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If the stock is already at distributors do they need a big release window? Just couple it with something else for a weekend surely. They could easily pair it with something like Chaos Knights or the like. Then again they might be trying to avoid it stealing the thunder of Warcry - even though we know that whilst Warcry is going to be big it is very Chaos focused - and whilst GW said there'd be rules for all the other armies at launch we don't know the full details and its only chaos who are getting new kits.

If it's at distributors and they are waiting for a release window, that could be the "politics" the store managers was angry about.

I bet they wished they’d just gone with a printing company based a little bit closer to home now.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I got the impression that there was some issue on the China end but no elaboration as to what. Could have just been a machine broke down at the printing factory and set their schedule back for all I know.

Fast forward and I have heard reasonably reliable information that the new Sylvaneth stuff is already at distributors right now, but GW is waiting for a release slot in the schedule to open up.

Its the China tariffs, most game companies are having a hard time right now. Not all GW paper goes through them tho, but i believe new releases on all books do for fast turn around, then they go to the GW work sites after.

Anyone know how mercenary companies work in Skirmish? They're on the warscroll builder under, so presumably they can be used, but do you have to take the "mandatory" units listed in the GHB, like the necromancer in the Sons of the Lichemaster, etc?

 nurgle5 wrote:
Anyone know how mercenary companies work in Skirmish? They're on the warscroll builder under, so presumably they can be used, but do you have to take the "mandatory" units listed in the GHB, like the necromancer in the Sons of the Lichemaster, etc?

Without an Errata for Skirmish, I think they don't work at all.

Honestly GW is just ticking Skirmish over in the background at present. I think they are basically stuck waiting for the Battletomes to be out for all/most armies in AoS because they can really devote resources to Skirmish in a big way.

Then again we also have Warcry coming out this summer which is set to have rules/ways to use other armies than just the chaos factions. So we don't yet know if Warcry is one of those "big summer wonders that vanishes by Christmas" or if its going to be the AoS "kill team"

Hanskrampf wrote:
Without an Errata for Skirmish, I think they don't work at all.

Shame, I was hoping someone would have a clear cut answer for this!

It's not quite the same thing as Skirmish, but my group is about to start a Hinterlands campaign, and we are wondering what would be the best way to include the mercenaries from GHB (or if we should at all).

Overread wrote:Honestly GW is just ticking Skirmish over in the background at present. I think they are basically stuck waiting for the Battletomes to be out for all/most armies in AoS because they can really devote resources to Skirmish in a big way.

Then again we also have Warcry coming out this summer which is set to have rules/ways to use other armies than just the chaos factions. So we don't yet know if Warcry is one of those "big summer wonders that vanishes by Christmas" or if its going to be the AoS "kill team"

Hopefully the latter!

The current incarnation of Skirmish is just so bizarre to me, not just the lack of support when Kill Team has been so successful, but I also just don't understand why they didn't get the guy who wrote the Hinterlands ruleset to write it (who they had already hired!). It just makes it feel so half-hearted, some of the scenarios were ported over and the warband selection is somewhat similar, but a lot of issues that continue to plague it were generally "fixed" in Hinterlands.

Skirmish is currently half-hearted because its marketed to the current customers. That's why it was slipped into White Dwarf rather than its own product. GW still has around half of the AoS armies without a 2.0 battletome, of which some of those forces have never had one at all. So right now its not the best time to have a "kill team" style product that encourages and gets loads of people into the game fresh because a lot of the armies they might start have no army book to buy and thus no progression into the core game of AoS.

So yeah right now its a bit of a back-burner even Warcry, if it turns out, is being pushed "more" as a Chaos thing at present and its own separate product rather than as the AoS answer to Killteam.

I fully expect GW to push an AoS Killteam product but not until Christmas or after when they should have a good chunk of the AoS armies with a Battletome.


Baring in mind that with things like Aelves the army situation is a real mess and we could still surprise lose things (like we lost Gitz and Greenskins)

I'm not expecting to see Aelves lose anything big. It really shouldn't have shocked anyone to see Gitz and Greenskins vanish since they didn't really vibe with Gloomspites or Ironjawz/Savages.

I could see Swifthawk Agents really getting hit or just plain dropped though. They've screwed the pooch so badly with that faction with no foot hero despite there literally being one in the Skycutter kit.

Greenskins was a shock because in the white dwarf that month their getting started set was advertised as part of skirmish and they did have some fairly new plastic models (boar riders). The other shock was that both them and the Gitz could have been absorbed into one of the other factions.

Wolf riders and wolf chariots would easily have fit into Gloomspite Gitz as a wolf-golbin focused force just like they've got one focused on spiders. Just perhaps with nothing new.

Greenskins were in an odd spot as the Ork line did have a fair bit of repetition of themes, but again they could easily have been rolled into Ironjawz or Boncrushers.




So Aelves have loads of "bits" that could easily get taken to the chop. We also have no idea what GW is going to do for the two new aelf forces, though its sounding increasingly like they were originally going to be two hole armies on their own and now the light aelves at least, are sounding like its going to be closer to an alliance of aelves with a few angelic aelves thrown in to help keep things in order. But this is only going on hints in the lore.

We've really no idea what GW's plans are and I suspect they have changed considerably over time.

I don't think even GW knows what they are going to do on any medium to long term basis. I think they kick things out to chase the short term with little eye on the long term.

 auticus wrote:
I don't think even GW knows what they are going to do on any medium to long term basis. I think they kick things out to chase the short term with little eye on the long term.

Really, you think this, despite all the podcasts with designers like John Blanche saying they started with stormcast designs well over 5 years ago, along with most of these model lines taking 3-4 years from design to "on shelf"? Amazing...

The miniature and lore designers very much know what will happen years in advance. It's just the rules team that is one of the last stages... The model designers dictate what the rule guys do, not the other way around.

I think this based off of a long decades pattern of releases that contradict themselves year after year or change direction so wildly year after year. They have a long storied past of not finishing an edition completely before moving to the next one. This was true in 5th edition. 6th edition. 7th edition. 8th edition. AOS Pre GHB. AOS 1.0. Now we're on AOS 2.0 with many factions still haven't even have received a single update since the 2015 killing of WHFB, many factions that had a 1.0 book but not a 2.0 book, and factions that have received 3 or 4 books since then. And even in the 2.0 sphere their direction has changed. Compare nurgle's battletome, a "2.0 like" release and how different the direction is today from it.

And I'm discussing their games. Their rules. Their game direction. Not their model designs. They have proven over 20 years that they lack either the capacity or will to finish off an edition in a way to keep things consistent before jumping onto another direction that they decided on either through choice or through throwing a dart or spinning the wheel of fortune they keep next to their office water cooler.

Sometimes I wonder if the rule designing team should be the ones leading the process rather than the mini designers.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Sometimes I wonder if the rule designing team should be the ones leading the process rather than the mini designers.

I somewhat agree, I do get the feeling that sometimes the whole "mini design leads the way" results in some armies getting way too much attention and others being ignored for way too long. But then again we don't really know how GW works internally and we've often heard how the mini-designers run things ,but not really how much that is true and how much its exaggeration from the truth. Clearly some armies get ignored for too long and clearly management/marketing sends down orders to give specific armies attention to rectify the issue.

I think the real issue is that GW has always treated army updates in a very ad-hock basis. Unless you're marines you don't get regular slots, so its very easy for an army to get ignored and ignored for a very very long time. Under the old scheme where most new models appeared only with a big rules up date in a big block this was a symtom of that system. Today I think that GW's new approaches mean that they have more ability to roll out smaller updates here and there to various armies without needing a huge bulk release. I'd really like to see them embrace that more so with a more spread out release pattern. So instead of 10 new Chaos models, roll out one or two for 5-10 armies over the same span of time. That way a larger percentage of players gets to have new things and a new interest and whilst, over the long term, the number of models coming out is the same; it means that you don't end up with Tyranids being left 5 years for anything new whilst the other armies get their stuff first. Instead Tyranids and everyone else gets something every half a year or year or so in little bits.

I think we are slowly starting to see this, but its not a clear pattern, just a mishmash of releases here and there.

 Kanluwen wrote:
I could see Swifthawk Agents really getting hit or just plain dropped though. They've screwed the pooch so badly with that faction with no foot hero despite there literally being one in the Skycutter kit.

This applies to any highborn faction, they've been mentioned multiple times in the background and hence I'm leaning towards the thought that they're not going to get dropped any time soon. I do hope light elves include the older elves, shadow warrior kit is really neat and it'd be simply such missed opportunity to not somehow use the older resources.

I have a hard time believing that the artists control the entire direction, mostly because it means that the game designers have no agency of their own and nobody wants to work in an agency-less game development.

If it is anything like other game companies then teams can pitch ideas, make some concepts, and then make a case for their idea and, if it is approved, move forward with it. Sometimes it is a standalone unit/model, and sometimes it is a campaign/theme.

Also, if it were the mini-designers controlling the entire narrative I can promise you that they would not be going trigger happy on making endless marines and stormcast. So my guess is that there is more collaboration between different teams and professions than people are willing to give them credit.

What is more likely to happen is that we have moneymakers willing to fund projects. Then teams pitch ideas that management must approve. Then production starts and the money people make projections regarding sales and growth. If something sells well and there are other similar ideas those ideas will be funded as well. If projections are not met then there will be a push to go towards something that might meet projections and estimations. It is in those pushes where you might see GW steer away from one direction to another and/or leave something unfinished.

Now, here is the kicker regarding some armies not getting any attention. Let's take Grey Knights as an example and make up some fictional data about them. Let us say we have Grey Knights and they are the worst selling line in the history of GW, that they haven't sold except a unit or two for several years due to disinterest in them from the customer. In these cases it would be very hard for any team/designers to justify spending resources on making new things for them. The GW money people would look at the pitch and go: "We can't spend a million dollar and get maybe a few thousand back. We need better ideas."

Then contrast this with Space Marines that have always sold well enough. The money people will look at most SM pitches as a good bet even if a bit uninspired.

Now, occasionally a team might come with an inspired pitch and somehow revive a dead weight. In fact, I think the codex/tome releases are often a gateway in revitalizing a line if done well and potentially open up a bigger release later due to better sales. Then you have an artist or a designer pitch a low-hanging fruit like a solo model that might sell enough to make up for its cost(good example is the Arch-Regent). The Primaris Lt. are probably the lowest hanging fruits as they can reuse Space Marine 3D files and just make changes(which is why they can make one off Primaris Lt models for all those occasions), which is also a reason why they release new SM stuff more frequently: it is simply cheaper to design and make due to all the basic armor stuff and weapon already existing in a 3D format just waiting to be assembled.

Mind you that GW has only twice queried their customer base properly so for the most part of their history they've only had sales numbers as their primary metric. Forum and blog info is incredibly unreliable.

At the same time we've seen time and again armies that got ignored, eg Dark Eldar, to the point where they were almost forgotten; or armies with very few models (Necrons) turn around in a massive way when they got investment.

So yes its try a poor selling army is harder to justify investing in because of poor sales; however at the same time ignoring an army results in continual dwindling sales and attention (investment) can reinvigorate the market significantly.

Furthermore its easier to update armies now and then rather than in one big go. Why let an army go 3 editions without new models or a rules update and then "have" to spend a massive fortune in one big go to bring it back to life. Far easier to keep it drip-fed over time - the investment total might be the same, but its spread out and much smoother and an army that remains popular has a greater chance of selling more volume over a longer period of time rather than in one bit fit.

I do wonder if that's another management change at GW. I wonder if the older system was set not just to enable but to encourage those massive swings on investment - big investment followed by a big release and big return. Today we see a lot more of the smaller style releases and updates which might not always be as "big" but I think they keep hype up higher and keep people interested longer and might well be generating more trickling sales over time. That works for GW really well because their product doesn't de-value. So unlike, say, a movie or computer game which has to make big sales in the early days; GW can let products have those big sale periods, but they can also make significant continued income off trickling sales.

To be fair the Drukhari and Necron were more of an exception than the rule. A lot of other lines suffered without new stuff for a long time. I don't remember if Craftworlds got anything between 4th and 6th edition. I will also point out that the Kirby era was a bit bonkers and I wouldn't be surprised if all the weird claims about GW were made when he was at his height as he had completely different idea about how the company should be run.

So yes its try a poor selling army is harder to justify investing in because of poor sales; however at the same time ignoring an army results in continual dwindling sales and attention (investment) can reinvigorate the market significantly.

It can, but it's a risk which is why you see it done less often. I think the Drukhari and Necrons were a better sell as they were probably somewhat popular but had such an aging line that it was more likely to result in a net win rather than a loss. The models were fugly enough that a case could be made that the line had to be sorted out start to finish. Then you have something like Grey Knights that has a lot of decent models but isn't selling well enough and requires a codex rewrite. In case of GK I could imagine seeing another GK sooner rather than later as it will be easier to make a case for that than new models(even if I would expect single models to follow). Worst case they might absorb GK into a larger faction book.

With the newer system I have noticed a few things. They want to sell boxes(Tooth and Claw, Carrion Empire, Wake the Dead) and they use that to push forward low-hanging fruits(new command model like a Spiritseer). This way they can keep the overall overhead low but still make it enticing for increased sales. After all they are just repackaging old models with one or two new ones.

What I've also noticed is that they are investing more into campaign ideas such as Soul Wars, Vigilus, and what not. These are good ways to keep things interesting, progress the story somewhat, and make bespoke models.

The third method they use occasionally is to test a board game and sell it as its own thing while at the same time trying to have specific models made for it. This helps them diversify their portfolio while at the same time allowing for new units to be made that can be used cross-product.

Ultimately their AoS line is a bit of a problem child as it is a scattered line where they are not sure what to do with it or how to solve the problem of having so many old and scattered models. However, I foresee unification of factions more than not and that they will use the Nagash/Skaven model to shepherd those lines.

I am certain that Greenskinz and Gitmob will be back, and with new miniatures.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Sometimes I wonder if the rule designing team should be the ones leading the process rather than the mini designers.

I believe that did happen for a while. It didn't achieve different results. I'll point to the Orc and Gobbo army book that Matt Ward didn't want to do, didn't offer much new and was generally pretty terrible. And we still had long spans of time where armies were untouched, largely because the designers didn't have any ideas for the army. (O&G was just too popular to leave without a book for a long period). This notably affected Brets, TK and Wood Elves.

I'm pretty convinced that was what happened with wood elves, by the way. Most elf ideas were eaten by the Highs and Darks, and Woods just weren't compelling. Then suddenly, new model designs kicked the army over and transformed it utterly. That's the first one I can really point to where the mini designers were calling the shots. I guess the TK also, since it finally diverged from the common undead army they unfortunately split up back in the day, but the snake surfers and generally weirdness didn't help overcome the TK problem, especially since they left the ancient and terrible core army alone.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I am certain that Greenskinz and Gitmob will be back, and with new miniatures.

I'm in this camp as well. People forget that while some of the stuff was new, there was a lot of old in there too.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I am certain that Greenskinz and Gitmob will be back, and with new miniatures.

I'm in this camp as well. People forget that while some of the stuff was new, there was a lot of old in there too.

This popped up on Facebook today when someone asked why they can't use Snotling Pump Wagons and Wolf Chariots in Pitched Battles anymore:

Warhammer Age of Sigmar wrote:We have had a few questions about the Gitmob Grots in relation to the new Generals Handbook. We have passed these questions on so we should have some more information soon.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I am certain that Greenskinz and Gitmob will be back, and with new miniatures.

I'm in this camp as well. People forget that while some of the stuff was new, there was a lot of old in there too.

I’m in the opposite camp*.

I think GW recognizes that generic 28mm Orcs and Goblins is a race to the bottom. Mantic and at least two other companies produce a similar product at cheaper prices. GW has the strength to walk out of that race that they’ve really already won (some O&G kits are older than Mantic) and has the creativity to take the O+G archetype and make something unique(Gloomspite Gits and Bonesplittas) or at a bigger scale (Ironjawz). And there are the consistent mentions and rumors of Grotbag Scuttlers in the lore, so they may be in the works as well. Plenty of options for those with the O+G itch that needs scratching.

Sure, some of the O+G product was new, but that was true of the Tomb Kings as well.

*I’d love to be wrong, but the unceremonious dropping of O+G kits just seems like a ‘put out to pasture’ move, rather than a “be back later” move

There's no such thing as a race to the bottom for GW when it comes to 3rd parties. Raging Heroes is about to release their own sisters of battle style models.

GW can make the most unique, iconic perfectly copyrighted designs for any model and any 3rd party can take that core concept and create their own perfectly legal, just as protected designs that are inspired by it.

There's nothing "new" that GW makes which is protected - griff hounds? Just griffins without wings; melusai - just medusa with a different spelling; demons of slaanesh, just hermapheraite demons with claw arms etc...

 Overread wrote:
There's no such thing as a race to the bottom for GW when it comes to 3rd parties. Raging Heroes is about to release their own sisters of battle style models.

GW can make the most unique, iconic perfectly copyrighted designs for any model and any 3rd party can take that core concept and create their own perfectly legal, just as protected designs that are inspired by it.

There's nothing "new" that GW makes which is protected - griff hounds? Just griffins without wings; melusai - just medusa with a different spelling; demons of slaanesh, just hermapheraite demons with claw arms etc...

Hell, Gloomspite and Ironjawz are just goblins and orcs.

The issue with their design approach is it's backwards. If a line isn't selling, the proper question is to find out why and try to fix that (usually due to poor rules). Instead, GWs approach is to say this army isn't selling, let's not invest in it so it stays poor and continues to not sell and push more of what does sell. There seems to be little or no actually trying to make a line better so it will sell rather than keep it languishing.

That's the complete opposite of what should happen.

Wayniac wrote:
The issue with their design approach is it's backwards. If a line isn't selling, the proper question is to find out why and try to fix that (usually due to poor rules). Instead, GWs approach is to say this army isn't selling, let's not invest in it so it stays poor and continues to not sell and push more of what does sell. There seems to be little or no actually trying to make a line better so it will sell rather than keep it languishing.

That's the complete opposite of what should happen.

True, but the problem is that companies like these will put up teams that are trying to fix these things, but sometimes fixing those things is easier said than done and man power must be rotated between other projects. Again, taking GK as an example, I can assure you that there is very likely a developer or two working on finding out how to fix them, but fixing them, playtesting them, and considering the constraints of the army, can be things that are hindering a release. In the meantime it would be easier to do a guaranteed release of something that sells(like Space Marines or Stormcast). Add on that that while GK is being "fixed" they also need to fix, maintain, and evolve existing lines.

Then all of these things must fit into release windows, financial projections, and you have a very slow moving cycle to work around.

Honestly? My *actual* hope is Destruction gets a Legion of Nagash-esqe treatment with something alongside Braggoths Beasthammer.

Orruks (Greenskins), Gitmobs, BCR and Ogors all in one tome (With the giant there for... Reasons!) all rampaging in one big waagh. I'd also like to add Ironjawz into it, but I honestly see Bonesplittas and IJ getting rolled together)

Or some awesome fusion with new models... Like that BS shaman wyvern we've seen in the art *drools*