GW Anonymous

My name's (EX-COMMUNICATUS) and I'm an ex GW employee.

For those in the know I managed GW Enfield from about 2000 to 2004. If I wanted to be glib I'd say something like "but I feel much better now" but that would be doing a disservice to too much and too many. Like many others I genuinely enjoyed the vast majority of my time within the Evil Empire with many great memories of customers, colleagues  and carnage across the gaming tables.

For me I decided to move on when I realised that to be better at my job I had to separate my time in the store from my hobby, which was the very thing that had got me in their in the first place. In the past ten years I've moved on without GW whilst GW has, quite rightfully, moved on without me. Neither of us should feel bad or spill any tears. I've got a far better hobby now and I do feel much better thank you ;)

As these pages attest the GW hobby isn't my thing anymore, for many reasons, but as many recovered addicts do I still feel the itch at times and keep an eye on the old girls progress through the warp. I still drop into a store every now and then and am fairly religious as far as paint and brushes are concerned. They're just a bit too much in my blood, possibly literally, and the colour wheels too ingrained into my psyche. (I'm also partially colour blind but have learnt GW shades to the nth degree)

The last month has been a bit seismic with profit warnings, the death of White Dwarf (fat, bloated and gouty) the sidelining of Finecast (thank the Ominissiah) and a multitude of corporate restructurings. There has, as always, been a great deal of gnashing, wailing and doomsaying from the (virtual) hobby masses, as might be their right but at the end of the millennium it's all just toy soldiers.....really, it is! 

For me it'll never happen again, the price in time as well as money is far too high for a set of games with a meta that I barely even recognise, let alone want to be a part of. The figures still do the job, all too well, and I regularly devour others blog entries that prove oh so tempting.

But then I read an article about the lastest Taumon, Tau with Daemon allies, tearing up the tourney scene and I let it go. New STC constructs are "discovered" according to the accountant rather than the artificer.


It seems to be what it's all about these days, even Fantasy is all Monstrous Creatures and Arcane Fulcrums from what I can tell. Every army has to have an entry for everything and even if it doesn't just borrow someone else's!

Generally I'm pretty live and let live and think a lot of hobbyists should get over themselves. You DO have a choice, you DO have the ability to vote with your feet. Kickstarters and the myriad of smaller games producers are taking chunks out of GW with high quality product on every level. I subscribe to the view that GW itself has indirectly stimulated this growth in high quality alternatives. They have to be to get people's money because that's what they expect these days, what a lot them were brought up on.

With the death of White Dwarf even as an agnostic doubter I'd rather see GW they something new than just more of the same. For that they do actually deserve some credit (not as painful as I thought!). The latest issue with the Imperial Knights is the best one yet, though it does kind of bat for both sides of my personal row with myself ;)

For me what I can't hack is the disembowelment of the ethos, mentality and background that I grew up with and cut my teeth on. I'm obviously getting a bit long in the fang because GW can do what they like with their IP, what I don't like is them fecking about with mine!

I DO realise how that probably comes across and YES and somewhat old-school with this one but I'm far from the only ranter here. A good mate and fellow escapee posted this recently and I couldn't agree more;

Was playing Bolt Action the other day, using US 101st, and they are proper elite troopers. Got me thinking, and talking to my opponents, about 40K and why I hate it so much. Forget about the company, and the crap they pull: the game is......just bland. My 'elite' space wolves die by the bucket loads. Over the years I have massacred whole legions of Chaos Space Marines. The fluff has ZERO relevance anymore. Look at Deadzone. It's like 3 pages of colour text. And it works. the game IS about a Deadzone containment. 40k? It's just a line battle where the winner has the most AP1 weapons. All the background fluff, and i DO still love it, gets it's coat and leaves once the game starts.

The thing that REALLY gets me is that the current state of affairs wasn't always so, or at least not how I remember it. It just feels so horrifically unnecessary. But then at least some of that could be me?! Just this month I've pledged $50 to the Pulp City KS, because a good mate I trust says its good and the figures are awesome, and $150 to Dreadball Extreme because it's a cool twist on a game that I already know that I'll be playing for years.

Thank you very much for listening, RANT OVER. I don't think anyone WANTS to see GW go down (I can't be learning a new set of paints!) I just don't want the hobby of my youth to curl up and die :/