I know some FLGS and online stores have had to “disappoint” customers as they ordered X amount (but GW didn’t allocate the total numbers OR simply they got overwhelmed with pre-orders). The Blood of the Pheonix “toxic” stock was simply because it was a bad deal (£140 box with 6 “exclusive Howling Banshees and the fact the Elder and Dark Eldar have been pretty much ignored for a number of years that there’s not many players collecting them OR they’ve already got all they need….so spending £140 for a box of 6 figure you might want to add to your army and a load of figures you’ve probably already got made it a “do not want” decision).

Again it’s all this jumping through hoops on about 50% of what GW release these days (and the situation with the card packs is just silly). It’s annoying customers, it’s damaging to the FLGS as they can’t maintain stock levels (or have to gamble by over ordering). Basically it’s GREAT for GW, but not so good for everyone else.

So for me I’ll not get Bloodbowl (because I’ve already missed loads of stuff that’s not going to appear again, so I’ve walked away). Adeptus Titianicus because you can’t get some of the stuff that’s needed to play anymore (and all the cards and dashboards made an already expensive game become UBER expensive. Friends NOT buying even a gang for Necromunda because they can’t get the tactics cards that go with the gangs (and these rules make a big difference, and we’ve not got all of them in or gaming group to even lend them out for a game). So it’s damaging the growth of the games for newer players who might want to get in (again I quote Gerry on this “waiting for GW to release a COMPLETE game”). Exclusives/Limited Runs all the time and all the games just wears away at gamers enthusiasm for the games. It’s beggaring FLGS who might not have the money to “gamble” on what’s going to be a hot seller and what’s not (as they only get ONE change to order).

We remember GW when the legal dept went crazy as the “bad GW”, I wonder in a few years if we’ll remember this current phase in GWs history by another name later on (I can think of a few, but they’ve all got swear words in 😀 )