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Epic is the right format for HH. Better played with such a ruleset for 5mm to 8mm than with 40k-like 28mm.

RazorEdge wrote:
Epic is the right format for HH. Better played with such a ruleset for 5mm to 8mm than with 40k-like 28mm.

Smaller scale in general feels much better suited to the kind of battles regular 40k seems to want to portray. Regular 40k battles feel cramped as all feth.

Games Workshop wrote:How Big is a Game?
The bigger the better. You can theoretically play a game of Legions Imperialis with a handful of troops and tanks, but that’s not really what it’s for. You’ll get the best experience with vast armies, where the actions of one squad, tank, or even a Titan, are just cogs in a vast strategic picture. In most games you’d ideally be looking for 100+ playing pieces on the table.

This is the most interesting aspect of the new FAQ article to me.

It tells us the rules are optimized for really big games with plenty of combined arms. Which is not to say smaller games aren't possible or fun, but the focus seems to be on "big."

As some of the old Epic games were real spectacles involving large forces, I like the focus there.

It will all come down to the rules though...

I for one appreciate the choices GW made with Epic Imperialis. Leaving the setting at HH, they dont need to start competing with the existing "indie" Epic game scene, nor lawyering up and killing off the fan sites and their established culture. OTOH it will also not cannibalize 40K sales (lets face it, many people are unhappy with 10th ed and might not mind dumping 40K altogether for 40K epic).

I would not advice anyone to buy into Epic Imperialis just in the hopes that a 40K epic game might result from it. Accept it for what it is, and use the existing "indie" Epic resources if you want to get your Xenos on

As for what's profitable and what's not, that's stuff is beyond my paygrade, I will not comment on it nor speculate it too much. Leave that ish to the professionals

 Albertorius wrote:

RazorEdge wrote:
Epic is the right format for HH. Better played with such a ruleset for 5mm to 8mm than with 40k-like 28mm.

Smaller scale in general feels much better suited to the kind of battles regular 40k seems to want to portray. Regular 40k battles feel cramped as all feth.

You needed a proper sized table to use bikes. And tanks often looked like parking lots on small tables.

I'm still fairly hopeful on this release.

The rules will tell all but may go in for the minis and future armour releases even if the rules are gak.

I'm very hyped for the release. Having played EA quite a bit and love the system and scale so I'm definitely getting one or two launch boxes depending on the price. Worst case, cool new miniatures to be used in other games.

Just received notification of a chonccy tax rebate.

It’s as if the world wants, nay needs me to be investing in this game 😂😂

tneva82 wrote:
Without good reason i'm inclined to believe those whose job it is over random internet never-heard-of. After all gw is making millions while these net-guys claiming gw is making huge mistake are making...how much?

You mean the company that bragged for years about not doing any market research whatsoever because "it is otiose in a niche"? GW have detailed sales data but very little else. What is the average age of a Space Marine player compared to Tyranids? What factions do women gravitate towards? How do the same armies compare in popularity between the US and Europe? They did a big email survey recently that gave them some of this info, but for the vast majority of the company's history, they were operating in the dark. They were throwing stuff at the wall to see what would stick, similar to their approach to balancing a competitive ruleset currently. They had very little idea of what their customers wanted until after the fact. A company can make millions while also making huge mistakes, most publicly traded companies simultaneously make millions of dollars and stupid decisions. I wonder how many people at Bud Light were involved in creating an ad campaign that dropped their sales 25-30% from the previous year. A company isn't all knowing, infallible, and immune to any criticism of their products simply because they are profitable.

And yet I’ll still take GW’s bet. Through the last I don’t know how long, they’ve managed to make well over market returns and profit during downturns, recessions, and a pandemic. So while we might think they’re idiots, they’re successful ones.

And Anheuser-Busch’s sales are up 7% over the last 12 months.

So while some lines of product may go up and down for various reasons, GW’s core business continues to chug along, much to the chagrin of the ‘they’ll be bankrupt any day now…any day now…how about now…”, even through the “otiose in a niche” phase.

Crazy how raising prices higher than the rate of inflation every year for 20 years leads to record profits.

If this has community has taught me anything, it's the definition of the word "otiose".

I'm still not sure if I'm happy about that.

 amazingturtles wrote:
If this has community has taught me anything, it's the definition of the word "otiose".

I'm still not sure if I'm happy about that.

See also: odious, officious, odorous

 Gert wrote:
It's not like the Heresy hasn't proven popular though. It's a fan-favourite setting and HH2 was both received well by the community and proved to be a big seller for GW. The crowd that goes for things like HH also tends to be the crowd that goes for specialist games like Necromunda or Titanicus so I'd wager GW is marketing to them because it can reasonably make money off them. For mainline 40k players, they will be focussed on 10th for at least the next year and most likely never pick up another ancillary system unless they can use the models they already have like Kill Team.

Sadly HH sales dropped off hard and now it's, uh... doing very bad.

stratigo wrote:

 Gert wrote:
It's not like the Heresy hasn't proven popular though. It's a fan-favourite setting and HH2 was both received well by the community and proved to be a big seller for GW. The crowd that goes for things like HH also tends to be the crowd that goes for specialist games like Necromunda or Titanicus so I'd wager GW is marketing to them because it can reasonably make money off them. For mainline 40k players, they will be focussed on 10th for at least the next year and most likely never pick up another ancillary system unless they can use the models they already have like Kill Team.

Sadly HH sales dropped off hard and now it's, uh... doing very bad.

And you know this how? Is there a source for that that goes beyond anecdotes?

stratigo wrote:

 Gert wrote:
It's not like the Heresy hasn't proven popular though. It's a fan-favourite setting and HH2 was both received well by the community and proved to be a big seller for GW. The crowd that goes for things like HH also tends to be the crowd that goes for specialist games like Necromunda or Titanicus so I'd wager GW is marketing to them because it can reasonably make money off them. For mainline 40k players, they will be focussed on 10th for at least the next year and most likely never pick up another ancillary system unless they can use the models they already have like Kill Team.

Sadly HH sales dropped off hard and now it's, uh... doing very bad.

Do you have an actual source for that?

HH is selling like Hot Cake, why should they release so many Stuff with HH Thema?

stratigo wrote:
HH sales dropped off hard and now it's, uh... doing very bad.

“Citation needed”

Citation is gonna be “Chinny Reckon”. Spesh as GW don’t, and have never, offered sales figures per line. Indeed their next six month report isn’t due for another couple of days, going on the last published date of 10 January 2023.

So in theory, we’ll get the latest, year end, report on Monday. Certainly at some point next week.

An aside, brought on by the discussion of GW's substantial yet rational focus on Marines... as well as my own distaste for this overwhelming, singular focus, I bring you:

Kill Team '21 - A game with 25 unique factions (not counting the "Index" teams in the Compendium) of which only 4 are Marines (and 2 of these are Chaos). Moreover, only 10 of the factions are Imperial (including those 2 Marines).

So, if you appreciate facing a variety in your tabletop opposition (and don't mind limited to nonexistent list building), I highly recommend giving Kill Team a spin.

Beyond the plug, I think KT'21 shows that GW is capable of producing and marketing a well-designed game that is not focused on Marines and find great success with it.

It also doesn't matter if the HH sales have slowed down in the last few months because HH will have made a butt load last year when it was getting almost constant releases.
HH slows down, 40k gets a new edition, 40k slows down, TOW gets released, TOW slows down, and AoS gets a new edition. In between all of this, every single range is getting smaller releases to keep the lines going.
That's how release schedules work.
There's this weird notion that unless a system is getting ten releases a month it's somehow dead, which is just preposterous.

Toofast wrote:
Crazy how raising prices higher than the rate of inflation every year for 20 years leads to record profits.

And record inflation...

 Gert wrote:
There's this weird notion that unless a system is getting ten releases a month it's somehow dead, which is just preposterous.

whatever GW was thinking by putting this into marketing
well, it was their marketing that a game without new releases each month is a dead game (guess mostly to go after competition as no other game has such a release schedule, therefore must be dead and unsupported) how unexpected that this backfires to their side games

 Andrew1975 wrote:

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.

Um... mind having a look at the rulebook page 62/63? There're pictures of Eldar and Ork titans, the plastic sets (Eldar Legion, Ork Horde - the models reappeared in the 2nd edition box) and plans for upcoming models. And yes, I'm talking about the game from 1989.

 Dryaktylus wrote:

 Andrew1975 wrote:

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.

Um... mind having a look at the rulebook page 62/63? There're pictures of Eldar and Ork titans, the plastic sets (Eldar Legion, Ork Horde - the models reappeared in the 2nd edition box) and plans for upcoming models. And yes, I'm talking about the game from 1989.

Plus all of the White Dwarf coverage that immediately started introducing additional content and had already been doing so since the release of Adeptus Titanicus in 1988.

suspect the issue with adding xenos is not massively linked to "will they sell enough?" its "do we have production slots?"

I would suspect that the specialist games side has a fixed allocation of production slots and thats going to be the decider here

previously Epic had essentially two frames from Marines (the Rhino/Landraider/marines one from the game and the one with the Mk7 marines, terminators etc on it), Eldar the same with two, orks ditto and other factions had one frame - and then their was the oddball frame with the stompa and a few other bits

with everything else being spin cast metal at a time they had a lot of spincast metal in the various ranges as the production tooling costs made it practical.

now its all going to be plastic so just supporting the marines & auxilia is going to be a fair few frames if they plan to produce more vehicles

e.g. I find is very hard to imagine there won't be a frame with Rhinos on it, likely combined with something else, Land Raiders may well get their own frame - heck from the boxed set showing turret and sponson options I think the frames for this will be quite interesting


Automatically Appended Next Post:
looking at the pictures, I had expected a frame for the marine infantry to include the contemptors.

I'm not so sure, from the larger picture there appears to be four different body poses, not two

- left leg forward
- right leg forward
- legs aligned, wider
- legs aligned narrower

also looks like the arms are separate.

suggests either a frame just for them, possible I guess, or that they are combined with something else?

Did a quick test print to eyeball a scale comparison. ~8,5mm toe-to-top-of-backpack-scaled marines seem damn close to proper scale to me, just in case it helps anyone.

 Bolognesus wrote:
Did a quick test print to eyeball a scale comparison. ~8,5mm toe-to-top-of-backpack-scaled marines seem damn close to proper scale to me, just in case it helps anyone.

they look lovely, have just finished a test print of infantry here, took some "6mm" ones from Cults which are basically 8mm anyway, and took a 32mm marine model and hit x0.25 and printed them - essentially the same size

was amazed the rescaled ones actually worked but they did and look similar to the pics published in terms of size.

and when you step back a bit +/- 1 or 2mm won't matter as long as your force itself is more or less consistent among the units

Oh mine are "6-8mm" which I found through a remix of them on cults crediting this maker on thingiverse. He's got quite a bit of stuff, too (right now grabbing it all before the inevitable soon-to-hit wave of takedowns).

I think the fan-supported Epic community has been on this scale for a while now, from what I can see.

 Bolognesus wrote:
Oh mine are "6-8mm" which I found through a remix of them on cults crediting this maker on thingiverse. He's got quite a bit of stuff, too (right now grabbing it all before the inevitable soon-to-hit wave of takedowns).

I think the fan-supported Epic community has been on this scale for a while now, from what I can see.

guessing a lot of it is "6mm but 'truescale' so 8mm high"

which is fine as it looks good

and yes I suspect the GW trolls will be out in force now they are bringing this back - and while a lot of whats there is perfectly legal, totally original sculpts I suspect the site will now be interested in protecting the community there and will take stuff down to save the fight

grabbing what you can is wise