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chaos0xomega wrote:

Tyel wrote:

I don't think the 3 year lifespan of 40k overly hurts things. Mainly because I think Peachy or someone said said the standard lifespan of a GW customer is only about 18 months to 2 years.

Given that I've been doing this for 20 years, and most of the other players I know have 5-30+ years in the hobby, I've always found that stat hard to believe.

Bit of a survivor bias. Most customers aren't players, and most players are friend groups who don't go down to the LGS to throw dice. In the 16 years I've been in the hobby, I've introduced a lot of friends and the attrition rate after the first few years is well over half, while those that stuck around for more than that are all still going. If you're really in it, you're in it for the long run, and anyone liable to drop it isn't likely to make a big entrance in the first place

Yes! Full-Tilt has been updated!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/02/11/sunday-preview-space-marines-return-from-battling-leviathan/

...but only on Warhammer+?

Yea.

Players come and go. If you have played for 20+ years might be hard to believe but this game isn't what everybody will love.

Kids even less so. They tend to try out many things but as grow older...

Playing the games is a relative small part of the hobby for me. And still, most of my projects are aimed at a possible game list. So, the gaming is the framework and motivation, even if building, painting, watching bat reps, reading books and keeping up with the online community is by far a bigger part of the hobby than actually playing some casual games with my friends.

well, from my original group 20+years ago who started with Warhammer Fantasy, I am the only one left doing wargames at all
from the group after that playing Warhammer Fantasy and later 40k, none plays GW games any more some switched from wargaming to RPGs
and from the current group there are only 2 of us who had previously played GW games and are looking into TOW
not talking about people I see coming and going while I was playing in clubs

so from personal experience I would say the majority of people accept a single Edition change
so depending on when they started something between 3-6 years
they might keep collecting and painting if this was the main hobby anyway or stick with an old Edition to play at home

 Tim the Biovore wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Yeah mine also arrived this week, same with everyone else I know that bought them.

Meanwhile I'm still waiting on the stuff I preordered that first Saturday to even ship

This prompted me to actually check the tracking link I got sent on the 5th, and I gotta say I wasn't expecting to see "Current Status: Damaged (05/02/2024)"

However that's just what it says on the GW tracking page, following through to both Royal Mail and Australia Post shows no suggestion of damage

I'll find out in the next few days, I guess, but that's one hell of an addition to the list of things wrong with Warhammer dot com if it's not true

One of mine said the exact same thing (they sent it across two packages for some reason, both arriving days apart). Not even a scratch. I could have put the two boxes side by side and would not have been able to tell you which was the "damaged" one.

There’s also an element of lies, damn lies and statistics involved. If someone buys (or is given as a gift) a starter box but never opens it, they were in the hobby for all of 5 minutes. Doesn’t need many of those to drag down the average.

Ofc actual business analysts take into account all of that, but the throwaway “average” comment lacks all context.

 Mr Morden wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Years ago they sold me on Cathay and Kislev, and now those factions are still not coming in the foreseeable future. Feels enough like vapor ware to me.

I donlt think they could have made anywhere enough models - they can't even keep up with the demand for old models - having a complete new range for Cathay and Kislev would mean us Whales would want large amounts.

It would def mean not releasing new Marines for a good few months

They didn’t have to tease those factions in the first place. Once they did, they should have put aside the space marines to make it happen, if that’s what it took.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Years ago they sold me on Cathay and Kislev, and now those factions are still not coming in the foreseeable future. Feels enough like vapor ware to me.

I donlt think they could have made anywhere enough models - they can't even keep up with the demand for old models - having a complete new range for Cathay and Kislev would mean us Whales would want large amounts.

It would def mean not releasing new Marines for a good few months

They didn’t have to tease those factions in the first place. Once they did, they should have put aside the space marines to make it happen, if that’s what it took.

Didn't demand blow up during the pandemic, leading to a supply crunch and production limitations? Could that have led to some registering of plans?

And it may be easy to say drop some Space Marines to make room for preferred army x, but I think the company is going to have different calculations on trading off sales of their flagship army and product line in favor of a devoting that expense and attention for a new faction for unlaunched/recently launched third tier game system.

The media team and the high level executives who sign checks team are different groups of people, and I think in the efforts to hype Warhammer Total War 3 some speculative plans were overstated. They may be totally true, in the full length of time, but I doubt GW management would have teased those armies SO many years out from their eventual release. Which may still be 3 to 5 years away. They did abruptly stop hyping them after that, I think for this reason.

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

 Tim the Biovore wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Yeah mine also arrived this week, same with everyone else I know that bought them.

Meanwhile I'm still waiting on the stuff I preordered that first Saturday to even ship

This prompted me to actually check the tracking link I got sent on the 5th, and I gotta say I wasn't expecting to see "Current Status: Damaged (05/02/2024)"

However that's just what it says on the GW tracking page, following through to both Royal Mail and Australia Post shows no suggestion of damage

I'll find out in the next few days, I guess, but that's one hell of an addition to the list of things wrong with Warhammer dot com if it's not true

One of mine said the exact same thing (they sent it across two packages for some reason, both arriving days apart). Not even a scratch. I could have put the two boxes side by side and would not have been able to tell you which was the "damaged" one.

How bizarre. Glad it all worked out fine. Mine arrived today and, sure enough, was in fact a bit crushed on one side, but the box was mostly empty space so none of the contents were damaged. Honest mistake, looks like someone just had a lapse of judgement in stacking things rather than an outright mistreatment, so I'm not bothered in the least.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Tyel wrote:

I don't think the 3 year lifespan of 40k overly hurts things. Mainly because I think Peachy or someone said said the standard lifespan of a GW customer is only about 18 months to 2 years.

Given that I've been doing this for 20 years, and most of the other players I know have 5-30+ years in the hobby, I've always found that stat hard to believe.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
I suspect about 3/4 of the product sold doesn't even get unwrapped.

If that were true I'd expect gw to have gone out of business due to an excess of second hand product being resold

In my experience, observing ~100 WH "players" at a middle school wargaming club I ran for 10years the dominating MO was:
-be excited
-get parents to buy 3 boxes
-open one box
-assemble 5 models
-paint half of a model
-ditch the hobby

Out of this huge group I think 2 dudes stayed with the hobby after leaving my school. A few managed to get a partly painted small force to the table and try to play, mostly with what they believed the rules were.

So yeah, anecdotal evidence, survivorship bias, availability bias - we can't know for sure, really.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Add to this the modern sales strategy of GW, artificial scarcity/ FOMO driven offers of big, attractive boxes which adult hobbyists can afford relatively easily and buy them for a short burst of dopamine without much thought for whether they actually need another army/boxed game, whether they have the time to paint and play or actual opponents to play this new game with.

No, buy, dopamine surge, open box, second dopamine surge, enjoy the smell of fresh sprues and off to the closet it goes. Western consummerism at its finest.

 Tim the Biovore wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:

 Tim the Biovore wrote:

 Matt.Kingsley wrote:
Yeah mine also arrived this week, same with everyone else I know that bought them.

Meanwhile I'm still waiting on the stuff I preordered that first Saturday to even ship

This prompted me to actually check the tracking link I got sent on the 5th, and I gotta say I wasn't expecting to see "Current Status: Damaged (05/02/2024)"

However that's just what it says on the GW tracking page, following through to both Royal Mail and Australia Post shows no suggestion of damage

I'll find out in the next few days, I guess, but that's one hell of an addition to the list of things wrong with Warhammer dot com if it's not true

One of mine said the exact same thing (they sent it across two packages for some reason, both arriving days apart). Not even a scratch. I could have put the two boxes side by side and would not have been able to tell you which was the "damaged" one.

How bizarre. Glad it all worked out fine. Mine arrived today and, sure enough, was in fact a bit crushed on one side, but the box was mostly empty space so none of the contents were damaged. Honest mistake, looks like someone just had a lapse of judgement in stacking things rather than an outright mistreatment, so I'm not bothered in the least.

Well that's good to hear, would have sucked if you had to wait 180 days for customer service to get you a replacement

 Tim the Biovore wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:

Tyel wrote:

I don't think the 3 year lifespan of 40k overly hurts things. Mainly because I think Peachy or someone said said the standard lifespan of a GW customer is only about 18 months to 2 years.

Given that I've been doing this for 20 years, and most of the other players I know have 5-30+ years in the hobby, I've always found that stat hard to believe.

Bit of a survivor bias. Most customers aren't players, and most players are friend groups who don't go down to the LGS to throw dice. In the 16 years I've been in the hobby, I've introduced a lot of friends and the attrition rate after the first few years is well over half, while those that stuck around for more than that are all still going. If you're really in it, you're in it for the long run, and anyone liable to drop it isn't likely to make a big entrance in the first place

Yeah, I've been around GW games for just over 20 years... most of the people that I see down at the FLGS have been doing it for 1 or 2 decades. But when I started, there was a lot of fresh blood, the FLGS had a mixture of old guys through to teens. Now it's mostly old guys who have been doing it for a long time.

But I'd hazard a guess that the people you see at the FLGS and club aren't the bulk of GW's sales anyway, it's difficult to say for sure though.

I think the other thing is that clubs/playgroups can often form up around a certain generation group and they manage to persist in an area without having any real active drive to get new people in.

So they tend up with the same generation partly because that's who was around when they started and that's who casually drifts in to join and tends to last out because when you're the 1 teen that turns up to the over 30s club - even if they are welcoming and nice - the generational gap can be an issue.


A lot of groups don't push growth all that much - heck despite being a super geeky hobby its amazing how many groups don't even have a functional facebook/website up and running (and by functional I mean they post regular content; organise events and so forth). Let alone any local marketing/advertising (and by that I mean going as far as perhaps a poster in the local game store window).


So yeah clubs can form up and not be representative of the whole playing body of gamers within an area. There might be many smaller groups that are just one or two friends playing at home or even playing at a school/other education body club - which are often (by their nature) pretty much only going to be students and facility staff members.




Groups that are much much more active at drawing in new people (often helped by being run at the game store if its big) tend to maintain a broader spread of age groups within them and can end up more diverse and larger. However that often requires quite a bit of work and energy from those at the top of the club in running it and pushing to get new people in. Advertising/reaching out; running demo days and events to get new people in and so forth

Sadly, there are no Old World players in my area that I know of - everyone sold off their army when 8th ended and has been sour on the idea of getting back in. If they're into GW, they're playing 40K or possibly Bloodbowl - I haven't seen an AoS game or tournament at the FLGS going on (even though they have AoS for sale).

Also, I suspect the "customer for 18 months" also has a factor that once you have an army up and painted, unless you're going to buy a new army, you aren't buying any more even though you may still be playing. Since you aren't in the market for getting new rules/models you aren't a GW customer any more.

 Overread wrote:
I think the other thing is that clubs/playgroups can often form up around a certain generation group and they manage to persist in an area without having any real active drive to get new people in.

So they tend up with the same generation partly because that's who was around when they started and that's who casually drifts in to join and tends to last out because when you're the 1 teen that turns up to the over 30s club - even if they are welcoming and nice - the generational gap can be an issue.


A lot of groups don't push growth all that much - heck despite being a super geeky hobby its amazing how many groups don't even have a functional facebook/website up and running (and by functional I mean they post regular content; organise events and so forth). Let alone any local marketing/advertising (and by that I mean going as far as perhaps a poster in the local game store window).


So yeah clubs can form up and not be representative of the whole playing body of gamers within an area. There might be many smaller groups that are just one or two friends playing at home or even playing at a school/other education body club - which are often (by their nature) pretty much only going to be students and facility staff members.




Groups that are much much more active at drawing in new people (often helped by being run at the game store if its big) tend to maintain a broader spread of age groups within them and can end up more diverse and larger. However that often requires quite a bit of work and energy from those at the top of the club in running it and pushing to get new people in. Advertising/reaching out; running demo days and events to get new people in and so forth

That's true, though I was more talking about the store than the club, seeing who comes in to play games and buy stuff. The local store has several clubs that play there but also people (like me) just buy the stuff, maybe have a chat, but play elsewhere.

Could just be all the young kids buy their plastic crack online instead of in stores though.

 Stormonu wrote:

Also, I suspect the "customer for 18 months" also has a factor that once you have an army up and painted, unless you're going to buy a new army, you aren't buying any more even though you may still be playing. Since you aren't in the market for getting new rules/models you aren't a GW customer any more.

I think this can only be true for the rare gamers who are actually all about the game. Gamers who love to convert or paint will get more pleasure from new minis than from keeping, and maybe repainting, the same minis year after year.

I've never met anyone with the discipline to only purchase, build, and paint a single army list at a single points value and never make another purchase again. Most people eventually collect additional stuff so they can modify and tweak their lists, buy into one or more additional factions, or fall into the meta-chasing mindset where they are rotating armies every however many months trying to keep up with the latest competitive hotness.

Nigel Stillman is either a hobby unicorn or a dirty liar.

chaos0xomega wrote:
I've never met anyone with the discipline to only purchase, build, and paint a single army list at a single points value and never make another purchase again. Most people eventually collect additional stuff so they can modify and tweak their lists, buy into one or more additional factions, or fall into the meta-chasing mindset where they are rotating armies every however many months trying to keep up with the latest competitive hotness.

Nigel Stillman is either a hobby unicorn or a dirty liar.

Our experiences are identical.


The iron of Stillman's premise is that it would indeed remove the grognard once they have an army and leave room for new blood constantly. The unfortunate side of this is that the "whales" keep this hobby going more than anyone else.

I have seen this with historical gamers, but not in the way that they build a certain points costs, but the overall goal is to aim for a certain historical army to build and paint and play with it yet those projects are certainly larger than the usual 2k army from GW games

the assumption that you need an ever changing game to keep people buying is something that in my optionion is far from reality as in people rather buy every option from an army over time instead of the exact amount needed to play a single army list or buy a 2nd army

In my experience the "build your army up to around 2k points (or whatever the local standard is/was) and then really slow down" is pretty common.

I think the whole "I've written down this list, and I will now buy, build and paint it and that's it, the end, forever" mentality to be crazy. But the whole "I'm at 5k points worth of Space Marines and don't expect to stop before 10k, no I don't have a problem" to be a bit weird too.

I mean I've got a friend who's keen to rejoin the hobby because of TOW. He was however against it due to the feeling he'd need to commit at least £500 (and the rest) to get started (needing models, rules and paints/tools etc). But he's managed to find his 25~ year old dwarf army. With a bit of creative accounting (I suspect he's being too character heavy to work in practice) he reckons he's at nearly 2k points. So when Dwarfs get a release, he can just buy a couple of kits to round out his collection and that will be fine to get started. A £100 every few months is affordable in a way that a big lump sum isn't (with the feeling that until you have a standard sized army, you have nothing).

Historically that was one issue with Old World having sales problems. The game back then "worked" at around 1.5K points. 1K it was so-so and at 500 points it basically didn't really work well at all for most factions.

So hitting 1.5-2K really was the sweet spot you wanted to be at. Which burned people out who were new.


40K was also starting to suffer the same issues until GW went hard on marketing Killteam and even now Combat Patrol as not just smaller format games but games (esp KT) with their own rules; books; marketing and products. Ergo allowing people to have game formats that work at the smaller model count and are built around it.

Easing people up toward the higher point values with the view that when people are active and engaged they are doing that "a bit here and there" addition to their army. That works great when you can play a KT game with that new box on its own; or augment your KT army with it easily. etc...


The issue was "ok you need 4 heroes and 3-4 battleforces and perhaps a monster to get your army going at 2K points - see you there".



So one thing I'm expecting to see once Old World has got the classic armies out is indeed its own version of Underworlds/Warcry/Killteam/Combat Patrol





And yeah most long term fans who are not on super strict budgets will generally keep buying because GW were sure to make building and painting part of the hobby marketing to attract people. So people still want to build and paint models in their free time not just play. So they either hyper focus on one army and make it huge or they drift into other armies. Heck part of GW doing more game formats is the realisation that this happens and that if GW has more game formats and styles - yep - those customers can drift into something else without having to leave the GW ecosystem. Even if those game saren't selling as much as Space Marines do; they are still generating profit and they are retaining people within the GW marketing and ecosystem. That means when their main army gets a wave of new models and updated models - BOOM - those people are ripe for the plucking and suddenly "Oh I'm going to rebuild my X army with the new models and add that new character ooh and the new codex " etc...

Tyel wrote:
In my experience the "build your army up to around 2k points (or whatever the local standard is/was) and then really slow down" is pretty common.

I think the whole "I've written down this list, and I will now buy, build and paint it and that's it, the end, forever" mentality to be crazy. But the whole "I'm at 5k points worth of Space Marines and don't expect to stop before 10k, no I don't have a problem" to be a bit weird too.

I mean I've got a friend who's keen to rejoin the hobby because of TOW. He was however against it due to the feeling he'd need to commit at least £500 (and the rest) to get started (needing models, rules and paints/tools etc). But he's managed to find his 25~ year old dwarf army. With a bit of creative accounting (I suspect he's being too character heavy to work in practice) he reckons he's at nearly 2k points. So when Dwarfs get a release, he can just buy a couple of kits to round out his collection and that will be fine to get started. A £100 every few months is affordable in a way that a big lump sum isn't (with the feeling that until you have a standard sized army, you have nothing).

I dug my partly finished Bretonnians out. I have about 1700pts-ish of units in Old World points, and then 10 characters, so I am easily above 2000 for variety.
Picking up the new Foot Knights and maybe another Knights of the Realm box would do it for me.
That's just to have models to convert into Grail Knights, since I don't find the Official Grail Knights to be a significant enough difference to justify the price.
The rebasing feels daunting, but I think I will be using regiment bases with spacers rather than cracking off models.

But to your point, I am much more inclined to give TOW a shot since I am not starting from scratch.
Now if I could only find the Rulebook & Forces book in stores...

Yep and I figure right now GW's core target market for Old World are old fans with old armies; or at least enough hobby dedication and connection that they are building the "army of their dreams they never got to build" and are more willing to soak that 2K army point target in models.


Once we are past the historical armies and models it when we should see the gears shift as new armies come out attracting fresh players; and GW's marketing should also shift. We might see Mordhiem or some similar concept game appear or a Killteam or something that creates those low point engagement games for people building up fresh.



Which does not mean we don't get fresh people starting now; just that they won't be the core marketing focus right now

the sales problem of old Warhammer was not really the size, given that 40k sold better and was not really playable in smaller size either (outside of community versions, but that worked for both)

but the main problem being that playable units were not always the iconic ones and rarely the ones in the army boxes
so people buying the units they like and/or starting with a box, and then realized that to actually play the game they need something different (worst case a different faction)

and this turned people down and let them leave


for something else, are there any rumours for expected dates on the missing units or if we see a stand alone release for the core units?

Orcs Warriors box (one without archers) - do I see it properly (on various internet pics) that there are no straps on their shields/shield arms = you simply glue the shield to a hand?

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Orcs Warriors box (one without archers) - do I see it properly (on various internet pics) that there are no straps on their shields/shield arms = you simply glue the shield to a hand?

Correct.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Orcs Warriors box (one without archers) - do I see it properly (on various internet pics) that there are no straps on their shields/shield arms = you simply glue the shield to a hand?

Correct.

That sucks, I really hate when minis are like that.

What made you think they'd put in effort for shield straps? They couldn't even replace the horrendous baseline goblin kit.