Anyway - interesting link from tabletopgamingnews that GW have dissolved the warhammer historical business. For those of you who don't know about it, WH Historical was a side company which produced historical adaptations for the main conventional wargaming periods, to try and make use of the warhammer rules - some good examples include Warhammer Ancients, Trafalgar, and Pike&Shotte. The rules used to be sold through independent retailers and from the historical side, were tremendously popular rulesets for a lot of wargamers.

About a year ago the firms products were absorbed into Forgeworld, and very little has been heard of them since then. All of the products previously sold to retailers are now direct order only, and there is a gap which is being filled by other rules (eg. Blackpowder and Fields of Glory). So its quite interesting to note that GW have now formally wound up the WH Historical business - instead it is now being run purely as a part of Forgeworld.

This is an interesting business move - in many ways WH Historical was cheap to operate, kept gamers interested - particularly those moving on from WHF into the wider wargaming world, and was low cost for GW. The business savings from shutting it down must have been minimal, and as such, I'm not sure what is gained by abandoning it to Forgeworld.

Similarly, the direct sale only method seems to have resulted in a major loss of interest by many players, who instead are able to pick up discounted rules at shows, rather than rely on ordering books via the Internet with no idea of what the book is like, unless friends have one. (Most wargamers I know order based on seeign a book in the flesh first, which they can no longer do).

BrookM wrote:It's funny that Jervis and Rick wrote Black Powder, you'd think GW would say something about that.