Warlord becoming the next GW?

[Pzkpfw_Steve]

I'm not sure it is as straight forward as that. Most of the the resellers (in the UK at least) are going with 20% discounts as part of the intense on-line competition here. That sort of discount ensures minimal margins and is only sustainable on high volume turn over.  Some traders are able to get an extra discount by being a tier 1 trader, meaning they have to buy volume off Warlord and have most of their range in stock, but to compete, these are discounts are often being passed on, but none of hese traders have the infrastructure costs of an outfit like WG.

Even at a Wargame show where Warlord is trading, their product is full price, while everywhere else in the hall, the discounters are there. It would seem reasonable to assume that the basic running costs of WG, their research and development costs, stocking costs of each item that needs a several thousand manufacture run and staffing levels and future viability all bring a more 'realistic' cost that WG are asking, rather than the one man band type seller who is simply moving product on and to convert into coin as fast as possible.

On the boardgame side of things, i have spoken with a retailer who is selling at high discount, so that on a £72 game, they are making £3, that model is simply not viable in the longer turn, but today, he is at least making sales!  but we want our wargame supply to be there forever, we are not a short term hobby. He also sells WG and so I guess similar applies.

Most of the Brick and Mortar stores where I live charge full MSRP. Especially on historical stuff, which doesn't sell as well as 40K locally, and has fewer stockists.  even if it was 20% off though, why would it be suddenly 50% more?  that would only account for half the increase, but that's not even the case.

[jetengine]

Theres always the Brexit elephant in the room ? Could very well be future proofing

[katie]

"None of their clearance stuff has gone oop afaik."

The 28mm Spec Ops plastics are either OOP or stupidly hard to find on their website. Which is a shame, cos I'd like to buy some more.

Saxon Miniatures (which they acquired) also made moulds for casting dark age buildings in plaster. I was quite interested in getting hold of a set, but I never did get a reply to a question to WG about how to that wasn't actually the answer to a completely different question.

I do miss not being able to get more of the classic Bolt Action figures as well. But on the other hand, they are a company with the clout to establish fairly comprehensive new figure lines and products that we might otherwise not have.

[westwaller]

I can see why the OP asked the question but Warlords similarity to Games Workshop in that there was that enthusiasm for the hobby and also the engagement of the news letter and (originally the forum) was part of the initial attraction of the company to me in the early days.
Unfortunately I don't find the quality of their products matches the hype around them. They sell a lot of stuff but I find it to be of variable quality. Even with their plastic box sets for bolt action, I find that one does not necessarily have the quality of another. The blitzkrieg Germans and the Fallschirmjager plastics are quite good imho. The grenadiers box set, not so. I have also heard others say that they find US airborne plastics are fairly ropey too.
There seems to be a lot of inconsistencies in the size of their figures even across one range and even within their box sets. The plastic grenadiers are an interesting mix of sizes which wouldn't matter so much if they didn't all use a standard set of arms.
Let's not get onto discussing the casting issues with some of their metals...
To sum up Warlord okay - but could do better...

[jetengine]

"None of their clearance stuff has gone oop afaik."

The 28mm Spec Ops plastics are either OOP or stupidly hard to find on their website. Which is a shame, cos I'd like to buy some more.

Saxon Miniatures (which they acquired) also made moulds for casting dark age buildings in plaster. I was quite interested in getting hold of a set, but I never did get a reply to a question to WG about how to that wasn't actually the answer to a completely different question.

I do miss not being able to get more of the classic Bolt Action figures as well. But on the other hand, they are a company with the clout to establish fairly comprehensive new figure lines and products that we might otherwise not have.

I did forget about the Z-war range tbh. I was thinking more of the ordinary stuff they regularly put on clearance 

[Karadek]

I often buy sprues from them when they go for cheap.  Bought Celts, Romans, etc several times.  Each time shipping to the States has been quick, and the one time a mistake was made they fixed it very quickly. 

[tabletopwargamer]

Warlord have made some strange decisions.

Crimean war, Korea, cruel seas, judge dredd, gates of antares.

They are guilty I think of doing too much but never fully completing and getting behind anything.

[Volleyfire!]

The way I look at it, there's only a certain number of wargamers around the world at any one time, and that isn't as vast a number as other hobbies out there have.

There aren't hordes of historical wargamers flocking to the hobby every year, there's some but not enough to keep firms like Warlord afloat with the new sales they'll bring in, unless Warlord keep releasing new stuff and keep their old ranges ticking over for those newbies to buy from. However, in order to keep going longterm WG need to reduce the competition by buying out ranges which might bring in more punters, but because sales on these ranges will die down after a while as the majority will buy their figures when they are first released they will have to seek out opportunities to add to their portfolio at a fairly steady rate in order to maintain turnover.

Unfortunately, there's going to come a point in the future where we will reach saturation point on figures, terrain and buildings where every conflict has been modelled in every scale available and people are spoilt for choice. No one is going to produce, for example, yet another comprehensive Napoleonic range in 28mm/15mm etc when it is already covered by plenty of other manufacturers, it will only dilute sales even further.

Some firms will only survive or thrive, by buying out other firms in order to cover as many periods and scales as possible, and as we see the owners of some businesses get older many will see the chance to sell up and retire whilst making something to put in their pension fund. The number of purveyors will shrink, it has to, and we will end up going to people such as WG where there is choice of scales and periods in a sort of online wargames supermarket.

That's how I see the hobby going in say 10/15 years time.

[wmyers]

Some interesting points.

I wonder about the hobby in 10/15 years, too.

As it stands now, it seems a great many historical gamers are not young. 

GW gamers are young. 

At one time, there was a lot of interest in historical gaming with a lot of media publicity that drove and inspired interest. 

I do not see that today.  I do not see many game stores even carrying historical.  Flames of War was the exception, but that has died away.

[Condottiere]

Some interesting points.

I wonder about the hobby in 10/15 years, too.

As it stands now, it seems a great many historical gamers are not young. 

GW gamers are young. 

At one time, there was a lot of interest in historical gaming with a lot of media publicity that drove and inspired interest. 

I do not see that today.  I do not see many game stores even carrying historical.  Flames of War was the exception, but that has died away.

It'll be fine...

The graying of the hobby is more subjective than objective and occurring in cycles. I'm more concerned about this sentence from The Times (January 21 2020):

Games Workshop also started to promote itself to schools (2,000 of them now run after-school Warhammer clubs) and the scouts (who dish out badges for Warhammer, as well as for camping and hillwalking).

It's worse than those 80s toy commercials and shows and more like a plan engendering a cultish mentality.

[Codsticker]

It's all about building a clientele isn't it. Unfortunately for historical gamers there is nobody doing something similar. Fortunately for historical gaming companies many of those kids may not have had any exposure to the notion of playing war games and some of them will migrate to historical games.

[Atheling]

It'll be fine...

The graying of the hobby is more subjective than objective and occurring in cycles. I'm more concerned about this sentence from The Times (January 21 2020):
It's worse than those 80s toy commercials and shows and more like a plan engendering a cultish mentality.

Games Workshop Youth!! 

[Elbows]

Games Workshop has one thing Warlord Games will likely never have.

Outside of Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, Games Workshop possesses one of the strongest fictional IPs in existence.  It's been a 40 year process, but they've managed to massage their IP into something solid, predominantly the 40K universe/IP.

This IP happens to appeal to younger people, and younger people are more likely to have random amounts of cash on hand, and a willingness to dive into something half-assed, or for six months before quitting.  As people age they tend to become more practical, more money-savvy, more likely to think out a long-term purchase/investment even in something as simple as a hobby.

GW has a decent following of older players, but their bread and butter are kids with parents and 20-somethings with disposable income (or even those without the money who spend it anyway).  Couple this with convincing people to pay $60 for ten plastic miniatures, and they're sitting in a unique market position.  They're a huge company with a captive audience.  It doesn't matter if someone plays the game for six months...they're likely to have already spent $500-1000 on stuff before flogging it off on eBay.

Warlord Games on the other hand is a charnel house of half-projects.  They're in a competitive market, selling historical figures (something GW doesn't really worry about since their products are based around a defensible IP)...but they also stockpile loads of small companies which sold their assets to them.  This means you have a huge variety in quality of material, with ranges which don't match each other, etc.  Also, I tend to dislike Warlord because prices go up after they buy a product line.

I feel like Warlord tries to do way too much, and doesn't do any of it particularly well.  Their rules are pretty decent, and some of their kits are completely okay, but they don't dominate many periods.  There's also nothing you can get from Warlord Games that you can't find elsewhere.  Without the captive audience that GW has, they'll never become financially anywhere near as strong.

Games Workshop has such a captive audience they more or less charge whatever they want, and people pay for it.  That's a really unique situation that only a handful of companies in the world have (and most of them are "luxury" clothes lines...).  Warlord will likely never be in that position.

[Condottiere]

It's all about building a clientele isn't it. Unfortunately for historical gamers there is nobody doing something similar. Fortunately for historical gaming companies many of those kids may not have had any exposure to the notion of playing war games and some of them will migrate to historical games.

'I'm all for building clientele, but this seems predatory and already seen the results on TGA: fanboys extolling GW's innovations in brush technology!

[syrinx0]

I usually do not defend GW practices but I don't see how it's at all predatory.  Obviously it will expose kids to their product line but there nothing wrong with that.