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Hey guys.

So after much time I was wondering why I hate AoS so much since I do not play very often.

Then I figured it out I do not care about anyone anymore, all the old guys Skarsnik,sigvald,greaseus and so on. I cared about them and their life and story. But now there is no one i care about...... the faceless name less tin men who keep being reborn, atleast til they become chaos sigmites. The ghost lizards, or the chaos nameless horde who do nothing but kill and if they are endless I guess screw alot..... so much for slaanesh for being missing.

Hell I can not even connect to a realm,world, demension or what ever they are. Also for everyone saying give it time... Well there are thousand of written stories that maybe after 10 years would be good, that well no one ever heard about. The only reason this one is being talk about is because it is GW.

So what do you guys hang on to or care about?

At this point? Absolutely nothing. It is my biggest gripe with the reboot. Even more so than the lack of points (and I loved WHFB tourneys).

Perhaps I'd be ok with it if the first faction they redid was the new empire and we got people to care about, with personalities and mortal lives, fighting not to banish evil on a cosmic level but to simply defend their home and family.

Instead we don't know if those people even exist any more or if all humans are now living safely as refugees in Sigmaheim.

I find it especially funny that very shortly after GW removed the human element of fantasy and turned it into AoS we got this trailer for Total War that, imo, perfectly captures why the human element is important and makes for the best, most inspiring, narratives:

My personal experience with AoS has very much been about trying to add the human element back into the setting. I have even put together a mini-battletome for my Empire-now-Azyrheim army.

I can only hope GW adds in mortal men, Aelves and Duardin soon and populates the mortal realms with towns and cities for us to fight for and protect.

For me, there is a glimmer of story. I've always played Skaven in Fantasy, they were my first army.

For the longest time I wanted to recreate the sacking of middenheim, It's a long story with bits across many army books from 3rd and 4th edition. The gist is the largest chunk of Warpstone encased in an engine of destruction called the Ark that could level entire armies was taken from Thanquil in an Ambush by the Empire and brought back to middenheim. Knowing he would be killed for losing it, he made a deal with Heinrich Kemmler to attack the city, and in a rare move paid in advance. Kemmler then enlisted the aid of Lord Krell, whom he had raised from the dead in a pact with a chaos Demon.

In one of the largest sieges ever, A chaos army led by Krell attacked from the north, a massive undead army led by Henrich came in from the south, and the Skaven both came in from underground and with a massive army to the east. The Empire had no idea why they were attacking, and in the confusion Thanquil was able to get the Ark and escape.

Now theres nothing like that in AoS yet. However, the Skaven are now a force of chaos, and they will use their tenuous footing to both grow in power and make sure they aren't usurped by Slaanesh.

I'm thinking that there's a campaign where they used there machinations to aid in the capture of slaanesh by the elves, and another where they attempt to insure that the elves cannot free Slaanesh, and/or fight to claim the prize for themselves. What better way to keep Slaanesh from rising to power then by imprisoning the chaos god themselves?

This leads to a good story line to fight against both Slaanesh armies, and another against any forces of order with a focus on Elves and Sigmar. (I'm sure he doesn't want the Skaven stealing a Chaos god.) It also gives a reason to fight with Khorne, who I'm sure would be all to happy to assist in the destruction or continued capture of his rival.

This rough outline also gives plenty of reason for Sylvaneth to get involved (helping the elves,) Undead to forage into the fray (Nagash may want the power for himself, not to mention his eternal hatred of the Skaven,) and lastly most other armies could become involved simply by being in between the goals of the Skaven. (The lore seems to suggest that although the realms are infinite, the realm gates are not.) The Seraphon may prefer the devil they know, and become involved to thwart the Skaven as well.

 pox wrote:
For me, there is a glimmer of story. I've always played Skaven in Fantasy, they were my first army.

For the longest time I wanted to recreate the sacking of middenheim, It's a long story with bits across many army books from 3rd and 4th edition. The gist is the largest chunk of Warpstone encased in an engine of destruction called the Ark that could level entire armies was taken from Thanquil in an Ambush by the Empire and brought back to middenheim. Knowing he would be killed for losing it, he made a deal with Heinrich Kemmler to attack the city, and in a rare move paid in advance. Kemmler then enlisted the aid of Lord Krell, whom he had raised from the dead in a pact with a chaos Demon.

In one of the largest sieges ever, A chaos army led by Krell attacked from the north, a massive undead army led by Henrich came in from the south, and the Skaven both came in from underground and with a massive army to the east. The Empire had no idea why they were attacking, and in the confusion Thanquil was able to get the Ark and escape.

Now theres nothing like that in AoS yet. However, the Skaven are now a force of chaos, and they will use their tenuous footing to both grow in power and make sure they aren't usurped by Slaanesh.

I'm thinking that there's a campaign where they used there machinations to aid in the capture of slaanesh by the elves, and another where they attempt to insure that the elves cannot free Slaanesh, and/or fight to claim the prize for themselves. What better way to keep Slaanesh from rising to power then by imprisoning the chaos god themselves?

This leads to a good story line to fight against both Slaanesh armies, and another against any forces of order with a focus on Elves and Sigmar. (I'm sure he doesn't want the Skaven stealing a Chaos god.) It also gives a reason to fight with Khorne, who I'm sure would be all to happy to assist in the destruction or continued capture of his rival.

This rough outline also gives plenty of reason for Sylvaneth to get involved (helping the elves,) Undead to forage into the fray (Nagash may want the power for himself, not to mention his eternal hatred of the Skaven,) and lastly most other armies could become involved simply by being in between the goals of the Skaven. (The lore seems to suggest that although the realms are infinite, the realm gates are not.) The Seraphon may prefer the devil they know, and become involved to thwart the Skaven as well.

Why does Nagash hate them the skaven i mean? There is no real lore that I found yet ad to why there is a giant skeleton floating around town, and if it is a realm of all dead then there is no more new dead.... He won? Or is he just a giant who found a really tall hat and became a necromancer?

It is not going to be for everyone.

For me, the blank slate/start again aspect is part of the appeal - it is like getting into the Old World but at the ground floor, so to speak.

I am also enjoying the sweeping storyline of the initial assaults, and am playing through the campaigns in the hardbacks. The last battle we had (https://ttgamingdiary.wordpress.com/2015/11/20/battle-report-the-ritual/) was one of the best I have had in any miniatures game for a long, long time.

So, I am enjoying it!

OgreChubbs wrote:
Why does Nagash hate them the skaven i mean? There is no real lore that I found yet ad to why there is a giant skeleton floating around town, and if it is a realm of all dead then there is no more new dead.... He won? Or is he just a giant who found a really tall hat and became a necromancer?

Well, in the old lore Nagash could hold a grudge, killing his entire civilization out of spite to make a huge army. The Skaven were responsible for killed him, chopping off his hand, and making him take centuries to regenerate. When he came back out of his crypt still missing his hand, he saw that the Skaven had strip-mined his lands, ate all his Warpstone, dug tunnels underneath everything making it unstable, and turned his castle into a giant toilet. His people also had revolted, and the Vampire counts now ruled everything.

I guess that what I'm saying is there are a few reasons why Nagash may want to fight with the Skaven from time to time, enough to make some interesting stories. especially with political fights caused by allying with Undead that also don't like Nagash.

Aside from the lack of any real characters to care about (the most important part of any narrative) the world itself is vague and uninspiring. There's nothing to really fight over except some vague notion of "kill the bad guys."

I'm just glad I'm not fighting over northern europe all the time. Will miss Karl Franz tho,really liked him after the End Times books

How much of the fluff have you read? It's my impression that the novels feature a lot of characters, conflicts, and events that are then (briefly) summarized in the campaign books. I've only read the first book (and listened to a sample of the audio book, which I might pick up, because the narrator's voice is amazing), but I think it set up the consequences of the conflict. It's not about one person's problems, but it show what humanity has been reduced to, how they are little more than vermin fleeing from cannibalistic predators that are little more than animals themselves. You understand the desperation of the Stormcast's need to win, what they are fighting for and what they have to lose if they fail. Yes, true, one Stormcast soldier dying is not much of a threat, but their failure to achieve their goal of opening the portal is. There's even a weird rivalry between Khuul and Hammerhand, as Khuul wants to complete his gift to Khorne and become immortal, feeling alive for the first time in centuries, while Hammerhand vaguely remembers fighting Khuul when he was whisked away by Sigmar.

I mean, it's there. So far, it hasn't been amazing, but it's there. I'm going to start on the next book eventually (gonna read Horus Rising next, probably), and I hear they get better as they go. I'm honestly not very beholden to fluff. As far as I'm concerned, this army is fighting that army because they're armies. It's what they do. In fact, my even reading the associated fluff is a bit of an experiment for me. Though I didn't love the first book, in hindsight, it did sort of set up my understanding and expectations for the setting. I'll find myself saying, oh, this is because this happened, or that over there is related to this scene in the book, or this scenario is reenacting this scene, or whatever. Ultimately, I'm glad that I read the book - which is why I'm willing to read a second one.

The problem with Age of Sigmar fiction, isn't that there aren't heroes and villains -- they ARE there, with fluff that's being pumped out -- it's that nobody gets to the point where they care about them.

The beauty of 40k is that after reading two paragraphs on the setting, some people are hooked on the universe: 40,000 years in the future a crumbling Imperium of Man led by a dying Emperor chained to a golden throne, struggling against the temptations of chaos and the invading Xenos hordes. A once glorious Eldar civilization that controlled the stars, shattered and now in huge, planet-sized starships. Space knights based on warriors that we can relate to, that defend the realms, so to speak. I mean, what's not to like?

Then I get into the mostly-bad fiction that is 40k fluff. It's only worth reading because I want to find out what happens in this interesting setting.

To me, Age of Sigmar has cool models, and a cool world, but not one that I particularly want to spend my time exploring. Which, frankly, is like most other imagined worlds; I don't feel an attachment to them. It's a tough trick to pull off, and for me, AoS didn't do it, despite it being a fun game with cool models (which is the same thing WMH is to me... I also have no attachment to that fluff).

The Old World did nothing for me. It was just too hodgepodge and some engagements made little sense to me. But the new realms of Age of Sigmar give me a Thor: The Dark World kind of vibe which has sparked my imagination a lot. The games finally feel like the fun slightly OTT battles that we saw in the third Hobbit movie and in the Lord of the Rings movies. There is still some way to go before Games Workshop have fleshed it all out a bit and I think that is the problem for some. We've gone from a fully realised world setting to something barely explained. But it will get there in time,

 Talys wrote:
The problem with Age of Sigmar fiction, isn't that there aren't heroes and villains -- they ARE there, with fluff that's being pumped out -- it's that nobody gets to the point where they care about them.

The beauty of 40k is that after reading two paragraphs on the setting, some people are hooked on the universe: 40,000 years in the future a crumbling Imperium of Man led by a dying Emperor chained to a golden throne, struggling against the temptations of chaos and the invading Xenos hordes. A once glorious Eldar civilization that controlled the stars, shattered and now in huge, planet-sized starships. Space knights based on warriors that we can relate to, that defend the realms, so to speak. I mean, what's not to like?

Then I get into the mostly-bad fiction that is 40k fluff. It's only worth reading because I want to find out what happens in this interesting setting.

To me, Age of Sigmar has cool models, and a cool world, but not one that I particularly want to spend my time exploring. Which, frankly, is like most other imagined worlds; I don't feel an attachment to them. It's a tough trick to pull off, and for me, AoS didn't do it, despite it being a fun game with cool models (which is the same thing WMH is to me... I also have no attachment to that fluff).

I find the 40k setting to be incredibly boring. Love the models, but the lore (what little I know of it) just seems like a bunch of gung ho soldiers fighting an infinite number of battles on an infinite number of worlds with no consequence, progress, or change. I admit that my knowledge is limited, and I'm going to start reading the Horus Heresy books soon, but I'd say that 40k looks, at a glance, like a male power fantasy, gothic grimdark Starship Troopers rip off. I'd say it suffers from the same initial bad impression that AoS does. I'm assuming there's more to it - that there are heroes and villains, and that there are consequences more than losing one of a million generic planets to one of the dozens of faceless enemy armies.

I guess I'm just saying, different strokes for different folks. I barely know anything about the Warmachine fluff and couldn't care less, but I like the models and that's enough for me. I'm increasingly becoming dissatisfied with the game itself, but that's neither here nor there.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Talys wrote:
The problem with Age of Sigmar fiction, isn't that there aren't heroes and villains -- they ARE there, with fluff that's being pumped out -- it's that nobody gets to the point where they care about them.

The beauty of 40k is that after reading two paragraphs on the setting, some people are hooked on the universe: 40,000 years in the future a crumbling Imperium of Man led by a dying Emperor chained to a golden throne, struggling against the temptations of chaos and the invading Xenos hordes. A once glorious Eldar civilization that controlled the stars, shattered and now in huge, planet-sized starships. Space knights based on warriors that we can relate to, that defend the realms, so to speak. I mean, what's not to like?

Then I get into the mostly-bad fiction that is 40k fluff. It's only worth reading because I want to find out what happens in this interesting setting.

To me, Age of Sigmar has cool models, and a cool world, but not one that I particularly want to spend my time exploring. Which, frankly, is like most other imagined worlds; I don't feel an attachment to them. It's a tough trick to pull off, and for me, AoS didn't do it, despite it being a fun game with cool models (which is the same thing WMH is to me... I also have no attachment to that fluff).

I find the 40k setting to be incredibly boring. Love the models, but the lore (what little I know of it) just seems like a bunch of gung ho soldiers fighting an infinite number of battles on an infinite number of worlds with no consequence, progress, or change. I admit that my knowledge is limited, and I'm going to start reading the Horus Heresy books soon, but I'd say that 40k looks, at a glance, like a male power fantasy, gothic grimdark Starship Troopers rip off. I'd say it suffers from the same initial bad impression that AoS does. I'm assuming there's more to it - that there are heroes and villains, and that there are consequences more than losing one of a million generic planets to one of the dozens of faceless enemy armies.

I guess I'm just saying, different strokes for different folks. I barely know anything about the Warmachine fluff and couldn't care less, but I like the models and that's enough for me. I'm increasingly becoming dissatisfied with the game itself, but that's neither here nor there.

For me, It's having the human element to relate too. I've ran an Armageddon based Ork army for years, but without the BL books on Armageddon and the old codex on Armageddon, it just wouldn't be the same. The BL resource book was written from a priests point of view who went on a pilgrimage after the bulk of fighting during the end of the third war. It's the relatable human element that helps to flesh out how truly monstrous the Ork horde is, and how awful the betrayal of Otto Von Saab was.

I have several Ork warbands with different themes all under the banner of the crooked arrow clan, all based off of different stories and pictures from around Armageddon. My Imp Guard force is based off of uderhive Hades PDF forces once loyal to Von Straab. They are now renegades used by an inquisitor because they can never be forgiven for serving under Von Straab and Orks from the Bloodaxe clan.

All of my armies are thematically linked, but the core is the human element, either defending the helpless or surviving under insurmountable odds. I think that AoS just needs to introduce a human or mortal army, and how they relate to the god-like creatures they are surrounding. I think the potential is there, and I understand that Armageddon lore goes all the way back to the original board game published in 1992, so obviously finding a patch of land I can relate too as fleshed out as that in AoS will take some time.

I would say that if nothing in 40K has grabbed you I'd just move onto another game. It's a silly hair metal power fantasy all the way down, most of the artwork would work fine painted on the side of a conversion van. I find the BL source books are infinitely better then any novels they have put out, but I don't know if any of those are still available.

 BlackLobster wrote:
The Old World did nothing for me. It was just too hodgepodge and some engagements made little sense to me. But the new realms of Age of Sigmar give me a Thor: The Dark World kind of vibe which has sparked my imagination a lot. The games finally feel like the fun slightly OTT battles that we saw in the third Hobbit movie and in the Lord of the Rings movies. There is still some way to go before Games Workshop have fleshed it all out a bit and I think that is the problem for some. We've gone from a fully realised world setting to something barely explained. But it will get there in time,

Part of me really misses the darker, grittier old world, and part of me really likes this new ultra high fantasy multiverse. I haven't read much AoS fluff yet (where's a good place to start?) but I'm finally reading the end times books and part of me really misses that vibe. I am looking forward to seeing where AoS progresses to. AoS has a similar feel to 40k for me now, a much bigger universe, meaning much more possibilities for fluff, army themes/ideas, battles etc. Fantasy did feel slightly more restrictive just because it was set on one world, armies were basically what they were, obviously there were different themes to explore but nothing majorly 'out there' without breaking out of the actual fluff, but now it feels much more open, which I like. But I feel it's lost a lot of the darkness which I enjoyed.

So far, focus has been on Storm cast Eternal. Few of them have the characterizations comparable to the Old World Heroes. Though right now, I'm definitely being piqued by the little group in Prisoner of the Black Sun and Sands of Blood.

As a Chaos player though, while I do miss the old Champions, only a few stood out for me in the Old World. Van Horstmann, Valkia, Archaon.

I do enjoy Zuvias right now in Eye of the Storm though. He's a very interesting Tzeentch Champion.

No doubt there will be more characterizations when the others get updated.

 Sqorgar wrote:
I find the 40k setting to be incredibly boring. Love the models, but the lore (what little I know of it) just seems like a bunch of gung ho soldiers fighting an infinite number of battles on an infinite number of worlds with no consequence, progress, or change. I admit that my knowledge is limited, and I'm going to start reading the Horus Heresy books soon, but I'd say that 40k looks, at a glance, like a male power fantasy, gothic grimdark Starship Troopers rip off. I'd say it suffers from the same initial bad impression that AoS does. I'm assuming there's more to it - that there are heroes and villains, and that there are consequences more than losing one of a million generic planets to one of the dozens of faceless enemy armies.

That seems to be a direction that GW are moving the fluff in these days. They want to be wargame fluff, so everything is just about army X beating up army Y. BL books are becoming more and more about simply a space marine captain you've never heard of fighting a fight and winning. The end.

If you care to dive into the fluff more the older BL books are great, Eisenhorn especially as it shows so much more of the day to day civilian life in the Imperium. The Night Lords omnibus is another one that really humanizes everyone.

Also, 40k has so much more Dune elements than Starship Troopers

I have gotten into AoS a bit after a few games. But one thing I cannot get into is its fluff. Its liked its aimed at children (no offense to those that like it and are not children, but its how i see it.) and over uses catch words like realm , blood and gate. Waiting for the new novel to come out to pass my final judgement. I bet itll be called BloodRealm Gatewars.

I always hear people say give it time but thats a problem. How many start up minature games ect had a cool or half arse concept that maybe after a couple years would be good?

They admit they are a minature company and if they do not sell minatures they will fall. I cant justify buying a 60$ 28 mm plastic toy that I care as much about as a ninja tutrle i can buy for 50 cents on ebay. Yes the 50$ one is nice but I still dont care about it.

Gw are not a company that can afford to throw some OK lore out there and wait years for it to catch on. The production, shipping and with not much return it will hurt on a scale that large. They kind suffer due to their size they cant afford to roll the dice for that long. It isnt like buying a book where you buy it think iit is ok, the go well it was ok i guess I will get the next one. The need you to read and go wow that is pretty cool I want that character and his,her warband and be willing to spend hundred if not thousands of dollars for it.

I think games workshop suffers from thinking their fans will follow them no matter what road they take. Kinda like pokemon they keep the same conecpt and keep changing it with new people and such. But they forget the big money needed from their fans. And not everyone will follow them just because ot has their logo on it.

Table wrote:I have gotten into AoS a bit after a few games. But one thing I cannot get into is its fluff. Its liked its aimed at children (no offense to those that like it and are not children, but its how i see it.) and over uses catch words like realm , blood and gate. Waiting for the new novel to come out to pass my final judgement. I bet itll be called BloodRealm Gatewars.

Saying it is for children is just factually not true. I know you are trying to be dismissive, but I don't think books which feature cannibals chasing down the last vestiges of humanity to feast on (or to use their skulls in a giant trophy skull pyramid to their dark gods) is quite in the same category as Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

If anything, I see it more like the old heavy metal album covers from when I was a teenager. Hell, do a google search for "heavy metal album covers" and I'll bet you find Archaon. But it's always been this way (the old White Dwarf covers were very metal).

OgreChubbs wrote:I always hear people say give it time but thats a problem. How many start up minature games ect had a cool or half arse concept that maybe after a couple years would be good?

All of them? Especially if you don't consider games where the fluff came first (like Warmachine or Dust Warfare, or licensed games).

I cant justify buying a 60$ 28 mm plastic toy that I care as much about as a ninja tutrle i can buy for 50 cents on ebay. Yes the 50$ one is nice but I still dont care about it.

As an adult, I can justify it easily. A toy is something that I would buy and sit on a shelf. I've long lost the ability to play with toys as toys. But I buy a miniature and I get to spend literally hours with it as I assemble and paint it, and then actively use the model for years in the games I play. Half the reason miniatures are so expensive is that they are like LEGOs. You can keep them around damn near forever, and you can always bestow them on your children, give them to friends, or sell them on eBay. In other words, Warhammer's biggest competition today is Warhammer from years ago.

Gw are not a company that can afford to throw some OK lore out there and wait years for it to catch on.

If anyone can afford to do it, GW can. I don't think the fluff is a major part of the hobby for many gamers, so I'm not even convinced poor fluff is all that destructive. Not when you can see the character and conflict in the models themselves (something GW does better than almost any other miniature company - compare a tabletop picture from 40k to something like Gates of Antares)

I think games workshop suffers from thinking their fans will follow them no matter what road they take. Kinda like pokemon they keep the same conecpt and keep changing it with new people and such. But they forget the big money needed from their fans. And not everyone will follow them just because ot has their logo on it.

Pokemon's probably not the hill you want to die on here, as their remakes still sell 10 million copies.

The problem there is that if the Lore isn't important, and the rule balance isn't important, and the model quality/diversity is not important...than what is? Fun is subjective, and these threads show that there are a lot of people who hate it rather then love it. I personally want to like the game, since it encourages you to start small and use whatever models you like rather then just use the best of the army. But its all just so bland and boring, where you have no idea what your army is doing or if the characters are alive anymore or if your models will fit the new aesthetic. Why would I want to start a new high elf army, if in two years it ends up being that they are reimagined as steampunk wizards riding wombats? Extreme obviously, but not impossible given how crazy stupid GW has been getting with this heavy metal universe

 Sqorgar wrote:

I don't think the fluff is a major part of the hobby for many gamers, so I'm not even convinced poor fluff is all that destructive.

You'd be wrong then.

The lore is the one thing frequently mentioned as the reason so many people stay with games like 40k. Without it, battles are just abstract geometry and nameless and pointless dice rolling.

Lore is THE most important thing after models, for me, and I think most others.

AoS has lots of potential but nothing substantial right now making it quite frustrating.

I understand why they went for the vast infinite mortal realms and the similarities it has with space, and I am quite excited by the possibilities it opens up, but as of yet there is nothing in those mortal realms I would want to defend from bad guys.

It's like 40k if the imperium was limited to earth and all the planets were nothing but primordial and barren landscapes.

Age of Sigmar needs some places, not to limit our imagination but to structure it. Just like we know about the different types of planets in the imperium we need some example towns/cities/empires to work with.

People say that the BL fiction has much more world building contained but unfortunately I can't stand BL fiction and won't be reading any more of it any time soon. I need source books that aren't focused on Stormcast Eternals.

I know they're coming... I am just getting impatient waiting.

Deadnight wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:

I don't think the fluff is a major part of the hobby for many gamers, so I'm not even convinced poor fluff is all that destructive.

You'd be wrong then.

The lore is the one thing frequently mentioned as the reason so many people stay with games like 40k. Without it, battles are just abstract geometry and nameless and pointless dice rolling.

Agreed. The fluff is what draws people in, it is what inspires you to create new armies, it is what motivates you to paint cool, thematic armies.

The strongest two motivations imo to get someone to start a new army are rules and fluff. If you are a tourney player the meta will shift, new things will be released, and sometimes you will want to try a different playstyle, change your tactics to stay ahead of the curve. AoS is clearly not that kind of game, it will never be a big tourney game like warmachine, I don't think anyone here would dispute that.
Fluff, on the other hand is the major motivating factor for narrative games and 'casual' players. These people start new armies because they sat down, read a novel and got inspired.

I'd say an absolute minority start a game and build whole armies (as in buy a lot of models) just because they like the models. No, these people buy a box, paint it, and put it on the shelf without a reason to expand it to an entire army. (And honestly if GW are focusing on the purely painters they are screwed, they can't compete with actual model companies the do 54 and 75mm models in resins, and metals, or plastic tank kits twice the size of a land raider at half the price and three times the detail.)

It's absolutely fine for people to like high fantasy or low fantasy.

It's just a pity that GW cannot cater for both.

 Sqorgar wrote:

Table wrote:I have gotten into AoS a bit after a few games. But one thing I cannot get into is its fluff. Its liked its aimed at children (no offense to those that like it and are not children, but its how i see it.) and over uses catch words like realm , blood and gate. Waiting for the new novel to come out to pass my final judgement. I bet itll be called BloodRealm Gatewars.

Saying it is for children is just factually not true. I know you are trying to be dismissive, but I don't think books which feature cannibals chasing down the last vestiges of humanity to feast on (or to use their skulls in a giant trophy skull pyramid to their dark gods) is quite in the same category as Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

If anything, I see it more like the old heavy metal album covers from when I was a teenager. Hell, do a google search for "heavy metal album covers" and I'll bet you find Archaon. But it's always been this way (the old White Dwarf covers were very metal).

OgreChubbs wrote:I always hear people say give it time but thats a problem. How many start up minature games ect had a cool or half arse concept that maybe after a couple years would be good?

All of them? Especially if you don't consider games where the fluff came first (like Warmachine or Dust Warfare, or licensed games).

I cant justify buying a 60$ 28 mm plastic toy that I care as much about as a ninja tutrle i can buy for 50 cents on ebay. Yes the 50$ one is nice but I still dont care about it.

As an adult, I can justify it easily. A toy is something that I would buy and sit on a shelf. I've long lost the ability to play with toys as toys. But I buy a miniature and I get to spend literally hours with it as I assemble and paint it, and then actively use the model for years in the games I play. Half the reason miniatures are so expensive is that they are like LEGOs. You can keep them around damn near forever, and you can always bestow them on your children, give them to friends, or sell them on eBay. In other words, Warhammer's biggest competition today is Warhammer from years ago.

Gw are not a company that can afford to throw some OK lore out there and wait years for it to catch on.

If anyone can afford to do it, GW can. I don't think the fluff is a major part of the hobby for many gamers, so I'm not even convinced poor fluff is all that destructive. Not when you can see the character and conflict in the models themselves (something GW does better than almost any other miniature company - compare a tabletop picture from 40k to something like Gates of Antares)

I think games workshop suffers from thinking their fans will follow them no matter what road they take. Kinda like pokemon they keep the same conecpt and keep changing it with new people and such. But they forget the big money needed from their fans. And not everyone will follow them just because ot has their logo on it.

Pokemon's probably not the hill you want to die on here, as their remakes still sell 10 million copies.

Ya, seriously. It isnt dark or gritty? The first part of the new novel was going into detail about eating human flesh, lol. Real child friendly. Or using goldmanes head as a weapon and getting his blood in hammerhands mouth. Rated g allright. And about time some good guys stomping these chaos clowns.

I'll just echo that fluff is a huge part of why people pick up and/or stay in the hobby. This forum is filled with people saying the fluff of 40k is what keeps them going.

The fluff of AOS is probably their biggest failure. It's undeveloped and immature. (Not childish, just not dealing in any meaningful themes or ideals and using extremes only instead of subtelty.) None of it feels like a real world with characters that actually matter.

It's just too over the top, with everything being centred around war. I think the actual setting has a lot of potential, there's just not been any (or much) world building from what I've heard, just constant fighting. That's the impression I've got so far.

 ImAGeek wrote:
... with everything being centred around war...

You ever played a wargame or read their fluff before?

Nerm86 wrote:

 ImAGeek wrote:
... with everything being centred around war...

You ever played a wargame or read their fluff before?

I think he means 'Literally' everything is centered around war.
Some war games the politics or characters are very important. AOS doesn't have important characters, politics, philosophies or much of anything except "AAAARRRRGGGGGHHHDUSUSUU!DIWEHDIFGHSIDO!!!!!!!!! BLOODGATEREAMLS!!!!!! AAAARRRRR!!!!!"