but what are their “other projects”, look at the silly rate new stuff is being released, white dwarf going down the drain, with its quality, besides some sily articles about how"cool" something is, WD used to contain new scenarios, mini campaigns, new units, namely good stuff. Now… pfff.
either GW wants to keep slow pace cos then they are getting more money as new releases are more sought after, or their marketers and management are so found of themselves that they dont see the necessity to respond to the needs of gamers.
The games designers don’t write White Dwarf (except for the odd article) - they write the Armies books, Codecies, supplements and new editions of the game. And since one of those gets released pretty much every month, I would imagine their plates are fairly full. If it seems like releases are slower than they were at one time, bear in mind that most of the books they produce now are bigger than in the past. We’re actually pretty much at 5th Edition Warhammer/2nd Edition 40K size for most things now.
I can’t say just how much I hate that GW totally threw out and gave up on the DoW concept. DoW not as an army, per se, but actually the idea of adding individual units who were part of armies that GW really had no intention of making full army lists for… it allowed for a lot more creativity than GW demonstrates today and I feel that if the concept had not been abandoned that by this time we might have enough DoW units that you could actually effectively make an Araby or Hobgoblin or Lustrian army.
Granted, the reason it didn’t work was their choice to put a particular hero with any regement of reknown instead of simply saying “here is an example of a unit with rules you can hire as a mercenary unit” and that the Dogs of War “army list” really came out to little more than a list of units that no army book contained but probably should have access to than a list that contained all the basic necessary units for an army to function.
While GW’s move away from creating creative collectable units and towards full support of existing armies may end up with it selling more models, it also feels like GW has given up and no longer supports an expanding hobby. Generallly it means that GW has chosen to begin shrinking the WarHammer line while there are still half a dozen armies in both Fantasy and 40K that they could make models and rules for-- Chaos Dwarfs should be counted amongst those who have been abandoned in favor of “retreat” from the creative front.
It’s pretty hard to balance an army when you can just circumvent any weaknesses by adding a unit from the DoW list. That’s the theory anyway. Creativity in gaming is all very well - but that’s what stuff like Apocalypse and special scenarios are for. If you’re the kind of person who wants to include mercenaries and the like in your army, then hopefully it’s because you want to have a cool army and not for the purposes of producing a more effective force, which is what the Armies books and Codecies are supposed to be about.
In other words, GW has always made it clear that their army lists are the baseline for playing a pick-up game - by definition, they’re just a starting point. If you’re that creative, why do you need GW to hold your hand?
I think the DoW concept was always a bit of a sticky issue for them really. Very hard to get right imo (as half the list could be from WA: Tilea, and the other half are more like proper mercenaries imo). There is a lot more they could do with the concept anyway.
GW changed their approach not too long ago. After SoC, they decided to separate supplements and army books, and to only support a very specific set of army books.
It’s why I think there is still room for them to bring back DoW, just as a supplement (or even a free pdf armybook ‘officially’ available). They wouldn’t need to release new models that way, just give people the variety in choice through rules, as ultimately if they supported them just a tiny bit they would automatically sell more models.
I don’t think it’s something FW would be interested in though.
Actually, I think a lot of these kinds of projects are good for Forgeworld - I mean, they have a good line in “unofficial 40K” going. If people want to play with their rules, they can, they just occupy that same nebulous area as Apocalypse: stuff to do with your friends, if they agree to it. I think all gaming should be like that, personally, but I can understand GW’s philosophy, because they try to provide a complete “hobby experience”. Part of their business model is based around the concept that you can play a game whenever you want, just by going into one of their stores, so they need to produce rules and ranges that are complete in and of themselves.
As I’ve always said Mercenaries have been a problem nearly every edition of the game. My guess is they are going to finish up the removal from the army book process then start with rules on them at some point as a standalone.
Granted that is not an earthshaking notion, rather its a educated guess based on what they have been doing over the last few years.
It's pretty hard to balance an army when you can just circumvent any weaknesses by adding a unit from the DoW list.
Thommy H
Indeed. Seen one too many of the DoW cannon unit (the galloper gun, right?) attached to Vampire Counts armies to give them a shooting threat against big targets in my past. Exactly put, Thommy H.
Since when have we needed GW to keep soldiering on with Chaos Dwarfs?
Willmark
If GW did give us a new CD range it would be awesome, but as they haven't we have to look to other manufacturers to help us get where we want to go.
Hasslefree are a good start.
Yep of even better the fans are taking matters into their own hands abd creating their own. Like at this site there are folks here who can create GW like chaos dwarfs which are just as good if not better.
If GW did give us a new CD range it would be awesome, but as they haven't we have to look to other manufacturers to help us get where we want to go.
Hasslefree are a good start.
Hashut's little helper
Yeah, I'll second that. You see this, Sjoerdo? It's all up to you, now ;)