One other potential negative is the "fans". The average Games Workshop consumer is not a customer, but a cultist. You're never allowed to say anything negative about Games Workshop. Even the slightest critique causes these people to change the topic, attack you, accuse you of being a fake fan, and perform insane mental gymnastics to always frame anything Games Workshop (a massive, profit driven corporation) does as a good thing. Though I must concede that this isn't technically something Games Workshop has control over, it is still a source of annoyance for me, and other companies don't seem to have this problem with their systems.
Far too true... The un-average fan of GW is an unreasonable cultist who will never accept any detraction at all. Sadly they tend to be the most vocal as they pour all their time and energy into attempting to justify their own bad choices. Drowns the rest of the fanbase out who have at this point given up trying to say anything because of all the attacks on their opinions.
That's not limited to 40k but to all sorts of media too. Videogames, movies, tv shows, music etc. It's because there are a lot of people out there who tie their identity and self worth to these franchises / products, so they see any criticism on those products as an attack on themselves.
Have to say it's usually (not always) newer / younger fans that are guilty of that stuff too. Long time fans are usually the ones making the criticisms as they're the people who grew up with a franchise and watched it reach it's peak, then also experienced the tipping point and watched it decline. Newer fans have usually jumped onboard during the decline so they don't know what they're missing to begin with.
Bingo. Just look at the youtube 40k community; it's a mess of shills, deeply confused individuals, grifters and weirdos. In particular, there's that extremely unsettling, long red-haired bloke who paints rainbow marines....
Theyre just a start point. Community editions and balance patches are where it's at. When I game with my friends, GW aren't present, and their rules are just scaffolding - if we deign to use them.
I just hate the 3 year edition cycle, which combines with a "change for change's sake" mentality and a tendency to have terrible balance which favors new releases. I want to build an army I can play with for a long time. But 40k armies require a shit ton of models, the game changes so often and the gameplay isn't very fun. I have a ton of 40k and 30k models, but I just don't like those systems. So I am sticking mainly with Dropfleet Commander. And I have been convinced to try out Legions Imperialis, which I will do once I have painted the 350 infantry models I need to have a playable army
I would like to think this would quell the negativity against you, Macca. But you are dealing with the hyper fanbois who don't want to hear well reasoned arguments. Great Vid though. Covers my thoughts on why I can't recommend this hobby to people
We live in a time when people like Macca can drop dozens of hours worth of in-depth breakdowns and discussion videos, only to be hit with "but I like it so therefore it's good" by Reddit
I have a major bone to pick with GW and their lopsided attention when it comes to factions. Damn near every faction I've ever taken an interest in gets axed or ignored. Chorfs got axed before I could really invest in them, Tomb Kings got axed alongside Fantasy, KO are a pitifully small faction comprised most of hero models, and Dark Eldar have a third of their range missing. Yes, you can always make the argument that they don't get support because they don't sell. However, a big part of those low sales numbers stem from a lack of new/updated models, a lack of marketing, or in the case of the Tomb Kings, abysmal rules that made the faction terminally unfun to play on the table. It's literally a death spiral situation - old players already have everything they want and new players simply don't invest, so sales drop alongside GWs investment. Worth mentioning as well that the Fantasy IP itself was killed due to this exact thing. GW created a bunch of problems that they proceeded to never address, saw their sales crater, and opted to wipe the board clean.
I honestly used most of my high school paychecks to buy my collection while I had no expenses, thanks to my parents. I have no idea how I would have realistically afforded my ultramarine army if I was living on my own in high school. It would have taken me way longer to save up for everything because of how expensive this hobby is. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who graduated high school less than a year ago and is now in the military.
100% Lore can be changed but there needs to be a reason for it. If they were so desperate to bring in Femstodes they could have had a storyline that perhaps said the Custodes have been forced to recruit females because lots of Custodes were killed in the 13th black crusade and Indomitus crusade. But no, that would reflect negatively on wahmen because it looks like they’re only being taken out of desperation. So instead they said, there have always been female Custodes. However as Custodes are basically supercharged marines and female physiology doesn’t enable them to become marines, the next logical step now Amazon is involved, is sadly inevitable.
On the lot of this. I..............Agree!😂 The big one for me is the 3 year edition cycle. It encourages rules management to not address systematic flaws, so that when all factions have their books published, GW can restart the hamster wheel and roll out a shiny *New* edition with *innovative*, *improvements*. Improvements which happen to upset and recontextualize unit and wargear options defining what offers preferred efficiacy. 😩 In that, the 3 year cycle, seems to facilitate that flipflop, rather than striving to improve the existing gaming environment where everything has a place 😞 And it all gets masked under the guise of a new edition. #new40k [Inserts Loki meme "Your Saviour.... Is...... Here!!!!"]
My first contact with GW was a 3rd edition rulebook for 40k in my early teens. The universe sucked me in and was a part in my life since then. That being said, I only started to play in 5th edition 40k. Sadly over the years the game (40k) lost the shine and glow for me ... too many games lost in the listwriting/deployment phase (I remember a few games with my dark eldar against a tau player of that playgroup - must have been 6th or maybe 7th. DE at that time relied heavy on dodge to survive, even with their paperplane transports. Guess what markerlights could just ignore - correct, dodge. And ofc that tau player loved to spam those ...). Horus heresy did hold me a bit longer as I truely think the setting is epic, but after the playgroup broke apart even that stopped (30k wasn't/isn't a game I'd recommend to have pick-up games with). 2nd edition for a very short time sparked my interest again, but then I saw some battlereports and got the punkings because of the rules (unbalanced reactions etc.). Nowadays I enjoy still the universe, though it's again years since I last read a warhammer book. Gamewise I switched over to other systems that feel a lot more balanced, engaging and strategic at the same time (Kings of War and Dropzone Commander currently). Personally I'd love the see GW return to itself a few years back - releases only once per month (not being bombarded every week with new things), specialist games being not mainstay systems (looking at you, horus heresy), less book-bloat, longer edtion lifetimes, ... Have I lost my faith in the god/corpse emperor? Not quite yet, but it's damn near :(
10th edition is so bad for balance. If you bring a fluffy list and your opponent has even moderately tuned his it's basically over. The entire concept of 10ths detachments is to build skew lists into whatever handful of units they buff, so unless your army has a powerful "all rounder" detachment you're never gonna win just playing rule of cool. And having to balance your list against your opponent pre-game really takes a lot of the fun out of it when you can never really rock up together with surprise lists and have a close game. That is, unless you're both running hyper-optimized net lists... which is a whole other issue in itself.
I didn't get into Horus Heresy until second edition, only because when it first came out, it was a Forge World exclusive game essentially. And even back then, their prices for those models were difficult to justify purchasing. With second edition being in plastic; while the prices are still in many ways ridiculous for their plastic models are still nothing compared to the older resin models that they're still peddling, and being almost double in price too.
This seems to really depend on the corner of gamesworkshop you're interested in. Necromunda has had excellent support for instance (it feels more iterative). 40k on the other hand seems to have planned obselecence, they just introduced a load of rules for most factions that make their codexes or indexes less competitive (they should be interesting but if anything less competetive)
I think they understand the relative markets and what they want, even if they are a bit disorganised. This is why I'm predicting that 3rd ed Heresy won't be a massive change, I think it'll just be a new rulebook with a comprehensive FAQ baked into it, and some new force org books that will be easy to ignore and play without, just using Battlescribe or whatever. The hook will be a new launch box with new marines, and more new marine stuff, which will launch the edition with a bang. The actual rules are kinda irrelevant from a sales perspective, unless they get so bad that people stop buying the models
I enjoyed you bringing your issues and positives forward. People just blindly support the company... Until their army gets deleted. GW is a bad company for a consumer. They make bad rules and anyone who has played anything outside of the GW sphere will get that. They have an 'addictive and FOMO' style marketing ploy which is predatory. They very publicly treat staff like cattle. They change game rules to suit their need to push a certain kit. The sad thing is that even with all the negatives, they will continue to be a bad company because they continue to make money from the folks they prey on
Curiosity and first miniature purchases began in 5th, Started playing in 9th, quit in 10th.. Codex out of date right after the first FAQ and the Black Templar index cards missing weapon profiles. I will never purchase another addition/codex/index cards again. Love the minis, hate the cost. Love the lore, hate the game. Finally bit the bullet and purchased a 3D printer. The Station forge Grimguard are super cool and filled with loads of character and unique poses, trench or ladder climbing, sitting down in transports or having lunch and playing guitars by camp fires to name a few. It hit me that GW has a very limited scope in their designs, mainly because they expect everything to be fielded in a war game setting. The unique 'character' like minis (aka santa goblin, Titus or the sniper ratlings) are limited to once a year holiday type scenarios and cost a small fortune ($74.00 here in Australia) I will always love 40k as a setting, but my purchases are finished unless something drastic changes..
9:41 I certainly feel this one with the power creep. I was already planning on buying the Krieg box because I like Krieg, but then they nerfed the Imperial Guard to where Krieg and Tanks are now the meta pick. I'd compare the feeling to wanting to order cake at a restaurant, but before you have a chance to order it, the waiter comes with that cake and shoves it down your throat. Now that I have a 3d printer, I'll probably use the box to bribe my friend (who also likes Krieg) into helping me assemble my Heresy backlog.
The saddest aspect of GW is that have no desire to explore the potential of the universes they own. The setting will never advance beyond Ultramarines showing up at the last moment and saving the day.
I think GW peaked at some point in the early 00s, in my opinion. Today's models are far, far too detailed to the point that there's too much going on. Furthermore, modern models are much larger and festooned with easily damaged or broken pieces that makes them hard to transport. They're more akin to display pieces than anything else. Back in the day, the blend between detail and the model's intended use as a gaming piece was just right. As an example, take the old metal plague marines from 3rd edition. They look diseased, but they're not over the top. The modern plague marines are just cartoonish in their appearance.
To this day I think most early Middle Earth miniatures are gorgeous. And I often argue with my friend that enjoys Sigmar models that LotR minis are better because they have only necessary elements on them. The less is more honestly.
absolutely, and the old plague marines are much better because of it. When I got back into the hobby I got the starter set that had plague marines, and I thought they were cool. Until I started looking at the models they got in 3rd edition - so much better because of the lack of cartoonishness and oversculpting. As a wargamer, I think at some level you want your armies to feel like armies, not like 100 individual D&D character models. I want my basic infantry basic
@@khamul64 yes they are so much nicer. beautiful models. AoS is just far too cartoonish, those models are made for people like Angel Giraldez to show off their insane painting skills. that's not what I want from a wargame
@@paulyg405 I just print my fantasy armies these days. Also when I got convinced to play AoS I decided to f it and go lizardmen because dinosawz are easy to paint. Plus they tend to be good, not over designed minis. After all most of AoS lizardmen are either resculpts of saurus or I believe 8th or 7th edition dinos.
I was talking to my gf last night about how some of the prices of kits don’t really make sense. The Aggressor kit is 60 dollars for 3 models and jump intercessors for 5 for 60with roughly the same piece count. And I had a thought about how the lose of the force org chart in 40K has kinda messed up the pricing.
I have a lot of nostalgia when it comes to GW. My first contact with battle board games ever was Lord of the Rings. Middle Earth magazine to be specific. Now I am old and grumpy dwarf with a long beard and no time for bullshit. So I tracked down all Middle Earth magazines and currently paint all minis required to play scenarios from those magazines. After that I will make all scenery required and start to invite friends to visit me for a game and few beers. I also have decent sized Horus Heresy force and even 40k army if needs be. But I am tired of constant changes. I just want to have fun with my bros so I am not invested into mainline GW stuff. So you know. You die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. I am villain.
What, listen to what you have to say and _then_ be outraged? Jk, I'm inclined to agree with you on pretty much every point. My bugbear is the point about speed of cycles. This is felt more the less one plays. I get maybe 1-2 game sessions a month (rarely 40k these days). That means I could get maybe 50 games per edition. It just ain't worth it when every edition brings so much cost, both in £ and time/effort to relearn the rules.
AOS never really appealed to me. It's like the lore for World of Warcraft. It's become so high-fantasy that everything is possible, and the whole thing is just shallow.
8:50 if only i wanted to buy them. personally i think the kits are worse than they use to be on a glance, but you'd know the technical factors better than me. i shouldn't be staring at GW models and wishing i was building gunpla instead. I shouldn't also be wanting the designs from a decade or more ago over now, and yet they do that. 15:27 and people say your uncharitable to GW. this ones utterly disproves that. GW flat out kept me away from most tabletop because I got to run the full gauntlet of reasons to not play anything like this while I tried to get into this. starting with warhammer fantasy was my first mistake of many. 16:28 my time in 40k was trying to be a sisters player. here's a handful of models over a decade and change, and then by the time the rerelease came out and i recognized the direction they took the army model wise, I didn't want to be involved. yaaaay. 18:08 i wanted to play IG and orks at different time periods. fiscally unviable. the plastic sisters run roughly would have cost me what i paid on auction for my metal ones. no thank you. 24:36 and this was the realization that backed me out of pretty much all of it, while they were telling me this setting was "for everyone". lets REALLY think about this for a minute, okay? use of fomo and the group gameplay inherent is what keeps people locked into this when the setting and rules do not. the setting may as well not exist because of how much they willingly alter it and inconsistently write it, and the rules are easily a load of wank at times, so if you believe those sentiments your left with multiple purchases on the level of video game equivalent costs, in order to catch up and stay up with the joneses. I know im a penny penching type, but it's wild to me to do this. it's like buying a video game because the graphics look pretty, but lack overall substance... thing is, even a game of the highest graphical settings nowadays is... what, one IG flyer at standard edition cost? less? in my country 10 IG infantry is worth more than most video games ive bought in the last decade, and those games didn't cost me the extra time, effort, Coordination and seemed to respect me more as a buyer than this did. all the while I keep being told "GW's recent systems make their production cheaper than metal". okay, must be just for them. I don't care if people complained about the quality of older IG models when the box of 20 infantry looks like a gold mine to me, or im actively debating alternatives for every model to try and make it viable in my head to even think of using their ruleset. there's a reason discussions around 3d printing happened, and it also doesn't help GW has in the past removed support for varieties of miniature lines, and even entire game systems, so how long do those models you have really even have effective use time among the people willing to play them? to me it'd be madness to buy. I've said enough. I honestly hate GW. in the context of entertainment they are easily in my top 5 most disliked companies. the purchases in my life i can look on the easiest with regret all have to do with them. It was all uphill climbs that honestly went to nothing but frustration. id have been happier if i didn't ever learn 40k or fantasy existed. that way I wouldn't have had to see fantasy end, nor what i see as a degradation of a good setting like 40k. several of my purchases to try and play the game flat out got discontinued the next edition, and I had books completely go unused or only lightly used because of personal circumstance plus their fast cycling. GW is a company to me that you put up with if you want to involve yourself in their settings. they don't help them in my eyes, and I can't even say i want to spend on anything related to them, knowing they'd benefit from any attention or money id give them. and the thing is... I love the settings, but even the elements i like are slowly getting written over or are not even what they were anymore.
I don't want a 3rd edition, my family and I are just getting into horus heresy and we like it alot more then 10th edition. I just feel like GW will make the game more like 40k.
Unreasonably expensive plastic soldier game, with the lore getting worse and worse, year after year. Props to you Macca for finding some positives, I couldn't have done it anymore. The edition cycle always eats away at the back of my mind, and (thankfully) saves me from making a purchase. I'm not going to invest in a hobby when the hobby is going to be turned upside down every couple of years, inaccurate $50 Codices will be released that'll take months to be properly FAQ'd to a playable point, and all the while all I can think about is how worthless most of my stuff will be when the new edition inevitably comes out prematurely. GW makes it easy not to spend money with their company, and for that I'm grateful.
GW got me into tabletop games, but I have since moved on to other games that scratch the itch like SW legion, turnip28 and Trench Crusade. I'll always keep my Khorne and nurgle armies cause I love the lore but GW has killed the fun of the game for me. They do not know how to write rules for game balance, they write rules to sell more kits
"Rasism", most of the Space Marines, descendant from "light/yellow" Primarchs have "dark" marines BUT the "dark marines ONLY have dark marines". "Sex1sm", many "gril bosses". ( specially in bretonia, the FIRST female knight was Repanse, with the "Old WOrld" there are countless females knights who came before the "very first female knight) Knights "playing" with squires. Etc
What sucks is that I agree on moronic CEOs and influencers who have nothing to do with the hobby getting free stuff for advertising, but these things are completely unrelated to "woke" and now I have no clue whatsoever what you mean and whether we're on the same page.
Irony's when so called fans do t realise GW is a more liberal company and have been progressive and inclusive for decades and being stagnant and not embracing change is what almost killed Warhammer 40k until GW brought the primarchs back. Calling fans tourists and woke because they like new lore is childish and idiotic are you really going to call people like lutin, majorkill and bricky tourists lmao. Warhammer has always been what you would complain as "woke" you just only realised it because GW added a she where before it was a he.
@@YOGI-kb9tg I'd certainly call Majorkill and Bricky tourists given that Bricky self-admittedly only cares about the money and is an ex-Warframe grifter who moved onto a more profitable and gullible audience and Majorkill is a wiki-skimmer with zero reading comprehension to the point he thought Tyberous wore a dreadnought as armour instead of a suit of terminator armour.
@joshwenn989 lmao you call the most successful TH-camrs who have been in the hobby since the early years tourists. Lmao you make me laugh you seriously think knowing eventually tinsy minute piece of lore makes you a fan but playing for over a decade and having more models that probably even you as well as majorkill who you cry about his minis he actually atleast makes his own that shows a bigger interest in the hobby than complaining about who is a tourist. Your a joke.
Game good-ish if you take time to fix the things wrong with it. Lore good-ish if you go the unreliable narrator route and handwave/ignore half the BS most of the talentless writers pen in order to appease $$$$$ gods. Company Bad... very bad, shame on them. Do better. Not likely but you gotta say no, you gotta unsubscribe and help open the eyes of others or else things will just stay on the course they are on. So Game A- with work arounds. Lore B- with handwaves to what you want as your canon. And Company C- do better. Oh and Pricing a D- level of utter rip off in comparison to all other available options.
Was a dedicated fanboy sonce 3rd edition and gave enough money to fill a medium garage with minis. You know the kind....insane lol. But you know, the type where people would think you were plugged in for life. It took up until now, just too many issues with GW that my purchases have grinded to a halt. I have no interest in investing in the game. Its just too much and the rules dont resonate with me anymore. Too much going on. You still cant buy the pariah nexus mission cards
That's just false. The kits are getting better, and that sounds more like rose tinted glasses speech. There are things about some of their newer kits which do rub players the wrong way (especially those push fits, but I also understand them as well so I'm torn on that). The issue is that the kits are too expensive, and aren't worth the price for the 'labour' put into making them. The artificial scarcity, long wait times for product to be not out of stock (especially for us where our LGS have small selection or GW brick and mortar stores aren't close to where we reside). The primaris situation, which I would have preferred they just upscaled their 'first born marines'. They are the iconic look that people have come to expect from Warhammer 40k. The kits they are releasing today is leagues better than the models from 15-20+ years ago, their business model is what's not gotten better.
@ It’s not rose tinted when I can compare the experience of working with old and modern kits whenever I do any hobbying. Get out of here. Kits from around 8th ed onwards often have worse tooling, worse cross-compatibility, fewer options and terrible layouts. Working with the older generation plastic kits continues to be the better experience. Best kit GW came out with recently is the solar aux rifle section. The tooling is better than most modern GW stuff. For some intolerable reason they didn’t replicate the better tooling for Veletaris so that’s a loss for cross-compatibility.
@@nerdwhosawtoomuch3511 the new kits are simply unfit for wargaming, they are just a bunch of painter collector action figures nowadays than proper wargaming pieces to play a game
@@DMKA94 had this amazing moment where I put a grey knight breastplate piece on a regular terminator back and they dry-locked together. I was expecting it to be a complete mismatch and to require a lot of cutting. Parts from two different terminator designs that were probably never meant to go near each other actually fitting at all is just a testimony to how well this stuff worked.
Honest to God. I really hope Trench Crusade does well, it's the system we need, good sculpts, you don't need several hundred mini's to play, similar style of lore to old 40k and makes the smart move of embracing 3D printing. Plus having a smaller pool of factions with smaller splinter groups and warbands is such a good start and lets people make their own lore. I'm not even saying this to rag on GW but more competition might force a bit of a sorely needed wakeup.
@@captainferrite True, I think GW will have a chokehold on people getting into Tabletop wargames specifically. My big hope is that it can drain some of the more disgruntled fans with it's ease of access. I think another issue is that due to the cost, motivation and time required to do this hobby, GW will always have an advantage over someone like WotC/DnD because if you want to play a different system to DnD all you usually need is to convince your mates to try a different game and to buy a rulebook.
If Games Workshop didn't die back when X-Wing and Warmachine were top-tier sellers they're not going to care about yet another skirmish game. Right now Games Workshop has arguably less competition than at any other point in their history.
Pros: They invented warhammer
Cons: Everything else.
They borrowed heavily from dozens of other fantasy settings to make warhammer, and have the nerve to sue people who use them as inspiration.
@malicant123 Thus the everything else including your comment.
I wouldn't even be that charitable to the current company, they inherited the IP
Eh only Jes is left, nobody else there invented the Warhammer I love but they sure did invent aos and the soymaris era.
they didn’t, really. all the people who did were fired or left.
One other potential negative is the "fans". The average Games Workshop consumer is not a customer, but a cultist. You're never allowed to say anything negative about Games Workshop. Even the slightest critique causes these people to change the topic, attack you, accuse you of being a fake fan, and perform insane mental gymnastics to always frame anything Games Workshop (a massive, profit driven corporation) does as a good thing. Though I must concede that this isn't technically something Games Workshop has control over, it is still a source of annoyance for me, and other companies don't seem to have this problem with their systems.
Too much soy sauce going around.
Far too true... The un-average fan of GW is an unreasonable cultist who will never accept any detraction at all. Sadly they tend to be the most vocal as they pour all their time and energy into attempting to justify their own bad choices. Drowns the rest of the fanbase out who have at this point given up trying to say anything because of all the attacks on their opinions.
That's not limited to 40k but to all sorts of media too. Videogames, movies, tv shows, music etc. It's because there are a lot of people out there who tie their identity and self worth to these franchises / products, so they see any criticism on those products as an attack on themselves.
Have to say it's usually (not always) newer / younger fans that are guilty of that stuff too. Long time fans are usually the ones making the criticisms as they're the people who grew up with a franchise and watched it reach it's peak, then also experienced the tipping point and watched it decline.
Newer fans have usually jumped onboard during the decline so they don't know what they're missing to begin with.
Bingo. Just look at the youtube 40k community; it's a mess of shills, deeply confused individuals, grifters and weirdos. In particular, there's that extremely unsettling, long red-haired bloke who paints rainbow marines....
When I realized that GW thinks basic characters are worth slightly more USD than an ounce of pure silver it made me groan
time to invest in precious metals instead of plastic crack boys
The level of greed has no bounds.
Always a good day when Macca uploads :)
It is when it's proper HH content rather than just another drip session
Theyre just a start point. Community editions and balance patches are where it's at. When I game with my friends, GW aren't present, and their rules are just scaffolding - if we deign to use them.
I just hate the 3 year edition cycle, which combines with a "change for change's sake" mentality and a tendency to have terrible balance which favors new releases. I want to build an army I can play with for a long time. But 40k armies require a shit ton of models, the game changes so often and the gameplay isn't very fun. I have a ton of 40k and 30k models, but I just don't like those systems.
So I am sticking mainly with Dropfleet Commander. And I have been convinced to try out Legions Imperialis, which I will do once I have painted the 350 infantry models I need to have a playable army
I'd say losing creativity is also a big con, same pose being recycled. Minimal updates on new models etc.
For 40k probably. But AoS and to some extend necromunda have fantastic minis.
@@uwesca6263 The contrast between both and 40k is staggering. I wonder if it's because GW realized 40K stuff would sell no matter what.
We had mono-pose in the past when we had metal models. God I miss them.
It's the min-maxing for shareholder value which ends up kills creativity.
I would like to think this would quell the negativity against you, Macca. But you are dealing with the hyper fanbois who don't want to hear well reasoned arguments. Great Vid though. Covers my thoughts on why I can't recommend this hobby to people
We live in a time when people like Macca can drop dozens of hours worth of in-depth breakdowns and discussion videos, only to be hit with "but I like it so therefore it's good" by Reddit
I have a major bone to pick with GW and their lopsided attention when it comes to factions. Damn near every faction I've ever taken an interest in gets axed or ignored. Chorfs got axed before I could really invest in them, Tomb Kings got axed alongside Fantasy, KO are a pitifully small faction comprised most of hero models, and Dark Eldar have a third of their range missing.
Yes, you can always make the argument that they don't get support because they don't sell. However, a big part of those low sales numbers stem from a lack of new/updated models, a lack of marketing, or in the case of the Tomb Kings, abysmal rules that made the faction terminally unfun to play on the table. It's literally a death spiral situation - old players already have everything they want and new players simply don't invest, so sales drop alongside GWs investment.
Worth mentioning as well that the Fantasy IP itself was killed due to this exact thing. GW created a bunch of problems that they proceeded to never address, saw their sales crater, and opted to wipe the board clean.
I am dark eldar player. Oh boy was I pissed when they axed Vect and Sliscus from the game.
That Jeep/Chrysler reference killed me 😂
I honestly used most of my high school paychecks to buy my collection while I had no expenses, thanks to my parents. I have no idea how I would have realistically afforded my ultramarine army if I was living on my own in high school. It would have taken me way longer to save up for everything because of how expensive this hobby is. I'm speaking from the perspective of someone who graduated high school less than a year ago and is now in the military.
- Changing the background within the game, not to improve the story, but to introduce the Woke Zeitgeist into the setting.
its ma'am custodes minis soon tm
100% Lore can be changed but there needs to be a reason for it. If they were so desperate to bring in Femstodes they could have had a storyline that perhaps said the Custodes have been forced to recruit females because lots of Custodes were killed in the 13th black crusade and Indomitus crusade. But no, that would reflect negatively on wahmen because it looks like they’re only being taken out of desperation. So instead they said, there have always been female Custodes. However as Custodes are basically supercharged marines and female physiology doesn’t enable them to become marines, the next logical step now Amazon is involved, is sadly inevitable.
On the lot of this. I..............Agree!😂
The big one for me is the 3 year edition cycle. It encourages rules management to not address systematic flaws, so that when all factions have their books published, GW can restart the hamster wheel and roll out a shiny *New* edition with *innovative*, *improvements*. Improvements which happen to upset and recontextualize unit and wargear options defining what offers preferred efficiacy. 😩
In that, the 3 year cycle, seems to facilitate that flipflop, rather than striving to improve the existing gaming environment where everything has a place 😞 And it all gets masked under the guise of a new edition. #new40k [Inserts Loki meme "Your Saviour.... Is...... Here!!!!"]
My first contact with GW was a 3rd edition rulebook for 40k in my early teens. The universe sucked me in and was a part in my life since then. That being said, I only started to play in 5th edition 40k.
Sadly over the years the game (40k) lost the shine and glow for me ... too many games lost in the listwriting/deployment phase (I remember a few games with my dark eldar against a tau player of that playgroup - must have been 6th or maybe 7th. DE at that time relied heavy on dodge to survive, even with their paperplane transports. Guess what markerlights could just ignore - correct, dodge. And ofc that tau player loved to spam those ...).
Horus heresy did hold me a bit longer as I truely think the setting is epic, but after the playgroup broke apart even that stopped (30k wasn't/isn't a game I'd recommend to have pick-up games with). 2nd edition for a very short time sparked my interest again, but then I saw some battlereports and got the punkings because of the rules (unbalanced reactions etc.).
Nowadays I enjoy still the universe, though it's again years since I last read a warhammer book. Gamewise I switched over to other systems that feel a lot more balanced, engaging and strategic at the same time (Kings of War and Dropzone Commander currently).
Personally I'd love the see GW return to itself a few years back - releases only once per month (not being bombarded every week with new things), specialist games being not mainstay systems (looking at you, horus heresy), less book-bloat, longer edtion lifetimes, ...
Have I lost my faith in the god/corpse emperor? Not quite yet, but it's damn near :(
10th edition is so bad for balance. If you bring a fluffy list and your opponent has even moderately tuned his it's basically over. The entire concept of 10ths detachments is to build skew lists into whatever handful of units they buff, so unless your army has a powerful "all rounder" detachment you're never gonna win just playing rule of cool.
And having to balance your list against your opponent pre-game really takes a lot of the fun out of it when you can never really rock up together with surprise lists and have a close game. That is, unless you're both running hyper-optimized net lists... which is a whole other issue in itself.
That's very similar to my own 40k journey. I collected two armies before I ever even played a single game.
Kings of War the game I wish Fantasy battles had been.
I didn't get into Horus Heresy until second edition, only because when it first came out, it was a Forge World exclusive game essentially. And even back then, their prices for those models were difficult to justify purchasing.
With second edition being in plastic; while the prices are still in many ways ridiculous for their plastic models are still nothing compared to the older resin models that they're still peddling, and being almost double in price too.
I feel this. Have had a Fairly similar story in my experience. One day brother.
This seems to really depend on the corner of gamesworkshop you're interested in. Necromunda has had excellent support for instance (it feels more iterative). 40k on the other hand seems to have planned obselecence, they just introduced a load of rules for most factions that make their codexes or indexes less competitive (they should be interesting but if anything less competetive)
I think they understand the relative markets and what they want, even if they are a bit disorganised. This is why I'm predicting that 3rd ed Heresy won't be a massive change, I think it'll just be a new rulebook with a comprehensive FAQ baked into it, and some new force org books that will be easy to ignore and play without, just using Battlescribe or whatever. The hook will be a new launch box with new marines, and more new marine stuff, which will launch the edition with a bang. The actual rules are kinda irrelevant from a sales perspective, unless they get so bad that people stop buying the models
I enjoyed you bringing your issues and positives forward. People just blindly support the company... Until their army gets deleted.
GW is a bad company for a consumer.
They make bad rules and anyone who has played anything outside of the GW sphere will get that.
They have an 'addictive and FOMO' style marketing ploy which is predatory.
They very publicly treat staff like cattle.
They change game rules to suit their need to push a certain kit.
The sad thing is that even with all the negatives, they will continue to be a bad company because they continue to make money from the folks they prey on
Slight correction at 24:00 the basic characters, like the chaplain, are 40-45 American Dollars.
When I started, a metal chaplin was about 9 euro. I remember seeing Abaddon for 12 euro and thinking that it was expensive!
Their kits have not got better over time
Dear Lord
They are cut so poorly for no good reason. So many schizophrenic sprues with diminishing content.
Curiosity and first miniature purchases began in 5th, Started playing in 9th, quit in 10th.. Codex out of date right after the first FAQ and the Black Templar index cards missing weapon profiles. I will never purchase another addition/codex/index cards again. Love the minis, hate the cost. Love the lore, hate the game.
Finally bit the bullet and purchased a 3D printer. The Station forge Grimguard are super cool and filled with loads of character and unique poses, trench or ladder climbing, sitting down in transports or having lunch and playing guitars by camp fires to name a few. It hit me that GW has a very limited scope in their designs, mainly because they expect everything to be fielded in a war game setting. The unique 'character' like minis (aka santa goblin, Titus or the sniper ratlings) are limited to once a year holiday type scenarios and cost a small fortune ($74.00 here in Australia)
I will always love 40k as a setting, but my purchases are finished unless something drastic changes..
9:41 I certainly feel this one with the power creep. I was already planning on buying the Krieg box because I like Krieg, but then they nerfed the Imperial Guard to where Krieg and Tanks are now the meta pick. I'd compare the feeling to wanting to order cake at a restaurant, but before you have a chance to order it, the waiter comes with that cake and shoves it down your throat.
Now that I have a 3d printer, I'll probably use the box to bribe my friend (who also likes Krieg) into helping me assemble my Heresy backlog.
Great video, cannot argue with any of your points - positive and negative.
The saddest aspect of GW is that have no desire to explore the potential of the universes they own. The setting will never advance beyond Ultramarines showing up at the last moment and saving the day.
The pros: they make recasters appealing but also have a great ip that so far made good content
The cons: selling your soul for an intercessors squad
I think GW peaked at some point in the early 00s, in my opinion. Today's models are far, far too detailed to the point that there's too much going on. Furthermore, modern models are much larger and festooned with easily damaged or broken pieces that makes them hard to transport. They're more akin to display pieces than anything else. Back in the day, the blend between detail and the model's intended use as a gaming piece was just right.
As an example, take the old metal plague marines from 3rd edition. They look diseased, but they're not over the top. The modern plague marines are just cartoonish in their appearance.
To this day I think most early Middle Earth miniatures are gorgeous. And I often argue with my friend that enjoys Sigmar models that LotR minis are better because they have only necessary elements on them. The less is more honestly.
absolutely, and the old plague marines are much better because of it. When I got back into the hobby I got the starter set that had plague marines, and I thought they were cool. Until I started looking at the models they got in 3rd edition - so much better because of the lack of cartoonishness and oversculpting. As a wargamer, I think at some level you want your armies to feel like armies, not like 100 individual D&D character models. I want my basic infantry basic
@@khamul64 yes they are so much nicer. beautiful models. AoS is just far too cartoonish, those models are made for people like Angel Giraldez to show off their insane painting skills. that's not what I want from a wargame
@@paulyg405 I just print my fantasy armies these days. Also when I got convinced to play AoS I decided to f it and go lizardmen because dinosawz are easy to paint.
Plus they tend to be good, not over designed minis. After all most of AoS lizardmen are either resculpts of saurus or I believe 8th or 7th edition dinos.
I was talking to my gf last night about how some of the prices of kits don’t really make sense. The Aggressor kit is 60 dollars for 3 models and jump intercessors for 5 for 60with roughly the same piece count. And I had a thought about how the lose of the force org chart in 40K has kinda messed up the pricing.
I have a lot of nostalgia when it comes to GW.
My first contact with battle board games ever was Lord of the Rings. Middle Earth magazine to be specific. Now I am old and grumpy dwarf with a long beard and no time for bullshit.
So I tracked down all Middle Earth magazines and currently paint all minis required to play scenarios from those magazines. After that I will make all scenery required and start to invite friends to visit me for a game and few beers.
I also have decent sized Horus Heresy force and even 40k army if needs be. But I am tired of constant changes. I just want to have fun with my bros so I am not invested into mainline GW stuff.
So you know. You die a hero or live long enough to become a villain. I am villain.
What, listen to what you have to say and _then_ be outraged?
Jk, I'm inclined to agree with you on pretty much every point. My bugbear is the point about speed of cycles. This is felt more the less one plays. I get maybe 1-2 game sessions a month (rarely 40k these days). That means I could get maybe 50 games per edition. It just ain't worth it when every edition brings so much cost, both in £ and time/effort to relearn the rules.
Folks don't care for Sigmar; why would we want to get invested into a game system when it's gonna be rewritten AGAIN in a year
AOS never really appealed to me. It's like the lore for World of Warcraft. It's become so high-fantasy that everything is possible, and the whole thing is just shallow.
Pro: Games
Con: Shop
8:50 if only i wanted to buy them. personally i think the kits are worse than they use to be on a glance, but you'd know the technical factors better than me. i shouldn't be staring at GW models and wishing i was building gunpla instead. I shouldn't also be wanting the designs from a decade or more ago over now, and yet they do that.
15:27 and people say your uncharitable to GW. this ones utterly disproves that. GW flat out kept me away from most tabletop because I got to run the full gauntlet of reasons to not play anything like this while I tried to get into this. starting with warhammer fantasy was my first mistake of many.
16:28 my time in 40k was trying to be a sisters player. here's a handful of models over a decade and change, and then by the time the rerelease came out and i recognized the direction they took the army model wise, I didn't want to be involved. yaaaay.
18:08 i wanted to play IG and orks at different time periods. fiscally unviable. the plastic sisters run roughly would have cost me what i paid on auction for my metal ones. no thank you.
24:36 and this was the realization that backed me out of pretty much all of it, while they were telling me this setting was "for everyone". lets REALLY think about this for a minute, okay?
use of fomo and the group gameplay inherent is what keeps people locked into this when the setting and rules do not. the setting may as well not exist because of how much they willingly alter it and inconsistently write it, and the rules are easily a load of wank at times, so if you believe those sentiments your left with multiple purchases on the level of video game equivalent costs, in order to catch up and stay up with the joneses. I know im a penny penching type, but it's wild to me to do this. it's like buying a video game because the graphics look pretty, but lack overall substance... thing is, even a game of the highest graphical settings nowadays is... what, one IG flyer at standard edition cost? less? in my country 10 IG infantry is worth more than most video games ive bought in the last decade, and those games didn't cost me the extra time, effort, Coordination and seemed to respect me more as a buyer than this did. all the while I keep being told "GW's recent systems make their production cheaper than metal". okay, must be just for them. I don't care if people complained about the quality of older IG models when the box of 20 infantry looks like a gold mine to me, or im actively debating alternatives for every model to try and make it viable in my head to even think of using their ruleset. there's a reason discussions around 3d printing happened, and it also doesn't help GW has in the past removed support for varieties of miniature lines, and even entire game systems, so how long do those models you have really even have effective use time among the people willing to play them? to me it'd be madness to buy.
I've said enough. I honestly hate GW. in the context of entertainment they are easily in my top 5 most disliked companies. the purchases in my life i can look on the easiest with regret all have to do with them. It was all uphill climbs that honestly went to nothing but frustration. id have been happier if i didn't ever learn 40k or fantasy existed. that way I wouldn't have had to see fantasy end, nor what i see as a degradation of a good setting like 40k. several of my purchases to try and play the game flat out got discontinued the next edition, and I had books completely go unused or only lightly used because of personal circumstance plus their fast cycling. GW is a company to me that you put up with if you want to involve yourself in their settings. they don't help them in my eyes, and I can't even say i want to spend on anything related to them, knowing they'd benefit from any attention or money id give them. and the thing is... I love the settings, but even the elements i like are slowly getting written over or are not even what they were anymore.
That hammer issue on the Iw has really got to you haha
New to the channel?
Pros? As in plural?
Didn't know you were such an optimist😂
I don't want a 3rd edition, my family and I are just getting into horus heresy and we like it alot more then 10th edition. I just feel like GW will make the game more like 40k.
Unreasonably expensive plastic soldier game, with the lore getting worse and worse, year after year. Props to you Macca for finding some positives, I couldn't have done it anymore.
The edition cycle always eats away at the back of my mind, and (thankfully) saves me from making a purchase. I'm not going to invest in a hobby when the hobby is going to be turned upside down every couple of years, inaccurate $50 Codices will be released that'll take months to be properly FAQ'd to a playable point, and all the while all I can think about is how worthless most of my stuff will be when the new edition inevitably comes out prematurely.
GW makes it easy not to spend money with their company, and for that I'm grateful.
I like Warhammer, I dislike GW.
I have a well paying fulltime job with no family and I think GW is to expensive for me at this point. So 3d printers go Brrrrrrrrr.
i haven't really seen the power creep in 10th ed
Cons:
High Prices
Contempt for their customers opinions
GW got me into tabletop games, but I have since moved on to other games that scratch the itch like SW legion, turnip28 and Trench Crusade. I'll always keep my Khorne and nurgle armies cause I love the lore but GW has killed the fun of the game for me. They do not know how to write rules for game balance, they write rules to sell more kits
"Rasism", most of the Space Marines, descendant from "light/yellow" Primarchs have "dark" marines BUT the "dark marines ONLY have dark marines".
"Sex1sm", many "gril bosses". ( specially in bretonia, the FIRST female knight was Repanse, with the "Old WOrld" there are countless females knights who came before the "very first female knight)
Knights "playing" with squires.
Etc
GW does deserve to go out of business
There’s another major negative:
The Chaos cult of woke has overtaken the hobby, from the parasitic tourists to the moronic CEOs.
We found the broflake 😊
What sucks is that I agree on moronic CEOs and influencers who have nothing to do with the hobby getting free stuff for advertising, but these things are completely unrelated to "woke" and now I have no clue whatsoever what you mean and whether we're on the same page.
Irony's when so called fans do t realise GW is a more liberal company and have been progressive and inclusive for decades and being stagnant and not embracing change is what almost killed Warhammer 40k until GW brought the primarchs back.
Calling fans tourists and woke because they like new lore is childish and idiotic are you really going to call people like lutin, majorkill and bricky tourists lmao. Warhammer has always been what you would complain as "woke" you just only realised it because GW added a she where before it was a he.
@@YOGI-kb9tg I'd certainly call Majorkill and Bricky tourists given that Bricky self-admittedly only cares about the money and is an ex-Warframe grifter who moved onto a more profitable and gullible audience and Majorkill is a wiki-skimmer with zero reading comprehension to the point he thought Tyberous wore a dreadnought as armour instead of a suit of terminator armour.
@joshwenn989 lmao you call the most successful TH-camrs who have been in the hobby since the early years tourists. Lmao you make me laugh you seriously think knowing eventually tinsy minute piece of lore makes you a fan but playing for over a decade and having more models that probably even you as well as majorkill who you cry about his minis he actually atleast makes his own that shows a bigger interest in the hobby than complaining about who is a tourist. Your a joke.
Game good-ish if you take time to fix the things wrong with it. Lore good-ish if you go the unreliable narrator route and handwave/ignore half the BS most of the talentless writers pen in order to appease $$$$$ gods. Company Bad... very bad, shame on them. Do better. Not likely but you gotta say no, you gotta unsubscribe and help open the eyes of others or else things will just stay on the course they are on. So Game A- with work arounds. Lore B- with handwaves to what you want as your canon. And Company C- do better. Oh and Pricing a D- level of utter rip off in comparison to all other available options.
yeeep
Was a dedicated fanboy sonce 3rd edition and gave enough money to fill a medium garage with minis. You know the kind....insane lol. But you know, the type where people would think you were plugged in for life. It took up until now, just too many issues with GW that my purchases have grinded to a halt. I have no interest in investing in the game. Its just too much and the rules dont resonate with me anymore. Too much going on. You still cant buy the pariah nexus mission cards
The kits just aren’t getting better.
That's just false. The kits are getting better, and that sounds more like rose tinted glasses speech. There are things about some of their newer kits which do rub players the wrong way (especially those push fits, but I also understand them as well so I'm torn on that).
The issue is that the kits are too expensive, and aren't worth the price for the 'labour' put into making them. The artificial scarcity, long wait times for product to be not out of stock (especially for us where our LGS have small selection or GW brick and mortar stores aren't close to where we reside).
The primaris situation, which I would have preferred they just upscaled their 'first born marines'. They are the iconic look that people have come to expect from Warhammer 40k.
The kits they are releasing today is leagues better than the models from 15-20+ years ago, their business model is what's not gotten better.
@ It’s not rose tinted when I can compare the experience of working with old and modern kits whenever I do any hobbying. Get out of here.
Kits from around 8th ed onwards often have worse tooling, worse cross-compatibility, fewer options and terrible layouts. Working with the older generation plastic kits continues to be the better experience.
Best kit GW came out with recently is the solar aux rifle section. The tooling is better than most modern GW stuff. For some intolerable reason they didn’t replicate the better tooling for Veletaris so that’s a loss for cross-compatibility.
@@nerdwhosawtoomuch3511 the new kits are simply unfit for wargaming, they are just a bunch of painter collector action figures nowadays than proper wargaming pieces to play a game
@@theylivewesleep.5139 I really miss the cross comparability between space marine and chaos space marine kits.
@@DMKA94 had this amazing moment where I put a grey knight breastplate piece on a regular terminator back and they dry-locked together. I was expecting it to be a complete mismatch and to require a lot of cutting.
Parts from two different terminator designs that were probably never meant to go near each other actually fitting at all is just a testimony to how well this stuff worked.
The actual rules are kinda irrelevant from a sales perspective, unless they get so bad that people stop buying the models
Eh i done with GW, ive been looking for an excuse to jump IP and trench crusade is the perfect excuse.
Honest to God. I really hope Trench Crusade does well, it's the system we need, good sculpts, you don't need several hundred mini's to play, similar style of lore to old 40k and makes the smart move of embracing 3D printing. Plus having a smaller pool of factions with smaller splinter groups and warbands is such a good start and lets people make their own lore. I'm not even saying this to rag on GW but more competition might force a bit of a sorely needed wakeup.
Despite the KS drawing massive money, TC isn't any sort of competition to GW as song as it doesn't have any sort of product to put on store shelves.
@@captainferrite True, I think GW will have a chokehold on people getting into Tabletop wargames specifically. My big hope is that it can drain some of the more disgruntled fans with it's ease of access.
I think another issue is that due to the cost, motivation and time required to do this hobby, GW will always have an advantage over someone like WotC/DnD because if you want to play a different system to DnD all you usually need is to convince your mates to try a different game and to buy a rulebook.
If Games Workshop didn't die back when X-Wing and Warmachine were top-tier sellers they're not going to care about yet another skirmish game. Right now Games Workshop has arguably less competition than at any other point in their history.
Yes to the 3 year edition cycle but release all codex at once, and balance over 2 year's with tournament players 😅
I hate the 3 year edition cycle with a passion. 5 to 6 years is more fair.
I'm here for the hate :]
Man, that hammer is still living rent-free up there, lol.
It's so huge I can't get it out.
The Warhammer itself
The only pro is the IP, everything else are cons