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**Not Online!!!**

Difficult to tell,, really.
the most pressing issue i heard for people to not start them was:
Availability, Concerns over rules and price in that order.
That has to do with them beeing in many ways the boutique version of SoB that were also stuck in a desinvestment cycle for a lot of the last decade.
However as we have seen, i don't think GW did expect the ammount of sales the sister update generated.

Truth of the matter is though, that SM are easily the most monetisable faction and they sure as hell get milked.
2 seperate rules sources just to play your chapter is frankly insulting , and we don't even have a core rulebook in that addition nor the army.

**kirotheavenger**

I totally agree, I'm refusing to buy any of the rules for 9th ed 40k.
Although part of that is because I hardly play anymore and the ~£80 I spent on 8th edition rules for about 6 games is not something I would describe as good value for money.

**Jidmah**

Bosskelot wrote:

Spoiler:

Ease of use is always a factor in competitive gaming. Harlequins very well may be the strongest overall army in 40k currently, but they're also the hardest to paint, one of the hardest to collect and one of the hardest to actually play well on the tabletop. This links in to my earlier post about Marines always being frustrating to play against because they have a low skill floor and a low skill ceiling, yet remain one of the strongest armies in the game still. Why bother playing such a risky skill-intensive army like Clowns when you could just pick an assortment of models from Indomitus or one of the Combat Patrol boxes and basically have a competitive list that could go 4-1/5-1 at a GT no problem? You saw this happening during the end of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty's life, where Terrans were switching en masse from the army to play Protoss or Zerg. Even though winrates looked fairly equal between the 3 races it obscured 2 major problems:

1) Terrans were only ever winning early game and could not stand up to lategame Protoss or Zerg whatsoever, especially in a meta and with a map pool that favoured long macro games to the exclusion of everything else

and

2) Terran was a few orders of magnitude harder to play than the other 2 races.

For people trying to climb the ladder and even professional players, they started to drop the race because they could play Zerg instead and get similar or better results, but for 50% less effort and stress.

If two armies have a roughly 50-50 winrate, yet one has to basically play out of their mind to even reach parity with the other faction that is basically just unga bunga'ing across the board then that isn't balanced, no matter what the percentage says. If you are hyper competitive and truly only care about being the best, then just pick a top tier and top tiers are usually that way for a variety of factors but also because their risk factor is incredibly low. They're usually safe picks that can do multiple different things very well in all manner of situations and have very few hard counters or glaring weaknesses. There does usually have to be an element of skill or mechanical requirement to them though, just to allow for skill depth to shine through and to stop them being completely braindead dominant because if you have a competitive game and the best race/character/whatever is also the easiest to play then your game has some serious issues.

That SC2 example before? The game was haemorrhaging players and viewers during that time. When Dota 2 has had metas where the easy to play unga bunga heroes have been buffed too much it's been a really negative experience for players and viewers too.

(essentially, your easy to play things should have a limit on what they can achieve because otherwise it's unhealthy for the game as a whole. Dota 2 and LoL have "pubstomp" and beginner heroes that basically never see competitive or high level play, and at times when they do because of bad balance patches it's always a negative experience)

In before someone berates you that 40k is much more complex than a video came (it's not)

But seriously, great post, I agree with much you have written recently on this topic.
Especially the variance in skill required to run certain armies is extreme in 40k.
Orks, despite their appearance, are an extremely hard to play army that has a rather high skill ceiling - when ork players place highly in GTs, it's usually seasoned veterans that have been playing them for years, and even someone like Nick Nanavati could not just hop to them and start winning tournaments, despite him doing exactly that with multiple other factions. Orks are an army that highly rewards skill an experience, and severely punishes mistakes.
In contrast, when I picked up Death Guard in early 8th, they were ridiculously easy to play compared to orks(I was winning games without knowing why I was winning) and despite there being a learning curve, I quickly hit a wall where I felt the only way to improve my game was by buying more optimal models (FW/daemons).

One thing needs to be addressed though, and that is the difference in effort to change what you play. Let's assume that you change Marines into an "easy to play, easy to master"-faction with a low power potential, then you would screw over any player who plays them as their primary/only army. For them, limiting potential would lock them out of competitive play - which is not only events like tournaments and leagues, but also communities and stores which play on a competitive level.
I guess you could put both entry-level and expert-level units in the same army, but I do think that - currently - GW lacks the expertise to design rules as sophisticated as that.

So I think the only way to do this for 40k is to limit the power level on the upper end as well as raise the power level on the lower end to have less "feels bad" situation where a player can't expect to win with their army, despite them being willing to learn how to play better and may investing in a limited amount of new miniatures.
The second thing is to take power out of list building and combos and put more power into decisions that are happening during the game - so stratagems, unit abilities and movement. Otherwise "mastering" an army is just copying a list. IMO what we have seen from 9th so far, GW is going in the right direction.

**ccs**

Not Online!!! wrote:
Difficult to tell,, really.
the most pressing issue i heard for people to not start them was:
Availability, Concerns over rules and price in that order.
That has to do with them beeing in many ways the boutique version of SoB that were also stuck in a desinvestment cycle for a lot of the last decade.

Not Online!!! wrote:
However as we have seen, i don't think GW did expect the amount of sales the sister update generated.

Yes they did. They expended the time/effort/& expense to completely re-sculpt the entire line, add new stuff, & make it plastic (save for the Preacher & the Missionary for some reason).
You don't make that kind of investment if you don't think it'll sell.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Truth of the matter is though, that SM are easily the most monetisable faction and they sure as hell get milked.
2 seperate rules sources just to play your chapter is frankly insulting ,

I agree.
Though there certainly were plenty of idiots championing the concept of core codex + supplement over the past year or so. Seemed all the rage to insist that we SW/DA/BA players be inconvenienced in order "to cut down on reprinting data sheets" book to book book. As if that's of any concern on our consumer side of the product.... Meanwhile DG, a faction of Chaos as detailed as my SW is only getting 1 required book....

Not Online!!! wrote:
and we don't even have a core rulebook in that addition nor the army.

R&H?? It's like you lost part of your thought there. Or started in the middle of it.

**Not Online!!!**

ccs wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
Difficult to tell,, really.
the most pressing issue i heard for people to not start them was:
Availability, Concerns over rules and price in that order.
That has to do with them beeing in many ways the boutique version of SoB that were also stuck in a desinvestment cycle for a lot of the last decade.

Not Online!!! wrote:
However as we have seen, i don't think GW did expect the amount of sales the sister update generated.

Yes they did. They expended the time/effort/& expense to completely re-sculpt the entire line, add new stuff, & make it plastic (save for the Preacher & the Missionary for some reason).
You don't make that kind of investment if you don't think it'll sell.

That's why we had massive shortages of delivery? If anything they expected to sell it but seemingly did substantially underestimate the ammount they 'd sell in total.

Not Online!!! wrote:
Truth of the matter is though, that SM are easily the most monetisable faction and they sure as hell get milked.
2 seperate rules sources just to play your chapter is frankly insulting ,

I agree.
Though there certainly were plenty of idiots championing the concept of core codex + supplement over the past year or so. Seemed all the rage to insist that we SW/DA/BA players be inconvenienced in order "to cut down on reprinting data sheets" book to book book. As if that's of any concern on our consumer side of the product.... Meanwhile DG, a faction of Chaos as detailed as my SW is only getting 1 required book....

The issue is not the consolidation but rather then propperly doing it, aka 1 book for them all with maybee seperate lists + equipment options depending upon chapter you now get to buy 2 books for an additiopnal 70% more cost to you... ( i assume that such a big book would cost extra $£EURCHF because GW)

PS: on the whole DG TS separate dex thingy, i'd expect gw to throw out EC and WE also separately , only to consolidate them in the same style as SM are inevitably because dual book sales....

Not Online!!! wrote:
and we don't even have a core rulebook in that addition nor the army.

R&H?? It's like you lost part of your thought there. Or started in the middle of it.

Nah, the addition of the two books Codex + supplement, aren't even the total you'd need to have the full set of rules or the units to field the army. Basically i am critising GW's audacity to also force you to buy the core rules.

**catbarf**

ccs wrote:
Yes they did. They expended the time/effort/& expense to completely re-sculpt the entire line, add new stuff, & make it plastic (save for the Preacher & the Missionary for some reason).
You don't make that kind of investment if you don't think it'll sell.

I read that the original boxed set- the one that sold out within half an hour- was expected to last from its release in September through Christmas. We know they had to scramble to produce more.

They may have expected it to sell, but certainly not in the volume that it did. To me the unexpected popularity of the Sisters release is the clearest sign that GW's releases aren't driven by perfect knowledge of what the community wants.

**vipoid**

ccs wrote:
Of course. But you know what making R&H work wouldn't do? Make them the desired amount of $.

This sounds like something of a bridge fallacy, tbh.

**Tyel**

Not Online!!! wrote:
That's why we had massive shortages of delivery? If anything they expected to sell it but seemingly did substantially underestimate the ammount they 'd sell in total.

This hasn't been confined just to Sisters though has it? I guess more recent issues can be put down to Covid, but I think the main thing (despite what forums would have you believe) is that 40k is on a major high, stuff is flying off the shelves and GW can't keep up.

Which is reflected in the results and share price - but unfortunately also motivates GW to keep hiking the price. Because if you are selling out, why not?

**Not Online!!!**

Tyel wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
That's why we had massive shortages of delivery? If anything they expected to sell it but seemingly did substantially underestimate the ammount they 'd sell in total.

This hasn't been confined just to Sisters though has it? I guess more recent issues can be put down to Covid, but I think the main thing (despite what forums would have you believe) is that 40k is on a major high, stuff is flying off the shelves and GW can't keep up.

Which is reflected in the results and share price - but unfortunately also motivates GW to keep hiking the price. Because if you are selling out, why not?

Well i remember GSC relaunch. It was a good day for the local Gaming store

There's also the other side of GW, beeing in many ways a monopolistic entity due to IP law and economies of scale in a market with a relatively high entry barrier, (plastic miniatures) , which is also protecting them kinda.
And they take full advantage off it, cue price rise during a pandemic.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

catbarf wrote:
ccs wrote:
Yes they did. They expended the time/effort/& expense to completely re-sculpt the entire line, add new stuff, & make it plastic (save for the Preacher & the Missionary for some reason).
You don't make that kind of investment if you don't think it'll sell.

I read that the original boxed set- the one that sold out within half an hour- was expected to last from its release in September through Christmas. We know they had to scramble to produce more.

They may have expected it to sell, but certainly not in the volume that it did. To me the unexpected popularity of the Sisters release is the clearest sign that GW's releases aren't driven by perfect knowledge of what the community wants.

no Gw's releases are driven by monetary reasons alone.
Producing more Primaris or SM is also low effort high yield, hence why we see a lot of power armor.

I sincerly suspect they didn't even consider remaking the SoB until that fatefull custommer survey, which was probably ear deafening to them, in a way they made the mental math and decided that it'd sell enough and garner some goodwill back, something GW still had at the time not so much.
It seems to me though that they fail to connect to their custommer base at a most basic level and even though they got better at it, kinda, they still are pretty tone deaf as the recent "metawatch article" promises...
Personally, i think there is no bad core faction concept to be put into an army in 40k, there's only issues with GW handling the factions that lead to issues in regards to support and desinvestment cycles. I'd consider f.e. to start a small aspect warrior army the instant if the kit's would've been updated.

Gw also has went to far price wise with some factions, think Guard with the cadians, not only are the potatoheads fugly turning off quite a few people but also for what it is and how many you need quite overpriced, making starting an guard army an daunting prospect, contrary to SM which flood the second hand market and starter boxes galore.

**VladimirHerzog**

How is making any model low effort? Every model has the same steps to follow for its development.

**Not Online!!!**

VladimirHerzog wrote:
How is making any model low effort? Every model has the same steps to follow for its development.

Simple, take hounds of morkai f.e.
It's a reiver CtrlC + Ctrl V and some bonus bits designed virtually.

Infact there's a lot of eerily similar poses for PA infantry.
Alot of the older stuff that would need a rework has been sculpted a long time ago and might not even be virtualised.

Therefore virtualising the later costs more and is a longer process costing even more then the stuff above.

**Cronch**

On the other hand, digital sculpting is easier and faster than hand sculpting, leading to less money spent on it. And once you sculpt the first basic guardian mesh, you can easily speed he process up by using it as basis for aspect armor.

It still doesn't change the fact that GW is detached from it's fanbase, and literally just produces what they know will sell without knowing why the other thing isn't selling. For all we know the managerial staff might actually huff their own farts and think people "just don't like xenos".

**VladimirHerzog**

Not Online!!! wrote:
VladimirHerzog wrote:
How is making any model low effort? Every model has the same steps to follow for its development.

Simple, take hounds of morkai f.e.
It's a reiver CtrlC + Ctrl V and some bonus bits designed virtually.

Infact there's a lot of eerily similar poses for PA infantry.
Alot of the older stuff that would need a rework has been sculpted a long time ago and might not even be virtualised.

Therefore virtualising the later costs more and is a longer process costing even more then the stuff above.

Hounds of morkai arent a new model tho, theyre a bundle.
Making a squad of Intercessors requires just as much effort as making a squad of guardians/fire warriors

**kirotheavenger**

Taking the existing Intercessor model, then designing a minor variation of bolter to go with them, takes significantly less effort than designing a whole new model like a Guardian.

**Slayer-Fan123**

VladimirHerzog wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
VladimirHerzog wrote:
How is making any model low effort? Every model has the same steps to follow for its development.

Simple, take hounds of morkai f.e.
It's a reiver CtrlC + Ctrl V and some bonus bits designed virtually.

Infact there's a lot of eerily similar poses for PA infantry.
Alot of the older stuff that would need a rework has been sculpted a long time ago and might not even be virtualised.

Therefore virtualising the later costs more and is a longer process costing even more then the stuff above.

Hounds of morkai arent a new model tho, theyre a bundle.
Making a squad of Intercessors requires just as much effort as making a squad of guardians/fire warriors

They're a new unit entry with very much zero effort on GW's part (for both the model AND rules)

**Not Online!!!**

VladimirHerzog wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
VladimirHerzog wrote:
How is making any model low effort? Every model has the same steps to follow for its development.

Simple, take hounds of morkai f.e.
It's a reiver CtrlC + Ctrl V and some bonus bits designed virtually.

Infact there's a lot of eerily similar poses for PA infantry.
Alot of the older stuff that would need a rework has been sculpted a long time ago and might not even be virtualised.

Therefore virtualising the later costs more and is a longer process costing even more then the stuff above.

Hounds of morkai arent a new model tho, theyre a bundle.
Making a squad of Intercessors requires just as much effort as making a squad of guardians/fire warriors

kirotheavenger wrote:Taking the existing Intercessor model, then designing a minor variation of bolter to go with them, takes significantly less effort than designing a whole new model like a Guardian.

Kiro has it.
That is the core issue, it's even more drastic, assuming SM were the first digitalised sculpting done, you can perfectly use their shiloutte and bits, modify accordingly and have x ammount of units for a lot of factions rather fast.
It makes anything SM in PA a breeze to design.
Meanwhile new eldar sculpts would need to be baseline redone digitally and then only you can get the benefits of doing so.
Further Marines and to a degree chaos marines, are really homogenous, unlike Eldar which have for basically every unit type a drastic armor variation.

**Hecaton**

ccs wrote:

Of course. But you know what making R&H work wouldn't do? Make them the desired amount of $.

Maybe, maybe not. GW was apparently caught off guard by the amount of sales they made with the SoB relaunch. And to a large extent the degree to which Astartes sales make them money is because they invest all their marketing money into promoting Astartes. It'd be more accurate to say they'd rather make a dime with Astartes than a dollar with another faction.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

Jidmah wrote:

The second thing is to take power out of list building and combos and put more power into decisions that are happening during the game - so stratagems, unit abilities and movement. Otherwise "mastering" an army is just copying a list. IMO what we have seen from 9th so far, GW is going in the right direction.

I think GW doesn't want mastery to be a big factor in how games of 40k shake out - otherwise players couldn't solve the problem of losing a game by buying a new model.

**catbarf**

Hecaton wrote:
I think GW doesn't want mastery to be a big factor in how games of 40k shake out - otherwise players couldn't solve the problem of losing a game by buying a new model.

I can't picture the designers, who genuinely seem to care about the game, sitting down and deciding that they want the game to be shallow so that people keep buying stuff.

And I can't picture corporate executives, who drive that sort of profit-focused decision-making, having the requisite knowledge of game design theory to recognize the principle of mastery, assess how 40K stacks up in that regard compared to its competitors, and demand that the game provide a low skill ceiling so they can keep up the churn.

I think we have to keep in mind that GW is not a monolithic entity. To me it seems like the designers just struggle to produce a system that can be tactically deep, account for the sheer amount of stuff present in the game, and still be playable in an afternoon. They do a much better job with the specialty games that don't try to account for everything from combat knives to ICBMs.

**AnomanderRake**

catbarf wrote:
...I think we have to keep in mind that GW is not a monolithic entity. To me it seems like the designers just struggle to produce a system that can be tactically deep, account for the sheer amount of stuff present in the game, and still be playable in an afternoon. They do a much better job with the specialty games that don't try to account for everything from combat knives to ICBMs.

The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that the specialist games have one design team and everyone involved all talks to each other, while 40k/Sigmar have a number of competing teams that don't talk to each other and there's no game designer in a leadership position to set any kind of unified direction. Any given rulebook, Codex, or supplement is written by someone who doesn't know what else exists in the game. Anything that's OP/useless is that way by accident, because the writers don't understand the context their rules are going to fit into.

**Jidmah**

AnomanderRake wrote:
catbarf wrote:
...I think we have to keep in mind that GW is not a monolithic entity. To me it seems like the designers just struggle to produce a system that can be tactically deep, account for the sheer amount of stuff present in the game, and still be playable in an afternoon. They do a much better job with the specialty games that don't try to account for everything from combat knives to ICBMs.

The explanation that makes the most sense to me is that the specialist games have one design team and everyone involved all talks to each other, while 40k/Sigmar have a number of competing teams that don't talk to each other and there's no game designer in a leadership position to set any kind of unified direction. Any given rulebook, Codex, or supplement is written by someone who doesn't know what else exists in the game. Anything that's OP/useless is that way by accident, because the writers don't understand the context their rules are going to fit into.

Definitely this. For example, it very much feels like the whole slew of releases that started with the indomitus box and its content was designed without talking to the guys who were writing Codex: SM 9.1 in the meantime.

**Tyel**

Bosskelot wrote:
Ease of use is always a factor in competitive gaming. Harlequins very well may be the strongest overall army in 40k currently, but they're also the hardest to paint, one of the hardest to collect and one of the hardest to actually play well on the tabletop. This links in to my earlier post about Marines always being frustrating to play against because they have a low skill floor and a low skill ceiling, yet remain one of the strongest armies in the game still. Why bother playing such a risky skill-intensive army like Clowns when you could just pick an assortment of models from Indomitus or one of the Combat Patrol boxes and basically have a competitive list that could go 4-1/5-1 at a GT no problem? You saw this happening during the end of Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty's life, where Terrans were switching en masse from the army to play Protoss or Zerg. Even though winrates looked fairly equal between the 3 races it obscured 2 major problems:

1) Terrans were only ever winning early game and could not stand up to lategame Protoss or Zerg whatsoever, especially in a meta and with a map pool that favoured long macro games to the exclusion of everything else

and

2) Terran was a few orders of magnitude harder to play than the other 2 races.

Did SC2 have 50/50 win rates though? What sort of level are we talking about?

My memory of Late Game Wings of Liberty was less "Terran are harder to play" - although I'd maybe agree - the issue was as you say, weakness late game. Which meant you had to *win* early on, which invariably brought its own problems. Drawing with a hope to sorting things out later was usually not enough.

The main meta issue though was that Infestor-Broodlord was completely busted. At a comparable technical skill it was superior to everything in the game, and this could be seen in tournament results. (It wasn't an auto-win because you had to get there, but assuming you did things started to spiral.) And it seemed Blizzard had no interest in fixing it, because HOTS was "coming soon" and they wanted you to buy that. (So far, so GW I guess.)

I think you have to be careful on this idea that there are low skill and high skill armies in 40k - which I feel was a mistake Blizzard famously made at the outset of Warcraft 3 (Night Elves will be the "micro faction", oh look games seem to be all DH+Mass hunts, uh, this is terrible, grab the nerfbat). I guess its true - something like Harlequins is *complex* because they are so fast - and can dance in and out of combat. So you need to learn how to use that to get the most out of the army. But to a degree learning movement and positioning applies to every faction in the game. When the DE 8th edition Codex came out, and I think its fair to say they were top tier. The fact they were *fast* didn't make them hard to play. It just made them *incredibly good*.

The idea (since at least 2nd edition tbh) seems to be that if an army like Harlequins are caught out, they'll be punished. Whereas something like Marines should be more forgiving - so you can bounce back and still win. But is that really case at the top end of games? That Harlequin player has got his minuses to hit/wound and invuls. So if the dice fall right they can shrug off anything (barring death hex etc, but kind of niche.)

**Hecaton**

catbarf wrote:
I can't picture the designers, who genuinely seem to care about the game, sitting down and deciding that they want the game to be shallow so that people keep buying stuff.

And I can't picture corporate executives, who drive that sort of profit-focused decision-making, having the requisite knowledge of game design theory to recognize the principle of mastery, assess how 40K stacks up in that regard compared to its competitors, and demand that the game provide a low skill ceiling so they can keep up the churn.

All it takes is one designer who understands how to drive that sort of a game talking to the execs and they'll get on board with that plan. They definitely talk and think about this kind of stuff.

**kirotheavenger**

Hecaton wrote:
And to a large extent the degree to which Astartes sales make them money is because they invest all their marketing money into promoting Astartes. It'd be more accurate to say they'd rather make a dime with Astartes than a dollar with another faction.

I think it's more like a dollar with Astartes than a Dime with another faction.
Most players either actively play Space Marines or have a small force kicking around somewhere. Adding a new unit to an existing faction is going to appeal to a lot more people than picking up an entire new faction.
So if GW makes a new Guardian sculpt, and its really awesome.
- a lot of Eldar players aren't interested because they have enough Guardians.
- most players don't play Eldar and although they'd love to spend £30 on five Guardians, they can justify £400 on an Eldar army.
- some players can and so buy tbr box.
You can circumvent the first point by making it a *new* *bigger and better* unit though.
But the second point is key. The Space Marine player base is just so much larger than anything else.
Sure, if GW advertised and hyped up other factions with kits and books they would sell better. But the focus is great for GW as it maximises the return on investment for them.
They tried to put Sigmarines into this niche with the launch of AoS, but the plsyerbase just didn't form the same fanbase.

I don't think the rules writers and specifically looking to make new units OP. But I think there is a definite desire to make each new thing more interesting than what came before, from the writer's themselves but particularly from higher up.
One way is to make their guns better and cooler that whatever came before.
Another is to make them faster or tougher than what came before.
Another is to give them awesome special rules, like the ability to shoot twice or move super far or whatever.
Which often comes out as the unit being a bit overpowered.

**Cronch**

But the second point is key. The Space Marine player base is just so much larger than anything else.

Of course the downside to this is that by releasing only marines (with occasional non-marine imperial and ever so rare xenos model) you end up with unhappy xenos/non-imperial playerbase which may either shelve their armies for more marines, or just quit 40k, resulting in nothing but mirror matches, which in turn a)deprives the marine players of their power fulfillment fantasies and b)is just boring to play to the marine players will inevitably feel less engaged. All of which will result in lower sales in the long run.

**Not Online!!!**

Cronch wrote:
But the second point is key. The Space Marine player base is just so much larger than anything else.

Of course the downside to this is that by releasing only marines (with occasional non-marine imperial and ever so rare xenos model) you end up with unhappy xenos/non-imperial playerbase which may either shelve their armies for more marines, or just quit 40k, resulting in nothing but mirror matches, which in turn a)deprives the marine players of their power fulfillment fantasies and b)is just boring to play to the marine players will inevitably feel less engaged. All of which will result in lower sales in the long run.

As an aside, there's an even better marine VS marine game out there by the same company

**kirotheavenger**

I don't disagree, I think GW's current direction is a little short sighted, but there's no denying how well it's worked for the the last few years and will likely continue to work for the next few years.
But hey, the more people walk away from 40k the better, imo. There are so many better games people can experience.

**Not Online!!!**

kirotheavenger wrote:
I don't disagree, I think GW's current direction is a little short sighted, but there's no denying how well it's worked for the the last few years and will likely continue to work for the next few years.
But hey, the more people walk away from 40k the better, imo. There are so many better games people can experience.

Due to the monolithic market power in some regions that is a bit of an issue. The experiencing of other games relies upon communities for these existing in the first place. Scratch building one up is an ordeal in itself
Further there's sunk cost and there's the IP .

Alot of games can't compete GW on these things.

**kirotheavenger**

Not Online!!! wrote:
kirotheavenger wrote:
I don't disagree, I think GW's current direction is a little short sighted, but there's no denying how well it's worked for the the last few years and will likely continue to work for the next few years.
But hey, the more people walk away from 40k the better, imo. There are so many better games people can experience.

Due to the monolithic market power in some regions that is a bit of an issue. The experiencing of other games relies upon communities for these existing in the first place. Scratch building one up is an ordeal in itself
Further there's sunk cost and there's the IP .

Alot of games can't compete GW on these things.

Bingo, that's exactly the point.
Although there are some "not-40k-honest-guv" games like Grim Dark Future, it's the plsyerbase.
40k massively dominates gaming groups and a lot of players simply aren't willing to try anything else, even if it means using the same models.

**Not Online!!!**

kirotheavenger wrote:
Not Online!!! wrote:
kirotheavenger wrote:
I don't disagree, I think GW's current direction is a little short sighted, but there's no denying how well it's worked for the the last few years and will likely continue to work for the next few years.
But hey, the more people walk away from 40k the better, imo. There are so many better games people can experience.

Due to the monolithic market power in some regions that is a bit of an issue. The experiencing of other games relies upon communities for these existing in the first place. Scratch building one up is an ordeal in itself
Further there's sunk cost and there's the IP .

Alot of games can't compete GW on these things.

Bingo, that's exactly the point.
Although there are some "not-40k-honest-guv" games like Grim Dark Future, it's the plsyerbase.
40k massively dominates gaming groups and a lot of players simply aren't willing to try anything else, even if it means using the same models.

It's that ease of availability for an opponent that makes GW/ 40k such a draw. Basically it has reached critical mass to have it's own gravitation.
And within 40k there's faction that has reached that state aswell...

It's funny though how over here during 6-7th our FLGS had a break down in GW games and now we have a more varied and healthy game scene.

**Hecaton**

kirotheavenger wrote:

I think it's more like a dollar with Astartes than a Dime with another faction.

And if other factions got the marketing, production, and rulea favoritism that Astartes got...?

Sure, Astartes products tend to be more lucrative, but that's because GW has put a lot of effort into engineering a situation where that's true, and there's opportunity costs to that.