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 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
And timing I’d argue.

They ultimately kinda created the miniatures market as we know it today. And by the time GW’s efforts had a community large enough to attract competition, they were very well established in terms of shops, casting and sculpting facilities, White Dwarf being easily found in pretty much any UK Newsagent. And it was able to do so by reinvesting the not insignificant profits it had made over what, a decade, maybe more?

That’s a fair while to have the audience more or less entirely to yourself, let alone one you pretty much built from scratch. And it meant for any other company to get noticed, it had to ramp up faster than GW had. Which costs money, and attracts a bigger risk to investment. .

The offshoot of this is that there is a not-insignificant part of GW's audience who play their games because everyone else does. I've spoken to quite a lot of gamers over the years who play 40K despite not really particularly liking it, just because it's the only game that they see people playing in their area. And when you rely on pick-up games, or have an established group who aren't willing to look outside of their established comfort zone, that makes it difficult for any other game to get any traction. Everyone plays Warhammer because everyone else plays Warhammer... and nobody is prepared to play something new, because nobody else is playing it.

That’s definitely a part of it. But why do people stick with it? I think we can agree the rules are imperfect - but are they really as bad as some claim?

What I’ve stuck about for is the background. To the point I was super chuffed when Epic returned, because I love that game. Not 6/8mm Gaming. I don’t simply want to play a sci-fi game in that scale. I want to play Epic. With the right models.

As well as a bad experience when first playing Warmachine (WAAC, Noobseeking Neckbeard) the lore there just never grabbed me. And so I sacked it off.

I enjoyed X-Wing well enough and spent a pretty penny. But wait, that’s dead now. As is Armada. And various other Star Wars games, as Asmodee seem to prefer Entire Sodding Game Churn.

Marvel Infinity thing? Local FLGS carries a decent amount, only I’d want to make my own Superhero.

That is of course only my experience and thoughts, and they’re not presented as anything beyond anecdote. But, I will argue sheer momentum isn’t the only reason GW continue to dominate.

Sure, we could point to that survey thing, the one that covers North America, and has at time shown X-Wing above AoS and even 40K. Except, that poll doesn’t, has never, taken into account GW’s direct sales, either from stores or online. I worked it out from GW’s published figures once, and I’ll attempt it here. From GW’s annual report 2024.

Core Revenue- £494,700,000.00

Trade Revenue - £296,300,000.

So, 60% of its income could be reported in that poll. Except, that poll only covers North America - and participation is voluntary.

Thankfully. I believe GW also publish its income by territory. And that shows North America to have brought in £124,400,000 at Trade. Which is 25% of GW’s overall income.

A tasty amount, no argument there. But kinda making the results of said poll (ICC or summat? I dunno why I can’t remember its name). It’s only reporting at most, 25% of GW’s income source. Why at most? Because it’s voluntary, so at least some retail stockists of GW’s toys won’t be responding,

Whereas PP, AMG etc don’t seem to do direct sales as GW do them. So we’re likely to be seeing a much higher percentage of their overall sales being reported.

 Lathe Biosas wrote:
Why do you think Warhammer is so popular, for so long?

The rules change, the fiction is fluid, but what is that all important... I don't know how to phrase it... je ne sais quoi.

What made the game succeed where so many other games have disappeared into the land of misfit toys, never to be heard from again?

To me, it's because it's an actual wargame that, even back in 2nd edition has focused on ease of access.
I know that sounds hilarious, especially with the prices that GW wants us to pay for minis, but think about it:
Everything is rolled on D6s and uses a basic tape measure. No specialist dice are required, or special movement sticks.
Next, I'd say is the ability to keep growing your army. Sure you can stop at like.. 500 points. maybe even the combat patrol for your dudes. But at some point, GW will put out a model that just makes you say "I need to paint that". or make rules for a new dude that just wows you.
So you have ease of access tools, good models, a reason to keep coming back, and on top of that- The lore is great. 40+ years of pretty consistently good stuff. Sure, you get a blunder now and then. (I will never forgive GW for saying that Khaine shattered the Nightbringer), But it's all rather consistent, and sometimes even spectacular.
Last... and this is more of a personal bit, which is why I saved it for the end:
Skirmish games are dominating RN, and I don't really care for Skirmish games. When I want to play a war game, I want to play with just about everything on offer. I may miss out on like- IDK super heavies. or, Terminator squads, but the point is that I can take them in a full game. I may not for one game, but I can come back to them eventually.
But I am not locked to Just terminators for that game. Or only locked to This other unit for a game. Or only locked to a Daemon Prince for a game because the Daemon Prince eats too many points. TL;DR for this bit: I want to play AN ARMY, not play A UNIT (or two).

And that's why I think 40K has been successful for over 30 years despite its rising cost.

think its helped GW that while they have shot themselves in both feet on several occasions they have faced competition who use belt fed artillery for that purpose

e.g. other companies seriously screwing up new game releases on a level that GW only came close to with AoS and GW eventually backed down, slightly

generally the models are actually available as well (even if you have to order them), they seem to have a love/hate relationship with 3rd party retailers but are not as outright hostile as some.

some is blind luck, some is 'right time & right place', some is the inertia that comes off it.

regardless they won't be easy to topple by someone else

We can also look beyond the game.

There’s a lot of people out there just in it for the painting and converting elements of the wider whole.

And sure, those folk are incredibly well served, with a staggering array of manufacturers and models to suit pretty much any taste.

But GW has ease of visibility. It’s very good at self promotion these days, and its sheer popularity will get eyes on across social media. You’ll also instantly know where you can get your mitts on it, should a particular model grab an otherwise Manufacturer Agnostic painter.

There’s also guarantee of Quite Certain Quality. As in, when you buy GW, you know what you’re getting. Not necessarily The Besterest Kit Ever. Not necessarily The Greaterest Finerest Detail Ever. But, you can be confident what you see on the box is exactly what you’re getting, as GW’s marketing doesn’t really do “contouring” type paintjobs. And, if anything is broken, missing or miscast, you can be confident GW will sort it.

Compare to “trust me bro” 3d renders of STLs, Rackham’s fondness for stunning paint jobs adding freehand details not actually present on the sculpt, and I dunno, Chapterhouse shuttering but happily continue to accept your order, and your dosh, for a good while after.

Eh, GW has absolutely 100% made mistakes on par or far far beyond things that have killed their competition. They've just had the capital and zealous devotion to make it out the other side.

Honestly, one of the things that often kills competitors is the zealous devotion of spurned GW fans. The promise of doing better has often been all it takes to abandon a popular new game in droves.

Yeah that is true. A lot of people will go back to GW as soon as possible, even in the face of really annoying anti-consumer stuff like the increased base sizes for the Old World.

The AOS launch though I feel was a different thing entirely. Fantasy had been poorly handled for quite a while and 8th edition was already a lot less popular than fantasy was in it's heyday (and I get the impression Fantasy also wasn't that big in the US market anyway). AOS was an attempt to claw some money out of the Fantasy genre and get some interest, because the revenue from the game was so low it wasn't worth keeping on as far as the suits were concerned.

But GW could get away with that because 40K is such a juggernaut of success that Fantasy was a fraction of a fraction of their total profits at that stage anyway. GW have only been close to disaster when they have really badly messed up 40K because that is by far and away their most popular game. If AOS succeeded, all well and good, but if it failed? Well Fantasy was already a failure in their eyes.

And despite my personal misgivings (another sign of how out of touch with the Wargaming Zeitgeist I am!) AOS seems to have gone from strength to strength, and it really did draw in a new audience of fans who really love it. Shows what I know, because I was sure it would fail.

AoS was such a disaster at launch that it sparked GW having a massive change which shook up their whole company top-end and management.

This is the height of Kirby's "I don't need customer feedback" era of management which I put down to the top end purely looking at the stats of sales and not much else. So they convinced themselves that the only sales they had from Old World was painters collecting models due to the low uptake of games.
What it failed to take into account was

1) A lot of people weren't playing because they were in limbo waiting for new models/rule updates

2) Burnout - Fantasy at the time needed big armies to work properly and it didn't really have a working low-model count game format that was well supported.
This was compounded by a long period of not gaining new recruits so you had newbies and pros with full armies and nothing really inbetween the soften the "go build 1.5K of models to play"

3) The fact that even within those who functionally collect and paint; many aspire to game even if they don't manage too.



So when AoS launched several months after Old World was removed from shelves without any real marketing build-up and with only joke rules to armies that sometimes were 1 single model with a view that people would "collect" a Grand Alliance and just pick up the halfdozen models from sub-armies that would appear and vanish as collector models - it burned hard.

Yes it found some fans and "home brew" rule writers had a lot of fun in that time; but it lacked any sense of unity and ultimately GW had to do a massive change in tone. Shifting away from tiny armies to regular ones; actually producing sensible rules for 2.0 and a bunch of other things.




Again this was back when GW didn't do any online marketing (and mostly just sent nasty letters to sites publishing rumours); when GW would sometimes leave armies without rule updates during editions, sometimes more; would often leave armies without any model updates for very long periods and only do them in big bulk releases etc...

A LOT of attitude and marketing changes took place around that time - almost all off the back of what happened with the AoS launch.












Also this reminds me of another thing GW has had in their favour - disasters are often restricted to a single product line. Whilst general management attitudes do spread across the brand, GW has often had the advantage that one game can be failing and another doing very well. Mistakes they make in one get shielded by good sales in others. Esp when it comes to their old specialist games.
Sure they lost money or didn't get the best return on investment; but they had other lines still selling. So they could ride out a lot of mistakes because they had a broad portfolio of products that could pick up the slack. Many smaller firms often don't have that luxury because they can't support multiple games at once or they are structured so that even if they support multiple; they have zero slack in the system - every game is just keeping itself afloat.

An extreme example of this is kickstarters which can crash and burn for firms when they get delays and there's no regular product or sales line bringing in income to keep the lights on during those delays and the KS money already got burned up invested into moulds or other elements way earlier. Small firms that do maintain a previous product line can still have issues because the KS takes so much time away they hit production shortfalls and suddenly their market is drifting away because there's no stock - or because their main customers burned out on the KS and are waiting and not buying product.


If GW's fantasy fans burn out they've still got their 40K and LotR fans; if their specialist game fans burn out they've got their big heavy lifters.
Space Marines being a very solid very steady very constant seller is likely a huge backbone of this - if they suffered major sales setbacks for prolonged periods that could impact GW; but even so if other lines were doing well they could still ride it out.

8th edition I think had serious problems despite having a very passionate fan base. I had a fully painted army which was the right size to play with, but I just found the game pretty unfun to play at the time - you'd spend ages setting up your painstakingly painted units only to have them mostly removed in turns 1 and 2 by mega spells blasting them off the board. It wasn't satisfying at all in my view and a downgrade on 6e and 7e despite some good changes like Step Up and simplifying some of the sillier rules. And a beautiful and inspiring rulebook.

8th was the right edition at the right time, but definitely full of problems. Primarily its resource mechanics were a disaster, but people were excited to have resources to manage in 40k. The CP reroll alone sold so many people on the game again and really the entire launch period gave 40k the momentum it's still running on even if every codex release chipped away at what made the indexes so refreshing.

That's not to say it wasn't full of problems. I wouldn't even say it's better than 9th even though I didn't enjoy that edition at all. I do think it's a huge step up from 6th and particularly 7th, but that style of game never appealed to me in the first place, so I was always going to feel that way.

 LunarSol wrote:
8th was the right edition at the right time, but definitely full of problems. Primarily its resource mechanics were a disaster, but people were excited to have resources to manage in 40k. The CP reroll alone sold so many people on the game again and really the entire launch period gave 40k the momentum it's still running on even if every codex release chipped away at what made the indexes so refreshing.

That's not to say it wasn't full of problems. I wouldn't even say it's better than 9th even though I didn't enjoy that edition at all. I do think it's a huge step up from 6th and particularly 7th, but that style of game never appealed to me in the first place, so I was always going to feel that way.

Pretty sure he's referencing 8th ed Fantasy not 40k.

Everyone else has hit the nail on the head for longevity.

Also also?

Despite the opinions of some self appointed interwebular experts?

We’ve got to admit, GW knows what it’s doing. And is a well run company. Despite as per my earlier post (page 1 I think) here, benefitting from Sheer Blind Luck at times, the luck has been the timing, not the action.

 Hulksmash wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
8th was the right edition at the right time, but definitely full of problems. Primarily its resource mechanics were a disaster, but people were excited to have resources to manage in 40k. The CP reroll alone sold so many people on the game again and really the entire launch period gave 40k the momentum it's still running on even if every codex release chipped away at what made the indexes so refreshing.

That's not to say it wasn't full of problems. I wouldn't even say it's better than 9th even though I didn't enjoy that edition at all. I do think it's a huge step up from 6th and particularly 7th, but that style of game never appealed to me in the first place, so I was always going to feel that way.

Pretty sure he's referencing 8th ed Fantasy not 40k.

Everyone else has hit the nail on the head for longevity.

That makes dramatically more sense.

Honestly, I've never vibed with Fantasy and kind of bounced off Sigmar as well, so it went right over my head.

 Da Boss wrote:
The setting takes a bunch of great sci fi tropes and smushes them all together with the wildcard influence of the Holy Roman Empire in Spaaaace to make something that is just amazing.

John Blanche's visuals, Jes Goodwin's mini designs and Rick Priestley's original setting ideas and appreciation of making a sci fi setting feel like it has capital H HISTORY all blend together with the contributions of all the other creatives to just make something powerful that spurs the imagination.

I was into 2000AD, medieval history and LOTR before I found 40K. It was electrifying to see them all playing in the same sandbox, along with all this fascinating stuff that I later found out was inspired heavily by Dune, another stone cold classic. It's been 28 years and my enthusiasm for the setting hasn't really waned. I've played other games, notably Warmachine and Hordes, and though I liked the settings none of them have had that impact on me. (Though I'm well aware you can only be 12 once!)

Most of the comments in this (excellent) thread talk about their marketing strategies and tactics, but this one gets at what I think the real secret ingredient is – the setting and characters.

The space marine designs are iconic. The chapters allow you to dig into Roman or Mongol history or to pursue whatever martial tradition you enjoy. The religious themes make the story feel grounded and relatable but epic at the same time.

This is why Sigmar has failed to catch on to anything like the same degree, to the point where GW is giving away palettes of Skaventide at Adepticon. AoS has the same beautiful sculpts, which are even better than 40K. It has the same distribution advantages. It even has protagonists in sweet armor fighting all manner of baddies. But the unique blend of influences that make up 40K isn't a commodity; combined, they strike a resonant frequency.

It's very much a game and commercial product, but it's also got a claim to be a unique work of art worthy of study and celebration.

Personal theory, its popular because of how its themes appeal to a broad variety of people. Ie, my gaming club all likes 40k, and pretty much all my mates in the services love it.

Hell, last survey by corporate puts the amount of 40k fans in america who are in the services at 20-40%

Perhaps a bit late to this topic - but felt I'd reply as I kind of disagree with a lot of responses.

I feel a lot of them focus on "why am I, often years - decades - later, still interested in Warhammer/40k/GW in general etc".
Which might make sense if you think you are a major feature of why GW has succeeded where others have failed.
But while I can relate to this a bit - I'm not sure it holds up. I'm not convinced GW is big today because White Dwarf was great in the 90s. We are potentially talking about an era where the people probably providing the bulk of sales weren't even alive.
You could perhaps claim "ah, but everyone read White Dwarf as a Teenager and this is what sowed the seeds for the great... nerd revival amongst people now in their 30s/40s, see Dungeons and Dragons and various other things". But I don't think "everyone" read White Dwarf.

I'd argue GW has been successful because year after year they've managed to re-invent themselves and get a largely new customer base. Ex-GW people say they think their target customer joins, spends a lot on the hobby over about 18 months, and then on average moves on to other things. Sure some percent stay forever and ever - but not all that many. And if they are notionally in the hobby but never buy anything from GW that's potentially useful (versus people explicitly being out of the hobby) - but doesn't help the bottom line.

I feel if you look at the competition, this is where they failed. In the early-mid 2010s both X-Wing and Warmachine were eating up GW's market share. Its subjective, but I think a case can made that both games were better than 40k. Fantasy's sales had collapsed - and I think even 40k briefly lost its crown.
Both games were far cleaner and simpler than the seemingly ever more bloated imbalanced mess than 40k (and Fantasy) was evolving into. I think was good for "tournament/competitive players" - who wanted a cleaner and more precise game than 40k's heavy luck, kind of abstracted mess. But it was better for completely new players -

But they couldn't obviously stay that way. They didn't want to sell you a starter set or faction starter. They wanted you to become a collector and buy more stuff.
So they released more.
But over time each additional expansion, supplement, additional units etc undermined the advantages vs 40k. The game became less clean - and became more complicated and bloated. The gap between new players and experienced players - and good options and bad options - grew.
Eventually both games kind of went for resets of a sort - and imploded as a result. Possibly not helped by the fact GW finally reset 40k in 8th which was very warmly received - and a range of their own problems.

I've argued before - but I think 10th was kind of a half-hearted reset. I think its very much late 9th written up in a new language with some toning down. Its not remotely the same as the more structural changes between 7th and 8th (or 2nd and 3rd). But I think GW was very aware of complaints that 40k had grown too complicated and that this was a barrier to entry for new players. Hence the need to be seen to do something about it. I also think this is why the edition timeline is sort of set in stone - GW want to target a new generation of players every year (across their different game systems.)

Which I guess is the question. Why was 40k able to carry through these changes - and yet they broke Warmachine and X-Wing? Their Veterans kind of faded away - but the key issue was that they couldn't be replaced by new people.
Some of this was obviously issues the companies had themselves.

This is a weird analogy - but I think its a bit like World of Warcraft players. You may have seen the famous graphs of WoW subscriber count - it rises through Vanilla to Wrath, peaks briefly in Cata, then falls away. But on paper, even though its a lot lower, its still quite big. Supposedly still about 7.5 million subscribers today.
So why hasn't WoW been... socially, anything like it was in that mid-late 00s period?
I think its because people look at the graph and draw the wrong conclusion. They think people only joined through Vanilla->Wrath. Then people slowly quit after.
In reality people were constantly joining and quitting. I don't have the data for this - but I think Blizzard claimed 100 million (including free trial accounts, which obviously skews it) were set up by the time they got to Pandaria. But what this means is that there wasn't the same 11.5 million people playing throughout WoTLK. That suggests there was instead potentially 30+ million people played, just that a lot of them joined, played for a few months, and quit. Unlike previous expansions, the number of people joining only matched the number of people quitting. In later expansions the quitters outnumbered the joiners.
But in terms of "the game", it also meant the vast majority of the playerbase was very new and inexperienced. Whereas today I think the vast majority are people who've been playing for years - perhaps decades. It has a major impact on how the game is experienced.

And this is similar I think to how gaming can go. I can't imagine "starting" 40k in late 7th. It must have been... an incredibly weird experience. I think it was the loss of these players which explains why GW's crown was briefly challenged.

Basically TL/DR. I think 40k manages to keep re-inventing itself to be attractive to new players. I think a lot of the competition start out that way - sometimes producing something even better than GW. But eventually to make money from "existing players" they have to add all the bloating content GW does. And then for whatever reason, they implode rather than constantly connecting to a new generation.

I think a lot of your points were already raised - indeed we covered the whole "GW attracts newbies" part quite a bit along with how they achieve it such as stores, licenced products and so on.

I'd argue that some of GW's "reinventing itself" isn't really there considering that the latest army update we've seen - Eldar - is basically model designs from the 90s updated and Old World is currently doing rather nicely for itself on models that ARE decades old and aren't updated.

The Rules side is very hard to judge because its not just rules. New Editions come with video animations; BIG marketing hype; lots of geek hype; bundles and deals on models which are insanely good value - two armies and a rule book for what you'd normally pay for just 1 chunk of models. etc...

I feel like those drive sales way more than "oh this edition is power-level" and "we decided to rename hitpoints hp" or things like that.



Now there are gaming elements that I think do help - Underworld, Warcry, Killteam, Spearhead - these are all fantastic game modes GW has been pushing which get people gaming with very little.

Little Timmy who can't afford 500 points of models to get started let alone 1K or 2K armies; can get himself a box of underworld/warcry/killteam models - one single purchase and he can play.

Even way back in the 90s that was something the game really was missing - Killteam was a few pages in the side of the rulebook and Old World never really worked all that well until you hit 1K points minimum; meanwhile games like Mordhiem and such came and went over the years so were never long-lasting draws.



Constant turnover is 100% important and happens; but at the same time I think what older hobbies show is that there's turnover and return customers. There's also the fact that whilst oldies are fewer, they are often keypeople. They are the rolemodels; streamers; club organisers; School teachers and so on even parents - who help encourage new generations; provide information and guides and also help with gaming space.


GW honestly becomes its strongest when it appeals to both; whenever they've bled one for the other they've suffered. If not losing money at least not sustaining growth. When GW was bleeding old customers and the other games like Warmachine grew, GW was still getting in the youth; it just wasn't retaining the oldies and where the oldies went so too did the clubs and all those intro points start to shift too.

Similarly when all those oldies come back to GW - back comes stuff for the new people too.

We’ve also seen people who got started young, then wandered off when they discovered basic personal hygiene, pubs and girls (and the joys thereof), wandering back in much later years. And finding that the rules have of course changed, but the hobby hasn’t.

And in terms of long serving games/settings? That’s pretty much just GW, and I suppose Battletech.

Some of that will just be that person and presumably their friends. Some of it will be Dad’s to children of a certain age getting back into it, because their kid is now into it.

Look at how well the relaunched Hero Quest is doing. The basic game has merely been tarted up to modern standards, but the rules haven’t been (well, other than the US rules now being global rules). You don’t get a hit like that just though the power of nostalgia alone.

GW has changed of course. As noted in earlier posts it’s developed and refined and become ever more professional. But it’s all been By Degrees. It’s not done a New Adventures or All New or Son Of reboots in a desperate attempt to maintain success. It’s not even gone X-Treem. Not all at once, anyway.

Where it’s definitely getting it right these days is The Right Mix.

Ever since 2nd Ed, 40K has been tweaked and altered to allow people to field larger forces as part of a standard game. Whilst a bit chicken and egg, part of that is customer demand/will/sheer blood mindedness to want to field as much of their ever expanding collection as possible.

The Kirby Era went along with that. And it did work, there only being a year or two where they didn’t make a profit (I honestly can’t remember or be bothered to check if it ever made a loss).

But the Rowntree era has recognised there’s room for both. Small scale, low initial investment games, and large sprawling games of frankly indefinite investment. Some will favour the former, others the latter, and there are plenty like me who are slags that’ll go for any of it.

I think what has helped 40K is that cyberpunk, gothic and dark future settings have been a constant presence across the decades. Sometimes burning brightly (The Matrix), but mostly happy in its seeming natural home of a slightly rebellious, and also pretty flexible, niche. Something not quite outright counter culture, but never truly mainstream culture. 40K? Has it in spades. In a shade for every taste and every season, from the dirty gang war of Necromunda, to vast, system spanning conflicts where lives are expended as happily and readily as ammo.

You might say the satire has lost its edge. And you might be right. But the oddly rebellious “you only think it’s uncool because you, in fact, are uncool, slavishly following any fashion if you think people will think you’re cool” appeal is still there.

 Overread wrote:
When GW was bleeding old customers and the other games like Warmachine grew, GW was still getting in the youth; it just wasn't retaining the oldies and where the oldies went so too did the clubs and all those intro points start to shift too.

Similarly when all those oldies come back to GW - back comes stuff for the new people too.

I guess GW alone have the data to prove it - but I just don't think think this is right. The oldies were still there. There were long arguments on forums like these in the throes of 7th that the oldies were the only ones keeping GW going and they should do what they wanted etc.
It was the newbies who weren't showing up.

But my point isn't really about GW's success here - which I think is sort of self evident, even if explaining precisely how they achieve it is hard. The issue is more that no other company in the space seems to manage it. I guess you can argue Battletech is very old and is still around. But then its not as if Warmachine is a spring chicken in 2025.
Maybe its just dumb luck - or these companies sabotaging themselves for various reasons. But I think its more that juggling the newbies vs oldies is very difficult. I think GW got it very wrong in 6th and 7th edition - but they had a very successful reset and its been success for nearly a decade after.

IMHO the issue is the jump from a small garage company of a dozen people at most to an actual corporate business with hundreds or even thousands.

You need manufacturing engineers, logistic engineers, business degrees, marketing degrees, lawyers, many different types of lawyers, oh so many lawyers, etc. People that know how to run all the complicated parts of a corporation, and you need to be a corporation if you want to compete with Games Workshop.

I wonder if we might be able to draw some kind of inference from FLGS vs Warhammer Stores.

Both are retail premises. And it’s early days, whilst never on the main strip or High Street to the best of my knowledge? At least in the UK, they were Just Off The High Street. Not exactly front and centre, but still areas of decent foot traffic, and you don’t typically have to go hunting.

FLGS are sometimes there as well, but have a tendency to quite hidden. Shop Rents are cheaper ways.

Both are tricky to make profitable. Whether it’s cards, models, RPG etc, there’s sadly more to it than If We Stock It, They Will Come. And certainly more to it than If I Discount It, They Will Spend.

GW of course is now an old hand at this, and the training I received circa 2009 still sticks in my mind, and is effective for generating footfall, and from that, sales.

Some FLGS absolutely get this, and thrive. Dunno if they’ll ever make their owner’s wealthy men, but they turn a profit and the wages are paid.

But, some FLGS just don’t seem to get it. It’s not just a club house for your mates. You do need to be hospitable and welcoming. If you’re more interested in chatting to your mates than your customers, you are losing out on sales, and you’re not exactly encouraging the curious or the new to town to get involved.

And just as it is with GW’s games? You’ve got to go further than “We made a sci-fi game”. You can have gorgeous models and decent rules. But if your background is slim, and you’ve not gone the original WHFB “this is an agnostic rules set” to tempt people to try it? There’ll be plenty like myself who won’t find the setting engaging, and so won’t find your game engaging.

And of course there’s the economy of scale involved for GW now, and has been for a long old time. It can absorb a game being sluggish at first, or Dead On Arrival, because it’s got so many irons in the fire, and some big money bags to toss on the fire to get the heat up.

AoS, much as I never had a problem with it, is a good example here. The launch wasn’t great, baffling a great many. But before long, GW spent more money on it, and addressed the common concerns. And now, by all accounts, it’s selling quite comfortably. And it’s got a cracking background, pulling more on Greek and Roman type myths than Medieval ones.

A new game, created, playtested and released with the best of intentions which, for whatever reason, doesn’t immediately find its audience? Unless you’re GW, you may not have the funds to retool, re-promote and rejig etc.

Just had another thought here. And it’s not 40K specific, but based on another “how, how are you still going when so many others have fallen” property.

2000AD, The Galaxy’s Greatest Comic.

It’s rapidly approaching 50 years in continuous print, and I’ve two bookcases pretty much filled with collected, hardback volumes. And yes, I’m an annual subscriber.

It….it shouldn’t have survived. It’s a niche British comic which has never quite cracked the US market, And Yet It Stands. Like GW it’s had some lean years, but has muddled its way through.

Both 40K and 2000AD have a nearly symbiotic relationship, sharing writers and artists, often giving up and coming hopefuls the first chance to get their goods in front of a relatively mass Market.

Both have moved with the times.

Dredd is particularly impressive. Despite, again, some lean years? It’s the same continuity. Revisions have occurred here and there, but not “oh no, that never actually happened” or “that was a parallel universe” stuff. The Joe Dredd I just read about in this week’s Prog, is the same Joe Dredd that debuted in Prog 2 of 2000AD.

Maybe there’s just a defiant Britishness to both? Something unleashed in our psyche during the Punk and Post-Punk era of social upheaval and uneven redistribution of wealth and influence. A feeling which persists to this day, and leads those who encounter it to the same two outlets, generation after generation?

Maybe it's the antiheroes. Heroes are often flawed, anti-heries, doubly so.
And who doesn't like being the underdog? Insurmountable odds, and all that.

Personally, I think a lot of why Warhammer has succeeded where others have failed is luck in the early years of owning their IP, not having a parent company, and not having a lot of debt.

Three of their biggest competitors in the late 1990's and very early 2000's crumbled due to financial issues.

FASA had Battletech, and well, we can see how much Battletech has had a cultural impact on the people who were playing it after FASA closed down in 2001 (for the most part) and who are playing it now with CGL at the helm.

I-Kore had VOID and Celtos, and VOID was outselling 40k in multiple markets in the 1990's from what I read. The multiple companies that have had to sell this IP off in a short period of time killed any and all momentum it had gained between 2000-2003.

Target Games/Epic Games had Warzone, which was growing and getting resculpts in the new edition they were working on that were GW level (in the late 1990's), with sculptors like Kev White working on parts of the line. The game was gaining a good deal of traction and won awards in the 1990's. Their parent company closing down and taking the studio waking the Warzone game killed that one off until the botched Prodos release, and the more stable but not as large release from Res Nova.

I would mention Rackham, but while they had absolutely stunning minis, it really never felt like the game was a big threat to Warhammer (to me at least).

It really gave GW almost a lot of free reign in the non-historical hobby sector to get their stores up and running to get more eyes on the products, and to secure themselves as the earliest game in the non-historical hobby market to be relatively stable enough to get pick-up games of.

Warmachine was ding absolutely incredibly well, but the models were just okay (I still liked them), and the units not really having any way to change load outs and with the majority of the models being metal made it almost impossible to avoid the SKU bloat that plagued the game at the tail end of the second edition. Their third edition and fourth edition were just awful releases, with awful decisions made about how they sell the products to stores, and the removal of the Pressganger program.

I think the other people here have covered the other big business aspects.

GW just got really lucky, right place, right time, right audience, a lack of debt, and owning their product. Allowed them to power through bad years of poor decisions and odd marketing to essentially become "the hobby" for a large portion of the players, and a "safe" choice to spend your money on since you know you can probably get games of Warhammer anywhere you go.

Warmachine VS GW was so interesting because the two firms almost made a massive swap around.

PP went from doing everything right to a whole series of steps, some forced by other powers but some internal to them. Shutting the PG (which was partly based on legal pressure/risk of having to pay volunteer workers etc...); closing off their own forums; dropping 3rd edition too early; material changes that didn't work right; etc....

Meanwhile GW at that time made a series of really good choices that turned things around.

It caused a positive feedback for GW because people were jumping off PP and the only big firm around with open arms was GW

I was big into Warmachine and Hordes in 2nd edition. But the cracks started then with some of the changes they were making to the game - you could see it creaking under it's own weight, and stocking all of it in a game shop was a real challenge because of their release model (which from a player POV was brilliant - all factions simultaneously updated is just THE way to do it for players).

I couldn't believe it when they blew up the world and squatted the old factions. I'm even more surprised that the game seems to have survived it! I've still got my Trolls, Legion and Minions and my 2e books, but it's sad that it's much harder to find games of Oldmachine than Oldhammer!

For some reason PP really avoided the whole "just re-release the same army with new sculpts" approach to their product. They updated some when they shifted materials, but broadly speaking they always kept trying for entirely new models.

End of 2nd ed they were also buckling trying to keep a skirmish game with a wargame level of models; esp when it was hinged around the warcaster/warlock leaders so much. They honestly needed to split into two game systems like GW has done now - one for skirmish and one for wargame.

But they didn't want that pathway.


The MKIV reboot I kind of get but I also still don't get. Don't get me wrong the new models look amazing and great and creative; but it still stings that some old factions were just abandoned. Steamforged Games appear to have a bit more of a head on their shoulders for this and are looking to dip into classic stuff more so.
They honestly feel like a breath of fresh air on a PP that was getting a bit "one trick pony" but also was just lacking funds to achieve some visions.

The long story short is that PP hit the upper bounds of what can be accomplished by a private company. They grew to the point where they really needed a higher risk/reward production method, but never could quite make that leap happen.

I think part of it is the model style. The top heavy artstyle that's so iconic to their work generally just doesn't translate well to HIPS. Some companies have started to get there in recent years, but you still rarely see the kind of bulging muscles and textured surfaces that Warmachine does so well. Particularly at the time PP needed to start moving this way, even GW hadn't really started to push their craft to the level we'd start to see with End Times and AoS. PVC was kind of sold as the answer, but was kind of a scam that PP overall lost big on. Honestly, this lack of a solid mid tier material remains one of the biggest gatekeepers for companies in the industry.

There's actually a lot "of the time" to PPs woes. Resculpts weren't yet a trend people cared for, in part because digital sculpting was new and a lot of resculpts weren't enough of a jump to be worth the investment compared to new kits. The idea that old stuff lasts forever was still the primary concern and selling point for a lot of people. A lot of companies would try limited formats without much success.

Ultimately the MK4 reboot is just a result of the old line being unsustainable. PP just lost the ability to produce far too much of it and hit a point where starting over was the only real option. Honestly, I feel like the only real difference with SFG is they can make a lot of the same decisions PP was already making without it seeming like they're breaking promises. Ultimately, I hope they mostly just reign things in, as it was already starting to feel like PP was going to bloat out the new factions as fast as they had the old.

Can’t comment on the rules or the range. But WarmaHordes lost its appeal swiftly for me.

Mostly because I just didn’t like the aesthetic of Warmachine. Top Heavy, Ridiculous Little Legs, and that shared across five (at the time!) factions just left me nothing to really cleave to.

Whereas GW has pretty much always been a dab hand at giving each faction its own clear visual identity. Look to the RT era Chaos. You can tell it’s ultimately of Imperial Origin, but so mutated and twisted by Chaos, it’s unique. Eldar have also always stood out, and other than some tweaks to scaling, have barely changed since inception.

So not just a strong design language (I’m not going to be a tit and claim WarmaHordes doesn’t have a strong design language just because I don’t like it), but a variety of strong design languages.

Compare to another modern competitor, Infinity. Clearly another example of a very strong design language. But to my eyes? The same problem as PP - the factions all look largely the same, so if the aesthetic doesn’t do owt for you?

Honestly the little legs big body was mostly just two big core factions from Warmachine - a lot of the other forces started to get more sane designs over the years - Hordes was way more sane in general having more beast based models from the outset.


I do think it was a mistake of PP to have Hordes and Warmachine separate for so long. Really at MK2 they should have put them under one marketing banner; one full game because lets face it most people played both against each other all the time.



Duel marketing two so closely related brands is tricky and its going to be interesting to see the long term impact of GW doing AoS and Old World at the same time. Though there its almost the opposite where the models share aesthetics and the rules are different; whilst for Warmachine the rules were the same and the models were very different.

Heck AoS is made from Old World armies and Old World new has one army just pulled from AoS into it and another - Slaves to Darkness, just pulling up old sculpts of ones that AoS got resculpted. So its going to be interesting to see how it all shapes up and if GW's current phobia of duel game compatible models is going to work for them at splitting the lines; or if its oging to work against them when one game takes off and the other sinks and they try to roll the models into one and suddenly you've got to rebase everything (instead of doing rounds on everything and then giving Old World movement trays with round slots on them)