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 kodos wrote:

he is talking about building a non-GW game community

Literally saying that other models are cheaper, implying people make their model buying decisions based on the price of the models. It's there for you to read twice, first where he wrote it and then when I quoted it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I think you guys are grossly overestimating Kings of War. Mantic is a company that employs a dozen people and has estimated revenue of about $5 million a year. GW makes a million dollars per day at this point (not an exaggeration), why would it even care? Kings of War isn't even Mantics most successful revenue generator if kickstarter is any indication. They've run three KoW kickstarters over the past decade, the first pulled $350k from 1500 backers, the second $370k from 2700 backers, and the most recent $270k from 2200 backers. GW literally makes more money in the 8 hours thst its stsff are asleep every night than Kings of War has been able to pull in any 30 day block of time on kickstarter.

If you take that entire market segment together, lumping Kings of War in with Conquest, Song of Ice and Fire, and random fantasy ministures lines for other games, etc you're *maybe* looking at $5-10 million in revenue per year if we are being generous. Again, why would GW even care?

You don't get to be the big dog by letting smaller companies take a piece of the pie. Big companies do their best to overwhelm or buy out smaller companies all the time.

Maybe GW think that consumer spending on wargaming is a finite resource and $5-10 million spent at another company is $5-10 million they aren't making.

GW have (wisely) started to diversify their income more instead of relying on 40k, and maybe they're thinking the rank and file game is a place they can spread their income once again, and don't want to come up against another established product.

But GW *did* become the big dog by letting smaller companies take a piece of the pie. There are countless genres of miniatures games and scales out there that GW has zero market presence in (naval games for one thing are a market segment that GW has absolutely zero presence in, whereas The Old World is an area that overlaps with their other offerings thematically even if not mechanically), both past and present. The idea that GW is moving into The Old World because it somehow feels threatened or needs to shore up some sort of moat around itself is pretty laughable in the face of the reality of the industry and ignores the fact that there is market overlap between Age of Sigmar and The Old World (i.e. the potential gains from The Old World are offset by potential losses to Age of Sigmar, assuming hobby dollars are limited).

If GW was concerned about smaller companies taking a piece of the pie then it would be pumping out more products in smaller scales, 6mm remains a hugely popular scale for miniatures gamers (the recent Battletech kickstarter proved the importance and viability of the scale, far moreso than anything that ASOIF, Kings of War, Conquest, Frostgrave, or any other 28mm fantasy miniatures line has done) yet they seem to not be in any rush to recreate Epic (which would pretty much compete directly with Battletech which I assure you is a far larger drain on those supposedly limited hobby dollars than 28mm fantasy rank n file games are). 10/15mm is likewise a hugely popular scale, second only to 28mm (read: much bigger potential slice of pie than 6mm, and probably a bigger slice of pie than what The Old World will be able to get them access to), and another segment of the market that GW has zero presence in.

Naval wargaming is another area that GW has absolutely zero presence in whatsoever at the moment, and probably accounts for the single greatest potential pie slice that GW might help itself to (and come on, Battlefleet Gothic is probably the single most requested product from the community at large) - and it would be *easy* because there is no big player in that market segment currently, GW would basically establish itself as the market leader for naval wargaming overnight.

GW isn't making this business decision because of Kings of War, I assure you.

chaos0xomega wrote:
But GW *did* become the big dog by letting smaller companies take a piece of the pie. There are countless genres of miniatures games and scales out there that GW has zero market presence in...

Yeah, and this is a genre they have in the past had a presence and in the future may want to again.

GW isn't making this business decision because of Kings of War, I assure you.

Of course, I'd go as far as "well, duh". But KoW may be a small part of a larger equation in them deciding to do it (alongside other strategy changes within the company since WHFB was killed, or a general realisation that maybe WHFB died because of their choices rather than a lack of market, or the more recent success of WHFB based video games, or a hundred other things), and I doubt it's an accident that GW decided to announce it just after KoW was announcing their new edition even though it's supposedly years away, I don't think GW has announced a product so far in advance in the many years I've been involved in their games. Again, it's not going to be the reason GW decided to go down the path of TOW, but the timing of the announcement may well do.

and I doubt it's an accident that GW decided to announce it just after KoW was announcing their new edition even though it's supposedly years away, I don't think GW has announced a product so far in advance in the many years I've been involved in their games.

KoW 3rd Edition was announced July 19th 2019 and released sometime in October of the same year. GW announced The Old World November 15 2019. I don't really see any correlation there, if GW wanted to steal Mantics thunder they could have made the announcement much sooner.

As for forecasting releases, the only thing comparable to that is Sisters of Battle, which they gave an 18 month notice on, so not quite as much lead time on it as on TOW. Incidentally, I think The Old World announcement probably had more to do with the Sisters than it did Mantic, the Sisters box set went on preorder the same weekend that GW announced The Old World, which basically marked the end (or at least the beginning of the end) of the 18 month saga of the Sisters product development. Theres a much stronger correlation between these two events than there are between Kings of War 3rd and the announcement, I'm thinking GW recognized how effective the hype generated by publicly tracking the almost two year long development of SoB was and wanted to hold on to that lightning in a bottle and thus decided to pre-announce another long term project in the same vein.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
Yeah, no question it could make money, but Return on Investment is a thing. Spending time and money on a game that makes $1 million profit is still considered a waste when that same time and money could have gone into a game that made $10 million.

Which again, is why I still can't quite get my head around his, except as a mirage to scare off anyone thinking of making a low fantasy Rank and File game.

A small release like Mordheim or Warmaster or Man O War to test the market for Olde Worlde games and Olde Worlde fluff would feel very likely. This just... does not.

Prior to the release of AoS, my FLGS owner was in Memphis for Games Day and met with the NA upper management. He was on good terms with them because his store was one of the top independent sellers in the US. He complained to them about the state of WHFB and asking for them to justify the wall space it took up. He still supported it because he loved the game, but the sales had become abysmal. Two things that came out of the conversation were that WHFB had peaked at the beginning of 6th, it had been in constant decline since. Second, they talked about how the game had become hard to justify continuing because it's development and productions costs were the same as 40k, but sales were a fraction. I don't remember if the whole Tac Squad out selling it was mentioned.

I don't see this as trying to compete with other companies, I see this as trying to tap a nostalgia vein. Many of those people who played 4th/5th and quit now have kids close to their age when they started. Likely a move to get them to reclaim a bit of their youth and also introduce it to their kids.

How GW will handle it, I don't know. The big difference is that most the management team (Kirby/Merrett) that is seen as making the horrible choices that hurt WHFB and kneecapped AoS' start are gone. My only concern is who they put in charge of the rules development. I hope they keep Jervis far away from this. He can make fun games, but he never makes balanced games.

chaos0xomega wrote:
But GW *did* become the big dog by letting smaller companies take a piece of the pie.

they did, but this does not mean they always will

 Hulksmash wrote:
To be fair this is likely a relatively small release similar to their Necromunda/AT/Warcry set ups. I think people are getting slightly unreasonable expectations because they are showing the old world map and old big name races/factions. I feel like off the bat we're getting a starter, some mild terrain, and likely an infantry, a cavalry, and a hero type box sets (so 3). They'll be able to be used by the initial "factions" which will all be Empire affiliated. Similar to the initial Horus Heresy "Board Game" they released but without the smoke and mirrors of releasing a "board game" as a starter to get it past old GW.

They can then rapid release another faction or two like Kislev or "Undead" which will use some of the core plastics but get some of their own sets.

If this were the case, why would they spend so many years preparing the release?
And if that were all, why would they start designing things like the Kislev bear cavalry and Ice Witch infantry units? Those aren't anywhere on the list as the first few things they would release for a Kislev range. Even the little we know hints at a range that's certainly larger than what Necromunda Houses get.
As for the armies that are to be covered, why would they add new High Elven colonies around Bretonnia, and add an Orc infestation in part of the kingdom, if the aim is to initially limit the scope of the game/range to only human factions centred on the Empire?

The idea that everything will resolve around a few plastic sets of just Empire troops feels largely based on the supposed similarities to 30k, but GW referring to the Horus Heresy when W:TOW was first previewed should, I think, only be regarded as "this is the same setting as our main game, but in the past". Similarities end there. When 30k was first announced, I don't think they were talking about what the Eldar were getting up to during this era, were they?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Of course, I'd go as far as "well, duh". But KoW may be a small part of a larger equation in them deciding to do it (alongside other strategy changes within the company since WHFB was killed, or a general realisation that maybe WHFB died because of their choices rather than a lack of market, or the more recent success of WHFB based video games, or a hundred other things), and I doubt it's an accident that GW decided to announce it just after KoW was announcing their new edition even though it's supposedly years away, I don't think GW has announced a product so far in advance in the many years I've been involved in their games. Again, it's not going to be the reason GW decided to go down the path of TOW, but the timing of the announcement may well do.

That's an interesting point. The long lead time is unusual.
And actually, given the speed they've been churning out editions for the last couple decades, TOW may end up with the longest development time of any project GW has done in the 21st century.
Assuming it comes out as early as 2022 (and it may be longer), the development for this game will have been longer than the entire runtime of 8th edition 40k.

People keep talking about popularity of games with anecdotal popularity of their local groups, the closest thing I could think of to any kind of real metric would be members of game-specific Facebook Groups or Subreddits

Facebook Groups
Warhammer 40K: 67K members
Age of Sigmar: has 2 similar sized groups of 24K & 23K members, I'd assume most of the members overlap between both groups
Lord of the Rings: 11K members
Warhammer Fantasy (any/all editions, but AoS discussions specifically not allowed): 5K members
Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition: 4K members
Warhammer The Old World: 13K members in a group just based on the announcement of WHFB returning
Kill Team: 2 similar sized groups of 19K and 16K members, lots of overlap now but the 16K group started as a Heralds Of Ruin fan-made rules Kill Team group
Warcry: 10K members
Underworlds: 2 similar groups of 10K and 9K members, probably lots of overlap
Mordheim: 14K members
Blood Bowl: 24K members
Necromunda: 16K members
Kings of War: 11K members
Oathmark: 3K members
Conquest: 153 members of the US group, 128 for a UK group
Infinity: 8K members
X-Wing: mostly regional groups, largest is an 8K member general group, but there's a 14K member trading group and a 10K member painting group
Legion: 18K members
ASoIaF: 8K members

Reddit
Warhammer (generic all-things-warhammer group) 198K members
Warhammer 40K: 352K members
Age of Sigmar: 70K members
Lord of the Rings: 14K members
Warhammer Fantasy: 30K members
Kill Team: 33K members
Warcry: 10K members
Underworlds: 12K members
Mordheim: 4K members
Blood Bowl: 21K members
Necromunda: 14K members
Kings of War: 4K members
Oathmark: only 105 members (although Frostgrave has 4K)
Conquest: 77 members
Infinity: 10K members
X-Wing: 1.5K members
Legion: 16K members
ASoIaF: 3K members

40K is pretty much more popular than everything else combined (no surprise), but AoS is hardly chump-change by comparison. And yet there's clearly still a LOT of people who are at least discussing WHFB. I don't know how much is related to Total War keeping the IP alive and how much is merely nostalgia, but there's very much a large amount of people that still love The Old World even if they now play AoS or have moved on to KoW or others, and there's more interest in WHFB/ToW, a dead OOP game, than the currently produced LotR (which is sad, LotR is great and should be more popular). There's more people interested in a dead OOP WHFB game than the currently produced Kings of War, Conquest, Oathmark and ASoIaF. If LotR is still popular enough to keep the entire line in production (even if much of it is mail-order) then so long as GW makes WHFB/ToW accessible it will be a success. Certainly the interest is more than the 4% of total sales that GW quoted when they killed WHFB, it's just a matter of GW making the game intro-friendly like they have with 40K and AoS

chaos0xomega wrote:
But GW *did* become the big dog by letting smaller companies take a piece of the pie.

You and I remember the last ~20 years very differently. I remember a GW in the ascendancy which was putting out a Specialist Game a year and expanding into licensed IP with LotR, and then I remember the previous management steadily narrowing the scope and focus of the company in a way that damaged their brands, reduced their customer base, and forced them to cannibalise their own assets to afford to keep paying out dividends. Then I remember the new management undoing basically every one of the previous decisions one by one, including re-entering into every niche market they could find.

There was a period of time there where GW's place as the "big dog" was in serious danger, at least outside of the UK. They seem to have learned the lesson pretty well: you don't allow potential competitors to even *approach* the point where they might become a threat, even if that means valuing some intangible benefits like market share and general brand awareness over raw earnings potential when it comes to your more niche ranges.

Are they quivering in their boots at the thought of Mantic? Of course not. But the current management are at least reasonable enough to recognise that today's Mantic can be tomorrow's peak-Privateer Press, and it doesn't actually cost GW all that much to make sure that doesn't happen.

Yeah, just look at the numbers I posted, people are overwhelmingly supporting GW even when other miniatures are comparable quality or other games are objectively better. That was NOT the case 5+ years ago, when GW was hemorrhaging customers to Warmachine and X-Wing and the dozen of other games that gobbled up the formerly Specialist Game market. GW was always the "Big Dog" even then, but not by a big margin in 2010~2015. The turn-around GW made with the current management is astonishing and has more than re-established them as the king of the market, even if the other games still have a healthy playerbase in certain gaming circles.

IIRC - "The Old World" facebook group predates the game announcement, I think it was a legacy WHFB group that converted over to "The Old World" after the announcement.

Certainly the interest is more than the 4% of total sales that GW quoted when they killed WHFB, it's just a matter of GW making the game intro-friendly like they have with 40K and AoS

Only if theres a way to convert that interest into sales. One of the big problems with WHFB was that GW kept releasing new products for it and nobody was buying it. Overwhelmingly, the community for the game had gone "full grog", they were content to keep playing with their oldhammer minis and couldn't be bothered to continue expanding their collections with newer products. Unlike 40k, the "meta chasing" aspect of the hobby never took firm hold in WHFB like it did with 40k - I think in large part because TO's for WHFB effectively clamped down on that by implementing hard army comp restrictions which often neutered the flavor of the month armies from dominating the tournament circuits. So basically, a static community with static collections that refused to finance continued support for the game despite the existence of new minis, etc.

This is the number one reason I think GW will have found a way to meaningfully invalidate everyones old WHFB collections with the new game somehow - its the only way they can ensure that the new game will see ROI.

There was a period of time there where GW's place as the "big dog" was in serious danger, at least outside of the UK.

Not really. For all the doom and gloom here and in the community at large, GWs revenues never dipped below 100 million pounds annually. The next biggest company in the industry at the time, Privateer Press was *maybe* a $20 million/yr revenue company. Maybe. Publicly available data for PP indicates that as of 2020 its a slightly more than $5 million company, I know that they collapsed a bit over the previous couple years, but I struggle to imagine PP collapsed quite that much. I would guess at its peak it was maybe more realistically in the $10-15 million range. GWs dominance was never in serious danger.

Right now, the biggest product line behind 40k and Age of Sigmar are Wizkids unpainted DnD minis - I don't know how much those minis make, but i know WizKids is a $20-30 million company. X-Wing and Legion fall behind that mark (and I assume Armada is somewhere not to far behind that). Maybe atomic mass games might come close to threatening GWs market dominance in a couple years, but given that they are a license holder rather than a license creator, I don't think GW is too worried about them.

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:
To be fair this is likely a relatively small release similar to their Necromunda/AT/Warcry set ups. I think people are getting slightly unreasonable expectations because they are showing the old world map and old big name races/factions. I feel like off the bat we're getting a starter, some mild terrain, and likely an infantry, a cavalry, and a hero type box sets (so 3). They'll be able to be used by the initial "factions" which will all be Empire affiliated. Similar to the initial Horus Heresy "Board Game" they released but without the smoke and mirrors of releasing a "board game" as a starter to get it past old GW.

They can then rapid release another faction or two like Kislev or "Undead" which will use some of the core plastics but get some of their own sets.

If this were the case, why would they spend so many years preparing the release?
And if that were all, why would they start designing things like the Kislev bear cavalry and Ice Witch infantry units? Those aren't anywhere on the list as the first few things they would release for a Kislev range. Even the little we know hints at a range that's certainly larger than what Necromunda Houses get.
As for the armies that are to be covered, why would they add new High Elven colonies around Bretonnia, and add an Orc infestation in part of the kingdom, if the aim is to initially limit the scope of the game/range to only human factions centred on the Empire?

The idea that everything will resolve around a few plastic sets of just Empire troops feels largely based on the supposed similarities to 30k, but GW referring to the Horus Heresy when W:TOW was first previewed should, I think, only be regarded as "this is the same setting as our main game, but in the past". Similarities end there. When 30k was first announced, I don't think they were talking about what the Eldar were getting up to during this era, were they?

How long did they take to completely revamp sisters? 1.5 YEARS! For a single faction in 40k they still had metals of and that arguably 75% of the army can be built of a single sprue. The line is bigger than that but the roll out took 6 months go get most of the product out. That was 5 infantry kits, 4 vehicles, and a fair number of characters. That kit number is pretty close to inline with what i expect total model kit wise out of the initial release over the first 6 months. But you know what they also have to do with this? DESIGN THE GAME SYSTEM.....This isn't a single codex going into an established pattern at the end of an edition. This is an entire game system which while it will bear similarities to fantasy isn't going to be a clone. And considering they spent most most of 8th 40k working on 9th that lines up.

And the 30k counter is just bull. 30k kinda happened organically because of the edition change and FW not having the resources to redo everything into 8th ed. 30k wasn't really it's own system until 40k moved on from that system.

I'd just say temper your enthusiasm. I doubt we're going to see 6 factions drop day one which is what we're up to now (Empire, Bret, HE, WE, Kislev, Orcs) and that doesn't count Empire subfactions or the all to likely chaos/BoC/dwarves/vampires.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

Which to me still doesn't make sense. How can a 28mm game that was ruled unprofitable and not worth it just 5 or 6 years back now be a great idea with a huge relaunch and dozens of kits? Especially when the Perrys, Fireforge, Ice & Fire, and Frostgrave (and more) already make plastic kits that cover a lot of this ground?

Maybe it is just an attempt to outflank possible challengers?

I doubt top3 selling miniature game was unprofitable...and we know gw has killed games that exceeded their own sale expectations by 400% so unless they greenlight releases expecting them to be huge losses we can safely say that game was profitable yet was killed.

No. Issue wasn't it was unprofitable. Problem was it wasn't selling as much as space marines which for kirby was huge offense.

 Orodhen wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A small release like Mordheim or Warmaster or Man O War to test the market for Olde Worlde games and Olde Worlde fluff would feel very likely. This just... does not.

Considering the IP is doing very well in other mediums, I don't see why they'd need to test the market.

They don't. At all. They know what their market is, and they know how well the IP is doing. They also know they already invested money in molds that I sincerely doubt are gone, so with the exception of the obvious addition of Kislev stuff which I will bet internal organs will most assuredly be AOS compatible for cross sell and conversion work, the releases will more than likely be padded with existing kits. This is ALSO why I think scale change is an incredibly stupid theory.


Also, while we're at it...

Apparently Warmaster was such a smash hit that games I've never heard of nor seen on any of my city's game store shelves (and I live in the same city as Purdue University, so no shortage of gamer customers). Am I understanding that garbage argument right? Food for thought: 40K is arguably the most popular tabletop game in the market, why is nobody aping THOSE rules?

I'll tell you why. Warmaster is so dead in the water that GW itself sees no point in chasing people away from the rule system. Warmaster was pushed at retail from March to July, 2000. Five months before being shoved off to hospice care at Specialist Games. I don't care how much certain people on this board think it's the super special bestest, it failed catastrophically. For a point of reference: Battlefleet: Gothic hit shelves in 1999 and stayed on shelves well past Warmaster getting pulled.

This whole waste of time scale change thing needs to die a death...

chaos0xomega wrote:
IIRC - "The Old World" facebook group predates the game announcement, I think it was a legacy WHFB group that converted over to "The Old World" after the announcement.

Certainly the interest is more than the 4% of total sales that GW quoted when they killed WHFB, it's just a matter of GW making the game intro-friendly like they have with 40K and AoS

Only if theres a way to convert that interest into sales. One of the big problems with WHFB was that GW kept releasing new products for it and nobody was buying it. Overwhelmingly, the community for the game had gone "full grog", they were content to keep playing with their oldhammer minis and couldn't be bothered to continue expanding their collections with newer products.

This is revisionist nonsense of the highest order, to the point I struggle to believe it's not intentional. Plenty of people were buying new stuff in 6th Edition and into early 7th, and the financial reports for the time bore that out - it wasn't 40K, but nothing is 40K. The issues began with the genuinely heinous balance problems with the 7th army books, was then compounded by GW's slow and lax attitude to FAQs, then compounded even further by 8th's push for bigger armies and stagnant release schedule. Trying to blame the fans for GW's series of terrible decisions is bollocks.

There was a period of time there where GW's place as the "big dog" was in serious danger, at least outside of the UK.

Not really. For all the doom and gloom here and in the community at large, GWs revenues never dipped below 100 million pounds annually.

The point is that "all the doom and gloom" was based on the observable and verifiable reality that GW's market share and revenues were declining and the company was maintaining profitability with ruthless cost-cutting, while companies like Privateer Press were going from complete nothings to second place within the span of a couple of years by hoovering up disgruntled former GW customers. There's absolutely no rational basis for assuming those trends would have changed if GW hadn't changed their approach, which the new management at least were capable of grasping - Kirby era GW completely disengaged from the fanbase, nuGW has built up a huge social media and online presence; Kirby GW narrowed the focus of the company down to 40K above all and conceived a replacement for WHF which was clearly intended to ape 40K, nuGW has brought back specialist and boxed games in a big way; Kirby GW's strategy was to chase ever larger Whales with every more expensive models that the games would require in ever larger numbers, while nuGW has put a huge focus on bringing in new blood through partworks, feeder games, and starter bundles and uses niche products to ensure retention of the customers it already has.

The fact such a radical change in strategy was even considered necessary would be indicative enough that the previous approach was failing and would keep on failing, the fact that the changed strategy has yielded such huge returns and spurred such massive growth is proof positive, and it's bizarre to me that there are still people trying to pretend that GW Was Fine and there are no American tanks in Baghdad...

 Just Tony wrote:

 Orodhen wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A small release like Mordheim or Warmaster or Man O War to test the market for Olde Worlde games and Olde Worlde fluff would feel very likely. This just... does not.

Considering the IP is doing very well in other mediums, I don't see why they'd need to test the market.

They don't. At all. They know what their market is, and they know how well the IP is doing. They also know they already invested money in molds that I sincerely doubt are gone, so with the exception of the obvious addition of Kislev stuff which I will bet internal organs will most assuredly be AOS compatible for cross sell and conversion work, the releases will more than likely be padded with existing kits. This is ALSO why I think scale change is an incredibly stupid theory.

If you want to talk about garbage arguments, this is it. The majority of the old WHFB range is presently available, its just rebranded "Age of Sigmar" and comes with round bases instead of square. Theres a handful of kits from across the range that are no longer available (mainly the entirety of Bretonnia and Tomb Kings), most of which went "Last Chance to Buy" (which as one of the guys explained at one of those event days, often means the molds are being retired and/or destroyed, though sometimes they are just put into storage - given the age of the Bretonnian range, I doubt the molds are still kicking around). GW is currently selling us those products right now, whats the financial incentive to them to center a new game that they are spending 3+ years working on on old products that probably don't have much in the way of potential returns remaining on them?

Apparently Warmaster was such a smash hit that games I've never heard of nor seen on any of my city's game store shelves (and I live in the same city as Purdue University, so no shortage of gamer customers). Am I understanding that garbage argument right? Food for thought: 40K is arguably the most popular tabletop game in the market, why is nobody aping THOSE rules?

Uhhh... wow, this is an incredibly dumb take. I mean, I've never seen Kings of War on the shelves of my local stores, and nobody locally plays X-Wing or Legion, but I'm smart enough to understand that these are still games that have a following (however irrelevant they may be relative to GWs games). Beyond that though, 40k happens to probably be the most aped ruleset out there. Bolt Action, Konflikt 47, Flames of War, Team Yankee, and a thousand other less relevant games all of 40k in their dna and design pedigree. 40k is to wargame design as D&D is to RPG design, probably about half the games out there started out as an attempt to make a "better" version of the ruleset, and the other half are attempts to design a game that intentionally avoid the mechanics that they use.

I'll tell you why. Warmaster is so dead in the water that GW itself sees no point in chasing people away from the rule system. Warmaster was pushed at retail from March to July, 2000. Five months before being shoved off to hospice care at Specialist Games. I don't care how much certain people on this board think it's the super special bestest, it failed catastrophically. For a point of reference: Battlefleet: Gothic hit shelves in 1999 and stayed on shelves well past Warmaster getting pulled.

And yet Warlord games continues to release new product lines based on the Warmaster ruleset, as do countless other smaller designers in the historical space. Also, your understanding of Warmasters history seems a bit flawed. Warmaster was *always* a specialist games product line. It was published by specialist games, I have an original printing of the rulebook, says so right in the book. Likewise it was available for sale at GW hobby centers between 2007 and 2011 - I know this because the only times I've ever been in a GW store was when I was in college, and lo and behold they had warmaster product on the shelves for at least a few years within that timeframe. The apparent "failure" of Warmaster somehow resulted in GWs decision to publish a separate game based on the engine for Lord of the Rings in 2005, and a bunch of additional warhammer historicals rulebooks over the next few years, as well as additional updates and miniatures releases, including additional armies and minis in 2009 and a 2nd edition in 2010.

This is revisionist nonsense of the highest order, to the point I struggle to believe it's not intentional. Plenty of people were buying new stuff in 6th Edition and into early 7th, and the financial reports for the time bore that out - it wasn't 40K, but nothing is 40K. The issues began with the genuinely heinous balance problems with the 7th army books, was then compounded by GW's slow and lax attitude to FAQs, then compounded even further by 8th's push for bigger armies and stagnant release schedule. Trying to blame the fans for GW's series of terrible decisions is bollocks.

And yet according to statements made by others, the decline for WHFB started in 6th edition specifically, which was supposedly the "good" ruleset. It would make sense, actually, as GW started pushing bigger armies with 7th - that would be indicative of an attempt to drive sales by forcing people to buy more stuff, wouldn't it?

The point is that "all the doom and gloom" was based on the observable and verifiable reality that GW's market share and revenues were declining and the company was maintaining profitability with ruthless cost-cutting

But we're not talking about profitability here, we're talking about revenues - it doesn't care about cost-cutting at all. Theres a reason I've been referencing revenue and not profitability - this is it. GWs revenues were never in decline, sure they had a couple down years here and there where they made a few percent less than they did hte year prior, and a coupl eyears where they made a few percent more - revenue was flat, not declining.

while companies like Privateer Press were going from complete nothings to second place within the span of a couple of years by hoovering up disgruntled former GW customers.

Warmachine and Hordes have been around for over 15 years at this point. Warmachine launched in 2003, and Hordes a year or two later. By my count it took them about a decade to go from "complete nothing" to 2nd place - and even then 2nd place was only 10-20% of GWs market share.

The fact such a radical change in strategy was even considered necessary would be indicative enough that the previous approach was failing and would keep on failing, the fact that the changed strategy has yielded such huge returns and spurred such massive growth is proof positive, and it's bizarre to me that there are still people trying to pretend that GW Was Fine and there are no American tanks in Baghdad...

GWs problem wasn't that it was collapsing, GWs problem was that it wasn't growing. The total market size like doubled or tripled in a period where GWs own revenue remained basically flat - thats why other games like warmachine were growing even as GWs own sales weren't declining. GWs competitors growth weren't coming at the expense of its own market share, it was coming because the market grew but GW failed to effectively engage that growth and profit from it. The success of post-Kirby GW isn't that GW "turned itself around" and ended a period of losses or whatever it is you seem to think, the success of post-Kirby GW is that GW started growing again and within a couple years effectively doubled its Kirby era revenue and caught up to where it would have been had it grown consistently with the market (actually, its probably still slgihtly behind, but the gap has narrowed dramatically).

 Just Tony wrote:

 Orodhen wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
A small release like Mordheim or Warmaster or Man O War to test the market for Olde Worlde games and Olde Worlde fluff would feel very likely. This just... does not.

Considering the IP is doing very well in other mediums, I don't see why they'd need to test the market.

They don't. At all. They know what their market is, and they know how well the IP is doing. They also know they already invested money in molds that I sincerely doubt are gone, so with the exception of the obvious addition of Kislev stuff which I will bet internal organs will most assuredly be AOS compatible for cross sell and conversion work, the releases will more than likely be padded with existing kits. This is ALSO why I think scale change is an incredibly stupid theory.


Also, while we're at it...

Apparently Warmaster was such a smash hit that games I've never heard of nor seen on any of my city's game store shelves (and I live in the same city as Purdue University, so no shortage of gamer customers). Am I understanding that garbage argument right? Food for thought: 40K is arguably the most popular tabletop game in the market, why is nobody aping THOSE rules?

I'll tell you why. Warmaster is so dead in the water that GW itself sees no point in chasing people away from the rule system. Warmaster was pushed at retail from March to July, 2000. Five months before being shoved off to hospice care at Specialist Games. I don't care how much certain people on this board think it's the super special bestest, it failed catastrophically. For a point of reference: Battlefleet: Gothic hit shelves in 1999 and stayed on shelves well past Warmaster getting pulled.

This whole waste of time scale change thing needs to die a death...

The whole Warmaster thing is just trolling from people who see this as a threat to AoS. They are worried that suddenly a bunch of people will go back to a square base game and that AoS will get fewer releases as they work on TOW. Total War has shown that people do still like the old IP, which makes some people worried about the future of their preferred game. In truth, I think that with smart execution, both games can thrive.

chaos0xomega wrote:


If you want to talk about garbage arguments, this is it. The majority of the old WHFB range is presently available, its just rebranded "Age of Sigmar" and comes with round bases instead of square. Theres a handful of kits from across the range that are no longer available (mainly the entirety of Bretonnia and Tomb Kings), most of which went "Last Chance to Buy" .

Have you looked at the WHFB range lately? Because that is absolutely not true

 Arbitrator wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

It's more that what little we've seen so far says TOW will be a new game with new units and ideas, not just a nostalgic reissue of old kits. I could see this if it was Necromunda or Realms of Chaos style skirmish game. But it will also be a rank and file, square base game.

Which to me still doesn't make sense. How can a 28mm game that was ruled unprofitable and not worth it just 5 or 6 years back now be a great idea with a huge relaunch and dozens of kits? Especially when the Perrys, Fireforge, Ice & Fire, and Frostgrave (and more) already make plastic kits that cover a lot of this ground?

Maybe it is just an attempt to outflank possible challengers?

I think the only person with any inside knowledge of numbers was Hastings, who said WHFB was still making them money it just wasn't the amount they wanted to make. Clearly they thought if Space Marines sell double literally any other GW product, making fantasy Marines will make them even more money, but since they didn't fit into WHFB it had to go. I genuinely believe that if they'd kept up with WHFB instead of killing it, that it would be enjoying the same success as AoS right now, because AoS' recent success' are attributed more to GW itself doing well than AoS being a better ruleset - it was completely dead during 1e and any LFGS will tell you the boxes were just gathering dust on shelves. It's not a coincidence AoS started taking off around the point GW had it's 8th 40k resurgence and started pushing it's very aggressive release policy (which WHFB absolutely didn't have).Sure the General's Handbook also helped, but I think that's overstated as the main reason (and I've say 2e was a bigger deal than GHB). Even Lord of the Rings is doing well again despite not that much changing from 2014 beyond the odd resin blister now and again.

TOW's announcement was 100% an attempt to hurt KOW. The timing of it with 3e was far too obvious, especially when we know GW hate reveal new projects to the public until they're almost finished and sitting in warehouses. The worst part is that it worked and all you really hear about KoW is the occasional "I'm playing it until TOW is out." TOW could be the worst version of WHFB ever, but you know it's going to kill KOW completely because people will always take a GW alternative.

On a less grim note if you're looking for a rank-and-file game that's lighter on the pocket and with a solid ruleset, A Song of Ice and Fire is a good option. Most armies you only need their starter and maybe a couple of boxes and you're at the 40pt 'average game size' and some like Night's Watch you need less than that. The community for TTS is also very active and done a lot to try and mitigate some of TTS' usual clunkiness.

This is a very good point. GW in 2020 is a completely different company to what it was in the butt end of Kirby's reign circa 2015, which is when WHFB was killed. They've massively embraced social media - even become quite competent at using it to build hype as opposed to the Kirby method of refusing to release any info until the week before something released, massively increased their release tempo (as opposed to a WHFB release every 3 months and 2 factions a year), brought back a load of specialist games, even made some box sets that offer a discount on separate purchase, become less aggressively 'it's all about the models, we're a miniatures company, we think people spend money at GW because they're miniatures collectors etc etc.

The state of GW before Rountree took over was depressing, any game system would (and did) suffer under that management. It's no surprise that it compounded WHFB's already known issues and likewise the modern leadership/company will increase the chance of TOW's success. At the time WHFB was killed, GW was in serious problems. People openly speculated, with only a little exaggeration, of GW's purchase by another company or potential going out of business in the long term if the trends continued. Revenue was only kept stable (not growing) through constant price increases, which were reaching their limit. Even 40k was struggling by it's own standards and being challenged by X-Wing. We're in a very different environment now.

Its absolutely not trolling - its people quite rightly wondering how GW intends to profit off of something that they didn't consider to be profitable enough to continue to support not even 5 years ago, and rationally extrapolating that if GW wants to profit from it they will have to drive sales of new miniatures vs allowing people to repurpose existing figures/figures from their competitors.

The most immediately logical way to do that would be to change the scale, as it prevents people from reusing their existing fantasy minis collections and also prevents GWs competitors from profiting from sales of their own cheaper sub-par 28mm fantasy lines. Theres very little in the way of decent small-scale fantasy miniatures out there on the market currently, and exactly 0% of it is in plastic, whereas everyone and their mother imagining themselves to be the next James Workshop is trying to sell 28mm fantasy plastics that would otherwise work in the old WHFB setting in a pinch. Hell, there are now *tons* of plastic 28mm historical minis that people can and do use as the basis for cheaphammer fantasy armies too. GWs other games all have decent "moats" that have limited the ability of outside entities to market decent alternatives to GWs own minis, 40k proper having the weakest moat of them all - but even then the best alternatives cost more than GWs own minis do, so you're not buying them to save a buck so much as you are because you want something different. Otherwise, other manufacturers haven't really been successful in producing popular alt-minis that you commonly see popping up on tables everywhere the way you started seeing mantics undead standing in for vampires/tomb kings, and historicals based conversions for empire armies, etc. the way you did towards the end of WHFB.

Mind you, there are other ways to go about doing it as well - I suspect the decision to set The Old World some 300 years prior to the last game will allow GW some leeway to feth around with the aesthetics of the setting in a manner that makes it harder to justify the use of other miniatures, but we'll see....

Also, IIRC the way UK copyright law works, as it was explained to me by another dakkite some years ago, requires that GW maintain usage/currency of its copyrights. i.e. if GW doesn't release anything further with the "Warmaster" label on it then the name goes up for grabs for a competitor to use after something like 10 or 15 years, etc. This was supposedly part of what led to the flurry of video game releases based on GWs older product lines and discontinued specialist games lines a few years back, as titles needed to be kept "current" before GWs rights sunsetted. Warlord branding its new 15mm plastics as "Epic Battles" might be the result of one of those copyright lapses.

(Okay, theres a little bit of trolling there, for me the warmaster suggestion started out as a "hey, it would be cool if they brought this back", and then became a knife to twist into the sides of people like Tony who seem to get incredibly offended at the mere suggestion of a mini in a scale other than 28mm).

Have you looked at the WHFB range lately? Because that is absolutely not true

Looks pretty true to me:



I can build the core of a Wood Elf, High Elf, Dark Elf, Dwarf or Empire army from this section of their store alone. Daughters of Khaine get me a few of the missing Dark Elf units, Sylvaneth a few of the missing Wood Elf units.

If I want to play Lizardmen, pretty much the entire army is here

Skaven?

Warriors of Chaos?

Beastmen?

Daemons?

Ogre Kingdoms?

Vampire Counts? With additional stuff under the Flesh-Eater Courts and Nighthaunt sections

Seems the only thing I was wrong about was that you can't really build an Orcs and Goblins army anymore the way you used to be able to.

Yes, there are a number of units and characters missing, mainly the things that were finecast/metal back in the day, but it looks like 90% or more of the above armies are still purchasable.

What people need to realise is that giant corporations often take decisions that seem ridiculous because capitalism is often kind of inherently ridiculous.

WHFB was never unprofitable, it just never pulled in the same sorts of numbers as 40k. It's like how Tomb Raider was rebooted in 2013, went on to sell 4.2 million copies in its first year and yet was still considered a financial disappointment by its Publisher, despite still turning a profit. A big part of that was misunderstanding the market and thinking every game could pull in CoD numbers and so reigning in the marketing budget would have probably gone a long way to keep the end cost down. And you can definitely say GW made big miscalculations with their market when it came to WHFB, but in a lot of ways their issue was lack of investment in the game, or at least poor priorities of investments. End Times almost revitalized the game in a lot of places and saw an uptick in sales for the game as a whole because people actually felt it was being paid attention to again. You still see this sort of attitude happening nowadays with game reboots or range refreshes: suddenly Necrons are one of the most popular factions in 40K.... hmmmm, I wonder why? The Sisters of Battle squad was the best selling kit of 2019? What the hell! How could that happen?!

But poor priorities? That's stuff like adding in a few new units for Tomb Kings, historically a pretty unpopular faction, while also having 0 community engagement, 0 marketing and keeping the core parts of the army the same and not updating them to fit in with the rest of the new stuff. Lets bring it back to Necrons again: a lot more people would give much less of a gak about the army if it wasn't for 5 months long media blitzes hyping them up and a restructuring and refreshing of some of their oldest models, which are also the ones most players are going to need to be buying and painting. Necrosphinx was a great model sure; but since new players would have to be buying 80 of those goofy old Skeleton Warrior sculpts before even considering it why would they even bother? Giving the faction good rules doesn't hurt either, something which the Tomb Kings didn't get.

Also the idea that WHFB players were not buying new stuff is kind of true, but this is because GW had basically given up trying to entice and draw new players into it. I think you severely underestimate how much new stuff people buy, even in 40K. New purchases are often a handful of times in a year and often very small for the majority of the playerbase and it's not like 40K doesn't have some fething entrenched diehards in it at this point. But even then, if people weren't buying stuff in WHFB it's because stuff wasn't being supported or updated. I would have jumped at the chance to buy plastic Wolf Riders, plastic Wolf Chariots, an updated Common Goblin kit, plastic Squigs, plastic Trolls and maybe some new plastic character types too. Did this stuff ever happen? Did it feth. Turns out, if you don't update or add models, existing people don't keep buying stuff in the army. Weird that. Ever noticed how poor Craftworlds sell in 40k nowadays? Do you really think if Primaris hadn't been introduced people would still be buying the same Tac Marines despite having 4-5 squads of them already?

(Although notice how some of those models have now actually since got plastic kits and people bought them. Crazy.)

Oh yeah and "The majority of the old WHFB range is presently available" is a complete and utter lie. Even outside of Bretonnians and Tomb Kings, a lot of factions are basically just extinct outside of 2-3 formerly special units. This includes many, many plastic kits, most of which are still newer than a lot of the plastic Troops choices still being sold in 40K currently.

See, chaos0xomega's post above is the thing: I already have a Bretonnian Army, made up 95% of the old metal infantry, plastic archers, 5th ed plastic and metal knights (of all stripes), and I've picked up metal grail reliquae, and used historical or GW trebs, foot knights, and sorceresses, etc. in metal. If GW re-did TOW in 28mm, I'd have to buy very little, most likely, to be able to play it, especially if it includes Bretonnia. And that's a loss for GW.

But, if they did it in 10mm or 15mm, I'd buy a ton of Brets, and enemies in a heartbeat. I'm already eyeing some Pendraken 10's (Normans and Arabs) for some Crusades gaming, but if GW did it for LOW, with either new or reskinned Warmaster rules. I'm in. Another 28mm effort? Changed aesthetics? I'm out, or using all my existing minis.

GW mentioned square bases. That could mean the units fit on their old square bases. That could mean its 28mm. That could mean they'll sell sabots to put rounds and squares onto a "frontage". AND, they have 2-3 years to change their minds about all of it. I'm not holding my breath.

I can build the core of a Wood Elf, High Elf, Dark Elf, Dwarf or Empire army from this section of their store alone. Daughters of Khaine get me a few of the missing Dark Elf units, Sylvaneth a few of the missing Wood Elf units.

You absolutely cannot build the core of a high elf or dwarf army from that list when they have absolutely no core units. Wood elves have no special or rare units.

Empire is one of the few and they're still missing a bunch of units from the list.

 Cruentus wrote:
See, chaos0xomega's post above is the thing: I already have a Bretonnian Army, made up 95% of the old metal infantry, plastic archers, 5th ed plastic and metal knights (of all stripes), and I've picked up metal grail reliquae, and used historical or GW trebs, foot knights, and sorceresses, etc. in metal. If GW re-did TOW in 28mm, I'd have to buy very little, most likely, to be able to play it, especially if it includes Bretonnia. And that's a loss for GW.

Much like a player that does not spend a dime on a free to play game is not a loss for the developer, you would not be a loss for GW.

There are new players out there ready to buy WFB, there are vets that will drop a grand on a new project. And then there's you, with an army ready to play, letting the newbies and vets with new, shiny toys find a game that much easier.

Sure, YOU would buy a ton of Brets in 10mm, and so would five to fifteen percent of the customer base than would otherwise invest in a system compatible with other GW ranges AND their pre-existing collections.

I'm sure there's a time and place for a Warmaster revival down the line, right after the inevitable, yet infuriatingly distant Epic remake.

Warhammer: The Old World is not that time and place.

Dwarf longbeards are core, at least as of 8th ed. You got me on High Elves, thought Shadow Warriors were core. You can easily use the lumineth minis as standins for stuff though. Wood elves still have Wildwood Rangers (Special), Sisters of the Thorn (Special), and Wild Riders (Special), as well as Treemen (Rare) under Sylvaneth.

Hulksmash wrote:

Spoiler:

 Coenus Scaldingus wrote:

 Hulksmash wrote:
To be fair this is likely a relatively small release similar to their Necromunda/AT/Warcry set ups. I think people are getting slightly unreasonable expectations because they are showing the old world map and old big name races/factions. I feel like off the bat we're getting a starter, some mild terrain, and likely an infantry, a cavalry, and a hero type box sets (so 3). They'll be able to be used by the initial "factions" which will all be Empire affiliated. Similar to the initial Horus Heresy "Board Game" they released but without the smoke and mirrors of releasing a "board game" as a starter to get it past old GW.

They can then rapid release another faction or two like Kislev or "Undead" which will use some of the core plastics but get some of their own sets.

If this were the case, why would they spend so many years preparing the release?
And if that were all, why would they start designing things like the Kislev bear cavalry and Ice Witch infantry units? Those aren't anywhere on the list as the first few things they would release for a Kislev range. Even the little we know hints at a range that's certainly larger than what Necromunda Houses get.
As for the armies that are to be covered, why would they add new High Elven colonies around Bretonnia, and add an Orc infestation in part of the kingdom, if the aim is to initially limit the scope of the game/range to only human factions centred on the Empire?

The idea that everything will resolve around a few plastic sets of just Empire troops feels largely based on the supposed similarities to 30k, but GW referring to the Horus Heresy when W:TOW was first previewed should, I think, only be regarded as "this is the same setting as our main game, but in the past". Similarities end there. When 30k was first announced, I don't think they were talking about what the Eldar were getting up to during this era, were they?

How long did they take to completely revamp sisters? 1.5 YEARS! For a single faction in 40k they still had metals of and that arguably 75% of the army can be built of a single sprue. The line is bigger than that but the roll out took 6 months go get most of the product out. That was 5 infantry kits, 4 vehicles, and a fair number of characters. That kit number is pretty close to inline with what i expect total model kit wise out of the initial release over the first 6 months. But you know what they also have to do with this? DESIGN THE GAME SYSTEM.....This isn't a single codex going into an established pattern at the end of an edition. This is an entire game system which while it will bear similarities to fantasy isn't going to be a clone. And considering they spent most most of 8th 40k working on 9th that lines up.

And the 30k counter is just bull. 30k kinda happened organically because of the edition change and FW not having the resources to redo everything into 8th ed. 30k wasn't really it's own system until 40k moved on from that system.

I'd just say temper your enthusiasm. I doubt we're going to see 6 factions drop day one which is what we're up to now (Empire, Bret, HE, WE, Kislev, Orcs) and that doesn't count Empire subfactions or the all to likely chaos/BoC/dwarves/vampires.

I'm not expecting 15 factions with 10 kits on release day; I was merely saying expecting just a few plastic sets on release was too low an estimate. There also isn't really any reason to believe there will be specific Empire subfactions by the way, that was (I think) just early speculation based on the first map which only showed different Imperial families. That may just have been a hint at the timeline not being the previous WHFB "present day", now confirmed with the Bretonnian names.
As for the comparison to Sisters of Battle: how many people were working on that? Full time? How many are working on W:TOW? Yeah, I don't know either.

chaos0xomega wrote:given the age of the Bretonnian range, I doubt the molds are still kicking around

At least some were still produced in a Made-to-Order just two years ago. I grabbed a Fay Enchantress then. Besides, some figures still in production are older than that.

Olthannon wrote:

I can build the core of a Wood Elf, High Elf, Dark Elf, Dwarf or Empire army from this section of their store alone. Daughters of Khaine get me a few of the missing Dark Elf units, Sylvaneth a few of the missing Wood Elf units.

You absolutely cannot build the core of a high elf or dwarf army from that list when they have absolutely no core units. Wood elves have no special or rare units.

Empire is one of the few and they're still missing a bunch of units from the list.

Wood Elves are also missing their Glade Guard and Glade Riders. That's half their core units gone too.

The only dwarf units left are the ones that came out with the last army book:
*Longbeards/hammerers
*Ironbreakers/Irondrakes
*Gryocopter/Gyrobomber
*Runesmith
*Cogsmith
*Warden King

At that time, a troll slayer was also released, dubbed an Unforged in AOS, before disappearing. Oddly enough, you can still buy him as "Grombrindal", same model, just not the same rules.

The dwarfs lost: Anvil of Doom, Thanes, Miners, Quarrelers/Thunderers, Grudge thrower, Bolt thrower, flame cannon, cannon/organ gun, etc. Sure, some of these were finecast, but a lot of them were pretty decent plastic kits and important staples of a dwarf army.

That's not even looking at how gutted High Elves (and Wood elves) are now. The latter kept their new plastic kits, and lost pretty much everything else. The former didn't even get to keep many of their newer kits. (Lore master, lothern skycutter, I guess the entire Island of blood army that got re-released for a bit). Empire lost things like the War altar, though they lost probably the fewest kits.

Don't get me wrong. I'm thankful those dwarf units exist. And although I may not have been a huge fan of the older dwarf kits that are gone, units like the cannon were still good models.


There are a lot of units that could make a comeback, thanks to The Old World. Wood Elf and High Elves have a lot of models that could be revisited. Dwarfs can get rangers, warriors, miners, etc. Goblins and Orcs can come back en mass, alongside models they lost, like the "regular" troll.

EDIT: Also, they can release new terrain as well. Not as likely since its a "smaller" project, unless they do something along the lines of necromunda. But basically all Fantasy terrain kits went away, so the chapel, arcane ruins, etc can come back too. Or different types of terrain that aren't like AOS' current range

 Kalamadea wrote:
People keep talking about popularity of games with anecdotal popularity of their local groups, the closest thing I could think of to any kind of real metric would be members of game-specific Facebook Groups or Subreddits

Spoiler:

Facebook Groups
Warhammer 40K: 67K members
Age of Sigmar: has 2 similar sized groups of 24K & 23K members, I'd assume most of the members overlap between both groups
Lord of the Rings: 11K members
Warhammer Fantasy (any/all editions, but AoS discussions specifically not allowed): 5K members
Warhammer Fantasy 6th edition: 4K members
Warhammer The Old World: 13K members in a group just based on the announcement of WHFB returning
Kill Team: 2 similar sized groups of 19K and 16K members, lots of overlap now but the 16K group started as a Heralds Of Ruin fan-made rules Kill Team group
Warcry: 10K members
Underworlds: 2 similar groups of 10K and 9K members, probably lots of overlap
Mordheim: 14K members
Blood Bowl: 24K members
Necromunda: 16K members
Kings of War: 11K members
Oathmark: 3K members
Conquest: 153 members of the US group, 128 for a UK group
Infinity: 8K members
X-Wing: mostly regional groups, largest is an 8K member general group, but there's a 14K member trading group and a 10K member painting group
Legion: 18K members
ASoIaF: 8K members

Reddit
Warhammer (generic all-things-warhammer group) 198K members
Warhammer 40K: 352K members
Age of Sigmar: 70K members
Lord of the Rings: 14K members
Warhammer Fantasy: 30K members
Kill Team: 33K members
Warcry: 10K members
Underworlds: 12K members
Mordheim: 4K members
Blood Bowl: 21K members
Necromunda: 14K members
Kings of War: 4K members
Oathmark: only 105 members (although Frostgrave has 4K)
Conquest: 77 members
Infinity: 10K members
X-Wing: 1.5K members
Legion: 16K members
ASoIaF: 3K members

40K is pretty much more popular than everything else combined (no surprise), but AoS is hardly chump-change by comparison. And yet there's clearly still a LOT of people who are at least discussing WHFB. I don't know how much is related to Total War keeping the IP alive and how much is merely nostalgia, but there's very much a large amount of people that still love The Old World even if they now play AoS or have moved on to KoW or others, and there's more interest in WHFB/ToW, a dead OOP game, than the currently produced LotR (which is sad, LotR is great and should be more popular). There's more people interested in a dead OOP WHFB game than the currently produced Kings of War, Conquest, Oathmark and ASoIaF. If LotR is still popular enough to keep the entire line in production (even if much of it is mail-order) then so long as GW makes WHFB/ToW accessible it will be a success. Certainly the interest is more than the 4% of total sales that GW quoted when they killed WHFB, it's just a matter of GW making the game intro-friendly like they have with 40K and AoS

That is quite interesting, though disheartening, thanks for compiling it. I can't think of better data either.
I wonder why the discrepency between Reddit and Facebook for some games? I don't use Reddit so I'm not sure what about it might affect a community preferring it.

That is a lot less than I expected for Conquest. It is rather new, but that is low even then.