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I'm hoping that AoS is a huge hit and GW does the same to 40K. Simple rules, free codices and free rules would be great. I'm guessing the chances of that are slim...

BUT -- what if AoS is a tremendous success - could it happen?

Mez

Dear god I hope not. I also doubt AoS will be a huge success but who knows. Currently all my fantasy stuff is worth jack squat on fleabay.

If they do, I hope it's a companion piece. That being said, I doubt they will because 40k as it sits is still selling by the bucketload. Fantasy was 13% (IIRC) of their total revenue, hence the giant shakeup.

For what it's worth though, AoS is selling like hotcakes in my area, so who knows.

Robisagg wrote:

For what it's worth though, AoS is selling like hotcakes in my area, so who knows.

It's doing really well here too. The reaction of most players is that the game is "fun". But I think each area is different.

Fun is something 40K hasn't been in quite some time. Going back to more of a RT model would potentially isolate many, but it would make the game a lot more fun - if you have the right opponents. It seems like most criticism of Age of Sigmar is just solved by playing with different opponents.

But I bet most 40K players weren't even born when RT came out. That was a different time.

Mez

Yah AOS is selling really well here at my store (36 starter sets so far).

Honestly it does make the games pretty enjoyable as long as you don't think hard on balance. I play pretty competitively on 40k though, but I think this is a huge first step for GW.

By the time they do this to 40k, I would hope they work out the kinks of this release. A 20 page main rulebook for 40k would probably be a sweet spot.

Great? How the hell is having godawful rules, no points system, entire armies squatted, terrible fluff, boring models, and completely killing any real strategy "good"? AOS is complete gak, if it came to 40K I'd want to see nothing but GW finally implode and go bankrupt, thus hopefully allowing some other company to pick up the 40K IP rather than have the entire model range wiped out for incredibly generic models.

Also, just because something is free doesn't make it good. The trash outside a restaurant is free, doesn't mean you should it- it's still garbage.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Great? How the hell is having godawful rules, no points system, entire armies squatted, terrible fluff, boring models, and completely killing any real strategy "good"? AOS is complete gak, if it came to 40K I'd want to see nothing but GW finally implode and go bankrupt, thus hopefully allowing some other company to pick up the 40K IP rather than have the entire model range wiped out for incredibly generic models.

Also, just because something is free doesn't make it good. The trash outside a restaurant is free, doesn't mean you should it- it's still garbage.

The consensus is that even if it were to happen it would supplement rather than supplant 40k. AoS happen because Fantasy sales dropped so drastically low that it demanded something of a radical change; when individual 40k armie's sell more minis than all of Fantasy that's a problem. AoS for its shortcomings is an entry level game, so if you've been playing for years and it doesn't appeal to you its because it's not meant to. For years people wanted games that were entry level, that required fewer minis, and where the rules were simple and free. This game is now one of the cheapest miniature games to start playing. So even if it sucks, it's the first edition. First edition fantasy sucked, so play this provide good feedback and hope they incorporate the changes as quickly as possible... Or not.

I think the rumored Heresy era plastics and mini game that those are associated with are gonna be GW's 40k -AoS style game.

 aka_mythos wrote:
I think the rumored Heresy era plastics and mini game that those are associated with are gonna be GW's 40k -AoS style game.

I could get into that.

GW only ax'd fantasy because it wasn't making them money.

 Anpu42 wrote:

 aka_mythos wrote:
I think the rumored Heresy era plastics and mini game that those are associated with are gonna be GW's 40k -AoS style game.

I could get into that.

Ditto, especially if the minis could pull double duty in 40k

I doubt 40k will be AOSed, but at the same time it's a indicator as to GW's thinking.

The Canadian we store is sold out of tactical marines. I think 40k is safe.

Don't see them making sweeping changes to 40K like they did to fantasy.

However, I'm not sure if GW will Stormcast the Space Marine models. I like the current SM line but wouldn't be opposed to AoS scaled marines - which I think look more truescale.

Seems to me all GW had to do to "fix" FB was cut their exorbitant unit prices and update a few army books.

I bet AoS would be blown completely out of the water by a Brettonia army book and updated model range. A Skaven army book would have trounced AoS total sales in one day.

Couple that with an across the board percentile discount on all WFB products and you would have had a recipe for instant revitalization. Even the neckbeards with full blocks of Chaos warriors would have gone apeshit for reduced prices.

Just look at the SM release. They did what, exactly to the new ASM kit, change a pose, slap an Aquila on a kneepad? They even jacked the price and no one batted an eye.

Just imagine how many feths would actually have been given. As it stands now? Well gak, we all know the new toys are gonna be more expensive, they have to recoup those "lost" army book sales somehow!

Compare A.O.S objectively to other free rule sets for fantasy battles.Then tell me it is a good move.

Or even compare A.O.S to the rules for Mordhiem or LoTR for more narrative focused gaming .

Then you may see why so many gamers are being negative about A.O.S rules...

I'd very much welceome a skirmish ruleset for 40k with more realistic rules and customisation options for individual squadies.

However if gW did realease this, it would be as a supplement / sub-game. Given that their development of the 40k ruleset, product line and manufacturing hardware has been to cater for bigger armies, it's very unlikely that they would suddenly change to a game that requires only two dozen models a side. It'd axe the level of models they'd sell which would be financially fatal to them.

The whole AOS has actually stopped me buying anything GW for a while, I was tempted to get a reaver titan or finally start a mechanicus army but who knows what will happen in a few years?

Look back 12 months, most fantasy posts were people looking forward to 9th edition and how it could be set in a more desperate time like 40k, then the end of times hit and people seemed to be into fantasy again.....then this BS stuck pretty much kicking all those players in the face.

 darkcloak wrote:
Seems to me all GW had to do to "fix" FB was cut their exorbitant unit prices and update a few army books.

I bet AoS would be blown completely out of the water by a Brettonia army book and updated model range. A Skaven army book would have trounced AoS total sales in one day.

Couple that with an across the board percentile discount on all WFB products and you would have had a recipe for instant revitalization. Even the neckbeards with full blocks of Chaos warriors would have gone apeshit for reduced prices.

Just look at the SM release. They did what, exactly to the new ASM kit, change a pose, slap an Aquila on a kneepad? They even jacked the price and no one batted an eye.

Just imagine how many feths would actually have been given. As it stands now? Well gak, we all know the new toys are gonna be more expensive, they have to recoup those "lost" army book sales somehow!

I've seen more people buying AoS starter sets than I've seen buy any WHFB kit in the last two years. So I don't think even a complete overhaul of Bretonnian miniatures and a release could top it.

The problem with Fantasy was bigger than just the price of kits or rules. WHFB had gotten to the point that to have a viable army required you to buy so many more models and it simply reached the point where that barrier to entry was too prohibitive for people just starting out. Even still for all the effort the vast majority of models only contributed to the game as wound counters with a few random heroes contributing more than all those other minis combined.

AoS has problems, but it solves the systemic issues that WHFB had that really couldn't be resolved with just an update.

Whilst I doubt GW will go full AoS with 40k, the design philosophy AoS is built on has been creeping into 40k for quite some time now. Unbound, allies and LoW/Escalation all seem to show GW moving 40k in the direction of AoS, whilst still keeping it's core (seeing as it's still their big money maker). I too would like 40k to be more streamlined, I'd rather they do that by reverting to 5th and ditching most of the randomness 6th brought as opposed to pulling an AoS and dicting everything and pumping out what, in my opinion, is a half finished mess

 Wyzilla wrote:
How the hell is having godawful rules

Entry level game. And a first edition one at that. It's not meant to be a hugely deep and intricate game like warmachine or infinity. Go there if you want that. And for what it's worth, I don't like the aos rules but then again I'm not the target audience.

 Wyzilla wrote:
, no points system

Not as big a deal as you'd think. Plenty historicals (eg hail Caesar)don't use points values at all. Co operative mission design and army selection goes a long way. Along with themed and scenario based play. Your responsibility as a player doesn't 'just' encompass what you bring to the board. It's that kind of 'blind' list selection and attitude to gaming etiquette that holds that you are only responsible for your army, and he is responsible for his that causes a lot of the problems in the first place. Gaming can be so much more than 1500 points of x versus 1500 points of y randomly meeting in the wilderness, followed by 'roll scenario and go!'

Sure, you can put down a dozen dragons to your mates dozen Orucs. But should you? By all means, but you're gonna run out of friends and games very fast.

 Wyzilla wrote:
entire armies squatted

Because they were generic and boring? To be fair, generic high fantasy has lost a lot of its appeal. And It's not the first time gw has squatted something. Wfb had run its course. It's as simple as that. One a macro scale, very few people were interested in it.

 Wyzilla wrote:
terrible fluff

Unfair statement. It's been out for three weeks. It takes years for settings to start to feel 'alive'. Give it a bit more time to develop, and then you can talk about terrible fluff.

 Wyzilla wrote:
boring models

I don't care for them personally, but that, like yours, is a subjective preference. Enough people seem to like them...

 Wyzilla wrote:
and completely killing any real strategy "good"?

Entry level game?

 Wyzilla wrote:
AOS is complete gak, if it came to 40K I'd want to see nothing but GW finally implode and go bankrupt, thus hopefully allowing some other company to pick up the 40K IP rather than have the entire model range wiped out for incredibly generic models.

To be fair, the 40k IP is similarly over rated.

Whfb wasn't generic, it had tons of personality and a beautiful gritty world of rats forming armies and toad magicians.

 Wyzilla wrote:
Great? How the hell is having godawful rules, no points system, entire armies squatted, terrible fluff, boring models, and completely killing any real strategy "good"? AOS is complete gak, if it came to 40K I'd want to see nothing but GW finally implode and go bankrupt, thus hopefully allowing some other company to pick up the 40K IP rather than have the entire model range wiped out for incredibly generic models.

Also, just because something is free doesn't make it good. The trash outside a restaurant is free, doesn't mean you should it- it's still garbage.

I agree 100% with everything about Age of Shareholders and I hate it to the bone, it even made me stop buying 40k for the moment as I despise GW so much.

However, rebooting just rules AoS style wouldn't hurt that much as in whfb imo as they are already simple in 40k. If they kept vehicles having weaker sides/ rear and upped movement ranges, the game could actualy gain in tactics department. Ofc points or gtfo though.

As for codieces, if they stopped releasing them a year ago, I would cry. Now with weird formations and most importantly cartoonish deviant arty artwork, I cant wait for that to happen tbh.

Viable army?

Who created that problem? GW for making a game that features massed battles or the players for refusing to play smaller games?

I don't know about you guys but IoB took all of two real purchases to bring both armies up to a "viable" standard. Even without buying anything that kit was still playable.



And who said starting WFB required a massive army? The meta? Pfft!

And make 40k die a horrible death?
Maybe, i play 30k so i'd be cool with it. Like i've been saying for some time: it'll become like D&D - which edition do you play? 6.5th

 Mezmaron wrote:


It's doing really well here too. The reaction of most players is that the game is "fun". But I think each area is different.

Fun is something 40K hasn't been in quite some time. Going back to more of a RT model would potentially isolate many, but it would make the game a lot more fun - if you have the right opponents. It seems like most criticism of Age of Sigmar is just solved by playing with different opponents.

But I bet most 40K players weren't even born when RT came out. That was a different time.

Mez

As someone who has been playing that long I will say that even Rogue Trader had more controls and balance than AoS does. At least it had point costs for things, sure you could field what you wanted early on, but it wasn't whatever you wanted for absolutely free. Also once more than just the Rogue Trader rulebook were out all armies started getting actual army lists too, so again not even remotely the same as AoS. All that was really lacking was the eventual FoC concepts to keep people from always just bringing a bunch of elite type units to every game and never bringing any normal troop type units. If AoS was closer to Rogue Trader I might actually like it.




Automatically Appended Next Post:

 aka_mythos wrote:

The problem with Fantasy was bigger than just the price of kits or rules. WHFB had gotten to the point that to have a viable army required you to buy so many more models and it simply reached the point where that barrier to entry was too prohibitive for people just starting out. Even still for all the effort the vast majority of models only contributed to the game as wound counters with a few random heroes contributing more than all those other minis combined.

AoS has problems, but it solves the systemic issues that WHFB had that really couldn't be resolved with just an update.

Of course AoS solves some of the systemic issues by totally throwing the whole concept out the window. Battlefront did that too when they went from 1st edition to 2nd edition in Flames of War, but in their case they abandoned methods and concepts that were not fully adaptable to the game moving forward and instead released a BETTER game in its 2nd edition. 3rd edition was focused on problem areas that players had been discussing and highlighting for sometime on Battlefronts forums, so they fixed those problem areas, while not messing with the parts that worked and again released a BETTER game. Now look at GW, 30 years of production on WHFB and then they release AoS. It is not an improvement over WHFB. It is not a culmination of 30 years of game design. It is a lazy and cheap cop-out that leaves it totally to the players to fix its holes and try to add some real balance to the game. This is a typical GW completely ignore fixing problems and instead replace them with new problems.

AoS is now cheap to get into compared to WHFB, but heroes are even more overpowered now, because while WHFB didn't have perfect balance, AoS has no balance at all.

Age of Sigmar is fun, cheap and perfectly balanced for what it is doing. It is the Orks of tabletop miniature games, happy and at peace with what it is, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth only fuels its ascension as Perfect Game.

One can only hope other tabletop companies look to GW, the perverted old uncle of the gaming industry, and copy their winning formula in their own products.

Infinity? Poof, gone, replaced with a stripped down version with none of those unnecessary shooting mechanics or anime waifus . Malifaux? Now it's cyberpunk. Warmachine? Melt all those poorly fitting metal models into hexagonal bases for the Big New Game.

Age of Sigmar is the Battletech Clans, bringing order and superior PPCs to the diseased husk of the Inner Sphere that tabletop gaming has devolved into.

If GW wants to commit suicide they can make 40k like AoS, having two games that play differently is much better then having two identical games in different settings.

 Badablack wrote:
Age of Sigmar is fun, cheap and perfectly balanced for what it is doing. It is the Orks of tabletop miniature games, happy and at peace with what it is, and the wailing and gnashing of teeth only fuels its ascension as Perfect Game.

One can only hope other tabletop companies look to GW, the perverted old uncle of the gaming industry, and copy their winning formula in their own products.

Infinity? Poof, gone, replaced with a stripped down version with none of those unnecessary shooting mechanics or anime waifus . Malifaux? Now it's cyberpunk. Warmachine? Melt all those poorly fitting metal models into hexagonal bases for the Big New Game.

Age of Sigmar is the Battletech Clans, bringing order and superior PPCs to the diseased husk of the Inner Sphere that tabletop gaming has devolved into.

Heh.

40k consistently generates the majority of their revenue. So the exact opposite situation to pre-AOS WHFB.

I think the big irony is that 40k began as Fantasy battles in space. AOS looks like space battles in the past.

 Badablack wrote:


Age of Sigmar is the Battletech Clans, bringing order and superior PPCs to the diseased husk of the Inner Sphere that tabletop gaming has devolved into.

funny you should mention battletech. Some time ago FASA closed their doors and gave the battletech IP to Wizkids, (owned, at the time, by Jordan Weissman, son of the owner of FASA and actually one of his founders. widely credited as the mind behind battletech and shadowrun) now Weisman, decided part of the problem with battletech's declining popularity was the complexity of the rules set, combined with 20+ years of in game history, both of these factors being turn offs to potential new gamers. so Wizkids launches Mechwarrior Dark Age. as a CMG, using their their popular click base format. the game is a novelty for a little bit, but in time dies off. the new blood has nothing keeping them hooked in, and the old blood largely has no intreast in the game (it helped that Fanpro was lisencing the classic game and continueing to publish it. ) it's why I'm so skeptical about AoS. the "let's dumb the rules down and do a time jump to allow new players a frensh entry point" idea has been tried before, it's failed.

All I know, is that I am glad AoS happened.if only because whfb was horrible in my area. Learning to play I bit the bullet and bought VC and spent WAY more than I wanted because the players at the local shop said I would need extra zombies, and necromancers because meta. After finishing I brought my army in and wasn't allowed to play with them because I had no movement trays. My fault so I checked their prices, and promptly cut some sheet metal and made my own. I go in with my cool trays, and wasn't allowed to use them because they might scratch the table.

Once again I leave, making tray 2.0 with magnetized strip and felt bottom.

Come back in and get stomped into the ground over the period of 2 months, no mercy, just pain.

Went in a week ago and everyone was quiet, I pull out my vampires and say "anyone wanna play AoS" felt good to see them angry and frustrated over the new format.

I consider it karma that AoS happened. Hopefully the bad players stop their elitism and learn to not br dicks.

Also, it's still fun, although I'm gonna rebase everything in round bases which isn't going to be fun.

Maybe AoS is Gw's way to fix the playerbase, toxic, powergaming, min maxing, "what's fluff I can take nothing but wave serpents but the lore is important to me I hate stupid armylists" players

I bet it would cause the smug players to stop being donkey-caves.