WHTV AT Update Livestream Notes

[wildweasel]

My notes from today's livestream :)

 

Brief intro to AT and its real world background for newcomers.

 

"Here to talk about the new releases coming out over the next few weeks."

 

Starting with the Sunfury Warlord box. Rehashing how frames were designed to allow sprues to be swapped out.

 

AT Warbinger Nemesis? "Would be nice, hopefully one day." Lot's of work and effort involved in converting to AT plastic.

 

Andy wants to do all the Legio dice.

 

Imperator not being worked on. Not ruling it out but "don't hold your breath" Would be a huge project/kit.

 

Showing off the Sunfury sprue. Three different heads, Enough upper arms for all weapons on the sprue for magnetizing. Forward carapace witht he extended section instead of the tilting shields.

 

Showing weapon cards and talking their stats.

 

New weapon sprues "in the new year." No exact date but "not a very long time."

 

Mega-bolters on fists deliberately don't have AT rules, they are short-ranged weapons and are factored into the melee potential of the fists.

 

Lots of Legio special rules being written.

 

Usual "Have lots to do for the HH setting right now, may do others in the future."

 

On to the Cerastus Knights.  "Would be nice to do the other weapons on the Banner terminal in resin."

 

Chainfist and warblade have the same profile since they are so similar in AT scale.

 

WHC blog was wrong, the Lancer shield only gives a +1 if you have a save from the table.

 

Can't really talk about the contents of the Titandeath sourcebook. Going over the Beta-Garmon background.

 

No universal naming convention for Titans across the Legios, so can do whatever you want for your own Legio.

 

They are looking at additional weapon types such as volkite and Oridnatus beyond "Convert the 40K weapons over". HH was a time of breaking all the rules and breaking out the weird and dangerous tech. Nothing firm as to what or when.

 

Talking the Reaver 2 now. Just showing the same image and listing the new weapons. Power fist can be open or closed. Both fists can be mounted to either side. One head with three faceplates. Standalone sprue "early 2019".

 

Knights are the Guardsmen of AT.

 

Plan is to get these new sprues out, then fill out missing weapons with resin.

 

Lots of room and expectation for people to make their own Legios and pick the special rules that best suit them.

 

FAQ in the works. Needs to go through layout and editorial. Aware there are questions and looking at them.

 

Horus Heresy 28mm coverage next Thursday.

[Brother Dallo]

Thanks for the comments wildweasel. Any word on whether shieldbane/draining was optional as mentioned on Communities?

 

Dallo

[Burni]

Awesome job Wildweasel. Thanks for doing that. I think the guy speaking was Jonathan Taylor something (Bloodbowl Guy) not Andy (I asked the dice question on the steam chat).

 

So the next weapons for knights and titans will be resin eh? Well can’t complain too much, we’ve been a bit spoilt in the plastic front so far.

[wildweasel]

Yeah they talked about the draining being optional. And the rules do say that “Trait (Draining)” means you only use the trait in question if you opt to take a reactor drain.

And yeah I realized Andy wasn't on a bit into it and thought I had removed all those references. I think with Andy not being on and them having to be kinda vague about future releases means we should take exactly what is going to be resin versus plastic with a bit of salt.

[Fajita Fan]

Thanks for the comments wildweasel. Any word on whether shieldbane/draining was optional as mentioned on Communities?

 

Dallo

I thought the rules said (Draining) was optional?

[Brother Dallo]

 

Thanks for the comments wildweasel. Any word on whether shieldbane/draining was optional as mentioned on Communities?

 

Dallo

I thought the rules said (Draining) was optional?

 

 

It may do. My rules are still in the post and I've seen some Facebook discussion about people who hadn't been playing it that way. It may be perfectly clear in the rules, when I get the chance to read them.

 

Dallo

[Mendi Warrior]

Excellent summary, thanks a lot.

 

I understood things a bit differently regarding weapons. As I understood it they would release the ones included in the cards in plastic, and the more esoteric ones in resin. Really eager to see a definite official answer on that.

 

They also seemed to rule out the Acastus class of knights. Saying something along the line of "acastus ... the large knights the size of warhounds ... no plans". Is that also your understanding?

[Fajita Fan]

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the comments wildweasel. Any word on whether shieldbane/draining was optional as mentioned on Communities?

 

Dallo

I thought the rules said (Draining) was optional?

It may do. My rules are still in the post and I've seen some Facebook discussion about people who hadn't been playing it that way. It may be perfectly clear in the rules, when I get the chance to read them.

 

Dallo

Well then, page 39:

 

“Some weapons have (Draining) after another trait - this means that they do not have the trait by default, but if they push the plasma reactor before attacking with the weapon, it gains that trait for the duration of the attack.”

[Burni]

So did they hint/say if the back of the Reaver head is the same as the current one and just the mask part is different?

 

Just wondering if I’m going to be able to use the mask part on the vanilla Reaver I’m building at the mo.

[Cpt. Bannockburn]

The back is exactly the same, just the masks are different, is what they said.

[Fajita Fan]

So overall kinda underwhelming?

[Burni]

About par for the course on these live-streams. They save reveals for events and similar. The best you can hope for is a slip up which reveals something accidentally or more details of something already shown.

 

Edit: I find it odd that we saw the Questoris carapace weapons on models before the game even launched (I think it was in the first live stream game they did) and we still have no idea when they are coming.

[Red_Shift]

I'm a little perplexed that gamers seem to already have the alternative weapons 3d scanned and printed from about week two after release and yet the designers seem to be suggesting that we shouldn't expect more than the same for a while and seemingly nothing else is being worked on I.e. emperor. I know next to nothing about 3d printers but if guys can do these weapon prints in their spare time I would expect new titan designs imminently from the professionals.

[Fajita Fan]

I found a bunch of stuff on Thingiverse and adapted them for my own use, I get to print at work as a librarian.  The process of designing plastic injection molded sprues is a very expensive process but GW's business model is clear:

 

1. Release a model with some weapons

2. Hint that extra weapons will be available

3. Reap sales from early adopters like me who bought 4 Warlords and 6 Reavers

4. Release the same model with new weapons

5. Hope to reap more sales from the same early adopters

6. Eventually be shamed into releasing new weapons separately

 

They want to see the game take off before they invest in more tooling but it's very obvious that these new Warlord and Reaver sprues were designed and molded at the same time as the original releases.  GW has really shifted to the drip feed method of stretching out sales so they don't get huge sales spikes, that kind of volatility is seen as undesirable to investors of publicly traded companies. Because the men who call the shots at companies like GW are major stockholders their business practices are meant to satisfy their stock options, not us customers.

 

The flip side of that?  Well people like me who bought 4 Warlords and 6 Reavers will switch to 3d printed and converted weapon options while GW twiddles its thumbs.  Their business practice of drip feeding releases to smooth their sales numbers will increase the demand for 3d printed and 3rd party bits companies so they need to factor that into their calculus.  

[wildweasel]

Excellent summary, thanks a lot.

 

I understood things a bit differently regarding weapons. As I understood it they would release the ones included in the cards in plastic, and the more esoteric ones in resin. Really eager to see a definite official answer on that.

 

They also seemed to rule out the Acastus class of knights. Saying something along the line of "acastus ... the large knights the size of warhounds ... no plans". Is that also your understanding?

 

I could well be misunderstanding on what's going to be plastic and resin, they were being kind of vague and of course my attention was split between listening and typing. That's my impression on the Acastus as well.

 

So did they hint/say if the back of the Reaver head is the same as the current one and just the mask part is different?

 

Just wondering if I’m going to be able to use the mask part on the vanilla Reaver I’m building at the mo.

 

They didn't and I don't have a Reaver yet so I can't speculate.

 

So overall kinda underwhelming?

 

It's pretty par for the course for the livestreams. It's more about showing off and more detail on things already announced, with maybe a bit of hints and wishlisting.

 

I'm a little perplexed that gamers seem to already have the alternative weapons 3d scanned and printed from about week two after release and yet the designers seem to be suggesting that we shouldn't expect more than the same for a while and seemingly nothing else is being worked on I.e. emperor. I know next to nothing about 3d printers but if guys can do these weapon prints in their spare time I would expect new titan designs imminently from the professionals.

 

Knocking together a 3D design to be printed out on Shapeways and creating something to be mass produced in the quality customers would expect are two different things. Plus the whole gearing up for mass production. Model wise, they said they have a bunch of stuff planned, and from past streams and such this is a bigger than normal amount of releases for a Specialist Game, in part because the delays allowed them to stockpile designs.

 

Keep in mind that AT is having to share production bandwidth (at every step of the process) with the rest of the Specialist Games range (and *that* has to fit into GW+FW's overall schedule).

 

Personally, I expect after the release of Reaver 2, the new sprues from it and Warlord 2, and Titandeath that AT releases are going to slow to a more typical Specialist Games schedule, with something dropping every quarter or so, with that something being anything from some resin packs to maybe a variant 3 for an existing chassis or even a new class (I also expect to see the standard Warbringer in AT before the Nemesis).

[Red_Shift]

Good answers guys. I'm a little worried that they have lost momentum and that as releases slow to a drip feed of resin add ons it will just die a slow death. I'm hoping they are just being cagey and not speaking too much about unexpected releases that are still a few months out.

[Reyner]

It's going quicker than Necromunda did at least. 

[Mendi Warrior]

 

Excellent summary, thanks a lot.

 

I understood things a bit differently regarding weapons. As I understood it they would release the ones included in the cards in plastic, and the more esoteric ones in resin. Really eager to see a definite official answer on that.

 

They also seemed to rule out the Acastus class of knights. Saying something along the line of "acastus ... the large knights the size of warhounds ... no plans". Is that also your understanding?

 

I could well be misunderstanding on what's going to be plastic and resin, they were being kind of vague and of course my attention was split between listening and typing. That's my impression on the Acastus as well.

 

 

I hope you misunderstood as I would really prefer to see the remaining "regular" weapons in plastic. We'll see. Maybe someone with access to the stream's archive could double check.

 

A bit surprising for the acastus class, as I think many people would love to see them. This said, there are lots of things they seem to would like to do but they always kind of emphasize their constraints: "time" + "resources".

[Burni]

Quite honestly once we’ve got all the weapons on the cards, I’d be content with quarterly SG style releases (obviously more would be better though!)

 

Unlike BB and N17 we’ll have got all our ‘gangs’ in a few months rather than a year plus. And the new stuff (Warbringer etc) can come every 3 months. That seems fair.

 

I hope Battlefleet Heresy gets released in a similar way to AT and not have the core stuff spread out over a year.

 

But obviously I want all the things now ideally!

[Fajita Fan]

I'll be super pissed if they change BFG's scale.