An Open (Video) Letter to Games Workshop from Miniwargaming

Note: Do not turn this in to a rant thread please. Our community is pretty amazing, and I'd really like to not repeat what has been said/whined about/ranted on Dakka, Bell of Lost Souls, Warseer or any of our other many wargaming communities. Please be constructive.

I thought Matthew's open letter was amazing. I've only been in the hobby for a fraction of the time compared to some of our vets here on the board. I started in 2004. Since 2004, I've only came close to quitting the hobby once. It was the release of the 5th edition Codex: Chaos. I didn't know that codices have radical changes. I do now, but then, I was completely new to Warhammer 40,000 and wargaming in general. I had discovered a brand new joy. Part of that joy for me, was being able to make my own models via conversions. I love conversions.

So what did I do? I went out and bought roughly 5000 points of Chaos Marines. I then bought all the pieces necessary to convert all my generic marines into Noise Marines. I converted three full squads of sonic bikers. I had sonic predators. Sonic dreadnaughts. Sonic defilers. Sonic terminators. Sonic everything. I even bought several boxes of daemonettes for support. I remember I had spent roughly $120 just on parts to scratch build my WYSIWYG Chaos Lord. He had a tail for his mutation that gave him +1 attack. He had Fabius bile's backpack with the vials and saws cut apart and added to the top of his awesome robed terminator body. He had some sweet looking terminator claws that I had to buy two models for to get claws that looked close to matching. He had a doom siren. Every piece of amazing wargear was modeled provided it looked good on the model. My army was one of the best converted armies in San Francisco.

Then... the fifth edition codex rolled out. Easily, over 90% of my army was instantly invalidated. What did Games Workshop do to rectify the situation? They wrote a Apocalypse Datasheet so that I could use my beautiful and expensive models for Apocalypse only. What a slap to the face. I seriously stopped playing 40k for well over a year before I gradually shifted back, calmed down and picked up a small Eldar force. Did I ever finish that army? No. Not really. I got it up to about 1250 with enough box sets to bump it up to 1750 but got disinterested when I watched almost every single unit break and run off the table in one of my very first games.

I know that Games Workshop will never read this post. I do hope, very sincerely that they do pay attention to what's going on with the online communities right now. Am I disgruntled? Not so much anymore. They've done a very adequate job distracted me with these beautiful Dark Eldar models. I hope they pay enough attention to not be the first company Matthew talks about. I love 40k. I love the background. I love the ruleset. I love the models. But in the end, if you piss off enough of your loyal customer base, you're just gonna be another idiom people use when describing the events of yesteryear to their buddies/children/etc.

25 euro for a venom.

Far too expensive. They need competition to lower prices.

I was the same with EC by the way. They invalidated my Terminator Lord.

It's well thought out, and well put. I like the video, and I fully agree. I won't quite 40k any time soon and I don't really mind the price increases, but for a lot of people it is a factor that'll push them either out of mini wargaming, or into the arms of another company. I hope GW watches this video and takes it seriously. They need to sharpen up to stay on top, and they need to do it sooner rather than later.

+1 to everything in video
+1 to that GW actually noticed that
+1 to that GW gon't give even slightlest ammount of s***


Anyway GW ain't gaming company (like PP), they just make models. They always did, back in '80 they did not even have their gaming systems, just making "random" Citadel stuff and D&D figures.

IMHO only Mantic could be reaol problem to them IF Mantic would not cover different area of wargaming - cheap, low quality miniatures.

And actually Wargaming is still one of cheapest hobbies, so people would swallow price increse anyway.


[still, if I finish Bladewing Transport anytime soon and it would NOT look like digest byproduct I may make some spare casts]

How NOT to run Your business part... erm... n+1:
http://www.belloflostsouls.net/2011/06/gw-marketing-tightening-screws.html

I wonder what the hell happened to GW recently? I actually feel kinda sorry for them right now...

There are rumors this is some sort of new marketing strategy test run. While it may enhance impact of new releases I don't think it's good strategy for "luxury" items like hobby supplies, especially for industry with such crappy release cycle.

Hope this would not affect "rumors".

Part two up now.

That's good, but they don't care since they produce models, not war games. Best part is they customers are mostly gamers... hmm..