Fantasy Flight Loses WH40K License

[Wes]

I know a lot of you guys are 40K fans, so I was bummed out to hear that Fantasy Flight Games, who has been making the Warhammer RPG books like Rogue Trader and Only War, will lose its association with Games Workshop next February. This means that the aforementioned titles, plus over a dozen other games and game supplements, are going to go out of print and will probably never be officially sold again.

Do any of you guys play these games and what's your thoughts on this announcement?

I'm kind of hoping there will be a sale and I can pick them up before they disappear.

 

[Zack]

Wow, I'm not sure what to think. GW is famous for its terrible business desisions regarding its tabletop franchises lately. The best thing they have done in recent years has been to rent their IP to other companies.

I know rouge trader wasn't that popular, but I certainly heard way more about it than GW's own short lived Inquisitor RPG.

It used to be Games workshop is what kept the lights on at the local hobby stores. Now days it is all war machine tabletop stuff.

 

[Fred]

That reminds me: there's several Warhammer games being discounted on Steam this weekend.
http://store.steampowered.com/sale/focus_weekend/
Apologies for the tangent; but I felt it was semi-related and I didn't want to start a thread over this. Maybe some of you Warhammer fans will be interested.

 

[raz]

Kind of sad because FFG's a great company that makes a great product, but also kind of glad because their organized play department encourages the worst kind of competitiveness.

I'm sure GW will do fine without FFG if they still want to make RPGs and stuff. Their latest hardbacks surpass FFG's print quality.

 

[Legix]

They should have left 40K and taken back Warhammer Fantasy, the one game they ruined.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Been a fan of 40k since childhood, but I'm getting pretty distant as of late. I think they have a real problem with a cohesive vision for their product, given that they want people to buy bigger and bigger armies. What about all the people who wanted to spend the time customizing their stuff, or giving it a quality paint job? You know, the two things that actually set it apart from (considerably cheaper and more accessible) video games?

I feel like their current intended fanbase is basically kids who will buy a mountain of stuff, and then never finish it or bother learning the rules. Is that a viable strategy in the long term? Probably not. Would it even be possible to run a such a niche franchise like this purely on the backs of more scrupulous adult fans? I'm not so sure either.

Right now I'm just sitting on a tank brigade entirely made up of e-bay rescues, and have no real intention to buy anything new.

If one of those excellent third-party bits sellers just manned up and attempted their own franchise instead, I'd be very tempted to jump ship indeed. At least they evidently have an interest in the hobby itself.

 

[Zack]

If one of those excellent third-party bits sellers just manned up and attempted their own franchise instead, I'd be very tempted to jump ship indeed.

They did!

Dropzone Commander

Maybe you remember Andy-Chambers from 40k's third ed, he went on to work on Dropzone Commander and the game is currently this hybrid card / model game and they are working on adding in a starship component. One of the neat gimmiks is that all your units have to arrive by dropship AND all of their models actually do fit inside of their dropship models.

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Soda Pop Relic Knights

Basically made by a models company as an excuse to sell all kinds of crazy models. This is another hybrid card/model game and the rules are fairly simple. The game is really less important than the models though and I really think they focus on trying to look cool rather than on mechanics. There is a TON of stuff here though, Japanese Demons, Magic Users, Mercinary Groups, Racing teams, ect.

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AT-43

Now defunct, their thing was pre-painted miniatures and a lot of them look really good. If anything it shows just how hard it is to keep the lights on at a gaming company.
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There are plenty of others out, and in development of course, but you have to go looking for them. It isn't easy to get a group together for this kind of stuff in person and no one else has the presence warmachine or 40k has.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Actually seen the AT-43 stuff before, it's a shame they went bust... Soda pop is okay, but all over the place stylistically... Dropzone commander I never heard of; Reminds me both of Epic 40k and the Earth Defence Force games. Definitely going to try and perk some interest with the uni guys, if I can. Good call.

 

[HotelKilo]

Call me a sucker but I was always a big fan of the 40K RPGs; as derivative as it might be at times I do enjoy the 40K fluff a lot more then I do the actual tabletop game. Hell, I even have a bunch of Inquisitor stuff. It feels pretty rough hearing that they're breaking up the partnership with FFG but hey, it's GW, if they weren't doing something dumb how would we know they were paying attention? By effectively moving their timeline forward or doing something innovative with their IPs?

Pffffffffffffffffffffffffffhahahaha.

 

[Arieg]

GW is going to die more or less, especially once 3D printing lights off.

 

[Zack]

It is unlikely that 3d printing is going to kill off Games Workshop. Games workshop is doing a good enough job on their own killing off their tabletop brand but that's beside the point.

Right now you can buy a set of space marines, get some resin, and duplicate all of the model parts using vacuum sealing for a fraction of the price of GW models, but this hasn't killed tabletop largely because this takes some skill and practice.

Along the same lines, you can't just go out and buy a 3d printer that will duplicate your favorite space marine. You need to go get a higher end printer if you want the same level of detail that you get from the mold-produced space marines.

The assembly line style is going to produce much better, and cheaper, models for the foreseeable future, meaning for the average person it is going to still be cheaper to buy from GW than it will be to buy a 3d printer and start printing out their own army.

Of course in the further future, assuming 3d printing gets really good AND really fast then we might see a change in GW's model. They'll buy some high end super-industrial 3d printers and churn out a lot of models. You'll likely see either larger models, or rules designed to encourage use of lots more models for play. Either way, you'll likely see that it is still cheaper to buy from GW than it is to get your own 3d printer and print them.

 

[Navian]

Making physical models seems inconvenient, anyway... if tech's going to make them obsolete, easier to do it by making VR gloves with tactile feedback that work together with glasses, projecting the appearance of the models onto the tabletop. You could even paint them in your hands, without needing real paint, or paint brushes! And there'd be an 'undo' button... and even if someone flipped over the table, you could restore the pieces to their last saved location instantly. Seems to me that would make things better for everyone, except whoever owned the table.

(Also, you could use a ping-pong table and just project the terrain onto it, complete with trees and elevations, but now I'm just getting fancy.)

 

[Zack]

They already have this, it is called tabletop simulator and it is for sale on steam.

It even has a table flip option and undo flip button.

But it is also pretty clear this won't replace your local game store. Going out for a night and hanging out is as much a part of the game as playing it.