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oni wrote:The answer is quite simple... Book Size.

Break the Orks down to their clans, break the Eldar into their craft-worlds and you end up with a bunch of tiny books that don't have much to offer and will be painfully redundant.

Compile all of the Space Marine chapters into a single book and now you end up with a tome larger than the hardcover rule book and costs $65.00.

Well yes that is what would happen...if you tried it right now.

IMHO, if you fleshed out all the other armies with as much rules as the SM then we would see variant codices. But as some have mentioned there is not the money in the other armies to justify this.

To the OP, the reason why as other have stated is because of money. At some point SM became popular...be it because of an early focus on them or they were rising as the popular army. Since then they have been expanded and detailed more then anyone else.

DaveL wrote:

Alamoth wrote:Those stories aren't interesting. It's a bunch of evil people fighting evil people. Woo evil. People are hooked on the Good vs. Evil story. People are bound to choose one side or the other (usually Good).

Good Armies in 40k:
Eldar
Space Marines
Imperial Guard

Evil Armies in 40k:
Orks
Dark Eldar
Chaos SM
Chaos Daemons
Necrons
Tyranids
Tau

Really? Huh. Sorry, Imperial forces are, at best, a not-all-that-dark shade of gray. Same with Eldar and Tau.

I realize people think that humans are default good guys... but we're pretty nasty critters in the 40K universe. The only sentient creatures I know of in the 40K universe who aren't vile scumbags are rank-and-file guardsmen or Eldar guardians, and both of those are essentially suckers. Everybody else is bloodthirsty and/or willing to sacrifice the entire rest of the galaxy for their own ends. Also: "Evil will always win, because Good is dumb."

In the grim dark future, there is no good or evil, only WAR!!! Who said this game had no basis in reality.


@OP- GW is a multi-national corp that operates like a multi-national Corp..
They pick an army most that the majority of there customer base and demographic can identify with(human w/ humans) and young men wanting to be superhuman. They then minimize production cost by spamming the army. Six armies using the same models with slight alterations (Shoulder pads and weapon sprues) in this day of modular production is much cheaper than six different armies using unique models across the entire model line.

Spamming the other model lines would be good but GW doesn't believe that the market is large enough to handle such an expansion and more importantly when it comes down to a choice between customer satisfaction and a reduced profit margin, the customer looses. Keep in mind that if they did expand in this manner, they would make more money overall but would make less money per unit.

Anything else you hear about the SMs being a blank slate is rubbish, it all boils down to GW has a favorite army That they can copy paste rules, units and models for maximum profit. GW will continue to push this model line down our throats until new players stop buying into the GW Staffer sales pitch of SMs being the starter army. Problem is that when people do stop buying SMs, GW will probably close its doors or scrap the entire system before promoting a xenos army as its flagship model line.

The fact that GW maintains such a narrow customer base and company policy of going after the kids lunch money without attempting to broade said base is poor business IMO.

While I agree that GW has made more then one SM codex because SMs are popular, I would also that if they were to base the decision of whether or not to make a second codex for a race on how popular it is, then Orks might actually stand a chance, seeing as they seem to one of the more popular non SM races (they did just come with the new Kans and Dreads, which i think is some evidence of this).

But, I would say the reason there are 12 kinds of marines and one kind of Ork is not because people dont like orks enough, but because...there is only one kind of Ork.

The main reason they made more then one SM codex is that some SMs are different from others. For example, the fluff differences ultramarines, blood angels, and space wolves are huge, and the playstyles that their different rules allow reflect this.

Orks are different. Whether he is on a bike, in a trukk, or charging on foot, all Ork's end goal is to hit you with an axe, sword, or power klaw, and then hit you again for good measure. And I think the current codex allows you to do that in all the ways an Ork would want to.

Orks just want to Assault. if you don't want to assault, why are you playing them?

While I think that it would be a good idea to put in certain character that might enhance the different Ork play styles (mech, green tide, w/e else), i don't see why you would really want a whole new Ork army codex.

I guess my main point is that in my opinion, Orks would never fight in any other way then they do now. They simply don't have the discipline, skill or desire to be anything except an assault army, so all that you would really be able to do is say "this is the Trukk codex, this one is for bikes, and this one is for foot slogging, but once you get to the enemy they are all pretty much the same", which for me would raise the question, "why don't we just we just combine them and let the player choose how to transport his boys?". Oh wait, that's the way it is now.

The only exception to this i can think of would maybe be some kind of Gretchin codex, featuring a crap ton of grot powered shooty war machines. This would probably be amazing if they could pull it off, but extremely unlikely (seeing as they would have to have some pretty crazy stuff to get over how terrible grots are...).

That being said, i do think that there is definitely potential for some of the other races/factions, such as Daemons (could easily have 4 different books) and Chaos Marines (there are how many chapters of chaos marines?) to have more then one codex army, but that as others have said, they are probably not popular enough to turn them each into 3-4 different armies and have GW make very much money off of it...

That is a good point. And it is true that Daemons did get their own dex, having previously been an offshoot of Chaos. So I guess Chaos probably has it the best re: number of dexes right now if you include the Chaos Space Marines plus the Daemons book.

Tau, I think, is just *begging* to be fleshed out. They use races from other worlds in their Empire - but this is sadly understated in the Dex. We get, what? Stingwings and Kroot. That's all. But imagine the possibilities for expanding the Tau - multiple Castes, alien races, and even different fighting philosophies.

Maybe even an answer to the age old question - what REALLY happened to Squats? (they joined the Tau for the Greater Good).

Although I would think that the Tau should be expanded first in their own Dex, my only point is that there's plenty of room for growth.

Solorg wrote:Maybe even an answer to the age old question - what REALLY happened to Squats? (they joined the Tau for the Greater Good).

I second this times 10 to the power of 18.

Kilkrazy wrote:

Brother Ramses wrote:Orks are mold. Not a whole lot you can do with mold.

Not so!

An Ork is the life and soul of the party, because he is a fungi!!

Bwahahahahahahaha...hack...hack...cough...cough....lung....hack...hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!
Good ol' Orkz humour!