Shadow Wars: GW, You Owe Us A Penalty Kick
Stormcaller is back with some feed back for Games Workshop in regards the Shadow War: Armageddon roll-out.
Games Workshop, you’ve been asking for feedback for a while now. Well, with the kind indulgence of the editors*, here’s some for ya…
First, if a new boxed game selling out in an hour is a cynical marketing ploy on the part of the company, then you have made no progress in my book. Someone commented on another article that “they are a shop, and they are supposed to sell things.” Agreed. But a shop is also supposed to have brand new product available to their customers, and not force them to go to interweb scalpers to get what the shop should have provided, but at a greatly inflated price. The fact that a highly anticipated, and highly previewed (including at Adepticon) boxed game is not available to a large portion of the community is inexcusable.
“What’s your problem Stormy? Surely they will produce additional kit posthaste. Surely they will have separate terrain kit and standalone rulebooks available in no time?” Dream on dreamer**. If you haven’t noticed, they also are selling individual Kill Team starter sets. At last count, four of these are sold out as well. Of course I hope I’m wrong. However, some perspective is in order. What if this had happened with The General’s Handbook? How about with Blood Bowl? How about with Calth? What if it were to happen with Shade Spire, or “8th Edition” when it arrives? We aren’t talking individual models or a trifecta of models. I am familiar, and understand, how individual models can sell out. I dealt with this when I started my Seraphon army. The fact is we are talking about an entire boxed game here, not a couple of sprues.
Next up…I go to the Warhammer Community site to see what’s what. I read “…is now sold out, but your local GW, Warhammer or independent stores should be receiving copies next week. So I have to hope that something arrives? If it does, how many copies? Five? Ten?
I have story to go with this thought…please read GDub! I convinced a friend who has two teenage sons that this might be a good alternative to video games. He buys in. Oh yeah, the bloke actually works on Saturdays. He gets home, goes online…bam. You guessed it, if there is limited stock in-store next Saturday, he will most likely not get there in time IF, IF, IF there happens to be an unsold copy. He is done with this now. So, yeah, they are a shop. But a simple mistake that a company like GW should not make, especially after so many home runs/goals this past year, just cost them the current, and potential future business of my friend and his sons. Multiply this by how many?
Just to grind the nail across the chalkboard…so you advertise that there are “rules” online? Pretty misleading, although a quick look reveals this is only rules for individual Kill Teams (other than Marine Scouts and Orks). Wait. I looked at the PDFs at the Community site. A couple of them are incomplete…they do not included the specialist models that are listed in the site itself. Sloppy, boys, pretty sloppy. Oh yeah, did I mention that some of the Kill Team starter sets are already sold out? Or that these “rules” are only for Kill Teams, and not the game itself? They are pretty useless with no context, which the Core Ruleset would provide. Wait, I can’t get a copy of that because it’s sold out.
I know that for every person who says they are now “out,” there will probably be three to take their place. It does not excuse what happened with such a highly advertised and anticipated release. GW owes the community an apology. Yes, GDub, an honest apology***, to all those who did not have the chance, nor will next week, to purchase this game. I have disappointed by friends before, but that doesn’t make it any easier when it happens. In the meantime, the hobby will continue to move forward, and hopefully, this will be a one off.
We are going to be reading, in agonizing detail this week, all about the lovely game of Shadow Wars. Unfortunately in the foreseeable future, many of us will being doing just that; reading about it.
Were you planning on picking up a copy? Were you able to?
*Stormcaller’s opinions are his own and do not represent the opinions of the BoLS Editors. That said we knew the community was feeling similar so we wanted those voices to be heard.
**Games Workshop has announced they are working to get those things out “soon.”
***This was as close to an apology as we saw from Games Workshop.
