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 Dysartes wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've still yet to see a shred of evidence backing the 'majority sales in the first year' claim, nor do I understand how so many buy into something so clearly absurd.

We have seen sales numbers on individual model kits and codex only during the chapterhouse case
and there was a clear picture that sales outside the year of release were 0 (or close to 0) with Tactical Marines being the only exception, as those sold each time a Marine Codex was released (not just with the generic one)

outside of this, only rumours from Interviews with (Former) GW people

Uh-huh - no-one starts an army over a year after a 'dex or army book drops, no-one starts the game with an older faction because they like the look of it, etc, etc.

I can buy that sales in year 2 or 3 are lower than year 1, but a claim of "0 (or close to 0)"? That's straight-up bull-pucky...

You have to think about how the FLGS system works. GW will sell kits out to them. They may not sell everything immediately. Any sale made at an FLGS/eBay ( over 50% of GW's business ) won't be counted as a sale after the fact. That's why the sales managers can be pushy on the FLGS, because they want to hit their monthly numbers.

I do personally finding that I don't buy much GW stuff until there is a release that interests me and if I do it is almost never direct.

I imagine their sales have grown enough to get a lot more incidental sales out of cycle, but it will certainly still drop.

 Dysartes wrote:
Uh-huh - no-one starts an army over a year after a 'dex or army book drops, no-one starts the game with an older faction because they like the look of it, etc, etc.

I can buy that sales in year 2 or 3 are lower than year 1, but a claim of "0 (or close to 0)"? That's straight-up bull-pucky...

Call me no-one.

My Black Legion army is going on 14 years, I purchase most models in advance of release through my FLGS. Totally fits with release cycles.

Not the same with my Deamons, Chaos Knights, Death Guard, Grey Knights, Deathwatch and Guard armies, which are > 90% second hand models.

This could help to explain the claim of near 0. The GK cost me $300 off Facebook, the Deamons all came used off eBay. The Guard was mostly through trades, I had CSM stuff I no longer wanted and wanted to do weathering on tanks. For the Deathwatch, half came from a purchase I made at a convention, the other half from online retailers. The Chaos Knights started with the Renegade boxed set, which I got in exchange for painting a FLGS army.

They're all complete armies, 4k - 8k points. While I don't assume everyone does this, it seems common enough that it could impact sales after a couple years. People get sick of their armies, other people buy them.

That's another good point for why model sales are so heavily front loaded, you can't buy someone else's used model on ebay if it was just released a week ago. Your only option is buying from GW or buying from someone who just ordered from GW

I really look forward to when the current slate of 2-3 year NDA's on all the current play testers expire, and they come onto these forums like Mr. Bean as Satan, and explain who was right and who was wrong.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
I really look forward to when the current slate of 2-3 year NDA's on all the current play testers expire, and they come onto these forums like Mr. Bean as Satan, and explain who was right and who was wrong.

That interview and AMA with James Hewitt was a real eye opener for me. I had to read it a few times just to make sure I wasn't seeing things. Just shockingly incompetent behavior that would put any company out of business without the weight of inertia and quasi monopoly enjoyed by GW.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
OK, so the 'it's all a GW scheme' people still have no basis for their argument beyond speculation, got it. Figured that hadn't changed, but good to confirm once in a while.

Your disrespectful, patronizing dismissal when other people give you evidence of what you're asking for makes this forum a worse place.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 kodos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
OK, so the 'it's all a GW scheme' people still have no basis for their argument beyond speculation, got it. Figured that hadn't changed, but good to confirm once in a while.

because it is easier to believe the company you give 1000s of dollars has a hidden scheme to mess things up, rather than the company you gave 1000s of dollars is an incompetent and don't know what they are doing

Oh it's definitely a witch's brew of both.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Doesn't seem to be working for the Snaggas. Surely they could have dropped the points on them, but they didn't. Why?

Probably because they already sold enough.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

And you'll still ignore the units that aren't beast snaggas that got really great. Your logic is entirely inconsistent.

If you don't understand how to pull a trend out of data then I don't know what to say. For example, in general, at any given point in 40k since 3e at least, the most recent codexes were the most powerful in the current play environment. It's not a perfect trend, but the effect is there. It doesn't mean that the most recent codex is always the most powerful.

It's the weird thing when people talk about new = powerful with the counterargument of "But this new thing isn't powerful!" because it assumes that this argument exists in a binary state: Either GW makes new things powerful, or they don't.

What people forget is just because you try to do something, doesn't mean you succeed, and GW's history is filled with examples of poor implementation of ideas.

To put it another way, there is every possibility that they meant to make certain new things that suck very powerful, but they just suck at writing rules.

 Dysartes wrote:

 kodos wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
I've still yet to see a shred of evidence backing the 'majority sales in the first year' claim, nor do I understand how so many buy into something so clearly absurd.

We have seen sales numbers on individual model kits and codex only during the chapterhouse case
and there was a clear picture that sales outside the year of release were 0 (or close to 0) with Tactical Marines being the only exception, as those sold each time a Marine Codex was released (not just with the generic one)

outside of this, only rumours from Interviews with (Former) GW people

Uh-huh - no-one starts an army over a year after a 'dex or army book drops, no-one starts the game with an older faction because they like the look of it, etc, etc.

I can buy that sales in year 2 or 3 are lower than year 1, but a claim of "0 (or close to 0)"? That's straight-up bull-pucky...

IIRC the actual takeaway from those numbers was that a model either would make its money back over the first months of its release or the accumulated sales over the years would never be enough to make up for development costs. That's quite different from what kodos is saying.
Then again, the chapter approved case happened during a time when a model with terrible rules could be stuck with them for many years, and there were no regular point updates either. So times might have changed. I'd wager that the squig buggy - which was the worst selling of the bunch in 8th - has easily made GW a profit by now due to its new rules.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
To put it another way, there is every possibility that they meant to make certain new things that suck very powerful, but they just suck at writing rules.

There also is the option where GW doesn't care for an army to be in the spotlight, tries to subtly nerf it and then makes it powerful by accident. There is no other way to explain the current ork codex

Actually there is Jid. they sent the intern to do it, because the rulesteam head honchos didn't want to because orks, and the intern basically got drunk probably and threw darts and landed always on +1 to hit in melee buffs.

Hecaton wrote:

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
OK, so the 'it's all a GW scheme' people still have no basis for their argument beyond speculation, got it. Figured that hadn't changed, but good to confirm once in a while.

Your disrespectful, patronizing dismissal when other people give you evidence of what you're asking for makes this forum a worse place.

Willfully obtuse framing of irrelevant trivia as evidence set the bar. Like, asking for evidence GW has changed after Kirby? That's borderline trolling.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's the weird thing when people talk about new = powerful with the counterargument of "But this new thing isn't powerful!" because it assumes that this argument exists in a binary state: Either GW makes new things powerful, or they don't.

What people forget is just because you try to do something, doesn't mean you succeed, and GW's history is filled with examples of poor implementation of ideas.

To put it another way, there is every possibility that they meant to make certain new things that suck very powerful, but they just suck at writing rules.

The suggestion is that it is not GW making new things OP on purpose but rather is simply incompetent, so we're on the same page. Don't think any supporters of that theory have guessed at intent.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Jidmah wrote:
IIRC the actual takeaway from those numbers was that a model either would make its money back over the first months of its release or the accumulated sales over the years would never be enough to make up for development costs. That's quite different from what kodos is saying.
Then again, the chapter approved case happened during a time when a model with terrible rules could be stuck with them for many years, and there were no regular point updates either. So times might have changed. I'd wager that the squig buggy - which was the worst selling of the bunch in 8th - has easily made GW a profit by now due to its new rules.

Yeah, that would be a very different claim. What I see waved around is 'models make the majority of sales in the first year' waved around like fact, whereas 'there is evidence to suggest models that do not cover costs in the first year tend not to make money' is several orders of magnitude more reasonable.

From GW's perspective I wouldn't be surprised if their sales to FLGS are massively skewed to the early month. The one I go to tends to buy 30-50 of a kit on release. They often all sell out week one. They may then put another order in of the same size. That will then drift down. From then on they'll aim to maintain 0-5 or so in stock.

People clearly do buy random stuff all the time. But from GW's perspective I can well imagine they'd see it as 60-100 unit sales to that store in the first month. And then... 10~ a year thereafter, unless something like a new codex stimulates people to buy that kit.

And frankly for years now GW often seems unable to supply surges in demand for old kits caused by codex changes anyway. Which I tend to think is a strike against this idea they are secretly sitting on Indiana Jones style warehouses of old sprues and they draft codexes with an eye to clearing them out.

 Jidmah wrote:

IIRC the actual takeaway from those numbers was that a model either would make its money back over the first months of its release or the accumulated sales over the years would never be enough to make up for development costs. That's quite different from what kodos is saying.
Then again, the chapter approved case happened during a time when a model with terrible rules could be stuck with them for many years, and there were no regular point updates either.

this was a claim made in interviews we have seen later on, without any numbers and not from the CH case (as just having the number of boxes sold, without knowing the development costs and margin we cannot tell from those numbers if the investment was made back or not)

I try to find the picture from the CH case, but I remember that the sales for Blood Angles were 0, outside the year of the Codex release
and of course not updating models and rules outside the codex for years was a reason for it

we have also seen on those numbers that models with bad rules did not sell, and even putting them into discounted army boxes made those sell bad compared to boxes were the models had good rules

No nerfs in the Eldar FAQ. Troupes get Core. Ynnari can include DE & Harlequins in a detachment and still get SoF. Although Ynnari are clearly still allergic to Corsairs for random reasons.

Dataslate tomorrow perhaps?

Codex: Aeldari FAQ is up

Hecaton wrote:

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

Doesn't seem to be working for the Snaggas. Surely they could have dropped the points on them, but they didn't. Why?

Probably because they already sold enough.

you seem to be ignoring that even on release the beast snaggas were never good, they are cool models, I got the starter ork box and 2 boxes of them to paint, I have them on the table and painted 2 days after release. I knew after one reading of the codex I was putting a terrible costed unit on the table.. but they look cool. They never got into combat or killed anything and basically were a waste of points where one volley of a squad of intersessors basically wipe them for not many more points. Vs a smart opponent kill 6, they fail morale a 7th auto runs, and likely an 8th also runs. you get left with a unit of 2 models that can be cleaned up with ease. total waste of 110 points if you care about competitiveness
.

when primaris came out. they were horrible up until 2.0 came out, and suddenly intercessors, dreads etc were godlike units. the primaris dreadnought with plasma became great only in 9th, years after he came out. Impulsors and marine tanks, horrible , aside for a very short time in 8th and only if you played IH.
When GW knows that stuff will be bought no matter what they put less work in to rules or details of interactions. Something like DE comes out as if tailored made for 2000pts game play. Marines feel like, throw bucket of stuff, old and new, and be told to make something out of it. Sometimes it is IH 2.0 and sometimes it is the opposit.

Still better then getting a copy past codex edition after edition.

Hecaton wrote:
If you don't understand how to pull a trend out of data then I don't know what to say. For example, in general, at any given point in 40k since 3e at least, the most recent codexes were the most powerful in the current play environment. It's not a perfect trend, but the effect is there. It doesn't mean that the most recent codex is always the most powerful.

You mean cherry pick to fit a narrative based on speculation.

I agree on this with mr Dedalus. When 9th started the top books and top armies, which wear beating all types of marines, necron and even DG, were custodes and harlequins.
when 8th started marines struggled to make it in the meta, until 2.0 books came out.

Now some factions seem to have a tradition of being and doing really well each time they get a new book, but this is hardly true for all factions. If 8th started with SoB, marines, 1ksons followed by necrons we would have had 4 books which were at best side grades and often downgrades to what they had in 8th ed.

Daedalus81 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
If you don't understand how to pull a trend out of data then I don't know what to say. For example, in general, at any given point in 40k since 3e at least, the most recent codexes were the most powerful in the current play environment. It's not a perfect trend, but the effect is there. It doesn't mean that the most recent codex is always the most powerful.

You mean cherry pick to fit a narrative based on speculation.

When have more recently-released codexes not generally been more powerful than older ones? Karol isn't even correct here, as Marines were in the lead when they got their first codex in 8th, fell behind as other codices released, and then catapulted back forward with SM2.0. Same with Death Guard, even if their rise with a new 'dex wasn't as meteoric. Definitely same with GSC. Same with Tyranids, which had some initial tournament success (esp Hive Tyrant spam) before starting to sink in the rankings.

I've never before seen someone seriously argue that the evergreen fact of codex creep is 'cherry-picking' or 'speculation'.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Yeah, that would be a very different claim. What I see waved around is 'models make the majority of sales in the first year' waved around like fact

Not fact, just decades of retail sales trends across multiple mediums, but hey, roll with that cognitive bias all day man, it's the raft to which you've chosen to cling.

Tyel wrote:
No nerfs in the Eldar FAQ. Troupes get Core. Ynnari can include DE & Harlequins in a detachment and still get SoF. Although Ynnari are clearly still allergic to Corsairs for random reasons.

Dataslate tomorrow perhaps?

nerf to banshees and Baharoth actually

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Tyel wrote:
No nerfs in the Eldar FAQ. Troupes get Core. Ynnari can include DE & Harlequins in a detachment and still get SoF. Although Ynnari are clearly still allergic to Corsairs for random reasons.

Dataslate tomorrow perhaps?

nerf to banshees and Baharoth actually

I suspect the Banshee Mask one is more of a clarification one than a definite nerf - GW expecting the rule to be used as they intended, rather than how it was written.

I don't have the Aeldari book, so I'm not clear on what changed with Baharroth - is it the landing on the same turn?

 Dysartes wrote:

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

Tyel wrote:
No nerfs in the Eldar FAQ. Troupes get Core. Ynnari can include DE & Harlequins in a detachment and still get SoF. Although Ynnari are clearly still allergic to Corsairs for random reasons.

Dataslate tomorrow perhaps?

nerf to banshees and Baharoth actually

I suspect the Banshee Mask one is more of a clarification one than a definite nerf - GW expecting the rule to be used as they intended, rather than how it was written.

I don't have the Aeldari book, so I'm not clear on what changed with Baharroth - is it the landing on the same turn?

its still a nerf, before it used to hit the unit until the end of the phase

Baharoth can only teleport once per turn now so you can't do : Move + Shoot + Teleport + charge + fight + Teleport

 catbarf wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
If you don't understand how to pull a trend out of data then I don't know what to say. For example, in general, at any given point in 40k since 3e at least, the most recent codexes were the most powerful in the current play environment. It's not a perfect trend, but the effect is there. It doesn't mean that the most recent codex is always the most powerful.

You mean cherry pick to fit a narrative based on speculation.

When have more recently-released codexes not generally been more powerful than older ones? Karol isn't even correct here, as Marines were in the lead when they got their first codex in 8th, fell behind as other codices released, and then catapulted back forward with SM2.0. Same with Death Guard, even if their rise with a new 'dex wasn't as meteoric. Definitely same with GSC. Same with Tyranids, which had some initial tournament success (esp Hive Tyrant spam) before starting to sink in the rankings.

I've never before seen someone seriously argue that the evergreen fact of codex creep is 'cherry-picking' or 'speculation'.

You're talking something different. Codex creep is different from pushing particular models and is it's own phenomenon.

People also confuse community sentiment with power creep. People freaked out about the DA chaplain who could murder anything in melee and unstoppable transhuman terminators.

Books that were on the curve - Necrons, Marines, DA, BT, SW, BA, DG, TS
Books a little above curve with some spiky stuff - Orks, Sisters, GK
Books above the curve - DE, AM, Tau, Custodes, Nids

11 books that could play and have a great game against 5 that are too much. A significant number of new dynamics have appeared during this edition that make things not as cut and dry like more prominent W4/5, D3+3/D4, and -1D. You can't just take D2 and solve all your problems on every army as you could when Marines were the biggest faction in attendance.

Overall there WILL be codex creep simply because when you add tons of layered rules you can't help but have old books be worse. So what do you do with the old books? Drop their points and make people buy more models only to raise points when they get their book? Or just leave them alone?

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 catbarf wrote:

Daedalus81 wrote:

Hecaton wrote:
If you don't understand how to pull a trend out of data then I don't know what to say. For example, in general, at any given point in 40k since 3e at least, the most recent codexes were the most powerful in the current play environment. It's not a perfect trend, but the effect is there. It doesn't mean that the most recent codex is always the most powerful.

You mean cherry pick to fit a narrative based on speculation.

When have more recently-released codexes not generally been more powerful than older ones? Karol isn't even correct here, as Marines were in the lead when they got their first codex in 8th, fell behind as other codices released, and then catapulted back forward with SM2.0. Same with Death Guard, even if their rise with a new 'dex wasn't as meteoric. Definitely same with GSC. Same with Tyranids, which had some initial tournament success (esp Hive Tyrant spam) before starting to sink in the rankings.

I've never before seen someone seriously argue that the evergreen fact of codex creep is 'cherry-picking' or 'speculation'.

You're talking something different. Codex creep is different from pushing particular models and is it's own phenomenon.

People also confuse community sentiment with power creep. People freaked out about the DA chaplain who could murder anything in melee and unstoppable transhuman terminators.

Books that were on the curve - Necrons, Marines, DA, BT, SW, BA, DG, TS
Books a little above curve with some spiky stuff - Orks, Sisters, GK
Books above the curve - DE, AM, Tau, Custodes, Nids

11 books that could play and have a great game against 5 that are too much. A significant number of new dynamics have appeared during this edition that make things not as cut and dry like more prominent W4/5, D3+3/D4, and -1D. You can't just take D2 and solve all your problems on every army as you could when Marines were the biggest faction in attendance.

Overall there WILL be codex creep simply because when you add tons of layered rules you can't help but have old books be worse. So what do you do with the old books? Drop their points and make people buy more models only to raise points when they get their book? Or just leave them alone?

is it telling that you forgot GSC?

A wonderfully balanced codex, both internal and external that has completely disappeared in the quagmire of broken gak that is 40k in 2022

Yea there was a ton of neat stuff in that book and it seems like there just isn't enough dedicated GSC players willing to use them over something else.

I feel Codex creep happens because GW like to "solve" the problems of the game in subsequent books (published 6-9 months later) but don't go back through the old ones until they get a new codex release (or a set of supplement rules).

The problem is GW has seemingly no idea what is powerful, so the outcome of said books to the meta is essentially random - but with a tendency towards an increase over time, because getting free (and better) rules=power.

GSC the second part of 9th necron codex. Did they draw the short straw durning design or not? It like a if the rules writen by someone that plays a lot of kill team, comes with cool ideas for w40k, but never played w40k in 9th a lot.

Tyel wrote:
I feel Codex creep happens because GW like to "solve" the problems of the game in subsequent books (published 6-9 months later) but don't go back through the old ones until they get a new codex release (or a set of supplement rules).

The problem is GW has seemingly no idea what is powerful, so the outcome of said books to the meta is essentially random - but with a tendency towards an increase over time, because getting free (and better) rules=power.

Overall, this seems like the most plausible explanation for creep. Design teams with an opportunity to learn from mistakes certainly will try new ideas to address them.

However, the idea Power Creep happens organically in no way contradicts the idea it's allowed to happen as a way of selling more models.

Tyel wrote:
I feel Codex creep happens because GW like to "solve" the problems of the game in subsequent books (published 6-9 months later) but don't go back through the old ones until they get a new codex release (or a set of supplement rules).

The problem is GW has seemingly no idea what is powerful, so the outcome of said books to the meta is essentially random - but with a tendency towards an increase over time, because getting free (and better) rules=power.

Yup, and the aggravating thing is that they have a system to go back and slap some fresh paint on the older books, but they haven't been using it for that very much. They could be using these dataslates to buff older codexes just as much as nerf the newer ones. They did it for Necrons and some of the 8th edition codexes in the first one, but then they decided to just use them to play Wack-a-Mole with overperforming tournament lists. And that's what I expect they'll do with this one too.