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Arctik_Firangi wrote:Seeing as how Games Workshop sell more Space Marine related products than everything else they sell combined, it's kind of understandable that they support them so much. Perhaps it's surprising that they don't get more support. There is simply a greater demand for Space Marine products and they are always popular.

GW wouldn't support them if they weren't naturally popular anyway. Lots of people also like to collect things that aren't the 'popular' choice so there are a proportionately higher number of non-Space Marine products. After all, Games Workshop has always made more than Space Marines, even if some people would barely know it.

Yes but then we come to the chicken or the egg coming first question- are space marines popular therefore GW supports them, or Because GW gives them so much support then any other army it makes it popular?

I understand the need to maintain quality, but I think it would be possible to do that, and keep products coming out at a better pace if GW hired some more creative people to work for them. There is certainly a pool of talent out there, and I feel that getting more releases out would pay for the new staff. I could be wrong. It's just my gut feeling.
Jes Goodwin and Phil Kelly can't do everything, so the trick is to hire more talent to help them out!

I'm using it as an example of un-necessary reshuffling of GW's priorities.

This thread is a complaint that too many SM books / too few Xenos books are published.

A 12 year gap for Dark Eldar does nothing to undermine that theory.

Kilkrazy wrote:
I'm using it as an example of un-necessary reshuffling of GW's priorities.

This thread is a complaint that too many SM books / too few Xenos books are published.

A 12 year gap for Dark Eldar does nothing to undermine that theory.

How many non-Marine books were published during that period?

Two Tyranid books, an Orks book, an Eldar book, two Tau books(admittedly: the second one really didn't add much), two Imperial Guard books, Daemonhunters and Witchhunters both(which, again: didn't really 'add much' to each other. You could argue them to be SM variants simply because both contained power armour--but those books were all over the damn place when it came down to it), and the Chaos Daemons book.

That's 11 "non-Marine/Xenos" books in that timeframe.

We had two Space Marines books, two Chaos Marines books, Black Templars, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels. That's 8 Marine books--discounting the 'minidexes' that existed prior to the non-Codex Chapters getting their own full sized books within that timeframe.

It's close to being absurd yes, but it's not really up to 'unacceptable' levels in my eyes.

The book that Beastmen got was a fething joke.

Terribly written, overcosted units all around.

Andy Hoare and Phill Kelly need to stay away from me and my Beastmen.

Andy Hoare needs to stick to writing background, because he can't write rules for crap.

Sidstyler wrote:

Platuan4th wrote:snip

Holy gak, lol, thanks for reminding me. I just remembered I bought a Transformers toy years ago (the classics line Rodimus) and I checked eBay to see how much it would sell new in the package, and I saw listings between $66-89.

I bought that thing at random just because, and stuck it in my closet and forget about it I guess. I should have bought the whole set apparently, lol.

And think, he(Classics Roddy) was only going for $35-40 until Fansproject( a 3rd party company akin to Chapterhouse and the like) announced this set to upgrade him to Rodimus Prime:



It's a great set, if a little pricy. Got one for my Roddy(plus the "Sidearm" set for his Weaponmaster partner from Season 4).

Polonius wrote:...

I haven't actually added it up, but I'd wager that if you added up all the dedicated kits for SM varients, you'd get roughly the same amount as something like Orks.

I mean, for plastic you have:
Wolf Packs
Wolf Terminators
Sanguinary Guard
Baal Predator
Stormraven (sort of?)
Death Company
DA upgrade
RW upgrade
BT upgrade

Compare to Orks:
Boys
Nobs
Trukk
Battle Wagon
Skorcha
Buggy
Bikes
Storm boys
Lootas
Grots

The point is, in terms of model support (by far the bulk of an armies development cost) all non-chaos MEQ variants roughly cost the same as a full new army.

Buggies dont count. Same with skortcha- werent both those made back in 2nd or 3rd edition?

Agreed xenos need more love. Tyrannids and Dark Eldar need to convert a lot of models.

Dark Eldar still have a large amount of releases completed and waiting for an 'appropriate' release framework.

And that's directly from the man in charge of overseeing the model lineup, Jes Goodwin.

Kanluwen wrote:

Kilkrazy wrote:
I'm using it as an example of un-necessary reshuffling of GW's priorities.

This thread is a complaint that too many SM books / too few Xenos books are published.

A 12 year gap for Dark Eldar does nothing to undermine that theory.

How many non-Marine books were published during that period?

Two Tyranid books, an Orks book, an Eldar book, two Tau books(admittedly: the second one really didn't add much), two Imperial Guard books, Daemonhunters and Witchhunters both(which, again: didn't really 'add much' to each other. You could argue them to be SM variants simply because both contained power armour--but those books were all over the damn place when it came down to it), and the Chaos Daemons book.

That's 11 "non-Marine/Xenos" books in that timeframe.

We had two Space Marines books, two Chaos Marines books, Black Templars, Space Wolves, Blood Angels, and Dark Angels. That's 8 Marine books--discounting the 'minidexes' that existed prior to the non-Codex Chapters getting their own full sized books within that timeframe.

It's close to being absurd yes, but it's not really up to 'unacceptable' levels in my eyes.

Using Lexicanum.com as the source, I found the release of all codexes from 3rd edition to the present. I have excluded the new GK as it is not yet published.

37 books were published including two as PDF format collected out of WD.

The division by faction was:

13 Loyalist Space Marines = 35.1%
3 Chaos SM = 8.1%
7 Imperial books not including SM = 18.9%
This included Daemon Hunters, Witch Hunters, Assassins, and two Catachan books.

14 Xeno = 37.8%
1 Chaos Daemon = 2.7%

I then worked out the gaps between codex releases for SM and for Xeno. The wait for Xeno codexes is 1.27 x the wait for SM codexes, on average.

The reason for that is because some Xeno books go a very long time between updates, while SM books are pretty regularly updated, because the other IoM and Chaos books have to be worked into the schedule. The longest gap for SM codexes was in the second half of 3rd edition, when Tau, Tyranids, Necrons, Daemon Hunter and Witch Hunter books were released. There was a four year gap in SM codexes because of that.

You can play around the the classifications to alter the results. For instance, Chaos Daemons arguably belong with Xenos, while Daemon Hunters and CSM could be included with SM. It depends on people's views of these armies.

I guess, ultimately, I don't understand why they don't explore the xenos books more because they have such compelling backstories. The marine books are all essentially deviations on the exact same backstory.

You could do so much cool stuff with the Tau and the Necrons, it baffles me why they don't do so.

Part of it comes from the idea that presenting an alien perspective is difficult to do convincingly.

If done badly, it's basically just a 'human' take on an alien perspective.

Its not difficult if effort is put in.

You say that, but look at most of the books written from an alien perspective. They end up as trash.

Gav Thorpe's "Path of the Warrior" is the only one that I've seen where it wasn't trash.

The simple fact is it's an alien perspective. It's easier to tell the human perspective when dealing with those aliens than it is to have to rely on one or two authors who can actually tell the alien perspective without it seeming like the story from a LARPer.

Yet you can still tell an Eldar/Tau/Necron story through the eyes of Imperials or others.

How many of the Xeno books are written by good, worthy authors? Not that many I wager.

There was a short story in "Let the Galaxy Burn" - Deus Mechanicus, I think it was called - about a Tech Adept and his level 1 apprentice going to what turned out to be a tomb world, and encountering what turned out to be, I think, the deceiver. I thought that was rather a cool short story, and it didn't demystify Necrons at all.

Ouze wrote:There was a short story in "Let the Galaxy Burn" - Deus Mechanicus, I think it was called - about a Tech Adept and his level 1 apprentice going to what turned out to be a tomb world, and encountering what turned out to be, I think, the deceiver. I thought that was rather a cool short story, and it didn't demystify Necrons at all.

In all fairness, this was written by Andy Chambers, and was written at a time when the Necrons didn't really have -any- background, other than, "Space Robots hellbent on destruction with gauss guns."

It actually -added- to what little we knew at the time; the Necrons went into hiding because of "the plague" and everything else that went with it.

--Chris
www.chrisvalera.com