Why isn't GW making New Astra Militarum

[brianfowler713Participant 3336xp 2]

Watching a video on youtube where a guy was converting some guard into Blood Pact and one of the things he mentioned was that the last thing GW made that you could call Astra Militarum was the traitor guard in Blackstone fortress.

The first thing I did when I heard that was remember how GW used to seemingly make models for everything from knights to Imperial guard to the Birdmen of Catrazza. And then I remembered how long gone that time was and I got really sad.

The next thing I did was ask myself, why aren’t they making new kits for the non-space marine grunts? Do they sell that poorly?  Are there too many third party competitors? Just why have GW seemed to forsake them?

[crazyredcoatParticipant 13642xp 2]

Probably no way to compete with the market and their high prices. Think about it, the Wargames Atlantic Grognards are pretty much Vostroyans right out the box and infinitely more affordable. I’d be willing to bet that Guard tanks sell well and the other kits are a bit ‘meh’. They gave up on a wide range because it was cheaper to build a smaller focused range and dropping the others didn’t affect their profits too harshly. I swear the Catachan were only kept because enough people found the ‘Nam vibe either enticing or hilarious. The other complication is that they will have to do a full release from the ground up for them now to bring them in line with modern scales and such, rather than work to the old style, and the Guard just don’t have enough of the market for that. They’d have to make them incredibly powerful to get the tournament players to go for them. Much of their new stuff does have a certain amount of catering to that demographic; just look at the community page when a new army comes out… Unless people want it enough to want to spend $60CAD (I don’t off the top of my head remember what that would be in real money (GBP or Euros) on a 10 man box then they won’t put in the effort.

[dekinrie 1460xp 1]

It basically boils down to cost, the old days if they wanted a new guard army give a sculpter the design brief with  25 maybe 30 individual sculpts basic infantry squad some alternate special weapons and crew for heavy weapons as they all used the same lascannon,mortar etc and a couple of officers ,sargeants for variety your talking a month for sculting as they all be worked at the same time In between waiting for the putty to harden then making moulds for them depending on the spacing you could get 15 to 20 minis on the mould for spincasting at around £600 for the mould

now look at today everything’s in plastic so Im guessing design may take a bit more knowing how the current miniature sprues are packed and the cost for the  plastic mould is a lot more hence less updates for individual army

[kiranamida 5791xp 1]

The thing I always try to remember is that: whenever GW decides they want to do something it takes about 3 years to come to pass as that is how far ahead they plan their release processes, on that long a stretch to coordinate all their divisions and book up the factories when they want a bit stock uptick for the new stuff.
At least that’s what keeps coming out from those with access to the inner workings like stockholders.

Now, that’s not to say that this means that there is something coming but just that, if the are taking on the feedback about marine fatigue and deciding to refresh other ranges (like the Necrons have recently undergone) and that they aren’t already on the docket for some time in the future then it would be three years for that to come to fruition under there current practices.
With the state of the world at the moment, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect things to take longer still.

Now, I’m not defending the practice: I would say that a rolling upgrade across all the ranges would make for a better ecosystem for the game overall (how many people do you hear that are bored on playing Marine vs Marine or simply not wanting to play against Marines because of the level of cheese at the moment) only to answer the question: “Why?”

As some one who plays AM myself, I feel the pain.

[somegeezer 18431xp 1]

As someone who started collecting guard relatively recently I’m happy with this. I like the current range (Cadians and all) and want to avoid having to buy a lot in a hurry if they update it.

I accept this might be a minority viewpoint, but it is one I’m backing up with my time and money ?

We’ve seen the death of Cadia in the fluff and a couple of limited edition minis. From this I think the Catachans will be the new face of the faction. The new minis look great but I hope they leave the armour as it is, it’s one of the few ranges without any models I really hate.

ok there is one but you can buy resin wheels for that.

 

[mecha82Participant 10037xp 0]

Sadly seems like GW doesn’t care about IG. I mean I would love them to make new IG models with some of them even being women but I doubt we get any new IG models as long as they want to keep milking Space Marines. And I say this as Space Marine player.

[limburger 21710xp 2]

GW doesn’t care about anything other than spacemarines …

pretty much every faction would kill for a major overhaul like the spacemarines got.
Although to be fair … there is not a lot of difference between the various primaris units as there appears to be.
It’s the same model over with minor tweaks.
Pretty much any other faction would have a dozen new models from scratch.

And yet … there’s WarCry.
They’ve done a dozen new factions from scratch in plastic. And almost all of them with unique poses.
That must have been a huge risk … which they didn’t want to take when they did Kill team (almost all units, except the second core box are re-boxed existing stuff)

They kind of did to Necrons in 9th edition what they did to the Deathguard in 8th.
It probably was the only faction that got such a huge revision of their core units and other than Chaos spacemarines and AdMech I can’t think of anyone else who got more new stuff. I suspect the release of Killteam sort of helped AdMech along as it might have given them a bit of a spotlight.

I’d love to see refreshed core troops and elites for every faction (Eldar, T’au, Imperial Guard, and Orks of course), but I kind of doubt that will happen.

[brianfowler713Participant 3336xp 3]

It’s so depressing.

I mean, I’m sure I’m probably looking back with rose tinted spectacles but I remember when I could walk around the GW store and see almost anything. There were knights and steam tanks, there were spaceships for BFG, there were Marauders and Tau mechs and skaven assassins, there were giant inquisitor models and finally, there was the Imperial Guard.

Now I can’t even walk around the store anymore (they ask you to stand at the entrance and ask what you want to look at while the staff shows it to you). But even if I could, there would be just Stormcast and Space Marines, and maybe the $230 giant kit.

I can’t even find the words for how depressing this all is.

[zorg 18801xp 1]

i think hope they may??? make new Guard after all the Necromunda figures are out.

[bigdave 3704xp 1]

The Catachan sculpts are ancient, don’t get me wrong, I love them but barring the command box and the plastic heavy weapons (which are only slightly younger) the sculpts are twenty years old. Cadia may be dead but many regiments use the Cadian pattern armour so I can’t see the Cadians getting retired any time soon. There are opportunities for conversion with the new Necromunda boxes but in truth, if the Guard was to get a new codex I could quite easily imagine a focus shift away from infantry in favour of armoured formations with a small amount of mechanised infantry support. Infantry will still be there and existing Guard players will no doubt stand firm and continue to use infantry heavy armies but for new players being introduced to the faction? Tanks, tanks, tanks I reckon…

Plastic steel legion would be great but who knows, doubt we’ll see it.

[kiranamida 5791xp 1]

Given GW’s propensity for “buy the base kit and then spend more money to customise” like you get with all the Legion/Chapter upgrade kits in, I’m surprised there isn’t more of that going around for the guard.

I know the really famous Regiments like the Steel Legion, Kreig, Tanith, Iron Guard, etc. require wholely unique sculpts which might not be worth it in their eyes but you’d think an upgrade sprue for female heads, Praetorian helmets, specialist berets or styles of officer hats would be an easy sell for such a do-it-yourself faction people could buy and put in their bits box.

[limburger 21710xp 0]

the 9th edition trailer showed classic Imperial guardsmen/women … and I think that was named ‘Cadian’ style ?

It is weird that they’ve only sort of done the Blood Brothers ‘upgrade’ kit for Imperial Guard to convert them into cultists.

Aren’t the chaos guardsmen new ?

[kiranamida 5791xp 1]

Yeah, the Brood Brothers are just a standard guard trooper sprue with an upgrade sprue in the box so most of the work is done. Even something like that would be a start.

The traitor guardsmen are part of a Blackstone Fortress set which contains a bunch of other stuff. I don’t think you can buy them separately.

[zorg 18801xp 1]

Looking at the blood brothers box they would be great painted up as a desert army for guard. And I think you can get the box separately for £25 from GW.

[limburger 21710xp 3]

part of the problem for GW is that they don’t know how to sell anything other than Chaos and Spacemarines.

Imperial Guard get none of the glory, have a pretty bad reputation and don’t get the cool toys.
And they rely on lots of infantry to get anything done …

Convincing little Jimmy he needs to paint a horde of ugly green/gray humans is not going to be easy if you keep showing him sexy new spacemarines in shiny new vehicles every week …

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