So the new Warhammer Quest board game is no longer available online. I mean, it’s not even out yet, this is being written during the pre-order week. But they’ve been hyping it for months, and now have sold out. I believe they’re making more, so it’s probably not going to be a problem – the quote is something like, they’re going to keep the base game in stock as they have done for Blackstone Fortress, which is still available as I write this.
But the way this sold out during the pre-order window, much like Piety and Pain, and Indomitus, and the plastic Sisters box, makes me baffled, for sure!
It feels very much like GW are increasingly all about the big splash releases, selling big boxes in small quantities rather than just letting people access their product in a more reasonable fashion. There is internet cynicism abound, of course, which blames shareholders and so on, but it definitely feels like GW has at the very least, shuffled a little away from being all about public engagement. On the one hand, they’re giving us incredible releases like Cursed City, but on the other they’re not really giving everybody the chance to experience that. An actual pre-order system, whereby you register your interest to buy the product and then they go ahead and fulfil that, would perhaps have been better, going up right at the start of the hype season.
I mean, they’re a fairly large company. They should be able to deal with that, right?
As it is, my interest was kinda waning anyway, but now I’m just thinking, I have enough plastic to keep me going. I’m fine with this. I don’t really have the energy for big splash releases anymore…
/grumpy old man rant đŸ¤£
spalanz.com 
This sort of game is right up my street so I managed to preorder it.
The special edition book sold out within 10 minutes. The free key that was part of preorder was out of stock by the time I got to the checkout.
The way preorders are being handled prey on people and it’s pretty a terrible system currently.
I got lucky this time but feel sorry for those people who wanted to get special releases, miss out only to find them on eBay at twice the cost.
I know what you mean. I keep thinking back to Silver Tower, which relaunched WQ a few years ago. There were the odd special bling pieces, but everything was quite sedate and peaceful, I picked the game up at my local GW and got the special bits, and that was that! Now, it’s like the rabid scalpers are out there before us regular gaming folk have a chance to get our wallets out, and it’s certainly left me a bit nonplussed!
That’s quite the over-generalisation, for sure, but it kinda feels like things are being spoiled…