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artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

 gorgon wrote:

artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

Space marines are not a risk.
In any game system.

When at one point a faction accounts for half your sales (not half your 40k sales, half of all sales), they become your de facto first faction for any game setting they fit in because if even a minuscule fraction of their 40k player base follow them to another system, they'll pay for their development costs (and probably the costs for the next couple of factions too)

artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

It's not even about selling space marines. It's about having several distinct ranges of models that people can pick and choose from at will:

Imperial Titans

Imperial Knights

Space Marines

Solar Auxillia

Imperial Navy

Likely Mechanicum & Custodes in future

Players can take space marines, sure. But they can also cherry pick their favourite models from the same pool as everyone else in essentially any combination and still play the game without looking at a space marine. It's Warhammer pick n mix. The same isn't possible by putting the same resources into 1 or 2 xenos factions.

 ImAGeek wrote:
Tbh Solar Auxilia out the gate is already far less conservative than I was expecting.

That, plus new Warhound weapons & putting Dire Wolves straight into plastic.

 gorgon wrote:


Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

So do you just think ice cream is free? Losing your investment in 1-2 flavors is the same as losing your investment in 5 flavors?

Charax wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

Space marines are not a risk.
In any game system.

When at one point a faction accounts for half your sales (not half your 40k sales, half of all sales), they become your de facto first faction for any game setting they fit in because if even a minuscule fraction of their 40k player base follow them to another system, they'll pay for their development costs (and probably the costs for the next couple of factions too)

Vanilla and chocolate aren't risky flavors to pick either, lol. They're likely big sellers for ice cream stands. It's just a risk to open ONLY with vanilla and chocolate. Thought the analogy, if imperfect, was pretty clear.

It's possible to be happy about the release of LI *and* also think the appeal is limited with 1.5 factions. Doesn't have to be one or the other. I mean, what's the sound argument here that having fewer options for the players is a positive for the players? It's not your money at risk, it's GW's money.

 gorgon wrote:

Charax wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

Space marines are not a risk.
In any game system.

When at one point a faction accounts for half your sales (not half your 40k sales, half of all sales), they become your de facto first faction for any game setting they fit in because if even a minuscule fraction of their 40k player base follow them to another system, they'll pay for their development costs (and probably the costs for the next couple of factions too)

Vanilla and chocolate aren't risky flavors to pick either, lol. They're likely big sellers for ice cream stands. It's just a risk to open ONLY with vanilla and chocolate. Thought the analogy, if imperfect, was pretty clear.

It's possible to be happy about the release of LI *and* also think the appeal is limited with 1.5 factions. Doesn't have to be one or the other. I mean, what's the sound argument here that having fewer options for the players is a positive for the players? It's not your money at risk, it's GW's money.

Having fewer options that lead to the game being stable for longer and eventually getting more stuff is preferable to another straw fire that starts with too many options for its own good and gets dumped shortly after the release, like it happened with Epic in several incarnations.

artific3r wrote:

 gorgon wrote:


Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

So do you just think ice cream is free? Losing your investment in 1-2 flavors is the same as losing your investment in 5 flavors?

Yeah...I'm not sure that I follow you here. You're saying it's better to harm your ice cream stand's chances of being successful...in the name of lowering your overall investment into the business?

See, then I'd ask why you're trying to open an ice cream stand in the first place.

 gorgon wrote:

artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

That different risk can still be less risk. I agree with the premise that there is some risk of the game not doing well because it has limited its audience too much. I don’t agree it’s the same level of risk of the game failing because they over invested in multiple extra factions. And GW have more data on the levels of risk than any of us here, between things like the 32mm heresy game, Xenos in AI etc, and they chose to go with Heresy only to start with.

 ImAGeek wrote:

 gorgon wrote:

artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

That different risk can still be less risk. I agree with the premise that there is some risk of the game not doing well because it has limited its audience too much. I don’t agree it’s the same level of risk of the game failing because they over invested in multiple extra factions. And GW have more data on the levels of risk than any of us here, between things like the 32mm heresy game, Xenos in AI etc, and they chose to go with Heresy only to start with.

Also, you have to take into account that while the risks look superficially same-ish (being fundamentally a percentage chance of that risk happening) the costs, results and consequences associated with them could be very different. Failing by underreaching can still be less bad for you than failing by overreaching, because the second option comes with more upfront investments and opportunity costs because you wasted a lot of tooling and production slots that could have been used for more profitable ventures, while the first mostly means leaving money on the table. Which is hard to quantify anyway, and not automatically bad for your bottom line as long as the projects you realized met expectations.

Whether or not more flavors increases or decreases your chances of turning a profit is complete conjecture. That's not risk you can quantify and it's not worth discussing.

Conversely, the amount of cold hard cash you fork over to build your ice cream factories is very quantifiable. You make business decisions around facts (as much as it's possible), not conjecture.

Tsagualsa wrote:
Having fewer options that lead to the game being stable for longer and eventually getting more stuff is preferable to another straw fire that starts with too many options for its own good and gets dumped shortly after the release, like it happened with Epic in several incarnations.

Two points:

1) Personally I don't see a very conservative approach/limited investment as a strong sign for long-term stability. Says strongly *to me* that they're looking to hit singles with LI, not doubles/triples/HRs. And that's fine. But again, hitting singles doesn't really suggest a product that will stick around. More like a profitable little side hustle that you'll move on from.

2) It wasn't customer choice that did in Epic 40K and sent the Epic line from more or less core game status into Specialist Games hell. It would have bombed with 2 factions or 10. The issue there was not GW not having its finger on the pulse of its customers. Doesn't matter if it was a well-conceived product in a vacuum. It wasn't what the customers wanted, and any product will fail if they miss that mark so spectacularly.

 gorgon wrote:
1) Personally I don't see a very conservative approach/limited investment as a strong sign for long-term stability. Says strongly *to me* that they're looking to hit singles with LI, not doubles/triples/HRs. And that's fine. But again, hitting singles doesn't really suggest a product that will stick around. More like a profitable little side hustle that you'll move on from.

Catering to half the 40k customer base is hardly what I'd call conservative.

 Gert wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
1) Personally I don't see a very conservative approach/limited investment as a strong sign for long-term stability. Says strongly *to me* that they're looking to hit singles with LI, not doubles/triples/HRs. And that's fine. But again, hitting singles doesn't really suggest a product that will stick around. More like a profitable little side hustle that you'll move on from.

Catering to half the 40k customer base is hardly what I'd call conservative.

Sure but it's not half it's whatever horus heresy is. People don't just want to play space marine vs space marine they Wana fight xenos and demons. If they wanted just marine on marine they would play 30k. How many fews players would 40k have if it was just space marines?

Simple to answer it would be how many play 30k. A tiny amount compared to 40k. Space marine players seem to forget that. Withought xenos there would be no 40k

Boosykes wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
1) Personally I don't see a very conservative approach/limited investment as a strong sign for long-term stability. Says strongly *to me* that they're looking to hit singles with LI, not doubles/triples/HRs. And that's fine. But again, hitting singles doesn't really suggest a product that will stick around. More like a profitable little side hustle that you'll move on from.

Catering to half the 40k customer base is hardly what I'd call conservative.

Sure but it's not half it's whatever horus heresy is. People don't just want to play space marine vs space marine they Wana fight xenos and demons. If they wanted just marine on marine they would play 30k. How many fews players would 40k have if it was just space marines?

Simple to answer it would be how many play 30k. A tiny amount compared to 40k. Space marine players seem to forget that. Withought xenos there would be no 40k

Most games are already marines vs marines in 40k. That percentage gets even higher when you add chaos marines to the mix.

People really like marines. If a game would be a flop with marines, you can guarantee it'd be a bigger flop with xenos. I hate that it is that way, but the only thing surer in the universe than "space marines sell" is death and taxes.

All they're showing is their willingness to ignore the diversity of the setting in order to maximise profit.

So now they see that fans will just play marines vs marines in any format, there's no reason to bother with xenos armies.

That at least used to be a selling point - there's variety in the enemies marines can fight. But now they're confident they can get away with the most boring matchup and double down on selling literally nothing but the same army fighting itself.

It really doesn't bode well for 40k in general.

I wouldn't be surprised if horus heresy 2 electric boogaloo happens and they just focus on another imperial civil war.

Who cares about non imperial armies? Players obviously don't.

 Hellebore wrote:
All they're showing is their willingness to ignore the diversity of the setting in order to maximise profit.

So now they see that fans will just play marines vs marines in any format, there's no reason to bother with xenos armies.

That at least used to be a selling point - there's variety in the enemies marines can fight. But now they're confident they can get away with the most boring matchup and double down on selling literally nothing but the same army fighting itself.

It really doesn't bode well for 40k in general.

I wouldn't be surprised if horus heresy 2 electric boogaloo happens and they just focus on another imperial civil war.

Who cares about non imperial armies? Players obviously don't.

Two Xenos armies being one of the edition featured armies begs to differ on this. If anything there's finally been some actual focus on Xenos armies for the first time in ages. Necrons, Craftworlds and now Nids in recent years, and I guess technically Votann though they're a bit of a mixed bag because they're sort of maybe human adjacent just not Imperial.

 Gert wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
All they're showing is their willingness to ignore the diversity of the setting in order to maximise profit.

So now they see that fans will just play marines vs marines in any format, there's no reason to bother with xenos armies.

That at least used to be a selling point - there's variety in the enemies marines can fight. But now they're confident they can get away with the most boring matchup and double down on selling literally nothing but the same army fighting itself.

It really doesn't bode well for 40k in general.

I wouldn't be surprised if horus heresy 2 electric boogaloo happens and they just focus on another imperial civil war.

Who cares about non imperial armies? Players obviously don't.

Two Xenos armies being one of the edition featured armies begs to differ on this. If anything there's finally been some actual focus on Xenos armies for the first time in ages. Necrons, Craftworlds and now Nids in recent years, and I guess technically Votann though they're a bit of a mixed bag because they're sort of maybe human adjacent just not Imperial.

Using xenos armies as an npc opposition is SOP. If GW could turn 40k into space hulk where everyone plays marines and you swap sides to see who played the marines best, they would. The Tau and craftworlds are not 'evil npc' enough to ever be an opposing force in a 40k starter, so they never get the kind of refresh necrons and tyranids got.

But the amount of resources going into yet another version of space marines, this time at a different scale, rather than into the non imperial factions shows you all you need to know about their priorities.

GW now have two whole game systems built solely around marines and over half 40k. That makes orks a slice of a slice of the pie and rather than giving them a bigger slice, they've just decided to give more of it to marines.

Releasing 1 or 2 new units for a xenos faction is insulting in that context. Claiming that's a focus just shows how used to being treated like absolute gak GW fans are.

They've built an environment that clearly and unequivocally says to a new customer marines are all they care about, so why bother picking up something they are going to ignore and leave with 25 year old models when you can pick up marines in any colour, configuration, era and SCALE?

You walk into a GW and they have Horus Heresy, Legions Imperialis taking up space with just different versions of marines and then go to 40k where over half is just more marines and then there's the tiny sliver of non muscleboi armies. In any other industry people would be looking at that askance, but in the GW fandom it's a 'focus' on xenos...

 gorgon wrote:
While I realize that some folks are heresy heads who don't care about the 40K setting and its associated factions...it's not hard to understand that 40K non-SM factions have far larger followings than 30K non-SM factions. And those followings represent a certain amount of potential sales that just won't happen with this approach.

What GW doing isn't brilliant or risk-free. It just shifts the risk. They've reduced their risk of overreaching with the risk of underreaching. You can say that it's better this way, but it isn't necessarily good in business to underperform the opportunity. Especially with a launch, IMO. Now is when you want to crush it with sales, not just make a little money and see how it goes.

Doesn't matter -- it is what it is. But I'll say it again that the folks hoping for a slew of 30K factions for LI should really pay attention to how conservatively GW is playing it here.

I think the way to look at it is if legions Imperialis really takes of......GW Can see there is a market for more. GW is not going to leave money on the table. The original Space Marine was a one off boxed game, it wasn't intended to be a whole system either. There is literally nothing in the original first edition box that hints at future expansion. The demand was there and the game expanded to include Xenos and eventually moved to the 40K time line with 2nd edition. When GW sees real demand for something they hop on it. Again in the past GW really invested in relaunches of Epic including relaunching and redesigning all the xenos races (the eldar redesign was so bad that that esthetic completely dissapeared, if you dont know what I mean just look at epic 40ks eldar titians and large vehicles...truly terrible redesigns) all of that and the game fell flat on its face. Litterally killed one of their most popular games. Id much rather they start small take it slow and do it right.

This is what happens when you rush a game.....they took the elegant eldar and turned them into this!




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gorgon wrote:

artific3r wrote:

 kodos wrote:

well if losing money is the reason why they don't do it, it will always be the reason and no matter how much money something else makes, they won't do it because they lose money with it

It's not that simple. GW doesn't know if they will lose money or make money with anything they release. That's the nature of business. To some degree, every new product is a gamble. The more novel the product, the bigger the bet. There is no reason for a healthy business to make huge risky bets when they have the option to bet conservatively. Which do you think is more risky, trying to sell space marines or trying to sell space marines + xenos?

Would it be "safe" or "risky" to try to open an ice cream stand but only offer vanilla and chocolate? With the idea being that if the vanilla and chocolate are popular, maybe later add other flavors like peach or rocky road or whatever.

The risk of course is that the stand never gets off the ground the way that you want, because a fair amount of potential customers want more than vanilla and chocolate. It's a different risk, not less risk.

You do realize that most places that sell ice cream only serve Vanilla and Chocolate Ice Cream right! Dairy Queen, possibly the largest Ice Cream establishment in the world only sells Vanilla and Chocolate, and vanilla probably out sells chocolate 10 to 1. Most successful endeavors start small and grow if successful.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Hellebore wrote:

 Gert wrote:

 Hellebore wrote:
All they're showing is their willingness to ignore the diversity of the setting in order to maximise profit.

So now they see that fans will just play marines vs marines in any format, there's no reason to bother with xenos armies.

That at least used to be a selling point - there's variety in the enemies marines can fight. But now they're confident they can get away with the most boring matchup and double down on selling literally nothing but the same army fighting itself.

It really doesn't bode well for 40k in general.

I wouldn't be surprised if horus heresy 2 electric boogaloo happens and they just focus on another imperial civil war.

Who cares about non imperial armies? Players obviously don't.

Two Xenos armies being one of the edition featured armies begs to differ on this. If anything there's finally been some actual focus on Xenos armies for the first time in ages. Necrons, Craftworlds and now Nids in recent years, and I guess technically Votann though they're a bit of a mixed bag because they're sort of maybe human adjacent just not Imperial.

Using xenos armies as an npc opposition is SOP. If GW could turn 40k into space hulk where everyone plays marines and you swap sides to see who played the marines best, they would. The Tau and craftworlds are not 'evil npc' enough to ever be an opposing force in a 40k starter, so they never get the kind of refresh necrons and tyranids got.

But the amount of resources going into yet another version of space marines, this time at a different scale, rather than into the non imperial factions shows you all you need to know about their priorities.

GW now have two whole game systems built solely around marines and over half 40k. That makes orks a slice of a slice of the pie and rather than giving them a bigger slice, they've just decided to give more of it to marines.

Releasing 1 or 2 new units for a xenos faction is insulting in that context. Claiming that's a focus just shows how used to being treated like absolute gak GW fans are.

They've built an environment that clearly and unequivocally says to a new customer marines are all they care about, so why bother picking up something they are going to ignore and leave with 25 year old models when you can pick up marines in any colour, configuration, era and SCALE?

You walk into a GW and they have Horus Heresy, Legions Imperialis taking up space with just different versions of marines and then go to 40k where over half is just more marines and then there's the tiny sliver of non muscleboi armies. In any other industry people would be looking at that askance, but in the GW fandom it's a 'focus' on xenos...

I can think of quite a few GW games that were exclusively Ork games, Gorka Morka and Speed Freaks to name a few.

Quite honestly at this point I don't think the non-stop debate about it not being 40k is relevant to this thread anymore. The game is called Warhammer The Horus Heresy Legions Imperialis. Three hundred posts on here about the economics of why it should or shouldn't have been 40k aren't going to change anything and aren't really productive to this thread. The game is going to be set in the HH setting. We are going to see the legions and at least some other factions of man in it. My best advice to all those complaining about how the economics would have supported a 40k game with xenos is this, buy a sh*t ton of this and then maybe in a few years then we can have a 40k version too.

 Hellebore wrote:
But the amount of resources going into yet another version of space marines, this time at a different scale, rather than into the non imperial factions shows you all you need to know about their priorities.

GW now have two whole game systems built solely around marines and over half 40k. That makes orks a slice of a slice of the pie and rather than giving them a bigger slice, they've just decided to give more of it to marines.

Releasing 1 or 2 new units for a xenos faction is insulting in that context. Claiming that's a focus just shows how used to being treated like absolute gak GW fans are.

They've built an environment that clearly and unequivocally says to a new customer marines are all they care about, so why bother picking up something they are going to ignore and leave with 25 year old models when you can pick up marines in any colour, configuration, era and SCALE?

You walk into a GW and they have Horus Heresy, Legions Imperialis taking up space with just different versions of marines and then go to 40k where over half is just more marines and then there's the tiny sliver of non muscleboi armies. In any other industry people would be looking at that askance, but in the GW fandom it's a 'focus' on xenos...

From what's been announced for Epic so far, they've given precisely equal resources to imperial guard as they have to space marines, plus new titan & terrain content on top of that. By all means continue arguing that HH is all about space marines though.

Meanwhile if you look at major faction releases in the last three years of 40k the "1 or 2 new units for a xenos faction" is actually:
Necrons (approx 18 kits)
Orks (11 kits)
Eldar (10 kits) + corsairs
Votann
Tyranids (8 in Leviathan, likely 10+ more to come)

That significantly beats the marine content released in the same period, especially when the CSM & World Eater waves had fewer kits in total with a focus on daemonic & cultist concepts over power armour.

If it wasn't for hyperbole and a frankly worrying tendency to feel like some kind of victim, your post would have been empty.

Im more interested in and concerned about a good solid rules set than I am about what factions are involved. A good solid rules set that sells well will eventually include all factions. What factions are even ready for Epic scale? Eldar Orks and Tyrranids are really the only other factions fleshed out enough to compete anyway. Most other factions need a lot of design work to be able to go toe to toe with Titians. I don't know if the Tau's one giant flying ship is enough the kings of Gundam suits can I'm sure come up with something better.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
What factions are even ready for Epic scale? Eldar Orks and Tyrranids are really the only other factions fleshed out enough to compete anyway. Most other factions need a lot of design work to be able to go toe to toe with Titians. I don't know if the Tau's one giant flying ship is enough the kings of Gundam suits can I'm sure come up with something better.

The original Epic factions were: Imperium, Orks, Eldar, Chaos, Squats, and Tyranids. Tau's brief Epic scale range had a bunch of aircraft created instead of typical super heavy & titan units.

Orks / Eldar / Chaos could all work in a post-heresy setting with little innovation. A lot of their units and concepts exist in current 28mm.

 xttz wrote:

If it wasn't for hyperbole and a frankly worrying tendency to feel like some kind of victim, your post would have been empty.

That’s most of the internet summed up, sadly…

GW have made it unusually clear that Xenos aren’t going to be part of new Epic. So maybe venting about this (and debating ice cream flavours - wtf?) no longer really belongs in a news and rumours thread.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
Im more interested in and concerned about a good solid rules set than I am about what factions are involved

And if there's a good solid rules set, there will be solid fan-brewed stats for the xenos posted on the internet by the end of the following month.

Sure, a xeno player won't be able to play in a tournament. But no Epic player can do that right now, regardless of which army they play.

 xttz wrote:

 Andrew1975 wrote:
What factions are even ready for Epic scale? Eldar Orks and Tyrranids are really the only other factions fleshed out enough to compete anyway. Most other factions need a lot of design work to be able to go toe to toe with Titians. I don't know if the Tau's one giant flying ship is enough the kings of Gundam suits can I'm sure come up with something better.

The original Epic factions were: Imperium, Orks, Eldar, Chaos, Squats, and Tyranids. Tau's brief Epic scale range had a bunch of aircraft created instead of typical super heavy & titan units.

Orks / Eldar / Chaos could all work in a post-heresy setting with little innovation. A lot of their units and concepts exist in current 28mm.

The OG original Epic was just 30k Space Marines, hence the name of the game Space Marine . Legions Imperialis actually has more starting factions than 1st ed already. Only later in first Ed did Orks and Eldar made a very limited army list, The rest did not come around until 2nd edition. Really is was epic that fleshed out these armies. Before epic there was no falcon grav tank or ork battle wagon. Before epic the largest vehicles non imperials had were bikes and dreadnoughts. A lot of modern 40k owes Epic for its vehicle designs. All the armies have changes so much since the last version of epic, They are really starting from square one even with legacy factions much less those who haven't been fleshed out to epic scale yet.

That faction list still leaves out a lot of factions that would need to be fleshed out for an Epic scale in 40k. Necrons, Dark Eldar, Leagues of Votan, Epic Scale 40k would be a colossal endeavor on so many levels, fluff, design, production, not to mention trying to keep all of that somehow balanced (They cant even do that with a game they have 40 years of experience with!). GW isn't going to go to all that trouble until they see a demand for it through sales of Legions Imparialis.

Does anyone think Flames of war or Bolt action really prioritized making Japanese, Italians or Finns when those games first came out? Probably not, but once the game was established and on good footing by selling what were easy sells (Americans/Russians/Germans/Brits) those other factions saw releases.




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 Snord wrote:

 xttz wrote:

If it wasn't for hyperbole and a frankly worrying tendency to feel like some kind of victim, your post would have been empty.

That’s most of the internet summed up, sadly…

GW have made it unusually clear that Xenos aren’t going to be part of new Epic. So maybe venting about this (and debating ice cream flavours - wtf?) no longer really belongs in a news and rumours thread.

They said there are no plans right now, thats not a definitive NO. In comparison Dreadfleet was always just going to be a limited run one box game, it was never meant to be a reboot of Man O'war, being limited it could never sell enough to test the waters for the rerelease of a whole system. Legions Impeialis a relaunch of the Epic Scale system. They will wring out the HH for all its worth first for sure, but if epic scale proves viable they will capitalize on it by expanding into the broader 30K and then if that works into 40K.......However I did expect to see Xenos in AT by now....but I don't think AT has taken off that well and Imperial areonaticus certainly isn't a cash cow, which kind of supports what Im saying. If the main release doesn't blow up, the rest doesn't happen.

I’d say GW have made their position clear:

“There are no plans to expand this game into Warhammer 40,000 at the moment.”

“This being a Horus Heresy-era game, xenos craft from the Aeronautica Imperialis range will be sitting this one out.”

“Support for Adeptus Titanicus and Aeronautica Imperialis (in the Horus Heresy setting only) will continue, so you can continue to play these games alongside this exciting new epic scale game.”

So talking about xenos factions in the context of this game isn’t news or rumours, it’s just complaining or wishlisting.

 Gert wrote:

 gorgon wrote:
1) Personally I don't see a very conservative approach/limited investment as a strong sign for long-term stability. Says strongly *to me* that they're looking to hit singles with LI, not doubles/triples/HRs. And that's fine. But again, hitting singles doesn't really suggest a product that will stick around. More like a profitable little side hustle that you'll move on from.

Catering to half the 40k customer base is hardly what I'd call conservative.

It's a 30K game. If they were catering to 40K SM players, I'd assume the game would include Primaris and some filthy xenos factions for them to smash.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
You do realize that most places that sell ice cream only serve Vanilla and Chocolate Ice Cream right! Dairy Queen, possibly the largest Ice Cream establishment in the world only sells Vanilla and Chocolate, and vanilla probably out sells chocolate 10 to 1. Most successful endeavors start small and grow if successful.

My local Dairy Queen -- like most locations -- sells probably 10 different types of Blizzards alone. And let's not forget about the famously awful DQ burgers and fries. So nah, they're not a two-product shop.

My local Dairy Queen -- like most locations -- sells probably 10 different types of Blizzards alone. And let's not forget about the famously awful DQ burgers and fries. So nah, they're not a two-product shop.

And what flavor ice cream goes into a blizzard.....Vanilla or Chocolate. They literally only sell two flavors of ice cream. Blizzards are just vanilla with bits mixed in them, fittingly there are vanilla marines with different bits mixed in them to give them flavor in this game too.

You will not dismiss the dairy queen Flamethrower burger like that

Burgers and fries are the Titans and Aircraft from the other games.

There’s a lot of inane “facts” being thrown around here by all sides. Do you or I know how any previous edition of epic sold in comparison to what GW wanted? Heck no. When E:A came out, the designer’s notes mentioned that BFG was a success in comparison to E40k and JJ or AC thought it was at least in part because BFG really added a ton of background material about the Gothic War, with characters and plots and so on. So they set the initial launch of E:A during 3rd Armageddon. That’s… pretty much all we know. When E:A died there were a bunch of forum posts - here, portent/warseer, the sg forums etc. claiming that it died even though it outsold expectations by 400%. A common claim, thrown around with as much authority and citations as any claim here.

We have frankly NO idea whether, if E:L is successful, whether that will lead to more E:L or towards 40k. Given that, it’s a bit… strange to suggest people who really want Epic in 40k to buy a ton of E:L if they don’t actually want 30k. I don’t make it a habit to buy a bunch of a food flavour I don’t want in the vague hopes that the manufacturer will deign to make a flavour I DO want.

That being said, absolutely nothing is stopping those of us who do want Epic 40k from just playing it. There’s a TON of good 3rd party options, lots of 3D printing that you can pay for that will be cheaper than GW, and realistically GW stores won’t have much outside of launch for things that aren’t 40k or AoS anyway. And even if you don’t want to explore the wide world of indie gaming, there’s forks of any of the official versions, whichever ones you liked, and there will surely be fan supplements of all sorts, as there already are for HH2. You really don’t have to get on the GW treadmill anymore.

Tsagualsa wrote:
Also, you have to take into account that while the risks look superficially same-ish (being fundamentally a percentage chance of that risk happening) the costs, results and consequences associated with them could be very different. Failing by underreaching can still be less bad for you than failing by overreaching, because the second option comes with more upfront investments and opportunity costs because you wasted a lot of tooling and production slots that could have been used for more profitable ventures, while the first mostly means leaving money on the table. Which is hard to quantify anyway, and not automatically bad for your bottom line as long as the projects you realized met expectations.

Most of the comments about risk, investment and such make me feel like people is coming here thinking about regular 40k factions and the investment they represent.

But they are not. The amount of stuff and sprues you need to produce for, say, a new faction like, say, Votann Leagues is more than what you'd need to produce a full fledged, complete, Epic faction. Like, multiple times more. You would probably need less sprues, total, for the whole game than just for Votanns.

I know there's also the issue of their limited production output, but then again... a sprue is a sprue is a sprue, so, again, I feel like you'd need more resources just for Votanns than for multiple Epic ranges.

So maybe what I'm trying to say is that this "risk" talk, which feels sometimes like people is saying that overexpending on a single small (for GW) game could doom it, might be a tad... you know, exaggerated?

We will know for sure how much sprue time and sprues the invested on once it starts coming out, but I'm pretty confident that AI didn't exactly break the bank for GW, and this seems like it would be following a similar pattern, plus titans, which really, are leftovers from other (very good) game.


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 gorgon wrote:
2) It wasn't customer choice that did in Epic 40K and sent the Epic line from more or less core game status into Specialist Games hell. It would have bombed with 2 factions or 10. The issue there was not GW not having its finger on the pulse of its customers. Doesn't matter if it was a well-conceived product in a vacuum. It wasn't what the customers wanted, and any product will fail if they miss that mark so spectacularly.

Sadly true. As good as I feel E:40k is, it was certainly not what the GW clientele wanted, at least not at the time and instead of the game they actually wanted.