LordAba posted:

Fun fact about dropzone commander and most CMoN mini games (Wrath of Kings and Dark Age): they hold tournaments to gauge balance in their armies and make minor corrections to things. They are also really good games with good backgrounds that are fun. In fact, the balance makes them MORE fun because you accidentally didn't pick the "joke" faction (see Orks/Tyranids) so you can stand a chance to win in a game.

El Estrago Bonito posted:

Doesn't something like one out of every 8 people alive speak Mandarin? That seems pretty wide spread IMHO

TheChirurgeon posted:

lot of real cultured types in this thread, you can tell

Leperflesh posted:

I mean, we assume you're aware they literally did that to Fantasy, but I'll mention it just in case it somehow slipped your notice.

Like, they not only invalidated all of the existing Fantasy library, they also invalidated the series of four very very expensive "the end times" books they'd just released during the previous six months.

Irate Tree posted:

I can't remember, was there even an explanation for why there's an 'ur' before gold? I mean, it's probably piss poor but was there?

Flipswitch posted:

a minis game with Amplitude designed models would be cool. admittedly i just want cravers in a tabletop game

Avenging Dentist posted:

New Tzeentch model: https://www.games-workshop.com/en-US/Tzeentch-Arcanites-Magister

It's slightly less ridiculous from a better angle but I love how they chose that for their glamor shot.

Cinnamon Bear posted:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKHsj5y8UL8

This is what sold me on 40k back in 2005.

DO IT TO IT posted:

http://natfka.blogspot.com/2017/02/warhammer-40k-8th-edition-will-change.html

i feel like he looked at this thread and thought it was insider information or something. then again if this turned out to be real it'd be even funnier.

Avenging Dentist posted:

Pinning is easy dawg. Sorry for your lots, etc etc

Ugleb posted:

This is described as 'a massive game of 40k' but I gotta ask. How normal is that? Because not only can the tanks not move for all the other tanks in their way, but I'm not sure they could get through the terrain anyway.

TKIY posted:

Southern Heel posted:

Please tell me that poofy sleeved toothless empire mans still exist in AoS and it's not all golden robo statues

Thirsty Dog posted:

From the bad thread:




I genuinely can't tell if this is sarcasm. Help me, death thread.

ijyt posted:

Lmao being angry at a hobby you don't even do. It's like getting mad at Canon for only minimally improving their low-light performance and never having owned a camera.

Mango Polo posted:

I agree. Brothers, it is with deep regret that I've decided to withdraw my Great Company back to the Aett and submit to spiritual cleansing by the Wolf Priests after one too many losses. My stubborness in refusing allies, even ones which are approved by the Rout such as the Imperial Knights allied to Fenris, Imperial Guard regiments seeking glory alongside the Rout, even the beautiful and war worthy Celestine .....

.... sigh, sorry can't make a nice narrative out of this. Put it simply, I'm tired of 40K and my wolves and will retire from the scene until 8th edition. Since I started in 2014, I've only made use of Space Wolves, first the 6th Ed codex, then Champions of Fenris, then Curse of the Wulfen. I keep telling myself that I don't need to jump on the allied or multiple detachment to defeat Eldar, Tau, Necrons or even our supposedly subpar (at least until Traitors Legion supplement) enemies the Chaos Space Marines. Now though, it appears that no matter what I do, even if I am tactically sound which according to most of my opponents I am, I keep handing myself the smackdown by choosing to face SM/CSM with Imperial Knights allies, Ynnari, Cawl buffed Mechanicum, and heck, most recently, a simple formation of 4 daemon princes called Tetrachs.

4 Daemons (plus a small CAD of nurgle daemons). Smashed my entire force of 1500 wolves. Which had Wulfen, Iron Priest on wolf, even a Stormfang Gunship for anti-air which I was anticipating, though not 4 FMCs. And to round it off, a small Deathpack formation to be able to run and charge a TWC gang and a Thunderlord with shield an sword. rest of army was 3 Drop pods of MSU.

If that isn't depressing, I don't know what is. I've been tabled before and was able to laugh like mad, even to Tau. This one along with many others just left a very sour taste in my mouth. They didn't just bring a gun to a knife fight. They brought automatic weapons, a tank, an F22 raptor and a nuke as well.

Sorry mates, my wolf spirit has been quenched, along with my 40K spirit. That being said, I haven't written off the hobby entirely and have decided to focus on just assembly and painting at least for a few months before going back, hopefully just in time for 8th Edition. I still love the Vlka Fenryka. I have no intention of going vanilla or any other army. But it looks like I have to accept in my heart that for a long time now, the Wolves have not been able to stand up themselves, even after Curse of the Wulfen came out.

A Blood Angel friend of mine has suggested 30K as an alternative, which I've accepted and therefore will be focusing on painting ALL my Burning of Prospero figures into the 6th Legion. Get me into the painting groove and at the same time, it's almost like making a fresh new army without giving up my first love of the Vlka Fenryka.

Another alternative is to find a different FLGS for different meta.

I just wish I could forget about competitiveness and just play with whatever the heck I want, even Swiftclaws and Skyclaws. Sadly if i do that, I'm handing a big "SMASH ME" sign to my whole meta. The kind of meta who will never play mutilators, non flying hive tyrant Tyrannid swarms or assault marines beyond skyhammer formation.

Don't know why I'm posting this, I guess I'm hoping that what I feel is normal among some of you old timers especially between edition changes, or whether you guys have ever felt "tired" of your army before.

Until the next winter.

Avenging Dentist posted:

there's no need for name-calling. these people are hurting enough as it is and i think we should do our best to be supportive, even though they feel like the only thing they can do right now is to lash out at the people who care about them

Saint Drogo posted:

lol they don't respond to people who don't actually play the game going THIS IS GONNA BE lovely ARE YOU SCARED ARE YOU MAD YET BE MAD

those brokebrain motherfuckers.

spectralent posted:

There's a bunch of stuff you can decide in AoS, but the issue is it's way outweighed by random variation in a couple of big things and that some choices matter way more than others. Double-turns are game-ruiningly bad, and I've seen several armies where I'm just wondering why they're even played because people just straight walk over them. Artillery is particularly bad.

The issues with GW's cargo cult design are, I feel, most emblematic with the removal of charts you mentioned. You put forward sound logic; it's true that you can build threat and vulnerability into the individual models, and that removing a chart speeds things up. But why keep hit and damage? You've got a single "threat" value, there, that's largely independent of everything else (there's some "reroll 1s to hit" type stuff, but that's not incompatible with a single dice roll for attack). All it does is prolong resolution and increase the randomness of a given number of attacks.

Mango Polo posted:

Age of Sigmar (AoS). Free rules. Everyone rejoiced and there wasn't a word of descent on the matter whilst the flame-wars went on with other focus.

This to me was actually a shame. Something no one suggested was an issue is actually one of the major problems with AoS. "The background is shallow" is the chorus we hear.

The depth and soul of a gaming system is the cool background that makes the great miniatures we have painstakingly assembled and painted, come to life. How much cooler is it to have Magnus the Red leading a Warband against Space Wolves and settling old grudges, rather than generic big plastic monsters firing magic at generic armoured space knights?

Well the crux of my post is thus; the free rules means players download the elements they need to play and have all the reading material they need. They don't buy background books they don't need. Given the choice between expensive books and new models and most folk go with the later. The proof is in the sales.

If people don't have these books they won't be reading the amazing background material we all love. It'll be the unknown army of blue painted plastic vs red version.

So I am of the opinion we need Codex books with rules and background to ensure the new players are as enamoured as ourselves. We don't want to be 5 years down the line and all the new players haven't a clue why Blood Angels have the Death Company, what their home planet is like or why the Dark Angels have Deathwing in different coloured armour.

Iceclaw posted:

E: ^ Subtility. Sure. Like uuuuuuh. Wait. The fascist parody that's now played dead straight? You even refered to litteral Space Nazi as the good guys. Think about that.

Chill la Chill posted:

The Tau bringing what many perceive to be anime (though I totally made my Tau anime because of the robots) influence into the game is no different than the initial crop of pop culture icons from the game's inception.

Iceclaw posted:

Thing is, the tone has grown to be really disturbing to an onlooker. It's, to a point, presenting an unholy fusion of the catholic church at its worst and Nazi Germany as awesome, heroic, good guys. That is cargo culting as its finest, and while I can excuse old timers for not realising it, since they started out when the satire was actual satire, it's still sketchy as hell.

Chill la Chill posted:

40k novel: The Jungle in a hive world. 40k novel: Canticle for Leibowitz.


Thanks for the insight. I started right past that, in 4e, so I only ever hear about and see idealized versions of the older fluff. I ascribe much of it with what was then the current pop culture ideals, and I'm sure it would've been different had 40k been started in, say, the booming economic internet powerhouse of the US in the 90s. Maybe they could've used a more '80s style of hyperviolent and darker anime instead? It existed, hell, the whole gundam series before Gundam Wing was rather dark in a bleak war-torn environment. But I can't fault them for wanting the more heroic good guy mobile suit anime look at the turn of the century. I only ever knew the 40k as it was then, and as far as I can remember, the satire of 40k was already well underway when I frequently visited Dakka and 4chan for turning into the thing it once used to make fun of.

Lord_Hambrose posted:

To me (and I've been in and out of the hobby since 3rd Edition), what makes the Dylan Thomas poem--and by analogy the 40k setting--so compelling is that the light is dying, so to speak.

Thomas writes:
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light

And what stirs my soul about that verse is the defiance it embodies. Night falls inevitably. But to rage against it nonetheless, when weaker than you were, and knowing that you cannot change the movement of the heavens, is inspiring. It is the same, to me, with the 40k universe. The grand ideals of the Great Crusade have been cast down and perverted. The Imperium has lost much of its technological and other progress. The once-proud Emperor is now a corpse-god, bound to the Golden Throne and enduring an eternity of torment in order to seal the daemon-infested webway gate at the heart of the Imperial Palace that his son Magnus inadvertently tore asunder. The Imperium of Man is beset on all sides, and from within, by enemies. It has developed into an incredibly oppressive, theocratic, authoritarian regime. The doomsday clock is ticking ever closer to midnight.

But it is not midnight yet. The galaxy should be certainly doomed, but it isnt. And not because of the bold actions of a few cartoonishly important heroes, but because of the millions of people fighting and dying for every inch, in an uncaring galaxy, every day, for ten thousand years. That is why it matters "that Eisenhorn stabbed Quixos with the reforged Barbarisater in the caves of Farness Beta," that "the Tanith 1st (and Only) made their epic stand outside the gates of the Civitas Beati," and that "the Ultramarines 1st Coy. died to a man underneath the northern polar fortress of Macragge." No individual life or death will swing the fate of mankind, but knowing that and still making the ultimate sacrifice anyway is that much more meaningful. Knowing your life won't sway the balance but giving it anyway, in the face of utter darkness, takes the highest kind of courage. The idea of staring into the abyss and spitting defiantly at the thirsting gods who stare back,is what has kept me invested in the story of this universe for the last 10-15 years. The clock ticks onward, and no one man (or Primarch) can hold back the hand before it strikes midnight. The Imperium has no choice but to pile bodies in front of it, jam the clockwork with the bodies of its heroes and commoners, in the hopes of staving off that final, last tick.

I agree that there should be hope. But hope here is a candle sputtering in a vast, windy darkness, yet somehow refusing to go out. Courage and defiance in the face of seemingly impossible odds. Once one man, or a few, seem to inexplicably turn the tide, it devalues the billions who over ten millennia could not. A ray of hope is necessary, but only a ray.

We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I would love to hear whether others agree or disagree.

Mango Polo posted:

Some kids I knew in high school were into the game. I can only recall that the one who lived around the corner from me had Eldar, though I can't even remember what colours his models were. I think someone else had Ultramarines or maybe Blood Angels.

Anyway, Warhammer 40,000 didn't really interest me at that "golden age" of 12-14 in the early Nineties. Back then I had a Warhammer Fantasy Battle starter, the 4th Edition with the High Elves and Goblins, but never bought anything past that.

To be honest, wargames never really interested me at all, probably because I'm not interested in competitive games. I was more interested in Dungeons & Dragons and other tabletop roleplaying games, though even Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay never made an impression on me at the time.

Later on in high school I had a closer friend who also played 40K, and I learned more about it then, but I seem to recall he was also getting to that age of 16+ where he was still into it but faintly embarrassed by it, so not exactly trying to persuade his other friends to play it. Then he took up fencing and got really into that, so all of his spare time and money was invested in that (and he's been involved in fencing for 20 years, so it was probably the right call).

I didn't really get into 40K until after I'd been out of university for some time and got married. At some point after 2008, I don't remember when or what prompted it, I must have decided I'd give it a go, because I bought a copy of the 5th Edition starter, Assault on Black Reach - but I discovered that same starter all but untouched in 2014, which is when I got into 40K in a serious way.

What finally pushed me over the line was really the Horus Heresy novels. I had never really known that much about the 40K universe - I didn't even know the name Horus, really - but I did know the basic idea of the Chaos Space Marines and the Chaos Gods, and I'd always thought that the Thousand Sons had a cool Egyptian aesthetic. It didn't hurt that Tzeentch had seemed the most interesting of the Chaos Gods even back when I was briefly interested in Warhammer Fantasy Battle; I think there was something about that crescent moon-headed Sorcerer of Tzeentch that caught my eye.

So then, in the context of the Horus Heresy series, I then became aware of the real backstory of the Thousand Sons, and decided I might as well read the novels in order. I read extremely quickly, so I figured it wouldn't take me long to get to the 12th book . . . but then I thought I should try out the audiobook for Horus Rising, since I had a long drive to work. I love the audiobooks, but I'm not always in the mood for them, so it's taken me about 3 years to make it to my current point of being about 2/3 of the way through Deliverance Lost.

But in that time I've become really interested in 30K, at least in terms of collecting and painting models, and who knows what will happen once my wife and I manage to organise our move interstate in the next few months? Maybe I'll get into playing if we're close to a decent store or club down south.

kingcom posted:

Came back to this thread to see a whole lot of shitposting, what happened? Did GW finally put Ham 40k in a reality ball?

Hamshot posted:

Death throes of a dying thread. Dane cook blowjoberer posting direct copies of other SA posts into this thread instead of mocking them openly in the thread they came from because it isn't the cuddly hate box echo chamber he feels comfortable in. Crack bone posting sup-par artificial memes in the hopes one will take off but instead gets ignored, resulting in him trying even harder like a toddler in a tantrum responding to being ignored by increasing volume.

RIP Death thread. The forums were at the same time too abrasive and too sensitive for you.

kingcom posted:

You may be confused friend, I think GW and 40k is a loving garbage fit of hot fecees but lol if this is the turning point for you or something or that people are jumping on to violently defend it literally nothing. When the 40k balls start touching then maybe its time for some shitposting idk.

TTerrible posted:

nopantsjack posted:

I'd say the GW cultists will get theirs shortly but we saw with AoS GW can squat all the teams and lore and release the worst game imaginable but sunk costs will always trump reason eventually in some folk.

I'm looking forward to AoS40k though because those early days when we all had ideas of how it might be alright then every piece of real info was worse and bafflingly awful... those were the salad days.

The latest releases are so end times it's incredible, check out the tactics pages for the 40k version of the united elf army and it's like "don't play this because it's too OP" and guilliman buffs your whole army massively.
When people say GW has improved they generally mean they're selling things people want to buy (at huge markup and with monopose CAD models) and putting out Facebook posts. There's actually no evidence they're getting better at writing rules but then again who actually wants to play Warhammer lmao. It's "the hobby" not a game.

Mango Polo posted:

OK, I just watched a really good video essay, and it kind of inspired me to plant this here.
Now, I’ll start off by saying I don’t nearly get ingrained into the Lore as much as some gamers. I don’t buy every book, and I read one every few months or so. But I do understand generally what is going on and what has happened, recognize key characters, and know the story-arcing themes of races. But lore does matter to me, and this is my opinion on how GW has made mistakes and can do better.

PART 1: Comparisons with the Warhammer Old World - End Times - Age of Sigmar progression
The End Times (and Age of Sigmar that came after) essentially invalidated all the general Lore for Warhammer Fantasy. The effect is the same as retconning WFB out of existence, as whatever happened in WFB had little effect on what happens in AoS.
So, why would GW do this, when it is mostly poor storytelling? Well, their goal wasn’t really story driven at all, but instead driven by the need (or want) to create something entirely new and invalidate the old. The small references to WFB are mostly done to appease the customer base and maintain some justification for models.
GW wanted to create better trademarks for IPs, and create new models that didn’t really fit WFB’s lore, while also changing gameplay entirely. In their eyes, these goals could not have been met without the End Times.

Part 2: 40k and the Future
Now we are seeing the progression of the storyline for Warhammer 40k. Thankfully, GW isn’t likely to AoS 40k, as 40k is the cash cow and doesn’t really need complete upheaval like WFB did. But GW obviously wants to sell more models and books, and story progression is the easiest way to do that.
“Curse of the Wulfen,” “Wrath of Magnus,” and “Fall of Cadia” all meet GW’s goals of more books and more models, and don’t really change the dynamics of the galaxy to massive degrees. Yes, the Space Wolves took a beating, and Cadia is now gone. But these groundbreaking events need to happen for the story progression to feel important. Nonetheless, none of the factions is destroyed or culled, and it just flows into the next story arc. Old foes and allies have returned, new characters are brought to the fore, and the future is uncertain but in motion.
Now I think that this is all promising. Obviously for anything to work there needs to be good writing, and it can be very hard to trust GW with progressing a storyline with their history in WFB. But at the end of the day, GW knows the best way to sell models and books is to accompany them with story progression. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as GW has learned lessons in their past mistakes and willing to improve.

D&D 3.5 aside (which primarily survives due to a very odd quirk of copyright in the OGL), these games have wispy, zombie-like support at best. They live and breathe, but only barely, and they only really do so because they're fun systems. There's no useful example of a game background era that "sticks around," because there's nothing tangible to be had for it. It's fiction. It lives in our heads.

Though, really, I don't think this is the reason people are displeased. The oft-repeated point of "but nothing's stopping you from ignoring it" is itself doing some pretty big ignoring of what people get and like out of a setting like 40K's. At the end of the day, it's a hobby that naturally requires external inspiration, and most of that comes from the people who make the hobby products. The spigot gets turned off, and there's nothing new to interact with. It's a game world, not a religion. Engagement isn't a monastic activity.

People want to go where the product goes, but the product's going in a place a lot of people don't want it to. It may not be The End Times in the sense that 40K won't face the ignoble steamrollering that poor ol' WHFB got. The Emperor will still be on his Throne, kicking out the oldies for Navigators to jam to, and his Imperium will stand against the Gods of Chaos (well, minus one before too long, I'd wager), but all indications are that it's going to be a radically different place in terms of tone, focus and engagement than the setting that preceded it.

Quite a few of us aren't pleased by that, and I don't think that's without cause. Whatever one wants to say about the merits of an advancing timeline, the fact is that the GW of today just doesn't cut it in terms of pure writing quality to execute on that advancement with anything like the competency it requires. Just look at these pages from the Fall of Cadia if you need an example. If you think that's the kind of material that should be used to birth the new era of 40K, well, I don't know what to tell you. You must not think much of 40K. I can't even bring myself to call that junk "cartoonish." Cartoons are, after all, are capable of subtlety, complexity and wit.

With all that stacked up, it just doesn't seem worth it to try and carry forth the lonely banner of Oldhammer 40K. There's other games and setting with better background (and, God, do we even want to start up on the sadness and desolation of 40K's rules set right now?) that are actively being maintained at a satisfactory level of quality. Why settle for the garish parody that 40K is looking to become? Life's too short.

Based on previous behaviour exhibited by Games Workshop, am I worried about the future of a games system I've been playing with for most of my life? YES.

Based on a discussion I've had, the majority of people who want AoS style formatting and rules brought to the 40K setting are those who don't care about the lore, the setting, and have zero patience with actually creating something from their games.

In my group, we have a saying "If the rules don't support a fluff event, we'll make arrangements."

Want a Marine Librarian who is a master at summoning daemons to do his bidding? Sure! We use that one often when my Grey Knights come out, as my opponent likes a story as much as I do.
Want a traitor guard company, but can't afford the Forgeworld book? Sure! Use the Astra Militarum codex, and deploy amongst your Chaos Marines!

We have toyed with many ideas, some of which aren't board appropriate in nature, however if you are after a conversation about them, PM me for sure. However, there is ALWAYS a fluff based reason behind stretching or breaking things like the Allies Matrix. Nothing touches the core of the game.

We are seeing story progression, new books and models, with rumours saying Loyal Primarchs might be returning (Which if in plastic would be cool), much the same way as End Times occured.

Does 40K NEED anyting approaching an AoS style reboot? No. Not at all. Sure, some of the special rules need looking at, and how they interact with each other. However, that's the most it needs. The current edition has everything we could want to represent the stories we are telling on our tables. From a patrolling Imperial knight encountering allies and enemies, to a named character leading an assault on their opposing counterpart.

I've had discussions and arguements with people who don't care about the lore, or tellign a story, they just want a game they can play once or twice, and move on. My suggestion to them has always been teh same. Want simple rules that are fast to play? Play Chess or Snakes and Ladders. 40K is an immersive hobby, very creative, and can be extremely cinematic. Forcing people who enjoy all aspects of teh hobby to put up with chess-simple rules, just because new gamers don't have the patience to learn about their hobby is wrong. For every new hobbyist with the attention span to learn, there are 3 or more impulse buyers who play with AoS style rules for a little while, then forget about it and move on to the next thing.

It honestly feels like we are racing to the bottom here. What we might eventually end up with is Snakes and Ladders, with models we paint outselves. Is that what we really want?

Main points in summary:

1) 40K is both the lore and the game.
2) Simple rules don't always work.
3) Want games you can "just play", play chess and snakes and ladders.
4) You get out what you put in.

TheChirurgeon posted:

I don't have a problem with them charging $50 for the hardcover rulebooks they release. They're usually very well put-together, and I really like printed materials.

What I do have a problem with is them charging $50 (or even $30) for digital copies of the rules. Those rules should be low-cost, or available with a subscription fee, on the understanding that they'll be updated regularly. Likewise, the physical books should carry with them the implication/warning that they'll be invalidated quickly, but come with vouchers/coupons for free digital downloads.

Currently, GW handles this is in the worst way possible, but it seems like they're moving to a digital strategy for 40k that has regularly-updated army lists and rules, with "seasonal" changes. Which is a good change, but it'll depend on the final implementation.

All that said, I see why they charge for the rules, though--unlike their competitors, GW has players who are playing with armies bought/painted 10+ years ago. If they aren't interested in a new army, the only way to get revenue out of them is to convince them to buy a new rulebook. Which isn't an enviable business position to be in. I'm not saying this justifies the model they've decided to do (I think free rules with subscription-based access to a full, continually-updated rules library is the way to go), but I don't fault them for sticking to printed rules this long either.

berzerkmonkey posted:

1) No, it just modifies a particular sentence/section. An FAQ or update doesn't invalidate anyone's printed book. Are you referring to an edition change?
2) The hobby, no matter if it is GW, or Malifaux, or whatever, is already expensive. If you can pay for models but can't afford a rulebook, maybe you should be looking for another hobby.
2a) I do, however, agree with you when it comes to 40+ codexes. If this is your argument, I'm on board.
3) This is ridiculous. You could say the exact same thing with digital distribution. I'd go as far to say that print makes rules more accessible, just like it makes information more accessible. Gutenberg's press is famous for a reason.
4) There are plenty of army builder options out there, plenty are free.
5) Yes, edition changes are disruptive, but they do shake things up and increase interest in a game system. Look how much people are talking about 8th ed. People are coming out of the woodwork saying they're excited for the edition because 7th is such a mess.

berzerkmonkey posted:

I thought you were arguing against print? You've got me confused now.

Avenging Dentist posted:

do not start foodchat you know the next thing that'll happen is a vitriolic screed about ketchup

Broken Record Talk posted:

The only way to eat a hotdog is to throw it out and get a sausage instead. Then eat it with hot peppers and mustard.

BULBASAUR posted:

i'm gmo

Leperflesh posted:

I fell behind and just caught up all at once. Way too many things I wanted to reply to in great detail and at this point attempting to do so would not work out well so I'll just post some random stream-of-thought responses based on my undoubtedly poor and rapidly fading recollection of all the garbage I just kind of halfassedly read and mostly skimmed through.

all hobbies are luxuries
gw has made some good decisions lately but their legacy of bad decisions has built up such an enormous backlog of poo poo that it's going to take a lot more than one year of a minor improvement in the ratio of good to bad decisions to shovel through it all
age of sigmor is a bad game that has made gw lots of money. making more money doesn't make it good. good for stockholders maybe but nobody should buy gw stock.
gw's miniatures are made with a very high production standard. that is one measure of quality.
gw's miniatures in the last few years seem to mostly be sculpted by committee, using a lot of digital tools and not much artistic merit. depending on what you want out of them, that might matter a lot to you, or not at all.
everyone who uses the phrase "the hobby" to refer to anything specific to GW is probably too far gone to help
if you regurgitate the arguments of idiots you're not trolling, you're just supporting idiots. if you want to trick someone by saying something that nobody should believe could come out of your mouth, you'll need to better establish your reputation as not an idiot first
the artistic merit of a miniature is important if you're evaluating it as a work of art.
the functional purpose of a game piece is to work as a game piece, and that's the way it should be evaluated
when you're using nominal works of art as game pieces, you have competing priorities that may not be well aligned
gws miniatures are a problem in part because they often put artistic merit above game function, but then still fail as works of art.
if you just want to play a game, proxying anything that works as the game piece should be completely fine with everyone. If you want to build a vignette that tells a story by assembling works of art, then thematic and artistic consistency with the works of art may be important to you.
if your goal is just to test the purity of your fellow players' devotion to your tribe, insisting on brand loyalty is a convenient filtering mechanism

infinity minis are well sculpted but the company has a serious mysogyny problem
amusingly though, they're getting better about it recently, which is exactly the argument gw defenders in this thread are pushing to justify continuing to support gw
but infiniti is bad because it's too anime, and I think you will find that anime is bad

malifaux is too goth

warmahordes is too steep of a learning curve to learn all the intricate nonintuitive tricks, you can't play by just attacking with your dudes or whatever

they're all three just ridiculously better games than warhammer though, like it's not even close

gw is still a bad company, let me count a few of the ways
they have a useless chain of stores that cost them too much money to run, and pass those costs on to the consumers through higher product markups
like seriously you still can't count on a one-man gw store to be open during reasonable hours, have room to play games in, have products you want in stock, or have a sales person available to help you if a single (1) other customer got there a little before you did
they are still routinely increasing prices on ancient kits instead of what literally every other company on earth does, which is discount old product
they still abuse independent stockists
they renamed a ton of their stuff to really stupid names in a completely misguided attempt to protect IP. this does not actually protect their IP in any way more than it was before, and no, they're not even using them to register as trademarks (of course they aren't, that would be ridiculously expensive)
the former horrible ceo is still clinging to the company's executive board, and being paid for it, like a bloated leech, and it shows
the company's website is a laughingstock. it functions only as a web store, and fails in many amusing ways at even doing that. it does little or nothing to introduce the company's products in a coherent or accessible way, goes out of its way to present products based not on suitability but price, is not the location of what minimal social engagement the company deigns to do, and constantly decides you're not in the country you are in.
the company's policy of never having sales runs contrary to a century of business evolution
the company still seems to evaluate its products solely based on sales figures, while ignoring critical factors that affect those sales like: recency of the item's release, utility of the item in their own games, price vs utility, the degree to which customers feel embarassed even picking up the item in a store because of its name, and more
the company still has no debt, which sounds fine until you consider the annual impact of missed opportunities to invest up front in something that would pay off long term. there is a reason virtually all public and most private companies borrow, it's literally why corporations exist in the first place (to raise investments while shielding the company owners from the financial risk of being ruined if the company's risks don't pan out).
gw is still not taking advantage of the enormous success of the total war: warhammer game to sell physical games and miniatures products to a large set of potential new customers, even though the game came out like a year ago now or something
gw's annual conventions are still just massive sales events where nothing is actually on discount and you pay to get in
the magazines still suck and are again just ads you pay for that give you nothing you couldn't have gotten in a blog post or by browsing their web store (ok I guess at least the magazine remembers your country preference from one visit to the next, lol)
gw as far as I know still has pretty terrible/abusive policies towards its employees. you still have to basically act like you're joining a cult to get hired, you will be paid terribly, and you will either burn out quickly or be fired due to failing to meet wildly unrealistic sales quotas
gw is still charging more for its products in australia and new zealand than it costs to buy them in the UK and ship them to australia and new zealand, even after currency conversion inefficiencies, for absolutely no fathomable reason. it clearly doesn't even help them make more money in those countries. And they still go out of their way to prevent anyone from engaging in the obviously huge arbitrage opportunity this presents, by going after any online retailer sending products internationally to those countries
oh yeah you can't advertise a discount on gw's products online, becuase that would compete with their always-full-price webstore. For some reason this approach basically works, because people buy a lot of gw products at full price direct from their webstore even though you can always get them at a discount from an online retailer if you're willing to jump through the hoops necessary to place an order with them
gw still doesn't test and revise its games rules with actual players, just in house, and the results are obvious
gw's facebook page is a joke
gw's got no forums
gw's free easy rules aren't free or easy or sometimes even rules
gw's rules writers still haven't learned how to write unambiguous rules
gw's approach to attracting girls and women to play their games is still hilariously nonexistent, because their sales figures say only boys and men buy their stuff, so obviously that's just how things are
gw is lazily cashing in on some of its ancient games' lingering popularity by republishing them without even the most desultory attempt to make them be good games in the modern era, and for some reason it works because of I don't know, either nostalgia, or people just want the models and it's the only option for getting them at less than full gw packaged retail?
gw's settings no longer work as satire directed at the thatcher administration or the horrors of the cold war but the company cannot seem to find the ability or will or maybe just desire to make its fiction relevant to modern concerns like maybe terrorism or populism or global warming or something

I could keep going but who cares. I'm sure someone will disagree with all of these points and feel free to type three thousand words refuting them but I don't care. Today the really sweet outdoor semiferal cat we occasionally see and feed when we see him limped up to my patio bloody and with a broken jaw and weighing like four pounds, matted in his own piss, and between the $250 the cat rescue people threw in and the $350 I put in, we have enough money just to find out if his jaw can be wired (he'll have a shot at making it with a month or three of intensive care in my bathroom) or not (we can't pony up for reconstructive surgery with a metal plate, that's thousands of dollars, so he's done).

In one day we've spent more on a cat someone abandoned than I've spent in the last 20 years on GW products. If he dies tonight it will have been money better spent because at least he's getting painkillers and sedation instead of slowly starving to death under a bush somewhere.

If you are thinking of spending a pile of money on the latest horseshit from GW, that is your choice of course, but perhaps I can encourage you to give some money to your local animal rescue and just play with the toys you already have for a while.