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Dal'yth Dude wrote:I'd say make combat tactics, ATSKNF USRs if for no other reason than there are multiple space marine codexes. The Eldar examples (or any other 1 unit only rules) are fine to leave as Codex only.

Well the problem with that situation is that they already tried that (Putting ATSKNF as a USR in 4th), and decided to go against it when they changed to 5th.

Just proves the point, doesn't it?

Gwar! wrote:Perhaps you need to go back to grade shool to learn to read.

Gwar! wrote:...I am glad to see you have shown yourself to be an utter hypocrite.

Gwar! wrote:..Dual Officers of the Fleet does nothing but HELP daemons

Gwar! wrote:...Perhaps a little of "Practice what you Preach" is in order before you start passing judgement on others is in order, wouldn't you agree?

I regret trying to have a discussion with you in it.

I originally thought you might be able to make a decent case. Thanks for showing your true colors. You are obviously trolling. Welcome to the ignore list.

Augustus wrote:I originally thought you might be able to make a decent case. Thanks for showing your true colors. You are obviously trolling. Welcome to the ignore list.

So you cannot handle criticism, and you ignore me? Wow, mature aren't we. I am not trolling, because all of what I said is valid and true, You didn't read my Arguments, and you are a hypocrite because you claim to "know your Enemy" when you have not the first clue about how Daemons work.

Gwar! wrote:

Augustus wrote:I originally thought you might be able to make a decent case. Thanks for showing your true colors. You are obviously trolling. Welcome to the ignore list.

So you cannot handle criticism, and you ignore me? Wow, mature aren't we. I am not trolling, because all of what I said is valid and true, You didn't read my Arguments, and you are a hypocrite because you claim to "know your Enemy" when you have not the first clue about how Daemons work.

Actually I agree with Augustus. Et tu Brute?

Gwar! and Augustus,

You have both contributed (in one way or another) towards raising the aggression level towards each other when it wasn't necessary in the least.


At this point please refrain from responding to each other any further in this thread (GWAR, you may want to consider 'ignoring' Augustus if you find that his responses rile you up so quickly).


And Gwar,

I do want to address your Daemons vs. the Officer of the Fleet contention.

Since Daemons get 1/2 of their army on turn 1, any ability that restricts the other half of their army from arriving from reserves really cripples Daemons as it allows any force to deal with only 1/2 of the Daemon army.

Having played Daemons a few times I can safely say that anytime you don't get the rest of your Reserves until later in the game is absolutely crippling, so I absolutely agree with Agustus that x2 Officers of the Fleet would be a pretty hard hurdle for any Daemon army to overcome.

It isn't impossible, but it certainly is a powerful weapon the Guard have against Daemons.

I would contend that it helps Daemons because, providing you don't mess up the placement of your first wave, having the second wave come on T4 or 5 is a Boon, especially in Objectives games.

Officer of the Fleet will be used I am sure, but once all these IG players running dual officers realise that they keep losing/drawing objective games because they don't have enough time to shoot the Troops taking them (whether they are pods or daemons) I feel it will self correct.

Of Course this is all hinging on the fact that they stack, which they may or may not (rule is highly ambiguous to put it mildly) so we wont know for sure until GW put forth an FAQ.

And apologies for appearing aggressive, I don't intend to be overly so, I just refuse to sugar coat my responses .

driverbob25 wrote:

I agree with this, take for instance the new marine codex, it says a marine must be trained in all aspects of a chapters way of making war, from assault, to devestator to tactical marine etc, hence when the heavy weapon marine in a squad takes a hit, another marine would pick the weapon up as he is already proficient in its use? yet now we have to allocate wounds to squad members and the heavy or special weapon gets lost a lot quicker, this just doesnt stand for marines either?

my only assumption on gw's part is that they are tryin g to represent the weapon taking a hit, which could happen on a real warzone?

bob

driverbob25 wrote:

I agree with this, I think the chaos marine codex current edition was rushed out just before the apocolypse release and as such didnt get the attention it should have recieved? you point out legion codex's for the big 4, I see it as gw being able to further break up the chaos marine codex's down into smaller codex's with new model releases for each, which will equal gw making more money, rather than the cash they would get for just 1 codex?

Periods. More than just little dots.

Dal'yth Dude wrote:I don't know. I liked the trend GW was using for the DA, Chaos and Blood Angels books. I liked having the Codexes simplified or more accurately, streamlined. I didn't see the reason behind all the "my options are gone" hysteria when Chaos came out. One could always do counts-as for a lot of things.

Edit: ever > every

You obviously did not play Chaos or flip through the two books in comparison. Not only did they take away 5 Troops choices worth of god-specific daemons (who were solid troops) and 4 HQ choices worth of greater daemons (who struck fear into the hearts of the enemies), but they took away the things that made our legions unique (5 pages or so worth of rules) and the things that made cult armies playable (each god had 2-3 pages of special rules and the like that gave a cult army some advantages and disadvantages.

Not to mention Chosen, who were an excellent idea for a multipurpose unit becoming just CSM with more special weapons and infiltrate (hilariously enough, when writing the good codex, the designers mentioned how ridiculous Chosen/CSM vets just having infiltrate was. Ha!) and yet again we had crappy possessed with random abilities. Joy.

My point being that this codex was an absolutely massive step back, from veteran skills to daemonic gifts. The old codex was probably overpowered. I did very well with it, and sometimes felt that the options were inexpensive for what they did. So they hit us hard with the nerf stick. Now, codex creep means that we're boned. They basically took us back to being in line with the rest of the old codexes, then decided to make each new one successively better. UGH. They could easily make the new codexes different without making each one successively better and thus creating an "arms race" that makes old codexes useless
.
And that, boys and girls, is why all the 12 year olds play 2x lash prince and plague marines armies and the old legion fanatics (read: me) miss our old options.

$50 new rulebook aside, I cannot wait for 6th edition.

Mad Rabbit wrote:$50 new rulebook aside, I cannot wait for 6th edition.

Yes, because the edition change is the reason newer codex's are more powerful...

What?

How will a 6th edition rulebook make ANY difference to your "Nerfed" Chaos Codex?

i apologize if this was mentioned, this thread is LOOOONNNGGG.

But as the OP made mention to, needing to own every army's codex in order to know when you are being cheated is a pain in the a$$. I suppose that unfortunate necessity always existed but with the seeming increase in army specific rules, ignorance regarding your opposition's codex is a bit more daunting now than it used to be.

Mad Rabbit: I played Chaos in 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th edition, so I can say I played Chaos. I still prefer the trend of removing options that were either not taken, were overpowered, or otherwise an excuse for more rules. Even with the lash prince/oblit/PM army, at least they aren't in the same league as Tau and Necrons at the moment.

GW has gone back to Codex escalation as a sales model. That doesn't make me happy, but I believe streamlining the rules, making USRs mean *universal* special rules, and moving away from kill points would make the game appealing to me again.

Overall i like 5th:

I like reserves/flanking.

The run mechanic adds some nice maneuvering potential and makes games less predictable.

I like the "steal the initiative" mechanic for a little helping of the unexpected once in a while.

However I think the changes to area terrain like woods, etc. not blocking LOS are unfortunate as this pretty much works against any potential added tactical maneuvering that flank and running brings. I can live with it, but I don't like it.

The scenario section is bland, unimaginative and anemic. Of course we know that this is so we will all line up to buy the scenario generator supplement book(yes you know it's coming) and things like Planet Strike when they release it...

Kill points? Really? That is the best they could come up with?

Overall I like 5th too, well, 5th with a codex written for 5th....

This past week we tried out another set of armies and games with the new IG dex. I noticed a certain pattern in the new codices when we played these games which contrasted sharply with Eldar (1 4th ed dex). The point is:

5th edition codices are reversing/compensating for some of the trouble spots in 5th, specificly morale and CC, KP and scoring units. (In the IG dex, stubborn, Squad Up and Orders for Ex. VERY different from ther V4 dex.)

Playing with a non 5th ed codex leaves a lot of armies playing the base 5th rules as written, when 5th ed codexes are drasticly changing how that works.

That's the 6th edition already point I meant in the OP. 6th = 5th+codex rewrites.

EDIT: To ad to the point: lets pretend the new IG codex fought the old one, as if they were independant condices. Wouldn't the advantage obviously lie with the new dex? By association, all the outdated dexes are in this same situation.

Augustus wrote:lets pretend the new IG codex fought the old one, as if they were independant condices.

That's a good question, and depends a lot on whether Allies are allowed, and whether we're playing Objectives or KPs.

If it's KPs, the new IG will easily win, as they can Squadron Tanks and blob Infantry to risk fewer KPs.

If it's Objectives, the old IG start with the advantage due to smaller squad sizes with massed Drop Troops and Infiltrators available. At this point, IG Advisors and DH Allies are the things that will matter.

As an Apoc player who never has to worry about KPs, the old IG list is clearly superior to the new one.

Fair enough, I'm just saying the game feels completely different when played with 5th ed written codices.

A friend of mine is desperately clinging to some of his older armies and having a tough time in 5th. Namely Dark Eldar and Eldar. He has a tough time beating any of the armies from the newer codices.

It's heartbreaking because he has some really beautiful armies too!

The new codices couldn't come fast enough IMO!

Yeah, 5th kinda hosed the Eldars.

Not as bad as the Necrons, but still...

I think Augustus makes a good point about the Codex rewrites + 5th edition rule book = 6th edition. Problem for me is I'm not interested in playing any of those Codexes. If I was, I'd have picked one of them up by now.

And if I have to have a Codex written for 5th to enjoy the game, then that means a lot of armies just won't get played. So it'll be years before I play 40K regularly like I did in 3rd and 4th edition. If GW changed their release process, that'd change, but I just don't see it.

It really has gotten to the point that the rules deficiencies have overcome my love of the background and miniatures.

Dal'yth Dude wrote:It really has gotten to the point that the rules deficiencies have overcome my love of the background and miniatures.

Then you didn't really give a toss about the Minis and Background imo.

Augustus wrote:Fair enough, I'm just saying the game feels completely different when played with 5th ed written codices.

A friend of mine is desperately clinging to some of his older armies and having a tough time in 5th. Namely Dark Eldar and Eldar. He has a tough time beating any of the armies from the newer codices.

It's heartbreaking because he has some really beautiful armies too!

The new codices couldn't come fast enough IMO!

I see what you're getting at but I don't agree when saying that codex exceptions to core rules means that they're creating a "6th edition" via the new codices. I think the IG and the other 5th edition codices embrace the 5th edition core mechanics but also give you some options of some ways to build your armies that counter negative effects on your units or allow you to perform specialized tactics that other armies can't necessarily perform.

The 'Stubborn' USR is in the main rulebook, its just that before 5th edition it wasn't a very useful rule and therefore wasn't used by codex writers very often. Now it is useful, so it is being used. But with Guard, although you are able to sprinkle Stubborn units around the army, in general the new codex has stripped away many of the morale protections that the IG had before.

While you do have the 'get back in the fight' order, you have only a limited number of orders you can make a turn and the range on these orders tends to be less than what the old 'Iron Discipline' rule was. So yes, you automatically have Ld8 Seargents and yes you can build some Stubborn pockets into your army if you want but in general the IG army more than ever relies on the presence of its officers to maintain its morale. Once they're gone your army is going to really start to crumble from any morale checks. While this was also true in 4th edition, this certainly wasn't how the IG played in 5th edition. . .the Ld boost provided by officers just didn't cut it against CC morale modifiers.

So while I do agree that playing with 5th edition codices does feel very different than playing with some 4th edition codices rather than saying they're moving towards a 6th edition I would say that the actual 5th edition codices fully embrace the new rules by allowing you to minimize or negate some of the negative effects of the rules on your army at a cost (more points, or not allowing you to use other options in the army, etc).


As for your friend desperately clinging to his old armies, see my comments below:

Dal'yth Dude wrote:I think Augustus makes a good point about the Codex rewrites + 5th edition rule book = 6th edition. Problem for me is I'm not interested in playing any of those Codexes. If I was, I'd have picked one of them up by now.

And if I have to have a Codex written for 5th to enjoy the game, then that means a lot of armies just won't get played. So it'll be years before I play 40K regularly like I did in 3rd and 4th edition. If GW changed their release process, that'd change, but I just don't see it.

It really has gotten to the point that the rules deficiencies have overcome my love of the background and miniatures.

There is one simple fact when it comes to wargaming: If a company stops tinkering with their game and essentially says "the game is done, that's it" then people consider the game 'dead' for some crazy reason and many, many people will instantly stop playing it.

That means, the nature of any long-standing wargame is that it MUST CHANGE in order to keep most of its players interested in the game and continually buying new things. It is just a simple fact that has to be accepted for a company to continue to stay in business AND for a single game to be continued to be played.

In order to keep this freshness and tactical change coming they have to update their core rules from time to time. When it comes to all their factions they have two main ways to proceed (there are other alternatives, but I don't know how financially viable they would be):

1) Change the rules while allowing the older codices to be produced (40K 4th & 5th edition).
2) Wipe out all the existing codices and print a get-you-by list for everything (40K 3rd edition).


While I think a whole lot veteran players (like myself) are really into the 2nd idea so that game balance is the most important factor, the reality is that it is a damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't scenario. When GW wiped out all the 2nd edition codices for the 3rd edition release there was a TON of people (especially casual gamers) who gnashed their teeth and HATED the fact that the codex they had bought for their army was no longer of any use.

Beyond that, codices are a marketing tool for the company to help sell their armies. When someone walks into a store, the sales guy can say: "come take a look at this codex to see how cool this army is". Having your game exist in stores without a good way to sell your armies is not a good gameplan for any company and because of that I think it is unlikely that GW will ever do such a thing again.

The other side consequence of what they did with 3rd edition is that they had to madly rush to get all their codices back in print. This severely compromised the quality of said codices. Go back and look at the third edition codices and notice just how threadbare they are. Again, this is a terrible position for GW to put themselves in because having a crappy codex is not a good way to introduce people to an army. If I'm really interested in playing Dark Angels, I want to be able to buy a book that tells me everything I really need to know about Dark Angels, not some flimsy little book that only contains a the briefest smidge of fluff on the army.


But coming back to the older armies being unplayable compared to the 5th edition codices. I think when you compare the top-tier hardest lists from these two types of codices together you are totally right. . .although with that said nearly every army does have some sort of back door build that is certainly still playable if you want to go down that route (3 Monolith Necrons CAN work with the right player in tournaments, for example).

However, if you're the kind of player who only likes to play the really hard lists and dominate in tournaments then you better damn well have accepted the fact that you're playing a game that is constantly in flux and that in order to remain completely competitive from time-to-time you're going to have to put one army on the backburner for a few years and play with something else.

If you're not that kind of player (arguably known as the 'silent majority') then the way they're doing the 5th edition changes works just fine because (for example) a casual Necron list does play fine against a casual Imperial Guard army. And I think that's the point. By keeping the existing codices around the majority of the casual games played can continue with maximum enjoyment.

Yakface: Can you give me an example of a game that was on top and stopped changing their rules that resulted in a 'dead game' that lost their market share? I don't believe that to be the case.

Changing rules isn't the only means of keeping a game fresh, nor keeping a particular company on top. For GW, I think a case can be made (as exemplified by GW's own actions), that it is the miniatures that sell the game. A steady stream of miniatures is one way to keep the game fresh. Other ways include releasing more background/fiction, creating factions that are easily slotted into existing rules, and new games using existing or new model lines that leverage existing IP.

Your response is well articulated, but I'm just not convinced constant rules changes are what keep people playing nor that a consistent rules set would make people stop playing.

As for the 3rd edition Codexes, GW could just as easily made them full of background (they certainly had plenty of that from the previous two editions) and introduced the few different units after play testing. In the example of Dark Angels you used, that would be the special characters, the Deathwing squads and Ravenwing. Two or three months of playtesting (perhaps at the same time as another marine codex such as Blood Angels or Space Wolves) should have sufficed to put out a Codex that would have met your requirements.

Codex escalation is not new to me. I'm no longer the kind of player that enjoys it. What keeps me from playing more casual games is the seemingly arbitrary rules changes that seem to not be though out at all. Change for change's sake just isn't a great model for a game that requires so much time and thought.

Again, thanks for the well reasoned response.

Edit: BTW, I to would be nice to have an edition have all of its armies done before changing editions. For example, the trial vehicle and assault rules in 3rd edition, the change in Codex builds for the last 3 codexes in 4th edition are examples of changing things mid-edition.

Second edit: homonyms fixed

Hmm... new edition of rules every 4 years. 2 codex revisits per year (maybe 3). 8 imperial and 7 non-imperial codex... Minimum 5 years to cyle through all but guaranteed the SM codex will get rebuilt first with new version release... At best, GW will cover 12 codexes in the lifetime of an edition of the core rules. At worst, they get through half of them in the life of that core. Major change to core + 50% of codexes behind the times = unbalanced codexes guaranteed.


I am an old 40k player and with some means so tabling an army for 2+ years is not a big deal. I will pull out another of my armies and thoroughly enjoy playing it.

My concern is with the young player with some limit on their cash. They come in all bright eyed and excited to learn a new game. They take their lumps as they learn tactics and accumulate more options for their army of choice. Then one day the light goes on... their favorite army is a 3rd tier in the current environment. Having sunk $$$ in this army with little chance of success, they show up less often and finally you don't see them at all.

Changes do push sales but if you sell to guys like me and turn off 3 out of 4 young players... (5 to 8 year rotation for "fixing" your one codex does not cut it in a 12 to 17 year olds' eyes.) How much will you be selling in 5 years? 10 years?

JohnHwangDD wrote:

Gwar! wrote:Once GW their their thumbs out and update all the legacy codex's to 5th edition, THEN they can work on updating the 5th Rulebook, because lets face it, Quite a bit of the rulebook is clunky because it has to accommodate for the old codex's.

I don't think GW should have the Rulebook held hostage by a handful of obsolete Codices. The Codices can be FAQd or updated or Squatted, because these affect relatively few people, whereas the Rulebook affects everyone.

And that's the very point - GW doesn't accomodate the older Codices, which is why they don't work as well under the current Rulebook. But the newer Codices (which cover most of the player base) are generally fine. Yes, Lash is a problem, but that doesn't invalidate the Rulebook, nor the Codex.

I agree. To say that 5th e isn't well made because the newer rules don't mesh with older codexes is not a reason not to like 5th. Are there some rules I don't care for? yes. but overall 5th is the best edition so far along the lines of fluid gameplay and plain ole fun. you can't expect GW to accomodate old codexes that, like johnhwangdd said, not many players really use.

Regarding universal rules and racial special rules. Instead of putting them all in the back of the rulebook, why not just ask the person youre playing about their armies special rules. What is he gonna say, no? I tell my opponents about mob rule and waaagh and whatnot before we make our armies so everythings clear, and people I play grant me the same courtesy with their rules. Seems to me people are overblowing the whole thing, to get rid of special racial rules would make for an incredibly vanilla game.

DAaddict wrote:Changes do push sales but if you sell to guys like me and turn off 3 out of 4 young players... (5 to 8 year rotation for "fixing" your one codex does not cut it in a 12 to 17 year olds' eyes.) How much will you be selling in 5 years? 10 years?

That's an easy one, the teenagers will be in their 20s then, and (at the risk of sounding overly cynical) they will sell to new teenagers...

EDIT: @ Yakface

I completely agree with your points on obsolecence by design. Having been in the hobby for years I have seen this pattern. I sold almost all of my armies at the onset of 5th edition and nearly started from scratch. My friend who is clinging to his older armies (the Eldar and Dark Eldar player) is not a younger player, and he has a tough time painitng, skill wise and vision wise. We actually painted the (great looking) armies together and he refuses to let them go, like I liquidated mine because of it.

Not everyone is ready, or financialy or artisticly capable of dropping and restarting everything like this though.

That said, I think there might be a silver lining, and that is, when the 5th ed codex gets re written for Eldar (any 4th ed. army) they could go from being outdated to being "UBER" in one swoop. Which is why I think the new dexes couldn't come soon enough!

This isn't new to 40k even, (remember the archaic Ork dex before the current dex?) and my heart goes out to anyone sitting on a 4e dex, because they love the army and are having a tough time in 5e! Hold on to those minis, it might be a while but one day, the dex will come out again and then you'll be ready!

yakface wrote:I would say that the actual 5th edition codices fully embrace the new rules

There is one simple fact when it comes to wargaming: If a company stops tinkering with their game and essentially says "the game is done, that's it" then people consider the game 'dead' for some crazy reason and many, many people will instantly stop playing it.

If you're not that kind of player (arguably known as the 'silent majority') then the way they're doing the 5th edition changes works just fine because (for example) a casual Necron list does play fine against a casual Imperial Guard army. And I think that's the point. By keeping the existing codices around the majority of the casual games played can continue with maximum enjoyment.

Excellent points, and generally agreed.

The 5E Codices are generally good a doing what GW wants them to do. The problem is that isn't necessarily what many players want them to do, due to the flexibility and lack of focus in previous editions. And this is primarily concentrated in the oldest armies from 2E.

"Evolve or die" is a fact of gaming. Nothing shiny = death. I, for one, don't want to go back.

I think the "casual" vs "competitive" thing is important, because GW really is writing for the casual crowd more than ever, and leaving the competitive gamers to fend for themselves, as they generally will do.
____

Dal'yth Dude wrote:Can you give me an example of a game that was on top and stopped changing their rules that resulted in a 'dead game' that lost their market share?

I'm just not convinced constant rules changes are what keep people playing nor that a consistent rules set would make people stop playing.

Edit: BTW, I to would be nice to have an edition have all of its armies done before changing editions.

For example, the trial vehicle and assault rules in 3rd edition, the change in Codex builds for the last 3 codexes in 4th edition are examples of changing things mid-edition.

Confrontation seems to have largely died during their changeover from 1E to 2E. Though qualifying with "on top" really narrows things, though I guess we could look at Avalon Hill / Steve Jackson Games. Those guys were huge in the 80s and early 90s, but hardly a whisper today.

If rules were allowed to stagnate as you suggest, we'd be trying (and failing) to play games of 2E with 2x or 3x the minis that the rules would support. It would be horrible, despite having nice, new 5E minis.

Having "all" armies done each edition only works if you have a few, basic armies. For example, if 40k kept to the original RT lineup of SM, Guard, Orks, Eldar, Nids, & Chaos then it's a sustainable thing. But 40k has a lot more than that.

Having to carry lots of rule changes or "optional" rules is a pain and generates some confusion as to which rules are in force. Having a new single rulebook every 4 years is easier.
____

DAaddict wrote:Hmm... new edition of rules every 4 years. 2 codex revisits per year (maybe 3). 8 imperial and 7 non-imperial codex... Minimum 5 years to cyle through all but guaranteed the SM codex will get rebuilt first with new version release... At best, GW will cover 12 codexes in the lifetime of an edition of the core rules. At worst, they get through half of them in the life of that core. Major change to core + 50% of codexes behind the times = unbalanced codexes guaranteed.

My concern is with the young player with some limit on their cash.

That's about right: 4 year cycle for each edition, 10-12 Codices (4-6 tier 1, 4-6 tier 2) per edition, 4-6 Codices not updated each edition. But while up to 50% of the Codices will be old, that will affect much less than 50% of the players. Beacuse the player:Codex balance isn't uniform, and many players have multiple armies, I would guess that upwards of 80%, perhaps 90% of the players will be up-to-date during this timeframe.

Young players only play for a few years before getting out. GW gets the cash, and the young player simply doesn't stick around long enough for Codex age to be a problem. If he stays for a while, most likely, he starts a second army. And even if he doesn't, most likely, he picked Marines, which always gets a new Codex. Or another major list like Eldar / Orks / Chaos / Guard / Nids, which also get regular updates, so again, not a big deal.
____

Augustus wrote:That said, I think there might be a silver lining, and that is, when the 5th ed codex gets re written for Eldar (any 4th ed. army) they could go from being outdated to being "UBER" in one swoop.

my heart goes out to anyone sitting on a 4e dex, because they love the army and are having a tough time in 5e! Hold on to those minis, it might be a while but one day, the dex will come out again and then you'll be ready!

As an Eldar player, I'm counting on it!

Me too (counting on Eldar), I'm actually having fun structuring IG armies to meet the power builds of the day.

Dal'yth Dude wrote:Yakface: Can you give me an example of a game that was on top and stopped changing their rules that resulted in a 'dead game' that lost their market share? I don't believe that to be the case.

Changing rules isn't the only means of keeping a game fresh, nor keeping a particular company on top. For GW, I think a case can be made (as exemplified by GW's own actions), that it is the miniatures that sell the game. A steady stream of miniatures is one way to keep the game fresh.

I can't think of any hobby game that is no longer supported that continues to be played by a large audience.

Examples I can think of would be pretty much any game that GW stopped supporting. . .everything in their specialist range, for example. As soon as they stopped making 'new stuff' for these games on a regular basis a large chunk of the players stopped playing the games. You hear it all the time in game stores and see it on the internet, a game is considered "dead" if the company no longer makes new expansions/product for it as though the idea of playing a game that you (apparently) loved in its current form is some horrible fate! Sure there are always a few die-hards who keep playing the game but for the most part once those rules expansions stop coming for a game the mass audience always dries up.

Now, I know you're saying that GW could theoretically keep supporting a game just by releasing new miniatures for it while keeping the exact same rules for the game. Has that ever been tried before to your knowledge (by any company)?

I can't realistically imagine that would work. Sure we've all bought new models because we love them but how excited would you really be about re-sculpts if there wasn't something new or interesting about the army to try out at the same time?

I know for my part, I almost never replace old models and I never get rid of armies. I just keep 'em packed away and when a new codex comes out I buy the models I want to play the army the way I want to play it for that edition. If there were no changes in the rules I would probably never buy any new models for 40K again and I don't think I'm alone on that one.

Other ways include releasing more background/fiction, creating factions that are easily slotted into existing rules, and new games using existing or new model lines that leverage existing IP.

Personally I don't think releasing new background or fiction alone would spurs enough new miniature sales. Does it spur some sales? Sure, but I'd wager not enough to keep a giant company like GW in business.

Your other two suggestions are good ideas but I don't think either of them is ultimately viable for the following reasons:

1) Adding new factions that use the same models only works to a certain point before you have a glut of factions for the game. At that point not only is the game amazingly intimidating to new players but at a certain point even vets will start to see that adding slightly different factions is just a boring marketing ploy to get you to buy different miniatures. Maybe you feel differently, but I really don't want 6 different Eldar factions, 12 Marine factions, 4 IG factions, etc.


2) Creating new games using existing models lines is an interesting one but again you run the risk of people thinking your original (main) game is 'dead' and choose to stop playing it (it will be interesting to see what happens with the LOTR strategy battle game now that WotR is out, although I never really saw the Strategy Battle Game played in stores anyway!). Also, there is only so much space in stores and on shelves to release new games. In a way, the 'expansions' GW puts out currently is kind of like this idea except that they all use the core rules of 40K to start with.

But if you are never updating your core game anymore that means you're going to have to keep coming out with new games using the existing models. This might work okay for a while but how long before you have like twenty games that are all roughly similar to the average consumer? You walk into a game store and the clerk explains that you have twenty different games to choose from that all use the same minis? How would you know what to pick up and how would you know what people are playing in the back room? I think the whole idea essentially collapses under its own weight over time.


GW has managed to stay relevant IMO because they keep a FEW games constantly running. Yes the rules constantly change over time but this gives people who like the games something new to constantly strive for and master. It gives people new reasons to buy new models for their existing armies and it makes sure that even if someone drops out of the hobby for a while there is still something vaguely recognizable for them to return to 10-20 years down the road (but with new challenges to then master and newer cooler models to buy).

Obviously the negative to this model is that people who really like to have a power army but don't want to spend the money to update their army every few years are really left out in the cold (as you clearly have been). But I firmly believe this is a necessary evil for the good of the hobby in general.

Augustus wrote:
Not everyone is ready, or financialy or artisticly capable of dropping and restarting everything like this though.

Absolutely, as I said above, this is definitely an issue but one I feel is necessary to the hobby as a whole.

And as I mentioned a few posts ago, I do think that if you like to play casually against casual friends you can, for the most part, keep your army as-is over edition changes and still have a fighting chance to win games with your existing models.

It really only is a problem if you've got those hyper-competitive friends who like to play with the hot new tough tourney lists and you're the guy who bought one of those tough lists at the time thinking you'd be able to dominate forever. But I really put that on the friends in that case. Those guys knew you have to constantly tweak and swap armies to stay at the top but they didn't tell their friend when they convinced him to start playing.

yakface wrote:

Dal'yth Dude wrote:Yakface: Can you give me an example of a game that was on top and stopped changing their rules that resulted in a 'dead game' that lost their market share? I don't believe that to be the case.

Changing rules isn't the only means of keeping a game fresh, nor keeping a particular company on top. For GW, I think a case can be made (as exemplified by GW's own actions), that it is the miniatures that sell the game. A steady stream of miniatures is one way to keep the game fresh.

I can't think of any hobby game that is no longer supported that continues to be played by a large audience.

But that's not what Dal'yth said Yak. He said stopped changing rules, not lost support. There's a difference. BattleTech has only done minor updates to their rules over the past 25 years, and their fanbase has been increasing. It is a supported game, but it is not a game with constantly changing rules based on some inane pendulum method.

H.B.M.C. wrote:
I can't think of any hobby game that is no longer supported that continues to be played by a large audience.

But that's not what Dal'yth said Yak. He said stopped changing rules, not lost support. There's a difference. BattleTech has only done minor updates to their rules over the past 25 years, and their fanbase has been increasing. It is a supported game, but it is not a game with constantly changing rules based on some inane pendulum method.