A Digital Dawn?

I see Tim over at Plastic Krak has published a post pointing to the Tomb King army book being missing from the GW UK webstore. Apparently it has been marked as "Sold Out" though still available in other languages.

Tim then makes a thoughtful post on what this may mean going forward.

For what it's worth here are my thoughts on what we may see going forward.

The crux when you look at Warhammer is the economics. It just does not generate the cash that comes from 40k. That is obviously not unnoticed at Lenton and I think shay we are seeing now is an attempt to rationalize the product offering.

The economics can't sustain 15 races. The stock that needs to be carried in stores and the space devoted to house it are unsustainable IMO. What we are seeing now is a move to reduce this to 5-7 offerings. These can then be carried in a smaller store space and low selling models then supplied from web orders. So an essence a continuation of what we are seeing now.

However I think we will start to see another trend emerge. The latest 40k codexes tend to be vanilla but are followed with limited run variant codexes which then morph in time to DLC. I think we'll see increasing use of this methodology from GW. A limited set of sourcebooks - End Times look like 4-5 - to be followed in 9th with similar limited offering. This can then be supplemented by digital product  as people come around to this method of buying their GW (though the delay is GW rather than customer inspired).

If you check the digital catalogue there are lots of pointers to this. The Battlefield series and a limited number of items like Belakor.

With 40k there has been a more aggressive push into DLC as variant lists and codexes are pushed at every release.

So for me while these might be the End Times, they also herald the dawn of the WHFB digital age.