Greybeard86

No, it isn't necessarily a small sample size. If you have large differences you can detect them with "small" sample sizes. Usually that comment is just a smoke screen. Pretty much, they aren't stupid. I firmly believe imbalances make the game unfun for everyone, not only tournament players. Because you might not recognize them as easily as the knowledgeable tournament player, but they still affect your game. There is a reason why most games attempt to have balance. I think they are straight up getting out in the open the whole concept of "metas". Of course they know what they are doing, but since so many players seem OK with it, why not use it as a sales tool? Here, go buy the new meta thing, buy what is hot now!

More like GW's marketing department thinks that this is the right choice based the current playerbase in AoS. They have years of experience selling knights, do you think they just forgot that and turned dumb to sell SoB? Obviously SoB are very expensive, I guess they think AoS players have higher tolerance for overpriced centerpieces. Certainly, they release far more "large amazing" sculpts for AoS / fantasy than 40k.

That is precisely what GW wants to avoid. They have a pretty tight grip over what can be used and that is gold from a sales perspective. Most people believe that they won't be able to use 3rd party minis outside of their homes, and GW loves that. wysiwyg, base sizes, how tall models are, and a bunch of other things could easily be sorted with better rules but GW has zero incentives to favor it. People play along, some avid tourney players 3rd print like crazy, and some others buy second hand and what not. But overall things are were GW wants them.

I have a different interpretation. Balance in GW games matters a lot more because adjusting to a new meta is very costly. Knowing this, they should be extremely conservative with balance decisions. However, they most certainly aren't, with top tier armies and bottom tier switching completely in some cases (knights in 40k, DoK in AoS). When a video game like LoL or others shake up the meta, it may not necessarily be a bad thing. Having a pool of 150 options and rotating the good ones might not be "bad" if the goal is to have "seasons" of options that are good. It may actually be a design choice. In GW games a lot of people have "main factions" they like to collect and build up over the span of years. Switching around things is a crappy thing for all of them. And expensive! I do not think GW does a good job at balancing the rules, like at all; in competitive play we see massive changes over the span of months. I do believe it is by design, but it is strictly "bad" for many players.

This would be extremely good for players, but GW works very hard to stop it. And it has convinced a whole lot of people that it is for the best, in part because of their influence on key members of the community.

I think that AoS has been a lab for GW to test strategies. From "simplifying" the game, to release schedules. Many factions in AoS have very limited ranges, not just SoB. Personally, I believe this is a sales strategy. They think they can sell more models by having people starting new armies instead of buying a few extra units for an existing one. SoB may or may not be expanded going forward. Much like fyreslayers have a super limited range while we had release after release for sigmarines.

Oftentimes people think you need ginormous data sizes to make precise and unbiased inference, but you do not. From power calculations we know that the necessary sample size is related to the strength of the effect. In other words, if some armies are "very" dominant, we should be able to see it with "few" events. When I headed back to the fantasy side of the hobby I took a look at tournament lists and results. This is what I found: Meta armies heavily dominate top placements, and the meta has changed a lot in the last few years. Meta armies are very "spammy", with lists that often have a few heroes and a lot of some poorly internally balanced unit. I find this particularly problematic in AoS because it is not rare to see blocks of 20-40 models per unit, which IMHO leads to "boring looking" armies.

I do not think any of us are disagreeing, I simply suspect that @RuneBrush and @Sleboda , like myself, place more weight on the "hobby" than the gaming. As all of us have admitted, some people do care quite a bit about the "gaming". To them, the rules are very important and so they are very affected by the meta swings. Then, naturally, the rules are part of what GW uses to "create value" for their range and is part of the pricing decisions.

We could argue that the "political element" has always been part of GW games / universe, as it was in its foundation a sattire of certain political elements of the 80s But I do understand why you have that rule, and also appreciate how there's been no censoring of opinions in the thread, so I will bow to the wisdom of the mod hat.

It was political from the beginning. But you didn't realize because it no longer is treated as such. Little by little the old satirical foundation is replaced with the "cleaner" version; except that it is "cleaning" a fascist regime, so good luck with that Right. I am curious to see how that shapes up. It does look a bit more like "greek mythology" than the true representation of a "real" setting. Which, by the way, it is a huge change from warhammer fantasy. Pretty much. They are sugar coating something that cannot be sugar coated sensibly. But I do not know if most people in the hobby care much; there are some subreddits about marxist theory in 40k or what not where this is hotly debated, but I would say it is a minority talking there. Personally, I have stuck with the old paradigm and mostly ignore the new things.

You would have resented 80's GW then I would have preferred for GW to avoid attempting to justify the "imperium" and just stick to the "everything sucks" theme. Or at least have more diversity in the interpretations in black library (and other "lore producing" media), not this general line of "justifying" the regime. As long as they keep producing books about how a "xenpophobic militaristic regime under the direction of strong men" is the only hope for humanity, they will get some complaints from those who view it as endorsing a certain political banner. But generally speaking most GW costumers seem pretty unconcerned with these issues in the franchise, I would say. I am starting to read more about the AoS universe and it seems that here they stuck to a more traditional "good vs evil", right?

I think the thread is already doing cross-country, no worries (at least on my end). It is certainly easier in current times, IMO, to sell the story about "heroes" and "villains". I bet the market they were selling to in the 80s was pretty different and the "counterculture" approach was both closer to the original writers and the other "geeks". The problem is that their "sugar coating" of the empire, which is inherently an authoritarian xenophobic thing, is in line with the current political debates / issues far too much for its own good. "Culture" may attempt to distance itself from the rest of society (in the case of GW, they likely just care about selling and "good" vs "bad" sells more now) but it going to fail. If you write stories about "good" fascist regimes, you are contributing to a narrative whether you want it or not. "In bad times, we need strong men and xenophobia" is certainly one side of the political debate. Funny how it is radically opposed to the original spirit of 40k. Can I get a LoL?

But they will rarely bother Whenever I see discussions about the meta and imbalances there are often comments about how "it is mostly about the player" or "armies aren't unplayable"; but the truth is that those who play to win do switch to "meta" lists and armies, and that those "dominate" competitive events. IMO armies should be balanced because while it won't utterly dictate settings in casual play, it will make it more enjoyable for everyone involved. Then, internal balance is more fun because it leads you feel different compositions and get more use out of the sculpts in your collection.

Yes, but you see how you did reference that reading? Because this is modern GW canon: "The imperium is besieged from all fronts and needs strong men (yes, mostly men) and to be xenophobic because otherwise it would perish; also, kids respect fatherly figures because they are ultimately doing what's best for humanity (the emperor our savior)" It is not random that people, including yourself, read it this way; it is GW's doing via the "newer" publications. In the past, it was more like: "The imperium is a freaking fascist mess, xenophobic because of fanaticism, ignorance, and greed. It is lead by riot-police-like fanatic / hooligans who workship a megalomaniac old man rotting in a chair"

That's the modern reading and likely what triggers some people. See, when we are in desperate times we need strong figures and to care for our own only; sounds familiar? In old times the imperium was authoritarian and xenophobic because it was a freaking mess. It was a barely functioning imperium, extremely ineffective at almost everything (mentioned mostly in terms of vastness and inopperancy) and overly influenced by fanatical super soldiers in dehumanizing armor that followed blindly some rotting corpse on a chair. *Tried to be. I do think corporate GW has abandoned any ambition to make social commentary. The fact that they are "justifying" a xenophobic genocidal dictatorship as "necessary to survive" is more a matter of trying to create some "good guys" out of the 40k mess than anything, IMO.

The original premise of the the fluff around the game was that there were no "good" guys, and that everything was utterly ridiculous. Now, I read recent novels were marines were "buff bros with a heart" and the emperor a "benevolent but misunderstood father figure". To me, it is clear that the original setting was drinking from a form of counterculture to the things you mention (in England, in particular). The current setting is probably a combination of "fanzine" of those who took it "too seriously" but also don't really drink from current political events (like the old fluff guys did) and "marketing engineered" stuff.

Well, IMHO as an old player, I can see a new strategy towards having smaller armies in terms of the range of miniatures. It may very well be a "sales driven" scheme: It costs more money to start a new army than to build on an existing one (required units vs adding a new sculpt). Armies with small ranges lead to people collecting more armies: fewer opportunities to add a few extra models now and then, so the collection is complete "soon". If you play, buying 2-3 models won't allow you to use the "new minis" from another army effectively (most allies suck), so you end up buying the bulk of a new army. In the old times, most armies had several possible compositions that looked quite different (although, of course, metas were still a thing). Now you must go to a new army for that, you can't build on a "core" and simply change the rest a tad. Yes, it is something that has taken over 40k, leading to an explosion of "ad hoc" rules called "stratagems", aka "combo wombos". GW would love to turn the warhammer titles into MTG; seasonal minis are a dream come true for them.

It seems to me that competitive players do seem to think that there are big imbalances. If you check late events (e.g. LVO), the composition of participating armies swings very hard with the meta. And the winning composition too, so comp players seem to be getting it right. For me, besides army imbalances, the problem is internal balance issues. It gets really boring to paint / play / see armies spamming a few key units. Army composition for winning lists tends to be mind numbingly boring.

Exactly! GW understood, from early on, that what they build around the model is as important or more than the model itself at determining its value. if they can trick you into paying more for something because of a story they wrote about it, or some powerful rules, then they will. That’s how they manage such high profits, they are a hype train company. It is quite an achievement to sell you 6 giants at hundreds of dollars and for players to say it is “fair” because it is the cost of another army (one with dozens of miniatures). It is no longer mainly about he physical model, it is mostly about the hype (sure, model quality will matter but it is secondary for many). now, being the corporate behemoth that it is, owned by investment funds, GW milks this really hard.

Yes, rules won’t alter the physical model like dinner with a chaos god would. But that’s besides the point, which was that GW loves to play with the rules and that affects the “value” some people get from the model (those who play). From vastly changing the power levels of models (nerfs and buffs), to outright removing them from “official” play (yellow warhammer fantasy models). Rules are part of what GW uses, together with fluff, to sell you such pricey models. Because if you couldn’t use it in a Warhammer battle and it wasn’t whatever thing GW came up with (the super duper daemon or hero) you sure as heck wouldn’t pay as much for it.

Right, but that's you. The other poster explicitely told you he does care about the rules and the IG performance of the model. I can understand you and I often buy what I'd like to paint. But I also recognize that for some the IG performance matters a lot and that it is not unreasonable for them to take that into account. They are in the sense described above.

Here I will disagree. Quite frankly, the model has a value that includes the physical object, and GW's support, which also means rules. Now, the importance of either depends on how you use the model; but denying that for a significant fraction of the people rules matter is silly, IMO. Of course, GW uses the "fluff" and "rules" ALSO as a way to increase "value", as they are well aware of this. If I were a tourney player I would most likely 3d print or try to get the cheapest possible miniatures no matter what; or maybe I would just quite the game. The reason being the massive meta shifts we are constantly seeing. Pretty much. I would love to have an insight on how things changed at GW when they went public, and on the transition from small company of "geeks" to market dominating corporation.

I would say that the cost of molds is pretty irrelevant in itself, as what is important is the margin that GW has given their current scale and full cost accounting (which isn't only molds). Regardless of the high or low price of the mold, GW has a margin that is far above other industries (my post history can give you the relevant source). It is clear that they could sell more miniatures at a cheaper price, if they so chose, while still making profit. But they chose to sell at "high" prices because that results in a higher profit. It is textbook market power, and it is quite obviously bad for the consumers. Not only those who buy have a lower consumer surplus, but some that could possibly buy are outpriced and hence cannot participate in the market. This is the fundamental justification for anti-trust laws and generally speaking attempting to curtail monopolies and "excessive market power", since we know that this market power is "bad" for "overall" welfare This has nothing to do with turning GW into an NGO, or that companies should not attempt to "maximize profit". At this point, I cheer for Mantic and equivalent companies. Not because I may like their product better (in some regards I do, in others I do not), because it is clear that more competition can only help us. The more dominant GW becomes, the worse it will be for us.

See, the whole imperium is fascist bad won’t bother the so called woke (that empire is clearly evil to a ridiculous level). It is, I guess, some of the recent “lore” portraying the emperor as benevolent father doing what is necessary that seems more apologetic of the concept of the empire and fascism. If I had to guess that’s what bugs them. But I’m still catching up on the new stuff.

We have company level information about their margins, I just posted it. There is no need to speculate, they sell “expensive” for what it costs them to make it. That consumers would refuse to belief the abundant evidence regarding the market power driven “high” prices GW uses is baffling to me. Why attempt to deny the obvious? Maybe the product is still worth the money to you and you buy (I do too, sometimes), but the prices are far above “competitive” prices and that’s GW using its position of dominance.