Thoughts on 8th edition 40k so far?

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Arkansan

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Just went and picked up the second Imperial Codex today to go with the boxes of IG I have been slowly amassing. Anyone play 8th yet, any thoughts?

I will say I'm very pleased with the way they have handled the codex, 25 dollars to cover multiple forces is very affordable. I don't have the rulebook yet but it seems it's going to be cheaper as well.
 
I've digested the rulebook over the last week. Its very much "AoS 2.0", with quite a few changes that I really wish AoS had implemented, most importantly keeping the classic statline. The thing is, unlike Warhammer Fantasy, I don't really have a basis for comparison. Beyond Rogue Trader, I never really played 40K. I read the previous (7th edition) rules and thought they were an overly complicated hot mess, so I appreciate the streamlining, but unlike AoS I don't know yet how the game is going to play.

To inaugurate the new system, however, I've started a new army. Bought the Starter set for Necrons as well as one of the other set deals, constructed two units of warriors and primed/Basecoated them with Army Painter Steel spray (which works an absolute dream. I'm totally sold on AP Primers just based on this one colour. Amazing results). I've always liked Necrons from afar, mainly because I've loved Dr Who's Cybermen since I was a wee lad, and I wanted something that would be simple and fast to paint so they didn't take too much time away from me getting back to my ridiculously massive Skaven army. Next month my gaming group will be trying the new rules out.
 
I wish vehicles were a tad more complex but other than that it seems like more fun than prior editions going back to 2e (that is to say, 3rd-7th).
 
Well I've went ahead and taken the plunge on the Rulebook. Suppose I should start painting the few boxes of Guard I've built up. I've got an infantry squad, command squad, heavy weapons squad, and a box Scions. That should keep me painting until I can add a start collecting box to that.
 
It may just be the death of my store. Another store has the GW contract and I'm too close (<6 km) and too broke to bring it in and all my customers have dropped everything and ran off after 40k. Still come in and use my tables, my tools, and my glue. I'm not sure they quite get how this whole business thing works. It's always been tenuous because I've focussed on what love rather than pushing populist swill ;) But if sales don't pick up it won't last another month. Really, it's probably for the best, it's a great personal workshop and gaming space but not so great as a store and it eats up a lot of my time which keeps me from writing, sculpting, drawing, and painting. Maybe it's just time.
 
It may just be the death of my store. Another store has the GW contract and I'm too close (<6 km) and too broke to bring it in and all my customers have dropped everything and ran off after 40k. Still come in and use my tables, my tools, and my glue. I'm not sure they quite get how this whole business thing works. It's always been tenuous because I've focussed on what love rather than pushing populist swill ;) But if sales don't pick up it won't last another month. Really, it's probably for the best, it's a great personal workshop and gaming space but not so great as a store and it eats up a lot of my time which keeps me from writing, sculpting, drawing, and painting. Maybe it's just time.

Sorry to hear that. I always hate seeing a small store go down.
 
Well, I've been right to the edge more than a few times in the last five years. I never had enough capital to make a go of it and I've borrowed too much money to keep it going. But I've made a lot of mistakes. This spring I borrowed more money and ended up agreeing to bring in the new edition launch for Flames of War, $3000 in product, of which I've sold $30. The new edition flopped here, too much into one product line, you'd think I'd have learned. It's generally been my best selling product but new edition + desert war = fail. Oh well, it'll be nice to have weekends and evenings off again.
 
Oh, damn, man, sorry to hear that...

FoW 4th edition has been doing poorly here as well. I think Battlefront is in a bad position right now. As it is - well, where do they go?

Consider - they've covered pretty much all of WWII, from Poland to Berlin, with some bare-bones coverage of the Pacific. They've branched into other eras with Vietnam and Arab-Israeli games. They've gone into their hypothetical WWIII with Team Yankee...

So - now what? New rules only go so far, and frankly the new edition isn't that good.

I've been playing FoW for a long time. I've amassed huge armies for the games I'm interested in playing, specifically GPW/Russian Front. I've got some Team Yankee stuff, but once I've got a small army built up there's no real need to build more. (I'm not going to buy 30 more tanks in order to replace my T-72s with T-64s or M-1s with M-1A1s.) There is no real need for me to buy anything from them at this point. I've got what I need for the games I want to play.

GW is in a different position. They've got a fictional world, so they can introduce new stuff. They can move/change the backstory a bit to justify this. Personally I think 8th edition is a really good step in the right direction, and I've been buying more GW stuff as a result.
 
Five years ago, when I opened my store there was a plastic Sherman and a plastic Stug in the Achtung! starter set and that was it for plastics and they really didn't fit together well. Their soft back books all fell apart within a week and the game was a cluttered mess of special case rules. I'll agree that the new edition isn't as good as the previous one but it is cleaner and faster and more accessible and the plastics are great. Battlefront has Gale Force Nine and that gives them a counterbalance to their Flames of War stuff. If I were them I'd do a modern alien invasion game. Cool modern hardware, realistic aliens, and no politics :grin:

GW keeps rechurning ideas without doing anything original.

What doesn't exist is a real compelling alternative. Warlord is probably the best company in that field and even then, I've sure got a lot of Warlord product gathering dust. I look at Beyond the Gates of Antares and I just don't see a game that's going to reach out and grab people. I like it, I was an early supporter, but it lacks something. That something that makes people get obsessive over the game and the setting. Nobody quite knows what it is, of course, but BToA doesn't seem to have it.
 
I'll agree that the new edition isn't as good as the previous one but it is cleaner and faster and more accessible and the plastics are great.

There's no real hook to keep a veteran player buying new stuff, and I doubt that the new rules will have enough appeal to bring in enough new players to counter that. Yes, it is a faster game. But - well, why would I buy plastics? I have about a hundred Soviet tanks at this point - why would I buy plastic ones? I think they're painted themselves into a corner here...

What doesn't exist is a real compelling alternative.

This is true. 40K hits a spot that other fictional worlds don't for me. I don't have any rational or logical explanation - I suppose it's part nostalgia and familiarity, but that's not all it is...
 
Well, I got a decent force for Germany and Britain out of it anyhow. Still a fair bit of building and painting left but there you go.

I think to take on 40k head on you have to offer something different than 40k and different than the video game and media franchises out there. Franchises cost too much, you'd need all the margin you could get, so I doubt Star Wars or Halo will ever be a long term threat. Companies buy into them, milk them for all they're worth and get out. Tolkienesque fantasy's been done to death, I love it but you aren't going to take on GW with orcs and elves any more, though there is a decent abandoned niche that lots of third tier companies are fighting over. Superheroes are too dominated by the Marvel and DC licences. Todd McFarlane made an interesting point in an interview I heard earlier this year. Marvel and DC own the to 99 super hero products and are all locked in so if you have the 100th most popular superhero you're still number one with the smaller studios. Yes there's a new Spawn movie in the offing.

I've always believed that you could do it with Traveller. Yes really, though Spacemaster Privateers actually has a better setting for a miniatures game. Traveller's rules are pretty wargamey and board gamey but you'd need a specialized, fast playing variant. But what you have is a number of factions, a big, detailed background, a visual style that leans to realistic and gritty. You'd want to focus on campaign play and have an on-line campaign tracker so people could create their own little pocket empire to build an grow. Plastic 15mm figures and vehicles and scenery, of course. I'd try for really modular vehicles so you could swap out drive systems and functions scenery as well. The figures would be one piece. Ideally there'd be models for ships up to the mercenary cruiser. What Traveller lacks is the irrational, rule of cool, rage and frenzy of 40k to appeal to teenage boys. SPAM has it, the Jeronian Empire is overrunning the peaceful Interstellar Confederation and the world Defiance has been repeatedly orbitally bombarded to destroy the Tulgar (knightly wolf guys) population. This has only made it a magnet for every overly romantic Tulgar youth looking for glory and fell deeds.

Really though, what the miniatures hobby needs most is more kids growing up with good toy soldiers. The ones in the toy stores and dollar stores these days are horrible.
 
I think what I've learned about the industry is that a lot of smaller companies are good at shooting themselves in the foot. The dropped and missed opportunities. If Warpath had come out last summer like it was supposed to I could have gotten people into it before the new 40k dropped. Heck if Mantic had bothered to support Warpath consistently. Second edition is one of my favorite rulesets I've ever played. But some people disliked it so they did other things. Prodos pursued AvP and scuttled their reputation with a failed kickstarter. And Traveller's history is a long and horrible tale of dropping the ball and falling flat.

Still, I expect the theory at Battlefront was that the old guard have their stuff and they need to draw in new players. Because that's always a problem for mature game lines. Indeed GW made it their policy to ignore the old players for years.
 
It may just be the death of my store. Another store has the GW contract and I'm too close (<6 km) and too broke to bring it in and all my customers have dropped everything and ran off after 40k. Still come in and use my tables, my tools, and my glue. I'm not sure they quite get how this whole business thing works. It's always been tenuous because I've focussed on what love rather than pushing populist swill ;) But if sales don't pick up it won't last another month. Really, it's probably for the best, it's a great personal workshop and gaming space but not so great as a store and it eats up a lot of my time which keeps me from writing, sculpting, drawing, and painting. Maybe it's just time.

David, what about converting the game store into a gaming cafe?

AKA, it sounds like your customers like you and your location as they are coming to your place to spend time. Perhaps you need an alternate method of monetizing the space.

Maybe sodas and sandwiches, tools and glue is the better angle.
 
Well, retooling is certainly a direction but I don't have the money and would have to change locations. As it's currently a part time side venture that doesn't do so well locking into a more expensive location with a lease isn't really viable right now, but I would like to have a sandwich counter someday, too much outside food coming in doesn't pay me a cent.

But the plan is, and actually always has been, to get some of my games on the market on-line to bring in some more cash. More cash would solve most of my problems, even a couple hundred more a month that didn't have all the overhead would be a nice boost. It's been a long haul but I'm getting there and in the day of kickstarter having an actual playtest document finished is a step up from a lot of projects.

But to take it back to topic, they want me to play the new edition but I don't want to get sucked back in. Sure I've got a large guard army but the odds of it being competitive or playable seem vanishingly small given the way GW's design model is intended to encourage people to buy the new hotness.
 
I am thinking about a Khorne army for 8th. How are Chaos this time around? Is Khorne more shooty or choppy this edition? And does Chaos Marine armies have demons / monsters as viable units in 8th? Or will there be a Demons-only-ish army?
 
I might pick up some Death Guard, cuz I always like painting Nurgle for some reason
 
I am thinking about a Khorne army for 8th. How are Chaos this time around? Is Khorne more shooty or choppy this edition? And does Chaos Marine armies have demons / monsters as viable units in 8th? Or will there be a Demons-only-ish army?


Chaos overall has gotten a much needed boost for the edition, after languishing for years. They are a suitable opponent for Space Marines now, at least until codex power creep sets in again. GW seems to be lavishing their attention on Nurgle for the time being though, with an entirely new model range. I guess because Khorne got so much love in AOS the last few years.
 
Khorne gets cranky without the love. It's lonely on the skull throne.

Is is possible to run a Sorcerer + Cultists + Demon army? AKA, chaos without the chaos marines?
 
Khorne gets cranky without the love. It's lonely on the skull throne.

Is is possible to run a Sorcerer + Cultists + Demon army? AKA, chaos without the chaos marines?

Yeah, you can basically take what you want, there's just certain benefits one gets for keeping to one faction. And Chaos
Daemons are their own faction separate from Chaos Marines. Basically it would be a Daemon army with cultist allies.
 
Thank you! That's great news. I've been wanting to do a non-marine Chaos army. I like the concept of a Chaos Sorcerer with a horde of disposable minions and crazy powerful demons taking the battlefield.

How are you liking the 8e ruleset in actual play now that some Codexes are out?

I've talked to a Tyranid and a Space Marine player at the local game store and they are happy overall, but they only started with 7e so they don't have much to compare it to.
 
Haven't gotten into the codexes yet, other than reading the Death Guard one. Right now we're discussing sticking with the compediums, with all armies nicely balanced, at least until enough codexes are out to judge by. The game itself is pretty good - a very cleaned up AOS with some common sense fixes to a lot of the bigger issues. I wouldnt want to play a huge game, but for narrative skirmishes its great, nicely streamlined and captures alot of the flavour of past editions without the learning curve.
 
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