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No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

 auticus wrote:
No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

No but given the poor reception of AoS and the large spike in kings of war and 9th ages well received arrival I'd say far more wanted ranks than wanted a shallow skirmish game.

Total war has saved this financial year for GW not AoS.

hobojebus wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

No but given the poor reception of AoS and the large spike in kings of war and 9th ages well received arrival I'd say far more wanted ranks than wanted a shallow skirmish game.

Total war has saved this financial year for GW not AoS.

I really don't know where this "large spike in Kings of War" comes from. I have yet to ever see anybody playing/buying the stuff in the wild.

I haven't seen a large spike in KOW either. In my entire region, KOW is a very minor game. (or 9th age)

I know that there are people that like rank and file but I think trying to pass it off quantitatively is misleading.

The single most largest issue that most everyone in my area that vocalizes their hate of AOS is typically revolving around lack of points.

Since points have been announced and are coming, our AOS activity has grown exponentially.

Yeah honestly I've never seen a KoW game played either (or 9th age for that matter). AoS isn't big, but KoW is non-existent and the Generals Compendium has many people excited to start playing.

I think Mantic selling out of their first print run of the second edition book shows a pretty decent spike in interest. You guys seem to have pretty established AoS communities; I'm not all that surprised you don't have many Kings of War games being played in the area.

 Kanluwen wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

No but given the poor reception of AoS and the large spike in kings of war and 9th ages well received arrival I'd say far more wanted ranks than wanted a shallow skirmish game.

Total war has saved this financial year for GW not AoS.

I really don't know where this "large spike in Kings of War" comes from. I have yet to ever see anybody playing/buying the stuff in the wild.

Crazy how individual experience isn't remotely a metric of a game's player-base. I'm going to a Kings of War doubles-tournament, tomorrow with 30 registered players, and this is coming off a GT in the area that saw about 45 players.

KoW is doing incredibly well in the competitive scene with a high adoption among groups that run Grand Tournaments. Now... as far as seeing it played with official Mantic models... i'll give you that. :-p I am starting to think its a myth that people play KoW with actual KoW models. :-p


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Spinner wrote:
I think Mantic selling out of their first print run of the second edition book shows a pretty decent spike in interest. You guys seem to have pretty established AoS communities; I'm not all that surprised you don't have many Kings of War games being played in the area.

The KoW 2nd Ed book is on its SEVENTH print run, and the expanded armies book Uncharted Empires is on its third.

The game is actually doing really, really well.

hobojebus wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

No but given the poor reception of AoS and the large spike in kings of war and 9th ages well received arrival I'd say far more wanted ranks than wanted a shallow skirmish game.

Total war has saved this financial year for GW not AoS.

What has Total War saving financial year for GW have to do with what Auticus said? I don't really Auticus saying AoS saved GW financial for GW this year. I am sure Total War didn't save it either. If there was no Total War GW still wouldn't be going bankrupt so there is no saving here.

NewTruthNeomaxim wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

No but given the poor reception of AoS and the large spike in kings of war and 9th ages well received arrival I'd say far more wanted ranks than wanted a shallow skirmish game.

Total war has saved this financial year for GW not AoS.

I really don't know where this "large spike in Kings of War" comes from. I have yet to ever see anybody playing/buying the stuff in the wild.

Crazy how individual experience isn't remotely a metric of a game's player-base. I'm going to a Kings of War doubles-tournament, tomorrow with 30 registered players, and this is coming off a GT in the area that saw about 45 players.

KoW is doing incredibly well in the competitive scene with a high adoption among groups that run Grand Tournaments. Now... as far as seeing it played with official Mantic models... i'll give you that. :-p I am starting to think its a myth that people play KoW with actual KoW models. :-p


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Spinner wrote:
I think Mantic selling out of their first print run of the second edition book shows a pretty decent spike in interest. You guys seem to have pretty established AoS communities; I'm not all that surprised you don't have many Kings of War games being played in the area.

The KoW 2nd Ed book is on its SEVENTH print run, and the expanded armies book Uncharted Empires is on its third.

The game is actually doing really, really well.

Beat me to it In the US there's certainly some KoW. Last weekend there was a doubles event then 2-day full GT and there are a few more summer events coming.

Davor wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

No but given the poor reception of AoS and the large spike in kings of war and 9th ages well received arrival I'd say far more wanted ranks than wanted a shallow skirmish game.

Total war has saved this financial year for GW not AoS.

What has Total War saving financial year for GW have to do with what Auticus said? I don't really Auticus saying AoS saved GW financial for GW this year. I am sure Total War didn't save it either. If there was no Total War GW still wouldn't be going bankrupt so there is no saving here.

Bankrupt no but they did issue a warning about end year profits being bad in January's brief.

AoS is not selling well, worse than wfb according to my sources but kow sold out of its first few printings of the new edition to say people no longer wanted rank and file is clearly wrong.

And the game that saved their year is a rank and file war game set in the old world not the brand new mini game they've pushed for a year.

AoS quite obviously isn't the game people want.

hobojebus wrote:
AoS quite obviously isn't the game people want.

To be fair I recall pre AoS people asking for a skirmish game, but that was people wanting an updated Mordheim, which is very different than AoS, people were asking for it as a game to go alongside WHFB, not replace it, and I still maintain that AoS is designed and though of as a mass battle game by GW so it doesn't count anyway.

Despite all the people who have come out saying they love it since I never once heard anyone asking for a game without any sort of balancing mechanics, probably because those people would just ignore points with their friends anyway.

I can't say I ever saw anyone ask for WHFB to turned into 40k, without the rank and file and with round bases. Let alone with Space Marines in it..

Lol hobojebus, I love how much conjecture you put on things to twist it round to support you.

AoS isn't the game some people want. The fact that KoW has sold out some print runs doesn't say either way. How big are these print runs? How does that compare to what 7th or 8th Edition WHFB sold? We've got no real stats to support any point of view and can only make guesses.

GW sales initially expected to be lower than the forecast. that still doesn't intrinsically mean AoS is doing badly as a war game, or even that it was doing worse than WHFB. 40k has been on the backburner ever since AoS launched - there have been scant few releases since Ad Mech in 2015. It's basically been AoS + Boardgames holding the fort for the last year, and so that lack of 40k releases could be the real reason sales were reforcast to be lower than expected. It seems to me GW's biggest mistake was thinking AoS could match the popularity and profitability of 40k straight away and based a 12 month release cycle to be dominated by it. Unless you can give me some real sales figures from KoW and AoS to compare side by side you are just making wild guesswork.

hobojebus wrote:

Davor wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

 auticus wrote:
No its certainly not the rank and file game that some people want but i don't think everyone wants rank and file either.

No but given the poor reception of AoS and the large spike in kings of war and 9th ages well received arrival I'd say far more wanted ranks than wanted a shallow skirmish game.

Total war has saved this financial year for GW not AoS.

What has Total War saving financial year for GW have to do with what Auticus said? I don't really Auticus saying AoS saved GW financial for GW this year. I am sure Total War didn't save it either. If there was no Total War GW still wouldn't be going bankrupt so there is no saving here.

Bankrupt no but they did issue a warning about end year profits being bad in January's brief.

AoS is not selling well, worse than wfb according to my sources but kow sold out of its first few printings of the new edition to say people no longer wanted rank and file is clearly wrong.

And the game that saved their year is a rank and file war game set in the old world not the brand new mini game they've pushed for a year.

AoS quite obviously isn't the game people want.

Talk about a broken record- haven't we been here already in this thread?!

Please, stop with the doom-saying speculation. No bugger has any idea how well it's doing (save for GW Head Office) and as was said earlier, comparing a game that has been around for 25-30 years to a new one doesn't really provide much to run the numbers against.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
comparing a game that has been around for 25-30 years to a new one doesn't really provide much to run the numbers against.

Well... comparing a 25 year old game to a new one is kinda fair if the 25 year old game was scrapped and replaced by the new one, and they both filled the same slot in the same company's financial reports.

I mean if we can't compare AoS to WHFB what the hell can we compare it to? 40k?

 Bottle wrote:
We've got no real stats to support any point of view and can only make guesses.

The most accurate rumors guy out there for - goodness, at least a decade now? - has repeatedly stated that AoS is doing quite poorly, and still hasn't matched the sales of WHFB, even during its worst periods. It's not "real stats," but I find it hard to imagine he's wrong, given his record.

 Lexington wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
We've got no real stats to support any point of view and can only make guesses.

The most accurate rumors guy out there for - goodness, at least a decade now? - has repeatedly stated that AoS is doing quite poorly, and still hasn't matched the sales of WHFB, even during its worst periods. It's not "real stats," but I find it hard to imagine he's wrong, given his record.

To be fair, looking at his accuracy? His record isn't spotless.

107 TRUE, 31 FALSE, 3 PARTIALLY TRUE/FALSE---and that's going back to 2009.

Heck, I think it's worth noting that he is also still on record as having claimed that there was going to be a 30K range replacing LOTR in the GW stores.

We've got rumours of more plastic 30k coming though don't we? And wasn't he claiming AoS would be coming with fantasy space marines well before anyone heard the name 'age of sigmar'?

hobojebus wrote:

Bankrupt no but they did issue a warning about end year profits being bad in January's brief.

AoS is not selling well, worse than wfb according to my sources but kow sold out of its first few printings of the new edition to say people no longer wanted rank and file is clearly wrong.

And the game that saved their year is a rank and file war game set in the old world not the brand new mini game they've pushed for a year.

AoS quite obviously isn't the game people want.

Fair enough. I thought you were trying to say that Total War Warhammer was the savings grace.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Lexington wrote:

 Bottle wrote:
We've got no real stats to support any point of view and can only make guesses.

The most accurate rumors guy out there for - goodness, at least a decade now? - has repeatedly stated that AoS is doing quite poorly, and still hasn't matched the sales of WHFB, even during its worst periods. It's not "real stats," but I find it hard to imagine he's wrong, given his record.

To be fair, looking at his accuracy? His record isn't spotless.

Looked at in granular detail, most of the "false" components attributed to Hastings are, at best, misunderstandings, and sometimes plainly-stated uncertainties. Given that he's provided spot-on release schedules over a year in advance, and was the first source for Calth, Silver Tower, the Mechanicus releases, Deathwatch Overkill, Execution Force, and even AoS, I'd say this is a pretty poor barometer of the guy's useful accuracy.

While I would believe that AoS had a bad launch, it's possible that Hastings might not be well informed about how it has been doing recently or be up to date with his information. Apart from the ST rumor he hasn't said much lately. There certainly were some rumors in march that said that sales were "healthy," and most of the other predictions made in that post have turned out to be true.
Source: https://war-of-sigmar.herokuapp.com/bloggings/784

And in regards to KoW, I don't doubt that some people jumped ship when AoS hit. But I doubt these numbers were great and it would seem that KoW remains a much less popular game than AoS. The AoS reddit forum has almost four times the amount of subscribers as the KoW forum, and appears to be growing faster.
Source: http://redditmetrics.com/r/ageofsigmar#compare=ageofsigmar+kingsofwar

 Bottle wrote:
Lol hobojebus, I love how much conjecture you put on things to twist it round to support you.

AoS isn't the game some people want. The fact that KoW has sold out some print runs doesn't say either way. How big are these print runs? How does that compare to what 7th or 8th Edition WHFB sold? We've got no real stats to support any point of view and can only make guesses.

GW sales initially expected to be lower than the forecast. that still doesn't intrinsically mean AoS is doing badly as a war game, or even that it was doing worse than WHFB. 40k has been on the backburner ever since AoS launched - there have been scant few releases since Ad Mech in 2015. It's basically been AoS + Boardgames holding the fort for the last year, and so that lack of 40k releases could be the real reason sales were reforcast to be lower than expected. It seems to me GW's biggest mistake was thinking AoS could match the popularity and profitability of 40k straight away and based a 12 month release cycle to be dominated by it. Unless you can give me some real sales figures from KoW and AoS to compare side by side you are just making wild guesswork.

The hard back of kow was 2K I think, soft back was 8K I seem to remember now compare that to the limited editions of AoS which couldn't sell out even 1k you tell me what's more popular? And remember you don't need to buy the kow books anymore than you do the AoS books.

We know the top 5 selling games thanks to icv2:
1)xwing
2)40k
3)armarda
4)warmachine
5)attack wing

So to suggest it's 40k that's not selling is false as AoS isn't anywhere in site and if it were outselling 40k it'd be on that list.

I can support my stance to some degree but can you offer any evidence at all that AoS is doing well?

hobojebus wrote:

The hard back of kow was 2K I think, soft back was 8K I seem to remember now compare that to the limited editions of AoS which couldn't sell out even 1k you tell me what's more popular? And remember you don't need to buy the kow books anymore than you do the AoS books.

Do you have a source for these numbers?
Anyway comparing rule book sales to limited edition army books for entirely new factions a few months after their introduction seems like apples to oranges to me.

If KoW is so much more popular than AoS, then how do you explain the reddit data I posted above?
I think numbers on a widely used social network like reddit are a better proxy of real numbers of players than speculation and rumors on forums like this.

I am going to say the same thing I said in warseer. As long as GW is making enough money via any means to support the hobby and community for 40k and AOS that's enough for me.

If people are so concerned about GW's financials why don't you apply to the company and make them money yourselves if you can do it better?

If you dislike said game system find another one you enjoy comoparing game systems you don't even play is pointless. I think people should just relax and enjoy their hobby and minatures.

If a company is doing something you dislike you don't buy any of their stuff end of story. With the leaks of the general handsbook?

People seem interested and I think AOS has a healthy future. It will never be as popular as 40k sci fi and super soldiers is more popular than fantasy that's just how it is.

Still I think AOS will be around for a long time.

Sure AoS will survive it may even thrive, but it will do so as a bottom tier game. It is too divisive, it split an already dwindling fan base. It will sit down there with wrath of kings, guildball and infinity as the also rans. It is fun, but not terribly creative. Its nothing revolutionary. I am trying to get some of the local lads here to get in on it hopefully at my FLGS, but I am the only person there actually ordering AoS so its an uphill battle and with warmahordes mk 3 coming out. very little chance we will actually succeed in growing a community. I am not gonna sit and sing its praises like its some awesome hip new game, its not, its half assed. But if we can get some folks having fun with it, then its good enough. It does not have to compete with the big boys.

 angelofvengeance wrote:
No bugger has any idea how well it's doing (save for GW Head Office) and as was said earlier

No, but we can guess it had a poor launch compared to expectations based on the half year figures. They were low in spite of Calth selling like hotcakes.

motski wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

The hard back of kow was 2K I think, soft back was 8K I seem to remember now compare that to the limited editions of AoS which couldn't sell out even 1k you tell me what's more popular? And remember you don't need to buy the kow books anymore than you do the AoS books.

Do you have a source for these numbers?
Anyway comparing rule book sales to limited edition army books for entirely new factions a few months after their introduction seems like apples to oranges to me.

If KoW is so much more popular than AoS, then how do you explain the reddit data I posted above?
I think numbers on a widely used social network like reddit are a better proxy of real numbers of players than speculation and rumors on forums like this.

No no I didn't say it was more popular don't straw man, I said mantic books outsold GW books and they did, I said AoS wasn't the game most wanted and the rise of 9th and kow shows plenty of people didn't want yet another skirmish game the split in the community obviously proves that.

As for Apple's and Oranges I'm comparing one book you don't need to buy to another book you don't need to buy it doesn't get more apt than that.

As for social media that only represents younger gamers most old farts like me don't bother and just pick up our phones, reddit and Facebook only represent a portion not the whole so are fairly worthless as a standard to measure against.

hobojebus wrote:

No no I didn't say it was more popular don't straw man, I said mantic books outsold GW books and they did, I said AoS wasn't the game most wanted and the rise of 9th and kow shows plenty of people didn't want yet another skirmish game the split in the community obviously proves that.

As for Apple's and Oranges I'm comparing one book you don't need to buy to another book you don't need to buy it doesn't get more apt than that.

You didn't say it was more popular, but it's what you were trying to imply.
Apples and oranges?
As you pointed out, neither book was necessary. So why would you buy a deluxe version?
The limited edition books didn't sell out because they were expensive versions of unnecessary books.
KoW sold out because the size of print runs were too small.
There were people who backed the kickstarter who were waiting until the 2nd reprint to get their copies.

Neither of these comment as to the game, but to the mindset of the company.

No no I didn't say it was more popular don't straw man

mm..

you tell me what's more popular?

You explicitly asked him to comment on what's more popular.

He didn't say you said it was more popular. He asked how you'd explain some other data if KOW was more popular. In other words it appears he directly addressed your explicit question and that you are then creating the strawman.

puree wrote:

No no I didn't say it was more popular don't straw man

mm..

you tell me what's more popular?

You explicitly asked him to comment on what's more popular.

He didn't say you said it was more popular. He asked how you'd explain some other data if KOW was more popular. In other words it appears he directly addressed your explicit question and that you are then creating the strawman.

No to strawman you must mistate the other persons stance and then argue against that instead of what they actually said.

What I did was invite further discussion after citing my case and its supporting evidence.

What this is is misdirection to avoid the actual point which is a claim was made that aos isn't failing that's yet to be substantiated, I've given my argument as to why it is but the evidence it's doing well has not materialised.

So what evidence circumstantial as it is can the pro AoS crowd provide that it's not an abysmal failure?

When a company brags about print runs you know they were strugling with sales, reduced expectations, and went with short prints. WizKids does this regularly(Pathfinder Battles and D&D minis, most recent). Getting people to start valuing the product higher than their money. It works.I can't say adding self-wounding into the game would be popular, it's needlessly complicated. Archers would take turns 1 and 2, then fade out\cannon fodder themselves. Heroes don't auto hit basics either, that makes them too special to even be there.