Warhammer 40k news and rumours - Rumored discontinued units page 340

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**Ashiraya**

I don't imagine most people are in much panic about it. The writing has been on the wall for several editions now. Tactical Squads have clearly gotten favourable treatment due to their popularity, but from fairly early on in 8e, it was clear that Primaris were going to gradually phase out Firstborn altogether.

If I were to be upset about it, it'd be six years ago, not now. I am more surprised it took -this- long. If Marines had been treated like Stormcast, then all 8e Space Marine units would have been squatted when 10e launched.

**His Master's Voice**

I don't mind the Tac Squad going, but losing Devs will suck, because the power armour portable heavy weapons are an iconic visual that doesn't really have a proper facsimile in the Primaris range.

**Crimson**

His Master's Voice wrote:
I don't mind the Tac Squad going, but losing Devs will suck, because the power armour portable heavy weapons are an iconic visual that doesn't really have a proper facsimile in the Primaris range.

There will me the gravis squad with some sort of heavy bolters in the box. I hope multipart version of that unit will have some other weapons too, such as lascannons.

**His Master's Voice**

Gravis?

**Crimson**

His Master's Voice wrote:
Gravis?

I think it makes perfect sense for hauling big guns, and they'd look nice and solid.

**LunarSol**

The question is whether Eradicators are getting weapon options or if we're getting a special name for each weapon option.

Eradicators - Melta
Exterminators - Heavy Bolters
Ennihilators - Las Cannons

**Crimson**

LunarSol wrote:
The question is whether Eradicators are getting weapon options or if we're getting a special name for each weapon option.

Eradicators - Melta
Exterminators - Heavy Bolters
Ennihilators - Las Cannons

Weird names aside, I hope they keep them as separate units, especially if wargear points are not coming back. Otherwise there will probably be just the obvious best option and others won't get used. Besides, as separate units they can have a bespoke special rules that supports what they're doing.

**Mad Doc Grotsnik**

His Master's Voice wrote:
Gravis?

Not that much different than MkIII compared to MkII.

**ccs**

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
LunarSol wrote:
Firestrike, Suppressors, and the ATV were all massive duds. Far more time has been spent hating on them then playing them and they will not be missed. I get the principle of the thing, but lets not kid ourselves into pretending we care about them now.

Agreed. Loyalists flying around with Autocannons always was wrong.
I guess the turret was okay, but 40K seems to have problems including any kind of building ever since 8th, despite them releasing quite a lot of them.

?? I assume you're talking about the Firestrike Servo-turret - wich is not a building (aka: Fortification).
(small twin barreled thing with a marine sitting on it)

Have you confused it with the Hammerfall Bunker?
(larger thing, about 5" or so, bristling with HBs/flamers & a missile launcher on top)

**BorderCountess**

I won't mind the loss of Tactical Squads so much if Intercessors learn how to take special weapons and Combat Squad.

**Nevelon**

On the bright side, player churn works for us in terms of getting tac squads back/redone.

Older players have tons of them. How do we sell more marines to established players? Primaris intercessors are the new battleline. Buy them while they are hot. And we’ve been doing it for the last decade or so. But new players? And by that I mean players who’ve started at 8th or later. How many tacs do they have? How many intercessors? How does GW sell more marines to the new kids? And mine nostalgia?

Tactical squads.

Even if they get the axe, hold onto your models. What was old will be new again.

**ccs**

NAVARRO wrote:
LunarSol wrote:
Insularum wrote:
LunarSol wrote:
Firestrike, Suppressors, and the ATV were all massive duds. Far more time has been spent hating on them then playing them and they will not be missed. I get the principle of the thing, but lets not kid ourselves into pretending we care about them now.
The problem with this attitude though is that it makes quality control the customers problem, not GW's. Throw any gak at the wall and see what sticks, if it turns out to be a dud just pull the product and move on - no one who matters will miss it anyway.

If you happened to not perfectly predict which products would last or not, well I guess it sucks to suck.

Quality control is always the customer's problem. The quality of those kits wasn't there and customers rejected them. This is something customers need to do more often.

And a company selling you a dream needs to back that dream with substance. Effectively if these kits are discontinued and if they are all part of Jon's army... he's now out of £200+ and cant recoup/resell his investment... that does not sound like a dream to me.
Theres something called perception of value and companies hobby based will try to sell you that their stuff is actually a good investment, most of the times hobbies are money drain and companies know they are not essential.
GW by deleting new models at this rate is effectively devaluating their perception of value, because all of a sudden, these minis continuity is random and you may end up stuck with a bunch of new plastic no one wants.
Quality control is not something you leave to your clients either if you have a plan!
Believe me, this volatile burn of new kits will eventually burn people armies and by consequence people engagement.
If the second hand markets show little interest in todays discontinued plastics then that perception of value is gone.

They do back it up (for the most part). When they discontinue a model/unit? They usually keep publishing it's rules in the Legends docs.
So if Jon's £200 pile of plastic has Legends rules & he's not using them? Then that's on Jon. He can either change how/where/with whom he plays or keep on as he is & suck it up.

**RegularGuy**

The legends/squatting has all but killed interest in 40k for my son. He had it in him to build and paint a decent army, and pieces keep falling off each edition he doesn't have cash or desire to replace with the latest GameBrakers models. Despite his desire to play competitively.

But he's not the demographic this game is for. Its not like GW will miss him. Sad though, he really loved it, part of the sell was that you could build and paint your models and use them edition after edition.

**ZergSmasher**

A little upsetting to hear about stuff as recent as the ATV and Firestrike turret going to Legends, especially since I have 3 of the former and 2 of the latter in my collection. Not surprised at all about Razorbacks, Tacticals, and Devs (honestly surprised it took this long and that more Firstborn stuff isn't going too, like the Predator, Vindicator, and Whirlwind). While at first I would dismiss it as rumors, the fact that they come from a reliable source like Valrak tells me it's most likely true. Suppressors going away doesn't bother me that much, even though I do have a fully painted unit of them. I do like their models, a flying Marine with a big feth-off gun is peak 40k to me, but ultimately they have never had good rules and I've only used mine in like 2 games.

**Sgt. Cortez**

ccs wrote:
Sgt. Cortez wrote:
LunarSol wrote:
Firestrike, Suppressors, and the ATV were all massive duds. Far more time has been spent hating on them then playing them and they will not be missed. I get the principle of the thing, but lets not kid ourselves into pretending we care about them now.

Agreed. Loyalists flying around with Autocannons always was wrong.
I guess the turret was okay, but 40K seems to have problems including any kind of building ever since 8th, despite them releasing quite a lot of them.

?? I assume you're talking about the Firestrike Servo-turret - wich is not a building (aka: Fortification).
(small twin barreled thing with a marine sitting on it)

Have you confused it with the Hammerfall Bunker?
(larger thing, about 5" or so, bristling with HBs/flamers & a missile launcher on top)

Ha, indeed I did. Shows you how much I care about loyalists. True Marines have Tarantulas.

**cuda1179**

If they were discontinuing bad kits, I'm almost surprised the Hammerfall Bunker wasn't thrown into Legends. It's ridiculous (not in a good way) and I have literally never seen one in person.

**Dudeface**

cuda1179 wrote:
If they were discontinuing bad kits, I'm almost surprised the Hammerfall Bunker wasn't thrown into Legends. It's ridiculous (not in a good way) and I have literally never seen one in person.

It's in dawn of war 4

**Patriarch**

Is the next edition the one where they stop using the terms "Primaris" or "Firstborn", since they have now done their job? People's older models aren't completely invalidated, they are just "short Intercessors" or whatever.

I'm not sure what standard shooty marines are supposed to do in the game without heavy or special weapons to contribute, do bolters really do much?

**Dudeface**

Patriarch wrote:
Is the next edition the one where they stop using the terms "Primaris" or "Firstborn", since they have now done their job? People's older models aren't completely invalidated, they are just "short Intercessors" or whatever.

I'm not sure what standard shooty marines are supposed to do in the game without heavy or special weapons to contribute, do bolters really do much?

I mean a unit of intercessors is still 40 shots at s4 ap-1 d1 + 2 grenades a turn, the fact that's not enough to even have a clue what to do with them shows a game design issue.

**Tyel**

Patriarch wrote:
Is the next edition the one where they stop using the terms "Primaris" or "Firstborn", since they have now done their job? People's older models aren't completely invalidated, they are just "short Intercessors" or whatever.

I half thought it would be this edition.

Tbh I also sort of wonder whether pushing Tacticals off to legends is just so they can do "Tactical Intercessors" in 12th.

**scarletsquig**

I'd say its almost a certainty that the tactical squad and devastators will return as Primaris, it's the last piece in the puzzle of revamping the space marine range to lore-accurate scaling.

The process had to be handled very slowly since it was taking the #1 best selling range for the entire company and wanting to completely restyle and rescale it.

Throwing in some elements of the older marine designs into the newer units also throws a bone to people with the old models, to some extent.

Other factions don't generally get as much hand-holding with scale creep, they just have the newer, larger, units released, and that's the end of it.

**Charax**

Well, we said when they were released that Primaris were going to end up replacing firstborn, it just took a few editions for it to play out*.

*Assuming the rumours are true

**Nevelon**

So what you we think about this?

GW wrote: We’ll be showing off something a little smaller from the Armageddon boxed set next Monday – make sure you’ve signed up for our Warhammer 40,000 newsletter to ensure you don’t miss it! We’re also getting very close to revealing ALL of the contents of the box, right here on Warhammer Community. Watch this space!

Something like a grot next monday, followed by a full box sometime that week? Full box this week and continue to highlight models afterwords, or will that stop once we have the bug drop?

**Billicus**

Gravis armour looks terrible and serves no real purpose, especially now Terminators are "back". I'm quite surprised they're getting another unit. Marines toted heavy weaponry just fine without a "heavier" armour suit up to now, it's part of the setting. My guess is the chunkier armour is intended to dissuade third parties from making weapon upgrade kits for the "cheap" intercessors so you can give them all meltaguns or whatever and have to buy the pricier models instead.

**Snord**

I had largely forgotten that Tac squads are still a thing in WH40. I think ditching them is a mistake, because (1) they are iconic, (2) they are wonderful units that have always been enjoyable to kit out, and (3) they make sense on the battlefield (okay, there was a problem when you had to shoot everything at one target, but that's long gone). I am hoping that GW eventually just faces up to reality and makes Intercessor squads essentially the same as Tac squads. This would also differentiate WH40k unit composition from HH; at present, you basically have the same approach i.e. overly-specialised squad types with largely uniform weapons. Hopefully the whole Primaris thing will recede into the past - GW's rather awkward attempt to shoehorn bigger Marines into the range without immediately invalidating the whole existing range - and we'll have something closer to the original lineup.

**Crimson**

Billicus wrote:
Gravis armour looks terrible and serves no real purpose, especially now Terminators are "back". I'm quite surprised they're getting another unit. Marines toted heavy weaponry just fine without a "heavier" armour suit up to now, it's part of the setting. My guess is the chunkier armour is intended to dissuade third parties from making weapon upgrade kits for the "cheap" intercessors so you can give them all meltaguns or whatever and have to buy the pricier models instead.

Only gravis unit that looks bad is aggressors, and that due the oversized double mittens. The basic armour itself looks very good.

**CorwinB**

Patriarch wrote:
People's older models aren't completely invalidated, they are just "short Intercessors" or whatever.

To quote a famous Princess :
"Aren't you a little short for a Space Marine ?"

To go back to the topic at hand, if the rumours prove true, then it's very disappointing for the Primaris stuff to be invalidated as early. The writing was on the wall for the Firstborn stuff, but it would be nice to have a Primaris-equivalent of the composition of Tactical & Dev squads (choice of specific weapons).

**Olthannon**

Yeah totally agree with Crimson. I think the Gravis armour is great. I think because it's uniquely "Primaris" I don't have an issue with it, whereas some of the others I preferred the original. I think it's purpose of up armoured Mk X is a nice touch.

I think a true tactical squad refresh would have say 8 intercessors 1x special weapon, one gravis marine with heavy weapons and one Sergeant.

**Tastyfish**

Nevelon wrote:
So what you we think about this?

GW wrote: We’ll be showing off something a little smaller from the Armageddon boxed set next Monday – make sure you’ve signed up for our Warhammer 40,000 newsletter to ensure you don’t miss it! We’re also getting very close to revealing ALL of the contents of the box, right here on Warhammer Community. Watch this space!

Something like a grot next monday, followed by a full box sometime that week? Full box this week and continue to highlight models afterwords, or will that stop once we have the bug drop?

There's also 3-4 weeks worth of "Army focus" articles, potentially with the new combi-detachments released in a 'Grotmas' style countdown to release day if they were going to do one every day. Start padding that out a bit so you don't have Kill team and AoS articles out on a 'big' 40K day and then we're looking at 7ish weeks to get through all 20+ armies.

Grots next week, then the full box reveal at the start of May would then see those 7 weeks take us up to the last Saturday in June..

**Nevelon**

Olthannon wrote:
Yeah totally agree with Crimson. I think the Gravis armour is great. I think because it's uniquely "Primaris" I don't have an issue with it, whereas some of the others I preferred the original. I think it's purpose of up armoured Mk X is a nice touch.

I think a true tactical squad refresh would have say 8 intercessors 1x special weapon, one gravis marine with heavy weapons and one Sergeant.

Mixing armor in squads could cause issues. Movement speed being one of them. It’s fine in KT, where you can take a gravis HB in a squad of intercessors. For the full 40k, I’d rather not see it personally.

My issue with agressors is less with the gravis armor or fists, but with the ammo belts.

The heavy intercessor kit is fine when built, but needs a lot of clean up work due to mold lines running over details, particularly backpack vents.