Former World Of Warcraft Lead Mark Kern Outlines Plan To Save Warhammer 40K From Games Workshop Woke Activists

2024 marked a bad year for Warhammer 40K fans, with Games Workshop changing the lore and virtue signaling to woke activists. However, former World of Warcraft lead Mark Kern, aka Grummz, believes there is still hope for tabletop gamers and outlines a plan to restore the hobby.

Warhammer 40,000 came to national attention in April when Games Workshop introduced female Adeptus Custodes to the property in the most recent Codex: Adeptus Custodes with an excerpt stating, ““Custodian Calladayce Taorvalia Kesh stood upon the bridge of a Cobra-class destroyer. Named Vigilant Flame, the warship belonged to the mighty Battlefleet Solar. She lingered in the shadows at the back of the bridge, positioned at a spot where she could observe the actions of every crew member be they in the instrumentation pits, at the armament shrines or — in the case of Shipmaster Lethwyck — stood ramrod straight before his command throne.”

The official Warhammer account on X confirmed the authenticity of the excerpt and declared that female Custodes always existed. The account wrote, “Since the first of the Ten Thousand were created, there have always been female Custodians.”

This is patently untrue. Former World of Warcraft Team Lead Mark Kern aka Grummz shared an excerpt from the Rogue Trader rules in 1987.

It states, “The Adeptus Custodes is the Emperor’s inner guard, the members of which are privileged in being permitted to serve upon the Emperor, attending to his needs, receiving and recording his directions. These men never leave Earth and only rarely leave the Imperial Palace – an endless, black hive of forbidden technology and subterranean passages delving deep within the bowels of the planet.”

Since the announcement, the company has been exposed by inserting pronouns into their fiction, attacking Sargon of Akkad in one of the Warhammer Fantasy novels, and even adding evil gender ideology to one of their Stormcast Eternals models to try to push the radical agenda.

Gamers have made a difference in the video game industry through 2024, however. Several AAA Studios have felt the pinch of gamers identifying as non-buy-nary of big investments such as Concord and Dragon Age: The Veilguard. The act of gamers banding together for specific boycotts and on the flip side, spreading the word of non-woke products has upended the industry.

Now, Mark Kern has called for a plan of action to boycott Games Workshop and change the face of the tabletop gaming hobby. He posted to X,

A modest plan to preserve the purity of Warhammer 40k.

I know many 40k fans are disheartened and angered by the gaslighting female Custodes debacle, and now there is more and more pressure to make 40k female Space Marines and Emperor knows what else.

Games Workshop continues to entertain the destruction of their lore and their game to satisfy the mythical, non-existent “modern audience” while spurning and even disparaging their core tabletop audience, who buys thousands of dollars worth of minis, codexes and supplements, by calling them all sorts of nasty names.

I also know that you love the hobby and many are loath to abandon it or are unable to resist the plastic crack to do anything like a full boycott (I’m there with you, but I have a technique).

You don’t have to.

For over a year, we’ve run a successful campaign in video games to push back against the mind virus ruining our hobbies.

We did it by voting with our wallets and being very vocal. Now, giant companies like Ubisoft are on the edge of folding, and medium and small publishers are embracing gamer feedback and sentiment. You can do this too, and you don’t need to swear off 40k to do it. You just need the mantra “underperform expectations.” A short thread

Games Workshop is a public company.

They are very sensitive to their stock price and investors sentiment. They are also expected to deliver results quarter after quarter, year after year. If a single quarter shows a decline, it’s a big headache for management.

You must rally and time your activities to these quarters, which often have major releases to try to “goose the numbers” and show demand, which increases the stock price. It’s like when rent is due at the end of the month, except on a stock basis.

GW will issue “stock guidance” which is their prediction of sales and how well they will do based off sales predictions.

If they fail to meet their guidance, the stock market punishes them heavily.

This is why you don’t need an absolute boycott to win. You just need them to “underperform expectations.”

This is exactly what happened with Star Wars Outlaws and Dragon Age Veilguard. They still sold over a million copies, but they missed internal targets. For a public company, underperforming, even while selling well, is enough to cause and emergency panic with shareholders.

So what can you do with this info?

All you need is 20%. Get them to underperform sales by 20% and you have immense voice in what they do and say and make (over time). Even 10-15% is a lot of pressure.

Get organized, and get loud. Find places like X that let you say what you really feel about changes to 40k and post them here. Find YouTubers that will cover it. This is what we did in video games, and it works.

How do you do this?

- Proxy 20% of your army. Use Legos, other game minis, or whatever. Instead of buying new units, proxy 20% of your intended GW purchases instead. I personally use 3D resin printers, which are excellent (I have a full threads on 3D printing if you search).

- Hold off on new purchases. Every quarter GW will release new exciting things that everyone will want to field on the table. I’m not saying don’t field them. Proxy them. Wait until the quarter is over before going out to buy the actual minis if you want them. That will completely throw off their quarterly projections and they will “miss rent” in our shareholder/landlord analogy.

- Be very vocal about why you are doing this on social media. If GW does something against the lore or for the “modern audience” let them know you will not be buying, will proxy and will be delaying your purchase (if at all). Heck, even if you bought units but only bought half of what you intended, that’s huge. Let customer service know too if you end up cancelling an order or buying less, exactly why.

- Get a website together to recommend when to buy and when to proxy and when to hold off. This is similar to @Kabrutusrambo’s DEI detected website and steam group, except this time focused on a single company. This website can help co-ordinate the timing, as well as post info about GW stock projections and quarterly filing info.

That’s it, that’s the crux of it. You have the power. The people who play and buy the most stuff are the “chuds” and you don’t have to give up the entire game to let yourselves be heard.

Gatekeep, vote with your wallets, get organized, apply 20% pressure, proxy 20% and delay purchases by a quarter while you do.

This works.

Much like the strategy with much larger video games, Warhammer 40K can be influenced by gamers and it’s a solid plan to force a public company like Games Workshop to actually service their customer base rather than woke activists.

What do you think of Grummz’s plan to save Warhammer 40K from Games Workshop activists? Leave a comment and let us know.

The Terran Imperiums must save a world from demonic alien creatures! Back THE EMERALD ARRAY space marine graphic novel on Fund My Comic!

NEXT: RUMOR: 'Dragon Age: The Veilguard' Director Hired To Work On New 'Dungeons & Dragons' Video Game