I agree with Legion 4.

Just speaking for myself, I hope GW never do anything more than supply miniatures. And even then, there's enough second hand, and alternate suppliers to cover that.

Simply put, the player based communities for both Epic and Bloodbowl have managed to put army/team balance, and rules integrity as the two primary focus points. It's not necessarily perfect, but at least that appears to be the goal. GW have other motivations (typically income related), and tend to not consider the other points. That's understandable from a business perspective, but isn't so great from a player more interested in the gameplay than the latest and greatest's perspective.

Morgan Vening

I wouldn't panic just yet in light of the fact that this topic is pure speculation with no supporting evidence. Even as a relative newcomer to these boards it's become apparent to me that any decision by GW to stop carrying Epic miniatures is almost meaningless at this point and becomes moreso as time goes by.

Well fi...IF GW would finally axe Epic then i hope it will absolute forget about it. So we, the comunity who actually cares, can make up our own stuff (rules and minis) without any interference from GW.

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Despite GW's notoriously bad treatment of Epic (as well as other specialist games) since it ceased to be a core game, I haven't heard anything about this, and I think it's rather unlikely.

I also happen to rather like the Epic infantry boxed sets (of which I have just purchased several), so I hope it's not the case either.

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Sorry guys, didn't want to start a panic.  I just wanted to know if anyone else had heard these whispers.

What I really don't get about GW is if they really don't want SG under their umbrella then why not sell of the rights.  I mean really it is not a direct competitor to the main 40k line (we Epic players are a definetly a minority).  Sell it to a company that might actually do the lines justice, make a good chunk of change off the deal, everyone is happy.  Then scream into a pillow when they see how popular it is when run by a competent company.  This strangle hold GW has on its products (even ones not longer available for sale) just amazes me.

But, I guess if they did this then they would not be able to pad their year end with sales from "special" (over priced) games releases.

Who's panicking?   If GW gave SG the ax, it wouldn't effect my enjoyment of, or how much I play, Epic and given the current prices I haven't bought any new minis in a long time. Besides, as others have said, given all the companies that now carry good quality 6mm minis, it's not like our source of new minis will dry up.

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"I don't believe in destiny or the guiding hand of fate." N. Peart

I think GW's main problem with epic is that it competes with 40k. If you can put together a large epic army for €100-€200 (ok, maybe you need a little more cash now...), you may decide not to spend the best part of €1000 on a 40k army.

Edit to add: This was in response to Legate's last post. That's why they don't sell the rights off.

QFT

I'm well stocked up on most things I could possibly want to make in the forseeable future. The only thing I might buy a bit of in case Epic got axed would be a bit of infantry. Vehicles can be had cheaply second hand and are easy to strip of paint. Anything else for special projects (which interests me most these days) I'll be scratch building or proxying using miniatures from non-GW sources.

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Yeah, I know.  My comment was my own wishful thinking.  Even though I do not think that the Epic and 40k are in direct competition...though I do seem to be the minority in that line of thought.  You will always have those who like Epic and those who like 40k (more leaning to 40k.)

There certainly are a good many companies who do produce quality minis for proxies, my problem is the majority are in the UK and ordering overseas could be as pricey as GW. Or so I've heard.

As this is a thread I started I will ask this here.  I've been looking at both exodus wars, and DRM as proxies for a Cadian IG force.  Now, I know many around here have used both as proxie troop, but how do they really stack up (quality and scale wise) to GW?  Some up close pics would be nice, if availabe (primarily of DRM light inf and SF troops.)

Chap interested in Blood Bowl was told it would cost around a million quid for him to get a licence to merely produce the mini's.

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Oh, they stack up nice. Real nice.
You got some examples here.

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092b85658e746a91d343e53509d357744e56f641

I suspect that GW policy to Epic and other specialist games is:

SG should never be a competitor to the core range either through this company or any company we might sell the rights to, it should never take money out of pockets that could be spent on the core range. It should always be niche and only take money from those who are going to abandon the core range anyway but it should never be a reason to abandon the core range

that's my suspicion anyway. So onto of general policy to to give licences to third parties to do miniatures we have another reason ontop of that as to why GW would never give epic to another company.

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GWs general attitude to their business is baffling. For a good example, google "Little Red Book" "Games Workshop" and have a read. Golden throne has a few extracts here (midway down the page - post is by ExquisteEvil). It's Tom Kirby's guide he put out explaining the whole GW ethos. A bizzarre read

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More of a current misconception which seems to be that every army in Rogue Trader consisted of 2 squats with toughness 15 force fields and homing autodestructive 50" blast vortex missiles on jetboards...

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Well I agree with Mr Kirkby on those points quoted. I dismissed the posters responses to each quote since I thought they where pretty irrational and overly emotional.

Never-the-less it would seem GW are not nearly properly practising what Kirby is preaching.

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Confirm's the idea that GW will no longer 'cannibalize' their core market to increase sales. This matches what we see in the decline of SG. If you want to play a miniatures wargame in the 40K universe then 40K is the game, period.

As he points out Card games could be seen as a separate market and therefore selling 40k card games widens their market.

Over time I think we will see some SG products go as and when the molds degenerate to a point were they are unusable.