Halandaar

Most of my painting interest is in non-board appropriate systems this month, so for April I'll vow a single Tau Ethereal.

Definitely this. I'm an "old head" now and even though 40K the game is not really to my taste anymore, it's obvious that it's more popular and more visible than it's ever been. Despite what some people would like us all to believe, GW do not need to keep the old guard around to continue to be a successful company as long as they can continue to attract new blood, and the increasing accessibility of the mainline games and the pushing of the franchise into more and more visible spaces (CoD crossover being a prime example) are succeeding in that whether us oldies like it or not. Arguably GW are even planning for this and designing products around it; what is Old World if not a game designed to welcome the people who thought it was all better before Stormcast and round-based fantasy minis? Heresy has a similar appeal to people who just thought the rules shift in 8E 40K was too much.

I know it's possible for third-party stockists to order the "direct-only" models in, but the majority don't bother because they have to pay the RRP to do so, which in turn means if they're offering them to punters at a discount, they're making a loss on them. I suppose some stores are willing to take the hit on those items in the hope you buy a bunch of other stuff from them at the same time which they can make a profit on, rather than you getting your entire order from GW.

This is pretty much what I was thinking; that if you're driving the distances people are talking about here, the amount of money you have to spend to get to the store for the "free" mini is basically the same as just buying it outright. That's fine when it comes to general availability stuff that third-party stockists have access to, but there are a surprisingly large amount of products that are GW-only, so if you're after one of those kits you are no worse off buying them in a physical Warhammer store than you would be from buying online. Warhammer World in particular is the best GW_operated store in the country in that regard because on top of the direct-only kits you'd have to buy at full price from the webstore anyway, they also have the Forgeworld store (you can't get FW minis cheaper anywhere online unless you're buying recasts) and stuff like the Command Tanks kit which is limited to just a few sites worldwide, and they often have stuff like previous years' anniversary and event minis available. Sure your son might not have wanted any of that stuff, but there's plenty of products available there that you are not costing yourself a discount on by buying in person. Spoiler alert; they cost more than a box of Deathwing Knights.

Might be to do with the terrain piece, which is two full-sized sprues rather than one like the scatter was in Salvation. The reason I say that rather than just calling it price creep is because Warcry's Pyre & Flood box (also on preorder today) has a single-sprue terrain pieces and is still priced at £80. If they were just increasing prices generally, they'd have done it for both sets.

Well yes, we all know this. But at least they bothered with an in-universe justification for those names. Drukhari is how they refer to themselves in their own tongue, with "Dark Eldar" being an imperial shorthand term from when they were first encountered and/or determined to be distinct from "normal" Eldar the Imperium had encountered previously. And even though names like Astra Militarum might be "new" to us, at least it fits thematically with names like the Adeptus Mechanicus and Adeptus Astra Telepathica, which have been in the language of the game for far longer.

The concept of people driving two hours for the specific purpose of collecting a single "free" mini is absolutely baffling to me. If you're going anyway then sure, but to make a specific trip? I guess different cultures and petrol/transport prices or whatever but yeah, put this one down in the "the European mind cannot comprehend" meme category.

Hopefully the fact that the Stormcast stuff is saying "Sold Out Online" vs the Warcry boxes saying "Temporarily Out Of Stock" suggests they're just being removed from AoS and will continue to be available for Warcry.

I know the article doesn't explicitly say so like it does for the Beastmen, but I presume they'll just rebox them for Old World, as they are an option in the Orcs & Goblins list. The overwhelming majority made the jump to AoS and got accompanying rules. Sure Tomb Kings and Bretonnia got the chop in full right at the beginning, but High Elves and Wood Elves were still buyable up until the Cities of Sigmar 3E book came out last autumn, and Dark Elves and Dwarves are still there in that range. Vampire Counts, Chaos Warriors, Night Goblins and Lizardmen minis lasted until they got direct replacements/upgrades (and the ones that didn't like the Mortis Engine, Gorebeast Chariot and Carnosaur are still going strong in AoS), and Skaven are only being removed now because they're about to get a full makeover. They even brought a lot of the named characters over, either as resurrected versions (Mannfred), or rebranded as generic ones (Belegar Ironhammer > Warden King) Some of these removals are pretty understandable; the Stormcast and Skaven stuff that's just getting refreshed being the obvious ones. Stormcast also suffer from a lot of Astartes-style bloat; Sequitors are just Liberators with tabards, Judicators have been replaced in the archer niche already by Vigilors, there's a replacement Knight Vexillor in the 3E starter box and so on, so none of that seems particularly offensive. I'm not even particularly fussed about Beasts of Chaos being removed altogether to move back to the Old World., although clearly that sucks for people who play them in AoS, but at least the model range isn't going away. The ones that offend me most are the Warcry warbands to be honest; I just cannot see the point of removing them. They were all designed as standalone products for a spin off game, and they work perfectly well within that game. They are only in AoS at all because clearly someone decided they'd sell more if they doubled them up in an AoS branded box. But that was never what they were for, so why can't they continue to exist in the Warcry ecosystem? Seems painfully stupid to me. But then I like Warcry a lot so maybe I'm just biased.

The only advice I can give anyone in this hobby is build your dudes the way you like them and to hell with the rules, because they are temporary (and to a large extent, cyclical) Come 12th edition different combi weapon profiles and the like will be back and GW will be telling us what a great new change it is to be able to to tailor your models to deal with specific threats, and combined with a brand new granular points system you'll have an unprecedented level of customisability.

Normally, the separate Kill Teams (and Warbands for Warcry which follows the same release pattern) come out at the same time as the next bundle box, so anything from 2 to 6 months later. For example, the standalone Cities of Sigmar and Ogre warbands for Warcry go up this weekend, and the box they launched in (Hunter and Hunted) came out in October. Scouts and Scorpions were a bit unusual in that they released earlier than the next KT box and had a much shorter turnaround, so hopefully that becomes the new norm, but impossible to be confident about it. If you want them soon, best bet is box splitters on Ebay; their prices are usually not actually any worse than the eventual RRP (although obviously you may prefer to wait for FLGS discounts)

They look great, but even ignoring the price my painting standard isn't good enough to warrant fancy cases!

With apologies for muddying the water for @LittlePlasticHomies, some of the big UK FLGS only offer 20% off on preorders, and their regular listings often have lower discounts (15% or even 10% off RRP). Best bet is to have a look at the products you're interested in across a few different companies. Not for a while now: majority of stuff is 15% off, with some things even worse (Kroot Army set is 10% off for example). That said they do occasionally have items for even higher discounts (as much as 25%) for stuff they obviously bought way too much of. But on the plus side, their turnaround on order to shipping is really good, sometimes even same-day dispatch. Hobby Workshop is one I use a lot, reliable shipping and quick turnaround, but again their discount percentage can vary between products. One of the most consistent in offering high level of discount is Dark Sphere, which has vast majority of items at a flat 20% off (even brand new high demand stuff that other stores opportunistically lower their discounts on), but they are also one of the only ones that don't operate a free shipping threshold so their effective discount is a little lower than that. Good call, although again be mindful that some stores offer a lower discount in person than they do online (the store has running costs to cover, after all)

Yeah, everything barring the bases and the metals is contrast. A couple of things have additional washes on but that's basically it.

On the other hand, out of the previous five army sets released, Flesheater Courts (Winter 23/24), Cities of Sigmar (Autumn 23), Slaves to Darkness and Astra Militarum (both Winter 22/23) all had a 2 month gap between the box and the standalone battletome. Seraphon (Summer 23) was one month. Hopefully Tau will be one month as well and it becomes the new norm but, as is usual with GW, we can't be sure when it will come out because there isn't a consistent pattern.