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Blacksails wrote:You could cut down on the bloat by making all marine factions into just two

Why stop there? It's possible to just make a single army. I mean, chess has the same pieces, it's just a matter of if you paint them black or white.

Anyways, the decision to hack it down to 5 armies would be a complete disaster, but if I were at GW and had to pick only five armies to keep, I'd keep the most profitable ones. That means my list would be:

Space Marines
Grey Knights
Blood Angels
Dark Angels
Imperial Guard

Yes, you'd lose a vast, vast quantity of fluff, but you would be doing that already, no matter which codices you decided to keep. Might as well go for the most popular armies, then.

It was just a thought really. Obviously I don't know how many kits and what kits GW sell most nor if they even make enough kits to be losing money on low selling items.

But for the sake of the game, if GW removed 66% of the armies - including their models - and provided a less expensive hobby with really solid and balanced rules, I'd accept it.

But that's not to say that I don't really, really like armies like Tau and Necrons, I just don't think they're vital to 40K in the same way Marines and Orks are

No, it would be completely stupid to remove armies at this stage.

It might have been smarter for GW to not have created certain armies in the first place, but to do it now would be terrible. It would kill 40k.

Though if you really wanted only 5:

Imperium of Man
Chaos
Orks
Tyranids
Eldar


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Davylove21 wrote:
It was just a thought really. Obviously I don't know how many kits and what kits GW sell most nor if they even make enough kits to be losing money on low selling items.

But for the sake of the game, if GW removed 66% of the armies - including their models - and provided a less expensive hobby with really solid and balanced rules, I'd accept it.

But that's not to say that I don't really, really like armies like Tau and Necrons, I just don't think they're vital to 40K in the same way Marines and Orks are

I don't disagree with the idea of a simpler game with less factions, but 40k has gone down this road and to try and back track would be awful. There would be many, many, many people who love the different armies and have spent thousands on various armies, to cut them out would create such hatred for GW and lose so much of the customer base it would be suicide.

Even though I personally dislike fliers, fortifications, allies and superheavies, I don't think GW really has the option to remove them from future editions.

Unfortunately 40k is a convoluted mess and to fix it is becoming increasingly difficult.

The 40k bloat is partially because GW put all their eggs in the 40k basket instead of specialist games like they used to do.

I still think GW need to revive Epic, BFG, Necromunda/Gorkamorka, etc etc.

 Ailaros wrote:

Blacksails wrote:You could cut down on the bloat by making all marine factions into just two

Why stop there?

Because the other factions are differentiated by something other than a few wargear/FoC swaps?

 Ailaros wrote:

Blacksails wrote:You could cut down on the bloat by making all marine factions into just two

Why stop there? It's possible to just make a single army. I mean, chess has the same pieces, it's just a matter of if you paint them black or white.

Anyways, the decision to hack it down to 5 armies would be a complete disaster, but if I were at GW and had to pick only five armies to keep, I'd keep the most profitable ones. That means my list would be:

Space Marines
Grey Knights
Blood Angels
Dark Angels
Imperial Guard

Yes, you'd lose a vast, vast quantity of fluff, but you would be doing that already, no matter which codices you decided to keep. Might as well go for the most popular armies, then.

Then they could ret-con the name from Warhammer 40k to Spurc Merhean Burtles of the Geraxy!

Space Marines (loyalist and chaos. Daemons only available via summoning, Grey knights add on for loyalists)
Orks (various tribes)
Eldar (combine dark eldar into a pirate unit only, choose composition..wych, kabalites, etc)
Tyranids (gotta have the hive mind....these over Necrons for sure)
Imperial (as mentioned before, have sisters and inquisitors here, just trimmed down)

Sorry tau, gotta go.

Sisters
Tau
GK
IK
DE

Mwahahahahahahah!

Personally, my five would be;

Imperial Guard (as: The Heroes, with Marines, Sisters, Inquisition and AdMech as unit choices).
Orks (as: The Alien Horde)
Eldar (as: The Enigmatic Threat)
Chaos (as: The Villains. Similar set up to the Guard, with the bulk being human, and a few unit choices for Chaos Marines and Daemons)
Necrons (as: The Implacable End)

Humans--IG, SM, Chaos, Sisters, etc all rolled into one codex. Can keep chaos models or drop and make people convert if they want to play chaos.
Eldar--regular and dark rolled into one book.
Orks
Tyranids
Tau

Hate the idea of reducing the number of armies, but this would be how i would do it. Tau over Necrons for potential of adding new allies beyond Vespid and Kroot.

- Space Marines (of all chapters, Maybe put chaos and loyalist marines into one book... that has potential. At least then the loyalist marines won't keep getting "relics from before the heresy" that Chaos marines somehow completely misplaced )
- Forces if the Imperium (AM/Inquisition/SoB/ maybe some adMech?)
- Forces of Chaos (Chaos Marines?/Demons/Lost and Damned)
- Orks
- Necrons

Got to have Imperium and Chaos, that's pretty much the core of the setting. Space Marines can have their own book since they are popular and move product. Orks are great to lighten the mood and to provide a lower tech "designated bad guy". Necrons because they are very cold and calculating and incredibly inhuman. Including them over Tyranids because it's possible for them to work for any side (including their own) which makes more interesting fluff possibilities.

Getting the opportunity to write Eldar out of the game makes me very happy. Shame Dark Eldar have to go too though.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Personally, my five would be;

Imperial Guard (as: The Heroes, with Marines, Sisters, Inquisition and AdMech as unit choices).
Orks (as: The Alien Horde)
Eldar (as: The Enigmatic Threat)
Chaos (as: The Villains. Similar set up to the Guard, with the bulk being human, and a few unit choices for Chaos Marines and Daemons)
Necrons (as: The Implacable End)

I'd go with a similar thematic approach, but with different choices:

Space marines: the epic heroes and essential part of the story. All chapters would be included with "chapter tactics" rules to represent their differences, all of the pointless "we need another model kit to justify keeping them a separate army" units/fluff get deleted.

Imperial guard: the average guy, just trying to survive in a universe that is cruel and evil beyond imagination.

That covers the heroes of the story, and the primary point of view armies for the fluff. The remaining three represent the archetypes of the threats facing the Imperium, and give a nice balance of gameplay styles with two melee armies, two shooting armies, and one "do everything" army:

Orks: the alien horde. The faceless horde that will devour the Imperium through sheer numbers, as the tide destroys your sand castle.

Chaos: the enemy within. The constant temptation for everyone in the Imperium, that will always exist and oppose humanity as long as it continues to exist.

Tau: the younger races. Ruthless innovation, free from the Imperium's superstitions and building towards a future where humanity will bow before superior guns or be utterly destroyed.

Noteworthy omissions:

Tyranids: the most boring of the armies fluff-wise, and way too much overlap with the orks. I'd get rid of them even if I didn't have to cut the game down to five armies, this is just a convenient excuse.

Eldar/DE: too irrelevant. Thematically they're a warning about what happens when Chaos wins, but they aren't actually a threat anymore. They'd be my choice of sixth army, but they're just not quite good enough to make the cut.

Necrons: TBH the Tau fluff is just better for representing the "superior technology" threat.

Space Wolves
Blood Angels
Dark Angles
Non-Legion Chaos Space Marines

You won't even notice that anything has changed.

 Vaktathi wrote:
Also, if Codex books keep increasing in price the way they have since 2007, you'll be paying $80-100 for a codex by 2020 anyway...

That's cute.

I would keep the most iconic races.

Imperial Guard (the good)
Chaos (the bad)
Orkz (the ugly)
Eldar (and the... well, space elves)

1. Sisters of battle
2. Inquisition
3. Imperial knights
4. Militarum Tempestus
5. Errrrr.... Thousand sons.

It's a tough one I said yes because their seems to be repeating going on in some packs and they could have less base units and more cheaper options for customizing the armies. This would drop their expenses and result in cheaper unit prices.

For example. I buy a template Set or termies or assault etc. it comes cheaper because they leave out the signature addons like shoulder pads etc. I then buy a BA pack to create my army with the details. They will need less standard space marine packs and more smaller cheaper custom packs.

I don't know maybe I'm waffling

I would keep BA, ultra marines because they have invested a lot in them, prob dark angels, then chaos and orks. The rest I would axe

My five would be:


Death Guard
Night Lords
Alpha Legion
Thousand Dons
World Eaters

If it had to be 5 armies, then it would be the following:

Codex: Imperium - Heroes and Heretics (Rolling all of the Space Marines, Chaos Space Marines, Imperial Agents and Imperial Guard into one book.
Eldar (including Craftworld Eldar, Dark Eldar, Harlequins and Exodites)
Orks
Tyranids
Necrons

Orks, Tyranids, and Necrons sort of fill the same role.

Horde - ork and nids
Faceless enemy - nids and Necrons
Apocalypse bent - nids, Necrons, orks.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Imperials - combined into one codex. SM chapters just use chapter tactics or special unit types.
Daemons - combined with chaos SM
Orks - dark humor needed.
Eldar - combine dark eldar.
Tyranids - I have more iconic 40k experience with nids than Tau or Necrons.

Necrons didn't really add much to the setting that hadn't already been covered by Tyranids.

Imperium - all of it
Chaos - all of it
Eldar - both of them
Ork
Nid

I think they should add MORE armies, MORE fluff, MORE codices.

Shrinking the 40K universe does not benefit GW or players

I only read a handful of posts on the first page and what if funny is that most people seemed to say "roll all Imperium guys into one army" "Roll all Eldar into one army" "Roll all Chaos into one army".

This doesn't benefit GW...This benefits YOU by still giving you the same diverse number of models, and hey, less codices to buy now.

Oh...and nobody likes the Tau

I would put all the imperials in one codex with unit restrictions, special rules and characters for playing different types of force.

Then a combined chaos book with marines, cultists, chaos guard, and daemons.

Then eldar and dark eldar combined. Nids would get a book, as would orks. So, if you wanted 5 books, that would be it. ThoughbI would not actually drop any of the remaining books.

 WarOne wrote:
My five would be:


Death Guard
Night Lords
Alpha Legion
Thousand Dons
World Eaters

"Warhammer Time is irrelevant in the Eye" instead of Warhammer 40K?

 thenoobbomb wrote:

 WarOne wrote:
My five would be:


Death Guard
Night Lords
Alpha Legion
Thousand Dons
World Eaters

"Warhammer Time is irrelevant in the Eye" instead of Warhammer 40K?

He got a point.

Maybe perfect balance is:

IG Cadia
IG Tallarn
IG Mordia
IG Catachan
IG Valhalla

as " the 5 ", where everyone has just lasguns, the same statline, and Tanks.

Lynkon_Lawg wrote:
I think they should add MORE armies, MORE fluff, MORE codices.

This doesn't benefit GW...This benefits YOU by still giving you the same diverse number of models, and hey, less codices to buy now.

I don't know. The codexes would be huge a cost a small fortune. And you couldn't do like now and only buy the army you want. I don't want Dark Eldar but have to pay for their rules and lame fluff if I want to pay Eldar for example. (Not trying to day anything bad about Dark Eldar, just giving an example).

The Squats players are still bitter about losing their faction. Not a good idea to drop factions.

Lynkon_Lawg wrote:
This doesn't benefit GW...This benefits YOU by still giving you the same diverse number of models, and hey, less codices to buy now.

A single codex that allowed you to build an Imperial Guard army with a few elite Marine units, a Knight and an Inquisitorial attachment would benefit GW, as it would give people who are currently put off by the high cost of buying multiple codexes an incentive to buy a wider range of models.

Oh...and nobody likes the Tau

I like them just fine. I just don't think they're more interesing as an army than GW's other alien races.

Why would the codex have to be huge and cost a fortune (other than gw charging too much for everything )? Just put the rules in there and leave the fluff to other books.

 Vaktathi wrote:
If it could only be five?

I'd keep it as close to the original few as possible, except that I'd merge IG and SM's


thusly

Codex: Imperialis (ala early 2E)
Codex: Tyranids
Codex: Orks
Codex: Eldar
Codex: Chaos (daemons and CSM's)

That said, really I think we'd just be better off consolidating all the loyalist books into one and calling it a day.

/thread

Lynkon_Lawg wrote:
Oh...and nobody likes the Tau

Hi, I'm Nobody. Who are you? I like Tau quite a bit. They're my favorite faction by far. But in terms of both sales and fluff they are not one of the armies GW should keep if they decided to downsize for whatever reason.

I don't think just 5 armies would work. This is how I can see it happening:

Codex: Imperium
-This would include Adeptus Astartes (regular codex astartes chapters and SW, BA, DA, etc.), Astra Militarum, Tempestus Scions, Imperial Knights, the Inquisition, Grey Knights, Adepta Sororitas and the Mechanicus.

Codex: Chaos
-Chaos Space Marines, Lost and the Damned and Daemons of Chaos rolled into one.

Codex: Orks
-This doesn't really need an explanation, although in a perfect world a book like this would feature Waaagh! Ghazghkull and klan-specific army lists too.

Codex: Necrons
-Similar to the current codex, but perhaps with two different detachments - one for the dynasty based armies and one for the 'old-school' C'tan servants.

Codex: Tyranids
-No explanation needed.

Codex: Tau
-Tau Empire and Farsight Enclaves all in one.

With the while Imperium being Battle Brothers now, there's no reason not to merge all their codices into 1 book. Add some bonuses if you pick from a single force, and you're good to go.

That'd leave the other BB forces:
Chaos (Marines and Daemons),
Eldar (both),
Orks,
Nids.