Warhammer Crime & Horror

[DukeLeto69]

I believe there are quite a few of us disappointed by the apparent dissolving of the Crime and Horror imprints.

I for one really enjoyed these, particularly the Crime series. I have always been a big fan of “domestic 40k” as I love the setting and want to see more of it. I wanted to see more away from the battlefield. That is why my favourite books/series have been Inquisitor based such as Wraight’s Vaults of Terra, Mitchell’s criminally unfinished Dark Heresy trilogy, and of course Abnett’s Eisenhorn/Ravenor/Bequin books.

 

When Crime launched I loved them. It was a refreshing change from the warzones (ironically I have never been a huge fan of Space Marine books, HH and ADB being exceptions).

 

I do wonder though…whether the fault lies with consumers rather than BL. They did seem committed and with Crime particularly were working up an overarching narrative/strategy. But did enough people buy them? Were they hits? Did they justify the effort?

 

I suspect they are/were a harder sell as I bet most people want to read about tabletop faction X in a military sci fi setting.

 

Now with the latest Fehervari announced (only been five years) but not labelled as Horror, I can only conclude both Horror and Crime are definitely dead.

 

Shame (to me). Big shame. 

[wecanhaveallthree]

don't forget warhammer adventures!

[Felix Antipodes]

Since the marketing methods of GW/BL (FOMO/limited print numbers/reprints rarely done) ensure that they sell 99.9% of whatever they put up for consumption, I find it hard to believe sales is any sort of indicator of what the customer wants.  I could be wrong on that but I don’t think so and believe the lost imprints were either;

a.  Only intended to be a short term thing, or

b.  The talent either lost interest (or encountered too much red tape to be bothered)

I do know how you feel though.  I’m especially missing the Crime imprint.  To be honest, I’ve never been a big Horror fan (Fehervari being the exception - and they released most of his work outside the imprint).  I even miss the Warhammer Adventures mentioned by @wecanhaveallthree.  I bought several of those as birthday/Christmas presents for young rellies and friends’ children in an attempt to spark interest in something other than TikTok.

 

We can only hope that one day GW shows a bit more openness to their fans and explains why some of these decisions are made.

Edited 4 hours ago by Felix Antipodes
added line

[Griefbringer]

Perhaps there has been also a shift in the tabletop game scope over the years? Back in the day (say 2001-2006) the Specialist Game branch was putting out material for various skirmish games (Inquisitor, Necromunda, Mordheim) that were taking place somewhere else than typical battlefield environment. And at the same time Black Library, that was getting up to speed, was publishing a fair number of stories (both novels and short stories) where the focus was somewhere than battlefield, action was small scale and there was plenty of emphasis on something else than combat. This could lead to a positive feedback loop: people reading such stories would like to play games depicting similar topics, and people playing those kind of games would be interested to read stories on similar scale and setting.

 

Particularly interesting is the 2001 spring release of the Inquisitor game, which was a rather unlikely product for GW at the time: 54 mm figure very small scale skirmish game that was extremely narrative/campaign/GM driven (and rather unsuitable for competitive play). The concept was largely built around inquisitors investigating things and getting into small but dramatic fights - a concept that works at least as well in books as it does in games. This game inspired Dan Abnett to write his Eisenhorn series, and there were a number of short stories (not all of them involving inquisitors) inspired by the Karis Cephalon setting published for the game. Around the same time the original inquisitor Draco stories got re-printed.

 

The inquisitorial theme was not restricted only to the small scale games, as also WH40K got the codex books for inquisitorial witch-hunters and daemon-hunters (ordo xenos only got WD articles for deathwatch kill teams). These tended to be more narrative-orientated than average 40K codices, containing several pages of plot-themes for various opponents, scenarios and rules for special adversaries.

 

Similar themes could also be found in the BL fantasy books of the time. Partially this might be due to the early BL output containing reprints of the original Warhammer Books titles, where the fantasy stories tended to be often inspired by themes from the Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay game, resulting in some detective-style material like The Beasts in Velvet and Sam Warble stories. But also newer stories featured witch-hunters, scholars and other fantasy characters with investigative mindset.

 

Gradually over time the game emphasis moved more towards the big battles, and the Specialist Games with their small scale games set outside conventional battlefields got discontinued. That said, since then Necromunda has made a return and Kill Team has been introduced.

[theSpirea]

Zero advertising. They went straight to paperback, so they were available in regular bookstores, but whenever I asked about them, the people working there had never even heard of them.

BL readership is, well... mostly not really readers in the usual sense of the word. They often just pick something that has their favorite plastic-crack army in it. I've heard so many people say, "I've been a fan of BL for decades and I've never heard of Fehervari. Someone new?" I don't expect people to read everything BL publishes, and Fehervari isn't for everyone, but reading BL for decades and still living under rock?

The whole imprint was supposed to attract people outside of WH, but somehow GW believes they don't need to advertise it and that people will just randomly stumble upon these books? And then they're surprised it doesn't sell. But crap like Indomitus sells well. Wraight and others have stated multiple times that they'd love to write more in Crime, but it's up to BL.

Same with McNeill, since getting fire from Riot, he openly said he's ready to work on BL stuff but they haven't approached him yet. Might have changed since but you'd think it's a name BL would go after right away.

[Lathe Biosas]

7 hours ago, wecanhaveallthree said:

don't forget warhammer adventures!

 

I'd never heard of these.

 

Since I'm almost done with the third C.S. Goto Dawn of War novel, I'll try out one of them when I finish.

 

How bad could they be?

 

 

[DukeLeto69]

Totally agree on the marketing. GW as a whole is pretty crap.

 

Agree also on the limited print runs (does anyone even know what their physical print runs are?)

 

But (marketing point aside) there are ebooks.

 

I think most GW customers are not buying the novels. When they do it is for the big events like HH or for tabletop factions.

 

BL loyal customers like us are a niche within a niche. And many of us (if not all) are more discerning and, dare I say this, have more (ahem) mature tastes. Likely we are all avid readers anyway?

 

I do wonder whether the inevitable wider mainstream exposure the Amazon shows/films will generate, whether it opens the door again to expand the IP and return to Crime & Horror?