Would never happen, if nothing else due to the ongoing rebrand of GW stores to “Warhammer” its to valuable a thing to license brand recognition away.  Plus i think its a bit of a fallacy to conflate a well performing KS campaign with commercial appetite for mass battle games, end of the day the people backing on KS are the market for that style, but ongoing purchases and all the things which didnt happen in terms of sales are why we have AoS, and GW as a company want to sell us high (stratospheric) margin show piece mini’s with the core troops being a secondary focus of sales (why you have prominently display the new big box mini’s in front of troops if you lack shelf space etc.) which again doesnt really work in a mass battle setting…

Its interesting that you mention total war as a reason to license, for me thats the perfect reason why not to license and killing off WHFB was a good idea, because total war does it better than it ever was on table top, in fact the only way i could see a real return of WHFB would be as software, but even if they did a 1:1 port you would still be going whats the point when there is total war…

I just wish they wouldn’t have gotten rid of tomb kings and bretonnians.  I guess you could play tomb kings using Deathrattle for skeletons, Morghasts for Ushabti, and maaaaybeee Zombie Dragons for Warsphinces/Necrosphinxes. I would say that a Lichepriest could be a Deathmage but IDK. But Bretonnians are pretty much gone for good. And that saddens me. I got into warhammer after visiting a toy store in Ireland 9 years ago. There was a guy on my plane on the way back who turned out loved warhammer and we got to talking. I am a hardcore greenskinz player. He was a hardcore bretonnian player. I wonder if he still plays and if he switched armies. I think they COULD bring these back, but don’t know if they WOULD. Tomb Kings could rise from deep subterranean crypts and tombs in Shyish and Bretonnians could have established a foothold in Ghyran. OR they could just bring update legacy rules every so often and maybe release the rare new model for old factions. IDK, but I am hopeful.  The one thing I don’t will happen is for them to bring back Oldhammer or license it.

Necromunda, Adeptus Titanicus, Blood Bowl, Warhammer Underworlds, Lord of the Rings, to a lesser extent the Horus Heresy which I suspect though was more of a revenue stream than WHFB had been for some time. Then there are the one-off games like Warhammer Quest and entry level games. Very unscientific here, but I guess I listen to around 10 GW related podcasts on a semi-regular basis and the one thing most people saying that the release rate has become staggering – and I’d agree – and you have to be much more discerning. Its not only about the money, there isn’t enough time to remotely dabble in all systems.

Lets be honest, GW is pretty mercenary when it comes to dishing out its IP for licences and will puts its name on some really suspect stuff. So you are right there are people doing the numbers and maximising the IP for what in some cases must be pretty limited profits. RPGs and electronic games are part of this because GW can’t or doesn’t want to do this in house.

The one area where GW is very protective is games with models because that is the core business. GW and FFG parted ways as they slowly had overlapping interests. GW prides itself with being the leader in miniatures production and I don’t think would be keen on licensing out an IP for another party to produce, from its perspective, second rate miniatures. In addition GW sells a complete hobby system miniatures, scenery, paints etc…- to the point that even in articles on scenery building it doesn’t mention generic building materials everyone has at home. Breaking up that chain for limited gains is what I meant with not being in GWs interest.

GW probably has the best market research and business understanding in this field so I suspect if in years to come they felt money could be made with a limited re-release of a classic game they would do it. If another manufacturer was making serious headway with a massed battle game to the detriment of GW’s interest they could well do this to undermine the competition (unlikely but possible).

If I had to guess where GW might put more energy in the future it would be CCGs after what seems to be the success of AoS Champions. Three big license games came out this year – AoS Champions, Dice Masters 40k thing and Heroes of Black Reach game – Champions seems to have the most buzz.

I’d have really liked to have played WHFB, in fact I bought the starter after AoS came out…

If I were in charge of GW right now I would be only be concerned about how much profit the Total War and WFRP and license were making. I would be no more concerned with 9th Age than I was about Kings of War – Just more possible competition. I certainly wouldn’t be looking to enable my competition by licensing a well established (and loved) IP to them and risk losing some of my own customers to a competitor.

If I were GW I wouldn’t change a bloody thing.

Massed miniature battle systems are not profitable enough and they can’t compare to the kind of profit a skirmish system can offer.

Let’s do basic math for a moment with a few random numbers for effect.

Assume the average WFB-clone needs about 100 miniatures to make a decent army.

Any skirmish level system can be pretty competitive with 10.

What does this mean ?

As a manufacturer I get 10 times as many customers, which also gives me more chances to try and get them to buy more of my products. We also get the opportunity to sell them a second (or 3rd or 4th) army, because getting such a small team tabletop ready isn’t much of an effort. They’re also more likely to introduce friends as the entry level isn’t so daunting.

That big mass combat army otoh … you’d be lucky if they start a second one.

On top of this I’ve successfully licensed my mass combat system to computer games.  Minimal effort, maximum profit.

Looking at the market I see more companies stepping into the skirmish level fantasy game and only a few die hards trying to relive past glories. This tells me that AoS was a good choice and it’s time to ensure we stay in the lead. More teams, more books, more products, more profit.

Let’s not forget that 9th age is a fan based product.
The average gamer isn’t a geek who is willing to suffer an inferior product. They’re used to high end products with lots of flash that are feature complete and userfriendly.The ‘missing’ bits are marketed as ‘extras’ to buy once we’ve got them hooked on our core products.

Kings of war hasn’t been a blip on our radar.
We might have to worry about ‘Song of Ice and Fire’, and yet … they’re targetting a different audience (fans of the series/books). We know how difficult that is with our LotR product.

So … that RPG. It doesn’t put a dent in profits that D&D is doing and there are dozens of other products within that same space. We do miniatures and board games. The games also lack long term opportunity as the core rules are enough to keep that consumer entertained. Outsourcing it to a company that has at least some experience in running such product lines is another one of those maximum profit /minimal effort type of things. No fear of it interfering with AoS either. At best an opportunity to get them into AoS

Cardgames are like skirmish games. Minimal effort to produce, lots of opportunity for customers to buy multiple sets and introduce their friends as a result of that low-cost entry level.

I’m not even sure Kings of War should worry too much about 9th Age.  Mantic’s miniatures are a lot more affordable than the “official” 9th Age miniatures.  You could reasonably collect an army of KoW miniatures and play 9th Age rules and much like GW it’s model sales that keep Mantic alive, not rules sales.

I think they made an almighty mess of the destruction of Warhammer and the launching of AoS – a product with virtually no setting and not enough rules to create – for many people – a satisfying game.

But they bet so much on its success, and were a big enough company to ride the storm, and with a change of leadership were able to change course.   They now have a game that still won’t suit plenty of players, but is now enough of a game to ensure a much larger group of players have fun playing it, and a rapidly developing world and setting which is constantly giving more and more people reason to invest emotionally as well as financially in it.

I agree with most of the reasons given by others as to why GW wouldn’t license out the Warhammer massed battle game to a competitor or relaunch it in some form themselves.   What would be interesting to think about though is whether they could have relaunched warhammer as a skirmish game with much simpler and more accessible rules.   Would the familiar and much-loved setting have been more of an asset than the almost unlimited opportunities offered by the AoS blank slate?

Now that they seem to have found their groove with AoS it looks more and more like the right decision for them to have made.   In part because I think one of the problems the old Warhammer had was that being a lower fantasy setting it was more jarring introducing all sorts or large and amazing models into the game.   AoS is designed from the start for almost any model to be viable, meaning their designers have free reign to produce the most amazing (again, not to everyone’s taste, but technically amazing) products.

I could perhaps see a future for miniatures in a Warhammer setting via an in-house GW release of a Mordheim like game.   A game of fairly limited scope that would give people an opportunity to buy and play with models designed with reference to the Old World aesthetic but which wouldn’t be marketed or seen as a competitor to AoS as their larger scale skirmish battle game.