A wonderful opportunity to spend way too much real money

Because it's about the lead, folks, is there any way to doubt it?

Those of you forced to listen to my interminable ramblings in real life are more than familiar with me rabbitting on about the way in which Games Workshop actually has a good side. Just as Microsoft has a sideline in making pretty good mice to balance their really godawful software, in the past three or four years GW has been making a lot of its rules available as free downloads on its specialist games site. So you could download all of Blood Bowl (who knew you could get 170 pages of rules out of American Football for Orcs?); all of 3rd generation Epic Space Marine (some surprisingly mature and interesting ideas in those rules) and all of the final version of Battlefleet Gothic (not even on a bet; the QRF for Battlefleet Gothic is enough to make a grown man cry). Because GW was no longer pushing figures for any of these rules, Epic Space Marine in particular was a surprisingly wargamer-friendly set of rules - use whatever figures - and whatever base sizes - you wanted, very few gimmick troops, and generally very little of the gothic encrustation which always sets my teeth on edge.

Well, that's all over now. A fresh generation of suckers has been detected (the bellwether has to be the immense outpouring of cash at ForgeWorld's stand at Salute) and all the rules have been republished - at GW's trademark how-the-hell-much-did-you just-say? prices. I'm thinking that what happened was that enough people downloaded the free versions of the rules that they started to think at GW Mansions (suggestions as to what GW HQ should actually be called are welcome) that the market was big enough to fire up the centri-cast machines again.

Because, with the rules, come the figures. My word, it's breathtaking.

Some of the stuff is pretty, but as always it's shockingly priced. Plastic 6mm (8mm in GW speak) figures at £12 for about 150 figures. Tanks and aircraft in the same scale at about £3 each. And upwards; anything fancy is closer to a tenner. Not necessarily closer on the single digit side either. I had thought Peter Berry's Baccus stuff was a special treat for when I'd been particularly well behaved; I'd have to cure cancer to justify spending this kind of money on micro-armour.

The spaceships are the same ones which came out last time, which means that most of the Imperial ones look like the Hungarian House of Parliament with engines, but made of plastic. Up at the top end of the size register, you're looking at £18 to £25 for about the amount of lead which Brigade or GZG would shuffle their feet and ask for £12. Even the boys at Mongoose might show a little shame looking for this kind of money and they have Babylon 5 licensing fees to cover.

It's good news for the boys at GZG and Brigade, I think, as long as they don't decide to get greedy and push their own prices up; at these small (with starships, purely nominal) scales it's harder for GW to retain the exclusivity that they hold at 28mm. Other people's figure would look just as good and cost a fraction of the money - as long as the fanboys are willing to think more widely and get on the net, there should be business for the smaller guys.

And looking down the road, in two years or so it will be good news for us, as the Bring and Buy stands groan with discarded GW 6mm and BFG stuff at affordable prices. Pity I have to wait that long.


Check out the hardware here Battlefleet Gothic and Epic Armageddon; Try to imagine my Bruce Willis in Die Hard laugh as I read this text
"Bag With Epic Bases (4 Sprues) This includes 4 sprues of Epic bases, giving you 16 bases in total.Price: £7.00"
I should perhaps make the point that Epic bases are bits of plastic 1 cm by 5 cm. 43.75p seems like a lot to pay for one.