Reading Dakka you see it constantly in threads that somehow 8th has been this massive failure that everyone hates and its running GW. But according to GW
“Following the close of its 2017/18 financial year Games Workshop provides the following trading highlights: Games Workshop is pleased to announce that the sales and profit growth, which was discussed in the trading update released on 4 May 2018, has continued in the period to the end of the financial year. Sales growth has been across all sales channels. We expect the Group’s sales for the 53 weeks to 3 June 2018 to be approximately £219 million and the Group’s profit before tax to be at not less than £74 million. Royalties receivable from licensing are c. £10 million. In recognition of our staff’s contribution to these results, we paid during the year a bonus amounting in total to £5 million. This was paid equally to each member of staff. Games Workshop also announces that the Board has today declared a dividend of 30 pence per share. This will be paid on 27 July 2018 to shareholders on the register at 22 June 2018, with an ex-dividend date of 21 June 2018. The last date for elections for the dividend re-investment plan is 6 July 2018. We will provide detailed information on the audited results for the 2017/18 financial year at the time of our full year results announcement on 31 July 2018.”
GW has seen an almost 40% sales growth from 2017. Bell of lost souls did an article with all the numbers and quotes. You can also independently look up GWs statements. So it looks as if 8th has been insanely successful and thus 8th style of play is most likely here to stay.
So looking at this report
1. Do you think that GW will ever truly move to a 9th or simply seen a minor update almost like what we are seeing is AOS 2.0 which is essentially adding a few rules and clarifying the old edition?
2. Will we begin to see a lot of new factions like in AOS or are there already enough factions in 40K?
3. Will people on Dakka ever store claiming that 8th is the worst thing to ever happen to 40k?
Lets discuss what exactly a sales report like this means for 40k headed into the future
So much disingenuous rubbish in that BoLS blog, it's unreal.
"Popular" doesn't equal "Good". "Appealing to the lowest common denominator" does equal "Good".
GW have manged to lure in a large new audience with dumbed down STEAMLINED (which doesn't mean well written, see my sig) rulesets to sell 9 pence of plastic for £40 to. They haven't made a "good" set of rules.
And only a very small minority think that 8th wasn't an improvement on 7th. If they actually hired a proper rules editor for 9th, that would make everyone a lot happier.
BaconCatBug wrote: So much disingenuous rubbish in that BoLS blog, it's unreal.
"Popular" doesn't equal "Good". "Appealing to the lowest common denominator" does equal "Good".
GW have manged to lure in a large new audience with dumbed down STEAMLINED (which doesn't mean well written, see my sig) rulesets to sell 9 pence of plastic for £40 to. They haven't made a "good" set of rules.
And only a very small minority think that 8th wasn't an improvement on 7th. If they actually hired a proper rules editor for 9th, that would make everyone a lot happier.
Popularity is arguably the only (and best) metric we have for measuring how good a game is. I don't see how anyone could argue that 8th isn't good while it's bringing in such a massive amount of money. Especially doing this despite the release of star wars legions which has a bigger more popular IP and surely would have destroyed an inferior game completely.
Does that mean it’s above scrutiny and criticism? No.
Financial success does not equal good. It never has and never will. Justin bieber is one of the most successful artists in the world, he also produces fething terrible music, fight me.
I want GW to do well, I really do. I love 40k and I want it to be around for as long as I am. But success is a process, by ignoring gaping flaws in a game and ignoring blatant mistakes and oversights by a design team who gets payed to do this for a living, you are contributing to mediocrity.
Is 8th the worst game ever? No. (AoS is). But it’s by far from the best, and I think there is lots of room for improvement. Financial statements will not convince me otherwise.
There’s also the fact that there is more to the upswing in profits than simply dropping a new edition. They also removed their old CEO and replaced him with someone who seems to be more in touch with reality. They released several new armies and releases for armies, brought back speciality games, licensed their IP out to various video game franchises, re entered the competitive gaming scene, started doing market research, and created an online presence. These are not insignificant changes that also contributed positively to their financial situation.
BaconCatBug wrote: So much disingenuous rubbish in that BoLS blog, it's unreal.
"Popular" doesn't equal "Good". "Appealing to the lowest common denominator" does equal "Good".
GW have manged to lure in a large new audience with dumbed down STEAMLINED (which doesn't mean well written, see my sig) rulesets to sell 9 pence of plastic for £40 to. They haven't made a "good" set of rules.
And only a very small minority think that 8th wasn't an improvement on 7th. If they actually hired a proper rules editor for 9th, that would make everyone a lot happier.
Popularity is arguably the only (and best) metric we have for measuring how good a game is. I don't see how anyone could argue that 8th isn't good while it's bringing in such a massive amount of money. Especially doing this despite the release of star wars legions which has a bigger more popular IP and surely would have destroyed an inferior game completely.
In my experience, things that are popular are often subpar. For a capitalist business, the most important factor in determining if something is "good" or not is its popularity. I do happen to think the 8th edition ruleset is the best I've played with in 40k so far. I started in 4th but didn't actually know how to play correctly until 5th.
Does that mean it’s above scrutiny and criticism? No.
Financial success does not equal good. It never has and never will. Justin bieber is one of the most successful artists in the world, he also produces fething terrible music, fight me.
I want GW to do well, I really do. I love 40k and I want it to be around for as long as I am. But success is a process, by ignoring gaping flaws in a game and ignoring blatant mistakes and oversights by a design team who gets payed to do this for a living, you are contributing to mediocrity.
Is 8th the worst game ever? No. (AoS is). But it’s by far from the best, and I think there is lots of room for improvement. Financial statements will not convince me otherwise.
There’s also the fact that there is more to the upswing in profits than simply dropping a new edition. They also removed their old CEO and replaced him with someone who seems to be more in touch with reality. They released several new armies and releases for armies, brought back speciality games, licensed their IP out to various video game franchises, re entered the competitive gaming scene, started doing market research, and created an online presence. These are not insignificant changes that also contributed positively to their financial situation.
So please, put down the koolaid.
No one is arguing that 8th is perfect..... But its hard to call it a disaster when it's doing so amazingly. If anything it shows we need fewer changes then ever before and id argue we are getting more improvements more frequently this edition then any edition in the past.
This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.
Financial success = money made.
Financial success doesn't mean players are happy.
The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.
skchsan wrote: This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.
Financial success = money made.
Financial success doesn't mean players are happy.
The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.
But there is more evidence of people playing the game
1. Increased sales by almost 40% (some percentage must be players)
2. Tournaments are selling out at a record pace and in larger numbers than ever. LVO sold out in just 48 hours and the FLG guys had to fly back out to vegas to try to get even more room for the event
It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th
skchsan wrote: This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.
The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.
Asmodios wrote: It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th
That really is what it is. It's not only that some people won't ever be pleased, it's that some of those people always say that it's the worst thing ever and that the game is unplayable because of it. There's a lot of good, valid criticisms of things in 8th, but none of them make the game unplayable or bad. I, for one, would like to see some, though not all, vehicles and monsters have 2 facings; front and back. I think it would be a lot of fun and make some things a little less safe to dive deep into enemy lines, or give a benefit to players that are able to surround their opponents, but it's a very minor thing overall.
Asmodios wrote: It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th
That really is what it is. It's not only that some people won't ever be pleased, it's that some of those people always say that it's the worst thing ever and that the game is unplayable because of it. There's a lot of good, valid criticisms of things in 8th, but none of them make the game unplayable or bad. I, for one, would like to see some, though not all, vehicles and monsters have 2 facings; front and back. I think it would be a lot of fun and make some things a little less safe to dive deep into enemy lines, or give a benefit to players that are able to surround their opponents, but it's a very minor thing overall.
Yes, I don't think there is anyone that thinks 8th is perfect (i have several of my own gripes) but it really does seem like some people won't give 8th a chance or truly do just want GW to fail. Even when faced with hard stats on the tremendous growth in both sales and the tournament attendance, some people just cant seem to admit GW is doing things correctly so far in 8th.
It really seems like just a vocal few on Dakka don't like 8th
Generally, people are more vocal when they dislike something than when they like something. The majority of people who like the game aren't going to go online and praise it, they'll probably just try to involve their friends or family. Those who dislike it are much more inclined to speak out, either online or to others in person.
As already mentioned, many 40k/AOS "players" rarely, if ever game, and many of those that do don't care much about the rules past "something to do with all my cool toys". And so the customer base proves Kirby right: people will buy the jewel-like objects of wonder GW makes, because purchasing GW products is the hobby.
8th may be popular. It does not necessarily follow that 8th must be a high-quality ruleset because it is popular.
The gaming industry as a whole doesn't make high-quality games very often. They make stuff that is watered down to appeal to the most people possible because making as much money as they can-whether it's GW, EA or Riot and so on- is more important than making a great game.
Most of what I hear and read of the positives of 8th boils down to:
Being something someone can just open up and play right away, because taking time and effort to learn a game, even if it means that the play experience will be richer in the long run, is too much work.
Being faster, because apparently there is an expectation that a mass-battle game with 50+ models per side should take as little time to play as one match of MTG.
And not being 7th edition- because an extremely simple, shallow ruleset with gameplay that consists of shuffling models towards the center of the table and rolling buckets of dice was somehow the only alternative to an extremely poor edition.
Is 8th edtion a good edition?
For casual gamers that dont spam op shait or abuse soup, but create their own house terrain rules cuz the game dont have terrain rules, yes it is.
For everyone else, 8th is not the solution to 40k. only 9th is.
GW has no sence of balance and combined whit their very successful hype train machine, they are basicly luring people to buy the next army/model cuz it has rules that make the prev army/model weak.
It is very clear that GW is a miniature model company, not a game company.
If only there were 40k events to gage the popularity of this game. Someone could put on conventions and tournaments especially for 40k players, and we could track attendance of those events over time as s proxy for the game’s popularity. Then we could compare those numbers to sales figures to get a clearer picture of the state of 40k as a whole.
I don't think I've seen people claim it was a failure. Just that they don't like it.
I think that the true value of 8th will be proven as time goes on. I think GW lost several players to the fast edition cycle and a lot of people came back with the promise of a complete overhaul. Whether this holds or not remains to be seen. You also have a very heavy and front loaded release too. Most had bought the indexes they needed then had a codex within a year for instance. You also had a major release for the largest faction in the game and all its sub factions. We don't know if this reached GWs sales goals for Primaris but it's no surprise that it increased sales.
If GW falls into the old GW habits then I think this will just be a sales spike. If they actually hold to the new GW image they are trying to build then they will likely continue to succeed. I think that addressing the game quality issues that many current fans bring up will help cement the new over the old.
From a game design standpoint - if your focus is on a really good game, you aren't going to make much money on it because a really good game will only appeal to the people that think its a really good game.
To make as much money as possible you have to have it watered down to appeal to as many people as possible.
Is 8th edtion a good edition?
For casual gamers that dont spam op shait or abuse soup, but create their own house terrain rules cuz the game dont have terrain rules, yes it is.
For everyone else, 8th is not the solution to 40k. only 9th is.
GW has no sence of balance and combined whit their very successful hype train machine, they are basicly luring people to buy the next army/model cuz it has rules that make the prev army/model weak.
It is very clear that GW is a miniature model company, not a game company.
Is 8th perfectly balanced? obviously no
But I believe we are seeing more unique lists and faction place in tournaments than ever before. even a simple ITC rule like "bottom level ruins block LOS" seems to fix the terrain rules very well. 8th seems to be a massive step in the "gaming company" direction for GW
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Skaorn wrote: I don't think I've seen people claim it was a failure. Just that they don't like it.
I think that the true value of 8th will be proven as time goes on. I think GW lost several players to the fast edition cycle and a lot of people came back with the promise of a complete overhaul. Whether this holds or not remains to be seen. You also have a very heavy and front loaded release too. Most had bought the indexes they needed then had a codex within a year for instance. You also had a major release for the largest faction in the game and all its sub factions. We don't know if this reached GWs sales goals for Primaris but it's no surprise that it increased sales.
If GW falls into the old GW habits then I think this will just be a sales spike. If they actually hold to the new GW image they are trying to build then they will likely continue to succeed. I think that addressing the game quality issues that many current fans bring up will help cement the new over the old.
Have you read the "8th moners too soon" thread. There's plenty of people claiming 8th is a trainwreck
meleti wrote: If only there were 40k events to gage the popularity of this game. Someone could put on conventions and tournaments especially for 40k players, and we could track attendance of those events over time as s proxy for the game’s popularity. Then we could compare those numbers to sales figures to get a clearer picture of the state of 40k as a whole.
If only.
The danger there is finding correlation without causation. The people spending more on product aren't necessarily the same group that are attending tournaments. Equally, are the same people repeatedly going to events, or is it simply a case of a radical shift in the game is generating a lot of "suck it and see" attendances which are resulting in a high number of "nope, not going to bother with 8th either" drop outs, but we've yet to see the end of the queue of potential returning/new competitors?
This aside, I don't think one can point to 8th as being a massive success with any certainty. The financials were already well on their way up before 8th's release, and most closely tracks model releases and big boxes rather than any sort of activity around either main game, so while it would be folly to try and argue it hasn't played a significant role, throwing around terms like "massive success" when we have no idea how sales break down, either since or before 8th's debut, makes it difficult to prove conclusively.
skchsan wrote: This is because they make new models & datasheets that invalidate older armies/units, forcing older players and new players to spend money at GW products alike.
Financial success = money made.
Financial success doesn't mean players are happy.
The problem us players have in the game has no bearing on the success of the sales. Afterall, I think the poll somewhere showed that more people simply likes to collect miniatures and not play the game of 40k.
You know, I seem to remember a time period when GW was releasing things like a new kit for the Hydra/Wyvern where one of the two was blatantly the most broken thing in the codex, and it wasn't the one people already owned.
Or new Wraithknights invalidating Wraithlords. Or new kits paired with blatantly broken formations including the new models. Or new Scatbikes invalidating everything.
Seems like this has been going on while GW was doing terribly, and while GW was doing well.
maybe that means it isn't the factor you can blame the success of 8th on?
Given that 6E and 7E were particular low points and 7E saw 40k lose its top tabletop wargame market spot, at least for a while, for the first time since the 1980's to X-Wing, almost anything would see a major improvement over that.
The GW of 2018 and 8E are far better than the GW of 2015 and 7E, but thats not saying much yet. We'll see in a couple more years.
Is 8th perfectly balanced? obviously no
But I believe we are seeing more unique lists and faction place in tournaments than ever before. even a simple ITC rule like "bottom level ruins block LOS" seems to fix the terrain rules very well. 8th seems to be a massive step in the "gaming company" direction for GW
Coming from other game systems, the more I hang around the 40k community, the more I realize they seem to have a pretty warped perspective of what a competitive, balanced game ends up looking like. No system out there lets you play with literally anything and win. No system out there doesn't demand some specific terrain constraints to work with the specifics of the game rules. Most games are lucky if more than half their factions are competitively viable.
40k definitely has problems. I definitely wouldn't rank it among the top games I play as far as being suited for competitive play. That said, in terms of approaching what a good competitive game actually looks like, 8th edition seems to have the game in the best shape I've seen in the decade or so I've been part of the hobby.
What it shows you is that this hobby had a massive following that was significantly disrupted by the quality of 7th edition.
I don't think this means 8th edition in and of itself is a great edition, it just tells you that it is markedly better than what preceded it, and their community outreach is having a really positive effect.
All I know is that I have absolutely enjoyed 8th edition. Far more than 6th or 7th.
6h, imho, was a disaster. 7th wasn’t exactly better. Just trying to figure out how various units moved meant flipping around several pages. I’m pretty sure I only played My DE reavers correctly in one game during 7th.
8th isn’t perfect but it’s far and away better than the previous crap.
8th might be a bit banged up with areas that could legitimately need improvement, but quite frankly after the last edition was figuratively on fire and burning everyone who tried to play it, it's a massive improvement and that's bringing people (back?) into the game in record numbers.
People who want 40k to be a highly balanced tournament style game are probably never going to be happy with it, because there is just too much stuff to create a perfect balance, and Forge World... exists and inherently takes a crap on balance in the game.
But 8th is the strongest version of the game in a while, especially from drawing in new players, both according to anecdotal evidence of increase in players in my local clubs and from GW's financial reports. Might stand to reason that Dakka is actually a very narrow portion of the player base, who doesn't reflect the feelings feelings of GW players as a whole?
I feel like 8th did a good job of bringing back legacy gamers. It was the first edition I heard about since I stopped playing way back in 2006 (I can't believe that was over 10 years ago).
I was excited about dusting off my old black templars and heading down to my local FLGS for the "most playtested version of 40k yet." It was fun until the IG codex came out, the eldar one made them unplayable and now those templars are on a shelf or have been painted as ravenguard or waiting conversion to deathwatch...
I've dropped hundreds of dollars (guessing around 1k) this edition on models (custodes, storm raven, another predator, characters, bobby g, celestine, assassins, scouts, primaris, dreads), codexes, indexes, rules, ca and haven't played a game in months.
I'm frustrated by the lack of balance, how bad marines are compared to other armies I face and how I need to take a fully optimized and cheesy list in order to have a good game against random armies from other factions.
Even with all of that, if I had the time to finish my army and practice I'd have attended the bay area open this year because even though the game is an unbalanced mess it is fun to go to a convention with people who enjoy the same thing you do.
I think the rise of "nerd culture" over the last decade is what is helping GWs numbers. I'd bet that comparing the rise in the tourney scene in 40k with the numbers of attendees at comic-cons would see similar gains.
Based on my experience, GW got a huge bump in sales due to people returning to an edition they actually advertised. Word got out to people who have been fans for years (I first started playing WHFB in highschool in the 90s) and they've come back but know with grown-up wallets. I'm grown now so a couple hundred bucks a month on a hobby doesn't really register but on the other side my grown-up friends aren't really into 40k so I don't have a game group like I used to. My "nerd" friends play rpgs like shadowrun, pathfinder and blades while the rest of my friends are into golf/shooting/fishing/sports...
Even though I hate the balance of the game now the "we'll fix it with CA" has kept me into the modeling/painting side of things but if things don't get balanced soon (dark eldar was a slap in the face to marine players) I guess I can just pack everything up again and play with my sons in 5-10 years once they are old enough.
Financially, eight edition, in all probability, alongside a number of other changes in direction gw have made have been responsible for the 'massive success' we are seeing. I don't think eighth is solely responsible, but I also don't think it can be entirely discounted.
What I do know is (anecdotally) interest here in gw games has not been as 'obvious' or 'energised' in a long time. From any of the shop owners or friends I speak to, most speak of a 40k project, or of seeing surging activity in playing 40k. Generally, the conversations also lead round to 'how' people are playing, and generally, the view is 'avoid the tournaments as some of the stuff out there is ridiculous, but try and talk it out and play less competitively'. I had enough not seen the community this excited in a long time, Internet aside. Conversely, I also see declining interest in the 'other' games that were the refuge of those escaping 40k. Warmachine/hordes has declined massively from a few years ago (read: fell off a cliff), and while I see plenty historicals (warlord are doing great), I rarely see games like infinity.
For my own part in this, I made not spent as much on gw stuff in 10 years. I have not enjoyed painting stuff this much in years either. Putting together my darkvmperium box set (especially the death guard) was an absolute joy. I am actually selling off two of my three WMH armies, and tempted to sell off some of my infinity stuff in order to put money towards my 40k projects (death guard and dark angels primaris forces). I have one regret. I regret not buying an assload of gw shares when they fell through the floor a few years back.
Deadnight wrote: What I do know is (anecdotally) interest here in gw games has not been as 'obvious' or 'energised' in a long time. From any of the shop owners or friends I speak to, most speak of a 40k project, or of seeing surging activity in playing 40k. Generally, the conversations also lead round to 'how' people are playing, and generally, the view is 'avoid the tournaments as some of the stuff out there is ridiculous, but try and talk it out and play less competitively'. I had enough not seen the community this excited in a long time, Internet aside. Conversely, I also see declining interest in the 'other' games that were the refuge of those escaping 40k. Warmachine/hordes has declined massively from a few years ago (read: fell off a cliff), and while I see plenty historicals (warlord are doing great), I rarely see games like infinity.
This is my experience as well. As a small shop owner, my sales of Warhammer product have more than tripled over the last year. We went from having around 5-6 steady players to 20-30 regular players. Though, like you mentioned, it has definitely led to other games dropping off significantly. Star Wars: X-Wing, Warmachine/Hordes, and most other miniature games have basically completely fallen off since last summer.
Marmatag wrote: Casual space marine 40k died with the IG codex.
Stop playing marines and join the xeno's IG arn't have as scary with a viable codex.
Sure, send me the money and I will do that.
I like that GW is making money, companies do erratic stuff when they are in the red. I hope they will invest some of that money in to people for their design and testing teams. Also, although this I know from being told so, so it maybe wrong, GW in 80 seems to be rapid fire puting out books and armies. More stuff made, means more stuff bought, so it is natural that more money is earned. I just hope that in w40k year two, when they slow down with new armies, the sales will stay high, and not just suddenly drop. Because it would mean GW games sell, because of impulse buyers . This maybe good for the company, but not very good for people actually wanting to play the game.
That depends a bit on what they do to keep up the pace. The 40k pace specifically hasn't been as fast as it sometimes feels. Being able to balance it out with Sigmar releases, particularly with the second edition shaking off a lot of the baggage of the initial launch will help. The ability in the past year to plug the gaps with releases for Necromunda, Blood Bowl, and Shadespire has also kept the pace up without putting any pressure on 40k.
Marmatag wrote: Casual space marine 40k died with the IG codex.
Stop playing marines and join the xeno's IG arn't have as scary with a viable codex.
I play Tyranids.
Then you really should have the tools to be able to play against IG.
I'm not going to say that the IG codex didn't get undercosted widely but the codex's that have followed seem a lot closer in power creep than the locked in marine statline/points cost codex's.
I remember in the dark days of 6th to mid 7th and before AoS when GW's financials weren't so flash. The nay sayers were quick to jump on them as evidence of a dying company and dead game.
The game is as playable as it has been for a long time (I've played since 3rd ed), and even if it isn't, there are now re-balancing mechanisms in place to nerf and buff things the community thinks are unbalanced. There has never been anything like this sort of feedback before. Hell there hasn't really even been a 'community' as such for the longest time either.
No its not perfect, no one has ever said that AFAIK. But its a massive leap forward even if you only consider the future potential of GW's changed attitude towards rules and balance. And GW are being suitably rewarded.
With 8th they made a great ruleset and a lot of new releases, stands to reason that they were rewarded for it. They invested a lot, risked a lot and won.
The only problem with the game is that the most played faction is among the weakest right now, so there is a general feel that the game is unbalanced, while this is the best state the game has ever been. Yes, SM are underpowered, but it turns out that there are dozens other faction which are on equal ground. In previous edition you could count on one hand the factions who could compete, and usually that was with a single list.
Marmatag wrote: Casual space marine 40k died with the IG codex.
Stop playing marines and join the xeno's IG arn't have as scary with a viable codex.
I play Tyranids.
Obviously, there are going to be top and bottom tier armies (nobody is pretending 40k has perfect balance). But watch videos like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bmmwQkoD2s and try to say there isn't a diverse meta where even in the most competitive settings many armies cant do well. Especially if you aren't trying to win GTs every weekend you should be able to have fun close games with almost any book (GK excluded from this statement). Seems like many people are able to take all different types of armies to top spots.
It's also nice that IF your army is lower tier, the way detachments work make it a lot easier to move towards something stronger if you're so inclined without needing to completely abandoning your preferred army.
Does that mean it’s above scrutiny and criticism? No.
Financial success does not equal good. It never has and never will. Justin bieber is one of the most successful artists in the world, he also produces fething terrible music, fight me.
I want GW to do well, I really do. I love 40k and I want it to be around for as long as I am. But success is a process, by ignoring gaping flaws in a game and ignoring blatant mistakes and oversights by a design team who gets payed to do this for a living, you are contributing to mediocrity.
Is 8th the worst game ever? No. (AoS is). But it’s by far from the best, and I think there is lots of room for improvement. Financial statements will not convince me otherwise.
There’s also the fact that there is more to the upswing in profits than simply dropping a new edition. They also removed their old CEO and replaced him with someone who seems to be more in touch with reality. They released several new armies and releases for armies, brought back speciality games, licensed their IP out to various video game franchises, re entered the competitive gaming scene, started doing market research, and created an online presence. These are not insignificant changes that also contributed positively to their financial situation.
So please, put down the koolaid.
Dakka in a nutshell. Totally ignore the evidence otherwise, and then trash on a game system they probably do not play. Honestly I have more fun playing AoS then 40k. The shooting phase for some armies in 40k is just......uggh.
Dakka in a nutshell. Totally ignore the evidence otherwise, and then trash on a game system they probably do not play. Honestly I have more fun playing AoS then 40k. The shooting phase for some armies in 40k is just......uggh
What evidence did I ignore exactly?
Great, you enjoy AoS. My niece enjoys Treehouse TV. Should I campaign the Golden Globe Awards to have Bob the Builder nominated for best Drama?
And yeah, I have played AoS unfortunately. I think I might have to smash my skull in with a hammer a few times to be brain dead enough to enjoy that flaming garbage.
Don't go yelling about how pop music is the greatest just because you're too tone deaf to understand jazz.
Dakka in a nutshell. Totally ignore the evidence otherwise, and then trash on a game system they probably do not play. Honestly I have more fun playing AoS then 40k. The shooting phase for some armies in 40k is just......uggh
What evidence did I ignore exactly?
Great, you enjoy AoS. My niece enjoys Treehouse TV. Should I campaign the Golden Globe Awards to have Bob the Builder nominated for best Drama?
And yeah, I have played AoS unfortunately. I think I might have to smash my skull in with a hammer a few times to be brain dead enough to enjoy that flaming garbage.
Don't go yelling about how pop music is the greatest just because you're too tone deaf to understand jazz.
It's almost like some of you are resentful that GW is doing well. Hell the start of the thread was coming close to people yelling "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEEEEEEEEE"
Good to see them rewarded for putting out a good product and engaging with their player base! I'm having fun wargaming again thanks to 40K 8th. Its not perfect, but that's OK. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. I'd rather play an imperfect game than admire a perfect game.
Heck, I even looked at AoS this evening at the FLGS...Does that make me a bad wargamer?
It's almost like some of you are resentful that GW is doing well. Hell the start of the thread was coming close to people yelling "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEEEEEEEEE"
I am "resentful" that bad writing and ripping off customers is being rewarded.
It's almost like some of you are resentful that GW is doing well. Hell the start of the thread was coming close to people yelling "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEEEEEEEEE"
I am "resentful" that bad writing and ripping off customers is being rewarded.
In three tournaments I have had precisely one instance where my opponent and I scratched our heads and called the TO for a ruling. That's not bad at all. In dozens of FLGS pickup games I can't recall a rules dispute.
It's almost like some of you are resentful that GW is doing well. Hell the start of the thread was coming close to people yelling "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEEEEEEEEE"
I am "resentful" that bad writing and ripping off customers is being rewarded.
Psst...come close. No closer.
Those things are subjective.
It's almost like some of you are resentful that GW is doing well. Hell the start of the thread was coming close to people yelling "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEEEEEEEEE"
I am "resentful" that bad writing and ripping off customers is being rewarded.
Then don't buy their stuff?
Vote with your dollars. If GW was producing things that nobody wanted, they wouldn't sell, and they wouldn't have financial success. Prior to 8th, GW's fanbase was not so great that they would be able to call 8th a financial success if they didn't bring in new people. The fact that they have been bringing in new people shows that new people are saying 'Y'know, this is expensive, but it looks like enough fun that I'll give it a shot anyway', and while some of those new people figure that 'no, this isn't for me', there are enough that are going 'hey, I like this thing, I'll buy more of it.'
That's how they're measuring their success. The community efforts have really put a halt on a lot of the grognarding that 40k is rife with as well. By providing people with news and community articles, a lot of the vitriol (as we see in this thread) is kept... well, here, in this forum, where it festers, as above.
Does that mean 8th is above scrutiny? No. It's not a perfect ruleset. GW will never make a perfect ruleset. Does that mean it's not FUN? No. Coherency of rules does not equal fun, though clarity does help. Should we encourage GW to make better rules? Yes, we should. Does that mean they will? Well, if all the grognarding remains in this forum and nobody sends the GWFAQ e-mail a buzz about what's broken, then nothing will ever get fixed and we'll all continue to complain in this realm where GW doesn't care and doesn't see what we complain about.
Even if we do all tell GW all the things that are wrong and broken, it's likely that it will take time for that all to filter through into the Big FAQs and future Chapter Approved, and even THEN, there will be people that are unhappy because x unit is broken and y unit is 'unplayable' due to whatever changes.
And at the end of the day, if you really aren't having fun with the game... why are you here? Move on to any of a million other hobbies that are A. cheaper B. easier to get into C. easier to learn D. more fun for you E. have more positive people in them F. aren't monopolized by a company you don't like - Pick your route.
Just Tony wrote: Higher prices mean less units need moved to show profit, correct?
If so, I can explain the success...
not unless GW trippled their prices in the last year
Did I say anywhere in my post (conveniently included inside yours) that they sold some abysmally low number of units? No, but I can tell you from first hand experience that there was not the interest in 8th that a runaway sellout would back up. I'm saying that having higher prices with lower cost involved shows more profit than when prices were lower, so any increase will show a profit increase of some time that is different than actual units sold.
It's almost like some of you are resentful that GW is doing well. Hell the start of the thread was coming close to people yelling "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEEEEEEEEE"
Complaining about GW for some is the hobby. Complaining can rewire your brain so it's easier to be negative and in a perverse way enjoyable.
And that's not counting the posters are using Dakka to feed their depression with all the negative energy.
It's almost like some of you are resentful that GW is doing well. Hell the start of the thread was coming close to people yelling "STOP LIKING WHAT I DON'T LIKE REEEEEEEEEE"
I am "resentful" that bad writing and ripping off customers is being rewarded.
Then don't buy their stuff?
Vote with your dollars. If GW was producing things that nobody wanted, they wouldn't sell, and they wouldn't have financial success. Prior to 8th, GW's fanbase was not so great that they would be able to call 8th a financial success if they didn't bring in new people. The fact that they have been bringing in new people shows that new people are saying 'Y'know, this is expensive, but it looks like enough fun that I'll give it a shot anyway', and while some of those new people figure that 'no, this isn't for me', there are enough that are going 'hey, I like this thing, I'll buy more of it.'
That's how they're measuring their success. The community efforts have really put a halt on a lot of the grognarding that 40k is rife with as well. By providing people with news and community articles, a lot of the vitriol (as we see in this thread) is kept... well, here, in this forum, where it festers, as above.
Does that mean 8th is above scrutiny? No. It's not a perfect ruleset. GW will never make a perfect ruleset. Does that mean it's not FUN? No. Coherency of rules does not equal fun, though clarity does help. Should we encourage GW to make better rules? Yes, we should. Does that mean they will? Well, if all the grognarding remains in this forum and nobody sends the GWFAQ e-mail a buzz about what's broken, then nothing will ever get fixed and we'll all continue to complain in this realm where GW doesn't care and doesn't see what we complain about.
Even if we do all tell GW all the things that are wrong and broken, it's likely that it will take time for that all to filter through into the Big FAQs and future Chapter Approved, and even THEN, there will be people that are unhappy because x unit is broken and y unit is 'unplayable' due to whatever changes.
And at the end of the day, if you really aren't having fun with the game... why are you here? Move on to any of a million other hobbies that are A. cheaper B. easier to get into C. easier to learn D. more fun for you E. have more positive people in them F. aren't monopolized by a company you don't like - Pick your route.
To pull a bit of hyperbole but this sounds a bit like a "love it or leave it and don't let the door hit you on the way out" statement. People like 40k ALOT, GW makes some great models, 40k has fantastic fluff (up until recently but not the point), and many people have enjoyed to various degrees the gameplay of the game for the past few years. 8th really changed up the gameplay which for a decent number of people the changes reduced the fun of the game for them. Many of these people have hundreds or thousands of dollars and untold number of hours building, painting, and other time/money investments into the hobby and now due to the actions of GW their investment of time and money has been soured due to changes in the hobby. What's worse is when there are valid critiques and observations about the game and those opinions get met with a choir of (warning hyperbole) "8th is the best game ever, 7th is literally satan and ate babies".
My little bit to all of this is that at the end of the day 8th is not very fun for me to play so I try to play 7th whenever possible. Win or lose 8th feels boring and bland while 7th feels a lot more tactical which is what gives me enjoyment. I would love 8th to improve although I would prefer them to make a 9th and build a slightly more robust rule set to give some tactical depth and mechanic variety to the game. At the very least GW could do something about terrain being terrible instead of the ideal terrain being either blocks of styrofoam or 1ft by 1ft slabs of area terrain with everything else needing to act like a statue to be relevant (hyperbole: glad that pile of scrap metal and tires is inspiring that guardsman to have better leadership).
If I'm salty about anything it's that GW has been bad about their rules writing and it went on a sharp downward spiral half way through 7th with the whole "decurion style detachments" era of codexes where power went from creeping to full blown nuclear arms race. 8th shows up with all the indexes and it basically guts everything down to barebones stat lines and very simple mechanics and suddenly people at like GW is god's gift to game design when instead it's just that GW made their crew of rules writers take the pants of their heads and make some very bland rules.
Regardless, as to what GW is doing as a company, getting Kirby out of the top decision making position was probably the greatest decision they have ever made as now they have leadership who actually wants to try and engage their consumers and attempt to market to both their existing customers as well as try and bring in new blood. I think the massive success GW is having has less to do with 8th "being a great game" and more so GW actually putting their gold mine of a IP into proper use, getting people excited about the hobby, and reducing barrier to entry for new players (getting new players an even cheaper first hit before going for the wallets). 8th (and AoS) is an easy game to get into which is much better for new players or players who enjoy a more relaxed and less complex game. I think GW's success now shows that all the excuses about currency exchanges due to a strong pound hurting profits was just poor excuses by Kirby to not admit that his vision for GW was stagnation (Kirby ran GW like the high lords of terra ran the IoM).
TangoTwoBravo wrote: Good to see them rewarded for putting out a good product and engaging with their player base! I'm having fun wargaming again thanks to 40K 8th. Its not perfect, but that's OK. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. I'd rather play an imperfect game than admire a perfect game.
Heck, I even looked at AoS this evening at the FLGS...Does that make me a bad wargamer?
1st Edition AoS was trash. The fact WHFB was thrown in a fire to release what amounted to scarcely a wargame, and had more akin to bashing two action figures together, was offensive in many ways.
Edition 1.5 however was moving in the right direction - and from the Wood Elves onwards (Flame dwarfs have grown on me, but they were ugly and expensive on release) the models have tended to be attractive.
I don't see why I shouldn't at least think about giving 2nd Edition a go given they have done a lot of the things I wanted them to do.
TangoTwoBravo wrote: Good to see them rewarded for putting out a good product and engaging with their player base! I'm having fun wargaming again thanks to 40K 8th. Its not perfect, but that's OK. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. I'd rather play an imperfect game than admire a perfect game.
Heck, I even looked at AoS this evening at the FLGS...Does that make me a bad wargamer?
1st Edition AoS was trash. The fact WHFB was thrown in a fire to release what amounted to scarcely a wargame, and had more akin to bashing two action figures together, was offensive in many ways.
Edition 1.5 however was moving in the right direction - and from the Wood Elves onwards (Flame dwarfs have grown on me, but they were ugly and expensive on release) the models have tended to be attractive.
I don't see why I shouldn't at least think about giving 2nd Edition a go given they have done a lot of the things I wanted them to do.
What happened to WHFB still hurts as i loved the game. Cant argue that something needed to change though as it was clearly not popular enough to continue on. I'm glad AOS seems to be headed in the right direction though and some of the minis they are putting out are amazing. I would love if they released a AOS mass battle for those of us that will never rebase 300 night goblins
TangoTwoBravo wrote: Good to see them rewarded for putting out a good product and engaging with their player base! I'm having fun wargaming again thanks to 40K 8th. Its not perfect, but that's OK. Perfect is the enemy of good enough. I'd rather play an imperfect game than admire a perfect game.
Heck, I even looked at AoS this evening at the FLGS...Does that make me a bad wargamer?
1st Edition AoS was trash. The fact WHFB was thrown in a fire to release what amounted to scarcely a wargame, and had more akin to bashing two action figures together, was offensive in many ways.
Edition 1.5 however was moving in the right direction - and from the Wood Elves onwards (Flame dwarfs have grown on me, but they were ugly and expensive on release) the models have tended to be attractive.
I don't see why I shouldn't at least think about giving 2nd Edition a go given they have done a lot of the things I wanted them to do.
What happened to WHFB still hurts as i loved the game. Cant argue that something needed to change though as it was clearly not popular enough to continue on. I'm glad AOS seems to be headed in the right direction though and some of the minis they are putting out are amazing. I would love if they released a AOS mass battle for those of us that will never rebase 300 night goblins
Also squatting Brets was a travesty imo. Of all the times to try and inject some life back into them, it would of been the past few years due to the rampant success of GoTs which I'm sure would of inspired some people to want and make a medieval theme army.
Vankraken wrote: Also squatting Brets was a travesty imo. Of all the times to try and inject some life back into them, it would of been the past few years due to the rampant success of GoTs which I'm sure would of inspired some people to want and make a medieval theme army.
GW's view on this has never really made sense.
I can appreciate you can't copyright knights & peasants.
I can appreciate you'd therefore get 3rd party manufacturers making counts as models for a fraction of the price.
But it also seems like a licence to print money - especially if the models look good, as it seems likely they would.
Still, never say never. If they can bring Sisters back, I don't see why Brets should never ride again - even if its with a new name and new lore.
Monopoly is one of the most commercially successful board games. Is it good, compared to something like Pandemic? Hell no.
1. That's subjective. I've seen people call Pandemic a bad game as well.
2. Being good isn't the metric. The metric is "was 8th edition a success". Which it objectively is as 40k is more popular than its been in years and it'a making GW giant stacks of money.
Monopoly is one of the most commercially successful board games. Is it good, compared to something like Pandemic? Hell no.
1. That's subjective. I've seen people call Pandemic a bad game as well.
2. Being good isn't the metric. The metric is "was 8th edition a success". Which it objectively is as 40k is more popular than its been in years and it'a making GW giant stacks of money.
Okay, that's fair on the subjective bit.
And I'd agree that 8th is a financial success, but a lot of people equate that to good game, which is not necessarily true.
That's like saying if you win an Oscar you're a good movie, which is demonstrably false.
That's like saying a movie brought in record sales, has amazing critic and fan review numbers, won an Oscar and is still really bad.....Which is a laughable statement.
Again, Sales does not make a product good. And saying "reviews" make 8th good ignore the context that GW could have just made a box of flesh eating scarab beetles that were infected with Super Syphilis and it would still have reviewed better than 7th edition.
BaconCatBug wrote: Again, Sales does not make a product good. And saying "reviews" make 8th good ignore the context that GW could have just made a box of flesh eating scarab beetles that were infected with Super Syphilis and it would still have reviewed better than 7th edition.
The topic isn't about if it's good. It's about if it's a success.
So reviewers are sell-outs, popularity and sales don't matter, and winning prizes from judges and fans mean nothing... do you have more mental gymnastics to justify that 8th sucks?
Seriously guys, could you be more hipsters?
"Man, thats so mainstream, its all so overrated!"
Can't people just admit that even if they dislike 8th it as actual value for a ton of people that find joy on is virtudes and qualities, without being whiteknights that can't see the flaws?
Xenomancers wrote: Sales is more or less a reflection of good advertising - critics are mostly bought and paid for - and fan reviews are as well.
If Oscar awards are given based on this criteria they are bought as well.
So let me get this straight
The sales numbers cant be trusted because an advertising campaign could be the cause for all of them
Critic reviews cannot be trusted because they could have been brought under the table
Fan reviews cannot be trusted because they could be bought or fake
But random Dakka user who says 8th is actually the worst thing ever....... That's what we should go on?
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BaconCatBug wrote: Again, Sales does not make a product good. And saying "reviews" make 8th good ignore the context that GW could have just made a box of flesh eating scarab beetles that were infected with Super Syphilis and it would still have reviewed better than 7th edition.
see above post. I just wanna make sure that i should rate the opinion of 5-10 Dakka posters higher than sales, critics and fans
Galas wrote: So reviewers are sell-outs, popularity and sales don't matter, and winning prizes from judges and fans mean nothing... do you have more mental gymnastics to justify that 8th sucks?
Heh.
During the 'summer of discontent' a few years back, when gw could do no right (for a lot of reasons), privateer press was the mover and shaker in the industry, and it felt they could do nothing wrong. Mk2 was a runaway success and was scooping up players by the trainload, and furthermore, this was acknowledged by the industry through various 'game of the year' awards, and so on and so forth. I remember these were trumpeted as the heralding in of a new dawn at the time, and proof positive that privateer press were the best company making the best damned game, everyone should get on the hyped train and gw could go swallow a brick.
But when gw win the award...
Honestly, all this shows me is haters are gonna hate. Gw could cure cancer tomorrow and their haters would find a way of twisting it round. and throwing it back at them.
Galas wrote: So reviewers are sell-outs, popularity and sales don't matter, and winning prizes from judges and fans mean nothing... do you have more mental gymnastics to justify that 8th sucks?
Heh.
During the 'summer of discontent' a few years back, when gw could do no right (for a lot of reasons), privateer press was the mover and shaker in the industry, and it felt they could do nothing wrong. Mk2 was a runaway success and was scooping up players by the trainload, and furthermore, this was acknowledged by the industry through various 'game of the year' awards, and so on and so forth. I remember these were trumpeted as the heralding in of a new dawn at the time, and proof positive that privateer press were the best company making the best damned game, everyone should get on the hyped train and gw could go swallow a brick.
But when gw win the award...
Honestly, all this shows me is haters are gonna hate. Gw could cure cancer tomorrow and their haters would find a way of twisting it round. and throwing it back at them.
How could GW cure cancer! Do they not care about overpopulation and the Climate! REEEEEEEEEE! They just did this so there would be more people to buy their terrible game that nobody likes!
8th edition is selling well. Doesn't mean it's a good game, just means people have low standards and are happy to embrace barely passable rules if it allows them to push cool spacemen around a table.
So let me get this straight
The sales numbers cant be trusted because an advertising campaign could be the cause for all of them
Critic reviews cannot be trusted because they could have been brought under the table
Fan reviews cannot be trusted because they could be bought or fake
But random Dakka user who says 8th is actually the worst thing ever....... That's what we should go on?
That's why we have the Ignore function on Dakka. You get to ignore the people who think that.
I think 8th only had to be 'good enough' to get the GW momentum wagon back up to speed, and their market saturation would do the rest
The general gist of my GW vs The Rest seemed to be people would rather get consistent games of 40k in than have to hunt down players for 'better' games, plus you can usually skip an edition or three and come back to 40k something not many systems bar MTG can boast
I’m glad that GW is doing well, and I’ve personally had a lot of fun with 8th edition with my friends. Hopefully the trend will continue
lord_blackfang wrote:8th edition is selling well. Doesn't mean it's a good game, just means people have low standards and are happy to embrace barely passable rules if it allows them to push cool spacemen around a table.
BaconCatBug wrote:
necrontyrOG wrote: Not only a financial success, but they just won Best Miniature Game from the Origin Awards:
That's like saying if you win an Oscar you're a good movie, which is demonstrably false.
What do you consider to be good rulesets? I’ve always been drawn to Infinity, but it’s hard to get a group started. Even harder now that everyone(including myself) wants to play GW games.
So let me get this straight
The sales numbers cant be trusted because an advertising campaign could be the cause for all of them
Critic reviews cannot be trusted because they could have been brought under the table
Fan reviews cannot be trusted because they could be bought or fake
But random Dakka user who says 8th is actually the worst thing ever....... That's what we should go on?
That's why we have the Ignore function on Dakka. You get to ignore the people who think that.
Ignore is only useful for people who post literally nothing positive. Even BaconCatBug occasionally has something useful to say. Not often, but he does.
Besides, silencing/ignoring people with opposing view points is a terrible way to live your life. Sure when people post political stuff on Facebook I immediately unfollow them but this is 40k. It's more important than politics.
I just wanna point out to people 8th has brought tonnes of players back from a gaming 40k haitus.
Me and my friend stopped end of 5th because the game literally became pay to win. "Ohhhh look at this new giant monster model we have" and if you bought it it was OP and pretty much guaranteed a victory. Then the next army would get their even more OP bigger monster, so on so forth.
It became greed workshop. 8th however if people stop looking through rose tinted glasses is much superior to any edition in the past whilst I've been playing the Hobby, since 2003/2004.
SeanDavid1991 wrote: I just wanna point out to people 8th has brought tonnes of players back from a gaming 40k haitus.
Me and my friend stopped end of 5th because the game literally became pay to win. "Ohhhh look at this new giant monster model we have" and if you bought it it was OP and pretty much guaranteed a victory. Then the next army would get their even more OP bigger monster, so on so forth.
It became greed workshop. 8th however if people stop looking through rose tinted glasses is much superior to any edition in the past whilst I've been playing the Hobby, since 2003/2004.
Yeah man, I know it was like if you didn't run out and buy a Taurox your Imperial Guard army was complete crap!
every edition introduces new units sometimes they're power houses othertimes they're not. we tend to focus on the power houses because they stand out in memory more, something new arrives on the scene, dramaticly shifts the meta and we remember it. othertimes something new arrives and just sputters on launch and is forgotten about.. How many people for example even remember that the Space Marine Hunter is a thing? or the IG Taurox?
Turnip Jedi wrote: I think 8th only had to be 'good enough' to get the GW momentum wagon back up to speed, and their market saturation would do the rest
This sums it up right here. GW, even at its worst during 7th, had a large number of inactive customers who were begging for any excuse to get back into the game. All they had to do was publish something that even had a superficial appearance of being an improvement over 7th, throw on some basic use of social media that any company in 2018 should be capable of, and wait for sales numbers to inevitably rise as those inactive customers came back to give GW another chance. 8th is still a terrible game with inexcusable flaws, but because people have reasons to believe it's better than 7th it's a win for GW. The real test will be how long GW can keep it going once they run out of new-codex spikes and have to sustain 8th over the long run. Can they continue to grow, or will they reach a point where their dedicated fans have come back but that's it? Will the game ever become a selling point on its own merits, rather than a broken mess you slog through because you love the fluff/painting aspect of the hobby? That seems much more doubtful.
I'm glad GW are doing well. The releases and codexes have been coming at a phenomenal pace, AoS getting new stuff/edition and frequent FAQ/adjustments being made.
Is it completely balanced with watertight writing? No.
Is it actually fun to play? In my eyes yes.
Every game I've played this edition has been fun. No OP units that simply stomp armies, no broken formations and rules that are easy to learn mean I'm having a blast. I'm sorry that 8th didn't cater to your specific wants and yes some codex books are worse than others (seriously, was the writer of the GK codex drunk!?) and some stuff is a little too good, but with chapter approved, and regular adjustments from GW themselves, it's only minor annoyances.
This thread made my morning. So many people who just seem to have ground their axe of hatred for GW so much that all that is left is the handle.
8th isn't perfect but it's good, better than they have had in years, we haven't seen price hikes recently that I am aware of, and GW is actually interacting with it's community like never before.
All of that and you're *STILL* upset? Who ever said that if GW cured cancer people would still be upset is spot on. Don't like the new rules don't play, it's the adult thing to do and it's what I did in 6th and 7th, I didn't like the rules and balance so I shelved my IG and DA, played other stuff and waited.
Xenomancers wrote: Sales is more or less a reflection of good advertising - critics are mostly bought and paid for - and fan reviews are as well.
If Oscar awards are given based on this criteria they are bought as well.
So let me get this straight
The sales numbers cant be trusted because an advertising campaign could be the cause for all of them
Critic reviews cannot be trusted because they could have been brought under the table
Fan reviews cannot be trusted because they could be bought or fake
But random Dakka user who says 8th is actually the worst thing ever....... That's what we should go on?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BaconCatBug wrote: Again, Sales does not make a product good. And saying "reviews" make 8th good ignore the context that GW could have just made a box of flesh eating scarab beetles that were infected with Super Syphilis and it would still have reviewed better than 7th edition.
see above post. I just wanna make sure that i should rate the opinion of 5-10 Dakka posters higher than sales, critics and fans
I was speaking more about movies and Oscar awards. Someone made that analogy. It's not directly related to GW sales in the same way. As many other posters have points out. All GW needs to do to get sales is release content. During 7th edition when the rules were the most busted that they ever had been. They were getting huge sales numbers when they came out with formations. How many freaking razorbacks do you think Gladius formation sold them? The have such a loyal base of customers that will always buy their stuff. GW can't fail - even with failed rules for their games.
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vonjankmon wrote: This thread made my morning. So many people who just seem to have ground their axe of hatred for GW so much that all that is left is the handle.
8th isn't perfect but it's good, better than they have had in years, we haven't seen price hikes recently that I am aware of, and GW is actually interacting with it's community like never before.
All of that and you're *STILL* upset? Who ever said that if GW cured cancer people would still be upset is spot on. Don't like the new rules don't play, it's the adult thing to do and it's what I did in 6th and 7th, I didn't like the rules and balance so I shelved my IG and DA, played other stuff and waited.
The codex balance is a joke. That means the game is not good.
Codex balance isn't bad outside of what is essentially the first set of them seemingly being designed for an environment where most people were still playing Index armies.
Xenomancers wrote: Sales is more or less a reflection of good advertising - critics are mostly bought and paid for - and fan reviews are as well.
If Oscar awards are given based on this criteria they are bought as well.
So let me get this straight
The sales numbers cant be trusted because an advertising campaign could be the cause for all of them
Critic reviews cannot be trusted because they could have been brought under the table
Fan reviews cannot be trusted because they could be bought or fake
But random Dakka user who says 8th is actually the worst thing ever....... That's what we should go on?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BaconCatBug wrote: Again, Sales does not make a product good. And saying "reviews" make 8th good ignore the context that GW could have just made a box of flesh eating scarab beetles that were infected with Super Syphilis and it would still have reviewed better than 7th edition.
see above post. I just wanna make sure that i should rate the opinion of 5-10 Dakka posters higher than sales, critics and fans
I was speaking more about movies and Oscar awards. Someone made that analogy. It's not directly related to GW sales in the same way. As many other posters have points out. All GW needs to do to get sales is release content. During 7th edition when the rules were the most busted that they ever had been. They were getting huge sales numbers when they came out with formations. How many freaking razorbacks do you think Gladius formation sold them? The have such a loyal base of customers that will always buy their stuff. GW can't fail - even with failed rules for their games.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
vonjankmon wrote: This thread made my morning. So many people who just seem to have ground their axe of hatred for GW so much that all that is left is the handle.
8th isn't perfect but it's good, better than they have had in years, we haven't seen price hikes recently that I am aware of, and GW is actually interacting with it's community like never before.
All of that and you're *STILL* upset? Who ever said that if GW cured cancer people would still be upset is spot on. Don't like the new rules don't play, it's the adult thing to do and it's what I did in 6th and 7th, I didn't like the rules and balance so I shelved my IG and DA, played other stuff and waited.
The codex balance is a joke. That means the game is not good.
This logic is just terrible. If all sales and profit depended on you would see a direct correlation of the number of products released per year to the capital made by GW. GW would also be able to exactly map out how much they would make in the upcoming year simply by looking at how many releases they had planned and being a business they would soon just churn out stuff with 0 forethought sense the amount released 100% correlated to the amount made. You can track the failure of 7th (declining sales/loss of top spot to competitors) and the success of 8th (increased sales/ customer satisfaction/ player base size/ market share/ect). I really hope you don't own any sort of company because if you think GW sales numbers is only dependent on number of releases you have a terrible buisness mind.
LunarSol wrote: Codex balance isn't bad outside of what is essentially the first set of them seemingly being designed for an environment where most people were still playing Index armies.
We haven't seen Knights hit the big tables yet, but from what I can tell it seems to be a great codex...one that many expected to be a total flop.
Finish the core codexes, polish up the older stuff, make a couple tweaks and we're good to go.
LunarSol wrote: Codex balance isn't bad outside of what is essentially the first set of them seemingly being designed for an environment where most people were still playing Index armies.
We haven't seen Knights hit the big tables yet, but from what I can tell it seems to be a great codex...one that many expected to be a total flop.
Finish the core codexes, polish up the older stuff, make a couple tweaks and we're good to go.
I can see Knights having a big impact on the meta, but overall I think they'll struggle to hit the top tables just by virtue of running into something they can't really handle, like a heavy melee troop swarm in an objective heavy scenario or just someone with enough firepower to reliably delete a knight a turn.
Xenomancers wrote: Sales is more or less a reflection of good advertising - critics are mostly bought and paid for - and fan reviews are as well.
If Oscar awards are given based on this criteria they are bought as well.
So let me get this straight
The sales numbers cant be trusted because an advertising campaign could be the cause for all of them
Critic reviews cannot be trusted because they could have been brought under the table
Fan reviews cannot be trusted because they could be bought or fake
But random Dakka user who says 8th is actually the worst thing ever....... That's what we should go on?
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BaconCatBug wrote: Again, Sales does not make a product good. And saying "reviews" make 8th good ignore the context that GW could have just made a box of flesh eating scarab beetles that were infected with Super Syphilis and it would still have reviewed better than 7th edition.
see above post. I just wanna make sure that i should rate the opinion of 5-10 Dakka posters higher than sales, critics and fans
I was speaking more about movies and Oscar awards. Someone made that analogy. It's not directly related to GW sales in the same way. As many other posters have points out. All GW needs to do to get sales is release content. During 7th edition when the rules were the most busted that they ever had been. They were getting huge sales numbers when they came out with formations. How many freaking razorbacks do you think Gladius formation sold them? The have such a loyal base of customers that will always buy their stuff. GW can't fail - even with failed rules for their games.
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vonjankmon wrote: This thread made my morning. So many people who just seem to have ground their axe of hatred for GW so much that all that is left is the handle.
8th isn't perfect but it's good, better than they have had in years, we haven't seen price hikes recently that I am aware of, and GW is actually interacting with it's community like never before.
All of that and you're *STILL* upset? Who ever said that if GW cured cancer people would still be upset is spot on. Don't like the new rules don't play, it's the adult thing to do and it's what I did in 6th and 7th, I didn't like the rules and balance so I shelved my IG and DA, played other stuff and waited.
The codex balance is a joke. That means the game is not good.
This logic is just terrible. If all sales and profit depended on you would see a direct correlation of the number of products released per year to the capital made by GW. GW would also be able to exactly map out how much they would make in the upcoming year simply by looking at how many releases they had planned and being a business they would soon just churn out stuff with 0 forethought sense the amount released 100% correlated to the amount made. You can track the failure of 7th (declining sales/loss of top spot to competitors) and the success of 8th (increased sales/ customer satisfaction/ player base size/ market share/ect). I really hope you don't own any sort of company because if you think GW sales numbers is only dependent on number of releases you have a terrible buisness mind.
Do you agree or disagree that gladius formation release increased sales of razorbacks or not? Follow the same logic that when a codex drops - half the items on the webstore go out of stock even 2 weeks before the codex comes out...those are sales generated by content release. Why does this work for GW and not other companies? It simple. GW has a loyal group of cumstomers that GW has no competition for their money - so GW has almost not risk of losing money on a release like another company in the market.
LunarSol wrote: Codex balance isn't bad outside of what is essentially the first set of them seemingly being designed for an environment where most people were still playing Index armies.
We haven't seen Knights hit the big tables yet, but from what I can tell it seems to be a great codex...one that many expected to be a total flop.
Finish the core codexes, polish up the older stuff, make a couple tweaks and we're good to go.
I can see Knights having a big impact on the meta, but overall I think they'll struggle to hit the top tables just by virtue of running into something they can't really handle, like a heavy melee troop swarm in an objective heavy scenario or just someone with enough firepower to reliably delete a knight a turn.
Xenomancers wrote: Sales is more or less a reflection of good advertising - critics are mostly bought and paid for - and fan reviews are as well.
If Oscar awards are given based on this criteria they are bought as well.
So let me get this straight
The sales numbers cant be trusted because an advertising campaign could be the cause for all of them
Critic reviews cannot be trusted because they could have been brought under the table
Fan reviews cannot be trusted because they could be bought or fake
But random Dakka user who says 8th is actually the worst thing ever....... That's what we should go on?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BaconCatBug wrote: Again, Sales does not make a product good. And saying "reviews" make 8th good ignore the context that GW could have just made a box of flesh eating scarab beetles that were infected with Super Syphilis and it would still have reviewed better than 7th edition.
see above post. I just wanna make sure that i should rate the opinion of 5-10 Dakka posters higher than sales, critics and fans
I was speaking more about movies and Oscar awards. Someone made that analogy. It's not directly related to GW sales in the same way. As many other posters have points out. All GW needs to do to get sales is release content. During 7th edition when the rules were the most busted that they ever had been. They were getting huge sales numbers when they came out with formations. How many freaking razorbacks do you think Gladius formation sold them? The have such a loyal base of customers that will always buy their stuff. GW can't fail - even with failed rules for their games.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
vonjankmon wrote: This thread made my morning. So many people who just seem to have ground their axe of hatred for GW so much that all that is left is the handle.
8th isn't perfect but it's good, better than they have had in years, we haven't seen price hikes recently that I am aware of, and GW is actually interacting with it's community like never before.
All of that and you're *STILL* upset? Who ever said that if GW cured cancer people would still be upset is spot on. Don't like the new rules don't play, it's the adult thing to do and it's what I did in 6th and 7th, I didn't like the rules and balance so I shelved my IG and DA, played other stuff and waited.
The codex balance is a joke. That means the game is not good.
This logic is just terrible. If all sales and profit depended on you would see a direct correlation of the number of products released per year to the capital made by GW. GW would also be able to exactly map out how much they would make in the upcoming year simply by looking at how many releases they had planned and being a business they would soon just churn out stuff with 0 forethought sense the amount released 100% correlated to the amount made. You can track the failure of 7th (declining sales/loss of top spot to competitors) and the success of 8th (increased sales/ customer satisfaction/ player base size/ market share/ect). I really hope you don't own any sort of company because if you think GW sales numbers is only dependent on number of releases you have a terrible buisness mind.
Do you agree or disagree that gladius formation release increased sales of razorbacks or not? Follow the same logic that when a codex drops - half the items on the webstore go out of stock even 2 weeks before the codex comes out...those are sales generated by content release. Why does this work for GW and not other companies? It simple. GW has a loyal group of cumstomers that GW has no competition for their money - so GW has almost not risk of losing money on a release like another company in the market.
LunarSol wrote: Codex balance isn't bad outside of what is essentially the first set of them seemingly being designed for an environment where most people were still playing Index armies.
We haven't seen Knights hit the big tables yet, but from what I can tell it seems to be a great codex...one that many expected to be a total flop.
Finish the core codexes, polish up the older stuff, make a couple tweaks and we're good to go.
I can see Knights having a big impact on the meta, but overall I think they'll struggle to hit the top tables just by virtue of running into something they can't really handle, like a heavy melee troop swarm in an objective heavy scenario or just someone with enough firepower to reliably delete a knight a turn.
Knights gonna dominate IMO.
Does content release push sales? obviously
Does content alone generate sales? obviously no
You are refusing to acknowledge a huge increase in sales and profit by just saying "releases 100% drive GW sales", if this was the case 7th would have never seen GW decreasing profit margins and every year's sales would be an identically correlated line based on releases.
For example for what you're saying to hold true say 1 release would make GW $1 profit. Each year you would be able to calculate GW exact profit by multiplying the number of releases (x) by $1. obviously, this wouldn't work and is silly because the quality of releases (as well as huge amount of other factors play into the amount made).
Another example is looking at another company going the opposite direction then GW. Star wars probably has one of the largest most loyal fan bases on earth (much larger than 40k). Based on your logic each movie should just generate a proportional amount of money that they pump into it. Unfortunately, Solo just lost 100 million dollars because fans who people though "would just buy it because its SW" didn't. The reason why is fans do not like the direction the company is going in.
So GW doing the right things is going to increase revenue
Just like Star Wars doing the wrong things will decrease their revenue
Ignore is only useful for people who post literally nothing positive. Even BaconCatBug occasionally has something useful to say. Not often, but he does.
Besides, silencing/ignoring people with opposing view points is a terrible way to live your life. Sure when people post political stuff on Facebook I immediately unfollow them but this is 40k. It's more important than politics.
The ignore tool is really useful. You still read their posts but it reminds you that they're idiots just in case they're disguising it better than usual.
If GW could just poop out whatever and people will blindly buy then why did GWs profits consistently drop for several years prior to 8th? Almost like people disliked the game and GWs approach and didn't buy anything. But that can't be true, can it?
If GW could just poop out whatever and people will blindly buy then why did GWs profits consistently drop for several years prior to 8th? Almost like people disliked the game and GWs approach and didn't buy anything. But that can't be true, can it?
Because before 8th they had no real marketing or social media interaction. Marketing bs has a tendency of increasing sales.
If GW could just poop out whatever and people will blindly buy then why did GWs profits consistently drop for several years prior to 8th? Almost like people disliked the game and GWs approach and didn't buy anything. But that can't be true, can it?
Because blind fanboyism isn't literally 100% automatic buy everything GW sells. The fact that GW was publishing such utter trash during 7th edition and yet somehow continuing to make a profit (even if it was a lower profit than before) is a testament to how blindly people buy GW products. Without that level of blind loyalty GW would be dead after so blatantly shoveling out half-finished rules and doing nothing to fix the mess.
If GW could just poop out whatever and people will blindly buy then why did GWs profits consistently drop for several years prior to 8th? Almost like people disliked the game and GWs approach and didn't buy anything. But that can't be true, can it?
Because blind fanboyism isn't literally 100% automatic buy everything GW sells. The fact that GW was publishing such utter trash during 7th edition and yet somehow continuing to make a profit (even if it was a lower profit than before) is a testament to how blindly people buy GW products. Without that level of blind loyalty GW would be dead after so blatantly shoveling out half-finished rules and doing nothing to fix the mess.
Or maybe they had a point and actually people that just wants to paint and model their models is a relevant portion of the demographic that buy Warhammer related products, so even if gamers where droping left and right that kind of people still sustained the company.
If GW could just poop out whatever and people will blindly buy then why did GWs profits consistently drop for several years prior to 8th? Almost like people disliked the game and GWs approach and didn't buy anything. But that can't be true, can it?
Because blind fanboyism isn't literally 100% automatic buy everything GW sells. The fact that GW was publishing such utter trash during 7th edition and yet somehow continuing to make a profit (even if it was a lower profit than before) is a testament to how blindly people buy GW products. Without that level of blind loyalty GW would be dead after so blatantly shoveling out half-finished rules and doing nothing to fix the mess.
Or maybe they had a point and actually people that just wants to paint and model their models is a relevant portion of the demographic that buy Warhammer related products, so even if gamers where droping left and right that kind of people still sustained the company.
I think that 7th-8th has made it clear that 40k's selling points really are the background and the cool models. I don't understand how that excuses the poor writing on the rules side of things, though.
I think that 7th-8th has made it clear that 40k's selling points really are the background and the cool models. I don't understand how that excuses the poor writing on the rules side of things, though.
7th, sure. What they were good at sustained them. In 8th it goes a bit beyond just that.
If GW could just poop out whatever and people will blindly buy then why did GWs profits consistently drop for several years prior to 8th? Almost like people disliked the game and GWs approach and didn't buy anything. But that can't be true, can it?
Because blind fanboyism isn't literally 100% automatic buy everything GW sells. The fact that GW was publishing such utter trash during 7th edition and yet somehow continuing to make a profit (even if it was a lower profit than before) is a testament to how blindly people buy GW products. Without that level of blind loyalty GW would be dead after so blatantly shoveling out half-finished rules and doing nothing to fix the mess.
Or maybe they had a point and actually people that just wants to paint and model their models is a relevant portion of the demographic that buy Warhammer related products, so even if gamers where droping left and right that kind of people still sustained the company.
I think that 7th-8th has made it clear that 40k's selling points really are the background and the cool models. I don't understand how that excuses the poor writing on the rules side of things, though.
But if you ask the dakka enlightened the fluff and models got worse in 8th, but income is up massively. The main issue here is a vocal minority who don't like 8th (or anything from GW in some cases) relentlessly complain while most people just take it for a game of toy soldiers that's now more accessible and get on with enjoying it.
Do you agree or disagree that gladius formation release increased sales of razorbacks or not? Follow the same logic that when a codex drops - half the items on the webstore go out of stock even 2 weeks before the codex comes out...those are sales generated by content release. Why does this work for GW and not other companies? It simple. GW has a loyal group of cumstomers that GW has no competition for their money - so GW has almost not risk of losing money on a release like another company in the market.
.
Partially true. The profit-generation from table top wargames in general comes from 'new waves' of stuff. Gw, privateer press, Corvus beli, wyrd, warlord, and whoever you care to name need to push 'new stuff' 'new rulez' to push stuff. Pointing to gladius is missing the point. I remember during the dark days of the summer of discontent, and people were saying how beyond the next space marine codex, what did gw have to push. They'll always find something to push. They have to. Every Wargame-making company has to.
Regarding the loyal group of customers that gw has no competition for their money - you are partially right.There is the old business anecdote that 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers. Thing is, since fifth, and maybe earlier, gw had been haemorrhaging the other 80% of customers at a fantastic rate. It was a common enough commentary piece on the regular 'gw financials analysis' threads that essentially, fewer and fewer people were spending more and more money on less and less product just for gw to keep a relatively stable sales -iirc and for ease of brain, let's say £100 million - it was a bit more or less, depending on the year but essentially, with yearly price hikes, and gw eventually accelerating the release schedule, they were still just about making the same amount of profit, despite cutting, refining, economising and streamlining everything thry could internally. Reading between the lines, it was as plain as day that fewer and fewer people were spending more and more money on less and less product just for gw to keep a relatively stable sales. Gw were cutting down to that hardcore of 20%. The problem is, they were getting to the point of 'critical mass' where below a certain level of active players, activity falls off a cliff. The people that were left buying into the game a few years ago were responsible for keeping gw level, they are not responsible for the surge in sales/interest that has been pushed by eighth, and roundtree's various initiates and changes in direction, or the massive boom in their share price and profits. A lot of it is people that left editions ago coming back. Or frankly, gw making it easier and more attractive to bring in new blood. That helps enormously. You have the exact opposite in privateer press warmachine and hordes gamesmanship at the moment in thst they are so beginner unfriendly that it is very difficult to actually get into the game at this point.
Deadnight wrote: Regarding the loyal group of customers that gw has no competition for their money - you are partially right.There is the old business anecdote that 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers. Thing is, since fifth, and maybe earlier, gw had been haemorrhaging the other 80% of customers at a fantastic rate. It was a common enough commentary piece on the regular 'gw financials analysis' threads that essentially, fewer and fewer people were spending more and more money on less and less product just for gw to keep a relatively stable sales -iirc and for ease of brain, let's say £100 million - it was a bit more or less, depending on the year but essentially, with yearly price hikes, and gw eventually accelerating the release schedule, they were still just about making the same amount of profit, despite cutting, refining, economising and streamlining everything thry could internally. Reading between the lines, it was as plain as day that fewer and fewer people were spending more and more money on less and less product just for gw to keep a relatively stable sales. Gw were cutting down to that hardcore of 20%. The problem is, they were getting to the point of 'critical mass' where below a certain level of active players, activity falls off a cliff. The people that were left buying into the game a few years ago were responsible for keeping gw level, they are not responsible for the surge in sales/interest that has been pushed by eighth, and roundtree's various initiates and changes in direction, or the massive boom in their share price and profits. A lot of it is people that left editions ago coming back. Or frankly, gw making it easier and more attractive to bring in new blood. That helps enormously. You have the exact opposite in privateer press warmachine and hordes gamesmanship at the moment in thst they are so beginner unfriendly that it is very difficult to actually get into the game at this point.
In principle I agree with this - but I am not totally sure the numbers are right. I suspect GW's sales of "Timmy's First Tactical Marine box+paints" continued to hold up and I reckon this represents a huge proportion of that 80%.
The idea there is no competition to GW is weird.
That may have been true a decade ago - but not today. I don't quite know exactly when it happened - but in about 2013-2016 vastly more people in my FLGS seemed to be for X-Wing, or Warmahordes or Malifaux or Infinity. Anything basically than playing GW games. You saw this on the tables - and you saw it in the company financials.
Most of them - apart from some of the X-Wing variants, and I think they are in danger of splitting the community - are pretty much dead now - or at least have seemingly been driven from the store's tables. I don't know if its backed up by sales figures, but I think 3rd edition would seem to have been a disaster for Privateer Press. Also - at the danger of doing a Kirby - I think the model quality compared with GW has collapsed.
Deadnight wrote: Regarding the loyal group of customers that gw has no competition for their money - you are partially right.There is the old business anecdote that 80% of your sales comes from 20% of your customers. Thing is, since fifth, and maybe earlier, gw had been haemorrhaging the other 80% of customers at a fantastic rate. It was a common enough commentary piece on the regular 'gw financials analysis' threads that essentially, fewer and fewer people were spending more and more money on less and less product just for gw to keep a relatively stable sales -iirc and for ease of brain, let's say £100 million - it was a bit more or less, depending on the year but essentially, with yearly price hikes, and gw eventually accelerating the release schedule, they were still just about making the same amount of profit, despite cutting, refining, economising and streamlining everything thry could internally. Reading between the lines, it was as plain as day that fewer and fewer people were spending more and more money on less and less product just for gw to keep a relatively stable sales. Gw were cutting down to that hardcore of 20%. The problem is, they were getting to the point of 'critical mass' where below a certain level of active players, activity falls off a cliff. The people that were left buying into the game a few years ago were responsible for keeping gw level, they are not responsible for the surge in sales/interest that has been pushed by eighth, and roundtree's various initiates and changes in direction, or the massive boom in their share price and profits. A lot of it is people that left editions ago coming back. Or frankly, gw making it easier and more attractive to bring in new blood. That helps enormously. You have the exact opposite in privateer press warmachine and hordes gamesmanship at the moment in thst they are so beginner unfriendly that it is very difficult to actually get into the game at this point.
In principle I agree with this - but I am not totally sure the numbers are right. I suspect GW's sales of "Timmy's First Tactical Marine box+paints" continued to hold up and I reckon this represents a huge proportion of that 80%.
The idea there is no competition to GW is weird.
That may have been true a decade ago - but not today. I don't quite know exactly when it happened - but in about 2013-2016 vastly more people in my FLGS seemed to be for X-Wing, or Warmahordes or Malifaux or Infinity. Anything basically than playing GW games. You saw this on the tables - and you saw it in the company financials.
Most of them - apart from some of the X-Wing variants, and I think they are in danger of splitting the community - are pretty much dead now - or at least have seemingly been driven from the store's tables. I don't know if its backed up by sales figures, but I think 3rd edition would seem to have been a disaster for Privateer Press. Also - at the danger of doing a Kirby - I think the model quality compared with GW has collapsed.
Warmahorde are in a weird place. Their models sculpts are improving drastically but their prices are getting to Kirby Era GW levels and the materials are pretty awful. Now that 8th has been a success I think we'll go back to the status quo of 40k dominating everything. Privateer Press seems to be trying to kill it's own game by making it over-expensive and as unfriendly to new players as possible while Infinity, Malifaux etc were always going to be too small and niche to compete and that just kind of builds upon itself. The more 40k dominates the more people will play and the less competition they'll have. It was brave of PP to try and capitalize on 40ks decline by release Mk3 but they screwed it up so spectacularly they may have killed their own game. I don't follow X-Wing but didn't it also do something recently that required people to buy upgrade packs or something for a new edition? I dunno, I don't follow X-Wing.
@Xenomancers I disagree that being OP helps a units sales performance. YMMV but most meta chasers I know are people thet either already had a huge colllection acquired oiver several years or people buying secondhand. Especially in the case of old units like Razorbacks.
IMHO the opposite does hurt a units' sales being woefully underpowered.
Year after year the financials (untill last year) made clear that Gw had falling sales. They upped prices on products. (Nowadays they just make newer stuff more expensive), cut internall costs via reststructuring and still showed less profit. (Tough they never had a red year since I think 2009?). The conclusion seems obvious they had falling sales. They turned that around throughout the last 1,5-2 years. And IMHO that's mostly because of better community interaction.
Whatever you think about 8th it is better balanced and easier to pick up than 7th. Whatever you think about how succesfull their efforts are, you can't deny they do more community interaction. (Okay they came from 0 but still.)
8th basically brought me back into the hobby after I left it in 40k 4th edition/WHFB 7th ed.
I can't really compare 8th to 5/6/7th but compared to 3rd and 4th it's better in almost every single way, especially the way people play it. Back in the day I hated playing 40k in my local area because everyone just wanted to do 1500 point pitched battles and whoever killed more points won. It was the absolute worst way to play the game but all of the actual missions in the rulebook and elsewhere were not encouraged or a really core part of the game.
Don't get me wrong I can see the flaws in 8th and have a big wishlist of things I'd like to see changed and since getting back into the game I am a bit salty that the two armies I play right now (SM and Necrons) kind of struggle. But I can't say I've not enjoyed any of the games I've played so far. I even got tabled on turn 3 by a Slamguinius list last week and it was still a lot of fun and I learned a whole lot from it and I could even see ways in which I could have drawn the game out longer or maybe even won.
Earth127 wrote: @Xenomancers I disagree that being OP helps a units sales performance. YMMV but most meta chasers I know are people thet either already had a huge colllection acquired oiver several years or people buying secondhand. Especially in the case of old units like Razorbacks.
IMHO the opposite does hurt a units' sales being woefully underpowered.
Year after the financials (untill last year) made clear that Gw had falling sales. They upped prices on products. (Nowadays they just make newer stuff more expensive), cut internall costs via reststructuring and still showed less profit. (Tough they never had a red year since I think 2009?). The conclusion seems obvious they had falliong sales. They turned that arounf throughout the last 1,5-2 years. And IMHO that's mostly because of better community interaction.
Whatever you think about 8th it is better balanced and easier to pick up than 7th. Whatever you think about how succesfull their efforts are, you can't deny they do more community interaction. (Okay they came from 0 but still.)
Largely agree, but hot units *do* see a sales bump. See for example previously pap Exocrines that went OOP the second they were deemed even slightly OP, and good luck finding Hive Guard to buy in many places too! That GW is missing out on sales due to production capacity woes is on them.
Warmahorde are in a weird place. Their models sculpts are improving drastically but their prices are getting to Kirby Era GW levels and the materials are pretty awful. Now that 8th has been a success I think we'll go back to the status quo of 40k dominating everything. Privateer Press seems to be trying to kill it's own game by making it over-expensive and as unfriendly to new players as possible while Infinity, Malifaux etc were always going to be too small and niche to compete and that just kind of builds upon itself. The more 40k dominates the more people will play and the less competition they'll have. It was brave of PP to try and capitalize on 40ks decline by release Mk3 but they screwed it up so spectacularly they may have killed their own game. I don't follow X-Wing but didn't it also do something recently that required people to buy upgrade packs or something for a new edition? I dunno, I don't follow X-Wing.
After introducing the 8th ed, the tendency goes clearly in the direction to 40k. I agree that PP could have made more out of their game when players withdrawed from 40k in the years 2013-2016. But PP has missed this opportunity. MK3 didn't make the game better. It shifted the point values and introduced new glaring weaknesses. So everybody in my gaming group is about 40k these days. No change in sight.
I don't follow X-Wing but didn't it also do something recently that required people to buy upgrade packs or something for a new edition? I dunno, I don't follow X-Wing.
People are waiting for 2.0 of the rules that promise to fix a lot of issues in 1.0. That's at least what my friends tell me who are hardcore into X-Wing. I think it is pretty normal for things to slow down as people wait for a new release. I know that 40k took a short dip while everyone was waiting for 8th edition at the time.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Regarding OP and the general narrative in the thread my simple answer is: 40k and AoS are fun, good games. They may not tickle everybody's fancy, but that's a subjective thing. For me 40k and AoS represent games that I can have fun with while also testing my mettle/army. Also, beautiful models for the most part.
In my neck of the woods 40k has been doing really well with people enjoying the game a lot. AoS is also picking up steam quickly, especially after they announced 2.0, with quite a few old WHFB players rejoining. Best of all? Everyone appears to be having fun with the games. People are playing, having fun, making jokes, and testing each others' skill. There isn't really much else I could ask for, and for that I just want to personally thank Games Workshop for doing such a wonderful job of getting people together to play.
Bosskelot wrote:8th basically brought me back into the hobby after I left it in 40k 4th edition/WHFB 7th ed.
I can't really compare 8th to 5/6/7th but compared to 3rd and 4th it's better in almost every single way, especially the way people play it. Back in the day I hated playing 40k in my local area because everyone just wanted to do 1500 point pitched battles and whoever killed more points won. It was the absolute worst way to play the game but all of the actual missions in the rulebook and elsewhere were not encouraged or a really core part of the game.
Don't get me wrong I can see the flaws in 8th and have a big wishlist of things I'd like to see changed and since getting back into the game I am a bit salty that the two armies I play right now (SM and Necrons) kind of struggle. But I can't say I've not enjoyed any of the games I've played so far. I even got tabled on turn 3 by a Slamguinius list last week and it was still a lot of fun and I learned a whole lot from it and I could even see ways in which I could have drawn the game out longer or maybe even won.
Sounds more like an issue with the people in your area rather than an issue with the rules.
All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
It's more than just marketing though, although that is definitely a factor. It's a complete revolution in how they communicate and interact with their customers.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
It's more than just marketing though, although that is definitely a factor. It's a complete revolution in how they communicate and interact with their customers.
Which is still just a matter of promoting their product better, not offering a better product.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
It's more than just marketing though, although that is definitely a factor. It's a complete revolution in how they communicate and interact with their customers.
It’s all done through the medium of marketing though, not a single reply they have made on Facebook is an honest and open one, they are all done through the lense of “you cannot say this, it will hurt our image” or “standard marketing response to query”
Every medium they have used to communicate with customers has one goal, sell more product, and they have done an amazing job at that, even going so far as to convince people that they have produced superior products or changed as a company...
They've also changed how they present and produce their product. So whilst it's mostly marketing, It's more than just they make good adds. They are trying to improve their procces and interaction. So it is marketing in broadest possible sense encroaching onto design.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
It's more than just marketing though, although that is definitely a factor. It's a complete revolution in how they communicate and interact with their customers.
It’s all done through the medium of marketing though, not a single reply they have made on Facebook is an honest and open one, they are all done through the lense of “you cannot say this, it will hurt our image” or “standard marketing response to query”
Every medium they have used to communicate with customers has one goal, sell more product, and they have done an amazing job at that, even going so far as to convince people that they have produced superior products or changed as a company...
I don't think that's very fair, and is overly cynical.
Of course they are a business, and so they have to sell product, grow, and make money. Their activities ultimately have to be financially justifiable. No one is going to argue against that.
But things like the Bug FAQ and other hotfixes to the rules in response to issues in tournaments and such. That's not simply marketing, it's not just to push product. I've met these people, genuinely it is a drive to make the game better and more fun, and it's behaviour we haven't seen quite like this from GW ever before.
Bosskelot wrote: 8th basically brought me back into the hobby after I left it in 40k 4th edition/WHFB 7th ed.
I can't really compare 8th to 5/6/7th but compared to 3rd and 4th it's better in almost every single way, especially the way people play it. Back in the day I hated playing 40k in my local area because everyone just wanted to do 1500 point pitched battles and whoever killed more points won. It was the absolute worst way to play the game but all of the actual missions in the rulebook and elsewhere were not encouraged or a really core part of the game.
Don't get me wrong I can see the flaws in 8th and have a big wishlist of things I'd like to see changed and since getting back into the game I am a bit salty that the two armies I play right now (SM and Necrons) kind of struggle. But I can't say I've not enjoyed any of the games I've played so far. I even got tabled on turn 3 by a Slamguinius list last week and it was still a lot of fun and I learned a whole lot from it and I could even see ways in which I could have drawn the game out longer or maybe even won.
Same here; came back after a long lul after the terribleness of 6th ed.
I like 8th, and I like how GW is making a conscious effort to patch and fix stuff, even if some of it is knee jerk. Plus GW's models are awesome.... I know they're pricey, but god are they awesome.
So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
Formosa wrote: It’s all done through the medium of marketing though, not a single reply they have made on Facebook is an honest and open one, they are all done through the lense of “you cannot say this, it will hurt our image” or “standard marketing response to query”
Every medium they have used to communicate with customers has one goal, sell more product, and they have done an amazing job at that, even going so far as to convince people that they have produced superior products or changed as a company...
I don't concur with that. The social media team do a sterling job of being on message, pushing product, and doing it in a enthusiastic fan way. Their responses to comments poke fun at in game targets or the posters themselves, but not in a mean exclusive way. Currently I would be happy using them as an example of how to deal with a dedicated but often slightly obsessed fanbase.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
Or maybe, just maybe, the game is actually more fun and easier to pick up and play.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
Or maybe, just maybe, the game is actually more fun and easier to pick up and play.
I dunno man. There's all the evidence to the contrary which totally exists and I could cite if I wanted to but instead I don't have to because you're dumb or something...
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
It's more than just marketing though, although that is definitely a factor. It's a complete revolution in how they communicate and interact with their customers.
It’s all done through the medium of marketing though, not a single reply they have made on Facebook is an honest and open one, they are all done through the lense of “you cannot say this, it will hurt our image” or “standard marketing response to query”
Every medium they have used to communicate with customers has one goal, sell more product, and they have done an amazing job at that, even going so far as to convince people that they have produced superior products or changed as a company...
EVERY Company interacts with their customers with the goal of selling more product. But thing is a biiig part of "selling more product" consists of "increasing customer sastifaction" If you put out a new edition of 40k and it's the worst experiance oy everyone's life they're less apt to spend the money on the future, meanwhile if the game is "the mosted fun evah!" they're more likely to spend money. a good consumer/busniess relationship is symbiotic.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
It's more than just marketing though, although that is definitely a factor. It's a complete revolution in how they communicate and interact with their customers.
It’s all done through the medium of marketing though, not a single reply they have made on Facebook is an honest and open one, they are all done through the lense of “you cannot say this, it will hurt our image” or “standard marketing response to query”
Every medium they have used to communicate with customers has one goal, sell more product, and they have done an amazing job at that, even going so far as to convince people that they have produced superior products or changed as a company...
EVERY Company interacts with their customers with the goal of selling more product. But thing is a biiig part of "selling more product" consists of "increasing customer sastifaction" If you put out a new edition of 40k and it's the worst experiance oy everyone's life they're less apt to spend the money on the future, meanwhile if the game is "the mosted fun evah!" they're more likely to spend money. a good consumer/busniess relationship is symbiotic.
But you know that’s not true Brian, until fairly recently, GW had no interaction at all, it was all one way, they stated X and we had to put up with it or move on, many did both.
Now we have seen what happens when you market well, or at all for that matter, it means literally nothing how good a product is if you market it well, people will still buy it and it’s related products, look at the IPhone model, total crap as phones now but people still buy them in droves as it’s matketed so well.
So the phenomenonal FB team does a good job and gets the image to improve, they use other mediums to get the image to improve, people buy into it (rightly or wrongly) and come back to 8th or are new, nice, good job marketing team, because until they buy it and try it, they know nothing meaningful other than what the marketing has told them.
My personal opinion is that 8th is a beta test that needs a hell of a lot of work to be considered “good” I think GW is trying to change its tarnished image for the better but I remain skeptical that they will actually manage it, given past behaviours.
I'm sure the non-Marine players were happy to play games without having to wait 3-12 months.
I am guessing you don’t play orcs?
I dunno, I suspect getting 2nd at a major GWGT and then getting 1st at the next major GWGT was probably better than orks not being able to play at all...
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
Yeah, it seems their marketing is not only making us buy crappy models we don't want, it's also tricking us into thinking this dumpster fire of an edition is actually not that bad. Oh wait....
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
Yeah, it seems their marketing is not only making us buy crappy models we don't want, it's also tricking us into thinking this dumpster fire of an edition is actually not that bad. Oh wait....
I mean, I only buy models, paint them, participate in campaign and tournaments, because of marketing. Without the flashy advertising I'd probably realize that 40k and AoS is the worst thing since [insert horrible thing].
If only the superior master wargames could advertise better I could play something decent.
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
Yeah, it seems their marketing is not only making us buy crappy models we don't want, it's also tricking us into thinking this dumpster fire of an edition is actually not that bad. Oh wait....
I mean, I only buy models, paint them, participate in campaign and tournaments, because of marketing. Without the flashy advertising I'd probably realize that 40k and AoS is the worst thing since [insert horrible thing].
If only the superior master wargames could advertise better I could play something decent.
They need to convince themselves they have make the right choice. If they don't play the game because it sucks, then that means the game NEEDS to suck, theres no other possibility. So the only excuse for other people to actually enjoy the game and like it are:
-They are GW fanboys
-They don't know better
-They have been tricked by marketing
-They have the beaten-up wife syndrome, and very low standards.
Just pay attention and you'll see the same posters using those excuses over and over and over again. Theres only a couple of posters that even if they dislike the game, are reasonable about it, his flaws, and his virtues.
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
Yeah, it seems their marketing is not only making us buy crappy models we don't want, it's also tricking us into thinking this dumpster fire of an edition is actually not that bad. Oh wait....
I mean, I only buy models, paint them, participate in campaign and tournaments, because of marketing. Without the flashy advertising I'd probably realize that 40k and AoS is the worst thing since [insert horrible thing].
If only the superior master wargames could advertise better I could play something decent.
Yep, they've truly got you there buddy, just burn it all.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
It's more than just marketing though, although that is definitely a factor. It's a complete revolution in how they communicate and interact with their customers.
It’s all done through the medium of marketing though, not a single reply they have made on Facebook is an honest and open one, they are all done through the lense of “you cannot say this, it will hurt our image” or “standard marketing response to query”
Every medium they have used to communicate with customers has one goal, sell more product, and they have done an amazing job at that, even going so far as to convince people that they have produced superior products or changed as a company...
This. This is what bugs me when people claim that GW is engaging the customer base- every single thing written (can't say for speech because I don't watch their videos) is something along the lines of "this thing I'm talking about right now is the greatest and bestest ever!!!!!! Buy it!!!!!!" There isn't anything resembling actual, honest dialog (and yes, a few companies actually do that). There's very little info given other than "new product is coming out, it's the best most beautiful thing we've ever made, amazing and incredible, spend money."
I'm sure the non-Marine players were happy to play games without having to wait 3-12 months.
I am guessing you don’t play orcs?
I dunno, I suspect getting 2nd at a major GWGT and then getting 1st at the next major GWGT was probably better than orks not being able to play at all...
Your reply is an interesting insight into how healthy the competitive scene is.
Turnip Jedi wrote: I think 8th only had to be 'good enough' to get the GW momentum wagon back up to speed, and their market saturation would do the rest
The general gist of my GW vs The Rest seemed to be people would rather get consistent games of 40k in than have to hunt down players for 'better' games, plus you can usually skip an edition or three and come back to 40k something not many systems bar MTG can boast
Pretty much exactly this.
I'd bet 90% or so of non-historical wargamers got into the hobby via Games Workshop products. Everybody has Warhammer 40,000 models. Wargaming is both a social hobby and one that requires a large financial investment, as well as personal time played building, painting and playing. This is ultimately the key to GW's success; why risk playing other games that may well die off completely in a few months to a year? People don't want to chance that when all they've known is GW and all their friends are playing GW products. It's just that AoS/7th Edition and GW's business model were so bad that for a good chunk of people they couldn't excuse it anymore. Those couple of years were by far the healthiest for the wargaming hobby as much needed diversity and newly kindled finances flowed into other games. Privateer Press absolutely shot themselves in the foot a few times, but the decline was inevitable when so many of it's new audience were always waiting for an excuse to flock back to GW. You can see this in how Infinity, Malifaux and even Guild Ball have shrunk considerably too.
GW began practising a basic social media presence. People remember their friends - because remember the majority still played GW products for the above reasons - and took what signs they could as an excuse to rejoin the majority of their clubs in playing 40k. Everybody else playing those other games had to buy into 8th if they wanted a community of more than two people, and so they were swallowed up as well. It's why even at their worst, GW could never really die.
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
More that the guy in a flashy suit and slick hairstyle has fooled you into thinking GW has changed. They have, but only in small ways; a basic social media presence and bringing back discounted starter sets. Prices are still absurd across 90% of the range, the rules writing is as utterly atrocious as it was before, the fluff is dreadful without an easily assignable hate figure (Ward). The difference now is they present it with a smile rather than spitting in your face, making it easier to swallow and convince yourself it's any different. It's 'okay' to buy GW products now because their CEO doesn't have total contempt for you.
I'm sure the non-Marine players were happy to play games without having to wait 3-12 months.
I am guessing you don’t play orcs?
I dunno, I suspect getting 2nd at a major GWGT and then getting 1st at the next major GWGT was probably better than orks not being able to play at all...
Your reply is an interesting insight into how healthy the competitive scene is.
No, it's more how 40k players won't call someone out on slow play in public.
Formosa wrote: All I see is the success of marketing, marketing that GW has done for the first time in over 20 years, it’s no real surprise that you start making more money when you start advertising to a larger audience.
So well done GW, marketing is successful!
Or maybe, just maybe, the game is actually more fun and easier to pick up and play.
Yes, it is.
But now its more like a board game where maneuvering plays no longer a vital role.
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
Yeah, it seems their marketing is not only making us buy crappy models we don't want, it's also tricking us into thinking this dumpster fire of an edition is actually not that bad. Oh wait....
I mean, I only buy models, paint them, participate in campaign and tournaments, because of marketing. Without the flashy advertising I'd probably realize that 40k and AoS is the worst thing since [insert horrible thing].
If only the superior master wargames could advertise better I could play something decent.
They need to convince themselves they have make the right choice. If they don't play the game because it sucks, then that means the game NEEDS to suck, theres no other possibility. So the only excuse for other people to actually enjoy the game and like it are:
-They are GW fanboys
-They don't know better
-They have been tricked by marketing
-They have the beaten-up wife syndrome, and very low standards.
Just pay attention and you'll see the same posters using those excuses over and over and over again. Theres only a couple of posters that even if they dislike the game, are reasonable about it, his flaws, and his virtues.
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
It's like Michael Bay movies. I don't enjoy them, no longer watch them and think they are awful garbage, yet they make huge profits.
40k is in no way the best wargame made in the history of wargames. It has many problems and many other systems consistently get better levels of player involvement and enjoyment. But it is the most successful in history, most common and best supported.
Sometimes you don't need to be the best to be the most successful. Indeed Microsoft used to have the unofficial motto of 'good enough'. 40k is good enough to show off your models, have a game with your mates and muck about.
But you know that’s not true Brian, until fairly recently, GW had no interaction at all, it was all one way, they stated X and we had to put up with it or move on, many did both.
GW had a forum for their games back up until a little while after the Black Crusade summer campaign where the Devs actually would interact with their player base from time to time. It was shutdown right after GW removed a nerf to Nid warriors that was panned by 40K players a large as unnecessary for them that GW put up in an FAQ. The interaction you enjoy now can always be taken away. Yes it would be a bad business decision, just like many people thought shutting down the forums was a bad business decision. It looks like the changes they made are working so far, but we won't be really sure until we see a longer term period of growth and continued interaction from GW. I still consider GWs involvement with their players to be less than it was, though.
I also think they used to have a letters section in WD, but I could be misremembering that from another magazine like Dragon.
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
It's like Michael Bay movies. I don't enjoy them, no longer watch them and think they are awful garbage, yet they make huge profits.
Yet presumably you don't go onto the Transformer movie forums and bitch ceaselessly about how awful they are. Curious.
Sim-Life wrote: So what's the excuse now? We're not REALLY enjoying the game, we've just been fooled by the guy with a flashy suit and slick hairstyle into THINKING we enjoy the game?
It's like Michael Bay movies. I don't enjoy them, no longer watch them and think they are awful garbage, yet they make huge profits.
Yet presumably you don't go onto the Transformer movie forums and bitch ceaselessly about how awful they are. Curious.
It's worse than that. This is the equivalent of seeing all the transformer movies, buying all the products and spending hundreds of hours playing transformer games; just to go onto the transformers forums to cry about how the new transformers that actually got good viewer and critics reviews and made tons of money is worse than the last one that had dwindling sales and horrible reviews.
Where the complainers are being deliberately hyperbolic and dishonest to someone coming back to the game and was just asking a simple question. The negativity is getting to the point where they're straight up trying to push people away from the community just so they can air a grievance that is at once incorrect and something we've all heard a million times before.
JohnnyHell wrote: Yeah the hyperbole and salt in that thread was ridiculous.
I don't see anything hyperbolic at all.
The list of books/documents is 100% accurate. To have every option for your army, including options that were removed from the codex, you need to buy every relevant index and codex and you need to get a copy of every FAQ document. Competitive play means having access to every option, even ones not generally considered to be the strongest ones, available in your toolbox and the simple truth is that GW removed some of those options from the codices because they don't currently sell a plastic kit for it. This is not hyperbole, it's a simple statement of fact.
The claim that plasma goes on everything is 100% accurate. Plasma is, by the indisputable math, the most effective special weapon and all other weapons are niche-role tools at best. It is not at all hyperbole to advise a new player to ignore their intuition from other editions (such as "melta is good at killing tanks") and put plasma on every model that can carry it.
The statement that soup is mandatory is 100% accurate. Competitive play requires the ability to bring soup lists, period, and that means buying every codex that you can soup together. You may wish to bring a mono-codex list for a specific event, but you can not consider yourself a competitive player if you reject a vast section of the very effective options that GW has provided. If you do not buy the rules and models to put soup lists in your toolbox you will be at a significant disadvantage in competitive play.
The claim that GW posts answers on social media is probably inaccurate, but only because social media posts are not official rules and therefore not relevant. They may be useful in choosing your own resolution to a rule issue, if you choose to value an unofficial opinion statement by a GW employee, but they are not mandatory reading.
So no, I don't see much hyperbole here. What I see is that certain pro-GW posters seem to consider objective truth about 8th edition to be "hyperbole" if it points out flaws in the game, perhaps because they are uncomfortable seeing that truth presented to them.
JohnnyHell wrote: Yeah the hyperbole and salt in that thread was ridiculous.
I don't see anything hyperbolic at all.
The list of books/documents is 100% accurate. To have every option for your army, including options that were removed from the codex, you need to buy every relevant index and codex and you need to get a copy of every FAQ document. Competitive play means having access to every option, even ones not generally considered to be the strongest ones, available in your toolbox and the simple truth is that GW removed some of those options from the codices because they don't currently sell a plastic kit for it. This is not hyperbole, it's a simple statement of fact.
The claim that plasma goes on everything is 100% accurate. Plasma is, by the indisputable math, the most effective special weapon and all other weapons are niche-role tools at best. It is not at all hyperbole to advise a new player to ignore their intuition from other editions (such as "melta is good at killing tanks") and put plasma on every model that can carry it.
The statement that soup is mandatory is 100% accurate. Competitive play requires the ability to bring soup lists, period, and that means buying every codex that you can soup together. You may wish to bring a mono-codex list for a specific event, but you can not consider yourself a competitive player if you reject a vast section of the very effective options that GW has provided. If you do not buy the rules and models to put soup lists in your toolbox you will be at a significant disadvantage in competitive play.
The claim that GW posts answers on social media is probably inaccurate, but only because social media posts are not official rules and therefore not relevant. They may be useful in choosing your own resolution to a rule issue, if you choose to value an unofficial opinion statement by a GW employee, but they are not mandatory reading.
So no, I don't see much hyperbole here. What I see is that certain pro-GW posters seem to consider objective truth about 8th edition to be "hyperbole" if it points out flaws in the game, perhaps because they are uncomfortable seeing that truth presented to them.
Seconded.
It seems that we will see more and more GW trolls here. But they can be dismantled. Well done.
I haven't played 40k since 3rd and I was like 12 then so I probably didn't matter much anyway. But 8th got me back into it and I think it's great. There seem to be a ton of people on this site that are really pissed off for whatever reason but that hasn't stopped me from introducing this game to a ton of friends and coworkers and having a great time together. The local game stores are also all very active with 40k and I honestly haven't had this much fun following a gaming scene (tabletop or not) in years, both through official and non-official channels.
My only real complaint is how close combat sucks due to automatic, risk-free fall backs, but everything else in the game has been really smooth and streamlined compared to how I remembered it. And the fact that we see lots of different list types in a constantly shifting meta is a ton of fun. Love the constant stream of codexes and FAQs that help keep the meta from getting stale, even it's sometimes my favorite units getting nerfed (Tzeentch daemons )
But you know that’s not true Brian, until fairly recently, GW had no interaction at all, it was all one way, they stated X and we had to put up with it or move on, many did both.
GW had a forum for their games back up until a little while after the Black Crusade summer campaign where the Devs actually would interact with their player base from time to time. It was shutdown right after GW removed a nerf to Nid warriors that was panned by 40K players a large as unnecessary for them that GW put up in an FAQ. The interaction you enjoy now can always be taken away. Yes it would be a bad business decision, just like many people thought shutting down the forums was a bad business decision. It looks like the changes they made are working so far, but we won't be really sure until we see a longer term period of growth and continued interaction from GW. I still consider GWs involvement with their players to be less than it was, though.
I also think they used to have a letters section in WD, but I could be misremembering that from another magazine like Dragon.
I remember the forums back in the early 2000’s they were good, but shutting them down was a mistake and the systematic removal of themselves from any kind of feedback and gauging of public opinion caused issues amongst fans no doubt, people felt ignored and a lot of people left because of it, it’s decisions like that and the anti consumer policies that led people to think GW was circling the drain for a long time, suddenly they get a change in leadership, start marketing and communicating with the player base and they have a massive surge in both market presence and profits, it’s a good thing, and I agree, GW back then seemed to care about the game first, just look at the dev team and the freedom they had, later taken away and controlled by the “marketing” team, I believe it was Andy hoare who spoke about it fairly recently and how they purposefully put out stuff that broke the game just for profit.
And yep white dwarf used to have letters from players in it, kind of like it does now but it’s emails I assume these days.
It’s claiming the game is unplayable when it isn’t that’s hyperbolic.
It’s the snark and salt and toxic attitudes that go with it (exemplified by the above two posts) that really don’t help.
I’m not a “GW troll” (what even). “They can be dismantled”??? Just really?
Pretty sad. There are tonnes of faults with every edition of 40K, this one is no different, and lots of things could be done differently/better. But everyone bitching at each other is pointless.
Maybe GW has been alienating "core fans" in designing/marketing the game to guys like me and my group? I dunno, the game seems awesome and they seem like they're on the right track with where they're headed.
It's not surprising to me that their financials are solid given the amount of "fun" I see people having around me.
If you want to play a complicated soup with 3 different codexes and indexes that's on you.
If the only thing you want to get out of the hobby is winning a well attended GT that's on you.
JohnnyHell wrote: It’s claiming the game is unplayable when it isn’t that’s hyperbolic.
Nobody in that thread claimed that. Please don't make straw man arguments.
It’s the snark and salt and toxic attitudes that go with it (exemplified by the above two posts) that really don’t help.
Funny, but all I see is people listing the required books to play 8th edition. The most trolling was from the pro-GW people saying things like "IGNORE THE TROLLS " because someone dared to mention the full list of required books instead of lying and saying "just buy a single codex".
Maybe GW just doesn't care about long time fans any more and only cares about attracting new customers. That's pretty much the case with most games these days.
barboggo wrote: Maybe GW just doesn't care about long time fans any more and only cares about attracting new customers. That's pretty much the case with most games these days.
That “appears” to have been the case for quite some time now.
barboggo wrote: Maybe GW just doesn't care about long time fans any more and only cares about attracting new customers. That's pretty much the case with most games these days.
That “appears” to have been the case for quite some time now.
I don't think that's strictly true. It seems to me that 8th ed., and all the other changes he have implemented have brought back a lot of former players previously alienated by gw's earlier shenanigans, and bad faith. It's good to have them (us,I should say!) back.
And it seems that's they're welcome. Well, they're welcome so long as they're spending money. If they're standing in the corner with a ten or fifteen year old army and complaining/lashing out all the time about everything, and not spending anything, is It any wonder they're not welcome?
Same with the new guy who rocks up and doesn't buy in, downloads all the codices on torrents and get some everything second hand from eBay. Or else third party proxies.
It's not about whether you are an old or new fan. It's whether you are an old or new fan that is willing to part with your cash for what gw is offering.
If you want to play a complicated soup with 3 different codexes and indexes that's on you.
If the only thing you want to get out of the hobby is winning a well attended GT that's on you.
Neither of these are required to play the game.
Amen. I’ll ignore Peregrine; his posts are rarely varied in content.
I am very much a fan of 8th edition. It got me back into the game. Much simpler, while keeping the CORE ideas of the game there. Obviously it, like all games, could use some improvements. But they seem much more invested in doing so.
Also, completely discounting the huge sales boon and the opinions of thousands of buyers who you all don't think as important is arrogant and silly. While finances, popularity and quality are not completely the same, they are certainly both correlated and causative. Rather than dismiss all these successes outright for unclear reasons and personal vendettas, wouldn't the Occam's razor assumption be that
1) 8th is at least somewhat better.
2) There is a rise in popularity.
3) GW finances reflect this.
I'm a casual WH40K player who's come back to the hobby with the release of 8th edition. I'm also putting together an SM army. In short I'm probably quite representative of the sort of customers who are financing GW's current success.
If you read through many of the threads on here though I'm playing a broken and imbalanced game with a bottom-tier faction.
GW sell a hobby, so when things aren't right people who are invested in that hobby are rightly critical and resent having to choose between putting up with it or giving up. The game clearly isn't perfect in terms of balance and rules, and the resulting FAQ bloat is an issue, but there are plenty of people who really enjoy WH40K 8th edition, and that's reflected in GW's current financial success.
Brother Castor wrote: I couldn't agree more.
I'm a casual WH40K player who's come back to the hobby with the release of 8th edition. I'm also putting together an SM army. In short I'm probably quite representative of the sort of customers who are financing GW's current success.
If you read through many of the threads on here though I'm playing a broken and imbalanced game with a bottom-tier faction.
I was speaking to a mate of mine recently. Got to know him through playing warmachine/hordes. We both turned to WMH after turning our backs on 40k, for various reasons. Though we were both big fans of WMH, he recently sold his grymkin army, and I've sold one of my three WMH armies, and will soon sell one of the remaining ones (I'm keeping my Khador, because patriotism). And we are both buying back into 40k. For me, it's death guard and primaris dark angels.
Thing is, we are both somewhat older - early thirties. Our outlook on gaming has changed over the years. Speaking about getting back into 40k, we were both very excited about it, and more so than we'd been in years. thing is, we both understand part of the responsibility of enjoying your hobby is on us. To play the games we enjoy. He'd been a tournament and thought it was ridiculous - he turned up with a 'regular' marine company, and ended up facing gulliman with 6 storm ravens or something. Needless to say, some of what you can pull out of the hat with regards to tournament play are utterly crazy and frankly, ridiculous. But rather than throw his hands up in the air and lash out, what he said was he simply won't go to tournaments. He's not interested in that scene, or that kind of play, so just won't engage with it. I'm in the same boat. Your bottom tier faction is in all probability perfectly playable in the right circumstances with the right people who share your outlook. Who cares what anyone else does.
Hm, but that would require for people both new and returning to be sure that at least like 15-20 people per store never want to have or don't have a tournament list. I mean I guess it is possible in the UK where the area is small and the number of stores is huge, but it would be harder to pull of in places where there is one store and one community, and you can't just decided your not going to play "those" people, as they maybe the only people that play locally.
I have a question about people who play much longer then me. What does GW do when it earns more money, games wise of course. Do they like start making some sort of mini factions, hire playtesters etc or do they tighten the belt awaiting another slump in the market?
My only real complaint is how close combat sucks due to automatic, risk-free fall backs
To be fair, while the fall back move itself is 'risk free' it rarely puts the unit out of risk. Most falling back units can't do anything else that turn, so you have completely negated them for a turn by having gotten them in to melee. Furthermore, as a fall back is only the distance of your base movement, most units that have fallen back can be automatically re-engaged in your next turn, so they haven't actually escaped at all! Sure, they get to overwatch you again, but that in itself isn't a problem. It's pretty much the only chance of a non-melee unit beating you 1v1 in this circumstance and the odds are stacked against them due to overwatch only hitting on 6s.
The problem for melee armies isn't that the target unit can get away as such, it's that in doing so it exposes your unit to fire from the rest of their army. So if a mechanic were to be changed to more favour melee focused armies, I'd probably look there to do it instead. Perhaps shooting a unit you fell back from this turn would be at -1 to hit for instance, to represent needing to take a moment to ensure friendlies were out of your fire arcs before opening fire.
If you want to play a complicated soup with 3 different codexes and indexes that's on you.
If the only thing you want to get out of the hobby is winning a well attended GT that's on you.
Neither of these are required to play the game.
The OP in that thread specifically mentioned wanting to get back into competitive play. It is not hyperbole to state what is required for competitive play in 8th edition, even if people feel uncomfortable with the fact that soup is mandatory.
If you want to play a complicated soup with 3 different codexes and indexes that's on you.
If the only thing you want to get out of the hobby is winning a well attended GT that's on you.
Neither of these are required to play the game.
The OP in that thread specifically mentioned wanting to get back into competitive play. It is not hyperbole to state what is required for competitive play in 8th edition, even if people feel uncomfortable with the fact that soup is mandatory.
Soup isnt mandatory, in fact its rare to see a proper soup list in tournies over here, not everyone plays like the yanks, even at tournies.
Formosa wrote: Soup isnt mandatory, in fact its rare to see a proper soup list in tournies over here, not everyone plays like the yanks, even at tournies.
What do you mean by "proper soup"? Are you saying that people in the UK don't mix codices, and only because they have found that single-codex lists are better at winning? Or is this one of those weird self-imposed rules where UK players feel obligated to take weaker lists and are unwilling to use soup?
Formosa wrote: Soup isnt mandatory, in fact its rare to see a proper soup list in tournies over here, not everyone plays like the yanks, even at tournies.
What do you mean by "proper soup"? Are you saying that people in the UK don't mix codices, and only because they have found that single-codex lists are better at winning? Or is this one of those weird self-imposed rules where UK players feel obligated to take weaker lists and are unwilling to use soup?
Also, the OP in that thread is in the US.
I am saying that the majority of tournies I have been to and seen, Soup spam is rare, what works in a meta in one place doesnt translate to other places or are actively shunned, I have played in tournies in Aus for example where the kind of lists popular in the states would get you DQ'd for not playing in a sportsmanlike way, they are very anti power gamer down there (not all)
And you call them weaker lists, but thats a meta thing, you assume there is some all destructive spam list that a lesser soup list or stand alone army cannot deal with, which is wrong.
But I know you Peregrine, you only deal in absolutes, so here is one for you, NOT EVERYONE IN THE WORLD PLAYS THE SAME WAY from what I see on Dakka and other sites, the Yanks play a VERY different Meta to the Brits, which play differently to the meta of the Aussies, germans etc.
Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
That’s kind of my point really dude, you call it well designed, another person could say it lacks imagination and is spammy, you call it nonsense and another person could easily say the same about your thoughts, you don’t get to go to someone’s else’s house and dictate how they should do things, it’s all about perspective.
So it’s only correct to say your advice only applies to your specific meta.
Except that PEregine is talking about building a list to win games.
Now, in your FLGS, it's fine to focus on other aspects. But at a tournament, where the goal is to win... It's really kinda silly to DQ someone for bringing a list designed to win.
JNAProductions wrote: Except that PEregine is talking about building a list to win games.
Now, in your FLGS, it's fine to focus on other aspects. But at a tournament, where the goal is to win... It's really kinda silly to DQ someone for bringing a list designed to win.
The lists were designed to win, the culture is anti power game, the culture dictated the lists, yank culture is WAAC, so that’s fine within the context of thier culture, the Aussies (of the time, not sure these days) didn’t want games with spam or WAAC lists.
The U.K. seems to be a half way between yank WAAC culture and Aussies CAAC culture.
Can you call a tournament where there are arbitrary and, more importantly, UNSPOKEN limitations on what counts as cheese and therefore worthy of a DQ a good tournament?
Now, if in Australia you have a strict list of what is and is not okay, and they just build within the lists, that's fine. It's a different meta, but it's a clear set of tournament rules to follow. But if it's just "Oh, you brought all good units and no bad units? WAAC scum, you're disqualified!" that's not a very good tournament.
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
That’s kind of my point really dude, you call it well designed, another person could say it lacks imagination and is spammy, you call it nonsense and another person could easily say the same about your thoughts, you don’t get to go to someone’s else’s house and dictate how they should do things, it’s all about perspective.
So it’s only correct to say your advice only applies to your specific meta.
I don't care about subjective opinions like "spammy". All that matters in competitive play is winning. If an event DQs people for bringing lists that are too good then it isn't competitive. And it isn't relevant to the OP.
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
That’s kind of my point really dude, you call it well designed, another person could say it lacks imagination and is spammy, you call it nonsense and another person could easily say the same about your thoughts, you don’t get to go to someone’s else’s house and dictate how they should do things, it’s all about perspective.
So it’s only correct to say your advice only applies to your specific meta.
I don't care about subjective opinions like "spammy". All that matters in competitive play is winning. If an event DQs people for bringing lists that are too good then it isn't competitive. And it isn't relevant to the OP.
And that attitude exactly demonstrates what I’m talking about, you cannot fathom that there are other ways of playing, your way is not the only way.
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
That’s kind of my point really dude, you call it well designed, another person could say it lacks imagination and is spammy, you call it nonsense and another person could easily say the same about your thoughts, you don’t get to go to someone’s else’s house and dictate how they should do things, it’s all about perspective.
So it’s only correct to say your advice only applies to your specific meta.
I don't care about subjective opinions like "spammy". All that matters in competitive play is winning. If an event DQs people for bringing lists that are too good then it isn't competitive. And it isn't relevant to the OP.
And that attitude exactly demonstrates what I’m talking about, you cannot fathom that there are other ways of playing, your way is not the only way.
JFC, the context of this is a U.S. competitive player asking for advice on playing competitively. It isn't "my" way of playing, it's what they asked for advice on. But apparently the BEER AND PRETZELS crowd doesn't like honest discussion of competitive play making 8th look bad, so they have to label it "hyperbole" and complain about not discussing some joke of a tournament where people get DQed for playing strong lists.
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
That’s kind of my point really dude, you call it well designed, another person could say it lacks imagination and is spammy, you call it nonsense and another person could easily say the same about your thoughts, you don’t get to go to someone’s else’s house and dictate how they should do things, it’s all about perspective.
So it’s only correct to say your advice only applies to your specific meta.
I don't care about subjective opinions like "spammy". All that matters in competitive play is winning. If an event DQs people for bringing lists that are too good then it isn't competitive. And it isn't relevant to the OP.
And that attitude exactly demonstrates what I’m talking about, you cannot fathom that there are other ways of playing, your way is not the only way.
JFC, the context of this is a U.S. competitive player asking for advice on playing competitively. It isn't "my" way of playing, it's what they asked for advice on. But apparently the BEER AND PRETZELS crowd doesn't like honest discussion of competitive play making 8th look bad, so they have to label it "hyperbole" and complain about not discussing some joke of a tournament where people get DQed for playing strong lists.
Your still not getting it, YOU are the joke to them because you seem incapable of understanding that not everywhere is the same, you have stated that soup is mandatory to win, I have pointed out that it’s not the case everywhere, in fact I’m pretty sure that some of the bigger tournies in the states had top table mono lists, as in single faction, wasn’t the winner of the LVO a mono Tyranid tyrant spam list, so no soup?
Speaking about that player, if he wants to play competitive it would be more relevant to know if he is gonna play on ITC events or no. Thats what makes the USA meta so different, no WAAC mentalities or whatever. ITC is played in USA, ETC in Europe and UK and Australia mostly play Fullhammer, thats why in europe you see FW banned everywhere, sadly.
My only real complaint is how close combat sucks due to automatic, risk-free fall backs
The problem for melee armies isn't that the target unit can get away as such, it's that in doing so it exposes your unit to fire from the rest of their army.
Oh yeah absolutely. I should have been more specific but this is kinda more what I meant. Falling back is almost always the correct option since 99% of the time the assault unit is dead from being in rapid fire range of the the rest of the army. Tying up and chasing down units in CC still seems to work sometimes with tanky vehicles and transports but you're right, the main issue is assault infantry just gets shredded after their target falls back. I don't mind that being a thing in 40k SOMETIMES, but as it stands, if your assault infantry unit fails to wipe their target and consolidate into a bunch of the other nearby units, you have a very high chance of losing more than you gained from that assault.
But even accounting for and playing around this bit of weirdness in 40k, I still find the rest of the game pretty fun and tactically engaging. Venoms/serpents at Leman Russes is great, dropping nurglings/kraken rippers into dreadnought gunlines is annoying as hell in the fluffiest way, etc. In general I dig it. It helps that I'm also just not very good at the game yet so there is a lot to learn and improve on. It's very "real" content and value for relative newcomers like me.
That nerf bat hits way too hard sometimes though. I don't mind 6++ brims but let me keep my -1 to hit changeling at least!
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
. I can imagine something like 2 detachments max till 2000pts, limiting the number of soup lists by a bit. Although the changes would be kind of a against what the core rules state.
Your still not getting it, YOU are the joke to them because you seem incapable of understanding that not everywhere is the same, you have stated that soup is mandatory to win, I have pointed out that it’s not the case everywhere, in fact I’m pretty sure that some of the bigger tournies in the states had top table mono lists, as in single faction, wasn’t the winner of the LVO a mono Tyranid tyrant spam list, so no soup?
Well to come in to mr Ps defense, winning in a non optimised enviroment isn't actually winning. Otherwise it would be like comparing normal and special olypmics, and say that they are equal. And from what I understand the mono wins happen in w40k in two situations, the tournament pack nerfs eldar a lot and this makes armies like tyranids win, specially pre rule of 3. The mono army is something like Inari eldar, and even those are plain better when run alongside a craftworld detachment to enable all the stratagem tricks.
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
. I can imagine something like 2 detachments max till 2000pts, limiting the number of soup lists by a bit. Although the changes would be kind of a against what the core rules state.
Your still not getting it, YOU are the joke to them because you seem incapable of understanding that not everywhere is the same, you have stated that soup is mandatory to win, I have pointed out that it’s not the case everywhere, in fact I’m pretty sure that some of the bigger tournies in the states had top table mono lists, as in single faction, wasn’t the winner of the LVO a mono Tyranid tyrant spam list, so no soup?
Well to come in to mr Ps defense, winning in a non optimised enviroment isn't actually winning. Otherwise it would be like comparing normal and special olypmics, and say that they are equal. And from what I understand the mono wins happen in w40k in two situations, the tournament pack nerfs eldar a lot and this makes armies like tyranids win, specially pre rule of 3. The mono army is something like Inari eldar, and even those are plain better when run alongside a craftworld detachment to enable all the stratagem tricks.
Looking at the adepticon lists this year it looks like 10 of the top 16 lists were not soup or soup light, it’s hard to read some of the lists on my phone so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
barboggo wrote: It helps that I'm also just not very good at the game yet so there is a lot to learn and improve on. It's very "real" content and value for relative newcomers like me.
This probably explains most of it. 40k can have the illusion of depth while you're still trying to learn the game, but once you figure out how everything works the strategy is rarely very interesting. List strength is the primary factor in who wins a game, and most of the tactics are just doing the obvious thing with your unit and rolling dice to see if it works. There isn't a lot of move vs. counter-move and trying to out-think your opponent, you pretty much set up your models, execute the plan you had when you wrote the list, and find out if the list you brought matches up against your opponent's plan and level of list optimization.
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Formosa wrote: YOU are the joke to them because you seem incapable of understanding that not everywhere is the same
I never said it was the same everywhere, but the OP is a US competitive player asking for advice. The fact that some joke of a tournament in Australia DQs people for being "too competitive" is irrelevant, we don't need to waste time talking about it.
you have stated that soup is mandatory to win, I have pointed out that it’s not the case everywhere, in fact I’m pretty sure that some of the bigger tournies in the states had top table mono lists, as in single faction, wasn’t the winner of the LVO a mono Tyranid tyrant spam list, so no soup?
You don't seem to understand how competitive play works. Obviously not every single list will be soup, but soup is an important tool in your toolbox. A player who can look at a mission packet and pick the appropriate list, including one with soup elements, because they have all of the rules available will have an advantage over a player whose list-building options are constrained by their refusal to buy more than a single codex. And if you are a competitive player conceding that advantage is not acceptable. So telling a newbie that they can get away with buying only a single codex is misleading at best, and a malicious bait and switch at worst.
Peregrine wrote: Well yes, if a joke of a tournament is going to DQ people for bringing a well designed list that's going to produce a different meta. But the OP is in the US and doesn't have to deal with that nonsense.
. I can imagine something like 2 detachments max till 2000pts, limiting the number of soup lists by a bit. Although the changes would be kind of a against what the core rules state.
Your still not getting it, YOU are the joke to them because you seem incapable of understanding that not everywhere is the same, you have stated that soup is mandatory to win, I have pointed out that it’s not the case everywhere, in fact I’m pretty sure that some of the bigger tournies in the states had top table mono lists, as in single faction, wasn’t the winner of the LVO a mono Tyranid tyrant spam list, so no soup?
Well to come in to mr Ps defense, winning in a non optimised enviroment isn't actually winning.
He was sarcastic: the word goes: Moving the goalposts
It means that you basically can't counter argue anymore and therefore declare an argument void by moving the goalposts/ declaring something as void via saying something along the line of "y does not count as a counter argument to x since ...(arbitrary line)... "
What it boils down to is: Your argument is void because i said it from this perspective, in this case you did say the following:
"Aussie Tornaments are not competitive since they DQ' people and since the person here lives and plays in the US, therefore all Aussie tournaments are uncompetitive because i said so."
Fact is, they are competitive, they just run another TO ruleset, therefore the Meta is diffrent.
Also the comparision with the "special" olympics to the real one is just bs, if you compare in such a fashion atleast take Hockey, which is played in diffrent nations with diffrent sizes of the field.
I came back and started plating in 8th edition again. I see a lot of arguments of weather the game is good or bad. I do not want to go into that, it is too subjective and the goal is to undefined. For instance some might think 8th edition takes to lobg to play. I can not comment on this. The same with gunlines are to good, representation in the setting etc. Here are some points they have fixed:
- Game balance, with a promice to improve it. Most units are at least playable. If a unit is to good it will get nerfed. This prevents people to buy the most cheesy army as it will be ruimed 6 months later. I remember 5th edition when the nid codex has units blatantly over priced with rumours that it was intensional to sell new models. (Rumours that to be at least got confirmed by former employes in massive reddit QnA.) Long gone is the 5th edition underpriced vendetta that in 6th edition only could be hit on a 6 with no price invrease.
- Adaption lag and cost. With most units being much more playable you do not have the problem of having painters play vs people who wanne winn. Different peoole play for different reasons and they do not winn. The painters argue cheesy. The competetive player argue incompetence. Factor in how expensive this game is and the time it takes to paint you can not ecpext any of these to 'get a new army'. This happens less now. (Orks are still sufferin here.)
- Actual FAQ. The fact that the FAQ comes so fast is good. I remember rules arguing that 5th edition SW characters should have T5 and not be insta killed by S8. But we had to wait 6 or 9 months to get it confirmed in the FAQ. Not to speak of questions they forgot to wanser in FAQs.
- Stil improving the rules of the game. The fact that they stil imrpove on the rules of the game is amazing. This is much more of a future promise then anything else. Some one at GW avtually care, and his bosses bosses boss actually allow someone who cares about the game to work with it.
- The rules are smaller, ish. I am not talking about that little phamplet. There are stil so many rules, faq and erataes in core rules and rulrbook to track. But it is less then 5th and 7th edition. This is a good trend.
- Many armies have support. There are so many armies to choose from these days. That is good. (Yes GK is bad, and orks are mono build.)
Niiai wrote: I came back and started plating in 8th edition again. I see a lot of arguments of weather the game is good or bad. I do not want to go into that, it is too subjective and the goal is to undefined. For instance some might think 8th edition takes to lobg to play. I can not comment on this. The same with gunlines are to good, representation in the setting etc. Here are some points they have fixed:
- Game balance, with a promice to improve it. Most units are at least playable. If a unit is to good it will get nerfed. This prevents people to buy the most cheesy army as it will be ruimed 6 months later. I remember 5th edition when the nid codex has units blatantly over priced with rumours that it was intensional to sell new models. (Rumours that to be at least got confirmed by former employes in massive reddit QnA.) Long gone is the 5th edition underpriced vendetta that in 6th edition only could be hit on a 6 with no price invrease.
- Adaption lag and cost. With most units being much more playable you do not have the problem of having painters play vs people who wanne winn. Different peoole play for different reasons and they do not winn. The painters argue cheesy. The competetive player argue incompetence. Factor in how expensive this game is and the time it takes to paint you can not ecpext any of these to 'get a new army'. This happens less now. (Orks are still sufferin here.)
- Actual FAQ. The fact that the FAQ comes so fast is good. I remember rules arguing that 5th edition SW characters should have T5 and not be insta killed by S8. But we had to wait 6 or 9 months to get it confirmed in the FAQ. Not to speak of questions they forgot to wanser in FAQs.
- Stil improving the rules of the game. The fact that they stil imrpove on the rules of the game is amazing. This is much more of a future promise then anything else. Some one at GW avtually care, and his bosses bosses boss actually allow someone who cares about the game to work with it.
- The rules are smaller, ish. I am not talking about that little phamplet. There are stil so many rules, faq and erataes in core rules and rulrbook to track. But it is less then 5th and 7th edition. This is a good trend.
- Many armies have support. There are so many armies to choose from these days. That is good. (Yes GK is bad, and orks are mono build.)
How excactly is it a good trend that i need index, codex, rulebook, CA, + FAQs when i want to play a game?
Also remind me how much money do we need to spend for all those books?
Often times for many armies i need additional codexes / indexes to even field a proper force.
It is not a good trend that you need index, codex, rulebook, CA, + FAQs when i want to play a game. I had in mind that if you add up the number of pages for all of this, the number of pages is less. The old rule book was staggering. But if you seperate the game from the game components, the game itself is better for the fact they are there. And then you have to consider that opposed to the game components.
But the fact that you need index, codex, rulebook, CA, + FAQs is nothing new under the sun. It seems to be build into warhammer 40K at a very basic level, or maiby build into the finasial model at a basic level.
If you want to avoid this there are many other games out there. x-wing in particular even take up less space on the table. Shadespire can even be played at a cofee house. MTG takes even less space. Many tabletop games, all tcg and most boardgames probably bypass this. But at the end of the day we are discussing 40K are we not?
I would say the points I pointed out in me previus post are legimate points. But discussions here on dakka dakka have a tendensies of getting bogged down in people thinking something is wrong instead of a beneficial exchange of ideas.
barboggo wrote: It helps that I'm also just not very good at the game yet so there is a lot to learn and improve on. It's very "real" content and value for relative newcomers like me.
This probably explains most of it. 40k can have the illusion of depth while you're still trying to learn the game, but once you figure out how everything works the strategy is rarely very interesting. List strength is the primary factor in who wins a game, and most of the tactics are just doing the obvious thing with your unit and rolling dice to see if it works. There isn't a lot of move vs. counter-move and trying to out-think your opponent, you pretty much set up your models, execute the plan you had when you wrote the list, and find out if the list you brought matches up against your opponent's plan and level of list optimization.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Formosa wrote: YOU are the joke to them because you seem incapable of understanding that not everywhere is the same
I never said it was the same everywhere, but the OP is a US competitive player asking for advice. The fact that some joke of a tournament in Australia DQs people for being "too competitive" is irrelevant, we don't need to waste time talking about it.
you have stated that soup is mandatory to win, I have pointed out that it’s not the case everywhere, in fact I’m pretty sure that some of the bigger tournies in the states had top table mono lists, as in single faction, wasn’t the winner of the LVO a mono Tyranid tyrant spam list, so no soup?
You don't seem to understand how competitive play works. Obviously not every single list will be soup, but soup is an important tool in your toolbox. A player who can look at a mission packet and pick the appropriate list, including one with soup elements, because they have all of the rules available will have an advantage over a player whose list-building options are constrained by their refusal to buy more than a single codex. And if you are a competitive player conceding that advantage is not acceptable. So telling a newbie that they can get away with buying only a single codex is misleading at best, and a malicious bait and switch at worst.
So 10 (?) of the top 16 lists at the last adpeticon not being soup of having ONE unit from another codex is me lying about the "soup not being required" sorry peregrine, but it looks like your wrong, clearly soup is NOT required and this is in your own country and a meta you claim to know so well.
So stop telling the OP he MUST soup in other factions to be competitive, when its clearly not the case.
People keeps saying you need brb+index+codex+FAQ+fw index+CA, and here Im, playing with my Codex as Dark Angel, and with 5 notes in pencil, 4 lines for FAQ and the point cost of the nephilim changed.
Most tournament armies dont use FW models or the Index, for starters.
Galas wrote: People keeps saying you need brb+index+codex+FAQ+fw index+CA, and here Im, playing with my Codex as Dark Angel, and with 5 notes in pencil, 4 lines for FAQ and the point cost of the nephilim changed.
Lol. My Slaanesh Daemons army needs two codexes because I soup in some Heretic Astartes. In fact, even a 3rd book since I like Zarakynel and she's FW. Bringing those three books is such a burden, I'm seriously considering never playing again and selling my armies. THREE BOOKS!? How do people manage?
Are people really that upset about bringing more than a single book? Firstly, if it bothers you that much just play a single codex army. Secondly, am I the only one that only brings the books a point of reference in case someone asks? after playing 2-3 games you should have basically learned the rules for your specific army. I almost never even have to pull out my codex at this point, especially when you can just reference something like battlescribe for a quick glance.
Ultimate GW just needs an official version of Battlescribe, since that's the only thing I bring. Even then, I run a pretty soupy Deatwatch focused list, but I really only need the Deathwatch codex itself and CA for scenarios to play if I wanted to go tablet free.
It seems like people put more effort into book counting than they do for other games. I mean, most all of them "require" Core Rules, Scenario Packet, Army Rules, Errata minimum and most of the time you see people show up to the table with just the army rules because.... well, that's all you really NEED to play in most instances. Same is really true of 40k and even soupy lists don't really require that much more.
Codexes are just a crummy game reference. That's really nothing new. Most (all?) games are pretty terrible if you try to play your army out of a book. It's a concept so out of date its replacements are being replaced.
Asmodios wrote: Are people really that upset about bringing more than a single book? Firstly, if it bothers you that much just play a single codex army. Secondly, am I the only one that only brings the books a point of reference in case someone asks? after playing 2-3 games you should have basically learned the rules for your specific army. I almost never even have to pull out my codex at this point, especially when you can just reference something like battlescribe for a quick glance.
Matches my experience. Usually you need the codex to either show it to an opponent or to check some non-intuitive interaction between rules.
Galas wrote: People keeps saying you need brb+index+codex+FAQ+fw index+CA, and here Im, playing with my Codex as Dark Angel, and with 5 notes in pencil, 4 lines for FAQ and the point cost of the nephilim changed.
Lol. My Slaanesh Daemons army needs two codexes because I soup in some Heretic Astartes. In fact, even a 3rd book since I like Zarakynel and she's FW. Bringing those three books is such a burden, I'm seriously considering never playing again and selling my armies. THREE BOOKS!? How do people manage?
Are people really that upset about bringing more than a single book? Firstly, if it bothers you that much just play a single codex army. Secondly, am I the only one that only brings the books a point of reference in case someone asks? after playing 2-3 games you should have basically learned the rules for your specific army. I almost never even have to pull out my codex at this point, especially when you can just reference something like battlescribe for a quick glance.
What if your army sucks played without other armies, or requires something like the IGCP battery to function? Or what if GW build your index rules with a clear idea that you are also running normal tyranids and IG in your genestealer cult army.
Plus the question is not if you learn the rules. No one cares about if you know them or not, your opponent only care if you can prove that your rules work the way they say you do. And they will never trust you unless you have an official GW book, the apps etc are too easy to modify to your adventage. Plus stores don't like them, because your not buying the codex from them if you download rules.
Are people really that upset about bringing more than a single book? Firstly, if it bothers you that much just play a single codex army. Secondly, am I the only one that only brings the books a point of reference in case someone asks? after playing 2-3 games you should have basically learned the rules for your specific army. I almost never even have to pull out my codex at this point, especially when you can just reference something like battlescribe for a quick glance.
What if your army sucks played without other armies, or requires something like the IGCP battery to function? Or what if GW build your index rules with a clear idea that you are also running normal tyranids and IG in your genestealer cult army.
Plus the question is not if you learn the rules. No one cares about if you know them or not, your opponent only care if you can prove that your rules work the way they say you do. And they will never trust you unless you have an official GW book, the apps etc are too easy to modify to your adventage. Plus stores don't like them, because your not buying the codex from them if you download rules.
edited by moderator
At lot of the the first half of your post is the players choice though. I don't think any army currently available NEEDS a soup to be viable. You're confusing viable with "tournament level competitive".
Asmodios wrote: Are people really that upset about bringing more than a single book? Firstly, if it bothers you that much just play a single codex army. Secondly, am I the only one that only brings the books a point of reference in case someone asks? after playing 2-3 games you should have basically learned the rules for your specific army. I almost never even have to pull out my codex at this point, especially when you can just reference something like battlescribe for a quick glance.
I think it's more than one of the reasons 7th gets so much hate is 'but I needed to bring all those books!'. 8th is shaping up to mandate even more books only a year in - and the way AoS is going, we'll probably see a rulebook for Psychic Powers before too long - but people are rushing to it's defence this time. There's a weird cognitive dissonance at play when hating on 7th (or 30k) and defending 8th.
Asmodios wrote: Are people really that upset about bringing more than a single book? Firstly, if it bothers you that much just play a single codex army. Secondly, am I the only one that only brings the books a point of reference in case someone asks? after playing 2-3 games you should have basically learned the rules for your specific army. I almost never even have to pull out my codex at this point, especially when you can just reference something like battlescribe for a quick glance.
I think it's more than one of the reasons 7th gets so much hate is 'but I needed to bring all those books!'. 8th is shaping up to mandate even more books only a year in - and the way AoS is going, we'll probably see a rulebook for Psychic Powers before too long - but people are rushing to it's defence this time. There's a weird cognitive dissonance at play when hating on 7th (or 30k) and defending 8th.
It's less defending 8th and more of a reality check vs the extremes some people are claiming to be absolutely necessary to play a single game.
The theoretical maximum number of books with relevant rules to a chaos soup army is huge (5 codices, 1 index, 1 FW index, CA, BRB plus all the FAQs).
For codices you usually have one CSM/TS/DG force supported by daemons, or if full soup it's CSM plus daemons plus DG OR TS OR Renegade Knights.
Almost everyone has a smart phone these days, should you need a FAQ, there is no reason to not just look it up. Bonus points
The BRB is not needed after army list composition, and since almost every one uses software to build armies these days, you don't need it at all - unless you are using the narrative rules for your mission.
CA is usually needed to play missions from there, since they are vastly superior to the BRB missions. One CA per location suffices for this though, unless there is an event with more than two games starting at once.
FW index is not needed if you don't own FW models, which is the case for most players. Index is not needed if you are not fielding any units that have been dropped in the codex, which is also pretty rare. Discontinued war gear options are only needed during list building.
The reality is that people usually have 1-2 codices with them, the battle primer and maybe print-outs of a FAQ, usually only if there is a rule in that FAQ that is constantly disputed.
So the answer to "what do I need to play a game" is not "bring everything that could have a rule that could ever influence one of your games" but "print out the battle primer and bring your codex".
So, could the rules be arranged in a better way? Hell yes!
If I had anything to say about it, you could go to the WH40k community page/download their app and just search for FAQs by keyword. Type "nurgling" and get all FAQs relevant to nurglings. Type "Codex Tau" and get the whole codex Tau FAQ. Type "charge" and get everything related to the charge phase.
The unit rules would be available from a webpage, you could build your list there, and then download all datasheets in that list as a PDF with newest errata, of course. No more "look at he shooty weapons list" nonsense, your selected weapons are simply part of the datasheet and all other irrelevant options are not. Print or store on the device of your choice.
As a bonus feature, I would be able to collect data about how people are actually building lists and make design decisions based on that.
Asmodios wrote: Are people really that upset about bringing more than a single book? Firstly, if it bothers you that much just play a single codex army. Secondly, am I the only one that only brings the books a point of reference in case someone asks? after playing 2-3 games you should have basically learned the rules for your specific army. I almost never even have to pull out my codex at this point, especially when you can just reference something like battlescribe for a quick glance.
I think it's more than one of the reasons 7th gets so much hate is 'but I needed to bring all those books!'. 8th is shaping up to mandate even more books only a year in - and the way AoS is going, we'll probably see a rulebook for Psychic Powers before too long - but people are rushing to it's defence this time. There's a weird cognitive dissonance at play when hating on 7th (or 30k) and defending 8th.
I didn't even play 7th so that has nothing to do with my comment. I currently play IG all I bring to a game is
1. chapter approved- just for missions
2. My codex (that only ever gets opened if my opponent asks a question)
3. My data card box
It's really not much stuff. Like I said after the first few games I know my unit stats and if I need a reference for some weird reason I just pull up my list on battlescribe. Say I wanted to run another army like knights I would just toss the knights codex in my bag. It doesn't seem like much stuff at all to me. I also don't see why its a complaint that you need another book if you run another army...... this seems like really obvious and the only way around it would be to have everything in 1 book with all armies and that book would be 10x larger then what i bring now and make it 10x harder to find what you need when you do crack it open. Not to mention you would be paying for the rules of every army even if you just wanted to play 1.
