Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Nope.

AoS is becoming part of GW eco system. In 10 years WHFB will be a fondly remembered system by veterans with starry eyed newbs grabbing the 2nd or 3rd iterations of celestials wondering wtf these old grognards are yakking about.

Drahazar1 wrote:
Well after they Squatted Tomb Kings I decided to take my army to 9th age and KoW.

And yes they were Squatted

but they still have war scrolls and can be played and they still sell their mini's.

so where are new mini's for my army. were are the new war scrolls and battalions. were are the new rules and support for my army. That's right no where so TK and Brettonians are squatted.

AoS is on its way to become super bloated with rules, supplements and such. but they have a free app. yeah you still have to buy all the war scrolls that are not base. They have come out with multiple battle tombs and alliance books and more will continue to the point you will have hundreds of books, scrolls and sub factions to keep track of.

Man they'll learn the hard way GW is evil. I didn't like GW and i used to eat up some of their garbage. Even Mat Ward which was heavily despised in 40k didn't irritate me that much. I despise everything AoS did and how GW handled it. The alienation of their Fantasy fans many of whom were loyal show just what GW feels about loyal fans not forking over enough money.

Oh and the original reason why they squatted Fantasy is because of the percentage of their business it was. Of course AoS only gathered in people that were in 40k or leaving 40k meaning it lost its Fantasy fans and gained nothing. Funny how all the people in the AoS threads were 40k players before and nobody new has joined from what i've seen.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:
Man they'll learn the hard way GW is evil. I didn't like GW and i used to eat up some of their garbage. Even Mat Ward which was heavily despised in 40k didn't irritate me that much. I despise everything AoS did and how GW handled it. The alienation of their Fantasy fans many of whom were loyal show just what GW feels about loyal fans not forking over enough money.

Oh and the original reason why they squatted Fantasy is because of the percentage of their business it was. Of course AoS only gathered in people that were in 40k or leaving 40k meaning it lost its Fantasy fans and gained nothing. Funny how all the people in the AoS threads were 40k players before and nobody new has joined from what i've seen.

I wouldnt underestimate the effect of the Chapterhouse ruling. GW learned from it, it may not have been the only factor, but going forward with all new versions of the factions they can protect and dropping the rest in the compendium to languish forever certainly shows GW being more conscious of it.

AoS was doing well in my area, the GH brought in a lot of the old WHFB holdouts, and sparked a host of warmahordes players to launch their own uber competitive league (their words not mine). My Bretonnians appreciate the Compendium update, we miss the flavor of the old spells but are enjoying it for what it is.

My Bretonnians appreciate the Compendium update, we miss the flavor of the old spells but are enjoying it for what it is.

Must feel good to be nicely competitive again eh?

Of course AoS only gathered in people that were in 40k or leaving 40k meaning it lost its Fantasy fans and gained nothing. Funny how all the people in the AoS threads were 40k players before and nobody new has joined from what i've seen.

I played both!

Indeed, I'm a fantasy player since 2008 and have moved to AoS. (Though I'll happily play older editions and 9th as well)

Also, the "nobody new joined" means you clearly don't even visit the AoS page. Just a glance will show about 8 "just started" threads.

As a Bretonnian player (fanatic) I think AoS basically did everything right but discontinue the line, funnily enough.

Killer cavalry, deadly Bowmen, useful peasants who can threaten wizards and great heroes. They even mesh well with the Stormcast since they share the paladin keyword.

Too bad the Empire beat them on pure popularity, confounded gun lovers!

Mat Ward

Yeah. Mister "I don´t know wich DE-city is wich".....
I just can´t take that guy seriously, either in 40k nor in WFB with his crazy books.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Nope.

AoS is becoming part of GW eco system. In 10 years WHFB will be a fondly remembered system by veterans with starry eyed newbs grabbing the 2nd or 3rd iterations of celestials wondering wtf these old grognards are yakking about.

You wont need 10 years to get 3rd iteration of AoS. They said they update Generals handbook yearly.

herjan1987 wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Nope.

AoS is becoming part of GW eco system. In 10 years WHFB will be a fondly remembered system by veterans with starry eyed newbs grabbing the 2nd or 3rd iterations of celestials wondering wtf these old grognards are yakking about.

You wont need 10 years to get 3rd iteration of AoS. They said they update Generals handbook yearly.

Of course that all depends on what all is updated, if it's just all the stuff in the generals handbook does this mean they'll be updating the base ruleset as well?

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

herjan1987 wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
Nope.

AoS is becoming part of GW eco system. In 10 years WHFB will be a fondly remembered system by veterans with starry eyed newbs grabbing the 2nd or 3rd iterations of celestials wondering wtf these old grognards are yakking about.

You wont need 10 years to get 3rd iteration of AoS. They said they update Generals handbook yearly.

Of course that all depends on what all is updated, if it's just all the stuff in the generals handbook does this mean they'll be updating the base ruleset as well?

Point cost updates would probably be almost guaranteed.

As far as base rules, with how receptive GW seems in some of the British podcasts that I listen to, I think they could change/ adjust as well. Pure speculation, but it seems possible with the posture GW has adopted lately.

 Whirlwind wrote:
Can we try and avoid this degrading into which sold better than the other. We can't possibly say. All the financial reports said was that the last few months of AoS classed sales sold has monthly sales better than WFB monthly sales in last couple of years and leave it as that.

No, we can't leave it at that because that's not what they said.

The way they worded it we have no idea if it was "monthly sales", they gave no indication of how they calculated it, it was an extremely vaguely worded statement that could be interpreted in many ways.

The way they worded it struck me as being very non-committal, designed to catch out people who don't read things carefully enough to realise they could have easily fudged the numbers.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

My Bretonnians appreciate the Compendium update, we miss the flavor of the old spells but are enjoying it for what it is.

Must feel good to be nicely competitive again eh?

Actually does, apart from bretonnians seemingly becoming the holy grail on ebay since the squatting, I'm loving them in AoS. Just wish damsels could heal units and not just models. My MaA loved that.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:
Can we try and avoid this degrading into which sold better than the other. We can't possibly say. All the financial reports said was that the last few months of AoS classed sales sold has monthly sales better than WFB monthly sales in last couple of years and leave it as that.

No, we can't leave it at that because that's not what they said.

The way they worded it we have no idea if it was "monthly sales", they gave no indication of how they calculated it, it was an extremely vaguely worded statement that could be interpreted in many ways.

The way they worded it struck me as being very non-committal, designed to catch out people who don't read things carefully enough to realise they could have easily fudged the numbers.

So you've just basically stated that they are lying to their investors then, do you really believe that?

Actually does, apart from bretonnians seemingly becoming the holy grail on ebay since the squatting, I'm loving them in AoS. Just wish damsels could heal units and not just models. My MaA loved that.

Well at least you are also free to use most old empire units as well due to how prevalent the Free People keyword is, what sort of army do you use?

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

Actually does, apart from bretonnians seemingly becoming the holy grail on ebay since the squatting, I'm loving them in AoS. Just wish damsels could heal units and not just models. My MaA loved that.

Well at least you are also free to use most old empire units as well due to how prevalent the Free People keyword is, what sort of army do you use?

I have two units of sixteen archers, love the spikes. I am eight men at arms short of two units of 32 (biggest want atm). 24 KoR, 5 questing knights. 6 pegasus knights, lord, prophetess, one mounted damsel, three on foot, two paladins on foot, three gripping beast tebuchet. Pack of 12 hunting hounds I run from the wanderer list as a hunting pack with a huntsman stand in.

Really hoping to get the Duke with the axe over his sholder, some grail knights, just a few more men-at-arms and then start a keep. Whats a Bretonnian Lord without a keep on a hill right?

Dont need a ton, just crazy how expensive the Bretts got on ebay, its for the Lady though, so its fine.

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:
Can we try and avoid this degrading into which sold better than the other. We can't possibly say. All the financial reports said was that the last few months of AoS classed sales sold has monthly sales better than WFB monthly sales in last couple of years and leave it as that.

No, we can't leave it at that because that's not what they said.

The way they worded it we have no idea if it was "monthly sales", they gave no indication of how they calculated it, it was an extremely vaguely worded statement that could be interpreted in many ways.

The way they worded it struck me as being very non-committal, designed to catch out people who don't read things carefully enough to realise they could have easily fudged the numbers.

So you've just basically stated that they are lying to their investors then, do you really believe that?

No, I don't believe they're lying, I believe there's a good chance they had to fiddle with the numbers to make it sound like AoS is doing better than WHFB so they purposefully used a vague statement.

I am assuming everything they've said is truthful. But the way they said it can be interpreted many different ways and still be considered truthful.

What they said was at best vague and at worst misleading. Here is what they ACTUALLY said...

as we released more of the range in the second half of the year, we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years.

The way it was worded there is no way to determine how they calculated it, what period the rate was taken over or even if sales were taken over the same amount of time.

If AoS was clearly and obviously doing better than WHFB I would have expected them to use more definite and less ambiguous wording to actually quantify the increase. Like "In the last 6 months AoS has sold at least 12.5% better than Warhammer has enjoyed over any 6 month period for the last 4 years". But they didn't do that, they used vague terminology which means they could have used one of a dozen calculation methods and still been able to come up with the statement they made.

Obviously it worked because you get people on internet forums claiming what Whirlwind said even though it's not what GW themselves said.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 ZebioLizard2 wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 Whirlwind wrote:
Can we try and avoid this degrading into which sold better than the other. We can't possibly say. All the financial reports said was that the last few months of AoS classed sales sold has monthly sales better than WFB monthly sales in last couple of years and leave it as that.

No, we can't leave it at that because that's not what they said.

The way they worded it we have no idea if it was "monthly sales", they gave no indication of how they calculated it, it was an extremely vaguely worded statement that could be interpreted in many ways.

The way they worded it struck me as being very non-committal, designed to catch out people who don't read things carefully enough to realise they could have easily fudged the numbers.

So you've just basically stated that they are lying to their investors then, do you really believe that?

No, I don't believe they're lying, I believe there's a good chance they had to fiddle with the numbers to make it sound like AoS is doing better than WHFB so they purposefully used a vague statement.

I am assuming everything they've said is truthful. But the way they said it can be interpreted many different ways and still be considered truthful.

What they said was at best vague and at worst misleading. Here is what they ACTUALLY said...

as we released more of the range in the second half of the year, we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years.

The way it was worded there is no way to determine how they calculated it, what period the rate was taken over or even if sales were taken over the same amount of time.

If AoS was clearly and obviously doing better than WHFB I would have expected them to use more definite and less ambiguous wording to actually quantify the increase. Like "In the last 6 months AoS has sold at least 12.5% better than Warhammer has enjoyed over any 6 month period for the last 4 years". But they didn't do that, they used vague terminology which means they could have used one of a dozen calculation methods and still been able to come up with the statement they made.

Obviously it worked because you get people on internet forums claiming what Whirlwind said even though it's not what GW themselves said.

Quite true.

When Black Library makes such bold statments that Age of Sigmar book series is popular and their werent able to sell the limited editions then I will start to doubt how honest their are.

I think the most misleading thing they could have done (and I'm not necessarily saying they did this) would be to take the last few months where AoS had a lot of releases and thus a lot of sales to calculate an average rate of sales. Then take WHFB over the last 4 or so years (where on average there weren't many releases) and calculate an average rate of sales over that period.

Even if AoS was doing poorly, using that calculation method you could come to the same conclusion GW came to...

"as we released more of the range in the second half of the year, we finished the year with sales of Warhammer: Age of Sigmar at a higher rate than Warhammer has enjoyed for several years."

I'm not necessarily saying that's what they did.... but they could have. Usually when you use vague statements in what should be a technical document (like a financial statement) it's because you can't commit to using a concise one.

I don't think we will really know anything about the sales until the end of the year. Especially since I have a strong suspicion that a lot of the numbers also factor in the "Last Chance to Buy" that happened at the beginning of the year counting towards the overall AoS sales numbers.

I mean I haven't bought anything direct from GW since 2008 but even I bought some Last Chance to Buy items.

Yeah, we will see in jannuary.

GW usually do a pretty good job of releasing stuff in such a way that we never get a great idea of how well any particular product is doing.

Except for that list of the year's best sellers that they've done for the last couple of years...

No resentment here, AoS is a fairly passing game. It will never be a top tier game, and it certainly didnt catch fire everywhere, but it wasnt a total failure either, The generals handbook saved it from being an also ran. IT did have a epically horrible roll out and was a massive dissappointment to a large group of players. The setting is gawds awfully sold, it could have been good, but its just...not. Overall its a second tier game that replaced a dying game. The rules were the problem, not the setting. I do hope that AoS gets better and moves to better things, but the glory of warhammer fantasy is faded, partly due to much better competition,.

Tribalism: that amazing human pathology wherein we only believe what we want to believe and disbelieve anything contradicting regardless of facts (see also voting, and two-party political system)

AOS is what it is. Not liking it is fine. Playing games you enjoy is also fine.

Trying to claim financial knowledge over what is selling better globally is laughably absurd. Trying to claim knowledge over what game is being played over another globally is equally absurd.

Anecdotal evidence doesn't hold much weight unless the discussion is on a local area like a city.

In my city, AOS is the only fantasy game being played. KOW has a tiny group of five guys that play at the tourney store. 9th age was never received at all.

Does that mean KOW and 9th age is dying or not doing well at all? Of course not. Its just here that is the case.

WHFB was dead here. We have a much larger fantasy player base now. I'm at least thankful for that.

Enjoy what you enjoy, have fun doing it, but trying to claim dominion over financial data or what is being played more than anywhere else globally cannot be taken seriously because none of us know.

I agree with much of what you say, but..

 auticus wrote:

Anecdotal evidence doesn't hold much weight unless the discussion is on a local area like a city.
In my city, AOS is the only fantasy game being played. KOW has a tiny group of five guys that play at the tourney store. 9th age was never received at all.

The anecdotal evidence you're attempting to present here is intrinsically flawed, though.

How big is your city? Mine has 4.5 million people. I doubt with my limited scope I could say jack gak with any real authority.

It's impossible to have real anecdotal evidence of even any decent-sized city, especially as many people play at home and in smaller groups and buy online. 9th Age has rules that are available online, for free, and uses people's existing armies. Probably not a huge surprise then, if it's not big in your local tourney store? KoW/Mantic have a very small retail presence compared to GW, and a ton of their stuff is online via KS and online sales, and also uses people's existing forces. AoS is the new hotness with new retail product and much-improved community support via GHB. No surprise to me that it has good visibility.

How could you know if a city of "only" 100,000 people has people playing WHFB or KoW as opposed to only AoS? Gaming groups in a few stores are perhaps indicative for some people and (very) local groups, but can hardly be fully representative of a whole city.

While it's clear that WHFB took a huge hit in playerbase, and those players largely fractured into AoS/T9A/KoW/quitting outright, I don't think it's fair to say that any of them are truly dead. It seems to me that without the new release cycle and store support, those games would have moved closer to the historical gamer model. We know they're out there, but they're not playing in the GW clubs or most of the stores with the small exceptions of a little KoW or BA perhaps.

I dislike that Warhammer died. I dislike the high fantasy/psudo sci-fi hero hammer of Age of Sigmar's fluff and it's mechanical game play.

However the death of Warhammer and the subsequent failing of AoS to encapture what so many people liked about Warhammer lead to the creation of Ninth Age. A functioning system lead by a caring and growing community that plays better than warhammer ever did. So all is well that ends well I guess.

Their move to 1.2 really makes me question how caring they are. Changing everything up so they can legally publish and sell rulebooks? Kind of a step away from the "by the community, for the community" mentality.

Oh well, they need money I suppose..

I really wish they'd listen to the KoE players, though. They're basically a peasant horde army which no one asked for. (Okay, a scant few people asked for it but why listen to the 5%?)

Baron Klatz wrote:
Their move to 1.2 really makes me question how caring they are. Changing everything up so they can legally publish and sell rulebooks? Kind of a step away from the "by the community, for the community" mentality.

Oh well, they need money I suppose..

I really wish they'd listen to the KoE players, though. They're basically a peasant horde army which no one asked for. (Okay, a scant few people asked for it but why listen to the 5%?)

I was under the impression they were going to keep the basic rulebooks available as free .pdfs and the move was to let them try and break into making official models and sell rulebooks with art/fluff sections.

And last I checked KoE worked quite well as a traditional Bretonnian knight army, the peasant horde is an optional approach they expanded on a bit but the knights still work fine. (They may have nerfed the 4+-ward Grail Knight lance and Paladin spam, but it was the most powerful thing in 9th Age at its height and probably needed to take the hit.)

Baron Klatz wrote:
Their move to 1.2 really makes me question how caring they are. Changing everything up so they can legally publish and sell rulebooks? Kind of a step away from the "by the community, for the community" mentality.

Oh well, they need money I suppose..

I really wish they'd listen to the KoE players, though. They're basically a peasant horde army which no one asked for. (Okay, a scant few people asked for it but why listen to the 5%?)

I think you're a little mistaken on the first point. Ninth is entirely non-profit, no one is selling official rule books for profit. You're correct that they had to change names up so they could legally publish things, but who does that surprise? Most name changes are quite small, and a few sound a lot better than their GW counterpart. E.G Blade Dancers instead of War Dancers, Wild Huntsmen instead of Wild Riders,

I do agree they are having issues with KoE, but that is quite simply because heavy cavalry is the hardest thing to balance in the game, and KoE are an entire army of the stuff! So it makes sense that KoE are a polarising army, and lets not forget that KoE Knight lists have been doing very well in team tournaments. Thus proving my original point, Knights are still powerful albeit match up dependent.

The rules are indeed free on their forum but the move to 1.2 was a huge change to move away from 8th edition rules, farther away from GW's property and to allow them to start publishing rulebooks and models. The donations apparently weren't enough to keep the project going as smoothly as they would've liked.

The KoE problem has always been a bad one, they went to unplayable at the beginning to finally balanced at 1.1. We even got brigands after the dozens of "what do you want in KoE" polls that were basically ignored. That's gone now too.

The knights are playable but hardly proper shock cavalry or comparable to other army cavalry like EoS. We're now a brightly colored hit-and-run force, unless you go heavy on the peasants.

 AnomanderRake wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:
Their move to 1.2 really makes me question how caring they are. Changing everything up so they can legally publish and sell rulebooks? Kind of a step away from the "by the community, for the community" mentality.

Oh well, they need money I suppose..

I really wish they'd listen to the KoE players, though. They're basically a peasant horde army which no one asked for. (Okay, a scant few people asked for it but why listen to the 5%?)

I was under the impression they were going to keep the basic rulebooks available as free .pdfs and the move was to let them try and break into making official models and sell rulebooks with art/fluff sections.

And last I checked KoE worked quite well as a traditional Bretonnian knight army, the peasant horde is an optional approach they expanded on a bit but the knights still work fine. (They may have nerfed the 4+-ward Grail Knight lance and Paladin spam, but it was the most powerful thing in 9th Age at its height and probably needed to take the hit.)

Rules are still free but the fact they couldn't continue to rely on just that and other companies to support them with models is what's raising some eyebrows.

The anger at the move is certainly felt on the forum, the several cases of people(and some mods) replying "good that those people left the forum, that means the ones left are those who enjoy the game" is rather a bad sign as well as the drop in site activity.

It's not all gloom of course. It's just like the shift GW took with AoS, a need for better IP and profit with a shaky start up. Given time 9th will fully recover and be going strong again.

The KoE army is definitely peasant dependant right now, 9th age has a huge focus on heavy infantry and hordes and KoE is feeling that. The knights have to stick to hit-and-run to be effective.

Do I resent AOS for killing Fantasy Warhammer?
Yes, yes I do.

I have tried AOS, and its just not what I want.
They should have never killed off the old world, they could have very easily transitioned back into a skirmish game like 40k / Mord style.

Some one will read this and shrug it off as just another AOS hater, but i actually tired it and didnt have anything good to say about it.

I dont even like the new models, dont get me wrong GW makes some killer models, but all the AOS look like to much is going on, i like details but i dont need the models to all like like they got rolled in a bitz box. They all look like Mr T designed the models, just to much ornaments and ring and jewelry crap on them all.

Also, elephant in the room, the prices for all the newer AOS models are stupidly overpriced.

You dont have to like what i said, but its how i see it.

I don't resent AoS. I think it's a wonderful way to make me interested in Warhammer Fantasy again when I gave up on WHFB in its sixth edition. I do wonder who the Doctor Who Miniature Game fan in the studio is though.