The Baneblade was on GW’s 43-item removal list, but now it’s back with a price increase; it’s hard not to look at the numbers behind the decision.
The Baneblade’s disappearance isn’t what hurts us the most. It’s what the decision says that is a bit concerning. This was a 11-sprue kit that sells for $197, lets you build eight different super-heavy variants with magnets, and that was one of 43 kits GW has marked for removal from the webstore. Sure, losing the kit is wildly disappointing, but the pricing logic behind the move is even harder to ignore, especially when you compare it to GW’s own pricing history.
This is still a kit that plenty of people want, especially front and center in the new Total War Gameplay video, so it’s not being removed for lack of interest. It looks like a kit that doesn’t fit the margins GW wants anymore, and if that’s really the reason, it says a lot about where the range could be headed and why they brought it back days later with a price increase.
The Baneblade is Back
Updated on July 28th, 2026, by Rob Baer with pricing equivalencies in local currencies and links to order yours.
- It’s Back: After being pulled from Games Workshop’s website, it will go up for pre-order on July 25th, 2026, with a $10 increase
- The take: GW pulling the Baneblade looks like a margin call, not a demand problem. People didn’t stop wanting the kit.
- The evidence: A six-sprue kit costs $197 while single-sprue kits of a similar size bring in much more money per sprue, meaning the Baneblade generates less revenue for more plastic.
- What changes if we’re right: Big multi-sprue centerpiece kits become harder to justify, while smaller boxes with higher margins become the safer bet.
Baneblade: $200 (USA), $240 (Canada), £120 (UK), €155 (EU), ¥28,500 (Japan), ₩260,000 (Korea), $245 (Australia), $300 (New Zealand)
Games Workshop quietly solicited stores for a new Baneblade product pre-order on Saturday, July 25th, that now costs $200.
That is $3 more than the “current” $197 kit that makes 8 different versions, but they have removed the extra set of sponsons and are selling them as an optional 2nd sponson upgrade set if you want to upgrade the Baneblade to have four side sponsons.
So, now the total new cost for the same kit that was $197 is $235 if you want the extra sprues, a 17.77% increase.
The increase seems to make sense only in the context that perhaps the new Astra Miliatrum codex rules will make the extra sponson weapons option or an additional upgrade like we saw with other 11th edition datasheets.
Previous Baneblade Box Contents (Image Source: TheBitzBasher)
Regardless, the kit used to come with 11 sprues inside and now only comes with nine. But the good news is that if you still want to make all 8 versions of the Baneblade, we have a tutorial on how to do it here using the Magnet Baron upgrade set.
Surprisingly, (or unsuprisingly depending on how you feel about GW and price increases) this was all omitted from the Sunday preview after being removed from sale the prior week.
We also noticed that the new Mark IV Astartes are $1 more than their counterparts in the GW store, potentially signaling that both kits are being released in line with potential price increases mirroring last October’s.
One other thing worth pointing out is that the new Combat Patrol terrain set is $170 and comes unpainted. Worse yet, you need two of these for one standard Warhammer 40k table, making just the unpainted terrain set close to $350, which is a big departure from the way they framed it during the summer preview and puts a big question mark on the quality and price of the pre-painted terrain that they will be offering this fall.
We will update this article as soon as we know more, but either way, Games Workshop has restructured how it lists items going out of stock on its website, so the rest of this article is definitely still worth a read.
GW Quietly Rewrote What Sold Out Even Means
GW used to have a Last Chance to Buy page that gave players a clear warning before kits disappeared. But now that page is gone, which lines up with a pattern of kits vanishing without much notice.
They also changed how stock status works. “Sold out” doesn’t always mean the same thing anymore. Click the info icon beside some products, and you’ll see a note saying the item is out of stock online and is due to be removed from the store (GW even left in the unfinished “due be” wording for now, but we’re sure they’ll fix the typo).
The same label now covers products that are coming back and products that are gone for good, all while the store consolidation continues to change how people shop.
It seems like a small change, but now it puts the burden on customers to figure out whether a kit is just temporarily unavailable or actually on its way out.
The Baneblade Math Just Doesn’t Add Up for GW
This is the part we don’t like admitting because the Baneblade is one of the coolest kits GW makes. You get six sprues for $197. Compare that to the Trygon, which is roughly the same overall size and sells for around $100, and is just one sprue of the same size.
That’s a huge difference, and it’s easy to see that GW makes far more money per sprue on the smaller kit. So, IF maximizing margins is the goal right now, then the Baneblade becomes much harder to justify because it packs a lot of plastic into the box without delivering the same return.
As much as we’d rather that wasn’t the case, the numbers support it. And let’s be honest, GW has never been shy about following the money, whether that meant the 2025 price increase or whatever 2026 has in store for our wallets, too.
Besides the Baneblade, here are all the items leaving the store this time around too:
| Name | Price | Badge Reason |
| Base: Caliban Green | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Celestra Grey | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Corvus Black | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Iron Hands Steel | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Macragge Blue | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Mechanicus Standard Grey | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Mournfang Brown | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Rhinox Hide | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Base: Wraithbone | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Citadel Tools: Knife | $35.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Here is Where it Will End Map | $65.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Horus Rising (Paperback) The Horus Heresy Book 1 | $9.99 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Layer: Moot Green | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Layer: Screaming Skull | $4.55 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Munitorum Varnish | $24.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| STC M Shade Brush | $8.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| General’s Handbook 2026-27 (Warlord Edition) | $100.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Gnoblars | $42.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Hedonites of Slaanesh Dice | $34.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Leadbelchers | $48.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Mournfang Pack | $82.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Ogor Gluttons | $60.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Tyrant | $39.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Warcry: Chaos Legionnaires | $65.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Warcry: Teratic Cohort | $65.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Mordor™ Battlehost | $96.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Adeptus Titanicus Warlord Paired Weapons Collection | $93.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Escher Champion with Power Hammer | $34.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Escher Champion with Shock Whip | $34.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Headhunter Kill Team Upgrade Set | $49.50 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Legio Custodes Aquilon Terminators with Infernus Firepikes | $92.50 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Legio Custodes Telemon Heavy Dreadnought Body | $91.50 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Legion MKIII Command Upgrade Set | $23.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Leviathan Cyclonic Melta Lance | $28.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Baneblade | $197.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Banehammer | $197.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Banesword | $197.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Ciaphas Cain | $48.00 | Sold out / limited – pending removal |
| Doomhammer | $197.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Hellhammer | $197.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Legio Custodes Telemon Arachnus Storm Cannon | $26.50 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Legio Custodes Telemon Caestus | $26.50 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Stormlord | $197.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
| Stormsword | $197.00 | Discontinued – being removed |
But Wait, Could a New Baneblade Kit Be Coming?
Sure, there’s always the chance we’re reading too much into this. GW has pulled kits from the webstore before bringing out updated versions or new variants, and some of the kits on this very list above are ones that were just replaced by new ones.
Imperial Knights are also a good example, as older boxes disappeared, then came back with expanded build options and refreshed packaging.
The Baneblade could also follow that same playbook. Maybe GW is reworking the kit, and adding another variant to the lineup, and rolling everything into a new box.
That said, we don’t really buy it. The current Baneblade kit already builds eight variants with a little magnet work, and there hasn’t been much pointing toward a ninth version waiting in the wings.
Could it happen? Sure, we’d love to be wrong. Based on what we’ve seen, though, this looks a lot more like GW trimming a kit that doesn’t fit the margins they want than clearing the shelves for something bigger.
This Is Where the Dream Kits Go to Die
Overall, though, this whole thing feels like more than one kit disappearing. If a six-sprue Baneblade at $197 isn’t worth keeping around, what does that mean for something like a full plastic Thunderhawk? A project like that would need even more sprues, and we’ve already seen that the amount of plastic in the box doesn’t determine the price.
That’s why moves like this make those big centerpiece kits feel less likely. It fits with GW’s recent FOMO strategy, and it puts the Baneblade alongside a growing list of discontinued kits. Not because GW can’t make them, but because they may not deliver the margins the company wants.
Final Thoughts on the Baneblade Removal
If you’re a GW shareholder, this is probably easy to understand. Higher margins help the business, and that’s what investors want to see.
For everyone else, it feels like another sign of where things are headed. If one of the biggest, most plastic-packed kits in the range can’t justify its place because smaller boxes make more money per sprue, then the future starts looking like more compact releases and fewer ambitious centerpiece projects.
Either way, you’ve been thinking about picking up a Baneblade; now may be the time, because GW has made it pretty clear this one isn’t sticking around.
đź”— Related Reads:
- Unleash the Power of the Baneblade in Warhammer 40k: Variants & Strategy Guide
- How to Magnetize All 8 Baneblade Variants From One Kit
- Gouging or Growth? 6 Wild Years of GW Price Increases
- Big 2025 Games Workshop Price Increase: What Changed
- The Games Workshop & Forge World Websites Are No More
- GW’s Failing FOMO Strategy: Warhammer Isn’t Hitting Like Before
What do you think GW’s real reason for cutting the Baneblade is, margins or something else?
I’ve had my Baneblade, the plastic one, since it came out, and it was a kit with no variants. I think I paid about $100 for it. I’ve been considering buying another one. Anyway, I missed the boat on this one, and hope the stats are still available to use when the Astra Militarum gets a new codex.
Well you know how I feel, using baneblades to build megabanes is my bread and butter.
I expect the Baneblade kit is getting re-boxed into the generic black box and going online-only. At worst, they’re going to break it out into multiple SKUs so players can’t spend $200 once, then use magnets to be able to swap to different variants. (Which would be distasteful, but understandable from a pure money-grubbing standpoint.)
If Games Workshop is foolish enough to squat the Baneblade, you will see the Guard community absolutely lose their collective minds. If you thought the blowup about the Steel Legion being written out was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. The only worse thing GW could do would be to squat the Leman Russ tanks.
You do realize that this isnt the first time a kit has been labeled “sold out online”, only for it to come back again, the stormbird is the most recent example of this, it disappeared from the webstore for quite a long while only to comeback, and the stormbird will be an even tighter margin than the baneblade kit will ever be, your also ignoring the fact that the baneblade kit has more then made back the cost to produce it, it has been around for long enough to make up its costs, we will also see this kit comeback because its one of the core, and along with the Leman Russ, most recognizable imperial tanks, its more likely an issue with mold , probably worn out, so GW is probably getting an new one tooled
You missed a couple – some of the kill-team/imperial agent boxes have dropped off the site too.
What is the deal with the paint colors? Is that removing them permanently or just because they’re now called Warhammer Color instead of the old Citadel Color branding?
Seems like it is permanent.
Doesn’t look like it is permanent.
A couple of weeks ago colours like Macragge Blue and Mechanicus Standard Grey were out of stock, pending removal on the Aus GWs site. The US was the same.
Now it’s saying temporally out of stock in the US and in-stock in Aus.
Also, Macragge Blue is included in the new introductory set, the ‘Getting Started with Space Marines’ set, the new starter paints and tools set and the ‘Intercessors + Paints’ set, all with the new “Warhammer Paints” branding.
Perhaps we will see the rumor/leaked Warhammer Tone Pro with a Primaris Lieutenant model with new colors as well this year.
I’ll be honest, the margin explanation doesn’t make a lick of sense to me. The cost of the plastic and manufacturing for the Baneblade is literally pennies. The cost of a model is primarily in the cost of creating the molds and all the stuff that happens long before it ever hits the shelf. At this point, the margins on the Baneblade are enormous. It doesn’t matter that the Baneblade has six sprues. GW could jam 100 sprues in the box and it would still be cheap to produce.
Maybe they plan on separating the loadout options between several boxed sets? Like for the Horus Heresy plastic vehicles, you get approxinately half of the configurations in the box, which doesn’t make other sense to me than to make the customer pay for 2 full tanks to be able to field a single vehicle with every option available.
Maybe this is what will be done, a split into two kits, one for tank options and the other for tank destroyer.
I think the Baneblade is the only 3-part mould that GW use, so it may have broken and the greedy management don’t want to spend a few hundred pounds to make a new one for ‘minimal’ profit.
It’s not “a few hundred pounds” in the OG days it would cost between $100,000 to $150,000 dollars each. The costs have gone down to like $60,000. Think of The Landraider and how old that kit is, and how bad it needs a new sculpt. Think of how bad it is assembling a Landraider.