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Wow, I'd buy that just because.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Wow, I'd buy that just because.

I grabbed an extra copy for sure at less than $1 per figure it was too good to pass up.

A Warscroll with Keyword "Monster" is a monster Warscroll.

AoS is DoA here. There's a group starting up locally to try and breathe some life into it, and it's being run by a GW manager on his off days. I think there's 5 people doing it.

I just asked my FLGS last night. Since the first week, they haven't sold a single box. Another FLGS nearby doesn't carry it.
Haven't checked out two other stores south of me. They're bigger into 40k, so maybe.

Smellingsalts wrote:
A Warscroll with Keyword "Monster" is a monster Warscroll.

Thanks. Just checking that I hadn't missed one somewhere.

 jonolikespie wrote:
Wow, I'd buy that just because.

Given you could probably sell them on eBay for $40 each...

Hargus56 wrote:
Went to a local gaming store today. They had 9 starter sets in the clearance bin at $40 each. Not doing well at that store. I hope to demo it to get more interest.

I would have bought all 9 without a second thought.

Here its mostly dead. The only people playing it either have a 50% discount or suck up to the guys with 50% discounts and cant admit to themselves the corpse they are carrying around of the game they loved is dead. All the fantasy players pretty much "Aw hell no" 'd out.

So far every game Ive seen goes like this:

"Okay so how do I know how many models to use"
"You don't we add up wounds, or you keep putting models down until the other guy says stop"
"... Okay. How do we balance it?"
"Social contract and pre discussion"
".... Okay. How about playing competitively?"
"Lots of houserules"
"Nah, I'm good"

The game has no structure. Its core mechanic is the also the best description of it, it's pointless.

You know, it's been a very clear trend in GW games to do less restrictions and more sandboxy games since at least 6th edition 40k hit (I know RT and 2nd and all those older games were like this too, but they had moved away from that).

AoS is very clearly the culmination of that as they remove every restriction.

However, I can't help but wonder why or how GW came to the idea that this was a good thing.
The only two theories I have are that Jervis Johnson likes playing this way (and has trumpeted that along with a lot of other ideas I think are total BS in his WD column) so he, and possibly others within the design studio who agree with him, have led the studio into creating a game the way they want rather than looking at what fans want. Or, the accountants are the ones calling the shots and look at it thinking that the game is meaningless and they are theoretically going to make more money by allowing more options because if Timmy wants to field a bloodthirster alongside his sigmarines he can now go buy that bloodthirster (but then doesn't that contradict the point about the game not mattering?)

Where I am right now, Age of Sigmar is dead. All the former Fantasy players refused to touch it and have fully converted to Kings of War.

 jonolikespie wrote:
You know, it's been a very clear trend in GW games to do less restrictions and more sandboxy games since at least 6th edition 40k hit (I know RT and 2nd and all those older games were like this too, but they had moved away from that).

AoS is very clearly the culmination of that as they remove every restriction.

However, I can't help but wonder why or how GW came to the idea that this was a good thing.
The only two theories I have are that Jervis Johnson likes playing this way (and has trumpeted that along with a lot of other ideas I think are total BS in his WD column) so he, and possibly others within the design studio who agree with him, have led the studio into creating a game the way they want rather than looking at what fans want. Or, the accountants are the ones calling the shots and look at it thinking that the game is meaningless and they are theoretically going to make more money by allowing more options because if Timmy wants to field a bloodthirster alongside his sigmarines he can now go buy that bloodthirster (but then doesn't that contradict the point about the game not mattering?)

Its not just Jervis, several of the old hands (the guys who make warlord's games for example) prefer to play "narratively" now. I think its because they play with friends and they all have massive collections. For them it really is just a drink beer and have fun with the guys game. I don't really think they were ever into the competitive aspect as much.

Of course, its also a lot easier to produce a non-competitive game, its just harder to sell it.

its doing far better than whfb so I would assume its a success

Term time - two nights dedicated to it. Not as popular as 40k nights but still going quite strong.

Home time - hardly any interest now despite initial surge. The GW manager keeps painting models and promoting it on the FB page but there is little to no interest. Demo in store hasn't been touched with in all the times I've gone home for a weekend.

I'll have to go into the new location of the local gaming store to see how popular it is but I haven't heard good things from my home time friends.

Dead

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
There seemed to have been a huge interest in Lisbon but the only official AoS event (I know of) so far had one attendant.

There will be a big "traditional/national" event in the 17-18th weekend which will provide additional insight to this.

An interesting update:

So far the number of players for the AoS event numbers the exact number of players of the FBtournament on these later years while running WHFB rules (18, but I think the highest had been 32 or something mid last decade), and I believe it's exactly the same group of players.

It should be noted that no one seems to be playing Stormcasts.

It boggles the mind what GW where thinking.
Release a game that will be decisive amongst your player base without doing anything to recruit new players to replace the ones lost, and heaven forbid, acutally grow the player base.

One man shops in back streets don't really do anything to grow the player base, and it's something GW really needs to look at in the long term. Not just for AoS, but for 40K too. Maybe they're hoping one of their videogame licenses will bring people into their shops.

In contrast independent shops are starting to thrive again in the UK. Magic organised play is pulling people into shops, and other systems are starting to benefit. X-Wing in particular seems to be doing quite well off the back of passing Magic traffic through indies.

After a couple of posts of bafflement, I've seen nothing locally. No games, no offers of splitting boxes, nothing.

So I don't think it's going great up here.

X-Wing is a very pick up and play kind of game, plus every boy born in the western world from about 1960 onwards knows about Star Wars.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
X-Wing is a very pick up and play kind of game, plus every boy born in the western world from about 1960 onwards knows about Star Wars.

And I heard the rules are pretty good too.

xwing is fun but has its own balancing issues. Here at least, pretty much every game is a big ship and a starfighter piloted by a level 8 or 9 pilot.

If they ever made rules that enforced actual fighter squadrons, I'd be all in for xwing.

Yeah but it's just a piece of fun, pull out and play game. At least, that'show I see it.

I don't think it was ever designed as a tournament ruleset. Though if you are sufficiently competitive you can start a tournament in nearly anything.

Bartali wrote:
It boggles the mind what GW where thinking.
Release a game that will be decisive amongst your player base without doing anything to recruit new players to replace the ones lost, and heaven forbid, acutally grow the player base.

One man shops in back streets don't really do anything to grow the player base, and it's something GW really needs to look at in the long term. Not just for AoS, but for 40K too. Maybe they're hoping one of their videogame licenses will bring people into their shops.

In contrast independent shops are starting to thrive again in the UK. Magic organised play is pulling people into shops, and other systems are starting to benefit. X-Wing in particular seems to be doing quite well off the back of passing Magic traffic through indies.

The biggest GW related video game coming out in the near future is set in the old WHFB world.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah but it's just a piece of fun, pull out and play game. At least, that'show I see it.

I don't think it was ever designed as a tournament ruleset. Though if you are sufficiently competitive you can start a tournament in nearly anything.

I think with people that aren't playing it as a tournament game it can definitely be a lot of fun, but FFG really pushes their systems with tournament play so it attracts a lot of competitive tournament players to your local metas which influences what type of lists people show up with.

 SilverDevilfish wrote:

The biggest GW related video game coming out in the near future is set in the old WHFB world.

Two of them are. Total War: Warhammer will probably bring in a lot of people based on the popularity of the Total War series. And Vermintide, another game set in the Old World, is a Left 4 Dead style game that actually looks pretty good.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Yeah but it's just a piece of fun, pull out and play game. At least, that'show I see it.

I don't think it was ever designed as a tournament ruleset. Though if you are sufficiently competitive you can start a tournament in nearly anything.

IIRC, there was a whole section in the starter set booklet which explained that the game was built up with competitive, tournament play in mind. It sure has its problems (atleast from what I've heard and my very limited experience with it), but I think they would vary from person to person unlike AoS where almost all of the players are complaining about the same things. X-Wing on the other side has things like unusable (at a given time) upgrades which wait for a certain model or a model which waits for a certain upgrade (which forces you to buy the new stuff). The level of gak X-wing gets about these is nowhere near that which GW attracts which may me a little unfair. Even with these, though, X-wing seems to be working well enough.

 infinite_array wrote:

 SilverDevilfish wrote:

The biggest GW related video game coming out in the near future is set in the old WHFB world.

Two of them are. Total War: Warhammer will probably bring in a lot of people based on the popularity of the Total War series. And Vermintide, another game set in the Old World, is a Left 4 Dead style game that actually looks pretty good.

The game developers should put a bit spoiler at the end of the story/campaign mode saying:

"Congratulations, all that you've done is moot, as Chaos will win anyway in a couple of years."

Definitely less interest as time goes by.
Players in our group play their 40k games as normal and few like me started 30k. No sign of AoS at gaming hours.

Dead on arrival. WHFB players won't touch it. Hasn't sold a box off of the shelf.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 infinite_array wrote:

 SilverDevilfish wrote:

The biggest GW related video game coming out in the near future is set in the old WHFB world.

Two of them are. Total War: Warhammer will probably bring in a lot of people based on the popularity of the Total War series. And Vermintide, another game set in the Old World, is a Left 4 Dead style game that actually looks pretty good.

The game developers should put a bit spoiler at the end of the story/campaign mode saying:

"Congratulations, all that you've done is moot, as Chaos will win anyway in a couple of years."

Isnt that the same thing as playing historicals or lord of the rings