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Makumba wrote:
That maybe ok for US with its huge houses, but in some countries playing at home is out of the question, unless someone lives alone. And storing terrain is even a bigger problem.

Then Get creative.

Back home, one of my gaming buddies played in his room. He had enough space for his bed, workbench, 4 by 4 board for gaming as well as storing several old 40k armies, infinity and warmahordes armies. Terrain. And books. By the bucketload. And it was an average 3 or 4 metre square room. Über geek, to be fair, but it worked for him.
Several other gaming buddies had rooms in shared houses and all managed to have space to store armies, store terrain etc in their rooms as well as having a 6 by 4 board that they chucked onto the kitchen table to game, and it was not a big house by any stretch of the imagination - thry were just creative with the space.
Here in scotland, two of my gaming buddies do tge same and just have boards thst they can set up in their living room. One lives alone, one doesn't. My partner and I just bought a flat. I'll be able to have my own board there if I want to and storing it won't be 'out of the question'.

Unless you live in A hobbit hole makumba, there is no reason thst you can't play at home.

Makumba wrote:

In 5th we had more then 100players here. Now after 2 closed stores we are down to less then 30.
.

Maybe they play elsewhere?cby your postings your group sounds rather extreme in how thry approach the game,

Makumba wrote:

Online only stuff also means some people just can't get the stuff they need to play an army.

This again? Really? I genuinely wonder if you ever do any research. Credit/debit cards or things like paypal are easy to get and use, even in the former eastern bloc. I was selling some trollbloods stuff to a guy in Romania, and he used paypal, so don't go telling me it can't be done.

The idea that home-play is ever going to be as successful at generating a playerbase as opposed to a storefront/club is rather silly. I've played this game in multiple states and probably a dozen different metro areas. Now, this is largely up and down the US west coast, other places may differ, but in my experience, while yes, there are always the people who play from home, but they're typically a small minority, and the majority of them don't typically play that often.

In addition to the extra cost of buying and storing terrain or just an army, there's the space considerations (sure most people have a table, not everyone has a 6x4" table), and playing at home has it's own issues. The significant other or roommates may not want other people over like that, players themselves don't necessarily want people over, other people often don't want to go to another person's home to play, there may just not be sufficient space (parking is often an issue), there may be little kids running about interfering with stuff. Tons of people go out to play 40k specifically to *go out*.

You generally can't get anything near the variety of army and player variety that you do from a store or club, most people that just play at home have like one or two friends the play maybe 5-10 games a year (or if they're getting lots of games in, it's against the same couple of opponents over and over).

The stores and clubs are what builds player communities, and even those that do often play at home, typically meet such opponents through the store/club. Such places are also the only real exposure many will ever have to the actual game and miniatures.

Are there garage gamers that spend obscene gobs of money? Sure. There are typically more store/club players however that spend just as much, they just spend it on different stuff. Why buy terrain when you can buy a 2nd or 3rd army?

Stores dropping GW product is a huge deal, it typically signifies that the player community has died, not that they're simply playing from home.

Maybe they play elsewhere?cby your postings your group sounds rather extreme in how thry approach the game,

I live in fairly large city, I could technicly travel by train to the next big city, but it would take me 5-6 hours and then another 5-6 back.

Back home, one of my gaming buddies played in his room. He had enough space for his bed, workbench, 4 by 4 board for gaming as well as storing several old 40k armies, infinity and warmahordes armies. Terrain. And books. By the bucketload. And it was an average 3 or 4 metre square room. Über geek, to be fair, but it worked for him.

I share my room with my brother. If I invite someone home, he has to get out, because there isn't enough space in the room. And I can't have people in when he has training. To give an example of how good housing is here. 48% of all under 35year old still live with their parants, and not because they want to.

My partner and I just bought a flat

You have no idea how alien this sounds to me.

This again? Really? I genuinely wonder if you ever do any research. Credit/debit cards or things like paypal are easy to get and use, even in the former eastern bloc. I was selling some trollbloods stuff to a guy in Romania, and he used paypal, so don't go telling me it can't be done.

Sigh. And here I go again. To get a credit card you need a bank account, to get a bank account you need steady income and it can't even be money transfered from your parents account.You can have a debit card, if your 17+ and either have work or your parents have an account at the bank and they are more or less in full control on what your spending the money on.

Makumba wrote:
Sigh. And here I go again. To get a credit card you need a bank account, to get a bank account you need steady income and it can't even be money transfered from your parents account.You can have a debit card, if your 17+ and either have work or your parents have an account at the bank and they are more or less in full control on what your spending the money on.

Why is getting a debit card so hard? The bank isn't giving you any credit, they're just giving you the ability to access money you have deposited at that bank with a piece of plastic instead of withdrawing paper money. At least in the US there's no job requirement, no minimum income, etc, nor is there any reason why there should be. As long as you're 18+ (IOW, old enough to sign your own paperwork) you can open an account and get a debit card in 15 minutes at most.

Obviously none of this applies to credit cards, which have much stricter requirements for good reasons, but you don't need credit to buy stuff online.

Crimson Heretic wrote:
Me and my friendst play at home..more freedom and its for the most part free..also in the fact that we don't have to deal with "power gaming". We use to go to various gaming stores but most charge "fees" and make you feel obligated to purchase stuff. well 40k is really not collectable..so i'm not going to buy a box of marines everytime to keep the store owner pleased. Which leaves store owners going hmmm well i could focus on a cash cow like magic the gathering or a game where once you have enough stuff, consumers don't really buy much more. Another semi big issue with warhammer or GW products in general is the large cost attached to it, its a double edged sword where for the most part it keeps the gaming population adults. But it also drives away the curious teenage crowd thats looking for a game with some complexity(and cool figs).

I'm not sure where the sterotype that americans have giant gaming basements, hell we use to have a big old table with terrain and all that stuff in a small apartment bedroom.

My friends and I do the same. There are many motivating factors, like being able to safely store your models, not having to transport terrain, and not having to pay corner store prices for food and drink.

Also, as has been stated many, many times, 40k is more enjoyable for most between a group of friends rather than in a pickup environment. While it's possible to have hood tournaments, where everyone has the same expectations, I think 40k often lends itself to poor pickup games. I should add that while other games might have better pickup experiences, they are still better played amongst friends, IMO.

Personally, for the "pickup game with stranger" experience, I find an anonymous person on the other side of the Internet on a PC game superior.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I disagree that playing out of the store is not good for community building. In my youth, we had a group that played 1 day at the university and 1 day at a home every week, and we were 50+ in numbers, with 20 or so showing up any given day.

Our current playgroup actually descended from that, and although we are but 8 (with occasional visitors and guests), this is by choice -- we could double the number of regulars easily if this was our choice. But we're pretty picky, and we all have a lot less gaming time now, mostly because we're older and have families.

I think that gaming amongst friends at a home is just way better. Also, I don't subscribe to this whole thing about needing a gigantic house to play war games. Yeah, if you live at hone with your parents, it may be an issue. But heck, I've played 40k in ny very first (very small) downtown rental appartment. Just pop a folding table, and boom.

 Blacksails wrote:
Regardless of the why GW does what it does, do you feel that it's a good direction for the game?

I honestly don't know. I can say that I'm having more fun in 7th than I ever did in 5th or 6th, and I've spent more on the game in the last 6 months than in the entirety of 6th. They're catering to me and my friends in ways only Forgeworld did before, which is great considering that FW has become all Horus Heresy all the time. But I have a lot of friends that are tourney players, and they got boned pretty hard by this change. I hate watching the scenes die, hate seeing all the anger and vitriol on the forums by jilted players. But I also understand that sometimes to create, you have to destroy. And we won't know if this slash and burn of the old model will pay off in the longrun or if 40k will be limping to its grave D&D 4e style before having to "reinvent" itself by going back to the old model.

I know there are a lot of armchair CEOs on Dakka that are certain they know what's going to happen, but the truth is our hobby is in a weird place and none of us know. I have my fingers crossed that this works out and I don't end up as another oldhammer player bitterly telling anyone who will listen that 7th is THE BEST GAME EVER and GW screwed the whole thing up by changing everything. But that very well might happen.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Vaktathi wrote:
The idea that home-play is ever going to be as successful at generating a playerbase as opposed to a storefront/club is rather silly. I've played this game in multiple states and probably a dozen different metro areas. Now, this is largely up and down the US west coast, other places may differ, but in my experience, while yes, there are always the people who play from home, but they're typically a small minority, and the majority of them don't typically play that often.

Stores dropping GW product is a huge deal, it typically signifies that the player community has died, not that they're simply playing from home.

But none of that is true. I've personally gotten a dozen friends into 40k from home because I love playing it, I love my friends, and invariably when one of them walks into my office and sees my shelves they ask about it and I offer to teach them. I build them a starter army and we knock back a few beers in the garage having a great time. I'm running a summer league out of my garage 10 strong and people organize painting parties and are starting to really get into it. 40k has always built its business on word of mouth. The idea that this word of mouth needs to come from a storefront is what GW figured it didn't need to foster anymore. I'm not against storefront gaming - I had years of fun doing it. I was blessed with going to the same store as the BoLS guys, and had some amazing times with them. But being able to play on my own schedule, drink, swear, play with whatever armies I wanted to without getting cross-eyed looks, and not have someone hovering over my table waiting to take it for their next game drove me to play at home.

Like any industry, the visible, vocal consumers are always just the tip of the iceberg. GW doesn't have the crazy sales numbers they do because of gaming clubs. They have it because there are so, so many players that you never see and don't even know exist. Austin has about 40 regular players on the scene. But they're not the reason our FLGS is picked clean of stuff by Sunday night after their Friday restock.

The conceit that people playing in stores is the only viable method of spreading word of mouth is wrong headed. Is it great advertising? Sure.It works. Clearly not enough for GW to believe it needs to support it anymore, but it DOES work. Though a friend saying "Hey, you want to come over and learn 40K," is 100x more potent.

But stores ceasing to carry 40k isn't a sign of a dying player base. It's a sign that too many folks are buying their stuff online for a 20% discount or getting stuff second hand on ebay. That's what's killing FLGSs, and it has been for 10 years. We have an UBER successful FLGS here in Austin called THE DRAGON'S LAIR. Started 20 years ago out of the owner's house and is now the second largest comic book and game store in the country (second only to Mile High Comics). The reason they thrived is they stopped catering specifically to gamers, hire as many women as they can, keep a clean, brightly lit store, and are geared toward selling games to soccer moms for their kids. They know their hardcore gamers will often chase down deals online, so instead they focus on their walk-in customers. Their rival, BATTLEFORGE GAMES, closed up a few years in because they did just the opposite. It was a 40k centric store that built an amazing community, ran tournaments weekly, had two 40k nights, but you could always walk in and get a game. They were awesome. But they didn't make any money because they couldn't compete with 20% off retailers.And walk-in customers always felt like they'd walked into some secret club where they weren't welcome. And that's what did them in. The idea that GW is choking out game stores is what's silly. The changing nature of niche commerce is what's killing them.

 Massawyrm wrote:


I honestly don't know. I can say that I'm having more fun in 7th than I ever did in 5th or 6th, and I've spent more on the game in the last 6 months than in the entirety of 6th. They're catering to me and my friends in ways only Forgeworld did before, which is great considering that FW has become all Horus Heresy all the time. But I have a lot of friends that are tourney players, and they got boned pretty hard by this change. I hate watching the scenes die, hate seeing all the anger and vitriol on the forums by jilted players. But I also understand that sometimes to create, you have to destroy. And we won't know if this slash and burn of the old model will pay off in the longrun or if 40k will be limping to its grave D&D 4e style before having to "reinvent" itself by going back to the old model.

I know there are a lot of armchair CEOs on Dakka that are certain they know what's going to happen, but the truth is our hobby is in a weird place and none of us know. I have my fingers crossed that this works out and I don't end up as another oldhammer player bitterly telling anyone who will listen that 7th is THE BEST GAME EVER and GW screwed the whole thing up by changing everything. But that very well might happen.

I don't think in this particular case you have to destroy in order to create. Obviously we'll see how it pays out for GW, and I'm glad you're having fun, but I haven't spent a dime in years on GW, and only a decreased amount on a few books from FW (knowing full well it still goes to GW, but still).

I'm hoping GW at least makes something of quality, regardless of how I feel personally about every little change. Basic things like writing formations that actually function, or entire codices that don't lose automatically on turn 1. You know, proof reading and play testing. My biggest complaints are in the rules quality and the price/value. Fix one of those things and I'll be substantially less bitter. Fix both, and I may have some positives to say about GW.

Anyways, thanks for the honesty.

Massawyrm wrote:But stores ceasing to carry 40k isn't a sign of a dying player base. It's a sign that too many folks are buying their stuff online for a 20% discount or getting stuff second hand on ebay.

This is actually very true. In my area, there are three successful stores. The most expensive sells at 10%-20% discount depending on how much stuff you buy, but has TONS of inventory of all sorts of exotic, hobby-related product, from Xuron to Tamiya to Revell, all of the major brands of paint, to 40k/PP/etc, and RPGs and boardgames. The next sells at about 18%+ discount from sticker on everything, and has a lot of gaming space. The last sells product at 20% for walkins, and up to 30-32% for high volume buyers, but really just does 40k, PP, and CCGs. Almost every other store with 40k is either very small or has gone out of business.

IMO, the trick to a successful FLGS in selling any of the miniature wargames is heavy discounts, and lots of inventory, because if you don't, people will go buy it for 20%+ on the Internet, not to mention tax-free (because it will probably be out-of-state/province).

It doesn't really matter if it's 40k or WMH or DUST. If your prices aren't good in a relative sense, a lot of people will buy it online, whether you provide a gaming space or not. Kinda sucks, to be honest, because the cost of operating a brick and mortar is high, and people aren't willing to pay a premium to support it.

Blacksails wrote:I'm hoping GW at least makes something of quality, regardless of how I feel personally about every little change. Basic things like writing formations that actually function, or entire codices that don't lose automatically on turn 1. You know, proof reading and play testing. My biggest complaints are in the rules quality and the price/value. Fix one of those things and I'll be substantially less bitter. Fix both, and I may have some positives to say about GW.

I don't think I've ever found a time that 40k has been as balanced (internally and externally) as it has been since the 2015+ codex releases, with each other. Our group has the luxury of having tons of models that we've collected/painted over decades, so we're certainly not a good litmus test of "average players", but we've tried a lot of the different things that you can do with all the codex and formation releases since Necron, and I'm personally quite happy. With the exception of Harlequins (unless you ally Eldar), every book feels eminently playable, and you're definitely not locked in to monobuild situations (if you want to be competitive). The formations and such also make for fantastic scenario-based play, and finally allow players to combine fluff and effectiveness. Though this isn't for everyone, I understand.

I'm really hoping that GW gives every faction the "Necron treatment". Now granted, the power levels aren't identical, and you still get lopsided battles, and obviously, not every list is made equal. But, playing TAC lists, we haven't had any auto-wins, and even the lopsided battles are close enough that they could go either way; plus, not every list we play is optimized to the hilt.

With respect to the price for models, I don't think GW will be making you happy any time soon, unless it's with Sigmar/Fantasy. I honestly don't think that, at least in the perceivable future, 40k will be more affordable, and I don't think there will ever be a time when 40k is generally much cheaper (or more expensive) than WMH on a price-per-model basis, and 40k players as we know them today will always be looking with games with more models. I think both PP and GW eye each other in terms of model prices, and even though they're not directly competing on price, they consider their competition in terms of how high they can get away with raising their prices.

I think there is a possibility, however, that eventually, 40k rules could get cheaper. I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that one day we have a different model for rules, like separation of fluff and lists; particularly, if GW's formula isn't working, and 40k sales decline. If 40k sales don't decline, I think the current mechanism of expensive books on a cycle of 2-3 years or so will continue.

+1 to everything Massawyrm said, from the garage aspect (what I've been doing since the end of 2nd ed 40k), to the silent majority, to feeling like some LGSs are a gaming club's private space, etc. And I've done GW Grand Tourneys from the late 90s through to Adepticon.

I also hoard 40k minis 'just in case' from many armies, like a squirrel hoards nuts before winter. My basement looks like a decently stocked LGS with all the shrinkwrapped product. A friend of mine has every.single.forgeworld.book ever produced, every terrain piece GW ever made, many apoc sized armies, etc.

I think Wyrm is correct that people with lots of disposable income and little access to information (or desire to seek it out) are Games Workshop's ideal customers. The impression that I get from reading about GW, though, is that they have no idea why their models sell so well or who is buying them. And that they're not just wilfully ignorant, but proudly ignorant about these things, to the point of doing no market research and making hiring decisions based on who will question their assumptions the least.

With that in mind, I think their de-emphasizing of the "storefront meta" is because they are blaming their line retail clerks and store managers for everything that goes wrong with their business, and terminating their jobs Imperial Commissar style. Except with fewer laspistols. That's why they bought the multi-million pound website; it's cheaper and less messy for them to run than people are, and it won't talk back or question them.

WRT having your own gaming table, I'm not sure it's uniquely American to have a ridiculous amount of living space. The hobby started in the UK, after all. I have noticed, however, the American tendency to blame other people for their circumstances.

Well I do have a garage and could organise a gaming room any time (it's what my wife insits on lol) but local shop dying was a blow anyway. It's not like I'm going to host a tourney or invite every random nerd I had 3 games with. We're only a few guys now and the need to synchronise doesnt help either, before you could just go to the shop alone if you had time and not look at others. Limited time brings hard choices too, I mean I hate Star Wars but Armada is times more tactical than 40k and I love to play it, there are chess boardgames etc. 40k very much suffered when it went underground, at least in my case.

 Cruentus wrote:
+1 to everything Massawyrm said, from the garage aspect (what I've been doing since the end of 2nd ed 40k), to the silent majority, to feeling like some LGSs are a gaming club's private space, etc. And I've done GW Grand Tourneys from the late 90s through to Adepticon.

I also hoard 40k minis 'just in case' from many armies, like a squirrel hoards nuts before winter. My basement looks like a decently stocked LGS with all the shrinkwrapped product. A friend of mine has every.single.forgeworld.book ever produced, every terrain piece GW ever made, many apoc sized armies, etc.

I read that originally as your friend having every single forgeworld MODEL. I'm still jealous!

Other than the realm of battle boards (I only own Sector Imperialis), I own about 5x of most of the terrain pieces, because I dream of building a ginormous castle. I can definitely understand the squirrelling aspect

This is what I squirreled away LAST YEAR (added to horde, sorted out this spring) - BNIB items things only, and it's not like I don't paint stuff



You can see there's a pretty good variety there, from a box of Eldar Fire Dragons to Druthu, to Necron overlord and a Bloodthirster My basement is entirely finished and almost entirely dedicated to wargaming for me & my buddies.

If I were a dragon, I would be keeping piles of plastic and resin miniatures warm... screw the gold!

 Jewelfox wrote:
I think Wyrm is correct that people with lots of disposable income and little access to information (or desire to seek it out) are Games Workshop's ideal customers. The impression that I get from reading about GW, though, is that they have no idea why their models sell so well or who is buying them. And that they're not just wilfully ignorant, but proudly ignorant about these things, to the point of doing no market research and making hiring decisions based on who will question their assumptions the least.

GW literally thinks it's a toy company, like Hasbro except more "premium" apparently, and that it's core demographic are 12-year-old boys. Explains the quality of some of their sculpts and how toy-like everything looks in general, the lack of effort put into the rules and the stupid-ass naming conventions for a lot of newer units.

Kirby doesn't seem to understand much about the modeling or gaming hobbies, like a lot of people who don't "get it" he looks at it all and sees a bunch of toys. He probably thinks all the adults that find their way into their shops and aren't buying for their children are just fething weirdos who are into something they shouldn't be, like bronies. Considering the state of 40k today I kinda wonder if maybe he isn't right, because 40k makes me feel awkward and like I'm too old to be playing it anymore...like playing with green army men in the sand box, except these army men cost more than your first car and the "rules" are somehow less structured.

 Talys wrote:
I don't think I've ever found a time that 40k has been as balanced (internally and externally) as it has been since the 2015+ codex releases, with each other.

Give it a couple months until the design paradigm shifts once again, then we'll see where your balance is.

 Peregrine wrote:

 Purifier wrote:
This is actually something I've been thinking about lately too. It seems like everyone in the 'muricas has this awesome gaming basement.
Here in Sweden, everyone lives in a small apartment. Me and my friends have a gaming table that we've made out of three IKEA tables. This allows us to store it, but whoever has it has to store those three table tops and all the scenery. It is a problem. We don't really have that kind of storage, so we're making concessions to store it.

You don't really need that much space. A 6x4 table can be built in sections and stored against the wall in a closet and takes up very little space. Then when you want to play you can put it on top of your kitchen table. For terrain storage you just need a small bookshelf, which probably takes up less space than models/paint/etc. It's not an awesome dedicated gaming space, but most people should be able to play 40k at home if they really want to.

A huge amount of affordable city housing in the UK is 2-up, 2-down. That's 2 rooms on either floor, plus the kitchen and bathroom. Bedrooms may be carved into 2 smaller ones. Rooms are maybe 10'x15'.
There's usually nowhere to prop things up against, as wall space is used for shelves or bookcase-type storage.
There is usually no 'kitchen table', as the kitchen is a workspace either side of a walkthrough to the loo.
Garages (if there is one) are rammed full of bbqs, bikes and old beds.
This is common enough, and quite large:
http://www.allsoppandallsopp.co.uk/property-for-sale/3-bedroom-property-for-sale/tynemouth-close-aldermans-green-coventry-west-midlands-cv2/299#overview
http://www.allsoppandallsopp.co.uk/property-for-sale/3-bedroom-property-for-sale/tynemouth-close-aldermans-green-coventry-west-midlands-cv2/299#floorplan
Don't forget that estate agents are masters of making a room look big in a photo.

For a gamer in charge of the home, there're ways to make it happen. For people living with others, FLGS and clubs are the only way to play.

 Massawyrm wrote:
All due respect, brother, but it doesn't sound like you understand garage gamers at all. Nobody spends money on the hobby like a garage gamer. We're the guys who build our own tables, stock entire shelves with terrain and codexes (even for armies we don't play), own multiple armies and have no cap on what we *need* for those armies. Our chief enemy is shelf space. There were a series of pictures on one of the reddit subreddits yesterday in which garage gamers posted pics of their war rooms. Just glance around those pics and see what I'm talking about. We're talking about guys who own three Warhound Titans just so they can run one and make sure their buddies can each use one too so it's fair.

You are making a seriously blanket statement there about garage gamers that isn't true. In my experience for every 1 lunatic like you describe, of which I am also one, there are another 4-5 people playing with that person, also as garage players, who range from having a couple newish purchases in the last year or so to others that haven't purchased a thing from GW in more than a decade and feel no draw to do so. Those who buy nothing as garage players, if regularly playing in a store instead, would be making some purchases here and there because most of us like to spend money in a store we regularly play games in. Without an in store model GW makes zero money off of those players, and will never make another cent from them. The lunatics spend that kind of money whether they play at home or they play in a local store, so it has nothing really do with them being garage players and everything to do with them being inclined to overspend on the game and doing so.

Skriker

My kids are getting older so I had split my basement in half so they have a "kid cave" for the toys and console games and stuff rather than them taking over our living room and destroying it.

Now I am out of room for my fold-out Ping-Pong table I used for wargaming. I used to host so now I depend on visiting my friends and whatever they can fit in or the local FLGS. Thank goodness they started carrying GW again.

I actually prefer to play at home beause I can drink and smoke while I play.

 Talys wrote:

 Cruentus wrote:
+1 to everything Massawyrm said, from the garage aspect (what I've been doing since the end of 2nd ed 40k), to the silent majority, to feeling like some LGSs are a gaming club's private space, etc. And I've done GW Grand Tourneys from the late 90s through to Adepticon.

I also hoard 40k minis 'just in case' from many armies, like a squirrel hoards nuts before winter. My basement looks like a decently stocked LGS with all the shrinkwrapped product. A friend of mine has every.single.forgeworld.book ever produced, every terrain piece GW ever made, many apoc sized armies, etc.

I read that originally as your friend having every single forgeworld MODEL. I'm still jealous!

Other than the realm of battle boards (I only own Sector Imperialis), I own about 5x of most of the terrain pieces, because I dream of building a ginormous castle. I can definitely understand the squirrelling aspect

This is what I squirreled away LAST YEAR (added to horde, sorted out this spring) - BNIB items things only, and it's not like I don't paint stuff



You can see there's a pretty good variety there, from a box of Eldar Fire Dragons to Druthu, to Necron overlord and a Bloodthirster My basement is entirely finished and almost entirely dedicated to wargaming for me & my buddies.

If I were a dragon, I would be keeping piles of plastic and resin miniatures warm... screw the gold!

Not to give you ideas, but with enough superheavies and 40k terrain you can kitbash an Emperor Titan. I mean, what's 30 boxes more in the grand scheme of things?

Just pop a folding table, and boom.

not couting kitchen and toilet the flat on your pic is the size of an avarge home here. Now imagine 3-4 people living there, with beds, work room for children and parents. There would be no place to pop floding table.

Why is getting a debit card so hard? The bank isn't giving you any credit, they're just giving you the ability to access money you have deposited at that bank with a piece of plastic instead of withdrawing paper money. At least in the US there's no job requirement, no minimum income, etc, nor is there any reason why there should be. As long as you're 18+ (IOW, old enough to sign your own paperwork) you can open an account and get a debit card in 15 minutes at most.

Because there is a good chance they will never see the money back, as a lot of young people go to UK or Norway and are gone. And here there are many requirments you never heard of. Do you know what an official living place is? If you don't have it, you count as homeless, even if your renting a flat. And guess what you can't get with the OLP, ID, credit card, can't have cable, and it gets better. You won't get a place at school, but your still under the have to go to school till 18law, so your parents will be persecuted for you not going to, and you can't because you don't have an OLP. Banks always check your OLP, so they know if you live in an old part of town or if you live in one of those new ones. And guess who gets a no, if he asks for credit? and the 15min lol. Officials here are scared that if something happens they will lose their job, so a long time ago, in fact in communist times, they wrote the law in a such a way that there are always 2 or more offcials deciding on something. So if you for example want to get an ID, because your 18, you have to go to 3 different clerks in 3 different places, who all work at the same time, so you will never get to do a thing in a single day. Well for normal people of course, if your important then the ID is already waiting for you when you come with papers. Do you know how long it takes to officialy be allowed to work and pay taxs, working without paying is of course illegal, 4 months minimum and the clerks can stretch it to 6 months, because , prepare yourself, they have 30 days to give an anwser to any question. And if they find something wrong in the papers your brought , and it can be something like in their opinion crooked stamp, the whole thing resets.
And before you ask if it is the same in non goverment owned places, I tell you it is the same.

I really don't get the main point of the focus on garage gamers comments by Massawyrm. I would think that garage gamers would be least impacted by changes to rules and GWs current marketing ideas whatever they happen to be. Massawyrm even acknowledges that his meta limits what people can use, so the argument that store metas are limiting is meaningless. If I were playing with a garage group, flyers and superheavies would be out because I don't like them and have no interest in playing against them. In a store meta I may be forced to buy them in order to effectively compete. Those in a store meta can be more easily forced into buying stuff they really don't want by the ever changing rule set.

In a garage meta on the other hand it should be easy to homebrew rules that are significant departures from whatever GW is currently pushing so when it swings from focus on CC to shooting then back again, no need to keep changing armies. If you don't like the changes just stick with the rules you like and the models you like. Skip entire editions or just pick and choose from rules and codexes from different editions that your group likes.

Basically the garage gamer playing with a group of friends with a similar attitude about the game can buy what they want and shape the rules to their interest. The store gamer on the other hand is more easily forced to do what GW wants because they have to keep up with the current stuff. I'd really like model x, but the rules suck so I can't get it. Instead I have to buy model y which I don' t like at all or I can't be competitive. At that point maybe it is time to give up the game since you can't play it as you like.

Not everyone is fortunate enough to have a large enough pool of like minded individuals who can put together a cohesive, diverse garage group. Why would GW willingly give up on those potential customers to cater to a group that doesn't need to be catered to since they can and I'm sure do mold the game to their interests? All you need to do to keep those people happy is keep coming up with new models and better casts.

Makumba wrote:
Because there is a good chance they will never see the money back, as a lot of young people go to UK or Norway and are gone.

What? That doesn't even make any sense. I don't think you understand how a debit card works. You deposit cash in the bank, and your debit card allows you to spend that cash and only that cash. It doesn't allow you to spend any money that you haven't already given to the bank. If you try to spend more money than you've already given the bank the transaction is declined. So if you leave the country the bank still has your money (at least until you spend it somewhere else). It's impossible to have a situation where the bank has loaned you money and you don't repay it.

As for the rest, I think the obvious conclusion here is that your country has serious problems and I'm really glad I don't live there. But none of that applies to the vast majority of GW's customers and potential customers.

I love how us westerners are just like "make room Sweden!"...

 Peregrine wrote:


your country has serious problems and I'm really glad I don't live there.

Look Who's Talking Now!

Starring John Travolta and an infant...

As a serious note, maybe don't try to tell people in a different country how their system works? That's a pretty stupid thing to do. For someone with such sage wisdom regarding the current and potential markets of yet another different nations business, you sure are capable of some truly wondrous moments.

 MWHistorian wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:

 MWHistorian wrote:

 Ghazkuul wrote:
The area I just moved to has a single gaming store within 30 miles of me and they are currently no longer carrying GW products because of the costs associated with the product. I understand the concept that GW wants to sell everyone from their webstore to make as much profit as possible. But did GW forget that in order to play the game we have to have stores to go to that carry all the amazing terrain and boards and is a gathering place for other players? At the current rate we won't be able to play fairly soon. So in conclusion.....RAGE!

No, they don't realize that. They don't know how the game is played outside of GW HQ and frankly, they couldn't care.
On the plus side, you can explore and find all the other amazing games out there.

assuming his local gaming shop isn't like one of mine (I have 3 gaming shops) where the only thing they sell is CCGs and a unwanted copy of the 4th edition D&D PHB

Oh my word. That's terrible. Come on down to Utah, there's like a hobby store every five miles.

Every five miles until you get too far north.

Gwaihirsbrother wrote:
I really don't get the main point of the focus on garage gamers comments by Massawyrm.

The original point was that 40K 7E and rules light AoS cater perfectly to the garage gamer, who will buy GW products without obsessing about how tight the rules are, or how balanced each new release is for competitive play, or needing an expensive storefront to play in.

In my experience they are also more heavily invested in the game. The LGS is interested in selling you 40K, but they also run MTG, X-Wing, Dicemasters, and Heroclix leagues as well. The average local LGS player is invested in 2-3 games, and not as focussed on GW.

 Massawyrm wrote:
All due respect, brother, but it doesn't sound like you understand garage gamers at all. Nobody spends money on the hobby like a garage gamer. We're the guys who build our own tables, stock entire shelves with terrain and codexes (even for armies we don't play), own multiple armies and have no cap on what we *need* for those armies. Our chief enemy is shelf space. There were a series of pictures on one of the reddit subreddits yesterday in which garage gamers posted pics of their war rooms. Just glance around those pics and see what I'm talking about. We're talking about guys who own three Warhound Titans just so they can run one and make sure their buddies can each use one too so it's fair.

While excitement on the forums might encourage sales, we're not affected by its meta. Because in our garages, in our basements, we control it. No one is ever going to show up at my house with 40 scatbikes or 2++ rerollable anything. That doesn't mean lists aren't competitive. But "competitive" and ITC-hammer are very different things. With garage gamers COOL is king, and netlists aren't cool.

Are there gamers like you're talking about, the ones who buy a starter box, a few extra units and then never buy anything else? Sure. But those aren't the guys GW is catering to. Escalation and 7th Ed weren't about trying to force tournaments to allow Superheavies; it was about giving the garage gamers a reason to buy a few more variants of baneblade, and convincing them to pull the trigger on that Thunderhawk they've been promising to buy themselves.

The problem of course is that we're the silent majority. The two hundred guys who show up to GTs aren't keeping GW afloat. It's not the loud 200 dakkanoughts that responded in that poll that they've stopped playing or buying 40k. It's the 31k members of the warhammer subreddit - the 18k on the 40k offshoot - the ones who don't even read the forums because the negativity of places like dakka harshes their buzz. It's the guys who, as the manager of my FLGS puts it, "Show up on a Saturday with a buddy, drop $500, and then we won't see them for another three months until they come back and do it again."

That's GWs target market. That's who they're catering to. That's what they want to turn the noobs into with all the "Your hobby starts here," stuff. Nobody needs a storefront to create a community. We have the internet now. That buying into a community idea works here too. Garages are just as good as a storefront - except that we have beer.

While the above is a great speech worthy of Ramsey Bolton, I can't help but feel that you might get conked on the back of the head yet again by GW and their annual report. If GW is indeed catering to these incredible paragon of the hobby that you describe as garage gamers, it simply hasn't been working. Unit sales are down and so are profits. We'll see in another month if cranking the release schedule past ludicrous into plaid like they've done over the past 6 months has helped, hindered, or not affected the year end numbers.

How does Massawyrm know about other garage playing groups? Is there like an organization for them? Kinda contradictory there.

Gwaihirsbrother wrote:
I really don't get the main point of the focus on garage gamers comments by Massawyrm.

The main point is this:

Bill and Joe are garage gamers who play at Bill's house. Bill *loves* Dark Eldar and refuses to play anything else. He doesn't care what the internet says about his codex, DE are AWESOME. Joe likes Space Marines. As Bill gets better at cleaning Joe's clock, Joe starts thinking about picking up new models to combat his new DE overlords. He needs something speedy with AP4/AP5 weapons or that is great at withstanding poison shots. Up the street, unbeknownst to them, are Dave and Pat, another pair of garage gamers. They bought Deathstorm and are really digging this 40k thing. Dave is playing Tyranids and loves big bugs. Pat, on the other hand, is finding that the Blood Angels aren't cutting it as their armies expand. He decides to pick up a small ally army. Everyone is talking about Eldar on the forums, so he decides to give them a shot, adding a Windrider Battlehost formation to his BA. Now he's got Dave on the run, so Dave is looking for even bigger bugs. Across town is Steve, Jake and Ollie. Steve is a crazy obsessed garage gamer with LoW choices for armies he doesn't even own just in case one of his friends comes over playing them. Steve bought a Warhound and reuses to play a game without it. Jake and Ollie don't care because Steve will always lend them a Thunderhawk or Stompa whenever they want to run one. Steve plays IoM, Jake Plays CSM, and Ollie plays whatever the new hotness of the month is. Their meta is constantly evolving, with the only static constant being that GD Warhound. Every week these guys try to out do each other with netlists or crazy ally combinations.

Each of these groups buys according to their tastes and the meta inside their garage or basement.

But say all of these guys played at the same store instead. At first their meta is wide, varied, and pretty interesting. But over time their purchases revolve around that meta. Killing a warhound becomes something everyone has to think about, because if they don't, they either get trounced or say goodbye to Steve, because he won't play without it. Now the meta has a lot of anti-tank. All of a sudden vehicles are a hindrance, so most everyone lays off using them. Bill loves his Dark Eldar, but is getting whipped solidly by most everyone else and isn't having much fun anymore, so he opts for one of the newer top tier armies. He goes with Eldar as Dave does well with them (he's dropped BA entirely.) They're both running Wraithknights and scatbikes now because it does better against the current meta. There's a lot of 3+ armor running around now, so the meta adapts to that. After a while, most everyone is running lists with a lot of anti-armor and ap3 weapons/units.

While all of these guys still buy the same amount of GW in the store meta as they would have in their garage metas, their unit selection and purchases have become more homogeneous. GW is making the exact same money, but on a smaller variety of kits. The store can't sell DE anymore, because none of their players play it, and tanks tend to collect dust as they just aren't good in the meta. Now extrapolate that to a much larger level, and start talking about a nation of stores with some isolated metas breaking from the pack, but most of the bigger ones driven by the national GT meta. Add to that the issue with the ITC and its direct influence on sales, and you begin to understand why GW wants to move away from that model.

The metas drive sales. The wider and more diverse the metas, the wider and more diverse the sales are from the line - even when they're making the same money. Even product distribution is GWs optimal goal. They want product moving steadily through their warehouse, not sitting unsold in it.

How they're *appealing* to garage gamers is by incorporating rules that aren't conducive to open store play. Even their terrain kits all come with rules in the rulebook now, each providing special advantages, encouraging garage gamers to buy them. Could we do this before? Sure. And we did. But now it's official. If I buy a Sanctum Imperialis and deploy my troops in it, I get Adamantium Will and Night Vision FOR FREE. And it's not cheating broken rules! It's in the book! [Insert sound of Peregrine's *Ahem* here.] When was the last time anyone in your store used the terrain rules in a game, or even allowed you to bring your own terrain kits for a possible advantage? "Well, you can do all that at home," which is ostensibly what GW is telling us all.

So there it is. My point is GW wants us to play at home because we can use all of our cool toys there and they can sell us a much more diverse selection of their models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 MWHistorian wrote:
How does Massawyrm know about other garage playing groups? Is there like an organization for them? Kinda contradictory there.

We live in a digital age. We're not cavemen. Here in TX we have a forum for gamers to connect, trade and set up games. I talk about 40k in a number of forums and on reddit with other guys who play in their houses. I still chat with all the guys at the store about how things are going, what's going on in the meta and set up the occasional game with one of them. It's not about isolation or blowing off the community, it's just a change in location of where you play.

 Massawyrm wrote:
The main point is this:

{example}

And down the street are Alice and Bob, who play the game exactly the way they would play it in a store, except they play in Alice's garage. They have a dozen friends who do the same. Or maybe Alice and Bob each buy a starter set, realize that playing each other over and over again is boring, and abandon the game because there's no store community to provide them with more opponents. See how much fun it is to make up hypothetical people that conveniently fit our assumptions?

GW is making the exact same money, but on a smaller variety of kits.

Who cares? Total profit is what matters, not some arbitrary "unit diversity" quota.

They want product moving steadily through their warehouse, not sitting unsold in it.

If GW has significant amounts of unsold inventory then that's unbelievable incompetence. If DE sell slowly then you reduce the production volume on those kits to match the sales rate.

How they're *appealing* to garage gamers is by incorporating rules that aren't conducive to open store play.

That's not appealing to "garage gamers" at all. If the rules suck and aren't popular with store players why are they going to suddenly be more popular just because the game moves to a garage? Why are the people who say "we hate this and won't use it" going to change their mind about those rules?

When was the last time anyone in your store used the terrain rules in a game, or even allowed you to bring your own terrain kits for a possible advantage?

Last time I played at a store.

On your point about GW's ultimate goal being even product distribution, couldn't they achieve that goal by...feth, I dunno...making the game more balanced in the first place? You said yourself that tanks don't sell in a "store meta" because people quickly figure out tanks are mostly useless...why do you think they're useless? Is there something about playing in a store environment that makes it so? No, it's in the rules, the rules are the reason why tanks aren't that good anymore and no one buys them. Fix the fething rules so that tanks don't gather dust anymore and you just might start selling a few of them again, without having to publish broken detachments that make them literally free as no one will take them otherwise. Stubbornly refusing to put any effort into the rules or do any research on how the game's actually being played and trying to appeal to this mythical garage gamer that buys everything GW wants them to buy and makes up their own rules isn't going to sustain GW in the long run, and we have evidence of that in their financial reports.

 Peregrine wrote:
And down the street are Alice and Bob, who play the game exactly the way they would play it in a store, except they play in Alice's garage. They have a dozen friends who do the same. Or maybe Alice and Bob each buy a starter set, realize that playing each other over and over again is boring, and abandon the game because there's no store community to provide them with more opponents. See how much fun it is to make up hypothetical people that conveniently fit our assumptions?

But they fit into my hypothetical model as well. The scene hasn't gone away just because GW stopped supporting it - for all the reasons people are mentioning in this thread. I'm not arguing for the abolition of store play, merely pointing out GWs trend of moving away from it...a fact *not* in dispute. Garage play isn't innately better. It's just a certain breed of gamer prefers it. And GW has decided to cater to them. As I mentioned above, I have no idea whether it will pay off in the longrun or not.

Who cares? Total profit is what matters, not some arbitrary "unit diversity" quota. If GW has significant amounts of unsold inventory then that's unbelievable incompetence. If DE sell slowly then you reduce the production volume on those kits to match the sales rate.

But you run into the Sister of battle problem in which it becomes cost prohibitive to update an army because you know sales are likely to be small. And yes, unit diversity is important for any successful business, especially one based upon the personal tastes of individual players. Having a wide variety of options rather than being restricted to what works in the meta improves player retention. People have been leaving GW for years - and returning players comment here on Dakka all the time with a "I got out when the meta did this thing," and "I hated croissant spam and Grey Knight cheese," and what have you. Homogeneity breeds boredom. This is just one attempt at combating that. When you control the meta, you are less likely to get chased off by what happens in it.

If the rules suck and aren't popular with store players why are they going to suddenly be more popular just because the game moves to a garage? Why are the people who say "we hate this and won't use it" going to change their mind about those rules?

How many threads have I read in which you swing your snark bat around in defense of Forge World, complaining how people won't play against it, leading to people not bringing it? The issue with the meta isn't that the rules suck, it's that when three or four guys at your store say "We hate this and we won't use this," it impacts the 30 others who would be fine with it but some people WON'T SHUT THE FETH UP ABOUT HOW BROKEN FORGE WORLD IS. Things get even dicier when it is your local store owner making the calls of what can and can't be played with in their store. "If I don't sell it, you can't play with it." ITC polls their players asking them whether they want things included or not. When 40% said they absolutely refused to play with superheavies after Escalation, they banned them whole hog. A number of stores use the ITC rulings for their tournaments, and the meta of virtually every game played in a store, be it MTG or Warmachine or Dicemasters, revolves around the tournament meta. "Oh, I'm practicing for an upcoming tournament which doesn't allow Forge World, so I'm not going to play against your Corsairs because I won't face any."

Last time I played at a store.

Congratulations. You answered the rhetorical question. You play in a cool meta. A lot of metas are not so cool. See above for a few examples.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sidstyler wrote:
On your point about GW's ultimate goal being even product distribution, couldn't they achieve that goal by...feth, I dunno...making the game more balanced in the first place?

No. This is actually one of the biggest myths of the game, perpetuated here on Dakka quite a bit.

If D&D 4E taught us anything, it is that players aren't drawn to balance. Rather, they are drawn to imbalance. It's why power creep is an industry wide phenomenon. When everything is perfectly balanced, players aren't encouraged to buy more product. MTG handles this by cycling cards out of tournament play every few years, while offering new, uber powerful meta breaking cards that players have to buy pack after pack to chase down. D&D deals with this by releasing books with increasingly more powerful feats, classes and spells. Video games deal with this by making characters and items more powerful, offering ever more powerful enemies to keep players interested. When D&D 4E failed, what did everyone do? They ran to Pathfinder, a souped up turbo edition of 3.5 that *allowed* you to use your old books, except that their newer books had a higher power level than your old ones, promoting sales beyond the initial ruleset.

GW deals with this by making their newer units beefier than their older ones, and making their reissued kits the new hotness. When was the last time Dev and Assault squads were A-list units? Oh look, new Dev and Assault Squad kits! SUCK ON MY SKYHAMMER!!!!

Personally I think it's bad game design, but I feel like Decurion is their new attempt to try and give the illusion of balance in a game they acknowledge will always need some level of imbalance to promote sales. Personally, I wish the game were a bit more balanced. But then, I'm the guy who still plays D&D 4E every Friday night because I love the balance of the system. But I understand why the gaming industry needs the creep.