![Atomic Tank – The Robot Wars Review | Fast-Paced 10mm Sci-Fi Wargame [7 Days Early Access]](https://images.beastsofwar.com/2026/01/unboxing-hydra-miniatures-atomic-tank-the-robot-wars-coverimage-225-127.jpg)
Point of View: Your Comments On Games Workshop & Justin’s Blanket
January 28, 2019 by crew
For some website features, you will need a FREE account and for some others, you will need to join the Cult of Games.
Or if you have already joined the Cult of Games Log in now
What difference will having a FREE account make?
Setting up a Free account with OnTableTop unlocks a load of additional features and content (see below). You can then get involved with our Tabletop Gaming community, we are very helpful and keen to hear what you have to say. So Join Us Now!
Free Account Includes
- Creating your own project blogs.
- Rating and reviewing games using our innovative system.
- Commenting and ability to upvote.
- Posting in the forums.
- Unlocking of Achivments and collectin hobby xp
- Ability to add places like clubs and stores to our gaming database.
- Follow games, recommend games, use wishlist and mark what games you own.
- You will be able to add friends to your account.
What's the Cult of Games?
Once you have made a free account you can support the community by joing the Cult of Games. Joining the Cult allows you to use even more parts of the site and access to extra content. Check out some of the extra features below.
Cult of Games Membership Includes
- Reduced ads, for a better browsing experience (feature can be turned on or off in your profile).
- Access to The Cult of Games XLBS Sunday Show.
- Extra hobby videos about painting, terrain building etc.
- Exclusive interviews with the best game designers etc.
- Behind the scenes studio VLogs.
- Access to our live stream archives.
- Early access to our event tickets.
- Access to the CoG Greenroom.
- Access to the CoG Chamber of Commerce.
- Access the CoG Bazarr Trading Forum.
- Create and Edit Records for Games, Companies and Professionals.
I like it.
One thing I would say with companies being competitive is to look at the Iron Maiden model. Bruce Dickinson said that they purposefully looked for a niche in their industry, singing songs about history and literature rather than “love songs”, a sound that was unique (well sort of) and a look with Eddie and the style of their heavy metal. We see companies like Mantic recently diverging (if only a little) with the rebuild of their world etc, and I believe this is because they can see “what the fans want”. I think businesses that offer a uniqueness in their stories, characters, art, rules and miniatures that grabs the heart and mind of gamers (the hard part is to find that winning combination – GW had it lost it and found it again) and then line up the right promotion and marketing and stick around long enough will make it through. Again like the music industry, this is why so few bands are successful .. you have to get ALL of the ingredients right to sustain your business.
Cheers
WarHound67
Er… I’m at 16:31 in this OTTBOWPOV and i think you misunderstood @coxjul‘s point about us each having 3.2 billion* ancestors 32 generations back, which would be at around about 1066AD for @coxjul. I think the point @coxjul was making is that that 3.2 billion number must be wrong because ( obviously ) there were not 3.2 billion people on the planet in 1066AD. The population of the planet was probably around a 1/2 billion in 1066AD. ( That 3.2 billion number rests on the assumption that each ancestor you have is your ancestor through only one line of their descendants / your ancestors, whereas in fact the further back you go the more likely you are to have multiple lines of descendants / ancestors between you and an ancestor from that far back, until indeed it becomes impossible that you don’t have multiple lines of descendants / ancestors between you both. ) In other words: there is a good chance that anyone ( or at least anyone of English descent ) being related to King Edward.
Another fun fact in the same vein. We have twice as many female ancestors and male ancestors.
* I make it 4.2 billion.
Something that makes it even less likely will have all 3.2b anscestors be unique is that until relatively recently most people would only marry someone from the same town or at most one town over, so very quickly theyd be marrying distant cousins which would truncate the number of ancestors their kids would have.
Another fun fact is that technically everyone alive today are cousins because we all share common ancestors in the mitochondrial Adam and Eve (disclaimer – this isn’t claiming that these are the Biblical Adam and Eve; Adam and Eve are just the nicknames scientists gave the two individuals, not to mention Adam wasn’t born until millennia after Eve had died iirc).
Quite.
That is meant to be written:
Another fun fact in the same vein. We have twice as many female ancestors as we have male ancestors.
Thanks for the backup and I make it (2^32) closer to 4.3 billion 😉
Touché.
Have a German girlfriend and know a lot of German gamers. The big problem is swastika’s and other Nazi symbolism are forbidden under German law but they’re allowed under artistic licence – so in historical films and such. At the minute games – including video games and board games are not considered “art” – but there’s a current law going through the process which will make them art – and then those historical symbols can be used.
The law has already passed and is applied to video games. The first game to have been officially allowed to show a swastika was shown at gamescom 2018. However it’s still a case by case decision and with “historically accurate” wargaming there is still the “bad taste” of our (German) past. I’m 43 now and ever since elementary school we are always told to not forget and not let it happen again. Having “fun” playing as Nazi Forces with games like FoW still leaves a bad taste in some peoples mouths. Especially when young people play it. It’s a very touchy subject. You don’t get model kits from that era with swastikas. So until tabletop wargaming will be considered legally as art in Germany I reckon we’ll have to play without swastikas.
Thanks for the update sundancer. I knew the law was going through for video games but wasn’t sure how it affected other games. I know how difficult the whole subject is and understand how it can leave a bad taste in peoples mouths. My girlfriend still gets so annoyed that I’m interested in WW2 history – especially as I am collecting Germans in Bolt Action. She’s like – yes we are subjected to how horrible it all was in school, it’s not Germany as it is today (shes only 27). And I totally understand that. With any conflict that is still fairly recent – it’s always going to touch a nerve.
You forgot the third way to identify a leader – no helmet. 😉
Feedback on the new segment – good work, although I’d suggest maybe pushing it back to Tuesday or Wednesday if possible so that you can feedback on those comments that come in a day or two after the weekend vids are posted.
Another idea you could try out with Points of View is maybe making it a livestream video so we can heckle you as you’re giving your feedback. ?
+1 vote on pushing POV a day or so back.
if @warzan had said “balance to the force” I would have demanded a Star Wars Legion battle between him and @avernos 😉 Good show guys
Nice Format. Lets see how this will revolve.
Cool new show.
Now I have to watch the weekenders …
Gerry this show: https://youtu.be/7jDo-XaRxl4
that’s the show I was talking about. I love it to bits, along with A Game of War introduced by Angela Rippon. Both are excellent at showing off wargaming, but both reinforce the stereotypes that it’s old men being stodgy and dull viewing.
Thanks for the response guys, yes, I am a Yank (please don’t hold that against me, I don’t know what the deal is with Trump either). I did get the sarcasm and I was kind of snarking back, but as we all know that doesn’t always translate well over written word. As someone who was bullied when he was younger, I’m sometimes a bit too sensitive to it and will call it out even if no offense was meant. It doesn’t bother me when Justin is the “straight man” to just Warren, but when he get’s picked on by the whole group, the paladin in me feels the need to step in and help defend. I’m glad to hear that Justin that has fully recovered :).
A couple of rebuttals to your points. First, I understand your concern over the closed loop of social media, however YouTube, Twitch, Twitter, Facebook etc., are not the only way’s to consume and promote the hobby. These have certainly been disruptive technologies and even the old guard of the media conglomerates are still learning how to deal with and interact with them. There will always be “Gerry’s” (sorry I misspelled your name earlier) and “Lloyd’s” at clubs/game stores with players that are not in the GW ecosystem that will promote and recruit for other games (“Hey guys, want to play some SAGA?”). Game conventions like Salute, UK Games Day, Adpeticon, GenCon, etc. are also perfect places for this. GW games will get people to the convention and other game companies will be on display to recruit, but those companies will have to give people a reason to try other games. Adepticon started as GW only convention and quickly grew to include many other games (including a bunch of ‘home brew’ style of games). Historical’s have an appeal all on their own and were around long before GW hit the scene and will continue no matter what GW does.
That being said the “tool-up”, as you put it, for the likes of Warlord, Mantic, Privateer, Weird and other companies means that they will have to pivot like GW has to survive. In a free market, the pie always get’s bigger, just because GW’s slice is growing doesn’t mean there won’t be a slice for anyone else. But that also means that those companies will have to give people a reason to buy their games. If they can’t and they fumble the ball then they’ll have to close their doors (Spartan Games, I’m looking at you). Mantic found that they can’t just make alternative figures and rules and started producing licensed games; others will have to pivot in their own ways. If they don’t and they do close their doors, then other companies will crop up just like they always do.
Second, the Land Raider and Predator comments. What you need to keep in mind is these are old kits, the Land Raider was released in 2000, the revamped Rhino/Predators came out shortly after that. Rules-wise the Primaris Marines can’t use these vehicles and have to use the new Grav tank ‘flying shoe thingy’ that came out a year ago, so these are hardly ‘core items’ anymore. GW wants to keep the new product in the stores not models that are 15+ years old. They don’t want to spend money on updating box art for these kits so they can take up space from the new shiny stuff. They don’t want to sell the “old space marines”, they want to push the new and improved Primaris. I don’t know what it’s like in the UK but in the US, I can order anything on the GW website through my local retailer so if I want another land raider/predator/rhino for my ‘old marines’ I can order it through my FLGS, I’ll get it faster than ordering it through the website and I won’t have to pay shipping. The only thing I’ve ordered through the GW website in the last 15+ years is the Adeptus Titanicus Grand Master boxed set, and that was only because my FLGS could not guarantee me two boxes (I could get one through them no problem). But again, the game store landscape here is quite different than in other places in the world. We primarily have Independent retailers and very few dedicated Warhammer stores across the country.
No ‘ball busting’ and no hate here, love the show and what you guy’s do. Disappointment only shows that I care :-). Thanks again and hope to post more in the future!
@oriskany
Lol! ???
Who was the poor sod having to hold the camera for an hour? He(She?) deserves a pay rise!
I was starting to feel a bit drunk when there was a bit of swaying but the cameraperson.
poor @ludicryan he was told it was going to be a pick video, and then we started filming ^^
We camera legionnaires are made of sterner stuff *collapses*
He’s been editing by knocking his head on the keyboard all morning.
he could lift his head? “he’s not dead yet. he’s feeling better. he’s going for a walk” XD
He’s not fooling anyone
Thanks for the response @warzan and it makes sense as a draw. I suppose what I coming from was what drew me to BoW was the non gw stuff – as I had long “given up” with them and their prices and my greater love of smaller scales and historics (and one day i’ll actually finish painting something!).
Given their resurge and people rediscoving their love for gw it is understandable that content would follow this, but if your question is what can OTT do, then maybe put a spotlight on some of the other big names that have a relatively easier buy in such as Saga (dunno who in the office can help you with that), I remember you recieved the Waterloo starter set from warlord and I joked I should be able to get my 3mm stuff painted before John gets that done (I think we’re drawing at nil there?). I would love to see gangs of Rome to see if it’s worth the cost etc etc. Maybe having a fortnight focus on xxx game (similar to the intro weeks you have done – maybe even digging it out the archives and making it front and centre again) might be a way to introduce GWers to a different religion!
I’m working on my gangs at the moment and myself and @lloyd have been discussing how we’d do Saga as well. In case we don’t get it done soon I will say, yes of GoR, it’s an excellent skirmish game, with many unique features.
Cheers Gerry. On the how, my steer would be to perhaps pick a book to focus on, and run down the “faction” chat approach as that worked well with KoW, Guild Ball etc. I don’t know how precious Gripping Beast/Tommhawk (spelling check), are about other manufacturers are but that method would allow you to go today Normans, chaps who love horsing around, Gb have a starter set, but also check out Conquest, Fireforge…(i hope this is correct!) so if you dont like GB here are some alternatives. And lets plays, some learner games slowed down and then a couple where almost you ignore the camera and just play as sometimes having games always explained can detract from the game itself… god I’m whining on a bit this time!
it’s not so much faction breakdowns and minis that’s all easy to do. It’s more showing the game itself and more importantly the battle boards since they have so much information and impact on the game.
love it.
Wow! That’s like having an extra extra weekender ?
So.
Cool.
Mondays will have a purpose again. Thanks guys, you’ve made my day!
Although I struggled to keep up with the discussion..I’m too old for this now having just survived yet another birthday. I just want to buy even more toy soldiers..in fact as many as I can before 29 March in case the UK economy goes totally kaput.
In my constant pursuit of happiness I’m also hoping to see AJ back now as I have forgotten what he was talking about last time and need a refresher. Would fit in with the current Workshop-philia here, too. I’m sure you could find a slot for him ?
I have often wondered about how you guys would react to some of the well thought out , and some not so well comments to subjects appearing on both the Weekender and XLBS . This show covers those bases , well done . Personally not a huge GW fan , in fact I tend to nod off when you guys are showing their latest models , but if discussing the hobby as a industry , they have to mentioned first and foremost because they are biggest player in the game . Love them or hate them , they do put out LOTS of product , I just wish some other companies would get their finger out and release the figures , kits I want
For me and GW tthe biggest problem is their pricing games here in Australia, now dont get me wrong I understand that you as a group try not to dicuss pricing as its relative but I ask you let me explain.
On a regular basis now boxes that would be the equilivent of $150 locally are being sold for around 240 250 230 etc. And this is without exageration we’re being charged $100 MORE here than almost every other country I know of (theres also the recent Forgeworld thing but I dont know enough about it to comment)
Granted we’re going to face postage costs I get that but when all of this is shipped here in BULK its not going to be anywhere NEAR that, its quite frankly an offence.
This is why i stopped buying from games workshop, not even the electronics industry rip us off that much. (and theyd have a stronger argument)
the physical stock pricing is wank, but the thing that gets me about that whole shit show for you is the pricing of digital products with the same mark up. I was unaware that bytes cost more to ship to you as well.
It “does” cost more to send data to Australia, mainly due to a finite number of fibre interconnects that run across the pacific and atlantic, but those market costs are so far removed from the enduser as to be insignificant.
Nope you can thank amazon and apple (well the greed of the 90’s music industry mainly, but apple needed to fill the itunes store and monetise the napster market) for the price parity on digital compared to physical. The main argument going that physical music and books is 60% license fee (you never own just license) 30% marketing and the remaining 10% going on creative, distribution, production and margin for sellers. So digital costs the same because of the license you buy into, not the media its distributed on, sure there is a slight decrease in costs due to lack of physical production or distribution costs, but things are priced at the level the market accepts, and the savings created their are lost to the cost of selling via one of the big market places (apple, google, amazon will take 10-30% of sale price as a levy for allowing you to sell via their platform) all the while profiling you and better targeting their business at you
I spent a large amount of time watching and waiting for that mug to fall over and smash. Strangely hypnotic.
Is it points of view or line of sight??
And where is the handwritten letters of outrage at smut from old biddies? This is not the points of view i know 😛
When we’re talking about Brexit, the uncertainty is if we have a deal going forward. During the transition period things should continue as normal, after that will depend on the deal that’s been struck. What we do know regarding No Deal, is based on WTO information and the legalities of international trade and agreements.
A lot of people will shout project fear regarding the NO Deal scenario, and there has been some codswallop from MP’s and media on both sides of the argument. What we do know is that if we crash out on a No Deal, all trade deals end including the 60 trade deals with countries outside the EU, frictionless customs will end, and all agreements end. A good example is that currently a UK driving license is valid for all of the EU, on a NO Deal this agreement ends. If you want to drive in the EU, you will need an international driving license for each country you want to drive in until a new agreement is finalized.
People use Switzerland as an example of frictionless trade, which is nonsense. Swiss border isn’t frictionless, you require customs paperwork to move goods into the EU. This paperwork has to be signed off by a customs agent which has a cost. Currently all trade into the EU from the UK doesn’t require customs checks under the EU trade deal. On a NO deal this will no longer exist which means all goods will require checking by customs. This means for instance that ‘Just in Time’ deliveries will pretty much end, which is why the car industry is saying they will leave. It also means that fresh food delivery will be hit. All goods coming from the EU will be slower and will have additional customs costs added and then there will be tariffs. So, the cost of goods will go up and those costs will be met by the consumer.
Under WTO rules, we can adjust the tariffs on imports in to the UK, but exports have to have tariffs applied which means goods going out of the UK will cost more. Now we can lower all tariffs on goods coming into the UK to 0% like many MP’s have suggested, but this would a detrimental effect on any goods that we currently produce in the UK. For instance, we can’t produce enough food in the UK, we roughly produce about 50-60% of our food, and import the rest with about 30% from the EU. So, placing 0% tariffs on food doesn’t make sense as it would affect our own industry having to compete with those vastly lower prices of imported goods.
This is just a fraction of the problems that a No Deal will cause, and you can bet your bottom dollar it will have a negative effect across all industries including gaming companies.
One other point to raise about the potential effects of “the demise of GW” would be the knock-on demise of a reasonably large number of independent retailers. I’m pretty sure that a lot of them would not be able to soak up the loss of their GW sales to survive. There are certainly those out there that a sufficiently diversified to survive, but there are plenty who aren’t (my guess would be in the 30-60% range). There’s a continuing knock-on affect to other manufacturers who might be skating along on the fine edge of profitability. The loss of even 30% of their B&M venues could spell the end of their businesses too.
Just my two cents.
Excellent point @davetaylor
I love this idea. My only gripe with it is that I don’t always have time in the weekends to watch and respond to the weekenders, but will certainly try more now that this is a thing.
Dusty CoC? Right up Gerry’s alley.
Right up there.
You know it. Fnaar fnaar
I liked the idea of this follow up VLOG. I rarely get involved in comments on the weekender / XLBS sadly as i tend to watch when painting/building and as such think of something, stop, tidy up, go to the keyboard and then realise ive forgotten what i was going to say 🙁
Commenting on the comments video! How meta is that!
I do think there was a perfect storm when Warmahordes, Star Wars, FoW and Malufaux all have had issues around rereleases.
The problem is as I see it that when GW is firing on all cylinders as it is now but wasn’t a decade ago, the relatively small other
companies struggle to match the expectations they are setting in terms of rate of release, model quality, presentation, FAQ releases and simple availability.
Not sure how to square that circle.
Personally I am pretty much over GW after 35 tears in the hobby and enjoy indie stuff even if it is less “polished” than GW. But objectivly speaking it is very hard to point out something an indie is doing “better” than GW any more. There are plenty of niche genres GW aren’t covering but if GW have it covered, then it is hard to find these days someone to outcompete them on quality. Even if I say so reluctantly.
I get what you say about the GW bubble and how hard it can be to break into, but if the product quality isnt perceived to be there with indie stuff by those in the Gw bubble, then even if you break in there won’t be takers.
Only just caught up with this. I’m glad you are covering community comments again. I think it helps foster debate and such an exchange of perspectives in a mutually supportive community like this one leads to a better understanding for us all.
Thanks for picking up on the points I made. I agree with you that it is difficult to see what is possible for companies and that the buying patterns and loyalty of gamers is very hard to track. I have a background in both business analysis and psychology so what makes people choose certain systems or switch their playing and buying habits are both interesting but very difficult to figure out. There is a real derth of relaible sales and customer data in our industry. Small companies have to do without adequate market research and big companies won’t tell anyone what they know. As far as the specific strategy @warzan picked out I have to disagree with @avernos a bit. Holding a broadly static position with a particular system allowed a competitor to develop their product to the point that they took your customers. You have two choices; go get new customers or go get your old ones back. What will incentivise them to return to you? They left what you had despite their previous investment of time and money, this is because your unique selling point (USP) is no longer competitive when compared to your rivals. You need to get your USP to outcompete the rival one again. You have two main options, create a new and better product with a new USP (shiny!), or make your exisitng product USP better than the competition again. A product refresh (wheter rules or minis) is a high risk strategy but it also has high rewards; you may end up losing more customers who stayed loyal and are put off by change but it is also your only chance to get yourself back to the customers you had before.
Interesting. But if a product refresh is what caused your company to lose players wouldn’t it further alienate and reduce your base even further to suddenly change again. Take a company that lost players because of a new edition of the only game they produce as an example.
How can they hope to refresh that without a loss in revenue and what becomes people’s perceptions of that company? If they release a set of rules players are unhappy with complain and leave and the company will change back an edition?
That’s why I think for some companies they have to continue with the choice they’ve made and build from there
Thanks for the reply Gerry. There is a difference between the business and the game and a player and a customer. As players we invest time and money into getting into a game. We then want to get on with the enjoyable bit of playing it. At some point we start settling for what we have and invest time but not money. This is a problem for our game company because they are a business.
As a business a player is of little value unless they buy stuff regularly, i.e. are also regular customers. It is expensive to develop a new game so companies only do this once they have wrung all of the money out of their customers on the original version first. Look at our beloved Saga. Version 1 was very popular, over time Studio Tomahawk (who only generate revenue from the rules, not the miniatures) put out a number of different expansions, then we got Crescent and Cross which was a 1.5 expansion. They can see the number of customers buying each expansion declining so their revenue from the game is declining too. Eventually revenue is declining to the point where their only hope is that a significant number of the player pool will re-engage as customers and buy a new version rules and the follow up battle book. This is potentially a huge payday, certainly in comparison to issuing a new expansion to existing rules where limited numbers are buying them.
Now this often goes wrong. X-Wing 2 has flopped as players were perfectly happy with their original game and the new one offered nothing but massive expense and the redundancy of large parts of their existing collections. So a games company has to incentivise both the trigger connections for players and customers. There has to be new shiny stuff for players that makes the new rules purchase make sense to customers. It is a tricky balance and one that companies often get wrong. The games market is subject to a number of extreme conditions and doesn’t play by quite the same rules that product life cycle and models like the Boston Matrix tell us about. However, these models are still our best tools for trying to understand both what is happening and what to do about it as a business.
On edition changes. Something I think that has proven to be a double edged sword is how long companies take to bring the new edition to market after announcing that they are working on a new edition.
There is a strong mind set among gamers that most people don’t want to play dead games and want to play the latest and best stuff. If a game needs a new edition then, it must be in poor condition! I should look elsewhere until it is fixed!
Malifaux and Dropzone Commander are two games suffering from this that I think are well worth playing. But, since they each went into an edition change interest and organised play has dropped off hard with lots of players holding off to see what happens. Ironically, a large reason for announcing the new editions early was to hold public and private betas to refine the game alongside the community.
GW don’t really do that. Their edition changes happen swiftly and dramatically (not always in a good way) but in a short enough span that players don’t become disengaged.
This is the problem facing Malifaux and Dropzone, their relaunches need to make some noise and energise lapsed players. I think it is doable but they will have to do it in the face of resurgent GW. With luck timing may fall on their side and the current freshness of kill team etc might be rubbing off a bit.
I do dislike GW acting like they are THE hobby, some of my most favorite minis and games have nothing to do with Warhammer/40k, and my house has a 40k room… bad closed loop! Bad!
I actually want to thank you and your site you have shown me a vast amount of different systems and games that i can play or just take a peek into this may come as a shock to you but i have never really got into 40k at all it just doesnt hit my interest button the miniatures are excellent that cannot be argued with but there is just something that stops me from committing.I loved wahammer fantasy and when that went i took a look into kings of war which i enjoy and was down to your site showing me an alternative game so really you are doing exactly what you are trying to do which is showing gamers there are games out there other then 40k.?
Love this show, a great idea. I might ask that you perhaps run it a little later, maybe a Tuesday as there’s quite a lot of comments made well into Monday. Otherwise it’s a really good idea.
Could we have Gerry on every show please?
It’s unlikely I’m only down there a couple of days a week to be unleashed. Then I am returned to the wild.
Gerry’s best experienced in a frantic burst ;P