanted to get it to sell. "We want supplements and different ways to play!

Blood in the Badlands
Triumph and Treachery
Storm of Magic
Mighty Empires

Still didn't sell. I mean I was upset when GW killed WHFB and gave us AoS, But given just HOW MANY GAMES THERE ARE OMG JESUS GUYS, I got over it pretty fast.

Frankly, the cost of getting into the game was too big and, frankly, the culture of wargaming had been moving away from rank 'n flank for awhile. Skirmish games were, and still are, where the gaming culture is at.


Also, on a semi-related note

What the hell are people talking about "bad models" with Mantic? Like, yeah 5 years ago I would agree with you that the only minis they produce worth a damn are the Ghouls and Zombies.

Have you seen them recently? All the old stuff that looked like ass has completely been revamped. And everything else is jut straight up their own style for the world they created whidch I would hardly call "bad", Just different.

Your post literally reads like - heh Gamers killed WFB with their bad decisions, also Gamers are making the correct decision to play skirmish games.

Yes it's true some (lots?) of WFB wanted a great comprehensive campaign system. There's a reason why General's Compendium is still sought after today. Blood in the Badlands was not it. It was basically a series of White Dwarf articles bundled in a hardcover. It was just some random stories and ideas for playing themed games in the badlands and some examples of the studio games.

Mighty Empires absolutely sold for the tiles for sure - it also had a pretty half-baked campaign system.

Storm of Magic? Who the fudge was asking for that? Who looked at the state of WFB and said, "Gee I wish every army could summon OP monsters forcing me to buy multiple kits from armies I don't own"
Who looked at the 8th ed magic phase and said - we should kick this up a notch!? Nobody - This was another blatant attempt to make a WFB apocalypse game and soak the whales for $.

Triumph and Treachery I actually don't know that one which means it came out after everyone in my area had given up on 8th.

GW was like the Monkey's Paw of rules designers:
We want infantry to be more relevant - Ok here's unbreakable 50-man hordes!
We want a way to limit magic so it's not so consistent and good for some armies - Ok roll randomly sometimes you do nothing, sometimes you delete a unit.
We want a way to deal with all these monsters - Ok here's an even bigger more ridiculous monster for your army!

Why would gamers destroy WFB?

Edit - I think there is room for all kinds of systems - I just don't like this idea that Rank and Flank is somehow inherently flawed. I.e. Gamers were moving toward smaller skirmish games precisely because of the design and rules decisions GW made from begining of 6th ed to downfall of WFB.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
Well those were new and no one had anything like that previously so, yeah, people bought them. Regular rank and file though? Well I have my metal Greatswords I bought during 6th edition, no way I'm buying a 10 man box of plastic Goldswords for the same price as metal models.

I actually think you made my point better, that when there was a more comprehensive release for WHFB, vets didn't buy it because they already had it (I also remember goldswords costing more than the metals!) Mine was more about GW only releasing Things That You Had to Buy to Be Competitive and little else interesting or foundational - i.e. updated books and meta-breakingly great MC or monsters. That's pretty obnoxious when you're not interested in riding the meta's wave of min/max same-ness (he said looking directly at 40k's trash fire). Also as a person who tried to get multiple newbies into WHFB and didn't have a ton of success: wow that game was hard to start from scratch. I'm finding KOW easier (you can access cool stuff faster + easier rules + doesn't cost $$$$) but RNF fantasy without any hobby experience is plain weird.

FWIW, I also think the current way GW has been rebooting legacy WHFB armies into AOS - look particularly at the Ogres, with a single new hero, a piece of terrain, a hardback book - and doing the marine supplements - a single new hero, an upgrade sprue, a hardback book (that requires a marine book) - is highly indicative of how WHOW is going to be handled. Minimum investment, token shiny minis for marketing purposes, lots of rehashing old sprues, new hardback books. A part of me hopes they step sideways and do something entirely different, however we've seen a lot of savvy low-investment, minimum-viable-product style decisions of late, so I have to suspect the same, particularly for a line that threatens to directly compete with AOS.

Cryptek of Awesome wrote:

Your post literally reads like - heh Gamers killed WFB with their bad decisions, also Gamers are making the correct decision to play skirmish games.

Gamers did kill WHFB by virtue of the fact that they didn't buy anything.

And yes, the culture of wargaming was slowly moving towards skirmish games and away from rank n' flank for awhile. The investment needed to put together an army was huge and expensive to get what were essentially wound markers. Added to the fact GW's way of balancing cheap troops vs Elite troops was "Horde formation" meant that it got even more expensive and untenable for everyone except veteran players who already had armies going back to 4th-5th edition.

I mean if you don't believe me just take a look at the shear number of Skirmish games out there

Warhammer 40k
Age of Sigmar
Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game
Warmachine/Hordes
This is Not a Test
Rangers of Shadow Deep
Relic Blade
Killteam
Infinity
Batman Miniature Game
Monsterpocalypse
The Walking Dead: All Out War
Star War Legion
Frostgrave
Malifaux
Bushido
Last Days: Zombie Apocalypse

Those are the ones just off the top of my head. Now Rank and Flank Games?

Kings of War
A Song of Ice and Fire
Legacy Warhammer Fantasy Battle (Pick any editiion)
The 9th Age

The investment to play skirmish is much easier to get into then games like WHFB. Part of the reason that AoS did have success after they finally added points is because it was friendlier to just buy a single box of anything and it was a workable unit. If I buy a box of lets say Freeguild Guard I can use it right away and it is viable. in WHFB? I'd need to buy 3 more to even have a chance to have a unit that will perform on the table.

There is a lot of other, cheaper options for entertainment out there. If a wargame wants to compete it needs to be priced accordingly. Warhammer Fantasy, by the way it was designed, did not allow for that.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

Gamers did kill WHFB by virtue of the fact that they didn't buy anything.

And then End Times happened, and gamers bought all the things. Suggesting that the real problem prior to that point wasn't gamers not buying, but GW not offering what gamers wanted to buy.

 insaniak wrote:

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

Gamers did kill WHFB by virtue of the fact that they didn't buy anything.

And then End Times happened, and gamers bought all the things. Suggesting that the real problem prior to that point wasn't gamers not buying, but GW not offering what gamers wanted to buy.

They bought books, not models.
Given that GW is a model making company and not a publisher its easy to see how that wasn't quite enough to save WHFB.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

I mean if you don't believe me just take a look at the shear number of Skirmish games out there

Warhammer 40k
Age of Sigmar
Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game
Warmachine/Hordes

If you're going to make that argument at least know what a skirmish game is. Those four are clearly not.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

I mean if you don't believe me just take a look at the shear number of Skirmish games out there

Warhammer 40k
Age of Sigmar
Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game
Warmachine/Hordes

If you're going to make that argument at least know what a skirmish game is. Those four are clearly not.

At the right point value yes they are. And if they are not skirmish then what are they? Cus I am seeing neither a rank nor a flank.

Company level wargames. A skirmish game would have like 10-15 or so models per side max, like Malifaux or Infinity. 40k et al are played at a larger scale and are not skirmish games.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

They bought books, not models.
Given that GW is a model making company and not a publisher its easy to see how that wasn't quite enough to save WHFB.

The models released for End Times were everywhere online. Clearly someone was buying them.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:

Gamers did kill WHFB by virtue of the fact that they didn't buy anything.

And then End Times happened, and gamers bought all the things. Suggesting that the real problem prior to that point wasn't gamers not buying, but GW not offering what gamers wanted to buy.

They bought books, not models.
Given that GW is a model making company and not a publisher its easy to see how that wasn't quite enough to save WHFB.

Still the end times proved that there was a community willing to spend if enough effort was put.

They lowballed the Nagash so much they shipped for a while in blank boxes. ET books sold out and eventually you could only buy the hardbacks on GW site (dick move to indie FLGS). A lot of the ET kits sold immensely well (morghasts, the skaven release)...

By that time it was probably too far to reverse course though.

 kodos wrote:

Elbows wrote:Mantic may have missed its chance. They've always been held back by terrible models.

Overread wrote:The problem Mantic has isn't just the quality of sculpt its the whole design ethos of them.

I am still surprised that the main argument against a game that makes clear that you can use whatever miniatures you like, are the bad models

I don't believe I said a single thing about "the game". I was commenting on Mantic's inability to capitalize on the demise of their primary opposition. Please read a response more thoroughly next time.

 ChargerIIC wrote:
The problem with WHFB hasn't changed. WHFB players are great at making a lot of noise but almost always fail to actually put money on the table to support the hobby. They bought thier models in 1978 or got them second hand and they are done ever buying more. The fanbase is split between those who prefer house-ruling and those who insist on only using their favorite edition. There's no significant base to make a profit from. What little there was is playing Age of Sigmar. ...

Well said.

Agree with many others that WHFB's demise was helped along its way by players who had existing armies and who never planned on buying anything retail.
That's a legitimate position to take but a silly one if you want to hope that a game stays in print/supported.

 privateer4hire wrote:

Agree with many others that WHFB's demise was helped along its way by players who had existing armies and who never planned on buying anything retail.
That's a legitimate position to take but a silly one if you want to hope that a game stays in print/supported.

I'm perplexed as to how that's the player's problem. A company can't expect customers to keep buying for the sole purpose of keeping them in business. It's up to the company to give their customers a reason to keep buying. They tried to do that by pushing for larger armies, larger and more powerful models, and larger unit sizes... if customers didn't buy more as a result, that's not a failing of the customer, it's a failing of that business model.