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So maybe, there exist a no small group of people. Who do not go to GT, but still care for the efficiency of their armies. And those people do not buy models at random or just because they, like how they look. But try to make their armies as efficient as they get, and that is why incursor boxs are selling well, while no one buys intercessors or scouts. And to think like that you really don't have to be a 30year old upencoming GT player. You know it is like all the other games that exist. People want the best build, the best guns, run the proper class and proper spec. They don't have to be a CS:GO ranker or going for speed runs on Twitch or do world first races.
Some people just want their armies to be fun, and not do nothing durning the game. Especialy if the game is there for them to play the game, and not show off models or generaly spend time with other people.

Karol wrote:
So maybe, there exist a no small group of people. Who do not go to GT, but still care for the efficiency of their armies. And those people do not buy models at random or just because they, like how they look. But try to make their armies as efficient as they get, and that is why incursor boxs are selling well, while no one buys intercessors or scouts. And to think like that you really don't have to be a 30year old upencoming GT player. You know it is like all the other games that exist. People want the best build, the best guns, run the proper class and proper spec. They don't have to be a CS:GO ranker or going for speed runs on Twitch or do world first races.
Some people just want their armies to be fun, and not do nothing durning the game. Especialy if the game is there for them to play the game, and not show off models or generaly spend time with other people.

Yes Karol such people no doubt exist and they are no doubt around in large numbers but by your very description they arent buying loadsa models.

Well someone is buying out the top picks from the GW site in seconds. And I have my doubts that scalpers sell the models they bought to painters. Especialy in bulk.

It is like supplements. Are people outside of sports or line of work taking them? Of course, it is a bilion+ dollar industry, but then again weekend joggers and regular gym goners don't go out of their way to get their hands on czech products every month.

What you are very right about though is the fact that in my part of the world, in a few years probably only very few people are going to be buying GW models at all. People are printing and recasting so much, that there are resin shortages, we are even getting in to trouble with big organisation Polish Chamber of Steel Contructions.

Are 40k Scalpers even a thing, anymore?

Absolutely, though it's more for Ltd Ed Codexes or novels.

Honestly the Ltd Ed codex/battletome market is a bit questionable. Unless its a super popular army those can hang around a bit. I think 2X the price for just a ribbon and a few less words on the cover really isn't good value for money for most people.

On the flipside as they are 2X the cost and limited production I'm glad they don't have loads of unique stuff in them like more art, lore and pages and such.

If they were 2X the length and were meaty on lore and art and loads of amazing content then I'd see value in them, but at the same time I'd hope they'd be long term as they'd be far more desirable.


Considering the amount of archived lore and art GW has I'm honestly surprised they don't do more of that. Never take the lore and art out but make a beefier codex for factions.

Honestly? GW should just go back to making books similar to Visions of Heresy or Realms of Chaos. Keep the basics in the Codex to keep it closer to a game book and lower the price, then give the option for expanded background knowledge and make them some properly meaty tomes.
The army books for Bolt Action are good for that IMO. You get the barebones history of each army with illustrations and model pictures to give you inspiration for your stuff.

 Gert wrote:
Honestly? GW should just go back to making books similar to Visions of Heresy or Realms of Chaos. Keep the basics in the Codex to keep it closer to a game book and lower the price, then give the option for expanded background knowledge and make them some properly meaty tomes.
The army books for Bolt Action are good for that IMO. You get the barebones history of each army with illustrations and model pictures to give you inspiration for your stuff.

I think GW have a good thing with their battletomes and codex right now. It's basically a catch-all product. You get rules, a bit of painting, some photos, artwork, lore. Yes it means the base price is higher, but its an all in one introduction. Yes if you're faithful to an army over many editions much of the lore can be a repeat with smaller changes, but then you're already hooked on lore, art and game or one of them. For those new to an army its a great lure and hook.

just think how many people remain hooked and return to 40K and AoS and Old World not just because of models and rules, but because of art and lore.
Yet at the same time very few people engage with the lore directly. Consider how active the BL thread is on Dakka - consider that we only have 1 thread for it rather htan one per book released or even one per game franchise. People just prioritize lore and art lower than models - which is fair as models are what drew many of us in. So if GW cut the codex down to just the essentials for a game and a few pages of lore; it cuts down that lore and art engagement.

Just so it's clear, I'm not saying remove everything but rather we're already at the point where the background has been cut extensively from the Codexes as is with a lot of factions. I just think GW should be dropping stuff like "The Realms of Commoragh" or "Successor Chapter of the Adeptus Astartes" to bring some of that back.

My opinion of the 40k devs is too low for me to fit into this narrative; I don't think they are competent enough to pull this off intentionally.

I'm going to go out and say, the pattern shows it's pretty clearly not the case. You can look at every faction pretty much over the course of the last two editions and they miss this, usually much more often than they hit.

For 9th a very large amount of the new Necron kits were very bad for most of the edition. That 170$ Monolith? Absolute garbage ruleswise. Multiple bad HQs, Several of the Destroyer variants were awful. The Reanimator and Doomstalker lol.

Other great examples are the 9th sisters model release, half the Beastsnagga release.. The Eldar release. I'd like to point out that Dark Reapers actually got significantly worse in 9th with their new kit.

So what about Votann? They nerfed the dex over a month before the line became available. Do you really think some dinky events in Germany banning it were enough that it would actually make GW nerf this before release if their plan was powerful rules for sales? If we follow that logic they would have nerfed this several months after release and the sales were satisfied.

GW is putting way more effort into trying to have a balanced game, but they just suck at it.

 Sasori wrote:

GW is putting way more effort into trying to have a balanced game, but they just suck at it.

And their release system works against them. Changing the core rules as much as they do every 3 years means they've only a tiny window to balance things before its all change.

 Overread wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

GW is putting way more effort into trying to have a balanced game, but they just suck at it.

And their release system works against them. Changing the core rules as much as they do every 3 years means they've only a tiny window to balance things before its all change.

That's not an excuse. GW doesn't HAVE to release as they do.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

GW is putting way more effort into trying to have a balanced game, but they just suck at it.

And their release system works against them. Changing the core rules as much as they do every 3 years means they've only a tiny window to balance things before its all change.

That's not an excuse. GW doesn't HAVE to release as they do.

Sales projections, marketing and management say they do

As does this working for 35 years and ending up with them as the undisputed wargame market leader by a very significant margin




And that isn't me saying its good, nor that adjusting their release pattern and such wouldn't net increased profits and happier customers. Just that GW appears to have got where they have and their rules have always been a weakpoint.

 Overread wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

 Overread wrote:

 Sasori wrote:

GW is putting way more effort into trying to have a balanced game, but they just suck at it.

And their release system works against them. Changing the core rules as much as they do every 3 years means they've only a tiny window to balance things before its all change.

That's not an excuse. GW doesn't HAVE to release as they do.

Sales projections, marketing and management say they do

As does this working for 35 years and ending up with them as the undisputed wargame market leader by a very significant margin

And that isn't me saying its good, nor that adjusting their release pattern and such wouldn't net increased profits and happier customers. Just that GW appears to have got where they have and their rules have always been a weakpoint.

GWs position as a market leader is A LOT to do with the inertia of being basically the first mass market tabletop wargame producer. They have like a 20 year lead on most of their major competitors and are the most visible TTWG around so they have a solid cultural foothold. If GW launched today with the rules and release model they have they would get zero traction and people would laugh 40k out of the marketplace for it's awful rules and ridiculous setting.

Let's assume that GW is actually manipulating the rules for models for sales purposes. And let's assume that they are knowingly doing it to sell otherwise unsold/unsellable models/units. My question to everyone is - "And??"

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Let's assume that GW is actually manipulating the rules for models for sales purposes. And let's assume that they are knowingly doing it to sell otherwise unsold/unsellable models/units. My question to everyone is - "And??"

Boycott until they stop. I played Genshin Impact entirely free to play because of predatory business practices and spent lots in League of Legends because I felt selling cosmetics at fair prices is okay. Ineptitude is more acceptable than malice. WHFB died because people stopped buying and GW made major changes when 40k performed badly.

Leo_the_Rat wrote:
Let's assume that GW is actually manipulating the rules for models for sales purposes. And let's assume that they are knowingly doing it to sell otherwise unsold/unsellable models/units. My question to everyone is - "And??"

I don't think it is as simple as making bad good and good bad. For marines maybe. But then they do stuff which clearly is power busting. The old playtest team, was testing the dark eldar rules, but with limited stratagems and old weapon stats. They gave feed back to GW, or at least the playtesters said they did, that the codex is very powerful. And then the DE codex dropped and it had the upgraded liquifires and dark lances no longer having the bad lascanon stats.
If GW is a business, then they could have different sales goals for different factions. They know their sells, we can only guess what sells in how high numbers, because even if something sells out we don't know if GW made 10k or 100k of a box or deal.

And the anwser to the "and?" question is important to new players. Because it brings insight in to how the company and game functions. For example. If a new player isn't in to the hobby aspect of the game, and likes the looks of an army which is bad and not one of those that GW updates often, or always well. Is it worth spending 1000$ on an army, investing time, being unhappy about the army performance etc. Maybe the player can do what GW wants them to do. Not just play one faction or one game. If they can afford it why torture yourself with a faction, which is unfun in w40k or AoS, when you can play something else. And again, if you can't do that, is it worth getting hard in to GW. This is also linked to the price hikes, pre christmas stuff at stores, in my area, suddenly went up so much, that it costs as much as stuff sold by GW online. If you can't afford a GW army, and you know how fast GW turns over armies with their seson system, then maybe you can afford a printed army at 1/4 of the cost. 250-300$ is a way different investment in to the game then 1000$+.

So understanding how GW shapes the game and its rules, how the company fixs or "breaks" them is important to not just enjoyment of the game, but in general deciding if one should even start playing a specific faction or game. For example right now, I think that while less popular, with a wierder lore, AoS is a lot more fun to start as a new player. Even if is just as complicated and sesonal as w40k, and has unfun random aspects implemented in to the game.

 Gert wrote:
The army books for Bolt Action are good for that IMO. You get the barebones history of each army with illustrations and model pictures to give you inspiration for your stuff.

Except that's kind of disingenuous comparison seeing you can find gigabytes worth of data on any WW2 military unit you want for free in seconds. BA in effect off loads all the hard dirty work on historians and hobbyists. Not that's necessarily wrong to do (I kinda liked softcover, cheaper B&W codexes of 5th edition) but GW these days tries to position itself as 'premium' product so doing the lazy minimum other wargame and skirmish companies can get away with is much harder for them. Plus, GW still does 'pure lore' books now and then, how many did you buy/read recently? Say, the look at xenos species they did as companion to BSF? Exactly...

We live in the age of the Internet Irbis. Everything you've said about WW2 can be applied to Warhammer nowadays.
As for the background books, I bought the Sabbat Worlds Crusade companion and Visions of Heresy. I wanted the BSF companion and the reprint of the Uplifting Primer but both were Lt Ed runs which made them impossible to get a handle on. Likewise popping down to WHW to get Realms of Chaos isn't just something I can do in my free time. GW hasn't actually made an effort as a company to make the background books readily available to the wider market and as someone who doesn't have the time to sit around on a Saturday morning waiting for a preorder I might never get, I'd say the only person being disingenuous is you.

There is a difference though between being able to generate the lore for your army or faction yourself, because you just want to know what the 16 core of mechanised infantry of the second belarussian front was doing in 1939 around Grodno Region. You just have to find the documents in court archives.
On the flip side, if GW doesn't generate official lore for something it does not exist.

 Irbis wrote:
Plus, GW still does 'pure lore' books now and then, how many did you buy/read recently? Say, the look at xenos species they did as companion to BSF? Exactly...

More people might have read that if it wasn't limited release and obscenely expensive.

(And for reference, I own a collector's edition of Xenology)

The same is true of art books. Whilst the prices on them are not always bad, they are still easily not a sudden impulse purchase. So when GW puts them up for sale they tend to sell out super fast if you're not hot to grab them and even "made to order" might only give you a 2 week window and then its gone.

Heck I bought the complete run of reprints of classic Inferno, but it was a huge pain dump £30 and then £50 (if I recall right) in one time payments at times that only fit GW's desires not my own. I was lucky I was able to grab them all; but you could easily have missed them if you weren't paying attention to the GW webstore for a month or if you'd had a bad month and couldn't afford them.


These limited print run windows suit GW as a firm as it means money invested is recovered very fast; but as a customer they are a nightmare.
They mean that lore and art books and easily vanish and aren't there when you want them. Eg Sabbot Worlds Crusade is a fantastic book, but if you've not yet read Gaunt's Ghosts its not really worth getting - even then its only worth it once you're a few books in and hooked.
Same as faction lore/art books - you might not have any interest in an Eldar concept sketches book until you collect Eldar.


I do wish GW would do more print runs or made to order runs or at least had some kind of quick rotation of them so that not only could you expect them to come around again ,but also have some kind of advanced warning etc..
The speed at which these books sell out shows that they are popular and that GW is likely not meeting full market demand. Furthermore making them more accessible doesn't just mean more profits for GW, but also happier fans even more hooked on the lore/art and thus even more likely to hang around and buy even more models.

I'm pretty sure that GW uses the Eldar Sketchbook as a way of actively trolling people who just want to buy a copy.

New rumours of the MFM are definitely trying to push marines again. Apparently it’s 10-20% off points for nearly every unit.

Jarms48 wrote:
New rumours of the MFM are definitely trying to push marines again. Apparently it’s 10-20% off points for nearly every unit.

That doesn't really seem relevant to the thread?

I've voted yes, but I don't think it is all that simple.

All new Codex's are not overpowered.

However, it does seem to be the case that a line that has a large new model release does get the bump, or a faction that is probably poorly selling or has had declining sales.

I also don't think this always happens either, but it does seem to happen. A lot.

Essentially, I do think management drop their needs and desires to the rules team - as there is certainly a correlation between powerful rules and sales, for example, Karskin have gone from being fairly available in the UK on the second hand market to absolutely barren everywhere. They are going for as high as £50 a squad now second hand when they do pop up.

However, evidently management doesn't always get their way...

The problem is GW has long been model-first-rules-second game manufacturering company. Which makes sense since you could drive multiple sales with models whereas you'd get the rule book once.

I personally feel like the recent change to GT format to seasonal ruleset is a great stride towards making the game more balanced , figuring out what actually works and what doesn't through these seasonal shake ups.

Having said, overpowered codice are probably due to the combination of driving sales as well as the conpany coming short of actually releasing fully playtested armies. The higher ups probably get a greedy chuckle out of it, but not with as much malicious intent as some of the posts here make it out to be.

The sesonal system is only good for two type of people. Those that got lucky and started playing a faction that GW always over buff or over nerf. Or if they have a gigantic collection already.

If a new seson starts and a 2000pts player, who potentialy saved up for 2 years to get his army, is told that now to play, at all and not even hyper efficient, he has to rebuy 800+pts of the army it becomes a unsustainable system. And for some armies it gets even worse. A chaos knight between 8th and 9th more or less had to rebuy the entire army. And this is not even that bad, there are armies which can just be bad for the seson, so to truely be safe and have fun with the game, one would not only have huge collection in a faction, but preferably multiple ones. Now I understand that for GW the idea of a 3x4000pts being the entry point for w40k is awesome as an idea. But it ain't so good for new players, and in the end run with how 3d printing is wide spread, it cuts in to GW sales. Which then blame players, for GW actions.

You do realize that low sales numbers for an army or entire faction reflects the fact that fewer people are probably playing that army/faction. A lot of people are steered away from playing armies/faction that have subpar performance on the table.

Of course GW wants to sell more models but the only way to increase sales is to increase interest. The best way to increase interest is to change either the rules of the army/faction or the points associated with their units.

If/when GW does make these changes sometimes they go overboard and sometimes they don't do enough. Very rarely they get the change done right on the first try. It's in GW's interest to make armies/factions as balanced as possible so that people invest in all of the lines and, GW hopes, they invest in multiple lines.