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Any epic scale game has to grow organically - AI grew from two separate other games and AT was an insane gamble considering the Warlords size.

The boon with 40K is that you've got ALL the 40K players - Xenos and Marines - to tempt over.

With HH setting you're basically right now left with IG, Marines and only recently Mechanicus.

They are less likely to do 50-shades-of-marines because most of the differences are too tiny to model (because most of its on the infantry). I also think we won't see Sisters of Silence or any other faction appear until its appeared in HH proper first. So it could be very long wait to even get more factions.


The other issue is long term - they've already got more than 50% of all 3 factions out right now. Yes they can still churn out kits for a few more years on that; but they will hit the ceiling faster and then where do you take the game?

Given how the departments try to keep things different, Epic40k needs to come from the 40k one and they need a reason why they want to do it.
They already use Kill Team to push 40k (by adding new plastic kits for 40k players), and adding Epic won't do anything here and "wasting" factory slots to make plastic kits that only sell to people who play the new game instead of making something for 40k is wasting money.
it is not even a risk or that the flavours don't translate over (they always can make it 12 or 15mm as it need to be different from LI anyway) but that there is no real reason making a small scale Primaris kit instead of a new 40k Primaris kit.

LI on the other hand can use the same 3D designs from HH which on paper lowers the cost for those.

For now it looks very much like that the different departments are in competition over sales and factory slots, and each of them decides what is the best use of those and how to increase sales (as the SG one now sees random made to oder of old fantasy models as good way to make money)
So if LI sales would be high enough that the 40k department sees this as viable option to increase sales for them, they are going to do it, if the new Primaris Box still sales better, they wont.

I can't see enough interest around LI to push GW to publish Epic 40k too. And that's a pity even though I think the LI ruleset is not so convincing.

In this report is also possible to read that new models will see a price increase. Nice.

 Overread wrote:


The other issue is long term - they've already got more than 50% of all 3 factions out right now. Yes they can still churn out kits for a few more years on that; but they will hit the ceiling faster and then where do you take the game?

The last few months of HH & LI gave us some insight into this. GW will 'retcon' concepts into existence where they want to explore something new, like saturnine units or dark mech constructs.

In the short term I do think we will see more variations in marine armour marks & infantry options, even if GW don't offer all of those cosmetic choices at this scale. Custodes at least should also make an appearance, even if they're not expected to be a full primary list faction.

For Epic scale there's a rich vein of 80's & 90's callback content that could be explored in the next few years:
Capitol Imperialis
Ordinatus engines (which are now in minor & major versions, and could easily cover several kits)
Precursor versions of various Daemon engines, like the Khorne vehicles or Slaanesh knights & scout titans.
Various titans only mentioned in lore, such as Rapiers & Nightgaunts
Imperator & other emperor class titans

With all of that plus the obvious range gaps GW could stretch LI out through a second edition and into the next decade quite easily. By then... perhaps we'll have some new Scouring material to explore?

 kodos wrote:
Given how the departments try to keep things different, Epic40k needs to come from the 40k one and they need a reason why they want to do it.
They already use Kill Team to push 40k (by adding new plastic kits for 40k players), and adding Epic won't do anything here and "wasting" factory slots to make plastic kits that only sell to people who play the new game instead of making something for 40k is wasting money.
it is not even a risk or that the flavours don't translate over (they always can make it 12 or 15mm as it need to be different from LI anyway) but that there is no real reason making a small scale Primaris kit instead of a new 40k Primaris kit.

LI on the other hand can use the same 3D designs from HH which on paper lowers the cost for those.

That's a null bonus because 40K is also 3D designed. Plus in a practical sense you can "kind of" use the same files for tanks, but they still take a considerable amount of work to clean up for such a massive scale drop. Lots of details have to be made larger, some removed, some made smaller, some blended into the file to make it printable. Even the parting of the files is entirely different.

Infantry are likely a total rework.


The only real saving is likely at the conceptual stage where the concept art and core design of the models remains the same.

Looking at the LI infantry, there wasn't a lot of work done to make it work, despite a total rework being needed to make it good, same with vehicles.

Point is, 40k studio doesn't need to another game to split costs off the main game they have Kill Team
While HH studio can split design costs between 2 games so make it appear cheaper on paper, and increase sales by appealing to 2 different target groups.

The Epic40k audience isn't big enough that a epic Primaris kit is going to sell enough to justify not doing a 40k Primaris kit while sales are high enough that any investment is easily justified.

I'd argue killteam isn't really a cost outside of terrain and card. The actual models are 100% core GW army models just in a different box.

It's not like Warcry which was unique factions at its outset and only latterly started doing other non-chaos themed warbands.