Reply To: Changes coming to Warlord's support for exisiting games

[phaidknott 7023xp 2]

I think I heard somewhere (probably “some guy on the internet”) that Bolt Action forms about 50% of Warlord’s sale revenue (thus ALL the other games share the remaining 50% which puts things in context).

Part of the problem in supporting Bolt Action as your primary focus however is “what to produce (as shiney is good for sales), when you’ve already released almost everything for the system (certainly for WW2)?”

Perhaps this is why we’ve seen BA branch into Korea and the Korean War (John also mentioned doing the Boar War as a Bolt Action theatre book and models). So perhaps we’ll see BA branch out into more historical periods (moderns/cold war perhaps?), rather than see Warlord continue to release more of the “weird and wacky” units for WW2. There’s a lot of room perhaps for remastering some of their WW2 range as some of the sculpts are a bit dated (in fact Warlord’s quality on sculpts is rather inconsistent and not just with the older sculpts. How they can produce their metal range of Winter War German’s (which are AMAZING, I wish they would do more to give more variety of sculpts/poses), and then produce their range of metal Partizans (which were awful) I don’t know (they just don’t seem to be able to say “no not good enough, try again”).

Black Powder has a lot of room for more plastics (although 28mm Naps isn’t my thing), and perhaps Epic Scale might be a BIG product line.  Although with their Epic ACW range I saw how it was all a bit “bait and switch” on the pricing for that range. Granted the Starter Set was INSANE value for money, but the rather expensive later releases seemed to stall the whole growth of the playerbase as a lot of customers just went “it’s all a bit too expensive” (especially when compared to similar figures from other manufacturers). And a load ended up on eBay instead of having the customers grow their armies (which was a pity as I’m a fan of smaller scale figures and BIG battalions for mass battles), Ebay sales due to the fact you couldn’t buy cheaper metals from other manufacturers (and then buy Warlord’s cheaper plastic line infantry), the decision to go with “13.5mm” bit them in the foot on that one. I expect this time around that customers will be a bit wary of the Epic Napoleonics this time around (as you said you need a LOT more cavalry than for the ACW). Instead they’ll be waiting to see how much Warlord are going to price up things after the Starter Set is released. In fact their Blood Red Skies range is also prohibitively expensive when you compare to other manufacturers selling aircraft in metal (£28 for just SIX aircraft from Warlord when other manufacturers sell at less than half that price). I feel they are pricing themselves out of the market with Blood Red Skies (or certainly slowing down the games growth with a playerbase given the current pricing. £15-£18 would be a lot more reasonable).

Yup they can’t just put anything with an licenced IP on hold (so Strontium Dog, Judge Dread and Doctor Who) look to be safe no matter how little they sell. So that leaves Gates of Antares, SPQR, Cruel Seas, Victory at Sea, Konflict 47, Black Seas, and Warlords of Erehwon all as possible candidates for the chopping block (or at the very least becoming direct only/made to order line items). I noticed also that they went with the Project Z as a “limited release”, perhaps this is going to be the future format for these game systems as Warlord look to be testing the water with that release?