The Rumour Thread

[JerekKruger]

2 hours ago, JackStreicher said:

The bad: Smells like what Wizards of the coast tried with DnD recently.

It depends on how it's handled really. I'd be happy to pay a small subscription to get digital access to all rules and battletomes, with FAQs and erratas actually included in the text. I wouldn't be happy if GW try to gate all their rules behind an expensive paywall, with no alternative.

The difference between Warhammer and D&D is Warhammer is well monetised already, whereas D&D have the tricky problem that a single GM can run a brilliant campaign with just the core rulebooks and a great imagination, with their players having bought nothing from WotC. Obviously GW will always be on the look out for ways to further monetise Warhammer, but hopefully they'll have seen the backlash to One D&D and realise there are less unpopular ways to extract money from their customers.

[JackStreicher]

59 minutes ago, JerekKruger said:

The difference between Warhammer and D&D is Warhammer is well monetised already,

It is, that does not stop them from getting ever more greedy though (proof are the constant price hikes for no reason but profit)

 

@Malakithe

I am not certain our community is that small anymore. However we have a reputation to swallow whatever prices and monetization methods GW tosses at us, often even defending it or at least not changing our consumption habits due to it. (Very inflexible market)

Edited February 17, 2023 by JackStreicher

[JerekKruger]

3 minutes ago, JackStreicher said:

It is, that does not stop them from getting ever more greedy though (proof are the constant price hikes for no reason but profit)

Definitely, and I share the concern. The relentless need to increase return to shareholders can result in short term choices which damage hobbies very easily, and the sad fact is once you're publicly traded there's very little you can do to avoid it because if the share price isn't going up, your investors are going to divest and invest in something else. They don't care about what you do, only whether or not you can make them wealthier.

[EonChao]

12 hours ago, RileyArlic said:

This is for 40k 10th, but a big pastebin is making the rounds. We could see similar things happen for AoS in terms of future battletomes.

Some of it honestly seems too good to be true, but GW have been working on a new website for YEARS from what I understand.

 

https://pastebin.com/WxGw8sDA

It's the boxset that gets me suspicious of this. The Tyranids have multiple units that are understrength based on current rules which after the pushback GW got over that in Soul Wars in some areas of the hobby feels unlikely to be a direction they'd take with a 40k launch box. Much as I might want Shrikes and Spike Rifle Gaunts back in the game I think this is probably fake.

[Grungnisson]

Look, not a rumour but sort of, how I see what's to come in the context of prices and GW's planning.

People keep saying that GW is only looking ahead in short term and that they've no planning, but I really don't think that's the case. They might be sometimes messy when it comes to actual games, but I think they've got their expertise when it comes to making money. And one thing they've seen and will want to capitalise on is that their prime customer profile has changed dramatically. They don't do blister packs for kids with pocket money any more. A kid popping in to a GW store after school, in terms of company profit, is completely negligible and not worth the company's attention.

Even if such kids even exist these days.

So who is the target? Most likely 25+ (35+ even) male with enough disposable income to dump whatever the asking price is on army boxes, KT/Warcry sets, dual army box releases etc. A person, who can and will dump £100 on a release on the preorder day. They already increased their prices a few months back, just when the cots of living crisis started to bite the most and, clearly, they must have realised that their sales haven't suffered.

We, the hobbyists en masse, could take it. Which means they can squeeze us a bit more still and some of us will grumble a bit online, but at the end of the day, if you're someone with two, three, five armies already, are you really going to overnight slam the door and never ever spend on a GW product again? 

Yeah, exactly.

So, to summarise, in my opinion the future will be even more expensive. GW is not treating their products as a niche for nerdy kids, they're in the process of pivoting to, effectively, a luxury goods market. Catering for people, who simply don't look at the price tags, when they really want something. There simply must be enough of those that they see it as a viable strategy and I strongly believe they're basing it on a thorough market research rather than fortune telling from sprue clippings.

[Ganigumo]

We shouldn't be comparing GW raising prices, to what WoTC is doing.
WoTC is guilty of overmonetizing MTG, and is looking to do the same with D&D.

WoTC is in hot water because they've been releasing way too many products too quickly, many of which are limited time fomo style releases, in an effort to squeeze as much money as possible out of the existing playerbase. Its basically what many video games have been doing as well, with the excessive microtransactions.  Its to the point where they print balance warping cards to try to get eternal format players to buy standard sets. Their monetization is burning customer goodwill and actually hurting the game as a whole.
You can go back on a price increase if your sales drop and generally win back the customer goodwill, especially if you overcorrect a little, but trying to go back on the stuff WoTC has been doing will take years of work to build back support.

[Beliman]

Can anyone explain what's happening with WotC, Magic and D&D?

I'm not used to this kind of stuff.

[Arzalyn]

4 minutes ago, Ganigumo said:

WoTC is in hot water because they've been releasing way too many products too quickly, many of which are limited time fomo style releases, in an effort to squeeze as much money as possible out of the existing playerbase. Its basically what many video games have been doing as well, with the excessive microtransactions.  Its to the point where they print balance warping cards to try to get eternal format players to buy standard sets. Their monetization is burning customer goodwill and actually hurting the game as a whole.

While I agree with you that the D&D situation is much worse, I don't think GW is too far off if you compare to MTG, at least if you take Warhammer as a whole. 6 month seasons, new rules in niche books and fomo boxes are still a thing. It isn't has bad as the MTG secret lair/spoiler season after spoiler season, but it is worrisome that we may go in the same rabbit hole in the future.

[Koala]

IMHO people do too much speculating about WHY GW is acting in a certain way. I mean, we do not even know if there IS an actual plan at all

A few things i am sure about:

- the budget necessary to properly enter the hobby is north of what most of us would consider "cheap". 

- the entry level products are considerably cheaper than the rest

- the performance of WH stores (shops run by GW, they got rebranded to "Warhammer", just to avoid misunderstandings) is judged by how many starter boxes they sell ( aka they are specifically told their job is to recrut new hobbyists, not to cater to an existing Community)

- people always complain about GW stuff being too expensive

- and yet, GW sees rising sales...

 

[Ganigumo]

Just now, Beliman said:

Can anyone explain what's happening with WotC, Magic and D&D?

I'm not used to this kind of stuff.

Recently (and for the second time) Bank of america has released a statement saying that Hasbro (WoTC parent company) has been destroying magic by overmonetizing it, and it has even started affecting their stock.

For the past few years WoTC (mostly off the back of MTG) has been pretty much the only profitable part of Hasbro, and hasbro has been all but directly lying on their financial reports saying things are going great, because the only reason they're turning a profit is because they're essentially strip mining MTG as a brand.

MTG has been pushing a lot of FOMO releases, pushing power creep to sell cards (in a game where cards rotate out), etc. A lot of it came to a head when they released the anniversary collection. 4 booster packs, of not legal cards (aka proxies, they have different backs) for 1000$USD.

 

4 minutes ago, Arzalyn said:

While I agree with you that the D&D situation is much worse, I don't think GW is too far off if you compare to MTG, at least if you take Warhammer as a whole. 6 month seasons, new rules in niche books and fomo boxes are still a thing. It isn't has bad as the MTG secret lair/spoiler season after spoiler season, but it is worrisome that we may go in the same rabbit hole in the future.

So far we all know the fomo box stuff will see solo releases if we wait though, and 6 month seasons are hopefully going away but I'm not sure that borders on the overmonetization of the game. GW would need to start doing stuff like power creeping every release, frequent squatting of old models (to make you buy new ones), tons of limited run miniatures etc.

I know they ruined their goodwill back in the 2000's so I think GW is wise enough to not go back down that path.

[Arzalyn]

1 minute ago, Beliman said:

Can anyone explain what's happening with WotC, Magic and D&D?

Magic is getting a over amount of products and release, to the point that they release a new set and a week after there are spoilers for the next one. This is compounded by the overwhelming production of secret lairs, limited timed releases of 3~6 cards with special art and premium price. This cause a overwhelming  influx of new cards and many older cards that need reprints to lower their price only get reprinted in premium products (which barely affect their prices).

D&D problem was the leak of their plan to change the open going license, which let people create third party D&D content. The change would basically be: if you gain over X money with your content you have to pay for wizards and they take all that you created and make their own in a super short notice. Third party products helped make 5e EXTREMELY popular in the last year's, specially helping fixing some of the lacklusters main release in the last year's (spell jammer as a example, is a half finished setting book). After a week of the planed changes leak and now words coming from wizards, the community revolted and started cancelling their DnDbeyond subscription (wizards D&D digital plataform), which hit them and made they go back with those plans. They released the 5e material under creatives commons now, but the damage is already done.

[Boingrot Bouncer]

To be honest FOMO-boxea are only FOMO if you can't wait 6 months or so.

The 6 month season on the other side is a bigger problem, with my busy year outside of playing I only managed a handful of games before needing to change all my army lists and the only upside to that is that last season was boring for me due to how the game was forming the game.

[Ganigumo]

17 minutes ago, Boingrot Bouncer said:

To be honest FOMO-boxea are only FOMO if you can't wait 6 months or so.

The 6 month season on the other side is a bigger problem, with my busy year outside of playing I only managed a handful of games before needing to change all my army lists and the only upside to that is that last season was boring for me due to how the game was forming the game.

I've never been happier to have 6 month seasons than after gallet season 1.

[sandlemad]

On 2/16/2023 at 1:59 PM, Neil Arthur Hotep said:

GW has historically been pretty reliable when it comes to keeping models playable in their respective faction, but have been pretty bad when it comes to preserving options that break faction barriers. Over the course of the last few years, we lost a number of those options: Grand alliances after the shift to 3rd edition, mercenary companies from GHB 2019 I believe when GHB 2020 came out, Legion of Grief just after Soulblight Gravelords released and also Lethisian Defenders at some point.

They’ve blown hot and cold on this tbh. There’s been whole spans of editions where they have indeed been good about not invalidating things within a faction, and then times they’ve suddenly dropped stuff like a hot potato.

Sometimes it’s with unit loadouts but for a drastic version, look at the new World Eaters codex. Whole swathes of units cut, seemingly at random, leaving a lot of long term WE players looking at stuff they’ve had for multiple editions - bikers, raptors, chaos lords on foot or in terminator armour - just gone.

[RyantheFett]

1 hour ago, Beliman said:

Can anyone explain what's happening with WotC, Magic and D&D?

I'm not used to this kind of stuff.

 

The control they tried to bring to Dungeon and Dragons was insane. Pathfinder was screwed. My group was scared that any good idea we came up with WoTC would bust in and claim copyright lol.

Edited February 17, 2023 by RyantheFett

[DinoJon]

One thing that the recent pastebin post has given me hope for is them reducing the General's Handbook back down to once a year. I would also love if they got rid of Battle Tactics altogether but that's another discussion. 

[Ganigumo]

7 minutes ago, DinoJon said:

One thing that the recent pastebin post has given me hope for is them reducing the General's Handbook back down to once a year. I would also love if they got rid of Battle Tactics altogether but that's another discussion. 

I'm also not a big fan of BTs, but I think they could be more interesting in specific battle plans.
As some theoretical examples:
A battleplan where there are 5 battle tactics as objectives, but you can only pick from the 5 listed in the battleplan, 
A battleplan where there are 5 battle tactics as objectives, but they follow a specific order
You could make a few battleplans using that format, and the map layout, objective placement and tactics chosen would let you easily make ~4 solid battleplans while still feeling simpler than the current system. I really like the idea of a set order of BTs too, since the order and ones chosen can really change the pace of the battle and add narrative.

[KingKull]

Does this happen to anyone else? To be clear, I don't have any problems with my phone and this only happens specifically on this website.

 

[Gitzdee]

Imho mtg had the winning formula for a decade until greed happened. I dont understand why, but the game just doesnt feel healthy anymore.

[DinoJon]

1 hour ago, KingKull said:

Does this happen to anyone else? To be clear, I don't have any problems with my phone and this only happens specifically on this website.

 

Pretty sure this is the first sign of madness. 

[Greyshadow]

3 hours ago, Boingrot Bouncer said:

The 6 month season on the other side is a bigger problem, with my busy year outside of playing I only managed a handful of games before needing to change all my army lists...

I've given up on keeping up with the General's Handbook battlepacks too. It's not that I am against them but I'm just not playing regularly enough to want or need a shake up every six months. It is nice that other ways to play are recognised by the three ways to play system - I don't feel I'm being corralled into playing the latest season which is a good thing.

[Arzalyn]

3 hours ago, Ganigumo said:

I've never been happier to have 6 month seasons than after gallet season 1.

It's funny that they choose the right season to make shorter. 1 year of Gallet season 1 would be a nightmare.

[KingBrodd]

5 hours ago, KingKull said:

Does this happen to anyone else? To be clear, I don't have any problems with my phone and this only happens specifically on this website.

 

Mine is as well mate. Seems to be a mobile issue.

[RileyArlic]

So... I almost don't even want to post these because they're so far off the track... but someone is refuting the Valrak stuff and posting their own version on Dakkadakka, which, as we know, is obviously the BEST place to get rumors. /sarcasm.

Spoilered beneath, some of this is identical to stuff that @Whitefang already refuted, but here it is for your discussing pleasure:

Spoiler

These Valrak rumours are all fake. Probably way more of the real stuff will leak out soon, so I will leave this here:

- 10th is a complete reset, some extreme changes, but still D6 based
- there is an index book called warhosts
- Overall themes:
terrain destruction
more options during army construction, streamlined game itself
faster rolling, no re-rolls
freer unit activation
- Charges, action economy, all-out attack, ward + damage taken more or less from AoS, no double turn
- units activate one at a time and can do stuff in any order they want. still ‘all your units in your turn then all your opponent’s units in his turn’
- fighting is less fiddly. you only fight in your own turn
- stats are dice values and now go from 1+ to 6+
- initiative is back
- there is no wound roll
- profile layout is aos-like
- stratagems have to be bound to units and written on the army handout
- terrain can be destroyed
- morale is completely different, some units don’t attrition but get debuffed
- GT is a completely revamped game mode with a ton of differences. for example a loadout sideboard and
- no more power levels
- armor is not only a numerical value, but has attributes against which weapon it is good

...

Cannot give more details at the moment. But the launch box is called Vigil of Blood and will be previewed way sooner than rules teasers. Maybe teasered as early as next month.

...

It is a bit more complicated than the broad strokes I used. If your initiative is high enough you can interrupt the enmy turn in certain situations. In addition to other purposes.

But that's it for now. Wait for the confirmation.

No terminators in the launch box.

But I'll stop now.

This doesn't read or sound like someone who is worried about revealing too much for the safety of their or their friends' jobs, but rather someone who doesn't want to make claims that end up turning out false and getting called out for them.

Alas, this tends to happen ahead of a new edition, where you'll have the truth mixed in with safe assumptions and different sources, but whether the rumormonger was actually going off of true information or a good guess is up in the air. 

It seems that some sources have queued in on the 'Vigil of Blood' box set title, but remember that competing sets of rumors have said this now, despite contradicting themselves, so it's likely that some rumormongers will use the reveal of the Vigil of Blood (if that happens) as a way to legitimize their particular sets.

It's all a bit silly, because what we're talking about is not actual leaks but rather people either trying to fool people, or that have weird misplaced egos...

[Twisted Firaun]

33 minutes ago, RileyArlic said:

So... I almost don't even want to post these because they're so far off the track... but someone is refuting the Valrak stuff and posting their own version on Dakkadakka, which, as we know, is obviously the BEST place to get rumors. /sarcasm.

Spoilered beneath, some of this is identical to stuff that @Whitefang already refuted, but here it is for your discussing pleasure:

  Hide contents

These Valrak rumours are all fake. Probably way more of the real stuff will leak out soon, so I will leave this here:

- 10th is a complete reset, some extreme changes, but still D6 based
- there is an index book called warhosts
- Overall themes:
terrain destruction
more options during army construction, streamlined game itself
faster rolling, no re-rolls
freer unit activation
- Charges, action economy, all-out attack, ward + damage taken more or less from AoS, no double turn
- units activate one at a time and can do stuff in any order they want. still ‘all your units in your turn then all your opponent’s units in his turn’
- fighting is less fiddly. you only fight in your own turn
- stats are dice values and now go from 1+ to 6+
- initiative is back
- there is no wound roll
- profile layout is aos-like
- stratagems have to be bound to units and written on the army handout
- terrain can be destroyed
- morale is completely different, some units don’t attrition but get debuffed
- GT is a completely revamped game mode with a ton of differences. for example a loadout sideboard and
- no more power levels
- armor is not only a numerical value, but has attributes against which weapon it is good

...

Cannot give more details at the moment. But the launch box is called Vigil of Blood and will be previewed way sooner than rules teasers. Maybe teasered as early as next month.

...

It is a bit more complicated than the broad strokes I used. If your initiative is high enough you can interrupt the enmy turn in certain situations. In addition to other purposes.

But that's it for now. Wait for the confirmation.

No terminators in the launch box.

But I'll stop now.

This doesn't read or sound like someone who is worried about revealing too much for the safety of their or their friends' jobs, but rather someone who doesn't want to make claims that end up turning out false and getting called out for them.

Alas, this tends to happen ahead of a new edition, where you'll have the truth mixed in with safe assumptions and different sources, but whether the rumormonger was actually going off of true information or a good guess is up in the air. 

It seems that some sources have queued in on the 'Vigil of Blood' box set title, but remember that competing sets of rumors have said this now, despite contradicting themselves, so it's likely that some rumormongers will use the reveal of the Vigil of Blood (if that happens) as a way to legitimize their particular sets.

It's all a bit silly, because what we're talking about is not actual leaks but rather people either trying to fool people, or that have weird misplaced egos...

Vigil of Blood makes it sound like it's *Insert Space Marine Chapter,* probably Dark Angels, vs World Eaters wave 2.