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ICv2 wrote:Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines - Fall 2016
1. Star Wars X-Wing – Fantasy Flight Games
2. Warhammer 40K – Games Workshop
3. Warmachine – Privateer Press
4. Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Games Workshop
5. Hordes – Privateer Press

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/36971/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-fall-2016

Ignoring GW direct sales, AoS is #4, beating Hordes.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

ICv2 wrote:Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines - Fall 2016
1. Star Wars X-Wing – Fantasy Flight Games
2. Warhammer 40K – Games Workshop
3. Warmachine – Privateer Press
4. Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Games Workshop
5. Hordes – Privateer Press

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/36971/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-fall-2016

Ignoring GW direct sales, AoS is #4, beating Hordes.

I've posted this already in the financials. Though I guess this is news too.

There's definitely an appeal to AoS with the General's Handbook. It was the guidance a lot of people needed to shape their collecting.

Warhammer community article wrote:
Narrative gamers were given the perfect resource to build on, with map, ladder and tree campaigns, and the very popular Path to Glory. For those who liked infinite freedom to create armies, open play gained multiplayer games rules, enabling the most outlandish and spectacular battles imaginable.

While all of that was awesome, it’s fair to say that matched play saw the biggest benefits. The General’s Handbook provided a solid framework for competitive games that were immediately embraced by gaming clubs and tournaments around the world. In the last 6 months alone, we’ve seen an explosion of matched play activity, with new Warhammer Age of Sigmar tournaments popping up all the time.

From https://www.warhammer-community.com/2017/02/07/the-generals-handbook-ii-wip-points-sneak-peek/

I'm actually surprised Warmachine is still going as strong as it is. I thought it had a major decline over the last few years. Maybe their control of online discounters is working and brick and mortar sales are popping back up. Or their hard plastic kits are selling well.

They had a new edition in the last year. I'm sure that made a difference as well. Much like an edition change in Warhammer, some stuff that was good now sucks, and some stuff that sucked is now good, so it creates a demand. More interesting is that WM and Hordes are tracked seperately. I wonder why that is. I also wonder if they'd beat out 40k if combined. My guess (and this is by someone who likes both games) is "Hell no, not by a country mile", but it's still intriguing. Id like to know what the gap between them all is.

The WM/H thing harks back to some sort of creative/royalties thing IIRC. Someone worked on WM that wasn't involved with H, and as a consequence there's a division.

Personally, I think it's functionally irrelevant for sales performance, and it would make more sense to include them both at 3rd (there's no plausible way they're bigger than 40K even combined) and bring another system (Armada?) onto the list.

Ahhh hahahaha.

*deep breath*

Hahaha.

So Star Trek and Star Wars: Armada got pushed out by AoS and Hordes (which crept back onto the charts), basically.

 frozenwastes wrote:
I'm actually surprised Warmachine is still going as strong as it is. I thought it had a major decline over the last few years. Maybe their control of online discounters is working and brick and mortar sales are popping back up. Or their hard plastic kits are selling well.

Last few years? If anything its surged in popularity until about MK3 when it plateaued. WHFB being killed caused a lot of people to look elsewhere and realise there's companies other than Games Workshop. Most of them went to the second biggest kid of the block (well, third after FFG I guess).

Just what happened to Armada though? Warmachine hasn't just overtaken it. AoS and Hordes have completely knocked it out of the charts. I thought it was doing pretty well, even though I've never paid much attention to it.

So fun and easy to play skirmish games are the ticket now it seems.

Come on 40k 8th edition, learn from this! It'll finally give me a reason to see Guardsmen share shelf space with my AoS armies.

Like... 2 ships a year. CAAAM AAAN!!! They make new stuff for it at a glacial pace is my real concern.

That''s why. It's a great game that doesn't get any support (FFG is notorious for this among its detractors), but it's core is expensive. I have heard theories it's too complicated for the mass appeal that X-Wing has.

FFG is a golden goose company. They only offer true support to their golden goose. Unless your the golden goose game line you get almost nothing. When 40k was king they were releasing a new 40k supplement for their rpg line like crazy. Soon as they got SW they basically ceased support overnight with only token releases and the player base died off. Same thing has happened time and again with the company and pisses me off. In some respects they are worse and 10x more cutthroat than GW. If they ever found a goose larger than SW you can bet your ass they would drop that gak asap.

Honestly it feels like it lacks diversity since there is only Empire and Rebels. I want to see a third scum and villainy faction for it.

That's just not true, FFG, by that metric, have a good half dozen "golden geese."

It's important to remember they don't just make miniatures games, they've got LCGs like GOT and Netrunner that are very popular, then the likes of Imperial Assault as well as other more self contained board game + expansion style products, I'm not sure how many RPG lines they have now, having stopped the 40K stuff, but up until, relatively recently at least, they were supporting those.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Here's a link to their roadmap for upcoming releases (and reprints) of all their product lines..

https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/upcoming/

Daedalus81 wrote:
Ahhh hahahaha.

*deep breath*

Hahaha.

Indeed.

Interesting to see AoS ranked higher (4) than Warhammer Fantasy (5).
I guess that mk3 will make WMH cry.

I think it's more interesting from the parent article which points out that the overall game/hobby market grew only 10% compared to the +25% of the last couple years. It's still healthy growth but not as much before. Noticing Magic discounted for sale at my local stores. Anecdotal, but still might mean the boom years for Magic are drawing to a close. Worried how a lot of game store will cope since it became the main driver for them.

As for AoS, ICV2's ranking are somewhat pointless without overall sales numbers. Have sales for the other games remained constant so AoS is growing into the top five or are sales for the other games dropping to where they only sell as much as AoS?

*edit* Though at least for the second half of 2016, GW did grow faster than the North American market. Will be interesting to see how the annual report shapes up in summer.

I could imagine that the sales of PP didn't go up after the release of mk3 in summer 2016. Therefore, WM and H have staggered while AoS has gotten a boost.

I'd be interested to see the top 10 or even 20.

If AoS with the General's Handbook equals better sales, that can only be a good thing for 40K. It makes 8th Edition likely to not be as much of a huse departure the way AoS without the General's Handbook was.

And honestly, looking back at the releases, AoS had a pretty good year. Fireslayers, Flesheater Cults, Orks, etc. One can only hope that 40K has a similar year. The 40K guys have said that every army is going to get something this year. So hopefully Tyranids and Necrons get something, since it has been quite a while for them.

I'm pretty sure GW will approach 8E differently from AoS, simply because WFB was a dead game and needed radical changes, whereas 40k is their flagship game, and they understand that radical changes aren't necessary.

You have to wonder where AoS could have been if the release had been handled better, i.e. Generals Handbook from day one.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

ICv2 wrote:Top 5 Non-Collectible Miniature Lines - Fall 2016
1. Star Wars X-Wing – Fantasy Flight Games
2. Warhammer 40K – Games Workshop
3. Warmachine – Privateer Press
4. Warhammer Age of Sigmar – Games Workshop
5. Hordes – Privateer Press

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/36971/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-fall-2016

Ignoring GW direct sales, AoS is #4, beating Hordes.

Which doesn't say anything about numbers and aos is still outperformed by fb when aos was started. Not particularly good showing without other sources therefore.

If we going back to fix things, how about we wonder where WFB 7E would have been if GW had used the AoS rules engine and reset the power level, so DE / Daemons never broke the game in the first place... Then GW never would have doubled down on the stupidity that was 8E, and WFB never would have collapsed.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I'm pretty sure GW will approach 8E differently from AoS, simply because WFB was a dead game and needed radical changes, whereas 40k is their flagship game, and they understand that radical changes aren't necessary.

The radical changes that comprise AoS were largely ports from post-fifth ed 40k. Therefore, Age of the Emperor or whatever inherently won't seem (or be) anything like a huge departure. AoS wasn't a new version of WHFB; it was just a new game altogether. With 40k, it has been a more organic, gradual, and yes messy development.

Well, it'll be amusing to see how the same people who time after time have used ICV2 as the evidence of GWs decline will try to spin this as negative news. Perhaps the old chestnut "oh it's just people buying the models for other games/panic buying WHFB models"?

Beyond the silly splitting of Warmachine and Hordes (which I understand is from a royalties issue), what other games would even come close to entering the top 5? Infinity? Malifaux? It seems like the split between the top 4 and other miniatures games is fairly dramatic.

Yeah, I think the real top 5 is
1 X Wing
2 40K
3 WMH
4 AOS
5 Armada

But I think 5th is up for grabs.

 Accolade wrote:
Beyond the silly splitting of Warmachine and Hordes (which I understand is from a royalties issue), what other games would even come close to entering the top 5? Infinity? Malifaux? It seems like the split between the top 4 and other miniatures games is fairly dramatic.

Malifaux was there for a year (2011)

and Dark Heaven from Reaper (2008-10) which is their regular minis line mainly used for D&D/Pathfinder

other than them the other top 5 entries have been Attack-Wing in D&D and Star Trek forms