Warlord discontinuing 2000ad range

[Mallo]

A post went around one of the facebook groups from warlord games promoting a painting project from one of their staff who took up painting the ABC warriors, with some very strange wording for a game on its 'last chance to buy':

"Our 2000ad ranges are currently on a 'last chance to buy' sale and they'll never return to sale in the same format. This is a great opportunity to grab some of the most characterful models we've ever produced, straight from the pages of the galaxy’s greatest comic, at some fantastic prices, whether you're completing the gaps in your collection, or picking ones of the games up for the first time!"

Firstly, I find it strange they would try push starting ABC warriors on anyone when the game is an incomplete release and being discontinued (and already sold out of things like the starter set) and secondly, its strange they would say 'never to return in this format' when the line is being discontinued.

It feels like a tease if they can't talk about it outright (perhaps a license is under discussion and can't be discussed publicly), but feels a little dishonest if its just to push people to purchase a game that they have no intention of saving.

[Daeothar]

Weren't the old Mongoose Starship Troopers minis at one time sold by Warlord? Because I'd still want to buy me some of those Grizzly Suits, but I can't find them there now...

[anevilgiraffe]

Weren't the old Mongoose Starship Troopers minis at one time sold by Warlord? Because I'd still want to buy me some of those Grizzly Suits, but I can't find them there now...

if memory serves the Grizzly suit became the Extreme Hazard suit for Mongoose's Dredd stuff. When Warlord was selling some Mongoose stuff ages back, it's possible they had them, but since the game range was released in it's own scale, no idea where they ended up.

[Cosmotiger]

The metal Starship Troopers Grizzly suits ended up with Rebel Minis:

https://rebelminis.com/sciencefiction.html

[anevilgiraffe]

The metal Starship Troopers Grizzly suits ended up with Rebel Minis:

https://rebelminis.com/sciencefiction.html

looks like the non obviously Judge stuff from Mongoose all ended up there as well... Citi-Def, Muties...

[manic _miner]

 I was wondering if the 2000AD ranges are being put on hold due to the New version of Konflict 47 coming out soon.
 It is strange how they have worded the topic.Maybe the range will come back with new packaging and contents to each set.
 A real shame that the rest of the ABC Warriors miniatures have not been released along with the other Judge Dredd miniatures that have been shown at Open Days and such.
 Living in hope that we see releases start some time later this Year.

[Daeothar]

The metal Starship Troopers Grizzly suits ended up with Rebel Minis:

https://rebelminis.com/sciencefiction.html

Cheers for the link

I knew that these Starship Troopers minis were shoehorned into the 2000AD range at some point, and that Warlord had them back then, but that's where my trail went cold

Too bad they made the jump over the pond...

[Rick]

Cheers for the link

I knew that these Starship Troopers minis were shoehorned into the 2000AD range at some point, and that Warlord had them back then, but that's where my trail went cold

Too bad they made the jump over the pond...

Normally that wouldn't be a major problem but, post Brexit, Rebel minis have had real problems navigating UK VAT regulations so don't ship to the UK any more (don't know if that changed recently) which left me high and dry as I like the company and have ordered from them before.

[Funkmachine7]

As a set of ranges there just not that much of it to collect.

Judge Dredd has been running for decades, i've read hundeds of progs (iusses) worth but theres maybe a dozen or so models i'd need to collect.
(Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson, Judge Hershey, the 4 dark judges, mean machine an thats about it for distinctive characters.)

Rogue trooper is even lower, it's what 5? an most of that is Rogue troopers gun, helmet an bag.

Slane, well there more characters, maybe i could get all of the tomb of terror cast and there more flex able towards fitting in other games.

[Rick]

As a set of ranges there just not that much of it to collect.

Judge Dredd has been running for decades, i've read hundeds of progs (iusses) worth but theres maybe a dozen or so models i'd need to collect.
(Judge Dredd, Judge Anderson, Judge Hershey, the 4 dark judges, mean machine an thats about it for distinctive characters.)

Rogue trooper is even lower, it's what 5? an most of that is Rogue troopers gun, helmet an bag.

Slane, well there more characters, maybe i could get all of the tomb of terror cast and there more flex able towards fitting in other games.

"Dirty Frank says he is most disappointed in your lack of vision. Dirty Frank may have wet himself."

Dirty Frank, Jack Point, Galen deMarco, Dredd, Anderson, Giant, Hershey, Lenny Zero, Silver, Cal, Chopper, Walter, Fatties.
And I'm really just scratching the surface here. I'll probably think of many more as soon as I post this.

[Mallo]

"Dirty Frank says he is most disappointed in your lack of vision. Dirty Frank may have wet himself."

Dirty Frank, Jack Point, Galen deMarco, Dredd, Anderson, Giant, Hershey, Lenny Zero, Silver, Cal, Chopper, Walter, Fatties.
And I'm really just scratching the surface here. I'll probably think of many more as soon as I post this.

I agree, there is a huge amount of stuff to pull from and Warlord games just skimmed the surface level stuff sadly.

Smiley, Angel gang (we only got mean), Fargo Gang (current Cursed earth version), Francisco (and supporting TV 'crew'), Judge Maitland, PJ Maybe, Spikes Harvey Rotten, Walter the Robot, Max Normal, Sabbat + Zombies, World Judges, Chopper, Judge Cal, Call-Me-Kenneth, President Booth, Ape gang/body guards, Satan, 'Dead Man', Morgar and the Mutant Brotherhood, Satanus, Las Vegas gangs + vehicles, Atomic War military robots, Slavers, Dune Sharks.

Not to mention all the gangs, criminals, victims, mutants, and civilians that could have been put together as sets.

I tried to avoid just naming all the named judges (We'd end up with a list of all the Fargo Clones), I avoided anything to do with the apocalypse war outright as they said they would no longer do that as an expansion, which was such a shame as it would have brought the game from 'skirmish' to 'wargame' with just a couple of plastic sprues and some resin tanks (and a expanded ruleset of course), I'm sure it would have injected new life in to all the current sculpts as well.

The cursed earth as an expansion was always my dream choice- for a handful of new characters, bring back the strontium dog kits (especially the mutant kits) and a couple of really big 'special' kits you would have something really special but also opened the game up to people to really get creative with their own creations going forward. Have the cursed earth saga as the main 'expansion' but suddenly, one extra release in the future and you could offer out 'affordable' story packs that expanded the game into more modern Dredd tales as well- 'Mutants in Mega-City One', 'Origins', 'The Hotdog run' etc.

So rather than the 'random' set we got for lone wolves last year to expand block war (which never really made sense to me as a concept), I'd have done it like this:

Cursed Earth Rule Expansion- Injured Dredd with backpack, and Judge Jack (almost mad) as included minis.
Special Mini (An expensive one)- killdozer
Character set- Tweak, Dredd and Spike on Bikes.
Character set- Booth and robot minders
Badguy set- Mutant brotherhood set (6)
reinforcement Set- Mutant Brotherhood set (3) 

A complete expansion that adds mutants, and the cursed earth the game. Then just expand the game with the smaller sets of characters (and rules) as needed until it needs another new expansion to expand the game again to get new players into it.

And that's all before going into expanding on what they did actually release. They brought out Devlin Waugh in the lone wolves set, but didn't bring out a single 'supernatural' set to expand the game into his books. We got Dirty Frank and Jack point, but never got Demarco or the other bits to finish off the range of PI and wally squad 'gangs'. Not going the full Dark Judges as a set just seems like they were keeping them back on purpose.

Now the game is 'over', it feels like to me they wanted to make a board game with very limited scope, but with wargaming prices/pieces.

[Cubs]

As a set of ranges there just not that much of it to collect.

Judge Dredd alone - okay, apart from those already listed, you have Giant (Sr & Jr), McGruder, Omar, generic street Judges, Tech Judges, Psi-Judges, SJS, riot gear, tac gear, bike-armed and foot, plus Cursed Earth judges who have taken the Long Walk. You also have Texas City, Brit-Cit, Sov Blok and every other global Judge type to dip into. Then you have JD's enemies - Orlok, Deathfist, the Cursed Earth Marshals, any amount of weird and wonderful muties and perps, plus the bizarre citizenry of Mega-City One.

That's without dipping into the side characters sharing the same universe but who have their own stories or the many, many other gameable universes within 2000AD - you have 50-odd years of great source material to use as inspiration for gaming.

Warlord does this time and time again, it is part of their business model. They buy up a range, tie in the licence and shelve it till it dies as a range. So many small ranges have disappeared because of this. I don't know if they have ambitions at the start to expand gaming systems or rules for all the ranges they snap up, but it very rarely happens.

[TWD]

The question isn't how rich or deep the background is (and it undoubtedly is) but how many *wargamers* are prepared to buy all those models.
Without a big film or TV series you are essentially looking at a Venn Diagram of Dredd fans and wargamers and my gut is that the cross over isn't as big as people may think and it isn't big enough to justify the expense and licence fees required to produce all those extra models.
A decent number of folk buy the initial game, subsets of that but the less central models and you very rapidly get to a place where you're selling less than a hundred Judge Giant versus several thousand JD.
Those supplementary figures aren't increasing your audience - the people who buy the initial release are the *entire* audience. After that it's basically fan service and the maths for that soon become untenable.
This is true of almost any nerd/niche IP outside the behemoths like Star Wars and LotR.

[TWD]

So essentially I don't think it is "Evil Warlord Games Business model" but the reality of trying to sell niche interest licensed wargames.

[Cubs]

So essentially I don't think it is "Evil Warlord Games Business model" but the reality of trying to sell niche interest licensed wargames.

I don't think they're evil, like I said, maybe they genuinely intend to support the ranges they buy the licence to in the longer term, but they never seem to. Perhaps you're right and it is just the reality of the genre, but I can't help but think there are several 20000AD stories and characters that could support an indefinite game system and range of models. I suspect the issue may be that Warlord is a big old machine these days and need big profits to keep it going. A mediocre line that simply ticks along is not going to fuel that machine, it all needs to be big money or it's gone. Catch 22 maybe, where a smaller company with smaller overheads could quite happily keep it going, but it would require more money to buy the rights and produce the games than a small company has. 

Still, they gave it a shot and the models made aren't going anywhere. You can still get the old Foundry ones on eBay from time to time as well.