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The sky is falling! I fear change! Why won't things stay the same for ever!?

It depends entirely on what you mean by "the hobby".

If you mean GW, then no, not really.

If you mean Wargaming in general, definitely not.
It could be argued that it is a golden age indeed.
There are loads of companies putting out great games with great models.
Off the top of my head, there are plenty of good games out there.
Malifaux,
Flames of War,
Bolt Action,
Warmachine,
Hordes,
Dropzone Commander,
X-Wing,
Urban War,
Warzone,
Kings of War,
Urban War,
Judge Dredd,
Rogue Trooper,
Dystopian Wars,

I could go on.
I don't remember a time when there was this much choice that was so easy to get hold of, and I've been actively gaming for over quarter of a century.

Around me the hobby is doing better than ever. Really is a Golden Age. Retailers? One is struggling, the other seems to be going strong.

 Psienesis wrote:
GW is one company in the hobby. If they go under? The hobby itself is not lost. Someone will buy the IP, and 40K products will continue to ship to stores.

Good point, mate. I guess when I refer to "the hobby", I mean Warhamer, vs what you mean, which is all miniature wargaming.

I change my vote - saw the space marine centurions.

There should be extra victory points for knocking those things off the table and a special rule where once the model is removed it must be thrown as hard as possible into a brick wall.

Brick versus brick, eh?

I do not agree that GW is "sinking" mainly due to the way they have streamlined their product releases and updates for 6th edition. When I first got into the hobby a long time ago it took FOREVER to get new model updates, new codex for a given army, etc.

I will always support GW b/c the quality of models is head and shoulders above PP or anyone else's I have seen and on top of that I just love collecting them obviously. There is no arguing that some tactics to increase sales (flyers and their mechanics come to mind) are a bit ridiculous but in the end they are a business with a bottom line just like any other.

I have always felt they should take a specialist game like Necromunda and re-release it with pre-assembled models/terrain and a simplified set of rules or some way to get a new player into the game system. They should then sell these in large retailers (such as Wal-Mart here in the U.S.) with the other board games. That would increase their exposure so much and also expose younger potential war gamers to their other product lines like 40K.

Their price point for this would have to be a classic "loss leader" type product but again I think there can be a big demand for war gaming from parents who want their kids away from the video games and doing something that would encourage their creativity.

Baneblade10000 wrote:
You guys should read the financial statement I liinked to at the start of the post. GW is sinking fast.

Yeah... that whole bla bla page is just a really bad rant against GW.
GW is doing pretty well with this financial crisis going on actually.

Even if GW goes down, someone else will pick up 40K or Fantasy, because it's rather profitable.

Baneblade10000 wrote:
You guys should read the financial statement I liinked to at the start of the post. GW is sinking fast.

They have no significant debt, and are making money in the current financial climate.
Hardly sinking fast.

There are 2 thing imo that are destroying the hobbies....

GW should realy quit throwing the prices up like crazy... like before new tau came out a box of fire warriors was 20 euro's... now all of a sudden its 31... like wth! New releases bumb up the prices by almost 50%... its crazy and they should quit it... 40 euros for 5 DA termies wth man...

Its like the hobby will soon only be played by people who earn above average.. I am just above averagely payed and i must say... i buy waaaay less warhammer then i used to just because the prices are on the border of ridiculous...

The current balance issues with assault armies and shooting armies is getting too big.. i hear more and more players are having trouble with cc armies... Myself sometimes included...

Are not nitch retailers in general having a tough go right now?

I'm not a business guru/accountant but I feel like GW is making some bad moves from a sales perspective though they've stayed in business for quite a long time, so what do I know?

From a strictly gaming perspective I think GW is doing a great job. The product will never be perfect; and gaming nerds will never be satisfied... but they continue to make better and fun games consistently.

Baneblade10000 wrote:
There are two things that are destroying the hobby.

Way to not even get one line in before declaring your bias.

Baneblade10000 wrote:There are two things that are destroying the hobby.
1) the community
2) GW

... so you're saying that the problem with 40k is people?

... umm...

 Ailaros wrote:

Baneblade10000 wrote:There are two things that are destroying the hobby.
1) the community
2) GW

... so you're saying that the problem with 40k is people?

... umm...

You read correctly, people and the game manufacturer that makes 40K in the first place. So in essence the issue with 40k is everything that makes and creates and everyone that participates and plays 40K

Every yeah when the financial reports comes out the naysayers have to devote an intense amount of time to eventually twist the report to their view. Each year they are here, turning a profit, and have no debt. The positives are easy to see, it takes a real amount of back breaking work to try to contort.

With that aside IMHO Warhammer is the best miniature game for me, most of my friends still play and the game is as big as it ever was so who knows. The hobby isn't that expensive as things go, I spent far more on video games and separately on my computer+ its list of games. Ive played the game since Rogue Trader and it gets increasingly more enjoyable with each passing edition so not certain where the issue is.

I will say that the OP and the people of his mindset need a new 'hobby' as it were. The amount of people who claim to be 'done' with the hobby and still stick around every thread like that last bit of paint that never comes off when striping a model is kinda amusing.

As someone fairly well involved in the historics section of the hobby, and seeing how vast things really are, the "hobby" is hardly sinking. If anything, it seems to be slightly growing in favor.

Now, GW on the other hand...well, they may be sinking reputation wise but financially they are doing quite well for themselves.

Alarmism? On my internet?

Nawww.

 Manchu wrote:
I think we are in the midst of an ongoing golden age for table top miniatures gaming. There are so many options these days and many of them are of very high quality. GW is making itself increasingly irrelevant to this hobby generally. At most, GW continues to be most people's first brush with scifantasy war gaming. If that remains the case going forward, I think it will be because of GW's licensed video games and BL novels rather than Citadel miniatures. If GW went under completely, I don't think the hobby would be crippled. It would be a hard blow to brick and mortar stores, however.

Very much this.

The hobby, over the last 5 years or so, has moved away from being GW centric with added historicals to having some very well established new games with growing companies and communities who seem to be making all the right decisions that GW is getting wrong.

Just off the top of my head, looking at the stuff on the shelf ay my FLGS, I could walk in and buy rulesets and high quality miniatures for Warpath and Kings of War (Mantic, large scale sci fi and Fantasy battle games), Malifaux and Infinity (Wyrd and Corvus Belli, Victoran Horror Steampunk or Anime Sci Fi skirmish games respectively), Flames of War (Battlefront Games, small scale, large model count WW2), Dystopian Wars and Firestorm Armada (Spartan Games, small scale, large model count naval and space based fleet combat games), Dropzone Commander (Hawk Wargames, small scale, large model count sci fi), Mercs (Mercs LLC, skirmish sci fi) and Warmachine/Hordes (Privateer Press, skirmish to large scale steampunk/fantasy game).

That's just off the top of my head, not even covering all of what they sell, just what I've actually looked at. As I said, these games are growing, the companies are growing, and people are playing them in stores. The hobby as moved on from just Games Workshop games. There's a massive, massive wealth of miniatures games out there right now, games that are fun, have models often surpassing Games Workshops offerings, and for those interested, are quite involved with the community.

OP - To say that because the GW community is very toxic towards itself and GW seems hell bent on raising prices as much as they can that the miniature wargame hobby in its entirety is dying is absurd. Look outside of the little walled garden you've created for yourself. You might be surprised at what's out there.

Also, don't discount the miniatures-light games out there like Legend of Drizzt, or Ravenloft, or D&D.

There are a lot more games that are getting miniatures in them, and not just proper miniatures games themselves.

Baneblade10000 wrote:
You guys should read the financial statement I liinked to at the start of the post. GW is sinking fast.

If you read from both groups the summary is "they are treading water".
The "Consolidated Balance Sheet" is what interests me:
They increased "Other intangible assets" by 2,856 which was the only cheating way they could make it look like their "Non-current assets" increased.
"Current assets" went down 4,821, cash is what took a hit which would translate to giving out dividends.
Total Equity is 47,854 for this year v.s. 48,607 for last year which is a 1.5% reduction on equity (net worth) never mind adding inflation (in Britain around 3.2%)

Summary: In order to pay dividends they showed a loss in net worth.

I keep seeing in other areas in the document them increasing the value of "intangible assets" which always gets me a bit nasty since no-one can really call them on it.

They also try to cheat by showing "Net cash of operating activities" and "Net funds" separately and the evil so and so's reverse the listing of 2013 vs 2012 so if you skim the report it all looks positive.

Love the blerbs in the document from kirby: WARNING YOU ARE NOW ENTERING THE KIRBY QUOTE ZONE

"That small increase in sales (3% or so) is a mix of strong performance in our more hobby oriented Forge World and Black Library businesses (our ‘Other businesses’)" - Take a look and see how it is done...

"Many of our independent stockists and our own sales people are fans as well as customers and it helps all round if we have a system that emphasises sales potential over aesthetics." - Huh? thought sales potential was based on esthetics...

He says this: "Within the business our number one and overwhelmingly important KPI is sales. ‘Sales’ is all the money we take in and we quantify it by counting it." - which has no bearing on profit margin, then he says this:
"Earlier I said our most important measure was return on capital." - Which is money spent to get product to customer to buy, minus the money we got from the sale = profit! like what the heck guy...

"In our own stores, after sales, we look at the average transaction value and the transaction count in each store. We use them to see where the problem lies if sales are not growing. We do not publish them and we do not use them in our forward planning." - Soooo... you can track the value and quantity of sales in each store but use none of the data to figure out spending trends... why even say this? It does not give confidence.

"In sales to independent retailers we check to see how many live accounts we have each month: did they order? This is a health check to make sure the guys are doing their jobs properly. We do not publish this number and we do not use it in our forward planning."-Sooo... you track orders for each month but do no trending like I dunno maybe declining sales in the independent retailers?

"Risks: People, Our biggest risk is the people we employ. The potential damage to the Group is enormous. We mitigate this risk through internal recruitment and using our Academy to educate and train and ensure we recruit well." - Soooo the staff are the #1 risk to focus on to ensure company profitability??? With drastically reduced means of interface with your people which is pretty much ONLY in their stores or the WD rag... gah,

Breach of IP " Those who don’t should be stopped more because we need to ensure everyone knows we are serious about defending our IP rather than because of the immediate threat of damage to our profits." -.. umm.. err...

YOU ARE NOW EXITING THE KIRBY ZONE

There! reviewed the whole report, I like Kirby much less now... thanks! "Treading water" I would agree, with big vampires sucking all the cash, and assets made into cash, to suck some more, shrinking the company while trying to hide the theft by pumping up the "intangible assets"... I am such a grumpy person now... but wait! it is not "The end of times!" it is merely "stagnant!!!!" Yipeee!!!!!

 Waaghboss Grobnub wrote:
GW should realy quit throwing the prices up like crazy... like before new tau came out a box of fire warriors was 20 euro's... now all of a sudden its 31... like wth! New releases bumb up the prices by almost 50%... its crazy and they should quit it... 40 euros for 5 DA termies wth man...

The funny part about this is that people are actually thanking GW for not making across the board price increases anymore, and only upping prices on the new released armies. They haven't stopped raising prices to crazy levels, they've just made it more palatable. Kind of makes me think of someone in an abusive relationship seeing "positive" change because their significant other didn't hit them as many times this week as compared to last. Still beating on them regularly, but it isn't as bad, so that makes it "positive". :\

I've been playing Flames of war for about 5 years now. I have been paying the same $12.50 price for a blister with a tank in it for years now. In the same time frame most GW kits have gone up in price multiple times. I am curious to watch closely over the next couple of years as GW is running out of things to streamline to cut costs to make the end of year numbers look better. I want to see how things progress once they can't do that as much anymore. If their numbers stay good despite not being able to cut back the corners to the extremes any more in a given year I'll be impressed.

Skriker

 Skriker wrote:
I've been playing Flames of war for about 5 years now. I have been paying the same $12.50 price for a blister with a tank in it for years now. In the same time frame most GW kits have gone up in price multiple times. I am curious to watch closely over the next couple of years as GW is running out of things to streamline to cut costs to make the end of year numbers look better. I want to see how things progress once they can't do that as much anymore. If their numbers stay good despite not being able to cut back the corners to the extremes any more in a given year I'll be impressed.

Skriker

Yes, they have been hitting that button of increases and still have not seen enough backlash from the consumer.
I only found that the Khorn-Blower at $190 is what completely stopped me, I will see how much GW is going to hit me this year before I file for divorce.

40k seems to be slowing down a lot in Tucson Az and fantasy is unheard of here.

FoW isn't really a fair comparison, to my mind.
They have the same problem that any WWII system in that scale has.
That is, there are loads of companies making cheap, decent WWII miniatures. All I need from Battlefront is the rulebook.
One 15mm german/russian/british/american lead soldier is much the same as any other.

I chose "community is to blame", because the correct answer is the economy is killing most hobbies. Not to support GW and their customer-unfriendly policies, but they are a for-profit company, trying to retain market share in a poor global economy. I'm not excusing their decisions, but I am putting the blame where it belongs, on those that fund GW's policies ... like you and me.

SJ

I think it very much depends on where you are. In Britain the fate of the FLGS is nowhere near as important. Firstly they are comparatively rare, many cities have no independent gaming shops at all. There was a massive cull in the 90s. I remember when you could get off the train in any major British town and quickly find a games shop. Now that is not true, even London only has a handful. However, unless you are in the Highlands of Scotland, the North York Moors or West Wales you are never more than 20-30 miles from a GW.

Personally I feel that the reality 'on the ground' is obviously not what is talked about on the net, where griping and moaning is common.

I accept that GW models are expensive but recently I've had a lot more exposure to the prices of other system's models and it is not like they are half the price. I mean a group of 6 or so 15mm tanks from Battlefront is over £100. Given the immense difference in scale and detail that is hardly a vastly cheaper product. I have never really taken much notice of Privateer Press minis but when I saw a big display of them at discounted prices I was amazed how much they were. I thought to myself "hang on I keep hearing how much cheaper warmahordes is than GW and these prices are saying it is only cheaper because the games are smaller and demand less figures".

I have said elsewhere that I think GW are adopting a much more sensible strategy. I think the turning point was the insane decision to release finecost the same time as the annual price rise so people screamed that a cheaper product was being sold at a higher price. It was madness and I suspect that they were so wrapped up in their own ideas that they thought finecost was such a world wonder that it would enable them to smooth the price rise - something like "wow these new finecost are so incredible that I don't mind paying 2% more".

Since then I've detected a noticeable change. The outstanding new paint range which is truly excellent in terms of quality and scope, the speed of the codex releases, etc.

Golden Age? No but I'm old enough to remember the first GW store opening in the 80s! Still solid thought and some good recent developments.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Never forget that GW's business model is to some extent outmoded and unsustainable. It is also piggy-backed on in effect by the rest of the sector, whether they would admit this or not.

I mean the retail stores. These are expensive to run and eat into the profit margins. However, they are part and parcel of the business and without them how would they recruit new people, etc? Other firms can allow GW to reel in the initial contact with wargames through their shops then they can recruit them for their own games. I don't know if that is ever a deliberate policy but how many people do you know who started off in GW and then moved into other wargames?

I think that GW is vital to the continued health of the wargames sector in terms of the physical and visible presence that it provides, a major factor in many young people starting the hobby (in its broader sense). Obviously with all those shops they have to turn a bigger profit to remain in business than firms who simply produce product.

That's my take anyhow!

Things are fine. There's more choice out in the market than there was 5 years ago, and certainly 10 years before that.


If we are talking about game stores, it's a really really hard model. I give major kudos to those that can pull it off (in my area, Battleground Games - two sites and going strong!), but it is a majorly uphill battle.

The End Times? Not while it remains fun to build, paint and play.

Granted, prices are increasing on a semi-regular basis, GW can't maintain this forever (but I imagine they have a lot of time left), and if they don't do something else when they hit that wall they will die.

...So? Someone else will pick up 40k, Fantasy and the rest of GW's lines, because they then gain a chunk of the wargaming market accustomed to spending lots of money. If they were to then lower prices (or even just leave them alone completely), and keep releasing good codexes and models, we would likely view them as saviours and stick with the game. There is no way that none of the smaller companies orbiting GW have thought of this.

We lack a GW store in my city, but my FLGS does very well competing with other stockists, selling Flames, 40k, Fantasy, comic books, D and D, Magic, and tons of board games (Talisman, Settlers and the like). They manage not only through having such a diverse range, much of which isn't GW, but through their involvement in the hobby. Their employees and the owner are all heavily involved in the local clubs, the store coordinates the biggest tournament of the year, and provides terrain and prizes for many of the others. As a result, people like to go and support them. There's always the people who buy armies off Ebay and the like, but many of us buy from them because if they went under, our tournament and gaming scene would be much worse off (not that I'm a competitive player, I enter tournaments for laughs and a good weekend ). Also, even the Ebay buyers will hit the FLGS if they only need a paint or two. Ebay is great for buying bits from if you can't find them locally though, which is what I've used it for in the past.

Other stores will be struggling elsewhere if they haven't got the population to support them, I imagine, but there will also probably be some dying through ineptitude. Even so, The End Times? Hardly. Although I've only been playing for about five years, it has all seemed perfectly healthy from my perspective.

Prices are too high, plain and simple.

In the last month I have bought a massive Tyranid army from Ebay / other sources and it only cost me about £400. If I did that in store it would be ridiculous.

Considering most of the models are basically plastic from a mould and can be made for pennies the prices are ridiculous.

If GW want to grow the player base they need to stop pricing people out of the market, if the models didn't cost a crazy amount I would have bought everything brand new but not at those prices...

Basically I have bought...

3x Hive Tyrant
2x Trygon / Mawloc
3x Carnifex
5x Zoanthrope
4x Hive Guard
6x Raveners
20x Gargoyles
60x Genestealers (I have a fun plan for these )
25x Tyranid Warriors
3x Biovores (28 Spore Mines)
9x Ripper Swarms
1x Parasite Of Mortrex (Conversion from random parts)
30x Devgaunts
30x Hormagaunts
3x Lictors
1x Codex


I do not even want to add up the price of that brand new!

The main problem with the price argument is that all hobbies are expensive. It is not cheap to play a large scale 28mm wargame. It can be cheaper but it is not cheap. 15mm and other mini scales are cheaper for obvious reasons.

A lot of people seem to be comparing GW to, say McDonald's Happy Meal toys, and arguing that because plastic is extremely cheap to produce (fair point) that Citadel figures ought to be sold for pennies. There are many, many reasons why that cannot happen. For one thing they produce in the West, not in China so the costs of production are higher. Secondly they need a large design team, etc as they are inventing ideas and products not making generic products and they have a huge store base to maintain.

It will never be very cheap.

Having said all that GW do not follow very sensible policies in terms of bulk discounts, introductory products, sales, special offers, etc. They need to address that and interact more with their audience.