http://web.mac.com/imagine_newszine/Site/%3E_FoW_Factory_Tour.html

Disclaimer: I’m not part of that group. I don’t play FoW.

As you can see, some New Zealand staff definitely came here, as Stu mentioned.

Myself and several of my gaming friends have noticed a drop in quality in GW figures since they moved to their new CAD system. Imho there’s definitely less detail on certain parts of the sprues than their used to be with pantographing. That’s another reason I think we’ve collectively stopped purchasing them.

Get some black foam card and a colour laser printer and you can build yourself a nice Space Hulk board using downloads from some of the less savory parts of the Internet. A friend has done just that and is happily playing SH with modern GW plastic Termies and Genestealers. To be honest if all GW are interested in is selling figures then I can’t see why they just can’t release the SH rules and board pieces as PDF. Particularly if it’s ’so expensive’ to produce colour printed die cut cardboard these days…

This offshore producing thing, would be a very bad move on almost any companies part. I know I have been going through this process at my place of work for the past few years!

GW’s model quality on a lot of its newer models has already been exceeded by some other manufacturers, moving the production offshore would only be more detrimental to quality.

In my experience even in China and India, if you want equivalent quality product, then you are going to have pay almost equivalent money for them. Otherwise you get sub-standard product.

Or in other words, if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.

If they go down this route, I will not even buy the odd mini from them like I do now.

As for Space Hulk, one of the best games ever put out by GW. It should be made available for newer players out there. Maybe with jigsaw sized board-pieces and minis. no direct cross-over problems or miniature cross-polinisation. Board sections and minis will also be cheaper and those starter paints GW puts out will actually have a use LOL!

I have 1st and 2nd edition rules with a double set of 2nd edition tiles to play this great game with and I think it is still the mutts dangly bits. Best board game ever.

The sad fact is that in the current climate, GW would still manage to stuff this one up, whether they are licensing this out to a third party or not.

GW have priced themselves out of the market imho and certainly locally (Asia Pac) they no longer represent good value for money. 40k Apocalypse was a joke and I’ll bet their basic boxed sales took a hammering from clubs and friends teaming up to buy what is essentially discounted stock in big boxes.

They certainly need to move figure production offshore to cheaper countries. I can’t see why this is even an issue to be honest.

I suspect that this is probably secondary to the miniatures.

I think that FFG doing a game based on the Aliens license might be popular :-)

This has always been the rumored reason behind the reluctance of GW to rerelease Space Hulk that I’ve heard.

re: Dropping Black Industries. I remember reading somewhere online that the bean-counters figured that for each dollar GW spent on the production of a Black Industries RPG product, they would get $3-4 return, while each dollar spent on a Black Library novel would get $6 return. Once they took a look at that, their decision was made.

These are both completely unfounded rumors as far as I know, but… interesting to contemplate nonetheless.

Regardless, yet another excellent Editorial. I love TGN. Well done!

They make their own tools (and everything else they make) because they have over 400 of their own hobby centers around the world that need these supplies. Hence a one stop place to shop for a GW gamer. Indie retail stores can stock whatever they like.

Honestly, FFG wouldn’t even have to keep it within the 40K universe. It’s just “powersuited Marines” versus bugs. Changing the names isn’t all that difficult.

If they really wanted to do something cool, they’d license Aliens and apply that IP to the Space Hulk ruleset. Dreams are fun.

Well, there’s justification for a scale shift. New terminators use 30mm bases, and won’t fit on original SH tiles.

One thing that could be done for Space Hulk and Blood Bowl is re-release with different scale minis that aren’t compatible with 40K - that way you don’t have the price skew. On the other hand, people would probably cry foul if new-scale-Space-Hulk didn’t fit together with old-Space-Hulk.

You can see where this might get to be a problem. By my count, its got 75 dollars worth of genestealers in it alone, and if you assume that a plastic terminator costs half as much as a metal one, that’s still $50 of terminators. If the game costs anywhere near a market competitive amount for a big box boardgame, it might be cheaper to buy Space Hulk than to buy miniatures for your Tyranid and Space Marine armies.

I think the FFG deal might be looked at as a good decision on the part of higher ups at GW because they will still make money on it and rather then fumble through working on RPGs they are farming the deal out to someone who has shown they can do that. Sounds like a good business decision to me

I am however really looking forward to seeing what FFG does with GW IP. I really miss the likes of Blood Bowl, Space Hulk, and Dark Future, which were so accessible it was easy to get non-gamer buddies to play.

Too true.

GW turned the corner in the mid to late nineties and the fact they are continuing to turn (in circles) proves that it is not working.

GW’s future is in their own hands, which at the moment have two left thumbs and are covered in motor oil.

They lost myself and many other gamers years ago.

Glen