Halandaar

Think it's more to do with overlap between the three sets and the short time span between them, to be honest. Three army bundles in the space of ten months is a lot when there's only seven kits in the range (one of which is a special character you wouldn't want a second copy of). It means none of them are different enough from the others to feel particularly compelling.

Given that's the same price as the Terminator Captain and Terminator Chaplain I'd have been surprised if it was anything different.

Well that would be because the Devilfish/Hammerhead is the oldest Tau kit still in production: it was part of the initial launch of the entire faction back in 3rd edition, and predates the Piranha and Sniper Drone Team by about five years.

Nope! It's one of the extremely good value ones where the kit is surprisingly on one issue like Wraithguard and Chaos Terminators.

*Shrug* - regardless of whether every book shares the "500 Worlds" tagline, there are going to be more books and they're going to be in a similar format to this. That said, if it's not part of a wider series you'd have to ask why the book isn't just called "Titus" rather than "500 Worlds - Titus" if the 500 Worlds bit isn't going to continue to be relevant. Why does 500 Worlds have its own logo in a new typeface, why is that logo printed on the front of a Necron Battalion box of not to tie multiple similar products together, etc. I mean, this is the format end-of-edition campaigns take: campaign book focusing on a few factions in part of a wider conflict, with new supporting miniatures and bundle boxes. They've even already shown us the models that will need future publications to deliver their rules (Tyranid, Votann, Tau) so the idea that this is a standalone is weird to me.

Army sets come with printed Codexes/Battletomes and card sets too (and in some older cases have had card token sheets too, similar to kill team) so card printing is a consideration for those sets as well. Aside from that, Crux Terminatus two weeks ago was also heavily restricted to third-party stockists and contained no cardstock whatsoever.

Oh there'll be at least four more books, each giving a few more factions a moment in the sun and excuse to release more character models. It's how these things go. (Arks of Omen run included Azrael, Dante, The Lion, Vashtorr, Farsight, Snikrot and Angron, while Psychic Awakening featured Drazhar, Jain Zar, Shadowsun, Fabius Bile, Lazarus, Ragnar Blackmane, Ghazkull Thraka, Ephrael Stern and Illuminor Szeras) Seen the start of it with the named Votann and Tau characters, and there'll be a big "surprise" for the end (guess this is where the rumour of Guilliman getting another model comes in)

There have been six army sets this year (Krieg, Emperors Children and Space Wolves for 40K, Gloomspite Gitz, Soulblight Gravelords and Helsmiths of Hashut for AoS) and every single one was available in substantial numbers from third party stockists - as far as I remember even the other KT sets like Typhon and Tomb World didn't sell out immediately. In a couple of cases, these products are still available even now. Compare that to Dead Silence where stockists are reporting being allocated less than 10% of what they ordered, or in some cases getting so few copies they didn't even list them in their online stores at all. Very different situations. The perfect level for GW is that they've sold out the run by the end of the preorder period; no stock hanging around in the warehouse, but maximum amount of sales made. Shorting the trade accounts by as much as 90% and still selling out in 3 minutes is a huge amount of money left on the table, and GW love money. Such a massive mismatch between supply and demand suggests either incompetence or design, and while I agree with you that it's probably the latter, it's almost certainly more to do with prioritising production capacity. My suspicion is that after how badly they botched the launch of Cursed City, they have printed a LOT of copies of Darkwater and that's probably used up a lot of the production capacity for this period.

Yeah, multiple sets. Lightning Claws, Thunder Hammers & Shields, Combi-Bolters & Power Fists, plus a few legion-specific sets like double axes for World Eaters, scythes for Death Guard, sword/shield for Blood Angels, sword/plasma for Dark Angels, Axes/Bolters for Sons of Horus etc. But they don't do anything in the way of heavy ranged weapons with the single exception of cyclone launchers that were intended to proxy the old Iron Warrior siege tyrant loadout.

On the subject of being priced out, I've said previously that rules churn is the main barrier for me but today's lack of stock for Dead Silence highlights another issue I have. As much as Warhammer is an expensive hobby I am prepared to indulge in, I still want the best value for money from my hobby and that means I almost always seek out bundles. I have a Space Wolves force and a small T'au force and I was prepared to buy two boxes today, but not being able to get them due to really restricted stock means it's full price teams, or nothing, and for me that normally means nothing. The exact same thing happened with Crux Terminatus a couple of weeks back: wanted to buy one, but couldn't due to stock. I was prepared to spend nearly £300 across these two releases and instead I've spent nothing, and GW is sorely mistaken if they think I'm going to pay the ~£100 extra to get the same stuff later on.

I think there's a lot of stigma still about the AoS setting among 40k players which is a real shame as imo Warcry is GWs best system, and you'd think with the low cost of entry (arguably even lower than Kill Team as you can use pretty much any infantry models from any faction you have lying around), more people would be willing to try it. Suppose the fact it looks like GW is mothballing it doesn't help.

Hmm. Cataphractii feel stretched rather than rescaled. I guess it's to differentiate them from how hulking the Saturnine terminators are, but it gives them more of a shape I'd associate with Tartaros. Certainly not terrible, but a bit of a miss compared to how perfect the Indomitus rescale was IMO. Breachers look grand though, eagerly awaiting the upgrade frame as a standalone for some Badab Siege Mantlets!

Yep, would also have bought two sets (one to keep all of, one to split with a friend). Had them in cart on Goblin Gaming and by the time I'd got through PayPal checkout they'd sold out. Thing is GW banks on us being prepared to shell out 4x full price teams later on, but in my case I've gone from someone who would have bought two full Dead Silence sets to someone who will buy one Wolf Scout team at best (and probably years down the line at this point). The bundle discount is the thing making it an attractive product for me.

And following up, Goblin Gaming and Hobby Workshop sold out in under a minute and Warhammer.com was sold out by 10:13 (maybe even earlier, that was when I checked). Feels like the run up to Christmas is always like this, doesn't make it any less frustrating though.

Availability looks iffy again for third parties, Dark Sphere once again got shafted (only got allocated 10% of the amount they requested).