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I'm just a nobody who don't know nothin'! But... do any of you guys think this rumor aligns with the latest Warhammer Quest? It's an Age of Sigmar game, but it sure doesn't look like one, looking a lot closer to Fantasy without calling it that. Maybe it's the first glimpse of what this Age of Sigmar might lean towards, lore-wise and aesthetically?

if im to guess, the actual reason behind this change is to make the setting more concrete ans usable as a setting. Allowing books and more campaigns to be set there, with games aswell

To be honest, I never found the setting a problem. It's different from WHFB, but that is the point. Maybe it's just because I am a Dungeons and Dragons veteran, but the idea of a series of magically connected, infinite (or so vast they may as well be infinite) realmspheres/planes works fine for me.

And just like Dungeons and Dragons, while the setting is immense and homebrew friendly, there are hotspots of particular importance that are useful to put stories in. Hammerhal is like Baldur's Gate, basically. A recognisable name that you know matters even though it's set in just one of the available planes.

In all my discussions I have never found the realms themselves an issue talking to people about the setting. It seems low as a problem that could be largely solved by just Ashiraya says with focusing on hotspots enough in the setting to have identity.
Each realm should be getting this as the setting grows, it just takes management care for it.
Honestly I think the factions cause way more friction.

I really like the potential of the Shards, but it's never really felt like GW took advantage of them. I'm definitely no expert on the setting, but I've never gotten the impression they interact in cosmologically interesting ways.

Sunno wrote:
As an outsider to playing GW games (but not painting or the lore), iv been sort of expecting a soft reboot or relaunch of the 40K universe for a while. Just with the move toward more mainstream vibes, moving away from grimdark etc they are going to have to do some sort of "that was then, this is now" break.

The cynic in me wonders if any AoS Reboot or relaunch is a dry run for that.

That was already done in 8th. Yknow, the whole cicatrix maladictum and the imperium being split in two thing?

The rumors of whats coming for AoS are functionally not much different.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s not really though, not when it’s objectively missing significant amounts of data. And, at least the versions I’ve seen, don’t offer the numbers behind the rankings.

For instance, when X-Wing overtook 40K? What was the reported difference there? Are we talking a few thousand dollars, or millions? What overall percentage of X-Wing sales does that represent overall? What percentage of those partaking in the survey stock all the games? Is anyone vetting the figures given, or are they potentially also “trust me bro”?

The other issue is do the non-GW games also have direct sales which might not be reported in the first place? If so, what sort of percentage?

Hence, and I don’t say this lightly or to be controversial, but as a data set ICV2 is frankly worthless.

GW aren’t much more help. Whilst their financials, like all businesses in the UK are independently verified, it doesn’t and has never offered a per system breakdown. Only by channel, and sometimes by territory. So the most we can do is say “GW had a core income, not including Licensing of £X at constant currency in a given year”, and see how that breaks down against retail (their own stores), online (its own website) and trade (pretty much everything else, including direct to FLGS and Distributors.

I had a post about this some years back. TLDR - X-Wing was never larger than 40k, the entirety of FFGs sales that year was like $35 million (we know this courtesy of pro forma statements, etc. that were released at the time Asmodee acquired FFG). Even if you assume the only products they sold were X-Wing, they were not larger than 40k when GW was pulling like $150 million the same year and WHFB was in the process of being sunset to no real noticeable revenue loss on GWs part.

 streetsamurai wrote:

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
It’s not really though, not when it’s objectively missing significant amounts of data. And, at least the versions I’ve seen, don’t offer the numbers behind the rankings.

For instance, when X-Wing overtook 40K? What was the reported difference there? Are we talking a few thousand dollars, or millions? What overall percentage of X-Wing sales does that represent overall? What percentage of those partaking in the survey stock all the games? Is anyone vetting the figures given, or are they potentially also “trust me bro”?

The other issue is do the non-GW games also have direct sales which might not be reported in the first place? If so, what sort of percentage?

Hence, and I don’t say this lightly or to be controversial, but as a data set ICV2 is frankly worthless.

GW aren’t much more help. Whilst their financials, like all businesses in the UK are independently verified, it doesn’t and has never offered a per system breakdown. Only by channel, and sometimes by territory. So the most we can do is say “GW had a core income, not including Licensing of £X at constant currency in a given year”, and see how that breaks down against retail (their own stores), online (its own website) and trade (pretty much everything else, including direct to FLGS and Distributors.

They clearly are not worthless. They are what they say they are. An indicator of the relative sales of different games made by independant stores in NA. Does the data have some limitations? Yes, of course, there's a ton of them. But as I said, they are by far the better indicator we have.

And my original comment was made relative to the claim that WHFB supposedly wasnt in the top 10 games of independant games stockist. If there's more reliable data than the ICV2 to support this claim, i'll have no problem retracting my comment that it sounds like BS, but it doesnt seems like it is the case

yes icv2 data is not really wortwhile for anything because its junk data in creating junk data out. Miniature gaming is by its very nature a highly localized hobby. There are stores in my area where I will never see anything being played other than A Song of Ice and Fire and Warmachine, whereas there are other stores where the only game being played is 40k. There are games that I know have big communities elsewhere, that are wholly invisible and might as well not exist anywhere that I have been within a couple hours drive of my apartment. The reality is that icv2s data pulls really only comes from a handful of *major* online retailers and wholesale distributors. I have never met or encountered a single traditional brick and mortar store that reports any data to them, and in fact many lack the data collection and reporting capabilities needed to provide accurate data to icv2.

Long story short, what this means is that the data is largely being driven by what certain retail outlets and sales channels are reporting, and the nature of those sales channels - when crossed against the nature of the hobby as a whole - means that certain product lines will be overrepresented while others will be underrepresented. For example, for many years I purchased all my X-Wing, Armada, ASOIAF, Flames of War, Malifaux, Warmachine, etc. product online because availability was limited in my area, whereas 95% of my GW product purchases were done at local shops which never provided a bytes worth of data to icv2. People go where the product is available, and for many product lines, going to online retailers is the only way many consumers can consistently access a product. If those e-retailers are where icv2 gets its primary data reporting from, its not going to be a truly representative sample of market activity as a whole.

 LunarSol wrote:
I really like the potential of the Shards, but it's never really felt like GW took advantage of them. I'm definitely no expert on the setting, but I've never gotten the impression they interact in cosmologically interesting ways.

The main issue is that theres no linkage between them. Hammerhal Aqsha and Hammerhal Ghyra are the only example of a concrete link between realms. GW should have done a lot more of that - like having a map that shows key areas of all the realms in one place, with the locations of realm gates and where they link to eachother across the realms so that people had a sense of place and how these areas interconnect.

As it currently stands, it appears that realmgates are kinda just arbitrarily and randomly scattered all over the place and using them is a roll of the dice as to where you might end up. Its hard to feel like theres any connective tissue between the realms as a result of that.

Realmgates are strategically important, but fairly plentiful exactly to enable reasonable cross-realm travel.

The Hammerhal one is notable for being absolutely colossal. Whole armies can cross that gate in fairly short order (though the bridge through it is kept narrower than that, for presumably strategic reasons).

But most of them are not a roll of the dice. Some are, particularly ones that have been corrupted or damaged, but in an early chapter of Skaventide the main characters use a Realmgate just outside Hallowheart to travel a substantial distance to Rookenval, a fortress in the eastern mountains. This is treated as a fairly casual thing to do (aside from said fortress being no laughing matter and more of a monastery).

 Ashiraya wrote:

 YodhrinsForge wrote:
"It is fact", followed by assertion, supposition, and the genuinely comical notion that GW has never made a bafflingly silly and counterproductive decision. I'm sure one day someone making this claim will have actual evidence, but once again it isn't today.

Does the bit ClockworkZion mentioned where it wasn't even in the top 10 according to independent stockist sales data count?

Again, for reference, I believe AoS is #3 right now.

Or is everything "supposition"?

(Also, again, while GW sometimes makes questionable choices, them outright killing off thriving product lines is definitely not their MO, and while I have much criticism for them, this is one that I'd present as unfair).

Peachy apparently covered it on a Painting Phase episode and to summarize: IP was part of it, but also that Lord of the Rings, even post films, was outselling WFB. WFB wasn't GW's #2 game, it was its #3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abIvH4bAOss


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Sunno wrote:
As an outsider to playing GW games (but not painting or the lore), iv been sort of expecting a soft reboot or relaunch of the 40K universe for a while. Just with the move toward more mainstream vibes, moving away from grimdark etc they are going to have to do some sort of "that was then, this is now" break.

The cynic in me wonders if any AoS Reboot or relaunch is a dry run for that.

Gathering Storm was 40k's soft reboot and is letting them expand the range as much as they want and lean into selling big name faction leaders like Primarchs.


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 Da Boss wrote:
And btw I don't buy the "toxic online community" thing at all, I think that's quite mean spirited. You can go read posts about WFB on Dakkadakka and it's generally a very civil discussion.

Dakka wasn't the only forum on the net for WFB content, though many of those are dead and gone these days so it's not like I can just pull up screenshots as evidence, but trust me when I say that as a 40k player who was interested in WFB at the time, it was really a thing that happened.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
Matt Ward wrote that army book and he's just not a very good game designer.

So what did they do? They gave him the entire next edition to write.

Matt Ward didn't do it only his own in a vacuum. It was a full studio effort, he was just the project lead on the book. It was his responsibilty to assemble it and do a majority of the writing, sure, but the ideas aren't solely his and others were contributing as well. Every book was written that way as far back as 3rd when Andy Chambers was credited as the sole author despite working with Rick Priestley the entire time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Da Boss wrote:
There is a trend of AoS fans making statements like "the WFB community was full of toxic grognards and needed to die" and it doesn't make me feel particularly sympathetic toward them getting a taste of their own medicine, I must say.

A decade of salty WFB fans saying AoS "killed" WFB (it didn't, it was it's successor, not murderer), and constantly talking down about AoS and insisting it was going to die any day now is the reason people have developed a negative opinion of WFB fans.
For example this is from 2016:


and this is from last year:


I can present a LOT more too. This has been a constant thing since AoS launched and it's honestly just embarrassing to see it persist.


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 streetsamurai wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:

 YodhrinsForge wrote:
"It is fact", followed by assertion, supposition, and the genuinely comical notion that GW has never made a bafflingly silly and counterproductive decision. I'm sure one day someone making this claim will have actual evidence, but once again it isn't today.

Does the bit ClockworkZion mentioned where it wasn't even in the top 10 according to independent stockist sales data count?

Again, for reference, I believe AoS is #3 right now.

Or is everything "supposition"?

(Also, again, while GW sometimes makes questionable choices, them outright killing off thriving product lines is definitely not their MO, and while I have much criticism for them, this is one that I'd present as unfair).

Which seems like total BS, since ICV2 had WHFB in the top 5 every years bar 2014. But hey, dont let facts go against the narrative you're trying to create..

Sure, it was still in the top 5 in 2013, but 2014 and 2015 it wasn't even close to that.



It's almost like things changed over time and GW was bleeding sales to the competition. I'm sure others who were around during the time remember how many people had jumped from 40k to Warmachine because they wanted crunchier, more balanced rules than what 40k had at the time.

AOS went out in 2015. The decision of scrapping WHFB was made way before 2014. So the 2014 and 2015 datas are irrelevant since the decision of scrapping WHFB was already made by then

These rumors are amusing, mostly because its the week leading up to April 1st.

We'll see if this is still being talked about in 2 weeks.

Skaven + CoS

https://www.warhammer-community.com/en-gb/articles/hz1jmcv8/adepticon-preview-2026-clans-eshin-battle-the-freeguilds/

TOW-WHFB jockeying aside, I like the new COS models a lot. Very much 'human fighter' while retaining the high fantasy flair of AOS.

 RaptorusRex wrote:
TOW-WHFB jockeying aside, I like the new COS models a lot. Very much 'human fighter' while retaining the high fantasy flair of AOS.

Something about the new Cities aesthetic reminds me of a cuckoo clock. Real clockpunk energy in my opinion which is a nice different flavor compared to the KO's more steampunk aesthetic.

Loving Howl’s Moving Howitzer. Completely bonkers concept, with a “well, I suppose maybe it could work?” execution.

Giants are pretty nice too. Just lovely stuff all round.

S tier Skaven. So many Mordheim warbands in those kits.

CoS have a couple decent to great models here and there, mostly the mages, but the infantry is still CoS infantry, this time with more bling, and that's not a good thing. The Cogfort is... very Rackhamesque. Not bad, but not great either. Maybe if it was painted in metallics, it would look better?

Love-love those eshin units, they mostly nailed skaven throughout AoS. Can't wait for pestilens down the line.

As someone who adores the Cities infantry designs, this entire reveal couldn't have been more perfect

.

I don't want Cities (really just can't justify another army) but this Cities reveal just really shows the skill GW have behind the AoS model team.


I'm also liking that GW have focused in on this idea of two wave releases for new/major updated armies. It really cements the army as a strong new faction to play with and gives a lot of variety and choice for players. You're not stuck running the same half-dozen models for years upon years hoping and waiting for another wave.

CoS is not really to my taste for fantasy, but I appreciate they're taking a big swing and the execution is great.

Still disappointed by the lack of Elves and Dwarfs in the CoS range, but the new minis are very good, particularly those wacky mages.

Needs to wear a clockwork bell helmet to drown out the voices in his head, strikes just the right balance between goofy and dark for me.

 LunarSol wrote:
I really like the potential of the Shards, but it's never really felt like GW took advantage of them. I'm definitely no expert on the setting, but I've never gotten the impression they interact in cosmologically interesting ways.

It's been mentioned a couple times that Hysh and Ulgu are literally day and night respectively for the other realms.

So, who reckons that these new wizzards mean that the battlemages kit will be shunted back to the Old World?

Somebody got inspired quickly

You know, I was completely convinced that I had no need for any of the Cities stuff since my armies in AoS are Chorfs and Skaven (and Stormcast because Sigmarines).

Now I need one of those walking warpfire spewing citadels...lord knows I have a bunch of spare Skryre bits.

The more I see the Cogfort, the more I like it. Main hull appears based on a Tortoise, and even with the cupolas and towers it manages to look stable.

 Inquisitor Gideon wrote:
Somebody got inspired quickly

Fitting a bell on top shouldn't be too hard ...

Immediately grabbing this concept to make a mechanical clan skryre version of a hell pit abomination for TOW…

Sigmar's Moving Castles.

I dig the Jorvan Kreel sculpt overall, but something about how he is standing on the debris looks wrong/awkward to my eye.