Games Workshop ARE the fun Police

This is a bit of a personal Blog about the on off love affair most wargamers my age will have had with the Games Workshop. However I hope it doesn't come across as bitter or even anti-Games Workshop as that's not my intention I just want to cover why it is that they have almost certainly lost me as a customer, pretty much forever!!!

The beginning

I'm told its a sensible place to start! I'm sure I've mentioned I was indoctrinated into the wargaming universe by a parental unit that was also addicted to toy soldiers, and if I ever sire any offspring I'll be sure to do the same!!! But you see this was at a time when there were more than just Games Workshop games dominating the gaming universe. I used to get really excited when my dad or somebody would bring back a board game or something new, it was almost every month and it was great. Sure some were less than good and some were outright shit, but others were real gems. I remember Battletech as fondly as I do my initial fumblings with Warhammer Fantasy.

However then came the monopoly and Games Workshops decision to stop selling other people's product, I remember the dissatisfaction at this from the adults around me at the time. It is probably the first point in my gaming career where even at my early (read very early) age that I had a gripe with the Games Workshop, I was you see slowly collecting the God awful Ral Partha baby dragon range and all of a sudden I was unable to complete my collection... sure they were shit but these bitches were my Pokemon and the fucks took that away from me... I'm actually surprised at how much this still annoys me after all these years.



The games

However to me at my young age it really wasn't that bad because I just loved my skellies and my fantasy stuff and the two lines that the Games Workshop stocked, Marauder and Citadel weren't too bad and kept me from Jonesing for new mini's. I was also starting my love affair with Warhammer Fantasy and unlike the parental unit, it turned out I was more than happy to focus on only a few things at a time rather than always having to have the latest new game.

Warhammer became my default go to game, and for a time life was good. I played rogue trader although to be fair I thought it was a bit poo... fun, but poo. The Games Workshop offered various iterations of Warhammer Fantasy Battle and Rogue Trader became 40k. However given my propensity to bore quite easily I am surprised at how of much of my hobby time, when I think back to it, has been devoted to their products. They did however deploy some further cunning tactics!!! They released other cool little games, games that were birthday and Christmas present priced, things like:

• Space Hulk
• Blood Bowl
• Necromunda
• Epic (or its various name sakes Space Marine, Armageddon etc. etc.)

These were the games that actually stopped me looking outside of the Games Workshop, even though my dad every now and then dragged me into looking outside of it.

But what did they do with these games? They fecking killed them, that's what they did with them!!! You see by now the accountants and cretins running the company decided that what would be really profitable would be only really having two game systems to support and maybe just the one specialist game at a time, which after initially milking it they could butcher it to death. I remember very well being told by a store manager that me and a friend could no longer play Epic in the store, even though the week before my friend had brought his Eldar army, from that very store.

But it was the small board games, Blood Bowl and Space Hulk and Skirmish games like Necromunda and Mordheim that baffled me. Here were the perfect products for entry point into the hobby. Cost wise they weren't prohibitive and as a n00b to the hobby you could get to grips with some basic principles of wargaming. They were also really good fun and quick to play, my after school gaming wasn't Warhammer anymore it was Blood Bowl or Necromunda because me and my friends could squeeze those games in on a kitchen table. So after creating some of my favourite games, the bastards went and killed them off. Don't even get me started on Man O War or Battlefleet Gothic!!! These all probably amounted to many minor fallings out with the Games Workshop, but together they probably amount to one HUGE one.

The monopoly

Maybe none UK based gamers won't get this one because I really don't think its quite the same anywhere else in the world. During my years of solid Games Workshop gaming, the years I refer to as the 'years of general ignorance' the Games Workshop had been up to some pretty savvy and well quite naughty business practices. Sound familiar? It should do because they've been playing silly buggers ever since. You see for a period they stopped their product being supplied by independents, then they didn't, then they did. They used sales data, quite wisely, to open up Games Workshops stores where independents were doing quite well. They killed many independents off with their antics and in doing so also killed off many of the places that sold competing game systems. It snuck up on many people, it did me, and while it made me angry it still wasn't a deal breaker. I suppose the more upsetting thing was that this 'development' killed my dads hobby pretty much dead... that I won't forgive them for.

The (de)evolution of their main games

I need to be clear that through all of this I forgave them because of Warhammer Fantasy. It was still the only ever present in my wargaming hobby, other games came and went, but Warhammer was always there like my bestest buddy. Even when the armies started to jump up in price and size, which compounded the price problems. Even through the abortive magic expansions, even when they started producing their plastic kits, even through Herohammer. It didn't matter it was a fun game with a tactical challenge. The same can not be said for its stable mate.

Now 40k still is and maybe always was the more popular game, I have to be honest and say I never quite got why. Second edition, although insanely complex was a damn fine system and an enjoyable game if played at the right size. But the right size didn't sell enough miniatures. We shouldn't kid ourselves that the Games Workshop changed to 3rd edition 40k to help us gamers out, oh no. The biggest leap in 40k wasn't what the rules did for making the game easier to play, it was the effect it had on the size of the armies...

It was truly the first time I saw the cynical 'up-scaling' of a game system simply to sell more figures... and tanks. Although I and many others saw it, we accepted it because the game was actually quite fun to play. But then came 4th and 5th and by then I'd lost my interest. With every subsequent version of 40k from 2nd ed it has been undeniably dumbed down. To the point where a retarded gibbon would probably be able to give you a 'good game' although to do that all they need to do is take any one of the increasingly common toughness 4, 3+ armour save armies out there. I've never been impressed by simply rolling lots of dice, I've never felt the tactical element of a game should start and end with writing an army list... and for those reasons 40k doesn't get played by me. Its anathema to me, its like anti-gaming.

So by this time my hobby was retracting ever more towards Warhammer Fantasy and although there were other games I played outside of Games Workshop these were with an ever decreasing select bunch of friends. However at least I'd always have Warhammer Fantasy... right?

8th Edition

Lets get this out of the way now, I still think that 6th and 7th editions of Warhammer were fine game systems. They were ruined by another of Games Workshops cynical sales ploys known colloquially as 'power-creep' or 'codex-creep'. Up until 6th edition, I'd always felt that the new army is the best syndrome was kind of a lame gamers way of excusing poor performance against a new army they didn't quite understand yet. However around the time of 6th edition I started to not be able to offer counter arguments to many of those accusations about newer armies being demonstrably better than older ones... but 7th edition was a whole new ball game!!! It really was something else altogether and totally indefensible, the mere mention of Dark Elves and hydra's or Chaos Daemons is enough to bring most competitive gamers out in hives. I'm not going to explain why, because I'm sure we all already know why, they're broken simple as that and quite frankly I think we all feel they were broken by design.

This power-creep was designed to force those of us who actually wanted to win games to buy the latest armies with the shiniest baubles... well I said fuck that. 7th edition started my trawl of 'alternative game systems' again (still hate that phrase), but 8th edition caused the full-on migration of my gaming habits. I remember well in the lead up to 8th hoping against hope that it'd contain things to balance out the armies, it bloody well didn't, well it kind of did but making things more random is a really piss poor way of balancing things out. Thing is it fecking nerfed half of the decent units in the older army books and actually helped out the already too bloody powerful armies. Mounted cavalry, the mainstay of many a fantasy story shafted in the ass with no lube, pointless in this version, unless we're talking Blood Knights or Chaos Knights. Tactics like well... moving and positioning not needed... yay... just throw huge blocks of boring identikit fecking plastic core troops at each other over random fecking charges... and throw lots and lots of dice.

Yep Warhammer Fantasy has become 40k with square dancing units, except its not as slick. All those ejitts who love rolling lots and lots of dice have suddenly cottoned onto the fact that in Warhammer Fantasy you now roll even more dice than you do in 40k... w00t. Its not for me. So here's the proverbial last straw that broke this camels back, they fecked up the one game I've been playing since I was 7. More importantly for them, that mounted Bretonnian army I always wanted to buy and paint will now never happen. My copy of 8th edition has been used as a door stop, a cats scratching post, a paper weight and now a dust collector. This wasn't a rage quit as has been the case with many... no it was acceptance of my fate, Games Workshop doesn't want intelligent people in their stores anymore, it doesn't want hobby veterans like me and that's fine... but in the last 18 months I've spent (after some careful addition) £4000 on other peoples products. I'm not so sure they'll be happy they missed out on that.

The end

To explain the title of this article, when growing up my dad used to joke that people who killed 'the fun' were the 'fun police'. My Grand Parents were the fun police, my teachers were the fun police and even at times my mom was the fun police!!! I brought the phrase with me to school, college, university and work when I worked in the Games Workshop on Corporation Street, Birmingham and let the staff know what it meant. It soon stuck as the nick name for a ginger haired manager, who never knew we were taking the piss out of him because he stopped the customers having fun, because it 'wasn't profitable' apparently. He strangely thought it was some kind of compliment... he's now a senior manager at the Games Workshop so I hear... you see the fun police are now ruining it for everyone. Peace out!