Warhammer fantasy 9th edition rumours and rumoured release schedule

[Gareth]

Thought i'd copy this quote across as it puts my thoughts on it better than me :p -

the_Armyman wrote:
It all sounds very plausible to me. Here's why:

1. Vets don't buy things. They buy enough to keep current in the hobby. Sometimes they don't even do that.
2. The prices make it difficult for new players to buy things.
3. Fantasy is bloated. There are too many armies with too many codes.
4. At what point does maintaining the status quo with WHFB become an albatross? Lots of anecdotal evidence that it just does not sell.

So, product bloat, high prices, and flagging sales? Change All the Things. Change the scale of battle: no more massed blocks of troops. Change the factions: compress and homogenize, add flavor later in the form of single special models/units and DLC. Change the fluff: break the high fantasy mold, change the faction names, protect the IP.

It all makes perfect sense.

If they do update all the army books as rumoured before 9th hits, leaving 8th playable for Vets and 9th as a new way of playing does make sense from a money making way. But it is a massive risk at the same time!

With regards to the above points.

1 - Correct for their army. But Vets tend to spend more, collecting multiple armies, and new releases for their existing ones, when they get redone. How many players of either GW game, are exclusive to one force? Very very few. They have multiple armies so that point was utter garbage.
2 - Correct prices make it harder for people. So what do GW do? Release kits that cost upwards of £70. Which makes that point whilst valid, an example of what GW be leave the opposite.
3 - Fantasy has 15 armies of which 3 (being the Elves,) are similar. That's 13 realistic army choice. That number could be slimmed. Point accepted.
However 40k have 18 armies, of which 8 are essentially a version of marines (counting Necrons as metal versions, and Sisters as the female version,) and two are Eldar. The same could be said for 40k. To be honest I thought their best idea was when the had the Marine codex, and various other much slimmer codices for BA, DA, CF and Salamanders hidden in Armageddon. Only Space Wolves functioned different enough to warrant a seperate book, and the rest pulled parts from the parent codex. However for a company where people say they have problems with in entry numbers, the last thing you would do when having so many codices is to then release stuff like Farsight and Ghazgkull. Point then invalidated.
4 - Fantasy sells just not in the volumes 40k does. And Fantasy players accept that, and the glut of books released in 2013 was very welcome. We would be happy if GW did their money making all year, but gave us stuff maybe every 4 or 5 months. Then they would still be turning a profit on the WFB stuff just not as fast.

WFB and 40k appeal to different people. Some people just like the look of an "Army" rather than a few squads of a few men. And that is probably why WFB doesn't sell as much (or as fast.) A WFB army costs a damn sight more than a 40k one, but it also takes longer to get together. The number of models I have painted for my Lizards and High Elves in the past two years, would give me 6 or 7 forces for 40k. That would show a lot of 40k sales, if I did that but not so much for fantasy (I'm trying to say, if I bought say 3 boxes of White Lions for a unit, and spent two months painting them, that would show one sale in two months, but if I did one unit of marines, another unit of marines, then a third, and bought them as the previous was finished in the same period, the store would show three 40k sales in that period, even though the same money had been spent.)

My biggest fear is that the WFB players get pushed into a game they don't want. I don't want a squad based game, I want an army based game. Do what they want with the armies to a degree, I'm not against the End Times model, because we can still play the, seperate. And yes the club or wherever could still play 8th edition, but if GW massively change in 9th, and then essentially drop armies and models, where do I get my stuff from. All that would do, is push the consumer into the alternate model market for their stuff, which with their legal battle with CHS I doubt they really want to do.