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Kislev

2018-08-03T10:16:13Z

2001:8003:3895:3A00:64AC:5459:90BD:4DC6: Jews have nothing to do with Russia/Kislev

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{{topquote|Land is Kislev, Kislev is land.|Kislevan proverb}}
{{topquote|THEN THE WINGED HUSSARS ARRIVED!|Sabaton}}

Kislev is the northenmost civilized state in the Old world, and the first line of defense against the hordes of Chaos that regularly spill out of Norsca to the far north.

Historically, Kislev is the result of the inter-mingling of main tribal confederations; the native Ungols of the north, the Gospodars in the south, and the long dead Roppsmenn tribes. The former two are in fact the off-shoots of the Kurgan tribes of the northeast. To this day, the Ungols maintain good relationship with those Chaos marauders, who have such wonderfully well thought out names such as "Dolgan", "Khazag" and "Kul".

In case you can't tell, Kislev is like Tsarist Russia. But only in the weak, decadent south. In the strong, manly north, it actually turns into Mongolia and the Turkic countries (Khazakhstan, Uzbekistan, etc). And the Kurgans who dwell east of the Norsemen are basically Siberians.

In essence, Kislev is Russia before Peter the Great got rid of everything in Russia that was Russian, combined with Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (winged hussars), the main opponent of Russia in 17th century. It's also named after Kievan Rus, as in the old Russian kingdom and the current capital city of Ukraine, all GW did was tack on two letters in the middle of Kiev. In the 1980s when Kislev was created there was no country called Ukraine, it was all just "Russia". (In fact, in the 1980s there WAS Ukraine, called Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic, in alliance with Soviet Union)

Also, Kislev is no more according to the whole return of Nagash thing GW has planned. At last, Archaon has done that which Napoleon, Hitler, the USA and the EU could only dream of -- the annihilation of Russia.

== History of Kislev ==
The Ungol people have populated the land of Kislev since the empire was founded and even helped support [[Sigmar]] in his first days of being the Emperor which created a bond between the empire and Kislev that lasts to to this day. They promise each other to help each other if one or the other was invaded.

Kislev as it is known now got started about 1500 IC when the Gospodar Tribe fled the encroaching Chaos wastes. The native Ungol people where not match for the wealth, arms, and magic of the Gospodar Tribe (the Empire at this time was going through a civil war and could not help the Ungols). The settlement of Praag grew in size as the Gospodars used the Lynsk to launch incursions into Ungol territory, eventually forcing the Ungol to accept Gospodar rule (who were now beginning to be called Kislevites after their capital city). Eventually the Ungols settled on the northern border of modern day Kislev where their people still reside mainly as the first line of defense against Chaos marauders. The south of Kislev is considered more civilized and even has some influence from the [[Empire]].

Over the past 750 years the two people have basically intermingled so that now almost everyone sees themselves as people of Kislev.

The Gospodar people have virtually all the power in the nation with the Tzars all being descended from the first Gospodar emperor and almost all the nobles are Gospodar. This is changing lately because Tzarina Katrarin has been uplifting more and more Ungol men into leadership roles to further tighten her grip on the nation.

In order for the [[Warriors of Chaos]] to get to the Empire on foot they have to go through Kislev. So the horde that shows up in the empire is actually a hell of a lot smaller than when they marched out. Kislev has been on the forefront of the chaos wastes since its inception and not once has the nation fallen. That basically means these guys have balls of steel on par with the [[Imperial Guard]]. At least thats how it was until the end times. In current fluff, Archaon has finally destroyed Kislev and only one city still stands.

== Religion in Kislev ==
Like the [[Empire]] to the south the people of Kislev have multiple deities but the main one is the Cult of Ursun the Father of Bears. Other common gods in Kislev are [[Dazh]], [[Tor]], [[Taal]], and [[Ulric]].

== Collecting Kislev ==
In [[Warmaster]], Kislev used to have both an official army list and a nice line of miniatures. In [[Warhammer Fantasy Battle|WHFB]], things are a little more complicated. While there is no official army book for them, aside their supplements in the 4th and 6º edition, there is also the warhammer fantasy roleplay book "Realm of the Ice Queen". There are good fan made ones which do include Bear Cavalry which in turn makes all other human armies seem pathetic (except for the [[Warriors of Chaos]], who are motherfucking Vikings). (Honestly that's easily debatable. These manly fuckers fight giant chaos monsters with a bow, rocks, and an axe. And you think they ask for help?)There are even a few official models made for them and a small White Dwarf list for them but that is out of date. Additionally, the Privateer Press line of Khador models for Warmachine give off the nice fantasy/russian look, if going only for infantry, with the Doom Reavers, Kossite Woodsmen, and Greylord models. If you need bears, you can grab their Brun and Lug set.

== Links ==
*Here is a link to the current fandex [https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_Redi9cZJ5iNVRCbFJMUVU5UXM/edit]
*Good song to listen to while working on a Kislev army [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3OpylRX53A]
*Good video for modeling Kislev armies from [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlhpi-WllkQ]

== Gallery ==
<center>
<gallery>
File:DSC00843.JPG|Kislev Minis for [[Warmaster]]. Those were the days...
File:Kislev2 v2.gif|Map of Kislev
File:Winged Lancers.JPG|The Famed Winged Lancers of Kislev
</gallery>
</center>

{{Regions and areas of the Old World}}
[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]]
[[Category:The Empire]]

Games Workshop

2018-08-03T09:02:06Z

2001:8003:3895:3A00:64AC:5459:90BD:4DC6:

{{cleanup}}
{{MattWard}}
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[[File:GW Logo.png|center|900px]]

{{topquote|In the state of nature profit is the measure of right.|Thomas Hobbes}}
{{topquote|A fool and his money are soon parted.|Dr John Bridges}}
{{topquote|A wise man should have money in his head, but not in his heart.|Jonathan Swift}}
{{topquote|For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. And some people, craving money, have wandered from the true faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows.|1 Timothy 6:10}}
{{topquote|Games Workshop is in the business of selling toy soldiers to children.|[[Tom Kirby]], (former) Chairman of Games Workshop PLC *He is still there, though.}}
{{topquote|...we recruit for attitude, not for skills.|[[Tom Kirby]], [http://investor.games-workshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/CHAIRMAN-statement-final.pdf 2013 Chairman's permeable] (Note how he claims it's to provide quality service and good attitudes, but avoids mention of customer complaints and what exactly those "desired" attitudes are)}}
{{topquote|1=But did the comic book medium that had endured world war, cold war, social revolution, finally meet its own demise not from a threat from without, but from within, unwittingly destroying itself when it decided that making money wasn't everything, it was the only thing? We'll have to see. It doesn't look good, but then... that's usually the moment when someone comes to the rescue.|2=SF Debris, [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOX5ONJQIk8&index=15&list=PLP7v2GoLok37YBm3WBaqvrKd97uSMYDPT "Rise and Fall of the Comic Empire, Afterword"] (I trust you can see the paralells)}}
{{topquote|Games Workshop is in the business of fixing itself from the piece of shit Tom Kirby left me with. I mean, have you seen our stocks lately?|[[Kevin Rountree]], if he has any common sense, even if he doesn't say it out loud}}

[[/tg/ gets shit done|"NOTE: It's our duty to leave a better Image of the hobby for future generations, the time of the old grumpy Neckbeard that only critiques must come to an end, we must reconquer those gold moments when fun and good times, not avarice, was more important."]]

'''Games Workshop''', known to /tg/ as '''Geedubs''', '''GW''' or '''[[/pol/|Jewdubs]]''' is a company which produces miniatures, and although they claim otherwise, games. Their two most notable games are [[Warhammer Fantasy]] and [[Warhammer 40,000]].
The first thing that you must know is that in /tg/'s general opinion, Games Workshop used to be good. Likewise, most believe it could also be good again. See [[Mordheim]], [[Beakie]], [[Rogue Trader (Sourcebook)|Rogue Trader]] and [[Talisman]]. They are now run by idiots. The second thing you must know is that Games Workshop is the reason /tg/ exists in the first place: originally being created as a containment board to isolate Warhammer threads from the general population on [[/b/]]. Warhammer is also a massive part of tabletop gaming culture history. As such, the importance of Warhammer in /tg/ cannot be overstated.

''Note:'' Before reading this article, see [http://www.londonstockexchange.com/exchange/prices-and-markets/stocks/summary/company-summary/GB0003718474GBGBXSTMM.html?lang=en this chart] for an illustration of what is GW current situation.

<s>Also, sign [https://www.change.org/p/games-workshop-limited-refocus-your-business-model-on-the-sale-of-a-game-and-support-of-a-gaming-community-vice-the-pure-sale-of-collectible-miniatures this petition]. Get your friends and family to sign it. Sign it, lest GW continue their abhorrent business activities unmolested.</s> Petition is closed, after gaining nearly 17,300 signatures. While GW never explicitly said that things were changing in response to the petition, see [https://www.change.org/p/games-workshop-limited-refocus-your-business-model-on-the-sale-of-a-game-and-support-of-a-gaming-community-vice-the-pure-sale-of-collectible-miniatures/u/15879809 this] to see the 'coincidental' changes that occurred since the petition hit 10k sigs.

Thanks to the tireless work of /tg/ it has been proven that Games Workshop exists as a quantum entity that simultaneously couldn't sell water to a man dying in the desert and also being master businessmen playing four-dimensional chess games with codex shifts and releases to masterfully trick innocent bright, attractive young game players out of their money. Of course the real answer can be found in the age-old saying: "Who is more foolish, the screaming bag of Scottish gibbons eating their own shit, or the people lining up outside the bag to buy the latest plastic toys from the gibbons?"

Laughably, Games Workshop are extremely protective about their precious intellectual properties. This is funny because you can count the number of original ideas in their core games on one hand, with the original creators outright admitting they ripped off existing works wholesale. The vast majority of backstory in Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 is a rehash of established fantasy/sci-fi literature, padded out with stuff the writers half-remembered from A-level history lectures. This is particularly true in the case of Warhammer Fantasy, which actually makes sense when you realize most of GW's founders actually had history degrees. 40k by contrast is mostly Fantasy ''IIIIN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE'', with a heaping helping of tropes from everything sci-fi that was popular in Britain in the 1980's.

==History==

===Ancient History===
The original Games Workshop was established several hundred years BC, originating in China. However, when the Emperor placed a commission for thousands of life sized soldiers, this predecessor began to collapse, as with all production geared to the creation of these soldiers and the murderous ire of the first Emperor they were unable to introduce price rises. As one, their board of directors resolved that they must fall into hibernation, to wait out the storm, screaming defiance at the one man who ever had defeated them.

===Almost-as-Ancient History===
[[File:John Peake and Ian Livingstone and Steve Jackson.jpg|thumb|center|300px|Steve, John, and Ian with their first products.]]
Games Workshop was established in 1975 in London as a small literal workshop that created wooden [[Board Games|boards]] for public domain games, such as [[Chess]] which it sold through mail-order catalogs (not its own). The original staff was just three men in a flat in London. [[John Peake]], [[Steve Jackson (Warhammer)|Steve Jackson]] (not to be confused with the other /tg/ [[Steve Jackson]]), and [[Ian Livingstone]]. Livingstone was a massive games fan, and was captain of the Chess club in school, while Peake carved wood as a hobby. They soon made a business of selling boards for Chess, Go, and Backgammon.
[[File:O&W!01.jpg|thumb|right|200px|Owl And Weasel, issue #1.]]
In the same year Games Workshop put out its own newsletter, called "Owl And Weasel" which somehow wound up crossing the Atlantic and ending up in the hands of pen-and-paper-gamings' Jack Kirby, [[Gary Gygax]]. Gygax sent the trio a copy of [[Dungeons & Dragons]] to playtest for a review in their publication. Jackson and Livingstone were hooked and ordered six more copies. Gygax, thinking they were a much more established (as in established at all) company, offered them exclusive distribution rights in the entirety of Europe.

In 1977, Jackson and Livingstone accepted and began selling copies of the game straight out of the flat by using Owl And Weasel to get the word out. Gygax himself had also been selling out of his apartment at the time, and neither found out the other group was just a couple of nerdy kids selling shit out of their home. Peake left the company as he had no interest or patience in new games (yep, people complaining every time something new comes along have been in since the beginning). After he left, D&D exploded in popularity and people who came to buy a game were continually knocking on the floor-level homes in the building, before being directed to talk to Livingstone and Jackson on the top floor. Predictably, this earned them a boot out the door from the landlord.

They rented a small office to be the original Games Workshop, slept in a van in the car park, and bathed in the restrooms of a nearby sports club while pretending to be patrons. They continued distributing D&D through mail order but had absolutely no success in convincing established hobby shops to carry the product. Without alternative, Livingstone and Jackson bought a place in west London in 1978 to sell mostly imported American gaming accessories from Dungeons & Dragons to [[Call Of Cthulhu]] and more. The two entered into negotiations to merge with [[TSR Games]] to retain exclusive distribution rights, but the owners of TSR (other than Gygax, who supported the idea greatly) turned the offer down.

===Citadel===
[[File:White Dwaf Issue 1.jpg|thumb|right|300px|White Dwarf, issue #1.]]
The new building allowed them to host gaming conventions which would later become the famous [[Games Day]]. This was followed Owl And Weasel being discontinued and replaced with [[White Dwarf]], a small magazine (originally just black and white on colored stationery) written by the now obsessed tabletop gamer Livingstone, which covered industry-wide tabletop gaming news. White Dwarf was supposed to be sci-fi and fantasy neutral, referring both to a dying star and to, well, [[Dwarves]]. Originally the magazine was everything Livingstone felt like writing about, from movies to publishing short stories to computer and computer gaming-related articles. The letters section quickly became THE forum for tabletop gaming in <strike>the Old World</strike> Europe, where everything from rules clarifications to personal reviews were published. Interestingly, Livingstone published letters that were critical of both him and Games Workshop.

Games Workshop's very first new product, [[Reaper]] (not to be confused with [[Reaper Miniatures]]) which was a basic fantasy skirmish game for between 5 and 30 miniatures.
In 1978, [[Citadel Miniatures]] was established under a man named [[Bryan Ansell]] as the miniature manufacturing division for any future Games Workshop products, which would produce them in bulk. Although initially a separate company simply owned by the same people as Games Workshop, it would eventually merge in the 90's into one company with the name only being a vestigial remainder of independence.
[[File:GW 1982.jpg|thumb|right|400px|Games Workshop team, circa 1982. Pictured from top right to bottom left: [[Andy Patterson]], <strike>John Lennon</strike> [[Anthony Epworth]], <strike>Abraham</strike> [[Bryan Ansell]], [[Diane Lane]], [[Gerry Ball]], [[Chrissie Lane]], [[Alan Merritt]], <strike>Jesus Christ</strike> [[Rick Priestley]], and an unknown woman.]]
This was followed in 1980 by the release of [[Valley Of The Four Winds]], a mostly forgotten fantasy game where two players fight over the fate of a realm. The side of evil consists of demons and the undead while the side of good consists of Elves, humans, and <strike>Dwarfs</strike> Dwarves (that spelling comes later). [[Battlecars]] was next, as a Mad Max style game. The first RPG created by Games Workshop was a licensed [[Doctor Who|Dr. Who]] roleplaying game. [[Fighting Fantasy]] was a project of Livingstone and Jackson, a fairly popular game they would leave the company to pursue.

Nothing Games Workshop made was as successful as Dungeons & Dragons, which was now being carried by competitors. Citadel sold generic fantasy miniatures for use with D&D, but players only ever made small purchases and were not in the market to collect one of everything leaving some stock hard to move. Ansell had become the primary boss of the company, and his solution was the wargaming market that had begun to catch on internationally. At this point, Games Workshop was still very much a small business with most employees putting in work as needed; a writer or mail sorter would load shipments into the building or package products.
<gallery>
Image:Games Workshop Old Ad.png
Image:Valley Of The Four Winds.jpg
Image:Doctor Who Games Workshop.jpg
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===Warhammer===
In 1983, [[Warhammer Fantasy|Warhammer]] was released. It was created by Games Workshop writer [[Richard Halliwell]] and his friend (former mail order department) [[Rick Priestley]] (known by [[Meme|many nicknames on /tg/, often "The Based"]]). Priestley was mostly inspired by growing up and delving headfirst into both science fiction and history, the news of the Atomic Age, and World War 2; all of which led him to the first wargames, and eventually getting a job at Games Workshop with the goal of working on his own.
The requirements for the new product were simple.
1. Take advantage of popular fantasy favored by gamers like [[Conan the Barbarian]] and [[Lord of the Rings]].
2. Every model must have rules, so everything gets sold.
3. Use six-sided dice since almost everyone everywhere already had some they could scrounge up to play the game.
Halliwell did the first draft for the game and did most of the work on raw mechanics, Priestley did development and editing.
Originally having no actual miniatures associated with it, it simply consisted of a single set of three books giving a basic rule system and scenarios. The first book, '''Tabletop Battles''', and has the core rules plus a bestiary and list of potions to be found in addition to an example scenario called '''[[The Ziggurat of Doom]]'''. The second book is '''Magic''', containing the rules for magic where spellcasting characters with the right equipment and wizard level (1-4, with the highest level being Archmages) can spend Constitution to use their chosen spells. The final book, Characters, adds the roleplaying game aspects including leveling up, alignment, upkeep costs, and the '''[[The Redwake River Valley]]''' example scenario.
While filled with typos, contradictory rules, and BADLY needing an FAQ that never came (so basically Games Workshop has always been bad at balance and fixing mistakes) it was well accepted for introducing the concepts of magic failing and of the psychology of forces on the field. The setting was almost non-existent, and what little lore there was only existed in the flavor text of magic items. Of special interest is the game was originally conceived partly as a wargame, partly as a roleplaying game with actual guidelines for leveling up your general and interacting with the world— even an alignment system! If anything, the game combined the role of Dungeonmaster and player into one as a character led a force of generalized encounters against each other and looted the dead. Every group of friends had a different world, as the results of a previous battle fitted into the unending campaigns of war. A major difference between current and early Warhammer is an extra player was required as a Game Master for a battle to take place.
[[File:Citadel Design Team 80s.jpg|thumb|right|400px|The Citadel Design Team in the early 1980's.]]
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Image:Warhamme Fantasy 1e.png
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Also in 1983, to much less fanfare but still modest success, the board game [[Talisman]] was first released. In it, players are adventurers trying to obtain the Crown of Command and kill their opponents.

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Ansell used the success of Warhammer to move Games Workshop HQ from London to Nottinghamshire, in what was presented as a merger but many at Games Workshop saw as a Citadel takeover. By that time there were six other Games Workshop locations, and cost appears to have been the only reason the name was not changed to Citadel. Few Games Workshop staff stayed on, as Nottinghamshire was in the midst of a nasty Thatcher-era labor dispute that saw employees harassed.

Due to popularity, an expansion for Warhammer called '''[[Forces of Fantasy]]''' was released in 1984 which began to describe the factions in the world (all still extremely generalized, mostly Dungeons & Dragons based). Once again containing three books (Forces of Fantasy, Fighting Fantasy Battles, and Arcane Magicks), it made the skirmish roleplaying game into a war roleplaying game with a fairly important magic system. The final booklet included, [[The Book Of Battalions]], contained example armies for the game and included the favored armies of the Games Workshop staff, including the Perry Twins, Bryan Ansell, [[Nigel Stillman]], and Based Priestley.

The same year also saw Games Workshop stop importing printed books from the United States, and instead print them in the UK while also expanding into having a US headquarters and manufacturing division so as not to have to physically import goods in reverse.
<gallery>
Image:Forces of Fantasy.jpg
Image:1e Supplement Booklets.jpg
Image:Book Of Battalions.jpg
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Later in 1984, the second edition of Warhammer was released. It combined the expansions with the core game as well as suggested supplementary rules from White Dwarf. Combat was the core rules, like Tabletop Battles. Battle Magic is the same as Magic, although it reduces equipment requirements and instead adds the lores of Illusionists, Demonologists, and Elementalists plus the example scenario '''[[The Magnificent Sven]]'''. The final book, Battle Bestiary, includes the stats of all the factions and models in the game and guides for forming armies out of them as well as homebrew additions. Still having very loose rules, the game was three books although this time they were actually professionally printed rather than looking like something off a photocopier. Paper punchouts were included to represent troops rather than any miniature although Citadel produced a range of minis which were advertised in White Dwarf (although the rulebooks still said in those days to simply use whatever you want), and the very first Warhammer lore was established.
The [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|Empire]] was a vague kingdom of men in decline, [[Chaos]] was some kind of Demonic extra-planar threat that prophesied the [[End Times|end of days]], there was some kind of ancient race that created the monsters of the world called [[Slann]], and [[High Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Elves]] had some kind of [[Dark Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|civil war]] going on although the version presented in this book was a clash of kingdoms rather than a two way war of genocide.
Three supplements were released, the first adding the very first Warhammer villain, [[Heinrich Kemmler]], in the [[Terror Of The Lichemaster]] campaign. The second, [[Bloodbath at Orcs' Drift]], introduced the first [[Orcs & Goblins|Orcs to the setting]] (although they weren't the asexual greenskins of today, but rather generic Dungeons & Dragons Orcs and Half-Orcs). The third, '''[[Tragedy of McDeath]]''' was basically Warhammer Macbeth, involving a plot of necromancy with Dwarfs and humans who would eventually come to be the [[Bretonnia|Bretonnians]]. "Blood In The Streets", was just rules for fighting with buildings as well as paper scenery. The final expansion, [[Ravening Hordes]], made the army choices much specific rather than relying on overlapping options.

On the side, Citadel had acquired the rights to produce miniatures for everything from [[Judge Dredd]] to [[Doctor Who]], and collaborated with many other companies including [[Ral Partha]] (one of their most successful partnerships, which launched Citadel into the mainstream of tabletop), [[Iron Claw Miniatures]] (which went out of business with their molds and copyrights being absorbed by Citadel), and [[Marauder Miniatures]] (technically another company owned by the founders of Games Workshop, much like Citadel itself, which was absorbed into the company in the early 90's much like Citadel would be absorbed by Games Workshop not long after).

Games Workshop saw aggressive expansion during this time, as White Dwarf went from a general nerd culture newsletter to specifically just a magazine for Games Workshop products which also functioned somewhat like a catalog and order form for new products. By opening physical retail stores to encourage gamers to meet at, they got easy advertising as Games Workshop products were on the shelves all around them. Many smaller companies began to suffer and close due to the slow death of the mail-order catalog business model that many companies relied heavily on.

Talisman received a second edition, different only in that the pieces were printed in color, in 1985.
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Games Workshop also acquired the license to make Lord Of The Rings miniatures in '85, taking over from competitor [[Grenadier Miniatures]].

In 1986, an expansion set for Talisman, called Talisman Expansion Set (clever) was released which had an FAQ, more characters, alternate endings, and enough stuff for up to 12 players to play at once!

In 1987 GW lost the license for LOTR, which passed to [[Mithril Miniatures]].

Third edition Warhammer was also released in 1987, and was just a single hardback book (the ancestor of the [[Big Red Book]] of <strike>today</strike> yesteryear). The rules were finally ironed-out although the magic system remained the same. Players now controlled large forces with specialized troops including elites and warmachines, movement was extremely important tactically as there was Charge actions, and generally the game was considered a bit more complicated to pick up and learn than your average tabletop game. Games Workshop began to push it's own miniatures more and more, and the rules for certain types of troops came bundled with them rather than in the core book. The Warhammer setting was more fleshed out, and many consider this to be the first true edition of a Warhammer game fluffwise. Orcs and goblins were not connected and had females, undead didn't really have a reason to exist, Chaos only really mattered if you were talking about Chaos, the Empire's decline was because of cultural problems rather than being buttfucked by everyone else with twelve men or more at their command every other season, Elves were pretty much just snooty Elves and douchey Elves, Dwarves had no real flavor beyond [[Joseph Bugman]] existing, and the rest of the world was just kind of assumed to be like our own somewhat.
Even going beyond this, [[Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay]] was released which introduced an entire world outside the not-Europe of the [[Old World]] by touching on [[Ind]], [[Araby]], [[Nippon]], [[Cathay]], [[Naggaroth]], and more.

Third edition had two expansions; [[Realm of Chaos]], written by Ansell as a blatant ripoff of [[Moorcock]], which introduced everyone's favorite (or hated) [[Chaos Gods|Evil Sues]] and established Chaos in a way it would basically remain from that point on; [[Slaves To Darkness]], which detailed pretty much everyone in the actual physical world who wanted to kill you for no particular reason; The [[Lost And The Damned]] which continued giving reasons why living in Warhammer would fucking suck; and finally [[Warhammer Siege]] which gave scenarios. So more or less the late 80's/early 90's introduced [[Grimdark|grimderp]], nicely paralleling the trend in comic books.

Talisman: Dungeon came out in 1987 as well and came with an additional game board and rules for navigating it on the side of the main board.
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===[[Indrick Boreale|Spess: Tha Finuhl Frunteer]]===
Later that year, Games Workshop released [[Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader|Rogue Trader]]. Rogue Trader was Priestley's first creation, before he became the mail packager at Games Workshop HQ. Based on the idea of having a ship and using miniatures to play the game, and he'd refined the game as he did rules articles and sci-fi discussions in White Dwarf.

Conceived as a Frankenstein's Monster of of Warhammer/Judge Dredd/[[Dune]]/[[Moorcock]]/Heinlein/Lovecraft and John Milton's Paradise Lost (the latter work inspired the [[Horus Heresy]]) with a sprinkling of anything else perceived as cool, the game was functionally a combination of Warhammer 1st edition with Warhammer 3rd edition as a roleplaying/skirmish/wargame. It was mostly just an updated version of the game [[Laserburn]] by Ansell, who after the financial failure of his solo creation re-imagined it for Games Workshop.
Forces were originally just a [[Space Marines]] faction decided by rolling dice rather than listbuilding, which was added later as well as with most of the story in White Dwarf. The [[Imperium]] was given fluff, [[Orks]] were created as green skinned assholes described briefly in 3rd Edition although now with asexuality to go with it. Extremely complex rules for vehicles were added, and finally Ansell's Chaos was copy/pasted from Warhammer to Rogue Trader with the overt Moorcockyness removed.
Priestley designed the Rogue Trader setting as part irony and part parody, with only self-deluded antivillains as protagonists.
It was hinted at various points that Warhammer 40,000 was Warhammer Fantasy in the future, then later than Sigmar was a "son" (its complicated) of the Emperor of 40k and thus all of Fantasy was a planet in the 40k universe, later that the 40k universe entirely existed in a box on a wizard's shelf in Fantasy, before finally the creators decided both Warhammers are reflections of each other in a multiverse.

===For Those About To Rock, We Sell-out You!===
Many employees in 1988-1990 left the company, unhappy with the increasingly profit-driven model of the company. Many created their own games, publications, and even went to Games Workshop's (few remaining) competitors. Notable was [[Fantasy Warlord]], which barely sold enough to break even before shutting down. The miniatures created for Fantasy Warlord by [[Alternative Armies]] are actually still available, although some were sold to [[Mayhem Miniatures]] (which became [[Kennington Miniatures]]).

Unchallenged in the market (being the Apple of miniatures in that day), Games Workshop sought to expand its customer base into the mainstream. Television commercials were made, Games Workshop expanded aggressively into France and Australia, and the miniature lines were made less grotesque and more like the artwork. Any place that could support a major sports team was designated a potential, even eventual, Games Workshop location. Later on Games Workshop prospects were locations that could afford to support high end clothing stores like Marks & Spenser or toy store retail chains like Early Learning Centre. Games Workshop stores were designed to be friendly, with owners and employees being outgoing and knowledgeable about tabletop games while popular music like Grunge and early Alternative was played over speakers.

Ansell in the meantime had begin to expand the company into entirely different mediums, and due to his love of music had begun to use Games Workshop as a publisher for bands like [[Sabbat]], [[Saxon]], and [[Bolt Thrower]]. He opened a Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000-themed clothing line, licensed novels set in the universe, and funded [[LARP]] events. Ambitions that were not realized even included a gameshow set in 40k where players built robots to fight other robots (so a themed version of the television show Robot Wars).

In 1988, Talisman: Timescape was released in which players in the medieval core game could randomly be thrown through space and time into other time periods, mainly those inspired by Warhammer 40,000.

In the same year, to compete with rival [[FASA]] and their [[Battletech]] game, Games Workshop released [[Adeptus Titanicus]], a 10mm scale tabletop game where twelve [[Titan (Warhammer 40,000)|Imperial Titans]] fight each other in a city. Games Workshop tied the game to the 40k franchise to boost both games. White Dwarf expansions added rules for vehicles, infantry, and aerial combat.

Talisman: City came out in 1989 which added a new board, a city for players to interact with the city guards and buy/sell items. It was likewise followed by [[Space Marine]], which was a battle between two Space Marine armies and included miniatures for vehicles as well.

In the same year, [[Codex Titanicus]] was released which combined Space Marine and Adeptus Titanicus together into one game, the first edition of [[Epic]].
Over the next year the game received major additions including Knight, artillery, and infantry models in not only Space Marines, but also Imperial Guard (1991 Armies Of The Imperium), Chaos and Eldar (1992 Renegades), Orks and Squats (1992 Ork and Squat Warlords), and finally Tyranids (1995 Hive War).

===Bitch, Where's My Money?===
In 1991 Ansell left Games Workshop, and sold his shares to the General Manager [[Tom Kirby]]. Kirby's first order of business was to grow the company to quickly pay off what he had borrowed to buy it, and he was presented with two choices; grow the company more diverse games or focus heavily on the two Warhammers. Kirby opted for the latter, and pushed the idea of more games in the two settings along with much bigger editions.

[[Image:Haet trees.jpg|thumb|FUCK TREES]]
Warhammer 4th edition was released in 1992, with changes to rules bringing the term "Herohammer" into the fanbase as most of any given army was simply there to protect the powerful characters the game was REALLY about. This was the first edition that had miniatures specifically for everything in the rulebooks, had specific race selection that prohibited using troops of another type in your army, and had a starter set which contained a two-force starter game which was High Elves VS Goblins. Magic was entirely redone, and was marketed as an expansion and used cards as spells. Magic had two further expansions, one for general magic and one for Chaos. Warhammer lore was more fleshed out, coming to resemble more or less the factions of today. The Empire was the human focus of 4th edition, with the valiant knights having no mention.

In 1993, Games Workshop came out with ''Warhammer 40,000'', normally called ''Second Edition''. Like Warhammer (now "Warhammer Fantasy Battles"), it was built around small units of infantry supporting ridiculously munchkinized special characters with complicated rules and wargear and appropriately pricey lead models, but at this stage Games Workshop actually cared somewhat about customers; models were made in plastic or wallet-friendly, Roman-Empire-collapsing lead, game sets included serviceable army lists and collections of miniatures, and paints were provided in 20ml pots, later 17.5ml. This switch was perhaps the first sign of the next age (and every other age, by the looks of things as paints are now just 12ml per pot).

===Special NEERDS!===
In the same year the very first of what would later on fall under the label of "[[Specialist Games]]" (anything not Warhammer or Tolkien) was released; [[Man O' War]]. Warhammer Fantasy setting, but rather than commanding an army the players were heads of an armada on the high seas!

1993 also saw the release of the final 2e Talisman expansion, Talisman: Dragons. It added new characters, locations, spells, and items, all themed with dragons, into the game.

In 1994 the third edition of Talisman was released, adding miniatures, experience points, alterations to the board, and the biggest change of all; it was set in Warhammer Fantasy. Later that year, White Dwarf contained mini expansions to the game while the first true expansion, City Of Adventure, reintroduced the city board as well as a forest. Dungeon of Doom came next, adding the dungeon and a mountain.
The year also saw the launch of Second edition Epic, still consisting of two games. The first was a rerelease of Space Marine that had Space Marines, Orks, and Eldar. The second game was Titan Legions which had the same factions.

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In 1995 Dragon's Tower expanded Talisman 3e as an alternative end goal as players climbed a tower and killed a dragon (duh). It came with another White Dwarf expansion.

In 1996 [[Necromunda]] was released. Priestley was inspired by his meetings with the creator of Judge Dredd during the days of Games Workshop licensing the IP, and used it to resurrect the forgotten RPG aspect of Rogue Trader.

Fifth edition Fantasy was released in 1996 as well, along with its magic expansion which rebalanced and simplified the magic system and included all three 4e expansions. Cards remained available to buy, although all the [[Winds of Magic]]-based magic spells were included in the core rules (meaning you still had 20 more spells you had to buy cards for). Of particular note is the Slann finally being fleshed out, creating the [[Lizardmen]] army with the starter being Bretonnia VS Lizardmen. Campaigns were released which were heavily involved in the lore; [[The Grudge Of Drong]] featured a conflict between Elves and Dwarfs which lead to the [[War of the Beard]], [[Tears Of Isha]] involved the bitter war between the High and Dark Elves, [[Idol Of Gork]] was the first time that Orcs were truly Orcy as known today with the introduction of [[Gork]] and [[Mork]] (or was it Mork and Gork?), Circle of Blood as the [[Vampire Counts]] (then still one army with the [[Tomb Kings|Mummies]]) VS Bretonnians as the first introduction of the [[Abhorash|Blood Dragons]], and Perilous Quest as a war between the Bretonnians and [[Wood Elves (Warhammer Fantasy)|Wood Elves]] during their introduction to the lore . Each campaign came with multiple endings decided by player involvement (becoming the precursor to Warhammer events), paper scenery which defined the architectural styles of the featured races from then on (although this was sadly the last time these races got scenery before everything simply became Empire and Chaos), and a campaign book summarizing the story.
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At some point it was determined that the stock army lists weren't enough, and so "Army Books" (for Warhammer) and "Codex Books" (for 40Kl, later simply "Codex:(faction)") began to come out, each bringing new models and rules into the game. The last round of these for 40K (''Codex: Tyranids'' in particular) tended to make the army ridiculously overpowered and make everyone ''else'' want a new Codex to rectify the balance. Perhaps the ultimate example of ''Second Edition'' philosophy was the last book, ''Codex: Assassins'', which consisted of nothing but four hideously powerful special characters. These included [[Culexus|this asshole]] who caused the psychology effect ''Terror'' to all psykers, regardless of anything, meaning Greater Daemons and Hive Tyrants would occasionally shit themselves and run for the hills when faced with a normal-sized human.

One notable aspect of this period was that Games Workshop hated trees, and would thus include several million cards in every boxed set if given the slightest provocation; the core sets for ''Warhammer'' and ''Warhammer 40,000'' both received an update governing the magic / psychic system which consisted solely of cards and templates (which were card). Some entire games (''Doom of the Eldar'', ''Battle for Armageddon'', ''[[Horus_Heresy#The_Board_Game|Horus Heresy]]'') came out in this period which consisted of nothing but OUR GREAT SOVIET UNION a board and lots of high-density card counters to lose down the back of the sofa or inside the dog.

[[Gorkamorka]] came out in 1997, and was Priestley's answer to Mad Max meets 40k, featuring Orks in different groups crashed on a desolate planet using vehicular weapons to slaughter each other.
Third edition Epic was released as well as a single game with simplified rules, but it was a financial failure after barely moving any units in six months and was recalled. This is unfortunate because [[Jervis Johnson]] and [[Andy Chambers]] consider it the greatest game they ever made. Most of the planned models were never released.

[[Mordheim]], the Fantasy version of Necromunda set in the ruins of an Empire city where all factions are scrambling for control was released in 1998.

The last Specialist Game was [[Battlefleet Gothic]], essentially Man O'War in space using massive battleships.

And did no one think of [[Blood Bowl]]?

===Learning The Wrong Lessons===
Despite the Specialist Games being massively popular, Kirby had expanded Games Workshop incredibly fast into unknown markets and as a result a massive amount of Gorkamorka sets in French, Spanish, and Italian were left unsold while English demand was high. Games Workshop was left almost on the verge of bankruptcy, causing a new sales philosophy to be decided upon. Rather than one based on restraint and market research as one would expect, the new direction was "only sure things, minimize risk".
Suddenly, the irony of the 40k setting was dropped. The Imperium suddenly WAS the heroes, and Chaos the evil that always wins in the end rather than these things being the punchline at the end of a sarcastic joke.

One of Bryan's policies for the company was that the production studio and creative minds must always be kept in charge of marketing or the company would die. Kirby, after Gorkamorka, decided the opposite was true.

Plans were made to phase out all of the Specialist Games, and over the next few years the only things available were simply unsold stock. An excuse was made for the first, Man O'War, that the molds had broken and somehow couldn't be fixed (bullshit for many reasons). The rest were quietly and unceremoniously dumped while all referenced to them were dropped as well.

Sometime in the run-up to ''Third Edition'', it was decided that models should switch from toddler-murdering lead to safe, pointy pewter (or "white metal" as the industry [not just GW] insisted on calling it). This led to a 25% cross-board increase in all metal mini costs, even those ordered through Citadel's back catalog (because those figures from their back catalogue were cast up, when ordered, in the new white metal). At this point, it seems, something clicked in the heads of GW's management; they had just made a ton more money without actually doing anything. Perhaps they could do that again.

''Third Edition'' 40K came out in 1998 and Warhammer Fantasy Battles 6th Edition (featuring Orcs VS Empire, and the last edition to come with paper scenery) came in 2000, both reducing the dominance of single munchkin characters in favour of large armies, conveniently meaning players had to buy far more models. Then along came the fucking screw-tops, and proof that any pretense of caring about the customer had been cast aside.

===Ringhammer===
Games Workshop had begun to suffer financial troubles in the late 90's with competition from the surging (and independent) Dungeons & Dragons 3rd Edition, [[Magic: The Gathering]], and [[Pokemon]] (no seriously, Pokemon was THAT fucking big back then).

The answer? Huge cash cow intellectual property. Priestley suggested to Kirby they cash in on the upcoming Lord of the Rings movies with the Lord Of The Rings Strategy Battle Game. Kirby was unable to see Priestley's ulterior motive, moving away from large and complex kits back to the roots of single characters and groups of soldiers, through the dollar signs in his eyes and approved the project at once.
[[Alessio Cavatore]], a major developer of Mordheim and supplement materials, was also put on the project and it was applauded by the gaming community. Games Workshop blew through the movie material and even began making miniatures based on things from Tolkien's works that weren't in the movie such as Tom Bombadil and Goldberry.
The miniatures were required to be produced in 25mm scale by contract, rather than the 28mm heroic scale used by Warhammer. Its been theorized by fans this was to keep the Tolkien miniatures out of Warhammer and keep their IP from becoming an expansion to GW's existing IP.

===Short Term Gain, Long Term Pain===
The issue is that as hype from the movies diminished, so did sales. Kirby by this point had expanded sales and marketing into autonomy, and when the interest in the game died down (something creative teams said would happen but marketing had shrugged off) the result was marketing attempting to drive up profits with unpopular schemes, the first among these being a major change the range of paints sold.
[[File:Citadel Paint Pots.jpg|thumb|right|300px|As time drug on, pots had less paint and worse seals.]]
The "problem" with the older flip-top paint pot designs that had been sold up until this point was that they actually kept [[paint]] usable for a long time. While the Citadel flip-top pot suffered from shit hinges and opening tabs which would both break after about four uses, [[rip and tear|a real man opens paint with his teeth anyway]] so that was not a problem. Obviously, these flip-tops were no good to GW, and so a new pot, the Screw(you)top, was designed which would gunk up its own thread and either glue itself shut forever or prevent an airtight seal forming after a couple of uses.
Apparently forgetting ''every other company in existence'' that made model paints, GW also raised the price of these new and terrible things; clearly justified, since they contained a mere 30% '''less''' paint than the old design. It was also around this point that photographs of the [['Eavy Metal]] studio started to vanish from the pages of ''White Dwarf'' (along with all other content that could be considered useful for anything at all other than advertising models) since they kept forgetting to hide all their non-Citadel gear for photoshoots. Even though, of course, everyone had known for ''years'' that the painters didn't "mix Snot Green with a little Chaos Black" to get a paint shade that was in Tamiya or Vallejo's stock range.
Nowadays of course we can get the good stuff for cheap from [[Privateer Press]] (problem, GW?), but back then it was just ''fucking'' terrible. GW managers and staff also suffered a change in personality, pushing the idea that anything other than GW was a ''plague'', and it was to be treated as such. "Saw you just bought some Knights of Minas Tirith, well, what about a Stompa?"

Games Workshop, highly resistant to change (ironically), began to see the shifting face of tabletop gaming towards electronics as unimportant with Kirby even calling video games "a fad". Just as Games Workshop had crushed their competition with physical stores, the internet distribution saw many new companies begin to emerge as they brought their products directly to the consumer via the internet. Games Workshop attempted to compete in this regard, although they never moved past having anything more complex than a digital version of a catalog and a little-moderated forum (which was closed down to much rage in the 2000's). Games Workship kneejerked and made White Dwarf exclusively Games Workshop products, allowing longtime competitor [[Dragon Magazine]] to reign triumphant as the source of tabletop gaming news in the last age of printed publications. Meanwhile a new market had emerged of making miniatures specifically designed to look like Warhammer models and be used in the game. This...did not go over well, and Games Workshop came to be known as ready to sue anyone at the drop of a hat, even once famously attempting to copyright "[[Pauldrons]]" and sue over the concept of a wolfskin cloak on a viking-looking warrior.

Prices began to ramp up ridiculously as GW realized they could charge whatever the hell they liked and their longterm fans would still pay. While GW was never particularly cheap, their chunky kits ended up in the same price bracket as top-quality scale miniatures by other companies; today, a [[Citadel Miniatures|Citadel]] Space Marine Hunter( 125-parts entirely cast in opaque plastic) costs about the same as AFV club's Churchill mk3 (400+ parts with 2 vinyl tracks, 22 metal springs, 29 Etched Brass pieces and a turned aluminium barrel). At some point, someone remembered that back in ''Second Edition'' days they actually had people willing to pay for gigantically expensive, limited-edition lead Thunderhawk Gunships. To hit this niche of "people with more money than sense," [[Forge World]] was created; all you had to do was get mom and dad to sign that second mortgage and stop being so damn selfish and a 40K-scale Titan would be yours.

===Minimize Effort, Maximize Rage===
In the year 2000, [[Warmaster]] was released. Designed by Based Priestley, it was essentially the Warhammer Fantasy version of Epic.
[[File:Gw_logo.png|thumb|right|400px]]
Fourth edition Warhammer 40k was released in 2004, and was more an advertisement for more models than an actual edition. It was advertised as being "backwards compatible", mostly because by itself it was barely a game. The rulebook was mostly sections of painted licensed plastic terrain and large models than anything else.

In 2005, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay was given a second edition which was largely the same but was up to date with the lore, and had a better magic system. It was used more to advertise the wargame however than as a frontline product.
This came with a single unified rulebook for Lord Of The Rings that included the (greatly) expanded line in the form of the [[One Rulebook to Rule them All]].

Around this time the bulk of plastic Warhammer scenery was released, with almost all of it in Fantasy geared towards the Empire or Chaos (with some trees maybe representing Elves?) and 40k towards the Imperium or Chaos (with a few Necron and Tau pieces from Forgeworld). Games Workshop had seemingly decided who the main characters were, and some factions in either game from this point on only were mentioned in passing while receiving no support or updates.

Seventh edition Warhammer Fantasy Battles in 2006 luckily avoided this, with Battle For Skull Pass as the starter set between Dwarfs and [[Goblins|Night Goblins]]. This marked the last major change for Warhammer Fantasy, as the next update only really changed by adding more models and having minor rebalancing. Many fans of armies like Bretonnia and Wood Elves were left very unhappy their army was not updated in 7e, relying on outdated rules and thus being extremely underpowered all in favor of an event.
Looking to resurrect the dying Lord Of The Rings game, Games Workshop released Legions Of Middle Earth, an "expansion" suggesting buying larger groups of models to use in a theme force using the existing rules.

[[Storm of Chaos]] was released as the major event of the 2000's to much pomp and circumstance, supposedly being the canonical transition from the old into the new as Chaos made its great attempt to destroy reality while every faction strapped on their wardrums and marched into the clusterfuck. Players were selected to actually play the factions to drive the narrative, and the community was kept informed of what was going on. Except...Chaos couldn't win. The bulk of the story for the event was driven by the fact a fuckhuge Chaos army was invading, but the players for Chaos couldn't even manage to scrape out a single win. So the narrative kept going that Chaos was a fuckmassive force that made all the other fuckmassive forces pretty much not worthy of note, and every time a player on another faction beat a Chaos player before turn four the story would state that the other player had ''barely'' delayed the forces of Chaos for only a brief time and at great cost, sometimes their complete destruction occurring anyway despite the actual battle report results saying no Chaos survived the battle and almost none of the other army was killed.
In the end, Chaos was given one last chance in the very last match as the defenders (meaning they had the advantage) in the last battle. Even this, they lost. Badly. In a phone-in result where Games Workshop made a desperate bid that fans would choose for Chaos to win and make all the actual promised narrative unnecessary, players chose to let Chaos deservedly lose. So the event ended with [[Grimgor Ironhide|a single crazy fucking Orc]] headbutting [[Archaon|Chaos Darth Vader]] in the balls, laughing at him, and walking away and thus saving the world in an ending befitting a Saints Row game. Games Workshop quickly stopped promoting the event and from that point on pretended it never happened. This also marked the last time Games Workshop put any control out of their own hands.

In 2008, fifth edition Warhammer 40k was released and borrowed heavily from 7e WFB as well as implemented a HEAVY emphasis on cover rules while making shooting much more important. In 2009 Games Workshop launched released War Of The Ring, which made the skirmish game into a full-fledged wargame. The rules were highly simplified to enable quick games with larger groups of models.

===[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYmrPn1CnzY|"How Bad Can We Be?"]===
[[File:Gymz Porkchop.jpg|thumb|300px|right]]
In 2010, Based Priestley left Games Workshop forever, saying that "the creative team was no longer doing anything creative" and "game development and game design wasn't of any interest to them. The current attitude in Games Workshop is that they're not a games company, that they're a model company selling collectibles."

In May 11th, 2011, Games-Workshop's new terms of use [[Embargo | restricts sales of all of their products to the European Economic Area]], (EU + Norway, Switzerland and Iceland). This essentially removed Games Workshop products from online distributors other than themselves, and furthermore made their actual in-store stock of products highly limited with many models only being available directly through them (although many Friendly Local Game Stores will order from their website to fulfill requests). Oh, and they spiked the prices another 10-15% for most models.

Additionally, all metal models were on their way to being discontinued, to be replaced with much more expensive [[Finecast|Resin]] kits which were INCREDIBLY unpopular with the community due to low quality casts and high price without the sense it was worth it. Unlike the pewter kits (which are basically tin), the resin kits are loaded with carcinogens; strange, since last anyone checked the reason for switching to pewter in the first place was that lead was toxic (and nothing to do with hiking the price). The quality of the product could lead one to believe it was much much cheaper, but [[Casting|resin damages the mold more than pewter because it sticks to the mold more]]. It gets expensive when you have to replace molds more often, and they also break fairly easily so that all the little ten year old Smurf players have to buy new ones when they snap them in half. So essentially, Games Workshop not only ruined the quality of their models, they jacked up the prices and made it nearly impossible for anyone outside the EU and 'murrica to obtain it. Kinda like going from fine French wine to your corner-store cheap beer... and the beer is more expensive than the wine. And the beer gives you cancer.

Eight Edition Warhammer Fantasy was released in 2010, introducing 40k-esque large models (and pretending Storm of Chaos didn't happen). Many fans hold that this is the most balanced the game ever was, despite some particularly nasty cheese existing and some factions STILL not getting long overdue updates and having to rely on 6th edition books in a system that had nerfed the core mechanics their models relied on. In 2011 it was expanded with Storm of Magic which introduced fuckhuge monsters from Forgeworld that could be summoned, as well as a redone (and pretty broken) magic system. This did poorly however as the magic was ludicrously terribly balanced and was only useful to a small number of armies, while the prices of the monsters were laughably high and the rules for them were not worth taking over basic infantry.

Blood in the Badlands came out in 2012 and added siege combat and advanced scenarios to the game, strangely echoing the early days of Warhammer.
As Lord Of The Rings interest had largely waned, it was rereleased with updated rulebooks, new models, and locensed The Hobbit miniatures in 2012 as well.

In 2013, Games Workshop decided to transfer their sales restriction to Canada, just as they had to Europe. As the United States had already had international sales cut back in 2003, this had lead to a large online market for Canadian retailers, selling their products at discount sales to US customers. However, with this new change, all international sales in North America are now completely gone, as GW once again decided to fuck over long term customers and local retailers in favor of luring more small children with disposable income to their overpriced, neckbeard-run stores.

[[File:Games Workshop Stocks.png|thumb|right|300px|Not being able to increase your revenue in a decade is a bad sign.]]
MiniWargaming, a well known FLGS with an extensive online store, has decided to close shop because of these new rules. Their store manager made [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnPpfs120DA an entire video explaining their reasons and going over just how asinine Games Workshop's new rules are.] Between jacking up prices, locking down international sales, and screwing over online sales and bitz sales, Games Workshop intentionally set itself on the fast track to running itself into the ground in the eyes of long term followers. Possibly due to their apparent belief that removing the entire world (excluding European Economic Area and Canada) from their consumer base is a good idea.

Also in 2013, [[Sigmar's Blood]] came out with a campaign between the Empire and Vampire Counts lead by [[Mannfred von Carstein]], introducing advanced diplomacy rules mostly involving misfortune.
The Desolation Of Smaug expansion to LordOf The Rings finished off 2013 releases.

Between all that in 2012 came sixth edition Warhammer 40k, borrowing even more heavily from Warhammer Fantasy with psychic power taking on a decidedly magical system while scenery became interactive. Furthermore, armies were no longer exclusive with mixed-faction lists being possible.

===The Fall of Warhammer===
In 2014 the [[End Times]] event was announced for Warhammer Fantasy while Warhammer 40k got its seventh edition. 7e 40k removed restrictions even more on armies and simply allow you to mostly take whatever you want if you are okay with some penalties, although you get advantages for sticking to groups existing in the canon. Otherwise it just added more diverse style of play for scenario-like gameplay in simple games and added even more Warhammer Fantasy-esque psychic and terrain rules.

Meanwhile, End Times... ended Warhammer Fantasy. Billed as the next big thing, the event consisted of staggered releases of extremely expensive books, nearly as much as a new starter set, and new (very large and expensive) models. The books contained scenarios, massive amounts of lore, and also removed a great deal of restrictions on how armies are built; first by allowing an army to be 50% low-level characters (Heroes) and 50% high-level characters (Lords) so long as the default core requirement of 25% of your army on basic troops was fulfilled while turning every spellcaster into a master of magic, then by making magic even more fucking insane by diddling with spells and giving a metric fuckload of dice to cast them, then in the final book simply throwing all listbuilding rules out the window and saying "take whatever the fuck you want and put it on the table". Meanwhile the story consisted of everyone taking it up the ass HARD from Chaos, other than the Undead who united under the resident Voldemort named [[Nagash]], as it slowly meandered its way through all opposition to the heart of the Empire (read: what they wanted from Storm of Chaos) and faced off against the "heroes" of the setting who all failed miserably and were consumed by black nothingness filled with plagues, gnashing teeth, evil intillects, and [[/d/|shitting dicknipples]] as the world simply '''ENDS'''. Fantasy fans were left feeling cold and full of hate, and for nearly a year simply assumed their setting had been completely and unceremoniously raped to death.

On a side note, multiple video games for Warhammer Fantasy were announced with some being released in this time, leaving fans tearing their hair out in frustration at the idiocy of killing a setting, then FINALLY making decent video games for it. This games include [[Total War: WARHAMMER]], [[Mordheim: City Of The Damned]], [[Man O' War: Corsair]], and [[The End Times: Vermintide]].

===Age Of Skubmar===
[[File:El Presidente Gym Porkchop.jpeg|thumb|left|500px|"El Presidente Gee Double U, the people wish to express their love and dedication to you. They may have used different words."]]
[[File:Age Of 40k.png|thumb|right|500px|Like a gut-torn rabbit hiding in a wooded thicket.]]
When it seemed it couldn't get any worse, Games Workshop then decided that since it had made 40k mostly like Fantasy, it would make Fantasy into 40k. A happier, LSD-fueled version of 40k.

That version, believed by some to have actually been made with [[Skub]] mixed directly into the material, was [[Age of Sigmar]] which removed literally ALL limitations on army building (as in you can take any models in the game from any faction in any number and call it an army, with rules for your opponent to play the game with an easy win condition if your army is x3 the size of theirs) and consists of a skirmish game which only has four rules, officially making it even less of a Warhammer than Warhammer 1st edition.

If that wasn't enough, almost everything was arbitrarily renamed to be copyright friendly. Zombies became "Deadwalkers", Elves became "Aelves", and Lizardmen were given the hilariously terrible name "Seraphon" which, if googled, brings up the career work of a [[furry]] tickle-fetish artist (in their defense, the name already existed as the name of Elf Darth Vader's dragon in Warhammer, although the connection between that and Lizardmen was never actually given so its a moot point). The only faction that escaped the renaming was the Tomb Kings, but that turned out to be foreshadowing akin to seeing a huge silver line on the horizon on the day you plan to go to the beach.

The story was worse still, consisting of Norse mythology mixing with superhero comics in an awkward combination where Chaos Gods can be kidnapped by Elves, Warhammer Darth Vader becomes the master of the Dark Side rather than the other way around, and characters introduced and given importance in one book immediately die in the next.

The advertising for Age of Sigmar was the rules (all four pages of them) and the stats of existing models being free on launch, followed by outrageously expensive digital content that updated the game, the core lore advancement being contained within scenario books that are ludicrously expensive, and a requirement for many scenarios to have specific models which includes the expensive as hell new terrain, the rules of which can only be viewed by buying the model. To put it simply, Games Workshop managed to take the hated practice of DLC content in video games and push it fully, hard and deep into tabletop gaming.

To top it all off, Games Workshop, almost overnight, took down their iconic Space Marine statue that had sat in front of their headquarters for years and replaced it with a giant statue of a Stormcast Eternal (the <strike>Sigmarines</strike> Space Marines of Age of Sigmar). They also replaced the Imperium Eagle with Stormcast-style wings and a Ghal Maraz replica to really hammer the point home (pun intended). [[RAGE| The beloved servant of the Emperor was relegated to being hidden under a staircase and behind an advertisement for Age of Sigmar.]] We... really wish we were making this up.

Games Workshop had promised their investors in 2014 that 2015 would be a massive year of financial returns, although by the time of the [http://www.iii.co.uk/research/LSE:GAW/news/item/1792782/half-yearly-report-and-trading-update?context=LSE:GAW Half Yearly Report] they had grown a mere 1%. To make matters worse, this included the ample revenue from their new video game licenses as Age of Sigmar had been largely rejected by large portions of the gaming community as many stores were completely unable to even move starter sets, resulting in a few months of them being at clearance prices online through third party distributors. Further still, many [[FLGS]] dumped all Fantasy Warhammer stock, some even Games Workshop stock entirely.
Considering the 2015 Financial Report of Games Workshop, Age of Sigmar is going nowhere and GW outright stated they do no market research and do not plan to start. [http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/richard-beddard/games-workshop-agm%3a-relentless-profit-machine They believe that only 20% of their fans actually play the game or give a fuck about the story so in their eyes the plot and rules are not to blame for any major decrease in sales and anyone who doesn't like it can fuck off.] Like it or not, Warhammer Fantasy is dead and buried while Age of Skubmar is here to stay.

Games Workshop plugged on ahead regardless by rebranding themselves, changing the names of Games Workshop Hobby Stores worldwide to Warhammer Stores after the deathrattle of The Hobbit merchandise.

===You Are The Special===
Following the disaster launch of Age of Sigmar, Games Workshop announced a plan in December 2015 to resurrect the Specialist Games division and the games Blood Bowl, Epic, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic, "And Many, Many More" while resurrecting the Tolkien games.

In February 2016, it was believed that Games Workshop used a Cease And Desist order to shutdown [[Warseer]], the largest Warhammer community forum other than /tg/, but thankfully that turned out to be a simple virus and database corruption (but to be fair, one could hardly be blamed for thinking GW responsible). In more substantiated dick-move news, Josh Reynolds, a freelance writer employed by Games Workshop known for actually answering fan questions about the setting and filling in plot holes in End Times (as many, MANY characters and plots were forgotten in the event even between books) and attempting to assure fans [[Sigmarines]] and Space Marines are totes different, was essentially told to shut the fuck up about GW IPs on social media while his entire list of lore mending was declared non-canon via being told to say nothing he writes reflects GW outside novels.

Going even further into community-souring, the popular Tomb Kings line and faction was squatted unceremoniously in the same month (worse than Squatted, at least the Squats got an explanation in-fluff as to why they disappeared), putting an end to Warhammer Egyptians and axing the faction that gave rise to all remaining Warhammer Undead. Needless to say, this was NOT well-received by fans, especially those who played Tomb Kings themselves and those sick of Age of Sigmar Stormstormed Stormbolters and their leader, the Celestial Primarch. The only positive is that this did somewhat toughen the fanbase for when GW continued their douchey warpath by axing the Bretonnians as well, along with reducing a large chunk of the Warhammer Fantasy models still in production. This included almost all named characters, while survivors of the purge were renamed to be generic (in a horrifying twist of fate, the very first Warhammer character Heinrich Kemmler was reassigned the name "Necromancer").
This was mixed with wave after wave of Khorne Chaos, Archaon Chaos, and Sigmarine updates leaving everyone either with balls bluer than Tzeentch's ass (and Slaanesh's imprisoned everything) or dreading when their faction book came out and gutted classic and beloved models forever.

To sum up - GeeDubs started to fix their shit, but decided it was too much effort and went back on being raging dickmongers as usual.

A report that the 30k boxed set ''Betrayal At Calth'' had outsold the entire Age range coupled with a stock value steadily dropping down to their 2012 status in early/mid 2016 may have shocked stockholders, because the armies of Order that were squatted had selected models returned to the store for a "Last Chance, for reals this time guys!" sale on 4/18/16. Within the day most of the models had already sold, leaving the newest Sigmarines to remain collecting dust in their place.

===Moving In The Right Direction For Once===
After an internal shakeup in which Kirby was relegated to a advisory position within the company, Age of Sigmar got rules which were actually fairly well-received. Reviews were predictably mixed, with AoS fans (mostly, some preferred the "do whatever" version) praising it and Fantasy players calling it inferior to what came before; it wouldn't win Fantasy fans back, but was actually a legitimate ''game''! ''[[Warhammer Quest: Silver Tower]]'' was released alongside it with a few models that even Fantasy fans didn't dismiss out of hand. Silver Tower was designed to have a system for creating your own character, allowing you to take any model sold by Games Workshop at any point for use in the game, which Fantasy fans derided as wasted on the AoS setting.

Months later, a "completely legit leak" was released on the Facebook page of a specific Games Workshop, followed by a video with the same background as the "leak". The Magnus The Red kit for Warhammer 40k as well as '''plastic Sisters Of Battle''' were teased in it, showing Games Workshop was actually capable of using the same media tactics, even if hamfistedly, that most large companies have been working with for two decades now. Better late than never?

Much bigger news was on the horizon. The GW Facebook page announced that old Out Of Production models would be brought back into the shop, for a limited time (and as many noted, at a price increase). For a week people either laughed about how astronomical the prices would be or wrung their hands in anticipation of old favorite models returning, at a fraction of the price of their secondhand market value (and a minority scrambled to put their wares on eBay before the selections were revealed). Some pointed to it as a return to Warhammer Fantasy if Tomb Kings and Bretonnia made their return only months after being Squatted. Rather than a large number of models all made to order however, the first releases were older Imperial Guard models at a modest price (with a Kasrkin pack being cheaper than the equivalent number of Scions). Some cheered, most shrugged and awaited the release of their army in their game. This was followed by Chaos, Space Marines, Blood Bowl, more Space Marines, and more Blood Bowl.

Why release more Blood Bowl you may ask? Because Games Workshop resurrected Blood Bowl as their first returned Specialist Game (now just "Boxed Games" alongside their more boardgame fare). It was met with a decent amount of success, in no small part due to the reasonable prices for most of the teams and the great encouragement for local competitive scenes provided (even a kit for hosting tourneys).

The White Dwarf got a pair of proper miniatures alongside his old nemesis the Black Gobbo, one pair being functional Blood Bowl players with rules.

Age Of Sigmar was retooled, more or less rebuilt from the ground up, and made competitive via returning points values to the game and running a competitive scene rather than leaning back and expecting one to simply occur.

40k 8th edition was released, with the biggest shakeup in lore to date in the setting; Robot Guillotine had returned, with a brand new, taller form of Space Marine called Primaris Marines. The Primarchs, good and evil, were returning and the universe split in two via an expanded Eye Of Terror with one side being the grimdest darkness and the other returning to Age Of Sigmar-esque grimbright via Girlymon and his Space Sigmarines rebuilding the Imperium from the ground up (totally not a metaphor for Games Workshop, we sware on our zog). <strike>Still no sign of the promised plastic Sisters</strike> Plastic Sisters in 2019 and everyone was surprised by the resurrection of [[Necromunda]]- and with it, the first new [[Squat]] model since 2e.

It was soon after announced that while Warhammer Fantasy remained dead, Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay would get a supported 4th edition.

Further good news that Games Workshop was so impressed with Total War: Warhammer the creative team was given far more leeway to create their own continuity and plumb the depths of Games Workshop established continuity; this was immediately made evident with Lustria containing many of the original elements such as Norse and Dwarf colonies.

While their prices could still be better, GW has slowly improved the overall quality of their models, and against all odds they seem to have learned the importance of actually listening to their customers. Only time will tell if this is really the start of something new or not.

Well guess they actually gave us a voice and started a survey in November 2017, as a result of which we are getting actual legit Plastic Sisters of Battle 2019.

==/tg/ Analysis Of Games Workshop==

===Blind Deaf-mutes===
In a [http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/richard-beddard/games-workshop-agm%3a-relentless-profit-machine meeting with shareholders], Games Workshop exhibited their attitudes quite plainly.
*"- the word “Game” in Games Workshop encourages the misconception that games are its business, but that only about 20% of Games Workshop’s customers are gamers. The rest are modellers and collectors. Maybe half of them think about playing now and then. The other half have no intention. People actually walk into the stores because they’re curious about modelling fantastic armies."

When asked "-if the company would sell games with pre-painted easy to assemble miniatures like the popular Star Wars themed X-Wing game" they said:
*"It wouldn’t be a hobby business then, it would be a toy company."

*"-introducing products at new price points is different to reducing the recommended retail price, something the company resolutely refuses to do. It’s considering “putting more value in the box”, discounting in other words, when people buy in number. That ought to encourage gamer-modellers."

*"Potentially lucrative income from licenses granted to video games producers like the much anticipated and soon to be released Total War Warhammer will always be incidental because video gamers do not become modellers, and Games Workshop doesn’t know how to make good video games."

In their 2015 Financial Report, they stated:
*"The Group does not undertake research activities."
In the same report, the words "market" and "research" never referred to the same subject. They claim their main audience is teenagers, although they also state that the hobbyist crowd is their main fanbase. Furthermore, they make assumptions about their fanbase despite admitting that they do not research about them.

So what can be learned? Games Workshop has absolutely no long-term plan other than to make more expensive models, and cater to those who can drop thousands in a single impulse buy. Rather than expanding and reaching out to new customers, they are intentionally becoming a niche market for an elite crowd. In other words?
"Fuck you, you smelly hatless Irishman."

===The Digital Age (And Completely Missing the Point)===
Games Workshop would sign a deal with Apple to sell eBooks on the interwebz, instead of Amazon (the largest retailer worldwide), because then the books would have to be cheaper. Games Workshop refused to understand the fact that eBooks ''almost always'' cost less than what they would if bought from a book store. That 1 pence discount doesn't count.
(From GW point of view, even tho it's stupid to put the same price on eBooks as the Hardcover Army Books/Codices, it makes sense. Because if they were to sell them cheaper, they would sell much less books, meaning they'll lose money from the traditional books. Yes, it cost $80 in Australia for both the eBook and the Hardcover, which again is bullshit.)(A load of crap, 90 dollars for Hardcover Codex, 70 for ebook, in Aus.)

Though in this regard, GW does seem to be slowly figuring out what works: Dataslates are a cheap effective means of deploying models without committing to entire armies/detachments. Essentially like microtransactions. While around £3 might seem like a lot of money for only a few pages of crunch and only two or three new units/formations, they are some of the cheapest products GW have released in a good long time and they do also use these to repost entire rules sections dragged out of the codices in addition to the product itself, so you never needed the codex if you never owned it in the first place.

Some of the Dataslates are extremely high quality (like [[Cypher]]) and are virtually must-haves, while some others are complete dross (Reclusiam Command Squad?) that were dreamed up over a 5 minute coffee break just to sell something. But with the advent of 7th Edition, armies can be made up entirely of dataslates ''(or just go unbound)'' so they are no longer telling you how to build your army any more and you can keep it cheaper by bringing only a few models to make up your chosen formation.

[[File:Gamesworkshopinanutshell.png|thumb|300px|right|Games Workshop's probable downfall.]]

Oh, and they sell them in various formats so you don't need that iPad if you don't have one since eReaders can be downloaded for free and if you still don't have anything to read them on, then have a [[FAIL|think]] about how you got onto the Internet.

===Why Games Workshop is Bad and Should Feel Bad===
When speaking of a company, a person is tempted to think of a large body of human beings coming together in an efficient group. The group is governed, and it is thought that someone is there to ascertain the best possible choices are being made granted the information available at hand. However, this perspective, like most of 40k's explicit war “tactics”, is absolute nonsensical trash.

Never mind that large groups are often less efficient due to the fact that most people like to agree and be part of a group, even if the group is wrong. Forget that the burden of hard work is often shrugged off thanks to the assumption that everyone else will be carrying enough of the real challenges to pull things through (and that when things go wrong, it's a flaw of human nature that people don't like to admit and accept when they screw up). Instead, focus on the fact that the people heading GW – or most large corporations for that matter – are successful, rich, ordinary men who are blessed by good fortune in an unfair universe and probably don't realize the reality. Further, examine the knowledge that, according to Sun Tzu and a variety of psychological studies, successful rich people with the aforementioned profound luck are the folks most likely to make stupid mistakes out of anyone!

Now you know why GW (or the entire world, for that matter) is run the way it is.

A source of some debate on /tg/ is whether or not it is actually charging prices that make sense for the hobby. All logic points to a resounding “no”, but another interesting social phenomena is this: fanboyism is an inbuilt human process. Whenever money is spent on a good, especially a luxury item, man has a way of increasing the illusionary worth of that item.

Imagine buying tickets to see your local team play football, and they lose. It's not even a good game, to be honest. People around the country were disappointed. However, those tickets cost a lot of money, and having spent all that money for so little in return makes a person feel stupid. We grope for other things, then, to make the tickets worth while rather than admit we were wrong (even if we were only wrong due to events beyond our control) and learn from it. Yes, it was cold, but your wife was there, so you bonded! The beer was too expensive as well, but they sold your favorite brand! You had an experience! It was fun! Yes, those tickets were worth it in the end.

We'll even do this with soft drinks. Even if brain probes reveal a man likes Pepsi more than Coke, going back and telling the man what he was drinking can actually ''alter his memory'' so that he remembers liking the Coke more. It's amazing.

GW products are exactly the same way. They're ludicrously expensive. Even people who support GW fervently wish they weren't. It hurts. In a rough economy, it's hard to play the game. You spend months, years – who knows how long waiting for that new codex, it turns out to be awful compared to expectations (hello, Tyranids!) (UP YOURS ASSHOLE.), and now you've either got to suck it up and keep playing (got to buy the new Trygons, I guess, even though they aren't ''that'' great), or take a huge monetary loss and give up. Fanboyism steps in and makes it all okay. You're not just buying the models, but the game and the network utility too, so 40k is still totally fun and cool!

Big corporations, and GW as well, are predators. They feast on fanboyism. Like the [[Dark Eldar]], they prey on your suffering and write sick, stomach-turning poetry about the flowing, green streams of vital wealth they siphon from your being. You are a toy (''moreso than the articles they sell''). [[Hot Chicks|That cute girl at the convenience store you see all the time?]] Thanks to GW, you have to choose between inviting her to the theater and buying that new squadron of Guardsmen. Those of you scoffing at the dilemma, shut up; those Guardsmen are not going to nag nearly as much after you've had them for a little while, so it's <s>[[Neckbeard|totally a tough call.]]</s>{{BLAM|'''*BLAM!* HERESY!!! NOT CHOOSING THE EMPEROR'S FINEST IS HERESY!!!'''}}
But putty in their hands you may be, there are still some principles of basic economics that imply GW ''might not be earning enough revenue,'' and surprisingly, they can only lose more money by raising prices! There's no real way of knowing how things really are within GW without a look at the delicate, inner machinery of their business. But it does all come back to our first consideration: GW is run by the type of person most notable for making poor decisions – lucky, successful people, and a group, no less.

Whatever idiot wrote the following has no _actual_ business sense. Revenue ≠ Profit. Profit = Revenue - Cost... yes, but still give you a good idea about GW policy.

The situation is thus: there is more to money flow than just the bottom line, though often it's all we think of, but basically there's income, cost, and revenue. What is of most concern is revenue, which could also be thought of as [[profit]]. GW sells their models for a greater amount than what they cost, and the amount they make is revenue!

So now, there's revenue, and then there's marginal revenue. Revenue is just how much you make. Sell a thousand Guardsmen and make ten thousand dollars? Your Guardsmen revenue is $10,000! Marginal revenue, on the other hand, is how much you make ''compared to selling one less of the item''. In this case, the Guardsmen have a marginal revenue of $10. Each Guardsman made a profit of $10, and if you sold one less Guardsman, you'd make $10 less. See? Easy. Well, for this simplified example anyway (in reality there are a lot of fixed start-up costs, but point made).

Now let's raise prices. From now on, we'll sell half as many Guardsmen per box, and the boxes will cost the same. Now marginal revenue is $22, because every time a Guardsman is sold, we bring in $20 per Guardsman plus an additional $2 gets saved thanks to the Guardsmen we didn't make! This is cool – we're in business, just like GW, /tg/! Let's do that again – our customers are fans, they'll bear it! Now we'll sell five Guardsmen to a box, and we have a marginal revenue of $45!

Okay, wait, wait. I've got it. I'm a genius. Let's sell one Guardsman. Sell it for the same price we used to sell twenty of them! We're going to be rich! Marginal revenue is going to be amazing! Like, what, over a hundred dollars a purchase?

So what's our profit in the end? What! Negative? How!? We're making ''so much'' per model! The marginal revenue is ''so high''!

The answer is simple. Not enough people are buying one crappy Guardsman for $200 dollars. A few of the fans are sticking it out, hating us relentlessly, but newcomers to the game see the price tag and run screaming. People who can't afford it leave because they have no other choice, but they're happy in retrospect. Even some of our most loyal customers finally decided to just date that girl after all – one gets more of their money's worth from her ([[This Guy|one way]] [[Hot Chicks|or]] [[Promotions|another]]) and they'll deal with her constant bitching. Actual revenue is at an all time low.

Believe it or not, lots of other companies really do make this mistake, albeit not often to this extent (unless you check out [[Forge World]], anyway. Anyone want a Tau [[Manta]]? Under £1,000). It's because maximizing marginal revenue is very easy. It's simple arithmetic, and if your market base is rather inelastic (and GW's market base certainly is due to the high investment requirements of their games), a lot of times price changes won't have a huge impact, so it's easier to focus on. GW is at some point in the middle here, where it has started to become questionable.

It's hard to say if they're making right decisions or if their pricing makes the most sense. It's becoming the status quo that their games are really a hobby of those with absurd disposable income, which is not a quality described of the young men who are presumed to make up 40k's primary demographic. It's possible that they're targeting young teens with parents who will buy the models for them, but that's hard to say as well since parents will lack the dedicated fanboyism to continually invest in the absurdly priced hobby.

Mix in unbalanced rules that unfairly favor certain factions, long wait times between army updates, [[Casting|inferior model quality]] compared to what's provided to model hobbyists outside of the wargaming industry, and GW may have a recipe for a failing market.

In fact, by using some math and basic market theory, we can actually take a look at how much GW is supposedly spending to bring our hobby to us.

The list below will give us some basic numbers to work with. We know that GW currently sells its rule books at $74.25. What we don't know is GW's actual costs or how many books they're selling. These things have an impact on the math, but we'll sort of fudge it. Now, based on that alone, we want to price our book at twice what it costs to make the thing. In the real world all this nice math has the tendency to fly apart, but generally speaking that's the ideal manner of doing things. For example:

Quantity sold: 0
Price of book: $0
Estimated cost to GW: $0
Marginal Cost: $0
Marginal Revenue: $0
Total Revenue: $0

Quantity sold: 1
Price of book: $74.25
Estimated cost to GW: $37.13
Marginal Cost: $37.13
Marginal Revenue: $37.12
Total Revenue: $37.12

Quantity sold: 2
Price of book: $74.25
Estimated cost to GW: $74.25
Marginal Cost: $37.13
Marginal Revenue: $37.12
Total Revenue: $74.25

And so on. Since we're assuming that every book has a fixed cost to produce, we just get a rough idea of what it's actually costing GW to make rule books for us. Or so such is true only if we figure they're trying to price things according to a competitive market where the consumer sets the price. Basic economics says we want to have a marginal revenue equal to our marginal cost if we want to work with a price we can't really control, and that's what this does.

See, there's a few things to consider. The first is that, in a competitive market, people are just going to buy the cheapest product. That means whoever is selling cheapest kind of wins the day, but while GW could maybe sell their rule books at $20 each, they'd be suffering huge profit losses that are not directly proportionate to the change in price. Instead, they'll try to follow along with what the market is doing, and to their very best possible effort, they'll try to lower their costs so that the marginal costs equal the marginal revenue (or, again, their prices are basically double their production costs per item). That just simply maximizes revenue, since if they raise prices their competitors will undercut them and GW will be able to sell nothing.

But honestly, if you've read this far, then hopefully you're braced for this shock. According to estimates from a few publishers, it only costs about $3 per book to publish 5,000 hardback books, and that cost decreases as you publish in greater bulk. 40k books do have a lot of pretty pictures, so maybe that increases costs somewhat, but again, costs generally tend to get smaller as you order more of an item, and it's pretty likely that GW is not just settling for a measly 5,000 books internationally. They sell all over the world.

So where are all these other costs popping up that should cause GW to spend $37 on every single book they produce? In small production quantities, we'd consider the cost of labor. Who knows how much Matt Ward demands to be paid to lick every rule book before it leaves the factory! What do the photographers want in compensation? Actually, ''stop''. At GW's production rates, those expense considerations become almost ''completely negligible.'' You pay Matt Ward a salary to lick all the books. It's a yearly thing. You pay him once and you're done, so by the time you've produced a million books, even if you paid Matt a million dollars to slobber on every single page, Matt is only increasing the cost of the books by a dollar each.

Margins are all that matter. GW talks about overheads and so forth as an excuse, but that's insanity. In a perfectly competitive market you don't increase prices to cover overheads. You reduce the overheads because they're predictable annual costs that you more or less established on your own! Besides, you shouldn't be able to arbitrarily raise prices like that, seeing as how your competitors are supposedly keeping you in check! So really, what we can infer is the following:

A. Basically, GW has no competitors controlling their pricing right now. (This was especially true in the old days. Nowadays, this is less of an excuse as wargames and miniature companies branched out into all sorts of different fields. Thus, the monopoly GW used to have is no more.)

B. They are price gouging their players to fill the pockets of the people who run the company. (This scares off a lot of players, especially ones who have to buy a bunch just to keep up with the inconsistent update schedule or wish to start with a full army. Thus, the only people left are the people rich enough to afford it and those too ignorant to really think otherwise/the GWIDF)

C. Their pricing is not directly related to their costs, and anything they say to the contrary is a big fat lie. (This particular argument is used by Recaster supporters and proponents of 3-D Printers as they slowly advance in complexity to begin making more accurate and good-quality resin models.)

D. You could play another game, but all your friends are playing 40k anyway and you don't want to feel left out.

'''E. Fuck Games Workshop'''. ''' ''FUCK THEM WITH A FUCKING CHAINBLADE. NO. MAKE THAT A DAEMONHAMMER.'' '''

This article also explains the problem with Australian prices, in a slightly less detailed manner; [http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/04/the-iron-fist-how-games-workshop-intends-to-monopolise-the-online-sale-of-products/]

Games Workshop have sat pretty at the top of the miniature wargames shit-heap for many years (indeed, the scale models industry tries to ignore that they're the biggest single seller of miniatures) and have abused this position to increase their own profits. However, fortunately for the long suffering gamer alternatives are emerging. [[Privateer Press]] for example produce the games [[Warmachine]] and [[Hordes]] and offers slightly cheaper models and starter sets. In the market for wargames Privateer Press and Coolminiornot are rapidly emerging as a viable challenger to GW's monopoly while Reaper Miniatures takes them on using the same tactics that made them in the first place; licensing IP's, and making things for other games. They are the Tau, Dark Eldar, and Chaos to GW's Imperium.

Also worthy of note is [[Mantic Games]] who produce [[Kings of War]], a fantasy battle game in a similar vein to Warhammer. The rules system was even written by former GW man Alessio Cavatore (essentially succeeding at what every frustrated ex-GW employee since 1988 has dreamed of) and it is fast, fluid and a lot more "fun" than Warhammer. The company is pioneering the use of plastic-resin alloy (or 'restic') as a cost effective alternative to pewter. Oh, and equivalent plastic models cost about HALF what GW charge (e.g. GW High Elf Spearmen (16 models) - £20, Mantic Games Elf Spearmen (20 models) - £13.99) the trade-off however is that Mantic models look like hammered dogshit. Mantic are basically the war gaming equivalent of Asylum films.

One can only hope that these new upstarts will beat down GWs monopolistic hold on the [[wargame]] market.

===The Beginning of the end?===
[[File:GWstockfail2.jpg|thumb|300px|right|GeeDub's stock taking a very hard fall. Coincidentally, their drop in stocks coincided with the 6th Edition release of the ultra-nerfed [[Tyranid]]s codex. Hilarious when you consider them to be the "shadow across the warp", it would appear that the Tyranids became GW's shadow across their profits, something they have yet to recover from after half a year. (The share price collapse was actually caused by a less-than-promising financial report released that day.)]]
Games Workshop's poor treatment of their customers is finally catching up and hitting them where it hurts. The first evidence was when they started making changes (you know how Games Workshop [[Heresy|feels about change]]). They started making supplements to armies besides Space Marines in Warhammer 40k, started increasing the amount of plastic models and, once or twice, making them reasonably priced. With the End Times, Warhammer Fantasy's plot is actually advancing. They've even released discount box sets from the new IG stuff. This sounds good, although long overdue, but one must ask; Games Workshop hasn't made these changes despite years of complaints or demands, why are they doing it now?

The reason is simple. There are cracks appearing in Games Workshop's foundation, and these tidbits are too little, too late. So many customers have said "enough is enough" and washed their hands of GW's merchandise that they're starting to lose revenue. For example, many GW shops in Australia have moved from upscale shopping centers to smaller stores in less-expensive locations as it's cheaper and easier to control.

Then-Chairman Tom Kirby mentioned in a 2011 press release that they were increasing cost cutting measures and making more products while avoiding mention of actual profits (note this is a summary, not his exact words). If their profit was growing, they would be more likely to announce it. If their profits were stable, considering cost cutting measures, that suggests a decrease in the actual profits (the decrease offset by the money saved from cutting costs). Just as the Imperium is starting to come under increasing threat in 40k (ie; their stagnation, Chaos starting to get its shit together, the Necrons reawakening, the Tyranids rushing towards Terra), Games Workshop could be in their final days. Since this is real life, they don't have the plot armor of the "Imperium of Man" and are less likely to survive. (More on this can be found here [http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/is-imperium-metaphor-for-games-workshop.html]. It would make a lot of sense that the reason The Imperium in 40k is GW's favorite faction is they have a lot in common [and that's not a compliment]. The article is old, but it's still relevant today).

Whether Games Workshop will actually fall and go out of business is unknown for now. They may survive another twenty years, or less than five. There's a possibility (however unlikely) that they may [[/tg/ gets shit done|pull their heads out of their asses and revamp everything about the hobby; from supporting expansions (such as Blood Bowl) to charging lower and more reasonable prices for their products, and maybe even advancing the plot for Warhammer 40k]] (yeah right!). Whatever Games Workshop's ultimate fate, none can deny that the ground is shrinking beneath their feet. As the old saying goes "Fist of iron, feet of clay"...

They have also demonstrated another old saying; "the bigger they are, the harder they fall". Games Workshop's stock as of Thursday the 16th of January 2014 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/131450-Games-Workshop-Stock-Plummets-By-24-Percent took a nose dive of ''24 percent''] . Adding to this, it's now been rumored that [http://natfka.blogspot.co.uk/2014/01/games-workshop-germany-shut-down.html the GW Headquarters in Germany, France and the United States will be closing down, too].

However, GW claim they are Abaddon and all of this is no failure but just as planned. Whatever may be, on 7/29/2014 Games Workshop Chairman and CEO stepped down. Whether that will be for better or worse? We shall see.

In late 2015, pop culture business site ICv2 reported that [[X-Wing]] [http://spikeybits.com/2016/03/warhammer-dethroned-top-5-miniature-games.html had dethroned Warhammer 40K as the top-selling miniatures game in the United States]. GW ''could have'' tried to sue George Lucas and Disney over the concept of a fascist galactic empire with fully-armored soldiers who enforce the Emperor's will, but it turns out even they weren't '''that''' stupid, and instead retaliated by refusing to renew [[Fantasy Flight Games]]' licences to GW's IPs. (Which could also be due to FFG being bought by Asmodee, a company GW views as a direct competator to their new line of "Boxed Games".)

===Network Utility, and How it May Contribute to the Fall===
On top of all the other financial considerations involved with a company like Games Workshop, there's one major concern that was probably gravely overlooked by the company as it raised prices and cut smaller retailers out of the picture: a concept called "network utility". A lot of products are useless unless they're used by a ton of people. A fax machine is a good example - if everyone owns a fax machine, then one person can use his own fax machine to send pictures of his ass to everyone on earth. That's a good value for a single person, and really makes the fax machine worth buying! However, if fewer people buy fax machines, it becomes less and less desirable to own one. After all, why buy a machine that's only capable of sending a picture of your butt to your grandmother, the only other person who still has a machine? Grandma is never impressed, anyway.

A similar concept exists with GW, and they've ignored it over the past couple of years, especially as they've cut models out of starter sets to reduce costs. If you go down to your local game store and everyone is playing Warhammer 40k, not only are you more likely to get into it because of friendly recommendations, but you're also likely to start playing because you know everyone has an army and everyone can play with you! Even if you aren't personal friends with the folks at your local game store, you know that anywhere you go, the people you meet at the FLGS can play the game with you!

Well, several things have happened to the hobby. First and foremost, the models have gotten more expensive; granted, many models only scaled in price with inflation, but since wages have largely stagnated in a lot of markets these past couple decades, to the typical consumer the costs still feel like they've gone up and the players notice the hikes. When a product gets more expensive, people naturally quit buying it. This thins the herd.

Meanwhile, GW also drags its feet when it comes to codex updates, and when it does update, there's no telling whether or not a new codex is going to be a complete load of shit. The Tyranid codex being a huge let down for two editions running is probably one of the most critical examples. Anyone who collected Tyranids as a main army has pretty well given up hope by now, and they've quit collecting. Other players with armies in similar straits, likely feeling abandoned during 5th edition when GW focused exclusively on Space Marines, have also probably drifted away from the hobby. Of course, there have also been a few people who just quit playing out of disgust because their local meta was a bit too hardcore and there was no way to win games without exploiting the broken, disjointed lack of balance.

Although Games Workshop continued to hike up prices and showed fantastic profits in the short term, these issues probably alienated too many people, and as they roll along with the next edition and new codices, they're probably discovering, with great horror, that there aren't enough players buying into it anymore. Worse, the effect can snowball out of control, and GW will probably lose their market control in one big flash of failure. Almost overnight, it'll suddenly seem that 40k has evaporated.

When there are too few players in the game, it's no longer true that you can go to your FLGS and play with any stranger in the store. There's always that one guy - that rich asshole who owns every army in the book and consequently has some of the most boring, broken, frustrating army lists to play against. But do you really want to play against that guy every single weekend? Eventually, you quit showing up to play 40k as well, and once you're gone, even that dick with all his money has no more reason to play. The final pillar falls, and Games Workshop is no more.

In other words, the player base has always been the most important foundation of the company, and it was always GW's greatest strength. Not the model quality, not the rules, not the setting or any of the IP that they keep suing their fans over. The reason Games Workshop dominated was because everyone played their games. As soon as that's no longer the case, the company can't save itself by releasing new models or updating the rules. Their reign is over. They topple, because the foundations have shrunk.

===GW The Bully===
Games Workshop has long had a history of being one of the most litigious companies in regards to its IP in ''existence''. One needs look no further than our own [[Pauldrons]] article to get an idea of how bad it is, in that it uses its designs to openly fight any company that dares have any remote similarity to its own models in any way, shape, or form. You have any wargame with armored dudes with big pauldrons? Lawsuit. You run a company that makes third-party components for existing models? [[Derp|Lawsuit]]. You make anything remotely resembling any GW IP ever and aren't a massive company that could actually contest the giant copyright stick GW is swinging around and make them look like the idiots they are? [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies|LAWSUIT]].

Whilst GW has a lengthy history of overstepping boundaries in its war to enforce its copyright, it only recently decided to go [[Deathstrike Missile Launcher|nuclear]]. [http://boingboing.net/2013/02/06/games-workshop-trademark-bully.html?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter In 2013, GW launched the claim that it owns the phrase ''Space Marine''], ignoring that sci-fi has used the terminology for the better part of eighty years (and showing their hypocrisy as Games Workshop shamelessly stole the term 'Eldar' from [[Tolkien]]; yes, he invented the word 'Eldar'). The story in question "Spots the Space Marine" is about a middle age housewife, nicknamed Spots, being recalled back to the Marine corp (ie a Real Marine, in space) to fight giant enemy crabs (in space). It had nothing to do with GW's Space Marines or the Warhammer 40K setting.

*The History of the term "Space Marine"; The term 'Space Marine' was made famous by sci-fi author Bob Olsen (real name; Alfred Johannes Olsen, 1884-1956), who may be the true creator of the term. He first used 'Space Marine' in his short story "Captain Brink of the Space Marines" from his "Amazing Stories" series, first published in '''1932'''. Warhammer 40K started as the Second Edition of Rogue Trader and was released in 1993, while [[Rogue Trader]] itself was released in 1987. Games Workshop was founded in 1975; even its oldest founding member (Ian Livingstone) was born in 1949. Therefore the term Space Marine was in use for forty-three years before Games Workshop existed (even James Cameron has more right to trade mark the term than GW, as his 1986 movie 'Aliens' came out one year before Rogue Trader did). <s>Clearly GW needs to sue Bob Olsen</s>. Sarcastic jokes aside, seeing GW fall on their ass for trying to sue Bob Olsen, the rightful owner of the term 'Space Marine' (also remember he '''died''' over fifty years ago), would be hilarious. Even in 2026 (seventy years after Bob Olsen died) when the term Space Marine should become public domain, that doesn't help GW as they can no longer trade mark it then.

This means that what GW tried to do was plagiarism, which is a direct violation of copyright law. Games Workshop's strategy to make "space marine" less generic involved launching high profile, bullying attacks on every professional author or artist who isn't associated with a huge company who uses it, so that there may yet come a day when people hearing the phrase immediately conclude that [[Derp|it ''must'' be related to Games Workshop]], because ''everyone'' knows [[Eldrad|what enormous cocks]] they are whenever anyone else uses the phrase. These attacks were not, again, targeted at any opponent that could credibly fight back; this is because if it actually came to attempts to litigate over the phrase, GW would be laughed out of court. It wasn't not going to stop GW from being cocks, though. In fact, as of 2014, [[Herp|Games Workshop's website still has 'Space Marine' listed as one of their copyrights]]. This copyright backlash made them rename the Imperial Guard "Astra Militarum" (This is not the correct Latin declension for "Star Military." If it was the correct declension, then it would be just as hard to trade mark as "Imperial Guard"), but their hard-on for Space Marines stopped GW from renaming the codex something original, such as "Adeptus Astartes".

After the failure and fiasco of the suit against Spots the Space Marine, GW would post a lengthy and self defeating rant on their own Facebook page, which basically displayed the ignorance of those writing the post. Shortly afterwards, the Facebook page went down after the backlash it caused. Several who queried GW over the pages removal were told that GW wished for the experience with the fanbase to be more personal, thus people should be following their own GW stores.

Their bullying came back to bite them in the ass after a failed attempt at suing third-party manufacturer [[ChapterHouse Studios]]; when they refused to back down from GW's threats to sue them for making unauthorized models (specifically Mycetic Spores, the Doom of Malan'tai, and the Parasite of Mortrex), the lawsuit went to court- which GW [[FAIL|failed]] to argue the majority of alleged copyright breaches. Apparently, just writing up the rules for a model doesn't give you the sole rights to making that model after all. Undaunted, GW did the next best thing-[[Rage|they removed the offending models from the Tyranid codex]], cutting off its nose to spite its face. Way to put the customer first, GeeDubs.

Now, despite their changes for the better, their hypocrisy has also come back to haunt them, as of August 2017 [https://spikeybits.com/2017/08/games-workshop-is-being-sued-for-62-5m.html Games Workshop is being sued in the US to the tune of 62.5 million for, among other things "...stolen Intellectual property of others to establish it’s Warhammer 40,000 game in the 1980s"] Fans either feel bad, worry about the future of the hobby or cheer that what goes around comes around (the latter since GW sued people for far less; see "Spots the Space Marine" above).

===So This Is How The Shit All Began...===
So GeeDubs apparently got an idea that, a company that made its name and infrastructure as a wargame hobby company, is actually a collectibles hobby company. This would help make sense of their previous decisions to minimize what you can get at your FLGS, and make much of their lines as web exclusives (and the accompanying £4 million site), as well as extending Citadel modelling and [[Finecast|certain questionable modelling decisions]] that would make sense on paper (but is brimming with shit and FAIL in practice), and the regular price rises. While this all would make sense if they were a collectibles company, nobody but Games Workshop is under the delusion that they are. The good news is that GW can hypothetically survive as a collectibles company, the bad news is under that model, all six of the pure 40k Collectors could collectively shell out just enough to support [[Forge World|<s>Alan Bligh and</s> Simon Egan]] (Alan Bligh has died, he will be missed) working a business out of a garage. (Don't pretend you didn't know this already.)

This attitude towards one's IP, company history, and misunderstanding of one's own consumer base is now known as the "Games Workshop handstand", or the "fecally incontinent handstand". The reasoning behind it is that [[Tom Kirby|one maladjusted asshole]] is held in a position above the rest of the body, and shit starts to shower all over the whole. In other words, with an executive board pushing a misaimed business model and misapplied corp-think into the whole without being able skillfully shift their target consumer, or without adapting to a model that can support their logic, then profits start to fall. Oh, wait...

===The PR¥€£$===
[[Image:1271198871887.jpg|thumb|right|250px|[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSxQnZ3TM8 Games Workshop's typical meeting board]]]
'''In the grim darkness of the near future, there are only price raises.'''

GW is infamous for their steep prices, and they would have been replaced by a more reasonable company for gaming dominance if their popularity wasn't XBOXHUEG compared to their competitors. These price hikes have been around forever, as the rise of video games (people buying fewer models in general over time) and currency inflation have necessitated "adaptation to a more niche market". The infamous price hikes that /tg/ will remember (and be ass-mad about) forever occurred within the decade span from 2005 to 2015. Between these dates, it is safe to say that every model kit raised its price 150%, with some kits doubling in price. Note that /tg/ came into being during the price hikes, and spent most of it's lifetime (and all of it's formative years) suffering under them.

Games Workshop also have a nasty habit of making prices proportional to how good a model/unit is in-game, rather than the actual cost of materials and manufacture.

Of course, if we really want to stop the price hikes, [[/tg/]] should probably start a legitimate campaign to give perspective and shine the spotlight on other wargames like Warmachine, but <s>/tg/ can't get REAL shit done!</s> that would be like distracting people from Pepsi with the juice in an otter pop.

===A look into GW's codex-writing processes===

For [[The Lord of the Rings Strategy Battle Game|The Lord of the Rings tabletop game]]: currently on hiatus.

For [[Warhammer 40,000]], follow the algorithm below:

1) Is the army a [[Space Marine]] Army?
* Yes: go to question 3
* No: go to question 2

2) Is the army a human army?
* Yes: Keep them effective as long as they don't surpass Space Marines.
* No: go to question 4

3) Do they fight for the [[Imperium]]?
* Yes: Give them a badass update, keep them strong and patch any weaknesses they may have in the crunch.
* No: go to question 4

4) Do they have anything that's good at killing Imperium-aligned Space Marines?
* Yes: Go to question 5
* No: Change the crunch by nerfing popular units and buffing unpopular units with the occasional new units, rules and fluff.

5) Is it a popular faction?
* Yes: Nerf slightly, as in question 4, but keep the army as a whole effective. Buffs are done at the discretion of the writer and can outweigh the nerfs.
* No: NERF THE SHIT OUT OF THE ARMY, ESPECIALLY ANYTHING EFFECTIVE AGAINST SPACE MARINES!

This has been GW's often-used codex-writing process for years. Recently it has been shaken up the exceptions the [[Eldar]] and [[Necrons]], who are arguably the most overpowered armies in the game so far, and the [[Sisters of Battle]] along with [[Imperial Guard]] (for the fuck's sake, they forgot to include codex flyer in new "Death from the skies"!), who are given the opposite treatment to the rest of the Imperium.
And don't forget the Necron Royal Court where one char can have 2+ saves with re-rolls and another can become a C'tan at any given moment. And they have Reanimation Protocols on top of that.

<s>For [[Warhammer Fantasy]]: Currently being changed, balance between army books as a guideline. Also of note is that every time Games Workshop creates a nation in Warhammer Fantasy, they follow a three-city formula; one city is the capital (eg; Naggarond, Khemri and Altdorf), one isn't the capital but has a lot of cool things (eg; Clar Karond, Lybaras and Nuln) and one is the butt monkey of cities that the writers neglect and/or shit on (eg; Karond Kar, Quatar and Middenheim). </s>

Actually scratch that, as of 2015, GeeDub have <s>[[Slaanesh|anally raped]]</s> destroyed (no more anal rape with Slaanesh sidelined, only Khorne now) all decent fluff they have been writing for nearly 35 years. And so begins, the [[Age of Sigmar|Age of Skubmar]].

For said Age, follow the algorithm below:

1) Is the army a [[Stormcast Eternals]] Army?
* Yes: ALL THE BUFFS AND NEW CODEXS AND ALL THE LORE.
* No: go to question 2

2) Is the army a Sigmarite army?
* Yes: Keep them effective and some lore as long as their crunch and fluff don't surpass the <s>Space Marines</s> Stormcast Eternals.
* No: go to question 3

3) Do they fight for the <s>[[Imperium]]</s> '''The Forces of Order'''?
* Yes: Give them a semi-badass update, keep them moderately usable and patch some weaknesses they may have in the crunch. No new models, tho.
* No: go to question 4

4) Are they Chaos?
* Yes: Go to question 5
* No: Go to question 6

5) Are they Khonate, Nurglite or of the <s>Great</s> Horned Rat?
* Yes: Buff to keep up with <s>Space Marines Sigmarines</s> Stormcast Eternals
* NO: '''FUCK YOU.'''

6) Is it a popular faction?
* Yes: '''[[Tomb Kings|SQUAT]] [[Bretonnia|IT]], [[The Empire (Warhammer Fantasy)|NERF]] [[Dwarfs (Warhammer Fantasy)|IT]], WHATEVER. NOTHING CAN BE MORE STORMY THAN SIGMAR.'''
* No: Give them all the lore buffs. Lookin' at you, [[Nagash]].

It hasn't been easy for anyone who is a fan of the old lore, let me tell ya.

===More about===
<s>[http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=3500005 Games Workshop Real Estate section], the site most of the hobbists probably have never ever visited yet may allow you to see GW plans and beliefs.</s> Dead. Another infamous thing GW does is to chop off more and more pages from their website, until nothing seems to remain except their store's new releases page.

[http://investor.games-workshop.com/ And also the Investors Relations, for knowing how they handle the business.]

I sent two e-mails to GW. They were both about the prices, one was in my name, one pretending to be an investor. To one they didn't respond, to the other they just bullshitted me- try it for yourself.

It is a well kept secret that the Board of Directors of GW are in the same situation as the [[God-Emperor of Mankind]] from Warhammer 40,000. Their defiled corpse-bodies lay dormant upon their Publishing Thrones, maintaining only the smallest semblance of life due to the constant influx of money. It is unknown what would happen if the Board of Directors were allowed to truly die. Some say Games Workshop would collapse in on itself, ceasing the production of all that is good and expensive. Perhaps Games Workshop would be free from the necrotic collar of the Directors' irresistible will, and the company would be free to explore new areas, such as advancing the story of the Warhammer 40,000 universe, or reviving older [[Specialist Games|"specialist" games]] like [[Space Hulk]] and [[Blood Bowl]]. (As of November 11, 2015 Games Workshop has announced the creation of a new division called call the Specialist Product Design Studio which is to bring back Blood Bowl, Epic Armageddon, Necromunda, Battlefleet Gothic and 'much much more!'. They are also breathing life back into The Lord Of The Rings and The Hobbit. When this was first announced, it was assumed as a hoax but was confirmed my multiple GW managers around the world.)

Much to the embarassment of the entire rest of the industry, they are the biggest single seller of military miniatures. But these are not ''scale mini-chures'', so modelling neckbeards ignore them and get back to folding 1:35 scale photo-etched hydrogen molecules for their dioramas.

Games Workshop also has a ridiculous hard-on for [[Empire|heavily]] [[Dwarves|armored]] [[Warriors Of Chaos|armies]], their version of Space Marines (who are also heavily armored) and Empires. Regarding the latter, the go-to human faction in Warhammer Fantasy is simply called the Empire. The other playable human army in Fantasy, Bretonnia (named after Britannia, the ancient title for Roman Britain; a faction based on a mixture of medieval English and French pseudo-history), is currently being neglected by GW. The non-playable human FOR COMMUNISM faction that gets the most attention from GW in WHFB fluff is the EMPIRE (note the pattern) of Cathay (it's ruled by an Emperor and based on ancient China). As for 40k, nearly everyone knows how much favoritism the Imperium gets from GW. We also have the Tau EMPIRE, the Necron EMPIRE, the ancient Eldar EMPIRE, and even Ork EMPIRES ([[Derp|despite the fact that Orks live in tribal "Might Makes Right" societies and also have no concept of elections or hereditary leadership: the closest to the latter they have is stealing the name of the last ork in charge which, to get technical, is closer to identity theft]]).

In Warhammer Fantasy GW has designed WF's map to resemble the real world, and have shamelessly made <s>Britain the High Elves</s> (come on, Ulthuan is Atlantis; the WHFB equivalent of Britain is Albion, a land of [[Catachan|swamps and tribemen]]) Then again, they made North America the Dark Elves (Showing GW had a sense of humour at some point). Not sure what they are trying to say by locating the Wood Elves where Switzerland would be though (Aggressively neutral and WILL riddle any army, regardless of faction, with arrows, and then go home? yep, they're Switzerland).

===Things GW should do if it wants to survive===
* GW understandably is a for-profit business. GW should strive to grow its sales, improve its market share, and try to grow the size of the market itself. Such a strategy would be forward looking, and consistent with the company mission statement to do what it's doing forever. The current strategy of price-gouging is obviously reducing sales, losing market share, and turning away potential future sex partners in the market. The existing customer-base is shrinking from being priced out. Prospective new customers are repelled by the pricing. From a basic financial standpoint, GW needs to commit to growing future sales, even before diving into the minutia of issues below. Fix the pricing.
* Ensure that the wants and needs of the share holders do not overrule the needs of the customer.
* Fire the whole management staff, their obsession with the bottom line is slowly destroying the company.
* Allow the setting to progress and change, even if this involves killing off special characters. As wide and encompassing the 40k universe is, the cracks are growing increasingly apparent with time. (These changes to the setting need not affect the crunch; for example, in the present day point of the Warhammer Fantasy timeline half of the [[Vampire Counts]] special characters and half of the [[Orcs & Goblins]] characters are as dead as they can be, but you can still use them in the Games. See also the Lord of the Rings models such as Éorl, Gil-galad and Isildur).
** <s>We now have that for Fantasy with [[The End Times]].</s> '''[[Age of Sigmar|WE SPOKE TOO SOON.]]'''
** We also have that for 40k with [[Warhammer 40,000 8th edition|8th edition]]. Still skub, but nowhere near End Times levels.
* Get over their fucking hard-on for Space Marines and 16th century HRE expies. And every army should get an update in each edition, lest any of them be left behind.
* Do a proper update for the Sisters of Battle. I mean, come on GW, nothing could go wrong by giving sisters a new codex and models; you look better in the eyes of everyone, have a fun new option for players, and probably grab a profit as they are a rather loved faction.
** GW has been teasing plastic Sisters nearly constantly since the runup to 8th edition began, and [[Celestine]] got a new (and ''gorgeous'') plastic kit for Gathering Storm. So far, so good.
* [[Your dudes|Encourage players to build their own armies with cool themes and feature these armies in books and White Dwarf; allowing Games Workshop to save money and at the same time let the players feel like they contributed in some way to the overall fluff.]]
** They finally did that with their new magazine "Warhammer Visions." (Yep. And that was doubtlessly an excellent decision on their part. Let's hope to see more of that.)
* Stop trying to monopolize things like terrain and game boards. It was a lot more fun and interesting when GW encouraged people to make their own stuff from scratch, but now they seem to think everyone has to have a Citadel Realm of Battle board and use only the plastic terrain kits that are sold at GW. This pisses off all us proper gamers who like to make things that look unique and original. Also, they really should stop selling those stupidly overpriced movement trays for [[Warhammer]], they're cheaper and easier to make using sheets of plasticard and trimmed down sprues! Also, everyone knows "Green Stuff" is "Kneadatite" or simply "Modeling Putty," and that every other hardware company in existence sells it more cheaply than GW does.
** Many players remember the days when paper scenery was included free with issues of White Dwarf and both that and plastic scenery was included with starter sets.
* Stop charging ridiculous prices for cheap and nasty tools with the Citadel brand on them. The £20 novelty flamer airbrush is inferior in every meaningful way to a £5 Silverline. The Citadel Razor Saw with a fixed, low-quality blade costs more than a decent razor saw with interchangeable blades (hell, some places will hook you up with a Tamiya saw with two blades for £10). The "Citadel Hobby Vice" is ''utterly useless''. People do not automatically come to GW for every single thing the hobby requires because they realise GW's idea of service is sticking its dick in their wallet and fucking their credit card to death.
* Cut the production costs, thus reducing prices of their products. This is a good business decision as it would increase volume while retaining profit margins. Lowering prices increases accessibility while also increasing demand, and when you have more customers buying shit at worst you suffer minimal profit loss if you decrease the prices by the right amount.
** Good news, they cut production costs. [[FAIL|Bad news, they did NOT pass on the savings to you, the consumer]].
* Start advertising. Without the infamous "In the grim darkness of the 41st Millennium there is only WAR!" ad we never would have the term "[[Grimdark]]". Also promote Warhammer Fantasy more. Without it there would have never been a Warhammer 40k in the first place.
** They're trying that with video games and movies. Now if only the movies could give a non-[[Imperium of Man|Creator's-Pet-faction]] some time in the limelight.
* Support independent retailers. They started as one, after all.
** GW won't support independent retailers. [[Imperium of Man|Games Workshop]] [[Inquisition|see]] [[Chaos|them]] [[Heresy|as competition]] [[Exterminatus|to squash]] if they grow for fear that they'll take GW's customers. Given the [[Derp|state]] of the Imperium, Games Workshop should learn their lesson.
* Hire more competent writers for both the fluff and the crunch then get rid of the [[Robin Cruddace|incompetent]] (and downright [[Matt Ward|Spiritual]]) ones (with the recent departure of Ward from GW; though I don't hate him as a person we wish he'd left before he did all the damage he's done such as Spiritual Liege and Newcrons).
** GW itself may not care much about tournaments, but the players certainly do - and consistently poor Codices and updates have driven off quite a few of these competitive players.
** On the topic of the Ward - [[Roboute Guilliman|'''HE'S BACK.''']]
* Try to take examples from their competition like [[Privateer Press]] and put both the rules and fluff on their site along with selling Codices/Army Books (dunno if this would be good or bad). Also put all their games into indefinite Beta Testing and take in feedbacks from players in order to rapidly update rules and units in order to make them both fun AND competitive (though probably it will put a lot of strain on them in both physical/mental and financial areas).
* For the people who love good Nid codices; FIRE THE CRUDDACE! He already destroyed the Tyranids, tried to crush the Space Wolves, most likely hobbled the Dark Eldar and fucked over the 7th edition, making almost no difference to the 6th edition. He is so bad that even Matt Ward's fluff work is starting to look like that of a higher quality in comparison.
** To be fair, considering that Ward made a good High Elves army book and invented a neat Eldar Special Rule, maybe overtime the Cruddace would overcome his Imperial Guard boner and improve on a change. One can only [[Tzeentch |hope]].
* Start worshipping the Changer of Ways, the current stench of rot & stagnation at GW is making granpappy Nurgle turn greener with envy.

===In Summary===
''It is the 3rd Millennium. For more than a hundred months Games Workshop has sat immobile on the Golden Throne of Nottingham. It is the foremost of wargames by the will of the neckbeards, and master of a million tabletops by the might of their inexhaustible wallets. It is a rotting carcass writhing invisibly with business strategies from the early Industrial Revolution Age. It is the Carrion Lord of the wargaming scene for whom a thousand veteran players are sacrificed every day, so that it may never truly die.''

''Yet even in its deathless state, GW continues its eternal vigilance. Mighty battleforce starter-sets cross the online-store-infested miasma of the internet, the only route between distant countries, their way lit by a draconian retail trade-agreement, the legal manifestation of the GW's will. Vast armies of lawyers give battle in GW's name on uncounted websites. Greatest amongst its soldiers are the Guardians of the IP, the Legal Team, bio-engineered super-assholes. Their comrades in arms are legion: the writing team and countless untested rulebooks, the ever vigilant redshirts, and the writers of White Dwarf, to name only a few. But for all their multitudes, they are barely enough to hold off the ever-present threat from other games, their own incompetence, Based Chinaman - and worse.''

''To support Games Workshop in such times is to spend untold billions. It is to support the cruelest and most dickish company imaginable. These are the tales of those times. Forget the power of sales discounts and Warhammer Fantasy Battle, for so much has been dropped, never to be re-published again. Forget the promise of cheaper digital content and caring about the fanbase, for in the GW HQ there is only profit-seeking, Space Marines and Sigmarines. There is no fun amongst the hobby shops, only an eternity of raging and spending, and the laughter of former employees who left GW to join better companies.''

===And then suddenly...===
It was not expected, we couldn't have known, since the resignation of supreme leader [[Tom Kirby]] and the ascension of new CEO [[Kevin Rountree]] there has started to appear a pattern, sporadic reports of real discounts at [[Forgeworld]] and [[Black Library]], and then, in the last days of 2015 it has been revealed that major changes are coming, the sudden resurrection of specialist games, Games Workshop releasing starter sets with real ''saving'', all around the internet neckbeards are discussing and watching, wondering what's going on, perhaps the new guy in charge has decided is time to take some contingencies for the inevitable demise of tabletop gaming with the ever increasing development in 3D printing and the emergence of new alternatives. It seems like the boxes are a replacement for the old Battleforce packs, and while you don't get as many units as the old box, they are cheaper and usually come with a good mix of units to start a small army.

And now, there's an [http://warhammerworld.games-workshop.com/the-bugmans-xxxxxx-league-cup/ official (as in hosted and ran by the almighty GeeDubs themselves) Blood Bowl tournament] going on at Warhammer World on May 21st. Truly these are strange times. GW also appears to be preparing to start selling their product in toy stores (Toys-R-Us Etc.) as well as producing various Warhammer Merchandise such as pillows and journals (For Some Reason). Also now they've made a 40k starter set with simplified rules and all the paint you need to assemble the models. Clearly the sky is falling. (Also they've started making conversion tutorials and stuff, for some reason).

They also actually maintain their Facebook page now, and the other night they had an Age of Sigmar live tournament...

Also a number of the staff now have twitter accounts.

They've also taken over the internet leak game. When a sprue for the new Ahriman model was found on E(vil)Bay, GW not only showed off the sprue, but also the upcoming Kharn model. And recently, they've shown not only Daemon Primarch Magnus, but also new artwork, teased the Thousand Sons sprue, and made a reference to plastic SoB. Strangely, they had the Magnus video up and running mere hours after the model was leaked. And the red trashcan seen in the video looks similar to the background of the leaked photos. Is GW leaking their own products to get the Hype train up and running? Just as Planned, so it seems. Discussions with my local GW guy indicated it was a rogue employee, as nobody else would be allowed anywhere near the new models, probably a cleaner, who leaked the pictures.

BUUUUUTTT... They rehired Matt Ward.
May or may not be responsible for the return of Roboute Guilliman (which ironically has earned a lot of character development thanks to his return to 40k), or maybe Bobby G's return it's a symbolic gesture that they have finally decided to start fixing everything.

While some people will never be happy, there are few than can deny that GW has been making a massive improvement in the last year or so with their products, content, and relationship with the community. Genuinely good deals, well received releases and ad campaigns (the recent hero bases one is positively goofy, but in a "that's the GW we used to know and love" kinda way.), combined with actively encouraging and showing off fan input and content (even producing a house rules data sheet for a conversion AAAAAND putting pictures of [[Your Dudes]] ON THE MODELS PAGE ON THE ACTUAL WEBSITE!!!!!!!!!), altogether it's almost as if, dare I say it, GW has remembered how to be... [[Warhammer Fantasy|fun!]] They even made a new model for [[slambo]]!

Hell, GW is even straight up asking fans what they want brought back in the next made to order wave. Answer: [[Warhammer Fantasy]] (Well, at least we still have Total War: Warhammer as a consolation praise)

As of January 2017, Games Workshop stock spiked 41% from November of 2015, '''bringing the stock's value higher than it was before the crash in 2014.''' Secret surveillance done by some fans reveal that after the crash a new board of directors was formed, it includes [[Sigmar]] and [[Roboute Guilliman]] (Matt Ward and Mortarion are teaming up), this may explain the sudden influx of good policies.

On a tragic side note unrelated to business, one of their most esteemed writers, Alan Bligh, died in May 2017. He will be sorely missed.

Games Workshop has been announced as the biggest riser in FTSE All-share index.

==Rise again==
By the middle of 2018 Games Workshop has gone through many changes, the first indicators were not mere bluff, it seems the company is now in a new fase of expansion and succesfully recovering terrain both in the skirmish, tabletop and specialist genres, let us see the list of achievements:
*Necromunda is back
**And the Squats with them, or at least a remnant in the form of a beardy mercenary, effectively killing the 20 years old meme.
*in Warhammer Fest 2018 they released a photo of one of the new Sisters of Battle plastic models, the level of detail is exceptional, and it's just a line trooper.
*Adeptus Titanicus is coming back, in plastic, while it may be expensive it lets you use your knights, which mean it may be accesible even to people which "just" can buy knights.
*While Dawn of War 3 didn't go as well as expected a new line of videogames are here, including the aforementioned Total War series with legacy tomb kings and Bretonnia, Adeptus Mechanicus, Vermintide 2 (which has sold over a million on PC), a videogame version of Titanicus, an enhaced edition of Spacehulk: Deathwing, the strategy game Gladius and Battlefleet Gothic: Armada 2 (which is set in the Gathering Storm).
*Duncan Rhodes and Chris Peach painting tutorials and tips of the day have become recurrent.
*Forgebane has become the first starter set with factions other than Space Marines, featuring necrons and adeptus mechanicus trying to out-geek each other.
*Did we mention Rogue Trader is coming back?
*With Warhammer Community and Facebook GeeDubs has fully taken into the web and social media, with regular updates as well as regular, if controlled, interaction between the admin and the people posting in Facebook.
*Most units and armies of 40k can give now a decent fight, with long-time dead loads like mandrakes, Pyrovore, flayed ones and the likes now being useful.
*Age of Sigmar is bringing quite original factions such as the Kharadron Overlords and the Idoneth Deepkin, with less emphasis in Tolkienesque armies and more in "let's try to make this faction unique", also they have toned down the noblebright with Maling Portents, which gives a lot of focus on Nagash and his centuries-old plans to take over the Mortal Realms.
*Black Library has worked out to give more deep to the characters and settings of 40k and AoS, the former is exploring the aftermath of the Noctis Aeterna and the Indomitus Crusade, while setting some of the books in Holy Terra itself and its denizens, in AoS there has been more focus in exploring the background and personality of the Stormcast Eternals, their former lives, as well as giving some much needed focus to other mortal races and stablishing potential new characters.
**On that note, Gotrek is back, with his first novel Realmslayer, looking for Felix in hopes he has reborn in this new reality.
*GW has gotten fully aboard laughing at themselves, with much of their recent media awash with memes, jokes, and jolly good humor. The reveal trailer of the Stormcast Eternals Sacrosanct Chamber, for instance, has an opening animation that [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9daI6m4KsM looks for all the world like something, well, ''we'' would make].

We are not sure how long this may last, but it seems like, for the recent years, GeeDubs is keeping a nice record, for a time, we may look to the immediate future with optimism (now go get more money, what you think they are, social charity?).

==See Also==
* [http://www.iii.co.uk/news-opinion/blogs/share-sleuth/ticker?ticker=LSE:GAW The current Games Workshop stock values, and articles on their financial status.]
* [[Rage]]
* [[Casting]]
* [[Heresy]]
* [[Proxy]]
* [[Counts As]]
* [[C.S. Goto]]
* [[Matthew Ward]]
* [[Black Library]]
* [[Citadel Miniatures]]
* [[Forge World]]
* [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zSxQnZ3TM8 This Video]
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnPpfs120DA A measured response to changes in the Trade Agreement]
* [[Citadel Combat Cards]]
* [[40K Rules Blooper Reel]], for GW's long history of shoddy editing

{{Model Manufacturers}}

[[Category:Warhammer Fantasy]][[Category:Warhammer 40,000]][[Category:Age of Sigmar]][[Category:Publishers]][[Category:Games Workshop]][[Category: Model Manufacturers]][[Category:Tabletop Game Paint Manufacturers]]

Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Imperial Militia and Cults (30k)

2018-08-03T06:15:38Z

2001:8003:3895:3A00:64AC:5459:90BD:4DC6: /* Provenances of War */

==Why Play Imperial Militia and Cults==
While not an overly powerful army, it is one of the most customisable armies you'll ever find <s>outside of</s> including 40k Renegades and Heretics. These guys represent the mish-mash of military units found across the galaxy before anyone sat down and formalized the Imperial Guard (and sometimes before they were part of the Imperial Army). Remember all those Exemplary Battles of [[Great_Crusade|Astartes vs non-compliant humans]]? This is the perfect list to model them - the ''true face of the Great Crusade''. So you can build an army of cyber augmented Skitarii wannabes, a feral world regiment of jungle warriors, a pre-compliant civilization or even a full-fledged Chaos cult.

Because of the sheer range of options available to you which can radically change both the appearance and function of the units under your command, you can even use models that you wouldn't otherwise consider to take into a 40k environment: If you want to maintain a low-tech/high-tech contrast then why not use fantasy Empire models for the [[Praetorian_Guard|fancy uniforms and muskets]] and even have them as crewmen for your Leman Russes or Earthshaker guns? Similarly if you are using the ''Abhuman Helots'' and/or ''Tainted Flesh'' provenances why not just take Fantasy Beastmen models? or even Skaven models if you want to go a bit more steampunk/alchemical?
And, I bet no one ever told you this, but if you take the provenances of ''Abhuman Helots'' and ''Survivors of the Dark Age'', you get... SQUATS!!! THEY'RE BACK, BABY!!! Then you'd just need to find a player who's masochistic enough to let you use your 30K army list, warlord traits and rules against their 40K army, all in the name of nostalgia, of course...

*'''Pros'''
**Insane customisation options and the chance to model things you couldn't do with other armies.
**The ability to build a list tailored to your playstyle; large squads of footsloggers, or with ''Survivors of a Dark Age'' smaller mechanised units.
**Cheap and large scoring units that do not confer any points to your opponent for killing (it costs 60 points to get 20 Guardsmen-equivalents)
**A good modicum of firepower with large heavy weapons squads, artillery and access to Leman Russ squadrons

*'''Cons'''
**Without the right Provenances or correct placement of characters, you have poor Leadership across most of your units.
**Even with the huge amount of customisation options you have only a few choices of unit per FOC slot and some of them can be entirely written off or made compulsory depending upon your Provenance selection, leaving you with less room to do your own thing.
**It's more of a side note, but there are a mass of misprints in the army list that means you need to be a bit liberal in your interpretation. An example would be the Rogue Psykers not having a points cost, or Grenadier Squad starting off with Auxilia Rifles but [[Fail|only being allowed to replace their non-existent Lascarbines]], makes the entire thing feel rushed and not up to the standard of most Forgeworld stuff. Make sure you don't play [[That Guy]] with this list, you've been warned.

==Special Rules==

===Provenances of War===
This is where the modelling opportunities for this army come from. Your Force Commander can purchase up to two Provenances of War. While their cost seems rather low, they can all massively impact the rest of your army, and can radically change the army build and the options you can take. Some Provenances lock you out of certain things or are mutually exclusive with one another, but some also allow units to buy their own unique options.

*'''Warrior Elite:''' All units gain +1 Ld (max 9) and Militia Levy cannot be compulsory troops choices. ''~ More important than you may think, since this raises your Infantry Squads to Guardsmen-Level leadership, and also means that your Grenadiers don't need Discipline Masters''
*'''Gene Crafted:''' +1 str and +1 initiative but cannot take FNP rolls, so Medicae Orderlies are absolutely useless.
*'''Cyber Augmented:''' All units gain a 6+ invuln save, or +1 to existing invulnerable saves, but they reduce run and sweeping advances rolls by 1.
**Can't be combined with Gene-crafted.
**This and Survivors of a Dark Age are a good away to make Proto-Sisters. The 6+ invulnerable becomes their Act of Faith Invulnerable and the reduction to run represents a lack of Black Carapace.
**[[Rules lawyer|Technically allows a 2++ invulnerable for your Force Commander, if combined with a Cyber-Familiar and a Iron Halo.]]
*'''Alchem-Jackers:''' Gain the Stubborn USR, but if a unit fails a Ld test due to enemy shooting it becomes pinned instead of falling back.
**'''Frenzon:''' Any unit can purchase ''Rage'', but must perform sweeping advances.
*'''Survivors of a Dark Age:''' Very powerful... Every eligible units gains +1 to their armour save, which essentially means Grenadiers are wearing Power Armour. The compulsory Troops must be Grenadier squads.
**'''Advanced Weaponry''' The entire army can buy +1 Strength for their las weapons or rotor cannons, which is very good but gets expensive since you have to pay 20 points per squad for it. Grenadier squads and command squads can also purchase a Rhino a [[Awesome|Land Raider Proteus]], or a Termite Assault Drill as dedicated transports. YES!
**Can't be combined with Cult Horde or Tainted Flesh provenances.
***The +1 Strength to las weapons isn't all that useful in reality, as the Grenadiers have to pay 10 points to get lascarbines before the 20 points to get +1 Strength, whereas bolters cost 30 points. Likewise, the Command Squad starts with lascarbines but upgrades to bolters for 20 points, meaning in both cases that you may as well get the bolters and be wannabe Space Marines. It DOES have uses with lasrifles (30" S4 firepower) or laslocks (S5 firepower), as well as rotor cannons (3 or 4 shots at S4 30" firepower).
***'''Alternate Take:''' In a game that features a majority of 3+ or better, sticking with 30" S4 lasrifles may be a better idea than even taking bolters as it provides the same strength at a longer range. Most armies will be getting saves either way.
*'''Feral Warriors:''' The army gains +1WS. Ogryns gain +1 attack instead. The army cannot have more vehicle units than infantry.
**'''Blade and Fury''' All non-ogryn squads can purchase +1 attack for 25 points.
*'''Abhuman Helots:''' All units gain +1 toughness but have -1 initiative.
**'''Discipline Collars''' Can be purchased for any unit. It grants ''Stubborn'', but if they EVER fail a morale check on a double six, their heads explode and you remove the unit entirely.
*'''Cult Horde:''' ''(Traitors only)'' Massively changes what you can do with your army. All units gain ''Hatred'' and ''Stubborn'' USRs, and they must always charge if in range, even if they have fired weapons that would render them unable to charge ''(like Heavy or Rapid fire weapons)'', but they perform a disordered charge if they do. However, all units can ONLY make snap shots when shooting and cannot go to ground, so build your models accordingly. Furthermore, the army cannot take grenadier squads.
**'''Cult Demagogue:''' Automatically happens with this Provenance. Your Force Commander gets the ''Daemon'' and ''Preferred Enemy (Loyalists)'' special rules, which is pretty sweet. He can also purchase a Tainted Weapon like the Word Bearers, but is probably better served by picking another weapon.
**Cannot be combined with Survivors of the Dark Age, but may use Chaos Daemons as Allies.
**Note: This may not be worth it following the FAQ since you lost ''Zealot'' ''(and the Fearlessness that came with it)'' but still suffer SNAPSHOTS FOR YOUR ENTIRE ARMY, which is extremely limiting. ''Hatred'' and ''Stubborn'' are good and all, but the change forces a reevaluation of how units need to be built; taking smaller units that don't sting if/when you lose them to a bad round of combat and the following sweeping advance. If you just wanted ''Stubborn'', consider Abhuman Helots to purchase ''Stubborn'' but also get +1 Toughness & -1 Initiative which rarely does anything bar against other Militia.
*'''Tainted Flesh''' ''(Traitors only)'' All units gain Fear, Feel no Pain (6+) and Rending in melee, compulsory Troops MUST be Levy squads and cannot have more "non-levy" squads than levy squads, They can only take the Force Commander (which is required to take a provenance anyway) and rogue psykers as HQs. They also gain access to Mutant Sp... [[Chaos Spawn|the disgusting things]].
**Cannot be combined with Survivors of the Dark Ages, Gene-Crafted or Alchem-Jackers.

===Wargear===
====Ranged Weapons====
This army has staggering variety of less than staggering guns, allowing you precise control over the balance and type of your firepower to affordability.
*'''Auxilia Rifle''': the standard-issue rifle for most of your units. Just an 18" S3 Assault 1 gun. They are described as any weapon ranging from black powder muskets to esoteric lasrifles not seen anywhere else, ''Survivors of a Dark Age'' doesn't apply to it in any case. Kudos to anyone who actually takes fantasy empire muskets on their models and starts mowing down space marines with them.
*'''Auxilia Pistol:''' Flintlock pistols essentially, 8" range and the same damage as the rifle. Characters don't really have the option to take them, since they'll have better laspistols to start with anyway. But your infantry/levy/grenadier squads can take them instead of a rifle giving you extra attacks in close combat when paired with their close combat weapons.
*'''Auxilia Lascarbine:''' The same as the 40k lasrifle.
*'''Auxilia Lasrifle:''' Better than the 40k lasrifle because they have 30" range.
*'''Bolter:''' Better than the 40k lasrifle because it's an ARMOUR PIERCING ROCKET RIFLE. Not as impressive as it sounds, but you know it and you might just love it. Available to Grenadiers and Command Squads.
*'''Blast Pistol:''' available to most characters. It's S5 and twin linked, which for 5 points seems like a bargain, however it only has a 6" range and ''Gets Hot!'' So you might have little opportunity to use it.
*'''Hand Flamer:''' available to all of your characters and squad leaders. A good option since you don't have to rely on Ballistic Skill to hit anything and it adds to your overwatch. It is usually one if your more expensive options, but it adds more to a squad than a Bolt pistol or blast pistol, so it should always be considered for each squad sergeant.
*'''Laslock:''' 18" S4 Assault 1, so a straight upgrade from the Auxilia rifle, optionally becoming S5 if you have the right provenance.
*'''Shotgun:''' Compared to the alternatives is a shorter range but (relatively) strong rank and file assault weapon. Not exactly shooty enough for shooty armies (like most of the other options) nor slashy enough for slashy armies, but an option if you just have to deny charges and want to hurt them at least a little.
*'''Needle Pistol:''' Its a ''Poisoned, Rending'' pistol, not available to regular sergeants but can be taken by Force Commanders and Discipline Masters. At 5 points it should be the default option as it can be a threat to near enough any form of infantry barring Death Guard.
*'''Rotor Cannon:''' Just like what the Legions get, S3 Salvo 3/4 (thought it will be S4 if you use the right Provenance). Not very good here either, as it is further hampered by the fact that it can only be taken as a special weapon option in Grenadier squads where it competes with better options. Or by Servo-Automata, who can't even improve it using a Provenance.

====Melee Weapons====
*'''Augmented Weapon:''' An S4 close combat weapon, no matter what the strength of your model is. Can be bought for most characters, but grenadiers can have the whole squad take them instead of their close combat weapon. Still not great considering if you wanted a close combat unit, you'd have built your army with specific provenances to do the job. That said, Gene-Crafted isn't the only melee option so this does have a place, such as in tainted ferals or... Various ferals.
*'''Charnabal Saber:''' Only the Force Commander can take one, giving him/her the Rending rule in melee and +1 Initiative in a Challenge. It's cheap at 5 points and can be considered a throwaway option, but is outclassed by nearly every other option and if your opponent is decked out for melee you're likely going to die. The only situation where it is of any use is if you took the ''Gene Crafted'' provenance so your commander can now strike at S4 & I5 and have a shot against marine sergeants and lesser characters.
*'''Power Weapons:'''
**'''Power Sword:''' In most cases this is a bad option for militia, as you strike after Marines you're likely to never get a chance to use it. As with the Saber above, its function radically changes when you take ''Gene Crafted'', so now you hit at the same strength and speed as those Marines. Just avoid challenges, as you are going to die.
**'''Power Mace:''' A better option than a sword, because unless your opponent forgets to clothe his characters in highly artificed fineries, that S+2 and ''Concussive'' rule will help you a lot more than AP3 will.
**'''Power Axe:''' Probably your best option. You were going to strike last anyway so you might as well resign yourself to that fact. With a few swings this will likely cause wounds to anyone without an Invulnerable save.
*'''Power Fist:''' Only available to Force/Platoon Commanders. For five more points than an axe you can have a Fist, which wounds on a 2+ rather than the axe's 4+ ''(not counting Gene Crafted, where you could then even insta-kill a marine with your S8)''. However, the Fist falls into the points vortex which sucks up more points because you have to justify your investment: so as a ''Specialist Weapon'' you've got nothing to pair it with, so you need to buy Digi-Weapons or Master-Craft it to improve your attacks, then you'll need a good invulnerable save in order to protect it long enough to take a swing... It goes on, but you're still going to die.
*'''Tainted Weapon:''' specialist weapon CCW that causes instant death. Get your psykers to take it because it's cheap and they have no other option anyway, so you might get lucky. If your Force Commander has the option of taking it, you've bought ''Cult Horde'' and you need to give them a better weapon than this to take advantage of ''Hatred'' and ''Preferred Enemy'' - unless you've taken Tainted Flesh as well, in which case the combination of ''Preferred Enemy, Rending'' and ''Instant Death'' makes the weapon scarier than you think.... Especially against battle automata.

====Special Issue Gear & Armour====
*'''Flak Armour:''' Default for most units and characters. It's a 5+ save but you know that's practically worthless in a marine heavy environment like the Horus Heresy. However with the right Provenance, beefed up flak is as good as Carapace Armour. At least it's better than...
*'''Sub-Flak Armour:''' When you thought Flak offered as much defense as cardboard. Sub-Flak is more like wet tissue paper, offering only a 6+ save. Even ''Survivors of the Dark Age'' wont offer any relief cause you're only bumping back to 5+ ''(still useless)'' Thankfully only your disposable Levy squads wear this, so it doesn't really matter if they die.
*'''Carapace Armour:''' comes standard on Grenadiers and can be bought as an upgrade for your HQ units. DO THIS even if you don't take the ''Survivors'' provenance, it gives you an actual save against bolt weapons.
*'''Power Armour:''' you know what this does. Sadly 3+ is as good as it gets; it is not further upgraded using Provenances and you can find ways to get yourself a 3++ save instead, so buying it is strictly optional.
*'''Refractor Field:''' 5+ save for your Force Commander. Can be bought for your Platoon Commanders Enginseers or Discipline Masters.
*'''Iron Halo:''' only available to your Force Commander.
*'''Cyber Familiar:''' This is where it gets interesting: it adds +1 to Invulnerable saves and let's you reroll failed characteristic tests [[Fail|(but not Ld checks)]]. Your first option is to take it as a budget Iron Halo, as its five points cheaper than the Halo for the same save. Or you go the full nine yards and get the 3++ save for twenty five points. You need to decide if your Force Commander is worth that much, cause now you need to load up on even more gear to make your investment worthwhile. But at least this means you don't need to buy Carapace/Power Armour.
**Enginseers can buy a familiar too, but they also need to buy the Refractor Field separately, falling into the same points vortex as the Commander for only a single wound model.
*'''Nuncio Vox:''' only two ways of getting this in your army: either buying it for Enginseers or taken as a compulsory member of your Platoon Command Squad, so they'll rarely be seen on the field. It helps prevent deep strike scatter and spots for barrage weapons. Not a big deal because your army doesn't really deep strike, and Space Marine allies have these pretty much everywhere.
*'''Vexilla:''' available to your big Troops units for 10 points and let's you add +1 to combat resolution, as well as allowing you to attempt regroups normally when below 25% strength. Is it worth it? Ugh... Your soldiers are likely to die in droves in melee, but since your Provenances are nearly all geared towards getting you into melee you're going to want this on your side, if only to stop the pain from being laid on so thickly. If it ever helps you win combat then you've entirely justified its cost.
*'''Platoon Standard:''' only on your Platoon Command Squad, so it won't be a regular fixture in most armies. It grants pseudo-stubborn to friendly militia within 24".
*'''Infravisor:''' available to your Force Commander and your Recon squads. Grants ''Night Fight'' but makes you take ''Blind'' tests at Initiative 1. It's cheap enough but you really need to think about what to go with it, as Night Fighting never lasts past the first few turns. So make sure your Recon troops have Sniper Rifles and/or you attach your Force Commander to an artillery battery so you can get the most out of your early game advantage.

====Relics====
The Imperial Militia use the generic list of Dark Age of Technology relics everyone uses, but there are no specific ones to their army. So they don't get anything unique. Since they are restricted for IC use, the only ones with access to them would be the Force Commander or a Traitorous Rogue psyker, and both would be good recipients for such an item, particularly because the army relies on them much more than the Solar Auxilia does.

In a campaign you're only allowed one character with a relic which you'll be stuck for the rest of the campaign, so be sure of your decision. If the relic bearer is killed, the side that killed him can choose to play a Relic Hunt mission, where the winner steals (or recovers) the relic, even if it's a Legion specific one, but a Draw means that relic is effectively lost for everyone. Still, you can always opt to play a 'Relic Hunt' mission at the beginning of every campaign phase to [[Blood_Ravens|acquire]] FREE relics, where your war zone-assigned character must be deployed and thus miss all other missions played in that phase...but that way you can [[Adeptus_Mechanicus|hoard up]] on [[Blood_Ravens|relics]], even getting duplicates of the non-faction-specific ones, by rolling a D6 on the 'Relic Uncovered' table below. Of course, this only matters when playing missions instead of casual gaming, enjoy!

*'''#1 Nanyte Blaster:''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo Grey Goo] gun of uncontrolled carnage!!! It's a S5 AP2 Fleshbane weapon, where if it kills anyone you center a large blast over the dead model on a die roll of 4+, causing a S5 AP2 hit to those underneath it. Unlike Volkite, each model who dies to this can cause ''yet MOAR'' large blasts on further rolls of a 4+. All you need to do is get one casualty and you can wipe out an entire unit! Smashing! Hilarious when it really works.
*'''#2 Warp Shunt Field:''' 3++ against shooting, however for every save of a 6+ (against direct fire weapons) the shooting unit suffers D6 S5 hits. This is the only risk-free defensive relic. Also hilarious if you get really lucky.
*'''#3 Phase Walker:''' Each moving phase, instead of moving you may place the bearer anywhere you like, counting as having just deep struck but with no scatter. If you move through a solid object you have to take a dangerous terrain check for EACH solid object you went through (including all models) so be wary of abusing it in city scenarios. Quite nice for Void Masters, who have Move through Cover, so feel free to abuse it. Too bad this leaves behind the rest of his unit, and commanders aren't known for being one-men armies. If you're up against an Assault heavy army though or are playing a Zone Mortalis/Cities of Death game it can make it's points back as your Warlord retreats through walls (and into another unit) so he can't be assaulted, like a panic button.
*'''#4 Combat Augment Array:''' Once per game, at the beginning of any of the controller's player turn, he may count any '''single''' die (only 1) rolled as an automatic 6 (Emails from FW confirm). However, he must also pass Toughness tests for each remaining wound. If he fails he suffers a wound with no saves or mitigating FnP rolls of any kind. A Cyber familiar can mitigate the danger by granting a re-roll on the commander tests. However, you're paying 35pts for '''one''' guaranteed 6 - nice combo with a Paragon Blade, but given that everyone strikes before you...[[Tau|do you really want to be in Close combat]]?
*'''#5 Cloaking Array:''' Once per game, at the ''beginning'' of ANY game turn you may make yourself invisible for that whole game turn (ie. on the 3rd turn both in your and your opponent's turn, thus starting on your enemy's turn if he goes first). You cannot be shot or charged at unless the enemy unit contains psykers or daemons, in which case the array immediately shuts down (so now ''everyone'' can hit you, not just the previous two). Unfortunately you cannot activate it while attached to a squad or if engaged in close combat already. You also cannot shoot, assault, move or ''do anything at all''. So your model stands on the same spot invisible but doing nothing during a whole game turn. Since you don't want your commander to be alone, pass on this one.
*'''#6 Void Shield Harness:''' Yep. You can get a [[Void_shields|voidshield]] for your dude. It's a large blast-sized shield, centered on your dude but protecting anyone that fits inside. Glancing, Penetrating and Destroyer hits will collapse the shield, but it can be restored at the end of your turn on a 5+, and with AV12 you'll be immune to most small arms fire. However, a result of Explodes! will overload the shield, disabling it for the rest of the game and placing a S6 AP4 Large Blast template centered on the bearer - that's '''Instant Death''' for your commander and his friends, who won't get their armor saves, so get the hell away from Meltaguns.

===Warlord Traits===
#'''Ruthless Tyrant:''' Gain +1 Leadership (to max 9) and the army may reroll Reserves
#'''Merchant Princeling:''' One infantry unit get better ranged weapons, and count their AP as one value better - ''so pick heavy support squads for [[Rape|AP3 Autocannons or Heavy Bolters]] or AP2 missiles'' '''Note:''' it can only be applied to a unit with the Infantry type - but not necessarily just 'provenance' infantry - so an enginseer with a cadre of ap2 phase-plasma fusils is possible.
#'''Beloved of the People:''' If the warlord ever dies, then the rest of his army gets Hatred from the remainder of the game. - ''Sucks if you took Cult Horde as a provenance''
#'''Marcher Lord:''' The warlord gains ''Implacable Advance'' (becoming a scoring unit in AoD games) and ''Stubborn'' while within 3" of an objective.
#'''Connoisseur of Alien Curios:''' Grab ''Fear'' and and ''It Will Not Die''
#'''Robber Baron:''' The warlord can voluntarily fail any morale check and may also re-roll Run or Fall Back distances.

==Unit Analysis==

===HQ===
*'''0-1 Force Commander:''' An Independent character with a relatively poor statline compared to every other unit in the Age of Darkness (such is to be a man in a time of giants), worse even than the Solar Auxilia's Legate Commander, but you don't want him for his combat skills, but because you NEED him in order to purchase Provenances of War, so you are going to have him. Furthermore, he can pay 20pts for the ability to choose his Warlord trait instead of rolling for it, so you can reliably pull some pretty powerful combinations like using the -1AP with your Heavy Weapon squads, which is the only one you'll ever pick because your choices are limited to the Militia Cults WL trait list only and the other five are balls. He's pretty customizable, starting with a 5++ that can be upgraded up to a 3++, and can buy power armour as well as a variety of melee weapons and pistols for those times you want him to pull his weight after you used your WT, but don't expect him to be a hero unit.

*'''Discipline Master Cadre:''' 2-5 near-Commissars, they get attached to other units and add +1 Ld ''(to max 9, and it is going to be nine anyway since their own Ld was eight)'' and allow for a LD reroll if they shoot some squad members. Oddly they're not as harsh as their 40k brethren, and while they cause D3 wounds to their unit, these wounds can be saved, although it could be argued that wild BLAMing is just as harsh as precise BLAMing. These guys may not be the compulsory HQ choice nor can any of them be the warlord, but your Force Commander was going to do all of that anyway. ''Back in the day'' your common Commissar had 2W base and a S4 weapon, and could buy a power weapon and refractor field at discount price.

*'''Auxiliary Platoon Command Squad:''' Six dudes; one commander who is basically there to get gear and nothing else, one nuncio-vox operator, one standard bearer who allows Militia units within 24" to discount casualties when taking morale checks ''(Stubborn aura, essentially)'' and three bodyguards, with the option to add four more of them. No orders because this ain't 40k, they also don't get heavy weapon teams. But all of the bodyguards in the squad may replace their lascarbines/autoguns with a variety of weapons, like bolters or heavy stubbers. Also, the Platoon Commander is merely Ld7 and the rest of the boys is Ld6, such was leadership in the Imperial Militia.

*'''Rogue Psyker''' ''(Cult Horde or Tainted Flesh only)'' ML1 psykers with two wounds, but a sucktastic BS2 so witchfires that roll to hit are generally going to be useless, so avoid them. If they are ever killed short of being "removed from play" then they get possessed on a roll of 5+, which becomes a 2+ if they were killed by losing a wound to perils of the warp, replacing the model with a a 3 wound WS5/S5 rending nightmare. These guys are miles better than the Renegades & Heretics version by being independent characters, they cause fear, have FnP, and can actually take proper psychic powers from Pyromancy, Telekinesis, Biomancy and Malefic Daemonology. One psyker per detachment can even be upgraded to an "Alpha" psyker, granting him ML2, WS/BS3 (instead of 2), three Wounds and Toughness 4 making him a far better prospect.
**The January 2016 FAQ finally updated a points cost for these guys, they now come in at 35 points for the basic ML1 psyker.
**You can even buy them a Tainted Weapon on the cheap, giving their attacks the ''Instant Death'' special rule. Note that this weapon gets lost if the psyker gets possessed since you had to "remove" the psyker and "replace" it entirely with the daemon model. Still, for five points a lucky wound can do some real damage on enemy special characters and if you rolled Iron Arm on biomancy or Fiery Form on pyromancy then you've created a pretty mean close combat unit.
**When choosing psychic powers, just be aware of the limitations of the unit. As mentioned, the poor statline generally means rolling to-hit on witchfires are going to disappoint you, but beams, novas and to a lesser extent, blasts are still alright.

===Troops===
*'''Militia Infantry Squad:''' Twenty guardsmen with auxilia rifles and shitty Ld. No platoons, just one squad per slot. The sergeant gets customisation and can take things like hand flamers and power weapons. Also the squad can replace their auxilia rifles (18" S3) for a variety of weapons, from different-lasguns (lascarbines or lasrifles) to assault oriented weapons (shotguns, laslocks, pistols for +1A). Oh, and they get a goddammed ''Super-heavy as a DT'', the Gorgon Heavy Transport. Have fun.

*'''Inducted Levy Squad:''' 20-50 conscripts with shitty BS2 auxilia rifles and shittier sub-flak armour. They have the same options as regular militia but just don't bother because they're here as fodder. Which is what they are fantastic at, because ''they never confer any points for their destruction'' like by kill points or by first blood, making them perfectly expendable. ''Back in the day'' however, <s>Conscript</s> Levy squads had a sarge of their own (to take challenges for the not-Commissar you'll add to them to make them Ld9), and could either upgrade their dakka to "decent" tier (lascarbine, laslock) or accept the fact BS2 is useless and get a pistol instead for +1 attack. And if they objected they could be given Discipline collars to make them Stubborn. Oh, those were the times.
**Puny as they look, Levy squads can be turned into rather scary melee units, as all mobs are. Especially in ''Cult Horde'' armies, where you now have a huge mob with 3 re-rollable attacks on the charge ''(4 if you also bought Feral Warriors)'', though unless you find ways of shoring up their leadership you should be prepared to lose them following the first round of combat because ''Stubborn'' isn't enough to save you from a bad leadership roll and being swept up in the advance which follows, so at least they were cheap and expendable. Combo ''Cult Horde'' with ''Tainted Flesh'' for ''Rending'' attacks and the prospect of causing ''Fear'' on certain 30k Legions. 50 mooks with multiple rerollable rending attacks will chew through nearly any target on the table through weight of numbers, including Primarchs and will never cost you victory points if/when they get wiped out.

*'''Militia Grenadier Squad:''' 10-18 veterans with BS4, carapace armour and auxilia rifles. These guys do well to replace their weapons with something else due to their increased accuracy. The remaining two spaces are made up by adding special weapon guys.
**If you've got grenade launchers in the squad, you can buy Gas and Fireburst grenades for them. Both are small blast weapons, Fireburst grenades are S3 and pinning so might be good as a trolling device, whilst Gas Grenades are Poisoned (4+) and Ignore Cover, the problem with Gas grenades though are that they have only AP5 so Space Marines and Solar Auxilia are getting saves anyway, making normal frag rounds either exactly the same or better for most situations, unless you are fighting against other Militia or Cult armies.
**These guys can allow you to have dick-swinging contests with the [[What|Tau]]. Grab Survivors of the Dark Age, Lasrifles, +1 Strength Upgrade and 8 extra guys coming to 140 points. Now lets compare to the Tau Strike Squad. Tau: BS3, 30" S5 AP5, 12/24 shots, T3 and 4+ Save. You: BS4, 30" S4 AP-, 18-36 shots, T3(4 with Abhuman Helot) 3+ Save. And you can add 2 Rotor cannons to that to up the number of shots to a grand total of 44. While the Tau do get markerlight support and could therefore [[Rape|annihilate]] your squad off the board, they can't take all of them on at once, especially when they have to worry about your supper cheap tanks/artillery. [[Troll|Don't forget that this squad is only 160 points tops.]]

*'''Fire Support Squad:''' your heavy weapon squads, just like with imperial guard, but as Troops choices with no platoon tax. Unfortunately as support squads they cannot be compulsory choices. They come in units of 5-10 teams and have the full range of guard weapons, including heavy stubbers and multilasers. This unit has awesome potential.
**Grab a unit of 10 Heavy Flamers and screw holding the line. These guys can move up the board and toast some motherfuckers because who said that heavy weapons need to stay still? Don't forget that [[Troll|all of these guys are 2 Wounds, 2 Attacks and have a laspistol + CCW]], so make for surprisingly good assault troops. [[Rape|Add in the -1AP Warlord Trait and teach Marines fear again]]. THIS should be the way you have them for any assault-based list, and creates awesome modeling opportunities.

*'''Reconnaissance Squad:''' Five veterans in flak armour and are a support unit. But they have scout, infiltrate, move through cover and the option to buy chameleoline. They probably cost way too much for a base squad of five men in flak armour. But they may replace their lascarbines with shotguns or sniper rifles for a flat cost, I wonder which one you'll choose? Their sergeant can also take a demo charge, which might make some interesting suicide bomber units <strike>in a cult horde list</strike> for any provenance other than cult horde because all snap fire all the time means no blast or template weapons sadly.

===Dedicated Transports===
*'''Auxillia Gorgon Heavy Transporter''' So, the Space Marines can get Land Raiders, Solar Auxillia get Dracosans, and we get a super heavy tank as our main transport? Seems legit. With 9 Hull Points, AV 14/14/10 and a 5++ save on the front (4++ against Blast and Template weapons) it'll be tough for you opponent to take it down without devoting serious resources to it (unless they get behind it, in which case it's as good as dead). It comes stock with a one-use Gorgon Mortar Battery (12-48" S5 AP5 Heavy 4 Blast, Barrage and Pinning) and two twin linked Autocannons, as well as coming with the ability to transport 40 dudes and imposing a -2 modifier to the Catastrophic Damage Table. It can spring for hunter killer missiles and Armoured Ceramite (for the ultimate expression of FUCK YOU to your opponent), as well as swapping the Autocannons for TL Multi-Lasers or TL Lascannons. It can also swap it's Gorgon Mortar Battery for two forward and two rearward facing sponsons which must all be the same type, either Autocannons, Heavy Flamers, Heavy Bolters, Multi-Lasers or Lascannons. However you'll only field it with a plan in mind as it costs 275 points base, meaning no spamming superheavies.
**Note: This thing ''is not'' Open-topped, so don't let your opponent fool you into thinking that. Not that it will matter to that Drop Pod full of Marines with Meltas, they'll punch through your paper-thin AV 10 rear armour like it's a game of [[FATAL]] even if you do get Armored Ceramite. Oh, but also note that, since it has lost open-topped, it's not an Assault Vehicle any more. So those 40 provenanced-up Cult goons might not be as useful as you think.
*'''Rhino Armoured Carrier''' ''(Survivors of a Dark Age only)'' It's a Rhino, you know what it does. Stolen from the Space Marines, it has the exact same options as the one in the Crusade army list, so look there for more info. Also note that it has the same profile, so it's BS 4. Won't be amazingly handy, but it's worth remembering.
*'''Land Raider Proteus''' ''(Survivors of a Dark Age only)'' Mwhahaha, my puny humans now have access to one of the most powerful tanks in the game. No forward assault ramp means no Assault Vehicle and awkward model placement, and it only comes with two twin linked Lascannons stock. However it's also the cheapest of the Land Raiders, and can take the ever-useful Explorator Augury Web as well as other useful things such as Armoured Ceramite, hull mounted Heavy Bolters/Flamers, Auxiliary Drives and a host of weapon options. However, these costs add up quick, and as the Gorgon is only 75 points more and (generally) much more survivable and can lay down more hurt, you may want to think about taking one of those instead.
'''Aurox Armored Transport:''' A [[Rhino]] analog, usable by Command Cadres and Grenadier Squads numbering 10 or less. Apart from using a Heavy Stubber (that can be replaced with a Heavy Flamer) instead of a Storm Bolter, costing 10 pts less and BS3, it's pretty much identical to the Rhino, but has no potential upgrades (even the dozer blade).

===Elites===
*'''Ogryn Brute Squad:''' 3-10 Ogryns with big sticks, flak armour and frag grenades. That's it. But the beauty of this in how they can be customised. You can buy power weapons, boarding shields or combat shields and get something equivalent to Bullgryns. Buy ripper guns and you've got normal 40k ogryns. You can even buy Heavy Bolters, that become 18" range assault weapons when held in their hands!!! However, the rules do say that each model may only buy one option from the list, so you cannot load up on cool shit, but you are allowed to mix and match. The only upgrade that is universal across the whole squad is Carapace Armour ''(which can be upgraded using Provenances to create [[Awesome|power armoured Ogryns]])'' which for a flat cost is always worth it. Consider what effect the army provenances will have on them before you build them, but the combinations are nearly endless.
**Unless your Provenance is ''Tainted Flesh'' forget Shields; a 6++/5++ invulnerable save at a cost of taking any improvement in damage output is not worth it. ''(Tainted Flesh works because they get enough rules to handle themselves)'' '''That being said...''' a single Boarding Shield in the squad counts as Defensive Grenades, making the whole squad resistant to incoming charges. Also, a 'frontline' of shields and 'rear rank' of axes works better than a pure unit of either. Cyber-augmetics plus shields give a 4++ in assault - pretty good on sonething as tough as an ogryn.
**Additional CCW is expensive at 10 points '''EACH''' for just one extra attack. If that's all you wanted remember that the ''Feral Warriors'' provenance gives them an extra attack a flat cost to the whole army
**Power Weapons are your most expensive option by far, but they also grant the 2 weapon bonus as well as beefing the unit with killy stuff. Axes become preferred here because even if you strike last, a model equipped with one is still likely to survive and beat down a marine or two. Maces tend to work alongside ''Gene-Crafted'' because of S8 and a chance at instant death, but a sword would strike at I4 as well so remains a good option. Kitting out a whole squad necessitates creating a Deathstar unit though.
**Lascutters should be avoided unless you are specifically trying to build up a set of Big Daddy clones [[Your Dudes|or something themed like that]], as they negate all the benefits of being an Ogryn.
**Guns are really up to you, as the models are already there for it. But having BS2 is not encouraging, massed S5 firepower can be found more cheaply and accurately in Fire Support squads or Leman Russ squadrons.

*'''Imperialis Auxilia Medicae Detachment:''' 3-6 guardsmen with medipacks and laspistol/CCW. No customistion beyond whatever provenances you take. You just deploy them separately to squads and get FnP. You are allowed to double up if you want to make certain a squad doesn't lose the rule.

*'''Enginseer Auxilia:''' one of the few squads that gains no benefit from your provenance, so it is what it is. You get 1-3 Enginseers and 4-8 Servo-Automata, which are basically more customisable T5 servitors that can take cool guns like phased plasma fusils or flamers. Enginseers can take invulnerable saves and graviton/volkite weapons if they want, and they can fix stuff and gain bonuses for each servitor with a servo arm in the unit.
**Enginseers are one of the few units that can take Augury Scanners, giving them ''Interceptor'' on Rapid Fire and Heavy weapons only, up to a range of 18". If you do this you'll want to create a counter-deep strike squad of Multi-Meltas or Heavy Bolters and screw over marine armies that depend on certain Rites of Battle ''(Yes, Marine Heavy Support squads can do this bigger and better, but Enginseers can do it from the Elites slot and at peanuts per model!)''
**This unit is particularly useful in a cult horde list as it's unaffected by the provenance's enforced snap-firing, meaning this is your only infantry unit that has a chance of hitting a barn door at range. Take phased plasma-fusils plus the -1AP WL trait and drink the tears of anyone spamming Terminators or MEQs in artificer armour. Do note however that augury scanners don't grant interceptor to Salvo weapons so your dream of removing a deep striking Cataphractii unit in its own turn with 24 S6 AP2 shots must remain sadly unfulfilled. What do you think this is, an Eldar list?

===Fast Attack===
*'''Arvus Lighter:''' Only marginally better than the travesty of their 40k incarnation in that they can take guns and use them properly; this makes them like flying razorbacks with twice the transport capacity. You can take them as dedicated transports for grenadiers and to be honest, it might be worth it here if you can stomach forking out for a resin box when you can have so many other things (why are you buying a Arvus Lighter this is Militia and Cults you could use a Tau Devilfish if you want). Since the Arvus won't last long with the amount of Dakka that 30k brings to the table. You may as well go full bore and shell out points for the twin linked Lascannons and the Armored Cockpit. Also should be considered, outside of Survivors of the Dark Age, the only non super heavy transport.

*'''Auxilia Sentinel Scout Squadron:''' almost exactly the same as the guard option, three to six chicken walkers with a heavy weapon, no plasma cannons but you can take a multi-melta. You can also take combat blades granting them +1 attack, but taking open topped AV10 walkers into melee is still generally not a good idea.

*'''Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter:''' If you have one, field it as these are the business. They start off at BS4 which means their considerable firepower is going to come to bear more reliably, which now includes Kinetic Piercer missiles, which while only S6, are AP2, armourbane and heat-seeking which makes them twin linked against other flyers. While you could swap them for hellstrike missiles, you'd be an idiot to do so because of the drawbacks of the ordnance rule, but if you wanted more ground attack then sunfury missiles can be bought which are AP3 large blast and blinding but get hot. For added goodies, they can buy strafing run, so your nose guns hit things on the ground with rerollable 2s, and a flare shield which reduced incoming firepower by -1 strength.

===Heavy Support===
*'''Rapier Battery:''' Your entry level artillery unit. You start out with quad multilasers which have all the sixes. You get six twin-linked shots at S6 AP6 at a range of 36" ''(6x6)'', so is very good at taking out infantry. You can swap this for a quad heavy bolter for free, which would be better against GEQ units due to the superior AP value. If you're looking for anti-tank then you can buy laser destroyers, which are 48" S9 AP1 twin-linked Ordnance, which are excellent even considering the the shitiness of the men firing them. If you want to annoy your opponent, then the most expensive option is the quad-mortar (thudd gun), which fires of four S5 small blasts each, so a battery of them will pepper the battlefield. While they may have poor AP and average strength for a heavy weapon, they can consume a chunk of time to resolve and give you a psychological advantage over your opponent as he gets frustrated with so many templates and wants you dead. Overall Rapiers are good and cheap, but at only Ld 6 and flimsy guardsmen crew they are going to fall over if something looks at them funny.
**Regarding longevity, remember that if the unit falls back, they abandon the gun which means it is permanently lost even if they regroup later. So morale boosting upgrades/provenances become your main priority. Don't worry so much about armour plating them, because the gun already has T7 and a 3+ save.
***Funnily, "Cult Horde" isn't as terrible for them because the quad laser/bolters can still snap fire twin linked, so can still potentially hurt something, yet because they are ''Artillery'' they are prohibited from declaring a charge, so can remain safely in position.
***"Alchem Jackers" can be a godsend, since it pins the unit when they suffer pinning instead of running away, meaning you don't automatically lose the gun, and ''may'' still be able to shoot with quad guns. While it has little benefit in melee, if your rapier gets caught up in close combat it's going to be dead soon anyway.

*'''Malcador Heavy Tank:''' bigger Leman Russes, also a fast super heavy vehicle that is not a Lord of War. You can upgrade it to AV14 on the front if you sacrifice the Fast rule, but you can also take a Flare shield which applies all over and is boosted against templates. These are great tanks, with a fair amount of customisation and make excellent support vehicles for even bigger baneblades or stormhammers.

*'''Battle Tank Attack Squadron:''' Leman Russes, everyone's favourite, chosen from the vanilla, annihilator, exterminator, demolisher and vanquisher flavours. They've only got access to Heavy Bolter and Flamer sponsons (which is still better than the Solar Auxilia, who get no sponsons at all), but hilariously they can replace the hull gun with a multilaser, which might be a good idea if you're taking an ordnance tank and just want a gun for snap firing, or even as a makeshift AA gun.

*'''Heavy Ordnance Battery:''' Immobile Earthshaker guns each with 4-8 crewmen who are subject to your provenance. If you're taking these hopefully your army has good leadership modifying rules since the crew only have LD 6 and will abandon the gun if they have to fall back. You can have Medusa guns instead which is more cost for the same risk. Either keep these WELL out of the way, or bump their leadership as high as you can.
**Unlike the rapier batteries, there is no way to snap fire with these guns, being both "Blast" and "Ordnance". So pinning the unit will effectively neutralise it. Taking "Cult Horde" with them makes you an idiot.

*'''Mutant Spawn:''' ''(Tainted Flesh only)'' oh shi- GLARBLBLBLBL... ''Ahem'' slightly lesser than the 40k chaos version, possibly because they started out as humans and not space marines. They don't get access to marks and have only I2, however these ones have IWND and Hammer of Wrath as well as being 5 points cheaper on a per model basis, albeit with a higher startup cost like everything in HH, but you can take them in squads of ten which makes them a very potent prospect in melee. Their mutation table has also been heavily modified; taking effect from the beginning of the game and '''cannot be changed'''. Ones give them only a 5+ armour save, but at least it applies out of combat. Twos make them reroll 1s for random attacks, bleh. Threes give them Rending, so hope for this one and you can possibly have a big squad of these tearing through virtually anything.

===Lord of War===

*'''[[Baneblade|Auxilia Baneblade]]:''' - Though outclassed by the Legion Fellblade, the Baneblade is still a nasty proposition to face. Sporting a Baneblade cannon, Autocannon, Demolisher Cannon and a twin-linked heavy bolter. With the option of two/four Lascannons and two/four more twin-linked heavy bolters ''(the sponsons don't come as standard here)'' optional pintle mounts, AND optional Hunter-killer missile, it is a rolling fortress of death.

*'''Auxilia Stormhammer:''' - Taking Dakka to a logical extreme, the Stormhammer is less a superheavy and more a rolling fortress bristling with guns. Its hull weapon is a TL Battle Cannon, and its main gun is a S9 AP2 cannon with shred and pinning. With the options to take a pintle-mounted multilaser or heavy flamer, up to 4 HK missiles(!), a coaxial multilaser, a hull lascannon on top of the battle cannons, and six sponsons, all of which are armed with multilasers by default (making it [[C.S. Goto]]'s dream tank) but can be swapped out for heavy bolters, heavy flamers, or lascannons (and the first two options are free), it can take on more targets at once than any other superheavy. (The sponsons are switched out individually, so feel free to mix and match however you like.) and the whole tank can buy targeters giving it a nifty BS4. In short, the Stormhammer is your best bet for a versatile superheavy that can fit any situation that you can think of.

===Fortifications===

===Age of Darkness Theme: Army of Dark Compliance===
Built from a blending of Legiones Astartes and units from the Imperial Militia and Warp Cults list. However, it is quite distinct from the "Sacrificial Offering" Rite of War in that it does not use up your allies slot, allowing you to take allies from a third source. But it does prevent you from using a rite of War, so you cannot layer on extra special rules.

However you are still privy to the insane customisation options presented in the Warp Cults list, and you are not prevented from taking any option from your Legion list either.

The "Age of Darkness" themes requires your opponents permission to use, however it is an easy theme to build an army around because there are few rules to take account of.

*'''Restrictions'''
**You build your army with units from both the Crusade List and the Imperial Militia and Warp Cults list.
**You must include a Space Marine Praetor, Centurion or Consul to be your Warlord.
***''Do note that to take any Provenances of War you'll also need a "Force Commander" as one of your HQ choices as well.''
**Your army is automatically part of the traitor faction.
**You cannot use Rites of War.
**"Legiones Astartes" rules that apply to models by virtue of being in the same detachment do not apply of Militia units.
***''That means the only way to get Militia units to benefit from Astartes rules would be to attach an independent character with special rules that confer to units.''
**Unless specifically noted otherwise, all units count as being part of the same list for rules purposes such as Transports, Warlord traits and so on.
**You cannot include more units from the Legiones Astartes list than from the Imperial Militia list.
***''This is your main restriction, which prevents you from merely dabbling in Militia units.''
**You may not include Discipline Master Cadres

*'''Special Rules'''
**'''The Warmaster's Due:''' "Tyrants Due" by another name, any time your Legion units are shot at which draws its line of fire through infantry militia units, you can add +1 to any cover save gained. However the militia unit then takes D3 wounds with no AP value, meaning your crap sub-flak conscript could take a hit from a Lascannon intended for a Space Marine and potentially survive it.
**'''Disposable:''' Any Militia units in your army may be affected the the "Disposable" rule, preventing them from conceding victory points for any reason when slain. It does however prevent these units from scoring or denying objectives so be sure and have enough Astartes units to hold on to objectives for you. You are not required to use this rule if you don't want to, but you must declare at the start of the game if you do.

==Allies==
A few notes about the list, since it interacts with other armies in different ways depending upon what Provenances of War they have taken.
*If they've taken Tainted Flesh or Cult Horde, then they cannot ally with Loyalist forces, though they may count ''Chaos Daemons'' as "Fellow Warriors".
*Cyber-Augmetics may count Mechanicum armies as "Sworn Brothers"
*Abhuman Helots only count Space Marine and Solar Auxilia armies as "Distrusted Allies"

==Tactics==
This army pretty much allows you to do whatever you want, although generally you'll be looking at infantry supported by armour and artillery. A large factor in how your army will play is what Provenances you take. Abhuman Helots, Survivors of the Dark Age, Cyber Augmentics and Tainted Flesh will all help improve the survivability of your infantry, while Warrior Elite, Alchem-Jackers and Abhuman Helots with Discipline Collars will make your guys less likely to run away so are highly recommended if you're not running Grenadier-only troops. There are ''a lot'' of Provenances that can improve your close combat game; Gene-Crafted, Feral Warriors, Cult Horde, Tainted Flesh and Alchem-Jackers with Frenzon all help you out in melee, although it's of questionable use in a Marine-oriented environment. However, only one Provenance, Survivors of a Dark Age, increases your range-game to any degree, [[Fail|which makes no sense at all]] considering that even with these buffs you'll get massacred by dedicated Marine units, but it's not supposed to allow your guys to go 1-1 with Marines, it's there to take it from a 3-1 fight to a 2-1 fight.

Your advantages include how cheap you are compared to other armies (seriously, even your [[What|Leman Russes are cheaper by 10 points]]), the fact that you can buff your infantry fairly easily with Provenances and Medicae Orderlies and the amount of armour and heavy firepower that you can bring to the field with artillery, Rapiers, Heavy Support Squads and Leman Russes, all of which are cheaper that anyone else's. However, this cheapness is balanced out by Provenances of War, making it not as spammy as it may initially seem.

Basically, what you want to do with these guys is find a theme to [[Roleplaying|forge a narrative]] on, and then base it round that. Want to have an army of clones that are little more than meat shields for your Dark Mechanimum army? Tainted Flesh and Cyber-Augmented are right up your alley. Want your humies to mimic beakies? Take Survivors of the Dark Age and load your Grenadier Squad up into Rhinos. However, as for competitive play it's not that good unless you [[Powergamer|really min-max]] your army, so don't expect a lot out of them.

Also of serious consideration is whether or not you want [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurf]] allies to bring along Invictarus Suzerains to gain +1Ld to all your guys within 12" as well as bringing some hardier troops and better CC ability. Not compulsory but a good idea.

==Building your Army==

USE YOUR DAMN IMAGINATION! Only Renegades & Heretics have more customization. This army is about as customizable As they but less diverse both in the base units available and being restricted by the biggest source of customization being army wide. The units can take a startling rainbow of standard weapons, but like a rainbow, many of the options are almost the same. Its entirely possible (albeit better for friendly counts as games) to proxy a fantasy army, such as the Empire or possibly Skaven. Look at the stuff available on GW's website. Empire, Elf, Guard, Skaven, (some) Skitarii, even ORKS (with some converting) can work! Since many tournaments ban forgeworld anyway, look to other model sites if it suits your fancy. All of it works, all of its totally fluff friendly. WoC? Feral worlders. Infinity stuff? Technological advanced enclave. A WW2 model range? You get the idea. If you ever wanted to make an army thats truly "you", a one of a kind masterpiece, et cetera, this is for you. You may not exactly win, but you sure as hell wont be forgotten. Hell, make your army a bunch of chicks with swag armour and do a proto-sisters of battle army. Then piss people off and give them gene-crafted for Sister Marines, alchem-jackers with frenzon for RED RAGE sisters, or cyber sex gals.

[[Category:Warhammer Tactics/30k]]

Warhammer 40,000/Tactics/Imperial Militia and Cults (30k)

2018-08-03T06:15:23Z

2001:8003:3895:3A00:64AC:5459:90BD:4DC6: /* Provenances of War */

==Why Play Imperial Militia and Cults==
While not an overly powerful army, it is one of the most customisable armies you'll ever find <s>outside of</s> including 40k Renegades and Heretics. These guys represent the mish-mash of military units found across the galaxy before anyone sat down and formalized the Imperial Guard (and sometimes before they were part of the Imperial Army). Remember all those Exemplary Battles of [[Great_Crusade|Astartes vs non-compliant humans]]? This is the perfect list to model them - the ''true face of the Great Crusade''. So you can build an army of cyber augmented Skitarii wannabes, a feral world regiment of jungle warriors, a pre-compliant civilization or even a full-fledged Chaos cult.

Because of the sheer range of options available to you which can radically change both the appearance and function of the units under your command, you can even use models that you wouldn't otherwise consider to take into a 40k environment: If you want to maintain a low-tech/high-tech contrast then why not use fantasy Empire models for the [[Praetorian_Guard|fancy uniforms and muskets]] and even have them as crewmen for your Leman Russes or Earthshaker guns? Similarly if you are using the ''Abhuman Helots'' and/or ''Tainted Flesh'' provenances why not just take Fantasy Beastmen models? or even Skaven models if you want to go a bit more steampunk/alchemical?
And, I bet no one ever told you this, but if you take the provenances of ''Abhuman Helots'' and ''Survivors of the Dark Age'', you get... SQUATS!!! THEY'RE BACK, BABY!!! Then you'd just need to find a player who's masochistic enough to let you use your 30K army list, warlord traits and rules against their 40K army, all in the name of nostalgia, of course...

*'''Pros'''
**Insane customisation options and the chance to model things you couldn't do with other armies.
**The ability to build a list tailored to your playstyle; large squads of footsloggers, or with ''Survivors of a Dark Age'' smaller mechanised units.
**Cheap and large scoring units that do not confer any points to your opponent for killing (it costs 60 points to get 20 Guardsmen-equivalents)
**A good modicum of firepower with large heavy weapons squads, artillery and access to Leman Russ squadrons

*'''Cons'''
**Without the right Provenances or correct placement of characters, you have poor Leadership across most of your units.
**Even with the huge amount of customisation options you have only a few choices of unit per FOC slot and some of them can be entirely written off or made compulsory depending upon your Provenance selection, leaving you with less room to do your own thing.
**It's more of a side note, but there are a mass of misprints in the army list that means you need to be a bit liberal in your interpretation. An example would be the Rogue Psykers not having a points cost, or Grenadier Squad starting off with Auxilia Rifles but [[Fail|only being allowed to replace their non-existent Lascarbines]], makes the entire thing feel rushed and not up to the standard of most Forgeworld stuff. Make sure you don't play [[That Guy]] with this list, you've been warned.

==Special Rules==

===Provenances of War===
This is where the modelling opportunities for this army come from. Your Force Commander can purchase up to two Provenances of War. While their cost seems rather low, they can all massively impact the rest of your army, and can radically change the army build and the options you can take. Some Provenances lock you out of certain things or are mutually exclusive with one another, but some also allow units to buy their own unique options.

*'''Warrior Elite:''' All units gain +1 Ld (max 9) and Militia Levy cannot be compulsory troops choices. ''~ More important than you may think, since this raises your Infantry Squads to Guardsmen-Level leadership, and also means that your Grenadiers don't need Discipline Masters''
*'''Gene Crafted:''' +1 str and +1 initiative but cannot take FNP rolls, so Medicae Orderlies are absolutely useless.
*'''Cyber Augmented:''' All units gain a 6+ invuln save, or +1 to existing invulnerable saves, but they reduce run and sweeping advances rolls by 1.
**Can't be combined with Gene-crafted.
**This and Survivors of a Dark Age are a good away to make Proto-Sisters. The 6+ invulnerable becomes their Act of Faith Invulnerable and the reduction to run represents a lack of Black Carapace.
**[[Rules lawyer|Technically allows a 2++ invulnerable for your Force Commander, if combined with a Cyber-Familiar and a Iron Halo.
*'''Alchem-Jackers:''' Gain the Stubborn USR, but if a unit fails a Ld test due to enemy shooting it becomes pinned instead of falling back.
**'''Frenzon:''' Any unit can purchase ''Rage'', but must perform sweeping advances.
*'''Survivors of a Dark Age:''' Very powerful... Every eligible units gains +1 to their armour save, which essentially means Grenadiers are wearing Power Armour. The compulsory Troops must be Grenadier squads.
**'''Advanced Weaponry''' The entire army can buy +1 Strength for their las weapons or rotor cannons, which is very good but gets expensive since you have to pay 20 points per squad for it. Grenadier squads and command squads can also purchase a Rhino a [[Awesome|Land Raider Proteus]], or a Termite Assault Drill as dedicated transports. YES!
**Can't be combined with Cult Horde or Tainted Flesh provenances.
***The +1 Strength to las weapons isn't all that useful in reality, as the Grenadiers have to pay 10 points to get lascarbines before the 20 points to get +1 Strength, whereas bolters cost 30 points. Likewise, the Command Squad starts with lascarbines but upgrades to bolters for 20 points, meaning in both cases that you may as well get the bolters and be wannabe Space Marines. It DOES have uses with lasrifles (30" S4 firepower) or laslocks (S5 firepower), as well as rotor cannons (3 or 4 shots at S4 30" firepower).
***'''Alternate Take:''' In a game that features a majority of 3+ or better, sticking with 30" S4 lasrifles may be a better idea than even taking bolters as it provides the same strength at a longer range. Most armies will be getting saves either way.
*'''Feral Warriors:''' The army gains +1WS. Ogryns gain +1 attack instead. The army cannot have more vehicle units than infantry.
**'''Blade and Fury''' All non-ogryn squads can purchase +1 attack for 25 points.
*'''Abhuman Helots:''' All units gain +1 toughness but have -1 initiative.
**'''Discipline Collars''' Can be purchased for any unit. It grants ''Stubborn'', but if they EVER fail a morale check on a double six, their heads explode and you remove the unit entirely.
*'''Cult Horde:''' ''(Traitors only)'' Massively changes what you can do with your army. All units gain ''Hatred'' and ''Stubborn'' USRs, and they must always charge if in range, even if they have fired weapons that would render them unable to charge ''(like Heavy or Rapid fire weapons)'', but they perform a disordered charge if they do. However, all units can ONLY make snap shots when shooting and cannot go to ground, so build your models accordingly. Furthermore, the army cannot take grenadier squads.
**'''Cult Demagogue:''' Automatically happens with this Provenance. Your Force Commander gets the ''Daemon'' and ''Preferred Enemy (Loyalists)'' special rules, which is pretty sweet. He can also purchase a Tainted Weapon like the Word Bearers, but is probably better served by picking another weapon.
**Cannot be combined with Survivors of the Dark Age, but may use Chaos Daemons as Allies.
**Note: This may not be worth it following the FAQ since you lost ''Zealot'' ''(and the Fearlessness that came with it)'' but still suffer SNAPSHOTS FOR YOUR ENTIRE ARMY, which is extremely limiting. ''Hatred'' and ''Stubborn'' are good and all, but the change forces a reevaluation of how units need to be built; taking smaller units that don't sting if/when you lose them to a bad round of combat and the following sweeping advance. If you just wanted ''Stubborn'', consider Abhuman Helots to purchase ''Stubborn'' but also get +1 Toughness & -1 Initiative which rarely does anything bar against other Militia.
*'''Tainted Flesh''' ''(Traitors only)'' All units gain Fear, Feel no Pain (6+) and Rending in melee, compulsory Troops MUST be Levy squads and cannot have more "non-levy" squads than levy squads, They can only take the Force Commander (which is required to take a provenance anyway) and rogue psykers as HQs. They also gain access to Mutant Sp... [[Chaos Spawn|the disgusting things]].
**Cannot be combined with Survivors of the Dark Ages, Gene-Crafted or Alchem-Jackers.

===Wargear===
====Ranged Weapons====
This army has staggering variety of less than staggering guns, allowing you precise control over the balance and type of your firepower to affordability.
*'''Auxilia Rifle''': the standard-issue rifle for most of your units. Just an 18" S3 Assault 1 gun. They are described as any weapon ranging from black powder muskets to esoteric lasrifles not seen anywhere else, ''Survivors of a Dark Age'' doesn't apply to it in any case. Kudos to anyone who actually takes fantasy empire muskets on their models and starts mowing down space marines with them.
*'''Auxilia Pistol:''' Flintlock pistols essentially, 8" range and the same damage as the rifle. Characters don't really have the option to take them, since they'll have better laspistols to start with anyway. But your infantry/levy/grenadier squads can take them instead of a rifle giving you extra attacks in close combat when paired with their close combat weapons.
*'''Auxilia Lascarbine:''' The same as the 40k lasrifle.
*'''Auxilia Lasrifle:''' Better than the 40k lasrifle because they have 30" range.
*'''Bolter:''' Better than the 40k lasrifle because it's an ARMOUR PIERCING ROCKET RIFLE. Not as impressive as it sounds, but you know it and you might just love it. Available to Grenadiers and Command Squads.
*'''Blast Pistol:''' available to most characters. It's S5 and twin linked, which for 5 points seems like a bargain, however it only has a 6" range and ''Gets Hot!'' So you might have little opportunity to use it.
*'''Hand Flamer:''' available to all of your characters and squad leaders. A good option since you don't have to rely on Ballistic Skill to hit anything and it adds to your overwatch. It is usually one if your more expensive options, but it adds more to a squad than a Bolt pistol or blast pistol, so it should always be considered for each squad sergeant.
*'''Laslock:''' 18" S4 Assault 1, so a straight upgrade from the Auxilia rifle, optionally becoming S5 if you have the right provenance.
*'''Shotgun:''' Compared to the alternatives is a shorter range but (relatively) strong rank and file assault weapon. Not exactly shooty enough for shooty armies (like most of the other options) nor slashy enough for slashy armies, but an option if you just have to deny charges and want to hurt them at least a little.
*'''Needle Pistol:''' Its a ''Poisoned, Rending'' pistol, not available to regular sergeants but can be taken by Force Commanders and Discipline Masters. At 5 points it should be the default option as it can be a threat to near enough any form of infantry barring Death Guard.
*'''Rotor Cannon:''' Just like what the Legions get, S3 Salvo 3/4 (thought it will be S4 if you use the right Provenance). Not very good here either, as it is further hampered by the fact that it can only be taken as a special weapon option in Grenadier squads where it competes with better options. Or by Servo-Automata, who can't even improve it using a Provenance.

====Melee Weapons====
*'''Augmented Weapon:''' An S4 close combat weapon, no matter what the strength of your model is. Can be bought for most characters, but grenadiers can have the whole squad take them instead of their close combat weapon. Still not great considering if you wanted a close combat unit, you'd have built your army with specific provenances to do the job. That said, Gene-Crafted isn't the only melee option so this does have a place, such as in tainted ferals or... Various ferals.
*'''Charnabal Saber:''' Only the Force Commander can take one, giving him/her the Rending rule in melee and +1 Initiative in a Challenge. It's cheap at 5 points and can be considered a throwaway option, but is outclassed by nearly every other option and if your opponent is decked out for melee you're likely going to die. The only situation where it is of any use is if you took the ''Gene Crafted'' provenance so your commander can now strike at S4 & I5 and have a shot against marine sergeants and lesser characters.
*'''Power Weapons:'''
**'''Power Sword:''' In most cases this is a bad option for militia, as you strike after Marines you're likely to never get a chance to use it. As with the Saber above, its function radically changes when you take ''Gene Crafted'', so now you hit at the same strength and speed as those Marines. Just avoid challenges, as you are going to die.
**'''Power Mace:''' A better option than a sword, because unless your opponent forgets to clothe his characters in highly artificed fineries, that S+2 and ''Concussive'' rule will help you a lot more than AP3 will.
**'''Power Axe:''' Probably your best option. You were going to strike last anyway so you might as well resign yourself to that fact. With a few swings this will likely cause wounds to anyone without an Invulnerable save.
*'''Power Fist:''' Only available to Force/Platoon Commanders. For five more points than an axe you can have a Fist, which wounds on a 2+ rather than the axe's 4+ ''(not counting Gene Crafted, where you could then even insta-kill a marine with your S8)''. However, the Fist falls into the points vortex which sucks up more points because you have to justify your investment: so as a ''Specialist Weapon'' you've got nothing to pair it with, so you need to buy Digi-Weapons or Master-Craft it to improve your attacks, then you'll need a good invulnerable save in order to protect it long enough to take a swing... It goes on, but you're still going to die.
*'''Tainted Weapon:''' specialist weapon CCW that causes instant death. Get your psykers to take it because it's cheap and they have no other option anyway, so you might get lucky. If your Force Commander has the option of taking it, you've bought ''Cult Horde'' and you need to give them a better weapon than this to take advantage of ''Hatred'' and ''Preferred Enemy'' - unless you've taken Tainted Flesh as well, in which case the combination of ''Preferred Enemy, Rending'' and ''Instant Death'' makes the weapon scarier than you think.... Especially against battle automata.

====Special Issue Gear & Armour====
*'''Flak Armour:''' Default for most units and characters. It's a 5+ save but you know that's practically worthless in a marine heavy environment like the Horus Heresy. However with the right Provenance, beefed up flak is as good as Carapace Armour. At least it's better than...
*'''Sub-Flak Armour:''' When you thought Flak offered as much defense as cardboard. Sub-Flak is more like wet tissue paper, offering only a 6+ save. Even ''Survivors of the Dark Age'' wont offer any relief cause you're only bumping back to 5+ ''(still useless)'' Thankfully only your disposable Levy squads wear this, so it doesn't really matter if they die.
*'''Carapace Armour:''' comes standard on Grenadiers and can be bought as an upgrade for your HQ units. DO THIS even if you don't take the ''Survivors'' provenance, it gives you an actual save against bolt weapons.
*'''Power Armour:''' you know what this does. Sadly 3+ is as good as it gets; it is not further upgraded using Provenances and you can find ways to get yourself a 3++ save instead, so buying it is strictly optional.
*'''Refractor Field:''' 5+ save for your Force Commander. Can be bought for your Platoon Commanders Enginseers or Discipline Masters.
*'''Iron Halo:''' only available to your Force Commander.
*'''Cyber Familiar:''' This is where it gets interesting: it adds +1 to Invulnerable saves and let's you reroll failed characteristic tests [[Fail|(but not Ld checks)]]. Your first option is to take it as a budget Iron Halo, as its five points cheaper than the Halo for the same save. Or you go the full nine yards and get the 3++ save for twenty five points. You need to decide if your Force Commander is worth that much, cause now you need to load up on even more gear to make your investment worthwhile. But at least this means you don't need to buy Carapace/Power Armour.
**Enginseers can buy a familiar too, but they also need to buy the Refractor Field separately, falling into the same points vortex as the Commander for only a single wound model.
*'''Nuncio Vox:''' only two ways of getting this in your army: either buying it for Enginseers or taken as a compulsory member of your Platoon Command Squad, so they'll rarely be seen on the field. It helps prevent deep strike scatter and spots for barrage weapons. Not a big deal because your army doesn't really deep strike, and Space Marine allies have these pretty much everywhere.
*'''Vexilla:''' available to your big Troops units for 10 points and let's you add +1 to combat resolution, as well as allowing you to attempt regroups normally when below 25% strength. Is it worth it? Ugh... Your soldiers are likely to die in droves in melee, but since your Provenances are nearly all geared towards getting you into melee you're going to want this on your side, if only to stop the pain from being laid on so thickly. If it ever helps you win combat then you've entirely justified its cost.
*'''Platoon Standard:''' only on your Platoon Command Squad, so it won't be a regular fixture in most armies. It grants pseudo-stubborn to friendly militia within 24".
*'''Infravisor:''' available to your Force Commander and your Recon squads. Grants ''Night Fight'' but makes you take ''Blind'' tests at Initiative 1. It's cheap enough but you really need to think about what to go with it, as Night Fighting never lasts past the first few turns. So make sure your Recon troops have Sniper Rifles and/or you attach your Force Commander to an artillery battery so you can get the most out of your early game advantage.

====Relics====
The Imperial Militia use the generic list of Dark Age of Technology relics everyone uses, but there are no specific ones to their army. So they don't get anything unique. Since they are restricted for IC use, the only ones with access to them would be the Force Commander or a Traitorous Rogue psyker, and both would be good recipients for such an item, particularly because the army relies on them much more than the Solar Auxilia does.

In a campaign you're only allowed one character with a relic which you'll be stuck for the rest of the campaign, so be sure of your decision. If the relic bearer is killed, the side that killed him can choose to play a Relic Hunt mission, where the winner steals (or recovers) the relic, even if it's a Legion specific one, but a Draw means that relic is effectively lost for everyone. Still, you can always opt to play a 'Relic Hunt' mission at the beginning of every campaign phase to [[Blood_Ravens|acquire]] FREE relics, where your war zone-assigned character must be deployed and thus miss all other missions played in that phase...but that way you can [[Adeptus_Mechanicus|hoard up]] on [[Blood_Ravens|relics]], even getting duplicates of the non-faction-specific ones, by rolling a D6 on the 'Relic Uncovered' table below. Of course, this only matters when playing missions instead of casual gaming, enjoy!

*'''#1 Nanyte Blaster:''' The [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo Grey Goo] gun of uncontrolled carnage!!! It's a S5 AP2 Fleshbane weapon, where if it kills anyone you center a large blast over the dead model on a die roll of 4+, causing a S5 AP2 hit to those underneath it. Unlike Volkite, each model who dies to this can cause ''yet MOAR'' large blasts on further rolls of a 4+. All you need to do is get one casualty and you can wipe out an entire unit! Smashing! Hilarious when it really works.
*'''#2 Warp Shunt Field:''' 3++ against shooting, however for every save of a 6+ (against direct fire weapons) the shooting unit suffers D6 S5 hits. This is the only risk-free defensive relic. Also hilarious if you get really lucky.
*'''#3 Phase Walker:''' Each moving phase, instead of moving you may place the bearer anywhere you like, counting as having just deep struck but with no scatter. If you move through a solid object you have to take a dangerous terrain check for EACH solid object you went through (including all models) so be wary of abusing it in city scenarios. Quite nice for Void Masters, who have Move through Cover, so feel free to abuse it. Too bad this leaves behind the rest of his unit, and commanders aren't known for being one-men armies. If you're up against an Assault heavy army though or are playing a Zone Mortalis/Cities of Death game it can make it's points back as your Warlord retreats through walls (and into another unit) so he can't be assaulted, like a panic button.
*'''#4 Combat Augment Array:''' Once per game, at the beginning of any of the controller's player turn, he may count any '''single''' die (only 1) rolled as an automatic 6 (Emails from FW confirm). However, he must also pass Toughness tests for each remaining wound. If he fails he suffers a wound with no saves or mitigating FnP rolls of any kind. A Cyber familiar can mitigate the danger by granting a re-roll on the commander tests. However, you're paying 35pts for '''one''' guaranteed 6 - nice combo with a Paragon Blade, but given that everyone strikes before you...[[Tau|do you really want to be in Close combat]]?
*'''#5 Cloaking Array:''' Once per game, at the ''beginning'' of ANY game turn you may make yourself invisible for that whole game turn (ie. on the 3rd turn both in your and your opponent's turn, thus starting on your enemy's turn if he goes first). You cannot be shot or charged at unless the enemy unit contains psykers or daemons, in which case the array immediately shuts down (so now ''everyone'' can hit you, not just the previous two). Unfortunately you cannot activate it while attached to a squad or if engaged in close combat already. You also cannot shoot, assault, move or ''do anything at all''. So your model stands on the same spot invisible but doing nothing during a whole game turn. Since you don't want your commander to be alone, pass on this one.
*'''#6 Void Shield Harness:''' Yep. You can get a [[Void_shields|voidshield]] for your dude. It's a large blast-sized shield, centered on your dude but protecting anyone that fits inside. Glancing, Penetrating and Destroyer hits will collapse the shield, but it can be restored at the end of your turn on a 5+, and with AV12 you'll be immune to most small arms fire. However, a result of Explodes! will overload the shield, disabling it for the rest of the game and placing a S6 AP4 Large Blast template centered on the bearer - that's '''Instant Death''' for your commander and his friends, who won't get their armor saves, so get the hell away from Meltaguns.

===Warlord Traits===
#'''Ruthless Tyrant:''' Gain +1 Leadership (to max 9) and the army may reroll Reserves
#'''Merchant Princeling:''' One infantry unit get better ranged weapons, and count their AP as one value better - ''so pick heavy support squads for [[Rape|AP3 Autocannons or Heavy Bolters]] or AP2 missiles'' '''Note:''' it can only be applied to a unit with the Infantry type - but not necessarily just 'provenance' infantry - so an enginseer with a cadre of ap2 phase-plasma fusils is possible.
#'''Beloved of the People:''' If the warlord ever dies, then the rest of his army gets Hatred from the remainder of the game. - ''Sucks if you took Cult Horde as a provenance''
#'''Marcher Lord:''' The warlord gains ''Implacable Advance'' (becoming a scoring unit in AoD games) and ''Stubborn'' while within 3" of an objective.
#'''Connoisseur of Alien Curios:''' Grab ''Fear'' and and ''It Will Not Die''
#'''Robber Baron:''' The warlord can voluntarily fail any morale check and may also re-roll Run or Fall Back distances.

==Unit Analysis==

===HQ===
*'''0-1 Force Commander:''' An Independent character with a relatively poor statline compared to every other unit in the Age of Darkness (such is to be a man in a time of giants), worse even than the Solar Auxilia's Legate Commander, but you don't want him for his combat skills, but because you NEED him in order to purchase Provenances of War, so you are going to have him. Furthermore, he can pay 20pts for the ability to choose his Warlord trait instead of rolling for it, so you can reliably pull some pretty powerful combinations like using the -1AP with your Heavy Weapon squads, which is the only one you'll ever pick because your choices are limited to the Militia Cults WL trait list only and the other five are balls. He's pretty customizable, starting with a 5++ that can be upgraded up to a 3++, and can buy power armour as well as a variety of melee weapons and pistols for those times you want him to pull his weight after you used your WT, but don't expect him to be a hero unit.

*'''Discipline Master Cadre:''' 2-5 near-Commissars, they get attached to other units and add +1 Ld ''(to max 9, and it is going to be nine anyway since their own Ld was eight)'' and allow for a LD reroll if they shoot some squad members. Oddly they're not as harsh as their 40k brethren, and while they cause D3 wounds to their unit, these wounds can be saved, although it could be argued that wild BLAMing is just as harsh as precise BLAMing. These guys may not be the compulsory HQ choice nor can any of them be the warlord, but your Force Commander was going to do all of that anyway. ''Back in the day'' your common Commissar had 2W base and a S4 weapon, and could buy a power weapon and refractor field at discount price.

*'''Auxiliary Platoon Command Squad:''' Six dudes; one commander who is basically there to get gear and nothing else, one nuncio-vox operator, one standard bearer who allows Militia units within 24" to discount casualties when taking morale checks ''(Stubborn aura, essentially)'' and three bodyguards, with the option to add four more of them. No orders because this ain't 40k, they also don't get heavy weapon teams. But all of the bodyguards in the squad may replace their lascarbines/autoguns with a variety of weapons, like bolters or heavy stubbers. Also, the Platoon Commander is merely Ld7 and the rest of the boys is Ld6, such was leadership in the Imperial Militia.

*'''Rogue Psyker''' ''(Cult Horde or Tainted Flesh only)'' ML1 psykers with two wounds, but a sucktastic BS2 so witchfires that roll to hit are generally going to be useless, so avoid them. If they are ever killed short of being "removed from play" then they get possessed on a roll of 5+, which becomes a 2+ if they were killed by losing a wound to perils of the warp, replacing the model with a a 3 wound WS5/S5 rending nightmare. These guys are miles better than the Renegades & Heretics version by being independent characters, they cause fear, have FnP, and can actually take proper psychic powers from Pyromancy, Telekinesis, Biomancy and Malefic Daemonology. One psyker per detachment can even be upgraded to an "Alpha" psyker, granting him ML2, WS/BS3 (instead of 2), three Wounds and Toughness 4 making him a far better prospect.
**The January 2016 FAQ finally updated a points cost for these guys, they now come in at 35 points for the basic ML1 psyker.
**You can even buy them a Tainted Weapon on the cheap, giving their attacks the ''Instant Death'' special rule. Note that this weapon gets lost if the psyker gets possessed since you had to "remove" the psyker and "replace" it entirely with the daemon model. Still, for five points a lucky wound can do some real damage on enemy special characters and if you rolled Iron Arm on biomancy or Fiery Form on pyromancy then you've created a pretty mean close combat unit.
**When choosing psychic powers, just be aware of the limitations of the unit. As mentioned, the poor statline generally means rolling to-hit on witchfires are going to disappoint you, but beams, novas and to a lesser extent, blasts are still alright.

===Troops===
*'''Militia Infantry Squad:''' Twenty guardsmen with auxilia rifles and shitty Ld. No platoons, just one squad per slot. The sergeant gets customisation and can take things like hand flamers and power weapons. Also the squad can replace their auxilia rifles (18" S3) for a variety of weapons, from different-lasguns (lascarbines or lasrifles) to assault oriented weapons (shotguns, laslocks, pistols for +1A). Oh, and they get a goddammed ''Super-heavy as a DT'', the Gorgon Heavy Transport. Have fun.

*'''Inducted Levy Squad:''' 20-50 conscripts with shitty BS2 auxilia rifles and shittier sub-flak armour. They have the same options as regular militia but just don't bother because they're here as fodder. Which is what they are fantastic at, because ''they never confer any points for their destruction'' like by kill points or by first blood, making them perfectly expendable. ''Back in the day'' however, <s>Conscript</s> Levy squads had a sarge of their own (to take challenges for the not-Commissar you'll add to them to make them Ld9), and could either upgrade their dakka to "decent" tier (lascarbine, laslock) or accept the fact BS2 is useless and get a pistol instead for +1 attack. And if they objected they could be given Discipline collars to make them Stubborn. Oh, those were the times.
**Puny as they look, Levy squads can be turned into rather scary melee units, as all mobs are. Especially in ''Cult Horde'' armies, where you now have a huge mob with 3 re-rollable attacks on the charge ''(4 if you also bought Feral Warriors)'', though unless you find ways of shoring up their leadership you should be prepared to lose them following the first round of combat because ''Stubborn'' isn't enough to save you from a bad leadership roll and being swept up in the advance which follows, so at least they were cheap and expendable. Combo ''Cult Horde'' with ''Tainted Flesh'' for ''Rending'' attacks and the prospect of causing ''Fear'' on certain 30k Legions. 50 mooks with multiple rerollable rending attacks will chew through nearly any target on the table through weight of numbers, including Primarchs and will never cost you victory points if/when they get wiped out.

*'''Militia Grenadier Squad:''' 10-18 veterans with BS4, carapace armour and auxilia rifles. These guys do well to replace their weapons with something else due to their increased accuracy. The remaining two spaces are made up by adding special weapon guys.
**If you've got grenade launchers in the squad, you can buy Gas and Fireburst grenades for them. Both are small blast weapons, Fireburst grenades are S3 and pinning so might be good as a trolling device, whilst Gas Grenades are Poisoned (4+) and Ignore Cover, the problem with Gas grenades though are that they have only AP5 so Space Marines and Solar Auxilia are getting saves anyway, making normal frag rounds either exactly the same or better for most situations, unless you are fighting against other Militia or Cult armies.
**These guys can allow you to have dick-swinging contests with the [[What|Tau]]. Grab Survivors of the Dark Age, Lasrifles, +1 Strength Upgrade and 8 extra guys coming to 140 points. Now lets compare to the Tau Strike Squad. Tau: BS3, 30" S5 AP5, 12/24 shots, T3 and 4+ Save. You: BS4, 30" S4 AP-, 18-36 shots, T3(4 with Abhuman Helot) 3+ Save. And you can add 2 Rotor cannons to that to up the number of shots to a grand total of 44. While the Tau do get markerlight support and could therefore [[Rape|annihilate]] your squad off the board, they can't take all of them on at once, especially when they have to worry about your supper cheap tanks/artillery. [[Troll|Don't forget that this squad is only 160 points tops.]]

*'''Fire Support Squad:''' your heavy weapon squads, just like with imperial guard, but as Troops choices with no platoon tax. Unfortunately as support squads they cannot be compulsory choices. They come in units of 5-10 teams and have the full range of guard weapons, including heavy stubbers and multilasers. This unit has awesome potential.
**Grab a unit of 10 Heavy Flamers and screw holding the line. These guys can move up the board and toast some motherfuckers because who said that heavy weapons need to stay still? Don't forget that [[Troll|all of these guys are 2 Wounds, 2 Attacks and have a laspistol + CCW]], so make for surprisingly good assault troops. [[Rape|Add in the -1AP Warlord Trait and teach Marines fear again]]. THIS should be the way you have them for any assault-based list, and creates awesome modeling opportunities.

*'''Reconnaissance Squad:''' Five veterans in flak armour and are a support unit. But they have scout, infiltrate, move through cover and the option to buy chameleoline. They probably cost way too much for a base squad of five men in flak armour. But they may replace their lascarbines with shotguns or sniper rifles for a flat cost, I wonder which one you'll choose? Their sergeant can also take a demo charge, which might make some interesting suicide bomber units <strike>in a cult horde list</strike> for any provenance other than cult horde because all snap fire all the time means no blast or template weapons sadly.

===Dedicated Transports===
*'''Auxillia Gorgon Heavy Transporter''' So, the Space Marines can get Land Raiders, Solar Auxillia get Dracosans, and we get a super heavy tank as our main transport? Seems legit. With 9 Hull Points, AV 14/14/10 and a 5++ save on the front (4++ against Blast and Template weapons) it'll be tough for you opponent to take it down without devoting serious resources to it (unless they get behind it, in which case it's as good as dead). It comes stock with a one-use Gorgon Mortar Battery (12-48" S5 AP5 Heavy 4 Blast, Barrage and Pinning) and two twin linked Autocannons, as well as coming with the ability to transport 40 dudes and imposing a -2 modifier to the Catastrophic Damage Table. It can spring for hunter killer missiles and Armoured Ceramite (for the ultimate expression of FUCK YOU to your opponent), as well as swapping the Autocannons for TL Multi-Lasers or TL Lascannons. It can also swap it's Gorgon Mortar Battery for two forward and two rearward facing sponsons which must all be the same type, either Autocannons, Heavy Flamers, Heavy Bolters, Multi-Lasers or Lascannons. However you'll only field it with a plan in mind as it costs 275 points base, meaning no spamming superheavies.
**Note: This thing ''is not'' Open-topped, so don't let your opponent fool you into thinking that. Not that it will matter to that Drop Pod full of Marines with Meltas, they'll punch through your paper-thin AV 10 rear armour like it's a game of [[FATAL]] even if you do get Armored Ceramite. Oh, but also note that, since it has lost open-topped, it's not an Assault Vehicle any more. So those 40 provenanced-up Cult goons might not be as useful as you think.
*'''Rhino Armoured Carrier''' ''(Survivors of a Dark Age only)'' It's a Rhino, you know what it does. Stolen from the Space Marines, it has the exact same options as the one in the Crusade army list, so look there for more info. Also note that it has the same profile, so it's BS 4. Won't be amazingly handy, but it's worth remembering.
*'''Land Raider Proteus''' ''(Survivors of a Dark Age only)'' Mwhahaha, my puny humans now have access to one of the most powerful tanks in the game. No forward assault ramp means no Assault Vehicle and awkward model placement, and it only comes with two twin linked Lascannons stock. However it's also the cheapest of the Land Raiders, and can take the ever-useful Explorator Augury Web as well as other useful things such as Armoured Ceramite, hull mounted Heavy Bolters/Flamers, Auxiliary Drives and a host of weapon options. However, these costs add up quick, and as the Gorgon is only 75 points more and (generally) much more survivable and can lay down more hurt, you may want to think about taking one of those instead.
'''Aurox Armored Transport:''' A [[Rhino]] analog, usable by Command Cadres and Grenadier Squads numbering 10 or less. Apart from using a Heavy Stubber (that can be replaced with a Heavy Flamer) instead of a Storm Bolter, costing 10 pts less and BS3, it's pretty much identical to the Rhino, but has no potential upgrades (even the dozer blade).

===Elites===
*'''Ogryn Brute Squad:''' 3-10 Ogryns with big sticks, flak armour and frag grenades. That's it. But the beauty of this in how they can be customised. You can buy power weapons, boarding shields or combat shields and get something equivalent to Bullgryns. Buy ripper guns and you've got normal 40k ogryns. You can even buy Heavy Bolters, that become 18" range assault weapons when held in their hands!!! However, the rules do say that each model may only buy one option from the list, so you cannot load up on cool shit, but you are allowed to mix and match. The only upgrade that is universal across the whole squad is Carapace Armour ''(which can be upgraded using Provenances to create [[Awesome|power armoured Ogryns]])'' which for a flat cost is always worth it. Consider what effect the army provenances will have on them before you build them, but the combinations are nearly endless.
**Unless your Provenance is ''Tainted Flesh'' forget Shields; a 6++/5++ invulnerable save at a cost of taking any improvement in damage output is not worth it. ''(Tainted Flesh works because they get enough rules to handle themselves)'' '''That being said...''' a single Boarding Shield in the squad counts as Defensive Grenades, making the whole squad resistant to incoming charges. Also, a 'frontline' of shields and 'rear rank' of axes works better than a pure unit of either. Cyber-augmetics plus shields give a 4++ in assault - pretty good on sonething as tough as an ogryn.
**Additional CCW is expensive at 10 points '''EACH''' for just one extra attack. If that's all you wanted remember that the ''Feral Warriors'' provenance gives them an extra attack a flat cost to the whole army
**Power Weapons are your most expensive option by far, but they also grant the 2 weapon bonus as well as beefing the unit with killy stuff. Axes become preferred here because even if you strike last, a model equipped with one is still likely to survive and beat down a marine or two. Maces tend to work alongside ''Gene-Crafted'' because of S8 and a chance at instant death, but a sword would strike at I4 as well so remains a good option. Kitting out a whole squad necessitates creating a Deathstar unit though.
**Lascutters should be avoided unless you are specifically trying to build up a set of Big Daddy clones [[Your Dudes|or something themed like that]], as they negate all the benefits of being an Ogryn.
**Guns are really up to you, as the models are already there for it. But having BS2 is not encouraging, massed S5 firepower can be found more cheaply and accurately in Fire Support squads or Leman Russ squadrons.

*'''Imperialis Auxilia Medicae Detachment:''' 3-6 guardsmen with medipacks and laspistol/CCW. No customistion beyond whatever provenances you take. You just deploy them separately to squads and get FnP. You are allowed to double up if you want to make certain a squad doesn't lose the rule.

*'''Enginseer Auxilia:''' one of the few squads that gains no benefit from your provenance, so it is what it is. You get 1-3 Enginseers and 4-8 Servo-Automata, which are basically more customisable T5 servitors that can take cool guns like phased plasma fusils or flamers. Enginseers can take invulnerable saves and graviton/volkite weapons if they want, and they can fix stuff and gain bonuses for each servitor with a servo arm in the unit.
**Enginseers are one of the few units that can take Augury Scanners, giving them ''Interceptor'' on Rapid Fire and Heavy weapons only, up to a range of 18". If you do this you'll want to create a counter-deep strike squad of Multi-Meltas or Heavy Bolters and screw over marine armies that depend on certain Rites of Battle ''(Yes, Marine Heavy Support squads can do this bigger and better, but Enginseers can do it from the Elites slot and at peanuts per model!)''
**This unit is particularly useful in a cult horde list as it's unaffected by the provenance's enforced snap-firing, meaning this is your only infantry unit that has a chance of hitting a barn door at range. Take phased plasma-fusils plus the -1AP WL trait and drink the tears of anyone spamming Terminators or MEQs in artificer armour. Do note however that augury scanners don't grant interceptor to Salvo weapons so your dream of removing a deep striking Cataphractii unit in its own turn with 24 S6 AP2 shots must remain sadly unfulfilled. What do you think this is, an Eldar list?

===Fast Attack===
*'''Arvus Lighter:''' Only marginally better than the travesty of their 40k incarnation in that they can take guns and use them properly; this makes them like flying razorbacks with twice the transport capacity. You can take them as dedicated transports for grenadiers and to be honest, it might be worth it here if you can stomach forking out for a resin box when you can have so many other things (why are you buying a Arvus Lighter this is Militia and Cults you could use a Tau Devilfish if you want). Since the Arvus won't last long with the amount of Dakka that 30k brings to the table. You may as well go full bore and shell out points for the twin linked Lascannons and the Armored Cockpit. Also should be considered, outside of Survivors of the Dark Age, the only non super heavy transport.

*'''Auxilia Sentinel Scout Squadron:''' almost exactly the same as the guard option, three to six chicken walkers with a heavy weapon, no plasma cannons but you can take a multi-melta. You can also take combat blades granting them +1 attack, but taking open topped AV10 walkers into melee is still generally not a good idea.

*'''Thunderbolt Heavy Fighter:''' If you have one, field it as these are the business. They start off at BS4 which means their considerable firepower is going to come to bear more reliably, which now includes Kinetic Piercer missiles, which while only S6, are AP2, armourbane and heat-seeking which makes them twin linked against other flyers. While you could swap them for hellstrike missiles, you'd be an idiot to do so because of the drawbacks of the ordnance rule, but if you wanted more ground attack then sunfury missiles can be bought which are AP3 large blast and blinding but get hot. For added goodies, they can buy strafing run, so your nose guns hit things on the ground with rerollable 2s, and a flare shield which reduced incoming firepower by -1 strength.

===Heavy Support===
*'''Rapier Battery:''' Your entry level artillery unit. You start out with quad multilasers which have all the sixes. You get six twin-linked shots at S6 AP6 at a range of 36" ''(6x6)'', so is very good at taking out infantry. You can swap this for a quad heavy bolter for free, which would be better against GEQ units due to the superior AP value. If you're looking for anti-tank then you can buy laser destroyers, which are 48" S9 AP1 twin-linked Ordnance, which are excellent even considering the the shitiness of the men firing them. If you want to annoy your opponent, then the most expensive option is the quad-mortar (thudd gun), which fires of four S5 small blasts each, so a battery of them will pepper the battlefield. While they may have poor AP and average strength for a heavy weapon, they can consume a chunk of time to resolve and give you a psychological advantage over your opponent as he gets frustrated with so many templates and wants you dead. Overall Rapiers are good and cheap, but at only Ld 6 and flimsy guardsmen crew they are going to fall over if something looks at them funny.
**Regarding longevity, remember that if the unit falls back, they abandon the gun which means it is permanently lost even if they regroup later. So morale boosting upgrades/provenances become your main priority. Don't worry so much about armour plating them, because the gun already has T7 and a 3+ save.
***Funnily, "Cult Horde" isn't as terrible for them because the quad laser/bolters can still snap fire twin linked, so can still potentially hurt something, yet because they are ''Artillery'' they are prohibited from declaring a charge, so can remain safely in position.
***"Alchem Jackers" can be a godsend, since it pins the unit when they suffer pinning instead of running away, meaning you don't automatically lose the gun, and ''may'' still be able to shoot with quad guns. While it has little benefit in melee, if your rapier gets caught up in close combat it's going to be dead soon anyway.

*'''Malcador Heavy Tank:''' bigger Leman Russes, also a fast super heavy vehicle that is not a Lord of War. You can upgrade it to AV14 on the front if you sacrifice the Fast rule, but you can also take a Flare shield which applies all over and is boosted against templates. These are great tanks, with a fair amount of customisation and make excellent support vehicles for even bigger baneblades or stormhammers.

*'''Battle Tank Attack Squadron:''' Leman Russes, everyone's favourite, chosen from the vanilla, annihilator, exterminator, demolisher and vanquisher flavours. They've only got access to Heavy Bolter and Flamer sponsons (which is still better than the Solar Auxilia, who get no sponsons at all), but hilariously they can replace the hull gun with a multilaser, which might be a good idea if you're taking an ordnance tank and just want a gun for snap firing, or even as a makeshift AA gun.

*'''Heavy Ordnance Battery:''' Immobile Earthshaker guns each with 4-8 crewmen who are subject to your provenance. If you're taking these hopefully your army has good leadership modifying rules since the crew only have LD 6 and will abandon the gun if they have to fall back. You can have Medusa guns instead which is more cost for the same risk. Either keep these WELL out of the way, or bump their leadership as high as you can.
**Unlike the rapier batteries, there is no way to snap fire with these guns, being both "Blast" and "Ordnance". So pinning the unit will effectively neutralise it. Taking "Cult Horde" with them makes you an idiot.

*'''Mutant Spawn:''' ''(Tainted Flesh only)'' oh shi- GLARBLBLBLBL... ''Ahem'' slightly lesser than the 40k chaos version, possibly because they started out as humans and not space marines. They don't get access to marks and have only I2, however these ones have IWND and Hammer of Wrath as well as being 5 points cheaper on a per model basis, albeit with a higher startup cost like everything in HH, but you can take them in squads of ten which makes them a very potent prospect in melee. Their mutation table has also been heavily modified; taking effect from the beginning of the game and '''cannot be changed'''. Ones give them only a 5+ armour save, but at least it applies out of combat. Twos make them reroll 1s for random attacks, bleh. Threes give them Rending, so hope for this one and you can possibly have a big squad of these tearing through virtually anything.

===Lord of War===

*'''[[Baneblade|Auxilia Baneblade]]:''' - Though outclassed by the Legion Fellblade, the Baneblade is still a nasty proposition to face. Sporting a Baneblade cannon, Autocannon, Demolisher Cannon and a twin-linked heavy bolter. With the option of two/four Lascannons and two/four more twin-linked heavy bolters ''(the sponsons don't come as standard here)'' optional pintle mounts, AND optional Hunter-killer missile, it is a rolling fortress of death.

*'''Auxilia Stormhammer:''' - Taking Dakka to a logical extreme, the Stormhammer is less a superheavy and more a rolling fortress bristling with guns. Its hull weapon is a TL Battle Cannon, and its main gun is a S9 AP2 cannon with shred and pinning. With the options to take a pintle-mounted multilaser or heavy flamer, up to 4 HK missiles(!), a coaxial multilaser, a hull lascannon on top of the battle cannons, and six sponsons, all of which are armed with multilasers by default (making it [[C.S. Goto]]'s dream tank) but can be swapped out for heavy bolters, heavy flamers, or lascannons (and the first two options are free), it can take on more targets at once than any other superheavy. (The sponsons are switched out individually, so feel free to mix and match however you like.) and the whole tank can buy targeters giving it a nifty BS4. In short, the Stormhammer is your best bet for a versatile superheavy that can fit any situation that you can think of.

===Fortifications===

===Age of Darkness Theme: Army of Dark Compliance===
Built from a blending of Legiones Astartes and units from the Imperial Militia and Warp Cults list. However, it is quite distinct from the "Sacrificial Offering" Rite of War in that it does not use up your allies slot, allowing you to take allies from a third source. But it does prevent you from using a rite of War, so you cannot layer on extra special rules.

However you are still privy to the insane customisation options presented in the Warp Cults list, and you are not prevented from taking any option from your Legion list either.

The "Age of Darkness" themes requires your opponents permission to use, however it is an easy theme to build an army around because there are few rules to take account of.

*'''Restrictions'''
**You build your army with units from both the Crusade List and the Imperial Militia and Warp Cults list.
**You must include a Space Marine Praetor, Centurion or Consul to be your Warlord.
***''Do note that to take any Provenances of War you'll also need a "Force Commander" as one of your HQ choices as well.''
**Your army is automatically part of the traitor faction.
**You cannot use Rites of War.
**"Legiones Astartes" rules that apply to models by virtue of being in the same detachment do not apply of Militia units.
***''That means the only way to get Militia units to benefit from Astartes rules would be to attach an independent character with special rules that confer to units.''
**Unless specifically noted otherwise, all units count as being part of the same list for rules purposes such as Transports, Warlord traits and so on.
**You cannot include more units from the Legiones Astartes list than from the Imperial Militia list.
***''This is your main restriction, which prevents you from merely dabbling in Militia units.''
**You may not include Discipline Master Cadres

*'''Special Rules'''
**'''The Warmaster's Due:''' "Tyrants Due" by another name, any time your Legion units are shot at which draws its line of fire through infantry militia units, you can add +1 to any cover save gained. However the militia unit then takes D3 wounds with no AP value, meaning your crap sub-flak conscript could take a hit from a Lascannon intended for a Space Marine and potentially survive it.
**'''Disposable:''' Any Militia units in your army may be affected the the "Disposable" rule, preventing them from conceding victory points for any reason when slain. It does however prevent these units from scoring or denying objectives so be sure and have enough Astartes units to hold on to objectives for you. You are not required to use this rule if you don't want to, but you must declare at the start of the game if you do.

==Allies==
A few notes about the list, since it interacts with other armies in different ways depending upon what Provenances of War they have taken.
*If they've taken Tainted Flesh or Cult Horde, then they cannot ally with Loyalist forces, though they may count ''Chaos Daemons'' as "Fellow Warriors".
*Cyber-Augmetics may count Mechanicum armies as "Sworn Brothers"
*Abhuman Helots only count Space Marine and Solar Auxilia armies as "Distrusted Allies"

==Tactics==
This army pretty much allows you to do whatever you want, although generally you'll be looking at infantry supported by armour and artillery. A large factor in how your army will play is what Provenances you take. Abhuman Helots, Survivors of the Dark Age, Cyber Augmentics and Tainted Flesh will all help improve the survivability of your infantry, while Warrior Elite, Alchem-Jackers and Abhuman Helots with Discipline Collars will make your guys less likely to run away so are highly recommended if you're not running Grenadier-only troops. There are ''a lot'' of Provenances that can improve your close combat game; Gene-Crafted, Feral Warriors, Cult Horde, Tainted Flesh and Alchem-Jackers with Frenzon all help you out in melee, although it's of questionable use in a Marine-oriented environment. However, only one Provenance, Survivors of a Dark Age, increases your range-game to any degree, [[Fail|which makes no sense at all]] considering that even with these buffs you'll get massacred by dedicated Marine units, but it's not supposed to allow your guys to go 1-1 with Marines, it's there to take it from a 3-1 fight to a 2-1 fight.

Your advantages include how cheap you are compared to other armies (seriously, even your [[What|Leman Russes are cheaper by 10 points]]), the fact that you can buff your infantry fairly easily with Provenances and Medicae Orderlies and the amount of armour and heavy firepower that you can bring to the field with artillery, Rapiers, Heavy Support Squads and Leman Russes, all of which are cheaper that anyone else's. However, this cheapness is balanced out by Provenances of War, making it not as spammy as it may initially seem.

Basically, what you want to do with these guys is find a theme to [[Roleplaying|forge a narrative]] on, and then base it round that. Want to have an army of clones that are little more than meat shields for your Dark Mechanimum army? Tainted Flesh and Cyber-Augmented are right up your alley. Want your humies to mimic beakies? Take Survivors of the Dark Age and load your Grenadier Squad up into Rhinos. However, as for competitive play it's not that good unless you [[Powergamer|really min-max]] your army, so don't expect a lot out of them.

Also of serious consideration is whether or not you want [[Ultramarines|Ultrasmurf]] allies to bring along Invictarus Suzerains to gain +1Ld to all your guys within 12" as well as bringing some hardier troops and better CC ability. Not compulsory but a good idea.

==Building your Army==

USE YOUR DAMN IMAGINATION! Only Renegades & Heretics have more customization. This army is about as customizable As they but less diverse both in the base units available and being restricted by the biggest source of customization being army wide. The units can take a startling rainbow of standard weapons, but like a rainbow, many of the options are almost the same. Its entirely possible (albeit better for friendly counts as games) to proxy a fantasy army, such as the Empire or possibly Skaven. Look at the stuff available on GW's website. Empire, Elf, Guard, Skaven, (some) Skitarii, even ORKS (with some converting) can work! Since many tournaments ban forgeworld anyway, look to other model sites if it suits your fancy. All of it works, all of its totally fluff friendly. WoC? Feral worlders. Infinity stuff? Technological advanced enclave. A WW2 model range? You get the idea. If you ever wanted to make an army thats truly "you", a one of a kind masterpiece, et cetera, this is for you. You may not exactly win, but you sure as hell wont be forgotten. Hell, make your army a bunch of chicks with swag armour and do a proto-sisters of battle army. Then piss people off and give them gene-crafted for Sister Marines, alchem-jackers with frenzon for RED RAGE sisters, or cyber sex gals.

[[Category:Warhammer Tactics/30k]]