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I absolutely echo your statements to the letter, Treesong.

Unfortunately there are plenty of 3-5 year long GW supporters who weren't barely born during the times we talk about who will counter that with the statement, "You're just old! You are just viewing things through rose colored classes!"

And....sigh. Litereally the only areas where GW has improved since those days is advancing plastic models. Everything else has stagnated.

Even when you had the options of all those other metal Guard regiments and even when starting a Guard army was not crazy expensive...

You would still see whatever was an option in plastic dominating more than the "unique" metal regiments.

I've been playing since mid-3rd Ed, and have WD dating back from earlier, so I feel as if I can comment with some idea of what I'm talking about.

For me the beginning of the end was when the 4th Ed. Dark Angels Codex was released: it marked the beginning of streamlining lists (5 or 10 man tac squads only, no armoury, and heavy restrictions on what units could and could not take. Not to mention it saw the Rhino drop from 50 to 35 points). Every other codex followed suit, and got worse and worse in terms of taking the uniqueness of an army away from the player/hobbiest. Did you Rune Priest rock a storm shield and rune staff? How about your chaplain with the crozius and hammer? Canoness with a jump-pack who was loaded up with all sorts of goodies (blessed weapon, litanies of faith, mantle of Ophelia) to make her a S3 T3 daemon slaying bad-ass? Nope, not any more.
That was the beginning of the end, where GW chose to dictate more and more about how its game should be played.

I kept playing right up to 6th ed mind you, at which point I stopped playing after it became *very* apparent to me the game was less about the player playing the way they felt most fun, and more about GW selling you its newest toys at ever increasing prices.
Example? I have a Biel-Tan Eldar Army (even after they did away with the 'official' 3rd Ed era craftworld codex) that had one of every aspect warrior unit in the army (save two). That was how I wanted to play the game. It was a challenge in 4th Ed., a challenge in 5th Ed., and completely unplayable in 6th Ed. An army that relied on tight rules, clever thinking, and units to do *exactly* what was needed of them, could not be played in a game with so much randomness and sloppy-feeling rules. What was the overwhelming response to my concerns? Buy more models! Change the army you've been playing for the past two editions and add the new release units that, by-the-way, don't jive at all with what you were going with to begin with! I believe you should by units you *want* to play with - not units that GW says you *need* to play with.

So yeah, I was a huge 40k fan for 8 years, and then stopped playing shortly after 6th was released. The turning point all started with the Dark Angels.

I have not played since 4th edition, and I am pretty sure the armies I have would be depressingly sub-par in 6th edition, from Space marines, to Necrons, to Eldar.

I mean, good god, my Necron army is still from back in 3rd edition, which has a Lord, two 5-man squads of Immortals, three 10-man Necron units, some Scarab bases, a destroyer unit and two Spyders - all metal through and through. It played just fine, too.

But there's no stereotypically powergame-able units in it, which is what GW wants me to keep buying.

Another post in support of Killkrazy's post.

Also, the introduction of True Line of Sight in 5th edition.

That too. The existing system of LOS seemed to work just fine up until then.

Also put in the part about measuring from the actual guns on the model, and not just the base.

I wrote this on another topic, earlier today. However I think that this is a better thread for what I had said. The only addendum that I would make to it is that while I played regularly for seven years, I began buying gamesworkshop/citadel miniatures way back in the mid 90's while in the military. A full decade before I ever rolled dice on the tabletop.

Well, well, well!

Now we can see why there have been no FAQs answered since April of 2013, which was when I had made my last purchase of GW product.

Honestly, after waiting several months after that particular April, I stopped playing altogether and moved onto other things to occupy my time. Things such as board games (Axis and Allies, Zombicide, even Chess and Stratego) and other non-game interests (Archery, Target shooting, Fishing, wood working, Beer making).

I actualy packed up all of my GW stuff into boxes and put them away in my storage shed just last month. It will remain there until I see some sort of improvement in the state of the game. I continue to keep an eye out on forums such as this one and hang out with my friends that still continue to play, but for now I am out.

I began playing in the later years of 4th edition, played regularly for seven years, spent thousands of dollars and ended up building three different massive armies. Orks, Space Marines, IG and a workable Tau army. I even read the Black Library books. At some point the product began to change making it less enjoyable. It was evidenced not only in the standard game, but in the books and Forgeworld as well.

It began to remind me of what happened to the comic book industry in the early 90's. I would read several titiles regularly and buy a few other titles from time to time. Yes there were a few different titles that covered the same characters such as "The Amazing Spiderman" and "Spectacular Spiderman" but you could follow one or the other without having to have the other title to understand what was going on. Then...everything changed. There was an explosion of books coming out that crossed over, across multiple titles! I couldn't understand what was going on in my issue of "Uncanny X-men" unless I also had "X-men", "X-factor", "X-force" (formerly "New Mutants"), Weapon X and who knows what else they added in just to get the sales of an underperforming book to increase. Even as a teenager I felt as though I was being had.

I first noticed things going that way while reading the Horus Heresy novels. I was following along fairly well, buying the books as they came out and enjoying them. Then other things began to crop up. E-books, audio only books (which I detest and aren't books) and Limited-gold-foil-dragonskin-written-in-the-blood-of-a-virgin-unicorn editions. I couldn't follow the story anymore due to holes that I was unable or unwilling to fill. So I stopped buying them .

The 40K games has gone the same way. I bought the new rule book, there were errors and discrepancies. They fixed a few, but not all. I could live with it knowing that they could correct them. Then they stopped correcting the discrepancies. Then there was a new suplemental rules printed in a magazine that I can never seem to get my hands on, due to limited printing. I eventually got those rules by downloading them for free from another source. They later printed those same rules into a supplemental rule book, that I wouldn't buy (because I downloaded them for free) People ran out and bought this supplemental rule book, for a hefty sum, only to see those that they needed pop up in another rule suplement that they would have to purchase anyway in order to play their prefered army. All the while answering no inquiries about discrepancies in this pile of rules.

Now, there is the rumor that there will be a new rule book that will clarify the mistakes that they made. While I have no doubt that there will be a book, I do doubt that it will truly fix much, More like, create a new batch of discrepancies, if the examples of the recent past are any indicator. To summarize the issue at hand...they are expecting me to buy their product, sight unseen with the expectation that this time....this time.....this time it will be better.

If GW wants to know why their stock dropped or why their sales are down, it's me and everyone like me. They aren't losing me, they've already lost me. I am giving them the opportunity to win me back.

When did it start going down hill?...

Was it when they went WAAC and started trying to min-max profits at the cost of the quality of their games?

Was it when they became the TFG of the gaming company world and started all those pointless lawsuits??

Was it when they made it clear they do not care what their customers opinions are???

---->Yes<----

I'm the kind of guy that stands on principle often and respects others for doing the same. I tend to do more business with companies that have them also and try to avoid those that don't. GW is not on my list of preferred companies and are in fact moving toward preferred enemy status.

I'd like to buy their models but it goes against my personal ethics to do business with a company that has none. It's really to bad that the company that created such an awesome game has turned it's back on it's customer base and shown such utter disregard for those that have supported them over the years. I find them unrespectable and view them with disdain.

I still play. I just don't give them any money.

Well, things went down hill when they lost part of their fan base due to price increases (students) and simultaneously kids were not able to get into the hobby due to the high prices for generating an army.

I feel like if I had to pick out a starting point for the decline it'd be the release of the 5e rulebook; before then you didn't see unplayable Codices languishing two editions behind the rules, newer kits didn't automatically trump older ones, the popular cheese armies were all more easily counterable, and the spread of power between Codexes was narrower. That's also about when they started letting Matt Ward write anything at all, his Necron and Grey Knight Codexes were the two worst Codexes in the history of the game in terms of game balance and in terms of fluff (he also broke Warhammer Fantasy so hard with his Daemons book that they had to release 8e just to nerf them, but that's a story for another day).

For me it all started going downhill when GW decided to keep all of its releases a big secret.
I remember a time when the News and Rumors section was packed with leaked info about what's coming in the next year or two. It gave rise to some exciting rumor-mongering and inspired cool ideas for future modeling plans. People where generally really excited.
You'll notice now that there is very little GW news anymore. Nothing to get excited about. Nothing to talk about. We know nothing until a release is imminent, at which point it's too late to build hype.

The GW decision to eliminate all promotion, excitement and anticipation about upcoming releases was akin to finding out that sex will never again involve nudity or foreplay... In fact you're lucky if you're even aware it happened.

It's going to vary from person to person really.

For me it was about 2002-3 where I really fell out of love with GW to the point I gave all my stuff away and abandoned it for a good few years.

It wasn't one thing so much as several. I went to Games Day in 2001 for the first and only time and while I'm sure most will have enjoyed it back then compared to what folk are saying about it now it ended up being a real non-event for me, and that was disheartening. I dunno, maybe it was the overnight coach journey with the brats. LotR became a bit of a factor after its release too tho. Before that, there was a pretty good amount of Necromunda & Blood Bowl players at our local store. That seemed to dry up in the years after LotR was released. Also White Dwarf seemed to start to become more like the sales advert it ended up as, with the inverted LotR section at the back and having to use more space to push the new releases than ever before, reducing content elsewhere. It was around that time I also started to notice the really aggressive sales tacks of the staff. Must emphasise they were nice guys all the same and knew the regulars well and would chat to us about what we're doing etc etc, but any time someone naive came in they'd be trying to push the boxed games like crazy. That was never fun to watch.

The price rises were also definitely a factor to me. While they're probably even more considerable now than back then, it was a shock seeing an Ork Dread go in the £30-£35 range for the first time, when I think it had been no more than half that when I started out. If they'd been kept at a lower level I might have kept the interest much longer, maybe even throughout the whole period instead of leaving. It was the combination of everything that just made it harder if not impossible to justify.

I've no doubt at this time there were still a lot of good things going on...and it's pretty clear that there's a lot more nonsense now than then as has been eloquently summed up by others... but for me my aim is so limited to just getting the Ork force done to play against mates I've met in the last few years that I can filter out most of the recent bs from GW, and with the ability to buy online from eBay/indy distributors the prices become at least tolerable. The quality of the minis has always been there (those AoBR Orks really helped get me hooked again) and I adore the overall fluff, even with drastic changes like what happened to Necrons recently. It's a shame how GW are going though - more and more corporate as the years tick by but I guess that was sadly inevitable.

I wonder what percentage of the forums nowadays is this exact thread.

 Mywik wrote:

 obithius wrote:

 Mywik wrote:
Models were always expensive. The rules were always badly written. The models were always awesome looking. People always loved bitching about gw.

Things started going down when more people got internet.

Models were not always expensive. When I started playing I bought a tactical squad each week with my £5 pocket money. That's equivalent to £8.60 in 2012, the last year data is available for:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/inflation/calculator/flash/default.aspx

A tactical squad is now £25. Nicer models, but a kid can't buy them with pocket money any more. That's when the game went downhill for me.

Thats subjective i admit. When i started playing in 2nd edition a leman russ battle tank was 50DM ... at that time i was ~15 and had 50DM pocket money per month. So for me it was expensive.

Admittedly Boxes are more expensive now but also kids get more pocket money. The point still stands that its a long way to a working army when you are that age. Today i can totally afford one or more expensive boxes but i refuse to because of the price and not being 15 anymore.

So for some kid starting the hobby nothing really changed.

What did change though is the fact that there are a lot more competitors than back in the day that offer a lot more value for your money.

Except, even accounting for inflation, the prices have gone up significantly in the past 5 years. When I started playing, you could get a Land Raider for 50 bucks, or a Tactical Squad for 25. (It might even have been 20.) Battleforces were 80 dollars.
In the past four years, though, prices have consistently grown so that every model is about 50% more expensive. In five years.

However, that's not even a fair comparison. Five years ago, it was incredibly easy to go online and find a web-store selling models for thirty, fourty, or even fifty percent off. Sales were frequent, and getting cheap models was painfully easy. So, in effect, for the average thrifty player costs have nearly trippled in those five years.

Now, I do agree with GW cracking down on the web-sales and discounts. The models were selling for so cheaply, they weren't making any profitwhatsoever. However, simultaneously taking away the discounts and massively raising their prices (Which were already high) is just too much.

I'd say after the late 90s. I think a lot of key people left GW, and it became more of a business than a company run by a bunch of hobby dudes. People like Andy Chambers, Paul Sawyer, Jake Thornton, etc. The people, to me, that really made GW what it was. Although I guess most of those were early 2000s. So maybe around 4th edition?

White Dwarf quality had slowly been declining, and took such a nose dive that I know I stopped buying it.

You think of ALL the Specialist games produced in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Stuff like Mordheim, which started as the pet project of a GW employee, and then was featured in White Dwarf, had a huge reception, and was eventually made into a game. I can't IMAGINE current day GW doing something like that. Back then GW really was innovative and generally had an aura of "excitement". Just pure joy and excitement at the hobby bled through every page of every article, codex, and rulebook. Whereas now the tone of the writing almost feels like a person trying to awkwardly recapture that. Whenever the 6th rulebook mentions "narrative" I roll my eyes, because it just feels so forced.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Mywik wrote:
Models were always expensive. The rules were always badly written. The models were always awesome looking. People always loved bitching about gw.

Things started going down when more people got internet.

Lets face it, GW is a British company, and if there's one thing we like better than our hobbies, it's complaining.

obithius wrote:
Models were not always expensive. When I started playing I bought a tactical squad each week with my £5 pocket money. That's equivalent to £8.60 in 2012, the last year data is available for:
http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/education/Pages/inflation/calculator/flash/default.aspx

A tactical squad is now £25. Nicer models, but a kid can't buy them with pocket money any more. That's when the game went downhill for me.

Funny. My army has only doubled in price since 1998. I have a picture to prove it.



I think you had more pocket money as a child than you remember.

I just broke out a copy of White Dwarf 244 from May of 2000. A 20 man box of Catachans had a cost of $22.99. Today the same exact 20 models will cost you $58.00.

A Space Marine Land Raider Army boxed set contained: A land raider, a 10 man tac squad, 5 man terminator squad, 1 terminator captain, 1 land speeder, a 3 man bike squad, a 5 man jump pack squad, a 5 man devestator squad, a dreadnaught, and a 5 man scout squad, all for $199.99.

Today that stuff will run you $425.75.

The catachans are over a 150% increase in 15 years while the land raider box is a 112% increase. I don't believe that inflation has been quite that high in the last decade and a half. A quick check on an inflation calculator will show that the $22.99 in 2000 had the same buying power as $31.10 as of 2013. That's a far cry from $58. The $199.99 had the same buying power as $270.55. That is a more than just a bit less than $425.75.

You could get a three model set of Sentinels for $50 and a catachan battle force containing 20 catachans, 2 sentinels and Leman Russ for $80.

Then let's look at a codex price. Codex Space Marines and Codex Imperial Guard were $14.99. The Space Wolves Codex was $9.99. Now I know that they've added a lot more pictures since those days, but that's about it. Heck, I personaly paid $32.95 for the Angels of Death codex, that contained all the rules for Dark Angels and Blood Angels with a ton of fluff in 120 pages. I know that I paid this because the price sticker is still on the book. But the new hardbounds are so much better quality, you might say...horse feathers. Out of all the trade paperback rule books that I have purchased (that's soft cover) I lost one page from one of them. My hard cover 6th edition rulebook is falling apart.

As the prices for this stuff have increased at roughly triple the rate of inflation i would surmise that.... no, he may not have had more pocket money as a child than he remembers as he didn't give the time when he was a child.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Even your example is a 117% increase. Way over inflationary adjustment. Even though it is a single model cherry picked from the entire line. You could easily do the same with Iron Hand Straken. That is indeed even a newer model than the 2000 version and it's price only increased roughly by 60% from $9.49 to $15.00. Still a bit steep as adjusting for inflation the model should cost $12.84 today.

 bosky wrote:
You think of ALL the Specialist games produced in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Stuff like Mordheim, which started as the pet project of a GW employee, and then was featured in White Dwarf, had a huge reception, and was eventually made into a game. I can't IMAGINE current day GW doing something like that. Back then GW really was innovative and generally had an aura of "excitement". Just pure joy and excitement at the hobby bled through every page of every article, codex, and rulebook. Whereas now the tone of the writing almost feels like a person trying to awkwardly recapture that. Whenever the 6th rulebook mentions "narrative" I roll my eyes, because it just feels so forced.

I think that's really the crux of it. There was a time when GW was innovative, when they actually created games. Now, they're just revising and rehashing the same things. When was the last time GAMES Workshop actually made a new game that we all wanted to play?

I think that's really the crux of it. There was a time when GW was innovative, when they actually created games. Now, they're just revising and rehashing the same things. When was the last time GAMES Workshop actually made a new game that we all wanted to play?

I would say Lord of the Rings, but that has become a bunch of rehashes, too. Hmm.....Battlefleet Gothic? Or maybe Epic: Armageddon, though that technically wasn't a "new" game.

Hell, before Battlefleet Gothic came out, they released a set of the beta rules in White Dwarf, complete with card punch-outs of ships. Can you even imagine GW doing that nowadays?!?

 AegisGrimm wrote:
Can you even imagine GW doing that nowadays?!?

I would shed a single manly tear of happiness if they did.

 Voidwraith wrote:
It all started going downhill when people started talking on forums.

It's really easy to just see all of the negative comments on forums and conclude that they are somehow to blame for spreading ill-will towards GW like some sort of online virus... But I've been involved in several clubs over the years that had most of their players with very little or no internet presence. And they still got progressively more anti-GW as time went on, due to GW's business practices.

The internet doesn't promote the hate. It just gives people a venue to discuss it. The internet also promotes the better aspects of the hobby in a way that physical clubs never can, by allowing enthusiasts to share their passion with people from all over the globe. Forums aren't the problem... the visible negativity is just a symptom.


To a certain extent, the idea that things started going downhill shortly after any given player started is spot-on... Because the point at which we are first introduced to the hobby becomes our baseline for what is 'normal'. As prices increase, and as you get exposed to an ever-increasing pool of examples as to why GW is completely fething insane, your perception of the hobby is coloured as a result, and things eventually wind up seeming less shiny than they were when you started.


So it's not surprising that everyone has a different idea of just when it started going downhill. It's been going downhill for a heck of a long time... but exactly when people noticed has varied for everybody.

I remember (and still have) the old Horus Heresy game they made about the Siege of Terra. It was a couple of card inserts worth in the White Dwarf and while it wasn't massively deep or intricate it was a completely free, fun game. It got you engaged with the IP (there was some awesome fluff with it) and let you play in the same world you loved a different way.

Likewise, we briefly had a lot of fun with Brewhouse Bash, and the Dark Eldar arena game at the start of 3rd edition.

More over I think there is also somewhat of a backlash due to the quality of rules. It has been brought into sharp relief in recent years. In 1990 I simply didn't notice how bad it was and there weren't any other options. Now in 2014 not only can I find loopholes with ease but I know full well there are other rulesets that just don'thave the issue.

Evey 40k player should browse the YMDC for Warmachine. That is the quality of rules the biggest wargaming company making the biggest game in the world should be making and it's customers should be getting.

 insaniak wrote:
Likewise, we briefly had a lot of fun with Brewhouse Bash, and the Dark Eldar arena game at the start of 3rd edition.

Yeah and mentioning WHFB briefly, Full Tilt.

Brewhouse Bash was really fun. Would still like to make a 3D version of that pub lol

 bosky wrote:


You think of ALL the Specialist games produced in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Stuff like Mordheim, which started as the pet project of a GW employee, and then was featured in White Dwarf, had a huge reception, and was eventually made into a game. I can't IMAGINE current day GW doing something like that. Back then GW really was innovative and generally had an aura of "excitement". Just pure joy and excitement at the hobby bled through every page of every article, codex, and rulebook. Whereas now the tone of the writing almost feels like a person trying to awkwardly recapture that. Whenever the 6th rulebook mentions "narrative" I roll my eyes, because it just feels so forced.

I started to agree with this and then remembered Dreadfleet. This was obviously made by someone who had a really good idea, and then managed to persuade management to run with it. And Dreadfleet was gak. So, I blame Phil Kelly for the decline of GW.

I think it's quite clear that there's a lot more management control over GW releases now. Sculpts are almost exact recreations of artwork [mostly to their detriment in my opinion] and characters that are either out of stock or never had a model are stripped from codexes. Units are intentionally withheld from codexes in order to sell dataslates. Epic will never come back as it's much more profitable to make customers buy the full size units.

In terms of buying models from GW, 'Fine'cast limited lots of options for me. Lower quality, higher cost models using a cheaper material [and the QC issues] led tome swearing never to buy this gak, something I've kept to. 'Fine'cast encouraged me to choose an all metal army - Sisters - which I love [I have only a handful of plastic models too].

Ruleswise, I've been really happy since 6th. Love allies, flyers, fortifications, Escalation. So for me, in terms of rules, GW is in a 'golden era'. In terms of models, maybe bronze. In terms of creativity, yeah I agree it's pretty barren ground due to corporate control.

 bosky wrote:
I'd say after the late 90s. I think a lot of key people left GW, and it became more of a business than a company run by a bunch of hobby dudes. People like Andy Chambers, Paul Sawyer, Jake Thornton, etc. The people, to me, that really made GW what it was. Although I guess most of those were early 2000s. So maybe around 4th edition?

White Dwarf quality had slowly been declining, and took such a nose dive that I know I stopped buying it.

You think of ALL the Specialist games produced in the late 80s and most of the 90s. Stuff like Mordheim, which started as the pet project of a GW employee, and then was featured in White Dwarf, had a huge reception, and was eventually made into a game. I can't IMAGINE current day GW doing something like that. Back then GW really was innovative and generally had an aura of "excitement". Just pure joy and excitement at the hobby bled through every page of every article, codex, and rulebook. Whereas now the tone of the writing almost feels like a person trying to awkwardly recapture that. Whenever the 6th rulebook mentions "narrative" I roll my eyes, because it just feels so forced.

When you think about it, its also a form of playtesting. Imagine if they did this in their white dwarf! Had a small section to rules and game options (like a demo) and if people like it enough then they can make a big deal about releasing it and so on. Like when someone converts an army, they make minor rules for it (blood pact comes to mind) and if people wanted it they could release a "Digital dataslate" for people to buy and so on.

Involves the community a bit more and makes white dwarf a better read if this was to be done.

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
I started to agree with this and then remembered Dreadfleet. This was obviously made by someone who had a really good idea, ...

All evidence would appear to the contrary...


An all-in-one-box naval game set in the Warhammer World might have been a good idea. But not in the format they decided on.



I think that the comparison between Dreadfleet and the redone Space Hulk, combined with the different receptions received by redone models compared to new additons recently suggests that redoing their old stuff is ultimately something that GW are far, far better at than coming up with anything new.

So, in that light, sticking with rehashing the same stuff over and over rather than pushing out more Dreadfleets and Riptides does seem like the best option...

 insaniak wrote:

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
I started to agree with this and then remembered Dreadfleet. This was obviously made by someone who had a really good idea, ...

All evidence would appear to the contrary...

An all-in-one-box naval game set in the Warhammer World might have been a good idea. But not in the format they decided on.

I think that the comparison between Dreadfleet and the redone Space Hulk, combined with the different receptions received by redone models compared to new additons recently suggests that redoing their old stuff is ultimately something that GW are far, far better at than coming up with anything new.

So, in that light, sticking with rehashing the same stuff over and over rather than pushing out more Dreadfleets and Riptides does seem like the best option...

There's definitely much more risk aversion at GW now. To be honest I would have been much more likely to buy Dreadfleet if it had been a reboxing of Man O'War. I would also happily buy a rebox of Bloodbowl, Necromunda, BFG, EPIC and Mordheim. Would I buy a completely new game? Maybe, maybe not.

I think a lot of the decisions made by GW management make more sense when you look at their customer base. Nostalgic 30/40 somethings with disposable income [like me] and new entrants to the hobby who want to buy somethin cool looking that is going to win them the game, no matter the fluff/balance.

I feel like if I had to pick out a starting point for the decline it'd be the release of the 5e rulebook; before then you didn't see unplayable Codices languishing two editions behind the rules, newer kits didn't automatically trump older ones, the popular cheese armies were all more easily counterable, and the spread of power between Codexes was narrower. That's also about when they started letting Matt Ward write anything at all, his Necron and Grey Knight Codexes were the two worst Codexes in the history of the game in terms of game balance and in terms of fluff (he also broke Warhammer Fantasy so hard with his Daemons book that they had to release 8e just to nerf them, but that's a story for another day).

I second this. 4e certainly had its problems, see holofalcons, Nidzilla and lash of submission, but they were isolated problems. When 5e rolled around, it seemed the new codices just straight out outclassed the older ones, and the game became utterly dominated by the likes of IG, Space Wolves, Blood Angles, Grey Knights, etc. To GWs credit though, if it wasn't for Tau and Eldar, I think the 5e codices would have been on a level playing field with the 6e codices, although 6e is still plagued by the likes of the flyer rules, snap shots, challenges, and lots of tables (warlord, mysterious terrain, etc.).

 tyrannosaurus wrote:
I started to agree with this and then remembered Dreadfleet. This was obviously made by someone who had a really good idea, and then managed to persuade management to run with it. And Dreadfleet was gak. So, I blame Phil Kelly for the decline of GW.

Haha, I guess this could be reasoned as Dreadfleet was not a labor of love, it was a calculated move to try to capitalize on how popular the single box Space Hulk re-release was. The fact that they focused more on the models than the rules in White Dwarf kind of supports this idea...at least that's how I'm going to reason it out

 Swastakowey wrote:
When you think about it, its also a form of playtesting. Imagine if they did this in their white dwarf! Had a small section to rules and game options (like a demo) and if people like it enough then they can make a big deal about releasing it and so on. Like when someone converts an army, they make minor rules for it (blood pact comes to mind) and if people wanted it they could release a "Digital dataslate" for people to buy and so on.

Involves the community a bit more and makes white dwarf a better read if this was to be done.

They did exactly that for Mordheim. I remember Tuomas Pirinen being excited about the game and posting some preliminary rules, sketches, and converted warbands. Which is why it's too bad how crummy White Dwarf and Specialist games have gotten.