The ultimate issue for me is the expense of it all. I started the hobby years ago when I was 12 (I’m 30 this year). The peak of my hobby was during and just after my university years when me and four friends played games every week and purchased so many models we could of started our own shop. Those guys each gave up one after the other due to the increase in costs. I am now the only one with any interest. I’m one of those chaps that used to peer through the windows of a Games Workshop store, see the new Night Goblin models for sale and just buy them because they looked great. Always a sucker for a new model me.

However, I don’t do that now – I just can’t justify the cost. Back in the day, it was £12 for a box set and I started new armies at the drop of a hat. Now a basic box set of troops is £15-£20. This wouldn’t matter if it was a one off payment but by its very nature you need to collect more boxes in order to have a half decent army. Playing Warhammer, you will know 10 empire troops (£15.50), or 20 Skaven (£20.50) are next to useless. To have a decent unit at all you need double the amount of soldiers, which means you need to spend double the amount of money. £30 for Stormvermin, what are they on? If I want a large unit of Stormvermin to make the most of the horde rules I need to spend £60! Who has £60 to spend on plastic? And how is the Stormvermin plastic kit at £30 made any different to the Clanrat plastic kit at £20? Maybe if it was coated in gold leaf it’ll be worth that much.

I walked past my local Games Workshop in Romford over Christmas and looked through the window and saw a price list for ‘bargain bundles’. I scanned the prices, the minimum was £80-£100 going up to £400, though reading what made up the bundles I realised you didn’t actually save any money. You could walk around the shop, buy the items individually and still spend the same amount. What I’d actually get free after spending £400 was perhaps the string used to tie the items together. It was obviously lost on the businessmen writing up the prices what a ‘bargain bundle’ is actually supposed to be and hence why I’m not all surprised at the news of the price bomb dive.

Personally, despite the great models and cool rulebook, I think the new Warhammer starter set was poorly thought out for kids and new starters. Most kids will get the box home, throw off the lid, make up the models quick and then want to play the game immediately. What kid is then going to have the patience to read a complex rulebook first? The main glossy booklet inside the box doesn’t present brief easy read rules about what the models in the box actually do or any exciting straight-out-of-the-box-and-play mini scenarios. In fact all the booklet tells you in great length is what models you should buy next and how/where to buy them. They may of well just thrown in a catalogue and order form. What kid, especially one brought up on Wiis and Gameboys, is going to have the patience to plough through the small rulebook, cross reference each unit using the vague characteristics grid at the back and then go to great lengths to figure out rules for the Skaven warmachines and High Elf griffin. There were no helpful play cards inside or an attempt to make the game accessible to a new gamer. The unbalanced armies inside didn’t help either, if the Skaven models were too expensive to produce (because of their number) then they should have used Chaos or Dark Elves.

If Games Workshop wants to reverse its downward slide into economic oblivion then it needs to do the following:

1) Prices – either drop them or introduce bargains etc. The prices as they stand are far too high. You can’t have one of your major game systems, Warhammer, plug horde rules for big units and then have you charge stupid amounts of money for them – Stormvermin (£30 for 20) and High Elf Phoenix Guard (£25 for 10) being prime examples. Who is going to spend £50 in one hit for 20 plastic models?
2) Starter sets – make them accessible, balanced and cheaper in order to draw in new interest. They need to be self-contained games as well as lead newcomers into the hobby.
3) Specialist games – reproduce properly the specialist games and sell them in your stores as complete sets. It will give the stores much needed variety other than just 2 game systems, also it’ll give the customer choice. To have a global brand focus purely on two games is just asking for trouble. Also how cool would it be to have Necromunda and Mordheim gangs available as customisable plastic kits! Customers intimidated by massive armies may prefer to start with a Necromunda gang or an Inquisitor model. At school, the game all my mates went out and brought wasn’t Warhammer or 40K but Blood Bowl.
4) Hero Quest – Bring back in some form games like Hero Quest, Space Hulk and Space Crusade and sell them / market them online, on TV, in Argos etc. If it wasn’t for playing Hero Quest at the age of 12, I would never have even known about the hobby and then go on to spend thousands of pounds over the years on Games Workshop products. Most blokes my age won’t know their Blood Bowl from their Warhammer, but they’d all know Hero Quest and Space Crusade!
5) Marketing – If 40K and Warhammer are going to be the only games to fill Games Workshop stores then they need to be marketed a lot better. Word of mouth is no longer strong enough, online media campaigns and perhaps TV advertising will have to be considered to push the products/hobby/brand.
6) Creativity – as Warren said, excitement and creativity is rather dry at the moment at Games Workshop. To have cool brand new ‘big’ models and brand new games would really help the company get out the static period it is in.
7) White Dwarf – needs to contain more updated rules and background. Releasing army books and rulebooks that hardly change once every four years feels like tax and bit of a rip off.