40K is a horribly and unnecessarily bloated game, with random extras thrown in on a clear for-profit basis rather than with the intention of improving the game for the players.

It works well if you play it with someone you know, on the understanding that it is a casual game where you should both take balanced lists that don't include flyers, superheavies, unbound etc.. I wouldn't play it under any other circumstances.

What 40K needs, is a rule set where the primary focus is to make a good, clean game and let the profit come from people actually wanting to play the game because it's great, rather than the primary focus being how to maximise short term profit by changing rules to encourage purchases from WAAC gamers.

But that will never happen, because GW state that they are a model company. Their rules are an afterthought even by their own policy.

I still consider myself a 40K fanboy. But 7th was my breaking point for mainline.

I'm sorta the same way although I never made it past 5th.

There were just so many things that I found disillusioning about the game.

First if you played Space Marines, the units were nothing like the fluff. They were pretty standard units barely able to take on a green skin. Oh and if you wanted to be a shooting army, don't bother with them.

If you want to play marines, you have to make the core of your list Terminators with Land Raiders, some of the most expensive models in the game. In order to fulfil your 2 troop requirement, you take two teams of scouts.

If you actually have tactical marines, half the options in the codex require you to buy things like a Devastator squad, because most of the options aren't in the tactical box. Which means you've limited what options you have for the Devastator squad...

Then there's the rules... the whole "oh you won the die roll?, so now I'll sit here for the next 30 odd minutes while you move, shoot, assault and basically wipe out half my list before I can respond in anyway..."

But I still love the IP and the video games, and if I had time I'd buy a box of tactical marines and play kill team no question.

The (40k) Emperor nears death in the face of the X-Wing Heresy!

I always assumed there were some tenticles, eye stalks, or a pincer claw under Vader's cape.

Also for sprint 2015 it shows 40k on top still.

Yup the Spring 2015 list:

1 Warhammer 40k - Games Workshop

2 Star Wars X-Wing - Fantasy Flight Games

3 Star Wars - Armada Fantasy Flight Games

4 Warmachine - Privateer Press

5 Hordes - Privateer Press

For Attack Wing to climb back to the fifth spot is a surprise.

I've always longed for Space Marines to just be a super elite Imperial Guard unit so they could be as awesome as they're supposed to be. Age of Sigmar has a similar problem in my mind. I'm a huge sucker for anything with angel wings, but to make something look truly awesome, you kind of have to surround it with some simplicity. The Sigmar armies just lose their impact when they become a faceless horde like that.

Oh, and Emperor of Mankind; please die or get off the throne already. I'm going to stop there, before I start ranting about how much I hate the awesome fluff of the universe.

Does anyone else here watch "If the emperor had a text to speech device"?

Does anyone else here watch "If the emperor had a text to speech device"?

Yeah, that show is awesome ))

Loved it, except the 'Adorable Centurion was Rogal Dorn all the time' stuff

What 40K needs, is a rule set where the primary focus is to make a good, clean game and let the profit come from people actually wanting to play the game because it's great, rather than the primary focus being how to maximise short term profit by changing rules to encourage purchases from WAAC gamers.

But that will never happen, because GW state that they are a model company. Their rules are an afterthought even by their own policy.

I firmly believe that GW began selling us the lie that they're only a model company when they realised they didn't have a clue how to make a clear and consistent rule-set for their games. If the statement were actually true they wouldn't publish any rules at all. If the statement were only partly true they would publish their crappy rules for free, either as a stand alone pdf, or as individual updates supplied with each box of toys.

However, each successive edition of the rules has been deliberately (and cynically) engineered to encourage players to need more models, bigger models, and extra rules in the form of expensive codices and data slates.

The company policy is clearly to produce a game that encourages you to buy more and more of their expensive models, but also to have to continually buy more and more of their perpetually updated rules.

And this is inevitable under the capitalist doctrine of infinite growth, because once the game is saturated with every flavour of Space Maine, Eldar, Ork etc, the only way to sell more stuff is to invent new races, release new versions of old models, and to change the rules to make popular units obsolete and unpopular units the next big thing.

FFG are going to hit this wall too eventually...

There are only so many waves of shippy ships they can release before the game is saturated and they either have to change the rules of the game to re-popularise old models, or they re-cast the models to encourage people to buy the newer toys.

This is already evident with the release of the FA starter set, the Aces/Veterans repaints and the release of S&V.

The difference is that the core rule-set for X-wing is both extremely solid and also free. If anything this makes them more of a model company than GW, who charge an absurd premium for their flaky ever-shifting rules.

FFG has (IMO) solid material for at least 4-5 years of x-wing releases. Between Rebels and 1 Star Wars movie per year for the next 5 years I think there will be enough material for at least 1 wave each year entirely out of new Canon. For the other wave of the year you can likely find the required 10-15 EU ships to keep going just about as long.

FFG has (IMO) solid material for at least 4-5 years of x-wing releases. Between Rebels and 1 Star Wars movie per year for the next 5 years I think there will be enough material for at least 1 wave each year entirely out of new Canon. For the other wave of the year you can likely find the required 10-15 EU ships to keep going just about as long.

I'm sure FFG will do fine for the foreseeable future, but inevitably they must eventually hit the wall.

GW managed 25 years before they ran out of material for sensible updates and had to artificially force flyers and titans into what was a small scale skirmish game.

What 40K needs, is a rule set where the primary focus is to make a good, clean game and let the profit come from people actually wanting to play the game because it's great, rather than the primary focus being how to maximise short term profit by changing rules to encourage purchases from WAAC gamers.

But that will never happen, because GW state that they are a model company. Their rules are an afterthought even by their own policy.

I firmly believe that GW began selling us the lie that they're only a model company when they realised they didn't have a clue how to make a clear and consistent rule-set for their games. If the statement were actually true they wouldn't publish any rules at all. If the statement were only partly true they would publish their crappy rules for free, either as a stand alone pdf, or as individual updates supplied with each box of toys.

However, each successive edition of the rules has been deliberately (and cynically) engineered to encourage players to need more models, bigger models, and extra rules in the form of expensive codices and data slates.

The company policy is clearly to produce a game that encourages you to buy more and more of their expensive models, but also to have to continually buy more and more of their perpetually updated rules.

And this is inevitable under the capitalist doctrine of infinite growth, because once the game is saturated with every flavour of Space Maine, Eldar, Ork etc, the only way to sell more stuff is to invent new races, release new versions of old models, and to change the rules to make popular units obsolete and unpopular units the next big thing.

But it's against the capitalist doctrine of "The customer is always right". (Anyone with retail experience, feel free to snort in disgust now)

Without customers, there is no business. And GW is a prime example of how *not* to manage market saturation.

Mostly I'm agreeing with you here, but I think there's got to be a way to handle that market saturation that doesn't involve becoming complete assholes to the consumer. Ideally, one that the consumers actually like and want to happen. Instead of ramming more product down their already full throats.

FFG has (IMO) solid material for at least 4-5 years of x-wing releases. Between Rebels and 1 Star Wars movie per year for the next 5 years I think there will be enough material for at least 1 wave each year entirely out of new Canon. For the other wave of the year you can likely find the required 10-15 EU ships to keep going just about as long.

I'm sure FFG will do fine for the foreseeable future, but inevitably they must eventually hit the wall.

GW managed 25 years before they ran out of material for sensible updates and had to artificially force flyers and titans into what was a small scale skirmish game.

Given that they don't own the IP, I doubt they expect they'll be making Star Wars games forever. When they stop being profitable FFG will likely just drop the license.

The complete lack of communication does help them, they don't even do faq's anymore.

What company does zero customer surveys? Not one that wants to stay in business.

40k right now relies a lot on going first and not getting seized on.

Fixed that for you

One-shotting half of enemy force is the state of things in 40k

Going second wins games not first.

This is a statement from someone who doesn't know the game.

The best scenario is to null deploy and go second so you go last and can compete objectives.

In X-wing yes

in 40k nope. When you both require that_filthy_invisibility being cast, or you suddenly remember that 90% of armies have super-devastating across-the-table weapons

All of the sudden you can lose half of your force because DERP, enemy has first turn, sucks to be you!

Null deploy? Possible only for filthy space marines who can come out of reserves on turn 1

ha-ha.

If you are having a problem where your army is being decimated on the first turn by your opponent's shooting, then the problem you are having is not with the game, but how you are playing it. On a 6x4 table, you need to have around 8 terrain pieces of decent size, with 2 or 3 of those being solid enough to block line of sight. If you are not doing that, then it's your own **** fault for being shot off the board. It's not even that hard to make terrain that blocks LoS.

As for the comments that AoS is a failure, I couldn't agree more from a business standpoint . The rules are not great, but my local independent store had his fantasy sales increase by a wide margin after AoS was released, and my local Warhammer store can't keep it on the shelves. He quite literally sells out of his stock of the starter set every week. Like clockwork.

Laughed harder than doctor allows me to xD

Sure thing, each and every table must be a cityfight block (ah, did I say GW fell flat on the face with their floors? Now I did!)

made up of solid walls, and there are completely no armies that somehow arrive from deep strike on turn 1 with ton of AP2 shots that reroll EVERYTHING

sure , no such thing!

There's no centurion deathstar that annihilates anything ever, there's no tau that require a truck to transport this much dice...

I just love your fanboy attitude, man, really, thanks to the likes of you GW is still miraculously unaware that they fell flat on the face and still slide on it along the road.

AoS is a failure even with miniatures. There are no things worse than Zieg- heil -marines and army of gaypride parade redhead dorfs.

with entirely BANTASНIT insanely bad fluff and awful game rules. Age of space marine bits Т_т

Sales go up? People just were afraid that good old miniatures would be gone, like the great old washes have been lost to us, replaced with "shades" of fail.

GW messed up. that's the summary.

^^^ Sums it up pretty well.

Invisible Centurion Deathstar = directly why i stopped 40k.

If you are having a problem where your army is being decimated on the first turn by your opponent's shooting, then the problem you are having is not with the game, but how you are playing it. On a 6x4 table, you need to have around 8 terrain pieces of decent size, with 2 or 3 of those being solid enough to block line of sight. If you are not doing that, then it's your own **** fault for being shot off the board. It's not even that hard to make terrain that blocks LoS...

LOL. No. That's excuse making at it's finest. It's quite clearly a problem with the game. Namely a complete and utter lack of balance, both throughout the basic (lol) ruleset and the rule subsets in the codices.

You don't get wiped off the board in turn one of X-Wing due to making poor deployment decisions or "not using the right asteroids".

Actually, it would. It would mean you placed all your ships facing the edge, and you fly off the first turn.

All your army in reserves, and scouts infiltrated to 18 inches away from the 4 riptides.

Still though, the igoyougo with entire army is ok in skirmish, and it still is for small point games of 40k. But larger. no. Just no.

Actually, it would. It would mean you placed all your ships facing the edge, and you fly off the first turn.

So GW's rule-making is basically an upgrade card that costs zero points for whatever new unit they've just released that reads "At the beginning of the activation phase, discard this card to turn every enemy ship up to 180 degrees and replace each ship's maneuver dial with a maneuver of your choice."

It's also worth noting that 'you should have at least this much terrain' is gone from the 7th edition rulebook. So having plenty of LOS-BLOCKING terrain is players fixing GWs broken game.

AoS is a baby step in the right direction with free rules online to drive the mini sales - but it's so blatantly, OBVIOUSLY engineered to fail. No points cost? It's as though they're following the Bill Cosby theory: Do a job badly enough and you won't be asked to do it again! The minis are pretty ugly, too, reminiscent of GW's 'Red Period' without any of the horrible charm of those ancient metals.

As far as GW still being viable as a business enterprise goes:

Despite raising prices year after year, GW's income has stayed flat, and profits have stayed flat as well. The math on this is nice and simple to understand, and I'll play an exaggerated version for ya:

If 10 people buy 10 Space Marine boxes at $10 apiece, that's $100 income.

If 5 people buy 5 Space Marine boxes at $20 apiece, that's $100 income.

If 2 people buy 2 Space Marine boxes at $50 apiece, that's $100 income.

There are fewer people buying fewer boxes and thus giving GW the same amount of money despite their constant price raises. They've cannibalized their own market and burned so many previous customers so badly that right now the only base they HAVE is the fanboys who literally cannot allow themselves to NOT be fans of GW because of the sunk cost fallacy. "If I abandon GW now, that means I've wasted decades of my life and thousands of dollars!" Which isn't true, they can't take those years of enjoyment from you.

In summary, Games Workshop:

1) Hates its best customers, the retailers, and has tried everything in its power to destroy them despite NEEDING them as a buffer between the unreliability of retail. It has done so in pursuit of monopoly (a pretty evil practice).

2) Has shown its focus to be on quarterly profits, not customer retention. It's an okay (if evil) model when you sell a necessity, like toilet paper or gasoline (if the Kochs printed TP with their faces on it I'd buy it just to wipe my ass on them!), but emphatically NOT for an entertainment product like a wargame

3) Has written and rewritten rules not to fix the flaws, but to drive sales towards new products, INCLUDING the new rules. This lack of focus has introduced new flaws, which were ignored when new rules came out, which introduced new flaws... and frankly, the basic d6 engine was showing its age in the early 2000s, let alone today. In terms of rule design, this is an evil practice.

4) The CEO has engineered a black snow culture at his HQ, where if he looks outside and says, "The snow is black," no one dares disagree with him because he's fired everyone else. Frankly, that's where all of the problems originate - he says, "I want a monopoly on wargaming everywhere with our own stores instead of retailers," they jump to obey his orders rather than point out the stupidity of the model in the US. Do I even need to rate the morality of the CEO's action?

So, yeah, while GW's not "DuPont causing a 5% cancer rate and a 10% birth defect rate in their main teflon factory's environs, then spending the next thirty years covering up the fact that the safe amount for the offending byproduct is is fact one in SEVERAL TRILLION rather than the one in a MILLION they said" evil, in terms of gaming companies...

Tthey're pretty evil.

Why doesn't EA get defenders like GW does? I have no idea.

All this GW hate and I'm just sitting here wondering where Warmachine and Hordes would be if they where combined into one unit. Because lets face it they really are just 1 game/system/whatever.

As a long time Warhammer Fantasy nerd, this news pleases me a great deal. What GW did to Fantasy was ruin a great gaming system, maybe they did the same to 40K.

They've been ruining that game for a looooooooooong time, sadly.

I hope FFG won't fall into the same trap and start dramatically increasing costs for individual fighter blisters. Where they're at right now is a good place, and going higher will kill it.

All this GW hate and I'm just sitting here wondering where Warmachine and Hordes would be if they where combined into one unit. Because lets face it they really are just 1 game/system/whatever.

Nowhere, because de facto they already are, and nobody gives a **** about them being de jure separate xD

Finally, official confirmation, from BOLS, and then ICV2

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/33912/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-fall-2015

Finally, official confirmation, from BOLS, and then ICV2

http://icv2.com/articles/markets/view/33912/top-5-non-collectible-miniature-games-fall-2015

/thread