With the explosion in popularity Warhammer 40k has seen since 10th edition dropped in 2023, more YouTube video makers than ever are competing for your time with their battle reports, lore explainers, painting tutorials, and more. Matthew Glanfield, co-founder of MiniWarGaming, the oldest Warhammer YouTube channel still on the air, visited our Discord community this week to explain why their business’ future lies in the game’s distant past.
MWG has been around almost since the beginning of YouTube. It opened its digital doors in 2007 – 18 entire years and six 40k editions ago. And, while it wasn’t the first channel to make Warhammer videos on the now ubiquitous, Google owned mega platform, it was certainly the first to build a huge audience, brand, and profitable business out of it.
In its long history, it’s made all kinds of videos, from short form clips about the latest Warhammer 40k faction the team’s been painting up, to months long narrative campaigns. But, as the race heats up to make the best competitive battle reports on the newest game – Warhammer 40k 10th edition – MWG thinks it’s found a way to break though the growing crowd: go back to the old, weird stuff.
For the full story, here’s our complete, one hour video AMA with Matthew for you to enjoy:
On the surface, it might be surprising that a YouTube channel with over 500,000 subscribers is turning away from producing content about the newest, biggest, most popular version of the world’s number one miniature wargame.
But the reason has to do with the key piece of advice Matt gave our AMA audience for anyone looking to start making Warhammer videos, or indeed any videos, online: differentiation.
If everyone’s making competitive 40k battle reports, how do you stand out from that crowd? By playing ancient Warhammer 40k editions from the 1990s, wacky spin-off games like GorkaMorka, and rare out of print ones like Battlefleet Gothic, is MWG’s first answer.
Its second is narrative campaigns – long series of linked Warhammer matches with a persistent, original backstory and characters that share nearly as much DNA with the likes of Dungeons and Dragons as they do with head to head, matched play games of 40k.
“We came to the conclusion in the past year or so… ” Glanfield explains, “that we’ve got to pull back and focus on the roots of what people know us for, and love us for”. That, he says, means more nerdy campaign videos and old edition shenanigans, and a turn away from the highly structured, hyper competitive environment fostered by modern 40k (though they’ll no doubt still be rocking 10th here and there).
The turn from 10th edition to vintage versions of the game started earlier, though, when the team made a few battle reports using 2nd edition rules first released in 1993, and were surprised to find they performed brilliantly on YouTube compared with their 10th edition videos. MWG has since doubled down on these vids, and is promising many more of them as part of their freshly relaunched ‘Vault’ subscription service.
Glanfield’s hypothesis? That the rapidly expanding, younger audience Games Workshop is catering to with 10th is leaving behind a smaller, but still sizeable older contingent that yearns for classic game modes with more scope for storytelling, even if their rules are clunkier and miles less competitively balanced.
The current version of Warhammer 40,000, he says, “feels more like a board game; it feels more like numbers than the thematic, narrative experience it used to be”.
“It’s little things like using a blast template, or a flamer template, or the positions of the guns on a vehicle mattering,” he adds -“those kind of things are more prominent in the older editions”.
“It’s not that [10th edition] is not good – it’s just not what I want.”
And based on the viewership they’re seeing on their retro edition videos, it seems he’s not alone. Warhammer (and wargaming in general) is a vast and many-headed hobby, with countless subgenres and alternate forms to try – both in the games you play, and the media you watch, read, or listen to.
Wargamer’s resident toy soldier lovers are pretty much in agreement that 10th Edition is the most polished and accessible version of 40k we’ve played – and on balance the best version of the game for most people. But it’s not for everyone, it’s not perfect, and there’s no doubting some of its potential for satisfying, emergent storytelling has been ironed out in the name of efficiency and, above all, balance.
If the internet’s oldest living Warhammer YouTube channel is going all in on celebrating ‘Oldhammer’ – the earlier and weirder forms of GW’s biggest wargame that many new fans will never have experienced – and delving deep into their storytelling potential, then that’s good news for us all.
What’s your take? Do you miss some of the crunchier bits of old editions from the current iteration of Warhammer 40,000? Or is that something you’d enjoy watching, but not playing? Jump into the Wargamer Discord community and let us know – it’s a debate that’ll never end, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun having it!
We’ve got loads more of these video AMA events planned, with everyone from tabletop game developers and designers, to content creators of every stripe. If you want to have a front row seat for the next one (and by golly do we have some big names coming up) you know what to do – it’s that big button right above. See you there, wargamers!
Source: Wargamer
