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Yes, GW have said "no, old marines aren't going anywhere" but that could easily just be a lie or only valid for 8th. Considering they made it a point in the fluff to allow old marines to be "upgraded" into Primaris ones (so your Special Characters don't all suddenly die), I suspect that 9th edition will remove the old line of Marines completely both from the rules and model line, with a "Just use them as primaris marines if you don't want to buy new models" rider.

That's a load of horse-s***. It makes no financial sense, both as the space marines are the best selling line and they'd alienate half their fanbase.

Yes, I'm sure GW will just throw away hundreds of thousands of Pounds worth of production equipment...

Jeepers, boy. The paint ain't dry on my Primaris marines yet, and you're already stressing about the next edition....?

Enjoy the day. One day at a time.

Also, what they ^^ said...

I more expect GW to try to milk both lines, even if Marine sales dwindle to a quarter of what they where, everyone else buying Primaris thats still a LOT of money

 Trickstick wrote:
Yes, I'm sure GW will just throw away hundreds of thousands of Pounds worth of production equipment...

To force people to buy new models? Of course they will.

Also, you can still buy boxes of the various IG units, like Valhallans, from the web store. Those things are from at least 1999.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaconCatBug wrote:

 Trickstick wrote:
Yes, I'm sure GW will just throw away hundreds of thousands of Pounds worth of production equipment...

To force people to buy new models? Of course they will.

I don't think that is how it works. How do you "force" someone to buy new models? Maybe for the top 1% of players, who chase the meta and stuff. The vast majority don't care and just have casual games with friends.

This is always stupid. As long as both keep selling they will always sell both. The only way we'll see gakmarines go away is if people stop buying them altogether.

No they won't, and anybody saying otherwise is doing an exercise of self-indulging in doomsaying.

Absolutely will.

But, not in any kind of earth shattering time frame. It may be 5 years, may be 10, but eventually basic Space Marine kits will slow down, Primaris kits will pick up. The Space Marine kits you do get will be slightly upscaled and possibly "new" designs to work with both and the basic Space Marines will fade. The story will move and slowly replace characters with new "bigger" Marines or Primaris, etc.

As the Space Marine kits sales start to stoop, they just won't replace certain kits which are no longer selling much, etc. So, yes, it will happen. It won't be turning off a light switch. They're not dumb.

The current marine design is pretty iconic, I don't see them axing it anytime soon.

The OldMarines will be left to rot just like sistars while still being supported in printed material with sub-par lists, just like sistars.

Meanwhile, the NuMarines will keep getting new, awesome toys and leave their stunted brothers in the dust.

It'll only be pre-existing players who'll play the OldMarines, anyway. Timmies will look at the shelf and always pick the lean and mean NuMarines over the dwarfish, malproportioned OldMarines. And so the OldMarines will naturally pass away like an extinct species.

The end.

If I recall, the chapters that needed the support were given a primaris company each, only Guilliman's boys have the means of replenishing primaris numbers. I don't think it makes any logical sense for him to shoulder the burden of replenishing entire chapters worth of men on his own in favor of just letting the chapters carry on with their own recruiting.

So unless cawl gives out the means of making the primaris marines (which I don't imagine is likely), I don't think it would even be feasable to completely phase out the marines for Primaris. I doubt any of the chapters are going to be comfortable having their men replaced entirely with roboute's special little boys anyway.

The Primaris Marines are buy-in-large guilliman's elites that on occassion he reallocates when necessary. Don't count on them replacing the new guys entirely.

Yeah, I figure Primaris will be the only marine models by 9th.

Similar things have been done with the beaky marines to current marine mark, Rhino, Land Raider, the Tyranid line, Orks, Chaos and Dark Eldar. I don't think the current SM line is immune to being phased out over the next 5 years or so. They simply don't need to make new SM kits, and when there's enough Primaris kits that you can use them instead of SM, they can just slowly start discontinuing the old SM line. "Use Primaris instead - they have better rules that match the fluff and are the right size anyways." Same exact thing happened with beaky marines.

Considering 8th is a departure from the 'edition' cycle I'm not entirely sure we will get an official 9th edition.

They have not strayed from their cycle at all. There will be a 9th, the question is simply whether it will be coming in 2 years (like 6th to 7th) or 5 years, like most of the older editions.

I'd say it will probably be a very slow process as they phase out some of the old stuff. 5-10 years or so as they put out NuMarine stuff for all the special chapters SW, BA, DA, ect and use old or make new upgrade kits for special minor chapters.

IRC I belive it is put down in the lore that current SM's can become NuMarines through an upgrade progress. I think it is mentioned in the new Dark Impirium novel.

Though as GW dose this I can anticipate GW doing a big "The Last Space Marine" campaign as the old space marines are upgraded to NuMarine/ kill off as casualties of war.

 Stormonu wrote:
Yeah, I figure Primaris will be the only marine models by 9th.

Similar things have been done with the beaky marines to current marine mark, Rhino, Land Raider, the Tyranid line, Orks, Chaos and Dark Eldar. I don't think the current SM line is immune to being phased out over the next 5 years or so. They simply don't need to make new SM kits, and when there's enough Primaris kits that you can use them instead of SM, they can just slowly start discontinuing the old SM line. "Use Primaris instead - they have better rules that match the fluff and are the right size anyways." Same exact thing happened with beaky marines.

But Primaris have worse rules...

And beakies didn't get phased out due to rules. They produced that kit to mould destruction. And then they tried hybrids and snap fit models, neither of which were very good, and finally had the tech for a decent all plastic kit.

Correct me if I am wrong but beakies are just a fancy helmet variation, an entirely different type of marine with it's own unique gear and fluff is something else entirely. It seems like a total false equivalency to me.

MrPyro wrote:
Correct me if I am wrong but beakies are just a fancy helmet variation, an entirely different type of marine with it's own unique gear and fluff is something else entirely. It seems like a total false equivalency to me.

Not really. The level of difference in what we had with the amazing old RTB01 boxed set plastic beakies and later iterations is as great as the change to Primaris marines. The difference is that the change has happened far more suddenly.

In the physical or the statistical? Were beakies their own unit?

MrPyro wrote:
In the physical or the statistical? Were beakies their own unit?

They weren't- a marine was a marine was a marine, even if they were Bloody Dark McWolfypants.

But marines got a huge boost along the way- in the beginning, in Rogue Trader, marines were T3 and power armor was a 4+. At some point along the line in WD, marines were given T4 and a 3+ save, and overwatch.

I guess it will balance out when GW finish phasing out guardsmen for scions...

I doubt it. They want to keep the other marines around so their newest iteration of "my marines are marinier than your marines" has a lesser variant of marine to be compared to.

If they can sell 8 Space Marine lines instead of the 7 (SM, BA, DA, SW, GK, DW, HH) they have been selling until now, then they most certainly will.
I do not see any Space Marine model line dissapearing now and neither in the far future. They are far too profitable. If anything, GW is going to add even more diverse Marine lines rather than remove some.
Really, I think the chance is far bigger that every faction apart from Space Marines is going to be removed than the chance that Space Marines are going to be removed.

I fully expect Primaris marines to become the standard - IMO, the only issue of debate is the timescale involved. It's what GW does and to be honest, what they need to do to be a successful company. I don't especially like it, but there you go...

Selling a £20 or £30 rulebook to someone who already has a 40K army is not much of a profit. The bulk of GW's profit comes from plastic miniature, not rulebooks. How do you get that large core of existing players to keep buying models then? Well, you can introduce new units and models, but GW have shied away from this recently after the GW/Chapterhouse debacle and the fact they seem to be focussing slightly more on tighter rules rather than just using every new codex release as a way to shoehorn in large, costly plastic kits (although I'm sure this will start again once the 8th codexes start appearing). How else can you get existing players to buy in? Well, you release new versions of old kits and you make the scale out of whack so it 'encourages' people to replace their old kits. It's something they have done time and time again. RT01 to 2nd/3rd ed marines, old style to new style terminators, move to 35mm bases, Deathwatch marines and so on and so forth as just a few examples. Each time, the new, flashy kit is slightly out of scale with the existing - the only reason it seems so jarring now is the fact that Primaris marines are of an order of scale difference far greater that it looks even more obvious.

The plastic tooling used for the 'old' space marine kit has paid for itself many times over, even after the redesigns, so GW aren't going to be worried about that. They aren't going to switch off manufacture overnight but I would expect to see production ramped down as the drive for Primaris stuff takes over. Expect to see more like for like Primaris replacement units in the near future. Not everyone will feel obliged to replace units in their army but enough will feel the urge to do so to make it worthwhile.

they would have to move the story on to suggest that most older marines had died out and were replaced by primaris marines.

If it happens it would be in 10th edition not 9th. But I doubt it. Why stop a line that makes them money?

GW's production capacity is not infinite. Every kit has to compete with every other for manufacturing time. So it isn't a case of getting rid of something that makes them money, it's more a case of replacing it with something that makes more money. The old space marine kit has comfortably paid for the tooling but I suspect the sales are fairly stagnant; there is quite a saturation of kits out there. Whereas the Primaris marines, being the new hotness, are going to sell both to newcomers and to existing players hence why the drive will be to sell them over the older kits.

Does anyone really think that Space Marine units are going to be become unavailable while they keep things like Wanderer Glade Guard in stock?

Isn't it far more likely that they'll concentrate new releases on Primaris marines (and vehicles) while keeping the non-Primaris ones available as normal inventory any store can order and sell?

MrPyro wrote:
If I recall, the chapters that needed the support were given a primaris company each, only Guilliman's boys have the means of replenishing primaris numbers. I don't think it makes any logical sense for him to shoulder the burden of replenishing entire chapters worth of men on his own in favor of just letting the chapters carry on with their own recruiting.

So unless cawl gives out the means of making the primaris marines (which I don't imagine is likely), I don't think it would even be feasable to completely phase out the marines for Primaris. I doubt any of the chapters are going to be comfortable having their men replaced entirely with roboute's special little boys anyway.

The Primaris Marines are buy-in-large guilliman's elites that on occassion he reallocates when necessary. Don't count on them replacing the new guys entirely.

****spoiler alert*******



on GW getting rid of "old" marines I seriously doubt it. I could see some blending of them where new kits are primaris marines but can be mixed with normal marines like tac marines and they all just use the same statline. 2 wound devistators be they astartes or primaris as an example. It could be in the fluff by then (likely in at the earliest 2025ish) and the astartes vertrans will be those whop filed the upgrade but kept fighting for the emperor as normal astartes. then again it could also be something where they exist separately and primaris stay just 2 wound space marines just separate but different. it does give gw a whole new lin e where they can swap editions of what is good and what is bad to boost sales.