I stress that I am not advocating "Conversion" of the Fantasy Gamer, but rather saying that with a few exceptions that thinking that that is a huge potential pool of new historical gamers is probably wrong.

GW realizes just how unique and specific that market is and designs, markets, and sells to predominately an adolescent male market. They know that they can turn over somewhere between $750 and $1500 per customer in the years 12-17 or so. I don't think they consider the "older" gamer other than as "gravy". I don't think they necessarily expect to hold the same gamer beyond that age. When women, college, and starting a career show up in their customer's lives, they fully expect most of them to "put away such childish things" and, at best, pass on their gaming collection to younger brother.

The GW strategy of rapid turn over of rules, figures, and the creation of new units, is designed to sell back into their customer base as rapidly as possible, selling them as much as possible before they "leave". This also speaks to their insistence on "official" figures, etc. They do not want to share this customer.

Their legal staff, which protects their customer base from interlopers, is probably larger than their figure casting personnel. Nor are they very interested in creating potential historical gamers for the future. (Unless the "unofficial" transition game of Warhammer Ancient battles actually works! Not with most established Historical gamers-GW could care less-but as a transition of their fantasy customer into an older demo. Jury's out on this one.)

And I think this is the issue: Will a fantasy gamer as he grows up gravitate to historical miniature gaming? Sure, some will. If a gamer likes the experience of gaming in a general sense, and would prefer to associate with a more mature crowd he might be attracted to Historicals. But, I'm afraid that that group is probably an absurdly small minority. Think about it, if that process were already occurring, and accepting that Fantasy is maybe 10 times the size of historicals (15-20K versus 150-200K gamers) then if only 5% of fantasy "converted" to historicals, our branch of the hobby would have seen a growth of 7,500 to 10,000 gamers-roughly 50% plus! Fergiddaboutit!

Now, just as some religious orders worry not about the number of souls saved, but concentrate on the goal of saving even one lost soul-so some historical gamers may choose to spend their time converting fantasy gamers by the ones, twos, or threes, but in the long run it's like throwing stones into a river to stop a flood... Better we should market our historical hobby more successfully, and reach a wider audience in general, than turn to the fantasy gamer as our salvation.