The most catastrophic success in Games Workshops history
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- Äas pĆidĂĄn 15. 06. 2023
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This week, we dive in to the fascinating and exciting history of one of games workshops most Successfull and catastrophic warhammer releases - Cursed City.
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GW artists and designers: 10/10
GW marketing team: monkeys at the zoo
GW Game designers : headless chickens...
@@the_arcanum oh yeah I spoke of miniature design, book design, artworks etc đ not the game design. Well pointed out
GW profits: increasing all the time.
It sucks, but they have basically learned that it doesn't matter how they do, they will still make profit - more and more of it, in fact. It doesn't matter if individual projects do not make absolutely optimal amounts of money, since they have many, many projects going on at once, and getting in more of those will be more lucrative than handling any one optimally.
Basically, to actually get them to change, there would have to actually just be a total mass boycott. But for each customer that leaves (and let's be honest, most will not actually leave), there's new ones. So until it reaches some sort of a critical point of total asshattery that just makes business actually go down (which, let's be real, is waaayy beyond being clumsy with some marketing), there will be no real change.
Hey! Lay off the monkeys at the zoo! I love monkeys đ
i love how cursed city artwork reminds me of darkest dungeon :D
My biggest catastrophe is buying the box on release day⊠only for it to stay unopened and unpainted on the shelf đ€Ł
The game was reportedly trash so your not missing anything.
@@youtubevanced4900 The game is amazing.
The models are great and fun to paint
@@carlstanford7607 the models are great. I thought about getting a copy just for the models until I saw the Australian price. I think it was about $300 which is about ÂŁ160.
That's too much for a few models.
I can 3d print similar models for a few dollars so it's hard to justify.
Same though. I still have it in plastic đ
I understand their keeping quiet on new figures/games release dates until planned announcements, I don't understand why they are so bad at letting the consumer know anything after the release as it makes it so frustrating to know if you missed a games release if you are ever going to be able to get a copy (which then pushes people to look towards eBay and Scalpers)
I really loved this different video, felt so fresh. Donât get me wrong, I love all of your videos, but this felt like something new and very welcomed hahaha
Same!
Me too!
3:30 Hey, a former buyer and a current production planner here. I need to be the "achtually guy" for a moment: There is no way in hell that a company producing plastic products for consumers has a strict production plan for 3 years into the future. GW has so many products (molds) that they need to keep their warehouse stock in a secure, minimal but optimal level without hurting the customer experience (which is a fiddly thing). What GW often sells are so called campaing products/special releases which is what Cursed City is/was. What that means is that they will need all materials from other companies (booklets, rulebooks, retail boxes etc) well in advance but no more than 1-4 months before the first production batch. Obviously before they actually SELL those Cursed City boxes they need a decent estimate from sales as to how many to initially produce. This is done in the business world via market analysis and/or pre-orders to get a rough estimate. These can go very wrong at times because consumers are sometimes unpredictable, which is especially true in the world of online hype and how it manifests as actual sales.
Now, how long is a regular lead-time for say a cardboard box manufacturer or a printing company? Even during the pandemic those delivery times were no more than 3 months worldwide. The first delivery time is always the longest because the manufacturer of said add-ons needs to make the actual stencils or whatever they use for specific purposes. This all costs a lot of money: designing the minis, buying the molds, designing the game, making test runs, designing the art, commissions, marketing, distribution etc etc. which means that Games Workshop will want to pump out as many boxes of Cursed City as possible IF THE PRICE IS PROFITABLE. GW had it all for Cursed City, the art, the game, the rules, the designs but they did not push to continue supporting the game. Why is that then?
My conclusion is that Cursed City was very non-profitable and was therefore canned. It's unfortunate but it is what it is. All products have a life-cycle.
Yea I can confirm. Leadtimes for us are 3-5 months normally. Anything over a year especially is insanity and incredibly risky. To act like this is the norm or should be done is silly
How could it be "very non-profitable" given that they set their own price and the demand was there?
Missing one last joke from GW : the second expansion only came in English. I was playing in Italian with my kids , we canât finish it the same way. Very annoying
They just never learn, do they?
Why would they, if they sold real shit.. it would be sold out within the hour
They never will... absolute incompetents who knowing how incompetent they are have a vested interest in protecting themselves from anyone competent getting in
Not sure who never learns, the company thay manage to sell whatever product they load with vague promises or the fan base that jump on all these prdoucts and empties their stock in a matter of minutes
The leviathan box preorder shows that they clearly have
â@@kieranbasham2678It was better, but having the two week preorder sold out in two days, and they're only answer to that was to say go to an LGS? They still have a long way to go. I will admit that I am still angry about the line box, since I am a Dark Angels player.
Amazing. Why would you not just post something like this? "Wow, you guys are awesome! You've bought our entire production run in a matter of hours! We're thrilled at the response, obviously, but this does mean the game'll be unavailable for a while. How long? We're not sure, the *situation worldwide* is messing with our supply chain pretty bad, but we're working on it. The game will return to shelves at some point. In the meantime, have you seen our new Soulblight Gravelords starter box?" How many corporate accounts have we seen post that kind of fluff? It's not hard.
I mean, what kind of ego do you have to be rocking to think it's better to carpet-bomb the goodwill of your customers than to just admit you... well, it's not even making a mistake, is it? They just didn't see it coming. Couldn't have seen it coming. And their response punches straight through the outrage zone and lands square in the zone of WEIRD. I don't get it.
@Andrew Sullivan And? Thank you for your time. Allah Yubarik.
Because they only employ and are run entirely by morons.
These brighten up my Friday afternoons- you guys rock and I †my Soma miniature.
I really don't get their management of the Warhammer Quest games. They are fantastic entry points for Warhammer and they can reach into board game cafes and other places that should be prime recruitment spaces but they are just not supported very well. They could MTO the Blackstone Fortress expansions for example and make a ton of money. The main set has been on sale for years now but you can't even complete the story in it. That said they should seriously consider updating it considering it's really an 8th edition boxed set.
I quite liked this news style like segment but you missed an opportunity to add Lucas as the weatherboy.
Really loved this video, would love to see more like this!
I've had mine for a while and I'm finally ready to build and delve into it! The character models are amazing. I was unable to get either expansion on release but I recently found Nightwars at my LGS.
Great show! Realllllly well done!
I was incredibly lucky to get a copy on day one from my local hobby shop. I recall going in and a guy was buying 5 copies, which I found out was because he wanted to paint them up and sell them on for a very healthy mark-up. I do wish the shop would have limited this as they would have sold them to other people who would have painted and played it for the enjoyment as opposed to fattening their wallet.
that guy needed a kick in the groin. Parasite.
Need a new hobby shop dude.....
@@davidstone-haigh4880 I'm glad to have that one. Many have come and gone over the years and this one is doing okay. For leviathan they kept a strict one per customer rule.
Absolutely wild you dropped this video, Iâve just spent 3 weeks painting up one of the villains from the box as part of a diorama, and it fucking slaps!
Hey, that was a good summary and nice shirt. The print looks cool đ
I have never seen a company with such a terrible community management.
Its like they expect to go bankrupt once they showed a little transparency.
I would kinda like to know how much financial damage there terrible PR work has done to themself.
In this case I'm willing to bet they'd have made a lot more money by producing supply to meet the incredible demand lol.
Because you cannot be transparent and do FOMO at the same time. Just an IMHO
I bet itâs in the higher millions
How much financial damage you say? Easy: ZERO. GW is a very profitable business. It has been for many years. They don't care about whining customers. For every person claiming "I'm done! I'll never buy another GW product!" they get two new customers. And the cycle goes on.
@@j.f.l.bousquet1998 Yeah. People love to say that they're surely losing money this way and just ignoring profits, but it is a sure thing that someone there has run the numbers, and it has been determined that the Fear of Missing Out of a limited first run, and then simply turning it down aggressively in favor of focusing on other things, gets you optimal returns of investment (that is, you get the highest potential money spike, and after that it's all diminishing returns of investment, while you could instead already be lining up another big FOMO spike). Because as much as people love to shout that nobody will buy their next release after whatever betrayal of trust or poor communication, they have sales data to suggest otherwise.
I'm by no means saying it's good or nice, but it sure seems to be working for them just fine.
great video! pls make more video essays like this one!
I really have to state, that I really liked this video! Well done!
Very well made video, Squidmar!
And I love all the minis so much. I got the last copy at my local game store.
Iâm pretty sure if you look up the definition of âfumbleâ a picture of the Games Workshop logo appears.
They never learn from past mistakes.
This is next in my painting que, canât wait to get started on it
I managed to get the release copies. I kept it home where I thought it was going to be safe and the basement flooded, completely destroying everything except the models.
⊠The game is still available in German, nearly everywhere. Crazy. I really like the artwork of the box and trailers. Going to paint my Drukhari Combat Patrol in the theme.
the worst part (for me) was that it wasn't even a good game. many of the mission types were a complete slog. we played about 3 times, and mainly only played because I had already painted the minis and we HOPED that the next mission type would finally be the one we enjoyed. the minis are great though, I love the extra zombie/skeleton sculpts
Perfect Overview!! The truth always comes out over time! Great job!
Great stuff friend đ đ
Great (objective) summary! Thank you!
Really like the 'documentary' style videos!
Iâm sitting here just now learning about the expansions⊠and I have a cursed city box set⊠so great, nice to know I missed that
Some Indies still have them. Chaos Cards in the UK had them yesterday when I looked.
âWe sold out online, check your local game storeâ meanwhile âhey we sold a ton online, we canât meet the normal allocations to local game storesâ - Classic GW
You got something a little wrong. Someone from GW said that because Cursed City was gone and not expected to return, that was why the expansion miniatures were released as stand alone AoS models. They were sitting on great sculpts that now had no other use so they thought may as well. Presumably the original intention would have seen them released inside the expansions, at a more reasonable price point. I can't remember who said it now, but there is a good chance it was Peachy or someone he was interviewing on the Painting Phase.
Honestly the minis remind me of the old Rackham / Confrontation minis. Really good.
I just got my made to order expansions and I didn't realize they came without figures. So not only did I have to pay full GW price for them, now I would need another about 280 euro at my discounted plastic crack merchant to play it? Damn...
The minis in the box are banging though
Transparency. That's what I've told many times speaking about this game with fans (the incredible thing is that some of them insisted there was no mistake, that GW did everythig properly). If GW just had spoke with a bit of transparency, there would have not caused so much frustration and rage between the comunity. Thanks for this vid pal.
A dungeon crawler combined with a playable soulblight army, for $200 (aus) sold itself. Just sucks the expansions weren't brought out properly.
Great vid again Emil. If you could do one on your goblin army that would be great!
Never expect large companies to make the obvious and common sense PR decision when faced with the option of being able to make a bad one
Cursed Cityâs entire release saga was epically mishandled. I was so lucky to get a copy back in 2021.
Love the game, managed to get the main box from the original release, was super hyped about the game as a whole.
I'm vampire counts player back in the fantasy day that never made the jump to AOS, but the setting there looked great and right up my alley, the artstyle and design was awesome as noted in the vid.
Unfortunately the steam was taken out quickly but the whole debacle. Still managed to paint about half the box, played a couple game but could never get it rolling as smoothy to go through the whole thing.
Still got both expansion "in case" I want to return to it later on. The separate model cost is a joke though, ther's gonna be a lot of proxying if I ever get to play them.
I have Silver Tower and Cursed City. I have yet to paint either one. They reign glorious atop my pile of shame.
Needed to spend more time on those expansions. You could make a much longer video on this topic.
Its the new MO for them. The small stores regularly get way less than they order. It even has happened with the Leviathan. Pretty much every Kill Team - same etc etc... the amount of money they are leaving on the table every month is astonishing.. I talk to the owners of 2 of my local shops regularly and a third occasionally not ONE of them got as many as they were promised, or even preordered. One owner was told on Monday " as many as you want/need" Wednesday they were told "9 is all you are getting" they have 12 ppl that preordered.
It's actually impressive how incompetent GW was when it came to communication about Cursed City.
What a coincidence. I recently asked my local hobby store to reserve a box of Cursed City for me, while I deal with my backlog.
This box is not leaving my mind, I can't wait to get it
I freaking love Cursed City.. Invested a lot extra in custom terrain, tokens, 3d printed stuff, you name it.. but still got the expansions packed and shelved. That they came without mini's just broke me. I was lucky enough to get a set at launch, but the whole outrage still caught me, such a shame that could be have prevented so easily.
my favourite kind of videos !
Completely agree with you. This was the greatest box ever! This universe had so much potential and the minis were unbelievable! Why waste it so badly? Can't GW understand the fans won't buy a text only expansion? Basic rule for commerce: give buyers what they ask for!
People back in 2016ish:
Wow, gw are so much more communicative now and more about customer relations.
Gw:
For the warlord Titan resin pour you should put the entire diorama in a deep freeze to prevent is from overheating.
extreme cold might inhibit the reaction though
I have the game and the expansions and models. I like it a lot .
It really was a cursed release. I remember wanted a copy on first release and saw what happened. My local shop had only gotten one copy since gw screwed him on the amount he got and he sold it to someone online from across the country vs one of us local guys. Finally got my hands on a copy during the second print from ebay well under the new msrp. I was also very lucky to get both expansions. I'm not happy about spending such a large amount for more minis and I still don't have them all yet
I just saw today, they still have one in my local Warhammer Store.
As soon as I start thinking Disney is the dumbest corporation I remember there is Games Workshop.
I saw this game live at a game store like a year after it's release
Hi emil and Lucas Thankyou for making these videos I havenât painted a mini in 15 years before finding your channel 2 months ago.. now Iâm looking to get an airbrush and finish my armiesâŠ.
Is there a new version of warhammer fantasy or has gw discontinued it??
The inability to Order Leviathan online in the US was beyond frustrating and people in the states are relegated to ordering of Ebay or trying to piece a box together.
Cool, I just got a copy of this from my LGS for $66. Worst case scenario, I have a bunch of cool bits for my orks to loot.
I got extremely lucky with the cursed city set. My local shop (comic book store) put a copy of both the book and game on hold for me without me asking. I went in and asked if they had it (I panicked because I missed the preorder because I didn't know it was getting released tell the actual release day, and they said we put it away for me believing I would want it told me about the book (they had 2 copies of the game 1 copy of the book) so I bought that as well(came with a 9th hero) only if you bought the hardcover edition. Later on I was able to get the expansions. I have a complete cursed city set with everything they released for it (except the ulfenwatch key) I enjoyed playing it I haven't got into play the expansion with my friends and myself unable to coordinate a time to continue are adventure into cursed city.
Itâs amazing how GW never seems to learn about their mistakes and choose to gaslight the fans instead of being transparent about their struggles.
It's not like it's even remotely a new thing. GW has been stiffing it's customer base for decades.
'Gaslight' lol. Such a fashionable word atm but usually used incorrectly. GW lying to us isn't gaslighting, it's just lying.
â@@WozWozEresaying one thing, then saying the opposite and pretending you never said the original thing is literally gaslighting isn't it?
@Daniel Espinoza gaslighting is deliberately making someone question their own sanity. GW are not setting out to make thier customers question their mental health, they are simply failing to deliver on promises.
Not just GW either, look at the repeated foot-in-mouth mistakes Hasbro/WotC has been making, several of which could probably have been completely avoided just by being honest with their customers. Also, never forget, you CAN be a fan, but as far as they're concerned you're a customer, a source of revenue.
I tried the Cursed City game, nowhere near as good as Blackstone Fortress in my opinion, mostly because if you got all expansions (I'm just missing the one with Plague Marines), you genuinely cannot predict what's going to hit you because you have a GIANT stack of cards to go through and more maps than you can really cover in a campaign.
Far more replayable in my opinion.
I got one through my local store. They seem to allocate product specifically for brick and mortar which really helps with these insane demands for new box sets. If you are online shopping only its really bad.
GW truly grasped defeat from the jaws of victory
Great video. It was so confusing when Games Workshop just stopped talking about the game. It led to speculation like that they had somehow made some kind of intellectual property "mistake" so could not sell the game any more. Whose bright idea was it to be so intransparent?
I got the game at Xmas last year. Minis looks amazing - I just wish I had had any time to even assemble them. Sadly they lie, in shame, in a cupboard still...
All boxes were sold in hours⊠and got resold on the eBay for the next half of the year
I literally just saw 3 copies of this game at my local game shop
I thought the reason for blanket silence was due to copyright claim against a location in the map?
Bit like the series 3 death guard box as I've been trying to get hold of them for a while they had them up again on pre order but sold out again
I would love to watch you guys paint miniatures from Witcher old world Board game ;)
I pre ordered the Rogal Dorn tank within a few seconds of it going live, i had my messages go unanswered and no news provided online, 2 months go by and still no news, happen to stop by my local GW store and they had 3! So i snapped one up only for the model i pre ordered to arrive the very next day, no message to let me know or anything..... i love GW but my god they are hopeless
wait wait, I heard that the problem with Cursed City wa about some copyright issue, thats why there wasnt expansions with minis, and the game was sold out for a long time. When they sorted out the problem they made the expansions w/o the minis because they were out allready.
Lol. I just bought my copy 3 days ago. I was browsing some miniatures from the game and then realize that I can have a full game box at the price of those few minis that were selled From an opened game.
GW is the best motivational speaker for 3d printing.
A. time to get back to painting Cursed City.
Got game a year after release for 50% off, and scooped both the expansions. Will 3d print and proxy everything for the expansions.
the problem here was you could pre order and there wasnt enough copies, so my gw store took 34 per orders and got 17 copies leaving many angry
"One of my patrons bought 2 and was kind enough to send the other."
Fuck him, this is part of the problem of why it's so damned hard to get the stuff you want at a reasonable price.
I would say that it would cost them nothing to make a post explaining the situation and their plans but actually there would have been a big cost in humility.
For the expansions... perhaps proxy? I mean... 500$! That's a month worth of groceries...
Aaah, half-assed games that never saw the light of day... GW at its best. I come from the generation that still awaits for an expansions of Advanced HeroQuest that never came. This meant that you had to buy any extra miniatures you wanted separately, in order to make your game more diverse and exciting, and spend hundreds of pounds on Warhammer Fantasy miniatures that could come in a box.
And like the undead, this game is back in my feed.
I remember a time when you came to the store and found out that an army was released, no way to find out in advance.
I remember a time when they just scrapped a gaming system and said hey just do rock, paper, scissors for things that you dont find in these 4 pages.
The old world was no more your models that you've spend 100s perhaps 1000 on is now unvalid.
But we have some Space Marines luitenant to sell to you instead, and we also have some golden fantasy Marines, cowelves, ugly boneheads and a overpriced borring Aquarium piece for your sea elves.
At that time I just stopped buy Games Workshops models! I will not under any circumstances play age of Sigmar!
And then they hinted The Old world! It looked to good to be true. Kislev and Cathey where hinted. But we got 9 factions! When it is released its probably sold out in two minutes and never printed again!
They could just have had old models on a made to order or print on demand and said hey. Use that fraiche and be creative. And let the community control it. Because its looks like its going to be a shitshow anyway after recent fiasco. If they dont do a better job the old world will die again on release.
I on the other hand can go on playing 6th edition.
I hope they will get it right but I'm kind of certain that they will not! Which means I probably won't get a new Bretonia army! đą
I recently brought itđ
What was crazy about the GW tweet of Cursed City not expecting to come back was that it was just a comment on some random guys tweet asking when he could buy the game since it sold out instantly. From my understanding there wasn't any big announcement, GW just tried brushing Cursed City under the rug.
GW has always been about as transparent at mud. So their reaction here isn't even remotely surprising. I can't honestly remember a time when they made a decision that would support the customers.
What a sad Story! I never knew that GW screwed up there so much, and the price for the two expansions including miniatures Sounds horrible.i play this game with a couple of friends too, its really great, but with all this informations from the background they really wasted Potential. As allways your paintjob is blasting! Thank you for this great New Video đ you the biggest Inspiration for me in this Hobby and one of very few reasons why i am even into it
They really F$%&D up this one! I was SO hyped.... I completed my collection of Blackstone Fortress, and was really expecting cursed city to become something similar.
My final approach? I bought the expansions and bought the asian version miniatures.... I wasnt going to pay full price for all those minis... This was my first big dissapointment with GW.
There's also a rumor that the factory in China that made the tiles for the game had a fire and couldn't produce anymore for some time. Who knows if that's true.
Great summary. Love to see more non-painting content like this.
The game has another major issue. Although the minis are some of the best they ever did, the rules set was a dumpster fire. It was highly repetitive and boring.
Remember that this is what was hyped as the revamped MordheimâŠ. Wow
I love the commentary was a fun vid and learned a lot about what happened to the game but its rough having to watch the painting portion of the video on mute. there are ads between the ads :[
The miniatures from cursed city were absolutely beautiful. Such a shame the release was so cursed too
I'll never get how a company can try to understand its audience and simultaneously not care at all about them in a self destructive way
This video could've been titled: Games Workshop is gonna Games Workshop.
Lol my local gaming store had 3 copys and still has 2 that nobody wants to buy
I saw an advert for this and it brought me back to Warhammer after 30yrs. Luckily I came in late and didnât get bitten by the bs. Iâm curious, does this destroy the âQuestâ titles reputation and will we ever see another one?