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Not Online!!! wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
If it wasn't for the pricing, their sales would rocket even higher, especially after this virus stuff. It's the price that shuts down many dreams to play before they can even grow. I know, as I've talked to many could have been players and price is invariably the hurdle too high to get over.

my original plans for R&H were far smaller because i accumulated at the time money for it. And when i had it together the whole range got oop, so i went with a substitute, with superior quality for lower money. it was at that stage i realised just how overpriced GW is for what it offers.

My point in case, however as you're on here as I am I'd say we represent a rather hard core center for GW and even many of us find the pricing just frustrating. Not just for me or my wants but I couldn't imagine starting a guard army from scratch these days, I wouldn't. It would cost way too much. However if they think the hardcore players will be around for ever, perhaps they need to realize time is an issue. They will need to eventually court new players but they will not with this ever rising tide of cost barrier to entry, what I've seen anyways.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Stormonu wrote:
I think the *typical* 40K gamer has an average 2-year lifespan or so. The first year is filled with ramping up - getting and painting models, learning the game. About six months of happiness, and then a slow decline and disinterest as frustration slowly sets in. At least, that’s been my observation over the years.

Note, I wouldn’t ascribe the forum members of Dakka as “typical”, as I believe most forum members here would be better described as enthusiasts, even though they might have moved away from 40k proper.

I've seen the same. I try and keep people positive in my local area but new players do grow disenchanted when what they felt would be balanced and fair as imbalanced and uncaring. All paid for at a premium cost that grows ever upward even with decades old kits. So try as you may unless you are really devoted I can see the GW burn out being a very real thing. The saddest fact is, even when the players fade out they still say they like it but the nature of the beast just grinds them down.

I have caved and instead decided to join them. Currently painting a load of assault intercessors.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
If it wasn't for the pricing, their sales would rocket even higher, especially after this virus stuff. It's the price that shuts down many dreams to play before they can even grow. I know, as I've talked to many could have been players and price is invariably the hurdle too high to get over.

Most people have a range of dollars they'll spend on some sort of schedule. Say that person will still spend $100 and pretend it costs GW $10 to make a kit that they sell for $50. They can buy two of those. Then GW drops the price to $33, so they buy 3 of them. GW got zero additional revenue, but paid $30 in costs instead of $20. Some people may not even spend on the third kit - they may just be happy to buy two and save money.

Then consider than an FLGS gets 50% meaning GW gets $16 and pays $10. The majority of their sales are Trade. Such price drops affect trade account margins as well and you may well see the 15% discounts diminish as a consequence.

The end result is GW makes no additional revenue by dropping prices. There's a breakpoint where they do lose money by increasing prices, but they're not there yet, I think.

There are a fair number of avenues to get into the hobby without a massive outlay. Not everyone has to have everything right now. I know I didn't when I started.

No matter how you try and explain that to a new player, they see the cost of over $100 USD to just wiggle a toe in as too high. Yeah, you can save up for long amounts of time to get a full experience but most don't want to do that. They crunch the numbers and once they figure out how much it'll cost to make the force they want to have, they just go, to heck with that and get into something else.

Some armies are more cost effective but if you say " Love " the feel and look of GSC and crunch the numbers of a 1500 pt force ? They just say heck no. Not everyone wants to play marines and I tend to see current players do the pacing out of purchases to take the sting out of the costs.

We all won't be buying forever though and when we aren't, I really don't see those numbers still going up as it gets more expensive each year to try and jump in for a new player.

Customer growth is what reducing prices does, not specifically increasing existing customer spending.

You expand the demographics capable of buying into the hobby by reducing the price, thus increasing your over all profit through numbers, rather than relying on a smaller population paying more.

And the way these things work, dropping the price by X% expands the demographic by orders of magnitude due to population wealth scaling.

 Hellebore wrote:
Customer growth is what reducing prices does, not specifically increasing existing customer spending.

You expand the demographics capable of buying into the hobby by reducing the price, thus increasing your over all profit through numbers, rather than relying on a smaller population paying more.

And the way these things work, dropping the price by X% expands the demographic by orders of magnitude due to population wealth scaling.

You are a wise Hellebore indeed.

 Hellebore wrote:
Customer growth is what reducing prices does, not specifically increasing existing customer spending.

You expand the demographics capable of buying into the hobby by reducing the price, thus increasing your over all profit through numbers, rather than relying on a smaller population paying more.

And the way these things work, dropping the price by X% expands the demographic by orders of magnitude due to population wealth scaling.

The problem currently is broader than that. Supply isn't really keeping up with current demand for GW product. Many products go in and out of availability, and new releases sell out very quickly despite being main-line product. Obviously we can point at the pandemic and other issues to this, but with the growing popularity of the GW hobby since 8th edition, GW's production capacity has been strained to keep supply consistent.

If price is lowered, that increases the demographic able to buy, which, yes, is great on the surface, but as it stands, GW's distribution would be stretched even more thin, and they'd lose money simply by being unable to produce desired product.

Therefore, they'd need to make a greater investment into factory capacity and inventory space in order to keep up with that demand, which would require a large capital investment. They already did this shortly after 8th dropped, with a fancy new distribution center in America and more machines in the UK, and that still hasn't been enough.

So, the company has to skirt this fine line. It goes something like this.
Company has X demand and Z supply.
When X demand is double Z supply, they invest capital into upgrading supply.
Repeat.

At no point is price involved in this. In fact, by keeping things where they are, the hobby will continue to grow, they can maintain prices to match inflation and other factors, and keep that supply/demand riding that process ad infinitum, as long as they continue to produce things that people want.

Another reason they do this is because supply and demand fluctuate. So, at the start of a new edition, demand skyrockets for lots of new kits and books. But then a year in, demand might sink a bit. There's no sense in saying they should upgrade supply at the peak of a new edition when they know it's going to taper off later during the year. They need for that curve of demand to be significant enough that it makes sense for their supply chain to be upgraded even during those dips.

So, there's a lot that goes into it, but a blanket price decrease just isn't in the cards unless demand severely drops and the company needs to sell off inventory to survive. At that point, the company would be going under.

A price drop would be good no lie, probs make things easier and give me a bit more reason to buy from me these days. No incentive for me to anyway atm with the lack of models for my army and having a complete collection already just about. 3red party options more enticing and far cheaper with nice quality to work with.

SemperMortis wrote:

 Irbis wrote:

SemperMortis wrote:
Last tournament I went to was 50-60% space Marines. We had 2 ork players (myself included), a Nid player, a single tau player, 2 eldar players, 1 Imperial Guard player and than 2-3 Chaos type players. Let me tell you how boring it was to face off against those Marine players. I know that I was excited when I got to play non-power armored opponents and the feeling was mutual throughout most of the event. I know a few people who have "dropped" out of the hobby because its so mono-directional in game play these days. They will bounce back every few months or so to check in but otherwise they are AFK.

Funny, because now you know how SM players felt for nearly a decade facing Taudar nonsense. Scatbikes that, riptidewing this, serpentspam, aspects getting 2+ rerollable BS just for existing, invincible drones, 190 pts knights, that garbage was vastly more broken than anything SM can do in 8th or 9th - but funnily enough SM players admit there is a problem (and there is a ton of people who think kicking squats to 2W was idiotic move) while Taudar players were screeching game is tOtEs BaLaNcEd the whole time and pretending everything is okay because they got to win just for picking the army. 'These days' you say?

A decade you say. I mean, you could easily make an argument that Eldar were overpowered from 5th to mid 8th and I would agree with you, But scatbikes were only ever oppressively good in 7th, same with riptide wing, serpeantspam died before that....So really you are complaining about 7th in general, which again, i agree with, but its a bit hyperbolic to say a decade. 7th lasted like 3 years and during that time frame SM's were one of the top 3 armies in the game with their demi-company free razorback spam.
During that same time frame I was playing my orkz still. Reasonably sure we were in a neck and neck race for worst codex of 7th, so trust me when I say I understand the feeling of walking into a game knowing you are at a disadvantage. Also, 8th edition Ironhands nonsense and early gunline girlyman were a hell of a lot more oppressive than triptides or scatbikes, but that is my opinion.

Serpentspam and Wraithknights were 6th, then Scatbikes and Riptidewing in 7th, so that was 6th and 7th edition Eldar were oppressive in some way.

I've lost interest in my Salamanders & am shelving(not selling, love how they look)them for the foreseeable future. For some background, I'm sitting on 5k of Primaris and almost another 5k of Astartes, so I like marines and have been accused here of being a marine______whatever.

GW has made me have no interest in playing against loyalists, even when I use my Ynarri or Flawless Host.

Luckily I play in a diverse local group and most feel the same way, so at some point in the future we may feel inclined to focus on all.

GW could really pump the brakes on loyal marine releases, but they're not gonna. Cash Rules Everything Around Me(GW)dolla dolla bills y'all.

Which is a shame, I was tinkering with expanding my nephews Star Dragons to include some Primaris. Unfortunately how the state of releases goes I want to reinforce non-marine releases so no loyalist purchases for a while.

I really want to add to my Ynarri(currently mostly Deldar w a couple of Harlis) but want CWE and have zero interest in finecast. Want to start Orks but since they've been mostly ditched(minus new buggies & don't care bout Goffs) and lack many units in plastic, have made me reticent to start.

The barrier to entry is extremely high as there is no value added save the random discount box. Horde armies are at an inherent disadvantage from a pure army building standpoint. So this unfortunately leads to marine saturation which can become unfun quickly for all involved.

There's always 3d printing, especially for armies who haven't been served as well by GW's release schedule and where the mini quality is often superior to older GW sculpts.

I don't know offhand of a good CWE modelset, but for Orks, I can and will point to the fantastic work of Geargut's Mekshop, whose Orks are big, chunky, and rather uniquely, kind of look like they're having fun.

The first thing I thought when I read about all the rules changes this edition was that it gave me a headache trying to wrap my head around all the tiny changes and thinking how much more complicated some basic stuff has got, even down to stuff like unit coherency.

I've seen a lot of worrying trends and changes that fostered concerns that have basically and seemingly turned out true given at the state of the meta being reported. I'm still working on painting a GSC army, because I'm learning a lot about painting and it's an interesting project. But I know for a fact that it's going to be about as fun to put on the table as a sandpaper bedroom toy, to put it gently. It's going to sit on a shelf and look pretty and that's about it.

GW seem to have made GEQ virtually worthless in a ridiculous kneejerk reaction to their laziness at the start of 8th where Astra Militarum had copy-pasted rules from 7th. In combination with a poorly thought out rule for Commissars which briefly gave AM insanely powerful conscript hordes that were immune to morale and could drown anything, they created a problem and then scrambled to fix it with one massive nerf at a time, each of which after the first was pure overkill.

But they kept going and now the blast and coherency rules are a thing, so my guardsmen bubblewrap are even easier to wipe out in record time.

Now we have cost efficient and spammable T5 3W marine troops which I'm told hover around the 20 pt mark and make my 6 pt Neophytes and 5 pt Guardsmen look laughable by comparison.

GW seem to have, piecemeal, forgotten the principle of game design that actually introducing something at the conceptual stage is a threat to game balance. We've seen Space Marines get a carbon copy of every niche unit from every other faction, but better. From what I can see they now have strong multi-wound basic infantry with long range guns that don't need mobility or transports, a variety of strong infiltration units, spammable firepower at long or short range, fast and durable transports, uber-powerful tanks that put IG to shame, a plethora of beatstick characters, niche gimmicks and strategies out the wazoo and more buffs and force multipliers than any other faction can shake a stick at. I mean I could go on all day.

They seem to have almost everyone's elses shtick and its dumb.

People have mentioned 5th edition in this thread. I loved 5th edition. I loved being able to play Marines and feel that my imperative was to rely on mobility, have a balance of stuff and build around stealing objectives knowing that it was futile and pointless to try and run a list that involved shooting the enemy off the board, because the most efficient unit for long ranged shooting was a Devastator Squad with 4 Missile Launchers or Lascannons. I started playing IG and enjoyed running niche platoons and being surprised at the ability of 30 Guardsmen to FRFSRF something out of existence valiantly just before it tore into them, or watching them fight heavy infantry in melee without it being a forgone conclusion.

None of that is the same anymore. Just play Marines and plonk down a mix of the new extreme-quantity-firepower-for-that-one-niche-units. GW brought out the Repulsor and thought no that's clearly too tame, lets have an even shootier, more specialized tank that does heavy firepower but can also shoot twice and called that the Repulsor Executioner. And now they've done it again, only this time we have the Gladiator, which is the same shtick, only scaled down to be more compact and more spammable! What's the point of Astra Militarum existing? I remember being excited looking at the Guard Codex because it was a novel concept that they had a tank that had a gatling gun that rolled twenty dice every time it fired. Now Marines are the Imperial Guard, but with power armour™.

At the end of 8th edition, my Guardsmen were used to block deepstrikers, and that was it. They were now so useless that they had gone from where I could use them offensively in 5th/6th, to having dubious use counter-offensively in 7th, to being a tarpit and deepstrike blocker in early-mid 8th, to just being a deepstrike speedbump that uberinfantry had to deal with first. Because I played a number of games where they were exterminated in a turn or two and served as little more than target practice.

Tl;dr

I've been playing a lot of X-Wing 2.0 lately and frankly it is refreshing. I can almost always pinpoint why I lost because of a tactical mistake that I made on a particular turn and I virtually never feel like I lost because my list was unplayable. I think often about how to play the cheapest low end ships and make them work against the high end ships that cost 5 times as much, and vice versa, and when I do I know I'm not clutching at straws.


When I think about writing lists for GSC, I think, jesus wept, what is even the point of taking Neophytes when 2W Marines are the least of my worries? How am I supposed to get anywhere with melee units that are incredibly fragile and expensive that are just barely threatening to Marines, that also depend on charges working out?

drbored 796396 11064314 wrote:

You're looking at it from a gaming/meta standpoint.

I'm talking about a model-release standpoint.

If you take your shiny new space marines and go up against a guy whose models, that he just bought, are from 3rd or 5th edition, it's... a complex feeling.

It's an imbalance in releases. Someone goes to the shelves and sees a huge section devoted to space marines. They get to their chosen/favorite faction and they see half a shelf of models. It's kind of disheartening.

Then you turn around and see the AoS side of things where everything is actually pretty even, with some discrepancy for whatever is the new hotness.

What perspective am I to have, this is a game? I played in 8th and I played in 9th. In both editions my dudes were on the bad side. Marines on the other hand, both chaos and loyallist, changed. In 8th marine armies didn't want to run marines, it was inefficient and unfun. So model wise, you were being forced in to buying non marine models, which you may not even like the looks of, just to play the army you want to play. In 9th a marine army has actual marines in it, and that is great. . The fact that different marine armies are actualy able to use different units and have different builds is even better

If we were to go back to how stuff looked in 8th it would be a huge downgrade. But I agree maybe because I look at the game from the gaming perspective I have little sympathy to people that in prior editions could run circles around marines armies, specially if the marine player wasn't playing a tournament list.

People were defending eradicators as being balanced by pointing out that attack bikes and melta devs were almost as good LMAO.

not much different then marine players being told that not every eldar player plays Alaitoc or maxed out reapers, or a dron form for tau. If reapers shoting twice were balanced, and required you to learn to play the game better, then aggressors shoting twice are just as balanced. Otherwise we are having a double standard. And if we are to have one, then I at least would rather have an army closer to my be the one with good rules.

 Amishprn86 wrote:
As a DE player, i just want 3-4 more HQ's, thats it, literally thats all I want.

1 Vect: Everyone else got their big baddy, I want mine
2 Baron: A cool unique HQ that everyone loved and added fun to the army
3 HQ with Fly: So I don't have to foot slug all over and feel fast, also Venoms and Raiders are 5 and 10 mans, adding a HQ sucks and doesn't feel right most the time (Bike, wings, skyboard)
4 Merch HQ: Optional one like a Mandrake, Incubi, Scourge, etc.. either any of them, just something.

Dracons, Ancients, etc.. can be with the same models we have now.

I been thinking a bit about this, and I think a big issue is so much of the design space and time is seeming put into marines and even interesting ideas in other Factions are often half done or not even thought about.

The uniqueness they could have is lost as the rules are not even written in a way to support them.
We are watching players drop, and the ones staying are getting more meta pushing by necessity.
Dropping none competing army’s and switch just to have some fun I do not think is going to be sustainable for 40k here again.

PenitentJake wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Most people have a range of dollars they'll spend on some sort of schedule. Say that person will still spend $100 and pretend it costs GW $10 to make a kit that they sell for $50. They can buy two of those. Then GW drops the price to $33, so they buy 3 of them. GW got zero additional revenue, but paid $30 in costs instead of $20. Some people may not even spend on the third kit - they may just be happy to buy two and save money.

One way of looking at it.

Here's another: think about all the people who don't deal with GW at all because of costs. If dropping your prices 50% gets you three or four times as many players who will stick with you for life, how much is that worth?

It isn't about how much each person spends (or at least it doesn't have to be); it can be about how many people spend any money at all.

Look at the new KT box. Many are complaining about the price, since the box only includes 12 models and very weak terrain. It's sales, from what I can tell by reading forums, are likely to disappoint GW. But if it was priced comparably with the Elite starter box, they wouldn't be able to keep it in stock. I'd buy one AND an Elite box, because that would give me enough Crons to field them. And I'd need a Necron dex on top of that.

But now, instead GW gets whatever they charge for heavy Intercessor from me instead. Likely $70 CAD instead of $290.

Forums are always on negative minority. Happy ones don't make as much noice...People claim always "this price sucks" yet stuff solds out anyway...

And GW have better sales data. They have tried making prices for new release lower. Guess it didn't work...Seeing you need to sell more than twice if you halve the price no surprise on luxury hobby that is pretty damn price elastic. Doubtful sales would go up 300% if cost is halved...And GW has data for sales lot more accurate than random internet poster has. They know when they tried how did it affect sales.

Not to mention...How on earth you sell more when you can't meet up with supply already! If you can't produce more than X how you intend to produce 3X? Supply&demand law is saying they are if anything underpricing since they can't meet with the demand...

They made prices lower for stuff like Dark Imperium and Know no Fear, and those boxs were a huge success. Stuff like indominatus is good only when compared to how much, specialy in retro spect, GW asks for the stuff. But those two boxs from 2ed were selling really well, a ton of people were picking them up. It was a bummer though, that marine armies based around primaris didn't become a thing till 2.0 book droped.

in the wargaming hobby we have the strange behaviour that people don't buy something if they feel it is too expensive but spend much more money if it is cheap

there was the time when the €/GBP conversion rate changed a lot in favour for the € and ordering in the UK was very cheap
also because things were sold cheaper in the UK anyway, not only for GW but over all

people who never bought a Land Raider because it was too expensive bought 4-6 because it was "cheap"


but still if GW already sells everything they produce, not need to reduce the price and produce more

the tricky thing here is, that the conclusion for models not selling is "people don't like it" and not "maybe it is too expensive"

so they just make something else that sells better on the given price and are happy
while the costumer gets more and more Marines

 AngryAngel80 wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 AngryAngel80 wrote:
If it wasn't for the pricing, their sales would rocket even higher, especially after this virus stuff. It's the price that shuts down many dreams to play before they can even grow. I know, as I've talked to many could have been players and price is invariably the hurdle too high to get over.

my original plans for R&H were far smaller because i accumulated at the time money for it. And when i had it together the whole range got oop, so i went with a substitute, with superior quality for lower money. it was at that stage i realised just how overpriced GW is for what it offers.

My point in case, however as you're on here as I am I'd say we represent a rather hard core center for GW and even many of us find the pricing just frustrating. Not just for me or my wants but I couldn't imagine starting a guard army from scratch these days, I wouldn't. It would cost way too much. However if they think the hardcore players will be around for ever, perhaps they need to realize time is an issue. They will need to eventually court new players but they will not with this ever rising tide of cost barrier to entry, what I've seen anyways.

Agreed, and i think we have seen it, it was called warhammer fantasy.

I never got into it, despite having enough disposable income, for the sheer lack of size many factions required.
On average was 2000-3000 pts over here, i looked into Chaos warriors, ogre kingdoms and vampire counts with a focus on skelletons. It was just not justifyable pricewise, even against FW armies like R&H or DKoK which required less pts and had bundles available to them.

And starting a guard army? right now? beyond the basic trooper which you will require decent ammounts off looking comparatively fugly as hell, they also dropped the 20 man box for them. When i started out 40k i could get a 20 man guardsmen box for 40 CHF. now i get 10 for 32.50 CHF. For the same sprues.

Now recently i started out with a GSC count as, since chaos has me in it's grips, but i skipped GW infantry mostly or kitbashed them into something else and made the core of it Wargames atlantic WW1 germans. Which look better then IG guardsmen, are easier to customize in many ways and i can import via my local FLG for 32 CHF / 30 models with 90 heads and more options to boot.
Heck it was cheaper to order for my former R&H project 70 anvil industry models in their platoon deal to my definitions and specifications than it would've been for me to order the bodies as cadians in my FLG.

Basically even for me, which is willing to overlook the price tag if quality or availability and support is there i started to wonder.

But the real answer is, that GW is so strong within it's specific niche of market that it is in many ways an quasi monopolist, their maximum profit is not under competition and therefore maximum market share but rather production and logistical fix costs. So they can maximize profitability instead, which is why even though the pricehikes gw has had will have inevitably made some people jump ship or partially go off, will have been no issue for them since they will gain more profit out of the lower production ammount.

I will tell you this, from the perspective of someone who owns and plays most of the armies that are considered unusably bad right now: some of your perspective is due to the fact that you are not currently playing the game.

A regular, T4, W2 intercessor is 20pts, not a heavy intercessor theyre like...I don't know, 30 or something. GEQ light infantry is not amazing at fighting, but it is good at running absolute circles around the opposing army.

My last game was against primaris-heavy salamanders infantry as Orks, admittedly not a tippy-top tournament game, but my opponent had what I'd consider a fairly reasonable, sensible list - some eradicators, mostly the best current version of intercessors as troops, flamestorm aggressors, lightning claw/storm shield vanvets with a discount smash captain and chaplain as a melee threat,and some of the assault cannon/double lascannon flyers for killing stuff.

Gretchins, boyz and kommandos absolutely 100% won the game for me. I had one really good threat to marines - two squads of flash gitz and badrukk in a kilkannon battlewagon with the defense upgrade - and a couple mek gunz and buggies which were able to kill a marine here or there and did bring down one of the flyers after a couple turns, but mostly it was just, gretchins and boyz and kommandos everywhere, on every objective, keeping 15pts per turn coming from primary, 3-4 banners up at all times, 2-3 points from engage on all fronts every turn, and after dealing with the big melee bomb on turn 2 I just kept killing the longer ranged intercessor and devastator squads sitting on the backfield objectives so my opponent would be forced to have assault intercessors sitting on them doing not much of anything so I couldn't burn them down for another 15 points.

Don't get me wrong, some light infantry units are in an absolutely asinine spot right now. Fire Warriors and Guardians have ZERO business being as expensive as they are. But in general cheap infantry units don't really need to be good at fighting when they can sit and perform actions all day long winning you the game.

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The first thing I thought when I read about all the rules changes this edition was that it gave me a headache trying to wrap my head around all the tiny changes and thinking how much more complicated some basic stuff has got, even down to stuff like unit coherency.

I've seen a lot of worrying trends and changes that fostered concerns that have basically and seemingly turned out true given at the state of the meta being reported. I'm still working on painting a GSC army, because I'm learning a lot about painting and it's an interesting project. But I know for a fact that it's going to be about as fun to put on the table as a sandpaper bedroom toy, to put it gently. It's going to sit on a shelf and look pretty and that's about it.

GW seem to have made GEQ virtually worthless in a ridiculous kneejerk reaction to their laziness at the start of 8th where Astra Militarum had copy-pasted rules from 7th. In combination with a poorly thought out rule for Commissars which briefly gave AM insanely powerful conscript hordes that were immune to morale and could drown anything, they created a problem and then scrambled to fix it with one massive nerf at a time, each of which after the first was pure overkill.

But they kept going and now the blast and coherency rules are a thing, so my guardsmen bubblewrap are even easier to wipe out in record time.

Now we have cost efficient and spammable T5 3W marine troops which I'm told hover around the 20 pt mark and make my 6 pt Neophytes and 5 pt Guardsmen look laughable by comparison.

GW seem to have, piecemeal, forgotten the principle of game design that actually introducing something at the conceptual stage is a threat to game balance. We've seen Space Marines get a carbon copy of every niche unit from every other faction, but better. From what I can see they now have strong multi-wound basic infantry with long range guns that don't need mobility or transports, a variety of strong infiltration units, spammable firepower at long or short range, fast and durable transports, uber-powerful tanks that put IG to shame, a plethora of beatstick characters, niche gimmicks and strategies out the wazoo and more buffs and force multipliers than any other faction can shake a stick at. I mean I could go on all day.

They seem to have almost everyone's elses shtick and its dumb.

People have mentioned 5th edition in this thread. I loved 5th edition. I loved being able to play Marines and feel that my imperative was to rely on mobility, have a balance of stuff and build around stealing objectives knowing that it was futile and pointless to try and run a list that involved shooting the enemy off the board, because the most efficient unit for long ranged shooting was a Devastator Squad with 4 Missile Launchers or Lascannons. I started playing IG and enjoyed running niche platoons and being surprised at the ability of 30 Guardsmen to FRFSRF something out of existence valiantly just before it tore into them, or watching them fight heavy infantry in melee without it being a forgone conclusion.

None of that is the same anymore. Just play Marines and plonk down a mix of the new extreme-quantity-firepower-for-that-one-niche-units. GW brought out the Repulsor and thought no that's clearly too tame, lets have an even shootier, more specialized tank that does heavy firepower but can also shoot twice and called that the Repulsor Executioner. And now they've done it again, only this time we have the Gladiator, which is the same shtick, only scaled down to be more compact and more spammable! What's the point of Astra Militarum existing? I remember being excited looking at the Guard Codex because it was a novel concept that they had a tank that had a gatling gun that rolled twenty dice every time it fired. Now Marines are the Imperial Guard, but with power armour™.

At the end of 8th edition, my Guardsmen were used to block deepstrikers, and that was it. They were now so useless that they had gone from where I could use them offensively in 5th/6th, to having dubious use counter-offensively in 7th, to being a tarpit and deepstrike blocker in early-mid 8th, to just being a deepstrike speedbump that uberinfantry had to deal with first. Because I played a number of games where they were exterminated in a turn or two and served as little more than target practice.

Tl;dr

I've been playing a lot of X-Wing 2.0 lately and frankly it is refreshing. I can almost always pinpoint why I lost because of a tactical mistake that I made on a particular turn and I virtually never feel like I lost because my list was unplayable. I think often about how to play the cheapest low end ships and make them work against the high end ships that cost 5 times as much, and vice versa, and when I do I know I'm not clutching at straws.


When I think about writing lists for GSC, I think, jesus wept, what is even the point of taking Neophytes when 2W Marines are the least of my worries? How am I supposed to get anywhere with melee units that are incredibly fragile and expensive that are just barely threatening to Marines, that also depend on charges working out?

I will tell you this, from the perspective of someone who owns and plays most of the armies that are considered unusably bad right now: some of your perspective is due to the fact that you are not currently playing the game.

A regular, T4, W2 intercessor is 20pts, not a heavy intercessor theyre like...I don't know, 30 or something. GEQ light infantry is not amazing at fighting, but it is good at running absolute circles around the opposing army.

My last game was against primaris-heavy salamanders infantry as Orks, admittedly not a tippy-top tournament game, but my opponent had what I'd consider a fairly reasonable, sensible list - some eradicators, mostly the best current version of intercessors as troops, flamestorm aggressors, lightning claw/storm shield vanvets with a discount smash captain and chaplain as a melee threat,and some of the assault cannon/double lascannon flyers for killing stuff.

Gretchins, boyz and kommandos absolutely 100% won the game for me. I had one really good threat to marines - two squads of flash gitz and badrukk in a kilkannon battlewagon with the defense upgrade - and a couple mek gunz and buggies which were able to kill a marine here or there and did bring down one of the flyers after a couple turns, but mostly it was just, gretchins and boyz and kommandos everywhere, on every objective, keeping 15pts per turn coming from primary, 3-4 banners up at all times, 2-3 points from engage on all fronts every turn, and after dealing with the big melee bomb on turn 2 I just kept killing the longer ranged intercessor and devastator squads sitting on the backfield objectives so my opponent would be forced to have assault intercessors sitting on them doing not much of anything so I couldn't burn them down for another 15 points.

Don't get me wrong, some light infantry units are in an absolutely asinine spot right now. Fire Warriors and Guardians have ZERO business being as expensive as they are. But in general cheap infantry units don't really need to be good at fighting when they can sit and perform actions all day long winning you the game.

Difference is Orks are doing ok this edition. Guard, Tau, and GSC are not at all.

 Hellebore wrote:
Customer growth is what reducing prices does, not specifically increasing existing customer spending.

You expand the demographics capable of buying into the hobby by reducing the price, thus increasing your over all profit through numbers, rather than relying on a smaller population paying more.

And the way these things work, dropping the price by X% expands the demographic by orders of magnitude due to population wealth scaling.

Don't they make more off of selling to fanatics at a high price? Could their collective spending be greater especially if they stick with it in the long term while regular people aren't as dedicated. Imo they reach all these people by making various games with lower pay walls like necromunda.

Look at me! I hate marines! I am special!

Look at what dakka has become.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Look at me! I hate marines! I am special!

Look at what dakka has become.

You're right, we're all being too negative about the state of the game. At least Dark Eldar players, like myself, can take solace in the fact that GW has finally taken the spotlight off Marines to give our faction some desperately-needed attention.

Here, let's calm ourselves by basking in the new range of DE units:

With ya Vipod. I know, it's silly to be hopeful, but I am. It helps that the thing I'm most interested in is Crusade content, because I do know the dex will have it.

I was also happy that a) there is a boxed set with Lelith in it, and b) that Sisters are the other force, because they are my primary army.

Finally, I'm happy to see that DE are in the Flashpoint/ Crusade mission pack/ Hardback campaign book that's coming.

That's not a lot- admittedly; we do absolutely need more. And hopefully, we'll get more. I really hope the wall to wall previewing that usually precedes a dex drop will start soon, because some of the things I most want to know about the new dex (how raiding force will play out) are likely to be previewed.

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Look at me! I hate marines! I am special!

Look at what dakka has become.

You're right, we're all being too negative about the state of the game. At least Dark Eldar players, like myself, can take solace in the fact that GW has finally taken the spotlight off Marines to give our faction some desperately-needed attention.

Here, let's calm ourselves by basking in the new range of DE units:

Spoiler:

Drazar and incubi are new models. I got 20 incubi the day they came out. Id love some new stuff too but DE models are all actually pretty good.

It's sad - we wont get anything new other than a trash lilith...really what direction should they go with DE though? I think the focus on eldar is going to be ynnari at this point.

the_scotsman wrote:

Spoiler:

 Mr.Omega wrote:
The first thing I thought when I read about all the rules changes this edition was that it gave me a headache trying to wrap my head around all the tiny changes and thinking how much more complicated some basic stuff has got, even down to stuff like unit coherency.

I've seen a lot of worrying trends and changes that fostered concerns that have basically and seemingly turned out true given at the state of the meta being reported. I'm still working on painting a GSC army, because I'm learning a lot about painting and it's an interesting project. But I know for a fact that it's going to be about as fun to put on the table as a sandpaper bedroom toy, to put it gently. It's going to sit on a shelf and look pretty and that's about it.

GW seem to have made GEQ virtually worthless in a ridiculous kneejerk reaction to their laziness at the start of 8th where Astra Militarum had copy-pasted rules from 7th. In combination with a poorly thought out rule for Commissars which briefly gave AM insanely powerful conscript hordes that were immune to morale and could drown anything, they created a problem and then scrambled to fix it with one massive nerf at a time, each of which after the first was pure overkill.

But they kept going and now the blast and coherency rules are a thing, so my guardsmen bubblewrap are even easier to wipe out in record time.

Now we have cost efficient and spammable T5 3W marine troops which I'm told hover around the 20 pt mark and make my 6 pt Neophytes and 5 pt Guardsmen look laughable by comparison.

GW seem to have, piecemeal, forgotten the principle of game design that actually introducing something at the conceptual stage is a threat to game balance. We've seen Space Marines get a carbon copy of every niche unit from every other faction, but better. From what I can see they now have strong multi-wound basic infantry with long range guns that don't need mobility or transports, a variety of strong infiltration units, spammable firepower at long or short range, fast and durable transports, uber-powerful tanks that put IG to shame, a plethora of beatstick characters, niche gimmicks and strategies out the wazoo and more buffs and force multipliers than any other faction can shake a stick at. I mean I could go on all day.

They seem to have almost everyone's elses shtick and its dumb.

People have mentioned 5th edition in this thread. I loved 5th edition. I loved being able to play Marines and feel that my imperative was to rely on mobility, have a balance of stuff and build around stealing objectives knowing that it was futile and pointless to try and run a list that involved shooting the enemy off the board, because the most efficient unit for long ranged shooting was a Devastator Squad with 4 Missile Launchers or Lascannons. I started playing IG and enjoyed running niche platoons and being surprised at the ability of 30 Guardsmen to FRFSRF something out of existence valiantly just before it tore into them, or watching them fight heavy infantry in melee without it being a forgone conclusion.

None of that is the same anymore. Just play Marines and plonk down a mix of the new extreme-quantity-firepower-for-that-one-niche-units. GW brought out the Repulsor and thought no that's clearly too tame, lets have an even shootier, more specialized tank that does heavy firepower but can also shoot twice and called that the Repulsor Executioner. And now they've done it again, only this time we have the Gladiator, which is the same shtick, only scaled down to be more compact and more spammable! What's the point of Astra Militarum existing? I remember being excited looking at the Guard Codex because it was a novel concept that they had a tank that had a gatling gun that rolled twenty dice every time it fired. Now Marines are the Imperial Guard, but with power armour™.

At the end of 8th edition, my Guardsmen were used to block deepstrikers, and that was it. They were now so useless that they had gone from where I could use them offensively in 5th/6th, to having dubious use counter-offensively in 7th, to being a tarpit and deepstrike blocker in early-mid 8th, to just being a deepstrike speedbump that uberinfantry had to deal with first. Because I played a number of games where they were exterminated in a turn or two and served as little more than target practice.

Tl;dr

I've been playing a lot of X-Wing 2.0 lately and frankly it is refreshing. I can almost always pinpoint why I lost because of a tactical mistake that I made on a particular turn and I virtually never feel like I lost because my list was unplayable. I think often about how to play the cheapest low end ships and make them work against the high end ships that cost 5 times as much, and vice versa, and when I do I know I'm not clutching at straws.


When I think about writing lists for GSC, I think, jesus wept, what is even the point of taking Neophytes when 2W Marines are the least of my worries? How am I supposed to get anywhere with melee units that are incredibly fragile and expensive that are just barely threatening to Marines, that also depend on charges working out?

I will tell you this, from the perspective of someone who owns and plays most of the armies that are considered unusably bad right now: some of your perspective is due to the fact that you are not currently playing the game.

A regular, T4, W2 intercessor is 20pts, not a heavy intercessor theyre like...I don't know, 30 or something. GEQ light infantry is not amazing at fighting, but it is good at running absolute circles around the opposing army.

My last game was against primaris-heavy salamanders infantry as Orks, admittedly not a tippy-top tournament game, but my opponent had what I'd consider a fairly reasonable, sensible list - some eradicators, mostly the best current version of intercessors as troops, flamestorm aggressors, lightning claw/storm shield vanvets with a discount smash captain and chaplain as a melee threat,and some of the assault cannon/double lascannon flyers for killing stuff.

Gretchins, boyz and kommandos absolutely 100% won the game for me. I had one really good threat to marines - two squads of flash gitz and badrukk in a kilkannon battlewagon with the defense upgrade - and a couple mek gunz and buggies which were able to kill a marine here or there and did bring down one of the flyers after a couple turns, but mostly it was just, gretchins and boyz and kommandos everywhere, on every objective, keeping 15pts per turn coming from primary, 3-4 banners up at all times, 2-3 points from engage on all fronts every turn, and after dealing with the big melee bomb on turn 2 I just kept killing the longer ranged intercessor and devastator squads sitting on the backfield objectives so my opponent would be forced to have assault intercessors sitting on them doing not much of anything so I couldn't burn them down for another 15 points.

Don't get me wrong, some light infantry units are in an absolutely asinine spot right now. Fire Warriors and Guardians have ZERO business being as expensive as they are. But in general cheap infantry units don't really need to be good at fighting when they can sit and perform actions all day long winning you the game.

I enjoyed this post a lot scotsman, thanks!

I hate that I can't play games right now :/

 Xenomancers wrote:

 vipoid wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Look at me! I hate marines! I am special!

Look at what dakka has become.

You're right, we're all being too negative about the state of the game. At least Dark Eldar players, like myself, can take solace in the fact that GW has finally taken the spotlight off Marines to give our faction some desperately-needed attention.

Here, let's calm ourselves by basking in the new range of DE units:

Spoiler:

Drazar and incubi are new models. I got 20 incubi the day they came out. Id love some new stuff too but DE models are all actually pretty good.

It's sad - we wont get anything new other than a trash lilith...really what direction should they go with DE though? I think the focus on eldar is going to be ynnari at this point.

Wasn't that a 2018 release?

I don't think we should count models that are years old as a new release.

You know what? We're 7 pages in, and I just noticed it, and I have to thank you.

OP. Thank you for correctly spelling "losing". I've developed anxiety attacks from people "loosing" their minds too many times. So yeah, 7 pages late, but THANK YOU!

 BlackoCatto wrote:

Difference is Orks are doing ok this edition. Guard, Tau, and GSC are not at all.

GSC are hamstrung, because they bear the burden of 8th dynamics. T'au are seeing a little more traction with suits, but they won't get too far still. AM have all the tools for good lists. I think their problem is still writing lists for 8th where the first thing they do is check off 3 Tank Commanders and then build the rest.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Wasn't that a 2018 release?

I don't think we should count models that are years old as a new release.

Nov '19

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 JNAProductions wrote:
Wasn't that a 2018 release?

I don't think we should count models that are years old as a new release.

Nov '19

Ah, okay. So still over a year old.

 Xenomancers wrote:
Drazar and incubi are new models.

I did say new units.

As in, not just replacement sculpts for already existing models. Because those are all we've gotten in over a decade now.

 Xenomancers wrote:
It's sad - we wont get anything new other than a trash lilith...really what direction should they go with DE though? I think the focus on eldar is going to be ynnari at this point.

I mean, if they want to go the ynnari route then I wish they'd bloody well get on with it.

Ynnari have been out since late-7th and the only units they have are 3 special characters. Not exactly a shining example of progression.


As for DE, I think there are numerous routes they could go with them. In terms of models. e.g.:
- Mobility options (Wings/Skyboards/Jetbikes) for existing HQs.
- Lieutenant HQs (Dracon, lesser Haemonculus)
- A Mandrake HQ
- A non-special character Incubi HQ
- Any of the 5 special characters that have been removed since 5th
etc.

If you mean in terms of direction, Mandrakes and Beasts both seem like they could be expanded on to some extent. The former seems like it would lend itself better to characters, but the latter has a lot of potential for new stuff. Hell, GW could probably just repackage stuff from its Fantasy range and it would work fine.


The thing is, though, I don't even desperately need GW to make new models for DE. I'd be happy enough if they'd just throw their 'no model, no rules' policy into the woodchipper and give DE a bunch of new units with or without accompanying models.