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I thought of a couple of great examples of why GW shouldn't do a mass rules dump.

1) D&D 5e. It launched with 3 core books and a premade adventure and they released it with a basic starter kit with the adventure, and then a book at a time over 3 months. This is the best-selling version of D&D ever, so in spite of my qualms about it, it did something right.

2) MtG. They release too many products in too short a span. It doesn't matter that most of these products aren't even for the formats you play or that you should always just draft or buy singles, people have FOMO and it feels bad when they can't at least afford a new release even if they probably wouldn't actually buy it.

-- I'd be intrigued to know where you live. I suspect the name would be something like "convenient land". If your local store isn't carrying spare merchandise in its stock room it probably has bigger issues than whether or not GW is drip feeding its releases or doing them in bulk. You also seem to miss the point entirely in relation to the OP. He's suggesting that they (GW) do a big release with a new edition, including all the codexes at once. An indi store would not need to hold hundreds of books permanently. It would simply need to hold a reasonable amount of stock for its area for a short period of time around the release date of the new edition, kind of like how stores will hold large quantities of things like a new Playstation model ready for its release date.


-- Do you live in "convenient land" with the other dude? Tills from the 90s/early 2000s are mostly not compatible with modern card readers, so a store like that would have difficulty even functioning in the modern world, let alone be non-compliment with various law (depending on the jurisdiction) around how long they need to keep transaction histories for. Again, I would suggest stores set up as you suggest have much bigger problems than whether or not GW is releasing its products in drip feeds or in bulk.

Most normal stores outside of convenient land will have at a minimum a basic system that dumps till transaction data onto a PC hard drive, data which can be sorted quite easily. Modern till systems are actually quite cheap (except for the scanners) and have never been more easy to set up to work with even just a basic stock system. Again, if your local stores lack this, there problems are much bigger than GW sales strategy.

-- The answer is more probable to just be a twist of fate. Back in the 90s they did updates to games like new magic packs and things like Dark Millenium, which were just supplements. Then came books for new races and sub factions, like the Angels of Death. It started the momentum and they went from there. They did do things like produce Ravening Hordes for 6th edition, which was kind of a get you buy set of army lists etc. but not really comparable to doing all the codexes in one blob. I suspect the big issue is just risk. The risk of trying something different when what they do now makes money.


-- Again, you're not looking at the problem in the context of what the OP is suggesting. If all the codexes are being released in one big shot then it's going to be a big one off event, not an ongoing thing. The store has time to prepare and stock up. I've known store owners (not necessarily FLGS specifically) to keep extra stock at their house if needs be, once every last scrap of available space is gone at the store itself. They're not doing this permanently, they're prepping for a big event. And even without a digital system, a store owner will have a pretty good idea about how many customers they have and what those customers play (SM are more popular than x, Blood Angels and y are popular in particular).

As above, if they don't then their problems are much more significant than "What is GWs latest sales strategy and how does that affect us?"


-- Again, assuming GW adopted the approach prefered by the OP, then they would have more than just mere weeks to sort everything out. They would be doing one big multi-codex dump with each new edition, which would be years apart, probably several months itself after the actual edition release in order to give breathing space to pick up snags in the rules and give retailers time to shift stocks of boxed sets. They're not going to be releasing 30 new codexes every few weeks/month.


-- As a shareholder in a number of companies, which until recently included GW, this is categorically not true. Remarkably enough shareholders tend to be a lot more savvy about the businesses they invest in than that, with the exception of day traders and students with 3 shares in Gamestop. What matters is the long term health of the company. Money generated in a big spike can be held and paid out in increments if necessary. As I mentioned earlier, most retailers generate bumper revenue in seasonal chunks, such as around Christmas, depending on their trade. Even companies like Cinema chains will generate their incomes often in fits and spurts, often based around the release schedules of big blockbusters.

It's also not clear why you think that a) GW could not still do special releases of certain additional units/characters throughout the year, and b) why you think that nobody would buy miniatures outside of the release window of the new edition? Indeed what the OP is suggesting, having all the codexes released in one blob, would probably facilitate addtional long run sales by making the game more even on the tabletop, increasing its long term appeal and its network utility.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Spoiler:

Voss wrote:
And I don't know what indie stores are like where you are, but for the last decade, keeping lots of stock on hand hasn't been a priority for most of the game stores I've been in. Even the ones that go hard on GW products don't have 'boxes of books' laying around.
They don't have merchandise in the back room, and what's on the shelves is it. They don't want to hold a 'surprising amount of stock.' Its money tied up in things that aren't selling, and for a lot of game stores, they can't afford that. Its a very difficult balancing act for most game stores. Most don't manage it for more than a few years.

-- I'd be intrigued to know where you live. I suspect the name would be something like "convenient land". If your local store isn't carrying spare merchandise in its stock room it probably has bigger issues than whether or not GW is drip feeding its releases or doing them in bulk.

Hardly local. Its been consistent across multiple stores in multiple states, over the last decade. Having a lot of stock on hand is something that game stores and comic stores that carry games have consistently moved away from. They'll order a little extra for a big new thing (unless their regulars are really down on it, if they listen to their regulars), but they much prefer drip releases to bulk. Less risk, less problems with stuff that doesn't sell.

You also seem to miss the point entirely in relation to the OP. He's suggesting that they (GW) do a big release with a new edition, including all the codexes at once. An indi store would not need to hold hundreds of books permanently.

I wasn't responding to the OP. I responding to _you_, talking about shops having boxes of books lying around, specifically this:

you wrote:And even small stores can hold a surprising amount of stock (boxes of books really don't take up much room).

Stores here simply don't do that, even the rare ones that do carry a lot of GW products. Even when I worked retail in bookstores, we largely didn't do that- just for pre-orders of big stuff like the Harry Potter craze, knowing most of it would be gone that first week.

It would simply need to hold a reasonable amount of stock for its area for a short period of time around the release date of the new edition, kind of like how stores will hold large quantities of things like a new Playstation model ready for its release date.

Indie local game stores don't operate like big box stores around a Playstation console release. They can't afford to and wouldn't want to take the risk anyway. If they order a pile of $200 boxes, and are stuck with 10, that's about $1000 worth of investment that's just sitting around on the shelves. That isn't useful or good for the store.

yukishiro1 wrote:
GW's entire model is based on continually stirring the pot to keep people buying new things. The fact that the balance is upset by each new codex release is a feature, not a bug. That's the whole point of the model. Every few months something new comes out that will prompt people to chase whatever the new meta develops into. If you release all the books at once in a balanced state, you destroy your own business model.

Has the balance been upset with the past four books? Are marines top dog?

The "Convenient Land" that Voss and others are explaining is "The US". FLGS here don't carry large backstocks of merchandise. Generally what's on the shelves is what they have. Once it's sold it's replaced by later shipments. That's how most stores here work, even big supermarkets. Stocks are sold during the day and restocked with shipments that come during the night or early the next day, because having large backstocks is a financial liability both for storage costs and the risk of having money tied up in merchandise that may or may not sell.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
GW's entire model is based on continually stirring the pot to keep people buying new things. The fact that the balance is upset by each new codex release is a feature, not a bug. That's the whole point of the model. Every few months something new comes out that will prompt people to chase whatever the new meta develops into. If you release all the books at once in a balanced state, you destroy your own business model.

Has the balance been upset with the past four books?

Absolutely. I'm not necessarily talking about balance between armies, and I'm not saying the newest book is always the best (though it's very clear by now that 9th books are on a level of power way above 8th, with 8th armies competitive only on points, not on rules). But the point is that each new release changes what stuff is good in each book (and for books without a wide bench, it can really destroy them - see how the Deathguard release has dumpstered Harlequins). The whole point of that model is to keep people swapping out units to counter the new stuff. Deathguard came out and the -1 damage armywide completely changed the value of 2D weapons, which had previously been top dog. This is great for GW, because all those people who teched into 2D weapons to kill marines are now second-guessing those decisions and (hopefully for GW) buying new stuff that will do better against the new releases.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

yukishiro1 wrote:
GW's entire model is based on continually stirring the pot to keep people buying new things. The fact that the balance is upset by each new codex release is a feature, not a bug. That's the whole point of the model. Every few months something new comes out that will prompt people to chase whatever the new meta develops into. If you release all the books at once in a balanced state, you destroy your own business model.

Has the balance been upset with the past four books?

Absolutely. I'm not necessarily talking about balance between armies, and I'm not saying the newest book is always the best (though it's very clear by now that 9th books are on a level of power way above 8th, with 8th armies competitive only on points, not on rules). But the point is that each new release changes what stuff is good in each book (and for books without a wide bench, it can really destroy them - see how the Deathguard release has dumpstered Harlequins). The whole point of that model is to keep people swapping out units to counter the new stuff. Deathguard came out and the -1 damage armywide completely changed the value of 2D weapons, which had previously been top dog. This is great for GW, because all those people who teched into 2W weapons to kill marines are now second-guessing those decisions and (hopefully for GW) buying new stuff that will do better against the new releases.

Everything is a matter of perspective.

DG isn't created to get other armies to buy other kits. It exists to give DG an interesting army and make it more difficult to solve for opponents you might face by doing one "thing".

It's literally a balancing mechanic as much as expanding availability of W1/W2/W3.

A new release doesn't mean marines went away and D2 is useless. That's a foolish approach.

Which is better? A meta where you take a variety of tools to deal with potential opponents or one where you tech one direction and hope for good matchups.

bouncingboredom wrote:
I'd be intrigued to know where you live. I suspect the name would be something like "convenient land". If your local store isn't carrying spare merchandise in its stock room it probably has bigger issues than whether or not GW is drip feeding its releases or doing them in bulk. You also seem to miss the point entirely in relation to the OP. He's suggesting that they (GW) do a big release with a new edition, including all the codexes at once. An indi store would not need to hold hundreds of books permanently. It would simply need to hold a reasonable amount of stock for its area for a short period of time around the release date of the new edition, kind of like how stores will hold large quantities of things like a new Playstation model ready for its release date.

No retailer is holding a lot of inventory just waiting for launch unless it is red hot and will move 90% of its volume on launch day. This works for a new console, a new game, even a new novel from a best-selling author but it doesn't work for 23 codices and an equal number of new models or boxes of models. That's simply insanity. I work for a moderately sized general goods retailer, we hold, generously, 5% more stock than we display simply because floor space is expensive and onsite storage space doesn't generate revenue.

Do you live in "convenient land" with the other dude? Tills from the 90s/early 2000s are mostly not compatible with modern card readers, so a store like that would have difficulty even functioning in the modern world, let alone be non-compliment with various law (depending on the jurisdiction) around how long they need to keep transaction histories for. Again, I would suggest stores set up as you suggest have much bigger problems than whether or not GW is releasing its products in drip feeds or in bulk.

In the US chip and pin is only now reaching ubiquity and tap is being rolled out but is still years behind the UK, Canada, and Australia in terms of actually being used. The US banking sector is backwards owing to a lack of national banks creating a fractured landscape of varying standards.

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Which is better? A meta where you take a variety of tools to deal with potential opponents or one where you tech one direction and hope for good matchups.

This is an argument in favor of concurrent releases. You get all the rules all at once, so people have to build to handle everything and can plan out their army for the whole edition accordingly.

This is very much not better for GW, which is why they don't do it. GW doesn't want you to plan out one balanced TAC list and use it all edition, they want you to chase whatever the counter is to the latest hotness, and then do the same thing again a few months later when they shake things up again with new rules that change the relative values of your existing options. That's the whole point of the stir the pot model. It's not even necessarily bad - things eventually do get stable when the pot isn't stirred, this is why all online games have frequent updates - the problem comes when it's done on a faction-by-faction basis, like GW does, at the expense of overall game balance. Though again, that's only a problem for people who want a good, balanced game, it's not a problem for GW since it delivers excellent returns.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Which is better? A meta where you take a variety of tools to deal with potential opponents or one where you tech one direction and hope for good matchups.

This is an argument in favor of concurrent releases. You get all the rules all at once, so people have to build to handle everything and can plan out their army for the whole edition accordingly.

This is very much not better for GW, which is why they don't do it. GW doesn't want you to plan out one balanced TAC list and use it all edition, they want you to chase whatever the counter is to the latest hotness, and then do the same thing again a few months later when they shake things up again with new rules that change the relative values of your existing options. That's the whole point of the stir the pot model. It's not even necessarily bad - things eventually do get stable when the pot isn't stirred, this is why all online games have frequent updates - the problem comes when it's done on a faction-by-faction basis, like GW does, at the expense of overall game balance. Though again, that's only a problem for people who want a good, balanced game, it's not a problem for GW since it delivers excellent returns.

You do realize that the meta will still shift and 'force' players to change armies even with a mass release, right? This doesn't fix the issues of people not wanting to add to their collection and them having to change armies in response to new lists emerging.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Spoiler:

Voss wrote:
And I don't know what indie stores are like where you are, but for the last decade, keeping lots of stock on hand hasn't been a priority for most of the game stores I've been in. Even the ones that go hard on GW products don't have 'boxes of books' laying around.
They don't have merchandise in the back room, and what's on the shelves is it. They don't want to hold a 'surprising amount of stock.' Its money tied up in things that aren't selling, and for a lot of game stores, they can't afford that. Its a very difficult balancing act for most game stores. Most don't manage it for more than a few years.

-- I'd be intrigued to know where you live. I suspect the name would be something like "convenient land". If your local store isn't carrying spare merchandise in its stock room it probably has bigger issues than whether or not GW is drip feeding its releases or doing them in bulk. You also seem to miss the point entirely in relation to the OP. He's suggesting that they (GW) do a big release with a new edition, including all the codexes at once. An indi store would not need to hold hundreds of books permanently. It would simply need to hold a reasonable amount of stock for its area for a short period of time around the release date of the new edition, kind of like how stores will hold large quantities of things like a new Playstation model ready for its release date.

Spoiler:

chaos0xomega wrote: You seem to have over-optimistic views of how small retailers operate. Most of the ones in this area are still operating the same computers and POS/inventory management systems they were running in the early 2000s - in one case its the same system they used in the mid/late 90s.... The others all have been kicking around for 15-30+ years and don't have the in-house knowledge or the financial ability to modernize tot he point needed to actually do what you propose.

-- Do you live in "convenient land" with the other dude? Tills from the 90s/early 2000s are mostly not compatible with modern card readers, so a store like that would have difficulty even functioning in the modern world, let alone be non-compliment with various law (depending on the jurisdiction) around how long they need to keep transaction histories for. Again, I would suggest stores set up as you suggest have much bigger problems than whether or not GW is releasing its products in drip feeds or in bulk.

Most normal stores outside of convenient land will have at a minimum a basic system that dumps till transaction data onto a PC hard drive, data which can be sorted quite easily. Modern till systems are actually quite cheap (except for the scanners) and have never been more easy to set up to work with even just a basic stock system. Again, if your local stores lack this, there problems are much bigger than GW sales strategy.

Spoiler:

Just Tony wrote:The answer is that drip feed codex releases facilitate power creep, which facilitates people buying new armies to replace their old armies on the fly. AOS is starting to rotate models out of stock as the editions progress, this isn't an accident.

-- The answer is more probable to just be a twist of fate. Back in the 90s they did updates to games like new magic packs and things like Dark Millenium, which were just supplements. Then came books for new races and sub factions, like the Angels of Death. It started the momentum and they went from there. They did do things like produce Ravening Hordes for 6th edition, which was kind of a get you buy set of army lists etc. but not really comparable to doing all the codexes in one blob. I suspect the big issue is just risk. The risk of trying something different when what they do now makes money.

Spoiler:

AngryAngel80 wrote:You are just straight wrong on that. While I'm sure some places find that all amazing, actually working for a small business I can say it doesn't work that way and see the sales that go out the door when GW short stock us or someone comes in and can't get something and buy it online. Boxes of books can take up a lot of space when you carry lots of different kinds of products so I don't know if we are talking the same kinds of small stores. If people feel like they can't even get an item because it's far too rare, they will just stop looking for it in the store period that is a net loss for the store. Not every store has a sole selling point of warhammer products but I can say for sure product scarcity is a net loss for the store in general, patience isn't a virtue most people have these days. GW is one of those product lines the informed consumer can hopefully stay ahead of but for the casual buyer ? It can be off putting to not find items in stock because they just didn't send enough. That isn't at all raising value or quality for us.

-- Again, you're not looking at the problem in the context of what the OP is suggesting. If all the codexes are being released in one big shot then it's going to be a big one off event, not an ongoing thing. The store has time to prepare and stock up. I've known store owners (not necessarily FLGS specifically) to keep extra stock at their house if needs be, once every last scrap of available space is gone at the store itself. They're not doing this permanently, they're prepping for a big event. And even without a digital system, a store owner will have a pretty good idea about how many customers they have and what those customers play (SM are more popular than x, Blood Angels and y are popular in particular).

As above, if they don't then their problems are much more significant than "What is GWs latest sales strategy and how does that affect us?"

Spoiler:

Deadnight wrote:Gw is a tiny company by comparison. The core studio is what? 100 people. Maybe 200? (Been there, or rather been near there,to warhammer world). This is not just people writing codices. You've got artists, colourists, editors, it, qa, tech writers, regulatory, sales, marketing, accounting, proofreading, logistics let alone the management structure etc. Why don't they do. 30 books at once? Workload. Bandwith. Simple as. Anything done at that level takes time. A colossal amount of hours goes into each individual codex. It's nowhere near as simple as some people think. Even.discussions about the layout, the fonts used, the art/pictures and down to the double entente on page 17 can take weeks to sort out.

-- Again, assuming GW adopted the approach prefered by the OP, then they would have more than just mere weeks to sort everything out. They would be doing one big multi-codex dump with each new edition, which would be years apart, probably several months itself after the actual edition release in order to give breathing space to pick up snags in the rules and give retailers time to shift stocks of boxed sets. They're not going to be releasing 30 new codexes every few weeks/month.

Spoiler:

Vector Strike wrote:GW is a public company, meaning they have to show shareholders good results. If they release everything at once, they'll get a huge sales spike for 2-3 months and then basically nothing for the rest of the year. That's TERRIBLE for public companies. It's much better for them to show smaller, but more spread numbers throughout the year. That signalizes a healthy business and attracts investiments.

-- As a shareholder in a number of companies, which until recently included GW, this is categorically not true. Remarkably enough shareholders tend to be a lot more savvy about the businesses they invest in than that, with the exception of day traders and students with 3 shares in Gamestop. What matters is the long term health of the company. Money generated in a big spike can be held and paid out in increments if necessary. As I mentioned earlier, most retailers generate bumper revenue in seasonal chunks, such as around Christmas, depending on their trade. Even companies like Cinema chains will generate their incomes often in fits and spurts, often based around the release schedules of big blockbusters.

It's also not clear why you think that a) GW could not still do special releases of certain additional units/characters throughout the year, and b) why you think that nobody would buy miniatures outside of the release window of the new edition? Indeed what the OP is suggesting, having all the codexes released in one blob, would probably facilitate addtional long run sales by making the game more even on the tabletop, increasing its long term appeal and its network utility.

I think maybe you live in fantasy land where small stores can afford to carry tons of extra stock to handle every eventuality and can promise to get all of their ordered product from a company that delights in short changing stock either willfully or beyond their control or every small store has vast analytic networks with deep enough pockets to cover any amount of over stock. I say fantasy land as your view of small stores seems crazy out of touch with what that actually means for the stores that carry these kinds of products regularly.

yukishiro1 wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:


Which is better? A meta where you take a variety of tools to deal with potential opponents or one where you tech one direction and hope for good matchups.

This is an argument in favor of concurrent releases. You get all the rules all at once, so people have to build to handle everything and can plan out their army for the whole edition accordingly.

This is very much not better for GW, which is why they don't do it. GW doesn't want you to plan out one balanced TAC list and use it all edition, they want you to chase whatever the counter is to the latest hotness, and then do the same thing again a few months later when they shake things up again with new rules that change the relative values of your existing options. That's the whole point of the stir the pot model. It's not even necessarily bad - things eventually do get stable when the pot isn't stirred, this is why all online games have frequent updates - the problem comes when it's done on a faction-by-faction basis, like GW does, at the expense of overall game balance. Though again, that's only a problem for people who want a good, balanced game, it's not a problem for GW since it delivers excellent returns.

I still think that just reads into it too much.

GW wants to sell models. Themed releases help them sell those new models ( 60% of sales are new releases ). They're not thinking at all about other armies adjusting. The only direction I see is the setup to provide tiers of units that interact with each other in interesting ways and in that sense offering a more diverse field of options.

When most things are balanced then the meta becomes whatever people decide, which can keep itself interesting. But that isn't directly possible so we'll still see point adjustments on things that stick too much and new/expanded armies ( Renegades, Exodites, Thousand Sons, Ynnari, Orks ) that offer other "problems" for people to face.

Rules sell models. Claiming that GW is not aware of that is odd. We have the famous wraith knight leak to prove it, but we don’t need it, as it is obvious anyway.

GW has many bad incentives (to make models obsolete, to create imbalanced armies, to constantly switch rules, to price super high). The only think that would keep them honest would be a player base that keeps a cool head and strongly punishes bad rules.

I do not see this at all; new releases are full of people posting and acting like in that take my money meme. And our acceptance of bad rules is similar to that of gamers accepting shifting metas.

Luckily, some of the most brutal sales strategies get punished. For example, the terrain rbooks and rules, don’t even know where that went (the trash can?). For our collective tolerance for BS is still very high.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Spoiler:

Deadnight wrote:Gw is a tiny company by comparison. The core studio is what? 100 people. Maybe 200? (Been there, or rather been near there,to warhammer world). This is not just people writing codices. You've got artists, colourists, editors, it, qa, tech writers, regulatory, sales, marketing, accounting, proofreading, logistics let alone the management structure etc. Why don't they do. 30 books at once? Workload. Bandwith. Simple as. Anything done at that level takes time. A colossal amount of hours goes into each individual codex. It's nowhere near as simple as some people think. Even.discussions about the layout, the fonts used, the art/pictures and down to the double entente on page 17 can take weeks to sort out.

-- Again, assuming GW adopted the approach prefered by the OP, then they would have more than just mere weeks to sort everything out. They would be doing one big multi-codex dump with each new edition, which would be years apart, probably several months itself after the actual edition release in order to give breathing space to pick up snags in the rules and give retailers time to shift stocks of boxed sets. They're not going to be releasing 30 new codexes every few weeks/month. .

Cool story bruh. Also besides the point. You're still.talking about repeated thirty codex drop cycles, also coinciding with the work that's requires for a new edition. And my point stands. Bandwidth. Resouce.

Youre being very... optimistic about things, and your posts indicates an unawareness of what actually goes on in these kinds of companies, the colossal.amount of hours that goes into everything etc. Bandwidth and resource is Still an issue.

There's a million things to be worked on at any one time in these companies and people have time for three of them. That's corporate life. Gw probably barely has the time to.manage their current 'one at a time' model, you're talking about thirty.

They (a) won't have the time, and resources to do a thirty codex drop once, let alone every edition. (B) thr logistical headaches associated with this approach would be huge and genuinely not worth it and (c) they wouldn't come our ahead in terms of bank.

Straight up, it's a non starter.

Do you honestly believe GW cannot handle more than one codex at a time? We are not talking about some indie garage based company.

Grey40k wrote:
Do you honestly believe GW cannot handle more than one codex at a time? We are not talking about some indie garage based company.

Yes. They really aren't that big.

No they're not an indie garage-based company, but equally they don't have a tower on Canary Wharf, and offices worldwide. Their head office is only about 1000 employees (according to their own LinkedIn page), and a lot of that will be in manufacturing and supply chain. I'd be honestly surprised if they had much more than a dozen people working on the codexes.

Or, alternatively, they are simply fine keeping a small rules / game design team because they have no intention to update more rules at a time. Not only this saves them labour costs, but also it is (scummy) but profit maximizing to create an ever rotating meta through slow codex releases.

The company is doing extremely well:

https://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/001-v-1-2020-21-half-year-report.pdf

Grey40k wrote:
Do you honestly believe GW cannot handle more than one codex at a time? We are not talking about some indie garage based company.

Do you know how backed up printing companies tend to be for books?
Them not being "some indie garage based company" means nothing when the printers cannot fit them into the schedule.

It's always astonishing the sheer amount of business acumen that comes up on Dakka when it's to complain about GW, and inevitably it always points to their financial reports...which AFAIK, no other companies publish due to them not being publicly traded.

Grey40k wrote:
Do you honestly believe GW cannot handle more than one codex at a time? We are not talking about some indie garage based company.

Do you honestly believe that doing more than one book at a time is the same thing as doing 25 at a time?

Two books at a time? Sure, it's what they'd be doing if not for Covid + Brexit.

Four books at a time? Probably.

Six at a time? Unlikely.

Ten plus? Has any games company in the world EVER done that?

Furthermore, this forum, being skewed to an audience of competitive players, isn't typically great at recognizing the diversity of play styles out there, and some people do like releases linked to story content. We need time between story events to play the games that the story sets up. So far this edition, Codex releases have been grouped according to the campaign cycle; the first campaign book included four armies, and what do you know, those were the dexes we got (though it does remain to be seen whether Knights comes before the second Charadon Release cycle; my theory is that it would have come in this cycle, but the Brexit + Covid situation is going to force them to bump it to later in the release schedule in order to keep the campaign on track- Admech is already 2 months late).

Next wave is shaping up to include Orks, Sisters, Daemons... And probably CSM.

Grey40k wrote:
Rules sell models. Claiming that GW is not aware of that is odd. We have the famous wraith knight leak to prove it, but we don’t need it, as it is obvious anyway.

Trotting to this tired old chestnut again? We all know rules sell models. We all know of this one specific case where the rules were 'allegedly' left too good to sell the model. Now do you need me to point out how many model releases since the Wraith Knight have sold badly due to crap rules? Just because something happens once doesn't mean it is a pattern.

Grey40k wrote:
Do you honestly believe GW cannot handle more than one codex at a time? We are not talking about some indie garage based company.

Honestly?

If there was absolutely nothing else to do, and you had infinite staff, and infinite printers, infinite storage capacity that didn't cost anything for storage, and absolutely no external pressures requiring releases now, sure, why not.

That's not the reality. And it never will be.

Gw isn't a massive company. Most of the staff count is retail. Gw hq isn't massive. I've been to Nottingham/Lenton. Its a three story building, including the ground floor. Hardly near the scale of the imperial Palace.and for a company with worldwide operations, a lot of things are always going on. There's always twenty things needing done and time to do three.

And in the corporate world, getting anything done takes time. I had a project to bring in some new equipment.by the time engineering had time for them and the validations etc were conpleted, its been over a year.

I work for a company of 50k people under the umbrella.

My site is about 100, the direct company itself is about a thousand people across several sites, with about 500 at the main one.

And I've seen the things I write literally take months to get through the full review process, when factoring in reviews, redraft, changes, client communications etc etc across multiple sites. Heck even the initial proposals for projects have gone back and forth for months at a time. Christ, imagine trying to push dozens throughout not just one or two. I'd literally need my own site and three digit staff count just to support my work, let alone the daily grind that encompasses what everyone else is working on. This is normal for corporations. It's not as simple as hammer a nail into a board.

There's loads of people/departments involved in each. Each codex gw writes takes a huge amount of man hours across multiple departments as well as very significant logistical considerations.

In the real world, do I think gw can handle it? I think its fairer to say that in the real world, gw probsblt have better, more productive things to do with their time than indulge this fantasy.

 Gadzilla666 wrote:
The "Convenient Land" that Voss and others are explaining is "The US". FLGS here don't carry large backstocks of merchandise. Generally what's on the shelves is what they have. Once it's sold it's replaced by later shipments. That's how most stores here work, even big supermarkets. Stocks are sold during the day and restocked with shipments that come during the night or early the next day, because having large backstocks is a financial liability both for storage costs and the risk of having money tied up in merchandise that may or may not sell.

Absolutely. My FLGS is fairly large and seems to be doing really well, but even they don't have "a back room full of extra stock", much less the kind of extra stock that would be required in a release of all codexes for all factions at the same time. That also seems to be overlooking the fact that said retailer needs to purchase all of that stock and then hope to sell it to recoup costs and make a profit. That's in addition to however many other game lines the store carries.

When a shipment comes in, it generally gets put on the shelves immediately. If there's any "extra", it might be a unit box or four, but certainly not boxes upon boxes of extra stock.

If GW releases all the codex at the same time, people will buy the ones they need or buy them in the span of a couple of months if they don't have the disposable income at the moment.

If GW releases codex one at a time they can generate hype for each one and each one they release is a will test for all of those "Damm I always wanted to start that army!" consumers that could end up buying into the army because look at how exciting those rules look!


On top of all the logistical reasons others have mentioned, of course.

bouncingboredom wrote:
I'd be intrigued to know where you live. I suspect the name would be something like "convenient land". If your local store isn't carrying spare merchandise in its stock room it probably has bigger issues than whether or not GW is drip feeding its releases or doing them in bulk. You also seem to miss the point entirely in relation to the OP. He's suggesting that they (GW) do a big release with a new edition, including all the codexes at once. An indi store would not need to hold hundreds of books permanently. It would simply need to hold a reasonable amount of stock for its area for a short period of time around the release date of the new edition, kind of like how stores will hold large quantities of things like a new Playstation model ready for its release date.

Holy gak, talk about convenient land. Most of the stores around here don't HAVE a stock room. The one that I moonlight at has a stock basement - but its filled with 30 years of detritus and unsold crap, they aren't carrying spare merchandise of stuff on the shop floor down there. You seem to have a completely fanciful understanding of how small hobby retailers operate and what their financial situation looks like. Its embarrassing how confident you seem to be in something you clearly have zero comprehension of.

Do you live in "convenient land" with the other dude? Tills from the 90s/early 2000s are mostly not compatible with modern card readers, so a store like that would have difficulty even functioning in the modern world, let alone be non-compliment with various law (depending on the jurisdiction) around how long they need to keep transaction histories for. Again, I would suggest stores set up as you suggest have much bigger problems than whether or not GW is releasing its products in drip feeds or in bulk.

They are very much still compatible with modern card reader tech, and you'd be amazed by how much transaction history you can keep in boxes full of rolled receipts. As for hard drives - sure, but that assumes the data is stored in a format thats readable or export/importable into a system that can be used to analyze that. The amount of work involved with making that happen, is not so "convenient".

-- That is literally what the OP is suggesting. By releasing all the books in one go you're building up to one big release day. You're not storing huge quantities of boxes for six months. Your storing a number that's about right for your store, for a very limited period of time.

-- Stores in the UK don't operate much differently. But even a store set up from a converted residential property will have a space out the back somewhere that you can clear a corner and store a stack of boxes for a short period, even if it means budging other things about a bit. Honestly, some of you are making this sound like we're talking about stacking pallets upon pallets of boxes somewhere, when that's not the case. And unless your FLGS is set up in a dumpster in the street, it absolutely will have a bit of space you can cram a few boxes into.

-- You're not going to store 23 different codices or an equal number of models. GW are not stupid. If they were hypothetcally going to do this then the game release would come in advance, with a set of "get you by" lists in the boxed set. The codices would come later, and potentially themselves might be slightly staggered such as SM one week, some Xenos the next. Even if they dropped them all in one lump, your store is only going to order stuff it thinks it can sell. If it has virtually no Tyranid players, it's not going to order 8 boxes of Tyranid codexes.

-- It's interesting to me that this has become accepted fact, despite there being no evidence of it. Even among ex-employees who speak out and are less than happy with GW, there's no hint of any kind of organised scheme to deliberately unbalance the game with each set of releases in order to force people to buy a counter to it. GW makes most of its money off of "whales", people who are generally not tournament players seeking the ultimate combo but people who will spend enormous amounts of money on models they like the look of, and will frequently have multiple large armies.

-- I don't think once have I suggested they carry tons of extra stock to handle every eventuality. Indeed I'm specifically suggesting stores would tailor their orders modestly to their regular customer base and hold - for a short time only - that stock which they thought they could sell.

The analytics issue seems to stem from people not understanding what analytics is. We're not talking about hiring an MIT graduate to analyse 10 seasons worth of football games. We're talking about opening a folder on a PC where your transaction history is kept and running a search for different product codes to get a more data based idea about just how many of some of the different lines you sell, so you can make a slightly more educated assessment of say how many Drukhari books you might need. Again, if your FLGS can't do this, then GW's release strategy is the last of is concerns.


-- None of those are actually incentives to GW. These are all things that can hurt their player base, which was why they changed strategy a little when they appointed a new CEO, because they realised they needed to try and win back players trust. There are lots of people that make cheaper models for example that are close enough to be used as proxies. People don't presumably because they like the actual models from GW and are willing to pay the extra to have them.


-- I don't think you're giving this proper thought. If they're going to do a codex dump in the manner suggested by the OP, then you're talking years between editions. Not months. Years. Plural. Most of the books GW produce contain artwork and photo's rehashed from previous editions, along with a lot of text rehashed from previous editions. You're not actually writing 23 books or whatever completely from scratch. You essentially have probably four years or so to produce what are in essence 20-odd new editions of an old book, with some new bits added into them.

-- Yes. GW. Two years after the release of 3rd edition 40K they produced 6th edition Fantasy, which involved a massive rework of how the game played (putting more emphasis on troops vs characters). They produced a Ravening Hordes book that had updated army lists (including points, stats, special rules, and magic items) for every faction. The army books that followed were basically just the old army books with the new points etc, some new art, and some minor lore updates etc.

-- Then your original argument is moot. If you seriously expect me to believe they have no stock room at all, then they have no capacity to hold spare stock of any kind, and thus are already losing customers because they cannot fulfil their orders when they come in. On a slightly harsher note, this is also not GW's problem.

Second point, my confidence stems from the fact that I've worked for and with retailers for many years, most of them small to medium size. I have yet to come across a store that has no stock room whatsoever. Even small shops converted out of old residential properties have some kind of storage space in which an area can be cleared away to make room for boxes.

Third, I'd be very surprised if this is true, unless we have vastly different ideas of what constitutes a 'modern' card reader, given that software updates alone would render most card readers (even pre-chip and pin) incompatible with tills as old as you're talking about. Though I did find it amusing that you think stores don't have room for boxes of sellable stock, but they do have room for boxes of old receipts.

Fourth, a till from even ten years ago will be able to dump its data on a PC hard drive in an easily searchable/exportable format. Funnily enough, till manufacturers thought about this problem. In this day and age it really is quite convenient, and again I would posit that a store that can't handle some of these basic problems has much bigger issues than what GW is up to with its release schedule.

chaos0xomega wrote:

bouncingboredom wrote:
I'd be intrigued to know where you live. I suspect the name would be something like "convenient land". If your local store isn't carrying spare merchandise in its stock room it probably has bigger issues than whether or not GW is drip feeding its releases or doing them in bulk. You also seem to miss the point entirely in relation to the OP. He's suggesting that they (GW) do a big release with a new edition, including all the codexes at once. An indi store would not need to hold hundreds of books permanently. It would simply need to hold a reasonable amount of stock for its area for a short period of time around the release date of the new edition, kind of like how stores will hold large quantities of things like a new Playstation model ready for its release date.

Holy gak, talk about convenient land. Most of the stores around here don't HAVE a stock room. The one that I moonlight at has a stock basement - but its filled with 30 years of detritus and unsold crap, they aren't carrying spare merchandise of stuff on the shop floor down there. You seem to have a completely fanciful understanding of how small hobby retailers operate and what their financial situation looks like. Its embarrassing how confident you seem to be in something you clearly have zero comprehension of.

Do you live in "convenient land" with the other dude? Tills from the 90s/early 2000s are mostly not compatible with modern card readers, so a store like that would have difficulty even functioning in the modern world, let alone be non-compliment with various law (depending on the jurisdiction) around how long they need to keep transaction histories for. Again, I would suggest stores set up as you suggest have much bigger problems than whether or not GW is releasing its products in drip feeds or in bulk.

They are very much still compatible with modern card reader tech, and you'd be amazed by how much transaction history you can keep in boxes full of rolled receipts. As for hard drives - sure, but that assumes the data is stored in a format thats readable or export/importable into a system that can be used to analyze that. The amount of work involved with making that happen, is not so "convenient".

You're fighting the good fight but he won't listen to reason, is lost in the sauce and I fear suffering from a " reality should be this " mentality. Good luck to you on your continued battle for how things are but I fear you are setting yourself up for a headache in which he will never back down. Some battles are foolish to engage in, this seems one of them apparently he's living in a different world from the one we've seen and work in with this topic of small hobby stores.I wish you the best with the fight as long as you maintain it but don't let it get under your skin, some of us do know the actual reality and not the wished for reality.

bouncingboredom wrote:

-- I don't think you're giving this proper thought. If they're going to do a codex dump in the manner suggested by the OP, then you're talking years between editions. Not months. Years. Plural.
.

Indeed. I'm pretty sure the project timeline for any codex is about 6 months to a year. Times thirty, now. You also need to have the planned edition in place/draft and ready to go, four years in advance so.as to.align your codices. That's an astronomical.amount of work.

bouncingboredom wrote:

Most of the books GW produce contain artwork and photo's rehashed from previous editions, along with a lot of text rehashed from previous editions.
.

All of which requires, formatting, editing,layout and massive back and forth regarding which artwork, which photos,or new ones, where they will be placed etc etc. Then there's the text updates. You don't just copy/paste these things.

bouncingboredom wrote:

-You're not actually writing 23 books or whatever completely from scratch.
.

Youte formatting,editing, laying out and organising 23 or whatever books from.scratch, so while yes you may have old text you can use, you are still building all these books from scratxh. Last thing you need on a worldwide release is a typo on page 32 because you couldn't be bothered and just did a lazy copy paste job.

bouncingboredom wrote:

You essentially have probably four years or so to produce what are in essence 20-odd new editions of an old book, with some new bits added into them.
.

Yeah, its not me 'not giving this proper thought'.

My company cannot crab out a minor report in 6 months hence GW cannot work on multiple codexes at once.
Printers are too busy.
GW has limited resources.
GW has a very small team to write rules.

Many companies and organizations do far more complex things than rehashing some not so complicated rules for a game. This is not rocket science or some complex engineering operation, it is not unfeasible, and would just require more human and physical resources devoted to it. The company had high margins and record profit, they could afford to triple or quadruple the rules team and still be very viable.

I find the stated claims astonishing, if someone believes that GW rules and publication schedules are pushing the limits of human capacity you are in for a big surprise once you get to see what is being done atm out there.

Deadnight wrote:

Last thing you need on a worldwide release is a typo on page 32 because you couldn't be bothered and just did a lazy copy paste job.

Somebody'd better let GW know that ASAP.....

I'd rather their staff didn't have to work ungodly hours in order for me to get a potentially slightly better game to be honest.