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Over the last several years we have had a number of [former] moderators retire from their duties. However, I have been remiss in my duties, not announcing those retirements. The moderators are essential to the health and welfare of the site. Like you, they are hobbyists who enjoy the hobby and the community. They sacrifice their hobby time to perform moderator duties, and many of these members have served in this capacity for years. You don't always see the work that they do because much of it takes place behind the scenes, whether it's discussion about how to improve the site or how to deal with problems (and we try to take care of discipline privately, so you don't always see those actions). We are all indebted to each and every member who performs moderator duties. Over time, however, we all drift away from the hobby and the community. Sometimes hobbyists lose interest in the hobby; sometimes they find that they have less time to devote to the hobby/community; sometimes there are other reasons to retire. Regardless of their reasons, we are always appreciative for their contributions to the site and we wish them the best. The following members of the community have retired from moderator duties. Some of them are recent retirees, while others have retired over the last few years (and I've been a terrible slacker in not recognizing them before now). They are listed here in alphabetical order: @Brother Cambrius @Canadian_F_H @Claws and Effect @Commander Dawnstar @Daimyo-Phaeron Lenoch @Dusktiger @Eddie Orlock @Iron Father Ferrum @Johanhgg @Khulu (you may remember him as Tyriks) @Lord Ragnarok @Mandragola @sal of manders @schoon @Seahawk @TiguriusX @toaae @TrawlingCleaner Triszin Please join me and the rest of the staff in thanking each of these members for everything they've done for the hobby and the community - the B&C is better for their contributions. And now I'll submit myself to the Pain Glove in penance for not thanking these very deserving members in a more timely manner.

Well.. Thats kinda what a drop pod does :)

Very altruistic of you - but why should I be expected to pay US tariffs when doing business with a UK company when I’m in the UK? I know price rises are inevitable, but I don’t see why I should pay taxes for another countries issues when I’m buying inside my own country.

Nyo Pity! Nyo Remorse! Nyo Fear! Nya!

Taste like crab, talk like people. With the God Legion head options Valrak mentioned:

She's finally done, for real this time. I had called her done this winter but i ended up hating the house sigil i made on the left pauldron then i got in my head about the stoles so i went back to the drawing board. Anyways, really happy i went back and gave her the love she clearly didnt get from her family. The whole journey is here, I love all the great ideas and gut checks by this community so thank you!

This is pretty great and I feel called out:

Damn GW works fast when ultramarines are in question

For you sir ! One Alpha Legion upgrade sprue !

Janovich is about as far from a reliable narrator as they come, so I'd be very doubtful about anything he's sharing. Also a very, very close associated with the likes of Arch and Gamza - which really puts the nail in the coffin there. Actually, to add - Janovich was directly involved in harassing SODAZ out of the community after they announced they'd signed on with Games Workshop. Abusive little twerp.

Admin please remove if this is not news, but....im not aware of this model to the best of my knowledge having been presented or available but this arrived in my buddy's mail today and was not ordered....

I'm afraid someone showed me this and I can no longer unsee it. "That's it! Cheese, Grommyt! We'll raid somewhere where there's cheese!"

Get ready to dust off your first born marines for warhammer 40k - the old world

Its 1993 and i'm excitedly looking at thunderhammer and lightning claw terminators in GW Harrow display cabinet. It's 2005 and i'm excitedly looking at thunderhammer and lightning claw terminators i've just bought on pre-release at Gamesday 2005. Its 2025 and i'm excitedly looking at thunderhammer and lighting claw terminators on the internet.

The article cites SpikeyBits as "excellent"... you'll forgive me if I don't take it entirely seriously.

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/s7lkrfhr/stand-out-from-the-flock-with-the-new-warhammer-tactical-rock/ lol.

No. I'm merely pointing out how this topic was nearly derailed multiple times by overt toxicity which isn't productive to a good discussion. And when it finally seemed to have ended we get some more toxic baiting, from a mod no less. Let's put things into context - this is a topic about a funny series of joke videos that GW have released. The videos are OBVIOUSLY jokes, and are filled with funny/witty comments and winks towards the 40k setting. If anyone thinks that these videos are justfication for actual anger, then those people need to re-evaluate their mental wellbeing. I'm not even joking about this.

No we don't! We needed zero of them! They were legendary figures of barely remembered mythic past, their absence symbolising the decaying nature of the current Imperium. Bringing them back destroyed the thematic core of the setting, and was completely unnecessary as there already was a fully supported separate game for inconclusive primarch slap fights. Oh, and chaos can have theirs. They are already a bunch of losers hanging around in desolate corner of galaxy, so at least having some primarchs whilst the Imperium has none gave them some chance to seem like a proper threat once in a while.

Combat patrol is a bit disappointing.

I shot off an email as well. 14 of my armies aren’t viable without major rework, and without RoW they’ll never work the same way again. Slapping in a couple centurions isn’t fixing anything. Every single army has models that are no longer valid. I included pictures so they don’t think I’m blowing smoke.

A couple of terminators from my Raven Guard successor chapter, The Storm Crows.

FW built a new dropsite diorama in the theme of the box. These are the highest res ones I could find. Its outstanding:

The miniature is her. The portrait is her social media avatar from her peak days in high school.

Exorcists Vth company captain, Arcturus Veth, bearer of the relic Expulsiaris The relic is mentionned in the Exorcists Chapter approved (WD 462)

My latest painting project is Lucius the Eternal! Tricky model to paint this, as the different parts make it difficult to put together. Great mini though!

some more BT HQs I did this year

I'd certainly hope to not find a host of racist comments, to be fair. This is a very strange hill to die on.

To lighten the mood of those worried about 3 yrs edition cycling, here's a quick mock-up of a simple conversion that came to my mind - who doesn't miss musicians from WHFB?

Well it appears the rumours were indeed, correct.

Call to Arms is returning for 2025!! I’ll be running it for @Grotsmasha this year, but otherwise it’s going to be mostly the same as in 2023 and 2024. One big change is that the loyalist Astartes will have their own Stronghold this year, split off from the other Imperial forces. This better aligns it with the current B&C forum structure and better evens out the number of participants between factions, as previously the broader Imperium faction had roughly double the participants of the other factions. WHEN: 15th June to 15th September 2025 The Stronghold threads will be posted and locked for two weeks prior to the Event to allow everyone to familiarize themselves with the rules and points value for the Event. WHERE: Work in Progress Forum in the Forge The Strongholds will once again be located in the WIP Forum in the Forge. Rally Points will be located in each Forum for Faction and will contain Faction specific points values, and may act as hub for strategizing and organizing the Forums efforts with a Stronghold. WHAT: For those who didn't participate previously, each model is assigned a points value, based on it's size, complexity, and time it takes to paint (generally). For example, a Primaris Intercessor is worth 1 point, but a similarly sized Primaris Captain is worth 5 points, this is because typically the Captain will have more detail, and generally be painted to a higher standard, taking more time. Models MUST be pledged to their Stronghold, designated by the Forum's location within the B&C's structure, Imperium, Chaos, Xenos, Heresy and this year, Astartes will gain it's own Stronghold rather than contributing to the Imperium Stronghold as previously. You may participate in as many of the Strongholds as you wish, having 4 Vows per Stronghold, 3 Vows that must be completed sequentially, with them counting as all or nothing, and one Jobs' A Bigg'un Vow, this is for models worth 10+ points that are outside of the 3 normal vows as they may take the entire event to complete. This means you will have a total of 20 Vows available to you. Any models that fall outside of the Strongholds, such as Necromunda, Blackstone Fortress, terrain, etc, may be pledged to ANY Stronghold. For the duration of the Event, the Strongholds are competing amongst the Rally Points to pledge and complete the most points worth of models, with Badges and bragging rights going to the Victors. Once the Event has concluded, the Stronghold will be measured against one another, for fancier badges, and ultimate bragging rights. Previously there were also a small selection of physical prizes, at this stage, prizes ARE NOT locked in for this year, BUT there is potential this may change, no promises, however. Here ae the four Strongholds from the 2024 Event for you to peruse to get a better idea of how it all works. IMPERIUM | CHAOS | XENOS | HERESY Feel free to contact me, @Dr_Ruminahui, if you have any questions.

Revision 1 (July 29): added Actual results, that matched or exceeded Predictions Revision 2 (July 31): EMERGENCY UPDATE, Pricing Update within this year, partly due to upcoming Tariffs, images captioned Additions (Aug 9): Further discussion of the value of the Warhammer license to video games, and model PREfreshes on page 2 As per our B&C bi-annual tradition, we're preparing to talk about Games Workshop's financial report when it lands this week. Why? Because as a U.S. Midwestern farmer, who are all financial experts, said to me, "Know where your food comes from." Prediction: GW will report ABOUT £610 million Revenue and just under £240 million Profit. Growth is on par with a 40k year. Actual: GW reported £617 million Revenue and £261.3 million Profit, WAY OVER expected. Growth EXCEEDED a 40k year. But my absolute favourite bit is from their new chairman: "As the new chair, and a hobbyist myself..." He didn't say "Warhammer customer" or "Warhammer player." He called himself a "hobbyist." +++ How were last year's predictions? +++ Where we were right: we were 100% right GW would enter the FTSE 100, and that tariff's slated to stay at 10%. Where I was wrong: though expected, I was 100% wrong about GW price increases updates. I'm glad to be wrong. What I completely missed: Necron Wraiths and Crypteks went DOWN in points cost. Did not see that coming. +++ This year's story to "business news media" +++ So you know GW does 3-year product cycles. 40k, then Age of Sigmar, then Horus Heresy. This report is about an AoS year. (For reference, 40k is a HUGE growth year, then it levels off for AoS, then it's kinda janky with HH. 40k is the high watermark.) But actually AoS is not the real story. The video game Space Marine II is the breakout star. Its licensing revenue is pure profit. That's what every business news article will be reporting on, then maybe link it to the Amazon streaming series negotiations. Prediction: The CEO will declare, "Record licensing Revenue! But don't expect a repeat until Space Marine III comes out." Actual, I'm going to make a personal note here; I'm looking at my projections and, the CEO will never, ever confess this, but I think he held off price increases during a year of record energy costs...huge to GW as it needs to melt plastic into miniatures...because he knew there would be this massive Profit bump from a video game to offset it, hoping no one would notice. Remember, even he only holds his job at the pleasure of shareholders. Actual: "We are actively exploring further...opportunites, including Space Marine 3..." +++ This year's story to us, actual Hobbyists +++ I don't speak for us all, but I'm thinking, did the video Space Marine II bring players from screens to the tabletop? GW has NOT categorised Revenue by 40k/AoS/HH/etc. It DOES separate Core (i.e. its stuff) vs. Licensing (i.e. royalties). So we MAY see a bump from Space Marine II conversion to the Hobby separated from the royalties GW gets. To keep myself honest, I can think of at least 2 ways where there may be indicators of this, maybe more: Is this year's Core Revenue growth way higher than other AoS launch years? That'd be a bump AoS 4th came in July, Space Marine II and Titus mini in Sept. Were sales more back-loaded? There may be other signs, like little glitches in the Matrix, that we'll know when we see them. Prediction: It's hard. It assumes AoS is growing like previously, and a huge, observable bump from Space Marine II. Actual: There's a huge observable bump from beyond AoS AND other signs. I think I can convince you with 3 images. I said above what all you already know, 40k is a HUGE growth year, then it levels off for AoS, then it's kinda janky with HH. 8th ed came out 2017, spike in 2018. 9th ed out 2020, huge spike in 2021. 10th ed was weird because of "head of lettuce". (I won't go into it, but there were political reasons which caused currency fluctuations, so 10th ed seems smaller than it was.) AoS years...and I LOVE their miniatures, my favourite game is Warcry...usually performs below 40k. This year, it BLEW past 40k. I've confirmed it via their breakdown of Core Revenue (i.e. GW's own products) vs. Licensing Revenue (from 3rd parties). Then there was a glitch in the Matrix where GW lets slip something innocuous. It was in gross profit margin (i.e. price hikes). "as some of our new product releases sold to below planned levels in the first half of the year" (Before I forget, remember GW aims for a core gross margin of 70% and will increase prices to match that. It's pretty much as close as you can get without inventing new forms of mathematics at 69.5%, I will NOT say any more as not to jinx us. Oh, unless you're our American Fraters et Sororitas, YOU can get a price increase due to tariffs, more below.) "...as SOME of our new product releases sold to BELOW planned levels in the FIRST half of the year." (That's got this company-wide email vibe like, "SOME people, who will not be named...") What'd be so big that it would cause a disturbance in the Force? Probably unsold AoS 4th ed sets. So it implies AoS undersold, yet overall sales were like a 40k year...but WHERE did those sales come from? Translation: Trade is FLGS or Walmart, etc. Retail is Warhammer Stores. Online is JUST GW's webstore. Imagine yourself as totally new, you JUST learned about 40k through Space Marine II or that Amazon animation. Seriously, it's harder to forget than to remember, but try. You're new. Where would you go to look for 40k stuff? New players would go to the shops they know, they've driven past it, that sell D&D and baseball cards, MAYBE a Warhammer Store. Because you want to see the actual miniatures for the 1st time yourself, in realspace, not the immaterium of the GW website. Those places for Neophytes are exactly where the growth is happening, very heavily in what GW calls their Trade channel. GW got this huge bump beyond normal AoS years, then a hint that AoS prolly didn't grow that much, and the source of growth being exactly where a 1st time Hobbyist would go. The thing that I missed was I didn't watch that Amazon animated series episode, I know it's by the same guys that did Love Death Robots, but somewhere between those, huge influx of players. +++ Other forever stories +++ There have been ongoing stories with GW that never seem to end: Amazon deal, Factory 4, IT, tariffs. Amazon Prediction: GW will continue to have meetings for negotiations for more meetings to negotiate. Factory 4 Prediction: GW cleared some hurdle to build Factory 4 until they clear the next hurdle. "...construction of Factory 4 (F4) has now started and we aim to have this completed in the summer of 2026." This is actually a pretty big deal and Factory 4 has been way more interesting to me, because it's the bottleneck for everything else. GW can't grow without more miniatures to sell EXCEPT by raising prices, it won't bother opening too many new stores if they don't got product to sell. You play 40k completely differently when you think you can contest an objective vs. just hold on to the ones you got. For any business entity, WE'RE the objectives, they fight for us harder if they think they can score Victory Points. No product, no VPs. IT Prediction: GW will continue to upgrade its IT infrastructure until they need to upgrade again. Yup. Tariff Prediction: Report will use some jargon "we will continue monitoring the situation," etc. So apparently there's also a bat problem. Send in that Callidus or whatever to kill Curze pls. There's bats. Thanks to Brother Vassakov and Brother Joe below. So this is a protected species!? +++ Personal note this year +++ I'm being brief, only because I'm reading up on all the Horus Heresy rules. I'm bringing back the Shattered Xth, baby! +++ EMERGENCY UPDATE: Pricing Update within this year, partly due to upcoming tariffs +++ Sorry that this isn't out earlier, even more sorry for the bad news, but took time to avoid politics as per B&C rules. All kudos to Brother Skyler Boodie for pointing this out, and reminding me of a thing I never had to deal with: Tariffs. "We will also continue to...raise our RRPs (Recommended Retail Price)..." TL;DR - New tariffs in JUST 1 country should (i.e. will and is technically designed to) increase prices WORLDWIDE. Yes, this is 100% UNFAIR, YET also Rules-As-Written, GW is only taking that money to hand it to the tariffing government. Yes, it has to do with the 70% Core Gross (Profit) Margin, the key aspect being the number is grouped like a weighted average. (The normal term is Gross Profit Margin. GW considers miniatures/paints/books as its Core business, thus Core Gross Margin now.) Easiest to explain via a 40k example. You know how like a single Primaris Lieutenant costs as much as like half-a-squad of Intercessors? Each Marine is about the same amount of plastic...maybe a little bit more on the Lt., so you know that Lt. model is making GW even more profit than the other guys. But you only need 1 Lt. to lead 10 or 20 or 30 other Astartes, and it might even be cheaper in a Combat Patrol box, etc. So it's all averaged out, spread out. That same spreading out should, as in will and it's actually technically correct accounting-wise, be spread out to us all. The reason is it's part of Cost of Goods Sold (COGS), which actually mean cost of ALL goods sold, everywhere. Before, GW usually does it after-the-fact in an embarrassed way, usually because they forecasted Inventory wrong. Their fault. Now, GW states it in a matter-of-fact way. Just as I'm following B&C rules by staying out of politics, so is GW. Not their fault. This is the 1st time GW announced Pricing Updates beforehand in Financial Annual Reports. Even I forgot it affects everyone. So you know a Tariff is just another Sales Tax, right? Everyone knows that. Actually, a Tariff is worse than a Sales Tax. When a shop sells a box of product, the shop owner had already bought that box, and when he sells it to you, the government magically shows up to add a sales tax on you, but the shop owner deals with it, he just takes the money and will pay the government later. When a shop buys a Tariffed box of product, you're not even there yet, the government has already shown up and made the shop owner pay the Tariff IN ADVANCE, when that box makes landfall. Importers and I think Friendly Local Government Stores will be holding the bag. I'll give a sad but timely example with the Saturnine boxed set, which I'm finding out isn't selling well. I've noticed a few online distributors are now giving a 35% discount off RRP (Recommended Retail Price), which is (I think) like their entire sales margin, meaning they're just dumping Inventory at cost. If Tariffs were already implemented, a store would've already paid that Tariff. They'd charge that Tariff cost to customers. What if it doesn't sell? Then they would try to spread that already paid Tariff to all other paying customers in the future. Online shops in a tariffing country would do this. FLGSs, too. And, thus, so would GW. I'll think they'll price with a buffer. How big is the impact? The tariffing country is the most populous in North America which is GW's biggest region, almost as big as its native UK and entire Europe TOGETHER, and is about 40% of GW's Revenue, so maybe a quarter to a third to the Cost of (All) Goods Sold. I used a Primaris Lieutenant in the above example, and OF COURSE I'm wrong to, because he'd only be a tenth or a twentieth of your army's overall points cost. Imagine if it's a quarter to a third of your army getting nerfed with higher points. That's like my C'tan list. GW's financial annual reports now DO list percentage CHANGES to their Core Gross Margin, including a line for Cost of Goods Sold, but not how much Cost of Goods Sold is part of their Core Gross Margin overall. So it's like OLD pre-8th points changes where they tell you that a Thunder Hammer went up +5 points, but not how many points a Thunder Hammer used to cost, so you still needed the Codex. I'm trying to look in older annual reports now. To conclude, a Pricing Update is coming, because GW just said, and it makes sense due to Tariffs in a big part of GW's business.

Not to mention we do have proof of people acting in ways that could indicate contempt for customers. For example, whoever made the decision to delete entire ranges of units/loadouts that were common until now could certainly be said to have contempt for the time people put into building their massive HH armies. Whoever is pushing for a harder split between ranges to make it more difficult for people to use their HH models in official 40k events after hard selling cross compatibility (i.e. Leviathan dreads) seems to not be all that concerned about how customers might feel. Whoever chose to release a premium cost rulebook that needs a large Day One DLC to fix it probably cares less about getting a quality product into people's hands than he does about getting people's money into GW's bank accounts. And so on. That kind of person is who people are referring to when they speak about "contempt," not the Peachies and Louises and the real nerdy fanboys grinding things out under The Man.

I saw this on Bluesky

well i couldn't wait and spent some time converting my 5-man intercessor squads into a single 10 man Greyhunter squad. my obsessive compulsion toward WYSISWYG is satisfied.

Illogical. A "Leviathan" is a big fish. Saturns are planets. Planets are much bigger than big fish. It makes sense.

No, this is a Hearsay Thursday. Totally different.

I like this place, I just dislike you

With the impending release of HH3 my personal and final take on recent events and the new edition in general is stick with second edition, the main way to beat edition churn is not to take part in it. Older editions of their games still exist and as we've seen with Blood Bowl and Necromunda the community is more than capable of keeping a game alive with or without GW. Refusal to buy their products or play their current editions is going to have zero impact on GW, they don't care because there are always going to be people buying their products who exist outside of the online community bubble. Even a perceived HH3 flop of a launch by the community isn't going to impact them, as Jack Sparrow once said "I love those moments, I like to wave at them as they pass by." You're never going to stick it to the man so to speak so why turn your back on something you already love and enjoy? I realize a massive chunk of the people reading this will pass over this comment or roll their eyes at the old man shouting at clouds, but speaking as a forty year veteran of wargaming who has been there and done that as far as hobby clout and influence is concerned and has worked with and been told that I have inspired thousands of individual hobbyists during my time I will offer this final single sage and hard learnt piece of advice to all of those that do read this. Free your mind and play YOUR game how YOU want to with YOUR miniatures.

How it feels as mostly a collector/painter coming back into this thread after a day:

In the last 20 years or so of Internet discussion over the hobby I learned one thing: People constantly complain about the dumbest and come to the worste possible conclusion no matter what. Luckily for me I am always right and never unnecessarily complain because my complains are always sound and base on reason and never are childish overreacting. Ever.

Man, you know what, this leaking actually bums me out a bit. I know I'm behind in the conversation but this is what I woke up to My girlfriend and I always watch the preview shows, she's not super into warhammer but it's something we have done since we started dating four years ago. Normally we turn on Valrak, laugh at the corporate talk of the stream, and she watches me bounce off the walls when the new CGI trailers drop. Sometimes it's at a decent time for us, sometimes we get up at 2am. It's become a tradition Then I actually do kind of feel bad for the marketing team. Do I love the tongue-in-cheek approach that they were doing? Not really, but they spent a lot of time on that stuff building up to the event I know it probably sounds whiny, but with all the stuff happening in the world right now, it was kind of nice to have something to look forward to, and see the community not fighting about for once as people try to figure it all out All ruined because someone on the internet couldn't wait until after the reveal show to sell their box. Like I said I get that the rant probably sounds whiny, it's just bummed me out a bit. I'll save my thoughts on the models for after the nicer pictures

That green sprue is the Flawless Blades sprue - cheeky sods.

Hi everyone, Just thought I'd share that our second Warhammer Conference is set to take place next week. As with last year's event, the panels are free to attend online. I will also be editing and uploading the recordings to our YouTube channel once the conference is over. Thanks so much :)

No, the bad press came from us customers reading their leaks, the entire rule set, then making our minds up. Let's not pretend it was all caused by leakers of bad faith. The rules aren't great. Even with Legacies, army building is pretty poor and a confusing mess. The army specific rules are anemic and things like Primarchs are very much much more bare of character. We made our minds up on that. And it isn't our fault I'm afraid. Our expectations arent even unrealistic since we have a previous edition that covered the rules we wanted much cleaner.

Alan would be deeply uncomfortable with the pedestal people put him on were he still alive - he himself acknowledged that he was far from a perfect writer, and more importantly, wouldn't have been happy to see the contributions of others trivialised. There are many, many reasons why Imperial Armour and the Black Books turned out the way they did - and even then, they weren't without their downsides at times. Many of the people who worked on them are still at Games Workshop to this day - Tony Cottrell, Neil Wylie, Andy Hoare, John French, etc. If there's one thing that can be said about nerd culture it's that we take one individual and either praise them for everything that goes right, or blame them for anything that goes wrong; even if they had no major involvement with either.

Nothing some gimp (the program) can't solve

Why was it a slap in the face? It's a was a humorous self-depreciating engagement with their online crowd.

Missed opportunity to add a sarcophagus/anything to remove the model's well-earned 'baby carrier' moniker.