Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 TalonZahn wrote:
If you don't think that GW has a long history in under-producing product and selling out quickly, then you haven't been a GW Customer for very long.

(You quoted this part in one of your replies. I didn't realize I had to spell it out for you.)

This is their literal Standard Operating Procedure.

As for Me vs. Them on the anecdotal side, that comes down to local vs. global thoughts.

On the whole, this game looks to be losing steam; less topics, less coverage, less articles, generally less everything from all sources (Official or not).

Locally, your 5 guys might really like playing the same 5 Minis over and over. Congrats.

I was referring specifically to the bit about "This game is in a terminal tailspin and I know it" (Paraphrased). Thanks for the condescending tone though, very reasonable of you.

No worse than anything you posted...... Mate

Alas, here comes the dogpile.

Since you've all proved your stance at least as well as I have (you haven't), I'll go back to not posting.

People who complaint about lack of coverage and slow production is probably not familiar with Specialist Game or realize that these are all side games lol. (AT already had the fastest production rate amongs all SG's games)

I'll say that be patient, or come back after a few years. Now that AT might get a collaboration with AI, that'd bring a whole new unit type into the game, and double the content release for the game.

They do need new competent rule writers though.

 TalonZahn wrote:
No worse than anything you posted...... Mate

Alas, here comes the dogpile.

Since you've all proved your stance at least as well as I have (you haven't), I'll go back to not posting.

"If you don't think that GW has a long history in under-producing product and selling out quickly, then you haven't been a GW Customer for very long.

(You quoted this part in one of your replies. I didn't realize I had to spell it out for you.)"

What on earth, Sir, would possibly make you believe that I was talking about stock levels? Go read my posts. I'm not sure how this could have happened. Perhaps I have somehow managed to wildly miscommunicate in the space of a handful of sentences. If that is the case I apologise.
/Edit - for clarity I'll say again - it's your claim that this is Dead Gaem that is befuddling me.

Didn't say it was dead.

I said losing steam, and fast.

 TalonZahn wrote:

On the whole, this game looks to be losing steam; less topics, less coverage, less articles, generally less everything from all sources (Official or not).

[citation needed]

I think this might help:

From this years Horus Heresy Open Day Titanicus Seminar:

Oh, and another tidbit from the Titanicus seminar. A number of the Transfer sheets, Command Slates and card packs are appearing as either No Longer Available or have disappeared completely from the online store. This isn't because they've stopped doing them, on the contrary. It's because there has been so much demand that they've massively oversold what they were expecting - Andy Hoare gave the comparison of having a projected years worth of stock and having it sell within a month. They're working on getting more in stock ASAP.

Sounds like an actual production shortage in that they massively underestimated demand.

From the Vigilus Weekender late last year:

I had a good chat about releases, future support and future plans. The Specialist Games team were very frank and open.

Games are divided into Tier One and Tier Two. Tier One games are games such as Blood Bowl and Necromunda that will continue to receive releases every three months - that could be models, supplements or gaming tools such as dice. These are the products that bring in the steady revenue and allow the games to grow and develop but also provide the profits to develop new games. However, that means the design team have to continue planning, sculpting and writing these products which reduces the time to develop new games. Currently, the design team is still small and time is divided between the three current specialists games of Bloodbowl, Necro. and AT.

So, how does this affect Battlefleet?

The original intention was to start Battlefleet this year. However... when the team sat down and planned out the resources it would take to get Battlefleet up and running including rules production, designing the classes of ship into CAD, designing counters and all the 'bits' of the game - they realised they would have to pull every member of the Specialist team off every project for the next year. This is due to the small size of the team and the resources they have. Clearly this is not possible if the other released games need continuing support to grow and develop with new releases. This means that currently Battlefleet has been shelved.

But...

Due to the success of all the Specialist Games (the Warlord and Reaver have been two of the most successful kits produced by GW this year) there are plans to increase the size of the Specialist Games team both in designers and rules writers. This will lead to an increased production capability that means that Battlefleet will eventually be worked on but not in the near future.

So, disappointing news but that can be tempered against the idea that the department is expanding and doing very well - possibly better than expected.

New people will be working on AI, and I see it as a move to keep the schedule release on time (quarterly release) It won't be any faster than that. You just won't have to wait 8-9 months like that time BB hit a stop.

I can live with quarterly plastic releases just fine, so long as they don't start derping out as with Necromunda using up plastic production slots on oddities and extras rather than actual Knights & Titans.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I can live with quarterly plastic releases just fine, so long as they don't start derping out as with Necromunda using up plastic production slots on oddities and extras rather than actual Knights & Titans.

Yeah, Kal Jerico in plastic is a really odd decision. The Ambots I can understand as they're pretty much unverisal and can be used as conversion fodder. But Kal? Pretty niche. I suspect they didn't have time to produce a full set and Kal is a filler release

 Yodhrin wrote:
I can live with quarterly plastic releases just fine, so long as they don't start derping out as with Necromunda using up plastic production slots on oddities and extras rather than actual Knights & Titans.

They've probably been pulling people from other games to make AT kit, AT require much bigger kits than the other.

 TalonZahn wrote:
Didn't say it was dead.

I said losing steam, and fast.

In your opinion. Backed by zero facts. Yet people are buying and would buy more if GW would produce. Community is bustling with activity. Hardly sign of losing steam fast when activity is more of increasing.

Did anyone really think that this games was going to have more than a quarterly release schedule? a Faster release stream than blood bowl or Necromunda? I think it's getting the steam it was always going to have. slw and Steady wins the race these days rather than the old 90's approach of a huge splash and fast releases before 'running out of steam'.

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Did anyone really think that this games was going to have more than a quarterly release schedule? a Faster release stream than blood bowl or Necromunda? I think it's getting the steam it was always going to have. slw and Steady wins the race these days rather than the old 90's approach of a huge splash and fast releases before 'running out of steam'.

The mindset usually is "Game is dead until my favorite X models is released"

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Did anyone really think that this games was going to have more than a quarterly release schedule? a Faster release stream than blood bowl or Necromunda? I think it's getting the steam it was always going to have. slw and Steady wins the race these days rather than the old 90's approach of a huge splash and fast releases before 'running out of steam'.

While the game does indeed have steam( the players themselves are providing that ), the game delivered a fart when a small bang was needed( the undersupported release of DOM ).

SamusDrake wrote:

MarkNorfolk wrote:
Did anyone really think that this games was going to have more than a quarterly release schedule? a Faster release stream than blood bowl or Necromunda? I think it's getting the steam it was always going to have. slw and Steady wins the race these days rather than the old 90's approach of a huge splash and fast releases before 'running out of steam'.

While the game does indeed have steam( the players themselves are providing that ), the game delivered a fart when a small bang was needed( the undersupported release of DOM ).

Certainly disappointing for the Knight household, everything else for the Titan player was great tho, the stratagems and legio have some insane rule.

I'd like to see actual Knight expansion : named character, special weapons, stratagem,household trait, Knightly Qualities not copy paste from one house to another.

And the new Fortis Maniple make a full knight list look like joke.

I think Molech is pretty disappointing as a knight expansion, but decent as a titan expansion. The expanded stratagem list is a good thing, for example. Failing to put the house-specific knight strats in the rulebook is absurd.

The quality of rules writing in AT is alarmingly bad. I do worry about this great game getting wrecked by the people who brought us phosphex quad launchers and all that nonsense.

Every time FW writes a rule for 30/40k the gods flip a coin and the community holds its breath. Will it be trash tier (usually) or game-breaking (too often)? So as much as I’d love to see more support for this awesome game I’d also like not to see terrible rules with no playtesting whatsoever.

For AT we seem to have an added complication of trying to figure out what the rules actually mean, often with little evidence to work from. The writers have chosen to diverge from the usual approach of trying to write clear rules that explain what happens in the game. Instead they have provided us with a more abstract selection of moods, colours and scents, from which we have to try and piece together a coherent explanation.

The rules are mostly good. But reading the books is like hearing about the rules second hand from someone who once watched a game being played.

That, or they don’t actually understand their own game. This would explain things like how Legio Vulcanum gets a “bonus” princeps seniors that everyone else gets too, but with a terrible penalty if either of them dies. Or how Atarus and Krytos get basically nothing at all.

Speaking of, has any 3rd party producers or Thingiverse makers made a Lucius pattern armour pack?

Well DOM itself is good enough but redundant for what its intended for; Knights. Obviously thats soon to be addressed but in the mean time we're left admiring the book than actually putting it to use.

But moving on from that well-beaten horse, I'm a little puzzled over the logic behind having at least two banners of the same type in a lance. Obviously there is the coordinated strike order requiring the same weapon across a lance-banner, but I don't see how this restriction actually contributes anything to the game itself.

Any thoughts?

Mandragola wrote:

Every time FW writes a rule for 30/40k the gods flip a coin and the community holds its breath. Will it be trash tier (usually) or game-breaking (too often)? So as much as I’d love to see more support for this awesome game I’d also like not to see terrible rules with no playtesting whatsoever.

People keep making remarks like this, as if the GW Studio are somehow paragons of writing clear, coherent, reasonable, fair rules.

FW occasionally produce a gamebreaking unit, GW have repeatedly produced gamebreaking armies(hell, 7th Edition WHFB Daemons were so bad they kicked off the downfall of the entire game system and setting). FW generally produce rules that track a bit below the point where you'd seriously consider the unit for competitive play, while with GW rules anywhere up to half the units in a given book will be virtually pointless.

FW are likely best used in casual, fun, narrative games for sure, but I maintain the same is true for GW material, people have just managed to convince themselves otherwise.

Anyway, as it stands, I've not seen anything really ludicrous in AT. It's not the most finely honed tournament-chess game ever made, but it's a GW product so who was really expecting that anyway? It's pretty balanced, and pretty good at testing the old noggin in terms of tactics - if that's not enough to get you on board that's a shame, as I'd argue you're missing out on something really special for the sake of an ideal that never has and never will exist from a GW system, but if it's not to your taste that's just the way it is.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Mandragola wrote:

Every time FW writes a rule for 30/40k the gods flip a coin and the community holds its breath. Will it be trash tier (usually) or game-breaking (too often)? So as much as I’d love to see more support for this awesome game I’d also like not to see terrible rules with no playtesting whatsoever.

People keep making remarks like this, as if the GW Studio are somehow paragons of writing clear, coherent, reasonable, fair rules.

Compared to FW (with exception of Phil Kelly, or the guy who made 6th/7th edition Tau to lesser degree), yeah, pretty much they are. Which is sad if you think about it.

I mean, just look at lists from big tournaments from last year. Every single one of them, loyalist or chaos, is stuffed full of pay to win FW gak, starting with Leviathans, through Fire Raptors, Deredeos or Contemptors right behind them, to all the broken IG and SM tanks on end. I am personally sick of this and would like to see GW dreads and tanks on table too, but competitive crowd somehow runs almost pure FW as main offensive component every single time without fail. I wonder why if both sides are just as bad, as you claim?

Just look at Adepticon winner - Jim Vesal was playing nearly pure Chaos Daemons utilizing all he could wring from Chaos soup, and guess what the only CSM unit besides HQ was?

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/adepticon19-vesal2.jpg

Even though it's still nothing compared to "Ultramarine" list (where 950 out of 1500 points were 3x FW dreads/tanks) or "Iron Warriors" (1200 out of 1500 points all being Chaos Deredeos).

FW occasionally produce a gamebreaking unit, GW have repeatedly produced gamebreaking armies(hell, 7th Edition WHFB Daemons were so bad they kicked off the downfall of the entire game system and setting). FW generally produce rules that track a bit below the point where you'd seriously consider the unit for competitive play, while with GW rules anywhere up to half the units in a given book will be virtually pointless.

Ha ha ha. I take you never tried to play vs Custodes, Thousand Sons, or Mechanicum in HH? These three factions pretty much did what you say, killed 7th edition based HH with broken bs (such as generic, cheap custodes HQ effortlessly slaying primarchs left and right, Scoria and some random dude, Nowhere who did nothing in HH being able to take on two primarchs at once while costing less than either one, and that's just the tip of the iceberg and the other things they have are even worse than that). Now, after mass toning down, it's better, but still much worse than 8th edition is, and their 40K rules were left untouched despite being in bad need of similar rebalance...

FW are likely best used in casual, fun, narrative games for sure, but I maintain the same is true for GW material, people have just managed to convince themselves otherwise.

Yup, because 12 phosphex quad launchers or invisible Lorgar taking on the whole enemy army and sweeping it effortlessly all by himself sure sounds like casual fun, eh?

Fun fact - after hearing for years how broken primarch with invisibility is, FW doubled down and made Magnus not only with invisibility, but also (unlike Lorgar who pretty much had to resort to punch stuff) ability to vomit D strength at range by buckets. Nothing in 40K was ever that broken, with maybe 7th edition Eldar being a contender, which is pretty sad when you consider the fact 95% of HH is space marines and it takes some real serious effort to rival most broken army ever while working from common statline and point costs.

Let's face it, then only thing stopping broken FW garbage from being everything every single player ever runs is the fact most players have no idea how broken it is due to rules being hidden in obscure, unadvertised book. Even among these who do, price/availability is the real deal breaker, but once these are no longer a concern, like on tourney, "balanced" FW is somehow the only thing that is being fielded as nothing in GW range can compare especially with recent rapid balance changes eliminating outliers far less broken than that quickly.

FW apologists can repeat their fables of "balance" as often as they want, one look at competitive lists and tactica threads is enough to disprove them.

Good thing that AT isn’t 30K or 40K.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Mandragola wrote:

Every time FW writes a rule for 30/40k the gods flip a coin and the community holds its breath. Will it be trash tier (usually) or game-breaking (too often)? So as much as I’d love to see more support for this awesome game I’d also like not to see terrible rules with no playtesting whatsoever.

People keep making remarks like this, as if the GW Studio are somehow paragons of writing clear, coherent, reasonable, fair rules.

FW occasionally produce a gamebreaking unit, GW have repeatedly produced gamebreaking armies(hell, 7th Edition WHFB Daemons were so bad they kicked off the downfall of the entire game system and setting). FW generally produce rules that track a bit below the point where you'd seriously consider the unit for competitive play, while with GW rules anywhere up to half the units in a given book will be virtually pointless.

FW are likely best used in casual, fun, narrative games for sure, but I maintain the same is true for GW material, people have just managed to convince themselves otherwise.

Anyway, as it stands, I've not seen anything really ludicrous in AT. It's not the most finely honed tournament-chess game ever made, but it's a GW product so who was really expecting that anyway? It's pretty balanced, and pretty good at testing the old noggin in terms of tactics - if that's not enough to get you on board that's a shame, as I'd argue you're missing out on something really special for the sake of an ideal that never has and never will exist from a GW system, but if it's not to your taste that's just the way it is.

I'm not asking for a perfect game. I'm hoping that a really good game isn't ruined. AT works now and I hope that it carries on being good. I'm worried about careless rules writing with no testing or proofing whatsoever. I've seen this make a mess of 30k (which the community keeps going with a whole new rulebook of house rules) and the complete nonsense of their rules for 40k when 8th first came out, which forced GW to apply massive points nerfs. Even so you still get weird stuff like a guy I know winning a major tournament with 3 tiger sharks after FW gave them a vast upgrade with no increase in points... which lasted until the next GW FAQ fixed them again.

Mandragola wrote:
and the complete nonsense of their rules for 40k when 8th first came out, which forced GW to apply massive points nerfs.

Kind of like how GW released complete nonsense and had to massively nerf it? Am I the only one who remembers the debacle of conscripts and commissars? Or GW-only space marine flyer spam that broke the game so hard GW had to change the core rules of the game to exclude an entire class of units from scoring objectives or counting as models on the table?

The basic game mechanics are solid.

Is everything balanced - no.

Do I care that much - no.

Am I really in it for giant stompy robot models - yes.

 schoon wrote:
The basic game mechanics are solid.

Is everything balanced - no.

Do I care that much - no.

Am I really in it for giant stompy robot models - yes.

I completely agree. I think the game as released is great.

What I’m worried about is what happened to 30k. That was a game that was advertised to be about space marines fighting each other in mass combat. When betrayal came out you could more or less make the case that this was true. But even then, those big squads were horribly vulnerable to the tanks and lords of war that FW really loves to make.

Over time the problem has got worse and worse. New factions and models come out, with ever better ways of hosing MEQs off the board.

The unit that gets the most mentions is the phosphex quad launcher. A unit of 3 fires 12 blast markers per turn, all at ap3, with a “creeping death” rule letting the firer reposition them after scatter, and these templates then all remain in play. So of course it’s completely devastating to a marine army. It’s also completely ridiculous to actually do. For a 5 turn game you’d need 60 small blast templates. It takes a serious amount of time to resolve too. But at the same time they’ve also introduced whole armies, like admech, where virtually everyone (apart from some incredibly cheap troops) has some different variety of MEQ-hosing gun.

It’s obviously fair to complain that GW writes bad rules too. But they at least try to fix them. Those quad launchers have been around unchanged for years now.

To repeat: I’m not asking for a perfectly balanced chess game. AT is awesome right now. I just want the game not to be ruined, like I think 30k was.

Well you can send email to them to express your opinions, I doubt the SG folks read dakka that often. Personally I'd email them everyday telling them to bring all the Gatling weapons back to their correct stat line, but i highly doubt that'd do anything.

Now can we back to news and rumour please.

Mandragola wrote:


To repeat: I’m not asking for a perfectly balanced chess game. AT is awesome right now. I just want the game not to be ruined, like I think 30k was.

I share your concerns (although I have no experience with 30K or other Forgeworld rulesets apart from AT).

I gather that the rules designer for AT left after completing the core game. That worries me because FW could indeed end up in the position of 'not understanding their own game', as mentioned above. Maybe they have already. I don't know.

On the other hand, I think players of Specialist Games tend to be a bit less... WAAC? Do we still use that acronym?... and more willing to come to gentlemen's agreements that such-and-such a rule or supplement is vetoed because it's broken/silly/game-wrecking. Like everyone agreeing that only the campaign arbitrator should use Spyrers in classic Necromunda, and things like that. So instead of a new book ruining the game, I think (or at least hope) most players will just decide to pretend it doesn't exist.

Or maybe I'm being too optimistic.

 Irbis wrote:
-snip-

See, the problem here is in order to refute this heap of reeking nonsense, I would have to spend literally a full day typing out the list of all the hideously, laughably, gratuitously broken stuff GW has sharted out over the years, so congrats, I concede the point because you're defending a company with a record so ludicrous it's literally too much trouble to fully detail exactly how ludicrous.

 Irbis wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Mandragola wrote:

Every time FW writes a rule for 30/40k the gods flip a coin and the community holds its breath. Will it be trash tier (usually) or game-breaking (too often)? So as much as I’d love to see more support for this awesome game I’d also like not to see terrible rules with no playtesting whatsoever.

People keep making remarks like this, as if the GW Studio are somehow paragons of writing clear, coherent, reasonable, fair rules.

Compared to FW (with exception of Phil Kelly, or the guy who made 6th/7th edition Tau to lesser degree), yeah, pretty much they are. Which is sad if you think about it.

I mean, just look at lists from big tournaments from last year. Every single one of them, loyalist or chaos, is stuffed full of pay to win FW gak, starting with Leviathans, through Fire Raptors, Deredeos or Contemptors right behind them, to all the broken IG and SM tanks on end. I am personally sick of this and would like to see GW dreads and tanks on table too, but competitive crowd somehow runs almost pure FW as main offensive component every single time without fail. I wonder why if both sides are just as bad, as you claim?

Some points to raise here. Most importantly point 1.

1. FW don't write the 40k rules for their products these days and haven't since the indexes converting to 8th ed. Everything thereafter was produced by Citadel (GW 'main'). So the current Fire Raptors, Deredeos and Contemptors et al are using rules created by 40k rules writers, not FW's writers. GW writes ALL rules for the models in 40k. FW writes ALL rules for the models in 30k. They are separate and distinct.

2. Phil 'writer of the greatest Ork Codex ever' Kelly no longer writes rules and has not in a considerable time (to my chagrin as he got the ork codex so well), he has, for a couple of years now, just been writing AOS background. That's what he does now. I'm sad about that, but he's apparently much happier writing background and not undergoing trial by internet every time a codex came out.

3. You reference 3 armies in 30k, 1ksons, Custards and Mechanicum. I have to ask, politely, if you are playing that game at the moment? Sons and Custards were certainly fairly borked when they were released and Inferno in general was a far less perfect book than it's predecessors, but both armies have undergone extensive rewriting in both FAQs and now with book 8's total revision of the Custards and introduction of all manner of psy-breaking equipment and squads to counter Sons edge, I'd be perfectly happy taking on either with my Alpha Legion. As to Mechanicum, they were initially feared on release several years ago because they were the first non-marine army and everyone with marines suddenly had to come up with something to counter them, but broken? Not in the slightest. Scoria is Primarch level (or he was until he was also nerfed) but I'd personally seen Horus, Magnus, Russ and Mortarion deathstar him into the ground (I've also seen him rangekilled on 2 occasions...). So your points on this game read as totally out of touch with the current game or someone who's skim-read.