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Baron Klatz wrote:
Well, with all due respect and as yourself admitted, that's what you believe. Besides some of the novels showing the struggles of the innocents in the mortal realms, any additional sourcebooks could really help you care about those people.

Of course, this is all opinion based when we get down to it. AoS could make great books and very well give you what you're asking in the nitty-gritty of why a town is there and why it's important and it's people worth saving but if you yourself can't invest yourself into the setting then it's all for nought anyway.

40k novels deal with countless worlds and random cities that meet death on a regular basis but are usually exceptional reads. No reason why AoS can't make just as compelling novels with it's fickle dieties, war to reclaim peace in a chaos ravaged setting and massive realms of unexplored possibilities.

[Edit]: @BobtheInquisitor, that's fair enough. Though there has been some good reads, GW might want to consider making it more accessible.

Nice to see things like the Lexicanum helping to show the events in the lore to that regard. Might have to start a Narrative guideline in the AoS section to help people catch up.

Well yeah, I suppose if your average 40K bolterporn novel is what you're after then AoS will keep you entertained until the cows come home. There's nothing wrong with that if it's your bag, but it's the pretense that AoS is just on the cusp of become some super-awesome and deep setting that gets my goat - maybe in 10 or 20 years we'll get an Eisenhorn or Matthias Thulmann equivalent out of an AoS author, but I doubt it, and I'm certainly not going to spend a fortune on GW stuff for a setting that might, some day get better.

I'd be perfectly happy to ignore the AoS lore which doesn't captivate me and deal with some of the stylistic choices (I'm only truly happy with most minis when I can convert the jeck out of them) and even the size increase, though I like prefer my minis more skewing to Gobbo or regular 28mm size with only the occasional ogre sized brute to look imposing in comparison. I can make room for shiny new things in my older edition armies (and ignore the actually playing tge game part even more )

But those prices. Ouch. Ork Nobz are reasonable in my book, big elite guys so you don't get a huge squad, but the sticker price is still easy to stomach. The new Orruk whatever, no, that's more than I paid for freaking Karl Franz on Deathclaw (and the druid on foot I made from the same kit). A kit I probably shouldn't have bought because it showed GW that ridiculously large models sell.

Half your prices and I'm willing to stop nagging and buy your crap (with discount) and start all those little factions and projects you want people to have.

Edit: Stupid shaking bus. I want to add that I'm REALLY salty about those Bret rumours. I would've gotten so many more knights and new M@A units and heros. If you had released them.

I have really enjoyed the aos novels. They are better than the 40k bolter porn you speak of, and are far less drama filled than the hh novels. Seems to me like you haven't even read them all, or were biased from the start by your comment.

Sorry but fantasy is dead, aos is what is here, growing, and outselling the old wfb.

 455_PWR wrote:
aos is what is here, growing, and outselling the old wfb.

[citation needed]

I think someone had decent numbers for AoS at some point. I couldn't care less though as I'm all about 40k.

@455_PWR,

Agreed, though you probably should have said selling well rather than outselling WFB.

Now every old guard is going to jump down your throat.

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:
Hear hear! There's so much for them to expand on and they've done a considerable amount when factoring in that they also have to balance out the releases with 40k.

What's annoying is that many disregard the lore and say it hasn't shown much when they haven't even read a novel of it yet.

The AoS lore so far has only covered major events and big battles, that's exactly what a wargame focused narrative is supposed to do. We'll have to wait for things like the upcoming Silver Tower game and any kind of future rpg supplements to get the level of lore detail people complain the setting lacks.

To be fair, the new lore is damn bloody expensive. It's even worse if the customer doesn't even know what to expect or if he'll like it. I'd love to catch up on the AOS lore, but the prices for the novellas are just bananas, and the gaming/fluff books are beyond that.

Agree. I bought the highly overpriced first "realm gate wars" book, eager to learn more about this new age of sigmar.
The writing was really poor, and the stories utterly failed to give me any grasp of the setting apart from massive battles with anonymous stormcasts against hordes of anonymous chaos worshipers. I was really dissapointed, and will not pay another krona for AoS lore anytime soon.

I do however find it quite easy to get in to the world with homemade scenarios and fluff. And that has alot more freedom for the players than the old world had.

For example
First battle was my empire general that had secretly gathered a small army to revolt against the evil nurgle deamon count ruling the region. Inspiered by the rumous of the stormcast crusade the general finaly decided that the time of the uprising was due, and it played out as an ambush against the evil count.

Second battle is a rescue mission for a steamtank commander trapped in a soulgrinders horrible forge lair. Etc, and so forth.

The oficcial lore though, as far as Im concerned, stink. I appreciate the funny maps though.

I Just cannot get along with the AOS lore.
Im not fussy with my reading either, almost any fantasy and sci-fi interests me from Tolkien to Bolter porn and Iain Banks.

I have nothing against AOS at all, I quite like the no points thing too, but the lore just seems really bad to me, It reminds me of those cheap cartoons that are made around action figures just to sell toys.
Maybe it is because we know the story around how it came about that influences how we regard it, I just actually want it to be good enough for me to read but as it is, id rather reread felix and gotrek.

GW will be just fine, its just taken them a long long time to set foot in the modern world !

 455_PWR wrote:
I have really enjoyed the aos novels. They are better than the 40k bolter porn you speak of, and are far less drama filled than the hh novels. Seems to me like you haven't even read them all, or were biased from the start by your comment.

Sorry but fantasy is dead, aos is what is here, growing, and outselling the old wfb.

Why would you expect someone to have read the AOS novels? The burden should not be on new customers to search out something to love about the setting. If GW prices the novels like first edition Gone With The Winds, then only people who are already fans will buy them. To convince new customers that AOS is any deeper than the intro fluff paragraphs on the website, GW should put the background out there as easy and cheap to stumble into as possible. Until they make AOS accessible, it is completely fair to judge the setting on the meager scraps that fed our first impressions.

@Fayric, nice fluff ideas.

I was thinking of an Empire campaign that involved defending a broken down steamtank and then using it as a battering ram on an Orruk fortress.

Also, concerning the old lore, it wasn't all cheap to get into. Ever see the rpg book prices? ( worth every cent, though)

The old fluff came in MMPBs at market prices. The omnibuses for Thulmann, Brunner, Blackhearts, Gotrek and Felix, Genevieve, the Ambassador, the Vampire War, and so on, cost $10 each for three novels' worth of fiction. They were amazing deals.

A book with Short Stories (like first chapter of the novels) about 5€ as ebook would get people easy introduced to the new background and is cheap enough for those who are not already fans

 455_PWR wrote:
Seems to me like you haven't even read them all

All 200 of 'em?!

God, no! Please, I'd rather take the bees!

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
The old fluff came in MMPBs at market prices. The omnibuses for Thulmann, Brunner, Blackhearts, Gotrek and Felix, Genevieve, the Ambassador, the Vampire War, and so on, cost $10 each for three novels' worth of fiction. They were amazing deals.

Yeah they were, wish that was still an option going forward. I'm a huge BL fan but the quality and pricing is getting really hard to take stabs at the amount of fic and stomach at the same time if it's not what I was hoping for--so, not great.

 455_PWR wrote:
Sorry but fantasy is dead, aos is what is here, growing, and outselling the old wfb.

Proof or it didn't happen.

Fantasy, between the actually growing Oldhammer trend and the more recent Ninth Age, looks more alive to me than AoS.

A game only dies when nobody bothers to play it.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/686899.page

Looks like Age of Sigmar is alive and well to me.

I think that one of the best indicators that AoS is doing alright is that GW keeps releasing big, splashy new models for it and giving AoS significant launch window time.

 455_PWR wrote:

Sorry but fantasy is dead, aos is what is here, growing, and outselling the old wfb.

Where are you getting the figures to prove it is growing? and outselling the old WHFB? Any proof that AOS models are outselling the pre-AOS WHFB models? and do you have some GW insider knowledge on sales figures of the Last Chance to Buy range vs the last 3 months of AOS model sales?

 Talys wrote:
I think that one of the best indicators that AoS is doing alright is that GW keeps releasing big, splashy new models for it and giving AoS significant launch window time.

Or the work was already mostly done, and there was nothing to be gained by not releasing them?

Or that the models are selling ok but not to be used in playing AoS?

Or someone thinks throwing releases at people is the way to revive flagging sales?

There's plenty of plausible explanations that don't require AoS to be in a good place as a game.

AOS seems to be about big, flashy kits that get people's attention versus WHFB's old rank-and-file focus. In that regard, the catalog for AOS *should* be much smaller (requiring much less upkeep) and the ROI for kits should be higher.

Now, whether AOS is as successful (or even close to as successful) as WHFB during its hayday (roughly 5th-7th) is another matter altogether. The costs of models for the game seem to be quite high- now of course they're much larger so as to justify this cost- but it still seems like it would push the game to a slightly more niche category for consumers.

Really, there won't be a way to tell until we get some more reports. Anecdotally, I haven't heard much positive about success of this brand overall, but of course the game's introduction to the customer base was...poor, to say the least. The Orcs (I'm not using that dumb copyright name) are probably the first big AOS release that have seen overwhelmingly positivity, but that might have a bit to do with the portability of the models into 40k.

 455_PWR wrote:
I have really enjoyed the aos novels. They are better than the 40k bolter porn you speak of, and are far less drama filled than the hh novels. Seems to me like you haven't even read them all, or were biased from the start by your comment.

Sorry but fantasy is dead, aos is what is here, growing, and outselling the old wfb.

And fourth edition D&D is the future of the game....

I had my doubts about 4th edition D&D at the time - but was a bit surprised to find that my doubts were the majority.

I have my doubts about AoS being the future of Warhammer - but I won't be surprised when it turns out that I'm right.

The Auld Grump

Ya know, I have been negative towards GW for years because of the way they have been conducting themselves and their prices. AoS was like a nightmare come true for me, but with the company truly listening for the first time in years has me hopeful that they will one day make AoS into a slightly better constructed game with some form of balancing mechanism. Even if they don't release a point system

That, and it gives me hope that maybe one day my 2nd Ed Wyche Cult models might also be useful again. We shall see, for the first time in years I am optimistic about the future of my favorite models and armies. Used to hope GW would fail, but now I can't say that I feel that way.

I get it, a lot of people are pissed at them for the roughlyten years of crap they have been feeding us, and rightfully so. But it does seem even GW can learn (very slowly).

 Talys wrote:
I think that one of the best indicators that AoS is doing alright is that GW keeps releasing big, splashy new models for it and giving AoS significant launch window time.

They crammed the entire Orruk/Destruction release into one week, when the previous 3 weeks had one new model released (and that was a single space marine collectors edition)

Chad Warden wrote:

 Talys wrote:
I think that one of the best indicators that AoS is doing alright is that GW keeps releasing big, splashy new models for it and giving AoS significant launch window time.

They crammed the entire Orruk/Destruction release into one week, when the previous 3 weeks had one new model released (and that was a single space marine collectors edition)

Maybe I'm wrong, but it felt like there was recently a whole month of Stormcast stuff before the Space Marine anniversary. It always feels longer when it's fantasy, because I really want more 40k releases Then, there were the Dwarf releases earlier this year too.

I mean, we're only in April, and there have been 3 giant AoS models -- and none for 40k. MORE TITANS!

 Talys wrote:

Chad Warden wrote:

 Talys wrote:
I think that one of the best indicators that AoS is doing alright is that GW keeps releasing big, splashy new models for it and giving AoS significant launch window time.

They crammed the entire Orruk/Destruction release into one week, when the previous 3 weeks had one new model released (and that was a single space marine collectors edition)

Maybe I'm wrong, but it felt like there was recently a whole month of Stormcast stuff before the Space Marine anniversary. It always feels longer when it's fantasy, because I really want more 40k releases Then, there were the Dwarf releases earlier this year too.

I mean, we're only in April, and there have been 3 giant AoS models -- and none for 40k. MORE TITANS!

You know, I haven't really been paying too much attention to their website right now, now that I stop to think about it, it is insane just how much stuff has been released for AoS recently. Hah, besides an army being redone, you never saw that much pushed out the doors for Fantasy.

Fantasy was killed due to bad sales. Talk to a gw investor, sales rep, or someone of rep at gw and they will confirm this. The sales issues I assume stemmed from imbalance and magic issues, starting with 5th.

As for aos is here... no citation needed... it's in stores.

As for aos is growing... go to various forums, tournaments, etc. The game has grown quite a bit. Tournaments had a half dozen folks, now there are several times that at most tournaments.

As for sales, you can see gw Financials online. Look to recent rumor threads or news posts on why gw got a new ceo. The major point was 40k is losing mass sales, not aos. Staff from gw has said that aos has increased fantasy sales (for collectors, famers, old fantasy players, etc).

Don't believe me? I don't care, aos is here and hasn't been changed yet (one past esition of wfb lasted 6 only 6 months). Naysayers will naysay, like the post above by a member that has an opinion that it is bad... but confirmed he didn't read the books lol.

All I know is wfb is dead in the major tournament scene, so it will end up like mage knight, star wars minis, etc, eventually. I liked the game, but I also like aos.

for sales, you can see gw Financials online. Look to recent rumor threads or news posts on why gw got a new ceo. The major point was 40k is losing mass sales, not aos. Staff from gw has said that aos has increased fantasy sales (for collectors, famers, old fantasy players, etc).

Citation needed.

GW don't report by system. They've even stopped reporting by territory and now only report by channel.

GW staff are the least reliable source of information, everything is awesome according to them, that's their job.

GW got a new CEO because Kirby is rapidly closing in on retirement age and it isn't really done to be both CEO and Chairman, which had been the case since Mark Wells left.

Not that it's directly correlated to sales (since GW minis are used in all the systems), I really don't think AoS tournament is a point in AoS favour.

How many WHFB tournaments ran before the AoS release compared to AoS tournaments after?

US had a whole 'masters' infrastructure for WHFB didn't it? Now that's gone to KOW. Every convention style gaming event I've heard about has both 9th age and KoW drawing higher attendance than AoS (though I obviously has no comprehensive knowledge here).

GW could theoretically sell minis well to people playing AoS at home and other game systems. AoS could theoretical be growing (from a pretty horrible baseline mind you). Pointing to tournaments and fora though (where AoS is bombing hard), paints a very different picture however.

Fwiw. Whenever I go into the local GW it seems that the younger customers 12-14 are buying and playing AoS the older folks are playing 40k.

There is a customer base there, it's easy to dismiss AoS because yeah it's easy and fashionable to bitch everything GW do. But people are buying and playing it, even if it's not you or your group.

Are they doing it in sufficiently increased numbers and with sufficiently increased amounts of cash to offer any improvement over its predecessor though? That's the thing which can't be proven by anyone claiming that it's growing.

It's also self evidently not "fashionable to bitch everything GW do" (sic) as can be seen by the positive reactions engendered by anything they do which is widely well received.
A certain amount of cynicism is to be expected, given the last few years behavior, but, by and large, people still get excited by the good things and will give the bad stuff a kicking.