Games Workshop in General

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I had decided I was going to skip on Cursed City. I figured I might get it later, as I figured it would be the new supported WQ game for a while. I had been checking the webstore.

I think for the US store it sold out in under 7 minutes.

Then I've heard some stuff about how GW temporarily delisted it and scrubbed all mention of it from their website. Then I've heard they restored mention of the game. I don't know what is going on with it.

I guess if I missed it, then I missed it. I still have Heroquest coming at the end of the year, and that Shadows of Hammerhal box I bought so long ago still sits unassembled.
 
No, I had the Hero Quest and Battlemasters games, but that one passed me by.

Though for a lot of my friends, I know it was their introduction to 40K.
 
I never owned by, but the owner of my FLGS did, so good as I suppose.
 
First 40k thing I owned. Maybe not an objectively great game but eh, it was still fun and had some really interesting ideas in it.
 
Absolutely played Space Crusade, had all of the expansions too, a really good game. Have stayed away from Games Workshop from about 1998, maybe earlier, so missed all of the more recent drama over-commercialisation which had just started then.

My lingering interest died in the Storm of Chaos era and begun with the handling of Advanced HeroQuest to Warhammer Quest and beyond.

Before that was a rabid fanboy to an extent with nearly all of their games in my family somewhere.
 
Ladybird said:
That's Space Hulk, a much more serious and tactical game; Space Crusade is more of an all-in scrap.

Space Hulk also possibly GW's finest work.
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Were that one and the GW one both the same game? I never have gotten that straight. I had the GW one, but never the Hasbro one.

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The Hasbro one is quite different, you have four players running a squad of five marines and one player playing the monsters. The GW one is more about space marine scouts boarding a hive ship.
 
chuckdee said:
Were that one and the GW one both the same game? I never have gotten that straight. I had the GW one, but never the Hasbro one.

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Yeah, Advanced Space Crusade is a different game again that doesn't really share anything with the others.

It does make you wonder about the Imperium's threat assessment though...

A floating hulk with lots of open space and containing a wide variety of xenos foes, from the smallest Gretchin to the biggest Dreadnought? Marine squads with full special weapon support. But let's also put all the Marine squads in competition.
Claustrophobic battle against a remorseless, insanely fast and agile, cunning foe who can shred even the thickest armour without issue and strike from any direction without warning? Let's send our slowest, least mobile, units.
Boarding actions into the (Literal!) heart of an enemy fleet, who absorb genetic material and use it to improve their forces for future engagements? Let's send in the newbies. They've got tissue paper and hope for armour, they'll be fiiiiine.
 
Ladybird said:
Claustrophobic battle against a remorseless, insanely fast and agile, cunning foe who can shred even the thickest armour without issue and strike from any direction without warning? Let's send our slowest, least mobile, units.
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To be fair, they can take the hits. Or is that hit? Well, more hits than someone in regular space marine armor. And carry heavier weapons as standard.
 
chuckdee said:
To be fair, they can take the hits. Or is that hit? Well, more hits than someone in regular space marine armor. And carry heavier weapons as standard.
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But that's just it, they can't! Genestealers in Space Hulk just go straight through terminator armour, which is rare and irreplacable, like it's not even there. Regular Marines would be better able to take advantage of the terrain (Cover and positioning being your best defense against the genestealers), could be armed with melee weapons (Your second best defense) and storm bolters too and be more capable of using them (Plus grenades!), and while power armour isn't exactly expendable it's a lot less rare.

But that's not how the combat doctrine of the space marines works. There's an element of "send the right tool for the right job", which includes both the marine's gear and experience, but also there's "you have to earn the right to go to the most glorious fights" and when you've got it you've got the freedom to decide what to take with you, which means the most glorious of kit. Everything is as much to terrorise opposing forces into not risking starting anything as it is to deal with the actual mission at hand.
 
They can't in that game- more for balance. In canon, they can.
 
Space Crusade - a bunch of us played all-nighters in college. We alternated that, the LEG Aliens boardgame, Heroquest, Blood Royale and Supremacy. And RPGs.

The world ALWAYS got nuked in Supremacy...

Loved Space Crusade though - really easy to play at 3am, lots of arguments between the marine players!
 
Atelerix said:
Space Crusade - a bunch of us played all-nighters in college. We alternated that, the LEG Aliens boardgame, Heroquest, Blood Royale and Supremacy. And RPGs.

The world ALWAYS got nuked in Supremacy...

Loved Space Crusade though - really easy to play at 3am, lots of arguments between the marine players!
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I always wanted the MB Space Crusade game. But it wasn't sold in the US, and the aftermarket prices were more than I was willing to pay.

I had Supremacy. That game was pure 80s. The graphic design was just like if a strategic situation room from the movies had been turned into a game board. I wanted to love Supremacy dearly, but the base game simply wasn't good.

In the base game, everyone turtled, because it was so hard bringing conventional forces to bear. The market always spent it's time at the very lowest or very highest with nothing in between. Once anyone researched nukes, EVERYONE researched nukes, and L-Stars were no kind of protection or deterrent at all. And then if ANYONE actually tried to win the game, the other players would all ensure that the world got nuked and the game would be over with everyone losing.

Like you said, every game always ended with the world nuked.

A few things would have helped immensely. The first would be a completely randomized resource deck so that it wasn't a guarantee that Saudi Arabia had 5 oil and there were a certain number of nuke cards in the deck. Everyone always knew those were there, so that was what everyone went for. There was actually an expansion deck which you were supposed to randomize cards with, so this was a known issue to the developers.

The other problem is that people got to see the cards as they drew them for prospecting. So even if you randomized the cards, everyone knew there had to be a nuke card in there. If anyone knew there was a nuke card, then everyone would research nukes and have them the next turn. There needed to be hidden prospecting where you only knew what the card was if it actually matched what you were prospecting for. As much as I hate to admit it, that would be an argument to make Supremacy an app driven game.

Finally, conventional forces were just insanely difficult to mobilize. The rules really needed to be tweaked to make it easier to wage conventional war. Defender pretty much always won merely because of not having to move.
 
We found piles of Space Crusade going cheap - about £10 - in Woolworths in '92. Sadly long sold off or lost now.

We played Supremacy with the Boomers expansion (for nuclear subs, not old guys with great pensions) and a few others. Absolutely brutal!
 
Ladybird said:
That's Space Hulk, a much more serious and tactical game; Space Crusade is more of an all-in scrap.

Space Hulk also possibly GW's finest work.
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I played A TON of Space Hulk, more than 40k truth be told. It was my 2nd GW purchase after Rogue Trader. It serves as the high point in the franchise for me.
 
Brock Savage said:
I played A TON of Space Hulk, more than 40k truth be told. It was my 2nd GW purchase after Rogue Trader. It serves as the high point in the franchise for me.
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Most people I've encountered experienced 40K from imagining the world from Space Hulk/Crusade (or the fixed board games more generally) combined with Codex Imperialis rather than the wargame itself.
 
Hmm, I think that for a very long stretch of years I would have been the exception. I lived and breathed competitive 40K for longer than was probably healthy.
 
Fenris-77 said:
Hmm, I think that for a very long stretch of years I would have been the exception. I lived and breathed competitive 40K for longer than was probably healthy.
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I used to, years ago, watch the call out videos of cheaters from 40K tournaments. It was HARDCORE
 
Fenris-77 said:
I never needed to cheat, although that was a pernicious plague on tournaments for a long time.
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Oh yeah, people got Hella upset. The comments sections would put a late Kickstarter to shame.

I never saw the point in cheating at a game, but I guess some of the tournies took it crazy serious
 
Surprised no one commented on Warhammer+...
 
chuckdee said:
Surprised no one commented on Warhammer+...
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At first I was like "wow, I'd love to see one of these for Warhammer Fantasy"...

And then I remembered. And I was sad.
 
TristramEvans said:
At first I was like "wow, I'd love to see one of these for Warhammer Fantasy"...

And then I remembered. And I was sad.
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I lost a Grand Tourney winner face off to a fucker of a rules lawyer. I am also sad. Although I did win a Grand Tournament, so there that.
 
chuckdee said:
Surprised no one commented on Warhammer+...
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Does it make anyone else sad that fan efforts like The Lord Inquisitor and Astartes nail it and GW with all their money flounders?

Oh well, GW is going to have a streaming service because of course they are. The upside I see is that they can control their own content and needn't clean it up for the other outlets. The downside is that they will anyhow because of course they will.
 
GW efforts to engage the fanbase have always been awkward and shitty, Warhammer Community aside I guess. I pay it no nevermind and take what I like from the fan community without hesitation or remorse.
 
What I don't understand is their hostility to fan created works. Yes I know it can undermine their rights but all the more reason to buy a share and get involved with talented people who love their worlds.
 
Yeah, they're Disney bad, and don't have anywhere near as much money on the line.
 
David Johansen said:
What I don't understand is their hostility to fan created works. Yes I know it can undermine their rights but all the more reason to buy a share and get involved with talented people who love their worlds.
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This has always baffled me as well. What are they afraid of? Why are they so short sighted? I feel like they are trying to save pennies but losing dollars in the process of clamping down on fan work. If I was in charge I would get my top marketing dudes working on how to encourage and channel fan enthusiasm.

Edit: I am not a business major but even I know that it is easier to retain happy customers than to attract new ones. I feel like GW puts their focus on trying attract new customers instead of keeping existing ones happy.
 
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A company that large most likely has a legal team that operates independently. They also do have an obligation to the stockholders to defend their copyright, that's simply one of the realities of the business world.

Keep in mind, that's not me defending, just offering a likely explanation.
 
My understanding is that if you don't defend your trade mark rights it can be taken to mean you've abandoned them. The rules are a bit different in Europe, GW killed a fan film at one point with the rationale that allowing it would cede certain rights to the creators. That's why I think they should buy in a little bit and get something in writing.

I'm not sure if GW still sees anyone who's been playing for more than a year as a liability. They've certainly tried to bring back fan favorites like Blood Bowl, Adeptus Mechanicus, and Necromundia and made some good will efforts to mend fences with fans. After the previous CEO nearly bankrupted them with his policies mind you.
 
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