The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[YPU]

My beef with 40K now (and maybe even since the early days, in hindsight) is that most of the 'gaming' and 'choice' is done ahead of time before the game even starts.

While I can see your point, I for one do enjoy tinkering around with idea's for armies and different components. If you look at the gaming community in general you have the same with say magic, where deck building is a huge deal, and role-playing games, where most people create hundreds more characters then they ever play, because its fun.

Naturally your more making a point about the choice of army being such a big deal that it might decide the game beforehand, and thus remove the fun of actually playing which is a fair argument.

[Dr Mathias]

While I can see your point, I for one do enjoy tinkering around with idea's for armies and different components. If you look at the gaming community in general you have the same with say magic, where deck building is a huge deal, and role-playing games, where most people create hundreds more characters then they ever play, because its fun.

Naturally your more making a point about the choice of army being such a big deal that it might decide the game beforehand, and thus remove the fun of actually playing which is a fair argument.

I know a lot of people play 40K for fun, buy the models they like, do scenarios etc. It just seems like for several years I've seen 'recipe' armies, where someone has a success at a tournament and then you see tons of that same army configuration hit the tables. I guess that's the 'Mathhammer' crowd. Maybe that model of army building is disappearing, but it seems to have infected a lot of other games. Even Infinity players are asking about 'winning' force lists on forums and buy the figures they need to win the game instead of building for fun or acquiring the models for their looks.

I'm probably just unobservant and that sort of stuff has always happened in tabletop gaming

I'm not sure what compelled me to pipe in on this discussion 

[Vermis]

expressing contempt for spotty teenagers or people who memorise the rules or whatever, I think it is unnecessary.

Not expressing contempt. Just stating a theory that holds a lot of water. (GW's main target market is children, after all. Is it so unusual to think they might tailor their products towards them?) If kids want to play 40K 'cos it's got all these wikkid space marines and monsters and stuff that automatically do amazing superhuman things, that's alright. If they enjoy all the reams of rules and tables and things because it chimes with their current state of mental development, that's okay. I'm just not that much interested in playing it myself, for my own enjoyment; same way I'm not altogether into Yu-Gi-Oh or Beyblade or snakes 'n' ladders or bang-I-shot-you-nuh-uh-you-didn't that kids do or did get so much out of.

Older people who play GW's core two for beer, pretzels and giggles, I understand that; but I do wonder if they might as well forego the rules and just have the minis go pew pew over the table at eachother. (In fact, given the state of the rules at any one time, that might be a lot more conducive to a good time, and I think I'd personally prefer it) Older gamers who still hold fast to the core two, declaring them superior to any other game; to be deep and tactical; to be reasonably priced; to have that elusive element that no other game can apparently offer them (sheer nostalgia, I think); to have background that they love and want to keep up with despite not liking the rules or minis or prices or other factors (and I've seen all these excuses, several times)... then yeah, I personally think there's something a bit weird about that.

GW's main target market is children. That's fine. The problem in my view is that their actual main market is anywhere from older teens to guys in their 30's or 40's, or at least becoming more so. Kids aren't buying anymore: the days of pocket money blisters are long gone, and I've read anecdotes that even kids who get into tabletop gaming at all, sneer at GW's prices and go straight to Warmachine or another of the new competitors around these days. That increasingly leaves the old (old) guard who can't leave 40K behind, and increasingly leaving them to sustain (or causing them to prolong) GW's 'made for kids but unavailable to kids' situation. It's doing neither party much good, IMO, and the increasingly desperate and bizarre price hikes and releases are even starting to leave those older gamers cold.

That old C S Lewis quote usually pops up in argum... er... discussions like this, usually in defence of GW's core two. "When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up." But like I said in my last post, 40K itself can contribute to that desire in children: a grim and brooding background, full of fighting, death, powerful beings and other 'adult' things, attached to a 'proper grown-up game' with stats and tables and everything. I know it once dazzled me. Add to that an earlier part of the quote:

"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development."

Me: when I was younger, I played with toy soldiers in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am older I play with them openly. But that doesn't obviously include rules and gameplay elements, and even whizz-bangs in the fluff, that click more with the (biologically, not pejoratively) adolescent mind. I still want to play, I just don't want to play the same way.

[grant]

[Cultist of Sooty]

Older people who play GW's core two for beer, pretzels and giggles, I understand that; but I do wonder if they might as well forego the rules and just have the minis go pew pew over the table at eachother.

Have you been spying on my gaming nights again? Grrr...

[Archie]

Regarding GW and rules writing, I think Space Hulk is one of the best board games ever made. The scenarios are balanced really well, simple mechanics, lots of choices during your activation. Fun after years and years.

Nice to see I am not alone in this. Space Hulk is a briliant boardgame. At least the basic game ... I thought the later expansions (after Deathwatch) unbalanced things ... Chaos Marines with Conversion beamers killing Terminators on  2+ ... no thanks!

[pixelgeek]

GW's main target market is children.

This gets said over and over again but I think its bullshit. The game is far too highly priced for kids. And I doubt that many kids are really interested in a hobby that has such a high entry point in terms of money or time. What young kid is going to spend $70 on a codex when they could spend less on a game for an XBox or PS?

I don't see young kids buying 40K kit in the way that I saw it a decade ago and I don't even see them playing at all in any of the stores or events I have been to.

[grant]

Older people who play GW's core two for beer, pretzels and giggles, I understand that; but I do wonder if they might as well forego the rules and just have the minis go pew pew over the table at eachother.

Always remember to leave your gun on "no pew"

[beefcake]

This gets said over and over again but I think its bullshit. The game is far too highly priced for kids. And I doubt that many kids are really interested in a hobby that has such a high entry point in terms of money or time. What young kid is going to spend $70 on a codex when they could spend less on a game for an XBox or PS?

I don't see young kids buying 40K kit in the way that I saw it a decade ago and I don't even see them playing at all in any of the stores or events I have been to.

I have to disagree myself. I believe that their target market is children (well, adolescents and teens at least). The rules are basic enough to be learned by young (well 2nd ed was at least, haven't played any since then). But your points are valid, what kid is going to spend $70 on a codex, maybe this is why they showed a drop in profits last year. They are losing money from entry level gamers, these children will spend their cash on a video game rather than getting into tabletop games where you need to spend a good $300 to get at least a small force together and the relevant rules for your force. Just because something is too highly priced for kids doesn't mean it isn't targeted at them. My 3 year old can't afford a single thing, that is where parents come in.

[OSHIROmodels]

Come on lads, aren't there any new, pricey products to moan at, this is getting boring 

cheers

James

[grant]

Come on lads, aren't there any new, pricey products to moan at, this is getting boring 

cheers

James

Don't blame me - come on "no pew", like that wasn't good for a laugh? 

Also the Mega Orks are ducking insanely priced!!!

[beefcake]

I was just saying my 3 year old is a free-loader  (she's actually two but it's her birthday tomorrow)

[Vanvlak]

It's a metaphor for life.
You start off having fun and enjoying yourself as a kid, as you do when you buy your first blister of orks (4 Epic Gobsmashas, in my case). Then you grow up and you channel more and more of yourself into your career - or army. Or armies. Or preferred game.

Then you become a wreck, and you cannot keep up with the hours you have to put in for work, or the new rules and codices. You find yourself embroiled in the rat race, or designing tournament armies. And then comes disillusion, and maybe rebellion - when you see the corporate philosophy taking over from the fun games, and you switch over to Pulp or VSF or anything non-GW. In the end you settle down for the long slog, and learn to live and work and enjoy yourself, which is when you get the odd GW model simply because you like it; and don't mind mixing models from different brands; and splash out in mid-life crisis Kickstarter purchases (oh my god, that's me!); and discover oldhammer or 2nd ed. 40K or Necromunda or Netepic or (best of all   ) Man O' War.

Some remain in the rat race, and succeed, and stick to GW all their life, and get their kicks there. Others drop out of life entirely - or gaming, which is when you get bargain armies from sellers, yet feel sad for their loss, and hope they're happy in some other way. And others become celebrated, talented  artists, brilliant at modelling and painting and sculpting and designing tables which may or may not have a touch of GW in them, doesn't matter at all. These are the guys who win the Lead Painters' League, or who don't, but grace us with pics of incredible paint jobs and conversions and tables which leave us wide-eyed with wonder.

'Meh' is an expression I never wrote before now, but I guess it fits.

And did you ever notice how inane the one-line product descriptions on the current GW home page are? Stand-up comedy gold. These are from the page up today:

Roar into battle aboard a mechanised fortress of bloody ruin.

Decimate your enemies with the duo of destruction - they slice and dice all opposition.

Plummet from the skies into the midst of an enemy battle line.
(Why did I read that last one seated on the golden throne? Plummet.)

I still love the Epic Gobsmashas and all the rest to bits, and given the tonnes of grimdark plastic and metal I own and the hours I spent and will spend bashing and throwing paint at them on the paint table, I still can smile inwardly at GW and remember better days.

[Gibby]

One thing I really hate about the GW website is when the text accompanying the picture of the model does nothing but describe the model. There are several pictures, and the option for a 360 degree image, and yet the text will still go over every last thing on the model.

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Throgg Possibly not the best example but the first one I found.

"This finely detailed miniature shows the King of Trolls in all his glory. Throgg’s toughness is denoted by the fact that he leaves weapons thrown at him to remain sticking there as trophies. He possesses thick, scaly and spiked skin and stands with one foot on an immense chain-bound rock-hammer. He has huge muscular arms, one of which is raised as if punching through the air; the fibrous muscles on his torso and legs blend into a thick-toothed maw. His ragged cloak sports various trophies and braids, and skulls are woven into his hair."

 

There is a shorter paragraph above with the most basic summary of his fluff. Why not just expand that, and maybe add a bit of what he can do for your army in the game in the text? Thing is, not all the product descriptions do it, some just have fluff or describe the options and accessories the picture may not feature. It's like they toss the job to the work experience kid in some cases, and all he/she can do is describe the model because they know nothing else about it.

http://www.games-workshop.com/en-GB/Be-lakor-Chaos-Daemon-Prince Another example...

"Be'lakor is, quite simply, one evil-looking miniature. His torso muscles are incredibly defined, as if carved out of rock, and upon it an eight-pointed scar. He has two ancient-looking horns covered with hooks, rings, chains and skulls, some of which are even attached to his immense wings. A chainmail loin cloth hangs down from his waist and he wears minimal armour plating across his animalistic legs. He possesses a long, rigid tail as part of his bestial appearance; he holds a huge, ragged blade above his head and with his other hand he points towards his next victim."

[Cubs]

This gets said over and over again but I think its bullshit. The game is far too highly priced for kids. And I doubt that many kids are really interested in a hobby that has such a high entry point in terms of money or time. What young kid is going to spend $70 on a codex when they could spend less on a game for an XBox or PS?

Most marketting for kids' toys aims at getting the child interested so the parents and grandparents can buy the product. A lot of retail, specifically gifts, gadgets and toys, max out their Christmas sales and then coast for the rest of the year.

I'm sure we're all familiar with the sight of a GW store being rammed to the gills from November onwards with adults clutching a) a piece of paper with details scribbled on them, or b) a tugging child whose eyes are swivelling madly from side to side, trying to calculate the maximum they can get away with asking for.

From my own experiences all I can say is that a lot more GW products were bought for me from the ages of 11 to 17 than I ever bought myself in my lifetime.