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Voss wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:
GW should really fold Grey Knights into the Inquisition book and remove them as a full army like Death Watch. SoB has enough model like to stand on its own, and has been its own army for much longer, but the Ordo marines should be treated consistently.

This is incorrect. GK had their own independent army list in Realms of Chaos during the RT days. I don't personally think they're great as their own army, but they're the oldest by far, and its much too late to shove them back in the box.

Deathwatch are the ones GW has treated inconsistently, and that's entirely an own goal on GW's part. Part of it simply stems from the fact that they aren't really a stand-alone model range, and Sisters and GK definitely are.

Releasing them right before Primaris without a plan for incorporating Primaris was a stumble that never got smoothed out.

Ehh...the issue was more that they kept Kill-Teams.

Those were made to be Formations. They were just a mess otherwise.

Another miss for GW. Would have been fitting for the Ordo Hereticus to get frateris militia in the form of Cawdor gangers. It would never happen for the same reason the new tech thralls not get rules for 40K.

Given the number of models lately that are stabbing their swords into the ground or bashing their hammers down, I conclude that the Imperium has given up on bombarding planets from orbit and seeks to destroy planets in close assault.

I wonder if there’s a possibility GW will end up resculpting Coteaz? Big difference since it was FW, but they redid the space wolf helmets I may try to pick him up in the off chance he goes OOP in a few years

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Something potentially interesting https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/07/24/get-ready-to-explore-warhammer-40000-with-dk-books-expansive-guide/

Who knew that the sword on the Sororitas Rhino is supposed to actually be used for close defence

 a_typical_hero wrote:
The new sculpt is just horrible.

Power armour does not have to look as ugly and bulky on non augmented humans, as evidenced by every Sororita.

Yeah, but there is no way that an actual person with muscles and organs could actually fit inside Sororitas armour.

Smaug wrote:
Another miss for GW. Would have been fitting for the Ordo Hereticus to get frateris militia in the form of Cawdor gangers. It would never happen for the same reason the new tech thralls not get rules for 40K.

The Frateris militia does get mentioned a LOT in the 10th edition Sororitas codex, so I'm predicting (hoping!) this is a sign that they're coming in the 11th edition book.

 Shakalooloo wrote:

Smaug wrote:
Another miss for GW. Would have been fitting for the Ordo Hereticus to get frateris militia in the form of Cawdor gangers. It would never happen for the same reason the new tech thralls not get rules for 40K.

The Frateris militia does get mentioned a LOT in the 10th edition Sororitas codex, so I'm predicting (hoping!) this is a sign that they're coming in the 11th edition book.

Frateris Militia strike me as a group the Sororitas tolerate, but the Ordo Hereticus are much more sceptical of. The Hereticus was created to monitor the charismatic preachers who gather frateris to them. Frateris make much more sense in the Sisters book than the Agents book IMO.

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Something potentially interesting https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/07/24/get-ready-to-explore-warhammer-40000-with-dk-books-expansive-guide/

Forget internet, here comes 334 pages of Ulitmate Guide!


Sarcasm aside, this looks pretty useless to me.

 Fayric wrote:

 Shadow Walker wrote:
Something potentially interesting https://www.warhammer-community.com/2024/07/24/get-ready-to-explore-warhammer-40000-with-dk-books-expansive-guide/

Forget internet, here comes 334 pages of Ulitmate Guide!


Sarcasm aside, this looks pretty useless to me.

The old catalog and hobby reference books from the early 2000s were ragged on when they were released, but became really valuable tomes of knowledge. I don't think these will be as comprehensive, but one thing we're learning is that the internet actually isn't forever. A lot of stuff we thought would stay saved won't be, and having hard copies of stuff might be cool.

That said, I'm in for $40, at $50 it's a maybe, above that I'll probably pass.

 Prometheum5 wrote:
GW should really fold Grey Knights into the Inquisition book and remove them as a full army like Death Watch. SoB has enough model like to stand on its own, and has been its own army for much longer, but the Ordo marines should be treated consistently.

I'm curious, Prometheum - which factions do you play, just so I know which ones we should be wishing get removed.

No hobbyist should ever be hoping another player's faction gets removed - well, except for the Tau.

I have about 3000 points of painted grey knights, and I think it's pretty clear that it's just not a very deep army. I don't' think there's a problem with small, focused armies (AOS thrives on it), but It's also an army with three unit kits and a couple of plastic characters. One box literally builds four units (plus a character), another builds two units plus two different characters. They're super cool and fun, but If they got bundled into a larger agents army, I wouldn't be sad.

I don’t think asking for a faction to be rolled in is the same as “squatting” it. To be fair, Deathwatch as it looks to be now is really how both they and Grey Knights should be implemented. Grey knights as an entire army is a bit excessive and hard to justify narratively (like Custodes), but I do agree once you have expanded an army, taking it backwards is not kosher.
I love the idea of having a single unit of grey knight terminators allying in to fight against chaos, but don’t really want a full army. I will wait til next year to see if they upgrade the terminators however.

Rolling factions together can sometimes be the best thing. Eg I'm fully behind Skaven in AoS being in one book because I feel like it helps highlight how united they are when engaging in largescale warfare; and because I don't feel that GW can do 4 Skaven armies on their own and have them have as many diverse options. Esp for the Assassin group which basically has a very limited model range and lore range and always has; and when all the skaven forces basically rely on clanrats and a few other core models shared between them.


Sometimes splitting is good - GW did great splitting the 4 Chaos God armies in AoS into separate forces. That each God was entirely unique from the others in style, lore and so forth; made it much easier to separate and retain unique elements and there were no common units that each faction used.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Prometheum5 wrote:
GW should really fold Grey Knights into the Inquisition book and remove them as a full army like Death Watch. SoB has enough model like to stand on its own, and has been its own army for much longer, but the Ordo marines should be treated consistently.

I'm curious, Prometheum - which factions do you play, just so I know which ones we should be wishing get removed.

No hobbyist should ever be hoping another player's faction gets removed - well, except for the Tau.

Lol. GK doesn't have the model range or narrative justification to support a full army. Same as DW, they're supposed to be an elite splash force in a larger context. An Ordo Malleus army allows for a lot more list building and hobby options than a GK army does. I was mistaken about them not being a full army in the RT days, but even then they didn't have the model range or support to be something people'd actually play like that. 'Cat's out of the bag' and all that with them being a full Codex previously, but the redo of Death Watch absolutely shows that GW could have made the same call for GK and that would have led to a better game experience.

I will say I'd much rather see the Inquisition as an army than either Deathwatch or Grey Knights, but their detachments need to treat them like real armies rather than serving as a placeholder.

The elephant in the room difference bewteen Deathwatch and Grey Knights is that Grey Knights have like 10 times the player base of Deathwatch.

Moreover GW seems to have at least some design goals with GK (super psychic Space Marines with Force Weapons galore) while DW seems to have been a design mess from the very beginning.

Agents/Assassins etc... are also pretty messy on the GW front. Jumping from being individual armies to wrapped into other forces and such.

They also speak of a force that GW hasn't been sure what to do with and has jumped them around some.



Sometimes I wonder if its just that the creative team makes a few models; gets bumped up to a full army and then no one on the creative front wants to make any more; other times I wonder if its management pushing for a new army but then losing the budget for moulds when the "tiny" starter army doesn't sell enough/fast enough to justify more investment.

GW is always models first and rules later
Someone down the line gets told which models are going to be released the next 3 years and need to figure out how to place those within the release windows and passes it down to the designers to write some background and rules that fit

Like the only real reason for Marines to get multiple books is because there are too many models for a single release and GW figured out in the past that models sell best combined with a book release

 Tyran wrote:
The elephant in the room difference bewteen Deathwatch and Grey Knights is that Grey Knights have like 10 times the player base of Deathwatch.

You have to wonder how well GW actually knows how many "Deathwatch" models they sold. Grey Knights are easy to track outside of generic Marine vehicles. They had their own models in the 90s that were refreshed and expanded on for Codex Daemonhunters when people were first enabled to play an exclusively Grey Knights army with a substantial model count. Same with the plastic replacements in 5th ed that last to this day.

Deathwatch only got their own models right before GW introduced Primaris. GW can track sales of the Deathwatch box and Start Collecting/Combat Patrol, but they wouldn't be able to attribute any sales of Primaris for Primaris Kill Teams to Deathwatch with any amount of certainty.

That may have had an influence on GW's decision as well.

 Geifer wrote:

 Tyran wrote:
The elephant in the room difference bewteen Deathwatch and Grey Knights is that Grey Knights have like 10 times the player base of Deathwatch.

You have to wonder how well GW actually knows how many "Deathwatch" models they sold. Grey Knights are easy to track outside of generic Marine vehicles. They had their own models in the 90s that were refreshed and expanded on for Codex Daemonhunters when people were first enabled to play an exclusively Grey Knights army with a substantial model count. Same with the plastic replacements in 5th ed that last to this day.

Deathwatch only got their own models right before GW introduced Primaris. GW can track sales of the Deathwatch box and Start Collecting/Combat Patrol, but they wouldn't be able to attribute any sales of Primaris for Primaris Kill Teams to Deathwatch with any amount of certainty.

That may have had an influence on GW's decision as well.

Good point. I have about 3 boxes of "proper" DW models and a single Watchmaster. Every other DW marine I own is some form of basic SM (Sternguard, Intercessor, Terminator, etc) with a shoulder pad swap. All those pads are either from DW upgrade sprues bought form eBay or 3d-printed versions. As far as GW are concerned, my roughly 3k DW army is about £120 of DW-specific purchases.

The good thing is, outside of the actual kill teams, all the Primaris stuff can easily be used as regular SM, so it's not like the models are now useless. I think the only time they really got DW right was with the Army of Renown which was purely kill teams, characters, transports and dreads. That made them play very differently to regular SM and applied meaningful restrictions that made the army look like a DW force rather than a normal SM army trying to take advantage of weird rules interactions.

The inverse is true too though - it's tough for GW to gauge what proportion of vanilla marine sales were people building deathwatch armies

Billicus wrote:
The inverse is true too though - it's tough for GW to gauge what proportion of vanilla marine sales were people building deathwatch armies

You could get a rough idea based on upgrade sprues sold. But that's only if the bean counters cared enough to that bit of the maths. Based on my experience in large organisations I'd only give that about a 30% chance.

Billicus wrote:
The inverse is true too though - it's tough for GW to gauge what proportion of vanilla marine sales were people building deathwatch armies

Sure, but I think given the sheer volume of SM models sold, you can safely disregard the proportion that went towards a DW army.

Slipspace wrote:

Billicus wrote:
The inverse is true too though - it's tough for GW to gauge what proportion of vanilla marine sales were people building deathwatch armies

Sure, but I think given the sheer volume of SM models sold, you can safely disregard the proportion that went towards a DW army.

That would be a kinda pointless thing to do if you were trying to estimate the sales given by DW purchases, though, wouldn't it?

 Dysartes wrote:

Slipspace wrote:

Billicus wrote:
The inverse is true too though - it's tough for GW to gauge what proportion of vanilla marine sales were people building deathwatch armies

Sure, but I think given the sheer volume of SM models sold, you can safely disregard the proportion that went towards a DW army.

That would be a kinda pointless thing to do if you were trying to estimate the sales given by DW purchases, though, wouldn't it?

but the point is, you can't really estimate this number based on the generic marines sold— but, given the low playerbase for the army in general, we can assume it's a negligible number of people painting those generic marines black compared to people who want to paint them blue, red, or black

The only "Deathwatch" purchases I made for my Deathwatch army were the Watchmaster, Artemis, Corvus Blackstar, and the special deathwatch Landraider that they sold for a while.

The only reason I bought the DW Raider was that it was the same price as the normal Land Raider, but also came with the upgrade sprues for the Crusader/Redeemer, AND a DW upgrade sprue. (only Sergeants got a DW shoulder pad)

Most of my army was made from splitting a Battle of Calth box with a friend. I got the Dreadnought, Dark apostle, and 30 marines.

Everything else was a raid on my bits box, 3rd party frag cannons, and some 8th edition Intercessors I picked up on the cheap.

 Tyran wrote:
The elephant in the room difference bewteen Deathwatch and Grey Knights is that Grey Knights have like 10 times the player base of Deathwatch.

Moreover GW seems to have at least some design goals with GK (super psychic Space Marines with Force Weapons galore) while DW seems to have been a design mess from the very beginning.

And thats the reason we like them, why stick to one team when you do your conversion when you can have all if them. Also the reason i like the 10ed kill teams because it encouraged you to mix loadouts.

I would think that GW has the ability to weight the sale of the handful of DW specific kits against the slightly greater handful of GK kits. They can also track things like sales of codexes, dice, or cards.