So a few days ago, several of the most popular Epic models disappeared from Forge World’s on-line store. Amongst other things, the Warhound Titans, Imperial Guard Basilisks, Tau Fire Warriors and battlesuits have vanished.

Turns out that Forge World are debating whether to keep their Epic range. They aren’t re-stocking anything as it sells out, and at the end of the year will decide whether to drop Epic altogether, or to bring back some of their range. The items that have disappeared so far are the most popular ones, and so were the first to sell out and be removed. See this thread on EpiComms for more detail.

I guess I’m just glad I got my Eldar army in time. There is some stuff I’d still like to add to it, but the only stuff I’d still like to get from Forge World is aircraft, which are apparently safe for now (since they’re usable for Aeronautica Imperialis).

But this is still a pain in the arse for a few reasons. Most immediately, I’d have liked to get a couple of Warhounds to convert into Feral Titans. Since I don’t much like the current Citadel Warhound (apparently it doesn’t look quite as crap in reality as it does in the photos, but it still isn’t great), this will now be more difficult. Hopefully the rumours of a new Titan game from Forge World next year are true, and the new Warhounds for that will be suitable. I just hope the scale difference (FW’s new titans will apparently be a bit bigger than before; the current ones are scaled down slightly relative to everything else) won’t mean that they’re way too big next to my Ravager.

More of a problem is that at some time in the near future I was planning to do an Imperial Guard army. At the very least, this would probably have involved more Warhounds and probably a Reaver. But it also would probably have involved Forge World’s Basilisks (the Citadel model is a decent enough figure, but it’s an enclosed ‘Armageddon Pattern’ Basilisk, while I prefer the more traditional look of the Forge World model), Hydrae, Chimerae and Super-heavy tanks (the Citadel ones aren’t bad, but the FW ones are better and cheaper). If I’d decided to use the Death Korps of Krieg army rather than the regular Steel Legion one, I’d also have needed Forge World’s Trojan support vehicles, Thunderer siege tanks, various fixed artillery platforms and their Stormblade and Stormsword SHTs, none of which are available elsewhere. FW dropping Epic would probably kill off any plans I had for a Krieg army, and seriously hinder a Steel Legion one.

But it’s also a blow to the Epic game as a whole. If FW stop producing Epic models, then the Tau army disappears and others (like the aforementioned Death Korps) become significantly less viable. Even the core official armies have the available model range reduced and become less appealing as a result. The cost will also go up, since most of FW’s Epic range was cheaper than its Citadel equivalent. All in all, this can only mean a drop in the already small number of new players getting into Epic and make it harder to convince new people to start. Which in turn means fewer people for me to play against.

And finally, if Forge World, who are already based around producing small numbers of models for dedicated collectors, aren’t finding Epic viable, how long before GW decides it’s not worth supporting either and drops it entirely? While they might see a slight short-term increase in sales of the things FW used to provide a cheaper alternative to, long-term the accelerated decline in popularity can only lead to further drops in sales and brings us ever closer to the day that new models become impossible to acquire.