Something Small Appears in the Next White Dwarf
November 23, 2012 by dracs
Games Workshop have started showing off the cover for the next White Dwarf and a certain short someone is on the cover. No, not me.
Our first glimpse at the Hobbit miniatures. Ah, I can already hear the short jokes lining up.
While I was never much for the Lord of the Rings game I do admit that the miniatures were pretty good and these promise to live up to the previous standard. I am particularly interested in seeing how the The Hobbit game differs, if at all.
Will any of you pick up this issue of White Dwarf to see what's inside?
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For a second I thought you were referring to WD’s word count 😉
I’m not really interested in the game although I’m sure the minis will be great. Also, is it me or does Bilbo look mighty pissed? Someone must have spilt his half pint 🙂
Tempted by the game but won’t be buying white dwarf – after all it would need content to inform you about the product
The dwarf* looks larger than Gimli was iirc. in comparison to Frodo
*brain death. can’t remember his name.
Prefer the previous gandalf the Grey tbh
Thorin? I think Gandalf’s paint job is partly to blame, Gandalf the Grey, Heavy GW hairy stick guys, key word ‘grey’, not “light blue”…
Not my cup of tea.
He’s thorin oakenshield I think
I have little or no resistance when it comes to buying figures especially when they sculpts by the Perrys.
As a child I loved the book so I will probably buy quite a few figures, after I’ve seen the film even more.
I dare say I will even try the game.
White Dwarf I’ll pick it up to see what’s inside but I’ll put it back down without buying.
@huscarle unless Adam Troke has broken Rick’s rules they are a remarkably good ruleset for scenario based skirmish. They are intrisically simple but have a great level of strategy and tactics that can be employed. They fall down on larger engagements and some listed play over a certain points cause them to breakdown well – largely cause lots of dice always count.
@dags I played the strategy game with my son when it first came out and really enjoyed the game. Your right it did fall down when our armies got too big though. I tried war of the ring a while back but I was not impressed with that.
The strategy game though should work well with most of the story of the hobbit apart from the battle of the five armies
I’m weeping like a whomping willow for this that you may have seen at Waylands *boohoo!*
http://www.waylandgames.co.uk/prod_19170.html?utm_source=Wayland+Games+Ltd+List&utm_campaign=f4c13c0dc8-Hobbit11_24_2012&utm_medium=email
Not even if I am a very very very extra secial good boy am I going to get gandie for Chrimbo! :'(
Oh well I still have the Gandalf on cart and Gandalf on Shadowfax to do. The latter was from the part works which got me into gaming
Wonder if there will be a series for The Hobbit?
Especially if I can’t spell special
I’ve downloaded the digital version of December’s WD from the Apple Store, and the miniatures are VERY impressive. I like the new design styles for the most part, although I find the new Goblins to be a bit too Nurgle-ey for my liking.
I am APPALLED by the prices that GW are charging for the range in Australia. The box set is 75 GBP, $125 USD, AND $205 AUS. That’s $90 PER BOX on top of the British retail price!!!
I don’t believe there is any logical reason that could possibly justify this obscene disparity in the pricing.
I went from excited to disappointed this morning, because I can’t justify the expense. Even at the discount prices offered by GW stockists in Australia, it’s still way over GB retail by a long shot.
I’m afraid this is the end of a long relationship between myself and GW…
It isn’t viable for me in the UK tbh
Was it £65 for the rulebook?
To those who say if you can’t pay don’t play I say I don’t! lol
I also live in oz and I buy everything via ebay now – the pricing here is a disgrace. I feel sorry for the independent stockists – one I know tried to sell GW for about 6 months then promptly stopped – two years later he was still trying to sell it with a 20% discount.
Yes, GW’s business model is both bizarre and clearly untenable for too much longer. THIS is the major reason I pray PP never goes public: the ‘bottom line’ and TTWG doesn’t seem to go hand in hand. Investors want money, hobbists want product… but not ANNUAL % price increases. GW, please… stop costing yourself out of existence… look more then five years and manager firings into the future!
Ahem. Anywho…
The minis are nice, the ‘new’ WD a silly travesty, unless you really like a double-length, obscenely expensive catalogue: repousse on the cover does not a decent publication make…
@huscarle, I actually liked war of the ring – although magic was imbalanced – largely as it came from a revamp of the warmaster engine – possibly the best ruleset in terms of pure strategy games workshop have produced (Well in my opinion). I am hoping we will see a box set and revamp of these rules come the last film.
@talso63, I sympathise GWs pricing in the oceania region is completely nonsensical, and I don’t blame you from moving on.
@ironmonger, completely agree although I don’t think you can completely blame the fact it is a public company – many companies do try to maximise profits but it is not in the investors interest to adopt a shortsighted strategy. They shrunk in terms of amount of sales by 13% ifrc this year, that is simply not tenable particularly give there solution seems to be push the price up even higher – and drive away more customers. The fact that the majority of the shares are held by a couple of investors who also direct the company I would say is possibly the driving factor – starting to smell of drive prices up and then bail out. OR they have just lost the plot.
@dags If they do revamp the rules I will give it another try. I’m not one who likes to miss out on any fun.
Good gods – even the UK prices for these are absolutely insane. £75 GBP for the boxed game isn’t *too* bad I guess, but some of the miniatures are awfully overpriced. The White Council set especially – it’s 4 25mm ‘Finecast’ figures for £45. I don’t see any way that GW can justify those kind of prices. Even the plastics are expensive – £20 for 12 25mm plastic orcs? Really? It’s not even as if the models are that great, either.
No wonder people are moving away from GW these days.
Especially as the description of the GW site makes it clear the White Council are single-piece minis…..
The White Council can only be for collectors surely, its a shame because I thought the hobbit was meant to be an intro game for kids.
But who would want to collect those godawful White Council models anyway? Especially when they’re Finecast :/
The White Council price was when I realized that the game was going to be unaffordable in the long term, let alone the short…
UK 45GBP retail
US $75.00 retail
Aus $125!!! That’s just over $56 Aus above the actual GBP to Aus$ conversion, for 4 single piece Finecast (yuck!) miniatures.
Just in case anyone was wondering, at this time the Aussie dollar is worth $1.04 US
The conversion from the GBP retail to US retail is correct to within a few dollars.
It’s an affront to the intelligence of every customer they have to just expect us to roll over and take it. obviously goodwill is not a key factor in their business model. How stupid is that?!?
Wow… I just was assaulted by the $800 ‘deal’ on the front of the GW site. $75 for 4 small resin minis?!
WOW…
The models look good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h63fXIXsnwc#!
Actually the Rulebook is listed at £50 not £65 as I thought. Still far too much for an extended hardbacked catalogue. No I am not being flippant. Terrain, how about a Realm of Battle Battleboard by Citadel?
No thanks the house has just been repossessed cos I bought enough plastic and paper to play the game.
Hope I can find someone in debtors’ prison who also plays. (Okay, now I am being flippant! lol)
I’m pretty horrified by the price tags for this launch, how anyone can possibly be considering a purchase I’ve no idea!?
I’ve got a sinking feeling that these prices will soon be converted over to GW’s other product lines and that being the case, I’m out for good. This release has been nothing but a huge fucking disappointment for me, I don’t even think the models are that great looking to be honest, ESPECIALLY with the astronomical price tag.
What a let down.
I strongly recommend voting with your wallet and writing to GW and politely tell them what you are doing and why.
The situation may never change, but there’s no chance at all of change if GW doesn’t get customer feedback.
£20 gets you 20 goblins (normal pricing for GW)
£10 gets you 1 goblin captain (no bigger than a Hobbit)
Pretty sound pricing policy I think 🙂
Yes picked up the WD. well actually got the son to as I was working. Ok bad move, I’ve given them 2 chances to get a decent mag back and failed both times. So I’ll leave it a year before I buy another.
Onto the Hobbit itself. Rule changes (as per WD) monsters nwo have ‘brutal power’ attacks, hand weapons now have extra rules based on type of weapon, heros now have different types of heroic actions (channeling, accuray, strike and march), character synergy (??). So game play will have changed.
The models. The white council other than obscenely expensive aren’t sculpted by the Perry’s and it shows, they look childish and all wonky. Some of the other figures look nice but simply priced out of existence.
What get’s me is a year and half ago we had Mark Wells state the following with regards the pricing in Aus (and NZ).
“While I understand that you may still be unhappy with our decision, it was taken to ensure we can continue to support the Games Workshop hobby communities around the world through our Games Workshop Hobby Centres and local trade accounts. And to ensure we continue to invest in developing the best possible new product releases every month. I hope therefore that over time you will see the benefits of this decision for you and your hobby. ”
Well here in Aus where i live/work we have had 2 store closures and one downsize (2 gaming tables of which one gets used for demonstrations) so I can’t see how the pricing has been supporting the hobby here.
@jamesf, completely agree regarding white dwarf gave the new one 2 months and it started poor but with promise, then lost the promise. Actually worse that before I feel as before it was just crap now its sold as new improved and full of hobby content – the person who thinks that is a magazine with hobby content is full of …….
Let me de-spin mark wells comment:
“While I don’t care you maybe unhappy with our decision, it was taken to ensure we can continue to pretend to support the Games Workshop hobby communities around the world through our Games Workshop retail outlets, we gave up on developing hobby ages ago, and local trade accounts. And to ensure we continue to regurgitate varying quality new product releases every month, while ensure we get nice big fat share dividends. I hope therefore that over time your addiction to toy soilders will overweigh your common sense and you will except being riped off, make us rich and then thank us for the privilage. ”
The releases currently are of such variable quality I cannot and will not justify buy atleast 50% at UK prices, hence my move to PP and wyrd and other various systems for most new purchases.
Something small appears in White Dwarf,well it certainly ain’t the prices.How can you expect to successfully introduce a game that costs so much! Was fairly interested until I got wind of the cost,not for me I’m afraid.
I loved the Lotr game. it was one of the best games GW has done in my opinion. people who did not like it had a tendency to go over board on models rather than taking advantage of a good skirmish system that allowed a large range of objective missions over the standard 3 types of game you get in fantasy or 40K.
I would love to get some of the hobbit stuff, but the price turns me off. far to expensive and i do not rate GW fine cast products. also the only models i can see i like are the 14 dwarfs. I will never pay £45 for 4 small single mold models, and certainly not for ones that are worse than the metal ones i used to get for £3-6 each a few years ago.
We can thank Del Toro for the rubbish looking goblins, and goblin king, they ruin the starter box set for me. love his stile sometimes but not this time. I will go on Ebay in a few months and try and get the good force for £25-30 download the hobbit rules, and play the new scenarios with my old lord of the rings models.
The worse thing about the new Hobbit range is that it will give a boost from a new generation of child fans of the movie and allow them to continue the way they are going for another 3 or 4 years.
I’m going to be quite interested to see how these models sell for GW, with the current economic climate being what it is I can only see the most ardent of fans ponying up.
Even my die hard, ‘fanboy’, GW mate who thinks they can do no wrong and usually has no problem handing them money like they’re holding a family member hostage (whilst sneering at other systems for being ‘inferior’ due to not being a GW product – you know the type) is having second thoughts with this release.
That’s what I call a turning point! I guess everyone has their limits, we’ve certainly reached ours here. Or that’s been my personal experience anyway! xD
It’s a massive wasted opportunity to get kids interested in wargaming. If you look at Sony and Microsoft – they take near enough a loss on the hardware to get kids to buy their consoles, once in they make profit on the games. GW are so short sighted, the intro box should be cheap!
I 100% agree, I worked in stores in the UK when LOTR released, we created a huge number of hobbiest and most moved onto other games in time. Unfortunately the company is in my view not set up to do that any more. It has a total sales focus and staff are hammered with targets, and hobby support offered is really basic as most stores are running at the low end staffwise. I see this as a clear statement of GW intent – sell what you can and hope they stick around – Rather than the old sell the hobby… as everything else will follow.
Just so anyone considering the box is aware, the rulebook is not complete, it lacks profiles for everything outside of the box and those in the box have no point values according to this:
http://www.thelastalliance.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5829&start=40
I will be checking GWs policy on return this as I believe it is a case of being mis-sold.
@dags you are so right. There is a legal precedent there and GW are dancing on the wrong side of it.
Warhammer Fantasy and WH40k have been sold for some time now (decades) with separate army books and codexes. The expectation, therefore is that you will have to buy the appropriate supplement to field your preferred army.
LotR SBG on the other hand has never been sold with army books. The three softcover rule books contained stats AND points for relevant models from that particular film. Then came the MoM box which had the mini ‘One Ring’ book which contained stats AND points. The hardcover had a larger selection. We had the release of the geographical location/scenario books to add to the library of models with stats AND points available.
2012 rolls around and the 5 blue Army books appear, and the older books are withdrawn from sale. Rumour mill picks up as the movie release date gets closer and GW don’t make one comment about the mini rulebook NOT containing stats AND points. Our expectation is that they will continue to release the rulebooks in the same manner they have for the system since the Fellowship box was released 11 years ago.
December hits and we have a lot of disappointed GW customers who didn’t get what they were expecting because they weren’t told that it had changed! This is the ‘Tolkien Novel’ SBG not WHF or WH40K. Why should we expect to have to buy the hardcover Rulebook to maximise playability of the starter set when we didn’t have to before? Want to play a points match with just the starter box? Forget it! Not possible… But it always was before, why weren’t we told that the packaging of the rules, and stats and points had changed?
So, there you go. If we could find an ace commercial lawyer, we could drum up a class action suit in a hot minute, methinks.
If your blood isn’t boiling already have a look in the iBookstore for the ‘Escape from Goblin Town’ painting guide… $25.99 Aussie dollars! Ok, so the page count is up to 150 from the 50 pages that constituted the waste of electrons that was the Dark Vengeance ($10) guide. Seriously? They expect us to suck that up on top of their already bilious Australian prices? Hah!!! Paint guides used to be included in the starter box price.
/rant
Just wanted to post an addendum to my previous message, after consultation with a lawyer this morning.
Given the expectation of the SBG customers to have the rulebooks supplied in the same manner as they have always been released, and the lack of disclosure from GW as to the change in the rulebook content, there is a possible case of fraudulent misrepresentation, AND unconscionable conduct. She went on to say that if this was a contract situation, GW would probably be found in breach of said contract.
As I read that they are prepared to take returns of unopened box sets so readily, I believe they might have had advice from their legal team to do so in order to try and prevent any repercussions, other than the incredible outpouring of negative reactions to the prices set for this new range that has already happened.