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 AlexHolker wrote:

 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.

Absolutely true; but to suggest that the yardstick of the rules being bad is "because most of the competitive player base got up and walked away" is ridiculous.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

You do sound utterly ridiculous with this post.


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

Yeah, you're right.

But at the same time, the people that I see who identify themselves as "competitive players" are not really the kinds of people who make tabletop gaming fun.

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

Good riddance.

And that's obviously a poorly thought through sentiment. You may not be a competetive player, you may not like competetive players but they are the best indicator for the state of a game. If you have competetive players that means the game is ballanced. These "power games" would no play it, if one or two factions would be overpowered. There's a lot of theorycraft and mathhammer going into this, so if it does not add up, people don't play it competetively.

I'm neither a comp player nor a fantasy player for that matter, but if what blackfang said is true and the competetive part just packed their bags and went to the greener lands over yonder, that means the rules are crap, easy as that.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:

You do sound utterly ridiculous with this post.


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

Yeah, you're right.

But at the same time, the people that I see who identify themselves as "competitive players" are not really the kinds of people who make tabletop gaming fun.

You really are terrible for coming out with those one-liners and them reading badly. Sorry mate but you really must spend a lot of time tasting your own shoe.

I understand what I think is the intention behind it, that you don't like aggressive tournament players. That's fine, I don't either. I will tell you that every tournament I've been to, as a fluffy player, I've met far far more decent human beings than douche canoes, but I understand where you were coming from even if I don't agree, because for every socially inept mouthbreathing suckarse who is 'positive the truth can injure'... there are a thousand average blokes and blokettes who enjoy the social aspect of tourney play, and we as a wider hobby really need to drop the labeling and encampment about the us and them of event play as much as the instant labeling of fanboi vs hater.

I also think the point that was being made before you insta-dismissed it as 'great news', was that competitive players served in this instance as canaries in the mine, they left WHFB in droves and now the game is teetering on an abyss so absolute that it's parent company is staging THE in-game apocalypse.

There is no 'good riddance' in this instance, it's 'oh god, more people stopped playing this game'...

Necros wrote:So, Kings of War .. I'm assuming all the WFB armies are in KOW? Will my lizardmen and night goblin armies work in KOW? Will I get to use my skink bowmen again?

KoW isn't even my first fantasy battle game of choice. Although it's fairly solid and I don't like when it's basic mass-battle principles are sneered at in favour of Bloathammer. Button-pusher.
Anyways. It's at this point I trot out my obligatory 'Have a look at Mayhem or Legions of Battle too' bit. KoW has a lot of well-made fanlists (Matt Gilbert's 'ratmen' list got me very interested for a while) but those other games have fairly nifty rules for building up a unit from basic stats and general weapon and trait rules. In Mayhem I'd maybe give skink archers D8 movement (quicker than humans, which I'd give D6), D20 Combat Quality (bad rating, with the understanding that they're diminutive archers not sticking around for close-up brawls), D12 Ballistic Armour Rating (very basic protection), Short Bow, maybe Disciplined to represent Cold Blooded to some degree - 17 crowns per unit. 18 with the skirmisher trait, for giggles.

PhantomViper wrote:

Not really, GW's latest attempts to target the board game market have tanked even more spectacularly than 8th ed WHFB! See Deadfleet for reference.

I continue to argue that since every single one of their old rules writers left, GW currently lacks the skill and talent needed to create a tactically engaging game that is outside their "randomize everything" method of rules writing.

Bit of a typo there, but an appropriate one.

Also: yes.

Prestor Jon wrote: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 that each have to be updated every time a new edition gets released and to pile on expectations that each army update will include a new book, new units, new rules for the new units, updated rules for existing units, new sculpts of existing units and continued support for everything that from previous editions is even more masochist and crazy.

Oh yes.

AlexHolker wrote:

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".

I'm off to build Chris Tolkien a golden throne right now.

JohnHwangDD wrote:Generic Fantasy is dead. I haven't bought any WFB in years.

What were you saying about what happens in your own little town?

Anyways, what I said to Wonderwolf. Mantic's weird design choices and flubs are not the fault of generic fantasy, and arguably diverging from it to some degree. (flat-headed heater-shield dwarfs are just... wrong) I've said I was disappointed with the minis, and 100 minis for $100 didn't tempt me even a little. I wouldn't have minded, for some good ol' generic fantasy mass battle gaming, but I just don't want the designs, no matter how cheap. I don't know if that was the mindset of anyone else who didn't go for it (let's go and ask an Uzbekistanian sheepherder) but I'll say it was some kind of factor.

And again, >10x their KS target. No, not as impressive as others, but not to be sniffed at. Hardly the death of generic fantasy.

Whereas Kingdom Death and Cthulhu Wars are arguably two of the kind of gamer/collector crossover that GW claims it is. Very exquisitely sculpted, desirable models, with many of a size that would sit on a collector or painter's shelf much more impressively than a 28mm plastic dwarf. (I saw some of the actual Cthulhu Wars sculpts at Salute, a couple of years ago, and they were POW. If I ever want a Cthulhu mini for a game I know where to look.)

Not to mention the slightly pertinent fact that both KD: Monster and CW seem pretty squarely aimed at the boardgame market too. (Got it this time, Baragash!) Moreso than at wargamers or collectors. If Mantic's own generic fantasy/sci-fi boardgames with their own minis outsell KoW, I don't doubt that the hype machine around these other two will do the same.

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

I, for one, want even more generic fantasy. (a greater degree, rather than greater quantity) In the last few years I've been gaming the Dark Ages, looking at the DA-themed Middle-Earth illustrations by Ted Nasmith and Victor Ambrus, looking at other gamers' converted DA Gondorians, looking at the goofy cartooniness running through a lot of newer fantasy lines... Now I want a line of very mundane-looking Norman elves and Vendel dwarfs. Only, looking good.

That's one side of the coin, IMO. Part of the problem between GW and Mantic that I've mentioned before: price vs. quality, and never the twain shall meet. I swear it's like watching an episode of The Apprentice where all these puffed-up know-it-alls have a surefire way of making a truly fantastic product and making scads of money off it, but you can see them making a ballsup of it as soon as they start, and no matter how many times you shout "No! No! Don't do that! Can you hear yourself?" at the screen, in the end they're showing off some cringeworthy thing like razorblade-flavoured yoghurt (with extra bits!) or clear perspex curtains. And maybe I've got the luxury of sitting on my arse at home to pontificate through the screen, but it just seems so easy to fix, it's painful.
I'm not saying everything produced in white metal or styrene has to replicate the painstaking sculpting and wooshy designs of Kingdom Death; but if you have a pretty good line of basic models for the purposes of selling loads for mass battles, don't charge an arm and a leg for them. If you have a nice, low-priced line of basic models for the purposes of selling loads for mass battles, don't think any old kind of '80's-'90's shonk will do just fine. Don't charge £3.50 for one plastic witch elf, and don't sign off on drakon riders and melty goblins. Simples.

Historical plastics seem to pull it off pretty well, for the most part. Especially anything from the Perrys. If I could get 100 of their HYW minis for $100, I'd go for it... but they sell for cheaper than that anyway. Why does it seem so difficult to do for fantasy?

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

Good riddance.

And now your game's dead.

Congrats.

WHFB might still end up as generic fantasy, since steampunk with a hint of cthulu is the new generic fantasy. Am I the only one who is getting bored by all the new games (a lot of them kickstarted) who proclaims that they have a new and unique setting while still sporting the same old goggles and brass machinery.

Steampunk is so 2004.

 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.

I'm not aware of any global data that tracks sales or popularity of games, let alone the profitability of different games, got any links?

What I have seen is from GW's data they released with the chapterhouse case is that WHFB was around a third the sales of 40k in the days of 7th edition. It's not really possible to make such wide statements as "it's profit eating". If they dropped fantasy, I doubt their expenses would drop by a quarter to account for the loss and I reckon it'd be a big task to try and invent a new product that can fill such a large deficit.

WHFB doesn't need to be 50/50 with 40k for it to be worth keeping. It just needs to be making more than it costs to maintain it, it doesn't need a new release every month, it doesn't need big shake ups, it doesn't even need the full range to be kept in each and every store. Support it with tournaments, advertising, events. GW's biggest expenses aren't maintaining games, it's maintaining the infrastructure to sell games, if they drop fantasy I'd suggest their expenses would barely even shift.

And the "space marines are bigger than fantasy" argument is a bit shallow, space marines are bigger than the rest of 40k combined as well, but I doubt anyone would suggest GW drop all products that aren't space marines.

 jorny wrote:
WHFB might still end up as generic fantasy, since steampunk with a hint of cthulu is the new generic fantasy. Am I the only one who is getting bored by all the new games (a lot of them kickstarted) who proclaims that they have a new and unique setting while still sporting the same old goggles and brass machinery.

Steampunk is so 2004.

Ha! Good point.

My own, personal setting what I've been adding to lately, is new and unique. It's just populated by same-old mail-clad elves and Sutton Hoo dwarfs.

 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...

I imagine it will be like the 40mm Terminator bases and round Bike bases - models may always use the bases that were (originally) supplied with the model. My Terminators are still on 25mm bases, and anyone who doesn't like that can go pound sand. And don't forget that WFB is 100s of models, not handsfuls of Bikes / Temies. No chance that GW will require wholesale rebasing.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 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.

The 7th edition competitive players were all Daemon and HE power players who were abusing the game system to have 25+ power dice.

They weren't competitive, they were abusing rules that were actually the problem with 7th edition.

8th edition may not be perfect, but its a much more fair system than 7th was. It gave everyone, after some army book updates, some parity.

Needing to buy more stuff is always lame, but its worth it to have a better game.

migooo wrote:

 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.

I don't remember this at all. I remember "count as" in 3E, and people swapping weapons for better effectiveness, but I don't require GW saying modeled weapons could not be used in some way.

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

Good riddance.

And do you wonder why Fantasy died? Think about it for a while and get back to us.

 MWHistorian wrote:

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

Good riddance.

And do you wonder why Fantasy died? Think about it for a while and get back to us.

Increased buy-in price, increased unit size, poor reception among the player base, lack of a player base to begin with in some areas...

There are a lot of possibilities that aren't "Because the competitive players went away".

Also, as an edit note:
I don't consider people who play solely in tournaments to be "competitive players". I consider competitive players to be the individuals who no matter the kind of game feel it necessary to bring the most powerful list possible and actively try to dissuade players from taking certain units because "they're not points efficient".

 Vermis wrote:
Don't charge £3.50 for one plastic witch elf, and don't sign off on drakon riders and melty goblins. Simples.

I understand what you mean, and I have something for you. Here:



I hope you're feeling better now

This is something we've actually discussed in the past I think. My mind if still the same... Mantic's whole product line is mostly hit/miss. Their fantasy undead range is mostly good, the dwarves are so-so (I don't mind the heater shields, but mostly because I wanted to convert them into chaos dwarfs and my chaos dwarfs either have big heater shields or small round shields), the elves look bad and some specific things - drakon riders! - seem to be the product of a ridiculous concept design. Then you have the warpath range, which mostly looks pretty decent - although prices there tend to be more expensive as well.

In any case I agree the whole fantasy miniatures market seems overpriced if you start comparing it with historicals. It's not just the Perrys, plastic 28mm historical infantry is always (or almost always) under the 1€/mini price. I just don't see why the fantasy manufacturers truly need to charge more for products that many times just don't deserve it.

GW are obviously an special case. The case of a dominant and powerful company, which once had the potential to completely dominate their market, but have allowed and encouraged competition by progressively pricing themselves out of their own market while alienating their own player base. It's got to a point where their pricing strategy seems to be purely "charge as much as we can get away with". If you have a game like WHFB, where most infantry squads need to have at least 20 models to be a viable option, and try to charge 40€ (or more) for 10 plastic infantry minis, the only reasonable outcome is people not buying it (there will always be someone buying it, always, but that's for another debate).

The whole "dimensional bubbles wars" looks like the most stupid way possible to revamp well stablished fluff across 8 editions and around 30 years, but if you think about it, considering what GW has been doing in the last 10 years, it would be fitting to a degree.

 Hive City Dweller wrote:
Not sure if this was posted/mentioned (apologies if it was) but this picture from today's post on GW site shows dwarf fighting in ranks with Ogres.



Wonder if it means anything for the future of both factions or if its merely an artistic concept. Have to say the ogres seem to fit in nicely with the little guys; almost an Age of Mythology like esthetic.

What do you guys make of this?

If my Ogres could fight with stunties, i'd be all over that.

... come to think of it... weren't half the Ogres marching west towards the Empire ? That'd take them through Dwarf lands wouldn't it ?

 Haight wrote:

 Hive City Dweller wrote:
Not sure if this was posted/mentioned (apologies if it was) but this picture from today's post on GW site shows dwarf fighting in ranks with Ogres.



Wonder if it means anything for the future of both factions or if its merely an artistic concept. Have to say the ogres seem to fit in nicely with the little guys; almost an Age of Mythology like esthetic.

What do you guys make of this?

If my Ogres could fight with stunties, i'd be all over that.

... come to think of it... weren't half the Ogres marching west towards the Empire ? That'd take them through Dwarf lands wouldn't it ?

I think all of the ogres are migrating out of the mountians of mourn through the badlands into dwarf lands

Wow, I'm pretty stunned. Not disappointed or angry, but this is definitely a big change. Time will tell, I guess, but the economic and game-play arguments are pretty strong to my mind.

@Vermis: My feelings about kings of war seem to be alot like yours. I would be more interested if every other sculpt wasn't so bad.

Wow, that pic is epic, but I have no idea how it will work with the square bases! Still, I'm intrigued, as this would make it easy to construct a chaos dwarf army from standard rules. I'll be watching

Vermis wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:Generic Fantasy is dead. I haven't bought any WFB in years.

What were you saying about what happens in your own little town?

Whereas Kingdom Death and Cthulhu Wars are arguably two of the kind of gamer/collector crossover that GW claims it is. Very exquisitely sculpted, desirable models, with many of a size that would sit on a collector or painter's shelf much more impressively than a 28mm plastic dwarf.

both KD: Monster and CW seem pretty squarely aimed at the boardgame market too.

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

I, for one, want even more generic fantasy.

That's one side of the coin, IMO. Part of the problem between GW and Mantic that I've mentioned before: price vs. quality, and never the twain shall meet.

I'm not saying everything produced in white metal or styrene has to replicate the painstaking sculpting and wooshy designs of Kingdom Death;

Historical plastics seem to pull it off pretty well, for the most part. Especially anything from the Perrys. If I could get 100 of their HYW minis for $100, I'd go for it... but they sell for cheaper than that anyway. Why does it seem so difficult to do for fantasy?

My personal note is simply as reference for those who might care to what extent I put (or don't put) my money where my mouth is.

My sense is that the new Nagash and Thankyouall are large and impressive, comparable to the CW stuff, though I'm doubtful that they will match the KD:M Dragon King or Spidicules. I suspect that some portion of those models are being purchased for paining purposes, only.

Many people backed KD:M and CW for the models, not the game. I personally backed KD:M on the strength of the models (because the KD gameplay isn't yet complete), and my friend backed CW for DnD minis.


I wish you luck in finding the "right" generic fantasy stuff.

I hate the look of Mantic fantasy, refuse to back any of it; their Dreadball stuff looks very fair for the price, as 3-D board game tokens might go.

GW's stuff is actually pretty intricate now, has been progressively moving this direction for years. They're really getting their Grimdark(tm) style down.

My Dogs of War (& ex-Empire) have lots of pseudo-historical models, purchased way back when, but I don't follow that scene at all. I'll dabble in Flames of War, later.

All good!

____

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
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.

I'm not aware of any global data that tracks sales or popularity of games, let alone the profitability of different games, got any links?

What I have seen is from GW's data they released with the chapterhouse case is that WHFB was around a third the sales of 40k in the days of 7th edition. It's not really possible to make such wide statements as "it's profit eating". If they dropped fantasy, I doubt their expenses would drop by a quarter to account for the loss and I reckon it'd be a big task to try and invent a new product that can fill such a large deficit.

WHFB doesn't need to be 50/50 with 40k for it to be worth keeping. It just needs to be making more than it costs to maintain it,

And the "space marines are bigger than fantasy" argument is a bit shallow, space marines are bigger than the rest of 40k combined as well, but I doubt anyone would suggest GW drop all products that aren't space marines.

Right now, WFB is just as broad as 40k, so it has the same effective cost structure of armies to support, but 1/3 the revenue. There is no question that WFB is definitely eating a disproportionate share of GW profits and preventing GW from properly re-investing back into 40k or other activities.

I would not be surprised if Fantasy's cost share (say 30-40%) was 2x it's revenue share (15-20%). In such a scenario, a GW that drops Fantasy to retain 80-85% of its revenue at 60-70% of its cost is a far more profitable and healthy company.

Space Marines play with the other 40k stuff, but look at Forgeworld - hasn't SM-centric 30k HH been pretty much their entire focus lately?
____

edit - fixed messed up quotes. Doh!

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

.....
What I have seen is from GW's data they released with the chapterhouse case is that WHFB was around a third the sales of 40k in the days of 7th edition. It's not really possible to make such wide statements as "it's profit eating". If they dropped fantasy, I doubt their expenses would drop by a quarter to account for the loss and I reckon it'd be a big task to try and invent a new product that can fill such a large deficit.

WHFB doesn't need to be 50/50 with 40k for it to be worth keeping. It just needs to be making more than it costs to maintain it,

And the "space marines are bigger than fantasy" argument is a bit shallow, space marines are bigger than the rest of 40k combined as well, but I doubt anyone would suggest GW drop all products that aren't space marines.

Right now, WFB is just as broad as 40k, so it has the same effective cost structure of armies to support, but 1/3 the revenue. There is no question that WFB is definitely eating a disproportionate share of GW profits and preventing GW from properly re-investing back into 40k or other activities.
.....

The problem seems to be that since those 33% days (7th), the proportion of sales has dropped to 8% (8th). Other than cutting costs for gw, i don't see how bubblehammer is actually going to bring in more sales for fantasy.

edit: brackets

 lord_blackfang wrote:
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.

I'd love to hear your date, it would have to be before 1987, since the game was a mess when Rogue Trader came out. Having being hooked on Space Marines, Space Elves and Space Orks, no one in my small village by the sea could make heads or tails of 3rd edition WFB. Complete disaster. Oh ya, 40K wasn't playable competitively, but sold gangbusters because...

 lord_blackfang wrote:
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.

There wasn't a single game on the market like Rogue Trader. I know all you youngness take that for granted, but even Shadowrun was two years away from arming elves and orcs with automatic rifles. But that's not what I meant. The more generic a Tolkien/D&D base the easier it is to allow third parties to eat your lunch. There is a bit of irony that at one time Warhammer had its own flavour before Blizzard and others stole the Warhammer look and feel.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
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.

And this is where my business degree points you to the fact that if GW sells at the same levels they do now, but severely reduces their costs (production, inventory, logistics) then they might actually make some money from fantasy... or a whole lot more. But I don't think their goal is to sell as much WFB as Privateer does Warmachine. I think GW wants WFB to be a close second to 40K and is betting the farm to build a new base for that game. They might actually be taking the long view for once. After all, if one army in 40K sells more than all of WFB, they really don't have much to lose no matter how conservative or radical they want to go.

Iain.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Right now, WFB is just as broad as 40k, so it has the same effective cost structure of armies to support, but 1/3 the revenue. There is no question that WFB is definitely eating a disproportionate share of GW profits and preventing GW from properly re-investing back into 40k or other activities.

What do you mean "just as broad"?

I would not be surprised if Fantasy's cost share (say 30-40%) was 2x it's revenue share (15-20%). In such a scenario, a GW that drops Fantasy to retain 80-85% of its revenue at 60-70% of its cost is a far more profitable and healthy company.

You really believe those figures are in the ball park? I'd say not a chance in hell.

Our best estimates are the stores alone consume 50-60% of expenditure, that cost isn't going to change much with WHFB going away unless you start closing stores (you might argue that you could have smaller stores, I don't think it would be a large difference though). So then of the remaining 40-50% of costs, how much would it be reduced, you have shipping (remembering that the cost of shipping tends to decrease the more you send), staff (aside from those working in the stores themselves as that's in our 50-60% above, so everyone in control of distribution, management, liaison and supply to independents, etc) warehousing (which typically won't halve even if you halve the volume), casting (would only decrease by the same % as revenue decreases) and anything else I have forgotten. The only bit that would actually come close to halving is paying sculptors, artists, writers and so on which I really don't think take a large slab out of the remaining 40-50% of costs.

I think it's being generous to say WHFB would cost 25% of the remaining costs, so the total cost would be in the 10-12.5% range.

So if WHFB was in the 25% of revenue range like it was in 7th, or even if we call it 15-25%, dropping WHFB altogether would put GW somewhere between almost breaking even and losing enough profit to be in the red.

Space Marines play with the other 40k stuff, but look at Forgeworld - hasn't SM-centric 30k HH been pretty much their entire focus lately?

I imagine the FW stuff is barely a blip on GW's overall radar, but either way that wasn't my point, just because something isn't an equal share of revenue doesn't mean it should be dropped unless the cost of keeping it is more than the cost of continuing it, I don't think WHFB is there yet, or if it is I think 8th edition is to blame and it was probably in the black before that.

40k is still the big boy in global wargaming (maybe excluding historicals, I have no idea how popular they are globally). To have a game that is 1/3 of the biggest game out there is hardly something to snub, you certainly wouldn't drop it thinking you can instantly create another golden egg laying goose like 40k or LOTR. Not even GW are that stupid, they are trying to transform it instead (which is still stupid depending on how much they change it, but certainly less stupid than killing it entirely ).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Torga_DW wrote:
The problem seems to be that since those 33% days (7th), the proportion of sales has dropped to 8% (8th). Other than cutting costs for gw, i don't see how bubblehammer is actually going to bring in more sales for fantasy.

If that's true then it's a shame, though I'm sure part of it would come from the fact 4 out of 5 releases** have been 40k instead of WHFB (prior to the end times). If you don't put any effort at all in to selling something then it will tend to not sell all that well, but the costs associated with it will also drop.

I guess my numbers were more for the 7th ed days. Maybe by now 8th ed revenue has dropped further but I'd suggest the associated costs have also fallen.

**I totally just guessed 4 out of 5, lol, I can't be bothered adding them up, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

More on the end of Warhammer during this interview with Gav Thorpe:

Very unlikely. After I finished Grudgebearer I did intend to write more books on some of the other characters – the mad engineer, for example, but the The Sundering came along and filled up my time. With the End Times upon us, I genuinely don’t know yet what kind of Warhammer novels Black Library will be looking for in the future.

Graham McNeill apparently also stated that he has written his last Warhammer novel ever, which will be about the last stand of Kislev.

"just as broad" = same number of factions and units to support with rules and models

If WFB is 25% of cost and 8% of revenue, that's a major money loser, worse than 30% of cost and 15% of revenue.

There is no way WHFB is 25% of cost.

EDIT: Or perhaps I should say that there is no way dropping WHFB would reduce costs by 25%.

Prestor Jon wrote:

Does SpaceHulk count as a board game? People seem to like it, at least it sells well from what I hear. I've only played the version of SpaceHulk that came on 3.5" disks with a D-Rok soundtrack so I have no experience with the board game version.

Yes, Space Hulk counts as a board game and a pretty good one at that.

It is also a re-release of a 20+ year old game that the current crop of "developers" at GW had absolutely nothing to do with.

PhantomViper wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Does SpaceHulk count as a board game? People seem to like it, at least it sells well from what I hear. I've only played the version of SpaceHulk that came on 3.5" disks with a D-Rok soundtrack so I have no experience with the board game version.

Yes, Space Hulk counts as a board game and a pretty good one at that.

It is also a re-release of a 20+ year old game that the current crop of "developers" at GW had absolutely nothing to do with.

In fairness, the current space hulk is a rerelease of third edition, which is much different from the 20 year old original release.

Talys wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Does SpaceHulk count as a board game? People seem to like it, at least it sells well from what I hear. I've only played the version of SpaceHulk that came on 3.5" disks with a D-Rok soundtrack so I have no experience with the board game version.

Yes, Space Hulk counts as a board game and a pretty good one at that.

It is also a re-release of a 20+ year old game that the current crop of "developers" at GW had absolutely nothing to do with.

In fairness, the current space hulk is a rerelease of third edition, which is much different from the 20 year old original release.

I haven't played 1st edition but I've been told 1st is very similar to 3rd which is the same as 4th minus a few missions and tiles, 2nd edition being the odd one out (which was 1996). Frankly I don't think 2nd is all that different either.

Over a 25 year span it doesn't seem like Space Hulk has changed in any considerable way.

Talys wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

Prestor Jon wrote:

Does SpaceHulk count as a board game? People seem to like it, at least it sells well from what I hear. I've only played the version of SpaceHulk that came on 3.5" disks with a D-Rok soundtrack so I have no experience with the board game version.

Yes, Space Hulk counts as a board game and a pretty good one at that.

It is also a re-release of a 20+ year old game that the current crop of "developers" at GW had absolutely nothing to do with.

In fairness, the current space hulk is a rerelease of third edition, which is much different from the 20 year old original release.

From what I've heard the 3rd edition is nothing more than a copy of the first one, but with slight updates to fit the contemporary 40k universe. The "4th" edition, is basically the third, but with some extra floor pieces.

 Lockark wrote:
@Vermis: My feelings about kings of war seem to be alot like yours. I would be more interested if every other sculpt wasn't so bad.

I've never understood this sentiment. Like GW models? Play KoW using those. Unlike GW, Mantic's official stance is "please enjoy using whatever models you like, even at a competitive level".

KoW is an amazing ruleset (about to get even better), that gives the WHFB minis you own a wonderful second life, IF WHFB really does morph into something unrecognizable.