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Out of interest:

Who here actually owned a Stalker and/or a Hunter?

I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

seen them on the shelf in the club back than when they were released, but that is all

 Eldarsif wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
AoS tanked until the General's Handbook started to fix things.

It wasn't doing much. Still did better than WHFB.

GHB 1.0 saved it from ending like WHFB and has built a fantastic game from that.

Honestly I am excited for TOW but fear that it can end up being ignored by players like before because they either own too much or don't have the finance to buy themselves into the game. Will be interesting how GW solves that.

I would expect that varied from country to country. The original AoS numbers in Spain were abismal, and WFB was still selling more than 40k.

I genuinely wonder how long until intercessors are re-packaged with an upgrade sprue for a special weapon and a heavy weapon - I wish they would just do it now, to be honest, there are zero reasons to have an intercessor squad and a tactical squad box set.

I think we won't get a proper devastator proxy though, at some point there will be kits with hand-held lascannons in the primaris range - maybe even a grav cannon.

The main units I am now intrigued about if they will get primarised is the more niche marine units. Will Centurions come back in a new kit at some point over the next 5-10 years?

Also, will we get new drop pods and land raiders in an appropriate scale?

The Grav/Primaris Vindicator/Whirlwind I presume is in the pipeline, even if it is long-term.

I'm not bothered about first born marines going away, the scale change was really required and had been for a long time.

I think GW slowly amending the SM range into bigger models etc is a lot less aggressive than what they did with AoS. WFB did not had that luxury and was simply discontinued and replaced with 3 pages of rules.
Maybe WFB was doing so bad and not sure of GW financials at the time that maybe they just had no other choice.

Today AoS seems been doing ok and I have little, to no faith on the old world coming back the way people remember WFB.
I never liked the Firstborn kits and even back then I thought they were bad designs but Im on board with Primaris and I think SM needs to cut down on the number of units, it's just ridiculous. The fact HH is there you can fill your hobby closet with SMs.

A lot of the older versions/variations of firstborn kits were fine - mainly the 3rd edition era, they were mainly fine size-wise because a lot of the other factions were still pewter. Yes they were never as tall as they should have been, but they were bulky compared to guardians, guardsmen, orks etc.

It was a lot of the plastic redesigns in third onwards that made them look minute. Plastic production at the time I presume provided most of the limitations, I still can't believe that the old cadian plastic kit was intentionally designed with such a stupid bulk to them, specifically on the helmet, it was out of necessity.

Other than some quirks with the height, modern plastic cadians and necromunda models look fine next to a first born marine.

Oh well, I'm really happy with the primaris scale, and with some units now getting older style grill helmets, they look awesome.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
I genuinely wonder how long until intercessors are re-packaged with an upgrade sprue for a special weapon and a heavy weapon - I wish they would just do it now, to be honest, there are zero reasons to have an intercessor squad and a tactical squad box set.

I think we won't get a proper devastator proxy though, at some point there will be kits with hand-held lascannons in the primaris range - maybe even a grav cannon.

The main units I am now intrigued about if they will get primarised is the more niche marine units. Will Centurions come back in a new kit at some point over the next 5-10 years?

Also, will we get new drop pods and land raiders in an appropriate scale?

The Grav/Primaris Vindicator/Whirlwind I presume is in the pipeline, even if it is long-term.

I'm not bothered about first born marines going away, the scale change was really required and had been for a long time.

Eliminators have the lascannon type gun atm, it's only grav that doesn't have some representation.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Tamereth wrote:

Were you around when AoS dropped? It was dead on arrival, a barely functional game that sacrificed the old world to exist. It bombing worse than a modern disney film was the cause of major changes to the plan for the reboot of 40k.

Did AoS 0.0 not do the numbers GW expected it to be? Yes. Did it do better than WHFB? Yes.

WHFB was in a really dire place when AoS dropped and I don't think a lot of people realize that. I remember some previous dev talking about WHFB terrain selling better than the armies in WHFB.

After AoS 1.0 dropped it started to pick up and is now a sizable game.

Hardly surprising because for 3 years gw had had no real　support. Aos development started in 2012. After that fb had no real releases and gw makes most of sales on new kits.

Even marine sales would be pathetic if they got zero releases. 40k would be on grave fast if　suddenly gw decided to no more new releases for 40k.

When aos development was started still top-3 seller.

Just not space marine level which offended kirby.

 endlesswaltz123 wrote:
I genuinely wonder how long until intercessors are re-packaged with an upgrade sprue for a special weapon and a heavy weapon - I wish they would just do it now, to be honest, there are zero reasons to have an intercessor squad and a tactical squad box set.

I think we won't get a proper devastator proxy though, at some point there will be kits with hand-held lascannons in the primaris range - maybe even a grav cannon.

The main units I am now intrigued about if they will get primarised is the more niche marine units. Will Centurions come back in a new kit at some point over the next 5-10 years?

Also, will we get new drop pods and land raiders in an appropriate scale?

The Grav/Primaris Vindicator/Whirlwind I presume is in the pipeline, even if it is long-term.

I'm not bothered about first born marines going away, the scale change was really required and had been for a long time.

I don’t think there will be any new landraider, they have just done that with HH. I hope to god they just let centurions die out because they are ugly and such a stupid idea. I must admit that I’m pleased this edition to see the lines blurring and models not being primaris only, it’s all just marines.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Out of interest:

Who here actually owned a Stalker and/or a Hunter?

I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

I didn’t realize they were so universally disliked. Rules for it have been all over the place, depending on edition. Never close to the power needed to find its way into competitive lists. I fielded it at least once. It did OK.

--

I recall thinking when 8th dropped that primaris would eventually replace things, but it would take a while, defiantly more then one or two editions. 10th did not seem “soon” back then, but here we are. I’d like to see expansions for the new guys that would let them be equipped like the classics. Gear up intercessors with a special/heavy and call them tacticals. Blur the lines between scouts and phobos units.

If they are dropping scout bikes, I’d like to see reivers on lighter bikes then the outriders to replace them. They are the movement/backfield harassment branch of the phobos line (even if their rules always suck). Scout bikers are a fun little toolbox of a unit; always seemed to do better in game they the appeared on paper.

Land Speeders filled a niche of fast firepower that wasn’t crazy expensive for what you got. The new speeders are way more guns, but at a corresponding price. Something that fragile needs to keep a low profile, so it doesn’t climb up the target priority queue and just get swatted off the table.

Oh well. We’ll find out the full story when the codex drops. I suspect I’ll be a bit sad at some of the losses, but some might get replaced.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

BrianDavion wrote:
except that you guys where claiming first born where going to be totally removed by 9th. yes some people ignored it but most people where predicting a slow soft removal of first born, as units are directly replaced. As it is the units going last chance to buy aren't exactly units we're going to miss much. Assault marines weren't exactly super common

I remember distinctly saying that the change to W2 Marines across the board was one of the steps in a long process of removing them, as that was the first step of removing differentiation between Primaris and non-Primairs, and that within a Codex or two they could remove them from the game.

But go on, continue to tell me that I was wrong when I was completely right.

In fairness, are we not now looking at the third codex since Primaris were a thing? And that still has plenty of non-Primaris in it. Or did you mean specifically Assault marines going away (in which case fair play, you were right)

I think more and more stuff will go away but I'd also be surprised if Tac Squads are ever removed. So many people own so many of them, and even if they stopped selling them keeping a single codex entry around isn't going to cost them much.

I don't think either side can celebrate being right quite yet. (And I guess those who have said "I think firstborn will stick around" can never celebrate because if they remove Tac Marines in 20 years' time there will be people on Dakka going "see, we said this would happen, we were right!")

I think it'll be more organic than flat replacements anyway. I do think eventually there will be no firstborn datasheets, but that's because the difference will go away. If that's done by "Tactical Squads are no longer allowed to take special and heavy weapons" (which is, in the grand scheme of things, really no more significant a wargear change than many armies have had between editions but I'm sure would attract outsized attention) or by an extra accessory sprue for the Intercessors we'll just have to see.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Out of interest:

Who here actually owned a Stalker and/or a Hunter?

I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

I have one that I converted into a Whirlwind with a 3rd party turret. The outriggers add to the look.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

I had a Stalker all built but never painted it. It never saw a game. I think it coincided with a period in which I wasn’t doing much with WH40k.

 kodos wrote:
no unexpected, the only surprise is that not all kits have a direct replacement now which would either indicate that there will be none (no AA tank for Primaris) or that one of the other kits is seen as replacement like the role of Scouts is covered by Rivers, adding another Primaris Scout would not help with cutting units

 Eldarsif wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
AoS tanked until the General's Handbook started to fix things.

It wasn't doing much. Still did better than WHFB.
GHB 1.0 saved it from ending like WHFB and has built a fantastic game from that.

any source that Endtimes sold less than AoS launch?
number of boxes sold, like Endtimes books sold out and AoS Launch box didn't?
or that the Slayers sold well enough compared to Nagash that those were offered at 50% discount bundles?

seen nothing that would indicate AoS sold better than WHFB at all until 2nd Edition, and being a fantastic game is personal taste as it is the 2nd best mainline game GW has (after LotR) but not on the level of "fantastic"

My understanding is that, ironically, the End Times stuff for WHFB sold really well. Much better than pretty much all the previous content for 8th edition, in fact. It quite significantly outsold the original AoS release. This is likely due to the combination of backlash over destroying the Old World, the dreadful jokey rules for many of the legacy armies and the almost complete lack of any actual rules or anything that could be considered a game in the early days of AoS. The Sigmarines and the slow rollout of new armies probably didn't help. WHFB's poor performance was at least partially down to poor support from GW, making it a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

AoS only started to pick up when the GHB came out and they tried to turn it into an actual game instead of the performance art/designers ego trip amalgam it was at launch.


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 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Out of interest:

Who here actually owned a Stalker and/or a Hunter?

I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

They remain the only SM kits I have never actually seen on the table, barring a couple of niche special characters.

 Asmodai wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Out of interest:

Who here actually owned a Stalker and/or a Hunter?

I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

I have one that I converted into a Whirlwind with a 3rd party turret. The outriggers add to the look.

Same here.

IIRC it came out when GW were pushing aircraft and Marines needed AA (but no idea why they didn't just use one of the existing FW kits...)

I'm curious to see when they inevitably send all the Rhino and Land Raider chassis to Legends if they'll give CSM reboxes based on the Deimos and Phobos or if CSM will just stop having vehicles.

I've seen them. *shrug* As others have said, they came out when flyer spam was the big thing. It may not have a good role now, but at the time its role couldn't have been clearer.




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Slipspace wrote:
WHFB's poor performance was at least partially down to poor support from GW, making it a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I know that's the narrative among WHFB fans. But it's much more likely that GW cut support because they saw that a reboot was needed for a game that wasn't selling well, wasn't growing, and wasn't capturing the interest of GW's preferred target audience in terms of gameplay and visual design.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to keep pushing out new WHFB kits when the plans for the game's replacement are already underway.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Last Chance to Buy for the kits and a number of the units (not all) are having their rules moved over to Legends (or are basically becoming official proxy models for Primaris units), which to me is the more surprising part.

 Eldarsif wrote:

 Overread wrote:
A few of those, like the speeders, are a surprise but then again might be ripe for new models! The stalker hunter is also surprising as that isn't that old?

My guess is that the stalker hunter sold very little(maybe close to 0), which means that they can technically safely sunset it. I know quite a few Space Marine players, both casual and competitive, that never bought it.

I've actually never seen a Stalker or a Hunter in person myself (except the unpurchased kits sitting on the shelf of my FLGS), they did not seem to be at all popular.

I bought one when it came out. Had to clear my skies of Hellturkeys. Haven't used it but once, but always glad to have it in my back pocket.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Out of interest:

Who here actually owned a Stalker and/or a Hunter?

I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

These models have a function in narrative scenarios to knock out opposing anti-air prior to an attack. Outside of those cases not much use for them.

 ThePaintingOwl wrote:

 Eldarsif wrote:
It wasn't doing much. Still did better than WHFB.

Maybe, but only because "better than the dying game that GW was deliberately killing off to make room for AoS" is an incredibly low bar to fail. AoS on launch was a complete failure and one of the worst tabletop games ever created

For that to be true would require AoS to have actually been a game on launch

, with such poor financial performance that it put GW as a company into some serious trouble. Things only got better once GW released a new version of the game that fixed its worst flaws.

This is hyperbole in the extreme. There is absolutely nothing to suggest that GW was in any sort of financial distress or trouble at any point during the launch of AOS. In fact, GWs revenue and profit figures stabilized (vs posting small losses) after AoS launched, which would indicate that the game had a net positive impact on GWs financial performance.

Despite the "game" sucking, the minis were cool enough to get people buying plastic.

 kodos wrote:
no unexpected, the only surprise is that not all kits have a direct replacement now which would either indicate that there will be none (no AA tank for Primaris) or that one of the other kits is seen as replacement like the role of Scouts is covered by Rivers, adding another Primaris Scout would not help with cutting units

 Eldarsif wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
AoS tanked until the General's Handbook started to fix things.

It wasn't doing much. Still did better than WHFB.
GHB 1.0 saved it from ending like WHFB and has built a fantastic game from that.

any source that Endtimes sold less than AoS launch?
number of boxes sold, like Endtimes books sold out and AoS Launch box didn't?
or that the Slayers sold well enough compared to Nagash that those were offered at 50% discount bundles?
seen nothing that would indicate AoS sold better than WHFB at all until 2nd Edition, and being a fantastic game is personal taste as it is the 2nd best mainline game GW has (after LotR) but not on the level of "fantastic"

If you go back through my post history, maybe 12-18 months or so, you will find I did some posts where I used GWs financial reports to indirectly analyze the impact of AoS on GW's financial performance. Heres one for example: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/807168.page#11448021

The general gist of it is that GWs financial performance was trending red through the tail end of the WHFB era (and in fact posted negative financial performance during the reporting periods following the release of WHFB 7th and WHFB 8th, which indicates that WHFB was posting losses, especially since there was a strong positive correlation to the launch of new 40k editions resulting in boosted sales, with the exception of 7th ed), but immediately following the release of AoS the losses stabilized, and with the release of the GHB, sales started skyrocketing.

There are other factors at play here of course and correlation != causation, but theres a lot to indicate at the very least that WHFB was an anchor around GWs throat, and even if AoS wasn't/isn't performing very well, its not holding GW down as much as WHFB might have.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Slipspace wrote:

 kodos wrote:
no unexpected, the only surprise is that not all kits have a direct replacement now which would either indicate that there will be none (no AA tank for Primaris) or that one of the other kits is seen as replacement like the role of Scouts is covered by Rivers, adding another Primaris Scout would not help with cutting units

 Eldarsif wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
AoS tanked until the General's Handbook started to fix things.

It wasn't doing much. Still did better than WHFB.
GHB 1.0 saved it from ending like WHFB and has built a fantastic game from that.

any source that Endtimes sold less than AoS launch?
number of boxes sold, like Endtimes books sold out and AoS Launch box didn't?
or that the Slayers sold well enough compared to Nagash that those were offered at 50% discount bundles?

seen nothing that would indicate AoS sold better than WHFB at all until 2nd Edition, and being a fantastic game is personal taste as it is the 2nd best mainline game GW has (after LotR) but not on the level of "fantastic"

My understanding is that, ironically, the End Times stuff for WHFB sold really well. Much better than pretty much all the previous content for 8th edition, in fact. It quite significantly outsold the original AoS release. This is likely due to the combination of backlash over destroying the Old World, the dreadful jokey rules for many of the legacy armies and the almost complete lack of any actual rules or anything that could be considered a game in the early days of AoS. The Sigmarines and the slow rollout of new armies probably didn't help. WHFB's poor performance was at least partially down to poor support from GW, making it a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

If you check the post I linked, the numbers don't really bare out that thesis.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 gorgon wrote:


I know that's the narrative among WHFB fans. But it's much more likely that GW cut support because they saw that a reboot was needed for a game that wasn't selling well, wasn't growing, and wasn't capturing the interest of GW's preferred target audience in terms of gameplay and visual design.

I'm not saying it's right or wrong. But it probably doesn't make a lot of sense to keep pushing out new WHFB kits when the plans for the game's replacement are already underway.

Indeed, going through and comparing the release schedules for army books vs codecies, WHFB through 7th and 8th ed actually got basically the same level of support that 40k received. Pretty sure I have a post in my history doing that comparison too but can't be arsed to try to find it.

well, the difference in support is, Warhammer was already dead by 8th release as the main migration towards 40k started with the 5th Edi release and got fully going with the Daemon book for Fantasy.
in addition, releasing a codex alone is not support but also new models and important, replacing outdated ones. Like people expected a Warhammer Army Book also coming with new core units but that never happened so people did not bought into new armies as they wanted to wait for new models
while compared to that, Marines got a new core unit box with each codex release during that time (new tactical, new Blood Angels, new Dark Angels, new Space Wolves)

chaos0xomega wrote:

If you go back through my post history, maybe 12-18 months or so, you will find I did some posts where I used GWs financial reports to indirectly analyze the impact of AoS on GW's financial performance. Heres one for example: https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/60/807168.page#11448021

I know about those, I know about the timeline and I don't know any source that would say that the release of AoS outsold the previous Warhammer releases
as there is nothing at all that can be tracked down to those 2 games as GW does not list numbers for that

the other problem with this data is also the claim that Warhammer as a whole sold less than the Space Marine line and therefore needed to be killed in favour of AoS,
which if true kills all the arguments with total sales numbers as Warhammer would not impact them at all over its lifetime and all changes in sales & profit would be related to 40k alone
something also to consider is that GWs profit went up while their sales went down, which means better margins and internal cost saving but also money from licences (which are always ignored)

changes that happened in 2016 when profits turned around from going down again at the beginning of the year were: Rountree replacing Kirby, GW opened on social media (F, YT & Twitch), White Dwarf coming back, start collection boxes and the release of the boxed games

GW brought cheap miniatures in the form of bundles on the market while also starting advertising themselves and a marketing as "new GW" (and yes they used that term for themselves) that boosted sales while investing into the rules for the games again (GHB)

so looking at the basic numbers and ignoring everything else, 8th Edition release sold better than original AoS release, and by 8th Warhammer was already a dead game, so someone claiming it was the other way around should at least show something to proof it other than "personal feeling because I like AoS more"

I wasnt involved with GW products when AoS launched, but was just thinking, when did LoTR miniatures game get released by GW?

Perhaps it was LoTR that killed Warhammer, and AoS was just a reboot in response to LoTR? GW couldn't just have Tolkiens' factions in another fantasy game (with uglier minis with worse proportions to boot), hence they came up with AoS and its factions, which were not direct clones from LoTR?

 tauist wrote:
I wasnt involved with GW products when AoS launched, but was just thinking, when did LoTR miniatures game get released by GW?

Around the same time as the first movie was released. WHFB lasted well over a decade past that.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 tauist wrote:
I wasnt involved with GW products when AoS launched, but was just thinking, when did LoTR miniatures game get released by GW?

Around the same time as the first movie was released. WHFB lasted well over a decade past that.

Indeed - WHFB was early in its sixth edition when The Fellowship of the Ring and the LOTR game came out, AOS was released a year after the last part in the 'The Hobbit' trilogy, which itself came 11 years after The Return of the King

It really isn't complicated. WHFB just wasn't very accessible or interesting to younger people for a number of reasons. People can pretend now like that wasn't true, but everyone talked about it openly at the time -- that WHFB catered to a more veteran audience. GW is a public company with growth targets that they need to hit, and a game that isn't roping in the new blood isn't going to help them do that.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Out of interest:

Who here actually owned a Stalker and/or a Hunter?

I said above that I've never actually seen that kit in person (outside of sitting in a box on a shelf at a GW store), and others have said that as well. Anyone own one? Anyone ever used one?

I played against a stalker in a local tournament once, shortly after it was released... There was a time there where you pretty much had to include some form of anti air in a tournie list on the (reasonable) chance that your opponent would show up with aircraft, as it was the only way to deal with them.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 tauist wrote:
I wasnt involved with GW products when AoS launched, but was just thinking, when did LoTR miniatures game get released by GW?

Perhaps it was LoTR that killed Warhammer, and AoS was just a reboot in response to LoTR? GW couldn't just have Tolkiens' factions in another fantasy game (with uglier minis with worse proportions to boot), hence they came up with AoS and its factions, which were not direct clones from LoTR?

LotR mostly sold to a very different audience to GW's other games... which was the reason that many WHFB and 40K players thought for a long time that LotR wasn't actually doing well, as they never saw anyone playing it. But it served as a massive cash injection to GW as a whole. WHFB's demise was from other causes.

 gorgon wrote:
It really isn't complicated. WHFB just wasn't very accessible or interesting to younger people for a number of reasons. People can pretend now like that wasn't true, but everyone talked about it openly at the time -- that WHFB catered to a more veteran audience. GW is a public company with growth targets that they need to hit, and a game that isn't roping in the new blood isn't going to help them do that.

Considering how many of the models in AoS are Old World models I don't think it was the models.

Old World failed on multiple fronts and, like many games fails, there was no one major "that did it" thing. IT was a combination of many aspects over many years.

Lord of the Rings stealing the limelight for a long while; lack of effective modern marketing methods (gw was openly at war with the internet in those days, it was doing zero marketing online beyond the webstore); a massive up-front cost to get into the game at functional point value let alone the popular 2K; the lack of effective intro point values and smaller scale games that "worked"; the lack of attention/investment for a considerable period of time (as evident by how popular End Times became and how sales rose when GW focused on it).

I think lore is honestly secondary when I consider how few people read BL books compared to play the game. Lore is fun stuff around the game for many, but the models, the pricing, the company attention and all are what brings people in. GW at the time was just not pushing Old World for a long time and when the market dwindled those that were left had 2K armies and bigger; they were playing big games and there just wasn't much to bridge that gap. So the fewer people getting into it had a greatre chance of burning out before getting to the fun part of the gameplay.



Almost all the major failing points are what GW does today - markets online; has multiple cheaper game entry options; releases new and shiny models; pays attention to the game in marketing; etc...
Honestly the only thing that's going to be a big question mark is how GW is going to market Old World and AoS side by side at the same time.

 tauist wrote:
I wasnt involved with GW products when AoS launched, but was just thinking, when did LoTR miniatures game get released by GW?

Perhaps it was LoTR that killed Warhammer, and AoS was just a reboot in response to LoTR? GW couldn't just have Tolkiens' factions in another fantasy game (with uglier minis with worse proportions to boot), hence they came up with AoS and its factions, which were not direct clones from LoTR?

Year 2000. And it certainly helped put the boot into fantasy. At it's height, LotR was outdoing 40k and fantasy. So much so that fantasy was kicked down to third position and barely even considered a core game anymore.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
barely even considered a core game anymore.

Lolwut. Yeah, that's not even close to an accurate depiction of 6th Ed Fantasy.