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 Sqorgar wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Then you're playing Stormcast with allies, really.

Not Seraphon.

I am, but a new player wouldn't be. A single box of Saurus Warriors would give you 20 models (two units worth) for $38, which is similar in scale to the Warmachine Battlegroup boxes for a beginner game.

And that, at least on paper, is definitely easier to start gaming with, no doubt - provided you can find a player to play a game that small.

But that will depend on the community.

For the player base many people left WHFB when 8th came out but many players joined as well. It was probably a net loss but can't say it was dead or dying when the active community was having weekly games in the cities and yearly championships not counting the private in house games.

I would guess it was market saturation that slowed down the sales with GW trying to make up the difference with increase in prices. Something I think they did because it was the easiest solution short term because they need to show good profits to increase it's stock value. Same with the GW legal team trying to increase revenue by suing other companies and fans looking more like a parking clerk desperate getting revenue for the city council rather than a concerned company that wanted to protect it's IP. I think can make the same argument for easing on the IP licensing for electronic games platform whereas before they declined Blizzards request to use WHFB for warcraft they now give almost any video game developer the chance to make a GW electronic game in order to get some extra cash no matter the quality of the product.

Take that into conjunction of a steady 3% growing western economy sometimes going into on stagflation where consumers are more selective of their purchases and a niche expensive hobby like tabletop is not good for new players. That being said as the economy grows at around 3% people are getting richer so the old guard continue to make purchases but it made it harder to get new customers, especially with the hard entry price as pointed out in this thread. I don't think it was the rules that killed 8th, it was GW acting like the short term shareholder company that it is.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

And that, at least on paper, is definitely easier to start gaming with, no doubt - provided you can find a player to play a game that small.

But that will depend on the community.

I think the AoS community will be a little more inviting, given that power gaming isn't easy with how AoS is set up. When I was (re)learning Warmachine, I had trouble finding people who were willing to play battlebox games because half the guys were training for a 50 pt tournament with a deathclock.

If you have all the rulebooks and models, why not just play? People are weird.

Dreadnok89 wrote:
If you have all the rulebooks and models, why not just play? People are weird.

Have you not noticed the complete and utter balkanization of the WHFB communities?

We have- People continuing to play 8th, People playing 9th age, People going over to KoW, People playing AoS; then within AoS we have different comps used by different groups, with no-one really playing the same game.

Also, some people only have GW store to play in, where unless the store is willing to bend the rules dramatically you have to play the current edition on their premises.

Dreadnok89 wrote:
If you have all the rulebooks and models, why not just play? People are weird.

I continue to play 8th with 4 other players, but the entire 8th tournament community switched to KoW due to AoS.

I can't speak for other people, but personally, I believe that the most significant issue is that WHFB and 40k competed with each other for the many of the same dollars. The type of fan that is required to be a WHFB or 40k player is quite narrow:

- you must want to build a fairly large army
- you have to want to play games that are many hours long
- you have a decently large space to game with
- the games are best enjoyed amongst regulars (rather than strangers/pickups)
- a big chunk of the playerbase places an emphasis on painted minis
- you must like the GW model aesthetic
- you must like the GW style of gameplay
- money can't be too big of an issue

Put all these together, and the universe of available players often falls down to people who like GW models and games for whatever reason -- and they must choose one of the two. Why not both? Well, cost putting money aside (and that's not insignificant), both of these games take a lot of time and energy to follow the rules, model the latest units, grow your army (or armies) and keep it competitive with the current meta. 40k and WHFB are games that demand not only a great initial investment of time and money, but also ongoing TLC to your army, well, for as long as you want to maintain it. Unless you don't have a day job, keeping two games the scale of 40k/WHFB up to date probably exceeds the time availability of most people.

It's much easier to choose one of them, and have a secondary game (or games) that's just a smaller, quicker, cheaper, fewer models, changes less frequently, et cetera. Or board games.

For me, personally, I chose 40k over WHFB because 40k just has more Cool Factor in it. Configurability is a huge factor, and the vehicles are a big part of it: futuristic vehicle kits are just more fun to build for me than griffons or dragons. Treeman Ancient remains one of my favorite models, but I can't really imagine building more than a couple; whereas, I could imagine a shelves full of titans or jets or tanks.

And then there are Space Marines. Yeah, I know some people can't stand how they get so much attention, but these guys are just such versatile models with a thousands of interchangeable parts in a huge number of kits.

What if GW had made Sigmarites 15 years ago, and put the number of options into that faction that they did into Astartes?

Well, maybe then it would have turned out differently for me. I'm not sure. But in the fantasy range, the configurability has always been so limited compared to the scifi range, and I'm not sure how they would have made vehicles for fantasy. I think scifi just lends itself to more modelling possibilities than fantasy. Maybe it's relevant and maybe not, but you'll also notice that there are a lot more scifi films than fantasy films that are produced. Is it something about the genre? I don't know: in my childhood, I far preferred fantasy to scifi, but these days, my fantasy is pretty much limited to Game of Throne, while I gobble up and endless stream of consumer scifi.

--

Edit -- to bring it around to AoS, I believe that GW has made an error in not trying to make AoS a smaller game. Sure, you can play it with any number of models, but you can do this with 40k, too. The reality is that people aspire to the army sizes typically displayed and sold, and GW army bundles picture the same, massive battle forces that require you to basically give up all your other entertainment time to make a reality.

I think GW needs a game that is more casual, encourages a smaller model count, and is more pickup friendly. Not because I want such a game, but because this would appeal to a different market, instead of chasing after the people who get excited about 40k, which I think is a lost cause... except maybe to sell a little bit of Stormcast and Chaos stuff here and there.

I can well understand the point about older gamers liking more tactical games. (Insert blather about frontal lobe development here) But I think that contributed to WHFB's death because saying WHFB was more tactical than 40K is like saying an ant is bigger than an amoeba. It had almost forgotten it was supposed to be a small skirmish/warband game, and thought a few token concessions made it a full-fledged, bona-fide mass battle game. And that's where I think a lot of it's problems came from.

- bloated figure counts and army sizes. Most mass battle games out there, barring a couple of WAB spinoffs, go by unit footprints and representative figure scales. All those who moved to KoW get just a taste of that. I know there are WFB fans out there horrified by the idea, of multibases and unit bases, and personally I still have some trouble with especially abstract figure scales ("Those two guys with funny hats on the end of the unit count as hundreds of grenadiers? Really?") but having fewer minis on a certain size of square or rectangle, representing a full, standard unit, has got to be easier on the wallet, right? Compared to a game with units based on gross numbers of minis and a skirmish-style 1:1 figure ratio, and especially one with specific rules that practically demand higher and higher gross numbers per unit, just so said unit can manage to stay on the table. (Hordes and Steadfast. What a racket.) I don't think it was helped by:

-- price. (You knew it was coming!) Not when the cost of the plastic human-sized minis for their 'mass battle' game often (almost always) outstripped the cost of metal minis from other manufacturers.
-- design. Bit of a vague, subjective matter; but I see people complaining that their scale-creeping, hyper-detailed, painstakingly painted, dynamically posed minis have to be squeezed on little, single bases into a big unit where they and the effect are lost. I think this is missing the point of mass battle games and the effect the units in them should have, but ironically, most mass battle rules might let them space their minis out a bit, even arranged more artfully, to show them off.

Then there's

- bad rules and confused rules. I read someone else on dakka today, mentioning how 40K tries to be about 10-storey war robots but still has to fiddle about with who's blinded by some sergeant's conversion field. Quite right, and I think that applied to WFB too. At various times it was crammed with big heroes, big monsters, big spells and big hordes, but you still had to fiddle about with individual infantrymen, working out who got hit and wounded and had their armour punched through, how many had to be hauled out of the back rank, how many were left in the back rank making the difference between winning and running... and aaall the individual special rules applied to most units... Like I said, it was a skirmish game trying to be a mass battle game, but couldn't really decide which it wanted to be.

-- any wonder it took so long to play?
-- it's touted as being tactical thanks to some maneuvre mechanics, but most other mass battle games start at that level of tactics. WFB tried filling in the gaps with those reams of special rules, random effects, and mathhammery listbuilding. Those grainy, skirmishy, kid-friendly aspects collided with the ostensibly tactical, big-army end and again, it turned out as a game that couldn't decide what it wanted to be. And folk decided it didn't satisfy them, whichever side they wanted.

 Bottle wrote:
I really enjoyed playing 8th edition Fantasy and thought it was a good game. The horrific spells like Pit of Shades could be very nasty to play against (especially for some armies like Lizard Men), and there were some loopholes in the rules that never got resolved. (Night Goblin Fanatic hits a regiment of just one RnF and a character. How are hits resolved? Etc)

I think the thing that killed it though was simple. The changes that meant you need 4 boxes to build a regiment rather than 1.

This was a combination of the horde rule, increasing minimum frontage to 5 models wide and dropping down to 10 models a box.

One of the best things AoS has going for it is as soon as you buy and assemble a box it's there ready to be used in your army.

There was nothing stopping people doing that in 8th, sure you don't get the bonus of a hoard but then if everyonr just uses what's in the box it makes no difference. Worked well for us so far.

 Bottle wrote:
I really enjoyed playing 8th edition Fantasy and thought it was a good game. The horrific spells like Pit of Shades could be very nasty to play against (especially for some armies like Lizard Men), and there were some loopholes in the rules that never got resolved. (Night Goblin Fanatic hits a regiment of just one RnF and a character. How are hits resolved? Etc)

Sorry to nitpick, but the rules are clear on that.

Goblin fanatic hits are distributed as shooting, so you roll for hits and, since there are less than 5 RnF models in the unit you have to distribute them equally between the models remaining (so if you roll 4 hits, 2 have to go to the character and 2 to the soldier, if you roll 3 you decide who gets two).

If there was a character and 2 RnF you would have to divide the hits between the three of them and so on.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

And that, at least on paper, is definitely easier to start gaming with, no doubt - provided you can find a player to play a game that small.

But that will depend on the community.

I think the AoS community will be a little more inviting, given that power gaming isn't easy with how AoS is set up. When I was (re)learning Warmachine, I had trouble finding people who were willing to play battlebox games because half the guys were training for a 50 pt tournament with a deathclock.

Powergaming will always exist, regardless of the system. It always depend on the local community alone, not the system. People seem to believe that a system like AoS doesn't encourage power gaming, when nothing could farther from the truth - any system encourages powergaming the moment you put a model next to another and come to the conclusion that model A performs better than B for exactly the same cost (wound,scroll, gold piece, whatever).

For example, about 7-8 years ago I was very active in a L5R community. That community was very hard gamewise, but always fair. Cheaters were found and either shown the error of their ways or literally cast from the community altogether, and we were always willing to help and teach new players the ropes, literally giving away hundreds of cards to new players at a given time.

But were the decks made always striving to competitively be the best possible? Damn right. Is that powergaming?

Edit: Actually, when you think about it, what better system is there to powergame on when AoS's basic premise is "bring whatever you want."


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Dreadnok89 wrote:
If you have all the rulebooks and models, why not just play? People are weird.

And the point of this comment is to what, to push on for further alienation?

The reason why I haven't found a lot of powergaming in Age of Sigmar isn't because its not easy to do, because it is, its because power gaming in Age of Sigmar is kind of pointless.

Age of Sigmar appeals to people playing for the experience of playing the game, and more cooperative story telling like an RPG, rather than people playing to try to prove they are the better player by winning.

Powergaming will always exist this is true, but powergaming and competitive gaming are to me synonyms (I don't consider powergaming to be "WAAC" or "TFG") and AOS is simply not a system that competitive players will enjoy.

Thats why I think AOS is not conducive to powergaming. Not because you can't do it but because the type of people that are building the hardest lists possible are not going to be interested in it.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Powergaming will always exist, regardless of the system. It always depend on the local community alone, not the system. People seem to believe that a system like AoS doesn't encourage power gaming, when nothing could farther from the truth - any system encourages powergaming the moment you put a model next to another and come to the conclusion that model A performs better than B for exactly the same cost (wound,scroll, gold piece, whatever).

Power gaming is about minmaxing - getting the maximum amount of X for the minimum amount of Y. But when Y is undefined, you can't decide what the value of X should be. That's why so many people are infuriated at the lack of points. There's no Y?!?! There's no limitations to what I can play with? I can just drop Nagash whenever I want? Does not compute! Next time Captain Kirk needs to talk down an enemy AI, he just needs to ask them to minmax AoS.

Edit: Actually, when you think about it, what better system is there to powergame on when AoS's basic premise is "bring whatever you want."

It's more like, "bring whatever you want and work with your opponent to build a fun gaming experience". AoS, as written, is not a competitive system. Without any limitations, and opponents that won't play against brutes, powergaming in AoS would be trying to create as fair-looking a battle as possible.

auticus wrote:
The reason why I haven't found a lot of powergaming in Age of Sigmar isn't because its not easy to do, because it is, its because power gaming in Age of Sigmar is kind of pointless.

Age of Sigmar appeals to people playing for the experience of playing the game, and more cooperative story telling like an RPG, rather than people playing to try to prove they are the better player by winning.

Powergaming will always exist this is true, but powergaming and competitive gaming are to me synonyms (I don't consider powergaming to be "WAAC" or "TFG") and AOS is simply not a system that competitive players will enjoy.

Thats why I think AOS is not conducive to powergaming. Not because you can't do it but because the type of people that are building the hardest lists possible are not going to be interested in it.

So, and again, it's not about the system - it's about the community. The System may encourage something (just like FB encouraged a different kind of wargaming to AoS) but that doesn't mean the community can't do what they want with it to suit their prefered playing style - e.g Azyr Comp.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Powergaming will always exist, regardless of the system. It always depend on the local community alone, not the system. People seem to believe that a system like AoS doesn't encourage power gaming, when nothing could farther from the truth - any system encourages powergaming the moment you put a model next to another and come to the conclusion that model A performs better than B for exactly the same cost (wound,scroll, gold piece, whatever).

Power gaming is about minmaxing - getting the maximum amount of X for the minimum amount of Y. But when Y is undefined, you can't decide what the value of X should be. That's why so many people are infuriated at the lack of points. There's no Y?!?! There's no limitations to what I can play with? I can just drop Nagash whenever I want? Does not compute! Next time Captain Kirk needs to talk down an enemy AI, he just needs to ask them to minmax AoS.

Edit: Actually, when you think about it, what better system is there to powergame on when AoS's basic premise is "bring whatever you want."

It's more like, "bring whatever you want and work with your opponent to build a fun gaming experience". AoS, as written, is not a competitive system. Without any limitations, and opponents that won't play against brutes, powergaming in AoS would be trying to create as fair-looking a battle as possible.

There IS a Y in AoS - it's your deployment space.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

auticus wrote:
The reason why I haven't found a lot of powergaming in Age of Sigmar isn't because its not easy to do, because it is, its because power gaming in Age of Sigmar is kind of pointless.

Age of Sigmar appeals to people playing for the experience of playing the game, and more cooperative story telling like an RPG, rather than people playing to try to prove they are the better player by winning.

Powergaming will always exist this is true, but powergaming and competitive gaming are to me synonyms (I don't consider powergaming to be "WAAC" or "TFG") and AOS is simply not a system that competitive players will enjoy.

Thats why I think AOS is not conducive to powergaming. Not because you can't do it but because the type of people that are building the hardest lists possible are not going to be interested in it.

So, and again, it's not about the system - it's about the community. The System may encourage something (just like FB encouraged a different kind of wargaming to AoS) but that doesn't mean the community can't do what they want with it to suit their prefered playing style - e.g Azyr Comp.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

Powergaming will always exist, regardless of the system. It always depend on the local community alone, not the system. People seem to believe that a system like AoS doesn't encourage power gaming, when nothing could farther from the truth - any system encourages powergaming the moment you put a model next to another and come to the conclusion that model A performs better than B for exactly the same cost (wound,scroll, gold piece, whatever).

Power gaming is about minmaxing - getting the maximum amount of X for the minimum amount of Y. But when Y is undefined, you can't decide what the value of X should be. That's why so many people are infuriated at the lack of points. There's no Y?!?! There's no limitations to what I can play with? I can just drop Nagash whenever I want? Does not compute! Next time Captain Kirk needs to talk down an enemy AI, he just needs to ask them to minmax AoS.

Edit: Actually, when you think about it, what better system is there to powergame on when AoS's basic premise is "bring whatever you want."

It's more like, "bring whatever you want and work with your opponent to build a fun gaming experience". AoS, as written, is not a competitive system. Without any limitations, and opponents that won't play against brutes, powergaming in AoS would be trying to create as fair-looking a battle as possible.

There IS a Y in AoS - it's your deployment space.

Yes very true - it is about the community and the type of people involved.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

There IS a Y in AoS - it's your deployment space.

It's like 8 square feet. You could deploy actual people in your deployment space.

It's better to describe Y as your opponent's force in the context of board, scenario and ability.

Simples...?!

I'd argue that Y, in this context and with reference to the powergaming attitude, is 'how much you're willing to pay GW'.

 Spinner wrote:
I'd argue that Y, in this context and with reference to the powergaming attitude, is 'how much you're willing to pay GW'.

There's a huge assumption in that if you spend $3,000 on models, your opponent will just play with you, allowing you to field your army of 20 Bloodthirsters and Skarbrand. More likely, the person who has spent that bundle of money in order to win through an advantage of models will not be able to find anyone willing to play them more than once, hate the game, and quit.

 Talys wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
I'd argue that Y, in this context and with reference to the powergaming attitude, is 'how much you're willing to pay GW'.

There's a huge assumption in that if you spend $3,000 on models, your opponent will just play with you, allowing you to field your army of 20 Bloodthirsters and Skarbrand. More likely, the person who has spent that bundle of money in order to win through an advantage of models will not be able to find anyone willing to play them more than once, hate the game, and quit.

And if he is the only other guy at the store who you can play against you don't get a game either.

Ostracizing people is bad for a community and a terrible go to for how to balance a game.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 Talys wrote:

 Spinner wrote:
I'd argue that Y, in this context and with reference to the powergaming attitude, is 'how much you're willing to pay GW'.

There's a huge assumption in that if you spend $3,000 on models, your opponent will just play with you, allowing you to field your army of 20 Bloodthirsters and Skarbrand. More likely, the person who has spent that bundle of money in order to win through an advantage of models will not be able to find anyone willing to play them more than once, hate the game, and quit.

And if he is the only other guy at the store who you can play against you don't get a game either.

Ostracizing people is bad for a community and a terrible go to for how to balance a game.

Of course it's not bad for a community, as long as it's not them who are being ostracized.

In this case do note that they are gleefully ignoring the Sudden Death Rule that that has been previously been praised as being so good as a balacing mechanism or even the fact that using as much models as you want in an AoS match is encouraged in those glorious 4 pages of rules.

So... what does a guy wanting to field - for fun - his 3000$ worth of Khornate models (who by chance has 10 BT's and Skarbrand in it because he really likes the actually rather fluffy idea of a list mirroring a Khorne Bloodhunt) and a guy playing a really competitive, hard list because he enjoys (aka has fun) playing competitively have in common?

Wait, wait, I got this... I know! The chances the "not competitive players" have of winning that game.

Looking at big, expensive models like Nagash or the Tau Storm Keel, I'm not surprised that people spending that much money want to use them in games. That's how you show them off.

Unless we accept the idea that people buy kits for the sake of merely owning them in a cupboard.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

There IS a Y in AoS - it's your deployment space.

It's like 8 square feet. You could deploy actual people in your deployment space.

Look at you ignoring my point again

So... let's for once imagine that you're playing a scenario with a much more limited deployment space, which I am pretty sure AoS has them - what stops me from keeping me spearmen at home and bringing the exact amount of Phoenix Guard, as they are statistically superior? They have the exact same 20mm bases so they occupy the exact same space on the deployment field - let's call this the "Base Fingerprint". If I wanna powerplay I'll just take a nice big dump on my statistically inferior units and bring the very best I can field from my extensive HE collection.

Nothing in the rules is stopping me from doing this. Actually, let me repeat this - it's actually encouraged to bring whatever models you want and how many you want.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Looking at big, expensive models like Nagash or the Tau Storm Keel, I'm not surprised that people spending that much money want to use them in games. That's how you show them off.

Unless we accept the idea that people buy kits for the sake of merely owning them in a cupboard.

Of course, only us horrible 20% of TFG WAAC "players" dare trod that horrible path of... Using the big, expensive models to game!!!!

I was buying a lot more 40k than whfb, but I alwas had whfb in mind. The day I got my first million (and the day is coming... I have lot of luck at dice so why wouldn't I in lottery), I would buy so much of it that I would then lit my cigaretes and crack pipes with stormvermin minis, pick my teeth with grave guard halberdiers and make cupboards out of garden of morr pieces and hellpit abominations stacked one on another.

I'm sure there were lot of people like me, with long term plans for whfb, or waiting for problems to be fixed, for a new book, whatever. People who put whfb on hold but weren't finished with it.

It failed for many reasons already listed but I'd like to single out one - turning a 100+ pages ruleset game into casual dicefest. While I liked 8th, I would never get into the game if it was actual back then, whfb had a reputation of quite a tactical game and they really shouldn't have touched that to apeal to casuals, it was never going to anyway. It was just a step into wrong direction and the point where they lost a lot of players. I'm positive that good, scalable ruleset and new releases would make it earn more than AoS will ever earn, especialy with incoming Total War game.

Btw I don't get a point about ranked units looking bad and making detailed paintjob pointless. I love the look of ranked units and cry tears of awe seeing them beutifuly painted/ converted/ posed.

The worst thing is that whfb wasn't doomed, at worst they could have left it direct only to save shelf space, stop making codieces to save on writing books and just relese rules for new models, erratas etc. Or just introduce AoS style rules for old world as an introductory game, no one would mind. But no they just had to try to shoehorn lame space marine wannabes into it and go bonkers with their pathetic attempts at copyrights.

auticus wrote:
From my perspective and experience there were a few reasons here:

1) moving in blocks turned a lot of people off.

2) the importance of the movement phase turned a lot of people off

3) the fact that if you screwed your movement or deployment off would put you at a big disadvantage turned a lot of people off especially as compared to 40k

4) fantasy in general (the setting) turned a lot of people off here

5) the number of models needed turned a lot of people off here. This is broken down into a few areas.

5a) total number of models exceeding 20-30 models turns a lot of people off

5b) having to take not elite core turns a lot of people off.

6) the size of the ruleset turned a lot of people off, particularly with games like xwing becoming popular that have a tiny rules pamphlet.

7) the people that were interested had a very deep second hand market to buy models off of, and I know about 90% of our fantasy players here never bought anything new if they didn't have to, sticking to ebay and local buy/sell groups to get hteir armies for 40% or even more of the total price.

I find it funny that points 1-5 are all advantages to me. Ofc big units get somehow unwieldy when you go over 50 also limit the number of units making the game less tactical but hey, they look good and just nerfing the steadfast a bit and lowering prices per box could do wonders here.

I played warhammer for points 1-5, I was just writing what I hear very often from people that wouldn't touch warhammer.

Ok. I think I took it like that but can't say for sure now lol. Not my best day today tbh.

WHFB was always a block movement game. Have people recently decided they don't like block movement games, for some obscure aesthetic reason?

 Kilkrazy wrote:
WHFB was always a block movement game. Have people recently decided they don't like block movement games, for some obscure aesthetic reason?

I think ranked armies were more common with historical games, but most people come into the hobby via skirmish-style games these days.

30 years of WHFB has done nothing to get people to come into the hobby?

My opinion is that disliking rules that put figures in ranks is a relatively minor reason for WHFB falling off. I think the complication of rules, unpopular changes, and sheer expense were more important.

 Sqorgar wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
WHFB was always a block movement game. Have people recently decided they don't like block movement games, for some obscure aesthetic reason?

I think ranked armies were more common with historical games, but most people come into the hobby via skirmish-style games these days.

'These days' being the last five years. Tastes haven't changes that much. Most people still come into the hobby via gw. Dismissing ranked games as the territory of 'historical games' is rather naive. Prior to 'these days', fantasy was pretty much 'the alternative' to 40k. And for thirty odd years, this rank-based game has been quite obviously in the limelight, was quite obviously one of 'the big two' and and had been successful for thirty years. Without historical players.

Regarding the point about folks coming into the game via skirmish games - that's partially true, especially in the last five years, but let's look at the reasons for this. This model has been successful because of a Low(er) cost of entry, with less of an emphasis on front loaded costs and an easier way to 'build up' your armies, along with a focus on balanced gameplay. Which are all things newer companies sold themselves on as an alternative to what gw wasn't doing or what gw's was doing wrong. Which reinforces the point that fantasy died not because ranked games belong to the historical playing crowd or skirmish games are popular but because of a combination of it being poorly handled, badly maintained with regard to poor overall direction and design, gw's contemptuous and sneering attitude to the fans, unbalanced and clunky rules, unpopular rules (8th random charges on their own drove a lot of fantasy players away) horrendous buy in costs - especially with the focus on lots of troops, and gw cutting the contents of their boxes by half, and all of this being front loaded because the game isn't user friendly at smaller scales. Assume for a second that fantasy could be promoted with some or all of these features fixed, and it would sell itself.

Essentially, gw's policies drove away and alienated the veteran players( and in a word-of-mouth based hobby, this is a death knell) whilst simultaneously putting up massive 'not welcome' and 'not interested' signs for any potential newer players. It's a shame really, but it was inevitable.