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Fanboy3 - that's it. Travelling Man had (IIRC) a very small section of GW stuff, like a shelf, when I was in. It may have mostly been the RPGs.

I quite enjoyed Manchester, though we were only down there for an afternoon. I'd probably visit again at some point if there was a suitable draw

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Herzlos wrote:
]Yeah but you still don't know if there's a large group of players NOT buying things in person.

Well, no, that's impossible. Obviously we can only work on the figures we know, and from that, apparently only 16 AoS players make regular use of the GW store. A store that can probably host 16 games.

Kilkrazy wrote:
People like different games for different reasons. A number of users have condemned AoS for being only "an excuse to push models around while rolling lots of dice." But that's what plenty of people want to do, so what's the problem?

Problem is, some people need to believe that they are smarter or more superior to other people. They think they are playing Chess instead of Checkers. They think if something is more complicated or has more rules, that they are superior and smarter than other people who do play those games. In reality all you are doing is playing a similar game. Chess is just like Checkers. Both are fun. Both move pieces across the Exact same board. One is more simpler than the other, but in the end it's the same game, spending time doing something you like against an opponent and having fun.

Also, 100% of murderers have drunk water at least once!

Interesting approach though. State facts, infer an unfounded conclusion, then when people question your hypothesis demand they disprove the facts.
It's like chemtrails and flat earthers...
I mean, I could state that nobody plays any Mantic Games anywhere at all because in the city that I live in because we have no FLGS within 10 miles and nobody plays it at the club I go to.

I never could find the Manchester GW either. Fanboy 3 is an *odd* little shop, but seems pleasant enough.

Confirmation bias: the thread.

Manchester GW is in the Arndale centre, sandwiched between Boots and a wedding dress shop. Pop in now and again to buy paint. Nice enough guys. Not too keen on the polo shirts tucked into pants attire.

16 people is pretty good considering the size of the store. I think they have four tables.

I live in Manchester. I don't play in any of the stores there. No intention of ever doing that. Same with the people I do play with; no interest in playing at stores.

For my friends they've seen a 100% increase in the number of people playing "fantasy" since AoS came out. Because there was two of them beforehand and now four of us play it. Stats, what a wonderful thing.

To answer the OP more directly, AoS before the first big book was a good concept lacking in direction. The Battleplans came out and we've had a lot of fun playing through them. They're a lot of fun (some more than others). We've had games that look won in the second turn, then it's a nail biter until the final, fifth round. Swings and roundabouts happen a lot. Nothing is for granted on the tabletop.
Looking forward to the General's Handbook in July.

[hobojebus]

are you calling the GW staffer a liar?

Funnily enough I'm pretty sure you would if his statements were that AoS was exceedingly popular there.

The hobby in general is in a massive upheaval where one hobby can be overwhelming in one town where as the next is completely different in games and attitude.

Personally I think this is better for the hobby in general as everyone's getting to sample new and exciting things instead of get stuck with one hobby and have no other options.

Now if only that pesky tabletop superiority complex would disappear....

Hobo will be back after he's finished screaming into a pillow;
some info from Atia's blog suggests AoS is now about 30% of business. Which would mean it's selling better than fantasy was in the last few years.
Salt obviously, but the third source to say AoS is doing well in the last month.

The further AoS gets away from the abysmal launch the better off it will be, I suspect. I'd also assume GW's newer turn in general policy is also helping quite a bit.

 wuestenfux wrote:

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
Say what you will, the models are absolutely gorgeous.

Right.

The rules are meh as we all know. The game was largely dead in our area. But now in our group we've started an AoS league with six players.

The mindset of a GW addict. :-(
I really don't get this.
We live in an age where there are more rulesets and variety of settings than there has probably ever been ever. Why choose to play a game that has a "meh" ruleset?
If you like the figures, fine, I understand, (I like a lot of them - which is why I frequent this forum) but why not use them in a ruleset that you actually enjoy. There's so much more out there than GW rulesets, even if you do like their figures best.

Getting people to play other rulesets is insanely difficult. People will largely play a game that has a lot of players in it, regardless of quality of ruleset, because they want people to play against.

 auticus wrote:
Getting people to play other rulesets is insanely difficult. People will largely play a game that has a lot of players in it, regardless of quality of ruleset, because they want people to play against.

I agree. Except the poster kind of implied they were starting a league in their own little group. That's the perfect situation for trying out new games.

In my experience, the people in little groups are still swayed by what everyone else around them is playing.

This is a common occurrence where I live. We have people that gripe that the only game people will play is GW but when we try to host Frostgrave or Dragon Rampant games, they turn their nose up to it and keep complaining.

RoperPG wrote:
Hobo will be back after he's finished screaming into a pillow;
some info from Atia's blog suggests AoS is now about 30% of business. Which would mean it's selling better than fantasy was in the last few years.
Salt obviously, but the third source to say AoS is doing well in the last month.

A meaningless statistic without any context to place it in. If the period that was taken over was a month or group of months when something new came out for AoS and nothin came out for 40k, then 30% is not a large number as most sales occur within the first month or so.

You also have to account for panic buying of models, how much short term money did GW get from killing TK, Bret's and large swathes of dwarfs, WE and empire? Enough that they decided to do a 2nd run of some of them. I'm sure there's also plenty of panic buying of regular stuff trying to get them before they swap to round bases.

Oh, I stated salt required. It's just that some have difficulty separating facts from opinions at the best of times...

RoperPG wrote:
I never could find the Manchester GW either.

It's hidden behind a wedding dress shop in the back corner underneath the food court. The wedding dress shop sticks out a few feet further than the GW which totally obscures it from vue unless you walk right up to it.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

RoperPG wrote:
Hobo will be back after he's finished screaming into a pillow;
some info from Atia's blog suggests AoS is now about 30% of business. Which would mean it's selling better than fantasy was in the last few years.
Salt obviously, but the third source to say AoS is doing well in the last month.

Since the only figure we've had for WHFB was about 8%, that'd mean that AoS is doing about 4 times as well as WHFB. In isolation, that's a crazy claim. Unless it's over a very short window (if they only count the week most of WHFB hit "Last chance to buy" then I could see it). But for the entire financial year or half year? I just can't see it.

Maybe AoS is picking up, as you said, there have been a few claims now. But there's also been claims that it's doing terribly and HQ is worried. I put more weight behind the latter because the rumour source has been faultless so far, and it ties in with all of the other signs (investors reports, the panicked change in direction, complete lack of interest locally, etc).
It'd be awesome if it became popular and evolved into a mature, competent game, but I'm just not seeing it. It came so close to being my ideal game.

RoperPG wrote:
Hobo will be back after he's finished screaming into a pillow;
some info from Atia's blog suggests AoS is now about 30% of business. Which would mean it's selling better than fantasy was in the last few years.
Salt obviously, but the third source to say AoS is doing well in the last month.

Yes that's why GW issued an investor warning...because AoS is so wildly popular.

hobojebus wrote:

RoperPG wrote:
Hobo will be back after he's finished screaming into a pillow;
some info from Atia's blog suggests AoS is now about 30% of business. Which would mean it's selling better than fantasy was in the last few years.
Salt obviously, but the third source to say AoS is doing well in the last month.

Yes that's why GW issued an investor warning...because AoS is so wildly popular.

Here's a website you'll love...
Spurious Correlations

To be clear, it's entirely possible that AoS is doing abysmally. But for some their standard of evidence is atrocious and are walking exercises in confirmation bias.

RoperPG wrote:
Oh, I stated salt required. It's just that some have difficulty separating facts from opinions at the best of times...

Yeah, I realise you stated that, I just don't want to come back in a year and hear about how AoS is doing awesome compared to WHFB because it's 30% of GW's sales when the evidence of it is worse than anecdotal because at least anecdotal evidence comes with context

The internet has a bad habit of just repeating numbers until they are taken as fact, even if they were without context, with no source or a poor source.

^^exalt

hobojebus wrote:

RoperPG wrote:
Hobo will be back after he's finished screaming into a pillow;
some info from Atia's blog suggests AoS is now about 30% of business. Which would mean it's selling better than fantasy was in the last few years.
Salt obviously, but the third source to say AoS is doing well in the last month.

Yes that's why GW issued an investor warning...because AoS is so wildly popular.

I can't find any information on the internet about any "investor warning", can you link me a source for this?

DeadlySarcasm wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

RoperPG wrote:
Hobo will be back after he's finished screaming into a pillow;
some info from Atia's blog suggests AoS is now about 30% of business. Which would mean it's selling better than fantasy was in the last few years.
Salt obviously, but the third source to say AoS is doing well in the last month.

Yes that's why GW issued an investor warning...because AoS is so wildly popular.

I can't find any information on the internet about any "investor warning", can you link me a source for this?

If I recall correctly the 6 month report that came out most recently stated they aren't projecting to meet their previous target by the end of the financial year.

EDIT: I just checked, they said...

Whilst we are disappointed with the decline in return on capital reported in the period, we are
all confident that we are focused on delivering the necessary changes to address this decline

.....

December sales were below expectations across the Group. At this stage in the Company’s financial
year, the Company’s internal projections indicate that pre-tax profit for the year to 29 May 2016 is
unlikely to exceed £16 million. A further update will be made when appropriate. “

Noting that pre-tax profit in 2015 was £16.6M. They had a bad half and are projecting not to match their 2015 numbers.

They issued a profits warning in January after not meeting expectations for Xmas sales.
Linky
Read further into the report and there's other factors at play (restructuring, etc.)
GW's share price dropped about 20% after the warning was issued, but it's actually been recovering over the past month.
Edit: funnily enough, since WHQ was confirmed...

Question I have for the Age of Sigmar is selling 30%, is it actually AoS miniatures that are selling or the Get Started Boxsets that are selling and the rest of the Fantasy range.

Why do I have a feeling those Sigmarines are not really selling and it's actual Fantasy models that are selling. But since now everything is labeled AoS Fantasy minis can be considered AoS minis now.

Still once we take out the Gets Started Boxsets and Fantasy minis out how much is the Actual AoS minis really selling.

Still that is good that AoS is 30%. Then again, if only 2 people played AoS last year and 4 people play now, that means a 100% increase in players showing up. So without knowing what the 30% is being based on, we can also say that AoS sales are the same from last year, flat and 40K took a HUGE hit which would make AoS 30% now instead of 10% or less like it was last year.

So context have to be taken. I wouldn't be bragging that AoS is 30% sales when 40K can be doing badly now and not AoS doing better.

RoperPG wrote:
They issued a profits warning in January after not meeting expectations for Xmas sales.
Linky
Read further into the report and there's other factors at play (restructuring, etc.)
GW's share price dropped about 20% after the warning was issued, but it's actually been recovering over the past month.
Edit: funnily enough, since WHQ was confirmed...

I'm pretty sure that just references the half year report I mentioned in my post above? But I don't have a subscription to FT so I'm just going off other sources I found by googling the title of your link.

I have no idea why that link isn't working - I can see it and I don't subscribe? Hmmm.

Just to be clear to people, too:
The "AOS IS CURRENTLY 30% OF SALES" is a rumour.

As far as GW are concerned AoS is the entire fantasy line, so there wouldn't be any demarcation - if it's a fantasy kit, it'd be an AoS sale.
There's no timescale on the rumour, so it could mean this week, this month, etc. etc.
It does come in succession of a couple of other sources in the space of a month stating it's doing better.
There's no way we'll ever have the empirical answer - no matter what click-bait BoLS kicks out, or ridiculous extrapolations people make based on their own observations, or appeals to authority over who internets better.
AoS isn't going anywhere any time soon, because GW WILL ride it into the ground if necessary to try and save it; they don't really have any other option.

RoperPG wrote:
they don't really have any other option.

Yes they really do have options. They just choose to not do them. They can make the game cheaper. They can write CLEAR, CONCISE, rulesets. They can apologize and ask for forgiveness. They can make a balanced rule set. They can make a point system. (Yeah looks like points are coming in, but from what I see so far it's not what people are looking for. Time will tell there.) They can do so much. GW can go the Walmart way, and sell in volume and make profit that way instead of selling in low volume with expensive prices. They do have options. They just choose not to do so.

That being said, yes I know companies don't apologize. I seen one or two computer game companies do so. Never a corporations, but still it's an option. Will it happen? Most likely not. Thing is GW still have the other options at their disposal and they are not doing it.

Interestingly, prices of AoS releases have been dropping, both from the inclusion of more bundled box sets and with newer books being outright cheaper than comparable previous releases.

GW will double down on AoS. They might tweak the rules fractionally, but I'm still convinced that the majority of the system's hallmarks are down to back-end business reasons.

I don't see square bases ever coming back, put it that way.

RoperPG wrote:
GW will double down on AoS. They might tweak the rules fractionally, but I'm still convinced that the majority of the system's hallmarks are down to back-end business reasons.

I don't see square bases ever coming back, put it that way.

I agree but I can also see in the style of BaC, Warhammer Quest, etc. them coming out with some sort of regimented, mass battle side game/one-off sort of deal one day. I think those nostalgia-fests get good play, and there's still interest in many classic Warhammer players for a regimented game.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Interestingly, prices of AoS releases have been dropping, both from the inclusion of more bundled box sets and with newer books being outright cheaper than comparable previous releases.

A good example is the crypt ghouls. About how AOS is doing? How about we wait until their financial report then everyone can play armchair CEO? Now what I have seen in my GW store? AOS is selling rather well but that's just one store I have no idea how its doing anywhere else I do know the new releases so far are being met with positive responses.

Oh and I am glad slaanesh is getting stuff don't know how many times I had to tell people slaanesh is not squatted from the fluff.

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Interestingly, prices of AoS releases have been dropping, both from the inclusion of more bundled box sets and with newer books being outright cheaper than comparable previous releases.

Are any of the AOS-specific releases cheaper or is it mainly the repackaging of WHFB? Just curous