Games Workshop

Games Workshop

If you like tabletop fantasy and futuristic battle-games, then you've probably heard of Games Workshop they make the popular Warhammer and Warhammer 40K. They also have the global license for the tabletop battle-game based on the film trilogy, The Lord of the Rings.

Games Workshop is headquartered in Nottingham, UK and also have a production facility in Memphis, Tennessee. The company makes a wide range of Citadel Miniatures, both plastic and metal and produces rulebooks for their games. To keep up with Games Workshop news, the company also has a magazine entitled, "White Dwarf."

The main games by Games Workshop include as mentioned above:

Warhammer Fantasy Battle
Warhammer 40K
The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game

All of these games systems have had expansion rules and supplements for them: Mighty Empires for Warhammer Fantasy Battles, Battlehosts for The Lord of the Rings War Of The Ring and the hugely successful Cities of Death, Apocalypse, Planetstrike and Planetary Empires for Warhammer 40K.

Now, as to what's the good and the bad about Games Workshop....

On the plus side, they are everywhere. You are just about guaranteed to be able to find game stuff and someone interested in playing the game if you live near any size city.

Their models have good detail. The fact that they produce miniatures in both metal and plastics is a plus, since plastic models are easier to work with for those enthusiasts interested in doing conversion work.

And of course, what's good is the games they make that many people like to play.

Unfortunately, gamers find there is also a dark side to Games Workshop.

The first and possibly the worst of GW's drawbacks is the expense. Their products continue to go up in price annually, and sometimes more often. The company seems to be taking the maxim of pricing "whatever the market will bear" to heart. They also have some practices that make it inevitable to force gamers into buying more models.

For example, when Warhammer Fantasy changed from the 7th edition to the 8th edition, the game default was changed from 2000 points to 2500 points. That means a 25% increase in army size, which means the gamer needs to buy 25% more miniatures.

They change rule book editions fairly frequently, and these tend to be major revisions that tend to upset the balance. In other words, models that were favored in older editions are not in the new one, and it usually means players have to buy new models to redress the balance.

Along that line, they also have a tendency to invalidate old models when the change rule editions or the codex, so that you can't use the old models at all or the rules for them are now so bad you don't WANT to use them.

Games Workshop is also very aggressive about protecting their intellectual properties, and in fact, in 2009 had several Cease & Desist orders filed against various internet sites. This did not endear them to most fans since these sites were seen as actually being supportive of Games Workshop.

Nevertheless, for all their faults, their games are still popular. Even though the intellectual property restrictions make it more difficult to buy GW products from other retail gaming stores online, you can still get stuff on Amazon fairly easily. You can also buy from people on eBay. There you can see pictures of the items and sometimes get some good deals if someone is selling a group of miniatures, or even an entire army.

The bottom line on Games Workshop?

At their best, they make great games and decent models. The games are so popular it's easy to find their products, and easy to find someone to game with.

At their worst, the prices are expensive, and some gamers find their business practices aggravating. So much so, they look around for other games to play such as WARMACHINE.

But whatever you think about Games Workshop, there's no denying Warhammer is a winner!

Warhammer - games workshop