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From a derailing topic in the AM news and rumours.

The gist is some posters think it is niche and underperforming, and others disagree. I don't have a dog in this fight except decluttering the AM thread, so have at it.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Bobug wrote:
You're either trolling or incredibly misinformed.

On which part? That 30k 1.0 had dismal sales? That should be obvious from how GW completely abandoned the game when one person died. Or that Contemptors are a problem worse than anything in 40k? I can't think of any 40k balance problem that is so bad that the community has a near-universal house rule that you aren't allowed to use it.

I will comment on this though. You do realise that product lines/services can sell well and be profitable and companies can still choose not to support them, right? I have no idea what happened internally regarding the HH line (and neither does anyone else not privy to GWs internal discussions) but companies have a variety of valid and invalid reasons to not support profitable business. Many of them to do with the stock market.

Right, now to sit back and enjoy the show.

well HH 1.0 likely had quite a specialist niche given how eye watering expensive a full army of infantry etc in FW resin was going to be.

GW took a risk with the plastic Mk IV and "Betrayal at Calith" box, it obviously did well enough for the follow up Mk III and "Burning of Prospero".

HH itself was in maintenance mode with the rebadged earlier edition rules to support all the books that had been put out.

someone thought it was doing well enough to stick out the Age of Darkness box and multiple new plastic kits with it

doesn't mean its doing "well" but does suggest its doing "well enough", guess only time will show if they continue with it

leopard wrote:

someone thought it was doing well enough to stick out the Age of Darkness box and multiple new plastic kits with it

doesn't mean its doing "well" but does suggest its doing "well enough", guess only time will show if they continue with it

If we go by the half-year report, the Age of Darkness box received, and i quote ''an enthusiastic reception by the players''. That, of course, is marketing speech, but investor reports usually stick a bit more to objective reality than other forms of corporate communications. So we can probably still infer that it sold at least according to expectations.

Tsagualsa wrote:

leopard wrote:

someone thought it was doing well enough to stick out the Age of Darkness box and multiple new plastic kits with it

doesn't mean its doing "well" but does suggest its doing "well enough", guess only time will show if they continue with it

If we go by the half-year report, the Age of Darkness box received, and i quote ''an enthusiastic reception by the players''. That, of course, is marketing speech, but investor reports usually stick a bit more to objective reality than other forms of corporate communications. So we can probably still infer that it sold at least according to expectations.

place not too far from here shifted some 350 copies of the box on launch day and have the full HH range as regular stock items so its still going nicely according to them, would be interesting to see who buys it, e.g. is this old HH players, people who wanted HH but couldn't justify the cost, 40k players, former 40k players, collectors etc

There's evidence that either GW overproduced some products for the new HH, and/or that retailers heavily over-ordered. In the UK at least several HH kits showed up in Black Friday sales at a few retailers with 25-40% discounts.

It certainly wasn't the entire range, and tended to be heavy weapon upgrade kits, a couple of the tanks, and older infantry squad kits like terminators. I've also seen the main AOD boxed set discounted by an extra ~5% than usual in some places. But at the same time some new HH products have been temporarily selling out, so there is clearly some market.

A couple of simple factors may well be causing a slowdown in buying; a delay on chapter specific shoulder pads and assault marines would slow some people from starting work on specific legions. Those players also wouldn't be picking up too many heavy weapon sprues too. Plus the sheer volume of plastic in the starter box (which of course can all be used by one person), may discourage additional purchases due to the imposing mountain of grey plastic.

I've also heard quite a few examples of 40k players picking up the newer vehicle kits to use for their marines, most often Chaos players wanting better quality rhinos & land raiders. That's probably going to be a constant low-level additional demand over the lifetime of these kits.

 xttz wrote:
There's evidence that either GW overproduced some products for the new HH, and/or that retailers heavily over-ordered. In the UK at least several HH kits showed up in Black Friday sales at a few retailers with 25-40% discounts.

It certainly wasn't the entire range, and tended to be heavy weapon upgrade kits, a couple of the tanks, and older infantry squad kits like terminators. I've also seen the main AOD boxed set discounted by an extra ~5% than usual in some places. But at the same time some new HH products have been temporarily selling out, so there is clearly some market.

A couple of simple factors may well be causing a slowdown in buying; a delay on chapter specific shoulder pads and assault marines would slow some people from starting work on specific legions. Those players also wouldn't be picking up too many heavy weapon sprues too.
Plus the sheer volume of plastic in the starter box (which of course can all be used by one person), may discourage additional purchases due to the imposing mountain of grey plastic.

If we go by the support from GW, HH has more character packs that entire sidegames have models in total, and the situation with full plastic kits is even better for HH. It seems clear that they want to establish HH as a ''little main game'' with more support than the Specialist Games side gets, and their recent rebranding of some social media channels paid tribute to that. We can also note that HH is very very prominently displayed on their community page and in the online store, to an extent that only Kill Team and Necromunda come close.

it is quite an impressive box, and can see the heavy weapons boxes being interesting..

as I see it if a weapon doesn't have AP3 or AP2 its basically got to have a silly number of shots or be very cheap so some of those packs will be better than others by a fair bit

and totally agree on stuff like assault marines, the current range is ok, but feels very short and as you note hurts some legions far more than others - still think the Mk VI box having a plasma pistol and not a bolt pistol and not having a chainsword for the sergeant is weird

 Haighus wrote:
I will comment on this though. You do realise that product lines/services can sell well and be profitable and companies can still choose not to support them, right? I have no idea what happened internally regarding the HH line (and neither does anyone else not privy to GWs internal discussions) but companies have a variety of valid and invalid reasons to not support profitable business. Many of them to do with the stock market.

Yes, I know how opportunity cost works. Companies will often cut or reduce support for a product line that is making a profit but less of a profit than they could make by putting resources into a better-performing line. This is exactly what I think happened with 30k 1.0. It was the vanity project of one guy at GW and his buddies were content to let him keep going with it as long as it never crossed into losing money but when he died that was the end of it. It was still making a profit but such a small profit that GW management decided it would be a waste of resources to assign anyone to replace him and left the line to fade out and die. They'd sell the existing products because the opportunity cost of doing so was low but they wouldn't put any work into further development.

Of course 30k 2.0 changed this situation as part of GW's effort to revive dead games and see if they could create a viable line of tertiary games and diversify their product range a bit, correcting the mistakes of previous management in allowing GW to concede ownership of certain genres to their competition. 30k got a new update, Aeronautica Imperialis got a new update, there are rumors of Epic and BFG getting updates. But none of those updates change the fact that prior to GW trying to revive them the games were dead.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 xttz wrote:
A couple of simple factors may well be causing a slowdown in buying; a delay on chapter specific shoulder pads and assault marines would slow some people from starting work on specific legions. Those players also wouldn't be picking up too many heavy weapon sprues too. Plus the sheer volume of plastic in the starter box (which of course can all be used by one person), may discourage additional purchases due to the imposing mountain of grey plastic.

Or a third factor: that once the hype wears off a game of nothing but space marines vs. space marines isn't very much fun for most people. Most of what gave 1.0 even modest success was the fact that it was fully compatible with 40k, you could build your 30k army and still play games with all the 40k players. But that's no longer possible, GW has decided to pander to nostalgia and stick with the old rules instead of keeping compatibility with the main game. So if you don't have several other local players interested in playing marines vs. marines you've got a dead game and no reason to make any further investments.

(And that's on top of the balance issues. I'm sure quite a few groups were killed off by Warhammer: Age of Contemptors and GW's continued refusal to provide even minimal support for the rules.)

I've also heard quite a few examples of 40k players picking up the newer vehicle kits to use for their marines

Really? That is very surprising given their hilariously terrible rules and GW's deliberate attempt to phase out all the FW stuff.

locally we have a few who play 40k, some of whom also play 30k, and a few who only play 30k - not so much because the rules are "better" but because fewer people play it and its easier to get smaller, non-cheese games

there may be a bit of elitism here, especially one player who hates 40k with a vengeance but has found HH a way to sort of play it without playing it if that makes sense

the teller will be if AoD gets a replacement similar box at some point

According to one fiscal analysis, HH 2.0 sold more than AoS

Must be insignificant eh

Aecus Decimus wrote:

 xttz wrote:
A couple of simple factors may well be causing a slowdown in buying; a delay on chapter specific shoulder pads and assault marines would slow some people from starting work on specific legions. Those players also wouldn't be picking up too many heavy weapon sprues too. Plus the sheer volume of plastic in the starter box (which of course can all be used by one person), may discourage additional purchases due to the imposing mountain of grey plastic.

Or a third factor: that once the hype wears off a game of nothing but space marines vs. space marines isn't very much fun for most people. Most of what gave 1.0 even modest success was the fact that it was fully compatible with 40k, you could build your 30k army and still play games with all the 40k players. But that's no longer possible, GW has decided to pander to nostalgia and stick with the old rules instead of keeping compatibility with the main game. So if you don't have several other local players interested in playing marines vs. marines you've got a dead game and no reason to make any further investments.

(And that's on top of the balance issues. I'm sure quite a few groups were killed off by Warhammer: Age of Contemptors and GW's continued refusal to provide even minimal support for the rules.)

Considering mechanicum, SoS, Custodes and SA exist. Militia and cults aswell as Daemons are verified to come at some point it is hardly yet Marine on marine only and in the future far less aswell.
Further you are right, contemptors are an issue, but when the only issue is a dreadnought and overly efficent custodes then personally the balance argument doesn't pull at all considering that even the pre-release nerfed votann are running pretty roughshot over many armies and the easily traceable escalation in power from dark eldar and admech onwards in 9th.

Also fwiw the fact that 30k uses "old" rules (templates, ws charts, initiative,) combines them with new systems like reactions is not at all a hinderance. Contrary it is one of the main draws for many players old and new.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Yes, I know how opportunity cost works. Companies will often cut or reduce support for a product line that is making a profit but less of a profit than they could make by putting resources into a better-performing line. This is exactly what I think happened with 30k 1.0. It was the vanity project of one guy at GW and his buddies were content to let him keep going with it as long as it never crossed into losing money but when he died that was the end of it. It was still making a profit but such a small profit that GW management decided it would be a waste of resources to assign anyone to replace him and left the line to fade out and die. They'd sell the existing products because the opportunity cost of doing so was low but they wouldn't put any work into further development.

Of course 30k 2.0 changed this situation as part of GW's effort to revive dead games and see if they could create a viable line of tertiary games and diversify their product range a bit, correcting the mistakes of previous management in allowing GW to concede ownership of certain genres to their competition. 30k got a new update, Aeronautica Imperialis got a new update, there are rumors of Epic and BFG getting updates. But none of those updates change the fact that prior to GW trying to revive them the games were dead.

This is a frankly absurd post:
1) GW decide to let Heresy die off as it was a "waste of resources"
2) ???
3) GW suddenly reverse the decision to spend several years and a lot of resources rebooting that 'dead game' into one of their primary product lines alongside 40k and AOS.

The GW investor report for 2021/22 says that they spent £5.7m on tooling for new models in that year. Obviously they don't detail how that was split out, but from the proportion of new kits released for Heresy from summer 2022 onwards it's reasonable to conclude that at least £1 million investment was put into HH, possibly over £2m. So GW sunk in the region of 15-30% from their total production budget into a "dead game"?

Your posts just read like you have an axe to grind against the very existence of Heresy as a game, and write revisionist fanfic to justify it.

 xttz wrote:

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Yes, I know how opportunity cost works. Companies will often cut or reduce support for a product line that is making a profit but less of a profit than they could make by putting resources into a better-performing line. This is exactly what I think happened with 30k 1.0. It was the vanity project of one guy at GW and his buddies were content to let him keep going with it as long as it never crossed into losing money but when he died that was the end of it. It was still making a profit but such a small profit that GW management decided it would be a waste of resources to assign anyone to replace him and left the line to fade out and die. They'd sell the existing products because the opportunity cost of doing so was low but they wouldn't put any work into further development.

Of course 30k 2.0 changed this situation as part of GW's effort to revive dead games and see if they could create a viable line of tertiary games and diversify their product range a bit, correcting the mistakes of previous management in allowing GW to concede ownership of certain genres to their competition. 30k got a new update, Aeronautica Imperialis got a new update, there are rumors of Epic and BFG getting updates. But none of those updates change the fact that prior to GW trying to revive them the games were dead.

This is a frankly absurd post:
1) GW decide to let Heresy die off as it was a "waste of resources"
2) ???
3) GW suddenly reverse the decision to spend several years and a lot of resources rebooting that 'dead game' into one of their primary product lines alongside 40k and AOS.

The GW investor report for 2021/22 says that they spent £5.7m on tooling for new models in that year. Obviously they don't detail how that was split out, but from the proportion of new kits released for Heresy from summer 2022 onwards it's reasonable to conclude that at least £1 million investment was put into HH, possibly over £2m. So GW sunk in the region of 15-30% from their total production budget into a "dead game"?

Your posts just read like you have an axe to grind against the very existence of Heresy as a game, and write revisionist fanfic to justify it.

This. Also, the weirdly specific and repeated disrespect directed against Alan Bligh is both unnecessary and indecent, and really sticks in my craw. Yes, his death greatly upset both Forge World as a company and Horus Heresy as a project and setting, but it was certainly not an 'personal vanity project of a employee nobody bothered to replace once he died'. That 'unimportant vanity project' amountet to scores of models, more than a dozen background and army books, a solid decades of design and modelling work and were a mainstay of Forge World to the point that a frequent criticism levelled at them was that they should just rename themselves Heresy Inc. and be done with it.

Most people can only dream of 'failing' as succesfully as Forge World's and Bligh's Horus Heresy did.

There is another way to consider this, forget the financials

what does HH set out to do? and how well does it do it?

I'd argue its a decent game system, not outstanding but decent, for taking two broadly similar factions and slugging it out - the background is decent, the models are good but more importantly it works and since from what I have seen people tend to put more effort into a HH legion army and stick with it over chopping and changing that appears more common in 40k it is visually more interesting as well.

I'd say as a game its successful, and having different rules to 40k is probably good for GW as well as they can appeal to people who prefer one or the other - while allowing a lot of crossover from 30k to 40k with the models for those who want something a bit different.

and by having the different rules bringing the stuff from 40k that can cause significant balance issues sometimes is stopped - the bulk of 30k forces are marines which are essentially the same list with a smattering of extra bits, that tend to have visually nice models and some character to the rules - then the other Imperial forces are coming in slowly as well.

overall I think its doing it quite well which also likely helps the financial side but as a game it hits the mark for "enjoyable way to spend an afternoon with friends not taking anything too seriously" without some of the "you lost in the list building phase" that can apply to 40k some times when different players want different games

 xttz wrote:
1) GW decide to let Heresy die off as it was a "waste of resources"
2) ???
3) GW suddenly reverse the decision to spend several years and a lot of resources rebooting that 'dead game' into one of their primary product lines alongside 40k and AOS.

1) GW decide to let Aeronautica Imperialis die off as it was a "waste of resources"
2) ???
3) GW suddenly reverse the decision to spend several years and a lot of resources rebooting that 'dead game' into one of their primary product lines alongside 40k and AOS.

1) GW decide to let Blood Bowl die off as it was a "waste of resources"
2) ???
3) GW suddenly reverse the decision to spend several years and a lot of resources rebooting that 'dead game' into one of their primary product lines alongside 40k and AOS.

1) GW decide to let Necromunda die off as it was a "waste of resources"
2) ???
3) GW suddenly reverse the decision to spend several years and a lot of resources rebooting that 'dead game' into one of their primary product lines alongside 40k and AOS.


Sorry, but it's very clear that 30k was a dead game regardless of the later decision to attempt to re-launch it. If a game is successful and making good money you don't immediately cease releasing new material just because one guy died. If 30k wasn't a dead game already they would have replaced him by the end of the week and continued on business as usual.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Tsagualsa wrote:
but it was certainly not an 'personal vanity project of a employee nobody bothered to replace once he died'.

Then why didn't GW replace him and continue business as usual for 30k? The only plausible explanation is that 30k was barely making any money and had been allowed to continue as a personal favor to a friend. Celebrate the quality of the lore or models or whatever all you want but from a commercial point of view it was a dead product.

The only thing holding HH back right now is that it's a game designed to play at 3000 points but is lacking an absolute ton of key units in plastic.

 lord_blackfang wrote:
The only thing holding HH back right now is that it's a game designed to play at 3000 points but is lacking an absolute ton of key units in plastic.

that and some parts not scaling back to smaller games all that well

youngest has a Sons of Horus army, he would fork out a fair bit for assault marines and some other bits

Not Online!!! wrote:
Considering mechanicum, SoS, Custodes and SA exist. Militia and cults aswell as Daemons are verified to come at some point it is hardly yet Marine on marine only and in the future far less aswell.

And yet somehow virtually every game involves marines, with an occasional gold marine army from someone who plays them in 40k. SoS have what, one unit and a HQ character? That's not a real army. Admech are expensive as hell, have no 40k rules for most of their models, and from everything I've read have awful rules in 2.0. Solar Auxilia are probably the most expensive army GW has ever created (and I'd be surprised if anyone outside of the GW studio has ever built a full SA army without buying recasts), have no 40k rules for most of their models, and have hilariously bad rules in 2.0. Cults and demons don't even exist in 2.0 because GW's promised roadmap turned out to be nothing but wishful thinking, which is definitely not a sign that 30k is a struggling game that isn't getting a strong commitment of resources.

Further you are right, contemptors are an issue, but when the only issue is a dreadnought and overly efficent custodes then personally the balance argument doesn't pull at all considering that even the pre-release nerfed votann are running pretty roughshot over many armies and the easily traceable escalation in power from dark eldar and admech onwards in 9th.

Post-nerf (a nerf which happened before the codex was even released) squats are A/B-tier alongside several other A/B-tier armies but not dominating. Contemptors are so far into "do not play this list if you want to have friends" territory that your choice as a 30k group is to either ban it or don't have a 30k group anymore, only the absolute most hardcore competitive lists can even attempt to play a game against it.

And it's not just the fact that GW printed the broken rules, it's the fact that they still haven't done anything to fix it. When 40k had a horribly broken codex GW fixed it before anyone outside of the playtesters even got to use it. It's embarrassing that it made it to print but GW didn't allow it to ruin the game. But in 30k GW doesn't give a about the problem. It would take them a trivial amount of effort to do something about it but they can't bother to make even a token attempt. That doesn't happen in a successful game that a company cares about.

Aecus Decimus wrote:


Then why didn't GW replace him and continue business as usual for 30k? The only plausible explanation is that 30k was barely making any money and had been allowed to continue as a personal favor to a friend. Celebrate the quality of the lore or models or whatever all you want but from a commercial point of view it was a dead product.

They did not replace him because the product had become too large and too successful to adequately support it in a 'boutique' style where one 'product owner' called most of the shots and was personally responsible for a lot of the day to day work - interest in the setting and the miniatures was too large to satisfy it with Forge World's possibilities, to the detriment of other FW projects, and it was apparently projected that a shift to plastic and thus an increase in output, availability and ease of handling the actual miniatures was economically viable. It was not a 'dead product', it was a succesful product that reached the absolute limit of what could be done with resin technology and boutique management, and needed to shift to a more streamlined organization model and production techniques suited to products for a mass market.

Tsagualsa wrote:
They did not replace him because the product had become too large and too successful to adequately support it in a 'boutique' style where one 'product owner' called most of the shots and was personally responsible for a lot of the day to day work - interest in the setting and the miniatures was too large to satisfy it with Forge World's possibilities, to the detriment of other FW projects, and it was apparently projected that a shift to plastic and thus an increase in output, availability and ease of handling the actual miniatures was economically viable. It was not a 'dead product', it was a succesful product that reached the absolute limit of what could be done with resin technology and boutique management, and needed to shift to a more streamlined organization model and production techniques suited to products for a mass market.

These are trivial obstacles for a successful product. If 30k had been making good money they would have reorganized the team by the end of the week and continued to produce the existing line of books. Even if the move to plastic was already planned at the time (and if it was why did they let one guy keep control of the project?) there was no reason not to continue the existing book series on schedule right up until the launch of the new edition. Instead the loss of one person instantly ended work entirely and GW was content to let the game sit idle and lose its player base until the launch of the new edition.

they may also have not had anyone they could shift into that role who had the required skills but also passion for the project, could explain why it took a while to come back around

they have also had production issues over the last few years with machines at the capacity of the local power supply

leopard wrote:
they may also have not had anyone they could shift into that role who had the required skills but also passion for the project, could explain why it took a while to come back around

Who cares about passion? If your product is making you $millions/year you tell someone "you're managing this now and if you don't get a 20% increase in revenue every year you're fired". The only reason passion is relevant is if it's a low-profit vanity project with no real business importance and you aren't willing to invest real resources in it.

there is a level of that but to take it and grow it would require someone invested in the background, or you get "Codex: placeholder marines"

again

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
Considering mechanicum, SoS, Custodes and SA exist. Militia and cults aswell as Daemons are verified to come at some point it is hardly yet Marine on marine only and in the future far less aswell.

And yet somehow virtually every game involves marines, with an occasional gold marine army from someone who plays them in 40k. SoS have what, one unit and a HQ character? That's not a real army. Admech are expensive as hell, have no 40k rules for most of their models, and from everything I've read have awful rules in 2.0. Solar Auxilia are probably the most expensive army GW has ever created (and I'd be surprised if anyone outside of the GW studio has ever built a full SA army without buying recasts), have no 40k rules for most of their models, and have hilariously bad rules in 2.0. Cults and demons don't even exist in 2.0 because GW's promised roadmap turned out to be nothing but wishful thinking, which is definitely not a sign that 30k is a struggling game that isn't getting a strong commitment of resources.

?!? tell me you haven't read the rules atleast once without telling me you have not read the rules. Because SoS are an actually interesting army in 30k alas.
SA are also not bad in the rules department, more than able to compete, but suffer from some rather wierd design choices in regards to weapons stats. Beyond that they are a perfectly workable army.

Further you are right, contemptors are an issue, but when the only issue is a dreadnought and overly efficent custodes then personally the balance argument doesn't pull at all considering that even the pre-release nerfed votann are running pretty roughshot over many armies and the easily traceable escalation in power from dark eldar and admech onwards in 9th.

Post-nerf (a nerf which happened before the codex was even released) squats are A/B-tier alongside several other A/B-tier armies but not dominating. Contemptors are so far into "do not play this list if you want to have friends" territory that your choice as a 30k group is to either ban it or don't have a 30k group anymore, only the absolute most hardcore competitive lists can even attempt to play a game against it.

And it's not just the fact that GW printed the broken rules, it's the fact that they still haven't done anything to fix it. When 40k had a horribly broken codex GW fixed it before anyone outside of the playtesters even got to use it. It's embarrassing that it made it to print but GW didn't allow it to ruin the game. But in 30k GW doesn't give a about the problem. It would take them a trivial amount of effort to do something about it but they can't bother to make even a token attempt. That doesn't happen in a successful game that a company cares about.

Yah, no, you are so full of having no clue what you are talking about that you should just stop doing it.
Votann are still outright canibalising other factions and are poorly designed supposedly slow but yet still somehow having one ofthe fastest units in game and other nonsense.
We still had mass domination from specific lists upon release and units which just outright are overly efficent with no possible counterplay because there are fewer mechanics to use in 40k as a counter.

Meanwhile all legions and SA and Mechanicus can deal with contemptor spam or even custodes in 30k.
And if price is really your main argument you realise that 40k isn't cheaper in many cases, no indeed 30k boxes tend to be more value / box than what 40k offers right now especially for CSM and SM.
and fun fact, if you intend to run a scion army, you'll pay more in 40k than you'd do in 30k for the basic army.

Not Online!!! wrote:
?!? tell me you haven't read the rules atleast once without telling me you have not read the rules.

Small blast AP 4 battle cannon lol. Definitely the kind of thing that makes me want to spend thousands of dollars on an all-resin horde army.

And sorry, I forgot that GW did the "make 10 different copies of the same unit" thing with SoS to let them pretend to be a real army. By models they have three infantry units (one of them a conversion set), a HQ character, and a transport I've never seen anyone actually buy.

Yah, no, you are so full of having no clue what you are talking about that you should just stop doing it.

Please do tell me what I'm missing that justifies GW not spending even a token amount of effort to fix the "don't play this if you want to have friends" list that will wreck any 30k group that doesn't agree to ban it.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
?!? tell me you haven't read the rules atleast once without telling me you have not read the rules.

Small blast AP 4 battle cannon lol. Definitely the kind of thing that makes me want to spend thousands of dollars on an all-resin horde army.

And sorry, I forgot that GW did the "make 10 different copies of the same unit" thing with SoS to let them pretend to be a real army. By models they have three infantry units, a HQ character, and a transport I've never seen anyone actually buy.

So you still insist on that line. Good, fine tell me how's it going in 40k in regards to "units".. oh wait , one can't even make the csm lord on the front of the csm dex due to loadout restrictions

Yah, no, you are so full of having no clue what you are talking about that you should just stop doing it.

Please do tell me what I'm missing that justifies GW not spending even a token amount of effort to fix the "don't play this if you want to have friends" list that will wreck any 30k group that doesn't agree to ban it.

First, it's not. I dare say it is less broken as a list than release 9th nids or custodes were. Alas since you repeatedly prove how little you actuall know about the rules you so love to slander why would you know.
Secondly: The key issue for contemptors is that they are too cheap, incidentally if you'd add 20-30 pts they'd be far less common, alternatively if points isn't something GW want's to go down with then allowing ranged armorbane weaponry to be more efficent is an easy fix aswell. Because GW works with unit types in 30k it actually has a choice to handle such things.

Not Online!!! wrote:
if you'd add 20-30 pts they'd be far less common

Then it is completely inexcusable for GW to not publish a quick errata adding 30 points to their cost. The only reason not to do it is if 30k is a low-priority tertiary game that gets a bare minimum of effort because sales don't justify real investment.

Aecus Decimus wrote:

Not Online!!! wrote:
if you'd add 20-30 pts they'd be far less common

Then it is completely inexcusable for GW to not publish a quick errata adding 30 points to their cost. The only reason not to do it is if 30k is a low-priority tertiary game that gets a bare minimum of effort because sales don't justify real investment.

Or , hear me out, it has a slower rules cycle, which is not a disadvantage considering that the 40k rules cycle has more sever headscratchers and flip flopping for the sake of it.

Could Gw throw out a bandaid for the contemptors? Sure. Is it preferable? No.
Unless you want to end up with Ro3 and AoC bandaids with far reaching consequences warping the game.

Also 30k has by some analysts surpassed AoS...

Aecus Decimus wrote:

<bunch of lists>

Sorry, but it's very clear that 30k was a dead game regardless of the later decision to attempt to re-launch it. If a game is successful and making good money you don't immediately cease releasing new material just because one guy died. If 30k wasn't a dead game already they would have replaced him by the end of the week and continued on business as usual.

Those are all examples of games that were taken completely out of production, removed from the official website and generally discontinued for over a decade. You're comparing them to a game system that was kept supported and on sale with new products (albeit reduced) for 3-4 years while a new version was developed. A project on this scale doesn't happen overnight, it needs a minimum of three years work. What's more we had photographic leaks of fully painted HH plastic models in summer 2021, so it's likely that HH v2 was being worked on from at least 2018.

The game was never "dead", it just had a slow period while resources were focused on the relaunch.

It's all subjective.
GW says the AoD box sold well and people who don't like GW will say that's a lie. Some people claim the AoD box outsold the Dominion box for AoS and honestly I see no way to prove that true or false. People will claim that because there were a lot of AoD boxes it means GW overproduced whereas I see it as GW actually doing a proper job with the launch box by producing more than enough to keep the support of the game continuing. Some local communities will grow and others won't.
Anyone claiming HH was a dead game prior to the AoD box is huffing glue fumes though. Blatantly untrue.