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 auticus wrote:
If you make it so that the flame scepter is not an auto win and only gives some glory points, then I think what will happen is mostly you will still fight in those 5 realms until the flame scepter is gotten, and then afterward the campaign continues in the other areas until your endpoint (whatever you all agreed on) is reached.

I find it incredibly amusing and more than a little bit sad that in a campaign you still have people who are trying to game it to win as quickly as possible.

Gaming culture is gaming culture. Thats why you need rules that are tight. It doesn't matter if its a campaign or a tournament, or a tabletop RPG session, people are going to min/max or find the most efficient means to victory.

Firestorm is just a very obvious shortcut to victory by owning those territories and forging the scepter first. (since if you do so you flat out win)

There are other ways around that, such as making the pieces of the scepter randomly obtained regardless of territory. Or what I would prefer - a quest token you get from something like winning a game of Silver Tower will earn you a piece of the scepter.

Only 40K is being played in my local GW on a regular basis. There were some AoS intro games in the past and then it went the way of the dodo.

Strong. Bit lower than 40K, but right now has been experiencing a surge in new players, expecially veterans getting bored by the 40K. The friendly tournaments at the local GW store have an equal partecipation forboth AoS and 40K, so I got to say AOS is looking good in my area

AoS started strong but has declined in favour of 8th ed 40K and Bolt Action. Rarely does an AoS game get planned anymore which is a shame.

 BlackLobster wrote:
AoS started strong but has declined in favour of 8th ed 40K and Bolt Action. Rarely does an AoS game get planned anymore which is a shame.

it reversed for us.

40k declined and AoS is super strong in my neck of the woods.

Shadespire seems pretty big in my area. I still see the occasional game of AoS proper too. My immediate group has been on an AoS binge of late.

With the new nurgle stuff coming I am going to really need to get AOS back and kicking. Sadly nurgle is fairly popular here so part of me is wanting to do something else, despite really liking it, just for variety.

AoS is keeping up with 40k by quite a bit at my gaming place, maybe even surpassing it. Trouble is there are a LOT of hardcore AOS tourney players so it's really a challenge to have some good victories, but overall Its alive and well!

With these new releases on the horizon I think AoS is going to come to the forefront.

I would think by this point AoS is pretty much at its "high water mark". anywhere its popular, it will likely remain so, where its not, it will remain unpopular.

I am slowly building the AOS in my community. Did a demo game for someone at my FLGS (where previously we tried to get AOS off, and nothing happened) who was new, and he loved it, and said he has two friends and a co-worker who have start collecting sets (his co-worker only bought it to paint, he said) so that's promising. The hard part here is that, for whatever reason, this region of Florida has no desire to be part of a community. People just don't care about organization, so it's going to be an uphill battle to try and get that going, despite there being like 3-4 stores in a 30 mile radius. Also I have a friend who, while I like talking to him, plays the game obnoxiously and I think is why it fizzled the last time (he can be very abrasive).

There might be a AoS player base in the town about 30 miles from me, but it's not really feasible to travel that far to game regularly, which has really sucked as a minis wargamer for the last 20+ years, lol.

The only gaming I get is with my Dad, when I can shanghai my wife into a game, or a couple of buddies who I really only get to see once or twice a month at best, and then it's mostly for Roleplaying games. So around me I would have to be the one pushing everything (as with 90% of the games I want to play) and it's just too expensive to buy all the gaming material to have multiple armies/warbands available to play with.

So I'm instead going to end up playing AoS in spirit, if not reality. I use the rules and warband lists for the game Age of Fantasy from One Page Games, which is a free indie ruleset that uses it's own set of rules to represent the forces of 40k and AoS, with a very light but fulfilling ruleset that's much less complicated than even AoS, which is perfect for only being able to game every several weeks or months and everyone's rusty and doesn't want to spend precious game time relearning rules.

Very badly, we have probably 3/4 players out of a hundred or so, some people collect it but don't play it, I think it needs someone to push it and try to get others on board, might try to get an escalation league going

Narrative campaigns have actually worked here. We finished path to glory with 18 players and the spring azyr empires campaign is set for potentially 21.

 auticus wrote:
Narrative campaigns have actually worked here. We finished path to glory with 18 players and the spring azyr empires campaign is set for potentially 21.

Can you make any suggestions on how to drum up interest? How did you do it?

I've been running events here for over twenty years, so that helps because people know it will complete instead of fizzle and die out.

I live in a tournament centric area but there are a lot of narrative guys here that dwell in the shadows that just needed events that they were interested in. The problem was that it wouldn't happen overnight, its like a slow moving snowball.

In our WHFB days we had about 25-30 active players. When AOS hit we were struck down to about 5 of us.

The tournament AOS scene here is basically totally dead.

How I assisted in growing it was to measure interest and cater to that interest.

We ran Azyr Empires (this will be our third run through this spring) and path to glory really helped get new players interested since they didn't need huge forces.

The biggest pointers that I can think of that were the most positive:

* start small, work up. Do not start at 2000 points. Do not start with tournaments or tournament standard. Most of the people I encounter actually have no interest in tournaments or events run like tournaments. Tournaments are great, but if your events are all based on tournaments, there is a large subsection of players that will stay out of the community.

* come up with a schedule. Give it a begin date and a definite end date.

I find that open scheduling is a setup for failure. I schedule players and that gives a structure and we have exponentially more players stick around than if its open scheduling where players don't want to be social lol.

I had little awards as well. I have a persistent plaque that hangs on our GW store's wall that goes back to 99 with all of the campaigns that have run and who won or what factions won. This gives history and shows a trail of successful events, which I also find is very important because a big complaint that I hear is that campaigns suck because they always just fizzle out.

They shouldn't always fizzle out.

Start small with players. Say 3-5 players your first go around. Build up from that.

Successful events that are fun will attract other players.

The biggest thing though is gauging your audience. I live in tourney-center-USA, and running campaigns can be a challenge particularly when houserules or non official material is presented, but the reward for persisting with that is a group of campaign players that aren't as worried about tournament rules and a lot of engaged players.

However if your audience are all tournament players, you will have to design accordingly or be ok with smaller groups which grow over the years.

The NEO events are great places to start. Firestorm Campaign is also a good box to start with. If you're interested in empire building, I wrote Azyr Empires and have the 2nd edition coming out this spring for our 2018 campaign (you can get to Azyr Empires on my signature). It is a bit more complicated than most people like though, but if crunch is your thing we have a good size playtest group and I'd be happy to hear critique for it. Thats how it got to 2nd edition after all.

Good luck!

I always joke with my buddies that at least my situation allows me to do whatever the hell I want for my local setting, as they are not really any kind of strict fans of Warhammer anyway.

Have our games set in a verdant kingdom on Ghyran and accept the official AoS setting while adding my own fluff? Sure.

Ignore the AoS realms, retcon half the End Times, and have Stormcast appearing several hundred years later and fighting to retake a Chaos overrun, ruined and tainted Empire in a post-apocolyptic Old World setting? Like anyone can stop me. This summer event...the retaking of Altdorf, and bloody tunnel fighting in the warrens below the great Chaos citadel of Middenheim.

Dying.

We have more Bolt Action players than AoS players.

About once a month, some folks get together and play AoS.

We have more games of Silver Tower and the other Warhammer Quest game than we do AoS.

It's really sad seeing how many communities ignore AOS; I wonder if its just bitter old WHFB people angry that they killed the world, or still angry over "muh points" and "silly rules" from the early days? In my experience, AOS is way better as a game than 40k is right now, 40k being a huge cluster this early in the edition.

Here its that the people that liked whfb like infantry forces clashing rank/flank style, and didn't want another skirmish game in a market glutted and overloaded with skirmish games.

Wayniac wrote:
It's really sad seeing how many communities ignore AOS; I wonder if its just bitter old WHFB people angry that they killed the world, or still angry over "muh points" and "silly rules" from the early days? In my experience, AOS is way better as a game than 40k is right now, 40k being a huge cluster this early in the edition.

I’m certainly enjoying AoS a lot more at the moment than 40k. Both in game mechanics and fluff.

Wayniac wrote:
It's really sad seeing how many communities ignore AOS; I wonder if its just bitter old WHFB people angry that they killed the world, or still angry over "muh points" and "silly rules" from the early days? In my experience, AOS is way better as a game than 40k is right now, 40k being a huge cluster this early in the edition.

generally no, those guys here are still playing 8th warhammer (and in some cases even older editions) AoS is largely ignored here because it just isnt very good at what it says it is, an "affordable, easy to get into skirmish game" when compared to the large number of other skirmish games. We have tried over and over to get any kind of momentum but sticker shock is a big killer. This game is not appreciably cheaper than warhammer and the armies are not appreciably smaller. Even running with smaller groups there is still a massive disconnect in price. The idea that "simpler is better" is really just a matter of local meta, here "simpler is poison" so other games get the nod. I used to think of AoS as the worst game currently on the market in terms of quality rules and cost, 8th edition 40k told me to "hold my beer" and managed to be the IMO the works game ever made, by anybody. I do not miss seeing 40k games anymore. But realistically taken on its own merits, AoS is a pretty decent little game.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
Here its that the people that liked whfb like infantry forces clashing rank/flank style, and didn't want another skirmish game in a market glutted and overloaded with skirmish games.

Again hitting the nail on the head, too many skirmish games available. But also...almost all of them are cheaper.

Cost is also definitely a factor. Even pushing for smaller games, people are not so keen on getting in because the standard (2000p) is so expensive regardless of local smaller games supporting people not wanting to get a full force.

Psychology in action the tournament scene in general dictates standard game size, even with people that will never set foot in a tournament.

Pretty dead in my area. Our FLGS owner tries every now and again to gen it up, but no one is biting.

I don't know a single Fantasy player that I played with who plays.

 auticus wrote:
Cost is also definitely a factor. Even pushing for smaller games, people are not so keen on getting in because the standard (2000p) is so expensive regardless of local smaller games supporting people not wanting to get a full force.

Psychology in action the tournament scene in general dictates standard game size, even with people that will never set foot in a tournament.

Well, the fact that once points based play came onto the scene it removed virtually everything else didn't help that, even though without that you had the ability to play smaller games. But that was "not fair" because you had to gauge balance yourself, so was a vile and evil thing that had to be stamped out. Ironically, ignoring that subset of the game also means people are back to complaining about it being "too expensive".

Yep people can be special.

Wayniac wrote:

 auticus wrote:
Cost is also definitely a factor. Even pushing for smaller games, people are not so keen on getting in because the standard (2000p) is so expensive regardless of local smaller games supporting people not wanting to get a full force.

Psychology in action the tournament scene in general dictates standard game size, even with people that will never set foot in a tournament.

Well, the fact that once points based play came onto the scene it removed virtually everything else didn't help that, even though without that you had the ability to play smaller games. But that was "not fair" because you had to gauge balance yourself, so was a vile and evil thing that had to be stamped out. Ironically, ignoring that subset of the game also means people are back to complaining about it being "too expensive".

to be fair though, just to put a 3 warscroll force of overlords on the table will cost you about $115 and thats just two units of arkanaughts and a leader. Even playing how we do (without points) that's a chunk compared to the other games out there. so even with free warscrolls and rules (and free rules and suchnot is more common than not for games) that is a hard sell. And having played since day 1, gauging balance is hit or miss and takes getting to know players and their army, good for long term, but terrible for pick up and getting people into a game. Trying to teach someone a game and then trying to eyeball them a good force with no metric whatsoever (what we had before any points) was not fun or easy.

in the warhammer store Rotterdam its going well, with an active AoS community. Its hard to tell whats more populair there 40k or AoS.