Beer & Pretzels Gamer

If we’re back to talking business I’ll make what I think is the key point from a business perspective. GW has access to two of the most powerful tools in retail for demographic targeting- price discrimination & branding differentiation. With two decades plus of business analysis including extensive periods covering retail which involved getting to pick the brains of some of the best in the business I can tell you these are the things retailers seek after most because they have proven so effective in marketing. GW is clearly incredibly effective at targeting different demographics using branding via 40k, AoS, Necromunda, BloodBowl, Underworlds, Kill Team, War Cry and various one offs such as Blackstone Fortress or Cursed City. GW is equally effective at offering products across a wide variety of prices from a $15 Savage Big Boss or Necromancer to a $5,000+ Titan. Finally, GW is also skilled at using the intersection of pricing and branding to target products demographically. In comparison to price discrimination paired with branding differentiation, targeting demographics via WS or rules is orders of magnitude less potent and its impact marginal at best.

One of my favorite movies growing up was “The Dirty Dozen”, especially the war games scene where they capture the General who has been harassing them by “breaking all the rules”. Interestingly this was actually based on a real event during WW2 when an intelligence officer used some local irregulars to completely disrupt some planned war games in Puerto Rico. History is actually full of examples of these broken war games where a creative individual or team finds a new approach that completely disrupts the plans & thinking of the higher ups who set up the game. Too often those higher ups don’t learn from this but simply reset the game prohibiting the disruptive actions (only to have to learn the hard way on actual battlefields these same lessons). I’m trying to thread a very fine needle here by specifically referencing war games since bringing up actual historical references seems to really anger some players. The point is that even when the stakes are much, much higher than we will ever see on the table top designing the rules and learning the right thing is incredibly hard. I think we lean into arguments of either incompetence or intentional malfeasance way too quickly ignoring again that no war game is fought in Lake Wobegon, where all the factions are strong, all the models good looking and all the war scrolls are above average…

Want to give a shout out to the other members of Zoom League. I’m very rarely at a loss for words but last night in the middle of the game I was playing another member entered the stream and gave me the cryptic instructions “look inside your closet”. Instead of it being the start of a horror movie or a weird gag I found myself staring at a NIB Archaon. The other members had gotten together to get it for me and then one had driven over, given it to my wife to hide in the room above the garage where the table is set up to allow us to play games over Zoom. I was truly flabbergasted. I’ve done Zoom League for love of the game and how it brings friends together. Won’t deny it is a lot of work setting up two games and week and moving all the pieces, even in games I’m not actually playing. But I had considered it well worth it. Their expression of gratitude though was amazing. So grateful to them for this and a quarantine that saw me playing more AoS than ever. Now to figuring out how to add Archaon to Tzeentch and Khorne!

If there is a 10.1 gotta guess there’s a 10.2 and, dare we hope, a 10.3? Maybe those will have terrain etc.

I think we do both agree that there are good and bad units as well as that too many are quick to point to the bad as evidence of incompetence. Agree we disagree on the intent behind good and bad units. As regards the rules themselves I am actually happy that Lake Wobegon (where all the factions are strong, all the models are good looking, and all the war scrolls are above average) is NOT one of the Mortal Realms (guessing it would be tucked in somewhere between Hysh and Ghyran?). I get a lot of pleasure riding up and down the unit and faction quality curves. The positive for me is that I think this spectrum is a feature of a complex dynamic system, not a bug. At the same time I recognize how easily this could spin out of control until the whole system breaks down. Happily for me it does seem there are enough competent mechanics working at GW burning the midnight oil to keep this from happening.

GW can be competent or incompetent when writing rules without it having anything to do with whether they use specific war scroll rules for sales. As @NinthMusketeer has already pointed out GW is actually pretty darn competent. AoS and 40k are massively multivariate though even the most competent writers will have hits and misses. Even the most competent writers on a deadline will have hits and misses. Combine massively multivariate with deadlines and you’ll certainly have hits and misses. To me at least, that is a simpler explanation than GW intentionally sacrificing some units (paying a high price in inventory costs as a result) to artificially boost others.

Yeah, I 100% agree there’s a correlation between the value of a WS (which includes points) and sales. The out of stocks an argument against intent as if you were intentionally trying to drive say, Deathshroud Terminators you would’ve built up more inventory before the tome to avoid the out of stock.

I’ve read the article (a few times, because it is interesting) but again Timmy is explicitly described as blind buying. He gets a pack that he doesn’t know what is in and is excited to find a rare power card. Left unsaid is what happens when he doesn’t find that rare card. False scarcity is an explicit part of MtG’s business model. They could print as many power cards as they want and make sure almost every pack has one but they don’t so people will buy more packs in hope of finding one. While there are certain limited sets there is zero false scarcity or uncertainty involved in a GW single unit purchase. Want Kragnos/Archaon/Nagash/Texkis/Kroak/etc. you don’t have to but a bunch of boxes and hope. You just buy them. Again, I fully believe GW analyzes sales figures and absolutely it influences the big stuff like which armies get new models etc. I am just skeptical that it is a major influence on individual WS. I think that in the end is where we differ. GW invested a lot of money designing, marketing and producing Kragnos. I doubt they intentionally sacrificed him to sell more Kroak.

It has been literally decades since I played MtG but isn’t the biggest difference that MtG you have to buy the card packs with some uncertainty re:what you’re going to get in the primary market? (Understand there’s a secondary market but WotC doesn’t directly benefit from that to my understanding.). Even setting aside the huge price differential in a retail priced pack of MtG cards and say, Kragnos, that’s a very different business model. But again, has been 20+ years since I checked in on MtG so maybe I’m missing something…

It’s a correlation vs causation question. Certainly rules influence sales. This does not have to mean that GW is intentionally writing rules to specifically drive sales. To use a simple example I just do not believe that somebody in inventory management called up the rules writers when they were doing StD and said, “hey, we’ve got a lot of Marauders boxes down here. Can you tune up their WS so we can clear them out?” Completely agree that GW has sales analysts. But also know that the lags are simply huge here re: the level of fine tuning sometimes suggested in these threads.

With Zoom League we’ve accidentally been playing close to this with a 48”x58” set up. The points increase to reduce models would be a variation on our general tendency to play elites but what I am more curious about is whether there will be a change in objective control zone (I.e. down to 3” vs current 6”, feel this almost destined since I went out and got the 6” templates…) or more particularly in the deployment zones? Smaller table size definitely made it a lot easier to screen off board edge ambushes, even with smaller unit sizes.

This is probably the one thing in switching from historical to AoS that I just can’t “get over” in sense of immersion breaking, whether it is shoot while in combat, shoot into a combat where other units in your army are engaged without penalty, or the whole “god funnel” where 30 archers can target a single Hero somehow…. Add in the non-sensible terrain issues and pretty much I just have to get through the Shooting Phase with brain logic turned off. Lots o& potential solutions but the area of new rules I’ll read first.

My first child’s pre-k teacher was very confused when she showed her a picture of a goose and she called it a daemon spawn like I always have 😂 but now I really want a Terrorgoose for my FEC

As a former LoA player would love to see the return of the Chaos Dwarfs. A good example of where I thought soup could’ve saved something I love as Execution Herd could’ve easily slotted into BoC while the Duardin went to StD. Looks like later could happen but a fear my Execution Herd has made their last charge

And it is the concept that soup has to mean lack of support that I’m trying to push back on because I have seen soup as a potential way to give players more flexibility in how they play and thus increasing the probability that they will get support, both in the form of new models and updates of existing. It’s an interesting needle to thread. Soulblight (if that is considered an update of LoN soup) did all three things. They squatted some old models. They updated some old models. They introduced some new models. Mawtribes so far updated the Tyrant and side-updated the Icebrow Hunter. Warclans has so far leaned in the new model direction. In the later cases though it may just be a matter of time before we see more of the rest. I’m less familiar with 40k but the majority of SM models for sale are still non-Primaris and when, for example, I read Goonhammer’s meta analysis it is rare to find a SM list that is more than 50% Primaris. (Maybe they’re over represented on the lower tables?). My GW store manager actively discouraged me from trying to build an all Primaris SM army if I wanted to be competitive. But yes, I think this is where this thread ends up struggling us that a lot of anti-soup seems to include that negative connotation of lack of support in its very definition. If your definition is inherently negative of course those in favor are going to sound… irrational at best. Who can be pro-negative after all? Yet my experience of soup and the majority examples I’ve seen so far, whether in AoS or 40k, are positive. So my basic definition of soup is more mechanical and neutral in form and from there I look and see what I gained or lost. With lots of experience with Mawtribes I feel very comfortable saying it was a net gain.

I can’t find it right now but this seems to be a long tradition for GW where point disparities between the two side are common. That said who knows what points logic is coming?

This. exactly my worry unless somehow points, tighter coherency size, etc. somehow compact the space taken up by models in 3e

With Kragnos in destruction I highly doubt the Execution Herd would come back with the Furnace Kings, so my excitement partially diminished. Ghur also just feels like a weird place to introduce them.

I’m happy to keep evolving the discussion as to whether soup makes you more or less competitive and whether we want to define that at the holistic level or piece by piece. But again, look at the space marine precedent re:existing models. We get Primaris than 9e and Primaris starts absolutely dominating lists? No. Sure you see some Primaris like Eradicators or Bladeguard shine. But you also see older models like attack bikes and vanguard vets come through as excellent. And given all the different factions you really do see a diverse mix of units when you start looking across lists whether you’re talking new vs old or any other category. Fully agree that SCE didn’t need new models just like SM didn’t need new models. But if I want a better SCE tome that makes more units viable SM/Indomitus/Primaris/9e precedent suggests that just maybe I get it from SCE/Dominion/3e new models. Could SCE tome flop? Of course. But I can’t look at Indomitus & Primaris in 9e and say it made legacy SM worse across the board.

I think the tough part is we’re really talking three different parts of GW. The people making the decisions that keep the lights on and the factories running, the people making the models and the people writing the rules. The most common points of intersection between these three groups are decisions on new editions, new battletomes and new models. Even at the prices they charge my guess is rule sets and tomes are a break even equation, and that overtime. If you understand business break even drives you bankrupt because it doesn’t include all the overhead and other items that are a reality for businesses and ignores the timing if cash flows. GW has to invest a lot of money upfront long before we plunk down our preorders. So it is unrealistic to expect a new edition without new models to drive sales to cover those costs. Similarly we know that the most likely catalyst for a new tome is new models. So if we want GW to prioritize fixing issues in battletomes (or supplements like BR or WD) we have to accept that these investments in time and money are largely paid for via new models. Put another way the rules writing team is massively subsidized by the models team. Which isn’t to say they shouldn’t bolster the rules writing teams. I think they clearly have. It really is showing in 9e 40k so I am hopeful for 3e AoS. That said I recognize how long a cycle it really is. The most consistent figure I here is GW operates on a three year cycle. GW has almost doubled in the last three years. Yet it would’ve been foolish for GW to have budgeted as if they’d achieve the growth they’ve achieved. As growth has exceeded budget forecasts I am not surprised GW remains a bit behind the curve hiring wise. As I do expect a slowdown in 2022/23 fiscal year given all the demand pull forward from COVID, 9e, and 3e I am guessing that is when we’ll start to see them catch up.

Been running a Beasts of Khorne Brass Despoilers list and looking at ways to run it as actual BoC. It brought up the general worry that with a smaller board any board edge based ambush going to be easier and easier to screen off. Fewer units may be an offset but looking at BoC or even FEC summoning this seems to be a potential snag.

What I am trying to do is address multiple different parts of the soup argument. One point that has regularly been raised is that soup tomes don’t get new models support. I think that one can pretty clearly be set aside at this point as many people have highlighted that soup is not a determinative factor in support. Now that the one soup people cited as having gotten nothing in the new models category when souped has been about doubled in size hopefully we can move past that. I’m actually fine with you labeling that a forest argument but I’m also happy to talk trees because your specific concern is whether or not there will be specific sub-categories of models within the soup and that is a narrower part. I understand there is a lot of debate as regards to how to count them but I would note that both sides of Warclans have now gotten Underworlds models. I regularly face Ironskulz Boyz on the table so here they are actually played. And I fully expect to see more IJ and BS coming in 3.0 particularly BECAUSE the Orruk soup is now a bigger part of the game and the narrative. If you don’t want to count the two new sets of IJ models and one set of BS models Warclans has gotten because you don’t count the warbands (either because they don’t have good rules or are a tax on your drops) I’m not going to argue with you because that’s personal preference/subjective. But our personal preferences don’t change the reality that those warbands were made. So whether you want to talk about the Warclans forest double in size or the number of IJ or BS trees increasing it is clear both have happened. And I think the same would be true in a combined dwarf forest too. More absolute trees, as well as more KO trees and more Fyreslayers trees. That’s what the precedents seem to show.

GW was explicit in saying these new models will be playable in Orruk Warclans, a frequently referenced soup tome in this thread because it didn’t get any new models when it was souped. As far as I can tell the number if models in the Orruk Soup that is Big Waaagh!!! Just about doubled with that announcement. And if we’re able to look past our AoS corner at other precedents to see if GW tends to support soup with new models we can easily see that GW’s single biggest moneymaker is the ultimate soup called Space Marines. Again, I just don’t see much evidence no matter where I look that soup in GW means neglect model wise.

What gives me some hope is that these are, in one way or another, expansions of existing factions (SCE and Orruk Warclans). 40k hasn’t stopped releasing new models. In direct comparison Space Marines got a ton of new Primaris models and 40k Orks are going to get Beast Snaggas. But in each case GW is building on what already exists so while we’ll have to wait and see for Beast Snaggas, Primaris didn’t fundamentally change 40k’s design philosophy and 8e nor was Primaris the prime driver of 9e design philosophy updates.

Here’s hoping new Troggoth can at least be ally. But in looking over these new units thought of a new unit of Troggoths I want for Dankhold. Trogs with giant frog like bellies and mouths using giant blow dart blowguns that are actually just hollow logs and the darts just primitive spears. Skinks ain’t got nothing on that!