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warhammers not dead its just called kings of war now.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 notprop wrote:
Build it and they will come, its a cliché but holds much truth.

After significant monetary and time investment creating starters for half a dozen games and not having people catch on with it, I just go with whatever people seem to be most interested at the time.

I'm sure it's partly the locals' fault and partly mine because of the nature of my work sometimes I have to abandon wargaming for months at a time.... but the reality for some (if not most) people is that an OOP game is a dead game. I've had enough trouble trying to get people to consider rules that are supported but not available off the shelf.

Yeah availability of time is a big factor I have found. Many of the chaps leading the charge seem to be always available for a game, club nights or not. Me I can't commit to a definite gaming night because of work never mind anything else.

As to availability, well free downloads like many of the old Speciaist Games make all such systems without barriers. The availability if the rules along with the full fluff and extra rules or expansions like say Necromunda gives you even more opportunity to hook people in. You have all the tools available to you. Of corse luck as a part of it and in our case plenty of people baabling on about how cool Epic/Mordheim/Necromunda was back in day helps. We get as many old players as new picking these games up.

You often seem down on GW, assuming your area is similar it might be a rather hard sell getting someone to pick up an old GW game. Still you only need one and hopefully your scene should grow from there.

Dead as a doornail where I am, 100% switch to Kings of War with about 2 dozen players at my local club.

Nobody plays, buys or likes AoS, it's a great game to introduce kids to wargaming but that's about it.

All warhammer models are compatible with KoW, so all the warhammer players simply shrugged their shoulders and used their armies to play KoW instead.

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

8th ed isn't supported. Not worth playing.

 Vermis wrote:
8th ed isn't supported. Not worth playing.

Of course. No game is worth playing unless its driven by the requirement to buy more new stuff. Unsupported = not worth playing.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

Who blew up the world?

hobojebus wrote:
Who blew up the world?

At the mo I have six game books, four background books, a couple of art books, a few novels, and for some reason a stack of WD material going back over a decade, on me bookshelf. That's just the stuff I kept. It didn't all spontaneously combust last July.

hobojebus wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

Who blew up the world?

Rome fell. A long long time ago. It's dead Jim.

Doesn't stop me enjoying any number of my historical fiction books (Simon scarrow, conn Igulden, etc etc) set in Rome, and following the stories of folks who have been and gone for millennia.

Gw nuked the old world. Ok, fine. So move on. Or else enjoy it for what it was - a setting you probably enjoyed immensely. And one that has a beginning, a middle, and now, an end. Like Rome, it fell. Doesn't mean you can't go back and enjoy the stories, or dig out your rulebooks and play games with your mates if they want to play as well. It's only 'gone' if you choose to let it go. Take charge of your own hobby. You decide what you want to do, and you decide what you want to play.

I'd better chuck my Napoleonics armies on the fire, apparently it's all over so they are no use any more. Just heard.

And there was me holding out for a new brigade of lizard riders or something to keep it supported.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

hobojebus wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:

 Nurgle wrote:

 Haechi wrote:
Dama queen much?

Imagine taking 15 years of your life and throwing it to the wind along with a hobby that brings you and many others joy.
Call it what you want, but many people feel the same.

And GW FORCED you to throw it to the wind, did they?

Who blew up the world?

The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:


The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

Exactly. Blood Bowl is healthier and bigger now than it ever was when it was "supported".

GW police doesn't confiscate your old armybooks or force you to play sigmarines.

Jervis held a gun to my head and made me play Sigmarines!

So many exalted comments so little time!

You can't destroy good fiction and a fun game.

9th age, EFFL and the good ol' oldhammerers are proof of that.

More anecdata, but AoS and it's simple ruleset is what actually got me interested in wargaming in recent months. I'm even leaning toward the Sigmarines!

See I would love to see a strong community make a proper 9th Edition set of rules. Certain FAQs could be answered by the majority and then have the rules updated. New models in AoS could be converted to the community's set of rules.

 Lord Scythican wrote:
See I would love to see a strong community make a proper 9th Edition set of rules. Certain FAQs could be answered by the majority and then have the rules updated. New models in AoS could be converted to the community's set of rules.

That's pretty much how 9th age operates. Close to 6000 users already.

 Lord Scythican wrote:
See I would love to see a strong community make a proper 9th Edition set of rules. Certain FAQs could be answered by the majority and then have the rules updated. New models in AoS could be converted to the community's set of rules.

Some people would far rather have a whinge than do something creative, or as in 9th ages case get involved in other more creative peoples projects.

jouso wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:


The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

Exactly. Blood Bowl is healthier and bigger now than it ever was when it was "supported".

GW police doesn't confiscate your old armybooks or force you to play sigmarines.

Blood Bowl is a different animal. Blood Bowl didn't require several hundreds of dollars and months if not years time investment to create an army. It is entirely feasible for a person to own not 2 but many Blood Bowl teams, all complete and ready to play. You can just take your box of Blood Bowl down to your local club with multiple teams and play some games with some randoms if you wanted to do that.

WHFB really isn't the same. For all the years playing WHFB I don't have what I'd consider a single "complete" WHFB army. I look at my Orcs and Goblins, probably my biggest army with a couple of hundred models and there's still several hundred dollars and a couple of hundred hours work to get it where I envisioned it. Those are big amounts of time and money to spend on something you aren't sure you're going to be able to find someone to play a game with you. Not to speak of my Bretonnians which I'm waiting to see if they get the chop completely.

Lot of GW White Knights in here.

When will we see the army book and miniatures?

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

jouso wrote:

 Fenrir Kitsune wrote:


The players did. GW didn't force them to throw away their toys, their books and their game and collapse onto the bed sobbing.

That's a choice the player makes for themself.

Exactly. Blood Bowl is healthier and bigger now than it ever was when it was "supported".

GW police doesn't confiscate your old armybooks or force you to play sigmarines.

Blood Bowl is a different animal. Blood Bowl didn't require several hundreds of dollars and months if not years time investment to create an army. It is entirely feasible for a person to own not 2 but many Blood Bowl teams, all complete and ready to play. You can just take your box of Blood Bowl down to your local club with multiple teams and play some games with some randoms if you wanted to do that.

I have 5 BB teams. 2 built around the old astrogranite pitch plastic teams with a few additions, a TK team and two teams bought more recently from manufacturers that weren't even around when GW kicked BB to the forgotten pile.

I have kept 3 warhammer armies (20.000-something points) the others I'm slowly seliing because I will never have time to get them to speed but a guy from my club has 11 of them. He's put countless hours even though he's the fastest painter I've ever met (and looking great to boot). We're talking over 100.000 points. Does anyone expected him, and others like him, to just rebase to rounds or move to KoW? Of course not, first we kept playing 8th, then jumped straight to 9th age.

Us, and many like us couldn't care less for officialdom or company support. And guess what, if you have a core of gamers with good looking armies the curious teenagers want to play with you, and want to build armies like yours. And now that rulebooks, armybooks, magic cards and whatnot you can spend all your allowance in minis. And not just official(tm) minis, but 2nd hand, cheap mantic, wargames factory or bones minis instead of paying the GW plastic crack tax.

jouso wrote:
I have kept 3 warhammer armies (20.000-something points) the others I'm slowly seliing because I will never have time to get them to speed but a guy from my club has 11 of them. He's put countless hours even though he's the fastest painter I've ever met (and looking great to boot). We're talking over 100.000 points. Does anyone expected him, and others like him, to just rebase to rounds or move to KoW? Of course not, first we kept playing 8th, then jumped straight to 9th age.

Yeah I'd say you guys are just a touch out of the ordinary.

For most people who have much more modest armies and modest gaming groups it's going to be a bigger blow than the people who have large groups and could basically open their own GW with the amount of stuff they've accumulated

In my region WHFB had problems for years and almsot nobody played it. So few complained when it went away,

Best comment i read here: GW did indeed not kill WHFB, players left it years ago so it starved to death.

The few that still kept their models and still want to play once and again, like me, choose WHFB 8th without the 6th spell and then there is Kings of War.

I never sell painted armies.
I will keep most of my (rather big) WHFB armies just as they are. I might move some Orcs & Goblins to my 40k armies with a big of converting. And i might put my 2 unpainted WHFB armies on round bases to play Age of Sigmar (not my game, but i played worse games).

I also kept all my BFG armies, Epic armies and Blood Bowl teams. We still play all of those games once and again.
And all of those might be back in a few years...

Might be the same for WHFB. Might even be a smart move of GW to bring it back after 5 years or so... :-)

ORicK wrote:
Best comment i read here: GW did indeed not kill WHFB, players left it years ago so it starved to death.

Erm, yeah, but they left it because of what GW did to it.

The biggest blow WHFB took around these parts was 8th edition.

Yes and no...

I play WHFB since 3rd edition and IMO 8th actually was the best one except for the way too powerfull "6th spells" and the price of the models (an army) for new players.

I doubt if the 8th would have been a problem at all without economic problems AND competitors like X-Wing and several skirmish games that cost less to play AND cost less effort (easy, pre-painted).

Where i live, and in the whole of the Netherlands really, also what i hear in Germany, wargaming as a whole gone down.
Many players i know quit everything, some choose 1 or 2 games to play (usually 40k, X-Wing or WoT), some quit alltogether.
People like easy-to-learn games and the creative aspect (modelling, painting) speaks to lesser and lesser people as well.

The numbers just in from last week were that woirldwide X-Wing is the best selling game, 40k 2nd, Star Wars Armada 3rd.

What X-Wing and SW Armada have in common is the SW franchise that everyone knows (even non-wargamers), the models are pre-painted and the games are VERY easy to learn.

I have and quite like X-Wing by the way.Played Armada too and had fun.
But i learned both in about 10-15 minutes; allthough that says nothing about the quality, it says something about the depth of a game.
But you need to invest time to learn it, get into it and, by playing and re-thinking, you can become good at it (where winning is something else then being a good player by the way).

As i see it WHFB took to much investment (time and money) at a time that people want to invest less of both.

I know a lot of people who think 8th is the "best" rules. My observation is it pissed off a lot of veterans and raised the bar of entry too high (not just price, but the sheer amount of time required to paint a large army).

Even without economic problems and competitors (if I recall correctly 8th came out about 2 years before X-wing) 8th wasn't a very appealing game to new comers and you need new comers to counter balance those leaving, and people are always leaving, but people left at a far higher rate on 8th's release.

You can say "yes and no", but I think 8th was one of the biggest nails in WHFB's coffin, even if a few people reckon it was the best for various subjective reasons.

That was the ÿes" part.

Yes, 8th also had the downside of the option of "huge units".
But i personally did not like and did not play that "tactic", because it was a no-brainer, not interesting or fun for both players. Multiple medium sized units were tactically more interesting. Especially in the hand of a good player.

And most players i know had multiple armies and most had armies with lots of infantry/models.
The bar of entry was high for newcomers, yes, but that does not explain that about 80% of old players quit as well.
And i know several people that put more money in X-Wing then you need to build a new WHFB army.

In this region quite some players switched to World of Tanks at first, some also started playing Dystopian Wars, but most quit those as well after a year.

8th also did have good wargaming concepts i personally had been waiting for since 3rd edition, which Warmaster has had forever. I would call this "the end of hero-hammer".
Probably not a smart move either indeed. The "Competetive gamers" liked it less. But the veteran gamers (most of them also knowing or playing Warmaster) i know actually liked this change.

Many players quit alltogether or quit both WHFB and 40k and only want to play smaller, easier games, like X-Wing and small skirmish games, that cost both less money and effort.

Age of Sigmar is simple and sells better. And it is definately not cheap.

ORicK wrote:
The bar of entry was high for newcomers, yes, but that does not explain that about 80% of old players quit as well.

Steadfast and random charge distances are the big ones I heard about from a lot of people.

And you can argue about how steadfast is good or bad and how random charge distances is good or bad, I don't really care, a lot of vets didn't like the changes.
.
And people are always going to be leaving a game, you NEED to appeal to newcomers or your game will slowly become unprofitable.

Yeah you have to feel sorry for GW store managers how are you supposed to sell £700 armies to new people?

So many other games are so much cheaper you can play three or four for the price of a single army.

That kind of money buys a decent gaming pc or both consoles and a bunch of games.

Bolt action £100 gets you a full army, same with mantic forces, you can do an x-wing fleet for less.

GW greed sunk wfb stop blaming the players they didn't make the game pay to win.

ORicK wrote:


And most players i know had multiple armies and most had armies with lots of infantry/models.
The bar of entry was high for newcomers, yes, but that does not explain that about 80% of old players quit as well.

I never quit WFB, in spite of selling off most of my armies and only keeping two. I just slowly stopped playing as 8th wasn't............fun. Used to think "I could have played something else in this time" so ended up doing just that. Couple of times the random rules made things get silly and ruined the game.

Played 5th edition a while back and that was great fun. Now playing same setting, same models different rules - non GW.

There are still people playing 6th and 7th edition WRG Ancients, even though that system stopped being developed in the early 1990s.

To be honest, unless you want continual changes within one rule system, it's better for a game to reach maturity and then stop.

I know it's arguable that WHFB had reached maturity, but that's the problem with GW. They aren't mainly interested in writing good rules, they want to sell lots of models and books without continually introducing new games, so they need to keep changing things in their existing games.