GW in good-content overdrive

>Necromunda coming back
>8th edition appears to be a success
>New models and boxes on the regular
>Skull box, because why the fuck not, it's a nice thing to have
>New generals handbook
>Skirmish and Path to Glory
>New Nurgle stuff for AoS
>Firestorm looks lit

Look, i like to meme on g-dubs as much as the next user, but over the last couple of months, they really made me a happy little shee... ah, customer.

Yeah, they still do some shit people don't like (like "Primaris can only fit in these new vehicles we obviously want you to buy"), but overall they're doing a lot more stuff the fans have reason to get excited for. Even finally switching to something that isn't based on the same 3rd-7th edition rules and giving everyone indexes as a starting point is nice. Codex armies probably have an advantage, but not one that seems as bad as just the old codex creep of the the last several editions. And the community site having news everyday is like a whole new GW.

You forgot
>frequent FAQs and releasing content based on player feedback
>offering actual deals on minis like the start collecting boxes and a variety of starter sets

I used to be one of the GW haters during the kirby era, but now I am chugging the kool-aid. I am more hopeful now than ever for the future of this company and its games.

What they are doing to the lore and Space Marine designs triggers the fuck out of me.

Digging a lot of the other stuff tho.

Just bring back Tomb Kings and I'll be happy, hopefully box o' skulls is the harbinger of their arrival.

I am one of the few out there who hates 8th ed (but if you like it i don't judge) overall, but the main reason is the goddamn lore. Oh look at these new primaris guys! Oh... everyone acts as they know em already...

I would have enjoyed a book about the very first couple of battles with these guys from guardsmen/marine point of view.

Also the release window for 8th ed was nearly as bad as AoS release window.


Other than all these bugbears (for me) i do like some of their other stuff. Bloodbowl was awesome, can't wait for shadowspire, Necromunda nearly made me faint. The bundles are cool and awesome. Skirmish for aos is a lot of fun and great for people to start off with and learn the rules.

Nurgle is a weak god, praise Khorne by lopping someone else's head for the blood god.

>Also the release window for 8th ed was nearly as bad as AoS release window.
How so?

You forgot
>making Slaanesh PG-13

SO slow

It was up in preorders 3rd june to come out 2 weeks later on the 17th, other than that nothing came out. The when it came out instead of banging out the Primaris release we had to wait another 2 weeks before anything substantial.

And we are finally having the last known release this coming saturday... 2 months later.(Thankfully i don't play primaris otherwise the wait would have killed me.)

Now atleast the primaris guys came out couple of boxes at a time unlike the stormcast which came out 1 at a time.

Otherwise what other major release apart from primaris marines (model wise which are for the main games, a couple of cool things came out but nothing substantial)

We are finally getting general's handbook 2 for AoS but other than that we had 2 months of just primaris marine. Which is cool for those who like marines but for everyone else: when the summer holidays, the biggest window for cool stuff to come out is bloated with just bigger space marines with better guns(I know its a different topic, but man that tank and dreadnought look ridiculous with the 50 million gun on them...) is just depressing for those who like chaos or xenos, or even those who prefer AoS, though atleast AoS is getting the handbook fix).

As a quick disclaimer that's how I see it. You're all welcome to disagree

>All Xenos still fucked

Not him but the releases feel pretty slow for what they're trying to do, i.e. the Konor campaign.
>make new campaign
>one side gets their new models and codex almost a full month ahead of the other side
>other side is still waiting on new models, yes they both are but primaris have gotten transports and dreads on top of jump pack, gravis, etc. way before DG have gotten anything outside of the DI box

The GW releases have been abominably slow lately. Like 6 months of leadup to a disappointing and/or meh release. Like Mortarion, they teased him for like a year and he turned out stupid looking.

Next year is allegedly the year of the Xenos and we know for a fact Tau will be getting a big update again. Also frontlinegaming confirmed Riptide buffs are coming.

Prepare for the universe to right itself.

>8th edition appears to be a success


Show me the 8e nid codex or Imma call you a LIAR

Hopefully some compensating nerfs, too. Tau aren't bad at the moment. Sure they aren't blatantly broken like they were, but they're perfectly acceptable.

In some cases like commander-spam they're still stupid as fuck to play against.

The thing that annoys me is they're just sitting on these new releases when there's an active event going on right now to release them in. I'm sure DG players would love that new tank that was teased in White Dwarf almost three months ago now, which is clearly finished and just sitting there not being sold.

It isn't perfect, but I'm thoroughly enjoying the GeeDubs redemption arc.

Based off what
GW literally said this is the edition of chaos

Chaos a shit

>the kirby era

What was that?

eleven thousand years of plot progression to toy with and you all still begged for more. Reap what you sow

Imagine if they returned the old world in some form of canonicy and produced NOT!tomb kings and NOT!brets that could be actually used by old fans.

that could really put the final boost in the positive reception of this new executive

Fuck you everyone with a a scrap of matter between their ears knew it was a setting. The faggots asking for the plot to move forward took a meme too far.

Total War Warhammer as well. One final look at the Warhammer world where we get to change the ending into what we want.

Hope we get Araby and Tomb Kings for the second game and the third game goes to the Mountains of Mourn and beyond.

I like it, I'm still salty about the canceling of WHFB, but I understand why. (Even if I think it's mostly GW's fault. Reeee, and so on.) I can always still play WHFB, or I can play Frostgrave or KoW. I'm happy for the new RPG coming out, though. I hope Necromunda is good, and I also hope that if Necromunda does good, they release a new Mordheim.

The last CEO, Kirby. He was the one who shat both 6th and 7ed out the door, let ward and cruddace fuck up every codex produced, discontinued battalion boxes and any other bundle that actually saved you money, killed fantasy, ensured there was no hint of balance or fun to be found, kicked puppies, etc.

Everything wrong with oldGW in a nutshell, basically.

Don't forget the "we are not a game company, but a model company" mantra he tried enforcing. Along with "premium price for premium product" he coined

Your giving me nightmares about WF 7th edition. What the hell were they thinking with that overly broken DOC army book!?

I quit a few years ago, but it's great that they're at long last cleaning up their act. What's next? Squats? Letting me cash in my skullz? Mutable genus returns for Tyranids? Jervis designs plastic Aspect Warriors?

£20 for a single monopose plastic character.

I want them to redo the skeleton kangs as some sort of Storm cast undead made from the slivers of souls Nagash has been stealing from the reforged

Let's not pretend that all of that left with Kirby though. For a start, Ward's back, and for regardless of any deals they are now offering on basic starter armies, the prices are still so fucking insane that the value proposition is negligible - especially when you see the undiscounted rate of the special units and characters.

>Yo I dont follow rumor sites and am bad with GW's chosen paths of information dissemination...
>Er, I mean "WHERES MY SHIT?"

Isn't the only reason Creative Assembly's been allowed to add so much original units and lore into TWW is because of GW's approval?

>looks lit
18+

I don't think you realize what 18 year olds are like in 2017. You haven't realized you're old yet.

The thing to remember about Kirby is that he was in charge for a very long time. He led a buyout of the company by the sales side from the games designers in 1991. That may seem like sacrilege, but it was under his rule that GW basically established 40k and WHFB as we know them (as well as a lot of the specialist games), developed a network of stores, and grew to the size that it is today. The problem was that, like all tyrants, he grew mad with power. He was always about the business management and finance side rather than the games, and led the company in the wrong direction through a chunk of the 2000s. By the time he left he'd become a symbol of everything people hated about GW. It's like the saying 'all political lives end in failure,' and the same is true of CEOs if they don't quit while they're ahead. If Kirby had stepped down for good in the early 2000s we'd remember him as the guy who built GW, as it is he'll go down as the man who nearly destroyed it.

Yeah he is right. The idiots you've been hating for the last 5 years are voting now

Is 8E the edition where we finally get plastic sisters? I will literally drop a grand on buying a fuck ton of them. I already have like 3k+ sisters but it's a workout moving them around

Interesting, I did not know this. Thank you.

Doesnt change gw priorities

How do you think Trump managed to get voted in?

I only started playing last year and it seems people REALLY hate him. However, from the descriptions people have I can't see a difference between them and now. The offices are still the same and the upkeep on models seems awful.

Then and now*

Good insight. Thanks.

It makes sense that if you had someone who wasn't at all invested in the games side, you'd have the games become steadily worse.

Out of curiosity, who's running the show now, and what do we know about them?

>How do you think Trump managed to get voted in?

The Amish, plus swinging one of Wisconsin or Michigan.

>Everyone with a a scrap of matter between their ears knew it was a setting

Wrong

It's still a generic edgy grimdark setting though

prices are still high, and they forced people to buy an $80 rhino for primaris marines. I just hope they do something with the pricing model.

can you fucking wait

The fact that they just handwaved the hundred years between them being stronger marines with no experience and becoming grizzled veterans really annoys me. One ofthe characters in the novel reflectsc about how early on in the crusade they made a lot of mistakes and that's all we get.

I also wish we could get a chance to see them fighting and living alongside normal marines to see how their cultures clash. But I guess there's still time for that.

There's so much narrative potential with all of this but they just aren't using it.

>tfw the gw dick is for far down your mouth you advertise for them
damn op you thirsty

Rountree is in charge now. He used to be the CFO (essentially head accountant), so you might have thought it would just be business as usual, but they've done an amazing job at turning things around since he took over the top job. I think he was involved heavily in the reorganisation of the retail side, perhaps that actually gave him more of an insight into the need to grow and please the community. Of course a company is a lot more than just its CEO, so it might have as much to do with the fact that the power dynamics have shifted back towards the creative department now that Kirby has left, but I'm optimistic about the way things are going.

>allegedly the year of the Xenos
Is your Dad Nintendo, or did I miss something?

Accountant here. We would actually know best what would make the most money, because we actually see the raw data flow in and out as money is used to produce product, product is moved out, and revenue comes in. So no doubt, Rountree isn't just "bringing the hobby back", he is using his experience as CFO to maximize profit.

Kirby as CEO should have received regular reports from the accountants working at GW as part of being a board member, but something tells me he didn't give a shit.

the fact that what you just said is something that GW would write into the story is fucking sad

I've heard that Roundtree used to play Warhammer himself.

GW has some awful agreement with their shareholders that they can't lower prices

>chaos codex sells 40% less during the release weekend than the last one

Cutting nurgle, tzeentch and no new models sure worked out well GW

>Kirby as CEO should have received regular reports from the accountants working at GW as part of being a board member, but something tells me he didn't give a shit.

I think it was the opposite. Kirby came from the sales side of the company. He was never big on the game itself, he was all about managing retail, expanding the business. During the 'golden years' of GW from about 1991 to 2003 the company grew almost exponentially, with revenues increasing more or less tenfold. I would suspect that, during that period, he more or less let the games studio do its thing and focussed on the retail side of the business. In 2003 the wheels came off, and from then until recently the turnover was pretty flat. That probably marks the point where all the worst aspects of Kirby-ism were realised, when price-gouging and pay-to-win started to rear their ugly heads, when insufficiently profitable games were shitcanned so that the company could focus on nothing but the big two, when stores had to meet sales targets or get shut down, when the aggressive attitude to independent stockists and copyright infringements began, and when the management interference in the rules in order to shift more models started to take place. All of those things probably 'made sense' from an accounting point of view, in terms of maximising profitability, but it didn't work because it pissed off the consumers and stopped growth. That was the stretch where a lot of the big names from the design team left the company, a sure sign of heavy-handed management interference.

You're dumb.

Thousand Sons and Death Guard aren't in the CSM codex for the same reason that Space Wolves and Dark Angels aren't in the Space Marines codex. They're going to get their own codex.

Don't forget the LotR bubble and what that did to GW.

Cont.

I'd reckon that its not Rountree's accounting experience which is responsible for the recent boost to profits. He's been in the company for a long time, and if he was responsible for enacting a lot of the Kirby decrees, then he's sure to have talked to a lot of staff in a lot of shops. Essentially, Kirby stayed in his high tower, got rid of people who disagreed with him, and boasted in chairman's preambles about how the company didn't do any market research and would never sell product at a discount. Kirby focussed on nothing but financials and sales targets, and avoided anything that looked risky or insufficiently profitable. Rountree is rumoured to have once played the game, and is 20 years younger (Kirby is pushing 70), so much more likely to have an awareness of the wider community and the importance of listening to internet chatter. I don't doubt that his accounting background plays into how they're increasingly targeting lower entry level pricing and investing to market and promote the game, but I'd reckon it's more likely to be a result of having a CEO with a more outward-looking attitude.

yeah what the fuck happened to "new models with each codex"

why cant games workshop just start giving us normie marine stuff like, i dont know, a multi part chaos lord? With ALL the options

the GW manager at the store near me literally tried to sell me stuff to convert one when I asked if he's heard about any new undivided HQs

what is the lord of the rings bubble?

Basically, as the movies were coming out LotR was a hot seller, drawing new blood in, and worth paying for the rights. As the movies wrapped up, people (outside the hobby) stopped caring about it and the money dried up.

ah. I'm surprised they haven't tried to make a game of thrones game or some other trendy shit. At least LOTR had an established world that a lot of modern fantasy got it's ideas from

>I'm surprised they haven't tried to make a game of thrones game or some other trendy shit.

Dude, they literally learned from LotR that such a thing is only profitable in the short term and will fuck them in the ass the moment the public moves on.

LOTR bubble is the big increase in revenue from about 2001 to 2004. Its collapse was the catalyst for all of the shitty Kirby-behaviour outlined in , partially because the company had overexpanded off the back of it and found itself in serious trouble. Of course the annual statement they just released shows revenues of £158 million, surpassing their previous peak.

I think the inherent danger for GW in tie-ins is that they do all of their production themselves in Nottingham, which is admirable in itself, don't get me wrong. The problem that causes them is that if they invest a lot of money into facilities and staff for something, as they did with LotR, and then popularity falls off a cliff, they're left holding the baby in a way that they wouldn't be if they had contracted out to some Chinese company to make all the minis. Of course, that might not have done that much to save them. A lot of the harm resulting from the LotR collapse was probably that they'd expanded their store network, and when demand dried up they found themselves stuck with loads of locations that were making a loss. Again, had GW just been a games manufacturer, that wouldn't have been an issue for them, but because they're a retail chain it's a major vulnerability.

I like how they made a terminator lord kit when nobody uses them, and instead of making a kit for biker lords, which everyone uses they just didn't include them in the chaos codex.

Rountree also scheduled important board meetings on days Kirby was absent (he was chairman of the board after stepping down from CEO, leaving the company in sept) IIRC. Meaning he could get shit done without the roadblock that is the old boss still wanting to meddle.

Theres a little bit of that in the new shroud of night novel

>Ward's back
If Rountree has any sense (and given how he has grown the company's profits and has made the company become very interactive with players. it seems likely he does), he will keep Ward on a VERY tight leash. When Ward wrote fluff that wasn't Ultramarines, he was actually pretty good at it. He sucked at writing codexes, but perhaps nuWard will not be able to completely imbalance the game since the new rules-making structure being one of simplicity and brevity, he won't be able to introduce rules that are so overtly complicated they fucking break the game. He did that a lot. And it didn't help that GW's codex-updating schedule was glacial at best. The new datasheet and FAQ system GW are doing will help curtail Ward's autistically excitable changes quite fast.

You are forgetting our lord Saint Duncan of the Thin Paints?

>Firestorm looks lit
The RPG actually looks like it's only going to sell because it's 40k related. Also since it's wholly D6 based, the little autists can roll all their normal 40k dice as well.
Probably will be talked about for two or three weeks, then abandoned.

The main games is still really bad, all the new 40K releases look stupid as fuck, and the fluff is getting steadily worse.

8th Ed is still an unbalanced mess of poor design choices. In about a year or two everyone will get tired of the new imbalance and we'll be back to square one.

Necromunda looks cool though.

GIVE ME PLASTIC SISTERS

REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

How long do you think they'll support Necromunda? A few months?

Probably decently.
Blood bowl is still getting support its been over a year now i think.

Knew it. Fookin' dishonest cretin.

Everything is now useable in the index, Genestealers are the new Riptides, Maleceptors aren't overpriced to shit (though he needs the other 3 powers to truly see play, either as a buff bot or mortal wound spammer), Warriors are good, Pyrovores are good, we can actually shoot worth a damn between Exocrine and Hive Guard (who are BS 3+ again)

anyone know where to get the Shadow War: Armageddon rules? Can't find it in any of the megas linked in the archived thread

>if this keeps going I might get new SoB models as a retro re-release

>SoB get released as a Necromunda army.

>Lose 40k rules.

If GW releases a 9th edition of WHFB I'll be happy and suck their CEO's dick.

They can even keep AoS, I just want my Old World back

I'm ok with this, new models and the index are still a thing.

It really was a CEO issue, I thought GW was done circa 2013 or so but Kirby really has improved things. Notable finally embracing social media, it's hard to believe that a few years ago GW didn't even have a facebook and seemed to treat the internet as anathema. Now we have daily content releases on blogs & youtube. Warhammer Community in particular allowed GW to take the initiative from fansites like dakka/warseer with regards to rumor and new release showcasing. I don't even check dakka rumors anymore.

The new GW even has embraced little things like not taking itself so seriously. Regimental Standard is a good example of this.

However there are still loads of issues. I appreciate them trying to reinvigorate their IP's, but I feel Age of Sigmar is a massive downgrade from WHFB in both gameplay and lore/setting. Also I find Primaris Space Marines dumb, but this is just a personal taste.

Lastly, prices are still THE biggest issue, as they were years ago. GW may have fixed fan interaction and lack of support for a lot of games/factions, but everything is still expensive as fuck.

Fantasy back when?
Its kinda funny that they could have revitalized fantasy with the total warhammer game and instead chose that time to release sigmarines and then sell them off.

There'll probably be decent support for a few years, then it will trail off to LotR levels.

What about the price?

Also, I want magus to be redeemed and work for the imperium again to fuck tzeetch back

>price
You better have more than US$1k to spend.

>Magus redemption
0% chance

Now, here's an interesting ponderation. GW's main competitor on the tabletop scene is probably X-Wing, at least on sales. Thye recently got bought out by Asmodee, a French outfit which has been on a wild spending spree of acquisitions recently, also acquiring Days of Wonder (which makes Ticket to Ride) and securing the English licensing rights to Catan, among numerous other purchases. They've done this by running up debts, and because they're part of a far larger parent company, but it's allowed them to post massive revenue growth, up from about €100 million five years ago to closer to €400 million now, leapfrogging GW. For a bit of context, that puts them at about a tenth of the size of Hasbro, but growing fast.

GW makes pretty much everything they sell in-house, and sets all of their products within the 40k, Fantasy or AoS universes, but it doesn't have to be that way. They started out as the UK distributor of D&D (the two of them nearly merged in the old days), there's nothing that stops them from buying out other games and companies fully formed, and using their existing network of stores to sell them. The stores could seriously use a more diverse range of products (they average barely over £1000 of profit per store), and doing so might also help to expose a wider range of potential players to the core GW products. Imagine, for a moment, if GW had been the one which bought out FFG, we'd be looking at GW stores stocking X-Wing, Netrunner, various roleplaying and licensed games etc. It's too late for that now, but is that kind of move a good way that GW could expand the business and broaden out to a wider market?

The problem with that would be that GW gained control over other franchises/IP.

Fuck that. GW can't even manage Warhammer properly, they can keep they're grubby hands off of other games.

Sold with a literal 50000% gain.

I'd also say they've finally found their sense of humour again.

>When Ward wrote fluff that wasn't Ultramarines, he was actually pretty good at it
I forget, what's the difference between psychic power and sorcery again?
And if there's no difference, why is the fucking council of nikea still a fucking thing?

FIrestorm's the AoS campaign, not the rpg.
If you're going to bait, bait with your glasses on, user.