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Davor wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:I don't think icv2 is going to tell you whether KoW is more popular than AoS. KoW armies are cheap, so even if it's popular it's not going to have a huge dollar value spent on it, if any at all because a lot of people are just playing with old WHFB figures or miniatures from other companies.

The only way to tell would be a detailed survey that tries to track down what individual groups are playing, which is never going to happen.

Why wouldn't it tell you? icv2 would tell you if KoW is more popular than Aos or not. It's telling you that nobody or most people are not buying the KoW minis but only using it for rules. So KoW is not really popular because the minis are not being sold. That is like saying people are playing Warmahordes, but with GW minis instead of Privateer Press minis. Since that is not the case we can say PP and Warmahordes is popular.

I would say KoW is not really that popular because the minis are not being sold but it's mostly for the rules. If KoW was really all that, people would want to INVEST into KoW but since it seams people are only playing KoW for the rules and not the minis, I would say no, KoW is not really that popular. I could be wrong, and KoW minis are really selling but what I get from Dakka people are still only using their GW minis and just buying paper products for KoW. So is KoW really successful if this is the case?

2 things...

1. If people are playing KoW, it means KoW is popular. You could have a ruleset with no models whatsoever, but if people play it, it's popular. Mantic and GW aren't the ONLY sources of models for playing KoW, KoW is open enough that you can use basically any miniatures from anywhere.

2. KoW models are cheap. Even if people are buying them. £50 buys you a small army and £100 buys you a large army. So the popularity of KoW models is going to be under represented on icv2 as well.

hobojebus wrote:

morgoth wrote:

Exactly this.

AoS is already a major success, because unlike WHFB 8th, it's bringing in NEW blood, i.e. what WHFB has been missing for years and which led to a slow death.

The very fact that AoS is growing where WHFB was shrinking is already progress.

Honestly, I don't see how they could make anything worse than WHFB 8th in terms of market share, that game almost compared with non-GW games for market share.

You can't know AoS brought in enough people to replace all those that left because they blew up the old world.

We don't even know it's new blood it sounds more like existing players swapping from 40k to AoS from accounts I've read.

It's just baseless claims without numbers to support it.

Let me rephrase:

AoS is a new game. it starts from zero. If it sells *anything*, that's growing.

WHFB was an old game, and its sales were shrinking.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

motski wrote:

hobojebus wrote:

Other than anecdotal comments where's the proof it's more popular?

Until we get the post ghb icv2 sales figures there's no basis to declare one more popular than the other.

Here's some data from reddit which in my opinion is a much better reflector of actual player numbers than the rumor and heresay thrown around in threads like this:

http://redditmetrics.com/r/ageofsigmar#compare=kingsofwar

As we can see, the AoS community is large and growing and the KoW community is small and stagnant.

That could still be biased but kudos for the idea - I'm stealing it right now.

morgoth wrote:
AoS is a new game. it starts from zero. If it sells *anything*, that's growing.

That's not really true since AoS is heavily built on the foundation of WHFB. The vast majority of the model line is not created for AoS but already existed before.
Likewise, the game didn't start from scratch but initially had the entire WHFB fanbase to retain rather than recruit people from scratch.

Had anyone else published AoS, it would have never have gotten off the ground in the first place.

Considering how little AoS releases we've seen in the last months, I almost start to suspect GW has given up on AoS already; releasing the stuff they still got in the pipeline but letting it peter out silently.

It's not enough that AoS sell more than nothing. To have been worth the destruction of WHFB (and by extention worth keeping arounf). AoS must sell enough stuff and bring in enough new blood to offset the loss of the large part of the old fanbase (which is admittedly mitigated by people still buying GW fantasy products even if not using them for AoS) and make a bigger profit than WHFB did. That's a pretty tall order when you've ran off a large part of the audience of a already failing product line.

 Dysartes wrote:

 Rayvon wrote:
I was really starting to think they had turned a corner, until this Blood bowl release.

The only way you can get two complete teams is to buy two copies of the game......

what a fething joke.

Just touching on this one for a moment - having looked at the rulebook from my LGS' preview copy yesterday, I do have to ask how you'd fill the two teams out to 16. My immediate reaction was 4 Linemen (or equivalent), but both teams have skill positions (and a Big Guy) which would be empty in that case. Equally, I didn't get chance to see the figures on the sprue, as they'd already been assembled, so I don't know if it would just be a case of adding an extra sprue to the box for each side.

My suspicion is that we'll see some form of set released down the line to allow you to expand the Orcs & Humans, but that it won't be announced immediately. Quite what said sets would include, though, I don't know. I could see a Human one with the missing skill positions (might be 2 Catchers & 2 Blitzers - I'm not sure), an Ogre (in kit which vaguely matches the Human model), and maybe some more Linemen - but then you're going to get people complaining about being forced to buy models they won't use.

Four blitzers is pretty standard in any Human or Orc team, so is four Black orcs and I would never have more that one thrower on the field at the start either, having two more players that start with the Block skill, and two extra STR 4 players makes a lot of difference, the Orc team you get here in the box is a particularly weak one imo.

I was in a pretty bad mood yesterday, I should really have expected it to end up with me needing to spend more than just what the starter box cost, in order to get a full team, it is GW afterall.

 Zywus wrote:

morgoth wrote:
AoS is a new game. it starts from zero. If it sells *anything*, that's growing.

That's not really true since AoS is heavily built on the foundation of WHFB. The vast majority of the model line is not created for AoS but already existed before.
Likewise, the game didn't start from scratch but initially had the entire WHFB fanbase to retain.

Considering how little AoS releases we've seen in the last months, I almost start to suspect GW has given up on AoS already; releasing the stuff they still got in the pipeline but letting it peter out silently.

It's not enough that AoS sell more than nothing. To have been worth the destruction of WHFB (and by extention worth keeping arounf). AoS must sell enough stuff and bring in enough new blood to offset the loss of the large part of the old fanbase (which is admittedly mitigated by people still buying GW fantasy products even if not using them for AoS) and make a bigger profit than WHFB did. That's a pretty tall order when you've ran off a large part of the audience of a already failing product line.

The AoS is built on WHFB is your point of view, same goes for the idea that the WHFB fan base was to be retained (hint: not worth the effort, not anywhere close to the first goal of AoS).

The reality is that WHFB was going straight into a brick wall and GW decided to can it - it was more than time and the line was losing money.

As they did that, they knew they were going to create an opening in the Fantasy Tabletop Miniature Game market and decided to offer something of their own to fill the gap.

That *new game* was AoS, where they tried to compensate the overweight rulebooks of WHFB v8 with something lighter and more experimental.


While so many WHFB fans saw this as "the replacement" of WHFB, that analogy was only there to try and get them started on the new game.

The old fan base was:
a) tiny and shrinking
b) stale
c) disgruntled
d) not interested in buying much stuff

So doing better than that with a new game wasn't as hard as it sounds.

The big goal of AoS is to succeed as a new fantasy game, by GW, taking advantage of GW's name, Warhammer's name and the existing miniature range because why not.
The goal is to create a game which will have a fan base which is:

a) large and growing
b) renewable
c) happy
d) buys stuff

The very fact that AoS has gathered *any* momentum at all means that it's growing, likely to be renewable, currently makes people happy and has them buying stuff.

If you ever try to start a business, you'll see what I mean when I say AoS is a success already.

Wfb was the third best selling game in America until GW stopped supporting it and let it fade as they worked on AoS.

End times proves there were people hungry for new content.

Wfb died because of poor management by GW.

morgoth wrote:
The very fact that AoS has gathered *any* momentum at all means that it's growing, likely to be renewable, currently makes people happy and has them buying stuff.

If you ever try to start a business, you'll see what I mean when I say AoS is a success already.

Of course people weren't buying much for WHFB. The rules had been a mess for years, making the startup costs daunting and very little stuff being released. If even half the effort given to promote AoS (starting bundles, coopertaion with tournaments, live streaming events etc.) had been afforded WHFB, we can only speculate how the interest and enthusiasm would have been rekindled.


AoS had little momentum until the Generals Handbook. GW's own AoS events in Warhammer world drew in the region of 30 people, where WHFB events had drawn in the hundreds.

The reason AoS has gathered momentum recently is because such a huge part of the old 'stale' 'disgruntled' fanbase that you so arrogantly dismiss was driven away, leaving us with a very low baseline to grow from and they seem to now be returning somewhat.

Not in terms of making making rules for formations and whatnot.
The 40k mess could only end with a new ed.

morgoth wrote:


There are many alternatives, like 8th edition forever, 9th age, ... - I don't see why anyone would even consider KOW rules.

Because KoW is a really good ruleset? It works really well and it's the most balanced fantasy wargame I've ever seen.

 DarkBlack wrote:

morgoth wrote:


There are many alternatives, like 8th edition forever, 9th age, ... - I don't see why anyone would even consider KOW rules.

Because KoW is a really good ruleset? It works really well and it's the most balanced fantasy wargame I've ever seen.

I think the biggest thing in my gaming group is not wanting to learn online community rulesets vs officially supported rulesets from a company. Especially not for gigantic games like WHFB where it can take a long time to actually learn the rules.

 Zywus wrote:

It's not enough that AoS sell more than nothing. To have been worth the destruction of WHFB (and by extention worth keeping arounf). AoS must sell enough stuff and bring in enough new blood to offset the loss of the large part of the old fanbase (which is admittedly mitigated by people still buying GW fantasy products even if not using them for AoS) and make a bigger profit than WHFB did. That's a pretty tall order when you've ran off a large part of the audience of a already failing product line.

AoS has already done that: GW have said in their last financial report that they are selling more than WHFB did, at least for the past few years.

motski wrote:
AoS has already done that: GW have said in their last financial report that they are selling more than WHFB did, at least for the past few years.

Which is yet another meaningless statement because we know WHFB was doing poorly and they gave no measure of how much better it was doing or their method of calculation.

Nobody denies WHFB was doing terrible, but the argument is there was a large fanbase willing to spend money on it. They just weren't because GW weren't supporting it and 8th edition was largely disliked.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

morgoth wrote:

There are many alternatives, like 8th edition forever, 9th age, ... - I don't see why anyone would even consider KOW rules.

Because KoW is a really good ruleset? It works really well and it's the most balanced fantasy wargame I've ever seen.

I think the biggest thing in my gaming group is not wanting to learn online community rulesets vs officially supported rulesets from a company. Especially not for gigantic games like WHFB where it can take a long time to actually learn the rules.

KoW are official rules from a company and the rules don't take long to learn.

 Zywus wrote:

morgoth wrote:
AoS is a new game. it starts from zero. If it sells *anything*, that's growing.

That's not really true since AoS is heavily built on the foundation of WHFB. The vast majority of the model line is not created for AoS but already existed before.
Likewise, the game didn't start from scratch but initially had the entire WHFB fanbase to retain rather than recruit people from scratch.

Had anyone else published AoS, it would have never have gotten off the ground in the first place.

Considering how little AoS releases we've seen in the last months, I almost start to suspect GW has given up on AoS already; releasing the stuff they still got in the pipeline but letting it peter out silently.

It's not enough that AoS sell more than nothing. To have been worth the destruction of WHFB (and by extention worth keeping arounf). AoS must sell enough stuff and bring in enough new blood to offset the loss of the large part of the old fanbase (which is admittedly mitigated by people still buying GW fantasy products even if not using them for AoS) and make a bigger profit than WHFB did. That's a pretty tall order when you've ran off a large part of the audience of a already failing product line.

If you really believe that you have not been following AoS at all. They recently streamed a huge AoS tournament as their first foray into live streaming, shortly after they announced an AoS Grand Tournament running through 2017 with tons of events, they have promised yearly updates to the Generals Handbook points. Furthermore, they have always alternated between game systems when it comes to pace of releases, they have released an INSANE amount of AoS in the last year, and we have known since like 6 months that 2016 would be the year of AoS, which they would logically follow up with a year or at least half a year more focused on 40k which saw very few releases when AoS was getting stuff every week. On top of all these things, they have invested an enormous amount of money into AoS and letting it "peter out" would be Kirby-levels of stupid. If anything, going by the facts I've laid out above, it's clear to me that GW are going all-in on AoS. I get that you hate AoS and would love for GW to let it die, but IMO you will be very disappointed.

motski wrote:

 Zywus wrote:

It's not enough that AoS sell more than nothing. To have been worth the destruction of WHFB (and by extention worth keeping arounf). AoS must sell enough stuff and bring in enough new blood to offset the loss of the large part of the old fanbase (which is admittedly mitigated by people still buying GW fantasy products even if not using them for AoS) and make a bigger profit than WHFB did. That's a pretty tall order when you've ran off a large part of the audience of a already failing product line.

AoS has already done that: GW have said in their last financial report that they are selling more than WHFB did, at least for the past few years.

That's not really what they said in that statement, it's not clear what they were comparing to. Is it selling more than WHFB did during the End times when there were lot's of releases, or better than WHFB the year before, when there was basely anything released for fantasy?

Plus, if they sell just barely better but use more than double the mount of resources to get those sales than they did for WHFB, then it's not a gain. For a while, AoS had more releases dedicated to it than 40K. Did the increases in sales offset the opportunity costs of not dedicating those releases to 40K products? If not, following the same reasoning that led to cancelling WHFB leads to cancelling (or rather stop producing for) AoS.

 Zywus wrote:

morgoth wrote:
The very fact that AoS has gathered *any* momentum at all means that it's growing, likely to be renewable, currently makes people happy and has them buying stuff.

If you ever try to start a business, you'll see what I mean when I say AoS is a success already.

Of course people weren't buying much for WHFB. The rules had been a mess for years, making the startup costs daunting and very little stuff being released. If even half the effort given to promote AoS (starting bundles, coopertaion with tournaments, live streaming events etc.) had been afforded WHFB, we can only speculate how the interest and enthusiasm would have been rekindled

How many times do you think GW has "tried" to make WHFB work again ?

I think you vastly underestimate the weight of WHFB's past and why it made business sense to just drop it and start from scratch when it had become such a small source of revenue.

morgoth wrote:


How many times do you think GW has "tried" to make WHFB work again ?.

Zero times.

It worked for decades but they let it slowly degrade by not taking the rules or their setting seriously. Then once something needed to be done they couldn't be bothered doing actual work on their existing beloved setting, so they threw it away like trash.

 Zywus wrote:


AoS was pretty dead until the handbook (something people can strangely admit now after the release, but before, all the anecdotal evidence for that was ignored). Stuff were obviously in the pipeline for a long time before the WHFB world ended so regardles of how much AoS flopped they'd have released what they had already made. Generals handbook managed to turn the community around around a bit, but is it back to the numbers before AoS?

They did go all-in on AoS. A year ago. (and that year was planned years before that). When AoS didn't turn out to be the success they were hoping for though...
How much AoS stuff has been released since Silver Tower?


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morgoth wrote:


How many times do you think GW has "tried" to make WHFB work again ?.

Since 8th edition? Zero times.

I don't think you understand the general plan behind AoS.

The idea was to release a blank game and fish for feedback, to then establish a simple core set of rules (the GHB you mention) to make the game simple yet playable.
So basically, everything is according to plan so far, even if it may seem weird that they didn't shoot for a day 1 finished product.

GW tried to make WHFB work again for years, before and during 8th.

WHFB didn't suddenly become "bad" with 8th either, it's been going downhill for a very long time from what I recall.

morgoth wrote:
I don't think you understand the general plan behind AoS.

The idea was to release a blank game and fish for feedback, to then establish a simple core set of rules (the GHB you mention) to make the game simple yet playable.
So basically, everything is according to plan so far, even if it may seem weird that they didn't shoot for a day 1 finished product.

Oh, so the Generals handbook was planned all along?
They just forgot to tell anyone.

If it helps you sleep at night.

 Zywus wrote:

morgoth wrote:
I don't think you understand the general plan behind AoS.

The idea was to release a blank game and fish for feedback, to then establish a simple core set of rules (the GHB you mention) to make the game simple yet playable.
So basically, everything is according to plan so far, even if it may seem weird that they didn't shoot for a day 1 finished product.

Oh, so the Generals handbook was planned all along?

That was indeed my interpretation from day one, that GW intentionally dropped an incomplete game on the market to see the reactions, community suggestions and then take their time to come up with a great, community inspired and more complete set of rules.

Even with the GH AOS still is a mediocre at best game. AT BEST.

RoninXiC wrote:
Even with the GH AOS still is a mediocre at best game. AT BEST.

I don't know and I don't care, I won't be playing AOS ever, the models are just ugly to me.
But I would expect a lot more stuff like the GH down the line, they seem to be managing this game more like a startup: launch fast, iterate quickly.

 DarkBlack wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

 DarkBlack wrote:

morgoth wrote:

There are many alternatives, like 8th edition forever, 9th age, ... - I don't see why anyone would even consider KOW rules.

Because KoW is a really good ruleset? It works really well and it's the most balanced fantasy wargame I've ever seen.

I think the biggest thing in my gaming group is not wanting to learn online community rulesets vs officially supported rulesets from a company. Especially not for gigantic games like WHFB where it can take a long time to actually learn the rules.

KoW are official rules from a company and the rules don't take long to learn.

Yeah sorry, that's what I meant. My group is uninterested in community rulesets for WHFB like 9th age but are happier to use rulesets published by an actual company.

Zywus, nothing you said supports your viewpoint. Regardless if they had releases in the pipeline for years or not , there is still nothing strange at all about the lack of AoS releases of late. Unless you believe that 40k was "petering out" when AoS completely took over the release schedule. All my other point still speak heavily in my favor. We're both speculating but i outlined several pieces of evidence that supports my view point while the ONLY argument you have is "they haven't released anything for AoS lately", which a) is false (they have had several AoS releases since ST) and b) follows an expected schedule that, like I said, we already knew about from rumors long ago. There's is simply nothing that indicates GW would stop supporting AoS anytime soon while there is plenty of indication that they are going full steam ahead and betting everything on it, still.

morgoth wrote:


The idea was to release a blank game and fish for feedback, to then establish a simple core set of rules (the GHB you mention) to make the game simple yet playable.
So basically, everything is according to plan so far, even if it may seem weird that they didn't shoot for a day 1 finished product.

A blank game that constantly refers back to WHFB before it...

morgoth wrote:

 Zywus wrote:

morgoth wrote:
I don't think you understand the general plan behind AoS.

The idea was to release a blank game and fish for feedback, to then establish a simple core set of rules (the GHB you mention) to make the game simple yet playable.
So basically, everything is according to plan so far, even if it may seem weird that they didn't shoot for a day 1 finished product.

Oh, so the Generals handbook was planned all along?

That was indeed my interpretation from day one, that GW intentionally dropped an incomplete game on the market to see the reactions, community suggestions and then take their time to come up with a great, community inspired and more complete set of rules.

If that was the case, don't you think they would have mentioned that they were looking for peoples input and suggestions from the community?
There was nothing said from GW's side that suggested there was anything else. And I'd say it's extremely clear there never were anything like the GH planned.
GW saw that people ran headlong from AoS and a tiny minority were interested in playing the game without any structure, so they scrambled to get the GH out and stem the losses. Which seem to have worked somewhat.

 Mymearan wrote:
Zywus, nothing you said supports your viewpoint. Regardless if they had releases in the pipeline for years or not , there is still nothing strange at all about the lack of AoS releases of late. Unless you believe that 40k was "petering out" when AoS completely took over the release schedule. All my other point still speak heavily in my favor. We're both speculating but i outlined several pieces of evidence that supports my view point while the ONLY argument you have is "they haven't released anything for AoS lately", which a) is false (they have had several AoS releases since ST) and b) follows an expected schedule that, like I said, we already knew about from rumors long ago. There's is simply nothing that indicates GW would stop supporting AoS anytime soon while there is plenty of indication that they are going full steam ahead and betting everything on it, still.

I'm not saying that GW has necessarily already dropped the game behind the scenes. But the way they act now is how I would do it if I had decided to drop it.
Release anything in the pipeline that's already far along. Keep the fanbase as enthusiastic as possible for as long as possible, as cheaply as possible. Streaming tournaments etc, cost almost nothing.

Several AoS releases since ST you say. Not saying that's wrong, as I don't keep a close watch on AoS but what have they released exactly? Some reboxings of characters to use in ST and a sigmarine here and there that barely the most fanboyest of AoS fanboys gets enthused about? I guess you could count that Khorne arena game with reboxed blood-dudes?

I do think GW is pushing in the right direction.

White Dwarf is back on its feet.

I love age of sigmar and think it fills a great niche.

Finally getting some decent 40k video games.

The launch of the 40k legends collection was a good idea.

STAND ALONE BOARD GAMES, and with models that can be used in other systems to boot... this is the icing on the cake.

Complaints are still the same

Costings

Very wavering quality between store to store (Some staff members are great in Store A, whilst Store B will be managed by the anti-emperor)

-

motski wrote:
Here's some data from reddit which in my opinion is a much better reflector of actual player numbers than the rumor and heresay thrown around in threads like this:

http://redditmetrics.com/r/ageofsigmar#compare=kingsofwar

As we can see, the AoS community is large and growing and the KoW community is small and stagnant.

This could also be the result of KoW having official forums (http://vb.manticforum.com/) which AoS does not have. Maybe reddit was just the simplest way for people to create a AoS discussion while Mantic actually provides a forum for people to use?

Mario wrote:

motski wrote:
Here's some data from reddit which in my opinion is a much better reflector of actual player numbers than the rumor and heresay thrown around in threads like this:

http://redditmetrics.com/r/ageofsigmar#compare=kingsofwar

As we can see, the AoS community is large and growing and the KoW community is small and stagnant.

This could also be the result of KoW having official forums (http://vb.manticforum.com/) which AoS does not have. Maybe reddit was just the simplest way for people to create a AoS discussion while Mantic actually provides a forum for people to use?

very unlikely seeing as the Grand Alliance forum for AoS is the de facto home for AoS discussion online (along with Facebook), and it's way more active than the KoW forum from a quick look in general discussion.