Warhammer - The Old World

[Landohammer]

9 minutes ago, Sception said:

Are you applying 'rule of three' only for otherwise unlimited stuff, or are you also applying it to units that already have discrete limits but would allow more than three?  eg, if something is '2 per 1000 points' would it be limited to 3 or to 4 in your group?

We would just be capping units that otherwise have no cap. So 2 per 1000 would not change but for example you couldn't have more than 3 units of glade guard. 

It's basically the same thing GW did at their first TOW matched play event. 

It's not perfect, and there are examples of where it's not fair (see orks and goblins) but it helps loosely mitigate the super silly stuff like all gyrocopter armies or extreme shooting spam. 

[Bosskelot]

Still baffles the mind that the two least popular factions in WHFB are consistently sold-out.

They've been bad at estimating demand for their products for 10 years now, but with the growth of their market, supply chain issues and lack of production capacity it is rapidly hitting a breaking point if they can't even keep stuff like this in stock. Meanwhile you've got the limited edition FEC box still on sale everywhere (element games has got a heaving shelf full of it that hasn't moved) while the actual full FEC release is up for preorder. We've had 2-3 years of limited run Marine boxes not coming anywhere close to selling out meanwhile most KT boxes have had laughably tiny runs and gone out of sale globally within 5 minutes of preorders opening. I don't think anything more needs to be said about Dominion either.

They just do not understand their product, who is buying it, and why.

and yet because they have a virtual monopoly on the TT wargaming sphere they still make money hand over fist. Hail the free market.

[Jamopower]

5 hours ago, MaxT said:

Tried it. Outside of very specific situations, it doesn’t work. It takes up multiple feet of board space, it can’t manage terrain at all, it cannot wheel worth a damn, it gets in the way of the rest of its army, it can’t defend itself against multiple chargers. It looks fantastic in 1 unit vs 1 unit mathhammer, but that’s not how armies and army construction works.

If you’re daft enough to feed it one unit at a time then sure it’s effective, but it has no way of enforcing that. Much more likely is it’s lack of manoeuvre is taken advantage of and it gets multi charged to hell - where the chargers also have the advantage of ranks, multiple close order bonuses and enough numbers to prevent FBIGO too.

Haven’t seen it in use, but for shooting units it seems to have also quite obvious flaw. Everyone needs to shoot at the same target, and it should be very easy to ensure that big part of the unit is always unable to shoot due not seeing it.

[Trokair]

Random question, still waiting on my box and rulebook. If a character is on a different bases size to the unit he is trying to join how does that work.

For example a 30x30mm joining a unit of 25x25mm or a 40x60mm joining a unit of 30x60mm?

[JackStreicher]

1 hour ago, Trokair said:

Random question, still waiting on my box and rulebook. If a character is on a different bases size to the unit he is trying to join how does that work.

For example a 30x30mm joining a unit of 25x25mm or a 40x60mm joining a unit of 30x60mm?

You slap the character to the side of the unit

[Tonhel]

1 hour ago, Bosskelot said:

Still baffles the mind that the two least popular factions in WHFB are consistently sold-out.

They've been bad at estimating demand for their products for 10 years now, but with the growth of their market, supply chain issues and lack of production capacity it is rapidly hitting a breaking point if they can't even keep stuff like this in stock. Meanwhile you've got the limited edition FEC box still on sale everywhere (element games has got a heaving shelf full of it that hasn't moved) while the actual full FEC release is up for preorder. We've had 2-3 years of limited run Marine boxes not coming anywhere close to selling out meanwhile most KT boxes have had laughably tiny runs and gone out of sale globally within 5 minutes of preorders opening. I don't think anything more needs to be said about Dominion either.

They just do not understand their product, who is buying it, and why.

and yet because they have a virtual monopoly on the TT wargaming sphere they still make money hand over fist. Hail the free market.

Yeah, I agree. I just checked and the FEC armybox is still available. A bit bizar, because if you want to start FEC than it is a much a better deal to buy the armybox instead of the new sets that are on pre-order.

I do hope that GW  will balance production capacity a bit better in the future. Maybe a bit less capacity to AoS and a bit more to TOW. It's crazy that I still wasn't able to buy a single new mini for TOW. I only managed to order the forces of fantasy, ravening hordes and the two Arcane journals. I still can't buy the rulebook. Bought the pdf as backup, but want the hardcover rulebook too.

I am really curious what GW upper management is thinking about the succes of the TOW release and how they compare it with their other games.

[Landohammer]

33 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

Yeah, I agree. I just checked and the FEC armybox is still available. A bit bizar, because if you want to start FEC than it is a much a better deal to buy the armybox instead of the new sets that are on pre-order.

I do hope that GW  will balance production capacity a bit better in the future. Maybe a bit less capacity to AoS and a bit more to TOW. It's crazy that I still wasn't able to buy a single new mini for TOW. I only managed to order the forces of fantasy, ravening hordes and the two Arcane journals. I still can't buy the rulebook. Bought the pdf as backup, but want the hardcover rulebook too.

I am really curious what GW upper management is thinking about the succes of the TOW release and how they compare it with their other games.

So the rumours are that TOW was a passion project and was driven primarily by a small team under skeptical management. Which I find personally pretty stunning since its probably the cleanest rank and flank rule set they have ever released. I'm not sure if that means this team was just extremely adept or if rules-writing overall has improved. (probably a mix of both lol)

Also, and not trying to be a negative nancy, but there are also twitter rumours that the lead on 10th edition 40k was inexperienced and the contract with Amazon for the tv show was severely mishandled by a single rogue executive.

So of course this is all hearsay, but there does seem to be a lot of social media/industry/rumor buzz that despite record profits the company might have some internal upper leadership issues.  

HOWEVER they have always struggled with calculating demand. I don't think that, at least, can be blamed on current leadership.

 

[Bosskelot]

37 minutes ago, Tonhel said:

Yeah, I agree. I just checked and the FEC armybox is still available. A bit bizar, because if you want to start FEC than it is a much a better deal to buy the armybox instead of the new sets that are on pre-order.

I do hope that GW  will balance production capacity a bit better in the future. Maybe a bit less capacity to AoS and a bit more to TOW. It's crazy that I still wasn't able to buy a single new mini for TOW. I only managed to order the forces of fantasy, ravening hordes and the two Arcane journals. I still can't buy the rulebook. Bought the pdf as backup, but want the hardcover rulebook too.

I am really curious what GW upper management is thinking about the succes of the TOW release and how they compare it with their other games.

I'm sure there are loads of them who absolutely hate that the game seems to be successful (at this early stage at least).

From working as a GW sales monkey from 2009-2010*, statements by former design people, studio workers, Alan Merrett etc, my perspective has always been that during the late 00's there was a deliberate and concerted effort to actively sabotage WHFB as much as possible from many people within the organization. Even at its lowest ebb, WHFB was never unprofitable (a direct statement from Alan Merrett and others), but it didn't make just enough, and the wider company was circling the drain at the same time, that it finally gave impetus to actually can the game.

Merrett is definitely a nasty piece of work, but he was someone who had been actively trying to end WHFB since the 90's so if he says the game was still making money then I'm inclined to believe him on that.

Like the whole AOS vs WHFB is a boring and played out discussion and ultimately meaningless and pointless, but it's very clear that GW wants AOS to succeed and will pour endless amounts into it regardless of its actual performance which is not something WHFB was ever really granted after a certain point in the 00's**. Even in modern times I've actually heard GW employees offer criticism of 40k; any hint of dissatisfaction about AOS gets you a VERY intense rebuttal and an employee fully immersed in The Company Culture ready to proselytise on that games behalf.

Half of the weirdness of TOW's development and marketing over the past 4 years has probably been down to internal shitflinging within the company over some of the higher ups not wanting it to be a thing at all.

*During my time, I saw other sales monkeys and managers across 3 different stores actively discourage people from getting into WHFB and point them towards 40k instead.

**I've seen a few metrics and talked to people In The Know, who say AOS isn't even GW's 2nd or 3rd most profitable game and that the disparity between modern 40k's sales and AOS are basically the same as 40k and WHFB's were during the 2010's.

[Tonhel]

31 minutes ago, Bosskelot said:

I'm sure there are loads of them who absolutely hate that the game seems to be successful (at this early stage at least).

From working as a GW sales monkey from 2009-2010*, statements by former design people, studio workers, Alan Merrett etc, my perspective has always been that during the late 00's there was a deliberate and concerted effort to actively sabotage WHFB as much as possible from many people within the organization. Even at its lowest ebb, WHFB was never unprofitable (a direct statement from Alan Merrett and others), but it didn't make just enough, and the wider company was circling the drain at the same time, that it finally gave impetus to actually can the game.

Merrett is definitely a nasty piece of work, but he was someone who had been actively trying to end WHFB since the 90's so if he says the game was still making money then I'm inclined to believe him on that.

Like the whole AOS vs WHFB is a boring and played out discussion and ultimately meaningless and pointless, but it's very clear that GW wants AOS to succeed and will pour endless amounts into it regardless of its actual performance which is not something WHFB was ever really granted after a certain point in the 00's**. Even in modern times I've actually heard GW employees offer criticism of 40k; any hint of dissatisfaction about AOS gets you a VERY intense rebuttal and an employee fully immersed in The Company Culture ready to proselytise on that games behalf.

Half of the weirdness of TOW's development and marketing over the past 4 years has probably been down to internal shitflinging within the company over some of the higher ups not wanting it to be a thing at all.

*During my time, I saw other sales monkeys and managers across 3 different stores actively discourage people from getting into WHFB and point them towards 40k instead.

**I've seen a few metrics and talked to people In The Know, who say AOS isn't even GW's 2nd or 3rd most profitable game and that the disparity between modern 40k's sales and AOS are basically the same as 40k and WHFB's were during the 2010's.

Ugh, I didn't know there was such a dislike for Warhammer by certain elements in GW. Now I am even more happy that TOW had such a succesful launch.

Edited February 5 by Tonhel

[Hollow]

The quality of the stuff from the ToW so far has been great. I do think the way it has been released has been pretty poor. They should have had a combat patrol-type mini-game as part of the rules similar to 40k and pumped out 9 Battleforces for the 9 core factions to begin with. Then started with secondary waves of resin, single kits and MTO. It would have allowed people to pick up the faction they want and to get building, painting and playing.

They seem to consistently leave so much money on the table. There is clearly a conservative aspect to management that is terrified of overproducing. 

40 minutes ago, Landohammer said:

the contract with Amazon for the tv show was severely mishandled by a single rogue executive.

I believe this was all but debunked when various Youtubers jumped on the rumour only for GW and Amazon to release a statement just a few days later that completely contradicted it. The rumour was ridiculous anyway and didn't have any connection to how a PLC operates. 

28 minutes ago, Bosskelot said:

I've seen a few metrics and talked to people In The Know, who say AOS isn't even GW's 2nd or 3rd most profitable game

I just do not believe that this can be the case. Which other possible systems would AoS be trailing? HH? 

[Landohammer]

1 minute ago, Hollow said:

 

I believe this was all but debunked when various Youtubers jumped on the rumour only for GW and Amazon to release a statement just a few days later that completely contradicted it. The rumour was ridiculous anyway and didn't have any connection to how a PLC operates. 

 

Thanks. Didn't know it had been debunked. I guess I just liked the narrative of executives being dumb 🤣

[Hollow]

Whilst I have no insider knowledge, I do think that parts of the internet over-blow the potential "bad blood" between different designers and departments at GW PLC. I also think that some conflate the incompetence and peculiarity of the Kirby years and the explosive growth and systemic changes seen under Rountree's reign. 

GW is a very different company from what it was pre-2015. Rountree took over as CEO On Jan 1 2015. (GW was trading at approximately 500p per share) today it is trading at approximately 10000p per share. 

The company has seen ENORMOUS growth, and like so many companies it is struggling to fully understand, cope and navigate that growth. The diversification of products, the explosion of growth during the pandemic and its IP penetrating the cultural zeitgeist have all contributed to more people than ever looking to buy their products. 

There have been so many outside factors regarding shipping, inflation, conflict etc that they are just struggling to adapt and they are also a company that is terrified of over-expanding due to what happened regarding the LOTR bubble. I think some in the company are waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

I just hope that they take some of those stacks of cash they have and get to work ASAP on new manufacturing, storage and logistical capabilities.  

[Ejecutor]

16 minutes ago, Hollow said:

I just do not believe that this can be the case. Which other possible systems would AoS be trailing? HH? 

I am curious as well about this bit. Prolly AoS is the second or third after HH. What else is GW producing capable of putting it behind?

[Bosskelot]

22 minutes ago, Hollow said:

I just do not believe that this can be the case. Which other possible systems would AoS be trailing? HH? 

HH, KT and Necromunda.

Again; this is profitability not gross sales. All of those systems benefit from being these ancillary 40k things and are rife with kitbash material or actively encourage it within the systems themselves so all 4 essentially have this continuous feedback loop of sales and cross-compatibility. KT benefits from this a lot; you want the Corsair or Kasrkin kits? Those count as KT sales. Necromunda is super low maintenance too; I know it and MESBG were hard-carrying FW for a while because their releases for those games sold really well despite being very small ones logistically. This is also why for a long time it was Necromunda Mondays on Warcom; that game sells like crazy for how little investment (relatively) it gets.

AOS gets basically almost as much attention as 40k does, have similar sized dev teams and departments, gets just as much floor space in stores devoted over to it etc, but it sells much less. It absolutely sells more total units of product more than something like Necro, but its costs are also far higher. Part of this is also because AOS itself doesn't require a lot of models; armies are generally pretty small so peoples collections stay small.

Edited February 5 by Bosskelot

[Hollow]

I could see something like Necro having a better ROI for sure. If you invest £1 million in Necro and generate £3 million, that is a massive 200% return on your investment. Then something like AoS invests £25 million and generates £50 million, which is only a 100% ROI. At the end of the Day though, Necro only generates £2 million total and AoS generates £25 mil, even though Necro is more "profitable" in terms of ROI. 

Are you saying something like Necro is more profitable than AoS in absolute terms? Or in terms of ROI percentages? 

Edited February 5 by Hollow

[Lavieth]

14 hours ago, Ogregut said:

Just had a delivery of the printed legacy army lists and I'm very happy with them, much better than having to check my phone all the time! 

Will order the rest for sure. 

 

I did the same thing with the Adeptus Custodes index with 10th. Makes a world difference, in my opinion.

[Tonhel]

7 hours ago, Bosskelot said:

HH, KT and Necromunda.

Again; this is profitability not gross sales. All of those systems benefit from being these ancillary 40k things and are rife with kitbash material or actively encourage it within the systems themselves so all 4 essentially have this continuous feedback loop of sales and cross-compatibility. KT benefits from this a lot; you want the Corsair or Kasrkin kits? Those count as KT sales. Necromunda is super low maintenance too; I know it and MESBG were hard-carrying FW for a while because their releases for those games sold really well despite being very small ones logistically. This is also why for a long time it was Necromunda Mondays on Warcom; that game sells like crazy for how little investment (relatively) it gets.

AOS gets basically almost as much attention as 40k does, have similar sized dev teams and departments, gets just as much floor space in stores devoted over to it etc, but it sells much less. It absolutely sells more total units of product more than something like Necro, but its costs are also far higher. Part of this is also because AOS itself doesn't require a lot of models; armies are generally pretty small so peoples collections stay small.

So you are saying that 40K, HH, KT and Necromunda are more profitable than AoS?

In that logic TOW is already more profitable than AoS by a huge margin as TOW is much more low maintenance than AoS. Probably cost wise between HH and Necromunda.

Edited February 6 by Tonhel

[JackStreicher]

[Beliman]

Let's be honest here, TOW had a massive campaign:

• 8 years of content creators (most spanish CC started between End Times and Covid).
• 4 years of hype (GW)
• 8 years of fanmade editions (WAP, One-Page-Rules, Manuscritos de Nuth, 8.5th, 9th Age, etc...)
• At least 3 years of a Tournament scene (2021-2024) for old editions (mainly 6th, 8th and fanmade).
• Total War Warhammer1, 2 and 3
• Vermintide 1 and 2
• The difficulty to accquire some WFB products
• High price on ebay and second market sites. 
• One of the most hostile and vocal communities.

I'm not going to lie, I expected a bit more stock from GW, but I'm sure that they will try to milk the cow as much as they can.

Note: AOS had a peak of tournament players this last 3 months (compared to last year) world wide.

Edited February 6 by Beliman

[Chikout]

8 hours ago, Bosskelot said:

HH, KT and Necromunda.

Again; this is profitability not gross sales. All of those systems benefit from being these ancillary 40k things and are rife with kitbash material or actively encourage it within the systems themselves so all 4 essentially have this continuous feedback loop of sales and cross-compatibility. KT benefits from this a lot; you want the Corsair or Kasrkin kits? Those count as KT sales. Necromunda is super low maintenance too; I know it and MESBG were hard-carrying FW for a while because their releases for those games sold really well despite being very small ones logistically. This is also why for a long time it was Necromunda Mondays on Warcom; that game sells like crazy for how little investment (relatively) it gets.

AOS gets basically almost as much attention as 40k does, have similar sized dev teams and departments, gets just as much floor space in stores devoted over to it etc, but it sells much less. It absolutely sells more total units of product more than something like Necro, but its costs are also far higher. Part of this is also because AOS itself doesn't require a lot of models; armies are generally pretty small so peoples collections stay small.

I'm sorry but this simply isn't true. Firstly anyone can see that AoS doesn't get as much shelf space as 40k in any GW store. The only hard data we see is from icv2 in America which despite not tracking GW store sales has AoS consistently in the top 5 best selling miniature ranges. The only way the profitability argument makes sense is if they are talking about profit margins and not actually profit made but even then it's weird. Since the price of manufacturing, shipping and storage is the same for all game system products, if the AoS and 40k team have the same number of staff, profit margins would be identical. 

Shop gossip and reality are not the same thing. My company would be bankrupt a dozen times over if it was. 

[Skreech Verminking]

2 hours ago, Tonhel said:

So you are saying that 40K, HH, KT and Necromunda are more profitable than AoS?

In that logic TOW is already more profitable than AoS by a huge margin as TOW is much more low maintenance than AoS. Probably cost wise between HH and Necromunda.

I mean where I could see hh being more profitable is probably their price range.

it’s funny, but as many people often stated hh being that system where you’ll spend more money then in the 40k universe.

the models are in comparison to any of the 40k variants of their own often cheaper, or have more models for the smae price in it.

For example for almost

the same price you’d pay for 10 intercessors, you can get 20 legionaries in any kind of armour with ease, next to that they even have truly gorgeous new armour sets that fit into the line very well.

although this is where it kinda stops, at the theory.

in practise, I haven’t seen to many people using 30k proxy armies for 40k.

the few that do often just play hh and sometimes with their buddies 40k.

maybe this is just the place where I love but while HH is a great game, I can’t see it being more profitable then aos.

1 hour ago, JackStreicher said:

Nor do I.

Then again I could see underworlds being more profitable, especially since not only the underworld players are often interested in fielding them, but I’m not certain if underworlds is considered its own system or a part of aos, when it comes down to profit

Edited February 6 by Skreech Verminking

[JackStreicher]

Just now, Skreech Verminking said:

Nor do I.

Then again I could see underworlds being more profitable, especially since not only the underworld players are often interested in fielding them, but I’m not certain if underworlds is considered its own system or a part of aos, when it comes down to profit

It reads too much like some doom-sayer-shield written on cardboard.

I agree however on that GW really doesn't grasp their targe audience(s) - New Bretonnian Knights would have even made the old Player Base buy even more -> Shiny new Bretonnians after two decades of neglect! Take my money!

 

It just reads too negative for my taste and too negative to reflect reality which tends to be quite chaotic, mixed and more complicated.

[Ejecutor]

Just now, JackStreicher said:

It reads too much like some doom-sayer-shield written on cardboard.

I agree however on that GW really doesn't grasp their targe audience(s) - New Bretonnian Knights would have even made the old Player Base buy even more -> Shiny new Bretonnians after two decades of neglect! Take my money!

 

It just reads too negative for my taste and too negative to reflect reality which tends to be quite chaotic, mixed and more complicated.

[Skreech Verminking]

Well, since we are at it, I actually just wanted to share a pic.

say hello to my black ork bigboss Bobba

ps: and no…. That’s sadly not the official base, I’m still waiting on my 30mm😭

Edited February 6 by Skreech Verminking

[Tonhel]

6 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

It reads too much like some doom-sayer-shield written on cardboard.

I agree however on that GW really doesn't grasp their targe audience(s) - New Bretonnian Knights would have even made the old Player Base buy even more -> Shiny new Bretonnians after two decades of neglect! Take my money!

 

It just reads too negative for my taste and too negative to reflect reality which tends to be quite chaotic, mixed and more complicated.

It's difficult.

GW cleary has no clue about demand. We still have the limited FEC armyset buyable everywhere, while the same kits are now available seperate for a higher price.

In the meanwhile I have mananged to buy ZERO new TOW miniatures, because they are all out of stock since hour 1 of their release. To me it seems they could easly halved the production of the FEC armyset and produced more stock for TOW.

I know this a very simplistic approach to the problem, but to me it seems to much FEC stock and not enough TOW stock.

Edited February 6 by Tonhel