GW is still one of the few hobby makers that I actually respect because they don't cater to these insane people.
GW isn't a company worthy of being respected since the .... mid 80ies. The more I read about them the more I was stunned how their anti-consumer practices were already up 40 years ago. The fact that up until the mid 2000 they still had some people inside that
cared barely saves some pieces of their business. If you consider them positive because they're not woke, they aren't woke because there isn't money to be extracted from tranny Space Marines... yet. GW cares only about money and extracting money, and it has been so for the longest time, they will fuck over fans and hobbyists at the first chance, engage in straight manipulative behavior, rewrite rules to extract more money and that's it. They're essentially a consumerist company that copies the copy of a copy of 80ies British comics and aggressively defends its IP.
The instant "woke" becomes
really worthwhile economically (and that requires iron proof, because the GW suits are utterly obtuse) they'll jump on it in an instant. Do not mistake
your engagement for the setting and how
you perceive it with GW's practices, they're soulless IP vampires.
he mentions warhammer historical battles, I’d never heard of that system before, any of y’all know about it?
I remember and I played it. It was.... adequate, think of a Warhammer Fantasy Battle with no magic and no heroes, they even did an attempt at a WW1 expansion. Imagine all the rules you had for WFB for pikes an' shit, now more developed for heavy/light infantry and skirmishers. It wasn't that good, but again, the basic ruleset of WFB wasn't that good either. It died because, surprise, it didn't bring enough money in and you could not force people to play only with GW APPROVED models.
A bunch of people from WHB went out and started Warlord Games, that tried the GW approach on historicals with Black Powder, Hail Caesar and Bolt Action. Unsurprisingly Bolt Action was the most successful (WW2) and it's essentially Third Edition 40k with no heroes and weirdo activation rules, and meme rules. They did have pre-eminence on the market for a while thanks to their aggressive GW model, but that's weakening and the rules are mediocre. They also re-invested the money on buying and developing a shitton of "specialist games" that range from mediocre (Blood Red Skies) to hilariously bad (Cruel Seas) to "JEEZ WE MADE WARHAMMER LETS MAKE MORE SCIFI OUR IDEAS ARE GREAT" (Gates of Antares, no one plays it, guess why).
