DEAD? What Games Workshop Should Do With Warcry

0:00 In this video, I'm going to tell you what Games Workshop should and shouldn't do with War Cry in 2025. Is it dead or something else? So, War Cry, huh? If you don't know what War Cry was, I'll tell you real quick. It was a Games Workshop fantasy skirmish game set in the world of Age of Sigmar. Think kind of like Killteam but in Age of Sigmar and then you'd be pretty close. It played on the same kind of smallsized board as Killteam 22 by 30 in and it generally had four to 15 models per side. It had these kind of special bespoke forces that you would buy to play like in the newer versions of Killte, but it also had a compendium book that allowed you to use a very wide selection of current Age of Sigmar figures as well. Now, some of you will notice that I'm talking about War Cry in the past tense, and that's with good reason. War Cry came out originally in 2019 and then had kind of a second edition come out in 2022. Games Workshop generally releases their games on a kind of annoying three-year treadmill except for maybe a few outliers in their in their, you know, catalog. And therefore, a new edition of War Cry was expected for this summer 2025.

1:31 However, there hasn't been a peep about War Cry on the Warhammer community website since September of 2024, nearly 8 months ago, as of this recording. And it's a little bit more than just radio silence. A few months back, the official Games Workshop web store listed the entirety of all War Cry product as online only. And the Warhammer stores have allegedly been sent information to remove the War Cry products from the shelves. And there was supposed to be, you know, according to this missive, some sort of follow-up article on Warhammer Community that was related to the move, right? But now that article still hasn't appeared, so I'm not really sure whether there any of that stuff about the physical stores, you know, being told to take it off the shelves was actually true or not. I don't know any Warhammer store managers because we don't have any specific Warhammer stores real close to where I live. But the War Cry product being online only on the Games Workshop web store is true and it's still true today. Also, uh, Adepticon, the biggest miniatures wargaming convention in the US and potentially, I think maybe also the world, has kind of come and gone. And Games Workshop had their traditional Wednesday night preview show, you know, there talking about new products and all that kind of stuff and whatnot. And nothing was said about War Cry. Not a word. This seems significant as it was

3:03 generally kind of believed that if Games Workshop was going to announce a third edition of War Cry in the summer, Adepticon would have been where it was announced. So, the real question that is probably on your mind now, uh, Uncle Adam, why are you talking about this? Games Workshop probably has like reasons for their actions like low sales or some other kind of corporate bugaboo, right? like what what's what's it matter? Well, it matters to me because I really like War Cry. In fact, I think that it's the best game that they have currently available, even though it's only available online only currently. The rules are excellent and fast-paced with like really interesting game mechanics. Also, the bespoke model sets are amazing sculpts for the most part. And you can also have more agency over how you build your war band by using the great compendium that I mentioned to build custom teams as well. The initial War Cry Launchbox back in like 2019 included some of the best terrain sets that Games Workshop has ever made for any of their games in my opinion. When second edition was launched, then it was unfortunately a lot of those weird looking meat trees, but the game itself was still very solid. The second edition didn't make like sweeping changes kind of like the difference between first and second edition Kill Team did, right? But instead, it just added some sort of small tweaks like the reaction system, which made their best current rule set,

4:35 at least in my opinion, even better. So, since it kind of seems like the writing's on the wall, as they say, and there won't be any more War Cry, new or otherwise, then I've got some ideas on what Games Workshop should do and not do going forward. The first one, honestly, is pretty easy. If they're discontinuing War Cry, then they should put all of the rules up as free PDFs on the download section of the Warhammer community site. Now I know that some of the core rules and the compendium are actually already there but they should stay there and all the other you know war cry books the current ones from second edition should be put up there as well. Now why would they bother? Well it's because of that compendium which allows you to use hundreds of current Age of Sigmar models in War Cry. If you keep those PDFs up there, which will cost honestly very very little per year, like in server costs and traffic and whatnot, they would see people who want to play War Cry buying more of the Age of Sigmar models that are compatible with War Cry.

5:46 They wouldn't have to necessarily, you know, Games Workshop wouldn't have to support the game, but people that wanted to play would still be able to do so, and it would probably drive some sales to, again, like I said, the existing Age of Sigmar line. And also there's precedent. For years and years back in the day, you could go to the old uh specialist games section of the Games Workshop website. Uh specialist games was basically the division that made the games that weren't like Warhammer 40k or Warhammer Fantasy. Games like Necroanda and Blood Bowl and Mheim to name a few. these days. Now, we have uh new versions of Necroanda and Blood Bowl available to purchase, but not Mheim. Yet, Mheim is still amazingly popular for a game that hasn't had a new release since like the mid 2000s. And I think it was because of the free PDF that they used to have online. Free PDFs on the Games Workshop website would help to extend the life of a game like War Cry, which they perhaps are not supporting anymore. Would the game still be played in tournaments at big conventions and such? Probably not.

6:59 Usually, competitive players kind of like there to be updates and balance changes and all that kind of stuff. So, they feel like the game is more supported. However, casual players would still have access to the excellent rule set and, you know, be able to play with Age of Sigmar models that they'd buy from their local store and it could gain traction and eventually be like Mheim is today, which is still played all over the world. Speaking of Mheim, one thing that Games Workshop shouldn't do is decide to remake Morheim. I've seen a lot of speculation online about how that's maybe something that they're going to do if War Cry is, you know, truly gone, and I don't think it' work out well for anyone. Mheim, if you're unfamiliar, was a skirmish game played in the old world, not in Age of Sigmar.

7:46 was played on a 4ft x4 ft board and it was best if the board was really quite dense with terrain. It was an earlier time and people were more interested in like scratch building their terrain for mheim boards back then. Games Workshop even made books about it. Nowadays, they'd have to tool up tons of all new plastic forces and terrain for a new Mheim game, which would be a huge financial gamble. Or they'd use older models coming from the old world, which you know they've brought back and everything like that, which would put off some players, or they could move the world of Mheim into the Age of Sigmar, which would potentially put off other players as well. The rules would end up being completely different than the original ones, I would suspect. And then that would end up making like two types of Mheim players which would fracture the player base within their own title which is weird and hasn't really happened too much before I don't think.

8:46 Maybe Necroanda I don't know it just all kind of seems like a big risk. Honestly, if they wanted an easy and low impact way to bring back Morheim, just to kind of get off subject here a little bit, they could just follow the advice that I suggested in the past, Pachchow, and re-release the original book in a print ondemand format on Wargame Vault or Drive-Through RPG. They're the same company, so you know, whatever. uh people who wanted it could then buy a physical copy from one of those places and it would be nearly no risk to Games Workshop as printon-demand books like don't need to be printed in bulk ahead of time like someplace and then shipped around the world. They don't need to be warehoused, all that stuff. They're printed on demand, hence the name. They could literally set up the file, all that kind of stuff, set it and forget it and then just let the money trickle or maybe even flow in. Another thing that they should do is take a good long look at their current game lineups and see if maybe they just don't need a fantasy skirmish game, right? Like they gave War Cry a good try. And though I loved it, it didn't seem to sell that well, right?

9:53 Otherwise, they'd still be releasing things for it or at least talking about it on official channels and they're just not. Just because there's like a skirmish sci-fi game, right, Kill Team, which is on its like third edition at this point now, doesn't mean that there has to be a skirmish fantasy game, I suppose. I mean, maybe Warhammer Underworlds could fill that spot. I don't know. If we're totally honest, Games Workshop's fantasy side just doesn't sell as well as their sci-fi titles. This year at Adepticon, if you got a swag bag with your badge, it was just, you know, it was a up up fee on your regular badge. You can get a badge without a swag bag and get it with. If you did get your swag bag attached to your badge, then you got a free copy of Scaven Tide, which is the fourth edition launch box for uh Age of Sigma. It came out last summer, I believe. They gave away Pallets of that game at Adepticon.

10:50 And about 3 years ago, they did the exact same thing with the third edition Dominion launch box at Adepticon. But they've never given away 40k boxes like Leviathan or Indomitus because those boxes always sell out. So though I strongly believe that skirmish games are easier to get into as a beginner than Army games are, uh tell me in the comments down below if you think I'm wrong and also why. Don't just be like, "Well, you're wrong." Uh maybe they just don't need to make a new fantasy skirmish game to replace War Cry. This would allow them to focus on other games that they already have out there, put their resources elsewhere, right? Maybe this is all a kind of early indicator of where the global economy is headed and they just decided that they needed to cut weight as it were and War Cry maybe seemed like the best candidate. We won't probably know because Games Workshop doesn't seem to like to communicate this kind of stuff to its customers. I mean, technically, there is still a light at the end of the tunnel. They could potentially release a new third edition of War Cry in the fall, which means that they could announce it at maybe like the Tacoma US Open in July or maybe even at the Nova Open in Washington DC at the end of August. But since there aren't any big tentpole releases this summer, right, there was no big huge launch this summer like uh you know, Age of Sigmar fourth edition or 10th edition 40k the

12:22 last two summers. Then like people kind of assumed that they were going to release War Cry in the summer because there wasn't anything else much really that big going on. And it all kind of seems a lot less likely now. War Cry was a great game that was a bit hog tied by having an entire season of expensive meat tree box releases, right? But maybe also it was also hog tied just by being a fantasy themed game, right? I've had discussions with my friend Sam Lens about, you know, what he'd really like is a a sci-fi version of War Cry Rules, what he refers to as sci. And I don't really disagree. I personally identify more as a science fiction gamer, but War Cry did have fun and elegant rules and some pretty great models and great kind of list building mechanics and all that kind of stuff, but I probably would have enjoyed it even more if it was Sciry more so than the current version of Kill Team for sure. So, what do you think will happen with War Cry? Will they finally announce a new edition kind of weirdly late? Or is the kind of online only status on the website uh a harbinger of the end of days for this title? Or will they make a new Mheim and let the chips kind of fall where they may? Or maybe even something else? Let us all know what you think down in the comments below. And while you're down there, engage in some depressment of the like button if you enjoy my

13:53 prognostication videos of what Games Workshop will or will not do in the future. If you want to see more videos like this every single Friday, there's also a subscribe button down there. You could hit that as well. Thanks for watching.