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Advertisement to who? Wargame enthusiasts or people that are unconnected to the hobby?

If GW is sponsoring the event anyway then a major event using only GW terrain is a win for GW. It's "costing" them nothing more than normal sponsoring; whilst at the same time it is advertising to the gaming market.

It's subtle advertising and sure many might not change, but some will. It also helps normalise the idea of using GW terrain over home made or 3rd party. The more you can drive that point home into communities the more accepting they are of buying GW terrain.



GW uses other things too - Warcry is a fantastic way to help push sales of terrain kits by having a random terrain generator based on cards in the pack for the game. It makes buying the terrain like buying a functional part of the game much like models to the average gamer. It's no longer just "scenery" its part of the game mechanics itself closer to the models. Same as how they've used faction terrain.

The fact these missions "forcing" players to bring their terrain is actually a game supplement defeats the "tin hat conspiracy theory", IMHO.

If GW wanted to do such an evil scheme, they would have put it in the core rules. That's the best way to "force" players into thinking they must bring GW terrain to their game.

While I do believe it's intentionnal, I don't think it's really a scheme to cut 3rd manufacturers out ot tournaments. It's just a set of rules ready to use and suggesting another way to organize tournaments for organizers who struggle to gather enough terrain. And of course GW advertises bringing GW terrain to the tables...they're selling these, in the end. Just like other manufacturers tend to put their own products on the front line rather than what's sold by their rivals.

also the terrain rules are very modular, as compared to 8th edition which had minimal rules for terrain in general but gave special rules to each GW specific peice of terrain

The way I see it is super simple. Terrain has long been the “second class citizen” of miniatures gaming product. And the more you think about it, the less sense that makes.

In the past, you’d generally only see a focus on beautiful, sophisticated terrain as exhibitions at major events. Outside of that, terrain was mostly DIY, pretty basic, and something that only a small percentage of players put much time and effort into. The store/club, as a hub for pick-up and competitive play, normalized this lack of proportion and it just became an assumption that most players expected to spend money and time on figures and NOT on terrain.

I see this as an unfortunate mistake that can be and needs to be corrected. Terrain is integral to miniatures gaming. But as long as it is conceived of as a subniche product, there isn’t strong incentive to spend a ton of resources bringing it to market. For a number of reasons I won’t delve into (unless someone really wants to get into it), the “second class” status of terrain has been breaking apart over the last ten years or so. But not coincidentally it tends to persist around pick up and competitive gaming. So GW is encouraging that segment of their customer base to value terrain more equally to figures.

 Manchu wrote:
The way I see it is super simple. Terrain has long been the “second class citizen” of miniatures gaming product. And the more you think about it, the less sense that makes.

In the past, you’d generally only see a focus on beautiful, sophisticated terrain as exhibitions at major events. Outside of that, terrain was mostly DIY, pretty basic, and something that only a small percentage of players put much time and effort into. The store/club, as a hub for pick-up and competitive play, normalized this lack of proportion and it just became an assumption that most players expected to spend money and time on figures and NOT on terrain.

I see this as an unfortunate mistake that can be and needs to be corrected. Terrain is integral to miniatures gaming. But as long as it is conceived of as a subniche product, there isn’t strong incentive to spend a ton of resources bringing it to market. For a number of reasons I won’t delve into (unless someone really wants to get into it), the “second class” status of terrain has been breaking apart over the last ten years or so. But not coincidentally it tends to persist around pick up and competitive gaming. So GW is encouraging that segment of their customer base to value terrain more equally to figures.

The big breakdown here is that the competitive crowd doesn't really get a choice between investing in figures or investing in terrain. A competitive player especially can't just buy less models and more terrain because he needs the correct models to be competitive. By emphasizing terrain, that segment of the playerbase is forced to either increase what is likely already a very significant investment; or not play the game in a the way that they enjoy.

It'd be like if you were mostly focused on the painting part of the hobby, if you had to buy a special GW plynth in order for paint to stick to your models

In all fairness though, if everyone brought even just 3 pieces of terrain, (that's 6 per table total) it would make the boards much fuller.

Add in the fact that you set up terrain before anything else and before you know what table edge you get and you can see how it may not actually be an issue.

Also it may just be a case of you have 2 pieces of dense cover and 1 piece of Obscuring, bam set up the board and be done.

As I understand it, the mission pack in question does not replace the GT mission pack but rather is an additional resource. So isn’t it premature to worry about pricing out players? And is pricing out players even a coherent worry? Competitive play itself already prices out players. There’s always going to be a straw that breaks the camel’s back for a given individual. But as a group, people committed to organized play don’t seem especially cost sensitive.

I think the objection of transporting terrain is a better one than additional spend.

EDIT: Ugh, I don’t even want to get involved in a discussion about the cost of playing miniatures games. The underlying issue is, if you want to play miniatures games then you need to understand that terrain is just as integral to that goal as figures.

 Manchu wrote:
Terrain has long been the “second class citizen” of miniatures gaming product.

Not under my roof it isn't!

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
Terrain has long been the “second class citizen” of miniatures gaming product.

Not under my roof it isn't!

How's the building and painting coming along, dude?

Slower than I'd like...

 Overread wrote:
This is more likely going to be a "major event" thing rather than your local scene club doing a tournament weekend. It's going to be big name tournaments that GW might well be sponsoring so the tournament might well get terrain on the cheap. It's advertising for GW and getting boons of their own. This might be staff attending; doing talks; authors from BL signing books; a sales booth; place in the WD magazine (before and after) and on the community website (before and after) etc... Heck get big enough and a twitch live stream on the GW stream channel.

Gt20 pack is more likely to be major event thing than this one.