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Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I can't seem to find the full planetstrike, apocalypse, or cities of death rules in any of my past 4 eddition's core books.

Could you show me where they are? I hate to have wasted money on books when it turns out there were simply hundreds of pages I missed...

It's a minor footnote in the "narrative" section. Here, I'll copy/paste it for you:

Planetstrike: play a maelstrom mission, except you should deep strike some stuff and forge a narrative.

Apocalypse: play a maelstrom mission, except you should forge a narrative about how you just spent $10,000 on GW models. At the beginning of each turn roll a D6 for each model on the table, and then remove them all as casualties.

Cities of death: play a maelstrom mission, except you should buy a bunch of GW ruins and forge a narrative about them.

Back in 4th/5th edition there were some expansions for those alternate games, with cool scenario rules, lots of fluff to be inspired by, etc. Back then it really was a significant expansion of the core rules, something to justify buying an entire extra book, but those days are long gone.

Something that keeps coming up is the idea that GW is just making these changes to sell more of this or that model. That is not how a big company like GW thinks. It wants to sell more models - not more of any particular kind of model.

And the way that it can sell more models is by making 40k a better game, so that more people will play it, enjoy it more and spend more money on it. It's really that simple. Their commercial interest is to find out what we want and to sell it to us. That's how they will make more money. It's how they have been making more money over the last year, and it's why their sales and their share price are way up.

There isn't some complicated conspiracy at work here. There's an honest attempt at better balance in points values to improve the game. That's not to say I think the points changes are perfect, or that they are the best solution in all cases (I think Bobby G's rules should be changed, not just his cost, for instance). But it's not about them hating FW - it's about them hating to see their game broken - which certain FW units have a tendency to do.

Mandragola wrote:
There's an honest attempt at better balance in points values to improve the game

Whilst I certainly agree, the trouble is that at the end of the day the rules team are still human. They have their likes and dislikes, as do their playtesters. If you hand one of them the task of writing the rules for an army, or testing an army, they really love, of course they're going to be more invested in it. That's completely understandable. But then you have the times when you're handing the job of writing or testing rules for an army you don't like. You've never really played them, and you don't really know how they work. So whilst you'll probably still do your best, it won't be as good as the job you did on the faction you like.

Take Guard. Robbin Cruddace is the lead rules writer for 8th and he's made no secret of his love for the Guard, especially their tanks. Their codex rolls around and they get an amazing book. I don't begrudge Guard players that; on the contrary, I'm delighted for them to get such a wonderful product to play with. And I don't feel it's a co-incidence that the Guard got such an amazing codex when Cruddace is calling the shots. He's passionate about them, so he knows more about them, so he can write good rules for them.

What worries Ork players like myself is that we're on the other side of the spectrum. There's no-one left on the rules team who plays Orks, so there's no-one there who's passionate about them. So no matter who gets the task of writing our codex, it won't be someone invested in them. Orks for most of 6th and 7th were also so bad that many players drifted away from the army, so playtesters who know how the army plays and what it needs are few and far between. Time after time when I pull my Orks out even now in 8th, I get players saying "Oh wow, never played Orks before, this'll be interesting!" I went to a 60 man tournament recently and was the only Ork player there.

So yes, I don't believe there's a conspiracy. But that doesn't mean everything is going to be equal.

Mandragola wrote:
There's an honest attempt at better balance in points values to improve the game.

Increasing the cost of some units 3 times over is not an 'honest attempt at better balance in point values to improve the game.' Especially when such ridiculous point increases are so blatantly systematic of a single subsidiary.

 Peregrine wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I can't seem to find the full planetstrike, apocalypse, or cities of death rules in any of my past 4 eddition's core books.

Could you show me where they are? I hate to have wasted money on books when it turns out there were simply hundreds of pages I missed...

It's a minor footnote in the "narrative" section. Here, I'll copy/paste it for you:

Planetstrike: play a maelstrom mission, except you should deep strike some stuff and forge a narrative.

Apocalypse: play a maelstrom mission, except you should forge a narrative about how you just spent $10,000 on GW models. At the beginning of each turn roll a D6 for each model on the table, and then remove them all as casualties.

Cities of death: play a maelstrom mission, except you should buy a bunch of GW ruins and forge a narrative about them.

Back in 4th/5th edition there were some expansions for those alternate games, with cool scenario rules, lots of fluff to be inspired by, etc. Back then it really was a significant expansion of the core rules, something to justify buying an entire extra book, but those days are long gone.

I have no idea what some oats salty as you is even doing in the hobby.
Because EVERY wargame can be summed as "buy some models and forge a narrative" is you want to be an arse.

Mandragola wrote:
Something that keeps coming up is the idea that GW is just making these changes to sell more of this or that model. That is not how a big company like GW thinks. It wants to sell more models - not more of any particular kind of model.

That's a nice theory, but we know it's wrong. For example, GW's retail stores have separate sales quotas for starter sets that you're expected to meet. It doesn't matter if you have a veteran community and easily make your general sales quota, if you aren't pushing enough starter sets on new players you don't keep your job. Even if you're recruiting new players and selling them other kits you're going to be fired if you don't get those starter sets off the shelf. GW has decided that starter sets need to sell $X/month in their business model, so you either accomplish that goal or GW replaces you with someone who will.

It's easy to imagine a similar thing with FW kits. Resin models have a lower profit margin than plastic, so GW wants as much money as possible being spent on plastic. FW needs to exist to capture the high-end collector/painter market, much of which would be lost entirely if GW didn't offer a suitable product line, but they don't want competitive players (who are currently buying high-margin plastic kits) to shift their purchases to lower-margin resin kits. So they keep making great models for the collector/painter market, but make sure that the rules are weak so that the tournament cash cow is properly milked.

Now, I don't think this is necessarily the correct answer. I think it's giving GW way too much credit for having a calculated plan when the "GW's rule authors are ing idiots" theory has been proven true over and over and over again, and the more likely answer is that someone at GW lost a game to those particular units and, in the grand tradition of "casual at all costs" TFGs everywhere, concluded that their opponent was cheese and powergaming and their WAAC army needed to be nerfed.

But it's not about them hating FW - it's about them hating to see their game broken - which certain FW units have a tendency to do.

This utterly fails as an explanation when some of the units that got massive nerfs were already on the weak end of the scale, completely outclassed by similar codex units, and FW units that are higher on the power scale got no changes at all. This is ignorance of balance by incompetent rule authors, not care for the health of the game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BoomWolf wrote:
Because EVERY wargame can be summed as "buy some models and forge a narrative" is you want to be an arse.

No it can't, and you're missing the point. In 4th/5th edition GW produced some nice expansions for Planetstrike/Cities of Death/Apocalypse. They had detailed alternate mission types, new FOCs, stratagems, guides for how to run a campaign, tips on scratchbuilding terrain and special scenario units, lengthy fluff sections, etc. They were legitimate expansions and alternative ways to play the game. In 7th edition GW released new versions of those expansions that stripped out 90% of the content and replaced it with little more than a new set of maelstrom cards and a vague suggestion to "forge a narrative". But apparently you're so intent on complaining about my opinions that you neglected to see that the issue is GW producing low-effort garbage recently, not scenario expansions in general, and I even praised GW for doing good work in the past.

I have all three of those expansions for 6/7th Ed, and you are dead wrong. My apocalypse book is as big as the entire core rule book for 6th, planetstrike and cityfight were put into campaign supplements with entire books on the narrative within.

The only missions that were maelstrom based were cityfight, and even then you had new objectives as well as tips to put together a campaign set within a major urban areas.

By your description I can easily assume you never bothered to actually open those books. So yes, there is more content here than some point changes and it is definitely a good buy for a twenty bucks.

Sorry, I didn't mention the Apocalypse rules for "roll a D6 and then remove that player from the game" disaster table. I'm not counting rules that are so obviously terrible that no sane person would ever use them.

Mandragola wrote:
Something that keeps coming up is the idea that GW is just making these changes to sell more of this or that model. That is not how a big company like GW thinks. It wants to sell more models - not more of any particular kind of model.

And the way that it can sell more models is by making 40k a better game, so that more people will play it, enjoy it more and spend more money on it. It's really that simple. Their commercial interest is to find out what we want and to sell it to us. That's how they will make more money. It's how they have been making more money over the last year, and it's why their sales and their share price are way up.

If they wanted to make 40k a better game they should provide decent rules first. If we follow the rules word by word we wouldnt be able to play the game at all.

 BoomWolf wrote:

I have no idea what some oats salty as you is even doing in the hobby.
Because EVERY wargame can be summed as "buy some models and forge a narrative" is you want to be an arse.

For some, being this salty is the hobby. Why go to all the effort of assembling & painting models or organising games when instead you can just jump on the Internet and be utterly obnoxious about a company you purport to be a customer of? As most people know, calling staff "incompetent", "fething idiots" or demanding that them and all their colleagues all be fired doesn't achieve much in a practical sense. It's mainly an avenue for the writer to soothe their ego over not having their pet ideas implemented, and try to spitefully discourage other customers over perceived slights. No one in their right mind would walk into a GW open day and tell a writer to their face that they deserve to be unemployed and their family made homeless because their favourite plastic model now costs 9 points instead of 7. Yet for some reason people think this is acceptable behaviour when behind an Internet pseudonym.

I do actually think we should all have gratitude for Peregrine and posters like him. GW have said on several occasions that a big driving force behind overhauling their social media policy in the last couple of years was the fact that for many customers, their one option to find out about upcoming releases was to visit forums like this. After many years of being shunned by GW itself, such forums that had inevitably grown full of toxic individuals spewing bile about the company yet strangely still claiming to be customers. This meant that, for example, if you wanted to find out when the next codex for your army was out you would have to wade through threads about how much people hate some specific rules writer they've never met in person, or sift through the latest round of financial reports for things to gloat about. Not a great situation for anyone involved.
So GW's solution was to take more control over their own information, allowing customers to discuss or speculate on the upcoming release schedule and provide feedback. Thankfully it's working, and we're starting to see customer feedback being incorporated into the final product for the first time in years. Except for people like Peregrine of course, whose only remaining contribution is to petulantly act out in a way hateful enough that it forced a company to create a whole new department and several new jobs to deal with it.

So thank you Peregrine. You are helping to improve this hobby in your own, twisted way.

Wow, that was one of the most legitimately toxic posts I've seen in a long time on this forum.

 xttz wrote:
As most people know, calling staff "incompetent", "fething idiots" or demanding that them and all their colleagues all be fired doesn't achieve much in a practical sense.

Nor does saying positive things about GW. Nothing that is said in this thread will ever accomplish anything, because GW is not reading it. However, I see no reason to refrain from giving an honest evaluation of GW's writers just because it's not as positive as you want it to be. They are incompetent and I will continue to call them incompetent until they show some signs of competence.

No one in their right mind would walk into a GW open day and tell a writer to their face that they deserve to be unemployed and their family made homeless because their favourite plastic model now costs 9 points instead of 7.

I would. I mean, I wouldn't spend the money required to fly to the UK and attend a GW event so it will never happen, but I would not hesitate at all to tell GW rule authors that their work is terrible if I had the opportunity to do so.

I do actually think we should all have gratitude for Peregrine and posters like him. GW have said on several occasions that a big driving force behind overhauling their social media policy in the last couple of years was the fact that for many customers, their one option to find out about upcoming releases was to visit forums like this. After many years of being shunned by GW itself, such forums that had inevitably grown full of toxic individuals spewing bile about the company yet strangely still claiming to be customers. This meant that, for example, if you wanted to find out when the next codex for your army was out you would have to wade through threads about how much people hate some specific rules writer they've never met in person, or sift through the latest round of financial reports for things to gloat about. Not a great situation for anyone involved.
So GW's solution was to take more control over their own information, allowing customers to discuss or speculate on the upcoming release schedule and provide feedback. Thankfully it's working, and we're starting to see customer feedback being incorporated into the final product for the first time in years. Except for people like Peregrine of course, whose only remaining contribution is to petulantly act out in a way hateful enough that it forced a company to create a whole new department and several new jobs to deal with it.

Yes, we know that GW's social media policy is that they want to bring everything under their control so that potential customers only see praise and hype for GW's products and are encouraged to keep buying. We know they want everything to be a pro-GW echo chamber. But I fail to see why burying their heads in the sand and pretending that legitimate criticism doesn't exist is something to be praised. It's absurd to suggest that the ideal is minimum criticism, no matter how many things GW does to deserve criticism.

Suggesting someone be fired for writing toy soldier rules you don't like isn't however 'legitimate criticism'. It's hyperbolic internet noise and diminishes the criticism within by sheer silliness. You can absolutely say 'I think this work is rubbish', not 'FIRE EVAHHRYYONE!' and you're expressing the same thing in a more reasonable, appropriate manner. But suggesting everyone be fired is just not an appropriate thing, and of course any company would disregard such feedback. Just say you don't like it, don't garnish the criticism with needless and hurtful suggestions.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Suggesting someone be fired for writing toy soldier rules you don't like isn't however 'legitimate criticism'. It's hyperbolic internet noise and diminishes the criticism within by sheer silliness. You can absolutely say 'I think this work is rubbish', not 'FIRE EVAHHRYYONE!' and you're expressing the same thing in a more reasonable, appropriate manner. But suggesting everyone be fired is just not an appropriate thing, and of course any company would disregard such feedback. Just say you don't like it, don't garnish the criticism with needless and hurtful suggestions.

Sure it is. I said this in a different thread, but I'll say it again:

GW's rules are terrible, to the point that a complete redesign from scratch is necessary, and their authors show no signs whatsoever of being capable of doing better. Worse, they have demonstrated a "casual at all costs" attitude towards the rules, where yelling "beer and pretzels, forge a narrative" is an excuse for printing bad rules (which are also bad for casual players, btw) and blaming competitive players for having fun the wrong way. This is a company-wide problem, and anything short of firing everyone is just delaying the inevitable. It would be far better to fire everyone up front and admit that you're starting over than to keep pushing out broken rules until you finally acknowledge that the process isn't working and fire everyone.

 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Suggesting someone be fired for writing toy soldier rules you don't like isn't however 'legitimate criticism'. It's hyperbolic internet noise and diminishes the criticism within by sheer silliness. You can absolutely say 'I think this work is rubbish', not 'FIRE EVAHHRYYONE!' and you're expressing the same thing in a more reasonable, appropriate manner. But suggesting everyone be fired is just not an appropriate thing, and of course any company would disregard such feedback. Just say you don't like it, don't garnish the criticism with needless and hurtful suggestions.

Sure it is. I said this in a different thread, but I'll say it again:

GW's rules are terrible, to the point that a complete redesign from scratch is necessary, and their authors show no signs whatsoever of being capable of doing better. Worse, they have demonstrated a "casual at all costs" attitude towards the rules, where yelling "beer and pretzels, forge a narrative" is an excuse for printing bad rules (which are also bad for casual players, btw) and blaming competitive players for having fun the wrong way. This is a company-wide problem, and anything short of firing everyone is just delaying the inevitable. It would be far better to fire everyone up front and admit that you're starting over than to keep pushing out broken rules until you finally acknowledge that the process isn't working and fire everyone.

Ohhhh kayyyyyy. Step awayyyyy from the keyboard...

Gws social media is a bad joke they don't want to hear from us look at how they handled the diversity post banning any dissenting opinion no matter how pleasantly you put it.

Its just smoke and mirrors and its sad people are so willing to buy into it.

CA is just proof that the whole pre 8th speil was blatent lies none of this has been play tested by anyone they are just flailing hopelessly.

Will give them some credit this has to be the fastest I've seen an edition of any game implode.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Ohhhh kayyyyyy. Step awayyyyy from the keyboard...

Thank you for that deep and insightful analysis of GW's rules team. I'll take this as your concession that you don't actually have any criticism of the substance of what I'm saying, and just hate negative posts on principle?

 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
Ohhhh kayyyyyy. Step awayyyyy from the keyboard...

Thank you for that deep and insightful analysis of GW's rules team. I'll take this as your concession that you don't actually have any criticism of the substance of what I'm saying, and just hate negative posts on principle?

Nope, I post reasonably-critiqued negative posts regularly. Please don't attempt to speak for me. I tried discussing reasonable approaches to criticism and you doubled down with an even more amped-up and exaggerated post. You can't demand the firing of an entire team and expect your post to be seen as reasonable, proportionate critique. I honestly suggest just stepping away from the keyboard or directing your views to GW management. Otherwise you're just ranting into the void. Be critical, yes. But be proportionate. If your view of that differs don't bother attacking me, just move on. Have a great day, whatever you're doing.

 JohnnyHell wrote:
You can't demand the firing of an entire team and expect your post to be seen as reasonable, proportionate critique.

Why not? What evidence has the current team given that they are capable of producing quality rules? This is not a one-time complaint about one specific rule I don't like, it's a sustained pattern of poor work going back at least 5-10 years. 6th edition was bad, 7th edition was bad, 8th edition is bad. And the rules are comprehensively bad: poor balance, awful rules bloat, shallow strategic depth, etc. They're bad for casual players, bad for narrative players, and bad for competitive players. And despite all the hype about 8th edition being the best edition ever it's still the same old dumpster fire of bad design and bad balance, with the latest CA changes demonstrating that they have no idea how the game works. It's arguably an improvement over 7th, but only because 7th was virtually unplayable by the end and the positive changes they made (removing formations, invisibility, etc) were all incredibly obvious things that any random player could have figured out. Take the game on its own merits, without the fluff and models to drive sales, and nobody would play it.

So, what reason do you have for keeping the current rule authors employed, besides a blanket assertion that firing people isn't reasonable? What justification do you have for a belief that, if GW continues to employ these people, the product is ever going to be good? And, if they are not capable of making a good product, why should they keep their jobs?

 Tiberius501 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
You can't demand the firing of an entire team and expect your post to be seen as reasonable, proportionate critique.

Why not? What evidence has the current team given that they are capable of producing quality rules? This is not a one-time complaint about one specific rule I don't like, it's a sustained pattern of poor work going back at least 5-10 years. 6th edition was bad, 7th edition was bad, 8th edition is bad. And the rules are comprehensively bad: poor balance, awful rules bloat, shallow strategic depth, etc. They're bad for casual players, bad for narrative players, and bad for competitive players. And despite all the hype about 8th edition being the best edition ever it's still the same old dumpster fire of bad design and bad balance, with the latest CA changes demonstrating that they have no idea how the game works. It's arguably an improvement over 7th, but only because 7th was virtually unplayable by the end and the positive changes they made (removing formations, invisibility, etc) were all incredibly obvious things that any random player could have figured out. Take the game on its own merits, without the fluff and models to drive sales, and nobody would play it.

So, what reason do you have for keeping the current rule authors employed, besides a blanket assertion that firing people isn't reasonable? What justification do you have for a belief that, if GW continues to employ these people, the product is ever going to be good? And, if they are not capable of making a good product, why should they keep their jobs?

It's somewhat justified. Even I'M getting salty and refusing to buy some stuff after the dumpster fire that is CA.

Mandragola wrote:
Something that keeps coming up is the idea that GW is just making these changes to sell more of this or that model. That is not how a big company like GW thinks. It wants to sell more models - not more of any particular kind of model.

And the way that it can sell more models is by making 40k a better game, so that more people will play it, enjoy it more and spend more money on it. It's really that simple. Their commercial interest is to find out what we want and to sell it to us. That's how they will make more money. It's how they have been making more money over the last year, and it's why their sales and their share price are way up.

There isn't some complicated conspiracy at work here. There's an honest attempt at better balance in points values to improve the game. That's not to say I think the points changes are perfect, or that they are the best solution in all cases (I think Bobby G's rules should be changed, not just his cost, for instance). But it's not about them hating FW - it's about them hating to see their game broken - which certain FW units have a tendency to do.

That is a very naive view. ABSOLUTELY, they want to sell a certain model... It is either the model they just released or the one that no one is buying. Once they have bled the consumer base for what is a good unit, that shift the power level of the units in a codex, or shift an entire army (codex creep) in order to move specific models. GW gives a feth about making a balanced game, has stated so publicly (we are a model company, not a game company), and any appearance of attempting to is nothing more than smoke an mirrors in order to shift power again. Why did the holy Trinity go virtually untouched? Possibly because we are smack dab in the middle of an Imperial release cycle... Or even just the fact that space Marines are their biggest sales line item?

Over the years I have always operated under the rule of always count on GW to do the absolute worst thing for either the game or the customer, but CA is a whole new level of WTF.

I think that 8th edition has far more positives than negatives, personally. I think that they've been doing a pretty good job so far in listening to the community and making changes where people have been asking and overall, 8th is really fun to play. In a game that has so many factions, units and options for those units, I'm not surprised that there are some balance issues.

Chapter Approved is the first one they've done in a long time, I'm assuming a lot of the additional rules are experimental and probably a little reserved because they're not sure what'll be cool or not yet.
The points changes are pretty good for the most part, except for a bunch of forgeworld stuff that doesn't make much sense, but I'm pretty sure a different team handles the FW rules, GW just chucked them into CA along with their own stuff because people asked for it. FW have never been great at rules writing so it's not much of a surprised that it's their units who have odd choices for points changes.

I think people these days are too quick to jump on the few bad things and forget about all the good because it's fun to complain.

 Tiberius501 wrote:
I think that 8th edition has far more positives than negatives, personally. I think that they've been doing a pretty good job so far in listening to the community and making changes where people have been asking and overall, 8th is really fun to play. In a game that has so many factions, units and options for those units, I'm not surprised that there are some balance issues.

Chapter Approved is the first one they've done in a long time, I'm assuming a lot of the additional rules are experimental and probably a little reserved because they're not sure what'll be cool or not yet.
The points changes are pretty good for the most part, except for a bunch of forgeworld stuff that doesn't make much sense, but I'm pretty sure a different team handles the FW rules, GW just chucked them into CA along with their own stuff because people asked for it. FW have never been great at rules writing so it's not much of a surprised that it's their units who have odd choices for points changes.

There's also the problem of factions who need help being outright ignored *coughGreyKnightscough*. That is the really inexcusable part that puts the untruth in any statement that it's a good start. A good start at least tried to hit all the targets.

 Peregrine wrote:

 JohnnyHell wrote:
You can't demand the firing of an entire team and expect your post to be seen as reasonable, proportionate critique.

Why not? What evidence has the current team given that they are capable of producing quality rules? This is not a one-time complaint about one specific rule I don't like, it's a sustained pattern of poor work going back at least 5-10 years. 6th edition was bad, 7th edition was bad, 8th edition is bad. And the rules are comprehensively bad: poor balance, awful rules bloat, shallow strategic depth, etc. They're bad for casual players, bad for narrative players, and bad for competitive players. And despite all the hype about 8th edition being the best edition ever it's still the same old dumpster fire of bad design and bad balance, with the latest CA changes demonstrating that they have no idea how the game works. It's arguably an improvement over 7th, but only because 7th was virtually unplayable by the end and the positive changes they made (removing formations, invisibility, etc) were all incredibly obvious things that any random player could have figured out. Take the game on its own merits, without the fluff and models to drive sales, and nobody would play it.

So, what reason do you have for keeping the current rule authors employed, besides a blanket assertion that firing people isn't reasonable? What justification do you have for a belief that, if GW continues to employ these people, the product is ever going to be good? And, if they are not capable of making a good product, why should they keep their jobs?

Take it up with GeeDub, bub. You're still shouting in the wrong direction. I don't write the rules. I'm not even defending them, and I'm not going to be goaded into debating whether or not people should be fired. I'm just saying your hyperbolic approach makes you look like you're ranting, and rants are usually disregarded right away. Such is the way of the world. If you approach such criticism by ranting more/louder, still at the wrong guy, then eh. Volume isn't the best way to be heard in this case. Take that as you will.

I didn’t know that all this stuff was news or rumors regarding the Chapter Approved supplement! You learn something new every day.

Is there a rumor or news about the GW staff being fired, because if not, can you guys move this to one of the like five threads in General Discussion?

Have any pictures of the different army rules materialized in the wild yet?

Nothing I've seen. Just the points list so far.

 quickfuze wrote:


That is a very naive view. ABSOLUTELY, they want to sell a certain model... It is either the model they just released or the one that no one is buying. Once they have bled the consumer base for what is a good unit, that shift the power level of the units in a codex, or shift an entire army (codex creep) in order to move specific models. GW gives a feth about making a balanced game, has stated so publicly (we are a model company, not a game company), and any appearance of attempting to is nothing more than smoke an mirrors in order to shift power again. Why did the holy Trinity go virtually untouched? Possibly because we are smack dab in the middle of an Imperial release cycle... Or even just the fact that space Marines are their biggest sales line item?

Over the years I have always operated under the rule of always count on GW to do the absolute worst thing for either the game or the customer, but CA is a whole new level of WTF.

Something is pointed low.
"Oh they're trying to sell that model!"
Points are raised.
"Ah they must be done selling that model!"

You guys are just too smart for GW. Clearly if everything was balanced we would buy kits from all over the range to try things out. That would be stupid!

 Peregrine wrote:

Lythrandire Biehrellian wrote:
I can't seem to find the full planetstrike, apocalypse, or cities of death rules in any of my past 4 eddition's core books.

Could you show me where they are? I hate to have wasted money on books when it turns out there were simply hundreds of pages I missed...

It's a minor footnote in the "narrative" section. Here, I'll copy/paste it for you:

Planetstrike: play a maelstrom mission, except you should deep strike some stuff and forge a narrative.

Apocalypse: play a maelstrom mission, except you should forge a narrative about how you just spent $10,000 on GW models. At the beginning of each turn roll a D6 for each model on the table, and then remove them all as casualties.

Cities of death: play a maelstrom mission, except you should buy a bunch of GW ruins and forge a narrative about them.

Back in 4th/5th edition there were some expansions for those alternate games, with cool scenario rules, lots of fluff to be inspired by, etc. Back then it really was a significant expansion of the core rules, something to justify buying an entire extra book, but those days are long gone.

I can agree with Planestrike and Apocalypse, but Cities of Death ,at least in 8th, offer a much more depth gameplay around cover, scenery, etc... you don't even need to use the stratagems or use it in an actual city. We use the advanced rules of Cities of Death in all of our games, for flamers, grenades, taking cover, etc...

 Fafnir wrote:
Wow, that was one of the most legitimately toxic posts I've seen in a long time on this forum.

But he is actually right. The reason why GW has create warhammer-community, their facebook pages, etc... is because forums like dakkadakka were full of people with only negative views towards GW. More or less legitimate, of course, I'm not saying GW is perfect, but thats the actual reason.

Daedalus81 wrote:

 quickfuze wrote:


That is a very naive view. ABSOLUTELY, they want to sell a certain model... It is either the model they just released or the one that no one is buying. Once they have bled the consumer base for what is a good unit, that shift the power level of the units in a codex, or shift an entire army (codex creep) in order to move specific models. GW gives a feth about making a balanced game, has stated so publicly (we are a model company, not a game company), and any appearance of attempting to is nothing more than smoke an mirrors in order to shift power again. Why did the holy Trinity go virtually untouched? Possibly because we are smack dab in the middle of an Imperial release cycle... Or even just the fact that space Marines are their biggest sales line item?

Over the years I have always operated under the rule of always count on GW to do the absolute worst thing for either the game or the customer, but CA is a whole new level of WTF.

Something is pointed low.
"Oh they're trying to sell that model!"
Points are raised.
"Ah they must be done selling that model!"

You guys are just too smart for GW. Clearly if everything was balanced we would buy kits from all over the range to try things out. That would be stupid!

Arguments like where posted are the same sort of thing that get people sucked into things like anti-vaxxing, flat-earthing, or any of the other various stupid conspiracies out there.

Firstly people start to think that they're superior because they worked out the 'secret scam' that no one else POSSIBLY could have. This is so important that the scam making any sense is nearly irrelevant. They're money grubbers! NO MOM IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT THERE'S NO MONEY TO GRUB IN MY IDEA!.

Then the assumptions start coming in. Obviously GW has perfect data about consumer preferences at the micro-level AND staff members who parse that data into useable trends despite evidence of them doing very little of this type of market research in the past. THEN obviously they've determined that in game power is the primary, no ONLY driver of model sales. Obviously, I mean it's not like they sold a ridiculous amount of deathguard/Primaris models despite deathguard being below average and primaris being quietly the worst mono-army in the game and inferior to their older counterparts in everyway.

Then once they evily determine the exact quality of kits that need to be sold which is obviously old kits t (new fancy stuff)hat aren't selling. O......kay, we'll put a pin in that one. But yeah they determine the type of kit that they just NEED to sell over every other kit they produce and then they...wait several months/years without doing anything.

But okay, it's months later and now it's time for the big change. Obviously we want people buying more Cawls so we'll drop him 10pts...wait every player in that army already owns Cawl? Darn it, well we'll get the next one. What about dropping SoB tanks? No one's bought a new SoB model since '04 because everyone that stuck around has everything they need or knows how to use ebay? Well shoot.

I know we'll drop Primaris marines, once they're the best army in the game the money will FLOW on...wait, most of it's still pretty subpar and hamstrung by the superior alternatives in existing marine armies...NOOOO! WHAT ABOUT GK TERMINATORS, PLEASE TELL ME THEY'RE BUYING GK TERMINATORS?!?! OH GOD WHY!!!!!

Well...at least we can make sure people stop buying conscripts and Forgeworld stuff. After all, that's what this was really all about. Our multi-million dollar company devoted design, development, and production assets to make sure no one buys superchicken. 'Cause they're eeeeeeevilllllllllllllll.

Rawr.