Ok, what a day, I am more than knackered! Hope you all appreciate me writing this up instead of going to bed!
So I garnered very little in the way of concrete information throughout the day, staff were being a lot more tight lipped than expected regarding forth coming releases - all I got was the whole "we're working on a lot of things, keep an eye on
WD" yadda yadda yadda. Interestingly, in the sermon thing that I attended, their head of studio said the secretive marketing strategy was just an experiment and if enough people didn't like it, they'd drop it. Needless to say that I put a written feedback slip over to the WNT guys, saying pretty much what everyone on Dakka has said - hobbyists budget for their purchases and if you let them know in advance of what they can get, you'll see happier customers and an increase in sales on launch day. Here's hoping that they'll listen, though obviously if you feel the same way, we'll all benefit from you writing in to tell them to stop being so bloody stupid.
I have an audio recording of the whole seminar, I'll get it up tomorrow night once my phone's recharged.
Here's what information I could garner, where it's a fact, I'll say so, otherwise take it with a pinch of salt.
- Necrons are not far off, though no specific launch date stated, no information on models etc. Some of what was said in the seminar hinted at a launch style similar to that of the
DE (wave 1, wave 1.5 mini release, wave 2, followed by fillers etc). One interesting point was as soon as you could finish saying "Nec..." the staff shut up like a threatened murder witness. Could this mean that something is nearing fruition? Pure speculation on my part, but there was a MASSIVE lack of necron items aside from those brought by the staffs gaming tables, that would say to me that they're getting ready for an announcement. I quizzed one of the 'eavy metal guys on why the 'cron 'dex was no longer on the site and was given the "we're working on many..." lines (again), I think you 'cron players will be happy very soon but have no facts to back this up, just my gut feeling.
- The
SoB WD codex was released purely as a stop gap to bring them in line with the grey knights release, they haven't neglected you
SoB players and wanted to give you something as quickly as they could that was playable and relevant to the current game.
- Dreadfleet confirmed to have no expansions, ever. Big surprise there. It was getting a hell of a lot of love on the 10 trial tables they had set out though, I heard a few saying they were off to preorder as soon as they finished gaming.
- The
DE Tantalus transports 16 miniatures. It comes with flickerfield, aethersails & 1 or 2 other things as standard. The scythes cause an instant hit on vehicles at (
iirc) 1d6
AP. Models with a toughness value take
2d6 s6 hits. The pulse disintegrators are S5 AP2 H6 with a 36" range.
FACT
- The
DE were planned to be a big part of imperial 12 but, due to the scale of what they have / had planned for them, have been put ON HOLD. They MAY appear in
IA13, and would have potential to span 2 books, in the same vain that the Badab War series did. However, the writer has stated that they ARE DEFINITELY ON HOLD, they may come back to them in the future though have been shelved for now. Would not be drawn on what they're being replaced by.
FACT
-
IA Apocalypse v2 contains information on the Tantalus, chapter specific contemptors and chaos contemptors. Lots of nice information there, with some stuff for Tau though I didn't recognise any of this stuff being new (note: I don't know the Tau range well enough, so take from that what you will)
FACT
- The Chaos Dwarfs are not planned to get a
GW / studio style codex, though they have a full army list, including characters, back story, magic items in the tamurkand book. The story is basically a dwarf lord promises to turn to chaos if they help him take over the empire, but instead of going the usual route through kislev (
) he works his way south west and attempts to head north in the empire through their southern borders. Bad things happen to bad stunties along the way.
FACT
- The'res a brilliant looking MMO
PVP game called Wrath of Heroes coming out, it's
PC only but apparently doesn't need a high spec gaming
pc to run. The bloke I was speaking to said he uses his on a standard word processing machine and it works fine. Pictures / video to follow, though you'll probably get more information from www.wrathofheroes.com. I'll hopefully have beta access soon so will feedback on this as I can. The game is aimed at the Dark Age of Camelot audience, and doesn't really compare to WoW[color=red]FACT[color]
- Andrew Kenrick, our wonderful
WD editor himself, and one of his colleagues (Phil I think? Not sure, will find his picture and confirm) hinted at a possible Tyranid release. This will not be the fabled 2 wave, but will fill a gap in the codex. However he also said "but then it may not be a gap filler, but an altogether different model with it's rule set to be released in white dwarf". Nid players... don't read too much in to this, there aren't enough facts to get excited about, but equally I don't think someone in the know such as Mr AK would say sometihng's coming when it's not. Again, no dates were hinted at.
Answers to the questions I could get:
Plans to release plastic titans - certainly one day, they'd love to do that and to make them a bit more mainstream, but for the moment no plans. (Side note,
GW seems to plan it's next releases by the number of staff saying "wouldn't it be cool if...", so if enough start saying this, then it could happen sooner. Don't hold your breath though.
Revitalising any of the specialist games - No, not at all, ever. The reason being that their staff have enough to remember with the 3 biggies, and they politely take the stance that if the customers are willing to champion the
SG's in their area to drum up interest and get games going, then brilliant, but
GW will not be offering any support aside from providing the models and rules.
Squ.... NO SQUATS. DO NOT ASK ABOUT SQUATS. This was actually said before questions were allowed, which inspired more laughter than I expected! They were talking about how they went back to the picture of the donorian clawed fiend in the 1998 rulebook 13 years later (present day) and decided to make a model; my plan was to lead that on to the squats as they're in the same picture, but alas, I baeten to it by a bloody powerpoint slide.
Extra equipment included with characters - restricted due to the cost to manufacture these, when they'd really be as and when required. The way they see it is that they already have a million bits out there that we as hobbyists can use, leaving them free to work on 'whats next'. Fair play to that I'd say.
I mentioned the rumour of
SoB and Necrons being included in the 6ed box set and was told "that's the first time I've heard that rumour" (by the 'eavy metal guy in the seminar). I'd kind of take it that that's a no, otherwise I'd have been given that "we're always working on..." line again.
Moving away from the Q&A side, I hope you're ready to battered by pictures of the miniatures painted by a guy called Angelo Dicampo (or something like that), he won 4 golden daemons, a bronze AND the slayer sword. What a legend! Pretty sure I saw
GW's intellectual property manager offering him a job, like that's a bloody surprise
lol.
I also managed to get my boarding captain & relic contemptor (with
HB &
PF), COPUY OF PROMETHEUM SUN (!!!!) number 2379, signed by the man himself (twice, I didn't realise he'd already signed it
lol) & a copy of the anthology, which I got signed by Nick Kyme & Gav Thorpe. Both damned nice guys too.
Also learnt that some of the authors have lists of people that have written in to them asking to be included in their books, apparently Dan Abnetts a big one for this, so if you fancy being a guardsman that gets killed 2 paragraphs after being introduced to a story get writing! I reckon I might! Guardsman Si Kitchener doesn't have much of a ring to it though
lol.
, though I will upload the audio file & pictures I have when I get back. Don't expect anything mega from the pictures, you'll have seen some already, of most interest will be some of the conversions and displays pulled out by the stores, Manchester & Wakefield were particularly incredible.
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