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Schadenboner posted:Selling books gives money, not selling books risks the money. It seems risky? I think the core issue, is that its pretty loving easy to sell books with fluff + rules. Most of the GW books I bought is for fluff. I bought the Skaven AoS book because I love Skaven. I don't even play AoS. Ive seen othr companies selling books easily as long as they can offer compelling art + fluff. GW is already a rockstar at both of those. It should not be hard to sell books. Charging for rules always felt stupid to me. People will buy physical swag rulebooks, even if you provide them digitally for free. As far as I see it, the important question is "can they sell nearly the same amount of books as they currently are, while providing the rules for free digitally?" IMO, I think the answer is yes. Maybe I'm wrong, but I see a lot of evidence that people mostly just buy books because they like the books intrinsically. A high % of the people buying books *just* for the rules because they *need* them resort to FILES anyway.
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Sep 26, 2020 23:47
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I’m new to GW but I do work for a corporation and I assume someone crunches the numbers on every change they make. But it is irritating I can’t get a book with all the rules, and buy all the cards. Their model might net profits but they are also encouraging people to print their own copies off the net.
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Sep 27, 2020 00:31
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Yeah, I was considering getting into Underworlds until I saw how goddamn ridiculous the process of acquiring a competitive deck would be. Especially when packs go out of print and the only way to get the cards is to buy the warband they came with and I guess sell off the minis or something? Plus buying the game boards separately. Looks like a fun game but what a convoluted nightmare.
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Sep 27, 2020 01:03
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Some real cognative dissodence going on in this thread about Specialist Games which mostly have have been out of print for 10 years and largely kept alive by die hard niche communities. From memory GW themselves had many of the rules pdfs up on their own website before they stopped supporting most of these games.
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Sep 27, 2020 02:36
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That's completely correct. The living rulebooks were a fan continuation of these games, and were often substantial improvements because they were written by people who played the games and understood the meta. Not to slight the GW creatives, but at the end of Specialist Games most games had a digest sized magazine that, on a monthly basis, injected new rules and models into the game. This lead to producing uneven content at a breakneck pace that prohibited quality checking. When SG closed down, people were able to finally take stock of everything and do the required tweaks and shoves. In a very real sense, these became community games.
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Sep 27, 2020 03:39
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Ropes4u posted:I’m new to GW but I do work for a corporation and I assume someone crunches the numbers on every change they make. But it is irritating I can’t get a book with all the rules, and buy all the cards. Their model might net profits but they are also encouraging people to print their own copies off the net. I'm pretty sure the Kirb admitted GW didn't do market research when he was running things
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Sep 27, 2020 04:24
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I don't think stealing rules from GW, of all companies, is going to really hurt them or something. But I want the game I love to continue to be supported, and spending money is the price for continued support. It still seems unreal that all the Gangs are getting another plastic kit with more cool stuff! Specialist Games are not the juggernaut 40k is, so they are much more at risk from people just illegally downloading everything. As long as you are buying official models for the bulk of your gangs it probably is fine but just don't act like it is some moral good to do so.
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Sep 27, 2020 04:58
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Lord_Hambrose posted:As long as you are buying official models for the bulk of your gangs it probably is fine but just don't act like it is some moral good to do so. Nobody even remotely ever hinted at anything even remotely close to that. So chill. Again, this all started because someone said that implying you've used downloaded rules is saying you want the designers to be out of a job. That's all I took issue with. I hate that everything is so hyperbolic, like, either you want someone out of a job or you think its a moral good? There's a mile of room between those two things. The situation is a bit more complex than that. Indolent Bastard posted:Or use the Necromunda Community Edition Rulebook and Outlanders Community Edition for free on Yaktribe and skip the eternal purchasing of new books from GW. Oh yeah, it was you. And this was the post that started it all. I think "don't buy the constant book releases, just buy the GW models and use community rules" is totally fair and you're being a bit overly defensive here Hambrose. Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 05:34 on Sep 27, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2020 05:31
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:I'm pretty sure the Kirb admitted GW didn't do market research when he was running things Didn't he say market research was, "Otiose in a niche," or something like that. Very funny.
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Sep 27, 2020 05:59
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I like the new necromunda models very much
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Sep 27, 2020 07:29
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Yeah really there’s a lot of grey area between ”buy only bootleg minis from China and pirate all books”, and ”force every gamer in your group to buy every book for necromunda or every warband to get a competative Underworlds set”. Necromunda’s book and starter set schedule is so convoluted that the absolutely most common question on the necro facebook page is ”what do i need to get started?”. That’s not a good thing for the game. The answer SHOULD be ”this pretty great affordable starter set with two basic gangs and some terrain, or this single book” but roflol look at where necro is now. Underworld’s x-wing business model means that a lot of people, like myself, love the idea of the game and the minis but refuses to get involved in a competative scene were only official cards are allowed. Neither lf these things mean that I hate GW and want their designers to get unemployed. This year I’ve been spending money on GW (through those two games) for the first time in about ten years. They are great minis! But don’t pretend that the two business models I listed are not actively keeping potential players away, compared to if there was a cheap (not even free!) source for the barebones rules for Necro, or a way to get the Underworlds cards without buying tons of minis you don’t like. lilljonas fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Sep 27, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2020 07:43
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I hate the way they run the company but I have to admit that GW paying zero attention to market research and somehow blundering their way into being the only tabletop gaming company that isn't getting pancaked by covid is darkly humorous.
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Sep 27, 2020 09:32
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:I hate the way they run the company but I have to admit that GW paying zero attention to market research and somehow blundering their way into being the only tabletop gaming company that isn't getting pancaked by covid is darkly humorous. A lot of miniature companies have been doing well during covid. I think Perry said they doubled or trippled sales this year, others like baccus have the dual headache of increased sales and limits on casting ability. So they open their webshop for a few hours, get more sales than they can print in weeks, and then close it again. Others are having a tough time. It’s a real rollercoaster, but at least a lot of historical tabletop companies are reporting big boosts. This article from summer was reporting a general boost in the tabletop hobby economy. And it’s not just GW or minis, puzzle brands like Ravensburger are doing great this year. Basically anything you can do at home. https://www.google.se/amp/s/amp.economist.com/britain/2020/07/02/why-games-workshop-is-worth-more-than-marks-and-spencer-and-centrica lilljonas fucked around with this message at 09:42 on Sep 27, 2020 |
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Sep 27, 2020 09:36
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Nissin Cup Nudist posted:I'm pretty sure the Kirb admitted GW didn't do market research when he was running things If that is still true they are leaving tons of money on the table.
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Sep 27, 2020 12:13
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Ropes4u posted:If that is still true they are leaving tons of money on the table. Nah that’s from previous management. They reshuffled upper management after the worst fuckups of the 2010’s and changed a bunch of things about how they marketed 40k, and suddenly sales increased at record pace. Funny how that works.
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Sep 27, 2020 12:41
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Ropes4u posted:If that is still true they are leaving tons of money on the table. The company has a market value of ~ £3.2 billion and had an operating profit to August that was almost double last year's. Despite having spent most of that time with the company closed down. They are leaving very little money on the table, except the government bailout cash which they returned as not needed. Fuckers do need to do print-on-demand game cards and transfers though. That's definitely somewhere they could do better.
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Sep 27, 2020 15:41
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lilljonas posted:A lot of miniature companies have been doing well during covid. I think Perry said they doubled or trippled sales this year, others like baccus have the dual headache of increased sales and limits on casting ability. So they open their webshop for a few hours, get more sales than they can print in weeks, and then close it again. Others are having a tough time. It’s a real rollercoaster, but at least a lot of historical tabletop companies are reporting big boosts. Thanks for this. Interesting, I swear I remember someone saying that GW was doing uncommonly well compared to competitors because so many people just buy their stuff to paint without any intention to play, which is pretty uncommon for other game systems. Guess that was off though!
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Sep 27, 2020 18:54
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GW is still several orders of magnitude more successful than even its closest competitors. You’re not wrong, it’s just that some of the other companies are also riding a wave of growth in the hobby space as a whole as well as more specifically in Covid times a trend of high demand for indoors activities.
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Sep 27, 2020 22:00
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PeterWeller posted:Thanks for all the responses! Both the alternating activations keeps everyone more engaged, and the more varied even more than the more competent gangers; there are only really a tiny handful of common starting gangs in old Necromunda; you needed at least five gangers to work your territories and almost everyone had a heavy. So almost everyone who wasn't playing an Outlanders gang had a near-identical gang until they started getting skilled. In Newcromunda taking on a starting Goliath gang with their T4 is very different to a starting Van Saar gang with their BS 4 or the Escher turn of speed. quote:Also, neonchamelion, my experience was that phase 3 was more about a handful of complete bad-asses who managed to survive all the culling in phase 1 and 2, surrounded by whatever scrubs players could afford out of their dwindling cash supplies. Depends what you were playing. My Van Saar gang turned out to be broken in my two long campaigns and my mid length one, not because (as I expected would be the problem) your inventors gave you a nice drip-feed of extra cash, but because when you have about four medics in the gang the culling you suffer is fairly limited after the first few games (and four armourers means that you can arm your entire gang with bolters as reliably as other gangs use las). Ratskins were also broken because they always got rerolls to their injury rolls. (Spyrers were terrible in campaign because they couldn't replace casualties at all and bounty hunter hired guns were terrifying threats for them).
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Sep 27, 2020 23:43
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neonchameleon posted:In Newcromunda taking on a starting Goliath gang with their T4 is very different to a starting Van Saar gang with their BS 4 or the Escher turn of speed. This does, btw, mean that balance is not very good, and sometimes you will have games where your opponent brings the hard counter to your gang and you are never really in the fight. Some gangs are just bummers, like Cawdor and (until their book comes out) Escher, and some gangs can be bullshit, like the all-Flamer, all-infiltrating Grinder nonsense. Every gang has a tendency to converge because ideal progression means boosting base stats and buying the good weapons and armor (and the very, very few good pieces of wargear) from the Trading Post, too.
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Sep 28, 2020 04:15
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Cawdor seems to be pretty disgusting if you are an rear end in a top hat and bring the absolute maximum number blunderpoles possible, but it sounds like very few people will want to play with you again afterward. It's a shame because they are easily my favorite Necromunda models.
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Sep 28, 2020 05:59
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Another part of Newcromunda's bad balance is that the wargear list is a vast wasteland of overpriced chaff, except for a handful of silly OP poo poo that you'll eventually have to ban if anyone starts using it for its intended purpose (falsehoods, ablative armor overlays), silly OP poo poo that gets way out of hand until everyone just takes the hard counters (flash grenades), hard counters for OP wargear or sometimes a gang's whole gimmick (nightvision/antismoke goggles and sights, enviro suits, arguably web solvent), and a handful of non-obvious solid choices you should be taking on almost every relevant character (stimm slugs). It's a roulette wheel of stuff that ends up making games feel bad until everyone agrees on what to do about it.
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Sep 28, 2020 06:32
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Took a look at the new Necromunda rules. 20+ gangs? Secret objective cards? 600+ pages of rules? Retromunda here I come. 160 pages across two books. I'm glad people like the 2017 edition, but it looks like peak GW. So many things to keep on top of. Yikes.
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Sep 28, 2020 23:25
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Indolent Bastard posted:Took a look at the new Necromunda rules. 20+ gangs? Secret objective cards? 600+ pages of rules? Most of this is fair, but I dunno where you're getting 20+ gangs? They have about the same number of gangs. Classic Necro had seven base, four in Outlanders, and a whole bunch of "use this 40K army as a Necro gang" stuff from the Black Library era. Newcromunda has 13 gangs. The seven houses, plus Enforcers, Grinders, Ogryn, and Chaos Cult, and Venators, with GSC as a "use these 40K models as a Necro gang" online. The only one with 20+ gangs is Oldcromunda, and that's only if you use every obscure terrible idea for an alien gang from a black and white Specialist Games magazine. At that point you might as well just play Kill Team.
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Sep 28, 2020 23:44
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Crackbone posted:Sure, but my point is ~5 years ago when they were still run by that moron Kirb, they refused to change at all. Once he left they changed course on pretty much everything, except that. I dunno, maybe the book numbers are phenomenal, but I'd be shocked if it was a profit center for them. I’m not saying they shouldn’t publish the rules for free and sell the books as collectors items. I wish they would. But it’s a loss of quantifiable revenue which is being weighed against an unknown (at least for GW) model (and probably one hard to measure the benefits of).
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Sep 29, 2020 00:14
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To be fair classic Necromunda had horrible balance in the wargear - and new Cawdor are very similar to the old Redemptionists in many ways (now there was some unbalanced nonsense - as most of the Outlander rules were). The parts I really don't like are that gangers are always boring in their advances and that you can select skills from your primary lists with only a couple of extra XP spent; one of the joys of classic Necromunda was knowing anyone could turn good in the long run and going with the gang you had rather than the gang you wished you had.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:48
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Indolent Bastard posted:Took a look at the new Necromunda rules. 20+ gangs? Secret objective cards? 600+ pages of rules? I agree with there being an insane amount of content (and not just for NM) but the cards aren't a requirement, and most books have some sort of objective/mission table you can use if you want. Also, you can play the game with just the core and big gang book. If you want, you can branch out to the "House of" books for crazy gang options, and the "Book of" books are campaigns that aren't necessary if you don't want to play them. I'm definitely not going to argue about the GW flood or pricing, but "600 pages of rules" is like going to D&D and saying that you have to buy all the supplements and campaigns in order to play. That being said, if your group prefers OGNM, feel free to keep playing it - it's still a fun game with great story potential. NM17 is crunchier and gives you some different options, but nobody is forcing anyone to play the new version.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:51
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This is why I’ve gone pretty hard into Blood Bowl. It’s kinda rough if you’re just doing one-offs, but a reasonable league (8-ish players) turns it into one of the top games from the old Specialist line. Shame it takes so much coordination and buy-in from the players, but it’s really been worth it so far and things can be roughly balanced - the halfling coach has a respectable win/loss record, which is always unexpected. Current season has me 3-0, which has been really great considering I’m running Chaos against mostly bashing teams who can out-bash me pretty easily. Should have Claw on one of my Chosen after the next game, which is going to help with the sheer number of AV8/9 dudes on the field. Looking at the leaks/general analysis of the upcoming ruleset, it seems like the new Passing stat is going to make things a little more frustrating thanks to making passing a little worse for everyone, and the nerf to Claw -while good from a design perspective because ClawPOMB is basically an auto-include if you can get it - means that my poor Chaos lads are gonna see less table time after this season unless I decide the nerf is worth it. Also, whoever gave the ‘Ooligan Disturbing Presence rather than Dirty Player is my enemy. I think it’s better thematically (because goblin fouling is amazing and half of what they’re kinda okay at) and while the pass interference is nice, it also feels a bit pricy. Sculpting up a custom Night Goblin/Gloomspite Gitz team for next season, because there always needs to be at least one Stunty team in a league.
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Sep 29, 2020 00:54
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Hedningen posted:Also, whoever gave the ‘Ooligan Disturbing Presence rather than Dirty Player is my enemy. I think it’s better thematically (because goblin fouling is amazing and half of what they’re kinda okay at) and while the pass interference is nice, it also feels a bit pricy. Sculpting up a custom Night Goblin/Gloomspite Gitz team for next season, because there always needs to be at least one Stunty team in a league. Goblin Ooligans get dirty player in the new edition fwiw
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Sep 29, 2020 01:15
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Any word on a release date for BB2020?
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Sep 29, 2020 01:32
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berzerkmonkey posted:Any word on a release date for BB2020? "Holiday Season for 2020"
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Sep 29, 2020 01:55
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Cease to Hope posted:Goblin Ooligans get dirty player in the new edition fwiw That’s really good. Are they keeping Fan Favorite as well? Means my plan of a goblin hoisting a broken beer bottle and wearing extra spikey boots will fit the ‘Ooligan well.
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Sep 29, 2020 02:52
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Hedningen posted:That’s really good. Are they keeping Fan Favorite as well? No, Fan Favorite isn't even a listed skill any more. They have Dirty Player, Disturbing Presence, then the usual goblin stuff. I ran down how I think all the teams will be affected by the changes in a previous post: Cease to Hope posted:Amazons
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Sep 29, 2020 12:31
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throwing stats, who knows. Tomb guardians should benefit from Decay being less deadly and the skill access changes.
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it will be very interesting to see how the amazon and norse throwers end up. necromatic are the undisputed best team now with nerfs to all the elf teams?
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Sep 29, 2020 14:11
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neonchameleon posted:Both the alternating activations keeps everyone more engaged, and the more varied even more than the more competent gangers; there are only really a tiny handful of common starting gangs in old Necromunda; you needed at least five gangers to work your territories and almost everyone had a heavy. So almost everyone who wasn't playing an Outlanders gang had a near-identical gang until they started getting skilled. In Newcromunda taking on a starting Goliath gang with their T4 is very different to a starting Van Saar gang with their BS 4 or the Escher turn of speed. House gangs were near identical to some extent, but how you geared up could lead to a lot of variety. Sure, there's the "just give every ganger a lasgun and sword and then take a leader and a heavy with flamers" sorta optimal build. But in the years I played, I rarely saw anything that plain. How much one invested in their heavy (or two) and leader had a big impact on how the rest of the gang was equipped. And then there was the question of bulking out your roster with a few more gangers or a bunch of poorly equipped Juves. I like the idea of giving different house gangs different starting profiles, but like Cease said, it seems like it could be really imbalanced. And I kinda love that you picked your old Necromunda gang based on not much more than their aesthetic. If you wanted to run your Spider Jerusalem posse as an assault focused group or your musclepunks as a shooting gang, you weren't mechanically hindering yourself. But also, I'm probably just being a bit of a grognard and looking for reasons to choose the old over the new. quote:Depends what you were playing. My Van Saar gang turned out to be broken in my two long campaigns and my mid length one, not because (as I expected would be the problem) your inventors gave you a nice drip-feed of extra cash, but because when you have about four medics in the gang the culling you suffer is fairly limited after the first few games (and four armourers means that you can arm your entire gang with bolters as reliably as other gangs use las). Ratskins were also broken because they always got rerolls to their injury rolls. (Spyrers were terrible in campaign because they couldn't replace casualties at all and bounty hunter hired guns were terrifying threats for them). Yeah, Van Saar could pile on the tech skills more quickly than other gangs. Ratskins would survive longer than their peers, but they were a lot more limited in their ability to gear up over the long haul. Spyrers were meant to have quick turnover in campaigns. They were the only gang with a built-in win condition.
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Sep 29, 2020 19:40
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For me it’s not really a balance issue as most gangs can assemble a ridiculous killer combo or two. Campaigns end up imbalanced more as a result of ridiculous amounts of money coming in and buying outrageous poo poo from the much more predictable rare trade system. I dislike how the gangs start out being as good as mid-late tier Old Munda gangs. It fundamentally alters the theme of the game for me. My group has created a hybrid of the two systems that we are very happy with. Needs some tweaking but it’s a lot of fun.
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Sep 29, 2020 20:24
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ineptmule posted:For me it’s not really a balance issue as most gangs can assemble a ridiculous killer combo or two. Campaigns end up imbalanced more as a result of ridiculous amounts of money coming in and buying outrageous poo poo from the much more predictable rare trade system. Care to share with the class?
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Sep 29, 2020 21:59
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Yes, I might be able to. Let me see if I can find it. Edit: Here you go. It’s written for the group so the opening pages might be all a bit campaign specific. The significant stuff begins on page 5 Squibsy fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Sep 29, 2020 |
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Sep 29, 2020 23:52
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After ages and ages of not doing any Warhammer stuff since gaming is dead due to all of 2020's crap, I grabbed Underworlds: Dreadfane, and....I kinda really like the rules? I guess my question is where to go from here - is the current "real" starter set Beastgrave? Is there a new one on the horizon I should hold out for? I was thinking of grabbing that and Mollog's Mob, both because the minis look awesome and I want some universal cards to screw around with. Also, how is the PC implementation on Steam? Is it a real approximation of the board game, or are there differences?
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Sep 30, 2020 17:12
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food court bailiff posted:After ages and ages of not doing any Warhammer stuff since gaming is dead due to all of 2020's crap, I grabbed Underworlds: Dreadfane, and....I kinda really like the rules? You could also get a set of Shadespire or Nightvault universal cards off of ebay, but those two seasons doesn't use keywords on the cards, and they mostly aren't tournament legal.
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