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There is a lot of confusion as to why GW doesn't convert everything they've ever published into Codices.

But when you look at it from a simple numbers standpoint:
- GW now publishes a new Edition roughly every 4 years.
- GW has 12 release slots each year (one per month)
- release slots are shared among 40k, Fantasy, LotR, and other special events / Specialist Games.

(Aside: WotC has a lot of very clever and very smart people who figured out that a Gamer's attention span is about 3 months - if they don't get something shiny, their attention wanders towards something else. This is why WotC schedules a Magic base set along with a 3-part block set each year, allowing them to release something new each quarter that shifts the environment and causes players to anticipate and explore / adapt to new shiny things in their decks. WotC is highly disciplined and runs things like clockwork. This constant treadmill of activity keeps Magic players engaged.)

At a minimum, GW needs to balance 40k vs Fantasy. And lurking in the wings are LotR and whatever else they choose to do. Then consider how global campaigns and mega-releases like Apocalypse and such eat a couple release slots by themselves. So if you look at things, 40k can't have more than around 5 release slots each year, or the other stuff starts to wither away due to inattention. And realistically, it's probably closer to 4 release slots because of how GW counts the big stuff.

GW finally figured out that they let 3rd Edition linger for too long. The band-aids and patches of Trial Rules toward the end were a mistake and could have been handled as a new base Edition. So now they correct the pace to a faster 4-year cycle.

So 4 years and 4 release slots per year? That's a total of only 16 slots.

If you look at current Codices, we have:

SM
+ BA
+ BT
+ DA
+ SW

CSM
+ Daemons

Imperial Guard
Daemon Hunters
Witch Hunters

Dark Eldar
Eldar
Necrons
Orks
Tau
Tyranids

That's a total of 5 SM, 2 Chaos, 3 Imperial, and 6 Xenos Codices = 16 Codices.

Funny how that worked out, eh?

So if every army were to get a new Codex each edition, then that means the 40k Universe (based on Codices) has reached its limit of expansion. There won't be room in the release schedule for anything else unless something gives.

On the other hand, if GW can defer updates on "unpopular" (from a *sales* perspective) armies (i.e. Hunters, Dark Eldar, Woofs), then GW can squeeze in 4 to 6 more Codices into the mix. This opens the door to a book for each of the 4 Ruinous Powers, Biel-Tan, Ad Mech, or traitor Guard. Heck, GW could even work on Pan Fo out of the woodwork...

But to do this, GW really needs each Codex to stand on its own, so that GW can defer it to another edition in favor of something completely different, if necessary. Otherwise, you have things like the Hunters and Woofs needing C: SM or C: IG to stay current.

I attribute it to stupidity.

Instead of actually coming up with something new and fresh, ( Like back in the day) GW is now fat and sassy on past laurals and feels that they don't have to prove themselves and the players owe them allegeance, without working for it.

SPACE MARINES, ohh wheee!!!!

Space marines are the consistant staple that even from RT days. Though they consistantly come up with all things Space Marine, they do not care about anything anymore then pushing product. Yeah, new guns, drop pods, tanks, sure, got that. Consistantly sticking it to me in the everlasting gobsmacking way of supposedly reinventing something that wasn't porked in the first place doesn't count to me as bringing out "NEW".

40k is broken. until the supposed gurus come to terms with that, it won't make any difference who, what, or why they continually come up with ways to screw over the nooblets.
My biggest issue with thier marketing and development is that they do not give two iotas of feces about you once you have gotten into the hobby.

Fantasy cutting into 40k is incorrect.
Fantasy has its own crowd. some of them cross over, but essentially the crowds are diffrerent. Fantasy players are essentially happy with thier game. They get peeved at some of the decisions, but not to the point of throwing models across the room in fits of rage. They take thier changes, which are not really as radical as redesigning the whole game and trying to pimp up the "NEW and IMPROVED !@#$ edition. Fantasy essentially stays the same.

40k, well... lets just say that I have seen a few grown men cry, throw boxes, and curse up enough to make a sailor blush. The new version is a far cry from what alot of players past were drawn in with. The players are pretty much waiting with a WTF look, trying to figure out where the heck all of these new plastic versions were when the game mattered. Now that GW is in the position to push the envelope of creativity, they fall back and essentially advicate the throne of table top games.
When they could have easily developed a consistant product with thousands of variations, they go back and turn 40K into expensive chess.
1- pawns, rooks, knights, a king, a qeen, ect.
All have thier place, all essentially do the same thing.

Ideas of futures past, like genestealer broods, LOTD, Ork squggoths, captured tanks, demonic hordes of the undead, The countless minis and ideas that were thrown to the wolves in the face of a doller etc. all go the way of the do do for sales.

What do they sell in thier place? SPACE MARINES. red Marine, white marine, pink marine too. the name of the game is little SPAZ MARINE TOO!!!

Naughty SPACE MARINES...
The only reason that they continually push this drek and don't do the best job they can is because they are stuck in a fishbowel where they are believeing thier own B.S.

Specialist Games could have been a steady bread winner, with some action for all of you blood bowel, GorkaMorka, Necromunda, Mordhiem, etc. as well as stuff they could have been, like revamping winners such as memories past like Space Hulk, Tyranid Attack, etc. Hell, even giving up a bone or two with something like added skirmish rules, rpg adds, or other adds that could actually peak interest.
GW has...
Right. GW is trapped in thier own BS cycle of smurf heaven where they play codex creep till they piss off enough of the fan base that they become the laughing stock of games.

tell me about the Inquisition? Tell me about the Chaos Legions? Tell me about the IG regimental varients? Tell me about the legion specific Space Marines that they were supposed to put out? What happend to DIY armies with character, home scratch build vehicles and variation armies.

LOTR?

Whats that? The movies done and we are sitting in dirty diapers waiting for "The Hobbit".

They could have fixed it with addentums, or FAQ's, or even using White Dwarf for what it was for in the first place.
Instead, they go crap on themselves and turn a perfectly good game into Space Marine vs. everyone else.

I wouldn't mind it too much if Jervis the Tool and Gav the Noob actually gave a crap about the game, instead of bread and butter. Now all they are are cute figureheads of days past when GW was hungry for players and people were passionate about playing the game instead of being clever.

Stop the treadmill, its lame now. Take your time and give the people what they need. An evolving game with variation that will eventually make and remake itself as the time progresses with character, creativity, and excitement of when you first played the game and it drew you in with the charm of a cool tabletop battle game.

NOW they want to go ahead with yet another price hike? Ha, good luck with that.

Ask Detriot what happened when you start to believe the hype you sell.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
- release slots are shared among 40k, Fantasy, LotR, and other special events / Specialist Games.

Does Specialist really get any love anymore in the mainstream release schedule? I don't remember seeing anything major from them in a long time.

JohnHwangDD wrote:If you look at current Codices, we have:

SM
+ BA
+ BT
+ DA
+ SW

CSM
+ Daemons

Imperial Guard
Daemon Hunters
Witch Hunters

Dark Eldar
Eldar
Necrons
Orks
Tau
Tyranids

That's a total of 5 SM, 2 Chaos, 3 Imperial, and 6 Xenos Codices = 16 Codices.

Funny how that worked out, eh?

So if every army were to get a new Codex each edition, then that means the 40k Universe (based on Codices) has reached its limit of expansion. There won't be room in the release schedule for anything else unless something gives.

I'd say that's a pretty correct assumption. I'll get back to this point in a minute though - the "limit of expansion". Keep that in mind through this discussion.

JohnHwangDD wrote:On the other hand, if GW can defer updates on "unpopular" (from a *sales* perspective) armies (i.e. Hunters, Dark Eldar, Woofs), then GW can squeeze in 4 to 6 more Codices into the mix. This opens the door to a book for each of the 4 Ruinous Powers, Biel-Tan, Ad Mech, or traitor Guard. Heck, GW could even work on Pan Fo out of the woodwork...

But to do this, GW really needs each Codex to stand on its own, so that GW can defer it to another edition in favor of something completely different, if necessary. Otherwise, you have things like the Hunters and Woofs needing C: SM or C: IG to stay current.

I think that it's not just a matter of "deferring". I mean, I'll reference GW's infamous quote about making sure that all Codices are moved forward for every edition of the game. But that doesn't mean they have to be in the same format. Let's say that instead of "deferring" an update of DH and WH, they combine them with the Alien Hunters for a grand unified inquisitors codex. You get a net gain of one release slot from that. You could do similarly by combining some of the SM codices. My question is, though, where does it get you? As a company, what are you going to produce to take advantage of those open slots?

Let's look at our semi-realistic options (and by that I mean we're talking about something that has been or at least been rumored):
- A Codex for Each of the Four Chaos Powers (4 slots)
- A combined Codex for the Four Chaos Powers (1 slot)
- Lost and the Damned (1 slot)

Or even things that are less realistic:
- Codex Hrud (1 slot)
- Codex Demiurge/Squats (1 slot)
- Codex Genestealers (1 slot)
- Codex Adeptus Arbites (1 slot)
- Codex Ad Mech (1 slot)

Here's where I start to see things fall apart. Let's say that you, as GW, want to open up enough slots to release codices for the four Chaos Powers. To do that, the easiest way is to lump the Inquisition armies together (that nets you one slot), and you lump a bunch of the SM armies together (giving you, say, three slots). There - that gives you the four slots you need for the four powers. But if your general philosophy for army books is lumping armies together, then it's pretty incongruous to do this so you can release four separate detailed books on a similar army. So, it seems to me that the actual potential for GW to do a Codex for each of the Chaos Gods is pretty slim. Granted, if you do that, you can potentially get rid of C: CSM and C: Demons, so maybe it's not as bad as I make it out to be, but I'm still thinking it's pretty slim. Doing Codices for the four Chaos Gods would eat up a huge chunk of their production cycle - people would be so sick of Chaos at the end, it'd be no good. Because of this, I think that if GW ever does a book for the Chaos Gods it would be one, two books at the most - similar to LatD and RoC. But, as easy as it would be to open up a single slot, GW could pretty easily do another Lost and the Damned list.

Okay, so let's look instead at lumping more of these Codices together so you can do some new, fresh armies. There's some of these (like Genestealers, Arbites, and Ad Mech - even Lost and the Damned) that you can represent fairly well with existing lists - they're certainly far from perfect, but it can be done. So, why do it? GW would really need to get a fresh idea that they figure they can market really well (thus the reason they haven't re-done Squats). GW doesn't have the best track record for adding new races - I mean, Tau's the best they've done - which is pretty good, but DE and Necrons aren't up to that level. But here's where we get into limits of expansion. I've played a number of other games where they've tried to expand the number of factions ad nauseum. The problem here is faction bleed - if you've got two factions that do nearly the same thing, other than for fluff reasons, why have them?

And really, when you have a suitable number of existing armies, of which many have a variety of problems that need to be resolved - why go off on something completely new when you can go back and re-do something to fix the problems?

Grot 6 wrote:I attribute it to stupidity.

Dude, you've got some serious anger issues.

Grot 6 wrote:Space marines are the consistant staple that even from RT days.

Yep, totally unlike Guard, Orks, and Nids.

Grot 6 wrote:Though they consistantly come up with all things Space Marine, they do not care about anything anymore then pushing product.

Yup, GW is a publicly-traded profit-seeking company.

Grot 6 wrote:Fantasy cutting into 40k is incorrect.
Fantasy has its own crowd. some of them cross over, but essentially the crowds are diffrerent.

Wow, you work in a Fantasy >> 40k bit, too? Anyhow, there's a lot of overlap between the two systems. Unlike, say, 40k & LotR. Much less Fantasy & LotR.

Grot 6 wrote:Specialist Games could have been a steady bread winner, with some action for all of you blood bowel, GorkaMorka, Necromunda, Mordhiem, etc. as well as stuff they could have been, like revamping winners such as memories past like Space Hulk, Tyranid Attack, etc.

Hell, even giving up a bone or two with something like added skirmish rules, rpg adds, or other adds that could actually peak interest.

That's unlikely. SG games seem to last about 3-6 months, just enough time for interested players to get 1 or 2 skirmish forces together, and that's it.

And IIRC, GW did give away a couple of free bones with 40k4's Kill Team and 40k/40m rules in the big rulebook. But because they didn't carry to the small book, nobody played more than 1 or 2 games.

Grot 6 wrote:What happend to DIY armies with character, home scratch build vehicles and variation armies.

The player base got stupid, fat, and lazy, and stopped creating their own stuff.

Grot 6 wrote:LOTR?

Whats that?

It's a game that is rumored to be selling better than Fantasy.

Death By Monkeys wrote:Does Specialist really get any love anymore in the mainstream release schedule? I don't remember seeing anything major from them in a long time.

They *should*, but if you look at things, they need 2 to 4 slots in a fairly short time frame. One slot per year is useless, because there's no momentum. That means, they can only do this in a year that they aren't launching / relaunching a new edition of one of their main lines, or doing a major campaign. For example, this year, 40k5 hits, so no SG push. Next year sees Planetstrike - 2 or 3 slots like Apocalypse. Then you've got WFB8 and a LotR relaunch when the Hobbit releases, eating 2 or 3 slots each. These slots disappear in a hurry!

Death By Monkeys wrote:

JohnHwangDD wrote:That's a total of 5 SM, 2 Chaos, 3 Imperial, and 6 Xenos Codices = 16 Codices.

So if every army were to get a new Codex each edition, then that means the 40k Universe (based on Codices) has reached its limit of expansion. There won't be room in the release schedule for anything else unless something gives.

I'd say that's a pretty correct assumption. I'll get back to this point in a minute though - the "limit of expansion". Keep that in mind through this discussion.

[un-quote]

I think that it's not just a matter of "deferring". I mean, I'll reference GW's infamous quote about making sure that all Codices are moved forward for every edition of the game. But that doesn't mean they have to be in the same format. Let's say that instead of "deferring" an update of DH and WH, they combine them with the Alien Hunters for a grand unified inquisitors codex. You get a net gain of one release slot from that. You could do similarly by combining some of the SM codices. My question is, though, where does it get you? As a company, what are you going to produce to take advantage of those open slots?

Hopefully, you produce something that nets more profit overall!

In general, I think this is part of the rationale of nuking the Armageddon, EoT, and Craftworlds stand-alone books. It folds the armies back under the main book to cut the count down and free some design space.

Death By Monkeys wrote:Let's look at our semi-realistic options (and by that I mean we're talking about something that has been or at least been rumored):
- A Codex for Each of the Four Chaos Powers (4 slots)
- A combined Codex for the Four Chaos Powers (1 slot)
- Lost and the Damned (1 slot)

Or even things that are less realistic:
- Codex Hrud (1 slot)
- Codex Demiurge/Squats (1 slot)
- Codex Genestealers (1 slot)
- Codex Adeptus Arbites (1 slot)
- Codex Ad Mech (1 slot)

Here's where I start to see things fall apart.

Yup. That's 11 slots there - almost 3 years of product, meaning that, for the entire edition, nothing else except the minimum 5 core books could be updated: SM, CSM, Eldar, Orks, Nids.

Death By Monkeys wrote:Let's say that you, as GW, want to open up enough slots to release codices for the four Chaos Powers. To do that, the easiest way is to lump the Inquisition armies together (that nets you one slot), and you lump a bunch of the SM armies together (giving you, say, three slots). There - that gives you the four slots you need for the four powers. But if your general philosophy for army books is lumping armies together, then it's pretty incongruous to do this so you can release four separate detailed books on a similar army. So, it seems to me that the actual potential for GW to do a Codex for each of the Chaos Gods is pretty slim. Granted, if you do that, you can potentially get rid of C: CSM and C: Demons, so maybe it's not as bad as I make it out to be, but I'm still thinking it's pretty slim. Doing Codices for the four Chaos Gods would eat up a huge chunk of their production cycle - people would be so sick of Chaos at the end, it'd be no good. Because of this, I think that if GW ever does a book for the Chaos Gods it would be one, two books at the most - similar to LatD and RoC. But, as easy as it would be to open up a single slot, GW could pretty easily do another Lost and the Damned list.

As I see it, GW could do the powers similar to how FW does the GDs: one per year. It would be a multi-edition thing, split between 5th and 6th Editions, assuming largely similar rulesets like late 3rd -> 4th.

In any case, I don't see people being any more sick of CSM than they are with SM...

Death By Monkeys wrote:Okay, so let's look instead at lumping more of these Codices together so you can do some new, fresh armies. There's some of these (like Genestealers, Arbites, and Ad Mech - even Lost and the Damned) that you can represent fairly well with existing lists - they're certainly far from perfect, but it can be done. So, why do it? GW would really need to get a fresh idea that they figure they can market really well (thus the reason they haven't re-done Squats). GW doesn't have the best track record for adding new races - I mean, Tau's the best they've done - which is pretty good, but DE and Necrons aren't up to that level. But here's where we get into limits of expansion. I've played a number of other games where they've tried to expand the number of factions ad nauseum. The problem here is faction bleed - if you've got two factions that do nearly the same thing, other than for fluff reasons, why have them?

Exactly. Each faction / army needs to have a distinctive design space, doing things that no other army can do. 5th Edition is moving along those lines - look at how SM, CSM, BA, BT, DA, and Necrons all manage to split hairs for distinction... I totally agree that the very fact that 40k has 16 factions right now makes it very hard to add another successfully.

Death By Monkeys wrote:And really, when you have a suitable number of existing armies, of which many have a variety of problems that need to be resolved - why go off on something completely new when you can go back and re-do something to fix the problems?

Sometimes, a clean start is desirable. Look at the Dark Eldar (or Squats). The DE could have had the entire Tau design space. But GW chose not to reboot them, so the DE languish.

JohnHwangDD wrote:As I see it, GW could do the powers similar to how FW does the GDs: one per year. It would be a multi-edition thing, split between 5th and 6th Editions, assuming largely similar rulesets like late 3rd -> 4th.

In any case, I don't see people being any more sick of CSM than they are with SM...

Well, that's exactly what I was thinking of - folks are already sick of MEqs getting all the love already - imagine if they were to do the four powers as well?

Exactly. Each faction / army needs to have a distinctive design space, doing things that no other army can do. 5th Edition is moving along those lines - look at how SM, CSM, BA, BT, DA, and Necrons all manage to split hairs for distinction... I totally agree that the very fact that 40k has 16 factions right now makes it very hard to add another successfully.

JohnHwangDD wrote:
Sometimes, a clean start is desirable. Look at the Dark Eldar (or Squats). The DE could have had the entire Tau design space. But GW chose not to reboot them, so the DE languish.

Yep, I'm in complete agreement with you here. I mean, personally, I think the DE are a much dumber concept than the Tau, but I figure since GW's put the army out there they'd better do something to support and improve it.