There are two separate issues here to my mind, the impact on SG and the impact on LOTR.
On the Specialist Games front it makes me really sad, I had long, long, LONG term plans of getting a Brettonian and Araby Warmaster army and there's really no way that'll happen now (the prices on ebay will skyrocket the moment they're unavailable, just like Man O War). I was staring at the GW website for ages at about 1am this morning debating buying an entire 3000 point Brettonian army and what bits of the Araby range they had left, it'd probably cost me about £400. Unfortunately, I'm not in the financial position to be able to spend that kind of money on an army that will realistically be AT LEAST 4 years down my painting schedule. I've still got a bunch of Undead and High Elf units, an entire unpainted 3000 point Empire army and the Battle of 5 Armies box set to paint for Warmaster and all my hobby time at the moment is devoted to LOTR.
Ultimately, I just plumped for 2 blisters of High Elf Eagles to complete that army, I needed the Empire War Alter too but that had already sold out. It makes me genuinely sad to see these games disappear from the website, the various games contain some of the greatest, coolest and most unique models GW have ever produced and it will be a major loss to not have those figures and ideas represented on the website. It also marks the final death of the 'Old' company for me, that fabulous GW from the 90s where there was a new game/range every year and which genuinely felt like a games company that was attempting to make fun and engaging rules rather than a miniatures company that was only interested in profits.
However, I do feel that I (we?) have had a hand in this; I consider myself to be pretty into Warmaster and have bought about 4-5000 points worth of troops over the last 2 years. ALL of this has been from ebay, I haven't bought a single blister from GW, assuming that this is the case for most SG fans then I can understand why GW would see these ranges as unprofitable. It's somewhat analogous to those people who watch reality TV shows, don't vote and then moan that their favourite contestant got voted out. Surely once we stop buying from GW direct we lose the right to complain about what GW sell direct? Granted I, along with others no doubt, have been pushed away from GW by the Warmaster blisters jumping from £5 to £8.70 but the point remains that if we had all been buying our SG models from GW they might have continued to support them, who knows?
As for the LOTR models, that's far more worrying as it's a game that they're still supporting in their stores and I'm sure many of us still buy metal models from the website. There were about 6 months early last year when we were getting LOTR models converted to Finecast every month and have now not had anything in ages as if their LOTR Finecast process is finished. This makes me think that the other models won't get converted to Finecast and I fear we might be about to see the first major wave of discontinued figures since the SBG began.
Time will tell though I guess. This morning I raise my glass and doff my cap to Warmaster, Blood Bowl, Mordhiem and Necromunda, fantastic games all that have given me 20 years worth of good times. You will be missed
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Finished 2nd in the 2014 GBHL. My Wife's so proud
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I'm assuming finecast....
(sorry bank account 
)
