Tomb kings in AoS

Meh, I don't think that'd work very well. You'd end up with two games that largely draw on the same target audience. One would most likely end up being vastly more popular, supported with local tournaments and whatnot. While the other dies a slow death and is only occasionally played by a handfull of players. It also runs the risk of creating a fractured playerbase, where in one city WFB is popular, but in the next city over they only play AoS which brings its own consequences.

The only way to reuse the models for different games is if they're genuinly different games (e.g. regular AoS, shadespire, warcry) with completly different systems. Not when you have basicly the same game twice but one is more complex.

What they could've done though would've been to use a kill-team like game as the "simple" introduction. The scale is smaller, you need fewer models & some of the more complex rules, like flanking, can be ignored. At the same time it is distinct enough to actually be its own game, and you can introduce a few of its own rules to further distinguish it.

I think fixing their business practices might've bought them a few more years, but ultimatly the barrier to entry would've remained super high and it'd probably had died a slow death eventually if nothing was done about the rule bloat. A reset of the complexity was going to be needed eventually.

I'd be curious to know how much of its initial struggles where due to purists just refusing to play along before eventually enough fresh blood arrived to make up for the most butthurt of purists. AoS has it's issues, especially when it was just new, but many of it's most fervent haters seem to not have much of a reason for their hate besides "it's not my pure WFB".

meh, people are far too obsessed with grimdark for the sake of grimdark lately. And the sigmarines have never been truly noblebright. The initial lore wasn't brilliant, but it wasn't terrible either. The focus on sigmarines was however an issue, and now we're finally seeing other factions in the limelight proper.

I do hope that they stop doing that. Videogames already have the nasty tendency of doing this and it completly ruins the game. At least warhammer has the advantage that it's far easier to develop houserules with a group of like-minded people to curb the worst abuses.

To be honest what's most dissapointing about this approach is that it's very short term. In the long term it ruins the health of your game, and since it prevents the meta from ever stabalizing it can create increadible issues with powercreep. Not just because new units are just statistically better. But because they need to keep getting new and shiny mechanics, and eventually the only options for these new and shiny mechanics will be mechanics that break the basic foundation the game is based on (e.g. Slaanesh's army fighting out of order)

 

To be honest I think both are about the same.

The Start Collecting boxes are great for those starting out, obviously, because they give you one or more characters as your general and cronies plus a couple of units. However, if you want to get your army up to a decent size, you need to buy additional units separately if you don't want to buy the characters again through buying another Start Collecting box.

Conversely, the old Battalion boxes gave you a good few more units so were great for expanding existing armies, but didn't include a character, so if you were starting out you would still have to buy a character as your general - I went through this experience when I started Tyranids back in the heady days of late 2010/early 2011, I bought the Battleforce box around Christmas, which was great in that it gave me 16 Hormagaunts, 16 Termagants, 8 Genestealers and 3 Tyranid Warriors, but I still needed a Hive Tyrant to lead my army so had to get him separately around Easter time (back in those days Hive Tyrants were still metal, so had to borrow my dad's Araldite to glue him together. Worked though, he's still leading my Tyranid armies 8 years later).

Personally I think it would have been better for GW to keep the Battalion boxes specifically for those who wanted to expand existing armies, while simultaneously releasing the Start Collecting boxes for new players to make both parties happy. Mantic do this for their starter and reserve force sets.

I'm still interested in having a go at the moment, especially as GW updated Fyreslayers with a new tome recently that boosted them quite a lot to make them more elite again, but if powercreep means they, Skaven and Gloomspite are shoved on the back-burner for a long time to make way for more Elf armies, my interest in taking them down to GW to play a few games will probably drop. I'd probably still have a go at playing a few games at home, but our household predominantly plays Warhammer Fantasy still in defiance at GW, so certainly Fantasy will still remain the top game in my home even if I decide to start AoS in earnest

 

That would be fun if it was set in the Warhammer world like Kill Team is set in the 40K universe, like a version of Mordheim with all the regular Fantasy factions.

Sigmarines were noblebright at the very beginning, it was only the Second Edition fluff that gave them the flaw of gradually losing their humanity with every reforging that has made them more relatable.

However, I do agree that the focus on Sigmarines was another issue that reduced AoS' popularity in the beginning.

Given that GW is still obsessed with Space Marines though, I won't be surprised if we haven't seen the last of those infernal Sigmarine battletome updates with loads of new stuff.

Agree with you there, Star Wars Galaxy of Heroes is just one of those that has gone down this route.

Well, GW seem to be only able to see things in the short-term, as otherwise they would have gone the more balanced route.

Kings of War as an example is especially well-balanced allegedly, so it seems Mantic, as usual, have learned GW's lesson in advance and gone the more balanced route.

 

I disagree. I feel that WFB and AoS are in fact two very different games. Complexity is FAR from the only thing that separates them, but that is a lengthy conversation.

While I am happy that GW is no longer bungling up my beloved WFB, there are many players that would have gladly have continued on with a 9th edition. Although it is true that there might be some overlap between AoS players and WFB players, I think many people that played WFB do not play AoS. As such, GW could have poached or maintained the player base from KoW, T9A and Oldhammer. And they could have done so "essentially" free, as the same models would be used.

An interesting viewpoint, but I feel otherwise. I'm not saying that GW couldn't have made changes to cleanup the game between editions, but a complete extinction of the game was not required. You are right that some people have difficulty getting into a complex game (I've never been one of those), but under a dual AoS-WFB system, AoS would bridge that gap. That way, you offer the choice between simpler game and a complex game to meet the precise interests of the miniwargaming player base.

 

To be honest I don't get why they don't release more battleforce boxes & boxed sets. Or at least keep them around for longer. Those both form excellent starting points for a collection as well as usually being a decent expansion. If they made sure there always was a battleforce available for each faction and say, 2 times a year they switch up what goes in it it'd be amazing and would prevent the current issues. It doesn't even have to be an official seperate box. Just make a bundle. Even with a significant discount it should probably generate more than enough extra sales to make a profit.

But for some reason we're limited to only 4 battleforces at a time, and only for 2-3 months. And 1 maybe 2 boxed games which rarely are around for longer than a year. It's quite weird.

Where they though? I mean yeah they were the "good" guys. But even in the original fluff there were stories about them being a tad overzealous when liberating a city or hunting down heresy. And yeah, they were "heroes" but they were also already teamed up with more questionable parties and several allegiances had fallen apart, betrayals had happenend. It might not have been as dark as 40K or WFB, but it wasn't exactly rainbow and sunshine either. I feel like noblebright might be rather pushing it.

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Weirdly enough they're actually somewhat in need of an updated tome for once. Their latest chamber (the wizard one) isn't actually included in any rulebooks as far as I know. Which leaves something like 10 units without artifacts, traits, battalions etc. Which is a bit weird.

To be honest I don't mind the sigmarines as much though. The only thing I dislike is that GW plasters them on everything, or well plastered them on everything till undeath things suddenly became their favorite for some reason. Most of the models are decently cool, they tend to not have super terrible OP rules & their lore is at least semi-interesting. Could be far worse.

Current AoS and WFB are quite different. However, AoS is not a simplified WFB and can't really be seen as a "easy entrypoint" at least not for WFB. Maybe for wargaming as a whole though. Important mechanics like magic, flanking, initiative create massive differences to the point that you can't really go and play one game if you're experienced in the other, you'l have to go and sit down and learn most of the rules from scratch. In contrast compare that to 40K and kill team, or AoS & skirmish. Most rules there are the same, and if you've played one you will at least be able to play a simple round of the other without constantly needing the rulebook.

Issue is that it also screws with communities. If in your local group of 10 people there's only 2 who want to play WFB and everyone else wants AOS chances are they're just going to default to AoS (or just quit altogether). Players who are willing to travel go to the bigger tournaments, or cities with particularly big wargaming scenes would be fine. But smaller communities would probably just default to one of the two games with very few people playing both. And yeah, maybe GW would poach some of the playerbase from competition like KoW, but ultimatly it seems like a lot of effort for little gain. Especially as it seems like most player communities seem to be relativly small and insulated. A small group of friends, a parent playing with their child. Hell, even most proper gameclubs/stores don't seem to have more than a handfull of regulars.

O yeah, killing of WFB in it's entirety might have been a bit extreme. Especially the lore. More could've been salvaged. However my point was that ultimatly they would've needed to put in a (near) complete overhaul of the actual game to deal with barrier to entry cuz of rulecomplexity. A new edition could potentially be enough to pull that off, but would likely piss off just as many purists as AoS did.

As for a dual system, maybe, but again AoS is not a simplified WFB, it's too different to function as entry point. Unless you simply want it to be an entrypoint into wargaming in general I guess. And again, I think having a dual system probably wouldn't work out to well unless it's a kill-team 40K system, where the "entry" game can literally be just a smaller version of the main game but with enough differences to stand on it's own. If both are just fullfledged wargames I feel you'l just end up splitting your communities with one of the two eventually becoming the dominant game while the other slowly dies out.

 

I could not agree more!

Once again we are in agreement. I don't think that AoS ports straight into WFB. However, learning to play AoS would greatly assist a new wargaming hobbyist in playing WFB. The rules may be different but there does exist significant conceptual and tactical overlap.

I am not presenting AoS as a simplified version of WFB (as is the case in the examples you provided). Both games are different enough to give players a unique gaming experience. However, after gaining experience in a game such as AoS, learning the more robust and involved rule set of WFB would not be as much of a daunting task (as it would be for a brand new player with zero wargaming experience).

I'm also not suggesting that all AoS players would move up to WFB. For some people, AoS would supply all the tactical and gameplay complexity they need. Those that prefer such a game, would continue playing AoS. On the flip side, those that wanted a more complex game would be able to graduate to WFB (and people with such an interest would have the inherent skill set and psychological predisposition to learn the more involved and cumbersome WFB ruleset).

This is true in some cases, but also unavoidable. The exact same thing can be said of AoS vs KoW vs T9A vs Oldhammer players. If GW had released WFB 9th edition, it would have captured many of the Oldhammer players and KoW players; and probably would have negated the creation of T9A. So the player base would still fractured, but at least (from GW's perspective) they would be in control of the model sales + rules, rather than competitors. What is the difference in having the player base split between [AoS and WFB] versus [AoS and T9A, KoW, Oldhammer]?

I guess that is where we differ. I don't see the learning of the rules as insurmountable (after all the game was around for decades). At my old GW shop, I saw plenty of 10 year olds playing 8th edition. Sure they won't beat players in their 20's or older, but they were having a great time amongst their peer group. As they got older, I'm sure they picked up the finer nuances of the game.

 

For wargaming in general sure. But I don't think you're going to get very far mantaining both an "introduction to wargaming"-game and a "proper diehard wargaming"-game as one company. Probably better to specialise in one or the other.

True, it's fractured regardless. But it still seems stupid to create multiple games that are in direct competition of eachother. AoS and WFB are different, but they are very much the same type of game, and they're competing for (largely) the same group of players. It's not like killteam vs 40K vs apocalypse where at least they're not directly competing for the exact same pool of players, with more inherent differences than simple mechanical differences like "this one cares about flanking & formations and the other one doesn't really" or "this one has a strenght vs thoughness mechanic, this one doesn't". The scale and setting of WFB and AoS is basicly the same (two armies clashing, fighting in unit formations with the occasional powerfull individual running around solo)

The vast majority of those 10 year olds probably came in after being introduced to the basics by an elder sibling/parent/cousin/etc. It's rare to see proper fresh blood, with no connections whatsoever, actually join the hobby. Sure they might walk into the store some day cuz they see some cool models, but very few will actually go to tournaments and gamenights if there isn't someone safe they can practise with first. Especially if the store isn't super nearby. Plus, if the game is simple enough they might convince a parent to play some practise matches, even if the parent isn't particularly interested. The more complex it is, the more dependent new blood is on the local store/community to actually get started. And joining a club is scary enough as is without having to worry about learning a complex game, and constantly getting your butt kicked. And unfortunatly those clubs are not always the most welcoming of places for a 10 year old (some are amazing, and some are filled with elitist purist that'l scoff at this kid that has painted his models the wrong colour scheme..)

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying a 10 year old is incapable of learning the game. But it is a massive hurdle. Plus, it makes it that much harder to find others to play with outside of the store. And that especially is something that can just kill off the hobby before you even get started. The average 10 year old won't exactly be eager to travel an hour, carrying several boxes of models, just to play a friendly game. And having to spend 2 hours explaining it to a friend on a playdate isn't exactly fun either.

 

Given how slow they are to update certain armies, fix certain flaws & how often there are fairly glaring flaws that need to be F.A.Q.-ed in em I'd question how low the cost would be for maintaining 2 games at an appropriate level.

Plus, people already proxy stuff. So if someone likes the GW models and wants to use them in a different system chances are they already do that anyway.

I think overall it'd just not gain them very much.

 

This...

You don't have a situation where the company would be creating multiple games that are in direct competition with each other. AoS would continue to capture the AoS market, while 9th edition WFB would have captured the KoW, T9A and Oldhammer market. Many of the KoW, T9A and Oldhammer players are not AoS players.

Also, from a GW financial standpoint, the games are not in competition at all because you are selling the exact same models to both groups. Direct competition would only occur if the second game resulted in selling less models from the first game (with the same model pool, this is impossible). So in this case we are left with a situation where GW would simply sell more models.

I'm not saying that the 10 year old was the target demographic, only that they seemed to have no trouble getting into the game and enjoying it. Of course there will be barriers of entry for a 10 year old, just as you described, but the complexity of the game didn't seem to be that significant (at least in my area). Also under my proposed dual AoS/WFB system, young kids that were unable or uninterested in playing WFB could still play AoS just as they can today. There is no downside in that regard.

 

They're all wargames, with similar settings, similar style of fluff, similar scale of warfare. There are of course differences, which give them a bigger appeal to certain people. But ultimatly they're very similar and are all fishing in the same pool of players and thus are in direct competition with eachother. Yeah, certain players might refuse to play X for whatever reason, but those still fall in the same target audience. Also, most of the players who'd prefer to play X will still play Y if Y becomes the most popular one in their community. Fortunatly most people aren't diehard purists. And given that wargaming is already a niche hobby to begin with, a lot of players simply won't have much of a choice but to go for whichever one is most popular in their immeadiate surroundings. Unless they happen to be lucky enough to have acces to a community for every game.

Would be interesting to have numbers.

The models wouldn't, but the games would be in competition. Both draw on the same pool of resources to create rules. Both draw on the same pool of players who will have to learn the game, and keep up to date. And one of the two is most likely going to be more popular. And if the difference becomes big enough, it'l create a cascading effect. If there's no tournaments for your game, you either stop or switch games. If enough people switch, there'l be even less tournaments. Likely leading to the eventual death of the unpopular one. Not to mention the appeal of putting ever so slightly more resources into supporting the more popular one. Giving more art, better books, whatever. Further hastening along the death of the unpopular one.

I think this might be a supremly important detail. I wouldn't be surprised if the issues I see with your suggested setup are magnified manifold, or nigh irrelevant, depending on where you happen to be and how the wargaming community there happens to be.

 

Hey now! Don't be dissing us die-hard purists!!

Even if one of the games is more successful, that doesn't mean that the other would dwindle out of existence. Otherwise, there would be no other game besides 40k. This holds true even in a fantasy setting. AoS is currently more popular than KoW, T9A and Oldhammer, yet those games continue to exist and have dedicated fan bases.

In terms of drawing from the same pool of resources to create rules, that is true. That is the one small expense that GW would have to incur in order to maintain both games (as the model designs, molds, artwork and packaging is shared between the two games). GW would have to hire a couple of more rules writers. This is hardly a major cost for such a large company and the sales of the rule books themselves should easily offset it (and may even turn in a small profit). As such, there is no real financial downside to maintaining both games.

I'm trying to look at this from a market share standpoint. GW is in the business of selling models, and the more customers it can siphon off of competitors, the better. Simply put, AoS + WFB would capture a larger market share than AoS alone. Why not capture and sell models to...

• KoW players
• T9A players (who are increasingly being served by models from other companies)
• Oldhammer players (as you could sell them new WFB armies and units)

After GW sells the models, it doesn't really matter to them if those consumers are playing exclusively AoS, WFB or a combination of both. The point is to sell as many models to as many people as possible. GW would rather have their two games compete with each other (because the same models are being purchased by both) than having to face external competitors. Best of all, they can capture this extra chunk of the market share with very little investment on their part (just hiring a few more writers).


Of course, from my vantage point, the creation of 9th edition would be terrible. 9th Edition would absolutely obliterate the 8th Edition community. Although I would have wished for GW to complete the last 3 outstanding army books and release a final all encompassing FAQ, I am happy with the state of 8th edition. I am happy with a WFB game that is free from SCE and other AoS models/armies that I am personally not fond of.

 

I'l never stop

Go look at AoS vs the LoTR game. They are also largley in direct competition with eachother, and are run by the same company. The LoTR game seems to be vastly less popular, and recieve vastly less support by GW. Just compare the lack of new releases, how much fewer white dwarf articles it gets, or even the complete lack of features like the regimental standard to flesh out the world. Or better yet, look at the very telling fact that it didn't even come up in the list you just mentioned of games that exist. It seems to only barely be hanging on, and I fear that what you describe would result in the same outcome.

As for 40K vs AoS, those aren't in direct competition (as much) as it's sci-fi vs fantasy. So there's space for both to exist without immeadiate competition.

As for the others you listed, 2 out of 3 are fanbased projects mantained largely by the aformentioned die-hard purists. Chances are it'l die out unless it manages to get some official support again (or just randomly blows up out of nowhere and becomes super popular for no apparent reason) when the current generation grows old as it'l struggle to draw in fresh blood aside from the occasional younger brother or son of one of those purists without that official support.

As for KoW, and the handfull of other competitors. Yeah they exist, but only in the fringes. Noone seems to be capable of even coming close to GW. And as far as I know there's noone who's big enough to really warrant the title of "competition". Hell, most of em i've never even seen in real life in a store or at one of those tradeshows (admittadly I should go to more of those ). But then again, might be that one of the competitors is super big in some random country I don't know off. Would love to see some estimates of how popular the various games are to be honest. Could be interesting, maybe KoW rules say the south american market while only having a 1% share where I am or something like that.

It'd also require a whole new host of testers. Not to mention the needed marketing. And potentially some fluffwriters. Which would actually be quite significant costs. And I think the gains are simply fairly insignificant.

Noone's stopping you from using AoS models for those other games though. They don't need to maintain the ruleset for KoW to sell those models. Hell, there's plenty of companies that sell models explicitly as proxies for other games. Sometimes to the point it gets dangerously close to copyright infringement.

Anyway, ultimatly I think that for a wargaming company it's not usefull to maintain 2 different games set in a similar setting, with a similar scale of warfare & a similar gamebasis (similar duration, similar phases, similar objectives, similar basis for most mechanics e.g. both games are based around units of soldiers not around individuals) with the only real differences being "this one's a bit easier to master" or the occasional mechanical differences like "this one places more emphasis on the importance of flanking & unit cohesion"

 

LOTR is a very different case. It was on a slide long before the existence of AoS. It was very popular back in the day as the movies were being released in the theater but then had a sharp decline. It's mediocrity can hardly be attributed with co-existing alongside of AoS.

Maybe it will die out... maybe it won't. Tough to say. Bloodbowl existed happily for many years before GW decided to support it again. The fans supported a living rule book and the game continued to thrive long after people thought it would die out.

Personally, I'm not a fan of T9A, but I cannot deny that it has a strong fan base and is actually very well supported (probably better than most non-SCE AoS armies). Aside from just rules, there are more and more companies that are coming on board to supply the game with miniatures. As for WFB, it continues to stubbornly stick around. There are still many groups that still play 6th edition (which seems to be a popular one), let alone the fan base of the much more recent 8th edition. The fact that it continues to endure despite any support is telling.

As far as KoW goes, I've never played or interacted with it. I don't know how far reaching the fan base is and in what countries it does well in.

The main point is that [KoW] + [Old Hammer] + [T9A] + [WFB players that left the hobby when WFB was discontinued] equals a lot more of a market base than you give it credit for. True, that the last one would only have been retained if the AoS + WFB coexistence would have been maintained right from the start (I don't know how many of those people would actually return to the hobby if WFB 9th edition was released today, I suspect not that many).

I don't think GW invests too many dollars in game testers (even for AoS or 40k). That sort of thing can easily be accomplished for virtually free among veteran players. In any event, it is not a significant expense.

As far as fluff writers go, most of that stuff is recycled from edition to edition anyways. Most of the 8th edition army book fluff is either a straight copy from 7th edition or a very slightly altered version of it. Nothing really that cost prohibitive here either.

True, but nothing is incentivising you to do so either. Why buy a proxy when you can buy something that perfectly represents the units you are fielding as dictated by the ruleset?

The games are much more different than you make them out to be. WFB was a large scale massive battle game and AoS is a skirmish game. AoS is probably closer to 40k at this point than it is to WFB.

This is where we truly differ.

You think the costs of maintaining WFB are significant. I feel that the costs are absolutely negligible and should be fully negated by the revenue of the WFB rule book sales.

You think the gains from offering players WFB are insignificant. I think there is a significant market share to be captured with very little effort or financial investment on GW's part.


Of course, we'll never really know for certain. There isn't really any factual data available to either of us. As such, this point of disagreement is ultimately un-resolvable and based purely on speculation (on both our parts).

Personally, I think the whole hobby (as we know it today) will likely die off. Once 3D printers get sophisticated enough to duplicate GW models at a fraction of the cost, I think GW (and other similar compaines) will be in big trouble. The technology is get better and cheaper every single day. It is only a matter of time.

How many $200 models will GW be able to sell when somebody can simply torrent a 3D printing file for the model and print it at home for mere pennies on the dollar? Especially considering that the fan base is usually pretty pissed off at GW price increases anyways. Today it is not yet viable as most people don't own 3D printers and even the ones that do, the quality is a far cry from the quality of legit GW produced models. These conditions will change however.... 10 years? 15? less? more?

 

The actual game was quite nice. I especially liked how it allows for more elite units without immeadiatly letting them crush cannonfodder. Was a nice way to create heroes that are appropriatly heroic, but never could solo entire armies like say a ghoul king on terrorgheist can.

As far as I can tell the bigger issue is that it simply never got all that much support and was mostly riding the tailcoats of the movies. With little marketing of their own and not many sideactivities like global campaigns either.

If other companies jump into the gap it becomes vastly more likely to survive. And yeah, it'l survive for a while. Hobby groups that grew up playing WFB and for whatever reason didn't switch to AoS will probably stick with it until the group falls apart. But these groups are unlikely to draw in (many) new members. And once these groups start dying out I suspect WFB will go with them. Admittadly, it might be decades before the last of those groups finally kicks the bucket, but it'l slowly be fading into obscurity along the way. Admittadly, that is assuming both small events like store tournaments and bigger GW sponsered events have also died out now that GW has pulled their support. If those events manage to stick around, supported by the fanbase or by other companies, then it's significantly more likely it'l manage to survive. But it requires that there is more than some groups of friends playing. It needs exposure to the outside world.

It would be a significant expense if they actually did it properly.. imho GW testing cycle seems sub-optimal to say the least... Proper testing is expensive, and difficult.

Cuz it's cooler? Plenty of companies that try to make a living by providing proxies and they seem to be succesfull enough.

Yup

meh, I suspect that's not going to go at that rapid a pace. Aside from quality & cost 3D printing simply takes ages. And the general public does not have much use from a 3D printer. The improvements needed are fairly massive & to the average consumer a 3D printer is little more than a novelty. Also, there's the fact that unless you are into something like wargaming, there isn't a whole lot that's worth the effort of printing at home as a regular consumer. Something like furniture requires too big a printer, and unless you use 100's of em getting a 1000,- printer to print household objects like cups or plates doesn't really seem worth the effort either. So there's no real incentive to develop a good consumer printer currently (at least not one that I can think of). Unless that changes I don't think this should be too big an issue any time soon.

 

You're definitely right about the difficulty in gathering fresh new players. I suspect that it will continue to live on in a limited fashion. That's the advantage of us die-hards, we really know how to keep a game around. I've seen several AoS forum members on Lustria pick up a fully supported AoS and drop it while I happily go on enjoying 8th edition.

If you're talking about what will happen beyond the physical lifespan of WFB players, none of us have any clue what so ever. Our entire niche hobby could be gone by then. There are lots of increasingly competitive hobbies and interests out there and many trends are increasingly shifting towards the digital. Who knows. Too many variables.

I second the sentiments expressed by @Killer Angel .

3D printing takes ages today, but technology grows at an exponential rate. Think of the peak levels of technology that were available a mere 15 years ago. Cost will decrease over time while quality and printing speed will only improve over time. That is the nature of technological evolution. I remember when the first plasma flat screen TVs cost $20,000. Now even vastly better flat screen TVs cost only a couple of hundred dollars.

At some point, most people didn't have TVs. At some point, most people didn't have computers or traditional printers. At the moment I agree with you that 3D printers are a novelty, but I suspect that in time they will become commonplace.

 

Sure, but mostly for industrial purposes. I don't really see any reason for consumers to have a household 3D printer though. What exactly would be worth the effort of getting your own printer for? Even if it were cost efficient, what exactly would be worth the effort of getting your own 3D printer? What is the average consumer going to need to use a 3D printer often enough for to warrant getting one themselves? The only "normal" consumer use I can think of is printing stuff for various board games. But that seems rather an extremely niche market to base the entire consumer grade printer industry on, especially seeing as many people would rather be lazy and not have to go and search for the patterns themselves.

Seriously, what is the industry expecting consumers to do with 3D printers at home aside from novelty projects and maybe the occasional home artists making a sculpture or something?

 

This is one of the main reasons, but as a collector and player of Middle Earth models myself I also personally blame two other reasons why Middle Earth is on the decline:

1. The February 2012 army selection rules changes. Originally as long as you had a hero as your General and some regular troops (unless you played an all-hero faction like the Fellowship or Thorin's Company) it was a legal army. However, when February 2012 came round, GW released 5 condensed sourcebooks that altered the army selection rules so that you had to have one hero for every 12 non-hero models (the so-called 'warbands'), and you could have heroes on their own without any non-hero units, but you couldn't have any non-hero models in a unit without a hero to lead them, which, compared to the Warhammer Fantasy, 40K and even AoS army selection rules is pretty silly, and a deliberate ruse to get people to buy more hero models, as previously you only needed one or two, and only bought more than that if you wanted to have an army with more heroes, not because you had to. This made the game so much less flexible that I wouldn't be surprised that many players just gave up there and then. What makes it worse is that this awful army selection ruleset remains in the new edition that was intended to revive it.
2. GW shifting the production of all new Middle Earth units and characters to Forge World. This was the biggest mistake GW ever could have made with resurrecting Middle Earth - not only are Forge World minis even more crazily-priced than the regular plastic GW minis, they are also only purchasable in the Warhammer World store and select independent stores if you don't want to buy them online (like me, although I understand not everyone has this latter problem). Have any of you noticed the horrendous price of the Iron Hills Dwarf Chariot (£100 for a model that is pretty small and unimpressive compared to, for example, a Trygon which has the same size base - I think I talked about this once before in another thread)? Talk about putting your customers off.

From both of these reasons and the fact that they continue to release minis and supplements for only the most famous characters and the frontline races, i.e. Gondor, Rohan, Lake Town e.t.c, rather than doing more to examine the more fantastical elements of Tolkien's world, it is certainly fair to say that GW still don't care that much about Middle Earth despite the attempted revival, which is a damn shame.