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Commissar von Toussaint wrote:

 Overread wrote:

I admit that even though I have not bought a single GW novel, I have been known to curl up with the 2nd ed. codexes just to re-read the background material.

I still need to grab a 2nd ed Tyranid codex; my first is now a well worn 3rd edition.

And yeah I was a gamer for ages before I ever tried a BL book. Which I think really helps highlight how easy it is to miss the lore when you don't "have" to buy it to game and why the codex as they are is oh so important. Heck I really hate how in the last 2 codex editions GW has cut out the unit lore pages. I really liked those and loved to see how they describe new units and models as well as get little tid bits of further info on earlier ones as they modified and adapted the entries.

 Overread wrote:
I still need to grab a 2nd ed Tyranid codex; my first is now a well worn 3rd edition.

The Tyranid codex from 2nd is brilliant. Full of foreboding, but also optimism as the Imperium recognizes the threat and mobilizes to meet it.

It basically tells Tyranid players that you are the ultimate bad guys, but that's okay.

A nice feature is that GW did a review of targeting rules to ensure players understood them. Imagine including that in a codex today!

Plus it had Regeneration, bought at 10 points per wound. A Carnifex would go up 100 points, but it was worth it.

The variations you could do through biomorphs in that book were wild too. A squad of Tyranid Warriors all with Bio-Plasma or Warp Fields? Pretty fun.

And the pre-game Tyranid effects were just fantastic. "Jones is acting strangely" of course, but also the various effects of your troops being exhausted and run down at the start of the battle because it's assumed that they've already been fighting a brutal campaign.

 Overread wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The codexes should just be books full of background, organisational detail, unit markings and colour schemes etc.
Then they wouldn't need to be replaced every three years (if you're lucky).

The rules should be free PDFs. Then they can be easily updated if necessary.

If anything this should be reversed.
Because GW will never sell enough of the type of Codex you envision to make it worth producing even 1 of them, let alone 20some.

The RULES though.... Those they know will sell.

And this is why the two should always go together as a sold product.

People focus on the game side as a priority purchase; whilst everything else is optional. Cut out the fluff and art from the rules - separate them - and it will work in the short term. Long term what will happen is new players will potentially have less and less interest in lore and art and side products. Furthermore you lose the connection so there might be less of a pull to draw them back once they take a step outside of the hobby (for whatever reason).

Cutting out lore and just having rules focuses on one type of customer; whilst having both hits far more customers over a broader spectrum. That helps encourage sales of that particular product and it helps generate interest and hype. Plus its a great way for GW to soft introduce a lot of people to their lore which might turn into BL book purchases and such.



There's a reason you see every other game that starts taking itself seriously start also producing lore and rule books and bundling bits of lore into the rules. The two are inseparable when the game you play is partly based on the story and imagination of the setting not just the raw tactical nuts and bolts of the game.

I know this & do not disagree. Damoles though is being short sighted

But the lore doesn't have to be in the codex. Why can't it be on the Community site. Old books that are out of print, why can't GW make them a free or 1`cent download. Why can't prior year movies from Warhammer TV, be put on the GW YT channel (not the entire series, just single episodes). Lore channels, painter and hobby channels are popular enough on YT for people to quit their jobs and become full time Youtubers. Why can't GW work with those people. The idea that in this day and age, where w40k is in the mainstream, people only can get their lore or w40k hobby from a codex is just wrong. There is a ton of specilised channels that help with that, there are YT shorts, lore Tiktoks etc.
If there was an option to just get rules, for an already VERY expensive hobby, it would not kill the game. Or at least not as long as the actual game is fun. The lore, hobby etc seems to often be used a crouch, when the core of the game which is the actual game is not working.

Yeah... they used to release citadel compendiums with rules and background stuffs from CJ and the first 40K compendium was taken from White Dwarf articles. All that rules and wargear lists and the story about Avatar of Khaine in 40K were all from WD issues (also the background books Index Astartes I&II, not the 8E/9E were also this, but collects the Index Astartes WD articles only). So in terms of practicality it's not impossible to do and in actuality, digital pulbications of these files would also be trivial. Hell, do this with BL like Cubicle 7 is doing on their side, offer physical prints but also digital downloads, and physical prints can be made-to-order to lower overhead and invenotry levels as well.

But why should they? First they ain't gonna curate a bunch of novel stories, because that's a monumental task if I ever hear one; then if they collects all the background unit fuffs, chapter backstories, timelines etc. from codex and core rulebooks, and compile them into separate volumes, it may mean hobbist like me would simply choose not to buy their rulebooks (which is one, heavy-ass tome, and expensive too).

Far easier to just sprinkle tiny bits of lore here and there, with a few new pieces of artworks, and charge you out the ass for it. Hey, you'd all pay for it!

And for that matter, there are quiet some nuances in the lore, like in 4th/5th edition Craftworld Eldar codex it was written that the Craftworlds were driven by solar sails -- and thus can only sail at sub-light speed because they are too big to fit into even the largest known webway gates; instead, their fleet must protect this relatively vulnerable target in space, and the Craftworlds themselves had webway portals on them that can transport their ships if need be.

I had compiled a document of notes around the end of 6E with lore bits and citations, and I just checked that file last week, so it's there. But this, this particular detail is no longer mentioned in later edtitions, making it seem impossible to invade a Craftworld without this information, if they can just vanish into the webway.

I've taken to compile WHFB timelines in recent years, the timeline events by themselves are often decently aligned, but if one digs into the relevant stories in the same army book, there are often contradictory information between editions too. How should a 40K version of such lore background info be organized? What format to host on this community website? Ultimately, it'd be work done for little gain for GW and I don't see them try.

Also, file hosting can be costly, with them continuously updating their backlogs, it'd be a full-time job to keep such an archive running; they shut down those specialist sections on their website as well as free campaign PDF sections for a reason. Warhammer-Community is now just a promotion website with new articles only now. Oh also get you to pay for their streaming services

ccs wrote:

 Overread wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:
The codexes should just be books full of background, organisational detail, unit markings and colour schemes etc.
Then they wouldn't need to be replaced every three years (if you're lucky).

The rules should be free PDFs. Then they can be easily updated if necessary.

If anything this should be reversed.
Because GW will never sell enough of the type of Codex you envision to make it worth producing even 1 of them, let alone 20some.

The RULES though.... Those they know will sell.

And this is why the two should always go together as a sold product.

People focus on the game side as a priority purchase; whilst everything else is optional. Cut out the fluff and art from the rules - separate them - and it will work in the short term. Long term what will happen is new players will potentially have less and less interest in lore and art and side products. Furthermore you lose the connection so there might be less of a pull to draw them back once they take a step outside of the hobby (for whatever reason).

Cutting out lore and just having rules focuses on one type of customer; whilst having both hits far more customers over a broader spectrum. That helps encourage sales of that particular product and it helps generate interest and hype. Plus its a great way for GW to soft introduce a lot of people to their lore which might turn into BL book purchases and such.



There's a reason you see every other game that starts taking itself seriously start also producing lore and rule books and bundling bits of lore into the rules. The two are inseparable when the game you play is partly based on the story and imagination of the setting not just the raw tactical nuts and bolts of the game.

I know this & do not disagree. Damoles though is being short sighted

I'm not convinced Damocles is being shortsighted, but they definitely aren't thinking of shareholders. I strongly suspect that what is good for the long-term success of the game and setting and what is good for GW's financials for the next couple of quarters are not the same, although they could overlap. Codex churn definitely burns out older players, and GW is relying on recruiting enough new blood to offset that whilst squeezing remaining whales whilst they can. I suspect this is not sustainable in the long term, but GW may change tack before they run into that issue. I understand the rationale- rushed rules stuffed into books with mostly recycled lore are going to have a higher profit margin than models.

With that in mind, a living, free ruleset (with good base rules) would retain more players IMO. I don't think this needs to be devoid of lore. Likewise, lore-only books do sell (see how many times GW has released the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer as an example), but the volume will be much lower than the forced rulebook churn.

Karol wrote:
If there was an option to just get rules, for an already VERY expensive hobby, it would not kill the game. Or at least not as long as the actual game is fun. The lore, hobby etc seems to often be used a crouch, when the core of the game which is the actual game is not working.

GW is the one making the hobby expensive. The ugly truth is that they used to offer better value for money.

 Haighus wrote:
With that in mind, a living, free ruleset (with good base rules) would retain more players IMO.

Even leaving aside the practical benefits of an online living ruleset, if being able to see the rules for a faction for free leads to someone buying even a single box of models for a faction they don't already collect, then it's already more profitable than selling that player a codex.

Anecdotally, I have seen more players read rules on Wahapedia or the free indices and decide they want to start another army than I've seen players buy codices and not end up playing the faction at all. Free rules are a functional sales strategy.

 catbarf wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
With that in mind, a living, free ruleset (with good base rules) would retain more players IMO.

Even leaving aside the practical benefits of an online living ruleset, if being able to see the rules for a faction for free leads to someone buying even a single box of models for a faction they don't already collect, then it's already more profitable than selling that player a codex.

Anecdotally, I have seen more players read rules on Wahapedia or the free indices and decide they want to start another army than I've seen players buy codices and not end up playing the faction at all. Free rules are a functional sales strategy.

^Totally agree. It's advertising.

Thing is GW doesn't want to advertise that way and they don't have too. A lot of smaller game firms do because they simply do not have much of a budget to advertise with.

GW can. They have stores on the highstreet; they have a VAST number of youtube and other streaming channels of players generating play content every day; they have their own 365 day a year marketing material on their main website; they have Warhammer + and the upcoming Amazon TV show; they have Video games (several of which are major hits); they have gamers building websites to talk about their game (And business advice).


GW don't need to give away their rules for free to advertise their game. They've got multiple avenues to advertise through whilst still profiting from their rules material. Plus the healthy sale of their rules material allows them to justify investing money into a quality product.

Free rules is very much an approach to marketing. It's not the only one, but its certainly a very good way especially when a firm has very limited resources

 Overread wrote:
Thing is GW doesn't want to advertise that way and they don't have too. A lot of smaller game firms do because they simply do not have much of a budget to advertise with.

GW can. They have stores on the highstreet; they have a VAST number of youtube and other streaming channels of players generating play content every day; they have their own 365 day a year marketing material on their main website; they have Warhammer + and the upcoming Amazon TV show; they have Video games (several of which are major hits); they have gamers building websites to talk about their game (And business advice).


GW don't need to give away their rules for free to advertise their game. They've got multiple avenues to advertise through whilst still profiting from their rules material. Plus the healthy sale of their rules material allows them to justify investing money into a quality product.

Free rules is very much an approach to marketing. It's not the only one, but its certainly a very good way especially when a firm has very limited resources

They don't need to now. But that assumes their current business model is sustainable. I suspect it is not, albeit over a fairly long time period. Bearing in mind that sustainability does not matter one bit to shareholders, profits in the short term do. To me, GW seems to be in its engakification stage and I worry* they could run into real trouble in the next decade if they stick the current course.


*Worry because they are the owners of a setting I am very attached to and enjoy, rather than any loyalty to the company itself.

 Haighus wrote:

 Overread wrote:
Thing is GW doesn't want to advertise that way and they don't have too. A lot of smaller game firms do because they simply do not have much of a budget to advertise with.

GW can. They have stores on the highstreet; they have a VAST number of youtube and other streaming channels of players generating play content every day; they have their own 365 day a year marketing material on their main website; they have Warhammer + and the upcoming Amazon TV show; they have Video games (several of which are major hits); they have gamers building websites to talk about their game (And business advice).


GW don't need to give away their rules for free to advertise their game. They've got multiple avenues to advertise through whilst still profiting from their rules material. Plus the healthy sale of their rules material allows them to justify investing money into a quality product.

Free rules is very much an approach to marketing. It's not the only one, but its certainly a very good way especially when a firm has very limited resources

They don't need to now. But that assumes their current business model is sustainable. I suspect it is not, albeit over a fairly long time period. Bearing in mind that sustainability does not matter one bit to shareholders, profits in the short term do. To me, GW seems to be in its engakification stage and I worry* they could run into real trouble in the next decade if they stick the current course.


*Worry because they are the owners of a setting I am very attached to and enjoy, rather than any loyalty to the company itself.

Right now I'm not worried about GW, heck they are in a very strong position now as a company. Don't forget all their investments come from profits not loans, so even if all their Warhammer TV costs go belly up, GW are simply left with wasted investment not debt hanging around their necks dragging them down. This means if they poorly invest they can just move on without baggage.

My main worry about GW right now is that they keep leaning into so many expansion books as a concept which I think will (and is)burning people out. I get a sense that GW is starting to realise this and might make adjustments. I think that they walk a tightrope between wanting people to buy their books and not wanting to shove that so much down people's throats that they choke and give up.

I think they are in a healthier position than, say, Magic the Gathering where you can 100% see the short term cash-cow marketing going on ($1000 for a handful of cards that can't even be used in games - so purely targeting rich collectors and "investors").

I do think that under Kirby GW focused a lot on short term profits and GW suffered for it and I think they realised that. Don't forget after the pandemic their stock sunk in value and there wasn't a massive panic move to try and raise it up again. GW enjoyed a rapid rise to fame and stock market power and then a decline because they are not a firm that can keep making record breaking expansion at that rate (so all those investors sold up which lowered the stock value for a time).


Could GW burn out or falter - possibly. That said one could argue that GW getting a bit weaker is a good thing for the market overall in some ways as it would give room for others to rise up. I think if GW weakened but others rose to fill the gap then we'd have the best of both worlds - GW supporting its stuff and a slightly bigger market with more choice and variety. Accepting though that Gw is very much a gateway firm in terms of getting a lot of new fresh blood into the hobby in many countries.

No way I can believe any public traded company today to expand using money they made instead of investments. No way any public-traded company today can build a whole factory and hire additional workers without outside investments. Nah, I ain't buying that, even if it's straight from the horse's mouth, it'd still be lies.

Their stock ain't flying this high without VC money flooding it, not possible. I can concede that their finance might be better than IT startup and "unicorns", but only because unlike those companies, GW does actually have products to sell, but I don't believe for a moment they have the liquidity to invest in a factory, nor do I believe their management would even consider using their own liquidity instead of using investment money and loans.

 Overread wrote:
Right now I'm not worried about GW, heck they are in a very strong position now as a company. Don't forget all their investments come from profits not loans, so even if all their Warhammer TV costs go belly up, GW are simply left with wasted investment not debt hanging around their necks dragging them down. This means if they poorly invest they can just move on without baggage.

The lack of debt almost sank GW (details on another thread) because when you have no debt and no existing credit relationship, when you need to borrow money on short notice, it can trigger a run on your stock.

One of the great questions of old was how much actual product does GW move given their relentless price increases and the much larger scope of the game.

The model count doubled from 2nd to 3rd, but the starter box had half as many figures. The product line has probably at least tripled in terms of offerings, and they are exponentially more expensive. So it's possible they make more but sell much less.

As for me, I like the feel of the old editions because (as we now know) the game designers were dedicated to producing a better product, and when they were repeatedly thwarted, they left, and you can see the resulting loss of quality.

I can't see how you can argue that GW are selling less when right now there's products that people want which are out of stock and GW only semi- recently built a whole new factory on their main site.

 Overread wrote:
I can't see how you can argue that GW are selling less when right now there's products that people want which are out of stock and GW only semi- recently built a whole new factory on their main site.

A new plant may simply be wanting to discard legacy machinery and methods. GM built a new plant west of Lansing - after closing three of them only a few miles away.

And as I said, no one knows the quantity of sales. GW has always, always been opaque about that sort of thing.

As for products being out of stock, that's just terrible supply management. If you only sell one model of a given type a year, you may not bother restocking it for a while. It is entirely possible that GW sales are a mile wide but only an inch deep - they have massive catalog, but a tiny fraction of it sees sales of any appreciable volume.

Again, how many factions/flavors of 40k are there at this point? I honestly don't know. Through years of effort and the skillful deployment of alternate lines of figures (including historicals), I've got a reasonable force for every major faction of 2nd edition 40k: Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Tyranids, Chaos Marines, Orks, Eldar, Sisters of Battle. Not only have the factions expanded, the sub-factions and time periods have also increased. It's not surprising that amidst that massive catalog there would be shortfalls.

Got a couple 40K games in today. this was a special request-

I had to fight 2 games without changing my army list with the following restrictions.

No reserves/deepstrike or outflanking units.

I ended up doing a bit of a throwback to an army i built when 5th ed was actually the current edition, based on the badab war siege army list.

My list

HQ
master of the forge with 2 servitors

Troops
5 sniper scouts with cammo cloaks
ironclad dreadnought talon

Elites
X3 venerable hellfire pattern dreadnoughts (las/missile)

Heavy support
.land raider achillies
.deredeo dreadnought with plasma cannonade/aiolos missile launcher/heavy flamers

The first game was a 5 objective match with an end to end deployment.

I was facing a double force org imperial guard armored company (forgeworld list) with iron hands marines.

All game the guard had the range advantage, i ended up having to focus on the objectives and try to stay alive. it was hard to pull off but my opponent managed to roll poorly enough for me to eek out a win holding 3 of 5 objectives.









The second game i was fighting against his 3.5 chaos iron warriors.

We left the table objectives the same but used a dawn of war setup.

This match saw him on par with my ranges and a large number of infantry on his side. he started out very strong but i managed to turn it around on damage output and his unlucky dice rolls to pull off a pretty impressive victory.

 lcmiracle wrote:
No way I can believe any public traded company today to expand using money they made instead of investments. No way any public-traded company today can build a whole factory and hire additional workers without outside investments. Nah, I ain't buying that, even if it's straight from the horse's mouth, it'd still be lies.

Their stock ain't flying this high without VC money flooding it, not possible. I can concede that their finance might be better than IT startup and "unicorns", but only because unlike those companies, GW does actually have products to sell, but I don't believe for a moment they have the liquidity to invest in a factory, nor do I believe their management would even consider using their own liquidity instead of using investment money and loans.

In the US, "Publicly Traded" companies have to issue annual statements that detail all the debt and investments they have. If there was VC money flooding the company and that wasn't on the annual statements, they would be in big trouble. I'm pretty sure the UK has similar laws.

Regarding the books being mixed with rules, lore and art, I suspect this was originally done out of sheer passion, but has since remained in effect as an effective copyrights enforcement method. If the books contained only rules, copyrighting their content would be much less enforcable legally.

With regards to GW debt, it wouldn't actually surprise me if they would not have much if any. Would certainly explain their glacial pace in upgrading their logistic infrastructure

 SgtEeveell wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:
No way I can believe any public traded company today to expand using money they made instead of investments. No way any public-traded company today can build a whole factory and hire additional workers without outside investments. Nah, I ain't buying that, even if it's straight from the horse's mouth, it'd still be lies.

Their stock ain't flying this high without VC money flooding it, not possible. I can concede that their finance might be better than IT startup and "unicorns", but only because unlike those companies, GW does actually have products to sell, but I don't believe for a moment they have the liquidity to invest in a factory, nor do I believe their management would even consider using their own liquidity instead of using investment money and loans.

In the US, "Publicly Traded" companies have to issue annual statements that detail all the debt and investments they have. If there was VC money flooding the company and that wasn't on the annual statements, they would be in big trouble. I'm pretty sure the UK has similar laws.

I know GW releases annual reports but I haven't kept track for years. According to Marketwatch.com, Games-Workshop's total liability in 2023 Q2 (June-May, how they wrote it, not me) is 91M GBP. Which is against their 326.8M total assets. Their Q2 total liability to total assets ratio was 28%. Their total liability is generally growing in the past 5 years, but so has their assets, so their finances do look good.

On the other hand, they have no SEC filing because they ain't in the U.S., I guess

 lcmiracle wrote:

 SgtEeveell wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:
No way I can believe any public traded company today to expand using money they made instead of investments. No way any public-traded company today can build a whole factory and hire additional workers without outside investments. Nah, I ain't buying that, even if it's straight from the horse's mouth, it'd still be lies.

Their stock ain't flying this high without VC money flooding it, not possible. I can concede that their finance might be better than IT startup and "unicorns", but only because unlike those companies, GW does actually have products to sell, but I don't believe for a moment they have the liquidity to invest in a factory, nor do I believe their management would even consider using their own liquidity instead of using investment money and loans.

In the US, "Publicly Traded" companies have to issue annual statements that detail all the debt and investments they have. If there was VC money flooding the company and that wasn't on the annual statements, they would be in big trouble. I'm pretty sure the UK has similar laws.

I know GW releases annual reports but I haven't kept track for years. According to Marketwatch.com, Games-Workshop's total liability in 2023 Q2 (June-May, how they wrote it, not me) is 91M GBP. Which is against their 326.8M total assets. Their Q2 total liability to total assets ratio was 28%. Their total liability is generally growing in the past 5 years, but so has their assets, so their finances do look good.

On the other hand, they have no SEC filing because they ain't in the U.S., I guess

If GW were taking vast amounts of VC or any investment money and not declaring it they'd be sitting on a time bomb before the taxman game and everything would fall apart.
I seem to recall the new faction was a £9million investment for them (or might have been £12million) though that might also have been bundled along with some warehouse improvements as well.

Honestly you sound like you're going down the rabbit hole of scams being the only way GW could support itself and sure they could be telling lies in every annual report and such. But on the other hand maybe they just have an older view to business that's proven to work in the long term for them more so than more "modern" practice which can load a company with debts and sink them when things get a little rough (just look at how many big highstreet named stores in the UK have crashed and burned over the years).

 Overread wrote:
Honestly you sound like you're going down the rabbit hole of scams being the only way GW could support itself and sure they could be telling lies in every annual report and such. But on the other hand maybe they just have an older view to business that's proven to work in the long term for them more so than more "modern" practice which can load a company with debts and sink them when things get a little rough (just look at how many big highstreet named stores in the UK have crashed and burned over the years).

I get what you're saying but there's a long and well-documented history of companies thought to be squeaky clean whose dirt was only discovered after their downfall.

I think that's where the old-school pessimism comes from. If you look at gaming companies, there are lots of examples of visionaries who fudged the books or lost track of what was going on and crashed and burned despite phenomenal success. SPI, Avalon Hill, TSR...the list is pretty vast. Then there are the product licensees who got knee-capped by losing the IP. West End Games and Decipher come to mind.

Getting back to something close to the OP topic, I think what a lot of us old-timers miss is the sense of adventure and innovation that defined "early" Games Workshop. They were genuinely having fun, and it showed. One-off games, weird variants in the magazines, what would later be called "specialist" games launched into the void without a second thought - this was the GW many of us fell in love with.

In that context, ragged rules and esoteric fluff was a feature, not a bug. The enduring appeal of 2nd comes in part from the understanding that it was truly a work in progress. The chaos of Rogue Trader was finally being brought under control, but there were rebel enclaves amidst the game design that stubbornly resisted assimilation.

The editions that came after were thoroughly homogenized. All of the little creative gremlins had been exteriminated, and while there were inconsistencies and rules exploits, it was more a product of bureaucratic carelessness than a surplus of creativity.

So... About those old editions...


A little light weekend hobbying... Tinkering with some custom cards to replace my venerable 2nd edition 40K decks.

Finally took some photos of my Warhammer World scores:

I'm going to stake out what is likely a hugely unpopular position, but I have no interest in the Rogue Trader stuff because it was before my time. Any nostalgia would be fake - I'd be retrofitting memories that aren't mine. Yes, I did play a game of Rogue Trader back in the day and didn't like it. It feels pretentious to pretend that I was a fan.

The materials of 2nd are plentiful and provide good depth, and so I'm content with collecting that era.

This may be surprising from a history nerd, but I suppose it's inspired by the depth of my loyalty to "my" edition.

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
I'm going to stake out what is likely a hugely unpopular position, but I have no interest in the Rogue Trader stuff because it was before my time. Any nostalgia would be fake - I'd be retrofitting memories that aren't mine. Yes, I did play a game of Rogue Trader back in the day and didn't like it. It feels pretentious to pretend that I was a fan.

The materials of 2nd are plentiful and provide good depth, and so I'm content with collecting that era.

This may be surprising from a history nerd, but I suppose it's inspired by the depth of my loyalty to "my" edition.

I don't think that's unpopular, it just sounds normal. You don't have a nostalgic connection to something you didn't really enjoy/engage with as much way back when and you found something else that you better connected with.

For some of us who didn't get the RT era stuff it was "before our time" as gamers or as Warhammer Gamers and part of wanting to own it is having some history and being able to see and read and experience that even though we have no nostalgic connection to it. Nostalgia is powerful, but its not all there is.

You see it in all areas; heck there are "retro gamers" who were never around for the "retro era" who love collecting and playing the old games as much as those who came from that era. Meanwhile there are "old gamers" who can't stand the old games and only love the brand new stuff.

I doubt I'll ever play RT again, and I'm enjoying 10th, but I did play as a teenager back in the day, and it does hold a significant amount of nostalgia for me.

I had all 3 of those books, and of course the Realm of Chaos books include the original army lists for 2 of my 3 armies. The other didn't exist back then of course.

 lcmiracle wrote:

 SgtEeveell wrote:

 lcmiracle wrote:
No way I can believe any public traded company today to expand using money they made instead of investments. No way any public-traded company today can build a whole factory and hire additional workers without outside investments. Nah, I ain't buying that, even if it's straight from the horse's mouth, it'd still be lies.

Their stock ain't flying this high without VC money flooding it, not possible. I can concede that their finance might be better than IT startup and "unicorns", but only because unlike those companies, GW does actually have products to sell, but I don't believe for a moment they have the liquidity to invest in a factory, nor do I believe their management would even consider using their own liquidity instead of using investment money and loans.

In the US, "Publicly Traded" companies have to issue annual statements that detail all the debt and investments they have. If there was VC money flooding the company and that wasn't on the annual statements, they would be in big trouble. I'm pretty sure the UK has similar laws.

I know GW releases annual reports but I haven't kept track for years. According to Marketwatch.com, Games-Workshop's total liability in 2023 Q2 (June-May, how they wrote it, not me) is 91M GBP. Which is against their 326.8M total assets. Their Q2 total liability to total assets ratio was 28%. Their total liability is generally growing in the past 5 years, but so has their assets, so their finances do look good.

On the other hand, they have no SEC filing because they ain't in the U.S., I guess

Why does it matter what's reported? You just said you don't & won't believe it.