Guest Post - Games Workshop Past, Present and Future - Part 1

 

 Something different today for my blog, a bit of an experiment if you will.  One of my long-time gaming partners asked if he could write a post on my blog explaining his current frustrations with Games Workshop.  I agreed to let him have a go, I got a lot more than expected, this is part one of a three part discussion/rant that I'll be posting over the next few days, over to Mike......

 

Sometime in late 1997 I walked into Games workshop and purchased my first Warhammer fantasy model. It was a £5 Undead Skeleton Chariot; an average model but I was chuffed with it. Collecting GW minis seemed fun and affordable to me and I was soon able to get enough models to play a fantasy game at the minimum recommended 1000pts level. Several more armies and regular gaming followed. We lost our gaming area for a while (When I went off to uni as I was the only one with a big table - Keith), and it wasn’t until somewhere in the mid/late 2000’s (6^th and 7^th ed. by then) that the old minis were brought out again. At that stage I realised that I no longer seemed to have enough, or the correct models to play larger games in the new editions. Despite having a job, I was also reluctant to purchase the models I needed to play those battles.

What had changed? One reason was the cost of minis (more on that later), but first a more general observation.

 

Some of the old chaos warriors that were popular in our gaming group back in the day.

 

I have compared GWs sample 1000pt list Chaos warrior list from the 5^th ed. Codex (I used it couple of times in the late 1990’s) with the same list, but constructed from the much later 7^th edition Warriors of Chaos codex.

 

Sample war band from 5^th ed. Codex

 

Chaos Hero with a shield on a chaos steed with the potion of strength and helm of many eyes

6 Chaos knights with lances, hand weapons and chaos armour including a standard

12 Chaos Warriors with hand weapons, heavy armour and shields

= 999pts

 

The same war band selected from the 7^th ed. Codex

 

Chaos Hero with a shield on a Chaos steed plus a maximum magic item allowance

6 Chaos Knights with lances, hand weapons and chaos armour + full command

12 Chaos warriors with additional great weapons and shields + full command

= 797pts

 

Right - I’ve gone to town a little with this 7th ed. list by adding full command groups and some slightly more expensive extras; however there’s still a deficit of more than 200 pts.

 

One sensible way to address the balance is to add some marauders. A basic marauder (which in 7^th ed. was 1/3 of the points cost of the 5^th edition selection). Give a 30 man marauder unit shields and flails + full command and phew we’re there! Okay, okay I could have thrown in a unit of warriors instead, but there’s noting like variety and besides, I wanted to make a point!

 

Mike concentrating on a game of Axis & Allies

 

People in our gaming group have commented that we have generally needed more models to play the same points limited tournaments which we had organised in previous years. Clearly, any collector would need quite a few more models for the above 1000pt Chaos list in 7^th ed., than they would have in 5^th. Now, I only have a handful of armies, and I don’t have an exhaustive collection of current and past codices to browse through. I’d be interested to see if this thesis holds up for other selections (perhaps Chaos is a poor example?). I’d be equally interested to see how other armies have changed over the years, right up to the current edition in 2014.

 

I don’t think many enthusiasts want to go back to the old rules of 5^th edition. However I have to say that as a teenager it was essential to my staying in the hobby that I could acquire armies relatively quickly at a ‘minimum’ 1000pts level within 2-3 months. Moreover I could do this using money from my paper round. I wonder how many young potential gamers can do that today? And I haven’t even begun to discuss a more pressing issue – the ever increasing cost of the miniatures…. Part 2 to follow.

 

Mike does have a point about decreasing points costs for minis, I remember back when I started 40K a space marine tactical squad was twice what it was now and a 1K army was a leader and three squads.  But the question is whether this matters? Some might say an army with two units and a hero isn't really an army at all and that even at 1000pts you'd hope to field more than that.  Having said that chaos is a bit of an extreme example with very expensive elite troops, but I do think Mike is right about the overall trend.  So again does it matter? We'd be interested to hear peoples thoughts.