RIP Warhammer

[mbh]

meh, the old stuff is better

 

[Asslessman]

I fully agree with you Scalene, I just think GW came to a similar conclusion as Lego :

They also started deliberately playing to more than one audience simultaneously - the adult collector of very expensive and intricate models, as well as the 10 year old spending pocket money.

That's pretty much the difference between Forgeworld and AoS right here

 

[billyfish]

Tournament gaming is big business and is certainly one of the reasons Privateer is doing so well. Their community support is amazing and the game is made to fit well with a tournament environment.

GW have chosen to distance themselves from the tournament scene and the effects were huge in the adult market (the exodus of warhammer tournament players to warmachine/hordes was huge in 2011/2012 in the US)

I have to think that price was a bigger factor in pushing customers out. The cost of a 30 strong unit of witch elves was a kick in the nuts.

40k seems to be doing very well and that's not a tournament game anymore than fantasy.

40k is still playable as a tournament format and still has a large US tournament scene. GW were even running official 40k events until a year or so ago while still maintaining they weren't a tournament game. 8th edition killed tournament play in the US for warhammer and only a few die hards carried on. UK seemed to follow a similar pattern from what i have seen

 

[Horace]

Sometimes I wish I could force everyone on this forum to give 8th edition an honest try. It won't work for everyone and it's definitely not perfect but there's a lot of good that gets glossed over.

8th is pretty decent in my opinion. It could do with the scale of units toned down a touch but half of that is on the people you play with. We don't play netlists which would have you believe that 40 is a minimum unit size.

I also preferred a card based magic system, other than that a set of minor tweaks would have been my preference rather than AoS

The prices are just ridiculous and no doubt contributed to pushing people out. I am not a huge fan of the aesthetics of most of the new stuff either (there are some exceptions)

 

[treps]

One thing I don't understand is why GW decided to go down the path of tournament play, to the exclusion of skirmish/narrative style of gaming? I get that it sold them more minis, I get that. But surely it wouldn't have cost them a whole lot more to come out with a couple of scenario packs each year? It was like they saw it as an either/or option, instead of a both in tandem arrangement. This would have kept both interested parties happy, engaged & dedicated to the company. Opportunity lost IMO.

It seems that they will provide (free) rules for tournament but not based on point value, we will see.

Anyways the big critic made to WFB was the cost of entry and the number of miniatures to buy and paint to play, it seems that a lot of people never understood that the rules worked exactly the same for skirmish games that for big battles, and indeed they were skirmish rules turned into mass battles rules.

With their new game the idea is :
1 - buy a box of 5 or 10 miniatures
2 - paint them
3 - play with the (free) rules
4 - buy another box of 5 miniatures (even unrelated to the first ones)
5 - paint them
6 - play with any combination of the miniatures you own with the (free) rules
7 - go back to 4

With WFB if you wanted to play an army by the books you had to paint big units of the same miniature again and again, mixing armies together was not explicitly written in the rules, and the codex creep made the army you just began collecting/painting obsolete if you wanted to be competitive... The classifieds are full of complete armies never to be finished by the original owner...

Now we will have no more units of 20+ miniatures nearly identical, no more armies made of the same troops with just a weapon swap, just buy the 5 miniatures you like, paint them and add them to your existing army and play, of course the new ones will be better than the old one (that's why they made silly rules in the warscroll for existing miniatures) so players will be tempted to buy and play the new ones, but the game will be accessible to everyone, even the collector who liked to have few miniatures from each race/range. I'm not sure that the gamble is such a great risk if the sales of WFB were that low...

 

[Horace]

That is certainly a better way of doing things treps.

I think people are just annoyed that the entire universe got changed in the process and the rules are basically for an entirely different game.

They didn't really need to do that to make the changes you listed

 

[mbh]

Tournament gaming is big business and is certainly one of the reasons Privateer is doing so well. Their community support is amazing and the game is made to fit well with a tournament environment.

GW have chosen to distance themselves from the tournament scene and the effects were huge in the adult market (the exodus of warhammer tournament players to warmachine/hordes was huge in 2011/2012 in the US)

I have to think that price was a bigger factor in pushing customers out. The cost of a 30 strong unit of witch elves was a kick in the nuts.

40k seems to be doing very well and that's not a tournament game anymore than fantasy.

40k is still playable as a tournament format and still has a large US tournament scene. GW were even running official 40k events until a year or so ago while still maintaining they weren't a tournament game. 8th edition killed tournament play in the US for warhammer and only a few die hards carried on. UK seemed to follow a similar pattern from what i have seen

I always figured 40k was seen as a bit cooler than fantasy and required less models. I could be wrong. 8th edition fantasy was just as payable in tournaments.

GW sponsored events didn't seem like anything special.. Independent tournaments were way bigger in the US.

 

[treps]

That is certainly a better way of doing things treps.

I think people are just annoyed that the entire universe got changed in the process and the rules are basically for an entirely different game.

They didn't really need to do that to make the changes you listed

A 9th edition based on the exact same rules would not have changed the mentalities nor it would have generated the buzz regarding AoS.

They killed the world as they needed to develop new protectable IP outside of the generic fantasy genre they were into, they want people to play with their miniatures even more than before now that they are giving the rules for free. The races we knew will all be replaced by new ones with copyrightable names and new designs, no generic Fantasy anymore.

Their new model is based on the fact that they will produce miniatures for a given limited time and then they will retire them from the catalogue as the timeline oft he setting will evolve (End times was a good test for that), the copycats/parasits living on their back will not have the time to launch *compatible* miniatures and if they try there will be new *better* ones with new rules already there. Of course the rules will still be available for free for the miniatures not on the catalogue anymore but there should be less appeal for these ones if they are not as good as the new ones or if they are not in the current timeline of the setting. Coupled with the fact that you will only need 1 or 2 boxes for your "army" then it's not a problem to not have all references available and you will be tempted to buy them when they are available.

I know that a lot of people do believe that GW has no marketing and does not know what they are doing but I do really think that their attempt to make a come back in the Fantasy genre, while locking it to their IP is not as bad as a lot may think of, and if this does not work they still have 2 choices : stop making Fantasy games or making a real WFB 9th edition. Only time will tell !

 

[mbh]

I would love to know how much business they lost to copycats over the sat five years.

 

[Asslessman]

A 9th edition based on the exact same rules would not have changed the mentalities nor it would have generated the buzz regarding AoS.

Totally, a couple of days after a traditionnal 9th ed, all gamers would have already found the tricks to get into their old habbits with the usual amount of fanboyism and nerd raging. here, they've igited a fire that they could very well drive where they want.

 

[Horace]

I would love to know how much business they lost to copycats over the sat five years.

Not much I would wager. Probably cost themselves more in lawyers fees in all the IP disputes.

Also I did not mean make 9th with the same rules, but I feel when scaled up to full sized games it should have at least resembled WFB. A skirmish game of sorts was a no brainer for including.

 

[billyfish]

Tournament gaming is big business and is certainly one of the reasons Privateer is doing so well. Their community support is amazing and the game is made to fit well with a tournament environment.

GW have chosen to distance themselves from the tournament scene and the effects were huge in the adult market (the exodus of warhammer tournament players to warmachine/hordes was huge in 2011/2012 in the US)

I have to think that price was a bigger factor in pushing customers out. The cost of a 30 strong unit of witch elves was a kick in the nuts.

40k seems to be doing very well and that's not a tournament game anymore than fantasy.

40k is still playable as a tournament format and still has a large US tournament scene. GW were even running official 40k events until a year or so ago while still maintaining they weren't a tournament game. 8th edition killed tournament play in the US for warhammer and only a few die hards carried on. UK seemed to follow a similar pattern from what i have seen

I always figured 40k was seen as a bit cooler than fantasy and required less models. I could be wrong. 8th edition fantasy was just as payable in tournaments.

GW sponsored events didn't seem like anything special.. Independent tournaments were way bigger in the US.

Many of the independents are supported by GW in some form. The prize support for some of them ranges into the thousands.

 

[mbh]

40k?

I always assued that support wasn't much. The fantasy tournaments in the US seemed to do pretty well in terms of attendance and fees but I don't know the detailed breakdowns.

I would love to know how much business they lost to copycats over the sat five years.

Not much I would wager. Probably cost themselves more in lawyers fees in all the IP disputes.

Also I did not mean make 9th with the same rules, but I feel when scaled up to full sized games it should have at least resembled WFB. A skirmish game of sorts was a no brainer for including.

it doesn't seem lie much. I always hear the ip issues, yet I don't see many fantasy players buying other products. Seems much worse for 40k.

 

[treps]

I would love to know how much business they lost to copycats over the sat five years.

Not much I would wager. Probably cost themselves more in lawyers fees in all the IP disputes.

You probably underestimate it, there have been companies only living by making/selling proxies (Avatar of War, Gamezone, Raging Heroes, Mantic, Harlequin(BTD ) in the 90's, and many more), some make a game as a pretext.

Regarding mass battles games, I'm not sure that, except for some historical wargames (even if the trend is also for skirmish games), there is still a market for those games. The trend is for game playable in less than 1 hour, with a handful of miniatures, pre-painted or almost ready to play with. Skirmish games are perfect for this, painting 10 miniatures is not as dissuasive than painting 2 or 3 regiments of 20+ miniatures. Of course rules for exceptionally big battles are a must (Apocalypse for 40k), but I don't see what could block you to play big battles with AoS.

I heard some arguing that "King of War" is a mass battle game and that the disappointed WFB players will massively switch for it but in fact it's more a game of chess played with miniatures and you could play it with only meeples or even single miniatures without changing the rules. This is an abstract game disguised as a wargame but it is probably more of a pretext to sell Warhammer proxies, I'm sure that the demise of WFB will be a a net loss for them, and that KoW will not benefit at all of the predicted massive switch to it !

 

[Fimm McCool]

I would love to know how much business they lost to copycats over the sat five years.

Not much I would wager. Probably cost themselves more in lawyers fees in all the IP disputes.

You probably underestimate it, there have been companies only living by making/selling proxies (Avatar of War, Gamezone, Raging Heroes, Mantic, Harlequin(BTD ) in the 90's, and many more), some make a game as a pretext.

And many of them make better (in my opinion based solely on the aesthetics that I like and those I don't) minis than GW. Maybe now they'll be able to make those nice minis without the fear of GW legal action. Though it has to be said I feel GW has been copying a fair few other peoples' IP over the last few years, they're not all that original- certainly as far as the development of Age of Cygnar is concerned...

 

[mbh]

I actually don't think any of those companies are consistently producing better models than GW. I do agree that aesthetically they are close or better, but the quality and design is often an issue.

AoW, mantic, and game zone at least.

 

[Fimm McCool]

I actually don't think any of those companies are consistently producing better models than GW. I do agree that aesthetically they are close or better, but the quality and design is often an issue.

Sure, they're working with smaller budgets. But I'd rather clean flash off a characterful mini than neatly assemble a precision but lifeless kit any day. Not that I'm advocating ripping off someone else's Ip, even if to do it better, but GW's move away from 'generic fantasy' should give some smaller companies a breath of fresh air.

 

[mbh]

I think it goes further than that.

the dwarfs from mantic and AoW for example. Not that great...

 

[Erny]

The current dwarves from citadel. Not that great....

 

[mbh]

The current dwarves from citadel. Not that great....

this is true, unfortunately

It's a real race to the bottom