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Tetsu0 wrote:
I wanted to point out a good example of how the game might look without marines getting disproportionate support and limelight from GW.

Warhammer fantasy didn't have a poster boy faction that was shoved down our throats and shoehorned into every starter boxset. And I and I know others remember no faction really being overrepresented at stores. I'm sure there must have been one that statistically sold the most but it wouldn't be by that much and it wasn't very apparent in the meta or by how much attention the faction got in releases.




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I think space marines have three major factors contributing to their popularity and sales. The first and major factor is probably them being in every starter box since the beginning. These are notoriously the best deals for models being nearly 50% off. It's how most people are introduced to the game and these models have to go somewhere. The marines are almost always stacked lopsidedly against the opposition, and in general have always been a solid faction in each edition.

Second factor is the idea or fact that marines get the most support and new stuff. It's a safe bet for someone wanting to invest in this hobby.
Third would jut be the fact they are the poster boys and focus of almost all stories and novels.

Not sure Fantasy is a great example to use considering it died from a lack of sales.
Maybe having a poster boy would have helped prevent that.

 Ordana wrote:

Tetsu0 wrote:
I wanted to point out a good example of how the game might look without marines getting disproportionate support and limelight from GW.

Warhammer fantasy didn't have a poster boy faction that was shoved down our throats and shoehorned into every starter boxset. And I and I know others remember no faction really being overrepresented at stores. I'm sure there must have been one that statistically sold the most but it wouldn't be by that much and it wasn't very apparent in the meta or by how much attention the faction got in releases.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think space marines have three major factors contributing to their popularity and sales. The first and major factor is probably them being in every starter box since the beginning. These are notoriously the best deals for models being nearly 50% off. It's how most people are introduced to the game and these models have to go somewhere. The marines are almost always stacked lopsidedly against the opposition, and in general have always been a solid faction in each edition.

Second factor is the idea or fact that marines get the most support and new stuff. It's a safe bet for someone wanting to invest in this hobby.
Third would jut be the fact they are the poster boys and focus of almost all stories and novels.

Not sure Fantasy is a great example to use considering it died from a lack of sales.
Maybe having a poster boy would have helped prevent that.

Not really just sale, but rather gw's own greed and terrible rulewriting. (a certain banner springs to mind)

I feel faction popularity is dependent on content. For example back in 2nd and into 3rd Orks were very much the 2nd faction in 40k (obviously the 2nd ed starter box may influence this) but in terms of what you saw in stores and White Dwarf etc. Then they went on a very, very long content drought, with weird missing units and bad rules that made them annoying to start collecting. This situation arguably wasn't totally fixed last year despite people going "Orks are very competitive now" (as opposed to "interesting now"). To the point today I reckon Orks are towards the bottom of the pile of played factions. Although it could be interesting to see some stats (and not just from tournaments.)

Anyway - we shall have to see if Alaitoc is changed, or there is a new overpowered cookie cutter craftworld tactic to use. Tbh I didn't like Successor Tactics as a concept - but they probably died on the back of mono-Chapter rules being over the top. This is just going to be "pick the best options, don't worry about paint scheme".

Feels like they are not even trying to maintain a fluff/crunch link, which sucks a bit.

Tetsu0 wrote:


Warhammer fantasy didn't have a poster boy faction that was shoved down our throats and shoehorned into every starter boxset. And I and I know others remember no faction really being overrepresented at stores. I'm sure there must have been one that statistically sold the most but it wouldn't be by that much and it wasn't very apparent in the meta or by how much attention the faction got in releases.

The Empire were the poster boys, as Ghal Maraz is on the rule book's cover and they do seem to be pretty prominent in the fluff.
Unlike 40k though, they don't show up everywhere and dominated what few releases GW bothered to make for WHFB, and you do have a more even spread of factions.
In the 5th ed starter box, for example, you had brets and lizards, in 6th ed it was Empire and Orcs, in 7th it was Dwarfs and gobbos and finally (sadly) in 8th it was High Elves and Skaven.


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 Ordana wrote:

Tetsu0 wrote:
I wanted to point out a good example of how the game might look without marines getting disproportionate support and limelight from GW.

Warhammer fantasy didn't have a poster boy faction that was shoved down our throats and shoehorned into every starter boxset. And I and I know others remember no faction really being overrepresented at stores. I'm sure there must have been one that statistically sold the most but it wouldn't be by that much and it wasn't very apparent in the meta or by how much attention the faction got in releases.




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I think space marines have three major factors contributing to their popularity and sales. The first and major factor is probably them being in every starter box since the beginning. These are notoriously the best deals for models being nearly 50% off. It's how most people are introduced to the game and these models have to go somewhere. The marines are almost always stacked lopsidedly against the opposition, and in general have always been a solid faction in each edition.

Second factor is the idea or fact that marines get the most support and new stuff. It's a safe bet for someone wanting to invest in this hobby.
Third would jut be the fact they are the poster boys and focus of almost all stories and novels.

Not sure Fantasy is a great example to use considering it died from a lack of sales.
Maybe having a poster boy would have helped prevent that.

Or maybe if GW didn't neglect it and wrote gakky rules that killed the tactical aspect of it they wouldn't have felt the need to go EA on it for not bringing in the cash.

And they had a "poster boy".
You see that hammer on the cover? That's Ghal Maraz. A hammer that belongs to Emperor Karl Franz of the Empire. Storm of Chaos was about the Empire fighting Archaon, Mordheim takes place in the Empire, pretty much every faction in the game had some sort of interaction with the Empire. They were basically WHFB's poster boys, its just that GW didn't play favorites and gave other factions some time in the sun.

WHFB died due to bad rules and very few releases.

Its all very well to say there was one every 3 months - but if it wasn't your faction, you were waiting the best part of 5 years for something new. I mean I don't think various Xenos factions have had the best shake of things - but there have at least been rules updates.

In 8th edition 40k, most factions bar Orks and GSC got a codex within a year. In 8th edition WHFB it took nearly 4 years.

Even so "End Times" got a lot of people back in, because "remember Warhammer, remember when it was fun? And 7th 40k is a train wreck?" - but then they threw it all away.

 Ordana wrote:

Tetsu0 wrote:
I wanted to point out a good example of how the game might look without marines getting disproportionate support and limelight from GW.

Warhammer fantasy didn't have a poster boy faction that was shoved down our throats and shoehorned into every starter boxset. And I and I know others remember no faction really being overrepresented at stores. I'm sure there must have been one that statistically sold the most but it wouldn't be by that much and it wasn't very apparent in the meta or by how much attention the faction got in releases.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
I think space marines have three major factors contributing to their popularity and sales. The first and major factor is probably them being in every starter box since the beginning. These are notoriously the best deals for models being nearly 50% off. It's how most people are introduced to the game and these models have to go somewhere. The marines are almost always stacked lopsidedly against the opposition, and in general have always been a solid faction in each edition.

Second factor is the idea or fact that marines get the most support and new stuff. It's a safe bet for someone wanting to invest in this hobby.
Third would jut be the fact they are the poster boys and focus of almost all stories and novels.

Not sure Fantasy is a great example to use considering it died from a lack of sales.
Maybe having a poster boy would have helped prevent that.

I concede that is a valid point. I also agree with not online that the main driving factor for fantasy's failure was probably mismanagement by GW.

Who knows GW may be slowly moving away from the all eggs in one basket approach with marines. They are starting to have versus boxsets now without marines. And this whole campaign is intended to give some love and attention to all factions, so it looks like they could be at least toning it down a little. I know part of the reason it looks so bad right now is because of the whole primarisification of the marines line that is in progress right now.

Tyel wrote:
WHFB died due to bad rules and very few releases.

I mean I don't think various Xenos factions have had the best shake of things - but there have at least been rules updates.

That's only really a recent development. Releases were infrequent in 40k as well.

Necrons had their 3rd ed book in 2002. They got their next book in 2011, which was 5th ed.

Dark Eldar had their 3rd ed codex in 1998. They got the next one in 2010. Again, 5th ed.

Eldar have been fairly consistent, receiving their 3rd ed book in 1999, their 4th in 2006 and their 6th in 2013 (7 years at a time). They did not receive a 5th ed book, oddly enough.

Orks had their 3rd ed book in 1999, and got their next book in 2008. 5th ed 40k was released like 6 months later.

Imperial guard got a release in 2003 (3rd ed). Next book was in 2009 (5th ed).

Tau had to wait 7 years (2006-2013) between their 4th ed and 6th book releases. They got their 3rd ed book in 2001.

Tyranids are surprisingly frequent. 3rd ed in 2001, 4th ed in 2005, 5th ed in 2010, 6th ed in 2014 (4-5 years between releases)

Chaos Marines actually enjoyed a fairly frequent and consistent release rate : 3.0 in 1999, 3.5 in 2002, 4 in 2007, 6 in 2012. (5 years between releases, they only missed out on 5th ed)

Marines were a little less frequent : 3rd ed in 1998, 4th ed in 2005, 5th ed in 2008, 6th ed 2013 (3-7 years between releases)

And of course, we all know about Sisters of Battle.

So yeah, if you play Tyranids and Marines you were fine. Everyone else had to wait their turn during the 2000s.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

That's only really a recent development. Non-marine releases were infrequent in 40k as well.

Necrons had their 3rd ed book in 2002. They got their next book in 2011, which was 5th ed.

Dark Eldar had their 3rd ed codex in 1998. They got the next one in 2010. Again, 5th ed.

Orks had their 3rd ed book in 1999, and got their next book in 2008. 5th ed 40k was released like 6 months later.

Imperial guard got a release in 2003 (3rd ed). Next book was in 2009 (5th ed).

Tau had to wait 7 years (2006-2013) between their 4th ed and 6th book releases.

Chaos Marines somehow skipped 5th edition, like Tau, but only had to wait 5 years between 4th ed and 6th ed books.

And of course, we all know about Sisters of Battle.

The only factions that really got to enjoy consistent releases were Tyranids and Space Marines, it would seem.

This is true.
I think the issues is that from about 2010-2012 with X-Wing and Warmahordes and a raft of other games, GW could no longer go along with their glacial release schedule, and "we don't care about the rules, we really don't care about balance, if things get too bad we just break out a new edition" mindset. Things had to evolve - which I feel they have.

Rules was probably the killer. As many complained - if the first thing you were told to do was buy 40 Empire Halberdiers, and this brick would likely stumble around the board looking for probably one good fight, you wouldn't think it was the best game. Especially if you then found an Elf player who just dodged all charges while zapping you with shooting and magic.

Yet that happened due to people clamouring for large infantry blocks to have a purpose throughout 7th edition. GW overfixed and the tournament/online list scene did the rest until you were seeing blocks of 50 chaos warriors with a couple units of horsemen or hounds to protect flanks as a common occurrence rather than a potentially viable one. Steadfast and the removal of the replacements for slain models in the ranks not getting attacks back were ridiculous rules the way it was implemented but I feel like warhammer was already dying a death before the release of 8th. I certainly recall demons to a leaser extent dark elf and vampire netlists driving folk from the game.

Dai wrote:
Yet that happened due to people clamouring for large infantry blocks to have a purpose throughout 7th edition. GW overfixed and the tournament/online list scene did the rest until you were seeing blocks of 50 chaos warriors with a couple units of horsemen or hounds to protect flanks as a common occurrence rather than a potentially viable one. Steadfast and the removal of the replacements for slain models in the ranks not getting attacks back were ridiculous rules the way it was implemented but I feel like warhammer was already dying a death before the release of 8th. I certainly recall demons to a leaser extent dark elf and vampire netlists driving folk from the game.

Ramblings ensue.

Demons famously destroyed 7th edition - but yes, things were not healthy. I think the issues were that you alienated people who had been playing cavalry hammer for a decade and didn't really encourage new players to start.

I'm not quite sure how to express this - but I think Fantasy always struggled for whether it should be "a reasonable attempt to give rules to fluff" or "a game".

I got into warhammer over 20 years ago. Mainly because fantasy *looked* cool. Large armies, infantry, cavalry, the odd monster, facing each other across the battlefield. I didn't approach it "as a game" - I approached it as "toy soldiers". I'm sure this isn't true - but 4th and 5th felt like that (characterhammer aside). Rules tried to represent what a unit would "be" like on the table - rather than having a game make something good, because of the rules.

By the time you evolved beyond 6th's Ravening hordes though the thing had very much became "a game". Take this overpowered thing and mix it with this other overpowered thing that fundamentally breaks "the rules of the game". It changed from - lets line up, run into each other, roll some dice and see what happens, to "this character dodges out of your charge arc, so you can't do anything, then he 6 dice's dwellers to blowup your deathstar, GG".

For example - to really alienate people - this is part of the issue I have with Age of Sigmar. On release this was not a game. It was literally as toy soldiers as you can get. "Grab some stuff, throw it into other stuff, roll some dice and laugh about it!"

Which felt.... bizarre.
But at the same time I now think it *is* a game - I have some issues but the rules work well enough - but it isn't one that think meaningfully represents the fluff at all. I can understand people disagreeing - but to me units are just sequences (or circles) of numbers and special rules. They don't "feel" like anything.

This issue obviously lurks behind 40k too. I was a big fan of chapter tactics - because they were a crunch buff for respecting the fluff. But that's essentially dead now. Its just special rules you can take if you feel like it. So its just a numbers game. "How would Alaitoc play on the table versus Biel-Tan? Well its essentially the same, its just blue is a *much* better colour.... but don't worry about that."

This hits the nail pretty much on the head.

Absolutely. Great post.

I'm curious to see the new psychic discipline. Both existing sets are great so the new ones will have to be really good or be redundant.
The previewed one looks good and isn't restricted to bikes and infantry which is promising.
The shuriken trait could be pretty horrific with double guardian bombs.

Jumping in on fantasy having died, it wasn't just poor rules. It was a focus on mega horde units, and the new costing structure mixed with slow releases.

The goldswords come to mind, and the gold guard most armies had. 10 man boxes where you'd want to run them in groups of 30 or 40 but the boxes were like 50$ USD for 10 men.

Doesn't sound bad on its face, until you realize you need like 4 boxes of them to really matter and spread that all over the armies and making a fantasy force ended up being the most time consuming and expensive thing you could do. I was lucky enough to have 2 full forces made from much earlier so missed all of that.

Though fantasy had one of the most expensive units that blew my mind for my army. Blood Knights. Came out at 75$ USD for a box of 5. They were pewter, when they re made them in fine cast ? They were like 95$ USH I wanna say ? Absolute madness, I see they are 99$ now. Wow, still blows my mind.

That is what really killed fantasy, that is all too intense.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
Jumping in on fantasy having died, it wasn't just poor rules. It was a focus on mega horde units, and the new costing structure mixed with slow releases.

The goldswords come to mind, and the gold guard most armies had. 10 man boxes where you'd want to run them in groups of 30 or 40 but the boxes were like 50$ USD for 10 men.

Doesn't sound bad on its face, until you realize you need like 4 boxes of them to really matter and spread that all over the armies and making a fantasy force ended up being the most time consuming and expensive thing you could do. I was lucky enough to have 2 full forces made from much earlier so missed all of that.

Though fantasy had one of the most expensive units that blew my mind for my army. Blood Knights. Came out at 75$ USD for a box of 5. They were pewter, when they re made them in fine cast ? They were like 95$ USH I wanna say ? Absolute madness, I see they are 99$ now. Wow, still blows my mind.

That is what really killed fantasy, that is all too intense.

Aye the pricing on some of these models was insane.
Also some stuff was only mail order, like bestigors here. Hallberds and twohanded weapon options were also often needed for some armies which were also seperately sold sometimes.

Also wasn't the points limit quite a bit higher aswell.

And then there was magic.

There was a lot that led to it, rules leading to army bloat leading to insane expensive kits. It got to the point I wouldn't even question why someone didn't start a fantasy force as I perfectly understood. It was crazy and it wasn't even a consistent madness. Some armies were pretty cheap all things considered others it was like you might as well sell some organs to make a couple rather rudimentary units.

Availability was an issue yes. It sucked as I honestly really enjoyed the different feel for old fantasy, and I just can't make myself want to play AoS when it feels so much like 40k, I'd rather play 40k and have my tanks then.

Add insult to injury and see how in AOS a unit can literally shut down whole armies, hint vhargulf .

But I love my varghulfs !!! Aside from wagons filled with zombies, they're my favorite unit in the vampire counts !

i personally prefered the pirate zombies, for howevershort lived they were.

Afraid the pirate zombies were after my time of large buying for VC. I did quietly hope they'd become a bigger thing however. Pirate zombie/vampire/ghoul/wraiths would be awesome.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
Afraid the pirate zombies were after my time of large buying for VC. I did quietly hope they'd become a bigger thing however. Pirate zombie/vampire/ghoul/wraiths would be awesome.

They are in Total War.
If GW didn't kill fantasy and made their pricing fairer instead of being greedy gaks, then we might have had an actual Vampire Coast army on the table by now.

My sadness is large, and it sucks as I really love some of those VC models. I didn't even see they redid the black coach till just now. Looks so cool but for 115$ USD ? That kinda blew me away, made me want to curl up in my own black coach to recover.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
Afraid the pirate zombies were after my time of large buying for VC. I did quietly hope they'd become a bigger thing however. Pirate zombie/vampire/ghoul/wraiths would be awesome.

They are in Total War.
If GW didn't kill fantasy and made their pricing fairer instead of being greedy gaks, then we might have had an actual Vampire Coast army on the table by now.

their list was so cool, compared to the boring plebs off regular VC.

Also i was a massive fan of throgg and a troll army.
but if you take a look at the pricing of them.....

Not Online!!! wrote:

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
Afraid the pirate zombies were after my time of large buying for VC. I did quietly hope they'd become a bigger thing however. Pirate zombie/vampire/ghoul/wraiths would be awesome.

They are in Total War.
If GW didn't kill fantasy and made their pricing fairer instead of being greedy gaks, then we might have had an actual Vampire Coast army on the table by now.

their list was so cool, compared to the boring plebs off regular VC.

Also i was a massive fan of throgg and a troll army.
but if you take a look at the pricing of them.....

Yeah, WHFB had the same problem as SoB and xenos characters / elite options, and 40k horde armies; the price (and age. Brets were still stuck in 6th ed, iirc) just didn't make them attractive.
It was even worse because thanks to the 8th ed steadfast rules, you needed to run like, 40 models in a block if you wanted to have a chance competitively, and the models tended to come in boxes of 10. At least in 40k you can get away with not building a "horde" army as a horde army (vehicles + MSU as Orks, monsters + warriors as nids), but in WHFB you didn't really have that luxury.

I really hated Steadfast. Its such a stupid rule that sacrificed tactics and flanking in favor of "hurr, I have more models" and made armies look like gak. In prior editions you had several regiments on the table and it looked great. In 8th ed you had one huge monster blob with a couple of screening units around it, and it looked terrible.

I can't look at the prices, I won't, they kill me inside. It's absolutely gobsmacking that no one at GW thought somewhere along the line. " Hey, maybe this game is dying because no one can afford it ? " " No, our prices are correct, it's the players who are wrong. "

3 river trolls are 47$ atm. 3 Rocktrolls 60$

And they were the comparatively cheap option to chaosify compared to armored chaos trolls.

Not to mention chaos Ogres, and armored ones which were even more expensive.

And they were less points then a block of infantry often for chaos warriors.

The concpet of an all troll ogre and dragon ogre army as genious as it was, never saw the table because of how expensive it was.

However, pricing wise the new eliminators take the cake.

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I can't look at the prices, I won't, they kill me inside. It's absolutely gobsmacking that no one at GW thought somewhere along the line. " Hey, maybe this game is dying because no one can afford it ? " " No, our prices are correct, it's the players who are wrong. "

Didn't AOS shrink the size of the armies on the table top compared to WFB?

I really hated Steadfast. Its such a stupid rule that sacrificed tactics and flanking in favor of "hurr, I have more models" and made armies look like gak. In prior editions you had several regiments on the table and it looked great. In 8th ed you had one huge monster blob with a couple of screening units around it, and it looked terrible.

That is something that you can say out loud.
A chaos army before had multiple regiments of warriors and barbarians at the flank.
in the end days it was sorcerers on disks with a blob of chosen with halberds or twohanded weapons.



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BrianDavion wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I can't look at the prices, I won't, they kill me inside. It's absolutely gobsmacking that no one at GW thought somewhere along the line. " Hey, maybe this game is dying because no one can afford it ? " " No, our prices are correct, it's the players who are wrong. "

Didn't AOS shrink the size of the armies on the table top compared to WFB?

it did, so the game became comparatively cheaper.
However if you look at the new prices

BrianDavion wrote:

AngryAngel80 wrote:
I can't look at the prices, I won't, they kill me inside. It's absolutely gobsmacking that no one at GW thought somewhere along the line. " Hey, maybe this game is dying because no one can afford it ? " " No, our prices are correct, it's the players who are wrong. "

Didn't AOS shrink the size of the armies on the table top compared to WFB?

Yes, but they didn't need to kill WFB to do that. They just had to remove steadfast and make vortex spells less stupid. That would remove the need to have 40+ super blobs and encourage building smaller units to enable flanking and get that juicy combat resolution going, which didn't matter with Steadfast. Unless you have a bigger regiment, of course.

AoS isn't really any cheaper per kit anyway, and some of the models are just absurdly priced. Its just that as you don't need to build huge regiments, it just seems cheaper. Which again, could have been easily done in WFB.

Yeah they didn't need to nuke the system to fix the fact they were insane with what they expected players to buy to build an army.

Like Greatswords were I believe 50$ USD for a box, you'd need 3 or 4 boxes to make them really viable in that edition they dropped. That was just one unit out of a large amount you'd have in an empire army.

Now cross compare that to the still expensive primaris marines, at 60$ for 10. That nets you a whole squad or two min squads. What you needed to spend to outlay in the game was so over the top all it really did was make 40k look cheap to play by comparison. It still makes it look cheap to play now. You could have had two marine executioner tanks for the cost of one greatsword unit.

The difference being those two tanks would be a large sum of your list, that unit of swordsmen was just one unit out of a bunch. How they didn't notice that, shows how out of touch they have to be with their players and what is reasonable.


Edit: Which shows in the ever rising higher and higher combo boxes they are releasing now. If they reach that breaking point with 40k, would they nuke the system just to try again because they are utterly clueless ? The past would hint to yes.