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How do!

Question is in the title.

Sector Imperialis, what happened to it? It was a fantastic range of very cool buildings, with GW’s usual flair for incredible modularity. It came, it was great, then…it went.

But did we ever get a credible, ideally cited, reason why?

Happens to all of their terrain, very little hangs about in production for long.

I'm guessing that like all terrain sets, Sector Imperialis terrain was not manufactured in the UK? If so, it gets the same treatment as all other terrain GW sells, they make their manufacturing runs overseas, and once those have been sold, more will not be ordered.

Personally, I much prefer the other terrain sets. Problem with Sector Mechanicus was always that the amount of intact wall pieces was super stingy per kit. Making larger solid buildings required walls from several kits, and you were left with plenty of identical looking ruined wall bits. Didn't they think that customers could create their own ruined pieces from intact wall pieces instead? FFS man

It's not in any way an outlier, so why does it need additional explanation? GW sells most terrain kits for a year or two max, can be as little as 3 months.

Sector Imperialis was introduced in the Kill Team 2018 starter, had a few standalone kits and bundles, went completely out of print, was reissued in Kill Team Chalnath in 2021, and is out of print again. Business as usual. GW literally does not sell a single meat tree right now. How old are those?

From what I gather Terrain seems to sell poorly for GW so I think they only do limited runs of terrain and when that's done they just don't do more.

I'm guessing they just don't sell fast enough for GW to think that they are worth putting into long term production and cycling production runs over just doing more regular models. Esp since they might have to do fairly big orders to make overseas worth it.


Their best seemed to be the whole faction terrain feature they ran a while back; but I think that burned itself out a bit. Plus there were some silly ones. Like the Ossiarch terrain feature that's utterly massive and basically wants to be in the middle of the table every time.

In the end its like cards - we get one big wave; maybe another and then nothing. It's just more odd with terrain as you'd think GW would design some really awesome modular terrain setups as a big one time investmetn and then just keep bringing them back into stock and adding bits here and there.

 Overread wrote:
From what I gather Terrain seems to sell poorly for GW so I think they only do limited runs of terrain and when that's done they just don't do more.

But at the same time they have no issue tooling more terrain sprues per year than most factions get on their once in a lifetime big refresh wave?

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Overread wrote:
From what I gather Terrain seems to sell poorly for GW so I think they only do limited runs of terrain and when that's done they just don't do more.

But at the same time they have no issue tooling more terrain sprues per year than most factions get on their once in a lifetime big refresh wave?

Yeah and that's an oddity in itself. You'd think a product line that's harder to sell would get less attention. I can only assume they might be using short term moulds for them and perhaps the lower level of detail makes the moulds they use cheaper as well. Perhaps even producing them in China alongside the production as well (rather than tooling in Nottingham and sending them over?).

I can only assume that GW bank on the whole "new shiny must buy" marketing strategy and that the terrain just never sells powerfully enough to move out of that line of sales.

 lord_blackfang wrote:

 Overread wrote:
From what I gather Terrain seems to sell poorly for GW so I think they only do limited runs of terrain and when that's done they just don't do more.

But at the same time they have no issue tooling more terrain sprues per year than most factions get on their once in a lifetime big refresh wave?

It's because they know HBMC will buy every new terrain piece but he won't buy many of the same or a new faction every year .

 lord_blackfang wrote:
It's not in any way an outlier, so why does it need additional explanation? GW sells most terrain kits for a year or two max, can be as little as 3 months.

Sector Imperialis was introduced in the Kill Team 2018 starter, had a few standalone kits and bundles, went completely out of print, was reissued in Kill Team Chalnath in 2021, and is out of print again. Business as usual. GW literally does not sell a single meat tree right now. How old are those?

Wait, I'm confused - I thought Sector Imperialis terrain was the older one, not the tall buildings we got in KT18 starter and in KT: Chalnath? You know, the ones which had those not so tall walls, and came with street lights, small pipes and the big combo box was called "Imperial Sector"?

https://elementgames.co.uk/warhammer-40k-scenery/imperial-sector

Sgt. Cortez wrote:
It's because they know HBMC will buy every new terrain piece but he won't buy many of the same or a new faction every year .

I bought two sets of Killzone: Bheta-Decima terrain.

I'm hoping we can get that platform sprue in other boxes as well.

Not to yuck anyone's yum, but does anyone feel like the increased amount of GW terrain on tables is kind of a double-edged sword? The GW terrain looks great and all, but I feel tables are much more same-y these days. Especially when people are using tournament style symmetrical maps.

The game already has enough problems with being run. Non standard terrain doesn't have to add to it too.

Karol wrote:
Non standard terrain...

This implies the presence of "standard terrain".

What a horrifically offensive concept.

 Overread wrote:

I can only assume that GW bank on the whole "new shiny must buy" marketing strategy and that the terrain just never sells powerfully enough to move out of that line of sales.

it makes sense to a point
We know GW has the option to make cheaper moulds for limited runs, we also know that stuff is selling best on release and that their target groups buy the new stuff rather than other people start buying the old stock

in addition, the terrain rules for their games are the only ones not connected to models at all, and we already had the situation were the "official" terrain was not usable for the main game (40k) without modification or house rules because they kept the models around for several Editions

Karol wrote:
The game already has enough problems with being run. Non standard terrain doesn't have to add to it too.

Weird I've not really had any problems with "not standard terrain" so far, the nearest we got was barriers on the upper floor of a building - do you need to climb over those as well to move up? We simply implied some logic and said as long as the barrier/fortification/whatever wasn't too tall as per the walls/barricades rules and moved on. Apply logic Karol, use some reasoning, maybe even a little imagination and the table is a far more beautiful surface than what might as well be plain MDF L's.

Dudeface wrote:
Weird I've not really had any problems with "not standard terrain" so far...

Only the lunatics who drank the Kool Aid and now think that L-shaped symmetrical terrain is the only way to have a "balanced" game have this "problem".

 Wyldhunt wrote:
Not to yuck anyone's yum, but does anyone feel like the increased amount of GW terrain on tables is kind of a double-edged sword? The GW terrain looks great and all, but I feel tables are much more same-y these days. Especially when people are using tournament style symmetrical maps.

Yep, in addition modern GW terrain tends to be functionally simplistic. just discrete, sterile pieces of cover or elevation. I think games not just looked but played better when terrain looked and worked "realistic" and presented an additional puzzle on the board beyond "how far do I have to space ruins so my Knights can fit through"

Honestly the L-shaped symmetrical terrain fetishists that I call my friends all insist that GW terrain is the absolute worst and generally refuse to use it.

chaos0xomega wrote:
Honestly the L-shaped symmetrical terrain fetishists that I call my friends all insist that GW terrain is the absolute worst and generally refuse to use it.

Because even the simplistic GW terrain is too funky for L ruin fetishists, I assume? Same here with the 40k tourney grinders, tbh. Luckily with 10th being the way it is they're starting to get outnumbered even by MESBG casuals