10th Edition: GW's Target Demographic

[Helycon]

@Toxichobbit appreciate the write up!

 

I do hope the CU, if that starts to form, for Warhammer stays a bit in its lane. One of the things that I imagine a lot of people also enjoy about the hobby is creating their own stories. Having everything fleshed out in series and films could limit creativity

[Sea Creature]

Audience composition can reveal a site's current market share across various audiences. warhammer-community.com's audience is 80.91% male and 19.09% female. The largest age group of visitors are 18 - 24 year olds.

[Marshal Rohr]

I thought it was weird I kept having to send a picture of my junk to the WarCom email before I could read the articles. Guess it was just market research. 

[phandaal]

28 minutes ago, Sea Creature said:

Audience composition can reveal a site's current market share across various audiences. warhammer-community.com's audience is 80.91% male and 19.09% female. The largest age group of visitors are 18 - 24 year olds.

 

Yep, for sure. Fan sites are an interesting metric too. As a former contributor to the Bell of Lost Souls website, can you share any insight on their stats?

[MaximusTL]

going against the grain here: for the most part, I am happy with GW. the prices remain insane of course, but GW consistentlently puts out high quality minis and interesting expansions to the lore. As someone who hasn't been able to get many games in since covid, my enjoyment hasn't gone down at all. i do think the core rules of 10th are solid, though no equipment points were a blunder. (i do think that there is room for making equipment closer in value and giving them different points as well). 

 

We've seen GW take in feedback. sometimes an FAQ is easily doable (like the deathwatch hellfire shells interaction a few weeks ago) but sometimes the changes that are wanted take longer. almost everything GW puts out goes through a 3 year development cycle, the lifetime of a modern edition - i wouldn't be surprised if alot of things people have been complaining about or discussing will be in 11th. Honestly, with this push back, i wouldn't be surprised if in the first chapter approved we see some equipment points.

[Scribe]

8 minutes ago, MaximusTL said:

GW consistentlently puts out high quality minis

 

Pity we cannot buy them?

 

I dont remember a time these were in stock.

 

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-CA/chaos-knights-war-dog-karnivore-2022

[Halandaar]

19 hours ago, Scribe said:

 

Pity we cannot buy them?

 

I dont remember a time these were in stock.

 

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-CA/chaos-knights-war-dog-karnivore-2022

 

Apologies as it's in the UK but this post on Facebook felt overly specific not to include

[Scribe]

Is that recent???

[Marshal Rohr]

2 minutes ago, Scribe said:

Is that recent???

Now we know why we don’t have any. They don’t even try to send them to NA. 

[Rain]

2 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

Now we know why we don’t have any. They don’t even try to send them to NA. 

It’s what we get for our colonial insurrection 

[Halandaar]

1 hour ago, Scribe said:

Is that recent???

 

It was 20minutes old at the time I posted it.

[Scribe]

6 minutes ago, Halandaar said:

 

It was 20minutes old at the time I posted it.

 

Wow, amazing. Is the great evil of the stock shortage finally coming to an end?!

[MegaVolt87]

On 7/28/2023 at 12:35 AM, KenaiPhoneix said:

I kind of disagree with OP, this is a hobby and a game, having fun is the most important element and there is usually no fun in playing agains “that” sweaty guy that spend the whole week planning your army fall. The correct mind set is to have fun and take the game lightly, after all we are all a bunch of adults (on the most part) moving plastic armies and imaginating epic battles in our heads. The true crusade are the good memories we made along.

 

BUT, and I haven’t got too many matches of 10th but will believe OP, if the game is broken or it is easy exploitable even by unintended actions, then those good memories are not gonna be there. To be a fun game, it has to be fair, and this applies to any gaming stuff. I really hope they fix this edition with current editions now that everything is “on the net”.  Instead of letting us just play this until 11. Better if they maintain 10 for a long time, but that’s more difficult, they would never ignore the “hype sales” a new edition causes. 
 

About the demographic, the idea is to made a game more fun, it was incredible awkward and bad when you opponent spent 45 minutes in its phase while reading and explaining special rules/stratagems while you sit on you side with you phone or just doing nothing. Building an army was a pain, and too overcomplicated, this will take possible new players out. Streamline the rules and make the game more “fast” is a good call imo, better than just making you moves for 45 minutes and then waiting another 45 minutes is to play for 10 minutes, and wait for 10 minutes.

 

this will cal more people in, because life happens and after all this is an expensive game and not only on money but also on time. Some people see this with the leviathan online campaign, many people haven’t finished painting their armies and it was over. Usually having more money also equals to having less time to do more stuff because of other responsibilities, so making a game more fast and streamlined is a bless to many that wants to split the time in all of their hobbies. So I believe those changes are for us too. 
 

And for the “new blood” or teenagers, having phases that take 30 minutes or just requiring 1 hour of and over complicated army building (to have it somewhat competitive) is a death sentence. Kids these days have the attention span of a pigeon, if there is not an instant gratification they just drop it. There are some cases of teenagers that take the time for their hobbies, but overall the tendency is to just give everything in the less time possible. And this doesn’t apply only to tabletop games (that were always kind of niche) but also movies, shows, videos or video games. 

 

The problems here are new player skill issues, not game issues. If you know what you are doing, you can play an entire game of 40k 2k pts at 2.5 hrs or less, HH 3k pts at 3hr or under. Army building was never complicated, variety is the spice of life. Now 40k 10th copied Age of Sigmar and it doesn't work when the whole setting is about different versions of guns and melee weapons, tanks, walkers etc. Also, "sweaty" guy sounds like a slur against someone who knows how the game works, how their army works and how your army works. Its called experience, taking time to read up on the game. The "sweaty" guy sounds like someone I want to play because they know whats going on and I can get in a second game on games night because we finished the game under the average time. Catering to the lowest common denominator like GW is attempting, only goes so far. GW has clearly thrown out the baby with the bathwater in an attempt to "fix" the game. Core 9th ed 40k was a solid system on its own at launch, 10th ed can't even say the same at release. 

[Scribe]

On 7/27/2023 at 10:57 AM, Toxichobbit said:

And yeah, I agree. I don't think 40k would work for modern audiences as it exists now, and definitely not how it was originally envisioned.

 

I think it could. Dredd was good.

 

I'll probably weep in frustration if they ruin 40K just to make it 'palatable' to whatever passes for 'modern audiences'.

[Marshal Rohr]

23 minutes ago, Scribe said:

 

I think it could. Dredd was good.

 

I'll probably weep in frustration if they ruin 40K just to make it 'palatable' to whatever passes for 'modern audiences'.

“I, Roboute Guilliman *looks directly at camera*, a bad guy no one should emulate, will take control of my father’s very evil and not good and definitely the bad guys Imperium. We will try to save humanity from obliteration by chaos with some morally and ethically wrong decisions that should never be examined in the context of the setting, because again, we are pure evil. The impact of my choices on normal people will be bad, and I need to say this explicitly for some reason after the great screening of Oppenheimer in M2 when everyone needed it spelled out for them creating an atomic weapon was bad.” 

[Rain]

8 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

“I, Roboute Guilliman *looks directly at camera*, a bad guy no one should emulate, will take control of my father’s very evil and not good and definitely the bad guys Imperium. We will try to save humanity from obliteration by chaos with some morally and ethically wrong decisions that should never be examined in the context of the setting, because again, we are pure evil. The impact of my choices on normal people will be bad, and I need to say this explicitly for some reason after the great screening of Oppenheimer in M2 when everyone needed it spelled out for them creating an atomic weapon was bad.” 

 

Oh, quite the opposite. I feel like it would be the honorable and courageous Imperials, who resemble a modern Western democracy in every way save some power armor window dressing, fighting Abaddon, an authoritarian Chaos Lord, who oppresses and invades his peace loving Cadian neighbors. Abaddon would destroy the beautiful and democratic planet Cadia, causing its strong female governor to flee on a ship, swearing vengeance. Guilliman will eventually arrive, team up with the Cadian governor, and monologue about the importance of resistance to tyranny. They engage in an epic duel, that spent 500 hours rendering at some CGI shop in Singapore.

 

Abaddon will appear to gain the upper hand, until the strong female governor steps in with a bolter that she picked up off a heroically dying Ultramarine, firing and revealing a chink in Abaddon's armor. Guilliman would then punch Abaddon really hard in the newly revealed hole in his armor, and Abaddon would stagger back, ranting madly as he turns a subtle shade of orange from pain and humiliation, before fleeing. The governor would be inducted by Guilliman as the first female Space Marine.

 

The galaxy is saved.

[phandaal]

21 minutes ago, Marshal Rohr said:

“I, Roboute Guilliman *looks directly at camera*, a bad guy no one should emulate, will take control of my father’s very evil and not good and definitely the bad guys Imperium. We will try to save humanity from obliteration by chaos with some morally and ethically wrong decisions that should never be examined in the context of the setting, because again, we are pure evil. The impact of my choices on normal people will be bad, and I need to say this explicitly for some reason after the great screening of Oppenheimer in M2 when everyone needed it spelled out for them creating an atomic weapon was bad.” 

 

If this were helmed by anyone else besides Henry Cavill, that is definitely the kind of subtle modern messaging we would get. Brought to us by whomever is running GW's Twitter account.

 

[MegaVolt87]

4 hours ago, Marshal Rohr said:

“I, Roboute Guilliman *looks directly at camera*, a bad guy no one should emulate, will take control of my father’s very evil and not good and definitely the bad guys Imperium. We will try to save humanity from obliteration by chaos with some morally and ethically wrong decisions that should never be examined in the context of the setting, because again, we are pure evil. The impact of my choices on normal people will be bad, and I need to say this explicitly for some reason after the great screening of Oppenheimer in M2 when everyone needed it spelled out for them creating an atomic weapon was bad.” 

 

Now that I think about it, RG's primarch novel is similar to Oppenheimer.... 

[DuskRaider]

Recent editions have been geared toward a younger audience. I know that some people will disagree, but with the absence of more advanced strategic rules such as armor facing and value and a lot of the TLoS / cover save rules, I just see it as a… simplified… version of 40K. 
 

Personally, I think HHv1 rules were probably the best that GW has come up with for 28mm scale. I still believe that AT18 are the best overall that they’ve created (at least for a long time), but FW basically took a good base rule system in 6th / 7th and removed all of the crap that basically ruined it… which wasn’t very difficult… and made a great gaming system. 

[SkimaskMohawk]

22 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

Recent editions have been geared toward a younger audience. I know that some people will disagree, but with the absence of more advanced strategic rules such as armor facing and value and a lot of the TLoS / cover save rules, I just see it as a… simplified… version of 40K. 

 

It shares a lot more with a card game than a tabletop war game. It's all about your combos and army build, or else your homebrew list is going to have a real uphill battle. Also watch out for the next season!

 

26 minutes ago, DuskRaider said:

Personally, I think HHv1 rules were probably the best that GW has come up with for 28mm scale.

 

I dream of playing Heresy 1st in 5th, which would fixed a ton of complaints in the rules. 1st in 6th was still very good though (but 7th turned it into blast-hammer).

[DuskRaider]

2 hours ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

 

It shares a lot more with a card game than a tabletop war game. It's all about your combos and army build, or else your homebrew list is going to have a real uphill battle. Also watch out for the next season!

 

 

I dream of playing Heresy 1st in 5th, which would fixed a ton of complaints in the rules. 1st in 6th was still very good though (but 7th turned it into blast-hammer).

Honestly, HH was an absolute blast until the introduction of Thousand Sons, Space Wolves and Custodes…

 

… or to put it another way, it all went downhill after Alan Bligh passed. In fact, the quality of FW writing as a whole has sharply declined since then. It’s still really upsetting. 

[Rain]

3 hours ago, DuskRaider said:

Recent editions have been geared toward a younger audience. I know that some people will disagree, but with the absence of more advanced strategic rules such as armor facing and value and a lot of the TLoS / cover save rules, I just see it as a… simplified… version of 40K. 
 

Personally, I think HHv1 rules were probably the best that GW has come up with for 28mm scale. I still believe that AT18 are the best overall that they’ve created (at least for a long time), but FW basically took a good base rule system in 6th / 7th and removed all of the crap that basically ruined it… which wasn’t very difficult… and made a great gaming system. 

Yeah, 6th edition would have been great, but for allies. Unfortunately allies broke the game so severely that this is tantamount to saying “this would have been a great steak but for it being lathered in runny pig feces.”

[SkimaskMohawk]

1 hour ago, Rain said:

Yeah, 6th edition would have been great, but for allies. Unfortunately allies broke the game so severely that this is tantamount to saying “this would have been a great steak but for it being lathered in runny pig feces.”

 

I think if by allies you meant "all the extras to your main force" it'd line up. 

 

Initial allies were a little cringey in a lot of ways, and kinda over the top with epidemious and nurgle CSM, but otherwise pretty unobtrusive. But then we got the inquisitors that didn't actually count towards allies, then the firebase cadre that didn't count towards allies, then the stronghold assault, then the knight that didn't count towards allies, and then the gargoyle formation that respawned them and lopsidedly introduced obsec... This is at the same time as the power curve went from codex CSM and shot right up to tau and eldar level. I'm also pretty sure some guy won a tournament with maugen ra double firing the Aquila strong point.

 

The mechanics of the edition were still very solid, but the sales division started acting like...well kinda like modern GW. The core issue of the FOC and army cohesion getting trampled, as well as super shameless power creep is just par for the course these days. 

[DuskRaider]

Formations were a death knell for good rules as well. The problem with GW is that when there’s a broken rule, they throw the baby out with the bath water and completely dismantle everything or respond with such a heavy handed move that it often times makes things worse. Just look at the fallout from the whole Chapterhouse incident. 
 

I don’t mind Allies as long as it’s done properly… I mean, it’s still a thing after all and I will say that the way it’s ruled is actually not bad… the Keyword system works quite well in a number of ways, but everything else is just… a mess. It started with 8th and it hasn’t gotten any better. 
 

Turning tanks into Monsters (more or less) was a huge turn off for me and that’s when I realized that the target demographic was much younger than myself and those that I play with. You can see it as well in the design of a lot of the models as well, particularly Chaos… at least in my opinion. 

[MegaVolt87]

The target audience is technically a younger one, kinda always has been. One issue for me is CSM being blurred so much with warriors of chaos/slaves to darkness AOS. The recent CSM Dex cover art is pretty much fantasy chaos warriors at this point in my eyes for instance.