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 Sim-Life wrote:

 Argive wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Argive wrote:
I'm just going to vent a bit here because I read this and quite frankly I wish they didn't bother trying to write this shpiel as its just insulting to anyone who understands how to play 40k and understands the current rules and meta...

Have you considered that "anyone who understands how to play 40k and understands the current rules and meta..." ... isn't the target audience this was written for?

So its not for anyone who plays 40k regularly. Gotcha!
People who don't play regularly will buy all the banshees after this article im sure..

Or maybe its for people who like banshees and will use them despite them not being great because its fun/themeatic. You know, like how most people who play 40k play the game?

Then why bother to hype them emphasizing rules, which is where they suck? Just great a fluff article, talk about the sculpts and call it a day.

Obviously GW knows that power sells miniatures and a lot of new players expect to play the game.

The whole war hammer game is a balance between selling a game, selling hype, and selling overpriced sculpts. You cannot keep selling at this price without all the elements and GW knows that very well.

The price of the new sculpts is too High and the rules are bad. As I said, I expect a relaunch of the eldar aspect warriors with 9th. So banshees are probably just a bit poorly timed.

As an aside, is it me or does this picture give the impression that Drazhar is a midget?

 Sim-Life wrote:

Karol wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:


Or maybe its for people who like banshees and will use them despite them not being great because its fun/themeatic. You know, like how most people who play 40k play the game?

Why would people that like banshees no matter what, require an article to convince them to do it? It would be like making a special mini vodka advertisment targeting alcoholics.

And if the focus was for painters or peoples that like to remodel stuff, then there wasn't much focus put on either of those options.

Why does coca cola put up ads when its the most popular soft drink in the world? Thats how advertising works.

I swear its like people forget GW is an international business and expect them to operate like an FLGS.

some people I think just want reasons to be out raged at GW.

At the end of the day these articles are adverts and should be viewed as such. If you think they are flat out lying sue them but I'm not sure you'll get far!

Edit - I am not defending the practice but when it comes to shady business practices GW really aren't the worst out there by any stretch.

Edit, edit - Points already been made, should read whole thread.

If GW put up articles on their community site that are gak, surely it is not a big deal if people want to talk about them?

Giving new players bad advice to sell them over priced miniatures is not very nice. As people said, just sell them on their strong points - the designs and the background.

The chaps on the Splintermind podcast seem to rate them.

 Da Boss wrote:
If GW put up articles on their community site that are gak, surely it is not a big deal if people want to talk about them?

Giving new players bad advice to sell them over priced miniatures is not very nice. As people said, just sell them on their strong points - the designs and the background.

So now we're back to the idea that most 40k players are poor simpletons being taken advantage of? That they lack even the most basic agency to seek out independent advice from the myriad of platforms that exist before spending a lot of money?

 Da Boss wrote:
If GW put up articles on their community site that are gak, surely it is not a big deal if people want to talk about them?

Giving new players bad advice to sell them over priced miniatures is not very nice. As people said, just sell them on their strong points - the designs and the background.

Of course. I suppose I am reacting to the over-reactions like "snake oil salesman" etc. It's just capitalism, I have no idea how true or not what they say is within the context of all the "metas" and what have you but by all means call them out when necessary. On the other hand constant complaining and excessive language will lead to a "cried wolf" situation. Or possibly put people off getting into the game at all which I am sure most of us don't really want.

Banshees are not without a few high points.

They are stupidly fast. 8” move, Advance (can guarantee 6” with strat), +3” on the charge, and the charge roll (~7”) means you are looking at covering about two feet of table to charge.

They ignore overwatch. This, combined with their speed, means they can be where they need and engage someone in CC. Now locking units up in combat isn’t what it it used to be, but not everyone can fall back and shoot with impunity. They can also be the first ones in to cover more vulnerable units that don’t feel like eating a face full of flamers (or worse)

They are not the walking blender murder machines they are made out to be. They are a big ol' monkey wrench that can be tossed at the foe to disrupt things.

Worth the points for that? Maybe not.
Worth the money? Well, they do look pretty...

Dai wrote:

Of course. I suppose I am reacting to the over-reactions like "snake oil salesman" etc. It's just capitalism,

They overhype a notoriously bad unit, this is just a dishonest way to advertise.

I have no idea how true or not what they say is within the context of all the "metas" and what have you but by all means call them out when necessary.

Exactly what is going on.

On the other hand constant complaining and excessive language will lead to a "cried wolf" situation.

Since you haven't checked whether it is in a good state (rules wise) or not, how can you say it is excessive?

Or possibly put people off getting into the game at all which I am sure most of us don't really want.

People who start playing should be aware of how GW conducts business. If being exposed leads to people being put off it is their own fault. Maybe next time they'll think twice before pulling on of these tricks.

The only thing keeping companies "honest" are discerning consumers and, for the most clearly predatory cases, legislation.

Before I hear anything along the likes of "it is just a game". It might be a game, but the money spent in it is very real.

Finally, from an old player coming back:

How the heck can be that site called "warhammer community"? It is one long bad infomercial and it doesn't have a single place that I could see where one could leave any feedback. Had there been comments accepted on the post, it would have been rightfully shredded.

Karol wrote:
In which builds are they useful?

Let's say you have a big unit of shining spears in the webway for a turn two charge using ghost walk to make that a 7" charge but the enemy's tau or IF aggressors that would be big problems for the spears so you send in a unit of five banshees and the spears can go in unmolested.
Or you could use them to tie up something with thunder hammers combined with the exarch power and the drain psychic power to make the banshees -3 to hit to tarpit that unit.
On their own banshees aren't very killy but they are a good utility unit when used correctly.

Grey40k wrote:

How the heck can be that site called "warhammer community"? It is one long bad infomercial and it doesn't have a single place that I could see where one could leave any feedback. Had there been comments accepted on the post, it would have been rightfully shredded.

Probably the same reason that so many dictatorships used to go around calling themselves 'The People's Republic of _____'.

'Warhammer Community' sounds much nicer and friendlier than, say, the Warhammer Company Propaganda Page.


Joking aside, I do agree with you that calling it 'community' is laughable when they designed it so that there would be no actual contact with the players, nor any way for them to even leave feedback.

Grey40k wrote:

Dai wrote:

Of course. I suppose I am reacting to the over-reactions like "snake oil salesman" etc. It's just capitalism,

They overhype a notoriously bad unit, this is just a dishonest way to advertise.

I have no idea how true or not what they say is within the context of all the "metas" and what have you but by all means call them out when necessary.

Exactly what is going on.

On the other hand constant complaining and excessive language will lead to a "cried wolf" situation.

Since you haven't checked whether it is in a good state (rules wise) or not, how can you say it is excessive?

Or possibly put people off getting into the game at all which I am sure most of us don't really want.

People who start playing should be aware of how GW conducts business. If being exposed leads to people being put off it is their own fault. Maybe next time they'll think twice before pulling on of these tricks.

The only thing keeping companies "honest" are discerning consumers and, for the most clearly predatory cases, legislation.

Before I hear anything along the likes of "it is just a game". It might be a game, but the money spent in it is very real.

Finally, from an old player coming back:

How the heck can be that site called "warhammer community"? It is one long bad infomercial and it doesn't have a single place that I could see where one could leave any feedback. Had there been comments accepted on the post, it would have been rightfully shredded.

You mean literally the same way every business has conducted its advertising since advertising was invented?

Sorry I just don't understand the mentality that GW is obligated to say "this unit has contextually bad rules and is too expensive but here's their fluff and you don't have to buy it if you don't want to".

ccs wrote:

 An Actual Englishman wrote:

ccs wrote:

 Argive wrote:
I'm just going to vent a bit here because I read this and quite frankly I wish they didn't bother trying to write this shpiel as its just insulting to anyone who understands how to play 40k and understands the current rules and meta...

Have you considered that "anyone who understands how to play 40k and understands the current rules and meta..." ... isn't the target audience this was written for?

I would suggest that an understanding of the current meta isn't even required.

It's a shill article for new players because they've likely seen the backlash of expecting people to pay the same price for 5 Banshees that people pay for 10 Primaris Marines and are trying to counter.

It's very obvious and reeks of greed.

I could of written their article in a few sentences;
Banshees can act as a T1 roadblock unit if you invest a few psychic powers into them. They will kill nothing/little but keeping the opponent in their deployment zone is oftentimes worth it. If you go second they are an easy kill, keep them out of LOS or expect them to die.

Ok genius, now go write an article that SELLS me (pretend I'm a new player) a unit of Banshees.
You've got exactly the same word-count GW used in their article, you're not allowed to say anything untrue about them, and you cannot focus on whatever their negatives are.

I'll give this a go. I'm not sure I can match the word count of GW, however;

We have these NEW Banshee sculpts and THEY'RE NOT FAILCA- FINECAST I mean!! Woohoo! Take your sexy Femdar fantasies to the NEXT LEVEL and get these bad bo- girls before all those other sneaky knife ears steal them to make conversions of units they can't play!! Awww Yeaaaaa Banshees, awesome and very cost effective models*.



*May not be cost effective models.

E - how did I do?

 Sim-Life wrote:


You mean literally the same way every business has conducted its advertising since advertising was invented?

Sorry I just don't understand the mentality that GW is obligated to say "this unit has contextually bad rules and is too expensive but here's their fluff and you don't have to buy it if you don't want to".

You do know that you can sue companies for false advertising? I am not saying this would be easy in a case like this, but there are regulations regarding advertising.

Some people seem to think we live in a jungle and that GW can do whatever the heck they want because "it is capitalism" / "all companies do the same" / "it is just a game" / "it is not so bad".

At the very least, I hope that anyone thinking of buying those cool but overpriced sculpts reads this thread.

Next time, perhaps Warhammer Community is a bit more careful with what they write, and their rules team is allowed some say over the bean counters.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 vipoid wrote:

Grey40k wrote:

How the heck can be that site called "warhammer community"? It is one long bad infomercial and it doesn't have a single place that I could see where one could leave any feedback. Had there been comments accepted on the post, it would have been rightfully shredded.

Probably the same reason that so many dictatorships used to go around calling themselves 'The People's Republic of _____'.

'Warhammer Community' sounds much nicer and friendlier than, say, the Warhammer Company Propaganda Page.


Joking aside, I do agree with you that calling it 'community' is laughable when they designed it so that there would be no actual contact with the players, nor any way for them to even leave feedback.

First time I had a look since I came back I spent a good 30 minutes looking for forums or any community interaction.

I remember when white dwarf was freely available in their stores (or at least I was always gifted mine, this is decades ago) and it had lots of stuff about conversions and what not.

Now you got to pay for it and, from what I have seen, is again an infomercial.

Wake up, GW! You used to be a company of board game players.

 Sim-Life wrote:
Sorry I just don't understand the mentality that GW is obligated to say "this unit has contextually bad rules and is too expensive but here's their fluff and you don't have to buy it if you don't want to".

That seems to be what they did anyway. This article is about how Banshees require careful play because they are easy to kill, only really good at killing specific units (and might need stratagems or character support to get the job done) and need a delivery system to not get shot to ribbons. I really can't see how this overhypes banshees unless you are easily confused by exclamation marks.

BrianDavion wrote:
Sorry thats not your job, you're PR not the rules team, your job is to sell the unit the rules team wrote, not sell what you think it should be.

C'mon now, you're not seriously suggesting some rules haven't been written just as a marketing tool?

Karol wrote:
In which builds are they useful?

The ones that you imagine when thinking about how awesome they are in the fluff.

Seriously, I can't believe they advocated deep striking a wave serpent to protect them. Let me just dedicate one of the toughest transports to a unit that isn't really a threat to anything. And I'll just deep strike the tank because my opponent is so likely to focus these game-winning assets, while my uberpowerful striking scorpions clear all the chaff.

Apologies for the salt, but this article struck a nerve. I'd at least have respected it if they'd talked about using banshees as fast overwatch denying fodder. That's not what they're supposed to be, but it is what they're good for currently at least.

Grey40k wrote:You do know that you can sue companies for false advertising? I am not saying this would be easy in a case like this, but there are regulations regarding advertising.

So put your money where your mouth is.

If you're going to imply this is false advertising, I await your attempt to legally call GW out on it. Otherwise, you're just making claims with no legal backing.

Wake up, GW! You used to be a company of board game players.

Speaking from experience, most of their WarCom team are. It's not hard to track them down on other media outlets and see that they're all pretty hobby-first guys and gals.

The sad thing is that it seems like it really wouldn't take *that* much to at least make Banshees decent, but GW constantly misses opportunities.

For example, Phoenix Rising gave each aspect warrior a whole table of Exarch Powers to choose from. I think something as simple as '+1 strength for the unit' would have gone a long way.

Instead, all but one of the Exarch Powers only helped the Exarch herself (and, in most cases, not by much). And the only power that affected the entire unit was defensive.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
If GW put up articles on their community site that are gak, surely it is not a big deal if people want to talk about them?

Giving new players bad advice to sell them over priced miniatures is not very nice. As people said, just sell them on their strong points - the designs and the background.

So now we're back to the idea that most 40k players are poor simpletons being taken advantage of? That they lack even the most basic agency to seek out independent advice from the myriad of platforms that exist before spending a lot of money?

Stupid argument. This game is sold to literal children. At least they can sell the kit based on it's qualities and not give bad advice to children.

Yeah my point was; they might as well not have bothered. I mean the ynnari strat requires you to have a full ynnari detatchement of each Cwe, harlies and DE (with all the ynnari characters). Thats how far they are reaching.


Yeah its just a grumble. But as others have said, people that are going to buy them will buy them anyway.

But lets not try to make it out to be something its not and expose the disconnect between warcom gw and the "community". Never said its a conspiracy etc. Just compared to similiarly priced kit.

It is what it is obviously they had a job to do. But could have just posted some nice pictures and said : the new pretty plastic banshees are up for pre-order dont forget. Lol

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
If GW put up articles on their community site that are gak, surely it is not a big deal if people want to talk about them?

Giving new players bad advice to sell them over priced miniatures is not very nice. As people said, just sell them on their strong points - the designs and the background.

So now we're back to the idea that most 40k players are poor simpletons being taken advantage of? That they lack even the most basic agency to seek out independent advice from the myriad of platforms that exist before spending a lot of money?

Stupid argument. This game is sold to literal children. At least they can sell the kit based on it's qualities and not give bad advice to children.

Children, of course, being well known for only competing at the highest level of competitiveness and the most very cutting edge meta lists.

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
If GW put up articles on their community site that are gak, surely it is not a big deal if people want to talk about them?

Giving new players bad advice to sell them over priced miniatures is not very nice. As people said, just sell them on their strong points - the designs and the background.

So now we're back to the idea that most 40k players are poor simpletons being taken advantage of? That they lack even the most basic agency to seek out independent advice from the myriad of platforms that exist before spending a lot of money?

Stupid argument. This game is sold to literal children. At least they can sell the kit based on it's qualities and not give bad advice to children.

Children, of course, being well known for only competing at the highest level of competitiveness and the most very cutting edge meta lists.

Do you need to be in a cutting-edge meta environment for Howling Banshees to do squat to anything and then die in every game?

 AnomanderRake wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Da Boss wrote:
If GW put up articles on their community site that are gak, surely it is not a big deal if people want to talk about them?

Giving new players bad advice to sell them over priced miniatures is not very nice. As people said, just sell them on their strong points - the designs and the background.

So now we're back to the idea that most 40k players are poor simpletons being taken advantage of? That they lack even the most basic agency to seek out independent advice from the myriad of platforms that exist before spending a lot of money?

Stupid argument. This game is sold to literal children. At least they can sell the kit based on it's qualities and not give bad advice to children.

Children, of course, being well known for only competing at the highest level of competitiveness and the most very cutting edge meta lists.

Do you need to be in a cutting-edge meta environment for Howling Banshees to do squat to anything and then die in every game?

Well it depends if our fictional 10 year old goes to his local tournament or is playing with his friend who brought some hormogants because they looked cool.

considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

 Argive wrote:
considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

The price of banshees isn't really the discussion because you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks its acceptable.

Edit: I also like that now our fictional, tournament going, meta chasing 10 year old has his own income?

 Argive wrote:
considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

Of course that balance matters, that is one of the basic premises of most games.

Saying that balance doesn't matter because people who just play for fun have fun anyway is a clumsy attempt to sweep aside an important concern.

Would kids have less fun if the game were to be better balanced? Nope!

Would the game be better for everyone, or at least not worse, if the rules were better balanced? Yep!

So why isn't it balanced? Because GW tampers with rules for business purposes. This game has been going strong for more than two decades and balance is no better than when I played; even after dumbing down / simplifying lots of mechanics.

Is it that hard not to get a faction going up to 65% win rate and utterly crushing some of the factions (75% win rates)? At the very least this points to insufficient testing.

GW might be good at creating fluff and getting the sculpts to be played across the world, but they certainly aren't good at keeping functioning rules for it. IMHO rules ought to be taken out from the business equation; if GW is unable to do that, ETC or ITC or whatever player run organization needs to step up.

In the meantime, every time they post a misleading infomercial in their so-called Warhammer community site I hope the real community posts something like this. That'll teach them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Argive wrote:
considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

The price of banshees isn't really the discussion because you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks its acceptable.

Edit: I also like that now our fictional, tournament going, meta chasing 10 year old has his own income?

So selling bad units to kids is OK because they don't know any better? It is hard to see this as a justification.

Next we should be telling them to just bang them against each other instead of using GW rules because that might be more balanced.

Sim-Life wrote:

 Argive wrote:
considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

The price of banshees isn't really the discussion because you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks its acceptable.

Edit: I also like that now our fictional, tournament going, meta chasing 10 year old has his own income?

Its kind of relevant though isint it ? Especialy if your fictiona 10 year old Timmy now has to save up 4 weeks worth of hi £10 pocket money to get banshees and have 7.50 left while timmy will save up 4 Weeks worth and get 22 hormogaunts.. or 10 intercessors/start colelcting or whatever.

Grey40k wrote:

 Argive wrote:
considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

Of course that balance matters, that is one of the basic premises of most games.

Saying that balance doesn't matter because people who just play for fun have fun anyway is a clumsy attempt to sweep aside an important concern.

Would kids have less fun if the game were to be better balanced? Nope!

Would the game be better for everyone, or at least not worse, if the rules were better balanced? Yep!

So why isn't it balanced? Because GW tampers with rules for business purposes. This game has been going strong for more than two decades and balance is no better than when I played; even after dumbing down / simplifying lots of mechanics.

Is it that hard not to get a faction going up to 65% win rate and utterly crushing some of the factions (75% win rates)? At the very least this points to insufficient testing.

GW might be good at creating fluff and getting the sculpts to be played across the world, but they certainly aren't good at keeping functioning rules for it. IMHO rules ought to be taken out from the business equation; if GW is unable to do that, ETC or ITC or whatever player run organization needs to step up.

In the meantime, every time they post a misleading infomercial in their so-called Warhammer community site I hope the real community posts something like this. That'll teach them!

I don't think anyone at GW is going to read this or care. Writing emails and going on FB to bash them might though as it seems to have worked for a bunch of stuff... I do almost kind of feel sorry for their PR dept... However, price per model is not something that they would ever back track on. The best thing that can happen is people complain about these kits, don't buy them and let GW know why they are not buying them. Maybe they will take notice for future releases. But im not holding my breath lol.

Take the elimantor kit as another recent example.. The plus side of those is youd only ever field 3 units (3 boxes) to field 30 banshees Id need 6 boxes...

Grey40k wrote:

 Argive wrote:
considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

Of course that balance matters, that is one of the basic premises of most games.

Saying that balance doesn't matter because people who just play for fun have fun anyway is a clumsy attempt to sweep aside an important concern.

Would kids have less fun if the game were to be better balanced? Nope!

Would the game be better for everyone, or at least not worse, if the rules were better balanced? Yep!

So why isn't it balanced? Because GW tampers with rules for business purposes. This game has been going strong for more than two decades and balance is no better than when I played; even after dumbing down / simplifying lots of mechanics.

Is it that hard not to get a faction going up to 65% win rate and utterly crushing some of the factions (75% win rates)? At the very least this points to insufficient testing.

GW might be good at creating fluff and getting the sculpts to be played across the world, but they certainly aren't good at keeping functioning rules for it. IMHO rules ought to be taken out from the business equation; if GW is unable to do that, ETC or ITC or whatever player run organization needs to step up.

In the meantime, every time they post a misleading infomercial in their so-called Warhammer community site I hope the real community posts something like this. That'll teach them!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sim-Life wrote:

 Argive wrote:
considering our fictional kid would drop £32.50 on 5 banshees while the hormogaunt kid would get around 18 hormogaunts for the same price tag....

The price of banshees isn't really the discussion because you'd be hard pressed to find anyone who thinks its acceptable.

Edit: I also like that now our fictional, tournament going, meta chasing 10 year old has his own income?

So selling bad units to kids is OK because they don't know any better? It is hard to see this as a justification.

Next we should be telling them to just bang them against each other instead of using GW rules because that might be more balanced.

I'm beginning to wonder if anyone on this board has ever met or even been a child.