Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Do you think Soup will lead to consolidation of armies? Like eventually were will see just an Imperium army book with Guard and all the various flavors of Space Marines in it? And then a Chaos book with all the Chaos factions in it. Same for Eldar (or whatever name they are going by., I've been calling them Eldar for 20 years and aren't going to change any time soon).

No GW seem pretty set on their seperation plan. Hence why Death Guard are an army now.

It seems to be heading in the other direction, and separating out factions where they can rather than consolidating. Saying that, we might see an Inquisition/Assassins/Agents book if we see any consolidation

So more and more "stand alone" armies that CAN'T stand alone, hence the further need for soup. Gotcha.

phydaux wrote:
So more and more "stand alone" armies that CAN'T stand alone, hence the further need for soup. Gotcha.

Yup, does seem that way

phydaux wrote:
So more and more "stand alone" armies that CAN'T stand alone, hence the further need for soup. Gotcha.

Not really. Custodes used to be strictly a support unit for other armies, now they can totally stand alone. Same deal for Imperial Knights.

Sure, competitively they might always soup in a Battalion of Guard, but in a more casual environment it's totally fine to collect and play these armies as stand alone.

Per the fluff, at least, Space Marines are very loyal to their chapters. They are very proud of their chapters. So, I don't see them putting all of the imperium together. I believe we will still have separate books for all the major chapters at least.

Just my $0.02

SG

 ServiceGames wrote:
Per the fluff, at least, Space Marines are very loyal to their chapters. They are very proud of their chapters. So, I don't see them putting all of the imperium together. I believe we will still have separate books for all the major chapters at least.

Just my $0.02

SG

This is true, but when it comes to actual war it is very common in the fluff for them to fight alongside Guardsmen and other Imperial forces. Command wise they are fairly autonomous, but joint operations happen a lot.

That said, they will definitely keep everything separate for Codexes. They want to sell more books, not less.

I agree with other posters here. Seems like they're more and more encouraged to separate out the armies.

I'm a bit mixed about this trend. For factions that I'm more into, I like having the extra bit of fluff. But for the factions with like.. 6 models that I'm 'meh' about the fluff, I don't like needing to pay for a codex.

All indications point to Soup not going away.

And really the issue isn’t with soup, it is with that soup is vastly more efficient than none soup. Building an effective assault component for Guard is far harder if you can’t just reach for some Blood Angels.

I expect between the Rule of 3, Single faction detachments, and eventually some fix to multiple detachment CP builds, it will start to become less effective to run soup, and even out with mono factions.

Why would they sell you one book for $100, when they can sell you 5 books at $40 each? Soup!

Though honestly, Imperial soup makes sense in many ways. As do many of the others.

People were fearing it at the advent of 8th. edition, you won't get any more consolidation than you got in the indices, but those were only a stopgap.
I'd be surprised to not see even more codizes after sororitas, like Kroot, Snakebites, Emperor's Children, Ynnari...

Soup follows along with similar ideas of expansion strategy we're seeing in other games. It feels a little different, but at the heart of the release model, its very similar to PP's CID Theme Force releases, Guild Ball's Minor Guilds, and Infinity's Sectorials.

All of these things work on ideas of a focus burst expansion for a larger gameplay structure. That expansion stands somewhat on its own and serves as a entry point, but can also be the start of a larger collection of releases under that umbrella. It gives new players a less daunting entry point without invalidating larger collections.

I would definitely expect once the codexes are out we'll see new stuff along similar lines. I'd not be surprised to see Kroot as its own Codex with a few new releases that include some keywords that allow them to ally with some Xenos races. I also think we'll continue to see Chaos and Imperium subfactions fleshed out without getting enough to models to really support an entire faction.

Personally, I think its a great model, and I've really enjoyed it in all the games I listed above. Hoping Malifaux follows suit soon, fwiw.

At some point they will decide the best way to up model sales is for an army only chosen from one codex to get +x CPs to its detachments...

I doubt it will. The only real problem with soup is that it doesn't work equally for every faction. Tau for example are a great choice for soup armies but don't have any other armies to ally with right now. The Necrons on the other hand would be really hard to shoehorn anything into. What are you going to do separate Flayers into their own army? Make armies around Ctan or Pariahs? Bring back biological Necrontyr? You could do these things but I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle in order to make players see these options as good additions to the game and not just an attempt to make more money.

Skaorn wrote:
I doubt it will. The only real problem with soup is that it doesn't work equally for every faction. Tau for example are a great choice for soup armies but don't have any other armies to ally with right now. The Necrons on the other hand would be really hard to shoehorn anything into. What are you going to do separate Flayers into their own army? Make armies around Ctan or Pariahs? Bring back biological Necrontyr? You could do these things but I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle in order to make players see these options as good additions to the game and not just an attempt to make more money.

It's worth noting that the game doesn't necessarily require a separate codex to make a worthwhile soup option. If, for example, the different Dynasties strongly supported different groupings of Necron models, it would likely be beneficial to take multiple deatchments with different dynasties. I think that's something that would really make factions like Orks work in the way people envision.

Stux wrote:
This is true, but when it comes to actual war it is very common in the fluff for them to fight alongside Guardsmen and other Imperial forces. Command wise they are fairly autonomous, but joint operations happen a lot.

That is very true. But, even alongside each other, they do tend to be very proud of their chapters and seem to stick with their own chapter while fighting alongside others as well as guard... at least in the books I've read. The main exception being the Deathwatch.

SG

 LunarSol wrote:

Skaorn wrote:
I doubt it will. The only real problem with soup is that it doesn't work equally for every faction. Tau for example are a great choice for soup armies but don't have any other armies to ally with right now. The Necrons on the other hand would be really hard to shoehorn anything into. What are you going to do separate Flayers into their own army? Make armies around Ctan or Pariahs? Bring back biological Necrontyr? You could do these things but I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle in order to make players see these options as good additions to the game and not just an attempt to make more money.

It's worth noting that the game doesn't necessarily require a separate codex to make a worthwhile soup option. If, for example, the different Dynasties strongly supported different groupings of Necron models, it would likely be beneficial to take multiple deatchments with different dynasties. I think that's something that would really make factions like Orks work in the way people envision.

The only problem is that this doesn't lead to players of armies like Necrons or Orks to branch out into other armies. Most of them will have the models to do this without additional purchases. Ideally I think GW would probably want something like Nids and GSC for most armies, that allows access to IG too, without getting overwhelmed by creating a bunch of new kits by creating ties to existing lines. Kroot Mercs would be a good example of a list that could be allied to multiple armies like they could in the past, as long as they don't make Tau one of the armies they can't ally with again. I think there would have been far more Kroot Merc armies had GW allowed Tau players to make use of that list. I know I would have started one.

Absolutely not.

For each army, GW can convince someone to buy:

1) A codex.
2) Dice.
3) Card decks.

etc. That's an additional $50-60 per army. You'll see more codices and extraneous bits, never less. Excluding simple business practices, should armies be consolidated? Absolutely - there are far too many little special-cupcake armies which don't need to have their own codex. But as long as people buy them, GW will keep making them.

I see a lot of people buying Knights.

Sure a few of them had a knight from before.

But it seems like most are due to them being a cool new compelling forces that people want to play.

The idea that people are sheeple and you can easily push them into expanding a new army after they buy that one guy isn’t really a good sales technique or one that yields the best long term results. Compelling universes are much more enjoyable.

And profitable.

Reemule wrote:
I see a lot of people buying Knights.

Sure a few of them had a knight from before.

But it seems like most are due to them being a cool new compelling forces that people want to play.

The idea that people are sheeple and you can easily push them into expanding a new army after they buy that one guy isn’t really a good sales technique or one that yields the best long term results. Compelling universes are much more enjoyable.

And profitable.

A lot of people bought Wraithknights when they were hot too. I think the main reason you see people buying full Knight armies vs just an Aux Knight though is simply because the Renegade box gets you there at such a relatively cheap cost.

AoS has Alliances but the factions within those Alliances are still getting second edition Battletomes. So I don’t think there’s any indication whatsoever GW wants to stop mak8ng faction books like codexes.

phydaux wrote:
Do you think Soup will lead to consolidation of armies? Like eventually were will see just an Imperium army book with Guard and all the various flavors of Space Marines in it? And then a Chaos book with all the Chaos factions in it. Same for Eldar (or whatever name they are going by., I've been calling them Eldar for 20 years and aren't going to change any time soon).

No. That's opposite to the idea of selling you 400 different codecies, which they like doing.

I think the index model was honestly better, and preferable, but then they can't sell as many books.

 LunarSol wrote:

Reemule wrote:
I see a lot of people buying Knights.

Sure a few of them had a knight from before.

But it seems like most are due to them being a cool new compelling forces that people want to play.

The idea that people are sheeple and you can easily push them into expanding a new army after they buy that one guy isn’t really a good sales technique or one that yields the best long term results. Compelling universes are much more enjoyable.

And profitable.

A lot of people bought Wraithknights when they were hot too. I think the main reason you see people buying full Knight armies vs just an Aux Knight though is simply because the Renegade box gets you there at such a relatively cheap cost.

What? Deal drive army purchases? More than Soup?

Lots of people complain about book proliferation, but you only need to buy codexes for armies you play,

So if you play four hundred armies, yes you need four hundred codices. If this is a problem, try playing fewer than four hundred armies. It works.

Keep in mind that by not offering omni-books, they aren't forcing you to pay for content you won't use.

But yeah, some of the Xenos do have it soup hard. The allied detachments from a single dex can work, but only if the dex is built with enough diversity that the subarmies can be visually and tactically diverse. The Drukari dex does that pretty well.