I have just typed up a reply on the warseer forums to share my thoughts on the matter. Forgive me for reposting it word for word here, but I wanted to say pretty much the same thing here too. I purposely left off mention anyting that might cause concern for this forum and its members in my post, but I think you can all add in the extra names where they fit in to the post!
Its just Ive been thinking about the future of epic all day long and its pretty disheartening tbh...
I just think it will be sad that as much as the community will push to keep epic alive, It will start to disappear anyway as I doubt GW will keep the rules online for a game they do not stock miniatures for, thus any one new wanting to get in to it wont have access to it any way. Sure, there will be ways to *get* the rules but not with out GW legal figuring it out and sending C&Ds. Epic will become imposable to encourage new players as it will become as expensive starting up as 40k is now, especially as the leeches start to come out on ebay. Have to say I'm mostly Looking forward to seeing the £100+ Orkaosaurus mini on ebay come this december. :eyebrows:
Saying that warmaster and Epic are not profitable to keep is, what I think, is rubbish. If they were then there wouldn't be loads of companies out there knocking out brilliant 6mm and 10mm miniatures, for far less the cost then GW's. Places like pendraken, microworld, eureka, and baccus (and all the others!) get some heavy traffic from warmaster & epic players, You can see that for yourselves on the forums, in painting logs, and in the very ranges that they create in the first place! Yes, they are making historical minis as well, but the fantasy stuff must be profitable enough or they too wouldn't keep making it! Some of the companies are new, of course, but others have been around for longer than the current player base of GW! Plus many of these companies don't keep stock of the older miniatures, but will happily cast it up if you want to order it! (Pendraken is excellent for doing this, from what Ive seen, even to the point that they have keep older sculpts on sale that have had redesigns released so people can still order them to finish off older projects and the like!)
But I see that this is were trouble will come in. GW have caused a vacuum that these companies will fill the void (much to the delights of their own wallets, I'm sure!) but how long before GW hit them hard with their legal tactics. They create the hole but wont allow any one to fill it!
I just hope some one with some tact in these matters can step in and create a business model that can fill this void with out causing the wraith of GW legal. Because removing SG will alienate more players then it will bring in buying core ranges I'm sure, but I for one, will not be going back to 28mm gaming when 6mm offers such good quality nowadays.
Apologies again for re-posting the same post from their. Im not expecting any sensible response from people on warseer, but wanted to share my thoughts with both communities anyway!
