A "phasing out" of regular marines by GW ...

[Helias_Tancred]

I was talking to a 40k friend yesterday about a complete space marine army for sale on the very cheap by someone we mutually know. My 40k friend is a Guard player but he's been expressing interest in playing Marines too in 8th.

 

His reply was "Not interested, I'm going to buy primaris marines because GW will be phasing out regular marines".

 

 

It got me thinking, is he right in this assumption? And if he is, I wonder what the actual timeline will be for GW doing this?

 

 

I just recently finished up my Blood Angels army. I have a full company, plus half of the Archangels along with armor, speeders, pods, transports, quad mortars, and different dreads. I started wondering how long will it be before I have to rebuild a Blood Angels army?

 

I'm not posting this to start controversy or to troll, but his reply really got me thinking about this topic and I'm wondering what the rest of your opinions are?

 

 

And if anyone knows anything certain about this subject?

[Sun Reaver]

I think that the change is inevitable, but the timeline will take much longer than most people think. Your models, army, and rules will be a apart of the game for years to come. Think about it - what makes many chapters unique, especially the Blood Angels, is that there are unique units and special characters. As long as Dante is around and kicking and they don't make Death Company Primaris Marines, we will be fine! And if they do, well then the models will look sick anyways!  

 

Hope that assuages some of your fears. Our armies will last quite some time. 

 

Cheers! 

[Xenith]

I started wondering how long will it be before I have to rebuild a Blood Angels army?

 

You will never have to rebuild your blood angels army.

 

Some day you might decide that you like the look of the new scale marines, and buy some, but primaris scale models invalidate current scale models just as much as current scale models invalidate my 2nd ed metal models i.e. they don't.

 

If someone pulled out an army entirely made of rogue trader metal minis from the 80's, what would your reaction be?

[Charlo]

Oh god I thought we'd all had enough of this topic in the NRA!!!

 

Basically, sure, in an edition of two they may have finally stopped producing normal marines.

 

Right now and the foreseeable future they are here to stay.

[Arkhanist]

Sisters of battle haven't been updated since 2004. They're still a valid army, still sold, and still in the fluff, and they're in metal to boot. I wouldn't expect the current marine sprues and boxsets to go anywhere anytime soon - the plastic moulds are the expensive part, once you have those you just keep squirting out new sprues for very little, at least until you need to re-do the moulds.

 

The problem GW has with marines is they're the most popular line by far, and their own success means the 2nd-hand market is full to bursting, as are existing players cupboards. How do you sell more marines at full price to people that already have, well, tons of them? New variants? Yes, but there's only so many 'weapons we had in the armoury but forgot about' aka centurions you can pull.

 

A full line reboot, with a fluff excuse and a true-scale redesign... well, there you go. Make them incompatible with existing vehicles, jump packs, equipment etc etc and people will buy them as a whole new faction without invalidating the old stuff.

 

All new marine stuff will be primaris, all tanks, dreads, flyers, characters will be primaris. No new mephiston or dante sculpt, for example, unless they go through a primaris conversion first. Gotta tempt you with that whole new army!

 

But the current stuff won't disappear from the rules or fluff or even the shelves any time at all soon. GW kill off stuff that's too expensive to produce that doesn't sell, to free up space for new stuff that will. Old finecast and metal characters, maybe, particularly ones that don't have special rules any more.

 

Mainstream popular plastic? Nah. At worst some boxes might end up online only in a few years time.

[bc99]

I've been around the game so long even though I'm new to this edition. I've seen GW phase out and remove armies and I don't see them scratching everything marine-oriented in favor of primaris. This is mostly due to the variety of chapters.

 

Primaris terminators? Primaris Sanguinary guard? Primaris wolf guys (k so don't know much about them but the wolf riders). I don't see that happening. 

 

What they will do is make primaris only transports. The writing is on the wall for that. I think they make primaris a sexy option and bank on people buying them to add to their armies.

[Xenith]

Yea, even if you assume that they will upscale special units when the moulds go (which they probably will), moulds can last a long time.

 

The old eldar jetbike moulds were in service from like 1997 - 2015, almost 2 decades. I think the falcon and vyper ones are the same age and still going.

 

As the death co and sanguinary guard sprues came out in 2010 or so, it's possibly going to be about 2025 - 2030 before the moulds die, and by that point the mini quality will have deteriorated so much we'll be begging for a resculpt.

 

Further evidence is the rhino and land raider sprues, from 2000 and 2001? respectively. Still going strong.

[Morticon]

Hey matey - unfortunately this isn't a BA specific issue, and while I usually dont mind a little more non-BA specific stuff here there's actually a long discussion going on in Amicus. 

Going to have to close this up.  Shoot me a PM if you'd like me to merge this thread with the Amicus one. 

Otherwise, can find it here:

http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/topic/336082-primaris-marines-gws-end-game/