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 Overread wrote:
And in fairness to Kirby his cost-cutting approaches did GW good in the early days of his management. At least far as I recall he got their income and numbers far better balanced and in a much healthier position.
I think the issue was he didn't have any/many other tricks other than that.

Yes, if I remember correctly cost cutting as part of the consolidation after the LotR bubble actually achieved its goal.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
I think you also need to understand how popular Vampires were in WHFB.

That's a really good point. If you cut Necrons in two and gave all the cool stuff to one faction and left another with nothing up variations of skeleton bots it would languish too

CthuluIsSpy wrote:Yeah, Vampires and Tomb Kings used to be one army, and then GW divided them into two.

I was not happy about this. Overall my collection was more vampire/wight based, so I broke that way. But it was hard leaving some of the TK stuff behind.

I think the real question is.....

Why were space marines more popular than all of WHFB combined?

 Easy E wrote:
I think the real question is.....

Why were space marines more popular than all of WHFB combined?

Because back in 3rd edition Jes Goodwin created the best-looking, most modular toy soldiers of all time!

And then in 8th that Jes Goodwin guy ruined it with monopose Primaris.

That Jes Goodwin! He ruined everything Jes Goodwin built!

I see that Goodwin's Law has struck again...

The Twice-Dead King series is really good.

I kinda wish that when they split TK away from Vampires they would have given each their own schtick. Vampires being more Night of the Living Dead, TK more World War Z. Similar, but with TK having fewer buffs, but slightly stronger and faster infantry.

When I think of skeleton warriors I imagine the old claymation Jason and the argonauts scene. Those skeletons were not slow.

Because warhammer fantasy already had an Undead faction, then they decided to break it up into seperate factions.

Back when they were an active faction, I think one of the things that worked against them (and the Slann) was their non-European theme in a game world that focused on a fantasy version of Europe.

I was never very happy about the breaking of the Undead army. Vampire Counts took away liches and mummies to give to Tomb Kings, but also de-emphasized Necromancers into just lackeys and thralls of vampires. I always ran a liche-led, necromancer-heavy army with a single vampire to add some punch. I didn't even consider the liche to be related to the mummies, just an arch-necromancer who'd cracked the final, tragic secret of necromancy.

But more to the point, the Tomb Kings caught the short end of the stick in that split. The breakage was handled very poorly. It took years for the Tomb Kings to get an army book - all they had in fifth edition was a White Dwarf list. They were pretty much stuck with leftovers and a magazine article for a long time, and since their core was a minor part of the old Undead book. Most people were better equipped to switch to the new Vampire Counts army book, especially with the Tomb Kings book and models pulling a no-show for so long.

That said, there must have been something to the Necrons early on, for them to have survived that awkward, "here's three units and a character, all questionable metal Gary Morely sculpts of the old Chaos Android...do some special scenarios or something with them," phase.

IIRC the 2nd edition metal Necrons were nearly dropped until someone submitted the designs for the smoother Necrons that became the 3rd edition plastics.

So the killing of tomb kings may just have been lack of a champion in the studio.

Tomb Kings were popular amongst fans of Oldhammer, however I remember only facing them once or twice, whereas I fought Vampires quite regularly. They seem like one of those things that people miss more now that they are no longer around. Everyone liked them, yet no one really played them.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
IIRC the 2nd edition metal Necrons were nearly dropped until someone submitted the designs for the smoother Necrons that became the 3rd edition plastics.

That must've been a quick turnaround. Rick Priestley always said Necrons were the very first 3rd edition army list that was written (i.e. their first 2nd ed list was written after the fact of the WD 3rd ed list presumably when they got pushed out earlier in release), with the plastics coming a couple of years after that- that decision must've been made PDQ.

 Psychopomp wrote:
That said, there must have been something to the Necrons early on, for them to have survived that awkward, "here's three units and a character, all questionable metal Gary Morely sculpts of the old Chaos Android...do some special scenarios or something with them," phase.

Dave Andrews.

For as much as people don't like Gary Morley's work, Dave Andrews is a whole 'nother level.

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
IIRC the 2nd edition metal Necrons were nearly dropped until someone submitted the designs for the smoother Necrons that became the 3rd edition plastics.

That must've been a quick turnaround. Rick Priestley always said Necrons were the very first 3rd edition army list that was written (i.e. their first 2nd ed list was written after the fact of the WD 3rd ed list presumably when they got pushed out earlier in release), with the plastics coming a couple of years after that- that decision must've been made PDQ.

They got a WD list, and I think it was updated in Chapter Approved, but no full codex till pretty late in 3rd, 2001 or 2002. So that army list was probably the WD list, since the Codex added several units and replaced all the old models.

 Psychopomp wrote:
I was never very happy about the breaking of the Undead army. Vampire Counts took away liches and mummies to give to Tomb Kings, but also de-emphasized Necromancers into just lackeys and thralls of vampires. I always ran a liche-led, necromancer-heavy army with a single vampire to add some punch. I didn't even consider the liche to be related to the mummies, just an arch-necromancer who'd cracked the final, tragic secret of necromancy.

But more to the point, the Tomb Kings caught the short end of the stick in that split. The breakage was handled very poorly. It took years for the Tomb Kings to get an army book - all they had in fifth edition was a White Dwarf list. They were pretty much stuck with leftovers and a magazine article for a long time, and since their core was a minor part of the old Undead book. Most people were better equipped to switch to the new Vampire Counts army book, especially with the Tomb Kings book and models pulling a no-show for so long.

That said, there must have been something to the Necrons early on, for them to have survived that awkward, "here's three units and a character, all questionable metal Gary Morely sculpts of the old Chaos Android...do some special scenarios or something with them," phase.

They also lost Mummies as a unit. Granted they’d always been a super slow unit, but they were also absolutely nails in combat.

We can also consider the range itself. I’ve brought up the Gigantor Skellingtons (granted at the time the same ones VC used. Then VC got rescaled and drastically improved ones, which were the standard until very recently, and probably didn’t even need replacing), but I’ve not ragged on their metal models….

Oh my word those metals. Tomb Guard were alright, single piece if you don’t count the shield. The Ushabti were pretty stand out. But the rest? Fiddly and fragile. So, so fragile.

The Bone Giant was top heavy with skinny legs. In the game, it looked alright on paper with potentially infinite attacks on the charge. But like all big monsters of that era you needed it to roll somewhat above average to even tie a combat (3 ranks, Banner, Outnumber was your static 5), let alone win - let alone win by a large enough margin your foe was likely to break.

Screaming Skull Catapult? Lovely weapon, once you got your eye in. But the models was truly awful.

Casket of Souls. Gorgeous model. Potentially devastating. Always shut down by Dispel Scrolls before the enemy flattened it.

See, all your Magic being bound spells, and so reliably cast sounds great. Until you tried, and realised just how far your opponent’s Dispel Pool went. You could of course spec into magic heavily, but that was points intensive - and gobbled up character slots, leaving you with no-one particularly fighty.

Compare to VC. Sure their magic was as risky as everyone else’s. But with Vampires, you just weren’t choosing between Magic and Combat Prowess. And boy did Undead need their combat prowess and magic.

For those not familiar with old Warhammer? Undead were a pain to deal with, as VC’s could readily replace losses, and so grind you down. The Vampires then provided the clout to get you winning combat by a decent margin. TK just couldn’t do that as effectively. You could take Kings and Princes, who were above average fighters. But that meant you weren’t taking Liche Priests, and so missed out on magic.

Just….TK didn’t Undead very well. At least at first. As said before they did latterly get pretty good. Making Chariots hit properly was itself a solid boon, as a unit of three could run rough shod over light and medium infantry, and even give Cavalry a hard time due to sheer volume of impact hits. Of course, like all Chariots, if you fluffed your first round you were in deep, deep trouble. And unlike regular, singular Chariots, you couldn’t send one in on its own as an assist for infantry.

Necrons didn’t really have any of those problems, at all,

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
IIRC the 2nd edition metal Necrons were nearly dropped until someone submitted the designs for the smoother Necrons that became the 3rd edition plastics.

That must've been a quick turnaround. Rick Priestley always said Necrons were the very first 3rd edition army list that was written (i.e. their first 2nd ed list was written after the fact of the WD 3rd ed list presumably when they got pushed out earlier in release), with the plastics coming a couple of years after that- that decision must've been made PDQ.

They got a WD list, and I think it was updated in Chapter Approved, but no full codex till pretty late in 3rd, 2001 or 2002. So that army list was probably the WD list, since the Codex added several units and replaced all the old models.

No, I know chronologically we got the 2nd ed list first, but (now I'm not sure where I read it or heard it. It's buried in my head somewhere) the 3rd ed WD Necron list was in fact written before the 2nd ed one. When GW decided to release them when they did, Priestley had to hamfistedly retrofit them into 2nd ed for the time being as their release got pushed up. Perhaps that was for the best, as maybe they might have actually been dropped had the debuted in 3rd and GW had less time to do a proper turnaround.

Psychopomp wrote:
... the Tomb Kings caught the short end of the stick in that split. The breakage was handled very poorly. It took years for the Tomb Kings to get an army book - all they had in fifth edition was a White Dwarf list. They were pretty much stuck with leftovers and a magazine article for a long time, and since their core was a minor part of the old Undead book. Most people were better equipped to switch to the new Vampire Counts army book, especially with the Tomb Kings book and models pulling a no-show for so long.

I suspect that the Tomb Kings might have been a victim of behind-the-scenes malarkey. Or maybe just having too many projects that needed doing and not enough time (what with 6th ed WFB about to chuck out of all the old army books they'd spent years building up, plus the 'silver age of side games' e.g. Mordheim, BFG, Warmaster and so on).

IIRC the person who was looking after the Tomb Kings project in 5th ed was Nigel Stillman, but at some point (after the 6th ed changeover?) he left GW and passed the project on to others--complete with huge stack of notes on Ancient Egypt. Maybe he should have done TK before Dogs of War?

Whatever the case, I can't remember ever hearing anyone say, "Gee, I'm really glad they split the old Undead into two factions!" Seems to have been a sore spot for many.

Grimtuff wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
IIRC the 2nd edition metal Necrons were nearly dropped until someone submitted the designs for the smoother Necrons that became the 3rd edition plastics.

That must've been a quick turnaround. Rick Priestley always said Necrons were the very first 3rd edition army list that was written (i.e. their first 2nd ed list was written after the fact of the WD 3rd ed list presumably when they got pushed out earlier in release), with the plastics coming a couple of years after that- that decision must've been made PDQ.

They got a WD list, and I think it was updated in Chapter Approved, but no full codex till pretty late in 3rd, 2001 or 2002. So that army list was probably the WD list, since the Codex added several units and replaced all the old models.

No, I know chronologically we got the 2nd ed list first, but (now I'm not sure where I read it or heard it. It's buried in my head somewhere) the 3rd ed WD Necron list was in fact written before the 2nd ed one. When GW decided to release them when they did, Priestley had to hamfistedly retrofit them into 2nd ed for the time being as their release got pushed up. Perhaps that was for the best, as maybe they might have actually been dropped had the debuted in 3rd and GW had less time to do a proper turnaround.

I've read that Priestley claim too, in White Dwarf somewhere during 3rd ed, but can't remember which article it was. He said something like "I had a devil of a job retro-fitting them for the old rules!"

(You didn't get that info from me, did you? I mentioned it on some other thread a while ago.)

GW had been dropping hints about the Necrons for a while beforehand, though. They featured (unnamed) in the background for Gorkamorka. Even before that, there was a cryptic reference to them in one of the 2nd ed 40K scenarios in WD: the Eldar were attacking Imperials to stop them awakening "the Shining Ones". (I think it also involved Eldar pirates called the Starkillers, and ended with the whole Imperial planet being wiped of life by some unknown cause ...)

Edit: To clarify, I don't think there was any connection with the C'tan during 2nd ed. That was part of a later proposal Andy Chambers submitted when they were taking ideas for a new 40K race (the masters of the Necrons).

IIRC Ctan and Kroot were both also-rans. Army ideas that couldn't support their own codex so they got shoehorned into other new armies. Which is why they had so little visually to tie them to their new homes. Kroot guns looked nothing like Tau for instance.

As for Tomb Kings another thought... how much do you like painting bleached bone?

You can get away with a lot more color for Vampires, and even with Necrons GW went out of the way to show different colors than just gunmetal.

tneva82 wrote:

SlamDunkerista wrote:
The fact for the last few years they are the default race included alongside Space Marines not just in the 40K noob kit equivalent Recruit Edition but even have far more set release of two factions in one Box (with the Space Marines always being included alongside) simply explains it all.

Where as the Tomb Kings were not only consistent low tier and struggled in sales.

Why Necrons surpass Tomb Kings so much in popularity despite simply being the 40K version?

Pre-9th necrons were more or less abandoned in support. And in another year some other faction replacing them in starter sets.

Eh... I don't think this is really true.

Necrons got a huge plastic revamp at the end of 5th, and that carried on into 3 more waves of releases in later editions. They also got the T. Vault which was a 3 model kit during this period too.

If anything, they were one of the largest supported ranges in plastic, and was one of the only dexes that I know of that released with huge swathes of models missing in it's codex and actually ended up getting all of them eventually (RIP Dark Eldar).

If you consider how long these sort of product pipelines take, I don't think I would have ever considered them abandoned in support.

Honestly considering the position Eldar were in and with GW trying to push Yinnari I was really surprised GW made Necrons the big focus for this edition and also gave them such a big model range update. A very welcome update, but at the same time they were overall in a pretty strong position before that .

It's a shame, in a way, that Eldar didn't get to be the edition focus because they really did need a huge leg up in models. Tau would have been another good one if GW had focused on the non-mech aspects of the army.

 Overread wrote:
Honestly considering the position Eldar were in and with GW trying to push Yinnari I was really surprised GW made Necrons the big focus for this edition and also gave them such a big model range update. A very welcome update, but at the same time they were overall in a pretty strong position before that .

It's a shame, in a way, that Eldar didn't get to be the edition focus because they really did need a huge leg up in models. Tau would have been another good one if GW had focused on the non-mech aspects of the army.

I think that's probably because it's harder to push the villain angle on Eldar. Not impossible, but I don't think the model line lends that to itself as much as Chaos, Necrons, Nids and Orks do.

Actually the whole Yinnari thing actually puts Eldar on the map again. They've been this "we are dying, slipping into the background manipulating" faction for a while. Yinnari is a wave of revolution running through them and seems to suggest that GW is advancing the lore for them and perhaps going to encourage them to go through a period of more overt military campaigns and perhaps even expansion.

Kind of like how early Necrons were quite easily contained as a problem until they got going waking up tombs and arising whole fleets not just the odd archaeological site here and there.


Though personally I'd love to see that come with GW finally releasing Exodites; however Craftworld and DE going on the offensive would be interesting.


Heck Necrons are not even being all that "big bad" they are sort of uniting as a force to counter the Tyranids more than anything against the Imperium itself.

 Overread wrote:
Actually the whole Yinnari thing actually puts Eldar on the map again. They've been this "we are dying, slipping into the background manipulating" faction for a while. Yinnari is a wave of revolution running through them and seems to suggest that GW is advancing the lore for them and perhaps going to encourage them to go through a period of more overt military campaigns and perhaps even expansion.

Kind of like how early Necrons were quite easily contained as a problem until they got going waking up tombs and arising whole fleets not just the odd archaeological site here and there.


Though personally I'd love to see that come with GW finally releasing Exodites; however Craftworld and DE going on the offensive would be interesting.


Heck Necrons are not even being all that "big bad" they are sort of uniting as a force to counter the Tyranids more than anything against the Imperium itself.

The aesthetics of the current Eldar range don't really lend them to a villainous look though, which is part of the reason. You can try to justify them with the Ynnari aspect, which at this point has pretty much had about the most minimal effort, but that doesn't change that they don't give off a major villain vibe.

As for the Necrons, It's hard to say they are not a big bad when the current plan is erecting a Blackstone network that would shut off the warp and instantly kill a large amount of the galaxies life.