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 PsychoticStorm wrote:
That works for Magic because the effort involved beyond buying the cards is zero, in wargaming were assembling and painting is involved especially in the numbers GW games demand the effort is massive.

Sorry, but deckbuilding and testing requires a lot of time. If you want to win...

And if you just want to play, knocking GW minis together isn't very much effort.

I was thinking if I should write in a parenthesis that yes you must visit forums, read blogs, watch tournaments ectr.

But on the most basic level the cards are an effortless acquisition are ready to play from the box and the sentimental bond is usually non existent, in contrast with building your own wargame force.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
That works for Magic because the effort involved beyond buying the cards is zero, in wargaming were assembling and painting is involved especially in the numbers GW games demand the effort is massive.

Sorry, but deckbuilding and testing requires a lot of time. If you want to win...

And if you just want to play, knocking GW minis together isn't very much effort.

John, you're being a bit ridiculous. Whatever deckbuilding and testing exists in Magic also exists in minis games (except maybe AOS for reasons you'd disagree with). Also, "knocking" together GW minis still takes an hour for a 5-10 squad compared with 15 seconds for spreading out the magic cards in front of you... and that is of course discounting the additional several hours necessary at a minumum to paint and base the minis as intended (which of course you can skip optionally) compared with another 30 seconds to "sleeve" your magic cards.

I do a lot of boardgaming, and I dispute that it takes anywhere near that kind of time to get a GW starter game up and playing. Especially as painting is NOT required.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
If your strategy is to burn the crops for fast profit instead of cultivating it for larger profit but also in more depth of time then yes, creating unbalanced overpowered new releases that are superior incentives for people to buy, but at the cost of older models and players who either cannot compete to the arms race, or are frustrated to see their collection becoming unplayable.

A balanced system has the advantage of keeping all the models an attractive purchase, allows players with different preferences coexist and has the bonus of people coming back having their old collection ready to play. It is a bad solution if the companies strategy is essentially a pay to win model.

The term that i would use is 'Going for the quick dime, not the slow dollar'.

The thing to bear in mind is that balance requires extensive playtesting - and that playtesting takes time.

Add in a paranoia about people finding out what is coming out soon and playtesting becomes unlikely.

Then there is the added problem that game designers don't always like to listen to the playtesters - and why I keep mentioning 4e D&D - the playtesters told the designers about problems with the skill tests, but years later those same problems were in the published version of the game, and led to a massive errata for the first printing. (In regards to Mantic, I rather expect that Thornton has a bit of that same problem - he seems a great person to make the first draft of the rules, but not so great to write the published version.)

The Auld Grump

 Talys wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

As for the upcoming mid-year. I fully expect it to show a marked drop in sales due to AoS. This doesn't necessarily mean that AoS is failing just that they're witnessing an implementation dip due to the reboot. I'll admit that I'm pessimistic about AoS' future but a decline is expected on this report; if you don't see some improvement between this year and the next, a smart investor would reconsider their future with the company.

It would be stunning beyond stunning if sales didn't drop after 3 months (half of the period) was exclusively Age of Sigmar. Even if sales only dropped a little bit, GW should be thrilled to bits. If I had to make a bet, I'd bet like a GBP 5-10m loss.

I don't think GW will be thrilled showing a loss, and certainly not one in the neighborhood of £10 million!

 Alpharius wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 agnosto wrote:

As for the upcoming mid-year. I fully expect it to show a marked drop in sales due to AoS. This doesn't necessarily mean that AoS is failing just that they're witnessing an implementation dip due to the reboot. I'll admit that I'm pessimistic about AoS' future but a decline is expected on this report; if you don't see some improvement between this year and the next, a smart investor would reconsider their future with the company.

It would be stunning beyond stunning if sales didn't drop after 3 months (half of the period) was exclusively Age of Sigmar. Even if sales only dropped a little bit, GW should be thrilled to bits. If I had to make a bet, I'd bet like a GBP 5-10m loss.

I don't think GW will be thrilled showing a loss, and certainly not one in the neighborhood of £10 million!

Thrilled, no, but they have a new scapegoat now that the single-man stores card has been played out, AoS and the inevitable implementation dip associated with a new system replacing an old one will suffice for the next year or so to distract most investors.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
That works for Magic because the effort involved beyond buying the cards is zero, in wargaming were assembling and painting is involved especially in the numbers GW games demand the effort is massive.

People can and do feel that their effort is worthless when their top tier armies become obsolete with the next update, I am not current with PP, but from my local PP players I get that although models get out of rotation they stay current with new characters that make them current again.

I spent a herculean effort organizing cards and decks Your point is well taken, though, and tongue and cheek aside, I concur. The point I made previously, though, is tat there are people who view the chance to buy new models for their army in exactly the same way as people look at buying cards for a new expansion. The bid difference is, how much do you enjoy putting together and painting these models? if its your favorite thing to do in the world, it's hardly a negative compared to buying more cards.

Keep in mind too, a lot of nerfed cards are worth practically nothing, whileach model offers many hours of modelling fun, and the residual value o a nice model, which is more than the value of most nerved cards.

But yea, the time involvement for many is just too much.

 Talys wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
If your strategy is to burn the crops for fast profit instead of cultivating it for larger profit but also in more depth of time then yes, creating unbalanced overpowered new releases that are superior incentives for people to buy, but at the cost of older models and players who either cannot compete to the arms race, or are frustrated to see their collection becoming unplayable.

A balanced system has the advantage of keeping all the models an attractive purchase, allows players with different preferences coexist and has the bonus of people coming back having their old collection ready to play. It is a bad solution if the companies strategy is essentially a pay to win model.

The point of reference upon which I think GW is basing that strategy is Magic the Gathering, where the business model isn't so much "pay to win", but "pay continuously if you want to play with everyone else".

It works a LOT better for people who want to (and can afford to) add to their collection. It doesn't work at all for people who don't enjoy adding to their collection, or can't afford to do so. All I'm saying is, I'm pretty sure that GW thinks that it's using the most profitable strategy, because it's not purposely self-destructive.

It's very hard to keep everything old equally relevant to everything new and still encourage people to buy the new things. It's obviously not just GW with this issue as collections mature, as you can plainly see PP er.... encouraging new model sales

That's exactly the reason I never bothered to play Magic. I was out of games for a couple of years, came back and found my best friend had become a mad magic fan. But I could also see immediately that to catch up with the collection aspect of the game would require lots of spending and trading, rather than playing, so I didn't bother to start.

It is also true, as the next poster said, that it's very cheap and easy to make Magic cards compared to new plastic kits.

The flaws in GW's strategy in my view would be firstly that if they are mainly selling new big models to existing customers, this is not a great incentive for new customers to join, and without new customers eventually GW will run out of new big models to sell. (I've already mentioned the introduction of boats into 40K to justify a new set of rules and models.)

The next flaw is that it seems to make the company even more dependent on 40K. Given most of their costs are absorbed by running their retail chain, it would make sense to diversify into other games -- which in fact we think they are now trying to do. However this of course is off the topic so let's not pursue that avenue any further.

During the years I was actively playing, I bindered my cards. I still have 16" of cards sorted into 9-pocket organizers for deckbuilding. And those are just the playsets, ignoring the duplicates and such. Organizing 1,000s of cards into playsets for efficient deckbuilding is non-trivial.

If I were a Magic competitive 40k player, both my IG, Sisters, Inquisition and CSM all be would be effectively worthless at this point in time. Same with a fair chunk of my Eldar. My SMs are low value, but if I build / buy a few more whatnots for the new Codex, they would be "good", too.

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
During the years I was actively playing, I bindered my cards. I still have 16" of cards sorted into 9-pocket organizers for deckbuilding. And those are just the playsets, ignoring the duplicates and such. Organizing 1,000s of cards into playsets for efficient deckbuilding is non-trivial.

If I were a Magic competitive 40k player, both my IG, Sisters, Inquisition and CSM all be would be effectively worthless at this point in time. Same with a fair chunk of my Eldar. My SMs are low value, but if I build / buy a few more whatnots for the new Codex, they would be "good", too.

And back when I bothered with CCGs a mate of mine toured the country beating the snot out of folk in MTG tournaments while keeping all his cards in roughly-elasticated-together bundles in an old shoebox.

You can squirm and shift all you like, the fact is no matter what "level" of SeriousBznz you choose, the difference in effort required to meet that standard between a CCG and a miniatures wargame is non-trivial, because you don't have to assemble your cards, or paint them, or base them.

DaFeth? There's no "squirm and shift".

Minis, there's quick assembly and go. No painting or basing required. Not even prep is required. And the snap-in / 1-piecers are easy peasy.

I've fielded bare metal and bare plastic. Hell, I've played against an army of legs on bases and other armies using Solo Cups.

The fact is, the effort is whatever you put into it. You can put in as little or as much as you like.

Get off that high horse (and take that stick out) rather than trying to talk down to me.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
During the years I was actively playing, I bindered my cards. I still have 16" of cards sorted into 9-pocket organizers for deckbuilding. And those are just the playsets, ignoring the duplicates and such. Organizing 1,000s of cards into playsets for efficient deckbuilding is non-trivial.

If I were a Magic competitive 40k player, both my IG, Sisters, Inquisition and CSM all be would be effectively worthless at this point in time. Same with a fair chunk of my Eldar. My SMs are low value, but if I build / buy a few more whatnots for the new Codex, they would be "good", too.

And back when I bothered with CCGs a mate of mine toured the country beating the snot out of folk in MTG tournaments while keeping all his cards in roughly-elasticated-together bundles in an old shoebox.

You can squirm and shift all you like, the fact is no matter what "level" of SeriousBznz you choose, the difference in effort required to meet that standard between a CCG and a miniatures wargame is non-trivial, because you don't have to assemble your cards, or paint them, or base them.

First of all, I agree. At the face of it, and generally speaking, it seems a lot less effort to get a top notch magic deck than it does a top notch 40k army.

But actually, **if you want to own every card without paying a bazillion dollars and having a kazillion total cards** it requires a crap ton of trading, playing dumb games with bad players to make friends, card organizing, deck building, cajoling, and everything else. As a parallel, you can simply pay $800 for models and about $400-$1,500 to paint your entire army ranging from acceptable to play to pretty darn decent. Or you can spend $400 or less on models, buying them cleverly, and paint them all yourself at a playable level for less than $50 of consumables.

For the card collector, it's actually huge fun sifting through cards and popping cases of boosters. I mean, I was positively giddy every time I ripped open a new booster, and I lovingly dumped hundreds of hours into organizing my card collection, building decks, and trading. Likewise, for a modeler, it's huge fun building and painting models.

The problem, I think is much the angst that Rick Priestley describes -- this isn't what the company that he helped build was about. What it's become is a profit-churning machine aimed at pleasing the modelling/collecting super-dedicated fan, rather than... well, whatever it was in the 80's and 90's. I'm sure there are many eloquent descriptions of the young wargaming company that many of us loved 3 decades ago.

Part of that is the pitfall of becoming a public company. You surrender the ability to control the destiny of your company in terms such as, "I want to make fun games accessible to everyone" with unfortunate necessities such as, "what will increase our stock price for the next quarter". But even absent public company perils, as PP is discovering (I think), at some point, your game matures, there's not a lot of new players to be had because it's a pretty small market, and you have to figure out ways of getting your existing players to spend more money. Of course, the more of the market that you own, the more this holds true.

Looking long term, yeah, KK is absolutely right: you must be able to attract new players. But that also can't come at the cost of boring your veterans who actually are screaming for you to take their money. I don't think it's an easy problem to solve, and I therefore don't vilify any company stuck in that predicament. Looking at specifically 40k and the big centerpiece model thing, the irony is that for skilled players, MSU is a really, really good way to win games in the current meta. But it takes a lot more thought and skill than moving four imperial knights or an unkillable deathstar.

Now, could GW be a LITTLE more consistent in its rules, and make the game more enjoyable for people who don't fall into its parameters for an ideal customer, without taking away from those ideal customers? I don't see why not.

 Talys wrote:
Part of that is the pitfall of becoming a public company. You surrender the ability to control the destiny of your company in terms such as, "I want to make fun games accessible to everyone" with unfortunate necessities such as, "what will increase our stock price for the next quarter".

If I had a £1 for every time I read this falsehood I probably would have retired to my own private island with a complete collection of all the HH Legions. In resin.

 Baragash wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Part of that is the pitfall of becoming a public company. You surrender the ability to control the destiny of your company in terms such as, "I want to make fun games accessible to everyone" with unfortunate necessities such as, "what will increase our stock price for the next quarter".

If I had a £1 for every time I read this falsehood I probably would have retired to my own private island with a complete collection of all the HH Legions. In resin.

It's either disingenuous or shows a complete lack of understanding of how publicly traded companies operate. GW likes to compare themselves to Apple; the investors were screaming for larger screens while Steve Jobs was alive and it literally took his passing for Apple to move to larger screens, investors be damned, the man ran the company how he liked. GW is vested by institutional investors who literally care not one whit about how the company is run on a day-to-day basis as long as the dividends continue to roll and they keep their heads above water financially. No, the big problem with GW management is that they are a combination of risk-averse and seem incapable of differentiated approaches to their product line.


As for Magic.
I have the option of participating in booster drafts on a weekly basis, on Magic Friday, in most areas of the US or picking up pre-builts with each new release as opposed to being chained to a "competitive" mindset. It baffles me that some people are so binary in their games, I read this board and I constantly see talk that people are either ultra-competitive or don't play which ignores large groups of people who are different shades in-between the two poles.

 Talys wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Who cares if it's a games company that makes models to go into its games, or a model company that published games into which to put its models. Maybe it's both.

The point is whether the business needs both tracks to be successful, and how well it is doing at that.

I agree. The core questions should be:

1) Could GW make more money if the business wrote games that appealed more to the competitive and pickup crowd? Or would they actually make less money?

2) Would the entire hobby community (not just the vocal online pro-gaming component) grow and make the hobby be a more profitable one with more participants if they did?

3) If GW 2015 were more like GW 1990, what would the hobby and competitive landscapes look like?

1. There is no way to know from the outside as we have no (very limited) data to prove any of our assumptions. We need data in order to isolate the Vital X and find Root Cause. However, I am sure everyone has an opinion on it.

2. Unknown. See point 1.

3. This is a pretty broad categorization. What would this need to entail?

 Baragash wrote:

 Talys wrote:
Part of that is the pitfall of becoming a public company. You surrender the ability to control the destiny of your company in terms such as, "I want to make fun games accessible to everyone" with unfortunate necessities such as, "what will increase our stock price for the next quarter".

If I had a £1 for every time I read this falsehood I probably would have retired to my own private island with a complete collection of all the HH Legions. In resin.

I don't know if you've ever participated in a management position of a company taken public. I have. Twice, successfully. The process is not very much fun, but it can be very lucrative for the founders. Afterwards, it's even less fun for a lot of people, especially the sort more interested in creating things than in just making money. It's unlikely that post-offering, you'll have exactly the same board (even if you weren't forced to do so, this would usually be a bad idea for your share price), and suddenly you have different stakeholders and different forces pulling at you, plus all sorts of regulatory that you didn't have to deal with before.

Especially in the relatively small public company size (like GW), many founders of companies who have gotten wealthy off of IPOs, acquisitions from public companies, and other means of becoming a publicly traded have expressed their regret at doing so, and would keep their company private if they had it all over to do again.

I work as a financial analyst advising company directors for a living. The majority of my experience is in UK retail.

Some of your comments might apply under some circumstances, they don't apply to GW for obvious reasons.

What I quoted is also a fallacy, it is not a mutually exclusive situation.

(Short answers, iPad typing)

Ooh, is it appeal to authority time? I can play too, as can many others on this forum. None of which precludes the evidence of organizations that smaller public firms like GW with primarily inside and institutional investors have great latitude to run their business as they see fit.

The simple fact that GW leaves money on the table by not pursuing the sale of their product in wider distribution should clue people in that the investors are absent in managerial decision-making and are happy with their dividend checks. Institutional investors generally just dump stock when it doesn't perform rather than get involved in internal squabbles, in my experience anyway.

Which can lead companies to taking out loans, in order to pay dividends.... (Not a good idea, in general.)

The Auld Grump

 Baragash wrote:
I work as a financial analyst advising company directors for a living. The majority of my experience is in UK retail.

Some of your comments might apply under some circumstances, they don't apply to GW for obvious reasons.

What I quoted is also a fallacy, it is not a mutually exclusive situation.

(Short answers, iPad typing)

As a professional matter, I'm not really a big fan of financial analyst types, stock promoters, and brokers. As you may be able to guess, I have a jaded perspective based on my experiences. I wont argue that IPO can be good for the pocketbook, but I found that it totally ripped out the spirit of doing things that we enjoy and doing them the way we enjoy doing them. Suddenly, it's very important to make money, grow, and show that you can keep growing and making more money. Because it's possible to make a ton of money, everyone with a stake in it feels obligated (or at least highly incentivized) to keep that pattern going.

Personally, I wouldn't do it again. I'd much rather have total control, have my books my own business, and not he beholden to others (invest in me, and I promise to try to make you more money). I do understand that, at a large company size, it's an invaluable tool to raise money, and it remains one of the best exit strategies. But if you want to answer why GW 2015 is a lot different than the company founded by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone, I think this is a big factor.

Now, all this being said, I have no skin in the game from the perspective of what happens inside GW. As a *customer* I'm happy with 40k exactly the way it's evolved (and I acknowledge that I may be in the minority), and if Kirby et al are happy with their company, good for them. I think he said he enjoys running the business and all that at some investor tour, and if this format is their thing, well, good on 'em.

KIrby is an accountant, so he's likely to enjoy running GW as an accounting exercise.

Talys, you say you like the way 40K has evolved. Did you dislike the late 5th edition situation in which Apocalyse was a supplement?

My view is that Apocalypse detracts from the core game, but that was not a problem as long as it was an optional extra.

However I believe that for people who enjoy Apocalypse, it would be equally enjoyable if the rules were a supplement or incorporated in the core rules.

@KK - Yes, I would be happy with something like 5e + Apocalypse. I generally enjoyed 5e very much (definitely a high point in 40k), and I thought that Apocalypse was cool when it came out, though I didn't really add big models, and I still don't really play with many of them.

I didn't much like 6e, but it was around for so short a time that it's barely a footnote. It wasn't so horrible as to be unplayable, IMO.

7e has been a good game for me, and since then, I've really grown fond of Formations. I get all the reasons to NOT like them, and I think a large percentage of the formations are not very good, but I like the concept of getting bonuses for playing groups of models that conform to the storytelling aspect, and I like ways of organizing a battleforce beyond a system where it often feels like you must take bad units to take good units.

I also enjoy the campaign supplements and such that have come out in the last couple of years; I think they add a lot of flavor to the game, and the books like Kauyon and Mont'ka are exactly what I like to see in expansion materials.

Yes, I would like them to be cheaper And preferably, softcover, so as not to weigh and take up so much space... even though I most often play in my own home, lol.

I mean, I get that 40k, AoS, and GW the way it is in 2015 doesn't follow Priestley's vision, and were I him, I'd probably not be a happy camper either. As someone with a creative side who gets both attached and passionate with projects, I tend to become attached to my vision of a company too, and take umbrage and resist that being turned upside down. But strictly speaking, as a player and hobbyist, the current release cadence, type and variety of models they produce, type of books they release, and moderate pace of meta change jive with what I like. That's not to say that if it had grown in another direction, I wouldn't have liked it just as much, or more, though.

 Talys wrote:
As a professional matter, I'm not really a big fan of financial analyst types, stock promoters, and brokers.

As I'm none of these things I guess we can be friends (well certainly not the second two)? I'm not really sure what to make of this under than a thinly-veiled ad hominem or a very narrow worldview of what "financial analyst" could mean.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
KIrby is an accountant, so he's likely to enjoy running GW as an accounting exercise.

Only if he's a bad accountant* (I thought his background was tax anyway?). Good accountants understand the balance between hard financials and creativity. The slippery slope of that kind of thinking would lead to DIY stores not selling nails and baby specialists not selling nappies, which of course, is absolutely bonkers.

*Alternatively, you might be thinking about a purely "financial" accountant who might not have sufficient training or understanding of the holistic view of a company. A Management Accountant very much understands the difference.

Formations are a development of several ideas from earlier editions; including Chapter Traits in the 4th edition SM codex, and leader bonuses that came into various codexes such as the Tau Farsight build or the IG orders system..

The potential of this concept was discussed quite widely on DakkaDakka a few years ago, and a lot of us thought it was a good idea, but GW have managed to implement it poorly by not balancing things.

As usual.

Returning to Apocalypse, about half the community loved it and half hated it, judging by reaction on DakkaDakka. So, when GW spooged the Apoc rules into core 40K, they alienated the half of players who didn't want them.

I can never rid my mind of the strange co-incidence that GW recent serious decline in sales started from this point. There is never one cause, of course, but I strongly feel GW would be well advised to split the rules out again if there is an 8th edition.

@Baragash - of course we can be friends. I have friends who are financial analyst types, stock promoters, and brokers

Professionally speaking, I am not a fan of most of the people in the world of investing and public companies, and in particular people whose job it is and who make a living off of taking companies public, selling their stock and increasing their share value. Why?

The IPO process is great for a lot of people, particularly those that need lots of money or want a way out, but it also isn't a great thing for a lot of other people. Those in the business of taking companies public or finding companies funding (and I've met so many that my head spins) seem to think that if a company can be made worth much more, and the founders can be made rich, it's always a good idea. I happen to disagree

But anyhow, I digress. I meant nothing personally against you, and I am friends with and game with people who do jobs that aren't in alignment with my own professional goals and beliefs, well, all the time. No different than I don't believe in reincarnation (I think the concept is crazy), but I can be married to a woman who does believe in it.

The only reason I brought this up, anyhow, was the topic of the discussion, and Rick Priestley's viewpoint. I believe (and have observed) that in many companies, after they go public, the culture, focus, and passion are directed differently. Not always *badly*, but often, differently, and not always in the vision of each of the founders -- who are unlikely homogenous and may have divergent goals anyhow. I'm not making an excuse for anyone, or attacking a fine institution that is perfect for some companies; I'm just proposing one reason of many that may have led Mr. Priestley to feel the way he does in the article.

I offer my own experience as a parallel, as a company I was a senior executive in went public, and made all the people involved lots of money, but then changed the entire focus of the company almost solely to the next quarterly statement, setting expectations, exceeding them, and spinning everything about the company. I don't harbor anyone ill feelings; I just wouldn't do it again, which isn't to say that others shouldn't.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Returning to Apocalypse, about half the community loved it and half hated it, judging by reaction on DakkaDakka. So, when GW spooged the Apoc rules into core 40K, they alienated the half of players who didn't want them.

I can never rid my mind of the strange co-incidence that GW recent serious decline in sales started from this point. There is never one cause, of course, but I strongly feel GW would be well advised to split the rules out again if there is an 8th edition.

I'd have no problem with that, and truthfully, the big models I enjoy building and painting more than playing anyhow.

I don't know how it is in other scenes, but when the superheavy and gargantuan monstrous creatures were rare, nobody had a problem around here with not fielding them if the opponent didn't want to play that, or of the battle would be too lopsided. Now, they're so common and the ways to deal with them are so well known I'm not so sure it's a huge problem anymore.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Formations are a development of several ideas from earlier editions; including Chapter Traits in the 4th edition SM codex, and leader bonuses that came into various codexes such as the Tau Farsight build or the IG orders system..

The potential of this concept was discussed quite widely on DakkaDakka a few years ago, and a lot of us thought it was a good idea, but GW have managed to implement it poorly by not balancing things.

As usual.

Returning to Apocalypse, about half the community loved it and half hated it, judging by reaction on DakkaDakka. So, when GW spooged the Apoc rules into core 40K, they alienated the half of players who didn't want them.

I can never rid my mind of the strange co-incidence that GW recent serious decline in sales started from this point. There is never one cause, of course, but I strongly feel GW would be well advised to split the rules out again if there is an 8th edition.

I think it's probably gone to far to break Apoc out from 40K now. Keep 40K as is for those that want to play it that way, and stealth re-boot the game with an additional squad level ruleset.

Bartali wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Formations are a development of several ideas from earlier editions; including Chapter Traits in the 4th edition SM codex, and leader bonuses that came into various codexes such as the Tau Farsight build or the IG orders system..

The potential of this concept was discussed quite widely on DakkaDakka a few years ago, and a lot of us thought it was a good idea, but GW have managed to implement it poorly by not balancing things.

As usual.

Returning to Apocalypse, about half the community loved it and half hated it, judging by reaction on DakkaDakka. So, when GW spooged the Apoc rules into core 40K, they alienated the half of players who didn't want them.

I can never rid my mind of the strange co-incidence that GW recent serious decline in sales started from this point. There is never one cause, of course, but I strongly feel GW would be well advised to split the rules out again if there is an 8th edition.

I think it's probably gone to far to break Apoc out from 40K now. Keep 40K as is for those that want to play it that way, and stealth re-boot the game with an additional squad level ruleset.

But 40K already is a "squad level ruleset". If anything, it is Apocalypse that should be a separate ruleset with streamlined rules to speed up play in large games (2000pts+). Aircraft, Superheavies etc should be confined to this Apocalypse ruleset, and the "standard" 40K game should be scaled back down to what it was back in 3rd and 4th Ed, 2000pts or less, with mostly infantry and a handful of tanks.

And then we can use Kill Team for a Necromunda scale skirmish game.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

But 40K already is a "squad level ruleset". If anything, it is Apocalypse that should be a separate ruleset with streamlined rules to speed up play in large games (2000pts+). Aircraft, Superheavies etc should be confined to this Apocalypse ruleset, and the "standard" 40K game should be scaled back down to what it was back in 3rd and 4th Ed, 2000pts or less, with mostly infantry and a handful of tanks.

And then we can use Kill Team for a Necromunda scale skirmish game.

I'm OK with "Apocalypse" being 2,000+ pts. But the streamlining should be across the board, for all rules, not just Apocalypse. Otherwise, Apocalypse becomes the immediately superior game from a gaming perspective.

The "standard 40k" game should be scaled back to 40k 3E size: 1,500 pts. I dispute that it needs to be predominantly infantry. Just cap the points.

Necromunda is supposedly the first next-gen Specialist Games product coming out. I look forward to seeing what happens there.

Keep in mind there are 2 different apocalypse games, in reality. One, where people bring every model they own and every turn takes 2 hours. The other is just as many points, but every turn goes quickly, because it's an 8x12 table faith a dozen 500+ point models, and a few small models like a deathstar and some heroes.

The problem with a lot of the gigantic models now, especially with the new rules that came out, is that many of the small models are just a waste of time to field.