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First off, I'd like to say I am happy for those players who are excited to collect a squat army. Truly. Rock & stone brother. That said...

Can we all just stop for a moment & acknowledge that squats are getting new models ahead of IG regiments that haven't been updated in 22+ years? There was a time when the 40k community was up in arms fighting GW on behalf of the Sisters of Battle for being ignored for decades. Generally speaking everyone agreed they were long overdue for a refresh. The same is not true for the guard. I have been advocating for GW to make new models for the long forgotten regiments for decades & have been met with nothing but hostility & dismissal.

Imagine for a moment if tomorrow the only space marine chapters that got new models were Ultramarines & Space Wolves. GW didn't announce it, they just stopped making models for every other chapter. How would space marine players feel? Imagine thinking every year "This year GW will definitely release new models for Blood Angels/White Scars" etc only to be ignored year after year, decade after decade with zero acknowledgement. Then when you inquire about new models for your chapter you are told:

"Your chapter doesn't need new models. Molds are expensive. Just play Ultramarines."

Can you imagine what that would be like? That is exactly the current state the Imperial Guard are in. If you do not collect Cadians/DKoK/Catachans your army is effectively discontinued. I understand that releasing new models for each regiment would be a big undertaking if you tried to do it all at once. I'm not asking for that. All each regiment needs is an infantry kit, HWT kit, command kit. If one regiment was done a year, we would have been done over a decade ago. Its entirely possible & I just wish there was more people advocating on our behalf. As much as I would like to dive back into the hobby, its a big ask when the army I play is effectively dead & completely ignored by Games Workshop.

 Commissar Benny wrote:
Can we all just stop for a moment & acknowledge that squats are getting new models ahead of IG regiments that haven't been updated in 22+ years?

Point of order: The non-Catachan/Cadian/Death Korps regiments did get updates in 8th. They got removed with little warning and no indication they were going to be replaced, which is technically an update.

Seriously, though, I agree with you. 8th soured for me when GW nuked all our old regiments without so much as a farewell card, and I've moved over to third-party purchases as a result. I can't say we've gotten nothing with the rumours of the Cadian refresh, but for me that's too little too late (and it took until that refresh for us to have anything that wasn't a one-off character or single small unit, which is...eugh).

 Commissar Benny wrote:
I have been advocating for GW to make new models for the long forgotten regiments for decades & have been met with nothing but hostility & dismissal.

You should be dismissed for what you're asking for (although I'm sorry people were hostile to you).

It simply doesn't make sense for a game with this many factions and this many SKUs to produce multiple boxes that are effectively reskins of the same unit.

The Marine comparison is rickety (although there are too many marine kits and there should be fewer). A lot of chapters can fill out swathes of their roster with generic power-armoured kits. Imperial Guard cannot do this with infantry. You're asking for three kits per regiment, but without specifying which ones you think are worthy of being included, so I'm going to assume you want at least Cadians, Catachans, Death Korps, Mordians, Tallarns and Valhallans, and possibly Vostroyans, Steel Legion, and more, so we're talking about 18 to 24+ kits, which is equivalent to an entire faction's roster worth. That's an insane ask for the sake of playing dress-up.

As a Squat player I could care less for the Votann. if I had known they were gonna butcher my Rotundus and remake them into Tau.....


I would rather have had updated guard stuff than what they're passing Squats off as

Yes. GW shrank the guard range over a long ago. It was kind of a jerk move to not officially announce it. But its be done and dusted for a long time now.

No, it isn't coming back to 6+ supported regiments. Not even piecemeal, once a year.

Imagine thinking every year...

Well, see... there wasn't any reason to think that. At all.

I likely won't ever field my Valhallans again (I haven't so far this century), but its honestly unreasonable to expect multiple model ranges for a low-to-maybe mid selling army (with lots of off-brand alternatives)

A comparison to a model range that is mostly just color swaps isn't a very good one. Especially not a so-so selling model range vs the very best selling model range.


Compared to Tomb Kings or Bretonnia, old guard models (which are still perfectly usable in the army) got off relatively light.

People making jokes about "squats will get models before IG regiments" in shambles right now. They memed this into existence.

 Altruizine wrote:
...The Marine comparison is rickety (although there are too many marine kits and there should be fewer). A lot of chapters can fill out swathes of their roster with generic power-armoured kits. Imperial Guard cannot do this with infantry. You're asking for three kits per regiment, but without specifying which ones you think are worthy of being included, so I'm going to assume you want at least Cadians, Catachans, Death Korps, Mordians, Tallarns and Valhallans, and possibly Vostroyans, Steel Legion, and more, so we're talking about 18 to 24+ kits, which is equivalent to an entire faction's roster worth. That's an insane ask for the sake of playing dress-up.

On the one hand, you're not wrong that it would be a lot of kits. However, as gets floated every time this discussion happens, we need not necessarily have full separate kits for each - we could get away with more generic/modular kits that can combine to make all the regiments (eg. a "greatcoat guard" kit that can make Steel Legion, Death Korps, or Valhallan, or a generic Guardsman kit with a regimental upgrade sprue you can buy separately).
Also, let's not forget that GW/FW seems perfectly happy to make (I would say "waste") SKUs/sprue space on different doors for Space Marine vehicles. It's a bit difficult to look at that and think it's truly unreasonable for them to at least meet Guard players halfway.

Voss wrote:
Yes. GW shrank the guard range over a long ago. It was kind of a jerk move to not officially announce it. But its be done and dusted for a long time now.

No, it isn't coming back to 6+ supported regiments. Not even piecemeal, once a year.

Imagine thinking every year...

Well, see... there wasn't any reason to think that. At all.

I likely won't ever field my Valhallans again (I haven't so far this century), but its honestly unreasonable to expect multiple model ranges for a low-to-maybe mid selling army (with lots of off-brand alternatives)

A comparison to a model range that is mostly just color swaps isn't a very good one. Especially not a so-so selling model range vs the very best selling model range.

I think that is the big misconception. That the guard ranges are simply color swaps. Take Steel Legion for example. Some of the best lore in the entire setting. Completely different from DKoK in nearly every way. One has clone troops who's sole purpose is to martyr themselves for the emperor. They employ a defensive doctrine with heavy artillery & excel at melee. Steel Legion on the other hand employ a blitzkrieg mechanized doctrine consisting of real human soldiers with families, jobs, lives under circumstances so dire they have hive gangers in their army & Armageddon is like Mad Max times a million. They have a very real fear of death & yet rise to the occasion in one of if not the biggest battle currently going on in the entire setting.

How can one say that these regiments do not deserve models? They have just as much right as any army does. Its a terrible precedent to set.

 waefre_1 wrote:

Also, let's not forget that GW/FW seems perfectly happy to make (I would say "waste") SKUs/sprue space on different doors for Space Marine vehicles. It's a bit difficult to look at that and think it's truly unreasonable for them to at least meet Guard players halfway.

That's not really a good argument. Forgeworld making doors doesn't create 'sku/sprue space' problems. (Any more than the once-vast range of FW guard tanks did)
Sprue space is problem for stores trying to keep an entire range in stock on shelves, not for direct sales from a boutique operation with its own, separate fabricators that can't be used to make plastic kits.

Making multiple plastic kits for each regiment would become a sku/sprue space problem. Especially with the way that GW forces Indie stores to buy stock (typically in big clumps that they assign, with add-ons they can buy into). An indie store owner would be rightfully mad to have a dozen guard infantry kits that would mostly just sit on shelves after the first month or so.

 waefre_1 wrote:

 Altruizine wrote:
...The Marine comparison is rickety (although there are too many marine kits and there should be fewer). A lot of chapters can fill out swathes of their roster with generic power-armoured kits. Imperial Guard cannot do this with infantry. You're asking for three kits per regiment, but without specifying which ones you think are worthy of being included, so I'm going to assume you want at least Cadians, Catachans, Death Korps, Mordians, Tallarns and Valhallans, and possibly Vostroyans, Steel Legion, and more, so we're talking about 18 to 24+ kits, which is equivalent to an entire faction's roster worth. That's an insane ask for the sake of playing dress-up.

On the one hand, you're not wrong that it would be a lot of kits. However, as gets floated every time this discussion happens, we need not necessarily have full separate kits for each - we could get away with more generic/modular kits that can combine to make all the regiments (eg. a "greatcoat guard" kit that can make Steel Legion, Death Korps, or Valhallan, or a generic Guardsman kit with a regimental upgrade sprue you can buy separately).
Also, let's not forget that GW/FW seems perfectly happy to make (I would say "waste") SKUs/sprue space on different doors for Space Marine vehicles. It's a bit difficult to look at that and think it's truly unreasonable for them to at least meet Guard players halfway.

If GW can/would actually do this I'd be in favour of it. But obvs that's not "3 kits per regiment" anymore.

I don't think continuing to make comparisons by way of Space Marines is a persuasive strategy. For one thing, many people want to see contraction of the Marine products/rules ecosystem. For another, the massive sales/popularity of Marines makes them singular (to every other faction's detriment).

The last Raven Guard model I saw released was Shrike and the RG upgrade.

Do other Chapters actually get models?!


Anyways, at the same time you're complaining about this remember that you lot helped bring this about by getting all up in arms anytime there were even insinuations that the basic Infantry Squad was going to change.

Why should they bother putting out new models for all the regiments when you're happy to just play pretend that the models matter in the first place?

The thing is, those Regimental models might not have sold well according to GW in the past. But we aren't in the past.
GW is bigger than ever, 40k especially is bigger than ever. The nostalgia factor is still a huge deal for many people and IMO even just a kit similar to the Krieg one would go a long way. Is it perfect? No of course not but perfection isn't in the repertoire.

 Altruizine wrote:

If GW can/would actually do this I'd be in favour of it. But obvs that's not "3 kits per regiment" anymore.

I don't think continuing to make comparisons by way of Space Marines is a persuasive strategy. For one thing, many people want to see contraction of the Marine products/rules ecosystem. For another, the massive sales/popularity of Marines makes them singular (to every other faction's detriment).

It's also a garbage comparison to make in the first place as most Chapters (even those with supplement books!) have maybe a single model to their name.

The exceptions are those which had their own army books previously.

 Commissar Benny wrote:

I think that is the big misconception. That the guard ranges are simply color swaps. Take Steel Legion for example. Some of the best lore in the entire setting. Completely different from DKoK in nearly every way. One has clone troops who's sole purpose is to martyr themselves for the emperor. They employ a defensive doctrine with heavy artillery & excel at melee. Steel Legion on the other hand employ a blitzkrieg mechanized doctrine consisting of real human soldiers with families, jobs, lives under circumstances so dire they have hive gangers in their army & Armageddon is like Mad Max times a million. They have a very real fear of death & yet rise to the occasion in one of if not the biggest battle currently going on in the entire setting.

How can one say that these regiments do not deserve models? They have just as much right as any army does. Its a terrible precedent to set.

There's nothing special or sacred about IG regiments compared to other factions' subfactions. All subfactions have (or could have) enough individual background and visual identity to warrant their own kits, if we lived in a world where a model company selling an unlimited variety of kits was feasible.

I mean maybe 20 years from now kits will be print-on-demand and dreams like this will work. Right now it still makes no sense.

I would say we don't really need 24 new kits for 3 different unit profiles in game. With the cost of plastic production and the way their ordering works for independent stores, it wouldn't work. Nobody is paying FW resin prices for IG infantry because an army would be $4,000 just for 2k points. Plastic would be the only option, and the numbers don't make sense. There are plenty of, ahem, other options for buying those other IQ regiments. If you REALLY have to have Vostroyans or whatever, hit up ebay or our friends across the pond in the Forge Worlds of Eastern Europe/NorAsia

 Commissar Benny wrote:

Voss wrote:
Yes. GW shrank the guard range over a long ago. It was kind of a jerk move to not officially announce it. But its be done and dusted for a long time now.

No, it isn't coming back to 6+ supported regiments. Not even piecemeal, once a year.

Imagine thinking every year...

Well, see... there wasn't any reason to think that. At all.

I likely won't ever field my Valhallans again (I haven't so far this century), but its honestly unreasonable to expect multiple model ranges for a low-to-maybe mid selling army (with lots of off-brand alternatives)

A comparison to a model range that is mostly just color swaps isn't a very good one. Especially not a so-so selling model range vs the very best selling model range.

I think that is the big misconception. That the guard ranges are simply color swaps.

Yeah... I'm gonna stop you there. I was calling _marines_ mostly just color swaps.
I don't think models for subfaction rules instead of colors for subfaction rules is any better (in some ways it's much worse), but that isn't at all what I was saying.

Take Steel Legion for example. Some of the best lore in the entire setting. Completely different from DKoK in nearly every way. One has clone troops who's sole purpose is to martyr themselves for the emperor. They employ a defensive doctrine with heavy artillery & excel at melee. Steel Legion on the other hand employ a blitzkrieg mechanized doctrine consisting of real human soldiers with families, jobs, lives under circumstances so dire they have hive gangers in their army & Armageddon is like Mad Max times a million. They have a very real fear of death & yet rise to the occasion in one of if not the biggest battle currently going on in the entire setting.

How can one say that these regiments do not deserve models? They have just as much right as any army does.

Easily. Partly because you're talking about engaging with the fluff to a degree that isn't all that important to most players (at least in my experience). That reads like someone's personal fanfic that doesn't matter to anyone else. 40k just doesn't drill down to a rules level where any of that matters. Your opponent chucks 20-30 dice a couple times and the unit is gone. There is no 'real human soldiers with stories' element to the game.

But most importantly that argument applies equally to _everything_. Every hive fleet, every single one of the 1000 chapters (rather than the big name handful (and the first founding hangers-on), every drukari kabal, every craftworld (even the ones who's names haven't been made up yet), every tiny band of chaos renegades, many thousands of ork klans. Everything.

Its a terrible precedent to set.

The precedent boat sailed long ago. By comparison to other model ranges, GW has treated Guard with kid gloves. Even did several MTOs and last chance sales. And they're getting a big set of additions soon (compared to other 9th edition armies that got a single character or special character, despite the sheer amount of failcast and even metal in their ranges)

I bought several Saturn cars during that company's lifetime. I was sad when GM killed it in 2010. But...it would be really weird to complain about it now. Guard regiments getting axed is an even older, more pointless grudge to carry.

Yea I don't personally care too much about what my little plastic army guys went through in their personal life.

Toofast wrote:
Yea I don't personally care too much about what my little plastic army guys went through in their personal life.

So the doctrines of space marines make no difference to you? Their lore? Their primarchs? If the setting does not appeal to you, what do you care about? Why play 40k at all? They're many other games systems with superior gameplay/rules.

I think kill team has a lot of potential to give guard regiments a bit of a boost. When seeing the way the Eldar Corsair KT can be used to build either an elite choice or a troop choice, it means that a single box can be made to do double duty.

The fact that GW is selling the kit for two games, and that the kit builds two units, it should push up sales.

You're also quite likely to get a big MTO drive one metal regiment boxes when the dex drops- just look at the MTO Chaos Sorcerors and Lords that went around when that dex dropped.

Dude... DE, yes we have gotten some units from Finecast to plastic but we have had NO NEW UNITS in 12yrs and 8 units TAKEN AWAY. Cool I got a Lelith re sculpt when no one asked for it bc the old one was amazing.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
Dude... DE, yes we have gotten some units from Finecast to plastic but we have had NO NEW UNITS in 12yrs and 8 units TAKEN AWAY. Cool I got a Lelith re sculpt when no one asked for it bc the old one was amazing.

Dark Eldar are in a bad place as well & I sympathize with you. I sincerely hope yall get lots of new models in the future. You have my support.

I mean, GW's decisions as to which factions to update or expand haven't exactly lined up with necessity.

Imperial Guard are still stuck with ancient models (and all GW has done is remove some of those kits outright, without replacing/updating them), Eldar still have models that are old enough to drink, and the DE codex has been haemorrhaging units and options since 5th.

However, GW spent most of 8th adding a whole new plastic range to what was already the most expansive and up-to-date range.

Then, in 9th, they added yet more models to that range and also gave a swathe of new releases to, of all things, Necrons. As someone who plays both DE and Necrons, this really irked me. In the transition to 7th, Necrons got to keep all the new, model-less special characters they'd received in 5th, whilst Dark Eldar lost all of theirs. Yet Necrons were the ones lavished with even more new models.

Tbh, I suspect it comes from the fact that none of the relevant designers play factions like IG or DE, so there's no personal incentive for them to make models for those factions, nor any great inspiration for new or improved models.

Thinking about it, if we actually got to a point where every single "old, bad kit" had been redone, I would totally support GW doing something crazy like an entire year of Guard regiments.

Everything from before ~2012ish is an old, bad kit (OBK). Dark Eldar need a lot of refreshes, Eldar Aspects need the same, Tyranids need a handful of redos, even Marines deserve one or two items (like Drop Pods that fit together better). Cadians would also be included in this.

If they could get to a point where all that was completed, and there were no OBKs remaining for sale, it would honestly be cooler to see them update every regiment than start making new units for ever-inflating factions. Will never happen, though.

Yeah, I do really feel the new Squats coming out right now is not good for the health of the community, especially with how backlog they have been, they really should have waited another year.

Hey, guard got a head sprue, and 5 plastic Krieg - you're totally fine!

On the serious side, I think GW wishes they could entirely be rid of Guard. They were the darling of some of the original designers who were (WW2) wargamers, who have since moved off to do WW2 and other games that the guard were derived from.

In addition, pretty much any designs GW does update for guard will instantly be copied by 3rd party manufacturers who can provide a better price point than a GW's overpriced horde would cost.

In many ways, I wish GW would just do the rulebooks for Guard and leave the miniature line to 3rd party manufacturers, who can accommodate the various looks far better than the parent company can.

If GW keeps guard in-house, though, they really need to redo the troop sprues badly. I think it was smart of them to focus on one army type for what they produce, and let other manufacturers take up the other armies.

I mean if GW changed their stupid packaging policies and actually put like 30 guardsmen/officers and heavy weapons in a box for like 60dollars im sure they would sell well. The could have one box set per regiment, including tallarn, cadians, vallhallans, vostroyans, catachans, mordians, steel legion and krieg. That would change their current guard infantry box amount from 7 to 8, with less air in the boxes and slighly bigger ones. I''m sure the better deal would incentivise more new players and sell well with nostalgic veterans.

Hell you need like 80 guard minis now to get started and the price is unreasonalble.

Tragic so many of you bash the legendary classic guard miniatures.

 Gitdakka wrote:
I mean if GW changed their stupid packaging policies and actually put like 30 guardsmen/officers and heavy weapons in a box for like 60dollars im sure they would sell well. The could have one box set per regiment, including tallarn, cadians, vallhallans, vostroyans, catachans, mordians, steel legion and krieg. That would change their current guard infantry box amount from 7 to 8, with less air in the boxes and slighly bigger ones. I''m sure the better deal would incentivise more new players and sell well with nostalgic veterans.

You could condense those down into a couple of boxes by consolidating stylistically similar regiments. A single 'medium infantry' box could become Tallarn, Cadians, Mordians, Steel Legion, or Elysians with head swaps, a choice of armored or unarmored torso, and accessories.

Realistically, they'd sell it as a Imperial Guard Platoon box for something like $100-150 USD and people would still buy it.

 Commissar Benny wrote:

Toofast wrote:
Yea I don't personally care too much about what my little plastic army guys went through in their personal life.

So the doctrines of space marines make no difference to you? Their lore? Their primarchs? If the setting does not appeal to you, what do you care about? Why play 40k at all? They're many other games systems with superior gameplay/rules.

The fact that they play different is what I care about. I care about black templars being about herohammer and melee buffs. Idc that they are space nazis. I like eldar because they are mobile glass cannons, their whole drugged orgy creating a chaos god and being a dying race doesn't matter one way or the other to me. I enjoy the fluff of the horus heresy novels and a small amount of 40k stuff, but it doesn't dictate my decisions in the game a whole lot.

There are many better games with superior gameplay/rules. If I could find more than 3-4 people in a 200 mile radius consistently playing any of them, I would happily play those games. Instead my Infinity, Titanicus, WMH, and any other models sit in my battlefoam case in the closet while I play 30k/40k/AoS. Those are the only things with large enough playerbase to get games. I tried to join an Infinity league but it got delayed by a month, and then I was going to be in Colombia for half of the league so I couldn't play when it finally started. I think 10 people initially signed up and it was down to 6 by the time the first dice were rolled. There's 30-40 players for 30k/40k/AoS at a store 10 minutes from my house. Monthly tournaments for all 3 games, leagues and campaigns with prize support from the store, etc. It's better to play a crappy game with tons of opponents than the best game ever on the kitchen table by yourself because nobody else in a 3hr radius plays it...

Toofast wrote:

 Commissar Benny wrote:

Toofast wrote:
Yea I don't personally care too much about what my little plastic army guys went through in their personal life.

So the doctrines of space marines make no difference to you? Their lore? Their primarchs? If the setting does not appeal to you, what do you care about? Why play 40k at all? They're many other games systems with superior gameplay/rules.

The fact that they play different is what I care about. I care about black templars being about herohammer and melee buffs. Idc that they are space nazis. I like eldar because they are mobile glass cannons, their whole drugged orgy creating a chaos god and being a dying race doesn't matter one way or the other to me. I enjoy the fluff of the horus heresy novels and a small amount of 40k stuff, but it doesn't dictate my decisions in the game a whole lot.

There are many better games with superior gameplay/rules. If I could find more than 3-4 people in a 200 mile radius consistently playing any of them, I would happily play those games. Instead my Infinity, Titanicus, WMH, and any other models sit in my battlefoam case in the closet while I play 30k/40k/AoS. Those are the only things with large enough playerbase to get games. I tried to join an Infinity league but it got delayed by a month, and then I was going to be in Colombia for half of the league so I couldn't play when it finally started. I think 10 people initially signed up and it was down to 6 by the time the first dice were rolled. There's 30-40 players for 30k/40k/AoS at a store 10 minutes from my house. Monthly tournaments for all 3 games, leagues and campaigns with prize support from the store, etc. It's better to play a crappy game with tons of opponents than the best game ever on the kitchen table by yourself because nobody else in a 3hr radius plays it...

There was a time when guard did play differently which is also why I feel its so important each regiment has their own models. Is this no longer the case? Each regiment had their own unique stratagems etc. I've sat out 9th edition for the reasons I outlined above. My army has effectively been discontinued. For me the setting/collecting is what draws me to the hobby & with no new models released for decades its left me uninspired. We might be here for different reasons but I'm glad you have an active 40k group nearby & you are able to play competitively. If you like Black Templars they share a lot of history with the Steel Legion in Hellsreach.

It's possible to have more regiments than we have now, but it would required a fairly significant re-design of some regiments.

Cadian, Steel Legion and potentially tallarn could be combined into one kit if you forgo some design features and are happy in some cases with just head swap. Then the same with other kits etc etc, some would not be happy with this though.

Anyway, GW can evidently make some games/expansion boxes that are FOMO (I know people hate this, but bear with me here) and/or limited time production runs and still make money.

Every 1-2 years, release an army box of a different regiment, with the option of being able to add in further squads that are made to order so you can flesh it out, have a 3-6 month order window, then that is it, and announce it a long time in advance so people know it is coming and can save accordingly. People get the opportunity to have their regiment, they know it is limited time release and that is there opportunity to buy. It could then come back at some point in range rotation, but make it know that is not guaranteed or has a time frame.

However, to make the above work, some regiments probably wouldn't make the cut at all due to not selling enough/demand for that regiment, and also, it would work best with a redesign/combination kits regiments where you can make more than 1 regiment with the same army box.

Anyway, as a Krieg player, other than being a bit miffed they seem to be doing cadians again, over giving us proper command squad, and heavy weapon squads, engineers etc.