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 Talizvar wrote:
At first glance I was tempted to agree but I found the "new" stores also carry "basic" stuff and most vehicles they do not.
They were VERY quick to point out that I can order there and pick-up for "free" but they have removed another reason for buying there: when someone wants that model "now" they are of no use, might as well order online.

This came up the last time I visited a GW store. I was visiting my old gaming club in Middlesbrough (I went to Teesside Uni so the town's indepedent gaming club was my local club for 3 years) and stopped at the GW store on the way home.

I asked if they had any copies of the new slimmed down Warhammer 40K 6th Ed rulebook (the one that cuts out the fluff, and just has the rules, for £30) but it turned out that the book is Online Only. He offered to have it delivered to the store, and was very persistent even after I declined twice. I had to explain how I'd have to make a 45 min £7 train journey just to get to the store and collect it.

 Las wrote:
^meeplemart?

J&J Cards and Collectables
http://www.jjcards.com/shop/
Their site does not do them justice.
A warehouse of "stuff" with GW taking up about 1/8th of the space with about 8 other gaming systems rubbing shoulders with it in the aisles.
The true scary thing about them is the much improved price compared to any other store within 50km.

 Kroothawk wrote:

 Ravenous D wrote:

 -Loki- wrote:
What GW does when it moves into a town is not undercutting, which implies they offer their products cheaper than their competitors. Their competitors usually undercut GW. They do however muscle out other stores with better stock availability - especially now that so much is direct only and it's so hard for stores to stock GW stuff, but this only works if said store makes most of its money from GW which is a rarity these days.

That and every store around that GW suddenly has mysterious supply issues as it has been reported many times.

Still, in times of one-man-stores with no gaming area but aggressive sales behavior, a GW store should have serious trouble now to attract customers from a FLGS.

If anything, GW has the advantage. In my old town, the new GW store has been raking in new players like crazy. These players apparently only play at the GW, and have no interest in breaking into the cliques established at the two Indy stores.

Add on the fact that the GW store is run by a cute girl in her 20 something's, versus the FLGS's fairly typical staff, its almost no contest. The GW store is infinitely more approachable for your average Joe, and that can be a huge deal breaker we don't often think about.

Remember, GW isn't targeting guys like us who are super into the game on forums and the like. They know the easy money is out there in the untapped market. Now whether this is business they "stole" from indies, or business the Indies would have never gotten anyways, is another argument entirely. I think its safe to say though that at least some of the new players walking into a GW store would never have walked into an average FLGS, due to things like atmosphere, playerbase, or social stigma.

The best thing for 40k and Fantasy Battle would be for GW to die the undignified death it deserves and someone to pry the IP out of it's cold dead hands.

I've long been an advocate that Warhammer would be better under Hasbro's care than in GW's mismanagement after all.

 Kain wrote:
The best thing for 40k and Fantasy Battle would be for GW to die the undignified death it deserves and someone to pry the IP out of it's cold dead hands.

I've long been an advocate that Warhammer would be better under Hasbro's care than in GW's mismanagement after all.

Assuming Hasbro have any interest in GW and it's IP.

I'll make this clear, the 40 and FB IPs are almost definitely going to outlive GW itself. There is a lot of money to be made in just the fictional setting alone as Dawn of War proved. There is simply no chance of 40k and FB becoming abandon ware in case GW dies because nobody is going to let those cash cows die off just because the ranch burned down.

The 40k setting is a valuable IP to set things in. Making a setting people want more of is arguably harder than making products for that setting. I mean, can you honestly name ten major characters and events in infinity without looking them up? Or point me to ten substantial discussions of their background and lore? People like the stories that can be told in the 40k setting, they want more of those stories, and taking that story-telling ability out of GW's stagnant hands and into a new body would be the best thing for the IP.

The game itself is likely to get radically redone by the inevitable buyer of the 40k IP to the point of being unrecognizable. The 40k lore though, has merchandising potential. As anyone who studies franchises can tell you, the associated merchandise of a franchise will usually drastically outstrip the actual core product in terms of revenue. Comic books for example, fewer and fewer people actually read comics, but people will buy tickets to watch the movies, purchase copies of the games set in those universes, and sink money into the toys. Or hell, Lucas or someone in Lucasarts even said that for every dollar they made on the Star Wars films, they made three in associated merchandise.

This is what makes 40k attractive to IP buyers, it's distinctive, it's got a large number of people who are demonstrably invested into the IP as a setting and not just as a game, and you could make it easily marketable. The game itself is a broken mess but the universe has the potential to make billions in the right hands. I mean, the spiderman comics themselves struggle to gross over a million every month. but the games, movies, toys, and cartoons all conspire to make Spiderman a billion dollar name even if less than a hundred thousand people actually read the comics he's in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 Kain wrote:
The best thing for 40k and Fantasy Battle would be for GW to die the undignified death it deserves and someone to pry the IP out of it's cold dead hands.

I've long been an advocate that Warhammer would be better under Hasbro's care than in GW's mismanagement after all.

Assuming Hasbro have any interest in GW and it's IP.

Hasbro is a money grubbing giant in the toy industry that snaps up IPs and companies it sees as having marketability while still being cheap. Which typically means dying companies looking to make their bigwigs a few last bucks by selling off everything for pennies on the dollar.

TSR's demise offered them D&D on the cheap, so they snapped it up.

GW dying would give them a way to dominate the wargaming market and gain another IP they could spin into being as huge as Transformers, G.I Joe, D&D, and MLP without overmuch effort with all the hard work of getting a fanbase to build off and basic setting premises that can interest people of before they commercialize the hell out of it being done for them.

Buying out a dying GW is completely in character for them.

If Hasbro did buy up GW's IP we could end up seeing 40k figures in the "McFarlane" style of models. I currently have a 7in Cole Train and Marcus model on my desk at work. Would love some 40k models in this scale and detail.

 MrMoustaffa wrote:
Add on the fact that the GW store is run by a cute girl in her 20 something's, ...

Okay, that's unfair business practice

 Kain wrote:
The game itself is likely to get radically redone by the inevitable buyer of the 40k IP to the point of being unrecognizable.

Yeah, you might get something like "Mechwarrior: Dark Ages" or "Mutant Chronicles 54mm Minatures Game". I wouldn't automatically assume that whoever gets a license will do a better job than GW - or at least will do something with the license you want to play...

 Kain wrote:


GW dying would give them a way to dominate the wargaming market and gain another IP they could spin into being as huge as Transformers, G.I Joe, D&D, and MLP without overmuch effort with all the hard work of getting a fanbase to build off and basic setting premises that can interest people of before they commercialize the hell out of it being done for them.

Buying out a dying GW is completely in character for them.

Again, this obsession with Hasbro, whose main virtue is being big. If they buy GW, likelihood is that there will be even more moaning minnies than we have right now.

Granted, if new management instituted tournament support, more coherent rules, lower prices, and focused on new player recruitment, we'd all be happier bunnies. But if GW really are dying (which I don't really believe, despite the schadenfreude-addicts' constant refrains ), they're more likely to attract vultures than wizards or white knights.

 Bomster wrote:
Yeah, you might get something like "Mechwarrior: Dark Ages" or "Mutant Chronicles 54mm Minatures Game". I wouldn't automatically assume that whoever gets a license will do a better job than GW - or at least will do something with the license you want to play...

I can't say much about the Mutant Chronicles game, but it's possibly worth pointing out that Mechwarrior: Dark Age won Origin Awards for both the game and the miniature range.

 insaniak wrote:

 Bomster wrote:
Yeah, you might get something like "Mechwarrior: Dark Ages" or "Mutant Chronicles 54mm Minatures Game". I wouldn't automatically assume that whoever gets a license will do a better job than GW - or at least will do something with the license you want to play...

I can't say much about the Mutant Chronicles game, but it's possibly worth pointing out that Mechwarrior: Dark Age won Origin Awards for both the game and the miniature range.

We would probably get something more like D&D or Star Wars Minis

 Anpu42 wrote:
We would probably get something more like D&D or Star Wars Minis

2 more hugely successful miniatures ranges?

Still not seeing a problem here...

 insaniak wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:
We would probably get something more like D&D or Star Wars Minis

2 more hugely successful miniatures ranges?

Still not seeing a problem here...

I did not say that was a bad thing, though 40k would probably become more a skirmish game.

 Kain wrote:
I'll make this clear, the 40 and FB IPs are almost definitely going to outlive GW itself. There is a lot of money to be made in just the fictional setting alone as Dawn of War proved. There is simply no chance of 40k and FB becoming abandon ware in case GW dies because nobody is going to let those cash cows die off just because the ranch burned down.

The 40k setting is a valuable IP to set things in. Making a setting people want more of is arguably harder than making products for that setting. I mean, can you honestly name ten major characters and events in infinity without looking them up? Or point me to ten substantial discussions of their background and lore? People like the stories that can be told in the 40k setting, they want more of those stories, and taking that story-telling ability out of GW's stagnant hands and into a new body would be the best thing for the IP.

The game itself is likely to get radically redone by the inevitable buyer of the 40k IP to the point of being unrecognizable. The 40k lore though, has merchandising potential. As anyone who studies franchises can tell you, the associated merchandise of a franchise will usually drastically outstrip the actual core product in terms of revenue. Comic books for example, fewer and fewer people actually read comics, but people will buy tickets to watch the movies, purchase copies of the games set in those universes, and sink money into the toys. Or hell, Lucas or someone in Lucasarts even said that for every dollar they made on the Star Wars films, they made three in associated merchandise.

This is what makes 40k attractive to IP buyers, it's distinctive, it's got a large number of people who are demonstrably invested into the IP as a setting and not just as a game, and you could make it easily marketable. The game itself is a broken mess but the universe has the potential to make billions in the right hands. I mean, the spiderman comics themselves struggle to gross over a million every month. but the games, movies, toys, and cartoons all conspire to make Spiderman a billion dollar name even if less than a hundred thousand people actually read the comics he's in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 Kain wrote:
The best thing for 40k and Fantasy Battle would be for GW to die the undignified death it deserves and someone to pry the IP out of it's cold dead hands.

I've long been an advocate that Warhammer would be better under Hasbro's care than in GW's mismanagement after all.

Assuming Hasbro have any interest in GW and it's IP.

Hasbro is a money grubbing giant in the toy industry that snaps up IPs and companies it sees as having marketability while still being cheap. Which typically means dying companies looking to make their bigwigs a few last bucks by selling off everything for pennies on the dollar.

TSR's demise offered them D&D on the cheap, so they snapped it up.

GW dying would give them a way to dominate the wargaming market and gain another IP they could spin into being as huge as Transformers, G.I Joe, D&D, and MLP without overmuch effort with all the hard work of getting a fanbase to build off and basic setting premises that can interest people of before they commercialize the hell out of it being done for them.

Buying out a dying GW is completely in character for them.

Transformers and G.I. Joe? Jesus man, this is the thing I don't understand about people schadenfreuding GW. If someone else takes over like Hasbro, they'll probably just make it worse. Transformers and G.I.Joe both blow. While the GW 40K universe has definitely gotten a little lamer (perpetuals? come the feth on...), I really doubt any other major company would substantially alter the path they are taking story-wise, which is to make the fluff simpler and more broadly appealing to a younger, more mainstream audience.

Based off of previous experiences with these type of franchises, this path generally seems pretty inevitable. Any sci-fi fantasy setting that obtains substantial popularity, whose money is made off of merchandise sales, and whose rights are owned by a company interested in profit maximizing typically takes this route.

It just is what it is. Nothing will change as long as a big company controls the IP, which it inevitably will even if GW dies (which I am truthfully pretty skeptical of) since 40K is so popular and potentially profitable.

It also depends on who gets it.

Wiz Kids: Would also not be a bad choice. I could see them doing like what they did with Shadowrun and BattleTech. Let’s say Wiz Kids buys GW to get at the Specialist Games and then pawns off Warhammer Fantasy and 40k to a secondary publisher to write the rule books.

Hasbro: We would probably get something like a booster driven Blood Bowl or Space Hulk while they figure out what to do everything else.

FoW Guys: Would see some major changes, but a lot would be the same to. FOCs, d6s and overpriced rule books.

Warlord Game: Prices might drop along with the overall model counts.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:
We would probably get something more like D&D or Star Wars Minis

2 more hugely successful miniatures ranges?

Still not seeing a problem here...

I did not say that was a bad thing, though 40k would probably become more a skirmish game.

40K IS a skirmish game. It's a platoon level skirmish in which GW have tried to cobble together details suitable for a rules-light RPG with the increased number of figures and units approaching a company level wargame.

They have managed in several ways to get the worst of both worlds, and that is a reason for the number of problems with the game.

In an ideal world, GW would produce a more detailed skirmish game, possibly set on a Hive World, and a genuine mass combat game on an epic scale, and 40K would be simplified by getting rid of a lot of the detail around characters and special rules.

To make my point obvious, this is roughly where GW were 10 years ago, when they produced Necromunda, Epic and 3rd/4th edition 40K. I'm not saying those were all perfect rules, BTW.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:

 insaniak wrote:

 Anpu42 wrote:
We would probably get something more like D&D or Star Wars Minis

2 more hugely successful miniatures ranges?

Still not seeing a problem here...

I did not say that was a bad thing, though 40k would probably become more a skirmish game.

40K IS a skirmish game. It's a platoon level skirmish in which GW have tried to cobble together details suitable for a rules-light RPG with the increased number of figures and units approaching a company level wargame.

They have managed in several ways to get the worst of both worlds, and that is a reason for the number of problems with the game.

Was a skirmish game would be a better way to put it.
I would not have a problem with it going back to it though, but I also like my 2k-3k games to.

I think the issue is that 40k doesn't really have a framework that allows it to scale to that, but GW has done it anyways. If the rules were well-written and balanced, you could offer 40k in multiple flavors using the same basic ruleset with modifications as needed to support the level at which you're playing.

So you might have a Skirmish version which ranges from Kill Team up through Combat Patrol (so about 200-500 points or so) and has streamlined rules for that, possibly with a bit more detail for individuality.

Then you have the Platoon level which is the "default" rulesset for 750-2000 or something like that.

Finally you have Apocalypse which again has streamlined rules designed for mass combat to make things faster and more intuitive (for instance maybe Apoc games don't have individual casualty removal but wound points on a squad).

A flexible and well-written rules framework could allow for all of those with the same basic rules at its core, and more importantly let you adapt all three as needed. The current 40k rules try to do all three of those scenarios badly.

BallinWitStalin wrote:

 Kain wrote:
I'll make this clear, the 40 and FB IPs are almost definitely going to outlive GW itself. There is a lot of money to be made in just the fictional setting alone as Dawn of War proved. There is simply no chance of 40k and FB becoming abandon ware in case GW dies because nobody is going to let those cash cows die off just because the ranch burned down.

The 40k setting is a valuable IP to set things in. Making a setting people want more of is arguably harder than making products for that setting. I mean, can you honestly name ten major characters and events in infinity without looking them up? Or point me to ten substantial discussions of their background and lore? People like the stories that can be told in the 40k setting, they want more of those stories, and taking that story-telling ability out of GW's stagnant hands and into a new body would be the best thing for the IP.

The game itself is likely to get radically redone by the inevitable buyer of the 40k IP to the point of being unrecognizable. The 40k lore though, has merchandising potential. As anyone who studies franchises can tell you, the associated merchandise of a franchise will usually drastically outstrip the actual core product in terms of revenue. Comic books for example, fewer and fewer people actually read comics, but people will buy tickets to watch the movies, purchase copies of the games set in those universes, and sink money into the toys. Or hell, Lucas or someone in Lucasarts even said that for every dollar they made on the Star Wars films, they made three in associated merchandise.

This is what makes 40k attractive to IP buyers, it's distinctive, it's got a large number of people who are demonstrably invested into the IP as a setting and not just as a game, and you could make it easily marketable. The game itself is a broken mess but the universe has the potential to make billions in the right hands. I mean, the spiderman comics themselves struggle to gross over a million every month. but the games, movies, toys, and cartoons all conspire to make Spiderman a billion dollar name even if less than a hundred thousand people actually read the comics he's in.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 Kain wrote:
The best thing for 40k and Fantasy Battle would be for GW to die the undignified death it deserves and someone to pry the IP out of it's cold dead hands.

I've long been an advocate that Warhammer would be better under Hasbro's care than in GW's mismanagement after all.

Assuming Hasbro have any interest in GW and it's IP.

Hasbro is a money grubbing giant in the toy industry that snaps up IPs and companies it sees as having marketability while still being cheap. Which typically means dying companies looking to make their bigwigs a few last bucks by selling off everything for pennies on the dollar.

TSR's demise offered them D&D on the cheap, so they snapped it up.

GW dying would give them a way to dominate the wargaming market and gain another IP they could spin into being as huge as Transformers, G.I Joe, D&D, and MLP without overmuch effort with all the hard work of getting a fanbase to build off and basic setting premises that can interest people of before they commercialize the hell out of it being done for them.

Buying out a dying GW is completely in character for them.

Transformers and G.I. Joe? Jesus man, this is the thing I don't understand about people schadenfreuding GW. If someone else takes over like Hasbro, they'll probably just make it worse. Transformers and G.I.Joe both blow. While the GW 40K universe has definitely gotten a little lamer (perpetuals? come the feth on...), I really doubt any other major company would substantially alter the path they are taking story-wise, which is to make the fluff simpler and more broadly appealing to a younger, more mainstream audience.

Based off of previous experiences with these type of franchises, this path generally seems pretty inevitable. Any sci-fi fantasy setting that obtains substantial popularity, whose money is made off of merchandise sales, and whose rights are owned by a company interested in profit maximizing typically takes this route.

It just is what it is. Nothing will change as long as a big company controls the IP, which it inevitably will even if GW dies (which I am truthfully pretty skeptical of) since 40K is so popular and potentially profitable.

I'm sorry, but I can't hear you over the sound of Transformers Prime winning emmies.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transformers:_Prime#Awards_and_nominations

Or the nearly universal positive reviews of Fall of and War for Cybertron.

Or the awesomeness that is the IDW Transformers comics.

Or Dark of the Moon being the sixth most successful movie ever.

 Kain wrote:

Or Dark of the Moon being the sixth most successful movie ever.

Another example of a steaming pile of gak smelling sweet to the schadenfreude freaks, as long as it's not GW.

Accounting for inflation, it's the 129th most successful movie ever. .

More importantly, it sucks!.

 Hivefleet Oblivion wrote:

 Kain wrote:

Or Dark of the Moon being the sixth most successful movie ever.

Another example of a steaming pile of gak smelling sweet to the schadenfreude freaks, as long as it's not GW.

Accounting for inflation, it's the 129th most successful movie ever. .

More importantly, it sucks!.

If you see the words "Domestic Gross" in bold you'll see the problem with your methodology. Once upon a time, Domestic Gross was all that mattered, these days international gross can easily outstrip domestic by a huge margin and do so with regularity. Not because foreigners have different tastes, or not entirely, but because Domestic Gross accounts for a nation of 300 million, and International figures in the other 6.7 or so billion people who can buy a ticket.

In addition, I actually liked the film unironically.

There is a time and a place for serious stories with a message behind it and a time for simple over the top fun. It's why I liked the Avengers more than the Dark Knight (I liked both to be sure), because I'm not interested in films pontificating about right and wrong. It's supposed to be entertainment first, not a lecture circuit.

 insaniak wrote:

 Bomster wrote:
Yeah, you might get something like "Mechwarrior: Dark Ages" or "Mutant Chronicles 54mm Minatures Game". I wouldn't automatically assume that whoever gets a license will do a better job than GW - or at least will do something with the license you want to play...

I can't say much about the Mutant Chronicles game, but it's possibly worth pointing out that Mechwarrior: Dark Age won Origin Awards for both the game and the miniature range.

Which in the case of the models is utterly incomprehensible to me.

As for MW: DA - it had an 'impressive' life cycle of 5-6 years, and the storyline advancement was so well done that after its demise everybody quickly returned to either the 3025 or 3050 era, as if they were slightly embarrassed about the 3100's development.


I can't say much about the actual quality of FFG's Mutant Chronicles game either, but it obviously wasn't anything the buying public was in any way interested it.


Rather than talking about the quality of my examples I was going for this point: whoever's willing to spend the cash for a 40k license after GW's (very hypothetical) end - might not want to create some sort of idealized version of the 40k game (like 40k but done really, really well). They might very much decide that the tabletop game was the albatross around the fluff's neck and could plug the setting into an existing rules frame (like Wizkids more or less did) or create a generic boardgame with some themed models.

Is there anyone who thinks 40K is an absolutely marvellous set of rules, already perfect and impossible to improve?

It seems to me that the player base is spread between people who think it's fun and good, all the way to people who have pretty much given up because they think it's got so bad.

It might be the best thing ever, to dump the rules and do a ground up revision. As long as it supported the current fluff and models, and was a good set of rules, would people not accept it?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there anyone who thinks 40K is an absolutely marvellous set of rules, already perfect and impossible to improve?

It seems to me that the player base is spread between people who think it's fun and good, all the way to people who have pretty much given up because they think it's got so bad.

It might be the best thing ever, to dump the rules and do a ground up revision. As long as it supported the current fluff and models, and was a good set of rules, would people not accept it?

I would. I liked 6th edition, and still do.

I just can't stand Escalation, Stronghold Assault, and 100x dataslates I can't possibly keep up with.

 Bomster wrote:
They might very much decide that the tabletop game was the albatross around the fluff's neck and could plug the setting into an existing rules frame (like Wizkids more or less did) or create a generic boardgame with some themed models.

And going by GW's current form (do the least comprehensible) then I can still only see that as an improvement.

 kronk wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there anyone who thinks 40K is an absolutely marvellous set of rules, already perfect and impossible to improve?

It seems to me that the player base is spread between people who think it's fun and good, all the way to people who have pretty much given up because they think it's got so bad.

It might be the best thing ever, to dump the rules and do a ground up revision. As long as it supported the current fluff and models, and was a good set of rules, would people not accept it?

I would. I liked 6th edition, and still do.

I just can't stand Escalation, Stronghold Assault, and 100x dataslates I can't possibly keep up with.

So...you don't think the 40K rules are perfect then. I got your point that you feel the core 6th ed rules are peachy. But part of the problem with 40K these days is the diffuse and inaccessible nature of the rules.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is there anyone who thinks 40K is an absolutely marvellous set of rules, already perfect and impossible to improve?

It seems to me that the player base is spread between people who think it's fun and good, all the way to people who have pretty much given up because they think it's got so bad.

It might be the best thing ever, to dump the rules and do a ground up revision. As long as it supported the current fluff and models, and was a good set of rules, would people not accept it?

Personally I think they are literally "between Scylla and Charybdis" (i.e. a rock and a hard place, but Greek Mythology version ). If they do nothing, they're going to slowly continue on this downward spiral and eventually consume themselves as more and more people get fed up - whether they believe it or not this hobby is NOT sustainable at the rate GW is going, especially not when they seem to think the answer is the sales equivalent of "more dakka". If they do a fullblown shakeup of 40k a la 2nd -> 3rd, they risk alienating a lot of loyal "hobbyists", but could potentially save themselves if they essentially realize the problems and work to fix them to make amends.

of course, that's assuming they even A) know what the problems, B) Know how to fix it, and C) care to fix it. They seem to have shown that they live in their own bubble and are ignorant of the world around them, but that could just be corporate speak because Kirby believes that. Using the classic ship analogy, I'm not so sure they can turn the ship around because they're too busy drinking champagne and partying at how great they are below decks to even notice the iceberg. They fact that they don't consider that they have any competitors (despite having several) and that they think their customers simply "buy GW products" speaks volumes for unbelievable arrogance and almost brainwash-like ignorance and towing the party line.

 Anpu42 wrote:
Was a skirmish game would be a better way to put it.
I would not have a problem with it going back to it though, but I also like my 2k-3k games to.

It again IS a skirmish game, as basically the number of "Titans" (Imperial Knight, Riptide, Wraithknight, Apocalypse units) in your list wins the game. The rest is more or less decoration.

A lot of axes are getting very sharp in this thread