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I'm pretty sure it's doing okay near me. Heelanhammer, an AoS podcast is based in Portsmouth right near me and they're doing the SCGT this month with about 140 people attending I believe. I haven't played myself yet though.

Baron Klatz wrote:
Meh, I don't put much stock in Hastings, he's kinda biased on the subject.

Eh, Hastings is no fan of AoS or GW, but he's never given false info before in any case. As people with inside knowledge of GW go, he's pretty much the gold standard. I doubt he'd say anything so firmly on the subject if he didn't have some knowledge.

Baron Klatz wrote:
Anyway, how would GW know? They don't do research, remember?

Doing market research is very, very different from tracking sales - something that GW does with quite a bit of rigor.

 Nordicus wrote:
I have yet to see a game of AoS in my local meta - I see some play Fantasy, but not AoS.

The same with me. A handful of people are playing some kind of bastardised 8th (they aren't going near 9th age for some reason) but its not very widespread.

@Lexington, ah, good point about the sales tracking.

@Silent Puffin, I can see why some choose 8th over 9th. 8th only needed a few fixes to some and 9th is constantly changing their rules. (Bretonnian players are having it rough in 9th as well)

My store wasn't playing much of AoS until my friends and myself picked it up and carried it for a few weeks, showing off hilarious and fun games at the store. All it needed was a couple of charismatic dudes with an opened mind and who aren't shy to shout and laugh while playing to get everybody on it. Now it's thriving.

Haechi - that is exactly what games need to succeed. IME LGS staff does next to nothing along those lines but this is why so many stores rely on MtG and 40k to keep the lights on. It is amazing to see how one or two enthusiastic players can build a customer base.

That makes sense. A old fantasy poll showed that 85% of the gamers got into tabletop because their friends got them interested.

I was part of the smaller portion, got into it because I thought the Mark of Chaos game was awesome. (didn't realize it was even a tabletop thing until years later when I moved onto the mmo and novels)

Thanks for the thoughts on the regional split, folks. Very interesting.

With regards to Hastings and "It's not doing well" I think there might be some truth to that, but it may not be that clear cut. AoS doesn’t really have a lot to buy just yet, outside of the Starter set and the Start Collecting! boxes which seem to be doing very well at my preferred retailer. I wouldn't be surprised if GW still had WHFB stuff listed as such, and not AoS, on their stock keeping database. Just pure speculation on my part, of course.

When more stuff gets re-branded/re-boxed/discounted(?!) I think the sales will spike. Again, just making stuff up on that spot

Baron Klatz wrote:
That makes sense. A old fantasy poll showed that 85% of the gamers got into tabletop because their friends got them interested.

...

That is the"network effect".

That's why it is so dangerous for GW to have pissed off their veteran players, turning them from enthusiastic promoters of GW games into opponents who promote and support rival systems.

AoS has been a two-edged sword in that respect. Quite a few people are enthusiastic about the new system, but quite a few other people think it's the spawn of Satan. We see roughly a 50/50 split between players reporting it's doing well and badly. Perhaps this reflects the local meta in various areas, depending on whether the AoS supporters or opponents were most successful in introducing or opposing the game.

GW shops for obvious reasons are immune to this, but it affects indie shops and clubs too.

There's no point buying a game unless you can find people to play it with.

 monders wrote:
Thanks for the thoughts on the regional split, folks. Very interesting.

With regards to Hastings and "It's not doing well" I think there might be some truth to that, but it may not be that clear cut. AoS doesn’t really have a lot to buy just yet, outside of the Starter set and the Start Collecting! boxes which seem to be doing very well at my preferred retailer. I wouldn't be surprised if GW still had WHFB stuff listed as such, and not AoS, on their stock keeping database. Just pure speculation on my part, of course.

When more stuff gets re-branded/re-boxed/discounted(?!) I think the sales will spike. Again, just making stuff up on that spot

That's possible, but knowing GW I'd be more worried that even if they only count new AoS stuff as 'AoS' the problem isn't that AoS is selling poorly (and thus explainable as there not being much AoS product), but that sales aren't meeting expectations.

I wouldn't put it past GW at all to have set expectations unreasonably high for this. Adding Space Marines to Fantasy right? Why not then expect Space Marine sales numbers? Makes perfect sense to an accountant.

I think the lack of 40k releases over 3 months of summer last year showed that GW expected AoS to explode with popularity. Looks like it didn't do that with an overall downturn on the year despite a 30k starter set (BaC) and a full Adeptus Mechanicus release (which were reportedly both very successful).

But - if it is doing better or worse than WHFB is still anyone's guess. I feel like the game is picking up lots of steam and even if it got off to a rocky start there is still plenty GW can do to turn it around.

 monders wrote:
Thanks for the thoughts on the regional split, folks. Very interesting.

With regards to Hastings and "It's not doing well" I think there might be some truth to that, but it may not be that clear cut. AoS doesn’t really have a lot to buy just yet, outside of the Starter set and the Start Collecting! boxes which seem to be doing very well at my preferred retailer. I wouldn't be surprised if GW still had WHFB stuff listed as such, and not AoS, on their stock keeping database. Just pure speculation on my part, of course.

When more stuff gets re-branded/re-boxed/discounted(?!) I think the sales will spike. Again, just making stuff up on that spot

I actually think it's the other way round - everything fantasy is now branded AoS; so a lot of the early AoS sales may in fact be people finishing off collections / panick buying / oldhammerers, and actual sales of AoS as artificially high because of that. We'll see how it progresses though as the panic buying should be done by now.

 auticus wrote:

As an aside, people that hate it say it's doing dreadful, but people that like it say it's doing well. Is it a regional thing, I wonder?

I think its largely a case of confirmation bias.

I know where I am we have several game stores, and if you ask someone if AOS is failing from one of the FLGS they will say no one in our city plays it at all because its horrible, even though we have a campaign group that is steadily growing and playing it at the GW (and they know that).

It's probably a kind of self fulfilling bias too. People decide it's bad and never try it or people who approach it with the right mind set get together and it does really well.

I'm not saying people who don't enjoy AoS are wrong, just that if you approach it with certain mindsets you will not enjoy it.

With AoS being a casual "with your mates" kind of game and a bit of a taboo in may places it's difficult to get a group going . When a group gets going it is set up in a way that grows easily though

I actually never seen anyone play it, excluding me and a friend. Which was a pity game at best, he bought a start collecting box and got a bunch of sigmar dudes. After a month of no one playing with him I said sure. Grabbed like 20 models off my shelf warriors of chaos or what ever they are now. I tried to show intrest but it was like watching a halloween concert of kids when none are yours. You count the moments til it is over.


It just hard to get intrest when it is bring what ever do what ever and scream PEW.

 DarkBlack wrote:

 auticus wrote:

As an aside, people that hate it say it's doing dreadful, but people that like it say it's doing well. Is it a regional thing, I wonder?

I think its largely a case of confirmation bias.

I know where I am we have several game stores, and if you ask someone if AOS is failing from one of the FLGS they will say no one in our city plays it at all because its horrible, even though we have a campaign group that is steadily growing and playing it at the GW (and they know that).

It's probably a kind of self fulfilling bias too. People decide it's bad and never try it or people who approach it with the right mind set get together and it does really well.

I'm not saying people who don't enjoy AoS are wrong, just that if you approach it with certain mindsets you will not enjoy it.

With AoS being a casual "with your mates" kind of game and a bit of a taboo in may places it's difficult to get a group going . When a group gets going it is set up in a way that grows easily though

There is definitely something in that. Speaking for myself. I've read the AoS rules and some of the war scroll collections. I've watched some games being played. I know it's a ruleset that, due to various factors, I won't very much like playing.

If I want to get a group to play a casual fantasy skirmish battle experience, there are various rulebooks -- Hordes of the Things, Dragon Rampant, Of Gods And Mortals, and others -- that are much cheaper, nearly as easy to learn, have more tactical depth, and won't get bogged down in endless new releases and elaborations of the special rules.

At the same time, I recognise that it is exactly the stream of new releases and elaborations of special rules that appeal to people who like AoS, as with 40K (another game that GW ruined for me.)

I say all this as someone who abandoned WHFB in the mid-1980s, who has no axe to grind in respect to the Olde Worlde. I actually wanted AoS to be a game I would enjoy playing.

I would enjoy an Age of Emporer version of 40K. Slimmed down system, free rules, free war scrolls, use all your old models? Bring it on!!

 Kilkrazy wrote:

I would enjoy an Age of Emporer version of 40K. Slimmed down system, free rules, free war scrolls, use all your old models? Bring it on!!

Even if they blew up Terra and brought back Guiliman to lead the 'new' Imperium from Ultrama, but renamed it the Imeerioom?

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:

I would enjoy an Age of Emporer version of 40K. Slimmed down system, free rules, free war scrolls, use all your old models? Bring it on!!

Even if they blew up Terra and brought back Guiliman to lead the 'new' Imperium from Ultrama, but renamed it the Imeerioom?

Please don't give them ideas...

No, I want them to keep the fluff. They could advance it by bringing the Emporer back to life and starting some kind of galaxy wide campaign.

I'm actually looking forward to that too. 40k in its current state disgusts me. There isn't a game that I play where we aren't having to have our nose in the rulebook for a good amount of time trying to sort out one thing or the other . I prefer simpler rulesets that don't require a lot of that.

@Jono

@Herzlos

Fair responses there, cheers.

It would be a shame IF AoS failed because then binning off the old world really was for nothing.

I think the next 12 months are crucial, as we see newer factions/models get released and GW getting more involved with players/events.

The 140 people registered for SCGT is something as well.

If the states could get some tournaments going like that, that would be huge.

 auticus wrote:
I'm actually looking forward to that too. 40k in its current state disgusts me. There isn't a game that I play where we aren't having to have our nose in the rulebook for a good amount of time trying to sort out one thing or the other . I prefer simpler rulesets that don't require a lot of that.

It's terrible, getting through a TURN without someone forgetting something is rare, just too many rules in too many places for EACH unit. The points are more a way of validating cheese than a balancing mechanism.

Which is why warscrolls are an amazing idea.

All warscrolls do is move the clutter onto individual pages. If you can trim it down to fit on a stat card it's ideal (I wrote out stat cards for my IG)

I uncerstand what you mean, however even in late 5th edition, to run a Tyranid Tervigon required reference to eight different special rules in five different pages of two different books.

It really shouldn't be like that to start with, and players don't expect be asked to pay £80 for a game that isn't playable until you do a bunch of work to get the stuff figured out and summarised into unit cards. That's why GW's sales dropped so much between 2012 and 2016.

Goodness knows what a Tervigon is like now in 7th edition.

 jonolikespie wrote:

I wouldn't put it past GW at all to have set expectations unreasonably high for this. Adding Space Marines to Fantasy right? Why not then expect Space Marine sales numbers? Makes perfect sense to an accountant.

Well I think their plan was to try to sell more then WHFB at the very least. I doubt they expected Space Marine level of sales although by introducing the Stormcast they were certainly going for that. I mean old hat WHFB players had been joking for years all fantasy needed was a space marine equivalent . Good guys you can cheer for who can go toe to toe with a Chaos Warrior...I just think they wanted that all to happen in the Old World.

Creating an entirely new plane of existence that in many ways mirrors the vastness of the Milky Way galaxy the Space Marines inhabit was not expected. I imagine once they get everything out they will be monitoring the sales and if it does not surpass the percentage of sales Fantasy had before...well at this point who knows.

 Commodus Leitdorf wrote:
I mean old hat WHFB players had been joking for years all fantasy needed was a space marine equivalent

I don;t know who these crazy people were BUT LOOK WHAT THEY HAVE DONE!

 Silent Puffin? wrote:

I don't know who these crazy people were BUT LOOK WHAT THEY HAVE DONE!

Hey I said it was a Joke! A JOKE!

*weeps bitter tears for the loss of the Empire*

Sweet averland you'll never be forgotten and we'll never forgive GW.

hobojebus wrote:
Sweet averland you'll never be forgotten and we'll never forgive GW.

No, no, Averland is no more. Forget about it. Long live the floating islands of the Shimmertarn!

Whatever that is. I'm sure it'll be fleshed out in an interesting manner and wasn't a random mashup of words their web staff came up with on the spot...

I mean old hat WHFB players had been joking for years all fantasy needed was a space marine equivalent

As I recall, most of those statements ended with "Oh God please no don't do that." Chaos in fantasy felt threatening in a way that Chaos in 40k doesn't - Necrons and Tyranids seem like much bigger threats to the galaxy, honestly. Part of that is because there wasn't an equivalent to a Chaos Warrior. They were faster, stronger, and tougher than any human troops...the best bet the Empire or Bretonnia had to hold them back involved shooting them, and if they closed, people were going to die - both in the background and on the tabletop.

Now, the dynamic is reversed...some people have been clamoring for it, but I'd guess there's not a lot of overlap between them and people who liked the old Warhammer background.

 Spinner wrote:
wasn't a random mashup of words their web staff came up with on the spot...

Yeah tottally unlike the faux German ...

 Spinner wrote:
Chaos in fantasy felt threatening in a way that Chaos in 40k doesn't

Now you have a point there. I was putting together a Bloodletter last night. I have some LotR Easterlings on my desk, too, and the Bloodletter looks cartoonishly overpowered compared to them (they have normal human proportions) - but I also have a Stormcast Eternal on my desk ... and he looks cartoonishly overpowered next to the Bloodletter!