The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[Franz_Josef]

Yes, but I'm sure they'll continue with the cricket bat swords!!

[Diakon]

Probably won't see any massive changes to be fair. She'll just be replaced by someone extremely similar. I don't really care if they're going to be doing more interaction with fans and leaking tidbits about upcoming releases if the new releases continue to be super awful (Space Marine Termie-Tubbies) or quite nice but ridiculously overpriced (dark elf infantry boxes). Can't see the legal folks having much say on the design of the sculpts or the pricing.

Also slight change of track but I recently uprooted a bunch of early to mid-nineties white dwarfs and I've been really enjoying reading 2nd edition 40k battle reports again. Not to mention that they have all sorts of interesting articles in them about building terrain, scratch building sci-fi tanks from WW1-modern era model kits etc. Such a shame it's just an expensive advertisement for their products now, when it used to be a top quality magazine.

Oh well.

[weismonsters]

I suspect the seeds of these things were sown very early on. Certainly White Dwarf stopped advertising non-GW products nearly thirty years ago. It often happens that the real seeds of decadence are sown just when things are perceived to be in their glory days. I remember a religious pastor I knew once making this same point regarding churches. Could it be the case also with GW?

There was a nice article "Freedom in an owned world" originally published in Vector Magazine which used to be on the internet but has unfortunately disappeared. It was an interview with various authors who had worked on Warhammer novels and such, and offered a kind of skeptical view of GW in the late eighties early nineties. Many of those criticisms seem the same in essence to the ones that are made today. Most notable was an almost obsessive fervour about their intellectual property.

As to what was their original source of success, I dont know because it was probably a bit before my time. The Fighting Fantasy gamebooks were the only thing i can really identify as a real winning idea. But as far as I understand those were a seperate venture by Jackson and Livingstone with the publishers, not GW as such.
Warhammer ever since I became familiar with it was always something that owed some of its success to hype, the kind of hype that can only be generated by some established status. After all the rules did not quite work really. We were told in white Dwarf they were great and we saw these pics of great tense battles with beatiful minis. Meanwhile, when we tried to play them, often our minis looked awful and one side or other won easily due to rules imbalances.

As i mentioned above, I can see why a company resorts to stifling opposition and propaganda. Relying solely on generating new winning ideas is rather like hoping that lightning strikes twice. However, morally, it should not be so essential to be a massive success and make lots of money. Rather just to do what you love, take satisfaction out of genuinely giving something to customers and make enough to get by in reasonable comfort. I daresay that that mentality of giving something to the gamer continued to exist or coexist with the new one even after the logical foundation had been cut from under it, just by inertia. But eventially it seems to have died, and that is the situation we have now.

[grant]

I think the days of free and helpful hobby content are dead. The new model of digital articles I found a bit shocking when I came across them. £2 for what should have been free

[FramFramson]

I think there's a boatload of free an helpful things here on the LAF, many of which are far better than any tips or tricks I ever saw in a copy of White Dwarf.

[grant]

Oh, don't get me wrong - I don't GW, any more ... 

[gimzod]

Well didn't think GW could get anymore insane but have you seen the prices on the sisters of battle? 

Anyone know a similar looking miniatures i've been looking for some for a game of in the emperors name.

[FramFramson]

There are new Sisters of Battle?!

That's the only army my buddy would play and all he ever does is go an about how refuse to make new models and nerfed the Sister's rules so badly as to make them unplayable, all part of GW's No Girls Allowed ethos.

[gimzod]

New codex and same miniatures I think.

[Dolmot]

New "digital exclusive" codex.

Edit: nevermind this latter part.

[joroas]

Well, I have no intention of spending any more money on any of the new codexes, etc., for my WH Armies. 

[FramFramson]

Oh okay. That sounds more correct (you'll note that so far all the other updated Codex releases have come with new miniatures too). I think that new codex was a the subject of some bitch becuase it only makes the Sororitas worse to play.

Which seems funny to me. I mean in this day and age, female warriors are a big hit (thanks to one motivation or another) with nerds. Seems silly to spit on free money - especially if you're GW.

[grant]

Holy shit. $45 for a digital download. A new low for Games Workshop!   

[FramFramson]

Oh okay. That sounds more correct (you'll note that so far all the other updated Codex releases have come with new miniatures too). I think that new codex was a the subject of some bitching because it only makes the Sororitas worse to play in the current environment (I don't personally know this for sure - it's just what the two people I know who play Sisters have told me).

Which seems funny to me. I mean in this day and age, female warriors are a big hit (thanks to one motivation or another) with nerds. Seems silly to spit on free money - especially if you're GW.

[grant]

Holy shit. $45 for a digital download. A new low for Games Workshop!