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 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Howard A Treesong wrote:
I'm not talking about customers, it's long been policy that they refuse to engage professional journalists.

Yeah, but in this age of blogs and Youtube interview channels--anyone can be a "journalist"!

Why are your responses so deliberately obtuse? I'm talking about professional writers, why should some disgruntled bloggers lead to GW refusing to talk to business publications, the BBC, Guardian or Financial Times? I've seen them all comment that GW don't do interviews of any sort, so have written articles without their input. They're a toy company, not a religious cult.

It's really not hard to see why it's far easier for them to have a blanket "no comment" policy than to continually respond to any kind of request for interviews.

Look at the whole thing going on right now with the revised trade terms in North America. MWG is "closing down" and it's currently being spun as though GW's revised trade terms are the biggest reason that this is happening. How could they respond without somehow making themselves look like "the bad guys", responsible for the closing of an independent retailer which is much beloved by a part of the community which closely follows GW's every move?

If GW were to do interviews, it would be no different than how EA is continually presented after any interviews they give. People pick and choose what they actually hear/read from these interviews.

Your commentary, like GW's policies regarding the press, statements and advertising, go against conventional corporate wisdom.

Having PR and a relations officer or dept would do wonders simply because this, instead what you leave is a void, nature abhors that and fills it with conjecture, speculation, bs and armchair generals.

When confronted by the BBC, not some blogger demanding the Truth, but the actual British Broadcasting Corporation, GW refused to discuss an issue because it 'does not talk to the press', massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop. It's insular, clannish and weird and frankly, defend them all you want, but there really is something rotten in the state of Nottingham. What it speaks of is a company's senior management so utterly turned in upon it's self, so entirely convinced of it's mastery of all it surveys, so propped up by a culture of elevating yes men and the reek of the Peter Principal, spread through the business like dry rot.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop.

Hey they aren't totally alone, Alex Ferguson fethed them off for ten years as well!

 mattyrm wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop.

Hey they aren't totally alone, Alex Ferguson fethed them off for ten years as well!

Who?

 mattyrm wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
Massive multinationals talk to the BBC, heads of state talk to the BBC, the Pope talks to the BBC, the Dalai Lama does, but not, apparently, Games Workshop.

Hey they aren't totally alone, Alex Ferguson fethed them off for ten years as well!

He didn't appear for 10 years as the BBC refused to apologise for some perceived slight, so difficult to say who fethed who off!

Oh I know who he is, doesn't excuse an internationally trading company from refusing to deal with the press.

GW's refusal to speak to the press, it's constant retreating from media in general and it's continual closing ranks as the world becomes a smaller place is boggling though. Similarly, it's ongoing seeking to change the 'rules' of it's sales instead of seeking to adapt to issues of a modern market would also allude to some very strange notions of running a competitive corporate entity in today's retail landscape.

As I mentioned previous, this gulf they leave in their retreat from the new age, from criticism, from PR, from interview, from advertisement... It leaves me a sense of the sinister or the incompetent, or the sinisterly incompetent... Like some board room full of Machiavellian mustache twirling ne'erdowells demanding 'One Million Dollars!' for their latest 'must have' miniatures.

You know, the problem for me with The Hobbit is the inconsistency of the pricing. I actually don't think the starter is a terrible value, but what killed me was the pricing of the trolls. It's simply way out of line with say, a box of river trolls, or a box of bloodcrusher, etc. Same goes for the White Council.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:


GW's refusal to speak to the press, it's constant retreating from media in general and it's continual closing ranks as the world becomes a smaller place is boggling though.

I think that's what's so odd. I feel more connected with the company that made my phone or my car than I do with GW.

Although to be fair, few minis gaming companies have really figure out social media. Mantic seems to "get" Kickstarter but their FB presence is pretty much the email updates on a different platform.

It's possible to now to display any number of painted units/models/armies, show tutorials, explain how to use products, etc. The only company I've seen really do that? Woodland "we only sell to ancient railroaders" Scenics

 Polonius wrote:


It's possible to now to display any number of painted units/models/armies, show tutorials, explain how to use products, etc. The only company I've seen really do that? Woodland "we only sell to ancient railroaders" Scenics

Doesn't GW do a lot of this on their website?

Less and less, it would seem.

Hardly a month goes by without someone noticing that GW have withdrawn another set of pages that deal with scratchbuilding and so on.

Their paper publications decline similarly... How much is a copy of "How To Make Wargames Terrain" nowadays?

Fair does to GW, they want to sell their terrain kits and stuff for as much as possible. Let's just not pretend that this isn't a change of policy.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
As I mentioned previous, this gulf they leave in their retreat from the new age, from criticism, from PR, from interview, from advertisement... It leaves me a sense of the sinister or the incompetent, or the sinisterly incompetent... Like some board room full of Machiavellian mustache twirling ne'erdowells demanding 'One Million Dollars!' for their latest 'must have' miniatures.

IMO the best way to understand it is fear. GW's management is terrified of risk. It's better to cling to the business model from 1980 and keep things stagnant until they retire than to try to adapt to 2013 and risk losing their retirement fund. So marketing is of course a waste, you don't need it to keep your existing sales level (at least as long as you keep raising prices to replace the lost customers) and it would be a risk of spending lots of money without any return. And why talk to the press, it's possible that you could look bad so it's better to stay with the known situation of looking bad on forums while most people ignore you. Etc.

 MajorStoffer wrote:
GW's response is now the 1 man store, and Kirby's final solution of opening, what was it, 800 new stores? They clearly want a big share of the market, especially in the US (700 stores for them, and the US isn't charged more than the UK), but they refuse to recognize that store saturation is an extremely inefficient way of moving product and raising awareness. They're dealing with enormous geographic entities, and often low population density, and opening brick and mortar stores will only ever work in those regions if combined with raising public awareness.

And worst of all they keep opening stores in the middle of nowhere. For example, there's one GW store in all of NC. It's in a major city with multiple universities and a lot of tech industry businesses (plenty of younger adults with lots of spending money) and an established community (enough to support 3-4 FLGS in a 30-mile radius), which you'd think would be a good thing. Except it's in a middle of nowhere strip mall that gets exactly two groups of customers: the handful of people who live nearby and might see the GW store on the way to the grocery store nearby, and existing customers who make an effort to go find it. Meanwhile there are at least 2-3 major malls in the area with huge amounts of traffic, but the idiots running GW couldn't possibly see how it would be a good idea to put the store somewhere where new customers might actually find it.

The proof of this? I decided to check it and go play a game on a weekend in the middle of christmas shopping season, and in several hours of playing there were two customers. One was a friend of the people playing there getting his first models, and one was a parent buying a gift for one of the people who regularly plays there. Not a single new customer walked in.

 cincydooley wrote:
Doesn't GW do a lot of this on their website?

They used to, but they removed all of that stuff to make WD more "appealing". Now they just put up pretty pictures in their zero-content blog, which is never advertised anywhere. After all, it's important to remove the possibility of someone who isn't a customer finding it and deciding to buy something.

I don't think GW does have the same business model as in 1980.

Back then they sold a variety of imported, licensed and self-created games and models. Warhammer wasn't one of them. None of the "specialist" games had been launched.

I'm wondering what box set they're going to do for Desolation of Smaug - as the Desolation of Smaug as it occurs in the book isn't really a battle as such.

The only fight I think of between the eagle rescue and Smaug is the Spiders in Mirkwood. Yet how can you call your box set "The Desolation of Smaug" and not have Smaug as the contents?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think GW does have the same business model as in 1980.

Back then they sold a variety of imported, licensed and self-created games and models. Warhammer wasn't one of them. None of the "specialist" games had been launched.

He didn't literally mean 1980; I suspect he was speaking figuratively of times before he was born. More literally it's a marketing/communications strategy that's been evolving (and seemingly degenerating) since sometime in the mid-late 90s, sometime after they started courting the kid market, but after they decided that the Milton-Bradley tie-in games were somehow not profitable enough or worthwhile.

It's funny, because I have to say that a huge percentage of 40k and WH players I know started out with Heroquest or Space Hulk. And what originally drew me in were their advertisements- the fantastic full-page and multi-page ads they ran in Dragon Magazine when I was a kid. Ads like the four-page spread for Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness, with a Poe quote, full color art, pics of dozens of evocative figures, and some fluff. Or the single-page ads where they'd showcase a new warmachine or unit for Warhammer, with the statline, and great pic of it painted, and some fluff (often funny and well-written, with a unique and appealing ton) about it.

I didn't join this hobby until I was a bit older, but does anyone recall how hero quest was priced? Was it comparable to other Milton Bradley offerings?

 Flashman wrote:
I'm wondering what box set they're going to do for Desolation of Smaug - as the Desolation of Smaug as it occurs in the book isn't really a battle as such.

The only fight I think of between the eagle rescue and Smaug is the Spiders in Mirkwood. Yet how can you call your box set "The Desolation of Smaug" and not have Smaug as the contents?

From my understanding, the second film("The Desolation of Smaug") is going to include a few flashback sequences which would work quite well for larger battles as well as leading up to the actual rousing of Smaug and that the third film is going to include the Fall of Smaug and the Battle of the Five Armies.

I could entirely be mistaken though.

 Mannahnin wrote:
It's funny, because I have to say that a huge percentage of 40k and WH players I know started out with Heroquest or Space Hulk. And what originally drew me in were their advertisements- the fantastic full-page and multi-page ads they ran in Dragon Magazine when I was a kid.

For me it was a GW ad in a wargaming magazine. I guess, all major recruiting of new customers was done by ads, mostly by companies like MB (Space Quest, Heroquest) and DeAgostini (LOTR). But nowadays, GW seems to think that magazines, TV, the BBC, the internet and gaming conventions are a fad passing any day now.

 Mannahnin wrote:
It's funny, because I have to say that a huge percentage of 40k and WH players I know started out with Heroquest or Space Hulk. And what originally drew me in were their advertisements- the fantastic full-page and multi-page ads they ran in Dragon Magazine when I was a kid. Ads like the four-page spread for Realm of Chaos: Slaves to Darkness, with a Poe quote, full color art, pics of dozens of evocative figures, and some fluff. Or the single-page ads where they'd showcase a new warmachine or unit for Warhammer, with the statline, and great pic of it painted, and some fluff (often funny and well-written, with a unique and appealing ton) about it.

I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

Whereas some might say you're only seeing what you think is there. "Modern version". HA!

The Blue Knight strikes again.

 Flashman wrote:
I'm wondering what box set they're going to do for Desolation of Smaug - as the Desolation of Smaug as it occurs in the book isn't really a battle as such.

It will come with 2 models - Bard and Smaug - plus a single die and 4 plastic Lake Town buildings. Each turn Smaug sets on building on fire, and Bard makes one shot. On a 4+ he kills Smaug. If he fails to kill Smaug before all the buildings are destroyed, Smaug wins.

The collector's edition will come with an extra building.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

It will come with 2 models - Bard and Smaug - plus a single die and 4 plastic Lake Town buildings. Each turn Smaug sets on building on fire, and Bard makes one shot. On a 4+ he kills Smaug. If he fails to kill Smaug before all the buildings are destroyed, Smaug wins.

The collector's edition will come with an extra building.

Won't laketown be the same bridge planks from goblin town? I mean a wooden pier is a wooden pier.

I suspect the Smaug design will make or break the next release of models. The Balrog design for the movie was quite controversial and a huge sticking point as many claim that the descriptions were of 'figurative' wings instead of 'literal' wings. The design was badass and the model is amazing.

If smaug is amazing, who knows the impact.

 Kingsley wrote:
I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

While I rarely use Facebook, I have yet to see an actual add for GW there or most anywhere else online which wasn't connected to some form of Ad Word marketing scheme. With those, chances are you are seeing them because you mention GW, Warhammer or are a member of a group already that is related to them. Preaching to the choir doesn't do much good in terms of advertising.

Regarding the video games - I don't know. Most the people who I know (again - anecdotal) who play either of those two games and wargame were wargaming first. I know several who play one game or the other but still have no interest in GW and have no particular attachment to the setting...only that it is a game which filled a particular niche in their gaming time (RTS or shooter).

 Kingsley wrote:

I myself was drawn into 40k thanks to a magazine advertisement back in 1998. But ironically those who claim that GW doesn't advertise seem to be the ones who are behind the times, as GW now runs a modern version of this strategy. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine. Instead of people seeing ads in Dragon magazine, they see ads on Facebook. This doesn't seem controversial or complex to me and I'm surprised that more people don't notice it.

Would that be the Facebook they threw all their toys out of the pram on and then vanished from?

Reminiscing over old ads, pages 1 and 2 of the multi page ad I was talking about..





And a couple more:

 cincydooley wrote:
You know, the problem for me with The Hobbit is the inconsistency of the pricing. I actually don't think the starter is a terrible value, but what killed me was the pricing of the trolls. It's simply way out of line with say, a box of river trolls, or a box of bloodcrusher, etc. Same goes for the White Council.

Aren't Bert, Tom and Bill significantly larger than Warhammer trolls? They are mounted on 60mm bases, so they seem quite large, but I'm not finding any comparison images online.

Their pricing seems consistent to me, it's just crap pricing. The White Council is $75 for 4 finecast models, that's $18.75 each, compared to most finecast infantry sized characters which are also $15-20. The trolls add up to $28 each (not including the fireplace) which compares to $29.75 for a single plastic cave troll or $41.25 for a Morder/Isengard plastic troll.

The pricing is bad, it seems consistent though.

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

He's basically describing 'word of mouth' marketing via PC games instead of board games. It's neither original nor is it any type of 'modern' strategy that GW came up with.

I saw some people mentioning 'gorgeous mithril figs' or something like that so I went to their site and now I'm just left wondering if those earlier posters were trying to troll me.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
He's basically describing 'word of mouth' marketing via PC games instead of board games. It's neither original nor is it any type of 'modern' strategy that GW came up with.

Nor is it a replacement for other forms of marketing. GW seems to be the only company that thinks that once you've done one form of marketing you should just ignore all the others.

I'll speak to my experience with it. I like the Lord of the Rings game - it's my favourite of the three main Games Workshop games - and so I picked up the box set. I was interested in the updated rules, the Hobbit stuff in general and the possibility of playing through the Lord of the Rings: Thorin's Company Edition!

The big issue I would describe with the game is "where do I go from here?" The starter box is anemic in terms of scenarios - in particular, it doesn't even properly present a game with the entire Company in it. It sort of hints at one at the start and I think you can engineer the rules from that, but it's never laid out as a scenario like the other mini-scenarios. Unlike the LotR rulebook, the points values even for the contents of the box aren't included, so if that's all you have you can't even make your own points games with the box set - I still have no idea how much Thorin's Company is worth, for instance. So for your $205 you get an anemic set of introductory scenarios.

How do you expand from there? Well... you buy the hardcover rulebook for $140. Without doing that, you have no scenarios based on the events of the book or the film and no points values to let you use the units in any other way. Compare this to the Mines of Moria set: the points values for all the models were included in the little softcover rulebook (which is about the same size as the one in The Hobbit boxed set, and there's no reason they couldn't have included them) and the introductory scenarios end in the fight at Balin's Tomb, which features all the models in the set in a big, fun battle. You have all the points values of the box - and most of the miniature range - in the little rulebook, so you can expand your army and play points games however you want. Then if you want to play through the events of the books/movies you can pick up the Fellowship of the Ring journeybook, which isn't cheap itself at $48, but includes quite detailed instructions for playing the 18 scenarios in it, painting the miniatures used in it and building all the required terrain, much of which is very cool and detailed and with a minimum of "buy our tie-in product" (though you do need, IIRC, two boxes of "Ruins of Middle Earth", but that's it).

Basically, the Mines of Moria boxed set is a more complete product than The Hobbit, and it facilitates getting further into the Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game. To even play past the limited introductory scenarios in The Hobbit with the stuff you get in the box you need to pay another two thirds of the box price for a rulebook, when you already have the rules. That's a fantastic way to dampen anyone's enthusiasm, and if you think the $140 sticker shock of the Trolls isn't enough, try turning it into $280 with that rulebook.

 Polonius wrote:

 Kingsley wrote:
. Instead of people being drawn in by Heroquest or Space Hulk, they are drawn in by Dawn of War or Space Marine

So, games that came out nine, four, and two and a half years ago.

If that really is their strategy, I'd work a bit harder at it.

Heroquest 9 years ago? Think you're nearly 20 years out there buddy, you may be thinking of Warhammer Quest, but even then 9 is low, nearer 15.

The scary part is that this year that $140 rulebook goes bye bye in favour of a new $140 rulebook that'll be mostly the same. It's crazy.