Quote Originally Posted by Mr Mystery View Post
Though of course, Age of Sigmar has shown GW are now happy to put the rules out for free.
Actually, the old Specialist Games set a mark for that. Then they stopped down that (even though Mordheim could have helped selling the Warhammer range).

AoS might have had free rules, but it was kind of a necessity given that they needed to try to salvage the Warhammer line (and, assuming it was in bad shape before, the fact that they've seen a revenues dip means it's still in bad shape, because they didn't learn the biggest lesson).

But then we see BaC, which has the rules in the box, not free. And the announcement for this new stuff used BaC as a reason for why they assume it'll all be successful. It does indeed sound like they're going for core stand-alone stuff... but that'll lead to issues with people who don't want the core game stuff.

We already have that issue, though, with 40K. Sure, you can skip on the starter box, but then you still have to pay $85 for a rulebook and $10-$15 for templates before you can start playing. Oh, and a codex, but that was always something you'd need. But GW thinks that's not really an issue for attracting players, despite the $150 or so price tag before you can even buy models to play with.

Thinking on this, though, why is this such an issue? The old Blood Bowl boxes had two teams and everything else you need to play, and no one saw an issue with that, even if you wanted to play, say, Dwarfs. Is it because we're pretty certain they'll stick a high price tag on the game, and resin team kits will be even more expensive? If so, that's more a failure of GW's pricing scheme than the box method. Necromunda, Mordheim, Adeptus Titanicus, Space Marine, Titan Legions... All of these games came with two forces in the box that you could build on or replace. It wasn't an issue back then. But GW didn't charge $125 for a board game, and $150 if that board game has more depth to it, back then. Makes you wonder what a proper core starter game will cost. If they want $125 for the core game and $75 for a team, then it's going to have trouble drawing people's attention, especially when they can already get nice Blood Bowl teams elsewhere.