Some years back here in Kentucky a massive Winter storm brought a layer of ice across the Commonwealth, knocking out power and making travel treacherous. Such adversity brings out the best in people, as homes open up to take in affected friends and family. Neighbors made sure to check on one another. Folks who happened to own trucks with scraper blades made at least their neighborhood a bit more traversable.
It also brings out the worst. At one point if you wanted to buy a generator from Lowe’s, you’d quickly discover that the store was sold out of them, not a one to be found. Instead, you’d have to buy one off the back of someone’s pickup truck in the parking lot- at double the price.
Depending on your own theology there may- or may not- be a special place in hell for those who chisel opportunity from the flesh of their fellow man. But whenever I feel the stirrings of frustration at scalper behavior in my chosen hobby, I try to remember that unlike electrical generators in an ice storm, hobbies are luxuries and not life-or-death situations.
Then again, I’ve never tried to order a Horus Heresy: Siege of Terra special edition during a ‘special preorder window’ before. Oy.
Let the Games Begin
Yesterday Games Workshop announced the next Special Edition for the Horus Heresy: Siege of Terra series, the anthology Era of Ruin, will be up for preorder.
If you’ve ever wondered what a sports All-Star Game would look like in Black Library form, wonder no more. The eight stories within were penned by Dan Abnett (Gaunt’s Ghosts, Eisenhorn), Aaron Dembski-Bowden (The Night Lords trilogy, Hellsreach), John French (the Ahriman series, The Dead Kingdom), Guy Haley (Genefather, The Devastation of Baal), Nick Kyme (Lords of Nocturne, Hand of Abaddon), Gav Thorpe (Angels of Darkness, The High Kâhl’s Oath), and Chris Wraight (The Lords of Silence, Vaults of Terra).
(Seriously, that’s a lineup so stacked that I momentarily experienced analysis paralysis at even deciding which two titles/series to list after each name, for the benefit of those who are newer to this incredible hobby.)
If you’re aiming to score yourself a copy, here’s some things to keep in mind.
- Era of Ruin’s special edition will not be a part of this Saturday’s preorder window, but everything else will preorder as normal. If you’re only after the regular, hardcover version of the book then it’s business as usual this weekend.
- Instead, it will release during a special preorder window on Tuesday, 10 June at 10am BST. For my fellow countrymen here in the States, that’s 5am EST.
- Games Workshop will have a queuing system in place. The way this has worked before is that everyone logging on gets placed in a holding tank before the window opens, then once it opens up folks are randomly assigned queue positions and we’re off to the races.
- It looks like you get one “entry” in the queue per cookie. So if you have three different computers and log in on each, then you’ve gotten yourself three spots in the queue. You don’t need a degree in game theory to understand what kind of behavior this incentivizes.
- Conventional wisdom of the Black Library collector’s community suggests that the queue system is particularly empowering to scalpers, and therefore less than ideal to the everyday collector. Why? Point #4 probably has something to do with that.
Around the community today, this seems to reflect the general sentiment.
But if you’re relatively new to all this, there’s a terrific primer over at Track of Words that’s well worth a read if you’d like to know more.
Surely There’s a Better Way
I’m not going to pretend that I have perfect knowledge here- only Games Workshop will truly know what the backend of all this looks like- but it seems to me that if a prestige product is announced and the response is a collective groan from your most-enfranchised fans, then maybe money (or at least goodwill, which can be converted into future money) is being left on the table somewhere.
Rather than rehash the negative, allow me to suggest a positive alternative in case any of our friends from the business side of the company happen to be reading.
A subscription to Warhammer+ costs $7 a month (or $60 a year), offering the following benefits:
- An exclusive miniature from either the 40K or Age of Sigmar range (and the option to purchase the other one)
- Expanded access to the app for the tabletop wargame, such as list-building
- Access to WarhammerTV’s stable of animations and show content
- Access to the Warhammer Vault, which contains loads of past content such as White Dwarf magazine and game supplements/rulebooks
Here’s my simple proposal. Offer an upgrade tier (let’s call it Warhammer+ Platinum) for an additional $5 a month ($45 a year, keeping with the same discount structure), which offers these additional benefits.
- A free Black Library eBook every quarter.
- A free Black Library audiobook every six months.
- Priority preorder access for select limited edition physical releases.
Would you pay that? I wouldn’t even blink. Digital goods have lower marginal costs than physical goods, with no stock depletion. That’s not to suggest that these are low-value, but rather that they are low-cost inclusions for Games Workshop. Obviously, you don’t want to give away so many goods that you threaten to impact the market for paying consumers (for example, if I spend $50 a month already on Black Library eBooks, they’d be losing money if they offered me unlimited access for $5 a month).
But there’s a sweet spot somewhere where you have the opportunity to attract new customers to formats they hadn’t previously been using. Someone who generally isn’t all that interested in listening to their books might be very surprised at just how engaging the Black Library’s audio books and dramas are, and begin making the occasional purchase (this describes me, by the way, after buying an audio to Graham McNeill’s The Last Church on a lark and finding myself riveted).
As for the “priority preorder access,” you don’t necessarily need to add in an entire layer of functionality to the existing process. Instead, you could simply ring-fence a particular quantity to make available for Platinum subscribers. You won’t be able to serve the entire subscription base this way, but you wouldn’t need to. If collectors feel that there’s a better EV with a subscription (measured in terms of acquisition rate of the product), then there will be a rational incentive for subscribing.
There’s a fairly common sentiment in the hobby’s consumer base that says, “If it’s not plastic, GW doesn’t really give a shit.” I don’t hold that view myself, but I do recognize the attractiveness of solutions that are simple, cost-effective, and enhance customer satisfaction while driving new revenue opportunities. My idea is napkin-math stuff, so if you’ve got a better solution in mind I’d love to read it in the comments!
The Best of the Rest
The other thing I was excited about in the preview this week (aside from Chaos Knights stuff) was the next eShort Subscription Week, Raiders of the Realms. This is the third “Theme Week” for short stories we’ve seen this year, and the first centered on Age of Sigmar (you can read my reviews of the previous two here and here).
Raiders of the Realms is following the same pattern with the others, being anchored by a veteran (here, Robbie MacNiven) and featuring some rookie debuts.
2013’s Imperial Creed is getting the audiobook treatment, and Gav Thorpe’s Luther: First of the Fallen (2020) will be released in paperback.
The Space Wolves Sweepstakes
The new Black Library boxed set by William King, Space Wolves: The Young Wolf, went up on preorder last Saturday. As someone who lives in the US, it’s interesting to watch how quickly the book shifts in the preceding time zones. Someone in Europe reported a sellout in under 5 minutes, while another in New Zealand said it still looked available a few hours after their window opened.
I kept an eye on it after securing mine, and the official time of sellout was 1:10pm EST.
This time I tried something different, loading up a voucher ahead of time rather than checking out using PayPal. Essentially you’re just buying a gift card for yourself, but it did make the process a little faster. I’d seen it recommended by others and thought I’d try it, and will be using it going forward.
ICYMI
Two big reads dropped this week on Goonhammer, one of which being the next installment of our running series on the 40K History of the Black Library. I covered the rest of 1998, a big year for the Library as it marked a one-year anniversary of Inferno! magazine as well as the launch of Warhammer Monthly, their new comic zine.
The other was Lenoon’s superb review of Aaron Dembski-Bowden’s Night Lords trilogy.
It’s fair to say that if not for that book, this column you’re presently reading wouldn’t exist. It was a hugely significant read for me, getting lost within its pages as I sat with my wife during her chemotherapy. ADB’s writing took the 8th Legion from worst to first for me, and Lenoon does a great job articulating what made that series so special for a lot of us. Terrific work.
Meanwhile around the interwebs, the 40K Book Club Podcast just dropped their latest, a review of Peter Fehervari’s The Dark Coil: Damnation.
And speaking of Graham McNeill, Mira Manga had a chance to interview him this week about The Outcast Dead, the seventeenth book in the Horus Heresy series.
RPG Corner
The release of the eagerly-awaited Warhammer: The Old World RPG is starting to feel imminent, as we were treated to a look at the launch bundle this week from Cubicle 7 Games. There’s also going to be a Collector’s Bundle, which we’ll learn more of soon.
They’ve also been teasing out additional content about the game, such as its career system (Ratcatcher!) and the game system itself.
Finally, as part of Warhammer Skulls their online store is 20% off through the end of this week- just in case there’s any hobby money left in the budget after The Young Wolf.
Quick Hits
- WarhammerTV released the first episode of Kill Lupercal, a Horus Heresy-set story of an Imperial Titan crew in the dying hours of the Siege of Terra. If you haven’t seen it already, here’s a look at the trailer.
- The latest episode of the Black Library Book Club on WarhammerTV has dropped, and this time it’s tackling 2022’s The Hollow King by John French.
- Looking for something monstrous to read next? Maria Haskins (The Jagged Edge) has compiled a list of cracking stories all with one very inhuman thing in common.
- Richard Swan (Blood Harvest, Tears of Raphaela) has a new dark fantasy novella coming soon, The Scour. This is being released as part of Grimdark Magazine’s novella series this year and shares the setting of his Empire of the Wolf trilogy.
- Tim Waggoner (The Skin Man) has a new tale of suspense hitting the bookstands, The World Turns Red. “Welcome to the meat room.”
- Lastly, Nicholas Wolf (Devilhunter, The Flesh Harvest) announced the next book in his YA fantasy series The Tidestone Chronicles, The Battle of Sapphire Bay.
Writers Are Fans, Too!
This is one of my favorite parts of the weekly column, getting to highlight just how invested Black Library writers are not just in crafting the stories that illuminate the Warhammer universe but also being fans just like us.
Here’s Andy Clark, author of Bad Loon Rising and Gloomspite, showing off his favorite mini from the Dark Commune.
Victoria Hayward (Deathworlder, The Feast of Saint Luthera) wasn’t able to make the UK Games Expo this past weekend, but shared a picture from a prior year making ready to walk a mile in the warmaster’s boots.
Mike Brooks (Da Big Dakka, The Lion: Son of the Forest) dubbed this the “world’s angriest Michael Stipe” for his next game of Necromunda. What’s the over/under on how many times “Everybody Hurts” or “What’s the Frequency, Keler” gets crooned right before the dice cup rattles?
Finally, Christoper Allen (False Dawn, Hounds) made some admirable progress with the paintbrush, giving a score of Night Runners their battle colors.
Have a great week ahead, folks!
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