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Every Friday night at the gaming club I attend there would be at least 3 games of Fantasy going on sometimes more. As soon as AoS dropped people gave it a shot and in unison said "nope not for me" and moved onto other games.

Now you hardly see any games of fantasy being played at all.

Locally, it was DoA.

Interest... never even began.

The semi-local GW Stuff Only store has given up on trying to set up games of it - leaving them with 40K and an RPG set in a world that will be turned to droplets in the wind. (How's that for motivation... yeah, you character has finally gotten to the pinnacle... but the entire world done been blowed up. Sucks to be you, eh?)

The even-less-local general gaming store has given up on the game entirely, and is dropping it's GW stocklist - having to carry AoS in order to get a better run on 40K has not been worth it.

So, locally... sales have been below poor.

The Auld Grump

If they move on from griping to talking about something else it will be. Right now it's hard to say.

 oni wrote:
I recall a time when 40K went through a very similar transformation with just as much player revolt - the switch from 2nd to 3rd edition.

I'm betting most of the people here on Dakka are too young to know of such a time, but it happened. 40K players left in droves; it was a dark and uncertain time indeed.

I see the potential in AoS just as saw the potential in 3rd edition 40K.

Let me remind everyone who is old enough to recall and inform the young that the 40K game we all love and enjoy today is only a tweaked version of that very same, so very hated, 3rd edition rules set.

Except that in that case it was a failing 2nd edition getting ousted by a much more successful 3rd edition, with rules that actually made more sense than the rules that they replaced.

And which included army lists so that folks could play their old armies immediately.

Otherwise, yeah, exactly the same situation....

The Auld Grump

RiTides wrote:
That's the rub, Vermis! In the AoS section, there was a poll which had these results:

AoS going strong or dying out in your area?

A. Picking up steam. - 24% (135)
B. Definitely less interest as time goes on. 76% (423)

I hadn't even looked at that poll! It's even more telling. To me, anyway.

It's people who check an online forum, of course - those are the only people who you can poll without it being a local (or "anecdotal") result!

That's the thing about people who say 'internet forums do a lot of complaining about X game but it's popular outside the internet'. Unless you're a commercial traveller or summat, I'd say the world wide web might be a slightly larger sample.

Agreed with the rest of your post.

oni wrote:Let me remind everyone who is old enough to recall and inform the young that the 40K game we all love and enjoy today is only a tweaked version of that very same, so very hated, 3rd edition rules set.

I discovered GW and 40K during 3rd ed. I hate and revile the 40K game today.*

*No, not that literally.

Sergeant Horse wrote:You can say I can just play 8th, but that's not realistic since most gamers move to supported game systems, and KoW has taken over.

It might be a bit more difficult to do in a shop that has to sell the latest stuff and keep selling it, but you know there's another kind of gaming culture out there, where organised and hosted games are a thing? I'd say the Red Queen effect and pickup games are largely an artifact of GW's kind of marketing and playstyle, anyway.

More to the point, if you think "it's not as good a mass fantasy game as Kings of War", where's the beef?

Cost doesn't really come into it I find, people who want to will buy the products, people who can't afford to or don't find the value in it, won't.

But people can't afford to or don't find the value in it because the cost is too high. I think it's only subjective up to a point, especially where GW's concerned.

jonolikespie wrote:If nothing else each race should have had 2 whole pages just for them in the first big book GW released, not every faction crammed into the bottom of a two page spread that was mostly art.

I think that alone would have deflected quite a bit of rage about AoS. Maybe not enough to avoid it's current slide, but I dunno.

wuestenfux wrote:How is your opinion about the Sigmarines.
I neither like the look of the models nor the fluff.

Even before looking at their fluff or comparing to space marines, they were boring. Well-made, but boring. A bland, generic, literally faceless, adolescent idea of some kind of hulked-out badass. (And after looking at their fluff: coming with a cops 'n' robbers "I shot you!" "Nuh-uh you didn't!" element.) Same with the khorne stuff, but spikier. It's like what comics went through in the '90's. It's like fantasy as interpreted by Rob Liefeld.* Complete with weird figure proportions beyond the medium's norm.

* Cable pic nicked from Progressive Boink.

I'd say that's part of the impression that they 40K-ified (fortyfied?) WFB. WFB was ostensibly seen as the thinky, tactical, block-manoeuvre game for older, veteran gamers, compared to 40K with all it's thinking done at the listbuilding stage, and run-shoot-pile-in-and-thump mechanics. (Though I would say that being more tactical than 40K is no grand achievement in itself) It looks like they tried to recapture 40K's success not only by putting in a fantasy version of a fan-favourite faction and sticking things on round bases, but by tailoring the game from the ground up to appeal to a younger audience: boy's-own power fantasies and very simple rules bulked out with loads of special powers that you pick and choose beforehand.

Like I hinted, I don't think WFB was radically different (cries of 'herohammer' popped up periodically, over the years and editions, and the last edition was crammed so full of heroes, mad magic and monsters, that basic infantry itself needed 'special powers' just to stay on the table) but when AoS dropped and WFB went swirling down the pan, apparently all token nods towards tactical play went with it. (The loss of block manoeuvre was 'merely' a symptom of that; it's possible to have a tactical skirmish game) So I'd agree with MWHistorian and others that say that AoS is alright for a few kickaround games, but doesn't have the meat (or the right kind of meat) for older gamers to get their teeth into.

I also think it's why Kings of War picked up a lot of the slack. Now, I think KoW could stand to have a few tweaks and more tactical elements itself, but it's at least the next step: a more mature development of Warhammer. Folk almost responded in shock to it: units were an indivisible whole, living or dying more by morale, than agglomerations of wound counters being whittled down; special rules, characters, and heaps of available gear were played right down; magic wasn't a cray-cray game changer. I know the feeling. Felt it when looking at Epic:A from the viewpoint of 40K. But when WFB players migrated to it because it was the nearest, most apparent block manoeuvre game, they found that it really was all about that block, 'bout that block, no gravel - and with more tactical considerations. Tickling an older gamer's fancy more, IMO.

Pacific wrote:
The saddest thing for me for this about AoS is that GW must have known how much players enjoyed getting into that (quite competitive) scene, how those big tournaments were annual events on the gaming calendar for many, but they shrugged and pulled the plug. It says to me that they are either desperate, don't care, or have a really low opinion on the intelligence of their player base (replacing a game with the mechanics of WHFB with something like AoS).

Didn't there used to be a lot of talk about how we 'didn't get it' and competitive tournies were 'getting it wrong' because that's not how the GW studio designed and played their games, all but playing an AoS anything-goes style game with Warhammer rules anyway? In that case I'd guess that all three of the factors in your last line count, only maybe less 'don't care' so much as - ironically - 'didn't get it'.

Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
I'd have done the same for High Elven spearmen and Silver Helms, for instance. Assuming, of course, they didn't decide the mess up with the scale.

Ah, true. One of GW's pre-AoS blunders that annoyed me most. I was waiting for updated HE spearmen for my own games, thinking it was a dead cert for the last HE update. Instead we got dinghies pulled by eagles (only trumped by dinghies pulled by wolves) and now it's too late.

I don't really think GW gives a damn about how a very specific standalone box was received. I bet you they just said "Ah it's not our forte - they were just ships anyway. We need to go back to 40k-like stuff! That's what we really excel at" and chugged it along the rest of the SG range kills they have made along the years.

Herzlos wrote:
That said; it's the best thing to happen to gaming in years - GW has single-handledly boosted Frostgrave and Kings Of War in ways they could never have dreamed possible, and broken many people out of the "GW is the one true hobby" mentality. Awful for GW, great for gamers.

It's at this point that I feel this strong compulsion... Fantasy game? Smaller scale? One box = one unit? Quick playing? Individual bases? Use whatever models you like, or have? But more about the interplay of the general mechanics and unit types than loads of special rules?

Hey! Look! Hey you! Over here! Look over here! Look at this!

 RiTides wrote:
Age of Sigmar is its own beast, and obviously not a fit for a fantasy tournament format (very much intentionally so). This makes it even harder to measure how well it's doing. We know it isn't being played at the tournament level, and the question is can it do well enough in informal gaming to make up for the lack of addressing that market (or those interested in formation-based fantasy games) at all.

Interesting that you brought this up, as our casual Saturday game group has decided to start an Age of Sigmar league after Christmas (there's a group that meets at my house on Saturdays, dedicated game room with several tables, terrain, board games, etc etc). Three of the people that want to do it have entirely new AoS armies (the Nurgle team I just got, a Stormcast player, and Khorne Bloodwhatever player), others are using their old WHFB models.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jonolikespie wrote:
Does anyone else kind of feel like when GW release a new edition for a game they take it for granted that all the old players will continue onto the new edition so they don't really need to advertise it at all and that, with that in mind, AoS was released as if it were a new edition which all the WHFB players would immediately adopt?

I kinda get the impression GW expected people would jump right over, not considering the differences in games to mean anything. At least that makes more sense to me than them just dumping their entire WHFB fanbase (no matter how small it was, it was more than 0).

No, not at all. Once you realized that GW had ended Warhammer Fantasy, and this was a wholly new product - which took me a while to realize - that was not GW's intent. I think their sole mistake was releasing free PDF's for pre-existing models. They nuked the setting and rules; they should have completely severed any ties with Warhammer Fantasy. I think those pdf warscrolls kept up an illusion that AoS was Fantasy. It's not. It's a completely new and different product.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I'm not surprised that it would appeal to a different kind of user. I'm also not very surprised that the user group would be relatively small.

It would seem logical that a game that is quick and easy to learn and play would appeal to people who don't have a deep interest in more complicated, time-consuming games. This kind of user does not seem likely to want to spend a lot of time and money building up their armies and terrain, etc.

If you want to make a beer and pretzels game, you need to make sure it is easily playable by a beer and pretzels crowd.

I think Age of Sigmar is the perfect compliment to 40k - 40k's rules are poorly written, armies are covered in exceptions and special case rules, it's a nightmare to play, and there's very little balance. Games take forever and even among more casual 40k players one can't help but feel cheated when an undercosted overpowered unit - of which there are many - wipes out entire squads with a few dice rolls. Age of Sigmar has super easy rules and is "field what you want". There's no pretense of faux balance. That's refreshingly honest.

Now, me, I love deeply tactical wargames. Kings of War being the best on the market right now, more akin to chess and relying less on powergaming axioms and entirely on the generalship of the player - especially positioning and maneuver, and how to think ahead several turns and anticipate your opponent's actions and reactions. I love war games and map games. I love any games that make me think and give me mental strain, where I'm fighting my opponent, and not the rules (this is also why I dislike 40k, because no matter how good you are as a commander, the rules and army comps are designed to negate tactical reasoning)

But I also really like Age of Sigmar because it's just ridiculous and fun, and is the total antithesis to the nontactical powergaming of 40k as well as the ultratactical KoW. It's literally it's own beast and reminds me of the Realm of Chaos days of 40k when there were no points and friends got together to just play really fun games with simple rules and neat models and drink a lot of beer. So, AoS has a home in my collection simply because it is not 40k and not Fantasy 8 (thank fething God, the worst ruleset ever published by mankind), and it's not KoW either, but it's still really ridiculously fun.

 judgedoug wrote:
No, not at all. Once you realized that GW had ended Warhammer Fantasy, and this was a wholly new product - which took me a while to realize - that was not GW's intent. I think their sole mistake was releasing free PDF's for pre-existing models. They nuked the setting and rules; they should have completely severed any ties with Warhammer Fantasy. I think those pdf warscrolls kept up an illusion that AoS was Fantasy. It's not. It's a completely new and different product.

That comment really has little to do with what Jono said. GW has been falling on their brand alone to push the increasingly badly designed rules they have been publishing these last few years. If you can't see that... I don't know what to tell you.

AoS is the continuation of WHFB - the fluff (slapdashed as it is) carries on from the last page of ET's Archaon. GW was clearly expecting WHFB players to follow along like the Pied Piper's rats - why else would they keep the iconic faction leaders alive? Archaon, Tyrion, Teclis, Sigmar, Alarielle, "Malekith", the Slann, the Skaven. Why would they issue scrolls for the now deceased world's units? (Apart from dodging the incoming riot to their HQ?)

AoS is GW's Fantasy - like it or not.

It all just massively backfired on them because they didn't realize they had already spent all their brand cred with the crappy rules and the relentless price hikes.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 judgedoug wrote:
the worst ruleset ever published by mankind.

You mean AoS, right? I mean... you got to mean AoS.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
No, not at all. Once you realized that GW had ended Warhammer Fantasy, and this was a wholly new product - which took me a while to realize - that was not GW's intent. I think their sole mistake was releasing free PDF's for pre-existing models. They nuked the setting and rules; they should have completely severed any ties with Warhammer Fantasy. I think those pdf warscrolls kept up an illusion that AoS was Fantasy. It's not. It's a completely new and different product.

That comment really has little to do with what Jono said. GW has been falling on their brand alone to push the increasingly badly designed rules they have been publishing these last few years. If you can't see that... I don't know what to tell you.

AoS is the continuation of WHFB - the fluff (slapdashed as it is) carries on from the last page of ET's Archaon. GW was clearly expecting WHFB players to follow along like the Pied Piper's rats - why else would they keep the iconic faction leaders alive? Archaon, Tyrion, Teclis, Sigmar, Allariele, "Malekith", the Slann, the Skaven. Why would they issue scrolls for the now deceased world's units? (Apart from dodging the incoming riot to their HQ?)

AoS is GW's Fantasy - like it or not.

It all just massively backfired on them because they didn't realize they had already spent all their brand cred with the crappy rules and the relentless price hikes.

I'm not talking about the background. I'm saying it's a mistake to have caused brand confusion. They should have not released free PDF warscrolls for older Warhammer Fantasy players. Age of Sigmar is a brand new game, and it should have been treated by GW as such.

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
the worst ruleset ever published by mankind.

You mean AoS, right? I mean... you got to mean AoS.

Oh dear me, feth no. Warhammer 4 and 5 are exponentially better than 8 could ever had hoped to be - in that Warhammer 4 and 5 were actually fun to play despite terrible rules. Warhammer 8 was just god awful. From what I can tell, Warhammer 8 was the result of someone at GW who didn't like Tuomas Purinin and used Warhammer 6 to wipe their ass and released that as Warhammer 8.

 judgedoug wrote:

No, not at all. Once you realized that GW had ended Warhammer Fantasy, and this was a wholly new product

Which is why the products are all labelled 'Warhammer: Age of Sigmar'.

I agree that it's a very different concept, but that reasoning smacks a bit of, say, trying to assert 1st ed 40K was an entirely different game and intent to subsequent editions because it was actually a game called 'Rogue Trader'. (Complete with it's real title squirreled away under that massive 'Warhammer 40,000' banner...)

they should have completely severed any ties with Warhammer Fantasy.

I don't think the old-faction pdfs made much difference to that. I get the feeling WFB players were pretty aware that ties were well and truly severed through other vague hints and clues.

And strangely, Doug, that was the problem. They didn't really view it as a chance to throw their arms in the air, shout 'yay!', chuck their pricey, carefully built armies in the bin and just blindly go along with what GW dictated.

Weird, huh?

Nah, they should have released Age of Sigmar as a brand new game, and let Warhammer linger, slowly remove retail codes and move the range to direct only, and then kill it off in a year when it finally finished it's death. Aka the Epic 40k treatment.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
the worst ruleset ever published by mankind.

You mean AoS, right? I mean... you got to mean AoS.

Oh dear me, feth no. Warhammer 4 and 5 are exponentially better than 8 could ever had hoped to be - in that Warhammer 4 and 5 were actually fun to play despite terrible rules. Warhammer 8 was just god awful. From what I can tell, Warhammer 8 was the result of someone at GW who didn't like Tuomas Purinin and used Warhammer 6 to wipe their ass and released that as Warhammer 8.

With all its flaws and weaknesses, 8th edition is millenia ahead of what AoS is. AoS was a massive downgrade - not an upgrade.

 Vermis wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

No, not at all. Once you realized that GW had ended Warhammer Fantasy, and this was a wholly new product

Which is why the products are all labelled 'Warhammer: Age of Sigmar'.

I agree that it's an entirely different game, but it smacks a bit of, say, trying to assert 1st ed 40K had an entirely different intent to later editions because it was actually a game called 'Rogue Trader'. (Complete with it's real title squirreled away under that massive 'Warhammer 40,000' banner...)

Not sure what you are saying here, because Rogue Trader and 40k 2 are pretty much different games. Several core rules changes, army composition, turn sequences, close combat, morale, hell, pretty much everything changed between RT being released, through the Compendium and Compilation and the new Vehicle Rules (well like the three iterations of vehicles rules) until 40k 2 was released.

With all the respect that I have for Epic 40k and their players... Epic isn't WHFB. To even assume FB - a two decades long flagship brand - should receive the same treatment as a SG game got when it was put down is... naive at best and insulting at worst.

And it would still result in the same shitstorm.

 judgedoug wrote:

coldgaming wrote:
I've found the forum-goer kind of crowd has been very negative toward it, but a lot of people outside of that are very positive and into it. I don't know anything about sales. I know some of the big tournament organizers are giving it a chance, especially in the UK.

I have experienced this firsthand. Most of the 40k and AoS players at the FLGS barely look or even know what Dakka and Warseer are - they get most of their news from like Spikey Bits or BoLS updates on their Facebook feeds. The AoS vibe is very very positive amongst them.

Same deal with my two regular groups, one mixed-game club and one group of crusty old SG vets, never touch the forums in the main, but AoS has died on its arse. There's a tendency to assume people on the forums are some totally disconnected sub-culture within wargaming, but from my experience the range of views is pretty representative of the broader community, they're just held with more vehemence by forumgoing fans.

 Guildsman wrote:
I think a big part of why the veteran community has had such a backlash against AoS is the destruction of the background. If the End Times had wrapped up with a cataclysmic event that left the world wrecked but intact, players might not have been so upset. Heck, a post-apocalyptic high fantasy world would be interesting and, more importantly, allow fans to maintain their connection to the game. Instead, they blew up everything, changed the cosmology, and advanced the timeline by 1,000+ years. Couple that with a shift to a completely different, dumbed-down ruleset, and it feels like a slap in the face.

Best thing to happen to Fantasy. I love me some Oldhammer, and began playing Warhammer in 1994... but the world timeline wasn't progressing - when it did, people bitched, when it was retconned, other people bitched. I still have all my army books and all my Warhammer Roleplay (GW and Hogshead) for that awesome oldschool Empire vibe.
The End Times and the AoS fluff are so over the top, I love it. Best thing GW could have done with the property since it was stagnating since 2006.

I can never get my head around this mentality. If I don't like or become bored of a thing, I don't hope that thing is changed drastically to suit my tastes/changed opinion, and certainly not at the expense of the enjoyment of everyone who liked it as it was, I just find something else to play/read/watch. Warhammer was the Warhammer World, that background, those races, those animosities and conflicts, without them AoS is essentially an entirely different game set in an entirely different world, so why on earth was it necessary to gut real Warhammer Fantasy and have AoS wear its skin as a cape? If GW had simply released AoS as a third "Warhammer [something]" game, would you really have been less likely to play it because its creation didn't come at the expense of real WHF?

You perhaps saw the lack of linear story progression as "stagnation", a lot of people saw it as a setting doing exactly what a setting is supposed to do.

 Yodhrin wrote:
You perhaps saw the lack of linear story progression as "stagnation", a lot of people saw it as a setting doing exactly what a setting is supposed to do.

And now GW is milking that linear story progression at 45€ a pop! Ain't that swell?

Edit: By progression I mean "This book here is where X faction appears to fight chaos in Y place... and fights B faction in Z place."

Phew... such progression. I swear I have NEVER seen such a thing before!

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
With all its flaws and weaknesses, 8th edition is millenia ahead of what AoS is. AoS was a massive downgrade - not an upgrade.

But what are we comparing? As a fun skirmish game, AoS definitely beats Warhammer 8. As a tedious exercise in mental fatigue, Warhammer 8 beats AoS. If you're trying to compare only the aspect of mass-battles, Warhammer 8 is certainly better than AoS at emulating troop formations, but fails compared to any other mass battles game released since the 1990's. We had seven revisions of a product whose rules philosophy have been eclipsed by better design, even by those same authors who sought to improve Warhammer, and it's not gotten better with age. It really needed to die.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
With all its flaws and weaknesses, 8th edition is millenia ahead of what AoS is. AoS was a massive downgrade - not an upgrade.

But what are we comparing? As a fun skirmish game, AoS definitely beats Warhammer 8. As a tedious exercise in mental fatigue, Warhammer 8 beats AoS. If you're trying to compare only the aspect of mass-battles, Warhammer 8 is certainly better than AoS at emulating troop formations, but fails compared to any other mass battles game released since the 1990's. We had seven revisions of a product whose rules philosophy have been eclipsed by better design, even by those same authors who sought to improve Warhammer, and it's not gotten better with age. It really needed to die.

Saying that a skirmish game - no matter how bad it is - is better at being a skirmish game than a mass battle block game is is like saying pears are better at being pears than oranges are at being pears - it proves what, exactly? I meant as a game - you know... with a structure?

And no - WHFB needed to be decently handled and have its rules revised - just like 40k does. It didn't need to die.

It was WHFB's death that split the community apart.

Edited to remove some hotheaded wording.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
No, not at all. Once you realized that GW had ended Warhammer Fantasy, and this was a wholly new product - which took me a while to realize - that was not GW's intent. I think their sole mistake was releasing free PDF's for pre-existing models. They nuked the setting and rules; they should have completely severed any ties with Warhammer Fantasy. I think those pdf warscrolls kept up an illusion that AoS was Fantasy. It's not. It's a completely new and different product.

That comment really has little to do with what Jono said. GW has been falling on their brand alone to push the increasingly badly designed rules they have been publishing these last few years. If you can't see that... I don't know what to tell you.

AoS is the continuation of WHFB - the fluff (slapdashed as it is) carries on from the last page of ET's Archaon. GW was clearly expecting WHFB players to follow along like the Pied Piper's rats - why else would they keep the iconic faction leaders alive? Archaon, Tyrion, Teclis, Sigmar, Allariele, "Malekith", the Slann, the Skaven. Why would they issue scrolls for the now deceased world's units? (Apart from dodging the incoming riot to their HQ?)

AoS is GW's Fantasy - like it or not.

It all just massively backfired on them because they didn't realize they had already spent all their brand cred with the crappy rules and the relentless price hikes.

I'm not talking about the background. I'm saying it's a mistake to have caused brand confusion. They should have not released free PDF warscrolls for older Warhammer Fantasy players. Age of Sigmar is a brand new game, and it should have been treated by GW as such.

If we take this to be true, that AoS is NOT WHFB then the reason for AoS failing becomes blindingly obvious.


Here we are months into its life with only 3 armies, and of those three armies one doesn't have models.

If you only count things released under the AoS banner then there has been an outright pathetic amount of support for this brand new game and it should not surprise anyone that it's doing poorly.

There are better games for less out there, I saw there was no points and just decided to play Kings of War.
Lets me expand to other companies I otherwise wouldn't have done.
I don't play 40k anymore, it's really not my style anymore.
No clue what I need to play it these days, every edition has something huge I need to buy, my poor chaos army is too old for this.

Oh, while I'm unable to get to sleep and posting here instead I'd just like to point out that "This is just an online forum, it doesn't represent the community" is a no more valid statement than "As the largest wargaming forum Dakka is the BEST representation of the community".

I also forgot to add I am so surprised it took GW this long to make fantasy space marines.
I thought it would have happened 10 years ago.

 judgedoug wrote:

 RiTides wrote:
Age of Sigmar is its own beast, and obviously not a fit for a fantasy tournament format (very much intentionally so). This makes it even harder to measure how well it's doing. We know it isn't being played at the tournament level, and the question is can it do well enough in informal gaming to make up for the lack of addressing that market (or those interested in formation-based fantasy games) at all.

Interesting that you brought this up, as our casual Saturday game group has decided to start an Age of Sigmar league after Christmas (there's a group that meets at my house on Saturdays, dedicated game room with several tables, terrain, board games, etc etc). Three of the people that want to do it have entirely new AoS armies (the Nurgle team I just got, a Stormcast player, and Khorne Bloodwhatever player), others are using their old WHFB models.

I see you skipped the part of my post that had the poll results

It is great that you have a local group that is into AoS! However, I think it's pretty clear that this is as "anecdotal" as it gets - that argument can not only be one-way. I know you think Dakka posters are not representative, but the fact is the only positive-only posters I see about AoS are you and MongooseMatt. There are a lot of fantasy posters on this site, and while some might not be representative, some certainly are... and that poll showing a 3-to-1 response rate of AoS generating less interest over time is very telling for the overall trend.

Even in your case, two of the players are using the models from the boxed set, the only one you mention who bought a new army and isn't using the boxed set models is your own army! That GW didn't invest more (releasing Lizardmen with no new models, despite a supposedly completely new setting!) means I really can't see a runway for this to continue to generate interest at the level they were aiming for.

It's also fine to say a complete dropping of the line was in order and a reboot (even if I disagree, with a major computer game coming out set in the Old World, for instance). However, that would be why people are viewing it as a failure - the adoption rate is very low, and this is much more comparable now to a skirmish game like the others on the market as far as adoption, rather than the dominant position they would have had if they had released the game people were expecting and hoping for (a smaller model count version of fantasy, with rules usable in a non-casual-only setting).

Sorry if this was long, I enjoy the discussion and hopefully these points came across as I intended! No disrespect to you or your gaming group at all, it is genuinely awesome that you guys are enjoying the game

I guess we have to define failure before we can decide if AoS is failing.

Now, I don't really play GW games any more. But I am interested (I have 4 large Fantasy armies and 2 large 40K armies as well as various specialist games and a lot of LOTR stuff).

It seems to me at least that GW were looking to improve on the sales of Warhammer Fantasy while also getting an excuse to clear out a bunch of poorly selling stock (Brets etc) and make everything more "protectable".

I think the evidence suggests they failed on the first point and probably succeeded on the second and third?

But the second and third objectives mean nothing if the sales of the game dwindle even further.

I think what stands out from the release is that we're not looking at a company that is even capable of innovative game design at this point.

 judgedoug wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:
That would have caused a shitstorm that would have dwarfed the current one. We're talking Eye of Terror-level shitstorm here. It would be spitting in the face of the players that have supported their first brand for over two decades.

The bad PR that would get would be... I don't even know how to define it. Post-Heresy HORUS would have better PR than GW if they pulled that stunt.

Nah, they should have released Age of Sigmar as a brand new game, and let Warhammer linger, slowly remove retail codes and move the range to direct only, and then kill it off in a year when it finally finished it's death. Aka the Epic 40k treatment.

That would not have sold a shed load of End Times product, though.

Perhaps I am too cynical.

To get back on topic, GW released the legacy army war scrolls because they hoped that this would attract WHFB players over to AoS, and perhaps also because they clearly did not have enough AoS branded model kits ready to go.

So yes, it has created brand confusion. Not a surprise as GW clearly have no understanding of brand marketing, which is of course because they don't do marketing at all.

GW's 'marketing' strategy for years has been to release stuff and users buy it. This used to work and still does to a degree, but not nearly as well as five or 10 years ago.

However if veterans didn't switch to AoS, then it wasn't because of brand confusion, but probably because of factors like the rules.

 jonolikespie wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:

 Lithlandis Stormcrow wrote:

 judgedoug wrote:
No, not at all. Once you realized that GW had ended Warhammer Fantasy, and this was a wholly new product - which took me a while to realize - that was not GW's intent. I think their sole mistake was releasing free PDF's for pre-existing models. They nuked the setting and rules; they should have completely severed any ties with Warhammer Fantasy. I think those pdf warscrolls kept up an illusion that AoS was Fantasy. It's not. It's a completely new and different product.

That comment really has little to do with what Jono said. GW has been falling on their brand alone to push the increasingly badly designed rules they have been publishing these last few years. If you can't see that... I don't know what to tell you.

AoS is the continuation of WHFB - the fluff (slapdashed as it is) carries on from the last page of ET's Archaon. GW was clearly expecting WHFB players to follow along like the Pied Piper's rats - why else would they keep the iconic faction leaders alive? Archaon, Tyrion, Teclis, Sigmar, Allariele, "Malekith", the Slann, the Skaven. Why would they issue scrolls for the now deceased world's units? (Apart from dodging the incoming riot to their HQ?)

AoS is GW's Fantasy - like it or not.

It all just massively backfired on them because they didn't realize they had already spent all their brand cred with the crappy rules and the relentless price hikes.

I'm not talking about the background. I'm saying it's a mistake to have caused brand confusion. They should have not released free PDF warscrolls for older Warhammer Fantasy players. Age of Sigmar is a brand new game, and it should have been treated by GW as such.

If we take this to be true, that AoS is NOT WHFB then the reason for AoS failing becomes blindingly obvious.


Here we are months into its life with only 3 armies, and of those three armies one doesn't have models.

If you only count things released under the AoS banner then there has been an outright pathetic amount of support for this brand new game and it should not surprise anyone that it's doing poorly.

This is my view on it as well. I really like the game and have bought a Stormcast army, but I'm completely baffled that they haven't released anything at all for the old factions, or variants of them. Stormcast and Bloodbound are pretty similar in that they both consist of big burly uncaring men swinging axes at each other - a theme that most certainly does not appeal to everyone, and it's all they have currently. I'm willing to bet that as soon as they release a few Elf and Dwarf kits (assuming those are next) sales will go up considerably. Although they really should hurry before they kill any momentum they have left.

I think they need to be new sculpts, not just the old Elf and Dwarf kits with round bases in AoS packaging.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I think they need to be new sculpts, not just the old Elf and Dwarf kits with round bases in AoS packaging.

Yeah that's what I meant. New, exciting dwarfs, elves, rats etc. Like doug said they have released models for two factions so far, which is abysmal. I think someone (Mantic?) said you should launch a new game with at least four factions.

It only needs a balancing mechanic.

And some good guys that aren't immortal.

4 main factions + some brand of mercs is pretty common unless it's a strictly 2-faction game, in which case 2 + some merc-ish pieces.

Yeah, it's somewhat embarrassing that GW's been so slow to get things jumping in the new aesthetic.