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http://www.manticgames.com/free-rules.html While I have not played Warpath in either version (skirmish or big battle), I have played Kings of War as a replacement for WHFB and enjoyed it. Assuming you have players in your area* willing to give non-GW games a chance, this might be a suitable alternate.

*In my area during the 90s, people adhered to GW games fanatically and would not play any thing else, even if you supplied the necessary materials.

Blastaar wrote:
For starters, I did play 40k, from the tail end of 5th to a few months before the announcement of 8th. 7th made me quit, 8th keeps me away. I still have my Dark Angels, WIP Eldar, and other GW minis I picked up for various reasons, whether to paint or for in-store events, and would very much like to play with them again someday, if 40k ever becomes a game I would enjoy again. And you know what? I have had a lot of lousy games of 40k. Silly noob me thought he would build his army in a way that represents how they work in the fluff; a couple tac squads, some scouts, devs, a few termies and bikes for support, acquired and painted very slowly over the years. Then he learned that was a stupid thing to do, if he wanted to enjoy playing. Not even winning, but having great games and a shot at winning. But being a student, he was (and is) strapped for cash, so he couldn't and can't afford to replace an existing army because he "built it wrong," nor does he think he should have to, just to enjoy the game. I pay attention with the slim hope that, maybe, I will see signs moving in that direction. Yes, I criticize GW. There is an awful lot that they do worth criticizing, many things they could do better if they chose to, and ignoring that doesn't contribute to improving the game. I understand the desire to talk about the thing you like and enjoy it. That's why I'm here, too. If I didn't like 40k in some way I wouldn't have bothered making an account. But if you want the good, the bad needs to be acknowledged, too. Better games that are fun to play is what we all want, isn't it?

I really don't see it as over saturation.

They are making some smart moves and doing it in small steps.

Take Kill Team for example. It appears they are releasing a lot of stuff for it very quickly but the size of each product release is actually not that big.

We are also comparing GW(now) to GW(then). GW(then) would just drop something on to the market after a few months/years and let it sink or swim, with little to no follow up support either way.

Yup, it's just smart, this is what those of us who were really critical of GW during the Kirby years insisted would be the way back for the company and lo & behold...

I look at it this way. Right now, GW are producing a main fantasy game I actively dislike, and are taking 40K in a direction I have no appreciation for, not to mention that frankly I'm still somewhat annoyed by how they ended WHFB even after several years.

And yet they're still getting a majority of my hobby money, because unlike in the Dark Times under Kirby for every move the company makes that I find annoying or unappealing, they make three more that I like and find interesting. AT, N17(models, until they compile the rules into a single reasonably priced volume), Shadespire(models that fit with the WHF aesthetic, for Mordheim), the Heresy(admittedly not going great at the moment), Primaris(insofar as they provide an easy armature for resculpting into truescale Proper Marines in classic marks of armour), and terrain. Plus there's still more to look forward to; the rumoured return of BFG, expansion of Necromunda as a setting, Sisters of Battle finally getting their due, more boxed games(that 40K Quest in particular) etc.

If GW were "focusing on their core lines" right now, they wouldn't be getting a penny from me. Instead, I've dialled back what I'd planned to be a major investment into FFG's Star Wars systems to a modest foray into Legion alone and dropped several planned videogame purchases and funnelled all of that into GW spending, because even though in my view they're producing pretty rubbish rules and fluff for the "core lines", they have the savvy to continue to offer me ways to interact with their IPs that don't involve dealing with that.

 Whirlwind wrote:

Specialist Games will have the same problem that it had previously. Eventually people will drift away; it happened before and will happen again. GW needs knew games to keep people interested once these games have filled the niche. So most recent games all have a base somewhere else. Now they have to start designing things from scratch this is going to be much harder to do and these will not have the same level 'misty eyed' loyalty given to them from former times. This is going to be much harder to do to keep trying to oversaturate the market in the same way.

Or do they? BB players seems to not have drifted away seeing how popular 3rd party models became after GW dropped so demand clearly was there even after GW dropped and epic itself sold out 400% more than GW expected itself to sell(and I very much doubt GW would have greenlighted project and new models if they expected it to not be profitable so that extra sales is straight profit)...GW didn't kill off specialist games because they sold too little. You could even arque GW dropped them off because they sold TOO WELL and GW was worrying they start to compete with FB and 40k.

And BTW reverse is also true. I'm about to reach oversaturation with 40k having pretty much enough to keep me happy with 40k apart from completely new units for orks(the buggies) which won't be steady stream forever. No interest whatsoever for the AOS. So how GW will keep getting money from me? Well Adeptus Titanicus is currently preeeetty darn good candinate to keep me busy enough for a while. If they then expand it to other races or heaven forbid epic proper I'm in for years of income etc...

So basically without other games than AOS/40k GW would be out of my money because they wouldn't produce anything I want anymore. There's only so much of any one game you can sell to one player. Helps thus to have multiple games!

 ProtoClone wrote:
I really don't see it as over saturation.

They are making some smart moves and doing it in small steps.

Take Kill Team for example. It appears they are releasing a lot of stuff for it very quickly but the size of each product release is actually not that big.

Over-saturation isn't specifically about the number of games you are releasing, it's whether the company is 'losing' potential income on a product because it is releasing new products so fast that the potential income on an older product is not achieved. If that continues to all products then you are operating an inefficient business model which may result in underlying problems later on if the company invest high capital investment (which GW are doing) and then that release rate starts to 'fatigue' people. An earlier poster already highlighted this as an issue.

For example lets suppose 'Timmy' has £100 per month to spend on GW 'luxury' products

They like Kill Team, Adeptus Mechanicus and Blood Bowl.

Over 4 months GW release £700 of products that Timmy would like to buy

Timmy hence can't afford all of these products so he buys Kill Team and Blood Bowl. Timmy decides to buy Adeptus Mechanicus in months 5-8

However in months 5-8 GW release the new game Gorkamorka and more Kill Team and more Blood Bowl and more Adeptus Mechanicus expansions. Combined these would cost another £900

Timmy still can't afford more than £400 so he buys Blood Bowl and Kill Team again. Timmy decides to defer Gorkamorka and AM purchases again (and the latter is now even more expensive to catch up on).

Rinse and repeat. (To note you can replace money with painting time, gaming time, modelling time and so forth).

The problem here in this example is that GW have oversaturated the market. If GW slowed down the release schedule then Timmy is able to purchase all of the products and they *all* make additional income over a longer timeframe. The release schedule is slower but you are maximising the capital invesment which makes the company overall more healthy. Trying to over expand too quickly is the classic case of expand too quickly and assume that the bad times before won't happen again. This can precede a huge problem when the bad times do roll around again and the capital investment becomes a burden. Really what you want is an output that just exceeds the overall demand because that encourages more spend rather than defering of spend which then never happens.

Over saturation of the market really only works when you want to drive your competitors out of business by flooding the market with cheaper mass market products that your competitors can't compete with. However GW have expensive products and generally their competitors are cheaper.

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tneva82 wrote:


Or do they? BB players seems to not have drifted away seeing how popular 3rd party models became after GW dropped so demand clearly was there even after GW dropped and epic itself sold out 400% more than GW expected itself to sell(and I very much doubt GW would have greenlighted project and new models if they expected it to not be profitable so that extra sales is straight profit)...GW didn't kill off specialist games because they sold too little. You could even arque GW dropped them off because they sold TOO WELL and GW was worrying they start to compete with FB and 40k.

Then why did GW stop producing it? And there's a reason. GW is a bigger company and needs a larger player base. Blood Bowl didn't generate enough of a player base after a period of time from release to keep it sustainable for GW (you only need 16 models or so). For smaller companies with smaller overheads and smaller playerbase is still viable and a lower number of newer players picking it up.

Generally new games have maximum players at the start and then tend to move towards a slightly declining plateau of players. This includes older players leaving and newer players joining. The initial numbers isn't the issue, it's whether the long term investment is reasonable for that plateau.

 Whirlwind wrote:
Then why did GW stop producing it? And there's a reason. GW is a bigger company and needs a larger player base. Blood Bowl didn't generate enough of a player base after a period of time from release to keep it sustainable for GW (you only need 16 models or so). For smaller companies with smaller overheads and smaller playerbase is still viable and a lower number of newer players picking it up.

Generally new games have maximum players at the start and then tend to move towards a slightly declining plateau of players. This includes older players leaving and newer players joining. The initial numbers isn't the issue, it's whether the long term investment is reasonable for that plateau.

Simple. GW decided "if we stop epic then 100% of money that goes to there goes to 40k instead as the 2 games are competing. Thus we can get same income but without having to bother with creating models and rules for 2 game!"

Braindead idea as not everybody is interested in 40k but would be interested in epic but hey we are talking "we don't need to do marketing research" Kirby or "our customers aren't interested in rules, just models" Kirby. They stopped it because they made stupid mistake because they had total fool as CEO.

You say 16 models but BB players clearly buy more than 16 models seeing how much people buy 3rd party teams...BB market is big enough to sustain more than 1 company yet can't be profitable with GW? Hahahaha. Keep in mind GW's fixed expenses aren't radically affected by BB/epic/whatever as most of that goes to support FB/40k and would be there whether BB etc exists or not. Those games might not bring amounts FB/40k did but then again neither did they require as much support either.

Market was there, GW just assumed that market switches 100% to FB&40k if their favourite games are canned. Surprise surprise it did not. Which anybody who would do marketing research would have been able to predict but hey market research is for wimps. No need for GW to do that as their customers after all are just interested in models so no need to do anything but release more FB/40k models and they are bought in droves!

...why then did GW's profits and sales take a huge nosedive under Kirby...Maybe Kirby's ideas weren't such an accurate after all...And he's the one who killed off specialist games as he thought they and FB/40k are sharing identical market so are just eating up each other.

Whirwind - the thing is GW isn't looking just at Little Timmy. GW is instead looking at Timmy, Tom, Tanya, Tina and Dave. So sure Timmy can't afford everything on his own, but some of hte others will pick and choose different options and thus all the products see some home with at least two or more of them.

Now that's just one group - each group area will often focus on a select number of games, some clubs will have big memberships and have more game variety, others will be smaller and some might even just be one or two games.

I think the big attitude shift is from seeing products as short term profit spikes into long term steady sales. Under Kirby there was clearly a heavy and growing bias for the "big launch". All marketing pushing for a single big launch event every few months that generated a big spike of sales; problem was specialist or short term game spikes were likely much smaller than marine or just 40K spikes. So GW started focusing more and more on those BIG spikes - less Xenos- less Fantasy - less specialist games. Chasing the big fish at the cost of all the smaller fish.

GW now appears far more sensible in that sure they have a big release, but they are not expecting everyone to leap on board then - they expect many, but they are also - I think - happier to enjoy solid steadier sales. A smoother running series of sales rather than big spikes followed by big drops.

tneva82 wrote:

You say 16 models but BB players clearly buy more than 16 models seeing how much people buy 3rd party teams...BB market is big enough to sustain more than 1 company yet can't be profitable with GW?

A BB team caps out at 16 models... If you want one team only, you can very well get by forever with 16 models. People buying third party teams are people either A) buying teams GW don't make (the biggest 2 third party sellers are Lizardmen and Undead) B) buying extra positionals GW don't sell (Goblin secret weapons) or C) buying teams that they prefer the look of over GW (largely only the case with Greebo Dark Elves). As for sustaining companies and profit, its all about economies of scale. The third party BB stuff are very small outfits, not the multi million dollar company GW is. To run their business they simply don't need to sell as high a volume, they don't need fancy packaging for store shelves, and they don't need to pay for stores.

In terms of long term keeping players, GW really are forced to promote buying of new teams, and players sticking to one loses them a serious amount of money long term. Even if they sell someone a team box, team booster (for those that have one), cheerleaders, all star player options, cards, dice and a special pitch (a significant investment), if people only do that once sales will absolutely plateau. It's before my time, but I'd hazard a guess and say this is very much what happened to GW when they dropped the line previously. When everyone already has all their teams, and new blood is being funnelled into 40k and WHFB, the game naturally stagnates. When sales stop, or at least don't grow, there's no incentive for GW to keep the line going, because as far as they know who plays it? Sales are gone, so obviously the players are gone too. Now that they actually look at the community they've seen that isn't the case, and they're now investing in getting the line to where it should've been a long time ago. Still snails pace, and the FW expansions are extortionate now, but its a start

On Bloodbowl.....

I think part of the issue is that GW stopped producing new models for it. Whether you need 16 or 150 models for a game, the second you stop releasing new stuff, you've just hamstring yourself.

Which is why I'm not entirely objecting to how they're handling Necromunda. The execution could be improved, certainly. But I find the content in the Gang War books worth it, and it does mean GW get a constant stream of sales, compared to one big boost by releasing everything at once.

Whether it'll still be getting this level of support in three years, I can only hope! It may, it may not. Only time will tell.

 Rygnan wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

You say 16 models but BB players clearly buy more than 16 models seeing how much people buy 3rd party teams...BB market is big enough to sustain more than 1 company yet can't be profitable with GW?

A BB team caps out at 16 models... If you want one team only, you can very well get by forever with 16 models. People buying third party teams are people either A) buying teams GW don't make (the biggest 2 third party sellers are Lizardmen and Undead) B) buying extra positionals GW don't sell (Goblin secret weapons) or C) buying teams that they prefer the look of over GW (largely only the case with Greebo Dark Elves). As for sustaining companies and profit, its all about economies of scale. The third party BB stuff are very small outfits, not the multi million dollar company GW is. To run their business they simply don't need to sell as high a volume, they don't need fancy packaging for store shelves, and they don't need to pay for stores.

In terms of long term keeping players, GW really are forced to promote buying of new teams, and players sticking to one loses them a serious amount of money long term. Even if they sell someone a team box, team booster (for those that have one), cheerleaders, all star player options, cards, dice and a special pitch (a significant investment), if people only do that once sales will absolutely plateau. It's before my time, but I'd hazard a guess and say this is very much what happened to GW when they dropped the line previously. When everyone already has all their teams, and new blood is being funnelled into 40k and WHFB, the game naturally stagnates. When sales stop, or at least don't grow, there's no incentive for GW to keep the line going, because as far as they know who plays it? Sales are gone, so obviously the players are gone too. Now that they actually look at the community they've seen that isn't the case, and they're now investing in getting the line to where it should've been a long time ago. Still snails pace, and the FW expansions are extortionate now, but its a start

Yes you CAN get by with just 16 models. There's also cap in 40k's. But as people's purchace patterns show they DON'T stop at 16 models. People buy more of them.

Yup. Hence my point that you need to keep up releases.

Only needing 16 models doesn't mean us Nerds won't buy more. Alternative sculpts are always welcome (poses, gender, I'd buy them for variety, and to make sure each team mate is a unique sculpt). Cheerleaders, Coaching Staff, Refs, Big Guys, even additional pitches all could've been done during BB's last run - but they didn't. That naturally strangles sales.

We're getting those things now. From team booster blisters (long time coming on those. Arguably too long), resin upgrades to change the look of the plastic team, Star Players, pitches, dice. Lots of stuff which we don't need, but most will certainly want.

Ditto Necromunda. Weapons packs are a must (even if they're hand flamer heavy!), the Brutes, Ambots etc are all nice little additions, and further sales waiting to happen. This is especially important in a limited game scale, but background sandbox game. Give us stuff to populate that sandbox with. The more you offer, the more reason I have to remain time invested in the game.

That's where they went wrong last time. They just stopped offering new stuff - so there was less reason to buy.

Very few people stop at a single small force. Most people will go for variety in terms of other characters or other teams. The wall is only really hit once you've got enough of everything (quite easy to do in old BB).

Frostgrave is capped at 12 models, Malifaux is normally about 6-10. Doesn't mean I don't have a good hundred models and growing between them.

 Whirlwind wrote:

Over-saturation isn't specifically about the number of games you are releasing, it's whether the company is 'losing' potential income on a product because it is releasing new products so fast that the potential income on an older product is not achieved. If that continues to all products then you are operating an inefficient business model which may result in underlying problems later on if the company invest high capital investment (which GW are doing) and then that release rate starts to 'fatigue' people. An earlier poster already highlighted this as an issue.

For example lets suppose 'Timmy' has £100 per month to spend on GW 'luxury' products

They like Kill Team, Adeptus Mechanicus and Blood Bowl.

Over 4 months GW release £700 of products that Timmy would like to buy

Timmy hence can't afford all of these products so he buys Kill Team and Blood Bowl. Timmy decides to buy Adeptus Mechanicus in months 5-8

However in months 5-8 GW release the new game Gorkamorka and more Kill Team and more Blood Bowl and more Adeptus Mechanicus expansions. Combined these would cost another £900

Timmy still can't afford more than £400 so he buys Blood Bowl and Kill Team again. Timmy decides to defer Gorkamorka and AM purchases again (and the latter is now even more expensive to catch up on).

Rinse and repeat. (To note you can replace money with painting time, gaming time, modelling time and so forth).

The problem here in this example is that GW have oversaturated the market. If GW slowed down the release schedule then Timmy is able to purchase all of the products and they *all* make additional income over a longer timeframe. The release schedule is slower but you are maximising the capital invesment which makes the company overall more healthy. Trying to over expand too quickly is the classic case of expand too quickly and assume that the bad times before won't happen again. This can precede a huge problem when the bad times do roll around again and the capital investment becomes a burden. Really what you want is an output that just exceeds the overall demand because that encourages more spend rather than defering of spend which then never happens.

Over saturation of the market really only works when you want to drive your competitors out of business by flooding the market with cheaper mass market products that your competitors can't compete with. However GW have expensive products and generally their competitors are cheaper.

But have they really oversaturated the market in your example? Sure, Timmy can't buy everything he'd like to, but let's say:

- Bob is absolutely loaded and buys everything GW release. If GW cut down to the number of releases that Timmy can afford (e.g. in this example keeping BB and KT, but ditching AM), Bob still buys everything but they lose out on £300 they would otherwise have got from him. He buys loads of stuff from other gaming companies too, but he would have done that anyway even if GW had released more stuff. The money that GW missed out on gets spent on a bottle of 25 year old single malt instead. GW misses out and a distillery benefits.

- Like Timmy, Jess can also afford £100 a month. She's only really interested in AM from the proposed lineup and would happily sink her whole hobby budget into it. If GW don't release it because Timmy can't afford it, they lose out on all of Jess' money as she goes to buy X-Wing models and Magic cards instead. GW misses out and other gaming companies benefit.

- Dave has a budget of £250 a month, but he only spends it if he sees something that interests him. He drifts along spending about £50 on his 40k armies and really wishes that GW would re-release Battlefleet Gothic. If GW add BFG to their releases list, it's another thing that Timmy can't afford - but Dave and Bob buy loads of it. If they don't, Dave decides it's time to build that sweet gaming table, and goes off to buy MDF and styrofoam. He's spending money on his hobby, but the DIY store is benefitting rather than GW.

- Alex is somewhat interested in GW's releases this month, but she's also interested in a lot of other gaming stuff. Jess shows Alex all of the stuff that she's bought for X-Wing recently, and Alex has always been a Star Wars fan. She starts X-Wing and ignores the GW releases. GW miss out and FFG benefits.

- Sanjay is patiently waiting for an update to his favourite outdated army. He's saving his hobby budget so that he can splurge when they get a rerelease. If GW slow down to accommodate Timmy, Sanjay might see the slower rate of release, conclude that his army isn't going to get a release any time soon if at all, and blow all of that money that he saved on a new PC. GW misses out and computer companies benefit.

- Tom loves wargaming but hasn't got much cash and can spend £20 a month - and that's on a good month. He can hardly afford to buy any of this stuff. There's no way GW are going to slow down their releases so that Tom can afford anything. Tom accepts that, so he carefully chooses the occasional kit to buy.

etc etc.

If each of those people listed represent groups, then it's the relative balance of those groups in the market that determines how saturated the market is. If everybody's a Tom, then GW could be making masses more profit on each release - so long as they release incredible slowly so that the Toms can buy everything they want. If everybody's a Bob they could release stuff as fast as they can possibly manage and sales would be great. If they slow down to maximise the sales of each product, they *will* be leaving some money on the table, which will go to other games or other entirely non-gaming things. Say they were releasing at a rate Timmy could keep up with and it cost them £X to do so, and the revenue on those releases was £3X. If they double the releases to costing £2X, not everybody can keep up but there are plenty who can, so revenue doesn't double but goes to £5X, then their percentage return on investment is down, but overall profits are up from £2X to £3X. At the rate GW are going, there will be a lot of Timmys out there at the moment, but profits are booming.

GW needs to go back to having more than a token effort at GenCon, at the very least. For years the Forgeworld booth was larger than the GW one.

Like others have said, Timmy is only one person of many.

Timmy has a budget that makes him choose his purchases wisely. The next person has enough disposable income to make all of those purchases. Just because Timmy can't afford everything doesn't make it oversaturation.

Another aspect is that GW is currently in a big growth period

40K needed to get most of its Codex off the ground fast to make the new approach to game balance and structure work

AoS needs models and Battletomes to get the game to a functional level for all product lines (its honestly lagging considering its 3 years old, but with 2018 being a 40K focused year we can hope that 2019 sees the pendulum swing back to focus on AoS

Bloodbowl, Necromunda, Adepticus Titanicus - all need a lot of releases to keep them going and get them going (AT being the newest needs the most). Shadspire is the very same. All those games need lots of releases.

When you've only 3 factions or so then you've only 3 market pools to get income from, those who don't have interest in those limited forces are not buying into the game; slowing sales and also hindering game community growth. Release 10 armies and now you've got a much bigger grasp on the market; and even those buying into a less popular faction are still providing a community and opponents for your most popular lines. Marines might sell like hotcakes but without any Xeno players the Marine fanbase would dry up steadily on its own.

The key point is what do GW's financials look like?

They had a pretty bad period in the 2010s and started to recover after the new guy took over and did lots of things fans had been asking for, like bringing back specialist games.

However it should be noted that most of GW's business is abroad, so they are greatly helped by the decline of the GBP in the past couple of years.

I really haven't been following it so I don't know the details, but if the financials look good at least part of it is because they are selling more stuff to customers.

I always used to say they had this expensive retail chain and needed more games to put in it other than 40K and Fantasy. Now they have.

Pretty damned well, all in all.

https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2018/05/games-workshop/

Whilst you're absolutely right the exchange rate isn't hurting them none, that doesn't account for all of it.

And their diversification has to be part of that. As I waxed lyrical about, Underworlds is incredibly affordable. Not just for GW, but the wider market. £40 for your core set, £17.50 each for additional warbands - all of which stand alone.

Even if you're playing Chase The Card (something I was initially sceptical about), you're still getting a fully playable faction for your £17.50. Compare to X-Wing, where you might end up buying a single ship that's not part of your faction, just to finish that Killer Combo. Not a criticism, just a comparison.

To get all of Shadespire? £40 for core set, 10 additional Warbands at £17.50. Boards are an extra £35 to get both sets. And I'm not sure if you need them if you've bought all the Warbands separately, but the Echoes of Glory and Leader cards are an extra £20 for both. £270 to get everything. And each purchase adds to the game there and then, as each is self contained.

That's very different from the GW we know, and indeed the wider industry, where you might want/need to buy Command Teams, Heavies etc separately to the man squad.

Necromunda, Kill Team. Both affordable. Both small scale, but with more room for expansion than Underworlds, in that they're campaign based.