The Drama of Games Workshop

So Games Workshop has been going through a lot of changes in the last couple of years, and even more in the last few months. This has sparked a lot of debate recently about what their plan is and what they are doing wrong and what they should change etc. One thing that I heard mentioned was that essentially the barrier of entry is now too high, especially for children. It's important to keep bringing new blood into your customer base in order to keep it healthy in the long run, but in a time when videogames are everywhere it's hard to get kids interested, and with the prices being what they are now... at least that's the argument I hear. Another point I just heard mentioned was that it takes a lot of space, while videogames take no more space than a box under the telly or a phone in your pocket.

I don't know how true this all is - remember miniatures wargaming was always a bit of a niche so for most kids to not be interested is nothing new - but it does make some sense, and it got me thinking about the hardships I encountered (and still do) getting into the hobby, and what some possible solutions might be.

So here's some ideas for GW. I don't for a moment think I'm some kind of genius who's figured out how to fix all their problems, these are just some suggestions for things that might make it easier for some people to get into the game.


First of all, let's take a look at where most people start playing: the starter box. Now, this is a great box of goodies, and it's good value compared to the rest of GW's product line AND to most board games and similar starter products I've seen, in that for only slightly more you get a whole heap more models. But it's still not cheap.

Lets take a look at the Privateer Press battle boxes for a moment. A single player battle box only has a few models, and only one faction so it's not all you need to start playing with a friend. But it's a lot cheaper, and they have them for a range of factions, so if you have friends who already play (which to be honest is probably how you're going to get pulled into the game) then it makes it a lot easier to get started with a faction you like the look of. They also have a set of "quickstart" rules that are probably (I don't really remember reading them) a lot easier to start with than the full rules. And hey, if you're buying stuff for two players, then each player is probably going to want his own copy of the rules and other bits in the long run, and there's a sense of ownership to picking your own faction and having your own box of figs, so at the end of the day just sticking with single player boxes probably works quite well.

But the models you get are still un-assembled and unpainted. That's great for some people, but other's just want to get into the game. Many board games come with very nice 1-piece models in different coloured plastics that you can start playing with right away, but I've even seen boxes of pre-painted figures in hobby shops (I think they were generic role-playing game style figures). Obviously we know it's not too expensive to manufacture fully assembled and painted figures as we've been buying them our entire lives.

Now such figures wont be as complex or detailed or have as much variety in poses, and the paint jobs would be very basic, but they work as an introduction. "Here's some simple stuff you can start with, and if you enjoy it you can eventually move up to the big-boy toys that you get to assemble and paint yourself" sort of thing.

Another thing I've seen in board games is, well, better packing. Essentially with a board game you want to take everything out of the box, have a game, then put it all back in and put the box away. For traditional board games this is quite simple as there's not much more in there than booklets, cards, dice, and a board - nothing too bulky or damageable - so it's easy to just drop them all in an empty cardboard box. But some modern board games come with more complex contents, and occasionally these have quite well thought out internal packaging that holds everything safely and securely. And lets face it, a sheet of foam with some basic cutouts isn't very expensive. I think Mantic sells boxes of figures that are robust and come with foam so they make pretty good cases for those same figures once they're painted, for example.


So that's the first suggestion: smaller, cheaper one-player starter boxes that cover a wider range of factions, have everything you need to play including pre-painted figures and some cardboard-cutout scenery, and are intelligently packaged such that you can continue to store and transport your stuff without needing to buy any additional carrying cases. In other words REALLY EVERYTHING you need to play (very) small scale games.

Ideally there should even be room to store more models: seeing those empty slots in the foam will probably serve as an incentive to buy more models after all (at this point the painting starter kit will be looking quite attractive...), and it more gradually transitions players into expanding their army. And while we're on the subject: when a prospective new buyer walks into a GW and starts buying stuff, it seems to me that the staff typically are quick to load them up with all the added bits: the codices and the carrying cases and the paint kits etc. What they should be doing is selling them as little as possible - the bare minimum they need, and not mentioning all the rest. That way they the don't get home, tally their purchases and realise the hobby is much more expensive than they expected. That might end up discouraging them before they are really invested. Get them started, and they'll be back for more soon enough.

OK, that might sound like I'm trying to help GW rip-off customers, but what I really want is a situation where customers never regret spending the money (the way I sometimes do), and enjoy a healthy long-term relationship with GW. Then they will continue to spend reasonable quantities over a lifetime rather than a lot in a hurry then decide it's all to expensive (the way I kinda feel right now) and quit the hobby.


The other big issue is the complexity of the rules. It takes a long times to figure things out, even when playing with more experienced players to guide you. A bunch of friends who haven't played tabletop wargames before trying to learn how to play 40K from the rulebook without some more experienced players around? It's going to take some effort, and I don't think they'll be enjoying themselves very much for a while - at least not as much as they could be, and if they don't really "get into it" after a game or two they probably won't stick with it. This is pretty much what happened with my friends when I tried to get them playing; at the time I was just starting to figure out the rules myself and as a result the games were slightly confused and they didn't enjoy themselves much and didn't play again.

I've been thinking about ways to solve this, and here is what I've come up with: a tiered rules system. The idea is that that are several "tiers" of rules; in theory you only need two, but I think it's useful to split into around four tiers. Alternately you could have two tiers and any number of optional "bolt-on" rule sets, with two initial ones in the main rule book and others as added releases. All named rules belong either to a tier or to a bolt-on. Let me explain.

The first tier is the introduction rules: the basics of movement and combat. These should fit on just a few pages; one or two would be ideal. The idea is that these let you start playing in a hurry. These rules may not be balanced across armies, but the starter boxes can be designed to be reasonably balanced with just these rules.

A second tier includes more advanced rules. This could be ALL the remaining rules for infantry if deemed appropriate, though if possible it should be more granular. The important thing is that these add on to the first tier, rather than replace them; by which I mean you don't need to un-learn a rule when learning a more advanced one, you just add some more rules into your game by moving up to the next tier when you're comfortable with the current one. This way you build up rules knowledge gradually, but always know enough to play.

Rules for terrain, vehicles and flyers could be additional tiers or bolt-ons, but I think tiers works as typically once you learn all those rules you will be playing with them all, so you would basically walk up to someone and say "Want to play a tier-1 game?" meaning you're a beginner, or "Want to play a tier-2 game?" meaning you're an intermediate player, or "Want to play a tier-4 game?" meaning you understand the rules and are no longer a beginner.

Now additional rule sets, like Cities of Death, Escalation and Stronghold, would be classed as "bolt-ons" and would essentially be additional optional rule sets that you can use one or more of as desired. Which is pretty much what they already are, but it would be more formalized and structured. Hell, I would probably suggest making flyer rules a bolt-on, since those change the game so much and not everyone likes playing with them. This would all serve to make it easier to play the game at the level of complexity that you are comfortable with.

Now this may be a tall order for GW as clear intelligent structured rules writing hasn't been their strong suit as of late, but that's probably something they should work on anyway.

The Ultramarines Omnibus review

I considered posting this on my main blog, but I decided to keep the reviews and rants in one place. Warning, lots of spoilers.

I recently finished the Ultramarines omnibus. This is a Black Library collection of 3 novels and a short story about the Ultramarines chapter written by Graham McNeill. Black Library omnibuses probably have the best value of anything in a Games Workshop. But I suppose that's subjective at the end of the day. But I digress. The book follows Uriel Ventris, captain of the fourth company of the Ultramarines. I shall review each story individually.


The initial short story,'Chains of Command', essentially introduces us to Uriel Ventris, telling us something of his character and how he became captain. I liked this story, it dealt with a relatively small yet important conflict (if it was not important then it is unlikely that any Adeptus Astartes would have been involved at all) allowing it to focus on the characters themselves. The themes it dealt with, rigid adherence to established methods and dogma versus free thinking is a central theme in Warhammer 40K that is a driving force behind many of the different factions and indeed the history of the 40K universe.

But perhaps more significantly in this case, it is actually a real issue for the Ultramarines themselves. Not so much in the fictional universe, but rather in the perception of hobbyists towards the Ultramarines chapter. Ultramarines are seen as the 'default' 40K Space Marines. The Space Marine codex always refers to them first, even featuring them on the cover. Most of the non faction-specific Space Marine miniature figures used by Games Workshop for advertising purposes are painted as Ultramarines. Many of the miniatures actually have Ultramarine iconography molded in.

All of this, coupled with their simple but appealing colour scheme, makes them in effect the 'starters' Space Marine army. The hobby of miniature painting and modeling (if perhaps not the actual wargaming aspect) draws a lot of people with a creative nature. They want to experiment, create armies that appeal to their own tastes and are as unique as possible. Therefore the idea of a 'standard' army or colour scheme is naturally of-putting to them. This makes the Ultramarines unpopular amongst long-term hobbyists, they are seen as boring and unimaginative.

So the idea of an Ultramarine who doesn't always follow the rules, doesn't always do things by the book, is important. In essence he's breaking the Ultramarines stereotype. This makes him interesting, which is significant because it helps make the Ultramarines interesting again. They're no longer the faceless standard. For those who can see past the gimmicky Space Wolves and Blood Angels, the Ultramarines have hidden depths. At least that is the idea that I believe the Author wanted to convey, and which he has spoken about in interviews (see, I'm not just making this stuff up).

To sum it all up, a good story that does a good job of establishing the protagonist and is especially significant to the Ultramarines themselves.


The second story in the book, Nightbringer, is in fact the first full-length Space Marines novel. This a good story, and it complements the first in that it picks up soon after and continues the evolution of Uriel himself. However, it has some significant flaws.

Surprisingly, it seems spend more time following characters other than the Ultramarines themselves. This is not really a mistake if you consider that the novel was initially published on it's own, at which time it may not have been planned as the first of a trilogy, in fact it's title doesn't relate to the Ultramarines in any way, but it does make it feel a little out of place here. The story does a good job of describing a planet suffering from rapidly escalating internal strife, split by internal politics. Unfortunately in this scenario Space Marines are of little help, and in the first half of the book they are somewhat peripheral to the story. It's only when things come to a head and all-out war erupts that that Ultramarines start to have a real influence on proceedings, and even then the book continues to follow a number of non-Marine characters as well.

And while there's a variety of 'villain' characters, most of them are not very intimidating an, to be honest, don't really seem very intelligent. This ties in to my other real complaint about this story; there's far too many missing pieces. We never really understand how the villains learned of the Nightbringer, it's location and how to wake it, or how they came up with their plan, why they thought they could control it, or even how they met or why they didn't turn on each other near the end when they didn't need each other anymore (especially since the main factions had revealed to the reader their desire to eliminate the other when feasible). It never even explained what could possibly have possessed them to believe that the Nightbringer would give them the power they sought.

I was also somewhat let down by the end, it didn't feel like a victory when the ancient being of incredible power and evil that was so terrifying that it had entered the hereditary memory of all the races in the galaxy, essentially being the stuff that our nightmares are, quite literally, made of, was awoken and freed to roam the universe. So why was everyone acting as if they had achieved some kind of victory and everything was fine now? In fact, Uriel had an opportunity to trap the Nightbringer once more, possibly even kill it (by my logic, destroying part of the mechanism that it used to sleep through the millennia and trapping it some ten miles underground, since it's no longer in hibernation and in a weakened state, may be enough to kill it or cause it to die from starvation). All he had to do was sacrifice himself and his brothers, but he chose not to. The jerk.

Overall a good read, but it feels out of place in a book titled 'The Ultramarines'.


The third story, 'Warriors of Ultramar', was easily my favorite. I believe Tyranids are a difficult race to write. You can't talk about their motivations because they only have one: eat everything. You can't write about their history, because we don't know it. You can't show them discussing plans and arguing amongst themselves, because they are all telepathically controlled by a single hive-mind.

Graham McNeill, however, manages it very successfully. He makes them interesting by describing how they operate as a biological weapon, and by giving them a surprising degree of intelligence. Perhaps most importantly, he does a good job of making them a terrible enemy, and writing about how the heroes triumph against the odds.

This time the Ultramarines are pivotal to the story from start to finish. Uriel himself continues to grow and change, and proves to be somewhat more effective this time around, relying on both his intelligence and strength. That's not to say that we don't see anyone else; there are a number of memorable supporting characters who's presence enriches the story. In fact this is something that I feel was done particularly well; we are introduced to many characters early on, and we continue to catch glimpses over the course of the book. Some of them prove to be important to the big picture, others are tangential but provide flavor and dimension to the story.

Overall a great book, especially considering the rather difficult subject matter.


Unfortunately I did not enjoy the last novel; 'Dead Sky, Black Sun'. It seemed quite random and I found it hard to follow. I find it somewhat unlikely that a Space Marine captain would be excommunicated for making a battlefield decision to trust his men on their own and personally spearhead a dangerous yet vital mission.

But it seems that is Uriel's fate, and he is given an unlikely mission: destroy some random things that Chief Librarian Tigurius had a dream about. It's worth mentioning that Tigurius is a named codex character - the equivalent of a 40K celebrity, it would have been fitting to at least have a bit of time spent fleshing him out. But we don't get that, instead he gets a brief mention and two minimal lines of plot-driving dialogue. Anyway, in a nearly unbelievable display of lazy storytelling, Uriel is given a vague mission based on a dream. Rather than the Imperium getting hints of something happening, lives lost to bring vital information to Ultramar or some sort of actual story, some guy has a dream. We don't even get to see him have the dream. We don't even see him tell Uriel about the dream, we get Uriel reminiscing about him mentioning about the dream.

Still, the idea has potential for an epic tale. Vague hints of a growing evil on an unknown planet; they could have written whole books about the adventures he had searching for this place. Instead a Daemon (with the highly imaginative name 'Slaughterman') just pops onto their ship mid-transport, picks them up, and drops them off on right planet. I find it to be lazy and just downright bizarre (as well as raising a number of questions about how it was possible, how come daemons don't wreck Imperial transports on a regular basis if it's so easy, how the daemon knew what they were after, why this obviously powerful daemon couldn't find a more reliable group to carry out his bidding than two random space marines, etc). The story eventually explains the daemon's actions, but to be honest I failed to follow the explanation and was left somewhat lost.

Personally I found the imagery described in the book to be quite disturbing. I realise that the 40K universe is very dark and the disturbing imagery serves a purpose, but this was too much for me. And again, I found the end unsatisfying. At the words of a tortured Traitor Marine, the two former Ultramarines remove the sacred objects binding a daemon with the unlikely name of the Heart of Blood, thinking that this will kill it. Instead this frees the immensely powerful daemon (for some reason this surprises them?). After it manages to kill the Slaughterman, it is left unconscious on the floor from the effort. Now, when daemons are defeated they generally evaporate. So seeing it lying around is a pretty strong indication that it is probably still alive. It seemed logical to me that a Space Marine would want to take advantage of it's weakness to kill it, probably using the same sacred hook things used to chain it before. But Uriel just walks away. Consequently, the owner of the castle in which the Heart of Blood was imprisoned and tortured walks over, kicks it, introduces himself as the lord of this castle, and orders it to kill his enemies. Rather than ripping him apart for the agony he subjected it to, it actually does as he orders. Apart from the absurdity of that, the fact that it successfully kills an entire army of Chaos Space Marines, who were already on a war footing and had been building up sorcerous powers for weeks in preparation for an assault on the castle, begs the question: just how the hell did they imprison it in the first place?

While some may enjoy the setting of this story and the Chaos theme, I found the lazy writing and disturbing imagery, along with a number of plot devices that didn't make sense to me, left a bad taste in my mouth.