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"Better" alone is fully subjective. I am talking objectively - and WHFB clearly is better in this regard. This means devoid of personal opinion. A game that is missing key components cannot be better than a comparable game with complete rules.

Some like one game better, some like another game better. Everyone should enjoy what he enjoys the most. Or both! That's not up to debate. The AoS ruleset, however, is, objectively, inferior.

Even without pointing out the flaws of a points based game suddenly moving to a system where there are no points - which raises problems like, why would you ever not take a mounted miniature if you have the choice of a foot version as well - there are other problems with the AoS ruleset, like measuring from the models instead of the base, problems with summoning, being able to shoot out of close combat while engaged in close combat, etc.

These are rules that need corrections, and saying that players can ignore these rules is an admittance of their lack of thought. These weren't problems that Fantasy had, and its strange that GW would suddenly leap backwards in their rules development in this way.

 Sigvatr wrote:
"Better" alone is fully subjective. I am talking objectively - and WHFB clearly is better in this regard. This means devoid of personal opinion. A game that is missing key components cannot be better than a comparable game with complete rules.

Some like one game better, some like another game better. Everyone should enjoy what he enjoys the most. Or both! That's not up to debate. The AoS ruleset, however, is, objectively, inferior.

Objectively, neither game is missing any components. Objectively, it has the exact set of rules and mechanics that the developers have intended each game to have. Objectively, they are both complete games.

You may think that there is stuff missing (the obvious case here being points) but as soon as you draw that conclusion, that AoS is "missing" points, you step into the realm of opinion.

Can't make it any clearer than that for you.

I think this is a sales and money thing more than anything else.

One of the guys at my LGS was explaining why GW had to do something about Warhammer Fantasy. The US is about 50-60% of the tabletop gaming market. The makeup of the sales between 40K and fantasy in the US used to be 70-30 and Europe about 60%-40%. They have seen their sales go to about 80%-20% 40k to fantasy in the US and that may be an optimistic assessment. These changes in percentages are not becuase 40k has exponetially grown (while there has been growth, it isn't that large). If they didn't do something to address the problems with fantasy they'd be ignoring more than half of the gaming market. They opted for a reset and made a lot of the figures resemble their more popular 40k line.

Overall, it needed to be done. Warhammer fantasy was in a death spiral and simply coming out with a 9th edition was not going to solve their big problem. As Age of Sigmar has shown, they are actually getting with the times by making the rules free online and having more digital options.

I think the fantasy genre as a whole has suffered from the fact that it is hard to come out with something new and fresh. In a steam punk or futuristic world, you can create anything you want - new guns, artillary, mechanical constructs, etc while fantasy suffers from a ceiling of creativity. There are only so many weapons available - sword, axe, bow, spear and other variations of those weapons. It is hard to make something new with those limitations.

I think they pulled back on the number of factions becuase it was becoming too hard to maintain. How many factions really needed to be redone? some had gone a decade or more without any changes or updates. I think they may have also finally figured out that power creep was ruining people's interest in the game.

 rybackstun wrote:
I guarantee you, if WHFB didn't start calling AoS a kiddy game and calling the players that play it childish idiots who don't understand what a real game is, AoS players ,,,,

There is a distinct difference here. AoS "players" have been playing a game for maybe 5 days now? max? The main set isnt even out. So really AoS "players" are WHFB haters or people who want to feel like they are part of the next "new" thing. You can not possibly have any attachment to the game yet. As a GAMER i find AoS lacking in the ability to provide fun. There are simply just way better skirmish rule sets available. Since they have drastically altered the fluff there is on reason to be historically attached to it either.

In a year, once the AoS fluff has been developed and people have actually been playing the game for some time i would be interested to hear how they feel about the game.

There's nothing at all wrong about "rank and flank" games, or games with point-based list building, or games geared toward competitive play. But they are not the only games. It's foolish to claim that these features are "essential" and/or that any game lacking them is inherently (or "objectively") incomplete/broken/inferior.

 tenebre wrote:

 rybackstun wrote:
I guarantee you, if WHFB didn't start calling AoS a kiddy game and calling the players that play it childish idiots who don't understand what a real game is, AoS players ,,,,

So really AoS "players" are WHFB haters or people who want to feel like they are part of the next "new" thing. You can not possibly have any attachment to the game yet.

This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier. Apparently, it is impossible for anyone to actually enjoy AoS. We're either WHFB haters or people who want to be part of the next big thing. In NO WAY shape or form can any AoS player be there to play the game because they enjoy it.

I'm sorry that you feel that people can't have fun with the new system, but those people do actually exist and in a much larger majority over "WHFB haters" and "Next big thingers"

 rybackstun wrote:
This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier.

I know right, he provided a perfect example.

Vetril wrote:
Some of the last games I played in 8th edition were with the Elves EoT list. Once I pretty much tabled a Khemri player - who also happens to be a friend of mine - on the first turn.
I felt awful about it, so I nerfed myself for the next game, which was against Bretonnia - so much in fact that I lost that one.
To some people this concept of playing against a person to have fun with that person is alien, I guess.

See now, to me this reads like you had a bad time because things weren't competitive. It bothered you that your friend's Khemri army was so uncompetitive against your elf build, and that your subsequent, self-limited (almost typed 'self-inflicted'...) build was so uncompetitive against Bretonnians. If you were only interested in narrative gaming or 'non-competitive fun', why would it bother you so much? Maybe the elves had a particular blessing from Asuryan on that day, or managed to take the tomb kings unawares somehow! Instead your fun was mitigated because things weren't properly pointed according to their abilities, therefore unbalanced, therefore poorly suited to competition.

Sigvatr wrote:WHFB is objectively better because it's a better /game/.

I can't disagree. I gave up on WFB because I thought the rules were rubbish (Vetril's anecdotes alone may show how little tactics mean in the face of WFB's listbuilding issues) but from what I've gathered of AoS it makes WFB look like chess. There are a couple of tactical situations in it and freedom in mini choices, but even people sympathetic to it say that it ends up as a scrum in the middle of the table, with minis just trying to thwack whoever's standing beside them. Ah, but the eventual scenario book will add depth! By... robbing you of that 'freedom of choice' in minis...

Snakes 'n' Ladders, or Ludo, or Craps, can be fun games to some; but that doesn't mean that they're not all about seeing who rolls the best random numbers, as opposed to having just as much depth, player agency, or dare I say it quality as other games.

 rybackstun wrote:

 tenebre wrote:

 rybackstun wrote:
I guarantee you, if WHFB didn't start calling AoS a kiddy game and calling the players that play it childish idiots who don't understand what a real game is, AoS players ,,,,

So really AoS "players" are WHFB haters or people who want to feel like they are part of the next "new" thing. You can not possibly have any attachment to the game yet.

This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier. Apparently, it is impossible for anyone to actually enjoy AoS. We're either WHFB haters or people who want to be part of the next big thing. In NO WAY shape or form can any AoS player be there to play the game because they enjoy it.

I'm sorry that you feel that people can't have fun with the new system, but those people do actually exist and in a much larger majority over "WHFB haters" and "Next big thingers"

But they dont..... Who are these people that fall head over heels in love with a game in a couple days? Thats .. just ... not normal.

again read the whole statement. I stand by it. any AoS fan can only be in 2 categories currently. There simply has not been enough time to have a long standing love for the game. Its absurd to try to think otherwise. I am giving the benefit of doubt to you all. Every person i have spoke with despises AoS bus i can see how it could be appeal to someone, just in now way could they be in love with it ... yet.

Also i was defending it ... until i played it. so i did give it a chance.

 tenebre wrote:
There simply has not been enough time to have a long standing love for the game.

No one has claimed to have a long standing love of AoS. Any other strawmen we can torch?

 tenebre wrote:

 rybackstun wrote:

 tenebre wrote:

 rybackstun wrote:
I guarantee you, if WHFB didn't start calling AoS a kiddy game and calling the players that play it childish idiots who don't understand what a real game is, AoS players ,,,,

So really AoS "players" are WHFB haters or people who want to feel like they are part of the next "new" thing. You can not possibly have any attachment to the game yet.

This is the type of thing I was talking about earlier. Apparently, it is impossible for anyone to actually enjoy AoS. We're either WHFB haters or people who want to be part of the next big thing. In NO WAY shape or form can any AoS player be there to play the game because they enjoy it.

I'm sorry that you feel that people can't have fun with the new system, but those people do actually exist and in a much larger majority over "WHFB haters" and "Next big thingers"

But they dont..... Who are these people that fall head over heels in love with a game in a couple days? Thats .. just ... not normal.

again read the whole statement. I stand by it. any AoS fan can only be in 2 categories currently. There simply has not been enough time to have a long standing love for the game. Its absurd to try to think otherwise. I am giving the benefit of doubt to you all. Every person i have spoke with despises AoS bus i can see how it could be appeal to someone, just in now way could they be in love with it ... yet.

Also i was defending it ... until i played it. so i did give it a chance.

You need to explain the bolded part. I'm not sure I can even fathom a reason why someone loving a system that they've played a few games with over a few days is not normal.

Long standing love? Sure, you are absolutely right that it isn't possible to have a "long standing love" of the game, but at that point you are just arguing semantics and arguing for the sake of argument.

I've played a couple games, love the rules set, and look forward to playing more. Am I SO wrong to think that? Do I not actually exist because you say I don't and I don't fit into your two very narrow camps?

Azeroth wrote:
I think this is a sales and money thing more than anything else.

One of the guys at my LGS was explaining why GW had to do something about Warhammer Fantasy. The US is about 50-60% of the tabletop gaming market. The makeup of the sales between 40K and fantasy in the US used to be 70-30 and Europe about 60%-40%. They have seen their sales go to about 80%-20% 40k to fantasy in the US and that may be an optimistic assessment. These changes in percentages are not becuase 40k has exponetially grown (while there has been growth, it isn't that large). If they didn't do something to address the problems with fantasy they'd be ignoring more than half of the gaming market. They opted for a reset and made a lot of the figures resemble their more popular 40k line.

Overall, it needed to be done. Warhammer fantasy was in a death spiral and simply coming out with a 9th edition was not going to solve their big problem. As Age of Sigmar has shown, they are actually getting with the times by making the rules free online and having more digital options.

I think the fantasy genre as a whole has suffered from the fact that it is hard to come out with something new and fresh. In a steam punk or futuristic world, you can create anything you want - new guns, artillary, mechanical constructs, etc while fantasy suffers from a ceiling of creativity. There are only so many weapons available - sword, axe, bow, spear and other variations of those weapons. It is hard to make something new with those limitations.

I think they pulled back on the number of factions becuase it was becoming too hard to maintain. How many factions really needed to be redone? some had gone a decade or more without any changes or updates. I think they may have also finally figured out that power creep was ruining people's interest in the game.

Azeroth - I totally get that, and I think it is undeniable that sales and accessibility are why the AoS ruleset was created.

But there have been a few threads and lines of discussion (some honestly prompted by GW most likely in pitching AoS and why people should play it) about the problem with WHFB being the players / competitive environment / etc. While I definitely think some of those things were present, the main problem with fantasy (and the cause of its stagnation) was GW's own doing - prices and army sizes so insane that no new people could get into it, so you were stuck with the same pool of players and very few who could break into it.

That's not the fault of the players, though, and so some of the threads / discussion lines online referring to WHFB being stomping grounds of TFG previously sound a lot like victim blaming to me. GW made its own bed with fantasy when they did things like doubling the price of a box of orc boyz with the army book's release (since they cut the number of models in half). Think about an army doubling in price, that was already a huge investment in money, model count, and assembly / painting time to start.

They made their own product non-tenable, and blaming the players who continued to play it despite that is missing the mark. The background is absolutely awesome, but it was impossible to get in to... I think it's awesome that AoS is easier to start, but unfortunately the ruleset isn't for me. That doesn't mean either game has "TFG" or are bad guys, though... just that I am looking for something different in my ruleset, and it's sad that GW didn't provide a tight skirmish ruleset that would have given people who loved the tactics of WHFB a smaller scale outlet for it while also welcoming in new players.

Morale of the story / TLDR version - Fantasy players aren't the bad guys, GW made its own game inaccessible. I do not begrudge AoS players for their enthusiasm and hopefully they won't lump me or other fantasy players into the "bad guy" category as the OP says! Tenebre - have you considered the Kings of War ruleset for your chaos dwarfs, as that's what I'm looking into?

What I've noticed is that there is a subset of GW fans that are on-board with whatever GW is doing at the moment, and deign to speak poorly of them in any current sense. The way they tend to get around being labeled as fanboys, as that all previous GW actions/games/editions are considered non-sacred and therefore open to criticism. Current GW, however, is not.

Why WHFB is getting hated on now is because it's something GW is no longer doing. Were we on a 9th edition that made some changes but stuck to the core concepts, you'd see people raving over it while waving away the previous game for completely different reasons (i.e. if 9th was even bigger than 8th, then 8th would have been inferior because it was too small and not open enough).

It's the mindset behind statements like "well, GW HAD to make these changes, the old customers weren't buying enough," despite there being no explanation of why GW couldn't have just addressed all of the issues that were plaguing the game.

Thus, Fantasy is now the bad guy. Like GW breaking up with a previous love, people pat GW on the back and say "I always hated that guy! He was a jerk!"


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 RiTides wrote:

Spoiler:

Azeroth wrote:
I think this is a sales and money thing more than anything else.

One of the guys at my LGS was explaining why GW had to do something about Warhammer Fantasy. The US is about 50-60% of the tabletop gaming market. The makeup of the sales between 40K and fantasy in the US used to be 70-30 and Europe about 60%-40%. They have seen their sales go to about 80%-20% 40k to fantasy in the US and that may be an optimistic assessment. These changes in percentages are not becuase 40k has exponetially grown (while there has been growth, it isn't that large). If they didn't do something to address the problems with fantasy they'd be ignoring more than half of the gaming market. They opted for a reset and made a lot of the figures resemble their more popular 40k line.

Overall, it needed to be done. Warhammer fantasy was in a death spiral and simply coming out with a 9th edition was not going to solve their big problem. As Age of Sigmar has shown, they are actually getting with the times by making the rules free online and having more digital options.

I think the fantasy genre as a whole has suffered from the fact that it is hard to come out with something new and fresh. In a steam punk or futuristic world, you can create anything you want - new guns, artillary, mechanical constructs, etc while fantasy suffers from a ceiling of creativity. There are only so many weapons available - sword, axe, bow, spear and other variations of those weapons. It is hard to make something new with those limitations.

I think they pulled back on the number of factions becuase it was becoming too hard to maintain. How many factions really needed to be redone? some had gone a decade or more without any changes or updates. I think they may have also finally figured out that power creep was ruining people's interest in the game.

Azeroth - I totally get that, and I think it is undeniable that sales and accessibility are why the AoS ruleset was created.

But there have been a few threads and lines of discussion (some honestly prompted by GW most likely in pitching AoS and why people should play it) about the problem with WHFB being the players / competitive environment / etc. While I definitely think some of those things were present, the main problem with fantasy (and the cause of its stagnation) was GW's own doing - prices and army sizes so insane that no new people could get into it, so you were stuck with the same pool of players and very few who could break into it.

That's not the fault of the players, though, and so some of the threads / discussion lines online referring to WHFB being stomping grounds of TFG previously sound a lot like victim blaming to me. GW made its own bed with fantasy when the price of a box of orc boyz basically doubled with the army book's release (since they cut the number of models in half). Think about an army doubling in price, that was already a huge investment in money and assembly / painting time to start.

They made their own product non-tenable, and blaming the players who continued to play it despite that is missing the mark. The background is absolutely awesome, but it was impossible to get in to... I think it's awesome that AoS is easier to start, but unfortunately the ruleset isn't for me. That doesn't mean either game has "TFG" or are bad guys, though... just that I am looking for something different in my ruleset, and it's sad that GW didn't provide a tight skirmish ruleset that would have given people who loved the tactics of WHFB a smaller scale outlet for it while also welcoming in new players.

Morale of the story / TLDR version - Fantasy players aren't the bad guys, GW made its own game inaccessible. I do not begrudge AoS players for their enthusiasm and hopefully they won't lump me or other fantasy players into the "bad guy" category as the OP says! Tenebre - have you considered the Kings of War ruleset for your chaos dwarfs, as that's what I'm looking into?

This thread is a fantastic example of why any of the animosity exists. The entire essence of this thread is doing nothing less than a) letting people who prefer fantasy get their jollies off by agreeing with each other b) AoS preferred players defending it and c) further polarizing an already small community.

The camps do not have to be separate, though it seems like a vocal minority (from both sides, mind you) want to make it seem like an 'us or them' scenario.

 Accolade wrote:
What I've noticed is that there is a subset of GW fans that are on-board with whatever GW is doing at the moment

I can't deny that there are people like this but my own experience is, I lost all interest in GW products for the past several years (BL novels were the last thing I kept up with but haven't even read one for ages now). AoS hasn't really redeemed GW in my eyes ... dice shakers anyone? ... but it has gotten me to (a) spend money and (b) rediscover some of my earlier enthusiasm for their brands and products.

 Accolade wrote:
Thus, Fantasy is now the bad guy. Like a GW breaking up with a previous love, people pat GW on the back and say "I always hated that guy! He was a jerk!"

Strangely enough i think this is probably the best summery of things. Sounds pretty spot on.

As I said I made this thread because I expected a few to be just going into overdrive for love of a new system, who doesn't love their shiny new car? but there were suddenly worrying amounts of comments made against WHFB where as before AoS there were complaining about things in the game sure but never outright distaste for the game as if it were the cancer of tabletop gaming. Last few days, the way its been talked about you would think fantasy was everything wrong with gaming an AoS was not only inevitable but the only answer and was actually begged for before release. Considering a lot of us got started in fantasy or spent the last few years and hundreds if not thousands of pounds (or dollar or whatever) on the system to have it dragged through the dirt for no other reason than to make the new system look better. Well I thought we owed the game a bit more respect than that. I know I don't want Fantasy to be remembered in a bad light because of some strange and I hate to use the phrase 'turncoat' opinions.

We can like AoS without shaming fantasy, they're so different they're not really even comparable really its fantasy in name so less of a replacement and more of a new system released at the time of fantasy closing down. Honestly when it comes to AoS I wish they would have lost the fantasy name and skin and pushed it further into been its own thing. I mean I can dig a new system with Diablo looking models, hell make them more Diablo, loose the fantasy armies make something new up. I'll happily take up a system with that aesthetic, give me:

It's had the opposite effect on me. When I read the ridiculous rules in their PDFs and noted the lack of any balancing mechanic, I just wondered why I would ever play this game rather than KoW, which is doing what I want and also has free rules.

I'm not getting into a pissing match over which game is better, because I also disliked Fantasy 8th edition, but yeah. AoS is the end of my interest in Fantasy as a game, rather than a source of kits.

I never get these arguments of "I didn't spent a lot of time in Warhammer Fantasy because it was too complex but now that Age of Sigmar has arrived I can join in."

It's not the same game. I'm perfectly fine with people enjoying Age of Sigmar as a stand-alone game, but why did it have to replace Warhammer Fantasy for it, destroying much the original fans liked of it.

Seems like WHFB was a financial drag on GW. I don't think AoS exists to spite people who liked WHFB. And it certainly doesn't make sense to blame WHFB going away on people who are excited about AoS.

 Manchu wrote:
Seems like WHFB was a financial drag on GW. I don't think AoS exists to spite people who liked WHFB. And it certainly doesn't make sense to blame WHFB going away on people who are excited about AoS.

I'm not saying we should blame the people who are excited about Age of Sigmar, definitely not. This is all on Games Worshop to make our game disappear. However, what I can blame people for is the lack of understanding for the fans of the old system and instead telling us to "deal with it" and "well just play the old system them" knowing we'll never get new releases or updates or books or anything for the system and setting we spent countless time and money in.

 Manchu wrote:
Seems like WHFB was a financial drag on GW. I don't think AoS exists to spite people who liked WHFB. And it certainly doesn't make sense to blame WHFB going away on people who are excited about AoS.

Nor does it make sense to start saying that fantasy players were all competitive or toxic and that people who play in tourniments are responsable for the death of the system because nobody wanted to play them and they hated just having fun, things like that are foolish things to say.
Guy in another thread actually said it serves those players right now that AoS is out and why? because they brought horde armies to the table, because he didn't like players with lots of models he gets to have his revenge with the new system. Or people saying TFG for fantasy players who shockingly used movement and angling tactically or built a list around winning. Basically making it anything thats now not in AoS was bad, it was flawed and it caused the death of tabletop gaming apparently.

In some ways AoS has been kinder on Veterens than any edition of Warhamer before it.

Previously GW built upon each edition to target veterens into buying more models for their army. 8th edition hordes and changes in what's good and what's bad being two examples.

AoS is the first time GW haven't gone after the vets. Got an army? Cool, don't need to spend a penny.

 Bottle wrote:
In some ways AoS has been kinder on Veterens than any edition of Warhamer before it.

Previously GW built upon each edition to target veterens into buying more models for their army. 8th edition hordes and changes in what's good and what's bad being two examples.

AoS is the first time GW haven't gone after the vets. Got an army? Cool, don't need to spend a penny.

It's true, they haven't gone after the veterans. Instead, they alienate them from the game by changing the entire ruleset and setting that got them hooked on the game.

I understand the good thoughts about it, but they could have handled it differently. They could have added a skirmish mode to Fantasy. They could've changed old Fantasy into something akin to 40k's Apocalypse, and introduced a Kill Team and something the size of normal 40k to the game.

It really seems like GW could not locate an adequate business reason to continue supporting WHFB.

Fantasy is not the bad guy. Some people that can`t move past 8th are the bad guy. Yes it was your game and you loved the background etc. It was a dead game though, it done nothing for the company. GW need money to survive they werent getting any from the old fantasy. Yes there is no guarantee they will get money from this fantasy but at least they are giving it a go. Its a shame some of these "vets" arent willing to do the same

Vets are not under any obligation to play a game they don't like the look of, though. So it isn't really a shame if they don't suck it up and force themselves to.

True, gaming time is too precious to waste on something you are pretty sure you will not enjoy.

 Los pollos hermanos wrote:
We can like AoS without shaming fantasy, they're so different they're not really even comparable really its fantasy in name so less of a replacement and more of a new system released at the time of fantasy closing down. Honestly when it comes to AoS I wish they would have lost the fantasy name and skin and pushed it further into been its own thing. I mean I can dig a new system with Diablo looking models, hell make them more Diablo, loose the fantasy armies make something new up. I'll happily take up a system with that aesthetic, give me:

Spoiler:

I'm there, too - I think I would have preferred to just create a completely new aesthetic and not try to rope in the old fantasy lore via the "bubbleverse" system... I think some of the new items are compelling (and it's freaking cool to have a summoning lizardmen army, for instance) but could have been even more compelling if they just went whole hog and made a completely new system.

That, I would have actually bought into! However, one that goes halfway and does things like have you measure from the model instead of the base to make the old models compatible doesn't seem to do either one justice (to me).

But to the point of the thread, fantasy isn't the bad guy, and neither is AoS - just very different!

Brand is too hard to build from scratch. This is something a lot of miniatures companies are currently struggling to overcome and not many seem to be really succeeding.