Blip wrote:
I really cant see what the incentive people see for GW to rescale their whole range to 6/8mm when people are happy to play massive EA-sized games (and spend massive amounts if money) using 28mm minis. Apocalypse IS the new epic. But rather than £3 a tank they can charge £40. Rather than £1 a stand people will pay £20.
AT and AI are leveraging design investment which has gone into the titans/aircraft, which although usable in 40kA, are a little rich for all but the privileged few. Wait 12 months, sell as many 28mm versions as possible to collectors and then down scale for the masses. But i doubt they will do standard 40k stuff in small scale as it would eat sales of 28mm. My main concern is that if doing 40kA in 6mm catches on in a big way it will give them reason to close down 3rd party 6mm miniature makers with “similar” designs.
Additionally i think these specialist games are designed to cover every genre niche so no one has to go outside of the GW ecosystem for different type of game (and therefore be exposed to what else is out there). To that end i see AI as the response to blood red skies, xwing etc. While AT is aimed at the rerelease of Battletech, heavy hitters, several arena fighting type board games and perhaps even Armada (in terms of crunchyness of rules). Looking at microscale scifi there doesn't seem to be a particularly big market and those that are out there mainly cater to the epic community as i see it. Dropzone has seen pretty lacklustre market penetration (with almost no competition) and planetfall died. The relatively minor interest in Dropzone and armada might also be putting them off rereleasing BFG incase it becomes another Dreadfleet.
The only chance for epic i can see is if GW needed to fight back against a resurgent FoW/Team Yankee or Dystopian Wars, but neither of these seem to have the following that they once had. Skirmish and miniature board games are what the market wants nowadays outside of the big name games.
I’m agreed on the leveraging of AT/AI/8 mm design investment—though I am surprised Aeronautica has appeared so quickly! I’m also agreed on the idea of GW targeting different gaming niches. AT and AI are both things that are hard to do with 28 mm, and these competitors to Battletech and X-Wing can be seated within the safe haven of ancillary games to 40K.
I think you’re probably right about Apocalypse taking the role Epic used to have at GW (and now they actually have proper bespoke rules!). I could see two avenues for small scale armies, though: adding support armour and infantry to AT (if AT is big enough in uptake), and extremely huge battles (with rules in the same direction as 3E Epic 40K). Not saying they’re likely, buy possible. If we’re lucky, the community will make such good rules for infantry, planes, and armour in AT that we won’t need GW anyways
To be fair, too, Epic (after the exclusively-titan times) was always the choice for doing bigger 40K battles in the old days, up until it became feasible post-3E 40K to build large 40K armies. In the current absence of 6/8 mm offerings, there are a lot of benefits to being able to use your 28+ mm scale miniatures at three distinct levels of gaming (as well as looking pretty), so there’s understandably a lot more ‘market inertia’ than there was when Epic first appeared.
I don’t think they can shut down the independent market, except for those who already have been targeted (but still continue to operate). They haven’t enforced trademarks, and Vanguard, Onslaught &c. are simply not GW Epic. People use them for Epic, sure, and they were inspired by GW’s inspirational Generic Scifantasy, but they are not Warhammer 40K.
The apparent disappearance of non-GW games is strange. I see hardly any mention of Flames/Yankee anymore, (a little more Team Yankee, but maybe that’s just a sign others are following me in getting interested about modern/near future historicals), or Warmachine. I’m not really sure why. Is it because GW has resurged! Is it because of mismanagement of the other games? Is it just a perception because the online world is no longer centred around multi-game forums and most discussion now happens on Facebook or the Chans in game-specific places? I think also the Lord of the Rings SBG and BFG communities might be good ‘bellweather’ games because of their survival after years of GW neglect—LotR:SBG was declining, but has become much more stable again, and BFG is certainly much smaller but invigorated by 3D printing.
As for Dropcommander games: I think Dropfleet has a healthy community for the size of the game’s development (and would probably be bigger if economic times were better). Dropzone has had some issues, especially from edition mismanagement and from the pains of switching company. I wonder, though: is no competition for Dropzone more a sign of low market demand than poor management? Dropzone, of course, is also a departure from 6 mm. It would have been interesting to see if the Epic community would have picked it up had the scales been more compatible.