The Rumour Thread

[Elmir]

I really do wonder how things will go "behind closed  doors" with these new product rotations". 

Are they really planning on destroying a bunch of older models to clear out shelf space? If so, the heads up is nice...

... But then they announce that they will return when it makes sense for campaign products (in other words, when there's some hype).

Are they really going to be remaking those older products that were destroyed? I mean... They could! Model production costs pennies. Or is it all just another way to weaponize FOMO in hopes  to just sell out almost all existing old stock of product that are almost out of stock anyway?

Edited February 11, 2022 by Elmir

[Neil Arthur Hotep]

3 minutes ago, Elmir said:

Are they really planning on destroying a bunch of older models to clear out shelf space? If so, the heads up is nice...

What gives you that idea? I understood it more as GW not making the commitment anymore to keep those rotation models in production at all times. So I would assume they will do something like a production run of only some of those models every month/few months and just keep them as a web store exclusive until they sell out. I don't see a reason to assume they would actively destroy models.I

Isn't this how things work in 30k and LotR, anyway?

[Gailon]

7 hours ago, Beliman said:

I think that's true for all armies appart from the ones at the bottom (Gloomspite comes my mind). Some micro-armies can disguise that problem because they don't have enough units, but it's exactly the same: only a few units are used in the competitive scene.

Instead of Fulminators, Longstrikes and Dragons, we had HGB spam, Ironclad+WLV, Eeel spam, Morathi/Gotrek and/or snake spam, Mortek Spam (Petrifex), etc... With SCE having a larger roster than other armies, it's easy to see the problem.

I read that Nu'Nurgle has some flexibile and unique lists that let you use a bigger competitive roster (5++ army-wide helps a lot I suppose) and maybe Lumineth, but I'm not really sure about that.

 

This is partly why I think Seraphon is one of the best books they’ve done. A Large range of models and virtually all of them have been viable. The subfactions change the look and play style of the army. 
 

Some things have been a bit OP for sure (but based on win % I think it has often been exaggerated). But a lot of that has been tempered by points. A Seraphon player has had the capacity to make their collection relevant, whatever they owned.

 

Id say SCE feels opposite to this. The subfactions are barely relevant, and mostly then just to change what is battleline. And 

[madmac]

9 minutes ago, Elmir said:

I really do wonder how things will go "behind closed  doors" with these new product rotations". 

Are they really planning on destroying a bunch of older models to clear out shelf space? If so, the heads up is nice...

... But then they announce that will will return when it makes sense for campaign products (in other words, when there's some hype).

Are they really going to be remaking those older products that were destroyed? I mean... They could! Model production costs pennies. Or is it all just another way to weaponize FOMO in hopes  to just sell out almost all existing old stock of product that are almost out of stock anyway?

Saying something "could" come back, is not the same as saying it "will" come back.  Out of just the initial list they've presented, I could see easily some of those models being brought back in a few years for codex whatever hype, some of them being remade as new models..and some of them just quietly disappearing forever.

[Elmir]

3 minutes ago, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

What gives you that idea? I understood it more as GW not making the commitment anymore to keep those rotation models in production at all times. So I would assume they will do something like a production run of only some of those models every month/few months and just keep them as a web store exclusive until they sell out. I don't see a reason to assume they would actively destroy models.I

Isn't this how things work in 30k and LotR, anyway?

Yeah exactly... That's why I find the whole "they are doing this to clear up some shelf space" argument very unlikely.

If that were the case, you would have to actively destroy any remaining stock. And then the heads-up would be very much appreciated... But that situation feels very unlikely to me. So I'm guessing it's more about abusing a certain FOMO element to sell off some unwanted stock (to people who wouldn't have considered purchasing the model in the first place) because now they are afraid of never getting their hands on a model (that, let's be honest, is very likely to end up in a pile of shame somewhere...)

[sandlemad]

The LotR/30k comparisons are relevant but those were less planned range rotations and more wholesale trimmings of the model lines with no plan to bring them back. Some of those kits did return to production later on (apparently due to internal designer pressure for LotR), sometimes temporarily, sometimes permanently, but not all kits.

The idea of formal range rotations is really a slightly inaccurate after-the-fact term for the practice and this new space marine example seems to be the first instance of GW actually planning it that way from the start. That means there’s probably a better chance of these models reappearing some day than for LotR/30k but I completely understand people not holding their breath.

Edited February 11, 2022 by sandlemad

[Clan's Cynic]

Honestly it's probably a way to just stealth kill Firstborn.

"They're not being squatted, they're being taken out of rotation haha."

[CommissarRotke]

I am mostly hoping the 40k rotation is a sign that they're making more production room for NON-Imperium characters... maybe due to the new Eldar and CSM ranges?

1 hour ago, Gailon said:

Id say SCE feels opposite to this. The subfactions are barely relevant, and mostly then just to change what is battleline.

And yea I don't think this will happen to Stormcast anytime soon because the "oldcast" have their own specific roles/niches that still hold up. Tons of lists are still using Judicators, Liberators, and Dracoths. Maybe if the entire line gets Thunderstruck we'd see this in AOS 4 (or 5).

[TheMuphinMan]

The rotation thing for 40k reminds me of AoS in 1.5/2.0 (or whenever they did it) when they took all the named character variants of vampire lords, skaven warlords, big bosses, etc and just moved them to "legends" then changed how some of the keywords worked so the legends models would only really work in legends armies basically soft-squatting them until they hard squatted them later.

Look you can run queek headtaker but he only has the "skaven" keyword not the "skaventide" keyword so you'd have to play GA:Chaos rules for artifacts or this character has the "night goblin" keyword not the "moonclan grot" keyword so he can't receive/give and buffs to your moonclan units

[madmac]

38 minutes ago, Clan's Cynic said:

Honestly it's probably a way to just stealth kill Firstborn.

"They're not being squatted, they're being taken out of rotation haha."

More or less, yeah. Or just a way to start really clearing out all that Resin without committing to replacing or updating any of it on any sort of realistic timeline.

I know they're calling it rotation and totally these can come back at any time for special events yadda yadda but seriously looking at this initial list, I don't think there's any actual pent up hype or demand for, say, two generic 20 year old Space Wolf resin characters and one ancient minor named character, even by the time Space Wolves get their 10th edition codex. Maybe Lukas will get a Primaris Model in 3-5 years and that's good enough.

My full expectation is that they'll eventually replace or bring back some very small percentage of these "rotated" models, but I can't imagine that wheel is turning nearly as quickly as the word rotation makes it sound.

[EntMan]

1 hour ago, CommissarRotke said:

Maybe if the entire line gets Thunderstruck we'd see this in AOS 4 (or 5).

What's the lore now on non thunderstrike SCE? When they are killed are they still stuck floating around, blocked from getting back to Sigmar for reforging?

[EntMan]

Just checking out the articles on WarCom and on closer inspection I'm less impressed by the new Eldar Autarch.

[Neverchosen]

GW's new strategy, pretend to remove nightrunners from store the rerelease them as classic sculpts and eventually sell out of the models and only then will we get a Skaven update. 😩

[CommissarRotke]

1 hour ago, EntMan said:

What's the lore now on non thunderstrike SCE? When they are killed are they still stuck floating around, blocked from getting back to Sigmar for reforging?

The Chaos storms are not everywhere yet (and possibly not even in some Realms period?) so non-thunderstrike Stormcast can still get reforged in tons of battles. Liberators and Paladins are still the big 2 that guard Free Cities. In our battletome it does also state that the Thunderstrike armor is better tuned for longer, sloggier campaigns; it seems like the original vanguard assault was more about creating bastions/bubbles of Order, and now The Long War to actually reclaim Realms has begun. 

The extremely obvious assumption here being that GW could release more Thunderstrike as they make Be'Lakor storms spread farther, and more Stormcast need it. We won't be able to tell if Thunderstrike is a full-on oldcast replacement until we see hard evidence of an old kit being remade. Though IMHO none of this would happen until at least AOS4.

[zilberfrid]

8 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

They weren't removed from 40k though, which is why I said we aren't getting that. They're going into a rotation, which means they will come back periodically. There's no reason for aos to get that at the moment, since all the stuff that would've been good candidates for a rotation like that was squatted.
We could get more stuff removed as tomes come out (although I think we're past that at this point) but thats a different thing.

They'll come back into rotation...

Like Squats, Halflings and Chaos Dwarves.

[Ratboy genius]

3 hours ago, Neverchosen said:

GW's new strategy, pretend to remove nightrunners from store the rerelease them as classic sculpts and eventually sell out of the models and only then will we get a Skaven update. 😩

skaven ain't got a stellar record for returning to the store after being removed

[Ogregut]

I would imagine they don't hold much stock, if any of the marine characters going into rotation, so when they do get an order for one, it has to be cast up, taking a valuable slot up on the production line. 

Even if they get 4-5 orders a month in for them, over time it's adds up and as the saying goes, time is money. 

[JackStreicher]

15 hours ago, Elmir said:

Are they really planning on destroying a bunch of older models to clear out shelf space? If so, the heads up is nice...

Guess what GW stores do if they need to clear shelf space. The heads up is astronomical.

@Gailon Seraphon are one of the worst books Imo. It forces you into shooting and other cheese while entirely neglecting melee combat of Saurus, which were supposed to be an elite infantry. 😕

Edited February 12, 2022 by JackStreicher

[EccentricCircle]

As a middle earth collector, i can tell how it works there. Firstly everyone has stats, regardless of whether the model is sold. So while older models are discontinued, nothing is ever actually squatted from the game.

There is then a core of plastic models which form the main characters, and the basic troops for the key factions. Some resin and metal characters are still permanently on sale, but are gradually getting turned to plastic.

The then sell the minor armies and specialist troops for their last couple of campaign books. Generally when a new campaign drops a handful of sculpts come back to make sure the whole army list is in stock, and a few things go away. So recently a couple of hobbits got phased out to make room for fall of the necromancer. 

So wherever the lore is focussed, the needed models are made available. Things can be gone for years though and may not return at all. I doubt they destroy much. I'd guess stock levels are so low that they actually have to cast a few more to meet demand in the run up to it being removed.

They then do themed made to order runs pretty regularly. These are usually for older models that have been out of circulation for years, or were replaced by newer versions. They know the old metal Perry era models are iconic, and there is demand for them. So its quite FOMo driven, but kind of works.

I don't see it happening soon for AoS as they've been pretty brutal at just squatting things. With less of an established setting there is less demand to keep things in the game. Whereas LotR is an established canon, which the game needs to represent. 40k is !ore like that too. I'm sure fans of these marine characters won't be pleased if they lost their rules, but we already lost an entire old world full of special characters, and they haven't made many new ones relatively speaking.

[Boingrot Bouncer]

The new warcry-boxes feels to expensive compared to the old ones. Sure they are good value compared if you buy them in AoS but for a Warcry-player they are a bit weird.

Feels like they should do something like Underworlds-band instead if they really would want to make Warcry it's own thing (although I realize it's unrealistic). 

[GenericEdgyName]

I would've totally grabbed the lumineth box if it was 10 sentinels instead of 5 wardens and 5 sentinels. They just made the box useless for AoS, well I guess I keep saving for Star Wars Legion

[GrimDork]

12 minutes ago, GenericEdgyName said:

I would've totally grabbed the lumineth box if it was 10 sentinels instead of 5 wardens and 5 sentinels. They just made the box useless for AoS, well I guess I keep saving for Star Wars Legion

You could always grab 2!

It's still the cheapest way of buying 10 wardens, 10 sentinels, 10 stone guard!

[GenericEdgyName]

3 minutes ago, GrimDork said:

You could always grab 2!

It's still the cheapest way of buying 10 wardens, 10 sentinels, 10 stone guard!

Don't tempt me haha

[Kaleb Daark]

On 2/11/2022 at 5:42 PM, Clan's Cynic said:

Honestly it's probably a way to just stealth kill Firstborn.

"They're not being squatted, they're being taken out of rotation haha."

It’s how dogs of war were dealt with.

move it to online only, then the rules changed and they were not really worth taking.

then they get forgotten about and eventually phased out due to stagnation and no sales, and whats left just got sold on the last chance to buy shelf.

[Ragest]

4 hours ago, GrimDork said:

You could always grab 2!

It's still the cheapest way of buying 10 wardens, 10 sentinels, 10 stone guard!

If you grab 2 for 10 sents you are losing 100€

And is only useful if you have a normal box or even underworlds models to proxy the leadee, because if not you are going to lose the wizard in the unit.

Disaster box for aos