Well they seem to have changed how they market things over the past few years. They are doing a LOT of “limited” releases/single print run on things like cards (and they’ve brought cards into every single game they do). This adds a touch of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out), so you have to move fast and pre-purchase (some of the recent Necromunda Cards were sold out while in pre-order).

GW Rules are also getting to be VERY expensive, for example if you want all the rules for Necromunda (and can get access to a time machine to get the gang tactic cards that are now OOP), the full rules (four hardback books and about 10 card decks) would set you back about £200. This is frankly silly when you look at it, but GW have you spending every quarter for everything released (as you might miss out on the rules as they don’t print them all in the “rulebooks” anymore) so you don’t notice at the time. To be frank it’s very good marketing, but not very pro-consumer.

But if you want to play these GW games, I’m afraid you have to be prepared to spend almost as much on the rules/cards as you do on the mini’s themselves (if not more), even 40K is now laden with multiple card decks needed to play (which it never did before). Basically GW went from “nasty” to it’s customers, to “nice”, but now has shifted to something more insidious 😀

I don’t see why it ruins it for casual players as they are far more likely to just play with whatever is available. It may, however, be an issue for competitive players who will be wanting to make sure they have access to as much of the meta as possible.

I dont see any problem here at all. This is better than most collectible card games like Magic do.

This is an excellent compromise to keep the game playable and fresh with new minis and cards, but still keep older teams in the loop. They are only rotating out the first season universal cards, which will be replaced with new universal cards in the third season. Any cards that are the same that you have from first season can still be used. All models and faction specific cards can still be used, so you do not need to buy anything new if you dont want to.

This lets them cull cards that have proven to be OP or whatever and keep the card volume managable for tournament players and casual players alike.

This really does make sense from a competitive stand point as it helps keep things fresh and prevents unwanted interactions without having pages upon pages of “you can’t take this” FAQ.

As a casual player you can always just play with what you got.

Casual gamers are likely to buy the starter set and then maybe a warband or two based almost exclusively on whether they like the models.

Cards that have been rotated out are still completely usable everywhere except GW sanctioned organised play events. The same is true in MtG.

Well, I agree with spud. I loved shadespire and collected 3 or 4 gorgeous warbands until the scene shifted to being far more like MTG with minis. I wanted to play casually but the vibe switched to deck building competitiveness so I had to move on.

Still love the minis (though haven’t bought any more sets).

Fair question — nothing other than that the people I played with all got into the more competitive side. Their choice, and I wasn’t upset or anything just disappointed.

I would say that they weren’t necessarily competitively minded, I feel that the game took them in that direction. If we’d have realised it was going till in that direction originally we probably would have picked something else (Silver Tower perhaps which would have been a different issue!).

A bit like nothing stopping people playing WHFB since AoS was released. The game moved on and so did most of the players.