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So right now the various denizens of twitter are bickering with each other over the current Yarrick trailer. More specifically the lack of The Armageddon Steel Legion within said trailer. Some lament the lack of the Steel legion while others are waving away such concerns by pointing out things like repainting or DKOK, making your own kitbashes or buying third party. I think both sides have valid points.

But then I thought to myself, what would be the best way to support the Imperial Guard? There are so many different worlds and warbands to pick from. I always felt that was the charm of collection IG. I remember older WD magazines being full of article for kitbashes and various paint schemes. Not as much as the vaunted space marines, but still.

So if you were in charge of GW, how would you handle the IG releases?

Should there be multiples codices or just one big book with a ton of customization? Maybe smaller, suplimental codcies like the various space marines.

Could there perhaps be multiple troop boxes? I imagine if you had three main regiments as boxes within distinct aesthetics, you could kitbash those into a variety of other regiments. Killteam is another route they could take. That's how they first reintroduced the DKOK. They could do the same with other regiment kill teams.

I think it'd be cool to get a supplement with "build your own" regiments like in old versions of the codex. You can kind of do that know by using whatever regimental units you want and making them proxies. But I don't care for the mixed arms look personally.

I'd like to see a plastic Tallarn range before Steel Legion just for variety. A steel legion kill team kit would be nice just to throw people a bone.

I think an elegant and lucrative (from GWs point of view) would be to introduce at least one regiment whose visual style just screams "kitbash me out of GW kits!". Something like Tempestos Scions bodies + AoS steelhelmets heads or the other way around (both work quite well in my opinion). Or expand on the chemdogs which might be done quite well out of Genestealer cults parts. Give the regiment some cool backstory, a black library novel or two, some animation on Warhammer +, not too shaby rules...

All together I think the company could introduce 3 or 4 additional regiments without producing any new sets, just to see how these are received by their customers before dedicating to it and really bringing out boxes for them. Which would reduce the often cited "risk" of bringing new regiment boxes without knowing if they will be bought at all. While also (maybe) reeling in part of the Guard community who are right now building their Squads from 3rd party parts or 3D printing them because they neither love Cadians nor Death Korps.



And regarding books: as stated elsewhere: I would say either a single thick codex with 4-6 regiments + a "build your own regiment" box OR 1 thin book just core rules and datasheets + another book with at least 6 regiments (+ build your own regiment rules), each with several pages of background, rules, paintschemes, rules for a regimental hero, regimental stratagems.
Again: not really a great risk for the company as several "codex Catachans", "Codex Chemdogs" etc. would be.

Upgrade/add-on sprues, like the Kill Team kits
This will require some degree of compromise in the visual style of certain regiments for the sake of simplicity and consolidation, but it would let you keep a relatively small number of base regiments with the others being variations
So for your base regiments, that get full bespoke ranges, you keep:
Cadians (Flak Armoured regiments)
Krieg (Greatcoat regiments)
Catachans (Deathworld regiments)
and add Mordians as your Dress Uniform regiments

Then you have upgrade sprues for:
Greatcoat Regiments:
- Steel Legion
- Valhallans
- Vostroyans perhaps? (head & weapon swaps)

Flak Armoured Regiments:
- Elysians

Dress Uniform Regiments:
- Praetorians

Each individual variant would not require many accessories to make them feel unique - GW already do a TON of similar boxes like the various chapter upgrades or Necromunda House upgrades, plenty of opportunity to add individual visual flair. Yes, Valhallans made using Krieg as a base are not going to be 1:1 recreations of the metal models, they make have to forego some of their fur trim and maybe not every single regiment gets to be as striking as it once was, but it is a far, far better system than relegating them to an alternate colour scheme or an occasional background mention

 Pyroalchi wrote:
I think an elegant and lucrative (from GWs point of view) would be to introduce at least one regiment whose visual style just screams "kitbash me out of GW kits!". Something like Tempestos Scions bodies + AoS steelhelmets heads or the other way around (both work quite well in my opinion). Or expand on the chemdogs which might be done quite well out of Genestealer cults parts. Give the regiment some cool backstory, a black library novel or two, some animation on Warhammer +, not too shaby rules...

In a way, I think that's what the Cadians were supposed to be at some. Or at least that was the impression I always had. Their equipment was supposed to be the standard issue for a lot of different regiments. Along with their simple design with just a bit of armor and some simple fatigues. You could make Cadians into a number of regiments with just a simple color swap and some extra bits swapped in their.

Yeah, I've never taken Cadians to be anything other than the generic standard. They show up in that attire on just about every planet in videogames and the like. It's only among 40k players have I ever come across the idea that those Guardsmen are exclusively "from Cadia".

 LunarSol wrote:
Yeah, I've never taken Cadians to be anything other than the generic standard. They show up in that attire on just about every planet in videogames and the like. It's only among 40k players have I ever come across the idea that those Guardsmen are exclusively "from Cadia".

The thing is the Cadians are only the standard because GW made the plastic kit. Of course people weren't going to believe that most of the Imperial Guard regiments out there looked like the previous plastic kit (the Catachans), but when the Cadian box came out their look became the new "standard" look for regiments.

Prior to that there was no suggestion that Cadian kit was in any way widespread or standardised. In fact in 2nd edition it's heavily implied that every regiment is uniquely equipped and styled after the planetary governor of their homeworld's whims and the only universal kit was the lasgun. Cadian equipment is mentioned as being of excellent quality but there's absolutely no indication other regiments use it

 Mr Nobody wrote:
So if you were in charge of GW, how would you handle the IG releases?

I acknowledge that how I would handle it is going to be different to how others would, and how GW would, but that's by-the-by.

Step 1 - On the next Codex, we roll back the split of the Infantry squad into Cadian/Catachan/Death Korp squads. Rinse and repeat for Command Squads and Heavy Weapon Squads. Keep actually distinct units (Kasrkin, Death Riders, Siege Engineers) as distinct units (yes, some might argue for Kasrkin being rolled into the Storm Troopers - I'd leave them out, for now). I'd like to see the Infantry squad give the option of a Heavy Weapon in it again, but that's just me.

Step 2 - For any Regiment being reintroduced to the range, they need a minimum of three (arguably four) kits. Their Command Squad, their Infantry Squad, their Heavy Weapon squad and, depending on how you want to structure things moving forwards, potentially a non-Command Squad Castellan-equivalent. I'm not keen on the Officer wandering around unsupervised; YMMV.

Step 3 - If at all possible, come up with a suitable Regiment-specific unit. Catachan Devils, for example, might be one for the Jungle Fighters.

Step 4 - Figure out which are your base Regiments, and which might work as upgrade sprues. The obvious example for the latter would be a Mordian base kit, but with a Praetorian upgrade sprue with heads, a bugle, etc. Vostroyans might work off such a base as well - I need to go back and review their sculpts.

If we use 2nd ed onwards as a base, we end up needing to cover Cadians, Catachans, Krieg, Mordians, Praetorians, Steel Legion, Tallarn, Tanith, Valhallans and Vostroyans, I think. Some of these already have existing kits that would fill gaps in the above proposal, others would need re-introducing from scratch. I'm not saying these all have to be on store shelves all the time - I'd be quite happy with a reintroduction splash release, then moving to Online Only, for example.

Yes, this would comfortably make the IG the second-largest range in the game, with up to 30 kits for their infantry. On the other hand, according to the GW store, "Ultramarines" currently feature 99 kits for 1,000 men, while the Guard currently have 63 kits to cover countless billions of men.

Guard are tricky from the GW side of things because while their aesthetics should vary a bunch, their tactics should only vary so much. So it probably doesn't make sense from GW's perspective to make a dozen different kits with different aesthetics to represent the same couple of datasheets, nor do I particularly want a million new datasheets for guard just to provide bespoke rules for each choice of aesthetic.

If my goal were to maximize players' ability to field different aesthetics while also having a reasonably robust set of tactics for the army to choose from, I think the easy (but not profitable) answer would be to shift to a company attitude that's more friendly towards third-party bits/models. Let the various 3D printers of the world provide samurai guardsmen and cyborg guardsmen and pirate guardsmen and so forth. And then just provide rules for some archetypes that those can reasonably slot into.

So instead of specifically having a horse-with-explosive-lance datasheet, do one or two datasheets that can represent a variety of types of mounts with melee or ranged options. Want to give those horsemen guns instead of lances? Here are rules for "imperial dragoons." Want to stick them on giant birds instead of horses? Here's an option to give them the Fly keyword that takes up the same slot to give them better toughness or FNP or whatever to represent high-tech barding or lizard scales, etc.

Basically, invite people to use non-GW bits or kitbash a bit more, and then also design datasheets around providing a flavorful variety of options instead of just streamlining everything for competitive play. Maybe bring back wargear points so you can easily pull some levers to help balance various options against eachother.

"Cadians, Catachans, Krieg, Mordians, Praetorians, Steel Legion, Tallarn, Tanith, Valhallans and Vostroyans, I think."

Wracking my brain for a sec I think of the Elysians and the Necromundan Spiders (? RT era, I think).

But really there should just be some highly customizable kits and accessories.

Just do what they did previously and kitbash stuff together as inspiration.

The ideal solution would be to do what sites like Mad Robot and Victoria Miniatures do - have separate arms/legs/torsos/heads/weapons (plus or minus the odd combo for stuff that can't be cleanly separated) and allow the buyer to mix'n'match what they want. However, that would require more than zero effort on GW's part.

Insectum7 wrote:"Cadians, Catachans, Krieg, Mordians, Praetorians, Steel Legion, Tallarn, Tanith, Valhallans and Vostroyans, I think."

Wracking my brain for a sec I think of the Elysians and the Necromundan Spiders (? RT era, I think).

But really there should just be some highly customizable kits and accessories.

Gert wrote:Just do what they did previously and kitbash stuff together as inspiration.

These two points bring up the core of my idea. Model-wise at least. How many kits would one need to easily kitbash all the other regiments.

Necromunda Spiders are one example.



That's just a Cadian trooper with extra equipment on top of it.

With the right upgrade sprues, I imagine you could make DKOK into things like Valhallans, Vostroyans and the Steel Legion.

How much more plastic would GW have to put out to give people the tools they need to kitbash more regiments?

I dunno just do it yourself is my view.

We live in the age of bitz websites and 3d printers, not to mention hundreds of people making conversion guides on the likes of YouTube.

Maybe I'm a special case but when I've converted almost every model in my 120 infantry strong Traitor Guard army, painting DKoK as Steel Legion doesn't seem that big of a deal.