No Longer Available on the US GW Website

[connahr]

good point

however i can understand the cutting back of specialist games for forge world as it must be such a small part of their business which isn't as much as the main shops

it's still a shame to see these games getting killed off, when they still have alot of support

i'm sure that if games workshop were to market the specialist games better, then sales would increase and they would become economically viable again

[Jimmy Zimms]

i'm sure that if games workshop were to market the specialist games better, then sales would increase and they would become economically viable again

There's some of this covered in a great thread over at WarSeer. While specifically discussing Epic the points that E&C makes and discusses some of his 1:1 with GW staff, they are in general applicable to Specialist Games as a whole (or specifically GW management's feelings on the range). I am not sure if this is where he discussed his attempts to actually license the Epic range from GW or not but let's just say some of what he encountered was colorful to say the least.

[Gorlak]

I was as devastated as I'm sure everyone else is at the news these models are being put oop, my own reaction was quite surprising to me yesterday.

I don't really know how I feel about the slightly ridiculous £150 I just spent to get the last BFG models I'll presumably buy from GW. On the one hand I'm excited to have them, but it feels like I've either been strong armed into it (of sorts) or that I have essentially validated/rewarded this move. On the other hand, im wondering if I should being pickjng up more Forge World ships. Weird feelings. Looks like my hopes of owning a Repulsive or Ad Mech light cruiser have become considerably harder. :s

[Thinking Stone]

 

I hadn't even had the chance to actually get some real ships...  . Living down south and being money constrained (like any reasoning person these days, especially with GW prices!) makes it much harder to acquire BFG ships, although conveniently pieces of cardboard do a really good job .

According to the GW Australia site, the only No Longer Available ship is the Eldar Void Stalker. For now.... Can those in other countries get Void Stalkers?

I imagine that the BFG ships in metal are being discontinued because their stock is running out. Except for a few LoTR SBG miniatures that were more alternatives than critically needed (e.g. Aragorn #5 ), most have been put into finecast or are otherwise still available (to my knowledge), so it seems like they might simply be not casting metals any more. Although metal moulds are the cheaper ones, are they not?

It was really nice to have just the last edges of Specialist Games supply available, allowing us to do our own thing without too much 'interference' from GW but I had been wondering if/when this would happen.

On Warseer (and I'm sure on Dakka Dakka and all their friends) there are often rumours/wishes of GW re-releasing BFG/other SGs as a boxed set (as with Space Hulk and Dreadfleet). Most are speculation, I am sure, but this is a pattern that has been followed before and could happen sometime in the future. But perhaps with something we don't recognise .

The next step: what's a list of good BFG miniatures to buy ? At least with Tyranids and Dark Eldar one can use WH40K miniatures as a base .

Anyway, this is like finding out a really nice bit of forest that thou played at/enjoyed thy whole life was bulldozed a few months ago and all that's left is a demountable.

[BaronIveagh]

What's truly astonishing is how fast everything is selling out.  BFG was really popular.  Imagine if they had invested time and money into it.

Glad I got my replacements when I did (thank you a lot guys) because that may have been all she wrote.

[lordgoober]

actually there are some key pieces of lotr stuff that's out of production now.  Both the Harad Chieftain and Mahud King are OOP now as is the Mahud grunt with blowpipe.

[Vaaish]

Interesting, the AdMech light cruiser is back in stock on the US GW site. Seems to still have the marine battlebarge and SC too. I thought I heard someone mention that it was gone already.

[khorne inquisitor]

So I am a newcomer to the BFG scene and I find myself entering at a bad time.  I am also trying to get others at my FLGS to get into it as well.  For the metal models being pulled, are there any suggested alternatives? 

For example, I am looking to get one of each Chaos BS, but they are sold out.  I have looked at the firestorm armada stuff but is it of comparable scale? Are there any other places I can get them (none on Ebay...). 

With BFG sales ending on GW (well, at least the metal models) does anyone here see this as a real end to the BFG community?  Not sure how staunch this community is.

[Vaaish]

There may be options available in the near future for players and ebay tends to have bfg fairly regularly. I usually get the best results searching for battlefleet gothic rather than bfg or specific ship names.

[Markconz]

Khorne Inquisitor I'm also a new player, but not that worried about SG ending, there are plenty of other excellent star ship companies in existance or coming into existance that have nice ranges.  E.g. even before I heard SG was shutting down ranges, I had got some Dark Realm ships to use as a Craftworld Eldar fleet because I liked the design more (and cheaper!):
http://www.forum.specialist-arms.com/index.php?topic=5341.0

[Armiger84]

To echo Vaaish and Marconz, the community is most certainly not fading away.  AfterImageDan is curating the community's currently ongoing full-spectrum overhaul of the BFG rules, which thankfully hasn't been very drastic though it's fixing a few balance issues that my gaming group had noticed as far back as, well, BFG's launch and the Armada supplement (I mean seriously?  The Emperor BB outgunned the Retribution BB on a broadside, not counting lances, and was cheaper?  Props to one of my friends for staunchly insisting on playing his Retribution back then...), and we've got some really talented artists in the community too, guys I'm frankly in awe of.  We already have a community-designed alternative to a long-OOP light cruiser, there's a bunch of stuff kicking around on Shapeways if you poke around there, and I wouldn't be surprised to see other community ship projects get off the ground in the next month or two.

Sure, GW pulling the plug on SG is a setback, but the community has already more or less grown beyond GW's input on balancing and growing a lot of the SG games anyhow!  I'd point everyone who's worried about the future of the Specialist Games lines to my high school's motto "succisa virescit;" "cut down, it grows back stronger" to paraphrase the Latin (rather poignant, that, considering some of my best times in high school were playing BFG and Epic40k campaigns with my friends).  We've already been carrying and nourishing these game lines as it is (BFG:R here and Epic Armageddon over on TacCom rather come to mind), this just moves miniatures procurement to Ebay and scratchbuilding, where tbh it's already been for a while anyway.  So yeah, we can freak out about the official closure of the model lines, or we can build ourselves a future, one kilometers-long macrocannon-festooned void-faring city-ship at a time.  I know which of those I'm choosing.

[Thinking Stone]

actually there are some key pieces of lotr stuff that's out of production now.  Both the Harad Chieftain and Mahud King are OOP now as is the Mahud grunt with blowpipe.

What!! . I really liked the Harad Chieftain and Mahud. But now that you mention it, I do recall these were some of the casualties. The others escape me at the moment but GW does seem to be quite eager to obscure the old 'LoTR' range versus the new 'Hobbit' range.

The main problem is that my friends and I really liked the Imperial Navy/Chaos aesthetic so it's a bit sad to see production presumably stopping and support lessening even further (it was enriching to the whole WH40K phenomenon to be able to link crucial battles (WH40K) with large scale conflicts (Epic:A) and space battles (BFG)). Those Eldar ships discovered by Markconz definitely look interesting though , especially since Eldar are some of the hardest to scratch-build.

Edit: On the Oz website, the Necron Tombship is no longer available too. At least the recent Necron Annihilation barges look like a good basis for a Tombship

[Gorlak]

Great post Armiger84, that certainly made me feel alot more positive after this bad news! I am certainly all in on what ever it takes to keep this both going forward and growing.

Perhaps the title of this thread should be changed to cover both UK and US (and other?) stores?

In what I hope will help everyone out (I don't want to add to any feelings of panic etc) I was able to get stock levels for key items for Imperial, Space Marine and Chaos fleets, as posted below. This was from yesterday morning so certainly items will have dropped and may be out of stock by now.

01/05/2013  BFG STOCK FOR GW UK:

Chaos Fleet
Chaos Planet Killer - x10
Terminus Est - x4
Chaos Desolator Battleship - x17
Chaos Despoiler Battleship - x20
Chaos Repulsive Grand Cruiser - x0 (very sad to see this gone already, I've always wanted one...  )
Chaos Cruisers - x20
Possessed Daemon Cruiser - x5

Space Marine Fleet
Space Marine Battle Barge - x25
Space Marine Strike Cruiser - x95
Space Marine Hunter Class Destroyers - x14
Space Marine Gladius Class Frigates - x23
Nova Class Frigates - x0
Firestorm Frigates - x3

Imperial Fleet
Imperial Emperor Class Battleship - x13
Imperial Retribution Class Battleship - x6
Apocalypse Class Imperial Battleship - x6
Imperial Vengeance Class Grand Cruiser - x24
Imperial Cruisers - x25
Imperial Dauntless Class Cruiser armed with lances - x10
Imperial Dauntless Class Cruiser armed with torpedoes - x3
Adeptus Mechanicus Battleship - x20
Adeptus Mechanicus Cruiser - x35
Adeptus Mechanicus Light Cruiser - 1 x0 - I missed out on this by about an hour yesterday, gutted!

Hope that helps some of you make informed decisions about what to get or not, and when.

[Vaaish]

hoe are you getting exact numbers?

[Gorlak]

By calling them. The extremely helpful guy on the phone offered the info for the chaos fleet, and I asked for the others. I didn't want to push it with him though. He was very understanding about it. I also asked for contact details for a way of letting them know my feedback on the decision.

The main reason for calling was to check that they actually were out of stock of the items that were 'no longer available', specifically the Repulsive. Turns out the Battle Barge had 25 stock, despite showing as NLA. That was the only one though...