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beast_gts wrote:
Your downloadable Warhammer 40,000 faction rules are changing – find out how

Interesting change - seems to be mainly cosmetic, but should make finding things easier.

I laughed when reading the article. “We’re gathering everything into one easy packet! Except the points. And the Combat Patrols. And the Tournament stuff and core rules...” So what’s left?

All the random stuff like the grotmass detachments. Single datasheets for new minis. Legends/Imperial Armor stuff. FAQs/errata. OK, that’s actually quite a bit. For some factions it’s not huge, but others (Marines) it actually condenses quite a bit of stuff.

Sgt. Cortez wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

deano2099 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Regards local player groups, you are right but like I say when the community as a wider whole are happily presenting the "right way" to play as following the default, anything else will always be an uphill battle.

I'm not saying you're wrong, and there's no way to actually know, but I think it's equally likely that even if Incursion was the "default" game mode according to what was in the rules, people would still end up going for 2000 points anyway.

There's a chance that the reason it's the most popular is because it's what most people want to play.

Not really there's a loooooot of studies on the bandwagon effect and the impact of people following the popular opinion, which at this point is entrenched at 2k. If people wanted to bring all the stuff or huge games you'd see 3k a lot more than you do, they instead default to the... default, as that's the sort of herd mentality.

Without ripping the game apart and going again, people are locked in as a group consciousness to this 2k game size, despite the fact it's in reality an arbitrary limit. As long as they can continue to be provided with a means to keep it "same-ish" and work towards that confirmation bias and comfort zone, it won't change.

If GW upped all points by ~30%, essentially making a 1500 point list the normal for 2k, people would simply play 2k still and either enjoy it or bemoan it, but there wouldn't be a giant mass community move to 2500.

Not sure I even buy your premise because I'd say overall 10th edition armies aren't actually larger than they've been in 5th Edition.
With the drive towards making marines more elite than before, Orks being more expensive per model and all hordes having smaller squads, vehicles overall being more expensive than in 6th edition and not being able to buy cheap squads without special weapons, I wouldn't say the game actually is getting bigger and bigger. Yes, there are points cuts in the FaQs, but usually they hit only a couple of units, it's not as prevalent as it was in 9th or 8th edition.
In 5th to 7th you also had game sizes of 1750 or 1850, but I'm not even sure these actually had a lower model count than a 2000points game today.

It might be partly rose tinted glasses, I existed in a world of 1500 being the norm until 8th as that was the common breakpoint on a lot of things for 40k in 3rd/4th when we were all generally picking up the game in my neck of the woods. It was also reinforced by a lot of GW publications at the time.

Just for a laugh though I got someones 1500 5th ed ork list from on here: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/457279.page

That list is now 1135ish (lack of precise model count and KFF mek being legends meant I subbed in a big mek).

beast_gts wrote:
Your downloadable Warhammer 40,000 faction rules are changing – find out how

Interesting change - seems to be mainly cosmetic, but should make finding things easier.

On the one hand, it's nice to see proper rules for Inquisitor Ostromandeus.
On the other, he doesn't have any points yet. Agents also seem to have lost Eisenhorn, Karamazov and all the special Kill-Teams.

Dudeface wrote:

deano2099 wrote:

Dudeface wrote:

Regards local player groups, you are right but like I say when the community as a wider whole are happily presenting the "right way" to play as following the default, anything else will always be an uphill battle.

I'm not saying you're wrong, and there's no way to actually know, but I think it's equally likely that even if Incursion was the "default" game mode according to what was in the rules, people would still end up going for 2000 points anyway.

There's a chance that the reason it's the most popular is because it's what most people want to play.

Not really there's a loooooot of studies on the bandwagon effect and the impact of people following the popular opinion, which at this point is entrenched at 2k. If people wanted to bring all the stuff or huge games you'd see 3k a lot more than you do, they instead default to the... default, as that's the sort of herd mentality.

Without ripping the game apart and going again, people are locked in as a group consciousness to this 2k game size, despite the fact it's in reality an arbitrary limit. As long as they can continue to be provided with a means to keep it "same-ish" and work towards that confirmation bias and comfort zone, it won't change.

If GW upped all points by ~30%, essentially making a 1500 point list the normal for 2k, people would simply play 2k still and either enjoy it or bemoan it, but there wouldn't be a giant mass community move to 2500.

If you subtly nudge like that sure. But then again I think if GW just doubled all the points, and said the new 2k (old 1k) is the standard way to play, but here's a 4k way to play, people would go to 4k.

But you're right that the question of if you took all that away and started from scratch, where would people end up purely on personal preference is a very different one (I suspect it'd be a mostly equal spread).

To me it really does seem like GW are doing everything they can short of the sort of the sort of "nudge" approach you mention. They have really pushed Combat Patrol and Spearhead as genuine, valid ways to play and put a lot of support behind them. They've also really pushed Kill Team and Warcry as their own systems, all against a general pushback from a community that often views all that product through the lens of being a "stepping stone" or gateway to 2k points games of the main systems.

5th edition also saw the game size creep up. From 2nd to 3rd the points roughly halved and the size of armies got a lot bigger, but the game was designed around the bigger game with a lot of the fiddly rules taken out.

4th stayed fairly consistent with 3rd but in 5th basic infantry got cheaper because they often got upgrades included or just flat out went down in cost, and transport vehicles also got cheaper generally across all factions. I believe that was also when they downgraded Necron warriors from being more elite than space marines into a sort of semi-horde. 5th also saw the introduction of superheavies and fliers which had previously been optional or part of apocalypse battles into the main game, which really altered the feel of the game in a negative way imo. The battlefields already felt too cramped for those massive miniatures back then.

Now the most common army in the game has had their base size increased by nearly 30%, all it's vehicles and walkers made much bigger and almost every other army has also had base size increases of a similar nature and scale creep in their miniatures. At the same time the battlefields used have shrunk. So the crowded feeling must be even more extreme than it was.

I'd argue there's a sort of "natural size" where a game of 40k takes about 2.5-3 hours, maybe up to 4 if you are new/hyper casual. (Either explaining a lot of rules as you go, or just chatting because its a Saturday afternoon and the game isn't "that" important.)

Much more than that and its impractical to play in an evening - much less and I feel armies are too small to show off collections.

The other issue with bigger points sizes is just transportation. Its hard to cart large armies to stores - or even to each other's houses. (Also one of the hidden negatives of horde armies.)

Admittedly, this has never really explained why people who don't much care about the models aspect, and would happily play with bits of sprue and pipe cleaners, haven't made a cleaner/quicker game at say 1000 points that you could finish in about 90 minutes. But various 40k competitors have tried this over the years and its fallen by the wayside.

I think you do have a clear bandwagon effect though. There's no obvious reason why for instance the US tournament scene back in the day settled on 1850 points - whereas the UK/EU tended to bounce around between 1500/1750/2000. You'd have people argue that 1750 points was somehow far too small versus the sacred 1850. But equally claim a 2k points game would take far too long to play vs 1850. All of which is a bit bizarre - when you are typically talking about taking one more or one less unit.

Suboden Khan, Master of the First Brotherhood

His bike, Thunder, was gifted to him by Belisarius Cawl during the Ultima Founding.

So Cawl can build jetbikes now - how long before there's a unit of them...

beast_gts wrote:
Suboden Khan, Master of the First Brotherhood

His bike, Thunder, was gifted to him by Belisarius Cawl during the Ultima Founding.

So Cawl can build jetbikes now - how long before there's a unit of them...

How convenient that next summer there's a new edition and presumably a new Marine codex with new Marine models.

Tyel wrote:


Admittedly, this has never really explained why people who don't much care about the models aspect, and would happily play with bits of sprue and pipe cleaners, haven't made a cleaner/quicker game at say 1000 points that you could finish in about 90 minutes. But various 40k competitors have tried this over the years and its fallen by the wayside.

Those people became board gamers. There's literally hundreds of games like that and while no single game can beat 40K, that's because people play all sorts of different ones. There's far better and more varied *gaming* experiences out there now.

 Nevelon wrote:

beast_gts wrote:
Your downloadable Warhammer 40,000 faction rules are changing – find out how

Interesting change - seems to be mainly cosmetic, but should make finding things easier.

I laughed when reading the article. “We’re gathering everything into one easy packet! Except the points. And the Combat Patrols. And the Tournament stuff and core rules...” So what’s left?

All the random stuff like the grotmass detachments. Single datasheets for new minis. Legends/Imperial Armor stuff. FAQs/errata. OK, that’s actually quite a bit. For some factions it’s not huge, but others (Marines) it actually condenses quite a bit of stuff.

So many they actually completely missed Vulkan He'stan's new datasheet

Condensing rules into one document (which they're only sort of doing anyway) would make sense.

...but I feel the tingle of a loss of Legends units occurring in the process...

 Lord Damocles wrote:
Condensing rules into one document (which they're only sort of doing anyway) would make sense.

...but I feel the tingle of a loss of Legends units occurring in the process...

There's definitely some missing, but it seems likely an oversight. The Legends points actually got merged into the MFM and most of the missing datasheets are still there so I'm guessing there's just Legends stuff that got missed in the first pass.

deano2099 wrote:

Tyel wrote:


Admittedly, this has never really explained why people who don't much care about the models aspect, and would happily play with bits of sprue and pipe cleaners, haven't made a cleaner/quicker game at say 1000 points that you could finish in about 90 minutes. But various 40k competitors have tried this over the years and its fallen by the wayside.

Those people became board gamers. There's literally hundreds of games like that and while no single game can beat 40K, that's because people play all sorts of different ones. There's far better and more varied *gaming* experiences out there now.

There always has been.

ccs wrote:

deano2099 wrote:

Tyel wrote:


Admittedly, this has never really explained why people who don't much care about the models aspect, and would happily play with bits of sprue and pipe cleaners, haven't made a cleaner/quicker game at say 1000 points that you could finish in about 90 minutes. But various 40k competitors have tried this over the years and its fallen by the wayside.

Those people became board gamers. There's literally hundreds of games like that and while no single game can beat 40K, that's because people play all sorts of different ones. There's far better and more varied *gaming* experiences out there now.

There always has been.

Before the internet, it was more difficult to know this, especially in the UK. You'd have a local GW store, and any board games on other shelves would be things like Buckaroo or Kerplunk. We don't have the boardgame culture of mainland Europe.

ccs wrote:

deano2099 wrote:

Tyel wrote:


Admittedly, this has never really explained why people who don't much care about the models aspect, and would happily play with bits of sprue and pipe cleaners, haven't made a cleaner/quicker game at say 1000 points that you could finish in about 90 minutes. But various 40k competitors have tried this over the years and its fallen by the wayside.

Those people became board gamers. There's literally hundreds of games like that and while no single game can beat 40K, that's because people play all sorts of different ones. There's far better and more varied *gaming* experiences out there now.

There always has been.

I mean you are not wrong but I would say the gap has widened (game design in board games got better faster than GW rules did) and the market is now about ten times larger than it was 15 years ago. Which also means much more variety and choice.

Got a fair few reports, kindly stick to 40k news & rumours, take all other discussion elsewhere, thanks.

 Matrindur wrote:
I think its time we got another generic 40k rumour thread so lets start with this new guy:

New Necron Overlord with Translocation Shroud

Pseudo jump packs for lych guard. Thats cool. I just wish the 'phase shroud' would be in green translucent plastic, like the old gun rods. Perhaps and outdated gimmick, but would make the model really stick out on the table and signal that here's something you dont see everyday.

The weekly pre-order arcticle doesn't say it, but the Jump Captain with Thunderhammer has been delayed in AUS & NZ and won't go up for pre-order until Oct 25th

New Valrak rumour video is that a plastic Warhound Titan is coming in the next year-ish.

He also says that GW are making a Warmaster Titan model in 30k/40k scale, but I'd be surprised if that was plastic (he doesn't say materials) before they did a Warlord or Plastic Thunderhawk.

There will be further upgrade sprues like the Kill Team Night Lords one and the Iron Warriors are next.

Yarrick is coming back and will get a new model. No new Steel Legion any time soon.

I can kind of see a Warhound in plastic - but its still insanely huge and a massive feat for plastic alone.

Warmaster in resin possible; though GW has gutted a LOT of that line of models from FW so its a bit of a surprise to see them going back to doing a mega-sized model for non-standard GW lines. Though I could see someone from GW saying "we'd do a Warmaster before a plastic warlord/thunderhawk" to mean "yeah we're not actually going to do any of those things, but if we did that's the order we'd do them in most likely"

Yarrick? Meh.

I thought he was dead. Can't we get some new characters, or perhaps plastic versions (like Sly "I'm still Finecast" Marbo) of the current models?


My only hope for the plastic Titan is that it's feet don't require an engineering degree to assemble like the resin one did.

Gamers want new original characters
Games also want new versions of original classic and favoured characters

Also didn't IG get a whole load of new characters - new leader of the Cadians; a new novel headed leader and retinue (though I think that was a one time print deal but her stocks still appear to be about in 3rd party stores)

Regarding Valrak hearing that the warmaster had been designed... Well yeah we basically already knew that. It's a standard part of the HH/LI development to design models in both scales at the same time to get details consistent, even if they don't intend to immediately make a full scale plastic kit. GW then use renders (or possibly 3D printed prototypes) of the higher detailed models in HH artwork, particularly for box art.

It's entirely possible that Valrak has just heard about this and is extrapolating it into a plastic warmaster in addition to the other kits.

True - even a plastic Warhound is a big investment from GW in a model that's still very much going to be purely a collectors piece for the vast majority who buy one and will see limited table time even for those who game.

I could see a Warhound lead a new round of the Apocalypse game. I wouldn't mind if they just polished/ rereleased the 2019 rules as they were quite nice.

Returning to the tabletop hobby, late last decade, to find 40K-sized Titans in the game and Epic-40K completely gone...was like Taylor discovering the Statue of Liberty at the end of The Planet of the Apes.

Still, a plastic Warhound would be cool.

 Overread wrote:
Gamers want new original characters
Games also want new versions of original classic and favoured characters

Also didn't IG get a whole load of new characters - new leader of the Cadians; a new novel headed leader and retinue (though I think that was a one time print deal but her stocks still appear to be about in 3rd party stores)

We lost a bunch in the process and gained the daughter of everyone's favorite commander... and a couple guys on horses.

The Cadians got some ridiculously rare and straight to Legends stuff that makes me sad.

Titans are really not my thing, if they are going to concentrate on that then my wallet is safe.
Thinking about old Forgeworld minis, so much dropped from the catalogue so its good to see plastic replacements.

I really would have thought a plastic Thunderhawk would happen before a Warhound Titan. It's one of those kits that's been asked about so much for so long that even GW jokes about it happening.

Red gobbo alert!

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/fndevuxa/wreck-the-halls-da-red-gobbo-is-back-with-a-festive-robotic-contraption/