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Post by ghostwalker on Jan 3, 2014 10:13:15 GMT
I have seen a lot of chatter around various sites of late, mentioning the release of 9th ed fantasy.
Now a new edition is always met with trepidation.
But some of the rumours are frankly a lot more worrying.
Initially everyone thought the new edition was pencilled in for this summer, but later rumours have it being pushed back a year to allow for a new ed of 40k.
The worrying aspect though comes from some of the usual sources.
Early edition talks actually bent around GW shelving WFB completelty. It makes up a fraction of GW's profits and we know how the bean counters are.
That plan seems to have been put to one side in favour of a complete reboot of the game. God only knows where that could lead to!.
Another more worrying rumour is the canning or combining of the less popular army books. Which in itself explains the lack of updates for some armies for such a long time.
Those are only the tip of what seems to be a large iceberg looming up.
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The Irontooth
Bloodclaw
Tale of Gamers: 3 units, 4 pieces of terrain
Posts: 387
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Post by The Irontooth on Jan 3, 2014 10:30:43 GMT
I heard 9thE is going to be released at the start of this summer (like 6thE 40k was 1.5 years ago).
And Dwarfs will get a new armybook begin this year.
...
I guess we'll see, but remember the leaked 40k rulebook 2 years ago in january/february. The rulebook GW released a couple of months later was nothing like it.
You will definitely be able to use your models one way or another. Worse case, you keep playing 8th or use them with Mantic rules. ;-)
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Post by Geifer on Jan 3, 2014 18:32:11 GMT
Yeah, current rumors are good for panicking and nothing else. I wouldn't bother taking them seriously, at least not the conclusions that are drawn.
Is 40k more popular (which translated to more slaes) than Fantasy? Yeah, I think it's safe to say it is.
Are less popular armies less popular? Guess so.
But the conclusions? Really? Fantasy still sells. Even if it's only a quarter of all the money GW makes, it's still a sizeable amount. More than GW would simply let go. Weigh cost cutting, that is not devoting any resources to Fantasy, against sales. Do you really think Fantasy is causing GW a loss? The profit margin on Fantasy sprues is never going to be as high as that of Space Marines. That's a given. GW hit the jackpot with Marines. To think they are the measure by which all other products are, umm, measured, is silly. People talk like the idiots at GW don't know a thing about business, and if you know about such things you can say with certainty that they don't get everything right, because that would require foreknowledge that no one possesses, but we are talking about professionals who studied economy. They'll be pretty knowledgable and they'll see that Marines are a one off thing that they can't repeat, and that they exist in a context. If the assumption is that a muscular dude with heavy armor and a big gun who knows no fear is the perfect teenage dream, you'll have to acknowledge that such a dream is not complete without mosnters to shoot and not be afraid of. 40k needs the other armies so Marines have something to shoot up.
I think we can agree this is the case. It then stands to reason that those bean counters that are in control can see beyond the profit margin of their best model line, at least to the extent how the existence of other 40k armies strengthens sales of that line. If we assume they are competent enough to see this, they must also be competent enough to see that their other game helps their best selling game by addressing people not into sci-fi. Its existence also adds diversity to the product line, allowing GW to retain customers that might grow bored of the sci-fi offering to still stay with a GW game and miniatures, which includes the potential of winning them back to the more profitable lines.
This is a lot to give up. A profitable game makes them money, and to drop it completely would require them to have confidence in whatever they then pour their resources into to make them more money than Fantasy did. Not break even or make a profit at all, but actually grow their profit. I believe this might also be a question of how much confidence shareholders have in the health of the company that drops a profitable product. While shareholders are the bane of us gamers, their interest is generally in the continued health of the company they invested in, so we shouldn't simply assume that GW will drop the game to make more money when it might not actually make sense.
While you might want to be cautious toward the end of an edition's lifespan, I think fearing for the whole game is unwarranted at this time.
As for changes within the game, some editions bring little new, some bring bug upheavals. That's just the way it is, and there's really no way to tell. GW sure doesn't feel like telling us. 8th ed might continue until 2015 as some rumors say, and you can get lots of table time for an army you start now. Or it'll follow the cycle we've become accustomed to and comes this summer, and you mightjust have finished your new army in time to find out that the new edition favors different troop types. They're really only one thing you can do if you are worried about the future: hold off on buying anything and keep yourself busy with stuff you have. Because GW doesn't want us to know the future, and this is the only reasonable answer to that.
There are, however, things that we can say with some certainty.
First, if a model exists, preferably a newer plastic kit, you are future proof. GW is not going to drop Gors from Beastmen. They are not going to drop the big moo cows from the list and they are not going to drop the even bigger moo cow from the list. GW has no habit of invalidating models by and large. A (special) character might get dropped here and there (which doesn't necessarily invalidate the model itself), or a unit may no longer fulfill a purpose in the army and gets removed (again, not necessarily invalidating the model you bought) - think of Sergeant Naaman here, for example: Dark Angels don't have the character anymore, but it is still an appropriate model for a Scout Sergeant - but if a new edition rolls around, you will still be able to use the models you have for the army they were meant to be used in. I'm going to drop a random number here and say 90% of your army will not be invalidated in any way.
Second, we know the direction in which GW is moving with regard to casting material. Which is to say that with the amount it costs to make plastic sprues, the newer a plastic kit is, the safer it is from getting dropped. GW wants a return on their investment, and the longer a product is around, the more profit it will make because plastic kits have a huge initial investment and after that only storage costs. So if you are interested in something but don't know what the future brings, you can be pretty sure that a fairly new plastic kit stays around.
Third, GW writes rules to include the options found on plastic sprues, generally speaking. If you buy a new Tactical Squad and build a Marine with a grav gun, you can be pretty sure that four years from now when the next Marine codex rolls around, Tactical Squads will still have access to a special weapon Marine with a grav gun. If you buy a box of Dark Elf Warriors, no matter how their next rules incarnation may turn out, you will be able to use them regardless of whether you assembled them with swords, spears or crossbows.
People like to trash GW for the decisions they make, and GW certainly deserves a lot of it, but there is consistency in their work and money invested in models is generally not money wasted after the next edition comes out. Little caveats apply here and there, like how an army has more for potential for invalidation the wilder and more exotic it is.
Armies getting removed? Helllooooo Squats! That was fifteen years ago, and you could see it coming for another four or five years before that.. After that we saw the rise and fall of Chapter Approved armies that might have gotten you into specialist forces whose models cannot be use in such quantities in their mother armies once these Chapter Approved lists went away. In Fantasy there's Dogs of War. Yeah, it's not unreasonable to think that an unpopular army is not entirely safe from squatting even though GW said they wouldn't do it anymore. But just because it's possible doesn't make it likely. Who would they drop? Beatsmen? Too much new plastic. They're not going anywhere. Bretonnians and Wood Elves? You can sell knights, you can sell elves. These are niche armies because of neglect, not because customers don't accept them.
The lesser variant of squatting that the rumors suggest? Combining lesser armies? How is that even going to work? Thematically putting together armies to save army books, which people seem to think will be happening in some way - what does that actually change? Say you have Brettonians, Wood Elves and Beastmen (because they are those unpopular armies and just happen to fight over a common stretch of forest in the background). The army lists will be the same. GW has the models and wants to sell them. The armies need to share a realease, so they also share new kits and units. First, is that bad? How long can GW add two or three new units per army before the army becomes bloated? It is anticipated that once all armies got their 8th ed update, the next stage in GW's devious plan is to revist old, ugly kits and replace them with new ones. Going easy on new additions fits this approach well enough. Redoing fewer old units per army, then? Yeah, that might happen. What else is new? I could have bought the same skeletons that populate Tomb King armies twenty years ago (minus the Egyptian upgrade sprue). No change here. What about the background? That might be less. Or the book might be bigger and there is no objective loss. Who can tell.
Or what if all human armies get tossed together to save space. Do you really need Empire Swordsmen and Brettonian Men at Arms? Yes, their stats are a bit different now, making this a bit unfit as and example, but you get the point. A human with a sword is a human with a sword. May as well save space and not let Mat Ward's imagination run wild with abysmal names for the sake of having them. And an armored dude is an armored dude, and if he'd riding a horse, all the better. Doesn't matter if he rubs Karl Franz's back as a personal favor or looks for silverware some chick swimming in a lake told him about. Where is the loss?
What you might be more interested in asking is how combined books would be themed. GW is not, and I am going to use a laughable way of saying it, selling you an inferior product for big money. I know, but think about it. Throw Chaos together. Three armies of Chaos down. Throw elves together. Elven races taken care of. Bretonnia, Empire and Dwarves? Defenders of the Old World. Easy enough? So what happens to Ogre Kingdoms, Orcs and Goblins, Tomb Kings, Vampire Counts and Lizardmen? The other guys? The good, the bad, the ugly, the fat and the emos? GW will want to throw together armies with a theme. The question is, do they they all fit in somehow? Also, GW will not likely make a single three for the rice of one army book. Either all armies get thrown in with another one, or they are all individual. They are in the market of selling a prestigious high price product. They want to maintain that image, and that doesn't work if all army books cost the same but include different numbers of army lists, or if the price is set per army list, which makes the the single list army books look cheap.
I'm not seeing it. Not that this might not happen. 6th ed Fantasy and 3rd ed 40k wiped the slate clean and relied on get you by army lists that came with the main rulebook. I can see that happening again if the changes to the core rules warrant it. I can see big changes. I can see a reworking of the rules system from the ground up. But I don't see where all the doom and gloom is coming from. You'll still be able to use your model collection, you'll still be able to play games, you'll still be able to have fun with the mixture of models, rules and background. And like now you'll be able to resort to an older edition if you and the people you play with think this is the way to go. For me it seems like business as usual. Simply lots of fearmongering, because it's GW and the future looks grim. Forever.
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The Irontooth
Bloodclaw
Tale of Gamers: 3 units, 4 pieces of terrain
Posts: 387
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Post by The Irontooth on Jan 3, 2014 19:08:13 GMT
I can't believe I read that entire post of Geifer.  But is was worth it.  |
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Post by Geifer on Jan 5, 2014 9:34:51 GMT
I had to be brief because of time constraints. |
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Post by badfang on Jan 5, 2014 14:12:34 GMT
I had to be brief because of time constraints. Thank Gawd for that! Can't help wondering why the moulds are so expensive though. Sure, making steel moulds by CNC cutting or spark erosion ain't cheap, but what's the problem with using ceramic moulds? The Shaw process gives low cost re-usable ceramic moulds that are suitable for casting steel to a tolerance of 1/4 mill, I'd be very surprised if they couldn't handle polystyrene to a tighter tolerance, and if they used vacuum casting methods even failcast ought to work. As for not invalidating 90% of your army - I'm still spitting feathers over my 3rd ed 'evvy armoured burna boyz  |
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Post by Farseer Kyladras on Jan 5, 2014 14:27:17 GMT
So if there's a new FB coming out is it even worth me trying to learn the current rules (which I've had since they first came out but never took the time to read!)?
FK
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The Irontooth
Bloodclaw
Tale of Gamers: 3 units, 4 pieces of terrain
Posts: 387
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Post by The Irontooth on Jan 5, 2014 14:55:41 GMT
So if there's a new FB coming out is it even worth me trying to learn the current rules (which I've had since they first came out but never took the time to read!)? FK If it gets released July 2014 maybe not. Depends on how many games you think you may play before July. If none, maybe just wait and start with the new rules so you don't mix old and new rules. If 5 or more, sure, the core of the rules won't change and now you can at least play these games. But what if it gets only released 2015? In that case I would definitely learn the rules. Because waiting another 1.5 years may be a bit long. |
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Post by Geifer on Jan 5, 2014 16:07:34 GMT
 Can't help wondering why the moulds are so expensive though. Sure, making steel moulds by CNC cutting or spark erosion ain't cheap, but what's the problem with using ceramic moulds? The Shaw process gives low cost re-usable ceramic moulds that are suitable for casting steel to a tolerance of 1/4 mill, I'd be very surprised if they couldn't handle polystyrene to a tighter tolerance, and if they used vacuum casting methods even failcast ought to work. The figure I kept reading was that making mold costs upwards of 100,000 GBP per. Because it's a durable steel mold, the process is expensive. I'm no expert on such things, so I have to rely on other people's expertise, but I know someone who works with molds for plastic sprues, and he said such that figure is realistic. Beyond that I can't give you an answer. As for not invalidating 90% of your army - I'm still spitting feathers over my 3rd ed 'evvy armoured burna boyz Teach you compose your army of more than 10% Burna Boys. So if there's a new FB coming out is it even worth me trying to learn the current rules (which I've had since they first came out but never took the time to read!)? FK If it gets released July 2014 maybe not. Depends on how many games you think you may play before July. If none, maybe just wait and start with the new rules so you don't mix old and new rules. If 5 or more, sure, the core of the rules won't change and now you can at least play these games. But what if it gets only released 2015? In that case I would definitely learn the rules. Because waiting another 1.5 years may be a bit long. Yes, that's the big unknown and what I talked about above. We can't be sure, and the difference between playing for a six months and eighteen months is quite big. In my opinion learning the rules is not a waste of time, though. The system isn't fundamentally different than 40k, which means that if you come from 40k you already have a headstart. You'll need to learn a bit or two for each phase of the game (maneuvers, power dice generation, to hit modifiers, combat resolution), but I don't think you will need tons of time to wrap your head around these things. Especially if you have experienced players to play against who can help you. We introduced a couple of new players to Fantasy at my local store, all with some 40k experience, and they picked the rules up quite well and are reasonably competent with their armies after only two months. Ultimately it is how the Irontooth formely known as Brynjolf says. If you intend to play the game, learn the rules. You lose nothing by doing so.
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Post by Farseer Kyladras on Jan 5, 2014 18:37:30 GMT
I probably won't get that many games in, currently I only get time to game once a month on club night and that is usually taken up with 40k. I think I will just concentrate on building/ painting my Skaven army up and wait for next edition of rules before I start playing.
FK
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Post by haywiregrenade on Apr 22, 2014 11:53:40 GMT
Looks like WoodElves are getting a reboot and Bretonians shortly after from the rumourmongering out there in the inter webs right now
The issue with WHFB right now is the unit size and cost to play being highly prohibitive.
You need massed blocks of core troops. You only typically get 10-12 in a box, and you need 4-5 boxes for one block. Multiply by 2 for core troops, add in some rare, a beefy character and some artillery and its double what you would spend in a similar points game of 40k.
I think thats whats caused the collapse of the player base of WHFB in my opinion.
WE have had a reboot of interest in my store of late with a slow grow thats going great...
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The Irontooth
Bloodclaw
Tale of Gamers: 3 units, 4 pieces of terrain
Posts: 387
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Post by The Irontooth on Apr 22, 2014 19:56:44 GMT
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Apr 23, 2014 9:13:57 GMT
Why is that Treeman blue? that looks rubbish!
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Post by Lord Draconiroth on Apr 23, 2014 9:20:47 GMT
Although some of the other pics floating around look cool, might have to pic up this weekend's WD and maybe even the Army book. I've been really enjoying my fantasy battles and I've wanted a Wood Elves army for ages, but they needed to be updated (along with Bretonnians).
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The Irontooth
Bloodclaw
Tale of Gamers: 3 units, 4 pieces of terrain
Posts: 387
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Post by The Irontooth on Apr 23, 2014 9:22:42 GMT
Why is that Treeman blue? that looks rubbish! Because Treemen are actually Tree Spirits? I actually like it. I like it when Fantasy is painted "Fantasy".  But that's the best thing about this hobby, every one can decide how to paint its own models. Can you imagine we all would have to paint our marines ultramarine blue? |
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But that's the best thing about this hobby, every one can decide how to paint its own models. Can you imagine we all would have to paint our marines ultramarine blue?