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I always thought the entire reason SGs were removed was because GW thought any profit not going to 40k/WHFB was lost profit, and wanted to push everyone into the main game instead of letting them "only" spend say $100 on a Necromunda Gang/Mordheim Warband/Bloodbowl Team.

The bottom line though is that GW needs an entry-level game that doesn't cost hundreds to get started at any decent level. That's the one thing they're lacking right now, with 40k costing $135 just for the rules, another $100+ for the absolute bare minimum that you need to play that nobody else will play against outside of demo games (i.e. 1 HQ, 2 Troops) and likely another $200 or more to bring that up to even a basic small force, and WHFB likely being similar if not more due to the even more insane pricing.

At that point you're looking at entire normal-sized armies, or more ($300+ can get you a pretty nice sized Bolt Action or Kings of War army, for example), from GW's competitors.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Again, I repeat, the idea that people are put off getting into GW's world due to a lack of such game, is ludicrous.

Are you sure? Do you have any kind of source for that? All the anecdotes indicate the opposite.

If it wasn't for HeroQuest & Space Hulk, I (and many of my generation) wouldn't have gotten into GW games.

Skipping over the introduction part, there's the retention part. My gaming buddies main game is 40K, but we rarely have time for it, had Blood Bowl or Space Hulk still been available, they'd be our quick game. They aren't, so we play X-Wing instead, which has pretty much taken over 40K for our big games too. At Claymore last weekend, my die-hard GW fan (who skips over everything non-GW) spent more time looking at X-Wing minis that GW minis. He didn't buy any, because he's got all of the Imperial ones already, but he didn't buy any GW stuff either.

Edit: Also, look at the games that are exploding in popularity. Like Mantics Dreadball and Deadzone, Malifaux, Infinity, Bushido, etc. Games in the small skirmish/boxed game space that GW doesn't compete in anymore. Hell, Mantic are about to launch a HeroQuest competitor on Kickstarter in 40 minutes. Why does this stuff work so well for everyone else, but not GW? Because GW want you to be buying hundreds of mini's instead of tens?

I really, really do NOT want GW to "fail" as I love their setting, and I think they bring a lot of good things to the miniature wargmaing hobby.

But when I continue to read this thread, and posts elsewhere like this:

rich1231 wrote:

 Eggs wrote:
Rich, any chance you could give us further info on how much Ice storm is shifting in comparison to 7th ed? Is the difference significant? Would you say 7th Ed was particularly unpopular, Icestorm particularly popular or a combination of the two?

I'd be interested to hear about it.

For us Icestorm has now outsold 7th Edition

7th edition has done about 50% of the numbers 6th edition did in the same period.

I get nervous about their long term viability - and maybe even their short term viability!

 loki old fart wrote:

 liquidjoshi wrote:
A new Apoc edition is unlikely, given 6th had one. I think the Space Marine Codex release probably pulled a lot of weight as well, as did the release of Imperial Knights - I doubt they can replicate those again any time soon.

I really don't know what other heavy hitters GW have left to put out. A new fantasy release maybe?

Codex Thousand sons, Codex Emperors children, ETC, ETC.

Oh, of course. I should clarify; I meant heavy hitters GW is likely to release or even consider developing. A decent NLs supplement would net them a pretty penny from me, I know that.

But hey, we know they'll just mass produce SM codex varients until they die. I think that's all they have left at this point.

The problem of GW are not the skirmish games. They were only marginally played. Our gaming group almost never played these games in the last 12 years - bar BFG.
In our gaming group we see an exodus to other game systems like WM/H and Infinity. Fantasy is hardly played. Too expensive and bad rules. 40k players only buy newer stuff to supplement their armies.

 Alpharius wrote:
I really, really do NOT want GW to "fail" as I love their setting, and I think they bring a lot of good things to the miniature wargmaing hobby.

But when I continue to read this thread, and posts elsewhere like this:

rich1231 wrote:

 Eggs wrote:
Rich, any chance you could give us further info on how much Ice storm is shifting in comparison to 7th ed? Is the difference significant? Would you say 7th Ed was particularly unpopular, Icestorm particularly popular or a combination of the two?

I'd be interested to hear about it.

For us Icestorm has now outsold 7th Edition

7th edition has done about 50% of the numbers 6th edition did in the same period.

I get nervous about their long term viability - and maybe even their short term viability!

Ouch! Especially when you conisder Icestorm isn't due to ship for another 6 weeks, and all the slating it's had for only containing 15 minis, though there seems to be a pre-order bonus mini. I'll probably get it before 7th edition 40K because it looks amazing.



Though I see this sort of thing coming out of GW and I can kind of see why@

Named Murderfang by the Space Wolves, this metal-skinned monster was found roaming the hell world of Omnicide. It clearly is a Dreadnought, yet the true identity of the once-noble hero within its sarcophagus is long lost. In times of great strife, this machine-beast is released from it’s glacial prison and set upon the foe, where it will claw, stamp and bite until nothing is left but ruin.

This multi-part plastic kit makes one Murderfang armed with murderclaws.

Murderfang, armed with murderclaws. Is the design team now being run by one of the work placement kids?

That's before you even consider the fluff; it's a hell world (so it's hot?) called Omnicide (really?), and they found a Wolves dreadnaught so old and defaced they can't identify it, nor presumably ask it, so it's kept in a glacial (so it's cold?) prison and brought out when needed where it presumably mauls everything (except the wolves/allies) with it's Murderclaws. "Murder" claws. Becaues the rest of the dreadnaughts come equipped with vacuum or whisk attachments. Maybe I'm getting too old for GW now, because I never want to have to say "My MurderFang is going to attack your unit with it's Murderclaws" out loud...

Don't forget that he also suffers from Murderlust.

Murderfang suffers from Murderlust, and murders his foes with his Murderclaws.

For real.

So, GW is clearly not financially bankrupt, but they might be creatively bankrupt!

At first I thought people were joking about that.

What does murderlust make him do that's unique to, well, any sort of ancient killing machine?

I take it it's essentially just Rage.

Do you think GW is turning itself into a parody of itself on purpose?

Herzlos wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Again, I repeat, the idea that people are put off getting into GW's world due to a lack of such game, is ludicrous.

Are you sure? Do you have any kind of source for that? All the anecdotes indicate the opposite.

If it wasn't for HeroQuest & Space Hulk, I (and many of my generation) wouldn't have gotten into GW games.

Skipping over the introduction part, there's the retention part. My gaming buddies main game is 40K, but we rarely have time for it, had Blood Bowl or Space Hulk still been available, they'd be our quick game. They aren't, so we play X-Wing instead, which has pretty much taken over 40K for our big games too. At Claymore last weekend, my die-hard GW fan (who skips over everything non-GW) spent more time looking at X-Wing minis that GW minis. He didn't buy any, because he's got all of the Imperial ones already, but he didn't buy any GW stuff either.

Edit: Also, look at the games that are exploding in popularity. Like Mantics Dreadball and Deadzone, Malifaux, Infinity, Bushido, etc. Games in the small skirmish/boxed game space that GW doesn't compete in anymore. Hell, Mantic are about to launch a HeroQuest competitor on Kickstarter in 40 minutes. Why does this stuff work so well for everyone else, but not GW? Because GW want you to be buying hundreds of mini's instead of tens?

I don't deny the influence of heroquest, but fighting fantasy books were very popular at the time as well, and the fact that the authors were the founders of GW, didn't hurt either.

X-wing is not a good example, because the Star Wars brand is so popular. You could put the Star Wars brand on a tin of prunes, and it would probably sell. I hate prunes

As for mantic, I've had some experience of their stuff, and it's been 50/50. I can't say anything about the other games.

Agree with Kilkrazy that GW's use of its retail arm has been shockingly incompetent, but the problems run deep, deeper than entry level games.

We don't really play X-WIng because of the star wars reference (I recognise like 4 of the ships). It was enough to get us to try it, but it's a genuinely good game.

You summed it up nicely: specialist games never made cash.

They made cash (probably don't have to tell you about epic's reputation as the 3rd core game, and I've heard Inquisitor exceeded it's initial sales target) they just didn't make as much cash as 40K or WHFB. Or, they took too much cash away from 40K...

There were a few other factors: the drastic changes to Epic 40K, the ambivalent nature of Inq, the different scales for some games, etc. On that note, I'm going to wonder if the general, mild xenophobia and infantilisation of the core 2 has had a bit to do with it too. I'm sure you've seen, as I have, plenty of core 2 players who dismiss other games out of hand, at their mere mention, just because they're 'not 40K'. Why play a challenging tactical 6mm game where you control an army, when you can play a game with a platoon or so because the big 30-35mm character dollies look so kewl, their special auto-play rules are so wikkid, and their grimdark conan-the-he-man fluff antics so badazz?

Do_I_Not_Like_That: I mean, I agree with you that a skirmish game isn't going to save GW, but it wouldn't be a bad idea all the same. Not remaking heroquest is also leaving money on the table in my opinion.

40K is currently borked, and I don't know when they're going to have another chance to fix it. Not for 2 years, anyhow. Is that going to be two years of continued falling sales.

Fantasy is suffering really badly from sticker shock when people see how many ten man boxes they need to buy to make an army, and do a price comparison with some of the other providers out there. Maybe they can turn Fantasy around with some sort of awesome new edition, but I am sceptical.

So with that context, skirmish and board games seem to offer design space for GW to expand into while getting their gak together with regard to the core games.

To agree with my stance of course, you have to agree that current GW releases are overpriced garbage.

Herzlos wrote:
Hell, Mantic are about to launch a HeroQuest competitor on Kickstarter in 40 minutes.

I know it's poor form to quote myself, but this gives a good illustration of how popular some of the box games were, Mantics Dungeon Saga (providing a gaming experience like HeroQuest) has hit it's target of $50,000 in 4 minutes. Whilst that's an initial spike, to put it into perspective GW made approx $22k/hour over the last financial year. That's what early announcements and hype building does for you.

Have a look at the 40k releases in the last two years.

Recent fiscal year:
- 7th Edition
- Space Marines
- Astra Militarum
- Tyranids
- Eldar
- Imperial Knights

Former fiscal year:
- 6th Edition
- Tau
- Chaos Space Marines
- Dark Angels
- Daemons

Orks released, and BA, DE, Necrons, GK, SoB(?) to be released.

The pace is astonishing but still gross revenue went down.

Here's how I see it. GW claims to be in the market of making models and for some reason, they don't understand that in order to make models, especially ones that have to be painted, people need a reason to buy them. GW IP is not like comics, movies or TV shows where people will buy models to just sit on the self, there has to be a reason at some point.

GW should have multiple games that use the same models. This allows them to lower price of production because the same models are used in multiple games. They also allow people to play with the same model, thus the purchaser feels they are getting more value. I would recommend the games be:

- Board game that takes 30 minutes or less and costs $50 or less. Game should support 1 to 4 players. This could be a scenario game based on a ship where players need to defend, escape or assault the ship. Expansions could include rules for other armies and new scenarios.

- Small skirmish game that takes 1 hour or less with an intro price of $100 total. This would be Necromunda.

- Mid level skirmish game that takes 1 hour with intro price of $200. I would see this at about 750 points of 40K.

- Platoon level game that takes about 2 hours with field army price of around $300. 1500 points of 40k.

- Army level game at 3 hours, $500 and about 3000 points of 40K.

According to Wikipedia, Hero Quest was designed by Milton Bradley, however it was very popular, and there have been a number of other similar boxed games since then, including the fairly recent Super Dungeon Explore, and various titles from FFG and other companies.

The boxed video-game shooter "dungeon" like Doom and successors, is a related and also successful category. Space Hulk can be seen as a progenitor of the Doom style of SF dungeon.

 Alpharius wrote:
Don't forget that he also suffers from Murderlust.

Murderfang suffers from Murderlust, and murders his foes with his Murderclaws.

Wait, wait, that was actually the official name of the thing, rather than a cute fan nickname?! It's like something Rob Liefeld rejected as being too cheesy for 90's Image comics.

Nothing cute about it. *fumes*

The Murderfang rules are a ripoff of death company Dreadnoughts

The text sounds like somebody ripped off Axecop.

Delete, wrong information

 Da Boss wrote:
40K is currently borked, and I don't know when they're going to have another chance to fix it. Not for 2 years, anyhow. Is that going to be two years of continued falling sales.

Why wait two years? GW have already broken the 4-year update cycle for the core rules so why stick to a 2-year cycle all of a sudden? They could release a new 40k edition every year if they wanted, and they probably think we'd all buy it, too.

Personally I could see GW doing a "7.5" release and for every edition thereafter. 7th comes out, 7.5 comes out a year later making minor changes, but juuust enough to make people switch up their army comp again so they have to buy another $400 batch of models to update their army, then 8th comes out, etc.

If they can get model production up to a fast enough rate, I can see that happening. Though if/when that didn't sell, it would simply catalyse their losses.

 Alpharius wrote:
Don't forget that he also suffers from Murderlust.

Murderfang suffers from Murderlust, and murders his foes with his Murderclaws.

For real.

So, GW is clearly not financially bankrupt, but they might be creatively bankrupt!

However, it's proof positive that they cater to kids. I could see a 12-year old chortling with glee over Murderfang's Murderlust kicking in and murdering things with Murderclaws.

But yeah, that's pretty silly overall. Along with everything else they've done, I'm starting to believe the 2 year prediction of doom.

I'm just amazed they him come from the planet Omnicide.

I'd say I feel bad for Space Wolves players, but I'd probably just be told to not take it so seriously and minis aren't serious business.

 Blacksails wrote:
I'm just amazed they him come from the planet Omnicide.

I'd say I feel bad for Space Wolves players, but I'd probably just be told to not take it so seriously and minis aren't serious business.

What I find stupider is that they just kind of found him and are like oh he looks like one of ours, but no idea who he is or where he came from, and I guess he can't talk (due to Murderlust?) to say it. So I imagine the conversation went like this:

Murderfang: RAWR!
Random Space Wolf: To which great company do you belong, brother?
Murderfang: RAWR! MURDERFANG KILL!
Random Space Wolf: Yep, sounds like one of ours.
Murderfang: RAWR!
Random Space Wolf 2: Aww he's so cute and furry and murderous! Can we keep him?
Wolf Lord: Well, I don't know...
Murderfang: RAWR?
Random Space Wolf 2: Aww please? Look how murderous he is with these murderclaws!
Random Space Wolf 1: *petting Murderfang* Who's a good Murderfang? You are!
Wolf Lord: Oh, okay. We can keep him.
Space Wolves: Yay! Praise the Emperor!
Murderfang: RAWR!
All: For Russ! For the Wolftime!
Murderfang: RAWR RAWRRRRRRR!


EDIT: Added more "Praise the Emperor" and "For Russ" for quality GW fluff

I mean, yeah, pretty much.

Throw in some 'Praise the Emperor', and 'For Russ' and you have some quality GW fluff.

WayneTheGame wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
I'm just amazed they him come from the planet Omnicide.

I'd say I feel bad for Space Wolves players, but I'd probably just be told to not take it so seriously and minis aren't serious business.

What I find stupider is that they just kind of found him and are like oh he looks like one of ours, but no idea who he is or where he came from, and I guess he can't talk (due to Murderlust?) to say it. So I imagine the conversation went like this:

Murderfang: RAWR!
Random Space Wolf: To which great company do you belong, brother?
Murderfang: RAWR! MURDERFANG KILL!
Random Space Wolf: Yep, sounds like one of ours.
Murderfang: RAWR!
Random Space Wolf 2: Aww he's so cute and furry and murderous! Can we keep him?
Wolf Lord: Well, I don't know...
Murderfang: RAWR?
Random Space Wolf 2: Aww please? Look how murderous he is with these murderclaws!
Random Space Wolf 1: *petting Murderfang* Who's a good Murderfang? You are!
Wolf Lord: Oh, okay. We can keep him.
Space Wolves: Yay!
Murderfang: RAWR!

WAARRDD!!!

 Alpharius wrote:
Don't forget that he also suffers from Murderlust.

Murderfang suffers from Murderlust, and murders his foes with his Murderclaws.

For real.

So, GW is clearly not financially bankrupt, but they might be creatively bankrupt!

You gotta be kidding. You can't be serious...can you? They really went for the triple Murder? :/

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Alpharius wrote:
Don't forget that he also suffers from Murderlust.

Murderfang suffers from Murderlust, and murders his foes with his Murderclaws.

For real.

So, GW is clearly not financially bankrupt, but they might be creatively bankrupt!

You gotta be kidding. You can't be serious...can you? They really went for the triple Murder? :/

If I was a SW player, I'd be very frustrated right now.

But back OT. The Specialist games would help bring people in, but it wouldn't be enough. For GW to increase sales, they'd have to: 1. build a bridge to the gamer community and that would require that they leave their secluded fortress and actually engage the player base. 2. Make better rules for their games. 3. Advertise.

I think I'm gonna name the cat I just adopted as Murderfang. He's pure white with golden eyes and fluffy.