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 Kanluwen wrote:
What "AoS characters" are they selling you "separately instead of as options in the boxes"?
Genuinely curious here.

Knights Heraldor, Knight-Vexillor, Knight-Azyros, Battlesmith, Grimwrath Berzerker, Skullgrinder, Deathbringer and why not Lord-Celestant who looks so much like a regular Stormcast. GW is free to design these models so that optional parts to build them may fit alongside another unit in a box (see Ogryns as an example), write some fluff that make them being there credible and make some space for them by not putting enough weapons options in said box that people would be able to build a whole Hecatonchires out of them.

This would also have had the benefit of making the high price of the new range easier to swallow and increase the popularity of low sellers like the Liberators that have to compete with the base AoS box (imagine the good it would have done them if they contained the pieces to do a Lord-Celestant or some other lower ranking leader, or an herald and musician).

Rest assured that I am perfectly fine with some models being in a clampack within a range, especially if they want to justify their very high pricing by having only rare models like generals or that are aesthetically quite different from regular models. But so far that is not the case, we just have a lot of clampacks that are unpopular enough for us to not bother with them and order them at customer request, which for us usually means at release, for a very small amount of customers, and never again afterward.

Two years ago the situation would have been different and I would have had a complete set of them available at all time. But there were two major differences back then, the price that was basically half of now and the amount of people who were playing the game. Now, the combination of high price and dramatically lower amount of player means we can't sell them fast enough to justify keeping them on the shelves, it also means they have become prime theft targets.

Overall, I do not believe that the current range of clampacks is helping AoS popularity toward customers, or toward stores like ourselves. Of course everything I say is my PoV only, I do not talk for anyone else.

I agree that sigmarites would have been better box sets if they had more in the box such as in unit standard/musicians. I dont see my self investing in sigie characters... shame. the khorne ones are mainly good tho and i think the boxed sets have had enough variation for my taste.

 Wulfson_40K wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:
What "AoS characters" are they selling you "separately instead of as options in the boxes"?
Genuinely curious here.

Knights Heraldor, Knight-Vexillor, Knight-Azyros,

You do understand that Stormcast were purposely not given standards and musicians, right?
Unlike the 'other armies', their versions serve an army-wide purpose rather than unit specific.

I don't see you complaining about the Bloodsecrator not being buildable out of the Bloodreaver or Blood Warrior box.

Battlesmith,

Remember when you got the clearly marked parts to build a Battle Standard Bearer hero out of generic infantry kits?
Yeah. You don't--because it's NEVER been an 'official' option for a 'Hero Standard Bearer' to be built out of the generic infantry kit. It's long been the case that people kitbashed them but it was never the intention.

Grimwrath Berzerker, Skullgrinder, Deathbringer and why not Lord-Celestant who looks so much like a regular Stormcast. GW is free to design these models so that optional parts to build them may fit alongside another unit in a box (see Ogryns as an example),

So because you cherry-picked a single kit(Ogryns--which can't build a "generic character" like the ones you've named here but rather builds Nork Deddog, a one-off upgrade to an IG Company Command Squad and a kit which is WIDELY considered overpriced to begin with for a unit which is widely considered garbage), it means that GW should have done exactly the same thing with three new ranges for a new system that gets rid of the idea of heroes 'attaching' to units and instead being by themselves?

The Ogryn kit building Nork Deddog seems to have been the exception rather than the rule.

write some fluff that make them being there credible

What does fluff have to do with anything?

and make some space for them by not putting enough weapons options in said box that people would be able to build a whole Hecatonchires out of them.

The whole reason they put 'enough weapon options in said box' now is to cut out the necessity for them to sell 'weapon sprues' and things like that.

This would also have had the benefit of making the high price of the new range easier to swallow and increase the popularity of low sellers like the Liberators that have to compete with the base AoS box (imagine the good it would have done them if they contained the pieces to do a Lord-Celestant or some other lower ranking leader, or an herald and musician).

It wouldn't have done any good if I'm going to be honest--as long as the base AoS box exists, the 'basic' stuff(Liberators, Blood Warriors, Blood Reavers) won't really be popular purchases. It's not really any different than any other time in the past where a starter set has contained expensive models and was sold at a loss.

Why would I spend $30-$50(whatever the price point you throw out for a Liberator box building a Lord-Celestant or some "other lower ranking leader or a Herald and Musician") when for the price of a starter I can get double the number of models(albeit with no weapon options) for Liberators, a unit of Retributors(arguably one of the nastiest units the Stormcast have), a unit of Prosecutors, and two Heroes(one on a Dracoth and one that isn't available elsewhere)---plus I can sell the Bloodbound stuff to recoup the excess?

Rest assured that I am perfectly fine with some models being in a clampack within a range, especially if they want to justify their very high pricing by having only rare models like generals or that are aesthetically quite different from regular models. But so far that is not the case, we just have a lot of clampacks that are unpopular enough for us to not bother with them and order them at customer request, which for us usually means at release, for a very small amount of customers, and never again afterward.

Do you actually have an active AoS community at your store?
Because that kinda helps.

I also find that it helps when you don't have 'veteran' customers hanging around badmouthing the system to potential customers. They don't need to be singing its praises or lying through their teeth, but it really helps to make sure the veterans understand that you're not a clubhouse for them. You're a business.

Two years ago the situation would have been different and I would have had a complete set of them available at all time. But there were two major differences back then, the price that was basically half of now and the amount of people who were playing the game. Now, the combination of high price and dramatically lower amount of player means we can't sell them fast enough to justify keeping them on the shelves, it also means they have become prime theft targets.

Did you ever consider that maybe--just maybe--your customers have no interest in these items to begin with?
Or maybe your attitude towards the game system(as it seems you have an axe to grind) might be driving customers towards other venues to purchase stuff?

Or hell, did you ever consider that maybe people just don't see these things as 'necessary' like they used to?

Overall, I do not believe that the current range of clampacks is helping AoS popularity toward customers, or toward stores like ourselves. Of course everything I say is my PoV only, I do not talk for anyone else.

Well I wish your shop the best, but I think that the lack of popularity for AoS has little to do with the clampacks.


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 Zognob Gorgoff wrote:
I agree that sigmarites would have been better box sets if they had more in the box such as in unit standard/musicians. I dont see my self investing in sigie characters... shame. the khorne ones are mainly good tho and i think the boxed sets have had enough variation for my taste.

You know that Sigmarites don't have unit standards or musicians, right?

Wow the great purge has begun. This is as sad as when confrontation destroyed his magnificient range of metal models

Jeez.

I guess after so many years it was inevitable that GW would have to trim the range. I'm just sad that they're trimming a lot of stuff I like and replacing it with stuff I don't.

While I do understand the need to clean the ranges... I would have loved if they kept some in perhaps a legacy store tab for sale.

Some discontinuations I don't get... Like they are getting rid of the plastic Empire Captain clamp... but keeping the resin/fincast/whatever one? Thought they were phasing that out?

Commander Kirby, the time has come. Execute Order 66.

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
Some discontinuations I don't get... Like they are getting rid of the plastic Empire Captain clamp... but keeping the resin/fincast/whatever one? Thought they were phasing that out?

Something is fishy with the Empire Captain. It's marked with the 'Last Chance to Buy' icon but its not been moved to the 'Last Chance to Buy' category like all of the others. So is he in the wrong category or does he have the wrong icon? Hmmm...

I think we may be looking at things the wrong way with the Finecast models being cut. I don't think they are being cut because they are Fincecast, they are being cut because many Finecast models are named characters.

The cuts made to the Death GA removed all the characters except the Mortachs. These Order cuts are also removing characters.
It was pointed out, possibly in the Heelanhammer podcast that there are are new characters in the fluff, like Vandus and Korghos Khul, but they dont have their own model, they use the generic lord models to represent those characters. Therefore it seems that GW is slimming down the range by removing the dead WHFB characters, and not producing unique models just for one character.

I think there is some evidence of this in what has been cut and what has not. Models of characters with no equatable non-character warscroll have gone, but the Finecasts of Vlad, Isabella, Konrad, Manfred, Heinrich and Krell have stayed because they can easily become generic vampires, necromancers and wight kings. Also as someone posted before some metal WE models have stayed. Again I suggest that it because they are generic heroes, not named characters.

Finally, I was talking to the GW Head of Sales for Japan at a store opening, and he was talking about Finecast and plastics. He said that they don't produce Finecast anymore, they are just selling through stock, so that anything that is't in the last chance to buy should get a plastic kit sometime. So it's not surprising that Finecast characters are going. It's not worth creating a new plastic kit for a unique named character, that isn't going to be the centrepiece of an army, when they can represent a new character from the fluff with a generic model.

It is a bit sad though. I like the named character models, they add, well, character to the armies.

Anyway, my conclusion is these models are being cut because they are the Finecast models of redundant characters, not just because they are Finecast. Generic Finecast and metal models (and character models which can be re-listed as generic models) will stay for now, and will eventually be replaced by plastics. Basically they will keep whatever is worth converting to plastic.

Krell was a named character in Finecast and was kept as a generic Wight King with Black Axe.

Does anyone else see the Firmir Skull under the Slaughterpriests foot?

MrHackenslash wrote:
Does anyone else see the Firmir Skull under the Slaughterpriests foot?

Probably not too much of a coincidence that the Fimir finally got AoS rules yesterday then...

I think there is a lot that goes into these decisions. it looks good for Gw if the last chance to buy stuff is seen to be selling out quickly as it will motivate people to buy more. So if there are a few kits that have loads of stock lying around, they may delay moving them over until the stock had reduced a bit.

I am sure that production capacity is a big factor. they want their factories working hard producing new tactical marine boxes without having to worry about the odd small run of high elf archers.
I am extremely curious how many new runs of legacy products they have done. Did they do a new run of plague monks or did they just cannibalise the mountains of old boxes they had lying around to make the new start collecting box. Businesses drop poorly performing lines all the time. Look at Nintendo or Sony.

If gw was the money grubbing company we all think it is, would they not have dropped underperforming models years ago.

As an aside, is anyone worried about how well last chance to buy seems to be doing? They even got rid of those massively overpriced collectors books. Does this encourage gw to prdoduce more limited releases in the future. This along with the one week preview model is a killer for me.

I am considering buying a couple of boxes of glade riders,but if next weeks Orruks are amazing, I will regret my purchase. If I wait the orruks might be rubbish and the glade riders might be gone. If this becomes the norm in the future, I will probably end up buying nothing.

You could always buy the glade riders and if the Orruks are better sell them on Ebay.

Funny how almost every game is doing away with characters. AoS (though you can substitute), KoW and 9th. Is fantasy so special that no-one's special?

Some guy on Twitter is calling this the bretxit

Bret + exit?

We kind of all saw it coming, sad though it is.

Lots of alternatives for those wanting more Brets while GW approved Brets will just have to be kitbashed.

 Rygnan wrote:

MrHackenslash wrote:
Does anyone else see the Firmir Skull under the Slaughterpriests foot?

Probably not too much of a coincidence that the Fimir finally got AoS rules yesterday then...

Arent the fimir semi-Chaos aligned? without seeing the rest of the skull that is covered by the foot, the skull could belong to any type of creature with that oblong shape.

Pariah-Miniatures wrote:

 Rygnan wrote:

MrHackenslash wrote:
Does anyone else see the Firmir Skull under the Slaughterpriests foot?

Probably not too much of a coincidence that the Fimir finally got AoS rules yesterday then...

Arent the fimir semi-Chaos aligned? without seeing the rest of the skull that is covered by the foot, the skull could belong to any type of creature with that oblong shape.

The Khorne models also have skulls with Khorne marks on them, so Chaos faction team killing isn't exactly out of the question

Chaos kills more chaos than anything else.

Which is to say, pretty sure its a Fimir skull, it seems pretty distinct to me.

Though come to think of it, Fimir are destruction aligned now.

 Sigvatr wrote:

 Uriels_Flame wrote:
Maybe the Brets will become Legion of the Damned and appear when needed...

...so never?

Given that all other armies have huge monsters and strong magic...or golden armors to fight with, I don't see the need for peasants to come in and help.

Peasants could be fun with some kind of Horde mechanic. IDK how well very large units work in AoS.


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 Kanluwen wrote:

 NAVARRO wrote:
Wow! Thats a big cut, I fear for my Orruks now.

Ehhh...Orruks have a Start Collecting set, so the stuff in there at least is safe.

Add in that Savage Orks seem to be getting quite a bit of love from AoS' GW and I think Orruks are going to come out of this fairly well.

Likewise Lizard Men became Seraphons and got some starter boxes and a book.

It looks like GW are strategically culling the legacy armies, which makes sense given the decision to axe all the WHFB books. One of the problems with WHFB was too many SKUs.

It doesn't mean they won't introduce updated (and no doubt pricier) kits to replace some of the lost units.

All those great character models going... :-(

I bet there's dozens of Golden Demon winner models vanishing and a lot of painters faves. Teclis, Tyrion, Alarielle and ofc The Green Knight. Even Visions is still showing a load of these quite regularly.

The real reason GW are cutting them...?
Well, those character models used to be our best painted centerpiece models for our warhammer armies. Why would GW want us spending £8.50 on our favourite stand out model when they can sell us £100 giant plastic models.

Seeing a lot of those named models vanish has finally killed the old Warhammer world off.

Although I dislike AoS, I had been hoping it would do well enough so GW would keep making their fantasy stuff and not axe it all together. For all I care now, AoS can go die in a fire.

This crap makes the squats look like bush league.

 Kanluwen wrote:
... I will not quote such a large comment, sorry, that's far too much for me...

No matter what your intention were I find your answer quite aggressive. The way you cut each sentence to put words under a microscope instead of looking at what I'm saying globally, as well as trying to put words in my mouth or guess what's my intentions are for the sake of arguing is something I do not agree with. I don't play that game, I sell it. I am happy with a game that sells and unhappy with a game that has issues, and no matter how much I complain if I truly had an axe to grind then AoS would not even be at the store to begin with.

Let me just comment one point, you do use fluff to explain why standards and musicians shall not be in a Stormcast box, then when I tell you that GW could use fluff as a tool to justify them being in (which means they could write the fluff to fit their need) you're asking what fluff has anything to do with it? That is exactly what I'm talking about, fluff has to do with it as the very beginning of your post shows. Thought I must admit, in the end what matters the most for a lot of people in the content of the box itself, fluff is just here to make sense of said content.

Anyway I made my point, there is nothing else for me to add, everything is already in my previous post. Sorry but your post is far too big to argue with each point, which is a shame because there are a few ones that would be worth a discussion (most notably regarding the starter box).

 Gimgamgoo wrote:
All those great character models going... :-(

I bet there's dozens of Golden Demon winner models vanishing and a lot of painters faves. Teclis, Tyrion, Alarielle and ofc The Green Knight. Even Visions is still showing a load of these quite regularly.

The real reason GW are cutting them...?
Well, those character models used to be our best painted centerpiece models for our warhammer armies. Why would GW want us spending £8.50 on our favourite stand out model when they can sell us £100 giant plastic models.

That's an interesting thought and seems to ring true.

 Rygnan wrote:

MrHackenslash wrote:
Does anyone else see the Firmir Skull under the Slaughterpriests foot?

Probably not too much of a coincidence that the Fimir finally got AoS rules yesterday then...

The warscroll also has loadout options which there are no miniatures for. Which is odd.

Genuinely saddened by the scale of this cut, so many great models I remember seeing when I first got into the hobby have just been done away with. Ludwig Schwarzhelm in particular I remember the first time I saw a picture of him thinking it was one of the coolest things that I had ever see and imagining one day being able to own him and painting it up.

I'm not overly shocked by it but still very upset by it, so many great conversion ideas ad future projects gone

 The Grumpy Eldar wrote:
While I do understand the need to clean the ranges... I would have loved if they kept some in perhaps a legacy store tab for sale.

Some discontinuations I don't get... Like they are getting rid of the plastic Empire Captain clamp... but keeping the resin/fincast/whatever one? Thought they were phasing that out?

I believe he is one of the early plastic characters that required the square base to complete the model, probably why he's being discontinued.

Wow, GW really wants to make it hard for people to buy their models to play KoW and Dragon Rampant instead of AoS.

Was in my local GW and ordered a box of Glade Riders. I'm making an elf army for KoW with a mix of Island of Blood plastics and wood elves.

The manager didn't know about the order stuff going last chance to buy - he was pissed that no one at HQ had told him and started ordering stuff for himself straight away. Pretty surprised he hadn't been told.

I guess in part it depends on when you started with GW, there used to be a much faster turn over of stuff

(although you could usually get them to dig out old stock or even spin an old mould via mail order unless they'd lost it which wasn't unknown)

then great purging of the metals (and all their moulds, minus the stuff that went to Wargames Foundry) killed the majority of stuff they'd ever done

sad to see some of this stuff go (very sad to see the new tomb kings kits chopped even though they weren't to my taste), but it's always been something that happened periodically

The new faction names are up in the AoS app!

Dark Elves become:
Scourge Privateers(Corsairs, Kharibdyss, Scourgerunner Chariots, Black Ark Fleetmaster)
Shadowblades(Assassins and Dark Riders)
Daughters of Khaine(Doomfire Warlocks, Witch Aelves, Cauldron of Blood, Bloodwrack Medusae and Shrine, Sisters of Slaughter, Death Hag)
Darkling Covens (Dreadspears, Executioners, Bleakswords, Sorceress, Sorceress on Black Dragon, Black Guard, Darkshards)
Order Serpentis (Drakespawn Knights[Cold One Knights], War Hydra, Dreadlord on Black Dragon, Drakespawn Chariots)

High Elves become:
Swifthawk Agents(Shadow Warriors, Chariots[Tiranoc Chariots specifically], Skywarden[Sea Helm on Skycutter], Skycutter)
Lion Rangers (White Lions and White Lion Chariots)
Eldritch Council(Archmage, Loremaster, Swordmasters, Drakeseer, Archmage on Dragon)
Order Draconis(Dragon Blades[Dragon Princes of Caledor], Dragonlord[Lord on Dragon], Dragon Noble[Old Prince/Lords on foot])
Phoenix Temple(Anointed, Phoenix Guard, Frostheart and Flamespyre Phoenix)

Wood Elves become:
Wanderers(Nomad Prince[Araloth!], Waystrider[Glade Lord/Captain with Great Blade], Sisters of the Thorn, Spellweaver, Glade Guard, Wayfinder[Glade Lord with bow/eagle], Wild Riders, Waywatcher, Sisters of the Watch(Sisters of Avelorn!), Eternal Guard, Wildwood Rangers)

Empire becomes:
Collegiate Arcane(Celestial Hurricanum, Battle Mage, Luminark of Hysh, Battlemage on Griffon)
Devoted of Sigmar(Warrior Priest, War Altar of Sigmar, Flagellants, Witch Hunter)
Free Peoples(Freeguild Crossbowmen, Freeguild General, Freeguild Guard, Freeguild Handgunners, Freeguild Pistoliers, Freeguild Greatswords, Freeguild Archers, Freeguild Outriders, Freeguild General on Griffon, Demigryph Knights)

Dwarfs become:
Dispossessed(Thunderers, Quarrellers, Ironbreakers, Unforged(Dragon-Slayer), Warden King(Thane/Lord), Longbeards, Irondrakes, Warriors, Runelord, Hammerers)

Dwarfs and Empire become merged and form:
Ironweld Arsonal(Gyrocopters, Gyrobombers, Cogsmith(Dwarf Engineer), Gunmaster(Empire Engineer), Helstorm Rocket Battery, Helblaster Volley Gun, Dwarf Cannon and Dwarf Organ Gun, Steam Tank)