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Warhammer 40k General thread

GW prices are pretty steep especially since they are the biggest wargaming manufacturer,

people claiming new technology would be the end of "insert X" for all time.
 
Konradleijon said:
GW prices are pretty steep especially since they are the biggest wargaming manufacturer,

people claiming new technology would be the end of "insert X" for all time.
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They are steep because they overcharge their customers. Period.

Worse, they do it with 3d printed models while some of the playerbase insists that 3d printed models will never take off. o_O
 
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Hykal94 said:
Voidsmen are a very strange of choice for troops. The only time I can recall where they were a major force, in my 40 plus novels of worth of reading material, is the middle of the first Eisenhorn book where a big name Inquisitor commmanded them to assault an enemy Chaos cult estate.
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Perhaps they presage a return of Battlefleet Gothic.

My personal experience is that BattleTech is making a solid comeback, and that historical and semi-historical are about even with GW in terms of play (Flames of War/Team Yankee), but my experience is probably skewed in that one of the FLGS is literally right outside the gate from MCAS Miramar, and much of the local scene is active-duty Marines. We also have a small but notable contingent of Victory At Sea players from the Navy, which I'm pretty sure is not normal.
 
Industrial 3D printers are amazing; I know a guy that works with one and they're just incredible for prototyping. But even your great 8k printer isn't getting close, and it's a giant pita alongside investment for the average hobbyist. The future is likely more stuff like Pop Goes the Monkey or Tortuga Bay where companies invest in solid printers and provide serial number rubbed off minis to complement GW, not a 3D printer in every basement.

From what I recall with GW their thing is that prices for their main games just aren't that elastic; dropping the prices outside of starter sets doesn't actually induce that many more new customers.

Night said:
Perhaps they presage a return of Battlefleet Gothic.

My personal experience is that BattleTech is making a solid comeback, and that historical and semi-historical are about even with GW in terms of play (Flames of War/Team Yankee), but my experience is probably skewed in that one of the FLGS is literally right outside the gate from MCAS Miramar, and much of the local scene is active-duty Marines. We also have a small but notable contingent of Victory At Sea players from the Navy, which I'm pretty sure is not normal.
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We've always had a solid FoW scene that's transitioned to TY around here which is nice. I would love a new Battlefleet Gothic, as designed by one of their "not stuck in the 1980s" dev teams, as while we have a small Dropfleet group the ships just don't quite hit the right notes.
 
Mutton said:
We've always had a solid FoW scene that's transitioned to TY around here which is nice. I would love a new Battlefleet Gothic, as designed by one of their "not stuck in the 1980s" dev teams, as while we have a small Dropfleet group the ships just don't quite hit the right notes.
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If I could wedgie the GW game designer way back when who thought +2 Holofield saves for Eldar ships was fun game design...
 
IfIhadaHammer said:
If I could wedgie the GW game designer way back when who thought +2 Holofield saves for Eldar ships was fun game design...
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It's an interesting way to shake up the weapon preferences. Rather than Weapons Batteries being the less desirable, they're the best option while Lances are very much not good against them.
 
$1000 3d printer 10 years ago is inferior to and harder to use than a $200 one from today. These were made with a printer you can buy for under $600, even without waiting for a sale:



There are flaws sure, they're not GW quality, but compared to what the machines were spitting out even 5 years ago? I would not be remotely shocked if we reached that point in 5-10 years. In the short to mid term sure, it'll be small to midsized companies based in countries where they can get away with it from an IP perspective. But long term it seems pretty inevitable that selling the plastic minis as they currently are is a dead end. The audience are hobbyists already willing to assemble and paint, it might be different if they were people less open to fiddly hobby-tasks, buying prepainted stuff, but as things stand?
 
How many current 40k fans do you know own a 3D printer? Not saying there aren't diehard fans out there, but they're diehard for a reason. Not only that, but 40k being a social game also plays into it, unless you're someone who takes far more joy in solidary painting than the social aspect of the hobby.
 
Hykal94 said:
How many current 40k fans do you know own a 3D printer? Not saying there aren't diehard fans out there, but they're diehard for a reason. Not only that, but 40k being a social game also plays into it, unless you're someone who takes far more joy in solidary painting than the social aspect of the hobby.
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That does seem to be GW's intended market to an extent given their own store policies, lines of paints, and copious discussion of painting and assembly. Yes, they're making a wargame, but you can detect a fair degree of official snobbery in their discussions of painting minis than most games.
 
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Hykal94 said:
How many current 40k fans do you know own a 3D printer? Not saying there aren't diehard fans out there, but they're diehard for a reason. Not only that, but 40k being a social game also plays into it, unless you're someone who takes far more joy in solidary painting than the social aspect of the hobby.
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The social aspect doesn't require you to actually buy minis from GW, judging by how much of my locals are still playing Fantasy.
 
Zavvnao said:
I myself actually want to get a sisters of battle army. I never played, but I enjoyed them in Soulstorm, and want flamer lady armies.
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I plan on getting a force, so I can complete my inquisition collection. The sisters have a few units that are just too useful to not have.

I own a couple of pewter sisters as well.



Tithed_Verse said:
It's the only game that the closest game shop is running on Thursday when I am free.
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Ah that makes sense.
 
Hykal94 said:
How many current 40k fans do you know own a 3D printer? Not saying there aren't diehard fans out there, but they're diehard for a reason. Not only that, but 40k being a social game also plays into it, unless you're someone who takes far more joy in solidary painting than the social aspect of the hobby.
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"How many artists do you know who own a digital drawing tablet?" (Asked when such tablets were still subpar and relatively expensive)

Obviously relatively few. The entire point of my post was that given the trajectory of improvement, even assuming a slowdown, at some point in 5-10 years it is quite likely that we will hit the point where quality+ease of use are high enough and price is low enough that the answer to your question changes. The point where it'd be worth getting a 3d printer because you're a miniature wargame hobby enthusiast, rather than because you're specifically a 3d printing enthusiast. That point will be earlier than the point for general-population buy-in because miniature wargame enthusiasts who paint and assemble their own minis have a higher tolerance for fiddly hobby tasks than Joe Average, and a real money-saving use case.

The social aspect isn't lost unless your only options for play are locations where GW is able to enforce their "only GW-manufactured minis, and we WILL inspect them all" rules. Places which will be increasingly unappealing vs. their alternatives when they're the difference between playing with essentially identical looking minis while saving hundreds or even thousands of dollars.
 
Estro said:
The social aspect doesn't require you to actually buy minis from GW, judging by how much of my locals are still playing Fantasy.
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Fair.

Landb said:
Obviously relatively few. The entire point of my post was that given the trajectory of improvement, even assuming a slowdown, at some point in 5-10 years it is quite likely that we will hit the point where quality+ease of use are high enough and price is low enough that the answer to your question changes. The point where it'd be worth getting a 3d printer because you're a miniature wargame hobby enthusiast, rather than because you're specifically a 3d printing enthusiast. That point will be earlier than the point for general-population buy-in because miniature wargame enthusiasts who paint and assemble their own minis have a higher tolerance for fiddly hobby tasks than Joe Average, and a real money-saving use case.
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Yeah but we aren't there yet, and 5-10 years is still plenty of time for GW to adapt. Like they survived the death of WHF, the shutting down of their own forums, and all manners of dumb shit (of their own making!). Like people have been saying GW is gonna die before I was even born. Chances are they're gonna adapt to that too. The current CEO seems smart enough to make the game popular and branch out to other mediums (mostly video games).
 
Hykal94 said:
Fair.



Yeah but we aren't there yet, and 5-10 years is still plenty of time for GW to adapt. Like they survived the death of WHF, the shutting down of their own forums, and all manners of dumb shit (of their own making!). Like people have been saying GW is gonna die before I was even born. Chances are they're gonna adapt to that too. The current CEO seems smart enough to make the game popular and branch out to other mediums (mostly video games).
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They better adapt fast.

Because current the bulk of their profits are from physical sales.
 
Games Workshop is the China of the tt gaming world, as in people have successfully predicted 50 of the last 0 collapses of Games Workshop.

Eventually someone will get it right by dint of being the last one to say it but if I held my breath I'd be long dead by now.
 
Yeah, no, they're going to collapse some day, but so is human civilization.

(Also amazon, microsoft, apple, ubisoft, and every other famous company in the world is one small run of worse decisions than their competitors and bad luck away from collapse)

Everything human made is fragile, but that doesn't mean you're going to live to see it fall. Though, honestly, you might.
 
3D printing is a relatively new technology that's improving in a slow but steady manner. Judging by how piracy performs with video games 3D printing will leech GW's profits, but slowly, so long as they keep their own models high quality (and while I will mock the Centurion relentlessly GW's models are generally really good). And Warhammer as a brand has other revenue streams they can rely on (books, video games, etc). GW will have more than enough time to adapt.

Whether or not they actually do is a whole other question but I don't see them going the way of Blockbuster.
 
Hykal94 said:
Yeah but we aren't there yet, and 5-10 years is still plenty of time for GW to adapt. Like they survived the death of WHF, the shutting down of their own forums, and all manners of dumb shit (of their own making!). Like people have been saying GW is gonna die before I was even born. Chances are they're gonna adapt to that too. The current CEO seems smart enough to make the game popular and branch out to other mediums (mostly video games).
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I was very careful to say "selling the plastic minis as they currently are is a dead end" rather than "GW is doomed" for precisely this reason. It's something they can adapt to, though it's likely to be a more painful adaptation than most of their others since it will necessitate substantial changes to their core business model (either in terms of what they sell or how hard they compete on price), rather than just developing a new secondary revenue stream. As of the last time I looked into things, their revenue from books, video games, and so on was extremely limited compared to what the minis pull in. Just making more books and games is unlikely to be enough to make up for the core of their business facing what is at the very least unprecedented competition.

But there are certainly ways to weather the transition. If the Spotnitz-helmed Eisenhorn show ever sees the light of day and is good, that could be a very big help for instance. A sufficiently great leap in overall popularity and franchise value could offset troubles on the miniature end quite effectively.
 
I just love that we are getting Squatts and Votans at once as separate but related things. Now if only this sort of thing could happen to the Eldar Exodites and the Dark Mechanicum than the setting would feel completely represented.
To be clear though I never expected to see squatts or genestealer cults get turned into armies. Ditto on Gargants and Idoneth and Flesh Eater Courts though if I'm allowed to mention the other Warhammer without being crucified over here?
I kind of expected everyone to become space marines.

For hypothetical examples maybe the Necrons reactivation protocols went wrong and now they all are super-destoyers, or whoops the Eldar are now all blocky wraith constructs because Ynead said so.
Luckily, It turns out Stormfiends and stormcasts were non-indicative of the future though :)
 
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So I finally got around to reading Horus Rising (well, the audiobook as I had Audible credits to burn) and I am surprised how anyone that read it could ever think of the Imperium as the good guys. Abnett is not at all subtle!

Also while I wasn't a fan of the framing story of the mirror Imperium (made for a great first line no lie though) goddamn do I want some Invisibles now.
 
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