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divineerdrick · 3 months ago

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Games Workshop's NOVA Open Preview - Should Have Been an Email and Now I'm Worried

If you've followed me for a while you might know that I started this blog following over from another blog nearly entirely dedicated to 40K. It was last summer, 10th Edition was coming out, there were almost daily teasers and releases, and I wanted to see if I could make any meaningful commentary on it. Then I heard that Tumblr wasn't as much of a hellhole as it had become after Verizon bought them. I had been following some Tumblr Homestuck blogs and decided it was time to give the site another chance.

Side note: It is an improvement, but not much of one.

While I stopped blogging daily about 40K, I did still cover a lot of their reveal shows. I loved 40K reveal shows! I loved the commentator banter, I loved the community interaction, I loved seeing all the new things coming, and they were useful for planning out purchases.

In case you didn't know, 40K is expensive. Having advanced notice helps.

But this year, 40K changed the reveal shows. Instead of a live stream on Twitch with community interaction, the shows were changed to pretty bland prerecorded videos that are nothing but marketing hype. In almost all cases it's better to just wait on the WarCom articles than to watch the reveals now. They aren't as long-winded, you get better images of the miniatures, and it's easier to skip to what you're actually interested in. From following people who attend these live, it's even worse. You're crammed in a room with other convention attendees, just to watch movie without any meaningful interaction.

This just really sucks! I really liked the old shows. As much as hype is a weapon corporations use against us, it's fun to get hyped for something! And when you can interact directly with people from a company like this, you feel like there's a chance to get questions answered and concerns voiced. This even happened during a few of the old reveals.

But this one is just beyond the pale! After revealing some cool new Chaos Dwarfs for Blood Bowl and the new Stormcast models that will be coming out, they moved to the other systems showcased in the preview articles.

And we got nothing.

While they presented what they claimed were roadmaps, there's basically nothing to them. Each roadmap uses more text talking about what's already been released than what's going to be released. The only concrete confirmed releases are as follows:

Warhammer 40,000: Guard, Aeldari, and Imperial Knights are coming out in 2025.

Warhammer Age of Sigmar: We're getting a Death announcement SoonTM, new Spearheads for Orruks and Gitz, and supposedly something for all factions in 2025.

Warhammer The Old World: Empire and High Elves are slated for 2025.

Warhammer The Horus Heresy: Tanks! We're getting tanks, plural, in 2025! So that's at least two, possibly more, new tanks coming for the game!

Are you hyped yet?

Now, the chronologically attuned among you will notice that it is, in fact, still August. That's four whole months left of 2024. Now we have a new release and edition of Kill Team coming. We also have some previewed models that haven't been formally released yet. But even assuming that Death announcement happens before the end of the year, that's not a lot. In fact, the 40K road map specifically says, "With such a lot happening in 2024, it's time to take a breath, watch the balance, and enjoy the World Championship of Warhammer. Blood Angels end the year." While Blood Angels have not officially had their release yet, that release is imminent. That means there will be nothing 40K for 3 month.

I repeat, this road map says there are no unannounced new 40K releases in the lead up to Christmas.

So what's going on?

Let's talk about a potentially good explanation first. Games Workshop, like so many companies, saw amazing growth during the pandemic. But like all of those companies, that growth appears to have leveled off. Yeah, there are spikes in profits around new releases, especially 10th Edition, but nothing close to what they saw in 2020 or 2021. At the same time, they've been releasing new games, editions, and miniatures faster than ever before. But if they aren't bringing new customers in with these new releases, well existing customers are unlikely to want to spend even more money than they already are. And that's before we get to the blanket price increases that occurred over the last two years!

If the profits GW is seeing from new releases aren't in line with the production costs, GW might be reevaluating their release schedule. This is good new and bad news. The good news is that fans who enjoy multiple GW games and factions, like me, will have more time between releases we care about. More time to assemble, paint, and most importantly, save money. The bad news is that means some games might get left by the wayside. There are already worries that Warcry is dead. And that sucks because, in my opinion, Warcry is a better game than Kill Team.

But even if GW is going to be slowing down releases, I still can't imagine not having a faction release for their biggest game for Christmas.

So I have fears.

The most simple, and possible fear, is GW is starting to dial back on communication. This would be in line with the changes to many of their information formats, such as Warhammer Previews. This is bad. For almost a decade now, GW has been on that knife edge of being a largely neutral corporate entity. They're big enough and successful enough that they can do cool things that smaller businesses can't, all while treating their employees pretty well. But they're also big enough that their executives and investors are very obviously meddling.

And no, I'm not talking about female Custodes! That was a great decision that fits the lore and makes for a great way to expand the miniature line and community.

I'm talking about things like Warhammer+ and the negative focus it brought to fan content. I'm talking about the continued insistence on mandatory physical rule books in an age of digital media. And, of course, I'm talking about price increases and reduced model counts for already expensive products.

Up to this point, I personally felt the good and the bad have been balanced. But we've seen this kind of GW before. Before the old CEO was kicked out and Kevin Roundtree took over, GW was a silent and imposing edifice. Interactions with fans had dwindled to near nothing, and were often hostile. In many cases, kits and books were actually more expensive then than they are now, some even without inflation! It was during that time that I initially left Warhammer and didn't come back until the release of 8th Edition.

But I'm worried about something potentially worse too.

Even if GW is backsliding into old habits, and hostile investors and executives are having more sway, that still wouldn't explain not having 40K releases for Christmas! Even if we say, "Well maybe there's something going on that's delaying the release," that doesn't explain similar blank slates for their other games.

This much empty calendar in a lead up to Christmas screams reorganization. And since I don't see GW declaring Chapter 11 anytime soon, that leaves an unsettling possibility.

Buyout.

Amazon seems to have taken a keen interest in this relatively small British corporation. In addition to the planned Amazon Prime series and the short in the upcoming Next Level, there are rumors that Amazon is talking about a movie. But supposedly the Amazon Prime series stalled out in talks about the shows creative direction.

We all know what Amazon tends to do when they see a potential for profit but have a business partner they don't want to work with.

I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill here, but that should tell you how troubled I am by this Warhammer Preview. It really bothers me. I've honestly never seen anything like it since they started pushing Warhammer Community. And it really has me worried.

#games workshop #warhammer40k #warhammer miniatures #warhammer fantasy #warhammer 40000 #warhammer 40k #warhammer #warhammer age of sigmar #warhammer aos #warhammercommunity #wh40k #not so live blog #wh 40k #whaos #wh40000

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divineerdrick · 2 months ago

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The Warhammer Preview Show: Warhammer Day 2024

twitch

I'm once again liveblogging my reaction to a Warhammer preview, and I couldn't be happier!

Why?

Because the Preview was live again!

If you've followed my Warhammer Liveblogs you know how much I hated that they moved to prerecorded live shows. And I wasn't the only one! But once again the studio has listened to the community and it looks like we've got live shows back.

This is one thing I will constantly press about Games Workshop. Being less than a billion-dollar global company, in a niche hobby, means they still have to respond to us. If we make our displeasure known for long enough, and it impacts their sales, they have to act. If even 1% of Warhammer fans don't buy the latest and greatest product that GW releases, it hurts.

It also helps that they're under UK corporate law instead of American corporate law.

And I have a feeling from some of the things I've seen on discount retailer sites, that certain big releases have been under-performing. So hopefully this is the first in some course corrections.

Give San Guard their wings back!

I'm still wondering about what's going on with how few releases have been announced for Christmas. They do seem to be pushing War of the Rohirrim more than I was expecting, so maybe they really are trying to just let releases breathe instead of smothering them. I'm wondering how Necromunda Secondus and Mechanicum performed given how they released along side Age of Sigmar 4.0.

Honestly I think that most Warhammer fans hold GW products as being the best in the market. When they start taking a downturn, we start asking why we're paying so much for them. I think GW really should go back to a slower release cadence of higher quality products. Releasing both of their major game systems back to back in essentially a beta state should not happen. There's no excuse for 10th Edition Eldar to release one summer only for 4.0 Nighthaunt to release the next. And the less said about 4.0's Regiment system the better.

All and all, I'm still really excited for this Preview. I'm not expecting too much right now, but I'm willing to be surprised. For now, just having a live Preview is enough.

Enough rambling! Onto the Preview!

Preshow

Our hosts today are veterans of the Preview shows, Alex and Nick. This was one of the first things that got me excited when I checked in on the stream after discovering WarCom was down. After some of their traditional introduction, including asking for location shout outs, Alex tells us what we've got in store. The reveals today are for Underworlds, AoS, 40K, Kill Team, and Legions. Legions in the past hasn't gotten a lot of love in these Preview shows, so I'm hoping for a little better presentation this time around.

But then Nick slyly cuts in that those are just what was announced, and we should keep our eyes pealed. I've heard some rumors already, but let's see what they actually tease for us.

Underworlds

We're starting with GW's original Skirmish game set in the Age of Sigmar. I'm still really hoping that Warcry gets some love again soon, but I'm betting Underworlds must be just slightly outperforming it.

Oh wow! So with the new edition of AoS out and the story advancing with the Vermindoom, the team has decided to release a new edition of Underworlds. And this edition looks like it will also start with a Stormcast verses Skaven box.

They're once again pushing that accessibility factor with this new edition. I will say this much, other than a few sticking points I have I don't really feel this push to accessibility has resulted in any "dumbing down" of these editions. Probably the worst offender was Kill Team 2nd, and they've undone some of that. Admittedly they pushed the worst part even more . . . Still I feel that 40K 10th and AoS 4.0 are still very tactically deep games. And that, at the end of the day, is what really matters.

And unfortunately we're probably never going to see this push to expand the audience through accessibility ever go away. Businesses in the current corporate world live and die through growth. There's only so much money GW can wring out of their current audience. There has to come a point where GW expands their audience, or investors will leave and the company will decline.

Unfortunately that's tricky to do when you also keep raising the prices of starter products.

But Underworlds has always been relatively inexpensive compared to GW's other products. It's a perfect example of creating a stepping stone into the larger hobby. Buying a board game style starter box with only a few push-fit miniatures to assemble and paint is much easier than buying and painting something like Skaventide. And GW looks to be leaning into that.

They're really throwing a lot of long looks into the miniatures and the board. Still, no matter how much time they spend here this is never as good as the bright, close-in pictures WarCom usually has later. One advantage of the Live previews is we often get to see some of those ahead of time. Hopefully Nick and Alex will focus in on some like they used to.

Here's our box reveal.

And you're making me nervous Nick. This is very similar to a lot of those prerecorded shows. Now that the reveal trailer is done I don't want to be here having someone presenting a prerecorded message on why I should want to pick this up. I want to be back in the studio, with chat, getting live impressions and active responses to questions and feedback from you and Alex. You got me excited for a live show, Nick. Don't turn this around on me.

Uh oh! It's a reset! Normally, this would have me excited. But there are two things that make me nervous here.

The first is that this game incorporates cards and deck building. If they're completely updating the rules, does that mean previous cards won't work anymore? Will we have to get new decks for any warbands we play?

The second is Kill Team. In case you didn't know, Kill Team just introduced a Standard style rotation that means that eventually your Kill Teams won't be legal in competitive play. Many classic Kill Teams already don't have rules in the new edition. Now many of those Kill Teams are still perfectly fine for casual games . . . for as long as GW writes compatible rules for them. But eventually you won't be able to play a given Kill Team without going back to a prior edition of a game. That's fine for collectors who have lots of friends going back to previous editions. But for most LGS communities, that creates a problem.

I'm guessing Underworlds will work in a similar way. I don't know if any previous Warbands will get retired, but they'll probably introduce a cut off point and then rotate out older Warbands eventually. You'll probably have to go buy a new deck for any of the older Warbands to use them in the new rules. This is all just speculation, but it's speculation based off how GW has been running their other games.

This may be a small point to some, but it's a legitimate up-sell to me. GW has gotten considerably better at creating and designing rule books. They've gotten much easier to read in recent editions of their games and much easier to use at the table. I'm hoping they continue to refine them. Also their apps have gotten better too for looking up the latest version of any given rule.

We're also going to single boards, war scrolls, and they're defining Warbands with stat systems to help you understand their play style. One thing I'm not sure of is the replacement of card art with miniature photos. I kind of liked the way the cards added some of that great GW art into the game. I'm not sure how well the various cards will depict the action if it's just still photos.

All and all the new edition looks good, but I've got questions that are going to need answered.

Back in the studio we've got some great shots of the miniatures - not sure I'm liking the sculpt around the eyes for this one - but we're not getting any community interaction yet. There's no point in these being live shows if we don't have any response to the community feedback and questions!

Hm . . . We've got them just talking over these repeating slideshows. I'd honestly prefer to just seem them sitting their and talking to each other to gauge their live reactions. And while I'll admit that this is a new edition, and there's a lot to talk about, they're kinda just going over what the presentation showed. Yes! I'm going to harp on this! I want community interaction, dammit!

Okay, here's one point answered. The starter set is going to come with four decks in it, one based on each of the now named play-styles, Strike, Take and Hold, Flex, and Mastery. These decks will be playable with any Warband. So any of the old Warbands that receives rule updates can use these decks to start with.

It looks like with other recent new editions, we'll get our first chance to see this played at a GW event. In this case it's the Tampa Open, which is next weekend! So we'll probably learn a lot about the game in the coming days.

. . .

And now we're moving into the next part of the show. No questions taken, no feedback, not even a glance at chat. I'm not happy.

Age of Sigmar

And it's just the Warhammer Day miniature. We've already seen this. It's a pretty cool looking miniature to be sure, but why are we covering it here?

My hype is draining away.

Same thing with the Darkoath. Though this looks like it might be a box set, and that means it might have some new miniatures.

Oh! While they didn't show it, this is the announcement for the Slaves to Darkness Battletome. I did miss that this box set is the Darkoath Spearhead. So this will be our first big release for AoS 4.0 following Skaventide.

We're getting a new release for a Sorcerer Lord outside of the Warhammer Day model. This one sounds like it will have a few options for it. Hopefully we'll see these on WarCom.

And here's our Battletome reveal! It sounds like they're doubling down on how little changed between the Skaven Index and Battletomes. This is potentially bad as some of the AoS armies need some real changes.

We are getting a new Army of Renown, Be'lakor's Legion of the First Prince. So hopefully that will bring something interesting for AoS players to experiment with. It's my understanding though that Regiments of Renown aren't seeing much play right now. But we can wait and see.

Speaking of! We've got a nice rules preview here of a new Regiment of Renown that can be included in any most of the god-aligned Chaos factions. The Daemon Prince gets to keep it's Gift of Chaos that it would have claimed in an S2D army and gets the relevant faction Keyword too. However, I can't imagine spending a drop on this the way AoS 4 currently plays, unless they change how drops work in the next rules update.

Battleforces

They didn't mention any universe transition, just that big boxes are on the way soon. My guess is this is our first look at the holiday boxes, which will probably included both 40K and AoS, maybe Old World if we're lucky.

These are all themed after detachments. The Tau box is obscured, but we saw it earlier in the preview, and is the Retaliation Cadre. This means that this is probably a sneaky reveal of one of the new Imperial Knight Detachments, the Valourstrike Lance. Though that sounds suspiciously like it might be a rename for the Noble Lance.

I'll note that none of these battleforces are Chaos themed. We've got three Imperial battleforces and two Xenos. But there looks like there's a lot of value in these kits. That Tau box has a Riptide in it, the Knights have a Paladin and four Armigers, the Sisters comes with two vehicles and a pair of Penitent Engines, the Necrons get the Void Dragon, and the Dark Angels get The Lion. I'm not gonna add everything up here, since I can't see exactly what everything is, but that's over $300 worth of Knights.

And just as I suspected, we immediately go into AoS boxes.

We're only getting four here, Maggotkin, Cities, Iron Jaws, and Flesh-Eaters. One for each Grand Alliance. These don't appear to be based on any Regiments or Armies. And I'm not seeing anything popping out at me for high value items.

These are indeed our holiday boxes. As with recent years, these are designed to go along with the intro boxes. So if you get a Combat Patrol or Spearhead alongside one of these, you'll have a pretty decent collection. Whether they match well with previous Battleforce launch boxes, I'd have to check. But at the very least, I know the Dark Angels one didn't have The Lion in it.

They're saying they're supposed to match Regiments in AoS. I only checked Iron Jaws, but looking through the others they also don't match any current Regiments. So these might be renames or new Regiments coming in the Battletomes.

Hah! They even just mentioned that the Cities of Sigmar force can represent different Regiments! So maybe there wasn't any actual consideration made there at all.

They also just brought up that there's duplication with the Morbheg Knights. So not so good there for the AoS portions either.

Warhammer Armoury

They tease that no one knows about this reveal yet. But it's an Officially Licensed product, so outside of games I'm not sure how much interest there will be.

Warhammer Armory! Okay, you have my attention.

Also, gee! I wonder what's about to be revealed?

There it is! Ghal Maraz! (Subject to GW's approval.)

i haven't gotten my hands on any of these, but I really want to see if I can. I just love stuff like this. If my father's business could get them to sell, we would in a heart beat.

I still have my Slayer of Kings. It's sitting right next to me. I'd honestly love to collect more stuff like this.

Legions

So we've already had Mechanicum for Legions revealed, so they're starting off by going into the lore. I guess that's one way to try to pay more respect to the specialist game. Still I'm hoping for more news for Legions.

"Now you're probably sat at home, thinking, "Games Workshop we've already seen these." It had crossed my mind, yes.

Dark Mechanicum! While they haven't shown any traitor specific models yet, the new rules will allow you to field these models in both Loyalist and Traitor forces.

But they're not keeping us waiting for long! This is the Serperos Heavy Stalker. Looks like it's a near Titanic scale model for the Dark Mechanicum. Like most of the new Mechanicum stuff, I'm totally here for this.

I'm also still hoping to see some even larger creations hitting Titanicus and Legions. Say a certain class of Titan that hasn't had an official model for a while . . .

And book reveal! This book will apparently have the rule for playing both factions. So hopefully we'll see more force specific miniatures in the future.

A Special Surprise

Something a bit more lighthearted. A feast in the field, huh? Blood Bowl? Don't they already have halflings?

40K! I know what this is! Apparently Death Korp isn't all the Guard is getting!

"Make a pie crust from compressed cardboard and fill it with a tin of Munitorum issued nutrient paste." Yummy.

I'm so here for this!

These ratlings look fantastic and have so much life and character to them! This is a fantastic addition to the Guard range!

Oh! It's a commemorative model! Boo! I want this to be a part of the main range!

Oh well. Looks like I'm picking up at least one thing for myself this year.

Kill Team

They teased more ratlings, but look at these Boyz! More proper Orky miniatures! Yes!

And there's our new ratlings! Look at the bulldog!

So I guess the next Kill Team box is Orks verse Ratlings. So much for the idea that the next team would be Storm Boyz. Specifically this is Ratling Snipers verses Tankbustas.

All of these miniatures look pretty bespoke. The ratling kit is definitely new, but that doesn't look like an upgrade sprue on the Orks either. I'm wondering if all the Kill Teams will be new kits from now on?

This Kill Team set will include a bunker terrain piece and missions for trying to defend the bunker or storm it. Sounds like a fun time.

The holiday miniature will also have a mission for trying to steal the food for their provisions. So there's another fun detail.

Hmm. New animation or game?

Bandai Namco? Guessing game.

Oh! I was wrong! It's an animated short! Looks like a free one too!

Our next preview will apparently be in November, for the Championships and Grand Narrative Campaign. I'm hoping they do a better job there.

But as the sign off, they hit us with one more teaser.

Final Thoughts

I've apparently hit my image limit, so I'm not gonna go into more details on the miniatures. But on the whole they were fantastic. Not the biggest fan of the Stormcast models for Underworlds but the Skaven models were cool. All the other new models, especially our new Kill Team set and commemorative mini look fantastic! While this Preview was light on new models, what was shown was great!

And that's all the good I have to say.

So this did definitely need to be a Preview because they were revealing the new Underworlds. But honestly, they could have made the whole show about that and I think it would have been better. The Kill Team reveals were good, but the rest was stuff that would normally just be a WarCom article. So they may as well have just dedicated it all to an Underworlds deep dive and left the Kill Team stuff for later.

And while I think this was better than the prerecorded stuff we got before, this might as well have been prerecorded. In fact I'm sure there are gonna be people who accuse this stream of being prerecorded. There was zero interaction with chat. Yeah, they asked chat to call out where they were from like they used to, but then didn't acknowledge any responses. Chat might as well have not been there, and that means this might as well not be live.

This isn't okay! And while I appreciate the nod to the old format, this was honestly something where I wanted to see designers talking about what they were doing. I don't want to hear Nick and Alex talking about the new mechanics and design ideas of Underworlds, I want to here it from the people who made the game! While I didn't like the mock interviews, there's no reason not to have the designers on there talking about what they're excited about.

Between lack of meaningful reveals and the misuse of the live format, this is still a fail. If the last review was a student handing in a print-off from Wikipedia with his name on it, this one was two guys who threw together their paper at the last minute. This will probably be my last liveblog for these. I'm certainly not gonna do another one until I see meaningful changes in the format.

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