Thursday, May 24, 2012

Some Weird News, Warhammer Historical...Gone

"Warhammer Historical Has Now Closed.  We can no longer accept any further orders for our products

We would like to thank our customers who have purchased our publications over the years and hope you will continue to get many more years of gaming enjoyment from them

If you have any queries regarding orders that have been placed with Warhammer Historical please
contact the Forge World Customer Service team"


A direct excerpt taken from what used to be the historical site.  Just another long line of what appears to be stupid things done by Gamesworkshop and it's affiliates.  Although I'm not surprised by the actions, they don't do any historical miniatures, so why build a game. 

I love the core Warhammer rules, they work well and WAB 2.0 is a very good system, the AoA book is an awesome source of lists.  So it saddens me to see this, for I dislike Hail Caesar and I don't know what this will mean for the future of the tournament scene. Locally, I think people will continue to play, but what drives many people to play games here in the midwest is the tournament scene, its a way for people with like minds get together to have fun and play hard.  Hail Caesar is not equipped to deal with tourneys in my opinion, I'm definitely not a convert.  I think Black Powder is fine for Napoleonics and such, but not as a Ancients Games Set of Rules. 

Maybe someone purchased it, but I doubt that very much.  I may have to consider Clash of Empires, as I forsee a mass exodus of players from Warhammer Ancient Battles.  I could be wrong, but its possible.   

I do plan to order SAGA as I get more in to the Dark Ages and look forward to some smaller skirmish styled games. 



6 comments:

  1. I have the Clash of Empires rules, they are not that dis-similar to WAB. There's also War and Conquest to consider.

    While it's a bit sad to see WHH close down, there are plenty of alternatives. The biggest problem is getting the players in your location to agree on a default set. Luckily, the ranges of historical minis continues to grow and improve.

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  2. PC:
    Your topic grabbed my attention - don't follow their site, so interesting to see this about WHH - although not entirely surprised. People have been talking about this due to happen for some time. Maybe it was a self fufilling prophecy, as the saying goes. Most of the local WAB players in WA State aren't really tournament guys - although Pat L. is trying to convert us. I agree with you about Black Powder & Hail Caesar. I have both rules, but have only played BP so far. Best, Dean

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  3. To be honest though, Warhammer Historical haven't really "been there" for a long time.

    I'm also confused as to why folks should be a "mass exodus from WAB". Just because the company that published the rules isn't around any longer doesn't mean that your rulebook is suddenly blank. GW and WH haven't provided prize support for a long time either, so there's no loss there. If the system is a good one, then there's no need to abandon it just because GW has.

    In my humble opinion Hail Caesar is a good game (much like Black Powder), but neither is designed for competitive play and so shouldn't be used as an alternative. They are rules for a different style of gaming, one that obviously isn't yours at the moment.

    Seems a shame to me to see gamers potentially throwing out the baby with the bathwater, a move that GW so often makes.

    Cheers
    Dave

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  4. Blood Bowl has survived and thrived ion the face of GW neglecting it the last 15 years, Ancients can too. I haven't played any of the historical wargames released in the last couple years, just read & listened to a lot of reviews. I'm surprised Adepticon is going forward with Hail Ceasar, must be a reason for it, but from what I have heard it sounds ill-suited for a tournament game. Both War & Conquest and Clash of Empires both sounded like they had good potential to step in.

    I can imagine there will be some confusion and hesitation as people don't have a clear big GW banner to follow forward, but communities and the big one in general can pick it up and keep going, either with WAB2.0 on their own or with another company's game. Personally, I'd like to see element basing for 28mm scale. I'd be much more enthused about a big army scale if I could do bases like that and not break the game because I can't remove individual minis.

    I am surprised it took them this long to kill it. I have a feeling GW didn't like their historical games, since it doesn't fit their model: it doesn't encourage people to buy GW minis is a big one, and doesn't require constant change and replacing old minis with new. Silly really, we're gamers, we want new minis just because we want new minis! No need to artificially drive it.

    Saddest thing is all the smaller lines that looked fun- they made some good games: Legends, Gladiators, Trafalgar... well, plenty of other game companies who are willing and will continue to develop and release such games.

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  5. Okay, I don't see a lot of baby tossing going on Dave. It is (IMHO) sad news, in general besides the Gazillion $ I spent on WAB2 and AoA2. Great rules and (for the most part) lists. Hell, IMHO the rule system is great, easy to pick up, and has enough nuances so as to be a challenge to play. Sigh...
    I agree on the tournament scene, for me it is a great way to get together and get in some games, etc. I think it will be a challenge to grow things if the game is not produced anymore. For someone like me whose ability to get in games as much as I like is very limited, tournaments are a great venue. I do see WAB (perhaps slowly) being phased out of events. This is where the "what now" discussion for me comes from. Perhaps this is a good thing and push codgers like me to try something new and maybe it will be a game where the producing company actually cares to support it. Who nows, we may be able to get more players at Adepticon, etc. because of it.

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  6. Well maybe "mass exodus" is a bit exaggerated, but it'll certainly mean that it will be much harder to get new people into WAB 2.0. Right now I see the waters very much muddy. I enjoy and have enjoyed get togethers at Adepticon with lots of people over the years, the one common thing that you have is rule sets. In the historicals, those waters are significantly muddy, I like diversity, but sometimes there is just too much.

    I do think that Laughing Ferret has a point about Bloodbowl. One thing about it, they won't be screwing up the rules like they did with Fantasy.

    The problem though will still be support and I already know many people are fickle about Games Workshop, people are just looking for reasons to bash and avoid GW, including those tournaments. I know from running our local WAB tournament that there are many that just want to complain about GW and their policies and their lack of support, and they are going to jump to HC or CoE, etc, get over it, we are getting together to play.

    I know that Rich runs the Ancients at Adepticon and is a proponent of Hail Caesar, which is fine, but I really am not interested in a tournament that runs HC. Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Warlord Games, quite the opposite, just not a fan of HC for a tournament type setting. And I like Rich, he's a good fella, if he and Adepticon choose to change, I'll try to approach it with an open mind.

    And thank goodness for the growth of historical miniature lines, with lots of high quality.

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