What to Expect From Non-Warhammer Games in 2025?
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- Опубликовано: 19 янв 2025
- We break down our thoughts about all the other main games we sell and what they will be up to next year..
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I can’t talk about Mantic as a whole, because I only play KoW, but it is honestly the most fun game I‘ve played in 30 years of miniature gaming. It is so elegant and well designed. I think the problem Mantic has is selling more than just the rulebooks - being a generic fantasy game there is no real need to use mantic minis (I play it mainly mini-agnostic).
Releasing Shatterpoint managed to both cannibalize Legion and undermine itself at the same time.
An impressive feat to be sure!
This
My biggest dislike of Shatterpoint was that you collected two 'squads' you liked, and you were pretty much done. They leaned to heavily into thematic forces that changing them up felt odd, and the points system isn't flexible enough to really make it work.
Can we have a episode solely on your thoughts / opinion on Battletech?
Love it. That was me calling the store to remind you to mention old world ! Haha.
This video mentioned Trench Crusade, Old World, AND Malifaux??? That's almost a Lords of War Bingo!
We are just missing Warmachine!
@@merylstrep5933 do they not carry warmachine ? :(
Conquest is a fun game that improves regularly, but it hurts that they often compete w lgs w heavy sales on their webstore. They have a large number of skus now, and while the models are affordable for players, I dont see how most lgs could afford to stock them in brick and mortar regularly.
Love Mantic rule sets, even their fans can say the sculpts were their weak point but they have been getter better and better each year. Some of the more recent monsters/creature kits have been epic.
Konflikt 47 could be a sleeper hit next year, weird world war from Warlord - one hell of a writing team and old version is pretty cool .... werebears, zombies, werewolves, ice ghouls and mechs
no offence but basically trench crusade has better models in a similar setting and hasn't flopped multiple times like konflict. Why is this a special time for konflict?
@montroyalbynight8107 none taken, I am not certain myself. WW2 so much more varied a setting, and weird units can integrate with historic forces, and a larger scale. Also more diesel punk than grim dark.
This time Warlord have brought the property, are going into plastic minis, doing a full rewrite with Andy Chambers and Bill King heading up the team.
Also warlord will put this on shelves
@montroyalbynight8107 also better is subjective they are a different aesthetic
@@montroyalbynight8107 Trench crusade will be for people that 3d print or like kit bashing. there are a ton of people who dont, and the models are expensive if you are paying someone to print it for you and ship it.
18:25 for historicals I’ve felt like there have been a lot of periods that would be diminishing returns for a hard plastic, or even really robust metal range. Like styles of armour knights wore is really quite different for 1350, 1380, 1415 and 1480, But for a lot time if you wanted to plan in this periods you got something that was probably more correct for a different decade. Like the Perry’s Agincourt Boxes, it would function for the battle of crecy fifty years before, but it wouldn’t be perfect. I feel like a lot of small STL modelers are able to fill that niche for more specific time periods and places.
I guess there's technically a finite limit to historicals, but not really for practical purposes - a full WW2 range, for example, would be the most insanely bloated range imaginable and would make peak Privateer Press look like a modest offering by comparison.
What there is a limit on is products that people will need/want to buy a lot of - you can see a pretty clear example of this from what Perry make in plastic vs metal, because those niche metal offerings that you need to build out from basic plastic infantry/cavalry are ones they don't think could recoup the costs of injection moulding etc.
Like a lot of people think that the Warhammer ranges are a huge range of options and the setting is this massive, really well laid out thing but there's less in the entirety of the 41st millennium than there is in the 1813 Battle of Dresden (Volkerschlacht or Battle of the Nations to give it the more dramatic names).
Conquest the last argument of kings is amazing!!!
In the Manitoba community Malifaux, blood bowl, ASOIAF, MCP are all doing well but 40K and AOS are the giants by far. Having said that I don’t think it matters what’s the biggest as long as there’s a community to play your game in no matter how fringe.
Battletech can create new factions at any time, they've done it before. They are tweaking some factions in the Ilclan Era currently, but it's not universally accepted, a lot of players prefer to play earlier eras. But they've resurrected dead factions, changed up existing faction's place in the setting, this kind of thing, in 2024 Novels, I'm pretty sure.
do they? id much rather play current. issue is not many current mech models.
Doesnt matter how awesome the game is if no one is playing it in your area then it will be a dust collector.
Facts
Biggest problem is no one is will to try new games. As a hobby and a player, we all will never grow and expand our horizons if we just play the same old game every time.
I was pretty late to the party on Mailifaux, and as much as I like the models I bought, I regret my purchase. No one in my area plays it at all. They all know about it but I guess that ship sailed and I just missed it.
I picked up all the stuff for Infinity N5 but none of the lgs's carry it in my area either.
So really my choice is to crawl back to the overpriced and convoluted rule sets of Games Workshop or become a painter/collector only.
GHQ just keeps pumping out a bunch of great new miniature designs and I keep buying them.
Historicals is essentially just a licensed IP: once you've made everything in that setting you really can't make anymore. It's a hard thing to achieve success in long-term at a business scale. Feels like the whole model is to be a cottage industry, make a quick profit on an idea, and skip out before you see yourself become the dust collectors and lose money.
TOW wins over Conquest when it comes to the setting and vibes of the models, but Conquest is such a better game design and has alternating activations.
Catalyst is CONSTANTLY making new lore and updates to the setting. It's pretty wonderful. So that base is covered.
Sure, but most of the popular models are already out the door. They have Wobbies coming up, other than that what is there? Ilkhan is an option, but there are no iconic mechs that don't already have a model.
Conquest is great. The game and models just get better every year.
Free app that walks you through a solo play and/or co-op play missions would be amazing 😁
^^^^ THIS x100‼️❗️‼️
The section “where games go to die.”
I can’t imagine how hard it must be as a retailer to bring in unproven products that seem to have buzz at the moment but fizzle out.
So much simpler and less risky to go with GW. If it sits on the shelf, the retail price goes up!😅
It's funny because GW actively wants to discourage people from buying via FLGS as much as possible. If an FLGS starts selling GW exclusively, it's just a Warhammer store with extra paint brands, more business risks and less benefits than actual Warhammer store
Another nice thing for battle tech next year they are coming out with their version of solo play that also is going to include paper craft terrain, and they’re gonna use that as a basis to set up for different biomes of play. I think as of right now they have four in the pipeline that’ll each be its own little narrative box set that you can either play with people or by yourself. It’s nice to see one of the larger companies get the idea that being able to set up and play solo is fun.
You mention all these games that had, like, a moment in the sun around my neck of the woods... Malifaux, Warmahordes, MCP, X-Wing, Shatterpoint. It’s just a cautionary tale for sure.
Battletech is coming out with ACES also, a Solo mode game.
Well that sounds great
Also great for a co-op game master when none of your friends wants to be GM.
I have two wargames that I'm manufacturing for, would love to send you out some starter sets and if you guys like em I can do custom low qty orders for your customers.
I've looked to 2027 to be the point Battletech falls back down to Earth again. The smartest move would be to do another huge release of 3055 and 3058 'Mechs (if I'm remembering my books correctly), the stories from that time are off the rails and stupid but people still like them because of the video games. What they actually seem to be doing is trying to push their new Il-Clan era, not understanding that people can just go, "Well I don't play that era and I have no emotional attachment to these new products, so I can keep my money in my wallet, what a relief."
It's more like they push ilclan but don't actually have any mech box sets for that period so why try to play it?
what about folk who like ilclan? i like it. i like the new era. its interesting. ive played all the old games so i dont have much interest in older eras.
You are sellng in Trench Crusade to me. All this enthusism for it is contagious :)
Legion has a bunch of stuff coming this summer. AMG soft launched a new edition a year early without releasing anything. Been really bizarre.
It's hard to understand sometimes
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 Just re-doing what they did to ruin Warmachine.
2025 is all Halo Flashpoint for me
Your videos are a gold mine for an indie creator like me. I'm preparing two new games and I'm implementing a lot of "good for miniature shops" ideas
This is great, thanks guys ! 🙏
Don't worry the invoice is on its way to you... lmao
We are very happy to help. The truth is most companies never actually ask us what we think, especially the big ones.
Good for you for putting yourself out there and trying to make something.
Personally I'm just excited for more frostgrave and stargrave kits. They are releasing 1 or 2 books a year and usually with a new kit with them. Always great especially for kitbashing if you want to play other skirmish games since they pretty much every little bob you could want.
It all depends on your situation as a player. I have a dedicated wargaming space (my double garage) and I invite old friends around to play lots of non GW games (historicals) so it works for me. If you have to travel and play in a store, or a club, then sure, you will be pushed into playing more popular, mainstream GW games.
BattleTech: Aces is going to be peak
"What's a sandtrap?" "It's a trap, made of sand." 1:30 and we're already in garbage time I see 😆
Lmao
I have said this before, but neither trenches nor crusades are things that appeal to me, and I can't see how combining them could possibly enhance that appeal.
Bolt Action is really having a moment and yeah, I have basically shelved FoW in favour of it, I think a lot of people have. I had some friends who were interested in WW2 games recently and it was kind of a no brainer to go BA. Also Konflikt 47 is getting a new edition next year and I am expecting that to really land in a way the first one didn't. Keep your eye on that one.
TOW is going to wreck all those other rank and flank games. Before TOW the target everyone was chasing was, "how do I pull in the old Warhammer fan base". As soon as TOW dropped, nobody is going to win that way anymore, the goal now needs to be drawing in people some other way, having some unique appeal. Most of the Warhammer-pretenders are not going to survive that pivot, at least in the long run, because it was already tricky to pull people in and now that trickle is going to turn off almost entirely. Things like the Game of Thrones game have the best chance because they are very much their own thing and have an existing (small, but existing) fan base. Mantic is going to have a rough go and things like 9th Age are going to become (more of) a historical footnote.
Im not sure there is 'pop lgs space' for two ww2 minis games...and Warlord seems to be coming out on top.
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 Yup. Warlord knows what they want to do with BA and they have a good range of other historical games that don't cannibalize BA so much. FoW and TY and that new one with late war superheavies all feel like they cannibalize each other a lot, and Battlefront really suffers from "here's a shiny new thing we just coked up coming out of left field which we'll forget about in a year" syndrome.
@@bazzab1023
Based on the people I know from the tournament scene BF lost a lot of people with V3 and didn't make any effort to get them back, hoping they'd get new players in. They did for a while but their 6 month churn cycle for WW2 and team yankee stuff really hurt em. Team Yankee also has structural issues beyond just current wars spooky, the main writer for BF, phil yates, operates under the delusion that Slavs are subhumans and are therefore incapable of complex warfighting tactics. This operant premise makes the soviets supremely unfun to play as or against, because they're an unfun horde army (literally a nigh impossible feat).
BF's games operate from the premise that you're engaged at a company level tactical engagement with platoons and sections as maneuver elements. The Soviet's and Soviet adjacent factions fight at a Battalion level, which makes them unweildly and messes with the fundamental balance and pacing of the game. Team Yankee took this dynamic and magnified it. As such you could routinely see a soviet list with more vehicles than the board has space fight a sub company sized NATO element.
Asymmetrical games work but you need more asymmetry than 90% of ur dudes die when NATO rolls a 2+, which is what the game basically did for the first year it was out. With elite soviet units its been somewhat alleviated but when your choices of factions are either politically charged predecessors to belligerents or engaged in an extremely controversial war currently its a tough sell.
BA will outcompete FOW long term because fundamentally its cheaper, easier, and its current edition is more approachable.
@@ivanivanovich4294 I play a little bit of TY but we brewed up an alt history setting and play NATO vs NATO with the points totals low enough that you can't have too many supertanks. That turns it into a very playable game. I have no interest in playing vs the Russian Parking Lot, even given all the baggage that goes along with playing modern Russians given *waves at everything happening*
I do think that FOW V4 is a decent game overall, their problem is more that they are constantly bringing out new ways to play basically the same game (early, mid, late, Viet Nam, WW1, semi modern, modern, alt hist) and it's not expanding their market at all, just dividing the attention of the existing fan base they already had. And these seem to wither on the vine pretty quickly once Battlefront's attention drifts away. There's not a lot of confidence that any new thing they bring out is going to have staying power.
BA is definitely a better game to introduce new people into historicals and overall I think it's a more fun experience, especially with the new edition injecting a lot of fresh air into it. I am playing a lot of BA lately and I haven't really had the urge to pull out my FOW stuff, and I know I'm not alone in that.
Asmodee's production and distribution is a massive anchor for the AMG, I don't mind it as I have plenty and I can expand as I want, provided its about. Star Wars legion could be a big year
Oh Jay GW are giving free rules, which you need to spend about 70 quid minimum to utilise. AMG have whole game modes you can download for free, inc the multi player encounters and the full rules are free. You get your unit rules in the box.
Flames of War died when they switched to 4th edition with the lane cards and new morale system. Killed the game for our large group in Barrie.
Yeah I quit fantasy in 7th edition, still have my chaos warriors and empire. But not digging them out for old world, more so I need to dig them out to see if I can sell them while they have some renewed value... If I ever had the time and energy or desire to get back into a rank flank game I would get back into Kings of war.
On the topic of kings of war, at my LGS I was looking at some of the starter boxes, and despite being brand new, those sculpts look very dated, and not in a nostalgic good way...
Brilliant again
How many people actually get to play tabletop games they way they want? Even Warhammer games? If you like lore there are lots of books/sci-fi etc. If you like the painting you would probably get just as much from conventional painting / modelling skills. For games it’s hard to beat online multiplayer matches for fun and cost. Maybe we’re all being daft spending our time on this.
I like my soldiers.
No thoughts on steamforged games ?
As soon as we stopped filming (we were tight on time) we were like 'DOH!'
Video idea: Do an Industry round up of the winners and losers every month. Who did well with releases and who bombed...
Of course you'll title it 'Biggest Losers in Wargaming' 😂
Vitrix has some nice fugres, great for games like SAGA
The lack of kits every month for marvel has been a boon for alot of us, we are feeling good because the pace is down and we dont feeling some of the Keeping up with the joneses as before.
Also, marvel does release new special cards to mess around with scenarios. but no one is too interested in them.
I like Mantic for the most part, but I think they're at their best when they just do their own thing like Dreadball, Deadzone or TerrainCrate.
Some of their "not the GW model but clearly a B-rate copy" models are downright embarrassing...
What turned me off from all of AMG's games is that they have no narrative.
Legion scenarios went from characterful games that felt like they fitted in universe to "push all your toys into the middle".
Shatterpoint is just variations of "stand on different spots".
Their attempt with X-Wing was nonsense with starfighters using tractor beams...
And of course, the system with the best narrative missions, Armada, was just ignored until they put a bullet in it - with the exception of releasing pdfs of untested ideas left over from FFG....
For a company that talks about narrative so much, they seem to have no idea how to achieve it.
Narrative play should be a core game mode for stuff like Marvel and Shatterpoint!
Marvel does a slightly better job with this. The ultimate encounters are fantastic, i only wish it was a larger focus
No one thinks higher of AMG than AMG themselves
Shatterpoint is a joke of a game
They divided the entire community for X-Wing with their changes and then just dropped the game
MCP ended up with severe power creep every release
Never ever buying into the BS games again
Y’all are getting all the algorithm keywords.
Old World
Trench Crusade
Bless
Malifaux rules!
It is a great game.
I love malifaux, sadly no one plays in my area =[
is Warcrow that game from Warmachine makers?
26:20 With all the brid- er, trenches you've burned, you'll have to eat that book live ;)
I expect every other miniature game combined to be like 5% of my sales compared to GW. Low bar to meet
Don't say this too loud, the internet gets really mad lol
@@lordsofwargamesandhobbies3905 genuine question as someone that is interested in starting a LGS in 2-3 years. Is GW 90% of your sales? or GW related stuff (paints etc that people mainly use for GW products for example, brushes etc)
Flames player and best friends with the top USSR player in the continental USA, Flames is dying because grew too fast and changed too much.
V4 was very radical and followed trends along with a botched release and new shitty plastic carved off a large portion of the existing and healthy V3 playerbase. V3 was turgid, V4 was cut down and gamey-er in a way that felt shit. They switched to a new points system that created a lot of bad incentives. The game balance suffered a lot too, mid war now updates once a year. The new players they got were then churned out by bad balance and the fast pace of releases. The result was a lot of people in the biggest historical space, WW2, leaving.
Most of the FOW old heads were BA players back in the day, so when FOW went to shit, they shelved 1/100 and pulled out their 1/56 guys. The new players just followed them. Economically it was good too, FOW is pushing for bigger forces (all games are) but the buy in for BA is just so much cheaper than any competition. I can have a new guy into the game for less than $120 USD. For the price of a full 2k 40k force you could easily have 3-4 well kitted bolt action forces (I personally do).
Also consider the BA edition change. BA V3 sought streamlining and clarification, like FOW V4, but unlike flames, it was a very conservative change. Warlord doesn't like radically changing their games, which is a tendency I like. The list of major changes can be counted on two hands with everything else is basically the same. This allowed Warlord to pursue a radical listbuilding change (to sell more models, you now need more commanders and a minimum of units, which is fine, its not that much more expensive) without alienating the community, unlike Battlefront.
Warlord is also similarly using a new material (warlord resin) which has been successful. Warlord, unlike Battlefront, has a bunch of other product lines, most of which are not as successful as their mainstays (black powder, BA, and Hail Caesar). Battlefront realistically just has 1/100 scale 20th century conflict. Warlord can, and does, test their new materials on products that are likely not going to sell as much so they know what works when they roll it out on their big releases. Battlefront did the soft plastic on their big edition change, and Warlord's doing warlord resin on theirs as well. The main difference is warlord resin has been tested in American Civil War products, WW2 naval products and others, the release will not be borked.
All this to say essentially warlord is doing battlefront's intended plan better and as such is eating their lunch. FOW just dropped a product that literally WAS NOT PLAYTESTED into Flames, (late war leviathans) to essentially hope they can sell Maus to redditors. I'm hearing rumors of V5, but unless they get a miracle I don't see them outcompeting Warlord in the short term.
Both of them are kind of running on fumes of the same game. FOW is overall the better game but has been around longer. They are both kind of circling the drain as companies.
@@montroyalbynight8107
I think warlord sticking to a throw everything at the wall won't have issues long term but I do think bf is in trouble. I also completely disagree with your assessment of game quality. Flames was a more detailed game with a lot of depth but that's been stripped away, I have more fun with bolt action. Flames is unique in both scale and concept, which isn't easily replicated.
Whether or not historicals will do well depends on whether or not their getting warhammer dropouts. I think BA V3 will see some revitalization for a game that had largely stagnated at the end of 2nd.
@@ivanivanovich4294
google "hornby buys warlord games"
I could easily spin your words around and one could be just as boundlessly optimistic about how FOW v4 would go when v3 started. They actually did much more transition work to keep legacy armies than BA is currently doing.
In fact this story has also been told many many times at the end of a new warhammer edition, and then again early into an unpopular launch.
Trench World
Old Crusade
Also not an Old World video…😉
Soon my friend! Empire is around the corner and we have a doubles event to talk about after this weekend.
Battletech has a ton of content that has not been touched yet.
Atomic Mass being handed the Star Wars line of games was stupid.
trampa de arena is a cool name . Not CB foult that english not only looks wierd , but also makes everything sound lame.
Old World is out and tbf the king is naked - apart from IP, GW marketing/media/sales machine and nostalgia there's not that much going on for the game. Were i new to the hobby id be disappointed by OW's many ancient and ugly minis, outdated, stale gameplay (i go you go? Please we live in 2025) and GW's general attitude that this game is a side gig to earn extra revenue on selling old kits to people with fond memories of WHFB
If anything, in my region I've seen influx of new people disappointed with OW to other more modern rank and file games, like ASOIAF and Conquest
I wanna like Conquest but the game seems super shallow thanks to the wide units. Like it's a chess board with five lanes basically, and whatever happens to be opposite one another is gonna bonk into one another, and generally whoever charges first wins that lane.
Have you tried the game? At 2k point level there's a lot of screening, positioning and mind games based on deck building involved
@@CzechOutGamer yes i have thanks
yeah I haven't bought anything not GW in a long long time... Long term is it a waste of money.
GW can also be risky, since they do start to invalidate more and more model lines, factions even
Battlefront's distribution network has collapsed several times. They offer a better product than warlord but the combination of it having been around longer as a single game and the collapses have worn things down. I don't see a lot of people going to BA from FOW, more like FOW to other non retail games.
Ultimately both companies are running on fumes though, they don't have the same living release strategy and energy as a CB. Both have very aged private owners that will likely sell soon. Warlord has actually already entered into an arrangement that includes a buyout option. So in a way it's pointless to get into detailed speculation about either companies, they will likely get packaged up soon.
I'll keep shilling Malifaux until I'm blue in the face. It's the single best tabletop minis game I've ever played, and it's not close.
Small games need champions like yourself keep it up!
with one of the most confusing rulesets ive given up trying to read.
@@kudosbudo I'm surprised! Now, it *is* a deep game, and there's a rule for just about anything you'd want to do. I had to watch a few games before I felt like I could get involved competently.
I work at one of the bigger stores in the UK, I used to work for GW, I can't stand their rule sets anymore.
But, me and friends play historicals and some other pieces, so we're fine. I don't want book spam, model spam and new edition spam constantly. Gotten boring to me as nice as GW minis are.
Totally fair!
Historicals are just cheaper too and stand in STLs are more readily findable, I don't need to figure out which codeword to type in to get what I want I just type in "WW2 Sherman Tank STL" and pick what I want, for example.