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Talys wrote: What matters is enough people love AoS and keep buying books and models to keep it alive, in a way that was sadly NOT true of WHFB in its last years.
Is that actually true, though? Aren't a lot of these so called "limited" releases sticking around a lot longer than they should, or not selling out at all?
They are not selling, in fact, we've just had the best litmus test for this so far, with the rerelease of an existing army from WHFB with an existing playerbase. The Seraphon ltd ed. book is still for sale. The Lizardman 8th version sold out within hours.
So, yeah...
Games Workshop Delenda Est.
Users on ignore- 53.
If you break apart my or anyone else's posts line by line I will not read them.
I've been a 40ker for a while and wanted to try fantasy a while back I bought the island of blood stuff but just couldn't get into it and sold it off. Since AOS was released it intrigued me a whole new start to fantasy!! So after a while I decided to buy into the starter. I'm a noob at the moment but so far I am loving it!!! One of the best starters GW has produced and I'm quite happy ruleswise too!! So why people are having it so much is beyond me. Long may AOS continue because for the life of me i just didn't 'get' WHFB!!!
Automatically Appended Next Post: I meant hating not having. My bad. :-(
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/11/20 20:10:34
People are hating it for a lot of reasons. The big one for me is that the balance in army building is close to non-existent. If you put down 100 of (insert figure name here) on the table, I can put down 130 of the same figure and not even have a sudden death penalty.
That's an extreme example, but trying to figure out a fair game is riddled with problems like that that just get worse with non-identical figures. How many skaven is fair to have per elf in the other guy's army? The only guideline GW gives us is the sudden death rules, which assume that all figures are equal. And the idea that they're all equal is just laughably wrong.
Sword Of Caliban wrote: I've been a 40ker for a while and wanted to try fantasy a while back I bought the island of blood stuff but just couldn't get into it and sold it off. Since AOS was released it intrigued me a whole new start to fantasy!! So after a while I decided to buy into the starter. I'm a noob at the moment but so far I am loving it!!! One of the best starters GW has produced and I'm quite happy ruleswise too!! So why people are having it so much is beyond me. Long may AOS continue because for the life of me i just didn't 'get' WHFB!!!
Automatically Appended Next Post: I meant hating not having. My bad. :-(
because some people want a challenging strategy game and AOS is the kiddie pool in terms of strategy.
Also, check out my history blog: Minimum Wage Historian, a fun place to check out history that often falls between the couch cushions.
Just out of curiosity, Sword of Caliban, how old are you? (Honest question, meaning no mockery whatsoever) And were there any particular parts of WFB that you didn't get?
I think it's unreasonable for people to on one hand say "WHFB wasn't selling well, that's why GW had to kill it", yet say AoS can't be judged by the same metrics used to determine if WHFB was selling "well" (which is really just independent reports and accounts from store owners / etc, since GW isn't breaking down their sales by product line / game system). At least four different store owners have posted in this thread about how they are having a very hard time selling AoS, sometimes even with a previously thriving fantasy community.
There are lots of indications that AoS is not selling better than WHFB. The example above of the Seraphon limited edition book still being available, but the 8th edition Lizardmen book selling out within hours is a good one.
Add to this the fact that there are Many alternate game systems for the fantasy market (much moreso than for the scifi wargaming market) and GW voluntarily gave up a ton of their wargaming market share. This obviously benefits KoW and the like quite a bit, but I hope the market doesn't decrease too much as a result of the biggest player (GW) totally leaving the field!
Talys wrote: The problem with the thought process of "GW should have just made a 9e WHFB and kept loyal WHFB fans happy" is that WHFB accounted for something like 5% of GW's revenue. Seeing as it takes up 30%-40% of the GW models shelf space in most stores that carry it, this just doesn't make sense.
Proof?
I'm not sure there's proof to be had, but from memory the guy who originally floated the AoS rumours on warseer (and got mocked, derided, etc) said 8% of sales, which is close enough to 5% to be much of a muchness. As a sidenote, the thought process should have been: why does fantasy suddenly only account for about 8% of revenue? Instead they just rebooted it again without knowing what was wrong with it, and this time their random 1D6 chart seems to have rolled a 1. Oh well. How can you fix something if you don't know what's wrong with it?
Personally I don't see why 40k players liking Age of Sigmar is a good thing. The 40k players find it a funny secondary game (at the cost of killing fantasy player's main game) and honestly would've bought 40k stuff with that money anyway. You want to increase your audience rather than chop off a portion of it and have your other game's players buying less of their game to buy the new one. I feel like in the end that'd be a net loss. Even if it was more popular than fantasy a lot of those players were already buying anyway and even worse I think it'll be a net loss for 40k if it even cut into their profits at all.
Honestly considering the current GW manager getting rather annoyed about fantasy even being mentioned makes me wonder if I shouldn't just leave GW altogether. I'm buying dark eldar stuff now which is horribly balanced into the game and are under-powered (I like dark eldar's aesthetic), having dealt with my old game being destroyed and re-made into a Frankenstein and having to deal with the constantly annoying prices and finally being told by the manager that I basically don't buy enough and that gamers aren't the target market. If anything GW is trying really hard to just cut off a bunch of players that would otherwise be buying their games. As a customer I've never felt more disillusioned and disgusted as I do now. I'm very close to jumping into another wargame if there were any games I liked the aesthetic and game of. That is not a good sign for GW.
Also seriously why are painters your target market? I don't think the reason why tau sold so much was because they had a nice aesthetic and were not OP. Meanwhile supposedly a void raven bomber hasn't sold for over a year despite dark eldar having some of the prettiest models. If anything GW doesn't get the customer and I feel like they're going to lose big for it.
GW is like the imperium in the 41st millenium. It's the largest power but is dying a slow death. Also nothing ever changes and everything is grim-dark and every victory is pyrrhic (won but lost more in the end) in nature.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/11/20 21:53:43
Necros wrote: In that case then Slaan should be able to also just wish away their enemies. Roll 4+ at the start of the battle to see if you win?
No no, in accordance with the behavioural rules that are in the game, you have to sing "If you wish upon a star" before being able to claim victory.
You're both wrong -
The Auld Grump
Kilkrazy wrote:When I was a young boy all my wargames were narratively based because I played with my toy soldiers and vehicles without the use of any rules.
The reason I bought rules and became a real wargamer was because I wanted a properly thought out structure to govern the action instead of just making things up as I went along.
Kilkrazy wrote: The price on UK Amazon is about £60 including postage, which is 20% discount. This is not a fire sale price.
US Amazon price is $65 with free shipping vs GW's $125 with free shipping = 48% discount.
T
''Fire sale'' is not a good prospect for AoS.
One more data point:
Was at my LGS today and the AoS box sets are 50% off and everything else AoS is 25% off.
Island of Blood was also 50% off.
T
At that price, pick up Isle of Blood - those figures can be used with many other games, and are a bargain at the price.
The Auld Grump
Kilkrazy wrote:When I was a young boy all my wargames were narratively based because I played with my toy soldiers and vehicles without the use of any rules.
The reason I bought rules and became a real wargamer was because I wanted a properly thought out structure to govern the action instead of just making things up as I went along.
@Korniov - the 5% thing (or 8%) of Fantasy Battle in GW sales is just something I've seen on Dakka. In chatting with various store managers and owners, it seems to be about right. Two things are for certain in every independent that I've run across:
1. 40k sales are way, way bigger than Fantasy sales - by an order of magnitude. Regardless of the actual percentage, I don't think there's anyone that seriously believes otherwise.
2. Fantasy sales are so small that if 40k didn't exist, there's no way they would put up with GW for Fantasy (as opposed to other manufacturers who can be bought though distribution, and don't have minimum stocking and all that).
Talys wrote: What matters is enough people love AoS and keep buying books and models to keep it alive, in a way that was sadly NOT true of WHFB in its last years.
Is that actually true, though? Aren't a lot of these so called "limited" releases sticking around a lot longer than they should, or not selling out at all?
What I actually meant is, what matters is if there are enough people who love AoS to keep buying stuff. I'm not saying that there are, at all.
Take me, for example. I really like the Starter models and the Sigmarites. I bought one of everything. Now, I won't make another AoS purchase until there are more sigmarite models, at which point, I'll buy one more box of whatever is released. I mean, yippee, there's no way GW will be able to sustain the Fantasy setting on that. And I'm a guy who likes GW and GW models.
Contrast that to 40k: in the last year, I've bought more boxes of almost everything on the Astartes menu, including all the old stuff li8ke dreadnoughts, Predators, drop pods, scouts, and of course multiples of all the new stuff. Next year, I'll buy more razorbacks, more predators, more scouts, more tacticals, and more dreadnoughts. And the year after that... I won't be happy until I have way more models painted in various chapters than I could achieve in a lifetime with nothing to do other than build models. But I have no interest in building a Sigmarite equivalent (whatever they call a chapter, I forget ).
It's not that I don't like the models. I love them. But I don't want to build a legion of them.
What makes me want to build apocalypse size armies of 40k stuff? I have no idea. It's just one of the favorite things for me to do in my spare time.
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I also have a hard time believing the percentage. The percentage I've heard stated at one point was 15, 18 and 20% at different times (20% during 'end times') and yet the GW manager seems to state it as a smaller and smaller slice as time goes by just as others seem to state its size.
I've also heard GW axed it because it was too basic LotR style fantasy whereas AoS wasn't. Just like how imperial guard used to be imperial guard rather than astra militarum. Ugh some of these names are idiotic.
We also know from Games Workshop that in 2014-2015 (not exactly, but the period is close enough) was something like $60-70 million. It's not possible to get the exact number, because Mail Order is such a large component, but we do know it's GBP28.5m + some percentage of GBP25.6m.
So if we call the top 5 games A, B, C, D, E, and WHFB X:
1. A>B>C>D>E>X 2. A+B+C+D+E < 125 (other games exist) 3. A = 65
Let's give WHFB the most favorable scenario, where BCDE are all very close in sales, and WHFB accounts for almost all of the other sales:
A + 4B < 125 4B + F < 125 - 65 4B + F < 60
Assume F is almost, but just under = B:
5F < 60 F < 12
So, we may deduce that in a perfect world where WHFB is *just under* the sales of X-Wing AND there are no other games other than the 6 above, it would be 18% of 40k
Now, nobody in this universe believes that this is the case; if you took a more realistic scenario, where the #2 game were about double the size of the #5 game (xwing versus hordes), and applied the same math, you'd get an upper bound of WHFB of closer to something like 9%. And that would mean that WHFB were as popular as Hordes.
Add in other games like Malifaux and Infinity, and take other non-collectible miniatures like Reaper, and assume that WHFB is more than just a hair less popular than Hordes... and suddenly, that percentage shrinks a lot.
TLDR: GW accounts for 65 / 125 million of the NA miniatures market, which is significant because all the other non-GW games can only add up to 60m. WHFB doesn't make it into the top 5. Therefore, if you do the math, whatever the percentage is, it's gotta be pretty small.
EDIT: I actually goofed it up a little, because WHFB should come under the 65m, not the 60m. But whatever; it won't shift it that much (the upper limit in the perfect, impossible universe where hordes, xwing, and WHFB are almost the same, should be $15m, not $12m).
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/11/21 02:41:47
1. ICv2 is horribly inaccurate. I know it's one of the few sources of numbers we have, but I don't value it much higher than anecdotal evidence to be honest. If you only care about NA figures, the only somewhat reliable figures we have are the Chapterhouse law suit numbers where we know there was $647k sales from 7th edition WHFB and $1,645k from 5th edition 40k. So at that point 40k was selling roughly 2.5 times more in North America.
2. In previous threads I believe we guessed that WHFB was more popular in Europe than it was in NA. NA is only a third of GW's revenue, even if WHFB was a complete flop in NA it could still be a significant proportion of sales.
Granted I don't think WHFB was massively popular compared to 40k, reality is we only have some very shaky numbers thrown around by unreliable sources.
I certainly don't think it was an order of magnitude like you suggested, Talys, though maybe after 8th edition it was that small.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/11/21 03:52:26
@AllSeeingSkink - I'm willing to happily concede any or all of the points that you've raised. I'm only using ICv2 for hard numbers because we literally have nothing else to go by. I'm also happy to concede that I may be underestimating WHFB sales in 2014, though I really do think (without actual solid evidence) that we're talking an order of magnitude or more. And to be clear, I mean a factor of 10 -- or 10% WHFB or less versus 90% 40k or more.
Let's take the hard numbers out for a moment, and let's go by rankings, and a bit of a gut check though.
1. Star Wars X-Wing, Star Trek Attack Wing, Warmachines, Hordes -- do you think WHFB in 2014 outperformed any of these? I don't think so.
2. How about Infinity? It 'feels' like it's more. But who knows? How about Malifaux? I think that's closer. Maybe somewhere between Malifaux and Hordes. Maybe even lower than Malifaux; I don't know.
3. Even if ICv2 is not *accurate* things like rankings and generalizations are usually in the right ballpark. In other words, WHFB isn't the #2 game, and X-Wing isn't the #1 game. No matter how you cut it, I doubt WHFB ranks better than #6. And does anyone really think that Hordes and War Machine EACH come anywhere close to 20% of 40k's sales, making them, combined, 40% (ie Privateer Press does $100 million in sales)?
4. If you disagree with this, peg WHFB somewhere in the #2 - #5 spot (say which), and attribute a percentage to it. Then fill in the spots above with a percentage, and see what numbers could possibly make sense. Unless you think 40k accounts for 20% of the market and all the other games account for 15% or less (leaving 5% for everything past the top 6), it won't work.
Keep in mind that I'm not talking about player base, or enthusiasm or number of gaming groups. I'm only speaking of dollars sold at retail, because at the end of the day... that's really the only thing that matters to determine future development.
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Regarding your 1 and 2 It's really hard to say. The tricky thing about it is even if you manage to guess at WHFB's numbers in North America, North America is only about a third of global revenue and I personally don't think is representative of the rest of the world.
GW has seen the largest growth in NA over recent years and that growth, IMO, has been off the back of 40k, not WHFB. Where as I think in Europe the community does have a stronger attachment to WHFB.
GW has 3 large regions of revenue. The UK, Europe and the USA. Each are roughly 30% each and the last bit is made of up of the rest of the world (which is mostly Australia). You can't really make any judgements based on the numbers of only 1 of those regions.
I think it's a mistake to project the numbers from one region (which are on shaky grounds to begin with) to global revenue.
Beyond that, we know ICv2 numbers aren't accurate and can be off by 10's of millions. As far as I'm aware, they are simply projections, not a proper analysis. I believe they just survey a bunch of stores and then project that on to a larger scale. They could be off by miles, especially if they aren't surveying GW's own stores or mail order.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/11/21 06:14:34
The percentages are a bit of a red herring, regardless. AllSeeingSkink notes that GW had to reveal sales numbers for 7th edition fantasy and 40k for the Chapterhouse case, and it was way higher than what is being speculated above.
If 8th edition then killed fantasy interest (perhaps by requiring higher model counts and making the game more random) it is entirely GW's fault. Their actions caused it to die, so saying they needed to take action to kill it because it was dying is a circular argument!
It baffles me that some folks try to point to poor performance of fantasy as justification for AoS. It is GW's refusal to learn from their mistakes that both killed fantasy and is very quickly dooming AoS.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2015/11/21 06:43:06
RiTides wrote: The percentages are a bit of a red herring, regardless. AllSeeingSkink notes that GW had to reveal sales numbers for 7th edition fantasy and 40k for the Chapterhouse case, and it was way higher than what is being speculated above.
If 8th edition then killed fantasy interest (perhaps by requiring higher model counts and making the game more random) it is entirely GW's fault. Their actions caused it to die, so saying they needed to take action to kill it because it was dying is a circular argument!
It baffles me that some folks try to point to poor performance of fantasy as justification for AoS. It is GW's refusal to learn from their mistakes that both killed fantasy and is very quickly dooming AoS.
I think we have a winner.
The failure of 8th edition was caused by GW's poor decisions and their way to 'fix' it with AOS shows more of that poor decision making not based in any kind of research data and only on "well, we think this is what's happening."
Also, check out my history blog: Minimum Wage Historian, a fun place to check out history that often falls between the couch cushions.
Out of curiosity was there any problem with Fantasy's sales back under 7th ed?
I know locally at least I thought our 8th ed tourney circuit was healthy when we drew 25 players to a statewide tourney. Except the vets there would go on about how that same tourney a couple of years before under 7th ed drew 200 people.
Fafnir wrote: Oh, I certainly vote with my dollar, but the problem is that that is not enough. The problem with the 'vote with your dollar' response is that it doesn't take into account why we're not buying the product. I want to enjoy 40k enough to buy back in. It was my introduction to traditional games, and there was a time when I enjoyed it very much. I want to buy 40k, but Gamesworkshop is doing their very best to push me away, and simply not buying their product won't tell them that.
jonolikespie wrote: Out of curiosity was there any problem with Fantasy's sales back under 7th ed?
I know locally at least I thought our 8th ed tourney circuit was healthy when we drew 25 players to a statewide tourney. Except the vets there would go on about how that same tourney a couple of years before under 7th ed drew 200 people.
We don't really have any hard numbers to know for sure. I tend to think in 7th WHFB was struggling but doing well enough to keep its head above water. As I mentioned earlier WHFB 7th rulebook sold $647k in North America vs $1,645k for 5th ed 40k rulebook. While that's not great, I think it's good enough to justify its existence (especially if it was doing better in Europe like I tend to think it was).
I will admit I stopped following WHFB with 8th because the more random rules and larger army sizes killed it for me, it also killed the local interest in the game. It went from being easy to find a pick up game of WHFB to being annoying.
I'm sure if it weren't for 8th culling a lot of the old veterans, AoS would have gotten an even worse reception (yes, I think it could have been even worse ).
Also 25 players for a statewide tournament sounds tiny. Back in 6th edition we used to get that many at the local club for WHFB events (Melbourne's eastern suburbs). When I first started in the late 90's on any given Friday there'd be around 10 people looking for a game of WHFB just at the local store. Unless the state you're talking about is the Northern Territory and the tourny was being held in Yuendumu, in which case 25 is awesome.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/11/21 15:28:43
AllSeeingSkink wrote: Also 25 players for a statewide tournament sounds tiny. Back in 6th edition we used to get that many at the local club for WHFB events (Melbourne's eastern suburbs). When I first started in the late 90's on any given Friday there'd be around 10 people looking for a game of WHFB just at the local store. Unless the state you're talking about is the Northern Territory and the tourny was being held in Yuendumu, in which case 25 is awesome.
QLD, so I guess when I say 'state wide' what I really mean is Brisbane, Gold Cost and a couple of people driving down for the weekend from god only knows where.
Fafnir wrote: Oh, I certainly vote with my dollar, but the problem is that that is not enough. The problem with the 'vote with your dollar' response is that it doesn't take into account why we're not buying the product. I want to enjoy 40k enough to buy back in. It was my introduction to traditional games, and there was a time when I enjoyed it very much. I want to buy 40k, but Gamesworkshop is doing their very best to push me away, and simply not buying their product won't tell them that.
In the end, after so much talk, the famed "percentages" about how little Fantasy was selling are just a bunch of speculation plus anecdotical evidence, and only based on North American data that can't even be trusted.
So no proof at all whatsoever.
I know in some places of Continental Europe Fantasy, even in its darkest hours of 8th edition, was selling as much as 40k. Still anecdotical evidence, so I won't be coming up with some speculative statistics about how Fantasy provided a high % of GW's total revenue.
In any case, it's still amusing people seem to blame the game and/or its players for "not selling". The players did not neglect the product, change the rules to force themselves to buy twice the amount of models, then skyrocketed the price of said models. GW did. While more and more better written, friendlier and more affordable alternatives appeared in the market one after another.
Progress is like a herd of pigs: everybody is interested in the produced benefits, but nobody wants to deal with all the resulting gak.
GW customers deserve every bit of outrageous princing they get.
@Korinov - There is also no proof that any other game is doing better than Age of Sigmar. Really, everything that we're talking about is anecdotal, because as has been said, there are no numbers to be had. However, you can walk into any gaming store, and just ask them how WHFB did in the last couple of years, and I doubt you'll hear a store owner tell you that it was awesome.
@Skink - You sad regarding the chapterhouse case: "$647k sales from 7th edition WHFB and $1,645k from 5th edition 40k." Is that $647,000 USD versus $1,645,000 USD? What does that even mean? That can't be 40k's North American sales. I mean, that number is just way too small; it would peg North America at less than 1% of GW's annual sales during 5e...
@MWHistorian & RiTides - I think it's a perfectly fine theory that 8e hurt the WHFB community and WHFB sales, although there could have also been other contributing reasons that people left WHFB, such as other games. But you need to act in the present and you can't rewrite the past. If GW went back to 7e-esque rules, would it help? The damage is done, so to speak, right? Rather than try to win back some of the people who left (this is a difficult task), GW opted to try to win some people who would never have considered WHFB at all.
Certainly, it's not the fault of players for WHFB not selling. But it IS reality that WHFB was not selling well enough for Games Workshop to continue it at its vector.
Games Workshop wants to be a company that builds relatively expensive infantry models and complex elite models, and really expensive centerpiece models, paired with expensive books, for people who want them and can afford them. It doesn't want to be a company that makes cheap models and cheap rules that 14 year-olds can get into with allowance money, because it doesn't see the possibility of its next quarter billion dollars that way. Whether it's right or not, it thinks that the universe of young teenagers with allowance money who are interested in wargaming and miniatures is not large enough to generate hundreds of millions of dollars, so it focuses on the market of employed persons to whom a few hundred (or even a few thousand) dollars a year on a hobby is okay if it's something they want to do.
In any case, it's not good enough for Games Workshop that people buy some models, are happy with a game, and every 5 years or so buy some new rules that they can keep using the models they bought 15 years ago on. In this way, they will never make another quarter billion dollars, because the niche isn't big enough. Instead, they need to create an atmosphere where the relatively small customerbase feels compelled to go out, every single year, and buy more and more models and grow their army, and reasons to buy their hundred dollar campaign adventures and dozen or so fifty dollar rulebooks a year.
I'm not saying it's a great idea, because after all, the next generation of people who can afford 40k/Fantasy need to start somewhere.
But the reality is, to perpetuate this massive profit machine, you need games that sell a crap ton of models, and WHFB wasn't doing that. Given that GW has the time and money to experiment, and they did not value the current state of WHFB, they decided to do AoS.... something different.
I applaud them for trying. Why not try to do something different? Plus, I actually enjoy the game, though, as I said, I have no desire to rush out and buy models that I'll spend my next thousand hours on, and if they want 40k levels of success, they need some people who feel that way. Maybe there are enough such people; maybe there aren't. On top of that, I don't think WHFB was attracting very many new players.
I don't think AoS will be successful in the sense of growing to the #2 spot in miniature wargames, or to getting sales back to what they were during 6e WHFB. I do think that it will increase the sales from where they were in 8e, but as I have argued, this is not a very high bar to beat. Plus, it might not be enough.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2015/11/21 18:51:34
Talys wrote: @Korinov - There is also no proof that any other game is doing better than Age of Sigmar. Really, everything that we're talking about is anecdotal, because as has been said, there are no numbers to be had.
Yes.
However, you can walk into any gaming store, and just ask them how WHFB did in the last couple of years, and I doubt you'll hear a store owner tell you that it was awesome.
There are many gaming stores around the world, all of them dependent of what the local community of players does. As such you'll be likely to find vastly different scenarios from one store to the next.
In example, Fantasy has been virtually dead for years in my FGLS, but now it's experiencing quite a revival with a bunch of new, young players. They play mostly 8th edition, although having talked to them, most seem open to trying older editions, and perhaps even other rulesystems. It's not like they're buying tons of models anyway, as several of them are either finishing high school or beginning college, so not much disposable income and GW's prices aren't exactly helping either. Sadly the store, as far as miniatures goes, carries GW, Infinity and little else (most of the non-GW models I have, I've bought them online).
And again, local-specific, anecdotical evidence at best.
Progress is like a herd of pigs: everybody is interested in the produced benefits, but nobody wants to deal with all the resulting gak.
GW customers deserve every bit of outrageous princing they get.
@Korinov - I hear you. I still don't think many people believe that WHFB ranks higher than xwing or war machine, though, and someone would have to provide some kind of evidence to the contrary to convince me.
I think there are many companies like Mantic that would be thrilled to have WHFB/AoS levels of sales -- but GW isn't one of them. They want another property that gives them LoTR type numbers, if not 40k, because otherwise it turns I to a rounding error that has to be managed and a constant disappointment. Keep in mind that I'm not saying that AoS won't also be that... Just that the only thing we know for sure is that GW wasn't happy with WHFB's numbers.
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