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Their 'churn and burn' mentality brings new blood into the hobby, then quickly turns that new blood into embittered veterans who are willing to try other games. Except for those few holdouts who insist GW is the greatest thing evar.

 insaniak wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

Actually, that is not one of 40Ks strong suits.

Can you name a commercially available game currently on the market that deals with armies as large as, say, even a 2000 point 40k army?

40k doesn't have to do large games particularly well to be better at it than games that don't do it at all.

There are loads of rulesets that deal with much larger armies (and navies) but they are all historical as far as I know.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Other plusses are being a high street presence for table top wargaming and long term, a centre of employment for designers, sculptors and artists. It is astonishing how many of the current generation of wargame sculptors have been employed at GW. They might never have got a start otherwise.

Well everything apart from forgetting to copyrite 'slotta bases' from 1987 to 1997.

During this time GW established great game worlds with good depth of game play in the rules ,with heavy narrative bias, and their house style of sculpting.
A freindly and informal TWO WAY communication with the fan base.

This and the MB games joint ventures which gave them massive market saturation and share.
So this these 10 golden years of GW , grew its customer base and market share to the highest in the world.(Doubled turn over every 3 years.)

Since the LoTR boom which they mis handles a bit.(Mr T Kirby admitted this to the share holders in an annual report.)

GW have simply lost sales volumes , by believing the easiest course of action is the best course of action.
They simply failed to recognise the changing market, and make the changes required to grow its market share.

So all the great stuff is down to the GW studio staff.
All the crap is down to Mr T Kirby.

 BryllCream wrote:

 insaniak wrote:
They stopped open gaming in some of their stores. Apparently, that was great news!

It's great news if you plan on simply going in and buying something without being harassed by the regulars. Touch wood they ban painting and modelling for non newcomers too. It'd supposed to be a shop, not a daycare or social hub.

What got me into 40k was the fact that the game base was very visible right from the start. I walked in to see a crowd (of admittedly rather squashed) people somehow juggling three games at the same time, painting, chatting, laughing, and generally having fun. To me, at the start, that was the face of GW.
Good people enjoying a hobby together.

And I'm sure there are many here who feel the same way. I acknowledge that the store is a... store, but at the time, if I'd walked in and seen just three walls of boxes and a large window, with one over-worked manager, devoid of gamers, I probably would have quit before even starting.

Good points?

GW exposed a lot of eager newbies to miniature wargaming who otherwise may not have taken up the hobby in the first place.

Garnering a high street presence these last 25 or so years has helped a niche gain traction.

For all their faults GW are still the envy of many a new games company wanting a piece of the action.

Skaven

I think we're missing the truly best part of GW:

Da WAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!


















(That's 300 Orks)

From an old veterans perspective GW does not have many good points lately, they create decent quality plastic models that utilize some but not all the potential they have at their disposal as a manufacturer.

Modern GWs greater opponent is the old GW, up to the end of WH40k 2nd edition, GW was a company that challenged the industry in quality, manufacturing process, game design and presentation, it wasn't all bright and shiny back then too, but they cared more about their product and cared for the hobbyist the painter. past that era, GW has progressively moved further away from their customer base and more aggressively tries to dictate to their customers what they need and how their games should be played.

Discarding the many negatives I perceive in current GW, they have one really developed IP that people love, 40k and have pushed it as hard as they could, they offer a complete product and their games for various reasons have a big player base.

Your metaphor makes no sense. Gaming tables in gw were and are dominated by a handful of regulars, usually kids, who just get in the way of people who just want to go in and buy stuff. I get that it may be different elsewhere but it makes about as much impact as a game store removing an Xbox stand as far as I'm concerned

Inquisition and Orkz.

Aside from that, they can churn out a decent model every once in a while. Although their fascination with arbitrary gaudiness and over-decoration has hurt a lot of their more recent releases, which become more mediocre to disappointing each time, as they seem to get more and more toyetic. The Fisher Price proportions that are the legacy of an era gone by do not help things either.

Hopefully, whenever they get around to releasing the updated Orkz, they'll be able to remind me what made their models so good looking in the first place.

Oh, and Forgeworld is pretty cool.

WHFB 8th army books are well-balanced. Sadly, the BRB is very mediocre and needs restrictions to work.

For me.....the single strongest thing about GW is the intellectual property.

Outside of Marvel, Star Wars, Star Trek, Transformers etc it is virtually unassailable in my opinion.

The Black Library churns out the fluff and I keep buying into it.

As a business it has some hard decisions ahead, but hey thats another thread lol

GW produces the only larger-than-skirmish scale rules at 30mm-ish, and these rules hold up under most situations... other systems rules would be stressed at the scales at which most GW games are played at and they too would have fractures. GW also, for the most part, puts out fine models.

Perhaps the best part about GW is that their failing business practices have created a surge in wargaming mini's, and GW itself has really created wargaming as a hobby common enough that people can actually find pick-up games. Their successes and mistakes have helped other games define themselves and create excellent rule sets. Many GW players have been able to go to a diverse array of model manufacturers to get their modelling bits when GW's set lacks, and without GW businesses like Pig Iron would not exist.

Finally, GW has created many iconic scifi images which have often been emulated or simply stolen by companies such as Blizzard or EA. Many modern scifi archetypes are GW creations.

Xyrael wrote:

Finally, GW has created many iconic scifi images which have often been emulated or simply stolen by companies such as Blizzard or EA. Many modern scifi archetypes are GW creations.

Wh-what?!

Examples, please.

 infinite_array wrote:

Xyrael wrote:

Finally, GW has created many iconic scifi images which have often been emulated or simply stolen by companies such as Blizzard or EA. Many modern scifi archetypes are GW creations.

Wh-what?!

Examples, please.

Don't ya know? Gee Dubs was around before Dune, Starship Troopers, Aliens, Judaic demons and robots!

 infinite_array wrote:

Xyrael wrote:

Finally, GW has created many iconic scifi images which have often been emulated or simply stolen by companies such as Blizzard or EA. Many modern scifi archetypes are GW creations.

Wh-what?!

Examples, please.

The examples I can think of are the starcraft marines and those nid-like aliens.
But GW just adapted archetypes, and in several cases just plain copied them:

Necrons + WBB = The Terminator + Arnie's catchphrase
Nids = The Aliens form The "Alien" movies.
SM = Already existed in Sci-fi, but not to this degree
Power Armour = same as above
IG = Space-trooper in any sci-fi movie
Chaos/The Chaos Gods etc = Lovecraft's work (Cthulu)

The Orks, however, are an original creation

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There are loads of rulesets that deal with much larger armies (and navies) but they are all historical as far as I know.

Yeah, I probably should have said 'commercially available sci fi game...

Please let's not get into an argument about which long established F/SF themes GW co-opted into 40K. There are far too many and they have been well explored.

Let's stick to the genuinely good things.

 insaniak wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:

Actually, that is not one of 40Ks strong suits.

Can you name a commercially available game currently on the market that deals with armies as large as, say, even a 2000 point 40k army?

40k doesn't have to do large games particularly well to be better at it than games that don't do it at all.

Defiance Vital Ground. The points values are comparable to 40K (vehicles are more expensive, but tend to have more impact). Game play ends up being about the same as for 40K (or at least what 40K used to be...about an hour for 1000 point games, 2 hours for 2000 point games...). I have used it to play games up to about 5,000 points per side. Activation is random based on a card draw...so, you might have one or two units move in a row or you might alternate units.

It has largely become our go to rules for large scale, large scale games. Even then, rules designed for 15mm, 10mm and even 6mm can be used for 28mm well enough. Simple math to convert distances upwards. You can even use Epic with 28mm figures (did that more than once back in 3rd edition...before GW introduced Apoc...granted, that was on a 6x10 table).

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Please let's not get into an argument about which long established F/SF themes GW co-opted into 40K. There are far too many and they have been well explored.

Let's stick to the genuinely good things.

Like...
The fact that I now know how to chant "KILL MAIM BURN!" and not sound utterly ridiculous... Wait.. Nope... Still can't.

Well, the entertainment value is still there

And let's not forget about the awesomeness of Captain Titus!

While Orcs / Orks are of course not a GW creation, I've always enjoyed their take on them.

Instead of being minions of an evil sorcerer (LoTR, every D&D adventure ever), they are their own masters and take no nonsense from anyone.

 Selym wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

Xyrael wrote:

Finally, GW has created many iconic scifi images which have often been emulated or simply stolen by companies such as Blizzard or EA. Many modern scifi archetypes are GW creations.

Wh-what?!

Examples, please.

The examples I can think of are the starcraft marines and those nid-like aliens.
But GW just adapted archetypes, and in several cases just plain copied them:

Necrons + WBB = The Terminator + Arnie's catchphrase
Nids = The Aliens form The "Alien" movies.
SM = Already existed in Sci-fi, but not to this degree
Power Armour = same as above
IG = Space-trooper in any sci-fi movie
Chaos/The Chaos Gods etc = Lovecraft's work (Cthulu)

The Orks, however, are an original creation

hate to tell you but even their improvements are things already existent from points as early as the 60s by many authors, but either way this brings up my favorite thing about GW, the combining of all these universes into one! 40k is the slam dunk of sci-fi fantasy, every single little bit of most sci-fi/fantasy universes have been incorporated. from the fluffiest softest sci-fi concepts that never set foot on real earth all the way to the hardest most scientifically sound geographically based terran concept they seemlessly meld it all, and they also leave enough room in their universe for a lot to happen. in my opinion the longer GW works on 40k stuff the more they theoretically restrict it.

 infinite_array wrote:

Xyrael wrote:

Finally, GW has created many iconic scifi images which have often been emulated or simply stolen by companies such as Blizzard or EA. Many modern scifi archetypes are GW creations.

Wh-what?!

Examples, please.

EA ripped off many different vehicles from GW in C&C. Starcraft marines, yes, those too. More generally, green-skinned Orks and Orcs in Warcraft; don't forget the first WFB book was in '83. Tyranids being Zerg. I'd counter the analogy of Tyranids to Aliens by saying that early Tyranid models looked nothing like Aliens and that Tyranids themselves being a hive mind is distinctively different than Aliens; they have steadily become Aliens though, if for no other reason than people like to piggy-back on the successes of other companies marketing. Starship Troopers has nothing to do with the IoM, if you read the book (its insanely boring) you'd realize that Heinlein's novel actually matches Tau Crisis Suits better, but fluff and books for Crisis Suit pilots aren't common enough for there to be a real comparison there yet. If you're looking at the Starship Troopers movie, then I should direct you to a Wikipedia on World War 2. Most scifi meatgrinder armies are inspired by something between Nazi's and Stalingrad.

I'm not sure I see any blatantly overt ripoffs from Dune in GW's works, there might be inspirations of course (because very few concepts are original) but there may be, I was never big into Dune. Necrons are obviously Terminator, can't deny that. Chaos gods being Cthulhu is imaginitive, Azathoth and Cthulhu and such aren't themselves copied, I would've thought you'd have drawn the connection between them and Abrahamic, Zoroastrian, and Hindi traditions first. The Emperor is obviously a Christ analogue.

Dune gives us the astropaths and ship travel, not in the book itself but in the EXSTENSIVE material following the book describing their universe. and I guess even a little in the book itself, theres just no spice in the 40k universe.

 jeeb_sound wrote:
Dune gives us the astropaths and ship travel, not in the book itself but in the EXSTENSIVE material following the book describing their universe. and I guess even a little in the book itself, theres just no spice in the 40k universe.

Spice, ha!

This brings up a f'kn brilliantly good point of GW if you are looking to emulate their success in sustaining a vast fictional universe which sells a product. GW's tropes are THE tropes for a huge amount of fans and players out there. Space marines are the only marines. Orks lokk much better than the outdated look of other orcs. Dune has astropaths? Dune? A name that inspires blank looks to a fair amount of the player base (and thus the target market).

Xyrael wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

Xyrael wrote:

Finally, GW has created many iconic scifi images which have often been emulated or simply stolen by companies such as Blizzard or EA. Many modern scifi archetypes are GW creations.

Wh-what?!

Examples, please.

EA ripped off many different vehicles from GW in C&C. Starcraft marines, yes, those too. More generally, green-skinned Orks and Orcs in Warcraft; don't forget the first WFB book was in '83. Tyranids being Zerg. I'd counter the analogy of Tyranids to Aliens by saying that early Tyranid models looked nothing like Aliens and that Tyranids themselves being a hive mind is distinctively different than Aliens; they have steadily become Aliens though, if for no other reason than people like to piggy-back on the successes of other companies marketing. Starship Troopers has nothing to do with the IoM, if you read the book (its insanely boring) you'd realize that Heinlein's novel actually matches Tau Crisis Suits better, but fluff and books for Crisis Suit pilots aren't common enough for there to be a real comparison there yet. If you're looking at the Starship Troopers movie, then I should direct you to a Wikipedia on World War 2. Most scifi meatgrinder armies are inspired by something between Nazi's and Stalingrad.

I'm not sure I see any blatantly overt ripoffs from Dune in GW's works, there might be inspirations of course (because very few concepts are original) but there may be, I was never big into Dune. Necrons are obviously Terminator, can't deny that. Chaos gods being Cthulhu is imaginitive, Azathoth and Cthulhu and such aren't themselves copied, I would've thought you'd have drawn the connection between them and Abrahamic, Zoroastrian, and Hindi traditions first. The Emperor is obviously a Christ analogue.

The Chaos pantheon was not inspired by Lovecraft, it was Michael Moorcock's work with the Eternal Champion and related books such as Elric, Hawkmoon, etc. They even acknowledged Moorcock in the first or second edition whfb rukebook.

I'm British so of course I get a kick outta moaning... BUT their fluff is genuinely really good, and they put out very good models.

Good points:

1, Market saturation. You can go to many clubs/stores and get a GW game in. They're like Mcdonalds. You can go to any one of them and know what you're going to get.
2. Models/design. Some gems in amongst the dross. No longer the "world's best" miniatures company, but certainly the largest.

In the end, It is easier to get a game for 40k then many others.

 hotsauceman1 wrote:
In the end, It is easier to get a game for 40k then many others.

Not really, if I want to get in a game of 40k, I have to plan it with the people I play with, it's all based on your local play area.