stuff they made up? As opposed to the Space Wolves who are real?

Bu I get what you mean: How come the SM have several chapter specific codexes but all the chaos legions and renegade chapters get crammed together in one codex for "chaos warbands"?!

The problem with the new eldar is is that the other armies aren't OP yet...

If everything is broken, then nothing is.

The problem with the new eldar is is that the other armies aren't OP yet...

If everything is broken, then nothing is.

Not strictly true, Robin - Tyranids have been broken forever. Doesn't mean they're good! LOL

So is Matt Ward into Eldar now?

Well depending who you ask he either quite because of what they are doing to warhammer or was fired for leaking info.

The problem with the new eldar is is that the other armies aren't OP yet...

If everything is broken, then nothing is.

Not strictly true, Robin - Tyranids have been broken forever. Doesn't mean they're good! LOL

Flyrants are a thing, and the eggplant release really bolstered the 'nids. They're actually in a halfway decent place right now.

Flyrants, huh? Is that why the admech have a gun thats shoots twin-linked autocannon AND a bunch of rockets AND at missile at once at a flying unit?

So, yeah. This was a well-timed thread, then.

The contagion is spreading!

The contagion is spreading!

As Grandfather Nurgle steeples his fingers and laughs.

As a ten year GW fan I'm really disappointed with the latest round of codexes. I made a 13th Company Space Wolves army that is no longer codex legal, I made a Blood Angels Sanguinary Guard army that's no longer legal, and I'm waiting for Deathwing to be removed from Troops and turned into a premade formation. My Orks were turned into Space Marines without 3+ saves (every codex entry mirrors C:SM) and all my Inquisitor stuff has been removed from Grey Knights.

Super sad, I really enjoyed the time spent converting models that are no longer usable.

Don't forget Matt's repugnent Sister snuff.

I recall a certain FFG forum lighting up with hatred for Wave 7 when the pics from Celebrations landed. Maybe the 40k folk are in this phase? Of course, the smoke settled 48 hours later when said forum obtained access to the Waxe 7 preview .. then it was roses.

As for 40k, I always found the game complicated and clunky. I had some negative experiences at the FLGS and simply lost all interest in the game early on. However, it did ignite my passion for painting and converting.

One thing can be said for GW though. Their product is expensive .. but the quality is of a high standard.

Nah the Eldar codex is exactly as over the top as feared an already top tier army just got even stronger people are right to be angry.

It's a company in decline that does not listen to its customers they are totally lost and showing no sign of recovery.

I played necrons but their latest codex is too strong and I can't imagine it would be fun for friends to fight.

Their sole goal now is selling overcosted models to an ever diminishing player base, they don't care about game balance so will give stupid stats to a kit just to sell it.

Eldar were already a top teir army they did not need further buffs.

Couldn't agree more. I was a big fan of their Specialist Games ranges and I have extensive amounts of Blood Bowl, Warmaster and Epic in my collection and was just branching into two Battlefleet Gothic fleets when they just up and binned the lot. I never bothered getting too serious about 40K because I could see the unbalance issues many, many years ago. Every time they "overhaul" the rules for a new edition, I see very little changes other than a massive hike in the price compared to the previous edition.

So is Matt Ward into Eldar now?

Well depending who you ask he either quite because of what they are doing to warhammer or was fired for leaking info.

Well speaking to a friend of Matt's (and one of my best mates) last week I asked him about this. Matt was apparently made redundant and it was pretty amicable. He's currently concentrating on his writing. Unbeknown to many (me included) he already has a series of novels out under a pseudonym as he wasnt allowed to write non GW fiction under his own name due to his GW contract.

I know the latter to be true as i work on a lot of RPG/wargames stuff with GW employees who are allowed to 'do what they like' as long as they dont put their own name to it.... off the record.

It's a company in decline that does not listen to its customers they are totally lost and showing no sign of recovery.

I played necrons but their latest codex is too strong and I can't imagine it would be fun for friends to fight.

Their sole goal now is selling overcosted models to an ever diminishing player base, they don't care about game balance so will give stupid stats to a kit just to sell it.

Eldar were already a top teir army they did not need further buffs.

Couldn't agree more. I was a big fan of their Specialist Games ranges and I have extensive amounts of Blood Bowl, Warmaster and Epic in my collection and was just branching into two Battlefleet Gothic fleets when they just up and binned the lot. I never bothered getting too serious about 40K because I could see the unbalance issues many, many years ago. Every time they "overhaul" the rules for a new edition, I see very little changes other than a massive hike in the price compared to the previous edition.

The problem with fantatic/specialist games right from the the off was that it had zero budget.

I started working at GW HQ as an editor with black library (new submissions, i was mainly responsible for which new stories we bought and worked them up to fit the GW lore with the author). we shared an office with Fanatic (later specialist games) and a lot of our guys 'moonlighted' and did overtime to help out the specialist titles as they did it all with about three members of staff (warrick, Ian and Stevey (rip mate) ).

There was just no money for anything so nearly all 'specialist games' minis were sculpting tests or rejects from the main range.

When a new sculptor starts at GW and sometimes as part of auditions/interviews they say 'sculpt an imperial guardsman, a space pirate and an eldar' to see how they handle archetypes. Sometimes a model gets made but it cant fit in a blister pack but is too small for a box so it gets shelved.

Jervis pulled some strings to get all these 'unusable' minis handed down to fanatic. we used to have boxloads under the desk of sculpting rejects (i really wish i'd taken home a handful of 'nurgle terminators', they are awful sculpts but worth a fortune on ebay now).

Thats why there were BONKERS things like 'eldar farseer and fire dragon escort' for Necromunda... they were rejected sculpts for 40k and all fantaic had to work with. Likewise the 'rapier laser destroyer'.... in necromunda? That was there because the rapier was written out of the guard list at the time but the model was stil there.

The 'steel legion sniper' , again.. a left over 'extra'.

Then you have the really clumsey resculpts like the amazons which were either mordheim figures made to be usuable in bloodbowl or the other way around and the 'ostlander' gangs etc which were early rejected sculpts for the main gangs of mordheim.

They only started getting good when they got a little bit of cash to pay freelance sculptors (guys like mike anderson started off freelancing for fanatic.. i know this as he was my lodger in my house when he was doing that job )

They couldnt afford to pay a 'day job' sculptor though.

Fantatic/specialist games was always hampered by two main things though.

1. Nearly every game bar warmaster only required you to have a handful of models to play, an investment of say £40 maxiumum... after that you were sorted. GW is an industry where the rules exist purely to sell models, they are an afterthought. You could write the apex of gaming rules but if it only needed five models a side to play they would have no interest. The money is in the lead/resin/plastic sales. its the reason warhammer was made.

Necromunda was far more popular than 40k in the late 90s but was retired like all none core games after a few years but never got a 2nd edition because it *stopped* people buying as many figures!

2. Jervis Johnson. he had his moments but really was/is treading water in wargames now.

The not selling enough minis is such bollocks though. Look at success of Infinity, 1st Edition Warmachine, Malifuax, and X Wing. Small skirmish games are proving to be successful. The key is to continually release new content that ADDS variety to game play, rather than invalidating it every few years. Something that GW still hasn't gotten a hold of yet.

Back on the topic of Eldar, I'll pick this book up once all the second ed and failcast models have been done in plastic.

Is it possible that GW opened the doors to table top gaming for many people by simply having a physical presence in accessible locations. Sure, there have always been the FLGS but these are rarely found in large shopping centres and high density locations. GW stores are always neat, clean and have disply models of well painted minis. They are inviting - inside you find knights, dragons, space marines, tanks, demons, aliens, monsters, etc.

It was this that drew me in many winters ago.

Players then develop and interest in table top gaming and learn of other systems (Warmachine, Infinity, etc.) and slowly become disenchantered with the GW model. Paying high coin for tonnes of minis (then watching those minis you paid high coin for and loveingly painted sit on the shelf because there is something newer and shinier) rules changing, etc.

Gaming systems with fewer models become attractive .. and then an incredible game based on our favourite movies hits and BAM .. there is no looking back.

I would argue that many table top games owe a large portion of their customer base to GW for the reasons listed above.

Its not bollocks at all.

The companies you quote just dont have the overheads that GW do, most are cottage industries and quite often a lot of their work is by freelancers who work another job. They are not paying ten guys full time wages to sit around making stuff. GW employ what, eight rules writers alone. *hundreds* of people worked at lenton when i was there. Actually thats a lie... *hundreds* of people were on the payroll, very few of them actually 'worked'

Put it this way most FFG RPG material is done by freelancers who work for other companies to pay their mortgage. I can tell you now that a load of my friends freelance for FFG, some of them work for GW too.

Trust me i worked in GWs UK studio marketing for years.

GW owns about 95 per cent share of the wargames market.

To them selling minis is *everything*. If you're a small wargames company then the sales of your rules are not quite as 'small fry' compared to your figures.

But look even at FFG, there is a reason they sell cards with ships.. it makes you buy models.

I dont know the figures as i dont work for the guys who make malifaux/infinity etc and never have but I'd be really really surprised if there best selling items sell as many as GWs worst selling items.

GW is geared up towards selling models in volume, its their business model. MIniatures on that scale have a much higher profit margin than expansion packs, rules, supplements etc. A good sculptor can do perhaps five or so greens a day, that makes a packet of saleable figures. It takes months to produce a supplement book that wont make as much money back.

I think GW clearly know what they are doing.

The issue they have had recently IMO (and again ive not been privy to sales figures for a decade) is that they have missed the mark as to where there main sales go to. For a long long time GW believed they had a core market of teenagers until they were 18 at which point they discovered beer and girls.... and geeky students. Customer retention post 18 was a big issue for us but the sales departments focussed on the easy sell of 'early teens'.

I think, from talking to people still in the business, that they now realise that the 'veteran gamer' (previously kept around stores to say to peoples parents 'sure little jimmy will be playing this game for years, look at Dave over there, hes been playing since he was 13 and hes 30 now!) is actually where most of there sales go. Older guys with good jobs, tolerant partners but no kids and a lot of disposable income.

The important thing to remember here is that GWs next biggest competitor makes a *fraction* of the money GW has and owns a really really tiny percentage of the miniature wargames market.

Conandoodle is spot on.

For a long time, and i remember this in the 80s, wargames shops were pretty wierd places to go as a teenager.

Lots of long haired guys smoking roll ups and listening to hawkwind round the til. You felt like you were intruding if you went in to buy something.

Also these shops tended to be in low rent , murky bits of town.

GW went 'high street' or more usually, 'just off the high street' and made the games shop *welcoming*. People said 'hi, what do you collect, have you played this game?' . Sure its irritating now as an adult but to a 13 year old it made the place like the worlds coolest youth club, one where the geeks could go and not get bullied.

Parents liked it because instead of hanging around the park and getting into trouble their kids were at 'games night' and there hobby was painting plastic.. not setting fire to bins because they were bored

Essenitally GW did open the door to a lot of people. early experiments with co developed games with milton bradley like 'heroquest' and 'space crusade' made stuff that was previously impenetrable to most people like 'dungeons and dragons' a family board game your mum and dad could get into.

I got into GW stuff when I was about 11 or 12 in 1986/87 after being given a copy of 'runequest' by my dads mate (man that was jumping in at the deep end after starting off on 'choose your own adventure' books') and my local GW shop was pretty intimidating in those days. Then the early 90s 'corporate' GW took off and it became a totally different place.

Whereas other independant gaming and comic stores still had this air of feeling like you were wasting someones time just going in to get your copy of 2000ad or whatever, as if selling you something was an imposition.

Perhaps i was just an obnoxious kid

Edit: GW did go overboard on this though. They marketed to a younger and younger demographic and went from a '14 year olds' game to a '12 year olds' game and when the pokemon craze hit the UK it pretty much shredded GW and they lost a lot of money. They had ignored all their old players and alienated them and the 'kids' had no brand loyalty.

Thats why GW stuff gets a bit more adult and darker again in the mid 90 to late 90s with mordheim and necromunda. All games that made it very easy to get 'back into' GW.

I worked for GW bradford briefly during this period but did unnoficial painting work for them for ages around this point and the policy then was for the 'core' game of warhammer and 40k to be rebranded every five years and for 'secondary' games to be available for about two years. If they did well and sold models they came out again as '2nd edition' at some point (adeptus titanicus/epic being a good example). As i say 'necromunda' was the most popular game in our store at this point but we got hardly any sales from it once you'd bought the core game and a gang or possibly a second gang.

Note also at the time that 'warhammer fantasy roleplay' (often considered an amazing FRP system) was shelved by GW because you didnt actually need minis to play it but it took up a lot of store shelf space to display the rules and the ten or so supplements. It was replaced with 'warhammer quest'. A game that took up less space and required you to buy warhammer minatures to play it alongside very expensive character packs.

40k came out in 1987 and no one thought it would actually go anywhere. 40k sales soon far outstripped warhammer and always have since. GW has spent a long time trying to get warhammer sales back up. Its latest attempt was 'tank type' purchases for warhammer. Big plastic kits with 'dual purpose' to encourage 'big sales' in a game that traditionally focus's on buying a lot of single figures to make regiments.

I agree with GW being in it to sell minis. Thats what they Always have done, way back when citadel just made minis for RPGs.

We only got Warhammer because they wanted a game that let people use all the minis they had bought.

One of the best things GW did (In my opnion) was team up with MB for heroquest and space crusade. Having a gateway game in major toy stores really drew in a lot of people (Including the guy who's typing this sentence right now )

Some stores are still like that. Mind you We don't have much GW stores in Belgium (i think none back in the early 90s) so i've only been in two in my whole life: the one in London ( twice) and the new one in Antwerp (once)

But my local store has all the GW stuff and a club etc...

But back in the day there was this tiny store in Hasselt that had a back section with a bunch of RPG and minis stuff. (AD&D Ravenloft, Advanced space crusade, Epic, tubes of chessex dic that costed an arm and a leg and...White dwarf 132)

I agree with GW being in it to sell minis. Thats what they Always have done,

Bryan Ansell is on record as saying that warhammer was written to give people something to do with citadel miniatures.

At the time citadel mainly sold 'semi nude girls being tortured' vignetts for the ahem 'teen market' and character and monster models for D&D.

They needed to give people a reason to buy *hundreds* of miniatures, not just a handful.

Ah yeah Brain Ansell, couldn't remember the name.

GW as a his history of pissing of its customers and keep on thriving. Before they went full on warhammer they mostly soild RPGs.

And by the time of WD 100 that was (almost) all gone, replaced by miniature wargaming.

Why would you not buy an army of semi nude girls being tortured?

Note to self: start Adepta Sororitas army made up soly of Sister Repentia squads.

Heroquest and Space Crusade. They were fun! I recently painted some minis to play as heroes (Barabrian, Elf, Wizard and Dwarf) to re-ignite Hero Quest with my buds. Though it'd be a fun, sit around, drink and chat kinda game.

Will post some pics in a few minutes.