So a while back i was at Warhammer World for its open day and had a brief chat with some of the specialist game dudes. I asked if Battlefleet Gothic was ever coming back and got a very firm "it would take us dropping support for two existing titles for two years, so no its probably not happening for years if ever" and while thats a shame considering GW could milk some of that X Wing money as its bleeding players. But it did get me thinking about the alternatives.
In this case Battlefleet Gothic, for the zoomers born after this game died, was a Warhammer 40k set Spaceship combat game. Effectively a skirmish game with a very different look and flavour. Instead of a hero and some goons it was a capital ship, its heavier cruisers and its smaller fast attack vessels. It was a fun game but never really got a big audience and the heavy blocks of metal on tiny balancing poles didn't do it any favours for the casual enthusiast at a time when GW's metal kits often required pinning, filling and in some cases grinding to fit together properly.
But we live in the age where even the Chinaman fears the 3D printer putting out a scanned and cleaned up model as a light, cheaply made resin chunk that no longer looks like a stack of wafers as printing quality as improved to say nothing of traditional 3rd party recastings.
It made me look into sites like etsy, ebay and other more specialist locations online to see what games that were dead like BFG, Inquisitor, Mordheim and the like just to use some GW examples were in fact easy to get into now that this market exists.
Turns out its pretty varied but in some cases pretty simple. For example you can find recasts or 3d printed copies of the battlefleet gothic core box for around £30 online, meanwhile live supported titles from companies like Privateer Press are around £100 for a dozen models in stuff like Monsterpocalypse so you could actually find the rulebook and tokens online -or also have tokens made this way- and for the price of a box of units in 40k or AoS end up having a full game to play with friends. To say nothing of fan made expansions, factions and fun new ruletypes.
Have you ever personally looked into this stuff? we always see /tg/ anons wax about missing some dead game when it seems easier than ever to revive it at your local FLGS with friends. Have you ever looked into it yourself? did it end well or nothing more than malformed lumps on a shelf that remain unused?