Specialist Games Coming Back To Games Workshop?
November 12, 2015 by brennon
It looks like Special Games are coming back to Games Workshop under the umbrella of a new division at Games Workshop that will work alongside Forge World called the Specialist Product Design Studio...
This flyer has appeared all over Facebook groups for Games Workshop stores including Games Workshop Belconnen. There has been NO announcement of this over on the official Games Workshop website or on Forge World but it does appear to be a legitimate announcement.
Even Games Workshop managers are saying this is on the money. We always wondered why Games Workshop were holding onto their properties like Mordheim and Blood Bowl but it appears they had a plan at least somewhere in the back of their mind.
Interestingly this development also includes The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and there is the promise of new product on the horizon to support the game.
This is quite the turn around from Games Workshop...
"Interestingly this development also includes The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit and there is the promise of new product on the horizon to support the game..."
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I’ve just woken up to this.
It’s official,
My year now has two Christmases!!
If this is true then its a step in the right direction for GW. However I’ll reserve my excitement until we have official confirmation, prices and a product list.
Highly skeptical of the veracity of this flier. If nothing else mentioning that many games in one release just isnt GW, its not like they have ever managed to focus on and support more than 3 games at a time. Whilst i would love some new necromunda stuff i just dont see it happening, also questionable is the “news” comes from Oz, i mean GW pretty much treats the entirety of the southern hemisphere as its despised ginger step kid, surprised the flier didnt also say the mailorder trolls are returning along with the citadel catalog, gonna call bollocks on… Read more »
SPDS = spuds = love spuds = another name for bollocks 😉
I very much doubt the truth in this anouncement. Posted by a store, without anything official on the printed word document and claiming to get new stuff out for LotR and Hobbit, even though the LotR licence for has run out (afaik) I will believe it, when there is a official statement from the GW HQ, not earlier.
The ‘flyer’ is just something the Belconnen store manager knocked together to announce the news on the store’s FB page, hence the spelling, grammar, and IP errors. He and other managers claim they were told this news yesterday and given permission to announce it to their customers. The cynical side of me thinks the timing is due to the big box release that GW would like to get people into stores for. As for the The Hobbit, there’d have to be new product for GW to retain the license as it’s highly unlikely they’d be allowed to sit on it… Read more »
It’s true, it’s real, but how and in what form is yet to be revealed. Very exciting news though, especially as GW is going full plastic.
Bearing in mind they didn’t produce models for half of the characters in The Battle Of The Five Armies I could see them now looking to do those in resin still under the Forge World and new Specialists moniker to keep the license going and continue ‘support’.
It’s going to be very interesting to see how they develop any of these older ranges to make them viable on the tabletop for anyone.
I would assume we’re going to see a LOT of free rules and then GW/FW just supply the models.
BoW Ben
“Assuming this is all true, then it being shunted off to a separate studio isn’t necessarily good news, albeit it confirms the place we all know it has the company” And just to expand on this a little, the last time GW shunted one of their main product lines into a studio was when the rpgs were made into Flame Publications, which basically consisted of three guys in a room recycling D&D adventures and re-using artwork until GW canned it for good. The Hobbit being part of this new studio likely means fewer people on it and fewer resources, but… Read more »
This is the most ridiculous move they could do.
I love most of these games, but GW do not produce games anymore and other companies have filled that void. Perhaps they are realising the huge mistakes they have done in the last decade and trying to fix them, sorry, too late for me.
Burt I’m happy for those whom will enjoy!
Sorry mate, but what you just said requires GW to have hindsight and I have yet to see them show that.
Well, it might just be plain and simple financial insight….
I agree. GW squandered what they had going for them. BFG: well today we have several alternatives with Dropfleet Commander looking stellar (bad pun, I know). Blood Bowl: has several similar games from other manufacturers like guild ball or dread ball. Man’o War might be slightly unique but then you have many good naval games out there and I seem to recall Spartan Games Uncharted Seas is somewhat, at least thematically, similar. Epic, again there are several alternatives in that scale out there. Oh, and these other manufacturers don’t charge you GW prices either and the quality of their work… Read more »
But crucially, both BFG and Bloodbowl still have a huge active community still playing the game so there’s already a good foundation to build on. I wonder how many people are playing bloodbowl but buying miniatures from people like Guildball?
Normally I would agree but GW Geelong have posted they were given the OK to release the news by the CEO of GW
Now either this is either the greatest hacking attempt in history with multiple comments from the store manager and also on the GW FB pages in Oz or suddenly all the GW managers in Australia are going for the Guiness book of records mass sacking attempt
I am still a wee bit sceptical though
Well this is interesting, I would be interested in Necromunda and GorkaMorka having new models as the games were fun and also you don’t need huge amounts of figures to play.
However unless GW have had a huuuuge change of heart (their priority is selling lots of models for high prices not games with small model counts) I will also remain sceptical…. but hopeful.
Specialist games… a new hope?
New Star Wars, and now new Specialist Games? It’s a nostalgia overload, and I love it. 😉
IF it is true there are going to be some unhappy sellers on eBay
Yep, happy buyers though!
If they revamp the figures then there will still probably be demand for the old models for nostalgia sake.
Definitely, trying to assemble fleets for BFG on ebay is extortionate, even for me! £60 for a new space marine battle barge!
am chuffed to find out how much my epic collection is worth, its not for sale but nice to know its value has sky rocketed, same with my necromunda and gorkamorka collections 😀
If the rumour is true, GW prices will probably be similar!
Yea a friend of mine got a couple of days advance warning on this and just off loaded a load of BFG stuff before the public announcement…
new/re-release Epic 40k…. o.0
The original list mentions a new GW studio etc
I wonder if this is an attempt to try and lure dome of their old designers and sculptors back
Again I add IF this is true
Why would GW allow major news story (if true) to be released by a random store in Australia? With a hastily made flyer no less? Some bizarre viral marketing attempt? Colour me skeptical
But it now looks like the majority if GW Facebook pages have posted the news
This odd I grant you
Love to see BFG back. Miss that game.
you’d think with what would seem to be such a large announcement GW wou’d have done it officially themselves. Oddness, be interesting to see what happens.
They externally-advertised Age of Sigmar, which is something they hadn’t done in a very long time. Virally getting the word out at store level is no more surprising to me than that.
In fact, probably less so give there’s a big box release about to hit the stores.
Until I see this on GW’s main page, I call BS
(And happy to be proved wrong!)
To me it’s nothing more than IP preservation, I’ve moved on from those games unfortunately.
In the case of Blood Bowl, it’s too late for IP preservation. The community have taken control and stream-lined/balanced the rules. There are still a lot of Blood Bowl events around the globe if you care to look for them.
The community even put together 3 new teams, officially accepted throughout the tournament scene! Nowadays, Blood Bowl players prefer to either buy alternative models or convert their own. It’s part of the fun!
There are some games I would definitely be interested in reviving but others have passed me by now. Two years ago I would have loved to see blood bowl upgraded but now I have guildball and i enjoy it more. That said I know lots of my friends who would be very excited by that prospect.
It’s understandable to be skeptical about this as we’re pretty conditioned to not expecting any kind of announcement from GW. But we did have odd bits like this showing up before AoS and their veracity was debated here at length. Personally, if it does end up being legitimate then I’m thrilled. We see new games popping up every month on Kickstarter that fill the gap left by GW’s smaller skirmish games and a large amount of them are successful. There’s definitely a point of saturation but with their gigantic presence in the market GW can easily push their games out… Read more »
its all well and good to support those titles but unless you make entry level products for children there will be no growth in the hobby, all this is doing is fan service and milking those fans for cash.
“entry level products for children” – they have that AoS!
If Wacoshop are going to reintroduce these games then will they be going down the ‘limited edition’ route that seems to be the fashion?
haha it does seem that way @unclejimmy, but that only supports an existing group of gw fans 🙁 and they already spend money on models there is no growth to our hobby from that just growth in gw pockets, how many of us here are here because back in the day we saw the advert for heroquest and space crusade as kids
I don’t see why they wouldn’t do it. Out of all the companies in the industry GW is the one most capable of putting out one of these games per year. And if they want to keep their release schedule up they will probably need more than 40K and AoS to fill the gaps.
Games like Nercomunda would probably only be the base game followed by box set gangs released in the weeks after and BFG they could almost do as a one box release.
Necomunda terrain?!
I just advanced ordered some 6mm Novan figures from Vanguard Miniatures
and Mad Robot have the Sci Fi bits to make Dune Freemen types (Van Saar – Necromunda)
Their skinnerz are nice to. Though it’s nice to see them supplying Onslaught as well
Cautiously optimistic…
Maybe someone should just ring GW and ask
If this is true, this is great news….
But I’ll wait until the official announcement from GW. Until then I am taking this with a giant shovel full of salt.
We have the computer game, and bringing back the Blood Bowl tabletop game would be amazing. Necromunda would be most welcome, this was one of my favourite games from GW, as was GorkaMorka, used to love trukkin’ around, grabbin’ scrap, earning teef and giving my guns more “Dhaka”. Never liked visiting the Doc though.
Stupid auto correct, I meant “DAKKA”. I’m off to the Meks workshop with my tablet…
I saw it and got excited and then my cynical side kicked in. I believe it when I hear it from GW or evidence is leaked in White Dwarf. But I hope it’s true I really do, missed out the first time Necromunda, Blood Bowl and Epic were out – as I was a snotty Fantasy only teenager lol
@torros I just rung them, and they said “we cant comment on that”.
So that means a resounding YES!!! By not commenting they have kept the idea that it is true alive and posable. I know my goofy logic is messing with me 😛