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You know what I think would make sense?

Allowing a defending unit to either put up a shooting defense, without Initiative test or prepare for CC. So your guardsmen can either try to shoot that wave of orks but have no melee attacks when some actually manage to break through or they ignore snapfire, instead mounting their bayonets or whatever and fighting in CC. Not sure how sensible this would be in most cases, but it would be a tactical option...

 warboss wrote:

 ashcroft wrote:

The amount of cloak and dagger surrounding GW's future plans is baffling to me.

GW assumes that everyone is just sitting there with a wad of cash in their hands and sweat beading down their brows while waiting for the opportunity to buy something... anything... and if they tell you stuff ahead of time that you'll change your mind. Unfortunately for all of us, there are enough of the former to sell out crap designs like the void shield generator in minutes with less than a day's notice which reinforces GW's decision to keep everyone in the dark.

There is plenty of research out there that shows what happens when a company that is selling X announces that Y is coming. Essentially revenue from X disappears. If the announcement is far enough out then this can drastically hurt the companies bottom line. Essentially the only time you want to announce something more than a few weeks out is when the announcement won't harm existing sales. Now, there is a marketing tactic where you announce a product a few months out when you will be releasing something that directly competes with the offering from another company. The purpose of which is to cause your competitor to lose sales. Works well even if you ship late or not at all...

It's just not in GW's interest to be discussing "7th" edition at all. If they did then sales of the 6th ed rulebooks and various supplements would drop drastically. That said, in order to make best use of customer good will they need to stop shipment of any material that would be outdated once 7th is released a month before hand.

Remember, the month before 6th edition was released White Dwarf had a special feature on using the miniatures available in AoBR and a double-page advert spread of the box set itself. If you want a heads-up on 7th edition, I would probably look for similar advertising of the 6th edition boxset as they try and clear stock prior to the new release.

@Clively - I think that works only if you have no other competitors in the marketplace and customers need to wait for your products. While there are still a lot of players who only play and collect 40k, I think there is a lot more cross-game movement by customers these days in what is essentially a very niche industry anyway. Customers are just as likely to shrug, buy an army for something else, and then suddenly realise they don't have any money to spend on x when it arrives on shop-shelves completely un-heralded.

clively wrote:

 warboss wrote:

 ashcroft wrote:

The amount of cloak and dagger surrounding GW's future plans is baffling to me.

GW assumes that everyone is just sitting there with a wad of cash in their hands and sweat beading down their brows while waiting for the opportunity to buy something... anything... and if they tell you stuff ahead of time that you'll change your mind. Unfortunately for all of us, there are enough of the former to sell out crap designs like the void shield generator in minutes with less than a day's notice which reinforces GW's decision to keep everyone in the dark.

There is plenty of research out there that shows what happens when a company that is selling X announces that Y is coming. Essentially revenue from X disappears. If the announcement is far enough out then this can drastically hurt the companies bottom line. Essentially the only time you want to announce something more than a few weeks out is when the announcement won't harm existing sales. Now, there is a marketing tactic where you announce a product a few months out when you will be releasing something that directly competes with the offering from another company. The purpose of which is to cause your competitor to lose sales. Works well even if you ship late or not at all...

It's just not in GW's interest to be discussing "7th" edition at all. If they did then sales of the 6th ed rulebooks and various supplements would drop drastically. That said, in order to make best use of customer good will they need to stop shipment of any material that would be outdated once 7th is released a month before hand.

There's also plenty of research out there on how steadily building excitement for new products over time with previews and sneak-peeks will result in increased sales and higher levels of positive word-of-mouth activity. Further, GW itself would appear to be an example which contradicts your contention; GW proper hates rumours or previews of any kind even at its own events in recent years, it does everything it can to keep information about new products contained within the company until the last possible moment in order to drive "impulse" purchases(which is, IMO, moronic in and of itself, since the rationale behind impulse purchases relates to small and/or cheap products, not increasingly expensive luxury hobby material), and the result? Falling revenue, shrinking profit, despite an aggressive cost-cutting regime and attempts to drive customers to buy at their own webstore with "direct only" products. Meanwhile Forgeworld, a semi-autonomous division within GW that holds two in-house events each year that feature extensive product previews months in advance, that attends non-company conventions to promote upcoming product, and which caters to the "veteran" gamers of whom GW-proper is so dismissive, are showing positive growth every year.

As for 7th edition specifically, if it's actually coming, whether it's in GW's interest to discuss it depends entirely on whether the company are competent enough to make it be positive. The "little Timmy" types, their parents; these people will not be scouring the internet to find the latest news and rumours about GW product, and ostensibly they are GW's main consumer demographic, so it's difficult to see how advanced previews on GW's laughable "what's on-sale today" blog would result in revenue from that group declining. For the rest of their customers, well the people who just buy the models to paint don't care about the rules much if at all, so no threat there, and all you have left then are the dwindling ranks of "veteran" gamers that the company is struggling to retain already. Whether revenue from that group would be positively or negatively affected depends entirely on how GW go about previewing a new edition. I would wager that if GW were to make a big deal out of "community involvement", if they seemed like they were genuinely soliciting opinion and feedback and acted on it to at least a token degree, that could well result in increased revenue in the medium-term by bringing previous customers back and generating positive word-of-mouth for a change. They could make a small sacrifice of potential revenue in the short term by offering, for example, anyone who bought a copy of the previous edition rulebook within 6 months of the launch of the new edition(proof of purchase required, ofc) a voucher for a free digital copy of the new rulebook, that would lead to better potential revenue in the medium term due to customer retention and goodwill.

It's not in GW's interest to discuss 7th edition only because they have structured their business model and customer relations/marketing(what little of it there is) in a manner which prevents them from adopting tactics which would generate a different outcome. That's their issue, not some inherent "rule of business".

I'm actually kind of excited for this new edition. It might eliminate some of the Ally stupidity and it looks like Assault lists will be viable again.

We know it's coming. Just not the details. I'll take most of what i see with seasoning cabinet.
But I think things should be more streamed lined. Here's hoping.

We all know how GW works. They're gonna fix a couple things, but break a couple other things in the process and then everyone will start hoping 8th edition will fix all flaws.

I feel like this will just be a bundling of the current rule book with Escalation and some other things with no rule changes. Nothing more.

I hope it kills off battle brothers. I will accept AV15 buildings in my rulebook if battle brothers fething die like Sean Bean in ANY MOVIE!

Some of these rumors sound too good to be true- and we all know how that works out with GW involved. Pancake 2.0 seems much more likely.

 kronk wrote:
I hope it kills off battle brothers. I will accept AV15 buildings in my rulebook if battle brothers fething die like Sean Bean in ANY MOVIE!

why would they kill battle brothers off like sean bean in any movie when they can keep it alive against all odds like sean bean in any episode of sharpe?

 Yodhrin wrote:
Meanwhile Forgeworld, a semi-autonomous division within GW that holds two in-house events each year that feature extensive product previews months in advance, that attends non-company conventions to promote upcoming product, and which caters to the "veteran" gamers of whom GW-proper is so dismissive, are showing positive growth every year.

To be fair, FW releases are quite different than GW codex/army book releases. They're very rarely "updates."

 gorgon wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Meanwhile Forgeworld, a semi-autonomous division within GW that holds two in-house events each year that feature extensive product previews months in advance, that attends non-company conventions to promote upcoming product, and which caters to the "veteran" gamers of whom GW-proper is so dismissive, are showing positive growth every year.

To be fair, FW releases are quite different than GW codex/army book releases. They're very rarely "updates."

While FW does create a lot of new content, they do also updates. Check their download-section. They have updates for their Army Lists and how to use them in 6th edition for free. Actually, you don't even have to have an Imperial Armour book anymore, the "updates" offer complete pricing lists, unit choices and whatever else you need for numbers crunching. That is like GW giving "rules only" codices away for free and selling only the printed fluff-versions.

Anyone else wondering if Natfka is going to octuple-down on this pile of rumors?

Frankly looking at the massive list I see a lot of things that look interesting, others seem like they might still be in the midst of being refined at the time or are the pendulum swinging back the other way (as it is prone to doing so). I don't see anything too insane, just some things that need to be explained better or possibly are poorly translated.

GW moving back to WFB and 40k being more similar (like they were before 40k hit 3rd edition) rather than less makes it a lot easier for players to pick up both games and makes a lot of sense from a business standpoint. Ideally you'd want your players to be able to move between systems more effortlessly as to better monetize both of them. So if it's true this will be one of the smartest things GW has done in a while for their games.

I do have a feeling we'll be seeing some bigger changes in the future to 40k, although I can't bet my money on it being the changes listed here.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Natfka is going to octuple-down on this pile of rumors?

He's still whipping the Epic rumors and I have about as much chance of gakking golden eggs as that one happening.

 pretre wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Natfka is going to octuple-down on this pile of rumors?

He's still whipping the Epic rumors and I have about as much chance of gakking golden eggs as that one happening.

Clearly, the new Warhammer Fantasy will be using Epic Rules and come with Orks and Blood Bretonnians in the Starter Box. All done by Forge World and available through the new GW store. Also, Plastic Thunderhawk incoming...

 Zweischneid wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Natfka is going to octuple-down on this pile of rumors?

He's still whipping the Epic rumors and I have about as much chance of gakking golden eggs as that one happening.

Clearly, the new Warhammer Fantasy will be using Epic Rules and come with Orks and Blood Bretonnians in the Starter Box. All done by Forge World and available through the new GW store. Also, Plastic Thunderhawk incoming...

Careful, Natfka's gonna repost that.

 pretre wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Natfka is going to octuple-down on this pile of rumors?

He's still whipping the Epic rumors and I have about as much chance of gakking golden eggs as that one happening.

If GW does do Epic switching the scale up would be the best way to make all the vets rebuy the stuff....

Not saying it's likely, just saying that the idea is sound.

 Kosake wrote:
You know what I think would make sense?

Allowing a defending unit to either put up a shooting defense, without Initiative test or prepare for CC. So your guardsmen can either try to shoot that wave of orks but have no melee attacks when some actually manage to break through or they ignore snapfire, instead mounting their bayonets or whatever and fighting in CC. Not sure how sensible this would be in most cases, but it would be a tactical option...

Like so many things in wargaming, It sounds good because it is way more like real life, but I think it wouldn't work on the tabletop. I always said the same about shooting into your own guys too, I mean, if your position is getting overrun in real life, its not unknown to call down artillery on your own position and grab your fething ankles. It makes sense if your guys are in shell-scrapes and the enemy have 20 times your number, so why wouldn't Space Marines happily hose a dreadnought with a flamer if It had grots or Orks swarming all over it? Or happily shoot their bolters are Terminators who are getting overan by lightly armored cultists?

Lots of things sound good because they would add realism, but I think that contrary to popular belief GW do actually do some (perhaps just a little!) play testing.

In both of our favored scenarios, I think it would break the game because literally nobody would run assault armies. They seem hard enough to get away with in 6th as it is, let alone if they implemented both of our changes. Think about Space Marines, one gakky attack in CC isn't much, but they are still ok with their power armor.. imagine if everytime anybody wanted to assault them they could double-tap with those boltguns, and hose them with flamers and combi-flamers as normal? I would fancy my humble tac squads against a gak load of Orks or Tyranids if that was the case. Same goes for shooting into combat, well armored guys would just stand back, send their termies and dreds forward, and then gleefully bomb the gak out of everyone who tried to kill them with anything other than shooting.

I agree with you to some extent, the gamer in me loves the idea of making things as real as possible, making it almost like an RPG where you can do anything and everything that makes tactical sense, but I reckon they actually do a little play testing and ban all those little quirky rules people might think of which would feth the game up.

 Pacific wrote:
Remember, the month before 6th edition was released White Dwarf had a special feature on using the miniatures available in AoBR and a double-page advert spread of the box set itself. If you want a heads-up on 7th edition, I would probably look for similar advertising of the 6th edition boxset as they try and clear stock prior to the new release.

Like, perhaps a codex supplement making the models in the starter set actual special characters with uniqe rules and equipment?

 Fayric wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Remember, the month before 6th edition was released White Dwarf had a special feature on using the miniatures available in AoBR and a double-page advert spread of the box set itself. If you want a heads-up on 7th edition, I would probably look for similar advertising of the 6th edition boxset as they try and clear stock prior to the new release.

Like, perhaps a codex supplement making the models in the starter set actual special characters with uniqe rules and equipment?

That's basically THE explanation for the whole supplement from my point of view. They had awesome legions to choose from and made some new unknown warband. Can't explain it any other way than GWs need to get the starters sold in time.

 pretre wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Natfka is going to octuple-down on this pile of rumors?

He's still whipping the Epic rumors and I have about as much chance of gakking golden eggs as that one happening.

I will bookmark this for future reference, just in case

 Kroothawk wrote:

 pretre wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Anyone else wondering if Natfka is going to octuple-down on this pile of rumors?

He's still whipping the Epic rumors and I have about as much chance of gakking golden eggs as that one happening.

I will bookmark this for future reference, just in case

Wouldn't be the first and sure as heck won't be the last time I'm wrong.

Just keep in mind that most true rumours are also posted on faeit212, just hidden in the pile of crap as always, something that statistics can't show. Anyway, can I get the first golden egg of yours

 Kroothawk wrote:
Just keep in mind that most true rumours are also posted on faeit212, just hidden in the pile of crap as always, something that statistics can't show. Anyway, can I get the first golden egg of yours

Well, I'm talking about stuff that is sourced to Natfka. Yeah, practically every rumor is posted there. Just the crap he posts tends to leave a bit to be desired.

I really hope they don't change the rules too much I've only just got to gross with the basics !

Ging3rDw4rf wrote:
I really hope they don't change the rules too much I've only just got to gross with the basics !

The last time they changed it so much that the game was basically "new" was 2nd to 3rd and even then there was a lot of carry over in things like phases being the same. Even with these rumors I don't see the game changing too much from how it currently works, just enough to get people needing to rethink how they build their army mostly.

Ah OK that shouldn't be to bad as I've really got no idea what I'm doing anyway! I just get the models I like and how they do ok in the games!

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Even with these rumors I don't see the game changing too much from how it currently works, just enough to get people needing to rethink how they build their army mostly.

They've sold enough Flyers now... perhaps 7th is the Dreadnought Edition

 Bull0 wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:
Even with these rumors I don't see the game changing too much from how it currently works, just enough to get people needing to rethink how they build their army mostly.

They've sold enough Flyers now... perhaps 7th is the Dreadnought Edition

Flying Dreadnoughts!