The most catastrophic success in Games Workshops history 

You can get the our exclusive miniatures and the paintbrushes used in the video here: www.squidmar.com/latepledge

GW artists and designers: 10/10 GW marketing team: monkeys at the zoo

i love how cursed city artwork reminds me of darkest dungeon :D

My biggest catastrophe is buying the box on release day… only for it to stay unopened and unpainted on the shelf 🤣

I understand their keeping quiet on new figures/games release dates until planned announcements, I don't understand why they are so bad at letting the consumer know anything after the release as it makes it so frustrating to know if you missed a games release if you are ever going to be able to get a copy (which then pushes people to look towards eBay and Scalpers)

I really loved this different video, felt so fresh. Don’t get me wrong, I love all of your videos, but this felt like something new and very welcomed hahaha

3:30 Hey, a former buyer and a current production planner here. I need to be the "achtually guy" for a moment: There is no way in hell that a company producing plastic products for consumers has a strict production plan for 3 years into the future. GW has so many products (molds) that they need to keep their warehouse stock in a secure, minimal but optimal level without hurting the customer experience (which is a fiddly thing). What GW often sells are so called campaing products/special releases which is what Cursed City is/was. What that means is that they will need all materials from other companies (booklets, rulebooks, retail boxes etc) well in advance but no more than 1-4 months before the first production batch. Obviously before they actually SELL those Cursed City boxes they need a decent estimate from sales as to how many to initially produce. This is done in the business world via market analysis and/or pre-orders to get a rough estimate. These can go very wrong at times because consumers are sometimes unpredictable, which is especially true in the world of online hype and how it manifests as actual sales. Now, how long is a regular lead-time for say a cardboard box manufacturer or a printing company? Even during the pandemic those delivery times were no more than 3 months worldwide. The first delivery time is always the longest because the manufacturer of said add-ons needs to make the actual stencils or whatever they use for specific purposes. This all costs a lot of money: designing the minis, buying the molds, designing the game, making test runs, designing the art, commissions, marketing, distribution etc etc. which means that Games Workshop will want to pump out as many boxes of Cursed City as possible IF THE PRICE IS PROFITABLE. GW had it all for Cursed City, the art, the game, the rules, the designs but they did not push to continue supporting the game. Why is that then? My conclusion is that Cursed City was very non-profitable and was therefore canned. It's unfortunate but it is what it is. All products have a life-cycle.

Missing one last joke from GW : the second expansion only came in English. I was playing in Italian with my kids , we can’t finish it the same way. Very annoying

Amazing. Why would you not just post something like this? "Wow, you guys are awesome! You've bought our entire production run in a matter of hours! We're thrilled at the response, obviously, but this does mean the game'll be unavailable for a while. How long? We're not sure, the *situation worldwide* is messing with our supply chain pretty bad, but we're working on it. The game will return to shelves at some point. In the meantime, have you seen our new Soulblight Gravelords starter box?" How many corporate accounts have we seen post that kind of fluff? It's not hard. I mean, what kind of ego do you have to be rocking to think it's better to carpet-bomb the goodwill of your customers than to just admit you... well, it's not even making a mistake, is it? They just didn't see it coming. Couldn't have seen it coming. And their response punches straight through the outrage zone and lands square in the zone of WEIRD. I don't get it.

I have never seen a company with such a terrible community management. Its like they expect to go bankrupt once they showed a little transparency. I would kinda like to know how much financial damage there terrible PR work has done to themself.

They just never learn, do they?

These brighten up my Friday afternoons- you guys rock and I ❤ my Soma miniature.

I was incredibly lucky to get a copy on day one from my local hobby shop. I recall going in and a guy was buying 5 copies, which I found out was because he wanted to paint them up and sell them on for a very healthy mark-up. I do wish the shop would have limited this as they would have sold them to other people who would have painted and played it for the enjoyment as opposed to fattening their wallet.

Really loved this video, would love to see more like this!

I really don't get their management of the Warhammer Quest games. They are fantastic entry points for Warhammer and they can reach into board game cafes and other places that should be prime recruitment spaces but they are just not supported very well. They could MTO the Blackstone Fortress expansions for example and make a ton of money. The main set has been on sale for years now but you can't even complete the story in it. That said they should seriously consider updating it considering it's really an 8th edition boxed set.

Great show! Realllllly well done!

I've had mine for a while and I'm finally ready to build and delve into it! The character models are amazing. I was unable to get either expansion on release but I recently found Nightwars at my LGS.

I quite liked this news style like segment but you missed an opportunity to add Lucas as the weatherboy.

great video! pls make more video essays like this one!

Hey, that was a good summary and nice shirt. The print looks cool 👍

I really have to state, that I really liked this video! Well done!

Absolutely wild you dropped this video, I’ve just spent 3 weeks painting up one of the villains from the box as part of a diorama, and it fucking slaps!

Very well made video, Squidmar!

the worst part (for me) was that it wasn't even a good game. many of the mission types were a complete slog. we played about 3 times, and mainly only played because I had already painted the minis and we HOPED that the next mission type would finally be the one we enjoyed. the minis are great though, I love the extra zombie/skeleton sculpts

And I love all the minis so much. I got the last copy at my local game store.

This is next in my painting que, can’t wait to get started on it

… The game is still available in German, nearly everywhere. Crazy. I really like the artwork of the box and trailers. Going to paint my Drukhari Combat Patrol in the theme.

I’m pretty sure if you look up the definition of “fumble” a picture of the Games Workshop logo appears. They never learn from past mistakes.

It’s amazing how GW never seems to learn about their mistakes and choose to gaslight the fans instead of being transparent about their struggles.

I’m sitting here just now learning about the expansions… and I have a cursed city box set… so great, nice to know I missed that

Transparency. That's what I've told many times speaking about this game with fans (the incredible thing is that some of them insisted there was no mistake, that GW did everythig properly). If GW just had spoke with a bit of transparency, there would have not caused so much frustration and rage between the comunity. Thanks for this vid pal.

Really like the 'documentary' style videos!

Perfect Overview!! The truth always comes out over time! Great job!

What a coincidence. I recently asked my local hobby store to reserve a box of Cursed City for me, while I deal with my backlog. This box is not leaving my mind, I can't wait to get it

Never expect large companies to make the obvious and common sense PR decision when faced with the option of being able to make a bad one

I just got my made to order expansions and I didn't realize they came without figures. So not only did I have to pay full GW price for them, now I would need another about 280 euro at my discounted plastic crack merchant to play it? Damn...

“We sold out online, check your local game store” meanwhile “hey we sold a ton online, we can’t meet the normal allocations to local game stores” - Classic GW

Cursed City’s entire release saga was epically mishandled. I was so lucky to get a copy back in 2021.

Its the new MO for them. The small stores regularly get way less than they order. It even has happened with the Leviathan. Pretty much every Kill Team - same etc etc... the amount of money they are leaving on the table every month is astonishing.. I talk to the owners of 2 of my local shops regularly and a third occasionally not ONE of them got as many as they were promised, or even preordered. One owner was told on Monday " as many as you want/need" Wednesday they were told "9 is all you are getting" they have 12 ppl that preordered.

I managed to get the release copies. I kept it home where I thought it was going to be safe and the basement flooded, completely destroying everything except the models.

Honestly the minis remind me of the old Rackham / Confrontation minis. Really good.

Great (objective) summary! Thank you!

Great stuff friend 👏 👍

For the warlord Titan resin pour you should put the entire diorama in a deep freeze to prevent is from overheating.

A dungeon crawler combined with a playable soulblight army, for $200 (aus) sold itself. Just sucks the expansions weren't brought out properly.

You got something a little wrong. Someone from GW said that because Cursed City was gone and not expected to return, that was why the expansion miniatures were released as stand alone AoS models. They were sitting on great sculpts that now had no other use so they thought may as well. Presumably the original intention would have seen them released inside the expansions, at a more reasonable price point. I can't remember who said it now, but there is a good chance it was Peachy or someone he was interviewing on the Painting Phase.

I freaking love Cursed City.. Invested a lot extra in custom terrain, tokens, 3d printed stuff, you name it.. but still got the expansions packed and shelved. That they came without mini's just broke me. I was lucky enough to get a set at launch, but the whole outrage still caught me, such a shame that could be have prevented so easily.

Great vid again Emil. If you could do one on your goblin army that would be great!

The minis in the box are banging though

It's actually impressive how incompetent GW was when it came to communication about Cursed City.

People back in 2016ish: Wow, gw are so much more communicative now and more about customer relations. Gw:

I have Silver Tower and Cursed City. I have yet to paint either one. They reign glorious atop my pile of shame.

Love the game, managed to get the main box from the original release, was super hyped about the game as a whole. I'm vampire counts player back in the fantasy day that never made the jump to AOS, but the setting there looked great and right up my alley, the artstyle and design was awesome as noted in the vid. Unfortunately the steam was taken out quickly but the whole debacle. Still managed to paint about half the box, played a couple game but could never get it rolling as smoothy to go through the whole thing. Still got both expansion "in case" I want to return to it later on. The separate model cost is a joke though, ther's gonna be a lot of proxying if I ever get to play them.

Needed to spend more time on those expansions. You could make a much longer video on this topic.

my favourite kind of videos !

I just saw today, they still have one in my local Warhammer Store.

It really was a cursed release. I remember wanted a copy on first release and saw what happened. My local shop had only gotten one copy since gw screwed him on the amount he got and he sold it to someone online from across the country vs one of us local guys. Finally got my hands on a copy during the second print from ebay well under the new msrp. I was also very lucky to get both expansions. I'm not happy about spending such a large amount for more minis and I still don't have them all yet

Completely agree with you. This was the greatest box ever! This universe had so much potential and the minis were unbelievable! Why waste it so badly? Can't GW understand the fans won't buy a text only expansion? Basic rule for commerce: give buyers what they ask for!

I saw this game live at a game store like a year after it's release

I got one through my local store. They seem to allocate product specifically for brick and mortar which really helps with these insane demands for new box sets. If you are online shopping only its really bad.

Cool, I just got a copy of this from my LGS for $66. Worst case scenario, I have a bunch of cool bits for my orks to loot.

GW truly grasped defeat from the jaws of victory

I got extremely lucky with the cursed city set. My local shop (comic book store) put a copy of both the book and game on hold for me without me asking. I went in and asked if they had it (I panicked because I missed the preorder because I didn't know it was getting released tell the actual release day, and they said we put it away for me believing I would want it told me about the book (they had 2 copies of the game 1 copy of the book) so I bought that as well(came with a 9th hero) only if you bought the hardcover edition. Later on I was able to get the expansions. I have a complete cursed city set with everything they released for it (except the ulfenwatch key) I enjoyed playing it I haven't got into play the expansion with my friends and myself unable to coordinate a time to continue are adventure into cursed city.

Hi emil and Lucas Thankyou for making these videos I haven’t painted a mini in 15 years before finding your channel 2 months ago.. now I’m looking to get an airbrush and finish my armies…. Is there a new version of warhammer fantasy or has gw discontinued it??

As soon as I start thinking Disney is the dumbest corporation I remember there is Games Workshop.

I have the game and the expansions and models. I like it a lot .

All boxes were sold in hours… and got resold on the eBay for the next half of the year

I pre ordered the Rogal Dorn tank within a few seconds of it going live, i had my messages go unanswered and no news provided online, 2 months go by and still no news, happen to stop by my local GW store and they had 3! So i snapped one up only for the model i pre ordered to arrive the very next day, no message to let me know or anything..... i love GW but my god they are hopeless

I tried the Cursed City game, nowhere near as good as Blackstone Fortress in my opinion, mostly because if you got all expansions (I'm just missing the one with Plague Marines), you genuinely cannot predict what's going to hit you because you have a GIANT stack of cards to go through and more maps than you can really cover in a campaign. Far more replayable in my opinion.

What was crazy about the GW tweet of Cursed City not expecting to come back was that it was just a comment on some random guys tweet asking when he could buy the game since it sold out instantly. From my understanding there wasn't any big announcement, GW just tried brushing Cursed City under the rug.

I would love to watch you guys paint miniatures from Witcher old world Board game ;)

The inability to Order Leviathan online in the US was beyond frustrating and people in the states are relegated to ordering of Ebay or trying to piece a box together.

I literally just saw 3 copies of this game at my local game shop

Great video. It was so confusing when Games Workshop just stopped talking about the game. It led to speculation like that they had somehow made some kind of intellectual property "mistake" so could not sell the game any more. Whose bright idea was it to be so intransparent? I got the game at Xmas last year. Minis looks amazing - I just wish I had had any time to even assemble them. Sadly they lie, in shame, in a cupboard still...

Bit like the series 3 death guard box as I've been trying to get hold of them for a while they had them up again on pre order but sold out again

A. time to get back to painting Cursed City.

I would say that it would cost them nothing to make a post explaining the situation and their plans but actually there would have been a big cost in humility.

Got game a year after release for 50% off, and scooped both the expansions. Will 3d print and proxy everything for the expansions.

wait wait, I heard that the problem with Cursed City wa about some copyright issue, thats why there wasnt expansions with minis, and the game was sold out for a long time. When they sorted out the problem they made the expansions w/o the minis because they were out allready.

Lol. I just bought my copy 3 days ago. I was browsing some miniatures from the game and then realize that I can have a full game box at the price of those few minis that were selled From an opened game.

GW is the best motivational speaker for 3d printing.

I thought the reason for blanket silence was due to copyright claim against a location in the map?

And like the undead, this game is back in my feed.

The miniatures from cursed city were absolutely beautiful. Such a shame the release was so cursed too

For the expansions... perhaps proxy? I mean... 500$! That's a month worth of groceries...

I remember a time when you came to the store and found out that an army was released, no way to find out in advance. I remember a time when they just scrapped a gaming system and said hey just do rock, paper, scissors for things that you dont find in these 4 pages. The old world was no more your models that you've spend 100s perhaps 1000 on is now unvalid. But we have some Space Marines luitenant to sell to you instead, and we also have some golden fantasy Marines, cowelves, ugly boneheads and a overpriced borring Aquarium piece for your sea elves. At that time I just stopped buy Games Workshops models! I will not under any circumstances play age of Sigmar! And then they hinted The Old world! It looked to good to be true. Kislev and Cathey where hinted. But we got 9 factions! When it is released its probably sold out in two minutes and never printed again! They could just have had old models on a made to order or print on demand and said hey. Use that fraiche and be creative. And let the community control it. Because its looks like its going to be a shitshow anyway after recent fiasco. If they dont do a better job the old world will die again on release. I on the other hand can go on playing 6th edition. I hope they will get it right but I'm kind of certain that they will not! Which means I probably won't get a new Bretonia army! 😢

the problem here was you could pre order and there wasnt enough copies, so my gw store took 34 per orders and got 17 copies leaving many angry

This video could've been titled: Games Workshop is gonna Games Workshop.

There's also a rumor that the factory in China that made the tiles for the game had a fire and couldn't produce anymore for some time. Who knows if that's true.

"One of my patrons bought 2 and was kind enough to send the other." Fuck him, this is part of the problem of why it's so damned hard to get the stuff you want at a reasonable price.

I recently brought it😉

They really F$%&D up this one! I was SO hyped.... I completed my collection of Blackstone Fortress, and was really expecting cursed city to become something similar. My final approach? I bought the expansions and bought the asian version miniatures.... I wasnt going to pay full price for all those minis... This was my first big dissapointment with GW.

I'll never get how a company can try to understand its audience and simultaneously not care at all about them in a self destructive way

Aaah, half-assed games that never saw the light of day... GW at its best. I come from the generation that still awaits for an expansions of Advanced HeroQuest that never came. This meant that you had to buy any extra miniatures you wanted separately, in order to make your game more diverse and exciting, and spend hundreds of pounds on Warhammer Fantasy miniatures that could come in a box.

I get the feeling that somehow if this was a 40k setting they'd have pushed it harder. Can't shake the feeling that the AoS setting, being the Bridesmaid line of products, will never merit proper attention when things go out of plan. This was the best setting for me and we probably will never see an undead Warhammer Quest for another decade or so.

Cursed City? Mordheim? Cursed City, Cursed Company Management ;p

The funny thing is because of how Games Workshop handled this resulted in me shelving my copy and never playing it with my group. My gaming group tends to like expanding games so when they all but disowned Cursed City we figured it wasn't worth playing. My copy is still sitting in storage and I never bothered picking up the two little expansions. I most likely never will.

Great summary. Love to see more non-painting content like this. The game has another major issue. Although the minis are some of the best they ever did, the rules set was a dumpster fire. It was highly repetitive and boring. Remember that this is what was hyped as the revamped Mordheim…. Wow

Operations/Product supply is not sexy, but it is critical.

I've been "into" GW games since Heroquest, Space Crusade, Rogue Trader and Space Marine (Epic) all crossed my path between 1989 and 91, and I can tell you this... No company has made me facepalm as much or as repeatedly as them. No company has ever made me wish I could just take it over and "put it back in the hands of fans" either, cos sweet lordy lord the decisions they make...