No Models For YOU!

The new Tau codex and release has excited many gamers, including my brother. He went down to his local game store to buy new models and prepare for an escalation league. Only to discover that they will not be getting the models that were ordered.

I took to the web and discovered that this is worse than average.
http://natfka.blogspot.co.at/2013/04/tau-release-due-to-extreme-demand-out.html
In other game stores we find them out of stock.
http://pinsofwar.com/tau-delayed/
Or Delayed.

However at the Local Game store we frequent we find that the order is flat out diverted. The store owner was given his delivery date and information, however he then received what could have only been a bad April Fool's joke except it was really happening.

The Tau models that were on their way to his store that he had paid for were being diverted. Games Workshop had called the driver and had them reroute from his store to the nearest Games Workshop as they needed more and were sold out.

This isn't a case of "we just didn't have enough for you" it's a full on case of "You don't matter".

Games Workshop by all appearances has been trying to factor out Independent Retailers and force all business to their own stores.

Added to this is their new business model of making certain items available only through their own online outlet and forbidding retailer sales online, what you wind up with is a company that clearly cares little about their own fanbase.

I still own several GW armies that I purchased down the years in 40K and Fantasy, as well as several Battle Fleet Gothic fleets. I continued purchasing models up until the well known Spots the Space Marine lawsuit.

For those who don't know, Spots the Space Marine was a novel written by M.C.A. Hogarth. The novel contained the words Space Marine, a term in use for almost a century now. As a result GW claimed that it owned the copyright to Space Marine on everything including E-books, when it in fact did not, and got Amazon to take it down. Games Workshop got shut down hard and showed they have no knowledge of the community or the Streisand effect.

There is also the Chapter House lawsuit underway at this time. This is probably a factor in why the release has been rushed ahead. GW has now realized that they can't keep their audience waiting for over three years for models such as the Doom of Malan'tai and Terigon. The lawsuit revealed that if GW isn't going to make a model for a unit then other companies will go ahead and provide what the customers want.