sandlemad

No one has an onus to buy into a force though. If an army doesn't sell, that's on GW, not their competitors or customers. Tomb Kings infamously didn't sell because they went for multiple editions with poor core models, minimal army book support and glaringly weak rules. GW threw up their hands and discontinued them but that wasn't on the players, the company half-assed it for years and was rewarded with declining sales. You can't trust them to make the right decision, with or without competition. Also lets not act like GW is helpless here. Look at the Blood of the Phoenix box. Finally GW puts out new plastic aspect warriors but at a serious premium and bundled with older kits. Folks don't buy it because of that. If GW's interpretation of that is "oh well, no point investing in xenos, better release more space marines", then I'm going to be hard pressed to blame competitors or the consumer for what the company does.

I rather like the distinction between Stompers, Breakers and Takers, that idea of broad kinds of factions rather than specific e.g. Stormhosts or Lodges. Worked well for StD with their Ravagers/Despoilers/Cabalists, should work well here. Gives a bit more conceptual room for Your Dudes. It also emphasises how central the mega-gargants are to the faction. Rather than a mix, the background and the rules seem to be conceptualised much more as your Big Lad, maybe his Just As Big Mate, and then all the smaller gargants that he can bully into doing his bidding who then take on his style and preferences. Kind of a fun approach, makes it about big eccentric personalities rather than sub-groups and blends of cultures (e.g. here's a Megaboss and his ironclad boys but also he has this Bonesplitters shaman and his savage orcs following them around too). Also those Fierce Loathing options are a good laugh.

On the specifics on manufacturing costs and upkeep and such, yes, but we do know that GW makes a very tidy profit despite all that and has done for a few years now. Their investor statement from only two months ago explicitly said that 2020 has been "the best year in Games Workshop's history, so far", even with covid's disruption. It's when we see stuff like the chart below (credit to N1SB on B&C for his excellent work) showing them doing extremely alright that price increases rankle a bit. They're under no obligation to pass any of this on to the customer of course, they're not our friends and by design they're meant to get as much of their customers' cash as they think they can, but still. I get what you mean about not wanting to speculate into the nitty gritty but equally I think we should be cautious when talking about their retail presence and their studio and their artists as though these are some sort of burden that GW has to endure (or as a noble charitable enterprise, as it was framed in the other thread) rather than part of the reason why they do well. Their retail presence and the size of the studio has varied over the years and prices have only gone in one direction.

That's really unfortunate and if I were in similar circumstances I honestly would have been driven out entirely.

I brought it up in the other thread but it also reflects the capital D Discourse: discussion on TGA, other forums and social media is pretty overwhelmingly focused on listbuilding, competitive gaming of various levels, and matched play battles between large armies, with a lot less attention paid to 'how do you actually get to 2000pts' or 'the existence of other games/modes of play'. I'm sympathetic to the idea that this is simply because it's easy to talk for page after page about this sort of thing, theorycrafting combos and such, mind, I just don't get the impression that it necessarily reflects the majority of games actually being played. So it's kind of a perception issue when we talk about entry point. GW encourages it on the one hand with its AoS/40k rules while still offering alternatives through those skirmish games but a lot of the baseline assumptions among a lot of hobbyists about what is considered affordable still reflects that atmosphere where a $500+ investment is just taken for granted. Also RE: Necromunda and rules online, it's worth bearing in mind that that online compilation approach was itself a frustrated response to GW/SG's byzantine and seriously unfriendly way of releasing and updating their Necromunda rules. Seriously, as bad as it is now, it's miles better than the slap-dash money-grubbing approach taken early on in N17's life cycle. The compilation was made by and for a small community that had kept the game alive for years without any support, and met a genuine need. Regardless of how you feel about it, it was a popular player aid because it filled a need.

Yeah, this is disappointing. Such an easy thing to do and they whuffed it. The chap in the Gatebreaker's right hand is clearly something of an updated Johann and that could be meant as an easter egg, like a point there about how the regular giants could never catch him but watch out, these new big giants don't mess about. But still, the fleeing chap was a fan-favourite even before he was co-opted as 'Johann' in the marketing and then the comic. A fun and useful bit. Real missed opportunity.

The Cypher Lords definitely fit Tzeentch narratively. You're absolutely right about how their background is pretty similar to that of the Arcanites, and their vaguely Egyptian aesthetic is one that's popular with Tzeentch stuff in general. In fact, I suspect their masks are meant to be at least a bit similar to that of Doctor Fate, just like the Thousand Sons are thought to be. That said, don't dismiss the other warbands entirely! As you say none of them are meant to be devoted to particular gods but there's definite angles you can take that would make them work as part of a force of Arcanites. Corvus Cabal: Tzeentch's association with birds; watchfulness and knowledge; obsession with taking treasures/trinkets becomes seizing magical artefacts Iron Golems: something to do with the change of metal from ore to molten stuff to armour; crafting and enchanting magical weapons; the patience of ritual; the fires of the forge changing all things Untamed Beasts: a shamanistic approach, changing from man to beast through devouring; merging souls; reading portents and signs in the winds as they track their prey Spire Tyrants: same as any chaos warrior really but maybe focusing on Tzeentch as the god of chance and luck and fate, very important in the arena Splintered Fang: alchemy and magic; some of the same cultish stuff as the Cypher Lords but more martial Unmade: they're all mad, aren't they? Fallen philosophers. They want to inflict suffering and that's maybe a bit more obviously Slaaneshi but consider that they're also desperate to defy Nagash, so set their beliefs about life/mutability/change against those of death/unchanging/staticness, gets more Tzeentchian. Also their island kingdom was called Tzlid, which sounds appropriate. Scions of the Flame: Tzeentch and fire go very well together! In practice the visual aesthetics of these warbands aren't as obviously Tzeentchian as those of the Cypher Lords but the right colour scheme could make it work. Silvery-blue armour on the Iron Golems/Spire Tyrants/Splintered Fang, twisty blue tattoos on the Untamed Beasts/Corvus Cabal, that sort of thing. Cypher Lords definitely fit Arcanites but you could certainly make the others work too.

Direchasm's out in December but it's not clear when we'll see more details about the core box and other warbands. We knew everything about the Beastgrave kit by August 2019 and had seen the first new warband for it by mid-September 2019, so clearly a different approach is being taken, whether because of covid or not. Maybe once we're over this first hump of 40k releases we'll get some more news. Previously GW's done a preview in November for Blood and Glory so they might take that opportunity to do something online.

Switch games. That's what worked for me. Blood Bowl, WarCry, Kill Team, Necromunda, Warhammer Underworlds, Lord of the Rings, Adeptus Titanicus, Aeronautica Imperialis, all these offer a lot at a fraction of the cost of going all out on a large AoS/40k army. They're fascinating games working in very different design spaces to mainline AoS/40k and some of them are to my mind just a helluva lot better as rulesets. The crowds tend to overlap a fair bit but if you're concerned about getting games, you could still easily get into even two of them and you'll double your chances. And that's just GW. Explore outside what they have, look at Hail Caesar or Frostgrave or Battletech or any number of other games. Not all of them are guaranteed to be meaningfully cheaper but there's good stuff out there.

You're right about the support for the smaller games being better but that wasn't out of the goodness of their heart, it's because the lack of them was part of a number of factors which really hurt GW around the death of WHFB. Like, I don't even mean it as a slight against them to say that as a company they are fundamentally incapable of doing anything that is not profit-oriented. That's by design and any analysis of their actions that doesn't have that front and centre is pointless. They want new blood because that's new customers, same as any business. That massive amount of work is specifically to make the company money, as obvious as it sounds, and they deserve zero credit for it. Their reward is sales, nothing more. Sounds trite but they're not your friend, they're really not. Also GW doesn't keep the idea of TT wargaming alive, they keep the idea of "the GW hobby" alive. There's a difference. They're the biggest and most powerful player in the field but that doesn't mean anything, any more than Disney being the biggest player in their field(s) deserving praise for keeping... whatever, film alive. See now those top ridge scales really look like tyranid scales. Having them on the sides as well though, that's not a feature of any tyranid models I've seen. And the chain... I dunno. Shadow elves seems as good a guess as any.

True but then Warlord games (Hail Caesar, Bolt Action, Pike & Shotte) and Northstar (Frostgrave) both manufacture their plastic and metal in the UK as well, literally down the road from GW headquarters in Nottingham, and their kits are considerably cheaper. I've not seen much that would lead me to attribute GW's high prices to anything other than "because they can". Sprue numbers don't account for it. A given kit's role within the army doesn't account for it, at least not consistently. Materials and manufacturing don't account for it. With a few exceptions where they've tentatively felt out the boundaries of what the market will bear, GW charges what they like because they know they can.

I mean what makes a Warstomper, really? The weapon is the main distinguishing feature to my mind: big club for the warstomper, flail for the gatebreaker, club-and-net for the krakeneater. Beyond that I think you're free to mix and match with the heads, clothes, back-thing, other assorted gubbins. Have your warstomper wear a hood and a risqué net thing around the belly, it'll still be clear what warscroll he is. It's actually even easier if you've only got one giant in your force, you just need to say "oh, this dude's X" and there's no scope for the opponent to get confused because hey, there's one big lad and they're not liable to mix up his rules with those of his neighbour. Customise as you like, I suspect. 'Eavy metal just painted up the stock models without any changes because that's typically what they do for battletomes and codices. Very true. When we compare GW games to other pastimes and/or look at the price, it's worth remembering that it is in fact one of the most expensive TT wargames around. Warmahordes comes close, as do the Star Wars games, but stuff like Frostgrave absolutely kicks ass and is far from comparable to golf club membership or renovating antique cars. It shows that there's nothing inherent to the hobby that demands the prices GW charges or the amount of buy-in 2000pt AoS asks for. In fact I think there's a larger cultural issue where we use what is really a very specific sort of approach to one game as emblematic of the whole hobby, to the exclusion of everything else. Going from broad to particular, you have: tabletop wargames (many of which are more affordable than some GW stuff) GW tabletop wargames (which come in a variety of costs and sizes, requiring very different levels of buy-in, e.g. WHU is c.€60 for two forces and the core stuff, boom, instant gaming) GW's flagship tabletop wargames: AoS and 40k a specific way of playing those flagship tabletop wargames, namely matched play battles between large (2000pt-ish for AoS) armies matched play battles between large armies in competitive tournament settings, requiring the regular updating/replacement of a hobbyist's armies And that's specifically looking at gaming and more or less leaving out folks who collect to paint or whatever. So when the fandom/hobbyist collective/folks on forums like TGA talk about 'the hobby' and discuss costs and investment and support, I often find we often talk about the most narrow, specific version or aspect of that hobby and unconsciously act as though the statements we make about it apply to a wider range of games and ways of playing. Building on what Overread said above, this is clearly an issue that GW identified with WHFB and has sought to ameliorate with stuff like Kill Team, Warcry, WHU, Necromunda, Blood Bowl, AoS's rules, etc. because otherwise you're driving off players, leaving their money on the table, and liable to drive your flagship game into a death spiral. But I still think it's worth bearing in mind when we talk about the hobby. When I see someone enquire about getting into the 'hams, I suggest Kill Team or Warcry or WHU. Not because I think it's less likely to scare folks off (and I'm not interested in recruitment, particularly) but because I know how dispiriting it is to be told "ok, here are the competitive armies, here are the only reasonable builds, you're going to want to drop about half a grand on this and expect it to be worthless in a year or so when the meta changes", as though that's the be-all and end-all of how you engage with the hobby.

Thank you for putting together that list. It's good to see it all written down, even if it's a slightly unpleasant reminder that ultimately this aspect of the hobby, the whole building a sizeable AoS/40k force, just isn't for me. I was fundamentally priced out of it years ago. Managed to keep at it a bit longer because BCR are a weird outlier but it couldn't last. And that's ok, I like e.g. Underworlds both because I think it's a better game and because I can afford it but ultimately I think that if you look at those costs and think "yes, this is good", we're not going to meet in the middle. The idea of building multiple 2000pt armies in a year is utterly alien to me, so wildly out of reach that it might as well be a joke, but then so are golf club memberships, restoring old cars, buying a new console every year, and dropping a grand on a MtG deck. I cannot reasonably consider these accessible hobbies and that they are being used as a comparison here speaks of a pretty basic mismatch of socioeconomic understanding. This is useful to show to new players though when they ask if they should get into 40k or AoS. The cost barrier makes this (or at least this aspect of the hobby, the return of skirmish games over the last few years is good) very, very exclusionary already and dismissing people's concerns only makes it feel more so, both in general and specifically re: GW's particular practices. This isn't on the level of other parts of the internet/AoSphere where raising these concerns would get you actively mocked as a 'poor' or a 'pleb' but it comes off as out of touch and in the same ballpark.

Four sprues does make a bit of a difference, as the closest equivalents are Archaon and the Knight Castellan/Valiant, which have three... but then you have kits like the Baneblade, which has fully seven sprues, is a huge model, and comes out as €40 cheaper than these guys. This is pretty much just because it's an older kit and GW charges more for things than they did 5 or 6 years ago, and gets away with it. Lot of decent bits there though. I don't think there's anything as distinctively brilliant or widely useful as base decorations as the gibbet, the skeleton roadsign or the squashed goblin from the aleguzzler kit. That really raised the bar and while there's a few gems here, it's not on the same level. Most importantly, where's Johann 2.0? Where's the clever little easter egg, an update to the running away dude that's been the lynchpin of their marketing? Where's Johann? The measure of everything in the mortal realms (that he runs away from), easily transferable to any base. No, no the dude in the Gatebreaker's hand, he's got the same hat but he's been caught, that doesn't count. Where's Johann, GW? GW? Where's Johann?!

Yeah, I ran the numbers on those as well, on what seemed like relatively standard 1000pt lists and SoB come out a little cheaper. That said 1. you’re dropping bigger ‘chunks’ so to speak. It’s one thing to pace yourself through 10 witch elves this month, a magmadroth that month or whatever. Lets you build gradually. It’s another when it’s over a hundred quid on one dude that’s half your army. To a degree that’s just different army building styles but SoB do require you to drop a lot at once. (Also we were talking about a Crusade analogue for AoS, well, SoB would really struggle there.) 2. DoK and Fyreslayers are two of the priciest armies to collect and I’ve seen new players baulk at them and switch to other factions precisely because of the costs associated with them. Makes it a less than flattering comparison for SoB.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that puts the lie to the idea that a kit's customisability or quantity of spare parts/multiple builds has anything at all to do with its cost.

I question the worth of this approach though. It's just speculating about GW's own made-up internal price-setting decisions, you know? The mega-gargant is presumably going to be a big three frame kit. Same materials, same labour, same everything else as other comparable kits. So instead we go to GW's own unstated thoughts on how many can they expect consumers to buy (1 for Archaon, 1-2 for the big knights, 2+ for the mega-gargants), how 'prestigious' a model is in-universe, how customisable they are, how popular this will actually be... We could measure the new release against them and compare to older releases (though I don't think you'll ever get anything consistent or reasonable out of them) but the the thing is that none of them are actual justifications. There was no reason for e.g. the old greatsword kit to be more expensive than its peers. All these reasons are inevitably completely steamrolled by the all-powerful "what do we think we can get away with". And with this new kit, well, they're charging more because they can.

...You're right. Maybe not about it being an intentional project but my god. The Bonegrinder Gargant from FW is €137.72 compared to the plastic Mega-Gargant at this mooted €150. And it's head and shoulders above the plastic kit in terms of height. Fewer options, blah blah blah, but this is a larger resin model from the boutique section that's cheaper than the plastic equivalent. This is insane. Has this ever happened before? Outside of Australia, I mean.

Oof. That dual gargant is only ten quid cheaper than buying the regular kit twice. And bear in mind that only three years ago GW sold the exact same box under the name 'Colossal Crushers' for €60.00. Forty quid more expensive now. That's bad. The previous box was a deliberate discount but that's still really bad. This some sort of hobby alright. And yeah, the mega-gargant is a good bit more expensive than Archaon. A good bit more expensive than the 40k big knight as well. So... €300 or thereabouts for a 1000pts SoB force of a mega-gargant and three regulars, or of two mega-gargants. Anyone who thought that this would be one of the cheaper armies to collect, or even just slightly more reasonably-priced armies to collect, will be sorely disappointed.

Last time GW sold a box with two giatns, as part of their ally boxes thing, it was only a little more expensive than the cost of the regular one-giant box. £45 to the single box's current £40-ish. Gods willing we'll see the same again, even if it might be too good to be true. Particularly as folks will presumably be aiming for getting their mancrushers in groups of three, to balance out a list with mega-gargants, e.g. 3 regular boys and a mega-boy for roughly 1000 pts. Also in retrospect Mancrusher is a fine name altogether but lacks the charm of Roald Dahl's 'Manhugger'.

I think mixing is 100% fine, particularly as we now have multiple cases of art showing different heads and accoutrements, e.g. dude without a beard but with the warstomper's big tusks on his back. This is no different to, like, Blood Warrior heads on regular khornate chaos warriors. Pragmatically with only 2-4 of these guys on the table at any one time, it really shouldn't be hard for anyone playing in good faith to remember that this dude's X, this dude's Y once it's been pointed out.

Same! I think a lot of it is the sheer amount of weight GW is willing to put behind Crusade as a viable alternative to 'all matched play, all the time'. Here's some stuff you can do in it that you can't do in your hitherto regular games, here's how it can operate in parallel to pick-up matches, and, perhaps more importantly, here's some shiny stuff that comes with keeping track of your dudes, with its own supplements and significant sections in the codices. There's probably a larger conversation to be had about incentives and officialdom but it looks cool.

100% agree. Path to Glory is the weird half-abandoned child of AoS. I think the concept of randomly getting reinforcements and... letting that guide your purchasing decisions? really turns people off, even though it could be relatively easily house-ruled. In theory keeping it similar to the ancient WHFB PtG rules for the chaos wastes isn't bad but it's too flattened out and it's a much bigger deal to add in a monster than, say, 3 beastmen in a small-scale skirmish game. Putting aside the whole points vs. whatever else argument, the glory point approach is very coarse and unwieldy in general. You can see the DNA of PtG in Crusade but I'd agree that GW would be better off wholesale adopting it. I think Crusade's got a decent shot at becoming pretty popular and prominent for non-tournament 40k games, even if I'm sceptical about how well it interacts with a random matched play matchup. More promising for building a force from small beginnings.

They're cute, they're tall, they're well built... I didn't say their name but they popped into your head, didn't they? The big lads.

Could be something new an unexpected for Warcry, some sort of standalone model like the ogroid myrmidon but a beast tamer of some description. It's not very chaotic though...