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Billicus wrote:
You see this a lot but without that community of fans, one of the core pillars of the offering to those new people - that there's a player base out there - is undermined and sales doubtless suffer. GW probably want everyone to be net promotors and probably do want established fans to be at least somewhat happy.

Right, I guess what I'm saying is that recent experiences suggest GW can get away with an awful lot while still reaching the bar of 'at least somewhat happy', and the attrition rate for unhappy players is low even when they're making fairly drastic changes. The flipside to GW's popularity being dependent on established local communities is that the people in those communities will tolerate an awful lot of bs so long as they can still play, and it takes a lot of discontentment to get a community to jump ship to a less popular game system.

And LunarSol is right, focusing on the here and now is good. A couple of years is a long time if you're playing regularly, rather than weighing whether a pile of shame will still be relevant by the time you actually get through it. It'd be funny if GW's churn works against backlog-stacking FOMO practices, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

With limited runs and special edition models being such a common thing, GW is definitely just as much a collector hobby as it is a building/painting/playing hobby and with that comes a certain expectation that the collection will hold some value, and squatting stuff definitely affects that value (not convinced it's all negative though; scarcity helps surely)

Yeah, some people definitely need to update their priors about GW's strategy (and, tbh, GW's success). The expectation that your models will stay current for a decade or more is not a thing anymore.

GW is a new release company now, not a back catalogue company. They have three main tricks for realizing their brisk release schedule:

1) dredge up units from old lore/old editions
2) invent new things
3) remake things

Number 1 is obviously a finite resource. Numbers 2 and 3 require existing units to be phased out to make new or revamped units relevant and desirable. And supposedly GW is building even more manufacturing capacity that may well be dedicated to even more new releases!

They’ve embraced the churn from every side – the core rules hardware gets redone every 3 years, the mid-edition faction software is constantly patched and remains in a state of flux, and now even models can rotate on roughly the same timeline as editions. GW invented a company-wide “Legends” category (sometimes with the wrapper changed, ie. Kill Team’s “classified” parlance) to manage the decreasing legality of models as it tumbles downwards through tiers.

And all of this is working great. The churn supports a vast commentariat ecosystem. Many items still sell out on release day. In the short-term, GW has no reason to draw back on the firehose strategy. I think we’re witnessing the last few generations of aspirational wargamers who were kids when Warhammer games were at their peak and are now entering their highest-earning years. I don’t think the future is terribly bright for the wargaming industry once the cohort of millennials (that can afford to) have finished actualizing their childhood desires, so GW may as well get while the getting’s good, as they slowly pry open the door to becoming more of an IP licensing company.

 NAVARRO wrote:

I would say you look into old hammer and other stuff and yeah some metals and kits I have are worth silly money. They were not bought as an investment but they hold their value and thats good it gives me options.

That wasn't actually true until recent years, though, after GW's popularity skyrocketed. In the 2000s and 2010s you could buy most OOP models for, like, 25-40% of what the newer versions would cost. Ebay was an endless sea of passé metals available for 5 or 10 bucks a mini. It's only in the last ~6 years that people have begun to treat old models like speculative assets.

 NAVARRO wrote:

GW discontinuing new kits after a few years reduces value in many ways

That remains to be seen. People are more willing to pay high prices for OOP products now than at any point in the past. There are more full-blown "collector" types now (who don't play the game, but want to own items for completionist reasons) than ever before.

You're presenting contradictory claims by saying that many of your old metal models (that currently have no rules, are the wrong size, have the wrong equipment, etc.) are more valuable than ever while also saying that models having no rules/legends rules will make them less valuable.

That's a great summary of where we are. And I'm bang in the demographic you're talking about (aging millennials actualizing childhood dreams).

I mean look at the starter we're discussing - a direct homage to the 2e Armageddon set that many "gamers of a certain age" will have started with.

And as you've mentioned, the strategy appears to be working. I've been through countless discussions of "this time GW have blown it for sure" and we've always been wrong, much as I dislike a lot of the direction of the modern company they're clearly doing a great job at making money and getting people excited.

Pilot Pirx wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:

I would say you look into old hammer and other stuff and yeah some metals and kits I have are worth silly money. They were not bought as an investment but they hold their value and thats good it gives me options.

That wasn't actually true until recent years, though, after GW's popularity skyrocketed. In the 2000s and 2010s you could buy most OOP models for, like, 25-40% of what the newer versions would cost. Ebay was an endless sea of passé metals available for 5 or 10 bucks a mini. It's only in the last ~6 years that people have begun to treat old models like speculative assets.

 NAVARRO wrote:

GW discontinuing new kits after a few years reduces value in many ways

That remains to be seen. People are more willing to pay high prices for OOP products now than at any point in the past. There are more full-blown "collector" types now (who don't play the game, but want to own items for completionist reasons) than ever before.

You're presenting contradictory claims by saying that many of your old metal models (that currently have no rules, are the wrong size, have the wrong equipment, etc.) are more valuable than ever while also saying that models having no rules/legends rules will make them less valuable.

Sorry dont want to derail much... but I have been following metal minis for many years and not ALL metal minis hold the same value but tracking down more than a decade some of my minis always been good value... I even sold old old plastic minis for a very good price it's definitely not a 6 year thing at all.

And "remains to be seen" sorry again sold discontinued stromcast for peanuts... its already here and would hate to see it across the board.

Also there no contraditicion the old hammer is a different beast with different baggage like I said previously on this thread and not comparable to new plastic kits that just recently have been discontinued.

I guess its possible GW think the Russ is covered by the Dorn and the Hippogriff(?) - but I don't really see it. The Russ is one of the icons of 40k. If they do scrap it then I suspect it will be because there's a new Russ earmarked for when the Guard codex comes out.

Could be wrong obviously but I don't really see it the same was as tacticals and Intercessors, who are really standing on each others toes. The moment GW releases "tactical intercessors, you can now take a flamer and/or missile launcher", you are at a 1:1 point.

I also don't believe the 9" coherency can be right. I mean yeah, no one likes conga lining - and there have been various steps (to my mind mostly successful?) to remove it.

I guess I could understand making it so models have to be in 9" of all other models in a unit - but it feels a bit... weird and gamey. I mean if I line up 10 marines base to base, is anyone really going to say this is an abusive conga line because the two marines at the ends are 10" apart or something? Its hard to feel like any unit which is base to base can be out of coherency.

Pilot Pirx wrote:
The expectation that your models will stay current for a decade or more is not a thing anymore.

I do wonder if some of this is the whole acceleration of time thing that comes with getting old. It's one thing to expect your models to be current for a decade, its another to recognize that your models are a decade old. My intercessors are nearly a decade old at this point, but it sure doesn't feel like it and they don't appear to be going anywhere.

Perhaps the distance for coherency increases a bit for unit size, similar to how unit coherency is different for smaller squads now.

Maybe your full unit will need to fit under a blast template to be in coherency.

In an unrelated change, they'll be reintroducing templates for blast weapons.

 LunarSol wrote:

Pilot Pirx wrote:
The expectation that your models will stay current for a decade or more is not a thing anymore.

I do wonder if some of this is the whole acceleration of time thing that comes with getting old. It's one thing to expect your models to be current for a decade, its another to recognize that your models are a decade old. My intercessors are nearly a decade old at this point, but it sure doesn't feel like it and they don't appear to be going anywhere.

For sure, that's gotta be an influence on one end.

On the other end, I'd also point to some of the more sinister trends of late-stage corporate capitalism. We've been gradually hammered down into accepting planned obsolescence, rent-seeking and renting-without-owning, subscription models, inexorable <redacted>, etc. as the current way of things. The younger you are the more likely you are to just accept these things as obligatory norms. If you've already been bamboozled into thinking that buying a new phone every few years is meet and good then getting 3 years out of your $100 model kit probably seems fairly expected.

Pilot Pirx wrote:

On the other end, I'd also point to some of the more sinister trends of late-stage corporate capitalism. We've been gradually hammered down into accepting planned obsolescence, rent-seeking and renting-without-owning, subscription models, inexorable <redacted>, etc. as the current way of things. The younger you are the more likely you are to just accept these things as obligatory norms. If you've already been bamboozled into thinking that buying a new phone every few years is meet and good then getting 3 years out of your $100 model kit probably seems fairly expected.

While there are definitely horrors of planned obsolescence in the world, I've been following minis long enough to have seen how these problems evolved out of solutions to problems that existed before to know that a lot of this stuff comes from the demands of a hungry fanbase as much as the voracious mouths of investors. Some of this stuff is the cost of getting what we wanted elsewhere.

As much as we have nostalgia for firstborn, as someone who plays a lot of games, I think its important to recognize that from the outside, they are not really competitive products in the modern age of artisan resins and the like. They are exceptionally functional, but that doesn't matter when you're looking and which of dozens of shiny game lines you want to get into and a decade ago when the primaris were introduced. There was absolutely a need for GW to keep pace with the size and detail of the competition to keep up with the market.

At the same time, GW's game design needed to evolve to keep up with the competition. This is both true mechanically with the advancements in rule templating and resource mechanics pulled in through things like MtG and Eurogames and the ability for online games to fix exploits on the fly. While it has its downsides, I don't imagine 40k surviving things like early 10th Eldar for very long these days. I'm honestly amazed many people put up with D weapons.

Stores can only carry so many options and as much as online stores can manage SKU bloat, they can't provide the environment needed for communities to thrive. Pretty much every game has had to reconcile with the idea that it can't add options forever and continue to keep them in stock. Honestly, that, more than anything else is what Legends is a solution to. These models have rules. They just can't be used in tournaments because it would ALSO really suck if the meta required you to be buying models that haven't been available since 2013 to be competitive.

Mostly I just want to emphasize that as customers, we're not universally losing. It's easy to lose sight of how much better of an experience the game is. To a degree you can see that as "be careful what you wish for" but I prefer to see it as taking stock of what I got out of the bargain.

 LunarSol wrote:
It's easy to lose sight of how much better of an experience the game is.

If you say so...

Yeah that's super subjective. Most peoples' experience of the game in 2026 is having their army invalidated before they've finished fething painting it.

If they’re worried about conga lines, can’t they just up the coherency requirement from 2 to 3 for large units? Not only because it’s difficult to achieve 9” with some units, but measuring and re-measuring that kind of thing to get it right massively slows the game down. That’s why getting rid of templates was a good thing IMHO, as it massively speeded up the game.

Billicus wrote:
Yeah that's super subjective. Most peoples' experience of the game in 2026 is having their army invalidated before they've finished fething painting it.

Unless you are painting Firstborn with the foreknowledge they would eventually be squatted, no, it isn't.

 Jadenim wrote:
If they’re worried about conga lines, can’t they just up the coherency requirement from 2 to 3 for large units? Not only because it’s difficult to achieve 9” with some units, but measuring and re-measuring that kind of thing to get it right massively slows the game down. That’s why getting rid of templates was a good thing IMHO, as it massively speeded up the game.

The way I've seen more and more games handle coherency is that when you move, you pick a leader model and every other model must end within some distance of it. Really cuts down on the amount of measuring needed to ensure everything is in coherency and sets a maximum frontage of two times whatever that radius is plus the width of the base.

Billicus wrote:
Yeah that's super subjective. Most peoples' experience of the game in 2026 is having their army invalidated before they've finished fething painting it.

If you mean “Have rules change that alter how effective some units are or points changes that affect how much you can bring,” sure.
But that’s not invalidation.

 catbarf wrote:

 Jadenim wrote:
If they’re worried about conga lines, can’t they just up the coherency requirement from 2 to 3 for large units? Not only because it’s difficult to achieve 9” with some units, but measuring and re-measuring that kind of thing to get it right massively slows the game down. That’s why getting rid of templates was a good thing IMHO, as it massively speeded up the game.

The way I've seen more and more games handle coherency is that when you move, you pick a leader model and every other model must end within some distance of it. Really cuts down on the amount of measuring needed to ensure everything is in coherency and sets a maximum frontage of two times whatever that radius is plus the width of the base.

Yeah and then you just need a simple system of that leader model always being the last in the unit to die. It does help tackle conga-lines and it is a lot simpler to measure to one model instead of going model to model and someone then teasing it all out over a long span over the battlefield.

The only downside is that the leader model is in effect immortal under such a system; but eh that's not a big deal in wargames honestly and can easily be said that "if the unit leader is killed another is nominated that takes their place). Just how rank and file games handle it

Billicus wrote:
Yeah that's super subjective. Most peoples' experience of the game in 2026 is having their army invalidated before they've finished fething painting it.

Maybe its [u]your[i] experience....
But I seriously doubt its most peoples.

Following eagerly.

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It's easy to lose sight of how much better of an experience the game is.

If you say so...

Yeah, uh, I'll raise my hand as part of the "does not enjoy 40k trying to become Magic: the Gathering" crowd.

Or, as I figured in another thread, League of Legends.

 Ashiraya wrote:

 Lord Damocles wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
It's easy to lose sight of how much better of an experience the game is.

If you say so...

Yeah, uh, I'll raise my hand as part of the "does not enjoy 40k trying to become Magic: the Gathering" crowd.

Or, as I figured in another thread, League of Legends.

Yep, its remarkable how much playing 40k has moved away from a 'traditional' wargame experience.

I'm one of those guys who has always liked 40k, but I've never really been much of a wargamer beyond that. So it getting less wargamey and becoming more of a campaign-based, warband style RPG via Crusade's progression system with small starting armies and escalation has been great for me personally... But I know I'm in the minority.

Tbf, it started out as a campaign based warband style RPG, became more wargamey, and has now accommodated that style of play again. Pretty cool really.

We're calling this mess a warband RPG now? What the hell?

Billicus wrote:
We're calling this mess a warband RPG now? What the hell?

I'm not calling stand-alone, 2k, Matched play, pickup games a warband RPG.

But Crusade campaigns that start at 500 pts. and escalate to 3k are VERY different from stand-alone, Matched play pick-up games... Which is what I've been telling people that are disillusioned with stand-alone, matched play pick-up gamers for six years.

If you don't believe it or can't see it, there's probably a good chance you've never played a Crusade escalation campaign. And you're not alone. So few people have taken my advice that we face a real risk of losing Crusade in 11th, and IMHO, it's the only thing that makes the game worth playing at current prices.

Yeah that playstyle is being catered to a little bit but they're absolutely focused on the big tournaments, with all the balance patches and errata and etc and through the choices of what to cover and push on their socials. It isn't "becoming more of a campaign-based, warband style RPG". It's got some optional content in that vein that only a few people use, that is by all accounts going away in 11th.

There's actually a ton of non tournament content released all the time. Players just largely ignore it and bemoan the lack of it in the same breath.

Every codex has campaign rules, the latest scenario deck has cards with asymmetric missions and we're just wrapping up 4 books who definitely aren't being purchased for tournament play.

People will see that and say it "doesn't count" and tell you "no one plays that stuff" and not even try to play the stuff they claim they want. This stuff is absolutely out there you just have to put time into it and show up. If anything drives catering to tournament play, its the simple fact that people vote with their feet and show up to play at those events.

 LunarSol wrote:
There's actually a ton of non tournament content released all the time. Players just largely ignore it and bemoan the lack of it in the same breath.

Every codex has campaign rules, the latest scenario deck has cards with asymmetric missions and we're just wrapping up 4 books who definitely aren't being purchased for tournament play.

People will see that and say it "doesn't count" and tell you "no one plays that stuff" and not even try to play the stuff they claim they want. This stuff is absolutely out there you just have to put time into it and show up. If anything drives catering to tournament play, its the simple fact that people vote with their feet and show up to play at those events.

Ok, I'll have to counter this:

Every codex has crusade rules which appears to be a discontinued game mode in 11th.

The latest deck is the chapter approved mission deck, which is sold as "An essential tool-kit for creating Matched Play missions on the fly" which matched play isnt directly competitive, but the line is so thin and blurred it might as well be. Yes there are asymmetrical cards, but most people likely never tried them due to the community led normative behaviour.

The last 4 campaign books are an extremely small print run. I dont have any of them at present, how many can I buy for my casual games in 2 months time? Probably none? Interestingly they're also not listed under rules and codex in the 40k section of the webstore, whilst dice are.

GW is absolutely shaping a narrative (lol) to direct people away from any of the narrative oriented products and it works. It's equally fruitless telling people "but the rules are there, try harder" when as you note people attend tournament events because it's got explicit framework and simple expectations. Never mind the fact my hobby doesn't want to be nagging people to play a 15 game series of crusade rules with a load of book keeping they don't care for.

 LunarSol wrote:
There's actually a ton of non tournament content released all the time. Players just largely ignore it and bemoan the lack of it in the same breath.

Every codex has campaign rules, the latest scenario deck has cards with asymmetric missions and we're just wrapping up 4 books who definitely aren't being purchased for tournament play.

People will see that and say it "doesn't count" and tell you "no one plays that stuff" and not even try to play the stuff they claim they want. This stuff is absolutely out there you just have to put time into it and show up. If anything drives catering to tournament play, its the simple fact that people vote with their feet and show up to play at those events.

The pace of Crusade supplements released has exceeded my group's ability to play through them, so no complaints there.

We've also just got a ton of further content released with the end of campaign supplements. The Vespator map campaign and a Boarding Actions mini-campaign, Crucible custom character creation rules, etc. with the expanded vehicle rules just around the corner.

I kinda wish 10th had an extra year just to explore all of it - though fortunately it looks like 11th will be mostly backwards compatible anyway.

It's certainly the best edition for supporting non-competitive game modes since 2nd.