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Another poster in a thread about how GWS should release a Horus Heresy line made this comment:

NELS1031 wrote:On Topic: I'd personally like to see some comprehensive xenos releases before they create an expansion thats would focus on an era of lore that is, when you boil it down, marine vs marine. Yes imperial guard and other auxilliary forces played a part, but its essentially about the larger then life Primarch heroes and their legions, at its heart. Plus a series of releases focusing on space marines may prolong the lame as f*** "sphess marinz" joke or that one mod's "Codex: <instert color> marine" previews that have been hammered into unfunniness.

This deserves, perhaps, it's own thread.

A cliche doesn't happen in a vacuum. Specifically, all these people who make these jokes have a rather strong point in how GWS has been over saturating Space Marines© are right.

I looked through all my FW and GWS newsletters to build the release schedule for 2010. There were 44 releases in 2010 for 40k (not counting army books, figure cases, scenery, WHFB, LOTR etc). Out of those, Space Marines© got 25, and everyone else combined got 19. So, while Chaos Space Marines are using the same craptastic metal dreadnought for the last, what, 16 years? - which makes it likely older then the target demographic for the game in which it's used - Space Marines© had 5 different bolter releases. If you're a xeno player, you're taking it in the shorts, month after month.

My apologies to the Tau players for using the pie chart, and not the more appropriate bar graph. The bar graph might have worked better for you, since i could have arranged it to look like a middle finger, and that's what you guys got in 2010; that and nothing else. You're not alone in that. Grey Knights also got nothing, as did Witchhunters. CSM got 1 release, and it was a re-issue that sucked - "Traitors of Chaos".

Do they do this for WHFB too? Is it month after month of Empire releases, while Beastmen haven't had an update since Bill Clinton was in his first term? I'm not a WHFB player, it's a legitimate question.

(A more accurate chart has been composed and is on page 2, but the composition is the same)

Now you can see why I suggested that the putative 6th edition starter set should contain Space Marines and Space Marines as the two armies.

Also, ever since they started this focus on Space Marines, (was it around 3rd ed, 1998?) haven't their 40k sales been in overall decline?

I don't remember it being so Marine biased in 2nd ed, where there was growth.

I'm no WHFB player but I am sure it isn't that lop sided towards any army.

Would GW improve their sales if they focused on the other armies as much as the SM? That's a question worth asking.

I don't think there is any evidence for that, if only because the early 2000s figures are distorted by the inclusion of LoTR. We do not have access to the actual EPOS figures which would show how many of each kit was sold.

It is true that sales figures have been dropping for several years recently, however I don't see why that should be blamed on Space Marines.

Release of a new codex or models for an army generally results in a boost of sales for that faction.

Personally I don't mind that so many SM codexes are released. What I care about is that too few non-SM codexes are released in the same time period.

That's fairly depressing. Obviously Space Marines receive more support, but I had no idea things were so disproportionate. Excellent observation and analysis, nonetheless.

I have no doubt that the trend will continue, however I don;t think things will be as bad this year. So far, we've seen a lot of support for Eldar (FW stuff) and Dark Eldar, getting a long over due codex update, and, as far as GW goes, what seems like a fairly expedited Second and 3rd wave. Hopefully that trend will continue. We're also getting Grey Knights very soon, though if the PDF leak tells us anything, they've been very much "Marine-ized." Normally, I'd take this opportunity to make a snide comment about Matt Ward, but he gets some brownie points here for making it possible to play (what appears to be very viable) dedicated Inquisition lists, despite the adamant reservations of one or two "outspoken" Dakkanauts...

Finally, there are only 2 more Marine Books that can be updated (BT, and DA) and hopefully after that, they'll bring everyone else up to date before going into 6th ed.

I think the more interesting question is: "Why is this a problem?" Obviously, it's perceived as one, and I don;t disagree that it is. Is it that no matter what the variance is between Marine codices, they all still boil down to the same basic statline (especially the 3+ save)? Is it the fluff and design where they are all just slight variations on a theme? If, hypothetically, in addition to all the standard marine books, there was a xenos race that just happened to have the same stateline, but looked completely different, and had unique fluff, would there still be an issue? Is it that Marines are what they are, or that every release for them is viewed as more of the same?

It does kind of suck (I don't play SM, though I do have CSM).

I'm not interested in SM, I don't have any SM models in my CSM army* (even though there are a lot of very nice SM models that I wouldn't mind getting to convert), and on principal I will not buy SM stuff.

I think it would encourage people to start a second army if the xeno lines got more regular releases and updates. At the moment people who start off with SM get more and more goodies each month, get kick ass codexes of which there are always a couple in the first few to be updated for each new edition.

But once their army gets to a certain size, there is not really a lot more for them other than a few new units a year to buy. There is no real incentive to get many of the other xeno factions as they have really old models and don't look like they will be getting new ones in a while, and even if they do get them, it is unlikely they will be updated for a while and for someone used to getting a couple of handfuls of new upgrades a year to switch to an army which is pretty much the same model wise as when it was released is not a lot of fun.

Give the xenos some love, for the good of the game!



* Except for a few bits and pieces I have been given.

Ouze wrote:Do they do this for WHFB too? Is it month after month of Empire releases, while Beastmen haven't had an update since Bill Clinton was in his first term? I'm not a WHFB player, it's a legitimate question.

They don't; WHFB is much more "balanced" in terms of releases. If anything, they've neglected some of their flagship armies (O&G) until recently, as they're getting a new book in a month! In your example, Beastmen just got a new book last year (although it is unfortunately underpowered and since it just came out, they won't be getting a better one for a long time).

Besides O&G, the next most neglected army was Tomb Kings, which is the next release book (already confirmed by GW's Incoming emails). Ogres and Brettonians are probably those that have been suffering longest after that. Wood Elves just recently became outdated due to the new 8th edition ruleset.

But overall, fantasy support has been balanced in my opinion. I'm not sure why people point to Empire (I guess it has the most background material?) as in my opinion it's most analogous to Imperial Guard. If anything, Warriors of Chaos are the closed to "space marines of fantasy". They are quite popular for similar reasons (great armor, less models, etc).

The SM focus helped drive me out of 40k... I no longer play it. That and the "gateway game" status of the sci-fi branch of warhammer, as opposed to the slightly older crowd that fantasy draws.

I should point out, of course, my methodology was far from perfect. Not from bias, but from laziness. Specifically, the tyranid release and the DE release each out as one release when obviously they both were many separate models. Unfortunately, the newsletters don't always cohesively break down which specific models are in each release, so I counted them as one major release. To keep it fair I did the same as the space marine side: when they had a month which saw 5 different Space Marine transfers released, that counted as one, so long as it was a single newsletter blurb. Blood Angels were 1 release. The bolters were spread out over several months, so that was more then one. If there were more interest I'm sure I could research it more in depth but I doubt the ratios would change much, and work is starting to pick up, so leaving it where it is: Not an exact science but definitely a good rough idea of just how unbalanced it is.

Ouze wrote:Do they do this for WHFB too? Is it month after month of Empire releases, while Beastmen haven't had an update since Bill Clinton was in his first term? I'm not a WHFB player, it's a legitimate question.

Fantasy isn't nearly as lopsided as 40K is.

That said, while Beastmen did get a fairly recent release, it feels extremely token. The Beastman Doombull is the only model that came out in that time that is widely considered to be a decent step up from the previous version. From what I hear the Ungors, Gors, and Bestigors are all thought of as very middling models while the Razorgor and Minotaurs are laughingstocks of the miniature world; the latter only occasionally being forgiven if you paint them so dark you can't see the sculpting. They're still waiting on their second wave, which I expect won't come until the army gets redone just before the next edition of WFB. I feel they're a bit like TK or OG- no one at the studio is really that excited about them so they get the minimum attention needed.

But at least they can count on a release almost every cycle.

I've seen several people indicate that there is an older crowd into WHFB. Tempting. Tomb Kings seem neat. But I don't know if my wallet can afford another massive game like that. Maybe will start a thread in the WHFB asking about it.

Kilkrazy wrote:I don't think there is any evidence for that, if only because the early 2000s figures are distorted by the inclusion of LoTR. We do not have access to the actual EPOS figures which would show how many of each kit was sold.

It is true that sales figures have been dropping for several years recently, however I don't see why that should be blamed on Space Marines.

Release of a new codex or models for an army generally results in a boost of sales for that faction.

Personally I don't mind that so many SM codexes are released. What I care about is that too few non-SM codexes are released in the same time period.

The LoTR bubble would have hid the decline, so I would probably mark the early 2000s as the beginning of the drop.

I think there's correlation but as always it may not be the causation. However, it does fly in the face of those who say that Space Marines are what keep the sales up; they have been pushed heavily and coincide with the decline period compared with when they weren't so pushed there was a growth period.

At best, the disproportionate focus on Space Marines does not help at all; at worst it's one of the factors in losing customers.

Commander Endova wrote:That's fairly depressing. Obviously Space Marines receive more support, but I had no idea things were so disproportionate. Excellent observation and analysis, nonetheless.

I have no doubt that the trend will continue, however I don;t think things will be as bad this year. So far, we've seen a lot of support for Eldar (FW stuff) and Dark Eldar, getting a long over due codex update, and, as far as GW goes, what seems like a fairly expedited Second and 3rd wave. Hopefully that trend will continue. We're also getting Grey Knights very soon, though if the PDF leak tells us anything, they've been very much "Marine-ized." Normally, I'd take this opportunity to make a snide comment about Matt Ward, but he gets some brownie points here for making it possible to play (what appears to be very viable) dedicated Inquisition lists, despite the adamant reservations of one or two "outspoken" Dakkanauts...

Finally, there are only 2 more Marine Books that can be updated (BT, and DA) and hopefully after that, they'll bring everyone else up to date before going into 6th ed.

I think the more interesting question is: "Why is this a problem?" Obviously, it's perceived as one, and I don;t disagree that it is. Is it that no matter what the variance is between Marine codices, they all still boil down to the same basic statline (especially the 3+ save)? Is it the fluff and design where they are all just slight variations on a theme? If, hypothetically, in addition to all the standard marine books, there was a xenos race that just happened to have the same stateline, but looked completely different, and had unique fluff, would there still be an issue? Is it that Marines are what they are, or that every release for them is viewed as more of the same?

You may have seen the term MEq used in discussion of army lists, tactics, and Mathshammer threads.

It means Marines and Equivalents, and encompasses everything with a 3+ armour save -- SMs, CSMs, Necrons, GK and SoB (to some extent). One of the key points about beating these armies is to load up on AP2 weapons which ignore their armour save. In other words, you look at an important common factor. Many of these armies are similar in other ways too, of course.

From that perspective, an alien army with the same statline as Sms would not just be an MEq, it would be an SM under another name, and would add nothing to the variety of the game.

I am making the basic assumption that we are looking at this from the game player's point of view.

Fluff is wonderful, but if you want different fluff you can read SF novels. The game isn't about fluff.

Models are excellent, but if you want different models you can buy different models for an army. The game isn't about models.

If you want the army to work differently in the game, and provide new challenges, it needs to work differently. And it needs to work significantly differently, not just have access to giant space wolves or terminators as troops or something like that. The game is about rules and differences between armies.

If I want to play a game in which all the armies are nearly the same and have only minor differences between them, I can play Napoleonics. It's not why I want to play 40K.

Yeah I was wondering why nids only was 2% when in fact they had quite few new things in 2010. But nevertheless your exercise is quite interesting and really shows the tendencies.

Marine fans are going to kill me but I would rather see a huge book with all marines and another with all chaos than this multiplication and fllooding of 40k with marines. I wonder if marine players or non nid fans would like to see every year a new book dedicated to a diferent hive fleet ( change the fluff and the colors and list a bit and its done).

If the product sales are declining maybe its time to spread a bit more and be less fanatic about marines... but we dont know the numbers, no one can tell if whats keeping GW sales from falling even further are not in fact the marines.

Johira, the thing is I don't think there was anything sinister involved in that. As far as I can tell, lots of people here were excited about beastmen... and they did get a lot of new plastic kits in their release! The models are great in my opinion. Minotaurs were let down by bad studio paint jobs, I even had that sigged for a while from Kirbinator "GW Minotaurs look great when not painted like ham" .

I'm hearing rumors that the Ghorgon or some such is a likely target for warhammer forge and/or some of the rumors about what GW is doing for fantasy this summer. It's true they haven't followed through on the monster releases, but if they're coming soon I don't fault them much for it. Skaven have gotten the Hellpit Abomination, after all.

The O&G and TK releases are yet to be seen- certainly, GW needs to generate momentum after so few releases following the 8th edition ruleset last year. As far as I can tell everybody's interested in TK. O&G are a staple, and the giant spider is awesome... would've been nice to get more plastic kits but the range is pretty good as it is (it's just their rules that have been terrible ).

So in my opinion, some of that is a bit off-base. As to the poor razorgor... in person it's not bad. So many people go off the "crazy bulging eye painted pic" and pan it. It's a massive hunk of metal in person and actually rather impressive.

My god! I knew there was a problem but not that it was that serious! I really can't see why GW has to keep doing this. As daba pointed out, GW sales are likely to be in decline overall, yes all these space marine releases are good for SM players and potential new players, there are still players, like myself, who don't and never will collect a SM army, and there are even SM players who would normally spend money on their other armies. They've given SM many new codexes, a film and a whole game to themselves recently, surely GW can leave them alone for a bit?!

JOHIRA wrote:Fantasy isn't nearly as lopsided as 40K is.

Yep. Fantasy neglectes a few armies ie WE but in general all armies are balanced and there's an equal spread of them. One thing i like about WHFB is that when i go into my FLGS to play a fantasy game i have no idea what army I'll be facing, whereas with 40K the chances are I'll be playing a SM army of some sort.

RiTides wrote:

Ouze wrote:Do they do this for WHFB too? Is it month after month of Empire releases, while Beastmen haven't had an update since Bill Clinton was in his first term? I'm not a WHFB player, it's a legitimate question.

They don't; WHFB is much more "balanced" in terms of releases. If anything, they've neglected some of their flagship armies (O&G) until recently, as they're getting a new book in a month! In your example, Beastmen just got a new book last year (although it is unfortunately underpowered and since it just came out, they won't be getting a better one for a long time).

Besides O&G, the next most neglected army was Tomb Kings, which is the next release book (already confirmed by GW's Incoming emails). Ogres and Brettonians are probably those that have been suffering longest after that. Wood Elves just recently became outdated due to the new 8th edition ruleset.

O&G was first army book the last 2 edtion and 6 (Orc) and 7 (Goblin) starter armys. I wouldn't say there neglected, but the rest is dead on.

Exactly! Fantasy has a much more diverse spread as far percentages of people taking armies... with the usual factors determining which are more popular (the current "top tier" factions, and those that are easier to collect due to low model count or being in a recent starter set).

As to WE being neglected- I'm all for beating that drum, as I played them through 7th and had to give up on them in 8th, but they only just became out-dated with the new ruleset. The other armies that have long been outdated are getting their updates as we speak, and I'm hoping the last glaring few (ogres and brets, in my opinion, although both are decent with 8th their models are suffering) are not far off.

Edit: Great point Noir, I guess I felt they'd suffered since they were so bad under 7th ed rules (arguably the worst). But it could be due to being released so early in the edition where they hadn't realized what would be powerful yet. Hopefully the same doesn't happen in 8th! It pretty much happened to Beastmen, even though they were released just before the new ruleset.

Well, I think Fluff, the Game and Image are all unbreakable linked and one of the reasons for the success of the Warhammer setting itself:

I know I wouldn't stay for only the rules; there are better out there with a variety of factions (GW even made them themselves). If I only wanted fluff there are other settings to read. The models are nice but if I was just into modelling there are plenty out there with more variety.

It's the combination of the lot which makes the Warhammer product compelling.

The main problem with the 3+ save is the armour system itself. The best thing for the game is the AP system to be consigned to history.

Another problem is that all the 3+ save armies are also mostly T4 and have a bolter or something very similar to one.

What Marines do is rip the variety out of the setting in all of rules, fluff and models: Marines more or less look the same, share too many rules and are just different spins on one archetype in fluff.

RiTides wrote:Johira, the thing is I don't think there was anything sinister involved in that. As far as I can tell, lots of people here were excited about beastmen... and they did get a lot of new plastic kits in their release! The models are great in my opinion. Minotaurs were let down by bad studio paint jobs, I even had that sigged for a while from Kirbinator "GW Minotaurs look great when not painted like ham" .

We'll have to agree to disagree (I think the minotaurs are terrible regardless of paint job, and I'm definitely not alone on that score). But my point was not that it was a sinister plot to screw over beastmen, only that in the WFB line there are certain armies less popular than others with the studio, and they get the minimum attention needed to have a "complete" release. That's way better than certain armies being neglected by the studio because some corporate bean-counter thinks they need to do a Space Marine army first. In fact, I'd almost prefer to have my army be neglected if the studio doesn't have any motivation to do anything exciting with it. Better to not get an update at all than to get an update that replaces good models with bad just to try and get me to buy new.

NAVARRO wrote:I would rather see a huge book with all marines and another with all chaos than this multiplication and fllooding of 40k with marines.

I would agree. A faction book should allow you to play any army of that faction. One SM book to play all the SM colours, a Choas book to allow you to play any CSM army/legion/warband +/- daemons +/- traitor IG. An Eldar book to allow you to play different craftworlds, an IG book to let you play any of the famous IG regiments/playstyles (although I think it is actually pretty good at doing this at the moment), etc...

Not that it will ever happen, but hey.

TTTTTTAAAAUUUUU RRRRAAAAAGGGGGEEEEE!!!!!

F#@K YOU GW!

YAY!! Manipulation of statistics to cause maximum effect time!!
I can do it as well, except this time I didn't ignore the FW Tau releases, and then make a massive point out of tau not having the bits that I ignored.



See?
It's not as bad as you thought, or made it out to be, because you counted each individual FW bit pack as a separate release, when they were actually part of a wave of releases for Badab.

If you do the same for all of the armies, rather than just for SM, it comes out much more balanced.



Automatically Appended Next Post:
Also CSM got the new daemon prince kit and daemon models.

Also Also, a large proportion of the SM models were bitz packs and conversion sets, such as the 3 sets of bolters.

Also Also, a large proportion of the SM models were bitz packs and conversion sets, such as the 3 sets of bolters.

Why do Space Marines need these?

38% is far too much for one army.

Daba wrote:Why do Space Marines need these?

Well, there are lots of different colours of marine

What came out for tau in 2010?

What were the 7 chaos releases for 2010? Are you counting Daemons and Chaos as a single faction? They aren't, any more then IG and SM are the same action.

When one SM weapons pack comes out in June, and another comes out in August, should those not be considered different releases?

And, the last question - when you have 12 factions, and 40% of new models go to a single one of them, is that percentage significantly less stupid?

SilverMK2 wrote:

NAVARRO wrote:I would rather see a huge book with all marines and another with all chaos than this multiplication and fllooding of 40k with marines.

I would agree. A faction book should allow you to play any army of that faction. One SM book to play all the SM colours, a Choas book to allow you to play any CSM army/legion/warband +/- daemons +/- traitor IG. An Eldar book to allow you to play different craftworlds, an IG book to let you play any of the famous IG regiments/playstyles (although I think it is actually pretty good at doing this at the moment), etc...

Not that it will ever happen, but hey.

As it is now, compressing all 8 million Space Marine codecies into one codex would be a little harsh.

I would rather suggest combining them into two codecies: One for codex chapters, and one for non-codex chapters. Both would give you options to customize your chapter, similar to a more refined version of the trait system from the 4th ed codex. The codex... codex would act similar to the 5th ed codex, with traits replacing chapter tactics instead of special rules, where as the non-codex... codex would have you picking traits that not only added new special rules, but also alter your selection of units, as well as their placement on the FoC.

Key issue is how many units in the codex currently have models available? Vanilla SM I think you can pretty much buy every unit and most of them in plastic. Maybe a few heroes/bikes, but essentially there. Only massive SM anomoly appears to be thunder wolves for SW as BA are also well supported, especially now stormraven and furioso dread now available.

My 2 armies? IG and Tyranids. IG - HS is a real pain with many variants in the FW only category - hydras, griffons, colossus etc. Tyranids? Well what a joke! Missing models, expensive single metal models (ie hive guard). Look at the one's you need to convert - swarmlord, prime, parasite, tervigon, ymgarl, doom, harpy, tyrannofex, mycetic spore, shrikes, sky slashers.

Using the Forge World releases as an indicator of too much attention being paid to Marines is pretty iffy. 2008 and 2009 both saw huge amounts of Ork stuff being released; the SM releases in 2010 were variations on a theme (marks of power armour, which have turned out to be very popular for a variety of reasons) and some retro bitz packs to go with them. The end of 2010 and the opening bits of 2011 have seen a bunch of Eldar releases in the lead up to IA11; the period from the release of the Hornet is roughly evenly split between Marines (with the Achilles, Tyberos and the FW Ironclad), Guard (Malcador, Cadian HE) and Eldar (Wasp, Hornet, Shadow Spectres). What FW releases is entirely dependent on what book they're putting out; it's been Guard vs. X for years, then Orks v. Marines, now Eldar vs. Guard/Marines with the focus seemingly on the Guard.