The Games Workshop Promise... and What Happens When It's Broken

What is sad to me is that the original GW promise was "We built this cool thing; come and play in it and play friendly games with your friends." There are 1000 space marine chapters because that was an invitation to create your own. The Ultramarines, Blood Angels, etc were just meant as examples "here's what we made, now make your own." Want a tank? Here's a deoderant bottle with a spoon and a dowel glued to it - you can do that, too! It was all an invitation to be creatve and have fun with your mates (as the Brits would say).

I've socks older than some of the models being discontinued

Ah man, that was such a Canadian suorry for Beastman players.

As someone still in school with a very fixed income, anything resembling a 'cycling out' of models/warbands would immediately make the hobby unaffordable for me. This release cycle of bloat->cut bloat->bloat etc. is unsustainable, and it seems like GW is trying to burn people out of the hobby since they make more profit short term, but this kills the community in the long-term.

Double Hello!!

I am so glad to see a youtuber talk about this. I played from 2nd ed 40k in the mid 90s and for years I always said 'yeah the minis are expensive but GW have comitted to let you use them forever'. Then AoS hit and I was like 'ok... fine I guess, fantasy was never a huge seller and this is their BS IP strategy. Fine... Then when Primaris came the writing was on the wall for me. Also the change of the basing rules which for years was 'if the mini shipped with base X you could keep using base X' which is now 'must be on Base Y'. I don't 'hate' GW, frankly by now I just don't care. They are a publicly traded company doing what publicly traded companies do.

As somebody who played a good sized Rogue Trader era Squat army, I can say the promise has been broken almost as far back as the game has existed. I also saw major changes in my other armies, Imperial Guard and Bretonnians.

For me, the problem of the Primaris models was that they were NOT replacing the old one, people like me wanted true scale tactical marine, true scale terminators, devastator, etc. And we got a new army, with different rules in the same codex, with badly written lore to explain it, and i knew that they would send the old stuff to the bin. What i wanted was a way to update my army little by little, retiring my old whirlwind, old tactical, etc.

I like your articulation of GW promise, especially since I see it’s echo in Wizards of the Coast and MtG’s continued role in the market.

8 years invested. If GW were my romantic partner, at this point, I would have to break up with them and I have. I would describe the relationship as somewhat abusive and manipulative. The major factor would be poor communication. Repeatedly not getting out of them what they appear to be offering. Over investing, and non-reciprocal returns. Either I would say that they need to grow up or I would simply try and accept that they just aren't right for me. They're the hottest guy/girl in the room maybe, but it comes at too steep a cost. I have never gotten out what I have put in.

I’ve recently started regularly playing, and immensely enjoying, 2nd Ed 40k. One of the advantages of that is my game is frozen in time. It will never be retconned, retired, have meta swings, etc. I play new games too, but I love that I can play 40k without the constant churn to keep up on the meta.

"The first was canceling Warhammer Fantasy..." New here, eh? First time something was squatted? Squatted... what an odd word that's been bandied about over the past twenty-some years...

Whats stunning is that this issue isn't drawing nearly as much ire as the Femstodes thing. Its bonkers that people aren't flipping out about this more.

The only games workshop promise you can trust is “Shut up and give us your money, we’re doing whatever we want and you’ll eat it off the plate” as proven by... the last 30 years of games workshop?

Playing GW games is like being in an abusive relationship. You invest time, money, effort and love. They ignore you and violate your trust until it breaks.

I already miss all the Chaos warbands. I always loved their pulpy Conan vibe, and none of the more recent warbands have quite matched them since :(

This is the point I'm so glad I left GW behind. What is sad many people get angy when they do things like this, and with reason, but then they still keep buying exclusively their products. If you are fed up with GW, start looking for alternative games like one page rules, which is a miniture agnostic game, so you can use models you already have. Also supporting some smaller companies I think it would do good for the wargaming landscape, because in the long run GW might have a competitior to deal with and it's monopol state would break. I was suprised when I bought the BattleTech starter box. It had two vouchers which I could use in their webshop, also had 8 mechs and 9 paper cutout mechs, and all the rules and a couple of scenarios. It wasa very different experience from GW.

First break of the promise, would probably be either the squats, or end of epic. And how they spent the next 20 years, taunting the people who wanted the squats back.

3:33 lol are those the boyz that are currently sitting on my work bench great video i love when you do miniature culture video essays, just rewatched your third edition box review too

I have a bunch of the Stormcast models that got squatted, some still on sprues, and I'm still more upset for the Beastmen players. I've played against them with one of the guys at my FLGS and I think they are a cool army. I really hate the GW policy of only allowing armies to be played in one game.