JP On Gaming

Friday, November 12, 2010

Warhammer Historical is no more

Yep, you heard me right. WH has been dissolved by Games Workshop as an entity. Late in 2009, they announced that the product line was going to be absorbed by Forgeworld. They got rid of all of WH’s personnel: Rob Broom in 2009 and his assistant earlier this year. This in itself was cause of concern, but at the time, WAB 2.0 was being promised "soon" so I assumed Forgeworld would take it over and make it great. However, having my WAB 1.0 books already, most of the supplements I wanted and few people to play with, I felt the impact of such news to be limited.

This leaves me with three questions. Does this mean the game stops producing content? Does this mean the end of Warhammer Ancient Battles (WAB), my personal favorite ancient rules set? Is there a future for WAB at Forgeworld?

New Content


Seeing the silence of Forgeworld on any new WAB product, the lack of effort they put in to the brand or any products, the endless delays in releasing products. They seem to have alienated some of their top writers in Allen Curtis and Jeff Jonas by either not responding to them or simply delaying everything through slow response time.

Good thing is that the WAB online community is filled with the authors of the WAB supplements and a lot of good people. Shout out to the WABList Yahoogroup.

End of WAB?


I think GW (Forgeworld and GW are interchangeable term IMO) is killing the brand as a whole. It is stupid and makes very little sense to me, but then again who can really claim to understand GW’s reasoning? I tried and after a short trip at the asylum, I gave up and just went with the flow. Stupid is as stupid does, which pains me greatly to say because I have enjoyed GW products and games for over fifteen year by now.

They have a brand that is seen by many as quality and community-friendly, and they cut it out. Perhaps it is not making the same amount of money as their 40k or Fantasy lines, but I know of few people who hate the line. Many prefer other games, and that’s fine.

Future with Forgeworld?


Seeing how Forgeworld won’t sell through my local story (thus giving me easy access to the product), I see little future for the brand. It will die out. It may hold itself in the UK for a while, but I see its US market dying.

This one is short. Forgeworld taking over anything is like executing a death sentence. We won’t see anything new. We won’t see much support. The game is dead as far as GW is concerned.

Really the End???


If you were expecting anything new for WAB, then yes.

Oddly enough, this move comes at a time where WAB is more attractive than ever, with hard plastics are both plentiful AND affordable. Players who balked at the idea of spending hundreds to build an army may now do so at very low prices. 40$ gets you 60 hoplites! That’s like the core of a Greek Army!

What about Imperial Romans? 30$ gets you 50 of them! Call it 120$ and you have a highly versatile army. The versatility increases a thousand folds if you are willing to do a little conversion work. For the Classical period, call it 500BC to 500AD, one can model so many armies: from the legions of Rome, to Alexander’s phalanxes, to some strange hybrids like the Carthaginians, the Mithridatic war, the Jewish rebellion, the conquest of Gaul. So many choices!

Stupid is as stupid does, sir.

JP

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