No more Games Workshop?

Did that title feel like clikbait? It felt like clickbait. Sorry about the clickbait.

But here's something mildly interesting I saw this morning: I was in town and I thought I'd pop into my local Games Workshop, only to discover that it had been replaced by some new franchise...

I'm already missing the red-and-gold signage. It looks like a Waterstones.
(a Waterhammerstone?)

Fortunately, this new outlet still sold fantastic miniatures at low, low prices. They'd kept the displays in the same place, the same staff, even the same website url on the window.

Unless I've been walking around with my eyes closed (I don't rule out that possibility), this is a relatively new development. I wonder if this is a local decision (can't be too flashy with signage in a World Heritage City, after all - although Krispy Kreme seem to manage it).

Or perhaps this is a harbinger of a wider rebranding (once The Hobbit franchise ends, GW will only have two products, both beginning with 'Warhammer' - why not call it 'The Warhammer Shop'?), They are, as they often state, a miniatures company, not a games one.

End Times indeed...

Changer of the Ways

Nooooo they've only gone and released a new army list a month and half after I've bought a new army.

Dagnammit.

It's impossible (for me, anyway) not to get excited at the amazing Warshrine model, although that's going to have to wait a long, long time before I spend any money on it. Good sprues for chariot conversions, I'm thinking, and it's a pretty good fighter in its own right, so I have my myriad unblinking eyes on one for the future.

It doesn't look like there are massive changes in the pipeline, as far as my guesswork goes. Lots of new models coming for some of the older character models, which are nice. My hope is that Marauders don't suddenly become more expensive, or that the way the Marks work isn't vastly different, or...

Nuts. There is no way of telling, is there? No plan ever survives contact with the enemy, as they say. Delightful that Spel Verkstad reveals themselves as the enemy in this particular scenario, and perhaps it would have been good to bloody my army in its current form first. Hey ho, it's all skulls for the skull throne at the end of the day.

Spel Verkstad

Turns out I now live about five minutes away from Goteborg's finest GW. My wife and I were wandering about the city centre on Midsommars Dag (yesterday) and somehow ended up in there.

True to form, as with all the locals, the guy behind the counter was a giant blond man with a healthy tan and muscular frame. I established I spoke more English than Swedish, and he asked if we knew anything about The Hobby. I said I did, V (as usual) rolled more eyes than dice, and our host launched into a kindly-meant explanation about how the games work in flawless English.

"They work like chess. Except that you buy and paint the models yourself," (demonstrated with a sprue of Mines of Moria characters with their arms not on yet), "we use a tape measure instead of squares to move closer to each other, and where in chess one piece jumps on another to take it," (demonstrated by hitting the top of a goblin with a hobbit), "we roll dice. Are you interested?"

I obviously am, although mostly in how that's anything like chess.