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Does Games Workshop's current business model harm existing factions?


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7 hours ago, kenshin620 said:

I keep parroting this, but methinks GW NEEDS to release a 2nd book of a non-SCE army to instill hope.

Ironjaw, Seraphon, Fyreslayers, just SOMETHING to say "oh right we didn't forget you".

Blades of khorne get an update to be fair.

1 hour ago, novakai said:

the consistent Primaris Lieutenant releases still baffles me

Space marines are overwhelmingly the best selling range they have and a lieutenant release is pretty easy to put together (no real concept work and most of the CAD sculpting is already done.) It's an easy win.

 

Back on topic, AOS is still a very young setting. At a similar point in its life, most ofthe current 40k races didn't exist, the Horus Heresy was an obscure paragraph of text and Guilleman was a talented general who got promoted to Primarch based on performance. The mini-factions for aelves and the like were created at a time when factions mattered a lot less than they do now, but I'd rather GW waited to do a proper job on those factions than simply gave us a quick "this is why your Altdorf army is in AOS." Likewise with minis the extensively fleshed out, fully plastic armies with a big range of kits for 40k and WFB were only something that was only fully realised part way through the previous edition. Before that the selection was much smaller and you had to build most of your elite units out of three monopose metal sculpts which made today's witch aelves seem cheap. 

I mean my absolute ideal would be an update of the Grand Alliance books to go with legions of Nagash. We could have an Armies of Azyr book which gave updated fluff to the various military orders that make up Sigmar's mortal armies, allowing us to field a unified army of aelves, men and duardin of the free cities with appropriate allegiance abilities. Likewise a proper look at the path to glory for Chaos followers and some new fluff for Ogors, common greenskins and the like. It's a longshot, but it would be great.

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6 hours ago, Thiagoma said:

Someone mentioned the Ally system.

I really hate how gw further limited allies on 2.0 (1 in 4 units).

It made non BT armies a harder time to make new lists. It also reduced variety in faction armies. 

I wish the next ghb to be more ally friendly, and also give some perks for GA armies.

Actually I think GW has been REALLY smart with the ally system. 

No I'm serious I think its one of the better/best ally systems I've seen in a long while. See the way GW has limited allies and also put benefits into having pure armies means that the whole "soup" issue has mostly gone away on its own. You can't just cherry pick the best units from a Grand Alliance into a min-max super army that uses the strengths of multiple armies to overcome any weakness or uses overpowered combos. 

Furthermore when most people visually get started with an army its often because of the armies lore, its visual design and their cohesive appearance on the table. Ergo there's a sense of background, story and history for the army as well as a visual unity. When you end up with souped armies you lose a lot of that. Plus the competitive end can end up with really odd armies that are just way overpowered over any pure army. 

 

Normally allies as a system can utterly break whatever game balance there was before; it can cause a lot more damage in that respect than it cures. The current system GW has is really neat for AoS; there's limits and you honestly can't break it and just look at the top tourney armies. Most are pure armies or run with a couple of allies here and there. And that's pretty much where I think we want it. 

 

If you want to take more allies I think its fair to do what most people did in the past; you agree to play a game and have "multiple armies" per side. So instead of one 2K army, you go with two 1K armies each side. etc...

 

 

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3 hours ago, AGPO said:

Blades of khorne get an update to be fair.

Space marines are overwhelmingly the best selling range they have and a lieutenant release is pretty easy to put together (no real concept work and most of the CAD sculpting is already done.) It's an easy win.

 

Well yea sure BoK is an updated Khorne Blood Bound but also to be fair it was literally the 2nd book they ever made. Back during the era of "armies are made in tiny compartments" (cough skaven in 6 factions!). Then they realized that chaos works far better as 1 god (regardless of mortal or daemon status) per allegiance. I almost consider the original khorne BB book to be more of a Starter Set Booklet sort of thing. And then we have the more "proper" books like IJ or Fyreslayers which are....just as limited as the original BB book. Though FEC and Skryre/Skaven (which I assume includes Pestilens) I suppose will finally break that.

On the slightly off topic of primaris marines, it is also game-wise necessary for them to make new upgrade kits or alts since they originally lack so many options (and today it has to be able to be officially built to have the option). They just got the ability to take power fists!

Plus lets be real here, if GW still made Metal/Resin models, you can bet your space dollars they would have made like 3-5 primaris variations of lieutenants/captains/librarians/chaplains by now! (and sce!)

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7 hours ago, CaptainSoup said:

Now we can all agree that the AoS release was more or less a ****** show (for the love of Nagash lets not go down that rabbit hole again)

Then why for the love of Sigmar did you bring it up?!?

Initial AOS was great and a wonderful way to game vs the moving backwards towards a WHFB style game

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I agree that buffing up Grand Alliances so that they are more competitive with single army allegiances would be great for people wanting to buy a few models they love the look of but would never get to play unless they start a whole new army

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9 hours ago, Thiagoma said:

Someone mentioned the Ally system.

I really hate how gw further limited allies on 2.0 (1 in 4 units).

It made non BT armies a harder time to make new lists. It also reduced variety in faction armies. 

I wish the next ghb to be more ally friendly, and also give some perks for GA armies.

I absolutely hope they do not - 40k is in a pretty awful place because of the degree of cherry picking that occurs right now. GA armies are fine as they are (and to a varying degree are effective) - we don't need AoS to allow more large scale souping. The current system is fantastic because it makes soup an acceptable but not clearly superior in every way system. 

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1 minute ago, SwampHeart said:

I absolutely hope they do not - 40k is in a pretty awful place because of the degree of cherry picking that occurs right now. GA armies are fine as they are (and to a varying degree are effective) - we don't need AoS to allow more large scale souping. The current system is fantastic because it makes soup an acceptable but not clearly superior in every way system. 

But they are restricted!

By points and by factions that lorewise fit.

Why further restrict with the 4 on 1 rule?

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2 minutes ago, Thiagoma said:

Why further restrict with the 4 on 1 rule?

Because allies should be heavily restricted in general - the more options you have to take out of faction units the more opportunity for you to just take the best units available to you with 0 respect to the actual army you're playing. 

I won Best Thousand Sons Player at a 40k tournament where my only Thousand Sons units were Ahriman, some cultists, and some Tzaangors. I also had almost as much Nurgle Demons and Slaaneshi Alpha Legion Cultists.  That shouldn't happen. 

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2 minutes ago, SwampHeart said:

Because allies should be heavily restricted in general - the more options you have to take out of faction units the more opportunity for you to just take the best units available to you with 0 respect to the actual army you're playing. 

I won Best Thousand Sons Player at a 40k tournament where my only Thousand Sons units were Ahriman, some cultists, and some Tzaangors. I also had almost as much Nurgle Demons and Slaaneshi Alpha Legion Cultists.  That shouldn't happen. 

But it wont happen.

In 1 k points you can take 200 and in 2k points, 400.  On 1 k you can probably fit 1 or maybe 2 cheap allies. In 2k about 1 big guy or a unit of something and that is it.

The 1/4 rule just punish people with units that need to be big to work (and have a small number of units), and the small factions with low model count.

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1 hour ago, Thiagoma said:

But they are restricted!

By points and by factions that lorewise fit.

Why further restrict with the 4 on 1 rule?

But there are no restrictions that are based on lore? And the only points restriction in place is the 1/4th allied rule? Its clear you want a more open system that allows more allies in an army, but I don't really understand why you think there are other restrictions already in place besides from the 1/4th rule. 

1 hour ago, Thiagoma said:

But it wont happen.

In 1 k points you can take 200 and in 2k points, 400.  On 1 k you can probably fit 1 or maybe 2 cheap allies. In 2k about 1 big guy or a unit of something and that is it.

The 1/4 rule just punish people with units that need to be big to work (and have a small number of units), and the small factions with low model count.

Right, it wont happen thanks to the 1/4th rule that's the point. 

Again, if we remove the 1/4th rule for allies it will quickly lead to army lists that just a blob of the best units with the best allegiance abilities chosen from the list of allies you have. For an example,

"Hey I got this really nice Free Guild list I wanna try!" 
"Oh cool whats the list?"
"Oh, well I got a bunch of of IDK eels, the giant turtle, some DoK and let's not forget the all important Celestar Ballistas!"
"Um... alright. So what Freeguild units do you have?"
"...some 80 point guard and a general?"

I would argue that if you allow more open matched play rules for allies in armies then it would actually lead to less sales for GW, as new releases come out people will check to see what units could be applied to the best allied blob army and not bother with the rest instead of building a good army based mostly on one sub faction.

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I think there's two main angles that GW uses when attempting to launch a product.

1) Is the user base for this new unit large - there's a reason we see 10+x more Space Marine models than Dark Eldar coming out. Something like over 60% of users have a Space Marine army and thus are potentially a customer of your new product. If they release a new Dark Eldar mini you're targetting probably 4% or less of your market.

2) Does this encourage users to pick up a new army. Like we saw with Idoneth, it's very risky to try and lure an audience into plopping down 300$+ for a new army. So better hit that launch properly.

From here on out in AoS I don't think we'll see too many new Factions, but rather releases like Gloomspite. Overhaul expansions to iconic factions.

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On ‎1‎/‎29‎/‎2019 at 8:38 AM, CaptainSoup said:

But there are no restrictions that are based on lore? And the only points restriction in place is the 1/4th allied rule? Its clear you want a more open system that allows more allies in an army, but I don't really understand why you think there are other restrictions already in place besides from the 1/4th rule. 

Couple bits to clear up.

There are currently 3 restrictions on allies.

1) A "lore" restriction:  the list of what sub-factions you are allowed to ally with.  Dispossessed not being able to ally with Collegiate Arcane is a lore restriction translated into a game restriction.  There is no game balance justification for this restriction, only a lore one.

2) A "points" restriction:  you are limited to 20% of your maximum points as allies.

3) A "units" restriction:  you are limited to one out of every four units in your armies being allies.  Some people think that the points restriction for Matched Play replaces or over-writes this bit of the Core Rules, but the points restriction is in addition to the units restriction, not instead of.

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2 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Couple bits to clear up.

There are currently 3 restrictions on allies.

1) A "lore" restriction:  the list of what sub-factions you are allowed to ally with.  Dispossessed not being able to ally with Collegiate Arcane is a lore restriction translated into a game restriction.  There is no game balance justification for this restriction, only a lore one.

2) A "points" restriction:  you are limited to 25% of your maximum points as allies.

3) A "units" restriction:  you are limited to one out of every four units in your armies being allies.  Some people think that the points restriction for Matched Play replaces or over-writes this bit of the Core Rules, but the points restriction is in addition to the units restriction, not instead of.

Thank you for the clarification. I was thinking mostly in just GAs where you can just take what you like from the main allegiance and forgot about the other rules. I would probably still lean on my point that the points restriction is tight but fair as to make sure that no one abuses the system even with the other restrictions in place, but that sounds like a discussion for another thread. 

 

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I feel it’s wise to have  Allies rules business wise as it allows people to add to their armies without them having to buying whole new forces.  There’s a lot of money and  time invested in producing an army and not everyone fancies doing that every time something comes out that takes their fancy. Ironjawz for example have no generic Battleline units so running as a GA force requires quite a bit effort if you’re playing Matched Play 

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Just now, SwampHeart said:

Did we actually see this though? There is no indication that IDK wasn't a successful launch. 

I think theo nly thing we've heard in rumours is that IDK didn't sell "as well as was hoped" which doesn't mean that they sold poorly. Also they are a very out-there fantasy army with the whole sea-units on dry land aspect. So even doing moderately well they are really kicking the ball out far and still landing a success. 

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26 minutes ago, SwampHeart said:

Did we actually see this though? There is no indication that IDK wasn't a successful launch. 

I think that when it comes to size, Idoneth is only behind Stormcast Eternals. I belive it sold well but not as good as Gw expected.

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13 hours ago, CaptainSoup said:

All I'll say is be careful what you wish for. If AoS is more forgiving to allies than it will very quickly turn into what 40k is currently dealing with, people cherry picking the best units from different factions to create super meta lists that mono-factions simply cannot compete against

Isn't CP farming more problematic, along with certain stratagem shenanigans?  You end up with mixed units, but you're not taking them for the raw power of their profiles. 

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19 minutes ago, Tiger said:

Isn't CP farming more problematic, along with certain stratagem shenanigans?  You end up with mixed units, but you're not taking them for the raw power of their profiles. 

I never said that it was due to the "raw power" of the units in the way you seem to be implying them (how strong a unit is in a vacuum??) though I can see how you might come to that conclusion. It's probably clearer to say something like, "... people using detachments from different factions so they can cherry pick the best stratagems that are used on units within that detachment which would make that unit the 'best unit...'"

You cant use the best stratagems with the CP you farmed without the compatible unit to use them on. Therefore, you are cherry picking the best units to use those strong stratagems in those allied detachments. 

It all ties together, so its easier just to mention the units since it loosely ties into the subject matter of the thread. 

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2 hours ago, Overread said:

I think theo nly thing we've heard in rumours is that IDK didn't sell "as well as was hoped" which doesn't mean that they sold poorly. Also they are a very out-there fantasy army with the whole sea-units on dry land aspect. So even doing moderately well they are really kicking the ball out far and still landing a success. 

Could be they were expecting all the, “We want Aelves” chanting on social to translate to massive sales. Sales may have been good but not what they were expecting from the feedback they were getting.   There’s always people claiming one faction or another will be “a license to print money,” but it doesn’t necessary work out that way. 

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11 minutes ago, Ollie Grimwood said:

Could be they were expecting all the, “We want Aelves” chanting on social to translate to massive sales. Sales may have been good but not what they were expecting from the feedback they were getting.   There’s always people claiming one faction or another will be “a license to print money,” but it doesn’t necessary work out that way. 

I felt like people where expecting either Atlantean Aelfs, Fish-men Aelfs, or something based on Scourge Privateers. but the end results was an AoS Version of Dark Eldar that where all bald vampires.

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51 minutes ago, novakai said:

I felt like people where expecting either Atlantean Aelfs, Fish-men Aelfs, or something based on Scourge Privateers. but the end results was an AoS Version of Dark Eldar that where all bald vampires.

Entirely likely, of course they may have always turned out to be the wrong sort of Aelf regardless 

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9 hours ago, Thiagoma said:

But they are restricted!

By points and by factions that lorewise fit.

Why further restrict with the 4 on 1 rule?

I agree with you on this, I think a lot of the people who are taking issue with it seem to have misunderstood what you are advocating for. 

The Allies system is excellent.  20% of points is a really good level so that you get some extra utility in your list but it still feels like a proper army and in no way comparable to Soup.  It worked really well from Day 1 when it was introduced in GH17.  The sky did not fall in without a 1 in 4 cap and in fact GA armies were seen a lot less after that book dropped - not least because of the new Allegiance Abilities that came out at the same time.

The 1 in 4 extra stipulation is not stopping people from running Soup.  The 20% cap does that.  Furthermore you can run true Soup anyway with GA Armies - what keeps them in check is that Allegiance Abilities reward taking an Allegiance, which is an excellent appoach.  

All that the 1 in 4 rule is doing is arbitrarily punishing low unit count armies, and rewarding high unit count armies.  If you want to make sure that armies like BCR and Ironjawz are in even worse shape, then it's a great way of achieving that.  The carrot of Allegiance Abilities and the stick of the 20% cap keeps the Soup wolf away from the door: not the extra 1 in 4 stipulation. 

I'd be happy to see it go for those reasons.

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In my case, Elven armies.

Take Phoenix Temple. Its got 4 units, 0 wizards. Phoenix benefits from nearby casters, so a good plan would be to ally Eldritch council. With the ally restriction you are  for example unable to take 2 archmages (100 pts each) because you can only have 1 ally.

Result: a struggling army got even more restricted.

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