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PenitentJake wrote:

 Marshal Loss wrote:

 waefre_1 wrote:
Sure, GW doesn't need explicit reason to do any given thing, but I'd expect at least some rationale behind so major a change.

$$$. 30k sold well, as do big centrepiece models, and people obsess over Primarchs. That's all there is to it

So I think the rationale you're looking for is the fall of Cadia, the galaxy being torn in two and a loss of function to the astronomicon that has left some sectors inaccessible?

OP was quite obviously referring to a real world rationale:

Maybe this is the decrepitude of (middle) age robbing me of my memory, but I can't recall there being any real-world reason to have the Primarchs return. The fluff didn't feel like it was any less for these demigods being present only in myth and nightmare (slight exception for Daemon Primarchs returning during something climactic like the 13th Black Crusade to firmly bury the "how are we?" dial in the 11+ range), and I never felt like the game needed something akin to a Primarch, either. Sure, GW doesn't need explicit reason to do any given thing, but I'd expect at least some rationale behind so major a change.

So no, that is not the rationale I am looking for. Read more closely.

No because I play iron hands and wouldn’t get one :(

For real though, I voted no because although it could be cool, I just kind of want them to take a bit of a break from the whole space marine vs chaos space marines thing. My pipe dream would be that for 10th edition, a new imperial guard commander like macharius would go on another massive reclamation crusade with the guard being the main good guys for the edition. This could be a good time to then update a bunch of the Xenos races as the guard attack them to seize their worlds. Idk what the endgame would be, but maybe they discover some sort of new super threatening race of xenos like the cythor fiends from the ghoul stars or something

PenitentJake wrote:
You can argue that Primarchs showing up at skirmishes is crap- I'd tend to agree actually- but that's on players, not GW. They make the models. Players choose when and how to use them. For example, in order for ME to field my Triumph of Saint Katherine, I've got a crusade force for each of the six Orders, and each will be fighting a battle where their Triumph relic is an objective, and after capturing that relic, each of these forces must fight their way across the galaxy to gather the first Triumph. It will take a minimum of 25 games to make it happen, and fielding the Triumph is the culminating act of the campaign.

GW gave me a model that made this elaborate campaign possible; that was their job. Actually creating a suitable narrative to field the model? That's my job.

If some chump wants to include the Triumph in a Combat Patrol game against cultists on a backwater world, blame the chump, not the company. Many of us DO use the models in a fluffy way- a thing which we LOVE doing, but couldn't do if GW didn't make the models.

This is all well and good, but there are 2 problems with it:

1) If it is destroyed in melee, will you still field it in the future or put it on the shelf forever? My problem isn't seeing RG once. It's seeing RG every other game even after my KOS killed him with her sword and healed when she ate his soul. Like yeah, sure, his suit comes back from THAT but Horus couldn't when the emperor did it to him, nice. By the way, she's eaten his soul about eight times now. Even a cat would be afraid to confront her at this point.

2) You totally could do it if GW didn't make the model. There have been plenty of conversions of super rare things before such things were official models. Look up Capitol Imperialis conversions, for example. I guarantee you, had you wanted to, you could make a cool tomb procession complete with relic bearers.

Miss-posted... NM.

I use that example to highlight a general problem in 40k. Removed from play may not equal dead, but in the case of a Primarch or a casket of a dead saint, I am definitely going to double-tap if I can - which is why I asked "died in melee". If they died to bullets, sure they could have gotten away, but it is a lot less plausible that they get away in melee, especially if they're completely overrun.

Furthermore, there are lots of "this character is really dead, HONEST" lore snippets and rules in 40k. Healing because you consumed their soul on the Keeper of Secrets is just one, there's also trapping characters in Tesseract Vaults (or there was, not sure if that is gone now), killing them with the equally soul-sucking Nightbringer/C'tan, using the Portal of Exile from a monolith...

...Yes I have Necrons on the brain, but point stands. I guarantee you there are at least 2 Guillimans worldwide stuck forevermore in their eternal pocket-dimension prisons from Portals of Exile. I also bet they showed up at their next games totally unhindered

 Unit1126PLL wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:
You can argue that Primarchs showing up at skirmishes is crap- I'd tend to agree actually- but that's on players, not GW. They make the models. Players choose when and how to use them. For example, in order for ME to field my Triumph of Saint Katherine, I've got a crusade force for each of the six Orders, and each will be fighting a battle where their Triumph relic is an objective, and after capturing that relic, each of these forces must fight their way across the galaxy to gather the first Triumph. It will take a minimum of 25 games to make it happen, and fielding the Triumph is the culminating act of the campaign.

GW gave me a model that made this elaborate campaign possible; that was their job. Actually creating a suitable narrative to field the model? That's my job.

If some chump wants to include the Triumph in a Combat Patrol game against cultists on a backwater world, blame the chump, not the company. Many of us DO use the models in a fluffy way- a thing which we LOVE doing, but couldn't do if GW didn't make the models.

This is all well and good, but there are 2 problems with it:

1) If it is destroyed in melee, will you still field it in the future or put it on the shelf forever? My problem isn't seeing RG once. It's seeing RG every other game even after my KOS killed him with her sword and healed when she ate his soul. Like yeah, sure, his suit comes back from THAT but Horus couldn't when the emperor did it to him, nice. By the way, she's eaten his soul about eight times now. Even a cat would be afraid to confront her at this point.

2) You totally could do it if GW didn't make the model. There have been plenty of conversions of super rare things before such things were official models. Look up Capitol Imperialis conversions, for example. I guarantee you, had you wanted to, you could make a cool tomb procession complete with relic bearers.

I tend to go the route of removed from play =/= dead; there is a lot of precedence for this, and explicit reference to the concept in many, many rulebooks- I think it's mentioned somewhere in the rules for almost every game that has a campaign system.. Now granted, in the scenario you describe, yeah, that one can pretty much only be a deathblow, since the healing is a result of death in the fluff, not injury. And admittedly, that particular case is hard to wrap your head around; I haven't been in that situation yet... but you're right, it's hard to wiggle out of; the DE Soul Trap requisition is similarly sticky. In my case, I think I'd actually let the character die. I don't use a lot of named, because they don't grow in Crusade- so continuity would be preserved. Having said that, some of the BSF characters, Draxus, Greyfax and Karamazov are all set to have cameo appearances in the campaign, so if they're up against any "fluffy death" weapons, we may have some thinking to do before we play and mess up the universe.

As for point 2; I like conversions and converting, especially in the world of plastics. But conversions are freaking expensive and unpredictable in that you won't always be able to test the fit until the buying is done. If GW brings back a bits service, great! But I'm not sure I want to shell out the cash before I know it's going to work. And while I am fortunate enough to play with a crew that will entertain house rules, in many circles, the ability to convert a Triumph doesn't give me the opportunity to actually field it unless rules also exist. Right now, it is a combination of these two things that prevent me from kitbashing a pair of exorcist launchers onto a baneblade and an exorcist launcher onto a knight. That's $600 for the components to two models, and I can't be sure in advance either of them will turn out. AND even if I did spend the money and successfully build them, I still wouldn't have rules to field them.

A conversion I AM willing to try: I have the old circle fleur de lis doors from the previous immolator kit as well as other bits that might work. I'm dropping them on a valkyrie now that I know for sure there's no sisters aircraft in the new dex. I can do this because a) I already have the sister bits and b) my sisters valkyrie will have rules. Among friends, I'll give it the right keywords to make it function as a sisters vehicle; in a pickup game, I'll throw together a small guard detachment to make it legal.

Point of Fact RE: Triumph of Saint Kat and conversions:

I actually did convert a Cannoness bearing the Shield of Saint Katherine; it was legal using the Praesidium Protectiva from the Witch Hunter's dex and the lore to support it is from the 2nd ed sisters dex. I don't remember whether the other relics in the Triumph existed in the fluff before the model, or had rules, but the Shield of Saint Katherine did, which was why I have a conversion for it. The new model is far better than my conversion- I just used a metal Seraphim superior and a terminator's storm shield- didn't even have a fleur on it.

Incidentally, I'm magnetizing my Triumph so that each sister can be used as a canonness of the order whose matriarch she represents- each of the relics in the Triumph has rules to facilitate this. But I'm also looking for substitutes for the saint- I want to be able to choose to field a Triumph of Saint Dominica, or Saint Mina... Or any of the other matriarchs. If anyone has suggestions for saint substitutes, I'd love to hear them. There aren't as many options for corpses as their are for living soldiers.

Ah sorry, may have missed your edit.

In any case, that is awesome for the campaign, but watching characters like Guilliman or the Triumph or High Lord New Lady get gobbled up by "this guy is really dead honest" weapons and then come back next week to have it happen again is just REALLY jarring.


It's why I voted No here, because it's yet more characters who are absolutely critical to the setting who I can watch get Swallowed Whole by a Dimacheron or whatever and just show up again next week like a kid's cartoon.

 Marshal Loss wrote:
...So no, that is not the rationale I am looking for...

Agreed. I chose my wording carefully - there are any number of lore reasons GW can and would use to resurrect a character (and I seem to recall more than one Loyalist Primarch who has an Arthurian "Dead until E̶n̶g̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ The Imperium's darkest hour" deal - come to think of it, why was the Sundering dire enough to call for Rowboat's resurrection but not dire enough for Leman Russ or Lion El'Jonson to come back?). I was specifically speaking of reason for the game to have Primarchs return.

Macharius562 wrote:
No because I play iron hands and wouldn’t get one :(

Don't worry, not having a Primarch in M42 is nothing to lose your head over

No. Kind of a pain how Horus Heresy stuff leaking into 40k has increased the fixation on marines and specifically First Founding chapters. Personally I believe it's part of the reason why marine chapters all get a supplement. Outside of chapters with unique units (Space Wolves, Blood Angels) the marine subfactions shouldn't be a thing to the extent they are in the rules, and their character should be determined more by the player's army composition (e.g. giving Salamander tac squads meltaguns) than considerable rule differences for what is essentially the same faction.It's become obscene how much the game focusses on marines, and I say that as someone who collects 6 marine armies.

Also, I'm not a big fan of how focussed many armies have become on named characters. Perhaps if's just my meta but I find more characters are named on the tabletop than not and it quite frankly has turned 40k into a Marvel style w*nkfest or WWE kayfabe. Big hero showdowns have zero stakes, Ghaz gets his head chopped off and put back again. I don't doubt it could happen but what's the point then narratively.

And speaking of narrative, I find this constant push for progress in the setting bizarre. I'll never understand why people wanted a shift from the minute-to-midnight setting that gave players narrative freedom with it's vagueness, but here we are, and every primarch is another step away from that. Soon it will be the 51st millenium, and the Imperium that was supposed to have collapsed about 10000 years ago is doing just fine.

Honestly I detest primarchs, First Founding fixation and what the 40k fluff has become generally.

Honestly I'd like to see a return of more primarchs because it just ramps up the danger. More daemon primarchs means that there is super powerful beings running around trying to waste the Imperium. Conversely having some loyalists come back would also help counter that AND move the story line along. Old 40k was way too stagnant and it takes a few primarchs to really get things moving on a galactic scale. After the galaxy was split no one else but Guilliman could have saved the Imperium. In this next critical juncture, especially if lets say angron strides forth, he will need a counter for the Imperium to have a chance. A Russ or Lion would be perfect. Additionally those 2 do not like Guilliman at all and would be at odds with him becoming the leader of the Imperium and all that he has done with primaris marines, no matter how justified it is. That rift would in turn allow the Chaos primarchs to do their thing and really make a mess of the galaxy

Apparently kids these days don't have enuff of an imagination to create their own narrative events(even if tangentially connected).

If they're not told what to do/how to do it, it might as well not exist.

 generalchaos34 wrote:
Honestly I'd like to see a return of more primarchs because it just ramps up the danger. More daemon primarchs means that there is super powerful beings running around trying to waste the Imperium. Conversely having some loyalists come back would also help counter that AND move the story line along. Old 40k was way too stagnant and it takes a few primarchs to really get things moving on a galactic scale. After the galaxy was split no one else but Guilliman could have saved the Imperium. In this next critical juncture, especially if lets say angron strides forth, he will need a counter for the Imperium to have a chance. A Russ or Lion would be perfect. Additionally those 2 do not like Guilliman at all and would be at odds with him becoming the leader of the Imperium and all that he has done with primaris marines, no matter how justified it is. That rift would in turn allow the Chaos primarchs to do their thing and really make a mess of the galaxy

I utterly despise this narrative. This is what Horus Heresy has done to people, they're literally unable to imagine events where there are people other than Primarchs who have agency. Everything revolves around these embarrassing oversized cartoon super babies.

 Unit1126PLL wrote:
I use that example to highlight a general problem in 40k. Removed from play may not equal dead, but in the case of a Primarch or a casket of a dead saint, I am definitely going to double-tap if I can - which is why I asked "died in melee". If they died to bullets, sure they could have gotten away, but it is a lot less plausible that they get away in melee, especially if they're completely overrun.

Furthermore, there are lots of "this character is really dead, HONEST" lore snippets and rules in 40k. Healing because you consumed their soul on the Keeper of Secrets is just one, there's also trapping characters in Tesseract Vaults (or there was, not sure if that is gone now), killing them with the equally soul-sucking Nightbringer/C'tan, using the Portal of Exile from a monolith...

...Yes I have Necrons on the brain, but point stands. I guarantee you there are at least 2 Guillimans worldwide stuck forevermore in their eternal pocket-dimension prisons from Portals of Exile. I also bet they showed up at their next games totally unhindered

Let's be honest. Plot armour is very much a thing and even the most grievous wounds can occasionally be magiked around. Marnius comes to mind, but then ghaz literally had his head cut off for an extended length of time and came back. Also got shot in the head with a bolt round, swallowed by a mawlock and impaled. 40K characters are gloriously stupid mate.

The entirety of 40k is gloriously stupid.


But only up until a point....after that it loses the former and doubles down on the latter.

 generalchaos34 wrote:
Honestly I'd like to see a return of more primarchs because it just ramps up the danger. More daemon primarchs means that there is super powerful beings running around trying to waste the Imperium. Conversely having some loyalists come back would also help counter that AND move the story line along. Old 40k was way too stagnant and it takes a few primarchs to really get things moving on a galactic scale. After the galaxy was split no one else but Guilliman could have saved the Imperium. In this next critical juncture, especially if lets say angron strides forth, he will need a counter for the Imperium to have a chance. A Russ or Lion would be perfect. Additionally those 2 do not like Guilliman at all and would be at odds with him becoming the leader of the Imperium and all that he has done with primaris marines, no matter how justified it is. That rift would in turn allow the Chaos primarchs to do their thing and really make a mess of the galaxy

It's funny, because HH itself is less of a Marvel Superhero story than 40k has recently become, even though it's explicitly centered around named characters in a way that 40k nominally isn't. I think what saves HH from superhero syndrome is that we already know the outcome, so it takes on more of a Greek tragedy kind of feeling to it, theatrical rather than soap-opera like 40k has become.

Racerguy180 wrote:
Apparently kids these days don't have enuff of an imagination to create their own narrative events(even if tangentially connected).

If they're not told what to do/how to do it, it might as well not exist.

This is a deliberate business strategy started back in Regan 80s with GI Joe and Transformers. Rather than just giving people toys to play with, you create an entire structure in which to play, ensuring they're more dependent on the company to enjoy the toys. It tells you there's a wrong way to play with your toys and only the company selling you the toys can provide you with the correct way. Hence a franchise of dozens of toys so you don't just use one of your other unrelated toys in play.

 Hellebore wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Apparently kids these days don't have enuff of an imagination to create their own narrative events(even if tangentially connected).

If they're not told what to do/how to do it, it might as well not exist.

This is a deliberate business strategy started back in Regan 80s with GI Joe and Transformers. Rather than just giving people toys to play with, you create an entire structure in which to play, ensuring they're more dependent on the company to enjoy the toys. It tells you there's a wrong way to play with your toys and only the company selling you the toys can provide you with the correct way. Hence a franchise of dozens of toys so you don't just use one of your other unrelated toys in play.

I don't disagree that there's an upside for the evil toy corp, but I also don't think it's malicious to provide me with GI Joe toys to tell the most diversified stories in the Joe-verse; I for one was quite happy to not have to use my star wars toys to tell GI Joe stories and vice versa. Heck, they made two sets of A-Team toys- one in the Joe/ Star Wars scale and one in the He-man (Masters of the Universe) scale, and I still didn't particularly want them to interact with each other- though both A-Team ranges lacked antagonists, so you didn't really have a choice, unless every time you sat down to play A-Team you invented a scenario to trick BA Baracus onto a plane to create inter-team conflict.

I also used Moffet the cyberdog from Battlestar Galactica to represent Cujo...

Yes, companies like to make money. But that also means they like to make their customers happy, because you kinda have to do one in order to do the other. I really don't think they made as many transformer toys as they did to undercut shogun warriors, although I suppose you could make the argument that Go-Bots and Transformers may have been trying to nuke each other as much as they were trying to make the kids who played with their toys happy.

 Banzaimash wrote:
No. Kind of a pain how Horus Heresy stuff leaking into 40k has increased the fixation on marines and specifically First Founding chapters.

This, but also I personally dislike how Primarchs inevitably warp the story into professional wrestling-esque grudge matches with their larger-than-life one-dimensional personalities. Too much focus on the hulking macho dudebros and their eons-old feuds, not enough Your Dudes. The feel is less military and more superhero and that's not something I'm interested in at all- especially when none of the factions I play even have a Primarch-level character.

 Hellebore wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Apparently kids these days don't have enuff of an imagination to create their own narrative events(even if tangentially connected).

If they're not told what to do/how to do it, it might as well not exist.

This is a deliberate business strategy started back in Regan 80s with GI Joe and Transformers. Rather than just giving people toys to play with, you create an entire structure in which to play, ensuring they're more dependent on the company to enjoy the toys. It tells you there's a wrong way to play with your toys and only the company selling you the toys can provide you with the correct way. Hence a franchise of dozens of toys so you don't just use one of your other unrelated toys in play.

Conveniently ignoring that this was going on in the 50s, 60s, & 70s....
And to degrees before that.

No, this did not start in the 80s..

PenitentJake wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Apparently kids these days don't have enuff of an imagination to create their own narrative events(even if tangentially connected).

If they're not told what to do/how to do it, it might as well not exist.

This is a deliberate business strategy started back in Regan 80s with GI Joe and Transformers. Rather than just giving people toys to play with, you create an entire structure in which to play, ensuring they're more dependent on the company to enjoy the toys. It tells you there's a wrong way to play with your toys and only the company selling you the toys can provide you with the correct way. Hence a franchise of dozens of toys so you don't just use one of your other unrelated toys in play.

I don't disagree that there's an upside for the evil toy corp, but I also don't think it's malicious to provide me with GI Joe toys to tell the most diversified stories in the Joe-verse; I for one was quite happy to not have to use my star wars toys to tell GI Joe stories and vice versa. Heck, they made two sets of A-Team toys- one in the Joe/ Star Wars scale and one in the He-man (Masters of the Universe) scale, and I still didn't particularly want them to interact with each other- though both A-Team ranges lacked antagonists, so you didn't really have a choice, unless every time you sat down to play A-Team you invented a scenario to trick BA Baracus onto a plane to create inter-team conflict.

I also used Moffet the cyberdog from Battlestar Galactica to represent Cujo...

Yes, companies like to make money. But that also means they like to make their customers happy, because you kinda have to do one in order to do the other. I really don't think they made as many transformer toys as they did to undercut shogun warriors, although I suppose you could make the argument that Go-Bots and Transformers may have been trying to nuke each other as much as they were trying to make the kids who played with their toys happy.

The concept of a joe-verse is part of the strategy.

Despite what CCS says above, toy makers in the 60s and 70s really didn't try particularly hard to create a verse for their toys to exist in. Kids naturally use whatever toys they have to play games - kermit and batman play tea time with power rangers and barbie. Because that's what the kid has. This is still normal kid behaviour, where the verse itself is part of the creativity and play. However they are quickly brought into discrete verses so they know that darth maul doesn't fight kermit, he fights Obi wan. So the kid needs an obi wan to do the star wars fight 'properly'. Rather than just enjoying smashing their kermit and darth maul together.

The concept of a joe-verse and the assigned VALUE of such a verse is entirely manufactured by the company - it becomes the 'correct' way to play with your toys. It reduces childhood creativity quite a lot by keeping the creativity within discreet verses rather than unfettered.

The Toy story films hark back to this pre 80s toy strategy, where kids just enjoyed using all their toys however they liked, with no arbiter of quality or correctness but themselves.


This is just a description of what toy companies began doing in the 80s and have refined to fine art today. It's an effective sales tactic that keeps consumer dollars coming to you rather than spread across all manufacturers.

There are plenty of articles out there describing exactly this in regards to GW and their full immersion hobby - GW even call the strategy "total global domination".

GW are commodifying creativity just like every other toy manufacturer has for the last 40 years. All their campaign books, characters, novels etc are increasingly doing the creative work for you. That's good business to keep consumers completely consumed in the GW verse of products.

I was more ranting about the flat-out inability to take an existing universe and stage one's own story in the larger framework of the existing story.

Yes, the evil corporations are trying to limit your imagination to a sanitized and marketable listing of products. I'm trying to drive the point about those that don't give a flying feth about what's official are few and far between nowadays. sure wish I was more stalwart when my squats were, well...squatted. but I'm glad it jaded me and made me realize that I'm the arbiter of my own fun, Not GW.

 Hellebore wrote:

PenitentJake wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:

Racerguy180 wrote:
Apparently kids these days don't have enuff of an imagination to create their own narrative events(even if tangentially connected).

If they're not told what to do/how to do it, it might as well not exist.

This is a deliberate business strategy started back in Regan 80s with GI Joe and Transformers. Rather than just giving people toys to play with, you create an entire structure in which to play, ensuring they're more dependent on the company to enjoy the toys. It tells you there's a wrong way to play with your toys and only the company selling you the toys can provide you with the correct way. Hence a franchise of dozens of toys so you don't just use one of your other unrelated toys in play.

I don't disagree that there's an upside for the evil toy corp, but I also don't think it's malicious to provide me with GI Joe toys to tell the most diversified stories in the Joe-verse; I for one was quite happy to not have to use my star wars toys to tell GI Joe stories and vice versa. Heck, they made two sets of A-Team toys- one in the Joe/ Star Wars scale and one in the He-man (Masters of the Universe) scale, and I still didn't particularly want them to interact with each other- though both A-Team ranges lacked antagonists, so you didn't really have a choice, unless every time you sat down to play A-Team you invented a scenario to trick BA Baracus onto a plane to create inter-team conflict.

I also used Moffet the cyberdog from Battlestar Galactica to represent Cujo...

Yes, companies like to make money. But that also means they like to make their customers happy, because you kinda have to do one in order to do the other. I really don't think they made as many transformer toys as they did to undercut shogun warriors, although I suppose you could make the argument that Go-Bots and Transformers may have been trying to nuke each other as much as they were trying to make the kids who played with their toys happy.

The concept of a joe-verse is part of the strategy.

Despite what CCS says above, toy makers in the 60s and 70s really didn't try particularly hard to create a verse for their toys to exist in. Kids naturally use whatever toys they have to play games - kermit and batman play tea time with power rangers and barbie. Because that's what the kid has. This is still normal kid behaviour, where the verse itself is part of the creativity and play. However they are quickly brought into discrete verses so they know that darth maul doesn't fight kermit, he fights Obi wan. So the kid needs an obi wan to do the star wars fight 'properly'. Rather than just enjoying smashing their kermit and darth maul together.

The concept of a joe-verse and the assigned VALUE of such a verse is entirely manufactured by the company - it becomes the 'correct' way to play with your toys. It reduces childhood creativity quite a lot by keeping the creativity within discreet verses rather than unfettered.

The Toy story films hark back to this pre 80s toy strategy, where kids just enjoyed using all their toys however they liked, with no arbiter of quality or correctness but themselves.


This is just a description of what toy companies began doing in the 80s and have refined to fine art today. It's an effective sales tactic that keeps consumer dollars coming to you rather than spread across all manufacturers.

There are plenty of articles out there describing exactly this in regards to GW and their full immersion hobby - GW even call the strategy "total global domination".

GW are commodifying creativity just like every other toy manufacturer has for the last 40 years. All their campaign books, characters, novels etc are increasingly doing the creative work for you. That's good business to keep consumers completely consumed in the GW verse of products.

"despite what CCS says...." (rolls eyes)

You DO realize that Star Wars toys were THE THING toy wise in '77+, right?
You do realize that in the 70's we had plenty of stuff besides Star Wars with it's own 'verse, right? The 6M$ Man, Micronaughts, Muppets, Godzilla, GIJoe (12' with Kung Fu grip etc + vehicles, continuing from the 60s), all the assorted Mego lines - Star Trek/Marvel/DC/Planet of the Apes, Space 1999, the Shogun warriors, Lord of the Rings/Hobbit, Seseme St., plenty of stuff based on WB/Hanna Barbara/etc cartoons, I could go on & on....
All of this stuff backed up by or coming from movies, TV, comics.... And a few like Micronoughts & GJoe originated with the toy companies.
And the average kid knew that Darth Vader, Kerrmit the Frog, etc all came from different stories/universes. It wasn't "Oh, look, some random thing Mom bought us."

The idea of toy lines with their own stories/universes did not spring into being with the 80's. Merchandising & cross-merchandising was alive and well prior to the '80s (getting a huge boost in '77 with Star Wars). It was greatly refined & perfected in the '80s though. And yes, here in the 21st century it a quite efficient & all encompassing concept.

TBH im not sure why they havent brought the lion back already.

The Lion, Fulgrim, and Russ can all be brought in without even a huge impact.

Angron, Perturabo, Vulkan, and Jagatai Khan are also fairly easy to bring in.

Here in the states the 80's in particular brought about a deregulation of the ability to market toys in TV shows, generating a whole host of shows made explicitly to sell to kids. So while tie-ins existed and there was a definite desire by toy companies to do it, it was still kept somewhat in check.

https://bettermarketing.pub/the-great-marketing-deregulation-2125a0efe094

It makes you wonder what the GW strategy is for releases and how they prioritise them. I think they could have made a killing with each primarch model in ltd edition box with a very special hard back book and some other ltd Ed chaff.

People have talked about limited production at their UK site, so they only release so much at a time, and I find this a funny one. As a Brit i think it’s great that they haven’t outsourced buuuuuutttt if it means they could get round to a full release for EC quicker...... then maybe one little production site in Korea wouldn’t harm anyone

Yup. As they've opened the gates, might as well finish releasing all of them.

However, I'd like to see a rule that forbids them from joining any game under 2000p (HH has something on that style).

 Vector Strike wrote:
Yup. As they've opened the gates, might as well finish releasing all of them.

However, I'd like to see a rule that forbids them from joining any game under 2000p (HH has something on that style).

Not happening, since GW wouldn't want to limit sales via not allowing them for the most common point range.

Same with knights, which are now a full army aswell either allowed at all pts level despite being a hard skew.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Vector Strike wrote:
Yup. As they've opened the gates, might as well finish releasing all of them.

However, I'd like to see a rule that forbids them from joining any game under 2000p (HH has something on that style).

Not happening, since GW wouldn't want to limit sales via not allowing them for the most common point range.

Same with knights, which are now a full army aswell either allowed at all pts level despite being a hard skew.

And the silent king etc GW clearly wants all armies to have a mega character unit however it sounds like RG is totally killable in most games.

Not sure about knights not really looked at them tbh

I greatly dislike Primarchs but their presence on the battlefield, I believe, is greately overexageratted by most people.

Of course I know theres some of you that play in a group with 10 ultramarine fanatical players that field guillimand every single time but I have seen it on the table as many times as the Swarmlord, for example.