Games Workshop is Dead! Long Live Games Workshop!

[Stu35]

When I was a child, my parents baulked at the price of GW minis, but I still managed to get into the game. I spent many, many happy years playing 40K, WFB, Blood Bowl, Mordheim, Epic 40k and so on and so forth.

That started with my parents buying me the occasional box of Space Wolves or Bretonnians for a birthday or christmas. Armies built up slowly over many, many years. Games played with oh-so-many "proxies" to stretch my 1,500 points of models into a 2,000 point army.

I got older, I got jobs, I started to buy my own models (and branch out into the sub-games), I didn't need proxies any more, if I wanted a 2,000 point guard infantry army I'd buy a fucking 2,000 point guard army (I've still got a few boxes of unassembled, unpainted Catachans from that particular pay-day splurge when I was about 17).

I got older still, it got ever more expensive, my free time vanished, I moved away, many of my friends who I used to play with also moved away. I came back to find my friends (the ones I still hang out with) now play Malifaux et. al. I've kinda just grown out of the whole hobby.

I honestly don't know how many thousands of pounds I (and my parents) have funneled into GW over the years. This includes plenty of trips down to Nottingham and manys a Pint of "Bugmanns Beer" quaffed (and one less-than-legal drive back to Yorkshire as a reckless 17 year old with more brass than sense, but that's another story altogether)

I do know that with the pricing structure the way it is now, this would never have happened if I was a child these days.

Even if I had the free time and inclination, there's no way I'd buy a GW product again now - I had 3 weeks off a while ago, and considered buying some new models, paints, and all the other detritus I don't have anymore. Looked at the prices, and immediately decided against it.


Honestly. I don't understand how GW is still in business, much less profitable... Then again, I never understood how "X-Factor" is still going whilst "Community" keeps getting cancelled.

 

[Atomic Spy Crab]

Well it was pretty obvious games workshop wouldn't die because 1/1000 of its money dropped (Price joke)
Also on the topic of prices, can we complain about something else for once? Such as the lack of a sisters or ork update?
(Even though $50 for tetto'eko is outrageous)

I stopped playing due to lack of support for Orks. I would get seriously ruined by all these other players armies having all this stuff I don't know about and wrecking my shit with it. The prices over here are awful too, around $80-90 (That's NZD) for a pack of just 10 Space Marines? It's a complete rip off.

10 marines is $40

 

[chozo_hybrid]

Well it was pretty obvious games workshop wouldn't die because 1/1000 of its money dropped (Price joke)
Also on the topic of prices, can we complain about something else for once? Such as the lack of a sisters or ork update?
(Even though $50 for tetto'eko is outrageous)

I stopped playing due to lack of support for Orks. I would get seriously ruined by all these other players armies having all this stuff I don't know about and wrecking my shit with it. The prices over here are awful too, around $80-90 (That's NZD) for a pack of just 10 Space Marines? It's a complete rip off.

10 marines is $40

Maybe in the United States, I clarified that it was in NZD in my post. This NZ site http://www.mightyape.co.nz/product/Warhammer-40000-Space-Marine-Tactical-Squad/20302119 has them listed normally for $73 NZD, Games Workshop themselves charge http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=&prodId=prod2160142a $75 for them for people in New Zealand, it may reroute you to the US or UK store depending on where you are, but if you can, choose the NZ one to have a look. Make sure to check before correcting someone. They may not be up to $90 anymore, but I distinctly remember them being that much at one point, because I had a discussion with a guy at the Games Workshop near my place about the prices.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Guess what.

They've pulled the miniature ranges for Mordheim.

Technically, yes. Well, there is an elf mage you can get in Australia still online.

However, the original models that came with the boxed set, the mercenaries and the skaven are still around, as Empire Militia, or Skaven Nightrunngers respectively.

But what I find is that since plastic figures aren't often conceptualized as a finished product if they're designed to be modular, then they generally result in finished products that have no sense of motion. Compare the Space Marine Vanguard Veteran [http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/catalog/productDetail.jsp?catId=cat440195a&prodId=prod2160152a] squad with Nomad Hellcats [http://www.infinitythegame.com/infinity/en/2013/miniatures/hellcats-4/]. The GW product looks chunky and oddly static for figures who are supposed to be rapid assault drop troops, while the Hellcats not only look more correctly proportioned, they appear to move the way an actual human being would. Rather than having a bunch of random accessories tacked on, the flat spaces are broken up with believable sci-fi combat equipment.

Not sure that's fair, surely it's in how they are assembled?

The proportions are off, true, but GW has always intentionally gone for weird proportions to look more heroic or something. Except for necroumundan Van Saars, which made them hard to convert.

 

[endtherapture]

Not sure that's fair, surely it's in how they are assembled?

It's that they're designed to be assembled that makes them come out looking unnatural.

When a sculptor designs a metal, non-poseable figure, they imagine the whole figure from start to finish as a single connected body. Even when for technical reasons it has to be assembled from multiple parts, the sculptor knows how those parts must go together. There's a natural flow of movement connecting the pieces. In the best cases, there's a natural, humanistic movement to the piece. The weapons and equipment they're carrying appear to have weight.

Multi-part plastics OTOH, are not designed this way. They're designed to maximize versatility, but that necessitates a loss in accuracy of form. Look at those Space Marines I linked to in my prior post. At best, only the beakie is assembled into a pose the human body would naturally adopt when in movement. And the squad leader and the Thunder Hammer marines are carrying extremely large weapons, but there's no hint from their pose that those weapons have any bit of weight at all. Their bodies aren't counter-balancing the weight of a 9 foot sword of a giant hammer- they can't, because the rest of the miniature was never sculpted with those pieces exclusively in mind.

Now look at the Hellcat miniatures. Both of them are designed as a single piece, so the body parts flow to imply a natural sort of movement. Were you to stand in a pose matching the space marines, if you didn't fall flat on your face you'd struggle to understand what the moment path was. But if you were to stand like the hellcats, you'd know exactly what sort of movement you were making. The one with the heavy machine gun looks like his weapon has weight, and the weight is shown by the way it is braced against his body. The hacker's combi rifle also looks to have weight, the way the weapon has been raised up and the whole torso has been shifted to counter balance it. This is an effect you simply cannot have in multipart plastics.

GW proportions are bad, yeah. But this is not an issue of proportions. This is about the natural way that the different body parts of a model kit connect. If the sculptor doesn't know how the different body parts will be assembled, there is no possible way to ensure that they will connect naturalistically.

GW proportions aren't bad, Warhammer and 40K ones are.

Have you seen the LoTR range? Brilliant looking, elegant, well proportioned models.