GW nuking model lines

[Redcomet]

30 minutes ago, Lay said:

GW needs a long term plan for their games and stick to it. But that's just wishful thinking.

They do have that. Mostly. AoS is a special case. The entire initial launch and edition was a very poorly handled 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

46 minutes ago, Valkyrion said:

Stormcast and Marines are going to suffer the triennial bloat that comes with being the poster boys of each new edition, so if new lines are added (e.g the totally unnecessary Infernus marines)  rather than updated (e.g new terminators), then sooner or later something that is still 'new' will eventually have to go. 

I don't know a lot about Stormcasts, and Space Marines are different because of the Firstborn legacy line, but maybe 11th will see things like Suppressors, Aggressors, Inceptors get rotated out rather than redone, and it will seem like it's too soon but it'll turn out they're 12 years old or something equally mental. 

Idk aggressors and inceptors seem too popular to get rid of. Why nuke units that are selling well?

[Nephaston]

Very much a symptom of lack of planning and their lack of coordination within their respective teams, not to mention any office politics between different games different teams.

The AoS 2nd edition Stormcast kits had massive overlap with those of the first, so instead of having to axe only the old liberators for the new one they now need to axe the other infantry hammer unit; Sequitors, or else they might parasitize liberator sales. Vanguard SCE are seemingly safe for now since they have their own niche for now. Bonesplittaz and Beastmen getting removed from AoS to OW  is also just GW refusing to have kits pull double duty and avoid having to approach two different design approaches (and include two bases)

 

And this can happen to any faction in 40k where there is either overlap within the army or overlap with 30k. Unlike the Warcry kits I think Kill Team kits will be safe as they are made with both systems in mind which wasn't the case with the early Warcry kits it seems.

 

Armies where this might happen are imo loyalist marines, which havve considerable overlap in units and kits that could have been one kit instead of three (for example reivers could have been just another infiltrator skew. Hellblasters, Infernus, and Desolators could also be the same kit), the other would probably be the mortals of traitor marines, which previously struggled to exist outside of forge world.

30k has the benefit of most of their kits playing around the standard infantry sprues, a setup which is so unbelievably smart that I would love to see it expanded to other armies where it makes sense.

[phandaal]

1 hour ago, CL_Mission said:

Some first born units could go away?? This is a new and surprising turn of events that I could never have imagined! 

 

To be less sarcastic, suppressors did cross my mind when seeing this news. Some of the older stuff going wasn't such a big surprise but seeing so much of the Stormcast go, which are quite recent models was unexpected. Obviously some will be getting new models like the Liberators (who got a glow up in my opinion, the new Stormcast are much better than the old) but I wonder if some units are just gone. 

 

 

I think the main takeaway is that models will disappear and reappear at random to match whatever is on the internal release calendar at GW HQ, and whatever they decide is part of a different game system. You should not buy models from Games Workshop with the expectation that you can use them for a long time in an officially-supported capacity with Games Workshop rules. That is not how things work anymore.

 

We have seen that with the Primaris refresh in 40k, with the recent Dark Angels codex, with the World Eaters codex, with the move to Legends for a bunch of 40k Chaos stuff, and now we are seeing it in their other systems as well. No doubt other people have more examples in mind than just these.

 

Their flagship "bad guy" faction for the new launch is Skaven, and those are getting their own version of a refresh with the message: some of these are going away, some are coming back, now play the fun game of waiting to see which of your units still exist in 6 months.

 

"Yes but-but-but," you may be saying, "they would never do that to MY models, they are only X years old!" Well, that is probably what a lot of people were saying about their fantasy models up until today.

[Nephaston]

3 minutes ago, phandaal said:

"Yes but-but-but," you may be saying, "they would never do that to MY models, they are only X years old!" Well, that is probably what a lot of people were saying about their fantasy models up until today.

There is already a rumour that Aggressors might be on the chopping block. And I honestly can see Reivers going as well.

[Redcomet]

Just now, Nephaston said:

There is already a rumour that Aggressors might be on the chopping block. And I honestly can see Reivers going as well.

I wouldn’t be surprised. There are other models that do 99% of what they do

[Dr. Clock]

While definitely a double-edged sword, in general I'm okay with this.

 

Stormcast simply can't sustain another round of 'variant Captains and Lieutenants', and there shouldn't be so much differentiation at the unit level that you need big differences between maces and hammers. 

 

I have been trying to decide whether to complete my Beastmen from their current 12-1500 pts, but now I'm just going to use them as basic Darkoath or Bloodbound infantry as the mood arises. Metal minotaurs? 'Theridons' will work fine. 

 

Having to micro-manage like 10 subtle variations on 'Chaos cultists' from Warcry was kinda cool, but also just a bit of a headache when I'm okay with them as... just more bloodreavers or darkoath. The diversity of models is its own reward for me, so if the game just gets a bit easier to play I really am fine changing whatever four to six sidegrade/snowflake units into just more of the 'basic infantry' in-game.

 

In terms of Warcry stuff, anything on a bigger base is potentially more useful as character minis. I'm kinda excited to use my Corvus Cabal flappy guy as a wizard, for instance, or the Iron Golem ogre as a beatstick character if I'm in the meed. Heck, some of the Iron Golem are even gonna end up permanently promoted to full bloodwarriors...

 

Mostly these kinds of things tend to have little or no impact on the models I choose to buy and play with... when something I love inevitably gets squatted I just find the closest approximation in current ruleset and roll the dice.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

[redmapa]

The writing has been been on the  wall regarding FB units and while this new codex did breathe new life into these old units they also scrapped like half of the current units so I'm not expecting units like Rhinos, Razorbacks or Castraferrum to get anything but deleted and anything getting an update will be in the vein of the Terminator/Assault Marines update, same unit but under the Primaris umbrella. 

 

At this point I'm not surprised GW is doing this, their production issues coupled with a bloated production line is a recipes for this situation and as for marines, we don't need 9 flavor of LTs and Captains or a squad per weapon load out so I hope those get consolidated somehow, now that the Intercessor box has tons of scopes and ammo that do nothing they could rebrand the unit as a new Tactical squad by adding two Plasmas/Flamer/Missiles in the box and consolidating the Tacticus special weapon squads into one unit, that's another way to reduce unit count and bloat.

[Zoatibix]

I do hope that all the Warcry units that instantly went ‘temporarily out of stock’ are going to stick around.

 

Firstly, they have some great designs there. Secondly, Warcry is a great game. It would be a pity if GW can them just because they don’t want them used in AoS.

[Redcomet]

7 minutes ago, Dr. Clock said:

While definitely a double-edged sword, in general I'm okay with this.

 

Stormcast simply can't sustain another round of 'variant Captains and Lieutenants', and there shouldn't be so much differentiation at the unit level that you need big differences between maces and hammers. 

 

I have been trying to decide whether to complete my Beastmen from their current 12-1500 pts, but now I'm just going to use them as basic Darkoath or Bloodbound infantry as the mood arises. Metal minotaurs? 'Theridons' will work fine. 

 

Having to micro-manage like 10 subtle variations on 'Chaos cultists' from Warcry was kinda cool, but also just a bit of a headache when I'm okay with them as... just more bloodreavers or darkoath. The diversity of models is its own reward for me, so if the game just gets a bit easier to play I really am fine changing whatever four to six sidegrade/snowflake units into just more of the 'basic infantry' in-game.

 

In terms of Warcry stuff, anything on a bigger base is potentially more useful as character minis. I'm kinda excited to use my Corvus Cabal flappy guy as a wizard, for instance, or the Iron Golem ogre as a beatstick character if I'm in the meed. Heck, some of the Iron Golem are even gonna end up permanently promoted to full bloodwarriors...

 

Mostly these kinds of things tend to have little or no impact on the models I choose to buy and play with... when something I love inevitably gets squatted I just find the closest approximation in current ruleset and roll the dice.

 

Cheers,

 

The Good Doctor.

This is where I am. The initial reaction was anger, but after thinking it over I can understand their reasoning. The SC line was poorly conceived from the get go.

 

As for Skaven, we are getting a range refresh this year, so no wonder they are going partially away, and that older units will disappear to be replaced with more AoS’y stuff.

 

Bonesplitters was bound to go, and BoX has had 2 minis in 10 years, so no surprise there either, and the minis can be used as various StD units.

[Lord Marshal]

Considering GW nuked an entire mainline game and most of the models there in - I'm speaking of Fantasy of course - in order to justify AoS' existence, I don't it comes as shocking they'd be willing to squat entire model lines after that. I mean compared to squatting Fantasy (even if it's now been returned), throwing a few armies in the bin still looks like small fries... not that it's of any comfort to those who collected and played them.

 

Anybody remember when the first leaks of AoS started appearing on Warseer and Dakka? Apparently the original plan was for every new AoS line to only exist for 6-12 months and then be squatted, a constant churn of of FOMO and Flavours of the Month. Would have been interesting to see how it ended up had they stuck to their original plan, though I suspect extremely poorly.

 

Edited April 4 by Lord Marshal

[darkhorse0607]

21 minutes ago, phandaal said:

"Yes but-but-but," you may be saying, "they would never do that to MY models, they are only X years old!" Well, that is probably what a lot of people were saying about their fantasy models up until today.

 

Yeah, this is my reaction too. There's a lot of "duh Firstborn are going away, who cares" here and elsewhere

 

But not a lot of realization that a lot of the Primaris kits, especially in the initial waves aren't much younger than the Stormcast models. There is no reason why, within the next year or two, GW could say that they've moved on from the aesthetic of the original Primaris kits and are going to go through them and LCTB them in favor of a new look, upgrade kits or just getting rid of random units that aren't performing well.

 

"Not my Primaris, they perform too well and they're the poster children of the setting" you say, well that's what the Stormcast players thought too.

 

To be clear I'm not trying to stand on the street corner and say the sky is falling, or reenact the "old man yelling at clouds" meme, but I don't think it's as simple as old kits being the only ones to get cut when that time comes. And I can't help but wonder how many more folks on here would be upset if it was the majority of their army kitting scratched, instead of fantasy or something that doesn't apply

 

 

Edited April 4 by darkhorse0607

[Valkyrion]

30 minutes ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Idk aggressors and inceptors seem too popular to get rid of. Why nuke units that are selling well?

 

It was just an example given the age of the kits, not meant to be taken literally.  I have no idea what sells well or doesn't. 

[Rain]

7 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

 

Yeah, this is my reaction too. There's a lot of "duh Firstborn are going away, who cares" here and elsewhere

 

But not a lot of realization that a lot of the Primaris kits, especially in the initial waves aren't much younger than the Stormcast models. There is no reason why, within the next year or two, GW could say that they've moved on from the aesthetic of the original Primaris kits and are going to go through them and LCTB them in favor of a new look, upgrade kits or just getting rid of random units that aren't performing well.

 

"Not my Primaris, they perform too well and they're the poster children of the setting" you say, well that's what the Stormcast players thought too.

 

To be clear I'm not trying to stand on the street corner and say the sky is falling, or reenact the "old man yelling at clouds" meme, but I don't think it's as simple as old kits being the only ones to get cut when that time comes. And I can't help but wonder how many more folks on here would be upset if it was the majority of their army kitting scratched, instead of fantasy or something that doesn't apply

 

 

 

Just play Dark Eldar. Forever safe from updates.

 

[Inquisitor_Lensoven]

24 minutes ago, Nephaston said:

There is already a rumour that Aggressors might be on the chopping block. And I honestly can see Reivers going as well.

Rumors from who? This is the first I’m hearing anything about that.

[TrawlingCleaner]

1 hour ago, SkimaskMohawk said:

What's most wild to me is getting rid of models that came out within the past 3-6 years.

 

There's always been the adage of build how you like because the rules change, but I don't think anyone thought that units were getting cycled out of sale/any mainline support after 6 years. That'd be like if blade guard and outriders and such got removed for 11th.

 

Forget churn with points and options, they're just making churn with units for sale now.

 

For the SCE side of things, I think it's mainly about scaling and design changes. I'd equate this to the MK3 Space marines for HH, they were 6-7 years old when they were redone? 

The units going basically come down to:

 

About to be refreshed - Prosectuors, Liberators are definitely getting an update imminently. We've seen a few Sacrosanct units getting the new Thunderstrike update too so I'd say most of those are a safe bet for updates (probably not straight away) and a couple of the characters have had very recent deaths most likely ready for Thunderstrike too

 

They fill the same role - Most of the Knight and Lord characters are basically the same character with a different hat, it'd be like pushing all the Lieutenant datasheets together to do the same thing but only selling one version of them. Sequitors are literally just Liberators with robes. Judicators are basically Vigilors without the robes

 

Could it happen in 40k? Yeah for sure, it's already been happening with Indexes and codex releases, they just haven't been public about it bar a few exceptiosn like when Land Speeders and Dreads were removed.

I think the SCE and Skaven ones are pretty clear cut, they're just getting updates but they should really just be clear about it, like X and Y are getting updates and we're smooshing profiles or you can just use them as a Z. I think this has lead things to be a little overblown (entirely GW's fault there), like we'd naturally know things are getting updated in a few months and they should have left most of these units off the article

 

 

 

Beastmen (being removed and sent over to TOW) and Bonesplittaz (currently not going over) do have an equivilent for 40k in Custodes. They're splitting the lines and distinguishing between 30k and 40k as they have with Marines, Knights, Solar Auxilla, assumably as they have will with Mechanicus too. If they to do it for Custodes, I think it would be to make a separate line to replace the 40k ones in 30k? I'm sceptical they'd do that at all to be honest

 

The WarCry and Underworlds stuff seems to be because they're pretty much already limited release runs. Like those Warcry boxes haven't been in stock on the GW store for absolutely ages, 3rd parties can't seem to get a hold of most of them either. I do think WarCry is likely to pivot more into the Killteam way of doing things which is updting or upgrading kits for the main army rather than just being unique sculpts first and foremost (the boring way of doing things IMO).

 

 

 

TLDR, This largely doesn't apply to 40k in the broad sense but has been happening quietly in parts already

[Nephaston]

9 minutes ago, Zoatibix said:

I do hope that all the Warcry units that instantly went ‘temporarily out of stock’ are going to stick around.

 

Firstly, they have some great designs there. Secondly, Warcry is a great game. It would be a pity if GW can them just because they don’t want them used in AoS.

Seems the community team also doesn't know...

 

4 minutes ago, darkhorse0607 said:

"Not my Primaris, they perform too well and they're the poster children of the setting" you say, well that's what the Stormcast players thought too.

Can't speak for others but in my group I don't think there has been a single person playing stormcast until the dragon riders came out, and even then it was only one guy, while every second player has a marine army of some sort. Not saying it can't happen but SCE did not have the same amount of pull.

1 minute ago, Inquisitor_Lensoven said:

Rumors from who? This is the first I’m hearing anything about that.

From no one solid, disregard at your leisure.

[Valkyrion]

Aggressors are a poor looking and poorly built sculpt, with a rubbish name, that serve next to no purpose in space marine lore. 

Like Reivers, and Suppressors, and at least one of Infiltrators and Incursors. Ripe for the chopping block. IMO. 

[Redcomet]

23 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

Considering GW nuked an entire mainline game and most of the models there in - I'm speaking of Fantasy of course - in order to justify AoS' existence, I don't it comes as shocking they'd be willing to squat entire model lines after that. I mean compared to squatting Fantasy (even if it's now been returned), throwing a few armies in the bin still looks like small fries... not that it's of any comfort to those who collected and played them.

 

Anybody remember when the first leaks of AoS started appearing on Warseer and Dakka? Apparently the original plan was for every new AoS line to only exist for 6-12 months and then be squatted, a constant churn of of FOMO and Flavours of the Month. Would have been interesting to see how it ended up had they stuck to their original plan, though I suspect extremely poorly.

 

The death of Fantasy has been explained time and time again. It was a dead game, from both a sales perspective and a creative perspective.

 

And I don’t believe those rumors one bit. There was, and is, so much ludicrous hate towards AoS that people claim all kinds of crazy stuff 

[Halandaar]

1 hour ago, Evil Eye said:

Also the entire Bonesplitterz/Savage Orc line getting culled is awful.

 

I know the article doesn't explicitly say so like it does for the Beastmen, but I presume they'll just rebox them for Old World, as they are an option in the Orcs & Goblins list.

 

9 minutes ago, Lord Marshal said:

Considering GW nuked an entire mainline game and most of the models therein

 

The overwhelming majority made the jump to AoS and got accompanying rules. Sure Tomb Kings and Bretonnia got the chop in full right at the beginning, but High Elves and Wood Elves were still buyable up until the Cities of Sigmar 3E book came out last autumn, and Dark Elves and Dwarves are still there in that range. Vampire Counts, Chaos Warriors, Night Goblins and Lizardmen minis lasted until they got direct replacements/upgrades (and the ones that didn't like the Mortis Engine, Gorebeast Chariot and Carnosaur are still going strong in AoS), and Skaven are only being removed now because they're about to get a full makeover. They even brought a lot of the named characters over, either as resurrected versions (Mannfred), or rebranded as generic ones (Belegar Ironhammer > Warden King)

 

Some of these removals are pretty understandable; the Stormcast and Skaven stuff that's just getting refreshed being the obvious ones. Stormcast also suffer from a lot of Astartes-style bloat; Sequitors are just Liberators with tabards, Judicators have been replaced in the archer niche already by Vigilors, there's a replacement Knight Vexillor in the 3E starter box and so on, so none of that seems particularly offensive. I'm not even particularly fussed about Beasts of Chaos being removed altogether to move back to the Old World., although clearly that sucks for people who play them in AoS, but at least the model range isn't going away.

 

The ones that offend me most are the Warcry warbands to be honest; I just cannot see the point of removing them. They were all designed as standalone products for a spin off game, and they work perfectly well within that game. They are only in AoS at all because clearly someone decided they'd sell more if they doubled them up in an AoS branded box. But that was never what they were for, so why can't they continue to exist in the Warcry ecosystem? Seems painfully stupid to me. But then I like Warcry a lot so maybe I'm just biased.

[Halandaar]

29 minutes ago, Nephaston said:

Seems the community team also doesn't know...

 

 

Hopefully the fact that the Stormcast stuff is saying "Sold Out Online" vs the Warcry boxes saying "Temporarily Out Of Stock" suggests they're just being removed from AoS and will continue to be available for Warcry.

[Marshal Rohr]

It’s concerning that GW is taking away models only a few years old for a popular faction in a mainline game (Warcry Warbands and Bonesplittaz) and discontinuing a whole host of new units for the flagship faction of a mainline game. 
 

What does all that mean for 40K? To start all non-Daemon Machines in the Chaos roster are probably dead. Firstborn are definitely dead, sooner rather than later (so you can miss out on something to buy the newest version in 11th). Things like Intercessors, Desolators, the Autocannon jump troops, the weird hour glass chaplain, and maybe even stuff like Hellblasters are in danger. You already own them, why keep them? They can just punt them to legends and make new versions of units that do those things better. 
 

edit: It is mind blowing to me where something as expensive and complex as a plastic mold can just get written off. Unless making the molds is now much faster and cheaper and GW is making their money back off a single print run, we have zero choice but to spend as the churn happens or we will completely miss out some cool stuff. 

Edited April 4 by Marshal Rohr

[Lord Marshal]

42 minutes ago, Redcomet said:

The death of Fantasy has been explained time and time again. It was a dead game, from both a sales perspective and a creative perspective.

 

And I don’t believe those rumors one bit. There was, and is, so much ludicrous hate towards AoS that people claim all kinds of crazy stuff 

 

GW was haemorrhaging money from everywhere at the time Fantasy was squatted. Even 40k wasn't doing hot. They don't call that period 'The GW Dark Ages' for nothing.

 

The rumours were coming from the same sources that were largely right in their leaks of AoS, before AoS had even been officially announced, so there's not much reason to dispute them. These were coming out months before any official announcement. Obviously GW changed tact, but the smaller initial 'AoS Original' armies (Fyreslayers, Ironjawz, different Sigmarine armies with their own books) does support the rumour that the plan was originally to have small, one-shot collections.

 

Also lets not pretend the AoS community covets itself in glory when it comes to Fantasy/TOW either. I've seen plenty of "feth TOW" comments coming out of the AoS Discords and social media today.

 

Edited April 4 by Lord Marshal

[Brother Tyler]

This conversation has remained primarily focused on the Age of Sigmar setting, which is decidedly off topic for this website.

 

If anyone would like to discuss Games Workshop's practice of terminating model lines within the context of the games set in the Warhammer 40,000 setting (and without bringing non-WH40K setting games into the discussion), feel free to start a new topic.