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I was thinking more about the rules, but you are right about the fluff aspect.

If people just want something off the shelf, AoS presents a high fantasy setting that at the moment is a bit skimpy but will be fleshed out over the coming years.

If people don't like it they can dump it and use the actual rules with something else.

I was really pumped about LR (see my overview) but the only person in my group who got similarly excited was the guy who was super into HYW and (thankfully) already had a ton of miniatures and terrain ready to go. And even I, after playing with him, came away pretty let down by the rules in contrast to the fun experience of the spectacle of his miniatures and the feeling for the period he infused into the scenario he wrote and the historical personalities and customs he evoked. AoS is a super strong contrast to this. There is theme oozing out of every rule in AoS.

It depends what you are looking for in a game. I am primarily looking for good rules, and I don't usually care about fluff.

I am looking for theme and I like it when mechanics are thematic. This is why LR left me cold. It's probably also why I like Bolt Action so much. To me, AoS and LR are about equivalent in terms of their mechanical depth but the former exudes theme whereas the latter assumes it.

Let's look at Amazon "Toys and Games" rankings for a few starter sets. Since they're a huge retail presence, they should be a reasonably good gauge of how stuff is selling right now.

Age of Sigmar Starter: #59,362
2014 Dark Vengeance: #52,911
Betrayal at Calth: #26,572
Escape from Goblin Town: #305,015
Warmachine Two Player set: #77,165
Infinity Operation Icestorm: #92,835
Dropzone Commander: #96,819
Forbidden Stars: #24,545
original X-Wing starter: #3,329
Force Awakens X-Wing starter: #2,224
Imperial Assault: #3,171
Star Wars Armada starter: #5,203
Zombicide Season 1: #5,401
Zombicide Season 2: #41,967
Zombicide Season 3: #28,301
Battlelore Second Edition: #45,512

On a side note, poor The Hobbit. Ouch.....

GW is doing pretty well compared to other hobby-focused stuff, but this makes it look like the market has an overwhelming preference for pre-assembled plastic miniatures. If you want to know where the money is, that's where it is.

 TheWaspinator wrote:
Let's look at Amazon "Toys and Games" rankings for a few starter sets. Since they're a huge retail presence, they should be a reasonably good gauge of how stuff is selling right now.

Age of Sigmar Starter: #59,362
2014 Dark Vengeance: #52,911
Betrayal at Calth: #26,572
Escape from Goblin Town: #305,015
Warmachine Two Player set: #77,165
Infinity Operation Icestorm: #92,835
Dropzone Commander: #96,819
Forbidden Stars: #24,545
original X-Wing starter: #3,329
Force Awakens X-Wing starter: #2,224
Imperial Assault: #3,171
Star Wars Armada starter: #5,203
Zombicide Season 1: #5,401
Zombicide Season 2: #41,967
Zombicide Season 3: #28,301
Battlelore Second Edition: #45,512

On a side note, poor The Hobbit. Ouch.....

GW is doing pretty well compared to other hobby-focused stuff, but this makes it look like the market has an overwhelming preference for pre-assembled plastic miniatures. If you want to know where the money is, that's where it is.

Is that monthly, weekly or lifetime? Only america?

MongooseMatt wrote:
Umm, spears quite important in AoS.

Yeah, not in the 4-page AoS rules though, but hidden behind £30 'battletomes'. They're not a standard weapon, with standard rules.

But you made me think, and I went to look again at the free warscrolls for the old factions. High elves in particular. Three infantry units with spears: spearmen, handmaidens, and sea guard.

All get their 2" range. Fair enough. Handmaidens don't get any extra benefit from their 'guardian spears'. Both spearmen and sea guard have 'silverwood spears'. But only spearmen get a 'spear phalanx' rule. A single spearman gets to use the 'spear phalanx' rule. A re-roll to hit. Sea guard get a re-roll to hit too, but it's a 'soldiery' rule, and requires twenty models, which - despite the fact that I'm sure it looks like a scrum on the tabletop - at least sounds a tiny bit closer to a phalanx. And spearmen have their own twenty-model rule, but it's a whole extra attack! And apparently nothing to do with the 'fact' they're a 'phalanx' with spears that can reach past eachother, or something, but because they're 'militia'.
But arguing about the names of the rules is almost beside the point. The thing is all three are spear-armed troops, but they all have different rules that do different things, both because of, and despite the fact they have spears. Sea guard are basically spearmen with an extra bow, and by implication, arguably better trained than levied militia. Why doesn't their soldiery rule get as much bonus as the phalanx rule? How does being militia give an extra, bigger bonus?

Even this one tiny speck of an example is an indication of the same old special rules runaround all over again. What would it look like if I actually did look in one of those battletomes, for the new factions? I assume, because they're army books under a different name, they don't contain general game rules.

Manchu wrote:I am not surprised in a way to hear you contrast AoS unfavorably to Lion Rampant, KK. They are similarly streamlined but LR is completely generic and really relies on the strong existing POV of the player. I think pretty much all of the flavor of LR comes from the spectacle of the miniatures and terrain and the attitude of the players.

The generic nature can be seen as a strength, for the same reason as I think you're only partly right: the flavour should come from the spectacle of the miniatures, the terrain, and the setting you choose to play in. And yes, rules too, to determine if a model is strong or weak, heavily or lightly armoured, mounted or not mounted, and so on, with bits and pieces of chrome here and there; but there shouldn't be so much of an extreme reliance on unique, special rules to provide flavour. IMO that just gets ingrained GW gamers turned around, equating setting and minis with rules, and putting a fence all around it. This is why we have people up in the 'KoW and WHFB' topic, in Dakka Discussions, recoiling from KoW (the rules) like it was poison, for the single reason that they think they 'have to' use Mantic models and Mantica fluff with it.

People talk about theme and flavour in rules. Those AoS high elf examples I gave are what helped push me away from WFB in the first place. It's not theme or flavour - it's randomness. It's arbitrary. It's game designers using the South Park manatee method of writing. "Remember the time there were... um... high elf spearmen... and they got a... reroll on 1s... to hit... in the... combat phase. We'll say it's because of phalanxes. Yeah."

Lion/Dragon Rampant, like KoW, strips that nonsense away.

LR's rules get out of the players' way

This can be seen as a good thing, compared to falling out of the rules tree and hitting every branch on the way down.

assuming the players have these great miniatures and this preexisting wonderful attitude drawn from a certain era or film.

I've started to buy new miniatures to prepare for Dragon Rampant. Do you know where my preexisting wonderful attitude is drawn from? The Warhammer world. That one that just blew up.

It can feel very liberating when you realise minis and their theme aren't physically tied to a page in an army book. (or a warscroll)

It doesn't teach the player anything he doesn't already know or make him feel anything he doesn't already feel.

I don't even...

But AoS beckons you into its world and wants to express to you its mighty, cosmic clashes.

An appropriate quote from the author:

Dan Mersey wrote:a bit of imagination (remember when we used to have to use that in fantasy games?)

http://merseybooks.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/dragon-rampant-strength-points-explained.html

I have a feeling some AoS players are in the old WFB position of wanting the fine details dictated to them, but being made to use their imagination anyway, without their knowledge. (Or even their consent) AoS is still bare. What was that campaign I commented on, the one set on an icy plane? Just to reiterate, all we were told about the setting and it's people is that it's a constantly snowstorming, snow-covered place, and that the tribes in it fight after it's... covered in snow once every thousand years. Oh, and they're shapeshifters so they can look like anything.
If that's a beckon into a world, then an invitation to a game is a guy throwing a simple white sheet over a table and saying "there y'go buddy, knock yourself out."

And there are complaints that Lion Rampant forces you to use a bit of imagination!?! Maybe we could imagine the knights are fighting in winter, after it's snowed. That should really get some motors running. (The Lion in Winter, fnar.)

Oh, and mighty cosmic clashes in what's being praised as a quick, small-model-count game, where you don't have to use your imagination... sorry, I'm rapidly losing grip on what the point was.

Although from what I've seen of rules and mini bundles on my rare visit to the GW webshop, it's not meant to stay a small-model-count game for long. Two. Hundred. Models. Over half a grand. For one official warscroll battalion. Someone remind me why this game was supposed to be a breath of fresh air from GW?

Back when I used to have money, I almost started a Tomb Kings army. To be perfectly honest, I have no idea how they would function in AoS and reading this thread has turned me off the idea even more.


I've already converted to SAGA, Lion Rampant and a host of other game systems. Frostgrave came through the door recently.

The goal of LR is to simulate the feeling of medieval combat as depicted in classic movies. But it has few mechanics that actually do that. Instead, it leans on the models. The most thematic thing about the ruleset are the pictures. I guess the duel mechanic is a close second. So in the pro column, it's streamlined. But in the con column, it has only a bare whiff of flavor. I brought up LR specifically because AoS is also streamlined, although not to the point of near-featurelessness like LR (I hope Dragon Rampant improves on that score). As I said, AoS oozes flavor. Just for example, Valkia's rule where allied Khornate models within some range may reroll a failed breaktest but if they fail again D3 outright die. Because she slays them for dishonoring the Blood God! To me, that kind of thing is fantastic. But I get that it isn't everyone's cuppa because it gets in the way of the player's control. (Although if you like LR, you can hardly complain about randomness.)

 Vermis wrote:

It doesn't teach the player anything he doesn't already know or make him feel anything he doesn't already feel.

I don't even...

Wait what?

I missed this, I'm seeing it out of context, but is this a thing that some people think a game should do?

Maybe take a look at the comment in-context before criticizing it.

Okay guys, there's been enough back and forth (myself included). This thread has gotten really far off-topic, so please only continue to post if you have something to say regarding "How AoS is doing and why"

Cheers all!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If people just want something off the shelf, AoS presents a high fantasy setting that at the moment is a bit skimpy but will be fleshed out over the coming years.

I do not believe that Age of Sigmar is going to be fleshed out, because I do not believe that GW wants to flesh it out. When given the opportunity they have only used it to further emphasise that this is a world of broad strokes. Three out of three factions so far have been soulless mooks of one variety or another, which makes it seem unlikely that next book they're going to make room for Jakob Jakobsson, loving husband and father of three, who serves in the militia to protect his neighbours and his family.

 AlexHolker wrote:
it seem unlikely that next book they're going to make room for Jakob Jakobsson, loving husband and father of three, who serves in the militia to protect his neighbours and his family

I would hope not. Regardless of what any given customer might make of that, it sounds completely off-brand. AoS has so far emphasized the fantastical over the mundane. It will be pretty interesting to see what GW will do with former Empire models like state troops. The trend toward bigger, more fantastical models isn't new to AoS, of course, and they were already starting to feel out of place in Eighth to me. But in any case, GW don't need Every Man type characters to tell the stories their customers seem to love most as 40k and especially the HH clearly demonstrates: endless columns of super humans engaged in titanic warfare does more than keep the lights on!

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Kilkrazy wrote:
If people just want something off the shelf, AoS presents a high fantasy setting that at the moment is a bit skimpy but will be fleshed out over the coming years.

I do not believe that Age of Sigmar is going to be fleshed out, because I do not believe that GW wants to flesh it out. When given the opportunity they have only used it to further emphasise that this is a world of broad strokes. Three out of three factions so far have been soulless mooks of one variety or another, which makes it seem unlikely that next book they're going to make room for Jakob Jakobsson, loving husband and father of three, who serves in the militia to protect his neighbours and his family.

I think that is probably a good (and on topic) point to look at. If GW wanted to they could easily have filled in more details of a smaller world and then worked outwards as they went forwards. We seem to have had a long time now for them to fill in the blank spots on the map (so to speak) but they don't seem to want to. Is the vast emptiness of AoS not the result of a slow release schedule but rather a feature of the setting?

And if so is that what people want? My instinct here is to say no. Both 40k and Fantasy had enough room in them to create your own colour schemes for your army, to find reasons to battle any opponent, but they were still solidly crafted settings that were full of history, events, places and characters for you to identify with and latch onto which then inspired you to add your own touches. I'm not sure without that a setting will appeal to that many people.

 Manchu wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:
it seem unlikely that next book they're going to make room for Jakob Jakobsson, loving husband and father of three, who serves in the militia to protect his neighbours and his family

I would hope not. Regardless of what any given customer might make of that, it sounds completely off-brand. AoS has so far emphasized the fantastical over the mundane. It will be pretty interesting to see what GW will do with former Empire models like state troops. The trend toward bigger, more fantastical models isn't new to AoS, of course, and they were already starting to feel out of place in Eighth to me. But in any case, GW don't need Every Man type characters to tell the stories their customers seem to love most as 40k and especially the HH clearly demonstrates: endless columns of super humans engaged in titanic warfare does more than keep the lights on!

People quickly grow tired of superinvincibilies vs superinvincibilies. As a result the superinvincibilies need to be escalated constantly or people get over it. Eventually the escalation itself will get old too.

We see this with 40k, things getting bigger and sillier, people where excited at first then quickly it became standard, so then things continued to get bigger. AOS itself is an escalation over 40k with it;s setting being even more superinvincibilies vs superinvincibilies and the models match.

However with nothing to fall back to people will get tired of it. Its like that movie where the big robots fight the big sea monsters, people loved it at first, but without the decent story etc people began to wish there was something more to it.

In short, superinvincibilies vs superinvincibilies is a short term way of keeping peoples interests when not done right.

AOS needs to have normal stuff or people have nothing to go back on when they get over the battle of titans.

 Swastakowey wrote:
People quickly grow tired of superinvincibilies vs superinvincibilies.

The HH begs to differ.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 jonolikespie wrote:
Is the vast emptiness of AoS not the result of a slow release schedule but rather a feature of the setting?

What you call "vast emptiness" I'd call breathing room. WHFB was "geographical" -- it took place on a map whereof every inch could be accounted for, broadly speaking. This is also how the Iron Kingdoms work for WM/H. This kind of setting emphasizes finitude, not only of space but also time. By contrast, the 40k setting is so big in terms of both space and time that the clock hands would never need to move again and there would still be room for every conceivable gaming scenario. GW took this "learning" from 40k and applied it to Fantasy. They traded in a terrestrial setting for a "planar" or mythological one. Story, including arc, is obviously still possible in a mythological setting but myths are not character-driven in the same sense as a lot of modern media. Even so, the mythic tone certainly has a lot of appeal. I don't think the setting of AoS is in itself a liability. I see it more as an opportunity, similar to how the concept works in 40k. But sure this won't work for everyone. There are always people complaining that "the plot" of 40k never advances.

See I'd say if you stripped out the important worlds in 40k back to just Terra, removed most of the named characters other than say the leader of each available codex, and left people not knowing if any of the other planets were inhabited by humans or if the Imperial Guard exist you'd kill almost all interest in it.

40k has a good balance of room to create your own stuff and established fluff. WHFB might have swung too hard in the direction of established fluff, but AoS is equally too far in the opposite direction with no established points of interest.

GW just pushed reset. So comparing it to a setting that they have developed over decades, whether the Old World or the 40k galaxy, will definitely leave the Mortal Realms feeling ... well, underdeveloped. That's why I think it's better to compare the setting style rather than the specific content at this point. And given each successive AoS campaign book shows us more and more of the Mortal Realms, development is already under way.

But that was the whole point Alex brought up. GW haven't fleshed it out yet and they have had months to do so. What if that emptiness is a feature, not a WIP?

 jonolikespie wrote:
GW haven't fleshed it out yet and they have had months to do so.

Don't you think that is a tad bit entitled? Especially when you compare it to settings developed over 30+ years?

So I guess "emptiness" could mean underdevelopment, which only time will change. But as I mentioned the other sense of "emptiness" (although I think it is is a pejorative term) is having a low canon density, i.e., where the official plot doesn't take up all the space in the setting. I think that is an intended feature of AoS just as it is an intended feature of 40k.

I'm not comparing it to settings developed over 30 years. I can pick up the two kings of war books next to me and read basic intro fluff for every faction, including a couple that don't have models yet. It gives me a footing in the setting to start at. AoS has given us nothing for so many factions, there are two or three we don't even know it they exist anymore.

I'm not saying we need a massive library of BL books and tons of material to sit and devour. What we need is basic information about who and what are in the setting. A lack of that is certainly turning people away.

 Vermis wrote:

MongooseMatt wrote:
Umm, spears quite important in AoS.

Yeah, not in the 4-page AoS rules though, but hidden behind £30 'battletomes'.

All of the army/model rules are free. The only rules you can't get on the website (and I believe they are available for a few bucks in the app, but I don't really look there) are some of the scenarios and formations.

 Manchu wrote:

 jonolikespie wrote:
GW haven't fleshed it out yet and they have had months to do so.

Don't you think that is a tad bit entitled? Especially when you compare it to settings developed over 30+ years?

It does not take months to write a piece of flavour text. GW has had time to write three factions with barely an ounce of personality between them: an army of respawning abhumans with all the character bleached out of them by the resurrection process, and an army of Flanderised berserkers and an army of remembered illusions. You don't think they could have simply cut that back to two such factions to make room for a third with some actual people in it?

So I guess "emptiness" could mean underdevelopment, which only time will change. But as I mentioned the other sense of "emptiness" (although I think it is is a pejorative term) is having a low canon density, i.e., where the official plot doesn't take up all the space in the setting. I think that is an intended feature of AoS just as it is an intended feature of 40k.

But it's not a feature of 40k - or at least, it wasn't in the past. 40k is a setting where a character like Ciaphas Cain exists, an Imperial Guard officer whose personality is not simply "i must win this battle because i must win this battle", but a man who values his own life and those of his companions, who has strong opinions about the nature of good leadership, who acts for his own self-interest and the interests of the Imperium as a whole.

 jonolikespie wrote:
I'm not comparing it to settings developed over 30 years.

Yes as a matter of fact you just did so in the post to which I was responding.

 jonolikespie wrote:
I can pick up the two kings of war books next to me and read

And read generic mush. The setting is called Mantica for crying out loud. The very name is a humorous reference to the generic quality of the setting, such as it is. Mantica is an empty vessel cast crudely in the shape of the Old World.

 AlexHolker wrote:
It does not take months to write a piece of flavour text.

This is an absurd line of argument. On the one hand, you are hand waving pages upon pages of flavor text already published. On the other hand, you are comparing army books with a series of novels.

 AlexHolker wrote:
But it's not a feature of 40k - or at least, it wasn't in the past.

Yes it absolutely is and yes it absolutely has been in the past. It was specifically designed by Rick Priestly that way and other developers have explicitly cited this feature.

Are you honestly attacking the naming of 'Mantica' while defending a setting where Sigmar armours his followers in Sigmarite?

Yes. The term "Mantica" is a joke that works by breaking the fourth wall. It's a joke between the company and the customers. You may not like "Sigmarite" or, over in 40k, the endless variations on blood and wolf references but they aren't winks at the audience. The KoW setting is entirely incidental to the game. The rules are not designed to reflect any particular trait of the setting nor is the setting designed to embody any particular traits. The exact opposite is true of AoS.

And you seem to be asserting that as if it is an objectively bad thing.

It certainly isn't objectively bad. It's a damn good business tactic considering Mantic's strategy is and has always been to onboard WHFB defectors.

 Manchu wrote:
Yes. The term "Mantica" is a joke that works by breaking the fourth wall. It's a joke between the company and the customers. You may not like "Sigmarite" or, over in 40k, the endless variations on blood and wolf references but they aren't winks at the audience. The KoW setting is entirely incidental to the game. The rules are not designed to reflect any particular trait of the setting nor is the setting designed to embody any particular traits. The exact opposite is true of AoS.

I would not be so sure about that. GW designers always liked to make private jokes hidden in their fluff/rules, and AoS isn't an exception. Just look at the silly special rules for some "dead characters" in the army lists on the website. Some say it's an insult to gamers, I see the designers having fun like in the old times by writing this.

So, trying to show Mantica isn't serious while saying using Sigmarite to forge the weapons of Sigmar's armies is, that's not being objective on that matter. It just shows you are subjectively in favor of GW.

And honestly, I have no problem with one or the other. They are just both names made by their creators. There is no real gain to judge them one above the other on that matter - could have been another word, after all, like Wartopia or Adamantine.


About the fluff, I also see AoS as a new one, and not just "the continuation of WFB's story". It's true we don't know a lot of details, but I see this as a strength so that you can design your own story in that vast "world". To me, it's quite compatible with GW's motto "Forge the Narrative". What I always liked in the GW games is that you could make your own lord, and not just being forced to use a "named character" with already a story and its own destiny. Sure, there are those like Archaon or the Celestant Prime, but you don't have to play them if you don't want to. I can still find a place for my own Vampire Lord (well, lady actually) to forge her own empire with her own troops in the Realm of Shadows, not caring about what happened to Alarielle in the Realm of Life. There is no problem at all, because the realms are so vast and there are plenty of place to describe your own setting.

At least, that's how I see things. There's still plenty of time to develop in the months/years to come, after all.