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chaos0xomega wrote:

 xttz wrote:

chaos0xomega wrote:
GW really should just set up a factory in AUS/NZ to localize production so they don't have to upcharge you guys like 300% to cover shipping and import costs.

That would just result in them being upcharged like 400%+ to cover a duplicate set of injection molds and machines. The USA wasn't a big enough market to justify that expense, so I can't imagine Australia is.

 dan2026 wrote:
Spiders need the update most considering how hilariously old they are.

They're clearly saving those for the "40 years of Warp Spiders" series of articles!

The US was a big enough market for it, we had a factory here - they would produce molds in the UK and ship them here for production (which was a significant expense). The reason they closed it down was more political, there was a lack of skilled labor in Memphis and they couldn't convince folks in the UK to relocate as they were unionized and had better benefits than they would get in the US, etc.

Us might have been big enough to basically double expenses. Would australia be?

chaos0xomega wrote:
Problem with one site is insurance and business continuity. I deal with that at my job, basically we need to have several facilities several states away (preferably the opposite side of the country) able to absorb our work otherwise we are basically considered uninsurable. I have no idea how GW manages with the totality of its operations in a single city.

Technically they've got 3rd party factories in China that do some limited casting and their cardstock is all printed overseas. That said I feel like unless you are a massive company; a lot of firms run on a single primary production site. Heck almost all small firms are going to be one production site.
It might be just a difference between how the USA and the UK do business. I could see US Insurance firms wanting multiple sites due to logistics of scale in the country as well as how some regions have very powerful weather events that we don't get in the UK in enough quantity to make them as big of a regular issue.

Eg USA has regions where hurricanes and tornadoes are an annual risk, whilst in the UK one of those happening is a major freak weather event (we get little tornadoes sometimes but they are tiny compared ot the USA types; and not long lived either)

tneva82 wrote:

Us might have been big enough to basically double expenses. Would australia be?

GW's North American revenue is equal to UK plus EU combined. If that was the only consideration it would make sense to move their entire production to the US (or more likely Canada or Mexico I guess), but obviously being a UK company is a big part of their core identity.

I have enough Ad-Mech for a decent 2000 point force (or probably 3k, not counting knights), but sadly I just dont get them.
And now this new stilt guy really baffles me. How could the army possibly need a weird sniper dude carrying a rifle that was not good enough on any other unit?
I will probably get him anyway, guy looks cool

He is not worse than the marines with jetpack and accelerator autocannaons when it comes to making sense.

ecurtz wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Us might have been big enough to basically double expenses. Would australia be?

GW's North American revenue is equal to UK plus EU combined. If that was the only consideration it would make sense to move their entire production to the US (or more likely Canada or Mexico I guess), but obviously being a UK company is a big part of their core identity.

Not just their core identity - its also kind of built into their whole distribution and company network. Moving a firm overseas to the USA like that would be huge if they moved everything. They'd also lose a lot of staff who simply would not want to move to the USA. Plus not to mention things like healthcare differences; tax differences; work visas and a bundle of other things. Far cheaper and more sensible just to produce more at the core factory and ship stuff over and potentially start a secondary factory up again; perhaps choosing a different region or finding key staff or even buying up a plastic casting firm in the USA that's small enough they can afford too and use that infrastructure.

 Fayric wrote:
I have enough Ad-Mech for a decent 2000 point force (or probably 3k, not counting knights), but sadly I just dont get them.

Remember that it's two armies that were forced together after having had a unique design mentality for each. It's been a terrible fit since day one of 8th.

And now this new stilt guy really baffles me. How could the army possibly need a weird sniper dude carrying a rifle that was not good enough on any other unit?

When the OG Transauranic Arquebus dropped? It was a legit threat to enemy armour up to and potentially even including things like the Land Raider. It had its teeth pulled after the swap to 8th.


Hopefully this new guy's Arquebus is a sign of things to come for the OG version, but the Jezzail is basically the same as the Dragoon has right now. Only difference off the top of my head is that the new guy is BS3+ on his Jezzail, but that might be something they're doing for the 'ranged' Skitarii units.

 Kanluwen wrote:

When the OG Transauranic Arquebus dropped?

Transauranic? Sounds like it involves dinosaurs!

EXODITES CONFIRMED!!!

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Fayric wrote:
I have enough Ad-Mech for a decent 2000 point force (or probably 3k, not counting knights), but sadly I just dont get them.

Remember that it's two armies that were forced together after having had a unique design mentality for each. It's been a terrible fit since day one of 8th.

And now this new stilt guy really baffles me. How could the army possibly need a weird sniper dude carrying a rifle that was not good enough on any other unit?

When the OG Transauranic Arquebus dropped? It was a legit threat to enemy armour up to and potentially even including things like the Land Raider. It had its teeth pulled after the swap to 8th.


Hopefully this new guy's Arquebus is a sign of things to come for the OG version, but the Jezzail is basically the same as the Dragoon has right now. Only difference off the top of my head is that the new guy is BS3+ on his Jezzail, but that might be something they're doing for the 'ranged' Skitarii units.

You got it backwards, it was originally one army that got split. We know this because the lead dev on those books talked about it in a Goonhammer interview after he went indie dev.

James: [...]The Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus [back in 7th] which should have one combined set of rules, they got two sets of special rules, because otherwise you don’t sell two books of special rules, you sell one.

Lupe: And interestingly they got combined back together in 8th.

James: And they should have been, they always should have been. The reason they were split was because of a logistics thing. It was when White Dwarf was weekly and they could only show one week’s releases at a time, and if you put out an army book in week one then you’ll show off the releases for the next one, and “secrecy is paramount” , you can’t show off the future releases. If you put it out in week two, it looks like the releases in week one were coming out without an army book, and that doesn’t make sense. And it was this whole ridiculous… the tail has often wagged the dog in Games Workshop in different ways, and this was a fantastic example of that.

As for the reason for stiltman, I'm guessing they decided they could only do one character for this update and went through some designs they already had and picked on and made it a character.

If they drop Servitors like they did in the Marine book my only hope is Dragoons get split into Taser Lance and Jezzail units just so they can be different points costs. That or give us plastic Servitors already.

 ClockworkZion wrote:

You got it backwards, it was originally one army that got split.

Kan is well aware of this and yet still vehemently denies it being true for his own headcanon because he only wants Skitarii.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

You got it backwards, it was originally one army that got split.

Kan is well aware of this and yet still vehemently denies it being true for his own headcanon because he only wants Skitarii.

Well good news since he gets a whole detachment dedicated to them then.

 ClockworkZion wrote:
You got it backwards, it was originally one army that got split.

People have been telling him this for years and he refuses to listen.

 Platuan4th wrote:

 ClockworkZion wrote:

You got it backwards, it was originally one army that got split.

Kan is well aware of this and yet still vehemently denies it being true for his own headcanon because he only wants Skitarii.

I'm also well aware that they were two wildly different armies in terms of playstyle and mechanics, whatever Hewitt's idea of the army for lore or the like was.

Hewitt says they should have been, not that they were designed as. Anyone who suggests that they played the same is flat-out being disingenuous.

The fact that he said they were "split" implies that they were at some point designed as one, this is further reinforced by, I dont know, the entire fething context of everything he says.

Of course they had "wildly different playstyles", by the way, they had very different units available to the two respective halves which dictated in large part how they played on the table.

chaos0xomega wrote:
The fact that he said they were "split" implies that they were at some point designed as one, this is further reinforced by, I dont know, the entire fething context of everything he says.

Cool, since you people always seem to know the entire story based on one snippet of information--when did the split occur? Was it before or after any work actually had started for the army's rules?

I mean, if you guys are going to constantly try to throw that singular quote at me every frigging time I make a statement about how the Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus books played differently from each other and how they were two wildly different books where Skitarii got the entirety of their flavor sucked out of them when combined into one for 8th?
You should be able to say so, with the confidence that you lot have to keep talking down at me.

Because if we want to talk about "context", as a reminder? Hewitt's also claimed that the designs for the miniatures are done before the books. This is the dude who also has talked about being told to make the Wraithknight better because of the model's $$$ cost.

I never said he's a liar, I've never said that he's wrong, or anything like that. I've simply said, and consistently stuck to, that no matter the intention?

Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus did not feel like two halves of a single army, just waiting to be stuck back together again. They genuinely had a unique feel to them that went beyond just the roster of the units. It's why I've always felt like(even if I may not have said all that often) that whenever the dictate came from on high to "split" them? It must have been extremely early on. Like, in the "We've got an idea as to what our next faction is!" stages.

Of course they had "wildly different playstyles", by the way, they had very different units available to the two respective halves which dictated in large part how they played on the table.

Yeah, and what else did they have?

Two wildly different playstyles that had nothing to do with the different units available to them but rather factored on the special rules for the armies. You cannot in good faith argue that Doctrina Imperatives and Canticles were even remotely similar, beyond being special rules.

Maybe I should just make a signature tag or something:
"Skitarii and Cult could have been one book, but by the Omnissiah's Blessing they had the chance to be something special before being combined"?

Kan you need to let it go, it's fairly obvious that Adeptus Mechanicus as a complete army was always going to happen and if a designer can be quoted stating they were told to split the range, then you're going to have to accept that.

Iirc his reasoning given was that management didn't want to release all the kits at once, they wanted them spread apart, but due to Charterhouse style GW they needed their own rules to justify both their existence and having 2 books in 6 months.

When this happened is largely irrelevant, the designer has told us they were intended as 1 range.

 Overread wrote:

ecurtz wrote:

tneva82 wrote:

Us might have been big enough to basically double expenses. Would australia be?

GW's North American revenue is equal to UK plus EU combined. If that was the only consideration it would make sense to move their entire production to the US (or more likely Canada or Mexico I guess), but obviously being a UK company is a big part of their core identity.

Not just their core identity - its also kind of built into their whole distribution and company network. Moving a firm overseas to the USA like that would be huge if they moved everything. They'd also lose a lot of staff who simply would not want to move to the USA. Plus not to mention things like healthcare differences; tax differences; work visas and a bundle of other things. Far cheaper and more sensible just to produce more at the core factory and ship stuff over and potentially start a secondary factory up again; perhaps choosing a different region or finding key staff or even buying up a plastic casting firm in the USA that's small enough they can afford too and use that infrastructure.

Not to mention the whole 'lead belt' effect they have had on the Nottingham area, which means there is a large pool of skilled sculptors, artists, game and mini designers and factory workers who already live in the local area.

Unless they double up on all the moulds on producing everything (which probably isn't profitable on some of the older or more obscure stuff) they will still need to ship over some of the stuff from the UK anyway and have to coordinate stuff coming from yet another source.

Maybe they will get a smaller factory that only produces the newer stuff and mainly be there for helping with new launches. Like production is only for stuff like leviathan, indomitus or new marine releases and then everything else is just shipped from the UK. Then they dont need a thousand different moulds or a huge warehouse that stock a ton of different products. Just focusing on the things that will sell a huge amount and not make the logistic chain too complicated.

Klickor wrote:
Unless they double up on all the moulds on producing everything (which probably isn't profitable on some of the older or more obscure stuff) they will still need to ship over some of the stuff from the UK anyway and have to coordinate stuff coming from yet another source.

Maybe they will get a smaller factory that only produces the newer stuff and mainly be there for helping with new launches. Like production is only for stuff like leviathan, indomitus or new marine releases and then everything else is just shipped from the UK. Then they dont need a thousand different moulds or a huge warehouse that stock a ton of different products. Just focusing on the things that will sell a huge amount and not make the logistic chain too complicated.

I think it will happen again, GW must have learned some things from the first attempt that failed and could take those lessons forward in setting up again. I think the risk for them is that it ends up being a huge cash investment that isn't actually going to net them anything more in income compared to simply expanding their warehousing and shipping system; which has to be done anyway for the rest of their market. The USA is a massive beast of a market to tap into and if they could improve their production output to better serve and expand more rapidly into that market (remembering that GW funds all expansion with profits not loans) then it could set them up for a bumper expansion. Of course they might also be waiting for financial times to improve from what they are now so that there's a market super hungry and ready to expand into what they offer.

They might also simply continue to invest in their current site, which is likely a lot easier to expand on because staff and resources are right there to be had

Plus cost of staff. On the last thread where we saw a GW job advert and there was discussion of salaries, many of the US posters were saying even entry level positions would need to pay twice as much as they do in the UK.

We didn't get a look at the scout sprues as of yet right?

Not Online!!! wrote:
We didn't get a look at the scout sprues as of yet right?

Not yet. They seem to be boxes of 10 though.

Scout kit is 5-man, but the box they sell might be 10 like Intercessor and Reiver.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
We didn't get a look at the scout sprues as of yet right?

Not yet. They seem to be boxes of 10 though.

Aye... that seems clear since it's a KT and those are always in the ballpark of 10 models.

That said, i have my concerns about the weapons loadouts... which i hope to include atleast full bolter, full cqc pistol and full sniperrifle support... that would make me buy a lot for my AL HH army.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
We didn't get a look at the scout sprues as of yet right?

Not yet. They seem to be boxes of 10 though.

Aye... that seems clear since it's a KT and those are always in the ballpark of 10 models.

That said, i have my concerns about the weapons loadouts... which i hope to include atleast full bolter, full cqc pistol and full sniperrifle support... that would make me buy a lot for my AL HH army.

Full sniper looks to be a thing of the past. There is a small hope we might get an alternative build/pose, but one/5 models looks to be the way forward.

Chopstick wrote:
Scout kit is 5-man, but the box they sell might be 10 like Intercessor and Reiver.

Scorpions are the only confirmed 5 models, doubled, for the new set.

There's assumptions that Scouts are as well, but that's not confirmed by GW. The Nova Open video showcased them as a box of 10 so that's likely what it is.

 Kanluwen wrote:

Chopstick wrote:
Scout kit is 5-man, but the box they sell might be 10 like Intercessor and Reiver.

Scorpions are the only confirmed 5 models, doubled, for the new set.

There's assumptions that Scouts are as well, but that's not confirmed by GW. The Nova Open video showcased them as a box of 10 so that's likely what it is.

They have picture of models on WaCom dude.

 Nevelon wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
We didn't get a look at the scout sprues as of yet right?

Not yet. They seem to be boxes of 10 though.

Aye... that seems clear since it's a KT and those are always in the ballpark of 10 models.

That said, i have my concerns about the weapons loadouts... which i hope to include atleast full bolter, full cqc pistol and full sniperrifle support... that would make me buy a lot for my AL HH army.

Full sniper looks to be a thing of the past. There is a small hope we might get an alternative build/pose, but one/5 models looks to be the way forward.

It's not as small as it could be, since HH has scouts as a regular unit for all legions and one of the options in that is a full set of Sniperrifles.

So maybee GW is smart and "generous" (for GW standards ) and has a full set of them in the kit.

Chopstick wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Chopstick wrote:
Scout kit is 5-man, but the box they sell might be 10 like Intercessor and Reiver.

Scorpions are the only confirmed 5 models, doubled, for the new set.

There's assumptions that Scouts are as well, but that's not confirmed by GW. The Nova Open video showcased them as a box of 10 so that's likely what it is.

They have picture of models on WaCom dude.

Yes, I know. I've linked to the Nova Open article that revealed them in this very thread.

Like I said, they aren't 100% confirmed to be 2 sets of 5 like the Scorpions are.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Nevelon wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
We didn't get a look at the scout sprues as of yet right?

Not yet. They seem to be boxes of 10 though.

Aye... that seems clear since it's a KT and those are always in the ballpark of 10 models.

That said, i have my concerns about the weapons loadouts... which i hope to include atleast full bolter, full cqc pistol and full sniperrifle support... that would make me buy a lot for my AL HH army.

Full sniper looks to be a thing of the past. There is a small hope we might get an alternative build/pose, but one/5 models looks to be the way forward.

It's not as small as it could be, since HH has scouts as a regular unit for all legions and one of the options in that is a full set of Sniperrifles.

So maybee GW is smart and "generous" (for GW standards ) and has a full set of them in the kit.

why would they do that when they can force you to buy ten copies of their kit?

Because at some point mithril even GW realises that 3d printing is an issue uniquly affecting them and not other plastic producers preciscly because of their price sheme and scarcity of options in the kit.