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.

Yep, and we don't know how much X-Wing is bought by people to run in homebrew battlefleet gothic games. In both cases there is probably not much point in bringing it into the conversation.

We don't know how much of it was bought by old veterans and we don't know how much was bought by new blood. We can give anecdotes either way but as most wargamers live in a bubble (in that they frequent with similarly minded wargamers) any anecdote is likely to be fairly unrepresentative of the wider scene.

At the end of the day, sales figures are still one of the best metrics in measuring the popularity of a game. We have nothing concrete for AoS, but we are getting rumours suggesting it is doing very well. Time will tell.

The interesting thing here is Lord of the Rings. Remember how nobody played LotR, except that it was a better game than WFB? And it sold amazingly well? Right.

 Bottle wrote:
Yep, and we don't know how much X-Wing is bought by people to run in homebrew battlefleet gothic games. In both cases there is probably not much point in bringing it into the conversation.

It's specifically important for WHFB/AoS because it's a source of income that's going to dry up quickly.

We don't know how much of it was bought by old veterans and we don't know how much was bought by new blood. We can give anecdotes either way but as most wargamers live in a bubble (in that they frequent with similarly minded wargamers) any anecdote is likely to be fairly unrepresentative of the wider scene.

At the end of the day, sales figures are still one of the best metrics in measuring the popularity of a game. We have nothing concrete for AoS, but we are getting rumours suggesting it is doing very well. Time will tell.

My thought that AoS is going to appeal mostly to existing 40k players isn't based purely off anecdotal evidence.

Some of my thoughts are anecdotal based on what I've seen on dakka, the people most excited about AoS seeming to be existing 40k fans. Additionally it seems if AoS did reasonably well last year, it suggests to me that it's mostly being bought by 40k veterans because 40k took an almost equal hit as AoS saw an increase.

That's really the only circumstance I can see AoS outselling 40k globally, people reducing their 40k purchases while increasing their AoS purchases rather than AoS actually growing larger than 40k was 1 or 2 years ago.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
The interesting thing here is Lord of the Rings. Remember how nobody played LotR, except that it was a better game than WFB? And it sold amazingly well? Right.

I'm not sure if you're trying to be sarcastic or not?

LotR both sold extremely well and was popular in gaming circles back when the movies were popular. Locally it outnumbered both WHFB and 40k as far as people playing games (which had large communities at the time as well). Things dried up when the movies ended, when GW stagnated the range and when the prices skyrocketed.

If it's unknowable I don't see the worth in adding it to the discussion. And your example seems a prime bit of anecdotal evidence to me. Care to explain how it's anything more? For what it's worth I am one of the biggest AoS posters here on the forums and I am a WHFB player that made the transition over. I am not a 40k player and haven't been for a long time (since 5th Edition).

@ASS - You being Oz/NZ, where LotR was filmed, has given you an unusual perspective on LotR. Here in the US, the 40k and WFB players said that LotR wasn't selling, all numbers to the contrary. Because they weren't playing it.

 Bottle wrote:
If it's unknowable I don't see the worth in adding it to the discussion. And your example seems a prime bit of anecdotal evidence to me. Care to explain how it's anything more? For what it's worth I am one of the biggest AoS posters here on the forums and I am a WHFB player that made the transition over. I am not a 40k player and haven't been for a long time (since 5th Edition).

Well it's not unknowable that 40k took a dive proportional to the increase in AoS last year, we just don't know what the dollar value of that change was.

EDIT: Unless AoS really didn't outsell WHFB for that year which I guess is also a possibility.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
@ASS - You being Oz/NZ, where LotR was filmed, has given you an unusual perspective on LotR. Here in the US, the 40k and WFB players said that LotR wasn't selling, all numbers to the contrary. Because they weren't playing it.

Just so you know, Australians don't consider NZ to be the same place as Australia, there's 1300ish miles of Pacific ocean separating New Zealand from us and we don't even share the same currency And I know you yanks think we all sound the same, but the accent is actually completely different

That's not what I was referring to. It's unknowable how much AoS miniatures are being bought by worried WHFB veterans as another poster commented.

@ASS - I know that Oz & NZ are different places. Oz has drop bears. NZ has the All Blacks! However, both are on the wrong side of the equator, hence the huge pricing jumps compared to things that don't cross that line!

NZ has even worse pricing than Oz.

But I know when I see a NZ movie I consider a foreign movie as much as any other I don't think I even knew LotR was filmed in NZ until some time after I saw FotR.

I'm sure a lot of people played LotR globally but again it's one of those things it's hard to gauge interest outside of your own city. Where I lived in Pennsylvania it didn't seem like any form of GW gaming was popular. But people didn't just come up with the idea LotR had good rules but then not actually play it

These days LotR is dead out here, but apparently in other places it's currently thriving.

Yeah. The main point is that people assume a game isn't popular if they aren't currently playing it.

 Bottle wrote:
Yep, and we don't know how much X-Wing is bought by people to run in homebrew battlefleet gothic games. In both cases there is probably not much point in bringing it into the conversation.

We don't know how much of it was bought by old veterans and we don't know how much was bought by new blood. We can give anecdotes either way but as most wargamers live in a bubble (in that they frequent with similarly minded wargamers) any anecdote is likely to be fairly unrepresentative of the wider scene.

At the end of the day, sales figures are still one of the best metrics in measuring the popularity of a game. We have nothing concrete for AoS, but we are getting rumours suggesting it is doing very well. Time will tell.

Yet I have also seen rumors that AoS is selling very badly indeed.

Can you guess which rumor comes closer to my personal observations?

I have also seen more boxes of AoS sold to folks playing Blood Angels than to people that want to play AoS.

It may be based more on locale than anything else, but I very much doubt that AoS is selling all that well - selling better than 8th edition? Perhaps - but that has more to do with 8th edition doing very badly than with AoS doing very well.

Locally, 8th edition killed the game - folks were already making the switch to Kings of War by the time GW rolled out the End Times.

40K does still have players, but the latest edition of that game has also damaged the brand - there are fewer playing this edition than the previous edition. (But only the one edition - WHFB started sliding in 7th edition, though 8th edition turned that slide into a fall.)

The Auld Grump - at a guess, and on a local basis only, Kings of War has about 2/3 of the audience that 7th had - but more than 8th edition.

In GW's financials 8th edition was touted as their means to correct the sliding sales of late 7th edition. It (obviously) didn't work so they did end times limited edition books and kits for one last feed at the trough and then the game got the axe.

Locally there are two stores that still sell GW stuff (one is a tiny single employee GW store). One of them (not the GW) runs weekly AoS and KoW leagues and they both get about the same number of people. Though both get twice as many as the last few months of their WHFB league nights. Though both pale in comparison to the WHFB player base near the end of 6th and into early 7th. I don't think those days are coming back, ever.

I imagine this might be true of many places. It will be interesting to see what effect FFG's ranked up fantasy game has on this equation.

 frozenwastes wrote:
In GW's financials 8th edition was touted as their means to correct the sliding sales of late 7th edition. It (obviously) didn't work so they did end times limited edition books and kits for one last feed at the trough and then the game got the axe.

Locally there are two stores that still sell GW stuff (one is a tiny single employee GW store). One of them (not the GW) runs weekly AoS and KoW leagues and they both get about the same number of people. Though both get twice as many as the last few months of their WHFB league nights. Though both pale in comparison to the WHFB player base near the end of 6th and into early 7th. I don't think those days are coming back, ever.

I imagine this might be true of many places. It will be interesting to see what effect FFG's ranked up fantasy game has on this equation.

It is also worth mentioning that folks using GW figures in KoW do not much boost KoW sales - the rules for KoW, even in print form, cost less than an army book for 40K....

The Auld Grump

 frozenwastes wrote:
In GW's financials 8th edition was touted as their means to correct the sliding sales of late 7th edition. It (obviously) didn't work so they did end times limited edition books and kits for one last feed at the trough and then the game got the axe.

Locally there are two stores that still sell GW stuff (one is a tiny single employee GW store). One of them (not the GW) runs weekly AoS and KoW leagues and they both get about the same number of people. Though both get twice as many as the last few months of their WHFB league nights. Though both pale in comparison to the WHFB player base near the end of 6th and into early 7th. I don't think those days are coming back, ever.

I imagine this might be true of many places. It will be interesting to see what effect FFG's ranked up fantasy game has on this equation.

The glory days of 6th Ed. could EASILY come back, but GW wouldn't make the steps necessary to do so. First, they'd have to change pricing. THEN they'd have to get a balanced ruleset. THEN they'd have to actually spend money advertising it to grow the customer base. Say what you will about certain army books, 6th was that popular for a reason. The days of battalions and 20 man regiment boxed sets made it easy to get into the game, but 7th came and sat balance on its face. 8th came with special rules to fix special rules that overrode special rules, and encouraged the 50+ man behemoths that dominated the game. When your buy in for a single regiment is $25 US for a box of 10 x 5+ boxed sets, you see where it went off the rails. Also, army books that were priced the same as rule books from less than 10 years prior.

Sure, WFB6 was cheaper, but just look at this magnificent beast!

I don't even play Orks, but I want one!

No, it's not so much the price of 6E vs 8E - it's the rules disaster that's 8E.

@TheAuldGrump that's the whole point. Our experiences are the exact polar opposite. So who's right? Without sales figures it is difficult to say. There are rumors supporting both sides too. Now I will point out there is a definite chronological progression in the rumors of it doing badly, followed by the Ironjawz release being popular, followed by GW's positive spin in the report (which you can choose to take with salt) and now these rumors that it is doing better than 40k at some point. Still we are going to have to wait till we get some more concrete facts from somewhere.

I think it's irrelevant if AoS miniatures are at times being sold to be played in other games. That is something true of all miniature ranges and at AoS tournaments other miniature ranges are popular too. To what extent it happens is going to be purely anecdotal without any numbers to back it up. If you frequent KOW clubs and tournaments you will obviously be exposed to more of it.

And saying that, this thread has never been truly about if AoS is being played more than 40k or KOW. It's about if the range is selling more than 40k and in that discussion what percentage the sales contribute to the AoS player base/collectors/players of other games doesn't matter too much in my opinion.

If you really want to look into which game is being played more I suggest looking at tournament numbers across the UK being a good measure.

I guess I'm not all that impressed with the surfing Orc

It's almost indicative of how things have shifted for GW, they've gone from trying to produce a good game with good models to just producing display shelf models, many of which are wholly inappropriate for gaming because they're a nightmare to transport.

I've never really liked how both 40k and WHFB became overly focused on the big stuff. Back when I started WHFB most armies had 1 big scary thing, maybe 2 at most. It was good because it made those big scary things look cool and imposing relative to all the small stuff.

The Orc is meh. The dragon is awesome!

But point taken on GW moving from 25mm to 28mm to 30mm to HUGE GIANT AWESOME models

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

I've never really liked how both 40k and WHFB became overly focused on the big stuff. Back when I started WHFB most armies had 1 big scary thing, maybe 2 at most. It was good because it made those big scary things look cool and imposing relative to all the small stuff.

You should look into AoS at 1000 points if you are interested, as it is exactly as you describe and from what I can see an old 6th Edition army is about the same size. One monster or other behemoth, supported by small regiments of troops (usually not going over 30 models). The game is also super fun. :-)

Eh, if it had rules put out that were backwards compatible I'd run it, but I'd rather see a horde of Orcs honestly.

Hmm, well I can't say I believe AoS to be outselling the juggernaut that is 40k but it's certainly doing well for itself.

Models keep appearing "temporarily out of stock" on the website, AoS events have been sold out, large competitions have large AoS player bases (though usually half the size of the 40k groups), Reddit and Facebook has a constant stream of posters either stating they're just getting into tabletop or returning after a decade while the fantasy forums usually see new members playing both 9th and AoS or branching out into AoS.

So there's plenty of evidence to support AoS' going strong but nothing really but clickbait to say it's triumphing over 40k.

Also, I like the bigger direction of the models. They survive better from accidents rather than the tiny figures whose heads or limbs pop off and are lost. I wonder how survivable the Warmaster mini models were in that case? (I quite liked those models)

Doesn't matter if one is outselling the other, neither has addressed the most common reason (excluding price) in my area for not starting up an army, might as well wait for the next edition-itis.

Warhammer: Age of Sigmar doesn't feel like a permanent setting, and people have picked up on that.

Oh, how so?

Baron Klatz wrote:
Hmm, well I can't say I believe AoS to be outselling the juggernaut that is 40k but it's certainly doing well for itself.

Models keep appearing "temporarily out of stock" on the website, AoS events have been sold out, large competitions have large AoS player bases (though usually half the size of the 40k groups), Reddit and Facebook has a constant stream of posters either stating they're just getting into tabletop or returning after a decade while the fantasy forums usually see new members playing both 9th and AoS or branching out into AoS.

So there's plenty of evidence to support AoS' going strong but nothing really but clickbait to say it's triumphing over 40k.

Also, I like the bigger direction of the models. They survive better from accidents rather than the tiny figures whose heads or limbs pop off and are lost. I wonder how survivable the Warmaster mini models were in that case? (I quite liked those models)

All that means is they are only making small batches at a time so they don't have piles of stock hanging around, storage space costs money.

Baron Klatz wrote:
Hmm, well I can't say I believe AoS to be outselling the juggernaut that is 40k but it's certainly doing well for itself.

I wouldn't even say it's doing it well. When has GW not tooted their own horn? I just find it funny anything Mr Roundtree is saying, I have to take it with salt as well since it's all "spin" words. If AoS is doing well, just come out and say it. Since they are using spin words and not giving out actual numbers a lot of salt needs to be taken. This is not just for AoS but 40K and GW on a whole.

Models keep appearing "temporarily out of stock" on the website,

I always hate being cynical or negative, but I see this as the Sony/Microsoft/Nintendo syndrome. In other words those companies only gave stores what 5 or 10 copies of the console so of course they will sell out right away. This way they can legally claim all their stores sold on within hours of being sold. Of course they will sell out when you under produce demand. GW is not stupid. They know what the demand is now, and they all they are doing is creating artificial hype in my opinion. Yes we will not see anymore Special Editions of The Hobbit or Dreadfleet. GW has learned their lesson now and now under produce instead of over produce.

So just because it's "temporarily out of stock" doesn't mean it sells well, it just sold enough for GW, just like how they like to sell the only 1000 copies of something.

Baron Klatz wrote:


Also, I like the bigger direction of the models. They survive better from accidents rather than the tiny figures whose heads or limbs pop off and are lost. I wonder how survivable the Warmaster mini models were in that case? (I quite liked those models)

Are you seriously arguing that AoS models are better because they are more resistant to falling? This is borderline satire.

And, the general trend of huge models is deleterious. Carry an army from point A to point B becomes cumbersome.
I think is a good metaphor for the rules, BTW.

Baron Klatz wrote:
Also, I like the bigger direction of the models. They survive better from accidents rather than the tiny figures whose heads or limbs pop off and are lost. I wonder how survivable the Warmaster mini models were in that case? (I quite liked those models)

I assume you're being sarcastic

Small models are usually tougher because the mass of an object scales with the cube of its scale while the strength scales with the square of its scale, i.e. things get heavier faster than they get stronger as they get bigger. If your small models are breaking more easily, look to your glue, not the size of the model

 Kaiyanwang wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:


Also, I like the bigger direction of the models. They survive better from accidents rather than the tiny figures whose heads or limbs pop off and are lost. I wonder how survivable the Warmaster mini models were in that case? (I quite liked those models)

Are you seriously arguing that AoS models are better because they are more resistant to falling? This is borderline satire.

Actually, that's the main non-ideological reason not to buy proper recasts and keep to GW plastic.
At least when your miniatures fall, they stay in one piece

Not that I think bigger miniatures withstand falls better... to the contrary the tiny pieces break off more easily.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:

Baron Klatz wrote:
Also, I like the bigger direction of the models. They survive better from accidents rather than the tiny figures whose heads or limbs pop off and are lost. I wonder how survivable the Warmaster mini models were in that case? (I quite liked those models)

I assume you're being sarcastic

Small models are usually tougher because the mass of an object scales with the cube of its scale while the strength scales with the square of its scale, i.e. things get heavier faster than they get stronger as they get bigger. If your small models are breaking more easily, look to your glue, not the size of the model

That's not quite correct.

Small models are generally full where large models are generally empty.
And no, the strength does not scale with the square of its scale or anything... that's just not how it works.
Assuming real existing plastic models from GW, the big ones which are empty will have a better surface to weight ratio and fall slower, although this is not visible to the naked eye.
As they are empty, they're also a lot more likely to break, since the tiny tiny seams that join the walls of your empty cavity have to absorb shocks relative to the total weight of the model, which is a lot trickier when there's more weight per bonded surface area.

Back in the real world, if you glue a space marine with proper poly cement, no amount of falling off a table should be able to separate the pieces OR alter the surface details significantly.

What you'll see is a space marine glued with superglue coming apart when falling, because superglue has absolutely no tolerance to vibrations, being very rigid and not elastic at all, so the bond tends to break at the first fall on a non-elastic surface.

For bigger models, Wraithknights routinely break "antennas" and gun tips when falling and properly glued, so do Tervigons.

The big summary is: if you don't want your plastic to be broken, glue it with superglue, it'll break before your plastic does... or just glue stuff properly and don't drop it on the floor.

morgoth wrote:
That's not quite correct.

It's obviously going to depend on the model but generally smaller models stand up to falls better. I know what you mean about larger models being hollow, but even if they have a better strength to weight ratio from being hollow they're still going to have more kinetic energy which gets absorbed by whatever part of the model hits the ground since the model as a whole is reasonably rigid. If stuff is breaking off just glue it with polystyrene cement, epoxy or other more rubbery glue because superglue has no capacity to absorb energy.

If you drop something like this...

https://www.games-workshop.com/en-PL/Deathlords-Nagash

...on the floor it's going to be screwed regardless of what it's glued together with.

But whatever, I find it a wholly insane argument that you would prefer bigger models because you think they're more resilient to damage

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
Sure, WFB6 was cheaper, but just look at this magnificent beast!

I don't even play Orks, but I want one!

No, it's not so much the price of 6E vs 8E - it's the rules disaster that's 8E.

Actually, I very much dislike that particular figure. (Loathe comes closer.)

The technical execution is excellent, but taken as a figure, the thing is a cluttered mess. Give me the old orc chieftain on wyvern any day.

The Auld Grump