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Ok seriously, how many people here have a local GW store that doesn't allow FW then?

I would be incredibly surprised to hear this is a regular occurrence.

 insaniak wrote:

Sure. Well, aside from the fact that Warmachine and Hordes were specifically designed to work together, while 30K was designed as a separate (but similar) game.

Is it really a separate game? I haven't really followed the FW releases other than from a model standpoint, so I'm legitimately curious... does it use a different core rulebook (i.e. does not require the 40k BRB)? Can you play it completely without any 40k-related material?

I'm not trying to be crass, but if does require the 40k rules material... I'd call it more of an "expansion" rather than a "separate, similar" game. To me, WHFB and WH40k are separate and similar, but a game which uses the majority of 40k's rules with only a different standards of balance, army comp, and scenarios is hardly a new or different game.

@OP: This whole situation is silly. It's not even a case of GW's left hand fighting its right hand... more like its right pinky finger fighting with its right index finger, all because of some stupid policies at the head (management). To be perfectly honest though, it might just be better if GW got out of the "table-hosting" business. They haven't really seemed like they wanted to pay for table space recently anyway; they've only continued to do so because it's "traditional" for them to have demo tables and the like. But the reality of GW shops is that they are no longer the community hobby centers of yore - now they are just storefronts.

Simple workaround
Ask if he, or anyone else currently in the store plays with an old pewter model and if they are allowed.
if he says yes they are allowed then you can argue on his policy saying that if 3rd party non-supported-any-more models are allowed then shouldnt FW a SISTER COMPANY of GW be allowed

FW IS GW

commander dante wrote:
Simple workaround
Ask if he, or anyone else currently in the store plays with an old pewter model and if they are allowed.
if he says yes they are allowed then you can argue on his policy saying that if 3rd party non-supported-any-more models are allowed then shouldnt FW a SISTER COMPANY of GW be allowed

FW IS GW

And what do you think his reply will be? I think I can guess.

 Grimtuff wrote:

commander dante wrote:
Simple workaround
Ask if he, or anyone else currently in the store plays with an old pewter model and if they are allowed.
if he says yes they are allowed then you can argue on his policy saying that if 3rd party non-supported-any-more models are allowed then shouldnt FW a SISTER COMPANY of GW be allowed

FW IS GW

And what do you think his reply will be? I think I can guess.

Spoiler:

OR someone could just attempt to buy the Smaug model and go "Well i want this Super-Duper Fancy GW model that i would like to use in a Hobbit game with my buddies BUT OH WAIT! ITS MADE OF FW RESIN! OH NO! WHAT WILL I DO! SURE ME BUYING IT OFF THE GW WEBPAGE IN STORE WILL NET YOU CASH BUT WHAT IS THE POINT! I CANT USE IT IN STORE ANYWAY! OH NO!"

Hobbit and main line resins are not counted as FW items. They are "high quality resin miniatures" AKA Finecast with the name shed from the product.

Being sarcastic to the teacher is not going to get you what you want at playtime.

commander dante wrote:
Simple workaround
Ask if he, or anyone else currently in the store plays with an old pewter model and if they are allowed.
if he says yes they are allowed then you can argue on his policy saying that if 3rd party non-supported-any-more models are allowed then shouldnt FW a SISTER COMPANY of GW be allowed

FW IS GW

Simpler workaround - If you disagree with how someone chooses to run their venue, find a different venue.

Pissing him off is likely to result in you trying to find another venue anyway, when he asks you to leave his store for being disruptive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Xca|iber wrote:

Is it really a separate game? I haven't really followed the FW releases other than from a model standpoint, so I'm legitimately curious... does it use a different core rulebook (i.e. does not require the 40k BRB)? Can you play it completely without any 40k-related material?.

It uses the 40K rules with some changes. The two can be made to work together, but Forgeworld have said that was never their intention. 30K is meant to be a different way of playing 40K, rather than just a set of new army lists.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ok seriously, how many people here have a local GW store that doesn't allow FW then?

I would be incredibly surprised to hear this is a regular occurrence.

Agreed... It just points to how crazy GW its with various policies store-to-store, but this one is incredibly rare from what I've seen. Because I live in an area with lots of GWs, I've probably been in close to a dozen different ones over the years... and afaik none of them had this policy, and some even used to help organize group FW orders to help folks save on shipping!

 Buttery Commissar wrote:


Being sarcastic to the teacher is not going to get you what you want at playtime.

Which was exactly my point, if it wasn't obvious from the CBG pic.

Something to bear in mind that while boycotts have limited effectiveness in a large scale, they can indeed work well in a small scale.

Rest in Peace, Kidz Hobbies - you deserved what you got.

(How I know that my group would walk as one - we have done so in the past. And, no, a bad game store is not better than none at all.)

That said - it likely is a rare occurrence - GW gets some very well deserved complaints, and I think that we would have heard about this problem if it were widespread.

The Auld Grump

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Buttery Commissar wrote:


Being sarcastic to the teacher is not going to get you what you want at playtime.

Which was exactly my point, if it wasn't obvious from the CBG pic.

There often does seem to be an unfortunate division in understanding of witty versus acceptable (or fruitful) behaviour. Making a lot of noise to exorcise frustration in private is very different to doing it to someone's face. Especially a captive audience such as store employees.

Don't know if it's the gaming community at large or just young adults of the moment, but I've quite often had people say things to me that would possibly be hilariously snappy when written in their blog, but were actually just painfully uncomfortable or hurtful in person.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ok seriously, how many people here have a local GW store that doesn't allow FW then?

I would be incredibly surprised to hear this is a regular occurrence.

I have two I flick between being a university student.

My home GW doesn't allow FW in the store as they can't sell it off the shelves. Local club allows it.

Term-time GW allows FW except in beginner games and has a dedicated HH night.

Prefer my term-time GW to be honest, they do way more events and I get my home-time friends to join me for weekends, even though it's a 1 hour 40 minute drive for them (which they don't mind, because they prefer the term-time GW).

If I was a customer and cared enough, I would complain to GW about this. Its stupid nott o allow them to play there. They obviously cant buy Forgeworld in store yet, but this may give them the chance to buy other items like paint, tools, varnish or hell even AoS or 40k models. Its all about getting the customer into the store.

jonolikespie wrote:Ok seriously, how many people here have a local GW store that doesn't allow FW then?

I would be incredibly surprised to hear this is a regular occurrence.

Unless 90% of regulars playing with FW armies is a widespread occurence, I'd be surprised too.

Snoopdeville3 wrote:If I was a customer and cared enough, I would complain to GW about this. Its stupid nott o allow them to play there. They obviously cant buy Forgeworld in store yet, but this may give them the chance to buy other items like paint, tools, varnish

Ching ching!

or hell even AoS or 40k models. Its all about getting the customer into the store.

If they're in the situation of using their (mostly?) online-ordered FW armies to play (mostly) 30K, they might be a little beyond the core 2, and calling them 'customers' might be a stretch. (Anyone else getting a weird sense of déjà vu here?) You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

 Vermis wrote:

If they're in the situation of using their (mostly?) online-ordered FW armies to play (mostly) 30K, they might be a little beyond the core 2, and calling them 'customers' might be a stretch. (Anyone else getting a weird sense of déjà vu here?) You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

The OP and the posters in other threads like this that have cropped up, have just said 'Forge World Models', not 30k or Forge World Armies... so bringing a specific tank, or a character model, or conversion shoulder pads, under that ruling, would be banned as 'you can't buy it in the shop'...

The idea that people bringing in entire armies of forge world models to play 30k is a larger percentage than people just bringing in 40k models with conversion pieces or a specific tank or monster seems unlikely to me.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Ok seriously, how many people here have a local GW store that doesn't allow FW then?

I would be incredibly surprised to hear this is a regular occurrence.

FW Models are fine at my local
FW Armies are fine at my local

30K is not.

Its understandable, 30K is a different game albeit using the same system.

 heartserenade wrote:


And honestly, how hard is it to spell heartserenade? You're British and you've spelled my name wrong every dang time. Serenade is an English word.

Apologies, I post from my phone, and mis-read your username. I can spell perfectly well, being an English teacher it is a necessity. Also, serenade is an Italian word. It won't happen again though.

I don't speak Italian, yet I'm pretty sure I know what serenade means.

Nobody likes a pedant. (which is a French word.)

 Azreal13 wrote:
I don't speak Italian, yet I'm pretty sure I know what serenade means.

Nobody likes a pedant. (which is a French word.)

Indeed. As I'm posting this from my Bungalow, which is an Indian word.

 JamesY wrote:

 heartserenade wrote:


And honestly, how hard is it to spell heartserenade? You're British and you've spelled my name wrong every dang time. Serenade is an English word.

Apologies, I post from my phone, and mis-read your username. I can spell perfectly well, being an English teacher it is a necessity. Also, serenade is an Italian word. It won't happen again though.

Az, I was responding to his pedantry with a little of my own.

How is it being pedantic asking someone to spell your name correctly JumesZ?

Fair enough, it obviously comes across far bitchier than I'd intended. Apologies Heartserenade, no offence intended.

 Grimtuff wrote:
How is it being pedantic asking someone to spell your name correctly JumesZ?

You're a legend.

 Lord Corellia wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:
How is it being pedantic asking someone to spell your name correctly JumesZ?

You're a legend.

Just to be clear, yes that was a joke.



Back OT- Whilst I do think this is an utterly silly decision by the manager in question, as I already implied earlier in the thread, being a smart-arse and stamping your feet about it won't get you very far with the powers that be.

So does this thread re-open the debate about whether or not FW is acceptable in "normal" games? If I'm not mistaken that was put to bed a while ago due to a combination of people very loudly arguing the point that "GW = FW" and implying that we were some kind of dunce for thinking otherwise when it's so obvious that they're the same company and all their products are meant to be compatible, and GW themselves throwing game balance completely out the window so that most people who actually cared about such a thing didn't even play the game anymore.

Now here we are, years later, arguing the point that FW actually is not GW, and now the implication is that we're a dunce if we consider FW products and GW products to be compatible and try to use them in their stores, because they can't actually be purchased there. It's also incredibly odd to me to see a company effectively competing with itself in this fashion, and I don't think this would be the case if the GW/FW relationship was as it was always said to be.

So which is it? Because it can't be both. If they're the same company and the products are designed to be used together, as it was always argued before, then I would fully expect to be able to use them in GW stores because I already paid GW for the privilege. If that's no longer the case and we're now insisting that FW and GW should be kept separate, then once again I posit that FW products should be considered an unofficial third party product and that their assumed acceptance in "regular" games of 40k is now no longer correct, and people who expect to use FW product need to go back to asking permission first. They clearly are not "designed" to be used together if official GW policy is to disallow that, and according to GW money spent on FW is not the same as money spent on GW product.

I don't even want to get into the absurdity of suggesting that you should buy a whole new army every time you play at a different store, because your old models didn't directly benefit that specific manager.

Game wise, FW=GW.

This discussion is entirely hinged on how badly a manager needs to hit his targets and has nothing to do with the game.

 Sidstyler wrote:
So does this thread re-open the debate about whether or not FW is acceptable in "normal" games?

No, I don't think so, though it's certainly a variant of it.

Think of it another way: should a FLGS allow people to play 30k in their stores? Or even use a significant number of FW models? It's not really the same question as should two players allow each other to play with FW models. In this instance, the store has something at stake (its own profits). Regardless of whether it's a FLGS or a GW retail location, neither store manager has an incentive to allow FW, other than being nice to customers.

If GW perceives that allowing 30k to be played in the GW stores it owns and is essentially willing to subsidize the store in this respect (ie, accept that some of the store's revenues may be moved to another division, in a way that is not easy to track), then they should instruct the stores to allow it. Otherwise, the status quo will remain.

It's a perfectly reasonable answer for a store manager of a FLGS or GW store to say, "Yeah, those are generally ok in 40k, but we don't allow them in the store except in really sparse numbers because it's just not something we can sell, and we have numbers that we have to reach. You should contact GW HQ and give them your feedback on it, and who knows, they might let you buy Forge World stuff here, one day!"

 Talys wrote:

 Sidstyler wrote:
So does this thread re-open the debate about whether or not FW is acceptable in "normal" games?

No, I don't think so, though it's certainly a variant of it.

Think of it another way: should a FLGS allow people to play 30k in their stores? Or even use a significant number of FW models? It's not really the same question as should two players allow each other to play with FW models. In this instance, the store has something at stake (its own profits). Regardless of whether it's a FLGS or a GW retail location, neither store manager has an incentive to allow FW, other than being nice to customers.

If GW perceives that allowing 30k to be played in the GW stores it owns and is essentially willing to subsidize the store in this respect (ie, accept that some of the store's revenues may be moved to another division, in a way that is not easy to track), then they should instruct the stores to allow it. Otherwise, the status quo will remain.

It's a perfectly reasonable answer for a store manager of a FLGS or GW store to say, "Yeah, those are generally ok in 40k, but we don't allow them in the store except in really sparse numbers because it's just not something we can sell, and we have numbers that we have to reach. You should contact GW HQ and give them your feedback on it, and who knows, they might let you buy Forge World stuff here, one day!"

No - it is reasonable for the FLGS to do so - but the GW store is owned by the same folks that own Forge World!

This is a major distinction.

The GW store is not a separate corporate entity - it is part and parcel with Forge World.

But, yes, the OP should call corporate and complain - and in the meantime take his business elsewhere.

The Auld Grump

 Talys wrote:


Think of it another way: should a FLGS allow people to play 30k in their stores? Or even use a significant number of FW models? It's not really the same question as should two players allow each other to play with FW models. In this instance, the store has something at stake (its own profits). Regardless of whether it's a FLGS or a GW retail location, neither store manager has an incentive to allow FW, other than being nice to customers.

If GW perceives that allowing 30k to be played in the GW stores it owns and is essentially willing to subsidize the store in this respect (ie, accept that some of the store's revenues may be moved to another division, in a way that is not easy to track), then they should instruct the stores to allow it. Otherwise, the status quo will remain.

The difference being that a FLGS goes out of business if they don't make enough sales but in the grand scheme of things (besides some accounting magic) it doesn't matter for GW where the money comes from (their store or through the FW web-store; the store manager probably takes a hit on monthly/quarterly bonuses but that's also a policy GW needs to work out for themselves and is not the customer's problem). For GW it's only a policy discussion and not their livelihood.

How they account for and handle things on their end is their problem and they chose to make it harder for the customer to have a simple experience which is made even worse in that the whole problem is about their premium premium line of collector miniatures (they are, after all, not toys anymore).

If FW, their old miniatures, and older games are such a drag for a store to support then they probably should implement some sort of ticket/stub/loyalty card system into their receipts that gives you one hour of playing time on one their tables for each $20 you spend in that store in the last month or so (or whatever ratio they feel is balanced/profitable enough) instead of each store having different rules. That way they could also push people into buying this month's greatest instead of three month old stuff that is so passé in today's retail reality.