Black Library Weekly: Sticker Shock

At what cost greatness...

The last time I saw so much furor over the question “what’s in the box,” the movie Seven was still in theatres. But Warhammer fandom had a lot of opinions this week as the new Space Marines Codex Limited Edition went up for preorder- and if I’m being candid so did I.

A Space Marine Codex doesn’t automatically scream Black Library, but as I like to highlight in my occasional series Black Library Bibliophiles¹ many of us book readers and collectors like to doll up their displays with all sorts of other goodies and physical memorabilia. With Games Workshop appearing to slow down a bit on the “Mega Limited Editions” of Black Library books in favor of boxed sets (such as the recent Mephiston one from Darius Hinks).

Here’s a list of Mega Limited Editions or other major physical-goods releases:

2017

• Gaunt’s Ghosts: The Warmaster, by Dan Abnett

2019

• Realmslayer Script Book, by David Guymer

2020

• The Helwinter Gate, by Chris Wraight

2021

• Sabbat Worlds Crusade, by Dan Abnett

• The Vincula Insurgency, by Dan Abnett

2022

• Ahriman: Exile, by John French

• Warboss, by Mike Brooks

2023

• The Fall of Cadia, by Robert Rath

• The First Founding, by John French, David Guymer, Guy Haley, Nick Kyme, and Callum Davis

2024

• Morvenn Vahl: Spear of Faith, by Jude Reid

• Interceptor City, by Dan Abnett

2025

• Trollslayer, by William King

It’s a pity we’re not seeing more of them, as these are some of my favorite things to decorate my Black Library Museum with. Here’s the shelf where I keep Dan Abnett’s Interceptor City (alongside Vagabond Squadron, by Robbie MacNiven), for example:

For that reason, I sat up and took notice when they announced that the Space Marines Codex would be releasing in a stunning Limited Edition alongside the regular release and a Collector’s Edition.

Look at that beauty! All told, the Limited Edition promised the following:

• The 223-page Codex with magnetic attachment for one of six different metal Chapter badges

• The six different Chapter badges, of course

• A metal Crux Terminatus icon

• Six full-color art prints

• A bunch of game stuff, including tokens and cards

Not only was this a stunning treatment for the Codex, but almost everything would find a home in my personal displays. All six of those Chapter badges, for example, could find a home with their respective faction’s shelf, alongside those lovely prints.

Last year, you may recall that Warhammer similarly released a set of four, Limited Edition Chaos Codexes, each themed on one of the four Chaos-pledged chapters of the Emperor’s Children, Thousand Sons, World Eaters, and Death Guard.

Each contained a similar slew of goodies in addition to the Codex, datasheet, and stratagem cards. Adding six metal objective markers, five art prints, and- perhaps most exciting of all- a quarter of a Chaos medallion that magnetically snapped together to form the whole if you went in on all four releases- there was plenty here to beautify the Chaos wing of any library or bookshelf.

Each released at USD $250, meaning if you wanted to assemble the full medallion Voltron-style, you’d be out of pocket $100. I’d naturally assumed the new Space Marine Codex would follow suit²; even if the Codex Space Marines was a standalone release, $250 seemed about right.

I was wrong.

Very quickly on Saturday it became apparent that this was going to run a lot more, and the usual community water-coolers were abuzz with the resultant sticker shock.

It was $420.

Impact Craters

I’m used to seeing arguments against Games Workshop’s business practices, from the price of things to their availability. Heck, I'd even started a biannual survey of Black Library Readers to help the community gauge this very thing.

If I can tweak a famous aphorism a bit, I’d note that a complaint can travel halfway around the world before a compliment even puts its boots on. Online fandoms are notoriously skewed towards the critical, leading to such pithy observations such as “if you put a twenty dollar bill inside each booster pack of Magic, they’d complain about how it was folded.”

That doesn’t, of course, mean they’re necessarily wrong. But generally speaking, based on the inaugural survey results most Black Library readers are fairly happy at the value-for-dollar proposition of the Black Library’s deluxe offerings, and while the Space Marine Codex Limited Edition isn’t specifically Black Library… it’s close enough.

What was particularly interesting here was just how widespread the reaction was- and not just in the Black Library circles.

Not all of the feedback was negative, of course, but the volume of outrage was especially high. And, at times, rather creative, as posted by u/WarsmithUriel:

The Zimmerman Defense

Black Library author Russell Zimmerman (Seven Ships, Auxilia) took a different approach, posting about the price on social media:

There’s a special, limited edition, Space Marine Codex that just went up for preorder, that costs $420.

Pot jokes aside, folks are up in arms about that “unreasonable” price point. But here’s the thing -- it’s absolutely reasonable, to me. Am I buying one? Lol no. Should you buy one? Probably not.

But for the people that WANT this, it absolutely makes sense. Like it or not. It’s not unreasonable or irrational, it’s perfectly logical.

First off, the price of their core codex has gone DOWN. The new edition’s core army books are softcover and compact, about $15 cheaper than prior editions where everything was automatically hardcover and fancy. They’re easier to tote around, they have MORE word count, they’re still full color.

This isn’t the basic army book. That’s cheaper than it used to be.

This isn’t even the limited edition army book. There’s a special collector’s edition model that’s lower than this one! A premium, hardcopy, version of the army book, that no one’s talking about. This isn’t that.

THIS is the super duper fucking fancy premium A++ wagyu all-the-bells-and-whistles version, that no one us buying to actually toss in a miniatures case alongside their plastic fightymans and take to a convention for tableside play. This isn’t a book. This is a collectible.

How much do they charge for a premium, gold-foil-pages, golden-bookmark, special-tri-fold-cover, special slipcase, special display-case, version of a limited run hardcover book?

How much do they charge for a special, one-off, metal crux terminatus medallion?

How much do they charge for a whole series of six magnetized bronze-finished Chapter badges, that connect to the hardback cover of your special book?

How much do they charge for the set of cards, the battlefield markers, the token/counter set?

How much do they charge for a set of six full-color high-quality art prints?

Now put ALL THAT TOGETHER, and voila. You end up at a $400+ price tag, yes.

Is it expensive as hell? You bet. And you’ve got to be a special kind of crazy/fan/rich to buy one, abso-fucking-lutely.

But it’s not UNREASONABLY so, when you remember that it’s a collector’s edition of a collector’s edition of a collector’s edition, the most indulgent, luxurious, version of a book being bought for an indulgent, luxurious, hobby in the first place. It’s not FOR regular people, to whom $420 is a lot of money. It’s a whole different product, for a whole different type of collector.

Zimmerman goes on to break down the different components of the release, asking how much each item might expect to command individually.

Comparable prints (fancy art prints of the old codex covers) are $25 each from the GW store.

Comparable magnets (which AREN’T a matching set that AREN’T designed to fit on the front of your book) are $30 each, from Starforged, who makes such official merch.

A Crux Terminatus medallion? Who even knows, but again look at Starforged medallion prices (where a Witcher medallion is $135 or so), and it gets pricey fast.

The cards/counters/markers are a VERY clear and known quantity, that set costs $35.

Pricing just the art prints, the markers, and the chapter badge magnets (not even talking about that silly-huge crux terminatus medallion), and you’re talking about $365 worth of collectibles/merch.

Yes, it’s stupidly expensive. But it’s not unreasonably so, because there’s every REASON to expect it to be, because it’s the elite, limited, collectible, version of something in an already-expensive hobby, AND it comes with $365+ worth of extra stuff.

My Takes

I don’t think Zimmerman quite hits the bullseye here in his valuations (for instance, the Starforged officially licensed accessories look considerably more sturdily-built than the magnets and Crux here), but the underlying principle is sound³. Here are some of my thoughts surrounding this as someone who was really looking forward to getting this for the Museum- and ultimately didn’t.

This isn’t about a Codex.

I saw a lot of comments to the effect of, “this is way too much for a product that will be quickly revised and then obsolete in three years.” There’s a reason there’s still a very healthy secondary market for historical Limited Edition tabletop game products, and it has nothing to do with the rulesets inside.

Do you think the person paying a steep collector’s price on this particular edition of the Deathwatch RPG rulebook is doing so because they want to run the game at their table, or because of how it looks:

Heck, I don’t even play the tabletop game, so the Codex itself was only ever going to be a lore book for me.

In short: you don’t buy this for the shelf life, you buy this for the shelf candy.

This is about more than a Codex.

Imagine drawing an invisible line down the center of a table, a line which reads, “if it’s not worth it to you, don’t buy it.”

On the one side of this table go all of the arguments against buying something that are specific to the product. That could be anything from, “it costs too much for what it does,” “I don’t really need or want it,” or any other product-based buying decision.

Once you’ve taken all of those out of the objection pool, a lot of what is left behind are broader concerns about consumer emotion and sentiment. Thoughts about how much things should be priced at or in what quantities they should be produced, outrage at corporate greed or FOMO, and the like. For these consumers, they have a boundary around what corporate behavior is acceptable and what is predatory or exploitative.

For many, the price of the Space Marine Codex Limited Edition was a gross violation of that sort of tacit social contract. There’s a certain range of behavior from companies within which their operations will feel to many like they are valued as customers. Go outside of that with a “cash grab,” and many instead begin to feel like resources to be exploited.

Companies make money.

But that’s just it, though. Companies do exist to make money, and companies that don’t soon cease to be companies at all. A strong balance sheet is one of the surest ways to preserve both your going operations as well as directional independence. Is there anyone who looks at Magic: the Gathering under HASBRO and says, “you know what Warhammer really needs?⁴”

It’s not a blanket defense of Games Workshop to note this; companies always have to balance their operations with consumer sentiment. If tomorrow they added a zero to every item on the webstore, for instance, they’re not suddenly going to make ten times the revenue. And indeed, try to boil the frog too fast and it will hop out of the pot.

But I don’t put a lot of weight in sentiments that say Games Workshop is “greedy,” because that’s the business of business. I am more likely to take issue with an argument that says, “the negative impact of this item’s pricing will offset the marginal gain of releasing it at that price point.” Now that’s a conversation, but not one I’m seeing much of in the wake of this.

Finally, these are luxury goods.

This, to me, is the most important point. Warhammer books are luxury items, so it’s difficult for me get behind arguments that appear to treat them as necessities (though it pains me a bit to say this, because to many of us books are pretty necessary for life’s enrichment). But just as I say not every book needs to appeal to every reader, nor must every product appeal to every consumer. It’s okay to not be a part of every target audience.

Indeed, as Zimmerman pointed out the book cost of the 11th Edition Codexes have gone down, making them more affordable than before.

At time of writing (Monday afternoon), the Limited Edition Codexes are still available on the US webstore. The $100 Collector’s Editions are sold out. That seems relevant somehow, but the degree to which it matters will depend on how quickly the remaining stock sells out. If it takes another week to do so, then it’s not a significant pain point. If we’ve still got available stock a month or so on, well, that’s a different matter.

We won’t boil the ocean on this today, but the ongoing dialogue is a very interesting one and it’s one we see here amongst Black Library readers and collectors with regularity.

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Back to School

This weekend will see a number of academics, scholars, and experts descend on the Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany for an annual conference. You might be surprised to learn that the area of focus each year is Warhammer.

This is the third year in a row the Warhammer Conference has been held, and this isn’t just a fancy excuse for folks to get together and wargame⁵. Seriously, take a look at a few of the presentations:

• Never Going Home: Space Marines, Soldiery, and the Indelible Mark of War.

• Girard’s Scapegoat Mechanism as Resolution of Mimetic Crises in Warhammer 40,000

• Mathhammer vs. Narrative Play: Ludonarrative Dissonance on the Tabletop

• Ruined, Infinite, Sublime: The Aesthetics of Warhammer 40,000 as Baroque Accumulation

• Skulls, Servitors, and Sustenance: The Work of the Dead and HumanRemains in Warhammer: 40,000

• The Zen of WAAAGH!: Deconstruction, Reconstruction, and Positive Satire in the Orks of Warhammer 40,000

• The RIPPLE Effect in the Inquisition: Strategic Placement Through Dan Abnett’s Eisenhorn and Ravenor

If you’re cut from similar cloth as me, you might need a moment to pick your jaw up off the floor. And while most of the events are in-person, they will also be streamed online FREE. You can find the schedule and links here:

• Saturday’s events

• Sunday’s events

And just to bring it back to the Black Library for a sec, here’s a presentation from the inaugural conference by Victoria Hayward, author of my 2024 Book of the Year, Deathworlder. Entitled “The Jungle Made Us: An Author’s Reflections on Writing Catachan,” I’d love to see more Black Library writers jumping aboard to do the same for future conferences!

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Arrivals & Departures

In this section I look at what’s coming up around the corner (Arrivals) and what’s landing on bookstore shelves (Departures).

Arrivals

I don’t actually deserve any of the credit, of course, but I’m enjoying the cosmic coincidence that has been seeing a dambreak of Warhammer fantasy after asking why we hadn’t seen much from it back in early August. First it was Blood of the Godeater by Noah Van Nguyen, then Shadow of the Silver Wolf by Evan Dicken. And now this week we get the exciting reveal of Gary Kloster’s next story, Shadow of the Silver Wolf.

This is the third Neave Blacktalon story, behind 2018’s Blacktalon: First Mark by Andy Clark and Liane Merciel’s 2024 follow-up, Blacktalon. Debuting in 2023, she was also featured in the Blacktalon animated series on WarhammerTV.

While Kloster has dabbled in Necromunda, the Horus Heresy, and Warhammer 40K since arriving at the Black Library in 2020, Age of Sigmar has been something of a specialty including the recent Queen of the Rose Throne and 2024’s Skaventide.

Departures

Both Blackheart: Claws of the Maelstrom by Marc Collins and Voice of Command, Richard Swan’s novel debut arrived on store shelves this week. Blackheart: Claws of the Maelstrom also arrived in its striking Special Edition form as well!

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ICYMI

Here’s what’s been going on this week for Warhammer content!

Warhammer Wordforge

• This week’s Black Library feature was a review of the audiobook for Daemonslayer, by William King. I listened to loads of Warhammer audiobooks on my drives to and from Houston, and still have a healthy backlog of reviews to come!

• In Warhammer RPG Weekly, we looked at the concept of anticipation management. How do you keep your customers excited at your new offerings, and what could Cubicle 7 Games learn from Games Workshop?

• Finally, Trench Crusade Weekly examined two recent business decisions from Factory Fortress that might have flown under the radar, and what it portends for the future of the game!

Tabletop Battles

• This week’s Lore Friday was my review of Robert Rath’s The Wicked and the Warped. I didn’t expect to write a review as critical as I did when I first cracked open the book, but while this one was a miss for me, it was a hit for many others for the exact same reason.

• While this would normally have been a Black Library Readers’ Hall of Fame weekend, the massive crush of new features around the new Space Marines Codex pushed it back a week on the publishing schedule. No harm done, it will be up this Saturday with the winners of 2017!

Warhammer Community

• The mothership was all about the Big Autumn Preview Show this week, which didn’t have any Black Library content in it. It never fails that many of us get our hopes up, but generally speaking if you don’t see a Black Library logo in the marketing collateral, you’re not going to see any new books⁶. That said, there were some things to be excited about (beyond just the amazing new models):

  • The new teaser trailer for the upcoming Astartes II animated series

  • The teaser trailer for another WarhammerTV animated series, this one set in Age of Sigmar called Arkanaut.

  • The announcement of a new roleplaying game set in Necromunda

• Finally, this week’s Pages from the Black Books download covers the battles around Nostramo Sector during The Scouring. Ave Dominus Nox, baby!

WarhammerTV (paywalled)

• Nothing for the Black Library this week.

Around the Webway

• Arbitor Ian and Mira Manga dropped the latest Warhammer Book Club episode this week, looking at Dan Abnett’s The Unremembered Empire.

• Not specifically Black Library related, but here and there I’ve talked about some of the different literary awards that Black Library authors have been nominated for. At Boundary’s Edge did a terrific job rounding up the big players for this year, so if you wanted to learn more about them all in one place (and learn who won this year), make sure to check it out.

  • They also have their own annual awards, the Boundies, at the end of each year- and three Black Library books won last year including Justin D. Hill for Hell’s Last.

Cold Open Stories

• Lots of excitement this week! First up, a winner was declared in the most recent fast fiction contest, “Laughing Matters,” with Taylor Araujo’s incredible Commissar Delecta’s Moment of Heroism taking the crown. I Had a chance to read an extended version of the story and it’s absolutely hilarious. You can see- and read!- all of the winners here.

• Then we’ve got the announcement of the next flash fiction contest, “Love in the End Times.” Here’s a chance for all you clamoring for grimdark romance to put pen to paper and make it happen. “For this Fast Fiction writing competition, we want you to explore affection, devotion, and connection through the lens of Storge, Philia, Eros, and Agape. We aren’t looking for cheap romance tropes or fourth-wall-breaking self-insert romances – we want the raw, tragic, bizarre, or profound bonds that bloom on the precipice of annihilation.”

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Quick Hits

• John French (Ahriman: Sorcerer, Dropsite Massacre) is always on my shortlist of, “reasons you should sign up for author newsletters.” This week we were treated to a brand new short story, right in our inboxes! A story “about a community growing in the husk of a dead city. It’s about having somewhere to sleep. It’s about ghosts.” Want to read it? Here you go- and don’t forget to subscribe!

• A list entitled Ten Great Sci-Fi B-Movies is always going to catch my eye, but it becomes a must-read when it’s from the desk of Kim Newman (Drachenfels, Beasts in Velvet). He’s picked some great cuts in this piece he wrote for the British Film Institute.

• The short fiction anthology Thunderbirds: Hidden Dangers, International Rescues is now up for preorder, edited by none other than James Swallow (The Flight of the Eisenstein, Nemesis).

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Coming Attractions

Here’s a list of the known upcoming releases from the Black Library based on the available preorder information we have. As always, take all of this with a grain of salt unless it’s Games Workshop-confirmed.

This section will be updated weekly in this column, and anything in bold has been added (or updated) this week.

Upcoming but Undated

• Cold Covenant, by Peter Fehervari

• Crucible of Fire, by Tom R. Pike

• Raptors: War and Shadow, by William Crowe

• Blood of the Bastion, by Evan Dicken

• Shadow of the Silver Wolf, by Gary Kloster

Current PODs in Production

• Hive, by Dan Abnett (Special Edition, estimated deliver-by date of 11/26)

Upcoming in 2026

• Dawn of Fire: Crusade of Vengeance (paperback, 10/3)

• Helbrecht: Sin of Hope, by Mike Vincent (hardcover, Special Edition, 10/3)

• Master of Rites, by Rob Young (paperback, 10/3)

• The Sundering, by Gav Thorpe (paperback, 10/3)

• Words of Waaagh!, by DK Books (hardcover, 10/6)

• The Sundering, by Gav Thorpe (paperback, 10/6)

• Auxilia, by Russell Zimmerman (paperback, 10/20)

• Dropsite Massacre, by John French (paperback, 10/20)

• Apostle, by David Annandale (paperback, 10/20)

• Death Rider, by Rhuairidh James (paperback, 11/19)

• Ghost Legion, by Mike Brooks (paperback, 11/19)

• Chem Dog, by Callum Davis (paperback, 12/17)

• Ghazghkull Thraka: Warlord of Warlords, by Denny Flowers (paperback, 12/17)

• Ashes of the Imperium, by Chris Wraight (paperback, 12/17)

Thanks again for joining me for all the going’s on in the Black Library, and see you next week!

1. Foreshadowing alert!

2. Not only that, but I was expecting GW to do (at least) three more Codexes in a similar fashion. After all, if there was demand for four of these releases last year, why not run it back for 11th Edition?

3. Mostly. One point I’ve seen raised in the community that I think has legs is in comparing the contents of this box to the contents of previous, comparable offerings which were offered at a lower price point. Of course, those sorts of comparisons require a closer look (adjusting for inflation, apples to apples comparisons, etc).

4. This isn’t the fairest comparison, as Wizards of the Coast was looking for a suitor with the logistical reach to manage its ballooning growth. But you get the idea.

5. Not that anyone should need a fancy excuse to do that, anyway!

6. Some of the confusion here stems from the fact that Games Workshop refers to things like Codexes and other collections of printed material bound along one edge are also considered ‘books’ (the audacity!), so they may refer to books being a part of the reveals. If you don’t see a Black Library logo, don’t get your hopes up. I think we’ve had all of one “surprise” reveal. They’re still fun to watch, though!