The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[Cubs]

The gaunt guy reminds me of the Mouth of Sauron from Peter Jackson's LOTR films or maybe something from Benicio Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth).

Seconded.

[Hobgoblin]

It looks somewhat Hellraiser-ish to me (though I can see Del Toro's Pale Man in there too).

It is a nice model. Pricey, though. And I'm always keener on painting an evil sorcerer's wretched goblin henchmen than the man himself.

[Major_Gilbear]

Agreed it is nice; old school, cool, and - dare I say - not even too obscenely expensive?

But what's the point if Warhammer is dead. If 6th or 7th were still live, this would be a must-buy; for AoS, what's the point? None, I say.

And I say a game is only dead when people stop playing it, making and painting models for it, and discussing it. But then, I still like and enjoy (and play) a number of older "dead" GW games.

Link to interview with Rick Priestley about GW

Rick seems to confirm a lot of the stuff people suspected about GW's operating practices through the article.

It actually surprised me a little that Rick's comments and views in that article (even his take on Marines, and on over-fussy/over-sized model kits) seem to be rather in line with my own.

Also, what's the bet that slight increase in sales GW saw is down to the launch of the AoS starter set (thier starter boxes are always decent and always popular), combined with summer rush of players trying to complete their WHFB projects once they heard the Old World was being axed?


Edit: Aaaand we're at 300 pages! 

[Elbows]

The sales rush would be a couple of things...

1) Launch of AOS
2) Fear of discontinued WHFB
3) Launch of Betrayal at Calth
4) Early Christmas shopping

And when your sales are trending downward it's always easy to see a rise.    I'm sitting here, every day glancing at my BoC set and trying to decide how best to use it or sell it.  Driving me a bit nuts. 

[Major_Gilbear]

The sales rush would be a couple of things...

1) Launch of AOS
2) Fear of discontinued WHFB
3) Launch of Betrayal at Calth
4) Early Christmas shopping

Yup!

I'm sitting here, every day glancing at my BoC set and trying to decide how best to use it or sell it.  Driving me a bit nuts. 

Why not make just one squad (ML, bolters, Plasmagun, Serg with Combi Melta) and see how you feel? Even if you don't want to play 30k, or 40k, you might still want to use a different ruleset and recreate some early-days stuff in the RT style. I've people use all sort of different rulesets for exactly that here on LAF, and I think that Mk4 Crimson Fists would look super-spiffy.

[Cubs]

The sales rush would be a couple of things...

1) Launch of AOS
2) Fear of discontinued WHFB
3) Launch of Betrayal at Calth
4) Early Christmas shopping

Fair play, I saw the box set in Firestorm the other day and if Space Marines were my thing, I'd be all over that. Lovely models, good price.

[Ray Rivers]

The sales rush would be a couple of things...

1) Launch of AOS
2) Fear of discontinued WHFB
3) Launch of Betrayal at Calth
4) Early Christmas shopping

I agree with that.

I don't think folks should understate the role of AoS.

For my part, I began with the Starter Box and made 2 additional purchases thereafter. I determined that I would not go crazy buying stuff until I had actually painted up the stuff I bought. I have the shipping box that the Starter Set came with and I have put my new purchases in there with a pledge to not buy more if it would overflow. So far I have painted up 13 miniatures from the box and am working on a piece of terrain. Nevertheless, there was room for another order and I was looking at what I could get for Chaos for Christmas when they released the new Everchosen faction. That release set me back, thinking that I needed to slow down a bit and see where GW is going with Chaos. I like the Everchosen releases and plan to buy the Knights and the Battletome. But this release seriously changed my view on what I may be putting together for a Chaos army and I want to have the Battletome first to see how the Everchosen are organized and what forces you can bring with them.

Overall, due to the Everchosen release, I think more than ever it is important to take a more long term approach to the game if you like Chaos. Rumors are there will be more Chaos release to come next year (Tzeentch focused), along with Dwarves and possibly Elves.

While I'm not especially motivated by Dwarves and Elves I don't plan to be making huge armies, so I want to be sure the units I do buy are what I want... especially given how long they take to paint.

Now one can speculate that AoS is not doing well as much as one cares, but as a follower I am now and have been slowing my purchases to more closely match my painting. If you want to judge by stuff posted on the web, there are lots of folks who are still painting the stater box including staff at stores. These miniatures are a severe time consumer to complete if you want to have them come out better than standard table top because they are so large and you can actually see all that detail on the table top.

So no rush here, just steady progress... and purchases.

[Malebolgia]

I agree with that.

I don't think folks should understate the role of AoS.

For my part, I began with the Starter Box and made 2 additional purchases thereafter. I determined that I would not go crazy buying stuff until I had actually painted up the stuff I bought. I have the shipping box that the Starter Set came with and I have put my new purchases in there with a pledge to not buy more if it would overflow. So far I have painted up 13 miniatures from the box and am working on a piece of terrain. Nevertheless, there was room for another order and I was looking at what I could get for Chaos for Christmas when they released the new Everchosen faction. That release set me back, thinking that I needed to slow down a bit and see where GW is going with Chaos. I like the Everchosen releases and plan to buy the Knights and the Battletome. But this release seriously changed my view on what I may be putting together for a Chaos army and I want to have the Battletome first to see how the Everchosen are organized and what forces you can bring with them.

Overall, due to the Everchosen release, I think more than ever it is important to take a more long term approach to the game if you like Chaos. Rumors are there will be more Chaos release to come next year (Tzeentch focused), along with Dwarves and possibly Elves.

While I'm not especially motivated by Dwarves and Elves I don't plan to be making huge armies, so I want to be sure the units I do buy are what I want... especially given how long they take to paint.

Now one can speculate that AoS is not doing well as much as one cares, but as a follower I am now and have been slowing my purchases to more closely match my painting. If you want to judge by stuff posted on the web, there are lots of folks who are still painting the stater box including staff at stores. These miniatures are a severe time consumer to complete if you want to have them come out better than standard table top because they are so large and you can actually see all that detail on the table top.

So no rush here, just steady progress... and purchases.

But...that's not related to AOS. I think 99% of the people here behave this way when they start a new project/game
Yes...guilty....!

[Ray Rivers]

But...that's not related to AOS. I think 99% of the people here behave this way when they start a new project/game
Yes...guilty....!

 

Actually, I think it is even more important with AoS for a couple of reasons.

First, of course, is the price. While folks like to moan and complain about the prices, fact is when you consider how much time you put into painting the minis (due to both size and detail) I think they are worth it. Nevertheless, it is not a game where you want to madly throw money at buying stuff you may never paint.

And Second, is because of the way the game is played. Note that there are 4 members of the Grand Alliance; Chaos, Death, Destruction and Order. Under each of these major groupings are factions, but overall when you play, it is Chaos vs Death or Death vs Order; that is one Alliance vs the other. You can put together a Chaos Warband which includes any of the factions that belong to it, but generally, you shouldn't be mixing factions from different members of the Alliances. Thus, you can have units of Khorne, Everchosen, Skaven, etc. on the same side but not Dwarves. The big difference with the Everchosen release was a NEW faction... and that is why I want to take it easy for awhile, because I want to see what else may be coming soonish down the line.

BTW, rumor has it that the Beastmen are going to be discontinued altogether.

[The Voivod]

With all respect I think you overestimate OAS.
GW haters may wish GW will go bust overnight, but wishfull thinking doesn't make it so.
Neither does it make OAS a succes, while it, by all accounts had a small surge of initial purchases, followed an almost complete collapse all around the world.

Sure, there are some enthousiast such as yourself and I do not begrudge you for that. Enjoy the games you want.

First, of course, is the price. While folks like to moan and complain about the prices, fact is when you consider how much time you put into painting the minis (due to both size and detail) I think they are worth it. Nevertheless, it is not a game where you want to madly throw money at buying stuff you may never paint.

I can't tell you what your money is worth or what to like. I will say I do not believe sensible buyers as you claim to be yourself  have been GW's target audience for a long while. They do go for the splurge sales.

[Rhoderic]

“The studio, the creative part of Games Workshop, had always been kept apart from the sales part of it. One thing Bryan said was that if the sales people got to be in charge of the studio, it would destroy the studio, and that’s exactly what happened.”

(Quote taken from the Priestley interview)

That's kind of the same thing I was getting at. The "creative spark" behind the production of new GW miniatures (and probably rules publications) these days isn't a creative spark at all, but decrees and directives passed down from the sales department. It just feels to me like GW products are now coming from "somewhere else" than the enthusiastic, inspired, creative drive of "our own kind" (proper hobby folks).

Of course, I'm aware it's all shades of grey, really. Like Priestley says in that interview, the inception of Warhammer first came by top-down order of Bryan Ansell. Still, that was a much, much lighter shade of grey (Ansell being more of a "down in the trenches" style miniature gaming hobbyist himself, and the general idea of a massed battle fantasy ruleset being a naturally, self-evidently neat idea that many people in early 1980s GW were probably enthusiastic about - not just because there was money to be made from it but because they wanted to create). I just feel that at some point along the line, GW turned too dark a shade, and it's only been turning darker ever since.

In other news, reading that interview, I now know who to blame for the demise of the Specialist Games: the French, the Spanish and the Italians!  (I jest!)

BTW, rumor has it that the Beastmen are going to be discontinued altogether.

I'd like more information about this rumour, if anyone has it.

[Major_Gilbear]

I don't think folks should understate the role of AoS.

Yes, buy is it a starter-box spike, or actual AoS sales, or something else (perhaps tangential to AoS)? It is extremely hard to tell, and I suspect that GW will be especially coy about it in their end-of-year report. All we do know is that there is a modest improvement in sales. Bolded words to indicate that we don't even know if GW actually made more or less money this year.

[generally sensible comments on a measured buying vs painting pace]

I think this is a sensible approach in general though, and does go back to the model size and intricacy argument a bit.

Take myself as a glacially slow painter for example. I do try to be faster, but I'm just slow and hate cutting corners. I don't mind too much - I enjoy the process and it's not a race afterall.

However, what has really made it starkly clear to me is that all the useless thoughtless annoying detail that many models are festooned with nowadays just take forever to finish. It's on the model whether I like it or not, and so I have to deal with it - either scrape it off, fill it in, or cover it over, or paint it. If that level of unnecessary clutter just wasn't there, I'd have the choice - to add it, freehand it, or do nothing and leave the area plain (and in doing so, it helps make the model "mine").

Similarly is the number and fragility of parts models seem to come with increasingly. Every one of those parts is separate for a reason, and fully-assembling models means that you will not be able to paint plenty of areas properly. Every one of those parts has a mouldline to remove, an order in which to be assembled, and a location to be glued to. All that takes a lot of time compared to simpler models! If you make sub-assemblies, then each model turns into two or three "sub-models" that all take just as long to paint before more assembly at the end.

Now, don't get me wrong: I like multipart models. However, I don't find that many plastic miniatures are especially well-considered for the typical wargaming customer (er, hobbyist?). Too many parts, parts that are either way too big or too small, fiddly three-point joins, mouldlines in the worst places, etc.

The Malifaux plastics are just insane - I built and painted two nurses, and they are the width of a biro! Far too small, far to many parts, far too fiddly. Lovely models despite that, but I would never want to paint them again.

By comparison, the Malifaux metals had some rather goofy sculpting and a number of ill-fitting parts, but they were a lot simpler to assemble and a lot easier to paint. Intriguingly, when painted well, they look just as nice as the plastics (IMO).

For me, this is less a comparison of the models' material, and more a comparison of their complexity (and resulting cost increase). I confess, I enjoyed painting the metal models a lot more as a result, and made much faster progress than with my Warmachine, Infinity, or GW models. Nothing spurs you on like finishing models either!


Bringing this back to GW then, I do wonder if they can sustain enough customer interest (and therefore generate enough sales) from the gigantic and complex centrepiece models that seem to dominate their recent releases. Because the way they're going, they're leaving gaming with the models behind them in their rush to reinvent themselves as a producer of collectable models... And if they're not gaming with them, why would most people ever want to buy very many? It's why the games were developed in the first place!

[Elbows]

Regarding rumors of various things being discontinued.  While I suspect we'll see a heap of WHFB army units discontinued and maybe even a few races...I fully suspect it's all part of measured plan to re-introduce them in a year or two's time to garner more interest and bring up the occasional sales bump.

Consider, if you will, if GW suddenly released a list of Squats for 40K?  While a lot of nostalgic players no longer run 40K, if the sculpts were not atrocious (big "if") I think you'd see a small surge in "buy them while they're available!" kind of stuff. 

[Vermis]

Edit: Aaaand we're at 300 pages! 

Waheeey!  

While folks like to moan and complain about the prices, fact is when you consider how much time you put into painting the minis (due to both size and detail) I think they are worth it.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by time relating to size and detail. Takes longer? Over quicker?

GW haters may wish GW will go bust overnight, but wishfull thinking doesn't make it so.

Was it ever about wishing they'd go bust? About 'hating', even? They do a lot of stupid, gamer-unfriendly, sales-losing things, and I know there's a number of people who wish they'd go bust (fringe or not), but I think a lot of us would rather they just stop taking crazy pills.

I'm not angry...



... I'm just disappointed.

Reading Rick's interview again. I knew the bit about Tom Kirby buying out the business, but thanks to a lot of movie repeats on TV recently, I realise who he reminds me of: Noah Vanderhoff.

Wayne, I used to be in meat packing. Lips and hooves. One day, I had a four-hour layover in Tulsa. These kids in the airport kept pumping quarters into a game called Pong. They must've gone through 50 bucks! I sat there watching and said, "Hell, I'm in the wrong business." Fifteen years later, I'm a millionaire.

Current GW games are what happens when Tom Kirby tries to rap.

Major Gilbear: heh! I even found the metal models difficult to assemble. Some of those Guild constructs had very fiddly connection points.

I haven't assembled any plastic Malifaux models yet, but I was given a few spare rail crew bits on the sprue. The thought of trying to keep some of those bits on the model, even with poly cement, fills me with dread. Heck, even the thought of trying not to lose them in the carpet.
And then another beef is that, apparently beginning with their plastics, their humans got a big dose of uncanny valley. The look well sculpted, realistic, truescale, but when you get down to the knees, the shins go shooting out about 1.5 to 2 times longer than they need to. (I mentioned that to the guy who gave me the rail crew bits - now he bkames me fir not being able to unsee it. )
That bit is not really anything to do with the medium; but overall, Wyrd seem to have taken the opportunity of remaking the range, to introduce some weird style changes and collector friendly/gamer unfriendly design elements. Much the same as GW. Though the thing may be, Wyrd didn't completely dump their popular game and setting, and introduce new, unstructured examples in the same process.

[The Voivod]

Was it ever about wishing they'd go bust? About 'hating', even?

Not to me. I was merely taking two example I did not believe would happen, same as I do not believe OAS is a succes.
Maybe a bit too extreme an example.

The point was I do not think that wanting something to be true, doesn't make it true. Good or bad.