Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

 oldzoggy wrote:
What if GW did not have aggressively marketed AoS as a replacement for WFB

But instead did something like 30k and used the following approach, would it have worked better ?
- Release AoS after the end times, but don't throw away wfb.
- Bring out a post End times wfb rule book.
- Market it as a premium game in a different time in a similar way as 30k is marketed, with a emphasises with on the premium miniatures, gentlemen play smoother rules.
- Reboxing wfb with both bases instead of just the circle versions.
- Bring out some wfb rules for (some) of the AoS models that would fit the setting.

I feel that this would make much more sense. Most of the AoS models look wonderful and the similarities with 30k seem so obvious.

No.

Not at all.

Now a revamp of WFB would have, and then introduced it as a supplement, but this gak was a gak load of in a bag.

 Bottle wrote:
I would think the only specialist game less likely to return than Mordhiem is Warmaster.

I don't know, I think Man O'War is probably the least loved side-game. Dead before most of the other SG's came out, never had a revival, seldom even gets mentioned alongside them.

I don't think that the main problem to AOS is that it replaces WHFB. Sure, this probably caused a lot of negativity toward it at first, but if AOS was a good game, with interesting mechanics and a deep setting, I think it could have overcame that hurdle.

Unfortunately, AOS is a terrible game, whose rules seems to have been written in half an hour, and whose fluff (at least so far) is completely bland and uninteresting (as someone said, the setting seems to be taken from a korean MMO). I just can't see what's interesting in these rules? The game pretty much consist in rolling 4+, and the only unique game mechanic are these terrible "funny" rules. Not to mention that there's no balancing mechanics.


THis thing is such a disaster, on all aspects, that it will be used soon enough as a case study on bad business practices in a business school.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 oni wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:

 oni wrote:
Pretty much the reaction I anticipated... A warranted one no doubt. I have come to find that my views and opinions on AoS tend to contradict most of those here on Dakka - that's OK, it is what it is.

I base my point of view on the few local communities I can directly observe and while my scope is limited and may differ from the rest of you, it holds true (in my opinion) for the player bases I can directly observe.

Your logic is flawed, that's why so many people contradict your opinion.

There is not now, nor ever will there be, a responsibility on the consumer to be excited for a product. That lies firmly and permanently at the feet of the maker of that product.

That so many people were unwilling to play AOS as it stood simply demonstrates that GW had made a product nobody wanted*, that so many people were willing to try and make it work demonstrates the enormous enthusiasm for GW products that still exists, despite GW's repeated attempts to squander it.

What you've observed has no impact on this, it doesn't even matter if people have modified or refused to play AOS for completely spurious reasons, or even completely invalid ones, the fact remains that it was GW who were responsible for managing that reaction, and GW who have apparently ultimately failed at it. What you have observed is that failure in action.



*and before someone pulls me up on "nobody" I'll ask them to provide a pre-launch example of someone calling for GW to scrap all the Fantasy fluff and abandon all pretence at structure or balance to back it up.

My logic is not flawed. My point of view merely comes from a different perspective - a perspective that is not your own and one which you seem to not understand at the moment (but that's OK, I did not convey it very clearly) and because of this you consider my logic to be flawed. Sadly I do not have time at the moment to delve deeper into this nor do I care to get into a pissing match.

Lol, it seems that we have an early candidate for most absurd post of the year. Tell us again how we are to blame for not accepting this wonderfull game that GW has deigned to give to the community, and how the dakka community is not enlighted enough to comprehend your words of wisdom

Oni sounds like he's making the "I didn't get my message across very clearly, and if I could just get you to understand then you'd all agree with me" fallacy. People do understand the message, they just don't like it and don't agree with it.

I thought a lot of the reason AoS was created was copyright protection since they lost that big lawsuit a while back?

Yes. Thats why they changed all the names. But that won't have the effect they desire - other companies can still say "compatible with X".

I think things would have gone better if GW had not taken such a scorched Earth approach for post End Times. I mean, I get it, it's the End Times...but wow!

 ProtoClone wrote:
I think things would have gone better if GW had not taken such a scorched Earth approach for post End Times. I mean, I get it, it's the End Times...but wow!

It's obviously the setting and not the crappy rules and over priced models - so lets blow up the setting, and provide even crappier rules, and even more over priced models!

YAY!

The Auld Grump - who is busy painting up a Mantic Abyssal army....

-

 oldzoggy wrote:
What if GW did not have aggressively marketed AoS as a replacement for WFB

But instead did something like 30k and used the following approach, would it have worked better ?
- Release AoS after the end times, but don't throw away wfb.
- Bring out a post End times wfb rule book.
- Market it as a premium game in a different time in a similar way as 30k is marketed, with a emphasises with on the premium miniatures, gentlemen play smoother rules.
- Reboxing wfb with both bases instead of just the circle versions.
- Bring out some wfb rules for (some) of the AoS models that would fit the setting.

I feel that this would make much more sense. Most of the AoS models look wonderful and the similarities with 30k seem so obvious.

i think your lucky they have rules at all, games workshop is getting out of the games buisness. they want to maybe at most sell baordgames. at every turn their trying to sell you everything but rules. they downplay the fact that rules exist at all at every turn. sigmar only has rules because if they didnt print something off then consumer confidence would tank and we would have all fled the ship with the mice below deck.

think about their sigmar release content its been models and storybooks, those have made their frontpages. rules have been an afterthough, the stormcast eternals rulebook and the other books since have been released with 0 count it 0 fanfare, heck sigmar audio dramas have had more company hype behind them, you know its bad when the rulebook is being shown up by the ebooks on the hypetrain.

i think that in a few years 40k wont even have rules, they just have to keep making the game even more toxic and release even more ludicrously priced model, maybe jack up sammael to a 60 dollar repackage box, maybe make no unit cheaper then 50 bucks a box unless its a clamshel.. that will make us all run away. so they can stop printing rulebooks and go to bedtime stores and fancy plastic showpieces. thats what they want to sell.

 ionusx wrote:

 oldzoggy wrote:
What if GW did not have aggressively marketed AoS as a replacement for WFB

But instead did something like 30k and used the following approach, would it have worked better ?
- Release AoS after the end times, but don't throw away wfb.
- Bring out a post End times wfb rule book.
- Market it as a premium game in a different time in a similar way as 30k is marketed, with a emphasises with on the premium miniatures, gentlemen play smoother rules.
- Reboxing wfb with both bases instead of just the circle versions.
- Bring out some wfb rules for (some) of the AoS models that would fit the setting.

I feel that this would make much more sense. Most of the AoS models look wonderful and the similarities with 30k seem so obvious.

i think your lucky they have rules at all, games workshop is getting out of the games buisness. they want to maybe at most sell baordgames. at every turn their trying to sell you everything but rules. they downplay the fact that rules exist at all at every turn. sigmar only has rules because if they didnt print something off then consumer confidence would tank and we would have all fled the ship with the mice below deck.

think about their sigmar release content its been models and storybooks, those have made their frontpages. rules have been an afterthough, the stormcast eternals rulebook and the other books since have been released with 0 count it 0 fanfare, heck sigmar audio dramas have had more company hype behind them, you know its bad when the rulebook is being shown up by the ebooks on the hypetrain.

i think that in a few years 40k wont even have rules, they just have to keep making the game even more toxic and release even more ludicrously priced model, maybe jack up sammael to a 60 dollar repackage box, maybe make no unit cheaper then 50 bucks a box unless its a clamshel.. that will make us all run away. so they can stop printing rulebooks and go to bedtime stores and fancy plastic showpieces. thats what they want to sell.

This might have been the plan, but the 'lukewarm' reception ( which according to my sources is in fact catastrophic) of AOS has to make them reconsider this whole ' models company, not rules company'. Hell i consider myself a lot more of a modelist than a gamer, but a good set of rules help me to immerse in the setting and makes me enjoy the models a lot more

 Bottle wrote:

 Elemental wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
I would think the only specialist game less likely to return than Mordhiem is Warmaster.

I don't know, I think Man O'War is probably the least loved side-game. Dead before most of the other SG's came out, never had a revival, seldom even gets mentioned alongside them.

Gonna nitpick and say Man O'War was never a "specialist game" in the true sense (it was long gone before then) - and it already came back once too (dreadfleet).

I don't think you can call dreadfleet a resurrection of man-o-war. The only similarity was the setting. It was a really strange move for GW though, I still don't understand their thought process. Invest such a dramatic amount of money into the component, then provide a gak game. And then make it a one off.

It worked for Space Hulk, because Space Hulk is compaitable with 40k, and is a pretty damn fine game to begin with. I just don't understand what GW is ever thinking. None of their choices ever make sense to me.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
It may surprise people to learn this, but one afternoon, months ago, boredom inspired me to develop a plan for a pre-Empire WFB game, and I ended up emailing it to GW.
Needless to say it got no reply...
Naturally, of course, GW spurned this golden opportunity.

I'm sure that they gets dozens or even hundreds of fan-submitted "golden opportunities" sent in each year. "Spurn" seems like a strong word for something that was probably just deleted/thrown in the recycling. Ignored would be a better term.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

I am surprised that a company the size of GW would have trouble supporting four games.

It's probably down to shelf space in their own chain of stores. While in retrospect, moving WHFB to direct-only might have been a better solution to discontinuing it outright (especially right after hawking all of those super-expensive End Times books and kits) but I have the feeling that they expected their loyal customer base to jump right on over, and a whole lot of 40k players to do the same.

 oni wrote:
Sure... GW could have done a better job introducing AoS, but it's my point of view that the player community is to blame for AoS's "failure to launch". Too few people were willing to try something new, to try the game rules as designed; instead rushing to develop a point system to apply to a game specifically designed not to need it. Where did this leave us... A fragmented player community who can't agree upon how to play the game and thusly avoids playing it altogether.

The public/consumers are never "to blame" for a failed or lackluster product launch. That's not how the consumer market works. It's entirely on the producers and their marketing team/strategy to reach the public or their perceived consumers. I say this as someone who purchased 4 starter sets and more recently 2 "Start Collecting" boxes and the Varangians set - though I'm buying for the models rather than buying to play AoS. I'd say that your logic is flawed, but you don't seem to have used any to draw your conclusion. You know... cause and effect.

 theHandofGork wrote:

I'm firmly in the camp that one of the reasons for the change was IP protection. By creating a new universe you get rid of orks, elves, and dwarves- all of which can be made by competitors. Setting the game in the warhammer universe's past wouldn't have accomplished this.

You're dead-on here. This is part of the fallout from the Chapterhouse lawsuit.

Regarding the IP and name changing thing, its really counter productive. Its still not going to stop competitors marketing their products to GW customers and players because of the "compatible with" thing.

Sure, it might have a minor benefit in that whenever somebody googles "Duardin miniatures" and whatever else they call their races now, then the search results will be almost entirely GW. But those new names don't have anywhere near the level of cultural penetration as Orc Elf and Dwarf.

Its like they're deliberately trying to create an even smaller, self isolated niche for thrmselves by inventing a new silly vocabulary that nobody uses, nevermind know how to spell.

 argonak wrote:

...
...

I don't think you can call dreadfleet a resurrection of man-o-war. The only similarity was the setting. It was a really strange move for GW though, I still don't understand their thought process. Invest such a dramatic amount of money into the component, then provide a gak game. And then make it a one off.

It worked for Space Hulk, because Space Hulk is compaitable with 40k, and is a pretty damn fine game to begin with. I just don't understand what GW is ever thinking. None of their choices ever make sense to me.

Thye've done it before. Original Adeptus Titanicus had great little models with swappable weapons, etc but the rules were pretty crappy. Original Dark Future was such a piss poor set of rules that literally there were no rules for turning. The models were a lot of fun, though.

I think GW were in some ways lucky to get such a good set of rules for Space Hulk in first edition, which they were able to update nicely for third edition and do a new set of awesome models. If they had had to write rules from scratch it might have turned out a lot worse.

Dread Fleet was a weird one. I assume that GW see a lot of their customers as people who don't want a rich tactical game, and are happier with more of a random dice fest that give you a couple of hours of pushing nice-looking models around and achieves balance by luck. Given they had the Man O War and Trafalgar rules to provide a basis for a Dread Fleet book, they certainly went out of their way to make the game pretty random.

As far as the importance of rules goes in AoS, it is a very simple, short rulebook that provides the core necessities of battle set-up, a turn sequence, movement, combat, and resolution phases (magic, morale.) For everything else it refers players to the war scrolls. Even GW would be hard pushed to make a four page rulebook into a production worth £30, so they haven't tried.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

Dread Fleet was a weird one. I assume that GW see a lot of their customers as people who don't want a rich tactical game, and are happier with more of a random dice fest that give you a couple of hours of pushing nice-looking models around and achieves balance by luck.

"It's not the game that Gotham needs, but the game that Gotham deserves."

As far as the importance of rules goes in AoS, it is a very simple, short rulebook that provides the core necessities of battle set-up, a turn sequence, movement, combat, and resolution phases (magic, morale.)

For 'core', read 'bare'. Nothing that any other game doesn't offer, except with less depth. If the four pages had some kind of revolutionary - or just noteworthy - mechanics to carry all that out, it'd be much more impressive. As it is, it's just about above 'snapping elastic bands at minis'.

Like others have said, I don't think it's enough to make AoS a hit, if it was introduced as a complementary game to WFB. I have a feeling that a chunk of it's current popularity (such as it is) is more down to the lack of any other fantasy wargame inside the GW compound, and a fear of having to look for a fantasy game - or just rules - outside it.

Even GW would be hard pushed to make a four page rulebook into a production worth £30, so they haven't tried.

They've been knocking themselves out, turning everything else into a £30 book, though.

But, but, the bit that tells you that you need to move your model up to another model to roll a dice and hit it, that's free! Hurrah!

There's an interesting experiment. Is it possible to play AoS with warscrolls and a basic familiarity with (GW) wargames only, without ever having read the four-page rules?

 Vermis wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

...
...

Even GW would be hard pushed to make a four page rulebook into a production worth £30, so they haven't tried.

They've been knocking themselves out, turning everything else into a £30 book, though.

But, but, the bit that tells you that you need to move your model up to another model to roll a dice and hit it, that's free! Hurrah!

There's an interesting experiment. Is it possible to play AoS with warscrolls and a basic familiarity with (GW) wargames only, without ever having read the four-page rules?

GW have been turning everything into £30 or £45 or even more expensive books since 2010, and their sales have been declining pretty much since the start. So there probably is some customer resistance to their grand design. At some point even GW's management are capable of recognising a failing idea before they go live with it. They have reintroduced cheaper softback codexes, for example, though at £25 compared to the £15 books they replaced, I doubt thy are flying off the shelves.

It wouldn't be hard to work out a way of playing AoS from the war scrolls without the benefit of the basic rules. I doubt that people would arrive at an identical plan, though.

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
Regarding the IP and name changing thing, its really counter productive. Its still not going to stop competitors marketing their products to GW customers and players because of the "compatible with" thing.

Sure, it might have a minor benefit in that whenever somebody googles "Duardin miniatures" and whatever else they call their races now, then the search results will be almost entirely GW. But those new names don't have anywhere near the level of cultural penetration as Orc Elf and Dwarf.

Its like they're deliberately trying to create an even smaller, self isolated niche for thrmselves by inventing a new silly vocabulary that nobody uses, nevermind know how to spell.

One of the things that I find annoying in this wide world, is that if I were to Google Skitarii then 99.9% of the results would be for GW... pushing the Greeks down to the bottom of the results....

This is Sparta! *Kicks AM Adept off the cliff*

The Auld Grump <= Bears no resemblance to Russel Crow.

-

 Bottle wrote:

 TheAuldGrump wrote:


This is Sparta! *Kicks AM Adept off the cliff*

The Auld Grump <= Bears no resemblance to Russel Crow.

I think you mean Gerard Butler ;-)

No, no.

I look exactly like Gerard Butler.

The Auld Grump <= Is lying.

The game is quick and fun. With people able to proxy units and free rules on a free app, this game system could have been great and one of the top systems being played.

The major setback and problem was that they destroyed a dying game and used the same units and setting (to a degree) to create this game. This created massive butthurt in the community, which only contained die hard fans due to balance issues, cost issues, etc. This slap in the face (esp after the buy it now asap of the end times) caused many to feel wronged; many of whom left gw, badmouthed the game, etc.

The rules would have worked for any other newly created game or system otherwise... all in all the game is still gaining some momentum and the new units are freaking gorgeous. However, the cost of the new units.... WOW, ouch, c'mon GW...

Now if infinity, WWX, battletech, etc, would create an app with free rules and interactive army building/unit profiles, they would go far! Especially since you could have an entire army for the cost of 6 archaon cavalry dudes.

 Bottle wrote:

 Elemental wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
I would think the only specialist game less likely to return than Mordhiem is Warmaster.

I don't know, I think Man O'War is probably the least loved side-game. Dead before most of the other SG's came out, never had a revival, seldom even gets mentioned alongside them.

Gonna nitpick and say Man O'War was never a "specialist game" in the true sense (it was long gone before then) - and it already came back once too (dreadfleet).

Not by name, but it fits all the other criteria (side-game in the FB / 40K settings, different rule-set, only fully supported for a time). And the MOW material I read in old White Dwarfs sounds nothing like anything I've heard about Dreadfleet, other than "fantasy ships".

 455_PWR wrote:
The game is quick and fun. With people able to proxy units and free rules on a free app, this game system could have been great and one of the top systems being played.

The major setback and problem was that they destroyed a dying game and used the same units and setting (to a degree) to create this game. This created massive butthurt in the community, which only contained die hard fans due to balance issues, cost issues, etc. This slap in the face (esp after the buy it now asap of the end times) caused many to feel wronged; many of whom left gw, badmouthed the game, etc.

The rules would have worked for any other newly created game or system otherwise... all in all the game is still gaining some momentum and the new units are freaking gorgeous. However, the cost of the new units.... WOW, ouch, c'mon GW...

Now if infinity, WWX, battletech, etc, would create an app with free rules and interactive army building/unit profiles, they would go far! Especially since you could have an entire army for the cost of 6 archaon cavalry dudes.

The weird thing is that AoS is so different in setting from WFB, that there was really no need to connect it at all. The Sigmar character in AoS bares no resemblance to the one in WFB. So the big question in my mind is why did they bother to force AoS to evolve from WFB? Why not simply use it as a new and creative setting. If GW really wanted to sunset WFB, perhaps they should have simply done so (and been clear they were doing so, End of Times would have been the send off with a big bang). After it was over, they could have presented AoS as an entirely new IP in an entirely new setting (with no sigmar of course). And no different than how I use my orcs and goblins in Mantica, they could have provided rules to continue to use old style armies in this new game setting.

The world of AoS (as much as I dislike it), is a new and creative setting. Maybe its not the highest level of quality, but it is its own beast. Had they separated it from WFB it would at least have the chance to stand or fall on its own, rather than being burned by all of us bitter fans of the old world.

 argonak wrote:

The weird thing is that AoS is so different in setting from WFB, that there was really no need to connect it at all. The Sigmar character in AoS bares no resemblance to the one in WFB. So the big question in my mind is why did they bother to force AoS to evolve from WFB? Why not simply use it as a new and creative setting.

I couldn't agree more. I wondered this as I read the 96-page AoS book in the starter box the first time. So much time has passed and the only connection between AoS and WHFB are the named deities and quasi-deities that survived with their persona intact (like Nagash). There are so few of them that have game models that really, who cares. They could have just made it a different reality, with no connection at all to the Old World.

I think they honestly believed that all the diehard people who stuck through with the end times would jump on AOS and love it. I think they really believed it would be interested universally loved.

There are quite a number of people who say the AoS fluff has a quasi-Ancient Greek Golden Age vibe, and I think there's something in that. Mighty gods, heroes and monsters, with small warbands of human supporters, fight over a fantastic landscape. From this angle, AoS might have made more sense as a mythic pre-history of the Olde Worlde rather than a mythic post-history after it was blown up.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There are quite a number of people who say the AoS fluff has a quasi-Ancient Greek Golden Age vibe, and I think there's something in that. Mighty gods, heroes and monsters, with small warbands of human supporters, fight over a fantastic landscape. From this angle, AoS might have made more sense as a mythic pre-history of the Olde Worlde rather than a mythic post-history after it was blown up.

But then they couldn't include space marines.

From this angle, AoS might have made more sense as a mythic pre-history of the Olde Worlde rather than a mythic post-history after it was blown up.

Thats actually a really good idea. They could have linked the pre old world stuff into whfb and gone from there.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There are quite a number of people who say the AoS fluff has a quasi-Ancient Greek Golden Age vibe, and I think there's something in that. Mighty gods, heroes and monsters, with small warbands of human supporters, fight over a fantastic landscape. From this angle, AoS might have made more sense as a mythic pre-history of the Olde Worlde rather than a mythic post-history after it was blown up.

But then they couldn't include space marines.

Why not?

Sigmarines would fit nicely in the Asgardian role they currently occupy. (Dead heroes co-opted by the gods to fight as auxiliaries.)

The problem would have been explaining away the war scrolls for the legacy armies, but this could have been solved somehow.

Well... Sigmarines didn't fight alongside Sigmar when he first formed the Empire..

No, but they could have existed with a fluff change and then simply been wiped out (heroic last stand thing) for whfb.

Or gone whackier and descended off to some other realm of existence to party all night long.

By the time Sigmar wanted to form the Empire the amount of Azyr energy had fallen too low to allow him to sustain Sigmarines, so he relied on the mortal troop types whose ancestors he nurtured during the Start Times.

That explains the presence of legacy armies in the Olde World and the absence of Sigmarines.