The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[YPU]

Makes me thing if it isn't all some big marketing ploy. They know from previous experience what cancelling a game does. (specialist games) Suddenly everybody wanted to play it, even if sales might have been low before.

[Major_Gilbear]

@ YPU:

I think the ill-will the scrapping of WHFB has generated, together with GW's obvious desire for wholly-owned IP, makes this unlikely.

Also, I don't think current interest in Specialist Games is greater than at any point when it was properly supported by GW - at most, it's largely the same people with the same stuff from back in the day!

[Cubs]

Oldhammer is growing ever more popular though and GW, Foundry, Grenadier and Ral Partha are all re-releasing a lot of the old sculpts. Could be worth them making a small investment to dip their toe into it.

[Duncan McDane]

Oldhammer is growing ever more popular though and GW, Foundry, Grenadier and Ral Partha are all re-releasing a lot of the old sculpts.

Would be brilliant. And stop the Oldhammer folks asking - and paying - top dollar for old lead. I feel everybody should be able to hold and caress the stuff it all started without having to sell a kidney or two... 

[Cubs]

Obviously it's not going to be a continually regenerating source of one-off 'youth' income like GW's previous business models, but should be a nice and steady trickle of money.

They just need to cast up some of their old models, maybe remake the moulds (which wouldn't be cheap), but with all the design, sculpting and game system already done, the expense wouldn't be too extreme and they know the market is ready and waiting to spend money.

[Hobgoblin]

The odd thing about AoS, to me, is that it appears to be a gamble on the background proving similarly popular to that of 40K. Because the troop types are so "out there", it's unlikely to appeal to people who like the "pathetic aesthetic" (great blog on that here) that used to characterise Warhammer (and many other fantasy games).

On the reissue of old models: I've long wondered why GW doesn't take a huge bite out of other miniature manufactures' pie by doing a completely IP-free range of "generics". Suppose GW invested in creating three customisable boxes of plastics: for example, generic orcs, generic adventurers and generic goblins (thus assuming a D&Dish, rather than Tolkienesque take, or they'd be the same thing as the orcs!).

Each box might be on the lines of the old Fantasy Tribe ranges, except that the head and weapon swapping would be done by customers rather than sculptors. The figures would be both war-game and RPG-compatible, with varied weapons and non-military accoutrements. And the tone would be one of "realism" - so, gangly, pot-bellied orcs like GW used to do, rather than steroidal, cartoony giant apes, and properly scaled weapons. The orcs could even have a pig-faced option for full D&D/old-school appeal. Poses might be broadly fixed (with a number of different ones in the box), but hands/weapons/heads/cloaks/backpacks, etc., would all be variable. The old C15 Armoured Orcs would be an ideal starting point for inspiration (or even direct reworking).

If these were done well (along the Frostgrave soldiers line, but with even more mainstream, generic appeal), with the full talents of the GW studio, can anyone imagine them not selling extraordinarily well? GW could produce AoS stats for them, but explicitly sell them for use with any or all fantasy games - just like the company used to.

[Modhail]

I get your point Hobgoblin, as I prefer the "pathetic aesthetic" over the "shock and awe" approach of AoS. Oh well, as long as they don't send shocktroopers on raids to incinerate the old books and models, I can still play just the kind of fantasy I want.

It seems like a sound decision to do high-quality generics, but it would require GW acknowledging that there is (war)gaming outside of "The GW Hobby", something they have been notoriously unwilling to admit in the past decade or so... Plus, generics can't be IP-locked.

[Vermis]

Would be brilliant. And stop the Oldhammer folks asking - and paying - top dollar for old lead. I feel everybody should be able to hold and caress the stuff it all started without having to sell a kidney or two...  

Obviously it's not going to be a continually regenerating source of one-off 'youth' income like GW's previous business models, but should be a nice and steady trickle of money.

They just need to cast up some of their old models, maybe remake the moulds (which wouldn't be cheap), but with all the design, sculpting and game system already done, the expense wouldn't be too extreme and they know the market is ready and waiting to spend money.

I can appreciate the sentiment, but I'd say GW's re-offered vintage minis are more in their current remit as a self-declared 'miniatures for collectors' business, than a token to the oldhammer set. (Especially at those prices!) Lest we forget they're terrified of their own games being 'cannibalised' by... their own games.

The odd thing about AoS, to me, is that it appears to be a gamble on the background proving similarly popular to that of 40K. Because the troop types are so "out there", it's unlikely to appeal to people who like the "pathetic aesthetic" (great blog on that here) that used to characterise Warhammer (and many other fantasy games).

'Pathetic aesthetic'.  I like that!

I know what you mean though. The thing I liked about Warhammer, when I found it in 6th ed, was... not so much the overbearing 'grimdark' stuff (though that was sometimes fun) but the idea of armies of normal humans, almost plucked out of historical armies and with only a few concessions to (dangerous, difficult-to-handle) magic, struggling against all these other weirdoes and creepers in the world - and those weirdoes and creepers were almost in the same boat, themselves. Compared to other bright, shiny, over-the-top, magic-did-it, giant-shoulder-pads-and-surfboard-sword settings. The World of Warcraft effect, or exXxtreme fantasy as I call it. Although I think the shot in the arm to their plastic production capabilities was a good thing in itself, I was pretty disappointed to see GW use it to put out more and more big, wacky things, turning their world into that kind of setting. (I still wonder if the high elf skycutter is a fever dream I'm having) And then surrender to it completely, with AoS.

And see some of their competitors and hangers-on follow suit.

On the reissue of old models: I've long wondered why GW doesn't take a huge bite out of other miniature manufactures' pie by doing a completely IP-free range of "generics".

Personally, I think they were pretty good at that with some of their fantasy races, up until the end - different flavours of elves, skaven, undead, lizardmen if you didn't mind the mesoamerican bit, dwarfs if you didn't mind the comedy-butterball-with-no-knees bit, etc. Only problem was affording very much of it...

... the laughable labelling of material designed to titillate teenagers as 'mature'.

Oh, that. Very much that. I've seen the spikeskullblood tone of GW minis and imagery lauded as proof that it's for 'mature' older gamers, without any hint of a clue that it might be intended to appeal to kids with a burgeoning idea of what's 'badass' and 'grown up', and too many hormones. It reminds me of that 'childish things' quote by C S Lewis: the full quote.

“Critics who treat 'adult' as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. 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. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

[Streetline]

Look, I've been in this hobby for 40 years.

I've only been in the hobby about 15;

Pretty certain that would put you both outside their target demographic.  It's like asking us about One Direction - you may like it, you probably won't, and it makes not one bit of difference to GW/OD.

JDE

[Tactalvanic]

Actually, physical age and years of experience I don't think should be applicable to barring us from being the target demographic.

After all its a niche fantasy market after all.

Don't think GW/OD care either as long as they get paid.

In fact I don't think I care either as long as I get paid. But thats unrelated

 

[Vermis]

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

It's just that the plot in GW's fairy tales isn't improving.

[YPU]

When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

Wiser words have never been quoted.

[Cultist of Sooty]

An ex of mine broke up with me and, in the final row he ranted about my "childish hobbies that you don't even have the decency to be ashamed of". He was a proper idiot.

But even I think Age of Sigmar is a bit too OTT for me.

[beefcake]

Sounds like a proper idiot.

[Vladimir Raukov]

An ex of mine broke up with me and, in the final row he ranted about my "childish hobbies that you don't even have the decency to be ashamed of". He was a proper idiot.

But even I think Age of Sigmar is a bit too OTT for me.

Bah, a little madness now and then is relished by the wisest men!