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 lord_blackfang wrote:
So Glaive and Falchion will come out at the same time it seems, that's a bold move, I can't see too many people affording both in the same month.

There's also the new Whirlwind and any other new vehicles in the tank DLC book (Ascalon?).

Can't wait for Whirlwind. Rocket pod is almost as big as the tank itself!

Would be a great time for a surprise Sicaran variant

 MajorWesJanson wrote:
Would be a great time for a surprise Sicaran variant

We are lacking Volkite & flamer ones!

 Overread wrote:
At the same time those kits will likely last more than a decade. So plenty of sales time.

I would hope so. Really, what do you even foresee them being replaced by in 2036? They're already plastic, and I think GW sprue tech has reached a plateau. So what would be updated?

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Overread wrote:
At the same time those kits will likely last more than a decade. So plenty of sales time.

I would hope so. Really, what do you even foresee them being replaced by in 2036? They're already plastic, and I think GW sprue tech has reached a plateau. So what would be updated?

Fresh designs - even if the tech enters a period of stagnation on advance there's still taking the concept of the unit in a new creative direction. GW has done that before many times.

But why? The Falchion here is remarkably faithful to the original Falchion from 12 years ago. Why would the design need to be any different 12 years from now?

 Ashiraya wrote:
But why? The Falchion here is remarkably faithful to the original Falchion from 12 years ago. Why would the design need to be any different 12 years from now?

Scale creep. In 12 years the new rhino kit will be the same size as old land raiders, so everything will need to be scaled up.

I’m joking, but there is also a non-zero chance that it will happen...

I would agree for infantry, but vehicle scale has stayed remarkably consistent. The 2022 Deimos Rhino (and variants built on its chassis) is of essentially identical scale to the 2002 Mars Rhino (which is still available).

The Rhino was already undersized and out of proportion with the infantry back then, but this was accepted as a compromise to keep its size as a miniature and game piece reasonable. That excuse remains as relevant as ever.

Terminators on the other hand, oh boy. I still think one of the funniest things I saw was last summer when 40k players saw the Saturnine box. I saw some 40k players on reddit ranting and raving about how the Saturnines make the Leviathan Indomitus Terminators look "small" and "pathetic" and how GW needs to refresh the Leviathan Terminators to "true scale".

This community sure has some size queens, huh?

 Ashiraya wrote:
I would agree for infantry, but vehicle scale has stayed remarkably consistent. The 2022 Deimos Rhino (and variants built on its chassis) is of essentially identical scale to the 2002 Mars Rhino (which is still available).

The Rhino was already undersized and out of proportion with the infantry back then, but this was accepted as a compromise to keep its size as a miniature and game piece reasonable. That excuse remains as relevant as ever.

Terminators on the other hand, oh boy. I still think one of the funniest things I saw was last summer when 40k players saw the Saturnine box. I saw some 40k players on reddit ranting and raving about how the Saturnines make the Leviathan Indomitus Terminators look "small" and "pathetic" and how GW needs to refresh the Leviathan Terminators to "true scale".

This community sure has some size queens, huh?

It’s not the size of the marine, it’s how you field them.

I agree that modern plastics are pretty solid, with not a whole lot of reasons to replace them. Sprues are pretty tightly packed, detail is crisp. There is no reason a modern sculpt couldn't see decades of service. But GW wants to sell us new kits, so what excuses could they come up with to get old grognards to repurchase their armies? Adding more options to the kit would be one. While the HH is more set/described then 40k, they could add new variants/options. Scale creep is another. Even if tanks are generally pretty stable, there may come a point where they need to re-do the turret gunners/commanders/drivers/etc to match the modern infantry standards.

They definitely want to keep doing more releases. It's really the only alternative, either your game gets new stuff or it gets killed off altogether.

I hope they do new stuff rather than re-releasing old, and that they think it through well. Some of the new stuff since the Heresy revamp in 2022 has been very promising. The Kratos and the Auxilia sentinels are very good, the Araknae is unexciting but perfectly inoffensive. The Saturnines have been... so-so, but if that's the weirdest stuff we're getting it's fine.

I do worry about the future though and what will happen when they run into the inevitable issue of range bloat. I would be very sad if, for example, the release of HH 4th edition (presumably in 2028) saw all HH 2.0 marine kits be booted to legends, like what happened to the Stormcast Eternals....

Easy.

Further expansion kits.

For fancy Marine units? Fancy upgrade Sprues. With, let’s face it, Mk II, III and VI having long since paid for themselves? Just takes a bit of skill to produce cloaks and sniper rifle stuff for Recon. And so on and so forth.

Sure, it might take a while for upgrade Sprues to wipe their nose? But each requires a fresh, near as you’ll get to pure profit purchase of the base unit. Or pack them in together, and balance the scales of investment that way.

I would love that, but I worry GW would notice falling profits (because, obviously, a Word Bearers Command Sprue would sell less than the Breacher Sprue does) and would feel compelled to flip the table regardless in the hopes of making people buy what they already have.

All ties back to near as you’ll get to Phree Munneh of selling the core set.

It’s the same approach as resin upgrade kits, without for some, including myself, the offputting choice of materials.

There’s also the economy of scale. Sure, any given Legion Exclusive Unit is going to have comparatively restricted sales. But, if removing what I’ll call for argument’s sake the resin barrier gets more people into the game in the first place? That is where you make your money.

Whilst we don’t, and will never know, the exact unit sales of anything GW produces? We can look at their overall size and financial performance to see that the cost of investment in a plastic mould is no longer the hurdle it once was. Spesh as, to the best of my knowledge, it’s been a while since the tooling itself was brought fully in-house.

Given we’ve a set of plastic Hive Scum and Hangars On for Necromunda? Also the Ambots and Ogryns? I dare say we’re well past the point where a given kit has to sell absolutely squillions of copies to be a worthwhile investment.

And that I accept is perhaps comparing apples and oranges. Maybe. Ish.

A new edition in 3 years will (unfortunately) give them the pretext for messing about with existing kits, if they want to 'refresh' them to boost sales.

If we’re still on a 3 year schedule.

Evidence against is they now have four main systems (40K, HH, ToW and AoS).

Evidence for, currently, is 11th Ed seemingly coming this year, in-line with the 3 year schedule.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
If we’re still on a 3 year schedule.

Evidence against is they now have four main systems (40K, HH, ToW and AoS).

Evidence for, currently, is 11th Ed seemingly coming this year, in-line with the 3 year schedule.

Next year will be interesting as it would be time for both TOW and AoS but I wouldn't be suprised if TOW is the outlier and gets longer editions as it also is the outlier in terms of releases with all the resin stuff and old re-releases. Its obviously not on the same level as the two main games 40k and AoS but also HH as that gets a lot of releases and plastic so also far better than what TOW is getting.

Yeah, it’s a tricky one to work out.

We should know for certain if we’ve moved to a 4 year cycle with the next edition of Heresy. Because we can’t be sure when such a currently hypothetical cycle began.

We may know next year when TOW gets a major plastic release in addition to a new Edition of another game

I personally expect that TOW shifts away from old armies to very new ones, but as long as those are just minorities it will be kept parallel

Same way HH was set aside until there was enough unique plastic coming to support it

In 10 years, they'll have advanced the sprue creation technology to the point where smaller models can have twice the detail and fiddly bits for small kid-hands. They'll be honestly impressive. GW will use this to market the game at a slightly smaller scale of minis, allowing you to field larger armies on the same sized tables (not epic/LI scale, but completely random 23.5mm scale that no other producer uses). Now all your existing minis are way too large, although some people will claim that the old firstborn models and old-skool dreads are finally appropriately scaled.

This would invalidate every purchase you've made, including terrain, allowing them to sell you everything all over again.

Then in 12 years they'll increase the scale back to something closer to what we have now.