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FYI: This thread is not just about GW's Tolkien-based products but about GW's practices more generally as they relate to the Tolkien franchise (for example, does GW have any idea how to handle a license?), the late-2012 market for war game miniatures, and the long term market -- looking backward and forward -- for Tolkien-based miniature wargaming.

IIRC, GW's LotR:SBG and WotR games have never been too popular. I have never known anyone in person who played either. Is all this talk about their Hobbit franchise-refresh having disastrous sales a reaction to this low popularity persisting during the film release and Christmas season? If so, that sounds like a retailer mistake. Or was the Hobbit a failure even compared to lifetime sales for the line?

Does anyone have a more detailed picture of what's going on with the Hobbit than the usual one-liner assumptions that fit so well into the much-beloved past time of GW-trashing? From what I know about SBG and WotR, the rules were pretty good. And new minis look as good and in some cases (e.g., wargs) much better than existing models.

Actually, LOTR was quite popular around my area. Several people played it, at one event a club got together and made an entire siege of Isengard diorama with a ton of scratch built Ents and tons of orcs and such. I myself have a small force of Rohan, a small force for Moria and bought the Mines of Moria boxed set. There's a lot of things I love about the LOTR range, I just haven't gotten in to it because I feel GW haven't really fleshed out the armies to the point where I'd like. It seems like that's the way they were heading, but then it kind of petered out.

I think the reason The Hobbit is unpopular is simply because the box set is not good value. I was ready to jump on The Hobbit bandwagon and give it a shot, but saw the price and contents of the boxed set and was like "err, no".

I still have a very close eye on LOTR/Hobbit and if GW can actually expand the armies I'll be very interested in collecting a full army. The new Dwarfs already look rather promising.

Let's talk about the starter set. I think that's a great, please pardon the pun, place to start.

Where did you think it came short as far as value? Just in terms of the price of miniatures compared against the product line, it wasn't bad. Was it more a matter of the actual units included?

LOTR never really seemed to take off as a game but the models seemed to fly off the shelves. I got into the hobby at that time and own hundreds of dollars worth of models but only ever played one real game of it.

I think what went wrong with The Hobbit is that LOTR was a easy sell to 12 year olds because it was $35 for 24 models, their parents would happily pay that. Even though the game never really took off the models sold.

The Hobbit was way too expensive on launch, you can't expect a parent to buy their kid 12 models for $55 (all Au pricing btw) as an impulse buy like you could LOTR.


Over all the entire release felt like GW were expecting it to be just as big a success so they got arrogant and raise the prices a little bit more, which pushed lots of people away.

So do you think the Hobbit was a casualty of practices regarding the other lines and the reaction to those practices?

Yes, I think the company has changed a lot since the LOTR release and the Hobbit has suffered directly as a result of GW dumping all their crap on this new line at it's release, while looking back on LOTR it looked to be mostly free of and sort of corporate pressure. 24 for $35 is possibly the cheapest GW models have ever been (cirtainly since I have been in the hobby) and it sold well, GW have gotten greedier since then though and seem to have developed a 'we make it and people will buy it no matter what' mindset so they are charging about 150% more then scratching their heads when that business model fails.

It is well established that GW made a ton of money off the LotR merchandise. However, the LotR movies, I believe were hugely more successful than the Hobbit movie and certainly more heavily marketed. The scope of the LotR movies was enormous in terms of geography and possible armies compared to the Hobbit as well.

I believe that the GW LotR merchandise sold a lot better in the UK and Europe than it ever did in the US. In all my years of gaming at several flgs I have never seen anyone play a single LotR game. I have observed plenty of other games and not just FoW and Warmahordes, but 15 mm martian, Battle fleet Gothic, and other sci fi miniature games, but never LotR.

Price of the Hobbit range could be a barrier or it could be that the Hobbit movies just didnt excite the same interest as LotR.

Speaking as not an LotR or Hobbit player, I think some of the explanation is that The Hobbit film wasn't as good or popular as the LotR films.

Also, people who were into their Tolkien battles possibly had been satisfied by the LotR releases. What did The Hobbit game/rules offer that was different and interesting?

I understand that from a licensing point of view it's an absolute necessity for a relaunch/rebranding of the LOTR line with the film release, it's also a pretty poor excuse. With the exception of the special characters, the existing LOTR line already has a plethora of choices for dwarves, elves, men, goblins, orcs, wargs, the white council and pretty much anything else to be found in the Hobbit.

The Hobbit just isn't a very good basis for a TTWG, there is only one massive battle, and another one spoke of in the past tense. The Hobbit is about a band of adventurers and really more like an awesome game of D&D.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Speaking as not an LotR or Hobbit player, I think some of the explanation is that The Hobbit film wasn't as good or popular as the LotR films.

Also, people who were into their Tolkien battles possibly had been satisfied by the LotR releases. What did The Hobbit game/rules offer that was different and interesting?

Finecast Characters?

 Oakenshield wrote:
The Hobbit just isn't a very good basis for a TTWG, there is only one massive battle, and another one spoke of in the past tense. The Hobbit is about a band of adventurers and really more like an awesome game of D&D.

MERP...

That is a big factor, although there are some new people to Tolkien, most the people I knew who bought into the first round were my age or older...and then they didnt actually use them for GWs game. The figures were an inexpensive alternative to Mithril figures to build big armies in the Middle Earth setting.

The new releases lack the price point, and the new movie really hasnt had the draw due to the nature of the story. As a result, the customer base has gone back to the company who has been doing Tolkien figures for 20+ years.

Battle of Five Armies is worth doing, surely?

There are a few things I think are factors:

The Hobbit isn't as big a franchise as LOTR.

The first film doesn't contain a single big battle (apart from a flashback), so there's really not anything to work with.

GW has engaged in no advertising about it, except to it's existing customers. Even a poster up in any cinema showing the film with "you've seen the film, now play the game" would have had a huge impact. There will be plenty of film fans that don't know the game exists.

And for those that do, the prices are a joke. The entry point on the starter set is too high for an impulse post-cinema purchase, and even after consideration you still need the BRB to play outwith the starter box. A lot of the other box sets are terrible value for money compared to other lines (LOTR, 40K, anyone non-GW).

I've certainly looked at the starter a few times, because I want Thorins company to paint, but at that price I'll wait and get it after the films are done and the people are dumping them on ebay.

Herzlos wrote:

GW has engaged in no advertising about it, except to it's existing customers. Even a poster up in any cinema showing the film with "you've seen the film, now play the game" would have had a huge impact. There will be plenty of film fans that don't know the game exists.

That's another thing, I first found out about GW from the magazine that they did for the LOTR release. It clearly worked well for them but they have really cut back on the advertising.

Cost! It is just far too expensive for a starter box set. £75 is not an impulse buy and really makes you consider whether you will actually get to play against anyone else.

I love the whole Tolkien world but after seeing no-one ever play LoTR games I decided I am very unlikely to see anyone play this as LoTR had a more armies and a better ability to play big battles.

The Hobbit isn't about big battles but the long journey. Apart from fighting Smaug and the end Five armies battle there really is nothing else.

I support the "Hobbit not for wargaming" thesis. And concerning just collecting miniatures or using them for rpg, while they don't have the aesthetic of the movie, in my shelf those beautiful sculpted Mithril figures still have the bar raised too high for GW. Who wants Heroic Scale if he can have heroes instead?

Also need to remember GW had to pay about 5 times as much for the Hobbit license than for the LOTR one. The starter set is actually really great value, its just that all of the GW starter sets are costing more. There are actually several LOTR players in my area (Melbourne, AU), however it seems most of them already had their armies, and didn't really see much reason to expand. If I recall correctly, the Hobbit didn't introduce any complete armies, just more options for already existing ones. I personally love the LOTR ruleset, however haven't really played a lot (lack of funds, lack of interest painting, relative lack of people playing compared to 40k or fantasy).

The biggest strength of LotR game was the system so the basis of the Hobbit game is sound.

I confess to have never having bought too much LotR stuff really just the Fellowship from eBay but always had a strong desire to he a Rohan Cavalry force. I decided to get this just as GW ramped up the rates/reduced the box contents.

Now I have spare cash for toys but I object to being fleeced so didn't bother. The hobbit follows this trend and is really unattractive to people already exposed to GW as a result.

I also have to say the starter set goblins are pap, the rest of the contents are nice though to be fair.

So in summary, too much for vets and not attractive enough for greenhorns.

1) No marketing.

2) Insane prices.

3) No marketing.

4) Boring starter set.

5) No marketing.

6) Presented as a separate product, not part of the greater LOTR product line.

7) No marketing.


Seriously, blame the lack of marketing. A Hobbit game is the perfect opportunity to expand GW's market to people who wouldn't otherwise be interested in miniatures games, but they completely blew it. How they could spend a bunch of money on the license and not even attempt to market the game properly, I have no idea. That's just a staggering level of incompetence, and if I was a GW shareholder I'd demand the immediate firing of GW's entire management over it.

 Peregrine wrote:
1) No marketing.

2) Insane prices.

3) No marketing.

4) Boring starter set.

5) No marketing.

6) Presented as a separate product, not part of the greater LOTR product line.

7) No marketing..

To highlight the shameful lack of marketing here, ask yourself this: as a miniature wargaming player who is significantly involved in the community and well-informed compared to the average (since you're posting on a wargaming forum), how much marketing did you see for the Hobbit releases? Did you see anything outside of GW's "what's new today" page and maybe a few pictures in the magazine nobody reads? Yeah, didn't think so. If GW can't even get their core customer base to notice a major new release what do you think their chances of having any meaningful sales are?

Perhaps the lack of marketing partly comes from the lack of community enthusiasm for LotR.

GW basically have two types of marketing:

1. You happen to walk past a shop and decide look inside.
2. Friends, older brothers and club members tell you about the games.

Remove no.2 from the equation and you are left with walk-in trade.

GW put out their initial release and seems to almost have walked away from the product entirely. Then again, what are they supposed to make other than goblins? Well, I suppose they could do Dwarves vs. Orcs per the flashbacks. The Hobbit just doesn't translate very well into a tabletop wargame, I guess.

Oh, in case nobody mentioned it, the prices seem a little on the steep side.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
GW basically have two types of marketing:

1. You happen to walk past a shop and decide look inside.
2. Friends, older brothers and club members tell you about the games.

Which is incredibly stupid. It's just unbelievable that a company in 2013 could come to the conclusion that marketing (as in actively trying to reach new customers) is completely unnecessary. You pretty much have to come to the conclusion that GW is a charity that exists for the sole purpose of employing managers who are too utterly incompetent to keep a job at a real company.

Remove no.2 from the equation and you are left with walk-in trade.

Which is a great plan when your stores are in the middle of nowhere instead of in places that actually get significant walk-in traffic from people other than existing customers. Depending on the impulse buy from random people walking past a display might have made sense if they'd put up Hobbit displays in walmart/bookstores/etc, but the way they actually did it was just insane.

I remember that Lotr gw miniatures, books etc were sold also by planet agostini publications, each month a mini some fluff etc etc at good prices, this had a HUGE market penetration because all of a sudden these minis were at every corner newspaper store... People unaware of GW ( 99.999999%) now could buy GW minis and they did.

As far as I know the Hobbit is not sold outside GW stores and these are just not practical or visible enough for the hobbit fans. The biz model GW chooses for distributing the Hobbit its just not helping... even more than prices.

I hadn't considered the fact that the Hobbit game offers nothing to LOTR players. The LOTR game was about big battles, and War of the Ring was about bigger battles. What do LOTR players need with the Hobbit? Why would they want to buy a super-expensive rulebook that's going to be supercooled by the Desolation of Smaug book in a year, and then again by the There And Back Again a year later? Sure the final film has a nice big battle that might appeal to them, but up until that point you've got a story that is structured in a very different way to the LOTR books and lends itself more to an RPG than a "tactical skirmish game" or whatever they're calling it.

 Manchu wrote:
So do you think the Hobbit was a casualty of practices regarding the other lines and the reaction to those practices?

I think that when the LOTR bubble burst GW saw how fleeting high sales were for a product like this. So when the Hobbit came around they planned ahead, making sure that the goal became to make as much money from it in the short term before the inevitable bursting of the Hobbit bubble. This is why the Hobbit minis cost so damned much.

If it's not going well for GW then they are simply victims of their own hubris and even greed.

Even though as a GW fan I knew about the game, it was that mag that got me to pick it up, because I'm a sucker for a magazine with info and lots of good photos and stills, with a seemingly free figure on the front.

Think I collected it to about issue 48 ish (maybe just past 50) before I finally dropped it and left Lotr, but by then GW had seen a good three to four hundred pounds from me in Lotr stuff and I wasn't really even playing the danged game.

LotR seemed pretty big, there are lots of accounts of it being a big seller and I remember people complaining about how it was overshadowing fantasy/40k, so I don't think there doubt about its success.

Someone claims GW paid five time more for the Hobbit license, where's the source on that? Seems a little unlikely and if so is rather too much. The Hobbit just seems a smaller franchise, I don't see the massive presence of it generally in toy shops.

As a game from GW it's been released with a bit of a whimper. It doesn't feature strongly in any LGS I've been in, but equally I can't say if it's been selling poorly. But if I didn't read Dakka I probably would barely have registered its existence.

The ludicrous prices are just the final barrier. I just don't know who would pay them other than the most dedicated LotR gamer. They are not casual purchases.

Agree with what most have said.

LOTR was a huge success, because De Agostini made standard marketing with TV-ads for their magazine+sprue products. Each issue, a bit of painting and a bit of rules were revealed, with pointers at GW stores to get more. Worked wonders, GW products became non-niche. GW decided to never do something like this again, as it cloggs the stores with customers and the cashiers with money.

Raising the prices by 100% on average for the Hobbit also wasn't helpful, as it cut off the main target customers. And yes, the Limited Edition is still available all over the world.

 Kroothawk wrote:
GW decided to never do something like this again, as it cloggs the stores with customers and the cashiers with money.

That and Agostini are a bunch of freeloaders, how dare they to make money out of GW toys?

Yeah I agree that the deAgostini magazine was a huge contributor to the success of LotR, it was apparently their best selling line ever by a considerable margin (according to Wikipedia). They had adverts on normal TV which is surely a big boost too.

I simply don't understand why GW don't advertise, at all. It makes no sense, how many other companies would do that? I guarantee that if I asked people I work with if they've ever heard of GW or warhammer etc they wouldn't have, and that's surely not right for a company with a store in most major towns and cities in the UK.

As far as the Hobbit releases go, they've not been given anywhere near the same treatment as the initial LotR releases. It's almost like GW refuses to admit that it's actually part of the LotR game system and not an entirely new game, they sort of make a cursory mention that you can use your existing collection too. Very few releases so far given no more coverage than the advert in WD at the front, and that's it really. My local GW doesn't have much shelf space devoted to it either, and it's tucked away in a dark corner.

Of course, the insane pricing doesn't help either does it. £50 for 3 trolls? Please, I could afford it if I wanted to but I still don't like being ripped off!