So what's the deal with Specialist Games? Why the sudden revival? Can we expect them to be any good now?

So what's the deal with Specialist Games? Why the sudden revival? Can we expect them to be any good now?

New Necromunda
>casualised
>scale creep
>forces STRONK WOMYN into 40k
>DAY ONE DLC

DO NOT SUPPORT THIS

>Why the sudden revival?
X Wing knocked GW from their all too comfortable perch

>>casualised
Did it take the depth away from the game or just make it more playable?

>>scale creep
Fair point, but the new models are gorgeous.

>>forces STRONK WOMYN into 40k
Escher are old thing. Warhammers have had strong women for ages anyway. Like Sisters of Battle/Sigmar and Amazons.

>>DAY ONE DLC
It is a physical product, no?

>Why the sudden revival?

GW making more money to support them and people want to pay them.

Blood Bowl
>abandon the game around a decade ago
>return upon seeing the game still thriving and backed up by third party miniature companies
>take the community rulebook
>literally copy-paste it, including errors that had been subsequently errata'd by the community
>don't make any changes to the core rules (when arguably stuff like the pass mechanic could have been streamlined slightly), fuck about with the very solid league rules for no reason though
>don't include the full rules in the main book, so rather than one reference point for all skills and stats, they are spread over several volumes
>limited-release special play cards
>Deathzone "seasons" books with 3 teams' rules in at a time, £20 each
>still sell teams in boxes that don't give you a standard team layout, nobody with a brain stem plays Orcs with 2 Blitzers and 2 Black Orcs for example

If you want an idea of what actual Blood Bowl players think, The NAF still uses the community rules pack for all their tournaments.

>casualised
This is actually perfect for me as someone that hasn't really played since the 90's, it's just a shame I dont know where my old Clan Spyre and Clan Delaque models are. I was going to take 40k back up when I heard 8th addition was more streamlined, but I am convinced the rules are already bloating as the new codexes come out.
I want to table top but I want simple systems that are skirmish scale.

>scale creep
True but that imperial beastman model has huge appeal to me.

>forces STRONK WOMYN into 40k
I am willing to bet, clan Escher was a thing when you were still in your dads nutsack.

>DAY ONE DLC
This sucks, I agree. I can live with it though.

The 'stronk womyn' argument is a meme. The problem is that of the two sides in the box set things seem heavily biased towards the female gang with typical GW cluelessness based on what we know so far, which is both frustrating to play and whips up the SJW bogeyman frenzy even more.

>STRONK WOMYN
You mean House Escher, who've been part of Necromunda canon since the game's inception?

I'd give a kidney for Andy Chambers to come back and remake Battlefleet Gothic. His work on Dropfleet Commander was great, but I prefer flying cathedrals to the Dropfleet universe.

GWs shitty modern design style ruining things.

BFG and Epic would be exceptions as getting miniatures in those scales of those things is difficult.

Necromunda, Bloodbowl and if anything turns up for Mordheim you can just use old miniatures or stuff from dozens of other 28mm companies.

name recognition of products
free publicity like this
ready made market (golden age types my age)
good entry point for younger players as small units & can turn into a league easily.

I think he meant "STRONK WOMYN" as in "strong-waisted", as in "fat with man faces"

Only thing is GW isn't really big enough to support all of this. Blood Bowl has 4 teams and has been out for over a year now. They are planning 1 gang per quarter so necromunda is going to grow very slowly or just idle and die. It's cool to see this stuff, but they just don't have the size required to look after all of this stuff

GW got boxed in by its own segmentation strategy. They focused on kids and ignoring if not actively driving off the grognards. That's smart if you are trying to be a premium niche play, like Ferrari. But meanwhile they vertically integrated, building a very expensive network of retail stores and trying to drive the small independent stores out of business. That works if you're a volume mass-market play like Toyota or Walmart. The problem is that you can't take and hold a near-monopoly AND try to sell Ferraris at Ferrari prices at the same time and expect that to work. FFG took advantage of that opening.

Now if GW wants to regain ground, they need shelf space and help from the indie stores. Only they screwed their channel relationships up and have to pay to restore them. And the older gamers, loyal and reliable if not actually lucrative, they're the backbone that sustains the community and helps keep the player base going. They've been driven off, too, and have to somehow be lured back. Good (or at least less bad) writing and game design can do that, but the best people have long since been pushed out.

The old party is over. Kirby is gone and it looks like GW is on the right track now but it will take time to recover. The new leadership arrived just in time to deal with the hangover. They also need investors to be patient and understand that Kirby's short term strategy got them into this mess. They'll be tempted to bring in a new Kirby and reverse course again.

>heavily biased towards the female gang
>whips up the SJW bogeyman frenzy
But user, (You) are the dirty SJW boogeygirl. :^)

>largest miniatures company on earth
>just not big enough to support all of this

If they can't do it, nobody can. They could have gone for a more aggressive release schedule, but they're taking a more cautious approach. It remains to be seen whether it works out for them. I think they're also following a continuous sales model, they probably think that they'll shift more product overall if they bring it out at a steady pace rather than all at once, so that they don't end up with one big release which sells well, and then nothing else after that. Essentially, if you bring all the gangs out at once then people will probably just buy one and stick to that. If you bring them out in a drip feed then those same people may buy them all. It's annoying for players, but we'll have to wait and see if it's a sensible business strategy.

>The old party is over. Kirby is gone and it looks like GW is on the right track now but it will take time to recover. The new leadership arrived just in time to deal with the hangover. They also need investors to be patient and understand that Kirby's short term strategy got them into this mess. They'll be tempted to bring in a new Kirby and reverse course again.

Kek, what on earth are you talking about. I'm an investor and GW stock is the best performing stock I've ever bought, I couldn't be happier. It's had the fastest growth on the entire FTSE this year, going from less than 500 pence a share to north of 2100 (nearly triple their previous peak from well over a decade ago), all while paying dividends of something like 6%. GW is a more valuable business than Debenham's now, investors are over the moon.

They don't need to support any of it, is the thing. GW's been quite happily selling little boxed games over the last couple of years and doing well out of it. Think of that Assasins game, the Dark Eldar flyers one, that SM Scouts vs Nids one, Shadespire, whatever.

They can sell models in regimental or boxed sets for the main games, or packaged with a board and some rules. Putting in the rules means that you'll get a few more sold to new interested players, for Christmas presents, that kind of thing.

Supporting this kind of game long-term is more dangerous than just dropping one boxed game. Right now, every single new Blood Bowl player or old player who wants the new rules or board needs to buy the Orc and Human team boxes packaged with rules and the board. GW will sell more of the Human and Orc miniatures than, say, the Goblin team box; only specific players who already own the base game and aren't converting their old miniatures will ever buy those boxes. There's just less profit to be had in them.

This hurts too much. I wold be satisfied if the boxes at least came with three sprues instead of 2, so we could have all of the options without having two buy two boxes. That and other team rules never because GW likes going very slow.

>>>DAY ONE DLC
>It is a physical product, no?
starter set comes with board game rules, if you want skirmish game you need to buy separate rulebook

Technically still the wrong term since DLC is a TLA for downloadable content.

It's still really shitty though to carve up the game like that.

Everything about the whole specialist games coming back thing has only confirmed my scepticism in calling out that it's still not old GW re-releasing games, it's post-Kirby GW. And whilst the man may be gone, GW is still GW.

I can still see Adeptus Titanicus being carved up for gradual release of just titans. There's enough in the fluff to sustain small releases for years without even touching other units. And given the scaling, they can and will charge comparable prices to other game's large figure units. We'd be lucky to see anything other than Imperial titan (including knights) variants released (maybe with a barely different warped traitor version) for more than a year after release.

And the way Bloodbowl and Necromunda are being handled all-but-confirms that is exactly what will happen. Carved up, neutered, expansions promised but trickled out.

Specialist Games are more specialised games focusing on areas and themes outsideof the remit of the two big fanchises

They are back because FFG and other companies are kicking GW's ass with similar offerings

Hahah, no, just use the old rulebooks.

Escher before were glam rockgals with an over-the-top backstory of hating men and treating them as breeding stock at best.

GW is taking them a bit too seriously.

So, typical GW female models.

I remember the good old days. What's Goodwin upto anyway/

Translation time:
>>casualised
Rules aren't the ungodly complex 2ed 40K rules.
>>scale creep
You control more than just 5-10 guys.
>>forces STRONK WOMYN into 40k
I'm a misogynist and should go back to le Reddit.
>>DAY ONE DLC
I escaped from le reddit lololo

The scale creep has more to do with the new models being 32mm than engagement size.

What is a specialist game?

Three pounds of flax.

...

Which would half work if they were wearing plate armor. Can't help with the fact GW makes faces using a straight edge.

There's literally nothing wrong with that.