How not talking to your base costs you money

Warning: What follows is a quasi op-ed piece.  A poorly written one to boot. 

Every summer I plan on a painting project to keep me busy during my Son's swim meets.  If you haven't been to one, as a parent with only one child who swims, you spend about four hours of your Saturday (and some Wednesday evenings) mornings for two and a half months so you can watch your child compete for about three minutes.  This equals lots of down time. 

A few years ago I figured out that I could paint during his swim meets, and get a lot done.  The first year I did it I painted up an 1850 Blood Angels Army, the year after Grey Knights.  Last year I painted a bunch of Khador.   This year I wasn't sure what I was going to do, though after doing Chaos for the last four months I knew I wanted to do something non-dark.  

I ended up picking some Trollbloods last week, for Hordes.  I don't have any Hordes forces yet, so I figured it couldn't hurt to give it a shot.  Mainly I picked them for their aesthetics, as they were organic and full of bright colors.  I also ran into a stupidly great video on how to paint up a Mountain King (A huge center piece Troll model).

I can't recommended it enough.  This video has several methods I haven't seen before, including using ground pastels as pigments that you can "dry paint" on to help with shading.  Very cool stuff.

Now that I've explained the above, I'll finally get to the point.  GW is stupid.  Like, really stupid. I am not one of those folks that gets up in arms about their pricing, or their abusive behavior towards retailers.  It bothers me, though at the end of the day I like the universe and the game enough I tolerate it.

What strikes me as just plain dumb, is this business of not telling anyone what armies and models you are releasing until one week before it's release.  I would have easily done Tau as my next army and project this summer.  I have been waiting for new Tau for over a year and have held off as the rumor mill has always been saying Tau are coming, Tau are coming....

Friday I went ahead and decided I was doing Trolls as my next hobby project.  Guess what happens on Saturday....Tau photos from a white dwarf in two weeks leak.  If I knew Tau were coming out I would be doing a Tau army this summer.  Instead, I'll be playing Trolls.  

The most amazing thing about GW is how they keep doing so well and treating the base so poorly.  Some days I think I am in the wrong business.