The one in Raleigh is actually doing great. Everytime I've gone in there have been at least 2 games going on, and I heard the owner saying that he had $1500 dollars of sales in one week, which was about 50% more than usual for him. Raleigh has a very large wargaming group (Triangle Sim Society if anyone is interested) and we have 2 conventions a year, so it's not a big surprise that he would be doing well.

Why Chapel Hill? They suck . What's your major?

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

@Draughluin, journalism. I never got into the NC school rivalries and I'm not into the Tarheel culture hype. I just see Chapel Hill as an internationally recognized, affordable school with a particularly strong journalism program.

It would seem we have a pattern of new GW stores opening up last year. Does it have anything to do with an anticipation of Hobbit sales?

The new gw by is enjoying great sales, the, Hobbit filling a large portion. I've helped reqruit 6 new players since December and on our way to more

I figure I’d give this thread a bump.

Last Sunday I met up with a relative newcomer to the hobby (technically I am as well… I took an extended hiatus).

The amount of LOTR items that he bought from the get-go was draw dropping. I’m talking enough miniatures to run a FOTR campaign + EFGT and then some! Quite amazing really!

But he too realizes that the Hobbit line is way passed the point of expensive. You know there’s an issue when an individual easily spends x amount of dollars and then comes to a sudden halt when considering Hobbit miniatures.

My GW’s Facebook page, which is usually updated with players submitting photos of their minis, contains a decent amount of LOTR stuff! Plenty of rangers, a mumak, elves…

There have been very little Hobbit submissions, mind you.

The manager is a very down to earth dude who I have met several times now, but it becomes quite nauseating when he asks if I have seen the EFGT box set at least once a visit. Something tells me there’s still quite a few them hanging around…

So, from my point of view, LOTR SBG is doing well, heck, I’d even call it healthy!

The Hobbit on the other hand …

It breaks my heart seeing potential hobbyists dart out of the place faster than a pack of rhosgobel rabbits.

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“There's a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.”

I've also met people like him. But we should look at the aggregate demand not individual purchases. How many newcomers to the hobby will spend such a large amount? I really do hope that SBG (be that LoTR, or Hobbit) is doing great. But it needs GW's support to flourish.

Can I ask what is possibly an Earth-shatteringly stupid question? How do people find out that GW have a range of minis and games based on Middle-earth? Ok, apart from doing a web search or being introduced by a friend? As a bit of personal research, I asked people I know had they ever heard of the company and most of them said no (these are people in the 20's-30's age range who play Halo and all that sort of stuff so we are not talking about a bunch of stamp collectors here). Those that said yes said their knowledge of GW came mainly from WH40k and that was because they knew someone else who was into it.
You see, I often wonder whether GW's relative invisibility to people outside the world of gaming is actually harming their business. Where do they advertise? Facebook? YouTube? But unless you are looking for them or stumble across them on a playlist they are not something the uninitiated is likely to encounter. Are they relying a lot on word-of-mouth/personal recommendation?
It goes beyond the Hobbit line itself, but I am curious. We are here because we like Middle-earth and are painters/modellers/gamers. What is there out there to attract new people into the hobby?

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Published ebooks:
Instrument of the Empire
A Note of Defiance
Phantom Ships, Ghost Flotilla
More to come!

The way I began was through an advertisement for The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game that came as an insert with The Return of the King video game.

That was the first and last time I saw GW advertising outside its own channels of communication.

My cousin got me started, and a friend of his got him started. I remember playing some star wars board game type thing with collectible pre-painted figures that he was into and enjoying that. Then the next time I was over at his house he had lotr sbg figures, so we did that. Soon after I was hooked.

I'm pretty sure that every minis company relies on word of mouth for new players.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

I myself came into the game after seeing LOTR in a hobby shop. I was looking at their science stuff for one of my nephews. As for GW I had heard about them in the past from a friend who was collecting Orks from Warhammer 40k but the cartoonish look to the sculpts in his catalog never caught my attention and it was years before I bought any of their products.

However, given the discontent with GW with many of the players I'm not sure how many people are recommending them anymore. I've run into several Warhammer/40k players that have left the systems and gone to things like flames of war and just tell people not to bother with GW's expensive products.

I'm sorry to 'threadromance,' but I'm still curious about this topic.

I myself have still not purchased anything Hobbit-related from GW, in part because I don't feel the same hype for Hobbit that I did for LotR and because the ridiculous prices do not correspond with my hype or the quality of the models.

Are there any official figures for how the Hobbit range is doing or has done so far? Was it a mistake for GW to bother with this range?

I have brought the Escape from Goblin Town set and the hardback rulebook, both of which are fantastic products I highly recommend to everyone - so I have given £125 to the Hobbit Range since it began (and may well have spent near that much money on lotr models since The Hobbit part 1 came out).

So no, it was not a mistake, almost everyone in the sbg community has to have spent atleast £50 on the rulebook, because the new rules are pretty funky.

However, the reason lotr models are still fun to collect is because they form powerful in game armies and some models, like Khazad Guard, Abrakhan Merchant guards, and Feral Uruk Hai, have such good profiles that they are worth the hefty pricetag. With The Hobbit models we get things like Grimhammers, who are terrible in game, Azog and Bolg who have bonkers profiles and cost too many points, Lindir who is just unplayable thanks to the lack of a mounted/armoured model.

The irony is that the two most appealing in game models, Thorin and the Goblin King, were both available in the relatively cheap starter set. Eagles are nice, and well costed, but thanks to the way good armies are structured they are tricky to fit into a list. Thror and Thrain similarly seem really handy, but they cannot lead all my lotr dwarves because of licensing differences. The two box sets that seem worth buying from a gamers perspective are the rivendell knights, Azog, and Radagast on sled, not because either are overpowered, but because they are effective, relatively easy to work into an army, and do something other units do not, which is appealing.

Great comments guys, got to politely disagree about Grimhammer rules, they are really good, throwing weapons and then a choice of weapon usage with knocked prone and the brilliant piercing strike with a D3 added to strength. defence of 6. I have yet to beat them.

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Harfoots-The first of the Hobbit people to cross over the Misty Mountains and enter Eriador.

As for how the range is doing, I remember a guy on Faiet212 saying that LotR is what kept GW out of bankruptcy a decade ago and that the Hobbit range is still giving them just enough extra sales to keep them from going out of business.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.

I don't know how GW is doing but I love the vast majority of releases made. The reason I have not purchased any Hobbit models is simply my own personal financial situation. I will wait until the second movie is released and see if another equivalent 'escape from Goblin Town' box is released before I make my move on the starter set.

So by 2016 they'll be on the ropes? I guess that means, if you have any interest in the game, get the models while you can...

Forming an opinion purely based on what I see in this community I would say its doing about average.

The new release threads are, I would say, leaning more towards being negative about the new range rather than positive (I feel this way myself).

Although there are some W.I.P. threads featuring the Hobbit range, if it was thriving I would expect there to be an overwhelming majority of threads featuring the Hobbit range, as the 'in thing'. This isn't the case.

That said this forum is definitely more active (but that could just be the Hobbit films have reminded people how much they love/loved the LOTR range rather than starting again with the Hobbit range).

I have to say that after the first couple of releases there were a lot of hobbit wip threads, mostly EFGT.

That really wouldn't surprise me, the way the prices are going they won't have any customers by then, LotR or not.

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"Leave Sauron to me."
If you're in the Raleigh, NC area, let me know.