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Also, worth remembering that the space marine data is partly skewed, there's some very old kits, namely special characters that will drag the average age up considerably. Bikes, attack bikes, land speeders, even the original land raider (not the now plastic crusader as such) and predator are old kits now, the predator is 17 years old...

Take out all of those, well any kit that's over 15 years old now and that average age would surely be under 5.

Interesting data, the average age metric isn't really that useful though...


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Also, worth remembering that the space marine data is partly skewed, there's some very old kits, namely special characters that will drag the average age up considerably. Bikes, attack bikes, land speeders, even the original land raider (not the now plastic crusader as such) and predator are old kits now, the predator is 17 years old...

Take out all of those, well any kit that's over 15 years old now and that average age would surely be under 5.

A more useful metric would probably what percentage of models were originally released in plastic,metal or finecast.

Where did this come from out of interest, was it made by yourself OP?

Good info. Thanks for letting us know, BCB, and thanks to whoever made it! (If that's you, BCB, extra thanks!)

DoomMouse wrote:Where did this come from out of interest, was it made by yourself OP?

JNAProductions wrote:Good info. Thanks for letting us know, BCB, and thanks to whoever made it! (If that's you, BCB, extra thanks!)

I take no credit for creating this, just something I came across on my internet travels. I wish I did know who made it so I could credit them properly.

To the folks talking about Space Marines being constant as a percentage of releases over time and saying that makes sense; I would argue that it doesn't. If you look at megafactions you may see that behavior somewhat with the others, but drilling down to any individual army, you don't get a hint of that behavior. And why should you? You're replacing/adding constantly; at some point, you should be done for awhile. That hasn't happened with Marines, and that's the whole point of the issue for most folks.

Marines went through a number of expansions into things like Deathwatch, SW, flyers, and so on. The past several years hasn't just been the same marines over and over again.

Are the 30K plastics in here? ( Now that I think about it the reason for Primaris as a lore item is so they didn't run over 30K as a game itself...just conjecture ) There's also a ridiculous number of marines that were just singular nothing burger characters. Are those in this?

Marines caught a new aesthetic and GW very clearly relies on their sales to keep things going. We're always going to see more marines - BA, SW, and DA all have models that need redoing. GK ( if you count them as marines ).

So once you fill that 30% or so the rest is whatever else GW is going to put into the schedule. That just seems like the fact of life we're going to be ( and have been ) living with.

ccs wrote:
SoB average age of kit being 5 years old - LOL.
Proof that you can make statistics tell any lue you want....

It's also a little unclear exactly what one box represents here.

Sisters in 2004 for instance have 17 boxes - which is roughly one box per individual model sculpt (i.e. two sisters with stormbolters = 2 boxes). But this doesn't match with the number of boxes for sisters in 1997, nor does it match with the space marines 7 boxes in 2004 (representing six models, one vehicle, a multi-model command squad and six-man veteran squad IIRC).

Slightly off topic, but I do wonder how much the income of 40k (and thus space marines) supplements the other games in terms of R&D etc. I know AoS is fairly popular, but with the amount of kits, and extravagant expensive to design and produce kits at that, I can't really believe they are making much of a profit on it, unless the development funds are siphoned over from other games.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Marines went through a number of expansions into things like Deathwatch, SW, flyers, and so on. The past several years hasn't just been the same marines over and over again.

Marines caught a new aesthetic and GW very clearly relies on their sales to keep things going. We're always going to see more marines - BA, SW, and DA all have models that need redoing. GK ( if you count them as marines ).

*apologies for the truncated quote*

If you do any of that for any other army, you also greatly grow their TAM too. Maybe picking another army for that treatment is the best business decision, maybe picking Marines gives you the most bang for your buck. GW doesn't know because they've only ever done it for Marines.

Yea it is a chicken and egg thing. At this point I don't think it would ever change, because they'll forever be the "protagonist" of the universe.

Overread wrote:In fairness its not just a rate of releases you have to look at. Tyranids, for example haven't had anything in a good while and yet their army is pretty much in a fantastic place right now. There's a few annoyances like gaunts having split heads; and there's a few finecast that are odd they've not been replaced; but by and large the vast majority is diverse and well made modern models. Even some of the older like the carnifex stand up well.

It's like Tau; they might be listed second oldest next to Eldar, but many of their models are still very good. Indeed I'd argue its more Kroot that appear to have aged poorly; whilst your fire warriors still look good today.

Not only that, but how much in proportion is plastic vs metal/resin. Tyranids are at a high proportion of plastic to resin when compared to Eldar, for example. Most of those plastic kits were made relatively early on, which makes it easier to have a good old line.

endlesswaltz123 wrote:Slightly off topic, but I do wonder how much the income of 40k (and thus space marines) supplements the other games in terms of R&D etc. I know AoS is fairly popular, but with the amount of kits, and extravagant expensive to design and produce kits at that, I can't really believe they are making much of a profit on it, unless the development funds are siphoned over from other games.

Honestly I think the reason we see such a high proportion of Marine models is because they are probably at least a third of GW's income, especially when you have the Heresy still running around is which is pretty much just Marine vs Marine action.

Design and production of the kits has also probably gone down a lot as they have converted over to more digital systems. The initial investment is usually the pain point, but when you can CAD all the models, the cost is only electricity, designer time, and naturally depreciating assets.

A.T. wrote:

ccs wrote:
SoB average age of kit being 5 years old - LOL.
Proof that you can make statistics tell any lue you want....

It's also a little unclear exactly what one box represents here.

Sisters in 2004 for instance have 17 boxes - which is roughly one box per individual model sculpt (i.e. two sisters with stormbolters = 2 boxes). But this doesn't match with the number of boxes for sisters in 1997, nor does it match with the space marines 7 boxes in 2004 (representing six models, one vehicle, a multi-model command squad and six-man veteran squad IIRC).

Yeah, a bit odd. Each box seems to be one article sold by GW, but when one article contains multiple charcters they count each one separately. Makes me wonder how they count stuff like scarabs/warriors or gaunts/reapers.

This seems a bit silly, half these marine releases are aluminum mold character sprues that come in a booster pack. Those are much lower cost investment than a steel mold used for the models that come in a box.

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea it is a chicken and egg thing. At this point I don't think it would ever change, because they'll forever be the "protagonist" of the universe.

But you can check, if at the time of some xeno army, getting a new plastic model line, and getting new powerful rules, out sold marines. Did eldar when they had their soup lists with all the jetbikes and undercosted lords of war outsell marines?
If yes, then this means that with support any army can be made popular, or just or more popular then marines. If not, then this means that marines , are special, and that the majority of players do want marines to play with, which makes supporting them with new models lines a sensible thing to do for model making company.

I mean McDonalds can love its vegan customers, but it ain't going to sacrifice its meat eaters to make them happy. And if it would try it, it would probably end really bad for the company.

Karol wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea it is a chicken and egg thing. At this point I don't think it would ever change, because they'll forever be the "protagonist" of the universe.

But you can check, if at the time of some xeno army, getting a new plastic model line, and getting new powerful rules, out sold marines. Did eldar when they had their soup lists with all the jetbikes and undercosted lords of war outsell marines?
If yes, then this means that with support any army can be made popular, or just or more popular then marines. If not, then this means that marines , are special, and that the majority of players do want marines to play with, which makes supporting them with new models lines a sensible thing to do for model making company.

I mean McDonalds can love its vegan customers, but it ain't going to sacrifice its meat eaters to make them happy. And if it would try it, it would probably end really bad for the company.

Eldar havnt had equal support as marines in forever.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Number of releases also means very little these days: orks had 6 releases in 2018 but basically just 2, the Wartrike and buggies with 5 different loadouts.

They're very different models. How should we view Intercessors, Incursors, Infiltrators, and Assault Intercessors? They're all the same model with different guns.

We disagree then. Infantry specialists have always been different units, with specific roles and unique abilities and still are. Buggies are different only since that release, and they really are the exact same unit with (slightly) different weapons.

Statelines of infantries should be pretty similar, but when a few vehicles share the same stateline is not the same: it's a redundancy that could be avoided. SM have tons of dreads, with different loadouts and unique sculpts but they're all dreads. They could easily all be merged into the same datasheet, or two at most.

I'd never say that boyz, kommandos, stormboyz, tankbustas and lootas are the same models with different guns. And yet some of those units have actually the exact same combination of weapons.

 Blackie wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Number of releases also means very little these days: orks had 6 releases in 2018 but basically just 2, the Wartrike and buggies with 5 different loadouts.

They're very different models. How should we view Intercessors, Incursors, Infiltrators, and Assault Intercessors? They're all the same model with different guns.

We disagree then. Infantry specialists have always been different units, with specific roles and unique abilities and still are. Buggies are different only since that release, and they really are the exact same unit with (slightly) different weapons.

Statelines of infantries should be pretty similar, but when a few vehicles share the same stateline is not the same: it's a redundancy that could be avoided. SM have tons of dreads, with different loadouts and unique sculpts but they're all dreads. They could easily all be merged into the same datasheet, or two at most.

I'd never say that boyz, kommandos, stormboyz, tankbustas and lootas are the same models with different guns. And yet some of those units have actually the exact same combination of weapons.

Boyz, Kommandos, TBs all occupy different roles on the battlefield. I think considering all the new buggy weapons "slightly" different as a bit of a stretch.

I don't care how one might want to cut the data up as long as the logic is equally applied. If all buggies are "one" then all Intercessor types are "one". And that isn't to defend marines - its a consistency thing.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
Slightly off topic, but I do wonder how much the income of 40k (and thus space marines) supplements the other games in terms of R&D etc. I know AoS is fairly popular, but with the amount of kits, and extravagant expensive to design and produce kits at that, I can't really believe they are making much of a profit on it, unless the development funds are siphoned over from other games.

A buddy of mine is the Manager of a Warhammer store near me. At least in our region Marines sell better than all of AoS, and most 40k sales are for marines.

Karol wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:
Yea it is a chicken and egg thing. At this point I don't think it would ever change, because they'll forever be the "protagonist" of the universe.

But you can check, if at the time of some xeno army, getting a new plastic model line, and getting new powerful rules, out sold marines. Did eldar when they had their soup lists with all the jetbikes and undercosted lords of war outsell marines?
If yes, then this means that with support any army can be made popular, or just or more popular then marines. If not, then this means that marines , are special, and that the majority of players do want marines to play with, which makes supporting them with new models lines a sensible thing to do for model making company.

there are no numbers available, the only ones we have came from the Chapterhouse Law suit were GW made some numbers public to support their case

and those showed that the overall model sales of a faction was directly related to the release of new boxes and new rules

so with Marines get more often new rules (because there are more Marine subfactions) and more models (because there are more subfactions), while at the same point most Marine releases can be used for all of the subfactions, Marines sell more models

from what we have seen, if Eldar would get the number of constant releases over time, models and rules, they would also sell

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Number of releases also means very little these days: orks had 6 releases in 2018 but basically just 2, the Wartrike and buggies with 5 different loadouts.

They're very different models. How should we view Intercessors, Incursors, Infiltrators, and Assault Intercessors? They're all the same model with different guns.

We disagree then. Infantry specialists have always been different units, with specific roles and unique abilities and still are. Buggies are different only since that release, and they really are the exact same unit with (slightly) different weapons.

Statelines of infantries should be pretty similar, but when a few vehicles share the same stateline is not the same: it's a redundancy that could be avoided. SM have tons of dreads, with different loadouts and unique sculpts but they're all dreads. They could easily all be merged into the same datasheet, or two at most.

I'd never say that boyz, kommandos, stormboyz, tankbustas and lootas are the same models with different guns. And yet some of those units have actually the exact same combination of weapons.

Boyz, Kommandos, TBs all occupy different roles on the battlefield. I think considering all the new buggy weapons "slightly" different as a bit of a stretch.

I don't care how one might want to cut the data up as long as the logic is equally applied. If all buggies are "one" then all Intercessor types are "one". And that isn't to defend marines - its a consistency thing.

I'm with daedalus here, buggies aren't just weapon swaps - they are distinct, separate units and each has a different role that they fulfill to varying degree. And they are definitely 6 new releases, not one.

At which point, we go back to what I said earlier, we need to know how this was calculated to confirm if it is consistent or not, as it seems multi-unit kits have been counted as distinct separate releases before, or, don't argue about anything based on this infographic and take it for what it is.

The untrusting person within me could assume this was made by someone with a gripe against the amount of marine releases so has made editorial decisions to make it look worse than it is, which would be hilarious as if done accurately marine releases would still be far ahead.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
At which point, we go back to what I said earlier, we need to know how this was calculated to confirm if it is consistent or not, as it seems multi-unit kits have been counted as distinct separate releases before, or, don't argue about anything based on this infographic and take it for what it is.

The untrusting person within me could assume this was made by someone with a gripe against the amount of marine releases so has made editorial decisions to make it look worse than it is, which would be hilarious as if done accurately marine releases would still be far ahead.

It just gets a little muddy, because not all dual kits are "equal". Immortals and Deathmarks / Lychguard and Praetorians. Most are just weapon swaps from what I can recall though.

*Sad nid noises*

Please GW, gives us a better Red Terror model!

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
At which point, we go back to what I said earlier, we need to know how this was calculated to confirm if it is consistent or not, as it seems multi-unit kits have been counted as distinct separate releases before, or, don't argue about anything based on this infographic and take it for what it is.

The untrusting person within me could assume this was made by someone with a gripe against the amount of marine releases so has made editorial decisions to make it look worse than it is, which would be hilarious as if done accurately marine releases would still be far ahead.

It just gets a little muddy, because not all dual kits are "equal". Immortals and Deathmarks / Lychguard and Praetorians. Most are just weapon swaps from what I can recall though.

Yeah I get it, I'd say a deathwing terminator kit is at least 2, if not 3 kits (normal deathwing, deathwing knights and maybe deathwing command for the third). However, are we classing the stormstrike speeders or gladiator tanks as 3x separate units each, they are just a weapon swap? If they are though, then that is 5x distinct ork buggies.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
At which point, we go back to what I said earlier, we need to know how this was calculated to confirm if it is consistent or not, as it seems multi-unit kits have been counted as distinct separate releases before, or, don't argue about anything based on this infographic and take it for what it is.

The untrusting person within me could assume this was made by someone with a gripe against the amount of marine releases so has made editorial decisions to make it look worse than it is, which would be hilarious as if done accurately marine releases would still be far ahead.

It just gets a little muddy, because not all dual kits are "equal". Immortals and Deathmarks / Lychguard and Praetorians. Most are just weapon swaps from what I can recall though.

Yeah I get it, I'd say a deathwing terminator kit is at least 2, if not 3 kits (normal deathwing, deathwing knights and maybe deathwing command for the third). However, are we classing the stormstrike speeders or gladiator tanks as 3x separate units each, they are just a weapon swap? If they are though, then that is 5x distinct ork buggies.

Silly question, endless - have you looked at the buggy sprues? Each configuration has its own sprue, with no shared components. The five distinct Ork buggies - are five distinct Ork buggies!

 Dysartes wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
At which point, we go back to what I said earlier, we need to know how this was calculated to confirm if it is consistent or not, as it seems multi-unit kits have been counted as distinct separate releases before, or, don't argue about anything based on this infographic and take it for what it is.

The untrusting person within me could assume this was made by someone with a gripe against the amount of marine releases so has made editorial decisions to make it look worse than it is, which would be hilarious as if done accurately marine releases would still be far ahead.

It just gets a little muddy, because not all dual kits are "equal". Immortals and Deathmarks / Lychguard and Praetorians. Most are just weapon swaps from what I can recall though.

Yeah I get it, I'd say a deathwing terminator kit is at least 2, if not 3 kits (normal deathwing, deathwing knights and maybe deathwing command for the third). However, are we classing the stormstrike speeders or gladiator tanks as 3x separate units each, they are just a weapon swap? If they are though, then that is 5x distinct ork buggies.

Silly question, endless - have you looked at the buggy sprues? Each configuration has its own sprue, with no shared components. The five distinct Ork buggies - are five distinct Ork buggies!

I'm on your side of the argument here, I'm saying the infographic is skewed and not consistent, I'd also say the 3x marine speeders and gladiators are 3x different releases as well, whereas an impulsor happens to have 3x options so is one release.

 Jidmah wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
Number of releases also means very little these days: orks had 6 releases in 2018 but basically just 2, the Wartrike and buggies with 5 different loadouts.

They're very different models. How should we view Intercessors, Incursors, Infiltrators, and Assault Intercessors? They're all the same model with different guns.

We disagree then. Infantry specialists have always been different units, with specific roles and unique abilities and still are. Buggies are different only since that release, and they really are the exact same unit with (slightly) different weapons.

Statelines of infantries should be pretty similar, but when a few vehicles share the same stateline is not the same: it's a redundancy that could be avoided. SM have tons of dreads, with different loadouts and unique sculpts but they're all dreads. They could easily all be merged into the same datasheet, or two at most.

I'd never say that boyz, kommandos, stormboyz, tankbustas and lootas are the same models with different guns. And yet some of those units have actually the exact same combination of weapons.

Boyz, Kommandos, TBs all occupy different roles on the battlefield. I think considering all the new buggy weapons "slightly" different as a bit of a stretch.

I don't care how one might want to cut the data up as long as the logic is equally applied. If all buggies are "one" then all Intercessor types are "one". And that isn't to defend marines - its a consistency thing.

I'm with daedalus here, buggies aren't just weapon swaps - they are distinct, separate units and each has a different role that they fulfill to varying degree. And they are definitely 6 new releases, not one.

Yeah, the basic chassis for each is completely unrelated, let alone the weapons. Statlines differ on some, and CC abilities as well- some do mortal wounds on the charge, some don't, some do base statline hits, others have melee weapons. It was a weird decision on GW's part to toss out the basic buggies completely and replace them with 5 distinct units, but that's exactly what they did. (And the not-a-warboss trike is something utterly unrelated)

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 Dysartes wrote:

Spoiler:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
At which point, we go back to what I said earlier, we need to know how this was calculated to confirm if it is consistent or not, as it seems multi-unit kits have been counted as distinct separate releases before, or, don't argue about anything based on this infographic and take it for what it is.

The untrusting person within me could assume this was made by someone with a gripe against the amount of marine releases so has made editorial decisions to make it look worse than it is, which would be hilarious as if done accurately marine releases would still be far ahead.

It just gets a little muddy, because not all dual kits are "equal". Immortals and Deathmarks / Lychguard and Praetorians. Most are just weapon swaps from what I can recall though.

Yeah I get it, I'd say a deathwing terminator kit is at least 2, if not 3 kits (normal deathwing, deathwing knights and maybe deathwing command for the third). However, are we classing the stormstrike speeders or gladiator tanks as 3x separate units each, they are just a weapon swap? If they are though, then that is 5x distinct ork buggies.

Silly question, endless - have you looked at the buggy sprues? Each configuration has its own sprue, with no shared components. The five distinct Ork buggies - are five distinct Ork buggies!

I'm on your side of the argument here, I'm saying the infographic is skewed and not consistent, I'd also say the 3x marine speeders and gladiators are 3x different releases as well, whereas an impulsor happens to have 3x options so is one release.

The Speeders and Gladiators are single kits with options to build 3 (or, if you include the Impulsor, 4 for the Gladiator) variants from one kit. Completely different kettle of fish to the Ork Buggies. Speeder and Gladiator should be one model release each.

 Dysartes wrote:
The Speeders and Gladiators are single kits with options to build 3 (or, if you include the Impulsor, 4 for the Gladiator) variants from one kit. Completely different kettle of fish to the Ork Buggies. Speeder and Gladiator should be one model release each.

I think they count as 3 here and I'm not sure if they should or not. Honestly this is all too disparate to make any real judgements.

As they say in "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" - the rules are made up and the points don't matter.