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Okay, so I have been out of the loop (somewhat, not entirely) for the past 4 years due to real life and other hobbies and before that I was mostly a 40k player. Still, I knew two parallel universes existed in GW, namely WHFB and LotR which later became the Hobbit.

I started playing a Medieval II: Total War mod called Call of Warhammer 2 years or so ago and that was my entry level drug into the WHFB universe. Then, TW released TW Warhammer and obviously it was the best video game adaptation that has ever happened to GW, imo even better than Dawn of War series or space marine simply due to the content but thats personal preference (and I love the DoW series, as well as the Space Marine game).

So...like many many others before me, I am still in shock that GW just killed off significant chunks of their WHFB range, making all of the minis go up in price on ebay, and replace it with AoS, which, again a total surprise for me, is commercially successful.

I just... I cant wrap my head around it. TW: Warhammer has been out for over 2 years now and even the most dim witted sales manager should have gotten the thought "hey guye, this game might attract a new generation of players so lets scrap our plans about phasing out the WHFB range, at least for now" but nope, nothing of the sort ever happened in Nottingham.

WHY? Okay, so apparently the WHFB range was suffering from poor sales and 40k has been GW's main source of income for decades. I get that.

But what I dont understand is, most of GW's lotr range is still on sale, example the riders of rohan whose plastic minis I bought THIRTEEN YEARS AGO when I was still a school boy. Meanwhile, GW has phased out the entire Bretonnia range. I cant wrap my head around this.

Like...bring on the Sigmarines and all the new stuff, but why phase out your existing range? Especially if ancient Lotr minis are still on sale in your webstore? Mind boggling. [insert *JUST* meme] Any explanation would help

Edit: I think the underlying cause is also fueled by Games Workshop's rabid paranoia of trademarking *their* stuff. Something I think started picking up pace since 2014*, when they renamed the Imperial Guard in 40k to Astra Militarum. Then Stormtroopers to Tempestus Scions. Eldar into Craftworlds, Dark Eldar into Drukhari, Tau into T'au just so they get a collective thumbs up from their lawyers...and a long list followed...Dark Elves gone, broken up into Daughters of Khaine, Darkling Covens etc... similar treatment for High Elves...this colossal crusade of renaming stuff...I think the GW community is one of the most resilient there is, taking so much bludgeoning from GW's corporate decisions and still the hobby is financially better than it has ever been before, hats off.

* maybe it has something to do with losing a legal battle they had going on in the years before that against privateer press, and perhaps also the surge of cheap 3D printing and counterfeit finecast stuff from china that started floodding stores like aliexpress before GW shut down those sellers around 2015.

 Sir Arun wrote:

I just... I cant wrap my head around it. TW: Warhammer has been out for over 2 years now and even the most dim witted sales manager should have gotten the thought "hey guye, this game might attract a new generation of players so lets scrap our plans about phasing out the WHFB range, at least for now" but nope, nothing of the sort ever happened in Nottingham.

A good friend of mine runs a large comic book store in my home city. A little while ago, in view of the deluge of super-hero movies coming out, I asked him if the release of those movies meant more comics from those lines selling. His answer? No. They'd see a very slight uptick in sales but it would be virtually unnoticeable. The simple fact was that people who went to the movies to see a super-hero movie weren't going to then head down to the shops and pick up a comic book on the same subject, unless they were already comic-book fans.

Games Workshop has always seen the video games as completely separate to the wargames they sell. The computer games as far as GW are concerned have no impact on their sales of minis. That might not actually be incorrect either; 40K's sales didn't budge much when any of the Dawn of War games came out, and the first and second at least were quite successful. Nor did Fantasy's sales get a boost from the Warhammer MMO Age of Reckoning. When you think about it, that does make sense. Just because someone is willing to throw down $50 for a video game doesn't mean they're going to rush out and blow $500 on an army. And that's without even taking into account that a video game has a much easier entry point than assembling, painting and playing, all of which take vastly more time and energy than just double-clicking a shortcut in Steam.

But what I dont understand is, most of GW's lotr range is still on sale,

Aside from it being a different system (and who knows, they might sell well) one of the leading things here is the moulds. If the moulds are still good, GW is likely to keep selling them. Perhaps the Brettonian moulds were getting too old. What frankly is more of a mystery is why the Tomb Kings range vanished, because a lot of their stuff had relatively new plastic moulds. But perhaps they broke, perhaps they're going to be re-released. Who knows.

I think the underlying cause is also fueled by Games Workshop's rabid paranoia of trademarking *their* stuff.

It's hardly rabid when GW got hit with a landmark court case that threatened their whole IP. Any company would do something similar in such circumstances. I know GW has a history of being pretty heavy handed with their legal department but they are protecting a large and valuable IP. I do find it funny that people are more than happy to bag GW for being heavy handed but give a free pass to Disney or Hasbro doing exactly the same thing.

Any explanation would help

They topped the FTSE last year and their stock has skyrocketed in value. Profits are way up across the board. Whatever they're doing, they're doing something right.

 Glane wrote:

It's hardly rabid when GW got hit with a landmark court case that threatened their whole IP. Any company would do something similar in such circumstances. I know GW has a history of being pretty heavy handed with their legal department but they are protecting a large and valuable IP. I do find it funny that people are more than happy to bag GW for being heavy handed but give a free pass to Disney or Hasbro doing exactly the same thing.

Honestly, I think it's just because of how dumb a lot of the new names for things are.

If I remember well a lot of poeple also had the hypothesis right after Aos's release that it was some kind of test to see whether they could successfully simplify 40k heavily and make the lore evolve towards something more apocalyptical. If you look ay 8th edition it is essentially whay it is, and that might be thanks to the success of AoS, especially, according to some, the core rules and chapter approved systems.

Also since fantasy sold poorly they probably wished to ditch it in some fashion so as to make it look closer 40k (what I mostly assume because of the round basis suggesting they got rid of regiments).

Again, just a hypothesis, but who knows.

And by the way, yes I believe GW deserves the hate on new names not because they are renaming things, why not, but because they are crap. Death to all who dare say astra militarum and tempestus scion!!!! Imperial Guard lives on forever!

It was discontinued because it’s hard to protect an IPthat took so much from other sources and from real life fantasy. How can you protect something called tomb kings from counterfeit printers if your literally just doing mummies? Same goes for French knights and half the setting. Warhammer Fantasy also wrote it’s self into a corner. You can only get so close to midnight until things have to blow up.

AOS may not be as fleshed out or interesting as Warhammer Fabtasy, but it’s far more original and far more unique. This makes it easier to protect legally.

TL: DR blame copyright law and GW being anxious about their IP being smacked down by bad law suits. Which honestly is a reasonable concern.

2 years later a couple of factors seem clear.

A aforementioned desire to have more protectable names and products than High Elves, Dwarves and Wood Elves.
A desire to break away from WHFB's low fantasy/historical settings. New factions like the sky dwarves and fish elfs are signs of that. Could they have been shoehorned into the Olde Worlde, sure. But the high fantasy AoS makes it much easier to insert all kinds of strangeness.
Sales, we don't know what sales were like for WHFB but all anecdotes say 'not good'. I've heard at first that the AoS sales were terrible but I think as it's become more of its own animal (sky dwarfs and fish elfs) its grown.
SKUs - stores can only handle so many different products, eliminating a lot of legacy product freed up shelf space for new stuff. Why were Tomb Kings and Brets chosen to get the axe? I'd assume sales but sometimes just people's feelings in the studio can matter.
New Rules and Fluff - I've not played AoS but i imagine the chance to break free from 30+ years of rules and fluff was appealing to the writers. Do you really want to be writing the 23rd version of Snotling Pump Wagon rules?

It was a gutsy move and one I did not like for many of the reasons you list, plus I always like the Olde Worlde's low fantasy/renaissance feel. If I'd been asked I would have done it differently, but I can certainly see the rationale.

As for why LotR stuff is still around, we don't know what sales are like or what GW's contract says but I would guess those are both factors.

If you read up on the financial reports given to stockholders leading up to AOS it becomes pretty clear - people didn't buy WHFB stuff in large numbers. It has a static community that was heavily staffed by people that already had complete armies and didn't see anywhere near the growth of 40k. Something had to be done to revitalize the IP before they lost the market compeltly and AOS was their attempt to do so. While AOS seems to have a slightly smaller audience than WHFB did, the player community seems much more wiling to talk with thier wallets than the WHFB community ever did.

IP was obviously an issue, that was certainly about names but maybe more about very generic designs.
Also it seemingly sold poorly and the setting was small and constrained with less potential to expand with more radical designs like we have seen from AoS.

Looking at GWs stockprices it seems they made the right call.

Something else that hasn't been mentioned yet was WHFB's high cost of entry - you couldn't really walk into a store, buy a box or 2 and start playing.

Would the Start Collecting! boxes have helped this if they came out earlier? Who knows...

beast_gts wrote:
Something else that hasn't been mentioned yet was WHFB's high cost of entry - you couldn't really walk into a store, buy a box or 2 and start playing.

I remember recalling that most armies in WHFB had starter boxes called battalions in the same way 40k armies had battleforces. I also remember GW releasing a generic starter set featuring two armies to get people into the game, one iteration I remember called Battle of Black Fire Pass, similar to 40k's Dark Vengeance, Dark Imperium etc. I can only judge this from a 40k financial standpoint (I think a 1000 point army costed something like upto €200), so were WHFB armies really more expensive to collect?

Incredibly so. The model count outstripped a basic 40k army by a considerable amount and god help you if you ever wanted to run a horde army like death or goblins. Plus there was always that annoyance that most of the models never actually did anything in game other than act as wound tokens. For a lot of things, only the front rank mattered, which was always a personal irritation of mine.

In my opinion Warhammer 8th edition was incredibly expensive compared to 40k, if you wanted to actually do anything you needed units of 40 and 50, and some being £25 for 10 the fabled empire goldswords meant it was unfeasibly expensive for making armies, sure battalion boxes helped but some had rubbish filler units you didnt actually want or need so buying multiple was not cost effiecient (apart from the Ogre Kingdoms one, I bought 3 and that was a decent army) then when you have you massive (pricey £££) unit on the table a wizard just 6 diced a super spell and the unit of 50 guys you bought painted and assembled were virtually all gone.

Then all the IP things started and what seemed like a general disinterest of fantasy settings (I remember numbers dwindling when x-wing was released) the game seemed to have hit ground and quite frankly couldn't be saved without major changes

 Sir Arun wrote:



I just... I cant wrap my head around it. TW: Warhammer has been out for over 2 years now and even the most dim witted sales manager should have gotten the thought "hey guye, this game might attract a new generation of players so lets scrap our plans about phasing out the WHFB range, at least for now" but nope, nothing of the sort ever happened in Nottingham.

Please show me the increase in marvel comics sales due to the MCU.

You won't. A ton of store owners will tell you they have next to zero impact.

I'm tired of this non-sensical argument. If video games could revive a tabletop games, Warhammer Age of Reckoning would have supposed a substancial influx... which wasn't the case at all. Video games bring attention and low hanging fruit seekers. They will go read the wikipedias and memes, maybe even buy a couple books or try to build a unit or two, but the staggering majority of that crowd won't budge deeper than the game. Sure, SOME will take the plunge properly, but those don't really outweigh the crowd they get from other sources and their standard policies.

But what I dont understand is, most of GW's lotr range is still on sale, example the riders of rohan whose plastic minis I bought THIRTEEN YEARS AGO when I was still a school boy. Meanwhile, GW has phased out the entire Bretonnia range. I cant wrap my head around this.

They have a lincensing deal. They are forced to keep that range. And by and large it's a negligible part of their store space most of the time.

WHFB didn't sell. For perceived reasons. Some say it was more expensive than 40k (it wasn't. but the illusion came from the steadfast rule where everyone being extremists decided they needed max size blobs smacking bellies in the center of the table which was expensive, and also boring to collect and paint)

My 40k armies cost about as much as my whfb fantasy armies from that era.

WHFB didn't sell. Because the 3rd party market was over-saturated with 2nd hand models and with other companies also doing generic elves and knights and dragons for a fraction of the price.

For the duration of 8th (2010 - 2015) we pulled in about five or six new players every year to our campaign events. NOT A SINGLE ONE bought a retail whfb army, they ALL went 2nd hand to ebay or other companies to get it cheaper.

Anecdotal, but an anecdote shared by many people over the years.

Our GW store couldn't move any WHFB at all and the game was played regularly so it wasn't from lack of players.

So GW blew the world up and started over with a more heavily IP protected world, a crack-easy ruleset that caters to the super casual and gets rid of pretty much any wargaming trope in favor of aligning more closely to the current trend of popular board games and collectible card games, brought on quite a few early 20-something year old developers that would be designing games to target their primary demographic, and well... they've profited from this.

The long and short of why it died was because GW sucks are coming up with new ideas to move the story forward. The thing that caused it was lack of sales and this is all because of kirby being a greedy dick and screwing over the game.

 auticus wrote:
WHFB didn't sell. For perceived reasons. Some say it was more expensive than 40k (it wasn't. but the illusion came from the steadfast rule where everyone being extremists decided they needed max size blobs smacking bellies in the center of the table which was expensive, and also boring to collect and paint)

My 40k armies cost about as much as my whfb fantasy armies from that era.
.

Depends on what you were playing
But the cost increase for Fantasy started with 7th Edition were they changed from 4 models wide units to 5 wide and nailed it in 8th with decrasing the Box content and raising the price. (no one was willing to pay 120€ for a single unit)
4th and 5th 40k were cheaper for some as new plastic kits and elite armies made it cheap in comparison

It was 7th 40k and 8th Fantasy that did maximize the costs for the player and they were equal in amount of models needed.

Fantasy and Lord of the Rings were the victims of the experiment on how expensive a premium product can be

 kodos wrote:

 auticus wrote:
WHFB didn't sell. For perceived reasons. Some say it was more expensive than 40k (it wasn't. but the illusion came from the steadfast rule where everyone being extremists decided they needed max size blobs smacking bellies in the center of the table which was expensive, and also boring to collect and paint)

My 40k armies cost about as much as my whfb fantasy armies from that era.
.

Depends on what you were playing
But the cost increase for Fantasy started with 7th Edition were they changed from 4 models wide units to 5 wide and nailed it in 8th with decrasing the Box content and raising the price. (no one was willing to pay 120€ for a single unit)
4th and 5th 40k were cheaper for some as new plastic kits and elite armies made it cheap in comparison

It was 7th 40k and 8th Fantasy that did maximize the costs for the player and they were equal in amount of models needed.

Fantasy and Lord of the Rings were the victims of the experiment on how expensive a premium product can be

In short, because of kirby

Not only because of him
there were others involved too that supported the idea of lowering points for infantry while increasing their prices

I do know that back in the beginning of 6th edition they wanted to get back into armies looking like armies and not the super hero collection of 5th edition. (Source: various white dwarf articles, interviews, and games day panel interviews)

7th edition wide hooked into cavalry hammer since he who charged first swung first, and dead men didn't step up so there was no need for infantry except for armies that had no cav (dwarves, raising the dead, daemons)

8th edition came out and they said once again they wanted to see armies that looked like armies so to alleviate the cav-hammer they brought in steadfast and step up so that cav units couldn't just obliterate large blocks of infantry.

Gamers being the extremists that they are took that and ran with it, creating massive blobs of infantry. Which could have been alleviated if GW would simply have added unit caps that were reasonable for the scale of the game.

That was coupled with the massive price hike in models.

In 7th you had the low model count cav armies that people liked because they only needed like 20-25 models. In 8th you couldn't do that. The pendulum swung back to that in AOS where we have "armies" that resemble the 5th edition super hero days (intentionally).

If 5th, 7th, and AOS are that... then one has to wonder if 6th, 8th, AOS 2.0 will swing back to more looking like armies instead of super hero collections.

Time will tell.

Little bit trademarking because GW is insane about that which is why we have aelves, aeldari and the amazing deadwalkers. Stupid names that are obviously still elves, eldar and zombies but easier to legally surround in legal junk.

A little GW is bad at fluff. They wanted to advance the story with End Times but they're incapable of advancing things without it having to be a world ending event these days so they killed Fantasy for AOS.

A lot is profit. Fantasy didn't do great so the logical course was deemed to be kill of Fantasy wholesale, butcher the model ranges and bring out AOS. Some people (me) still don't understand keeping Fantasy around in the same way as AOS seeing as that would have solved a lot of Fantasy's problems.

Or you can be salty and say GW just hate their fanbase and like to ruin fun.

As a person who got into fantasy at the end of 8th. It wasn't a very fun game to start in.

Practically no matter what new unit you bought or built, there was nothing that could match the blob of basic infantry in the centre with a big wizard overcasting. For a vetrean that already had these blacks of infantry fine but boy was that frustrating.

IMHO that dried up the well of new blood in fantasy. Made sales plummet.(Most people having armies barely bought any new models). And thus led to GW canning fantasy.

No company likes doing a hard reset like AoS. It's a gamble of epic proportions. so GW must have thought or known it had little top lose.

I don't think the Trademark/ chapterhouse issue had much to do with AoS itself. That could have been handled at a army book level (like it was for 40k: imperial guard to Astra militarum for instance).

 Earth127 wrote:


For a vetrean that already had these blacks of infantry fine but boy was that frustrating.

IMHO that dried up the well of new blood in fantasy. Made sales plummet.(Most people having armies barely bought any new models). And thus led to GW canning fantasy.

I don't think the Trademark/ chapterhouse issue had much to do with AoS itself. That could have been handled at a army book level (like it was for 40k: imperial guard to Astra militarum for instance).

I agree that it wasn't necessary to remove the entire game for names. But do you also intend to mean that the game basically turned way to old?

 Earth127 wrote:
As a person who got into fantasy at the end of 8th. It wasn't a very fun game to start in.

Practically no matter what new unit you bought or built, there was nothing that could match the blob of basic infantry in the centre with a big wizard overcasting. For a vetrean that already had these blacks of infantry fine but boy was that frustrating.

Yeah, steadfast was a terribly executed rule. Still just needed 9th ed, not a complete scrapping.
The fact that GW had the strange idea that people wanted to pay lots of money for a few models to play a system that wanted lots of model was another factor. Its why AoS is more like 40k and isn't close formation.

WHFB wasn't selling and IP protection, it really isn't anymore complicated then that.

AoS solved all the problems they were having with WHFB while, at the same time, promoted sales of their minis. Say what you will of AoS but impulse buying is a thing you can do with the game. I can walk into my local game store, buy a box of anything and BOOM! Completely usable unit for AoS. While with WHFB I'd have to plan ahead and figure out how many of X I would need for a usable unit.

Added to that I would probably not buy new as Ebay has been my go to for minis since I started playing back in 2003. I built my whole Empire army off 6th edition starter sets I got cheap online.

AoS also did not sell without start collecting boxes and General Handbook

If there would have been Army Boxes with a legal playable army, point and rules adjustments instead of "we don't make mistakes" and a more reasonable size or army price Warhammer Fantasy would have been as healthy as AoS is now

Had WHFB 9th edition added unit caps to units so mega units couldn't exist, flanking negating steadfast been a rule to give maneuver something that mattered, and toning down those ridiculous army-killing spells that the main tactic was "six dicing for the win", WHFB would have had a minor resurgance.

They still would have struggled with the 3rd party market and the fact that ebay was glutted with armies and no one felt the need to buy retail when ebay would provide for them indefinitely.

People still would not have bought minis though, even if all that were done. The changes to army structure through Allegiances and Battleline allowed you to buy anything and have it be usable right out of the box.

Simply put, the way WHFB was designed and the way it played were not really condusive to selling minis. Especially minis at the price point GW sells them which is why so many alternatives popped up in the later years WHFB. If all these models are are expensive wound counters why buy GW and not cheaper options? Or why not just buy used? It's how I built my 8th Edition Ogre army, all half price ebay that just needed some paint stripping.

While adjusting the rules for a 9th edition would have fixed the game, it would not have fixed the "No one is buying anything" problem. AoS fixes that by opening up army structure and allowing people to buy stuff and have it all be useful.

But the argument is still the same
Why should I buy a 600€ Stormcast army if I can get it secound hand for 300
Or buy just any old collection for cheap to use it in AoS.

There is just no reason to buy anything new for AoS except for that stuff that is just new and not available somewhere else.

So a 9th Edition with Stormcast and Khorne, adding Sylvaneth, Overlords and Deepkin later would have sold the same as they are doing now

Blowing up the world was an easy to way to skip the old factions and avoid updating them to a modern model range (eg Dwarf Warriors) while adding shiny new stuff.

Perhaps you can eventually do that. AoS is 3 years old, WHFB was 30. 30 years of minis building up are quite a lot of excess stock people can trade/Sell driving the price of the minis down making that a viable option. Meanwhile AoS is 3 years old and doesn't have that level of saturation of old minis sitting in cardboard boxes in garages.

Give the game another 15 years and that might be a problem but for now even on Ebay, getting anything other then Starter Set minis cheap is kinda hard.

If GW is doing what I think they are doing with the game it won't matter even if you sell those armies cheap. I just think GW's plan is to just keep releasing new factions that, due to the way the game works, you can keep mixing and matching with other allegiances.

Than look at 40k the game still sells even with everyone has a stockpile of minis in their garage

and you still can use the stockpile of minis from warhammer in AoS
Why should I buy the new Khorne stuff if I can use my old Chaos Warriors

But than, it had always been the case that the stockpile of minis did not help you building up an army in a new edition
My 4000 points empire army of 5th edition just got me a playable 1000 points in 6th
my 3000 points dwarfs of 7th did not make a playable 2250 points army for 8th, neither did my Chaos Warriors.

The game sell or did not sell for different reasons and not just because of secound hand or third party.
Same for 40k, there is just no reason to buy expensive Space Marines if I can get appropriate models for cheap but GW still sells.

It is the easy to pick up and "good" price for an army that sells models.