3.0: failed or not?

[Brother Sutek]

14 hours ago, Griefbringer said:

Grognard (veteran) players can be a valid audience for a game, but then the managers and designers also need to understand what makes (or does not make) a ruleset attractive to such audience. And it seems that a lot of grognards appreciate certain stability of the ruleset. Thus, frequent edition cycles and changes for the sake of changes tend to be anathema to them, and HH 3.0 seems to have burned a lot of bridges in this sense. On the other hand, HH 3.0 also re-introduced the RT-style psychological stats (Ld, Cl, Int, WP), which might be seen as a some sort of attempt to cater to the older audience (though I am not aware of too many people missing those stats in the intervening years). So maybe the game is seen at some level on company side as a grognard game, thus justifying separate rules, but at the same time the interests of that audience on the rules side are less well understood.

I can definitely agree that the longer edition cycle made me happy. As for the return of even more characteristics... I only liked them in Necromunda.  I haven't played 3rd so I can't speak from experience but I can say from playing 2nd edition 40k that the more minutiae you add the longer and more complicated the game. This is only aggravated by the edition churn if you don't get to play often.  This isn't GWs concern but I'm lucky to play once a month,  that means at best 12 games a year and 36 in the game life cycle. This means nothing to them and I honestly get that but adding more things to remember doesn't endear it to my group who don't play enough to make it second nature. Having it based off 7th edition,  that we had all played for years made the game intuitive and popular as they cleaned up a lot of the 7th edition issues.

[Griefbringer]

Besides being annoying to many grognards, I think a rapid edition change is also detrimental for new wargamers, who are not used to learning new rules in the first place. Having a revised rules set dropping soon after you have learned a previous one may be a frustrating experience. That said, somewhere in the middle there is also a portion of moderately experienced gamers who enjoy regular rules updates that prevent game from "going stale" in their view.

 

As for sales peaks on new edition launch (also on other things than new rulebooks themselves), I am left to wonder if this is partially an artificial effect of the edition cycle itself. If it is generally known that a ruleset has an edition cycle of X years, then potential new players are less likely to get invested in the last 6-12 months, choosing instead to postpone their purchases (to avoid need to re-purchase and re-learn the rules). Thus you would get a reduction in sales towards the end of an edition life cycle, as potential players enter into a waiting mode, and an increase in sales after the release as people move from the waiting mode to purchase mode. This kind of peak may look attractive in sales statistics, but part of it would be just an issue of pushing customers to post-pone part of their purchases.

 

That said, a new edition release (and especially new shiny starter boxes) may also attract interest from people who were not particularly interested beforehand.

[Nagashsnee]

I personally both do and have noticed that people will avoid buying rules near the end of a edition. But minis are not really affected, unless its really old stuff that might get the can.

 

But this is 100% on GW who put out expensive books with a self life of in some cases months.  Especially when they know the next ed is not compatible with the product.  Most recently it was for 40k and the Iron Warriors/Mechanicum book. i bought the mech minis, but paying what they are asking for the books when WE KNOW they are on a very short timer is a no go. 

 

Now with the old FW black books and imperial army the lore and quality was good enough to justify getting them in any case. But 30k and 40k books have for years not been to a quality where i would want to collect them.  Anyone i know who seriously invested in 2 ed 30k feels burned by the rapid ed change, and learned their lesson, and the lore nerds havent been happy with 30k books since Alan passed and quality fell off a cliff.

 

 

Edited Thursday at 01:10 PM by Nagashsnee

[Brother Sutek]

1 hour ago, Nagashsnee said:

I personally both do and have noticed that people will avoid buying rules near the end of a edition. But minis are not really affected, unless its really old stuff that might get the can.

 

But this is 100% on GW who put out expensive books with a self life of in some cases months.  Especially when they know the next ed is not compatible with the product.  Most recently it was for 40k and the Iron Warriors/Mechanicum book. i bought the mech minis, but paying what they are asking for the books when WE KNOW they are on a very short timer is a no go. 

 

Now with the old FW black books and imperial army the lore and quality was good enough to justify getting them in any case. But 30k and 40k books have for years not been to a quality where i would want to collect them.  Anyone i know who seriously invested in 2 ed 30k feels burned by the rapid ed change, and learned their lesson, and the lore nerds havent been happy with 30k books since Alan passed and quality fell off a cliff.

 

 

Between cost and value and the fact that when younger I was able to play more,  I used to buy all the army books. I didn't play them all but wanted to own them for the fluff and to know the rules. I haven't done that in decades. Same for fantasy,  I used to buy all the books again for the fluff if nothing else. Now I buy nothing as the churn is ridiculous and who knows how long it will be worth the price. I hate being salty but my hobby money is tighter and the value, as I see it, is less.

[Griefbringer]

1 hour ago, Nagashsnee said:

I personally both do and have noticed that people will avoid buying rules near the end of a edition. But minis are not really affected, unless its really old stuff that might get the can.

 

Figure purchases by established gamers may not be affected much by the phase of edition cycle. However, if prospective new player opts to wait until the new edition release, then likely that person will also postpone figure purchases until they have the new rules at hand (though I have also heard of cases where people get first the models and then the rules). That said, total newbies may also be unaware of the edition cycle and its effects, and thus not discouraged by the phase (though they may end up disappointed a few months later).

 

As for GW supplements with short life spans, those have been around since late 1990's. The original Codex Sisters of Battle (1997), Codex Assassins (1997) and Warhammer Armies Vampire Counts (1999) books had shelf lives of 10-16 months before the next game edition release (that was no longer compatible with them). The original Space Marine (1989) epic game had a shelf life of two years before being replaced with 2nd edition rules, though that rules replacement lasted for almost six years (and was later on re-born in the form of the unofficial NetEpic rules).

[Ahzek451]

On 9/24/2026 at 9:39 AM, Brother Sutek said:

Between cost and value and the fact that when younger I was able to play more,  I used to buy all the army books. I didn't play them all but wanted to own them for the fluff and to know the rules. I haven't done that in decades. Same for fantasy,  I used to buy all the books again for the fluff if nothing else. Now I buy nothing as the churn is ridiculous and who knows how long it will be worth the price. I hate being salty but my hobby money is tighter and the value, as I see it, is less.

I think the vast majority of folk that have spend time in this hobby fall into this(I am one too). And so you would think GW would be seeing some sort of affect from this. As ever, nuance is needed, but this just goes to show their leaking bucket business model is "working". Quotes because I don't think it is sustainable, give it time. The leaking bucket being an analogy for their business model of focusing on constantly recruiting new customers, and less focus on retaining them. They got their money from the those already invested and can stand to lose them so long as the bucket keeps getting filled. The age old argument of "graph go up so GW must be doing good" being a constant claim that GW is indeed successful. 
 

 

One bucket fills with money, the other empties with good will. 

Edited yesterday at 03:15 AM by Ahzek451

[Hfran Morkai]

On 9/24/2026 at 2:08 PM, Nagashsnee said:

I personally both do and have noticed that people will avoid buying rules near the end of a edition. But minis are not really affected, unless its really old stuff that might get the can.

 

 

 

And you'll undoubtedly get some people who've no interest in playing the new edition still buying the new starter boxes for their current projects, even if they're previous editions as the savings are often very good and the first opportunity to grab stuff.

[Griefbringer]

6 hours ago, Hfran Morkai said:

And you'll undoubtedly get some people who've no interest in playing the new edition still buying the new starter boxes for their current projects, even if they're previous editions as the savings are often very good and the first opportunity to grab stuff.

 

No doubt, and shiny big boxes of new stuff (at discounted price) will always attract people. However, obtaining this effect does not necessarily require putting out a new edition - similar interest can also be obtained with "battle group" style boxes full of interesting new stuff. In the last three years, there have been several such battle groups for HH (at least Mk 3 and 4 marines, Solar Auxilia and Mechanicum), though those boxes may not have provided quite the same amount of models (and discount) as the starter boxed sets.

 

 The contents of the Saturnine boxed set could also have been released separately as a battle group box, instead of needing to couple them with a new edition of rulebook. The Saturnine set contents in my view leave a bit to be desired as a generic starter set (especially when it comes to including a static sentry gun platform instead of something mobile), though looking at the studio painted figures there is a serious attempt at narrative angle for them - Salamanders assaulting dug-in Iron Warriors on Isstvan V is rather iconic theme when it comes to heresy (unfortunately the Saturnine terminators and dreadnought do not give me such iconic vibes).