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So still no superheavies for the Astartes?

You can see in the GMG review that the Tallarn book has box art & fluff sections for the Sicaran Venator. Presumably that's coming in the next wave at least.

Given that Astartes can take Solar superheavies as allied support, I'd much rather see the next supplement cover Mechanicum and Households.

The Question is - what next.

Molech?

 Pacific wrote:

And it's an oft-used joke by Necromunda players, but soon you'll need your own servitor to carry books between games.

.

I do not want by any means defend the GW approach in general, or this awful game in particular, and I know it is a joke . But complaining about having to carrry 3 (or any) books to a game seems quite ridiculous, am I the only one in the world that came up with the idea of just copying the pages where the units (datacards) one uses are? in my case for the second book those were just the Basilisk page and the Dracosan page...

Copying the relevant bits rather goes without saying, but the broader point is that spreading the army list so thinly across multiple hardback books has no possible upside for the consumer. At best it's an annoyance. I've not bought either of the expansions for a couple of reasons, and the too-little-butter-spread-across-too-much-bread nature of the army list is a key reason.

I'd dearly like to see Epic succeed, but the continued handling of the game has made it impossible for me to evangelise for it. The Tallarn Campaign book is emblematic of the reasons for that: the balance of material I do want made prohibitively expensive by material I'm not fussed about.

SU-152 wrote:
am I the only one in the world that came up with the idea of just copying the pages where the units (datacards) one uses are? in my case for the second book those were just the Basilisk page and the Dracosan page...

Personally I'm happy to just keep ignoring any prinetd GW rules materials completely and use Legion Builder. It gets more features every month.

SamusDrake wrote:
Given that Astartes can take Solar superheavies as allied support, I'd much rather see the next supplement cover Mechanicum and Households.

My expectation is that there will be release wave either just before or after the main Mechanicum launch where some of the resin Knight kits are re-done in plastic. That gives potential Mechanicum players a chance to buy things in phases rather than all at once. Box art for the Styrix & Atrapos has been done since launch, and plastic Armigers seem like they'd be popular.

With only a handful of kits left needed to 'complete' the Solar range, I wonder if the next book (Molech?) will focus more on Marine tanks versus Knights. Sicaran Venators, Falchions, Cerberus...

Then book 4 could launch Mechanicum with some token Solar kits (Aurox, Carnadon).

 Apologist wrote:
Copying the relevant bits rather goes without saying, but the broader point is that spreading the army list so thinly across multiple hardback books has no possible upside for the consumer. At best it's an annoyance. I've not bought either of the expansions for a couple of reasons, and the too-little-butter-spread-across-too-much-bread nature of the army list is a key reason.

I'd dearly like to see Epic succeed, but the continued handling of the game has made it impossible for me to evangelise for it. The Tallarn Campaign book is emblematic of the reasons for that: the balance of material I do want made prohibitively expensive by material I'm not fussed about.

Aside from the digital option which GW is allergic to, what's the alternative?

They release army books for each faction, which are obsolete every 6-12 months abdnneed to be repurchased as GW continues expanding the game? That's more of an annoyance than the current model IMO.

I expect Molech as the next Books Thema.

With Mechanicum as a new Faction and more Plastic Knights. Maybe more Infantry Weapon options for Legiones Astartes and the Solar Auxillia.

They could introduce more specialist Stuff. Maybe Titan Legion or Knight House specific Traits like in AT?

Otherwise they could expand the Knights Army Stuff - Household Infantry with APCs or such Stuff - make them an own full faction in the Game.

I don't expect knights or titans to get faction treatment. GW has been pretty clear that's not the scope for this game, they even locked that concept behind a wholly separate game mode already. I would expect though that when they release Mechanicum they will have more flexibility to include knights/titans as a higher proportion of the force than SA and Astartes do, so you won't be able to play Knight/Titan pure but you'll be able to go heavy on them.

chaos0xomega wrote:

Aside from the digital option which GW is allergic to, what's the alternative?

They release army books for each faction, which are obsolete every 6-12 months abdnneed to be repurchased as GW continues expanding the game? That's more of an annoyance than the current model IMO.

Datasheet cards in the box.

I find most people actually dislike that kind of thing, especially for games that receive regular rules updates. It invariably results in higher costs due to the need to buy upgrade packs, and frustration when you buy an older box of a kit and gst the outdated rules instead of the most recent.

chaos0xomega wrote:

 Apologist wrote:
Copying the relevant bits rather goes without saying, but the broader point is that spreading the army list so thinly across multiple hardback books has no possible upside for the consumer. [...]too-little-butter-spread-across-too-much-bread nature of the army list

Aside from the digital option which GW is allergic to, what's the alternative?

They release army books for each faction, which are obsolete every 6-12 months abdnneed to be repurchased as GW continues expanding the game? That's more of an annoyance than the current model IMO.

Better grouping of releases would have helped matters a great deal. Legions has enjoyed a huge number of releases, but in weird groups. Why were the Fast Attack options for Space Marines, and artillery options for Guard, included in the Titandeath expansion? The Legion and Auxilia fast attack/artillery boxes should have been released with the core game, while the Kratos/Baneblade/Shadowsword etc. would have made a better complement for Titandeath.


The card decks could also have been a way to shore things up; by including cards for the full list in decks released alongside expansions. Much more simply, however, GW could include a summary chart at the back of each expansion with an up-to-date army list.


I'd agree with your point about frustration with cards in boxes becoming outdated – except that there's little if any indication that GW are intending to provide any updates or FAQs...

chaos0xomega wrote:
I find most people actually dislike that kind of thing, especially for games that receive regular rules updates. It invariably results in higher costs due to the need to buy upgrade packs, and frustration when you buy an older box of a kit and gst the outdated rules instead of the most recent.

^^^ this, oh so much this

have also seen with other games that do this "the rule cards are in the box" stuff there is a serious reluctance to make changes when errors are found so as not to invalidate the cards

its also why this treadmill release stuff is so frustrating as a player and ends up being seriously offputting.

cards can be useful, but need to be done right, and need to also be entirely optional without stuck idiocy as making the rulebook entries a pain in the backside to use with the aim of forcing card purchases (looking at Battlefront here)

another massive requirement for cards that hardly anyone seems to ever do, have an issue date printed on them somewhere or some method that makes it very clear if you have the "current" version or a previous one - changing the design on the back or something

Heck GW doesn't even print the edition in the Codex/Battletomes they make. For a time you could do it by the design and cover, but they've had a few editions now where they use the same (or nearly the same) cover art on the book so you can't even do that trick.

Now to be fair GW are an enigma because their rule updates are FAST (3 years) and they update the whole game with new core mechanics and structure. Most other firms update the core rules much slower and often tend to err toward tweaking rather than wholesale rebuilding.

GW very much does almost all the wrong things with paper based gaming and rules. They only get away with it because of the sheer size of their firm and how well positioned they are in the market. Any other firm that tried to do what GW does would likely fail.



Cards in the box worked great for Warmachine 1.0 and 2.0. However when they went to 3.0 they only managed about one annual update to the card sets and then kind of just gave up.

I think part of the issue is simply the firm ordering and distributing stock and having enough sales movement to keep it a viable option; but I think there's also just flat out issues with how firms approach the paperwork side of things.



Apps and such have the bonus that you can update things swiftly, but at the same time they've their own drawbacks including the need to have a machine capable of running an app (slightly less of an issue today than 10-20 years ago); and the fact that for many people, the gaming night is a night they want ot step away from electronics.

IIRC, Aeronautica Imperialis & Blood Bowl have rules in the box (at least for the resin models), and Adeptus Titanicus has the terminals there as well, so it's not like GW can't do it if they want.

there are also cases of how not to do it from others, e.g. Battlefront's Clash of Steel..

in a flip from Flames of War and Team Yankee, where cards are in the boxes here they are not - they are in the starter sets, so yes buy a starter you get all the cards for that faction

there is no way to get the rules for a faction without buying that starter.. e.g. I have the American and Soviet starter, I would quite like the rules for the Germans to see what I'm up against but have to buy a starter I don't need or want to get them

with GW the update cycle is a large part of the issue, especially as noted given they make "what edition is this?" hard to know, also a problem given the damned cards tend to be out of stock after the initial release - presumably to try and force sales on release

CorwinB wrote:
IIRC, Aeronautica Imperialis & Blood Bowl have rules in the box (at least for the resin models), and Adeptus Titanicus has the terminals there as well, so it's not like GW can't do it if they want.

What's weird is that Titanicus originally started out forcing you to buy some (but not all) rules separately. The expansion books themselves were largely optional / add-on content, but you need enough command terminals & weapon cards for your full list and those were sold as fairly expensive packs. The launch box came with a small number, but if you wanted more than two of the same titan that required either a photocopy of your current cards or an extra ~£15 purchase. The low point was when the Acastus knights released without rules in the box, and the limited number of terminal card packs for them sold out on day one.
GW had to post the knight terminal cards as a free PDF download to make the kits playable. Then any new kits released from the Warbinger titan onwards came with thin terminal & weapon cards in the box instead.

I'm resigned to the fact that GW are never going to give away their release roadmap by printing rules for every planned kit in the core book. But it's a real shame they didn't carry that Titanicus lesson over to LI and either offer detachment cards in the boxes, or PDF downloads so you don't need a £30+ book to use a single kit.

In response to a question over on B&C I added up the numbers of kits and sprues for all specialist games (except Necromunda) and since I already took the time I wanted to post it over here too as its quite interesting how much investment LI is getting:

Ignoring any terrain and bases and using sprue sizes instead of kit numbers to gauge investment these are the numbers different sub-games got:

I'll count the Dire Wolf and Warhound weapons as Titanicus releases but the plastic Arvus Lighter as LI release instead of AI.
The sprues sizes will all be converted to medium size sprues which is the LI standard size.

Legions Imperialis got 24 kits with 24 medium size sprues with 3 more kits with 3 more sprues on the way so 27 medium size sprues in 9 months
Titanicus got 14 plastic kits with 34.25 medium size sprues , 8 resin Knight/Titans kits and 19 resin weapon releases (still counting resin releases that later got replaced by plastic)
So a total of 34.25 medium size sprues and 27 resin releases over a total of 72 months
Aeronautica Imperialis got 21 plastic kits with 23 medium size sprues and 15 resin resin releases
So a total of 23 medium size sprues and 15 resin releases over a total of 27 months (Launched in June 2020, last release in August 2022 with the Legio Custodes Ares Gunship)
Underworlds got 58 warbands with 1 medium size sprue each so a total of 58 medium size sprues over a total of 82 months
Warcry got 32 kits with 54 medium size sprues over a total of 60 months. It also got alot of terrain releases but I'm not counting them here.
Kill Team second edition got some new 40k models released as part of KT commander sets but they weren't really KT releases so the Elucidian Starstriders and Gellerpox Infected were the only real KT releases so 3 medium size sprues. It really started with the 3 season so thats when I'm going to start counting.
KT 3rd season got 15 kits and 8 upgrade kits with 40.5 medium size sprues over a total of 36 months. Again alot of terrain releases but I'm not counting them here.

Necromunda is a bit too muddled with their releases for me so not going to count them.

So on average:
LI got 3 medium size sprues per month
Titanicus got 0.48 medium size sprues and 0.375 resin releases per month
Aeronautica got 0.85 medium size sprues and 0.55 resin releases per month
Underworlds got 0.707 medium size sprues per month
Warcry got 0.9 medium size sprues per month
Kill Team got 1.125 medium size sprues per month

So on average LI got nearly 3x as much as the next highest game. Of course LI is still young so now is the time we are getting more kits in average so that will distort the numbers but still we are getting some nice output

Really interesting statistics, thanks!
It's obvious from those numbers that LI is getting a lot of investment, and that they seem really serious to see it succeed. I suspect most/all of what we have seen so far was already in the pipeline before the somewhat troubled launch.
I checked the recently released Year End Report for additional information on LI's performance, but couldn't find anything.

Yeah GW don’t break down their sales by game, hence we should always take any online claims about what is or isn’t selling with a hearty pinch of salt.

On the books?

If it’s what it takes to keep these non-core games in production, I can live with it. And it’s not as if the books are otherwise devoid of content.

It also adds a certain impetus to buy more than just the new models, as players may look at the new Detachment and figure “hey, another unit of Preadtors would round that one out nicely” or similar.

Also, from a historical point of view? This is what I’m used to with Epic. In second edition, the main box had rules for a small selection of units. You then got the expansion boxes (Armies of the Imperium, Ork & Squat Warlords, Hive War, Chaos & Eldar Renegades), which fleshed out two armies each. From there you also got various WD releases, Titan Legions, and more WD releases.

As ever, that’s not to say “therefore it are grate and fab and STFU n00b”. Because it can be a pain, especially when trying to track down every last WD for a vintage collection! But, it is why I for one am genuinely not bothered at buying multiple books and expansions. It’s just what I’m used to.

On the books?

If it’s what it takes to keep these non-core games in production, I can live with it. And it’s not as if the books are otherwise devoid of content.

It also adds a certain impetus to buy more than just the new models, as players may look at the new Detachment and figure “hey, another unit of Preadtors would round that one out nicely” or similar.

Also, from a historical point of view? This is what I’m used to with Epic. In second edition, the main box had rules for a small selection of units. You then got the expansion boxes (Armies of the Imperium, Ork & Squat Warlords, Hive War, Chaos & Eldar Renegades), which fleshed out two armies each. From there you also got various WD releases, Titan Legions, and more WD releases.

... and that's a much more customer-friendly approach. The main box for Space Marine Second Edition (SM2) had functional army lists for five factions. The expansions tended to focus on two factions at a time (e.g. Space Marine and Guard; Ork and Squat; Eldar and Chaos), and gave expanded army lists for each, which included a complete reprint of the original lists.

In contrast, the army lists in the Legions Imperialis (LI) core box are seemingly based purely on the models immediately or imminently available, while the expansions provide only a handful of additions at a time. Are there understandable commercial reasons for that? Of course – but if the aim is to keep these non-core games in production, it strikes me that making it easy to get in on the ground floor is key.

Hell, why not take a page from the past and provide a summary sheet in White Dwarf of the new models?

 Apologist wrote:
... and that's a much more customer-friendly approach. The main box for Space Marine Second Edition (SM2) had functional army lists for five factions. The expansions tended to focus on two factions at a time (e.g. Space Marine and Guard; Ork and Squat; Eldar and Chaos), and gave expanded army lists for each, which included a complete reprint of the original lists.

In contrast, the army lists in the Legions Imperialis (LI) core box are seemingly based purely on the models immediately or imminently available, while the expansions provide only a handful of additions at a time. Are there understandable commercial reasons for that?

Yes, this is something GW have done since a court case over a decade ago.

Basically 40k codexes used to include rules for all sorts of units & wargear that didn't have models at all, and may or may not have been planned for later. A small company called Chapterhouse started selling their own resin models for these gaps in the GW range, like Tyranid Tervigons or Eldar Farseers on jetbikes. It went to court, GW won part of the case but lost on many other points.

The general takeaway was that GW need to have a physical model ready for sale to be protected from a legal point of view, rules & concept sketches aren't enough. Given their business model and the long lead time in creating plastic kits, there was also a geniune risk of publishing rules for a new unit, a third-party jumps in with their own hand-sculpted resin item, then the GW kit releases the official version some time later which legally speaking could considered be an imtiation of the 3rd-party model. So from around 2012 GW has operated on "no model no rules", generally only making game rules available when they have a model kit close to going on sale.

LI is also likely the most vulnerable GW game system to this kind of 'issue', because not only is 3D printing really efficient at this scale but a lot of the units already exist as full size HH kits that can be easily rescaled by the community. They will definitely be worried about giving customers several months headstart to print out their own land raiders or falchions when the models were still some time away from release.

It's also because GW are the elephant in the market so everyone copies GW. I've seen a previewed model appear as a 3D design in under a day from the preview image going live.


I don't know if GW has to have a model in production and on sale to copyright it (you don't have to sell something to hold the copyright over it); but its much more likely that GW just doesn't want to allow the 3rd party market to fullfill a model requirement before GW can. So not putting new things in the book and such helps prevent that from happening.

The other bonus is it stopped GW putting more and more models into books that required you to convert/buy 3rd party. They had gotten pretty bad at doing that for a while and whilst it was cool to get new things faster; it was a pain when there was just no model to buy. Conversions should be optional not mandatory to field a force

Good overview, @xttz. Things have certainly changed since SM2 – I just wish GW had found another solution.

Given the huge range that has been released, I wonder how things would have differed if the core box had been purely Space Marines, with Solar Auxilia a follow-up in their own book?

I can see the advantages to having two factions in the core box. It was a great way to get the inevitably less popular SA into player's hands, tempting them to start an army. It also ensured Marine players weren't satiated with just the core box, and encouraged buying the expansions.

Still... I wonder how the releases would have looked if it had followed another route.

In all likelihood, we will get a "Compendium" book of sort later down the line with full army lists and perhaps FAQed Core rules. Doesn't make it easier to carry the books in the meantime, of course.

Yes, that has been the pattern with many of the specialist games.

I wounder if until such Compendiums, they had released some Legion specific Stuff.

This could lead to two seperate Books for Loyalist and Traitor Legions...

I wonder if we will see Shattered Legions and Black Shields as "Formations of Legends".

 tauist wrote:
The approach is great, but I am a bit let down how they didn't add more tiny debris onto the tiles. IME, adding tinyscale debris generously can greatly enhance a terrain piece's sense of scale. Of course you still want to keep the table playable, but yeh

Additionally, the architechture overall looks a bit too monotonious. We really should have a couple more building kits with more diverse wall styles. Like, check this 1st edition Space Marine reference - Even if the old cardboard buildings werent 3D, they had at least variety in architechtural styles

Great bit of fluff, thanks for sharing it!

CorwinB wrote:
In all likelihood, we will get a "Compendium" book of sort later down the line with full army lists and perhaps FAQed Core rules. Doesn't make it easier to carry the books in the meantime, of course.

No, but I'll admit that this staggered release is a factor in me not getting into the game yet.