Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I think it might also be possible that GW might be re-releasing Advanced Heroquest. Why not? They did it with Space Hulk. Also, there seems to be an upsurge of this style of game. First, that Spanish company (can't remember the name) did a crowd-funded redo of Heroquest. Then Mantic does their version, and right now Monolith is doing a Conan KS version. Maybe all of the fantasy round base rumors are actually for Advanced Heroquest. The rumors about short term releases would also make sense if you were talking about expansion packs for Advanced Heroquest. It would also be a good year to make that their surprise Fall release if they are also pushing WFB this year. And there are other signs. Before GW re-released Space Hulk, didn't they release a video game version?. And didn't GW release an Advanced Heroquest video game just recently?

As an owner of a retail store myself, I am annoyed by GW's wall of secrecy. I have a collection of White Dwarves dating back to the 80's, when people actually waited with anticipation for the next White Dwarf. I don't understand why they can't look at their own history and figure out what works and what doesn't. The fact that GW does not interact with the gaming community is the reason there is so much ill will out there, and the reason they can't seem to make good decisions. Most of the time, when I talk to their reps or even their higher ups I feel like I am being talked down to like a child by an all-knowing infallible parent.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
... GW may be using ET as a way to introduce a new system while still using the more popular ranges in the WHFB catelog. This will be GW's attempt at taking on the skirmish level game market that is becoming so popular, using an established IP and model range, adding to it as the game evolves. The cost for them initially is minimal, just a new rule book, as the expansive model range for WHFB allows them to pick and choose what existing fantasy models are available to the new factions.

This is what I'm hoping for. But I feel like that would be a logical thing to do, so I'm not holding my breath :(

I really don't understand why people keep insisting on talking about the fluff of End Times "gutting armies".

Characters have been dead before and been in army books.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Or they could not burn their bridges and leave WHFB mostly the way it is (it could use some small fixes) and launch a side system based off the same IP or look at WHY WHFB isn't selling well when once upon a time it did sell.

Adding another Fantasy game would simply increase costs and burn money even faster.

In a rational company, Fantasy would have been put out of its misery years (decades) ago. Fantasy is a profit-eating white elephant that basically drives no benefit for GW aside from its longevity of 8 editions. GW has tried pretty much all of the possible fixes:
- expanding Fantasy under a "more gets more" by splitting Undead & Chaos, adding Ogres;
- keeping Fantasy under a "hold for same";
- moving Fantasy to a super-premium game.
Of these, only the super-premium approach of dataslates, limited editions, limited production and megamodels seems to be working.

Now it's time for GW to downsize Fantasy to a sustainable level, which is what 8E ET is doing as preparation for 9E.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Smellingsalts wrote:
I don't understand why they can't look at their own history and figure out what works and what doesn't.

GW works the numbers very clearly, which is why they are taking all of the money away from LGS and keeping it in house. GW doesn't care about you at all.

How many "new" factions will we supposedly be seeing, besides the knight marines?

Is it wrong of me to hope that Chaos Dwarfs make a return will all this chaos?

Prestor Jon wrote:
Does SpaceHulk count as a board game?

I think one of the biggest issues with the decline of WHFB was that GW set themselves up for an inevitable fall in profits if not also with players, although that happened too apparently. The whole line just got too bloated. Too many armies, too many rules, too many minis etc. If the intent by GW was to always make a new edition ever 5 years or so then they never should have expanded the range the way they did. It's a logistical nightmare to have 10 army factions

Space Hulk is definitely a board game. Pretty good one, too.

Fantasy 8E has more than 10 Army Factions: HE WE DE; Emp Bret; Dorf; VC TK; BoC WoC DoC; OnG; Skaven; OK; Lizard - that's 15, not counting FW's CD. Also, GW was experimenting with a 4-year cycle for WFB and 40k. So the nightmare is actually 15 armies every 4 years (avg 4 annually), not 10 armies every 5 years (avg. 2 annually), ignoring the rules bloat. Going to 6 armies every 6 years would be ideal.

In the end, when this is all said and done, I really hope GW publishes a book with all the models rules. Its getting ridiculous the amount of publications I need on my table to use these models. I hope when 9e launches I can buy one simple thing will all the rules for all the models for "insert army" and not need an army book, a White dwarf weekly, and some clippings out of a b/w instructions manual...

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Adding another Fantasy game would simply increase costs and burn money even faster.

It all depends how adventurous they're actually being. To completely destroy WHFB and start from the ground up is going to cost them far more than keeping WHFB and adding a side game with the same models. They're probably doing something half way in between those 2 extremes, we just don't know how far at this point.

In a rational company, Fantasy would have been put out of its misery years (decades) ago. Fantasy is a profit-eating white elephant that basically drives no benefit for GW aside from its longevity of 8 editions. GW has tried pretty much all of the possible fixes:
- expanding Fantasy under a "more gets more" by splitting Undead & Chaos, adding Ogres;
- keeping Fantasy under a "hold for same";
- moving Fantasy to a super-premium game.
Of these, only the super-premium approach of dataslates, limited editions, limited production and megamodels seems to be working.

Do you actually have any data to back up any of those assumptions? WHFB has been popular around this area from the mid 90's through to about 2010 when 8th edition came out.

GW works the numbers very clearly, which is why they are taking all of the money away from LGS and keeping it in house. GW doesn't care about you at all.

They don't do a very good job of working them, they too naive to realise they can't actually take away money from LGS and expect to keep it for any length of time.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
GW has tried pretty much all of the possible fixes:

Except making a decent ruleset, you mean? That would fix it right up.

Smellingsalts wrote:
I think it might also be possible that GW might be re-releasing Advanced Heroquest. Why not? They did it with Space Hulk. Also, there seems to be an upsurge of this style of game. First, that Spanish company (can't remember the name) did a crowd-funded redo of Heroquest. Then Mantic does their version, and right now Monolith is doing a Conan KS version. Maybe all of the fantasy round base rumors are actually for Advanced Heroquest. The rumors about short term releases would also make sense if you were talking about expansion packs for Advanced Heroquest. It would also be a good year to make that their surprise Fall release if they are also pushing WFB this year. And there are other signs. Before GW re-released Space Hulk, didn't they release a video game version?. And didn't GW release an Advanced Heroquest video game just recently?

As an owner of a retail store myself, I am annoyed by GW's wall of secrecy. I have a collection of White Dwarves dating back to the 80's, when people actually waited with anticipation for the next White Dwarf. I don't understand why they can't look at their own history and figure out what works and what doesn't. The fact that GW does not interact with the gaming community is the reason there is so much ill will out there, and the reason they can't seem to make good decisions. Most of the time, when I talk to their reps or even their higher ups I feel like I am being talked down to like a child by an all-knowing infallible parent.

I'd actually love to see a Warhammer Quest reboot, with the roleplay book updated for all of the stuff that has been released since the original was published. All those random monster tables made a great excuse to go grab a box or two of all the units from each 'bad-guy' army, plus one or two of all of the big beasties. Now that they have all of these wonderful new plastic versions of everything (and the digital files available to make a couple of new board game specific sprues with various 'monsters' on them. Maybe add a few new sculpts to the mix (Orc Boys and standard Goblins being good candidates due to tired sculpts). I know this is just wish-listing, and likely will not happen, but I think it makes sense at least as a splash release like Space Hulk...I think it would sell almost, if not as well.

I haven't played Fantasy since before some of you were born, so...

LotR is coming to an end for GW, unless Peter Jackson intends to make a series of movies of the rest of the Silmarillion. (F#*k, shouldn't have put that idea out there!) Warhammer Fantasy took a backseat after 40K exploded in the late '80s. It was clear back then what the market wanted. In fact if GW is blowing the Horn of Fate on the Old World, I'm surprised it took this long. See Fantasy has been staring at a long slow death for a while now. Add in that many third party miniatures companies sell proxies that are as good if not better than GW's own offerings and again I wonder why it took so long. And that doesn't even take into account other games stealing part of their pie... WarmaHordes, I'm looking at you.

If GW ever has a chance of making another decade someone should be asking, "how do we get new players into Fantasy?" If your base is shrinking and you don't release a lot for that shrinking base to buy then Fantasy has a very gloomy future, by which I mean none at all. If one is to believe the rumours of a tighter and more compact Fantasy, you don't need to understand why... there just isn't enough money in the current incarnation of the game. i personally think Epic and Warmaster were great games, better than the games that inspired them, but they had no financial future. Buy your army, play the game and realize that without critical mass you can't keep making the game chasing less and less people. And maybe GW realizes that's Fantasy's future.

So in order to "save" Warhammer, it must right size it into a sustainable game. Ideally the game would appeals to current players of previous Warhammer Fantasy, current (but soon to be eventually ex-GW) LotR players and hopefully appeals to players of other games especially ones who never played Fantasy. And in order to do that you need a smaller, more accessible game with less generic armies appealing to more people. No revision to the current rules can do that. All you can do is gracefully blow up the old game and setting, priming/non-upsetting as many current players for a new game with new armies. End times storyline seems to fit the bill perfectly, roll armies into each other, kill off characters and show that big things are in store. Better to have a quick death than a slow drawn out one with far too many SKUs that don't move.

Awesome GW, you may have done something right for once.

The problem is what comes next. So all your old Fantasy players... might not like the new skirmish friendly rules that require rebasing at best or eBaying old armies at worst. Hell, I don't have a lot of old Fantasy models, but I love the Dark Elf stuff and will be sad to see it go if the rumours are true. I also loved playing LotR. It is in my personal opinion the best set of Warhammer rules GW has ever produced... unfortunately, I was never a fan of Middle Earth. So I sold all my LotR minis because while I liked the true scale approach, they didn't have any Warhammer flair to them. In my case there are are multiple ways to lose me in a new Warhammer Fantasy: 1) continue with old Fantasy rules, 2) keep with cartoony miniatures, 3) offer generic/overly-stylized armies, ... And each opposite to me loses current players. It's almost a no win scenario, and yet still better than the slow death and massive support of a dwindling game.

All through out I've made a huge assumption, Warhammer Fantasy is dying. There are anecdotes, financial reports, and anecdotes of financial reports all about Fantasy slimming away. This radical path that GW is now pursuing literally screams "End Times" for WHFB. The question really is, how can the current GW keep its current players, bring in new ones and create a buzz for a game that was old when 40K stumbled into the spotlight and propelled GW into the 800b gorilla it was until recently?

Iain.

 ClassicCarraway wrote:
I am still of the mind-set that the rumored game is NOT WHFB 9th edition, but a new skirmish level game set in the post End-Times. Hear me out....

1) The rumors contradict themselves by saying the core rules remain the same but now everything will be on round bases and in skirmish formations. By changing to default skirmish, this goes against saying the rules are "largely unchanged".

2) WHFB is largely done, as most of the armies have hardback 8th edition books. Additionally, the WHFB fanbase is largely happy with 8th edition as a ruleset. Many I know personally have said a new edition is simply not needed.

3) This one is the biggie for me. While WHFB army sales may be sluggish, End Times and the associated models has been extremely popular. Unfortunately, End Times has also gutted or severely disrupted a number of armies, both in the rules and in the fluff. If rumors of the future ET books are to believed, this will just continue at an accelerated rate. Any kind of post-End Times release would almost have to be something completely new, and GW may be using ET as a way to introduce a new system while still using the more popular ranges in the WHFB catelog. This will be GW's attempt at taking on the skirmish level game market that is becoming so popular, using an established IP and model range, adding to it as the game evolves. The cost for them initially is minimal, just a new rule book, as the expansive model range for WHFB allows them to pick and choose what existing fantasy models are available to the new factions.

4) This would allow GW to introduce the WHF setting to new players at a much lower price point, and allow existing WHFB players to get the occassional new model as they are introduced (with dual rule sets, one for the new game, one for the old). They double their target audience for each new fantasy release. If done right, this could end up being a win-win for everybody involved..

Anyway, that's my theory.

Please let this be true, please oh please.

To add to the validity of this idea is the simple fact of all the new kits they have made for the end times. Think about this the land raider mold cost over $1,000,000 to make just so they could sell land raiders. Think of what nagash cost?????

I dont seem them trashing the big battles portion of the game. NOW rewriting it to be a lotr SBG with a WOTR style of game on top of that is great. Killing most of the armies is truly sad though

Will all the chaos bubble world pocket dimension talk, will the End Times models even be viable?

I'd love to have an excuse to use the Morghasts I need to finish painting.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

In a rational company, Fantasy would have been put out of its misery years (decades) ago. Fantasy is a profit-eating white elephant that basically drives no benefit for GW aside from its longevity of 8 editions.

Do you actually have any data to back up any of those assumptions?

WHFB has been popular around this area from the mid 90's through to about 2010 when 8th edition came out.

You can go look at GW Fantasy sales rank for the past 20 years. 40k3 eclipsed Fantasy to the point that it has been repeatedly stated by GW insiders that Space Marines alone have outsold all Fantasy combined for a very long time.

The anecdote of your little town matters not at all when we look at global trends.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Chairman Aeon wrote:
All through out I've made a huge assumption, Warhammer Fantasy is dying. There are anecdotes, financial reports, and anecdotes of financial reports all about Fantasy slimming away. This radical path that GW is now pursuing literally screams "End Times" for WHFB. The question really is, how can the current GW keep its current players, bring in new ones and create a buzz for a game that was old when 40K stumbled into the spotlight and propelled GW into the 800b gorilla it was until recently?

Iain.

People do realize that 8E and ET armies will be valid for the duration of 9E, right? That GW is radically changing the background, but the armies and models are still playable, right? That everything should still play together.

Or is there some super-secret army of GW gnomes that are going to sneak into people's homes and take away their stuff? Is that what's happening?

Chairman Aeon wrote:
i personally think Epic and Warmaster were great games, better than the games that inspired them, but they had no financial future.

The last version of Epic did £5m in it's launch year and £1m the following year when they failed to support it. The issue wasn't that it wasn't profitable/didn't make money, just that it didn't for GW.

If GW had licensed it's Specialist Games out to smaller companies it could have had a small amount of revenue without bearing as much of the risk and remained competitive in areas that it's ceded to other companies.

Chairman Aeon wrote:
And in order to do that you need a smaller, more accessible game with less generic armies appealing to more people. No revision to the current rules can do that.

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. Fantasy died overnight when the rules became too random to be played competitively. Overnight. I could give you the date if you want. It has nothing to do with the factions being generic. In fact, that is its strength. Even today it is far, far easier for a new garage company to survive by giving us the n-th iteration of a Dwarf, Elf or Zombie, than by trying to sell something strange and unfamiliar. If GW tries to sell us weird new armies using the same unplayable rules, it will sell the same or worse as Fantasy does now, at a colossal waste of development resources.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Chairman Aeon wrote:
And in order to do that you need a smaller, more accessible game with less generic armies appealing to more people. No revision to the current rules can do that.

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. Fantasy died overnight when the rules became too random to be played competitively. Overnight. I could give you the date if you want. It has nothing to do with the factions being generic. In fact, that is its strength. Even today it is far, far easier for a new garage company to survive by giving us the n-th iteration of a Dwarf, Elf or Zombie, than by trying to sell something strange and unfamiliar. If GW tries to sell us weird new armies using the same unplayable rules, it will sell the same or worse as Fantasy does now, at a colossal waste of development resources.

Yah, this. Well fantasy might not as sold as well as 40k, it still sat at 2nd best seller for a lot of disturbers for years.

Chairman Aeon wrote:
LotR is coming to an end for GW, unless Peter Jackson intends to make a series of movies of the rest of the Silmarillion. (F#*k, shouldn't have put that idea out there!)

That's never going to happen unless the plan includes making Christopher Tolkien have "an unfortunate accident".

 lord_blackfang wrote:
Even today it is far, far easier for a new garage company to survive by giving us the n-th iteration of a Dwarf, Elf or Zombie, than by trying to sell something strange and unfamiliar.

You sure about that?

Let's look at Kings of War as "the n-th interation of Dwarf, Elf or Zombie":
. Kings of War 1E pulled $355k
. Kings of War 2E pulled $366k
Supposedly, Mantic's Kings of War "solves" all of the WFB problem by providing generic, cheap Fantasy rules and models that dramatically undercut GW pricing. Sure, the quality is crap, but when you're getting "100 models for $100", something's gotta give.

Now let's look at garage companies "trying to sell something strange and unfamiliar:"
. Kingdom Death : Monster pulled $2.0M
. Cthulu Wars pulled $1.4M
Either of these games outsold all Kings of War 2:1 or 3:1. Combined, they outsold Kings of War 5:1.

Generic Fantasy is dead. I haven't bought any WFB in years. But I did back KD:M at HoD level for their huge and awesome monsters:

I am super excited to receive Spidicules, Sunstalker, Dragon King and Gorm later this year.

I am also very interested in the Others : 7 Sins, announced last year.

The monsters look awesome, and are better for being "strange and unfamiliar".

I, for one, am not excited by more of the same, generic stuff.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

Chairman Aeon wrote:
And in order to do that you need a smaller, more accessible game with less generic armies appealing to more people. No revision to the current rules can do that.

I'm sorry, but that's nonsense. Fantasy died overnight when the rules became too random to be played competitively. Overnight. I could give you the date if you want. It has nothing to do with the factions being generic. In fact, that is its strength. Even today it is far, far easier for a new garage company to survive by giving us the n-th iteration of a Dwarf, Elf or Zombie, than by trying to sell something strange and unfamiliar. If GW tries to sell us weird new armies using the same unplayable rules, it will sell the same or worse as Fantasy does now, at a colossal waste of development resources.

Since when were the rules for 8th edition bad? You are quite off. 8th is a solid ruleset that may need to tweeking but no major overhaul at all

7th would have been a very good ruleset with some minor changes.
8th changes thinks instead of solving the mistakes

And the problem is 8th will get some changes, but not the ones the game need

 namiel wrote:
Since when were the rules for 8th edition bad?

Since the day of release. You could tell because most of the competitive player base got up and walked away. Doesn't matter one bit what you think of the system. That's what happened.

Doubling the number of models needed for a functional unit while halving the number of models per box didn't really help, either.

OH NO! The competitive player base walked away?!

Good riddance.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

In a rational company, Fantasy would have been put out of its misery years (decades) ago. Fantasy is a profit-eating white elephant that basically drives no benefit for GW aside from its longevity of 8 editions.

Do you actually have any data to back up any of those assumptions?

WHFB has been popular around this area from the mid 90's through to about 2010 when 8th edition came out.

You can go look at GW Fantasy sales rank for the past 20 years. 40k3 eclipsed Fantasy to the point that it has been repeatedly stated by GW insiders that Space Marines alone have outsold all Fantasy combined for a very long time.

The anecdote of your little town matters not at all when we look at global trends.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Chairman Aeon wrote:
All through out I've made a huge assumption, Warhammer Fantasy is dying. There are anecdotes, financial reports, and anecdotes of financial reports all about Fantasy slimming away. This radical path that GW is now pursuing literally screams "End Times" for WHFB. The question really is, how can the current GW keep its current players, bring in new ones and create a buzz for a game that was old when 40K stumbled into the spotlight and propelled GW into the 800b gorilla it was until recently?

Iain.

People do realize that 8E and ET armies will be valid for the duration of 9E, right? That GW is radically changing the background, but the armies and models are still playable, right? That everything should still play together.

Or is there some super-secret army of GW gnomes that are going to sneak into people's homes and take away their stuff? Is that what's happening?

Obviously most of the armies unit entries will be different, and possibly require re basing, if certain rumors are to believed. Considering they are now " streamlining " the armies to 6, it does feel that the factions are getting short changed.



Fine Space Marines sell I'm not disputing that, Fw HH sold so well that's basically all they do now, okay fine.

GW is a company and it wants to make money, yes okay also fine.

However as we saw with companies such as Cadbury ditching the Wispa then being pestered to bring it back.

I can see GW being pestered but doing nothing. They've given SoB nothing but lip service for a long time, they removed every avenue save strictly controlled events of customer / company interaction.

They've shown that they do not give a heck about customer loyalty since about 1998? ( I'm not sure when the skulls promotion was now)

Look I loved this company I truly honestly did, I even got some stuff Published in the old Citadel Magazine, and did some other work with them. They were never very receptive to feedback honestly but at least you could interact with them.

Mantic is honestly trying too ride the coat tails of peoples frustration, I had 2 Complimentary figures from them, and they were just awful, I'm sorry but they were, I gave gave them away as soon as I saw them. The rules are all right but Its not something that makes me do cartwheels.

Now I love KD and hope that Nico gets a new re release.

Now in my mind there is space for a mass battle fantasy game if a company can pull it off however you need good sculpts and reasonable prices with a flexible yet evolving rule system. Gw is just throwing the baby out with the bath water.

I've play tested most big companies games and they all have flaws and exploits. That's why I hope somebody like Corvus Belli who are awesome guys consider taking this niche because honestly if they don't then its just Mantic left and that's really really sad.

If I wasn't so heavily involved in rpg games at this moment my focus would be on this.



This is said with all due respect to everybody your all great guys here and I'm glad this is so civil.

 Kanluwen wrote:
OH NO! The competitive player base walked away?!

Good riddance.

Yeah those nasty competitve players can you show me on the troll where they facerolled you?

Srsly get over yourself because it's obvious the casuals/fluff bunnies did not spend enough to keep fantasy alive and as a whole don't spend enough to support a game.

I have yet to see any requirement for people to have to re-base the models they already have.

I can see GW create new units on round bases a la Goblin Fanatics.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I have yet to see any requirement for people to have to re-base the models they already have.

I imagine it will end just like the 32mm 40k uproar. GW just wanted the minis to look cool so used different bases...

 Kanluwen wrote:
OH NO! The competitive player base walked away?!

Good riddance.

You do sound utterly ridiculous with this post.


I mean, more than usual for your hyperbolic one-liner binary statements...

 pretre wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
I have yet to see any requirement for people to have to re-base the models they already have.

I imagine it will end just like the 32mm 40k uproar. GW just wanted the minis to look cool so used different bases...

It is possible. But I remember having to replace weapons on figures before.

 Kanluwen wrote:
OH NO! The competitive player base walked away?!

Good riddance.

Competitive players and casual players want the same thing, Kan. Both want a clearly written, balanced ruleset that allow interesting choices to be made, because the ruleset that allows a casual player to understand the rules and build an effective army around whichever theme tickles their fancy is also a ruleset that allows a competitive player to avoid rules arguments and build a top tier army that suits their playstyle.