So, while I have often ranted against AoS for one thing or another and so have many others, so here is the question.....what would you have done different? Even if you like AoS what would yuo have done different? not a bash thread, but a "this is how I would have made it better" thread.
Make AoS a side game while keeping WHFB. There was no good reason to just axe off WHFB like they did. The two games have a lot of cross-over with the models and lore so doing two games isn't a total diversion of resources
TheCustomLime wrote: Make AoS a side game while keeping WHFB. There was no good reason to just axe off WHFB like they did. The two games have a lot of cross-over with the models and lore.
Yeah I would have done that.
Though I also wouldn't have released 8th edition as it was which IMO put WHFB on the path to death.
I also would have spent a bit more time on the AoS rules. While I like the idea of a game with rules on 4 pages, I think they could have been written a bit better and if it had expanded it to 5 pages I don't think much would have been lost.
I would have stopped short of destroying the Old World.
Still have a global catastophe which completely ravages the world but have the blasted ruins be somewhat recognizable to keep a stronger link to the history of the game.
reimagine the races in terms of the last survivors struggling to make it.
The first release would be a Mordheim style game. Make a limited number of terrain kits and minis that exemplify the new background. The bulk of the new design work would be upgrade sprues to adapt the minis to the new racial identities and world's aesthetic.
The second release would be a supplement which advances the storyline and has rules for larger games akin to 1000ish games in previous editons.
A final release which further advances the story and establishes how the world and its nations have settled. Have this include rules for full scale 2400-2500ish battles.
Throughout each release focus on persistant characters and units with robust campaign rules for playing from one game size to the next.
This would accomplish the dual goals of rebranding the more generic elements and breaking down the barriers to entry which plagued the latter era of WHFB.
Rules-wise, you’ve got to add points. Everything else is workable, as long as it had a balancing mechanic of some sort. A system with poorly-tested points is at least as good as just eyeballing your and your opponent’s forces. A system with well-tested points is tightly tuned for competitive players and a great baseline for modification by “fluff-driven” players. (Still think that’s a false dichotomy though.)
Fluff-wise, I’d have gone in an entirely different direction. Keep the Old World, keep the planet, but push it towards a post-apocalyptic theme. A lot of the factional changes could still work. Pockets of human civilization struggling to survive. Bands of Chaos marauders, roaming the countryside, still living large off of their End Times victory. Sylvaneth spirits under the command of the Everqueen, staking out a new forest home. The dwarves, in a move to stave off extinction, forging a closer bond with the plane of fire, particularly their slayers. And running between the forces of order are Sigmar and the stormcast eternals, supporting the downtrodden and marshalling the other races to fight against Chaos.
I’d even tweak the stormcast further, make them more authoritarian. Sigmar will move mountains to help your village fend off the oncoming Chaos, but you have to give up your sovereignty, swear fealty to him. The stormcast are useful, but cold and impersonal. Some say they’re reincarnated heroes; others say they’re enslaved demons. And woe betides anyone who turns their back on Sigmar’s grand plan…
Like so much of what GW does, there are nuggets of good material in AoS. They just missed the mark, as usual.
The idea of a post End Times skirmish game happening in the ruins of the Old World has a lot of potential, but it needs to be tied to the setting we knew and loved. We should be playing in the ruins of Nul instead of a doodle on a map we've never seen before, and we should be playing the remnants of the Empire who are trying to eek out a living there, rather than people thousands of years later who have no real connection to the Empire.
In my version of the story, the Chaos wins and ravages everything but little secret enclaves.
The dwarves would have taken refuge in giant sealed vaults close to the center of the planet, where they met with the magmadroth and become the fireslayers later.
The Slanns would have pulled their cities off the ground, becoming a conglomerate of flying kingdoms hiding in the skies and striking anywhere through teleportation magic.
Sigmar would have indeed become a god and created the Stormcast Eternals atop of a mountain perpetually hidden in a deadly storm of lightning and thunder. hundred of years later, once ready, he unleashed them on the world.
Nagash conquered Khemri and set his realm deep in the desert, where no army could reach them.
Orcs retreated far East and have been fighting the forces of Chaos for centuries.
Dark and High elves formed an alliance and emprisoned Slaneesh himself in forgotten caves far in the south pole. They have have been trying to vanquish him for centuries, fighting in the dark against corrupting magic and slowly becoming something never seen before: the shadowkin.
Wood Elves and Sylvaneth have survived in the forest of Athel Loren thanks to Alarielle's magic, which basically renders the place invisible. Remains of old Bretonnia live there with them as well. They bacome knights of the forest, lead by the Knight of Sinople himself. Now that the SE are trying to reconquer the world, Alarielle brought down the barrier, but Nurgle is coming after her.
The rest of the word is ruled by Chaos. The land has been transformed. The entire Great Ocean has become a land of everchanging metal, ruled by Tzeench, who built his throne on the remains of Ulthuan. Rumors say a Duardin enclave has sprouted from the ground not long ago and is fighting there since.
Khorne rules the north, where everyday, thousands of prisoners are brought by his legions from all over the world to be excuted or take part in savage combats in bloody arenas.
Nurgle has built his new garden in old Lustria.
Most of the ex vampire count and dwarf kingdoms belong to the Skaven.
The center of the empire and Altdorf itself became the capital of Archaon's empire. And at the center of it, the Spire of the Varanguard keeps an eye on everything.
That's pretty much it. I would have made a better fluff.
Make the combat resolution simpler and quicker. Just To Hit, To Save. Get rid of a lot of the little modifiers for combat that give you D3 attacks if you blah blah blah. Just make that unit a bit stronger.
Instead of range for melee, make a range 1 weapon work only in contact, a range 2 weapon work if in contact with a figure that is in contact (one layer) and so on.
Use movement trays for the multi-figure units. When positioning is so important, it's ridiculous that people can waft figures around within a kind of electron probability cloud and thereby magically have more of them in range when it's crucial. It's also very slow to move all the figures individually and precisely.
Alternatively, scrap the two previous rules and make it that the whole unit is available once one figure is in contact, so that positions don't matter. For large units, use the range stat as a limiter; range 1 means six figures can attack, range 2 means 12, and so on. To prevent people making very long linear units, coherency is changed so that you have to stay within three inches of the unit leader.
Get rid of IGOUGO and have some kind of unit activation system.
These ideas obviously need some working out in detail.
thekingofkings wrote: So, while I have often ranted against AoS for one thing or another and so have many others, so here is the question.....what would you have done different? Even if you like AoS what would yuo have done different? not a bash thread, but a "this is how I would have made it better" thread.
Release it in addition, not instead of 8th edition, as a smaller in scale, mission-intensive game, campaign-oriented game.
A new Mordheim, brought up to date in the Infinity mould (activation points and such)
Slowly phase out 8th edition, but continue supporting it with dual releases AoS/WHFB.
TheCustomLime wrote: Make AoS a side game while keeping WHFB. There was no good reason to just axe off WHFB like they did. The two games have a lot of cross-over with the models and lore so doing two games isn't a total diversion of resources
Oh please don't give Games-Workshop a way out of this. There is a perfectly good reason to axe of Warhammer Fantasy Battles. First off there was the high prices, then there is the poor writing/no editing. Then we have poor balance between army books, and then GW makes a rule set that a lot of people don't like. Also there is no support for their product in the way of answering questions of piss poor writing and or not a clear and concise rule set. Because of this a lot of people stopped collecting and playing WHFB. So instead of giving the people what they want, and GW not taking responsibility for what they did and blaming their customers instead they decided to axe a product they can't fix. So yes there is a perfectly good reason what GW did. It's their fault for letting it happen.
For what I would have done, is let Age of Sigmar be the introductory into WHFB. AoS could have been the starter/smaller rules set to play and WHFB could have been for lager battles. For me there was no good point to get into WHFB since the buy in was just way to big. Also I would support the game buy answering questions or actually updating every 2 weeks or at least once a month the FAQs/Erratas.
To get people into the fluff for AoS I wouldn't be charging a premium product for what nobody knows about. No way am I paying $100 for books of garbage. While they may not be garbage, that is what I see GW as now, great looking minis, but garbage when it comes to rules and books. So why would I want to pay a premium price for those? GW should be almost giving me these books for free so I would want to spend my time reading them, get invested into AoS and want to be paying a premium price for those minis.
Instead we are still getting the same old same old. While it's great we are getting the rules and war scrolls for free the problem still is that the Rules seem like little to no effort was being made. No support via FAQs and GW is not really serious about it. I still get the feeling I am suppose to become a sucker instead of a customer.
Making AOS a side game would have been useless. People hate change as it is. Making AOS a side game would have resulted in it largely being ignored. If you're going to invest energy into making a game, you don't make a stupid decision like that.
AOS could not exist side by side with WHFB as a fantasy themed tabletop game.
I don't mind the old world being destroyed. I would have likely destroyed it too.
What would I have done differently?
I would have made the game about 10-12 pages. Its still simple but with enough room to clarify.
I would have kept points because the vast majority of wargamers today cannot function without them and trying to go off back to 1982, while admirable, is foolish from a marketing standpoint.
Other then that, I love that battleline finally gets flushed. I really cannot emphasize enough how tired I am of that scenario. The various scenarios are great, give us a mechanism for generating them now.
The various realms are great, but give us the default rules for all of them. Right now we have time of wars for a few of the realms but not all.
The narrative is ok, but can we find out, even if its just short stories, what the other races are doing?
I think the new mechanics would be perfectly fine, if they were tightened up and the points cost style kept.
It's not even to the second page of this thread, and I have already seen several setting outlines that are more inspired than the official one. It's obvious that the serting above all else is what's making the game fall flat with so many people.
Well, that and the crazy army composition rules. But mostly the trippy as hell setting.
Add a points value to all units. Make it a scenario rule that not every scenario uses, but have one.
Add unit-type keywords to all units, not just monsters and war machines. Ie, have units tagged as 'infantry', 'cavalry', 'monstrous infantry', etc.
The base is considered part of the model for measuring purposes. Leave concerns over appropriate base sizes to tournaments, you never needed rules about that stuff before.
Up coherency to 2". 1" is just sort of awkward.
Remove the basic scenario from the core rules, (no victory bonuses, no sudden death, no deployment, etc). Put that in a separate scenarios PDF with a handful of interesting sample scenarios, some using points for forces, some using them for victory conditions, and some not using them at all. The game works far better with scenarios, make interesting scenarios their own free document like with terrain.
Take the generic terrain rules out as well, and put those in the separate terrain rules PDF that already exists.
Use the space saved to add the following rules:
Non-Monster Heroes within 2" of a friendly unit with the same unit-type keyword cannot be targeted by shooting attacks in the enemy's shooting phase.
add rules for bound spells - basically spell effects cast at a particular value that can be dispelled by mages as normal.
Expand on rules for reserves somewhat - make them units that are part of your army that you set to the side, but make clear that they're part of your army, so if a scenario restricts your army then your reserves count towards those restrictions.
Change most summoning.
With undead, go back to only zombies and maybe ghosts being outright summonable, and keep the current rules for summoning them.
Replace other summoning spells with healing spells which restore the same amount of models as the banners for similar units, and either d3 or d6 wounds for monsters, depending on casting value. Then make the banners bound spells, keeping the ability and fluff, but letting the enemy do something about it.
With daemons (including lizards), replace summoning with the ability to hold in reserve, then roll at the start of every turn after the first, and on a 4+ deploy anywhere more than 9" from an enemy unit and may not move that turn. Instead of a summoning spell, have a spell that lets the caster pick one daemon unit in reserve to automatically pass that roll that turn, and the unit can then deploy anywhere within 9" of the caster but more than 3" from an enemy unit, and may move normally that turn.
Greater daemons and daemon princes in reserve instead enter by possessing (desroying) a friendly chaos hero with the same alignment keyword, setting up the monster within 6", then removing the hero as a casualty.
Tree summoning would be deploying from reserve into forest terrain.
Fluff wise, move back the timeline to much closer to the end times. The old world gets sucked into the warp whole, causing catastrophic damage, shifting continents around, becoming a warped and magical wasteland, but the powers of chaos are still in the process of ravaging the world and hunting down survivors, and into that setting - with the world re-arranged and changed but still full of recognizeable places and people - have sigmar launch his sigmarine counter-offensive with the sigmarines.
auticus wrote: Making AOS a side game would have been useless. People hate change as it is. Making AOS a side game would have resulted in it largely being ignored. If you're going to invest energy into making a game, you don't make a stupid decision like that.
Very good point there, never thought of that.
I would have kept points because the vast majority of wargamers today cannot function without them and trying to go off back to 1982, while admirable, is foolish from a marketing standpoint.
I think it's not the majority of wargamers but Nerds and Geeks. For some reason we need numbers that make us feel like we are smarter than others. I call it the Jock plastic toy syndrome. A lot of use need to be Jocks. Since we couldn't do it physically years ago, we try and do it mentally now. That is why a lot of people are having a hard time. They are not being athletes with plastic toy soldiers. Quite simple really. We no longer have fun, but need to win and for some, need to be validated. Pefect example? Read Privateer Page 5. You need to have balls. BALLS. Do we really need to prove that our nerd weiner is bigger than some one else's?
auticus wrote: Making AOS a side game would have been useless. People hate change as it is. Making AOS a side game would have resulted in it largely being ignored. If you're going to invest energy into making a game, you don't make a stupid decision like that.
It is popular in certain geographical locations, and is selling much better than fantasy was. Certain comments here just show bias or personal dislike, which is fine as everyone is entitled to their opinion... but is just solely their opinion.
Fantasy was dead and bleeding cash from gw for its last few years. That's why they killed the system (with one last cash grab for the end times) and rebooted with aos. Financials and flgs showed this for the most part (again things differ based on geography). Feel free to speak with gw management and they will tell you WHFB was not doing well, not oas.
Aos is not doing as well among the fantasy crowd (many of whom are bitter about whfb and rightfully so after the end times cash grab), but aos has a growing following of 40k players, other gamers, etc. Negative slights here do nothing for the hobby, the game, or the growing fan base. If anything they push those gamers away from the forums, which is why aos has been quieter while the actual gaming community I growing. It is the bully and school yard mentality.
455_PWR wrote: It is popular in certain geographical locations, and is selling much better than fantasy was. Certain comments here just show bias or personal dislike, which is fine as everyone is entitled to their opinion... but is just solely their opinion.
Fantasy was dead and bleeding cash from gw for its last few years. That's why they killed the system (with one last cash grab for the end times) and rebooted with aos. Financials and flgs showed this for the most part (again things differ based on geography). Feel free to speak with gw management and they will tell you WHFB was not doing well, not oas.
Aos is not doing as well among the fantasy crowd (many of whom are bitter about whfb and rightfully so after the end times cash grab), but aos has a growing following of 40k players, other gamers, etc. Negative slights here do nothing for the hobby, the game, or the growing fan base. If anything they push those gamers away from the forums, which is why aos has been quieter while the actual gaming community I growing. It is the bully and school yard mentality.
We are not talking about whether or not its popular or selling, just what we would have done different
I wouldn't have done the silly rules, especially during the introduction, as I think that was salt in a lot of people's wounds.
I would have thrown more of a bone to people with legacy armies, as clearly a lot of people, even many interested in the new game, felt left in limbo with whether their army still existed or not and therefore were hesitant to take it up/felt uninspired.
I agree with Davor to an extent that AoS doesn't cater to the "Alpha Nerd" personality (but that's not a bad thing in my view).
I side with everyone proposing a post apocalyptic version of the old world. Just a few ideas:
- The fall of Altdorf, capital of the Old Empire, was the symbolic End Times for the old alliance of noble races. Chaos has settled into the city as their new capital, and the new government resembles the absolute worst moments of the French revolution, with forced conversion to Chaos worship enforced by mass use of the guillotine.
- Archaon won daemonhood with the death of Karl Franz and the collapse of the various enemies of Chaos. But, in his ascension, he has left the Chaos forces in the real world leaderless. We start the new story with Archaon missing and Chaos largely dysfunctional - a large Archaon demon model would be released as the story progressed and he returned.
- The various non-Chaos races are in a state of guerrilla warfare, living now in the lands seldom seen before in Warhammer Fantasy. The southlands, Tilea, Cathay, all must now join the struggle, or they surely will be the next to fall. The remnants of the Empire live in exile, under the assumption that the gods have abandoned them, and into this growing lack of faith a new religion has taken hold: faith in science. The surviving engineers have become venerated, and many nations now put their faith in shotte and math more than hammer and prayer. Industrialization, where still possible, has seen steam powered war engines standardized. Within another season, the first Steam Tank Platoons will strike at the edges of the new Chaos Empire, under the cover of Dwarven air-mobile forces. It remains to be seen though, if their small numbers can really make a difference.
- Karl did not die of course, his body was spirited away, and he has become an avatar of Sigmar, the rebirth of the human god. Those who protect him are agents of the other surviving dwarven and elven gods, who hope to reforge an alliance that will save their dying races. Together, the gods forge a palace in the sky, far above the despoiled ground, and try to rebuild their power through restoring faith and hope to their lost kin, sharing their power more directly with those few who have kept faithful. And so, the first of the Stormcast are forged in secret. Where the men of the land have put their faith in science, the Stormcast will epitomize the will and power of the gods.
- The Lizardmen, being revealed to be essentially phone repairmen, finally receive a reply from the home office on their now thousands of years old report that the signal interference in the polar relay gates of the Warhammer planet have been due to warp feedback caused by the unresolved presence of undisciplined mortal minds. The home office relays back, and explains that the feedback could interfere with other planetary relays in the galactic spiral if unresolved, and requests the extermination of all mortal minds present to resolve warp feedback and restore the communication relay function. The Slann now must decide if they will obey the orders of the home office and set to work on the genocide of the broken world, or if they have any loyalty to the mortals that are causing these service interruptions, and will side with them against the Chaos gods that are equally to blame.
auticus wrote: Making AOS a side game would have been useless. People hate change as it is. Making AOS a side game would have resulted in it largely being ignored. If you're going to invest energy into making a game, you don't make a stupid decision like that.
As opposed to now where it's super popular?
AoS isn't just a ruleset for kids with piss poor background made from the tears of people who owned a WFB rulebook...
Ignoring the act of playing the game, everything about AoS is a departure for GW, an attempt to overhaul the concepts of starting and collecting that GW had created for themselves, of being able to break the required chain of release cycles, of all their minis being judged solely on appearance, as without points values nothing "isn't worth taking".
If they ran WFB in conjunction with AoS, all of those business decisions that obviously had some effect on AoS would be pointless.
WFB was not making GW enough of a return on the investment of resources. AoS is a product that GW obviously hope will correct that.
For me, I'd have kept bases as the definition of the model for measurement. A couple of wording clarifications here & there, including a partially simulated LoS. The beginner's scenario has to stay in the rules (otherwise you can't actually play!) but it'd have a random victory condition such as kill general, etc. rather than the pitched battle idea.
Markers. GW aren't normally slow to try and monetize an aspect of gaming, so for a system that relies heavily on remains-in-play effects I'm amazed they haven't released some form of markers for this job.
Wfb wasn't making money because gw were neglecting it, look at how fast the first few end times books were sold out clearly there was a market there eager for wfb to get some attention.
They made the game too expensive with the whole hordes thing that stopped New people dead.
hobojebus wrote: Wfb wasn't making money because gw were neglecting it, look at how fast the first few end times books were sold out clearly there was a market there eager for wfb to get some attention.
They made the game too expensive with the whole hordes thing that stopped New people dead.
So your suggestion is you would have lowered prices? again not talking abuot WHFB or whether or not AoS sucks,...just what you would have done to make it different or better..
I would have kept WFB going and used AoS as a "gateway drug" to get people into it. I had 3 smallish armies in 6th, skipped 7th and got back in during 8th. I quickly found that I had neither the points or the heavy hitters I needed to do much of anything.
If they had done AoS as something similar to Mordheim I think it would have done a lot better. Keep the End Times thing, but rather than destroy the Old World outright just leave it in ruins. The AoS/ Mordheim game would be based around smallish warbands/ scouting bands roving around seeing what's what and gathering resources.
As it is, not much really catches my eye in the new model range and I'm reluctant to drop much money on stuff for the older armies while everything is still up in the air.
Lord Corellia wrote: I would have kept WFB going and used AoS as a "gateway drug" to get people into it. I had 3 smallish armies in 6th, skipped 7th and got back in during 8th. I quickly found that I had neither the points or the heavy hitters I needed to do much of anything.
Putting aside the setting, a skirmish scale, campaign oriented game, using regular fantasy and 40k models, would be a boon to GW in my opinion. I've put a few hundred into fantasy after years of nothing, because I liked the idea of smaller armies. I got into orks for 40k because of the models I had started collecting in Gorkamorka.
There must be others out there who would buy GW products if the game didn't require hundreds of models for a "real" game.
Which is why, had i made AOS, I wouldn't have listed points - it's the points that create this artificial "real" game size. That said, I would have included a blurb that clubs and online communities should come together and build their own balancing mechanisms. Because, ultimately, I trust players and TOs to balance the game better than I trust GW to do it.
Oggthrok wrote: Which is why, had i made AOS, I wouldn't have listed points - it's the points that create this artificial "real" game size. That said, I would have included a blurb that clubs and online communities should come together and build their own balancing mechanisms. Because, ultimately, I trust players and TOs to balance the game better than I trust GW to do it.
I trust SOME of the local players to self-regulate. A couple of guys around here would just bring literally hundreds of models and be like "well why isn't your collection this big?"
That's why I haven't even attempted to get into AoS yet.
I would have included a points system to allow for pick-up games and those that want them.
I would have also come out with a "campaign setting guide" for AoS in softcover that is about the size of the Grand Alliance Chaos book along with that price.
455_PWR wrote: It is popular in certain geographical locations, and is selling much better than fantasy was. Certain comments here just show bias or personal dislike, which is fine as everyone is entitled to their opinion... but is just solely their opinion.
Fantasy was dead and bleeding cash from gw for its last few years. That's why they killed the system (with one last cash grab for the end times) and rebooted with aos. Financials and flgs showed this for the most part (again things differ based on geography). Feel free to speak with gw management and they will tell you WHFB was not doing well, not oas.
Aos is not doing as well among the fantasy crowd (many of whom are bitter about whfb and rightfully so after the end times cash grab), but aos has a growing following of 40k players, other gamers, etc. Negative slights here do nothing for the hobby, the game, or the growing fan base. If anything they push those gamers away from the forums, which is why aos has been quieter while the actual gaming community I growing. It is the bully and school yard mentality.
If AoS was a success it would be pretty obvious. If AoS was a genuinely good game it wouldn't need to be coddled like this. This kind of attitude, the one that says AoS fans need to be sheltered or they'll run for the hills, either shows how little confidence it's fanbase has in the game or how fragile it's position is.
But that's neither here nor there. The fascinating cognitive dissonance displayed by it's most ardent defenders is worthy of it's own topic.
The topic is what would you have done differently in launching AoS, so let's stick to that and not turn this into another AoS is Great!/AoS is Gak! thread.
Parallel instead of replacement game. Pretty much the key to it.
Have AoS be an entry game for WHFB that allows for small Skirmish battles with the very same miniatures and hobby beginners. Once they wanted to step it up and play an actual tabletop with rules and stuff, they could use the WHFB rules.
There never was a need to fully eliminate an entire system and marketing-wise, it was quite possibly the dumbest movie in the history of GW to just delete one of their main system. Judging by sales in Western Germany so far I am glad to see GW falling straight on their face.
tl;dr: Should have made AoS the "beginner" level WHFB and then still have both.
OOOoooh, I know. I'd take the Destiny of Kings book Mantic put out for KoW, slap a 'sigmar' sticker over the KoW title, and release that alongside AoS.
It is a wonderful campaign guide that talks all about how to do linked, narrative games, as well as map based more competitive games, and an example of a narrative campaign that included a round of their dungeon crawl game and KoW rules for one of that games antagonists. Hell, it even had advice for how to get a group together and organize the campaign with other gamers.
That kind of thing sounds to me like a perfect book to pair with the kind of game AoS is supposed to be, Battleplans on the other hand seem a little.. lacking compared to that I think.
Pair a good campaign book with the initial release and you'd have a much better release.
They tried the skirmish game alongside the main game approach back in 6th edition. They even dedicated a few white dwarf issues to releasing scenarios for it.
The skirmish rules were in WHFB core rulebook.
It didn't do very well because people ignored it for the main game.
Thats why I do not think a parallel release would have done any good. It would have been a waste of energy.
People don't want the beginner game. They want to skip straight to what people are playing for real and in tournaments.
Now if there were skirmish TOURNAMENTS going on at the same level as the regular tournaments, this would change. That currently does not exist though.
a SAGA version of WHFB would have been IMO awesome.
AoS supposedly was introduced because since 8th edition, 2010, WHFB had lost a lot of popularity. This was thought to be due partly to the massive increase in army size, though I believe doubling the cost of books was also an important factor.
At any rate, perhaps the lack of impact of a skirmish game in 6th edition is not relevant to the situation of the past five years.
1. Points - perhaps keep a statement saying "you can chose to use points in your games, but we encourage you to ignore them if you prefer". Give people the choice. It doesn't have to be as fiddly as previous GW points systems either - something simple like Saga could have worked fine.
2. Keep the Old World, but change it. The End Times should have played out differently and left the Old World changed but intact. I have no real interest in the new background but I did like the background for the Old World and there wasn't a whole lot like it in the mass market fantasy scene.
3. Keep square bases. Don't see any reason round bases were needed and it's a pain in the arse. Then use bases as the point for measurement.
4. Keep the scale on new minis close to the old. The upscaling will prevent me from buying any AoS minis unless they are monsters.
You could keep the Sigmarines (just make them angelic warriors of Sigmar intervening due to Chaos over-running the world, Angels of Order.)
The idea of fast and loose skirmish system is actually attractive. The free rules are fine, and the core is also fine, free army lists is great.
RoperPG wrote: WFB was not making GW enough of a return on the investment of resources. AoS is a product that GW obviously hope will correct that.
The reason why WFB wasn't making GW enough money on a return of investment was because they were not giving it's customers what they wanted. GW thinks we will buy what they put out and that is not the case. It looks like GW is doing it again with AoS. So how will AoS correct it when GW is doing the same thing as they did last time?
I would have:
1) forced round bases, make the base the measure point, I dont think that currently the solution worked, they let us keep square bases in a vain attempt to throw a bone to old warhammer fans but with no real intention of keeping our armies around. stick with 1 base type and make it work
2) points not by unit, but by model, and eliminate units altogether. you want it to be "bring what you want" then make it no kidding bring what you want, an army of 3 thunderers, 5 iron breakers, a thane, and a cannon would be ok if they all did what they wanted. a warscroll could give all the things a model could do and then let someone go nuts (more of a lotr type thing)
-------2) warscroll for model not units without points to keep the "no points" in if absolutely insistant on that part.
3) clarify combat better, make it clear, currently its a mess
4) alternating model/unit activation or do a lotr style system for turn sequence.
Thecustomlime, again, using 50 cent words to insult. Cognative dissonance... lol. I have two college degrees and two tech diplomas, four cars, a new home, etc, you should get the point.
All I said if you read my post is that everytime someone says something good about aos, someone slams them with sarcasm or insults about the game. No adult likes that kind of childish bullying or needs it. This is why the aos/fantasy forums have shrunk as most players don't waste their time trying to reason with the unreasonable. You just proved that point good sir.
Back on topic; I think points would have fixed the issues with the game. The models, play what you want (lack of foc), free digital rules, etc, are actually pretty cutting edge compared to other skirmish games. The only issue I see is balance that could be fixed with a point or wound system. This is why the gw tournaments have a wound cap and keyword limitation system. If it is used in tournaments, why not make it official for the game?
I think a misstep GW took was just introducing two factions from the start. Especially since those armies aren't particularly unique within the company's model range. If they had started with the Start Collecting boxes they had today for Seraphon, Nurgle etc. the game would've been received a bit better.
I would've also tried to distance the game from WHFB in terms of lore if they wanted AoS to be it's replacement. Keep Chaos and Sigmar but axe off everything else. It may alienate old players but... that was inevitable.
I think GW would have a lot less rage towards it and AoS if the transition was more rational and less abrupt.
More rational because after the EoT books spam there was several months of total silence, only to be broken by a jugular cut to wfb. I mean seriously? Who in their right mind lures people for EoT ( and looking back lots of Wfb fans were exited with the stream of news and got more into WFB mode again) and then after months of nothing they explode it all into bubbles. This is someone luring you with a pint of beer only to smash it in your head after you bought it. This is never going to end up well.
Less abrupt because there was no need for the fluff to be obliterated, it could have been evolving slowly. Rules its another thing I have no idea how they could have done it otherwise in therms of jumping from 50 men regiments 10front wide to skirmish armies of 50 models. Bonkers!
It was a hard thing to take on board and I think communication failed, GW still lives to much stuck into their own beliefs and ignored the idea that maybe they should respect more who actually pays the bills.
I also would have created small themed warbands box sets with mixed alliances very much like the current factions arrangements as a starting point rather than 1 starter box with sigmar and khorne.
RoperPG wrote: WFB was not making GW enough of a return on the investment of resources. AoS is a product that GW obviously hope will correct that.
The reason why WFB wasn't making GW enough money on a return of investment was because they were not giving it's customers what they wanted. GW thinks we will buy what they put out and that is not the case. It looks like GW is doing it again with AoS. So how will AoS correct it when GW is doing the same thing as they did last time?
Because GW obviously didn't draw the same conclusions you did?
AoS isn't just 'a different game', it's an entirely different retail model.
I haven't said what they have done is the right thing, but it's for the reasons I stated that I don't believe dual-running AoS and WFB was ever an option - AoS was an overhaul of GW's fantasy system from studio to stockroom to shopfloor, so running both systems would have been utterly pointless and even more costly.
455_PWR wrote: Thecustomlime, again, using 50 cent words to insult. Cognative dissonance... lol. I have two college degrees and two tech diplomas, four cars, a new home, etc, you should get the point.
All I said if you read my post is that everytime someone says something good about aos, someone slams them with sarcasm or insults about the game. No adult likes that kind of childish bullying or needs it. This is why the aos/fantasy forums have shrunk as most players don't waste their time trying to reason with the unreasonable. You just proved that point good sir.
Back on topic; I think points would have fixed the issues with the game. The models, play what you want (lack of foc), free digital rules, etc, are actually pretty cutting edge compared to other skirmish games. The only issue I see is balance that could be fixed with a point or wound system. This is why the gw tournaments have a wound cap and keyword limitation system. If it is used in tournaments, why not make it official for the game?
I was with you all the way up to "cutting edge" compared to other skirmish games, it stacks very poorly against other skirmish games. the units have reasons to be up to 30-40+ models in size, most of the good skirmish games out there that one unit outnumbers. I think had they ditched the "unit" concept altogether they could have made something very unique,. as it is, they did not make anything unique but hodgepodged together what they already had in a clumsy way. a warband built in the mode of mordheim where these individual models would be more useful other than handfull of dice adders would have been very interesting
1. Not destroyed the old world. I dont see the point because when chaos trys to destroy a planet, that worlds population will no longer worship them, shed blood, contract disease, indulge in excess, etc. I thought the chaos gods would rather have things continue but in their own image and ways versus total obliteration.
2. I would not have brought back mannfred. He essentially is the one who destroyed the old world with his backstab, i dont see why Nagash brought him back in AoS.
3. Sigvald would not have been cheap-shotted and died.
Why? because:
SonOfSigvald wrote: 1. Not destroyed the old world. I dont see the point because when chaos trys to destroy a planet, that worlds population will no longer worship them, shed blood, contract disease, indulge in excess, etc. I thought the chaos gods would rather have things continue but in their own image and ways versus total obliteration.
2. I would not have brought back mannfred. He essentially is the one who destroyed the old world with his backstab, i dont see why Nagash brought him back in AoS.
3. Sigvald would not have been cheap-shotted and died.
Why? because:
RoperPG wrote: WFB was not making GW enough of a return on the investment of resources. AoS is a product that GW obviously hope will correct that.
The reason why WFB wasn't making GW enough money on a return of investment was because they were not giving it's customers what they wanted. GW thinks we will buy what they put out and that is not the case. It looks like GW is doing it again with AoS. So how will AoS correct it when GW is doing the same thing as they did last time?
Because GW obviously didn't draw the same conclusions you did?
AoS isn't just 'a different game', it's an entirely different retail model.
I haven't said what they have done is the right thing, but it's for the reasons I stated that I don't believe dual-running AoS and WFB was ever an option - AoS was an overhaul of GW's fantasy system from studio to stockroom to shopfloor, so running both systems would have been utterly pointless and even more costly.
NAVARRO wrote: I think GW would have a lot less rage towards it and AoS if the transition was more rational and less abrupt.
More rational because after the EoT books spam there was several months of total silence, only to be broken by a jugular cut to wfb. I mean seriously? Who in their right mind lures people for EoT ( and looking back lots of Wfb fans were exited with the stream of news and got more into WFB mode again) and then after months of nothing they explode it all into bubbles. This is someone luring you with a pint of beer only to smash it in your head after you bought it. This is never going to end up well.
Less abrupt because there was no need for the fluff to be obliterated, it could have been evolving slowly. Rules its another thing I have no idea how they could have done it otherwise in therms of jumping from 50 men regiments 10front wide to skirmish armies of 50 models. Bonkers!
It was a hard thing to take on board and I think communication failed, GW still lives to much stuck into their own beliefs and ignored the idea that maybe they should respect more who actually pays the bills.
I also would have created small themed warbands box sets with mixed alliances very much like the current factions arrangements as a starting point rather than 1 starter box with sigmar and khorne.
That really was the BS of all BS moves. I feel for all the new players that were drawn into the game and then bought fantasy material in the months leading up to the switcheroo. It's like GW was using their lack of transparancy to fleece customers into buying product they didn't want to take a loss on, and those players got one hell of a screwjob. Not everyone looks on the internet for random rumors.
I only can wonder on how many players GW lost after they bought rules material for WHFB last spring that ended up being for naught.
Of all things that I could have done differently from GW about AoS, it would have been being more clear with the fans what was going to happen, bottom line be damned.
I don'tagree that AoS is a completely different retail model to 40K, WHFB or LoTR.
You buy a starter kit that includes two small armies and the rules. You've then got the option to buy a more expensive rulebook, expansion books, and more kits of figures to expand your army or armies. Alternatively, you can buy the rules and figures separately if you don't want the starter set.
All this seems to be the same as the other games.
The difference is that you can download the core AoS rules and army lists free, as a taster. This is a good idea, which many games have used, though not previous GW games.
Kilkrazy wrote: I don'tagree that AoS is a completely different retail model to 40K, WHFB or LoTR.
Probably best if I explain my thoughts on GW's decision making properly.
NB. This is *not* an assessment of whether they made the right decisions or not.
Start from 3 basic assumptions;
1) Need to improve income relative to cost of development
2) Customers are not buying enough minis.
3) GW would rather sell £x of minis than £x of books, presumably due to % profit per £.
Provide basic game rules for free - this removes the necessity of buying a BRB or starter set every few years, reducing the minimum spend to get going or stay involved.
1 box, 1 unit. In 40k, one box provided everything you needed to field at least a minimum sized unit that was usable. In WFB, you normally required at least a couple of boxes to field a unit that was game-worthy. AoS has moved to that model, again supporting the idea of lower minimum spend in order to combat prohibitive cost for beginners.
Remove points / composition rules from standard game rules. A lot's been said about the fact you could always do that voluntarily, but overwhelmingly people tend to play as RAW, so by including points/comp in the rules people will tend to default to those. No more criticism of unit Y being overpowered, unit Z being underpowered, or army A having no counter to unit B, or the requirement to have at least 2 of a unit before you could buy that hero you wanted.
Points & comp also necessitate the updating of the relevant army books, and ongoing FAQ work. Without, you can release unit A for army B whenever you want. No more scheduling big releases for armies that (post chapterhouse) necessitate a full suite of mini releases to coincide with the army book.
By providing mini rules in the box or free downloads, combined with zero comp/points, you never get power creep or underperforming units when the core rules change (specific example for me was the window between Wood Elves at the end of 5th and the changes to skirmishing for 6th - they were *brutal* in that window.) while people wait for the AB/BRB update.
People like the idea of space marines, and space marines sell. Well, here come the Stormcast.
Destruction of the Old World? Well, only reasoning I can put there is that due to the finite nature of the Old World, adding in Stormcast or Fyreslayers (for example) would have required retconning published histories and therefore imply more book purchasing. Switching to the journalistic approach to fluff of AoS as opposed to the quasi-historical approach of WFB allows the studio free reign to do whatever, whenever.
I'm not saying any of these could not have been fixed by changing the WFB rules and still keeping it ostensibly the same, but my opinion is that any change to facilitate the intent would have resulted in either a halfway-house financial measure, or big enough changes to the game that people would still have been unhappy.
TL: DR - GW had painted themselves into a corner with WFB, both financially and intellectually. They either had to scrabble to pull it back and risk some or all of the issues perpetuating, or clean slate and hope for the best. They obviously went for the latter.
"Age of Sigmar is the exciting first step in completely re-imagining the Warhammer game and experience! Rather than simply dictate what this new experience will be from on high, the designers here at GW will be working with the community to craft the very best game possible. Consider the game presented here to be a 'first draft'. Give these rules a go, and talk them over with your friends. What worked? What didn't? Included in this box set is a play test survey form that you can fill out and mail back to us with feedback. The same form, along with all of the current playtest rules, can also be found on our website online. Our studio designers will be looking over the feedback from these surveys to see what players like about the new game, and what still needs some work. Expect the next big revision to the Age of Sigmar rules on X/X/20XX - and if you've picked up this box after that point, then be sure to check our website for the most current playtest rules and feedback form!"
There. That's it. That's all you need to 'fix' age of sigmar. All the detractors then have a direction to dump their anger, even if no human being actually reads those surveys. Defenders have a go-to excuse that shuts down most griping "it's a playtest, if you don't like something send them feedback so they can fix it." Nobody needs to get too upset in the first place, since again, it's just a playtest.
Plus it would have given GW the excuse to walk back any change that proves to be overwhelmingly rejected by the community (no points no points no points), while still pretending it was part of their plan all along.
Public "play testing" keeps communities engaged even when going through changes they don't approve of otherwise. It gets people invested, makes them feel like part of the process. In this social media age, people expect to have at least the illusion of participation in the products and services they buy. GW's insistance on a uni-directional relationship between producers and consumers where the producers make what they want and consumers just buy it and use the product exclusively as directed is hopelessly backwards.
Sigvatr wrote: Parallel instead of replacement game. Pretty much the key to it.
Have AoS be an entry game for WHFB that allows for small Skirmish battles with the very same miniatures and hobby beginners. Once they wanted to step it up and play an actual tabletop with rules and stuff, they could use the WHFB rules.
There never was a need to fully eliminate an entire system and marketing-wise, it was quite possibly the dumbest movie in the history of GW to just delete one of their main system. Judging by sales in Western Germany so far I am glad to see GW falling straight on their face.
tl;dr: Should have made AoS the "beginner" level WHFB and then still have both.
This. (bold added for emphasis)
GW could have easily reshaped the setting's geopolitical situation without having to axe it. They could have settled for a path that could only gain them customers instead of starting from a complete and utter rupture with a significant portion of the FB playerbase, and introduce a decent, balanced version of FB to go with AoS.
Kilkrazy wrote: I don'tagree that AoS is a completely different retail model to 40K, WHFB or LoTR.
Probably best if I explain my thoughts on GW's decision making properly.
NB. This is *not* an assessment of whether they made the right decisions or not.
Start from 3 basic assumptions;
1) Need to improve income relative to cost of development
2) Customers are not buying enough minis.
3) GW would rather sell £x of minis than £x of books, presumably due to % profit per £.
Provide basic game rules for free - this removes the necessity of buying a BRB or starter set every few years, reducing the minimum spend to get going or stay involved.
1 box, 1 unit. In 40k, one box provided everything you needed to field at least a minimum sized unit that was usable. In WFB, you normally required at least a couple of boxes to field a unit that was game-worthy. AoS has moved to that model, again supporting the idea of lower minimum spend in order to combat prohibitive cost for beginners.
Remove points / composition rules from standard game rules. A lot's been said about the fact you could always do that voluntarily, but overwhelmingly people tend to play as RAW, so by including points/comp in the rules people will tend to default to those. No more criticism of unit Y being overpowered, unit Z being underpowered, or army A having no counter to unit B, or the requirement to have at least 2 of a unit before you could buy that hero you wanted.
Points & comp also necessitate the updating of the relevant army books, and ongoing FAQ work. Without, you can release unit A for army B whenever you want. No more scheduling big releases for armies that (post chapterhouse) necessitate a full suite of mini releases to coincide with the army book.
By providing mini rules in the box or free downloads, combined with zero comp/points, you never get power creep or underperforming units when the core rules change (specific example for me was the window between Wood Elves at the end of 5th and the changes to skirmishing for 6th - they were *brutal* in that window.) while people wait for the AB/BRB update.
People like the idea of space marines, and space marines sell. Well, here come the Stormcast.
Destruction of the Old World? Well, only reasoning I can put there is that due to the finite nature of the Old World, adding in Stormcast or Fyreslayers (for example) would have required retconning published histories and therefore imply more book purchasing. Switching to the journalistic approach to fluff of AoS as opposed to the quasi-historical approach of WFB allows the studio free reign to do whatever, whenever.
I'm not saying any of these could not have been fixed by changing the WFB rules and still keeping it ostensibly the same, but my opinion is that any change to facilitate the intent would have resulted in either a halfway-house financial measure, or big enough changes to the game that people would still have been unhappy.
TL: DR - GW had painted themselves into a corner with WFB, both financially and intellectually. They either had to scrabble to pull it back and risk some or all of the issues perpetuating, or clean slate and hope for the best. They obviously went for the latter.
On the power creep part, I think one needs to take into context the fact that there is already a Power Creep in place. I mean, why take 5 Chaos Knights when you can take 5 Varanguard since they are clearly more powerful?
I dunno about a lot of Age of Sigmar and how to improve it, but if there's one thing I'd change, it's how much distance the new setting has created.
What I mean by distance is how easy it is to get into the setting as a player and fan, and how easy it is to both understand and care for the setting. They did completely up with what the previous setting had done in that area, with a relatable setting, heroes and cultures you can sort of understand, and introduced a setting with no physical rules, created entirely by magic and make-believe and inhabinated by people who don't have a culture, a way of living and something to fight for. We don't know what all this fighting will accomplish, and we don't get to understand the drive to keep on fighting for a world that doesn't do anything good for anyone anyway.
The Stormcast are another very powerful good guy faction, which automatically turns me off, since that removes all sense of struggle from the faction. Combine this with the fact that they're post-mortals, and they have lost me completely; they have no relevance, other than to fight. On the other side there's the Khorne guys, who, previously, were vikings with homes and families who took out to pillage to feed their families and appease their gods, but now are just kinda... There. Fyreslayers are a flanderized version of the Dwarves we know, who have no Underway or Karaks to fight for, and no survival to think off, and the Lizardmen aren't threathened, and can suddenly do their Order things without any trouble. Meanwhile, all the peasants are completely unnoticed and no one mentions them, like they don't matter - And they don't, really. In WFB, a butchered city or countryside was an issue. But now, when everyone lives on warpdust and wishes and lives mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, who cares?
Add that to the fact that the good guys are somehow winning, and now are better morally than all other factions, and it's just one big, '300'-esque slop with no sense to anything and no investment. The heroes are unkillable and have no faces, no struggles, no personality, the bad guys are in it for no reason other than to be bad guys, and serve as meat for the hero-grinder.
Tat's what they lost from WFB, and what makes it all so sad, to me. I hope Total War will deliver the Old World in a somewhat recognizable state to compensate...
On the power creep part, I think one needs to take into context the fact that there is already a Power Creep in place. I mean, why take 5 Chaos Knights when you can take 5 Varanguard since they are clearly more powerful?
No, that's not power creep; they're simply a better unit. 1 to 1, yes, Varanguard objectively better.
Power creep is (for example) when unit X is pretty much twice as effective as unit Y, but for some reason only costs another 50% in whatever comp system is being used. It becomes a must-have. it sells. Meanwhile, unit Y is pretty much only purchased if people *have* to take them or are building fluff lists or just really like the models *because* unit X is better.
Without points, it's down to discussion with opponent. (Or not!)
GW aren't stating what Varanguard are equivalent to, so there by definition can't be power creep because there isn't a quantifiable concept of 'power' within AoS.
Perceived inefficiency in-game is (relatively) disposed of. So unit Y sells.
Without points to balance things out wouldn't Varanguard be an effective replacement for Chaos Knights in people's armies? I mean, why would you take Chaos Knights instead if they are inferior?
The Wise Dane wrote: I dunno about a lot of Age of Sigmar and how to improve it, but if there's one thing I'd change, it's how much distance the new setting has created.
What I mean by distance is how easy it is to get into the setting as a player and fan, and how easy it is to both understand and care for the setting. They did completely up with what the previous setting had done in that area, with a relatable setting, heroes and cultures you can sort of understand, and introduced a setting with no physical rules, created entirely by magic and make-believe and inhabinated by people who don't have a culture, a way of living and something to fight for. We don't know what all this fighting will accomplish, and we don't get to understand the drive to keep on fighting for a world that doesn't do anything good for anyone anyway.
The Stormcast are another very powerful good guy faction, which automatically turns me off, since that removes all sense of struggle from the faction. Combine this with the fact that they're post-mortals, and they have lost me completely; they have no relevance, other than to fight. On the other side there's the Khorne guys, who, previously, were vikings with homes and families who took out to pillage to feed their families and appease their gods, but now are just kinda... There. Fyreslayers are a flanderized version of the Dwarves we know, who have no Underway or Karaks to fight for, and no survival to think off, and the Lizardmen aren't threathened, and can suddenly do their Order things without any trouble. Meanwhile, all the peasants are completely unnoticed and no one mentions them, like they don't matter - And they don't, really. In WFB, a butchered city or countryside was an issue. But now, when everyone lives on warpdust and wishes and lives mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, who cares?
Add that to the fact that the good guys are somehow winning, and now are better morally than all other factions, and it's just one big, '300'-esque slop with no sense to anything and no investment. The heroes are unkillable and have no faces, no struggles, no personality, the bad guys are in it for no reason other than to be bad guys, and serve as meat for the hero-grinder.
Tat's what they lost from WFB, and what makes it all so sad, to me. I hope Total War will deliver the Old World in a somewhat recognizable state to compensate...
Yeah, that sums it up very nicely for me. And it's depressing to see several different people in this thread write better game settings with probably 15 minutes thought at best. It all just feels like what you get when the beancounters and IP lawyers have creative control.
On the power creep part, I think one needs to take into context the fact that there is already a Power Creep in place. I mean, why take 5 Chaos Knights when you can take 5 Varanguard since they are clearly more powerful?
No, that's not power creep; they're simply a better unit. 1 to 1, yes, Varanguard objectively better.
Power creep is (for example) when unit X is pretty much twice as effective as unit Y, but for some reason only costs another 50% in whatever comp system is being used. It becomes a must-have. it sells. Meanwhile, unit Y is pretty much only purchased if people *have* to take them or are building fluff lists or just really like the models *because* unit X is better.
Without points, it's down to discussion with opponent. (Or not!)
GW aren't stating what Varanguard are equivalent to, so there by definition can't be power creep because there isn't a quantifiable concept of 'power' within AoS.
Perceived inefficiency in-game is (relatively) disposed of. So unit Y sells.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerCreep"A term used in any kind of multi-player game (including Video Games, Collectible Card Game, and Tabletop Games) to describe the process in which newly-added-content can be played along with the old-content, but with the new content being far more powerful/useful in every sense."
"No, that's not power creep; they're simply a better unit. 1 to 1, yes, Varanguard objectively better."
I'll just leave that there. Just because one's not using points doesn't mean there's no power creep. It's your choice to use the new unit or not, but you objectively cannot deny it. Varanguard are significantly stronger than Chaos Knights for the exact same "price": being one model. You can't use the "but it'll balance out because there's no points!!1!" excuse for everything.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
TheCustomLime wrote: Without points to balance things out wouldn't Varanguard be an effective replacement for Chaos Knights in people's armies? I mean, why would you take Chaos Knights instead if they are inferior?
On the power creep part, I think one needs to take into context the fact that there is already a Power Creep in place. I mean, why take 5 Chaos Knights when you can take 5 Varanguard since they are clearly more powerful?
No, that's not power creep; they're simply a better unit. 1 to 1, yes, Varanguard objectively better.
Power creep is (for example) when unit X is pretty much twice as effective as unit Y, but for some reason only costs another 50% in whatever comp system is being used. It becomes a must-have. it sells. Meanwhile, unit Y is pretty much only purchased if people *have* to take them or are building fluff lists or just really like the models *because* unit X is better.
Without points, it's down to discussion with opponent. (Or not!)
GW aren't stating what Varanguard are equivalent to, so there by definition can't be power creep because there isn't a quantifiable concept of 'power' within AoS.
Perceived inefficiency in-game is (relatively) disposed of. So unit Y sells.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerCreep"A term used in any kind of multi-player game (including Video Games, Collectible Card Game, and Tabletop Games) to describe the process in which newly-added-content can be played along with the old-content, but with the new content being far more powerful/useful in every sense."
"No, that's not power creep; they're simply a better unit. 1 to 1, yes, Varanguard objectively better."
I'll just leave that there. Just because one's not using points doesn't mean there's no power creep. It's your choice to use the new unit or not, but you objectively cannot deny it. Varanguard are significantly stronger than Chaos Knights for the exact same "price": being one model. You can't use the "but it'll balance out because there's no points!!1!" excuse for everything.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
TheCustomLime wrote: Without points to balance things out wouldn't Varanguard be an effective replacement for Chaos Knights in people's armies? I mean, why would you take Chaos Knights instead if they are inferior?
My point exactly.
But then by that logic, Stormvermin, Greatswords & Hammerers are power creep, for example. Because they're elite units, and you have 'standard' units available.
For the vast majority of people who played WFB - or any game, for that matter - 'power' was/is a function of in-game usefulness vs. points cost. The various list discussion forums are absolute proof of this; how much bang can I get for my buck?
Even fluffy list writers included caveats like "I know they're not worth the points, but I like the models" or similar.
I have not stated anywhere that you couldn't/shouldn't take unit X v unit Y. I'm also not trying to cop out. But without points, a Varanguard is simply a Varanguard. He's a big boy who will tear chunks off anything and requires a lot of effort to put down. Whether you and your opponent factor that into any decisions on what should/shouldn't be on the table is down to you.
Because GW haven't codified any value to how powerful a Varanguard is in comparison to a Chaos Knight, or any other unit.
*That* is my point.
Yeah, GW kinda took the nuclear option with regard to Power Creep. Now they only "power creep" is what you can afford and what you can browbeat your opponent into letting you take.
On the power creep part, I think one needs to take into context the fact that there is already a Power Creep in place. I mean, why take 5 Chaos Knights when you can take 5 Varanguard since they are clearly more powerful?
No, that's not power creep; they're simply a better unit. 1 to 1, yes, Varanguard objectively better.
Power creep is (for example) when unit X is pretty much twice as effective as unit Y, but for some reason only costs another 50% in whatever comp system is being used. It becomes a must-have. it sells. Meanwhile, unit Y is pretty much only purchased if people *have* to take them or are building fluff lists or just really like the models *because* unit X is better.
Without points, it's down to discussion with opponent. (Or not!)
GW aren't stating what Varanguard are equivalent to, so there by definition can't be power creep because there isn't a quantifiable concept of 'power' within AoS.
Perceived inefficiency in-game is (relatively) disposed of. So unit Y sells.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PowerCreep"A term used in any kind of multi-player game (including Video Games, Collectible Card Game, and Tabletop Games) to describe the process in which newly-added-content can be played along with the old-content, but with the new content being far more powerful/useful in every sense."
"No, that's not power creep; they're simply a better unit. 1 to 1, yes, Varanguard objectively better."
I'll just leave that there. Just because one's not using points doesn't mean there's no power creep. It's your choice to use the new unit or not, but you objectively cannot deny it. Varanguard are significantly stronger than Chaos Knights for the exact same "price": being one model. You can't use the "but it'll balance out because there's no points!!1!" excuse for everything.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
TheCustomLime wrote: Without points to balance things out wouldn't Varanguard be an effective replacement for Chaos Knights in people's armies? I mean, why would you take Chaos Knights instead if they are inferior?
My point exactly.
But then by that logic, Stormvermin, Greatswords & Hammerers are power creep, for example. Because they're elite units, and you have 'standard' units available.
For the vast majority of people who played WFB - or any game, for that matter - 'power' was/is a function of in-game usefulness vs. points cost. The various list discussion forums are absolute proof of this; how much bang can I get for my buck?
Even fluffy list writers included caveats like "I know they're not worth the points, but I like the models" or similar.
I have not stated anywhere that you couldn't/shouldn't take unit X v unit Y. I'm also not trying to cop out. But without points, a Varanguard is simply a Varanguard. He's a big boy who will tear chunks off anything and requires a lot of effort to put down. Whether you and your opponent factor that into any decisions on what should/shouldn't be on the table is down to you.
Because GW haven't codified any value to how powerful a Varanguard is in comparison to a Chaos Knight, or any other unit.
*That* is my point.
But that's the thing - GW have indeed codified their value - each model is worth exactly *one* model. Period. End of. That's it. Without any comp, army restriction or whatever balancing tool you have no other way to compare them except by doing it on a 1 to 1 basis, and it's impossible not to see the power creep. It's. Right. There! Look at the AoS events that Matt goes to. What are the restrictions? Model numbers. Also, remember the reviled dwarf army he fought against a couple of months ago in an official Warhammer World AoS event?
As for the Stormvermin, Greatswords and Hammerers bit, I was tempted to mention them but decided not to because they are an issue related to the innate lack of balance in the base AoS release itself - it's not a power creep because neither of those three are part of content that was released after AoS was pushed out - it's just gakky balancing.
But that's the thing - GW have indeed codified their value - each model is worth exactly *one* model. Period. End of. That's it. Without any comp, army restriction or whatever balancing tool you have no other way to compare them except by doing it on a 1 to 1 basis, and it's impossible not to see the power creep.
If you're talking about RAW game rules, then even they state that you can deploy whatever you want, which also means you can not deploy whatever you want. You decide.
If you're talking about figuring out relative power... how about actually playing with them? Taking a guess?
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote: Look at the AoS events that Matt goes to. What are the restrictions? Model numbers. Also, remember the reviled dwarf army he fought against a couple of months ago in an official Warhammer World AoS event?
Model numbers, with discussion with your opponent/s.
Or for the next and previous events, model numbers with total wounds taken into account.
Which I take as an admission from GW that just leaving it up to players is not a universally good idea.
(The Dwarf army was a guy being a tool - his deployment implied they were a single unit, not individual characters, and he broke the tournament rules anyway by breaking the model count limit in the first place. So to my reading, he was a cheat because there was subterfuge involved, meaning he knew what he was doing.)
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote: As for the Stormvermin, Greatswords and Hammerers bit, I was tempted to mention them but decided not to because they are an issue related to the innate lack of balance in the base AoS release itself - it's not a power creep because neither of those three are part of content that was released after AoS was pushed out - it's just gakky balancing.
Which proves what I've been trying to say. GW have an awful track record at balancing. Most discussion involving 9th age or any of the comp systems for AoS usually contain at least one person stating that players do a better job of balancing than GW. So GW've obviously decided to go with that, and leave it up to the players.
Depending on your point of view, that's either an incredibly stupid, or incredibly brave move to make.
For the UK market, I think incredibly brave. Gaming clubs/stores have pretty good penetration so are fairly insular, so you'll likely be playing the same group of people week-in, week-out so it's not difficult for a consensus to form pretty quickly on what 'balance'is.
For the US market, I think stupid. From what I can infer, penetration outside of cities is pretty low and they have a wide catchment area, meaning a high turnover of players meaning PUGs become really problematic without a shared protocol.
Well, I would argue that in AoS there is a cost to a unit even if you don't use community created comps. Vanilla AoS seems to be roughly balanced by unit footprint (In this case meaning wounds vs physical space occupied) or, as some say, "eyeballing it". Varanguard have a very similar unit footprint to Chaos Knights and thus are similar in relative value. But Varanguard have special rules that makes them much more powerful. I would argue that, to use Roper's example, that Greatswords are a side grade to State Troops since they are about as durable with some increase of power but with less unit resiliency. Plus, State Troops have some buffs that makes them better in larger numbers. Varanguard are just +1 Chaos Knights.
Put another way, 15 wounds of Varanguard>15 wounds of Chaos Knights.
But that's the thing - GW have indeed codified their value - each model is worth exactly *one* model. Period. End of. That's it. Without any comp, army restriction or whatever balancing tool you have no other way to compare them except by doing it on a 1 to 1 basis, and it's impossible not to see the power creep.
If you're talking about RAW game rules, then even they state that you can deploy whatever you want, which also means you can not deploy whatever you want. You decide.
If you're talking about figuring out relative power... how about actually playing with them? Taking a guess?
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote: Look at the AoS events that Matt goes to. What are the restrictions? Model numbers. Also, remember the reviled dwarf army he fought against a couple of months ago in an official Warhammer World AoS event?
Model numbers, with discussion with your opponent/s.
Or for the next and previous events, model numbers with total wounds taken into account.
Which I take as an admission from GW that just leaving it up to players is not a universally good idea.
(The Dwarf army was a guy being a tool - his deployment implied they were a single unit, not individual characters, and he broke the tournament rules anyway by breaking the model count limit in the first place. So to my reading, he was a cheat because there was subterfuge involved, meaning he knew what he was doing.)
Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote: As for the Stormvermin, Greatswords and Hammerers bit, I was tempted to mention them but decided not to because they are an issue related to the innate lack of balance in the base AoS release itself - it's not a power creep because neither of those three are part of content that was released after AoS was pushed out - it's just gakky balancing.
Which proves what I've been trying to say. GW have an awful track record at balancing. Most discussion involving 9th age or any of the comp systems for AoS usually contain at least one person stating that players do a better job of balancing than GW. So GW've obviously decided to go with that, and leave it up to the players.
Depending on your point of view, that's either an incredibly stupid, or incredibly brave move to make.
For the UK market, I think incredibly brave. Gaming clubs/stores have pretty good penetration so are fairly insular, so you'll likely be playing the same group of people week-in, week-out so it's not difficult for a consensus to form pretty quickly on what 'balance'is.
For the US market, I think stupid. From what I can infer, penetration outside of cities is pretty low and they have a wide catchment area, meaning a high turnover of players meaning PUGs become really problematic without a shared protocol.
Since I'm crap with Multi Quoting, I'll answer the points one at a time with some lines in between:
Regarding the first point - one doesn't need to play them to understand that in a system as linear as AoS the Varanguard are vastly Superior to the Chaos Knights. I am actually quite baffled that you're even bringing that up, while at the same time trying to ignore the fact that you may want to try to disprove my point by sneakily pointing that I never played with them. Look at their stats and then tell me that the Varanguard aren't better.
And sure, you can choose - not - to deploy the Varanguard, but that still doesn't mean they aren't part of the power creep. That's the whole point: I can choose not to deploy my Ravenwing Knights, but that doesn't change the fact that they are better than the standard Ravenwing unit.
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Regarding the Dwarf dude, the problem is that, RAW, neither Model Numbers nor Wounds provide an acceptable balancing, but we've already come to that point a while ago.
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As for the hammerers points, the thing here is that one cannot excuse or deny a power creep just because the base game is immensely flawed in its balance. It may even intensify the creep, not diminish or abolish it.
Awwwww!!!! (If it's any consolation, I can't figure out MQ either - I just copy and paste the spoiler tags to break up the post!)
My intent wasn't to suggest that you'd never played with them or that meant you were wrong. I framed it as an answer to the statement that without comp the only balancing mechanism is 1v1. I see where you're coming from, but I disagree.
(I'm also impressed sometimes that people who speak english as a primary language can understand my thinking, so kudos on making it this far!)
Just to be as clear as I can on the points;
I do not think playing with points / comp is 'wrong' or 'bad'.
The removal of points/comp in the transition from WFB to AoS was not a visionary move. It was GW attempting to clear up their own mess.
That said, going back to the (by now) exhausted Varanguard and Chaos Knight.
I mentioned points were 'bang for buck' - the only balance achievable is 'bang for bang' - yours for your opponent's.
Simply by looking at their stats, there is a clear winner. One Varanguard is 'better' in whatever way you want to quantify it than one Chaos Knight. You don't need to play 1v1 to figure that out.
It is mathematically possible for a Chaos Knight to kill a Varanguard in a single turn, but everything suggests it'll go the Varanguard's way.
That is the same of any system - 40k, WMH, X-Wing - you are going to have units that are just plain better.
The difficulty is grading that so in cases where the power is more even 1v1 you have some way of knowing, and it's here that the arguments start as to whether x is broken or y is useless. Again, to be clear, this is not the fault of the players.
Take the Dracothian guard. My gut - just from looking at the stats - says that the xbow guys and lance guys are 'better' than a varanguard, depending on how they're used / matched up. I think the Varanguard look better vs. the hammer and axe guys. But depending on what happens, it could conceivably go either way.
So in the group I play in, we'd look at starting at a 1v1 equivalency and judge how that affected things over a few games. It could be Concussors just seem to chew up Varanguard for fun. Stats aren't everything.
Now let's say I don't have a Dracothian guard, but I do have Liberators. How do you eyeball that?!
I mean, they have 2 wounds, and they have that special rule vs. 5w models, but then if the VG charges they pretty much won't get a save, maybe I could stick on a Celestant to improve them, would 5 be enough? Is 10 too many?
I'm only going to find out if I play. Maybe I'm great with Liberators. Maybe I suck with them. Maybe I'm okay but my opponent is a virtuoso with varanguard.
That's the principle problem or success with AoS for me, depending on your point of view.
I don't want to use the words competitive or balance in summary because they attract the wolves like crazy.
But I think it comes back to the magic-eye picture analogy; either you can see how no-comp gaming can work, or you can't, and either way is fine. Everyone has their proclivities when it comes to gaming.
Even if you can see how it could work, that doesn't mean it's simple. If you can't, then no amount of discussion is going to convince you otherwise.
I'm enjoying it, and I think I can eyeball reasonably well (accepting I still haven't got over unconscious bias in my own favour!), but I genuinely cannot explain to you how I do it.
I just watch what my opponent's doing, look at terrain, and I can just 'feel' what seems about right. AoS is my first experience of comp-less gaming and I like it.
But to be very, very clear - I don't believe GW ditched points in some amazing visionary move.
I genuinely believe they binned them because they decided that points/comp were costing too much to maintain, they weren't getting it 'right' anyway, and they perceived that getting it 'wrong' was driving sales of some products down.
This is why all my 'what would you have done different' is restricted to just amendments to some of the mechanics of AoS rather than maintaining WFB - if you look at AoS through the prism of it being designed as a method to reduce costs and push mini sales, it all follows a logic - even if it's not one you agree with.
Like when you're watching Castle or CSI or Criminal Minds or whatever - the dime-store nutter is a complete headcase, but you can understand *why* he dressed up his chainsaw in the prom dress even if you would never do it...
(Oh, and regardless of points/balance etc., Dwarf guy was still a cheat. )
Yes, the Dwarf dude was a cheat. I was just using him as an example of exactly what can happen when a tight ruleset isn't used for a game, even one that is clearly encourages to be an extremely laid back, friendly experience. BUT!!! we'd be going around in circles regarding the rules, and that has been done to death like a billion times already.
I believe that the main difference here is how we look at the game. I can tell you that I have started looking at AoS as a completely uncontrolled (balance-wise) free-for-all killfest that is targeted at players that don't share my specific liking, but even then I still can't help but see the power creep in the releases.
Maybe It's just the years of competitive gaming in me shadowing my view of things, but I couldn't just help but roll my eyes at the Varanguard when they came out and now at the Dracoth Riders... and the Star Dragon. The releases just keep getting bigger and stronger... and pricier - regardless of how you intend to play them, be it comp or no-comp.
I am not challenging anyone's enjoyment of the game at all as I don't want this to go into the usually trench post warfare of pro and anti AoS argumentation - some people like it, some people don't. That's why I chose to focus only on the power creep.
The idea of a post End Times skirmish game happening in the ruins of the Old World has a lot of potential, but it needs to be tied to the setting we knew and loved. We should be playing in the ruins of Nul instead of a doodle on a map we've never seen before, and we should be playing the remnants of the Empire who are trying to eek out a living there, rather than people thousands of years later who have no real connection to the Empire.
I agree absolutely 100%. The sigmarines are just awful. An apocalyptic world with pirate bands and gangs of empire loyalists scraping it out across deserted ruins would have been superb. The sigmarines just don't fit in anyway I can imagine. The whole realms and overly convoluted world they created is just too much.
I'm not really concerned with taking away points. I'm not a fan of balance in a war game anyway so that so that I was cool with. It's the fluff I have issue with.
Honestly? I would have taken the approach of the game, and not destroyed the Old World but maybe shook it up a bit, splintering factions to allow for intra-faction conflict e.g. The Empire and Bretonnia merge together, but there's still rival lords vying for control a la Normans vs. Saxons. Elf nations are nominally a united front, but there are squabbles and the like that can come to blows, same for basically everything else. A logical way to have the same faction fight each other in a game without hand-waving it away, basically. There's so many real-world analogies of the same region/culture battling each other that it would make perfect sense. Different clans with grudges, different city-states or kings wanting a rival's land or wealth, etc.
Keep the style of the rules that allow for/encourage smaller scale, fully narrative driven campaigns and games, but also have an optional points system and way to do larger scale games a la old WHFB (with LotR style movement trays like they used to have).
That way, you have the best of both. You have a way to add a level of balance to the game so it can be played in pick-up game or tournament styles, but the "core" of the game still encourages coming up with your own scenarios and campaigns and theming a force around it without having a points system to constrain your choice (although likely not as silly as "Place whatever you have until you're done"). You could have even kept the "Sigmarines" as some kind of elite paladin-esque order in the Empire/Bretonnia kingdom that has their own goals and desires, so for instance some of the more ruthless ones could basically be mercenaries, some might have allegiances to other lords, some might just want to do their own thing (a concept I think 40k should also do with Space Marines) so they can exist too (albeit likely not as silly as they currently are, although personally I find them to look pretty cool)
thekingofkings wrote: So, while I have often ranted against AoS for one thing or another and so have many others, so here is the question.....what would you have done different? Even if you like AoS what would yuo have done different? not a bash thread, but a "this is how I would have made it better" thread.
The main thing was the release - giving away all those warscrolls online for dead armies was a bad idea. GW should have just axed them from day 1, and really focused on AoS being a different game from WHFB. Too many people were confused (or feigned confusion) during the first month.
As it stands, Age of Sigmar has done everything amazingly. Fantastic models, easy rules, and the best benefit of all - it killed a terrible game system. And the new community of AoS players are, overall, much nicer and more enjoyable to play with than the older WHFB players. When the overall community is not concerned about WAAC powergaming a broken system, and is just playing the cool scenarios introduced in the overwhelming number of rapidly released fantastic campaign books, most of the tension is gone and every game tends to be very enjoyable, versus old Warhammer-headache-inducing 4 hour games.
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Knockagh wrote: I agree absolutely 100%. The sigmarines are just awful. An apocalyptic world with pirate bands and gangs of empire loyalists scraping it out across deserted ruins would have been superb. The sigmarines just don't fit in anyway I can imagine. The whole realms and overly convoluted world they created is just too much.
They fit in perfectly with the fluff, which has been advancing since the game's release, through a series of novels and supplements. If you have no knowledge of them, then I'm sure warriors in full plate armor in a fantasy setting could be conceived as "awful", despite it being a relatively common trope.
The game is called Warhammer, though. I don't think GW could have fooled everyone into thinking it was a completely separate game by not publishing the legacy army scrolls.
If they wanted to make it clearly a separate game, they should have made it nothing whatsoever to do with WHFB, and carried on publishing WHFB, so it would be obviously it was a completely new game.
This would have been a lot more expensive in business terms, though, as they would have needed to make a lot more new figures and books available straight away. The legacy war scrools meant that 100,000 current WHFB players could start playing AoS from day 1 if they wanted to.
I think they should have introduced Stormcast as being "much" darker, rather than paragons of good. Still good guys, but much more inhuman-seeming to a normal citizen.
I just painted mine dark, with cold colors (black, blue, turquoise). This gives them a dark feel, and they look like they are surreal fighters/gladiators on the tabletop instead of shiny good guys. I play them as a cold, stalwart army, that arrives from lightning, kills stuff, and coldly leaves.
The main thing was the release - giving away all those warscrolls online for dead armies was a bad idea. GW should have just axed them from day 1, and really focused on AoS being a different game from WHFB. Too many people were confused (or feigned confusion) during the first month.
As it stands, Age of Sigmar has done everything amazingly. Fantastic models, easy rules, and the best benefit of all - it killed a terrible game system. And the new community of AoS players are, overall, much nicer and more enjoyable to play with than the older WHFB players. When the overall community is not concerned about WAAC powergaming a broken system, and is just playing the cool scenarios introduced in the overwhelming number of rapidly released fantastic campaign books, most of the tension is gone and every game tends to be very enjoyable, versus old Warhammer-headache-inducing 4 hour games.
I concur with the first part, but I do not have a similar experience on the second, they IMO replaced a bad system with another atrocious system (both are fun, but neither qualify as "well written or good" the new community I have found generally are much bigger d-bags than the old hateful neckbeards. otherwise AoS really didnt offer anything "new" its the same old just rehashed. but back on the first part, I would have definately made it a clean break, no connection whatsoever to the old world.
thekingofkings wrote: So, while I have often ranted against AoS for one thing or another and so have many others, so here is the question.....what would you have done different? Even if you like AoS what would yuo have done different? not a bash thread, but a "this is how I would have made it better" thread.
The main thing was the release - giving away all those warscrolls online for dead armies was a bad idea. GW should have just axed them from day 1, and really focused on AoS being a different game from WHFB. Too many people were confused (or feigned confusion) during the first month.
As it stands, Age of Sigmar has done everything amazingly. Fantastic models, easy rules, and the best benefit of all - it killed a terrible game system. And the new community of AoS players are, overall, much nicer and more enjoyable to play with than the older WHFB players. When the overall community is not concerned about WAAC powergaming a broken system, and is just playing the cool scenarios introduced in the overwhelming number of rapidly released fantastic campaign books, most of the tension is gone and every game tends to be very enjoyable, versus old Warhammer-headache-inducing 4 hour games.
AegisGrimm wrote: I think they should have introduced Stormcast as being "much" darker, rather than paragons of good. Still good guys, but much more inhuman-seeming to a normal citizen.
I'm thinking/hoping they eventually branch out and there are darker chambers. I like the idea of them being quite fascist and heartlessly authoritarian. The ones who die and become reforged more lose their humanity and become killing and maintaining-order machines. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss in the end. I think it would be fitting gameplay-wise to justify why humans would fight them in the fluff as well.
I think the direction the lore took was silly: destroying the world is destroying the "fluff" that got so many of us into this game, this universe. That was a mistake. I'm waiting for the "it was all a dream" deus ex machina, so we can go back to the world of warhammer which is so excellent.
It's a pity they didn't instead decide to restart other smaller-model-count games that still use their excellent models. Introducing a player to warhammer through Mordheim is a great start. Buying a game with a few dozen figures and trying out the table top skirmish rules that, if I liked it, could easily be expanded into WHFB just makes sense. Introducing a player to Warhammer Quest (or whatever "next generation" iteration it would have) using similar mechanics to WHFB but only needing a few models as a dungeon crawler just makes sense. Expansion packs could be built around single sprues of other monsters. A sprue of beastmen for a beastmen adventure/dungeon. A sprue of skeletons with maybe the plastic necromancer thrown in for an undead expansion.
All those opportunities seemed like easy money, just crazy to pass up!
Kilkrazy wrote: It would be very interesting if the Sigmarines became more like Space Marines.
I could see it happening, if they get some more ranged units with guns (hell even the bows, given how powerful the are) it'd be hard to not draw more comparisons. Or an initiate unit of some kind, fulfilling a role similar to scouts (not that you can't do that now allying in regular humans but you know what I mean)
Knockagh wrote: I agree absolutely 100%. The sigmarines are just awful. An apocalyptic world with pirate bands and gangs of empire loyalists scraping it out across deserted ruins would have been superb. The sigmarines just don't fit in anyway I can imagine. The whole realms and overly convoluted world they created is just too much.
They fit in perfectly with the fluff, which has been advancing since the game's release, through a series of novels and supplements. If you have no knowledge of them, then I'm sure warriors in full plate armor in a fantasy setting could be conceived as "awful", despite it being a relatively common trope.
I bought and read the first 3 novels and still couldn't warm to them in fact I disliked them more with each passing page! I'm far far from a GW hater I'm a pretty big fan of nearly everything they do, to a stupid extent at times. I just hate those boys in gold! Maybe I'm just to old at nearly 40 to be arsed with the whole new world thing, leave it to the young 'uns! It's just not what I want from a fantasy world too far away from Conan and Crom!
I quite like the image in my head of the Old World still existing, with the Chaos Wastes expanding (and maybe random incursions showing up in the middle of kingdoms) but with Stormcast units coming down like Asguardians to fight on the front lines. Maybe the Chaos forces find some way to "teleport" forces deep into kingdoms, so noone's quite sure where they will strike next (an alternative to having a war on all fronts without resorting to the Wastes taking over the whole world)
But the Stormcast are so heartless in their mission of the destruction of Chaos for Sigmar that even people of the Empire who are acting like fanatics to gain their attention have a bit of doubt that these giant armored beings see them as anything more than resources or objectives to be protected.
1) Legacy War scrolls for all units and special characters from the last 30 years, even units where models are no longer being sold. Gotrek, etc. I'm perfectly ok with GW deciding not to make any more of a particular figure, but they shouldn't drop rules for a character or unit just because they don't want to sell it anymore.
2) More play testing/focus groups before releasing the updated rules. A little more clarity in the rules.
3) More spell casting and magic items, although this can be a future supplement.
auticus wrote: Making AOS a side game would have been useless. People hate change as it is. Making AOS a side game would have resulted in it largely being ignored. .
The success of Necromunda, Mordheim, Epic and Blood Bowl when they were being actively supported suggests that this is not necessarily the case.
Using AoS as a separate, entry-level game would have helped to reduce the buy-in sticker shock for new gamers. Keeping the existing WHFB armies would have meant that people could buy small starter sets to get started with AoS, and then later expand their collection into an army scaled force for use in WHFB.
So for my money, I would have fixed WHFB and kept it, while launching AoS as an introductory game.
The AoS setting would have been immediately after the cataclysmic event that destroyed the Old World (or perhaps just part of it, to keep the two games' backgrounds running concurrently, so that existing armies would remain usable in both games.
I have no problem with the Sigmarites in the setting, and having them as some sort of newly arrived force in the Old World, with nobody being quite sure of their intentions or motivations would have fit right in, IMO.
Ruleswise, I would have kept the systems more similar, but simplified and streamlined for AoS.
So for my money, I would have fixed WHFB and kept it, while launching AoS as an introductory game.
If keeping WFB in any way was an option as far as GW were concerned, AoS would never have happened.
It's not just a radically different set of rules, it's a complete overhaul of how GW do business.
Keeping WFB in anything like a recognisable format would have rendered the back-of-house changes impossible or pointless.
Quite possibly. But people love to talk sales figures, and GW were the only ones in possession of the full facts in WFB's case.
I don't believe they took the decision to axe WFB lightly.
So for my money, I would have fixed WHFB and kept it, while launching AoS as an introductory game.
If keeping WFB in any way was an option as far as GW were concerned, AoS would never have happened.
It's not just a radically different set of rules, it's a complete overhaul of how GW do business.
Keeping WFB in anything like a recognisable format would have rendered the back-of-house changes impossible or pointless.
WFB should have been kept but the rules should have seen a considerable rehaul. The Rules, not the Setting. There were major changes that would have brought back players that had quit with 8th edition and they would only stand to gain and to expand, unlike the present situation in which AoS started from a negative number. But this argument has been done to death.
And it's not really a complete overhaul of how GW do business - it's actually the continuation of it. For the last decade GW has steadily sold less models for higher prices. AoS is just the next step down that road, where you dish out 60£ for three cavalry models and 100£ for Archaon.
Yes, but think about what AoS has done. Anybody can buy any box and it's a game ready unit that they can field with whatever they already have.
Without being tied to book-and-mini release schedule - as we've already seen so far - they can release whatever they want whenever they want.
I'd be extremely surprised if this option of ongoing smaller 'impulse' purchases rather than bigger purchases that peak around army releases wasn't a conscious decision on GW's part.
RoperPG wrote: Yes, but think about what AoS has done. Anybody can buy any box and it's a game ready unit that they can field with whatever they already have.
Without being tied to book-and-mini release schedule - as we've already seen so far - they can release whatever they want whenever they want.
I'd be extremely surprised if this option of ongoing smaller 'impulse' purchases rather than bigger purchases that peak around army releases wasn't a conscious decision on GW's part.
I agree with what you're saying. I'm only pointing out that these implements are exactly the thing that will facilitate the sales ideology of "less/same amount of models for more dough", and that it really isn't a rehaul of how they do business - it's just a nice excuse to implement it further.
Because now a HE player won't have to bother with those pesky Spearmen or Archers (16 infantry models for 20£) and go directly for the yummy Phoenix Guard, Sisters of Avelorn (10 infantry models for 25/30£) or just go straight to the Phoenixes/Dragons (a single model 30£+) and bypass the whole silly infantry thing - because he can! And mind you, this is done without even touching the units released after AoS came out.
Quite possibly. But people love to talk sales figures, and GW were the only ones in possession of the full facts in WFB's case.
I don't believe they took the decision to axe WFB lightly.
Which still doesn't make the handling of AoS release any better. They surely got the limping sales part right, but the causes and very especially the fix was very wrong.
Just about every source of information seems to point at varying degrees of non-success.... which at least they are trying to revert now at least giving the impression of caring for rules and organised play support.
I do enjoy AoS, but I'm not defending GWs actions or saying it was the only option - but I can see the logic behind the decisions they have taken, if not the logic behind the ones they didn't. (9th Edition WFB proper, for example)
I think GW made a very logical accountancy based decision that if they could convert people from buying large armies of cheap figures to small armies of expensive figures, their profit margin per kit sold would increase. Fewer SKUs = lower production and inventory costs.
In support of this, I offer the fact that many of the Signmarine units are variations on the same basic model, with different weapons, different heads, and so on. The Fyre Slayers look to be the same concept. This reduces design and CADCAM costs. Also, it's clear that rank and file Sigmarines and Fyre Slayers are adventurously priced.
Also, it's clear that rank and file Sigmarines and Fyre Slayers are adventurously priced.
Depends what you call "rank and file", since there is absolutely no restriction about what you can fill as troops in your army.
An All Elite force isn't the same than an All Monster one or Horde of Infantry.
To me, that argument is quite a fallacy.
Also, prices tend to go up and down if the game is skirmish or not. If you look at other Skirmish games and want to fill the same amount of miniatures, you will often find the prices are wildly going up in a fast way.
Did try to make 3 squads of 10 guardsmen infantry with Infinity miniatures a few years ago. What I bought at that time nearly put GW's products as cheap ones in comparison.
Since AoS is usually Skirmish friendly, well...maybe prices are just adapted to that.
Therein lies GW's biggest problem the accountants are running things.
All they are concerned with is profit not the quality of the product they sell.
What are the rules dept meant to do when the first they hear of anything is when the finished product is dumped on the desk in front of them? They are told to make it worth buying by the accountants.
Also, it's clear that rank and file Sigmarines and Fyre Slayers are adventurously priced.
Depends what you call "rank and file", since there is absolutely no restriction about what you can fill as troops in your army.
An All Elite force isn't the same than an All Monster one or Horde of Infantry.
To me, that argument is quite a fallacy.
Also, prices tend to go up and down if the game is skirmish or not. If you look at other Skirmish games and want to fill the same amount of miniatures, you will often find the prices are wildly going up in a fast way.
Did try to make 3 squads of 10 guardsmen infantry with Infinity miniatures a few years ago. What I bought at that time nearly put GW's products as cheap ones in comparison.
Since AoS is usually Skirmish friendly, well...maybe prices are just adapted to that.
I call rank and file all the Sigmarines who arean't special characters such as the bloke on a mini-dragon.
I tried to make an AoS army by commissioning Asprey's of Bond Street to make me individual Sigmarine-alike models out of 24 carat gold with diamond detailing. It came out to quite an expensive army.
Depends what you call "rank and file", since there is absolutely no restriction about what you can fill as troops in your army.
rank and file
n.
1. The enlisted troops, excluding noncommissioned officers, in an army.
2. The people who form the major portion of a group, organization, or society, excluding the leaders and officers.
Assuming that we all agree that the rank and file for the Stormcast are the Liberators (fluffwise, of course) since it has been mentioned here and on the Tome itself that they are the most common SE on the field, then the customer is paying 30£ for 5 rank and file miniatures.
So yes, adventurously priced.
If you want to consider other models as Rank and File (Paladins, etc) then the price goes even higher.
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RoperPG wrote: I do enjoy AoS, but I'm not defending GWs actions or saying it was the only option - but I can see the logic behind the decisions they have taken, if not the logic behind the ones they didn't. (9th Edition WFB proper, for example)
Again, and especially on my posts (as I know I can be a very aggressive poster) please don't take anything said as a jab against your personal preferences game-wise. I think we all respect that regardless of our personal taste towards any specific game. I understand the logic behind AoS, I simply heartily disagree with it, and it exposed something in GW that radically changed my view on the "GW hobby"
Also, prices tend to go up and down if the game is skirmish or not. If you look at other Skirmish games and want to fill the same amount of miniatures, you will often find the prices are wildly going up in a fast way.
Did try to make 3 squads of 10 guardsmen infantry with Infinity miniatures a few years ago. What I bought at that time nearly put GW's products as cheap ones in comparison.
Since AoS is usually Skirmish friendly, well...maybe prices are just adapted to that.
"Skirmish" is too broad a term to cover both AoS and Infinity. AoS is, apparently, a warband sized game, with minimum sized units (Liberators are a minimum 5 model unit). Infinity is a much smaller scale skirmish games, with at most 10-15 models needed to play. Trying to say that AoS's models should be more expensive because of Infinity's pricing isn't a good justification, not to mention the difference between plastic and metal miniatures.
Also, prices tend to go up and down if the game is skirmish or not. If you look at other Skirmish games and want to fill the same amount of miniatures, you will often find the prices are wildly going up in a fast way.
Did try to make 3 squads of 10 guardsmen infantry with Infinity miniatures a few years ago. What I bought at that time nearly put GW's products as cheap ones in comparison.
Since AoS is usually Skirmish friendly, well...maybe prices are just adapted to that.
"Skirmish" is too broad a term to cover both AoS and Infinity. AoS is, apparently, a warband sized game, with minimum sized units (Liberators are a minimum 5 model unit). Infinity is a much smaller scale skirmish games, with at most 10-15 models needed to play. Trying to say that AoS's models should be more expensive because of Infinity's pricing isn't a good justification, not to mention the difference between plastic and metal miniatures.
It is also good to note that Mordheim is also a Skirmish game and you could have a full Empire Warband with one Empire Free Company box.
It is also good to note that Mordheim is also a Skirmish game and you could have a full Empire Warband with one Empire Free Company box.
When AoS came out, I bought some Empire stuff because the local store was having a sale. I found a Free Company box hiding amongst some others, and used that for my Frostgrave warband.
So for my money, I would have fixed WHFB and kept it, while launching AoS as an introductory game.
If keeping WFB in any way was an option as far as GW were concerned, AoS would never have happened.
It's not just a radically different set of rules, it's a complete overhaul of how GW do business.
Keeping WFB in anything like a recognisable format would have rendered the back-of-house changes impossible or pointless.
GW knew Warhammer had been dead for years. There's only so many times you can retcon the storyline and the number of SKUs for the line were out of control - and certain armies just weren't selling no matter what they did to overpower them (in a... points... based system! gasp). Warhammer was a bloated mess and no one was buying anything. Nuclear option.
As it stands, Age of Sigmar did nothing to Warhammer... Warhammer has had the same unmoving fiction since the early 1980's. The End Times at least progressed it, but any change at all in the Warhammer World would cause internet rage tears no matter what happened. If Warhammer was in a 9th edition and the storyline had progressed, there'd be the same amount of complaints because GW "ruined" something (which in itself is staggering as there's more people who claim GW "ruined" Warhammer than have ever actually played a game of Warhammer)
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay first, second, and third edition all still exist. Warhammer Fantasy Battles first through eight edition still exist. The storyline only ever progressed in 6th edition through 7th edition, only to be totally retconned in 8th, which then had the End Times. Pick your flavor of Warhammer and stick with it, as I have. I love the Warhammer World from 2000-2007 or so, and Warhammer will never be better than that.
Age of Sigmar is it's own entirely different and new creature, and the storylines are AWESOME.
for...?
I got over Warhammer being killed off when 8th edition came out. I watched it struggle and fail and flounder and I mocked GW for their terrible decision to continue it. Then they killed it permanently and released Age of Sigmar, a far superior ruleset and setting than anything they've come up with in yeeaaaarrsss.
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Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote: I understand the logic behind AoS, I simply heartily disagree with it, and it exposed something in GW that radically changed my view on the "GW hobby"
Same here. I hadn't bought any GW models in three, four years, or longer, even... I got one of each of the TK releases when they got their 8th makeover, out of loyalty to my TK, having had the army since they day they launched in 6th edition. Thought Age of Sigmar was stupid and ridiculed it. Played a demo game, and then bought a starter set, a bunch of Stormcast Eternals, and then a Nurgle army. It's straight up a superior game to 8th, and I have more fun with it than most of my games of 7th. All my 6th edition bliss has moved to Kings of War at this point, which is a more tactically rewarding game than Warhammer. I mean, let's face it: Kings of War is a better mass battles game than Warhammer could ever hope to be (mainly because Warhammer's core rules are so dated, no matter what makeup you put on it the core of it is still a corpse and it still smells terrible), and Age of Sigmar is more fun than Warhammer had become. KoW and AoS are both different but equally better than Warhammer Fantasy. IMHO this is the best thing that could have happened in the marketplace; two superior games replacing a poorly written corpse of a game that had overstayed it's welcome.
judgedoug wrote: Same here. I hadn't bought any GW models in three, four years, or longer, even... I got one of each of the TK releases when they got their 8th makeover, out of loyalty to my TK, having had the army since they day they launched in 6th edition. Thought Age of Sigmar was stupid and ridiculed it. Played a demo game, and then bought a starter set, a bunch of Stormcast Eternals, and then a Nurgle army. It's straight up a superior game to 8th, and I have more fun with it than most of my games of 7th. All my 6th edition bliss has moved to Kings of War at this point, which is a more tactically rewarding game than Warhammer. I mean, let's face it: Kings of War is a better mass battles game than Warhammer could ever hope to be (mainly because Warhammer's core rules are so dated, no matter what makeup you put on it the core of it is still a corpse and it still smells terrible), and Age of Sigmar is more fun than Warhammer had become. KoW and AoS are both different but equally better than Warhammer Fantasy. IMHO this is the best thing that could have happened in the marketplace; two superior games replacing a poorly written corpse of a game that had overstayed it's welcome.
I will be finishing my HE army out of loyalty aswell (still need a few things since my hiatus since mid 7th to late 8th) but I have decided not to give a dime to GW while doing it. Ebay and other sources are my friends now. I will eventually consider other things, like bloodbowl and a possible BFG release. I will also consider it if they make a very good Aelf Dragon, but I can already see that the pricing will be prohibitive.
As for 40k... I shall keep looking into it - I mean I did buy the DA Codex and now my niece wants to start Eldar just to spite my nephew - but Ebay and others are always there for me.
I call rank and file all the Sigmarines who arean't special characters such as the bloke on a mini-dragon.
Everything but the Celestant Prime, then. All right.
You know AoS has no limitations about what you want to put in your army. It can be 3 miniatures or 127 - money spent will obviously not be the same, since there is no real balancing factor other than yourself and your opponent.
Why would I bother to have rank and file troops if my army theme is a "Seven Samurai" all heroes warband? That's what I mean; you make the army you want for AoS. You don't have to take rank and file troops at all if it isn't what you wish for.
I tried to make an AoS army by commissioning Asprey's of Bond Street to make me individual Sigmarine-alike models out of 24 carat gold with diamond detailing. It came out to quite an expensive army.
Exactly! But that would be your choice to buy it at that price.
And it would certainly be awesome.
Thing is, price is always subjective, no matter the product. I know Infinity miniatures are cool and in metal, fact is they're not really made from gold and they still are miniatures of the same size and the same "value" in game if you choose to use them as proxies for another game.
So, when you say GW is expensive for its rank and file troops, I'm just answering the prices aren't especially that cheap with other companies. Especially Privateer Press, whose games are much more similar to AoS in terms of scale and that still have "rank and file troops" that can't really be called "cheap".
Seriously, did you see their prices for mere troopers? A squad of 10 elven archers in their simili-plastic material? Do you know how much you have to spend if you want to make an army full of "grunts" just for the pleasure of the horde? It won't be that far from GW's prices - sometimes even higher. One of the most funny things to see are players for Horde/Warmachine using GW MINIATURES to proxy some troops for their games. Because they ARE CHEAPER than Warmachine/Horde representatives. Seriously.
About AoS, it's obvious you will not buy several Stardrakes if they are expensive enough to make you think twice about it. But since you don't have to...well, not really a big deal. Apparently, GW is glad enough to sell a number of boxes at that price...that's their choice. If the consumers decide to take it or not, that's their choice.
Could be cheaper, sure. Matter of perspective. I play Stormcast Eternals as "Ogres" in Kings of War. Since I don't need a lot of them to make a sizable army, the money spent in comparison to what I would spend for "actual Ogres" feels quite reasonable enough so that I'm satisfied in the end. And I can still play them at AoS on a "big Skirmish scale" battle.
So, yeah, your mileage may vary even with miniature wargames.
Okay, so we all know that the main appeal of the WFB setting was, and is, the main characters and heroes of the setting. Don't argue: When you think about your army, isn't it first and foremost built in a unique way that fits yourself, but also fits whatever Lord you had for the army? Even in the crunch, huge tactically differences are made on what equipment you give your characters, where you place them and what role you want them to perform. A Blender Lord wants into something huge and big unit and just kill away, while mages wants to stay a little away and dominate the battlefield with spells. Not only that, many heroes from the setting itself are build with a goal in mind, and can enchance their armies to a high degree. Plus, we have hero-level characters like Felix and that dwarf-fellow who have their own stories, who you can make legends by using them in your games.
So, in many ways, WFB is about the characters; something I always felt like 40k and many other settings lacked; it injects personality into the fluff and makes you invested, but the crunch is changed as well, as leader characters in WFB change a lot about their armies and determine how an army plays, where 40k just kinda... Have them. So...
How the hell did Age of Sigmar screw that up?!
What I mean by that is that GW had the perfect opportunity to make a setting where heroic journeys, lost treasure and a new, albeit a broken world makes up the adventures the players make themselves. It would be a natural fit. Take the Old World, smash it open a little bit, destroy some stuff and add new stuff: boom, now we have a new setting with unfamiliar stuff in it, and the dominant forces are weakened and put back. Plus, all factions have been well tumbled up and many propably lack purpose and goals now.
This new "Age of Sigmar" situation would have two games, with new models coming out for both. The 9th Edition of Warhammer Fantasy Battle; a definitive version of the game, and the Age of Sigmar rules (with optional use of points) that would be slowly updated through World Tomes, which would be large books, including updates and additions, such as new scenarios for either game, new rules for new models, terrain rules and stuff. Like this, the Old World (we could call it the New World, or Broken World now or something) could be slowly explored, as both games slowly unfold themselves and new stories emerge.
The Age of Sigmar version of the game is basically a "Warband Skirmish Game", in which you create your own force (following some loose rules) and take them to battle. The twist, so to say, is that the game would be based around individualizing your Heroes, and making them into what you want them to be. Each new World Tome would add new equipment or ways to build a Warband, fitting the setting of the Tome, or just new stuff in general. You could have a Warband of an imperial mercenary, his men, a necromancer and his spirits, some dwarves and an elven princess and hey haven't I seen this somewhere...
This way, the Age of Sigmar part of the game isn't about the game, but the possibilities. Scenarios could be simple things like "Skirmish", or maybe "Final Bout", where one player plays his Warband against a player with a very powerful model and/or army (think the above Warband against End Times Mannfred with a large Grave Guard retinue, for example), and further updates could make Campaign rules. Much like Mordheim, but not as hardcore.
Meanwhile, the people who want to play with their armies could still do so, with the new, revised final rules for 9th Ed. New models would get rules for use in 9th if they fit, and the rest would be let up to the community.
... I mean comeon. Am I alone in thinking this could be the best Ed of Fantasy yet?
judgedoug wrote: There's only so many times you can retcon the storyline and the number of SKUs for the line were out of control -
There's no particular reason to change the setting every time you release a new edition, particularly when the setting is the thing that people like about the game. The rulebook fiction is solely there to provide a setting... it doesn't [i]have to be an ongoing story. They have a whole branch of the company dedicated to releasing the ongoing stories associated with the setting.
And nuking the entire game is not the only solution to the product range being too large. Consolidating into multi-unit boxes (as they have been doing with 40K), could have achieved a certain amount of that.
...and certain armies just weren't selling no matter what they did to overpower them (in a... points... based system! gasp).
Which could almost lead one to believe that in-game effectiveness isn't the only criteria on which people base their choice of army... but that's not really news to anyone who has been playing GW games for longer than three and a half minutes.
RoperPG wrote: Yes, but think about what AoS has done. Anybody can buy any box and it's a game ready unit that they can field with whatever they already have.
Without being tied to book-and-mini release schedule - as we've already seen so far - they can release whatever they want whenever they want.
The same thing could have been achieved simply by ditching the army book release format, and just including a sheet of rules in the box with each unit. You don't actually have to kill off the entire game in order to change how army formation works, or how your releases are timed.
The thing is, the other thing that AoS has done is taken all of the things that made WHFB a distinct option from everything else in the market, and turned it into just another fantasy skirmish game in an increasingly crowded pool full of fantasy skirmish games.
From what I've seen, the two main issues with getting people into WHFB were that the rules were a mess, and the cost of entry was too high. Fixing the rules sorts out the first issue. And adding an entry level game to ease people in to army building fixes the second (assuming that you're not willing to go the cheaper miniature route, which GW are clearly not).
Nuking the entire game and starting over with something completely different is the 'throwing out the baby with the bathwater' option.
Kilkrazy wrote: The unique thing about AoS is that it's by GW. Lots of people won't accept a game and figures that aren't by GW.
Indeed. That's why a lot of people say that FB is dead. FB is dead only in the sense that GW stopped supporting it, and that alone is enough to kill the setting altogether.
The Old World will still live and breathe for anyone who plays from 1st Edition all the way to 8th, regardless of taste. For some it will live on in 9th edition and Kings of War (I count myself upon these ranks, though I doubt I can find a game of those in Portugal).
RoperPG wrote: Yes, but think about what AoS has done. Anybody can buy any box and it's a game ready unit that they can field with whatever they already have.
Without being tied to book-and-mini release schedule - as we've already seen so far - they can release whatever they want whenever they want.
The same thing could have been achieved simply by ditching the army book release format, and just including a sheet of rules in the box with each unit. You don't actually have to kill off the entire game in order to change how army formation works, or how your releases are timed.
But it's not that simple, is it?
If you wind up in a situation where a single box of something is a valid, viable unit, then something big happened in the mechanics of WFB. People will be pissed at that.
If they bin faction composition but try to keep points, balancing/giving armies their hook becomes very difficult - people will be pissed at that.
If they bin army books and put rules in the box, points values / specific magic items / etc. become a nightmare to maintain/manage; etc. They become a mess or get cut; people will be pissed.
Again, not saying the choices GW made were necessarily the right ones - but they only work/make any sense implemented en masse.
Deadnight wrote: I think the sad truth is that the time to 'save' fantasy was about ten years ago. :(
A critical juncture of that significance will have it's own time travel TV movie eventually.
But I think you're right. For me that's when the "bigger is just better, okay?!" mentality got stuck in 5th gear.
RoperPG wrote: But it's not that simple, is it?
If you wind up in a situation where a single box of something is a valid, viable unit, then something big happened in the mechanics of WFB. People will be pissed at that.
Making everything usable straight out of the box doesn't mean making every box of equal strength. That certainly didn't happen with AoS, and there's no reason to expect that it's what would have happened if they had done it with WHFB.
If they bin faction composition but try to keep points, balancing/giving armies their hook becomes very difficult - people will be pissed at that.
I wasn't talking about binning army composition entirely, though... That's part of the reason you have the AoS gateway game.
AoS, as it does now, would allow you to just buy whatever models you want and plonk them on the table.
WHFB would remain focussed on structured armies... but would still benefit from all models having up to date rules, and model releases not being tied to the release of a book.
If they bin army books and put rules in the box, points values / specific magic items / etc. become a nightmare to maintain/manage; etc.
Only if they're making stuff up on the fly as they release it.
Assuming that releases are planned out some time in advance, it wouldn't really be any more complicated to maintain than it would be if they had been putting any actual effort into doing so for the last 15 years or so.
Other companes manage to do it. GW, with their vastly superior resources, should find it a sinch.
RoperPG wrote: But it's not that simple, is it?
If you wind up in a situation where a single box of something is a valid, viable unit, then something big happened in the mechanics of WFB. People will be pissed at that.
Making everything usable straight out of the box doesn't mean making every box of equal strength. That certainly didn't happen with AoS, and there's no reason to expect that it's what would have happened if they had done it with WHFB.
If they bin faction composition but try to keep points, balancing/giving armies their hook becomes very difficult - people will be pissed at that.
I wasn't talking about binning army composition entirely, though... That's part of the reason you have the AoS gateway game.
AoS, as it does now, would allow you to just buy whatever models you want and plonk them on the table.
WHFB would remain focussed on structured armies... but would still benefit from all models having up to date rules, and model releases not being tied to the release of a book.
If they bin army books and put rules in the box, points values / specific magic items / etc. become a nightmare to maintain/manage; etc.
Only if they're making stuff up on the fly as they release it.
Assuming that releases are planned out some time in advance, it wouldn't really be any more complicated to maintain than it would be if they had been putting any actual effort into doing so for the last 15 years or so.
Other companes manage to do it. GW, with their vastly superior resources, should find it a sinch.
I don't know how many ways I can explain it.
If WFB was saveable in GW's opinion, then AoS wouldn't have happened.
When you look at it through the prism of financial flexibility/efficiency and a total fear of Chapterhouse MK2 on GW's part, AoS makes perfect sense - but only if AoS is as it is, and WFB is done and dead.
The reasons for AoS' existence are exactly the same reasons why WFB had to go.
A halfway house would have failed on all counts.
Yeah...all the talk about two separate games sounds nice on paper but that would've meant more costs sunk into a game that was giving back little in profits and in a tough market. The IP is also a large issue that the increase of competitive companies keeps pressure on.
GW doesn't have limitless resources afterall and that may have been like cutting a branch down the middle and expecting both halves to grow. They would've wilted and died....
RoperPG wrote: If WFB was saveable in GW's opinion, then AoS wouldn't have happened. .
Yes... but the topic of this thread is 'What would you have done differently?'
Clearly GW didn't think that WHFB was worth trying to save. That doesn't mean that their assessment of the situation was correct. Remember, this is the company that quite proudly does no market research, and thinks that their customers will buy whatever they choose to offer us... So it is rather doubtful that they even have the faintest idea of why WHFB was actually doing badly, and what actions would have turned things around.
RoperPG wrote: If WFB was saveable in GW's opinion, then AoS wouldn't have happened. .
Yes... but the topic of this thread is 'What would you have done differently?'
Clearly GW didn't think that WHFB was worth trying to save. That doesn't mean that their assessment of the situation was correct. Remember, this is the company that quite proudly does no market research, and thinks that their customers will buy whatever they choose to offer us... So it is rather doubtful that they even have the faintest idea of why WHFB was actually doing badly, and what actions would have turned things around.
aaand I get that. I just thought we were at least trying to be realistic in our suggestions, not just wishlisting with a blank cheque. Murder your darlings, and all that.
RoperPG wrote: If WFB was saveable in GW's opinion, then AoS wouldn't have happened. .
Yes... but the topic of this thread is 'What would you have done differently?'
Clearly GW didn't think that WHFB was worth trying to save. That doesn't mean that their assessment of the situation was correct. Remember, this is the company that quite proudly does no market research, and thinks that their customers will buy whatever they choose to offer us... So it is rather doubtful that they even have the faintest idea of why WHFB was actually doing badly, and what actions would have turned things around.
Not to say that any decision is necessarily right, but GW would have far more knowledge about these things than any forumgoer, being able to see the exact numbers and trends and all that.
Without access to GW's financials and some actual market research, it's impossible to say which alternatives to GW's chosen route would have been realistic.
The best you're going to get in a thread like this is people offering the plans that make sense to them based on their own understanding of how it all works.
Having said that, the fact that WHFB used to be GW's flagship game should in itself be proof that killing it off entirely wasn't the only viable solution. The game used to be huge. So what changed, and what can be done about it?
Killing it and launching a new game in its place using a lot of the same resources was clearly deemed to be the safest and/or most cost-effective option... but I can't help but think that keeping it, fixing the issues with it and working on encouraging people to play it again would have been a better solution in the long run.
But who knows? With GW's apparent re-entry into the 'talk to your customers' game, maybe we'll see it return in some form or another, sooner or later.
Not to say that any decision is necessarily right, but GW would have far more knowledge about these things than any forumgoer, being able to see the exact numbers and trends and all that.
They would have more knowledge of what is selling and what isn't.
Finding out why some things are selling and some aren't generally requires either communicating with your customer base or hiring some pretty outstanding marketing people who know what they are doing.
The fact that they proudly proclaim that they don't talk to their customers, and think that the best way to drum up interest in new product is to not tell anyone about it (including the people who have to try to sell it) strongly suggests that neither of those things happened prior to the launch of AoS.
Not to say that any decision is necessarily right, but GW would have far more knowledge about these things than any forumgoer, being able to see the exact numbers and trends and all that.
They would have more knowledge of what is selling and what isn't.
Finding out why some things are selling and some aren't generally requires either communicating with your customer base or hiring some pretty outstanding marketing people who know what they are doing.
The fact that they proudly proclaim that they don't talk to their customers, and think that the best way to drum up interest in new product is to not tell anyone about it (including the people who have to try to sell it) strongly suggests that neither of those things happened prior to the launch of AoS.
This.
Please excuse some of us if we don't share the sentiment that GW actually know what they are doing.
Case in point - 40k's slow descent into... well, wherever GW took FB to shoot it in head.
Oh, I've never claimed GW know what they're doing! They're the only ones with the ability to be in full possession of all the facts, even if they don't exercise that ability.
As with anything else, I think the truth lies somewhere between the two extremes of 'GW are only interested in money!' and 'GW hate balanced competitive games and anyone who likes them!'
Although for my $0.02 I think you'd have to be pretty naive to think financial considerations were only minor.
I think as well that the various threads on what might have been have pointed something else out - beyond the description of "it's a fantasy battle game that uses ranked regiments of troops" WFB had evolved massively over its' lifespan, and a lot of people had their preferred iteration.
For example in my case, I think 6th was the best edition and 7th was the beginning of the end in terms of my interest.
So even if GW had pushed ahead with 9th, it wouldn't necessarily have been met with any more happiness.
There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and with AoSGW have definitely been one of those. I guess we'll find out in time which it was.
GW knew Warhammer had been dead for years. There's only so many times you can retcon the storyline and the number of SKUs for the line were out of control - and certain armies just weren't selling no matter what they did to overpower them (in a... points... based system! gasp). Warhammer was a bloated mess and no one was buying anything. Nuclear option.
As it stands, Age of Sigmar did nothing to Warhammer... Warhammer has had the same unmoving fiction since the early 1980's. The End Times at least progressed it, but any change at all in the Warhammer World would cause internet rage tears no matter what happened. If Warhammer was in a 9th edition and the storyline had progressed, there'd be the same amount of complaints because GW "ruined" something (which in itself is staggering as there's more people who claim GW "ruined" Warhammer than have ever actually played a game of Warhammer)
Warhammer wasn't selling for years because it was totally neglected. The End Times seemed to have caused a pretty big resurgence up to the point the rumours hit that it was going to get squatted hard. I have to admit I can't recall anyone complaining about the fluff advancement in End Times, though there were some about the rule changes (like the 50% lords thing) and Nagash.
I have no figures, but I'm pretty sure the End Times series did more to boost GW's fantasy sales than AoS had. I think GW's fantasy sales are currently only holding on where they are because of other games (oldhammer, Kings Of War and Frostgrave). Even I've been tempted by a few GW boxes for Frostgrave warbands.
GW knew Warhammer had been dead for years. There's only so many times you can retcon the storyline and the number of SKUs for the line were out of control - and certain armies just weren't selling no matter what they did to overpower them (in a... points... based system! gasp). Warhammer was a bloated mess and no one was buying anything. Nuclear option.
As it stands, Age of Sigmar did nothing to Warhammer... Warhammer has had the same unmoving fiction since the early 1980's. The End Times at least progressed it, but any change at all in the Warhammer World would cause internet rage tears no matter what happened. If Warhammer was in a 9th edition and the storyline had progressed, there'd be the same amount of complaints because GW "ruined" something (which in itself is staggering as there's more people who claim GW "ruined" Warhammer than have ever actually played a game of Warhammer)
Warhammer wasn't selling for years because it was totally neglected. The End Times seemed to have caused a pretty big resurgence up to the point the rumours hit that it was going to get squatted hard. I have to admit I can't recall anyone complaining about the fluff advancement in End Times, though there were some about the rule changes (like the 50% lords thing) and Nagash.
I have no figures, but I'm pretty sure the End Times series did more to boost GW's fantasy sales than AoS had. I think GW's fantasy sales are currently only holding on where they are because of other games (oldhammer, Kings Of War and Frostgrave). Even I've been tempted by a few GW boxes for Frostgrave warbands.
This. The end times proved there was plenty of life left in square-based warhammer. Up until thanquol all books sold out. Nagash minis where shipped for a while in blank boxes because they sold way more than they expected. Even morghasts had a few weeks of lead time.
And then the uncertainty. GW trying to milk people with thinning ET books without any new minis and finally AoS.
End times could of lasted years instead it was what six months such a wasted opportunity.
The push to make customers buy bigger and bigger armies is what's killing both games.
£500-700 for a regular army just isn't a reasonable figure for most people you should be able to build two or three for that kind of investment it's just toy soldiers.
Then they come out with AoS where £127 gets you seven plastic toys and you wonder why people leave in droves.
hobojebus wrote: End times could of lasted years instead it was what six months such a wasted opportunity.
Something about ripping a band-aid off slowly...?
The first few books sold out in less than an hour there was a brief moment where wfb players had hope their game was going to get some much needed attention then it became obvious to all the leaks were true and they were destroying the world.
End times shows there was still alot of interest in wfb, the rejection of AoS is a rejection of the poor treatment GW heaped on the community.
Seems to me the rejection of AoS is more about the rejection of modern game design principals.
If AoS had come out with point values I think a lot more people would jump on it. I know in my community that is the case. Granted in my community the perception anyway is most people don't really care as much about the setting or the story (note I'm not saying not care at all I'm saying that the setting is very much ancillary to the game itself, and the game itself could be set on Candy Land and would be ok with a lot of people I know so long as there were points and non exploitive rules)
They don't care about perceived slights by GW on the community, they care about a game that entertains them.
The backlash was that a game which was well loved and played well despite its flaws was replaced by a totally different game whiich totally failed to address any of the flaws.
Haechi wrote: I wouldn't have destroyed the Old World.
In my version of the story, the Chaos wins and ravages everything but little secret enclaves.
The dwarves would have taken refuge in giant sealed vaults close to the center of the planet, where they met with the magmadroth and become the fireslayers later.
The Slanns would have pulled their cities off the ground, becoming a conglomerate of flying kingdoms hiding in the skies and striking anywhere through teleportation magic.
Sigmar would have indeed become a god and created the Stormcast Eternals atop of a mountain perpetually hidden in a deadly storm of lightning and thunder. hundred of years later, once ready, he unleashed them on the world.
Nagash conquered Khemri and set his realm deep in the desert, where no army could reach them.
Orcs retreated far East and have been fighting the forces of Chaos for centuries.
Dark and High elves formed an alliance and emprisoned Slaneesh himself in forgotten caves far in the south pole. They have have been trying to vanquish him for centuries, fighting in the dark against corrupting magic and slowly becoming something never seen before: the shadowkin.
Wood Elves and Sylvaneth have survived in the forest of Athel Loren thanks to Alarielle's magic, which basically renders the place invisible. Remains of old Bretonnia live there with them as well. They bacome knights of the forest, lead by the Knight of Sinople himself. Now that the SE are trying to reconquer the world, Alarielle brought down the barrier, but Nurgle is coming after her.
The rest of the word is ruled by Chaos. The land has been transformed. The entire Great Ocean has become a land of everchanging metal, ruled by Tzeench, who built his throne on the remains of Ulthuan. Rumors say a Duardin enclave has sprouted from the ground not long ago and is fighting there since.
Khorne rules the north, where everyday, thousands of prisoners are brought by his legions from all over the world to be excuted or take part in savage combats in bloody arenas.
Nurgle has built his new garden in old Lustria.
Most of the ex vampire count and dwarf kingdoms belong to the Skaven.
The center of the empire and Altdorf itself became the capital of Archaon's empire. And at the center of it, the Spire of the Varanguard keeps an eye on everything.
That's pretty much it. I would have made a better fluff.
That is much, MUCH better fluff than the embarrassingly terrible stuff that GW has come out with. I would keep the lizardmen as mortal, physical being rather than being stupid daemons that are just "memories" of the Slann.
Herzlos wrote: I don't think there's anything modern about AoS.
The backlash was that a game which was well loved and played well despite its flaws was replaced by a totally different game whiich totally failed to address any of the flaws.
Thus the rejection of modern game design by GW, which is what I was talking about. Gamers expect implicitly that modern game design be followed, and if it is not followed many people tend to chaffe at that. When the entire game goes against modern game design, you're going to have a perpetual nuclear fallout - as we saw.
If anything the past year or so was a great behavioral game theory experiment.
If AoS had come out with point values I think a lot more people would jump on it.
Quite possibly.
It still wouldn't be an adequate replacement for WHFB, though, since even with points values it would still be a completely different type of game.
Far less to do with design principles than with GW choosing to replace a High Fantasy ranked mass battles game with a skirmish game in a ridiculous setting.
Herzlos wrote: I don't think there's anything modern about AoS.
The backlash was that a game which was well loved and played well despite its flaws was replaced by a totally different game whiich totally failed to address any of the flaws.
Thus the rejection of modern game design by GW, which is what I was talking about. Gamers expect implicitly that modern game design be followed, and if it is not followed many people tend to chaffe at that. When the entire game goes against modern game design, you're going to have a perpetual nuclear fallout - as we saw.
If anything the past year or so was a great behavioral game theory experiment.
My bad; I thought you meant GW did something modern with AoS and the gamers rejected it.
I'm also not convinced that just adding points would have fixed it, as there are lots of other things the gamers dislike, like what happened to the fluff and what they view as a tactically shallow game. Points would certainly go the furthest towards giving people something to work with.
hobojebus wrote: End times could of lasted years instead it was what six months such a wasted opportunity.
Something about ripping a band-aid off slowly...?
The first few books sold out in less than an hour there was a brief moment where wfb players had hope their game was going to get some much needed attention then it became obvious to all the leaks were true and they were destroying the world.
End times shows there was still alot of interest in wfb, the rejection of AoS is a rejection of the poor treatment GW heaped on the community.
Wait, so you're seriously suggesting that GW should have stretched out the end times for a couple of years and *then* binned WFB?
Fail to see how that looks any better.
Also - why are blood warriors better than libarators? Their stats may be even but their USRS put them a tier ahead of liberators. For the sake of balancing, and making the Stormcast even more elite, paladins, judicators etc.. ESPECIALLY liberators should have a save of 3+... if there is any changes to units GW should make it's this. I don't collect, nor am I a huge fan of the SE, but Khorne Blood Warriors eat up liberators despite being sold and in boxes of 10 instead of 5. A 3+ armour basis to the SE would further reinforce the notion of them being trans-being demigods.
Warhammer wasn't selling for years because it was totally neglected. The End Times seemed to have caused a pretty big resurgence up to the point the rumours hit that it was going to get squatted hard. I have to admit I can't recall anyone complaining about the fluff advancement in End Times, though there were some about the rule changes (like the 50% lords thing) and Nagash.
I have no figures, but I'm pretty sure the End Times series did more to boost GW's fantasy sales than AoS had. I think GW's fantasy sales are currently only holding on where they are because of other games (oldhammer, Kings Of War and Frostgrave). Even I've been tempted by a few GW boxes for Frostgrave warbands.
While partially true it this ignores the main reason GW killed it. Fantasy was only about 15% of GW total sales and it was not growing. Yeah, the End Times sold like hot cakes but it was not increasing overall share of GW's business so they decided to do something radical.
I mean I'm not an AoS fan....but I'm also not a hater of it either and I can see GW's logic even if I don't fully agree with it. Yeah the End Times sold like gang busters....to that small 15% of GW's market that makes up Fantasy.
I mean was fantasy totally neglected? I know there were things veterans had been asking for for a long time that they finally got that would supposedly rejuvenate interest. "We want a campaign system!" Oh so here's Mighty Empire and Blood in the Badlands...not that they sold that much but they did try to do quite a few things vets wanted and none of it caused a rise in sales. We can argue back and forth about what could have been done with the End Times, however when your sales are being compared to the Juggernaut in the room that is Space Marines you better be able to step up or get dropped.
Probably for the same reason Tau are BS3 instead of 4, even though their entire military doctrine is about shooting.
At some point, too powerful is too powerful.
There's plenty of ways of dealing with Bloodwarriors without simply running Liberators at them.
Wait, so you're seriously suggesting that GW should have stretched out the end times for a couple of years and *then* binned WFB?
Fail to see how that looks any better.
No, he was suggesting that GW should have stretched out the end times for a couple of years and then brought out a new edition of WFB.
While partially true it this ignores the main reason GW killed it. Fantasy was only about 15% of GW total sales and it was not growing. Yeah, the End Times sold like hot cakes but it was not increasing overall share of GW's business so they decided to do something radical.
They'd decided to kill WFB before End Times, and certainly didn't leave it to run long enough to see where that boost went.
Also, was it 15% of sales because only 15% of the buyers wanted it, or was it that low through neglect? End Times showed that giving it some special treatment caused a huge surge in popularity (and sales), but AoS showed than uncertainty and the shift change kill off interest.
They'd have been much better trying to assess *why* WFB was only 15%, and made some effort to address them (neglect, balance, cost, cluttered rules). AoS addresses some issues from GW's point of view (trademarking, ability to sell anything to anyone, higher margins) but does absolutely nothing to address the actual issues. It's still without balance, costs far too much, and has managed to make rules that are both too simplistic and too cluttered at the same time. They have flipped the neglect thing though; now players don't want their armies to be updated, because the fear what'd happen.
I really can't see any situation where AoSing WFB was the best option.
Herzlos wrote: now players don't want their armies to be updated, because the fear what'd happen.
God ain't that the truth. Not just for Fantasy/AoS either... I worry about what happens to the 40k factions I like when an update comes around after the last couple of Space Wolf releases.
Herzlos wrote: now players don't want their armies to be updated, because the fear what'd happen.
God ain't that the truth. Not just for Fantasy/AoS either... I worry about what happens to the 40k factions I like when an update comes around after the last couple of Space Wolf releases.
I know this is off topic but I need to say it:
Incoming Blood Angel Vampire Unit "Blood Angel Blood Drinkers!" They sparkle as they come down from their Bloodhawk transport.
You heard it here folks!
In the topic: I am now very curious as to what Elven units will get the axe, actually.
Also, was it 15% of sales because only 15% of the buyers wanted it, or was it that low through neglect?
Hardly neglect, Storm of Magic, Triumph and Treason, Blood in the Badlands, Mighty Empires, etc. They have been putting out supplements that veterans have been saying would "save the game!" and garner more interest for the last few years. Nothing has taken hold except for those few who make up that 15% who grab them. Added to the fact the game has been around for 30+ years. There is a VERY strong secondary market for stuff that buying new is not necessarily a must. Heck my whole Empire army is made from OOP models that I bought second hand. The only new model I bought from them is a unit of Outriders. 4000pt worth of Empire I have built up over the 15 years I've been playing and I bought precisely ONE new box of minis from GW.
Now the End Times/AoS by the time we saw it was already in the works and there was no stopping it. I agree with quite a few people on here (and I have given my 2 cents on it quite a bit too) that they did not need to kill the Old World to rejuvenate the game. Destroy it beyond recognition? Sure! Go nuts! But end it entirely? Ehh
Frankly I was upset at what they did but GW have proven grossly incompetent at marketing their game and balancing it. Decoupling it from them and having the community make a rule set so far has proven to be the most fun I've had with Warhammer in a long while.
Oh and also - the battleshock mechanic should be tweaked, the unit should lose as many models as the difference between the dice roll and the units' bravery characteristics. Makes sense, as battleshock is all of a sudden a big deal and the bravery Stat becomes actually important... battleshock is atm a very underwhelming mechanic.
Seems to me the rejection of AoS is more about the rejection of modern game design principals.
If AoS had come out with point values I think a lot more people would jump on it. I know in my community that is the case. Granted in my community the perception anyway is most people don't really care as much about the setting or the story (note I'm not saying not care at all I'm saying that the setting is very much ancillary to the game itself, and the game itself could be set on Candy Land and would be ok with a lot of people I know so long as there were points and non exploitive rules)
They don't care about perceived slights by GW on the community, they care about a game that entertains them.
I know there are plenty of people who like the rules, I can't argue with that. and good luck to them for having fun. But, really AoS is a very old fashioned game indeed. Its core mechanics date back to the early 1980s. My huge disappointment over AoS was how conservative, dull, limited and unadventurous the rules are.
123ply wrote: Oh and also - the battleshock mechanic should be tweaked, the unit should lose as many models as the difference between the dice roll and the units' bravery characteristics. Makes sense, as battleshock is all of a sudden a big deal and the bravery Stat becomes actually important... battleshock is atm a very underwhelming mechanic.
Not sure I'm reading right, but isn't that what battleshock does already?
Now the End Times/AoS by the time we saw it was already in the works and there was no stopping it. I agree with quite a few people on here (and I have given my 2 cents on it quite a bit too) that they did not need to kill the Old World to rejuvenate the game. Destroy it beyond recognition? Sure! Go nuts! But end it entirely? Ehh
With GW and the internet crowd, I think it would have been a lose-lose situation anyway. If they turned the Old World into something else, I imagine people would be just as upset of the "rape" of the Old World, with similar calls that they should have just started fresh.
123ply wrote: Oh and also - the battleshock mechanic should be tweaked, the unit should lose as many models as the difference between the dice roll and the units' bravery characteristics. Makes sense, as battleshock is all of a sudden a big deal and the bravery Stat becomes actually important... battleshock is atm a very underwhelming mechanic.
Not sure I'm reading right, but isn't that what battleshock does already?
Yeah, unless he means changing what the bravery values are and/or how the dice roll it worked out. Hmmm.
With GW and the internet crowd, I think it would have been a lose-lose situation anyway. If they turned the Old World into something else, I imagine people would be just as upset of the "rape" of the Old World, with similar calls that they should have just started fresh.
Oh I agree, there was no pleasing everyone and I think they knew that when they made the decision. Part of the reason we have Warscrolls for armies GW decided to get rid of. It was an attempt to grab as many people as they could from the old player base to build a new AoS player base. I just don't think they expected THAT bad of a reaction.
I agree. It's inconceivable that GW were genuinely happy to piss off so many existing customers to the point that those same customers would spend the next nine months trying as hard as possible to persuade other people the replacement game was utter gak.
But there it is. The only rational explanation is that GW had no idea what would happen when they blew up the Olde Worlde and canned WHFB.
Hey guys, im thinking to start collect Age of sigmar. I've always been more tournament's player but I don't know exactly Im been atracted by age of sigmar, maybe his stuff, his minis, fluff, and fast system to play, and also its easy to start play. There are tournaments in your contry?
what advices can you give me to start age of sigmar? thanks and sorry for my english, Im trying to learn Im from Spain
Download the rules and have a few practice games using counters or figures from other games. See if you like the rules. If you do, then you can look at the various army books to see if you like the Sigmar faction or Chaos.
Sometimes I really wonder if more people are buying pre-AoS Warhammer figures to play Age of Sigmar, or Kings of War? It'd be funny if GW's largest sales of WHFB in the last 8 months are for playing in a competitor's ruleset?
Mantic might have done more to invigorate Warhammer sales than GW in the last couple of years, excluding the big End Times boom of sales.
Necronntyr wrote: Hey guys, im thinking to start collect Age of sigmar. I've always been more tournament's player but I don't know exactly Im been atracted by age of sigmar, maybe his stuff, his minis, fluff, and fast system to play, and also its easy to start play. There are tournaments in your contry?
what advices can you give me to start age of sigmar? thanks and sorry for my english, Im trying to learn Im from Spain
Heelan Hammer has a lot of tournament focus and are running the biggest AoS tournament yet, some 150 players. Really good twice-monthly podcast http://heelanhammer.com
Herzlos wrote: I don't think there's anything modern about AoS.
The backlash was that a game which was well loved and played well despite its flaws was replaced by a totally different game whiich totally failed to address any of the flaws.
Thus the rejection of modern game design by GW, which is what I was talking about. Gamers expect implicitly that modern game design be followed, and if it is not followed many people tend to chaffe at that. When the entire game goes against modern game design, you're going to have a perpetual nuclear fallout - as we saw.
If anything the past year or so was a great behavioral game theory experiment.
AoS doesn't "goes against modern design". Is just a sloppy, soulless product selling overdesigned CAD minis (excluded that Tzeentch model, that one is awesome). This is why is a failure.
GW has contempt for the customer base. The warscroll debacle and the poor content of the AoS books is an evidence.
GW is creatively bankrupt. Have now excellent techniques and molds and use them to sell overdesigned, poorly conceived models. It started with 5th edition 40k tough, just think about Space Wolves and GK.
Also, was it 15% of sales because only 15% of the buyers wanted it, or was it that low through neglect?
Hardly neglect, Storm of Magic, Triumph and Treason, Blood in the Badlands, Mighty Empires, etc. They have been putting out supplements that veterans have been saying would "save the game!" and garner more interest for the last few years. Nothing has taken hold except for those few who make up that 15% who grab them. Added to the fact the game has been around for 30+ years. There is a VERY strong secondary market for stuff that buying new is not necessarily a must. Heck my whole Empire army is made from OOP models that I bought second hand. The only new model I bought from them is a unit of Outriders. 4000pt worth of Empire I have built up over the 15 years I've been playing and I bought precisely ONE new box of minis from GW.
The game needed new players; is pointless expand it if the core is rotten and the rules encourage big expensive armies just to start playing.
Me and my group stopped because the codex imbalance and the progressively dumber (8th edition) core rules killed all the fun. If you do not have fun, you are not interested in investing in a game and do not encourage younger people to invest their few money into something more similar to an exercise of frustration than to a game.
I would be interested to hear exactly how it does not go against modern game design.
It goes against modern game design in that there are no points, no army composition rules, and that it relies on agreements with your opponent (in effect a cooperative game where modern game design would have made it a competitive game) to succeed.
auticus wrote: I would be interested to hear exactly how it does not go against modern game design.
It goes against modern game design in that there are no points, no army composition rules, and that it relies on agreements with your opponent (in effect a cooperative game where modern game design would have made it a competitive game) to succeed.
thats not unique or new, many mini games of the past have done that as well, granted most of them are failures or not mainstream. The problem with the agreements mentality is you cant play a basic pick up game without alot of it at the beginning. It seems that AoS was not meant to expand the hobby at all, it felt to me like a game where if you already had a regular group you were ok, since you all knew each other and got along anyhow.
auticus wrote: I would be interested to hear exactly how it does not go against modern game design.
It goes against modern game design in that there are no points, no army composition rules, and that it relies on agreements with your opponent (in effect a cooperative game where modern game design would have made it a competitive game) to succeed.
Very like Little Wars, published 1913.
I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that approach, it has a long tried and trusted place in wargame history.
auticus wrote: I would be interested to hear exactly how it does not go against modern game design.
It goes against modern game design in that there are no points, no army composition rules, and that it relies on agreements with your opponent (in effect a cooperative game where modern game design would have made it a competitive game) to succeed.
The way things are defined is important, because it sets a tone and opens for specific interpretations.
Just saying that AoS is "against modern design" could suggest that AoS is so avant-garde that defies modern design (and dumb, conservative gamers do not understand its genius), or has some warm old-school feel. This is just too much generous with something designed is such a lazy, cost-cutting, dishonest way.
Better use instead a more fitting definition: that is an unpolished, unfinished t**d.
in effect a cooperative game where modern game design would have made it a competitive game
Co-op games are actually a pretty popular game style, competitive is probably the oldest style of game and two a penny. Introducing coop is arguably a much more modern take on things.
Arkham horror and Pandemic being obvious examples, but there are also plenty of combined coop + competition style games as well.
RPGs are of course the ultimate coop games, but they were a direct evolution of wargames that already had army lists and points and a competitive bent, so clearly in that regard Coop is way more modern than anything you mentioned above.
Just saying that AoS is "against modern design" could suggest that AoS is so avant-garde that defies modern design (and dumb, conservative gamers do not understand its genius), or has some warm old-school feel. This is just too much generous with something designed is such a lazy, cost-cutting, dishonest way.
Wasn't my intent at all. People don't like change first and foremost. Gamers expect modern game design.
They expect points. They expect pick up game friendly. They expect world wide tournament support. They expect prizes. They expect rankings. They expect rules that should have no house rules.
AOS goes against all of these things. It was going to have an uphill struggle even if the rules weren't so ambiguous.
RPGs are of course the ultimate coop games, but they were a direct evolution of wargames that already had army lists and points and a competitive bent, so clearly in that regard Coop is way more modern than anything you mentioned above.
I'm not aware of a coooperative tabletop wargame. All of the coop games I know of don't have you vs your friends, you are on the same side as your friends in those games against a game master.
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Kilkrazy wrote: Points aren't modern design either. They were introduced at least as early as WRG Ancients in 1969.
Perhaps. But when I started playing, Points weren't used until 1995. I went from 1989 - 1995 without ever using points. From 1995 on... always points.
Points are expected now. Thats what I mean by modern design. Modern design would always use points today.
What do you think is wrong with it and how would you have done things differently?
People invested a lot in WH miniatures so of course they cannot accept that GW tried to milk them expanding WH as much as possible and then, when it finally collapsed, GW is now selling them this new product designed with zero effort. "Look! no points! you will not suffer anymore the imbalances we created! no rules to restrain buying our models... I mean having FUN!"
"people enjoy it" is not an argument for quality. Can be an argument for success, but people enjoy objectively bad stuff. Look the success of Michael Bay Transformers.
Personally, when the first glimpses of AoS were available, I was negatively surprised by the warcraft-esque models, but I was looking forward the rules because I expected something like the Lotr SBG. I am actually shocked by the fact that GW did not use that as a framework.
Lotr SBG is a skirmish, but has ways to field armies that use formations* of some sort - you use pikes, shieldwalls and move the minis in base of that.
And, thanks to the warband system and the good/evil factions, you have enough freedom in the choice of the army, but with a minimum of coherence.
If you want an hero army there are ways and the very framework of the game allows fielding monsters without breaking the game in half (compare, instead, LoW in 40k and the impact they had on the game).
Scenarios are well made and the fantastic background allows for custom ones. Designers created specific ones related to the story, with guidelines. Point cost is reasonable, especially for basic infantry.
Stats of the models interacted with the stats of enemy models: feels different for an Uruk-hai to fight a Rohirrim or to fight an Elf.
So I was expecting a similar game with similar sweet spot in balance, structure, gameplay, background. I mean, is the same company. If you want to be lazy, use something you already have and know that works. If you focus on few models, such hero centric system is fantastic. I was optimistic.
I was wrong. What we had was a sorry mess without any structure. The rules (no model stats interaction, shoot in melee) kill immersion; the lack of framework does not bring to an idea of structured army and kills the will of collecting. The lack of constraints kill a fast pickup game, a common ground between foreigners. There is not a single thing i can defend of AoS (except the gaunt summoner, did I already say that is awesome?).
Just saying that AoS is "against modern design" could suggest that AoS is so avant-garde that defies modern design (and dumb, conservative gamers do not understand its genius), or has some warm old-school feel. This is just too much generous with something designed is such a lazy, cost-cutting, dishonest way.
Wasn't my intent at all. People don't like change first and foremost. Gamers expect modern game design.
They expect points. They expect pick up game friendly. They expect world wide tournament support. They expect prizes. They expect rankings. They expect rules that should have no house rules.
AOS goes against all of these things. It was going to have an uphill struggle even if the rules weren't so ambiguous.
I agree 100% with you then. Sorry for the tone (and I had to apologise even if we did NOT agree, of course).
In the 80's we sometimes used points, sometimes didn't. In the 90's, we always used points. I'm not sure that the battles were anymore balanced in the 90's with points. The armies had the appearance of potentially being balanced, but there were always figures that were more efficient for their points cost, and less efficient for their points cost. You would see people bringing powerful ability troops with a flaw, because the powerful ability overcame the flaw (i.e. pikemen without armor in a game where pikemen never lose in melee, why spend points on armor?), Trolls with low experience (what do regenerating trolls need experience for?), etc.
"people enjoy it" is not an argument for quality. Can be an argument for success, but people enjoy objectively bad stuff. Look the success of Michael Bay Transformers.
This would all just be subjectivity. You don't like it, you think something's bad, but obviously the people who like it don't think it's bad. Everyone growing up tends to malign this about the world, "Why does that terrible music top the charts when my underground favourite band can't even pay its bills?" But the world is more nuanced than that, and playing the superiority in taste card is naive in my opinion.
What you think is bad about Transformers, other people may find charming about it. I've never seen the movies myself. Lots of people like "bad" shows or music for many reasons, including the same reasons someone else thinks it's bad.
I would say "people enjoy it" is the fundamental argument for quality. You can make the most well-designed whatever, but if people don't like it, it's worthless. You might hate that some seemingly simplistic competitor's version is wildly popular, but they've done something that you couldn't do. The fact you can't figure out what that is doesn't make it "objectively" bad.
I can't think of anyone who thought Transformers was good; most people enjoyed it, but the consensus was it was a bad movie. Which is fine.
Movies and games can be objectively bad; you can count the number of plotholes, or violations of golden rules of design, or number of mistakes, or number of vague rules etc.
For AoS you could also look at the number of people who play the game as written, and even of those, how many actually do.
That there were 2 fan comps in progress within hours of the AoS launch indicates that enough people thought it was too bad to use as is.
Even the AoS fans on the whole seem to feel that it's a bad game, and needs some minor (or major) tweaks. Most of the AoS fans also seem to think that the fluff is pretty terrible (and the fluff is objectively bad, it's shallow, repetitive, value, and absoultely terribly written).
Just for the record then, I play the game as written and really enjoy the fluff and the continued progress into the eight realms.
If I'm feeling particularly competitive then I'll use the Azyr comp but otherwise it's scenarios and fun.
Back to the topic at hand, I would've brought the story of AoS back to the point where the Mortal realms were beating back the forces of chaos and went from there. Lots of unexplored territory with the kingdoms that still stood, the aelves searching for their lost kin and Nagash's betrayal.
(Hopefully GW will make some fun sidegames for those moments.)
I know that this has been beaten to death but... with the current landscape of miniature games, are you sure that if AoS was not for GW, would you have started playing it? IMHO, it would have been laughed into obscurity soon. The whole thing seems like a big catastrophe of marketing associated with underpaid designers (or the studio losing talents. Or people fired and not substituted properly. Or the same talented people but less in number. With more tasks and growing tired and/or disenfranchised).
Why everything must be adjusted to the lowest common denominator? I hear people saying "is simple, is good for kids" but I was actually more strict and demanding as a kid because I had not money to waste and my wishes were limited. I wanted stuff with long re-playing potential. And as a (hopefully) future parent, I want to buy for my kids something with taste, well designed and that can stimulate them Intellectually. A point based game teaches how to work under a framework, under restraint. Among other things, points are educative. As if a game that encourage choices on the field. I charge so I shut down enemy shooting. Stuff like this.
My question is: does GW deserves to be rewarded for this? Mind it, is kind of hypocritical from my part, because I buy GW products* for other games that satisfy me
* but I am leaning toward Ebay more and more with the secondary, explicit intent of not giving GW money. What brought me to Ebay? OOPlotr models. I would have preferred to buy from them excellent small scale orcs from the Perry than the bloated mess of the bloodgoreskullkillers.
I'm very sad about the culling of the lines - my first Fantasy opponent was Wood Elves and my most memorable Fantasy Campaigns were against Empire and Brets.
I'm gonna go buy some of those wood elf kits if I can. I just assumed they'd always be there for me when I got around to it.
Alternating unit activation. I got my first wargame-scaled taste of it with Rackham's two games of AT-43 and Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok, and good god it's fun and engaging. So tired of half my lovingly painted army be swept off the table before I can even play with them because I failed a single dice roll ten minutes ago, and waiting around for another player to make descisions for every unit in their army.
With Alternating Activations, you get to do something meaningful every other minute or so. I don't know why GW has ignored this for everything but Epic 40k. I'm only able to put up with it in Kings of War because it's such a great game.
Alternating unit activation. I got my first wargame-scaled taste of it with Rackham's two games of AT-43 and Confrontation: Age of Ragnorok, and good god it's fun and engaging. So tired of half my lovingly painted army be swept off the table before I can even play with them because I failed a single dice roll ten minutes ago, and waiting around for another player to make descisions for every unit in their army.
With Alternating Activations, you get to do something meaningful every other minute or so. I don't know why GW has ignored this for everything but Epic 40k. I'm only able to put up with it in Kings of War because it's such a great game.
This is what made chronopia so much better than warhammer fantasy.
I've never really been bothered by the IGOUGO system of 40k and WHFB, at least as long as each turn isn't absurdly long which can become a problem in games with lots of models and you move each one indivudually. Alternating activations never really did anything for me except in circumstances where it was really called for (like Aeronautica Imperialis).
I find the alternating activation is great for smaller games but bogs down a bit in bigger games as you need markers to record who ha done what and who can still react and so on. That said, AoS scale would be fine with some sort of alternate activation, but WHFB was getting too big for it.
One thing I've found about alternate (or random) activation, is that it involves paying a lot more attention; you can zone out a bit during their turn on IGOUGO.
Herzlos wrote: Even the AoS fans on the whole seem to feel that it's a bad game, and needs some minor (or major) tweaks. Most of the AoS fans also seem to think that the fluff is pretty terrible (and the fluff is objectively bad, it's shallow, repetitive, value, and absoultely terribly written).
I like AoS. I think it is a good game. And the Age of Sigmar App is awesome! I think the fluff compares with the WHFB and WH40k fluff. Or for that matter most of the D&D fluff except the original DragonLance and Drizzt novels.
I think one of the advantages of AoS is that it is a lot easier to tweak than War Hammer Fantasy Battle was. Yes, you could have made house rules with WHFB, but we have played with more different House rules with AoS than we ever did with WHFB.
Some of the easy tweaks we have tried:
1) points or no points;
2) measure from base or model;
3) only figures that can reach fight, all figures in a unit fight.
4) various summoning approaches;
5) victory conditions
6) turn order by rolling or choice
etc.
