Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

So we all knew the big scenery piece was coming this month. I am questioning the logic in releasing a £400 scenery kit for a game this fresh into its infancy though? Beyond the exceptionally hardcore I struggle to see who this particular release is aimed at. It's a beautiful thing no doubt but I honestly can't image a whole lot of hem being shifted.

To me this is more of a release to push out as an optional extra once the game has been established, new armies have been built and people are looking for something to add that extra edge to their games.

What do people think? Would you had preferred more unit updates or are you happy with the big scenery pieces?

Release a force organisation document. GW can only win by doing so and would open itself up for large profits, satisfying all kinds of players.

GW have attempted castle-type terrain before and it's been niche stuff.
This kit can work aesthetically in an AoS or 40K setting, which is an automatic improvement on the last castle.
With the skirmish nature of AoS big terrain pieces are far more likely to be used / wanted because they don't complicate movement either rules-wise or physically manoeuvring units.

I think releasing it at any time could be argued too soon or too late; so they might as well release now.

My opinion is that these were designed with the in store demos in mind. If I walked in a GW not knowing anything about the hobby and saw one these fully painted with two armies staged for war, I'd be sold before the Red Shirt got to me to ask what brought me in today.

RoperPG wrote:

This kit can work aesthetically in an AoS or 40K setting, which is an automatic improvement on the last castle.

The last castle is largely considered one of the best deals/kits GW has ever put out.

This one... we shall see.

 IcarusRising wrote:
If I walked in a GW not knowing anything about the hobby and saw one these fully painted with two armies staged for war, I'd be sold before the Red Shirt got to me to ask what brought me in today.

Can you imagine the conversation at the till though?

So that will be £65 for your box set, would you like some glue and plastic clippers to go with those? Cool...! Good stuff...! How about a £300 castle to play the game on?

To be fair I'm more miffed at the accompanying book. I had intended to try and keep up with every book release for AoS but I can't justify buying a hardback that only gives me rules for a piece of scenery I never intend to buy. Do we know yet if the book contains fluff or is it just scenarios?

To be fair, it can be used in more than just AoS. While AoS is still fresh the rest of the wargame hobby is not. You can use the fortress for plenty games not just AoS

The book contains fluff, battle plans and rules for all the pieces

It was obvious very quickly that AoS is going to be an expensive game if you use the official GW stuff, so I don't think there's a pricing problem with the fortress except that very few people actually have £400 to spend straight away while a lot of people have got £40 to buy another set of figures.

So from that point of view GW should have released more useful models.

OTOH the fortress has a real "smell the sausage" appeal if you like the Chaos vibe, etc. and is an aspirational model for trusuperfans to buy.

I'm struggling to think of any of the other 7 systems I play that would warrant a skull castle skull keep skull skull place. Aside from 40k...

Don't get me wrong I'm not knocking it, lovely piece of scenery but it falls under the same bracket of the Realm of Don't really Need It Battle Board.

The price for it here is insane I am thinking, and looking way to Khorne bland for me to justify the. Would have been nicer to see where the game is going before anything crazy like this..

It should also be pointed out that the Numinous Occulum and Ophidian Archway are also modular and interconnect together. There's only 4 different Chaos structures (Skull Keep, Overlord Bastion, Malefic Gate, and wall segments) which matches the 4 Sigmar-related terrain elements released so far. It's just that they are all modular (not just two of them), and GW is not shy in showing you how jaw droppingly awesome they look all together.

Seriously, if I was rich off my ass, I'd have an entire room dedicated to the dreadfort. I'd build a table out of skulls to put it on.

I don't think its too early. AoS is a new game, but with a miniature line carried over. There isn't any urgency to flesh out the other armies as they have entire placeholder ranges.

For veterans with completed armies what is there to buy? No rulebooks this time round, save the overpriced picture books, so scenery makes sense to me.

Is it too early to sell a kit like this for a three decade old game?

Before you guys tear me apart hear me out, AoS may be an entirely new thing, but it's models aren't. There's a sizeable chunk of the AoS playerbase that already have the majority of their armies bought, assembled, and painted long before AoS came out, so what do you offer these guys? Specialist kits like the scenery that GW has been pushing. As others have stated these don't have to be used for AoS alone, you could get them for any wargame that fits the theme, and why wouldn't you since the scenery so far being released is gorgeus.

Not everything that's branded Age of Sigmar is made to appeal to newbies.

Just realised Bottle stated the same thing...

I joke about the thousand-dollar piece of scenery as much as anyone else. But let's be fair. It's not really marketed as a thousand dollar piece of scenery, although the option is there.

It's pretty modular, in the sense that you can configure it AFTER it's built, which is a good thing, so you can buy the thousand dollar set a hundred bucks at a time.

There is nothing wrong with the basic Bastion:


These would be the largest configurations I would personally purchase (at least, to start a project), at GBP 165 and 200:



Practically, the GBP320 set is the largest most people will ever be able to fit on their gaming table, I think -



Sure, that looks like an expensive castle. But really, unless you build one from scratch, you're not getting a castle of that size from anyone else for much less (does one even exist?).

Wall of Martyrs/Cities of Death/Fortress of Redemption/Realms of Battle -- if you add up enough plastic to fill up equivalent spaces -- it's a big price tag too.

There are many toy castles and castle building systems on the market.

http://zenseeker.net/Castle/MiniCastles.htm

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There are many toy castles and castle building systems on the market.

http://zenseeker.net/Castle/MiniCastles.htm

Not enough skulls.

 Venerate1 wrote:
I'm struggling to think of any of the other 7 systems I play that would warrant a skull castle skull keep skull skull place. Aside from 40k...

Don't get me wrong I'm not knocking it, lovely piece of scenery but it falls under the same bracket of the Realm of Don't really Need It Battle Board.

Well, I can come up with at least two examples - that along with Khorne paint scheme could work fine as a Skorne piece of scenery or forgotten Orgoth keep for Warmachine/Hordes and it would make a fine demon fortress for the Legion in WarZone: Resurrection, especially Algeroth's forces, but then again WarZone was just a 40k rip-off, so it fits that the scenery somewhat works for their extradimensional demons too.

These day if scenary is not in mdf i tlikely will be soon.....

Big Castle set

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/TTCombat-Fantasy-Scenics-Castle-Set-Great-for-Wargames-/351225139304



Portals

 tydrace wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
There are many toy castles and castle building systems on the market.

http://zenseeker.net/Castle/MiniCastles.htm

Not enough skulls.

Yes.

If I wanted to put the Chaos bling on a homemade castle I would either find a source of cheap model skulls or make a mould to cast my own skulls.

On the whole, though, I prefer to make terrain which is not specific to one single game.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

On the whole, though, I prefer to make terrain which is not specific to one single game.

Normally I'd agree but since I'm starting a Khorne army I'm really starting to warm up to getting the Skull Keep. I could just include it as part of my army and it immediately gives the battle more flavour since I don't really see a Khorne warband defending a generic castle/fort.

I feel a lot of the AoS scenery pieces are meant to be used this way.

ChazLikesCake wrote:

Normally I'd agree but since I'm starting a Khorne army I'm really starting to warm up to getting the Skull Keep. I could just include it as part of my army and it immediately gives the battle more flavour since I don't really see a Khorne warband defending a generic castle/fort.

I feel a lot of the AoS scenery pieces are meant to be used this way.

The Guardians of the Deepwood battalion warscroll includes 2 Sylvaneth Wyldwoods scenery, though it includes rules for adding the Wyldwoods to the table after the other scenery is set up. It's possible that the Dreadfort book includes battalions that include the scenery as well.

The rules for picking scenery only decide how much scenery is placed on the table, not what that scenery is. I would personally not have a problem with someone who brought their own scenery and either added it to the pool, to be chosen randomly, or decided which scenery is placed in their deployment zone. With the volume of army themed scenery, I think including the scenery as part of your army is a great idea - playing against different armies will create different battlefields.

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's possible that the Dreadfort book includes battalions that include the scenery as well.

There's atleast one AFAIK - http://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/scenery/aos-warscroll-ravagersruinkeep.pdf

There may be more in the book

 CoreCommander wrote:

 Sqorgar wrote:
It's possible that the Dreadfort book includes battalions that include the scenery as well.

There's atleast one AFAIK - http://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/scenery/aos-warscroll-ravagersruinkeep.pdf

There may be more in the book

"In addition, a unit that is garrisoning one of the Skull Keeps can launch a sudden counter-attack by charging into the fray without having to exit the building first; measure their charge distance from the Skull Keep itself."

If you're not imagining bloodthirsty warriors suicidally leaping from the battlements into the enemy, why are you here?

Slaanesh used to be my favourite of the chaos gods but man does Khorne sound like a fun guy.

 CoreCommander wrote:

There's atleast one AFAIK - http://www.games-workshop.com/resources/PDF/AoS_Warscrolls/scenery/aos-warscroll-ravagersruinkeep.pdf

There may be more in the book

Good eye! I missed that completely. So, yeah. What I said earlier, but now with PDF proof.

 Kilkrazy wrote:

On the whole, though, I prefer to make terrain which is not specific to one single game.

I totally agree with this.

However, I must say, all the other "toy castles" and scenery castles above are not scenery I would ever put on a gaming board. Things like totally flat bricks (instead of ones that are cast like stones) are just too plain for me. I want my model castle to actually look and feel like a castle.

This is my idea of a generic tower, and filling up a 6x4 with scenery like this would interest me if I wanted to play Fantasy:



I don't expect that it would be cheap.

It's pretty cheap and easy to cover flat castle walls with embossed plasticard to give them a texture.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
It's pretty cheap and easy to cover flat castle walls with embossed plasticard to give them a texture.

Yeah, for sure. There's no denying, though, if you look at the example I gave, of the difference in the level of detail that I would like if I'm going to spend any time on model terrain. It just goes back to, do you want a game piece, or do you want something that looks and feels like an authentic (themed or unthemed) castle; and are you spending 1 hour on it (or no time at all), or 50 hours on it, or 500 hours on it.