9th Ed unit release count?

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**Altruizine**

Well, now someone has to run the numbers on this question: "if every 9th edition kit representing a new unit type had instead been allotted to something that is still metal/resin, how many metal/resin kit would remain un-updated?"

Or just "how many/what percentage of the 9th edition kits were new unit types"

And you can't really claim this was a "good edition for updates" unless you go back and generate the same type of release data for prior editions.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

True on the last point, but that wasn’t the purpose of this particular thread. But it is an interesting question unto itself.

With three significant Xenos updates (Necrons, Orks and Craftworld Eldar) it feels like a good Edition for releases. But as you said, actual analysis and comparison is required.

I think Chaos Space Marines (vanilla flavour) also got a decent count of kits - even if they weren’t the kits folk were wanting.

**ProfSrlojohn**

Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:I disagree, because this effort focuses solely on 9th Ed - which is their 40K production alongside those other games also being churned out.

Now of course what we’re digging up isn’t going to be the full story. But it is an interesting reference point based in fact.

So far, we’ve been able to speculate that, if GW were so inclined, they could replace every non-plastic kit in a single edition.

Range Rotation, for this thread’s purpose, is something of a red herring, as that’s a Production Capacity thing, rather than Design Capacity, and if I’m right in thinking, no plastic kit has been range rotated - it’s all been metal or Finecast.

Now, how well would the community accept an edition where it’s pretty much just kit updates? I genuinely don’t know. I suspect it might vary from army to army.

For instance, as someone working on a curious CWE project (went on hiatus, bringing it back. Expect a thread) I’d be pretty happy if they did just update the remaining Finecast stuff into plastic. Not only are those quite old kits now, but the plastic glow ups we have had have been pretty bloody excellent.

Remember, Warp Spiders (filthy dirty deadly 2nd Ed Warp Spidiers, with their monofilament beards) are coming up 30 years old. No. Really! 1993. As are the Phoenix Lords. 30. Years. Older than many a Dakkanaut!

Of course the part of the puzzle we’re missing and can’t even really speculate on? How do sales of Updated Kits compare to New Kits? That’s a natural consideration for GW, as they need to maximise the return on the design costs.

But…even if we spread a full plasticification of the range? It could comfortably be done on the numbers above, across a couple of editions.

Only one plastic kit has been thrown on the rotation and that’s Artemis from the Deathwatch. All I can guess is that he’s in such low demand it wasn’t worth wasting a Sku or production space on him.

ZergSmasher wrote:Are the various Phoenix Lords for Craftworlds currently rotated out? I thought they were all in metal (other than the one or two that are now plastic like Maugan Ra).

They were in resin and are currently rotated out.

All I did folks was go through the GW website and grab all the kits availible, barring the current batch of MTO Librarians and captains for the SM. (Most if not all of which weee discontinued before the rotation)

This discussion would be very different if they hadn’t tossed large swaths of the DE, CWE, Inquisiton, and SM ranged into the rotation, but for now I’m considering then discontinued for rhe purposes of that list. They can come back, but at the end of the day they aren’t making any more until it’s time to rotate.

**Gert**

Artemis was the HQ model in the SC for Deathwatch and I checked the site I go to for second hand minis to see how many I could find when it was announced the model was getting rotated. I managed 7 pages of about 15 Artemis models each which IIRC was more than even the Prospero Ahriman count from before it was released separately.