I'm pretty sure that there is some kind of big announcement coming this week.

My money would be on a surprise announcement AND release of Enemies Without .

Here's why:

1) GenCon starts July 30th.

Historically, FFG have always had a pretty big showing and have made some pretty major announcements regarding their RPG lines. Dark Heresy 2nd Ed. and the GM Kit both had surprise releases at GenCon last year (Note: Although previously announced, they didn't have any release dates. GenCon was a surprise-ish). Forgotten Gods was announced last year at GenCon as well in FFG's In-Flight Report.

2) Tim Huckelbery is going.

You wouldn't spend money on flights, lodging, and food to send your 40k RPG line producer to GenCon unless you needed to. As far as I know, Tim's only real focus right now is on 40k products, so it would only make sense to have him there if he was actually promoting a new product.

3) There hasn't been any kind of Dark Heresy announcement for a while.

FFG's pattern in RPG releases is pretty consistent in having 3 months between books.

Forgotten Gods came out 3 months after the Core Rulebook. Enemies Within was originally targeted for 3 months after that but came out a little later in April. That means that Enemies Within is now almost 4 months old. No new Dark Heresy announcements have happened in that time. There was a news post about the App in June, but the App actually popped up on the forums in May.

Why am I thinking it's a surprise announcement AND release? Any new book usually takes around 3-6 months after being announced to hit the shelves. If it is only an announcement, we would be going roughly 7-9 month between supplements - which feels a little long. This is especially long if you consider that no other 40k RPGs are getting releases currently. Dark Heresy and Enemies Within are still near the top of DriveThruRPG's charts and it would make sense for FFG to make a splash at GenCon to boost the line further.

4) There is a "big" update coming for the Character Sheet App

According to the app team:

"We are already working on the next content update. I should not tell you this, because it is top secret, but I just have to! This is really exciting because we … SHHHH.. to … XSCS*J@ … huge upd..KRRRR… Inquisiton… RKRKRKR… BLOG: 26-07-15… SXRCCRR… … … … … END OF TRANSMISSION"

A really exciting huge update? If it was just UI improvements or new features, they wouldn't be a secret. Sounds like they're adding a ton of NEW content. You wouldn't add new accessible content unless a book was out to support it.

They also reference a blog post for today ( http://blog.dizelabs.com/ ). It's an image with more pieces coming in the "next few days" - ie. GenCon.

So yeah, let's speculate.

Genestealer Cults? Sanctioned Xenos? What else?

Genestealer Cults?

Around 5 or so years ago I was informed by a reliable source that GW had officially 'Squatted' Genestealer Cults and that they were to no longer be written about in any licensed product. That said... that was half a decade ago, GW has been known to change to flip-flop on these kinds of things, and I believe that some key individuals have come and gone since then. So, I suppose it's possible.

Genestealer Cults?

Around 5 or so years ago I was informed by a reliable source that GW had officially 'Squatted' Genestealer Cults and that they were to no longer be written about in any licensed product. That said... that was half a decade ago, GW has been known to change to flip-flop on these kinds of things, and I believe that some key individuals have come and gone since then. So, I suppose it's possible.

Totally spoilers, but a Genestealer cult is featured pretty heavily in

in 2013. Probably some of the best 40k fiction that I've read to date.

Agreed. "Religious cult" genestealers in limos don't need to be a thing but 'genestealers infest and manipulate a society' has been a consistant thing in many black library novels and FFG adventures (hell, it was the Deathwatch release mission, Oblivion's Edge ).

I would not be surprised to see genestealers feature, but at the same time, the big 'xenos' things featured in DH2 to date are the Eldar - who are 'tolerated enough' that they do interact with humans in Askellon without being shot on sight; Anzaforr, a rogue trader, manages to be a respected member of society (ish) despite having a ranger tagalong - and the cold trade. Xenotech is a big thing in DH/DH2 as it shows off alien influences without having obvious aliens wandering around 'on screen'.

It wouldn't surprise me to have rogue traders be a thing - one thing that will probably determine if FFG aims to do a Rogue trader 2nd edition or wants to bring everything under the one 'house' of DH2 is if there's a Rogue Trader Elite Advance in Enemies Withoutin the place of the Adepta Sororitas elite advance. If so, it'd be nice to have some space combat stuff, but how that'd be done is anyone's guess - the current version is very clunky.

In an extreme case, you might even see a wider selection of Astartes-calibre weaponry to allow you to tool up Deathwatch Reinforcements and you've almost got a mini Deathwatch 2nd Edition, and some 'combat mission/covert combat ops' tables and guidance to replace the investigation stuff (it would make sense as the Ordo Xenos is the organisation which acts like a special forces group rather than law enforcement far more than the other two ordos).

So I know what it is going to be.

At last we are going to have the 'The Ultimate Games Workshop Cash Grab' - Horus Heresy the RPG. Each book will be embossed with real imitation gold and 90% of the functional rules will only be available if you own an iPad.

Seriously though. Rogue Trader Second Edition all way. Bring it all under one roof.

Well, whatever the "huge update"/announcement is from the App team, it's definitely Dark Heresy related.

They just updated the image in the blog post that's referenced in their "censored" teaser.

I tweaked the levels on a few things to get a clearer picture and it's clearly the DH2 crest:

Either way, I guess we'll find out tomorrow at GenCon.

As long as it's actual content and not an update of a character sheet or something.

At last we are going to have the 'The Ultimate Games Workshop Cash Grab' - Horus Heresy the RPG. Each book will be embossed with real imitation gold and 90% of the functional rules will only be available if you own an iPad.

Also, it's going to be Limited Edition.

At last we are going to have the 'The Ultimate Games Workshop Cash Grab' - Horus Heresy the RPG. Each book will be embossed with real imitation gold and 90% of the functional rules will only be available if you own an iPad.

Also, it's going to be Limited Edition.

.....So do we know what it is yet?

According to The Grimdark Podcast, nothing new in regards to any 40k RPGs was announced or released today.

https://twitter.com/GrimDarkPodcast/status/626761805952602112

However, FFG's In-Flight Briefing is tomorrow at noon!

Furthermore, when I prodded the App team about their update being Enemies Without, here's what I got back:

Like the huge update for Enemies Without?

The first rule of the fight club is you do not talk about... no that was something else. You'll have to follow our blog at blog.dizelabs.com, we are publishing a new hint every few days

So tomorrow should be another reveal of their mystery image on http://blog.dizelabs.com/

There's still hope yet! Tomorrow should be exciting!

For those of you not familiar with FFG's practices at GenCon, they always save some announcements until part way through the show. They have a glass display wall on one side of their stand which has several blank spots where a sign indicates that a new product will be placed there after the In-Flight Presentation on Friday. At least one of those spots is with other role playing products.

I'll be interested in seeing what the DizeLabs announcement is, it looks very likely to be Dark Heresy related, but it's possible that the servitor skull device they are hinting at may become something FFG uses for the whole range as/if they update the other products. Note that the Inquisitorial =][= is not shown in the enhanced image. That's just idle speculation however.

Tim, it turns out, has done some writing for the Star Wars RPG, but so far today he's been pretty busy running Dark Heresy 2nd Edition demos.

That said, I would really love a Horus Heresy set RPG.

Something more Only War-esque, where the players are a squad from a single legion, would be fantastic; if you provide scenarios/campaigns to flesh out 'on the ground' some of the big name battles like Istvaan, Calth, Phall, Tallarn, etc, etc. If it were to be done in a format to match the HH rulebooks, and art books (like Macragge's Honour ) even better, because the HH photoshop artwork and prints are jawdropping sometimes.

It gives you the opportunity to do a Space Marine focused DH2 line without directly copying Deathwatch, and lets you add in more tweaks that would be needed - squad orders are nice, for example, but the squad/solo/cohesion/fear mechanics were a bit of a mess.

Well, the In-Fight Briefing has come and gone and nothing new announced for 40k RPGs or games at all....

Maybe they're saving something fun for tomorrow? Right?

They have a glass display wall on one side of their stand which has several blank spots where a sign indicates that a new product will be placed there after the In-Flight Presentation on Friday. At least one of those spots is with other role playing products.

Let us know if anything takes that spot. Nothing new RPG-wise was discussed during the Briefing, so who knows...

Well, the In-Fight Briefing has come and gone and nothing new announced for 40k RPGs or games at all....

Wow... I was expecting at least a mention. That's really depressing.

BYE

The space I was looking at ended up holding some additional Imperial Assault minis, on top of the new set that was released at the show.

There was a little mention of Warhammer during the Q&A - mainly about Age of Sigmar, but there wasn't going to be a lot of value asking about unmentioned products since Christian already said that he couldn't speak about unannounced products.

What we do know is that FFG still has the license from GW (evidenced by the release of The Great Devourer, and the upcoming release of Warhammer Quest). There was a brief discussion after the formal part of the event, but we'll mention that on our show. Walking out of there, I was disappointed that we didn't see anything, but I was left with certainty that there is still more to come.

but boy howdy we got 2 new star wars expansions! << heavy sarcasm

Crap

*sounds of crickets chirping*

A whole GenCon and nothing. I'm really surprised and saddened by that.

BYE

Who knows, maybe they wanted (or contractually needed) to give the spolight to their Star Wars projects or to keep their Warhammer announcements minimal in order to let GW focus on Age of Sigmar?

Grim Dark Podcast is still hopeful about the future and the App developers are still teasing something really big coming soon.

Maybe we'll get an announcement in the next week or so once the GenCon hype drops down. Fingers are still crossed for a surprise Enemies Without release.

No surprise here. SW is a bulging cash cow and 40k RPG is stagnant. Makes total sense they'd use all their time to promote their SW products. X-Wing is fun as hell everyone should play X-Wing.

unfortunately true*, it is still just disappointing that 5/8 of the news feeds on the front page are star wars related and not a peep for 40k at all. I would settle for a rough guideline of what they plan to do in the future.

*It can be argued that the reason the line is stagnate is partly to do with the fact that FFG has done almost nothing with it in so long.

Often I show up to check information about new products. What worries me that nothing new appears on the Warhammer 40k.

There is a large and loyal group of people. Maybe not all are active online but are looking forward to new books.

The transition from the Calixis to Askellon requires the support of new textbooks.

I very much hope that FFG will not give up WH40K for Star Wars.

Hi Thelesis, btw, does it requires a lot of effort to adapt Calixis BG to Askellon ?

Hello Devilredneck,

It's very simple. In fact I'am using lot of Calixis lore and influences in my game.

I just want to say that there is very little information on Askellon System and new textbooks are created more slowly than in the case of Star Wars.

I would be extremely glad to see handbook on lives of ordinary people. And although we all know that every world is different but some behavior is common.

So far, the best text on this subject is an article on page Drakka Drakka "Civilian Life in Warhammer 40,000 AD"

At least, GM is able to create his own worlds emerging from Pandemonium.

But this is not the topic of this conversation.