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Might be useful to stop and think about why they would not want to make new games for a minute.

When I say "new games," I mean something original with it's own models, rules, etc. Not an offshoot of an existing game.

GW has an interest in expanding the market for their existing games. There is a finite amount of money in the current market for playing tabletop games, as demonstrated by what the company earns each year. If they were to create a new game, one that really appeals to people - would compete for that money. They don't have an interest in competing with themselves.

That's why we see so many new releases that are strongly related to existing properties. Battle for Calth / Burning of Prospero, for example, sell more Space Marine models to people who already identify with the brand. They don't increase what people have to spend, so much as make sure people are not spending it elsewhere.

Finding new channels to sell games is how they would expand the market. Bringing younger players in, creating more ways to appeal to women, tying releases to other brands & forms of entertainment, reducing the cost to produce to remove barriers to entry, advertising to groups the company doesn't currently reach - this is how a company would increase the money available to be spent on gaming. New products and systems are the way that company would ensure it's being spent.

You can see an example of this with the current Hasbro / Mattel acquisition talks. The value of each company would grow by reducing competition and appealing to each other's market. While it's likely there is a lot of overlap in who they consider their customers, a combined entity would be able to market new products / ideas by reducing competition and risk associated with doing so. They can retire brands that exist but are not performing very well, which frees up dollars to be spent on the new things coming out.

Other than international releases (like the Japanese Space Marines we saw earlier this year,) I don't see GW as a company taking big steps to expand the market. Sure, there will eventually be a plastic Sisters release, and that will earn them some points with new customers who might not ordinarily buy their product. But their business is designed to be comfortably profitable, they pay dividends to shareholders. They don't use their cash to expand the brand beyond what it is, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It means we will enjoy existing games for a long time to come.

At least, until the new Hasbro / Mattel entity scoops up GW and retires the grimdark in favor of a tactical My Little Pony line of miniatures / tabletop game. They have the market power to do that.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:

There is no reason for GW to make an effort if people keep buying subpar products (not the mini's as swirly gak aside they are solid) from them rather than looking elsewhere but for reasons unknown people seem GW brand loyal to fault

Except this doesn't seem to have been the case.
Any good franchise is going to have a loyal core of fans; however it seems that GW could recruit new fans and keep them for a while, but they were bleeding out and losing most of their long term fanbase. That's a problem in a hobby like wargaming because the long term ones are often those who organise and keep game clubs/groups going and provide players for the new players to play against.

They also nearly lost fantasy to continued reduction in sales and fanbase.

The fact that they've started to turn things around in a big way and thus had a huge supply problem to meet the massive rise in demand over the last half a year or so kind of shows that GW did have problems and that addressing them has started to have a positive effect. Sure they still don't have the tightest rules system out there; but they've done a lot to push closer toward it.

IMO, part of the problem also lies with the exodus of talent that GW has lost over the years: Andy Chambers, Paul Sawyer, God AKA Rick Priestly, that Space Hulk guy who's name escapes me and even Jervis Johnson. Jervis Johnson seems to get stick for some strange reason, but when he's allowed free reign away from GW top brass i.e Kirby, his historics were pretty damn good

Still, GW's loss is Warlord's gain, so I really shouldn't complain.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Age of Sigmar. New.

Shadespire. New.

Dreadfleet. New.

Deathwatch Overkill. New.

Gangs of Commoragh. New.

So to answer the OP? Evidence suggests not, no.

AOS is new, but it's hardly anything to write home about

AOS was one of the reasons why I abandoned GW.

 techsoldaten wrote:
GW has an interest in expanding the market for their existing games. There is a finite amount of money in the current market for playing tabletop games, as demonstrated by what the company earns each year. If they were to create a new game, one that really appeals to people - would compete for that money. They don't have an interest in competing with themselves.

This is a really mistaken way of looking at things. There is a finite amount of money in the current market, but GW doesn't have anywhere near 100% of that money. Large amounts of money are going to companies that are selling games in various genres that GW doesn't compete in. For example, where's GW's competition for X-Wing now that Aeronautica Imperialis is OOP? All the money from customers who want to buy an air combat game is going to FFG. They might be avoiding competition with their own games, but they're also avoiding competition with other companies and conceding those sales without a fight.

That's why we see so many new releases that are strongly related to existing properties. Battle for Calth / Burning of Prospero, for example, sell more Space Marine models to people who already identify with the brand. They don't increase what people have to spend, so much as make sure people are not spending it elsewhere.

But this directly contradicts what you said previously, about not competing with themselves. Making a new space marine game competes with GW's existing space marine sales. As you say, those sales are going to people who already identify with the brand, people who are likely going to buy some other space marines if the alternate game didn't exist. They do very little to bring in money that GW doesn't already have. So if that's not competing with themselves then I don't know what is.

Other than international releases (like the Japanese Space Marines we saw earlier this year,) I don't see GW as a company taking big steps to expand the market. Sure, there will eventually be a plastic Sisters release, and that will earn them some points with new customers who might not ordinarily buy their product. But their business is designed to be comfortably profitable, they pay dividends to shareholders. They don't use their cash to expand the brand beyond what it is, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. It means we will enjoy existing games for a long time to come.

IOW, GW is a badly-run business. A business that is not looking to expand its market and increase its long-term profits is failing on a very basic level. GW is settling for mediocrity, and we should not praise them for it.

Yeah, FFG, as an example, ain't perfect, but it's a favourite company of mine, and seems to be doing a hell of a lot more with the tools at its disposal than GW seems to be doing.

GW ceded a lot of ground to smaller, niche companies during the Kirby years, and for people like me, there is no reason to go back.

I get better and cheaper paints from Vallejo and Tamiya

And I have a wealth of new games choices at my disposal, many of which are first class. And I'm not just talking historics here.

I've learned to live without GW these days, but to be fair, some of their new minis look amazing, but I prefer a good ruleset over a good mini.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
IMO, part of the problem also lies with the exodus of talent that GW has lost over the years: Andy Chambers, Paul Sawyer, God AKA Rick Priestly, that Space Hulk guy who's name escapes me and even Jervis Johnson. Jervis Johnson seems to get stick for some strange reason, but when he's allowed free reign away from GW top brass i.e Kirby, his historics were pretty damn good

Still, GW's loss is Warlord's gain, so I really shouldn't complain.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Age of Sigmar. New.

Shadespire. New.

Dreadfleet. New.

Deathwatch Overkill. New.

Gangs of Commoragh. New.

So to answer the OP? Evidence suggests not, no.

AOS is new, but it's hardly anything to write home about

AOS was one of the reasons why I abandoned GW.

So you not liking a game means it’s not new or innovative, or otherwise a reason for you not to count it?

It was new, but it certainly wasn't innovative, unless you consider deliberately alienating your core fanbase on release day as being innovative!

It sells more than Warhammer managed by all accounts?

This isn’t a ‘how very dare you not enjoy AoS’ thing. I’m just confused as to why you not enjoying a given game means it’s not innovative?

The thing is a developer has two choices - totally innovate or copy-cat the same.

If they copycat the innovation fans cry foul; if they innovate the copycat fans cry out instead.

A company cannot win on either count unless it makes two products for the same market; which is expensive.

As I said before, as GW has been around for 30 years, I see nothing wrong with releasing a game that has the same theme and even partial shared ruleset with games that have been off the market for nearly 20 of those 30 years.

Think about it guys.....there are a vast number of GW gamers that were barely alive when the last of the Specialist Games assortment stopped being sold. I'm 35 and Necromunda came out over half my lifetime ago.

 AegisGrimm wrote:
As I said before, as GW has been around for 30 years, I see nothing wrong with releasing a game that has the same theme and even partial shared ruleset with games that have been off the market for nearly 20 of those 30 years.

Think about it guys.....there are a vast number of GW gamers that were barely alive when the last of the Specialist Games assortment stopped being sold. I'm 35 and Necromunda came out over half my lifetime ago.

Two questions arise from this comment:

1. Why did they stop producing specialist games in the first place?

2. Why can't they come up with something just as good as Space Hulk, or Mordheim or Epic or whatever.

People bang on about Calth and Assassins, or whatever its called, but I've yet to see anybody on dakka speak of those new games in the same revered tones as they would Space Hulk or Necromunda.

They didn’t feel they were profitable enough. For all we actually know, they could’ve been loss making at that point.

You not liking a given game doesn’t mean they’re not achieving point 2.

As for the last one? For the same reason I’ll never be able to hold the new Star Wars films in the same reverence as the original trilogy. I’m not a kid anymore, and as a result I’m simply not as impressionable.

I don’t hold any games in as high esteem as I do Space Marine/Titan Legions, 2nd Ed or Necromunda, because those formative years are long gone.

I have to go 100% with Peregrine on this.

The only reason anyone plays 40k 8th and AoS is inertia. If they had been published by anyone else, they'd have a smaller player base than the average free pdf on Wargame Vault. That anyone would defend any aspect of their rules design boggles the mind.

I think its rather insulting to suggest that fans of a franchise are only fans because of some kind of "fault" in their personal mental state/character/etc....

At that point you're not just saying that a game system has faults (honestly show me any game that hasn't got any); but actually turning around and insulting the fanbase directly.


Also many of the skirmish games GW has done are either very new or were one-off releases*. Of course they haven't got the same legacy fanbase as a game which was out with support for many years previously. It's kind of nuts to compare (heck new Necromunda isn't even out yet) .



* Honestly I think under Kirby GW wasn't looking at side games being major releases; they were short term products designed to be a one investment one return affair for GW; rather than being dedicated games supported long term with their own internal team. Considering how they are making big news of the internal teams it might also be that those games were previously a sort of "fill in" job in that staff were drafted in from other teams to do bits here and there.

 Overread wrote:
I think its rather insulting to suggest that fans of a franchise are only fans because of some kind of "fault" in their personal mental state/character/etc....

At that point you're not just saying that a game system has faults (honestly show me any game that hasn't got any); but actually turning around and insulting the fanbase directly.

Stockholm syndrome was maybe too strong a term. Let's just say attachment to the IP, decades of investing in GW minis, and the size of the gamer ecosystem. But definitely all laurels of past glory. The current rules have no redeeming value and wouldn't get a second look from anyone if they weren't GW rules.

Although, thinking back to ETC discussions when AoS first came out, UK gamers definitely made an irrational amount of effort pushing AoS for the sole reason it was a GW game. Other areas were able to switch to 9th age (or the vague idea of an 9th age at the time) or KoW but the UK team would hear none of it and campaigned to make AoS the flagship tournament game when it was still just the 4 pages with no points.

To be fair I think the UK AoS was pushing hard because they could see that if Sigma failed fantasy was going to die without question. Basically even though it destroyed the lore gameplay and almost everything of fantasy - Sigma was its last ditch attempt at being saved.

Right now we are even in the fortunate position where GW has released new armies and models for it and we cean hope that with the big success that 40K has had; we'll see Sigma get a tighter better rules system released for it. A repair fix that might be a few years coming though.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I have to go 100% with Peregrine on this.

The only reason anyone plays 40k 8th and AoS is inertia. If they had been published by anyone else, they'd have a smaller player base than the average free pdf on Wargame Vault. That anyone would defend any aspect of their rules design boggles the mind.

I don't think the facts on the ground support this assertion. 8th edition is bringing people back to 40k after long absences, and also new players continue to join. 8th edition 40k or AOS aren't going to win any awards for best miniature game ever, but people are having gun and are excited, which is very different from the mood in 6ht/7th.

If you're arguing that GW simply has the advatnage of being well established and in every shop, with a rich lore and massive model range, then of course, yes, GW's rules are not it's strength. But the inertia you describe is built on far more than personality quirks, but on the very real advantages of playing GW games.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Where are the game designers and the talent to give us new games like Bloodbowl, Space Hulk, and Necromunda. For all its faults, GW used to be pretty good at trying something new in the 1980s and 1990s.

Churning out brilliant games for the competition.

A lot of the new games fit the same theme of being designed to sell a minis bundle. I've heard people talk about the minis but not the games. Last time I checked you could get the game part of Calthwaite (no minis) on ebay for peanuts.

I really liked lost patrol, but I fear for its longevity. By the 2nd game we were already talking about house rules to add depth. We could have probably come up with a better game in an afternoon.

Herzlos wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:


Where are the game designers and the talent to give us new games like Bloodbowl, Space Hulk, and Necromunda. For all its faults, GW used to be pretty good at trying something new in the 1980s and 1990s.

Churning out brilliant games for the competition.

A lot of the new games fit the same theme of being designed to sell a minis bundle. I've heard people talk about the minis but not the games. Last time I checked you could get the game part of Calthwaite (no minis) on ebay for peanuts.

I really liked lost patrol, but I fear for its longevity. By the 2nd game we were already talking about house rules to add depth. We could have probably come up with a better game in an afternoon.

This is actually something that was commented upon, dunno remember WHERE, recently: up until very recently, even with the Roundtree directive, the side-games were seen as just glorified bundles of models. With recent successes from BB and ST, they decided to change the ethos. SoH has a bit of that but in truth, as far as Hewitt is concerned, only Shadespire has yet been released properly under the new ethos.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I have to go 100% with Peregrine on this.

The only reason anyone plays 40k 8th and AoS is inertia. If they had been published by anyone else, they'd have a smaller player base than the average free pdf on Wargame Vault. That anyone would defend any aspect of their rules design boggles the mind.

I've gone back to 8th edition after giving up 40K at the advent of 6th.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I have to go 100% with Peregrine on this.

The only reason anyone plays 40k 8th and AoS is inertia. If they had been published by anyone else, they'd have a smaller player base than the average free pdf on Wargame Vault. That anyone would defend any aspect of their rules design boggles the mind.

I've gone back to 8th edition after giving up 40K at the advent of 6th.

Sure, but was it because you wanted to play 40k and it looked less unplayable than previous editions, or would you have started this game up if it were a random independent ruleset you found on freewargamerules.com?

Also Reddit's Warhammer sections are usually a stream of "new to the hobby and jumping in with AoS" or "been gone for 5/10 years and getting back into it with AoS" posts.

If AoS/40k 8th didn't have their own game merits and relied mostly on devoted fans I don't think we'd see those kinds of players appearing with such frequency.

Baron Klatz wrote:
Also Reddit's Warhammer sections are usually a stream of "new to the hobby and jumping in with AoS" or "been gone for 5/10 years and getting back into it with AoS" posts.

If AoS/40k 8th didn't have their own game merits and relied mostly on devoted fans I don't think we'd see those kinds of players appearing with such frequency.

It depends on why the new players are coming; because friends play? Because they found a gw store? Because they researched the hobby and decided it was the best?

The thing that a lot of people that hate simple games fail to realize is that simpler "watered down" versions of complex games simply appeal to a wider audience and sell more.

It is true to me that if AOS or 40k 8th had been released by Joe Bob Games in Mobile Alabama or whatever that few if any would be playing them... but what that is is simply player psychology in motion.

People have a large investment in their existing collections for them to simply set fire to them on youtube and walk away. And people will play what others are playing no matter the quality of the game.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I have to go 100% with Peregrine on this.

The only reason anyone plays 40k 8th and AoS is inertia. If they had been published by anyone else, they'd have a smaller player base than the average free pdf on Wargame Vault. That anyone would defend any aspect of their rules design boggles the mind.

I've gone back to 8th edition after giving up 40K at the advent of 6th.

Sure, but was it because you wanted to play 40k and it looked less unplayable than previous editions, or would you have started this game up if it were a random independent ruleset you found on freewargamerules.com?

I see what you are trying to show with this question, but the fact remain that IP, brand and the "flavour" of a setting are legitimate reasons of why someone plays a game, or reads a book, or watchs a movie or TV series.

Yes. I wanted to play Warhammer 40k, and many other people do. I like the settings, the feeling of the universe and the models. And if the rules are just good enough, its enough for me.
I'll have three times more fun playing in the 40k universe with mediocre rules than playing a game with a bland setting that doesn't appelas to me but with much better rules. (Now I'll say that I have actually use my GW and warhammer miniatures in many other game systems that I have been using trought the years: Kings of War, Frostgrave, Deadzone, Warmachine, etc...)

This is very similar to the discussion about WoW-killers: "Look guys, all those other MMORPG are much better, they offer new content, fresh, and innovative! Why aren't you playing them!". Because at the end of the day, what is fun for someone isn't objetive: People can have more fun playing a worse game than a better one you prefer. Yes, it is how it works. People doesn't have any obligation to play, use, see, read, the BEST product in the market. And no one has a right to insult them. One has his right to give his opinion about the objetive values of a product, of course, but many, many times you have just straight attacked the playerbase, like another Sean Drake, and thats not good

 Peregrine wrote:
It only works "fine" in open play because you don't play the game as-written, you play a custom version of the game with self-imposed limits on army construction. If you play strict RAW and choose the optimum strategy at all points the winner of every game is the player with the most money to spend on GW models.

(And that's on top of idiotic stuff like models on sufficiently large bases being unable to be engaged in melee combat because the rules require contact between the models, not between the bases.)

Very few games work out of the box with "game-as-written", house ruling/adhoc has always been a part of wargaming since it first dawned. Also by this logic, isn't matched play itself a custom version of the game with imposed (perhaps not "self-imposed") limits on army construction? You seem to be implying that Open is badwrongfun because you can't use it "out of the box" but matched play isn't out of the box anyways.

It depends on why the new players are coming; because friends play? Because they found a gw store? Because they researched the hobby and decided it was the best?

Likely a mix of those and several other factors but the fact remains AoS and 40k 8th aren't just playerbases of stubborn fans. They're a big mix of gamers that love the IPs and the fun game systems.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

 AegisGrimm wrote:
As I said before, as GW has been around for 30 years, I see nothing wrong with releasing a game that has the same theme and even partial shared ruleset with games that have been off the market for nearly 20 of those 30 years.

Think about it guys.....there are a vast number of GW gamers that were barely alive when the last of the Specialist Games assortment stopped being sold. I'm 35 and Necromunda came out over half my lifetime ago.

Two questions arise from this comment:

1. Why did they stop producing specialist games in the first place?

2. Why can't they come up with something just as good as Space Hulk, or Mordheim or Epic or whatever.

People bang on about Calth and Assassins, or whatever its called, but I've yet to see anybody on dakka speak of those new games in the same revered tones as they would Space Hulk or Necromunda.

I'll fix that for ya. I speak of those games with the same revered tones.
Execution Force has only one mission and once you beat it (many folks only ever play the first mission of Space Hulk over and over btw) you can try it at higher challenge.
Don't lose any assassins next time. Infiltrate without alerting guards, at all. Kill the chaos sorcerer in fewer turns. Etc.

B@Calth was my hope for the new 40k until they adapted AoS ( a game I also like for its streamlined approach) to 40k.

Chikout wrote:
You should listen to the interview James Hewitt did for Necromunda with drive thru fm. It goes into a lot of this stuff. For many years even under the new management GW boardgames were explicitly pitched as a miniature delivery system with designers explicitly being told not to slave over these projects too much.

It has been easy to see the Hewitt games which had more put into them: betrayal at Calth, Gorechosen and silver tower being three classic examples. Compare them to stormcloud attack, the knight game and gangs of commoragh and you can easily see the difference. While those games are fun enough the Hewitt designed games are clearly a step above. The reason is that Hewitt refused to do half arsed game design.

According to him the ethos has changed (perhaps as a result of the success of silver tower and bloodbowl) The first game that has been built under this new ethos is Shadespire.
I am sure that most will agree that Shadespire is a big improvement for GW. I am looking forward to seeing what Dave Sanders (that game's designer) does next.


We also have one more original Hewitt game coming next year for GW as well as the revamped adeptus Titanicus.
So essentially the answer will come in the next couple of years.

Is Shadespire the first step on the path to greater things or is it a fluke and we will go back to games that are ok but never remarkable?

Have you more info about the new game designed by Hewitt?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It sells more than Warhammer managed by all accounts?

This isn’t a ‘how very dare you not enjoy AoS’ thing. I’m just confused as to why you not enjoying a given game means it’s not innovative?

Its more that it is not innovation, all the mechanics pre-existed in either warhammer or 40k already, AoS merely stripped them down to the most base it could.