Interesting interview snippet re:Skitarii

[Shinespider]

Goonhammer recently ran an interview series with a former GW designer, James Hewitt. Part one mostly focuses on AoS's early troubles and its eventual evolution into a solid game, but there's some interesting insider stuff about early Admech at the end:

 

https://www.goonhammer.com/the-goonhammer-interview-with-james-hewitt-part-1-age-of-sigmar-and-40k/

 

 

The Skitarii and Cult Mechanicus [back in 7th] which should have one combined set of rules, they got two sets of special rules, because otherwise you don’t sell two books of special rules, you sell one.

Lupe: And interestingly they got combined back together in 8th.

James: And they should have been, they always should have been. The reason they were split was because of a logistics thing. It was when White Dwarf was weekly and they could only show one week’s releases at a time, and if you put out an army book in week one then you’ll show off the releases for the next one, and “secrecy is paramount” , you can’t show off the future releases. If you put it out in week two, it looks like the releases in week one were coming out without an army book, and that doesn’t make sense. And it was this whole ridiculous… the tail has often wagged the dog in Games Workshop in different ways, and this was a fantastic example of that.

Lupe: OK, sorry, can I just clarify: the reason that in 7th edition they were two separate armies was publishing requirements of White Dwarf?

James: There you go. It was like the Skitarii didn’t have any characters. I had to write that codex. There were no HQ choices, so how do we do it? We had to make up a new detachment for them. Similarly things like the Skitarii didn’t have any transport options.

Lupe: So you worked on 40k as well?

James: Oh sorry yeah, I did, did I not say that?

Lupe:  [Laughs] No you didn’t mention that at all.

James: The rules team worked on everything, 40k was just ubiquitous. It was always just there in the background. It was probably the least exciting part to me – churning out codexes that are 80% the same as the previous edition of the codex, with a few new bits. The Skitarii book was a rare exception, a chance to do a whole new army from scratch. But yeah, the transports thing. We’d had to come up with this whole thing because they didn’t have any transports. And this comes back to the thing I was saying earlier and how it goes miniatures, then background and then rules. The miniatures stuff is so closed off, we didn’t get to know what was happening in the future. So when the background was written for them, the background stuff was emphasising how they’d walk everywhere. And we wrote rules around the idea of them not having transports. So when I saw the transports come out a couple of years later I went “Oh come on!”, that’s just rewritten a huge chunk of stuff. But hey.

Lupe: Wow that is just bizarre.

 

[Closet Skeleton]

This was pretty well known at the time, so its not really 'news'.

 

Still just as bizarre though.

[Sandlemad]

It was definitely known that they were split for money-grabbing or managerial reasons but to know that it was for something as... prosaic as fitting the WD release schedule, that's new and even more ridiculous.

[Gederas]

It was definitely known that they were split for money-grabbing or managerial reasons but to know that it was for something as... prosaic as fitting the WD release schedule, that's new and even more ridiculous.

Honestly, something like that makes it just hilarious. Instead of a single army, they release it as two separate armies.... Because they had to fit it into the White Dwarf release schedule. :lol:

[Closet Skeleton]

It was definitely known that they were split for money-grabbing or managerial reasons but to know that it was for something as... prosaic as fitting the WD release schedule, that's new and even more ridiculous.

Its not new to me but I can't remember what circle I heard it from.

 

Books don't have high profit margins so the two books for profit thing never made sense. Especially not two thin books where you have to pay double for binding and then sell them at slightly cheaper.

 

It wasn't 'just' white dwarf in that white dwarf went weekly as part of a broader 'weekly releases' intent, but blaming weekly white dwarf makes sense as it was the poster child for the policy that the admech releases had to coordinate with.

Edited March 19, 2020 by Closet Skeleton

[Prot]

That's funny. I read the same thing and had the same thoughts.

 

When I read that interview the first thing I thought was... wow how incredibly fortuitous that GW has outstanding Sculpts and Background. Otherwise I think they'd be in trouble. The release schedule being dictated by a magazine release schedule blew my mind more than the "Skitarrii walk everywhere."

[MajorNese]

 

But yeah, the transports thing. We’d had to come up with this whole thing because they didn’t have any transports. And this comes back to the thing I was saying earlier and how it goes miniatures, then background and then rules. The miniatures stuff is so closed off, we didn’t get to know what was happening in the future. So when the background was written for them, the background stuff was emphasising how they’d walk everywhere. And we wrote rules around the idea of them not having transports. So when I saw the transports come out a couple of years later I went “Oh come on!”, that’s just rewritten a huge chunk of stuff.

And that, ladies, gentlemen and toasters, is why I can't take any codex fluff (and coinciding product placement novels) seriously.

 

AdMech fluff was a damn lot more varied when there were no miniatures to sell, and authors could just come up with stuff that made sense, instead of this nonsense...

[Magos Takatus]

I'm glad that part of the background had changed since I had tried to ignore them not having transports as incredibly foolish. I still find it hard to believe that the development of new models, their lore and their rules seem to be created in such a bizarre manner.

[Trokair]

While not quite the same as the above I did hear a while back that another reason that the two was split was to do with production issues as well. There was only so many completely new spruce/ units that could be developed at one time/one cycle (quarterly I think) and that they had to limited the number of different spruce for the initial release. Hence why there are some subtle design difference between the Skittarii and the Cult units as the later where done later (but not significantly later).

[SpiritFox22]

Personally I still wish there was a split between the two. I liked the no HQ in 7th and made me feel like Skitarii were the initial wave before their leaders arrived with the heavy artillery to mop up if needed.

 

To me the design differences are too much of a gap skitarii were clean and straight cyborgs vs Cult leans to "Look at what bit I slap on!" Imo. They just don't look right together in my eyes damned be their effectiveness.

[Magos Takatus]

Well, it looks like the Skitarii range is getting more updates than the Cult Mechanicus. I'm still hoping for a dedicated Skitarii commander one day.

[MajorNese]

To me the design differences are too much of a gap skitarii were clean and straight cyborgs vs Cult leans to "Look at what bit I slap on!" Imo. They just don't look right together in my eyes damned be their effectiveness.

It depends - during launch, there was Skitarii with a clear and unified design, and Cult as whatever GW might want to throw out collected into one codex, with each unit being completely unique.

 

Now, with new releases, things tend to clear up a bit.

Cawl, Daedalosus and Grombrindal have the same design elements as the TPD.

X-101 is a perfect style fit for kataphrons (and I wish there were even more such servitors).

And secutarii/the upcoming AdMech releases fit skitarii again.

 

Now this is just about design elements/style, not the unit concept in itself.

Skitarii vehicles still tend to be a wild mixture from chicken and crab over shoe box and WW2 boat to dragonfly.

And electro priests/baymaxes are still weird stuff that doesn't fit anywhere, being mostly a throwback to the good old times.

[Xisor]

Bear in mind, the time of this release, GW were in the midst of some of their most absurd-seeming decisions in goodness knows how long.

 

The switch to Hardbacks for HH, the mad release programme, the absolute secrecy vs leaks, the scrapping of the Old World the culmination of the drive to single-worker stores, the utter alienation of non-GW stores...

 

GW were making MANY odd decisions. I've a notion this was from about early 2011 onwards, but if I forget the precise timings (if I ever knew them).

 

Look at the BL books of the era - it coincided with the Beast Arises novels too - they'd been started years before. I think "I Am Slaughter" was said to be written/planned about 2012(?), and the follow-ups, but then shelved and the vague plan to have Iron Men be the salvation versus the Orks was similarly shunted, to make way for the Origins of the Deathwatch and some extra notes about the Sisters of Silence.

 

Listening to the authors/editors talk about it it sounded... Chaotic.

 

(This also aligns with the Outcast Dead, and the timing of Dan's major hiatus in writing his GW novels - they weren't tying directly into product placements, so they weren't getting green-lit.)

 

Im not sure what it was, but something changed.

 

Guttingly, Rob Sanders' (IMO: excellent) Skitarius & Tech-Priest novels came out at the time, but love them as I do, I can't really defend against the product placement concerns.

 

But consider the alternative: Dan had a book "on hold", Mark Clapham's "Tyrant of the Hollow Worlds" was sat on for no particular reason, then rushed to print without much feedback (if memory serves - he was surprised when it *eventually* just sailed through, he'd expected a bit more give/take in what to modify, what to change, what to tidy or what to add in more of)...

 

Hell, the third in Josh Reynold's vampire novels was ditched (and Master of Death was released as basically a non-entity footnote, mid-rebranding of a cancelled series!), whilst Nick Kyme and Chris Wraight's six-book War of Vengeance/the Beard Epic was truncated into a trilogy culminating in a single novel written by neither of them.

 

Given that the wheels were falling off in many places, it's strange to think what position an author would be in: add a conspicuous and very explicit Electropriest Corpuscarii vs Fulgurites scene, or face having your book never be published?

 

(Don't know if that was ever explicitly said that way - but I don't recall that sort of odd product placement in any of Rob Sanders' other [excellent] novels, so I've not a clue.)

 

In that respect, the fact that the Mechanicus are as vivid and cool as they currently are, it's kind of strange that it actually worked out well.

 

Whatever changed between 2012-2016 is, I'm sure, a thrilling story.

 

But the idea of things being orchestrated just to fit White Dwarf's schedule?

 

I find myself nodding my head in resigned marvel.

 

(Or to follow the metaohor: with my head nodding me...)

Edited March 20, 2020 by Xisor

[MajorNese]

Yeah, GW at that time was beyond chaotic, and I know that misguided sort of leadership from my company. Which is another reason I can't take the fluff from that time seriously - we all know it was explicitly written around the released models, and anything beyond that was no-go area. Which leads to such ridiculous fluff like the no transport thing.

 

Guttingly, Rob Sanders' (IMO: excellent) Skitarius & Tech-Priest novels came out at the time, but love them as I do, I can't really defend against the product placement concerns.

I've only read the first. Usually, I read everything about AdMech, but the product placement priority was just too obvious. And one or two short stories, at least the breacher one was pointless to the extreme.

 

I mean, there is almost nothing beyond the models - the leader had a slightly different loadout IIRC, and got transported by hanging onto the back of an Onager (?!?), but everything else has a price tag on the GW store and a codex entry. Most battle scenes were repeating the exact wording of the codex about what the guys are armed with and how awesome that is at killing stuff. That just breaks the suspension of disbelief for me, to the point where the story just appears as a setup to tell me to buy the models. And if I wanted to read that, I'd grab the codex instead.

 

I agree, it's not the author's fault if leadership has snorted too much resin dust and would never greenlight more creative content, but it's a clear example of not taking GWs more model-based fluff too seriously. There are a lot of people out there who take fluff like this for the word of the omnissiah, instead of looking for the bigger picture (enabling the truly interesting part of the hobby IMHO, creating "your dudes" instead of repeating cookiecutter armies).

[Black Knight]

I had major problems reading the first part of that dual book, I rarely come across books I have to re-read too much for it to go in but Skitarius was one of them, to the point where I haven't had any interest in reading the Tech-Priest part. I thought it was due to too much "Cog"(Using technical made up words) language but I have read so many other Ad-Mech books with no issues at all. I am currently reading the Great Work.

 

It seems so stupid to have their marketing arm in WD dictate the release schedule and force two books to be produced, isn't that too much hassle and money for a company to go through? Wouldn't it of been easier just to say that the codex would release as a single tomb in the second Admech release, postpone the Skitarii to release next to Admech and job done.

[Quantum]

I was under the impression that GW had moved away from the annoying habit of pretending that, if no dedicated model was produced (yet), certain units or vehicles did not exist at all in the setting. Guess I was wrong.

[Beren]

Well, we are talking about something that happened five years ago.

[Scribe]

That is actually hilariously meta-relevant within 40K and the Admech in particular...institutional dysfunction.

 

EDIT: WOW. Thank you for that link. The Age of Sigmar stuff is absolutely GRATIFYING. We knew it was an absolute disaster, and well...as the meme goes.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjA5A86V6SY

Edited March 30, 2020 by Scribe

[BrainFireBob]

Kirby years. A DnD guy who didn't understand tabletop wargaming, didn't really understand business at that level- I am sure he excelled as a department head- trying to first boost, then maintain, profitability.