The LAF Games Workshop Discussion Thread

[nic-e]

Makes you just want to call the mortician, tip him generously, and have her taken away. Taking up valuable space for those who are living!

Clear out the coffin dodgers, sell the house to a baby who will live happily until the gem in their hand turns red.

[Major_Gilbear]

That's an awesome Fist Marine, a unit of em would be great I imagine the ships and craft would resemble something like an Austin Powers spaceship.

The command squad, painted by MrChaos:




The Dread:



And some WIP:

(Note the squaddie on the far right: he has a power folding chair).

[Cherno]

Not enuff Bling Bling in this thread, so...

[grant]

[nic-e]

if you were the new CEO of GW how would you 'fix' it.

How would you increase profit for the shareholders while keeping enough customers happy to stay afloat and grow.

Me first thing would be a line of pre paints or the use of different coloured plastics like the gundam kits. When kids are the age they get a GW big box for christmas the fun lasts until they try put paint on a figure and it all goes horribly wrong. I call it the airfix effect when things are much more fun before you start playing with them. Keep the kids who are getting started young, going for more than a month before its all declared too hard and put under the bed.

Second I would release 2 small box games a year. Use existing figures from the ranges for the minis components.

Third I would focus on winding back the force sizes in games. Its got to the point now where there are TOO many figures you need to have an army especially if people have transformers and voltrons on the table. 50 figs should be the size of the average army tops. People can actually finish an army then and will game it and stay interested.

4th I would start using the business model of 'quantity has a quality all of its own.' If you can make up the difference in a smaller price by moving a greater volume of product then do so for gods sake. Its now too expensive to buy other than second hand and with detol you can strip them back to bare plastic components as good as out the box no worries.

5th rationalise the fluff while at the same time making it lots looser.

6th loosen up on IP. Buy the competition like puppets war/kromlech to work for you. These guys are so into GW stuff they made a company making minis to compliment it and some of them a fantastic too. Its a big pool of talent to plunder.

7th Also on that note add minecraft/legos aspect to GW minis with a program called chapter master. With chapter master you choose from a pool of hundreds of parts to make your own personalised force leader which is 3d printed. Charge about the same you charge now for a force leader character but this way it becomes real value for money. The other upside is with a unique force leader it creates a deeper investment in the game by the player.

8th develop a strong partnership with a game company like sega who do good mass battle games (apart from rome II cough cough). These are hugely expensive and time consuming projects that eat money like a big boned lad goes through popcorn. Yet at the same time a franchise that is strong and has a good product can spin out millions/billions of dollars in profits. How much has the COD franchise made? Thats why you need a partnership to have the funds to truly fund a product that is a game changer like the total war series.

9th Kids cartoon show. Make it about orks, Battletech had one. offshore all the animation in korea to cut costs and get a damm good script writer. Put a cartoon show into a kids brain and you can sell that franchise forever more to them. Look at TMNT/transformers/voltron/thunderbirds. (my tribal nephew Finn had all the thunderbirds and the show was 10 times older than he was!)

10th stop being total dicks about lots of things. Having just watched a slew of 80's era high school movies I must state GW break the rule of school yard cool in those movies. Being cool is not saying you cant use other people figures, the rule of cool is to just act like why would they even want to but happily accept it. Image is everything, truth is what is popular at the time and social manipulation is an everyday job for many people. (go spend 2 weeks working in advertising and tell me it aint.) You wanna be the Jeff Spicoli of the minis world not Mr Hand.



 



  

 

So become a mix of mantic, microsoft and airfix whilst maintaining the luxury product attitude of apple and the storylines of a 13 year old goths wet dreams?

I'm in, get this man an office and a coffee!

[grant]

the luxury product attitude of apple

It's not an attitude - it's a lifestyle.

Mac since '93. 

[weismonsters]

The article "Freedom in an owned world" is back up on the net. I found it to be a very interesting read. It is a glimpse into GW in the 80s and 90s from the point of view of contract sci-fi authors.
http://www.bsfa.co.uk/www.vectormagazine.co.uk/article.asp%3FarticleID=42.html

[Dr.Falkenhayn]

 

[grant]

Totally agree. Now that's angry! 

[beefcake]

Yep, gotta love that pic.

[FramFramson]

I've seen the angry marines before, but not that one! Man is that ever awesome.

Here's one of the best:

[Andym]

That man is a bonifide genius!!

[Major_Gilbear]

Got to admit, one thing that I liked about the Angry Marines is that despite being obviously a jokey chapter, they do actually manage to capture a lot of the RT silliness that I think a lot of people here used to enjoy when playing GW games in their youth...

Another thing I liked about them, aside from the silly, was that they can be made from any old leftovers, can fit any Marine Codex or game edition, and can be used for different armies from game-to-games - all of which makes them quite economical. For example, if you want to play them as Chaos Space Marines, you can easily imagine a heavy metal inspired squad for Havocs/Noise Marines (and yes, I do remember the old Noise Marine with the guitar-gun). Play them as Blood Angels, and have fun strapping massive phallic rockets to their backs. Play them as Space Wolves, and have fun finding them suitably stupid mounts to ride (maybe walking sharks with laser beams on their heads?). Really, I think they are both a great homage and antidote to the "new GrimDark".

Also, not sure *who* came up with the chapter, but it has spawned lots of comic strips, fluff, a fan-Codex, and lots of people have clearly had a lot of fun making models too.

Maybe it will inspire folks here on LAF to join in and start a unit or two of Angry Marines? 

[Dr Mathias]

That whirlwind with the marines in the launchers is damn funny. That made my day

[nic-e]

Got to admit, one thing that I liked about the Angry Marines is that despite being obviously a jokey chapter, they do actually manage to capture a lot of the RT silliness that I think a lot of people here used to enjoy when playing GW games in their youth...

Another thing I liked about them, aside from the silly, was that they can be made from any old leftovers, can fit any Marine Codex or game edition, and can be used for different armies from game-to-games - all of which makes them quite economical. For example, if you want to play them as Chaos Space Marines, you can easily imagine a heavy metal inspired squad for Havocs/Noise Marines (and yes, I do remember the old Noise Marine with the guitar-gun). Play them as Blood Angels, and have fun strapping massive phallic rockets to their backs. Play them as Space Wolves, and have fun finding them suitably stupid mounts to ride (maybe walking sharks with laser beams on their heads?). Really, I think they are both a great homage and antidote to the "new GrimDark".

Also, not sure *who* came up with the chapter, but it has spawned lots of comic strips, fluff, a fan-Codex, and lots of people have clearly had a lot of fun making models too.

Maybe it will inspire folks here on LAF to join in and start a unit or two of Angry Marines? 

like many of 40k meme's, you have 4Chan to thank.

http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Angry_Marines