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 GaroRobe wrote:
When they showed Gork and Mork, I'm pretty sure they got them mixed up.

I don't blame them for thinking the fiery red one is Gork (I made that mistake), but I'm pretty sure the blue one is Gork and the fiery one is Mork

Ssssh, don't tell anyone but they're really Tzeentch and Khorne!

 kodos wrote:

 kirotheavenger wrote:
Did anyone seriously expect these battle reports to be anything but an advertise for GW products?
They already took White Dwarf in that direction and that's what their youtube painting tutorials are for.

of course it is advertising you are supposed to pay for

but they are taking their painting videos serious (unlike the 4 step guides were 10 steps between 3 and 4 are missing) although it is advertising

so coming up with such a battle report either means they are not taking playing the game as serious as painting their minis
or they are serious about it and this is how GW thinks everyone should play 40k

Even though I agree that just because the game board's intended purpose is to advertise there's nothing to stop the terrain team from making something funky, I'm not sure painting videos are a good comparison. Using Citadel paints to paint a Citadel miniature assembled following the assembly instructions gets its variability from the number of paints used and the time the painter puts into the model, the latter of which is not as relevant a factor for GW. A the model or a squad itself comes straight from a single box. For painting, the sale is always this one box and however many paints GW's savvy marketing guy thinks they can get away selling for that kit. A board, short of starter sets like for Kill Team or Warcry, does not come out of a single box. The variability here is the number of terrain kits require to recreate the advertised item and the ease of combining these kits. Terrain kits have a significantly higher price tag and adding one or two is simply not the same as adding another pot of paint or two. Additionally, kitbashing terrain kits requires more skill and dedication than adding layers of paint. It's an overall tougher sell, and I'd expect a directive from marketing to keep terrain creation simpler and more accessible to make it a more manageable purchase. I don't think it's about being serious so much as having different goals for their advertising based on what people will buy into.

As for what we can expect to learn about how GW wants us to play the game, doesn't the article already answer that?

Our gaming presenter, Patrick, who you’ll get to know very well in the coming months, chose this particular battle. He spent a lot of time preparing everything – researching the setting, writing the army lists, and coming up with a suitable mission to play.

He then drew a sketch of how he saw the armies interacting with the scenery to recreate the clash as closely as possible. This gave the team a strong start from which we could use our modelling experience and knowledge of the Warhammer 40,000 terrain range to bring the battlefield to life.

Dude does all the setup and passes out from Forging the Narrative(TM) so hard that two other guys have to step in to play the actual game.

You could take any of Jervis's preachy articles from the last 25 years and get the same information out of it. These new battle reports won't be any kind of revelation.

Cronch wrote:
Probably because games on planet golfcourse are boring as hell to watch, since there's no movement or tactic to speak of?

Hey, don't tarnish the name of planet golf-course with that comparison... at least golf courses have bunkers.

JimmyWolf87 wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Probably because games on planet golfcourse are boring as hell to watch, since there's no movement or tactic to speak of?

Hey, don't tarnish the name of planet golf-course with that comparison... at least golf courses have bunkers.

Technically, that table has two bunkers too ^^. And trenchworks, even.

I wonder if this was done so they could get the whole army in photoshoots.
Units hidden behind buildings looks bad for the camera. It's the sort of set-up you'd see in Armies on Parade.

 Albertorius wrote:

JimmyWolf87 wrote:

Cronch wrote:
Probably because games on planet golfcourse are boring as hell to watch, since there's no movement or tactic to speak of?

Hey, don't tarnish the name of planet golf-course with that comparison... at least golf courses have bunkers.

Technically, that table has two bunkers too ^^. And trenchworks, even.

That's a generous description of those terrain pieces. Technically, I suppose that's what they are. Do love the trenches that somehow manage to actually raise the occupant and make them easier to hit than if they were just stood on flat open ground. At least their toes will be in cover.

Most trenches in board games are rise-up kinds unless you go all out building a custom board with recessed trenches.

Those aren't trenches! Those are Walls of Martyrs (TM)!

Earthworks don't always have to be recessed, though I think they look better if they are. To me it just looks weird because those look like prefab and on top of the gameboard it looks a bit odd.

But this is nothing new. Since 5e GW have only used their saleable products in their books and videos. It's sad from a hobby POV but I guess makes sense to them from a business POV.

 Overread wrote:
Most trenches in board games are rise-up kinds unless you go all out building a custom board with recessed trenches.

And as we all know, that kind of thing just cannot be done. Laws of physics bend and twist if your board isn't made of Official GW Components. GW lost three interns trying to make actual custom boards this way.

Are you trying to infer that these battle reports could be something else than not-thinly disguised adverts?

C'mon now. Would no one think of the bottom line?

If they are playing short edge deployment with staggered Imperial lines I guess its ok?

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, I don’t think anyone expected them to be GW promoting another product or laying into their own?

So you're ok with paying for someone else's advertisments?

a_typical_hero wrote:
And you complain that the board isn't sporting the correct amount and placement of LOS blocking terrain... why?

I said nothing about the "correct amount and placement of LOS blocking terrain". I just said it's a terrible table. Because it's planet bowling ball. It's a mostly flat surface with little to no features of any kind. And it's a fething RoB board.

a_typical_hero wrote:
My magic 8 ball told me that they won't be using cutthroat tournament meta lists either, can you imagine?

You going to argue against points made by someone in particular, or are you fine just throwing straw around the thread?

JimmyWolf87 wrote:
That's a generous description of those terrain pieces. Technically, I suppose that's what they are. Do love the trenches that somehow manage to actually raise the occupant and make them easier to hit than if they were just stood on flat open ground. At least their toes will be in cover.

 Overread wrote:
Most trenches in board games are rise-up kinds unless you go all out building a custom board with recessed trenches.

Good thing they're not actually trenches, nor are they meant to be. They're pre-fab fortifications that sit above ground and provide consistent cover along a battle line.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, I don’t think anyone expected them to be GW promoting another product or laying into their own?

So you're ok with paying for someone else's advertisements?

As much as people pay to watch football clubs play which is just advertising for the club merch and tickets
or video games
or basically any event.

Even 3rd party battle reports cost and many of the best are done by teams who run stores or run ads or such to cover investment and costs.


In the end sure its advertising, as much as if you engage with anything else GW or any company does. And perhaps some of their "ads" are just going to be fun things and enjoyable without being competitive or something.

Cronch wrote:
And as we all know, that kind of thing just cannot be done. Laws of physics bend and twist if your board isn't made of Official GW Components. GW lost three interns trying to make actual custom boards this way.

It really has very little to do with GW.

Lots of places make "trenches" terrain, and more often than not they sit at table level and rise up, dip down back to near table level for the "trench", and then rise up again on the other side. They look silly and unnatural because they're trying to create a trench on top of a flat surface*. Forge World made a proper trend system that has to be sunk into a surface. GW decided to just not make them trenches, and make them pre-fab battlements. Far cleverer idea.

Has nothing to do with official GW components or whatever you were trying to spin there.

 Overread wrote:
As much as people pay to watch football clubs play which is just advertising for the club merch and tickets
or video games
or basically any event.

Football games are just advertising for merch and tickets?

I mean, I'm a cynic, but I don't regard "basically any event" as "just advertising". That's absurd.




*You could argue that river terrain does the same.

Sure how else and why else would they spend a fortune putting it on TV and such?


We don't like to think about the money that runs the sports and events and competitions we enjoy; but in a world that runs on money and commerce its basically there. However its not by any means the only thing.

You can choose to see it as the only thing if you want; but if you do so it will likely harm your enjoyment because you're choosing to ignore every other reason and just focus in on one.

 Overread wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Well, I don’t think anyone expected them to be GW promoting another product or laying into their own?

So you're ok with paying for someone else's advertisements?

As much as people pay to watch football clubs play which is just advertising for the club merch and tickets
or video games
or basically any event.

Even 3rd party battle reports cost and many of the best are done by teams who run stores or run ads or such to cover investment and costs.


In the end sure its advertising, as much as if you engage with anything else GW or any company does. And perhaps some of their "ads" are just going to be fun things and enjoyable without being competitive or something.

That's a weird take on the situation, to say the least. Yes, pretty much any popular event will have some form of advertising but the complaints around GW's approach (and others that do similar things) is how thinly veiled the adverts are. I don't think anyone who goes to a football match comes away thinking they're just having advertising thrown at them rather than watching a sport. I'm not sure the same can be said of White Dwarf, or GW's batreps where the singular intention a lot of the time seems to be to sell you something rather than doing that organically through the entertainment value of the content.

I think a lot of it comes down to the order in which this stuff happens.

GW started by producing their 'merch', and now branches out into batreps. Certainly from the table it seems like this merch is front and centre.

Whereas stuff like football went the other way. They started with football, selling spectator tickets. Then they branched out into merch. That means the merch revolves around the game. Whereas with GW it seems the batreps will revolve around the merch (like White Dwarf revolves around the merch).

Slipspace wrote:

a_typical_hero wrote:
The game this board is being used for is a narrative driven battle between two Primarchs.

And you complain that the board isn't sporting the correct amount and placement of LOS blocking terrain... why?

My magic 8 ball told me that they won't be using cutthroat tournament meta lists either, can you imagine?

And what makes you think this is how everyone is supposed to play the game?

Have you forgotten about the article showing the two officially used boards for GW tournaments already, or do you just want to gak on the company because it is that time of the week again?

Either the game is just about smashing two Primarchs into one another while everyone else watches, which is boring as hell. Or it's a narrative game about a historical conflict involving two armies which happen to be led by Primarchs, in which case a table with no appreciable cover makes for a boring game. It doesn't have to be a tournament game with cut-throat armies but it at least has to be engaging and what they've shown so far isn't that.

I'd also argue that almost every narrative game I've seen or played in tended to have more terrain than normal, not less. It also tended to be very thematic, not just standard GW realm of battle stuff.

And if forces are primarily melee with maybe odd 24" range weapon is lack of los blocking terrain big issue?

What was story it involved anyway? Was it for example during night?

We know there's at least one psyker and one monster involved so I'd say the general lack of terrain is a problem, yes. The lack of terrain that can potentially slow down Mortarian or allow you to hide from LoS psychic powers will likely be a problem. Further, if the game is literally two all-melee armies I don't think it'll be that interesting given how resilient DG are in melee.

I'm sure there are any number of ways you could try to make the game they described interesting but that table and my general faith in GW mean I'm not holding my breath.

I see GW are going to be offering a £10 (or currency equivalent) voucher if you subscribe to Warhmmer+ before the end of August and remain subscribed through September.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/23/want-a-10-voucher-subscribe-to-warhammer-in-august-and-its-yours/

Seems like a decent deal, or at least means you'll get the sub for free for the first two months.

£49.99 for the full service.

£10 voucher+ £25 megaboss for free=£35.

So technically, warhammer plus is only £15. Whether or not its a good deal is up to you, but the freebies make it more tempting.

Tavis75 wrote:
I see GW are going to be offering a £10 (or currency equivalent) voucher if you subscribe to Warhmmer+ before the end of August and remain subscribed through September.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/23/want-a-10-voucher-subscribe-to-warhammer-in-august-and-its-yours/

Seems like a decent deal, or at least means you'll get the sub for free for the first two months.

Also, it doesn't look desperate at all.

Like how Disney+ offered me a discounted first year subscription, and froze my subscription price in the second year desperate?

Or is it just…..y’know….basic marketing?

 Albertorius wrote:

Tavis75 wrote:
I see GW are going to be offering a £10 (or currency equivalent) voucher if you subscribe to Warhmmer+ before the end of August and remain subscribed through September.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2021/08/23/want-a-10-voucher-subscribe-to-warhammer-in-august-and-its-yours/

Seems like a decent deal, or at least means you'll get the sub for free for the first two months.

Also, it doesn't look desperate at all.

lol this x1 million

This art style/animation level should not be something we accept from a multi-million pound company, half the stuff on YouTube was better than this. If you accept this mediocrity then expert more. I won't be giving them my money on this.

They really want people to try the service, but I think the deals easy for them. Plastic is cheap for them as a product once it’s already on the shelf. And single mini not much in the long run.

Especially if it converts into more sales. They leveraging what they have and it’s going to work.
Will people stay, I suspect if they offer another mini on top. Then yes, I think it will be a success no matter the quality.

They just ran offers for gift-vouchers for every certain amount spent in their webstore...if you didn't see them doing this as a possibility but always see it as a "desperation" move?

That's on you. It seems more just to be another incentive.

 Kanluwen wrote:
They just ran offers for gift-vouchers for every certain amount spent in their webstore...if you didn't see them doing this as a possibility but always see it as a "desperation" move?

That's on you. It seems more just to be another incentive.

That's also been a very rare thing for GW over the past decade. I can think of one other time they've done something like that in the past 10 years (besides WH+), and that was during the full lockdown portion of the pandemic when they weren't shipping product. Let's not act like this is some commonplace thing for them.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Like how Disney+ offered me a discounted first year subscription, and froze my subscription price in the second year desperate?

Or is it just…..y’know….basic marketing?

Right after releasing a video to (apparently) lukewarm reception, at best?

Basic marketing it might be, but the timing is kind of suspect.

I am actually very hopeful regarding the impact of GW official 40k battle reports. I doubt any of the upper management/decision makers have ever played a game of warhammer, or even seen what it looks like.

Now they will have a digestible media format to drink their product in. And it will likely reveal to them what a convoluted and unfun mess the game actually is to play, when you strip away all the hype and consumerism and the marketing.

If they want warhammer to compete with other esport IPs, they will need to completely redesign the game system. Attempting to produce their own slick and interesting battle reports will show them all the brutal warts that 40k carries with it.