Why make an army book if you won't stock the army?

[brianfowler713Participant 3336xp 1]

Warning, this is about GW, specifically their apparent plans for Freeguild armies. I’m not trying to… bicker, but I’m not trying to lick their toes, either.

Basically, since they released an army book for the ‘Free Cities of Sigmar,’ I logically assumed (alright, who’s snickering?) they would be releasing new boxes of basic Freeguild units (spearmen, swordsmen, etc). Today I went to a ‘local’ store (if you can call a roughly half hour drive local) and noticed this apparently hadn’t happened yet. I asked an employee when they would finally get new boxes (specifically I asked about new spearmen or swordsmen, then I specified for the Freeguild) and the answer was there weren’t any plans to stock them and they would only be sent to the store on order.

I don’t get this. I know the industry’s changing and apparently retail’s dying, but none of this has stopped them from loading the shelves with bloody Nighthaunt or Primaris boxes. I just don’t get why they expect people to buy the Freeguild army book when they’ll never see Freeguild on the shelves.

What’s the point of releasing an army book if you’re never going to release an army?

 

[zeker1966 1633xp 1]

The book serves two purposes. 1) It allows those that had models from pre AoS to repurpose those miniatures, and, 2) a way to combine forces into a single army. They may eventually release new models but it is likely a low priority. Unless people start buying lots of the existing models and GW sense an opportunity… it will be a while before new models are released.

[timmothParticipant 697xp 1]

Yep, it’s meant for people who already had the models and don’t want their army to go extinct just because the world ended…

[brianfowler713Participant 3336xp 0]

Not saying @zeker1966 or @timmoth are wrong, but wouldn’t it make more sense if they made the Free cities, more like the old armies? Like, few, if any, of the Free Cities armies have the same colours as the old Empire or Ulthuaan provinces. And how many Dwarf players collected a Dark Elf fleet at the same time? Or how many Dark Elve players collected High and Wood Elves and Empire Flagellants? Do they really expect people to rebase and repaint all their old Warhammer armies? Don’t they remember how big they could get, when peasants like me could still afford them?

Maybe there was no good way to do this, but there had to have been a better way than all this. I really don’t see too many Grognards rebasing and repainting their entire old armies when they could just use them to play 9th Age (or just use a 6th edition rulebook).

[limburger 21683xp 1]

They sort of do this to all of their armies. I can only get a few core infantry sets for the gloomspite gitz. They don’t have a start collecting box. The generals and any spiders are web only…the iron Jawz have similar issues..

It sucks that they making even less of an effort for the new human codex. Although I did notice two new start collecting sets.

I think gw want everyone to buy their stuff online or order in gw specialist stores. I hate that, because I like to see what I buy in store.

[dawfydd 11923xp 2]

Check out Element Games – they have most of the units you mention as not being able to find available in their AOS Forces of Order section, and cheaper than buying from GW direct.

It is an unfortunate reality though that SKU bloat is a thing that all companies selling a product that have success will likely run into, so a periodic pruning is required (or amalgamation as we have seen more frequently with the Middle Earth ranges). At least in GW’s case they keep a considerable portion of their range available as Direct Only, and have begun giving access again to these products to retailers like EG who want to carry them.

 

[hephestoParticipant 880xp 0]

Unfortunately the Freeguilds have become somewhat of a dumping ground for older WHFB kits GW still considers profitable enough to produce and sell online. Granted looking at AoS regular humans just come across as pointless, pretty much anything out there massively more powerful or even godly. They’re sadly enough a bit of an afterthought and probably nothing more than an attempt not to alienate whatever WHFB fans this around.

[limburger 21683xp 0]

@dawfydd I was kind of hoping that AoS would have been the perfect moment to focus on a few factions and make lots of interesting units for them.

then again … it’s GW. They sell models with rules attached.

//

It’s really odd to see that the two ‘start collecting’ sets for ‘free cities of sigmar’ dont’ contain any human at all.
You either go dwarf or elf (or are those corsairs supposed to be human?)

Those Stormcast are the only faction besides chaos that has more than a few core infantry + generals.
It kind of sucks that they’re listed as options in ‘free cities’, because it’s the last thing I’d want if I wanted a non-Stormcast human faction …

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