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There are people still using "Cult of Officialdom" as a term? Seriously ?

Those who have been here for a few editions know that each edition is an experiment for GW. They can be all hot on the tourney scene this edition; all hot on casual next; all hot on something else next edition.

It's one frustration and partly why their rules haven't "improved" over the decades because they never settle on a focus or theme. It's chop and change each edition.

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Spoiler:

Welcome to why my gaming group basically abandoned 40k over 9th.

9th ed blatently focuses on tournament scene, and GW managed to bring the worst aspect of MTG over into 40k, that is the burn and churn marketing method, where the new meta comes out, meta chasers buy the new hotness, then 3 months later the meta is nerfed into the ground, then the process repeats all over. Its blatantly obvious at this point that this is GWs tactics. The only group of people not able to see this are willfully ignorant.

This however is going to bite them in the rear soon as eventually they will run outta models/armies to rotate into the meta that people dont already have, and its a lot easier for magic to get away with it because printing cards is a lot easier manufacturing wise then pumping out new model lines.

Either way, if you got into warhammer for the thematic wargaming aspect of it, or for the traditional sense of what a table top wargame is, modern 40k is not for you.

Pretty much this...

Bone Stock current 40k offers absolutely nothing for me to want play it.
Play the open war deck, it's tolerable
Modify it a little or a bunch, gets better
Bring in cool stuff/rules from previous editions, gets better
Then play with like-minded people, it's fething great.

But not as good as pre 2.0 8th...or RT/2nd(but that's entirely subjective)

 Eldarsif wrote:
I do feel like OP is ignoring the real world events that actually happened in the world and how they affected everything.

Now, GW is a slow releaser even if it is faster than before...

So what's stopping GW from doing digital rules releases now, and then launching the new models with the physical book that has a couple of new goodies in it for those who buy it? That creates two bumps, one when the rules hit, and another when the models and physical codex (and digital mini supplement) drop.

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Welcome to why my gaming group basically abandoned 40k over 9th.

9th ed blatently focuses on tournament scene,

No, it doesn't.

If it did, Crusade would not exist and there would be more resources that include Crusade content than resources that don't. Every single hardback released since 9th began includes Crusade content.

7 Crusade mission packs. 7. Matched got what, 4? There's another one on the way for Matched. There's another 2 on the way for Crusade. White Dwarf Flashpoints are stacked with Crusade content.

Please don't confuse "I only play in stores, and people there don't play Crusade" with "GW provides more support for Matched than Crusade."

If you do, you are demonstrably and categorically wrong.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Welcome to why my gaming group basically abandoned 40k over 9th.

9th ed blatently focuses on tournament scene,

No, it doesn't.

If it did, Crusade would not exist and there would be more resources that include Crusade content than resources that don't. Every single hardback released since 9th began includes Crusade content.

7 Crusade mission packs. 7. Matched got what, 4? There's another one on the way for Matched. There's another 2 on the way for Crusade. White Dwarf Flashpoints are stacked with Crusade content.

Please don't confuse "I only play in stores, and people there don't play Crusade" with "GW provides more support for Matched than Crusade."

If you do, you are demonstrably and categorically wrong.

How does Crusade hold up to the current state of balance in the game?

 Eldarsif wrote:
I do feel like OP is ignoring the real world events that actually happened in the world and how they affected everything.

Far from it. I acknowledge the real world events however regardless of COVID, we would have seen the same thing.

Think of it this way - if the aim was to release the codexes which then completes the rules sets - then why would there even be a 9th edition? The fact is, they stagger out all the releases right up the the point they then say "That's all the rules updated - time to start from scratch again".

As such, COVID, Russia, Aliens wouldn't change their business model because it works. They are a manufacturer, not a games company. They only care about rules because it impacts sales. Hence the original post why we really need to hate this game. Would any of you tolerate this from a computer game (which you spend far less on)?

Me and the local gaming group have been discussing this and in honesty, we're just not going to play 10th edition. When it comes out with their usual reset shithousery, we're just going to keep playing 9th. We're not interested in being beta testers, neither are we interested in waiting 2 years to be brought up to a level playing field.

Do you also want us to know water is wet?

GW models are great but that does not mean anyone is required to play the games the model company makes. Have people been paying attention to Onslaught spoilage? It is going to be a skirmish game with preprinted miniatures that is also intentionally miniatures agnostic. Imagine Blackstone Fortress made to work fine without GW models... After your blown mind is stuffed back into your brain box look up One Page Rules to replace 40k, Kill Teams, and Hammer Fantasy, preorder Onslaught, and drop the expectation of quality GW game content.

 Canadian 5th wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Welcome to why my gaming group basically abandoned 40k over 9th.

9th ed blatently focuses on tournament scene,

No, it doesn't.

If it did, Crusade would not exist and there would be more resources that include Crusade content than resources that don't. Every single hardback released since 9th began includes Crusade content.

7 Crusade mission packs. 7. Matched got what, 4? There's another one on the way for Matched. There's another 2 on the way for Crusade. White Dwarf Flashpoints are stacked with Crusade content.

Please don't confuse "I only play in stores, and people there don't play Crusade" with "GW provides more support for Matched than Crusade."

If you do, you are demonstrably and categorically wrong.

How does Crusade hold up to the current state of balance in the game?

Completely besides the point, and irrelevant to it.

But to answer the question; better, because it is fundamentally grounded in the idea of self-moderated balance. It is not advertised as being "matched" any more than open play is, and they have even done whole articles on that aspect and how to manage it in WD.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Overread wrote:
Those who have been here for a few editions know that each edition is an experiment for GW. They can be all hot on the tourney scene this edition; all hot on casual next; all hot on something else next edition.

It's one frustration and partly why their rules haven't "improved" over the decades because they never settle on a focus or theme. It's chop and change each edition.

It is interesting to compare it against AoS. AoS 2nd edition saw a dramatic increase in the quality of the rules, though it does need to be acknowledged that 1st set the bar quite low. I was seriously worried going into 3rd; I expected a sidegrade at best. Instead we got another notable improvement of rules quality in multiple aspects. It has its rough edges, but any Wargame has that. It's major pitfall is random initiative, which is still a mechanic carried over rather than added in.

That is not to confuse rules quality with balance quality though. The balance is as bad as it's always been. But the core game underneath that has seen improvement for two editions in row, something that from my (obviously subjective) perspective hasn't happened to any of the Warhammers since at least last century.

But the core game underneath that has seen improvement for two editions in row, something that from my (obviously subjective) perspective hasn't happened to any of the Warhammers since at least last century.

Well, 7th was 6th with some FAQs added, 8th was better than 7th and then 9th was 8th with some FAQs added.
So the core rules of 40K improved steadily over 4 editions (6th is widely seen as a downgrade from 5th, though) , balance and how they approached Codizes, no models no rules and missions didn't exactly improve, though. I'd say it was an up and down with these.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Welcome to why my gaming group basically abandoned 40k over 9th.

9th ed blatently focuses on tournament scene,

No, it doesn't.

Oh deary me! Looks like you've fallen in that Egyptian river again...

You have to either be wilfully ignorant or blind to not see that 9th is the 40k tournament edition. Hell, even Chapter Approved is called the "Grand Tournament 20xx pack". You cannot deny it when GW spell it out for you in the bloody titles of their expansions.

 Dysartes wrote:
You'd hope some companies were making decent money increasing the supply of containers, at least - any evidence of that, that you're aware of?

AFAIK the issue is that there are more containers coming into first world countries than there are going back to the rest of the world. These days the Hamburg harbor (third larges freight harbor in Europe) has an entire island which is nothing but stacks and stacks of abandoned containers. Abandoning them and paying the fines for that is more profitable than taking back empty containers.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Canadian 5th wrote:
How does Crusade hold up to the current state of balance in the game?

Depends. It has different issues than GT/matched play has since armies are built differently and you can't just switch to the new hotness without losing requisition and/or experience. People also tend to avoid named characters, so that "breaks" some top builds as well.

So if there is just one specific built or combo that is problematic, you rarely feel the impact of it. It's also worth noting that an army which was build for scoring GT secondaries isn't necessarily one that works well in a narrative scenario.

What you do notice is when an entire codex is overtuned, someone happens to play one of the OP subfactions or when a codex just has powerful troops and HQs.
For example, both unerfed drukhari and AdMech caused massive problems in our crusade, while ork buggy spam, GK or custodes were a non-issue.
Balance issues don't necessarily overlap with what's too powerful in tournaments though. For example, TS are an army which are absolutely vicious in crusade with the right cult and some battle traits on their scarabs and rubrics.

The one issue is that GW isn't going back and fixing things for crusade like they are for matched play and its variants. If something is broken, you are stuck with it 7th edition style.

That said, crusade is what is keeping the game alive for our group. GW is providing so many resources to draw from, you can have cool campaigns and narrative missions by just plugging together the things you want for your games. Sadly, the one big limiter here is the codex rule bloat which severely limits how much extra rules you can slap on a game before people start blanking out.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimtuff wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:
Welcome to why my gaming group basically abandoned 40k over 9th.

9th ed blatently focuses on tournament scene,

No, it doesn't.

Oh deary me! Looks like you've fallen in that Egyptian river again...

You have to either be wilfully ignorant or blind to not see that 9th is the 40k tournament edition. Hell, even Chapter Approved is called the "Grand Tournament 20xx pack". You cannot deny it when GW spell it out for you in the bloody titles of their expansions.

Crusade Mission Pack: Plague Purge
Crusade Mission Pack: Beyond the Veil
Crusade Mission Pack: Amids the Ashes
Crusade Mission Pack: Containment
Crusade Mission Pack: Catastrophe
Crusade Mission Pack: Wars of Faith

According to your own metric, this is the crusade edition, as there have been twice as many crusade mission packs than there have been Grand Tournament mission packs

But wait, there is more:
War Zone Charadon: The Book of Rust
War Zone Charadon: The Book of Fire
War Zone Octarius: Rising Tide
War Zone Octarius: Critical Mass
War Zone Nachtmund: Vigilus Alone
War Zone Nachtmund: Rift War

All those books are full of content for running crusade campaigns as well, with only a few pages dedicated to tournament pay-to-win.

Racerguy180 wrote:

 Backspacehacker wrote:

Spoiler:

Welcome to why my gaming group basically abandoned 40k over 9th.

9th ed blatently focuses on tournament scene, and GW managed to bring the worst aspect of MTG over into 40k, that is the burn and churn marketing method, where the new meta comes out, meta chasers buy the new hotness, then 3 months later the meta is nerfed into the ground, then the process repeats all over. Its blatantly obvious at this point that this is GWs tactics. The only group of people not able to see this are willfully ignorant.

This however is going to bite them in the rear soon as eventually they will run outta models/armies to rotate into the meta that people dont already have, and its a lot easier for magic to get away with it because printing cards is a lot easier manufacturing wise then pumping out new model lines.

Either way, if you got into warhammer for the thematic wargaming aspect of it, or for the traditional sense of what a table top wargame is, modern 40k is not for you.

Pretty much this...

Bone Stock current 40k offers absolutely nothing for me to want play it.
Play the open war deck, it's tolerable
Modify it a little or a bunch, gets better
Bring in cool stuff/rules from previous editions, gets better
Then play with like-minded people, it's fething great.

But not as good as pre 2.0 8th...or RT/2nd(but that's entirely subjective)

So true. GW is surviving on IP and inertia. It is all they have left. 3d printing will eventually overtake them on model sales. they know this. so they have been pushing the market to their streaming service, and everything about the IP NOT related to the tabletop game. because they have maintained full control building the franchise from the ground up with a very visible presence over 30+ years they have dominated a very niche market making it very hard for any competitor. It is comparable to the mountain climber forging the way to the top of the peak only to pull the ladder up behind them to prevent anybody else from getting there the same way or as easily. the inertia feeds itself. the majority of people play 40K because it is the most available. it is the most available because the majority of players play it.

No new company that pulled half of what GW has done in the last 5 years would survive the community backlash.


We all know they do not have the best rule sets. even the best editions had flaws, often times glaring ones. while their model quality has increased dramatically over the decades as technology increased, it is quite easy now to reach those standards without having to rely on them.

By your comments it appears you individually have reached the place many of us did years ago. i have a huge collection of 40K minis dating back to 3rd ed. i have no need to buy anything from them to play the editon i prefer to play (5th for our group). there is no need to chase the meta of the month or constantly buy the "new hotness" or check for FAQs/updates or be forced to play the current edition. many of us who still come here to talk miniature gaming have done the same. this is more difficult for some if they cannot find a good group of like minded players. thus they suck it up and suffer through whatever GW throws out there to at least get some gaming in. I understand it, but i am fortunately not in that situation.

It is sad really because the game used to be a very fun experience for us non-tournament minded players rather you preferred RPG ish rogue trader, skirmish hero hammer second, or a Napoleonic army battle games that was the core design of 3rd-7th that was based on Kriegsspiel the original TT wargame meant to train real soldiers. 8th edition on past the index rule set is none of those things. this style of game with CCG elements will appeal to some people and turn others off. the look and lore may scream classic 40K but the game play does not.

Many players also are not as active as others. i am lucky in that i get an entire day to game every week (usually 12+ hours straight) with a great group of players who play just about everything in a very casual setting. So we can enjoy some fun oldhammer games of 40K, epic, BFG, kill teams or not touch 40K for weeks while we spend time on other systems we enjoy as well.

The downside of this is collecting many different games (although they are usually far cheaper than GW). This also requires each and every one of us to promote and build a community in our local area of GAMERS, not GW gamers or 40K gamers but general gamers so we do not get burnt by playing the same game system exclusively.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
How long are we going to give them the COVID excuse? I mean, the same problems at the start of 9th are still ongoing. They are still drip feeding codexes. I mean, yes, capitalism is a thing, but at some point can we stop saying COVID was to blame for the way that 9th turned out? Capitalism, BREXIT, and poor design are at fault here. Not a super-virus.

HAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHA

When it comes to Capitalism, you don't know what it is, and are incredibly incorrect. But oh my, thanks for the laugh!!!!

You are correct, though. Covid was always the excuse to centrally plan people's lives through socialistic mechanisms (lockdowns, regulations, tariffs, etc) and tell them how to live.

And you are also correct here. Brexit has been a complete statist mess, of course, which has impacted the free movement of workers and hurt trade.

But even through all of that, GW is able to still provide new codexes and models on an almost weekly basis. It's insane how efficient GW has become, which has been pointed out FACTUALLY dozens of times in this thread already, despite socialist control of their actions through regulations and trade cut off through lock downs.

I'd rather have GW's production capabilities today than whatever they called Production for dozens of years in the past, where some codexes took over a decade to get a new edition.

The essential of the OP is that GW is slow. GW isn't, factually, and has only sped up it's production and updates. The OP is flat out wrong on his assumptions, and should come to conclusions based on the facts of reality, and not his emotions.

GW today is vastly superior to GW of the past in context of production and updates.

How is it that the largest Shipping companies in the WORLD (Oil shipping) are reporting 200-400% profits, and the world is still seeing record consumption, but we are still clinging to the bogeyman that "Covid is killing shipping"?

It's obviously not anymore, every major business that isn't customer facing in the US is doing gangbusters. The war economy staggers on. Elon Musk is sending people to space for 55Mil a seat, every few months.

Stop perpetuating the corporate lie that Covid is still hampering business. That's like believing by paying double for gas than you did a year ago means you must be getting better gas.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
How is it that the largest Shipping companies in the WORLD (Oil shipping) are reporting 200-400% profits, and the world is still seeing record consumption, but we are still clinging to the bogeyman that "Covid is killing shipping"?

It's obviously not anymore, every major business that isn't customer facing in the US is doing gangbusters. The war economy staggers on. Elon Musk is sending people to space for 55Mil a seat, every few months.

Stop perpetuating the corporate lie that Covid is still hampering business. That's like believing by paying double for gas than you did a year ago means you must be getting better gas.

That is like 3 seconds of googling on the subject: https://fbx.freightos.com. You really have to check your bias.