Reply To: If you were in charge of GW now

[poosh 4207xp 2]

Hasn’t’ GW’s financial fortunes taken a big reverse in the last few months anyway?

I think AoS’s success will probably be found at the Start Collecting box sets that they’ve been releasing, rather than AoS itself. Nothing that they’ve done right couldn’t have been done in Fantasy.

Do GW actually learn their lessons? I don’t think so.

They’ve continued to scrap entire lines of models without warning including classic models.

They’ve started to raise the price on the Start Collecting (presumably because they sell so well).

After the cluser**** of AoS’s, I won’t even call it lore or fluff, but whatever * that * was – GW did not learn and allowed 40K to be infected with terrible writing too: the back story of the new Primaris Marines being a big example of this.

8th Edition 40K’s success is in the simplicity and refinement of the rules (a better version of AoS) – but they’ve allowed it to become bloated and overly-complex once again: all the issues that this edition “fixed” on launch.

Investors seem to be perceiving this. GW refuse to learn and listen it seems despite some promising behavior elsewhere.

Most of their recent success is, imo, the new stream-lined edition to 40K (a win) and them making full use of GW’s historical backlog by bringing out fantastic models such as Necromunda and Genestealer Cultists (i.e. the PAST is what drives sales); and experimenting with products designed to be played in local clubs (Kill Team etc.).

40K and Warhammer Fantasy’s history and lore – built up over decades – is what makes their primary audience: model collectors/painters come back over and over (rather than just picking models that take their fancy, which means competitors get a slice of their money). There is nothing like 40K and Warhammer Fantasy out there, they’re both unique despite being based on technically generic things (elves are generic) and copying (e.g. Dune), an incredible accomplishment. Age of Sigmar – probably intentionally – is fully generic and similar if not identical to everything else out there; such as World of Warcraft. That’s the audience they presumably wanted to tap into, but it’s a risk I doubt will pay off. Investors are starting to turn away citing lack of sustainability/the future – though we shall see.

I don’t have the numbers, but from what I can tell AoS’s biggest hits from the Night Haunts to Gloomspire Gitz are literally all Warhammer Fantasy stuff, just expanded: they are not “Age of Sigmar”.