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I remember seeing leaked picture of it from forgeworld years ago, but it has yet to be released. Did they scrap it, or are they just taking a really long time to release it?

on a side note, has anyone noticed models going missing from the FW fantasy range? as far as I can tell, the incarnate elemental of fire, and beasts are both gone. There may be more that im missing.

pic from 2012

Everything in the Warhammer Forge section is discontinued, whatever is up is while stocks last.

wow that's... extremely disappointing.

I guess that means the k'daai destroyer is never going to be produced?

Forgeworld said they were gonna to review the most popular sculpts sometime next year, so I doubt anything new, which is a shame, they could do with more than marines marines marines.

(The TL Devourer kit that came out for e.g. was done by an employee in their own time)

 Krellnus wrote:
Forgeworld said they were gonna to review the most popular sculpts sometime next year, so I doubt anything new, which is a shame, they could do with more than marines marines marines.

(The TL Devourer kit that came out for e.g. was done by an employee in their own time)

It's also worth noting that Tamurkhan is discontinued too. Even more proof that chaos dwarfs aren't a real army.

They've said rules for the Chaos Dwarf army would still be available as a free PDF.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
They've said rules for the Chaos Dwarf army would still be available as a free PDF.

While i know they are consolidating armys, i do wish they'd just get official with the chaos dwarves again and be done with it. It's a really neat army. With Forge World allegedly coming more and more under the GW Brand (yes i know the relationship between them, i'm speaking more of comments the CEO of GW made shortly after taking the post) in 2015 and beyond i really hope this happens.

Yeah its not like having 16 armies instead of 15 is going to negatively effect a healthy four to five year army book cycle.

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
Yeah its not like having 16 armies instead of 15 is going to negatively effect a healthy four to five year army book cycle.

Well i think its more like this (if rumors about 9th are to be believed, and are somewhat being fleshed out in End TImes, and note you still have the ability to completely play mono-army).


Beastmen, Daemons, Chaos become 1 army.

Wood, Dark, and High elves become 1 army.

Brets and Empire become 1 army. Dwarves maybe?

Tomb Kings and Vamp Counts become 1 army.

Skaven likely stay solo.


Wild cards / no one really knows for sure: Dwarves, Lizards, Ogres, Orcs and Goblins.


If they did chaos dwarves, they could roll them out in phases and lump them into the Chaos Unified army. Probably won't ever happen but i'd love to see it.


So we consolidate 11 of the 15 into 5, which is pretty good, with 4 more being something of wildcards / no one is really sure. Leaves us with 9 armies, give or take. Still kind of a lot. I'd love to see the game get down to 7-8, if it were me. Problem is that starts necessitating some hard choices. Dwarves go with humans. Ogres go with Greenskins. Lizards stay solo. That gives you 7. Maybe 8 is the sweet spot. Not sure. Regardless, it needs to reduce, Even if they get down to 10 or so. It's just too frickin' unwieldly to update right now.

 Haight wrote:

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
Yeah its not like having 16 armies instead of 15 is going to negatively effect a healthy four to five year army book cycle.

Well i think its more like this (if rumors about 9th are to be believed, and are somewhat being fleshed out in End TImes, and note you still have the ability to completely play mono-army).


Beastmen, Daemons, Chaos become 1 army.

Wood, Dark, and High elves become 1 army.

Brets and Empire become 1 army. Dwarves maybe?

Tomb Kings and Vamp Counts become 1 army.

Skaven likely stay solo.


Wild cards / no one really knows for sure: Dwarves, Lizards, Ogres, Orcs and Goblins.


If they did chaos dwarves, they could roll them out in phases and lump them into the Chaos Unified army. Probably won't ever happen but i'd love to see it.


So we consolidate 11 of the 15 into 5, which is pretty good, with 4 more being something of wildcards / no one is really sure. Leaves us with 9 armies, give or take. Still kind of a lot. I'd love to see the game get down to 7-8, if it were me. Problem is that starts necessitating some hard choices. Dwarves go with humans. Ogres go with Greenskins. Lizards stay solo. That gives you 7. Maybe 8 is the sweet spot. Not sure. Regardless, it needs to reduce, Even if they get down to 10 or so. It's just too frickin' unwieldly to update right now.

Why does this make any sense. Why would GW do this? Where's the benefit to them?

GW makes money by creating buzz with new releases. New rules comes out, new models accompany them, existing players rush out to update their armies while other players are enticed to start a new faction on the basis of a shift in the power curve or shiny new models.

All that consolidating the armies does is make it more expensive to produce each book while over-saturating the buzz around each release. Better to spread it out over a number of books.

They are MUCH more likely to just introduce a faction-based alliance matrix than they are to consolidate books.

PirateRobotNinjaofDeath wrote:

 Haight wrote:

 Col. Tartleton wrote:
Yeah its not like having 16 armies instead of 15 is going to negatively effect a healthy four to five year army book cycle.

Well i think its more like this (if rumors about 9th are to be believed, and are somewhat being fleshed out in End TImes, and note you still have the ability to completely play mono-army).


Beastmen, Daemons, Chaos become 1 army.

Wood, Dark, and High elves become 1 army.

Brets and Empire become 1 army. Dwarves maybe?

Tomb Kings and Vamp Counts become 1 army.

Skaven likely stay solo.


Wild cards / no one really knows for sure: Dwarves, Lizards, Ogres, Orcs and Goblins.


If they did chaos dwarves, they could roll them out in phases and lump them into the Chaos Unified army. Probably won't ever happen but i'd love to see it.


So we consolidate 11 of the 15 into 5, which is pretty good, with 4 more being something of wildcards / no one is really sure. Leaves us with 9 armies, give or take. Still kind of a lot. I'd love to see the game get down to 7-8, if it were me. Problem is that starts necessitating some hard choices. Dwarves go with humans. Ogres go with Greenskins. Lizards stay solo. That gives you 7. Maybe 8 is the sweet spot. Not sure. Regardless, it needs to reduce, Even if they get down to 10 or so. It's just too frickin' unwieldly to update right now.

Why does this make any sense. Why would GW do this? Where's the benefit to them?

GW makes money by creating buzz with new releases. New rules comes out, new models accompany them, existing players rush out to update their armies while other players are enticed to start a new faction on the basis of a shift in the power curve or shiny new models.

All that consolidating the armies does is make it more expensive to produce each book while over-saturating the buzz around each release. Better to spread it out over a number of books.

They are MUCH more likely to just introduce a faction-based alliance matrix than they are to consolidate books.

Well for one, it comes directly from their financial statements saying the decline of fantasy is in part due to the difficulty in keeping the game up to date which is a direct factor of having 15 armies ; That if there were less armies it would be faster to update and turn revisions of the game, generating more sales.

For another, i can tell you that despite whatever evidence you're basing this on, i've worked in the game industry professionally for a major game maker, and you're assumptions about "moar books = moar money!" is flat out wrong. Books are not huge margin makers, not even rule books. They are incredibly man-power intensive (writing, editing, layout, proofing, multiple passes at each), and there's only so much price a market will bear. Models by proxy are much more margin prone. Also there's the economy of scale. It costs WAY more to do those four steps in their various multiple passes individually for three armies (say, elves), than it does to do those same four steps at their individual multiple passes ONCE.

Ergo, your low margin, high manpower intensive item goes to the costly steps less times, and goes to print (also costly!) less times. You also reduce the number of books you need to publish, but you can now fit in rules and artwork for as many new units and models as you want, without having to actually SHOW the model (before you hit that reply button with "no way will GW do this", it is exactly what privateer does. They drop a book for each game every other year, and each book has several releases in it that have rules but no model for quite some time. It is a VERY effective model. You publish a book every other year for each game, and you have that entirety of time worth of models release schedule. It works. If you don't believe me, go take a look at the last seven years of sales comparison and market share data of Privateer to GW, and lets resume the conversation. ). Which means you can spend more time throughout the on the designing of new models and rules, which is where your profit centers are.

Also.... to use nice round numbers. Lets say there are 1000 elf players world wide. 550 of them are Dark Elf Players. 350 of them are High elf Players. 100 of them are Wood Elf Players.

You release three individual books. Great! You have 100 people buying wood elves, and maybe stragglers here or there to paint some stuff. Most players of the Dark and High no matter how much they like the wood, unless they really want to paint or model it or think they might start up wood, otherwise they aren't going to pick up any wood. See where i'm going ?

Or you release "Elves of All Shapes and Sizes". Still 1000 players. Now you have 1000 players that can sample and pick and choose from all three lines of models. You are making your customers buying schedules and habits INCLUSIVE instead of EXCLUSIVE, and that is going to also increase your chances to increase revenue. This is precisely why they are doing Legion of Undeath, Chaos, and Host of the Eternity King to test the waters and see if they see anecdotal or real evidence of increased metrics of sales of the various army types. It's live fire marketing intelligence.


Now do the same as all above, and now introduce allies / mercenaries too. Great! now your elves can also bring in Ogres. Or your Ogres can bring in Chaos. Or your Chaos can bring in Undead (so in this case, now 5 lines of product to choose from...).


So in honesty, as they are trying to save a dying game, these are first tier steps they can take to get even more money out of existing customers, while they make the game (potentially) smaller for buy in to attract new customers (another admitted from company statements issue with fantasy currently ; buyin is too high, barrier to entry too large) so that they can dive into the game. FIrst tier step they've taken to do this: reduce model count. How did they do this (if and when people want to): you can now spend up to 50% on lords and heroes. This is a direct measure to reduce the model count required to pierce the barrier of entry (buy in) and play the game with minimal investment (the "taste test" phase ; i spend my 50-100 dollars and see if i like it, if i do, i spend more...).

Games are not just made by people that love to make rules and cool models ; its a business, and there's economics and psychology influencing all of that.

-- Haight

I guess with the above model they could also justify selling the books for a higher price as they will include the rules for multiple armies within.

As I'm new to fantasy but old to the hobby I am quite hesitant about the changes. At times it seems like a good idea to shake things up, but really if we see lots of models removed from the game come 9th I will be very dissapointed.

 Bottle wrote:
I guess with the above model they could also justify selling the books for a higher price as they will include the rules for multiple armies within.

As I'm new to fantasy but old to the hobby I am quite hesitant about the changes. At times it seems like a good idea to shake things up, but really if we see lots of models removed from the game come 9th I will be very dissapointed.

You are dead on, and the books can be sold higher in price with probably 1/3 -1/2 less production cost. This means more margin, and that means more profit. It's a win for the company all the way around.

To the second point ; i'd really only worry about models / rules going away in two instances: 1) is this character dead or killed off in End Times ? If yes, be worried. 2) Did this thing never have a model (be it unit or character) ? If yes, potentially be worried.

Past that i'm not too too worried, though i won't breathe totally easy until i start seeing plastic kit replacements for things that were metal and went to finecast (for instance, eagles).