GW News: BIG N' SMALL WAAAGH! COMIN'

Following on from this post I made a few weeks ago, GW have released news on the smaller starter sets for 9th Edition:
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2020/07/27/warhammer-40000-new-starter-sets-sighted/

I was largely right concerning the contents of the medium set, though the Space Marines surprisingly only have 2 units to the Necrons’ three - either GW have overpriced the points of their favourite army or they’ve made them so strong that 2 units is enough (probably the latter knowing GeeDubs )

The smaller set (which will probably be the same price as First Strike) isn’t much of a surprise either with the Necrons having basic Warriors and Scarabs and the Space Marines having basic Intercessors, but it is nice that that set will contain the two weaker characters from Indomitus (the Royal Warden and the sidekick Space Marine dude) to give you a general even if you buy the smallest set.

The so-called Command Edition seems somewhat of a disappointment given that it will contain the exact same units as the medium-sized set, and the only extras it contains are some plastic scenery (which admittedly is nice and hasn’t been seen since Escape from Goblin Town for Middle Earth since 2012) and a pocket-size-but-hardback copy of the rulebook. I really am perplexed as to why GW only made a limited run for Indomitus rather than releasing it as the permanent big set of 9th Edition like Dark Imperium was for 8th. The only thing I can think of is that maybe those who were new to the game historically veered away from the >£100 big set (which I can certainly understand) and more often bought the smaller boxes and the rulebook separately, so they’ve gone back to the style of sets like Island of Blood, Assault on Black Reach and Battle for Skull Pass with this Command Edition set to make a larger set that’s substantially cheaper.

 

Just had a look at the prices of the new starter boxes, and am disgusted by the prices of them. The Recruit Edition has had a £7 price hike from the previous small box for nothing extra (a minor character and 2 units for Necrons and a character and one unit for the Space Marines isn’t much different from the 2 units for both sides in First Strike) and the Elite Edition costs around the same as Island of Blood did and more than its predecessor, Know No Fear, yet only contains one extra unit and superior characters for each side. The Command Edition costs over £100, only about £20 less than Indomitus, yet contains far less than that box with only 1 character, 2 or 3 units for each side and the rules section of the rulebook. I’d much rather have seen them add an extra unit for each side in the Command Edition (perhaps the Reanimator for the Necrons and the Bladeguard for the Space Marines) than the plastic scenery to justify the increased price, as said scenery is going to be released separately anyway and the quantity of miniature content is extremely poor for £105.

You can actually buy the Elite Edition and the full Core Book for the exact same price, and all you’re missing out on is the plastic scenery which you can always buy later once you’ve got your first few games in, so the Command Edition is pretty much pointless now unless you’re really desperate for the scenery and don’t care about the non-rules stuff in the Core Book. I had been expecting that the small and medium boxes cost the same as their predecessors and the Command Edition cost around the £70-75 mark in order for it to be good value, given it has so much less than Indomitus and not much more than the Elite Edition, so pretty disappointed to see what GW actually decided to do.

 

Something especially interesting I’ve seen when cruising around the Warhammer internet community is this little excerpt from an Admech communication seen in the last of the Psychic Awakening books, Pariah:


The Admech ship is under attack by a race who was deemed extinct by official dogma, that begins with ‘Squa’.

Unless that Admech captain had spent too much time with the Machine Spirit and had been hallucinating, it’s now becoming ever more likely that Squats could come back!

True, new 40K canon states that Squats are very few in number, but they’re obviously sufficiently high in numbers to actually have at least one ship of their own powerful enough to take on the Adeptus Mechanicus, so that would be reason enough for them to become a faction in their own right again.

Now GW have certainly been great at killing hype in the past with reveals that are completely different to expected (Ossiarch not being Tomb Kings 2.0 for example), but on the other hand they did bring Genestealer Cults and Adeptus Mechanicus into the game when it was expected that the former would never return and the latter wouldn’t appear in mainstream 40K, so the possibility hasn’t been completely destroyed.

I think it’d be fun to see them arrive, what you @Killer Angel given you play Dwarfs and 40K?

 

meh, in all honesty I like the terrain being in a starter set, it's one of the most dissapointing things about starting wargaming hobbies, especially if you play at home with friends or a slibling or something. You both get a box, paint your new fancy miniatures and then you fight on an completly empty table, which rather diminishes the entire experience. Adding in some basic terrain in the starterboxes just looks way better & has the added benefit that there's more to work with on the table as now there's at least something resembling choke-points.

Having said that, you really need 2 of the command edition boxes to get something interesting going. And that's just way too expensive. With 1 command edition box you neither have enough terrain to do anything with nor do you have enough units to make an actual army out of. It'd have been better to just put in a few extra units so at least you have a decently sized army. Especially the space marine side is kind of disgusting, 2 units & 1 hero, for a total of 8 models. At least throw in a tank or some other large model if you're going to get that few.

at least the amount of necron stuff you get isn't too bad I guess, though not enough to carry the box (the smallest box sorta works as a start collecting necron box I guess, at least it's fairly cheap....)

And yeah, the price hikes are getting annoying, especially as they seem to keep on doing them one after another. With no real justification or benefit for customers.

why would the squats and admech fight though? Aren't squats supposed to essentially be humans?

Also, I must say that given how little love xenos get from 40K adding yet another faction that won't get the support it deserves might not be the best of ideas.

 

I wasn’t saying that adding terrain was a bad idea, I just think that for that price they should have thrown in another unit or two into the Command Edition as well. There’s just not enough variety with the units that are in the Elite and Command editions to make starting as fun as it could be.

I can’t understand why GW only made Indomitus a limited run - given that it was so popular on its release that it sold out in minutes, surely that should have been a green light for GW to make it the permanent 9th Edition starter box, rather than replace it with a box that has much less in it but is only £20 cheaper. I can see people boycotting the Command Edition all over the place and instead buying the two smaller boxes and the rulebook or something like that to get more units.

£65 is expensive for a Start Collecting box (they’re usually £50, or £60 at the max), and the only really interesting things you get in it are the Skorpekh Destroyers and the exclusive Overlord sculpt. I’ve seen deals for the Necron half of Indomitus costing around the same price but you get 2 Warrior units and Scarab units, the Overlord, the Skorpekh Lord, the Reanimator and the Skorpekh Destroyers. You’re much better off splitting a copy of Indomitus with a friend and dividing the price between you evenly, with whichever one of you who is richer buying a Core Book separately.

Squats look as though they’re shrunken humans, but culturally they were always the closest thing to 40K Dwarfs.

Maybe GW are changing it so Squats are no longer loyal to the Imperium, or making them less trustful of other Imperium factions. Also Imperium factions have been known to fight each other anyway - Space Marines attacking Imperial Guard because they believe them to be hiding a cult of HERETICS, e.t.c. Given that Admech distrust anything made of living flesh, I wouldn’t be surprised if they had bad blood with the Squats in the past, and every Warhammer Fantasy player knows Dwarfs aren’t one to let grudges down lightly. You can just imagine that some Tech-Priest abducts some Squats on a backwater world to experiment on or turn into Skitarii, the Squat nation then declares a grudge against the entire Adeptus Mechanicus for this travesty, the rest of the Admech retaliates when the Squats attack Forge worlds, and it goes on.

I know that GW will probably sh*t on them with poor rules as soon as they arrive, but I’d still like to see miniatures of them because they would be fun to collect and paint and I just think it would be a really nice thing to bring them back and update them to current 40K aesthetics, like they did with Genestealer Cults, just so fans can buy some and convert them or do whatever they want with them. Also I don’t play the more recent 40K Editions anyway - if I get any new stuff I will simply write my own 5th/6th Edition rules for them and playtest them until they’re balanced, then use those rules in all home battles I play.

 

O definitly, I just appreciate there being terrain in a starting set. The box itself is still terrible, especially the space marine side, 2 units & a hero only works if you have a faction like the beastclaw raiders or a knight army in 40K, something that has a super low model count.

Who knows, GW constanty makes weird decisions when it comes to selling their stuff. Arbitrarly discontinuing sets, making random models impossible to get, nothing in terms of the occasional discounts/sales or a customer loyalty schemes to encourage even more spending. Faction that get virtually no support versus factions getting ridiculous amounts of support. It's a weird company.

At least for the 2 smaller boxes if you like the necrons it's not too bad as a starter set, yeah it's on the expensive side, but as long as you have some use for the space marines it's worth it. The command edition however is not worth it unless you want both a necron & space marine army (and even then it's underwhelming). If all you care about is the space marines though none of these boxes are even remotly interesting.

Aren't they canonically abhumans though? And not a proper xenos species?

Could be, still seems a bit random though.

I didn't just meant rules, I also meant modelwise. Xenos don't seem to get a terrible amount of love in general.

 

Why would AdMech and Squats fight? Mechanical animosity. Back in the day, the Squats had their own totally-not-Mechanicus organization that often argued with the AdMech. Squats made their own weapons, their own power armor, their own tanks. They honestly considered the AdMech to be kind of backwater and inept with tech.

 

If they bring back the squats, I hope they also bring back the squat train!

 

Gods that would be so awful, yet funnily enough I wouldn’t put it past GW for a moment to do that.

Certainly in 8th the continual Imperium vs Chaos releases were dire, but the fact they’re including Necrons in the starter set for this Edition (where the three previous Editions had all been Imperium vs Chaos rubbish) may hint that they may be going to give Xenia more love, like AoS 2nd Edition switched the focus to Death where Chaos had been the focus of 1st Edition. Of course this is GW we’re talking about and I’m not getting my hopes up too much, but you never know.

 

really? They seemed to have some decent stuff in it.

 

What looks decent may not be what GW want to make powerful. If GW want the Space Marine part to be especially strong, decent-looking stuff on the Necron side won’t stand in their way.

 

Surely the Harbinger of Destruction (if you’re talking about the full Indomitus set) is a Cryptek?

 

Meh, expected the new fancy big model to be able to do some heavy lifting, as well as that new fancy lord. But i guess the warriors and scarabs need some better support.

 

Oh yeah, those artillery trains were awesome! Plus if I recall, the Squats were the originators of the Mole-Mortars! Oh, and 40K Gyrocopters!

 

Well that’s stupid - given they are merely a type of Cryptek they should be able to use all the basic Cryptek abilities alongside those unique to their discipline - that was certainly the case in the 5th Edition Harbinger rules and should be the case again.